(due April 1) I have extremely high expectations for any Emma Donoghue book I pick up. Her books Slammerkin and Life Mask are two of my favorite novels of London historical fiction. And Room was incredible. (I actually would not have read it, except for the fact it was written by her.) So Frog Music comes to me with a fair amount of baggage. She hit it out of the park. Frog Music succeeds on a lot of levels. San Francisco novel, historical fiction, mystery. As usual with her books I ended up reading it twice, once galloping through the story, then about a week later I went back and read it again for the quality of the writing that I missed the first time around.  -- Martin
 

Here is how Wendy McNaughton describes the genesis of this extraordinarily charming look at our fair city: "These stories are a collaboration. The drawings are mine, but the words came from people living and working in San Francisco. To create each story, I spent anywhere from twenty-four hours to four weeks getting to know the people, the place, and their histories through conversation and observation."  From Muni to the Dolphin Club (the 2nd-best rowing club in SF!) to Chinatown, this book is just flat our going to charm your socks off.

Michael Lewis's next insider bombshell on the financial shenanigans of the bad boys of Wall Street lands on March 31. We haven't had a chance to read it in advance--we bought the book without knowing anything about its contents, which is highly unusual.  But given what we learned in The Big Short and Liar's Poker, we're pretty sure you're going to be hearing a lot about Flash Boys in the coming days.

Twain arrives by stagecoach in San Francisco in 1863 and is fast drunk on champagne, oysters, and the city's intoxicating energy. He finds that the Civil War has only made California richer: the economy booms, newspapers and magazines thrive, and the dream of transcontinental train travel promises to soon become a reality. Twain and the Bohemians find inspiration in their surroundings: the dark ironies of frontier humor, the extravagant tales told around the campfires, and the youthful irreverence of the new world being formed in the west. The star of the moment is Bret Harte, a rising figure on the national scene and mentor to both Stoddard and Coolbrith. Young and ambitious, Twain and Harte form the Bohemian core. But as Harte's star ascends-drawing attention from eastern taste makers such as the Atlantic Monthly--Twain flounders, questioning whether he should be a writer at all.


From the inimitable creator of The Selby Is In Your Place and The Edible Selby comes what is perhaps the greatest Selby of them all!  Here he explores the kaleidoscopic world of fashion, featuring profiles of today's most interesting designers, stylists, haberdashers, models, shoemakers, and more. The subjects include a mix of the avant-garde, the traditional, the must-haves, and the totally unexpected.


We don't need to go to Mars to discover extraterrestrial life, we merely need to dive down into the briny deep of the sea to discover creatures strange and otherworldly. This book takes the reader to the absolute limits of the ocean world, where we meet the fastest and deepest and hottest and oldest creatures in the oceans. It dives into the icy Arctic and into the boiling hydrothermal vents to show how marine life thrives against the odds. It is filled with wonder and appreciation for was lives in that most mysterious realm on Earth.