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Today's edition originally appeared as muralwork on a long, wooden fence near the river.

POWELLS.COM INTERVIEWS: JEFFREY EUGENIDES
In 1993, Jeffrey Eugenides published The Virgin Suicides, a spellbinding novel about five mysterious sisters in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and the boys whose lives they would forever change. Middlesex, the author's long awaited follow-up, introduces another Grosse Pointe family: the Stephanides. Bridging generations, continents, and genders, it's a broad, comic epic, tracing the path of a mutant gene that finds expression in one Calliope Stephanides. Eugenides explained in part, "I see it as a family story. I used a hermaphrodite not to tell the story of a freak or someone unlike the rest of us but as a correlative for the sexual confusion and confusion of identity that everyone goes through in adolescence."

SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS: MIDDLESEX
Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com cheered: "Middlesex begins as a generous, tragicomic family chronicle of immigration and assimilation, becomes along the way a social novel about Detroit...and incorporates a heartbreaking tale of growing up awkward and lonely in '70s suburbia. It's a big, affectionate and often hilarious book." Jeff Turrentine of the Los Angeles Times agreed, "Middlesex isn't just a respectable sophomore effort; it's a towering achievement." Claim a signed first edition while they last.

STAFF PICKS: 2002 GIFT GUIDE
From art books to travel, browse an extensive (though by no means complete) selection of books that Powell's staff will be giving to friends and family this holiday season. Books for men, books for women, books for kids, and (maybe most important) books to fit budgets big and small.

14 FAVORITES
Every two months, seven (or so) staff members choose their favorite new releases. Our final list of the year debuts today with New Yorker humor and James Bond movie posters; plus, mysteries, biography, literature, travel writing, and even a book without words. Our favorite new books, in hardcover and paperback, all on sale.

Powells.com seeks cold weather words for seasonal employment. Words and phrases pertaining to diminished heat patterns are encouraged to apply. Additionally, a number of positions remain available to words and phrases connoting short days, heavy clothes, or frozen forms of precipitation — more or less all able-lettered structures with experience expressing phenomena prevalent throughout the northern hemisphere's holiday season. Powells.com is an equal opportunity employer. Slang welcome.

GREAT DEALS FOR YOUNG AND OLD
Save up to 80% on twenty hand picked staff favorites, including two fantastic additions for kids of all ages: Olive, The Other Reindeer by J.otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh and Peanuts: A Golden Celebration: The Art and the Story of the World's Best-Loved Comic Strip by (who else?!) Charles M. Schulz.

WIN 15 SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS
Enter now for a chance to win our 2002 collection of signed first editions: the latest releases from Salman Rushdie, Michael Chabon, Michel Faber, Leif Enger, Judy Blunt, Ann Rule, Chuck Palahniuk, and more. Fifteen collectible editions. One low price — free!

BIBLIOLATRY
Interested in taking a tour through the Dantean world of fitness culture with Carlisle? Well, either way, you might want to check out our fine selection of books about rococo muscles, hormone injections, and the infernal quest for the perfect body, all in Bibliolatry No. 29.

Brief interlude featuring small children playing hide-and-seek, dogs playing dead, and the impressionistic stylings of our very own Powells.com Dancers.

OTHER VOICES
Among the latest postings from our Other Voices: Salon.com speaks to journalist Mark Hertsgaard about how the world sees Americans; MediaChannel.org executive editor Danny Schechter recounts PBS's surprising decision to reject his documentary about the Florida elections; Mother Jones reports on the Democrats who followed the party's center-seeking presidential hopefuls into an ideological no-man's land; and Donna Tartt tells Poets & Writers, "I think many writers who churn novels out at a fast rate are getting bad advice." All this and your weekly horoscope, too.

eBOOKS
New electronic titles include Jeffrey Eugenides's acclaimed Middlesex and Pat Conroy's memoir of a basketball season past, My Losing Season. Also, The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre and new mysteries from James Lee Burke and the Higgins Clarks (Mary and Carol). Save 20% on them all.

CALENDAR
Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher stops by the City of Books to sign When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden on November 21st before his show at the Aladdin Theater. The coming weeks also boast readings by Michael Malone (The Last Noel), Mark Svenvold (Elmer McCurdy), and a host of writers whose work appears in the annual Pacific Northwest magazine, Stringtown. Check the calendar for these events and more — and don't forget: say "It's for kids!" in our Portland and Beaverton stores through the end of November and Powell's will donate 10% of your purchase price to public school libraries!

FUP. STORE CAT.
Wiggums's farm is plush. Pasture and woods, a barn and a stable — and family. Fup's country cousins (Wiggums, Barleycorn, Midget, Carbuncle, and Eliza) have been anticipating her arrival for days. For the cats it's like being able to breathe again: being around familiar faces after trudging so many tired miles.

Tucked into a pocket of pines sits the farmhouse. Its giant covered porch overlooks a long pasture. Afternoon shadows creep closer toward the house. Bear, sprawled across a weathered but immensely comfortable sofa, suggests, "We should spend summers here, escape the city heat."

With a chance to relax finally, it occurs to Fup how sore she is from all the walking. She tells Wiggums, "Maybe we just won't leave. We'll subsist on mice and sparrows."

"And mallards," Bear adds.

The mallard snorts. This is what he gets for hanging out with cats.

Wiggums informs Fup, "Your sisters are thoroughly enjoying the bookstore, by the way. Ro spends all day in the aisles, interacting with customers. Clara apparently prefers the attic. She asked me to ask you where the extra catnip balls are stashed."

Zooey lies a bit apart, off by himself on the mat at the top of the stairs. In place of green pasture in front of the porch he imagines his own yard: the familiar dogwood and rhododendron, the one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight steps down to the sidewalk. And, the worst, his housemates going about their days without him

TOP TEN
1. Satellite Sisters' Uncommon Senses by The Dolan Sisters (Self Help)
2. The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket (Children's Middle Readers)
3. Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Literature)
4. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (American Studies)
5. Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai (Literature)
6. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
7. Thanksgiving On Thursday by Mary Pope Osborne (Children's)
8. The Pillars Of Creation by Terry Goodkind (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
9. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Literature)
10. Stupid White Men by Michael Moore (Politics)

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TRAIN-CAR CONSTRUCTIONS
"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness,' 'joy,' or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.' I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.'"
—from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

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by Dave