On Sal Mal Lane

Ru Freeman

Graywolf Press

On the day the Herath family moves in, Sal Mal Lane is still a quiet street, disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries. But the tremors of civil war are mounting, and the conflict threatens to engulf them all. In a heartrending novel poised between the past and the future, the innocence of the children-a beloved sister and her overprotective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very different brothers-contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults charged with their care. In Ru Freeman's masterful hands, On Sal Mal Lane, a story of what was lost to a country and her people, becomes a resounding cry for reconciliation.

Inferno

Dan Brown

Doubleday

In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history's most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante's Inferno. Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante's dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust . . . before the world is irrevocably altered.

The Perfume Collector

Kathleen Tessaro

Harper

Newlywed Grace Monroe doesn't fit anyone's expectations of a successful 1950s London socialite, least of all her own. When she receives an unexpected inheritance from a complete stranger, Madame Eva d'Orsey, Grace is drawn to uncover the identity of her mysterious benefactor. Weaving through the decades, from 1920s New York to Monte Carlo, Paris, and London, the story Grace uncovers is that of an extraordinary women who inspired one of Paris's greatest perfumers. Immortalized in three evocative perfumes, Eva d'Orsey's history will transform Grace's life forever, forcing her to choose between the woman she is expected to be and the person she really is.

River of Dust

Virginia Pye

Unbridled Books

On the windswept plains of northwestern China, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes lost in the rugged, corrupt countryside populated by opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses. This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants and is christened Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers. Grace, his young ingénue wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, where visions of her stolen child and lost husband begin to beckon to her from across the plains. The foreign couple's savvy and dedicated Chinese servants, Ahcho and Mai Lin, accompany and eventually lead them through dangerous territory to find one another again. With their Christian beliefs sorely tested, their concept of fate expanded, and their physical health rapidly deteriorating, the Reverend and Grace may finally discover an understanding between them that is greater than the vast distance they have come.

The Conditions of Love

Dale M. Kushner

Grand Central Publishing

Dale M. Kushner's novel The Conditions of Love traces the journey of a girl from childhood to adulthood as she reckons with her parents' abandonment, her need to break from society's limitations, and her overwhelming desire for spiritual and erotic love. In 1953, ten-year-old Eunice lives in the backwaters of Wisconsin with her outrageously narcissistic mother, a manicureeste and movie star worshipper. Abandoned by her father as an infant, Eunice worries that she will become a misfit like her mother. When her mother's lover, the devoted Sam, moves in, Eunice imagines her life will finally become normal. But her hope dissolves when Sam gets kicked out, and she is again alone with her mother. A freak storm sends Eunice away from all things familiar. Rescued by the shaman-like Rose, Eunice's odyssey continues with a stay in a hermit's shack and ends with a passionate love affair with an older man. Through her capacity to redefine herself, reject bitterness and keep her heart open, she survives and flourishes. In this, she is both ordinary and heroic. At once fable and realistic story, The Conditions of Love is a book about emotional and physical survival. Through sheer force of will, Eunice saves herself from a doomed life.

The Human Division

John Scalzi

Tor Books

Following the events of The Last Colony, John Scalzi tells the story of the fight to maintain the unity of the human race. The people of Earth now know that the human Colonial Union has kept them ignorant of the dangerous universe around them. For generations the CU had defended humanity against hostile aliens, deliberately keeping Earth an ignorant backwater and a source of military recruits. Now the CU's secrets are known to all. Other alien races have come on the scene and formed a new alliance-an alliance against the Colonial Union. And they've invited the people of Earth to join them. For a shaken and betrayed Earth, the choice isn't obvious or easy. Against such possibilities, managing the survival of the Colonial Union won't be easy, either. It will take diplomatic finesse, political cunning...and a brilliant "B Team," centered on the resourceful Lieutenant Harry Wilson, that can be deployed to deal with the unpredictable and unexpected things the universe throws at you when you're struggling to preserve the unity of the human race.

Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Knopf

From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a dazzling new novel: a story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home. As teenagers in a Lagos secondary school, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are leaving the country if they can. Ifemelu-beautiful, self-assured-departs for America to study. She suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships and friendships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze-the quiet, thoughtful son of a professor-had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. But when Ifemelu returns to Nigeria, and she and Obinze reignite their shared passion-for their homeland and for each other-they will face the toughest decisions of their lives.

Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery

Walter Mosley

Doubleday

asy Rawlins is one of the few private eyes in contemporary crime fiction who can be called iconic and immortal. In the incendiary and fast-paced Little Green, he returns from the brink of death to investigate the dark side of L.A.'s 1960s hippie haven, the Sunset Strip. We last saw Easy in 2007's Blonde Faith, fighting for his life after his car plunges over a cliff. True to form, the tough WWII veteran survives, and soon his murderous sidekick Mouse has him back cruising the mean streets of L.A., in all their psychedelic 1967 glory, to look for a young black man, Evander "Little Green" Noon, who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator's Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual, and emotional resurrection, but peace and love soon give way to murder and mayhem. Written with Mosley's signature grit and panache, this engrossing and atmospheric mystery is not only a trip back in time, it is also a tough-minded exploration of good and evil, and of the power of guilt and redemption. Once again, Easy asserts his reign over the City of (Fallen) Angels.

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

Rick Atkinson

Henry Holt and Co

The magnificent conclusion to Rick Atkinson's acclaimed Liberation Trilogy about the Allied triumph in Europe during World War II. It is the twentieth century's unrivaled epic: at a staggering price, the United States and its allies liberated Europe and vanquished Hitler. In the first two volumes of his bestselling Liberation Trilogy, Rick Atkinson recounted how the American-led coalition fought through North Africa and Italy to the threshold of victory. Now he tells the most dramatic story of all-the titanic battle for Western Europe. D-Day marked the commencement of the final campaign of the European war, and Atkinson's riveting account of that bold gamble sets the pace for the masterly narrative that follows. The brutal fight in Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the disaster that was Operation Market Garden, the horrific Battle of the Bulge, and finally the thrust to the heart of the Third Reich-all these historic events and more come alive with a wealth of new material and a mesmerizing cast of characters. Atkinson tells the tale from the perspective of participants at every level, from presidents and generals to war-weary lieutenants and terrified teenage riflemen. When Germany at last surrenders, we understand anew both the devastating cost of this global conflagration and the enormous effort required to win the Allied victory. With the stirring final volume of this monumental trilogy, Atkinson's accomplishment is manifest. He has produced the definitive chronicle of the war that unshackled a continent and preserved freedom in the West.

Mickey and Willie: Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age

Allen Barra

Crown Archetype

Culturally, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were light-years apart. Yet they were nearly the same age and almost the same size, and they came to New York at the same time. They possessed virtually the same talents and played the same position. They were both products of generations of baseball-playing families, for whom the game was the only escape from a lifetime of brutal manual labor. Both were nearly crushed by the weight of the outsized expectations placed on them, first by their families and later by America. Both lived secret lives far different from those their fans knew. What their fans also didn't know was that the two men shared a close personal friendship--and that each was the only man who could truly understand the other's experience.

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction

Annalee Newitz

Doubleday

As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet's turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference. It's a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth's past major disasters-from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation-resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet's species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation-humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just during the last million years-but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions. This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity's long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey's ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for "living cities" to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death.

The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code

Margalit Fox

Ecco Press

In 1900, while excavating on Crete, the charismatic Victorian archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed inscribed clay tablets amid the ruins of a lavish Bronze Age palace. Written by palace scribes circa 1450 b.c., the script they displayed--featuring outline drawings of swords, chariots, and horses' heads, as well as other tiny pictograms--resembled no alphabet ever seen. Evans named the script Linear B, and from the start it posed a deep mystery. No one knew what language Linear B recorded, much less what the curious inscriptions meant. If the tablets could be deciphered, they would open a portal onto a refined, wealthy, and literate society that had flourished in Greek lands three thousand years earlier, a full millennium before the glories of the Classical Age. The Riddle of the Labyrinth is the true story of the quest to solve one of the most mesmerizing riddles in history--Linear B--and of the three brilliant, obsessed, and ultimately doomed investigators whose combined work would eventually crack the code. There was Evans, who had discovered the script but could never unravel it; Alice Kober, the fiery American scholar whose vital work on Linear B never got the recognition it deserved; and Michael Ventris, the haunted English architect who would solve the riddle triumphantly at the age of thirty only to die four years later under circumstances that remain the subject of speculation even now. For half a century some of the world's foremost scholars tried to coax the tablets to yield their secrets. Then, in 1952, the script was deciphered seemingly in a single stroke--not by a scholar but by Ventris, an impassioned amateur whose obsession with the tablets had begun in childhood. The decipherment brought him worldwide acclaim. But it also cost him his architectural career, his ties to his family, and quite possibly his life. That is the narrative of the decipherment as it has been known thus far. But a major actor in the drama has long been missing: Alice Kober, a classicist at Brooklyn College. Though largely forgotten today, she came within a hair's breadth of deciphering Linear B before her own untimely death in 1950. As The Riddle of the Labyrinth reveals, it was Kober who built the foundation on which Ventris's decipherment stood, an achievement that until now has been all but lost to history. Drawing on a newly opened archive of Kober's papers, Margalit Fox restores this unsung heroine to her rightful place at last.

The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story

Dean King

Little, Brown and Company

For more than a century, the enduring feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys has been American shorthand for passionate, unyielding, and even violent confrontation. Yet despite numerous articles, books, television shows, and feature films, nobody has ever told the in-depth true story of this legendarily fierce-and far-reaching-clash in the heart of Appalachia. Drawing upon years of original research, including the discovery of previously lost and ignored documents and interviews with relatives of both families, bestselling author Dean King finally gives us the full, unvarnished tale, one vastly more enthralling than the myth. Unlike previous accounts, King's begins in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Hatfields and McCoys lived side-by-side in relative harmony. Theirs was a hardscrabble life of farming and hunting, timbering and moonshining-and raising large and boisterous families-in the rugged hollows and hills of Virginia and Kentucky. Cut off from much of the outside world, these descendants of Scots-Irish and English pioneers spoke a language many Americans would find hard to understand. Yet contrary to popular belief, the Hatfields and McCoys were established and influential landowners who had intermarried and worked together for decades. When the Civil War came, and the outside world crashed into their lives, family members were forced to choose sides. After the war, the lines that had been drawn remained-and the violence not only lived on but became personal. By the time the fury finally subsided, a dozen family members would be in the grave. The hostilities grew to be a national spectacle, and the cycle of killing, kidnapping, stalking by bounty hunters, and skirmishing between governors spawned a legal battle that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court and still influences us today.

The War Below: The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan

James Scott

Simon and Schuster

The War Below is the riveting story of the submarine force that helped win World War II in the Pacific by ravaging Japan's merchant fleet and destroying the nation's economy. Focusing on the unique stories of three of the war's top submarines - Silversides, Drum, and Tang - James Scott takes readers beneath the waves to experience the determination, heroism, and tragedy that defined the submarine service. From the thrill of a torpedo hit on a loaded freighter to the terror of depth charge attacks that shattered gauges and sprang leaks, The War Below vividly re-creates the camaraderie, exhilaration, and fear of the brave volunteers who took the fight to the enemy's coastline. Scott recounts incredible feats of courage-from an emergency appendectomy performed with kitchen utensils to the desperate struggle of sailors to escape from a flooded submarine trapped on the bottom-as well as moments of unimaginable tragedy, including an attack on an unmarked enemy freighter carrying 1,800 American prisoners of war. The casualty rate among submariners topped that of all other military branches. The war claimed almost one out of every five subs-and a submarine crewman was six times more likely to die than a sailor onboard a surface ship. But the submarine service accomplished its mission; Silversides, Drum, and Tang sank a combined sixty-two freighters, tankers, and transports. So ravaged from the loss of precious supplies due to the destruction of the nation's merchant fleet were the Japanese that by the war's end hungry civilians ate sawdust while warships lay at anchor due to lack of fuel and pilots resorted to suicidal kamikaze missions.

A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

Sue Halpern

Riverhead Hardcover

At loose ends with her daughter leaving home and her husband on the road, Sue Halpern decided to give herself and Pransky, her under-occupied Labradoodle, a new leash-er, lease-on life by getting the two of them certified as a therapy dog team. Smart, spirited, and instinctively compassionate, Pransky turned out to be not only a terrific therapist but an unerring moral compass. In the unlikely sounding arena of a public nursing home, she led her teammate into a series of encounters with the residents that revealed depths of warmth, humor, and insight Halpern hadn't expected. And little by little, their adventures expanded and illuminated Halpern's sense of what virtue is and does-how acts of kindness transform the giver as well as the given-to.

Steal the Menu: A Memoir of Forty Years in Food

Raymond Sokolov

Knopf

Four decades of memories from a gastronome who witnessed the food revolution from the (well-provisioned) trenches-a delicious tour through contemporary food history. When Raymond Sokolov became food editor of The New York Times in 1971, he began a long, memorable career as restaurant critic, food historian, and author. Here he traces the food scene he reported on in America and abroad, from his pathbreaking dispatches on nouvelle cuisine chefs like Paul Bocuse and Michel Guérard in France to the rise of contemporary American food stars like Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz, and the fruitful collision of science and cooking in the kitchens of El Bulli in Spain, the Fat Duck outside London, and Copenhagen's gnarly Noma. Sokolov invites readers to join him as a privileged observer of the most transformative period in the history of cuisine with this personal narrative of the sensual education of an accidental gourmet. We dine out with him at temples of haute cuisine like New York's Lutèce but also at a pioneering outpost of Sichuan food in a gas station in New Jersey, at a raunchy Texas chili cookoff, and at a backwoods barbecue shack in Alabama, as well as at three-star restaurants from Paris to Las Vegas.

The Grilling Book: The Definitive Guide from Bon Appetit

Adam Rapoport

Andrews McMeel Publishing

No one anticipates summertime cooking more eagerly than the grilling enthusiasts at Bon Appétit. The glowing embers, the sizzle of a well-marbled rib eye as it hits a hot grill, the bracing slaws and perfectly charred kernels of sweet corn-Bon Appétit has always brought the delicious alchemy of grilling to life in the pages of the magazine. Now home cooks will discover their ideal grilling companion and coach in The Grilling Book. Offering more than 350 foolproof recipes, dozens of luscious full-color photographs, crystal clear illustrations, and plenty of plainspoken, here's-how-to-do-it guidelines, The Grilling Book welcomes you to everything that is sensational (and sensationally simple) about grilling. Here are thick, juicy steaks that need no more than salt and freshly cracked pepper to create an unforgettable meal; baby back ribs rendered succulent and fall-apart tender with flavor-rich rubs and a shellacking of barbecue sauce (plus the secret cheat method that makes them ridiculously easy to prepare); moist fish, seasoned and grilled quickly over a hot fire; irresistible grilled flatbreads, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, creating the perfect canvas for every topping you crave. Not to mention the salads, slaws, sides, and drinks that complete the perfect grilled meal.

The Batali Brothers Cookbook

Leo Batali, Benno Batali

Ecco Press

A kid-friendly cookbook that's fun for the whole family from the sons of popular chef Mario Batali. Incorporating all of the valuable lessons they learned at Mario's side in a fully illustrated four-color cookbook, it is full of delicious recipes that any kid--or parent--can master.

Ruby Redfort Take Your Last Breath

Lauren Child

Candlewick

Everyone's favorite girl detective is back for a second mind-blowing installment, packed with all the off-the-wall humor, action, and friendship of the first book. This time, though, it's an adventure on the wide-open ocean, and Ruby is all at sea. . . . Can she crack the case of the Twinford pirates while evading the clutches of a vile sea monster as well as the evil Count von Viscount? Well, you wouldn't want to bet against her.

Toys in Space

Mini Grey

Knopf Books for Young Readers

That summer night, the toys were left outside. . . . For the very first time, the Wonderdoll, the helpful wind-up robot, the thoughtful green dinosaur, and the rest of their plucky gang lie in the grass, gazing up at the stars. But one star seems brighter than the rest. As it grows bigger and bigger, the toys realize it may not be a star at all! Soon they're venturing into the unknown, traveling by spaceship, where they meet a lonely alien in need of help, and some friends.

Where's Waldo? The Fantastic Journey

Martin Handford

Candlewick

Another classic Waldo adventure has received the deluxe treatment! Prepare to find: A striking new jacketed cover, An original collectible poster on the underside of the jacket, A spot-the-difference game on the cover, A gatefold with checklists on every spread, Never-before-seen sections of artwork in each scene, New things to search for!

Towering

Alex Flinn

Harper Teen

High in my tower I sit. I watch the birds fly below, the clouds float above, and the tall, green forest stretch to places I might never see. Mama, who isn't my mother, has kept me hidden away for many years. My only companions, besides Mama, are my books--great adventures, mysteries, and romances that I long to make my reality. But I know that no one will come to save me--my life is not a fairy tale after all. Well, at least no one has come so far. Recently, my hair has started to grow rapidly and it's now long enough to reach the bottom of the tower from my window. I've also had the strangest dreams of a beautiful, green-eyed man. When Mama isn't around, I plan my escape, even if it's just for a little while. There's something--maybe someone--waiting for me out there and it won't find me if I'm trapped here towering above it all.

Happy Birdday, Tacky!

Helen Lester, Lynn Munsinger

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

The Nice Icy Land was crackling with busy-ness. It had taken weeks and a lot of whispery chirps for Tacky the Penguin's friends to plan a Perfect Surprise Birdday Party for him on his special hatchday. With songs, presents, cake, fishy ice cream, and surprise entertainment from Iglooslavia's own Twinklewebs the Dance Queen, how could anything go wrong? But it's a comedy of errors . . . and all is far from perfect. Luckily, Tacky's good cheer--and his flippity dance moves--save the day with a flap of his flippers and a tap of his tippywebs. Munsinger's adorable, expressive penguin illustrations are the icing on the cake.

The Mighty Lalouche

Matthew Olshan, Sophie Blackall

Schwartz and Wade

In Paris, France, there lived a humble postman named Lalouche. He was small, but his hands were nimble, his legs were fast, and his arms were strong. When his job was replaced by an electric car, he turned to boxing to support himself and his pet finch, Genevieve. But-"You? A boxer?" the fighters asked. "I could sneeze and knock you down!" Still, Lalouche refused to give up. And perhaps small Lalouche was just nimble . . . just fast . . . and just strong enough to beat his fierce competitors.

Vote

Gary Paulsen

Wendy Lamb Books

Kevin Spencer, the hero of Liar, Liar, Flat Broke, and Crush, has a knack for tackling big ideas and goofing up, so what's next? Politics, of course! He's running for office, and his campaign is truly unique.

Make Good Art

Neil Gaiman

William Morrow

In May 2012, bestselling author Neil Gaiman stood at a podium at Philadelphia's University of the Arts to deliver the commencement address. For the next nineteen minutes he shared his thoughts about creativity, bravery, and strength: he encouraged the students before him to break rules and think outside the box. Most of all, he encouraged the fledgling painters, musicians, writers, and dreamers to make good art. This book, designed by renowned graphic artist Chip Kidd, contains the full text of Gaiman's inspiring speech. Whether bestowed upon a young artist beginning his or her creative journey, or given as a token of gratitude to an admired mentor, or acquired as a gift to oneself, this volume is a fitting offering for anyone who strives to make good art.