Hi Everyone-

Hope your summer is off to a good start. The weather has been very cooperative, so I've gotten in a fair amount of backyard reading. As I'm sure you're ready to do. And to that end:

I'm hereby announcing the great Random Summer buy-two-get-one-free sale! All the books from three of Random House's most prestigious paperback imprints - Vintage, Anchor, and Broadway - will be included. Simply buy two of the great books from these folks and you'll get a third (of equal or lesser value) free!

And this is an incredible list of books: all of Ian McEwan, including Atonement and Saturday, all of Faulkner, including The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying, Mark Haddon's mega-bestseller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, perennial favorite The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, Toni Morrison's Beloved (picked by the New York Times as the best novel of the last 25 years), Margaret Atwood's great novels, including The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale, Bill Bryon's marvelous oeuvre, including A Walk in the Woods and I'm a Stranger Here Myself, all of Alexander McCall Smith's much-loved Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, Orhan Pamuk's works, including Snow and My Name Is Red, John Krakauer's hard-hitting Under the Banner of Heaven, Mitch Albom's sentimental favorite Tuesdays With Morrie, Alice Munro's great short story collections, including the recent Runaway, Richard Ford's multi-prizewinning novels The Sportswriter and Independence Day (the third in the series is coming this fall), Karen Armstrong's provocative memoir The Spiral Staircase, and, I can't overstate this, too many more fantastic books to even begin to begin mentioning. We were very gratified with your response to the Penguin sale, so here's another chance with another great publisher with a truly stunning breadth of titles. The sale starts Friday, so get ready to stock up on your summer (and beyond) reading.

To make a particular suggestion: summer is a great time to take up Richard Russo. If you've been putting off reading his wonderfully character-and-plot driven, poignant but often astonishingly hilarious novels, now's the time. To name my personal top three, in no particular order: Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool, and The Risk Pool are all impassioned, brilliantly plotted, and occasionally, gut-bustingly funny portrayals of small town life and families with some unforgettable characters. Russo's books also make perfect Father's Day gifts, so stop in right away and pick up three great books for Dad - at the price of two!

See you in the stores,

Joe Murphy
Head Book Buyer