Annie Bloom's Books

Jonathan Lethem masterfully weaves outsider male bonding, a tragic romance, and an off-kilter portrait of Manhattan into a slanted tapestry of modern life. Rather than tackle these themes head on, he lets them unfurl slowly through the cannabis-fueled dialogue of his richly drawn central characters, former child actor Chase Insteadman and washed up pop culture critic, Perkus Tooth. Meanwhile, an escaped tiger is ravaging Manhattan, a gray fog hangs over Wall Street, and it's getting harder and harder to tell who's pulling whose puppet strings. Chronic City is Jonathan Lethem's finest accomplishment since his masterpiece, Motherless Brooklyn.

-Michael

Fire, by Kristin Cashore, is many colors of brilliant. A creative fantasy world as well as a treatise on beauty, power, and personal responsibility, this book truly digs deep. (Fire is a companion piece to Graceling, but you do not need to read the books in order.)

-Holly

In Audrey Niffenegger's second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, two American twenty-year-old twin sisters inherit their aunt's London apartment. Before selling the property, the will stipulates that they must spend one year living in the apartment, which borders the vast and ornate Highgate Cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate..

Sherman Alexie, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian delivers War Dances, a heartbreaking and hilarious collection of stories and poems that explore the precarious balance between self-preservation and external responsibility in art, family, and the world at large. With unparalleled insight into the minds of artists, laborers, fathers, husbands, and sons, Alexie populates his stories with ordinary men on the brink of exceptional change.

In Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, a global disaster has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women remain: Ren, a young dancer locked away in a high-end sex club, and Toby, a former member of the God's Gardener religious group, who barricades herself inside a luxurious spa. Have others survived? Ren and Toby emerge into an altered world, where nothing - including the animal life - is predictable.

Richard Powers's new novel, Generosity: An Enhancement centers around a mysteriously happy young woman from war-torn Algeria. When writing teacher Russell Stone encounters the joyful Thassadit Amzwar, he longs to understand and protect her. His meddling, however, leads to her involvement with a geneticist and the media circus that ensues when the happiness genome is announced.

Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, brings us the story of her grandmother in the "true-life novel" Half Broke Horses. Lily Casey Smith was Walls's no-nonsense, resourceful, and hard working grandmother. From breaking horses at age six, to teaching at fifteen, to flying planes and running a ranch in Arizona, Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, and the Great Depression.

Manhood for Amateurs is Michael Chabon's first major work of nonfiction. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, Chabon presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.

Jon Krakauer's Where Men Win Glory tells the story of football star Pat Tillman, his death from friendly fire while fighting in Afghanistan, and the Bush Administration's cover-up of what really happened. Krakauer chronicles Tillman's riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking circumstances of his death.

With the myth-busting powers for which she is acclaimed, Nickel and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America's penchant for positive thinking in Bright-Sided. On a personal level, it leads to self-blame; on a national level, it's ushered in an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best.

If you've not encountered Swedish Chief Inspector Erik Winter, you're lucky because Penguin has just released the first in the series chronologically in paperback. In Ake Edwardson's Death Angels, newly promoted Winter, Sweden's youngest chief inspector, must work with a cop in South London to solve a series of murders as young Swedish men are murdered in London and young Brits in Sweden. Edwardson introduces us to the sleazy world of black-market entertainment. This mystery is made richer by the interplay between stylish, iconic Winter and his British counterpart, a down-home, blue-collar cop who loves his South London beat.

A British village might seem the antithesis of South London, but Sheila Radley's police procedurals don't allow for the stereotypical cozy village, human nature being the same everywhere. She and her sleuth, Inspector Quantrill, both appreciate how much is hidden behind lace curtains. In Fate Worse than Death, the disappearance of a garden gnome, while annoying to its owner, seems minor until the owner's daughter also disappears. Quantrill's sidekick, the often-smug young cop Martin Tait, adds spice to this back-in-print series from Felony & Mayhem.

Johan Theorin won Sweden's Best Crime Novel of the Year award for his second suspense novel, The Darkest Room. Oland, an island off the coast of northern Sweden, is the setting for both Theorin's mysteries. Theorin writes page turners with depth because his characters are complex and troubled. Intent on restoring a family manor and giving their children the island freedom they loved, a young couple cannot escape the secrets they left behind on the mainland. Plan on staying up late to finish this tour de force.

Since the late 1950s, legendary photographer Jim Marshall has documented the world's greatest musicians, including Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, and The Beatles. With Trust, photographs from Jim's extensive color archive offer fresh insight into the work of this renowned photographer and a new look at some of the great figures in music history.

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Led Zeppelin's first album release, Charles Cross's Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls offers generations of fans a critical, retrospective reevaluation of the band's place in history. The book features stunning photographs, removable ephemera, and an audio CD.

In the first book on Thelonious Monk based on exclusive access to the Monk family papers and private recordings, as well as on a decade of prodigious research, Robin D. G. Kelley brings to light the witty, intelligent, generous, politically engaged, brutally honest, man, devoted father, and husband. Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz's most original composer.

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of Merge Records, founders Mac and Laura offer first-person accounts - with the help of their colleagues and Merge artists - of their work, their lives, and the culture of making music. More than just the bio of a great indie rock band and a cool label, John Cook's Our Noise is the story of how indie labels have flourished while the majors have imploded.