Archive for October, 2009


Penguin Online Digest – New Content 10/20 – 10/26

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Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpts (35)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt A Song for Arbonne Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt And Then There's This Bill Wasik (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Ariel Steven R. Boyett (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Belladonna Anne Bishop (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Bitter is the New Black Jen Lancaster (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Blood Bound Patricia Briggs (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Bone Crossed Patricia Briggs (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Bright Lights Big Ass Jen Lancaster (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Candy Girl Diablo Cody (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Cry Wolf Patricia Briggs (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Dark Hunger Christine Feehan (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Elegy Beach Steven R. Boyett (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Hunting Ground Patricia Briggs (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Iceland Betsy Tobin (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Iron Kissed Patricia Briggs (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Moon Called Patricia Briggs (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Sebastian Anne Bishop (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Stolen Kelley Armstrong (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Such a Pretty Fat Jen Lancaster (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Tangled Webs Anne Bishop (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Awakening Christine Feehan (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Darkest Road Anne Bishop (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Deep End of Ocean Jacquelyn Mitchard (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Invisible Ring Anne Bishop (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Last Light of the Sun Sheri Reynolds (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Ramen King and I Andy Raskin (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Rapture of Canaan Sheri Reynolds (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Shadow Queen Anne Bishop (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Summer Tree Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Venetian Judgment David Stone (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt The Wandering Fire Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Tigana Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Velva Jean Learns to Drive Jennifer Niven (Penguin Audio)

Digital-Only Audiobook Excerpt Ysabel Guy Gavriel Kay (Penguin Audio)

Reading Group Guides (3)

RGG The China Lover Ian Buruma (Penguin)

RGG The Butterflies of Grand Canyon Margaret Erhart (Plume)

RGG Through the Heart Kate Morgenroth (Plume)

Short Story (1)

Short Story Urgent Care CJ Lyons (Jove)

Videos (5)

Video Your Kids Are Your Own Fault Larry Winget (Gotham)

Video Remarkable Creatures Tracy Chevalier (Dutton)

Video Iron River T. Jefferson Parker (Dutton)

Video Urgent Care CJ Lyons (Jove)

Video Million-Dollar Throw Mike Lupica (Philomel)

Posted on Oct 26th, 2009 by Penguin Group USA in Penguin Online Digest |

I See Working People

Iseeyourdreamjob.jpgThe career-advice industry has always hinted at the mystical. By following a various number of steps, you can “discover your strengths,” unearth some “secret” to success, or “find your true calling.” The truth is out there, they promise, it’s just hiding. The implication: when looking for a new job, you’re better off ditching Craiglist and picking up a divining rod.

In this atmosphere, “I See Your Dream Job: A Career Intuitive Shows You How to Discover What You Were Put on Earth to Do,” by the “career coach” and “accomplished rock climber” Sue Frederick, seems familiar. That is, until you ask, Just what is a “career intuitive”?

According to the book’s publicity material, the author “draws upon intuition, practical career experience, and the ancient system of numerology to help people identify their ideal career and how to make it happen.”

Frederick expands on one of her two Web sites:

dreamjob.jpg

“You encoded this great journey into the numbers of your birth date and name. Your greatest potential for this lifetime, your highest, most meaningful work is all clearly outlined in these numbers. This is done on purpose. As we journey through a lifetime, our birth code vibrates out a message to everyone we interact with. They sense our path by the vibrations they feel from us. (Not the words we speak.)

“If it’s in our highest good to get hired by someone, they sense it and hire us. If it’s for our highest good to be fired by someone (so we’ll redirect our work and get back to our true path), they’ll fire us. If it’s for the greater good that we become successful, we will be. If we’re being true to the great work we came here to do, all doors open effortlessly. When we’re “off-path,” the doors slam shut.”

“Birth code vibrations” are a long way from the Myers-Briggs test, or even the kooky Dewey Color System. Still, some people are buying. In a 2008 profile, the Times spoke to one of Frederick’s clients:

In the weeks since the workshop, Mr. Cotter saw Ms. Frederick for a one-hour session. He recalled that when he walked into her office she said, “I’ve been meditating on you. I think you should make movies.” Now he is considering combining his interest and experience in financing with documentary filmmaking.

Posted on Oct 26th, 2009 by Ian Crouch in Sue Frederick, The Secret, career intuitive, coaching, self-help |

And the Award Goes to…, Penguin Group (USA) Weekly Update – 10/26

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Berkley Author Julie Hyzy Wins Two Awards at the 2009 Boucheron

Berkley Prime Crime author Julie Hyzy has won two awards for her book, State of the Onion: A White House Chef Mystery: the Anthony Award and the Barry Award in the Best Paperback Original category. Both awards were presented this past weekend in Indianapolis at Bouchercon, the largest annual meeting in the world for mystery lovers.

The Barry Awards are named for one of the most beloved ambassadors of mystery fiction, Barry Garner, and are voted on the readers of Mystery News and Deadly Pleasures. The Anthony Awards are named for Anthony Boucher, one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, and are among the most prestigious awards in the world of mystery writers.

Julie Hyzy’s new White House Chef Mystery, Eggsecutive Orders will be out in January 2010 and features the White House Easter Egg Roll.
 

Penguin Press’ Karl Jacoby Wins Albert J. Beveridge Book Award 

Penguin Press author Karl Jacoby has been selected by the American Historical Association as the winner of this year’s Albert J. Beveridge Book Award for his book, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History. The Beveridge Award honors U.S. Senator Albert J. Beveridge (Indiana, 1899 – 1911), a longtime member of the Association and an active supporter of history as both a lawyer and a senator. It is given annually for the best book in English on the history of the United States, Latin America, or Canada from 1492 to the present.

Jacoby will be honored at the American History Association’s annual conference on January 8th in San Diego.
 

Dutton's Harlan Coben Named Favorite Crime Genre Author at the 2009 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards

Dutton’s Harlan Coben was named this week as Britain's ITV3 viewers' favorite crime genre author as part of the 2009 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards, sponsored in conjunction with the Crime Writers Association. Coben was chosen out of a pool of five authors by viewers who voted via a six-week long online poll. The awards, which were held this past Wednesday in London, are the longest established literary awards in the UK, and are internationally recognised as a mark of excellence and achievement. This year, the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2009 will be televised on ITV3 in the UK on Tuesday, October 27th.
 

Penguin Author Randa Jarrar Named One of Beirut39’s “39 under 40”

Randa Jarrar, author of A Map of Home (Penguin), has been named one of ‘Beirut39’ Project’s “39 under 40,” it was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week. Beirut39 is a Hay Festival project which aims to select and celebrate 39 of the most interesting Arab writers under the age of 40 as a part of the Beirut World Capital festivities 2009/10. Beirut39 follows on from the extremely successful Bogotá39, which the Hay Festival launched in Bogotá in 2007 and which identified many of the outstanding upcoming Latin American talents, including Riverhead’s Junot Díaz and Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Beirut39 will celebrate the best 39 Arab writers under 40 in Beirut in a festival to be held April 15-18th of next year. An anthology featuring the authors' work will be published simultaneously in English and Arabic by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc and Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.

To read more about the project, click here.

Learn more about author Randa Jarrar by reading our interview with her and checking out her blog posts on the Penguin Blog.
 

Posted on Oct 26th, 2009 by Penguin Group USA in Penguin News, Penguin Weekly Update, awards |

“Feminists” Love Mutilated Women?

Yesterday, the English Observer belatedly picked up an article written for the September issue of Standpoint magazine by Jessica Mann, a reviewer who covers crime fiction for the Literary Review. In it, Mann criticizes the genre for revelling in the brutalization of women, and writes that “however many more outpourings of sadistic misogyny are crammed on to the bandwagon, no more of them will be reviewed by me.”

I sympathize with Mann—I can’t stomach much mutilation, and I wouldn’t want my job to be wading in dismembered female bodies. Judging by the response in the blogosphere, though, you’d think this was kinda like Marlon Brando refusing his Oscar or Jonathan Franzen turning down Oprah. But the problem of crimes against women in crime fiction has been often noted: here’s a rundown of some of the more sickening passages you’ll find in today’s popular offerings.

The debate, however, is not just about female mutilation—it’s about terminology. First, it’s about the “F” word. Mann writes:

The trend cannot be attributed to an anti-feminist backlash because the most inventive fiction of this kind is written by women.

In a 2007 piece in the Guardian, Julie Bendel asked why women love to write and read about other women being brutalized:

Given my work as a feminist activist and writer, you might expect me to hate the crime genre. I have spent the whole of my adult life fighting male violence, and much of my work involves researching topics such as rape, child sexual abuse, pornography and murder…. Yet, when it comes to fiction, the serial killer genre is my favourite.

I understand Mann’s and Bindel’s basic premise—that women who care about women shouldn’t, in a logical sense, like to write or read about violence against women—but they both seem to ignore that women can be part of an “anti-feminist backlash,” that men can be feminists, that feminism means different things to different people, that it might have very little to do with what is going on here. When a headline on a Web site geared toward women asks “Feminist or Misogynist?” in a (thoughtful) consideration of Stieg Larsson’s “Girl” trilogy, is that helpful or merely polarizing? Must we choose?

The “F” word is not alone. There’s another word commonly thrown around in this discussion that really seems to turn people’s heads upside down: the “L” word. In 2007, Ian Rankin caused a stir when he quipped, “The people writing the most graphic novels today are women. They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting.”

I suppose it is terribly interesting—if one’s logic follows the proposition “If L then F,” and if you are quite certain what each variable signifies. The popular media was pretty certain: it badgered Val McDermid, a lesbian, for a response (which the Times Online ran with the headline “Revenge of the Bloodthirsty Lesbians”). She called it “arrant rubbish,” and said, “I’ll tell you what pisses me off more than almost anything: when people say, ‘As a woman, how do you feel about writing on violence?’ Have you ever heard a male crime writer being asked, ‘As a man, how do you feel about writing about violence?’ ”

McDermid keeps it real: this debate is about men and women, and mostly about women, a “demographic” that contains multitudes, that is comprised of individuals who may resist any label, even that of “woman.” So it’s a debate about humans, and it turns on the question “Are Women Human?” Not when they are being lumped into unhelpful categories so that they can be lazily scrutinized by the press.

Posted on Oct 26th, 2009 by Macy Halford in Jessica Mann, Julie Bindel, Val McDermid, crime fiction, feminism, feminists |

Unearthed Final Instalment in Montgomery’s Green Gables Series a Dark Ending

blythes-are-quoted-montgomeryFans of Anne Shirley, Avonlea and Green Gables might be excited to hear that after over three decades since the publication of the last Green Gables book, The Road to Yesterday, a final volume in the series has been discovered. L.M. Montgomery is said to have submitted the final instalment just before her death – now thought a suicide – in 1942.

While fans may see the new material as cause for celebration, the darker, bleaker mood of the last book may leave a bitter taste in the mouths of some. While the Green Gables books began as hopeful, positive and love-filled, even in difficult times, the series did see more despair as the stories went on, possibly in reflection of Montgomery’s own life.

The book, called The Blythes are Quoted, is due for release tomorrow, October 27th.

Posted on Oct 26th, 2009 by elizabethc in Canada, books |
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