Adult

The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini’s EMPIRE OF SELF probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well --- a virtual Who's Who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret and the crème de la crème of Hollywood.

In the spring of 1978, a young Haruki Murakami sat down at his kitchen table and began to write. The result: two remarkable short novels --- HEAR THE WIND SING and PINBALL, 1973 --- that launched his career. These powerful, at times surreal, works about two young men coming of age are stories of loneliness, obsession and eroticism. Widely available in English for the first time ever, newly translated, and featuring a new introduction by Murakami himself, WIND/PINBALL gives us a fascinating insight into a great writer’s beginnings.

Jonathan Lethem brings both literary and comics credibility to his picks for the best graphic pieces of the year.

Glamorous, superconnected Ann Tenna is the founder of Eyemauler, a New York City-based Web site that’s always the first to dish the most up-to-the-minute dirt on celebrities and ordinary folks alike. Ann has ascended to the zenith of the New York media scene, attended by groups of grovelers all too willing to be trampled on by her six-inch Giuseppe Zanottis if it means better seats at the table. But as high as her success has taken her, Ann has actually fallen far --- very far --- from her true self. It takes a near-fatal freak accident on her birthday --- April Fool’s Day --- and an intervention from her cosmic double in a realm beyond our own to make Ann realize the full cost of the humanity she has lost.

Incorporating original, never-before-published material from 007 creator Ian Fleming, Anthony Horowitz returns James Bond to his 1950s heyday. The world's most famous spy has just returned victorious from his showdown with Auric Goldfinger in Fort Knox. By his side is the glamorous and streetwise Pussy Galore, who played no small part in his success. As they settle down in London, the odds of Galore taming the debonair bachelor seem slim --- but she herself is a creature not so easily caught.

Ciaran Devine, who made Belfast headlines seven years ago as the “schoolboy killer,” is about to walk free. At the age of 12, he confessed to the brutal murder of his foster father; his testimony mitigated the sentence of his older brother, Thomas, who was also found at the crime scene, covered in blood. But DCI Serena Flanagan, the only officer who could convince a frightened Ciaran to speak, has silently harbored doubts about his confession all this time. She will soon discover that even closed cases can unleash terror on the streets of Belfast.

Mother’s Rest is a tiny place hidden in a thousand square miles of wheat fields, with a railroad stop, sullen and watchful people, and a worried woman named Michelle Chang, who mistakes Jack Reacher for someone else: her missing partner in a private investigation she thinks must have started small and then turned lethal. Before long, Reacher is plunged into a desperate race through LA, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco, and ultimately back to Mother’s Rest, where he must confront the worst nightmare he could imagine.

When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper's isolated farmhouse, she knows instantly that it's the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, it's just another stop on a long and bloody journey. For San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart, their trail of victims has brought her from obsession to the edge of physical and psychological destruction. But the murders at the Cooper farmhouse didn't quite go according to plan. There was a survivor, Rowena's 10-year-old daughter, who now holds the key to the killings.

In the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. But then he sees a familiar man --- who else would wear an Elvis pompadour in this day and age? --- lurking around the crime scene. Where does Connor know him from? And why does everyone he knows keep showing up dead?

A serial killer known as the Cowboy is killing young women in cheap motels in North Seattle. Even after a stalker leaves a menacing message for Tracy Crosswhite, suggesting the killer or a copycat could be targeting her personally, the homicide detective is charged with bringing the murderer to justice. With clues scarce and more victims dying, Tracy realizes that the key to solving the murders may lie in a decade-old homicide investigation that others, including her captain, Johnny Nolasco, would prefer to keep buried.