I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal

In a comic masterpiece following the misadventures of a simple but hugely ambitious waiter in pre-World War II Prague, who rises to wealth only to lose everything with the onset of Communism, Bohumil Hrabal takes us on a tremendously funny, often deeply touching and satirical trip through 20th-century Czechoslovakia.

See the just released film directed by Hrabal's friend and collaborator Jiri Menzel.

"One of the most authentic incarnations of magical Prague, an incredible union of earthy humor and baroque imagination."
--Milan Kundera

"An extraordinary and subtly tragicomic novel... Hrabal has told both the story of a nobody and a history of Czechoslovakia and found in their commonplace details everything that matters in life." --The New York Times

"I Served the King of England is a joyful, picaresque story, which begins with Baron Munchausen-like adventures and ends in tears and solitude, a modulation typical of Hrabal's greatest work." --James Wood, The London Review of Books

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

WINNER
-2007 Brive-la-Gaillarde Reader’s Prize
-2007 French Booksellers Association Prize
-2007 Rotary International Prize (France)
-2007 French Librarians’ Prize for Culture

Vogue: "A new book that plumbs the astonishing ways private lives and guarded secrets can come tumbling – for better or worse – into the open."

Publishers Weekly: "By turns very funny (particularly in Paloma's sections) and heartbreaking . . . [Barbery's] simple plot and sudden denouement add up to a great deal more than the sum of their parts."

L'express (France): "The ultimate celebration of every person’s invisible part (Renée smells of cabbage soup but reads Husserl) constitutes one of the book’s operative factors."

Elle (Italy): "this second novel by Muriel Barbery, thirty-eight-year-old French author and professor of Philosophy, is among the most exhilarating and extraordinary novels in recent years."

Le Monde: "Fifty-five weeks after it release, Muriel Barbery’s novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog is still on all of the country’s bestseller lists..."

Repubblica (Italy): "The formula that made more than half a million readers in France fall in love with The Elegance of the Hedgehog has, among other ingredients: intelligent humor, fine sentiments, [and] an excellent literary and philosophical backdrop"

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

At once hilarious and heartbreaking, Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, is a look at pre-World War II idle classes of England. These are the Paris Hilton's and Kim Kardashian's of their day, the men and women who have all the money and all the time in the world, who go to glamorous parties, get photographed and scooped by the Daily Mail, and who have no idea that the party is going to end with a blitz that will change their lives forever. It is a tale of love, romance, tragedy and ultimately triumph, but one that takes those cliches and makes them new. Waugh is the great writer of his time and this is one of his best; it is still as relevant today as it ever was.
-Julia

Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolano

Discovering a new author is one of the great joys in life. The feeling when you finish a novel and are halted, lost in a morass of needing--- MORE: more of the voice you've been traveling with, more of the world you've only come to know and for too short a time- this is why we read!
I know you reader. I know you read "The Savage Detectives".
And I know you wanted more. Can you wait until the November publication of "2666", Bolano's masterpiece?
No.
You cannot.
And you don't need to.
New Directions Publishing has released 5 of Bolano's shorter novels of which this--------------------------->
is certainly the best.
And quite possible the most innovative and exciting of all Bolano's work yet published in English.
Start here. Then read EVERYTHING else. You won't regret it.
Nicole Krauss says it better than I ever could:

"When I read Bolano, I think: Everything is possible again. To Step inside his books is to accustom yourself, as much as is possible, to walking along the edge of an abyss. But how he makes on laugh! The laughter of someone who just escaped being buried alive, and suddenly remembers how badly she wants to live. No other writer in the history of the world could have written Nazi Literature in the Americas: it's lucid, insane, deadly serious, wildly playful, bibliomaniacal, and perversely imaginative; in other words, classic Bolano. – Nicole Krauss

A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti is a national treasure, and his voice has become part of our collective conscience. Some of his most famous poems from this collection such as "I Am Waiting" and "Junkman's Obbligato" were created for jazz accompaniment. Written in the conservative post-war 1950s, his poems still resonate, as they will continue to resonate, with a joyful anti-establishment fervor that beats a rhythmic portrait of humanity. Ferlinghetti sings of a world in which "the heart flops over / gasping 'Love'," "cadillacs fell thru the trees like rain," and where "we are the same people / only further from home / on freeways fifty lanes wide."

This special 50th Anniversary Edition comes with a newly recorded CD of the author reading the 29 poems of the title section of A Coney Island of the Mind as well as selections from Pictures of the Gone World. Also available in a limited (200 copies) edition with a hard slipcase signed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

"I got it signed when I was a teenager. I took the train to San Francisco, went to the bookstore and went to a nearby bar where I heard that he hung out, gave it to the bartender and said, 'Well, if he comes in, have him sign it for me, will ya?' And he did! There are great pieces in A Coney Island of the Mind--it feels very current in spite of the fact that it's fifty years old." --Tom Waits, on National Public Radio

“Lawrence is my favorite poet, to warn us of the coming of Big Brother. Lawrence gets you laughing, then hits you with the truth. From D-Day to 9/11 Lawrence is the poet who asks why the human race is trying to kill itself.” – Francis Ford Coppola

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

If you know the film Gummo, you know the kind of world Donald Ray Pollock's "Knockemstiff" inhabits. If you don't know Gummo, then you're in for a treat. Knockemstiff, Ohio is a damned, doomed, deadend town, and it's inhabitants sling to their sanity in oddle touching ways (though you may have to reevaluate your definition of 'touching'). By turns ribald, disturbing, and hilarious (often simultaneously), Knockemstiff is fantastic new fiction.

-Manny

In this unforgettable work of fiction, Donald Ray Pollock peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents.

Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled and depraved—but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page at the reader with inexorable force. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor.

With an artistic instinct honed on the works of Flannery O’Connor and Harry Crews, Pollock offers a powerful work of fiction in the classic American vein. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.

City of Thieves by David Benioff

David Benioff is one of the best writers working in Hollywood today. He published his first novel "The 25th Hour" seven years ago to much acclaim and made his Hollywood debut adapting it for the screen. Since then he's left the book world breathless with anticipation for a follow up while working on countless incredible films. The wait is finally over......

"As wise and funny as it is thrilling and original—the story of two young men on an impossible adventure

A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won't talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds."

The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson

A gift "book in a box" by one of Britain's greatest modern writers.

One of the lost classics of the 1960s, and a legendary experiment in form, The Unfortunates is B. S. Johnson's famous "book in a box," in which the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in any order the reader chooses. It is one of the key works of a novelist now undergoing an enormous revival of interest.

A sportswriter, sent to a small town on a weekly assignment, finds himself confronted by ghosts from the past when he disembarks at the train station. Memories of one of his best, most trusted friends, a tragically young victim of cancer, begin to flood through his mind as he attempts to go about the routine business of reporting a soccer match.

The Unfortunates is a book of passionate honesty and dark, courageous humor: a meditation on death and a celebration of friendship which also offers a remarkably frank self-portrait of its author.

B.S. (Bryan Stanley) Johnson (1933-1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet, critic and filmmaker.

The Mayor's Tongue by Nathaniel Rich

Riverhead Books Strikes Again!!!!

Just when we thought this was going to be a bleak year for books "The Mayor's Tongue" arrived. This was the most refreshing read I've had in a long while. Here's Stephen King's great and true review:

"I read The Mayor's Tongue with ever-increasing delight, rooting with all my heart for the young protagonist on his near-mythic quest. This is an elegantly-structured, brilliantly-told novel, by turns terrifying, touching, and wildly funny, and always generous and magical. The Mayor's Tongue is about how we talk to each other and how make-believe helps us get on with our lives; most of all, it's about love. Kudos to Nathaniel Rich, who has created a brave book, a novel brimming with brio." -Stephen King

Book of the Week - The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

James Ellroy calls Power of the Dog “the first great dope novel since Dog Soldiers thirty years ago.” He’s not joking. This sprawling badass of a novel covers decades of … everything: CIA, DEA, FBI, NSA, NAFTA, Irish mob, Italian mafia, cold warriors, Sandinistas, contras, high-priced whores, corrupt priests, Reagan, Bush, Giuliani, Colombian drug lords, Mexican cartels, campesinos, Gomeros, torture, despair, murder, sex, love, etc… The most absorbing, intense, fast-paced, and just plain motherfucking badass book I’ve read in a long time. Read this. I dare you. (Robert DeNiro just bought the rights to Winslow’s latest, The Winter of Frankie Machine, so read this guy before he blows up!)