February 2, 2016

Here you will find books releasing the weeks of February 1st and February 8th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar. This week, we are calling attention to a Sneak Peek contest and two Author Spotlight giveaways on Bookreporter.com.

We also share details about Signature-Reads.com's "Winter Reading Essentials" Sweepstakes, which gives readers the opportunity to win five buzzworthy books and other fabulous prizes.

Know a friend or family member who you think may enjoy this newsletter? Then please forward it on to them!

• 5 buzzworthy books
• A cotton herringbone blanket from Kaufmann Mercantile
• A pair of Warby Parker glasses ($95)
• A $25 Starbucks gift card

February 8th

NELLY DEAN: A Return to Wuthering Heights by Alison Case (Fiction)
Young Nelly Dean has been Hindley’s closest companion for as long as she can remember, living freely at the great house, Wuthering Heights. But when the benevolence of the master brings a wild child into the house, Nelly learns she must give herself over completely to the demands of the Earnshaw family. As death, illness and passion sweep through the house, Nelly suffers heartache and betrayals at the hands of those she cherishes most, tempting her to leave it all behind. But when a new heir is born, a reign of violence begins that will test even Nelly’s formidable spirit as she finds out what it is to know true sacrifice.
Pegasus * 9781605989617

PIECE OF MIND by Michelle Adelman (Fiction)
At 27, Lucy knows everything about coffee, comic books and Gus (the polar bear at the Central Park Zoo), and she possesses a rare gift for drawing. But since she suffered a traumatic brain injury at the age of three, she has had trouble relating to most people. When unexpected circumstances force her out of the comfortable and protective Jewish home where she was raised and into a cramped studio apartment in New York City with her college-age younger brother, she must adapt to an entirely different life --- one with no safety net.
W. W. Norton & Company * 9780393245707


February 9th

ARCADIA by Iain Pears (Supernatural Thriller/Fantasy)
In 1960s Oxford, Professor Henry Lytten is attempting to write a fantasy novel that forgoes the magic of his predecessors, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. He finds an unlikely confidante in his quick-witted, inquisitive young neighbor, Rosie. One day, while chasing Lytten’s cat, Rosie encounters a doorway in his cellar. She steps through and finds herself in an idyllic, pastoral land where Storytellers are revered above all others. There she meets a young man who is about to embark on a quest of his own --- and may be the one chance Rosie has of returning home. These breathtaking adventures ultimately intertwine with the story of an eccentric psychomathematician whose breakthrough discovery will affect all of these different lives and worlds.
Knopf * 9781101946824

THE ARRANGEMENT by Ashley Warlick (Historical Fiction)
Los Angeles, 1934. Mary Frances is young, restlessly married, and returning from her first sojourn in France. She is hungry, and not just for food: she wants Tim, her husband Al’s charming friend, who encourages her writing and seems to understand her better than anyone. After a night’s transgression, it’s only a matter of time before Mary Frances claims what she truly desires, plunging all three of them into a tangled triangle of affection that will have far-reaching effects on their families, their careers and their lives.
Viking * 9780525429661

THE BATTLE FOR ROOM 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School by Ed Boland (Memoir/Education)
In a fit of idealism, Ed Boland left a 20-year career as a non-profit executive to teach in a tough New York City public high school. But his hopes quickly collided headlong with the appalling reality of his students' lives and a hobbled education system unable to help them. In the end, Boland isn't hoisted on his students' shoulders and no one passes AP anything. This is no urban fairy tale of at-risk kids saved by a Hollywood hero, but a searing indictment of schools that claim to be progressive but still fail their students.
Grand Central Publishing * 9781455560615

BLACK RABBIT HALL by Eve Chase (Fiction)
Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family’s country estate, where no two clocks read the same. More than three decades later, Lorna is determined to be married within the grand, ivy-covered walls of Pencraw Hall, known as Black Rabbit Hall among the locals. But as she’s drawn deeper into the overgrown grounds, half-buried memories of her mother begin to surface. Lorna soon finds herself ensnared within the manor’s labyrinthine history, overcome with an insatiable need for answers about her own past and that of the once-happy family whose memory still haunts the estate.
G.P. Putnam's Sons * 9780399174124

BREAKING WILD by Diane Les Becquets (Mystery/Adventure)
It is the last weekend of the season for Amy Raye Latour to get away. But her venture into a remote area presents a different set of dangers than she has planned for, and she finds herself on the verge of the precarious edge that she’s flirted with her entire life. When Amy Raye doesn’t return to camp, ranger Pru Hathaway responds to the missing person’s call. Even after an unexpected snowfall turns the operation into a search and recovery, Pru’s discoveries lead her to suspect that Amy Raye is still alive. Her search becomes an obsession for a woman whose life is just as mysterious as the clues she has left behind.
Berkley * 9780425283783

FIND HER by Lisa Gardner (Thriller)
Seven years ago, carefree college student Flora Dane was kidnapped while on spring break. For 472 days, she learned just how much one person can endure. Miraculously alive after her ordeal, she has spent the past five years reacquainting herself with the rhythms of normal life. When Boston detective D. D. Warren is called to the scene of a crime --- a dead man and the bound, naked woman who killed him --- she learns that Flora has tangled with three other suspects since her return to society. Is Flora a victim or a vigilante?
Dutton * 9780525954576

THE FIRST CONGRESS: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government by Fergus M. Bordewich (History/Politics)
The First Congress was the most important in US history, says prize-winning author and historian Fergus Bordewich, because it established how our government would actually function. Had it failed, it’s possible that the United States as we know it would not exist today. The Constitution was a broad set of principles. It was left to the members of the First Congress and President George Washington to create the machinery that would make the government work. Fortunately, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and others less well known today rose to the occasion.
Simon & Schuster * 9781451691931

GEORGIA: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe by Dawn Tripp (Historical Fiction)
In 1916, Georgia O’Keeffe is a young, unknown art teacher when she travels to New York to meet Alfred Stieglitz, the famed photographer and art dealer, who has discovered O’Keeffe’s work and exhibits it in his gallery. O’Keeffe is quickly drawn into Stieglitz’s sophisticated world, becoming his mistress, protégé and muse, as their attraction deepens into an intense and tempestuous relationship and his photographs of her create a sensation. Yet as her own creative force develops, Georgia begins to push back against what critics and others are saying about her and her art. And soon she must make difficult choices to live a life she believes in.
Random House * 9781400069538

THE GIRL BEHIND THE DOOR: A Father’s Quest to Understand His Daughter’s Suicide by John Brooks (Memoir)
Early one Tuesday morning, John Brooks went to his teenage daughter’s room to make sure she was getting up for school and found her room dark and “neater than usual.” Casey was gone, but he found a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m sorry. Several hours later, a security video was found that showed Casey stepping off the bridge. Brooks spent months after Casey’s suicide trying to understand what led his 17-year-old daughter to take her life. In THE GIRL BEHIND THE DOOR, Brooks shares what he learned and asks, “What did everyone miss? What could have been done differently?”
Scribner * 9781501128349

THE HEART written by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor (Fiction)
Just before dawn on a Sunday morning, three teenage boys go surfing. Returning home, exhausted, the driver lets the car drift off the road into a tree. Two of the boys are wearing seat belts; one is sent through the windshield. He is declared brain-dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. His heart is still beating. THE HEART takes place over the 24 hours surrounding that fatal accident and the resulting heart transplant as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. The book examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux * 9780374240905

HOSTILE WITNESS: A Kate Ford Mystery by Leigh Adams (Mystery)
When single mom and computer security specialist Kate Ford is suddenly and mysteriously put on administrative leave, she finds herself drawn into the drama of a lurid kidnapping case with ties to her company. Kate has enough on her plate dealing with a condition that leaves her extra-sensitive to stimuli, but the case is too juicy to leave untouched. However, what begins as simple curiosity quickly leads her to the country’s darkest corners of power and leaves her and her family the target of a ruthless network of war profiteers, who will stop at nothing to protect their billion-dollar interests.
Crooked Lane Books * 9781629531991

ICE CHEST by J. D. Rhoades (Comic Crime Fiction)
Clarissa Cartwright is about to take the stage wearing a fortune in jewels. In the wings, a motley crew of bumbling crooks is scheming to make off with the biggest heist of their careers: five and a half million dollars in precious stones. When the robbers find themselves pursued by both the intimidating ex-cop tasked with protecting the world’s most valuable piece of lingerie and Clarissa's insanely jealous and mobbed-up ex-boyfriend, things get ugly. Especially when Clarissa decides she's had quite enough of being an object and resolves to turn the tables on both the crooks and the fashion world.
Polis Books * 9781940610801

IN EUROPE'S SHADOW: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond by Robert D. Kaplan (History)
Robert Kaplan first visited Romania in the 1970s, when he was a young journalist and the country was a bleak Communist backwater. It was one of the darkest corners of Europe, but few Westerners were paying attention. What ensued was a lifelong obsession with a critical, often overlooked country --- a country that, today, is key to understanding the current threat that Russia poses to Europe. Through the lens of one country, Kaplan examines larger questions of geography, imperialism, the role of fate in international relations, the Cold War, the Holocaust and more.
Random House * 9780812996814

IN OTHER WORDS written by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Ann Goldstein (Memoir)
Jhumpa Lahiri’s love for the Italian language first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. Although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterward, true mastery always eluded her. Seeking full immersion, she decides to move to Rome with her family, for “a trial by fire, a sort of baptism” into a new language and world. There, she begins to read, and to write --- initially in her journal --- solely in Italian. Presented in a dual-language format, IN OTHER WORDS investigates the process of learning to express oneself in another language, and describes the journey of a writer seeking a new voice.
Knopf * 9781101875551

INCARCERATION NATIONS: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World by Baz Dreisinger (Social Science/Penology)
Beginning in Africa and ending in Europe, INCARCERATION NATIONS is a first-person odyssey through the prison systems of the world. Professor, journalist and founder of the Prison-to-College-Pipeline, Baz Dreisinger looks into the human stories of incarcerated men and women and those who imprison them, creating a jarring, poignant view of a world to which most are denied access, and a rethinking of one of America’s most far-reaching global exports: the modern prison complex.
Other Press * 9781590517277

INTO OBLIVION: An Icelandic Thriller by Arnaldur Indridason (Thriller)
A woman swims in a remote, milky-blue lagoon. Steam rises from the water, and as it clears, a body is revealed in the ghostly light. Miles away, a vast aircraft hangar rises behind the perimeter fence of the US military base. A sickening thud is heard as a man's body falls from a high platform. Many years before, a schoolgirl went missing. The world has forgotten her, but Erlendur has not. Erlendur is a newly promoted detective with a battered body, a rouge CIA operative, and America's troublesome presence in Iceland to contend with.
Minotaur Books * 9781250077349

LIAR: A Memoir by Rob Roberge (Memoir)
When Rob Roberge learns that he's likely to have developed a progressive memory-eroding disease from years of hard living and frequent concussions, he’s terrified by the prospect of becoming a walking shadow. In a desperate attempt to preserve his identity, he sets out to (somewhat faithfully) record the most formative moments of his life. But the process of trying to remember his past only exposes just how fragile the stories that lay at the heart of our self-conception really are. As LIAR twists and turns through Roberge’s life, it turns the familiar story of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll on its head.
Crown * 9780553448061

THE LION’S MOUTH: A Hanne Wilhelmsen Novel by Anne Holt (Mystery)
Less than six months after taking office, the Norwegian Prime Minister is found dead. Was it a politically motivated assassination or personal revenge? Hanne Wilhelmsen, Chief Inspector of the Norwegian Police, is on leave in California, but when this death shakes the country to its core, she knows she can’t remain on the sidelines of such a crucial investigation. When secrets begin to unravel from the Prime Minister’s past, Hanne and her partner, Billy T., must piece together the crime before a private tragedy becomes a public outcry.
Scribner * 9781501123238

MY FATHER, THE PORNOGRAPHER: A Memoir by Chris Offutt (Memoir)
When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle and 1,800 pounds of porn. Andrew had been considered the “king of 20th century smut,” a career that began as a strategy to pay for his son’s orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the ’70s when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel was at its height. Over one long summer in his hometown, helping his mother move out of the house, Chris began to examine his deceased father’s possessions and realized he finally had an opportunity to come to grips with the mercurial man he always feared but never understood.
Atria * 9781501112461

PACIFIC BURN: A Jim Brodie Thriller by Barry Lancet (Thriller)
In recognition for his role in solving the Japantown murders in San Francisco, antiques dealer and sometime-PI Jim Brodie has just been brought on as the liaison for the mayor’s new Pacific Rim Friendship Program. He recruits his friend, the renowned Japanese artist Ken Nobuki, who ends up being shot by a sniper and lies comatose in the hospital. Brodie soon realizes that, with the suspicious and untimely death of Nobuki’s oldest son a week earlier in Napa Valley, someone may be targeting his friend’s family --- and killing them off one by one.
Simon & Schuster * 9781476794884

THE RAMBLERS by Aidan Donnelley Rowley (Fiction)
Clio Marsh, whose bird-watching walks through Central Park are mentioned in New York Magazine, is taking her first tentative steps towards a relationship while also looking back to the secrets of her broken childhood. Her best friend, Smith Anderson, the seemingly perfect daughter of one of New York’s wealthiest families, organizes the lives of others as her own has fallen apart. And Tate Pennington has returned to the city, heartbroken but determined to move ahead with his artistic dreams. Rambling through the emotional chaos of their lives, this trio learns to let go of the past and make room for the future.
William Morrow * 9780062413314

SHUTTER MAN by Richard Montanari (Mystery)
Killing is in Billy's bloodline, as a member of Philadelphia's dangerous Farren crime family. Plagued with a rare disease that prevents him from recognizing faces, Billy carries a photograph in his pocket that is his only way of identifying his next target. Killing is in Billy's bloodline, as a member of Philadelphia's dangerous Farren crime family. While Billy stalks Philadelphia, Detective Kevin Byrne is assigned to a series of bizarre home-invasion cases and is joined by his former partner-turned-assistant district attorney, Jessica Balzano. Their investigations circle Byrne's childhood neighborhood of Devil's Pocket, and they find themselves revisiting a crime from Byrne's past that has haunted him for decades.
Mulholland Books * 9780316244770

SUDDEN DEATH written by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Fiction)
SUDDEN DEATH begins with a brutal tennis match between the bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo that could decide the fate of the world. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time. Across the ocean in Mexico, conquistador Hernán Cortés and his Mayan translator and lover, La Malinche, scheme and conquer, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the world. And in a remote Mexican colony, a bishop reads Thomas More’s UTOPIA and thinks it’s a manual.
Riverhead Books * 9781594633461

THE VATICAN PRINCESS: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia by C. W. Gortner (Historical Fiction)
Glamorous and predatory, the Borgias fascinated and terrorized 15th-century Renaissance Italy, and Lucrezia Borgia, beloved daughter of the pope, was at the center of the dynasty’s ambitions. Slandered as a heartless seductress who lured men to their doom, was she in fact the villainess of legend, or was she trapped in a familial web, forced to choose between loyalty and survival? THE VATICAN PRINCESS is the first novel to describe Lucrezia’s coming-of-age in her own voice.
Ballantine Books * 9780345533975

VIOLENT CRIMES: An Amanda Jaffe Novel by Phillip Margolin (Thriller)
Dale Masterson has become wealthy and successful representing the interests of oil and coal companies. But when his colleague is found dead, his business practices are put under surveillance and a lower-level employee stands accused. The controversy surrounding the firm is magnified when Dale is found beaten to death in his mansion. His son, Brandon, confesses to killing him on behalf of all the people whose lives are being destroyed by his questionable clients. Veteran lawyer Amanda Jaffe is hired to represent Brandon, but what seems like an open-and-shut case quickly begins to unravel.
Harper * 9780062266552

WAYS TO DISAPPEAR by Idra Novey (Fiction)
Deep in gambling debt, the celebrated Brazilian writer Beatriz Yagoda abruptly vanishes. In Pittsburgh, her American translator Emma hears the news and flies immediately to Brazil. There, in the sticky, sugary heat of Rio, Emma and her author's children conspire to solve the mystery of Yagoda's curious disappearance and staunch the colorful demands of her various outstanding affairs: the rapacious loan shark with a zeal for severing body parts, and the washed-up and disillusioned editor who launched Yagoda's career years earlier.
Little, Brown and Company * 9780316298490

WEST OF EDEN: An American Place by Jean Stein (History)
Jean Stein transformed the art of oral history in her groundbreaking book EDIE: American Girl, an indelible portrait of Andy Warhol “superstar” Edie Sedgwick, which was edited with George Plimpton. Now, in WEST OF EDEN, she turns to Los Angeles, the city of her childhood. Stein vividly captures a mythic cast of characters: their ambitions and triumphs as well as their desolation and grief. These stories illuminate the bold aspirations of five larger-than-life individuals and their families.
Random House * 9780812998405

THE WOLVES: A John Wells Novel by Alex Berenson (Thriller)
John Wells has just barely managed to stop an operation designed to drive the United States and Iran into war, but the instigator himself disappeared behind an impenetrable war of security. Now it’s time for him to pay, and Wells has made it his personal mission. But the White House doesn’t want anybody stirring the pot; his old CIA bosses have their own agendas; and other countries are starting to sniff around, sensing something unusual. It is when Russia and China enter the mix, however, that the whole affair is set to combust. With alarming speed, Wells is once again on his own…and the wolves are closing in.
G.P. Putnam's Sons * 9780399176142

WRECK AND ORDER by Hannah Tennant-Moore (Fiction)
Elsie has a tumultuous relationship with an abusive boyfriend, a dead-end job at a newspaper, and a sharp intelligence that’s constantly at odds with her many bad decisions. When her initial attempts to improve her life go awry, Elsie decides that a dramatic change is the only solution. So she travels to Paris and Sri Lanka, hoping to accumulate experiences, create connections, and discover a new way to live. Along the way, she meets men and women who challenge and provoke her towards the change she genuinely hopes to find. But in the end, she must still come face-to-face with herself.
Hogarth * 9781101903261