Edgar Wallace Kitapları

Edgar Wallace Kitapları.

Altı Numara (Number Six) ve Ölüm Seferi (On the Spot) romanlarını çevirmeye başladım. Bastırmak üzere yayınevi aramaya da başladım.

Publisher Weekly: Haftanın Kitapları

Publisher Weekly: New Books

Picador Modern Classics:

Jonathan Franzen, The Twenty-Seventh City, his first novel, 1988

Colum McCann, Dancer

Le French Book - Ingram:

Bernard Besson, The Greenland Breach

Sylvie Granotier, The Paris Lawyer

USA TODAY 8:03 p.m. EDT October 30, 2013

What we read and how we read it has changed a lot in two decades.

J.K. Rowling dominates the top 10 from 1999 through 2008

Erotica goes mainstream, thanks to E.L. James

And the word "Amazon" brought to mind a river in South America or a very tall woman.

A lot has changed in two decades.

Driven by Amazon.com, about half of all books are now bought online, a click away. More than 20% are downloaded. Some 40% of adults have e-readers, tablets or other devices to read e-books.

And Rowling and Collins? They have a combined total of 225 million copies in print of the books (10 in all) of their two series for children and teens, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games.

Two decades worth of data show what's changed — and what hasn't — since USA TODAY began tracking best sellers in October 1993.

The highlights from three distinct eras:

• Self-help and other advice titles were big during the first five years (1993-1998) when most books were bought in physical bookstores.

• Rowling triggered Dickens-like excitement about reading and demolished the conventional wisdom about children's books in the second era (1999-2008), when online sales grew.

• Since 2009, fiction (as a percentage of best sellers) has risen to all-time highs and erotica went mainstream as e-books became the fastest growing part of the market.

Of the 25 most popular books since 2009, 11 are part of series aimed at kids or teens. That includes Collins' Hunger Games, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Of the 25 most popular books between 1993 and 1998, only one was for kids: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.

Fiction as an escape

Since then, fiction is on a roll — up to 68% of best sellers in 2002, 77% in 2010, and to an all-time high of 81% so far this year.

"People today are looking for escape," Fitzgerald says. "Fiction provides that. In the '90s and early 2000s, we were in a different economic time. People were living the dream, not just dreaming it. "

Sex sells

Romance novels, from the PG to the X-rated variety, have always had their fans, but thanks to James, erotica is now mainstream.

Who reads translations?

Rawlinson notes another "old" idea: ''Americans won't read books in translation."

Then along came the posthumously published crime novels by Stieg Larsson, a Swedish reporter. All three of the books in his Milennium trilogy, starting with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, are among the 25 top sellers since 2009.

What hasn't changed

"Readers still want to read what other people are reading and talking about," Fitzgerald says. "When a new name pops onto the list and stays there, there is a lemming effect of sales as readers want to be part of reading a new author early."

That was true for Frank McCourt's memoir, Angela's Ashes, which hit USA TODAY's weekly list at No. 150 in September 1996. Thanks to great reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations, it moved up the list to No. 11 three months later. After it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997, it reached No. 2.For all sales from 1993 through 1998, it's No. 18.

In an industry where most books lose money (or don't "earn out" the author's advance), best sellers are crucial to publishers' bottom line. But Bogaards says they also play a cultural role:

"A mega best seller works itself into the social fabric of our lives. It becomes part of the American culture. Everyone knows Harry Potter even if they've never read any of the books."

Crown:

Mark Fainaru-Wada, co-author of League of Denial:

The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth

Harvill Secker:

Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

The Library of America:

Philip Roth, collected works in nine volumes

Holt:

Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act:

The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination

 iBooks Bestsellers: 'Allegiant' Pushes to the Top

Oct 30, 2013 Top Paid Books

1. Allegiant by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

2. Sycamore Row by John Grisham (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)

3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (Tom Doherty Associates)

4. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty (Penguin Group US)

5. Divergent by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

6. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (Atria / 37 Ink)

7. Things That Matter by Charles Krauthammer (Crown Publishing Group)

8. Killing Jesus by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard (Henry Holt and Co.)

9. Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)

10. Storm Front by John Sandford (Penguin Group US)

11. The Longest Ride by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)

12. David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company)

13. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (Scribner)

14. The Proposition by Jennifer Lyon (Jennifer Lyon Books)

15. Insurgent by Veronica Roth (Katherine Tegen Books)

16. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Random House Children's Books)

17. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Crown Publishing Group)

18. The Heroes of Olympus, Book Four: The House of Hades by Rick Riordan (Disney Publishing Worldwide)

19. Fifty Shades Darker by E L James (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group)

20. Gone by James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge (Little, Brown and Company)

Halloween reading: Joseph D'Lacey's top 10 horror books

When people discover I write horror, they usually take a nervous step backwards. Maybe they think I'm going to bury a cleaver in their skull. Maybe they think they'll catch Weirdofreakosis. They'll often say something like: "So, is your head full of sick, horrible ideas all the time?"

Actually, it's not. I'm calm, I'm happy and I hardly ever have nightmares. All my darkness is on the page – where it belongs. In fact, I'm convinced that people who write and read horror are saner and better-adjusted than those who casually dismiss the genre.

By engaging with horror, we take a journey into every possible fear. We open the closet door, rip the mask from the psycho's face, embrace ghosts and demons, cast ourselves into the hellish chasm of the imagination. We return, not polluted but cleansed and set free.

This Halloween, I urge you to peel your fingers from your eyes and face your greatest dread. If you can survive these books, I promise you'll live happily (and sanely) ever after…

1. Let's Go Play at the Adams' by Mendal Johnson

In 1974, Stephen King released his smash hit debut Carrie. The same year, Johnson's far more challenging, non-supernatural horror novel was also published. It's an exploration of the behaviour of children left to their own devices and is utterly harrowing. I've known people weep towards the end of the book. King went on to monumental success and fame, but within two years Johnson was dead.

2. The Long Walk by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman)

King's early works – written under the Bachman pseudonym – are my favourites, and this short novel is a classic of that period. Although not published until 1979, it appears King began it long before Carrie. Whatever the case, I was there with the boys of this dystopian tale for every agonising step of their journey.

3. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

You might want to call this post-apocalyptic fantasy, but The Road is stacked with enough bleak terror to sit proudly in the horror section of any bookshop. It's a simple story of a father and son making a perilous journey in the aftermath of a global cataclysm. But it's really about keeping the light of the world aflicker, even in the darkest times. And, whilst it's disturbing as hell, it's also incredibly beautiful.

4. The Ritual by Adam Nevill

Nevill is arguably the best British horror author writing today. The Ritual takes us into the wild boreal forests of northern Sweden where four university friends reunite to go hiking. They soon find themselves lost and terrified, stalked by an unknown but malevolent entity. Riveting storytelling that barely lets you catch your breath.

5. One by Conrad Williams

Published in 2009, this earned Williams a British Fantasy award for best novel. It charts the journey of Richard Jane, who walks from Aberdeen to London searching for his son after a cataclysmic cosmic event. Like Nevill, Williams's command of language and use of imagery lifts this novel into the realms of literary fiction. Another example of the sheer joy of terror.

6. The Function Room: The Kollection by Matt Leyshon

It may not be that big but there's still a market for short horror fiction. Many of the genre's brightest stars began their writer's journey by submitting tales to the small presses. This debut collection, published by indie magazine Morpheus Tales, showcases a talented newcomer with a firm grasp of all things weird and grim. Accompany Leyshon to Leddenton for a double-handful of the bleakest horrors imaginable. Be warned, though; he might not let you come back.

7. The Rats by James Herbert

I was 10 when I read this; a portal to a new world of shock and gore. I forget how many times I've read it but several of its scenes linger even now, as though they were my own memories. I think it's safe to say that the late James Herbert is responsible for my chosen career. Wherever you are now, Mr H, I salute you.

8. Metamorphosis and other stories by Franz Kafka

Born in 1883 and largely unpublished in his own lifetime, Kafka became and remains incredibly influential. This collection contains one of the most brutal and disturbing stories I've ever read: In the Penal Colony. If you haven't read Kafka yet, you're missing an astonishing talent.

9. Under the Skin by Michel Faber

Canongate have a knack for picking unusual but brilliant writing. Marketed without the merest mention of the word horror, this novel packs in one terrifying surprise after another. The wonderful thing is that so many people bought and read this incredibly speculative work, probably thinking it was literary fiction. An engaging but utterly creepy book – now set to be adapted for screen – and another coup for Canongate.

10. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

A meticulous study in sociopathy and a satirical critique of ladder-climbing, materialist culture. It's also cold, grim and nausea-inducing. I read it on a sunny tropical island but never have the grasping fingers of a serial killer felt so close to my throat. A landmark novel encapsulating the madness of late Twentieth Century society.

… Having picked this top 10, I realise there isn't a single female author among them. The reason is that I simply haven't read enough dark fiction by women. I'm now on the lookout for hard-hitting full length horror from women for my TBR pile. If you have suggestions, please post them here. I'm starting off with Poppy Z Brite's Exquisite Corpse…

PublicAffairs:

David Folkenflik, author of Murdoch's World:

The Last of the Old Media Empires

David Morrell, Murder as a Fine Art

Renee Rosen, Dollface: A Novel of the Roaring Twenties

RatPac Press:

Ben Mezrich, Seven Wonders

Shambhala:

Lodro Rinzler, author of Walk Like a Buddha: Even If

Your Boss Sucks, Your Ex Is Torturing You & You’re Hungover Again

Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941–1985

New Releases Tuesday! Barbara Vey -- October 29th, 2013:

Just Like Other Daughters by Colleen Faulkner (Kensington Publishing)

Devilishly Wicked by Kathy Love (Brava / Kensington Publishing)

Pelican Point by Donna Kauffman (Kensington Publishing)

Notable by Marni Bates (Kteen / Kensington Publishing)

Thoreau At Devil’s Perch by B.B. Oak (Kensington Publishing)

Blood Curse by Sharon Page (Aphrodisia / Kensington Publishing)

A Kiss Under the Mistletoe by Jennifer Basye Sander (Harlequin)

Wyoming Bold by Diana Palmer (Harlequin)

A Fool’s Gold Christmas by Susan Mallery (Harlequin)

The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier (Plume / November)

Storm Demon By Gregory Lamberson (Medallion Press)

Realm Walker by Kathleen Collins (Carina Press)

Battle Scars by Sheryl Nantus (Carina Press)

Trancehack by Sonya Clark (Carina Press)

Undead Chaos by Joshua Roots (Carina Press)

Holiday Kisses by Alison Kent, Jaci Burton, HelenKay Dimon, Shannon Stacey (Harlequin)

If You Were Mine by Bella Andre (Harlequin)

Take Me Home for Christmas by Brenda Novak (Harlequin)

Upon A Winter’s Night by Karen Harper (Harlequin)

Sleigh Bells in the Snow by Sarah Morgan (Harlequin)

The Perfect Match by Kristan Higgins (Harlequin)

Christmas in Snowflake Canyon by RaeAnne Thayne (Harlequin)

One Night with the Laird by Nicola Cornick (Harlequin)

Candlelight Christmas by Susan Wiggs (Harlequin)

The Young and the Submissive (Doms of Her Life 2) by Shayla Black, Jenna Jacob, Isabella LaPearl   (Dream Words, LLC)

Rumors That Ruined A Lady by Marguerite Kaye www.margueritekaye.com (Mills&Boon)

His Third Wife by Grace Octavia  (Dafina / Kensington Publishing)

Barefoot by the Sea by Roxanne St. Claire (Forever, Mass Market)

Once She Was Tempted by Anne Barton (Forever, Mass Market)

Once a Rake by Eileen Dreyer  (Forever, Mass Market)

Accidentally in Love With…A God? by Mimi Jean Pamfiloff (Forever, Mass Market)

Wild Man by Kristen Ashley (Forever, Mass Market)

J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst, S

Marilyn Pappano, A Hero to Come Home To

Erin McCarthy, Full Throttle (50th book in 11 years)

Sterling Lord, Lord of Publishing

PW Picks: Books of the Week, October 28, 2013

By Gabe Habash |Oct 25, 2013

       

This week, one of the best novels of 2013, the life of Johnny Cash, and the history of America in 101 objects.

Sorrow’s Knot by Erin Bow (Scholastic/Levine) - Otter is the daughter of Willow, the most powerful woman in a matriarchy that exists on the edge of a dangerous forest. Willow, the binder, casts yarn into “wards” that protect the village by keeping the dead at bay. Although Otter has inherited her mother’s magic, Willow mysteriously refuses to teach her spells, expels her from home, and chooses another girl as her apprentice. Otter must rely on two best friends: Kestrel, a ranger in training, and Cricket, who plans to become the village’s storyteller.

Jonathan Swift: His Life & His World by Leo Damrosch (Yale Univ.) - The outlines of Swift’s life are more or less familiar. To render a novel account of Swift’s biography, then, Damrosch investigates myths and assumptions about such vexed questions as Swift’s disappointed political ambitions, his moral and religious views, and his love affairs.

City of Lies by R.J. Ellory (Overlook) - In this outstanding noir from British author Ellory, Miami hack journalist John Harper, drinking less, believing in God less, but still unable to recapture the muse that inspired his first and only novel eight years earlier, is called back to New York City, scene of his bitter childhood and now the Faustian arena for a deadly gangland game where everyone but Harper knows the rules.

Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn (Little, Brown) - A decade after his death, Johnny Cash still towers over the landscape of country and rock music, a legendary figure whose work with figures as diverse as Bob Dylan, Cowboy Jack Clement, Kris Kristofferson, and producer Rick Rubin illustrate Cash’s embrace of musical eclecticism and his deep devotion to finding that musical moment when tune and lyrics blend to make a great song.

Sea of Hooks by Lindsay Hill (McPherson & Co.) – One of 2013’s best books, this first novel by poet and one-time banker Hill is less a novel, in the traditional sense, than a spiritual biography. Christopher Westall, raised in San Francisco in the 1950s and heady ’60s, is the only child of an alcoholic and distant father and an eccentric, meddling mother. Nearly every paragraph astonishes, every moment rich with magic and daring. An unforgettable trip.

The Animal Book: A Collection of the Fastest, Fiercest, Toughest, Cleverest, Shyest—and Most Surprising—Animals on Earth by Steve Jenkins (Houghton Mifflin) - Jenkins compiles more than 300 animals, using a loosely encyclopedic format with sections covering topics like “Animal Extremes,” “Predators,” and “Animal Senses.” Jenkins’s always skillful use of cut- and torn-paper animal artwork appears throughout (several images comes from his earlier books), while factually detailed captions describe each subject, resulting in a vibrant juxtaposition of science and art.

The Dissertation by R.M. Koster (Overlook) - A careful fake is better than the truth, according to fictional Banana Republic president León Fuertes, and so it is with Koster’s 1975 novel masquerading as a doctoral dissertation, reissued after four decades and still fresh, funny, and disturbingly relevant. Half text, half footnotes, this second volume in a trilogy (after The Prince) about the imaginary Latin American country of Tinieblas purports to be the annotated biography of the leader, as written for academic credit by his son, Camilo, whose sources include interviews with dead people.

The Smithsonian’s History of America in 101 Objects by Richard Kurin (Penguin Press) - As Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture for the Smithsonian Institution, Kurin has intimate knowledge of the organization’s inventory of over 137 million items (that doesn’t include millions and millions of books, photos, documents, recordings, etc.). That blessing had the potential to turn into a curse when he was challenged to select a mere 101 objects that would tell the history of the United States. But he’s done a masterful job. Yes, there are obvious inclusions, like the Declaration of Independence, Neil Armstrong’s space suit, Dorothy’s red ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, and the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk Flyer, but even these well-known items have surprising and significant backstories.

 The 10 Best Short Story Collections

By Carolyn Cooke |Oct 25, 2013

       

Carolyn Cooke's new collection, Amor and Psycho, is one of very best of 2013. When you go to the bookstore to pick it up, make sure to save room for these 10 legendary collections.

From almost the beginning it seemed impossible to survive the limited impressions, atmospheres, and perceptions generated by my own experience. I wanted more, and so became an early reader of short stories. Cheever and Updike were my literary parents; the vistas they described--the 1960s and 1970s, the shaken cocktails, the urgent bad sex, the smoky, Nixonian America--amplified my own narrow vision. Casting further back, Hemingway and Fitzgerald represented (impossible to imagine this now) literary polar opposites--bullfights and Africa! Martinis and money!

Drawn to decadence in every form, I also wanted to read writing that might erase boundaries of generation, gender, race and class, and show how one might live more fully in the great body of humanity. I discovered American champions of working class experience--Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Raymond Carver--then Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel, Kafka, and Borges. I’m still regularly blown open by the wildly different effects writers achieve using the somewhat limited range of 
human experience, language and consciousness. The following 10 collections--whole atmospheres made entirely of words--feel essential, either because they manage to make human experience feel new, or because, like some uncle who left a $1,000,000 legacy, their influence lingers.

1. The Complete Works by Isaac Babel - This volume contains The Red Cavalry Stories and the stories from 1925-1938, including “The Story of My Dovecote” and my all-time favorite, “Guy De Maupassant.” I wrote my own short story, “Francis Bacon,” under the self-imposed constraints that 1) like “Guy de Maupassant,” it concern a young writer in a compromised position; and 2) that it contain, in the original draft, exactly the same number of words (2,675) as my translation.

2. Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin - Baldwin was a master of the apparently “true” story, the first person narrator revealing more of the story than he knows. This volume includes the sublime “Sonny’s Blues” and that masterpiece of rage and compassion, “Going to Meet the Man.”

3. Love is Power, Or Something Like That by A. Igoni Barrett - A brand-new collection by a brilliant young Nigerian-Jamaican writer--and the most exciting, scary collection I read last year. Barrett’s characters don’t usually think about colonialism or corruption--they can’t afford the luxury of despair. Whole lives contain less agonizing detail than one of these stories.

4. The Collected Stories by Lydia Davis - Davis’s excruciatingly compressed, intensely dark, and usually playful stories render the strange as ordinary and the ordinary as strange. To read Davis for five minutes is consciousness-altering. The aperçu, for her, is an artery of intelligence.

5. Because They Wanted To by Mary Gaitskill - The strangeness of human desire is Gaitskill’s great subject. In “The Girl on the Plane”--one example of many--Gaitskill pursues the awkward moment, and particularly the awkward sexual moment, to an interesting extreme. The reader reddens, but her characters never look away.

6. Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson - Nobody writes more beautifully or goes closer to the sweet, rotten core.

7. Dubliners by James Joyce - Maybe it’s less true than it used to be that people are made of place--that the same elements that form coal and clay and bogs and ice form faces, voices and characters. I wrote my first collection of short stories, The Bostons, in homage to this book, hoping, as did Joyce’s young Stephen Dedalus, “to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience” of some island-dwellers I knew.

8. The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka - To read “In the Penal Colony,” “The Hunger Artist,” and “Metamorphosis” is to be in some essential way unburdened of innocence about the human condition, to recognize the primal claw beneath the wings of human spirit and desire, and to understand, finally and forever after, the absurdity of “realist” fiction.

9. Selected Stories by Alice Munro - Munro’s stories feel expansive, but are in fact masterpieces of compression. On the inside cover of my brutally used copy of Munro’s Selected Stories (1996) is written: “She is an insight machine.” A few Munro sentences can capture a provincial girl in itchy clothes waiting for the Canadian National Railroad to take her to her destiny--while some cosmic rearview mirror unfurls the whole arc of a life.

10. The Great Short Works by Leo Tolstoy - Includes my all-time favorite story, “The Death of Ivan Ilych.” Helplessly in thrall to this perfect work, I wrote the first chapter of my novel, Daughters of the Revolution, in an attempt to capture--in the same span of 39 pages--a life and death.

 The 10 Best Mystery Books

By Thomas H. Cook |Oct 18, 2013

       

Thomas H. Cook, one of the best at what he does, has done it again with 2013's Sandrine's Case, which is just as intricate and surprising as you'd expect from the Edgar winner. A veteran thriller and mystery writer of over 20 books, Cook shared his favorite mystery novels.

I went to the Alabama public schools at a time when my English teachers, all but one of whom was a woman, taught nothing but the classics. They revered the great British and American writers. As a high school student, I read Shakespeare and Dickens, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. As a result, my reading taste has always been guided by the sense that a novel should be a complete work of art, that action, alone, is not enough, and that it is moral dilemma that ups the ante in crime fiction just as it does in all other literary forms. For these reasons, the 10 books listed below are all novels that skew toward the literary. Their plots are character-driven and their action is organic. They have distinct narrative voices and the sense of place is, as they say, palpable. That said, they are extraordinarily different in time, place, style, voice and probably in every other way one novel can be technically different from another. In the end, of course, the relationship between a novel and a reader is one in which one subjectivity confronts another. My choices are admittedly subjective, with plenty of room for disagreement, but in my view they remain if not the 10 best mysteries every written, certainly my favorites.

1. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - This is still a wonderfully mysterious novel. It is large and sweeping, with skillfully drawn characters, lovely passages and absolutely haunting scenes, a fully formed 19th century novel with all the trimmings. The story is complicated, but it was originally written in serial form, so the story moves forward in carefully measured steps. Much of what became standard in crime fiction was first done here, so it is not only an engaging read, but a fundamentally instructive one.

2. A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne - I have recommended this book many times to all kinds of readers. For me, it is a novel that uses suspense in the best possible way, not by having a character confront one contrived obstacle after another in a mindless stream of action, but by creating an atmosphere of deep moral peril in which the culminating tragedy seems as inevitable as it is, well…tragic. It is also one of those books in which the title become completely apt, and very moving, after one has completed the book. In this case, the “crime in the neighborhood” turns out to be far more profound and long lasting than any single act of violence could be.

3. A Dark-Adapted Eye by Ruth Rendell - I confess that this is one of the most beautiful titles in mystery fiction. The good news is that the book lives up to the title. It is intricate, with genuinely surprising revelations, and the depth of the characterizations makes a major contribution to the novel’s suspense. This is psychological suspense for adults, with real people confronting real, and very dark problems.

4. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler - “It is not who fired the shot but who paid for the bullet.” It is a line that has since become famous, but it is only one of the many literary beauties of the book. Dimitrios, in life and death, is a figure of surpassing fascination, his life a tale of struggle and fierce intrigue that I have never forgotten. The secondary characters are wonderfully drawn. From the moment Charles Latimer meets Colonel Haki and hears of the mysterious Dimitrios, the reader is returned to the lost Balkan world that flourished between the two world wars, a boiling cauldron of expediency and deceit that Ambler renders in exquisite detail.

5. True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne - The novel begins with a crime based on the Black Dahlia murder, and from there steadily deepens into a work of great emotional power, complete with an unforgettable portrait of Los Angeles in the '40s. It is a story of two brothers, one a cop, the other a priest, and by following their relationship along the trail of a gruesome crime, it ultimately becomes one of the most movingly redemptive novels I have ever read.

6. The Eye of the Beholder by Marc Behm - I read this novel years and years ago, and have never been able to get it out of my mind. It is a story of obsession, with a private detective called only The Eye who follows a nameless female serial killer for more than a decade. The Eye is the classically damaged PI, not just solitary, but deeply lonely, and the woman he pursues is a heartless--yet in some sense comprehensible--hater of men. The macabre dance of death that becomes their lives is one of the strangest and most intriguing relationships in mystery fiction.

7. A Simple Plan by Scott Smith - In this wholly realistic novel, two brothers and a friend come upon a crashed plane in whose shattered ruins they find an enormous sum of money. Before that moment, none of these men has ever needed to concoct a simple plan to keep and conceal a fortune that quite obviously does not belong them. In the midst of doing just that, they become criminals, as well as victims of crime. The story builds steadily as the wages of sin become more and more costly. Here is a classic cautionary tale about the penalty dishonesty may exact upon ordinary, and largely innocent, human beings.

8. Sneaky People by Thomas Berger - This is arguably one of the funniest crime novels ever written. It is set in the 1930s, and its main character is Buddy Sandifer, a used car dealer who wants one very simple thing: his wife dead. The reason is no less simple. He yearns to live the rest of his days with Laverne, a woman who on occasion dimly realizes that sleeping with men for money adds up to prostitution. Buddy’s efforts to plot his wife’s murder creates one of the most hilarious tales of misadventure you will ever read.

9. The Quiet American by Graham Greene - Published in 1955, The Quiet American provides an intensely observed portrait of Vietnam on the eve of French defeat. Fowler, the world-weary British journalist whose observations enrich this fiercely observed novel, provides just the right counterpoint to Alden Pyle, the idealist “quiet American” whose mysterious death provides the narrative heart of the story. Part novel of intrigue, part mystery, part love story, The Quiet American remains as powerful today as when it was first written.

10. Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg - Hailed by the New York Times as the best novel of its kind in 10 years, Cutter and Bone is the story story of one man’s obsession with another man’s crime, in this case, a murder. What makes Thornburg’s story unique is that the “murderer,” a big money man by the name of J.J. Wolfe, may not have committed the crime at all. For that reason, it is Cutter’s mad pursuit of Wolfe, rather that the justice of that pursuit, that gives the book its passionate momentum.

10 Best Romance Novels, Picked by Bella Andre

By Bella Andre |Feb 08, 2013

       

Just in time for Valentine's Day, bestselling romance author Bella Andre picks her 10 favorite romance books.

I have been a huge romance fan my entire life, reading a book a day when I can squeeze it into my busy writing schedule. There's nothing I enjoy more than reading about two people falling in love and the best romances are the ones that make me laugh, cry and stop to tell my husband, “This book is so good!” at least half a dozen times while I'm reading. While I love the romance genre so much that I could have easily written a Top 100 list, what follows are ten of my all-time favorite emotional, fun and supersexy romance novels.

1. Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie - Bet Me is, hands down, my favorite romance, one I've read and reread countless times. Like all Crusie books, Bet Me makes me laugh out loud. My chest clenches during the "falling in love" scenes, and boy, oh, boy, do Minerva Dobbs and Calvin Morrisey do a good job of tangling up the sheets. As a bonus, Minerva is a perfectly written full-figured heroine. Any of Crusie's books could have made this list, but Bet Me turns the dial up to eleven.

2. This Heart of Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips - I'm a huge fan of Phillips and have loved everything she's written, but there is something extra special about this story. Between the way each chapter starts with a scene from the "Daphne the Bunny" children's books penned by Molly Somerville and her unrequited love for cocky quarterback Kevin Tucker, who has never noticed she's alive (until he suddenly can't stop noticing after an accidental roll in the hay!), this book is pure magic from start to finish.

3. Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy by Nora Roberts - If this had been a Top 100 list, I still could have filled it with Nora Roberts titles. She's that good. Which is why I'm going to cheat a little and pick a Roberts trilogy instead of just one book. Jewels of the Sun, Tears of the Moon, and Heart of the Sea are three extremely emotional, beautifully written stories set in Ireland that have stayed with me for years.

4. A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux - I can't recall when I read Deveraux's iconic time-travel romance for the first time, but I do remember buying it again about ten years ago while on vacation in Vancouver and falling in love with the fantastic love story all over again. It's sweet and sexy and funny and brilliant, and I now reread it every year without fail. A Knight in Shining Armor is the blueprint for time-travel romance.

5. Nine Rules To Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean - Gabriel St. John, the Marquess of Ralston, is the perfect hero. So perfect, in fact, that I must confess to dreaming about him the night after I read MacLean's book. Lady Calpurnia Hartwell is a full-figured spinster, and as far as I'm concerned, few things in life are more fun than reading about a rake falling head over heels for a wallflower.

6. The Duchess by Jude Deveraux - I had planned to stick to one spot per favorite author on my Top 10 list, but there's no way I could possibly choose between A Knight in Shining Armor and The Duchess. Funny, moody and sexy, The Duchess is unlike any romance I've read before or since. There are secret passageways in a historic castle, an extremely intelligent heroine, a rather strange but incredibly alluring hero and a little sister nicknamed "Brat" who likes to play dress-up in jewels and priceless gowns. It's a book that defies description, which might just be one of the reasons it's so fantastic. Trust me, you should read it.

7. Whitehorn Woods by Maeve Binchy - I know that Binchy's books may not technically be romances as they usually feature a wide cast of characters, only some of whom get a happily-ever-after by the end of the book, but I have loved every single word she's ever written, so she must be on my Top 10 list. Although it was nearly impossible to pick a favorite book of hers, I chose Whitehorn Woods, with Tara Road a very close second. I was very sad to hear that she passed away last summer and am rereading each of her stories slowly to really savor them.

8. Three Nights of Sin by Anne Mallory - In order to save her brother from the gallows, a desperate Marietta Winters must promise Gabriel Noble three sexy, sinful favors. Mallory's writing is always beautiful, and the romance, the mystery and the sensuality of this story absolutely blew my mind.

9. Caressa's Knees by Annabel Joseph - Joseph does an incredible job of writing about Caressa Gallo, a talented but emotionally damaged cellist, and Kyle Winchell, the personal assistant/bodyguard who can't help but want to heal her. Plus, the end of this book has one of the most beautiful wedding scenes I've ever read in which fireflies play the starring role. Anyone who enjoyed the Fifty Shades books should dive into Annabel Joseph's books, which feature amazingly emotional, heartfelt and sizzling-hot BSDM scenes in addition to the fantastic romance. Be sure to have tissues ready.

10. Wild Card by Lora Leigh - Bella Malone thought her Navy SEAL husband died three years ago, but when a sexy stranger appears suddenly in her life, one with so many similarities to her husband, even though he looks nothing like him, she can't help but start asking herself crazy questions about who he really might be. Bella and Nathan Malone's love story is Leigh at her ultra-angsty, über-alpha-hero, shockingly erotic best.

 The 20 Best Books in Translation You've Never Read

By Chad W. Post |Sep 27, 2013

       

Chad W. Post, director of Open Letter Books, which specializes in great books in translation, as well as the Web Site Three Percent, gives us the benefit of his years of working with world literature--he's narrowed his best books in translation list to 20.

As the director of Open Letter Books and Three Percent—and former Associate Director of Dalkey Archive Press—I’ve spent most of my adult life reading literature in translation. Why? In part because I find it fascinating to learn about other parts of the world, but mostly because there are so many incredibly good works in translation available to English readers.

On the surface, this seems to run counter to the commonly cited statistic that only 3% (or less) of the books published in the United States are originally written in another language. Quantity doesn’t necessarily relate to quality though. Even though there are just over 400 original translations of fiction and poetry being published in the States every year, the vast majority of these are top notch books—titles that are critically acclaimed in their own country, and often are written with a style and structure that can expand your ideas of what’s possible in fiction.

When Stephen Sparks of Green Apple Books and I started talking about putting together a 20-book list of translations, we immediately wanted to get away from some of the more obvious authors that populate lists of this sort—Garcia, Cortázar, Proust, Kafka, Tolstoy, etc. Not that these books aren’t amazing—they definitely are—but those are authors that most engaged readers have already heard of, oftentimes in a college class, or from one’s reading buddies.

So instead, we chose 20 of our favorite translations from around the world. Obviously, this could be expanded and expanded, but hopefully you’ll find at least a few new works of international literature to check out.

The Box Man, Kobo Abe, translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders (Vintage)

Imagine a Japanese Samuel Beckett. But weirder. Multiply that weirdness by two and add a dose of extra intellectualism and humor. Now you have a sense of what The Box Man is like.

Act of the Damned, António Lobo Antunes, translated from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (Grove Press)

Along with José Saramago and Fernando Pessoa, Antunes is considered to be one of the literary giants of Portugal. Unlike Saramago and Pessoa, his work is much more Faulknerian in the way it incorporates a range of unique voices and complex literary structures. Act of the Damned details the dismantling of a once wealthy, now incredibly dysfunctional family trying to escape the socialist revolution.

Concrete, Thomas Bernhard, translated from the German by David McLintock (Vintage)

Everyone’s favorite misanthrope, any number of Bernhard books could be included on this list. His single-paragraph, ranting style has influenced dozens of writers and continues to be just as scathing and poignant to read today as when it was first written.

Dolly City, Orly Castel-Bloom, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu (Dalkey Archive Press)

Castel-Bloom’s satire on everything from motherhood to the state of Israel is as scathing as they come. Doctor Dolly, a doctor in name only who practices illegally in her home laboratory, finds a baby in a plastic bag, names him Son and grows increasingly, hysterically concerned about this well-being. It might not help you understand the political situation in Israel, but it’ll give you an idea of its insanity.

Zero, Ignacio de Loyola Brandão, translated from the Portuguese by Ellen Watson (Dalkey Archive Press)

Brandão, the author of eight novels and a dozen other works, is one of Brazil’s greatest contemporary writers. A number of his works—including Zero, which is definitely his best—focus on the period of the military dictatorship in Brazil, while also incorporating certain dsytopic, sci-fi elements.

The Obscene Bird of Night, José Donoso, translated from the Spanish by Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades (David R. Godine)

Although many of the other “boom” writers may have received more attention—especially Fuentes and Vargas Llosa—Donoso and his masterpiece may be the most lasting, visionary, strangest of the books from this time period. Seriously, it’s a novel about the last member of an aristocratic family, a monstrous mutant, who is surrounded by other freaks so as to not feel out of place.

The Zafarani Files, Gamal al-Ghitani, translated from the Arabic by Farouk Abdel Wahad (American University in Cairo Press)

A refreshingly atypical Egyptian novel, The Zafarani Files is a hysterical novel about a wicked curse that a sheikh puts on Zafarani Alley, causing all of the men to suddenly become impotent. Related through a series of notes and observations from an unnamed observer, al-Ghitani’s novel reads like a comic Arabian version of a French Nouveau Roman novel.

Mysteries, Knut Hamsun, translated from the Norwegian by Sverre Lyngstad (Penguin)

Hamsun is most well-known for Hunger, his first novel about a starving artist, but Mysteries is a much more seductive, beguiling book. Centering around a mysterious man who appears in a small Norwegian town and upends everyone’s lives with his bizarre attitudes and actions, it also contains “The Midget,” one of the best characters in all of literature.

The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat, translated from the Persian by D. P. Costello (Grove Press)

A claustrophobic, feverish novel about a painter of miniatures whose life unravels after his wife cheats on him (or does she?). Hedayat’s circular novel has been compared to the work of Poe and Dostoevsky and mines a dark vein of psychological horror and black comedy.

That Smell, Sonallah Ibrahim, translated from the Arabic by Robyn Creswell (New Directions)

In flat, unaffected prose that works more by what’s left unsaid--or what, for political reasons, couldn’t be said--Ibrahim’s 1966 novel provides insight into Egypt that’s still relevant today. Written as a diary of an ex-prisoner finding his way back into the world, That Smell is a stark and haunting chronicle of life under constant threat of lock and key.

The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal (New York Review Books Classics)

A perfectly constructed book about truth and deceit, and deceiving through truth, it’s obvious why this book won the Best Translated Book Award in 2011. And it’s the perfect accompaniment to reading all of Jansson’s Moomin books.

Kassandra and the Wolf, Margarita Karapanou, translated from the Greek by N.C. Germanacos (Clockroot Books)

Karapanou’s Kassandra is an uncomfortable mix of the girlish and wolvish. This ambiguous novel is about victims, the victimized and the gray area in-between, leaving the reader on unsteady ground as the story, told in a series of vignettes, rolls towards its inexorable conclusion.

Satantango, László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by Georges Szirtes (New Directions)

Winner of the 2013 Best Translated Book Award, Satantango was first published in 1984 and took master translator Georges Szirtes over two decades to translate. For that reason alone it’s worth reading. Also, it’s a diabolical, haunting deconstruction of apocalyptic messianism that was made into a stunning seven-hour long movie by Béla Tarr.

Stone Upon Stone, Wiesław Myśliwski, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston (Archipelago Books)

“Having a tomb built.” That’s the opening line of Stone Upon Stone and its main plot. Narrated by the unforgettable Szymek, a farmer who hates reading but loves him some booze and women, this is an epic novel about modernization in rural Poland.

Life, a User’s Manual, Georges Perec, translated from the French by David Bellos (David R. Godine)

A literary game and puzzle about a man who spends his life traveling around the world painting watercolors, having them made into puzzles that he then solves, before dipping them in water and watching the paintings float away. But it’s about so much more than that. Life is one of the best books to come out of the Oulipo—a French literary movement in which writers use explicit constraints to create their texts—and is about, well, life. There are a number of constraints at work in this novel, the main one being that Perec took a 10x10 gridded picture of an apartment building and applied the “knight’s move” from chess to determine each of the 100 chapters—one for each space in the building.

A Broken Mirror, Mercè Rodoreda, translated from the Catalan by Josep Miquel Sobrer (University of Nebraska Press)

One of Catalonia’s most beloved writers, Rodoreda wrote a number of books that could be included here, including In Diamond Square and Death in Spring. But A Broken Mirror is the most ambitious of her novels, a family saga that opens in the 1870s and ending in the 1930s, the storytelling evolves throughout the book, from a very Victorian opening, to something more modernist, to a very fragmented end—reflecting the lives and times of the various characters.

The Event, Juan José Saer, translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane (Serpent’s Tail)

Saer’s novels—which read like a cross between Alain Robbe-Grillet and Javier Marias—are all magical and worth reading, but this one, about a discredited magician trying to recover his life in the Argentine pampas is particularly moving and well-crafted. Besides, everyone loves magic, right?

Maidenhair, Mikhail Shishkin, translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz (Open Letter Books)

One of the best books I’ve read in the past decade, Maidenhair is the sort of densely beautiful book where, after reading 50 pages, you may not know what’s going on—there are three distinct storylines, all of which bounce off one another, without completely connecting until the very end—but you’ll know that what you’re reading is an absolute masterpiece of world literature.

The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, Dubravka Ugresic, translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (New Directions)

If the world were a fair place, Dubrakva Ugresic would win the Nobel Prize. A great chronicler of contemporary Europe, nostalgia, and life in exile, Ugresic’s novels, essays, and stories are all worth reading—especially this book comprised of such a wide variety of literary forms.

Five Spice Street, Can Xue, translated from the Chinese by Karen Gernant and Zeping Chen (Yale University Press)

It’s safe to say that there’s no other writer in China like Can Xue. Over the past thirty years she’s produced a ton of work—120 stories, a dozen novellas, five novels—all of which are strange, surreal, and very compelling. Reading Can Xue is like participating in a literary performance as you puzzle out the logic beneath these engrossing dreamscapes. A number of her works are available in English, but this novel is probably the best place to start.

Trade Paper

Rank     Last Week     Weeks on List     Bibliographical Information

(Click title for review)

    Pub Date     Units

2013 YTD

1     1        5

   

The Hit

David Baldacci, Author

Grand Central Publishing, $15.00 (432)

978-1-4555-2117-3

    Sep

2013     10,179

68,653

2     2        52

   

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife

Eben Alexander, Author

Simon & Schuster, $15.99 (196)

978-1-4516-9519-9

    Oct

2012     7,803

829,223

3     5        2

   

Dear Life: Stories

Alice Munro, Author

Vintage Books, $15.95 (336)

978-0-307-74372-5

    Jul

2013     7,639

33,634

4     4        13

   

The Casual Vacancy

J. K. Rowling, Author

Little Brown and Company, $18.00 (503)

978-0-316-22858-9

    Jul

2013     6,553

199,485

5     7        4

   

Four Blood Moons: Something Is about to Change

John Hagee, Author

Worthy Publishing, $14.99 (224)

978-1-61795-214-2

    Oct

2013     6,082

22,000

6     6        8

   

The Racketeer

John Grisham, Author

Bantam, $16.00 (340)

978-0-345-54533-6

    Aug

2013     5,174

77,959

7     10        10

   

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan, Author

Simon & Schuster, $16.00 (266)

978-1-4516-2138-9

    Aug

2013     4,935

42,106

8     8        3

   

The Time Keeper

Mitch Albom, Author

Hyperion Books, $14.99 (224)

978-1-4013-1285-5

    Oct

2013     4,817

14,389

9     47        2    

Unlikely Loves: 43 Heartwarming True Stories from the Animal Kingdom

Jennifer S Holland, Author

Workman Publishing, $13.95 (240)

978-0-7611-7442-4

    Oct

2013     4,675

7,661

10     11        29

   

Beautiful Ruins

Jess Walter, Author

Harper Perennial, $15.99 (368)

978-0-06-192817-8

    Apr

2013     4,432

245,410

11     15        22

   

Orphan Train: Novel

Christina Baker Kline, Author

William Morrow & Company, $14.99 (288)

978-0-06-195072-8

    Apr

2013     4,085

94,644

12     13        11

   

I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your Life

Joel Osteen, Author

Faithwords, $15.00 (192)

978-1-4555-2932-2

    Aug

2013     3,972

68,771

13     27        7

   

Michael Symon's 5 in 5: 5 Fresh Ingredients + 5 Minutes = 120 Fantastic Dinners

Michael Symon, Author, Jennifer May, Photographer, Douglas Trattner, With

Clarkson Potter Publishers, $19.99 (224)

978-0-7704-3432-8

    Sep

2013     3,956

34,384

14     12        4

   

The Round House

Louise Erdrich, Author

Harper Perennial, $15.99 (321)

978-0-06-206525-4

    Sep

2013     3,900

20,242

15     17        30

   

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed, Author

Vintage Books, $15.95 (336)

978-0-307-47607-4

    Mar

2013     3,891

215,207

16     16        9

   

Orange Is the New Black (Movie Tie-In Edition): My Year in a Women's Prison

Piper Kerman, Author

Spiegel & Grau, $16.00 (352)

978-0-8129-8618-1

    Aug

2013     3,795

37,898

17     9        3

   

The Good House

Ann Leary, Author

Picador USA, $15.00 (320)

978-1-250-04303-0

    Oct

2013     3,782

11,650

18     -        1    

Come Home to Supper: Over 200 Casseroles, Skillets, and Sides (Desserts, Too!) to Feed Your Family with Love

Christy Jordan, Author

Workman Publishing, $16.95 (320)

978-0-7611-7490-5

    Oct

2013     3,735

3,753

19     14        4

   

The Chew: What's for Dinner?: 100 Easy Recipes for Every Night of the Week

Mario Batali, Author, Gordon Elliott, Author, Carla Hall, Author, Clinton Kelly, Author, Daphne Oz, Author, Michael Symon, Author, The Chew, Author, Mario Batali, With, Gordon Elliott, With, Carla Hall, With, Clinton Kelly, With, Daphne Oz, With, Michael Symon, With

Hyperion Books, $19.99 (256)

978-1-4013-1281-7

    Sep

2013     3,704

27,355

20     20        29

   

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Maria Semple, Author

Back Bay Books, $14.99 (330)

978-0-316-20426-2

    Apr

2013     3,667

136,610

21     22        29

   

Light Between Oceans

ML Stedman, Author, ML Stedman, Author

Scribner Book Company, $16.00 (352)

978-1-4516-8175-8

    Apr

2013     3,637

140,170

22     18        14

   

The Silent Wife

A S a Harrison, Author

Penguin Books, $16.00 (336)

978-0-14-312323-1

    Jun

2013     3,488

81,250

23     21        38

   

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Susan Cain, Author

Broadway Books, $16.00 (352)

978-0-307-35215-6

    Jan

2013     3,459

229,442

24     19        8

   

Winter of the World

Ken Follett, Author

New American Library, $25.00 (940)

978-0-451-41924-8

    Aug

2013     3,400

54,712

25     -        1    

Well Fed 2

Melissa Joulwan, Author

Smudge Publishing, $24.95 (210)

978-0-9894875-0-4

    Oct

2013     3,346

3,358

Hardcover Fiction

Rank     Last Week     Weeks on List     Bibliographical Information

(Click title for review)

    Pub Date     Units

2013 YTD

1     1        4

   

Doctor Sleep

Stephen King, Author

Scribner Book Company, $30.00 (544)

978-1-4767-2765-3

    Sep

2013     29,571

261,667

2     2        5

   

The Longest Ride

Nicholas Sparks, Author

Grand Central Publishing, $27.00 (398)

978-1-4555-2065-7

    Sep

2013     27,348

286,316

3     4        3

   

Gone

James Patterson, Author, Michael Ledwidge, Author

Little Brown and Company, $28.00 (386)

978-0-316-21098-0

    Sep

2013     18,881

98,794

4     -        1    

Identical

Scott Turow, Author

Grand Central Publishing, $28.00 (416)

978-1-4555-2720-5

    Oct

2013     18,065

18,231

5     -        1    

The Vespertine

Saundra Mitchell, Author

Hmh Books for Young Readers, $16.99 (304)

978-0-525-95296-1

    Oct

2013     16,970

17,229

6     3        2

   

Storm Front

John Sandford, Author

Putnam Adult, $27.95 (384)

978-0-399-15930-5

    Oct

2013     16,542

48,602

7     -        1    

Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy

Helen Fielding, Author

Knopf Publishing Group, $26.95 (390)

978-0-385-35086-0

    Oct

2013     13,059

13,118

8     5        2

   

Starry Night: A Christmas Novel

Debbie Macomber, Author

Ballantine Books, $18.00 (256)

978-0-345-52889-6

    Oct

2013     12,731

30,123

9     -        1    

The Wolves of Midwinter: The Wolf Gift Chronicles

Anne Rice, Author

Knopf Publishing Group, $25.95 (400)

978-0-385-34996-3

    Oct

2013     10,023

10,214

10     -        1    

Police: A Harry Hole Novel

Jo Nesbo, Author

Knopf Publishing Group, $25.95 (416)

978-0-307-96049-8

    Oct

2013     9,392

9,464

11     7        3

   

The Signature of All Things

Elizabeth Gilbert, Author

Viking Books, $28.95 (512)

978-0-670-02485-8

    Oct

2013     8,725

34,892

12     9        7

   

Never Go Back: A Jack Reacher Novel

Lee Child, Author

Delacorte Press, $28.00 (416)

978-0-385-34434-0

    Sep

2013     8,044

185,776

13     6        2

   

Doing Hard Time

Stuart Woods, Author

Putnam Adult, $26.95 (320)

978-0-399-16414-9

    Oct

2013     7,795

22,022

14     11        5

   

The Quest

Nelson DeMille, Author

Center Street, $26.00 (458)

978-1-4555-7642-5

    Sep

2013     7,133

69,188

15     10        6

   

W Is for Wasted

Sue Grafton, Author

Marian Wood Book, $28.95 (496)

978-0-399-15898-8

    Sep

2013     7,128

133,113

16     8        2

   

The Circle

Dave Eggers, Author

Knopf Publishing Group, $27.95 (504)

978-0-385-35139-3

    Oct

2013     7,120

17,786

17     -        1    

Christmas Bliss

Mary Kay Andrews, Author

St. Martin's Press, $16.99 (294)

978-1-250-01972-1

    Oct

2013     6,995

7,068

18     12        4

   

The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri, Author

Knopf Publishing Group, $27.95 (352)

978-0-307-26574-6

    Sep

2013     6,986

44,645

19     -        1    

The Dogs of Christmas

W. Bruce Cameron, Author

Forge, $15.99 (240)

978-0-7653-3055-0

    Oct

2013     5,834

6,196

20     14        4

   

Deadline

Sandra Brown, Author

Grand Central Publishing, $26.00 (416)

978-1-4555-0151-9

    Sep

2013     5,461

41,239

21     -        1    

The Last Dark: The Climax of the Entire Thomas Covenant Chronicles

Stephen R. Donaldson, Author

Putnam Adult, $35.00 (592)

978-0-399-15920-6

    Oct

2013     5,063

5,135

22     18        23

   

Inferno

Dan Brown, Author

Doubleday Books, $29.95 (480)

978-0-385-53785-8

    May

2013     4,818

1,282,122

23     -        1    

The Luminaries

Eleanor Catton, Author

Little Brown and Company, $27.00 (848)

978-0-316-07431-5

    Oct

2013     4,528

4,553

24     -        1    

Spirit of Steamboat: A Walt Longmire Story

Craig Johnson, Author

Viking Books, $20.00 (160)

978-0-670-01578-8

    Oct

2013     4,413

4,590

25     20        12

   

The Husband's Secret

Liane Moriarty, Author

Amy Einhorn Books, $25.95 (416)

978-0-399-15934-3

    Jul

2013     4,284

54,894

25th Southern Festival of Books

Charm and Success: The 25th Southern Festival of Books

By Paige Crutcher 

 

  
This past weekend, more than 30,000 authors and readers descended upon downtown Nashville in Legislative Plaza for the 25th annual Southern Festival of Books. With 212 sessions, three performance stages, and 325 authors speaking, the festival was a non-stop celebration of story. From the kickoff Friday at noon, to Rick Riordan’s panel drawing over 1,000 attendees late Sunday afternoon, readers came out in droves to listen to panels and attend signings. To celebrate the 25th anniversary, nine of the original authors from the first festival in 1989 - Cathie Pelletier (The One-Way Bridge), Lee Smith (Guests on Earth), Roy Blount Jr. (Alphabet Juice), Paul Clements (A Past Remembered), Alana White (The Sign of the Weeping Virgin), Bobbie Ann Mason (The Girl in the Blue Beret), John Egerton (Southern Food), Jill McCorkle (Life After Life), and Allan Gurganus (Local Souls) – gathered on the steps of Legislative Plaza. Panels featured over the three-day festival included: In Conversation with Jon Meacham and Alison Stewart, Gals Gone Wild: Zelda Fitzgerald and Other Scandalous Women of the 20s with Therese Anne Fowler and Suzanne Rindell, The Year of Billy Miller with Kevin Henkes, and The Pulpwood Queen Presents with Kim Boykin, Michael Morris, Kathy Patrick, and Julie Catrell -- who noted she loved everything about the festival. “There is no event quite like Southern Festival of Books,” said best-selling author Julie Cantrell (Into the Free). “I’m amazed by the incredible authors they manage to bring into Nashville each year, and it’s a joy for me to attend -- both as a reader and as a writer. This year was particularly special for me because I was honored to serve on a panel with the fabulous tiara-wearing Pulpwood Queen Kathy Patrick. Add to that the opportunity to share that panel with Michael Morris and Kim Boykin, and I feel like I’ve dreamed the whole thing.” Gorgeous weather and a slew of headliner panels – from John Lewis to Al Gore to Chuck Palahniuk – were just part of what set the tone for a joyous SoFest. Serenity Gerbman, director of literature and language programs at Humanities Tennessee, told PW, “The small staff at Humanities Tennessee worked incredibly hard all year to make the 25th annual Festival the best yet, and it was. All weekend long we heard again and again about author readings, discussions, and conversations between readers and writers that deepened the appreciation of books of all types. The Festival involves numerous community organizational partners and more than 400 volunteers. We are thankful to all who gave of their time, energy, and dollars to make the weekend such a resounding success.” Successful the 25th Southern Festival was, with the “highest ever sales totals in merchandise and books by quite wide margins.” Perhaps Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, middle grade author and regional advisor of SCBWI, said it best. “The Southern Festival of Books showcases the power that story has to unite us. Hundreds of kids screaming for Rick Riordan like he's a rock star. A line around the block to meet Bill Bryson. An 80-something wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘I like big books and I cannot lie.’ They're all there, this huge mix of readers, all so different, but there for the same reason. It's wonderful to spend a weekend united by words.”

K: PW

Frankfurt Book Fair 2013

E-Book als Falle Die im Dunkeln lesen nicht

09.10.2013 ·  Evgeny Morozov, einer der Chefkritiker des Silicon Valley, eröffnete die Buchmesse mit einer Wahnsinnsfrage: Warum nicht weiter Papier drucken statt digitales Spielzeug verschenken?
 

Von Stefan Schulz

Im luftleeren sozialen Raum: Das E-Book zerstört die Produktionsbedingungen des alten Wissens

Die Idee hinter einer Party namens „Script“ sei, schon am Dienstagabend, bevor die Buchmesse richtig beginne: Alkohol zu trinken. So die warmen Willkommensworte von Sven Murmann, die auch wahre Worte waren. Nur Rainald Götz traute sich, schon nach dem ersten Satz zu applaudieren. Und es wurde ihm namentlich dafür gedankt. Die Botschaft an das Publikum war also auch: Rainald Götz ist unter Ihnen, es wird ein launiger Abend. Jakob Augstein fiel zumindest auch kein weiterer Grund ein, weshalb man die Zusammenkunft „Script“ nannte. Er kam deshalb zum Punkt: Die Bundeskanzlerin habe recht, wir betreten alle „Neuland“. Was die Bundeskanzlerin nun aber nicht tat, sei nunmehr der Auftrag der Anwesenden: die Herausforderungen annehmen.

Die Produktionsbedingungen des Wissens

Den Lotsen für die Reise vom alten ins neue Land hatten die Veranstalter mitgebracht. Als „einen wie uns, nur viel jünger“ kündigte Augstein Evgeny Morozov, den F.A.Z.-Kolumnisten an, dessen Buch „Smarte neue Welt: Digitale Technik und die Freiheit des Menschen“ gerade erschienen ist. Befreien uns die Errungenschaften des Silicon Valley, oder ziehen sie uns eine Zwangsjacke über? So lautete die spontane Fragestellung Augsteins. Angefragt hatte er Morozov allerdings zu einem anderen Thema, nämlich „dem Zustand der Welt“. Ein Thema, das ihm etwas merkwürdig erscheine, ihn aber nicht überfordere, sagte Morozov.

Zurück zum Buchdruck: Evgeny Morozov beim „Script“-Empfang im Frankfurter Hof

Irgendwo im Silicon Valley sitze ein junger Entwickler, der mit einer einzelnen Idee jetzt gerade die Geschäftsmodelle aller Anwesenden zerstöre. „Und allenfalls Sie halten das für eine schlechte Sache“, sagte Morozov, der seiner kurzen Rede keine launige Einführung gönnte. Die Ideologie sei schlicht: Wer Wissen auf einfachere Weise unter die Leute bringe, als dies Buchdrucker und Blattmacher heute tun, leiste einen Beitrag zur Gesellschaft, fördere die Aufklärung, vergrößere das Weltwissen und bringe Ordnung ins Chaos – wie könne das schlecht sein? Was man nur noch nicht herausgefunden habe, sei, in welchem Ausmaß die Zerstörung alter Organisationen die neue Gesellschaft weiterbringe und was dabei übersehen werde. Bislang sei es gelungen, das alte Wissen mit neuen Methoden zu ordnen, wodurch die Produktionsbedingungen des alten Wissens allerdings zerstört würden, und sei es auch nur, weil niemand mehr die Rechnungen bezahle. Die Frage der Finanzierung stelle heute alles in Frage, so Morozov, und verdecke, ganz andere, ebenso drängende Fragen.

Vermarktung in der Datenwolke

Der Rohstoff Wissen werde heute allein in marktfreundlichen Produkten verbaut. Appels iTunes University, ein Modell der Verbreitung des Wissens, zerstöre die Universitäten, die es eigentlich bereithielten. Der Professor werde zum Verkäufer, wie auch der Student, der erst gar kein Zeugnis bekomme. Die Reputationssysteme seien ohnehin längst in Mitleidenschaft gezogen. Wissensgebiete, die nicht ins Silicon-Valley-Schema passten, verschwänden. Es gebe kaum noch soziale Räume für nicht marktkonforme Forschung und Lehre. Was sich in der Wissenschaft abspiele, sei kein Elfenbeinturm-Problem, sondern beispielhaft für das, was auch längst auf den Straßen passiere. Das Rechtssystem, so eine alte philosophische Idee, komme nicht mehr als gesellschaftliche Immunsystem zum Tragen, wenn über die Normen echten Verhaltens nicht mehr debattiert werde, weil in der Big-Data-Welt jede Straftat verhindert werde, bevor sie geschehe. Wie könne überhaupt noch legitim bewertet werden, was kriminell sei, wenn sich die Gesellschaft aus lauter Vorsorge in einer Moral- und Mentalitätsfalle verstricke? Eine Buchmesseneinstimmungsparty war sicherlich der falsche Ort, insbesondere die falsche Zeit, für solche Fragen. Doch zeige sie, schloss Morozov den Gedanken ab, dass die Gesellschaft, die so viel mit Prävention beschäftigt sei, auf das, womit sie es nun zu tun bekomme, gar nicht vorbereitet sei. Die Datenwolke, die alles und alle umhüllt habe, sei heute unsere Arbeits- und Lebenswelt; die einzige Frage, die man sich stelle, sei, wie man sich in ihr am besten vermarkte.

Unbehelligtes Lesen

Was die Eingangsfrage bedeute, werde sich den Anwesenden bald zeigen, wenn die ersten elektronischen Lesegeräte nicht mehr verkauft, sondern verschenkt würden, sagte Morozov – bezahlt werde schließlich trotzdem. Unbehelligtes Lesen werde dann eine Option, die teurere. Statt ums „Produkt Buch“ gehe es dann um den „Service Lesen“, ohne dass sich der Dienstanbieter je wieder abschütteln lasse. Unbehelligtes Lesen werde dann zum sozialen Feature, das eingeschaltet werden müsse, und dadurch zu einem Verhalten, für das man Gründe vorbringen müsse. Wer sich nicht als Kunde zu erkennen gebe, werde es schwer haben in der kommenden Gesellschaft. Morozov erwähnte nicht, dass er das alles ja gar nicht vor Lesern, sondern vor Bürcherverkäufern sagte. Aber es würden die Verlage sein, die darüber entscheiden, ob Geheimdienste eine Datenbank darüber führen werden, wer welche bösen Gedanken liest, deutete er an. Evgeny Morozov, der an dieser Stelle feststellte, dass die angesprochenen Themen „nicht besonders partyfreundlich sind“, läutete die Buchmesse, die sich in diesem Jahr wieder einmal vornahm, nun tatsächlich über E-Books zu diskutieren, mit der Wahnsinnsfrage ein, ob man nicht noch einmal darüber debattieren könne, Papier zu verkaufen, statt Tabletcomputer zu verschenken.

Quelle: F.A.Z.