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Greetings!
This week Lily Koppel will read from THE RED LEATHER DIARY, an evocative and
entrancing work that peers into the life a young woman in 1930s New York. Click here to read Frederick Koeppel's review in yesterday's Commercial Appeal.
We have signed copies of THE
ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE by Salman Rushdie, HOME by Julie Andrews, and BRIGHT SHINY
MORNING by James Frey.
"For
bringing a rollicking, Southern-mountain energy to the guitar-driven music of
Blue Mountain," Gibson
Magazine recently named Oxford musician Cary Hudson
#5 on a list of the top ten best alternative country guitarists. Cary's solo cds, as
well as Blue Mountain's newly released Omnibus, are available at Off Square Books.
Our Dear Reader newsletter and the current calendar are available at www.squarebooks.com. |
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EVENTS
Thursday, June
26,
signing/reception @ 5 p.m.,
reading @ 5:30
p.m.
Lily
Koppel
THE
RED LEATHER DIARY
(Harper, hd. 23.95)
Rescued
from a dumpster on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a discarded diary brings
to life the glamorous, forgotten world of an extraordinary young woman. Recovered
by Lily Koppel, a young writer working at the New York Times, the
journal paints a vivid picture of 1930s New York--horseback riding in Central
Park, summer excursions to the Catskills, and an obsession with a famous
avant-garde actress. From 1929 to 1934, not a single day's entry is skipped. Joining
intimate interviews with original diary entries, Koppel reveals the world of a
New York teenager obsessed with the state of her soul and her appearance, and
muses on the serendipitous chain of events that returned the lost journal to
its owner. Evocative and entrancing, The Red Leather Diary re-creates
the romance and glitter, sophistication and promise, of 1930s New York,
bringing to life the true story of a precocious young woman who dared to follow
her dreams. BUY NOW!
* Only books purchased at Square Books may be signed.
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SCANNING THE FRONT TABLES
Summer is a great time to read about
crime...
WHILE THEY SLEPT
by Kathryn Harrison
(Random
House, hd. 25.00)
Early
on an April morning, eighteen-year-old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr. killed his
sleeping parents. Billy then climbed the stairs to his sister's bedroom and
said, "We're free." But is one ever free after an unredeemable act of violence?
The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime of physical and mental abuse
suffered by Billy and Jody at the hands of their parents. In this mesmerizing
book, bestselling writer Kathryn Harrison brilliantly uncovers the true story
behind a shocking and unforgettable crime as she explores the impact of
escalating violence and emotional abuse visited on the children of a deeply
troubled family. With an artistry that recalls Truman Capote's In Cold Blood
and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, Harrison reveals the
antecedents of the murders and embarks on a personal quest to understand how
young people go on after tragedy--examining the extent as well as the limits of
psychic resilience. Weaving in meditations on her own experience of parental
abuse, Harrison searches out answers to the question of how survivors of
violent trauma shape a future when their lives have been divided into Before
and After. BUY NOW!
MY SISTER, MY LOVE
by Joyce Carol Oates
(Ecco, hd. 25.95)
Joyce
Carol Oates returns with a tale that revisits the Jon Benet Ramsay murder,
replacing the famous family with the Rampikes--father Bix, a bully and
compulsive philanderer; mother Betsey, obsessed with making her daughter Bliss
into a prize-winning figure skater; and son Skyler, the narrator of this tale
of ambition, greed, and tragedy. A decade ago the Rampikes were destroyed by
the murder of Skyler's six-year-old sister, Bliss, and the media scrutiny that
followed. Part investigation into the unsolved murder; part elegy for the lost
Bliss and for Skyler's own lost childhood; and part corrosively funny exposé of
the pretensions of upper-middle-class American suburbia, this captivating novel
explores with unexpected sympathy and subtlety the intimate lives of those who
dwell in Tabloid Hell. Joyce Carol Oates's most controversial and
boldly satirical novel to date, this unconventional work of fiction explores the
tragic interface between private life and the perilous life of
"celebrity." With superb psychological acuity, the incomparable Oates
once again mines the depths of the sinister yet comic malaise at the heart of
our contemporary culture. BUY NOW!
THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE
by Douglas Preston
(Grand Central, hd. 25.99)
In
the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt's Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil and Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, bestselling author Douglas Preston
presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills
surrounding Florence, Italy.
In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he
discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century
farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian
history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence, who
ritually murdered fourteen young lovers over a period from 1968 to 1985. Preston,
intrigued, meets with Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn
more. This is the true story of their search for--and identification of--the man
they believe committed the crimes and their chilling interview with him. And
then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and
Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston
has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi
fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's
grim Capanne prison. Like Preston's thrillers, The Monster of Florence,
tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and
suicide--and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi caught in a bizarre
prosecutorial vendetta. BUY NOW!
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INDIE BOUND PICK
FINDING NOUF
by Zoë Ferraris
(Houghton
Mifflin, hd. 24.00)
Zoë
Ferraris' electrifying debut of taut psychological suspense offers an
unprecedented window into Saudi Arabia and the lives of men and women there.
When sixteen-year-old Nouf goes missing along with a truck and her favorite
camel, her prominent family calls on desert guide Nayir al-Sharqi to lead a
search party. Ten days later, just as Nayir is about to give up in frustration,
her body is discovered by anonymous desert travelers. But when the coroner's
office determines that Nouf died not of dehydration but from drowning, and her
family seems suspiciously uninterested in getting at the truth, Nayir takes it
upon himself to find out what really happened to her. This mission pushes
gentle, hulking, pious Nayir, a Palestinian orphan raised by his bachelor
uncle, to delve into the secret life of a rich, protected teenage girl--in one
of the most rigidly gender-segregated of Middle Eastern societies. Fast-paced
and utterly transporting, Finding Nouf
offers an intimate glimpse inside a closed society through a riveting literary
mystery. BUY NOW!
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OPENING LINES
"Dysfunctional
families are all alike. Ditto survivors."
--
from MY SISTER, MY LOVE by Joyce Carol Oates
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