This extraordinary work of fiction about the German occupation of France is embedded in a real story as gripping and complex as the invented one. Composed in 1941-42 by an accomplished writer who had published several well-received novels, Suite Francaise, her last work, was written under the tremendous pressure of a constant danger that was to catch up with her and kill her before she had finished.... read more
Most of us are at a great distance from our food. I don't mean that we live "twelve miles from a lemon," as English wit Sydney Smith said about a home in Yorkshire. I mean that our food bears little resemblance to its natural substance. Hamburger never mooed; spaghetti grows on the pasta tree; baby carrots come from a pink and blue nursery. Still, we worry about our meals -- from calories to carbs, from heart-healthy to brain food. And we prefer our food to be "natural," as long as natural doesn't involve real... read more
Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Bronte and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings... read more
Flynn gives new meaning to the term "dysfunctional family" in her chilling debut thriller. Camille Preaker, once institutionalized for youthful self-mutilation, now works for a third-rung Chicago newspaper. When a young girl is murdered and mutilated and another disappears in Camille's hometown of Wind Gap, Mo., her editor, eager for a scoop, sends her there for a human-interest story... read more
In this witty examination of New York's chattering classes, which opens in the spring of 2001, the despot of the title is Murray Thwaite, a famous journalist who made his name in the Vietnam era. The next generation, however, is having trouble gaining traction. Murray's daughter, Marina, unable to complete a long-overdue book on the cultural significance of children's clothing, has moved back into her parents' Upper West Side apartment and is doing a lot of yoga... read more
The Looming Tower may be the most riveting, informative, and "heart-stopping account" yet of the men who shaped 9/11 (New York Times Book Review). The focus on individuals gives the book its emotional punch, but it is also a narrative bold in conception and historical sweep... read more
Stewart, a resident of Scotland, has written for the New York Times Magazine and the London Review of Books, and he is a former fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In January 2002, having just spent 16 months walking across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, Stewart began a walk across Afghanistan from Herat to Kabul... read more
Buford's book starts smartly - he first met dynamic celebrity chef Mario Batali at a dinner party at his own home, where Batali sparkled until 3 a.m.- and continues at a fast clip as he conceives the notion of becoming Batali's "kitchen slave." Buford wanted to profile Batali for the New Yorker but also wanted to learn about cooking; he would be a "journalist-tourist" in the boot camp of a "kitchen genius." ... read more
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is... read more
The author's vivid portrait of the late Roman Republic that Caesar toppled is correspondingly jaundiced: its politics are about nothing except the personal ambitions of powerful men, and chaos, corruption and violence reign beneath the ritualistic niceties of republican procedure. More compellingly than most biographies, Goldsworthy's exhaustive, lucid, elegantly written life makes its subject the embodiment of his age. 16 pages of b&w photos, maps... read more
Carson's writing was direct and her rhetoric carefully chosen, as her biographer Linda Lear and other scholars have noted. Carson appreciated Americans' fears about nuclear fallout: something invisible was contaminating their food... read more
Throughout the years that she has lived and worked in East Hampton, Ina Garten has catered and attended countless parties and dinners. She will be the first to tell you, though, that nothing beats a cozy dinner, surrounded by the people you love most, in the comfort that only your own home can provide. In Barefoot Contessa at Home, Ina shares her life in East Hampton, the recipes she loves, and her secrets to making guests feel welcome and comfortable... read more
Her recipes, by the way, are no rivals to the Culinary Institute of America; for instance, the directions for "carrot coins" call for slicing carrots so they look like coins and sauteing with butter, salt, and pepper. Readers can choose from any number of easy items to craft--a Greek dress, a calf stretcher, or a mini-pantyhose plant hanger... read more
His own cautious liberalism is a model: he's skeptical of big government and of Republican tax cuts for the rich and Social Security privatization; he's prochoice, but respectful of prolifers; supportive of religion, but not of imposing it... read more
Based on extensive interviews with American soldiers and officers as well as first-hand reportage, Ricks's detailed, unsparing account of the occupation paints a woeful panorama of reckless firepower, mass arrests, humiliating home invasions, hostage-taking and abuse of detainees. .. read more
Drawing from the collection of the world-renowned Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Bird Songs presents the most notable North American birds including the rediscovered Ivory-billed Woodpecker in a stunning new format... read more
The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch... read more
Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe... read more
In Cell King taps into readers fears of technological warfare and terrorism. Mobile phones deliver the apocalypse to millions of unsuspecting humans by wiping their brains of any humanity, leaving only aggressive and destructive impulses behind... read more
On December 5, 2005, the 9/11 Commission issued its final report card on the government's fulfillment of the recommendations issued in July 2004: one A, twelve Bs, nine Cs, twelve Ds, three Fs, and four incompletes... read more
The premise - that there is a dark side to the safe haven law - is deep as well as clever, and Unger plays it out thrillingly. rights reserved... read more
As for content, what is in this man's brain? He is knee-slappin' funny but never corny, witty, ironic, smart as punch, really angry about the world in which we find ourselves, and can write about violence, tenderness, confusion, purpose, and utter mayhem with equal aplomb... read more
The artwork, rendered in a chromatically cool palette, is crisp and clear, with clean white space around center panels that sharply focuses the reader's attention in on Yang's achingly familiar characters. There isn't an adolescent alive who won't be able to relate to Jin's wish to be someone other than who he is, and his gradual realization that there is no better feeling than being comfortable in your own skin... read more
The author of a critically acclaimed debut novel, Gob's Grief, and short fiction that has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, he's also a pediatrician now studying at Harvard Divinity School. All of these experiences bear fruit in The Children's Hospital, though that fruit may be a specialized taste, more durian or rambutan than apple or plum... read more
A self-absorbed scholar and a young girl crisscross America by car, flitting through college towns where they endure ill-advised sexual encounters, heartache and a potent dose of popular culture... read more
Today a distant third to Equal and Splenda, Sweet'N Low is run by Marvin's son Jeff, who took over after Marvin and several other chief officers were charged with tax evasion and criminal conspiracy in 1993... read more
This superb book is beautifully written in spare yet stirring language. The tender look at the changes from arrogance to grateful loving is perfectly delineated. Ibatoullines lovely sepia-toned gouache illustrations and beautifully rendered color plates are exquisite... read more
This remarkable story of the survivors omits none of the raw intensity and brutality of their experience but is burnished by time, casting an analytical perspective on ways in which their subsequent lives were influenced by the ordeal... read more
A unique and important book that will appeal to both young adults and their parents, My Secret offers a raw and revealing glimpse into the real lives of today's teens and twentysomethings... read more
Lisey's Story is, at its core, a love story--heart-wrenching, passionate, terrifying and tender. It is the multi-layered and expertly crafted tale of a twenty-five year marriage, and a widow's journey through grief, through discovery and--this is King, after all--through a nightmare scape of the ordinary and extraordinary... read more
She became Rolling Stone's chief photographer in 1973. By the time she left the magazine, ten years later, she had shot 142 covers. She joined the staff of Vanity Fair in 1983 and in 1998 also began working for Vogue.... read more
He's too easy on Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who, while fashioning himself as the second coming of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, has abetted the president's anti-press campaign by jailing one reporter for not playing ball and threatening others... read more
Forced to cross the frozen tundra, Laura free-associates to keep herself alert; her random memories work to sustain a plethora of people in the city, including her best friend from childhood, a blind man she'd met in the street, her former journalism professor and her parents... read more
Nathan Glass, a retired life insurance salesman estranged from his family and facing an iffy cancer prognosis, is "looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn."... read more
In desperation, he buys Belgian citizenship and a passport in Absurdistan, a new country being forged out of a staged war between the Sevo and Svani peoples in a small territory between Iran and Russia... read more
Though most of the dishes invite good eating, and all are approachable, a surprising number, like Blue and Red Flannel Hash (with potatoes, hot sausage, pickled beets, and blue cheese) are overwrought or of questionable taste... read more
Jay Kopelman tells a story that is both tender and thought-provoking--candidly portraying the ugly conditions in wartime Iraq, while also describing his (and his fellow Marines') growing attachment to a scruffy stray puppy... read more
This family is the most chaotic bunch of narcissists to come along in some time. Yvette and Teddy, matriarch and patriarch, are devout Catholics on whom some of their childrens' antics are, fortunately, lost... read more
King's movement may have been nonviolent, but his times were not, and each of Branch's volumes ends with an assassination: JFK, then Malcolm X, and finally King's murder in Memphis... read more
His job was supposed to be easy: the province, Maysan, nestled along the Iranian border deep in Iraq's Shia south, was one of the country's most homogenous, and nearly all of its citizens had fought against Saddam... read more
Spectacular effects include a three-dimensional kronosaurus skeleton with intricately sculpted vertebrae, tinted plastic inserts that evoke murky underwater scenes, and an action-packed, pop-up battle between two long-necked behemoths... read more
Greenspan knows her stuff, of course, but it's her droll, anecdotal style (readers learn, for example how a chocolate cake got her fired) and her recipe-making expertise that sets the book apart... read more
Her coming out is pushed aside by his death, probably a suicide. The recursively told story, which revisits the sites of tragic desperation again and again, hits notes that resemble Jeanette Winterson at her best... read more
I knew almost nothing of the flu epidemic of 1918 and even less about the political climate in the US during WW1. These are not subjects I would go out of my way to read about, but Mullen has made them compelling and interesting... read more
There are second and third marriages, gay couples adopting babies, complicated custody arrangements, the stray cradle-robber. Many of the characters confront encroaching middle age with consternation, their possibilities reduced before they were even fully aware they'd made choices... read more
From Lane's quarters in the West Side's venerable Dakota apartment building to the shady sections of SoHo and Greenwich Village, the author's atmospheric descriptions make Manhattan a leading player, with menace lurking at every intersection... read more
While this might seem like a no-brainer, Prose (Blue Angel; A Changed Man) masterfully meditates on how quality reading informs great writing, which will warm the cold, jaded hearts of even the most frustrated, unappreciated and unpublished writers... read more
These make up some of the book's most powerful and memorable moments, from the surgeon whose illiterate mother changed his early life with faith and a library card to the English professor whose poetry helped him process a traumatic childhood event... read more
New York is one of the world's great food cities; it is also one of the most culinarily diverse. Check out these great cookbooks from some of the stars of the New York food scene, as they make their great recipes accessible to the home cook... read more
