Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I by Margaret George
Viking / On-Sale: April 5, 2011

Praise for ELIZABETH I

“This is Margaret George’s best novel yet, and a true masterpiece.  Her Elizabethis unforgettable.”
—Sharon Kay Penman

“This is one of the best historical novels I have read in ages, a stunning tour de force. It conveys a vivid and authentic sense of Elizabeth Tudor and her world. Extensively researched with the highest integrity, and deeply engaging, it sets a new benchmark for the genre. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”
—Alison Weir

“George’s mastery of period detail and her sure navigation through the rocky shoals of Elizabethan politics mean this lengthy novel never flags.”
—Booklist (starred)

“Like her heroine, George possesses an eye for beauty and a knack for detail, creating a vibrant story that, for nearly 700 pages, enables readers to experience firsthand Elizabeth’s decisions, triumphs, and losses. Rather than turn Elizabeth I into a romantic heroine, George painstakingly reveals a monarch who defined an era.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Nicely bloody and byzantine.”
—Kirkus

“The epitome of a well-researched book. . . . This novel is by far the most human look at Elizabeth[and] an absolute must read for ElizabethI fans.”
—Dallas Examiner

“This is a magnificent, stay-up-all-night page-turner. . . . Margaret George dazzles.”
—GoodReads (Movers & Shakers feature)

 “Illuminating. . . . An up-close-and-personal view of Elizabeth’s inner life and private circle: at court, in parliament, and as commander-in-chief of the world’s greatest empire.”

—Book Reporter

“A richly fleshed out story [and] a tantalizing glimpse into what Elizabeth may have been like.”
—San Jose Examiner

“By carefully blending the rich historical detail that is available with her own equally rich imagination, George presents a fascinating portrait of a smart, brave and politically savvy leader who was nevertheless also human and emotional”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram

About the Book:
More than 400 years after the death of Elizabeth I, the last and longest-reigning of the Tudor monarchs, the dynasty continues to fascinate us, living on in Hollywood blockbusters like “The Other Boleyn Girl,” television series like Showtime’s “The Tudors” and books like Hilary Mantel’s award-winning Wolf Hall. ELIZABETH I (Viking; ISBN: 9780670022533; On-sale Date: April 5, 2011; Pages: 688; Price: $30), by Margaret George, one of our premier writers of historical fiction, is one of the few works to explore England’s most famous queen at the height of her powers, picking up where other books leave off—just as the Spanish Armada is about to invade. In truth, the Armada was the beginning of a great era, not its finale.

About Margaret George:
Margaret George is the author of several bestselling novels, including The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles, The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Mary, Called Magdalene, and Helen of Troy. She travels widely to research her novels

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The Ragged Edge of the World

The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous Peoples Meet
by Eugene Linden
Viking / On Sale Date: March 17, 2011 

“Thoughtful and compelling”
—National Geographic

“The Ragged Edge of the World is a call to arms – albeit one that may already be too late, given humankind’s astonishing ability to destroy the environment. It underlines the need for those organisations most concerned with understanding the natural world and its fragile complexities to do much more to reverse the tide.”
—Financial Times

“A well-rendered but disheartening tale of a life’s work documenting the ‘human and animal detritus left behind in the aftermath of the advancing armies of the consumer society’”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Linden’s involving and provocative dispatches and discerning long view offer piercing insights into how very difficult it is to protect ecosystems and traditional cultures, and how terribly impoverished we will be as so many wondrous species and invaluable forms of indigenous knowledge, much far beyond science in understanding nature, vanish.”
—Booklist

 “Linden provides an original look at globalization and its impact on various cultures and species throughout the world. Anyone interested in global environmental issues will find this book informative. Highly recommended for its readability and content.”
—Library Journal

For over thirty years Eugene Linden has traveled the world researching his books and writing for National Geographic, Time, and many other publications, on nature and the environment. While these trips were prompted by diverse writing assignments, all were informed by a singular hunger: a desire to see the places where modernity and tradition collide. In his book, THE RAGGED EDGE OF THE WORLD: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous Peoples Meet (Viking; $26.95; 256 pages; ISBN 978-0-670-2251-9; On-sale March 21, 2011) award-winning author and environmental journalist Linden puts a human face on globalism by examining how various cultures around the world are succumbing to—or resisting—modernity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Eugene Linden is the author of seven books, including The Winds of Change and The Parrot’s Lament And Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity. For many years, Linden wrote about global environmental issues for Time and has contributed to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Fortune, and Slate.

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Year of the Hare

The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna with foreword by Pico Iyer
Penguin Paperback Original / On Sale: January 2011 

In his foreword to the internationally bestselling comic novel THE YEAR OF THE HARE (Penguin Paperback Original / On-Sale: January 2011 / ISBN: 9780143117926 / $14.00) by Finnish writer Arto Paasilinna, Pico Iyer asks, “Which of us has not had that wonderfully seditious idea: to play hooky for a while from life as we know it?,” an appropriate meditative beginning to the fairytale-like adventure that follows.

A contemporary classic of world literature, THE YEAR OF THE HARE was first published in Finland more than twenty-five years ago and has won three international prizes, twice been made into a feature film, and been translated into more than twenty-five languages. This is the first time it’s being published in North America, just in time to usher in 2011—the Year of the Hare in Chinese zodiac—and to inspire readers seeking a more meaningful life to take to heart this story of one man’s life-changing epiphany and to make their own vows of renewal in the new year.

Praise for THE YEAR OF THE HARE
“A spare narrative about a social misfit and a hare, halfway between fairy tale and fable, that builds with an unexpected cumulative impact. Perpetually unpredictable and constantly heartwarming, it’s a book to read slowly and savor.”
—Shelf Awareness

 “The Year of the Hare is only the most Finnish, and perhaps most antically Zen-ish, of a shelf-load of books that tell us to find and live by our own ideas of contentment.”
—The Wall Street Journal

 “Step out of the domestic gulag and into The Year of the Hare, a novel that depicts the confident freedom of the journeyman. I loved it.”
—Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft

 “An exemplary comic novel, full of amiable if binding warnings about the septic follies of civilization—to be read with rising anxiety and delight.”
—Thomas McGuane

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Journal of a UFO Investigator

Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin
Viking / On Sale: February 3, 2011 

“The UFO fell from the sky on the night of December 20, 1962, the week of my thirteenth birthday.  The event itself, after more than three years, I recall with perfect clarity.  Many of its circumstances, however, have blurred in my mind …”  So begins David Halperin’s enthralling debut novel: JOURNAL OF A UFO INVESTIGATOR (Viking / On-Sale: February 3, 2011 / ISBN: 9780670022458/ 304pgs./ $25.95).

Set against the backdrop of the troubled 60’s, the novel weaves together compelling psychological drama and vivid outer space fantasy.  Danny Shapiro, an awkward, lonely teen with a terminally ill mother and a hostile father, turns to an imaginative universe to escape his crumbling home life.   He enters the world of UFOs when a glowing red disk tumbles down upon him from the night sky, and his home is mysteriously burglarized not long afterward.  He becomes drawn into the “Super-Science Society,” a group of intellectually and sexually precocious adolescents who have as their emblem the trisected angle.  Soon he’s fallen for one of the “Super-Scientists,” the beautiful, seductive Rochelle.

Praise for JOURNAL OF A UFO INVESTIGATOR

“A thrilling romp through the domain of aliens and spacecraft, Halperin’s highly entertaining coming-of-age tale poses questions about the real and the imagined and suggests that fusing the two might be the only way to survive adolescence.”
—Booklist

“Set in the mid-1960s, religious studies professor Halperin’s gripping debut is less about aliens than alienation. . . .[T]his heartbreaking coming-of-age story of a boy losing and finding his way in this and other worlds will resonate with many readers.”
—Publishers Weekly

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Deep Down True

Deep Down True by Juliette Fay
Penguin Paperback Original / On Sale: January 25, 2011 

Juliette Fay’s second novel, DEEP DOWN TRUE: A Novel (Penguin Paperback Original / On-Sale: January 25, 2011 / ISBN: 978-0-143-11851-0 / $15.00 / 432 pgs) is the story of Dana Stellgarten, a quintessential good girl whose unfailing “niceness” is acquiring a surprising edge.

DEEP DOWN TRUE is a novel about having your heart in the right place when everything else – from husbands to loyalties to jeans size – isn’t.

New York Times bestselling author Emily Giffin calls DEEP DOWN TRUE “sincere, powerful and heartfelt,” with “a ‘me, too’ moment on every page, right down to the satisfying finish.”

“Fay grants them their flaws as generously as she celebrates their daily decencies, their persistent hopefulness, their moments of personal grace,” says New York Times bestselling author Marisa De Los Santos.

Praise for DEEP DOWN TRUE

“Fay imbues Dana with the smarts and insecurities that war within most of us. . . .Highly recommended for fans of women’s fiction featuring resilient heroines.”
—Library Journal

“Fay. . .gives readers a believe able cast, from the daughter struggling with the wolf-pack mentality of middle school to Dana’s sometimes obnoxious yet fiercely loving sister. It expertly walks a heavily trodden path.”
—Publishers Weekly

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A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism

A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism: Fables from a Mouse, a Parrot, a Bear, a Cat, a Mole, a Pig, a Dog, and a Raven
by Slavenka Drakulic
Penguin Paperback Original / On Sale: February 22, 2011 

“Ms Drakulic’s words are not easily forgotten.”
—The Economist

In A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE MUSEUM OF COMMUNISM: Fables from a Mouse, a Parrot, a Bear, a Cat, a Mole, a Pig, a Dog, and a Raven(Penguin Paperback Original / On-Sale: February 22, 2011 / ISBN: 978-0-143-11863-3 / 208pages / $14.00), Slavenka Drakulić, who The Washington Post calls “a perceptive and amusing social critic,” takes readers on a journey through eight former Eastern Bloc countries, twenty years after the fall of the Communism.A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE MUSEUM OF COMMUNISM is a biting and brilliant critique of communism narrated by an array of unlikely characters: a mouse in Prague, a parrot from the former Yugoslavia, a Bulgarian bear, a cat in Warsaw, a mole from East Germany, a Hungarian pig, a dog in Bucharest, and an Albanian raven. Told in the first person, these astute animals offer the readers their own stories of life under the former communist regimes and what came after their demise. These sharp-witted observers wonder—in their own particular ways—whether democracy and capitalism were a change for the better and ask big questions: has the idea of social justice been lost forever? What are we to do with our past?

About the Author
Slavenka Drakulić was born in Croatia in 1949. Her nonfiction books include a trilogy on communism: How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, a feminist critique of communism that brought her to the attention of the public in the West, Café Europa: Life After Communism (Penguin).

She also wrote a trilogy about the war in the Balkans: The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of the War, a personal eyewitness account of the war in her homeland and They Would Never Hurt a Fly (Penguin) about trials of war criminals in The Hague. The third part, a novel  S. (Penguin), has  been made into a major motion picture under the title As if I am Not There.

Drakulić is the author of the novels Holograms of Fear, which was a bestseller in Yugoslavia and was short-listed for The Best Foreign Book Award by the Independent (UK), Marble Skin, and The Taste of a Man (Penguin), as well as Frida’s Bed, a novel about Frida Kahlo.

Her books are translated in over twenty languages

She is a contributing editor to The Nation, and her articles appeared in The New Republic, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany), Dagens Nyherter (Sweden), La Stampa (Italy), The Guardian (UK), as well as many other magazines and newspapers. She now divides her time between Sweden and Croatia.

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A Palace in the Old Village

A Palace in the Old Village by Tahar ben Jelloun
Penguin Paperback Original / On Sale: January 25, 2011

“Jelloun’s haunting novel reads like a timeless fable, while taking on the oh-so-timely challenges of the immigrant experience. Poignant meditation on the enduring lure of home and the cost of being left behind.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Subtle, well-paced . . . Ben Jelloun has created a fine character study and touching family drama well worth reading.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Lovers of literary fiction should take note of this affecting novel.”
—Booklist

“Beautifully and concisely written and well translated, this novel is a superb addition to the genre of ‘exile literature.’”
—Library Journal

“With this novel, Ben Jelloun, a native of Morocco, gives us an unvarnished look at a Muslim’s life in the West, and reminds us that literature can help us understand one another.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

A heartbreaking novel about parents and children, A PALACE IN THE OLD VILLAGE (Penguin Paperback Original / On-Sale: January 25, 2011 / ISBN: 9780143118473 / 192pgs. / $15.00) by Tahar Ben Jelloun captures the sometimes stark contrasts between old- and new-world values, and an immigrant’s abiding pursuit of home.

A PALACE IN THE OLD VILLAGE is a novel about returning to one’s place of origin with hopes of rekindling family relationships and a sense of self; it’s about an individual’s journey back to the important things in life.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
TAHAR BEN JELLOUN was born in 1944 in Fez, Morocco, and emigrated to France in 1961. A novelist, essayist, critic, and poet, he is a regular contributor to Le Monde, La Répubblica, El País, and Panorama. His novels include The Sacred Night (winner of the 1987 Prix Goncourt), Corruption, The Last Friend, and Leaving Tangier. Ben Jelloun won the 1994 Prix Maghreb, and in 2004 he won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for This Blinding Absence of Light.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR:
LINDA COVERDALE (translator) has translated more than sixty books including Tahar Ben Jelloun’s award-winning novel This Blinding Absence of Light. A Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, she won the 2006 Scott Moncrieff Prize and the 1997 and 2008 French-American Foundation Translation Prize. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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