Tuesday, April 22, 2008
A Classic Returns to Print
Diamond Pass Publishing has just released the 5th Edition of A Cruising Guide To The Maine Coast, as this classic and definitive text turns 20. For more information, or to order your copy, take this link.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Historic Photos of Maine
We just got in today from Turner Publishing a newly-published book called Historic Photos of Maine From the Civil War to the present day, this collection of nearly 200 photographs of Maine people, places, machines, and animals is a history worth a quarter-million words. From child laborers in Sanford to snow removal in Caribou; from "summer people" at Mt Kineo to sons of Maine mustering during the Spanish-American War; from the burned-out streets of Portland right after the Great Fire to an elm-shaded summer afternoon in Bethel, this is a record of the "way we lived" – and continue to live – in the Land of Dirigo.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Just Out Of The Box....
The following went on sale today....
The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
by Pico Iyer
Hardcover, 288 pages
$24.00
Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s) for the last three decades – an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama’s position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the remotest, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.
Moving from Dharamsala, India – the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile – to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West, where the Dalai Lama’s pragmatism, rigor, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.
The Blue Zone: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest
Written by Dan Buettner
Hardcover, 304 pages
$26.00
With the right lifestyle, experts say, chances are that you may live up to a decade longer. What’s the prescription for success? National Geographic Explorer Dan Buettner has traveled the globe to uncover the best strategies for longevity found in the Blue Zones: places in the world where higher percentages of people enjoy remarkably long, full lives. And in this dynamic book he discloses the recipe, blending this unique lifestyle formula with the latest scientific findings to inspire easy, lasting change that may add years to your life.
Buettner’s colossal research effort, funded in part by the National Institute on Aging, has taken him from Costa Rica to Italy to Japan and beyond. In the societies he visits, it’s no coincidence that the way people interact with each other, shed stress, nourish their bodies, and view their world yields more good years of life. You’ll meet a 94-year-old farmer and self-confessed “ladies man” in Costa Rica, an 102-year-old grandmother in Okinawa, a 102-year-old Sardinian who hikes at least six miles a day, and others. By observing their lifestyles, Buettner’s teams have identified critical everyday choices that correspond with the cutting edge of longevity research – and distilled them into a few simple but powerful habits that anyone can embrace.
Buckingham Palace Gardens
Written by Anne Perry
Hardcover, 320 pages
$26.00
The Prince of Wales has asked four wealthy entrepreneurs and their wives to the palace to discuss a fantastic idea: the construction of a six-thousand-mile railroad that would stretch the full length of Africa. But, alas, the prince’s gathering proves disastrous when the mutilated body of a prostitute hired for a late-night frolic (after the wives have retired to bed) turns up among the queen’s monogrammed sheets in a palace linen closet.
With great haste, Thomas Pitt, brilliant mainstay of Special Services, is summoned to resolve the crisis. The Pitts’ cockney maid, Gracie, is also recruited – to pose as a palace servant and listen in on the guests’ conversations, scan their bedrooms, and scrutinize their troubled faces for clues to hidden rivalries and attachments that could have lead to murder. If Pitt and Gracie fail to find out who brutally murdered the young woman – as seems increasingly likely – Pitt’s career will be over, and the scandal may just cause the monarchy to fall.
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
Hardcover, 288 pages
$25.00
Elizabeth Strout binds together thirteen rich, luminous narratives into a book with the heft of a novel, through the presence of one larger-than-life, unforgettable character: Olive Kitteridge.
At the edge of the continent, Crosby, Maine, may seem like nowhere, but seen through this brilliant writer’s eyes, it’s in essence the whole world, and the lives that are lived there are filled with all of the grand human drama – desire, despair, jealousy, hope, and love.
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance: a former student who has lost the will to live: Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life – sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.
Our Story Begins
New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff
Hardcover, 400 pages
$26.95
Wollf returns with fresh revelations – about biding one’s time, or experiencing first love, or burying one’s mother – that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary: a retired Marine enrolled in college while her son trains for Iraq, a lawyer taking a difficult deposition, an American in Rome indulging the Gypsy who’s picked his pocket. In these stories, as with his earlier, much-anthologized work, he once again proves himself, according to the Los Angeles Times, “a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions that take a lifetime to resolve.”
Now In Paperback
At Some Disputed Barricade
by Anne Perry
Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Price: $15.00
We Shall Not Sleep
by Anne Perry
Trade Paperback, 304 pages
$15.00
Dark Wraith of Shannara
by Terry Brooks
Trade Paperback, 208 pages
$13.95
Man and Camel
Poems by Mark Strand
Trade Paperback, 72 pages
$15.00
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Muskrat Stew, anyone?
The Maine Folklife Center has issued a new publication called, Muskrat Stew and Other Tales of a Penobscot Life. The life which is the subject of the tales is that of Fred Ranco, born in 1932 on the Penobscot Revervation on Indian Island near Old Town.
"I consider myself a modern man," Ranco writes in the book's introduction. "I am, however, proud to belong to the ancient tribe of people of which I will speak."
These tales tell us much more than the usual nostalgic reminiscences of a 75-year-old man. In these pages we learn what it's like to live with one foot in a century dominated by the gauge of progress and with one foot in the traditions of the ancients. Here are grandparents who spoke in their native tongue. Here also is prejudice, racism, and economic hardship -- a glimpse of an ordinary man living in extraordinary circumstances, a story of the strength of the human spirit and the healing power of human love.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Martha Tod Dudman in Bangor on Feb. 16
Martha Tod Dudman will read from, discuss, and sign copies of her new book, Black Olives, on Saturday, February 16th, at 2 o'clock at the Bangor Public Library. Dudman is the author of Expecting to Fly and Augusta, Gone. She lives in Maine.
BookMarc's has copies available for sale now and will have them at the event.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Welcome To Duma Key
Stephen King's new novel, Duma Key, is here!
It's been garnering favorable reviews in, for instance, the New York Times and Kirkus, and already has its own entry in the online knowledge base, Wikipedia. Here's some of the cover art from King's own site.
Buy Now!
Now in paperback: Stephen "Richard Bachman" King's Blaze!
