Faith No More by Phil Zuckerman

From Publishers Weekly: "In this sociological study of "apostates," defined as religious people who later become atheists, Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College, interviews former adherents from a variety of religions-among them Muslims, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses-and examines their religious histories and motivations for rejecting belief. Though apostates are a steadily growing category of the American religious landscape, little research focuses on them and much of the public still mistrusts them. Zuckerman's solid research and insights make this book an important contribution to the field and a thoroughly fascinating read."

The Moment edited by Larry Smith

From Library Journal: "Have you ever taken a wrong turn and never looked back, or picked door number one instead of door number two? The results of split-second choices and unexpected events frame this fascinating collection of new, brief, personal narratives. Here are words and sketches by 125 contributors whose on-the-spot decisions or transformational moments led to a permanent change in lifestyle, career, or relationships. Melissa Etheridge details her decision to perform at the 2005 Grammy Awards when she was undergoing chemotherapy. In "Those Old Keys," it's the clacking of the keys on his father's typewriter that inspire NPR's Alan Cheuse to become a writer. "If I Don't Die Today, I Will Marry Kristin Moore" describes the decision photojournalist Aaron Huey made while crawling through a muddy field as Taliban gunfighters shot over him. First kisses, childbirth, accidents, and jury verdicts are other topics covered. Each author's ability to concisely describe such big moments pulls the reader in. Book and writing groups will have a lot to talk about after reading this first-rate collection."

The Coward's Tale by Vanessa Gebbie

From Publishers Weekly: "The tenderness and generosity of this debut novel is strengthened by the precision and sharpness of its language. Gebbie creates a mid-century Welsh mining village and its tragic history through the eyes of Laddy Merridew, a newly arrived schoolboy, and Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the indigent bard whose stories of fellow townsfolk evoke the village's devastating past and "get into your soul." Ianto unspools the history of past generations of miners, their families, and the lasting devastation of the Kindly Light mine accident, a defining event for the town. Tenderness lies beneath cold exteriors, and casual brutality beneath placid domesticity, and Jenkins's burden as the teller is greater than his childhood meditations on death and loss. The tale is one Ianto can only just bring himself to tell to an audience that yearns to hear it, and this compassionate and sage depiction of a rural community gives the other warmly fashioned characters the power of healing and forgiveness."

The Technologists by Matthew Pearl

From Library Journal: "Pearl's faultless fourth historical mystery centers on Boston in the late 1860s and the newly founded college that will become the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Three male students from different class backgrounds and the institution's sole female student team up to research a series of scientific mysteries baffling the Boston police. As part of MIT's first secret society, the Technologists, the students use chemicals, experiments, and such inventions as a primitive submarine to track a murderer whose abilities and education seem to parallel their own. Pearl has a special talent for making likable detectives out of historical figures and for pulling compelling plotlines from biographies. Here, MIT and Harvard are brought to the foreground and so well depicted that they become historical characters in their own right. This thriller won't disappoint Pearl's many fans."

Test your reading speed!

Just for fun, try this test of how fast you read. The world record holder for speed reading clocks in at 4700 words per minute. As Tom Hawking of Flavorwire noted, "She apparently read the final Harry Potter book in 47 minutes on its release, later reviewing it for UK newspaperThe Independent (who presumably scooped everyone else as far as getting their review out first went.)" I (Randy) got 839 words per minute. How'd you do?

From Fields to Fairways: Classic Golf Courses of Minnesota

From Fields to Fairways is the first book to thoroughly explore the history, architecture, and joie de vivre of Minnesota golf clubs, bringing to life the personalities who founded and shaped the clubs and courses, including forgotten details of how the greatest courses were built. Rick Shefchik highlights the best-known golf architects and the clubs they designed. He also traces the evolution of the state's public courses, which provided affordable playing grounds for the middle class as well as African Americans, who were not allowed to join private clubs. Another chapter focuses on the creation of private clubs by Jewish golfers, who were likewise once excluded from Minnesota's elite golf clubs. Featuring more than two hundred photos from newspapers, clubs, museums, and private collections-many of which have never before been seen by the public. This will be the book of record on Minnesota's illustrious golf history for fans and players of all handicaps.

Hell on Two Wheels by Amy Snyder

Three-time Ironman finisher Amy Snyder takes the wraps off the best kept secret in the sports world, the Race Across America (RAAM), a bicycle race like no other. Unlike its famous cousin the Tour de France, RAAM is much crazier, more gothic, and even savage: once the gun goes off the clock doesn't stop, and the first rider to complete the prescribed 3,000-mile route is the victor. In Hell on Two Wheels , Snyder follows a group of athletes before, during, and after the 2009 RAAM, the closest and most controversial race in the event's 30-year history. This work offers a thrilling and remarkably detailed account of the competitors' triumphs and tragedies as they test themselves, each other, and the limits of human endurance. As RAAM exacts its vicious toll, Snyder shows how the racers discover their essential humanity and experience profound joy and completeness, demonstrating how such a grueling effort can also be cleansing and self-revelatory.

Great book you may have missed

If you are a fan of dark and suspenseful stories but have not yet discovered Gillian Flynn, you are in for a treat. Of the 2006 novel Sharp Objects, her first book,  Publishers Weekly said "Flynn gives new meaning to the term "dysfunctional family" in her chilling debut thriller. Camille Preaker, once institutionalized for youthful self-mutilation, now works for a third-rung Chicago newspaper. When a young girl is murdered and mutilated and another disappears in Camille's hometown of Wind Gap, Mo., her editor, eager for a scoop, sends her there for a human-interest story. Though the police, including Richard Willis, a profiler from Kansas City, Mo., say they suspect a transient, Camille thinks the killer is local. Interviewing old acquaintances and newcomers, she relives her disturbed childhood, gradually uncovering family secrets as gruesome as the scars beneath her clothing. The horror creeps up slowly, with Flynn misdirecting the reader until the shocking, dreadful and memorable double ending."

Born to Darkness by Suzanne Brockmann

From Publishers Weekly: "Bestseller Brockmann takes readers on a pulse-pounding ride with the first installment of her new futuristic paranormal series. In the not-too-distant future, Boston is a war zone. A new drug, Destiny, keeps people in perfect physical shape while driving them insane. It's manufactured from the hormones of preteen girls procured by the nefarious Organization. Trying to combat the tide are empath Michelle "Mac" Mackenzie of the Obermeyer Institute, which teaches "Greater-Thans" to harness their supernatural powers for good, and blacklisted former Navy SEAL Shane Laughlin. The Greater-Thans race to save the girls before the Organization discards them. While a departure from Brockmann's romantic military suspense novels, this story does contain some of her trademark elements-a military hero, a same-sex romance between secondary characters, and sizzling connections to explore in future titles-but never feels formulaic or stale, and the drama pulls readers in from page one."

Tides of War by Stella Tilyard

From Library Journal: "The Napoleonic Wars were not only a time of great military and political turmoil, but a period of social and economic upheaval as well, brilliantly explored in this novel of the Peninsular War (1807-14) in Spain through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it (seasoned Major Yallop, dashing Captain Raven, his batman Thomas Order, and Wellington himself) and the women they left behind (phlegmatic Dorothy Yallop, new bride Harriet Raven, and Kitty, the oft-ignored Lady Wellington). As the men storm the walls of Badajoz and are feted and courted in a liberated Madrid, the women, making the most of their chance at independence, take charge of their financial futures and make new friendships that both empower and enlighten them. In short, war is as transformative for those who remain at home as for those who fight it, and historian Tillyard, making her fiction debut, does a superb job of portraying those transformations with deft, economical prose and metaphors that are as instructive as they are descriptive."

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman

A single day in Paris changes the lives of three Americans as they each set off to explore the city with a French tutor, learning about language, love, and loss as their lives intersect in surprising ways. Josie, Riley, and Jeremy have come to the City of Light for different reasons: Josie, a young high school teacher, arrives in hopes of healing a broken heart. Riley, a spirited but lonely expat housewife, struggles to feel connected to her husband and her new country. And Jeremy, the reserved husband of a renowned actress, is accompanying his wife on a film shoot, yet he feels distant from her world. As they meet with their tutors-Josie with Nico, a sensitive poet; Riley with Phillippe, a shameless flirt; and Jeremy with the consummately beautiful Chantal-each succumbs to unexpected passion and unpredictable adventures. Yet as they traverse Paris’s grand boulevards and intimate, winding streets, they uncover surprising secrets about one another-and come to understand long-buried truths about themselves.

Why I Left the Amish by Saloma Miller Furlong

When Saloma Miller Furlong’s father dies during her first semester at Smith College, she returns to the Amish community she had left twenty four years earlier to attend his funeral. Her journey home prompts a flood of memories. Now a mother with grown children of her own, Furlong recalls her painful childhood in a family defined by her father’s mental illness, her brother’s brutality, her mother’s frustration, and the austere traditions of the Amish — traditions Furlong struggled to accept for years before making the difficult decision to leave the community. In this personal and moving memoir, Furlong traces the genesis of her desire for freedom and education and chronicles her conflicted quest for independence. Eloquently told, Why I Left the Amish is a revealing portrait of life within — and without — this frequently misunderstood community.

The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt

From Library Journal: "A poet regains her balance following her husband's affair in Hustvedt's fifth novel (following The Sorrows of an American, 2008). After 30 years of marriage, Mia and Boris can easily finish each other's sentences, so closely are they enmeshed. But when Boris becomes enchanted by a younger colleague and tells Mia that he wants to take a "pause" from their marriage, shell-shocked Mia lands in a psychiatric hospital. Once released, she flees to rural Minnesota to spend the summer in the land of her childhood, where she hopes to heal while retracing the steps of her life. There, she comes to know a variety of females of all ages, each coping with the challenges of her particular stage of life. These interactions prove to be highly cathartic for Mia, and by summer's end she emerges stronger than ever before. While this tragicomic depiction of "women on the verge" sometimes veers off tangentially, in the end it proves to be insightful and thought-provoking. Readers may be reminded of the intelligent, evocative writing of Anita Shreve or Elizabeth Berg."

51 Puppy Tricks by Kyra Sundance

From the publisher: "[G]ives puppy owners the tools they need to teach behaviors and tricks to their puppy through step-by-step instructions and photographs. Most other puppy training books focus on curbing bad behavior. Some have training, but only the most basic tricks. Kyra's curriculum differs from that of 101 Dog Tricks in that the instructions are geared for the less mature dog. Young puppies are not yet well-tuned to humans, and respond better to a clicker than to a voice. Also, young puppies have so few skills that everyone benefits from a technique called "shaping" which breaks a behavior into minute steps for easier learning. And, of course, puppies receive extra gentle care when we teach, focused more on instilling a love of learning and a communication pathway rather than accomplishing the goal behavior."