Inkwell Recent Fiction Bestsellers
 1. Still Alice
By Lisa Genova
Pocket Books, $15.00
Still Alice is a compelling
debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset
Alzheimer's disease, written by a first-time author who holds a Ph.D.
in neuroscience. Reminiscent of A Beautiful Mind and Ordinary
People, this work packs an emotional punch.
 2. Time Traveler's Wife
By Audrey Niffenegger
Harvest Books, $14.95
A dazzling debut novel told in a most untraditional fashion;
this is the story of a passionate love affair that endures
across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly
romantic trap. The
remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian
who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist
whose life takes a natural sequential course, is captivating.
 3. I See You Everywhere
By Julia Glass
Anchor Books, $15.00
From the author of the bestselling Three Junes
comes an intimate tale of two sisters, together and apart, told in
their alternating voices over 25 years. I See You Everywhere offers a
piercingly candid story of companionship and sorrow, life and death.
 4. That Old Cape Magic
By Richard Russo
Knopf, $25.95
In this follow-up to Bridge of
Sighs, Russo delivers a novel of deep introspection and every family
feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and
their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter's new life
and, finally, what it is he thought he wanted and what in fact he has.
 5. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
By Stieg Larsson
Vintage, $14.95
In this European publishing
sensation, a crusading journalist joins forces with a 24-year-old
pierced and tattooed genius hacker to investigate the whereabouts of a
missing woman from one of the wealthiest families in Sweden.
 6. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Dial Press, $14.00
In 1946, writer Juliet Ashton
receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey
Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale
of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a
society as extraordinary as its name.
 7. Olive Kitteridge
By Elizabeth Strout
Random House, $14.00
Pulitzer Prize winner Strout binds
together 13 rich, luminous narratives through the presence of one
larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge, who offers
profound insights into the human condition.
 8. The Good Thief
By Hannah Tinti
Dial Press, $15.00
A staff favorite! Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with
the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist, The Good Thief
introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary
fiction and ratifies Tinti as an exciting new talent.
 9. Sarah's Key
By Tatiana De Rosnay
St. Martin's Griffin, $13.95
Haunting and suspenseful, life-affirming and
beautiful, Sarah's Key offers a compelling portrait of occupied Paris
and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this little-known
episode in French history.
 10. South of Broad
By Pat Conroy
Nan A. Talese, $29.95
The one and only Pat Conroy returns with a big,
sprawling novel that is at once a love letter to Charleston, South
Carolina, and to lifelong friendship--a long-awaited work from a great
American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds.
 11. The Help
By Kathryn Stockett
Putnum, $24.95
In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines
that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all
around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever
changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and
daughters--view one another.
 12. The Art of Racing in the Rain
By Garth Stein
Harper, $14.99
Meet Enzo, the unforgettable canine narrator of this
bittersweet and transformative story of family, love, loyalty, and
hope. Enzo is a philosopher with a nearly human soul, and he's gained a
wealth of knowledge from hours spent in front of the TV.
 13. Netherland
By Joseph O'Neill
Vintage, $14.95
The author of the New York Times
Notable Book Blood-Dark Track delivers a mesmerizing novel about a
man trying to make his way in an America of shattered hopes and values,
and the unlikely occurrences that pull him back into an authentic,
passionately engaged life.
 14. City of Thieves
By David Benioff
Plume, $15.00
Benioff follows up The 25th Hour with this
hard-to-put-down novel based on his grandfather's stories about
surviving World War II in Russia.
 15. The Elegance of the Hedgehog
By Muriel Barbery
Europa Editions, $15.00
In this enthralling international
bestseller, two girls live inconspicuous lives in the center of an
elegant Paris apartment building. It is only when a stranger moves into
their building--and sees through the girls' disguises--that Paloma and
Rene discover their kindred spirits.
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Inkwell Recent Nonfiction Bestsellers
 1. Born to Run
By Christopher McDougall
Knopf, $24.95
Part adventure story, part extreme sports, Born to
Run is a riveting story about one journalist's quest to discover the
secrets of the world's greatest distance runners, a reclusive Indian
tribe living deep in the Copper Canyon of northern Mexico. With a sharp wit and wild exuberance, McDougall takes us from the
high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing
peaks across North America.
 2. Red Leather Diary
By Lily Koppel
Harper, $14.99
A New York Times journalist discovers a discarded
old diary--a find that introduces her to an extraordinary
woman--Florence Wolfson--and a glamorous, forgotten time. Evocative and
entrancing, The Red Leather Diary recreates the romance and glitter
of 1930s New York.
 3. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
By Haruki Murakami
Vintage, $15.00
Perennial staff favorite Murakami's new book is by turns funny and sobering, playful and
philosophical; this memoir is both for fans of this masterful yet
guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes
who find similar satisfaction in distance running. Full of vivid memories and insights, including the
eureka moment when he decided to become a writer.
 4. A Colossal Failure of Common Sense
By Lawrence G. McDonald
Crown Business, $27.00
McDonald, a former vice president at Lehman
Brothers, offers an intimate look inside the mad house that Lehman
became, and shows beyond a doubt that Lehman's top executives were
totally out to lunch, allowing Lehman's risk profile to reach
gargantuan proportions.
 5. We Two: Victoria & Albert
By Gillian Gill
Ballantine, $35.00
Gill presents a 21st-century perspective on a giant
of English history, Queen Victoria, and her marriage to German Prince
Albert. As Gill shows, the marriage of Victoria and Albert was great not
because it was perfect, but because it was passionate and complicated.
Wonderfully nuanced, surprising, often acerbic–and informed by
revealing excerpts from the pair’s journals and letters–We Two is a revolutionary portrait of a queen and her prince.
 6. The Soloist
By Steve Lopez
Berkley, $15.00
A moving story of a remarkable bond between a
journalist in search of a story and a homeless, classically trained
musician. When Steve Lopez saw Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a
two-string violin on Los Angeles’ skid row, he found it impossible to
walk away. More than thirty years earlier, Ayers had been a promising
classical bass student at Juilliard, ambitious and charming, until he gradually lost his ability to
function, overcome by schizophrenia.
 7. The Family
By Jeff Sharlet
Harper, $15.99
Part history, part investigative
journalism, The Family presents an eye-opening examination of the
spiritual awakenings that have convulsed this nation from its very
beginning. Behind the scenes
at every National Prayer Breakfast since 1953 has been the Family, an
elite network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful.
 8. Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson
Penguin, $15.00
Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to
read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following
a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance
encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build
them a school. Three Cups of Tea combines adventure with a celebration of the humanitarian spirit.
 9. Eat Pray Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert
Penguin, $15.00
A celebrated writer pens an irresistible, candid,
and eloquent account of her pursuit of worldly pleasure, spiritual
devotion, and what she really wanted out of life.
 10. When You Are Engulfed in Flames
By David Sedaris
Back Bay Books, $15.99
In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre
conundrums of daily life to the most deeply resonant human truths.
Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to
quit smoking, his sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic
writing.
 11. The Tipping Point
By Malcolm Gladwell
Back Bay Books, $14.99
This celebrated bestseller, now in paperback, is a
book that is changing the way Americans think about selling products
and disseminating ideas. The new Afterword by the author describes how
readers can constructively apply the tipping point principle in their
own lives and work.
 12. The Finest Hours
By Michael J. Tougias
Scribner, $25.00
From the author of Ten Hours Until Dawn comes a
new work brimming with excitement and suspense, and packed with gripping
authentic descriptions of an actual Coast Guard rescue adventure.
 13. My Horizontal Life
By Chelsea Handler
Bloomsbury, $14.95
In this raucous collection of
true-life stories, actress and comedian Handler recounts her time spent
in the social trenches with that wild, strange, irresistible, and often
gratifying beast: the one-night stand.
 14. Wilderness Warrior
By Douglas Brinkley
Harper, $34.99
Brinkley, a New York Times bestselling historian, has
written an extraordinary and timeless biography that looks at the
influence the natural world played on Theodore Roosevelt.
 15. Cod
By Mark Kurlansky
Penguin, $15.00
A delightful romp through history with all its economic forces laid
bare, Cod is the biography of a single species of fish, but it may as
well be a world history with this humble fish as its recurring main
character. Cod, it turns out, is the reason Europeans set sail across
the Atlantic, and it is the only reason they could. Here, for scientist and layperson alike, is a
startlingly complete and rational synthesis of disciplines, and a new,
optimistic message about existence.
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