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Michael Chabon




Title Author Publisher Price
The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon Harper Perennial $14.44
($15.95 list)
Yiddishcop
Read more and comment... 		It's here, the much anticipated and long awaited new novel by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  It was originally scheduled to ship this time last year, but Chabon and his editor decided at the last minute to pull the plug and do a full rewrite.  As with Chabon's last novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is brimming with invention.  Conflating at least two genres -- the alternate history and the hard-boiled detective story -- his new work tells the story of Detective Landsman, Homicide, who works for the Federal District of Sitka, Alaska, the "temporary" safe haven created for Jewish refugees after the 1948 collapse of Israel.  The story is set on the eve of the district's reversion to Alaskan control, an event that is poised to plunge its populace into unknown territory. 
Gentlemen of the Road Michael Chabon UNDEFINED $18.88
($21.95 list)
OUT OF STOCK!
Gentroad
Read more and comment... 		What's this?  Two new Michael Chabon novels in one year?  This new novel is a bit slighter on the ambition scale than this year's earlier release, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but that is its intention.  As is splendidly evident in its design, Gentlemen of the Road is a classic adventure yarn.  Starting with endpapers that depict a historical map of the area where the book's adventures occur, and continuing with its old-school table of contents and list of illustrations, and, especially, on through to the llustrations themselves -- all done up in the classic pen and ink style by the current (and quite excellent) illustrator of Prince Valiant, Gary Gianni which are liberally scattered throughout -- this is a book that wants to take you back to when reading was an adventure in and of itself.  Set a thousand years in the past amidst the Caucas Mountains  and along the Don and Volga River valleys, it's a tale that follows a mismatched pair of adventurers, affectionately referencing Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as they get into -- and out of -- one mess after another on their way to the revolution.  Here's a couple of  reviews in The Village Voice and The Guardian UK.
Maps and Legends Jordan Crane, Michael Chabon McSweeney's $22.22
($24.00 list)
Mapsandlegends
Read more and comment... 		The first non-fiction collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Kavalier & Clay ranges from autobiographical essays (growing up in the then experimental community of Columbia, MD) to book reviews (Cormac McCarthy's The Road, for one) to artist appreciations (Howard Chaykin, Will Eisner, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) to Judaism (Golems anyone?) and then back to memoirs (writing Mysteries of Pittsburgh, childhood encounters with literature).  We can pretty much guarantee that any and all readers who are enamored of Chabon's fiction will take great pleasure in reading this volume, as the same discerning intelligence is on ample display here in sentences and paragraphs that are as finely crafted as any he has written and that will leave each reader with greater appreciations of and deeper insights into all the covered topics.  And then there's the way fab, three tier, Jordan Crane dustjacket.
McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories Michael Chabon McSweeney's $11.85
($13.95 list)

Read more and comment... 		This is the sequel to 2002's swell McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, and features more great genre fiction (see Chabon's intro for a discussion of this term) from some of today's finest writers.  The best book for your bedside table.  Features new work by  Margaret Atwood, Stephen King, Peter Straub, David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem, Heidi Julavits, Roddy Doyle, and more.