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Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the September 23rd issue include:

Last Man in Tower, by Aravind Adiga. Knopf, 2011. Print length: 400 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...maps out, in luminous prose, India's ambivalence toward its accelerated growth, while creating an engaging protagonist..." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $13.99; Hardcover $16.73. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"...a riveting story of money and power, luxury and deprivation, set in the booming city of Mumbai. At the heart of this novel are two equally compelling men, poised for a showdown. Real estate developer Dharmen Shah rose from nothing to create an empire and hopes to seal his legacy with a building named the Shanghai, which promises to be one of the city’s most elite addresses. Larger-than-life Shah is a dangerous man to refuse. But he meets his match in a retired schoolteacher called Masterji. Shah offers Masterji and his neighbors - the residents of Vishram Society’s Tower A, a once respectable, now crumbling apartment building on whose site Shah’s luxury high-rise would be built - a generous buyout. They can’t believe their good fortune. Except, that is, for Masterji, who refuses to abandon the building he has long called home...a richly told, suspense-fueled story of ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none: the new India as only Aravind Adiga could explore - and expose - it." - Publisher.

The Taste of Salt, by Martha Southgate. Algonquin Books, 2011. Print length: 288 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Southgate writes with a minor-key melancholy that comes on softly, but lingers long after." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (8 reviews). Kindle edition $9.39; Paperback $11.16. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Josie Henderson loves the water and is fulfilled by her position as the only senior-level black scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family back in landlocked Cleveland. Her adored brother, Tick, was her childhood ally as they watched their drinking father push away all the love that his wife and children were trying to give him. Now Tick himself has been coming apart and demands to be heard. Weaving four voices into a beautiful tapestry, Southgate charts the lives of the Hendersons from the parents’ first charmed meeting to Josie’s realization that the ways of the human heart are more complex than anything seen under a microscope." - Publisher.

Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, by Susan Orlean. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print length: 336 p. NONFICTION. EW's slant: "...Orlean relates the histories of the original Rin Tin Tin and his various successors with her customary eye for capitivating detail..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (20 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $17.81. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"...sweeping, powerfully moving story of Rin Tin Tin’s journey from orphaned puppy to movie star and international icon. From the moment in 1918 when Corporal Lee Duncan discovers Rin Tin Tin on a World War I battlefield, he recognizes something in the pup that he needs to share with the world. Rin Tin Tin’s improbable introduction to Hollywood leads to the dog’s first blockbuster film and over time, the many radio programs, movies, and television shows that follow. The canine hero’s legacy is cemented by Duncan and a small group of others who devote their lives to keeping him and his descendants alive. At its heart, Rin Tin Tin is a poignant exploration of the enduring bond between humans and animals. But it is also a richly textured history of twentieth-century entertainment and entrepreneurship and the changing role of dogs in the American family and society." - Publisher.

Upper Cut, by Carrie White. Atria Books, 2011. Print length: 400 p. MEMOIR. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (2 reviews).. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.62. Text-to-Speech: Disabled.

"Behind the scenes of every Hollywood photo shoot, TV appearance, and party in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, there was Carrie White. As the 'First Lady of Hairdressing,' Carrie collaborated with Richard Avedon on shoots for Vogue, partied with Jim Morrison, styled Sharon Tate’s hair before her wedding to Roman Polanski, and got high with Jimi Hendrix. She has counted Jennifer Jones, Betsy Bloomingdale, Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, and Camille Cosby among her favorite clients. But behind the glamorous facade, Carrie’s world was in perpetual disarray and always had been...An unflinching portrayal of addiction and recovery, Upper Cut proves that even in Hollywood, sometimes you have to fight for a happy ending." - Publisher.

Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life, by Michael Moore. Grand Central Publishing, 2011. Print length: 448 p. MEMOIR. EW's slant: "...Moore has succeeded in making himself better heard by lowering his voice." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (21 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Michael Moore - Oscar-winning filmmaker, bestselling author, the nation's unofficial provocateur laureate - is back, this time taking on an entirely new role, that of his own meta-Forest Gump. Breaking the autobiographical mode, he presents twenty-four far-ranging, irreverent, and stranger-than-fiction vignettes from his own early life. One moment he's an eleven-year-old boy lost in the Senate and found by Bobby Kennedy; and in the next, he's inside the Bitburg cemetery with a dazed and confused Ronald Reagan. Fast-forwarding to 2003, he stuns the world by uttering the words "
'We live in fictitious times...with a fictitious president' in place of the expected 'I'd like to thank the Academy.' And none of that even comes close to the night the friendly priest at the seminary decides to show him how to perform his own exorcism..." - Publisher.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Doubleday, 2011. Print Length: 400 p. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (134 reviews). EW's slant: "In a fantasy realm in which just about anything can be made to happen, what does transpire shouldn't feel as arbitrary as it sometimes does here." Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.03. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night. But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway - a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love - a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands..." - from the hardcover edition.
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