Bright Shiny Morning
by James Frey

Hardcover $26.95 - 10%

One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel—a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original.

Dozens of characters pass across the reader’s sight lines—some never to be seen again—but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA’s lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a supremely narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of the great city; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addled teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home.

Throughout this strikingly powerful novel there is the relentless drumbeat of the millions of other stories that, taken as a whole, describe a city, a culture, and an age. A dazzling tour de force, Bright Shiny Morning illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles.

No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
by Miranda July

Paperback $14.00

“These stories are incredibly charming, beautifully written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and even, a dozen or so times, profound. Miranda July is a very real writer, and has one of the most original voices to appear in fiction in many years. Fans of Lorrie Moore should rub this book all over themselves — she’s got that perfect balance of humor and pathos. There has been no more enjoyable and promising a debut collection in many a moon.”– Dave Eggers

“These delightful stories do that essential-but-rare story thing: they surprise. They skip past the quotidian, the merely real, to the essential, and do so with a spirit of tenderness and wonder that is wholly unique. They are (let me coin a phrase) July-esque, which is to say: infused with wonder at the things of the world.”– George Saunders, author of In Persuasion Nation

“Miranda July’s is a beautiful, odd, original voice — seductive, sometimes erotic, and a little creepy, too.”– David Byrne

“A woman gives swimming lessons in her kitchen — of course! Miranda July can make anything seem normal in these truly original stories. She has first-rate comic timing and a generous view of the human condition. Maybe best of all, there’s joy here, too, often where you would not expect to find it.”– Amy Hempel, author of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick Perlstein
Hardcover $37.50 - 10%

A richly detailed descent into the inferno — that is, the years when Richard Milhous Nixon, ‘a serial collector of resentments,’ ruled the land.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS

Nixonland is a grand historical epic. Rick Perlstein has turned a story we think we know — American politics between the opposing presidential landslides of 1964 and 1972 — into an often surprising and always fascinating new narrative. This riveting book, full of colorful detail and great characters, brings back to life an astonishing era — and shines a new light on our own.” — Jeffrey Toobin author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

“This is a terrific read. What a delight it is to discover the new generation of historians like Rick Perlstein not only getting history correct but giving us all fresh insights and understanding of it.” — John W. Dean Nixon’s White House counsel

“Rick Perlstein has written a fascinating account of the rise of Richard Nixon and a persuasive argument that this angry, toxic man will always be part of the American landscape.” — Richard Reeves author of President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination

Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland digs deep into a decisive period of our history and brings back a past that is all the scarier for its intense humanity. With a firm grasp on the larger meaning of countless events and personalities, many of them long forgotten, Perlstein superbly shows how paranoia and innuendo flowed into the mainstream of American politics after 1968, creating divisive passions that have survived for decades.” — Sean Wilentz Princeton University, author of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

The Pesthouse
by Jim Crace

Paperback $13.95

From Publishers Weekly
In this postapocalyptic picaresque from Whitbread-winner Crace (for Quarantine), America has regressed to medieval conditions. After a forgotten eco-reaction in the distant past, the U.S. government, economy and society have collapsed. The illiterate inhabitants ride horses, fight with bows and swords and scratch a meager living from farming and fishing. But with crop yields and fish runs mysteriously dwindling, most are trekking to the Atlantic coast to take ships to the promised land of Europe, gawking along the way at the ruins of freeways and machinery yards, which seem the wasteful excesses of giants. Heading east, naïve farm boy Franklin teams up with Margaret, a recovering victim of the mysterious “flux” whose shaven head (mark of the unclean) causes passersby to shun her. Their love blossoms amid misadventures in an anarchic landscape: Franklin is abducted by slave-traders; Margaret falls in with a religious sect that bans metal and deplores manual labor, symbolically repudiating America’s traditional cult of progress, technology and industriousness (masculinity takes some hits, too). Crace’s ninth novel leaves the U.S. impoverished, backward, fearful and abandoned by history. Less crushing than Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and less over-the-top than Matthew Sharpe’s Jamestown (to name two recent postapocalyptos), Crace’s fable is an engrossing, if not completely convincing, outline of the shape of things to come.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008
edited by Laura Furman

Paperback $14.95

An annual collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman from hundreds of literary magazines, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 is studded with extraordinary settings and characters: a teenager in survivalist Alaska, the seed keeper of a doomed Chinese village, a young woman trying to save her life in a Ukrainian internet café. Also included are the winning writers’ comments on what inspired them, a short essay from each of the three eminent jurors, and an extensive resource list of literary magazines.

Translucent Tree
by Nobuko Takagi, translated by Deborah Iwabuchi

Hardcover $19.95 - 10%

Chigiri Yamazaki is a divorced single mother who has returned to Tsurugi City with her 11 year old daughter to care for her ailing father–a famouse sword maker whose business has completely faltered. It falls upon Chigiri to keep dept collectors at bay.

Go Imai, a freelance documentary maker, is on a business trip from Tokyo and has decided to stop by this little town of Tsurugi, where he had come to do a story on Chigiri’s father 25 years ago. Go reunites with Chigiri, and the two begin a love story of epic consequence and passion reminiscent of the works of Marguerite Duras and Alice Munro, set against the backdrop of bucolic Japan.

The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
by Matt Taibbi

Hardcover $24.00 - 10%

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush’s America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off—or radicalized—by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders (“they hate us for our freedom”) that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.
Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places.
Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.

The Big Girls
by Susanna Moore

Paperback $14.95

From Publishers Weekly
In spare yet hypnotic prose, Moore (One Last Look) examines the bond between a young psychiatrist and a mentally ill patient in her devastating sixth novel, set at an upstate New York federal women’s prison. Sloatsburg Correctional Institution, a former sanitarium on the west bank of the Hudson, is dangerous, understaffed, underfinanced and overwhelmingly grim. The place epitomizes what’s wrong with our nation’s prison system and stands as a warning about our growing mental health crisis. Moore deftly shifts perspective among her principal characters—Dr. Louise Forrest, Sloatsburg’s psychiatry chief; Helen Nash, a suicidal inmate who’s been convicted of killing her children; Capt. Henry “Ike” Bradshaw, a corrections officer who’s in love with Louise; and Angie Mills, a Hollywood actress (and Louise’s ex-husband’s girlfriend), whom Helen believes is her long-lost sister—as the action hurtles to an oddly satisfying resolution. Reading this heartbreaker is like watching a train wreck while dialing for help on your cellphone. You can’t turn away.

The Post-American World
by Fareed Zakaria

Hardcover $25.95 - 10%

“This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.” So begins Fareed Zakaria’s important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest”—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

Brooklyn Street Art
by Jaime Rojo & Steven P. Harrington

Hardcover $14.95 - 10%

This latest addition to Prestel s acclaimed Street Art series takes the train to Brooklyn to present a dizzying collection of urban images that gives testament to the vibrant culture in New York City s largest borough.

From the warehouses of ultra-hip Williamsburg to the brick facades of Bushwick tenements and DUMBO S waterfront cool, the 150 images in this book by photographer Jaime Rojo capture the wide range of mediums and styles of today s exciting street artists. Presented as full-page images, this selection of Brooklyn street art celebrates free expression. The result is a collection of art that brilliantly reflects Brooklyn s unique energy and dynamic population.

Vermeer’s Secret World
by Vincent Etienne

Hardcover $14.95 - 10%

Young readers will delight in this journey through the life and work of one of history s most distinctive and enigmatic painters.

Scenes of domestic life and luminous color make Vermeer s art both accessible and irresistible. Designed and written to appeal to young readers, this engaging introduction to the Dutch master encourages children to experience the charm and mystery of Vermeer s work. Large, vibrant reproductions allow for a close study of the fascinating details that make Vermeer s paintings so compelling and allow the colors for which he was so famous to leap off the page. While recent books and movies have brought Vermeer into the forefront of popular culture, this lively and informative book introduces the artist to children.

Space Between People: How the Virtual Changes Physical Architecture
edited by Stephan Doesinger

Paperback $29.95

Winners of the Second Life architecture competition bring the physical world into the digital age on the pages of this book.

If architecture is the construction of space between people, what happens when that space exists in a virtual world? That question is the starting point for this collection of revolutionary projects by a new generation of designers. The book begins by examining the important issues that have emerged as technology reshapes our idea of place and proceeds to present the four winning projects from the first architecture competition held within the explosively popular Internet community known as Second Life. Chosen for their inventiveness and aesthetic excellence, these structures a cloud that can be inhabited; a meta-museum; an interactive sound scape; and a snow palace of discarded objects illustrate the mind-bending possibilities of digital design. In the book s final section, media artists share their real-time experiences conceptualizing and creating projects for the virtual world.

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis
by Kingsley Amis, intro by Christopher Hitchens

Hardcover $19.99 - 10%

A gift for anyone who loves good liquor and high-proof prose: a collection of hilarious and deeply informed writings about drink from one of the all-time authorities.
Kingsley Amis was one of the great masters of comic prose, and no subject was dearer to him than the art and practice of imbibing. This new volume brings together the best of his three out-of-print works on the subject. Along with a series of well-tested recipes (including a cocktail called the Lucky Jim) the book includes Amis’s musings on The Hangover, The Boozing Man’s Diet, What to Drink with What, and (presumably as a matter of speculation) How Not to Get Drunk—all leavened with fun quizzes on the making and drinking of alcohol all over the world. Mixing practical know-how and hilarious opinionation, this is a delightful cocktail of wry humor and distilled knowledge, served by one of our great gimlet wits.

What It Is
by Lynda Barry

Hardcover $24.95 - 10%

How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry’s compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry’s first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”

The Boat
by Nam Le

Hardcover $22.95 - 10%

A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling.

In the magnificent opening story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father’s experiences in Vietnam—and what seems at first a satire of turning one’s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. “Cartagena” provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In “Meeting Elise,” an aging New York painter mourns his body’s decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees, where a young woman’s bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.

Brilliant, daring, and demonstrating a jaw-dropping versatility of voice and point of view, The Boat is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.

Modern Shoestring: Contemporary Architecture on a Budget
by Susanna Sirefman

Hardcover $40.00 - 10%

Residential design provides a rich testing ground for architectural innovation. Intimate scales and specific programs inspire distinctive homes, and comparatively small budgets are catalysts for exploring nontraditional materials. Modern Shoestring proves that building a contemporary house can be affordable and shows how constraints actually stimulate the most creative design solutions.

Eighteen residential projects are presented, with emphasis on the goals of the owners, the site, and the cost in the design process. Collections determine floor plans, observatories are built for starry rural nights, and found and industrial materials such as highway construction remnants, laboratory counters, plastic water bottles, and discarded chalkboards keep costs low while imbuing structures with character. These ingenious designs range in cost from $50 to $220 per square foot and represent geographical settings from Los Angeles to Anchorage to East Hampton.

Eric Fischl: 1970-2007
edited by Arthur C. Danto & Robert Enright

Hardcover $85.00 - 10%

The Hyena & Other Men
by Pieter Hugo, intro by Adetokunbo Abiola

Hardcover $50.00 - 10%

Many myths surround the Hyena Men who haunt the
peripheries of Nigeria s cities. Accompanied by hyenas, rock
pythons and baboons, these men earn a living by performing
before crowds and selling traditional medicines. Pieter Hugo s
extraordinary portraits of their liminal existence reveal an
uncanny world of complex, codependent relationships, where
familiar distinctions between dominance and submission,
wildness and domesticity, tradition and modernity are
constantly subverted. Nigerian journalist Adetokunbo Abiola
introduces readers to the Hyena Men, explaining the
traditions and mystique behind their practices. Presented in
thirty-five full-color plates, these intense portraits reveal why
Hugo is one of the most exciting young photographers at work
today.

Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest
by Lincoln Hall

Hardcover $24.95 - 10%

Lincoln Hall likes to say that on the evening of May 25, 2006, he died on Everest. Indeed, he attempted to climb the mountain during a deadly season in which eleven people perished. And Hall, in fact, was pronounced dead, after collapsing from altitude sickness. Two Sherpas spent hours trying to revive him, but, as darkness fell, word came via radio from the exhibition’s leader that the Sherpas should descend the mountain in order to save themselves.

The news of Lincoln Hall’s death traveled rapidly from mountaineering websites to news media around the world, and ultimately to his family back in Australia. Early the next morning, however, an American guide, climbing with two clients and a Sherpa, was startled to find Hall, sitting cross-legged on the summit ridge, just staring at them.

As featured in the Emmy-nominated Dateline NBC documentary “Miracle on Mount Everest,” Dead Lucky is Lincoln Hall’s account of this miraculous night atop Everest and the days and nights that led up to and followed this fascinating expedition. Hall had been part of Australia’s first attempt to climb to the top of the mountain in 1984, but, he had not done any serious climbing for many years, having set aside his passion in order to support his family. Hall was forced to turn back due to illness in 1984 so his triumph in reaching the summit at the age of fifty is a story unto itself. Not since Into Thin Air has there been such a thrilling Everest story. Dead Lucky is a page-turner from beginning to end.