Staff Picks

"Fig Garden Bookstore has a staff of various ages, cultures, and interests. We are students, mothers, grandmothers, and even a great-grandmother. We all read a little bit of everything and pick up great recommendations from our friends and customers every day. We read obscure titles sent to us from small publishers, best sellers, cookbooks, biographies, classics, and childrens books and are willing to give almost every book a try. Join us here, at Goodreads.com and on our blog as we journey through the world of books."

	When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family. Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin. Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk. The Kitchen House is a tragic story of page-turning suspense, exploring the meaning of family, where love and loyalty prevail.
	From Chitra Divakaruni, author of such finely wrought, bestselling novels as Sister of My Heart, The Palace of Illusions, and The Mistress of Spices, comes her most compelling and transporting story to date. One AmazingThing is a passionate creation about survival-and about the reasons to survive.
	Luke May teaches local history—his lifelong obsession—at his old high school in Loring, Mississippi. Having been mentored by his hometown newspaper’s publisher, a survivor of the civil rights turmoil, he now passes these stories along to students far too young to have experienced or, in some cases, even heard about them. But when a long-lost friend suddenly returns to Loring, where years ago her family had been shattered by an act of spectacular violence, Luke begins to realize that his connection with her runs deeper, both personally and politically, than he ever imagined. Just children in 1962, they had no sense of what was happening when James Meredith’s enrollment at Ole Miss provoked a bloody new battle in the old Civil War, much less its impact on their fathers’ ambiguous friendship. Once his daughters leave for Ole Miss, and with his marriage at an impasse, Luke’s investigation of this decades-old trauma soon spills over into his own life. With his parents unwilling, or unable, to help him unlock secrets whose existence he’d never suspected, this amateur historian is soon entirely consumed by an obscure past he can neither explain nor control—a gripping reminder that the past isn’t dead, or even past. Once again Steve Yarbrough powerfully evokes—as David Guterson put it—“not only historical grief but the grief of our own time.”
	When Brody's niece Anabel comes for a visit, Max and the gang's only job is to keep her out of trouble. How hard could it be to babysit a puppy anyway? To Max's surprise, this fun-loving pup can't help getting into trouble—especially when set loose in the backyard. Turns out being a “sitting duck” is a lot harder than Max expected! In this hilarious Max the Duck book, children will delight in the silly mayhem that results when Max tries to be a good babysitter.
	New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper takes us to the outer reaches of fear in her latest thriller, as the Special Crimes Unit finds itself targeted by a monster intent on destroying both Noah Bishop and his people.
	The Bricklayer is the pulse-pounding novel introducing Steve Vail, one of the most charismatic new heroes to come along in thriller fiction in many years. He's an ex–FBI agent who's been fired for insubordination but is lured back to the Bureau to work a case that has become more unsolvable—and more deadly—by the hour.
	The second book of an irresistible series narrated by a loveable and wise dog. In the newest Chet and Bernie mystery, Chet gets a glimpse of the show dog world turned deadly.
	Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
	In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.
	Picking up where her previous successful, and highly lauded book, America's Women, left off, Gail Collins recounts the sea change women have experienced since 1960. A comprehensive mix of oral history and Collins's keen research, this is the definitive book about five crucial decades of progress, told with the down-to-earth, amusing, and agenda-free tone this beloved New York Times columnist is known for.
	In both lively prose poems and more formal verse, Fresno's own Philip Levine brings us news from everywhere: from Detroit, where exhausted workers try to find a decent breakfast after the late shift, and Henry Ford, “supremely bored” in his mansion, clocks in at one of his plants . . . from Spain, where a woman sings a song that rises at dawn, like the dust of ages, through an open window . . . from Andorra, where an old Communist can now supply you with anything you want—a French radio, a Cadillac, or, if you have a week, an American film star.
	Their story begins with one letter on their wedding night, a letter from the groom, promising to write his bride every week—for as long they both shall live. Thirty-nine years later, Jack and Laurel Cooper die in each other's arms. And when their grown children return to the family B&B to arrange the funeral, they discover thousands of letters. The letters they read tell of surprising joys and sorrows. They also hint at a shocking family secret—and ultimately force the children to confront a life-changing moment of truth...
	Project Runway's Nina Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of The One Hundred and The Little Black Book of Style, offers smart shopping strategies for style on a budget in The Style Strategy. Filled with interesting fashion tidbits, celebrity lists of bargain fashion musts, Nina Garcia's trademark style, and Ruben Toledo's world-renowned illustrations, The Style Strategy is a charming and practical fashion and beauty guide for every woman searching for budget-friendly glamour.
	These swift, penetrating essays from former Los Angeles Times writer Mark Arax take the measure of contemporary California with a sure and supple hand, consciously but deservedly taking its place alongside Didion's and Saroyan's great social portraits. Expect the unexpected from Arax's reports up and down the state: on the last of the Okies, the latest migrants from Mexico, the tree-sitters of Berkeley, Bay Area conspiracy theorists, an Armenian chicken giant's infamous fall or the mammoth marijuana economy of Humboldt County, among much else. For Arax, a third-generation Californian of Armenian heritage who spent years covering the Central Valley as an investigative reporter, the state's outré reputation and self-representation are a complex dance of myth and memory that includes his own family lore and personal history. It's partly this personal connection, running subtly but consistently throughout, that pushes the collection past mere reportage to a high literary enterprise that beautifully integrates the private and idiosyncratic with the sweep of great historical forces.
	The Help by Kathryn Stockett In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women-mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends-view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.
	Once upon a time, before the Second World War, children's books were whimsical, colorful, and exuberant. Artists and authors such as Howard Pyle, N. C. Wyeth, Howard Garis, and Walter Brooks bestowed wide-eyed wonder on generations of children. Artist Doug Hansen has recaptured this whimsy in a way that is at once nostalgic and brilliantly original. The text of this book is the pure vintage Mother Goose of your grandmother's childhood but set to a new illustrated backdrop of California landmarks such as Half Dome and the Golden Gate Bridge, and inhabited by conquistador cats and sailor squirrels. The level of detail in the illustrations is marvelous. For the letter T Hansen recreates an old-fashioned toy store filled with handcrafted gems. Jack be nimble is Mark Twain s famous jumping frog dressed up as a gold prospector, complete with a Colt six-shooter and holster, pickaxe, and panning tray.

This page was last modified on February 05, 2010