There's a little over a week left to vote in WGBH's Boston A-List contest, where we're up for best bookstore. Click here to vote for us, or find us under Shopping: Bookstore. There are lots of other great categories too, so you'll have a chance to vote for all your favorite local businesses!
For the last installment of our fall book preview, we turn to children's book buyer Kari. These are broken up into rough age groups, but feel free to ask one of our children's booksellers if you need more specific advice tailored to the kids in your life.
A picture book for all ages: Middle Grade (ages 8 or 9 and up): Young Adult (ages 12 or 13 and up): - Dodger by Terry Pratchett - And a Dickens-inspired book for the older set. A bit alternate history, a bit literary mash-up, this novel follows Dodger through the streets of London in adventures with Charles Dickens and others I hesitate to name. I don't want to spoil anything.
- Son by Lois Lowry - The conclusion to Lowry's Giver Quartet. What more do you need to know?
- The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde - Jasper Fforde's first novel for younger readers is as witty as his grown-up fare. This is the first of what I hope is a series about fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and the Kazam magician employment agency.
- The Diviners by Libba Bray - It's the Jazz Age with supernatural powers, a serial killer, and Dark Forces! Libba Bray at her historical best.
Finally, this week, a correction: In my haste to get last week's newsletter out before I went on vacation, I accidentally attributed The Pilgrim's Progress to Paul Bunyan instead of John Bunyan (and I misspelled his name to boot!). Thanks to one of our eagle-eyed readers, Robert, for spotting the error.
'Til Next Week,
Rachel 
|  | New on Our Shelves: The Latest in Fiction, Nonfiction, Scholarly Books & In Store Book Printing
| | | Fiction | |
 | | Long Time, No See
by Dermot Healy
$27.95
Viking Adult, hardcover
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| | Set in an isolated coastal town in northwest Ireland, Long Time, No See centers around a cast of innocents and wounded, broken misfits. The story is narrated by a young man known as Mister Psyche who is drawn into a series of bemusing and unsettling misadventures with two men some fifty years his senior--his granduncle Joejoe and Joejoe's neighbor The Blackbird--characters full of ancient jealousies and grudges and holding some very dark secrets.
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| | | Nonfiction | |
 | | The Violinist's Thumb and Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
by Sam Kean
$25.99
Little, Brown and Co., hardcover
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| | In The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean unlocked the mysteries of the periodic table. In The Violinist's Thumb, he explores the wonders of the magical building block of life: DNA. Genes illuminate everything from JFK's bronze skin (it wasn't a tan), to Einstein's genius, to why some people survive nuclear bombs. They can even allow some people, because of the exceptional flexibility of their thumbs and fingers, to become truly singular violinists. Kean's storytelling once again makes science entertaining, exploring human history while showing how DNA will influence our species' future.
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| | Printed on Paige
Each week, we'll feature a book printed in Harvard Book Store on Paige, our book-making machine. Featured books will range from fresh works from local authors to near-forgotten titles discovered in our extensive print-on-demand database. | |
 | | Above & Beyond Wellfleet
by Constance B. Wilder
$12.99
Print on Demand, paperback
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| | "I picked up my pen a little over a month before my husband died and started writing my heart out; I never stopped. The stories in this book are a peek into that heart. A heart which was breaking. This book is a memoir about love lost and courage gained. While grief is universal, each person's response is unique. Grief hollows a person. Just when strength and courage are required to cope with the loss, the spirit is frail. These stories are about the unwelcome challenge of learning to live alone--not by choice but by circumstance. They are about the monumental and the mundane aspects of coping with loss and learning how to create a new way of living." --Constance B. Wilder
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| | | Bargain Books | Bargain Books are new books at used-book prices. We have a limited number of copies of these titles, so if you see something that you're interested in, come in and check it out soon. To see more of our Bargain Books section, visit our Bargain Books page.
| | The New Yorker Stories
by Ann Beattie
$5.99 paperback (originally $18) | Ann Beattie began publishing short stories in The New Yorker in the mid 1970s, and every one of the stories she has had in the magazine during her thirty-five-year career with them appears in this anthology. Beattie's literary examinations of American family life resonate across generations.
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| | In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
by Daniyal Mueenuddin
$4.99 hardcover (originally $23.95) | |
Made up of a series of interconnected stories set in feudal Pakistan, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders shows how class, gender, profession, and age affect the varied lives of the many related characters featured. From a politician to a landowner, from a society girl to a servant woman, each character and his or her situation shows a different side of a shared humanity.
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| | The Wisdom of Birds
by Tim Birkhead
$7.99, hardcover (originally $45) | | With over one hundred illustrations, and as appropriate and approachable for the experienced birder as it is for the backyard bird enthusiast, The Wisdom of Birds gives a comprehensive history of ornithology, including some of the many myths and folktales about birds, why they inspire so much fascination, and some little-known facts about our feathered friends. |
| | | Recent Finds Downstairs in the Used Book Department | |
Featured used books go fast, so if any titles interest you, stop in to check them out soon. We will hold the book if you are the first caller to reserve it. To reserve a book, call (617) 661-1515 and ask for our Used Department. We're also always looking for books to buy. Learn about selling your used books, including textbooks, here.
| | Akira
by Katsuhiro Otomo
Originally published by Kodansha, Ltd. in 1984
$85 (paperback, six volumes) in Very Good Condition | Japanese manga classic Akira is set in a post-apocalyptic city built where the city of Tokyo (which was destroyed in the nuclear blast that started World War III) once was. The city, called Neo-Tokyo, is beset with violence among rival gangs and terrorist groups, and a monstrous power called Akira threatens to destroy Neo-Tokyo for good.
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| | Saints and Avengers:
British Adventure Series of the 1960s
by James Chapman
Originally published by I.B. Tauris in 2002
$18 (paperback) in Very Good Condition | | Saints and Avengers examines the place of the adventure series, filled with secret agents and private detectives, in the history of British television and pop culture. Author James Chapman argues that the adventure series is particularly British, and that these series played an important role in exporting "Britishness" during their heyday in the 1960s. |
| | Sound Commitments:
Avant-Garde Music and the Sixties
edited by Robert Adlington
Originally published by Oxford University Press in 2009
$16 (paperback) in Very Good Condition | Throughout the activist 1960s, many avant-garde musicians were intensely involved in the era's social and political upheavals, and they often sought to reflect this engagement in their music. Sound Commitments examines the encounter of avant-garde music and "the Sixties" across a range of genres, aesthetic positions, and geographical locations.
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Author Events
Tickets on sale now:
Meghan McCain and Michael Ian Black (7/26)
Subscribe to the Harvard Book Store Google Event Calendar here.
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Marjorie Garber
Mon, July 16, 7PM
|  | Harvard professor of English and Visual and Environmental Studies Marjorie Garber discusses her new collection of essays, Loaded Words.
| At Harvard Book Store
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G. Willow Wilson
Wed, July 18, 7PM
|  | G. Willow Wilson, a graphic novelist, memoirist, and blogger on politics and culture, reads from her new novel, Alif the Unseen.
| At Harvard Book Store
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Colson Whitehead
Thurs, July 19, 7PM
|  | | Colson Whitehead, bestselling author of Sag Harbor, reads from the new paperback edition of his zombie novel, Zone One. | At Harvard Book Store
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Don Lee
Tues, July 24, 7PM
|  | Award-winning novelist and short story writer Don Lee reads from his newest novel, The Collective.
Co-sponsored with Ploughshares.
| At Harvard Book Store
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Michael Ian Black and Meghan McCain
Thurs, July 26, 6PM
|  | Comedian Michael Ian Black and political commentator Meghan McCain discuss America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom.
| At the Brattle Theatre
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Harvard Square Book Circle
Mon, July 30, 7PM
|  | The Harvard Square Book Circle, our in-store book club, discusses Jesmyn Ward's National Book Award-winning novel Salvage the Bones.
| At Harvard Book Store
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Things to know about our $5 tickets...
$5 tickets are also coupons good for $5 off a purchase at events or at Harvard Book Store. Coupons expire 30 days after the event, and cannot be used for online purchases, event tickets, or gift certificates. Please note that your ticket only guarantees you a seat until 5 minutes before an event begins.
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We appreciate the feedback we get from readers of this e-newsletter.
Please send your comments and suggestions to Rachel at rcass@harvard.com. Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you in the store!
Rachel Cass
Marketing Manager
rcass@harvard.com
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