Here's the latest five-star review of The Speed of Clouds. Though a self-confessed "outsider" in the sci-fi fan world described in the book, the reviewer got deeply absorbed in the characters and story.

​Which is what we've been saying all along about this remarkable novel. It's about community in general--what makes us stick together or fall apart. It's got romance, rejection, rivalry, antiques, motorcycles, and Sitting Bull. As the characters pursue their own adventures, both real and fantasy, the book becomes, as the reviewer says, "an adventure in its own right."

The headline above is the title of the next All But True reading, to be hosted by Louis Greenstein. It's on Wednesday, January 30, 6:30 p.m., at Penn Book Center. Click here for more details.

If you wonder how fiction can deal with complicated questions of spiritual identity, come out for the reading and discussion with Anjali Mitter Duva and Janet Mason.

Yo! Yo! For a short time we have the Kindle-compatible version of Everything Is Borrowed by Nathaniel Popkin available at a humongous discount. You can get it for less than a cappuccino, and it'll last much longer. Click on the image or here to go to the Kindle page.

No, this timeless classic isn't from New Door Books, but our own Miriam Seidel will be helping to launch it on January 22 when she converses with the author, Josiah Bancroft.

The Hod King is the third in Bancroft's Books of Babel series, which starts with a couple on a honeymoon and goes on to feature madhouses, assassinations, a flying fortress, a Sphinx, a mysterious Tower, and ultimately the Hod King himself.

This, by the way, is fantasy, not the latest U.S. foreign policy adventure.

The launch party is at Penn Book Center in West Philadelphia, 34th & Sansom Streets, Tuesday, January 22, 6:30 p.m. For the full info, see the bookstore's page here.