Nineteen Minutes: A novel

Starred Review. Bestseller Picoult (My Sister's Keeper) takes on another contemporary hot-button issue in her brilliantly told new thriller, about a high school shooting. Peter Houghton, an alienated teen who has been bullied for years by the popular crowd, brings weapons to his high school in Sterling, N.H., one day and opens fire, killing 10 people. Flashbacks reveal how bullying caused Peter to retreat into a world of violent computer games. Alex Cormier, the judge assigned to Peter's case, tries to maintain her objectivity as she struggles to understand her daughter, Josie, one of the surviving witnesses of the shooting. The author's insights into her characters' deep-seated emotions brings this ripped-from-the-headlines read chillingly alive. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You to Know About

By the #1 New York Times bestselling author Kevin Trudeau comes the last diet you will ever need. Imagine, you will lose at least 30 pounds in 30 days...with no hunger...no exercise...and no surgery!

An absolute cure for obesity was discovered almost fifty years ago by a British medical doctor. Tens of thousands of people used this simple, inexpensive, safe medical treatment and achieved miraculous, fast, and permanent weight loss. Stubborn area fat deposits melted away. Body reshaping of the hips, thighs, buttocks, and waist was so dramatic it appeared as if the patients received liposuction! Amazingly, this medical breakthrough has been debunked, discredited, and suppressed by the American Medical Association, the Food and Drug Administration, and other medical establishments throughout the world. Now, for the first time in fifty years, this revolutionary breakthrough discovery, which permanently cures the condition of obesity, is being released to the public.

The main problems that overweight people deal with are massive, intense, constant physical hunger; food cravings and uncontrollable urges to eat when not hungry; low metabolism; and an abnormally high amount of fat stored in stubborn secure problem areas such as the hips, thighs, buttocks, and waist. This "weight loss cure protocol" has been proven to be virtually 100% successful in correcting these conditions, thus curing the individual of obesity for life! Read the fascinating true story of how this discovery was made and, more importantly, how this miracle weight loss breakthrough has been hidden from the public so that drug companies can make billions of dollars selling their expensive drug treatments and surgical procedures for obesity. You'll be amazed to read how the food manufacturers actually have a financial incentive to make you fat! This is the book that answers all the questions about why people today are continually getting fatter and fatter. The good news is this book gives you the cure that can solve your overweight condition once and for all.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

It's difficult to imagine a harder first act to follow than The Kite Runner: a debut novel by an unknown writer about a country many readers knew little about that has gone on to have over four million copies in print worldwide. But when preview copies of Khaled Hosseini's second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, started circulating at Amazon.com, readers reacted with a unanimous enthusiasm that few of us could remember seeing before. As special as The Kite Runner was, those readers said, A Thousand Splendid Suns is more so, bringing Hosseini's compassionate storytelling and his sense of personal and national tragedy to a tale of two women that is weighted equally with despair and grave hope. We wanted to share the book as soon as we could and find out what other readers thought, so we asked our top customer reviewers to read A Thousand Splendid Suns and give us their reactions. --The Editors

The Woods

At the start of this disappointing stand-alone from bestseller Coben (Promise Me), Paul "Cope" Copeland, acting county prosecutor for Essex County, N.J., and Lucy Gold, his long-lost summer camp love, are still haunted by a fateful night, decades earlier, when their nighttime tryst allowed some younger campers, including Cope's sister, to venture into the nearby forest, where they apparently fell victim to the Summer Slasher, a serial killer. Cope's intense focus on a high-profile rape prosecution of some wealthy college students shifts after one of the Slasher's victims, whose body was never found, turns up as a recent corpse in Manhattan, casting doubt on the official theory of the old case. Cope's own actions on that night again come under scrutiny, even as the highly placed fathers of the men he's prosecuting work to unearth as many skeletons as possible to pressure him into dropping the rape case. Less than compelling characters fail to compensate for a host of implausibilities. Hopefully, Coben will return to form with his next book. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Little Green Book of Getting Your Way: How to Speak, Write, Present, Persuade, Influence, and Sell Your Point of View to Others

Following in the bestselling footsteps of Little Red Book of Selling, Little Red Book of Sales Answers, Little Black Book of Connections, and The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, Jeffrey Gitomer's The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way digs deep into the 9.5 elements that make persuasion, and getting your way, happen. By breaking down the elements, the reader will begin to understand, take action, become proficient, and then master the ability to persuade. Because persuasion occurs in so many different areas of life and business, Gitomer leads the reader from mental readiness to the principles of getting your way and the power that persuasion offers. He challenges the reader to prepare before they present, to prepare before they try to persuade. He demonstrates how to change a presentation into a performance and shows how this can be done in any environment. But because persuasion most often takes place in business, he draws special emphasis to the reader's ability to write and sell persuasively. The book talks about the persistence that enables winning persuasion. He brings the Benjamin Franklin quote "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" to the Gitomer level of "You only fail when you decide to quit," and the book ends challenging the reader how to think about excellence and eloquence. It will be up to the reader to take advantage of the opportunity and harness the power.

The 6th Target

When a horrifying attack leaves one of the four members
of the Women's Murder Club struggling for her life, the
others fight to keep a madman behind bars before anyone
else is hurt. And Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the
San Francisco police department run flat-out to stop a series
of kidnappings that has electrified the city: children are
being plucked off the streets together with their nannies--
but the kidnappers aren't demanding ransom. Amid
uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility
of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the
knowledge that one member of the club could be on the
brink of death.
And just when everything appears momentarily under
control, the case takes a terrifying turn, putting an entire
city in lethal danger. Lindsay must make a choice she never
dreamed she'd face--with no certainty that either outcome
has more than a prayer of success.

Crazy Aunt Purls Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair: The True-Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split

After her husband of eight years left her to “get his creativity back,” Crazy Aunt Purl took up knitting, not to unleash her Inner Domestic Goddess, but to keep from obsessing over him. She soon became addicted to knitting—from fondling new yarns at JoAnn Fabrics to putting down the Cheetos in favor of attending a knitting group. By “picking up the sticks,” she picked up her life. Here, in this spin-off of her wildly popular blog, www.crazyauntpurl.com (10,000 visitors a day!), she chronicles how she gets her groove back . . . while knitting some really cool (and really botched) stuff in the process.

Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair is the irreverent first-person narrative of Crazy Aunt Purl facing life as a contemporary cat-loving, divorced, knitting-obsessed female. Readers will laugh and cry with her as she gets dumped (“cast off” in knitting terms), gains weight (“casts on”), and finds new friends, and her true self, as she learns to knit.

I Heard That Song Before: A Novel

At the start of bestseller Clark's riveting new novel of suspense, Kay Lansing recalls her first visit as a six-year-old to the Carrington estate in Englewood, N.J., where her father worked as a landscaper. Twenty-two years later, she returns to ask the present owner, Peter Carrington, if she can use the mansion for a fund-raiser. The two fall madly in love, and after a whirlwind courtship, they marry despite the shadow of suspicion that hangs over Peter regarding the death of a neighbor's daughter two decades earlier and the drowning of his first wife four years before. After an idyllic honeymoon, the couple return to New Jersey, where a magazine article has caused the police to reopen the cases. The subsequent discovery of two bodies buried on the estate causes even Kay to doubt her husband's innocence. Clark (Two Little Girls in Blue) deftly keeps the finger of guilt pointed in many directions until the surprising conclusion. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Infidel

Starred Review. Readers with an eye on European politics will recognize Ali as the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations, where she was subjected to genital mutilation and later forced into an unwanted marriage. While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government. Apart from feelings of guilt over van Gogh's death, her voice is forceful and unbowed—like Irshad Manji, she delivers a powerful feminist critique of Islam informed by a genuine understanding of the religion. 8-page photo insert. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Body of Lies: A Novel

Starred Review. Displaying his trademark expertise and writing skill, Washington Post columnist Ignatius (Agents of Innocence) has crafted one of the best post-9/11 spy thrillers yet. Subtly framing a highly elaborate plot, Ignatius tells the story of idealistic CIA agent Roger Ferris, newly stationed in Jordan after being wounded in Iraq. After a failed initiative to flush out a terrorist mastermind known as Suleiman, Ferris, who's dedicated to forestalling further al-Qaeda attacks, develops an intricate scheme modeled after a British plan used successfully against the Nazis. Ferris's plot to turn the terrorists against each other by sowing seeds of suspicion that their leaders are collaborating with the Americans puts his personal life in turmoil and threatens his professional relationship with the head of Jordanian intelligence. Few readers will anticipate the jaw-dropping conclusion, and the pairing of first-rate espionage suspense with fully developed characters should propel this onto the bestseller lists and possibly attract Hollywood interest. Author tour. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Batman: Secrets

Sam Kieth, renowned illustrator of THE SANDMAN, has earned a reputation for creating comic-book epics that combine powerful action and thought-provoking themes. Now, he brings that vision to Batman in a story that pits the Dark Knight against the Joker -- all under the unforgiving eye of the media.

Their confrontation is caught on film, and Gotham City's protector appears to pummel his archenemy without mercy. The Joker uses this to frame Batman in the court of public opinion while the media hover like vultures, ready to convict before all the facts are in.

The Last Christmas

After the apocalypse, no one is safe; not even at the North Pole. After tragedy strikes, Santa withdraws from life and turns his back on Christmas. When he finally emerges from seclusion, the old world is gone forever, and as Santa struggles to find his way in a post-apocalyptic world, can he find a way to save Christmas too?

Lost Girls (Hardcover Comic)

Although Moore (Watchmen, 1987; From Hell, 2000) is arguably comics' most popular writer, many fans and more libraries may be scared off from his latest project, an unabashedly porno graphic novel in which Wonderland's Alice, Oz's Dorothy, and Neverland's Wendy reveal their carnal natures by relating their past sexual encounters and coupling in the present, especially with one another. While explicit sex, including incest, is on virtually every page, Moore has an agenda beyond titillation. The work voices an impassioned defense of artistic freedom that stresses that fiction and fantasies aren't the same as actual events and behavior. "Only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them," one character proclaims. Gebbie's delicate, painted style, rife with art nouveau references, somewhat mitigates the sensational subject matter. She and Moore have labored on Lost Girls since 1991, and the book's lavish production (three oversize, hardcover volumes in a slipcase) monumentalizes their dedication and adds a high price tag to the red-flag contents to put off all but readers and collections highly tolerant of the transgressive. Gordon Flagg

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell

Starred Review. Washington Post reporter DeYoung covers Powell's entire career in this nuanced, comprehensively researched first complete biography to bring to life the Jamaican immigrants' son who became chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretary of state and a widely supported potential candidate for president. DeYoung presents her subject as above all a soldier, with an ethic of honor and service shaped by his career in the U.S. Army, during which he brought a combination of intellectual force and moral courage to his senior military appointments that distinguished him among his contemporaries. DeYoung, who obtained six in-depth interviews with Powell, explains that he wrestled with whether or not he had the duty to run for president in 2000, but ultimately realized he didn't want the presidency from the "depth of [his] stomach or soul." She correspondingly demonstrates that his continuing commitment to public service drove his ascension to secretary of state—a commitment that was strained to the limit during Powell's four years in office. DeYoung paints a favorable but balanced portrait of Powell, and she avoids using him as an instrument for Bush-bashing. Powell emerges from her account as a person who grew to meet his wider responsibilities.

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York

George Appo, the antihero of this fascinating historical study, was a pickpocket and con man who gained notoriety after testifying in 1894 about police corruption and even played himself on Broadway. Historian Gilfoyle, who in City of Eros wrote about prostitution in New York, uses Appo's autobiography as a starting point for an exploration of the urban demimonde and the varieties of criminal experience in the Gilded Age. We follow Appo through Gotham's teeming sidewalks and streetcars as he casually picks pockets for spending money and then smokes it away in opium dens where the classes and races mingle. Sooner or later he runs afoul of New York's police and court system, almost as corrupt and chaotic as the criminal subculture they regulate. Then he's off to an archipelago of correctional institutions, from a shipboard reform school to Sing Sing, a prison-industrial hellhole where convicts are contracted out as factory laborers and disciplined with such tortures as the "weighing machine." Gilfoyle paints a Hogarthian cityscape peopled with gang ruffians, gentleman swindlers, dirty politicians, cunning shysters and evangelical reformers, all depicted with a sympathetic understanding of the rigors of life on the margins. The result is a colorful, evocative social history. 60 illus. (Aug.)

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

Neal Gabler's meticulously researched biography, Walt Disney offers the full story (Gabler is the first writer to gain complete access to the Disney archives) of the American icon. Readers will discover the whole story, witnessing Disney's invention of a "synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise." What fans don't know could fill a book (this book in fact), and we asked Gabler to point out a few of the juicy bits. Read our interview with him, and his "10 Things That May Surprise You" list below. --Daphne Durham

The Complete Roman Army

The Roman army was one of the most successful fighting forces in history. Its highly advanced organization and tactics were unequaled until the modern era, and monuments to its perseverance and engineering skill are still visible today throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world.

This book is the first to examine in detail not just the early imperial army, but also the citizens' militia of the republic and the army of the later empire. Every aspect of the Roman army, from the daily lives of individual soldiers to the outcome of major campaigns, is explored:

• The Republican Army considers the earliest armies, the creation of the Roman navy, and the militia army that conquered the Mediterranean.
• The Professional Army describes reforms under Marius and his successors and the creation of the new legionary structure.
• The Life of a Roman Soldier looks in detail at all aspects, from recruitment and daily routine to equipment and off-duty life.
• The Army at War reveals how the army operated, from grand tactics to hand-to-hand combat and siege warfare.
• The Army of Late Antiquity examines the reorganization after the defeats of the third century and the rise in the use of cavalry.

Discussions of key Roman battles and brief biographies of the great commanders bring the army's campaigns and personalities to life, while hundreds of photographs, diagrams, and specially commissioned battle plans illustrate the many aspects of the Roman army over several centuries. 245 illustrations, 107 in color.

The Double Bind: A Novel

Best known for the provocative and powerful novel, Midwives (an Oprah Book Club® Selection), Chris Bohjalian writes beautiful and riveting fiction featuring what the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed "ordinary people in heartbreaking circumstances behaving with grace and dignity." In his new novel, The Double Bind, a literary thriller with references to (and including characters from) The Great Gatsby, Bohjalian takes readers on a haunting journey through one woman's obsession with uncovering a dark secret. We think Bohjalian fans will be thrilled with this compelling and unforgettable read, but just to be sure, we asked bestselling author Jodi Picoult to read The Double Bind and give us her take.

Sisters

Four stunningly beautiful Connecticut-bred sisters pursue their disparate careers in prolific Steel's (H.R.H.) latest. There's Candy, 21, a supermodel with an eating disorder, on location in Paris; Annie, 26, a RISD-grad studying painting in Florence; Tammy, at 29 an L.A. TV producer with a new hit and no life; and Sabrina, 34, a workaholic, commitment-phobic family attorney. No matter what, all meet at Mommy and Daddy's for July 4, Thanksgiving and Christmas. During one of the reunions, a disastrous car accident kills their beautiful, dutiful mother and leaves artist Annie blind. Sabrina comes up with a plan for the sisters to live ensemble in a New York brownstone, so that they might grieve and ease Annie's transition into the sightless world. The questions then become Will Candy eat? Will Sabrina commit? Will Tammy have a hit? Will Annie transition? And will Dad love again? Legions of fans expect an emphatic yes, and they won't be disappointed. But they can also expect decapitation, rape and emotional betrayal, which work like little shocks to keep pages turning. (Feb.)