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The
Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason
and Faith
by David L. Ulin
Earthquakes are one of the great unsolved geological mysteries, in which science begins to fade to the fringes as an odd assortment of researchers, psychics, and apocalyptics base their predictions on everything from changes in the earth's magnetic fields to the behavior of whales. David L. Ulin's new book is a journey - both personal and cultural - through this world of earthquakes and earthquake prediction, one that seeks a middle ground between science and superstition, while also looking for a larger context in which seismicity might make sense. <<buy now>>
Heaven Lake by John Dalton
Vincent Saunders has graduated from college, left his small hometown in Illinois, and arrived in Taiwan as a Christian volunteer. After opening a ministry house, he meets a wealthy Taiwanese businessman, Mr. Gwa, who tells Vincent that on his far travels to western China he has discovered a beautiful young woman living near the famous landmark Heaven Lake. Elegant, regal, clever, she works a lowly clerk in the local railway station. Gwa wishes to marry her, but is thwarted by the political conflict between China and Taiwan. In exchange for a sum of money, will Vincent travel to China on Gwa's behalf, take part in a counterfeit marriage, and bring her back to Taiwan for Gwa to marry legitimately? Vincent, largely innocent about the ways of the world and believing that marriage is a sacrament, says no. Gwa is furious." Soon, though, everything Vincent understands about himself and his vocation in Taiwan changes. Supplementing his income from his sparsely attended Bible-study classes, he teaches English to a group of enthusiastic schoolgirls - and it is his tender, complicated friendship with a student that forces Vincent to abandon the ministry house and sends him on a path toward spiritual reckoning. It also causes him to reconsider Gwa's extraordinary proposition. (Heaven Lake has been chosen by Barnes and Noble for their Discover Great New Writers program, chosen by Book of the Month Club as an alternate selection ,and nominated for their First Fiction Prize. -stc) <<buy now>>
The Handyman by Carolyn See
The Handyman is the story of Bob Hampton, an aspiring young painter who has had to face the humbling fact that he doesn't know what to paint. And how are you supposed to be an artist in this world if you don't have a vision? Bob trades in his artist's palette for a minivan full of house paints, hammers, and nails, and sets about earning a little cash as a handyman. Although he turns out to be very bad at fixing the things he's hired to fix, Bob demonstrates quite a knack for fixing the lives of the people around him. In the midst of his jerry-built repairs and inspired home improvements, Bob meets an extraordinary cast of characters - rendered in all their delightful eccentricity and human frailty as only Carolyn See can - each of whom shows Bob the true scope of his own remarkable talent. There's Angela Landry, a house wife with far too much time on her hands, a sexpot of a stepdaughter, and a son in need of attention; Jamie Walker, whose allergy-prone and ADD-afflicted children keep a menagerie of scaly pets that far exceed Jamie's managerial skills; Valerie LeClerc, older, sadder, and certainly wiser than Bob; and Hank and Ben, who leave a narrow-minded Midwest only to find unremitting illness and isolation in the California of their dreams. <<buy now>>
Dreaming: Hard Luck & Good
Times in America by Carolyn See
In this bittersweet and beautifully written memoir Carolyn See embarks on nothing less than a reevaluation of the American Dream. "This is a history," she writes, "of how drugs and drink have worked in our family for the last fifty - actually it turned out to be closer to a hundred - years. In varying degrees, it's history seen through a purple haze. It's full of secrets and chaos and distortions, and secretly remembered joys. I'm beginning to think it may be the unwritten history of America." Although it features a clan in which dysfunction was something of a family tradition, Dreaming is no "victim's story" or temperance tract. With a wry humor and not a trace of self-pity, See writes of fights and breakups and hard times, but also of celebration and optimism in the face of adversity. The story of See's own family speaks for the countless people who reached for the shining American vision, found it eluded their grasp, and then tried to make what they had glitter as best they could. Dreaming is about yearning, imagining, and reinventing oneself, about rolling with the punches and continuing on. In this fiercely funny and deeply empathetic book, See shows us that the wild life, for better and worse, has made us what we are. <<buy now>>
Golden Days by Carolyn See
Golden Days is a major novel from one of the most provocative voices on the American literary scene. Linking the recent past with an imagined future, Carolyn See captures life in Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. This marvelously imaginative, hilarious, and original work offers fresh insights into the way we were, the way we are, and the way we could up. <<buy now>>
Making
a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers by Carolyn See
As Carolyn See says, writing guides are like preachers on Sunday
- there may be a lot of them, but you can't have too many and there's always an
audience of the faithful. And while Making a Literary Life is ostensibly a book
that teaches you how to write, it really teaches you how to make your interior
life into your exterior life, how to find and join that community of like-minded
souls you're sure is out there somewhere.
<<buy now>>
Three
Ring Circus, edited by Roseanne Welch
Today's parents are supposed to enjoy the "freedom" to have it all-high-powered careers, passionate partnerships, and brilliant, well-mannered children. That's the spin, at least, from those who have never tried to balance the needs of bosses, spouses, and those demanding little people. Unlike guidebooks or workbooks that simply replace stress with guilt, or that offer tips most parents don't find applicable, Three-Ring Circus offers a variety of real situations and honest stories. Parents will find comfort-and genuine solutions-in this frank collection of first-person accounts that includes married paramedics who work tag-team shifts to care for their four children, confessions of a working mom who finds the challenges of her career infinitely easier than appeasing two kids home sick from daycare, and a dad who shaped his journalism career around his children's lives and wouldn't have it any other way. In all, thirty moms and dads weigh in on making it all work-and knowing what to let go in the name of sanity. <<buy now>>