On the morning of February 19th 1979, Ollestad, his father and girlfriend, and the pilot of the plane they were in, crashed into Ontario Peak in southern California. Throughout the next 9 hours all would die, except Norman, age 11. What is it that prepares any of us for the transformations which make it possible to survive? What prepares us to make the choices that make us more fully human? This memoir takes a simple two-step approach to the event and the history leading up to it. Chapters alternate between crash site and flashback, poignant events and developments in his personal and family history recounted against a vivid hour by hour account of his survival on the mountain. Beyond this capable storytelling is a mastery of the language enabling him to articulate the kaleidoscopic kinaesthesia of his extreme surf and ski initiations under the, at times forced, guidance of his inspired, athletic father. The surf culture of Topanga and Malibu in the late '60s is evoked with exquisite attention to the minute particulars of the culture, style, ways, and spirit of that rough and tumble time. It not only shows how we incorporate time but is also a praising of the diverse strands of pain and pleasure that can be woven into new understandings, new relationships, and love. His voice is honestly sentimental, in a way that is often difficult for us to appreciate these days. This is a wise, multi-layered and adult story, which would also be good for teenagers to read. It is a meditation on the dance of the everchanging meanings of winning and losing and a moving testament to the loss of his father, who made all winning possible. -- John Evans

Concerned with national identity, historicity, perception, and morality, Miéville's latest introduces police investigator Tyador Borlú in what is certainly the most unorthodox police procedural I've encountered. In The City and the City, two nation-cities coexist "geophysically" but in every other regard are worlds apart: each nation-city's citizens are not allowed to interact with or even perceive the other; if they do they are immediately "in Breach" - a state wherein they will be made to disappear by a shadowy third government whose only raison d'etre is to maintain the separation of both nations. So what happens when a murder is discovered that occurred in one nation but was covered up in the other? Miéville creates a narrative that slides between genres as deftly as his shadowy characters, and explores the politics of exclusivity, blind nationality, and willful ignorance, and the tenacity and intrepidity required in pursuit of dangerous truths. -- Trevor Calvert

Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist extraordinaire, said, "The only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature," and sadly I (and probably you) do not live in a treehouse, so this is a good reason to buy New Treehouses of the World by Pete Nelson. Treehouses crams its pages with full color pictures of arboresque domiciles - everything from rustic single occupancy leafy huts to oaken bungalows to multiple-tree mansions. Most of us will probably never live in a treehouse, but with Nelson's excellent tour of homes in the branches we can at least live vicariously. (And if I ever do build a treehouse in which to live, I'll be coming back to this fantastic book for inspiration!) -- Trevor Calvert

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's stories are completely unique. She manages to preserve the romance of India while going beyond the merely exotic, beyond even the struggle for dignity, love and understanding we all share, and into the downright quirky and even shocking landscape of the individual psyche. No one gets beneath the skin as quickly and effortlessly as Jhabvala, and in the realm of Indian literature, there's nothing quite like her. -- Colin Waters