The Strothman Agency - Forthcoming

FLIGHTS AGAINST THE SUNSET: Stories that Reunited a Mother and Son. Kenn Kaufman (Houghton Mifflin) $24.00 ISBN: 978-0618942701

At age sixteen, Kenn Kaufman left home to travel the world in search of birds. Now a grown man and a renowned ornithologist, he has come back to visit his ailing mother and explain to her what drove his obsession with bird life. His explanation forms a series of interlocking tales from the frontier where the world of birds intersects with the world of the humans who pursue them. The stories range over settings from Alaska to Africa, from trackless jungles to parking lots. They delve into subjects from first dates to last rites, from imagination and desire to sleep deprivation, from poignant encounters with eternal mysteries to comical brushes with biker gangs and secret agents. But as the stories unfold, the ornithologist comes to realize that he can still learn from his mother some things about life and even about the meaning of birds.

Flights Against the Sunset brings together nineteen essays, mostly adapted from Kaufman's long-running column in Bird Watcher's Digest. They weave an original story that examines how we communicate about our passions with those who do not share the same interests and how to celebrate the world of infinite possibilities and wonder.

For more about the book or author visit http://www.kknature.com/ or order it today from your Local Independent Bookseller or Amazon.

The Book of Getting Even : A Novel Benjamin Taylor. (Steerforth Press). $23.95 ISBN: 978-1586421434

TIME TO LEARN: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods. Christopher Gabrieli and Warren Goldstein (Jossey-Bass) $24.95 ISBN: 978-0470258088

Across the country, an educational revolution is taking root. Kids are learning more. Teachers are free to teach beyond the test. And parents aren’t worried about what their kids are up to after school. What accounts for this change? The simple answer is, “More time to learn.”

The current school day—6 hours and 180 days per year—is obsolete. It fails to provide students with the academic foundations and well-rounded education they need to succeed and thrive in the twenty-first century. The old school day is also out of step with the reality of working families without a stay-at-home parent to manage their children’s after-school time. Using an additional one to two hours, the new school day reworks the schedule so that children can master core academic subjects, receive individualized instruction and tutoring, and be exposed to a broad array of topics such as the arts, music, drama, and sports.

Order a copy today from your Local Independent Bookseller or Amazon.

Son of a rabbi, budding astronomer Gabriel Geismar is on his way from youth to manhood in the 1970s when he falls in love with the esteemed and beguiling Hundert family, different in every way from his own. Over the course of a decade-long drama unfolding in New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and the Wisconsin countryside, Gabriel enters more and more passionately and intimately into the world of his elective clan, discovering at the inmost center that he alone must bear the full weight of their tragedies, past and present. Yet The Book of Getting Even is funny and robust, a novel rich in those fundamentals we go to great fiction for: the exploration of what is hidden, the sudden shocks, the feeling at last of life laid bare.

"The Book of Getting Even is among the most original novels I have read in recent years. The story Taylor tells is a romance of brains — brains working well, then tragically giving out. The book is exuberant and charming and heartbroken by turns; indeed, the jaggedness of the ride is one of the things I liked best, along with Taylor’s proceeding by ironies. Add to that lyricism, an ear for dialogue, a strong feel for place, and a highly developed dramatic sense and you begin to have an idea of this novelist’s exceptional gift."— Philip Roth

For more about the book or author visit http://www.thebookofgettingeven.com/ or pre-order it today from your Local Independent Bookseller or Amazon.

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