Hi Everyone-

Hope your summer is going well. After last week's merciless heatwave, this week is astonishingly pleasant. I'm getting a good deal of backyard reading done, so let me mention a couple of books:

I'm nearly through T.C. Boyle's new book Talk Talk, the first of his I've read since Riven Rock (I know, Boyle fans; I've been missing out!). It's quite riveting, and it works as a thriller, a Rashomon-like exchange of alternating viewpoints, a case study on identity theft, and an examination of what communication really means in relationships of all kinds. The plot: Dana Halter, a deaf teacher of English, has her identity stolen, leading to mistaken arrest, the loss of her job, and serious financial trouble. She enlists her boyfriend on a cross country journey to track down the man who has taken her life, and the chase is on. It's a great portrayal of Dana's alienation from the hearing world, particularly in the face of this crisis. Boyle also convincingly draws Dana's bewildered boyfriend, Bridger, and William "Peck" Wilson (nice Poe reference, T.C.!), the identity thief with the easy sense of entitlement and a feeling of outrage that his victims are pestering him. It's a well done, fun-yet-serious, breezy summer read. And it's a Buyer's Choice, on sale for 20% off at all our stores.

I also just finished David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which was a highly entertaining postmodern puzzle. It's a number of linked stories, structured like a Russian nesting doll, so that the first chapter is concluded in the last, the second in the next to last, etc. The conceit works rather nicely (although it does require a little momentum), and the stories, which range from sea tale to memoir to mystery to dystopia story to post-apocalyptic account (and back again!) are highly involving, often suspenseful, touching, and curiously philosophical. This is the second Mitchell book I've read, after the delightful Black Swan Green (I seem, appropriately enough, to be reading him backward), and I highly recommend his work.

One last (but crucial!) bit of business: we've been so delighted by the response to the Penguin and Vintage/Anchor/Broadway buy-two-get-one-free sales that we're going for it again: this time with a trifecta of great publishers: all paperbacks from Harcourt Brace, Mariner, and WWW. Norton.

Harcourt Brace's list of paperbacks includes Arturo Perez-Reverte's now-classic thriller The Flanders Panel, Yann Martel's beloved Life of Pi, Michel Faber's dirty-yet-Dickensian The Crimson Petal and the White, and my own all-time favorite novel, All the King's Men.

Mariner's list features favorites such as Adam Hochschild's great work of history King Leopold's Ghost, Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake, and Jonathan Safron Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Some great W. W. Norton titles include Seamus Heaney's seminal translation of Beowulf, Nicole Krauss' recent bestseller The History of Love, and perpetual favorite Guns, Germs, and Steel.


And this goes for all three publishers: there are too many other fantastic titles to begin to mention. So head on in and check out this great new sale, starting Friday.

See you in the stores!

Joe Murphy
Head Book Buyer