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In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of November 4th and November 11th 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 our Sounding Off on Audio contest for November. This month's prizes are the audio versions of Mary Higgins Clark’s KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM CRY, read by January LaVoy, and Martin Cruz Smith’s THE SIBERIAN DILEMMA: An Arkady Renko Novel, read by Jeremy Bobb. Submit your comments about the audiobooks you've listened to by Monday, December 2nd at noon ET, and you'll be in the running to win both these audio titles.
Also, we have updated our Books on Screen feature for this month. November's roundup includes the feature films Doctor Sleep, Motherless Brooklyn and The Good Liar; the series premieres of "Dublin Murders" on HBO and "The Morning Show" on Apple TV+, along with season two of "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan" on Amazon Prime; and the DVD releases of The Art of Racing in the Rain, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Brian Banks and Official Secrets.
For those of you who are doing online shopping, if you use the store links below, Bookreporter.com gets a small affiliate fee on your purchases. We would appreciate your considering this!
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound
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This Week's Bonus News:
November's Sounding Off on Audio Contest
Tell us about the audiobooks you’ve finished listening to with your comments and a rating of 1 to 5 stars for both the performance and the content. During the contest period from November 1st to December 2nd at noon ET, two lucky readers each will be randomly chosen to win the audio versions of Mary Higgins Clark’s KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM CRY, read by January LaVoy, and Martin Cruz Smith’s THE SIBERIAN DILEMMA: An Arkady Renko Novel, read by Jeremy Bobb.
To make sure other readers will be able to find the audiobook, please include the full title and correct author names (your entry must include these to be eligible to win). For complete rules and guidelines, click here.
- To see reader comments from previous contest periods, click here.
Click here to enter the contest.
On Sale the Week of November 4th in Hardcover
November 5th
36 RIGHTEOUS MEN by Steven Pressfield (Apocalyptic Thriller)
When James Manning and Covina “Dewey” Duwai are called in to investigate a string of murders, their investigations take them from the headquarters of the Russian mafia in Brighton Beach to a sweltering maze of shops in Little Hong Kong. After apprehending a woman --- a disgraced but brilliant rabbinical scholar --- fleeing one of the crime scenes, they’re brought face to face with the shocking truth: the Jewish legend of the hidden Righteous Men, the 36 who protect the world from destruction, is no legend at all. They are real, and they are being murdered. As the bodies pile up and the world tilts further into chaos, Manning and Dewey must protect the last of the Righteous Men from a ruthless killer able to beguile his victims and command them against their will.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9781324002895
THE ACCOMPLICE by Joseph Kanon (Historical Thriller)
Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill has never forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz --- nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm, a camp doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max’s family to the gas chambers. As the war came to a close, Schramm was one of the many high-ranking former Nazi officers who managed to escape Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina’s Juan Perón gave them safe harbor and new identities. With his life nearing its end, Max asks his nephew Aaron Wiley --- an American CIA desk analyst --- to complete the task Max never could: to track down Otto in Argentina, capture him and bring him back to Germany to stand trial.
Atria Books | 9781501121425
ACID FOR THE CHILDREN: A Memoir by Flea (Memoir)
In ACID FOR THE CHILDREN, Flea takes readers on a deeply personal and revealing tour of his formative years. Through hilarious anecdotes, poetical meditations and occasional flights of fantasy, the iconic bassist and co-founder of the Red Hot Chili Peppers deftly chronicles the experiences that forged him as an artist, a musician and a young man. His dreamy, jazz-inflected prose makes the Los Angeles of the 1970s and ’80s come to gritty, glorious life. It is here that young Flea, looking to escape a turbulent home, found family in a community of musicians, artists and junkies who also lived on the fringe. He spent most of his time partying and committing petty crimes. But it was in music where he found a higher meaning, a place to channel his frustration, loneliness and love.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781455530533
ALL BLOOD RUNS RED: The Legendary Life of Eugene Bullard — Boxer, Pilot, Soldier, Spy by Phil Keith with Tom Clavin (Biography)
Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of 11 to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun. ALL BLOOD RUNS RED is the inspiring untold story of an American hero, a thought-provoking chronicle of the 20th century, and a portrait of a man who came from nothing and by his own courage, determination, gumption, intelligence and luck forged a legendary life.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335005564
BLIND SEARCH: A Mercy Carr Mystery by Paula Munier (Mystery)
Nine-year-old Henry is lost in the woods. Again. Only this time he sees something terrible. When a young woman is found shot through the heart with a fatal arrow, former Army MP Mercy Carr thinks that something is murder. But Henry, a math genius whose autism often silences him when he should speak up most, is not talking. Now there’s a murderer hiding among the hunters in the forest --- and Mercy and her retired bomb-sniffing dog, Elvis, must team up with their crime-solving friends, game warden Troy Warner and search-and-rescue dog Susie Bear, to find the killer. When an early-season blizzard hits the mountains, cutting them off from the rest of the world, the race is on to solve the crime, apprehend the murderer and keep the boy safe until the snowplows get through.
Minotaur Books | 9781250153050
THE BOOK OF LOST SAINTS by Daniel José Older (Fiction)
Marisol vanished during the Cuban Revolution, disappearing with hardly a trace. Now, shaped by atrocities long-forgotten, her tenacious spirit visits her nephew, Ramón, in modern-day New Jersey. Her hope: that her presence will prompt him to unearth their painful family history. Ramón launches a haphazard investigation into the story of his ancestor, unaware of the forces driving him on his search. Along the way, he falls in love, faces a run-in with a murderous gangster, and uncovers the lives of the lost saints who helped Marisol during her imprisonment.
Imprint | 9781250185815
A CHRISTMAS GATHERING by Anne Perry (Historical Mystery)
As beautiful as it may be, their friends’ country house is not where Lady Vespasia wishes to spend Christmas with her new husband, Victor Narraway, former head of the London Special Branch. As tensions grow, the young and beautiful Iris Watson-Watt becomes the center of several men’s focus. Unbeknownst to Vespasia, Iris carries a sensitive package that she must pass to Victor in the hope of unmasking a British traitor. While Victor plots his moves, he is reminded of a similar case from 20 years before, when a young Frenchwoman also carried a clandestine message --- one that resulted in her still-unsolved murder. Victor has always been tormented by his failure to protect her, and now he must act fast before history repeats itself.
Ballantine Books | 9780525621010
THE CITY GAME: Triumph, Scandal, and a Legendary Basketball Team by Matthew Goodman (Sports/History)
The unlikeliest of champions, the 1949–50 City College Beavers were extraordinary by every measure. City College was a tuition-free, merit-based college in Harlem known far more for its intellectual achievements and political radicalism than its athletic prowess. Every single member of the Beavers was either Jewish or African American, and they stunned the basketball world by becoming the only team in history to win the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year. However, during the following season, all of the team’s starting five were arrested, charged with conspiring with gamblers to shave points. The story centers on two teammates, Eddie Roman and Floyd Layne --- one white, one black --- each caught up in the scandal, each searching for a path to personal redemption.
Ballantine Books | 9781101882832
THE DEEP by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes (Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction)
Yetu holds the memories for her people --- water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners --- who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone except for the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu, who remembers for everyone, but the memories are destroying her. So she flees to the surface and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past --- and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity --- and own who they really are.
Gallery/Saga Press | 9781534439863
DESK 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America by Sherrod Brown (Biography/History)
Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In DESK 88, he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him. They range from Hugo Black, who helped to lift millions of American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho’s Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities. He also writes about Herbert Lehman of New York, Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374138219
THE FAMILY UPSTAIRS by Lisa Jewell (Psychological Thriller)
Shortly after her 25th birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames, which is worth millions. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well --- and she is on a collision course to meet them. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy 10-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
Atria Books | 9781501190100
FATE OF THE FALLEN by Kel Kade (Dark Fantasy/Adventure)
Everyone loves Mathias. Naturally, when he discovers it’s his destiny to save the world, he dives in head first, pulling his best friend Aaslo along for the ride. However, saving the world isn’t as easy, or exciting, as it sounds in the stories. The going gets rough, and folks start to believe their best chance for survival is to surrender to the forces of evil, which isn’t how the prophecy goes. At all. As the list of allies grows thin, and the friends find themselves staring death in the face, they must decide how to become the heroes they were destined to be --- or, failing that, how to survive.
Tor Books | 9781250293794
FINAL OPTION: A Novel of the Oregon Files by Clive Cussler and Boyd Morrison (Thriller/Adventure)
When the CIA realizes that the identities of three American spies in Brazil have been compromised, they turn to Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon to rescue the agents. What seems like a routine operation turns out to be a trap designed by Cabrillo's greatest enemy, a man driven by hate to seek the ultimate revenge. At the heart of the plot is a state-of-the-art ship that is identical to the Oregon: same weaponry, same technology, same ability to evade capture. The crew of the Oregon must piece together a series of disturbing events, including the mysterious sinking of a nuclear attack submarine and the possible discovery of a WWII-era weapon that was thought to be lost in the jungles of Brazil, in the ultimate game of cat and mouse.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525541813
FINDING CHIKA: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family by Mitch Albom (Memoir)
Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Mitch Albom operates in Port Au Prince. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, “No one in Haiti can help you with.” Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure.
Harper | 9780062952394
GALWAY GIRL: A Jack Taylor Novel by Ken Bruen (Mystery/Thriller)
Jack Taylor has never quite been able to get his life together, but now he has truly hit rock bottom. Still reeling from a violent family tragedy, Taylor is busy drowning his grief in Jameson and uppers, as usual, when a high-profile officer in the local Garda is murdered. After another Guard is found dead, and then another, Taylor’s old colleagues from the force implore him to take on the case. The plot is one big game, and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious team: a trio of young killers with very different styles, but who are united by their common desire to take down Jack Taylor. Their ring leader is Jericho, a psychotic girl from Galway who is grieving the loss of her lover, and who will force Jack to confront some personal trauma from his past.
Mysterious Press | 9780802147936
THE GREAT PRETENDER: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan (Psychology/History)
For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness. In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But as Susannah Cahalan's explosive new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors, and what does it mean for our understanding of mental illness today?
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538715284
IN THE DREAM HOUSE: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado (Memoir)
Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Carmen Maria Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives IN THE DREAM HOUSE its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope --- the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman --- through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships.
Graywolf Press | 9781644450031
KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM CRY by Mary Higgins Clark (Mystery/Thriller)
When investigative journalist Gina Kane receives an email from a “CRyan” describing her “terrible experience” while working at REL, a high-profile television news network, Gina knows she has to pursue the story. But when Ryan goes silent, Gina is shocked to discover the young woman has died tragically in a jet ski accident. Meanwhile, several female employees have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. REL counsel Michael Carter approaches the CEO, offering to persuade the victims to accept settlements in exchange for their silence. Was Ryan’s death truly an accident? And when another accuser turns up dead, Gina realizes someone will go to depraved lengths to keep the story from seeing the light.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501171703
LITTLE WEIRDS by Jenny Slate (Essays)
You may "know" Jenny Slate from her new Netflix special, "Stage Fright," or as the creator of Marcel the Shell, or as the star of Obvious Child. But you don't really know Jenny Slate until you get bonked on the head by her absolutely singular writing style. To see the world through Jenny's eyes is to see it as though for the first time, shimmering with strangeness and possibility. As she will remind you, we live on an ancient ball that rotates around a bigger ball made up of lights and gasses that are science gasses, not farts (don't be immature). Heartbreak, confusion and misogyny stalk this blue-green sphere, yes, but it is also a place of wild delight and unconstrained vitality, a place where we can start living as soon as we are born, and we can be born at any time.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316485340
NOEL STREET by Richard Paul Evans (Fiction)
The year is 1975. Elle Sheen --- a single mother who is supporting herself and her six-year-old African-American son, Dylan, as a waitress at the Noel Street Diner --- isn’t sure what to make of William Smith when his appearance creates a stir in the small town of Mistletoe, Utah. As their lives unexpectedly entwine, Elle learns that William, a recently returned Vietnam POW, not only is fighting demons from his past, but may also have the answer to her own secret pain --- a revelation that culminates in a remarkable act of love and forgiveness.
Gallery Books | 9781982129583
THE OLD SUCCESS: A Richard Jury Mystery by Martha Grimes (Mystery)
When the body of a French woman washes up on a wild inlet off the Cornish coast, Brian Macalvie, divisional commander with the Devon-Cornwall police, is called in. While he stands in the Sicily Islands, Inspector Richard Jury --- 20 miles away on Land’s End --- is at The Old Success pub, sharing a drink with the legendary former CID detective Tom Brownell, a man renowned for solving every case he undertook. Except one. In the days following the mysterious slaying of the Parisian tourist, two other murders take place: first, a man is shot on a Northhamptonshire estate, then a holy duster turns up murdered at Exeter Cathedral in Devon. Macalvie, Jury and Bronwell set out to discover if these three killings, though very different in execution, are connected.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802147400
ON SWIFT HORSES by Shannon Pufahl (Fiction)
Muriel is newly married and restless, transplanted from her rural Kansas hometown to life in a dusty bungalow in San Diego. She misses her freethinking mother, dead before Muriel's 19th birthday, and her sly, itinerant brother-in-law, Julius, who made the world feel bigger than she had imagined. And so she begins slipping off to the Del Mar racetrack to bet and eavesdrop, learning the language of horses and risk. Meanwhile, Julius is testing his fate in Las Vegas, working at a local casino where tourists watch atomic tests from the roof, and falling in love with Henry, a young card cheat. When Henry is eventually discovered and run out of town, Julius takes off to search for him in the plazas and dives of Tijuana, trading one city of dangerous illusions and indiscretions for another.
Riverhead Books | 9780525538110
PALM BEACH, MAR-A-LAGO, AND THE RISE OF AMERICA'S XANADU by Les Standiford (History)
Looking at the island of Palm Beach today, with its unmatched mansions, tony shops and pristine beaches, one is hard pressed to visualize the dense tangle of Palmetto brush and mangroves that it was when visionary entrepreneur and railroad tycoon Henry Flagler first arrived there in April 1893. Within less than a year, he had built the Royal Poinciana Hotel, and two years later what was to become the legendary Breakers. Over the next 125 years, Palm Beach has become synonymous with exclusivity --- especially its most famous residence, “Mar-a-Lago.” PALM BEACH, MAR-A-LAGO, AND THE RISE OF AMERICA’S XANADU tells the history of this fabled landscape intertwined with the colorful lives of its famous protagonists.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802128492
SECRET SERVICE by Tom Bradby (Thriller)
To those who don’t really know her, Kate Henderson’s life must seem perfectly ordinary. But she is in fact a senior MI6 officer, who right now is nursing the political equivalent of a nuclear bomb. While heading up the Russia Desk of the Secret Intelligent Service, one of Kate’s undercover operations has revealed some alarming evidence. Evidence that a senior UK politician is a high-level Russian informer. Determined to find out who it is, Kate must risk everything to get to the truth. Until a young woman is brutally murdered as a consequence, which puts Kate and her team under the spotlight. With blood on her hands, her reputation to uphold, her family hanging by a thread and a leadership election looming, Kate is quickly running out of options and out of time.
Atlantic Monthly Press | 9780802148032
THE SIBERIAN DILEMMA by Martin Cruz Smith (Thriller)
Iconic Moscow investigator Arkady Renko hasn’t seen his part-time lover, journalist Tatiana Petrovna, since she left on assignment over a month ago. Renko slowly learns that Tatiana has been profiling the rise of political dissident Mikhail Kuznetsov, a golden boy of modern oil wealth and the first to pose a true threat to Putin’s rule in over a decade. Though Kuznetsov seems like the perfect candidate to take on the corruption in Russian politics, his reputation becomes clouded when Boris Benz, his business partner and best friend, turns up dead. In a land of shamans and brutally cold nights, oligarchs wealthy on northern oil, and sea monsters that are said to prowl the deepest lake in the world, Renko needs all his wits about him to get Tatiana out alive.
Simon & Schuster | 9781439140253
THE STARLESS SEA by Erin Morgenstern (Fantasy/Romance)
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead.
Doubleday | 9780385541213
THIS IS PLEASURE: A Story by Mary Gaitskill (Fiction)
The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Mary Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons --- hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable.
Pantheon | 9781524749132
THE WINTER ARMY: The World War II Odyssey of the 10th Mountain Division, America's Elite Alpine Warriors by Maurice Isserman (History)
At the start of World War II, the US Army had two cavalry divisions --- and no mountain troops. The German Wehrmacht, in contrast, had many well-trained and battle-hardened mountain divisions. Starting from scratch, the US Army developed a unique military fighting force, the 10th Mountain Division, drawn from the ranks of civilian skiers, mountaineers and others with outdoor experience. The resulting mix of Ivy League students, park rangers, Olympic skiers and European refugees formed the first specialized alpine fighting force in US history. By the time it deployed to Italy at the beginning of 1945, this ragtag group had coalesced into a tight-knit unit. In the months that followed, at a terrible cost, they spearheaded the Allied drive in Italy to final victory.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9781328871435
THE WITCHES ARE COMING by Lindy West (Social Science)
From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In THE WITCHES ARE COMING, Lindy West turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one. Here, she extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the 21st century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media that she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions and prejudice that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics.
Hachette Books | 9780316449885
On Sale the Week of November 4th in Paperback
November 5th
THE ADULTS by Caroline Hulse (Fiction/Humor)
Claire and Matt are no longer together but decide that it would be best for their daughter, Scarlett, to have a “normal” family Christmas. They can’t agree on whose idea it was to go to the Happy Forest holiday park, or who said they should bring their new partners. But someone did, and it’s too late to pull the plug. Claire brings her new boyfriend, Patrick, a seemingly sensible, eligible from a distance Ironman in Waiting. Matt brings the new love of his life, Alex, who’s funny, smart and extremely patient. They all drink a little too much after Scarlett’s bedtime, overshare classified secrets about their pasts…and before you know it, their holiday is a powder keg that ends where this novel begins --- with a tearful, frightened call to the police.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780525511762
AN ANONYMOUS GIRL by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen (Psychological Thriller)
Looking to earn some easy cash, Jessica Farris agrees to be a test subject in a psychological study about ethics and morality. But as the study moves from the exam room to the real world, the line between what is real and what is one of Dr. Shields’ experiments blurs. Dr. Shields seems to know what Jess is thinking…and what she’s hiding. Jessica’s behavior will not only be monitored, but manipulated. Caught in a web of attraction, deceit and jealousy, Jess quickly learns that some obsessions can be deadly.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250133755
AUTUMN by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Memoir)
AUTUMN begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark. He describes with acute sensitivity daily life with his wife and children in rural Sweden, drawing upon memories of his own childhood to give an inimitably tender perspective on the precious and unique bond between parent and child. The sun, wasps, jellyfish, eyes, lice --- the stuff of everyday life is the fodder for his art. Nothing is too small or too vast to escape his attention. Through close observation of the objects and phenomena around him, Knausgaard shows us how vast, unknowable and wondrous the world is.
Penguin Books | 9780399563324
THE BEST BAD THINGS by Katrina Carrasco (Historical Mystery)
It is 1887, and Alma Rosales is on the hunt for stolen opium. Trained in espionage by the Pinkerton Detective Agency --- but dismissed for bad behavior and a penchant for going undercover as a man --- Alma now works for Delphine Beaumond, the seductive mastermind of a West Coast smuggling ring. When product goes missing at their Washington Territory outpost, Alma is tasked with tracking the thief and recovering the drugs. She’s enjoying her dangerous game of shifting identities and double crosses as she fights for a promotion and an invitation back into Delphine’s bed. But it’s getting harder and harder to keep her cover stories straight and to know whom to trust.
Picador | 9781250238146
BOWLAWAY by Elizabeth McCracken (Historical Fiction)
From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the 20th century, Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is the heir apparent to Truitt Alleys.
Ecco | 9780062862860
THE BROMANCE BOOK CLUB by Lyssa Kay Adams (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Nashville Legends second baseman Gavin Scott's marriage is in major league trouble. He’s recently discovered a humiliating secret: his wife, Thea, has always faked the Big O. When he loses his cool at the revelation, it’s the final straw on their already strained relationship. Thea asks for a divorce, and Gavin realizes he’s let his pride and fear get the better of him. Distraught and desperate, Gavin finds help from an unlikely source: a secret romance book club made up of Nashville's top alpha men. With the help of their current read, a steamy Regency titled Courting the Countess, the guys coach Gavin on saving his marriage. But it'll take a lot more than flowery words and grand gestures for this hapless Romeo to find his inner hero and win back the trust of his wife.
Berkley | 9781984806093
THE CHEF by James Patterson and Max DiLallo (Thriller)
In the Carnival days leading up Mardi Gras, Detective Caleb Rooney comes under investigation for a murder he is accused of committing in the line of duty --- as a Major Crimes detective for the New Orleans Police Department. Has his sideline at the Killer Chef food truck given him a taste for murder? While fighting the charges against him, Rooney makes a pair of unthinkable discoveries. His beloved city is under threat of attack. And these would-be terrorists may be local. As crowds of revelers gather, Rooney follows a fearsome trail of clues, racing from outlying districts into city center. He has no idea what --- or who --- he'll face in defense of his beloved hometown, only that innocent lives are at stake.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538714867
THE CURRENT by Tim Johnston (Thriller)
In the dead of winter, state troopers pull two young women and their car from an icy river. One is found downriver, drowned, while the other is found at the scene --- half frozen but alive. What happened was no accident, and news of the crime awakens the community’s memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river 10 years earlier, and whose killer may still live among them. Determined to find answers, the surviving young woman soon realizes that she’s connected to the earlier unsolved case by more than just a river. The deeper she plunges into her own investigation, the closer she comes to dangerous truths, and to the violence that simmers just below the surface of her hometown.
Algonquin Books | 9781616209834
THE DREAMERS by Karen Thompson Walker (Fiction)
One night in an isolated college town, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep --- and doesn’t wake up. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster. Those affected by the illness are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams --- but of what?
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9780812984668
ELSEY COME HOME by Susan Conley (Fiction)
When Elsey's husband, Lukas, hands her a brochure for a weeklong mountain retreat, she knows he is really giving her an ultimatum: Go, or we’re done. Once a successful painter, Elsey set down roots in China after falling in love with Lukas. Now, with two young daughters and unable to find a balance between her identities as artist, mother and wife, Elsey fills her days worrying, drinking and descending into boredom and unhappiness. So she agrees to go. There, she meets a group of men and women who will forever alter the way she understands herself, and help her to finally embark on a journey to address her own pain and find her way back to her marriage.
Vintage | 9780525562559
EVENINGS IN PARADISE: More Stories by Lucia Berlin (Fiction/Short Stories)
In 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN, a posthumous story collection by a relatively unknown writer, to widespread acclaim. The book’s author, Lucia Berlin, earned comparisons to Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Alice Munro and Anton Chekhov. EVENING IN PARADISE is a careful selection from Berlin’s remaining stories --- 22 gems that showcase the gritty glamour that made readers fall in love with her. From Texas to Chile, Mexico to New York City, Berlin finds beauty in the darkest places and darkness in the seemingly pristine.
Picador | 9781250234865
FOREVER AND A DAY: A James Bond Novel by Anthony Horowitz (Thriller)
FOREVER AND A DAY is the story of the birth of a legend, in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera, taking readers into the very beginning of James Bond’s illustrious career and the formation of his identity. The sea keeps its secrets. But not this time. One body. Three bullets. 007 floats in the waters of Marseille, killed by an unknown hand. It’s time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organized crime. It’s time for James Bond to earn his license to kill.
Harper Paperbacks | 9780062873620
GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN by Talia Hibbert (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
After almost --- but not quite --- dying, Chloe Brown has come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life” and already has completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items? Enjoy a drunken night out. Ride a motorcycle. Go camping. Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex. Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage. And...do something bad. But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher. Redford “Red” Morgan is a handyman and an artist who Chloe spies on occasionally. But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her.
Avon | 9780062941206
THE KINSHIP OF SECRETS by Eugenia Kim (Historical Fiction)
In 1948, Najin and Calvin Cho, with their young daughter Miran, travel from South Korea to the United States in search of new opportunities. Wary of the challenges they know will face them, Najin and Calvin make the difficult decision to leave their infant daughter, Inja, behind with their extended family; soon, they hope, they will return to her. But then war breaks out in Korea, and there is no end in sight to the separation. Miran grows up in prosperous American suburbia, under the shadow of the daughter left behind, as Inja grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn’t remember. Najin and Calvin desperately seek a reunion with Inja, but are the bonds of love strong enough to reconnect their family over distance, time and war?
Mariner Books | 9780358108511
LAST NIGHT: A Searchers Novel by Karen Ellis (Thriller)
One of the few black kids on his Brighton Beach block, Titus "Crisp" Crespo was raised by his white mother and his Russian grandparents. Crisp has always been the odd kid out, but a fundamentally good kid, with a bright future. But one impulsive decision triggers a horrible domino effect --- an arrest, no reason not to accompany his richer, whiter friend Glynnie on a visit to her weed dealer, and a trip onto his father's old home turf where he'll face certain choices he's always strived to avoid. As Detective Lex Cole tries to unravel the clues from Crisp's night out, they both find that what you don't know about your past can still come back to haunt you.
Mulholland Books | 9780316505703
MASTER OF HIS FATE by Barbara Taylor Bradford (Historical Fiction)
Victorian England is a country of sharp divides between rich and poor, but James Lionel Falconer, who spends his days working at his father’s market stall, is determined to become a merchant prince. Even as a child, he is everything a self-made man should be: handsome, ambitious, charming and brimming with self-confidence. James quickly rises through the ranks, proving himself both hardworking and trustworthy, and catching the eye of Henry Malvern, head of the most prestigious shipping company in London. But when threats against his reputation --- and his life --- begin to emerge, James will have to prove that he truly is the master of his fate.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250187406
THE MAYFLOWER: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America by Rebecca Fraser (History)
The voyage of the Mayflower and the founding of Plymouth Colony is one of the seminal events in world history. But the poorly equipped group of English Puritans who ventured across the Atlantic in the early autumn of 1620 had no sense they would pass into legend. They had 80 casks of butter and two dogs but no cattle for milk, meat or ploughing. They were ill-prepared for the brutal journey and the new land that few of them could comprehend. But the Mayflower story did not end with these Pilgrims’ arrival on the coast of New England or their first uncertain years as settlers. Rebecca Fraser traces two generations of one ordinary family and their extraordinary response to the challenges of life in America.
St. Martin’s Griffin | 9781250108579
MIGHTY JUSTICE: My Life in Civil Rights by Dovey Johnson Roundtree and Katie McCabe (Memoir)
Paperback Original
In MIGHTY JUSTICE, trailblazing African American civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree recounts her inspiring life story that speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times. From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation’s capital; from the male stronghold of the army where she broke gender and color barriers to the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister --- in all these places, Roundtree sought justice. Dovey Roundtree passed away in 2018 at the age of 104. Though her achievements were significant and influential, she remains largely unknown to the American public. This book corrects the historical record.
Algonquin Books | 9781616209551
NOVICE DRAGONEER: A Dragoneer Academy Novel by E. E. Knight (Fantasy)
Paperback Original
Fourteen-year-old Ileth grew up in an orphanage, and thanks to her stutter was never thought to be destined for much beyond kitchen work and cleaning. But she has dreamed of serving with the dragons ever since a childhood meeting with a glittering silver dragon and its female dragoneer. For years she waits, and as soon as she is old enough to join, Ileth runs away to become a novice dragoneer at the ancient human-dragon fortress of the Serpentine. While most of her fellow apprentices are from rich and influential families, Ileth must fight for her place in the world. She is then sent off to the dragon-dancers after a foolish kiss with a famously named boy and given charge of a sickly old dragon with a mysterious past. But she finds that those trials were nothing when she has to take the place of a dead dragoneer and care for his imprisoned dragon in enemy lands.
Ace | 9781984804068
PAIN written by Zeruya Shalev, translated by Sondra Silverston (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Ten years after she was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, the pain comes back to torment Iris. But that is not all: Eitan, the love of her youth, also comes back into her life. Though their relationship ended many years ago, she was more deeply wounded when he left her than by the suicide bomber who blew himself up next to her. Iris' marriage is stagnant. Her two children have grown up and are almost independent; she herself has become a dedicated, successful school principal. Now, after years without passion and joy, Eitan brings them back into her life. But she must concoct all sorts of lies to conceal her affair from her family, and the lies become more and more complicated.
Other Press | 9781590510926
PARIS ECHO by Sebastian Faulks (Fiction)
American historian Hannah intends to immerse herself in World War II research in Paris, wary of paying much attention to the city where a youthful misadventure once left her dejected. But a chance encounter with Tariq, a Moroccan teenager whose visions of the City of Lights as a world of opportunity and rebirth starkly contrast with her own, disrupts her plan. Hannah agrees to take Tariq in as a lodger, forming an unexpected connection with the young man. Yet, as Tariq begins to assimilate, he realizes that the country’s dark past and current ills are far more complicated than he’d anticipated. And Hannah, diving deeper into her work on women’s lives in Nazi-occupied Paris, uncovers a shocking piece of history that threatens to dismantle her core beliefs.
Picador | 9781250230676
THE POPPY WIFE: A Novel of the Great War by Caroline Scott (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Survivors of the Great War are desperately trying to piece together the fragments of their broken lives. While many have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie’s husband, Francis, has not come home. Francis is presumed to have been killed in action, but Edie believes he might still be alive. Harry, Francis’ brother, was there the day Francis was wounded. He was certain it was a fatal wound, but as time passes, Harry begins questioning his memory of what happened. Could Francis merely be lost and confused somewhere? When Edie receives a mysterious photograph of him, she is more convinced than ever he might still be alive. And so she embarks on a journey in the hope of finding some trace of her husband. Is he truly gone? And if he isn’t, then why hasn’t he come home?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062955326
QUEENIE by Candice Carty-Williams (Fiction)
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle-class peers. After a messy breakup from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places, including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?” --- all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.
Gallery/Scout Press | 9781501196027
SPRING by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Fiction)
You don’t know what air is, and yet you breathe. You don’t know what sleep is, yet you sleep. You don’t know what night is, yet you lie in it. You don’t know what a heart is, yet your own heart beats steadily in your chest, day and night, day and night, day and night. So begins SPRING, the recommencement of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fantastic and spellbinding literary project of assembling a personal encyclopedia of the world addressed directly to his newly born daughter. But here Knausgaard must also tell his daughter the story of what happened during the time when her mother was pregnant, and explain why he now has to attend appointments with child services. In order to keep his daughter safe, he must tell a terrible story, one that unfolds with acute psychological suspense over the course of a single day.
Penguin Books | 9780399563386
SUMMER by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Memoir)
The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's intensely personal series about the four seasons, SUMMER once again intersperses short vividly descriptive essays with emotionally raw diary entries addressed directly to Knausgaard's newborn daughter. Writing more expansively and, if it is possible, even more intimately and unguardedly than in the previous three volumes, he mines with new depth his difficult memories of his childhood and fraught relationship with his own father. Documenting his family's life in rural Sweden and reflecting on a characteristically eclectic array of subjects, he braids the various threads of the previous volumes into a moving conclusion.
Penguin Books | 9780399563416
THOSE WHO KNEW by Idra Novey (Fiction)
On an unnamed island country 10 years after the collapse of a U.S.-supported regime, Lena suspects that the powerful senator she was involved with back in her student activist days is taking advantage of a young woman who's been introducing him at rallies. When the young woman ends up dead, Lena revisits her own fraught history with the senator and the violent incident that ended their relationship. Why didn't Lena speak up then, and will her family's support of the former regime still impact her credibility? What if her hunch about this young woman's death is wrong?
Penguin Books | 9780525560586
TOM CLANCY OATH OF OFFICE: A Jack Ryan Novel by Marc Cameron (Thriller/Adventure)
President Jack Ryan has plenty to handle at home. A deadly strain of flu is ravaging the United States as spring floods decimate the Southeast. An unethical senator wants to bring down the Ryan presidency and is willing to lean on fabricated bot-planted stories to do it. But the scariest story is the most closely guarded one. Two Russian nuclear missiles have been hijacked. The Campus gets their first break when Jack Junior connects with a rogue Russian intelligence officer in Afghanistan --- only to be abducted soon after arriving. John Clark and the rest of the Campus team race to track the missiles and rescue their colleague.
Berkley | 9780735215979
VALLEY FORGE by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin (History)
In December 1777, some 12,000 members of America’s Continental Army stagger into a small Pennsylvania encampment near British-occupied Philadelphia. Their commander in chief, George Washington, is at the lowest ebb of his military career. Yet, somehow, Washington, with a dedicated coterie of advisers, sets out to breathe new life into his military force. Against all odds, they manage to turn a bobtail army of citizen soldiers into a professional fighting force that will change the world forever. VALLEY FORGE is the story of how that metamorphosis occurred. Bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin show us how this miracle was accomplished, despite thousands of American soldiers succumbing to disease, starvation and the elements.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501152726
WE MET IN DECEMBER by Rosie Curtis (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Twenty-nine-year-old Jess is following her dream and moving to London. It’s December, and she’s taking a room in a crumbling, but grand, Notting Hill house-share with four virtual strangers. On her first night, Jess meets Alex, the guy sharing her floor, at a Christmas dinner hosted by her landlord. They don’t kiss, but as far as Jess is concerned, the connection is clear. She starts planning how they will knock down the wall between them to spend more time together. But when Jess returns from a two-week Christmas holiday, she finds that Alex has started dating someone else --- beautiful Emma, who lives on the floor above them. Now Jess faces a year of bumping into the man of her dreams…and the woman of his
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062964564
THE WEDDING GUEST: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman (Psychological Thriller)
Summoned to a run-down former strip joint, Dr. Alex Delaware and LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis find themselves crashing a wild "Saints and Sinners"–themed wedding reception. But they’re not the only uninvited guests. A horrified bridesmaid has discovered the body of a young woman, dressed to impress in pricey haute couture and accessorized with a grisly red slash around her neck. What’s missing is any means of identification, or a single partygoer who recognizes the victim. The baffled bride is convinced the stranger snuck in to sabotage her big day --- and the groom is sure it’s all a dreadful mistake. But Delaware and Sturgis have a hundred guests to question, and a sneaking suspicion that the motive for murder is personal.
Ballantine Books | 9780525618515
WELCOME HOME: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters by Lucia Berlin (Memoir)
Before Lucia Berlin died, she was working on a book of previously unpublished autobiographical sketches called WELCOME HOME. The work consisted of more than 20 chapters that started in 1936 in Alaska and ended (prematurely) in 1966 in southern Mexico. In this publication of WELCOME HOME, her son Jeff Berlin is filling in the gaps with photos and letters from her eventful, romantic and tragic life. From Alaska to Argentina, Kentucky to Mexico, New York City to Chile, Berlin’s world was wide. She describes the places she lived and the people she knew with all the style, wit, heart and humor that readers fell in love with in her stories.
Picador | 9781250234858
WHAT BURNS: Stories by Dale Peck (Fiction/Short Stories)
Paperback Original
The stories in WHAT BURNS examine the extremes of desire against a backdrop of family, class and mortality. In “Bliss,” a young man befriends the convicted felon who murdered his mother when he was only a child. In “Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore,” a teenage boy fends off the advances of a five-year-old his mother babysits. And in “Dues,” a man discovers that everything he owns is borrowed from someone else --- including his time on earth. Dale Peck’s first collection of short fiction walks the tightrope between tenderness and violence that has defined his work since the publication of his debut novel, MARTIN AND JOHN, through his most recent, NIGHT SOIL.
Soho Press | 9781641290821
WINTER by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Memoir)
In WINTER, we rejoin Karl Ove Knausgaard as he waits for the birth of his daughter. In preparation for her arrival, he takes stock of the world, seeing it as if for the first time. He writes about the moon, water, messiness, owls, birthdays --- to name just a handful of his subjects. He fills these oh-so-familiar objects and ideas with new meaning, taking nothing for granted or as given. New life is on the horizon, but the earth is also in hibernation, waiting for the warmer weather to return, and so a contradictory melancholy inflects his gaze.
Penguin Books | 9780399563355
WOLVES OF EDEN by Kevin McCarthy (Historical Thriller)
Dakota Territory, 1866. Following the murders of a frontier fort’s politically connected sutler and his wife in their illicit off-post brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his long-suffering orderly, Corporal Daniel Kohn, are ordered to track down the killers. Meanwhile, Irish immigrant brothers Michael and Thomas O’Driscoll have returned from the brutal front lines of the Civil War. Unable to adapt to life as migrant farm laborers in peacetime Ohio, they reenlist in the army and are shipped to Fort Phil Kearny in the heart of the Powder River Valley. Amidst the daily carnage, Thomas finds a love that will lead to a moment of violence as brutal as any they have witnessed in battle --- a moment that will change their lives forever.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393357608
On Sale the Week of November 11th in Hardcover
November 11th
THE WRONG GIRL: The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse by Donis Casey (Historical Mystery)
Blanche Tucker longs to escape her drop-dead dull life in tiny Boynton, Oklahoma. Then dashing Graham Peyton roars into town. Posing as a film producer, he convinces the ambitious but naive teenager to run away with him to a glamorous new life. Instead, Graham uses her as cruelly as a silent picture villain. Yet by luck and by pluck, taking charge of her life, she makes it to Hollywood. Six years later, Blanche has transformed into the celebrated Bianca LaBelle, the reclusive star of a series of adventure films, and Graham's remains are discovered on a Santa Monica beach. Is there a connection?
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781492699187
November 12th
THE ANDROMEDA EVOLUTION by Michael Crichton and Daniel H. Wilson (Science Fiction/Technothriller)
Deep inside Fairchild Air Force Base, Project Eternal Vigilance has continued to watch and wait for the Andromeda Strain to reappear. On the verge of being shut down, the project has registered no activity --- until now. A Brazilian terrain-mapping drone has detected a bizarre anomaly of otherworldly matter in the middle of the jungle and, worse yet, the tell-tale chemical signature of the deadly microparticle. With this shocking discovery, the next-generation Project Wildfire is activated, and a diverse team of experts hailing from all over the world is dispatched to investigate the potentially apocalyptic threat. If they can’t reach the quarantine zone, enter the anomaly and figure out how to stop it, this new Andromeda Evolution will annihilate all life as we know it.
Harper | 9780062473271
ANYTHING FOR YOU by Saul Black (Thriller)
On a hot summer night, a watchful neighbor locks eyes with an intruder and unwittingly alerts the police to a vicious crime scene next door: a lavish master bedroom where a man lies dead. Next to him, his wife is bleeding out onto the hardwood floor, clinging to life. The victim, Adam Grant, was a well-known San Francisco prosecutor --- a man whose connection to homicide detective Valerie Hart brings her face-to-face with a life she’s long since left behind. Adam’s career made him an easy target, and forensic evidence points towards an ex-con he put behind bars years ago. But while Adam’s wife and daughter grapple with their tragic loss, Valerie uncovers devastating clues that point in a more ominous direction.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250199911
BOWIE'S BOOKSHELF: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie's Life by John O'Connell (Essays)
Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O’Connell studies each book on Bowie’s list and contextualizes it in the artist’s life and work. How did the power imbued in a single suit of armor in THE ILIAD impact a man who loved costumes, shifting identity and the siren song of the alter-ego? How did the poems of T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara, the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Anthony Burgess, and the groundbreaking politics of James Baldwin influence Bowie’s lyrics, sound and artistic outlook? How did the 100 books on this list influence one of the most influential artists of a generation?
Gallery Books | 9781982112547
CARRIE FISHER: A Life on the Edge by Sheila Weller (Biography)
Sheila Weller traces Carrie Fisher’s life from her Hollywood royalty roots to her untimely and shattering death after Christmas 2016. Her mother was the spunky and adorable Debbie Reynolds; her father, the heartthrob crooner Eddie Fisher. When Eddie ran off with Elizabeth Taylor, the scandal thrust little Carrie Frances into a bizarre spotlight, gifting her with an irony and an aplomb that would resonate throughout her life. Weller sympathetically reveals the conditions that Fisher lived with: serious bipolar disorder and an inherited drug addiction. Still, despite crises and overdoses, her life’s work --- as an actor, a novelist and memoirist, a script doctor, a hostess and a friend --- was prodigious and unique.
Sarah Crichton Books | 9780374282233
THE DOG I LOVED by Susan Wilson (Fiction)
After spending years in prison for a crime she didn’t intend to commit, Rose Collins is suddenly free. Someone who knows about the good work she has done --- training therapy dogs while serving time --- has arranged for her early release. This mysterious benefactor has even set her up with a job in the coastal Massachusetts community of Gloucester. There she works to rebuild her life with the help of Shadow, a stray dog who appears one rainy night. Meghan Custer is a wheelchair-bound war veteran who used to be hopeless, too. But ever since she was matched with a service dog named Shark, who was trained in a puppy-to-prisoner rehabilitation program, Meghan has a brand-new outlook. Finally, she can live on her own, go to work and maybe even find love again.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250078148
ECHOES OF THE FALL by Hank Early (Mystery)
After losing a hotly contested sheriff's race to the lackey of corrupt politician Jeb Walsh, Earl Marcus has had the worst summer of his life. But worst turns deadly when a body turns up on Earl's front lawn, accompanied by a cryptic letter. Earl finds a cell phone in the victim's car and tracks it to The Harden School, an old, isolated campus surrounded by barbed wire and locked gates, and catches a sneak peek at a file labeled complaints, where he finds a familiar name: Jeb Walsh. Jeb's ex-wife, Eleanor, had lodged multiple complaints against the school on behalf of her son, and when he contacts Eleanor, the horrifying truth begins to emerge. Desperate to make a connection between the school and the dead man, Earl journeys into a world where nothing is sacred.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643851815
THE INNOCENTS by Michael Crummey (Historical Fiction)
A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them alive. Muddling through the severe round of the seasons, through years of meager catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.
Doubleday | 9780385545426
LIFE ISN’T EVERYTHING: Mike Nichols, as Remembered by 150 of His Closest Friends by Ash Carter and Sam Kashner (Biography)
The work of Mike Nichols pervades American cultural consciousness --- from The Graduate and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Angels in America, The Birdcage, Working Girl and Primary Colors, not to mention his string of hit plays, including Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple. If that weren’t enough, he was also one half of the timelessly funny duo Nichols & May, as well as a founding member of the original improv troupe. Most fans, however, know very little of the person behind it all. Here, for the first time, Ash Carter and Sam Kashner offer an intimate look behind the scenes of Nichols' life, as told by the stars, moguls, playwrights, producers, comics and crew members who stayed loyal to Nichols for years.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250112873
MARGARET THATCHER: HERSELF ALONE: The Authorized Biography by Charles Moore (Biography)
How did Margaret Thatcher change and divide Britain? How did her model of combative female leadership help shape the way we live now? How did the woman who won the Cold War and three general elections in succession find herself pushed out by her own MPs? Charles Moore's full account, based on unique access to Margaret Thatcher herself, her papers and her closest associates, tells the story of her last period in office, her combative retirement, and the controversy that surrounded her even in death. It includes the fall of the Berlin Wall, which she had fought for, and the rise of the modern EU that she feared. It lays bare her growing quarrels with colleagues and reveals the truth about her political assassination.
Knopf | 9781101947203
NOTHING MORE DANGEROUS by Allen Eskens (Mystery)
Boady Sanden is the new kid at St. Ignatius High School. When Thomas Elgin moves in across the road, Boady's life begins to twist and turn. Coming to know the Elgins, a black family, forces Boady to rethink his understanding of the world he's taken for granted. Secrets hidden in plain sight begin to unfold, the biggest of which is the disappearance of Lida Poe, the African-American woman who keeps the books at the local plastics factory. Word has it that Ms. Poe left town, along with a hundred thousand dollars of company money. As the mystery of her fate plays out, Boady begins to see the stark lines of race and class that both bind and divide this small town --- and he will be forced to choose sides.
Mulholland Books | 9780316509725
PARISIAN LIVES: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me: A Memoir by Deirdre Bair (Memoir)
In 1971, Deirdre Bair was a journalist and recently minted Ph.D. who managed to secure access to Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett. He agreed that she could write his biography despite never having written --- or even read --- a biography herself. The next seven years of intimate conversations, intercontinental research and peculiar cat-and-mouse games resulted in SAMUEL BECKETT: A Biography, which went on to win the National Book Award and propel Deirdre to her next subject: Simone de Beauvoir. The catch? De Beauvoir and Beckett despised each other --- and lived essentially on the same street. Her seven-year relationship with the domineering and difficult de Beauvoir required a radical change in approach, yielding another groundbreaking literary profile.
Nan A. Talese | 9780385542456
QUEEN OF BONES: A Havana Mystery by Teresa Dovalpage (Mystery)
Juan, a Cuban construction worker who has settled in Albuquerque, returns to Havana for the first time since fleeing Cuba by raft 20 years ago. He is traveling with his American wife, Sharon, and hopes to reconnect with Victor, his best friend from college --- and, unbeknownst to Sharon, he also hopes to discover what has become of two ex-girlfriends, Elsa and Rosita. Juan is surprised to learn that Victor has become Victoria and runs a popular drag show. Elsa has married a wealthy foreigner, and Rosita, still single, works at the Havana cemetery. When one of these women turns up dead, it will cost Padrino, a Santería priest and former detective on the Havana police force, more than he expects to untangle the group’s lies and hunt down the killer.
Soho Crime | 9781641290159
TRACKING GAME: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery by Margaret Mizushima (Mystery)
An explosion outside a community dance sends Mattie Cobb and Cole Walker reeling into the night, where they discover a burning van and beside it the body of outfitter Nate Fletcher. But the explosion didn't kill Nate --- it was two gunshots to the heart. The investigation leads them to the home of rancher Doyle Redman, whose daughter is Nate's widow, and the object of one of their suspect's affection. But before they can make an arrest, they receive an emergency call from a man who's been shot in the mountains. Mattie and her K-9 partner, Robo, rush to the scene, only to be confronted by the ominous growl of a wild predator. They journey into the cold, misty mountains to track the animal --- but discover something even more deadly.
Crooked Lane Books | 9781643851358
TWISTED TWENTY-SIX: A Stephanie Plum Novel by Janet Evanovich (Mystery)
Grandma Mazur has decided to get married again --- this time to a local gangster named Jimmy Rosolli. If Stephanie has her doubts about this marriage, she doesn't have to worry for long, because the groom drops dead of a heart attack 45 minutes after saying "I do." A sad day for Grandma Mazur turns into something far more dangerous when Jimmy's former "business partners" are convinced that his new widow is keeping the keys to a financial windfall all to herself. But the one thing these wise guys didn't count on was the widow's bounty hunter granddaughter, who will do anything to save her.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780399180194
WHAT WE WILL BECOME: A Mother, a Son, and a Journey of Transformation by Mimi Lemay (Memoir)
From the age of two-and-a-half, Jacob, born “Em,” adamantly told his family he was a boy. While his mother, Mimi, struggled to understand and come to terms with the fact that her child may be transgender, she experienced a sense of déjà vu --- the journey to uncover the source of her child’s inner turmoil unearthed ghosts from Mimi’s past and her own struggle to live an authentic life. As a young woman, she wrestled with the demands of her ultra-Orthodox Jewish faith and eventually made the painful decision to leave her religious community and the strict gender roles it upheld. Having risen from the ashes of her former life, Mimi was prepared to help her son forge a new one --- at a time when there was little consensus on how best to help young transgender children.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 9780544965836
On Sale the Week of November 11th in Paperback
November 12th
BROTHER by David Chariandy (Fiction)
One sweltering summer in the Park, a housing complex outside of Toronto, Michael and Francis are coming of age and learning to stomach the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry. Propelled by the beats and styles of hip hop, Francis dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
Bloomsbury Publishing | 9781635573541
ELEVATION by Stephen King (Fiction)
Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis. In the small town of Castle Rock, Scott is engaged in a low-grade --- but escalating --- battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott’s lawn. They are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face --- including his own --- he tries to help.
Scribner | 9781982102326
EVERY DAY IS EXTRA by John Kerry (Memoir)
EVERY DAY IS EXTRA is John Kerry’s candid personal story. A Yale graduate, Kerry enlisted in the US Navy in 1966 and served in Vietnam. He returned home highly decorated but disillusioned, and he testified powerfully before Congress as a young veteran opposed to the war. Kerry was elected to the Senate in 1984, eventually serving five terms. In 2004 he was the Democratic presidential nominee and came within one state --- Ohio --- of winning. He succeeded Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in 2013. In that position he tried to find peace in the Middle East; dealt with the Syrian civil war while combating ISIS; and negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501178979
HUNTING GAME written by Helene Tursten, translated by Paul Norlen (Mystery)
Embla Nyström has been plagued by chronic nightmares and racing thoughts ever since she can remember. She has learned to channel most of her anxious energy into her position as Detective Inspector in the mobile unit in Gothenburg, Sweden, and into sports. A talented hunter and prize-winning Nordic welterweight, she is glad to be taking a vacation from her high-stress job to attend the annual moose hunt with her family and friends. But a string of unsettling incidents culminate in the disappearance of two hunters. Embla takes charge of the search, and they soon find one of the missing men floating face down in the nearby lake. With the help of local reinforcements, Embla delves into the dark pasts of her fellow hunters in search of a killer.
Soho Crime | 9781641290975
IN SEARCH OF MARY SHELLEY: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson (Biography)
We know the facts of Mary Shelley’s life in some detail. But there has been no literary biography written this century, and previous books have ignored the real person, despite the fact that Mary and her group of second-generation Romantics were extremely interested in the psychological aspect of life. In this probing narrative, Fiona Sampson pursues Mary Shelley through her turbulent life, much as Victor Frankenstein tracked his monster across the arctic wastes. Sampson has written a book that finally answers the question of how it was that a 19-year-old came to write a novel so dark, mysterious, anguished and psychologically astute that it continues to resonate two centuries later.
Pegasus Books | 9781643132426
JEEVES AND THE KING OF CLUBS: A Novel in Homage to P.G. Wodehouse by Ben Schott (Fiction/Humor)
The misadventures of Bertie Wooster and his incomparable personal gentleman, Jeeves, have delighted audiences for nearly a century. Now bestselling author Ben Schott brings this odd couple back to life in a madcap new adventure full of the hijinks, entanglements, imbroglios and Wodehousian wordplay that readers love. The Junior Ganymede Club (an association of England's finest butlers and valets) is revealed to be an elite arm of the British secret service. Jeeves must ferret out a Fascist spy embedded in the highest social circles, and only his hapless employer, Bertie, can help. Unfolding in the background are school-chum capers, affairs of the heart, antics with aunts and sartorial set-tos.
Back Bay Books | 9780316524599
KILLING QUARRY by Max Allan Collins (Hard-boiled Mystery)
Paperback Original
Quarry, star of 13 previous novels, a comic book and the acclaimed Cinemax TV series, returns in an all-new assignment that takes the hitman's hitman into uncharted territory, when he finds out that for the first time someone has taken out a hit on him. Is the mysterious killer assigned to hit the hitman someone from Quarry's past? Maybe even a past lover?
Hard Case Crime | 9781785659454
THE LAST SECOND: A Brit in the FBI Thriller by Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison (Thriller)
Galactus, France’s answer to SpaceX, has just launched a communications satellite into orbit, but the payload actually harbors a frightening weapon: a nuclear-triggered electromagnetic pulse. When the satellite is in position, Galactus’s second-in-command, Dr. Nevaeh Patel, will have the power to lay waste to the world with an EMP. A former astronaut, Patel believes she is following the directions of the Numen, aliens who saved her life when she space-walked outside the International Space Station. Special Agents Nicholas Drummond and Michaela Caine must stop the EMP that would wreak havoc on communication and electronic systems on Earth, resulting in chaos and anarchy.
Gallery Books | 9781501196393
MAD, BAD, DANGEROUS TO KNOW: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce by Colm Toibin (Biography)
Colm Tóibín begins MAD, BAD, DANGEROUS TO KNOW with a walk through the Dublin streets where he went to university and where three Irish literary giants also came of age. Oscar Wilde, writing about his relationship with his father, William Wilde, stated: “Whenever there is hatred between two people there is bond or brotherhood of some kind…you loathed each other not because you were so different but because you were so alike.” W.B. Yeats wrote of his father, painter John Butler Yeats: “It is this infirmity of will which has prevented him from finishing his pictures. The qualities I think necessary to success in art or life seemed to him egotism.” John Stanislaus Joyce, James’ father, was widely loved, garrulous, a singer and drinker with a volatile temper, who drove his son from Ireland.
Scribner | 9781476785189
THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY by Claire North (Supernatural/Historical Thriller)
Paperback Original
South Africa in the 1880s. A young and naive English doctor by the name of William Abbey witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William. William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.
Orbit | 9780316316842
RUN AWAY by Harlan Coben (Thriller)
You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened and clearly in trouble. You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home. She runs. And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never knew existed. Before you know it, both your family and your life are on the line. And in order to protect your daughter from the evils of that world, you must face them head on.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538748442
SING TO IT: New Stories by Amy Hempel (Fiction/Short Stories)
These 15 exquisitely honed stories reveal Amy Hempel at her most compassionate and spirited, as she introduces characters, lonely and adrift, searching for connection. In “A Full-Service Shelter,” a volunteer at a dog shelter tirelessly, devotedly cares for dogs on a list to be euthanized. In “Greed,” a spurned wife examines her husband’s affair with a glamorous, older married woman. And in “Cloudland,” the longest story in the collection, a woman reckons with the choice she made as a teenager to give up her newborn infant. Quietly dazzling, these stories are replete with moments of revelation and transcendence and with Hempel’s singular, startling, inimitable sentences.
Scribner | 9781982109127
YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY YOU LOVE ME: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie (Memoir)
Family relationships are never simple. But Sherman Alexie's bond with his mother, Lillian, was more complex than most. She plunged her family into chaos with a drinking habit, but shed her addiction when it was on the brink of costing her everything. She survived a violent past, but created an elaborate facade to hide the truth. She wanted a better life for her son, but it was only by leaving her behind that he could hope to achieve it. When she passed away, the incongruities that defined his mother shook Sherman and his remembrance of her. Grappling with the haunting ghosts of the past in the wake of loss, he responded the only way he knew how: he wrote.
Back Bay Books | 9780316270748
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