Read Colum McCann, Drink Schell's Berliner and Listen to Boards of Canada's Return

Turbulence drives famous men across the Atlantic to Ireland in three remarkable tales of defiance and hope. In vivid and brilliant language, National Book Award-winner Colum McCann creates the perfect blend of fact and possibility in his historic characters: American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown, and American peace negotiator George Mitchell. But the real power comes in stories of the women in history’s shadow. Swept up in the currents of their times, they make decisions, make do, make families, make sense and make peace with a dangerous world. Emotionally intense and unusual in structure, TRANSATLANTIC delivers adventure with an impressive literary spin. –Ann Woodbeck EXCELSIOR BAY BOOKS36 Water St.Excelsior952.401.0932Ann Woodbeck has been a “bookseller extraordinaire” for Excelsior Bay Books for the past nine years. When not peddling the next great novel, she reads, writes and plays with her husband and poodle in Excelsior. --- Schell’s Brewing Company was founded by German immigrant August Schell in the 1870s as his family and friends settled in the town of New Ulm, Minn. Nearly 140 years later, this brewing institution is still going strong under the watchful eye of seventh-generation Schell descendant Jace Marti. This year, Marti revisits those early brewing days by producing a traditional German beer style known as Berliner Weisse in the Star of the North collection. This beer is brewed with light pilsner malts before being inoculated with wild yeasts. Lagered in a Cyprus tank from the 1930s, this “wild” brew pours a pale straw color and shows wonderfully lemony sour flavors that will only increase with age. Now you can experience the beer that Napoleon referred to as the “Champagne of the North”. –Tyler Melton THE WINE SHOP17521 Minnetonka Blvd.Minnetonka952.988.9463 Tyler Melton is the manager of the Wine Shop. Sign up for their weekly recommendations by emailing wineshopmtka@gmail.com and read their best seasonal drink pick on this page each month.--Forget the nostalgic, dust-warped memories that defined Boards of Canada's earlier releases. The paranoid, icy sound of the record mirrors the album art, which depicts a distant, austere megalopolis shrouded in noxious haze; in the foreground, a desert wasteland bakes under a glaring sun. Tomorrow's Harvest’s second track, “Reach For The Dead,” provides the album's mission statement: No playful interludes, a marked shift away from melodies and toward complex textures, and percussion that sounds like it was recorded on a metal skeleton. It’s not a wholly bleak album; there’s always been a fractured beauty to the duo’s electronic gloom. And even if Harvest is about the end of civilization, at least we already have the soundtrack. –Jack Kentala FIND THE ALBUM AT:Barnes & Noble13131 Ridgedale Dr.Minnetonka952.546.2006 Jack Kentala is a local filmmaker and writer. He has directed two feature films, Transmissions (2009) and Archetype (2012). He also wrote his first novel, Meridien K, in 2011.