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Forthcoming Books: November 2015
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Here are some of the best-reviewed books coming up in November. You can request them before they are published, and the library will contact you when they are available.
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The bazaar of bad dreams : stories
by Stephen King
From the master of the short story, a collection that includes stories never before in print, never published in America, never collected and brand new - with the magnificent bones of interstitial autobiographical comments on when, why and how Stephen King came to write each story.
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Avenue of mysteries : a novel
by John Irving
Embarking on a trip to the Philippines, senior-aged Juan Diego reflects on dreams and memories of his childhood in Mexico before his past and present intersect in unexpected ways. By the award-winning author of A Prayer for Owen Meany. Tour
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The Japanese lover : a novel
by Isabel Allende
A multigenerational epic by the New York Times best-selling author ofThe House of the Spirits follows the impossible romance between a World War II escapee from the Nazis and a Japanese gardener's son, whose story is discovered decades later by a care worker who would come to terms with her past
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The mare : a novel
by Mary Gaitskill
Taken in by a heavily drinking artist and a jaded academic, a young Dominican girl in Brooklyn's Fresh Air Fund program explores the contrasts between her inner-city life and her hosts' privileged world and finds her realities powerfully shaped by her relationship with a horse. Reading-group guide available. By the author of Veronica. Tour
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The Mulberry Bush
by Charles McCarry
Falling in love with a famous Argentinean revolutionary's daughter who he hopes will further his ambition to exact revenge against the handlers who ended his father's career years earlier, a maverick spy is caught in a web of deceit with ties to the Cold War. By the author of The Shanghai Factor
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Sword of honor
by David Kirk
Great samurai Musashi Miyamoto travels to Kyoto for a reckoning after a price is put on his head and falls in love with a blind witch. By the author of Child of Vengeance
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Captivity
by Gyorgy Spiro
An award-winning tale from Hungary, set during the first century, follows the holy pilgrimage of a hapless Roman-Jewish youth who after an encounter with a condemned Jesus undergoes a scholarly and sexual awakening before escaping a pogrom and returning home to discover a family transformation.
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The gold eaters : a novel
by Ronald Wright
Based on actual historical events, a novel of exploration and invasion in 16th-century Peru follows young Waman, the epitome of an everyman, as he, captured by the conquistadors looking to plunder gold, becomes an indispensible translator between cultures and must learn political gamesmanship in order to survive.
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The Bottom of Your Heart : Inferno for Commissario Ricciardi
by Maurizio De Giovanni
Ricciardi is one of the most intriguing and unique figures to appear in crime fiction in recent years. He possesses the dubious gift of being able to see and hear the last seconds in the lives of those who have suffered a violent death. This ability makes him an unusually effective investigator but plagues him and renders human relationships almost impossible. He is a classic noir hero and the cursed son of a city, Naples, that, for all its Mediterranean splendor, is a perfect noir city.
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Hostage
by Kristina Ohlsson
Shortly after a crowded New York-bound flight takes off from Stockholm, a bomb threat is found on board. Anonymous hijackers demand that the Swedish government revoke its decision to deport a Moroccan man. If their demands are not met, the plane will explode if it attempts to land. The US and Swedish governments must choose between negotiating with terrorists in order to save the four hundred passengers held hostage at thirty thousand feet, or to stand their ground and pursue the deportation of a possibly innocent man.
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D.C. Trip
by Sara Benincasa
Author and comedienne Sara Benincasa takes a bold, fearless and irreverent look at the classic high school trip to Washington DC. Alicia Deats is a new teacher chaperoning her very first high school trip to Washington DC, and nothing could be more terrifying than a class full of horny, backstabbing, boundary-pushing teenagers under her watch. To make matters worse, she embarrassed herself with her co-chaperone Bryan Kenner with one too many margaritas and an ill-placed vomiting incident at last year’s teacher mixer and is hoping this trip can be a fresh start for them.
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The 6:41 to Paris
by Jean-philippe Blondel
Cécile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. These trips back home are always stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation thirty years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles towards the French capital. Cécile and Philippe undertake their own face to face journey.
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Bird : a novel
by Noy Holland
This is a novel about the persistence of longing in which the twin lives of the title character blur and overlap. Bird puts her child on the bus for school and passes the day with her baby. Interwoven into the passage of the day are phone calls from a promiscuous, unmarried friend, and Bird’s recollection of the feral, reckless love she knew as a young woman. It’s a day infused with fear and longing, an exploration of the ways the past shapes and dislodges the present.
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Memory Theater
by Simon Critchley
From this renowned philosopher comes a debut work of fiction, at once a brilliant précis of the history of philosophy, a semiautobiographical meditation on the absurd relationship between knowledge and memory, and a very funny story
A French philosopher dies during a savage summer heat wave. Boxes carrying his unpublished papers mysteriously appear in Simon Critchley’s office. Rooting through them, Critchley discovers a brilliant text on the ancient art of memory and a cache of astrological charts predicting the deaths of various philosophers. Among them is a chart for Critchley himself, laying out in great detail the course of his life and eventual demise.
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Trashed : a graphic novel
by Derf
Every week we pile our garbage on the curb and it disappears—like magic! The reality is anything but, of course. Trashed is an ode to the crap job of all crap jobs—garbage collector. Anyone who has ever been trapped in a soul-sucking gig will relate to this tale. Trashed follows the raucous escapades of three 20-something friends as they clean the streets of pile after pile of stinking garbage, while battling annoying small-town bureaucrats, bizarre townfolk, sweltering summer heat, and frigid winter storms.
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Tower of thorns : a Blackthorn & Grim novel
by Juliet Marillier
Blackthorn and Grim try to drive out a howling creature that is living in an old tower on an Irish noblewoman's property and casting a blight over the region. By the author of the Sevenwaters series andDreamer's Pool
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Recipes for Love and Murder
by Sally Andrew
Forced to transition her career when her magazine moves from culinary to romance advice, middle-aged Afrikaans columnist Tannie Maria discovers her knack for helping others and risks her life to help track down an abusive man who has murdered his wife. Reading-group guide available. A first novel. 50,000 first printing.
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The big green tent
by Liudmila Ulitskaia
An orphaned poet, a gifted pianist and a budding photographer meet in a mid-20th-century Moscow school and eventually embody the heroism, folly, compromise and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. By the author of The Funeral Party.
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Death on Demand : A Shaw and Valentine Police Procedural
by Jim Kelly
When the newspapers turn up to cover Ruby Bright's 100th birthday, they find her seaside care home is a murder scene. Someone spirited Ruby away by wheelchair down to the water's edge on the idyllic north Norfolk coast, and strangled her. But why kill a harmless centurion? As Detective Inspector Shaw and Detective Sergeant Valentine investigate, it's clear Ruby wasn't the first victim, and nor is she the last.
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The improbability of love : a novel
by Hannah Rothschild
When she comes into possession of a lost masterpiece by one of the most important French painters of the 18th century, chef Annie McDee, who works for two sinister art dealers, finds herself pursued by interested parties who would do anything to possess her picture, as well as faced with the possibility of falling in love again. Reading-group guide available. Tour.
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Twain and Stanley Enter Paradise
by Oscar Hijuelos
A final novel by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is inspired by the friendship between 19th-century journalist-explorer Henry Stanley and Mark Twain throughout a journey to Cuba in search of Stanley's father. 50,000 first printing. Tour
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Written in Stone : A Journey Through the Stone Age and the Origins of Modern Language
by Christopher Stevens
In a combination of detective work, mythology, ancient history, archaeology, the roots of society, technology and warfare, a prominent journalist reveals how the English language is based on original Stone Age language and uncovers the most influential and important words used by our Neolithic ancestors. Illustrations.
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This old man : all in pieces
by Roger Angell
The award-winning, nonagenarian New Yorker writer and editor presents a selection of essays, letters, light verse, book reviews and other pieces culled from the 10th decade of his vibrant life, including the acclaimed title work, in which he surveys the limits and discoveries of great and abundant age. Illustrations
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Newton's apple and other myths about science
by Ronald L Numbers
Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science debunks the widespread belief that science advances when individual geniuses experience “Eureka!” moments and suddenly comprehend what those around them could never imagine. Science has always been a cooperative enterprise of dedicated, fallible human beings, for whom context, collaboration, and sheer good luck are the essential elements of discovery.
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Spooky action at a distance : the phenomenon that reimagines space and time : and what it means for black holes, the big bang, and theories of everything
by George Musser
What is space? It isn't a question that most of us normally ask. Space is the venue of physics; it's where things exist, where they move and take shape. Yet over the past few decades, physicists have discovered a phenomenon that operates outside the confines of space and time: nonlocality-the ability of two particles to act in harmony no matter how far apart they may be. It appears to be almost magical. Einstein grappled with this oddity and couldn't come to terms with it, describing it as "spooky action at a distance." More recently, the mystery has deepened as other forms of nonlocality have been uncovered.
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Petty : the biography
by Warren Zanes
An intimate account of the life of the iconic rock-and-roll star traces his rural Southern upbringing, the stories behind his most famous songs and his collaborations with such fellow artists as George Harrison, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash. Illustrations.
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This Is All a Dream We Dreamed : An Oral History of the Grateful Dead
by David Gans
Fifty years after the Grateful Dead was formed, the band still exerts a powerful influence over hundreds of thousands of fans around the world. Today, an entire generation of Deadheads who have never experienced a live Dead show are still drawn to the music and the complex and colorful subculture that has grown up around it.
The book traces the band's evolution from its folk/bluegrass beginnings through the Jug Band craze, an early incarnation as Rolling Stones wannabes, feral psychedelic warriors, the Americana jam band that blazed through the '70s, to the shockingly popular but still iconoclastic stadium-filling band of later years. The Dead broke every rule of the music business along the way, taking risks and venturing into new territory as they fused inspired ideas and techniques with intuition and fearlessness to create a sound-and a business model-unlike anything heard and seen before.
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Elizabeth : Renaissance prince
by Lisa Hilton
Casts Queen Elizabeth as she saw herself: not as an exceptional woman, but as an exceptional ruler. Hilton opens her new biography of Elizabeth I by outlining her leading idea: that Elizabeth was a new kind of ruler for England, a prince on the Machiavellian model, who held that "the ruler's primary duty was the preservation of the state at any cost." By ruling in this way, Hilton asserts Elizabeth led her realm out of the Middle Ages and towards modern nationhood.
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