Annie Bloom's Books

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present is a comprehensive mix of oral history and Gail Collins's keen research--covering politics, fashion, popular culture, economics, sex, families, and work.

Mary says: "Collins is a terrific storyteller (with no ax to grind). This well-indexed book is nearly irresistible, no matter what page you open to. It kept me reading far into the night."

Now out in paperback, McKay's The Birth House is set during World War I. A midwife's apprentice, Dora Rare learns to assist the women of an isolated Nova Scotian village through infertility, difficult labors, breech births, unwanted pregnancies, and unfulfilling sex lives.

Alison says: "McKay writes with sensitivity about one woman's efforts to preserve age-old customs from the onslaught of modernity in this beautiful novel."

The Museum of Innocence is Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk's new novel. In 1975, a wealthy young Turkish man falls in love with a shopgirl, setting off a stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and of the mysterious allure of collecting. The Museum of Innocence also plumbs the depths of an Istanbul half Western and half traditional -- its emergent modernity, its vast cultural history.

In Stephen King's new 1000-plus-page new novel, Under the Dome, the town of Chester's Mill, Maine is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. No one knows what this barrier is and when it will go away. A handful of intrepid citizens find they must stand up to Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- to hold the reins of power.

All Alison ever wanted was a blissful childhood for her six children -- a real "old-fashioned family life." Beneath this postcard sheen, Penelope Lively's The Family Album reveals a picture that's clouded by a distant father, Alison's inexplicable emotional outbursts, and long-repressed secrets that no one dares mention.

In Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, a young Czeck couple in the 1920s move into their newly built modernist home. Soon, however, Viktor and Liesel Landauer turn toward others for passion in their lives. As WWII looms, the Nazi invasion forces them to flee for America. Still, the allure of their magnificent home calls them back.

Al Gore's Our Choice gathers in one place all of the most effective solutions to the climate crisis that are available now. It is meant to depoliticize the issue as much as possible and inspire readers to take action - not only on an individual basis but as participants in the political processes by which every country, and the world as a whole, makes the choice that now confronts us.

Diane Ackerman's Dawn Light awakens us to the world at dawn, drawing on sources as diverse as meteorology, world religion, etymology, art history, poetry, organic farming, and beekeeping. Joining science's devotion to detail with religion's appreciation of the sublime, this is an impassioned celebration of the miracles of evolution - especially human consciousness of our numbered days on a turning earth.

In Eating the Dinosaur, Chuck Klosterman dissects the boredom of voyeurism, tells why music fans inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, and why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly. Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense.

In Connected, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more.

New Titles for Teens:

In L.K. Madigan's Flash Burnout, a 15-year-old photographer named Blake navigates the tangle of life, death, loyalty, and love. Now in paperback, John Green's Paper Towns finds Quentin trying to get closer to the enigmatic, ninja-clothed Margo. In Gary Paulsen's Notes from the Dog, Finn's summer plans change when Johanna, a twenty-something with breast cancer, moves next door and hires Finn (and his amazing dog, Dylan) to create a garden for her.

Great New Books for Grade School Kids:

Roland Smith's Tentacles is the story of 13-year-old twins and their uncle, who takes them to New Zealand to hunt for a giant squid. In Cressida Cowell's A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons, Hiccup must sneak into the Meathead Public Library and steal the Viking's most sacred book, or his dragon will be banished. Ann M. Martin's Everything for a Dog features connected stories between a stray dog, a boy dealing with great loss, and another boy who desperately wants a dog.

New Children's Picture Books:

Loren Long's Otis is the story of a tractor who loves to work and his friendship with a little calf. Judy Schachner's lovable hero is blasting off to Mars in Skippyjon Jones, Lost in Spice. Blues legend B.B. King teams up with Sandra Boynton for One Shoe Blues, a fun story with sock puppets, plus an accompanying DVD.

Since its founding by a bloodthirsty tyrant in 1756, The Onion has not merely changed the way we think about the news -- it has changed whether we think about the news at all. As the first decade of this new millennium draws to a close, Our Front Pages shows us the first thing that presidents, kings, prime ministers, and popes saw when they opened their eyes each morning for the last 21 years.

In What Would Susie Say?, Susie Essman reveals how she went from an anxiety-ridden, struggling stand-up comic to being one of the funniest women on television (Curb Your Enthusiasm). Essman provides side-splitting wisdom on a range of topics that she's highly unqualified to expound upon, including men, sports, hypochondria, and step-parenthood.

Everyone has his or her own neuroses. On a routine trip to the office bathroom, Lianna Kong discovered one of hers: "How could I possibly pee with my coworker sitting right next to me doing her business?" i am neurotic (and so are you) is a smorgasbord of anonymous confessions that reveal people's deepest, strangest, and funniest compulsions - quirks that are triggered in the boardroom, the bedroom, and everywhere in between.

In I Drink for a Reason, David Cross (Arrested Development; Mr. Show) weaves his media mockery, celebrity denunciation, religious commentary and sheer madness into book form, revealing the true story behind his almost existential distaste of Jim Belushi, disclosing the up-to-now unpublished minutes to a meeting of Fox television network executives, and offering up a brutally grotesque run-in with Bill O'Reilly.

Released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing... is the sixth installment in the series begun by Douglas Adams. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone's favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.

Cherie Priest's Boneshaker is set just after the Civil War, when a gold prospecting machine called Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine went awry, unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas and leaving Seattle a walled-in city populated by the living dead. Sixteen years later, Dr. Blue's son Ezekial undertakes a secret crusade under the wall. Only his mother, Briar, can bring him out alive.

In Jesse Bullington's The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, Hegel and Manfried are stalked by death as they travel through the dark woods of medieval Europe on a naive quest for fortune. The Brothers Grossbart are about to discover that all legends have their truths, and worse fates than death await those who would take the red road of villainy.

In Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, four lives are entangled and changed forever. Meanwhile the wizards at Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University prepare to revive the erstwhile tradition of putting forth a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff. Once they learn the rules of the sport, they must win a football match without using any magic.