A CRIME SO MONSTROUS: Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery. E. Benjamin Skinner. Free Press. 328 pages. $26. Freelance reporter E. Benjamin Skinner opens his book on modern slavery with a paradox: Though human bondage is now banned everywhere, ``there are more slaves today than at any point in human history.''
FICTION
The Sister. Poppy Adams. Knopf. 273 pages. $23.95. Poppy Adams' captivating debut novel was originally titled The Behaviour of Moths, and for much of the novel's first half, moths take up a great deal of space, psychologically and literally.
NONFICTION
THE FRUIT HUNTERS: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession. Adam Leith Gollner. Scribner. 267 pages. $25. In his first book, Adam Leith Gollner offers enough historical facts, horticultural wonders and real-life adventures of fruit fanatics past and present to fill a thousand and one summer nights with delightful reading.
TUESDAY Salman Rushdie and The Enchantress of Florence. 7:30 p.m. Temple Judea, 5500 Granada Blvd., Coral Gables. Tickets required and available with purchase of book at any Books & Books location.
FICTION | AMERICA AMERICA
AMERICA AMERICA . Ethan Canin. Random. 458 pages. $27. Ethan Canin's riveting and thought-provoking political novel arrives at the perfect time -- the summer before a pivotal presidential election -- and reflects wisely on the ongoing clash of public idealism and ruthless ambition. It's a marvelously ambitious book, a pointed history lesson and a timeless meditation on fate and self-determination. Canin, who is on the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of the novels For Kings and Planets...
MEMOIR
APPLES & ORANGES: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found. Marie Brenner. Sarah Crichton. 288 pages. $24. Apples & Oranges is Marie Brenner's ode to her dead brother. But before you start thinking it's some maudlin tale about the World's Greatest Guy, know this: She could barely stand him.
NONFICTION
THE LAST FISH TALE: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town. Mark Kurlansky. Ballantine. 304 pages. $25.
BOOKS
''I am one of the journeying people,'' Salman Rushdie says. ``I've done it all my life. I don't even feel it's complicated.'' The Bombay-born author knows complicated. His 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, perceived as blasphemous by much of the Muslim community, launched a death-sentence fatwa by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, forcing Rushdie to live most of the '90s in hiding. While wed (and then last summer unwed) to wife No. 4, dishy Top Chef star Padma Lakshmi, he watched his private life turn into...
FICTION | AMERICA AMERICA
AMERICA AMERICA . Ethan Canin. Random. 458 pages. $27. Ethan Canin's riveting and thought-provoking political novel arrives at the perfect time -- the summer before a pivotal presidential election -- and reflects wisely on the ongoing clash of public idealism and ruthless ambition. It's a marvelously ambitious book, a pointed history lesson and a timeless meditation on fate and self-determination. Canin, who is on the faculty at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and author of the novels For Kings and Planets...
MEMOIR
APPLES & ORANGES: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found. Marie Brenner. Sarah Crichton. 288 pages. $24. Apples & Oranges is Marie Brenner's ode to her dead brother. But before you start thinking it's some maudlin tale about the World's Greatest Guy, know this: She could barely stand him.
NONFICTION
THE LAST FISH TALE: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town. Mark Kurlansky. Ballantine. 304 pages. $25.
FICTION
DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES. Jonathan Miles. Houghton Mifflin. 180 pages. $22. Jonathan Miles' deliciously cynical first novel challenges the axiom that all publicity is good publicity. The airlines can't appreciate the poison pen letter that the novel's disgruntled hero, Benjamin (''Bennie'') Ford, writes while stranded at O'Hare Airport for what had promised to be the most important day of his life: the chance to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding.
MEMOIR
THE PRINCE OF FROGTOWN. Rick Bragg. Knopf. 255 pages. $24. Rick Bragg has now written three family histories, all dredging up bitter times alongside sweeter memories, all exposing his conflicts with the past. So it is fitting that the trilogy's final volume is composed of chapters that alternate between the past (the story of Bragg's alcoholic father) and the present (the story of Bragg's 10-year-old stepson). Both parts of the story grapple with the macho myths of white Southern manhood, but flesh-and-blood...
FICTION
THE MERCY RULE. Perri Klass. Houghton Mifflin. 276 pages. $24. Perri Klass is a practicing pediatrician who understands the murky risks of judging a mother's care. The Mercy Rule, her sixth work of fiction, is an insightful novel comprised of stories about a doctor who runs a clinic in Boston for children who are in state custody -- or about to be. Passionate and self-deprecating, Dr. Lucy Weiss wants to slap some sense into the careless mothers who pass through her office, but she also wants to...
SUSPENSE
HIT AND RUN. Lawrence Block. Morrow. 287 pages. $24.95. John Keller, professional hit man, is on his way to Des Moines to take a life -- one last job before retiring to spend more time with his stamp collection.
I Still Have It . . . I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Confessions of a Fiftysomething. Rita Rudner. Harmony. 272 pages. $23.
TUESDAY Julia Reed and The House on First Street. 8 p.m. Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. WEDNESDAY Authors Cynthia Thomason, Linda Conrad, Lyn Armstrong, Traci E. Hall and Patrice Wilton will discuss romance novel writing. 8 p.m. Books & Books, Gables.
NONFICTION | HAVANA NOCTURNE
HAVANA NOCTURNE: How the Mob Owned Cuba . . . And Then Lost It to the Revolution. T.J. English. Morrow. 416 pages. $27.95. Cuban writer Jose Lezama Lima's description of Havana -- ''an unnameable feast'' -- fits the city's last great era like the flawless suits from Pepe Sastre fit the best-dressed mobsters of the glittering casino years.
NONFICTION
THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE. Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi. Grand Central. 317 pages. $25.99. This gripping collaboration between a bestselling American author and an Italian journalist is a most unconventional thriller, a real-life murder mystery in which they become suspects.
FICTION
THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE. David Wroblewski. HarperCollins. 562 pages. $25.95. Too many dog stories should come with warnings: Sentimentality ahead! Manipulative tear-jerker coming at you!
HISTORIC PLACES
Mark Twain, Edith Wharton and other boldfaced names among the dead have something in common with living Americans in these hard financial times:
AUTHOR! AUTHOR!
With equal parts lactic acid, chlorine and soda ash swirled in his bloodstream, author W. Hodding Carter has an admittedly crazy goal: Qualifying for the 2008 Summer Olympics Games as a member of the United States swimming team.
FICTION
SKELETONS AT THE FEAST. Chris Bohjalian. Shaye Areheart. 372 pages. $25. Perhaps our tumultuous times have something to do with the enduring popularity of World War II as subject matter for books and films. In recent years, novelists such as Richard Bausch, Louis Begley, A.L. Kennedy, Ian McEwan and Michael Ondaatje have approached this tragic period from different perspectives, each seeking to make new the terrible history. Now Chris Bohjalian, author of the hugely popular The Double Bind and Midwives...
TUESDAY Rabbi David Dalin and Icon of Evil. 7:30 p.m. Temple Judea, 5500 Granada Blvd., Coral Gables. For Books & Books. WEDNESDAY
HUMOR | WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES
WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES. David Sedaris. Hachette Audio. 8 CDs, unabridged. $34.98. You don't have to listen to David Sedaris read his work aloud to enjoy it. The audiobook of his latest collection of essays is not mandatory; if, for some reason, you are violently opposed to being read to, get a hard copy of When You Are Engulfed in Flames (Little, Brown, $25.99).
ESSAYS
THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND: Reports from a Divided Nation. Barbara Ehrenreich. Holt. 288 pages. $24. Wikipedia dubs prolific author and essayist Barbara Ehrenreich ''an American feminist, socialist and political activist,'' just the sort of writer to get Fox News commentators frothing. In This Land Is Their Land, her first book of satirical commentary, Ehrenreich spins off a reference to her as a destroyer of the American family in a book by Fox News pundit Kate O'Beirne.
FICTION
DEVIL MAY CARE: The New James Bond Novel. By Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming. Doubleday. 278 pages. $24.95. Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was born 100 years ago. In 1964, at the age of 56, having completed 12 Bond novels, he died of a heart attack, one apparently hastened by his fondness for the cocktails and cigarettes he wrote of with such affection. More than 20 additional Bond novels, authorized by his estate, have appeared, and now, to mark Fleming's centenary, we have yet...
SUSPENSE
NOTHING TO LOSE. Lee Child. Delacorte. 407 pages. $27. Jack Reacher -- former military cop, covert specialist, intelligent tough guy with big hands, a big frame and minimalist philosophies -- has always been an archetypical lone wolf, and so it's fitting that in his latest adventure we find him zipping back and forth between Hope and Despair.
FICTION
LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH. Emily Giffin. St. Martin's. 342 pages. $24.95. Happy newlywed Ellen Graham is crossing the street one afternoon in New York City when she runs into her ex-boyfriend Leo, the laid-back, commitment-phobe of a guy who broke her heart, leaving her to binge on Twinkies and sob herself to sleep for weeks, almost months. They chat.
BIOGRAPHY
WILLIE NELSON: An Epic Life. Joe Nick Patoski. Little, Brown. 576 pages. $27.99. Willie Nelson's first name really is Willie. Not William. Just Willie. That's about the simplest fact about this complex American musical icon, which means it's a Herculean task to put the singer/songwriter into context. Noted Texan author Joe Nick Patoski tries in his new biography, and though he secures interviews with Nelson and family and doesn't miss a fact, he comes up short in creating an intimate portrait.
Where Did I Leave My Glasses? Martha Weinman Lear. Wellness Central. 272 pages. $22.99. If you're out of your 20s, it has happened to you: Moving from one room of your home to another, you forget why you went to the second room. Or you put down your glasses, and now you can't find them. Or you start to introduce your fiancé to a friend you've known for 30 years, only you suddenly can't remember her name.
TUESDAY Alan Furst and The Spies of Warsaw. 8 p.m. Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables. Beth Dunlop and Miami Mediterranean Splendor. 8 p.m. Books & Books, 933 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach.
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
A father seeks forgiveness for what so many men regret, missing key moments in his children's lives because he was too busy, too far away.
BOOKS
For a guy known for his devastating novels about the human condition, Andre Dubus III sure sounds cheerful. He's gregarious and upbeat, the sort of writer who sneaks in quick workouts between interviews and happily chats about non-literary matters, say, the virtues of the wide-open kitchen in the house north of Boston that he built for his family .
HISTORY | WASHINGTON BURNING
WASHINGTON BURNING: How a Frenchman's Vision for Our Nation's Capital Survived Congress, the Founding Fathers, and the Invading British Army.
FICTION
THE OTHER. David Guterson. Knopf. 272 pages. $24.95. The premise of David Guterson's The Other sounds fairly high-concept: Neil Countryman, a middle-aged English teacher, inherits a fortune from boyhood pal John William Barry, a trust-fund baby who disappears to live as a hermit in the Washington back country. Toss in some coming-of-age angst, and the inevitable movie version will likely turn out to be something like A Separate Peace meets Into the Wild.
FICTION
OLIVE KITTERIDGE. Elizabeth Strout. Random. 270 pages. $25. Elizabeth Strout's new book is a hybrid, a ''a novel in stories.'' She places all her stories in and around a small coastal town in Maine, and she brings Olive Kitteridge onstage in every one, even if only briefly. But what you begin to realize, as these carefully crafted pieces accumulate, is that together they shape the arc of a narrative, and that the narrative is nothing less than the whole of Olive's life.
NONFICTION
AMONG THE CANNIBALS: Adventures on the Trail of Man's Darkest Ritual. Paul Raffaele. Smithsonian. 278 pages. $25.95. You know the standard image about cannibalism: A white Christian missionary stews in a large pot while an African tribe dances around him, planning to make him their next meal.
NONFICTION
THE ZOO ON THE ROAD TO NABLUS: A Story of Survival from the West Bank. Amelia Thomas. PublicAffairs. 293 pages. $24.95. There were no zoos on the West Bank when I was a teenager growing up in Ramallah in the late 1970s and early '80s. The only zoo I had ever visited was in West Jerusalem. Most animals were kept in pairs, as though Noah had just arrived and emptied his ark. I did not like the zoo because captivity was the reality of my life, too. If these animals -- most displaced -- had a language...
FICTION
SNUFF. Chuck Palahniuk. Doubleday. 208 pages. $24.95. Chuck Palahniuk's lackluster new novel, is -- despite being set during a record-smashing group sex porn shoot -- comparatively tame. This is Palahniuk after all -- a writer whose most famous work, Fight Club, took barbaric feats to new artistic heights and later gained notoriety with a descriptive book excerpt about gruesome injuries incurred during masturbation.
