New Release Books

If you like Urban Fantasy, be sure to check out today’s post at Hot Romance Books on the Knob.

Today’s first Featured New Release is A Beginner’s Guide to Paradise: 9 Steps to Giving Up Everything ($10.99 Kindle), by Alex Sheshunoff [NAL / Penguin].

Book Description
So You Too Can:

• Move to a South Pacific Island
• Wear a Loincloth
• Read a Hundred Books
• Diaper a Baby Monkey
• Build a Bungalow

And Maybe, Just Maybe, Fall in Love! *

* Individual results may vary.

The true story of how a quarter-life crisis led to adventure, freedom, and love on a tiny island in the Pacific.

From the author of a lot of emails and several Facebook posts comes A Beginner’s Guide to Paradise, a laugh-out-loud, true story that will answer your most pressing escape-from-it-all questions, including:

1. How much, per pound, should you expect to pay a priest to fly you to the outer islands of Yap?
2. Classic slumber party stumper: If you could have just one movie on a remote Pacific island, what would it definitely not be?
3. How do you blend fruity drinks without a blender?
4. Is a free, one-hour class from Home Depot on “Flowerbox Construction” sufficient training to build a house?

From Robinson Crusoe to Survivor, Gilligan’s Island to The Beach, people have fantasized about living on a remote tropical island. But when facing a quarter-life crisis, plucky desk slave Alex Sheshunoff actually did it.

While out in Paradise, he learned a lot. About how to make big choices and big changes. About the less-than-idyllic parts of paradise. About tying a loincloth without exposing the tender bits. Now, Alex shares his incredible story and pretty-hard-won wisdom in a book that will surprise you, make you laugh, take you to such unforgettable islands as Yap and Pig, and perhaps inspire your own move to an island with only two letters in its name.

Answers: 1) $1.14 2) Gas Attack Training Made Simple 3) Crimp a fork in half and insert middle into power drill 4) No.

About the Author
Alex Sheshunoff is a writer whose work has appeared in National Geographic Adventure, Slate.com, Marketplace, The Anchorage Daily News and other very prestigious media outlets. Before deciding to call himself a writer, Alex snuck through Yale and started and ran an Internet company in New York called E-The People – a nonpartisan precursor to Moveon.org but with a pun in its name.

Five years later and burnt out and facing a quarter-life crisis, Alex gathered the one hundred books he was most embarrassed not to have read and moved to a small island in the Pacific called Yap. He later wrote a vaguely-humorous memoir with a very long title about the experience: A Beginner’s Guide to Paradise: 9 Steps to Giving Up Everything So You Too Can: Move to the South Pacific, Wear a Loincloth, Read a Hundred Books, Diaper a Baby Monkey, Build a Bungalow and Maybe, Just Maybe, Fall in Love! (Individual results may vary.) – a book he got to write and rewrite while get a masters in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. Miraculously, Penguin Random House plans to release it in hardcover on Sept. 1st, 2015.

Because of his unique last name, Alex is often asked if he’s somehow related to Ian Shenanigan Sheshunoff, the first-place winner of the Diaper Derby Crawling Contest at the 2008 Alaska State Fair. They are indeed related. Ian is his son. Today, Alex and his wife, Sarah, live in Ojai, California with Ian and his equally talented younger brother, Andrew Commissioner Sheshunoff.

Today’s second Featured New Release is A Curious Beginning: A Veronica Speedwell Mystery ($11.43 Kindle), by Deanna Raybourn [NAL / Penguin].

Book Description
In her thrilling new series, the New York Times bestselling author of the Lady Julia Grey mysteries, returns once more to Victorian England…and introduces intrepid adventuress Veronica Speedwell.

London, 1887. As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry—and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England now gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

But fate has other plans, as Veronica discovers when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron with ties to her mysterious past. Promising to reveal in time what he knows of the plot against her, the baron offers her temporary sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker—a reclusive natural historian as intriguing as he is bad-tempered. But before the baron can deliver on his tantalizing vow to reveal the secrets he has concealed for decades, he is found murdered. Suddenly Veronica and Stoker are forced to go on the run from an elusive assailant, wary partners in search of the villainous truth.

About the Author
Deanna Raybourn, the author of the award-winning New York Times bestselling Lady Julia Grey series and several standalone novels, is pleased to introduce her new Victorian-set mystery series featuring Veronica Speedwell. Deanna lives in Virginia with her husband and daughter.

Today’s third Featured New Release is Citrus: Sweet and Savory Sun-Kissed Recipes ($11.99 Kindle), by Valerie Aikman-Smith and Victoria Pearson [Ten Speed Press / Random House]. My lemon trees won’t have enough fruit for more than a small recipe or two (they are getting big, but won’t ripen until nearly New Year’s), but that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to try several of the recipes in this one over the winter.

Book Description
A visually stunning collection of 75 inventive, foolproof recipes that highlight the use of citrus.

This sunny, citrus-infused collection showcases lemons, oranges, tangerines, grapefruits, and limes as well as out-of-the-ordinary kumquats, pomelos, Buddha’s hand, and yuzu in everything from breakfast to dinner, drinks to dessert. Seventy-five delicious, foolproof recipes include Tangerine Sticky Ribs, Burnt Sugar Meyer Lemon Tart, Citrus Crisps, and Havana Mojitos, while beautiful photography captures the essence of citrus on the plate. From miniature clementines to aromatic makrut limes, delicate Meyer lemons to ruby-hued grapefruits, the zesty, tangy flavors of Citrus will brighten up both your kitchen and your cooking.

About the Author
VALERIE AIKMAN-SMITH is a cookbook author and food stylist. She cooked at Greens restaurant in San Francisco before applying her chef skills to food styling and writing. She is the author of Salt, Smoke & Spice, Juicy Drinks, Pickled & Packed, and Cooking in Cast Iron. VICTORIA PEARSON is a photographer specializing in food, still life, travel, and beauty. Her extensive client list includes Crate & Barrel, Food & Wine magazine, Giada De Laurentiis, Gourmet magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Pottery Barn, Town & Country, Travel & Leisure, and Williams-Sonoma.

May be price matched at B&N, eBooks.com, iTunes or Kobo for those needing EPUB.

All prices current at the time the post is written. Most books remain at their listed price until “midnight” (each store operates on it’s own timezone and schedule), but prices can change at any moment. I have seen prices change within the hour or even minutes after posting.

from Books on the Knob http://ift.tt/1LI4kv6