Mr. Bookclub *NEW

June 2010 Selection: A satirical joyride in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, First Contact introduces us to the hyper-intelligent Rigelians, who admire Woody Allen movies and Bundt cake, and who urge the people of Earth to mend their ways to avoid destruction of their planet. But the president of the United States, a God-fearing, science-doubting fitness fanatic, is skeptical of the evidence presented to him and sets in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of his young attache, an alien scam artist, several raccoons, and a scientist who has predicted the end of the universe. Parrot sketch excluded.

April 2010 Selection: A fascinating and moving portrait of a brutalized man in Mao's China.

November 2009 Selection: A Dickensian cast of characters in 19th Century New England comes brilliantly to life in this wondrous debut novel about an orphaned boy and the colorful con man who claims to be his brother.

August 2009 Selection: As a teenager, it was never Sam Pulsifer's intention to torch an American landmark, and he certainly never planned to kill two people in the blaze. To this day, he still wonders why that young couple was upstairs in bed in the Emily Dickinson House after hours. After serving ten years in prison for his crime, Sam is determined to put the past behind him. He fifinishes college, begins a career, falls in love, gets married, has two adorable kids, and buys a home. His low-profifile life is chugging along quite nicely until the past comes crashing through his front door. As the homes of Robert Frost, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even a replica of Henry David Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond, go up in smoke, Sam becomes the number one suspect. Finding the real culprit is the only way to clear his name--but sometimes there's a terrible price to pay for the truth. "An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England" is a tour de force--a novel disguised as a memoir, a mystery that cloaks itself in humor, and an artful piece of literature that bites the hand that breeds it.

June 2009 Selection: Jane Charlotte has been arrested for murder. She tells police that she is a member of a secret organization devoted to fighting evil; her division is called the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons--"Bad Monkeys" for short. This confession earns Jane a trip to the jail's psychiatric wing, where a doctor attempts to determine whether she is lying, crazy - or playing a different game altogether. What follows is one of the most clever and gripping novels you'll ever read.

February 2009 Selection: "Rosenbaum's The Ant King and Other Stories contains invisible cities and playful deconstructions of the form. In "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, With Air-Planes, ' by Benjamin Rosenbaum"--yes, his name is part of the title--the author imagines a world whose technologies and philosophies differ wildly from ours. The result is a commentary on the state of the art that is itself the state of the art."--Los Angeles Times Favorite Books of 2008 * "Give him some prizes, like, perhaps, "best first collection" for this book."--Booklist (Starred review) "Featuring outlandish and striking imagery throughout--a woman in love with an elephant, an orange that ruled the world--this collection is a surrealistic wonderland."--Publishers Weekly "Rosenbaum proves he's capable of sustained fantasy with "Biographical Notes," a steampunkish alternate history of aerial piracy, and "A Siege of Cranes," a fantasy about a battle between a human insurgent and the White Witch that carries decidedly modern undercurrents.... Perhaps none of the tales is odder than "Orphans," in which girl-meets-elephant, girl-loses-elephant."--Kirkus Reviews "Urbane without being arch, sweet without being maudlin, mysterious without being cryptic."--Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing "Lively, bizarre, and funny as well as dark, sinister, and sensual."--Boston Phoenix A dazzling, postmodern debut collection of pulp and surreal fictions: a writer of alternate histories defends his patron's zeppelin against assassins and pirates; a woman transforms into hundreds of gumballs; an emancipated children's collective goes house hunting. Benjamin Rosenbaum's stories have appeared in Asimov'sScience Fiction and McSweeney's, been translated into fourteen languages, and listed in The Best American Short Stories 2006. Shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards, Rosenbaum's work has been reprinted in Harper's and The Year's Best Science Fiction. He lives in Switzerland with his family.

October 2008 Selection: A birthday-party magician whose hat tricks end in horror and gore; a girl parented by a major household appliance; the possessor of the lowest IQ in the Mossad--such are the denizens of Etgar Keret's dark and fertile mind. "The Girl on the Fridge "contains the best of Keret's first collections, the ones that made him a household name in Israel and the major discovery of this last decade.