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DECEMBER 17, 2014
What's New! 

CAROL:

Gutenberg's Apprentice
by Alix Christie
In this masterpiece of fictionalized history, the author asks the question: Who was Johann Gutenberg? Her answer is skillfully brought to bear in this well researched novel. The invention of the printing press was not brought about by just one man. In the mid-fifteenth century, during the warring between the church and the guilds, Gutenberg's ambitious vision was to "reproduce" the Bible in numbers. But was it too much of a monumental task for him to achieve? In this story of invention, intrigue, and betrayal, the reader will find rich historical detail as  told through the lives of the three men who made this  daring venture possible: copies of the Holy Bible. Highly recommended.  (Harper, $27.99)
 
I Shall Be Near To You
by Erin Lindsay McCabe
An extraordinary novel of a young couple who enlist in the Northern Army during the Civil War in order to use their army wages to buy a farm in Nebraska following the end of the war. Jeremiah enlists and is soon followed by his wife Rosetta, disguised as a man, to fight beside her husband. This story is a courageous adventure of enduring love about a woman's search to follow the man she has given her soul to. A must read.  (Broadway Books, $14.00)  

DEBBIE:

Belzhar 
by Meg Wolitzer

If life were fair, Jam would still be at home in New Jersey with her British boyfriend, Reeve.  She'd be watching old comedy sketches with him.  She'd be kissing him in the library stacks.  She certainly wouldn't be at  a therapeutic boarding school for troubled teens in rural Vermont, mysteriously signed up for an exclusive, supposedly life-changing class called "Special Topics in English" that will focus only on the works of Sylvia Plath.  But life isn't fair. Reeve has been gone for almost a year and Jam is still mourning.  When a journal-writing assignment leads Jam into a mysterious other world she and her classmates call Belzhar, she discovers a realm where the untainted past is restored, and she can feel Reeve's arms around her once again.  But, as  the pages of her journal begin to fill up, Jam must to confront hidden truths and ultimately decide what she's willing to sacrifice to reclaim her loss. I loved her adult fiction book  The Interestings, and this is her new book for teens.  Ages 12 and up.  Limited autographed copies.  (Penguin Young Readers, $17.99)


How We Got to Now
by Steven Johnson
In this illustrated history, Johnson explores the history of innovation over centuries, tracing six important inventions of modern life (i.e. refrigeration, clocks, eyeglass lenses, and clean water) from their creation by hobbyists, amateurs, and entrepreneurs to their unintended historical consequences. Filled with surprising stories of accidental genius and brilliant mistakes-from the French publisher who invented the phonograph before Edison but forgot to include playback, to the Hollywood movie star who helped invent the technology behind Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-How We Got to Now investigates the secret history behind the everyday objects of contemporary life.  If you are watching the PBS series, don't miss the book.  Fascinating!  (Penguin, $30.00)
ERIKA:

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doer 

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. They carry with them perhaps the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a German mining town, an orphan named Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. He becomes expert at fixing these new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. Increasingly aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge. An absolutely amazing book that keeps you reading till the end. Fans of  The Invisible Bridge by Julie Oringer would enjoy this book as well.   (Simon & Schuster, $27.00)

 

The Best of Me
by Nicholas Sparks

In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives.  Forced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living and the dead: Can love truly rewrite the past?  (Grand Central Publishing, $8.00)

 

NATALIE:

Spoiled Brats

by Simon Rich

From "one of the funniest writers in America" comes a collection of stories culled from the front lines of the millennial culture wars. Rife with failing rock bands, student loans, and participation trophies, Spoiled Brats is about a generation of narcissists and the well-meaning boomers who made them that way.  A hardworking immigrant is preserved for a century in pickle brine.  A helicopter mom strives to educate her demon son. And a family of hamsters struggles to survive in a private-school homeroom.  Surreal, shrewd, and surprisingly warm, these stories are as resonant as they are hilarious.  (Hachette, $25.00)


 

Loitering
by Charles D' Ambrosio
Charles D'Ambrosio's essay collection Orphans spawned something of a cult following. In the decade since the tiny limited-edition volume sold out its print run,  devotees have pressed it upon their friends, students, and colleagues, only to find themselves begging for their copy's safe return. D'Ambrosio's writing is exacting and emotionally generous, often as funny as it is devastating. Loitering gathers those eleven original essays with new and previously uncollected work so that a broader audience might discover one of our great living essayists. No matter his subject - Native American whaling, a Pentecostal "hell house," Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J. D. Salinger, or, most often, his own family - D'Ambrosio approaches each piece with a singular voice and point of view; each essay, while unique and surprising, is unmistakably his own. (Tin House, $15.95)

STEFANIE:

How to Build a Girl
by Caitlin Moran

It's 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there's no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde--fast-talking, hard-drinking gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer like Jo in Little Women, or the Bront�s, but without the dying-young bit.  By sixteen, she's smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. She's writing pornographic letters to rock stars, having all the kinds of sex with all the kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.  Imagine The Bell Jar written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.  (Harper, $26.99)

Debbie Lane
Bookshelf Stores, Inc.
11429 Donner Pass Rd. St#2
Truckee, CA 96161

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