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 "The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain" by Bill Bryson

In 1995, Iowa native Bill Bryson took a motoring trip around Britain to explore that green and pleasant land. The uproarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, is one of the most acute portrayals of the United Kingdom ever written. Two decades later, Bryson—now a British citizen—set out again to rediscover his adopted country. In these pages, he follows a straight line through the island—from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath—and shows us every pub, stone village, and human foible along the way.

Whether he is dodging cow attacks in Torcross, getting lost in the H&M on Kensington High Street, or—more seriously—contemplating the future of the nation’s natural wonders in the face of aggressive development, Bryson guides us through the old and the new with vivid detail and laugh-out-loud humor. Irreverent, endearing, and always hilarious, The Road to Little Dribbling is filled with Bill Bryson’s deep knowledge and love of his chosen home.

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 "Admiral Richard Byrd: Alone in the Antarctic" by Paul Rink

From BarnesandNoble.com:

Experience the incredible story of Richard Byrd as he survives for six months in -60F temperatures in his bid to explore The South Pole in Admiral Richard Byrd.

Also known as the aviator that flew over The North Pole, Richard Byrd’sexploits of exploration reached The South Pole, as well! Admiral Richard Byrd truly left his mark on the world, and remains one of the greatest explorers and survivors to set foot in the Arctic and Antarctic.

This incredible biography of one of the most renown Arctic explorers in history chronicles Byrd's 1934 journey into the frozen south, and his desperate bid to survive the harsh Antarctic landscape. During his voyage, Byrd became hopelessly lost in the frozen tundra. Byrd was separated from his crew for an astonishing six months in unforgiving, 60 degree below zero temperatures. Byrd’s story is one of courage, fortitude, and the indominable human spirit. A must have for anyone with a taste for adventure!

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 "Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" by Steve Martin

From BarnesandNoble.com:

In the mid-seventies, Steve Martin exploded onto the comedy scene. By 1978 he was the biggest concert draw in the history of stand-up. In 1981 he quit forever. This book is, in his own words, the story of “why I did stand-up and why I walked away.”

Emmy and Grammy Award–winner, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, and a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Martin has always been a writer. His memoir of his years in stand-up is candid, spectacularly amusing, and beautifully written.

At age ten Martin started his career at Disneyland, selling guidebooks in the newly opened theme park. In the decade that followed, he worked in the Disney magic shop and the Bird Cage Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm, performing his first magic/comedy act a dozen times a week. The story of these years, during which he practiced and honed his craft, is moving and revelatory. The dedication to excellence and innovation is formed at an astonishingly early age and never wavers or wanes.

Martin illuminates the sacrifice, discipline, and originality that made him an icon and informs his work to this day. To be this good, to perform so frequently, was isolating and lonely. It took Martin decades to reconnect with his parents and sister, and he tells that story with great tenderness. Martin also paints a portrait of his times—the era of free love and protests against the war in Vietnam, the heady irreverence of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late sixties, and the transformative new voice of Saturday Night Live in the seventies.

Throughout the text, Martin has placed photographs, many never seen before. Born Standing Up is a superb testament to the sheer tenacity, focus, and daring of one of the greatest and most iconoclastic comedians of all time.

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 "I Am Not Spock" by Leonard Nimoy

From Goodreads.com:

To a watching world he is the logical, powerful, stalwart first officer of the Starship Enterprise—the adored object of millions of Star Trek fans.

For 3 years, 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, he functioned as the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock, an extraterrestrial. He is not. He is Leonard Nimoy. An actor. A teacher. A writer. A father. A husband. A real flesh-and-blood human being.

Now while the phenomenal popularity of Star Trek still grows, Nimoy doffs the pointy ears and placid face and reveals himself totally—his relationship with fellow actors; the backstage frenzies; the near-cancellation of Star Trek; the lean years; the loneliness, the battles and the ultimate struggle to survive his own success!

IF HE IS NOT SPOCK, WHO IS?

IF HE IS NOT SPOCK, WHO IS HE?

WHAT IS THE LOGICAL ANSWER?

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 "Rendezvous with Rama" by Arthur C. Clarke

From BarnesandNoble.com:

An enormous cylindrical object has entered Earth’s solar system on a collision course with the sun. A team of astronauts are sent to explore the mysterious craft, which the denizens of the solar system name Rama. What they find is astonishing evidence of a civilization far more advanced than ours. They find an interior stretching over fifty kilometers; a forbidding cylindrical sea; mysterious and inaccessible buildings; and strange machine-animal hybrids, or “biots,” that inhabit the ship. But what they don’t find is an alien presence. So who—and where—are the Ramans?

Often listed as one of Clarke’s finest novels, Rendezvous with Rama won numerous awards, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Jupiter, and the British Science Fiction Awards. A fast-paced and compelling story of an enigmatic encounter with alien technology, Rendezvous with Rama offers both answers and unsolved mysteries that will continue to fascinate readers for generations.

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 "Fan Fiction" by Brent Spiner

From BarnesandNoble.com:

Brent Spiner’s explosive and hilarious novel is a personal look at the slightly askew relationship between a celebrity and his fans. If the Coen Brothers were to make a Star Trek movie, involving the complexity of fan obsession and sci-fi, this noir comedy might just be the one.

Set in 1991, just as Star Trek: The Next Generation has rocketed the cast to global fame, the young and impressionable actor Brent Spiner receives a mysterious package and a series of disturbing letters, that take him on a terrifying and bizarre journey that enlists Paramount Security, the LAPD, and even the FBI in putting a stop to the danger that has his life and career hanging in the balance.

Featuring a cast of characters from Patrick Stewart to Levar Burton to Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, to some completely imagined, this is the fictional autobiography that takes readers into the life of Brent Spiner, and tells an amazing tale about the trappings of celebrity and the fear he has carried with him his entire life.

Fan Fiction is a zany love letter to a world in which we all participate, the phenomenon of “Fandom.”

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 "Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers" by S.E. Frost Jr

From BarnesandNoble.com:

A complete summary of the views of the most important philosophers since the beginning of Western civilization. Each major field of philosophic inquiry is treated in a separate chapter, so that each chapter can be read as a complete unit, without reference to the others. Includes Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Dewey, Sartre, and many others.

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 "Cinderella Story: My Life in Golf" by Bill Murray, with George Peper

From BarnesandNoble.com:

One of the funniest, most beloved, and most often quoted entertainers in the world tells his tale of Life and Golf—and of somehow surviving both.

With his brilliant creation, groundskeeper Carl Spackler, and the outrageous success of the film Caddyshack firmly etched into the American consciousness, Bill Murray and golf have become synonymous. Filled with Murray's trademark deadpan and dead-on humor, Cinderella Story chronicles his love affair with golf from the life lessons he learned as a caddy—"how to smoke, curse, play cards. But more important, when to"—to his escapades on the Pro-Am golf circuit at the Augusta National and as a fan at the Masters, the U.S. Open, and the Western Open. An up-by-the-bootstraps tale of a man, his muse, and our society's fascination with a little white ball, Cinderella Story is one pilgrim's bemused path through the doglegs.

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 "I'm Not a Terrorist, but I've Played One on TV" by Maz Jobrani

From BarnesandNoble.com:

After he emigrated with his family to the US during the Iranian Revolution, Maz Jobrani spent most of his youth trying to fit in with his adopted culture—learning to play baseball and religiously watching Dallas. But none of his attempts at assimilation made a difference to casting directors, who only auditioned him for the role of kebab-eating, bomb-toting, extremist psychopath.

When he first started out in show business, Maz endured suggestions that he spice up his stand-up act by wearing “the outfit,” fielded questions about rising gas prices, and was jeered for his supposed involvement in the Iran hostage crisis. In fact, these things happened so often that he began to wonder: Could I be a terrorist without even knowing it? And when all he seemed to be offered were roles that required looking menacingly Arabic, he wondered if he would ever make it in America.

This laugh-out-loud memoir chronicles a lifetime of both killing it and bombing on stage, with “plenty to say about matters of race, assimilation, embarrassing family members, life in America for brown-skinned people before and after 9/11, the vagaries of international pop culture, and making it in big, dumb, fizzy, sometimes beautiful America” (The New York Times).

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 "Black Butterfly" by Mark Gatiss

From BarnesandNoble.com:

Lucifer Box. He’s tall, he’s dark and, like the shark, he looks for trouble.

Or so he wishes. For, with Queen Elizabeth newly established on her throne, the now elderly secret agent is reaching the end of his scandalous career. Despite his fast-approaching retirement, however, queer events leave Box unable to resist investigating one last case…

Why have pillars of the Establishment started dying in bizarrely reckless accidents?

Who are the deadly pay-masters of enigmatic assassin Kingdom Kum?

And who or what is the mysterious Black Butterfly?

From the seedy streets of Soho to the souks of Istanbul and the sun-drenched shores of Jamaica, Box must use his artistic license to kill and eventually confront an enemy with its roots in his own notorious past. Can Lucifer Box save the day before the dying of the light?

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 "Fore!: The Best of Wodehouse on Golf" by P.G. Wodehouse

From BarnesandNoble.com:

P.G. Wodehouse often said that he wished he'd spent more time playing golf and less "fooling about writing stories and things." Happily, the prolific and beloved satirist often took his pen to the green. Here, Wodehouse expert D.R. Bensen has collected a dozen pieces to delight golfers and those who know them — even those who have never basked in the ecstasy of a perfect putt.

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"My Life in the NYPD: Jimmy The Wags" by James Wagner with Patrick Picciarelli

From Amazon.com:

In a fascinating look behind the badge of the NYPD, a veteran former street cop describes the drama of working in New York's toughest precinct, from the 1960s to the 1980s, offering anecdotes about his fellow cops, colorful and violent miscreants, celebrity misdeeds, and more.

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 "Beyond Uhura" by Nichelle Nichols

From Amazon.com:

Famous as Star Trek's Lieutenant Uhura, Nichols has lived long and prospered in quite a number of other endeavors besides acting, including singing, several varieties of dancing, songwriting, minority recruitment for NASA, space advocacy, and as an African American role model, wife, mother, daughter, and no-nonsense human being. The granddaughter of a slaveowner's son who married an African American woman more than a century ago and the daughter of a man who faced down one of Al Capone's hit squads, she has personally survived discrimination, family feuds, Hollywood, brushes with both the Mob and rape, and 30 years of the ups and downs of Star Trek (she is a definite partisan of Gene Roddenberry--hardly surprising, perhaps, since they considered marriage). Her frankness on all these matters eliminates any need for a future unauthorized biography. This fascinating and delightful book by and about someone who comes across as fascinating and delightful herself is a vital addition to both Star Trek literature and African American studies.

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 "The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Scalzi

From BarnesandNoble.com:

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm, human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

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 "Life Before Man" by Margaret Atwood

From BarnesandNoble.com:

A particularly complicated love triangle sets this poetic novel in motion—from the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments

Elizabeth and Nate, though habitually unfaithful to each other, have remained married for more than a decade. But after Elizabeth’s latest lover commits suicide, she emerges from her grief to find that her gentle, indecisive husband is on the verge of leaving her. He has become enamored of Lesje, a young paleontologist and perennial innocent who seems to prefers dinosaur fossils to humans. Elizabeth sets her sights on Lesje’s live-in boyfriend, William, and the ensuing emotional maelstrom threatens to upend all of their lives. Blending painful honesty with cutting satire, Margaret Atwood give us characters whose haunting dilemmas linger long after the final page.

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 "Servants' Hall" by Margaret Powell

From BarnesandNoble.com:

The sequel to New York Times bestseller Below Stairs, Servants' Hall tells a gripping real-life tale reminiscent of Downton Abbey's Lady Sybil and Tom Branson and makes a perfect gift book for fans of the popular series and film.

Margaret Powell's Below Stairs became a sensation among readers reveling in the luxury and subtle class warfare of Masterpiece Theatre's hit television series Downton Abbey. Now in the sequel Servants' Hall, Powell tells the true story of Rose, the under-parlourmaid to the Wardham Family at Redlands, who took a shocking step: She eloped with the family's only son, Mr. Gerald.

Going from rags to riches, Rose finds herself caught up in a maelstrom of gossip, incredulity and envy among her fellow servants. The reaction from upstairs was no better: Mr. Wardham, the master of the house, disdained the match so completely that he refused ever to have contact with the young couple again. Gerald and Rose marry and leave Redlands, and Powell looks on with envy, even as the marriage hits on bumpy times: "To us in the servants' hall, it was just like a fairy tale . . . How I wished I was in her shoes."

Once again bringing that lost world to life, Margaret Powell trains her pen and her gimlet eye on her "betters" in this next chapter from a life spent in service. Servants' Hall is Margaret Powell at her best—a warm, funny and sometimes hilarious memoir of life at a time when wealthy families like ruled England.

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 "The Gun Seller" by Hugh Laurie

From BarnesandNoble.com:

Hugh Laurie concocts an uproarious cocktail of comic zingers and over-the-top action in this "ripping spoof of the spy genre" (Vanity Fair) — the irresistible tale of a former Scots Guard-turned-hired gun, a freelance soldier of fortune who also happens to be one heck of a nice guy.

Cold-blooded murder just isn't Thomas Lang's cup of tea. Offered a bundle to assassinate an American industrialist, he opts to warn the intended victim instead — a good deed that soon takes a bad turn. Quicker than he can down a shot of his favorite whiskey, Lang is bashing heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femmes fatales. Up against rogue CIA agents, wannabe terrorists, and an arms dealer looking to make a high-tech killing, Lang's out to save the leggy lady he has come to love...and prevent an international bloodbath to boot.