Featured Books: September 2009

New In Paperback!	Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (Paperback) by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner $27.95 / 9780060731335 / Harper Perennial Steven Levitt, through devilishly clever and clear-eyed thinking, shows how to seethrough all the clutter. "Freakonomics" establishes this unconventional premise: If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work. It is true that readers of this book will be armed with enough riddles and stories to last a thousand cocktail parties. But "Freakonomics" can provide more than that. It will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

New In Paperback!	The Hour I First Believed (Paperback) by Wally Lamb $15.99 / 9780060988432 / Harper Perennial The #1 "New York Times"-bestselling author and two-time Oprah's Book Club pick delivers an extraordinary work of prodigious scope and ambition that explores the consequences of violent events, and the chaos that ensues.

New In Paperback!	A Lion Among Men: Volume Three in the Wicked Years (Paperback) by Gregory Maguire $16.00 / 9780060859725 / Harper Paperbacks In this third novel of the "New York Times"-bestselling series, civil war looms in Oz, and an ancient oracle named Yackle prepares for death. But before she can die, the Cowardly Lion arrives seeking knowledge about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West.

New In Paperback!	The Lace Reader (Paperback) by Brunonia Barry $14.99 / 9780061624773 / Harper Paperbacks Every gift has a price . . . every piece of lace has a secret. Towner Whitney, the self-confessed unreliable narrator, hails from a family of Salem women who can read the future in the patterns in lace, and who have guarded a history of secrets going back generations. Now the disappearance of two women is bringing Towner back home to Salem--and is bringing to light the shocking truth about the death of her twin sister.

	Anathem by Neal Stephenson $7.99 / 9780061474101 / Harper Since childhood, Erasmus has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery. There, he and his cohorts are sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, and unpredictable secular world, until the day that a higher power decides it is only these cloistered scholars who have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe.

	Unbound by Kim Harrison $7.99 / 9780061699931 / Harper Collins Not all hunters are bound by human laws . . . Revisiting the paranormal realms they've made famous in their wildly popular fiction, New York Times bestselling authors Kim Harrison, Jeaniene Frost, Vicki Pettersson, and Jocelynn Drake—plus New York Times bestselling YA author Melissa Marr with her first adult supernatural thriller—unleash their full arsenal of dark talents, plunging us into the shadows where the supernatural stalk the unsuspecting . . . and every soul is a target. Get ready for the ride of your life—because the wildest magic has just been unleashed . . . and evil is about to have its day.

	Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane $7.99 / 9780061703256 / Harper Summer, 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them. But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. And neither is Teddy Daniels. Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe's radical approach to psychiatry? An approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing. . . . Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there? As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount: How has a barefoot woman escaped the island from a locked room? Who is leaving clues in the form of cryptic codes? Why is there no record of a patient committed there just one year before? What really goes on in Ward C? Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards? The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive them insane. . . .

	Why Is Daddy in a Dress? by Amanda McCall $9.99 / 9780061857546 / Harper Paperbacks Why face the embarrassment of dealing with life's most awkward questions when adorable baby animals can do it for you? Amanda McCall and Ben Schwartz, the creators of the wickedly lovable Grandma's Dead, return with Why is Daddy in a Dress?, another invaluable aid to avoiding sticky situations. A book of postcards featuring cuddly kittens, playful puppies, fuzzy ducklings, and hoppity baby bunnies broaching sensitive subjects like "Are you a hooker?" or "Can we stop cuddling?," Why is Daddy in a Dress? is the perfect cure for foot-in-mouth disease.