2010.10.9 NEW ARRIVALS

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You [Paperback]

AUTHOR : Sam Gosling

GENRE : Non Fiction

Do the things on your desk betray the thoughts In your mind? Does your dining room decor carry clues to your character?

Award-winning psychologist Sam Gosling has dispatched teams of scientific investigators to poke around bedrooms and offices, check out iPods, iPads and peek at personal Web sites - to see what can be learned about us, simply from looking at the things we possess.

What he has discovered is intriguing. When it comes to the most essential components of our personality - from friendliness and flexibility to openness and originality - the things we own and the way we arrange them can say more about who we are than even our most intimate conversations.

Packed with original research and a wealth of fascinating stories, Snoop is a captivating guide to our not-so-secret selves, and reveals how intensely connected we are to the places in which we live and work. -From the publisher

The Last Child [Paperback]

AUTHOR : John Hart

GENRE : Fiction

In this chilling novel from Edgar-winner Hart (Down River), the search for 12-year-old Alyssa Merrimon, who disappeared on her way home from the library in an unnamed rural North Carolina town, is continued by her twin brother, Johnny. Even after a year, he searches for her, street by street, even visiting the homes of known sex offenders.

Detective Clyde Hunt, the lead cop in Alyssa’s case, keeps a watchful eye on Johnny and his mother, whose health has deteriorated since Alyssa’s abduction and her husband’s departure soon afterward.

When a second girl is kidnapped, Johnny becomes even more determined to find his sister, convinced that the perpetrator is the same person who took Alyssa. But what he unearths is more sinister than anyone imagined, sending shock waves through the community and putting Johnny’s own life in danger. Despite a tendency to dip into melodrama, Hart spins an impressively layered tale of broken families and secrets that can kill.

-Publishers Weekly

The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth [Paperback]

AUTHOR : Michael Schuman

GENRE : History

The dynamic Asian tiger economies, with export-focused, state industrial policies, defy laissez-faire economic orthodoxies. This insightful history sheds light on their controversial achievements.

Time magazine’s business correspondent, Schuman, surveys behemoths such as China, Japan and India, middleweight powerhouses like Taiwan and Korea and oft-neglected developing countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, examining their economies through profiles of their government and business leaders. His evenhanded treatment of the “Asian model” notes both its successes-spectacular growth and technological progress-and failings-crony capitalism and sometimes stifling government regulation-while exploring the complexities and effectiveness of its various national versions.

The clearest policy message is the author’s not entirely convincing endorsement of globalization and free trade, which, he insists, benefits South Carolina as much as South Korea.

-Publishers Weekly

5. Commencement (Vintage Contemporaries) [Paperback]

AUTHOR : J. Courtney Sullivan

GENRE : Fiction

J. Courtney Sullivan’s celebrated debut novel is a tale of friendship and a fascinating portrait of a first generation of women who have all the opportunities in the world, but no clear idea as to which they should choose.

Assigned to the same dorm their first year at Smith College, Celia, Bree, Sally, and April could not have less in common. Celia, a lapsed Catholic, arrives at school with a bottle of vodka in her suitcase; beautiful Bree pines for the fiancee that she left behind in Savannah; Sally, preppy and obsessively neat, is reeling from the loss of her mother; and April, a radical, redheaded feminist wearing a “Riot: Don’t Diet” T-shirt, wants nothing more than a room transfer immediately.
-From the publisher