Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero

Title: Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero

Author: Larry Tye

ISBN: 9781400068661

Price: $27.00

It's the Summer of the Superhero and what better way to celebrate than Larry Tye's new biography of America's favorite Superman? From his creation in 1933 by Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel to the Christopher Reeve films of the 1980s, television shows, and a new movie due out next summer, Tye has all the inside info on the Man of Steel.
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Beginning with Superman's creative birth and development in the 1930s, Larry Tye takes readers on a journey almost more incredible than Superman's journey to Earth. Through the advents of new technologies, wars, and even a battle against comic books themselves, Superman has proven to be a character worthy of reinvention. Superman, fans will recall, began in the comics. From there, his journey mirrored our own cultural development as he found his way into newspapers, radio shows, television shows, and finally the big screen. With each twist, the Man of Steel proved himself to be a necessary and celebrated figure of pop culture around the world.
What makes Tye's particular book so fascinating for readers is the depth of research and insight. Pulling on interviews, archival footage, books, and articles, Tye brings a well-rounded insight into the creation to fame of one of pop culture's most recognizable figures. Tye also gives great insight into the creators, artists, actors, writers, directors, and marketers who made Superman a household name. From the origins of Superman mythology to those little known Superman facts, Superman is a wonderful addition to pop culture literature and a fun, smart summer read.

--Kyla Paterno

Watchers

Title: The Watchers
Author: Jon Steele
ISBN: 9780399158742
Price: $26.95

Are there really angels among us? Do fallen angels exist? Jon Steele's beautiful new novel is a haunting, mesmerizing, and genre-bending look at angels, the forces of good and evil, and the spirit of humanity.

Marc Rochat is the Watcher of Lausanne Cathedral in Switzerland. He was sent there after the death of his father. His mother always told him that one day an angel would come to him. He would know the angel  by the light in the angel's eyes and must protect the angel at all costs. Complications during his birth have left Marc physically deformed and somewhat simple. Still, he knows the duty his mother has charged him with and believes in it with all his heart. He believes, now, that he has found the angel and must protect her from the dark shadows that encroaching on the cathedral.

Katherine Taylor is a beautiful young American woman, living the high life as an exclusive call-girl, the highest paid escort in all of Switzerland. She has money to spare and all the material goods she could ask for, but Katherine has dreams and an insatiable curiosity. She's fascinated by Marc and his life, but believes she's about as far as one could be from angel status.

Jay Harper is a man so mysterious even he doesn't have the answers. He's a private detective for the Olympics committee and has no idea why, or even what qualifies him. There's a lot Harper doesn't know these days. There's more that he knows and can't explain. A trail of international murders are all pointing to Lausanne. Something dark is closing in, and Marc and Katherine may hold pieces of the puzzle.

Described by its publisher as "Silence of the Lambs meets Hunchback of Notre Dame, as told to Justin Cronin," The Watchers is a perfect blend of murder mystery, paranormal fiction, and character portrait. Steele's novel is one not to be plowed through, but to be savored and read at a leisurely pace. Some critics have called the book too long; literature of today is often break-neck speeds read in a matter of days. The Watchers is one to be treasured and enjoyed. Each page holds a piece of the mystery and what unfolds at the end is amazing.

--Kyla Paterno

Check out these reviews....
While we were on hiatus, Kyla was still reviewing Young Adult and Middle Reader titles for Shelf Awareness: Readers' Edition. Check them all out here! Though these books are all classed as Young Adult and Middle Reader, many of the titles are one adults will love as well, particularly Masque of the Red Death (a fantastic and thrilling read inspired by Poe's short story) and Ripper, a historical semi-steampunk book that dares to ask: What if Jack the Ripper's murders in England only stopped because he came to the U.S. in search of the son he never knew he had?

What's the best book you've read lately?

Zoe Letting Go

Title: Zoe Letting Go

Author: Nora Price

ISBN: 9781595144669

Price: $17.99

Check out Kyla's newest review on Shelf Awareness: Zoe Letting Go by Nora Price.

Zoe is in an exclusive treatment for girls with eating disorders. Zoe doesn't believe she has an eating disorder, and neither do other girls. So why is she there? And why won't her best friend answer her letters?

The Postmortal

Title: The Postmortal

Author: Drew Magary

ISBN: 9780143119821

Price: $15.00

The basic premise of Drew Magary’s debut novel The Postmortal is simple: a cure for aging has been discovered, but is the world really prepared for the consequences?

Big Nate on a Roll

Click here to read my latest review of Lincoln Peirce's Big Nate on a Roll, the third installment of the fantastic Big Nate series, published in yesterday's Shelf Awareness.

Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have)

Check out my review of Sarah Mlynowski's Ten Things We Did (and Probably Shouldn't Have) on  Shelf Awareness for Readers.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

Title: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Author: Patrick Suskind

ISBN: 9780375725845

Price: $15.00

Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is not like you or I. Three things set him apart. One, he has an extraordinary sense of smell. Grenouille can identify types of trees, can tell you which cow in the field produced the milk served at breakfast, and can use this knowledge to create perfumes more magnificent than you can imagine. Two, Grenouille has no smell himself. No normal human odor is given off by him, nor has he ever produced a smell. And the third thing that sets Grenouille apart from you and I is that Grenouille is a murderer.

Looking for Alaska

Title: Looking for Alaska

Author: John Green

ISBN: 9780142402511

Miles Halter doesn’t have a lot of friends. Strike that. Miles Halter has no friends. Bored by the loneliness and monotony of public school life, Miles convinces his parents that he’d like to leave Florida and follow in his father’s footsteps and start his junior year of high school at a boarding school in Alabama. What Miles really seeks is not just friendship, but the Great Perhaps. Adventure. Experience. Life.

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Across the Universe
Author: Beth Revis
ISBN: 9781595143976
Price: $17.99
(Paperback edition releases November 29, 2011; email us to pre-order yours!)

Amy has agreed to be cryogenically frozen for 300 years. Her parents were chosen to be leaders on a new planet, Centauri-Earth; Amy was allowed as a frozen passenger as well. Now Amy's chamber has been unplugged fifty years ahead of schedule and Amy finds herself on board the ship Godspeed. The passengers on board, descendants of those who helped Amy and her parents board, have developed their own society of order and regulation, where anything that stands out or anything different is seen as a threat to the well-being of all those on board.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
ISBN: 9780061726828
Price: $17.99

What if we've been wrong about Love? What if love is not, as the Beatles sang, "all you need"? What if Love, in fact, is the one thing you don't need. Lauren Oliver's Delirium presents readers with a futuristic world very different from our own. At the start of the book, readers are told "It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected the cure."

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Title: Wither: The Chemical Garden Trilogy 01

Author: Lauren DeStefano

ISBN: 9781442409057

Price: $17.99

No one wants to grow old—at least, no one in our world. In Lauren DeStefano’s Wither, growing old is a dream. No one grows old. Due to complications of genetic engineering, no males live past the age of twenty-five. No females live past twenty. This is the world that sixteen year old Rhine Ellery lives in.

Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories

Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories

Author: Mike Birbiglia

ISBN: 9781439158005

Price: $14.00

Every once in a while you read a book that makes you laugh until you cry. Sometimes one also finds a book that feels like an old friend who’s just called to chat. Mike Birbiglia’s bestselling book Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories is both: he tells stories and in doing so, invites readers to share in his memories. Switching back and forth between stories of his childhood and adolescence and early years in comedy, Birbiglia maintains the conversational tone of an old friend who just has to tell you what happened today.

Paper Covers Rock

Title: Paper Covers Rock

Author: Jenny Hubbard

ISBN: 9780385740555

Releases on: June 14

It’s no secret that Young Adult literature is read by adults, and on an increasing level. Paper Covers Rock, I suspect, is a book which will be enjoyed even more by adults than by teens. Any book that inspires readers to pick up Moby-Dick must be, on some level, brilliant.

Mullah's Storm

Title: The Mullah's Storm
Author: Thomas W. Young
ISBN: 9780425242254
Releases: June 7, 2011

Thomas W. Young, a Senior Master Sergeant wtih the Air National Guard, knows war. At the end of his debut novel The Mullah's Storm, Young writes of his experiences and what led to the book. "When I first flew into Afghanistan, what scared me most wasn't the thought of getting shot down and killed. It was the thought of getting shot down and not killed" (p. 275). That fear becomes the basis for his book. What happens when a plane is shot down in a war zone and the passengers are not killed?

Robopocalypse

Title: Robopocalypse

Author: Daniel H. Wilson

ISBN: 9780385533850

On Sale: June 7

I will admit: Robopocalypse is not necessarily the best title. Robots rising against humans is not necessarily a new plot either. However, Daniel Wilson’s Robopocalypse is one of the most entertaining, thought-provoking books on the subject. From the outset, the reader knows only one thing: humans survive. Starting at the end of the war, Wilson frames his book with narration by Cormac “Bright Boy” Wallace, Military ID: Gray Horse Army 217, Human Retinal SID: 44V11902. Leader of a band of surviving humans, Wallace reveals that the Robot War has ended and humanity has triumphed. From there, readers are given a full account of the time leading up to and including the war itself.

Heaven is for Real

Title: Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

Author: Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent

ISBN: 9780849946158

            Colton Burpo was almost four years old when he visited Heaven. Todd Burpo, his father and the book’s author, is also a pastor. I had one question when I sat down with this book: did Colton really have this experience, or had he simply recounted what he’d heard his father preach?  This book is fairly convincing: Colton went to Heaven, or at the very least had some extremely vivid visions.

The Passage

Title: The Passage

Author: Justin Cronin

ISBN: 9780345504975

Release Date: May 17, 2011

            When asked what prompted him to write the book, Cronin has been quoted as saying that his daughter asked him to write a book about a girl who saves the world. The Passage is the result of that request.

Les Miserables

Title: Les Miserables

 Author:  Victor Hugo

ISBN: 9780451525260

 Victor Hugo's classic masterpiece, Les Miserables, is a beautiful story of morality, law, justice, love, war, loss, heroism, and redemption. Often explained as simply “the story of a man's quest for redemption,” Les Miserables is that and much more. It is a story of many multi-layered, complex characters and the way their lives intertwine with one another. It is the story of Valjean, the former convict seeking redemption, and Javert, the obsessed inspector desperate for justice. It's the story of Fantine, a beautiful young woman forced to sell everything, including herself, to provide for her young daughter. It's the story of Marius, the young man who finds himself penniless and befriended by student leaders early in the French Revolution. It's the story of Eponine Thenardier, raised by her villainous parents to help in their schemes, who finds herself helping the man she loves pursue someone else. It's the stories of all of les miserables (“the miserable ones”).

Reviews coming soon...plus Woody Harrelson is Haymitch Abernathy!

This week's review is a bit late, but stay tuned in the next few days for a review of a classic that's one of my favorites. Anyone care to venture a guess?
Also coming soon, a review of the highly-anticipated Robopocalypse. This book is now responsible for me finally deciding to see Terminator, as many I've spoken with have said the plot sounds similar. Stay tuned for the review to find out if they're right.

Now, for those of you eagerly awaiting the Hunger Games film, one of the biggest supporting roles has been cast! Haymitch Abernathy, the drunken former-winner-turned-trainer, will be played by Woody Harrelson. Rumors were circulating in recent weeks that the role was being offered to John C. Reilly (whose rep immediately denied the claim). Personally, I'd never thought of Harrelson for the role (I was one of many hoping for Robert Downey, Jr.), but I think Harrelson will not only pull it off but be absolutely wonderful. What do you think of the casting choices thus far?