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Staff Recommendations
Click the book covers to read our booksellers' recommendations and buy these and other recommended books.
Click here to meet our booksellers and see even more of their recommendations.
During National Poetry Month, our bookseller selections will highlight poets' individual collections and books about poetry appreciation.
SAY UNCLE
by Kay Ryan
(Grove Press, $14)
Simple, beautiful, always surprising, Kay Ryan's collection of poems
combine the shortness of a breath with the searing burn of a lasting
phrase and powerful image. Her poems are like little miracles in twelve
lines. - Lacey Dunham
LAST LOOKS,
LAST BOOKS: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill
by Helen Vendler
(Princeton University, $19.95)
Helen Vendler is one of the best guides to poetry that the genre could
have. In this collection of her 2007 Mellon Lectures she looks at five
20th-century American poets who, at the end of their lives, faced the
ultimate personal and artistic challenge of writing about life from the
perspective of imminent death. Is poetry up to the task of embracing and
finding meaning in mortality? Find out here. - Laurie Greer
THE
METAMORPHOSES OF OVID
by Allen Mandelbaum
(Harvest, $20)
Allen Mandelbaum's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses was the funniest,
raciest, most heart-achingly beautiful book I read in college. I
scoffed that no novel could possibly compare. Even now, whenever I crave
a decadently rich literary treat, it's the Metamorphoses I reach for
first. - Elizabeth Sher
Click here for more of
our booksellers' poetry recommendations!
 Rebecca West published this gorgeous novel in 1956, but I think of it as a feminist alternative to Charles Dickens. Narrated by twelve-year-old Rose Aubrey, THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS follows the Edwardian adventures of the Aubrey clan—an eccentric family of musicians and writers ruled largely by its women. >> >> more Recommended by Elizabeth Sher |
 Gavin de Becker's A GIFT OF FEAR means to scare you for your own good. In de Becker's opinion, fear is a gift for sensing danger; it is an important survival instinct that should be respected and, more importantly, acted upon. >> >> more Recommended by Anne Armstrong |
 AN IMPERFECT OFFERING by Dr. James Orbinski might be called a “testament” bearing witness to the best and worst of humanity. If the topics it treats were that simple, it could be broken down into digestible bits for learned discussion and forgotten . . . but there is nothing digestible about this book. >> >> more Recommended by Nicole Martin |
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Jack the Ripper was—if you’ll excuse me—a distant second to William Burke and William Hare of 19th century Edinburgh. Lisa Rosner, a professor of history, has brought them and their world to life in THE ANATOMY MURDERS. It was a widespread practice of the time to dig up corpses in order to sell them to medical men for dissection. >> >> more |
ALL OTHER NIGHTS plunges into a fascinating and little-known world: the network of Jewish spies who served on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line during the Civil War. From New York’s German-Jewish merchants to the slave-owning families of Richmond and New Orleans, Horn deftly captures an insular yet deeply divided community. >> >> more
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We've all read a stack of books with a preternaturally intelligent young person as the protagonist, perfect kids capable of greater depth of insight, genius, or understanding than most grown-ups. These wunderkinder of the literary world can be a bit hard to take at times—they're peaking at 8? 10? 12? Then I met Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet. >> >> more |
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3:15 a.m., a Tangier beach: A group of Moroccans crowd onto a raft bound illegally for Spain. From this uncertain, anonymous departure, Laila Lalami spins utterly captivating tales. The travelers represent every social stratum and hail from the city, suburb, countryside, and slum.>> >> more |
When I need a pick-me-up, I flip through NOBODY'S PERFECT and am instantly cheered. Whether he’s pondering high art or gleefully skewering pop culture, Anthony Lane—whom John Updike called the world's "fizziest critic”—is an irresistible companion. >> >> more |
Dorothea Brooke swooned in Rome. Stendhal fainted in Florence. Jeffrey Atman, the protagonist of JEFF IN VENICE, DEATH IN VARANASI, is sotted and besotted in Venice. The novel is first, a rushing tale of carnal serendipity and bacchanalian excess at the Venice Biennale, the ultimate junket for a hack arts reporter. >> >> more |
 THE INVENTION OF AIR is so much more than an intellectual biography of Joseph Priestley, one of the brightest stars in the 18th Century political, religious and scientific firmament. It is a spectacular demonstration of that virtue Priestley possessed in superabundance, intellectual curiosity. >> >> more Recommended by Michael Allen |
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