That whole free shipping thing that Amazon offers is really sort of dangerous. They're smart to make it free only after spending $25 (from a marketing standpoint). If you're buying a paperback you need to buy two or three to take advantage of the offer. And then if you're like me you can't resist throwing another book into the cart for good measure. So, yes, the top four books are recent Amazon purchases and the bottom book is a review copy I recently mentioned. The impetus to order anything was a combination of being seduced by those lovely Europa Editions, and a recommendation (via) for a book I'd never heard of that I was pleased to find (am working on borrowing the other great suggestions and so far have one).
I own some of Penguin's Rough Guides (from the Women Travel series--excellent books!), but I didn't realize they did other kinds of (non travel) Rough Guides. On first glance The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (with a forword by Ian Rankin) looks to be an excellent resource. It's a compact little reference guide to the best of the best in mysteries and crime fiction. There are fifteen different categories ranging from "The Golden Age" to "Organized Crime" to "Foreign Bloodshed". I expect to find some new authors between these pages and only wish it was an even bigger book (though I shouldn't be so greedy).
It was hard deciding on just a couple of Europa Editions titles, but I finally narrowed it down to Amélie Northomb's Tokyo Fiancée, a novel of modern relationships, and Christa Wolf's One Day a Year, 1960-2000, which is a book of essays. I'm especially curious about the Wolf book. According to the blurb she is the "best-known author to emerge from East Germany and one of contemporary literature's most important living authors." Wolf was asked by a Russian newspaper to describe one day (the 27th of September) "as precisely as possible". This should be an interesting look behind the Iron Curtain over the course of forty years.
The Sleeping and the Dead by Ann Cleeves was bought purely on a whim. It's about a body discovered in a lake thirty years after it was dumped there. I'm always interested in mysteries where the crime occurred in the past, as there is usually a nice historical slant to them. It's published by Bloody Brits Press, which is an entirely new to me publisher. I wonder what other good titles they publish and will be checking out their website to find out.
The last book, The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell I've already mentioned. I had to share a photo--it's quite a hefty book. It includes a glossary and list of German military ranks and their American equivalents in the back. I'd be curious to read some reviews of it before diving in--it's one I think may take a while to get through. It's been called controversial and provocative, so I'll have to wait for the right moment to pick this one up.