BOOKS- JAN 26, 2010

BLOOD TIES

By KAY HOOPER

FORMAT: HARDCOVER
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: BANTAM

New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper takes us to the outer reaches of fear in her latest thriller, as the Special Crimes Unit finds itself targeted by a monster intent on destroying both Noah Bishop and his people.

It starts with an unspeakable series of grisly murders across three states, a trail of blood leading, finally, to the small Tennessee town of Serenade. There, two more brutal killings lure the SCU into what may be the ultimate trap.

One of the first investigators on the scene, Special Agent Hollis Templeton, is willing to push herself as hard and as far as necessary. Risking more than her life to help and protect her SCU colleagues, Hollis must cope with her own psychic abilities, which are evolving in unprecedented ways, an attraction to the most complex man she’s ever known, and a serial murder investigation that turns very, very personal.

In her time with the SCU, Hollis has shown an uncanny ability to survive even the deadliest attacks. But what she can’t know is that this killer intends to destroy the team from within.

TEXTS FROM LAST NIGHT
ALL THE TEXTS NO ONE REMEMBERS SENDING

LAUREN LETO and BEN BATOR

FORMAT: PAPERBACK
PAGES: 192
PUBLISHER: GOTHAM BOOKS

In the tradition of The Truth About Chuck Norris, PostSecret, and I Can Has Cheezburger?, Texts from Last Night celebrates the funniest and most outrageous text messages from the instantly popular website

There are few forms of communication that are more entertaining, appalling, and laugh-out-loud hilarious than the text message-especially when it’s received in the wee hours of the morning from a friend who has had one too many shots of tequila. Texts from Last Night is a celebration of the best, worst, and weirdest text messages that have ever been sent, such as:

•Before i could say “i’m not the kind of girl,” i was

•I got us kicked out of the bar because the waitress found me in the kitchen trying to make spaghetti

•The ticket read “found nude in a tree”

Texts from Last Night is chock full of LOL and WTF moments and will make any thumb-typer in recognition.

CUTTING FOR STONE

by ABRAHAM VERGHESE

FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK
PAGES: 688
PUBLISHER: VINTAGE CANADA

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics — their passion for the same woman — that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him — nearly destroying him — Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

STILL LIFE

By JOY FIELDING

FORMAT: PAPERBACK
PAGES: 400
PUBLISHER: SEAL BOOKS

Casey Marshall looks like she has it all: a successful interior design business, a devoted husband, friends who love her, and a family fortune that means a comfortable lifestyle. But looks can be deceiving.

Distracted by thoughts of a baby, Casey didn’t hear the car until it was too late. It slammed into her at almost fifty miles an hour, breaking nearly every bone in her body and plunging her into a coma. Lying in her hospital bed, Casey slowly begins to realize that although she is unable to see or communicate, she can hear everything that goes on around her.

She soon discovers that her friends aren’t necessarily the people she thought them to be — and that her accident might not have been an accident at all. As she struggles to break free from her living death, she begins to wonder if what lies ahead could be even worse.

THE AMAZING ABSORBING BOY

By Rabindranath Maharaj

FORMAT: HARDCOVER
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: KNOPF CANADA

Both familiar and strange, this story of a large Canadian city seen through the wide eyes of a naive and inexperienced young immigrant — wise in the culture of comic books — is both hilarious and heartbreaking.

Samuel is just 17 when his mother dies and he is called to live with the father he has only heard of. He leaves his village in Trinidad and flies to Toronto, where he finds his father living in a place called Regent Park. Samuel is lonely in this “big mall of a country,” but he has his memories of superheroes — his mentors — to guide him, including the memory of an unusual friend who was two superheroes in one, as he sets out to explore what Toronto has to offer.

BLACK RAIN

By GRAHAM BROWN

FORMAT: PAPERBACK
PAGES: 528
PUBLISHER: DELL

Covert government operative Danielle Laidlaw leads an expedition into the deepest reaches of the Amazon in search of a legendary Mayan city. Assisted by a renowned university professor and protected by a mercenary named Hawker, her team journeys into the tangled rain forest—unaware that they are replacements for a group that vanished weeks before, and that the treasure they are seeking is no mere artifact but a breakthrough discovery that could transform the world.

Shadowed by a ruthless billionaire, threatened by a violent indigenous tribe, and stalked by an unseen enemy that leaves battered corpses in its wake, the group desperately seeks the connection between the deadly reality of the Mayan legend, the nomadic tribe that haunts them, and the chilling secret buried beneath the ancient ruins.

THE CINDERELLA DEAL

BY Jennifer Crusie

FORMAT: PAPERBACK
PAGES: 288
PUBLISHER: BANTAM

New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie brings humor and storytelling magic to this modern-day romance of a match made anywhere but in heaven—but destined for a fairy-tale ending.

Daisy Flattery is a free spirit with a soft spot for strays and a weakness for a good story. Why else would she agree to the outrageous charade offered by her buttoned-down workaholic neighbor, Linc Blaise? The history professor needs to have a fiancée in order to capture his dream job, and Daisy is game to play the role. But something funny happens on their way to the altar that changes everything. Now, with the midnight hour approaching, will Daisy lose her prince, or will opposites not only attract but live happily ever after?

SHADOW TAG

By LOUISE ERDRICH

FORMAT: HARDCOVER
PAGES: 272
PUBLISHER: HARPER COLLINS

When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her Red Diary—hidden where Gil will find it—into a manipulative farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag is an eerily gripping read.

SAFE FROM THE NEIGHBORS

By STEVE YARBROUGH

FORMAT: HARDCOVER
PAGES: 272
PUBLISHER: KNOPF

Luke May teaches local history—his lifelong obsession—at his old high school in Loring, Mississippi. Having been mentored by his hometown newspaper’s publisher, a survivor of the civil rights turmoil, he now passes these stories along to students far too young to have experienced or, in some cases, even heard about them.

But when a long-lost friend suddenly returns to Loring, where years ago her family had been shattered by an act of spectacular violence, Luke begins to realize that his connection with her runs deeper, both personally and politically, than he ever imagined. Just children in 1962, they had no sense of what was happening when James Meredith’s enrollment at Ole Miss provoked a bloody new battle in the old Civil War, much less its impact on their fathers’ ambiguous friendship.

I AM OZZY

By OZZY OSBOURNE, CHRIS AYRES

FORMAT: HARDCOVER
PAGES: 1416
PUBLISHER: GRAND CENTRAL

“They’ve said some crazy things about me over the years. I mean, okay: ‘He bit the head off a bat.’ Yes. ‘He bit the head off a dove.’ Yes. But then you hear things like, ‘Ozzy went to the show last night, but he wouldn’t perform until he’d killed fifteen puppies . . .’ Now me, kill fifteen puppies? I love puppies. I’ve got eighteen of the f**king things at home. I’ve killed a few cows in my time, mind you. And the chickens. I shot the chickens in my house that night.

It haunts me, all this crazy stuff. Every day of my life has been an event. I took lethal combinations of booze and drugs for thirty f**king years. I survived a direct hit by a plane, suicidal overdoses, STDs. I’ve been accused of attempted murder. Then I almost died while riding over a bump on a quad bike at f**king two miles per hour.

People ask me how come I’m still alive, and I don’t know what to say. When I was growing up, if you’d have put me up against a wall with the other kids from my street and asked me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of sixty, which one of us would end up with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and Beverly Hills, I wouldn’t have put money on me, no f**king way. But here I am: ready to tell my story, in my own words, for the first time.

A lot of it ain’t gonna be pretty. I’ve done some bad things in my time. I’ve always been drawn to the dark side, me. But I ain’t the devil. I’m just John Osbourne: a working-class kid from Aston, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a good time.”