1. Cure for the Common
Breakup by Beth Kendrick (fiction)
Litchfield Park resident Beth Kendrick’s latest novel tells the sort of transformative-heroine story Oprah Winfrey and other book-of-the-month club matrons would love – it’s got a strong central female character in Summer Benson, a flight attendant who lives by two rules: “Don’t stay with the same man for too long, and never stay in one place.” She considers breaking her first rule when she learns her boyfriend plans to propose, but then a series of unfortunate events puts her in Black Dog Bay, a seaside spot in Delaware known as “the best place in America to bounce back from your breakup.” As you can imagine, things get complicated as Benson navigates the singles scene in this quirky burg. ($9.25, New American Library, bethkendrick.com)
2. The 66 Kid: Raised on the Mother Road
by Bob Boze Bell (nonfiction)
True West magazine editor Bob Boze Bell grew up in Kingman and spent much of his life along Arizona’s famous Route 66. This book recounts the glory days of the “Mother Road” through gorgeous full-color pages featuring everything from old road maps and vintage photos to roadside diner menus and Boze’s own paintings. Along the way, readers also learn some interesting things about the author – including how he hauled ice for travelers at his dad’s Kingman gas station and that he lost his virginity in a Nash Rambler. The book (hardbound versions are available at local sellers Changing Hands Bookstore and The Poisoned Pen) is coffee-table- and conversation-piece-ready. ($30 paperback, Voyageur Press, voyageurpress.com)
3. The Interstellar Age
by Jim Bell (nonfiction)
Why should Pluto be called a planet again? How did a Chuck Berry song end up on a “Golden Record” that was sent into space? Who is Ed Stone? Answers to these questions and more reside in this book, which tells the story of the two Voyager satellites launched in 1977 that still send information back to Earth. Penned by Jim Bell, a professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, the book takes a conversational tone that makes science not only easy to digest, but fun. And for hardcore science buffs, there are spacecraft diagrams galore. ($27.95, Dutton, penguinrandomhouse.com)
4. The Tall Man
by Lee Bishop (fiction)
When protagonist Ricardo Montoya, a wealthy rancher in Mexico, learns he was taken as a baby from a stagecoach robbery in the Arizona Territory in which his biological family was killed, he becomes determined to find and exact vengeance on the murderers. In the process, he crisscrosses the Mexico-Arizona Territory border to fight Apache raiders and champion the cause of impoverished Mexicans during the rebellion. Scottsdale-based author Lee Bishop wrote for the now-defunct Phoenix Gazette for 15 years. This is the first book in his “Border Legend Trilogy.” ($11.99; World Castle Publishing, LLC; worldcastlepublishing.com)
5. Breakfast at Tuli’s
by Paul Mosier (fiction)
Readers who dig the subversive style and transgressive fiction of Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk will certainly get into Phoenix-born writer Paul Mosier’s Breakfast at Tuli’s. The attractive titular character has a compulsion to have sex with hideous men. She resolves to stop when she meets a hunchbacked man with a nervous disorder and (maybe, just maybe) starts to fall in love. Adding to its post-modern panache, the narrative is told through the voice of Tuli’s pet fish, who has a crush on her. It’s a strange brew, but that makes this book stand out. No way you’ve heard this one before. ($13, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, available at amazon.com)
