Best Book Of The Month and Top 10 Editors' picks from Amazon

Best Book Of This Month

The Vanishers is a lot of things: it’s a paranormal detective story, an affecting exposition of familial and female dynamics, and a hilarious satire of academic politics. Here, Heidi Julavits has crafted a novel that is as ambitious as it is strange. After angering her jealous mentor, Julia, an up-and-coming psychic, is exiled from the Institute of Integrated Parapsychology, an elite psychic academy dubbed the Workshop. Subjected to a "psychic attack," Julia is crippled of her powers, until she receives an offer she can't refuse: to team up with her mentor's academic rival to get revenge, while seeking out a mysterious filmmaker who may have a connection to Julia's dead mother. It's a bizarre adventure that takes her to a recovery facility for victims of psychic attacks and which doubles as a spa for plastic surgery patients. Beneath The Vanishers’s quirky, metaphysical charms is a dark, Freudian undercurrent--Julia can’t help comparing her mother’s suicide to Sylvia Plath's--that surfaces at the very end in a satisfying, thrilling twist. The Vanishers is a truly unique, thoroughly imagined astral mystery.-- Kevin Nguyen


Editors' Top 10 Picks for March

Island of Vice by Richard Zacks		Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan		The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
A colorful history of Teddy Roosevelt's attempt to rid 1890s Manhattan of prostitution, gambling, boot liquor, and Tammany Hall.		This novel sizzles with jazz banter and tactile imagery as an aging jazzman returns to Berlin and discovers how his former band mate disappeared under the Nazis.		A new twist on the Trojan War story, featuring star-crossed Patroclus and Achilles—a mortal underdog exiled in shame and a glorious demigod revered by all.
The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura		Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer		Wild by Cheryl Strayed
A young thief weaves along the streets of Tokyo, pickpocketing his way through as if in a dream. But does he care anymore, and about whom or what?		A fun, engaging study of creativity that combines cutting-edge neurological research with the age-old mystery of how and when inspiration strikes.		Alone and grief-stricken on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed encountered bears, thirst, fear, and inexperience in her quest to find peace and redemption in the mountains.
The Reconstructionist  by Nick Arvin		White Bread by Aaron Bobrow-Strain		Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman
Mechanical engineering degrees don't normally lend themselves to fine literature, but Nick Arvin is an exception: His thoughtful, original sophomore novel has a caliber as unexpected as its author's.		A comprehensive and engaging history, illustrating that the story of American bread is leavened with good intentions and unintended consequences.		A short story collection that constructs a world filled with animals and nature and family who hate and love and mostly need one another--and it feels complete.