A nameless 21 year-old sex offender is the focus of a nameless sociology professor's studies in this brilliant novel about isolation, modern society, and morality, set in a Florida that is by turns forbidding and a stand-in for the Garden of Eden.

This Southern-Gothic quest novel features masterful writing of the same caliber as Ron Rash or Cormac McCarthy, and a teenaged heroine that is as tough and memorable as any protagonist I've run across in a while... and this in a period when I've been introduced to Lisbeth Salander and Katniss Everdeen. In broad outline, the story is like a meth-fueled version of True Grit, set in a bleak, cold corner of todays' Ozarks. Contemporary yet timeless, horrifying and beautiful, this little book will sock you in the gut. Read it, then see the darn good movie adaptation which cleaned-up at Sundance.  Take a look at Gary Carden's review at the Tuck Reader.

This exceptional little memoir takes in an incredible sweep of experience. Structured around the reading list for the first course in Gay and Lesbian Literature taught by the author, Jody uses wit and a deeply humane sensitivity to show how those students (and re-encountering the readings) helped her confront a life time of secrecy. While the recollections range from joy and adventure to pain and sorrow, the overarching message of this well-crafted book is a one of hope.

This is the first of twenty addictive historical novels centered around a compelling pair of protagonists named Jack Aubrey and Steven Maturin. In this book, set primarily in the western Mediterranean, we find Jack getting his first command in England's early nineteenth century navy and meeting the friend that will follow him through many adventures. The decidedly un-seaman-like Steven Maturin is a genius of many talents.

Wild Trees is a nice mix of biographical sketches and natural history. Preston got interested in recreational tree climbing and canopy travel, and then connected with a group of scientists and enthusiasts that are pushing the envelope of tree climbing by ascending some thirty stories off the forest floor into the canopy of Coastal Redwoods. Preston tags along with them and gets to know the individuals who have made careers and hobbies in the temperate rain forest where this threatened giant grows. His portraits are humane and insightful. When I picked up the book, I was expecting a little more natural history, but the sociological and psychological stories made for an unexpected treat.

This book is the first in a wonderful series of autobiographies that follow the author and his family through the first three decades of the twentieth century. This first volume starts with family's move from New England to Colorado when Ralph is eight. The range of emotions the reader (and the audience if reading aloud - highly recommended) experiences covers the spectrum. The Ralph Moody books should be shared and cherished by any family that enjoys reading together.

Attention fans of Patrick O'Brian's fiction about the Royal Navy -- this is a piece of American history you will enjoy reading. You will be introduced to larger-than-life characters and make good use of that specialized vocabulary you developed in reading the Aubrey/Maturin series.

In his new book, Malcolm Gladwell brilliantly does for the psychology of the unconscious mind what he did for the sociology of trends in his first book, The Tipping Point. Like that bestselling earlier book, Blink is packed with fascinating studies and profiles. Here Gladwell starts with art historians' knack for sensing a sophisticated forgery (they couldn't initially verbalize the exact problem), and ends with a notorious failure of intuition, the shooting death of Amadou Diallo. Along the way we are by turns wowed and disquieted by scores of other examples that bolster his conclusion that good "thin-slicing," or ignoring all but a few salient facts in the face of potentially overwhelming amounts of data, is what makes for truly expert judgment. --Chris Wilcox
[paperback release Fall 2007]

A marvelous historical novel that depicts Alexander the Great as a eccentric yet charismatic youth, clearly vibrating at a higher frequency.

This wonderful collection of 29 short stories and three poems is something of a change for Gary. His earlier publications include several plays and two books as co-writer: Belled Buzzards, Hucksters & Grieving Spectres: Appalachian Tales, Strange, True & Legendary with Nina Anderson and Papa's Angels: A Christmas Story with Collin Wilcox Paxton. Here for the first time is a collection of Gary's stories written entirely in his own voice. In his introduction Gary implies that he struggled to move his stories from a lifetime of performance to the published page with no live audience to engage. Reading these stories, one would be hard pressed to find evidence of any struggle; the transition from the storyteller's stage to written word is seamless. Readers will get a distinct impression of Gary's voice with its implicit, often deadpan, humor even when telling a few of the grimmer tales. The first section of the book is comprised of the semi-autobiographical Harley Stories. The first of these is "Mason Jars in the Flood," in which young Harley sends notes in his grandmother's canning jars swirling off into the waters of a branch in Rhodes Cove during the flood of 1940. Gary says this is a metaphor for this book, in which he sends his stories off to unknown readers. This audience is in for a real treat.