May
23

Amazon Best Books of The Month May 2008

Every Month Amazon put their best books of the month in one place and not only choose 7 books but also gives 40% discount from that list. Check out the Best Books of the month of May 2008.

Spotlight Title: Nixonland by Rick Perlstein

How did we go from Lyndon Johnson’s landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon’s equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a “Silent Majority” that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended them in disgrace…

The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby

You don’t have to be a rabid Chris Farley fan to enjoy The Chris Farley Show, an honest, endearing oral biography about a truly funny, deeply troubled addict that is as likely to make you cry as it is to make you laugh out loud. Made up mostly of excerpts from intimate interviews with family, childhood friends, famous castmates, and writers, The Chris Farley Show is a vivid portrait of a performer, told plainly by the people who knew him best at every stage of his life…

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

On August 17, 1988, Pak One, the airplane carrying Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals, crashed, killing all on board–and despite continued investigation, a smoking gun–mechanical or conspiratorial–has yet to be found. Mohammed Hanif’s outrageous debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, tracks at least two (and as many as a half-dozen) assassination vectors to their convergence in the plane crash, incorporating elements as diverse as venom-tipped sabers, poison gas, the curses of a scorned First Lady, and a crow impaired by an overindulgence of ripe mangoes…

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

America has a richer literary landscape since Aleksandar Hemon, stranded in the United States in 1992 after war broke out in his native Sarajevo, adopted Chicago as his new home. In The Lazarus Project, his most ambitious and imaginative work yet, Hemon brings to life an epic narrative born from a historical event: the 1908 killing of Lazarus Averbuch, a 19-year-old Jewish immigrant who was shot dead by George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police, after being admitted into his home to deliver an important letter. The mystery of what really happened that day remains unsolved (Shippy claimed Averbuch was an anarchist with ill intent) and from this opening set piece Hemon springs a century ahead to tell the story of Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian-American writer living in Chicago…

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian

Like a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, a troubled young man slumbers away for ten years. While he slowly retraces the experiences that brought him into this dream state, the world around him morphs into a nearly unrecognizable place. The place is not a mountain fairyland in pre-Revolutionary America, though, but China at the turn of the 21st century…

The Girl of His Dreams by Donna Leon

Reading The Girl of His Dreams leaves you no choice but to reconsider what makes a mystery novel so good. Certainly there’s no denying the appeal of a hard-boiled crime story, where more often than not a brilliant yet battered P.I. drives you white-knuckled to the edge of your seat, but Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti–at once exactingly inquisitive and disarmingly sensitive–bucks that genre convention entirely. Here in Leon’s 17th Brunetti mystery is a man who relentlessly investigates the tragic drowning of a young Gypsy girl, yet–in his thoughtful meanderings through the streets and cafes of Venice–also struggles to understand the human warps and weaknesses that make his beloved city so vulnerable. In the end, it’s this pure love and curiosity for life (and, I admit, his lusty appreciation of daily luxuries like prosecco, good coffee, or a burst of sunshine) that make Brunetti such a seductive hero–so much so that you’re willing to follow him wherever he goes…

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer, creator of the phenomenal teen-vamp Twilight series, takes paranormal romance into alien territory in her first adult novel, The Host. Those wary of sci-fi or teen angst will be pleasantly surprised by this mature and imaginative thriller, propelled by equal parts action and emotion. A species of altruistic parasites has peacefully assumed control of the minds and bodies of most humans, but feisty Melanie Stryder won’t surrender her mind to the alien soul, called Wanderer, that inhabits her…