2010 Picks by
the Midwest Booksellers AssociationJanuary | February | March | April | May | June
Happy: A Memoir
by Alex Lemon
$25Jen says: Way back in October, we attended the Midwest Booksellers Association’s trade show. Sally and I had the honor of sharing a table with author Alex Lemon over supper one evening. At the trade show, we receive a plethora of books. Alex Lemon’s Happy was the first one I read. In fact, I had nearly finished it by the time I returned home at the end of the trade show weekend. Like Alex in person, Happy gives us all (or seemingly all) of Alex: the boisterous partying college student; the scared young man who fears he might not survive brain surgery; the not so honorable boyfriend; the son; and all other parts of him. In the past, Alex Lemon has published prose poetry. The voice in Happy is one that is so accessible and so succinct. Not every poet is able to write a memoir, but Alex Lemon has done a terrific job.
Out of the Northwoods: The Many Lives of Paul Bunyan
by Michael Edmonds
$24.95*This was also a pick in the Midwest Booksellers 2009 catalog. If you haven’t redeemed your 10% off one catalog book coupon in the back of the catalog yet, you have until January 31st, 2010 to do so!
Every American has heard of the lumberjack hero Paul Bunyan and his big blue ox. For 100 years his exploits filled cartoons, magazines, short stories, and children’s books, and his name advertised everything from pancake breakfasts to construction supplies. By 1950 Bunyan was a ubiquitous icon of America’s strength and ingenuity. Until now, no one knew where he came from—and the extent to which this mythical hero is rooted in Wisconsin.
Out of the Northwoods presents the culture of nineteenth-century lumberjacks in their own words. It includes eyewitness accounts of how the first Bunyan stories were shared on frigid winter nights, around logging camp stoves, in the Wisconsin pinery. It describes where the tales began, how they moved out of the forest and into print, and why publication changed them forever.
By sifting through the unpublished manuscripts of early editors of the tales, Michael Edmonds unearths dozens of authentic Bunyan stories told aloud by lumberjacks between 1885 and 1915. Edmonds recounts a saga of lies, hoaxes, thefts, and greed that transformed the private jokes of working-class loggers into mass-market picture books for toddlers. The central characters include a genial northern Wisconsin con-man who claimed he invented the lumberjack hero, a spunky University of Wisconsin co-ed who collected the tales in logging camps in 1915, and a mild-mannered curator of the Wisconsin Historical Museum who lifted federal documents to keep the truth alive.
Part bibliographic mystery and part social history, Out of the Northwoods explains for the first time why we all know and love Paul Bunyan. An appendix includes more than 100 original tales about Bunyan, his camps, his crew, and his adventures taken directly from loggers early in the last century.
February Picks
Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter
by Michael J. White
$24.95Seventeen-year-old George Flynn, an all-around decent guy, has just moved with his family to Des Moines, a place where he knows no one and is pretty much nobody. Despite this inauspicious start to his junior year, he soon finds his niche, falling in with the unique, enchanting Schell sisters. Emily, an aspiring actress and free spirit, becomes the object of George's mostly unrequited yearnings. But it's Katie, with her quirks, her scathing deadpan humor, and her brave battle with multiple sclerosis, who really gets George hooked on the Schells. When an out-of-the-blue tragedy strikes, upsetting the delicate balance of all their lives, George must figure out a way to help Emily in order to save himself.
Cougar Club
by Susan McBride
$13.99Meet three women who aren't about to run and hide just because the world says they should be on the shelf and out of circulation: Kat— Her life seems perfect until she loses her high-powered advertising job and catches her live-in lover in a compromising position—with his computer! Carla— This sexy TV news anchor is in danger of being replaced by a twentysomething blond bimbo. Wasn't it just yesterday that she was the up-and-coming star? Elise— A married dermatologist, Elise thinks her plastic surgeon husband is playing doctor with someone else. Kat firmly believes that aging gracefully isn't about giving up; it's about living life with your engine on overdrive. So this unofficial "Cougar Club" quickly learns three things about survival of the fittest in today's youth-obsessed society: True friendship never dies, the only way to live is real, and you're never too old to follow your heart.
March Picks
Tiny Pilot
CD
by Michael Perry and the Long Beds
$11.99CD?? Yep, that’s right, for the first time ever, one of the Midwest Connections Picks is a CD! Michael Perry is the author of Population 485, Truck: A Love Story, and Coop. Readers of Perry’s books will definitely recognize some bits. Come in to Beagle and take a listen to the CD!
The House of Tomorrow
by Peter Bognanni
$24.95Sebastian Prendergast lives in a geodesic dome with his eccentric grandmother, who homeschooled him in the teachings of futurist philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller. But when his grandmother has a stroke, Sebastian is forced to leave the dome and make his own way in town.
Jared Whitcomb is a chain-smoking sixteen-year-old heart-transplant recipient who befriends Sebastian, and begins to teach him about all the things he has been missing, including grape soda, girls, and Sid Vicious. They form a punk band called The Rash, and it's clear that the upcoming Methodist Church talent show has never seen the likes of them. Wholly original, The House of Tomorrow is the story of a young man's self-discovery, a dying woman's last wish, and a band of misfits trying desperately to be heard.
Lamb Bright Saviors
by Robert Vivian
$22.95Lamb Bright Saviors begins as an apocalyptically inclined itinerant preacher staggers across the Nebraska prairie. With his young assistant, Mady, in tow hauling a wagon
stacked with bibles, it’s not long before the
preacher finds he’s come to the final fulfillment of his self-proclaimed life’s work: to die in front of a group of strangers. Odd as his own end-of-days might be, the lives and struggles of the strangers attending this deathbed scene are even odder. As the dying preacher unleashes a barrage of hallucinatory ramblings and rantings in the hope of imparting wisdom, each ragtag member of this unlikely congregation must reckon with his or her own dark past. And, through it all, the irrepressible Mady lends the preacher’s strange performance a surprising and unforgettable dignity and humor.
Here are the latest Midwest Connection Picks for Kids!
In a Heartbeat
by Loretta Ellsworth
$16.99When a small mistake costs sixteen-year-old Eagan her life during a figure-skating competition, she leaves many things un-reconciled, including her troubled relationship with her mother. From her vantage point in the afterlife, Eagan reflects back on her memories, and what she could have done differently, through her still-beating heart. When fourteen-year-old Amelia learns she will be getting a heart transplant, her fear and guilt battle with her joy at this new chance at life. And afterwards when she starts to feel different—dreaming about figure skating, craving grape candy—her need to learn about her donor leads her to discover and explore Eagan’s life, meeting her grieving loved ones and trying to bring the closure they all need to move on.
Bag in the Wind
by Ted Kooser
$17.99One cold morning in early spring, a bulldozer pushes a pile of garbage around a landfill and uncovers an empty plastic bag —a perfectly good bag, the color of the skin of a yellow onion, with two holes for handles—that someone has thrown away. Just then, a puff of wind lifts the rolling, flapping bag over a chain-link fence and into the lives of several townsfolk—a can-collecting girl, a homeless man, a store owner—not that all of them notice. Renowned poet Ted Kooser fashions an understated yet compassionate world full of happenstance and connection, neglect and care, all perfectly expressed in Barry Root’s tender illustrations. True to the book’s earth-friendly spirit, it is printed on paper containing 100 percent recycled post-consumer waste and includes an author’s note on recycling plastic bags.
The Buddy Files
books by Dori Hillestad Butler
$14.99 each
**Published by the same publisher as Boxcar Children Mysteries!
The Case of the
Lost BoyWhile searching for his mysteriously lost human family, Buddy the dog is adopted by another family and helps solve the mystery of their missing boy.
The Case of the
Mixed Up Mutts
While attending obedience class with his new humans, Buddy the dog helps solves a mystery involving two pugs that were switched at the dog park.The Case of the
Missing Family
Buddy has settled in with his adopted family, but he still misses his original people. When he sees a van taking things out of his old home, he decides to make a daring journey to find his original owners.
These past Picks titlesCame out in paperback this month
Mudville
by Kurtis Scaletta
$7.99Savvy
by Ingrid Law
$7.99
April Picks
Motherhood: A Radio Collection
CD by Garrison Keillor
$24.95Collected from live radio broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion, these humorous and heart-warming stories and songs celebrate the ups and downs of motherhood. Motherhood includes News from Lake Wobegon, and guest appearances from Robin and Linda Williams, Inga Swearingen, Vern Sutton, Prudence Johnson, the Rankin Family, and more.
“She brought you forth out of the cloud of genetics and fed and clothed you and taught you to wipe yourself and say Please and Thank You and never expected you to pay her back, only that you behave appropriately and try to make something of yourself and not land in prison but if you had, she’d love you because after all she’s your Mother.”—Garrison Keillor
The Cradle: A Novel
by Patrick Somerville
$13.99Early one summer morning, Matthew Bishop kisses his still-sleeping wife Marissa, gets dressed and eases his truck through Milwaukee, bound for the highway. His wife, pregnant with their first child, has asked him to find the antique cradle taken years before by her mother Caroline when she abandoned Marissa, never to contact her daughter again. Soon to be a mother herself, Marissa now dreams of nothing else but bringing her baby home to the cradle she herself slept in. His wife does not know, does not want to know, where her mother lives, but Matt has an address for Caroline's sister nearby and with any luck, he will be home in time for dinner. As Matt tries to track down his wife's mother, he discovers that Caroline, upon leaving Marissa, has led a life increasingly plagued by impulse and irrationality, a mysterious life that grows more inexplicable with each new lead Matt gains, and door he enters. As hours turn into days and Caroline's trail takes Matt from Wisconsin to Minnesota, Illinois, and beyond in search of the cradle, Matt makes a discovery that will forever change Marissa's life, and faces a decision that will challenge everything he has ever known. (Synopsis from www.powells.com)
The Tale of Halcyon Crane
by Wendy Webb
$15A young woman travels alone to a remote island to uncover a past she never knew was hers in this modern ghost story. When a mysterious letter lands in Hallie James’s mailbox, her life is upended. Hallie was raised by her loving father, having been told her mother died in a fire decades earlier. But it turns out that her mother, Madlyn, was alive until very recently. Why would Hallie’s father have taken her away from Madlyn? What really happened to her family thirty years ago? In search of answers, Hallie travels to the place where her mother lived, a remote island in the middle of the Great Lakes. The stiff islanders fix her first with icy stares and then unabashed amazement as they recognize why she looks so familiar, and Hallie quickly realizes her family’s dark secrets are enmeshed in the history of this strange place. But not everyone greets her with such a chilly reception—a coffee-shop owner and the family’s lawyer both warm to Hallie, and the possibility of romance blooms. And then there’s the grand Victorian house bequeathed to her—maybe it’s the eerie atmosphere or maybe it’s the prim, elderly maid who used to work for her mother, but Hallie just can’t shake the feeling that strange things are starting to happen…
Never Land: Adventures, Wonder, and
One World Record in a Very Small Plane
by W. Scott Olsen
$24.95According to W. Scott Olsen, there are two reasons for flying. The first is just to get somewhere. The second has nothing to do with destination. It is this second reason, expressing our deepest curiosity and our longings for infinity, grace, and clarity that Never Land explores. At once frankly philosophical and engagingly practical, the book combines accounts of touring in the air, the history of flight, the sensations of flying, and the technical acts and facts of navigating, piloting, lifting off, and landing.
As it brings together many views on flight, Never Land also chronicles Olsen’s own personal journey—his experiences and the shift in his perspective as he goes from green beginner to seasoned pilot. Whether reflecting on airmail delivery, plotting routes from above, interviewing veterans, learning aerobatic moves, or encountering history in the making, Olsen makes the feel of flying a reality for his earthbound readers. Albeit a personal narrative, his book is ultimately a celebration of aviation that brings to bear the intellectual precision, emotional passion, exhilarating risk, and incalculable reward behind the human desire to fly.
MAY Picks
How High the Moon
by Sandra Kring
$15In this tender novel set in 1955 Mill Town, Wisconsin, Sandra Kring explores the complicated bond between mothers and daughters, the pressure to conform, and the meaning of friendship and family.
Ten-year-old Isabella “Teaspoon” Marlene has been a handful ever since her mother, Catty, dumped her with an old boyfriend and ran off to Hollywood. Teaspoon fights, fibs, never stops singing, and is as unpredictable and fearless as a puppy off its leash. Still, Teddy Favors, a man who has taken his share of kicks, is determined to raise her right.
Teaspoon wants to be better for Teddy—even if that means agreeing to take part in a do-gooder mentorship program and being paired up with Brenda Bloom, the beautiful reigning Sweetheart of Mill Town. Against all odds, as the summer passes, this unlikely duo discover a special friendship as they face personal challenges, determined to follow their hearts instead of convention.
It’s while Brenda and Teaspoon are putting together the grandest show the Starlight Theater has ever seen that Catty returns to Mill Town, shattering illusions and testing loyalties. But by the final curtain call, one determined little girl shows an entire town the healing that can happen when you let your heart take center stage.Shoot to Thrill
by P.J. Tracy
$24.95It begins with a floater.
It’s eighty-five degrees in the shade when Minneapolis detectives Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth pull into the MPD parking garage. They’re driving a tricked-out Caddy, repossessed from a low-level drug dealer. It’s not a Beemer or a Mercedes, but it’s got GPS, air conditioning, and electric seats with more positions than the Kama Sutra.
But things are heating up inside the station house, too. The bomb squad’s off to investigate another suspicious package at the mall, and kids are beating the crap out of each other and posting it on YouTube. And before Leo and Gino can wish for a straight-on homicide, the call comes in: a floater.
Soon they’re humping it along a derelict stretch of the Mississippi River, beyond the green places where families picnic and admire the views. They can see her — she looks like a bride in her white formal gown-face down, dead in the water. And so it begins.
Across town, Grace McBride’s Monkeewrench crew-the computer geeks who made a fortune on games, now helping the cops with anticrime software-has been recruited by the FBI to investigate a series of murder videos posted on the Web. It’s not long before Rolseth, Magozzi, and Monkeewrench discover the frightening link between the unlucky bride and the latest, most horrific use of the Internet yet. Using their skills to scour the Net in search of the perpetrator, the team must race against the clock to stop a killer in his tracks . . . before it’s too late.Thief
by Maureen Gibbon
$14Suzanne, a teacher off for the summer, has rented a cabin in a small town in the north woods of Minnesota, to escape the Cities, and her most recent dysfunctional relationship. She begins corresponding by letter with a convict named Alpha Breville, whose crime she plumbs for the hope of revelations of a trauma she suffered at the age of sixteen. As she experiments with this precarious relationship, she begins to liberate herself from the turbulence that has characterized her life ever since that event. Not virgin, victim, or vigilante, who then, is Suzanne?
The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl
by Ree Drummond
$27.50From the author: My name is Ree. Some folks know me as The Pioneer Woman. After years of living in Los Angeles, I made a pit stop in my hometown in Oklahoma on the way to a new, exciting life in Chicago. It was during my stay at home that I met Marlboro Man, a mysterious cowboy with steely blue eyes and a muscular, work-honed body. A strict vegetarian, I fell hard and fast, and before I knew it we were married and living on his ranch in the middle of nowhere, taking care of animals, and managing a brood of four young children. I had no idea how I’d wound up there, but I knew it was exactly where I belonged.
The Pioneer Woman Cooks is a homespun collection of photography, rural stories, and scrumptious recipes that have defined my experience in the country. I share many of the delicious cowboy-tested recipes I’ve learned to make during my years as an accidental ranch wife—including Rib-Eye Steak with Whiskey Cream Sauce, Lasagna, Fried Chicken, Patsy’s Blackberry Cobbler, and Cinnamon Rolls—not to mention several “cowgirl-friendly” dishes, such as Sherried Tomato Soup, Olive Cheese Bread, and Crème Brûlée. I show my recipes in full color, step-by-step detail, so it’s as easy as pie to follow along.
You’ll also find colorful images of rural life: cows, horses, country kids, and plenty of chaps-wearing cowboys.
I hope you get a kick out of this book of mine. I hope it makes you smile. I hope the recipes bring you recognition, accolades, and marriage proposals. And I hope it encourages even the most harried urban cook to slow down, relish the joys of family, nature, and great food, and enjoy life.
June Picks
The Stormchasers
by Jenna Blum
$25.95
As a teenager, Karena Jorge had always been the one to look out for her twin brother Charles, who suffers from bipolar disorder. But as Charles begins to refuse medication and his manic tendencies worsen, Karena finds herself caught between her loyalty to her brother and her fear for his life. Always obsessed with the weather—enraptured by its magical unpredictability that seemed to mirror his own impulses—Charles starts chasing storms, and his behavior grows increasingly erratic…until a terrifying storm chase with Karena ends with deadly consequences, tearing the twins apart and changing both of their lives forever.Two decades later, Karena gets a call from a psychiatric ward in Wichita, Kansas, to come pick up her brother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for twenty years. She soon discovers that Charles has lied to the doctors, taken medication that could make him dangerously manic, and disappeared again. Having exhausted every resource to try and track him down, Karena realizes she has only one last chance of finding him: the storms. Wherever the tornadoes are, that's where he'll be. Karena joins a team of professional stormchasers-passionate adventurers who will transform her life and give her a chance at love and redemption- and embarks on an odyssey to find her brother before he reveals the violent secret from their past and does more damage to himself…or to someone else.
Deeply Rooted:
Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness
by Lisa M. Hamilton
$15.95A century of industrialization has left our food system riddled with problems, yet for solutions we look to nutritionists and government agencies, scientists and chefs. Lisa M. Hamilton asks: why not look to the people who grow our food? In this narrative nonfiction book she tells three stories, of an African-American dairyman in Texas who plays David to the Goliath of agribusiness corporations; a tenth-generation rancher in New Mexico struggling to restore agriculture as a pillar of his community; and a modern pioneer family in North Dakota breeding new varieties of plants to face the future’s double threat: climate change and the patenting of life forms. In unique ways, these “unconventional farmers” reject the passive role that modern agriculture has insisted they accept and instead reclaim their place as stewards of the land and leaders within society.
Threads of history and discussion weave through the tales, exploring how farmers have been pushed to the margins of agriculture and how that has led to the broken food system we grapple with today. These unusual characters and their extraordinary stories make the case that in order to repair the damage, we must bring farmers back to the table.
Horse-Drawn Days: A Century of Farming with Horses
by Jerry Apps
$24.95Before tractors or steam engines arrived on the farm, horses did all the heavy work. From spring plowing to the fall harvest, the mighty draft horse powered farms across the Midwest. Relied upon to complete a multitude of tasks, including towing threshing machines and plows, hauling milk to the local cheese factory, and pulling the family buggy to church each Sunday, these animals were at the center of farm life, cementing the bond between human and horse.
Wounded Knee: Party Politics and
the Road to an American Massacre
by Heather Cox Richardson
$28.95On December 29, 1890, American troops opened fire with howitzers on hundreds of unarmed Lakota Sioux men, women, and children near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, killing nearly 300 Sioux. As acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson shows in Wounded Knee, the massacre grew out of a set of political forces all too familiar to us today: fierce partisanship, heated political rhetoric, and an irresponsible, profit-driven media. Richardson tells a dramatically new story about the Wounded Knee massacre, revealing that its origins lay not in the West but in the corridors of political power back East. Politicians in Washington, Democrat and Republican alike, sought to set the stage for mass murder by exploiting an age-old political tool—fear. Assiduously researched and beautifully written, Wounded Knee will be the definitive account of an epochal American tragedy.
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