Heirloom Modern

Porter Hovey, Hollister Hovey

Rizzoli

A look inside the homes of today's stylish new "heirloomists." Proclaimed as "the New Antiquarians" in the New York Times, Hollister and Porter Hovey are proponents of an aesthetic that puts Ralph Lauren, the Royal Tennenbaums, and a whole lot of taxidermy into a tarnished silver cocktail shaker and mixes it all up. As the principles of Hovey Design, they work to integrate nostalgia, adventure, and history into the home. In this book, the sisters pull back the velvet drapes on the model ships, antique book collections, and vintage Vuitton trunks that fill the homes of today's chicest heirloomists and flea-market lovers, and give readers a visual taste of this eclectic, generation-hurdling aesthetic. This book opens up the homes of individuals and couples to show how they use décor to give their residences a sense of history and autobiography. The Hoveys venture into the apartments, cottages, and townhouses of artists, architects, designers, furniture makers, and landscape designers, who seamlessly integrate inherited keepsakes, tag sale curiosities, collections and memorabilia, and contemporary art. Inspiring in its eclecticism, this book introduces readers to a new kind of modern.

Hollister Hovey is the creator of the history-laden lifestyle blog, "Hollister Hovey." Porter Hovey is a photographer and interior decorator. They are the founders of Hovey Design. Their nostalgia-highlighting aesthetic has been featured multiple times in the New York Times, as well as in House Beautiful, Domino, and Design Sponge.

The View from Penthouse B

Elinor Lipman

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Unexpectedly widowed Gwen-Laura Schmidt is still mourning her husband, Edwin, when her older sister Margot invites her to join forces as roommates in Margot's luxurious Village apartment. For Margot, divorced amid scandal (hint: her husband was a fertility doctor) and then made Ponzi-poor, it's a chance to shake Gwen out of her grief and help make ends meet. To further this effort she enlists a third boarder, the handsome, cupcake-baking Anthony. As the three swap money-making schemes and timid Gwen ventures back out into the dating world, the arrival of Margot's paroled ex in the efficiency apartment downstairs creates not just complications but the chance for all sorts of unexpected forgiveness. A sister story about love, loneliness, and new life in middle age, this is a cracklingly witty, deeply sweet novel from one of our finest comic writers.

London Falling

Paul Cornell

Tor Books

Police officers Quill, Costain, Sefton, and Ross know the worst of London-or they think they do. While investigating a mobster's mysterious death, they come into contact with a strange artifact and accidentally develop the Sight. Suddenly they can see the true evil haunting London's streets. Armed with police instincts and procedures, the four officers take on the otherworldly creatures secretly prowling London. Football lore and the tragic history of a Tudor queen become entwined in their pursuit of an age-old witch with a penchant for child sacrifice. But when London's monsters become aware of their meddling, the officers must decide what they are willing to sacrifice to clean up their city.

The Movement of Stars

Amy Brill

Riverhead Hardcover

It is 1845, and Hannah Gardner Price has lived all twenty-four years of her life according to the principles of the Nantucket Quaker community in which she was raised, where simplicity and restraint are valued above all, and a woman's path is expected to lead to marriage and motherhood. But up on the rooftop each night, Hannah pursues a very different-and elusive-goal: discovering a comet and thereby winning a gold medal awarded by the King of Denmark, something unheard of for a woman. And then she meets Isaac Martin, a young, dark-skinned whaler from the Azores who, like herself, has ambitions beyond his expected station in life. Drawn to his intellectual curiosity and honest manner, Hannah agrees to take Isaac on as a student. But when their shared interest in the stars develops into something deeper, Hannah's standing in the community begins to unravel, challenging her most fundamental beliefs about work and love, and ultimately changing the course of her life forever.

The Famous and the Dead

T. Jefferson Parker

Dutton Adult

Los Angeles County sheriff 's deputy Charlie Hood is attached to the ATF, working undercover on the iron river that flows across the U.S.-Mexican border. The diamond fillings he wears in his left canine glimmer, distracting the men who sell the illegal firearms that enable the unspeakable violence on both sides of the map. Spotting the sparkle when "Charlie Diamonds" opens his mouth is often their first step toward life behind bars. Meanwhile, Bradley Jones, sheriff 's deputy and employee of the Baja Cartel, son of the love of Charlie's life, the deceased L.A. outlaw Suzanne Jones, is expecting a son of his own. Suzanne was descended from famed Mexican desperado Joaquin Murrieta, whose embalmed head Bradley inherited from her and keeps nestled among piles of cash, proceeds from Bradley's own life of crime. Charlie knows all of Bradley's secrets; the question is what he'll do with the information. Until he decides, his obsession remains the inexplicable existence of Mike Finnegan, the diminutive devil who flits in and out of both men's lives, knowing things he shouldn't, seemingly immortal. Three men: earnest law-enforcer, inveterate lawbreaker, and the man who pits them against each other-hurtle toward one another in the jaw-dropping conclusion to T. Jefferson Parker's mesmerizing vision of the border. Their climactic showdown brings to a spectacular close a crime series that obliterated the boundaries of the genre.

The Astor Orphan: A Memoir

Alexandra Aldrich

Ecco

Alexandra Aldrich, a direct descendant of the famous Astor dynasty, grew up in the servants' quarters of Rokeby, the forty-three-room Hudson Valley mansion built by her ancestors. Her childhood was one of bohemian neglect and real privation. But it was fairly stable until the summer of her tenth year, when her father took up with an alluring interloper, Giselle. Alexandra idolized her father, Rokeby's charismatic lord of misrule, who had attended elite private schools as a child but inherited only landed property, not money. To him, she says, "poverty was amusing, a delightful challenge." All of the family's resources--emotional and financial--went to the maintenance of the Astor house and legacy. If the family had sold the house and its 450 acres, they all would have been able to live comfortably. Instead, Alexandra and her parents lived precariously in the grand house, scavenging for the next meal. Her mother, an icy Polish artist, disguised her maternal indifference by extolling the virtues of independence. Relatives preyed on Alexandra's low status in the household. Once her father got involved with Giselle, Alexandra's only stalwart was her affectionate grandmother (whose great-great-grandfather, Nicholas Fish, was a close friend of Alexander Hamilton's and an executor of his estate). Grandma Claire held Alexandra's life together with family dinner parties, rides to violin lessons, and snacks after school. But as she grew progressively more debilitated by alcohol, she soon became too frail to provide a safe haven for her granddaughter. Determined to impose order on her anarchic world and prove her worth, Alexandra awoke promptly at six thirty each morning, adhering to a strict personal regimen of exercise, grooming, and intensive violin practice. With money borrowed from the owner of the local gas station, she did the grocery shopping, occasionally setting aside four dollars to buy herself clean white socks. The betrayal of her father's flagrant affair, however, ignited a series of familial feuds that shook her hard-won stability and set her on a path toward escaping the Astor legacy. Reaching back to the Gilded Age, when that legacy first began to come undone, Alexandra has written an unflinching, mordantly funny account of neglect and class anxiety amid the ruins of a once prominent family. More than an insider's look at a decaying American institution, The Astor Orphan is the debut of a thrilling new voice able to render the secret pains and glories of childhood afresh.

Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise

David Rothenberg

St. Martin's Press

In the spring of 2013 the cicadas in the Northeastern United States will yet again emerge from their seventeen-year cycle-the longest gestation period of any animal. Those who experience this great sonic invasion compare their sense of wonder to the arrival of a comet or a solar eclipse. This unending rhythmic cycle is just one unique example of how the pulse and noise of insects has taught humans the meaning of rhythm, from the whirr of a cricket's wings to this unfathomable and exact seventeen-year beat. In listening to cicadas, as well as other humming, clicking, and thrumming insects, Bug Music is the first book to consider the radical notion that we humans got our idea of rhythm, synchronization, and dance from the world of insect sounds that surrounded our species over the millions of years over which we evolved. Completing the trilogy he began with Why Birds Sing and Thousand Mile Song, David Rothenberg explores a unique part of our relationship with nature and sound-the music of insects that has provided a soundtrack for humanity throughout the history of our species. Bug Music continues Rothenberg's in-depth research and spirited writing on the relationship between human and animal music, and it follows him as he explores insect influences in classical and modern music, plays his saxophone with crickets and other insects, and confers with researchers and scientists nationwide.

Brutal Simplicity of Thought: How It Changed the World

Maurice Saatchi

St. Martin's Press

The principles of creativity in stunningly simple words and pictures by the man behind the world's most successful advertising agency How did two wheels emancipate women? How can a pie save thousands of lives? How can a useless piece of fabric determine social status? How can you make night day? Simplicity looks easy. It's not. It's easier to complicate than simplify. This book presents deceptively simple examples of concepts that have changed the world-from the single piece of paper that became the American Declaration of Independence, giving birth to the most powerful nation in the history of the world, to the symbol and line that enable us to write music. Thought-provoking and incisive, Brutal Simplicity of Thought is the distillation, in words and pictures, of the Saatchi method of creativity. This book started life as a training manual for Saatchi advertising employees, and its approach has shaped the Saatchi story for forty years. Its principles permeate the culture, philosophy and structure of one of the world's best known corporate brands. Whether you are a student, an artist, a manager, self-employed or a CEO, this book has something to teach us all: simplicity rules.

A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story

Qais Akbar Omar

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

One of the rare memoirs of Afghanistan to have been written by an Afghan, A Fort of Nine Towers reveals the richness and suffering of life in a country whose history has become deeply entwined with our own. For the young Qais Akbar Omar, Kabul was a city of gardens where he flew kites from his grandfather's roof with his cousin Wakeel while their parents, uncles, and aunts drank tea around a cloth spread in the grass. It was a time of telling stories, reciting poetry, selling carpets, and arranging marriages.Then civil war exploded. Their neighborhood found itself on the front line of a conflict that grew more savage by the day. With rockets falling around them, Omar's family fled, leaving behind everything they owned to take shelter in an old fort-only a few miles distant and yet a world away from the gunfire. As the violence escalated, Omar's father decided he must take his children out of the country to safety. On their perilous journey, they camped in caves behind the colossal Buddha statues in Bamyan, and took refuge with nomad cousins, herding their camels and sheep. While his father desperately sought smugglers to take them over the border, Omar grew up on the road, and met a deaf-mute carpet weaver who would show him his life's purpose. Later, as the Mujahedin war devolved into Taliban madness, Omar learned about quiet resistance. He survived a brutal and arbitrary imprisonment, and, at eighteen, opened a secret carpet factory to provide work for neighborhood girls, who were forbidden to go to school or even to leave their homes. As they tied knots at their looms, Omar's parents taught them literature and science. In this stunning coming-of-age memoir, Omar recounts terrifyingly narrow escapes and absurdist adventures, as well as moments of intense joy and beauty. Inflected with folktales, steeped in poetry, A Fort of Nine Towers is a life-affirming triumph.

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

Dan Jones

Viking Adult

The first Plantagenet king inherited a blood-soaked kingdom from the Normans and transformed it into an empire stretched at its peak from Scotland to Jerusalem. In this epic history, Dan Jones vividly resurrects this fierce and seductive royal dynasty and its mythic world. We meet the captivating Eleanor of Aquitaine, twice queen and the most famous woman in Christendom; her son, Richard the Lionheart, who fought Saladin in the Third Crusade; and King John, a tyrant who was forced to sign Magna Carta, which formed the basis of our own Bill of Rights. This is the era of chivalry, of Robin Hood and the Knights Templar, the Black Death, the founding of Parliament, the Black Prince, and the Hundred Year's War. It will appeal as much to readers of Tudor history as to fans of Game of Thrones.

Michael Chiarello's Live Fire: 125 Recipes for Cooking Outdoors

Michael Chiarello

Chronicle Books

He's a Top Chef master, an Iron Chef, an Emmy Award-winning television host, a booked-solid restaurateur, and his cookbooks have sold half a million copies. And, at heart, Michael Chiarello is a master of cooking over fire. This passion and Michael's great gifts for sharing his cooking philosophy (described by Publisher's Weekly as "cooking is craft") and his recipes with such ease and enthusiasm infuse Live Fire, a book destined to fire up the cooking of anyone who takes pride in their grilling. Live Fire features many ways to cook with open flame and embers: the beloved backyard grill, of course, and also using a fire pit, spit, or rotisserie, and more. Here are 125 of Michael's surefire recipes for all courses and 100 sumptuous photographs. All this makes Live Fire a substantial volume o be pored over for years to come-and a grilling book unlike any other.

Taken

Erin Bowman

Harper Teen

There are no men in Claysoot. There are boys--but every one of them vanishes at midnight on his eighteenth birthday. The ground shakes, the wind howls, a blinding light descends . . . and he's gone. They call it the Heist. Gray Weathersby's eighteenth birthday is mere months away, and he's prepared to meet his fate--until he finds a strange note from his mother and starts to question everything he's been raised to accept: the Council leaders and their obvious secrets, the Heist itself, and what lies beyond the Wall that surrounds Claysoot--a structure that no one can cross and survive. Climbing the Wall is suicide, but what comes after the Heist could be worse. Should he sit back and wait to be taken--or risk everything on the hope of the other side?

Again!

Emily Gravett

Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

It's nearly Cedric the dragon's bedtime, and for Cedric, bedtime means storytime! When his mother reads him his favorite book, he likes the story so much that he wants to hear it again...and again...and again! Cedric's mom understands that the best stories are ripe for repetition, and she tries very hard to be patient. But sometimes dragons will be dragons-which is why this bedtime tale ends with an incendiary surprise!

Glasswings: A Butterfly's Story

Elisa Kleven

Dial

Claire, a glasswing butterfly whose transparent wings reflect her lush home, finds herself lost in the city after being separated from her family. She doesn't know how they will ever see her, but she finds new city friends, a pigeon, an ant, and a ladybug, who search for the flowers Claire needs to live. They come upon a tiny urban garden, and as Claire drinks from the flowers' nectar, she pollinates more flowers. Soon the garden-and Claire's clear wings-fill with color, allowing her family to recognize her at last. Together they create an oasis for all to enjoy. Facts about glasswing butterflies and pollination complete this beautiful and educational picture book. Kleven's latest offering is as colorful and delicate as a butterfly's wings-a treasure that can be cherished for years.

Penguin on Vacation

Salina Yoon

Walker Childrens

Penguin is tired of the snow and cold-so he decides to visit the beach! But when his favorite activities like skiing and skating don't work so well on sand, can a new friend help Penguin learn how to have fun in the sun? Seasoned illustrator Salina Yoon's charming text and bright, energetic illustrations ensure that readers will be clamoring for more Penguin stories-wherever they make their home!