featured titles for October, 2005
to see September, click HERE - to see November/December, click HERE

Meet Lennon, a mute Irish getaway driver who has fallen in with the wrong heist team on the wrong day at the wrong bank. Betrayed, his money stolen and his battered carcass left for dead, Lennon is on a one-way mission to find out who is responsible--and to get back his loot. But the robbery has sent a violent ripple effect through the streets of Philadelphia. And now a dirty cop, the Russian and Italian mobs, the mayor's hired gun, and a keyboard player in a college rock band maneuver for position as this adrenaline-fueled novel twists and turns its way toward its explosive conclusion.

One thing's for sure: This cast of characters wakes up in a much different world by novel's end--if they wake up at all.

A man is found murdered in his Reykjavik flat, and the police have no obvious leads. Delving into the dead man's past, two investigators discover that the city of Reykjavik has one or two secrets of its own, secrets it would rather keep.

Some time ago Rafi Zabor sat down to write a brief narrative of the year 1986. That was the year he set out across two continents in a used Mercedes--"Wabenzi" is the Swahili word for a member of the Mercedes-owning class--to buy a grave stone for his friend Mahmoud Rauf and to outrun the shadow of his own parents' recent death.

But like a boat against the current, the writer was drawn back into the past: his father's escape from the Nazis, Rafi's own Brooklyn boyhood surrounded by the fractious, Zabors and Zaborovskys, and the anguished--sometimes farcical--spiritual journey that led Zabor from Brooklyn to Turkey by way of Coltrane, the thirteenth-century mystic Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi, the McGovern campaign, Gurdjieff, a shoe salesman named Gogol, and the cataclysmic months Zabor spent studying (and whirling) amid a band of Sufis in rural England. The result--the first of a projected four volumes--is one of the most original, capacious, and vivid narratives of the last few decades, a real-life Bildungsroman dealing with an expanded range of human experience, from matters of life and death to a piece of what lies beyond them.

Straight from the unchartered territory between "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and "Tristram Shandy, "I, Wabenzi lifts a corner of the known world as if it were the edge of a curtain, and begins to show a reality new to our literature gleaming on the other side.

Official histories have determined our view of the past. Governments and those in power have tried to preserve and reveal only information that serves their interests. Until now.

"The Secret Histories is a groundbreaking collection of the documents that have clarified history and altered the way we view politics and culture. From Edwin Black's investigation into the strategic alliance between IBM and the Nazi regime to I. F. Stone's classic study of the hidden history of the Korean War, from the 1952 "Reader's Digest expose of tobacco's link to cancer and heart disease to Seymour Hersh's report on the My Lai massacre (as well his expose on the abuse in Abu Ghraib prison), this is the perfect anthology for those seeking to revisit--or discover for the first time--the stories that have shaped our understanding of the world.

Edited by noted journalist and filmmaker John S. Friedman, as well as featuring an illuminating preface by bestselling author James Carroll ("An American Requiem and "Constantine's Sword), "The Secret Histories is an invaluable resource guide and a genuine tool for further change. It is a must-have book for anyone yearning to expand their understanding of the past and the present.

The dramatic story of one of the greatest disasters in history

In 1917, the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, was crowded with ships leaving for war-torn Europe. On December 6th, two of them--the Mont Blanc and the Imo--collided in the Narrows, a hard-to-navigate stretch of the harbor. Ablaze, and with explosions on her deck filling the sky, the Mont Blanc grounded against the city's docks.

As thousands rushed to their windows and into the streets to watch, she exploded with such force that the 3,121 tons of her iron hull vaporized in a cloud that shot up more than 2,000 feet; the explosion was so unusual that Robert Oppenheimer would study its effects to predict the devastation of an atomic bomb. The blast caused a giant wave that swept over parts of the city, followed by a slick, black rain that fell for ten minutes. Much of the city was flattened, and not one in 12,000 buildings within a 16-mile radius left undamaged. More than 1,600 Haligonians were killed and 6,000 injured; and within twenty-four hours, a blizzard had isolated Halifax from the world.

Set vividly against the background of World War I, Curse of the Narrows is the first major account of the world's largest pre-atomic explosion, the epic relief mission from Boston, and the riveting trial of the Mont Blanc's captain and pilot. Laura M. Mac Donald is as adept at describing the dynamics of a chain reaction explosion as she is at chronicling unforgettable human dramas of miraculous survival, unfathomable loss, and the medical breakthroughs in pediatrics and eye surgery that followed the disaster.

Using primary sources--many of which haven't been read in decades and--with a wonderful feel for narrativehistory, Mac Donald chronicles one of the most compelling and dramatic events of the 20th century.

Welcome to beautiful Bareneed. For as long as anyone can remember, this village has been like many other secluded seaport communities in Newfoundland. Other than a few minor problems caused by the town's steadily declining fishing industry, little has disturbed Bareneed's idyllic existence.

Hoping to return to his childhood hometown's tranquility, Joseph Blackwood and Robin, his eight-year-old daughter, visit Bareneed. Living in a historic house overlooking the once-bountiful ocean, father and daughter will try to heal some of the emotional wounds they have each suffered during the recent separation of Joseph and his estranged wife Kim.

However, something terribly strange is happening in Bareneed. Many of the townspeople are suddenly having mysterious and deadly respiratory problems; doctors can find no medical explanation for what threatens to become an apparently unpreventable epidemic. Then, to make matters worse, the nearby ocean, no longer yielding its formerly plentiful supply of cod, is instead quite inexplicably disgorging dozens of bodies dressed in all sorts of curious clothing. Surprisingly, young Robin is the one person who may possess the keys to solving the ever-growing list of Bareneed's darkly sinister mysteries.

Canadian author Kenneth J. Harvey's gothic novel is a beautifully haunting parable of love and loss, as well as survival and mortality. Harvey's readers might be reminded of works from H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Gabriel García-Márquez, but Harvey brings uniquely imaginative storytelling skill to this wickedly allegorical tale about the effects of culture and history upon communities and families. On one level, this novel's powerful thematic significance will linger for a long time. But on another level, it will frighten readers so much that they may never turn out the lights!

In this funny and absorbing first novel, Amy Scheibe mines the life of one frazzled and frumpy-feeling Manhattan stay-at-home mommy of two preschool-age children, who wrestles with the eternal question: should she return to work?

Set in the aristocratic world of old money and grand houses in 1960s England, this absorbing novel tells the story of one seemingly charmed family who learns the painful cost of keeping secrets.

Carl is finally back! Once again, Alexandra Day has concocted a very busy day for the amazing and all-around resourceful Rottweiler Carl. His owner believes Carl is at home taking a nap, when really he's making tracks all over town. He visits a bakery, makes a delivery for the pharmacist, helps out a veterinarian, and joins in a magician's act in the park. But in the most important event of the day, Carl becomes a real hero when he rescues a litter of puppies from a fire. With eight more pages of fun than in the previous Carl books, this captivating adventure, related mostly through pictures, will delight fans old and new.

A cozy, cumulative book to warm a cold winter day

Alive with swirling snow and lots of outdoor fun, the first ten days of winter bring special gifts for a special friend. This cumulative tale will have children chanting along as they discover all the trimmings needed for the most perfect snowman ever!

Alfred is trying to survive high school when his guardian convinces him to steal the legendary sword of King Arthur. After Alfred unwittingly delivers the sword to a man with enormously evil intentions, he sets off on an unlikely quest to try to right his wrong.

Living in Jerusalem, Elise Margulies fears for the lives of her husband and daughter every day. Then comes the day when her worst fears come true. Cancer specialist Dr. Jonathan Margulies drives his young daughter home from her ballet recital. His bullet-ridden car is found empty on the side of the road hours later. Elise, in the last stages of a difficult pregnancy, desperately calls her grandmother Leah in America for help and unknowingly revives a decades-old oath. Over five terror and hope-filled days during which ordinary people join the front lines against terrorism, the ties that bind two generations form a powerful alliance against contemporary evil.

Although she was orphaned at birth, Eden Moore is never alone. Three dead women watch from the shadows, bound to protect her from harm. But in the woods a gunman waits, convinced that Eden is destined to follow her wicked great-grandfather--an African magician with the power to curse the living and raise the dead.

Now Eden must decipher the secret of the ghostly trio before a new enemy more dangerous than the fanatical assassin destroys what is left of her family. She will sift through lies in a Georgian ante-bellum mansion and climb through the haunted ruins of a 19th century hospital, desperately seeking the truth that will save her beloved aunt from the curse that threatens her life.