Fiction New Releases

Micro by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston

In Jurassic Park, he created a terrifying new world. Now, in Micro, Michael Crichton reveals a universe too small to see and too dangerous to ignore.  In a locked Honolulu office building, three men are found dead with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye.  [read more]

Inheritance by Christopher Paolini

Not so very long ago, Eragon - Shadeslayer, Dragon Rider - was nothing more than a poor farm boy, and his dragon, Saphira, only a blue stone in the forest. Now the fate of an entire civilization rests on their shoulders.  Long months of training and battle have brought victories and hope, but they have also brought heartbreaking loss. And still, the real battle lies ahead: they must confront Galbatorix.  [read more]

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

It’s the early 1980s—the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.  [read more]

Kill Alex Cross by James Patterson

The president's son and daughter are abducted, and Detective Alex Cross is one of the first on the scene. But someone very high-up is using the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA to keep him off the case and in the dark.  A deadly contagion in the water supply cripples half of the capital, and Alex discovers that someone may be about to unleash the most devastating attack the United States has ever experienced.  [read more]

V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton

A woman with a murky past who kills herself--or was it murder? A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt who thinks he can beat the system. A lovely woman whose life is about to splinter into a thousand fragments. A professional shoplifting ring working for the Mob, racking up millions from stolen goods. A wandering husband, rich and ruthless. A dirty cop so entrenched on the force he is immune to exposure.  [read more]

The Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan

It’s been two years since the vampiric virus was unleashed in The Strain and the entire world now lies on the brink of annihilation. There has been a mass extermination of humans orchestrated by the Master - an ancient vampire possessed of unparalleled powers. The future of humankind lies in the hands of a ragtag band of freedom fighters - Dr. Eph Goodweather, Dr. Nora Martinez, Vasiliy Fet, and Mr. Quinlan, the half-breed offspring of the Master who is bent on revenge.  [read more]

The Next Always by Nora Roberts

The historic hotel in Boonsboro has endured war and peace, the changing of hands, and even rumored hauntings. Now it’s getting a major face-lift from the Montgomery brothers and their eccentric mother. As the architect in the family, Beckett’s social life consists mostly of talking shop over pizza and beer. But there’s another project he’s got his eye on: the girl he’s been waiting to kiss since he was sixteen.  [read more]

Non Fiction New Releases

That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman

America has a huge problem. It faces four major challenges, on which its future depends, and it is failing to meet them. In That Used to Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman, one of our most influential columnists, and Michael Mandelbaum, one of our leading foreign policy thinkers, analyze those challenges - globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption - and spell out what we need to do now to rediscover America and rise to this moment.  [read more]

Midas Touch by Donald Trump & Robert Kiyosaki

What makes some business owners wildly successful? What separates the entrepreneurs who build businesses from ones who just seem to create more work for themselves? How, exactly do the world’s most prominent business builders seem to hit home run after home run? The answer: They have the Midas Touch.  [read more]

Great by Choice by Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen

The new question: Ten years after the worldwide best seller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? In Great by Choice, Collins and his colleague, Morten T. Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.  The new study: Great by Choice distinguishes itself from Collins’s prior work by its focus on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today.  [read more]

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public. It is a lucid and enlightening summary of his life's work. It will change the way you think about thinking.  [read more]

War of the Worldviews by Deepak Chopra & Leonard Mlodonow

Two bestselling authors first met in a televised Caltech debate on “the future of God,” one an articulate advocate for spirituality, the other a prominent physicist. This remarkable book is the product of that serendipitous encounter and the contentious - but respectful - clash of worldviews that grew along with their friendship. In War of the Worldviews these two great thinkers battle over the cosmos, evolution and life, the human brain, and God, probing the fundamental questions that define the human experience.  [read more]

Now You See It by Cathy Davidson

Using cutting-edge research on the brain, Davidson shows how the phenomenon of "attention blindness" shapes our lives, and how it has led to one of the greatest problems of our historical moment: Although we blog, tweet, and text as if by instinct, far too many of us still toil in schools and workplaces designed for the last century, not the one we live in. To change this, we must ask ourselves critical questions: How can we redesign our schools to prepare our kids for the challenges they'll face as adults?  [read more]

Civilization by Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson's last audiobook, The Ascent of Money, was such a smash hit that we're expecting good things of his new one.  Civilization: The West and the Rest is out this week and should be a great listen for history buffs.  From the New York Times review:

"What keeps the reader pushing on through “Civilization” is the author’s knack for making long-ago events as vivid and visceral as the evening news, for weaving anecdotes and small telling details together with a wide-angled retrospective vision. "

Click here for the rest of the review.

Or click here for the audiobook.

Non Fiction New Releases

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries.  [read more]

The Time of Our Lives by Tom Brokaw

Tom Brokaw, known and beloved for his landmark work in American journalism and for the New York Times bestsellers The Greatest Generation and Boom!, now turns his attention to the challenges that face America in the new millennium, to offer reflections on how we can restore America’s greatness. “What happened to the America I thought I knew?” Brokaw writes.  [read more]

Back to Work by Bill Clinton

President Bill Clinton gives us his views on the challenges facing the United States today and why government matters--presenting his ideas on restoring economic growth, job creation, financial responsibility, resolving the mortgage crisis, and pursuing a strategy to get us "back in the future business."  [read more]

Here Comes Trouble by Michael Moore

Michael Moore-Oscar-winning filmmaker, bestselling author, the nation's unofficial provocateur laureate-is back, this time taking on an entirely new role, that of his own meta-Forest Gump. Breaking the autobiographical mode, he presents twenty-four far-ranging, irreverent, and stranger-than-fiction vignettes from his own early life.  [read more]

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling has lived many lives: the obedient child of immigrant professionals, a timid chubster afraid of her own bike, a Ben Affleck–impersonating Off-Broadway performer and playwright, and, finally, a comedy writer and actress prone to starting fights with her friends and coworkers with the sentence “Can I just say one last thing about this, and then I swear I’ll shut up about it?”  [read more]

Fiction New Releases

The Litigators by John Grisham

The partners at Finley & Figg--all two of them--often refer to themselves as "a boutique law firm." Boutique, as in chic, selective, and prosperous. They are, of course, none of these things. What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who've been in the trenches much too long making way too little.  [read more]

Aleph by Paulo Coelho

In his most personal novel to date, internationally best-selling author Paulo Coelho returns with a remarkable journey of self-discovery. Like the main character in his much-beloved "The Alchemist, " Paulo is facing a grave crisis of faith. As he seeks a path of spiritual renewal and growth, he decides to begin again: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the landscapes around him.  [read more]

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.  [read more]

Lethal by Sandra Brown

When her four year old daughter informs her a sick man is in their yard, Honor Gillette rushes out to help him. But that "sick" man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won't be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.  [read more]

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.  [read more]

Robert Ludlum's The Ares Decision by Kyle Mills

A COVERT-ONE novel by Kyle Mills

With U.S. intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy, the President was forced to establish his own clandestine group-Covert-One. It is only activated as a last resort, when the threat is on a global scale and time is running out.  [read more]

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley
It’s Christmastime, and the precocious Flavia de Luce—an eleven-year-old sleuth with a passion for chemistry and a penchant for crime-solving—is tucked away in her laboratory, whipping up a concoction to ensnare Saint Nick. But she is soon distracted when a film crew arrives at Buckshaw, the de Luces’ decaying English estate, to shoot a movie starring the famed Phyllis Wyvern.  [read more]

Time travel with Stephen King

If you ever thought about what would happen if you could travel back in time and stop a pivotal event, Stephen King's new audiobook 11/23/63 is the audiobook for you.  In a bit of a departure from his normal horror fare, King writes about a teacher who gets sent back in time and becomes obsessed with preventing the Kennedy assassination.  The New York Times approves:

"The pages of '11/22/63' fly by, filled with immediacy, pathos and suspense. It takes great brazenness to go anywhere near this subject matter. But it takes great skill to make this story even remotely credible. Mr. King makes it all look easy, which is surely his book’s fanciest trick."

Click here for the rest of the review.

Click here for the audiobook.

Ellen Degeneres and audio - a perfect combination

To end the week on a lighter note, check out Ellen Degeneres's new audiobook, Seriously. . .I'm Kidding.  It's perfect for fun weekend plans or for holiday gifts for just about anyone (if you're shopping this early!).  Here's an excerpt from Today Books that ought to make you want to listen to the rest:

"Perhaps you might like to hear about some of the highlights that have occurred throughout my life and career, but it’s hard to know what highlights you would find exciting versus the highlights I think are exciting. For example, a few years ago I called my credit card company and got a late fee reversed that quite honestly I didn’t think they’d reverse."

Click here for the rest of the excerpt.

Or click here for the audiobook.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

Joan Didion's Blue Nights is not the audiobook to listen to if you're already feeling down.  Picking up where The Year of Magical Thinking left off, Didion explores her daughter's death and her own struggle with grief.  The Wall Street Journal provides a good reason to listen to it:

"Yet, with her poignant descriptions of a much-loved little girl who grew up to be a troubled but still cherished woman, Ms. Didion has created something luminous amid her self-recrimination and sorrow. It's her final gift to her daughter—one that only she could give."

Click here for the rest of the review.
Or click here for the audiobook.