The Dog Stars (9780307959942 $24.95) ~ Peter Heller
A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss–and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.
Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life–something like his old life–exists beyond the airport. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return–not enough fuel to get him home–following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face–in the people he meets, and in himself–is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.
Narrated by a man who is part warrior and part dreamer, a hunter with a great shot and a heart that refuses to harden, “The Dog Stars “is both savagely funny and achingly sad, a breathtaking story about what it means to be human.
Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure (9780316101844 $17.99) ~ James Patterson
One last chance…for Max, Fang, and Dylan…before it all ends.
Are you ready for the final chapter? Are you ready for the ultimate flight? Because THIS IS IT. One last incredible, explosive adventure with an astonishing ending that no one could have seen coming.
What Language Is: And What It Isn’t and What It Could Be 
(9781592407200 $16) ~ John McWhorter
A love letter to languages, celebrating their curiosities and smashing assumptions about correct grammar
An eye-opening tour for all language lovers, “What Language Is “offers a fascinating new perspective on the way humans communicate. from vanishing languages spoken by a few hundred people to major tongues like Chinese, and with copious revelations about the hodgepodge nature of English, John McWhorter shows readers how to see and hear languages as a linguist does.Packed with big ideas about language alongside wonderful trivia, “What Language Is “explains how languages across the globe (the Queen’s English and Suriname creoles alike) originate, evolve, multiply, and divide. Raising provocative questions about what qualifies as a language (so-called slang does have structured grammar), McWhorter takes readers on a marvelous journey through time and place–from Persia to the languages of Sri Lanka–to deliver a feast of facts about the wonders of human linguistic expression.
City of Women (9780399157769 $25.95) ~ David Gillham
It is 1943–the height of the Second World War–and Berlin has essentially become a city of women.
Sigrid Schroder is, for all intents and purposes, the model German soldier’s wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime. But behind this facade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman who dreams of her former lover, now lost in the chaos of the war. Her lover is a Jew. But Sigrid is not the only one with secrets. A high ranking SS officer and his family move down the hall and Sigrid finds herself pulled into their orbit. A young woman doing her duty-year is out of excuses before Sigrid can even ask her any questions. And then there’s the blind man selling pencils on the corner, whose eyes Sigrid can feel following her from behind the darkness of his goggles. Soon Sigrid is embroiled in a world she knew nothing about, and as her eyes open to the reality around her, the carefully constructed fortress of solitude she has built over the years begins to collapse. She must choose to act on what is right and what is wrong, and what falls somewhere in the shadows between the two. In this page-turning novel, David Gillham explores what happens to ordinary people thrust into extraordinary times, and how the choices they make can be the difference between life and death.
The Best of Me (9780446547642 $14.99) ~ Nicholas Sparks
In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in the small town of Oriental, North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths.
Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back to Oriental for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realize that everything they thought they knew — about Tuck, about themselves, and about the dreams they held dear — was not as it seemed. Forced to confront painful memories, the two former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living, and the dead: “Can love truly rewrite the past?”
My Favorite Fangs: The Story of the Von Trapp Family Vampires (9780312640200 $14.99) ~ Alan Goldsher
Maria von Trapp can sing like an angel, but she’s also a bloodthirsty vampire. She lands a job caretaking the family von Trapp, a rowdy clan in need of some serious discipline or vampirification in a story of similar vein to “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.”
A Hundred Flowers (9780312274818 $24.99) ~ Gail Tsukiyama
A powerful new novel about an ordinary family facing extraordinary times at the start of the Chinese Cultural Revolution China, 1957. Chairman Mao has declared a new openness in society: “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.” Many intellectuals fear it is only a trick, and Kai Ying’s husband, Sheng, a teacher, has promised not to jeopardize their safety or that of their young son, Tao. But one July morning, just before his sixth birthday, Tao watches helplessly as Sheng is dragged away for writing a letter criticizing the Communist Party and sent to a labor camp for “reeducation.” A year later, still missing his father desperately, Tao climbs to the top of the hundred-year-old kapok tree in front of their home, wanting to see the mountain peaks in the distance. But Tao slips and tumbles thirty feet to the courtyard below, badly breaking his leg. As Kai Ying struggles to hold her small family together in the face of this shattering reminder of her husband’s absence, other members of the household must face their own guilty secrets and strive to find peace in a world where the old sense of order is falling. Once again, Tsukiyama brings us a powerfully moving story of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances with grace and courage.
Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Softly Book (9780375870033 $10.99) ~Dr. Seuss
This interactive touch-and-feel book lets toddlers snuggle and squish the soft beds, bellies, and pillows of Dr. Seuss’s iconic sleepy characters!
A new Dr. Seuss Nursery Collection title with interactive fun for baby based on “Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book–”just in time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the classic bedtime story.
Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original 
Navajo Code Talkers of WWII (9780425247853 $16) ~ Chester Nez
During World War II, the Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. But when the Marines turned to its Navajo recruits to develop a secret military language, they created the only unbroken code in modern warfare–and helped assure victory for the U.S.
The Dead Do Not Improve (9780307953889 $25) ~ Jay Caspian Kang
On a residential Bay Area block struggling with the collision of gentrifier condos and longtime residents, stymied recent MFA grad Philip Kim is sleeping the night away when bullets fly through a window in his apartment building and end up killing one of his neighbors. Philip only learns about the murder the next day when bored and Googling himself. But when he gets caught up in the investigation and becomes the focus of an elaborate, violent scheme, he will learn far more than he ever wanted to about his former four-eggs-at-a-time borrowing neighbor Dolores Stone, aka “The Grey Beaver,” and her shocking connections to an underworld only a city like this one could create.
Siddhartha “Sid” Finch, a homicide detective bitter about everything except his gorgeous wife, and his phlegmatic, pock-marked partner Jim Kim, land the case. Sid and Jim race after Philip through a menacing, unknowable San Francisco fending off militant surfers, vaguely European cafes, and aggressive Advanced Creative Writing students as they all try to figure out just who’s causing trouble in this city they love to hate.
Exceedingly unique, pulsing with vigor and heart, and loaded with fierce, fresh language, “The Dead Do Not Improve” confirms Jay Caspian Kang as a true American original as obsessed with surfing and surviving as with the power of unforgettable storytelling.
Every Day A Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week 
(9780892969906 $15.99) ~ Joel Osteen
The title comes from research that shows people are happiest on Fridays. Pastor Joel Osteen writes how we can generate this level of contentment and joy every day of the week.
Known as a man who maintains a constant positive outlook in spite of circumstances, Osteen has described this message as a core theme of his ministry. Combining his personal experiences with scriptural insights and principles for true happiness, he shows readers how every day can hold the same promise and opportunities for pure joy that they experience at five o’clock on Friday.
