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 Weekly Words about Books
JUNE 23, 2013
A Man of Many Genres - And Devoted Fans - Adds to His Legacy

Neil Gaiman is best known to his fans for. . . well, actually it depends which fans we're talking about. Comic book and graphic novel aficionados probably would cite the acclaimed Sandman series - 75 editions published from 1988-2006 and now collected into 12 volumes. Fantasy readers might debate whether Nevermore or American Gods is his best. And children would praise The Graveyard Book, published in 2009 and winner of two prestigious awards gaiman that year - the Newbery and the Hugo.

It should please all Gaiman fans that The Ocean at the End of the Lane has just arrived in bookstores. It's billed as his first adult novel in several years, but as usual, Gaiman is not easily pigeonholed. The new novel, which has already gasrned a slew of great reviews, combines elements of fantasy, mythology, speculative fiction, and coming of age themes. Here's a brief description from the publisher:

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
The Spies Who Infiltrated Paperback
Bestseller Lists
Mission to Paris by Alan Furst.  The author of several top-notch espionage thrillers set in and around World War II has another winner with his newest, now in paperback on independent bookstore shelves. It's the summer of 1938, and mission paris Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie. The Nazis know he's coming - a secret bureau within the Reich has been waging political warfare against France, and for their purposes, the actor is a perfect agent of influence. What they don't know is that Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, has become part of an informal spy service run out of the American embassy.

Furst is a master at building tension, and this novel has a bonus character of sorts - the city of Paris, with all its pre-war glamour and sense of impending gloom.

By the way, a prior Furst spy novel, The Spies of Warsaw, was made into a BBC series that aired this past spring and starred David Tennant of Dr. Who fame.


Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre. For a dose of true-life spying, Macintyre has chronicled the largely unknown story of the grand final deception of the war and of the extraordinary spies who achieved it, and it's now in paperback as well.

On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied troops landed on double cross the beaches of Normandy and suffered an astonishingly low rate of casualties. A stunning military accomplishment, it was also a masterpiece of trickery. Operation Fortitude, which protected and enabled the invasion, and the Double Cross system, which specialized in turning German spies into double agents, tricked the Nazis into believing that the Allied attacks would come in Calais and Norway rather than Normandy. It was the most sophisticated and successful deception operation ever carried out, ensuring Allied victory at the most pivotal point in the war. This epic event has never before been told from the perspective of the key individuals in the Double Cross system, making it a fascinating and unique tale.

WHERE TO FIND A BOOKSTORE
Many of you already have a favorite local bookstore, but for those of you without such a relationship, this link will take you to a list of Northern California indie bookstores by region.
 
If you live or work elsewhere, you can click here to find the nearest indie bookstore by simply entering your postal code.
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BACK ISSUES
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
My name is Hut Landon. I'm a former bookstore owner who now runs the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA) in San Francisco.

My goal with this newsletter is to keep readers up to date about new books hitting the shelves, share what booksellers are recommending in their stores, and pass on occasional news about the book world.

I'm not into long, wordy reviews or literary criticism; I'd like HUT'S PLACE to be a quick, fun read for book buyers.If you have any friends who you think might like receiving this column each week, simply click on "Forward this email" below and enter their email address. There is also a box in which to add a short message.