What's Releasing (04-07-10 edition)

Books available the week of 4/12:

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Fate takes many forms. . . .

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey—named Beatrice and Virgil—and the epic journey they undertake together.

With all the spirit and originality that made Life of Pi so beloved, this brilliant new novel takes the reader on a haunting odyssey. On the way Martel asks profound questions about life and art, truth and deception, responsibility and complicity.


The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker

FBI Special agent Brad Raines is facing his toughest case yet. A Denver serial killer has killed four beautiful young women, leaving a bridal veil at each crime scene, and he's picking up his pace. Unable to crack the case, Raines appeals for help from a most unusual source: residents of the Center for Wellbeing and Intelligence, a private psychiatric institution for mentally ill individuals whose are extraordinarily gifted.

It's there that he meets Paradise, a young woman who witnessed her father murder her family and barely escaped his hand. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Paradise may also have an extrasensory gift: the ability to experience the final moments of a person's life when she touches the dead body.

In a desperate attempt to find the killer, Raines enlists Paradise's help. In an effort to win her trust, he befriends this strange young woman and begins to see in her qualities that most 'sane people' sorely lack. Gradually, he starts to question whether sanity resides outside the hospital walls...or inside.

As the Bride Collector picks up the pace-and volume-of his gruesome crucifixions, the case becomes even more personal to Raines when his friend and colleague, a beautiful young forensic psychologist, becomes the Bride Collector's next target.

The FBI believes that the killer plans to murder seven women. Can Paradise help before it's too late?

Also available:

• Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky
• Batman & Robin Vol. 1: Batman Reborn Deluxe HC by Grant Morrison
• Bringing up Girls: Practical Advice and Encouragement for Those Shaping the Next Generation of Women by James C. Dobson
• Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben
• The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris by Mark Kurlansky
• Eat the Cookie... Buy the Shoes: Giving Yourself Permission to Lighten Up by Joyce Meyer
• The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence by Paul Davies
• Elegy for April by Benjamin Black
• Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
• The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
• The Host by Stephenie Meyer
• A Mighty Fortress by David Weber
• Oprah: A Biography by Kitty Kelley
• The Other Family by Joanna Trollope
• The Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark
• Shameless by Karen Robards
• The South Beach Diet Super Quick Cookbook by Rodale Books
• 2010: Take Back America: A Battle Plan by Dick Morris
• Wrecked by Carol Higgins Clark