December 1941 – Craig Shirley
December 1941 31 Days that Changed America and Saved the World Craig Shirley Genre: United States Price: $9.99 Publish Date: December 06, 2011 Publisher: Thomas Nelson Seller: Thomas Nelson December 1941 traces, day-by-day, the most important 31 days in the history of America's participation in WWII, which snuffed out the lives of millions and changed history forever. From December 1, 1941, until the morning of December 7, 1941, America was at peace and-with the exception of the stubborn and persistent high unemployment of the Great Depression-was a relatively happy country. By the afternoon of the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, America was a radically changed country, forever. Its isolationist impulses evaporated, and both major political parties became more or less internationalist. The month also introduced food and gas rationing, Victory Gardens, scrap drives, a military draft, and the conversion of Detroit into an “arsenal of democracy.” From the moment of America's entry into World War II, people of all kinds, but mostly women looking for work, flooded into the city. Instant apartment buildings sprang up, as did eating and drinking salons, all to the advantage of the massive increase in spending generated by the federal government. December 1941 is a fascinating and meticulously researched look at the American home front-her people, faith, economy, government, and culture. “Craig Shirley's December 1941 is a riveting narrative history of America in the crucible of the Second World War. A real page turner. Highly recommended.” Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and New York Times bestseller of The Wilderness Warrior
The Happy Hooker – Xaviera Hollander
The Happy Hooker My Own Story Xaviera Hollander Genre: Biographies & Memoirs Price: $1.99 Publish Date: July 26, 2011 Publisher: Harper Paperbacks Seller: HarperCollins How did you first learn about sex? If you grew up in the 1970s, it may have been from a gleefully lusty tour guide named Xaviera Hollander In the late 1960s — that era of sexual chaos, when Playboy Clubs and love-ins were competing for national attention — a beautiful, intelligent young Dutch secretary named Xaviera de Vries moved to New York, grew swiftly tired of her desk job . . . and soon became the most visible and glamorous madam the city had ever seen. As Xaviera Hollander, she published a shockingly candid account of her life behind the brothel door. The Happy Hooker shot straight to the top of the bestseller lists, sold more than fifteen million copies, and made this enterprising young woman an international phenomenon. Thirty years later, these delightfully explicit tales of the '60s and '70s swingers' scene — including countless jaw-dropping stories of lesbianism, bondage, fetishism, and more — remain as titillating as ever, charged with the mix of shrewd observation and uninhibited appetite that made Hollander an irresistible storyteller. The Happy Hooker is a classic: the world's greatest book on the world's oldest profession.
Death in the City of Light – David King
Death in the City of Light The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris David King Genre: True Crime Price: $12.99 Publish Date: September 20, 2011 Publisher: Crown Publishing Group Seller: Random House Digital, Inc. (Books) Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150. Who was being slaughtered, and why? Was Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills? Was he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance? Or did he work for no one other than himself? Trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. When Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers. But the trial soon became a circus. Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease. His attorney, René Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges. Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day. Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions. From the Hardcover edition.
Drink Deep – Chloe Neill
Drink Deep A Chicagoland Vampires Novel Chloe Neill Genre: Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost Price: $9.99 Publish Date: November 01, 2011 Publisher: Penguin Group US Seller: Penguin Group (USA) Inc. A strong-minded, sharp-witted heroine who will appeal to fans of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series and Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake.” ( Library Journal ) Clouds are brewing over Cadogan House, and Merit the vampire can't tell if this is the darkness before the dawn, or the calm before the storm. With the city itself in turmoil over paranormals and the state threatening to pass a paranormal registration act, times have never been more precarious for the vampires. If only they could lay low for a bit… Then magic rears its ugly head when Lake Michigan turns black. The mayor insists it's nothing to worry about, but Merit knows a panic is coming. She'll have to turn to friends old and new to find out who's behind this, and stop them before it's too late for both the vampires and humans. ”
Slaughter-House Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughter-House Five Kurt Vonnegut Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy Price: $5.99 Publish Date: September 15, 2010 Publisher: RosettaBooks, LLC. Seller: ROSETTABOOKS, LLC Unstuck in time, the hero of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five — an unforgettable Everyman named Billy Pilgrim — is never sure what part of his life he is going to have to act in next. Vonnegut's wildly imaginative, witty and affecting novel tells Billy Pilgrim's story in just that fashion. It spins back and forth through time, layering in the elements of Billy's life, which begins, chronologically, in 1922 in the upstate New York town of Ilium, and ends over 50 years later, when he is a successful middle-class optometrist with a wife and two grown children. Like Vonnegut himself, Billy was a World War II draftee and a prisoner of war in Dresden when the Allies firebombed the city early in 1945. All of these facts are significant, and the novel emerges as a powerful anti-war statement, dominated by the experience of surviving the Dresden nightmare. But not in the expected ways — for these facts are splintered, rearranged and transformed by another element in Billy's peculiar tale. Late in his life, he is abducted by wise aliens, from the planet Tralfamadore, who teach him that they, unlike humans, can see time all at once, as a continuum, where the past, present and future exist together, each moment a permanent thing. Thus does Billy come to experience his life unstuck in time,zigzagging from his childhood to his death, from his abduction to Tralfamadore (where he mates with another captive, a starlet named Montana Wildhack) to the ever-present experience of Dresden. It is a fractured but transcendent journey toward understanding and acceptance amid the violent certainties of modern life. Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse Five (the title alludes to the makeshift prison where Billy and his fellow prisoners are kept in Dresden) became one of the most popular and enduring novels of its time. Its indelible ironic tone, its trippy plotting and its bold, even hilarious use of science fiction make it an utterly unique reading experience. “Slaughterhouse Five” remains perhaps the signature work in Vonnegut's large and varied catalogue of writings. In reviewing the novel for Life magazine, the critic Wilfrid Sheed called it splendid art … a funny book at which you are not permitted to laugh, a sad book without tears.
The Eleventh Victim – Nancy Grace
The Eleventh Victim Nancy Grace Genre: Women Sleuths Price: $2.99 Publish Date: August 11, 2009 Publisher: Hyperion Seller: Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. As a young psychology student, Hailey Dean's world explodes when Will, her fiancé, is murdered just weeks before their wedding. Reeling, she fights back the only way she knows how: In court, prosecuting violent crime…putting away the bad guys one r****t, doper, and killer at a time. But dedicating her life to justice takes a toll after years of courtroom battles and the endless tide of victims calling out from crime scene photos and autopsy tables. Just as she grows truly weary, a serial killer unlike any other she’ s encountered begins to stalk the city of Atlanta, targeting young prostitutes, each horrific murder bearing his own unique mark. This courtroom battle will be her last. Hailey heads for Manhattan to pick up the pieces of the life she had before Will's murder, training as a therapist. In a vibrant new world, she finally leaves her ghosts behind. But then her own clients are brutally murdered one by one by a copycat using the same M.O. as the Atlanta killer she hunted down years before. As the body count rises across Manhattan, Hailey is forced to match wits not only against a killer, but the famed NYPD. Unless she returns to her former life and solves the case, still more innocent people will die at the hands of a killer who plans to get her, before she can get him!
Snuff – Terry Pratchett
Snuff Terry Pratchett Genre: Fiction & Literature Price: $12.99 Publish Date: October 11, 2011 Publisher: HarperCollins Seller: HarperCollins For nearly three decades, Terry Pratchett has enthralled millions of fans worldwide with his irreverent, wonderfully funny satires set in the fabulously imaginative Discworld, a universe remarkably similar to our own. From sports to religion, politics to education, science to capitalism, and everything in between, Pratchett has skewered sacred cows with both laughter and wisdom, and exposed our warts, foibles, and eccentricities in a unique, entertaining, and ultimately serious way. At long last, Lady Sybil has lured her husband, Sam Vimes, on a well-deserved holiday away from the crime and grime of Ankh-Morpork. But for the commander of the City Watch, a vacation in the country is anything but relaxing. The balls, the teas, the muck?not to mention all that fresh air and birdsong?are more than a bit taxing on a cynical city-born and -bred copper. Yet a policeman will find a crime anywhere if he decides to look hard enough, and it?s not long before a body is discovered, and Sam?out of his jurisdiction, out of his element, and out of bacon sandwiches (thanks to his well-meaning wife)?must rely on his instincts, guile, and street smarts to see justice done. As he sets off on the chase, though, he must remember to watch where he steps. . . . This is the countryside, after all, and the streets most definitely are not paved with gold. Hailed as the ?purely funniest English writer since Wodehouse? (Washington Post Book World), with a ?satirist?s instinct for the absurd and a cartoonist?s eye for the telling detail? (Daily Telegraph, London), Terry Pratchett offers a novel of crime, class, prejudice, and punishment that shows this master at his dazzling best.
The Drop – Michael Connelly
The Drop Michael Connelly Genre: Mysteries & Thrillers Price: $14.99 Expected Publish Date: November 28, 2011 Publisher: Little, Brown and Company Seller: Hachette Book Group Harry Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever. In one morning, he gets two. DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted r****t. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab's DNA cases currently in court. Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving's son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch's longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation. Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.
Talk of the Town – Sherrill Bodine
Talk of the Town Sherrill Bodine Genre: Fiction & Literature Price: $1.99 Publish Date: December 01, 2008 Publisher: Grand Central Publishing Seller: Hachette Book Group GOSSIP QUEEN DETHRONED! Darlings, what a to-do at the Daily Mail today! After fifteen years as Chicago's gossip guru, Rebecca Covington has been demoted from divulger of secrets for the city's elite to headlining recipes in the Home and Food section. Apparently, a touchy senator is threatening legal action for Rebecca's latest extramarital scoop. But Windy City rumor has it that new CEO and dreamy Pierce Brosnan look-alike David Sumner downgraded Rebecca in favor of fresher, younger blood on the social beat. Industry insiders expect Rebecca to fight her denouement, and inquiring minds have already seen the feisty maven trading quips and searing glances wtih her arresting new boss. Rebecca swears she'll reclaim her shining star status, but can the dishy diva even cook? And how can she ignore David's arousing effect on her sensibilities? Don't miss a trick, darlings. Sparks are going to fly.
Where You Left Me – Jennifer Gardner Trulson
Where You Left Me Jennifer Gardner Trulson Genre: Biographies & Memoirs Price: $11.99 Expected Publish Date: August 30, 2011 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Seller: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc. Lucky — that’s how Jennifer would describe herself. She had a successful law career, met the love of her life in Doug, married him, had an apartment in New York City, a house in the Hamptons, two beautiful children, and was still madly in love after nearly seven years of marriage. Jennifer was living the kind of idyllic life that clichÉs are made of. Until Doug was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, and she became a widow at age thirty-five — a “9/11 widow,” no less, a member of a select group bound by sorrow, of which she wanted no part. Though completely devastated, Jennifer still considered herself blessed. Doug had loved her enough to last her a lifetime, and after his sudden death, she was done with the idea of romantic love — fully resigned to being a widowed single mother . . . until a chance encounter with a gregarious stranger changed everything. Without a clue how to handle this unexpected turn of events, Jennifer faced the question asked by anyone who has ever lost a loved one: Is it really possible to feel joy again, let alone love? With unvarnished emotion and clear-eyed sardonic humor, Jennifer tells an ordinary woman’s extraordinary tale of unimaginable loss, resilience, friendship, love, and healing — which is also New York City’s narrative in the wake of September 11. Where You Left Me is an unlikely love story, a quintessentially New York story — at once Jennifer’s tribute to the city that gave her everything and proof that second chances are possible.
