Locally Grown Northfield

All these items are available at Monkey See Monkey Read in downtown Northfield. An as always, we’ll wrap your gifts for free in some of our lovely wrapping paper.

Wingshooters by Nina Revoyr

In the traditin of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, A River Runs Through It, and Snow Falling on Cedars, Revoyr’s new novel examines the effects of change on a small, isolated town, the strengths and limits of community, and the sometimes conflicting loyalties of family and justice. Set in the expansive countryside of Central Wisconsin, against the backdrop of Vietnam and the post-civil rights era, Wingshooters explores both connection and loss as well as the complex but enduring bonds of family.

A damn fine book.

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.

Alvin loved this one.

Making a Friend by Alison McGhee

Bestselling author, Alison McGhee reminds us all that nothing that has been cared for can ever disappear for good, for, “What you love will always be with you.” And, this tender story about the power of friendship will stay with readers long after they turn the last page.

Another winner from Alison McGhee

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg

For more than twenty-five years, the illustrations in the extraordinary Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg have intrigued and entertained readers of all ages. Thousands of children have been inspired to weave their own stories to go with these enigmatic pictures. Now we’ve asked some of our very best storytellers to spin the tales. Enter The Chronicles of Harris Burdick to gather this incredible compendium of stories: mysterious, funny, creepy, poignant, these are tales you won’t soon forget.

The Clodhopper Monologues by Mike Perry

Not so long ago, author, humorist and amateur pig farmer Michael Perry fed the chickens, changed his boots, kissed his wife and daughters, and drove downstate to a refurbished opera house in Stoughton, Wisconsin. Waiting for him onstage was a microphone; waiting in the seats was a sold-out house full of folks ready to laugh. For the next two hours the walls of the old opera hall echoed with stories of love and long underwear, happily failed bachelors, aggressive roosters, one-eyed joke-telling butchers, the glories of pickup-truck-based courtship…and wave after wave of laughter. And then – right at the end there – came the story of the little girl, the guinea pig, and a math lesson gone wrong.

okay this one’s not a book, but it’s so damn funny.

Set Cubed

SET Cubed is A Curious Game of Clever Connections, challenging a player’s ability to identify SETs between the dice in their hand and those already on the board.  Players can play up to 3 dice per turn making as many SETs as possible. Create SETs up, down and across the board, the more SETs you create, the higher your score. As the number of dice on the board increases so do the possible SET combinations. Rack up points by using BONUS SQUARES! Roll a WILD die and unleash the possible number of SETs that can be made during your turn! How many SETs can you make?! The player with the most points wins!

My favorite game

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

Simply an amazing story. Highly recommended

Haruki Murakami

We have a number of his books you could choose including his latest 1Q84. Murakami is always a delight to read.

Tiny Pilot by Mike Perry and the Longbeds

Like so many before him, Michael Perry learned to sing in church. Then a Waylon Jennings 8-track got him hooked on boogety-boogety. This combination yielded the mix of straight-up twang and churchly harmonies found in Perry’s music. Tiny Pilot is Michael Perry’s second full-length release with his band the Long Beds. The songs on Tiny Pilot range from boot-stomping country to roughneck folk ballads and are populated by characters drawn straight from rural and small-town America. The music made by Perry and his Long Beds has been described as ‘country folk,’ ‘folk-twang,’ and Americana.

Just like Gordon Lightfoot…only zippier. Seriously, I love this album.

Big Little Brother by Kevin Kling

“This charming first children’s book by celebrated storyteller Kevin Kling, with whimsical drawings by Chris Monroe, traces a familiar arc from sibling rivalry to brotherly love.”

We’ve been posting our daily specials to our Monkey See Monkey Read Facebook page all month.

For our December Third Thursday special, we will discount everything 20%. Well, not everything. There are a few exceptions like special orders. Books, games, toys, and calendars will be 20% off.

Visit our Monkey See Monkey Read website and the Monkey See Monkey Read blog.

Third and Long

“This novel is so good-hearted, so life-affirming, it’s a joy to read. . . . What Katz does so well is evoke the feelings of love the people have for their town and their close connections, even when the football team keeps losing. Katz clearly has compassion for all of his characters, and some of his descriptions of their feelings are so beautiful you’ll want to read whole paragraphs several times.” —Mary Ann Grossman, St. Paul Pioneer Press

“Katz has offered us a smart, moving, beautiful and important book.”  —E. J. Dionne Jr., syndicated columnist, NPR commentator

A haunted stranger seeking a second chance in life helps a struggling Midwest factory town rediscover its better self. Think: Friday Night Lights meets It’s a Wonderful Life.

Winner of the 2011 Independent Book Publishers Association Award for popular fiction, Third and Long tells the story of a dying Midwest factory town that finds new life when a former Notre Dame football star is hired as the local plant manager. Soon he is handed not just the job of saving Made Right clothing, but the far more daunting task of saving the town.

Laced with keen insights into contemporary issues—the importance of community, pitfalls of the global economy, the skewed importance of sports in the lives of people who desperately need a victory—Third and Long is a moving portrait of a vanishing America hanging by a thread, with perhaps just enough time remaining for one last miraculous play.

Bob Katz is the author of several widely praised books, including Hot Air, a novel about a charismaticLatin American revolutionary who comes to the U.S. for a speaking tour of Midwest colleges, which was optioned for a movie by MGM, and the nonfiction book Elaine’s Circle about an Alaskan schoolteacher.

“Beautifully layered and lovingly detailed, White Truffles in Winter is a tale of extraordinary people entangled in a captivating love story. Filled with lush and decadent longing, this novel will dazzle the mind as well as the senses.” —Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Birds of Paradise: A Novel

A breathtaking novel, rare and moving, about the world’s greatest chef and his unruly heart.

White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who changed how we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz. A man of contradictions—kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry—Escoffier was also torn between two women: the famous, beautiful, and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the independent and sublime poet Delphine Daffis, who refused ever to leave Monte Carlo. In the last year of Escoffier’s life, in the middle of writing his memoirs, he has returned to Delphine, who requests a dish in her name as he has honored Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, and many others.

How does one define the complexity of love on a single plate? N. M. Kelby brings us the sensuality of food and love amid a world on the verge of war in this work that shimmers with beauty and longing.

N. M. Kelby is the critically acclaimed author of In the Company of Angels, Whale Season, White Trufflesin Winter, and the Florida Book Award winner A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts, among others. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Both books are available at Monkey See Monkey Read in downtown Northfield.

The Least Cricket of Evening

A beautiful collection of meditative essays on the everyday nothings of life in which meaning can be found. In the tradition of the meditative essay, the writing of Robert Vivian begins with a mundane moment and, through the delicate workings of curiosity, contemplation, and inspiration, reveals unsuspected meaning.

In this second collection of essays, Vivian finds his occasions in Midwestern towns and European cities. He explores the spiritual significance of circumstances and places and those who inhabit them, from the Jewish dead in a long-neglected cemetery in Poland to a dog slaughtered on a highway fronting the Black Sea to gunshots ringing out in rural Michigan. Again and again, Vivian probes what such phenomena suggest about the times we live in—and what they share with every time that ever was.

Robert Vivian is a professor of English and creative writing at Alma College in Michigan and a core facultymember in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, and his plays have been produced in New York City. He is the author of Cold Snap as Yearning and the Tall Grass Trilogy, which includes The Mover of Bones, Lamb Bright Saviors, and Another Burning Kingdom, all available from the University of Nebraska Press.

Praise for Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

“Soon the bread will be making itself… The crusty, full-flavored loaf that results may be the world’s easiest yeast bread.”–The New York Times

“If holiday gift-givers are aiming to buy one new cookbook title for the bakers in their lives, they should look no further.” –Minneapolis Star-Tribune

From the bestselling authors of the hugely popular Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day featuring the authors’ signature approach to yeast dough that the Chicago Sun-Times has called “quite simply, genius,” this new a cookbook applies their same revolutionary approach to bread-making to pizza and flatbreads. With nearly half a million copies of their books in print, Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François have proven that people want to bake their own bread—as long as they can do it quickly and easily. When fans hailed their pizza and flatbread recipes as the fastest in their books, Jeff and Zoe got busy creating all new recipes for lightning-fast pizzas, flatbreads, and sweet and savory tarts from stored, no-knead dough.

Jeff Hertzberg, M.D., is former practicing physician with 20 years of experience in health care as a practitioner, consultant, and faculty member at the University of Minnesota Institute for Health Informatics. He grew up eating New York pizza and spent years trying to figure out how to make dough that was convenient enough to use for daily pizza, flatbreads, and loaves. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two daughters.

Zoë François is a pastry chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America, but she is a pizzaiola at heart. While writing this book, she traveled far and wide to eat every pizza and flatbread she could find. In addition to tossing pizzas, she creates desserts on her pastry blog zoebakes.com. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and two sons.

The authors met in their children’s music class in 2003 and wrote the best-selling Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Pizza or bread questions are answered at www.PizzaIn5.com.

Both books are available at Monkey See Monkey Read in downtown Northfield.

In Caddis Wood

Told from the alternating perspectives of a husband and wife, In Caddis Woodexplores the competing rhythms of romantic love, family life, and professional ambition, refracted through the changing seasons of a long marriage. Beneath the surface, affecting their collective future, beats the resilient and endangered heart of nature. As the memories multiply and the family gathers at their longtime summerhouse in the woods of Wisconsin, Hallie and Carl’s grown-up daughters offer unexpected avenues toward forgiveness and healing. With warmth and generosity, Mary François Rockcastle captures the way that the aging mind imbues the present with all the many layers of the past as she illuminates the increasingly unbreakable bonds borne of a shared life.

“As she did in her debut, Rockcastle once again melds family drama with a palpable sense of place. . . . Suffused,appropriately, with imagery of the natural and man-made worlds, Rockcastle’s skillful pacing weaves together the family’s tumultuous history with its uncertain present. A mature love story offering a clear-eyed glimpse of the challenges and rewards of a long marriage.”—Publishers Weekly

The bestselling author of Montana 1948returns to Milkweed Editions with American Boy, a classic tale of desire, betrayal, and coming of age in 1960’s Minnesota.  Already chosen as one of the top 20 Indie Sleeper hits for Fall 2011, as well as an IndieNext selection for October, American Boy is shaping up to be the Midwestern novel of the year.

“Watson has penned some of the best contemporary fiction about small-town America, and his new novel does not disappoint. . . . With his graceful writing style, well-drawn characters, and subtly moving plot, Watson masterfully portrays the dark side of small-town America. Highly readable and enthusiastically recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review)

Larry Watson is the author of seven widely acclaimed novels, including the best-selling Montana 1948. Over the course of his career, Watson has been praised for the “unflinching honesty and complete respect” he shows to his characters (Booklist), and his novels have been called “captivating and haunting” (Washington Post), “remarkable” (Baltimore Sun), “utterly mesmerizing” (The Nation), and lauded as small masterpieces which “pull you immediately into [their] depths and settle inside your bones for a long and haunting stay” (San Francisco Chronicle). Larry Watson lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his family.

Both books are available at Monkey See Monkey Read in downtown Northfield.