New and interesting paperbook books

New and interesting paperbook books
Scripps Howard News Service
Canadian clients may not use
Must credit Toronto Globe and Mail
(All currency U.S.)
By ALISON GZOWSKI
Toronto Globe and Mail
"Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony" by Gary Stephen Ross (McClelland & amp; Stewart, $24.99)
Banker Molony was a mild-mannered manager by day, an uncontrollable gambler by night. Molony loaned to himself, and then lost, $10 million of his bank's money before he was arrested. His story is now the subject of the film, "Owning Mahowny," but it's hard to believe you can beat Ross's wonderfully engrossing look at obsession.
"Inspector Banks Investigates" by Peter Robinson (Penguin Canada, $24)
The perfect big book for summer, this omnibus gathers the fourth, fifth and sixth cases in the Inspector Banks series.
"The Zygote Chronicles" by Suzanne Finnamore (Grove Press, $19.95)
A surprisingly funny and touching account of pregnancy. Called a novel, this story is addressed to the baby in utero by his charming, if occasionally hormonal, mom-to-be.
"When The Wild Comes Leaping Up: Personal Encounters with Nature" edited by David Suzuki (Greystone, $22.95)
Suzuki believes that we should preserve the wild not for economic, but for spiritual reasons. To that end, he has collected personal essays from Australia, Great Britain, U.S. and Canada, including one by Timothy Findley -- -his last piece of writing on a subject very dear to him
"Prague" by Arthur Phillips (Random House, $21)
This debut novel is actually set in Budapest, where five Americans and one Canadian have gone in the post-Communist heyday of the early 1990s, when waves of young Americans flooded into Prague. Full of subversive wit, this book was a quick bestseller.
"The Blue Bear: A True Story of Friendship, Tragedy, and Survival in The Alaskan Wilderness" by Lynn Schooler (HarperPerennial Canada, $21.95)
Schooler, an award-winning wildlife photographer, recalls the friendship he struck with Japanese photographer Michio Hoshino in the 1990s and how they worked together to find the rare and elusive glacier bear. Several years later, Hoshino was killed by a grizzly and, as Schooler writes in this haunting memoir, only nine months later he gets the picture they'd been trying to capture of the glacier bear.
"The Summer of My Greek Taverna" by Tom Stone (Simon & amp; Schuster, $19)
Described as "Kitchen Confidential with ouzo," this travel memoir is the perfect summer escape. Stone describes his adventurous summer trying to run a taverna on the island of Patmos when he had to learn the Greek style of business and bargaining. Complete with recipes.
"Dancing with Minnie the Twig" by Mogue Doyle (Black Swan, $19.95)
A debut novel set in rural Ireland in the 1960s, this opens with the narrator attending his own funeral. This is a tragi-comic coming-of-age story that has been compared to "The Butcher Boy."
"Bones to Pick" by Suzanne North (McClelland & amp; Stewart, $8.99)
Another Phoebe Fairfax mystery, this one involves the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta. Although fossils have gone missing and a dead body has been found, this Canadian crime novel is surprisingly funny.
"On a Wave" by Thad Ziolowski (Grove Press, $19.50)
The sublime side of the beach is here, in this mesmerizing memoir of a surfing adolescence in the 1960s. You don't have to know a thing about surfing to be charmed by poet and essayist Ziolowski's evocation of life and the ocean.
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