While most take the presence of clouds for granted, Akira Kumo reveres their power, since surviving Hiroshima's devastating mushroom cloud. Now in adulthood, Akira and his Parisian assistant Virgine madly search for the famed and fabled single copy of The Abercrombie Protocol, to complete Akira's meteorlogical literature collection. As the pair begins to acknowledge the hypnotic and ephemeral nature of clouds, their eyes are opened to those very parallels in life and love . . .and yours will be too.

Before his death in 2003, Bolaño likened literary culture to a whore: "In the face of political repression, upheaval and danger, writers continue to swoon over the written word." How timely then the U.S. release of his posthumous magnum opus. Every sentence is a marvel of language and artistry. Taken together, these many perfect sentences tell five interwoven stories of characters all drawn to the desert land in which hundreds of women have mysteriously ceased to exist. 2666 is the most significant work of South American literature since Garcia Marquez, Borges and Fuentes. It is a wildly inventive work by an author at the peak of his powers. Above all, it is a brave and risky account of a human story that cries out to be told. Roberto Bolaño has left us with this gift of exquisite heartache -- our lives will not be quite the same.

Annie Dillard's seminal work of nonfiction is best, and perhaps should only be, approached once the reader has abandoned all preconceived notions of how the world works. For it is with a wholehearted, open minded innocence that one will see her surroundings anew, as Dillard did over the course of a year in her beloved Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains. As much a milepost in nature writing as it is a meditation on faith, and a questioning of God's presence in life and death, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek takes any ratiocination out of viewing this existence, and approaches it simply and with wide eyed wonder, as it is surely intened to be.

Maryanne Wolf has some big ideas to share--some so big that she could not do them justice by simplifying them. Having said that, this is a fascinating study of the evolution (or perhaps devolution?) of the human brain, from the "reading" to the "digital" brain. The fascinating soon turns frightening, however, when Wolf begins to offer empirical evidence suggesting how dangerously close we are to losing the reading brain forever. An ideal read for anyone interested in the relationship between the natural world and the technological age, Proust and the Squid is a timely manifesto recalling the importance of language, communication and the written word.

Outspoken New York lawyer Joel Litvinoff first charmed the reservedly British Audrey Howard at a Socialist-inspired cocktail party in 1962 London. Forty years after this auspicious meeting, Joel and Audrey find themselves disappointed that their three adult children have none of the activist enthusiasm with which their parents raised them. Karl has turned to marriage to avoid her parents. Lenny has turned to drug addiction. And Rosa has turned to her work with troubled teens. Then, Joel has a stroke; it is while he lies in a coma that Audrey uncovers a secret that reveals her husband's hypocrisy and the skewed values she'd thought they shared. A wickedly funny examination of liberal intelligentsia and "The American Dream" post 9/11. The Believers sends each of its characters on a journey in defense of what they think they believe.