An astonishing first novel that traces the lives of a Scottish family over a decade as they confront the joys and longings, fulfillments and betrayals of love in all its guises.

In June of 1989 Paul McLeod, a newspaper publisher and recent widower, travels to Greece, where he falls for a young American artist and reflects on the complicated truth about his marriage. . ..Six years later, again in June, Paul’s death draws his three grown sons and their families back to their ancestral home. Fenno, the eldest, a wry, introspective gay man, narrates the events of this unforeseen reunion. Far from his straitlaced expatriate life as a bookseller in Greenwich Village, Fenno is stunned by a series of revelations that threaten his carefully crafted defenses. . .. Four years farther on, in yet another June, a chance meeting on the Long Island shore brings Fenno together with Fern Olitsky, the artist who once captivated his father. Now pregnant, Fern must weigh her guilt about the past against her wishes for the future and decide what family means to her. In prose rich with compassion and wit, Three Junes paints a haunting portrait of love’s redemptive powers.

Avid science readers know the value of good judgment. There's just too much out there to go through it all in one lifetime, so we learn to appreciate the recommendations of those we trust. Editors James Gleick and Jesse Cohen took it upon themselves to select 19 eclectic pieces for The Best American Science Writing 2000, resulting in a delicious, engrossing volume with something for nearly every reader. Whether relying on well-known authors like Stephen Jay Gould and Oliver Sacks or surprising us with a selection from humor publication The Onion ("Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms of Pseudoscience"), they choose works that combine the best of exposition and aesthetic delight. The scope of topics is broad: physician Atul Gawande reports on medical mistakes, Douglas R. Hofstadter ruminates on natural and artificial intelligence, and Deborah Gordon gives an inside look at southwestern American ant life. Though the editors cheerfully admit that they can't define science writing with any precision, they still please the reader with this important and enjoyable volume. —Rob Lightner

In Myla Goldberg's outstanding first novel, a family is shaken apart by a small but unexpected shift in the prospects of one of its members. When 9-year-old Eliza Naumann, an otherwise indifferent student, takes first prize in her school spelling bee, it is as if rays of light have begun to emanate from her head. Teachers regard her with a new fondness; the studious girls begin to save a place for her at lunch. Even Eliza can sense herself changing. She had "often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see."

Eliza's father, Saul, a scholar and cantor, had long since given up expecting sparks of brilliance on her part. While her brother, Aaron, had taken pride in reciting his Bar Mitzvah prayers from memory, she had typically preferred television reruns to homework or reading. This belated evidence of a miraculous talent encourages Saul to reassess his daughter. And after she wins the statewide bee, he begins tutoring her for the national competition, devoting to Eliza the hours he once spent with Aaron. His daughter flowers under his care, eventually coming to look at life "in alphabetical terms." "Consonants are the camels of language," she realizes, "proudly carrying their lingual loads." Vowels, however, are a different species, the fish that flash and glisten in the watery depths. Vowels are elastic and inconstant, fickle and unfaithful.... Before the bee, Eliza had been a consonant, slow and unsurprising. With her bee success, she has entered vowelhood. When Saul sees the state of transcendence that she effortlessly achieves in competition, he encourages his daughter to explore the mystical states that have eluded him—the influx of God-knowledge (shefa) described by the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia. Although Saul has little idea what he has set in motion, "even the sound of Abulafia's name sets off music in her head. A-bu-la-fi-a. It's magic, the open sesame that unblocked the path to her father and then to language itself."

Meanwhile, stunned by his father's defection, Aaron begins a troubling religious quest. Eliza's brainy, compulsive mother is also unmoored by her success. The spelling champion's newfound gift for concentration reminds Miriam of herself as a girl, and she feels a pang for not having seen her daughter more clearly before. But Eliza's clumsy response to Miriam's overtures convinces her mother that she has no real ties to her daughter. This final disappointment precipitates her departure into a stunning secret life. The reader is left wondering what would have happened if the Naumanns' spiritual thirsts had not been set in restless motion. A poignant and exceptionally well crafted tale, Bee Season has a slow beginning but a tour-de-force conclusion. —Regina Marler

It's senior year for Buffy Summers and her friends. And that means homecoming, senior prom, finals, graduation — all the usual evil doings guaranteed to make the Chosen One long for recess.

Slayer duties caused Buffy to miss picking up her Yearbook, so Willow took it for her and enlisted the help of Xander, 0z, Cordelia, Giles, and Angel to make it truly special. Filled with personal notes, candid photos, and in-jokes about Slayerfest, Halloween, substitute teachers, the principal who was eaten, Ascension, etc. — Buffy's Yearbook is part school publication, part memory book.

Written by the authors of the bestselling The Watcher's Guide, this keepsake volume is packed with key references to the show and characters, 32 full-color pages of fan-favorite moments, and Graduation photos!

One of TV's best shows now has a superb tie-in book—and this watcher's guide is even better than the one for The Simpsons. For novices, the title is a pun: Buffy, an ordinary high school girl with all the normal problems, also must spend her nights battling vampires and demons, supervised by her "Watcher," who poses as the school's librarian.

But the book serves novices and obsessive Buffy fans equally well. Each episode of the first two seasons gets a snappy yet learned summary, including a "Quote of the Week," a quick recap of each love entanglement and relationship switcheroo (and no soap opera is tanglier than Buffy), a "Pop-Culture IQ" guide (when Oz hunts for Buffy—who—who's been turned into a rat—that—that's Michael Jackson's "Ben" he's singing), countless pop-up balloons of fun facts (Buffy was turned into a rat in order to free up her schedule to host Saturday Night Live), and a catalog of "Buffy's Bag of Tricks"—her weapons, plus all the spells, chants, incantations, and previously incomprehensible rock-band lyrics on the show.

There's way more than we can list here. Not only do we get an ample sample of dialogue nearly as clever as Seinfeld's, there are scenes from the original scripts that were cut for length and cast interviews. Every single vampire, demon, witch, zombie, mummy, werewolf, shape shifter, ghost, reanimated cadaver, invisible killer, prehistoric parasite, monster puppet, and psychotic robot on Buffy's acrobatic dance card gets its due.

Get this book, then send one as a gift. Friends don't let friends miss out on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A collection of short stories, essays, and excerpts from some of the finest writers past and present captures fabulous scenes of food and feeding, from Isak Dinesen's "Babette's Feast" to Ernest Hemingway's moveable one.

The world is divided into two types of people: those who wince when they see the words Canadian geese in print, and those who don't. If you are the former, or if you are the latter working for the former, the The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual provides invaluable assistance when you need to get your Canada geese all in a row. Countless newspapers and other publications base their style guides on this manual. The entries are arranged alphabetically and include issues of spelling, punctuation (there is no period in Dr Pepper), grammar, abbreviation, capitalization (Popsicle and Dumpster are, tollhouse cookies aren't), hyphenation (none, surprisingly, in ball point pen), and frequently misused words. There are also longer discussions of things such as Arabic names, chess notation, weather terms, and religious movements. Plus you'll find separate sections on sports writing, business writing, libel, and copyright.

Which came first: the chicken or the Eglise-Clinet? Well, if you're a disciple of author Sid Goldstein—and you will be—you—you've had that Bordeaux decanted long before you even thought of shopping for those Cacciatore ingredients. And "wine-first" cooking is precisely what Goldstein—vice president and director of marketing communications at Mendocino, California's Fetzer Vineyards—so ably demonstrates in The Wine Lover's Cookbook, soon to become indispensable to anyone who has ever chosen the wine first and the groceries second. In 100 easy-to-follow-yet-impressive-as-heck recipes, Goldstein shows you how to exquisitely match the tastes and textures of wine varietals to food. In fact, if you want to find specific recipes, you have to look in the back index; the chapters themselves are divided into grape types! Serving a Chardonnay? Chapter 7's Spinach Fettuccine with Sea Bass and Lemongrass-Coconut Cream Sauce is seamless. Pinot Noir? Coffee-and-Spice-Rubbed Lamb with Coffee-Vanilla Sauce shouldn't work; and yet lamb marinated for hours in mint, pepper, red wine, freshly ground coffee beans, and rosemary, then grilled and sauced with a combination of honey, brewed coffee, shallots and vanilla bean—any one of which elements should have bullied a Russian River Pinot—provides a tightly woven hammock on which the wine can luxuriate.

Chapters discuss the grape variety and list "Base Ingredients"—the main medium of the dish (Game Hen and Rabbit are a couple for Sangiovese)—as well as "Bridge Ingredients"—those connectors of food and wine (Plums, Fennel, and Green Peppercorns among those for Syrah). This "wine-first" regimen is not without pitfalls: it's fine to decide that tonight is Riesling or Pinot night, but if you can't find radicchio or pomegranate, you might as well skip a few pages. Yet if you've ever been made to feel immoral by cookbooks that give you the recipe first, then deign to suggest a "perfect" wine pairing beyond your means, let Father Sid absolve you of all your Zins (or Merlots or Viogniers). After all, the Bible talks of wine 650 times; food barely rates a mention. Perhaps if they'd had The Wine Lover's Cookbook in the Garden of Eden, Adam wouldn't have wasted all that time trying to pair ribs and an apple with a Sauvignon Blanc. —Tony Mason

"Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi is part biology textbook, part sociological treatise and all celebration of a very natural process. Both my daughters begged me to read the book over and over again. They marveled at the enormity of the elephant's poop and searched with the skill of a scientist for the tiny specks which represent bug poop. The text is simple and straightforward but not without humor.

More than ever, new parents are bringing their babies into their beds, but ironically, many of these parents feel alone in doing so. With warmth and humor, Good Nights brings the family bed out of the closet, and gives expert answers to parents common questions on everything from safety to sound sleep to sex. Good Nights also offers easy-to-tailor advice on when and how to move children into their own beds, and reasoned responses and snappy comebacks for critics. The authors build their case for the family bed on new scientific research, which has uncovered a wealth of dvantages for babies who share their parents bed. Among these benefits are possible protection from SIDS, andparadoxicallymore independence later in life. With its perfect blend of science and common sense, Good Nights is poised to become the new best friend and must-have accessory of all new parents.

Like Jack Kerouac's intrepid little sister, Ariel Gore spins the spirited story of a vulnerable drifter who takes refuge in fate and the shadowy recesses of a string of glittering, broken relationships. With just a few pennies and her I Ching, a change of clothes and a one-way ticket to Hong Kong, a perceptive, searching sixteen-year-old Gore makes her way from the sterile suffocation of the Silicon Valley through the labyrinthine customs of Cold-War China, wanders through bustling, electric Kathmandu, and hunkers down in an icy London squat with a prostitute and a boyfriend on the dole. Yet it is in the calm, verdant landscape of rural Italy where, pregnant and penniless, nineteen-year-old Gore's adventure truly begins. An illuminating glimpse into the boldly political Gore-creator of HipMama.com and Hip Mama magazine-this unflinching memoir offers a poignant exploration of the meaning of home and surveys the frontiers of both land and heart.