Monday, October 01, 2012

Fall Paperbacks from Overlook


Autumn is slowly creeping into the atmosphere with its dropping temperatures and beautifully changing leaves, and Overlook has brand new paperbacks to enjoy while you're wrapped up in a sweater enjoying a mug of hot cocoa. From crime thrillers and totalitarian art to celebrity stories and a history of magic, this list will surely provide  something for every book lover.

To help get you started we’re even giving some books away. Subscribe to the Winged Elephant before 9a.m. (EST) Friday morning and you might be the lucky reader who receives three paperbacks from the list below. To subscribe, enter your email address in the form on the right side of this page, or click here to get the latest news from Overlook delivered straight to your inbox. We'll contact a winner at the end of the week to select three books of their choice. Good luck and happy reading!

Dave Zeltserman
On Sale: 8/28/2012

In A Killer’s Essence, already optioned for the movies, Zeltserman’s unique talent (“deserves comparison with the best of James Ellroy” —Publisher’s Weekly) is back with full, sinister effect. Stan Green is a jaded New York City cop assigned to the most shocking homicide of his career—and he finds only one witness, a neurologically damaged recluse subject to demonic hallucinations. Then the murderer strikes again. Stan’s best hope is a man who claims to be surrounded by ghoulish apparitions. And there’s just a chance this witness isn’t insane, but instead terrifyingly perceptive…

Dave Zeltserman’s grisly crime novel is backgrounded by the 2004 ALCS playoffs, when the Red Sox triumphed over the Yankees. A knuckle-whitening, surprising, and compelling trip into Stan’s obsession with a brutal case, this serial-killer mystery is Zeltserman’s darkest, most gripping work yet.

“A doozy of a doom-laded crime story.” —The Washington Post


Cole Stryker
On Sale: 8/28/2012

Epic Win for Anonymous is the first book to tell the story of the genesis of the rogue protest groups—including Anonymous, LulzSec, and AntiSec—currently changing our world. Longtime Web culture critic Cole Stryker traces their growing importance to mainstream news, community activism, and new creative media. Starting with the “anti-Facebook,” the web community at 4chan.org, the book follows the evolution of Internet culture from humorous memes to political game-changers. Whether chronicling how Sarah Palin’s personal email account was hacked or dissecting the threat of cyber-bullying, Stryker’s engrossing and approachable book proves the transformative cultural impact of the Internet and the communities it sustains.

“This sharp guide avoids the fear, condescension, and hand-waving that dominate mainstream coverage of Internet culture…satisfying and thoroughly researched.” —Nick Douglas, author of Twitter Wit and editor at Slacktory


Igor Golomstock
On Sale: 9/25/2012

Totalitarian Art achieves nothing less than a thorough and serious comparative study of the official art of Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Mao’s China.

In the Soviet Union, and later is Maoist China, theories of mass artistic appeal were used to promote the Revolution both at home and abroad. In Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy they asserted the putative grandeur of the epoch. All too often, art that served the Revolution become “total realism,” and always it became a slave to the state and the cult of personality, and ultimately one more weapon in the arsenal of oppression. Igor Golomstock gives a detailed appraisal of the forms that define totalitarian art and illustrates his text with more than two hundred examples of its paintings, posters, sculpture, and architecture, and includes a powerful comparative visual essay which demonstrates the eerie similarity of the official art of these very different regimes.

“Golomstock convincingly demonstrates how the overlapping aesthetic values of these superficially disparate regimes underlined how much they had in common…Fascinating.” —Wall Street Journal


Sam Christer
On Sale: 9/25/2012

This thriller is “one of those very rare books that is capable of both thrilling and chilling the reader” (James Becker, author of The Moses Stone). Eight days before the summer solstice, a man is butchered in a blood-freezing sacrifice on the ancient site of Stonehenge before a congregation of worshippers. Within hours, one of the world’s foremost treasure hunters has shot himself in his country mansion. Teaming up with an ambitious young policewoman, his estranged son soon exposes a secret society—an ancient legion devoted to Stonehenge. With a ruthless new leader, the cult is now performing ritual sacrifices in a terrifying bid to unlock the secret of the stones.

Packed with codes, symbology, relentless suspense, and fascinating detail about one of the world’s most mysterious places, The Stonehenge Legacy is a breakthrough novel of addictive and eerie suspense.

“Intriguing…integrates secret diaries, codes, hooded monks, and historical detail.” —Publishers Weekly


Elizabeth Abbott
On Sale: 9/25/2012

She has been known as the “kept woman,” the “fancy woman,” and the “other woman.” She exists as both a fictional character and a flesh-and-blood human being. But what do Madame de Pompadour, Jane Eyre, and Camilla Parker-Bowles have in common? Why do women become mistresses, and is a mistress merely a wife-in-waiting, or is she the very definition of the emancipated, independent female?

In Mistresses, Elizabeth Abbott intelligently examines the motives and morals of some of the most infamous and fascinating women in history and literature. Drawing intimate portraits of those who have—whether by chance, coercion, or choice—assumed this complex role, from Chinese concubines and European royal mistresses to mobster molls and trophy girlfriends. Mistresses offers a rich blend of history, personal biography, and cultural insight.

“Has the irresistible appeal of celebrity gossip…Full of fascinating details and illuminating insights.” —Kirkus Reviews


Stephen Fry
On Sale: 9/25/2012

Stephen Fry, star of Wilde and host of QI, is firmly established as a celebrated cultural figure. But when he arrived at Cambridge he was a convicted thief, an addict, and a failed suicide, convinced that he would be expelled. Instead, university life offered him love and the chance to entertain. He befriended bright young things like Hugh Laurie, now the star of House, and Emma Thompson. This is the hilarious and utterly compelling story of how the Stephen the world knows (or thinks it knows) took his first steps in the worlds of theater, radio, television, and film. Tales of scandal and champagne jostle with insights into hard-earned stardom. The Fry Chronicles is not afraid to confront the chasm that separates public image from private feeling, and it is marvelously rich in trademark wit and verbal brilliance.

“Funny, poignant…His prose feels like an ideal form of conversation.” —The Washington Post


John Avlon
On Sale: 9/25/2012

America’s story has always been best told in newspapers. From the local and mundane—crime blotters, crop prices, and Sunday sermons—to the Federalist Papers and Watergate, the press has played an outsized role in our nation’s culture and history. Now in its fifth hardcover printing, Deadline Artists celebrates the relevance of the newspaper column through the simple power of excellent writing. It is an inspiration for a new generation of writers—whether their medium is print or digital—looking to learn from the best of their predecessors.

Contributors include: Jimmy Breslin, Ernie Pyle, Dorothy Thompson, Thomas L. Friedman, David Brooks, Ernest Hemingway, Will Rogers, Langston Hughes, Woody Guthrie, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, Art Buchwald, William F. Buckley, Dave Barry, Anna Quindlen, George Will, and Pete Hamill.

“As far as this essential anthology goes, it’s so well done, there’s nothing left to say.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)


Olga Slavnikova
On Sale: 9/25/2012

In the year 2017 in Russia—exactly 100 years after the revolution—poets and writers are obsolete, class distinctions are stingingly clear, and mischievous spirits intervene in the lives of humans from their home high in the mythical Riphean Mountains. Professor Anfilogov, a wealthy and emotionless man, sets out on an expedition to unearth priceless rubies that no one else has been able to locate. His expedition reveals ugly truths about man’s disregard for nature and the disasters created by insatiable greed.

Olga Slavnikova stuns with this witty, engaging, and remarkable tale of love, obsession, murder, and the lengths people will go to get what they want. Her biting prose is brought to life vividly and faithfully by acclaimed translator Marian Schwartz. With 2017, Slavnikova takes up the mantle of Russia’s unrivaled literary heritage.

“An unsettling but satisfying experience.” —The New York Journal of Books


Carrie Hagen
On Sale: 10/30/12

In 1874, a little boy named Charley Ross was snatched from his family’s front yard in Philadelphia. A ransom note arrived three days later, demanding $20,000 for Charley’s return. The city was about to host the United States Centennial celebration, and the mass panic surrounding the Charley Ross case plunged the nation into hysteria.

The desperate search led the police to inspect every building in Philadelphia, set up saloon surveillance in New York’s notorious slums, and begin a national manhunt. With white-knuckle suspense and historical detail, Hagen vividly captures the dark side of an earlier America. Her brilliant portrayal of its criminals, detectives, politicians, spiritualists, and ordinary families will stay with the reader long after the final page.

“Relentlessly suspenseful…This is an elegantly told, superbly accomplished history of good and bad intentions gone awry.” —Philadelphia Inquirer


Charles McCarry
On Sale: 9/25/2012

Since his reemergence with the publication of The Old Boys, Charles McCarry has been heralded as one of the few espionage writers whose books break out of the genre to shine as brilliant novels. The Secret Lovers is a McCarry tale at its finest—an exploration of the spying game, but also a riveting psychological portrait of a man ensnared by his own profession.

A courier delivers a dissident Russian manuscript to Paul Christopher early one morning in West Berlin; minutes later, the courier is dead. Meanwhile in Rome, Christopher’s wife takes a lover to stir her husband out of his stoicism. These two seemingly discrete events set in motion a spiral of Cold War intrigue, both personal and political, that leads Christopher from Europe to the Congo. In this relentlessly suspenseful novel, McCarry, who “surpasses Len Deighton and John le Carré” (Washington Post), builds his multilayered story to a outstandingly satisfying end.

“The sheer ambition of McCarry’s spy novels catapults him into the company of John le Carré, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, and Alan Furst, but his stylish voice and historic scope make him unique.” —Los Angles Times


Ludmila Ulitskaya
On Sale: 10/30/2012

Daniel Stein, Interpreter is seen by many as the great Russian novel of our time. Winner of the Russian National Literary Prize and the Simone de Beauvoir Prize, and nominated for the Russian Booker Novel of the Decade, Ludmila Ulitskaya has earned accolades internationally for this groundbreaking work.

This innovative novel tells the story of Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew who narrowly survives the Holocaust by working for the Gestapo as an interpreter. After the war, he converts to Catholicism, becomes a priest, and finally emigrates to Israel. Despite this seemingly far-fetched progression, the life of Daniel Stein is not an invention—he is based on a real person, Oswald Rufeisen, a Carmelite priest.

Daniel Stein, Interpreter ranges from before World War II to modern times, and from the shtetl to Israel to America. It portrays a life full of amazing contradictions and undaunted faith.

“Rarely does a novel appear that is as commanding and brilliant as Daniel Stein, Interpreter.” —The Chronicle Herald


Rudolf Kippenhahn
On Sale: 10/30/2012

The achievements of cryptography, the art of writing and deciphering coded messages, have become a part of everyday life, especially in our age of electronic banking and the Internet. In Code Breaking, Rudolf Kippenhahn offers readers both an exciting chronicle of cryptography and a lively exploration of the cryptographer’s craft. Rich with vivid anecdotes from a history of coding and decoding and featuring three new chapters, this revised and expanded edition makes the often abstruse art of deciphering coded messages accessible to the general reader and reveals the relevance of codes to our everyday high-tech society. A stylishly written, meticulously researched adventure, Code Breaking explores the ways in which communication can be obscured and, like magic, made clear again.

“A breezy survey of codes, ranging from the betrayal of Mary, Queen of Scots…to the nature of credit card security.” —The New York Times


Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate
On Sale: 9/25/2012

Have you ever wanted to know more about alchemy, mix up a herbal remedy, dowse for water, perform a spell, or find out more about “second sight”? Did the Harry Potter books ignite your curiosity about wizardry? Through experiments to try and places to visit, as well as a historical exploration of magic and interviews with leading magicians, The Book of English Magic will introduce you to the extraordinary world that lies beneath the surface.

Magic runs through the veins of English history, part of daily life from the earliest Arthurian legends to Aleister Crowley to the novels of Tolkien and Philip Pullman, and from the Druids to Freemasonry and beyond. Richly illustrated and deeply knowledgeable, this book is an invaluable source for anyone curious about magic and wizardry, or for sophisticated practitioners wanting to learn more.

“An accessible and immensely readable book…A fascinating insight into a hidden world.” —Booksquawk


Pamela Stephenson
On Sale: 10/30/2012

A favorite of American audiences, Billy Connolly, who now lives in Los Angeles, is the outrageous comedian whose unsurpassed comedic talent has won him countless fans. Billy, the revelatory, poignant, and wildly entertaining biography is written by the woman who knows him best—his wife.

With insight and objectivity, Pamela Stephenson, a clinical psychologist, takes us through the heartbreaking and hilarious life of a comic legend and what made him the man he is today. The descriptions of Scottish life evoke the poignancy of the Ireland in Angela’s Ashes as she tells of the troubled, abused, and desperately poor child in the docklands of Glasgow who grew up to shock and awe audiences around the world with his notoriously bawdy humor and a remarkable range of performances as a brilliant comic, a serious actor who played opposite Dame Judi Dench in Mrs. Brown, and the star of the U.S. television show Head of Class.

“A triumph of the will, an Angela’s Ashes with punch lines.” —Publishers Weekly


Susan Hill
On Sale: 10/30/2012

Susan Hill—the Man Booker Prize nominee whose ghost story The Woman in Black is now a major film starring Daniel Radcliffe—has written her most captivating work in The Betrayal of Trust. The English town of Lafferton is ravaged by flash floods. A shallow grave is exposed; the remains of missing teenager Harriet Lowther have been uncovered. Harriet was the daughter of a prominent local businessman, and her death twenty years before had led to her mother’s suicide.

Cold cases are always tough, and in this mystery in the enduringly popular series, Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler must confront his most grisly, dangerous, and complex case yet. Susan Hill’s understanding of the human heart, her brilliance when evoking characters, and her tremendous powers of storytelling come into full force in The Betrayal of Trust.

“Beautifully written…Hill is giving us a timeless panorama of life and death in an English town, one in which a murder investigation is only one drama among many.” —Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post

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