Reader, meet your next book club book.  Schroder has a clear hook: Eric Schroder (who has gone by Eric Kennedy since his youth trying to fit in as an immigrant), has kidnapped his six-year-old daughter during a parental visit.  It's a week on the road and on the lam.  Beyond the compelling hook, though, this novel explores all kinds of complexity: what it means to be a good parent; what makes us "American;" and so on.  Schroder is both a page-turner and a lyrical meditation on parental love.  Both of Gaige's previous books have been Green Apple favorites, but now Gaige has really hit her stride.  Buy the book or eBook ($9.99), save the date, and get your questions ready, as Amity Gaige will be visiting Green Apple on March 21 at 7pm.

How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields (Knopf)

David Shields' Reality Hunger so riled up the literary world (and this reader), that this, his follow-up, was even before its publication the source of both eager expectation and skepticism. I devoured it in a sitting, ready to argue, ready to nod in agreement. And I did both. How Literature Saved My Life is a stimulating blend of memoir and manifesto, a call to arms for a literature that unshackles itself from claustrophobic limitations to demonstrate how we "think about what happens to us." And, brilliantly, it succeeds in living up to its own mission statement. -- Sparks [eBook $12.99]  

Spectacle: Stories by Susan Steinberg (Graywolf)   

 

Fresh Off the Boat: a Memoir by Eddie Huang (Spiegel & Grau)

Eddie Huang, owner of the hip East Village restaurant Baohaus (self-described as a "futuristic YMCA") has written what Anthony Bourdain calls a "thumb in your eye" memoir about growing up in a family of "FOB hustlers and hysterics from Taiwan." Through this chronicle of growing up and finding his place in the world, Huang refreshes a genre (the food memoir) that once seemed in danger of going stale. [eBook $12.99] 

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (Penguin)     

 

Read that title again. Okay. Now, let me accentuate that these are billed as "love stories." Petrushevskaya, author of the GAB favorite There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby, returns with her second diabolically twisted collection of tales, which so excited Nick that he jumped up and down. (We don't have video evidence, unfortunately.) If cringe-worthy humor makes you jump for joy, you've found your next book. [eBook $9.99] 

Alone On the Ice: the Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration by David Roberts (Norton)

Everyone's heard of Shackleton, of course, but how many of us who aren't polar exploration aficionados are familiar with Douglas Mawson? Thanks to David Roberts for pulling Mawson's incredible, gut-wrenching story back from the brink of oblivion, because it's one of the more remarkable feats of survival in a literature full of astonishing stories. [eBook $17.39]

Artful by Ali Smith (Penguin) 

Ali Smith's engaging book ranges widely across subjects to tell a tale of loss and inspiration. At the center of these freewheeling and incomparable pieces (essays? stories? letters?) is a haunting; beginning with a ghost, Smith covers everything from Oliver Twist to the difference between city and country trees. This book is too good and too unique to pass up. [eBook $12.99]

The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (Norton)

In one of the most intriguing books that will be published this year, Elizabeth Wayland Barber asks simply, "Why do we dance?" The answer, Barber argues, can be found by examining a lineage of dance back to ancient fertility goddesses, whose influence can be traced through the ages. This heavily illustrated book covers a spectrum of topics: from jewelry to popular traditions (why do we throw rice at newlyweds?) to shamanism. In doing so, she offers a fascinating argument as to the centrality of dance in the making and maintaining of culture. [eBook $21.69]