Jane Brox is the author of Clearing Land, Five Thousand Days Like This One, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Here and Nowhere Else, which received the L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. She lives in Maine.

Brilliant, reminiscent of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift in its reach and of Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time in its haunting evocation of human lives, offers a sweeping view of a surprisingly revealing aspect of human history — from the stone lamps of the Pleistocene to the LEDs embedded in fabrics of the future.

Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light (Hardcover)

By Jane Brox

$25.00

ISBN-13: 9780547055275
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Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 07/01/2010

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Twins are forced to confront a violent secret from their past in Jenna Blum’s first novel since her runaway bestseller, Those Who Save Us.

In Those Who Save Us, Jenna Blum proved herself a master storyteller with brilliant insight into the spectrum of human emotion. Now, Blum turns her sights to the most intimate and mysterious of family relationships — that between twins — in her powerful and provocative second novel.

The Stormchasers (Hardcover)

By Jenna Blum

$25.95

ISBN-13: 9780525951551
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Published: Dutton Adult, 05/01/2010

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In her signature self-deprecating and hilarious style, humor essayist Rose Madeline Mula gripes about growing old. Her inability to stick with New Year’s resolutions, the mystery of her clothes shrinking to a smaller size with each passing season, and her susceptibility to infomercials are just a few of the problems pestering Mula. In this collection of comical compositions, readers can skip around from one laugh-out-loud essay to the next while enjoying the author’s endless wit and charm.

The animated author recalls the days before cars came equipped with electric windows, when pin boys frequented bowling alleys, and songs were composed with lovely lyrics that the listener could understand. While written with a mature audience in mind, women of all ages will enjoy this relatable book.

One of the Saturday Evening Post‘s "favorite humor writers," Rose Madeline Mula is the author of If These Are Laugh Lines, I’m Having Way Too Much Fun. In addition to contributing articles to the Post, Mula’s work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, among hundreds of other publications. She composes a monthly column for www.seniorwomen.com.

The Beautiful People and Other Aggravations (Paperback)

By Rose Madeline Mula

$14.95

ISBN-13: 9781589806887
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Published: Pelican Publishing Company, 04/01/2010

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In the winter of 1795, a frustrated young writer named William Henry Ireland stood petrified in his father’s study as two of England’s most esteemed scholars interrogated him about a tattered piece of paper that he claimed to have found in an old trunk. It was a note from William Shakespeare. Or was it?

In the months that followed, Ireland produced a torrent of Shakespearean fabrications: letters, poetry, drawings — even an original full-length play that would be hailed as the Bard’s lost masterpiece and staged at the Drury Lane Theatre. The documents were forensically implausible, but the people who inspected them ached to see first hand what had flowed from Shakespeare’s quill. And so they did.

This dramatic and improbable story of Shakespeare’s teenaged double takes us to eighteenth century London and brings us face-to-face with history’s most audacious forger.

Doug Stewart frequently writes about history and the arts for Smithsonian magazine. A freelance journalist, his articles have also appeared in Time, Discover, and Reader’s Digest. He lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly (Hardcover)

By Doug Stewart

$24.95

ISBN-13: 9780306818318
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Published: Da Capo Press, 03/01/2010

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Sidney, a rather rotund pig, loves to write rhyming poems for his friends’ birthdays. On one such occasion, he realizes his own name doesn’t rhyme with anything except . . . well, kidney. This just will not do. Sidney resolves to change his name to Joe, an extremely rhyme-able name. But being "Joe" is hard to remember. His friends aren’t that keen on it. And when Sidney’s mom finds out, she’s crushed. After all, Sidney was named after his great-great-great-grandfather, the inventor of the mop! What’s a pig with a non-rhyming name to do?

Jane Sutton’s text is full of laughs, and wonderfully complemented by Renata Gallio’s charming characters, quirky details, and rolling perspectives. Kids will love Sidney’s solution and identify with his name-changing plight.

Don't Call Me Sidney (Hardcover)

By Jane Sutton

$16.99

ISBN-13: 9780803727533
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Published: Dial, 06/01/2010

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In his earlier book, Leviathan, Eric Jay Dolin offered a wonderfully readable history of whaling in America. His new book, an account of the fur trade in America is another great success. And as his subtitle suggests, this is an epic tale. Dolin guides readers through over 200 years of man’s quest for valuable pelts, especially beaver and buffalo. Much of the tale is surprisingly nautical, as early world powers vie for control of the abundant resources of the New World. Even the Pilgrims depended on the sale of beaver pelts! Later, the quest for fur moves ever farther west. Dolin’s book seamlessly connects the economic, cultural, and geographical threads of the fur trade. His overview of this key era is beautifully written. Mostly though, Dolin reminds us that history is the interconnected stories of people, and his book is packed with memorable characters. Shipboard scoundrels, mountain men, Indian captives, ruthless capitalists, even victims of grizzly bears — Fur, Fortune, and Empire has it all! Surely, Eric Dolin is one of America’s most gifted historians.

Eric talks about his book:

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America (Hardcover)

By Eric Jay Dolin

$29.95

ISBN-13: 9780393067101
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Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 07/01/2010

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Coming soon!

Listen to the Dead (Hardcover)

By Randall Peffer

$24.95

ISBN-13: 9781935562191
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Tyrus Books, 08/01/2010

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A majestic history of the summer of ’64, which forever changed race relations in America

Bruce Watson‘s previous books include Sacco and Vanzetti, a finalist for the Edgar Award, and Bread and Roses, a New York Public Library Book to Remember. His journalism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, and Reader’s Digest. He lives in Massachusetts.

Freedom Summer (Hardcover)

By Bruce Watson

$27.95

ISBN-13: 9780670021703
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Published: Viking Adult, 06/01/2010

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Brunonia Barry, the New York Times bestselling author of The Lace Reader, offers an emotionally compelling novel about finding your true place in the world.

Zee Finch has come a long way from a motherless childhood spent stealing boats — a talent that earned her the nickname Trouble. She’s now a respected psychotherapist working with the world-famous Dr. Liz Mattei. She’s also about to marry one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors. But the suicide of Zee’s patient Lilly Braedon throws Zee into emotional chaos and takes her back to places she though she’d left behind.

What starts as a brief visit home to Salem after Lilly’s funeral becomes the beginning of a larger journey for Zee. Her father, Finch, long ago diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, has been hiding how sick he really is. His longtime companion, Melville, has moved out, and it now falls to Zee to help her father through this difficult time. Their relationship, marked by half-truths and the untimely death of her mother, is strained and awkward.

Overwhelmed by her new role, and uncertain about her future, Zee destroys the existing map of her life and begins a new journey, one that will take her not only into her future but into her past as well. Like the sailors of old Salem who navigated by looking at the stars, Zee has to learn to find her way through uncharted waters to the place she will ultimately call home.

The Map of True Places (Hardcover)

By Brunonia Barry

$25.99

ISBN-13: 9780061624780
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Published: William Morrow, 05/01/2010

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Noted writer Jay Atkinson recreates Jack Kerouac’s legendary On the Road journey in contemporary North America

Jack Kerouac’s iconic 1950s novel On the Road is a Beat Generation classic, chronicling the adventures and misadventures of Kerouac’s travels crisscrossing North America with colorful companions Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. Now gifted writer Jay Atkinson hits the road to retrace Kerouac’s legendary journey today. How much has changed? What has remained the same? The author’s experiences offer fascinating insights on American culture and society then and now and illuminate his own quest for self-understanding and discovery.

• Contrasts the life and landscape of Kerouac’s 1940s and 1950s America with the country today
• Filled with unexpected adventures and strangers encountered on Atkinson’s trips to New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Mexico City, and the California coast
• Reveals Atkinson’s engaging reflections on the search for personal identity and self
• Other titles by Jay Atkinson: Ice Time (a Publishers Weekly Notable Book of the Year) and Legends of Winter Hill (a Boston Globe bestseller) as well as the novels City in Amber and Caveman Politics

Absorbing and beautifully written, Paradise Road is essential reading for Kerouac fans as well as lovers of engaging travel memoirs and anyone interested in American life and culture.

Jay Atkinson talks about his journey:

Paradise Road: Jack Kerouac's Lost Highway and My Search for America (Hardcover)

By Jay Atkinson

$25.95

ISBN-13: 9780470237694
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Published: Wiley, 03/01/2010

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In this astonishing debut, Tracy Winn poignantly chronicles the souls who inhabit the troubled mill town of Lowell, Massachusetts, playing out their struggles and hopes over the course of the twentieth century. Through a stunning variety of voices, Winn paints a deep and permeating portrait of the town and its people: a young millworker who dreams of marrying rich and becoming "Mrs. Somebody Somebody"; an undercover union organizer whose privileged past shapes her cause; a Korean War veteran who returns to the wife he never really got to know—and the couple’s overindulged children, who grow up to act out against their parents; a town resident who reflects on a long-lost love and the treasure he keeps close to his heart. Winn’s keen insight into class and human nature, combined with her perfect, nuanced prose, make Mrs. Somebody Somebody truly shine.

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As in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, place is at the center of Cynthia Morrison Phoel‘s debut collection of linked stories. Quirky, remote, and agonizingly intimate, the ragged village of Old Mountain is home to a cast of Bulgarian townsfolk who do daily battle with the heat or the bitter cold, with soul-crushing poverty, with petty disagreements among themselves—all the while attempting to adapt to changing times and keep up with their neighbors. Money is tight in this valley of run-down Communist blocks and crumbling plaster houses, but community is tighter.

Cynthia Morrison Phoel served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a Bulgarian town not unlike the one in her stories. She holds degrees from Cornell and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her work has appeared in the Missouri Review, Gettysburg Review, and Harvard Review. She lives near Boston with her husband and children.

Mrs. Somebody Somebody: Fiction (Paperback)

By Tracy Winn

$14.00

ISBN-13: 9780812981452
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Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 06/01/2010

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Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories (Hardcover)

By Cynthia Morrison Phoel

$22.50

ISBN-13: 9780870745614
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Published: Southern Methodist University Press, 06/01/2010

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Does life continue after death? Will we ever be reunited with loved ones? Does love ever die? Heartfelt testimony to the eternal nature of the human spirit can be found in this collection of eighty-eight true stories from people who have seen, heard, and felt love from their family, friends, and acquaintances in spirit. The author, a hospice nurse, shares the wisdom she has gained from nearly twenty years of working with the dying and bereaved. Told with courage and warmth, these vivid firsthand accounts — of receiving signs, messages, and even hugs from family members who have crossed over; encounters with angels; near-death experiences; and visits from the spirits of beloved pets — offer hope, reassurance, and comfort to anyone who is mourning a lost loved one or has ever wondered if life goes on.

Miraculous Moments: True Stories Affirming That Life Goes on (Paperback)

By Elissa Al-Chokhachy

$17.95

ISBN-13: 9780738721224
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Published: Llewellyn Publications, 07/01/2010

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Kathleen Kent is the author of The Heretic’s Daughter. She lives in Dallas.

The Wolves of Andover (Hardcover)

By Kathleen Kent

$24.99

ISBN-13: 9780316068628
Availability: Not Yet Published
Published: Reagan Arthur Books, 11/01/2010

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Walthers offers inventive soup and side pairings, creating nourishing meals to be enjoyed in any season. Take comfort in classic duos such as tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich or dive into new favorites including Thai carrot soup with watercress spring rolls and red lentil soup with chickpea burgers

Soups + Sides (Paperback)

By Catherine Walthers

$19.95

ISBN-13: 9781891105456
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Lake Isle Press, 09/01/2010

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In a quirky farmhouse outside Boston, seventy-year-old Percy Darling enjoys a vigorous but mostly solitary life — until, in a complex scheme to help his oldest daughter through a crisis, he allows a progressive preschool to move into his barn. The abrupt transformation of Percy’s rural refuge into a lively, youthful community compels him to reexamine the choices he’s made since his wife’s death, three decades ago, in a senseless accident that haunts him still. No longer can he remain aloof from his neighbors, his two grown daughters, or, to his shock, the precarious joy of falling in love.

Meanwhile, Percy’s beloved grandson Robert, a premed student at Harvard, joins his visionary roommate in a series of environmental "actions" targeting the well-to-do; they begin as pranks but escalate insidiously, with dire consequences for Robert’s family and the people around them, including a Guatemalan gardener and a gay preschool teacher, whose lives intersect fatefully with those of the Darlings. With equal parts affection and satire, Julia Glass spins a powerful tale about the multigenerational loyalties, rivalries, and secrets of a family, inhabitants of a complacently prosperous world where no one is immune to unexpected change. Yet again, she plumbs the human heart brilliantly, dramatically, and movingly.

JULIA GLASS is the author of Three Junes, winner of the National Book Award; The Whole World Over; and I See You Everywhere, winner of the Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her short fiction has also won several prizes, and her personal essays have been widely anthologized. She lives in Massachusetts.

The Widower's Tale (Hardcover)

By Julia Glass

$26.95

ISBN-13: 9780307377920
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Pantheon, 09/01/2010

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By invitation only.