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The Skull Mantra
Eliot Pattison
One of those rare mysteries worth having in hardbound. Takes place in a Tibet brutalized by the Chinese, lit only by the glow of the ancient religion practiced by its monks. But wait! There is a murder... a beautiful woman... a man just trying to hold onto his soul.
Great writing. $24.95 hardback

Paul
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Wonders of the Invisible World
David Gates

This book of marvelous short stories is the latest from the immensely talented author of Jernigan and Preston Falls. Gates has an uncanny gift for dialogue, and his characters are vivid and intense. 'A Wronged Husband' was one of my favorites, but all of these stories shine. This is a captivating read. $23.00 hardback

Laura
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Newman's Own Cookbook
Paul Newman
From one of America's most beloved actors comes a lovely cookbook. Newman's company donates 100% of profits to charity, but that's just one reason to buy this book. The recipes are another- they're wide-ranging, interesting, and manageable for even the domestically challenged. $25.00 hardback

Laura
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Waiting to Fly
Ron Naveen
Like Mr. Naveen, I'm not ashamed to rave on about penguins. Read about the beautiful, yet changing, ecology of Antarctica and why penguins are the coolest animals. $14.00 paperback

Alesha
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Tournament of Shadows
Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac
A detailed but fast-moving account of the imperial contest for Central Asia. The authors go beyond the usual "Great Game" stories to examine lesser known events of the almost two hundred year long struggle. With access to newly available materials, the authors shed light on previously unknown events, such as the CIA training program for Tibetan Guerillas in the 50's and 60's. $35.00 hardback

Terry
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The Rediscovery of Man
Cordwainer Smith
Smith is probably the best science fiction writer you've never heard of. Long out-of-print, this volume collects in one place the complete stories of the Instrumentality of Mankind, which are among the best in the genre.
$30.00 hardcover

Terry
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Motherless Brooklyn
Jonathan Lethem
The latest novel from one of the hottest young writers out there tells the story of Lionel Essrog, an orphan with Tourette's syndrome. The murder of Lionel's mentor and guardian, Frank, plunges Lionel into a dark and complicated world as Lionel searches for Frank's killer. What Lionel soon discovers is that no one is what he thought they were. Lethem handles the Tourette's beautifully.
25% off! $17.96 hardcover

Terry
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Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home
Julia Child and Jacques Pepin
Wouldn't it be great to have Julia and Jacques cooking in your home? You bet. This cookbook is not for someone who is just starting out in the kitchen, but the recipes are very readable and based on common sense, so why not try it?
$40.00 hardcover

Zisko
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Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams
Gioia Diliberto
A Useful Woman is a shortish rendering of the early years of a woman who practically invented modern liberalism along with the field of social work. Few people know of her sorrow- and stress-filled early years, brought on largely by an institutionalized sexism that left few options for women of intelligence, originality or ambition. Gioia Diliberto is a fine writer and a diligent researcher, who has obtained access to many of Addams' early letters and journals. Her book is brilliant biography and finely wrought feminist history. It is also sheer pleasure to read.
$26.00 hardcover

Paul
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The Restraint of Beasts
Magnus Mills
This is a delicious black comedy about a crew of fence builders set in contemporary England and Scotland. The trio's comic misadventures comment on the nature of class, manual labor and xenophobia and build to a bleak Kafkaesque ending.
$11.00 paperback

Robert
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Fencing the Sky
James Galvin
Galvin is that rare thing -- a romantic realist and the laconic beauty of his prose makes vivid the American West that he captures just as it disappears.
25% off! $17.25 hardcover

Jan
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Plainsong
Kent Haruf
Not since Raymond Carver gave us his brief aching stories of ordinary people has an author presented the people most of us know with as much dignity as Kent Haruf does in his extraordinary new novel Plainsong. The setting is the farm country of eastern Colorado. The heartbreakingly vulnerable characters include a school teacher with a wife lost in a bitter melancholy from which she's unlikely to return, a pregnant teenager being cared for by a pair of old bachelor brothers, and an old woman living in the past. There is not much dialogue but its spare rhythms carry the book like magician's props you can't see but which inspire a wonder the reader can't explain.
25% off! $18.00 hardcover

Paul
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One Heart
Janet McCafferty
Gladys and Ivy, Janet McCafferty's marvellously interesting sister protagonists in her new novel are funny and down-to-earth and as different as can be. They serve lunch in the public school system somewhere in upstate New York and yet live lives that are profoundly unboring because of the choices they make and the thoughts they think. One Heart is an original: its voices those of characters I know from life but have never felt come off the page to greet me with such wonder. It is the hope of finding books like this that keeps me reading fiction.
$24.00 hardcover

Paul
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The Blood of Strangers
Frank Huyler
Not since William Carlos Williams made medicine into literature better than half a century ago has a real doctor who is also a real poet so touchingly opened the process of saving lives to the reading public. Huyler writes with poetry, humor, and a dark irony about the work he does in the emergency room. The book is divided into short chapters economical as poems each of which opens a quick window on Huyler's life as a physician. You'll finish the chapters quickly and stand dumbfounded in front of these open windows. An extraordinary doctor book.
$19.95 hardcover

Paul
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The Ladies Auxiliary
Tova Mirvis
Mirvis' debut novel is about how a small community of Orthodox Southern Jews come to both fear and crave the changes that begin to occur when a stranger moves into the neighborhood. The Ladies Auxiliary is engrossing, original in its use of a collective narrator and rich in characters that are all too human.
$23.95 hardcover

Karima
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Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything
James Gleick

As Gleick so aptly puts it: "We are in a rush. We are making haste. A compression of time characterizes the life of the century now closing." Fascinating and bit frightening, Faster is definitely worth our time.
$24.00 hardcover

Karima
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The Best American Sports Writing 1999
edited by Richard Ford

This is a great collection of essays and in my mind better than the Best American Essays. John Hildebrand's piece on the Vietnamese and Laotians in Eau Claire is probably better than any in the other volume. David Remnick on Cassius Clay; Melissa King on inner city Chicago hoops; Simon Winchester and David Mamet ... make this collection.
$13.00 paperback

Jim
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The Dog of the South by Charles Portis

The Dog of the South is the funniest novel I've ever read. Portis works his magic in a direct line of descent from Mark Twain through Ring Lardner. One reviewer said, "It's like being held down and tickled." A dead pan hero travels from Arkansas to Belize in search of his stolen wife and car. That is all ye know in life and all ye need to know. $14.95

Paul
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The Deposition of Father McGreevy by Brian O'Doherty

O'Doherty has written a moving and involving novel of rural Irish life under siege. He has a perfect ear for speech and a deep knowledge of things Irish. His story of the demise of a tiny mountain parish is heartbreaking and inspiring. I read it in Spain and missed most of Spain. $25.00

Paul
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In The Dark Places of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley

Have you ever had the sense of something missing within the sterile rationalism of Western Civilization? Do the texts, history and philosophy seem to lack depth, meaning, and resolution, as if hidden truths existed beneath and beyond these lifeless expositions? Brace yourself, for you are about to confront evidence that rocks the very foundations of the western world: information that fills the gaps of our fragmented civilization and illuminates the roots we've forgotten and the heritage we've been denied. "And that's the purpose of this book: to awaken something we've forgotten, something we've been made to forget by the passing of time and by those who've misunderstood or--for reasons of their own--have wanted us to forget." $12.95

Stacie
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A Field Guide to American Houses by Virginia and Lee McAlester

One of the most informative books on types of architecture. This is one of my all time favorites. $24.95 paper, $39.50 hardcover.

Zisko

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Lost Continent by Bill Bryson

Native Iowan expatriate returns from Great Britain to rediscover small-town America. He sets out from Des Moines in his mother's beat-up Nova and travels through 38 states in search of the ideal small town. His sardonic observations are wickedly funny--this is a laugh-out-loud travelogue. $13.50

Emily

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The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon by Tom Spanbauer

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is set in the brutal West in the small-town of Excellence, Idaho. The main character Shed, a half-Indian bisexual who lives in a pink whorehouse, explores the meaning of sexuality, race, manhood and magical realism in this epic western. This is one of the best books I've ever read.
$14.00

Emily

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The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing is a series of connected short stories which chronicle the life of a young woman named Jane as she struggles to make sense of herself in terms of her relationships with boyfriends, family, friends and neighbors. While this book is a lot like an American version of Bridget Jones' Diary, Jane proves to be a much more likable and sympathetic character than Bridget. The Girls' Guide is a perfect light summer read: funny, smart and true to life.
$23.95 hardcover

Kate M.

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The Life of an Ordinary Woman by Anne Ellis

The Life of an Ordinary Woman was written on the 1930s by a woman who had grown up in Colorado mining camps in the 1880s and 1890s. A terribly hard life lived in high good cheer. She learned to read and is a natural writer. Full of characters and incidents that give the reader the texture of time and place. A lovely book.
$14.00

Paul

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The Overspent American by Juliet B. Schor

The problem I have with the traditional personal finance guide is that I already know what I should (and shouldn't) be doing, but somehow still stay in the same financial rut--this book explores why that is. Schor explores why we never feel materially satisfied, what role shopping plays in our lives and how our identities are caught up in consumption. Schor writes in clear, easy-to-understand prose without sacrificing intelligence or insight--definitely a fresh take on the topic.
$13.00

Karima

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Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert D. Kaplan

In Balkan Ghosts, Kaplan not only explains in compelling prose more than a millennium's worth of history, but also makes this history relevant by pointing to how the present is haunted by the specters of the past. Each chapter of this travelogue reveals the story of a different region of the Balkans, mixing historical characters with modern voices and events. The result is wonderful: informative, thorough, timely and captivating; perfect for anyone looking to better understand the current political situation, or those intrigued by a world full of beauty, mystery, belief and passion.
$13.00

Jim

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An Ocean In Iowa by Peter Hedges

From the author that brought us What's Eating Gilbert Grape comes another gem. This is one year of a family in Iowa, as seen through the eyes of seven year old Scotty. While at times funny and simple, it is also an achingly sad story of Scotty's mother abandoning the family set against the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the turbulent 60's.
$11.00

Emily

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Codeine Diary by Tom Andrews

Tom Andrews is a poet and a hemophiliac. He's raced motorcycles, plays basketball and was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for clapping his hands ceaselessly for more than sixteen hours. Codeine Diary is a wonderful memoir of a young man's coexistence with his disease. It is way funnier than you might guess.
$13.00

Paul

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Pretty in Punk by Lauraine LeBlanc

This is an extremely well-researched and well-put-together book exploring some ways in which girls and women resist mainstream feminine gender roles. The best part is that you don't have to be a feminist scholar or a cultural studies expert to understand it. So if you're interested in this sort of thing, check it out. Girls Kick Ass! $ 20.00 paper.

Julie

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River of Darkness by Rennie Airth

If you are looking for a summer thriller, look no further. In River of Darkness, Rennie Airth has written a great one. Set in England, a few years after W.W. I, this gem sinks its hook in early on and spends the rest of the novel slowly reeling you in.
$24.95

Terry

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Farewell: A Memoir of a Texas Childhood by Horton Foote

Horton Foote is our greatest literary screenwriter (To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, Trip to Bountiful). He grew up in Wharton, Texas, a sleepy county seat among doting aunties, degenerate uncles, and a town full of amazing characters. His eye and ear and heart are so perfectly tuned to this culture that this lovely memoir seems to pour directly from his mind onto the page. He gives us Wharton, warts and all, without once looking down his nose at its people. A delicious memoir of life as it was lived in small towns during the 1920's and 1930's.
$24.00

Paul

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The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman

The Inn at Lake Devine is a clever and original romantic comedy that was such a pleasure to read that I finished it in one night. The book begins with a spunky, wry, intelligent twelve-year old questioning why she as a Jew is not welcome at the Inn at Lake Devine. After Natalie finally finds a way into this forbidden world, she has a hard time leaving the inn behind--despite the pull of her conscience. It is only as an adult that Natalie finally learns all that the Inn had to offer.
$12.00

Karima

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Caught Inside by Daniel Duane

Daniel Duane heads to Santa Cruz to spend an intimate year with the waves. He captures the surfers' lingo perfectly with phrases such as, "Shrackable bowls." Duane's reflections, however, extend beyond surfer culture. He explores the history of coastal California, from Spanish explorers to Captain Cook, as well as a naturalist's perspective with deep observations on marine life. This is a very compelling and meditative read. You'll want to immediately watch the classic, Endless Summer.
$12.00

Emily

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