Early Reviewers: Free advance copies of books

Lisa Gardner, the New York Times bestselling author of Hide and Gone, draws us into the venomous mind games of her most terrifying killer yet.

Come into my parlor . . . ... (show rest)

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"I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers." January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she's never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb...

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. ... (show rest)

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A Week in October is a thriller for those of us who usually prefer a good love story that you just can't put down. In other words it is a thriller-of-the-heart, where the spirit of "dangerous liaisons" is set against the all too familiar and difficult background of breast cancer. The beautiful wife of a successful Chilean architect courageously confronts her illness, mastectomy, and treatment while recording her thoughts and experiences in her journal. What develops is a thinly veiled version of her own life, her disappoint with their cold marriage, her reminiscences of childhood, and the death that seems to surround her. Her husband discovers the notebook and is stunned: How does she know that he had a mistress all these years? Is he really such a fatuous bore? Could it be true that his sick wife had a passionate love affair with one of his colleagues, right under his nose? Is this just a fictional story—he asks himself, turning the pages—or his wife's very personal diary as she awaits death?

A bestselling Latin American author, A Week in October is Elizabeth Subercaseaux's first novel to be translated into English. This extraordinary tale about erotic tension, deception, resilience, and death keeps us in suspense, between laughter and tears, until the unexpected, haunting ending that ponders the mysteries of a woman's heart, where truth is a lie and a lie is truth.

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A stunning and elegiac collection of interrelated stories from the acclaimed author of Julius Winsome and Schopenhauer's Telescope.

A young man driving across Ireland with his wife asks her how long she would wait before being with another man if he died. A man is trapped, hidden, in a small changing room by the sea on Galway Bay, as he listens to his friends discuss his wife's infidelity. An anguished young boy and his widowed mother struggle to reconstruct their lost father and husband in their own respective ways. The stories in Country of the Grand magnify a New Ireland as it copes with the rewards and pressures of its fresh success: immigration, mid-life crisis, adultery and divorce, a lost sense of place and history, and of course, what to do with all that prosperity.

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Colby Cavendish has finally been invited to join the popular clique. Even though it meant ditching her old best friend for Amanda, the coolest girl in school, she'll get to spend her senior year as a member of the in-crowd she's always envied. Colby even hooked up with her long-time crush Levi, who didn't know she existed until she started hanging out with Amanda.

Colby is excited about spending summer vacation with her new friends, but her world soon comes crashing down. Her parents begin a messy divorce and send her away to spend the summer in Greece with her aunt. And just like that, Colby finds herself living on a remote island and worrying that her new friends have forgotten about her. But when she falls for a cute Greek native, they strike up something deeper and more intense than a summer fling, and Colby's forced to see herself in a new way...and the life she left behind.

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Are you tired of boring old planet Earth?

Then why not try all new EaRTH Inc. brought to you by Softcom, Best-Co, Okay Cola and O'Connels Burgers? ... (show rest)

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Set in Brisbane, Australia, during the stultifying 1950s, and moving to the grubby London of the 1970s, Feather Man is about Sooky, who, ignored by her parents, is encouraged to make herself scarce and visit Lionel, the farmer next door—there, an incident will take place that will impact the rest of her life.

Against the backdrop of rural Australia and the London art world, McMaster meticulously paints the landscapes of Sooky's internal and external worlds through a narrator that brings to mind Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird. ... (show rest)

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WINNER OF THE 2008 ORANGE AWARD FOR NEW WRITERS

When 35-year-old Rosa Lane impulsively quits her job as a promising young journalist, her world rapidly falls apart. Feeling disoriented and overwhelmed by modern day London, Rosa embarks on a journey in search of self, enlightenment, and wisdom. Inglorious is an absorbing story about a modern woman walking on the edge between self-destruction and self-discovery as she struggles with loneliness and her quest for fulfillment.

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First in a Five-Part Fantasy Series!

High over China, twelve-year-old Mei arrives at the Sky Village, an intricate web of hot-air balloons floating above an Earth where animals battle machines for control. Deep below the ruins of Las Vegas, thirteen-year-old Rom enters a shadowy world where he is commandeered to fight, gladiator-style, against hybrid demons for the entertainment of a mercenary crowd. Mei and Rom have never met, but they share a common journal — a book that allows them to communicate with each other and reveals that they carry the strange and frightening Kaimira gene, entwining aspects of human, beast, and machine within their very DNA. In this thrilling, intricately plotted novel, Mei and Rom must find the courage to balance the powers that lurk within — and overcome outside forces that seek to destroy them — if they are to survive and save the ones they love.

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Betty Lynn Davidson is planning her husband's funeral. The problem is, he isn't dead. Suzanne Mullins gets the call from her father to come back home because her mother would rather tell people he is dead than face a possible divorce. Suzanne isn't ready to see the faults in her parent's marriage, nor face the ghosts of her past which may affect hers when she returns home to help set all the craziness straight.

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A devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us.

Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident. Plagued by insomnia, he tries to push back thoughts of things he would prefer to forget—his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus—by telling himself stories. He imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall, and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union, and a bloody civil war ensued. Brill gradually opens up to his granddaughter, recounting the story of his marriage and confronting the grim reality of Titus's death. Man in the Dark is a novel of our time, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night whilst also celebrating the existence of ordinary joys in a brutal world.

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When fifteen-year-old Beck Phillips travels by train to the secluded village of Kingsplot to live with his wealthy but estranged uncle, Beck discovers some dark family secrets. A buried basement, a forbidden wall, an old book of family history with odd references to . . . dragons? Beck's life is about to be changed forever in this suspenseful tale about the destructive nature of greed and the courage to make things right. Pillage is filled with Mr. Skye's signature humor as well as some very intense moments, including a surprise ending, that will keep readers young and old engrossed and entertained.

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All she wants to do is teach. For Anna Taggert, an earnest Ivy League graduate, pursuing her passion as a teacher means engaging young hearts and minds. She longs to be in a place where she can be her best self, and give that best to her students.

Turns out it isn't that easy. ... (show rest)

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Bella Shaughnessy is addicted to lipstick with names like My Chihuahua Bites and Kiss My Lips, an occupational hazard, since she works as a stylist and makeup artist for her family's small chain of beauty salons in Marshbury, Massachusetts, along with her four half-brothers and -sisters. The owner is her father, Lucky Shaughnessy, a gregarious, three-times-divorced charmer with Donald Trump hair, who is obsessed with all things Italian and still carries a torch for his first wife, Bella's mother. After Bella's own marriage flames out spectacularly when her half-sister runs off with her husband, Bella decides she has seen enough of the damage love can do. She makes a vow: no more men.

Then Bella meets a cute entrepreneur at a college fair, and despite their bickering, they can't seem to stay away from each other. He also gives her a brilliant business idea, one that just might allow her to share her makeup expertise with the world. A small, well-tressed dog finds her way into her life, and her heart, and she decides to chance that, too. When the whole clan heads to Atlanta for a big Southern wedding, sparks fly—in a summer blowout no one will ever forget. ... (show rest)

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Son of a rabbi, budding astronomer Gabriel Geismar is on his way from youth to manhood in the 1970s when he falls in love with the esteemed and beguiling Hundert family, different in every way from his own. Over the course of a decade-long drama unfolding in New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and the Wisconsin countryside, Gabriel enters more and more passionately and intimately into the world of his elective clan, discovering at the inmost center that he alone must bear the full weight of their tragedies, past and present. Yet The Book of Getting Even is funny and robust, a novel rich in those fundamentals we go to great fiction for: the exploration of what is hidden, the sudden shocks, the feeling at last of life laid bare.

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In this gripping novel set against the violent and corrupt Taiwanese criminal underworld, The Foreigner tells the story of Emerson Chang, a lonely and mild-mannered man who travels to China to scatter his mother's ashes. Once in Taipei, Emerson is forced to confront the remaining members of his family, namely his younger brother Little P, who is deeply enmeshed in the criminal underworld. As Emerson unveils his family's dark, haunting secrets, he soon discovers the truth about his own identity as he wrestles with loyalty, love, brotherhood, and his unrelenting conscience.

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It's 1975 and Amy is on her way to California to start college...but not before her tiara-toting mom decides to tag along. One car break-down later, they are stuck spending the summer in Cordial, Colorado, among the young and old, coal miners and hippies who call Cordial home. This coming of age story for both mom and daughter shows how in a surprise twist, the mother and daughter find themselves on another roadtrip in 2008 to try to heal the wounds from that summer.

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High above the mountain village of Fracture, trouble is brewing. The sorceress Lady Lamorna wants a skull-studded gown of deep black velvet, but her treasure chest is empty of gold. That doesn't stop her, however — from kidnapping, blackmailing, and using more than a little magic to get what she needs. Will her plans be foiled by the heroic Gracie Gillypot, two chatty bats, a gallant (if scruffy) prince, the wickedest stepsister ever, a troll with a grudge, and some very ancient crones? Humorously macabre and wickedly illustrated in black and white, The Robe of Skulls is truly a scream.

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Devil-Girl is a storyteller smaller than a stain and larger than life, a mythic figure roaming the globe. Born into Brooklyn housing projects and the nightmares of her immigrant family, she becomes a runaway in the human marketplace of the streets of New York. Accompanied by her sense of outrage and sense of humor, ghosts of the ancestors and her prophetic vision, she moves from silence through rage into deep alliance with the marginalized.

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A sense of foreboding sets in the moment fourteen-year-old twins Rachel and Adam arrive from New York to visit their English grandmother. The station is empty, village streets are deserted, locals are hostile, and even their frail Granny Root is oddly distant. And what about the bees that appear to follow a mysterious force? It all seems tied up with the Triskellion — an intertwining symbol etched in chalk on the moors. With a growing sense of danger and white-knuckle suspense, the twins are compelled to unearth a secret that has protected the village for centuries, one that reveals a shocking truth about their ancestors — and themselves.

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What We All Long For is a multi-cultural infusion that follows the stories of a close circle of second-generation twenty-somethings living in downtown Toronto—and the secrets they hide from their families.

Tuyen, is a lesbian avant-garde artist and the daughter of Vietnamese parents who's in love with her best friend Carla, a biracial bicycle courier. Oku is a jazz-loving poet, who unbeknowst to his Jamaican-born parents, has dropped out of college, tormented by his unrequited love for Jackie, a gorgeous black woman who runs a hiphop clothing store. ... (show rest)

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Woman of a Thousand Secrets is the story of Tonina. She came from the sea, found floating in a basket by a childless couple. Unlike the fellow villagers in her adoptive home, she is tall and lean and light skinned. When she turns nineteen, her parents knows they must send her back to her people. Their island is not far from the mainland, the place where she must return. And here is where Tonina's adventure begins. It is a tale of survival and sacrifice, of luck, magic, intrigue, and danger, romance and betrayal, an epic filled with ancient lore, tales of bearded white men who sailed to this shore in giant ships, and discoveries of medicinal miracles in the Central American jungles. It is Barbara Wood at her best.

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Sam Wyly founded and grew best-of-breed companies on the leading edge of advancements in technology, energy, retail, and investments over a career spanning 45 years. Now this fast-paced, fascinating, and candid memoir reveals the creative process, relationships, struggles, and financial strategies that led to him becoming one of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes magazine.

From the hardships his parents faced trying to hold on to the family cotton farm during the Depression to the coaching he received on the high school football field, this self-made billionaire describes how his early days in Louisiana prepared him for what lay ahead. He recounts how his experience in sales working for IBM and Honeywell led to his idea to start a "computer utility." Needing $600,000 of start-up capital, he risked $1,000 of his savings to found University Computing in 1963, then took it public in 1965, making him a millionaire at age thirty. ... (show rest)

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Following a chance encounter with a psychic, Angus Bell sets off on an 8,000-mile Skoda-powered road trip across Eastern Europe in search of a cricket match. It's a gloriously batty adventure which brings Bell face-to-face with fingerless fielders in the Czech Republic, Serbian MI6 agents, and the realisation that England's most eccentric game is being played with passion in the strangest corners of the continent.

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Cool Jew does for gefilte fish and matzah balls what the Preppy Handbook did for plaid and polo—only with much more chutzpah.

Cool Jew covers everything Hebraic from womb to tomb, finally putting an end to Christmas tree envy. Short essays, lists, instructional guides, photographs, and original illustrations celebrate Jewish cultural pride with love, enthusiasm, and irreverence. ... (show rest)

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Ever wonder why certain events allow you to expand your consciousness or alter who you think you are beyond what you normally experience? Through the power of Frameshifting, I'll show you how you can have access to this experience at any time, without adopting, changing, or fixing your beliefs! Along the way, I share with you personal experiences I've had that triggered this shift in me. With the tools provided in this book, you can have these shifts too.

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Wendell Scott figured he was signing up for trouble when he became NASCAR's version of Jackie Robinson in the segregated 1950s. His roughneck Dixie workplace provided his apprehensions correct. Competitors slammed his car into the fence. Some speedways refused to let him race. "Go home, nigger," spectators yelled. After a prejudiced promoter refused to pay him, Scott decided to speak for the first time with the sport's founder and boss. NASCAR czar Bill France Sr. made a promise Scott would never forget—that NASCAR would always treat him without prejudice.

For the next two decades, Scott chased a dream whose fulfillment depended on France backing up that promise. Admiring Scott's tenacity and skills, many white drivers helped and befriended him. Persevering through crashes, ulcers, and money troubles, Scott remained convinced he had the talent to become one of NASCAR's best. Hard Driving, however, documents a previously untold chapter in the history of integration, politics, and sports in America. It details how France, founder of the multibillion-dollar NASCAR empire, reneged on his pledge and allowed repeated discrimination against Scott by race officials and other powerful figures.

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In this publication of a popular online debate from ChristianityToday.com, leading atheist Christopher Hitchens (author of God Is Not Great) and Christian apologist Douglas Wilson (author of Letter from a Christian Citizen) present their answers to this divisive question. The result is an entertaining and significant contribution to the current discussion.

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With an estimated 400,000 multiple sclerosis patients in the United States alone, conservatively speaking, half of the MS population will encounter varying degrees of cognitive difficulties. Newer studies point to a percentage of 65%, affecting over 2.5 million world-wide MS patients.

Mental Sharpening Stones: Manage the Cognitive Challenges of Multiple Sclerosis provides real-life techniques garnered from MS patients and their medical providers, sharing their practical methods for pushing back against the disruptive and potentially disabling cognitive symptoms that affect MS patients. The book offers strategies that will assist those living with MS to retain their intellectual faculties through sharpening their mental discipline. ... (show rest)

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Monique and the Mango Rains is the compelling story of a rare friendship between a young Peace Corps volunteer and a midwife who became a legend...

Monique Dembele saved lives and dispensed hope in a place where childbirth is a life-and-death matter. This book tells of her unquenchable passion to better the lives of women and children in the face of poverty, unhappy marriages, and endless backbreaking work. Monique's buoyant humor and willingness to defy tradition were uniquely hers. In the course of this deeply personal narrative, as readers immerse themselves in the rhythms of West African village life, they come to know Monique as friend, mother, and inspired woman.

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Events around the world continue to present challenges for first responders and mental health professionals. Natural and man-made disasters continue. Evidence mounts concerning potential events such as global warming and the effects this may have worldwide. Avian Flu remains a concern as do forms of biological terrorism and natural hazards such as tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. The 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka and Thailand continues to have a significant impact on that area of the world. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to impact those countries, the Middle East and the United States. Preparing our communities and families not only for deployments and support of those deployed and their families, but also for the aftermath and return of our military and National Guard personnel into our communities is important for all..

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Doreen and Tim are both psychiatrists in their mid-forties. She's a self-proclaimed couch potato; he loves exploring the great outdoors. When Tim suggests traveling cross-country in a converted bus, Doreen bluntly asks why he can't weather his mid-life crisis by having an affair or buying a Corvette. But Tim's powers of persuasion prove formidable and soon they are packing up their belongings, two cats, and a dog, and setting forth in a 340-square-foot bus.

... (show rest)

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Running wild rivers such as the crocodile-infested Tekaze in Ethiopia, Richard Bangs lived for the adrenalin, for the rush of reveling in the misery of hardship and sidestepping death around every bend. Bangs classic, The Lost River, which recounts first descents in Ethiopia and demands a single-session chair-gripping read epitomizes the rough-and-ready formative years of Bangs as the explorer's explorer. As Bangs and his compadres survived river after river, a new purpose presented itself, though. Now an eminent and respected conservationist, Web pioneer, ambassador, and explorer, Bangs still travels to exotic and difficult environments, but with a new purpose:

"Over the decades, I have witnessed many special places preserved and lost, and the critical vector in their survival or demise was more often than not the number of visitors who trekked the landscape or floated the river and were touched deeply by their unique beauty and spirit. When such a space became threatened, there was a constituency for whom the place was personal, a collective force ready to lend energy, monies, and time to preservation." ... (show rest)

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Sacred Grief offers an intriguing exploration of the far-reaching ripple effect of our present-day opinions about surviving grief's emotional roller-coaster and the unnecessary suffering our judgments unconsciously promote. You'll find comfort in discovering that there's another dimension to this universal experience—a dimension that fosters trust, kindness and compassion, peacefully heals, and steadfastly moves you towards your soul's deepest desires and dreams.

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Complexity, as any scientist will tell you, is a slippery idea. Things that seem complicated can be astoundingly simple; things that seem simple can be dizzyingly complex. A houseplant may be more intricate than a manufacturing plant. A colony of garden ants may be more complicated than a community of people. A sentence may be richer than a book, a couplet more complicated than a song.

In Simplexity, Time senior writer Jeffrey Kluger shows how a drinking straw can save thousands of lives; how a million cars can be on the streets but just a few hundred of them can lead to gridlock; how investors behave like atoms; how arithmetic governs abstract art and physics drives jazz; why swatting a TV indeed makes it work better. As simplexity moves from the research lab into popular consciousness it will challenge our models for modern living. Jeffrey Kluger adeptly translates newly evolving theory into a delightful theory of everything that will have you rethinking the rules of business, family, art—your world.

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Why do perfectly rational people make irrational decisions?

We interviewed experts and collected stories from the realms of psychology, economics, sports, politics, aviation, jurisprudence, anthropology, and corporate management to distill the psychological forces that sway our behavior. ... (show rest)

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The anti-coagulant Coumadin can be challenging to manage — slight changes in its blood levels can lead to either ineffectiveness and stroke or bleeding episodes. What's more, a wide range of foods and medications can alter blood levels in conjunction with this medication. In a single, accessible book, author Diana Schneider explains how Coumadin works, letting readers understand how food and medications alter its effects. She also provides information on how to enjoy a normal, healthy diet while using the drug, manage unusual situations, travel with Coumadin, and much more.

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The basic premise of this book is a simple one...that stress management is a health-promoting skill for life that should be taught to children and teenagers as soon as they are capable of understanding the concepts. Most parents want their children to be happy and to do well in life. Resiliency may be the single most important factor that predicts both happiness and success!

For years, Dr. Everly's clinical practice has focused on helping adults recover from the physical and mental illnesses caused by excessive stress. This book grew out of the realization that they would never have needed this treatment if they had been taught to better manage stress early in life.

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The best adventures come full circle, depositing intrepid explorers back into their cozy armchairs to dream of the next challenge. But often that armchair may be the last lingering thought as a last breath is taken, as an adventure conjured in comfort spins off into a mystery forever unsolved. Vanished! Explorers Forever Lost dives deep into the true and harrowing accounts of adventurers who never came home. From the disappearance in Utah of cowboy roamer Everett Ruess to the loss of billionaire explorer Michael Rockefeller in the wilds of New Guinea, the tales of those forfeited to the call of wild adventure ring with mystery, intrigue, and excitement to this day. Murdered, drowned, or eaten alive—these are mysteries of disappearance likely to remain unsolved but never forgotten.

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