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Staff Recommendations

Churchill P.'s Recommendations

The Armies
by Evelio Rosero
New Directions

Our Price: $14.95

This novel is one of the best pieces of fiction that I have read this year. It is the beautiful and sad tale of a retired schoolteacher and his life in Colombia, caught between warring factions who kidnap and murder with no hesitation. As the teacher's village loses touch with its once simple existence, so does his mind lose touch with reality. I could not recommend it more.

Blind Owl
by Sadegh Hedayat
Grove Pr

Our Price: $14.00

This novel is easily in my top ten, possibly even in my top five, favorite things I have ever read. I was introduced to it in college in a Non-Western writing course emphasizing authors from Middle Eastern and Islamic cultures. Because the novel as a literary form was imported into Islamic culture, I found The Blind Owl compelling in that it approaches the narrative from a different angle than most Western novels. There are definitely influences from poetry as well as folktales, both forms of storytelling coming from an oral-based society rather than a literary one. But beyond the importance of this novel as a product of a Middle Eastern culture, the story itself is why I love this book. It is the dark and hypnotic tale of a man and his dance through time with a mysterious woman with whom he is obsessed. His desperation for her becomes a disease as he descends into madness, haunted by repeating images and events.

Abc3d
by Marion Battaile
Roaring Brook

Our Price: $19.95

My first contact with this book was when my graphic designer wife sent me a video of it. You know a pop-up book is something special not only when it has a YouTube video but when that video has over 650,000 views. This book is elegant and whimsical and it's construction elevates it from being a ABC pop-up book into the world of sculpture and design. And at the same time it brings me back to a time before letters had connotation and meaning. A time when they were simple forms both beautiful and mysterious.

The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories
by Nicholas Gurewitch
Dark Horse Comics

Our Price: $14.95

Nicholas Gurewitch’s comics are hilarious, clever and tragic. But mostly they are tragic. Tragic and hilarious. His illustration style is simple and reminiscent of “Little Golden Books,” if they were written for adults. I realized his genius when I first read “Sun Love” on the Perry Bible Fellowship website (pbfcomics.com).

Tragic and hilarious.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Karen Russell
Vintage

Our Price: $13.95

I don't usually read short story collections, because I like the more more "in depth" relationship with characters and plotline that I get from a novel. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. Karen Russell's short story collection is good enough to not only transcend this rule, but it makes me question why I came up with it anyway. Her stories are masterfully written. She creates her own mythology, steeped in tragedy, hilarity, and an edge of Southern gothic. I could compare her to other writers of the same ilk, but I really think it would distract from the genius of her stunning debut. I look forward to whatever she will give us next.

The Night Watch Trilogy
by Sergei Lukyanenko
Miramax Books

Our Price: $13.95

I first heard of this work when the film version screened at the Kendall Theater and some of my friends went to see it. I missed that opportunity, but in a way I'm glad that I did, because this way I could read the novel first. It was wonderful! I really hate to make this comparison, but here goes: This is what life is like in the Harry Potter universe once everybody grows up, lives outside the sheltering world of boarding school, and gets drunk more often than they should. But what separates Night Watch from other novels of this vein is that while it is a battle of light versus dark, neither side is absolutely in the right. Plus we have Day Watch and Dusk Watch on the horizon!

Monster Island
by David Wellington
Thunder’s Mouth,

Our Price: $13.95

I'm not going to mince words here. This is a novel about zombies. It is one of the best novels about zombies I have ever read. Wellington does a fantastic job of creating an undead controlled New York that is both disturbing and realistic while providing poignant social commentary. He explores the subject with an expertise that George Romero should envy. If this first novel is any indicator, we should look forward to great things from David Wellington.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril: A Novel
by Paul Malmont
Simon & Schuster

Our Price: $14.00

This novel is an action filled romp through the filthy streets of a pulp era New York. Paul Malmont offers a tale that would make his own characters, who were, in fact, pulp writers, giddy with delight. In writing this work he presents them with their own pulp adventure, transforming them from artists into subjects. He gives them something for which they surely would have hungered: a mystery with sinister motives and deadly results. This is, in fact an exciting update of the early twentieth century detective story, beautifully written and breathlessly delivered. It is a wonderful tribute to men who discarded their names and wrote not for their celebrity, but for the masses.

U.S.!
by Chris Bachelder
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Our Price: $14.95

For a few days this novel made me believe, somewhere in my subconscious, that Upton Sinclair was alive. I was putting the new copy of The Jungle (the one with the Charles Burns cover) in the “new paperback” window display, and I thought, “How proud will Upton be that his book is being reprinted and is on display in a store window!” Then I remembered, alas, that he is dead!

U.S.! is a hilarious novel, written in a multi-media fashion! It is tragic and engaging, and a great read for Socialist and Capitalist alike!

Maze of Death
by Philip K. Dick
Vintage Books USA

Our Price: $12.00

Philip K. Dick's works have a wit and style yet unmatched by any other novelist of our time. While this work is obviously the product of the 1970's, the themes maintain their validity as social commentary, and remain as relative today as when they were written. Dick creates characters so flawed that they are almost archetypes of disorder. A Maze of Death is a look into what can happen to people when they cannot hide their neuroses and must struggle to survive. This is certainly one of Dick's best. Plus the copy I got has an amazing Bob Pepper cover!

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
Harcourt

Our Price: $13.00

So you've decided to read a novel, and you're here on this website, and everything looks so appealing, but wait... what's this? This book has some manner of communique beside it. This means there must be at least one other person who has read this book. But you like books about your own interests, and you just don't know if this one's up to snuff. But wait, what's that? You're the main character of this particular work? So you think, "Well, let's give it a go. I'm never going to know what happened to me unless I buy this book."

Battle Royale
by Koushun Takami
Viz Communications

Our Price: $15.95

Please be aware that this book is extremely explicit and violent. It is, despite the violence, a very exciting tale of survival and adventure. You should read this book and then rent the movie and watch it with friends so that you can say things like, "That never happened." But don't just read this to annoy your friends. Read it because it is like Lord of the Flies, with a little bit of A Clockwork Orange, with a smattering of Akira. So if you like super-violent Japanese Science Fiction, you might enjoy this one.

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