Staff Picks
A Billion Wicked Thoughts : what the world's largest experiment reveals about human desire
Two maverick neuroscientists use the world's largest psychology experiment-the Internet-to study the private activities of millions of men and women around the world, unveiling a revolutionary and shocking new vision of human desire that overturns conventional thinking. For his groundbreaking sexual research, Alfred Kinsey and his team interviewed 18,000 people, relying on them to honestly report their most intimate experiences. Using the Internet, the neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam quietly observed the raw sexual behaviors of half a billion people. By combining their observations with neuroscience and animal research, these two young neuroscientists finally answer the long-disputed question: what do people really like? Ogas and Gaddam's findings are transforming the way scientists and therapists think about sexual desire.
Appetite for Reduction
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Isa Chandra Moskowitz is known for making groundbreaking strides in vegan cooking, proving that going vegan doesn’t mean sacrificing flavor. Appetite for Reduction offers 125 delicious, big-portion recipes—from Spinach Lasagna to Manhattan Glam Chowder—that are fewer than 400 calories per serving, low in fat and sugar, and high in fiber. Best of all, a healthy dinner can be on your table in under forty-five minutes.
Believing the Lie
In this novel Inspector Thomas Lynley is mystified when he's sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the wealthy and influential Bernard Fairclough. The death has been ruled an accidental drowning, and nothing on the surface indicates otherwise. But when Lynley enlists the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, the trio's digging soon reveals that the Fairclough clan is awash in secrets, lies, and motives. Deborah's investigation of the prime suspect, Bernard's prodigal son Nicholas, a recovering drug addict, leads her to Nicholas' wife, a woman with whom she feels a kinship, a woman as fiercely protective as she is beautiful. Lynley and Simon delve for information from the rest of the family, including the victim's bitter ex-wife and the man he left her for, and Bernard himself. As the investigation escalates, the Fairclough family's veneer cracks, with deception and self-delusion threatening to destroy everyone from the Fairclough patriarch to Tim, the troubled son Ian left behind.
Born to Run
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Full of incredible characters, amazing athletic achievements, cutting-edge science, and, most of all, pure inspiration, Born to Run is an epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? In search of an answer, Christopher McDougall sets off to find a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners and learn their secrets, and in the process shows us that everything we thought we knew about running is wrong. Born to Run is that rare book that will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that the secret to happiness is right at your feet, and that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.
Drifting House
An unflinching portrayal of the Korean immigrant experience from an extraordinary new talent in fiction. Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present.In the title story, children escaping famine in North Korea are forced to make unthinkable sacrifices to survive. The tales set in America reveal the immigrants' unmoored existence, playing out in cramped apartments and Koreatown strip malls. A makeshift family is fractured when a shaman from the old country moves in next door. An abandoned wife enters into a fake marriage in order to find her kidnapped daughter.In the tradition of Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, Drifting House is an unforgettable work by a gifted new writer.
Easy Growing
Growing a handful of herbs and edible flowers adds sparkle to dozens of meals year-round. Fortunately for us, these plants are not fussy. They’re simple to grow and will fit into any space you can provide, including a crack in a broken patio stone, the step next to your front door, or a windowsill. In Easy Growing, Gayla Trail—author of Grow Great Grub and creator of the top online gardening community, YouGrowGirl.com—shares the tips, ideas, and know-how you need to raise delicious organic edibles wherever you can squeeze in a planter. Herbs give big rewards with a small amount of work—even the most inexperienced, space-strapped gardener will have success.
Eating dirt : deep forests, big timber, and life with the tree-planting tribe
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During Charlotte Gill’s 20 years working as a tree planter she encountered hundreds of clear-cuts, each one a collision site between human civilization and the natural world, a complicated landscape presenting geographic evidence of our appetites. Charged with sowing the new forest in these clear-cuts, tree planters are a tribe caught between the stumps and the virgin timber, between environmentalists and loggers. In Eating Dirt, Gill offers up a slice of tree-planting life in all of its soggy, gritty exuberance while questioning the ability of conifer plantations to replace original forests, which evolved over millennia into intricate, complex ecosystems. Among other topics, she also touches on the boom-and-bust history of logging and the versatility of wood, from which we have devised countless creations as diverse as textiles and airplane parts. She also eloquently evokes the wonder of trees, our slowest-growing “renewable” resource and joyously celebrates the priceless value of forests and the ancient, ever-changing relationship between humans and trees. --From Amazon.com
Empire of the Beetle
Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of improbable bark beetle outbreaks unsettled iconic forests and communities across western North America. An insect the size of a rice kernel eventually killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska to New Mexico. Often appearing in masses larger than schools of killer whales, the beetles engineered one of the world's greatest forest die-offs since the deforestation of Europe by peasants between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. The beetle didn't act alone. Misguided science, out-of-control logging, bad public policy, and a hundred years of fire suppression created a volatile geography that released the world's oldest forest manager from all natural constraints. Like most human empires, the beetles exploded wildly and then crashed, leaving in their wake grieving landowners, humbled scientists, hungry animals, and altered watersheds. Although climate change triggered this complex event, human arrogance assuredly set the table. With little warning, an ancient insect pointedly exposed the frailty of seemingly stable man-made landscapes. And despite the billions of public dollars spent on control efforts, the beetles burn away like a fire that can't be put out. Drawing on first-hand accounts from entomologists, botanists, foresters, and rural residents, award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk investigates this unprecedented beetle plague, its startling implications, and the lessons it holds.
Fabulous Baker Brothers
Tom and Henry Herbert - The Fabulous Baker Brothers - are fifth generation bakers with a passion for food in all its forms. Tom is a talented master baker whose famous Hobbs House Bakery sits just next door to his younger brother Henry's butchery. Together our young brothers work side by side making the amazing bread and delicious meaty accompaniments and fillings that have made their businesses so successful. Here, in this brand new cook book to accompany the hit Channel 4 show, The Fabulous Baker Brothers share with us mouthwatering oven-based recipes that unlock a world of gorgeous homemade breads, pastries, pies, cakes and confectionary. With carefully chosen ingredients and some easily-mastered techniques - this is healthy, wholesome, beautiful food that doesn't cost the earth to make.
Go the F**k to Sleep
[A] bedtime book for parents who live in the real world ... profane, affectionate, and radically honest, it captures the familiar--and unspoken--tribulations of putting your little angel down for the night. ... You probably should not read it to your children.--Back cover.
How To Draw Lifelike Portraits From Photographs : 20 step-by-step demonstrations
This new revised edition has expanded to 160 pages and features more diversity of age and ethnicity. You will find brand-new step-by-step demos and detailed instruction on drawing all the elements of portraiture using reference photos and the time-tested grid method to create stunningly lifelike renderings of family and friends.
Knitting Stitches Visual Encyclopedia
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A stitch pattern dictionary is a must-have for every knitter’s bookshelf. A collection of stitch combinations—everything from basic knit-and-purl stitches to more complex cables, lace, and colorwork—enables knitters to create their own designs or modify existing patterns with ease. The content is timeless (unlike a book that contains patterns for garments), so this hardcover book will have a long shelf life and will have the potential to be a solid backlist performer for years to come.
Life, on the Line
An award-winning chef describes how he lost his sense of taste to cancer, a setback that prompted him to discover alternate cooking methods and create his celebrated progressive cuisine.
Lillian Alling : the journey home
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In 1926, Lillian Alling, a European immigrant, set out on a journey home from New York. She had little money and no transportation, but plenty of determination. In the three years that followed, Alling walked all the way to Dawson City, Yukon, crossing the North American continent on foot. She walked across the Canadian landscape, weathering the baking sun and freezing winter, crossed the rugged Rocky Mountains and hiked the untested wilderness of British Columbia and the Yukon. Finally, on a make-shift raft, she sailed alone down the Yukon River from Dawson City all the way to the Bering Sea. Lillian Alling is a legend. She has been the subject of novels, plays, epic poems, an opera and more tall tales than can be remembered. Her life has been subjected to speculation, fiction and exaggeration. But as legendary as she may be, the true story of Lillian Alling has never been told. Lillian's name lives on in the folk tales of British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska, but her life leading up to her journey and what waited for her at home in Eastern Europe still remains a shadowy mystery. Lillian Alling: The Journey Home is a collection of personal documents, first-hand recollections, family tales and archival research that provide tantalizing new clues to Lillian's story.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: A Novel
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Available in a book club set (12 copies)
You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family. Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero of Helen Simonson's wondrous debut. Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart.The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?
Soft Geography
2008 Winner of the ReLit Award for Poetry Shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize "What a wonderful, fresh voice Gillian Wigmore brings to the page. These wise poems know the push and pull within family. They reveal the tender truths behind the rough edges of small-town life. Her voice resonates with authenticity, and whether she is writing about a near drowning or ice fishing, she is ultimately writing about the complications of love. These are poems you will not soon forget." --Robert Hilles, Governor General's Award-winner for Poetry
The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian
Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.
The Butcher of Penetang
Betsy Trumpener's raw fiction hits quickly, cuts deeply and lingers on in the imagination. Her urgent, unique voice pushes fiction north of what's real. The Butcher of Penetang carves up rare slices of savory stories that are both tough and delicious. A child missing in a dangerous part of town; a draft dodger with bloody hands; a robber armed with a hairbrush; a refugee who rescues poetry from his prison cell; moose hunters chasing snow flakes. The people in these edgy stories cut cocaine into comfort food, push sex into the snow and chase speeding ambulances in the dead of winter. Trumpener's debut collection is aching, funny, powerful and sharp.
The Quarter-Acre Farm
When Spring Warren told her husband and two teenage boys that she wanted to grow 75 percent of all the food they consumed for one year and that she wanted to do it in their yard they told her she was crazy.She did it anyway.The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren’s account of deciding despite all resistance to take control of her family’s food choices, get her hands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard. It’s a story of bugs, worms, rot, and failure; of learning, replanting, harvesting, and eating. The road is long and riddled with mistakes, but by the end of her yearlong experiment, Warren’s sons and husband have become her biggest fans in fact, they’re even eager to help harvest (and eat) the beautiful bounty she brings in.Full of tips and recipes to help anyone interested in growing and preparing at least a small part of their diet at home, The Quarter-Acre Farm is a warm, witty tale about family, food, and the incredible gratification that accompanies self-sufficiency.
The Sisters Brothers: A Novel
Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living–and whom he does it for. With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters–losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life–and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.
The Story of Charlotte's Web
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As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E. B. White was obeying that oft-repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats-White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. Painfully shy his entire life, "this boy," White once wrote of himself, "felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people." It's all the more impressive, therefore, how many people have felt a kinship with E. B. White. With Charlotte's Web, which has gone on to sell more than 45 million copies, the man William Shawn called "the most companionable of writers" lodged his own character, the avuncular author, into the hearts of generations of readers. In The Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile-fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole" by mining the raw ore of his childhood friendship with animals in Mount Vernon, New York.

