American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
Published 1991 by Vintage Books USA

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780679735779

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Now a major motion picture from Lion's Gate Films starring Christian Bale (Metroland), Chloe Sevigny (The Last Days of Disco), Jared Leto (My So Called Life), and Reese Witherspoon (Cruel Intentions), and directed by Mary Harron (I Shot Andy Warhol).

In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems
by Cesar Millan
Published 2006 by Harmony

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780307337337

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Cesar Millan, host of TVUs "The Dog Whisperer," offers a fresh and highly readable, commonsense guide to understanding dog behavior and correcting common dog problems. 25 illustrations & photos.

Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card
Published 1994 by Tor Books

Mass Market Paperbound, English. ISBN: 9780812550702

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The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning classic--the revised, definitive edition, from the bestselling author of Xenocide. The alien Buggers threaten humanity with extinction, and Earth's ultimate savior may be one small boy. Andrew "Ender" Wiggins thinks he is only playing computer games, but he is really commanding Earth's last great fleet.

Good Dog. Stay.
by Anna Quindlen
Published 2007 by Random House

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9781400067138

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Quindlen honors the life of her beloved black Labrador retriever, Beau, in this heartening and bittersweet work. With her trademark wisdom and humor, Quindlen reflects on how her life has unfolded in tandem with Beaus, and on the lessons shes learned by watching him.

The Leiber Chronicles: Fifty Years of Fritz Leiber
by Fritz Leiber
Published 1990 by Dark Harvest

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780913165485

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REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 02/16/1990

The year 1939 was a turning point for science fiction and fantasy. It saw the first publication of stories by Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt and Theodore Sturgeon, who, with a few others, virtually created modern science fiction, and by Fritz Leiber, one of the fathers of modern fantasy. In celebration of his 50-year career, this hefty volume features 44 of his best shorter works. Included are his first story, ``Two Sought Adventure,'' which introduced the swashbucklers Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, of ancient, imaginary Lankhmar, as well as three other stories about this colorful duo; four horror stories, including ``The Girl with the Hungry Eyes,'' an eerie meditation on the connections between sex, death and advertising; the science-fictional ``Sanity,'' ``A Pail of Air'' and the cautionary ``Coming Attractions''; the hilarious spoof of Mickey Spillane, ``The Night He Cried''; and the joyful, chilling ``Gonna Roll the Bones,'' about a confrontation with the Devil over a gambling table, for the highest of stakes. A literate and effective writer, Leiber is one of the two best fantasists to come out of the pulps--the other is Bradbury--but he remains under-appreciated. This volume should be something of a corrective. (Apr.)

The Memory Keeper's Daughter
by Kim Edwards
Published 2005 by Viking Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780670034161

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A doctor delivers his own twins, and upon seeing that the daughter has Down's syndrome, tells his nurse to take the baby to an institution and never reveal the secret. The nurse disappears into another city to raise the child herself in this tale of redemptive love and long-buried secrets that unfolds over a quarter of a century.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 05/16/2005

Edwards's assured but schematic debut novel (after her collection, The Secrets of a Fire King) hinges on the birth of fraternal twins, a healthy boy and a girl with Down syndrome, resulting in the father's disavowal of his newborn daughter. A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul's twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives, and Phoebe's absence corrodes her birth family's core over the course of the next 25 years. David's undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents' icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well. Though the impact of Phoebe's loss makes sense, Edwards's redundant handling of the trope robs it of credibility. This neatly structured story is a little too moist with compassion. Agent, Geri Thoma . (July)

Pattern Recognition
by William Gibson
Published 2003 by G. P. Putnam's Sons

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780399149863

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REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 01/20/2003

Gibson, known as the "patron saint of cyberpunk lit," has made his reputation with futuristic tales. Though his new novel is set in the present, baroque descriptions of everyday articles and menacing anthropomorphic treatment of the Internet and sister technology give it a sci-fi feel. Cayce Pollard, a market researcher with razor-sharp intuition, makes big bucks by evaluating potential products and advertising campaigns. In London, she stays in the trendy digs of documentary filmmaker friend Damien (away on assignment), whom she e-mails frequently. When Cayce brusquely rejects the new logo of advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend, she earns his respect and a big check but makes an enemy of his graphic designer, vindictive Dorotea Benedetti. Hubertus later hires Cayce to ferret out the origin of a series of sensual film clips appearing guerrilla style on computers all over the world and attracting a growing cult following. Cayce treats this as a standard job until somebody breaks into Damien's flat and hacks into her computer. Suddenly every casual encounter carries undertones of danger. Her investigative trail takes her to Tokyo and Russia and through a rogue's gallery of iconoclastic Web-heads. Casting a further shadow is the memory of her father, Win, a security expert (probably CIA) missing and presumed dead in the World Trade Center disaster of exactly a year earlier. For complicated reasons even she doesn't understand, she connects her current dilemma with her father's tragedy and follows the trail with the fervor of a personal vendetta. Gibson's brisk, kinetic style and incisive observations should keep the reader entertained even when Cayce's quest begins to lose urgency. Gibson's best book since Mona Lisa Overdrive should satisfy his hardcore fans while winning plenty of new ones. Agent, Martha Millard. 10-city author tour; rights sold in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain and the U.K. (Feb.) Forecast: Given Gibson's reputation with SF fans, his grasp of popular culture and state-of-the-art technology and his inimitable narrative voice, this chase thriller should take off right out of the gate.

05/01/2003 REVIEW: School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Cayce Pollard is a well-paid professional marketer. She and her friends-filmmakers, dealers in electronic esoterica, designers, and hackers-live on the cutting edge of a highly technological, "post-geographic" world, where the manipulation of cultural trends can bring great power. When she is employed to discover the source of "the Footage," a mysterious film that has been appearing in bits and pieces on the Web and gathering a worldwide underground following, her survival is at stake. In her search for the auteur, she outwits corporate spies, terrorists, and mobsters in London, Tokyo, Moscow, and New York; struggles with ethical issues; and even delves into the mystery of her father's disappearance on September 11, 2001. Some readers might feel that this novel demands too much of them-the prose is witty, each page challenges with provocative observations, and there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. But those who enjoyed Gibson's earlier work, or the writing of Neal Stephenson or Bruce Sterling, should relish this headlong race through an unsettling but recognizable world to a surprisingly humane conclusion.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Queenpin
by Megan Abbott
Published 2007 by Simon & Schuster

Paperback, English. ISBN: 9781416534280

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Jacket Notes:

An Edgar] nominee for "Die a Little," Abbotts latest mystery puts a feminine twist on a classic story of underworld seduction.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 04/30/2007

Edgar-finalist Abbott (Die a Little) delivers a sharp, slender, hardboiled tale of a protégé's schooling by a notorious, been-there-done-that moll. The first time the unnamed 22-year-old female narrator lays eyes on Gloria Denton, her first thought is "I want the legs." The setting is the Club Tee Hee, an indeterminate Las Vegas-L.A. nowhere where "the kid" is doing the mobbed-up books, and Gloria comes in every few weeks to count "Jerome's vig." The kid absorbs very entertaining lessons in how to dress, move, behave, and how to pick up, transport and distribute payoffs and winnings-until she falls for sweet-talking gambler Vic Riordan. Abbott is pitch-perfect throughout: Gloria Denton, still turning heads in her 40s, is as hard a moll as any, and the kid is a beautiful combination of foil and tool as she strives to emulate her role model. The collision, violent and inevitable, rips away the facade of glitz and glamour, and leaves their low-end edifice starkly exposed. (June)

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
by Jeffrey Toobin
Published 2007 by Doubleday Books

Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780385516402

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Based on exclusive interviews with the Supreme Court Justices themselves and other insiders, "The Nine "is a timely and provocative state of the union about Americas most elite legal institution. As a CNN senior legal analyst, "New Yorker" staff writer, and bestselling author, no one is more superbly qualified on this topic than Jeffrey Toobin.

REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 07/09/2007

It's not laws or constitutional theory that rule the High Court, argues this absorbing group profile, but quirky men and women guided by political intuition.New Yorker legal writer Toobin (The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson ) surveys the Court from the Reagan administration onward, as the justices wrestled with abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gay rights and church-state separation. Despite a Court dominated by Republican appointees, Toobin paints not a conservative revolution but a period of intractable moderation. The real power, he argues, belonged to supreme swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor, who decided important cases with what Toobin sees as an "almost primal" attunement to a middle-of-the-road public consensus. By contrast, he contends, conservative justices Rehnquist and Scalia ended up bitter old men, their rigorous constitutional doctrines made irrelevant by the moderates' compromises. The author deftly distills the issues and enlivens his narrative of the Court's internal wranglings with sharp thumbnail sketches (Anthony Kennedy the vain bloviator, David Souter the Thoreauvian ascetic) and editorials ("inept and unsavory" is his verdict on the Court's intervention in the 2000 election). His savvy account puts the supposedly cloistered Court right in the thick of American life. (A final chapter and epilogue on the 2006-2007 term, with new justices Roberts and Alito, was unavailable toPW .)(Sept. 18)