In My TBR Stack:

Ghost Hunter: The Groundbreaking Classic of Paranormal Investigation
Hans Holzer
Tarcher Penguin
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

The prestige edition of the classic, trail-blazing work on ghost hunting will intrigue new fans and longtime devotees alike—part of the new Tarcher Supernatural Library.
 
Fifty years before Paranormal State, Ghost Hunters, and Most Haunted, there was Hans Holzer—a man known as the “Father of the Paranormal.” Holzer pioneered ghost-hunting methods still used today, and brought ghosts and ghost hunting into popular culture in the second half of the twentieth century.
Ghost Hunter presented some of the first-ever case studies of haunting investigations, taken from Holzer’s own practice in the New York City area—ranging from Civil War-era spirits to the tormented ghosts of murder victims.

For devoted ghost-hunting aficionados curious about the practice’s history, there is no better place to start than the first book Hans Holzer wrote, Ghost Hunter.This is the 1963 book that launched his publishing career and gained him international fame.

The first three titles released in Tarcher's Supernatural Library are Ghost Hunter (by Hans Holzer), Romance of Sorcery (by Sax Rohmer) and Isis in America (by Henry Steel Olcott).

Fiction Spotlight:

Mr. Tall: A Novella and Stories

Tony Earley

Little, Brown and Company

Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Two decades after his debut collection Here We Are in Paradise (LB, 2/94) heralded Tony Earley as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, the rueful, bittersweet, and riotous stories of Mr. Tall reestablish him as a mythmaker and tale spinner of the first rank. These stories introduce us not only to ordinary people seeking to live extraordinary lives, but also to the skunk ape (a southern variant of Bigfoot), the ghost of Jesse James, and a bone-tired Jack the Giant Killer. Whether it's Appalachia, Nashville, the Carolina Coast, or a make-believe land of talking dogs, each world Earley creates is indelible.

Tony Earley -- Photo by Ruthie Earley

In My TBR Stack:

RG3: The Promise
Dave Sheinin
Plume Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

He’s been called many things—Heisman Trophy winner, MVP, the savior of the Washington Redskins—but to his millions of fans, Robert Griffin III is known simply as RG3.

Robert Griffin III was a preternaturally gifted athlete from a young age, but in those early days he played nearly every sport except football. He seemed pointed toward stardom, but would it be in basketball or maybe in track, where he qualified for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials as a hurdler? As for playing football, Griffin first had to overcome his mother’s objections to the violence and danger by making a “Pinkie Promise” with her that no one would catch him. Eventually, he began to realize that all of his remarkable talents—unrivaled speed, pinpoint accuracy, exceptional intelligence, single-minded drive—combined into a potent force that few quarterbacks could rival. What followed seemed almost destined: a football scholarship to Baylor University, three exceptional seasons capped by winning the Heisman Trophy, and the 2012 draft—where Griffin, as the second overall pick, became the franchise quarterback for one of the oldest and most storied football teams in the country.

In RG3: The Promise, award-winning Washington Post reporter Dave Sheinin provides an in-depth, behind-the-scenes account of Griffin’s phenomenal rookie year—and offers a unique and intimate look inside the transformation one of the NFL’s brightest young stars.

In My TBR Stack:

How to Lose Everything: A Mostly True Story
Philip Mattheis
Zest Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Jonathan, Sam, Schulz, and Eric usually spend their summers skateboarding at the park and dreaming about the time when they’ll finally move out of the suburbs. But in the summer of 1994 the four teenagers find a small fortune hidden inside an abandoned house, and that changes everything. The money was a dream come true, but it couldn’t last. Stress, drugs, and dwindling funds raise the stakes and also raise some serious questions about the future. Eighteen years later, Jonathan returns to that life-changing summer to tally up the cost of that discovery and explain how one broken dream led to a totally renewed sense of purpose.

In My TBR Stack:

War of the Whales: A True Story
Joshua Horwitz
Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Two men face off against an all-powerful navy—and the fate of the ocean’s most majestic creatures hangs in the balance.

"A gripping, brilliantly told tale of the secret and deadly struggle between American national security and the kings of the oceans."—Bob Woodward

War of the Whales is the gripping tale of a crusading attorney who stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound—and drives whales onto beaches. As Joel Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is forced to choose between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore to the Navy in his youth.

When Balcomb and Reynolds team up to expose the truth behind an epidemic of mass strandings, the stage is set for an epic battle that pits admirals against activists, rogue submarines against weaponized dolphins, and national security against the need to safeguard the ocean environment. Waged in secret military labs and the nation’s highest court, War of the Whales is a real-life thriller that combines the best of legal drama, natural history, and military intrigue.

In My TBR Stack:

Big Red: Baseball, Fatherhood, and My Life in the Big Red Machine
Ken Griffey and Phil Pepe
Triumph Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Reflecting on an outstanding 19-year major-league career, this autobiography chronicles baseball great Ken Griffey, beginning with his days just out of high school. The account relates Griffey's decision to venture into the baseball business, documenting his time as a scout, coach, and manager along with his accomplishments as a father, raising two other major league ballplayers: Craig, who played briefly for the Seattle Mariners, and future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. Capturing the subject's time with the Big Red Machine, this record details his days playing alongside Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, and Pete Rose, highlighting the Reds' two consecutive world championships in 1975 and 1976. Finally, the ultimate thrill of Griffey's career is featured: playing in the same outfield in 1990 with his son, Ken Griffey Jr., during the game where they hit back-to-back home runs—the only father-son combination to do so in the history of Major League Baseball. Filled with amusing anecdotes and behind-the-scenes glimpses of what it's like when baseball really does run in the family, this is a sports memoir unlike any other.

In My TBR Stack:

Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite & the Way to a Meaningful Life
William Deresiewicz
Free Press
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

A groundbreaking manifesto for people searching for the kind of insight on leading, thinking, and living that elite schools should be—but aren’t—providing.

As a professor at Yale, Bill Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.

Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.

In My TBR Stack:

Season of Saturdays: A History of College Football in 14 Games
Michael Weinreb
Scribner
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

From an award-winning writer, journalist, and college football expert: an entertaining cultural history that highlights the key moments, games, personalities, and scandals of the popular and controversial American pastime.

Every Saturday in the fall, countless college students, alumni, and sports fans wake up filled with a particular kind of hope and excitement, ready for their team’s game. Half of them finish the day in joyous celebration, and the other half in abject depression, but all of them are ever ready to do it over again the next weekend.

College football is one of the unifying cornerstones of American culture. Since the first game in 1869, football has grown from a stratified offshoot of rugby to a ubiquitous part of our national identity. Today, as college conferences fracture and grow, amateur athlete status is called into question, and a playoff system threatens to replace big-money bowl games, we’re in the midst of the most dramatic transitional period in the history of the sport.

Michael Weinreb’s Season of Saturdays examines the evolution of college football, from the moral and ethical quandaries that informed its past to the fascinating changes that may affect its future. Since its nascent days on elite Ivy League campuses, college football has inspired both school spirit and controversy. Weinreb explores the game’s inherent violence, its early seeds of big-business greed, and its impact on institutions of higher learning. Filtered through the stories of such iconic coaches as Woody Hayes and Joe Paterno and Steve Spurrier, Season of Saturdays also celebrates some of the greatest games of all time while exploring their larger significance. Part popular history, part memoir—and always uniquely American—Season of Saturdays is both a look back at how the sport became so fraught with problems, and a look ahead at how the sport might survive another century.

In My TBR Stack:

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir of Food & Love from an American Midwest Family
Kathleen Flinn
Viking Books
Hardcover

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good excerpt

From the publisher's website:

In this family history interwoven with recipes, Kathleen Flinn returns readers to the mix of food and memoir beloved by readers of her bestselling The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good explores the very beginnings of her love affair with food and its connection to home. It is the story of her midwestern childhood, its memorable home cooks, and the delicious recipes she grew up with. Flinn shares tales of her parents’ pizza parlor in San Francisco, where they sold Uncle Clarence’s popular oven-fried chicken, as well as recipes for the vats of chili made by her former army cook Grandpa Charles, fluffy Swedish pancakes from Grandma Inez, and cinnamon rolls for birthday breakfasts. Through these dishes, Flinn came to understand how meals can be memories, and how cooking can be a form of communication. Brimming with warmth and wit, this book is sure to appeal to Flinn’s many fans as well as readers of Marcus Samuelsson, Ruth Reichl, and Julie Powell.

In My TBR Stack:

Julian Hawthorne: The Life of a Prodigal Son
Gary Scharnhorst
University of Illinois Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Julian Hawthorne (1846-1934), Nathaniel Hawthorne's only son, lived a long and influential life marked by bad circumstances and worse choices. Raised among luminaries such as Thoreau, Emerson, and the Beecher family, Julian became a promising novelist in his twenties, but his writing soon devolved into mediocrity.

What talent the young Hawthorne had was spent chasing across the changing literary and publishing landscapes of the period in search of a paycheck. Julian was consistently short of funds because--as biographer Gary Scharnhorst is the first to reveal--he was supporting two households: his wife in one and a longtime mistress in the other.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's son was nothing if not resourceful. Using his father's name to open doors, his portfolio became a pastiche of potboilers, low-budget magazine pieces, and ad copy, as well as anything else that would help pay the bills.

The younger Hawthorne's name and work ethic gave him influence in spite of his haphazard writing. Julian helped to found Cosmopolitan and Collier's Weekly. When he was convicted of stock fraud, his four-month incarceration turned him into an effective advocate for prison reform. And, as a Hearst stringer, he covered some of the era's most important events: McKinley's assassination, the Galveston hurricane, and the Spanish-American War, among others.

When Julian died at age 87, he had written millions of words and more than 3,000 pieces, out-publishing his father by a ratio of twenty to one. Gary Scharnhorst, after his own long career including works on Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and other famous writers, became fascinated by the leaps and falls of Julian Hawthorne. This biography shows why.

In My TBR Stack:

How to Write Anything: A Complete Guide
Laura Brown
W.W. Norton
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A practical guide to everything you’ll ever need to write—at work, at school, and in your personal life.

With more than two hundred how-to entries and easy-to-use models organized into three comprehensive sections on work, school, and personal life, How to Write Anything covers a wide range of topics that make it an essential guide for the whole family. You want your boss to fund a special project. How can you write a persuasive email that will win his approval? It's time to apply to college. How can you write an essay that will stand out? The mother of one of your co-workers has died. What's the best way to express your condolences?

Grounded in a common-sense approach, friendly and supportive, How to Write Anything is Internet-savvy, with advice throughout about choosing the most appropriate medium for your message: e-mail or pen and paper. At once a how-to, a reference book, and a pioneering guide for writing in a changing world, this is the only writing resource you'll ever need.

In My TBR Stack:

Consider: Harnessing the Power of Reflective Thinking in Your Organization
Daniel Patrick Forrester
Palgrave Macmillan
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

There's an intangible and invisible market place within our lives today where the products traded are four fold: attention, distraction, data and meaning. The stories and examples within Consider demonstrate that the best decisions, insights, ideas and outcomes result when we make sufficient time to think and reflect.  While technology allows us to act and react more quickly than ever before, we are taking increasingly less time to consider our decisions before we make them.  Reflection supplies an arsenal of ideas and solutions to the right problems.  The organizations and leaders who can sustain thought upon the right problems, while they absorb the unknowns that will inevitably arise, will prove the most relevant and lasting in this already turbulent new century.

In My TBR Stack:

My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking & Going With Your Gut
Hannah Hart
It Books (Dey Street Books)
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

One day, sad cubicle dweller and otherwise bored New York transplant Hannah Hart decided, as a joke, to make a fake cooking show for her friend back in California. She turned on the camera, pulled out some bread and cheese, and then, as one does, started drinking. (Doesn't everyone cook with a spoon in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other?) The video went viral and an online sensation was born.

My Drunk Kitchen includes recipes, stories, full color photos, and drawings to inspire your own culinary adventures in tipsy cooking. It is also a showcase for Hannah Hart's great comedic voice. Hannah offers key drink recommendations, cooking tips (like, remember to turn the oven off when you go to bed) and shares never-before-seen recipes such as:

1. The Hartwich (Knowledge is ingenuity! Learn from the past!)
2. Can Bake (Inventing things is hard! You don't have to start from scratch!)
3. Latke Shotkas (Plan ahead to avoid a night of dread!)
4. Tiny Sandwiches (Size doesn't matter! Aim to satisfy.)
5. Saltine Nachos (It's not about resources! It's about being resourceful.

This is a book for anyone who believes they have what it takes to make a soufflé for the holiday party and show up the person who apparently has nothing better to do than bake things from scratch. It also recommends the drink you'll need to accompany any endeavor of this magnitude. In the end, My Drunk Kitchen may not be your go-to guide for your next dinner party . . . but it will make you laugh and drink . . . I mean think . . . about life.