National Book Store recommends summer reads
Martha Stewart’s Pies & Tarts
By Martha Stewart
P895
MANILA, Philippines - Filled with seasonal fruit, piled high with billowy meringue, or topped with buttery streusel, pies and tarts are comforting and foolproof. In Martha Stewart’s New Pies and Tarts, the editors of Martha Stewart Living include 150 recipes: Some are savory, some are sweet; some are simple enough for a weeknight, while others are fancy enough for special events. Throughout, readers will find plenty of fillings and crusts, basics, and techniques for creating flavors and textures for every taste—from down-home classics that come together easily with fresh berries and stone fruits to modern tarts layered with chocolate ganache or finished with a wine glaze. A complete basics section of tools, pantry staples, and dough recipes (pâte brisée, cream cheese dough, press-in cookie crusts, puff pastry), plus plenty of tips and make-ahead tricks, help readers along the way. Whether making an effortless, free-form galette or the perfect latticework pie, bakers of all skill levels will look again and again to Martha Stewart’s New Pies & Tarts book.
Chicken Soup For The Soul: Shaping The New You
By Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Amy Newman
P595
No one likes to diet, but the personal stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Shaping the New You will encourage and inspire readers with its positive, practical, and purposeful tales of dieting and fitness. This is a great book for anyone embarking on a healthier lifestyle.
Worth Dying For: A Reacher Novel
By Lee Child
P315
No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child follows the electrifying 61 Hours with his latest Reacher thriller — a story that hits the ground running and then accelerates all the way to a colossal showdown. There’s deadly trouble in the corn country of Nebraska and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved case of a missing child, already decades old, that Reacher can’t let go of. The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. They’re awaiting a secret shipment that’s already late—and they have the kind of customers no one can afford to annoy. For as dangerous as the Duncans are, they’re just the bottom of a criminal food chain stretching halfway around the world. For Reacher, it would have made much more sense to keep on going, to put some distance between himself and the hardcore trouble that’s bearing him down. Worth Dying For is the kind of explosive thriller only Lee Child could write and only Jack Reacher could survive—a heart-racing page turner no suspense fan will want to miss.
Imperial Bedrooms
By Bret Easton Ellis
P315
Bret Easton Ellis’s debut, Less Than Zero, is one of the signal novels of the last 30 years and he now follows those infamous teenagers into an even more desperate middle age. Clay, a successful screenwriter, has returned from New York to Los Angeles to help cast his new movie, and he’s soon drifting through a long familiar circle. Blair, his former girlfriend, is married to Trent, an influential manager who’s still a bisexual philanderer, and their Beverly Hills parties attract various levels of fame, fortune and power. Then there is Clay’s childhood friend Julian, a recovering addict, and their old dealer, Rip, who is face-lifted beyond recognition and seemingly even more sinister than in his notorious past. But Clay’s own demons emerge once he meets a gorgeous young actress determined to win a role in his movie. And when his life careens completely out of control, he has no choice but to plumb the darkest recesses of his character and come to terms with his proclivity for betrayal.
Tell All
By Chunk Palahniuk
P299
Soaked, nay, marinated in the world of vintage Hollywood, Tell All is a Sunset Boulevard-inflected homage to Old Hollywood when Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ruled the roost; a veritable Tourette’s syndrome of name-dropping, from the A-list to the Z-list, and a merciless send-up of Lillian Hellman’s habit of butchering the truth that will have Mary McCarthy cheering from the beyond. The Thelma Ritter–ish narrator is Hazie Coogan, who for decades has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine “Miss Kathie” Kenton—veteran of multiple marriages, career comebacks, and cosmetic surgeries. But danger arrives with gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III, who worms his way into Miss Kathie’s heart. Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written a celebrity tell-all memoir foretelling Miss Kathie’s death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman–penned musical extravaganza; as the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans and for posterity. Tell All is funny, subversive, and fascinatingly clever. It’s wild, it’s wicked, it’s bold-faced and it’s vintage Chuck.
