laila lalami secret son a debut novel a tale of contemporary morocco straddling the personal and the political told simply beautifully with heart and panache gary shteyngart author of absurdistan y oussef el-mekki a young man of nineteen is living with his mother in the slums of casablanca when he discovers that the father he believed to be dead is in fact alive and eager to befriend and support him leaving his mother behind youssef assumes a life he could only dream of a famous and influential father his own penthouse apartment and all the luxuries associated with his new status his future appears assured until an abrupt reversal of fortune sends him back to the streets and his childhood friends where a fringe islamic group known simply as the party has set up its headquarters in the spirit of the inheritance of loss and the reluctant fundamentalist laila lalami s powerful first novel explores the struggle for identity the need for family and the desperation that overtakes ordinary
|
amy stewart wicked plants a book of botanical atrocities the bestselling author of flower confidential delves into the dark side of the plant kingdom to reveal the sordid lives of plants behaving badly a tree that sheds poison daggers a glistening red seed that stops the heart a shrub that causes paralysis a vine that strangles and a leaf that triggered a war in wicked plants stewart takes on over two hundred of mother nature s most appalling creations it s an a to z of plants that kill maim intoxicate and otherwise offend you ll learn which plants to avoid like exploding shrubs which plants make themselves exceedingly unwelcome like the vine that ate the south and which ones have been killing for centuries like the weed that killed abraham lincoln s mother menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard drawing on history medicine science and legend this compendium of bloodcurdl
|
robert olmstead praise for robert olmstead violent and meditative hopeless and elegiac ribald and somber mr olmstead s voice draws its energy from contradiction and unpredictability from daring juxtapositions of language and event heartbreakingly accurate moving prose the new york times book review s et in 1916 far bright star follows napoleon childs an aging cavalryman as he leads an expedition of inexperienced soldiers into the mountains of mexico to hunt down pancho villa and bring him to justice though he is seasoned at such missions things go terribly wrong and the patrol is brutally attacked after witnessing the demise of his troops napoleon is left by his captors to die in the desert through him we enter the conflicted mind of a warrior as he tries to survive against all odds as he seeks to make sense of a lifetime of senseless wars and to reckon with the reasons a man would choose a life on the battlefield olmstead an award-winning writer uses his precise descriptive pros
|
james dodson writer truman capote once observed that every son of the south eventually comes home again if only in a box perhaps fear of this fate explains why for better or worse during the quarter century i d lived in northern new england i d returned on a fairly regular basis to my boyhood haunts of pinehurst and southern pines coming back whenever my spirits needed a lift or my ailing golf game required a jump-start after all this is where i played my first full eighteen holes of golf as a hot-headed club-tossing teenager and where i eventually learned to calm down grow up play by the rules and as my late father once put it appreciate the higher game james dodson w hen acclaimed golf writer james dodson leaves his home in maine to revisit pinehurst north carolina where his father first taught him the game that would shape his life and career he s at a point where he has lost direction but once there the curative power of the sandhills region not only helps him find a new career
|
emyl jenkins the big steal a sterling glass mystery the big steal nabs your attention with its southern charm and keep-you-guessing mystery of missing antiques my appraisal read it kate jacobs author of the friday night knitting club a lgo n q u in pa pe r bac k o rigina l h ired to assess the value of broken and missing antiques following a suspicious burglary at a virginia manor house intrepid appraiser and amateur sleuth sterling glass finds that her job is more complicated than she d anticipated the antiques she realizes are not always what they seem some are worth tens of thousands others are well-done replicas whether the well-traveled and well-heeled couple who once owned wynderly could have been trafficking in fakes is what sterling must unravel from the secret rooms hidden treasures uncovered diaries and convoluted trail of paperwork and provenance as our sharp-witted heroine sifts through details doled out by the museum s curators board members and the town s local residen
|
winter 2009 releases douglas brenner and stephen scanniello a rose by any name the little-known lore and deep-rooted history of rose names this full-color miscellany encompasses art literature science technology history and everything in between in its search for the stories behind the names of what is arguably the world s most popular flower natural history/gardening · 978-1-56512-518-6 · no 72518 · $19.95 hardcover · february jay mathews work hard be nice how two inspired teachers created the most promising schools in america two stories are masterfully woven together here one is of two young men think tom sawyer and huck finn setting out on an adventure to teach children how to read write and behave in some of our toughest urban classrooms the other story is of the children themselves mostly poor and minority soaring to life in their new environments jay mathews deserves great credit for telling this tale so well and for making a compelling case that yes we can change public e
|
recent releases roland merullo american savior a presidential contest like nothing seen before an enthralling wild ride people the almighty s an independent in [this smart political satire [american savior is a page-turner about how the country might change if jesus christ ran for president a second coming satire it s an inquiry into what might happen in a political season ruled by a figure that not only gets but also can actually paint the big picture chicago sun times fiction · 978-1-56512-607-7 · no 72607 · $24.95 hardcover ariel sabar my father s paradise a son s search for his jewish past in kurdish iraq an engaging account of a wonderful enlightening journey a voyage with the power to move readers deeply even as it stretches across differences of culture family and memory the christian science monitor excellent a compelling read the story is told with novelistic attention to narrative and detail but its heart is ariel s heart that of a son searching with lov
|
for a complete listing of all backlist titles please visit www.algonquin.com birding · gardening · food&drink songbirds in your garden fifth edition by john k terres introduction by roger tory peterson gardener s latin a lexicon by bill neal introduction by barbara damrosch 100 flowers and how they got their names by diana wells illustrated by ippy patterson whether you consider yourself primarily a gardener or a birder you will love the updated and expanded version of a classic omaha world-herald a country homes and gardens book club selection isbn-13 978-1-56512-044-0 no 72044 $14.95 paper 1994 little-known horticultural facts and fables and the wisdom of gardeners from virgil to vita sackville-west nifty pithy explanations of words that confront every plant tag reader the new york times book review a garden book club selection isbn-13 978-1-56512-384-7 no 72384 $10.95 paper 2003 from abelia to zinnia one hundred well-known garden favorites and the stories behind their na
|
highlights from the backlist poetry · tr ave l love poetry out loud edited by robert alden rubin this sweet little book collects 100 poems `to stir the heart rubin provides annotation and commentary but if readers prefer no interference or intrusion it s easy to stick to the original words alone and still get a good measure of the silly and the sublime the washington post book world this anthology may rekindle faith in the time-tested ritual of wooing with words if not readers will at least find pleasure in rubin s clever and even cheeky sidebar commentary booklist this is a collection for those who live for valentine s day and those who live in spite of it o the oprah magazine 978-1-56512-459-2 · no 72459 · $14.95 paper · 2007 if you lived here i d know your name news from small-town alaska by heather lende who knew a writer could find so much human drama simple pleasure and thorny issues in such a remote place if you like the stories on prairie home companion or northern
|
index by title my father s paradise 23 my therapist s dog 29 new stories from the south 22 flannery sarah 26 fleeson lucinda 15 gash amy 28 gessler diana hollingsworth goodman richard 30 goolrick robert 45 28 gruen sara 25 hall barbara 20 harper gordon 26 hemingway edward 27 holzer harold 18 hopgood mei-ling 10 hunter tab 28 jain sachin h 26 jenkins emyl 16 joseph sandra 26 jordan hillary 3 jourdan carolyn 21 kennedy dan 28 kogan deborah copaken korczak janusz 26 31 kumar satish 31 lalami laila 2 lansky aaron 28 lende heather 30 louv richard 26 maloy kate 17 mathews jay 20 melville greg 22 menger-anderson kirsten 22 merullo roland 21 23 31 morgan robert 21 24 neal bill 27 nordan lewis 25 23 19 the $64 tomato 27 100 birds and how they got their names 27 100 flowers and how they got their names 27 american savior 23 an arsonist s guide to writers homes in new england 21 the beggar king and the secret of happiness 28 between here and april 23 the big steal 16 boone 21 breakfast with bud
|
algonquin books of chapel hill a division of workman publishing p.o box 2225 chapel hill n.c 27515-2225 · 919-967-0108 · www.algonquin.com
|
