As the final days of 2010 wind down, many websites and blogs are busy compiling their “Best of” lists for the year, including line-ups for the best in book cover design. Anis Shivani at The Huffington Post has selected 21 “cool” covers and spoken with the authors and designers to get a feel for the creative process that goes into designing a successful cover. Many of the titles selected are by lesser-known authors, but the design quality of several of the selections is top-notch. The cover created for The Line by Olga Grushin plays on the contrast of color and gray scale, positive and negative space, the austere and the lyrical to create a simple, yet intriguing cover. “Everyone immediately loved this one…A perfect cover should capture the feel of the book, and this one does so wonderfully: there is the contrast between the grim reality and the world of fantasy, hope and beauty; there are individual stories, each one unique; and I read a Nabokov reference into the butterflies, which makes me even happier,” comments Grushin. Read more…

By Dean Koontz
Bantam | 464pgs
Release Date: December 28, 2010

Summary:
Bestselling thriller writer Dean Koontz conjures up a modern day ghost story with his new novel What the Night Knows. Alton Turner Blackwood, the villain from Koontz’s short story Darkness Under the Sun, wreaks havoc on a small town, killing several families. His murderous rampage is finally brought to an end on the night he attacks a fourth family, when he is killed by a 14-year-old boy, the only one to survive Blackwood’s savagery. Many years later and miles away from his childhood trauma, the boy, John Calvino, is now a man with his own family, when evil strikes again. Working as homicide detective, Calvino begins investigating a series of murders that bear a sickening similarity to the tragedy of his childhood. The unsettling and inexplicable events surrounding these new crimes cause Calvino to intensely fear for his own family’s safety and believe that he must fight a killer whose power extends beyond the grave. Read more…

During the summer of 2008, as journalist Ted Gup sifted through the dusty contents of an old suitcase once belonging to his grandfather, he made a surprising discovery. A trove of letters, heartfelt pleas for help written during the dark days of the Depression, was uncovered. Further investigation found that Gup’s grandfather, Sam Stone, had placed a small ad in a Canton, Ohio newspaper days before Christmas in 1933 calling on people to write to him about their need, and offering “Financial aid”. Stone used the alias, B. Virdot, and promised all the letter writers confidentiality. Good to his word, the man sent $5 to 150 families, about $12,400 translated into today’s money. These honest, raw letters and his grandfather’s simple act of kindness served as the impetus for Gup’s book A Secret Gift (The Penguin Press HC, 368pgs). Read more…

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff searches for the real woman behind the centuries old myths in the new biography Cleopatra: A Life (Little, Brown and Company, 384pgs). Historical propaganda has often painted the Egyptian queen as a scheming beauty who seduced powerful men like Julius Caesar and Marc Antony for political gain. But Schiff’s research revealed a much more intelligent and nuanced personality. “It’s astonishing how tenacious a myth is. I mean, Plutarch is the first to say that her beauty was by no means as remarkable as was her charm and her intellect. And here we are 2,000 years later and we’re still stressing the beauty,” says Schiff in an interview with SFGate. “Here you have an incredibly ambitious, accomplished woman who comes up against some of the same problems that women in power come up against today. Cleopatra plays an oddly pivotal role in world history as well; in her lifetime, Alexandria is the center of the universe, Rome is still a backwater.” Read more…

Indie band Pomplamoose (Nataly Dawn left and Jack Conte right) created the Richmond Book Drive program to benefit the struggling school district in Richmond, CA.

Indie band Pomplamoose, is so passionate about literacy that they’ve created the Richmond Book Drive program and are offering everyone who donates a book to the struggling school district in Richmond, CA a free copy of their new Christmas album. Pomplamoose, made up of Nataly Dawn and boyfriend Jack Conte, have developed quite a fan following on YouTube, and have recently gained more visibility with their quirky Hyundai commercial that has been rocking the airwaves this holiday season. The Christmas album is not for sale, and can only be obtained through the purchase and donation of books on the Richmond wish list via Amazon. According to the Richmond Book Drive website their mission is “to put compelling, relevant books into the hands of young people throughout the City of Richmond, California. We aim to provide students — be they reluctant or voracious readers — with books that they will love, books that will turn them into lifelong readers and learners. In the process, we hope to spread the message that all students are worthy of investment, that none are beyond repair, and that ours is a city full of curiosity and hope.” Read more…

Mashable names "PopOut! The Tale of Peter Rabbit" as one of the top interactive children's books for the iPad.

In previous posts, In the Stax has discussed the merits of the iPad as an eReader and as an educational tool for young children. This engaging device also offers a unique platform for app developers to combine these two functions and produce stand-out interactive interpretations of classic children’s stories. Mashable recently posted a list of their Top 5 classic children’s books designed for the iPad. Each selection was chosen for the eBook’s ability to engage young readers and provide a variety of interactive experiences through out the story. Read more…

By Graham Moore
Twelve | 368pgs
Release Date: December 1, 2010

Summary:
Graham Moore draws on the history and adventures of the world’s most beloved sleuth, and his creator, in the debut novel The Sherlockian. Interweaving one investigation conducted by Arthur Conan Doyle in the late 19th century and another worked by a modern day literary researcher, the author builds a mystery that would engross Sherlock Holmes himself. In 1893, at the height of Holmes’ popularity, Conan Doyle tires of the character and unceremoniously tosses him over Reichenbach Falls to his death in the story The Final Problem. An irate fan sends him a letter bomb to voice his displeasure, thus sending the writer on the trail of a real-lifer murderer, accompanied by a young Bram Stoker. Conan Doyle documents his investigation in a journal that later goes missing, gaining a sort of legendary status among Doylean scholars. In early 2010, as “freelance literary researcher” Harold White is inducted into the prestigious Baker Street Irregulars, he encounters a new mystery. A renown Sherlockian expert announces to the group that he has discovered the legendary lost diary, but the man is soon found strangled in his hotel room, and the diary is nowhere to be seen. Harold then sets out to track down the murderer and find the illusive diary, using Holmes’ investigative methods. Read more…

Award-winning author and illustrator David Shannon has released his latest rambunctious adventure in his David series just in time for the holidays. In the new picture book It’s Christmas, David! (The Blue Sky Press, 32pgs), the irresistibly naughty little boy faces new challenges and temptations as he struggles to keep himself on Santa’s “Nice” list in the days before Christmas. Shannon, who based the mischievous David on his younger self, has special empathy for kids at this time of year. “Christmas is when you get in the most trouble and you get told ‘no’ the most. There’s all this excitement that you have to be patient for,” he explains in a interview with the Los Angeles Times. But at the end of the book, Shannon also illustrates the upside to Christmas. “It’s the biggest ‘yes’ of the year when it finally comes. That’s the other side of being told no: The ‘yes’ that comes after it.” Read more…

On Monday, Google debuted their new Google eBookstore, and will now compete with Apple and Amazon for a share of the lucrative eBooks pie. As announced on the company’s official blog, consumers will be able to “browse and search through the largest eBooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale.” This launch is significant in that Google eBooks are not linked to a specific device but are compatible across many platforms “— everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers.” The books themselves are stored in the cloud instead of on an individual piece of hardware. “That means you can access your eBooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa – using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited eBooks storage.” Read more…

Avi Steinberg’s intelligent and amusing new memoir Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian (Nan A. Talese, 416pgs) recounts his two year stint working as a librarian at Boston’s Deer Island prison library. The poorly motivated, but highly educated Harvard grad found the job posted innocuously listed on Craigslist, and was hired even though he did not hold a degree in Library Science. Despite poor conditions, strict prison regulations and interacting with felons on a daily basis, Steinberg found the job oddly appealing. In addition to duties common to most librarians such as checking out books and helping patrons with research, the 20-something academic also had the more colorful duties of examining books for “kites”, prohibited messages traded between prisoners of the opposite sex, and keeping an eye out for any library materials that could potentially be fashioned into weapons. “I am living my (quixotic) dream: a book-slinger with a badge and a streetwise attitude, part bookworm, part badass,” quotes a review in USA TODAY. Read more…