If you want to know what's new and notable in the world of books ahead of the
crowd you have a choice. You can either spend hundreds of hours and many
hundreds of dollars wading through thousands of books in the prepublication
magazines and publishers' catalogs; or you can let us do the work for you!
In this issue we preview 86 high profile and notable books publishing in April including:
25 contemporary novels
6 historical fiction novels
3 short story collections
9 mysteries
10 thrillers
5 books for children & teens
8 biographies
13 nonfiction books on history, current affairs and science
and 18 first books or first novels
If you're new to BookBrowse or unfamiliar with our Preview
issues, please
click here for a fuller explanation of the previews, and
here for more about our rating system.
Best wishes,
Davina Morgan-Witts
Editor, BookBrowse.com
Next Issue During most of the year we publish four magazines each month.
The next issue will be "BookBrowse
Recommends". It will publish on April 1.
Schedule.
Disclaimer! In order to create the monthly Preview issues, we read the
prepublication magazines and all the major publishers' catalogs looking for
notable books to highlight. From the many thousands of books published
each month, we end up with a shortlist of about 300 titles, from which we select
around 80-100 to feature in any given month. The books we preview are
selected either because they are written by well known authors and are thus
likely to be of interest to many readers, or because they are books that are
receiving particularly strong prepublication reviews. Without a doubt,
despite our best efforts, there will be excellent books that we do not cover -
not just because of space limitations but because the world of books is far too
vast and far too open to subjective opinion to allow for a comprehensive list.
When previewing each book for you, we read and summarize all the reviews from
established media sources that we can find. Then we assign a rating to each
review that we believe reflects the reviewer's overall opinion; then we apply an
overall rating to each book. This has the advantage that you can skim the range
of opinion for each book in a few seconds (there are over 300 abbreviated reviews
in this issue alone). However, there is also an obvious disadvantage in that our
5-point ratings are based on our best interpretation of each reviewer's opinion, and only on those reviews available at the time this issue was published. With this in mind, please use our rating scale as a rough guide to each book, and not a definitive tool.
Novels
The Spy Game: A Novel by Georgina Harding
March 31
320 pages
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN-13: 9781596915893
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: On a freezing January morning in 1961, eight-year-old Anna’s mother disappears into the fog. A kiss that barely touches Anna’s cheek, a rumble of exhaust and a blurred wave through an icy windshield, and her mother is gone. Looking back, Anna will wish that she could have paid more attention to the facts of that day. The adult world shrouds the loss in silence, tidies the issue of death away along with the things that her mother left behind. And her memories will drift and settle like the fog that covered the car.
That same morning a spy case breaks in the news—the case of the Krogers, apparently ordinary people who were not who they said they were; people who had disappeared in one place and reappeared in another with other identities, leading other lives. Obsessed by stories of the cold war and of the Second World War, which is still a fresh and painful memory for the adults around them, Anna’s brother, Peter, begins to construct a theory that their mother, a refugee from eastern Germany, was a spy working undercover, and might even still be alive. As life returns to normal, Anna struggles to sort between fact and fantasy. Did her mother have a secret life? And how does anyone know who a person was once she is dead?
The Spy Game is a beautifully wrought novel about loss, history, memory, and imagination, and the way in which we shape these to construct our own identities. It is a painful and tender reminder of the importance of understanding the past and, in turn, the importance of letting go.
Prepublication Reviews: "[T[he shifts between present and past never fully integrate the suggestion of espionage into the otherwise effective story of children coping with loss." - Publishers Weekly.
"In this painful, remarkably tender tale, Harding's focus on Anna and Peter ... makes this powerful psychological study most effective." - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. There are few hard facts to be learned, but a deft conclusion pulls together the elusive, engrossingly atmospheric strands. An aching, delicate and affecting interpretation of loss and acceptance. " - Kirkus Reviews.
"[E]xplores the ways we invent ourselves, the unknowability of others, and the lacks that define us more than anything we possess." - Booklist.
Note: Georgina Harding is the author of the novel The Solitude of Thomas
Cave and of two works of nonfiction: Tranquebar and In Another
Europe. She lives in London and the Stour Valley, Essex, England.
March 31
288 pages
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN-13: 9780143114659
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In his new novel, award-winning, internationally bestselling author Tahar Ben Jelloun tells the story of a Moroccan brother and sister making new lives for themselves in Spain. Azel is a young man in Tangier who dreams of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. When he meets Miguel, a wealthy Spaniard, he leaves behind his girlfriend, his sister, Kenza, and his mother, and moves with him to Barcelona, where Kenza eventually joins them. What they find there forms the heart of this novel of seduction and betrayal, deception and disillusionment, in which Azel and Kenza are reminded powerfully not only of where they’ve come from, but also of who they really are.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. A captivating study of one man's search for identity in terms of sexuality, religion, values, nationality, and class; recommended for all fiction collections." - Library Journal.
"This harsh, unsentimental view of the risks and regrets of emigration - as well as the stunning realities of life under Islam law - is a stark, straightforward tale that readers can't help getting caught up." - Publishers Weekly.
"Of the thirty books Tahar Ben Jelloun has written, this is undoubtedly one of the most courageous." - Le Monde des Livres.
Note: Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in Morocco. This book is translated by Linda Coverdale who won the 2006 Scott Moncrieff Prize and the 1997 and 2008 French-American Foundation Translation Prize.
March 31
368 pages
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
ISBN-13: 9780764205712
Book Description: In the seemingly ordinary Amish home of Grace Byler, secrets abound. Why does her mother weep in the night? Why does her father refuse to admit something is dreadfully wrong? Then, in one startling moment, everything Grace assumed she knew is shattered. Her mother's disappearance leaves Grace reeling and unable to keep her betrothal promise to her long-time beau. Left to pick up the pieces of her life, Grace questions all she has been taught about love, family, and commitment.
Heather Nelson is an English grad student, stunned by a doctor's diagnosis. Surely fate would not allow her father to lose his only daughter after the death of his wife a few years before. In denial and telling no one she is terminally ill, Heather travels to Lancaster County--the last place she and her mother had visited together. Will Heather find healing for body and spirit? As the lives of four wounded souls begin to weave together like an Amish patchwork quilt, they each discover missing pieces of their life puzzles--and glimpse the merciful and loving hand of God.
Simultaneous release in paperback and hardcover.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Lewis lays out - and knots - many plot threads to pursue and resolve in subsequent installments in the series, ensuring readers' return." - Publishers Weekly.
Book Description: One summer, a young woman travels with her lover to the isolated tobacco farm he has inherited after his family dies in a terrible accident. As Orren works to save his family farm from drought, Aloma struggles with the loneliness of farm life and must find her way in a combative, erotically-charged relationship with a grieving, taciturn man. A budding friendship with a handsome and dynamic young preacher further complicates her growing sense of dissatisfaction. As she considers whether to stay with Orren or to leave, she grapples with the finality of loss and death, and the eternal question of whether it is better to fight for freedom or submit to love.
All the Living has the timeless quality of a parable, but is also a perfect evocation of a time and place, a portrait of both age-old conflicts and modern life. It is an ode to the starve-acre Southern farm, the mountain landscape, and difficult love. In her lyrical and moving debut novel, C.E. Morgan recalls both the serenity of Marilynne Robinson and the shifting emotional currents and unashamed eroticism of James Salter. It is an unforgettable book from a major new voice.
Prepublication Reviews: "Morgan's prose holds the rhythm of the local dialect beautifully, evoking the land, the farming lifestyle and Aloma's awakening with stirring clarity." - Publishers Weekly.
"The strong tradition of Kentucky literature has found a great new addition in Morgan. A gorgeous debut; recommended for both popular and scholarly fiction collections." - Library Journal.
"Morgan occasionally musters a fine and telling phrase ... but these moments are overwhelmed by the story's grueling pace. Wearying." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 1
336 pages
Publisher: New Press
ISBN-13: 9781595584366
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Living on a tiny island entirely surrounded by ice during the long winter months, Fredrik Welin is so lost to the world that he cuts a hole in the ice every morning and lowers himself into the freezing water to remind himself that he is alive. Haunted by memories of the terrible mistake that drove him to this island and away from a successful career as a surgeon, he lives in a stasis so complete an anthill grows undisturbed in his living room.
When an unexpected visitor alters his life completely, thus begins an eccentric, elegiac journey--one that shows Mankell at the very height of his powers as a novelist.
A deeply human tale of loss and redemption, Italian Shoes is a testament to the unpredictability of life, which breeds hope even in the face of tragedy.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Mankell displays his considerable gifts for characterization as he succeeds in making his emotionally limited lead character sympathetic." - Publishers Weekly
"Mankell ... provides a moving test of Welin's belief that 'people are close to each other so that they can be parted.'" - Kirkus Reviews
"Mankell ... has an ability to create an intimate atmosphere that places the reader directly into the world of his characters, which is nothing short of brilliant." - Library Journal
April 1
336 pages
Publisher: Amistad
ISBN-13: 9780061255588
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A captivating novel that will appeal to readers of The Secret Life of Bees and Mudbound about the fault lines – both seen and unseen – that lie in a small southern town as it struggles with integration.
Revere, Mississippi, is not unlike many small towns in the South during the 1960s, with black people living on one side of town and whites on the other. Both groups have their fair share of mysterious and interesting characters, and everyone has something to hide, or something they’re hiding from. When a poor white man is injured in what looks to be a typical hunting accident and is brought to the segregated Doctors Hospital and later dies, many truths long hidden begin to reveal themselves.
Perfect for summer reading, with an intriguing plot and characters with whom all readers can identify.
First published in hardcover in January 2008. Publishing in paperback in April 2009.
Reader Rating: 4 out of 5
This book got generally positive reviews from the 13 BookBrowse Members who have posted reviews.
Read the reviews.
Prepublication Reviews: "This heartwarming novel will strike a chord with fans of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees" - Booklist.
"Johnson offers a colorful, well-drawn story …Johnson's omniscient narrator gracefully glides through the tangle of associations that exist between the black residents and those who inhabit Revere's 'white' side. Told in folksy language and down-home idioms that only occasionally veer into corn pone, this enjoyable story evokes a world once hidden in plain sight, and the inevitability of its end." - The Washington Post.
"Johnson tries to squeeze too much out of the limited plot, but compelling character studies keep pages turning." - Publishers Weekly.
"In this engaging if oddly benign and probably revisionist take on the civil-rights upheaval, Mississippians cross racial lines with ease." - Kirkus Reviews.
"At the heart of the story are two physicians, African American Reese Jackson and Caucasian Cooper Connelly. Unfortunately, both are stereotypes. Worse, other characters are clichés ... " - Library Journal.
Note: Deborah Johnson now lives and works in Columbus, Mississippi, after living for many years in Italy.
It's winter 1944 and the second World War is entering its most crucial state. A few months ago Ali Banana was a blacksmith's apprentice in his rural hometown in West Africa; now he's behind enemy lines, trekking through the Burmese jungle. He is fourteen years old. Led by the unforgettably charismatic Sergeant Damisa, the unit has been given order to go behind enemy lines and wreak havoc. But Japanese snipers lurk behind every tree - and if they manage to escape the Japanese, infection and disease lie in waiting. As torrential rains turn the landscape into a muddy death trap, the losses mount up. Homesick and weary, the men of D-Section Thunder Brigade refuse to give up.
Taut and immediate, at once somber and exhilarating, The King's Rifle is the first novel to depict the experiences of black African soldiers in the Second World War. This is a story of real life battles, of the men who made the legend of the Chindits, the unconventional, quick strike division of the British Army in India. Horrific and always brilliantly executed, this vividly realized account details the madness, the sacrifice and the dark humor of that war-s most vicious battleground. It is also the moving story of a boy trying to live long enough to become a man.
Prepublication Reviews: "Bandele favors a straight-ahead style fueled by imagery and wordplay, and his perspective on heavily traveled literary territory is refreshing and even endearing." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. A revelation of unsung heroism, distinguished by love of language and lightness of touch." - Kirkus Reviews.
Book Description: When Frank and Ellie Benton lose their only child, seven-year-old Benny, to a sudden illness, the perfect life they had built is shattered. Filled with wrenching memories, their Ann Arbor home becomes unbearable, and their marriage founders. But an unexpected job half a world away offers them an opportunity to start again. Life in Girbaug, India, holds promise—and peril—when Frank befriends Ramesh, a bright, curious boy who quickly becomes the focus of the grieving man's attentions. Haunted by memories of his dead son, Frank is consumed with making his family right—a quest that will lead him down an ever-darkening path with stark repercussions.
Filled with satisfyingly real characters and glowing with local color, The Weight of Heaven is a rare glimpse of a family and a country struggling under pressures beyond their control. In a devastating look at cultural clashes and divides, Umrigar illuminates how slowly we recover from unforgettable loss, how easily good intentions can turn evil, and how far a person will go to build a new world for those he loves.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Beautifully written and incisive novel - Umrigar establishes herself as a singularly gifted storyteller" - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Umrigar...finely plumbs the depths of the human heart, from the heights of joy and passion to the very deepest despair." - Library Journal.
"Umrigar's portrait of Frank's descent into obsessive madness is well paced ... but the novel stumbles with two long flashbacks ... that add little." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 1
368 pages
Publisher: Harper
ISBN-13: 9780061750441
Book Description: Igor Malev has one thing on his mind - his ex-wife Ewa. He's handsome, rich, and effortlessly personable - but she left him for a successful fashion designer, a sting he's never recovered from.
So he travels to the glamorous Cannes International Film Festival where they'll be appearing, intent on winning back her love. But Igor is a man of rare intensity and cold intelligence - and this is to be no ordinary reconciliation. For Igor made a promise to destroy whole worlds to get to his beloved. Now, the conflict between an individual evil force and society emerges as the novel unfolds, and as morality is derailed.
April 1
304 pages
Publisher: Hyperion
ISBN-13: 9781401309800
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Paperback Original.
James Fitzroy isn't doing so well. Though his old friends in Buffalo believe his life in New York City is a success, in fact he writes ridiculous taglines for a greeting card company. Now he's coming home on Thanksgiving to visit his aging father and dying mother, and unlike other holidays, he's not sure how this one is going to end. Buffalo Lockjaw introduces a fresh new voice in American fiction.
Prepublication Reviews: "Caustically comic and wrenchingly emotional, while the wry riffs on family tension and the sad state of Buffalo that appear throughout this fine first novel don't undercut the serious consideration of murder or mercy for terminal patients." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. A novel about hard choices and doing the right thing that is modest, moving and true. " - Kirkus Reviews.
"Buffalo Lockjaw, like its charming, bitter screw-up of a narrator, reaches finally for larger meaning, and succeeds.... A brazen and tender book about a city and a scene, a mother and a son, and the beauty and pain of several kinds of love."
- Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land.
"Ames knows how to build up the world with a light hand while still getting to the complicated and painful ways we muddle through. Funny, fresh, and generous." - Aimee Bender.
"In Buffalo Lockjaw, love of one's parents and love of one's hometown mix powerfully with the mad undertow of loss that seems as inevitable in life as gravity."
- Jonathan Ames.
Note: Greg Ames grew up in Buffalo, New York. His work has appeared in The Best
American Nonrequired Reading, McSweeney's, Fiction International, The Sun,
and other publications. He has taught fiction at Brooklyn College and at
Binghamton University. He lives and works in Brooklyn.
The Ballad of West Tenth Street: A Novel by Marjorie Kernan
April 1
336 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN-13: 9780061669170
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Paperback Original.
Once upon a time in Manhattan . . .
. . . there stood a pair of fine old brick townhouses on West Tenth Street. One had a blue door with a tarnished brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin. The other was empty. Behind the blue door lived Sadie, the widow of a famous British rocker who died of an overdose, and two of her children, Hamish and Deen.
The children manage to muddle along as best they can with a loving but distracted mother. But their whole world changes when the house next door gets a new owner—a mysterious Southerner who quickly endears himself to his new neighbors, taking them—and their friends—under his protective wing. In doing so, he transforms everything.
Magical, lively, lovely, and unique, The Ballad of West Tenth Street is a contemporary urban fairy tale that delightfully reimagines real life.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. [A]n insightful illustration of how a string of city blocks can feel like home." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Her vivid characterizations of these damaged but good-hearted people and the joyous but realistic manner in which she draws New York City come together in an utterly charming fable about the creation of community." - Library Journal.
"Kernan devotes too much space to these supporting players, presumably hoping to evoke Dickens's deep understanding of the entire class ladder. She lacks the chops and seriousness to pull off anything so ambitious. Blurry panorama of an unrealistic city." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Marjorie Kernan, a former painter, owns an antiques shop on the coast of Maine. This is her first novel.
April 2
320 pages
Publisher: Viking
ISBN-13: 9780670020591
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: During the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution, a twelve-year-old boy named Love Liu wonders what life is like beyond the region of Xinjiang in China’s remote northwest. Here, conformity is valued above all else, and suspicion governs every exchange among neighbors, classmates, and even friends. Into this stifling atmosphere comes a tall, clean-shaven teacher from Shanghai, with an elegant gray wool jacket and an English dictionary tucked under his arm.
With the dictionary at his disposal, Love Liu throws himself into learning English, and a whole new world opens up for him. But in an atmosphere of accusation and recrimination, one in which the teacher is deemed morally suspect and mere innuendo can cost someone his life, Love Liu’s ideals face a test more challenging than any he’ll meet in the classroom.
A major bestseller in China, with rights sold around the world, English is a transcendent novel about a boy’s self-discovery, a country’s shame, and the transporting power of language.
Prepublication Reviews: "[W]ang's friendship emerges with touching clarity and provides a perfect counterbalance to the corruption and confusion of the Cultural Revolution." - Publishers Weekly.
"A loner comes of age in a telling, appreciably non-Western narrative enriched by politics and poetry. " - Kirkus Reviews.
April 7
272 pages
Publisher: Random House
ISBN-13: 9781400066469
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Julian Donahue is in love with his iPod.
Each song that shuffles through “that greatest of all human inventions” triggers a memory. There are songs for the girls from when he was single; there’s the one for the day he met his wife-to-be, and another for the day his son was born. But when his family falls apart, even music loses its hold on him, and he has nothing.
Until one snowy night in Brooklyn, when his life’s soundtrack–and life itself–starts to play again. He stumbles into a bar and sees Cait O’Dwyer, a flame-haired Irish rock singer, performing with her band, and a strange and unlikely love affair is ignited.
Over the next few months, Julian and Cait’s passion for music and each other is played out, though they never meet. In cryptic emails, text messages, cell-phone videos, and lyrics posted on Cait’s website, they find something in their bizarre friendship that they cannot find anywhere else. Cait’s star is on the rise, and Julian gently guides her along her path to fame–but always from a distance–and she responds to the one voice who understands her, more than a fan but still less than a lover.
As their feelings grow more feverish, keeping a safe distance becomes impossible. What follows is a love story and a uniquely heartbreaking dark comedy about obsession and loss.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. This is a triumphant return for Phillips to the level he achieved in his wonderful debut, Prague." - Publishers Weekly.
"Phillips attempts an antinovel wherein we are to be carried away by Music's power to disconnect us from and connect us to our most honest selves. This comes, unfortunately, at the expense of story and dramatic tension." - Library Journal.
"The problem is Cait, whose ostensibly irresistible allure is never fully convincing ... Still, the novel's clashing harmonies seduce and fascinate. And Phillips still looks like the best American novelist to have emerged during the present decade." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 7
304 pages
Publisher: Pantheon Books
ISBN-13: 9780307377371
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman—a jaded, dissolutely resolute journalist—whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled party-going is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets Laura, he is rejuvenated, ecstatic. Their romance blossoms quickly but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly?
Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only for a few days he ends up staying for months, and finds—or should that be loses?—a hitherto unexamined idea of himself, the self. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced. In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other. Could two stories, in two different cities, actually be one and the same story?
Nothing Geoff Dyer has written before is as wonderfully unbridled, as dead-on in evocation of place, longing, and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment, as irrepressibly entertaining as Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. For all his wit and cleverness, Dyer is unflinching in conveying the empty lives of his contemporaries, and in doing so he's written a work of exceptional resonance." - Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week.
"A theme of the conflict of Western vs. Eastern modes of behavior and perception. Thought-provoking and entertaining, if not to everyone's taste..." - Library Journal.
"Unsatisfying as a novel, but the observations are piquant enough to make for an enjoyable read. " - Kirkus Reviews.
"Dyer is very funny, in both senses - sort of like a post-modern Kingsley Amis. His writing is acute and bad tempered in the great British tradition, and his prose is the equal of anyone in the country. A national treasure." - Zadie Smith.
"Riveting. I love this book. Moments of wit, humanity, and intelligence are to be found on every page here. Dyer can write as beautifully as Lawrence and Proust. I don't ever want to be without his brilliant mind to turn to." - Nadeem Aslam.
Note: Geoff Dyer is the author of three previous novels, and five nonfiction books, including But Beautiful, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, and Out of Sheer Rage, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. The winner of a Lannan Literary Award, the International Center of Photography's 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography (for The Ongoing Moment), and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' E. M. Forster Award, Dyer lives in London.
April 7
560 pages
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN-13: 9781416550549
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book -- a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family.
But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell's death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book's title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.
Prepublication Reviews: "Both books reveal Morton as an author in supreme control of her material, and she delivers again, right on target, with another atmospheric historical saga shot through with mystery and secrets, grand passions and tragic woes...like the maze in the forgotten garden of the title, it's a delicious book to become lost in." - The Sunday Mail.
"A compelling, richly layered mystery..." – The Australian Women's Weekly magazine.
"This is a novel of a writer who is really getting into her stride. The magical opening of The Forgotten Garden launches us into a complex and richly textured world. Morton skillfully interweaves the different periods in which the novel is set, maintaining pace throughout. She gradually strips away layers of mystery, leaving a nice twist to the end...A beautifully written and satisfying novel." - Daily Express.
"Perfect for a long afternoon in a deck chair." - Gloss Magazine.
"[S]immers with secrets and strangeness" - Good Housekeeping.
Book Description: Mary McGarry Morris has been hailed as "one of the most skillful writers at work in America today" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). In The Last Secret, she tells the riveting story of Nora Hammond, a woman blessed with the perfect life: a charming husband, two bright teenage children, a successful career in the family's newspaper business, and an esteemed role in the charity work of her New England town. But Nora's comfortable existence threatens to unravel when she learns of her husband’s longtime affair—and when the specter of a sordid incident from her youth returns with terrifying force.
Confronted by shame and betrayal, Nora suddenly feels dangerously alone. With no one to turn to, she becomes easy prey to a ghost from her past—the cunning, relentless Eddie Hawkins.
A tautly told tale of psychological tension and chilling moral complexity, The Last Secret accelerates to a shattering conclusion as it explores the irreparable consequences of one family’s crimes of the heart.
The Last Secret burnishes Mary McGarry Morris’s reputation as one of our most prodigously gifted writers.
Reader Rating: 4.6 out of 5
The 15 BookBrowse Members who posted advance reviews loved this book!
Read the reviews.
Prepublication Reviews: "There are few contemporary authors whose work can absorb readers so fully and with such immediacy that the line between character and reader begins to seem dangerously thin. Among these few is the brilliant Mary McGarry Morris." - Los Angeles Times.
"Morris offers a melodramatic plotline that develops into a memorable, cinematic novel through strong portrayals of complex personalities ... As suspense builds, Morris adds context and depth by carefully revealing inner lives dominated by deception and loneliness, creating empathy for a variety of flawed characters." - Library Journal.
"Morris knocks over a domino chain of events that, while not too surprising, confirm the importance of comprehending past mistakes to avoid future ones." - Publishers Weekly.
Note: Mary McGarry Morris is the author of Vanished, nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award; A Dangerous Woman, chosen by Time magazine as one of the "Five Best Novels of the Year" and made into a major motion picture; Songs in Ordinary Time, an Oprah Book Club selection and a CBS television movie; and the highly acclaimed Fiona Range. She lives in Massachusetts. Visit her at marymcgarrymorris.com.
Book Description: Set in north-western Queensland, in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance, Carpentaria paints a portrait of the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, the land's original inhabitants. Their battles are with relative newcomers Joseph Midnight's renegade Eastend mob, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine.
By turns operatic and surreal, Alexis Wright's storytelling is a blend of myth and scripture, farce and politics. Her extraordinary characters - Elias Smith the outcast saviour, the religious zealot Mazzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Stan Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist and prodigal son Will Phantom, and, above all, the rulers of the family, the queen of the rubbish-dump and the fish-embalming king of time, Angel Day and Normal Phantom - are larger than life figures who stride across this stormtossed world.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Wright's award-winning second novel (after Plains of Promise) offers in Phantom one of the most compelling literary protagonists since Odysseus and will surely stand as a masterpiece of modern English-language literature." - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. Rarely does an author have such control of her words and her story: Wright's prose soars between the mythical and the colloquial." - Publishers Weekly.
"If you want to sample the writing at its best, look at the novel's eighth chapter, an astonishing tour de force in its own right." - The Guardian (UK).
"Wright breaks all the rules of grammar and syntax to sweep us along on a great torrent of language that thrills and amazes with its inventiveness and humour and with the sheer power of its storytelling. It's brutal and confronting and it's sad and funny at the same time. Like the Gulf Country itself, this is big enough to lose yourself in. Once in, you may never want to be found." - Sydney Morning Herald.
"There is hope here in these stories – the big ones and the little ones in between – but like Norm, you'll need to dive in and almost drown in them to find it. Like Will, the reader is on a quest. Like Truthful the copper, you won't know quite what to believe. And like Elias, you'll emerge from this astonishing novel, sodden but illuminated, and with part of your brain left somewhere in the Dreamtime." - The Independent (UK).
"Carpentaria is a big book, more than 500 pages, big enough to enter a world, to feel as if you once lived in a town called Desperance." - The Age (Australia).
"By the end of the book you'll be seduced by its Dreamtime logic, and probably persuaded by its passionate political and ecological message. It's not an easy read, but if you want to know the real Australia, persevere." - The Daily Telegraph (UK).
Note: Australian writer Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the southern highlands of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her books include Grog War, a study of alcohol abuse in the outback town of Tennant Creek, and the novel Plains of Promise, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, the Age Book of the Year Award and the NSW Premier's Award for Fiction, and translated into French as Les Plaines de l'espoir.
April 9
224 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13: 9780446538954
Book Description: Married for 12 years, Laura and Charlie Rider have come to share almost everything: their nursery business, their love for their animals, and, most especially, their zeal for storytelling. And though they no longer share a bed, they are happy enough continuing along in their pleasant, platonic routine.
Then Charlie begins an email exchange in earnest with Jenna Faroli, the host of a popular radio show, and, according to Laura, "the single most famous person in the town." Seeing her opportunity, Laura cannot resist using Charlie's new connection to promote her writing skills, and together, the couple crafts florid, strangely intimate messages that entice Jenna into their game.
"The Project," as they come to call it, quickly spins out of control. As the lines between Laura's words and Charlie's feelings become blurred, Jenna finds herself effected in ways most disturbing, while Laura is transformed into an artist of the highest caliber—in her own mind. The end results are hilarious and poignant, and for Laura Rider, beyond even her wildest imagination.
Prepublication Reviews: "Though the plotting is a bit predictable, the female characters are sharply observed and delineated, and the humorous tone will be an appealing surprise." - Publishers Weekly.
April 13
464 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13: 9780446540704
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: "Admissions. Admission. Aren't there two sides to the word? And two opposing sides...It's what we let in, but it's also what we let out."
For years, 38-year-old Portia Nathan has avoided the past, hiding behind her busy (and sometimes punishing) career as a Princeton University admissions officer and her dependable domestic life. Her reluctance to confront the truth is suddenly overwhelmed by the resurfacing of a life-altering decision, and Portia is faced with an extraordinary test. Just as thousands of the nation's brightest students await her decision regarding their academic admission, so too must Portia decide whether to make her own ultimate admission.
Admission is at once a fascinating look at the complex college admissions process and an emotional examination of what happens when the secrets of the past return and shake a woman's life to its core.
Prepublication Reviews: "[E]ven if Portia tends to ruminate in a precious way, Korelitz makes good use of the sociological issues tied up in elite university admissions." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Readers will experience the challenge of the admissions process at an Ivy League school, where every applicant tends toward the extraordinary. This engaging and surprisingly suspenseful novel is highly recommended." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. Strongly plotted, crowded with full-bodied characters and as thoughtful about 'this national hysteria over college admissions' as it is about the protagonist's complex personality - a fine, moving example of traditional realistic fiction." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Jean Hanff Korelitz was born and raised in New York and graduated from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is the author of one book of poems and three previous novels, as well as a novel for children. She has also published essays in a number of anthologies. She lives in Princeton, NJ with her husband (Irish poet Paul Muldoon, poetry editor at The New Yorker and Princeton poetry professor) and two children.
Book Description: You're twelve years old. A month has passed since your Korean Air flight landed at lovely Newark Airport. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable. Your mother isn't exactly happy, either. You're seeing your father for the first time in five years, and although he's nice enough, he might be, well--how can you put this delicately?--a loser.
You can't speak English, but that doesn't stop you from working at East Meets West, your father's gift shop in a strip mall, where everything is new.
Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim.
Prepublication Reviews: "[A] charming tale of family, community and the struggle for understanding..Woo's text strikes a true chord" - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Cleverly concatenated stories about the experience of Korean immigrants make up Woo's loosely structured novel ... a novel that both delights and instructs." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Sharp, immediate … captures the contemporary immigration struggle, but it is also an elemental family drama of fury and tenderness." - Booklist.
"A tender, funny, beautifully written novel-in-stories, each a sparkling step in the coming-of-age journey of a boy straddling two cultures with remarkable humor and grace. First-time author Sung Woo has created both lasting characters and a timeless portrait of a community." - A. Manette Ansay, author of Vinegar Hill and Blue Water.
"In its clear-eyed take on family and community, Everything Asian is Everything American. The proprietors of this roadside New Jersey shopper's village are by turns dreamy and despairing as their fortunes - like the local economy - change. Sung J. Woo has crafted a debut rich in character and event." - Stewart O’Nan, author of Songs for the Missing.
Note: Sung J Woo's short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times,
McSweeney’s, and KoreAm Journal. His short film was an audience
choice screening of the NYC Downtown Short Film Festival 2008. A graduate of
Cornell University with an MFA from New York University, he lives in Washington,
New Jersey. Visit his Web site at www.sungjwoo.com.
April 14
120 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-13: 9780151013678
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: An ingenious, witty, behind-the-scenes novel about eight hours in the life of an author.
A literary celebrity is in Tel Aviv on a stifling hot night to give a reading from his new book.While the obligatory inane questions ("Why do you write? What is it like to be famous? Do you write with a pen or on a computer?) are being asked and answered, his attention wanders and he begins to invent lives for the strangers he sees around him. Among them are Yakir Bar-Orian Zhitomirski, a self-styled literary guru; Tsefania Beit-Halachmi, a poet (whose work provides the novel’s title); and Rochele Reznik, a professional reader, with whom the Author has a brief but steamy sexual skirmish; to say nothing of Ricky the waitress, the real object of his desire. One life story builds on another—and the author finds himself unexpectedly involved with his creations.
Prepublication Reviews: "Stamped with Oz's charm and graceful skill in creating rich characters, this is a must for any fan." - Publishers Weekly.
"As Oz reminds us throughout this spellbinding fable, readers are partners with novelists in this enterprise of fiction, imagining in our heads what exists only as words on a page." - Kirkus Reviews.
" This postmodern novella could be the sherbet between courses for the accomplished Oz—and his readers." - Library Journal
Note: Amos Oz was born in 1939 in Jerusalem. At the age of fifteen, he left home and went to live and work on Kibbutz Hulda. His first book, "Where the Jackals Howl", was published in 1965, to immediate acclaim. For thirty years, until 1986, he divided his time between writing and teaching at the kibbutz high school, and turned over all his literary income to the kibbutz. He now lives in Arad and teaches at Ben-Gurion University. He is one of the leading figures of the Peace Now movement, and has written and lectured widely on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rhyming Life and Death is translated by Nicholas de Lange.
April 14
320 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN-13: 9780312383886
Critics' consensus:
Book Description:Life Without Summer tells the story of Tessa, a mother who has just lost her four-year-old daughter in a hit-and-run accident and the grief counselor, Celia, who tries to help her to put her life back together. When their lives begin to intersect in powerful and unexpected ways, they discover that the answers one needs might be the other's only chance for peace. Each woman’s intensely personal journey reverberates with universal themes about the connections between love, marriage, truth, and forgiveness that no reader will forget.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Griffin's carefully crafted characters ring heartbreakingly true and her finely wrought plot will snare readers from the first page." - Publishers Weekly
"Tessa and Celia's first-person voices, conveyed via journal entries, are indistinguishable. Worse, Celia's journal is a less-than-skillful authorial artifice..." - Kirkus Reviews
"There are many deep satisfactions in this absorbing and deftly plotted novel but what I most admired was Lynne Griffin's wonderfully complex characterization of her two heroines ... A sparkling debut." - Margot Livesey, author Banishing Verona
"A remarkable debut novel." - Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of True Colors
"I could not stop reading…The epitome of smart women's fiction...a deeply satisfying book that pulls us through the lives of two very different women, any one of whom could be ourselves." - Patricia Wood, Orange Prize-nominated author of Lottery
"Haunting, lyrical, and remarkable...fully realized characters who live and breathe from the page...a five star offering from a first-time novelist." - Carrie Padgett, Armchair Interviews
"Lynne Griffin hooks her readers on page one...able to delve into family issues and women’s lives with such fearless insight...readers will be demanding more of this new perspective in fiction." - Norah Piehl, Bookreporter
"There is something rare in the way Lynne Griffin portrays emotions, revealing a sensitive novelist who has the ability to sink beneath the surface of the skin and deliver raw humanity to the page." - Therese Walsh, Writer Unboxed
Note: Lynne Griffin is a nationally recognized expert on family life. She is the author of Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment (2007). Life Without Summer is her first novel.
April 14
304 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-13: 9780151014323
Critics' consensus:
Book Description:Night Navigation opens on a freezing-rain night in upstate New York: the kindling gone, the fire in the woodstove out. Del’s thirty-seven-year-old manic-depressive son needs a ride, but she’s afraid to make the long drive north to the only detox that has a bed.
Through the four seasons, Night Navigation takes us into the deranged, darkly humorous world of the addict—from break-your-arm dealers, to boot-camp rehabs, to Rumi-quoting NA sponsors. Al-Anon tells Del to “let go”; NAMI tells her to “hang on.” Mark cannot find a way to live in this world. Del cannot stop trying to rescue him. And yet, during this long year’s night, through relapse and despair, they see flare-ups of hope as Mark and Del fitfully, painfully try to steer toward the light.
Told in the alternating voices of an addict and his mother, this riveting novel adds new depths to our understanding and our literature of parents and their troubled children.
Reader Rating: 4.1 out of 5
This book got generally positive reviews from the 25 BookBrowse Members who have posted reviews.
Read the reviews.
Prepublication Reviews: "Howard is a graceful, spare and fluid writer, and her somber and bleak novel has the power to lift and inspire." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Harrowing first novel about the uneasy symbiosis of an addict and his mother." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A gritty, unblinking, compassionate portrait of addiction – the deceptions, the exhausting repetitions, and most of all the agonizing dilemmas of parental love, which may or may not have the power to save but can never stop trying." – Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index.
"Ginnah Howard's raw, vivid account of addiction and codependency unflinchingly explores the vast darkness of guilt and despair. The stark, urgent voices of mother and son ache with anger and love, fear and hope. Howard's ability to dive so deep into the human psyche is a testament to her grace and compassion as a writer. Night Navigation will leave you breathless--a haunting, riveting debut." – Kiara Brinkman, author of Up High in the Trees.
"Night Navigation is unerring in its grasp of the multiple deceptions of the addictive relationship, the self-deceptions above all. You can't help getting furious at its characters. And you can't help loving them." Peter Trachtenberg author of The Book of Calamities
"I fully enjoyed and admire this sparely written, unsparing portrait of a deeply troubled American family. Ginnah Howard is a wonderful new writer." Hilma Wolitzer, author of Summer Reading and The Doctor's Daughter.
Note: Ginnah Howard taught high school English for 27 years. Her work has appeared in the Portland Review, Permafrost, Blueline, A Room of One's Own, Water-Stone Review, Ballyhoo and Eclipse and Natural Bridge. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has been granted residencies at Cummington Community of the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and Saltonstall. She currently lives in Gilbertsville, NY. She can be found online at ginnahhoward.com.
April 14
320 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN-13: 9780312385187
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Hennie Comfort is eighty-six and has lived in the mountains of Middle Swan, Colorado since before it was Colorado. Nit Spindle is just seventeen and newly married. She and her husband have just moved to the high country in search of work. It's 1936 and the depression has ravaged the country and Nit and her husband have suffered greatly. Hennie notices the young woman loitering near the old sign outside of her house that promises "Prayers For Sale". Hennie doesn't sell prayers, never has, but there's something about the young woman that she's drawn to. The harsh conditions of life that each have endured create an instant bond and an unlikely friendship is formed, one in which the deepest of hardships are shared and the darkest of secrets are confessed.
Sandra Dallas has created an unforgettable tale of a friendship between two women, one with surprising twists and turns, and one that is ultimately a revelation of the finest parts of the human spirit.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Like the lives narrated, this novel, by the author of Tallgrass (2007), runs the gamut of heartache, hardship, and happiness as Dallas skillfully weaves past into present and surprises everyone at the end." - Booklist
"This satisfying novel will immediately draw readers into Hennie and Nit's lives, and the unexpected twists will keep them hooked through to the bittersweet denouement." - Publishers Weekly
"Forgiveness and redemption are the themes of this gentle novel about hardscrabble lives." - Kirkus Reviews
Note: Sandra Dallas is the author of seven novels, including Tallgrass and New Mercies. She is a former Denver bureau chief for Business Week magazine and lives in Denver, Colorado. She can be found online at sandradallas.com.
Perfect Fifths: A Jessica Darling novel by Megan McCafferty
April 14
272 pages
Publisher: Crown
ISBN-13: 9780307346520
Book Description: Old flames are reignited in the fifth and final book in the New York Times bestselling Jessica Darling series.
Captivated readers have followed Jessica through every step and misstep: from her life as a tormented, tart-tongued teenager to her years as a college grad stumbling toward adulthood. Now a young professional in her mid-twenties, Jess is off to a Caribbean wedding. As she rushes to her gate at the airport, she literally runs into her former boyfriend, Marcus Flutie. It's the first time she's seen him since she reluctantly turned down his marriage proposal three years earlier – and emotions run high.
Prepublication Reviews: Praise for The Jessica Darling Series
"Megan McCafferty's hilarious coming-of-age novels are getting better as Jess gets older. ...Acidly funny, imaginatively profane and, above all, a sharp reflection of the what-do-I-do-now, postcollege dilemma." - Miami Herald
"Judy Blume meets Dorothy Parker." - The Wall Street Journal
"McCafferty looks at travails with humor as well as heart." - People
"Jessica offers brilliant and cutting insights into the world of the adolescent about-to-be-a-woman." - Chicago Sun-Times
"The books are a springboard for McCafferty’s hilarious pop-culture riffs. ... The series has won her a legion of fans, from teens and college students to twentysomethings, mothers, and the occasional grandmother." - Star-Ledger
April 21
352 pages
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN-13: 9780307270825
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Award-winning poet and novelist Anne Michaels gives us a love story of extraordinary depth and complexity, a mesmerizing tale that juxtaposes historical events with the most intimate moments of individual lives.
In 1964, a newly married Canadian couple settles into a Nile River houseboat moored below the towering figures of Abu Simbel. Avery is one of the engineers responsible for the dismantling and reconstruction of the temple as it’s rescued from the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. He is a “machine-worshipper,” yet exquisitely sensitive to the dichotomy of creation and destruction of which machines are capable. Jean is a botanist by avocation and passion, interested in everything that grows. They had met on the banks of the St. Lawrence River and watched together as the construction of the seaway changed the course of the river and swallowed towns, homes, lives. Now, at the edge of another world about to be lost forever, Avery and Jean create their own world, exchanging the “moments that are the mortar of our days, innocent memories we don’t know we hold until given the gift of the eagerness of another.”
But that gift will not be enough to bind them when tragedy strikes, and they will go back to separate lives in Toronto. Avery returns to school to study architecture, and Jean enters the life of Lucjan, a Polish émigré artist. Lucjan’s haunting stories of occupied Warsaw draw Jean further and further away from Avery. But, in time, he will also offer her the chance for forgiveness, consolation, and, finally, her own, most essential life.
Stunning in its explorations of both the physical and emotional worlds of its characters, intensely moving and lyrical, The Winter Vault is a radiant work of fiction.
Prepublication Reviews: "Because Michaels is such an unrelenting artist – she bejewels every square inch – The Winter Vault ends up giving us everything but space. No memory or death or tragedy or whisper of the past is allowed to pass without poetic handling, so readers are left with few mysteries or personal interpretations or stray shadings to fill in for themselves. Some people will love all that writerly fulsomeness; others might admire the writer’s vision, but long for more room to breathe." - Quill & Quire.
"Starred Review. A tender love story set against an intriguing bit of history is handled with uncommon skill." - Publishers Weekly.
"Readers passionate about history, philosophy and the power of words to bend meaning will swoon for Michaels' rarefied if oddly impersonal fiction." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Anne Michaels’s first novel was the international best seller Fugitive Pieces, now a major motion picture. It won several awards, including the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Guardian Fiction Award, and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Michaels is also the author of three highly acclaimed poetry collections. She lives in Toronto.
April 21
304 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN-13: 9781565124943
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Youssef el-Mekki, a young man of nineteen, is living with his mother in the slums of Casablanca when he discovers that the father he believed to be dead is, in fact, alive and eager to befriend and support him. Leaving his mother behind, Youssef assumes a life he could only dream of: a famous and influential father, his own penthouse apartment, and all the luxuries associated with his new status. His future appears assured until an abrupt reversal of fortune sends him back to the streets and his childhood friends, where a fringe Islamic group, known simply as the Party, has set up its headquarters.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. A brilliant story of alienation and desperation that easily transports readers to hot, dusty Casablanca; highly recommended." - Library Journal.
"An absorbing tale that, alas, ends too abruptly." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A story brimming with insight into the complexities of life in contemporary Morocco." - Booklist.
Note: Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2006. She lives in Los Angeles. She can be found online at lailalalami.com.
Tea Time for the Traditionally Built: A No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Novel by Alexander Mccall Smith
April 21
256 pages
Publisher: Pantheon Books
ISBN-13: 9780375424496
Book Description: Mma Ramotswe’s ever-ready tiny white van has recently developed a rather disturbing noise. Of course, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni – her estimable husband and one of Botswana’s most talented mechanics – is the man to turn to for help. But Precious suspects he might simply condemn the van and replace it with something more modern. And as usual, her suspicions are well-founded: without telling her, he sells the van and saddles his wife with a new, characterless vehicle . . . a situation that must be remedied. And so she sets out to find the van, unaware, for the moment, that it has already been stolen from the man who bought it, making recovery a more complicated process than she had expected.
In the meantime, all is not going smoothly for Mma Makutsi in her engagement to Mr Phuti Radiphuti (to make matters worse, Violet Sephotho, who could not have gotten more than fifty percent on her typing final at the Botswana Secretarial School, is involved). And finally, the proprietor of a local football team has enlisted the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency to help explain its dreadful losing streak: Surely someone must be fixing the games, it can’t just be a case of unskilled players.
And as we know, there are few mysteries that can’t be solved and fewer problems that can’t be fixed when Precious Ramotswe puts her mind to it.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Once again, Precious Ramotswe uses her insights into human nature to unravel problems big and small ..." - Publishers Weekly.
Note: This is the tenth volume in McCall's popular No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.
April 21
336 pages
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN-13: 9780307268907
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A poignant, funny, blazingly original debut novel about sisterhood, the tantalizing dream of America, and the secret histories and hilarious eccentricities of families everywhere.
In the wake of their mother’s mysterious death, Linno and Anju are raised in Kerala by their father, Melvin, a reluctant Christian prone to bouts of dyspepsia, and their grandmother, the superstitious and strong-willed Ammachi. When Anju wins a scholarship to a prestigious school in America, she seizes the opportunity, even though it means betraying her sister. In New York, Anju is plunged into the elite world of her Hindu American host family, led by a well-known television personality and her fiendishly ambitious son, a Princeton drop out determined to make a documentary about Anju’s life. But when Anju finds herself ensnared by her own lies, she runs away and lands a job as a bikini waxer in a Queens beauty salon.
Meanwhile, back in Kerala, Linno is undergoing a transformation of her own, rejecting the wealthy blind suitor with whom her father had sought to arrange her marriage and using her artistic gifts as a springboard to entrepreneurial success. When Anju goes missing, Linno strikes out farther still, with a scheme to procure a visa so that she can travel to America to search for her vanished sister.
The convergence of their journeys—toward each other, toward America, toward a new understanding of self and country, and toward a heartbreaking mystery long buried in their shared past—brings to life a predicament that is at once modern and timeless: the hunger for independence and the longing for home; the need to preserve the past and the yearning to break away from it. Tania James combines the gifts of an old-fashioned storyteller—engrossing drama, flawless control of plot, beautifully drawn characters, surprises around every turn—with a voice that is fresh and funny and powerfully alive with the dilemmas of modern life. She brings grace, humor, deep feeling, and the command of a born novelist to this marvelous debut.
Prepublication Reviews: "James paints Kerala and immigrant New York with identical depth and ease, and the story is a readable balance of well-crafted plot and artful emotion." - Publishers Weekly
"A touching debut novel with a range of tones, from the sweet to the sordid." - Kirkus Reviews
"This debut paints amusing and disturbing pictures of both cultures, highlighting the struggles experienced by those who find themselves on foreign soil. Sensitively told and completely engrossing." - Library Journal
"[A] plain masterful debut from a gifted writer. Tania James is a natural born storyteller, and Atlas of Unknowns is the torn-between-two-continents family saga to prove it." - Nathan Englander
"Debut novelist Tania James maps her characters’ yearnings and missteps with the skills of a seasoned cartographer. Dazzling, original, witty, and poignant, Atlas of Unknowns is one of the most beguiling first novels I've read in years." - Ann Packer
"A powerful and nuanced debut novel ..." - Chitra Divakaruni
Note: Tania James was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and is a graduate of Harvard and Columbia universities. She has published her work in One Story and The New York Times. She lives in New York City.
May 1
384 pages
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
ISBN-13: 9781414323220
Critics' consensus:
Book Description:It is us against the world, Abigail thought. You and me. . . .
Sisters.
Abigail Bennett was completely in control of her life until tragedy pushed her
to the brink of something she’d never experienced: obsession. Now,
she’s given up everything she’s ever worked for to chase down the object of that
obsession. His name is Tyler Kamp. As Abigail follows him across the border into
Canada to a beautiful winery in British Columbia, her journey is awash in
memories of family and childhood, especially those of her younger sister,
Hailey. Dangerously beautiful yet indefinably needy, Hailey seemed to take all
the risks Abigail avoided. Until now. But even as Abigail races into her future,
her past continues to pull her back. Only when she is brought to the edge of her
obsession will she be able to come to terms with the tragedy that ignited it.
A breathtaking story about the emotional risks of relationships, The Moment
Between explores the cost of regret, the desire for revenge, and the
redemptive power of forgiveness.
Prepublication Reviews: "[A]n emotionally intense tale of two sisters. ... a poignant and gripping story." - Publishers Weekly.
"Tragic yet hinting at mercy and forgiveness, Baart's well-crafted contemporary novel features engaging characters and will appeal to readers who have had to deal with difficult family relationships." - Library Journal.
Note: Nicole Baart was born and raised in Iowa, where she and her family now live. She taught high school English for several years in Canada but is now the full-time mother of two young sons and the wife of a pastor. She is also the author of Leaves Fall and its sequel, Summer Snow. Visit her Web site at nicolebaart.com.
The Lost Quilter: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel by Jennifer Chiaverini
March 31
352 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN-13: 9781416533160
Book Description: Master Quilter Sylvia Bergstrom Compson treasures an antique quilt called by three names -- Birds in the Air, after its pattern; the Runaway Quilt, after the woman who sewed it; and the Elm Creek Quilt, after the place to which its maker longed to return. That quilter was Joanna, a fugitive slave who traveled by the Underground Railroad to reach safe haven in 1859 at Elm Creek Farm.
Though Joanna's freedom proved short-lived -- she was forcibly returned by slave catchers to Josiah Chester's plantation in Virginia - she left the Bergstrom family a most precious gift, her son. Hans and Anneke Bergstrom, along with maiden aunt Gerda, raised the boy as their own, and the secret of his identity died with their generation. Now it falls to Sylvia -- drawing upon Gerda's diary and Joanna's quilt -- to connect Joanna's past to present-day Elm Creek Manor.
Just as Joanna could not have foreseen that, generations later, her quilt would become the subject of so much speculation and wonder, Sylvia and her friends never could have imagined the events Joanna witnessed in her lifetime. Punished for her escape by being sold off to her master's brother in Edisto Island, South Carolina, Joanna grieves over the loss of her son and resolves to run again, to reunite with him someday in the free North. Farther south than she has ever been, she nevertheless finds allies, friends, and even love in the slave quarter of Oak Grove, a cotton plantation where her skill with needle and thread soon becomes highly prized.
Through hardship and deprivation, Joanna dreams of freedom and returning to Elm Creek Farm. Determined to remember each landmark on the route north, Joanna pieces a quilt of scraps left over from the household sewing, concealing clues within the meticulous stitches. Later, in service as a seamstress to the new bride of a Confederate officer, Joanna moves on to Charleston, where secrets she keeps will affect the fate of a nation, and her abilities and courage enable her to aid the country and the people she loves most.
The knowledge that scraps can be pieced and sewn into simple lines -- beautiful both in and of themselves and also for what they represent and what they can accomplish -- carries Joanna through dark days. Sustaining herself and her family through ingenuity and art during the Civil War and into Reconstruction, Joanna leaves behind a remarkable artistic legacy that, at last, allows Sylvia to discover the fate of the long-lost quilter.
Prepublication Reviews: "This satisfying and redemptive narrative unfolds with cinematic clarity, and Joanna's journey is sure to have readers holding their breath for her until the last page." - Publishers Weekly.
Note: Jennifer Chiaverini is the author of fourteen Elm Creek Quilts novels including a number of other books inspired by the series. She designs the Elm Creek Quilts fabric lines from Red Rooster fabrics and lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin.
Book Description: It is the time of Arthur, but this is not his storied epic. Arthur is a young and powerful warrior who some would say stands on the brink of legend. Britain’s leaders have come to elect a new supreme king, and Arthur is favored. But when a young woman is brutally murdered and the blame is placed at Merlin’s feet, Arthur’s reputation is at stake and his enemies are poised to strike. Arthur turns to Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, a man whose knowledge of battle and keen insight into how the human mind works has helped Arthur come to the brink of kingship.
Malgwyn is also the man who hates Arthur most in the world.
After the death of Malgwyn's wife by Saxon hands, he became Mad Malgwyn, killer of Saxons and right-hand lieutenant to the warrior Arthur. Right hand, that is, until a Saxon cut his sword arm off and left him to die on the battlefield. Arthur rescued him. Now a one-armed scribe and a heavy drinker, Malgwyn rejects the half-life that his liege gave him. But loyalty is sometimes stronger than loathing…and Malgwyn is pulled toward a puzzle that he can’t walk away from.
Think CSI:Medieval: gritty, powerful, and with the true ring of historical perspective and a character who sees more than those around him. The Killing Way is the first in a mystery series that is sure to be a hit with both mystery readers and historical fans alike.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. This fascinating blend of history and fiction by the author of Murder in the Latin Quarter is sure to engage fans of both Bernard Cornwell and Ellis Peters. Highly recommended." - Library Journal.
"Earthy, densely plotted and likely to have readers eagerly awaiting the next installment." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review. History buffs as well as mystery fans will be amply rewarded." - Publishers Weekly.
Note: Tony Hays is a journalist and novelist. He has covered topics as varied as narcotics trafficking (earning his newspaper the Tennessee Press Association award for Public Service in 2000), political corruption, Civil War history, and the war on terror. His short fiction has appeared both in the United States and Japan, and he is the author of three novels. He lives in Tennessee.
March 31
304 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN-13: 9781565129771
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt — a passionate man with his own dark secrets —has plans of his own for his new wife. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways.
Published in hardcover: March 2009
Published in paperback: January 2010
Prepublication Reviews: "This darkly nuanced psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. After breaking through with a disquieting memoir ... Goolrick applies his storytelling talents to a debut novel, set in 1907, about icy duplicity and heated vengeance.... A sublime murder ballad that doesn’t turn out at all the way one might expect." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Goolrick twists a familiar story, refashioning it into something completely original. . . . Few have permeated their narratives with gothic elements and suspense to such great effect. ... The unforeseen conclusion provides a big payoff for readers of this tension-laden debut from a promising new talent." - Booklist.
Note: This is Goolrick's first novel following his memoir The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life (2007). For background material including an author interview and book club discussion guide please visit www.reliablewife.net
April 1
464 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN-13: 9780061689840
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Two sisters discover passion during the War of the Roses—one in the arms of the king, the other in the world of silk
From the author of the acclaimed novel Portrait of an Unknown Woman comes an epic tale of love and intrigue. The year is 1471. Edward IV, who won the throne with the help of his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is restoring law and order after years of war. Under Edward IV, life in England begins to improve. Business is booming once more and the printing and silk industries prosper in London.
When silk merchant John Lambert marries off his two beautiful daughters, their fortunes are forever changed. Elder daughter Jane Shore begins a notorious liaison with the king while industrious and clever Isabel finds herself married into the house of Claver, a wealthy silk dynasty. Fate delivers Isabel a challenge when her new husband is killed and she is forced into apprenticeship to her mother-in-law, Alice Claver.
It is from Alice Claver that Isabel learns to love silk and the exotic and passionate fabrics from Italy, Persia, Spain, Tunisia, and beyond. Isabel learns to make her way in this new world of silk—to find friends and enemies—and she strikes an alliance with her sister's lover, King Edward IV, that will bring the secrets of silk-making to London. As Isabel grows in power and her plan for a silk industry run by Englishwomen is set into motion, the political landscape shifts in dangerous ways. One sister will fall as the other rises and choices must be made that will change their lives forever.
Prepublication Reviews: "Readers of historical fiction will be pleased with Bennett's sure-handed storytelling." - Publishers Weekly.
"This casual observation becomes the political reality of the narrative. Ably explores themes of romance and politics." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Mysterious, romantic, turbulent, and rich in historic detail ... should appeal to fans of Sharon Kay Penman and Tracy Chevalier." - Library Journal.
"Superior historical romance in the Philippa Gregory vein." - Scotland on Sunday.
Book Description: How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, it is a question his commanders have answered for him: on Passover in 1862 he is ordered to murder his own uncle, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln.
After that night, will Jacob ever speak for himself? The answer comes when his commanders send him on another mission—this time not to murder a spy but to marry one.
A page-turner rich with romance and the history of America (North and South), this is a book only Dara Horn could have written. Full of insight and surprise, layered with meaning, it is a brilliant parable of the moral divide that still haunts us: between those who value family first and those dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Horn propels the love story at a thriller's pace; the mix of love and loyalty played out in a divided America is sublime." - Publishers Weekly.
"Two big questions remain ... Make that three: Does anyone care? Turgid and meandering." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 7
400 pages
Publisher: Touchstone
ISBN-13: 9780743298926
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: The author of the internationally acclaimed Josephine Bonaparte trilogy returns with another irresistible historical novel, this one based on the life of Louise de la Vallière, who, against all odds, became one of the most mysterious consorts of France's Louis XIV, the charismatic Sun King.
Set against the magnificent decadence of the seventeenth-century French court, Mistress of the Sun begins when an eccentric young Louise falls in love with a wild white stallion and uses ancient magic to tame him. This one desperate action of her youth shadows her throughout her life, changing it in ways she could never imagine.
Unmarriageable, and too poor to join a convent, Louise enters the court of the Sun King, where the king is captivated by her. As their love unfolds, Louise bears Louis four children, is made a duchess, and reigns unrivaled as his official mistress until dangerous intrigue threatens her position at court and in Louis's heart.
A riveting love story with a captivating mystery at its heart, Mistress of the Sun illuminates both the power of true and perfect love and the rash actions we take to capture and tame it.
Prepublication Reviews: "Gulland skillfully blends fact and fiction to imagine the life of Louise de la Vallière (1644–1710), mistress to Louis XIV, France's Sun King. ...A supernatural element threaded throughout adds color to Gulland's vivid period imaginings." - Publishers Weekly
"Teeming with the rich period details that make historical fiction so rewarding, Gulland’s dynamic and nuanced portrait of Louis’ notorious reign thrums with page-turning expediency and deliciously seductive machinations." - Booklist
"[T]his is a fine telling, bolstered by the strength and sensitivity of Gulland's characterizations." - Kirkus Reviews
A Proper Education for Girls: A Novel by Elaine diRollo
April 14
368 pages
Publisher: Crown
ISBN-13: 9780307408341
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Not since the Brontës have we seen the likes of the Talbot sisters, plucky peach growers with a peculiar upbringing and a flair for subversion. Set in England and India in the mutinous year of 1857, A Proper Education for Girls tells the story of Alice and Lilian Talbot, twins separated for the first time in their lives by their martinet father. After an affair comes to a tragic end, Lilian is banished from the Talbot mansion and married off to a sickly missionary in India. Unwilling to play the part of the demure missionary wife, beautiful, tomboyish Lilian quickly takes advantage of her husband's hypochondria and her newfound freedom as a British expatriate, tramping off into the jungle to paint pictures of the indigenous flora and secretly learning the language and customs of her adopted homeland.
Meanwhile, the plain but sharp-witted Alice remains on her father's isolated estate, serving as curator to his strange and vast Collection under the watchful eye of the malevolent Dr. Cattermole. The Collection, which has taken over every inch of the rambling estate, is the essence of Victorian England—antiquated and ingenious, austere and excessive. Twelve perfectly synchronized grandfather clocks stand at attention at the bottom of a staircase. Botanical specimens have overrun the conservatory, turning the room into a tropical greenhouse. Forgotten house-guests roam amid fossilized sea creatures, display cases of Greek pottery, and mechanical contraptions. A peach tree, inherited from their mother and planted in a wheelbarrow for portability, is a constant reminder of Lilian’s absence.
Though Mr. Talbot has cut off all communication between the sisters, a cryptic letter from Lilian manages to slip through, and hidden in the envelope is a puzzling photograph of a tiger hunt. Alice sets about cracking the code in the letter, finding an unlikely ally in Mr. Blake, the photographer hired to document the Collection. While Mr. Talbot is absorbed in the eccentric but seemingly benign Society for the Propagation of Useful and Interesting Knowledge, Alice plots her escape from both her oppressive father and Dr. Cattermole’s unspeakable plans for her future.
Intrigue is rife in India as well, where Lilian continues to defy convention. Playing her many admirers off one another, she quietly works toward the goal of reuniting with her sister. But the violent onset of the Indian rebellion against British rule threatens to derail her plans. And back at the Talbot estate, the Society's experiments are taking a menacing turn. Will the sisters' resourcefulness and profound devotion to each other be enough to save them? Capturing the Victorian era in all of its whimsy and horror, A Proper Education for Girls is a superb debut novel about the power of sisterhood.
Prepublication Reviews: "Alice and Lilian are fabulous, quirky characters, gifted with an engrossing plot. Here’s hoping we will meet them again. A rollicking good time that does not take itself too seriously." - Kirkus Reviews
"DiRollo's delightfully original debut simultaneously mocks and colorfully depicts British imperialism and the Victorians’ obsessive pursuit of scientific progress." - Booklist
"The premise is wonderful, but the execution doesn't do it justice." - Publishers Weekly
"This debut is ideal for readers who enjoy unconventional historical fiction peppered with interesting, intelligent characters." - Library Journal
"A book that turns a searchlight on Victorian double standards. Rich in detail, full of sensational surprises from flying machines to tiger hunts, this is a novel to shock and delight. A Thelma and Louise for the mid-nineteenth century." - Katharine McMahon, author of The Rose of Sebastopol and The Alchemist’s Daughter
"Wonderful…a spirited and energetic debut, witty and inventive and often just downright addictive." - Irish Independent
"This is one of the most enjoyable, intelligent and genuinely humorous books I've read this year … Elaine diRollo's debut should be read, and it should be rewarded, too." - The Scotsman
Note: Elaine Dirollo was born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, and now lives in Edinburgh, where she is a lecturer at Napier University. She holds a Ph.D. in the social history of medicine from Edinburgh University. A Proper Education for Girls is her first novel.
April 14
320 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN-13: 9780312371067
Book Description: Publius Quinctilius Varus, a Roman politician, is summoned by the Emperor, Augustus Caesar. Given three legions and sent to the Roman frontier east of the Rhine, his mission is to subdue the barbarous German tribes where others have failed, and bring their land fully under Rome’s control.
Arminius, a prince of the Cherusci, is playing a deadly game. He serves in the Roman army, gaining Roman citizenship and officer’s rank, and learning the arts of war and policy as practiced by the Romans. What he learns is essential for the survival of Germany, for he must unite his people against Rome before they become enslaved by the Empire and lose their way of life forever.
An epic battle is brewing, and these two men stand on opposite sides of what will forever be known as The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest—a ferocious, bloody clash that will change the course of history.
Prepublication Reviews: "The fantastic action scenes and taut narrative make this a fine addition to the ancient Roman battles canon." - Publishers Weekly.
April 16
272 pages
Publisher: Penguin Press
ISBN-13: 9781594202070
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Locke, CA, 1928 - Three bedraggled Chinese women suddenly appear out of the mist one afternoon in a small Chinese farming town on the Sacramento River, and their arrival throws the community into confusion. Two of the women are unknown to the townspeople, while the third is the long-lost wife of Richard Fong, the handsome manager of the local gambling parlor, who had left her behind in China many years earlier and had not yet returned for her.
Richard’s wife’s unexpected arrival complicates his life in no small way—not least with two prostitutes at the local brothel he frequents. One, the beautiful young Chloe, depends on him but has eyes for someone else, someone even more forbidden—the local preacher’s daughter. The other, Poppy, the psychic madam of the brothel, is desperately in love with him, and she begins to sink into despair as he grows further and further away from her.
As the lives of the townspeople become inextricably intertwined with the newly arrived women, Poppy’s premonitions begin to foretell a deep unhappiness for all involved. And when a flood threatens the livelihood of the entire town, the frightening power of these mysterious women who arrived in the mist will be revealed.
Shawna Yang Ryan’s melodic first novel is a passionate, sophisticated intertwining of fact and fiction that examines mingling cultures, modern myths, and forgotten history. Locke 1928 beautifully chronicles separation and betrayal, loneliness and longing, and what happens when a Chinese ghost story begins to come true.
Prepublication Reviews: "Ryan's fluid flashbacks allow the past to sweep over the collective population of Locke..." - Publishers Weekly.
"As a whole, Ryan's debut feels forced, as the story moves slowly and meanders without providing enough significance to the nine principal characters she identifies in the book's opening." - Library Journal.
"Fascinating material clumsily shaped." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A beautiful debut ... opens up a page in history that sometimes is forgotten by both cultures that once coexisted in Locke, a Sacramento Chinese faming town. By mapping out the familiar and the strange territories of human passion and retelling the old myths, Shawna Yang Ryan tells a story that, in the end, is about how America was truly made. - Yiyun Li, author of Thousand Years of Good Prayers.
"[A] multilayered marvel of a book. The prose is a delight, the characters fascinating, the story richly imagined and heart-rending. This first novel of grace and substance presages a notable literary career for Shawna Yang Ryan." - John Lescroart.
Note: Water Ghosts was previously published by an independent, non-profit press as
Locke 1928.
April 1
336 pages
Publisher: Ecco
ISBN-13: 9780061704314
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A gripping and moving new collection of stories by Joyce Carol Oates, which reimagines the meaning of family—by unexpected, often startling means
With the unflinching candor and sympathy for which Joyce Carol Oates is celebrated, these fourteen stories examine the intimate lives of contemporary American families: the tangled ties between generations, the desperation—and the covert, radiant happiness—of loving more than one is loved in return. In "Cutty Sark" and "Landfill," the bond between adolescent son and mother reverberates with the force of an unspoken passion, bringing unexpected consequences for the son. In "A Princeton Idyll," a woman is forced to realize, decades later, her childhood role in the destruction of a famous, beloved grandfather's life. In "Magda Maria," a man tries to break free of the enthralling and dangerous erotic obsession of his life. In the gripping title story, Oates boldly reimagines the true-crime story of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her children in 2001. Several stories—"Suicide by Fitness Center," "The Glazers," and "Dear Joyce Carol,"—take a less tragic turn, exploring with mordant humor the shadowy interstices between self-awareness and delusion.
Dramatic, intensely rendered, and always provocative, Dear Husband, provides an unsettling and fascinating look into the mysterious heart of America.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Throughout the collection, Oates seamlessly enters the minds of disparate characters to find both the exalted and depraved aspects of real American families." - Publishers Weekly.
"Oates, author of more than 30 previous story collections, presents another good choice for libraries." - Library Journal.
"The onrushing prose and stabbing emotional intensity that are Oates' greatest strengths imbue the volume with compulsive readability. One of this indefatigable author's best books in some time." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 1
224 pages
Publisher: Sarabande Books
ISBN-13: 9781932511703
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Spanning over half a century—from the years just before the Korean War to the present—the eight stories in this collection reveal an intricate and unforgettable portrait of a single island in the South Pacific. Novelistic in scope, daring in its varied environments, Once the Shore introduces a remarkable new voice in international fiction.
Paperback original.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Yoon's stories are introspective and tender while also painting with bold strokes the details of the lives of the invisible." - Publishers Weekly.
"Paul Yoon writes stories the way Fabergé made eggs: with untold craftsmanship, artistry, and delicacy. Again and again another layer of intricacy is revealed, proving that something as small as a story can be as satisfying and moving as a Russian novel." - Ann Patchett.
Note: Paul Yoon was born in New York City. His fiction has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Best of the Web 2008, and The Best American Short Stories, among other publications. Once the Shore is his first book.
Acclaimed author Amanda Eyre Ward has written a stunning collection of twelve stories about love in all its complexity, absurdity, and glory. From San Francisco to Savannah, Texas to Montana, Ward’s characters are united in their fervent search for a place where they truly belong. In a Maine cabin, a family tragedy forces Bill and Lizzy to take a hard look at their own lives. Casey, a suburban New Yorker with a wry sense of humor, braves the dating scene after losing her husband. Annie, a librarian in a small mining town, must choose between the only home she’s ever known and the possibility of a new life. And in six linked stories spanning a decade of her life, Lola Wilkerson navigates elopement, motherhood, and lingering questions about who she wants to be when she grows up.
With writing as evocative as it is striking, Amanda Eyre Ward once again proves herself an astute interpreter of emotions both familiar and strange. Whether exploring the fierceness of a mother’s love or the consolations of marriage, these stories are imbued with humor, clear-eyed insight, and emotional richness.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. The way Ward balances ruefulness and hope is singularly impressive." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Luminous work from a gifted writer." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Ward's often bewildered characters' efforts to keep trying to get it right is romantic courage at its most vulnerable. Strongly recommended." - Library Journal.
Note: Amanda Eyre Ward is the author of three novels: Sleep Towards Heaven, How to Be Lost, and Forgive Me. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and their two sons.
Eye of My Heart: 27 Writers Reveal the Hidden Pleasures and Perils of Being a Grandmother by Barbara Graham
April 7
336 pages
Publisher: HarperTrophy
ISBN-13: 9780061474156
Book Description: In Eye of My Heart, twenty-seven smart, gutsy writers explode myths and stereotypes and tell the whole crazy, complicated truth about being a grandmother in today's world. Among the contributors:
Anne Roiphe learns—the hard way—to keep her mouth shut and her opinions to herself.
Elizabeth Berg marvels at witnessing her child give birth to her child.
Beverly Donofrio makes amends for her shortcomings as a teenage mother.
Judith Viorst exposes the high-stakes competition for Most Fabulous Grandchild.
Jill Nelson grapples with mother-daughter tensions triggered by the birth of her grandson.
Judith Guest confesses her failed attempt to emulate her own saintly grandmother.
Bharati Mukherjee transcends her strict Hindu upbringing to embrace her adopted Chinese grand-daughters.
Lynn Lauber finds joy in grandmotherhood that she missed out on as a mother.
Sallie Tisdale pays a high price—financially and emotionally—for her fast-growing brood of grandkids.
Ellen Gilchrist reveals how grandparenthood has eased her fear of death.
Molly Giles is spurned by her toddler granddaughter during a trip to Paris.
Susan Shreve finally accepts that she's the grandmother, not the mother.
Roxana Robinson realizes, with relief, that she doesn't have to worry so much anymore.
Abigail Thomas plots her escape when she can't bear to bake one more cake.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin longs to leave a lasting impression on her grandchildren.
Mary Pipher explores the primal role of grandmothers in a fast-changing world.
In this groundbreaking collection, you will encounter the real stories that usually go untold. Free of platitudes and clichés, the essays in Eye of My Heart are linked by a common thread: a love for grandchildren that knows no bounds, despite inescapable obstacles and limitations.
Prepublication Reviews: "In illuminating, unsentimental essays, 27 writers offer up insights on the tricky art of grandmothering.” - People
"Insightful and candid, sometimes painfully so... Women who have achieved grandmotherly status will appreciate this engaging, honest volume of essays by 26 writers who articulate shared emotions about their grandchildren." - Publishers Weekly
"So many different perspectives and vantage points are woven seamlessly that no matter what their personal relationship to the word ‘grandmother’ is, readers will find much to make them laugh out loud—and also to break their hearts'" - Christian Science Monitor
“Spry and unsentimental. ... Truth telling with dollops of love." - O Magazine
Book Description: The first installment in a wonderful new series that follows the exploits of Benoît Courrèges, a policeman in a small French village where the rituals of the café still rule. Bruno—as he is affectionately nicknamed—may be the town’s only municipal policeman, but in the hearts and minds of its denizens, he is chief of police.
Bruno is a former soldier who has embraced the pleasures and slow rhythms of country life—living in his restored shepherd’s cottage; patronizing the weekly market; sparring with, and basically ignoring, the European Union bureaucrats from Brussels. He has a gun but never wears it; he has the power to arrest but never uses it. But then the murder of an elderly North African who fought in the French army changes everything and galvanizes Bruno’s attention: the man was found with a swastika carved into his chest.
Because of the case’s potential political ramifications, a young policewoman is sent from Paris to aid Bruno with his investigation. The two immediately suspect militants from the anti-immigrant National Front, but when a visiting scholar helps to untangle the dead man’s past, Bruno’s suspicions turn toward a more complex motive. His investigation draws him into one of the darkest chapters of French history—World War II, a time of terror and betrayal that set brother against brother. Bruno soon discovers that even his seemingly perfect corner of la belle France is not exempt from that period’s sinister legacy.
Prepublication Reviews: "Without sacrificing a soupçon of the novel's small town charm or its characters' endearing quirkiness, Walker deftly drives his plot toward a dark place where old sins breed fresh heartbreak." - Publishers Weekly.
"[Martin] Walker sets a charming table . . . the civilized approach to detection will likely appeal to fans of Roderic Jeffries’s Inspector Alvarez." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Martin Walker's book is a nice literary pairing with the slow-food movement. But lovely as it is to linger at the table, the sleuthing can drag. B+." - Entertainment Weekly.
"Walker does a wonderful job of bringing la France profonde to life." - Mail on Sunday.
"This is a crime novel that is also a lovely, lyrical and frequently comic evocation of rural France." - The Scotsman.
Flipping Out: A Lomax & Biggs Mystery by Marshall Karp
March 31
304 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
ISBN-13: 9780312378219
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Nora Bannister is a bestselling mystery novelist who buys run-down houses in LA. While her business partners turn the house into a showpiece, Nora makes it the scene of a grisly murder in her House To Die For series. As soon as the new book goes on sale, so does the house — and the bidding frenzy begins. It seems a lot of people are willing to pay a lot of money to live in a real house where a fictional character has died a violent death.
Just before Nora’s latest book hits the market, one of her house-flipping partners is murdered. LAPD Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs are assigned the case, but this one is a hot potato – the dead woman is also the wife of one of their fellow cops. As Mike and Terry dig into the victim’s private life, more bodies turn up . . .
Is someone stalking the house flippers or is the murderer after cops' wives? Either way, Mike and Terry have to track down the killer before he murders his next logical target — Marilyn Biggs, Terry’s wife.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Karp delivers a treat that's not only laugh-out-loud funny but also remarkably suspenseful." - Publishers Weekly.
"Glib, trendy and not so much plotted as delivered in comedy-club one-liners, with an over-the-top final twist." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Karp's humor and convoluted plot make this mystery a pleasure to read, à la Janet Evanovich and Lisa Scottoline ..." - Library Journal.
“If you haven’t read Marshall Karp yet, start with Flipping Out. Start today. This mystery is right up there with the best of Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiassen. Yep, it’s that suspenseful, that funny." - James Patterson.
Dare to Die: A Death on Demand Mystery #19 by Carolyn Hart
April 1
304 pages
Publisher: William Morrow
ISBN-13: 9780061453038
Critics' consensus:
Book Description:She came in the rain. Alone. On a bicycle.
Annie and Max Darling are completely unprepared when the arrival of a mysterious young woman shocks their sea island and stirs up more than just gossip.
It turns out that Iris, the beautiful stranger, is a former resident of Broward's Rock. Her arrival throws the normally happy town into a downward spiral that pits neighbor against neighbor.
Things take a turn for the worse when Annie befriends Iris and invites her to attend the Darlings' party at the pavilion where Death is the uninvited guest. Suddenly, Max and Annie find themselves in the middle of a fight they don't understand and at the mercy of an unknown assailant who's trying to kill them—and all they know is that it is one of their friends.
Prepublication Reviews: "Readers will enjoy the many allusions to actual mystery authors and their books, from the classic to the contemporary." - Publishers Weekly.
"Longtime fans will welcome the usual suggestions for further mystery reading, all couched in genially undemanding prose." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 2
368 pages
Publisher: Putnam Books
ISBN-13: 9780399155369
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel: girls, jazz, bootleg hooch . . . and a dead actress named Virginia Rappe. The D.A. says it was Arbuckle who killed her—crushing her under his weight—and brings him up on manslaughter charges. William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers stir up the public and demand a guilty verdict. But what really happened? Why do so many people at the party seem to have stories that conflict? Why is the prosecution hiding witnesses? Why are there body parts missing from the autopsied corpse? Why is Hearst so determined to see Fatty Arbuckle convicted?
In desperation, Arbuckle’s defense team hires a Pinkerton agent to do an investigation of his own and, they hope, discover the truth. The agent’s name is Dashiell Hammett, and he’s the book’s narrator. What he discovers will change American legal history—and his own life—forever.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. [A]n outstanding crime novel...those familiar with the historical case will be impressed by how well the book meshes fact and fiction." - Publishers Weekly.
"Sure to appeal to Hollywood buffs and mystery readers alike." - Library Journal.
"As in his earlier historical novels, Atkins again proves a meticulous researcher, but here he does an even better job of melding that research into a lively, atmospheric narrative." - Booklist.
"Atkins writes so well that some readers - but not all - will forget to ask if that's enough to validate time spent with irredeemable lowlifes in a modern-day Sodom." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Ace Atkins earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 2001 for his investigation
into a forgotten murder of the 1950s that became the basis for his novel
White Shadow. His next novel, Wicked City, was based on the true
story of "the Wickedest City in America" - Phoenix City, Alabama. He is also the author of four Nick Travers novels.
About Face: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, #18 by Donna Leon
April 8
272 pages
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN-13: 9780802118967
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Incinerators across the south of Italy are at full capacity, burning who-knows-what and releasing unacceptable levels of dangerous air pollutants, while in Naples, enormous garbage piles grow in the streets. In Venice, with the polluted waters of the canals and a major chemical complex across the lagoon, the issue is never far from the fore.
Environmental concerns become significant in Brunetti’s work when an investigator from the Carabiniere, looking into the illegal hauling of garbage, asks for a favor. But the investigator is not the only one with a special request. His father-in-law needs help and a mysterious woman comes into the picture. Brunetti soon finds himself in the middle of an investigation into murder and corruption more dangerous than anything he’s seen before.
Prepublication Reviews: "It's not until a violent climax at the Casino that the two halves of the plot come together, and then the connection is more convincing in metaphorical than literal terms." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Leon flawlessly melds the two plot threads as she parallels her characters' vulnerability with that of Venice." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Leon continues to live up to the increasingly high standards set by each novel." - Library Journal.
Book Description: Cheryl Beth Wilson is an elite nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital who finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having an affair with the doctor's husband, a surgeon, and this makes her a "person of interest" to the police, if not at outright suspect. But someone other than the cops is watching Cheryl Beth.
The killing comes as former homicide detective Will Borders is just hours out of surgery. But as his stretcher is wheeled past the crime scene, he knows this is no random act of violence. Instead, it has all the marks of a serial killer case he supposedly solved years before.
Rebuked by his former partner and unable even to walk, Borders starts to investigate. He teams up with Cheryl Beth, who is desperate to clear her name. But as the city teeters on the edge of violence and a killer grows closer, the two are running out of time to unlock the secrets of the murder and the brooding, old hospital.
Prepublication Reviews: "Talton's authentic depiction of hospital life lends heft, as do his searing descriptions of Borders's physical pain and mental anguish during recovery." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Talton ... demonstrates his versatility in depicting the little-known world of the hospital pain nurse. A strong series launch" - Library Journal.
"Nicely done. Though she's a pain nurse, Cheryl Beth is a pleasure." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Unfortunately, a clunky plot overladen with coincidences mars this effort; if it spins off into a series, though, it bears watching." - Booklist.
Note: The Pain Nurse begins a new series by the author of the award-winning David Mapstone series.
Book Description: Such a pretty girl. Four years old; well-loved by her young mother, Grace. But there’s something ... off about the child. Her deathly fear of water; her night terrors; most of all, her fixation with a photo of an Irish seaside town called Coldharbour.
“Sylvie, tell me about your picture. Why’s it so special, sweetheart?” My heart is racing, but I try to make my voice quite calm.
“That’s my seaside, Grace.” Very matter-of-fact, as though this should be obvious. “I lived there, Grace. Before.”
I sit very still for a long slow moment. Cold moves over my skin.
“I don’t know about it,” I say.
“Don’t you, Grace?” She seems surprised.
Every once in a blue moon, a masterful writer dives into Gothic waters and emerges with a novel that—like Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, or, more recently, Patrick McGrath’s Asylum—simultaneously celebrates and transcends the genre. Welcome Margaret Leroy to the clan. Haunted and haunting, Yes, My Darling Daughter is a wonderfully original, deliciously suspenseful mystery. Impossible though it may seem, Grace has to face the fact that her daughter may be remembering a past life. And not only that: the danger haunting Sylvie from her past life is still very much a threat to her in this one.
Prepublication Reviews: "Heavy with atmosphere and rich in detail, Leroy's prose lures readers into a disturbing murder mystery." - Publishers Weekly.
"Leroy's delicate psychological insight falls to pieces under the weight of solving a preposterous murder mystery." - Kirkus Reviews.
"There is quite a bit of suspension of disbelief .... However, those who like Victorian gothics will enjoy getting to know Sylvie and Grace." - School Library Journal (Adult Books for Teens)
Note: Published as The Drowning Girl in the UK in May 2009.
Margaret Leroy was born in England, was born in England and studied music at Oxford. She has worked as a music therapist, teacher, and psychiatric social worker. She is the author of four previous novels.
April 14
288 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
ISBN-13: 9780312375867
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: 'Hands On Emergency. This is Jessie. Is there an emergency in the vehicle?' Roadside Assistance Operator, Jessie Dancing, knows what it's like to take a life, and she's trying to put that memory behind her. But when the call comes in from real estate tycoon Darren Markson, she thinks she hears him being killed while she's on the phone with him. This can't be, but she knows the world of violence and death is never far away. Jessie travels from Phoenix to her hometown of Tucson to let Markson's wife hear that last communication from her husband. But according to Emily he's very much alive ...
"Starred Review. Shamus Award-winning Ure's third mystery (after Forcing Amaryllis and The Fault Tree) is perhaps her finest effort to date." - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. Ure ... provides a meaty, twisty puzzle. But the real prize here is Jessie, a tough, conflicted heroine you won't soon forget." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Louise Ure currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and whichever senior golden retriever rescue dog has most recently captured her heart. She is the Shamus Award-winning author of Forcing Amaryllis and The Fault Tree. This is her third novel.
Book Description: Prussia has been overrun by Napoleon’s forces, and the Emperor’s troops have discovered a new source of funds there: enough amber to finance France’s wars. But their plans stall when the girls who collect the stones begin to disappear, only to be found gruesomely disfigured by an unknown killer. The French call upon Prussian investigator Hanno Stiffeniis, who must seek out the culprit knowing hat his own success may doom his country’s future.
Dark, intelligent, and vividly written, A Visible Darkness continues a masterful series of historical mysteries that portray a past torn between nationalism and humanism, superstition and science.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. While some readers will anticipate the solution, the pitch-perfect evocation of the period and the compelling, gloomy atmosphere more than compensate for any lack of surprise." - Publishers Weekly.
"The third dose of Stiffeniis boasts the same strong evocation of history and, refreshingly, a looser and more confident narrative voice." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Gregorio writes dense prose and detailed passages on living conditions of the time. But he excels in his depiction of an unusual sleuth who combines the wily psychology of a conquered people with the underlying philosophy of his former teacher, Emmanuel Kant." - Library Journal.
Note: Michael Gregorio is the pen name of Michael G. Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio. They live in Spoleto, Italy, and were awarded the Umbria del Cuore prize in 2007. This is the third in the series following Critique of Criminal Reason and Days of Atonement.
April 28
272 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
ISBN-13: 9780312383657
Book Description: Keith Gilman's provocative debut is a dark and atmospheric tale of an ex-cop from Philadelphia who must face old ghosts.
Louis Kline, PI, is asked to track down the missing teenage daughter of an old friend. In doing so, he uncovers truths about the alleged suicide of his friend, a fellow officer with the Philadelphia Police Department. They shared accusations that ended both their careers, and a love for the same woman. As Louis further investigates, he comes to understand the tortured life of the girl he’s trying to find, and some truths about himself.
Keith Gilman knows how cops think and he pulls back the curtain on a disturbing vision of a decaying urban world, haunted by shadows of deceit and death. Father’s Day, a novel of great psychological depth and stark visual imagery, is a terrifying exploration of what lies at the heart of our deepest fears.
Prepublication Reviews: "An impressive conclusion provides a serious jolt and appears to set Klein on the path to further gritty adventures." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. This winner of the Minotaur Books/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel competition is essential for fans of the genre." - Library Journal.
"Despite some awkward flashbacks, Gilman's debut keeps the tension strong while showing that Philadelphia isn't just about brotherly love." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Keith Gilman has been a cop in the Philadelphia area for over fifteen years. He lives in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania.
March 31
900 pages
Publisher: Interlink Books
ISBN-13: 9781566567800
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul's Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer--and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out to interrogate the man's mysterious widow, the Secret Service takes the case away from him. Barudi continues to investigate clandestinely and discovers the murderer's motive: it is a blood feud between the Mushtak and Shahin clans, reaching back to the beginnings of the 20th century. And, linked to it, a love story that can have no happy ending, for reconciliation has no place within the old tribal structures.
Rafik Schami's dazzling novel spans a century of Syrian history in which politics and religions continue to torment an entire people. Simultaneously, his poetic stories from three generations tell of the courage of lovers who risk death sooner than deny their passions. He has also written a heartfelt tribute to his hometown Damascus and a great and moving hymn to the power of love.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Schami, a major international talent, has a broad range, from the scatological to the sexually comic to the painful, and deserves to establish an American audience." - Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
"A rewarding and beautifully written, if blood-soaked, tale." - Kirkus Reviews
"With its feuds, lovers, murders, villains and assorted heroes and heroines, this is a novel to enjoy and to ponder." - Washington Post
Note: Rafik Schami was born in Damascus in 1946, came to Germany in 1971 and studied chemistry in Heidelberg. Today he is the most successful German-speaking Arabic writer. His novels have been translated into 21 languages and received numerous international awards.
March 31
368 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN-13: 9780312363291
Book Description: Two young lovers. A sultry summer night. One brutal, cold-blooded murder. In this stunning, atmospheric thriller, Brian Freeman takes you deep into Detective Jonathan Stride’s complicated past.
It’s the case that has haunted Stride for thirty years. During the summer after his junior year of high school, he fell in love with beautiful Cindy Starr, the girl who would become his wife. But on the Fourth of July, the same night that Jonny and Cindy cemented their love, Cindy’s older sister Laura was savagely murdered. The police suspected a vagrant of committing the crime, but no one was ever arrested, and the case was closed.
Now, Laura’s best friend Tish Verdure has returned to Duluth to write a book about Laura’s death. Tish knows secrets that a lot of people would like to keep hidden, including information about Cindy that leave Stride questioning his entire past. When a young girl is found drowned in the St. Louis River and a witness to the original murder attempts suicide, Stride realizes that the violence of the past is spilling over into the present.
As he unearths the explosive events that led to Laura’s murder, Stride discovers that the ripples of her death changed everyone’s lives, including his own. Can Stride put to rest the ghosts of his past, or will they devour him whole?
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. [T]his harrowing and heartrending novel will leave readers guessing until the very last pages." - Publishers Weekly.
"As alternating chapters excerpt the proposed book and follow the current-day story, Freeman builds a suspenseful tale of terror and secrets kept too long." - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. The good “guys” are gratifying to watch here, too, from shrewd and vulnerable Stride to his detective partner, Maggie Bei, who’s, smart, sassy, and wry." - Booklist.
Book Description: Berlin, between the two world wars. When an executive at the renowned Ufa film studios is found dead floating in his office bathtub, it falls to Nikolai Hoffner, a chief inspector in the Kriminalpolizei, to investigate. With the help of Fritz Lang (the German director) and Alby Pimm (leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin), Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin’s sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler’s Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Being swept up in the case are Hoffner’s new lover, an American talent agent for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his two sons: Georg, who has dropped out of school to work at Ufa, and Sascha, his angry, older son, who, unknown to his father, has become fully entrenched in the new German Workers Party as the aide to its Berlin leader, Joseph Goebbels.
When we last met Hoffner, it was 1919, and he had taken on the disappearance and death of Rosa Luxembourg in Rosa, a novel the critic John Leonard hailed as “a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux.” Shadow and Light is equally brilliant and atmospheric, and even harder to put down or shake off. Like Joseph Kanon or Alan Furst, Rabb magically fuses a smart, energetic narrative with layers of fascinating, vividly documented history. The result is a stunning historical thriller, created by a writer to celebrate—and contend with.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Both a first-rate historical novel and a singularly artful crime noir. - Library Journal.
"Rabb's prose can occasionally be provokingly gnomic, but as usual, he has a good story to tell and most readers will bear with him contentedly. " - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review. Well-conceived cameos by director Fritz Lang and actor Peter Lorre add to the intrigue." - Publishers Weekly.
Note: Jonathan Rabb is the author of three previous novels: Rosa, The Overseer, and The Book of Q. He lives in New York with his wife and two children.
Long Lost: Myron Bolitar Series #9 by Harlan Coben
March 31
384 pages
Publisher: Dutton
ISBN-13: 9780525951056
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Myron Bolitar hasn’t heard from Terese Collins since their torrid affair ended ten years ago, so her desperate phone call from Paris catches him completely off guard. In a shattering admission, Terese reveals the tragic story behind her disappearance — her struggles to get pregnant, the greatest moment of her life when her baby was born … and the fatal accident that robbed her of it all: her marriage, her happiness and her beloved only daughter.
Now a suspect in the murder of her ex-husband in Paris, Terese has nowhere else to turn for help. Myron heeds the call. But then a startling piece of evidence turns the entire case upside down, laying bare Terese’s long-buried family secrets … and the very real possibility that her daughter may still be alive.
In grave danger from unknown assailants in a country where nothing is as it seems, Myron and Terese race to stay a step ahead of Homeland Security, Interpol, and Mossad. Soon they are working at breakneck pace, not only to learn what really happened to Terese’s long-lost little girl — but to uncover a sinister plot with shocking global implications.
Prepublication Reviews: "[A] fast-paced ninth thriller ... Bolitar fans will cheer their hero every step of the way." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Fans are strongly advised to leave plenty of time to plow through the case at one sitting, as any delay would be fatal to the suspension of disbelief it demands. On the other hand, those few hours will leave the easy chair smoking." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Coben puts a wicked topical spin on Children of the Corn in an action-packed thriller with a horrific yet credible premise." - Booklist.
"This is sure to please both Bolitar fans and those who have only read Coben's roller coaster-ride thrillers." - Library Journal.
The Dakota Cipher: An Ethan Gage Adventure, #3 by William Dietrich
April 1
368 pages
Publisher: Harper
ISBN-13: 9780061568008
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Ethan Gage, the hero of Napoleon's Pyramids and The Rosetta Key, just wants to enjoy the fruits of victory after helping Napoleon win the Battle of Marengo and end an undeclared naval war with the United States.
But a foolish tryst with Bonaparte's married sister and the improbable schemes of a grizzled Norwegian named Magnus Bloodhammer soon send Ethan on a new treasure hunt on America's frontier that will have him dodging scheming aristocrats and hostile Indians.
In 1801 newly elected president Thomas Jefferson, taking office in the burgeoning capital of Washington, D.C., convinces Ethan and Magnus to go on a scouting expedition—one that precedes that of Lewis and Clark—to investigate reports of woolly mammoths and blue-eyed Indians.
The pair have their own motive, however, which they neglect to share with the president: a search for the mythical hammer of the Norse god Thor, allegedly brought by fugitive Norsemen to the center of North America 150 years before Columbus. Can the hammer control thunder and lightning? Is there a core of truth to this myth?
Ethan's journey takes him across the Great Lakes to country no white man has seen, but not before he becomes entangled with a British temptress, a comely captive, a French voyageur, and a landscape as breathtaking as it is perilous.
Ancient Norse runes will lead him to his most fantastic discovery yet—and to wonder, danger, mystery, and sorrow that will test every ounce of wit and skill Gage can muster. The Dakota Cipher is another exciting adventure by a writer who has quickly become one of America's most beloved and inventive thriller masterminds.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. [A] tale rich in intrigue and impressive historic detail with abundant wit and humor." - Publishers Weekly.
"This fun blend of history and adventure makes for a terrific, fast-paced read as Gage once again winds up inadvertently impacting history." - Library Journal.
Note: William Dietrich is the author of eight novels, which have sold in twenty-eight languages, as well as several works of nonfiction. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, historian, and naturalist, and teaches at Western Washington University.
April 2
336 pages
Publisher: Dutton
ISBN-13: 9780525951025
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In the tradition of John le Carré, The Secret Keeper, set in war-torn Sierra Leone, tells the story of one man’s search for the truth in a nation where the rules of civilized society simply don’t apply.
Four years ago, British journalist Danny Kellerman was given the opportunity of a lifetime: covering the political crisis in Sierra Leone as a war correspondent. While in Freetown he begins a passionate love affair with a beautiful American woman named Maria Tirado, who helps run an orphanage for ex-child soldiers. But Danny can’t shake the feeling that Maria is hiding something from him, and as the crisis escalates, Danny has no choice but to leave; he boards a helicopter out of Freetown and never turns back….
Until four years later, when, with a new relationship and a new life in London, Danny receives a mysterious, urgent letter from Maria. She’s in trouble and needs Danny’s help. But the letter is dated three weeks earlier, and it’s already too late. Danny learns that Maria was murdered in a roadside robbery.
Haunted and heartbroken, Danny leaves London and returns to Freetown. Although there is now peace in Sierra Leone, corruption is rampant and every promising lead is a dead end. But with the help of old friends and contacts, Danny uncovers a string of secrets that sheds a shocking light on the woman he thought he knew—and reveals a hidden truth that could destroy those in power. Trapped in the heart of a dangerous nation where he can trust no one, Danny is forced to choose between his journalistic integrity and the devastating consequences of speaking the truth.
Reader Rating: 3.9 out of 5
This book got generally positive reviews from the 35 BookBrowse Members who have posted reviews.
Read the reviews.
Prepublication Reviews: "While the surprise-filled final chapter may strike some as a hastily contrived escape hatch, Harris shows a flair for intrigue that bodes well for future novels." - Publishers Weekly.
"As if Graham Greene himself had returned to Africa." - Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland.
"A fast-paced, stylish and gripping thriller laced with international intrigue. Harris plunges headfirst into the frightening reality of Africa in the throes of a blood-soaked civil war." - Nicholas Shaxson, author of Poisoned Wells.
Note: Paul Harris is a journalist who has written for Reuters, the Associated Press, and The Daily Telegraph. He spent four years in Africa, where he covered the conflict in Sierra Leone. Now The Observer's U.S. correspondent, he lives in New York City.
Browse an excerpt from the book and invite the author to chat at The Secret Keeperwebsite.
April 7
336 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN-13: 9781416570868
Book Description: Natalie Raines, one of Broadway's brightest stars, accidentally discovers who killed her former roommate and sets in motion a series of shocking events that puts more than one life in extreme peril.
While Natalie and her roommate, Jamie Evans, were both struggling young actresses, Jamie had been involved with a mysterious married man to whom she referred only by nickname. Natalie comes face to face with him years later and inadvertently addresses him by the nickname Jamie had used. A few days later, Natalie is found in her home in Closter, New Jersey, dying from a gunshot wound.
Immediately the police suspect Natalie's theatrical agent and soon-to-be-ex-husband, Gregg Aldrich. He had long been a "person of interest" and was known to have stalked Natalie to find out if she was seeing another man. But no charges are brought against him until two years later, when Jimmy Easton, a career criminal, suddenly comes forward to claim that Aldrich had tried to hire him to kill his wife. Easton knows details about the Aldrich home that only someone who had been there -- to plan a murder, for instance -- could possibly know.
The case is a plum assignment for Emily Wallace, an attractive thirty-two-year-old assistant prosecutor. As she spends increasingly long hours preparing for the trial, a seemingly well-meaning neighbor offers to take care of her dog in her absence. Unaware of his violent past, she gives him a key to her home...
As Aldrich's trial is making headlines, her boss warns Emily that this high-profile case will reveal personal matters about her, such as the fact that she had a heart transplant. And, during the trial, Emily experiences sentiments that defy all reason and continue after Gregg Aldrich's fate is decided by the jury.
In the meantime, she does not realize that her own life is now at risk.
Prepublication Reviews: "It's a shame that the climax awaiting them is the most strained and silly the bestselling author has ever fobbed off on her devoted readers." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 7
384 pages
Publisher: Putnam Books
ISBN-13: 9780399155697
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: The killings on Isle Royale have left Anna drained and haunted, her memories of her time with the wolf study group forever marred by the carnage on the island. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, she is on administrative leave, per her superintendent’s urging. Anna wonders if the leave might not be permanent, either by her own choice or that of the National Park Service.
The one bright spot in Anna’s life is Paul, her husband of less than a year. Hoping the warmth and the adventure of a raft trip in Big Bend National Park will lift her spirits, Paul takes Anna to southwest Texas, where the sun is hot and the Rio Grande is running high. The sheer beauty of the Chihuahuan Desert and the power of the river work their magic—until the raft is lost in the rapids and a young college student falls overboard, resulting in an even more grisly discovery.
Caught in a strainer between two boulders and more dead than alive, is a pregnant woman, hair and arms tangled in the downed branches. Instead of the soul-soothing experience they’d longed for, Anna and Paul find themselves sucked into a labyrinth of intrigue that leads from the Mexican desert to the steps of the Governor’s Mansion in Austin, Texas.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Leave it to Anna to tackle both racism and sexism in her usual, indefatigable way." - Library Journal.
"Bestseller Barr skillfully blends sticky border issues, marital strife and politics in her exciting 15th novel..." - Publishers Weekly.
April 7
384 pages
Publisher: Touchstone
ISBN-13: 9781416591009
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Just minutes after winning a $1.6 million wrongful-death verdict, attorney David Sloane confronts the one case that threatens to blemish his unbeaten record in the courtroom. Beverly Ford wants Sloane to sue the United States government and military in the mysterious death of her husband, James, a national guardsman killed in Iraq. While a decades-old military doctrine might make Ford's case impossible to win, Sloane, a former soldier himself, is compelled to find justice for the widow and her four children in what is certain to become the biggest challenge of his career.
With little hard evidence to go on, Sloane calls on his friend, reclusive former CIA agent turned private investigator Charles Jenkins, to track down the other men serving with Ford the night he died. Alarmingly, two of the four who returned home alive didn't stay that way for long, and though the mission's wheelchair-bound commander now works for a civilian contractor, he refuses to talk. The final - and youngest - soldier is also the most elusive, but he's their only shot at discovering the truth - if Sloane and Jenkins can keep him alive long enough to tell it.
Meanwhile, Sloane isn't the only one on a manhunt. As he propels his case into a federal courtroom, those seeking to hide the truth threaten Sloane's family, forcing his new wife Tina and stepson Jake into hiding, where they become the targets of a relentless killer. Now Sloane must race to uncover what really happened on that fatal mission, not only to bring justice to a family wronged but to keep himself and the people closest to him from becoming the next casualties....
Prepublication Reviews: "Predictable situations - Sloane's crusade endangers his wife and stepson - are a reminder that the author's forte is page-turning action, not imaginative plotting." - Publishers Weekly.
"Good guys to like, villains to hiss, windmills to attack. If it's all a bit pat, Dugoni ... plots deftly enough to keep most readers happy anyway." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Dugoni is able to rise above some of the routine aspects of the genre by presenting an interesting, contemporary plot that includes a possible Iraq War conspiracy." - Library Journal.
Note: Robert Dugoni has practiced as a civil litigator in San Francisco and Seattle
for seventeen years. In 1999 he left the full-time practice of law to write, and
is a two-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary
Contest. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a degree in
journalism and worked as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times
before obtaining his doctorate of jurisprudence from the University of
California at Los Angeles School of Law. He lives with his wife and two children
in the Pacific Northwest.
April 8
400 pages
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN-13: 9780802118882
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: November 2033, Joe Benton, a three-term democratic senator from Arizona, is the newly elected American president. Just days into his presidency, Benton learns of devastating news: his predecessor has engaged in failed climate change talks with China, and previous estimates regarding the effect of global warming on rising sea levels have been grossly underestimated. Miami will soon be washed away, and thirty million coastal-dwelling citizens in the United States will need to be relocated. For Benton, the only solution is to abandon multilateral negotiations in the impending Kyoto 4 and renew top-secret talks with his country's largest rival and now the world's leading polluter, China, to force it to drastically lower its emission levels before it is, simply, too late.
Ultimatum explores the most pressing issue of the twenty-first century—the future of our planet—and shows the effects that climate change will have on our lives and those of our children. It is a brilliant character study of a U.S. president and his key staff, and an impressively convincing portrayal of the inner workings of the U.S. administration. With tension escalating on almost every page and an astonishing and terrifying ending, Matt Glass's visionary and deeply unsettling thriller steers us into the dark heart of political intrigue and a future that is all too believable.
Prepublication Reviews: "Glass's debut, an anxiety-inducing thriller about global warming, effectively taps a hot topic and handles it with flair." - Publishers Weekly.
"Glass's plot is fresh and arresting, but the book lacks distinctive, identifiable characters to drive it." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A rare thriller that terrifies not because it is possible, but because it feels probable—if not inevitable. ... A masterful novel with deftly drawn characters, real settings and a dark, dark understanding of geopolitical reality. The ending will leave you gasping." - Douglas Preston.
Note: Matthew Glass lives in England. Ultimatum is his first novel.
Living Witness: A Gregor Demarkian Novel by Jane Haddam
April 14
400 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
ISBN-13: 9780312380861
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In her 91 years, Ann-Victoria Hadley has often been the most hated person in Snow Hill, Pennsylvania. But now, it’s worse than ever. After a new school board inserted “intelligent design” into the curriculum, they were sued by a coalition including Hadley, the one member of the board who wouldn’t go along with the rest. With the trial about to start and the town a national laughing stock, Annie-Vic is found clubbed into unconsciousness and not expected to survive. The local police chief, one of the school board members, can’t investigate it himself and doesn’t trust the state police. So he brings in Gregor Demarkian.
Gregor Demarkian, former FBI agent, is happy to help—his wedding is coming up and he’s desperate for a bit of time away from his too-involved neighbors on Cavanaugh Street in Philadelphia. Even if it is to investigate a brutal crime in a powder-keg of a small town.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Haddam's excellent 24th Gregor Demarkian novel ... explores the inner life of her detective hero without cluttering up the plot - and offers an ingenious fair-play puzzle." - Publishers Weekly
"Haddam ...defeats the anti-scientists with fact as well as tact. If another "monkey trial" comes up, the evolutionists should ask her to write their brief." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Repetition and an overly long telling make this one for devoted series fans only." - Library Journal.
April 21
464 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13: 9780446539753
Book Description: It began with what seemed like an ordinary children's birthday party. Friends and family gathered to celebrate. There were balloons and cake, games and gifts.
This party, however, was far from ordinary. It was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat. And it ended with a daring kidnapping ... which immediately turned into a national security nightmare.
Sean King and Michelle Maxwell were not looking to become involved. As former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, they had no reason to be. The FBI doesn't want them interfering. But years ago, Sean King saved the First Lady's husband, then a senator, from political disaster. Now, Sean is the one person the First Lady trusts, and she presses Sean and Michelle into the desperate search to rescue the abducted child.
With Michelle still battling her own demons, and forces aligned on all sides against her and Sean, the two are pushed to the absolute limit. In the race to save an innocent victim, the line between friend and foe will become impossible to define ... or defend.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Baldacci's careful plotting and confidant depictions of national security procedures make this a thinking man's thriller." - Publishers Weekly.
February 9
352 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN-13: 9780312380731
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a "Have You Seen This Child?" flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops—the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and won’t be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth. And she can’t shake the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up? She investigates, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, and when she digs too deep, she risks losing her own life—and that of the son she loves. Lisa Scottoline breaks new ground in Look Again, a thriller that’s both heart-stopping and heart-breaking, and sure to have new fans and book clubs buzzing.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Scottoline's best novel to date will have faithful fans and new readers singing her praises." - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. For once Scottoline subordinates the criminal plot to the human-interest story that rides side-saddle in all her thrillers...and the result is her best book yet." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review. Bestseller Scottoline scores another bull's-eye with this terrifying thriller about an adoptive parent's worst fear" - Publishers Weekly.
Visit the publisher's website for an excerpt and other information and, below, view a video of Lisa discussing Look Again and why she recommends it to book clubs:
Note: Publishing history: Hardcover April 2009. Paperback February 2010
March 31
384 pages
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN-13: 9780743437202
Book Description: Jocelyn Minton is a woman torn between two worlds. Her mother grew up attending private schools and afternoon teas, but she married the local handyman. After her mother died when Joce was only five years old, her father remarried into his own class, and Joce became an outsider -- until she met Edilean Harcourt. Although she was sixty years Joce's senior, Miss Edi was a kindred soul who understood her like no one else ever had.
When Miss Edi passes away, she leaves Joce all her worldly possessions, including an eighteenth-century house and a letter with clues to a mystery that began in 1941. In the letter, Miss Edi also mentions that she has found the perfect man for Joce -- a handsome young lawyer. Joce is shocked to learn that the mystery, the house, and the future love of her life are all in Edilean, a small town in Virginia that Miss Edi never told her about. Hurt that the woman who meant so much to her kept so many secrets, Jocelyn moves to this tight-knit village in an attempt to understand the legacy that has been left to her. As she begins to dig into Miss Edi's mystery, she soon discovers some shocking surprises about her family's history and her own future -- and she meets a man with his own mysterious past.
Prepublication Reviews: "For all the novel's coincidences and predictability, readers will find it hard to resist the charm of Edilean ... and, of course, the series to follow." - Publishers Weekly.
April 21
384 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN-13: 9780312368111
Book Description: Emily Hudson is an archeologist who travels the world in search of priceless artifacts from war-torn countries and other hot spots. Her best friend and partner, Joel Levy, is always at her side—until one day, her entire crew is massacred and Joel and Emily are held captive. Victims of one of the most ruthless and evil human beings on earth. For two weeks they try to survive, until Emily is the unwitting instrument in Joel’s demise.
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John Garrett has worked for the CIA, MI6, and whoever else needed his services. Now, the CIA comes calling with a desperate mission for him: save Emily Hudson. But their may be more to this job than they let him know. And soon, his connection to Emily has him questioning everything he thought to be true. Emily has vengeance on her mind. Will Garrett aid her in getting revenge? Can Emily help him get to the truth behind a bigger conspiracy? Or will they both die trying…With lightning-fast pacing, plot twists and shocking betrayals, Iris Johansen is at the top of her game in this latest thriller.
Prepublication Reviews: "An especially far-fetched plot and unconvincing dialogue mar this romantic thriller." - Publishers Weekly.
March 26
704 pages
Publisher: Dutton
ISBN-13: 9780525950516
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A mind-bending, time-bending, zeitgeist-defining novel about the days leading up to December 21, 2012—the day the Maya predicted the world would end
December 21, 2012. The day time stops. Jed DeLanda, a descendant of the Maya living in the year 2012, is a math prodigy who spends his time playing Go against his computer and raking in profits from online trading. (His secret weapon? A Mayan divination game—once used for predicting corn-harvest cycles, now proving very useful in predicting corn futures—that his mother taught him.) But Jed’s life is thrown into chaos when his former mentor, the game theorist Taro, and a mysterious woman named Marena Park, invite him to give his opinion on a newly discovered Mayan codex.
Marena and Taro are looking for a volunteer to travel back to 664 AD to learn more about a “sacrifice game” described in the codex. Jed leaps at the chance, and soon scientists are replicating his brain waves and sending them through a wormhole, straight into the mind of a Mayan king…
Only something goes wrong. Instead of becoming a king, Jed arrives inside a ballplayer named Chacal who is seconds away from throwing himself down the temple steps as a human sacrifice. If Jed can live through the next few minutes, he might just save the world.
Bringing to mind Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and Gary Jennings’s Aztec, yet entirely unique, In the Courts of the Sun takes you from the distant past to the near future in a brilliant kaleidoscope of ideas.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Fans of the late Michael Crichton will welcome this engrossing thriller. ... The period details are as convincing as those in Simon Levack's superb Aztec mysteries." - Publishers Weekly.
"End-of-the-world aficionados will find it compelling, but librarians will have a hard time booktalking it. It also ends with the dreaded four words: End of Book One." - Library Journal.
In the Courts of the Sun by Brian D’Amato is an enthralling and original read, a stunningly inventive novel that will keep you turning the pages until the wee hours. With the sure hand of a master storyteller, D’Amato weaves together Mayan history, modern science, game theory and the coming Mayan apocalypse to deliver a gripping read. Beware December 21, 2012!" - Douglas Preston.
"A remarkable, unique, stand-out book. Prodigious in its scope, its originality, its ambition, its intelligence, and the mastery of its research. In a word: awesome. Or brilliant. Make that two words: awesome and brilliant." - Raymond Khoury.
A Madness of Angels: Or The Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin
April 6
464 pages
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN-13: 9780316041256
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: For Matthew Swift, today is not like any other day. It is the day on which he returns to life.
Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift finds himself breathing once again, lying in bed in his London home.
Except that it's no longer his bed, or his home. And the last time this sorcerer was seen alive, an unknown assailant had gouged a hole so deep in his chest that his death was irrefutable...despite his body never being found.
He doesn't have long to mull over his resurrection though, or the changes that have been wrought upon him. His only concern now is vengeance. Vengeance upon his monstrous killer and vengeance upon the one who brought him back.
Prepublication Reviews: "Griffin's lush prose and chatty dialogue...create a wonderful ambiance but often diffuse the tension, leaving readers to make their own way through the uncomplicated plot." - Publishers Weekly.
"She writes with assurance and polish, and her grasp of modern mythology - the magic and the poetry inherent in contemporary life - is strong. A very promising start, and great things seem likely to follow. " - Kirkus Reviews
Note: Kate Griffin is the pseudonym of Young Adult author Catherine Webb. This is her first novel writing as Kate Griffin and her first novel for adults.
April 14
480 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN-13: 9780765305251
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Some see stem-cell research as mankind’s greatest scientific breakthrough. Others see a blasphemous attempt to play God. Suddenly, the possibility of immortality exists. Two brothers, both doctors, stand on opposite sides of the controversy. To Dr. Arthur Marshak, his work is a momentous gift to humanity. To Dr. Jessie Marshak, it is a curse. Between them stands a beautiful, remarkable woman both brothers will do anything to save.
Somehow, before it’s too late, Arthur and Jessie Marshak must bridge the gap that divides them…on an issue that could mean nothing less than life or death for millions.
Prepublication Reviews: "Even an implausible love triangle and a cast of two-dimensional characters can't dim the forcefulness of Bova's message: the singular significance of science in modern-day society." - Publishers Weekly.
"Bova adds the tension of courtroom drama to a medical thriller ... will please Bova fans and bring him new ones." - Library Journal.
"An effective mix of science, politics, and family struggle in a novel that should reach a wide audience." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: A six-time winner of the Hugo Award, a former editor of Analog, former editorial director of Omni, and past president of the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America, Ben Bova is the author of more than a hundred works of science fact and fiction. He lives in Florida.
March 30
384 pages
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
ISBN-13: 9780393064834
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In this expansive cultural biography of Judas, prominent scholar Susan Gubar explores the meaning of Jesus' betrayer over twenty centuries. Who was Judas Iscariot and why did he betray Jesus? Despite the recent recovery of a Gnostic Gospel bearing his name, the centrality of the twelfth apostle has gone largely ignored. Yet, because of gaps and incongruities in his appearance in the Bible, artists throughout the ages have returned to this man, whose treacherous act inaugurates Jesus' death and resurrection.
In this comprehensive, interdisciplinary work, Susan Gubar explains that Judas came to stand for the Jewish people because he reflects ambivalence about a composite Judeo-Christianity as well as changing attitudes toward the body, blood, and money; greed and hypocrisy; suicide and repentance; homosexuality and divinity. Over twenty centuries, a figure of disgrace turns into a dignitary. Gubar shows how Jesus' most notorious disciple--known for a kiss--has provoked profound reflections on the problem of evil that still resonate today.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. The evolution of the Judas myth is an important story, one not to be missed." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. An exhaustive, beautifully written cultural history of our favorite wrongdoer, Gubar's work is an immensely rewarding and crucially important book. Highly recommended." - Library Journal.
"If Judas had not existed, God would have had to invent him. The divine script called for betrayal with a kiss, and someone had to be cast in that role. Judas, the intimate friend of the Son, became thus the indispensable collaborator of the Father and a figure of endlessly inviting ambivalence for the Western imagination. Susan Gubar has assembled a tour-de-force collection of Judas-art and Judas-literature and turned it into a Judas biography full of thought, heart, and fascination." - Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography.
"Judas is a dark journey through the murderousness of Christian Anti-Semitism, culminating in the mass slaughter of more than a and their associated European butchers. Lucid, study is close to definitive on the fictive figure of Judas." - Harold Bloom.
Note: Susan Gubar (Ph.D. University of Iowa) is a Distinguished
Professor at Indiana University, where she has won numerous teaching awards,
most recently the Faculty Mentor Award from the Indiana University Graduate and
Professional Student Organization. In addition to her critical collaboration
with Sandra Gilbert, she is the author of Racechanges: White Skin, Black
Face in American Culture (1997), Critical Condition: Feminism at the
Turn of the Century (2000), Poetry After Auschwitz: Remembering What
One Never Knew (2003), and Rooms of Our Own (2006), and editor of
the first annotated edition of Woolf's A Room of One's Own (2005).
Book Description: "In the end," writes Tori McClure, "I know I rowed across the Atlantic to find my heart, but in the beginning, I wasn't aware that it was missing."
During June 1998, Tori McClure set out to row across the Atlantic Ocean by herself in a twenty-three-foot plywood boat with no motor or sail. Within days she lost all communication with shore, but nevertheless she decided to keep going. Not only did she lose the sound of a friendly voice, she lost updates on the location of the Gulf Stream and on the weather. Unfortunately for Tori, 1998 is still on record as the worst hurricane season in the North Atlantic. In deep solitude and perilous conditions, she was nonetheless determined to prove what one person with a mission can do. When she was finally brought to her knees by a series of violent storms that nearly killed her, she had to signal for help and go home in what felt like complete disgrace.
Back in Kentucky, however, Tori's life began to change in unexpected ways. She fell in love. At the age of thirty-five, she embarked on a serious relationship for the first time, making her feel even more vulnerable than sitting alone in a tiny boat in the middle of the Atlantic. She went to work for Muhammad Ali, who told her that she did not want to be known as the woman who "almost" rowed across the Atlantic Ocean. And she knew that he was right.
In this thrilling story of high adventure and romantic quest, Tori McClure discovers through her favorite way—the hard way—that the most important thing in life is not to prove you are superhuman but to fully to embrace your own humanity. With a wry sense of humor and a strong voice, she gives us a true memoir of an explorer who maps her world with rare emotional honesty.
Reader Rating: 4.4 out of 5
This book got generally positive reviews from the 15 BookBrowse Members who have posted reviews.
Read the reviews.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. An inspirational story of losing pride, embracing humanity and accepting love. " - Kirkus Reviews.
"Tori Murden McClure is one of the most remarkable women I have ever met; her journey across the ocean is equal only to her journey of the heart. This is a story of courage, adventure, and personal discovery that will appeal to women--and men of all ages." - Candice Bergen.
Unlike Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Tori Murden McClure's true story of a woman and the sea and a boat named American Pearl is one of victory. But her triumph is not merely over the elements. Tori finds the courage to cross the inner seas and discover not monsters but a land of promise and an expanded opportunity to love. If you want to be inspired, read this book. You won't stop till you've finished.
- Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab's Wife.
Note: Tori Murden McClure is the vice president for external relations, enrollment management, and student affairs at Spalding University. Her firsts include being the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic and to ski over land to the South Pole. She has an AB from Smith College, where she currently serves on the board of trustees, a master's in divinity from Harvard University, a JD from the University of Louisville School of Law, and an MFA in writing from Spalding University. She has worked as a chaplain at Boston City Hospital and for Muhammad Ali at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her husband.
The Hornet's Sting: The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum by Mark Ryan
April 1
368 pages
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
ISBN-13: 9781602397101
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Assassination by crossbow, refueling homemade planes in mid-air, mother and daughter seduction - Allied spy Tommy Sneum has done it all. The exploits of Tommy Sneum, the Danish-born spy who died in 2007, made him a legend in espionage circles. But until now, the full extraordinary story of Sneum’s action-packed career as a British-run spy had never been told.
Working with hundreds of hours of interviews with Sneum, Mark Ryan describes how Tommy made an incredible escape from Denmark in a battered old Hornet Moth aircraft—which he had to refuel in mid-air by climbing out on the wing. Later, he escaped from Denmark again—by walking across a treacherous frozen sea on which two of his companions died.
Tommy brought over precious intelligence about the Nazi radar installations in Denmark and their atom bomb—his reward was to be imprisoned in Brixton as a suspected double agent and threatened with execution. He cheated the hangman - but it is only with the publication of this enthralling book that Sneum can be celebrated as, in the words of Professor R.V. Jones, Churchill’s chief of scientific intelligence, "one of the true heroes of World War II." According to Major General Richard Eyre Lloyd, Sneum's King’s Medal for Courage should have been the prestigious Victoria Cross.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Ken Follet's The Hornet's Sting was based on this World War II episode, but the real account is more exciting than fiction: readers will find the book hard to put down." - Library Journal.
"Ryan skillfully builds and sustains interest through a narrative that grows increasingly convoluted." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Mark Ryan interviewed Sneum at length before the former spy died in 2007 aged 89.
Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox
April 7
288 pages
Publisher: Hyperion
ISBN-13: 9781401303389
Book Description: There are many words to describe Michael J. Fox: Actor. Husband. Father. Activist. But readers of Always Looking Up will soon add another to the list: Optimist. Michael writes about the hard-won perspective that helped him see challenges as opportunities. Instead of building walls around himself, he developed a personal policy of engagement and discovery: an emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual outlook that has served him throughout his struggle with Parkinson's disease. Michael's exit from a very demanding, very public arena offered him the time - and the inspiration - to open up new doors leading to unexpected places. One door even led him to the center of his own family, the greatest destination of all.
The last ten years, which is really the stuff of this book, began with such a loss: my retirement from Spin City. I found myself struggling with a strange new dynamic: the shifting of public and private personas. I had been Mike the actor, then Mike the actor with PD. Now was I just Mike with PD. Parkinson's had consumed my career and, in a sense, had become my career. But where did all of this leave Me? I had to build a new life when I was already pretty happy with the old one..
Always Looking Up is a memoir of this last decade, told through the critical themes of Michael's life: work, politics, faith, and family. The book is a journey of self-discovery and reinvention, and a testament to the consolations that protect him from the ravages of Parkinson's.
With the humor and wit that captivated fans of his first book, Lucky Man, Michael describes how he became a happier, more satisfied person by recognizing the gifts of everyday life.
I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles by Lily Burana
April 14
368 pages
Publisher: Weinstein Books
ISBN-13: 9781602860834
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A former stripper with a penchant for fishnets and anarchist politics, Lily's lacerating wit and rebellious past never would have suggested a marriage into the military. But then she met Major Mike, a Military Intelligence officer and professor at West Point, and fell hopelessly in love, resulting in a most unorthodox fairytale romance -- poignant, sometimes painful, and utterly unpredictable.
After Lily and Mike tied the knot, life as an Army wife proved to be a rough adjustment for authority-averse Lily. When Mike was deployed in the War on Terror, Lily was suddenly left to endure his absence alone, with no friends, no support system, and no knowledge of the vast and confusing military world into which she had married.
Upon Mike's return from the war, the couple moved to historic West Point. With the support of the other military wives, Lily worked through the daily struggle to find her way and came to know and love a group of unlikely friends. Together, Mike and Lily suffered through the nightmare of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while Lily suffered bouts of depression that nearly ended their marriage. Through it all, Lily struggled with her preconceptions about the military and coped with being married to a good soldier fighting a brutal war.
From harrowing emotion to the dishy details of being an Army wife, Lily Burana bares her heart and soul as a modern military spouse. I Love a Man in Uniform is a profoundly moving story of how a woman can locate, and heal, her true self.
Prepublication Reviews: "One of those rare memoirs that both teach and make us laugh." - Kirkus Reviews.
"The War on Terror, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression all rear their ugly heads in a work that will no doubt attract other military wives and husbands." - Library Journal.
"Lily Burana is as American as apple pie, dazzling as a Fourth of July firecracker, and smarter than a lash from a Senate Majority whip. Equal parts Cultural Studies professor and bombshell geek, she teases words into impossibly satisfying configurations. Her sparkling prose is like brain tonic served in a coconut shell - it's packaged so whimsically we forget we're being schooled." - Diablo Cody, screen writer of Juno.
Note: Lily Burana is the author of the acclaimed Strip City and the novel
Try. Her writing about the domestic side of military affiars has been
published in the New York Times Op-Ed pages and Slate. Other
features and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, the
Washington Post, GQ, Glamour, Self, The New York Observer, The Village Voice,
Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Salon, and many other publications. She has
been a contributing editor at New York Magazine and SPIN.
The Horse Boy: A Father's Quest to Heal His Son by Rupert Isaacson
April 14
368 pages
Publisher: Little Brown & Company
ISBN-13: 9780316008235
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: When his son Rowan was diagnosed with autism, Rupert Isaacson was devastated, afraid he might never be able to communicate with his child. But when Isaacson, a lifelong horseman, rode their neighbor's horse with Rowan, Rowan improved immeasurably. He was struck with a crazy idea: why not take Rowan to Mongolia, the one place in the world where horses and shamanic healing intersected?
The Horse Boy is the dramatic and heartwarming story of that impossible adventure. In Mongolia, the family found undreamed of landscapes and people, unbearable setbacks, and advances beyond their wildest dreams. This is a deeply moving, truly one-of-a-kind story - of a family willing to go to the ends of the earth to help their son, and of a boy learning to connect with the world for the first time.
"Breathtaking atmosphere, solid prose and stunning cultural observations can't obscure troubling parental desperation and skewed priorities." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A colorful real-life adventure with inspiring results." - Good Housekeeping.
"Rupert Isaacson has conjured a nonfiction journey that reads like an epic novel. It is a book of endless amazements. The world of Mongolian shamans, the details of adventuresome travel, the mysterious world of autism-all are amazing. Soon you realize that the world of horses is mysterious, too-and, yes, amazing. By the time you are in the grip of this book, you'll see love, marriage, and parenthood as realms of magic, profound power, and further amazements. The Horse Boy can change the way you see your life, and it's a terrifically good read at the same time. It feels like a classic." - Luis Alberto Urrea.
Note: Rupert Isaacson was born in London to a South African mother and a Zimbabwean father. Isaacson's first book, The Healing Land , was a 2004 New York Times Notable Book. He has traveled extensively in Africa, Asia, and North America for the
British press and now lives in Texas, with his wife, Kristin, and their son, Rowan.
Jantsen's Gift: A True Story of Grief, Rescue, and Grace by Pam Cope
April 16
320 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN-13: 9780446199698
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Nine years ago, Pam Cope owned a cozy hair salon in the tiny town of Neosho, Missouri, and her life revolved around her son's baseball games, her daughter's dance lessons, and family trips to places like Disney World. She had never been out of the country, nor had she any desire to travel far from home.
Then, on June 16th, 1999, her life changed forever with the death of her 15-year-old son from an undiagnosed heart ailment.
Needing to get as far away as possible from everything that reminded her of her loss, she accepted a friend's invitation to travel to Vietnam, and, from the moment she stepped off the plane, everything she had been feeling since her son's death began to shift. By the time she returned home, she had a new mission: to use her pain to change the world, one small step at a time, one child at a time. Today, she is the mother of two children adopted from Vietnam. More than that, she and her husband have created a foundation called "Touch A Life," dedicated to helping desperate children in countries as far-flung as Vietnam, Cambodia and Ghana.
Pam Cope's story is on one level a moving, personal account of loss and recovery, but on a deeper level, it offers inspiration to anyone who has ever suffered great personal tragedy or those of us who dream about making a difference in the world.
Prepublication Reviews: "This is a wonderful story of a woman whose personal tragedy gave birth to a gift and how she fulfilled that legacy to make the world a better place." - Publishers Weekly.
"The author's charitable, compassionate nature saturates the narrative, giving it a smooth, unrushed flow ... skillfully written account of finding hope after grief." - Kirkus Reviews.
A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy by Thomas Buergenthal
April 20
256 pages
Publisher: Little Brown & Company
ISBN-13: 9780316043403
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Thomas Buergenthal, now a Judge in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, tells his astonishing experiences as a young boy in his memoir A Lucky Child. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 10 after surviving two ghettos and a labor camp. Separated first from his mother and then his father, Buergenthal managed by his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck to survive on his own. Almost two years after his liberation, Buergenthal was miraculously reunited with his mother and in 1951 arrived in the U.S. to start a new life.
Now dedicated to helping those subjected to tyranny throughout the world, Buergenthal writes his story with a simple clarity that highlights the stark details of unimaginable hardship. A Lucky Child is a book that demands to be read by all.
Prepublication Reviews: "Buergenthal's authentic, moving tale reveals that his lifelong commitment to human rights sprang from the ashes of Auschwitz." - Publishers Weekly.
"The author's story is astonishing and moving, and his capacity for forgiveness is remarkably heartening. An important new voice joins the chorus of survivors." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review. Buergenthal regards the Holocaust as a moral compass for his life's path as a judge on the International Criminal Court in The Hague." - Library Journal.
"[A] powerful choice for teens looking for a mentor through emotional and political challenges of their own." - School Library Journal
Note: Thomas Buergenthal is a judge at the International Court in The Hague. A
graduate of Harvard Law School, he served as the first US Judge and later,
President, of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He has also served as a
member of the UN Human Rights Committee. He has authored over a dozen books on international law, and is the subject of a biography, entitled Tommy,
by the Norwegian humanitarian and UNICEF founder, Odd Nansen. Judge Buergenthal
was also the co-recipient of the 2008 Gruber Foundation International Justice
Prize.
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles
April 21
736 pages
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN-13: 9780375415425
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism.
Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington’s presidency, he rose from boatman to builder of the nation’s largest fleet of steamships to lord of a railroad empire. Lincoln consulted him on steamship strategy during the Civil War; Jay Gould was first his uneasy ally and then sworn enemy; and Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States, was his spiritual counselor. We see Vanderbilt help to launch the transportation revolution, propel the Gold Rush, reshape Manhattan, and invent the modern corporation—in fact, as T. J. Stiles elegantly argues, Vanderbilt did more than perhaps any other individual to create the economic world we live in today.
In The First Tycoon, Stiles offers the first complete, authoritative biography of this titan, and the first comprehensive account of the Commodore’s personal life. It is a sweeping, fast-moving epic, and a complex portrait of the great man. Vanderbilt, Stiles shows, embraced the philosophy of the Jacksonian Democrats and withstood attacks by his conservative enemies for being too competitive. He was a visionary who pioneered business models. He was an unschooled fistfighter who came to command the respect of New York’s social elite. And he was a father who struggled with a gambling-addicted son, a husband who was loving yet abusive, and, finally, an old man who was obsessed with contacting the dead.
The First Tycoon is the exhilarating story of a man and a nation maturing together: the powerful account of a man whose life was as epic and complex as American history itself.
From the Hardcover edition.
Prepublication Reviews: "Mark Twain described Vanderbilt as something like the Grinch, the 'idol of ... a crawling swarm of small souls' - a cartoon that Stiles does a good job of redrawing." - The New Yorker
"...perceptive and fluently written…[Stiles] writes with both the panache of a fine journalist and the analytical care of a seasoned scholar. And he offers a fruitful way to think about the larger history of American elites as well as the life of one of their most famous members." - The New York Times Book Review - Michael Kazin
"In this whacking new biography of Vanderbilt, T. J. Stiles…moves with force and conviction and imperious wit through Vanderbilt's noisy life and times. The book…is full of sharp, unexpected turns…I read eagerly and avidly. This is state-of-the-art biography, crisper and more piquant than a 600-page book has any right to be." - The New York Times - Dwight Garner
"Vanderbilt's colorful battles made him a magnet for mythology. Much of what has been written about him until now was dictated by his enemies. Stiles, a superb researcher, has unearthed quantities of new material and crafted them into the illuminating, authoritative portrait of Vanderbilt that has been missing for so long." - The Washington Post - Alice Schroeder
"Starred Review. [H]ighly recommended for readers interested in biography, popular business, New York State history, and transportation." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. An exemplary biography and highly readable business history." - Kirkus Reviews
"Shrewd .... As he did in his much-acclaimed Jesse James, Stiles limns the meteoric career of an impetuous spirit. Rich in detail, the narrative reveals much about not only the unschooled genius ... but also the national culture he helped transform . . . A landmark study." - Booklist
Note: T. J. Stiles has held the Gilder Lehrman Fellowship in American History at
the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York
Public Library, taught at Columbia University, and served as adviser for the PBS
series The American Experience. His first book, Jesse James: Last
Rebel of the Civil War, won the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg
Award for Civil War Scholarship, and was a New York Times Notable Book.
He has written for The New York Times Book Review, Salon.com,
Smithsonian, and the Los Angeles Times. Helives in San
Francisco.
Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town by Warren St. John
April 21
320 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
ISBN-13: 9780385522038
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: The extraordinary tale of a refugee youth soccer team and the transformation of a small American town
Clarkston, Georgia, was a typical Southern town until it was designated a refugee settlement center in the 1990s, becoming the first American home for scores of families in flight from the world's war zones—from Liberia and Sudan to Iraq and Afghanistan. Suddenly Clarkston’s streets were filled with women wearing the hijab, the smells of cumin and curry, and kids of all colors playing soccer in any open space they could find. The town also became home to Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman who founded a youth soccer team to unify Clarkston’s refugee children and keep them off the streets. These kids named themselves the Fugees.
Set against the backdrop of an American town that without its consent had become a vast social experiment, Outcasts United follows a pivotal season in the life of the Fugees and their charismatic coach. Warren St. John documents the lives of a diverse group of young people as they miraculously coalesce into a band of brothers, while also drawing a fascinating portrait of a fading American town struggling to accommodate its new arrivals. At the center of the story is fiery Coach Luma, who relentlessly drives her players to success on the soccer field while holding together their lives—and the lives of their families—in the face of a series of daunting challenges.
This fast-paced chronicle of a single season is a complex and inspiring tale of a small town becoming a global community—and an account of the ingenious and complicated ways we create a home in a changing world.
Prepublication Reviews: "You can read this book or wait for the movie, but the book is worth the effort. This story is too textured, too filled with layers of light and dark, for Hollywood to capture its complexity…This is an uplifting tale celebrating the most old-fashioned of virtues: hard work, self-discipline, regard for others." - The Washington Post
"This wonderful, poignant book is highly recommended for libraries collecting on the role of sport in people's lives and for those with an interest in immigration." - Library Journal
"A fascinating and fast-moving account of big-picture politics, small-town sports, and some very memorable people." – Booklist
"He also provides some valuable sociological insight into the adjustments required from both the refugees and their Clarkston neighbors to keep this small-town melting pot from boiling over. Readable, educational and enriching." - Kirkus Reviews
"St. John begins with an inspiring description of a beautifully played game and then delves into the team's formation, but his storytelling takes on the methodical approach of a long series of newspaper articles that lack narrative flair and progression." - Publishers Weekly.
"A brilliant and empathetic depiction of our common quest for meaning and happiness. Warren St. John invites us into the lives of a community of refugees, their bewildered neighbors in a small town, and a Jordanian woman who not only coaches but also mentors, mothers, and inspires some remarkable boys, to create a heartwarming tale about the transformations that occur when our disparate lives connect." -Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone.
Note: Warren St. John is a reporter for The New York Times and the author of the national bestseller Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer.
The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It by Joshua Cooper Ramo
March 23
288 pages
Publisher: Little Brown & Company
ISBN-13: 9780316118088
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Today the very ideas that made America great imperil its future. Our plans go awry and policies fail. History's grandest war against terrorism creates more terrorists. Global capitalism, intended to improve lives, increases the gap between rich and poor. Decisions made to stem a financial crisis guarantee its worsening. Environmental strategies to protect species lead to their extinction.
The traditional physics of power has been replaced by something radically different. In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo puts forth a revelatory new model for understanding our dangerously unpredictable world. Drawing upon history, economics, complexity theory, psychology, immunology, and the science of networks, he describes a new landscape of inherent unpredictability--and remarkable, wonderful possibility.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. [T]his revelatory work argues that there must be some audacity in thinking before there can be any audacity of hope." - Publishers Weekly.
"A smart essay in geopolitics and realpolitik that does not foresee a rosy future for conformists." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Thought-provoking. ... Ramo questions conventional thinking and provides fresh ideas - something we deeply need these days." - Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein.
Note: Joshua Cooper Ramo is Managing Director and a partner at Kissinger Associates, one of the world's leading strategic advisory firms. Prior to joining Kissinger Associates, he was Assistant Managing Editor of Time and worked in the advisory and banking business in China.
One Nation Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics, and Organic Pet Food by Michael Schaffer
March 31
304 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN-13: 9780805087116
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In 2003, Michael Schaffer and his wife drove to a rural shelter and adopted an emaciated, dreadlocked Saint Bernard who they named Murphy. They vowed that they’d never become the kind of people who send dogs named Baxter and Sonoma out to get facials, or shell out for $12,000 hip replacements. But then they started to get weird looks from the in-laws: You hired a trainer? Your vet prescribed antidepressants? So Schaffer started poking around and before long happened on an astonishing statistic: the pet industry, estimated at $43 billion this year, was just $17 billion barely a decade earlier.
One Nation Under Dog is about America’s pet obsession—the explosion, over the past generation, of an industry full of pet masseuses, professional dog-walkers, organic kibble, leash-law militants, luxury pet spas, veterinary grief counselors, upscale dog shampoos, and the like: a booming economy that is evidence of tremendous and rapid change in the status of America’s pets. Schaffer provides a surprising and lively portrait of our country - as how we treat our pets reflects evolving ideas about domesticity, consumerism, politics, and family - through this fabulously reported and sympathetic look at both us and our dogs.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. [E]ssential reading for anyone whose dog has become hooked on Kong bounce balls." - Publishers Weekly.
"Good-natured, anecdote-crammed account of how we coddle our pets. ... Doggone entertaining." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Well researched with copious notes yet accessible to lay readers who will chuckle in self-recognition." - Library Journal.
"In the wake of Marley mania… Schaffer explores the rapidly expanding dimensions of America's pet mania - Mr. President, a must-read before you pick the pup!" - Philadelphia Inquirer.
Note: Michael Schaffer has written for The Washington Post, Slate,
The New Republic, and US News & World Report, among other
publications. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Keltie Hawkins, and their
well-loved—but not freakishly pampered, they insist—pets, Murphy the Saint
Bernard and Amelia the black cat.
A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream by Mark Gevisser
March 31
400 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-13: 9780230611009
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: A gripping social history of South Africa’s past and future. Beautifully narrated by one of Africa’s most esteemed journalists, From Struggle to Liberation sheds light on the future of the nation under a new regime. With unprecedented access to Thabo Mbeki and the top brass in the African National Congress, Mark Gevisser weaves a nuanced portrait of the black experience under apartheid.
This accessible account of a monumental period in world history is the definitive look at contemporary South Africa.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. [A] judicious and an eye-opening account of a life intersecting history at the most profound level." - Publishers Weekly.
"Gevisser skillfully examines Mbeki's legacy within the context of a complicated, still uncertain South African history ... Densely packed research in a well-organized package." - Kirkus Reviews.
"A monumental biography." - The New York Times.
"Anyone who wants to go beyond those clichés, and also to understand what has happened in South Africa since the end of white rule should read [this]." - Financial Times (UK).
"{Gvisser]e sheds considerable light on more than half a century of South Africa's difficult history. … essential reading for anyone intrigued by South Africa's complex philosopher-king." - The Economist.
Note: Mark Gevisser is a journalist at the Johannesburg Sunday Times and former correspondent for London's Mail & Guardian and The Nation. In 2008, he won the prestigious Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize for the best non-fiction book of the year, and has also won the Recht Malan prize for non-fiction. He was educated at Yale University and received an MFA from Columbia University. He lives in South Africa.
South African politician Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki served almost two terms as the second democratically elected President of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008.
March 31
560 pages
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN-13: 9780307262882
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Never before in English, Armenian Golgotha is the most dramatic and comprehensive eyewitness account of the first modern genocide.
On April 24, 1915, the priest Grigoris Balakian was arrested along with some 250 other intellectuals and leaders of Constantinople’s Armenian community. It was the beginning of the Ottoman Turkish government’s systematic attempt to eliminate the Armenian people from Turkey; it was a campaign that continued through World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, by which time more than a million Armenians had been annihilated and expunged from their historic homeland. For Grigoris Balakian, himself condemned, it was also the beginning of a four-year ordeal during which he would bear witness to a seemingly endless caravan of blood.
Balakian sees his countrymen sent in carts, on donkeys, or on foot to face certain death in the desert of northern Syria. Many would not even survive the journey, suffering starvation, disease, mutilation, and rape, among other tortures, before being slaughtered en route. In these pages, he brings to life the words and deeds of survivors, foreign witnesses, and Turkish officials involved in the massacre process, and also of those few brave, righteous Turks, who, with some of their German allies working for the Baghdad Railway, resisted orders calling for the death of the Armenians. Miraculously, Balakian manages to escape, and his flight—through forest and over mountain, in disguise as a railroad worker and then as a German soldier—is a suspenseful, harrowing odyssey that makes possible his singular testimony.
Full of shrewd insights into the political, historical, and cultural context of the Armenian genocide—the template for the subsequent mass killings that have cast a shadow across the twentieth century and beyond—this memoir is destined to become a classic of survivor literature. Armenian Golgotha is sure to deepen our understanding of a catastrophic crime that the Turkish government, the Ottomans’ successor, denies to this day.
Prepublication Reviews: "An important historical document, though its relentless depiction of atrocity make this a hard slog for the average reader." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Important for readers who want to judge whether or not this was the first genocide in modern times." - Library Journal.
"Read this heartbreaking book. Armenian Golgotha describes the suffering, agony and massacre of innumerable Armenian families almost a century ago; its memory must remain a lesson for more than one generation." - Elie Wiesel.
"Grigoris Balakian's Armenian Golgotha is a powerful, moving account of the Armenian Genocide, a story that needs to be known, and is told here with a sweep of experience and wealth of detail that is as disturbing as it is irrefutable." - Sir Martin Gilbert.
Note: Born in 1876, Grigoris Balakian was one of the leading Armenian intellectuals of his generation. Educated in Germany and in the Ottoman Empire, he was ordained as a celibate priest in 1901 and served the Armenian Apostolic Church as an emissary to Europe, Russia in particular. He wrote several books, some of which were confiscated by the Turkish government in 1915 or subsequently lost. He later became bishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church in southern France. He died in Marseilles in 1934.
Peter Balakian is the author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocideand America’s Response , winner of the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize, a New York Times best seller, and a New York Times Notable Book; and of Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of Memoir, also a New York Times Notable Book. Grigoris Balakian was his great-uncle.
Armenian Golgotha is translated by Peter Balakian.
Cleopatra and Antony: Power, Love, and Politics in the Ancient World by Diana Preston
March 31
352 pages
Publisher: Walker & Company
ISBN-13: 9780802717382
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: The story of the world’s best-remembered celebrity couple, set against the political backdrop of their time.
On a stiflingly hot day in August 30 b.c., the thirty-nine-year-old queen of Egypt, Cleopatra, took her own life rather than be paraded in chains through Rome by her conqueror, Octavian—the future first emperor, Augustus. A few days earlier, her lover of eleven years, Mark Antony, had himself committed suicide and died in her arms. Oceans of mythology have grown up around them, all of which Diana Preston explores in her stirring history of the lives and times of a couple whose names—more than two millennia later—still invoke passion, curiosity, and intrigue.
Preston views the drama and romance of Cleopatra and Antony’s personal lives as an integral part of the great military, political, and ideological struggle that culminated in the full-fledged rise of the Roman Empire, joined east and west. Perhaps not until Joanna in fourteenth-century Naples or Elizabeth I of England would another woman show such political shrewdness and staying power as did Cleopatra during her years atop the throne of Egypt. Her lengthy affair with Julius Caesar linked the might of Egypt with that of Rome; in the aftermath of the civil war that erupted following Caesar’s murder, her alliance with Antony, and his subsequent split with Octavian, set the stage for the end of the Republic.
With the keen eye for detail, abundant insight, and storytelling skill that have won awards for her previous books, Diana Preston sheds new light on a vitally important period in Western history. Indeed, had Cleopatra and Antony managed to win the battle of Actium, the centuries that followed, which included the life of Jesus himself, could well have played out differently.
Prepublication Reviews: "Going beyond the charisma and romance of two of history's greatest lovers, [Preston] vividly puts their lives in the larger political context of their times." - Publishers Weekly.
"In her extensive research, Preston seeks to unravel the centuries of myth that shroud the infamous couple ... highly recommended." - Library Journal.
"Preston ably conveys her admiration for the Egyptian queen." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Diana Preston is an Oxford-trained historian and author of Before
the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima, which won the 2006 Los
Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, Lusitania: An Epic
Tragedy, The Boxer Rebellion, A First Rate Tragedy, and The
Road to Culloden Moor. With her husband, Michael Preston, she has coauthored
A Pirate of Exquisite Mind and Taj Mahal.
Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science by Curtis Ebbesmeyer
April 1
304 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN-13: 9780061558412
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Pioneering oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer unravels the mystery of marine currents, uncovers the astonishing story of flotsam, and changes the world's view of trash, the ocean, and our global environment.
Curtis Ebbesmeyer is no ordinary scientist. He's been a consulting oceanographer for multinational firms and a lead scientist on international research expeditions, but he's never held a conventional academic appointment. He seized the world's imagination as no other scientist could when he and his worldwide network of beachcomber volunteers traced the ocean's currents using thousands of sneakers and plastic bath toys spilled from storm-tossed freighters.
Now, for the first time, Ebbesmeyer tells the story of his lifelong struggle to solve the sea's mysteries while sharing his most surprising discoveries. He recounts how flotsam has changed the course of history—leading Viking mariners to safe harbors, Columbus to the New World, and Japan to open up to the West—and how it may even have made the origin of life possible. He chases icebergs and floating islands; investigates ocean mysteries from ghost ships to a spate of washed-up severed feet on Canadian beaches; and explores the enormous floating "garbage patches" and waste-heaped "junk beaches" that collect the flotsam and jetsam of industrial society. Finally, Ebbesmeyer reveals the rhythmic and harmonic order in the vast oceanic currents called gyres—"the heartbeat of the world "—and the threats that global warming and disintegrating plastic waste pose to the seas . . . and to us.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. A captivating account of the man who turned beachcombing into a science." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Part oceanography lesson, part memoir, this cheerful book examines Ebbesmeyer's life and work as a pioneering oceanographer and connoisseur of beach-combed artifacts." - Publishers Weekly.
"With a whimsical mood overlaying serious science, Ebbesmeyer's work will appeal to the environmentally minded." - Booklist.
Note: Curtis Ebbesmeyer holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Washington. Media worldwide have turned to his expertise on ocean currents and floating objects. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
April 1
400 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-13: 9780618670185
Critics' consensus:
Book Description:Practicing Catholic is a personal history of the American Catholic Church during James Carroll’s lifetime. It traces the transformation of a medieval institution suspicious of American ideas of freedom and democracy into a church that has begun to embrace basic American principles of pluralism and respect for conscience. The book tells the story of heroes (Pope John XXIII, Thomas Merton, Cardinal Richard Cushing, William Sloane Coffin), and great events (Vatican II, the Kennedys, the end of the Cold War). Considering the new meaning of belief in a secular world, it stands against the fundamentalisms of “neo-athetists” as well as of born again Christians. The book shows how and why the world needs a renewed, rational, vital Catholic Church. All of this is centered in the life-long journey of its author, who embraced the priesthood in his youth, but who finds in the writing life a renewal of religious belief. For James Carroll faith is a practice-- like all practice, it aims at getting better.
Prepublication Reviews: "Brilliant prose, historically insightful, and sincere passion remain hallmarks of the author's work. " - Library Journal.
"[O]verall the book is a page-turner and offers controversial insights on modern American Catholicism. A captivating look at the Church and a call for change from within its numbers." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Readers who, like Carroll, remain Catholic but wrestle with their church's positions on moral issues will most appreciate his story." - Publishers Weekly.
Summer World: A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich
April 1
272 pages
Publisher: Ecco
ISBN-13: 9780060742171
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In Summer World: A Season of Bounty, Bernd Heinrich brings us the same
bottomless reserve of wonder and reverence for the teeming animal life of
backwoods New England that he brought us in Winter World: The Ingenuity of
Animal Survival. Now he is focusing on the animal kingdom in the extremes of the
warmer months, with all its feeding, nesting, fighting, and mating.
Whether presenting disquisitions on ant wars, the predatory characteristics
of wasps, the mating rituals of woodpeckers, or describing an encounter with a
road full of wood frogs, Summer World never stops observing the
beautifully complex interactions of animals and plants with nature, giving
extraordinary depth to the relationships between habitat and the warming of the
earth. How can cicadas survive—and thrive—at temperatures pushing 115°F? Do
hummingbirds know what they're up against before they migrate over the Gulf of
Mexico? Why do some trees stop growing taller even when three months of warm
weather remain? With awe and unmatched expertise, Heinrich explores hundreds of
questions like these.
Exquisitely illustrated with dozens of the author's own drawings, Summer
World is Bernd Heinrich's most engaging book to date, a fascinating work
from one of our very best science writers.
Prepublication Reviews: "Heinrich...delights with the surprising activities of local flora and fauna - and his own scientific antics." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Heinrich presents natural science at its engaging best." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Starred Review. Heinrich notices everything around him in the woods and sets out to investigate; his skillful writing and delight in the season and nature are obvious." - Library Journal.
"This lovely book, meticulously etched and based on impassioned but exacting scientific research, illustrate why Bernd Heinrich is generally regarded as the most truly Thoreauvian of modern natural history writers." - Edward O. Wilson.
"Bernd Heinrich's books open my eyes and help me see the wonder of the natural world...I love the fascinating details of his drawings, the lyricism of his observations, the way he unveils not only the physical workings of nature but the stories and dramas within it." - Amy Tan.
"It is possible there is a better guide to the world around us than Bernd Heinrich, but I've not come across him. This is the book that will get you out the door into the season!" - Bill McKibben.
Note: Bernd Heinrich is the author of many bestselling and award-winning books. He is a professor of biology at the University of Vermont, and he divides his time between Vermont and Maine.
April 6
432 pages
Publisher: Twelve Books
ISBN-13: 9780446546935
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence, irrevocable branding every subsequent shooting "another Columbine."
When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window, the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to the prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal.
The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boys' tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.
Prepublication Reviews: "Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill, even if the answers aren't easy to stomach." - Publishers Weekly.
"Cullen clarifies a lot of misconceptions that evolved soon after the tragedy and provides new insights into why it occurred, which makes the book definitely worth reading despite the disjointed narrative." - Library Journal.
"Poignant sections devoted to the survivors probe the myriad ways that individuals cope with grief and struggle to interpret and make sense of tragedy ... Carefully researched and chilling, if somewhat overwritten." - Kirkus Reviews.
April 7
368 pages
Publisher: Pantheon Books
ISBN-13: 9780375424298
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: From one of our most acclaimed science writers: a dramatic narrative of the discovery of the true nature and startling size of the universe, delving back past the moment of revelation to trace the decades of work--by a select group of scientists--that made it possible.
On January 1, 1925, thirty-five-year-old Edwin Hubble announced findings that ultimately established that our universe was a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed, filled with myriad galaxies like our own. It was a realization that reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos. Six years later, continuing research by Hubble and others forced Albert Einstein to renounce his own cosmic model and finally accept the astonishing fact that the universe was not immobile but instead expanding. The story of these interwoven discoveries includes battles of will, clever insights, and wrong turns made by the early investigators in this great twentieth-century pursuit, from the luminaries (Einstein, Hubble, Harlow Shapley) to the lesser known: Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered the means to measure the vast dimensions of the cosmos . . . Vesto Slipher, the first and unheralded discoverer of the universe’s expansion . . . Georges Lemaître, the Jesuit priest who correctly interpreted Einstein’s theories in relation to the universe . . . Milton Humason, who, with only an eighth-grade education, became a world-renowned expert on galaxy motions .... and others.
Here is the watershed moment in our cosmic history, splendidly arising from the exceptional combination of human curiosity, intelligence, and enterprise.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Bartusiak reveals the vibrant beginnings of modern astronomy, along with all the dreams and fears, rivalries and triumphs, of those involved." - Publishers Weekly.
"Staying true to the scientific topic, she doesn't overburden the story with jargon. Yet Bartusiak presents figures like Edwin Hubble, Heber D. Curtis, Harlow Shapley, and George E. Hale with the skill of a novelist; their personalities transcend the page. This book will appeal to a wide readership, from scientists to those with an interest in science or the history of science." - Library Journal.
"A dynamic journey through an important period in the history of astronomy." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Marcia Bartusiak is an award-winning author whose previous books include Through a Universe Darkly, Thursday’s Universe, Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony, and Archives of the Universe. Her work has appeared in such publications as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Discover, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She teaches in the graduate program in science writing at MIT and lives in Sudbury, Massachusetts, with her husband.
Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future by Charles Bowden
April 9
256 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-13: 9780151013951
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing, the brilliant and iconoclastic Charles Bowden continues the quest he first set out on in Blood Orchid (1995) and Blues for Cannibals (2002)—to explore, as Jim Harrison says "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox - all of them - books about America."
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden has blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway—and to the roiling places that give such ideas the lie.He has claimed as his turf "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America" (Jim Harrison, on Blood Orchid).
In this seminal book, the third part in a trilogy which started with Blood Orchid (1995) and continued with Blues for Cannibals (2002), Bowden turns his fearless gaze toward the future—the future we can feel hurtling toward us, as fuel reserves dwindle, species die out, terrorism flourishes, the Earth warms, and our ability to be fully awake—alert and impassioned in our lives—wanes. Weaving together natural history, memoir, reportage, and sheer virtuosic writing, he takes us on a furious tour of our emerging reality, his observations from the borderlands—of nations, laws, species, and desire—all the more searing for his refusal to be our scourge.
Bowden has always had the gift of prophecy, but Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing is proof that the times have caught up with his vision, and need it now more than ever.
Reader Rating: 3.5 out of 5
This book got generally positive reviews from the 12 BookBrowse Members who have posted reviews.
Read the reviews.
Prepublication Reviews: "Affirms Bowden's place in the cranky Edward Abbey-Hunter S. Thompson school of Western individualists." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Bowden is a blood-and-guts journalist with a poet's sensibility, a noirish naturalist, a ferociously inquisitive witness to life's glory and horror torn between the desire to embrace the world and the need to hole up in a drapes-drawn motel room." - Booklist.
Note: Charles Bowden's journalism appears regularly in Harper's, GQ, and other national publications. He is the author of several previous books of nonfiction, including Down by the River.
April 14
336 pages
Publisher: Pantheon Books
ISBN-13: 9780307377401
Book Description: The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai offers a refreshingly unique perspective on the challenge facing Africa, even as she calls for a moral revolution among Africans themselves, who, she argues, are culturally deracinated, adrift between worlds.
The challenges facing Africa today are severe and wide ranging. Yet what we see of them in the media, more often than not, are tableaux vivantes connoting poverty, dependence, and desperation. Wangari Maathai presents a different vision, informed by her three decades as an environmental activist and campaigner for democracy. She illuminates the complex and dynamic nature of the continent, and offers "hard-headed hope" and "realistic options" for change and improvement. With clarity of expression, Maathai analyzes the most egregious “bottlenecks to development in Africa” occurring at the international, national, and individual levels—cultural upheaval and enduring poverty, among them—and deftly describes what Africans can and need to do for themselves, stressing all the while responsibility and accountability.
Impassioned and empathic, A Challenge for Africa is a book of immense importance.
Prepublication Reviews: "Africa's moral and cultural dysfunctions loom as large as its material problems in this wide-ranging jeremiad." - Publishers Weekly.
False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World by Alan Beattie
April 16
336 pages
Publisher: Riverhead Books
ISBN-13: 9781594488665
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: An important book for turbulent times - an accessible and engaging economic history of the world, by a leading economic writer.
Alan Beattie has long been intrigued by the fates of different countries, economies, and societies - why some fail and some succeed. Here, he weaves together elements of economics, history, politics, and human stories, revealing that societies, economies, and countries usually make concrete choices that determine their destinies. He opens up larger questions about these choices, and why countries make them or are driven to make them, and what those decisions can mean for the future of our global economy.
Economic history involves forcing together disciplines that fall naturally in different directions. But Beattie has written a lively and lucid book that successfully marries the two subjects and illustrates their interdependence. In doing so, he addresses such illuminating queries as: Why are oil and diamonds more trouble than they are worth? Why did Argentina fail and the United States succeed? Why doesn't Africa grow cocaine?
False Economy explains how human beings have shaped their own fates, however unknowingly, and the conditions of the countries they call home. And though it is history, it does not end with the present day. Beattie shows how decisions that are being made now-which have either absorbed or failed to absorb the lessons from economic history-will determine what happens in the future. What does economic history teach us about the present economic unrest? Who will succeed and why? And who will fail? These are questions that we cannot afford to leave unasked ... or unanswered.
Prepublication Reviews: "Thorough research, eclectic examples and a sprightly tone ... should make this a hit among those interested in world economics - and a must-read alternative for those who couldn't get through Guns, Germs and Steel." - Publishers Weekly.
"A readable, timely discussion of the world economic system." - Kirkus Reviews.
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti
April 7
256 pages
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN-13: 9780307265807
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: In Paris at the start of a radically new century, the most famous face in the history of art stepped out of her frame and into a sensational mystery.
On August 21, 1911, the unfathomable happened—Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa vanished from the Louvre. More than twenty-four hours passed before museum officials realized she was gone. The prime suspects were as shocking as the crime: Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, young provocateurs of a new art. As French detectives using the latest methods of criminology, including fingerprinting, tried to trace the thieves, a burgeoning international media hyped news of the heist.
No story captured the imagination of the world quite like this one. Thousands flocked to the Louvre to see the empty space where the painting had hung. They mourned as if Mona Lisa were a lost loved one, left flowers and notes, and set new attendance records. For more than two years, Mona Lisa’s absence haunted the art world, provoking the question: Was she lost forever? A century later, questions still linger.
Part love story, part mystery, Vanished Smile reopens the case of the most audacious and perplexing art theft ever committed. R. A. Scotti’s riveting, ingeniously realized account is itself a masterly portrait of a world in transition. Combining her skills as a historian and a novelist, Scotti turns the tantalizing clues into a story of the painting’s transformation into the most familiar and lasting icon of all time.
Prepublication Reviews: "The true motive for the theft - and the possible connection to a larger ring of art thieves - remains tantalizingly unknown by the end of this lively recounting." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Mystery fans, history buffs and culture vultures alike will savor this delectable immersion in the mindset of an age." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: R. A. Scotti is the author of three previous works of nonfiction, including
Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal—Building St. Peter’s and
Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938, and four novels. She lives in
New York City.
The Big One: An Island, an Obsession, and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish by David Kinney
April 8
272 pages
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN-13: 9780802118905
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Renowned for its pristine beaches and celebrity inhabitants, Martha’s Vineyard is one of the most exclusive destinations in America. But each September, after the tourists clear out, thousands of fishermen take back the beaches to compete in the Vineyard’s annual fishing derby, a monthlong contest that pits plumbers against investment bankers, schoolkids against senior citizens, and natives against newcomers in a round-the-clock hunt for a great fish. Island immortality is at stake, and history has proven that anyone can win it: teenage girls, dozing fishermen, complete amateurs. In The Big One, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Kinney takes readers behind the scenes at the derby to chronicle thirty-five days of fish-addled hope and heartbreak. He captures all the action and introduces us to an eccentric gallery of characters that includes: Dick Hathaway, the crotchety legend who once caught a bluefish from a helicopter; Janet Messineo, a recovering alcoholic who says that striped bass saved her life; and Lev Wlodyka, a cagey local whose next fish will spark a storm of controversy and throw the tournament into turmoil. The Big One is a hugely entertaining story of passion and obsession that does for fishing what Friday Night Lights did for football.
Prepublication Reviews: "The book is a lot of fun...like a frenzied baseball season condensed into one month of triple-headers." - Publishers Weekly.
"With solid prose, Kinney nails the character of this spirited community and its defining anima, the striped bass." - Kirkus Reviews.
March 31
256 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN-13: 9780805082821
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Dani was born with her heart on the wrong side of her body. In her fifteen years of life, she’s had more doctor’s appointments, X-rays, and tests, and eaten more green hospital Jell-O than she cares to think about. Fourteen-year-old Amanda is a competitive gymnast, her body a small package of sleek muscles, in perfect health. The two girls don’t know each other, don’t go to the same school, don’t have any friends in common. But their lives are about to collide. Acclaimed author Jill Wolfson tackles this fascinating story with her trademark honesty and wit.
Prepublication Reviews: "Showing teens confronting unexpected emotions in both themselves and others, this novel is sure to please fans of realistic but gentle teen romance or medical stories." - Booklist.
"Starred Review. Detailed, accurate descriptions of medical procedures are leavened with humor and sincerity ... Ages 10+." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Nonetheless adolescent readers may be drawn to the drama surrounding organ transplants, the teen love affair, and the dynamics of Tyler and Amanda's sibling relationship." - School Library Journal
Note: Jill Wolfson is the author of the novels What I Call Life and Home, and Other Big, Fat Lies. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.
April 1
224 pages
Publisher: HarperTeen
ISBN-13: 9780060850715
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Positive.
Negative.
It's how you look at it. . . .
Someone shoves a photo negative into Rowan's hands. She is distracted but, frankly, she has larger problems to worry about. Her brother is dead. Her father has left. Her mother won't get out of bed. She has to take care of her younger sister. And keep it all together ....
But Rowan is curious about the mysterious boy and the negative. Who is he? Why did he give it to her? The mystery only deepens when the photo is developed and the inconceivable appears.
Everything is about to change for Rowan. . . . Finally, something positive is in her life.
Award-winning author Jenny Valentine delivers a powerful and life-affirming story of grief, friendship, and healing that will resonate long after the last page.
Prepublication Reviews: "The story is delicately written, and mysteries and revelations involving Jack propel it forward. A solid tale of what it takes to grow up and how to ask for help. Ages 14-up." - Publishers Weekly.
"Give this poignant, rewarding story to teens who need books dealing with grief or who crave romance amid tragedy and hardship." - School Library Journal.
"Starred Review. This is rich, satisfying storytelling, indeed." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Most enjoyable: a life-affirming, witty, romantic read, about freedom, responsibility and love." - Sunday Times (UK).
"Starred Review. The language is simple, but its crafting is deft and emotional. Rowan herself is a believable blend of heroic and desperate, and the book is particularly perceptive." - - Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books.
Note: Jenny Valentine worked in a food shop for fifteen years, where she met many extraordinary people and sold more organic bread than there are words in her first book. She studied English literature at Goldsmith's College, which almost made her stop reading but not quite. Her debut novel, Me, the Missing, and the Dead, won the prestigious Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in the UK under the title Finding Violet Park. She is married to a singer/songwriter and has two children. They live in Hay on Wye, England.
Book Description: Hector is being hectored by an unlikely bully: a talking brain tumor. And it's not just a talking brain tumor. It's a know-it-all, pain-in-the-arse, jibber-jabbering brain tumor that names itself Jack, and insists on coaching Hector through life even as it's threatening to take his life away. It's a pretty good coach, actually. With Jack in control of Hector’s speech and brain chemicals, Hector suddenly finds himself with a cool haircut, a new fashion sense, and tactics for snogging previously unattainable hottie Uma Upshaw. But when Jack begins to force increasingly questionable decisions and behavior, Hector has to find a way to turn the tables – before it's too late for both of them.
Delightfully twisted, desperately funny, and deeply moving, this novel is also the winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize in the United Kingdom.
Prepublication Reviews: "Hector's musings seem pretty mature for his age. As Hector grapples with love, friendship and death, a broad range of readers should find the trip worth it. Ages 12-up." - Publishers Weekly
"A British import, the narrative contains many references that American teens might not understand, but who cares with a concept like this? Lots of laughs but little else." - Kirkus Reviews
"Too bad the message, Hector's insightful humor, and his love-hate relationship with Jack are buried in so much vulgarity." - School Library Journal
Note: Anthony McGowan has written books for children, teens, and adults. His previous young adult novel, Hellbent, was declared "a brilliantly nauseating thriller" by the London Times. He lives in North London.
Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Alternate History
(Teen/Young Adults)
Genesis by Bernard Beckett
April 20
160 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-13: 9780547225494
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: Set on a remote island in a post-apocalyptic, plague-ridden world, this electrifying novel is destined to become a modern classic.
Anax thinks she knows her history. She’d better. She’s now facing three Examiners, and her grueling all-day Examination has just begun. If she passes, she’ll be admitted into the Academy—the elite governing institution of her utopian society.
But Anax is about to discover that for all her learning, the history she’s been taught isn’t the whole story. And that the Academy isn’t what she believes it to be.
In this brilliant novel of dazzling ingenuity, Anax’s examination leads us into a future where we are confronted with unresolved questions raised by science and philosophy. Centuries old, these questions have gained new urgency in the face of rapidly developing technology. What is consciousness? What makes us human? If artificial intelligence were developed to a high enough capability, what special status could humanity still claim?
Outstanding and original, Beckett’s dramatic narrative comes to a stunning close. This perfect combination of thrilling page-turner and provocative novel of ideas demands to be read again and again.
Prepublication Reviews: "The rigorous narrative and crushing final twist bring a welcome freshness to a familiar setup." - Publishers Weekly.
"[S]tronger with philosophical fare than with plotting [but] his conception of a broken world and the role technology plays in it is convincing." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Bernard Beckett, born in 1967, is a high school teacher based in Wellington, New Zealand, where he teaches drama, mathematics, and English. Genesis was written while he was on a Royal Society genetics research fellowship investigating DNA mutations. Genesis has received two literary prizes in Beckett’s native New Zealand. Rights have been sold in twenty-one countries.
Book Description: In a single moment, everything changes. Seventeen year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall riding along the snow-wet Oregon road with her family. Then, in a blink, she finds herself watching as her own damaged body is taken from the wreck...
A sophisticated, layered, and heartachingly beautiful story about the power of family and friends, the choices we all make—and the ultimate choice Mia commands.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. There is little wasted prose, and not a single event rings false. Music lovers will appreciate the passions of Mia, Adam, and her family, who adopt an eclectic mix of favorites." - VOYA.
"Starred Review." - Booklist.
"Forman excels at inserting tiny but powerful details throughout ... which will draw readers into this masterful text and undoubtedly tug at even the toughest of heartstrings." - Kirkus Reviews.
Note: Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Alternate History
(Younger Readers)
Shadowland: Book III of the Brotherhood of the Conch by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
March 31
240 pages
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
ISBN-13: 9781596431539
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: The hero of the Brotherhood of the Conch series, now fifteen, is settling back into his life as an apprentice in the lush Silver Valley, nestled high in the Himalayas. There he continues to learn the secret arts of the Brotherhood. But suddenly his adopted home is reduced to a barren wasteland when his beloved conch, the valley’s source of magical energy, is stolen by an unknown force.
Together with his friend Nisha, Anand embarks on what may be his most dangerous mission—traveling to the cold and forbidding world of Shadowland in his attempt to restore the conch to its rightful place, and his home to its original splendor.
Prepublication Reviews: "The teenagers must race against time to rescue the conch in a world where science is at war with magic and distrust rules the day. By reminding the many villains of the joys of love and fellowship, they just might succeed." - Kirkus Reviews
"Both action scenes and suspenseful moments are competently done, but there is no sophistication within those passages. Dialogue is choppy at best, and may be too advanced for the targeted audience." - School Library Journal
Note: Shadowland is the third and final book in the "Brotherhood of the Conch" series. The first two books are The Conch Bearer (2003) and The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming (2005). The series is recommended for grades 5-8.
April 7
256 pages
Publisher: Hyperion Books for Children
ISBN-13: 9781423106937
Critics' consensus:
Book Description: After traveling to the ghostly underworld beneath New York City, Jack has made it back above ground, to join the living. But if he's alive why is he still seeing ghosts?
Jack tries hard to fit in at his new school - and tries even harder to win the affections of his Latin classmate and friend, Cora. In an effort to impress her, Jack leads Cora to the entrance of the underworld and makes a terrible mistake. Soon they have crossed the threshold, and there may be no getting back.
Like The Night Tourist, this exciting sequel blends together the modern-day world and mythology - this time cleverly introducing readers to myth of Persephone and Eros.
Prepublication Reviews: "Starred Review. Readers should be drawn in by the complex relationships between Marsh's protagonists and Jack's continuing existential struggles." - Publishers Weekly.
"The plot is lavishly draped with snappy dialogue, realistic teen characters and clever didn't-see-it-coming twists. An outstanding story with wide appeal." - Kirkus Reviews.
All books are hardcovers unless otherwise noted. On-sale dates have been verified within the last few days based on USA publication dates.
However, books are often delivered to stores ahead of time, and therefore might be available before the date shown.
In all cases,
descriptions have been lifted directly from the book jackets (although usually abbreviated). When available, a range of reviewer opinions
have been included - each whittled down to represent the essential opinion of the reviewer.
If no reviews are shown it is because none were
found at the time of publication. If no "critics' consensus" rating is shown it is because less than two media reviews were available at publication - sometimes this is
because the book has received little review attention and occasionally because it is embargoed until publication.
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