Skip to main content

Week of September 17, 2018

New in Paperback

Week of September 17, 2018

Paperback releases for the week of September 17th include WHAT HAPPENED, in which Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history; SLEEPING BEAUTIES, a spectacular father/son collaboration in which Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?; SOURDOUGH, Robin Sloan's highly anticipated novel (following MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE) about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker; and THE BOOK OF SEPARATION by Tova Mirvis, the memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly mapless world.

The Book of Separation: A Memoir by Tova Mirvis - Memoir

September 18, 2018

Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life. After all, to observe was to be accepted, and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age 40 she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her marriage and her religious world and forge a new way of life. In order to do so, she must learn to silence her fears and the voices telling her who she is supposed to be.

A Disappearance in Damascus: Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War by Deborah Campbell - Memoir

September 18, 2018

In 2007, Deborah Campbell travels undercover to Damascus to report on the exodus of Iraqis into Syria, following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. There she meets and hires Ahlam, a refugee working as a “fixer” --- providing Western media with trustworthy information and contacts to help get the news out. Ahlam has fled her home in Iraq after being kidnapped while running a humanitarian center. She supports her husband and two children while working to set up a makeshift school for displaced girls. But one morning, Ahlam is seized from her home. Campbell spends the months that follow desperately trying to find her --- all the while fearing she could be next.

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter - Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction

September 18, 2018

As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place. The story traces fear and wonder as the baby grows, thriving and content against all the odds.

The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer - Thriller

September 18, 2018

Her body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she's dead. The US government confirms it. But Jim "Zig" Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run. Zig works at Dover Air Force Base, helping put to rest the bodies of those who die on top-secret missions. Nola was a childhood friend of Zig's daughter and someone who once saved his daughter's life. So when Zig realizes Nola is still alive, he's determined to find her. Yet as Zig digs into Nola's past, he learns that trouble follows Nola everywhere she goes.

The Exact Nature of Our Wrongs by Janet Peery - Fiction

September 18, 2018

On a summer evening in the blue-collar town of Amicus, Kansas, the Campbell family gathers for a birthday dinner for their ailing patriarch, retired judge Abel Campbell, prepared and hosted by their still-hale mother Hattie. But when Billy, the youngest sibling --- with a history of addiction, grand ideas and misdemeanors --- passes out, the family takes up the unfinished business of Billy’s sobriety. Billy’s wayward adventures have too long consumed their lives, in particular Hattie’s, who has enabled his transgressions while trying to save him from Abel’s disappointment. As the older children contend with their own troubles, they compete for the approval of the elderly parents they adore but can’t quite forgive.

A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay - Fiction

September 18, 2018

When Elsie Gormley falls and is forced to leave her Brisbane home of 62 years, Lucy Kiss and her family move in, eager to make the house their own. Still, Lucy can’t help but feel that she’s unwittingly stumbled into an entirely new life --- new house, new city, new baby --- and she struggles to navigate the journey from adventurous lover to young parent. In her nearby nursing facility, Elsie traces the years she spent in her beloved house, where she too transformed from a naïve newlywed into a wife and mother, and eventually, a widow. Gradually, the boundary between present and past becomes more porous for her, and for Lucy --- because the house has secrets of its own, and its rooms seem to share with Lucy memories from Elsie’s life.

I Know You Know by Gilly Macmillan - Psychological Thriller/Mystery

September 18, 2018

Twenty years ago, 11-year-olds Charlie Paige and Scott Ashby were murdered in the city of Bristol. A man was convicted of the brutal crime, but questions still linger decades later. Filmmaker Cody Swift has been haunted by the deaths of his childhood best friends. Hoping to uncover new evidence, and to encourage those who may be keeping long-buried secrets to speak up, Cody starts a podcast to record his findings. When a long-dead body is found in the same location the boys were left decades before, the disturbing discovery launches another murder investigation. Now Detective John Fletcher, the investigator on the original case, must reopen his dusty files and decide if the two murders are linked.

Mrs. by Caitlin Macy - Fiction

September 18, 2018

Despite a shadowy past, Philippa Lye has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in New York City. Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women: Gwen Hogan, a childhood acquaintance who uncovers an explosive secret about Philippa's single days, and Minnie Curtis, a newcomer whose vast fortune and frank revelations about a penurious upbringing in Spanish Harlem put everyone on alert. When Gwen's prosecutor husband stumbles over the connection between Philippa's past and the criminal investigation he is pursuing at all costs, this insulated society is forced to confront the rot at its core and the price it has paid to survive into the new millennium.

The Nine-Tailed Fox: A Sueño and Bascom Mystery Set in South Korea by Martin Limón - Historical Mystery

September 18, 2018

Three American GIs have gone missing in different South Korean cities. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, agents for the Army CID, link the disappearances to a woman locally rumored to be a gumiho, a legendary thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox disguised as a woman. George suspects that the woman is no mythical creature, but a criminal who’s good at covering her tracks. Meanwhile, George and Ernie are caught in a power struggle between two high-ranking women in the 8th Army. Scrambling to appease his boss and stay one step ahead of a psychotic mastermind, George realizes he will have to risk his life to discover the whereabouts of his fellow countrymen.

The Prague Sonata by Bradford Morrow - Fiction

September 18, 2018

In the early days of the new millennium, pages of a worn and weathered original sonata manuscript --- the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens --- come into the hands of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist whose concert piano career was cut short by an injury. The gift comes with the request that Meta attempt to find the manuscript’s true owner --- a Prague friend the old woman has not heard from since the Second World War forced them apart --- and to make the three-part sonata whole again. Leaving New York behind for the land of Dvořák and Kafka, Meta sets out on an unforgettable search to locate the remaining movements of the sonata and uncover a story that has influenced the course of many lives.

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King - Supernatural Thriller/Horror

September 18, 2018

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare. One woman, the mysterious “Eve Black,” is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Abandoned and left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.

Sourdough: or, Lois and Her Adventures in the Underground Market by Robin Sloan - Fiction

September 18, 2018

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. But when visa issues force them to close up shop, they give Lois their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market --- and a whole new world opens up.

The Spying Moon by Sandra Ruttan - Mystery

September 17, 2018

The unexplained disappearance of her mother led Kendall Moreau to become a police officer and pursue a posting in the town where her mother went missing. She is on her way to her first posting when she gets reassigned to a task force in Maple River. There she's partnered with Nate Duncan, whose role on the task force raises suspicions amongst the team because of his family's criminal connections. They are assigned to investigate the death of Sammy Petersen, but Duncan's personal connection to the family and suspects threatens to compromise the investigation. When a routine break-and-enter call produces a second body, Moreau suspects a connection to Sammy's death. After someone breaks into her cabin and assaults her, Moreau is forced to decide who to trust.

The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson - Historical Fiction

September 18, 2018

In a house full of secrets, two babies --- one light-skinned, the other dark --- are born to Elma Jesup, a white sharecropper’s daughter. Accused of her rape, field hand Genus Jackson is lynched and dragged behind a truck down the Twelve-Mile Straight. In the aftermath, the farm’s inhabitants are forced to contend with their complicity in a series of events that left a man dead and a family irrevocably fractured. Elma begins to raise her babies as best as she can, under the roof of her mercurial father, Juke, and with the help of Nan, the young black housekeeper who is as close to Elma as a sister. But soon it becomes clear that the ties that bind all of them together are more intricate than any could have ever imagined.

Two from the Heart by James Patterson with Frank Costantini, Emily Raymond and Brian Sitts - Fiction

September 18, 2018

Anne McWilliams has lost everything. After her marriage falls apart and a hurricane destroys her home, she realizes that her life has fallen out of focus. So she takes to the road to ask long-lost friends and strangers a simple question: "What's your best story?" Can the funny, tragic, inspirational tales she hears on her journey help Anne see what she's been missing? Tyler Bron seemingly has it all --- a successful company and more money than he knows how to spend. But he has no life. So he hires a struggling novelist to write one for him. There are no limits to the fictional world that Bron's money can transform into a reality, and he soon becomes the protagonist of a love story beyond his wildest imagination. But will Tyler Bron be able to write the happy ending himself?

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton - Memoir

September 18, 2018

For the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. In these pages, she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward.