Our Father's Day Duffel Bag of Books contest may be over, but if you're still not sure of the perfect gift for Dad, may we suggest one of our featured titles? BAD LUCK AND TROUBLE by Lee Child, HOOKED by Matt Richtel, HOW TO FEEL MANLY IN A MINIVAN by Craig Boreth, MAYFLOWER by Nathaniel Philbrick, THE MIGHTY FALLEN by Larry Bond and f-stop Fitzgerald, THE SECOND OBJECTIVE by Mark Frost and SHIP OF GHOSTS by James D. Hornfischer are some great choices.
Thanks to all the readers who entered and told us their favorite book that their dads read to them.
Click here to see our five winners and what other readers had to say.
From a helicopter high above the empty California desert, a man is sent free-falling into the night…. In Chicago, a woman learns that an elite team of ex–army investigators is being hunted down one by one.... And on the streets of Portland, Jack Reacher --- soldier, cop, hero --- is pulled out of his wandering life by a code that few other people could understand. From the first shocking scenes in Lee Child’s explosive new novel, Jack Reacher is plunged like a knife into the heart of a conspiracy that is killing old friends…and is on its way to something even worse.
A decade postmilitary, Reacher has an ATM card and the clothes on his back --- no phone, no ties, and no address. But now a woman from his old unit has done the impossible. From Chicago, Frances Neagley finds Reacher, using a signal only the eight members of their elite team of army investigators would know. She tells him a terrifying story --- about the brutal death of a man they both served with. Soon Reacher is reuniting with the survivors of his old team, scrambling to raise the living, bury the dead, and connect the dots in a mystery that is growing darker by the day. The deeper they dig, the more they don’t know: about two other comrades who have suddenly gone missing --- and a trail that leads into the neon of Vegas and the darkness of international terrorism.
For now, Reacher can only react. To every sound. Every suspicion. Every scent and every moment. Then Reacher will trust the people he once trusted with his life --- and take this thing all the way to the end. Because in a world of bad luck and trouble, when someone targets Jack Reacher and his team, they’d better be ready for what comes right back at them…
Lee Child is the author of eleven Jack Reacher thrillers, including the New York Times bestsellers PERSUADER, the Barry Award Winner THE ENEMYandONE SHOT, which has been optioned for a major motion picture by Paramount Pictures. His debut, KILLING FLOOR, won both the Anthony and the Barry Awards for Best First Mystery. Foreign rights in the Jack Reacher series have sold in more than 40 territories. Child, a native of England and former television writer, lives in New York City and France, where he is at work on his next thriller, which Delacorte will publish in 2008
From New York Times reporter Matt Richtel comes a psychological thriller that establishes him as “the bard of the iPod generation.”*
Nat Idle, a San Francisco writer with a medical degree, narrowly survives an explosion in an Internet café after a stranger hands him a note warning him to exit immediately. The handwriting on the note belongs to his deceased girlfriend, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whom he has obsessively been mourning. So begins HOOKED, a pop thriller for the Internet Age, written with the force of an adrenaline rush and the pace of an intimate email dispatch you can’t stop reading. Each chapter of this novel will keep readers hooked as Nat Idle searches for the love of his life in the midst of manipulation and conspiracy.
Matt Richtel has covered technology and telecommunications for the New York Times in San Francisco since 2000. Under the pen name “Theron Heir,” he writes the nationally syndicated daily comic strip Rudy Park, which revolves around the lives of employees and regulars of an Internet café.
John Grisham fans will love HOOKED for the suspense laced with humor; Michael Crichton fans for its provocative take on the way technology is impacting our world; and Scott Spencer devotees for its story of intense love.
*Rupert Holmes,
Edgar Award-winning author of Swing and Where the Truth Lies
Matt Richtel is an author, journalist, and (we kid you not) cartoonist. HOOKED is his first novel, and he is currently writing a second, tentatively titled IDLE'S MIND. Matt makes most of his living as a New York Times reporter, covering technology and telecommunications from the San Francisco bureau. In his spare time, Matt writes the syndicated daily comic strip Rudy Park under the pen name, "Theron Heir." The strip, launched in 2001, revolves around the lives of regular and occasional patrons at an Internet cafe.
Matt grew up in Boulder, Colorado and obtained a bachelors degree in rhetoric from University of California at Berkeley and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University. He lives in San Francisco with Meredith Jewel (last name still to be determined) whom he married in October 2006. They are raising a cat, Magus, and considering family expansion.
For every guy who has wondered how he could possibly become a dad while preserving any masculinity, sanity or dignity, this practical and hilarious guide will teach you
HOW TO FEEL MANLY IN A MINIVAN
...and many other essential self-preservation techniques for new dads
Men are ill equipped to face the challenges of fatherhood, but we’ve always made a noble effort: engaging in the meaningful sex, attending the breast-feeding class without giggling, and staying sober during the college planning. But the time has come for new dads to suffer no more.
Veteran dad and author Craig Boreth sets out to smooth the path to paternity, showing desperate new dads:
HOW TO CONVINCE YOURSELF THAT YOU’RE READY, from abandoning your entire existence to preparing for the biggest challenge of all: being useless.
HOW TO GET FIT FOR FATHERHOOD, since that pudgy butterball will smack you down faster than a jilted stripper and make you sicker than Tijuana tap water.
HOW TO maintain the illusion of control, from remaining conscious during delivery to telling pushy parents where to stick their unsolicited advice.
HOW TO HAVE A NORMAL LIFE AGAIN, from getting that #$@%&! song out of your head to appreciating your wife the MILF.
…and much more in this entertaining, life-saving, fully illustrated guidebook that no new dad should be without.
Craig Boreth is also the author of HOW TO IRON YOUR OWN DAMN SHIRT and THE HEMINGWAY COOKBOOK. He is a co-author --- with Donna and Shannon Freeman of HGTV's Designed to Sell --- of SEVEN STEPS TO SOLD.
In addition to writing books, Craig designs and builds custom furniture and cabinetry, and continues on his complete renovation of his family's townhouse. When he's not writing or renovating, Craig continues perfecting his chocolate truffle recipe, dogs it up and down the hoops court, and re-watches The Big Lebowski over and over. He lives in Santa Monica, CA with his fabulous wife and super-cool son. And yes, he knows exactly how lucky he is.
Behind the quaint, pious version of the MAYFLOWER story we learned in school, lies an epic tale of violence, human endurance, diplomacy, cowardice, and courage. The story of the Pilgrim fathers who set sail on the Mayflower in 1620 culminated in the bloody and little-known battle they waged against the Native Americans during King Philip’s war in 1675.
Following the Pilgrims on their perilous journey from England on a battered, leaky ship where they forged the Mayflower Compact, through their first bitter North American winter to their establishment of a precarious colony, and fifty-years later, their equally bitter battle against the native Wampanoag, Philbrick vividly recreates an unforgiving and dangerously alien environment in which their determination to survive brought out the best and worst in the English settlers.
Among the litany of hardships, however, are stories of friendship and cooperation among the settlers and indigenous peoples, whose timely assistance on more than one occasion rescued the Pilgrims from otherwise certain death. In fact, the region’s inhabitants --- including the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Mohegan, Mohawk and Pequot tribes, the Puritans, and the Pilgrim separatists --- built a delicate social ecology which when upset, precipitated King Philip’s war decimating the English population and all but obliterating the Wampanoag’s. Central to the story are a host of marvelous characters, including not only the usual suspects—Miles Standish (or Captain Schrimp as he was called), William Bradford, Roger Williams—but Massosoit, the cunning, theatrical, generous Wampanoag leader who was the first to befriend the Pilgrims as well as the first in a line of distinctly American heroes, Benjamin Church, the Plymouth-born frontiersman who used his knowledge of ‘Indian ways’ to help the British defeat Philip—Massosoit’s son --- -and his foremost warrior Annawon.
A hundred years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, King Phillip’s War brought into disturbing focus the issues of race, violence, religious identity, and economic opportunity that would determine the course of the nation’s future. America was never simple but in Philbrick’s breathtaking account, we begin to understand the subtle forces that make us who we are.
Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of the acclaimed international bestseller IN THE HEART OF THE SEA, which won the US National Book Award for non-fiction in 2000, and SEA OF GLORY: the Epic South Seas Expedition, 1838-42. He is founding director of the Egan Institute of Maritime Studies on Nantucket Island and a research fellow at the Nantucket Historical Association. A champion sailboat racer, he has also written extensively about sailing.
THE MIGHTY FALLEN is a beautiful, evocative presentation of more than 150 never-before-seen photographs of the nation's greatest monuments and war memorials, along with text that describes the memorials and tells their stories. This extraordinary collection calls attention to the power of memory and the ways in which we immortalize people and events. As Larry Bond notes in the Introduction, "Memories of a war or battle are unpleasant, but few veterans would want them erased." This book is a unique tribute to veterans and a commemoration of some of the most significant conflicts in our history.
Most battlefields leave little record of the historic confrontations that occurred there. Those who fought in epic struggles want us to remember not just the outcome, but the cost of victory and those who paid the price for the freedoms we enjoy today. Memories fade, so we raise monuments of stone and bronze to carry their message of sacrifice through the centuries.
The Iwo Jima Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC are instantly recognizable, but there are monuments all over North America honoring more than 300 years of military service. The Mighty Fallen shows you hundreds of monuments, memorials, and statues conveying the message their designers wanted you to hear—these are more than just a date and location.
f-stop Fitzgerald is a best-selling author, international photographer and successful book packaging entrepreneur. His photographs have appeared in over 100 periodicals, from Rolling Stone to GQ, and his best-selling collaboration with Stephen King, NIGHTMARES IN THE SKY, sold over 180,000 copies. Mr. Fitzgerald’s current book, THE MIGHTY FALLEN, with author Larry Bond, is a heartfelt tribute to America's fallen heroes. His website is www.f-stopfitzgerald.com. His company, BAND-F Ltd. Book Packaging (www.band-f.com) is a prestigious full-service book packaging company with 20 years of experience and over 200 books published that has partnered with organizations such as Major League Baseball, USA TODAY, Orvis, A&E Television Networks, The Smithsonian, ABC Television, ESPN Networks and The National Audubon Society.
Larry Bond coauthored the international bestseller RED STORM RISING with Tom Clancy. A U.S. Navy veteran, he has written numerous military-themed books including New York Times bestsellers RED PHOENIX, VORTEX, and CAULDRON. His most recent publication is DANGEROUS GROUND. He lives with his wife and two children in Virginia.
A ray of light penetrates Western European skies for the first time since the beginning of World War II, as the Allies reach the border of Germany and victory appears at hand. As part of his last desperate offensive to halt the advancing Americans, Hitler dispatches a company of English-speaking Nazi commandos on an even more treacherous secret assignment of assassination that could change the course of history. In a chain of furious action during the Battle of the Bulge, all of his assassins are killed or executed...all but two who were never accounted for.
There ends the historical record.
Frost picks up where these facts leave off and weaves a breathtaking narrative around these last two commandos: one the Brooklyn-born son of German parents, haunted by his American heritage, and the other a charismatic sociopath from the depraved ranks of the SS. Close on their trail is a veteran NYPD homicide-detective-turned-military-police-investigator, who soon finds himself faced with an impossible choice on which the outcome of the entire conflict depends.
Loyalty and betrayal, identity and honor, madness and salvation --- all are tried and tested to unthinkable limits, creating in The Second Objective an unforgettably riveting thrill ride from start to finish.
Mark Frost's other books include the bestselling novels THE LIST OF SEVEN andTHE SIX MESSIAHS, and the nonfiction bestsellers THE GRAND SLAM and THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED. He received a Writers Guild Award and an Emmy nomination for the acclaimed television series Hill Street Blues, was co-creator and executive producer of the legendary ABC television series Twin Peaks, and in 2005 wrote and produced The Greatest Game Ever Played as a major motion picture from Walt Disney Studios. His new nonfiction sports book:THE MATCH, THE DAY THE GAME OF GOLF CHANGED FOREVER, will be published by Hyperion in November 2007. Mark Frost lives in Los Angeles and upstate New York with his wife and son.
The navigator of the USS Houston confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR’s favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. It wasn’t a fair fight, but the men of the Houston would wage it to the death.
Hornfischer brings to life the awesome terror of nighttime naval battles that turned decks into strobe-lit slaughterhouses, the deadly rain of fire from Japanese bombers, and the almost superhuman effort of the crew as they miraculously escaped disaster again and again–until their luck ran out during a daring action in Sunda Strait. There, hopelessly outnumbered, the Houston was finally sunk and its survivors taken prisoner. For more than three years their fate would be a mystery to families waiting at home.
In the brutal privation of jungle POW camps dubiously immortalized in such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, the war continued for the men of the Houston --- a life-and-death struggle to survive forced labor, starvation, disease, and psychological torture. Here is the gritty, unvarnished story of the infamous Burma–Thailand Death Railway glamorized by Hollywood, but which in reality mercilessly reduced men to little more than animals, who fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, will–power --- and the undying faith that their country would prevail.
Using journals and letters, rare historical documents, including testimony from postwar Japanese war crimes tribunals, and the eyewitness accounts of Houston’s survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted an account of human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it’s easy to forget that every single word is true.
James D. Hornfischer is a writer, literary agent, and former book editor. THE LAST STAND OF THE TIN CAN SAILORS, his first book, won the 2004 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and their three children.
