These Books have been recommended by our publishers.

 

Suggestions from VHPS:

The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy
By Robert Leleux $23.95
     In a memoir studded with delicious lines and unforgettable set pieces, Leleux describes his east Texas boyhood and coming of age, under the tutelage of his eccentric, bewigged, flamboyant, and knowing mother.

Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher
By Lenore Hart $24.95
     Becky Thatcher wants to set the record straight. She was never the weeping ninny Mark Twain made her out to be in his famous novel. She knew Samuel Clemens before he was "Mark Twain," when he was a wide-eyed dreamer who never could get his facts straight. Yes, she was Tom's childhood sweetheart, but the true story of their love, and the dark secret that tore it apart, never made it into Twain's novel.

Confessions of a Carb Queen: The Lies You Tell Others & the Lies You Tell Yourself: A Memoir
By Susan Blech and Caroline Bock $15.95
     When her doctor told her she could suffer a stroke just by walking across the street, Susan Blech knew drastic action was called for. She was only 38 years old, and the scale registered a life-threatening 468 pounds. Rejecting the idea of gastric bypass surgery, Susan relocated to Durham, North Carolina, giving up all that was familiar and $70,000 of her life savings to devote herself to losing weight and getting healthy on the famed Rice Diet. In "Confessions of a Carb Queen," Susan Blech speaks candidly about topics no obese person has dared to address: fat sex, eating binges, the lies you tell others, and the lies you tell yourself.

The Timer Game
By Susan Arnout Smith $24.95
     Grace Descanso was going to be a pediatric heart surgeon---she was a brilliant up-and-comer with a bright future in a heartbreaking, innovative field. Then she took two months off to work in a clinic in Guatemala, and something happened there that nearly destroyed her. She won't talk about why, but she quit medicine and nearly killed herself with drink. Finally, inch by inch, she pulled it all together for her new baby girl. Now, five years later, though she's sworn off practicing as a doctor, Grace is using her science background as a crime scene tech in San Diego and going to AA meetings, scraping by and living to be a mom to five-year-old Katie.
     Everything falls apart again when in the middle of processing a crime scene Grace shoots a madman after he's killed two of her colleagues and after he's called her by name, in a bizarre kind of warning, about someone he called "the Spikeman." A day later, her daughter is kidnapped right out from under her, and instead of a ransom note, the kidnapper sends her on a harrowing twenty-four-hour scavenger hunt, laying out clues and giving out deadlines, leading her carefully, terrifyingly closer to Katie---and to him.

Stark
By Edward Bunker $23.95
     Ex-con. Author. Actor. Legend. Edward Bunker is one of the acknowledged masters of crime fiction. Written in the late 1960's and discovered after Bunker's death in 2005, "Stark "is his first and perhaps his most explosive novel ever.1962. Oceanview, California. The girls are beautiful. The dope is cheap. The squares here are ripe for the plucking--easy money for a man with a plan. Ernie Stark is a hophead and a grifter out to make a big score. If he has to screw over everyone in town, he will. The problem is one more misstep will find him locked up for good. Violent, lightening paced and exotic, filed with the most wonderful cast of lowlifes you'll ever meet and dialogue that crackles, this is the lost novel for mystery lovers everywhere and the legion of fans of the legendary Edward Bunker.

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
By Atul Gawande $14
     The struggle to perform well is universal: each of us faces fatigue, limited resources, and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. But nowhere is this drive to do better more important than in medicine, where lives may be on the line with any decision.
     Atul Gawande, the "New York Times" bestselling author of Complications, examines, in riveting accounts of medical failure and triumph, how success is achieved in this complex and risk-filled profession.

Blue Heaven (unabridged CD)
By C.J. Box $39.95
     A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother go on the run in the woods of northern Idaho, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder--four men who know exactly who the children are, and where their desperate mother is waiting patiently by the phone for news of her children's fate. In a ranching community increasingly populated by L.A. transplants living in gaudy McMansions, the kids soon find they don't know whom they can trust among the hundreds of retired Southern California cops who've given the area its nickname: "Blue Heaven."

Christine Falls
By Benjamin Black and John Banville $14
     The hero of "Christine Falls," Quirke, is a surly pathologist living in 1950s Dublin. One night, after having a few drinks at a party, he returns to the morgue to find his brother-in-law tampering with the records on a young woman's corpse. The next morning, when his hangover has worn off, Quirke reluctantly begins looking into the woman's history. He discovers a plot that spans two continents, implicates the Catholic Church, and may just involve members of his own family. He is warned--first subtly, then with violence--to lay off, but Quirke is a stubborn man. The first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of John Banville's writing to the dark, menacing atmosphere of a first-class thriller.

The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
By Yoko Ogawa $13
   The first major English translation of one of contemporary Japan's bestselling and most celebrated authors. From Akutagawa Award-winning author Yoko Ogawa comes a haunting trio of novellas about love, fertility, obsession, and how even the most innocent gestures may contain a hairline crack of cruel intent.

Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood
By Trey Ellis $24.95
     How is a single dad supposed to navigate a new girlfriend into and out of his California king without his son or daughter noticing? For Trey Ellis, raising children while trying to find his way through the unfamiliar nuances of the contemporary dating scene has been a sometimes nerve-racking challenge.

Prepared for Rage (unabridged CD)
By Dana Stabenow $39.95
     A renegade terrorist with a bottomless personal grudge against all things American targets the most visible symbol of American prestige and power one clear morning in Florida as NASA prepares to launch the Space Shuttle. This time the shuttle carries a high-profile payload and a high-paying visitor on board as a guest, and astronaut Kenai Munro, the FBI special agent Patrick Chisolm and U.S. Coast Guard Captain Cal Schyler are doing everything they can to help the launch go off without a hitch. Can one terrorist with a gift for mass murder subvert all the forces arrayed against him in a bid for recognition and revenge?

John
By Niall Williams $24.95
     In the years following the death of Jesus Christ, John the Apostle, now a frail, blind old man, lives in forced exile on the desolate island of Patmos with a small group of his disciples. Together, the group has endured their banishment, but after years awaiting Christ's return, fissures form within their faith, and, inevitably, one of John's followers disavows Christ's divinity and breaks away from the community, threatening to change the course of Christianity. When the Roman emperor lifts the banishment of Christians, John and his followers are permitted to return to Ephesus, a chaotic world of competing religious sects where Christianity is in danger of vanishing. It is against this turbulent background--and inspired by Jesus's radical message of love and forgiveness--that John comes to dictate his Gospel.

After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405
By John Darwin $34.95
     A “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" for the post-Cold War era--a brilliantly written, sweeping new history of how empires have ebbed and flowed over the past six centuries. The death of the great Tatar emperor Tamerlane in 1405, writes historian John Darwin, was a turning point in world history. Never again would a single warlord, raiding across the steppes, be able to unite Eurasia under his rule. After Tamerlane, a series of huge, stable empires were founded and consolidated-- Chinese, Mughal, Persian, and Ottoman--realms of such grandeur, sophistication, and dynamism that they outclassed the fragmentary, quarrelsome nations of Europe in every respect.

Snow Angels
By Stewart O’Nan $14
     Soon to be a major motion picture from Warner Independent starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. Arthur Parkinson is 14 when his world is shattered after his beloved former babysitter, Annie, falls victim to a tragic series of events.

Pushing Up Daisies: A Dirty Business Mystery
By Rosemary Harris $23.95
     Meet Paula Holliday, a transplanted media exec who trades her stilettos for garden clogs when she makes the move from the big city to the suburbs to start a gardening business. Paula can handle deer, slugs, and the occasional "human" pest---but she's not prepared for the mummified body she finds while restoring the gardens at Halcyon, a local landmark.
     Casual snooping turns serious when a body is impaled on a garden tool and one of Paula's friends is arrested for the crime.
     Aided by the still-hot aging rocker who owns the neighborhood greasy spoon, a wise-cracking former colleague, and a sexy Mexican laborer with a few secrets of his own, Paula digs for the truth and unearths more dirty business the town has kept buried for years.

Suggestions from Scholastic:

What Pet to Get?
By Emma Dodd $16.99
     Jack's mother says he can choose a pet . . . but what pet to get? An elephant? (So difficult to take on vacation.) A polar bear? (It wouldn't like the central heating.) What about a Tyrannosaurus Rex? (Unfortunately, it's been extinct for 65 million years.) The gatefold on the last page reveals Jack's final choice, and a big surprise -- literally!

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls
By Meg Cabot $15.99
     The #1 "New York Times" bestselling author of the Princess Diaries series makes her first foray into books for middle-grade readers, with this first installment of a new series starring nine-year-old Allie Finkle, who is trying to adjust to a new town, a new school, and a new room.

LaRue for Mayor: Letters from the Campaign
By Mark Teague $16.99
     Ike LaRue finds his civil liberties at risk when Hugo Bugwort, the hard line mayoral candidate, promises to crack down on free-roaming, fun-loving dogs. Ike is compelled to join the political fray and run for mayor himself, in this third LaRue adventure told through letters and newspaper accounts.

Zen Ties
By Jon Muth $17.99
     Summer has arrived -- and so has Koo, Stillwater's haiku-speaking young nephew. And when Stillwater encourages Koo, and his friends Addy, Michael, and Karl to help a grouchy old neighbor in need, their efforts are rewarded in unexpected ways.
     Zen Ties is a disarming story of compassion and friendship that reaffirms the importance of our ties to one another.

Medusa Jones
By Ross Collins $16.99
     In ancient Greece lives a little girl called Medusa Jones, a Gorgon. Medusas sure the school camping trip is going to be a nightmare. A rock fall puts the popular kids in peril, and Medusas the only one who can help. Will she be a hero--or is her monster side finally going to come out?