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Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the October 28th issue include:

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, by Jennifer Reese. Free Press, 2011. Print length: 304 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...equal parts cookbook, DIY how-to, and urban homesteading tale." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (9 reviews). Kindle edition $10.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.
"When Jennifer Reese lost her job, she was overcome by an impulse common among the recently unemployed: to economize by doing for herself what she had previously paid for. She had never before considered making her own peanut butter and pita bread, let alone curing her own prosciutto or raising turkeys. And though it sounded logical that 'doing it yourself' would cost less, she had her doubts. So Reese began a series of kitchen-related experiments, taking into account the competing demands of everyday contemporary American family life as she answers some timely questions: When is homemade better? Cheaper? Are backyard eggs a more ethical choice than store-bought? Will grinding and stuffing your own sausage ruin your week? Is it possible to make an edible maraschino cherry? Some of Reese’s discoveries will surprise you..." - Publisher.

Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, by Brian Kellow. Viking, 2011. Print length: 432 p. BIOGRAPHY. EW's slant: "...a bio that's bound to be catnip for both Kael's fans and her naysayers..." Amazon customer rating: 3 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"A decade after her death, Pauline Kael remains the most important figure in film criticism today, in part due to her own inimitable style and power within the film community and in part due to the enormous influence she has exerted over an entire subsequent generation of film critics. During her tenure at the New Yorker from 1967 to 1991 she was a tastemaker, a career maker, and a career breaker. Her brash, vernacular writing style often made for an odd fit at the stately New Yorker. Brian Kellow gives us a richly detailed look at one of the most astonishing bursts of creativity in film history and a rounded portrait of this remarkable (and often relentlessly driven) woman." - Publisher.

The Maid: A Novel of Joan of Arc, by Kimberly Cutter. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Print length: 304 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...beautifully written novel..." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (33 reviews). Kindle edition $14.30. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"It is the fifteenth century, and the tumultuous Hundred Years’ War rages on. France is under siege, English soldiers tear through the countryside destroying all who cross their path, and Charles VII, the uncrowned king, has neither the strength nor the will to rally his army. And in the quiet of her parents’ garden in Domrémy, a peasant girl sees a spangle of light and hears a powerful voice speak her name. Jehanne. The story of Jehanne d’Arc, the visionary and saint who believed she had been chosen by God, who led an army and saved her country, has captivated our imagination for centuries. But the story of Jehanne - the girl - whose sister was murdered by the English, who sought an escape from a violent father and a forced marriage, who taught herself to ride and fight, and who somehow found the courage and tenacity to persuade first one, then two, then thousands to follow her, is at once thrilling, unexpected, and heartbreaking..." - Publisher.

Lost Memory of Skin, by Russell Banks. Ecco, 2011. Print length: 432 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...an attempt to remind us that people cannot be reduced to blunt descriptors..." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (26 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Suspended in a strangely modern-day version of limbo, the young man at the center of Russell Banks’s uncompromising and morally complex new novel must create a life for himself in the wake of incarceration. Known in his new identity only as the Kid, and on probation after doing time for a liaison with an underage girl, he is shackled to a GPS monitoring device and forbidden to live within 2,500 feet of anywhere children might gather. With nowhere else to go, the Kid takes up residence under a south Florida causeway, in a makeshift encampment with other convicted sex offenders. Barely beyond childhood himself, the Kid, despite his crime, is in many ways an innocent, trapped by impulses and foolish choices he himself struggles to comprehend. Enter the Professor, a man who has built his own life on secrets and lies..." - Publisher.

1Q84, by Haruki Murakami. Translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. Knopf, 2011. Print Length: 944 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (14 reviews). EW's slant: "...one of those books that disappear in your hands, pulling you into its mysteries with such speed and skill that you don't even notice as the hours tick by and the mountain of pages quietly shrinks."" Kindle edition $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled

"The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84... Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He becomes so wrapped up with the work and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As Aomame’s and Tengo’s narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector. A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, a dystopia to rival George Orwell’s - 1Q84 is Haruki Murakami’s most ambitious undertaking yet..." - from the hardcover edition.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.