Books grouped by city; cities listed alphabetically: O ~ Z
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PHILADELPHIA,
Pennsylvania
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Flander, Scott,
FOUR TO MIDNIGHT. NEW copy, hardcover with dust jacket.
William Morrow & Company, 312 pages.
~~~ When a black city councilman is badly beaten on a West Philadelphia
street and blames two of Sergeant Eddie North's best cops, they deny it. Called to
the scene, Eddie - uncertain of what really happened - decides to back his men and
finds himself accused of a conspiracy to cover up the truth. The media, the
politicians, and the public are outraged. And then a man in a black ski mask
begins a campaign to assassinate cops. As Eddie races to learn what was really
behind the beating, more trouble erupts. A fellow sergeant has taken advantage
of the tension in the city and formed a ring of corrupt officers that includes
one of the two cops for whom Eddie is risking everything. The widening conflict
between the police and the black community is mirrored by the battle of cop against
cop. And with the stakes so high, there are no winners . . . just those strong
enough - and lucky enough - to survive.
$24.95
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PITTSBURGH,
Pennsylvania
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Wideman, John Edgar,
SENT FOR YOU YESTERDAY.
NEW copy.
TRADE PAPERBACK, Mariner Books, 208 pages.
~~~
Winner of the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction,
Sent for You Yesterday
is the stunning first book in John Edgar Wideman's
highly acclaimed Homewood
trilogy. Reimagining Homewood, the black
Pittsburgh neighborhood of his youth,
Wideman creates a dazzling and evocative milieu.
From the wild and uninhibited
1920s to the narcotized 1970s, "he establishes a
mythological and symbolic link
between character and landscape, language and plot"
(New York Times).
$14.00
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Wideman, John Edgar,
TWO CITIES.
NEW copy.
Hardcover with dust jacket, Houghton Mifflin Company, 107 pages.
~~~
Two Cities is a redemptive, healing love
story that brings to brilliant
culmination the themes John Edgar Wideman has
developed in fourteen previous
acclaimed books. It is a novel of bridges - bridges
spanning the rivers of
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, bridges arching over
the rifts that have divided
our communities, our country, and our hearts.
$24.00
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Wilson, August,
JITNEY.
NEW copy.
TRADE PAPERBACK, Overlook Press, 96 pages.
~~~
A thoroughly revised version of a play August Wilson
first wrote in 1979, Jitney
was produced in New York for the first time in the
spring of 2000, winning rave
reviews and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award
as the Best Play of the
Year. Set in the 1970s in Pittsburgh's Hill District,
and depicting gypsy
cabdrivers who serve black neighborhoods, Jitney
is the seventh in Wilson's
projected 10-play cycle (one for each decade) on the
black experience in
twentieth century America. He writes not about
historical events or the
pathologies of the black community, but, as he says,
about "the unique
particulars of black culture . . . I wanted to place
this culture onstage in all
its richness and fullness and to demonstrate
its ability to sustain us . . .
through profound moments in our history in which the
larger society has thought
less of us than we have thought of ourselves".
$22.00
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Wilson, August,
JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE.
NEW copy.
TRADE PAPERBACK, Plume Books, 94 pages.
~~~
When Herald Loomis arrives at a black Pittsburgh
boarding house after
seven years impressed labor on Joe Turner's chain
gang, he is a free man - in body.
But the scars of his enslavement and a sense of
inescapable alienation oppress
his spirit still, and the seemingly hospitable
rooming house seethes with
tension and distrust in the presence of this
tormented stranger. Loomis is
looking for the wife he left behind, believing that
she can help him reclaim his
old identity. But through his encounters with the
other residents he begins to
realize that what he really seeks is his rightful
place in a new world - and it
will take more than the skills of the local "People
Finder" to discover it.
$11.00
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Wilson, August,
SEVEN GUITARS.
NEW copy.
TRADE PAPERBACK, Plume Books, 107 pages.
~~~
It is the spring of 1948. In the still cool
evenings of Pittsburgh's Hill
district, familiar sounds fill the air. A rooster
crows and screen doors slam.
The laughter of friends gathered for a backyard card
game rises just above the
wail of a mother who has lost her son. And there's the
sound of the blues,
played and sung by young men and women with little
more than a guitar in their
hands and a dream in their hearts. August Wilson's
Seven Guitars is the sixth
chapter in his continuing theatrical saga that
explores the hope, heartbreak,
and heritage of the African-American experience in
the twentieth century. The
story follows a small group of friends who gather
following the untimely death
of Floyd Barton, a local blues guitarist on the
edge of stardom. Together, they
reminisce about his short life and discover the
unspoken passions and undying
spirit that live within each of them.
$11.00
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ROCHESTER,
New York
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Kelly, Jack,
MOBTOWN. NEW copy.
Hardcover with dust jacket,
Hyperion Books, 271
pages.
~~~ Kelly sets this novel in Rochester, New York,
circa 1959. Kelly's Rochester is a
dark and glamorous place, not unlike Los Angeles in the
forties - filled with
dapper mobsters and slightly dangerous, mysterious women.
Rochester is home to,
among others, gangsters, a dead heiress, and a savvy
private detective named Ike
Van Savage. Enter a beautiful mystery woman in the flesh,
the wife of a
notorious local gangster, who believes her husband is
out to kill her. Van
Savage takes on the case despite its dangers - perhaps
even because of them -
and finds himself drawn into a dark world of seduction,
suspicion, and violence.
$23.95
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SEATTLE,
Washington
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Hecht, Daniel,
CITY OF MASKS.
NEW copy.
Hardcover with dust jacket, Cree Black, 438
pages.
~~~
Cree Black didn't believe in ghosts until she encountered her dead husband. Now
she not only sees ghosts, she feels, hears, and even talks to them. Seeking
answers to life's mysteries as well as to riddles from her past, she's putting
her newfound abilities to use. Based out of Seattle, Cree and her partner are
detectives of the spirit, scientific ghost busters who study ghosts as they try
to exorcise them from people's lives. But the ghost in their latest client's
life has Cree fearing for her own.
$24.95
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$24.95
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Moody, Fred,
SEATTLE AND THE DEMONS OF AMBITION.
NEW copy.
Hardcover with dust jacket, St. Martin's Press, 303
pages.
~~~
A fascinating yet unsettling account of the transformation of America's
most
conflicted city. Once a paradise for artists, slackers,
and utopians, Seattle's
spectacular ocean and mountain scenery has long beckoned
to those seeking an
ideal city. Seattle and the Demons of Ambition
tracks the astonishing ten years
during which Seattle became the "it" destination for new
urbanites - and began
to lose the struggle for its soul. Tracing the rise of
Microsoft, Starbucks,
Amazon, and other avatars of the new economy, balanced
against the growing
homelessness, child abuse, and cultural disenchantment that
culminated in the
1999 World Trade Organization riots, Fred Moody offers a
remarkable account of
urban boosterism and underground rage. Seattle's struggle
with itself mirrors
our larger American dilemma, where technology and
development build wealth, but
leave behind troubling human consequences that go
unnoticed at our peril.
$24.95
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WASHINGTON,
District of Columbia
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Eliach, Yaffa,
THERE ONCE WAS A WORLD.
NEW copy.
TRADE PAPERBACK, Little Brown & Company, 818 pages.
~~~
In the soaring, three-story space that is the Tower of Life
at the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., sixteen
hundred photographs
collected by the historian Yaffa Eliach give face to a
murdered people. In There
Once Was a World, Eliach brilliantly and movingly records
the history of that
people. Nineteen years of scholarship, a poet's ear, and a
storyteller's voice
have yielded what is perhaps the richest, fullest, most
detailed portrait of
Eastern Jewish life that we will ever have, a book that
encompasses both the
sweep of history and an intimate view of the day-to-day
lives of generations of
small-town Jews, in all their uniqueness and universality.
Eliach's own roots in
Eishyshok - she is a descendant of one of the five
founding families and herself
one of only twenty-nine survivors - give her work an
unrivaled depth and
passion.
$25.00
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Solomon, Burt,
THE WASHINGTON CENTURY: Three Families and the Shaping
of the Nation's Capitol.
NEW copy.
Hardcover with dust jacket, William Morrow & Company, 498 pages.
~~~
Solomon focuses on the families of three individuals -
black activist Julius
Hobson Sr., southern congressman Hale Boggs, and
real-estate developer Morris
Cafritiz - to reveal various perspectives in our
nation's capital during the
last century. Solomon juxtaposes the lives of these
families with
administrations from Roosevelt through Clinton, providing
perspectives that
allow for a panoramic view of Washington, D.C.
$26.95
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Williams, Edward Christopher,
WHEN WASHINGTON WAS IN VOGUE.
NEW copy.
Hardcover with dust jacket, Amistad Press, 285 pages.
~~~
When Washington Was in Vogue casts a loving but
critical eye on Black high
society of 1920s Washington, D.C. A novel told in letters,
this sly, humorous
story was first published anonymously in the Black journal
The Messenger from
1925 to 1926. This is the first time When Washington
Was in Vogue is being
published as a book.
$23.95
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Books grouped by city; cities listed alphabetically: O ~ Z
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