Welcome to our Best of the Month page, where, in addition to our regular Significant Seven picks (our favorite books of the month, which we offer all month long at 40% off), you can find seven more picks on the side (since we always have more books we want to share), our favorite new paperbacks, and up-to-date lists of the topselling and most discussed books of the month.
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| Spotlight Title: The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston | 
When author Douglas Preston moved his family to Florence he never expected he would soon become obsessed and entwined in a horrific crime story whose true-life details rivaled the plots of his own bestselling thrillers. While researching his next book, Preston met Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist who told him about the Monster of Florence, Italy's answer to Jack the Ripper, a terror who stalked lovers' lanes in the Italian countryside. The killer would strike at the most intimate time, leaving mutilated corpses in his bloody wake over a period from 1968 to 1985. One of these crimes had taken place in an olive grove on the property of Preston's new home. That was enough for him to join "Monsterologist" Spezi on a quest to name the killer, or killers, and bring closure to these unsolved crimes. Local theories and accusations flourished: the killer was a cuckolded husband; a local aristocrat; a physician or butcher, someone well-versed with knives; a satanic cult. Thomas Harris even dipped into "Monster" lore for some of Hannibal Lecter's more Grand Guignol moments in Hannibal. Add to this a paranoid police force more concerned with saving face and naming a suspect (any suspect) than with assessing the often conflicting evidence on hand, and an unbelievable twist that finds both authors charged with obstructing justice, with Spezi jailed on suspicion of being the Monster himself. The Monster of Florence is split into two sections: the first half is Spezi's story, with the latter bringing in Preston's updated involvement on the case. Together these two parts create a dark and fascinating descent into a landscape of horror that deserves to be shelved between In Cold Blood and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. --Brad |
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Read the introduction to The Monster of Florence
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| The Last Campaign by Thurston Clarke | | Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen | 
When Senator Robert F. Kennedy entered the presidential race during the chaotic year of 1968, anarchy appeared to be gathering on the horizon. America was coming to grips with an unwinnable war in Vietnam and unacceptable social policies at home. The Last Campaign examines Kennedy's bold (and tragically shortened) efforts to awaken his country's social conscience and moral sensibility. In contrast to the cocksure attitude of Thirteen Days (RFK's own 1962 memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis), Thurston Clarke reveals a very human politician who often trembled at the podium and scanned crowds for an assassin's glare. Though motivated to serve by an unwavering desire to help the poor and oppressed, Kennedy also lived with a deep fear that his life would be cut short by violence. "I'm afraid there are guns between me and the White House," he prophetically remarked during the spring of '68. Yet The Last Campaign chooses not to explore what could have been. Instead, Clarke focuses on what is certain: for an 82-day period, Kennedy "convinced millions of Americans that he was a good man, perhaps a great man." --Dave | | 
Imagine what it might be like to realize that the person you love is, in fact, not the person you love but a doppelgänger: or, what Leo Liebenstein coolly terms a "simulacrum" of his wife Rema at the outset of Atmospheric Disturbances. David Byrne's infamous cry that "this is not my beautiful wife" seems the most likely response, but Leo's reaction to this sea change takes unpredictable and dazzlingly plotted turns in the story that follows. Leo's journey to recover the "real" Rema is nothing short of byzantine; among its many mysteries is the delightfully inscrutable Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, a master meteorologist who in cleverly constructed flashback sequences takes up residence in the daily rhythms of Leo and Rema's marriage and becomes as much a focus of Leo's obsession as his wife's whereabouts. (Think Vertigo--but directed by Charlie Kaufman.) Make no mistake: this is dizzying debut fiction, bursting at the spine with beautifully articulated ideas about love, yes, but also--and with maddening resonance--about the private wars love forces us to wage with ourselves. Be sure to keep a pen or pencil handy: it's impossible to resist underlining prose this good. --Anne |
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Read the prologue from The Last Campaign
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Read an exclusive Amazon Q&A with author Thurston Clarke
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Read more about Atmospheric Disturbances
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Read the first two chapters of Atmospheric Disturbances
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| The Other by David Guterson | | A Thousand Hills by Stephen Kinzer | 
When John William Barry and Neil Countryman meet at a high school track meet in the early 1970s, they are two sides of the same coin: John is a trust-fund baby and student of a prestigious private school while Neil is solidly working class, but they share an affinity for the outdoors and apprehension over impending changes in their lives. After an unintentionally challenging week lost in the wilds of the North Cascades, John is compelled to an ascetic path: life in a remote river valley in the Olympic Peninsula rainforest, where he chips a shelter from a granite wall and immerses himself in the esoterica of Gnostic dualism--a philosophy that holds that the material world is illusional and destructive. Neil meanwhile chooses a traditional path as a father and school teacher, despite his troubled friend's exhortations to eschew "hamburger world" and find truth in a simpler, stripped-down existence. Nothing is that simple, of course, and The Other compellingly explores the compromises we make to balance meaning and security in our lives through the choices (and their subsequent consequences) of these two men. --Jon | | 
Fourteen years after the 1994 genocide that claimed 800,000 lives in 100 days, Rwandans continue the daily work of rebuilding their shattered country. In light of recent reports that one in four people there suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder--which Rwandans aptly describe as ihahamuka or "breathless with fear"--how is recovery even possible? In search of answers, foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer traveled extensively in Rwanda, where he observed an astonishing economic and political transformation--based surprisingly on Asian models--and the implementation of unconventional reconciliation strategies. The result of Kinzer's quest is A Thousand Hills, a page-turning story of a society desperately trying to regain its breath and an ambitious and autocratic leader's unrelenting efforts to breathe life into its future. This is essential reading, even if you've read earlier accounts by Canadian general Roméo Dallaire, journalists Philip Gourevitch and Samantha Power, and the heroic Paul Rusesabagina, immortalized in the film Hotel Rwanda. --Lauren |
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Read the first chapter of The Other
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Read chapter five from A Thousand Hills
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| The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie | | The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski | 
Trying to describe a Salman Rushdie novel is like trying to describe music to someone who has never heard it--you can fumble with a plot summary but you won't be able to convey the wonder of his dazzling prose or the imaginative complexity of his vision. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story--whether it is the imagined life of a Mughal queen, or the devastating secret held by a silver-tongued Florentine. Make no mistake, it is Rushdie who is the true "enchanter" of this story, conjuring readers into his gilded fairy tale from the very first sentence: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold." At once bawdy, gorgeous, gory, and hilarious, The Enchantress of Florence is a study in contradiction, highlighted in its barbarian philosopher-king who detests his bloodthirsty heritage even while he carries it out. Full of rich sentences running nearly the length of a page, Rushdie's 10th novel blends fact and fable into a challenging but satisfying read. --Daphne | | 
It's gutsy for a debut novelist to offer a modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin--particularly one in which the young hero, born mute, communicates with people, dogs, and the occasional ghost through his own mix of sign and body language. But David Wroblewski's extraordinary way with language in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle immerses readers in a living, breathing world that is both fantastic and utterly believable. In selecting for temperament and a special intelligence, Edgar's grandfather started a line of unusual dogs--the Sawtelles--and his sons carried on his work. But among human families, undesirable traits aren't so easily predicted, and clashes can erupt with tragic force. Edgar's tale takes you to the extremes of what humans must endure, and when you're finally released, you will come back to yourself feeling wise, and flush with gratitude. And you will have remembered what kind of magnificent alchemy a finely wrought novel can work. --Mari |
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Read more about The Enchantress of Florence
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Read more about The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
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| | | | | More Media Picks | 
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See the monthly favorites of our other editorial teams:
• Music
• Movies & TV
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| Best Way to Know Life as an African Child
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In these remarkable stories, a Nigerian-born Jesuit priest brings us into the lives of five African children, and their battles for food, shelter, safety, joy, and other necessities. --Mari
Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
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Best Return to the Valley of the Dolls
|  Just in time for the beach, a sharp, funny, and wise take on the ambitions, expectations, and failures of a typically suburban Silicon Valley family. --Jon
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything by Janelle Brown
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Best Seat in the House Without Leaving the Couch
|  Make room for this over the (big) top book of amazing early circus photographs and memorabilia. Just add a bag of peanuts! --Lauren
The Circus: 1870-1950 by Noel Daniel
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Best Literary Letter of Complaint
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Dear Jonathan Miles: You've written a dazzling, desperate debut novel aching with dark humor and hope. May your book be embraced by readers stranded at airports and armchairs across America. --Brad
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
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Best Nostalgia Trip for the Toughskins Set
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Collects all the dopey-gag genius of the "Wacky Packs" that deformed a generation of young minds, complete with authentic wax-paper cover. --Tom
Wacky Packages, introduction by Art Spiegelman
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Best Alternative to Point Break
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Don Winslow's darkly funny and engaging thriller featuring surfer-ex-cop- turned-PI Boone Daniels will make you forget all about Johnny Utah. --Daphne
The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow
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