|
Latest Update on Our GoFundMe Campaign
Thank you to those of you who have donated to our GoFundMe campaign. So far, with online and snail mail donations, we have raised $38,309 of our $50,000 goal.
In addition to these contributions, we are loving your comments about how you enjoy Bookreporter.com. Here is a message we received recently:
Monica: "I have enjoyed reading the newsletter for years. I look forward to reading the various newsletters every week. It is one of my favorite sites to find new books to read. The Bets On selections are always fantastic books. Thanks so much for all of the information! Keep up the great work!"
You can read about our plans and donate here. If you would prefer donating via check, please send to:
The Book Report, Inc.
16 Mt. Bethel Road, Suite 365
Warren, NJ 07059
Thank you again for your consideration and your donation.
Carol Fitzgerald (Carol@bookreporter.com)
In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of January 11th and January 18th 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 Winter Reading Contests and Feature, which we have brought back for a seventh year. On select days in January and February, we are hosting a series of 24-hour contests spotlighting a book releasing this winter and giving five lucky readers the chance to win it.
Also, we are sharing Carol's first "Bookreporter Talks To" interview of 2021. It is with Ashley Audrain, whose debut novel, THE PUSH, is this month’s “Good Morning America” Book Club pick and will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. Ashley and Carol covered a lot of ground without giving away the many reveals that are layered into the book, which is being called an “emotional thriller.” It’s written in the second person, which you do not see much in fiction, but the storytelling from that point of view is dead on here. They talked about structuring the book, as well as some poignant scenes, but they tiptoed around anything that would spoil the story, which was quite a feat. Click here to watch the video and here to listen to the podcast.
Finally, please remember to sign up for this month's "Bookaccino Live" events.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, January 13th at 2pm ET, Carol will present titles releasing between January 12th and February 2nd, along with a few from March, that she would like to get on your radar. Click here to register. Those attending the live event will be asked to answer a survey about the books from the presentation that they are most interested in reading and will be eligible to win prizes.
And on Thursday, January 21st at 8pm ET, we will host our second "Bookaccino Live" Book Group Event. Our guest will be William Kent Krueger, who will talk about his most recent novel, THIS TENDER LAND. Click here to register. If you would like to be one of our “live panelists” and ask Kent a question, please also fill out this form; we will feature those who have questions "on stage."
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
Upcoming Virtual Book and Author Events
As so many book and author events are happening online these days, we are highlighting a number of them that you may be interested in attending. Click on the links below for more info and to register.
Tuesdays at 7:30pm ET: "Talking ETERNAL with Lisa Scottoline": Join Lisa Scottoline every Tuesday night at 7:30pm ET on Facebook as she premieres a new episode from her video series, "Behind the Book: Talking ETERNAL," which reveals behind-the-scenes looks at the inspirations of her upcoming historical fiction book, ETERNAL, releasing on March 23rd. And stay tuned because immediately following each video premiere, Lisa hosts a Facebook Live to talk about the video.
Wednesday, January 13th at 2pm ET: "Bookaccino Live: A Lively Talk About Books": Carol Fitzgerald will present titles releasing between January 12th and February 2nd, along with a few from March, that she would like to get on your radar.
Wednesday, January 13th at 7pm ET: "Friends and Fiction": The "Friends and Fiction" authors --- Mary Kay Andrews, Kristin Harmel, Kristy Woodson Harvey, Patti Callahan Henry and Mary Alice Monroe --- will talk to William Kent Krueger, whose most recent novel is THIS TENDER LAND.
Wednesday, January 13th at 8pm ET: Anderson's Bookshops Virtual Event: Join Anderson's Bookshops for a virtual event with Melanie Benjamin to discuss her newest novel, THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD. Melanie will be in conversation with fellow New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline.
Thursday, January 14th at 7pm ET: Literati Bookstore Virtual Event: Literati Bookstore is pleased to welcome Melanie Benjamin to their "At Home with Literati" virtual event series for an event in support of THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD. She will be joined in conversation by acclaimed author Paula McLain.
Thursday, January 14th at 8pm ET: Anderson's Bookshops Virtual Event: Join Anderson's Bookshops for a virtual event with Liese O'Halloran Schwarz in conversation with Cecily von Ziegesar, talking about Liese's latest novel, WHAT COULD BE SAVED.
Thursday, January 14th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: Ace Atkins will be on hand to discuss his new Spenser mystery, ROBERT B. PARKER'S SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME.
Friday, January 15th at 7pm ET: Books Are Magic Virtual Event: Anna North will discuss her latest novel, OUTLAWED, with THE INCENDIARIES author R.O. Kwon.
Friday, January 15th at 8pm ET: Murder By The Book Virtual Event: P. J. Tracy, the pseudonym of Traci Lambrecht, will join Murder By The Book to talk about her latest novel, DEEP INTO THE DARK, which kicks off a new mystery series.
Tuesday, January 19th at 6pm ET: American Ancestors Virtual Event: American Ancestors and GBH Forum Network present a virtual event with debut author and Whiting Award winner Nadia Owusu, who will discuss her memoir, AFTERSHOCKS.
Tuesday, January 19th at 7pm ET: Watermark Books & Café Virtual Event: Watermark Books & Café invites you to attend a virtual event with bestselling historical fiction authors Melanie Benjamin and Kate Quinn. During the event, Melanie will be discussing her new novel, THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD, and Kate will be talking about her forthcoming novel, THE ROSE CODE.
Tuesday, January 19th at 8pm ET: The Poisoned Pen Bookstore Virtual Event: Lisa Gardner will discuss her new thriller, BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED, with special guest host and fellow New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager.
This Week's Bonus News:
Bookreporter.com's Seventh Annual
Winter Reading Contests and Feature
At Bookreporter.com, we are kicking off 2021 with our seventh annual Winter Reading Contests and Feature. On select days in January and February, we are hosting a series of 24-hour contests spotlighting a book releasing this winter and giving five lucky readers the chance to win it. We also are sending a special newsletter to announce the day's title, which you can sign up for here.
This year's contest titles are:
Click here to read all the contest details
and learn more about our featured titles.
On Sale the Week of January 11th in Hardcover
January 12th
ACROSS THE GREEN GRASS FIELDS by Seanan McGuire (Fantasy)
Regan loves, and is loved, though her school-friend situation has become complicated of late. When she suddenly finds herself thrust through a doorway that asks her to "Be Sure" before swallowing her whole, Regan must learn to live in a world filled with centaurs, kelpies and other magical equines --- a world that expects its human visitors to step up and be heroes. But after embracing her time with the herd, Regan discovers that not all forms of heroism are equal, and not all quests are as they seem.
Tordotcom | 9781250213594
AFTERSHOCKS: A Memoir by Nadia Owusu (Memoir)
Young Nadia Owusu followed her father, a United Nations official, from Europe to Africa and back again. Just as she and her family settled into a new home, he would tell them it was time to say their goodbyes. The instability wrought by Nadia’s nomadic childhood was deepened by family secrets and fractures, both lived and inherited. After her father’s passing, Nadia’s stepmother weighed her down with a revelation that was either a bombshell secret or a lie, rife with shaming innuendo. Nadia arrived in New York feeling uncertain about her future, yet eager to find her own identity. What followed, however, were periods of depression in which she struggled to hold herself and her siblings together.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982111229
BEFORE THE RUINS by Victoria Gosling (Literary Thriller/Mystery)
It's the summer of 1996, and school is out forever for Andy, her boyfriend Marcus, her best friend Peter, and Em. When Andy's alcoholic mother predicts the apocalypse, the four teenagers decide to see out the end of the world at a deserted manor house, the site of a historic unsolved mystery. There they meet the charming and unreliable David, who seems to have appeared out of nowhere. David presents an irresistible lure for both Andy and Peter and complicates the dynamics of their lifelong friendship. When the group learns that a diamond necklace, stolen 50 years ago, might still be somewhere on the manor grounds, the Game begins --- which grows to encompass years of secrets, lies and, ultimately, one terrible betrayal.
Henry Holt and Co. | 9781250759153
THE BREAKER: A Peter Ash Novel by Nick Petrie (Thriller)
When Peter Ash --- a man wanted by two governments --- spots a suspicious armed man walking into a crowded market, he knows he can't stand by and do nothing. The young gunman appeared to have one target and one mission, but when he escapes, it seems there is more to the encounter than meets the eye. Peter's hunch is proven correct when a powerful associate from his past appears with an interest in the crime, and an irresistible offer: if he and his girlfriend June solve this mystery, Peter's record will be scrubbed clean. While Peter and his friend Lewis trace the gunman, reporter June digs into the victim of the incident, a man whose face rings a bell in her memory.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525535478
BRYANT & MAY: ORANGES AND LEMONS by Christopher Fowler (Mystery)
On a spring morning in London’s Strand, the Speaker of the House of Commons is nearly killed by a van. It’s an absurd near-death experience, but the government is more interested in investigating the Speaker’s state of mind just prior to his accident. The task is given to the Peculiar Crimes Unit --- the only problem being that the unit no longer exists. Against impossible odds, the team is reassembled, and once again what should be a simple case becomes a lunatic farrago involving arson, suicide, magicians, academics, and a race to catch a killer with a master plan involving London churches. Joining their team this time is Sidney, a young woman with no previous experience, plenty of attitude --- and a surprising secret.
Bantam | 9780525485926
THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING by Jamie Harrison (Fiction)
For Polly, the small town of Livingston, Montana, is a land charmed by raw, natural beauty and a close network of family that extends back generations. But the summer of 2002 finds Polly at a crossroads: a recent head injury has scattered her perception of the present, bringing to the surface long-forgotten events. As Polly's many relatives arrive for a family reunion during the Fourth of July holiday, a beloved friend goes missing on the Yellowstone River. Search parties comb the river as carefully as Polly combs her mind, and over the course of one fateful week, Polly arrives at a deeper understanding of herself and her larger-than-life relatives.
Counterpoint | 9781640092341
THE CHARMED WIFE by Olga Grushin (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Cinderella married the man of her dreams --- the perfect ending she deserved after diligently following all the fairy-tale rules. Yet now, 13 and a half years later, things have gone badly wrong and her life is far from perfect. One night, fed up and exhausted, she sneaks out of the palace to get help from the Witch who, for a price, offers love potions to disgruntled housewives. But as the old hag flings the last ingredients into the cauldron, Cinderella doesn't ask for a love spell to win back her Prince Charming. Instead, she wants him dead.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593085509
THE CHILDREN'S BLIZZARD by Melanie Benjamin (Historical Fiction)
The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats --- leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as 16 were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm.
Delacorte Press | 9780399182280
THE DANGERS OF SMOKING IN BED: Stories written by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Fiction/Short Stories)
Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken --- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history --- with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.
Hogarth | 9780593134078
DEEP INTO THE DARK by P. J. Tracy (Mystery/Thriller)
Sam Easton --- a true survivor --- is home from Afghanistan, trying to rebuild a life in his hometown of LA. Separated from his wife, bartending and therapy sessions are what occupy his days and nights. When friend and colleague Melody Traeger is beaten by her boyfriend, she turns to Sam for help. When the boyfriend turns up dead the next day, a hard case like Sam is the perfect suspect. But LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan, whose brother recently died serving overseas, is sympathetic to Sam's troubles and can't quite see him as a killer. She's more interested in the secrets Melody might be keeping and the developments in another murder case on the other side of town.
Minotaur Books | 9781250754943
HADES, ARGENTINA by Daniel Loedel (Fiction)
In 1976, Tomás Orilla is a medical student in Buenos Aires, where he has moved in hopes of reuniting with Isabel, a childhood crush. But the reckless passion that has long drawn him is leading Isabel ever deeper into the ranks of the insurgency fighting an increasingly oppressive regime. Tomás has always been willing to follow her anywhere and do anything to prove himself. Yet what exactly is he proving, and at what cost to them both? It will be years before a summons back arrives for Tomás, now living as Thomas Shore in New York. What awaits him is an odyssey into the past, an encounter with the ghosts that lurk there, and a reckoning with the fatal gap between who he has become and who he once aspired to be.
Riverhead Books | 9780593188644
THE HOUSE ON VESPER SANDS by Paraic O'Donnell (Historical Mystery)
London, 1893: High up in a house on a dark, snowy night, a lone seamstress stands by a window. So begins the swirling, serpentine world of Paraic O’Donnell’s Victorian-inspired mystery, the story of a city cloaked in shadow, but burning with questions: Why does the seamstress jump from the window? Why is a cryptic message stitched into her skin? And how is she connected to a rash of missing girls, all of whom seem to have disappeared under similar circumstances? On the case is Inspector Cutter, a detective as sharp and committed to his work as he is wryly hilarious. Gideon Bliss, a Cambridge dropout in love with one of the missing girls, stumbles into a role as Cutter’s sidekick. And clever young journalist Octavia Hillingdon sees the case as a chance to tell a story that matters.
Tin House Books | 9781951142247
THE LAST GARDEN IN ENGLAND by Julia Kelly (Historical Fiction)
Present day: Emma Lovett has been tasked to restore the gardens of the famed Highbury House estate, designed in 1907 by her hero, Venetia Smith. 1907: When Venetia Smith is hired to design the gardens of Highbury House, she is determined to make them a triumph. 1944: When land girl Beth Pedley arrives at a farm on the outskirts of the village of Highbury, all she wants is to find a place she can call home. Cook Stella Adderton is desperate to leave Highbury House to pursue her own dreams. And widow Diana Symonds is anxiously trying to cling to her pre-war life. When war threatens Highbury House’s treasured gardens, these three very different women are drawn together by a secret that will last for decades.
Gallery Books | 9781982107826
THE LAST PROTECTOR by Andrew Taylor (Historical Thriller)
No one in England wants a return to the bloody days of the Civil War. But Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard, has abandoned his exile and slipped back into England. The consequences could be catastrophic. James Marwood, a traitor’s son turned government agent, is tasked with uncovering Cromwell’s motives. But his assignment is complicated by his friend --- the regicide’s daughter, Cat Lovett --- who knew the Cromwells as a child, and who now seems to be hiding a secret of her own about the family. Both Marwood and Cat know they are putting themselves in great danger. And when they find themselves on a top secret mission in the Palace of Whitehall, they realize they are risking their lives…and could even be sent to the block for treason.
HarperCollins | 9780008433857
LIFE AMONG THE TERRANAUTS: Stories by Caitlin Horrocks (Fiction/Short Stories)
Following her first novel, THE VEXATIONS, Caitlin Horrocks returns with a much-anticipated collection of short stories. In her signature, genre-defying style, she explodes our notions of what a story can do and where it can take us. In “The Sleep,” reprinted in Best American Short Stories, residents of a town in the frigid Midwest decide to hibernate through the bitter winters. In the title story, half a dozen people move into an experimental biodome for a shot at a million dollars, if they can survive two years. And in “Sun City,” published in The New Yorker, a young woman meets her grandmother’s roommate in the wake of her death and attempts to solve the mystery of whether the two women were lovers.
Little, Brown and Company | 9780316316972
THE LOST BOYS: A Decker/Lazarus Novel by Faye Kellerman (Mystery)
When Bertram Telemann, a developmentally disabled man, goes missing from a local diner near Greenbury, the entire community of the small upstate New York town volunteers to search the surrounding woods. When no trace of him is found, the disappearance quickly becomes an official missing persons case and is assigned to detectives Peter Decker and his partner, Tyler McAdams. As their investigation deepens, Decker becomes convinced that Bertram had left with someone he knew. Soon he discovers that Elsie Schulung, a recently fired nurse who had worked at the home, seemed to be especially interested in Bertram. But answers prove elusive when Elsie disappears and human blood is found in her kitchen. However, the complications are only beginning.
William Morrow | 9780062910455
THE OTHER MOTHER by Matthew Dicks (Fiction)
Thirteen-year-old Michael Parsons is dealing with a lot. His father's sudden death; his mother's new husband, Glen, who he loathes; his two younger siblings, who he looks after more and more now that his mother works extra shifts. And then one day, Michael wakes up and his mother is gone. In her place is an exact, duplicate mother. The “other mother.” No one else seems to notice that the real version is missing. His brother, his sister and even Glen act as if everything is normal. But Michael knows in his heart that this mother is not his. And he begins to panic.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250103468
PEOPLE LIKE HER by Ellery Lloyd (Psychological Thriller)
To her adoring fans, Emmy Jackson, aka @the_mamabare, is the honest “Instamum” who always tells it like it is. To her skeptical husband, a washed-up novelist who knows just how creative Emmy can be with the truth, she is a breadwinning powerhouse who is chillingly brilliant at monetizing the intimate details of their family life. To one of Emmy’s dangerously obsessive followers, she’s the woman who has everything --- but deserves none of it. As Emmy’s marriage begins to crack under the strain of her growing success and her moral compass veers wildly off course, the more vulnerable she becomes to a very real danger circling ever closer to her family.
Harper | 9780062997395
THE REVOLUTION ACCORDING TO RAYMUNDO MATA by Gina Apostol (Historical Fiction)
Gina Apostol’s second novel takes the form of a memoir by one Raymundo Mata, a half-blind bookworm and revolutionary, tracing his childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of writer and fellow revolutionary Jose Rizal. Mata’s 19th-century story is complicated by present-day foreword(s), afterword(s) and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices: a nationalist editor, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic, and a translator, Mimi C. Magsalin. In telling the contested and fragmentary story of Mata, Apostol finds new ways to depict the violence of the Spanish colonial era, and to reimagine the nation’s great writer, Jose Rizal, who was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities and is considered by many to be the father of Philippine independence.
Soho Press | 9781641291835
ROBERT B. PARKER'S SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME: A Spenser Novel by Ace Atkins (Mystery)
Ten years ago, Spenser helped a teenage girl named Mattie Sullivan find her mother's killer and take down an infamous Southie crime boss. Now Mattie is a college student with a side job working for the tough but tender private eye. Her first big case involves a 15-year-old girl assaulted by a much older man at one of Boston's most prestigious private clubs. The girl, Chloe Turner, only wants the safe return of her laptop and backpack. But like her mentor and boss, Mattie has a knack for asking the right questions of the wrong people. Soon Spenser and Mattie find ties between the exploitation of dozens of other girls from working class families to an eccentric billionaire and his sadistic henchwoman.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780525536857
THE SCORPION'S TAIL by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Thriller)
A mummified corpse is found in the cellar of an abandoned building in a remote New Mexico ghost town. Rookie FBI Agent Corrie Swanson is assigned to ID the body and determine the cause of death. She brings archaeologist Nora Kelly to excavate the body and lend her expertise to the investigation, and together they uncover something unexpected and shocking: the deceased apparently died in agony, in a fetal position, skin coming off in sheets, with a rictus of horror frozen on his face. Hidden on the corpse lies a 16th-century Spanish gold cross of immense value. When at last they identify the body --- and the bizarre cause of death --- Corrie and Nora open a door into a terrifying, secret world of ancient treasure and modern obsession.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538747278
THE SECRET LIFE OF DOROTHY SOAMES: A Memoir by Justine Cowan (Memoir)
Justine Cowan had always been told that her mother came from royal blood. The proof could be found in her mother’s elegance, her upper crust London accent --- and in a cryptic letter hinting at her claim to a country estate. But beneath the polished veneer lay a fearsome, unpredictable temper that drove Justine from home the moment she was old enough to escape. Years later, when her mother sent her an envelope filled with secrets from the past, she buried it in the back of an old filing cabinet. Overcome with grief after her mother’s death, Justine found herself drawn back to that envelope. Its contents revealed a mystery that stretched back to the early years of World War II and beyond, into the dark corridors of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children.
Harper | 9780062991010
SLEEP WELL, MY LADY: An Emma Djan Investigation by Kwei Quartey (Mystery)
Hard-hitting talk show host Augustus Seeza has become a household name in Ghana, though notorious for his lavish overspending, alcoholism and womanizing. He’s dating the imposing, beautiful Lady Araba, who leads a self-made fashion empire. Fearing Augustus is only after her money, Araba’s religious family intervenes to break them up. A few days later, Araba is found murdered in her bed. Her driver is arrested after a hasty investigation, but Araba’s favorite aunt, Dele, suspects Augustus Seeza was the real killer. Almost a year later, Dele approaches Emma Djan, the only female PI at her agency. To solve Lady Araba’s murder, Emma must not only go on an undercover mission that dredges up trauma from her past, but navigate a long list of suspects with strong motives.
Soho Crime | 9781641292078
SPIN: A Captain Chase Novel by Patricia Cornwell (Thriller)
In the aftermath of a NASA rocket launch gone terribly wrong, Captain Calli Chase comes face-to-face with her missing twin sister --- as well as the startling truth of who they really are. Now, a top secret program put in motion years ago has spun out of control, and only Calli can redirect its course. Aided by cutting-edge technologies, the NASA investigator and scientist turned Space Force pilot sets out on a frantic search for the missing link between the sabotaged rocket launch and her predetermined destiny…a search that someone else seems very interested in stopping. From NASA to the Chase family farm, to the White House to distant orbits of space, Calli plays a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek with a cunning and ruthless adversary.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542044783
SUMMERWATER by Sarah Moss (Fiction)
They rarely speak to each other, but they take notice --- watching from the safety of their cabins, making judgments from what little they know of their temporary neighbors. At daylight, a mother races up the mountain, fleeing into her precious dose of solitude. A retired man studies her return as he reminisces about the park’s better days. A young woman wonders about his politics as she sees him head for a drive with his wife. A teenage boy escapes the scrutiny of his family, braving the dark waters of the loch in a kayak. This cascade of perspective shows each wrapped up in personal concerns as they begin to notice one particular family that doesn’t seem to belong. Tensions rise, until nightfall brings an irrevocable turn.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374105938
A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders (Literary Criticism/Essays)
For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
Random House | 9781984856029
THAT OLD COUNTRY MUSIC: Stories by Kevin Barry (Fiction/Short Stories)
With three novels and two short story collections published, Kevin Barry has steadily established his stature as one of the finest writers not just in Ireland but in the English language. All of his prodigious gifts of language, character and setting in these 11 exquisite stories transport the reader to an Ireland both timeless and recognizably modern. Shot through with dark humor and the uncanny power of the primal and unchanging Irish landscape, the stories in THAT OLD COUNTRY MUSIC represent some of the finest fiction being written today.
Doubleday | 9780385540339
WAITING FOR THE NIGHT SONG by Julie Carrick Dalton (Literary Mystery)
Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface? An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend, Daniela Garcia, brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. There, Cadie and Daniela are forced to face a dark secret that ended both their idyllic childhood bond and the magical summer that takes up more space in Cadie’s memory then all her other years combined. Now grown up, bound by long-held oaths, and faced with truths she does not wish to see, Cadie must decide what she is willing to sacrifice to protect the people and the forest she loves, as drought, foreclosures and wildfire spark tensions between displaced migrant farm workers and locals.
Forge Books | 9781250269188
WALKING WITH GHOSTS: A Memoir by Gabriel Byrne (Memoir)
Born to working class parents and the eldest of six children, Gabriel Byrne harbored a childhood desire to become a priest. At 11 years old, he found himself crossing the Irish Sea to join a seminary in England. Four years later, he had been expelled and quickly returned to his native city of Dublin. It was a friend who suggested Byrne join an amateur drama group, a decision that would change his life forever and launch him on an extraordinary 40-year career in film and theater. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and reflections on stardom in Hollywood and Broadway, Byrne also courageously recounts his battle with addiction and the ambivalence of fame.
Grove Press | 9780802157126
WHAT COULD BE SAVED by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz (Fiction)
Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Bea, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared 40 years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea’s warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers. Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston raise their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve finds herself drawn into a passionate affair with her husband’s boss, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers in a rapidly changing world and a country they don’t really understand.
Atria Books | 9781982150617
YELLOW WIFE by Sadeqa Johnson (Historical Fiction)
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. She’d been promised freedom on her 18th birthday, but instead of the idyllic life she imagined with her true love, Essex Henry, Pheby is forced to leave the only home she has ever known. She unexpectedly finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil’s Half Acre, a jail in Richmond, Virginia, where the enslaved are broken, tortured and sold every day. To survive, Pheby will have to outwit her Jailer, and soon she faces the ultimate sacrifice.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982149109
On Sale the Week of January 11th in Paperback
January 12th
A BEAUTIFUL CRIME by Christopher Bollen (Literary Thriller)
When Nick Brink and his boyfriend, Clay Guillory, meet up on the Grand Canal in Venice, they have a plan in mind --- and it doesn’t involve a vacation. Nick and Clay are running away from their turbulent lives in New York City, each desperate for a happier, freer future someplace else. Their method of escape? Selling a collection of counterfeit antiques to a brash, unsuspecting American living out his retirement years in a grand palazzo. As it turns out, tricking a millionaire out of money isn’t as easy as it seems. As Nick falls under the spell of the city’s decrepit magic, Clay comes to terms with personal loss and the price of letting go of the past. Their future awaits, but it is built on disastrous deceits, and more than one life stands in the way of their dreams.
Harper Perennial | 9780062853899
THE BETTER LIAR by Tanen Jones (Psychological Thriller)
Robin Voigt is dead. If Leslie had arrived at her sister’s apartment just hours earlier, this would have been their first reunion in a decade. In the years since Robin ran away from home as a teenager, Leslie has stayed in New Mexico, taking care of their dying father. But when he passed away, Leslie received a rude awakening: She and Robin would receive the inheritance he left them together --- or not at all. Now her half of the money may be beyond her grasp. When she meets a charismatic young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Robin, the two make a reckless bargain: Mary will impersonate Robin for a week in exchange for Robin’s half of the cash. But neither realizes how high the stakes will become when Mary takes a dead woman’s name.
Ballantine Books | 9781984821232
BLINDSIDE: A Detective Michael Bennett Thriller by James Patterson and James O. Born (Thriller)
The mayor of New York has a daughter who's missing and in danger. Detective Michael Bennett has a son who's in prison. The two strike a deal. Bennett and the mayor have always had a tense relationship, but now the mayor sees in Bennett a discreet investigator with family worries of his own. Just one father helping another. The detective leaps into the case, and sources lead him to a homicide in the Bronx. The victim has ties to a sophisticated hacking operation --- and also to the mayor's missing daughter, Natalie, a 21-year-old computer prodigy. The murder is part of a serial killing spree, one with national security implications. And suddenly Bennett is at the center of a dangerous triangle anchored by the NYPD, the FBI and a transnational criminal organization.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538764398
CLEANNESS by Garth Greenwell (Fiction)
Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song. In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection.
Picador | 9781250785664
THE COYOTES OF CARTHAGE by Steven Wright (Political Thriller)
Despite being a successful political consultant, Dre Ross’ aggressive tactics have put him on thin ice with his boss, Mrs. Fitz. She exiles him to the backwoods of South Carolina with $250,000 of dark money to introduce a ballot initiative on behalf of a mining company. The goal: to manipulate the locals into voting to sell their pristine public land to the highest bidder. Dre, an African-American outsider, can’t be the one to collect the signatures needed to get on the ballot. So he hires a blue-collar couple, Tyler Lee and his pious wife, Chalene, to act as the initiative’s public face. As lines are crossed and lives ruined, Dre’s increasingly cutthroat campaign threatens the very soul of Carthage County and perhaps the last remnants of his own humanity.
Ecco | 9780062951687
DEAD TO HER by Sarah Pinborough (Psychological Thriller)
Marcie’s affair with Jason Maddox catapulted her into the world of the elite. Old money, old ties, old secrets. Marcie may have married into this world, but she’ll never be part of it. Then Jason’s boss brings back a new wife from his trip to London. Young, attractive, reckless --- nobody can take their eyes off Keisha. Including Marcie’s husband. Some people would kill for the life Marcie has. What will she do to keep it?
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062856838
DEAR MISS KOPP: A Kopp Sisters Novel by Amy Stewart (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
The U.S. has finally entered World War I. Constance is chasing down suspected German saboteurs and spies for the Bureau of Investigation, while Fleurette is traveling across the country entertaining troops with song and dance. Meanwhile, at an undisclosed location in France, Norma is overseeing her thwarted pigeon project for the Army Signal Corps. When Aggie, a nurse at the American field hospital, is accused of stealing essential medical supplies, the intrepid Norma is on the case to find the true culprit. The far-flung sisters --- separated for the first time in their lives --- correspond with news of their days. The world has irrevocably changed. Will they be content to return to the New Jersey farm when the war is over?
Mariner Books | 9780358093121
EVERYWHERE YOU DON’T BELONG by Gabriel Bump (Fiction)
Claude McKay Love is an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. Yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place --- to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
Algonquin Books | 9781643750859
FIND ME IN HAVANA by Serena Burdick (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Cuba, 1936: When Estelita Rodriguez sings in a hazy Havana nightclub for the very first time, she is nine years old. From then on, that spotlight of adoration --- from Havana to New York’s Copacabana and then Hollywood --- becomes the one true accomplishment no one can take from her. Not the 1933 Cuban Revolution that drove her family into poverty. Not the revolving door of husbands or the fickle world of film. Thirty years later, her young adult daughter, Nina, is blindsided by her mother’s mysterious death. Seeking answers, the grieving Nina navigates the troubling, opulent memories of their life together and discovers how much Estelita sacrificed to live the American dream on her own terms.
Park Row | 9780778389361
THE FOREVER GIRL by Jill Shalvis (Romance)
Paperback Original
When Maze returns to Wildstone for the wedding of her estranged BFF and the sister of her heart, it’s also a reunion of a once ragtag team of teenagers who had only each other until a tragedy tore them apart and scattered them wide. Now as adults together again in the lake house, there are secrets and resentments mixed up in all the amazing childhood memories. Unexpectedly, they instantly fall back into their roles: Maze their reckless leader, Cat the den mother, Heather the beloved baby sister, and Walker, a man of mystery. Life has changed all four of them in immeasurable ways. Maze and Cat must decide if they can rebuild their friendship, and Maze discovers her long-held attraction to Walker hasn’t faded with the years but has only grown stronger.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062897855
HEART OF JUNK by Luke Geddes (Fiction/Humor)
The city of Wichita, Kansas, is wracked with panic over the abduction of toddler pageant princess Lindy Bobo. However, the dealers at The Heart of America Antique Mall are too preoccupied by their own neurotic compulsions to take much notice. Rather than focus on Lindy, they are consumed by another drama: the impending arrival of Mark and Grant from the famed antiques television show “Pickin’ Fortunes,” who are planning to film an episode at The Heart of America and secretly may be the last best hope of saving the mall from bankruptcy. Yet the mall and the missing beauty queen have more to do with each other than these vendors might think, and before long, the group sets in motion a series of events that lead to surprising revelations about Lindy’s whereabouts.
Simon & Schuster | 9781982106676
THE HOLLOWS by Jess Montgomery (Historical Mystery)
Ohio, 1926: For many years, the railroad track in Moonvale Tunnel has been used as a shortcut through the Appalachian hills. When an elderly woman is killed walking along the tracks, the brakeman tells tales of seeing a ghostly female figure dressed all in white. Newly elected Sheriff Lily Ross is called on to the case to dispel the myths. With the help of her friends, Marvena Whitcomb and Hildy Cooper, Lily follows the woman’s trail to The Hollows --- a notorious asylum --- and they begin to expose dark secrets long-hidden by time and the mountains.
Minotaur Books | 9781250781697
THE KING’S EVIL by Andrew Taylor (Historical Thriller)
London, 1667. In the Court of Charles II, it’s a dangerous time to be alive --- a wrong move may lead to disgrace, exile or death. Therefore, the discovery of a body at Clarendon House, the palatial home of one of the highest courtiers in the land, could have catastrophic consequences. James Marwood, a traitor’s son, is ordered to cover up the murder. But the dead man is Edward Alderley, the cousin of one of Marwood’s acquaintances. Cat Lovett had every reason to want her cousin dead. Since his murder, she has vanished, and all the evidence points to her as the killer. Marwood is determined to clear Cat’s name and discover who really killed Alderley. But time is running out for everyone. If he makes a mistake, it could threaten not only the government but the King himself.
HarperCollins | 9780008433864
LANA’S WAR by Anita Abriel (Historical Fiction)
Paperback Original
Paris, 1943: Lana Antanova is on her way to see her husband with the thrilling news that she is pregnant. But when she arrives at the convent where he teaches music, she’s horrified to see Gestapo officers execute him for hiding a Jewish girl in the piano. A few months later, grieving both her husband and her lost pregnancy, Lana is shocked when she’s approached to join the resistance on the French Riviera. Lana’s cover story makes her the mistress of Guy Pascal, a wealthy Swiss industrialist and fellow resistance member, in whose villa in Cap Ferrat she lives. Consumed by her work, she doesn’t expect to become attached to a young Jewish girl or wonder about the secrets held by the man whose house she shares.
Atria Books | 9781982147679
THE LAST PASSENGER: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch (Historical Mystery)
London, 1855. A young and eager Charles Lenox faces his toughest case yet: a murder without a single clue. Slumped in a third-class car at Paddington Station is the body of a handsome young gentleman. He has no luggage, empty pockets and no sign of identification on his person. And putting together the clues to the mystery of the man’s identity only raises more questions, when Lenox discovers that the crime has a significant connection to America. As he seeks to solve this impossible case, the young Lenox must confront an equally troublesome problem in his personal life. Kitty Ashbrook, beautiful and cultured, appears to be his soulmate --- but love comes with obstacles of its own.
Minotaur Books | 9781250312211
LAYING BONES: A Texas Red River Mystery by Reavis Z. Wortham (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
Constable Ned Parker is looking into the seemingly accidental death of his nephew R. B., who was found in his overturned pickup near Sanders Creek bridge. At first it appears that R. B. drowned in the shallow water, but something doesn't add up for Ned, who begins turning over stones in search of what really happened the night R. B. died. Eventually, the investigation leads Ned back to the Starlite Club, a dangerous honky-tonk recently constructed in a no-man's land on the Lone Star side of the Red River. Although his investigation uncovers suspicious characters, drugs and gambling, it's the series of murders that eliminated any potential witnesses to what happened to R. B. on that cold January night that's the most troubling.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464214370
LITTLE GODS by Meng Jin (Fiction)
On the night of June 4th, a woman gives birth in a Beijing hospital alone. Thus begins the unraveling of Su Lan, a brilliant physicist who until this moment has successfully erased her past, fighting what she calls the mind’s arrow of time. When Su Lan dies unexpectedly 17 years later, it is her daughter Liya who inherits the silences and contradictions of her life. Liya, who grew up in America, takes her mother’s ashes to China. In a territory inhabited by the ghosts of the living and the dead, Liya’s memories are joined by those of two others: Zhu Wen, the woman last to know Su Lan before she left China, and Yongzong, the father Liya has never known.
Custom House | 9780062935960
MINUS ME by Mameve Medwed (Fiction)
Paperback Original
Annie and her devoted but comically incompetent childhood sweetheart, Sam, are the owners and operators of Annie's, a gourmet sandwich shop, home to the legendary Paul Bunyan Special Sandwich --- their "nutritionally challenged continual source of income and marital harmony and local fame." But into their mostly charmed marriage comes the scary medical diagnosis for Annie --- and the overwhelming challenge of finding a way to help Sam go on without her. Annie decides to leave Sam step-by-step instructions for a future without her, and considers her own replacement in his heart and their bed. Her best-laid plans grind to a halt with the unexpected appearance of Ursula, Annie's Manhattan diva of a mother, who brings her own brand of chaos and disruption into their lives.
Alcove Press | 9781643856438
THE MOMENT OF LIFT: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates (Social Science/Women's Studies)
For the last 20 years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, you need to stop keeping women down. In THE MOMENT OF LIFT, Melinda shares lessons she’s learned from the inspiring people she’s met during her work and travels around the world. As she writes in the introduction, “That is why I had to write this book --- to share the stories of people who have given focus and urgency to my life. I want all of us to see ways we can lift women up where we live.”
Flatiron Books | 9781250257727
THE PERFECT GUESTS by Emma Rous (Gothic Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
1988. Beth Soames is 14 years old when her aunt takes her to stay at Raven Hall, a rambling manor. The Averells, the family who lives there, are warm and welcoming, and Beth becomes fast friends with their daughter, Nina. But when they ask her to help them with a harmless game, nothing is ever the same. 2019. Sadie Langton is an actress struggling to make ends meet when she lands a well-paying gig to pretend to be a guest at a weekend party. As day turns to night, Sadie starts to feel that there’s something off about the glamorous guests who arrive at Raven Hall. As the party begins, it becomes chillingly apparent that their unseen host is playing games with everyone...including her.
Berkley | 9780440000488
THE PERSUASION by Iris Johansen (Thriller)
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy Seal Joe Quinn are about to give Seth Caleb their trust for the most important duty of his life: keeping their daughter, Jane, safe at any cost. Her talent as an artist has caught the attention of a brilliant psychopath with a violent past. Seth, Jane's strongest ally and fiercest protector, is determined to keep her out of danger, but that becomes nearly impossible when Jane is forced to take matters into her own hands and confronts the madman who wants her for himself…and wants Seth Caleb dead. As Jane and Seth chase down their bloodthirsty adversary, they finally commit to a life together. As the two come face to face with danger, one thing is made clear: it will take both of them working together to confront and defeat this evil.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538762943
PLAY THE RED QUEEN by Juris Jurjevics (Mystery)
Vietnam, 1963. A female Viet Cong assassin is trawling the boulevards of Saigon, catching US Army officers off-guard with a single pistol shot, then riding off on the back of a scooter. Although the US military is not officially in combat, 16,000 American servicemen are stationed in Vietnam “advising” the military and government. Among them are Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, two army investigators who have been tasked with tracking down the daring killer.
Soho Crime | 9781641292139
THE RESISTERS by Gish Jen (Dystopian Fiction/Humor)
The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica, a country surveilled by one “Aunt Nettie,” a Big Brother that is part artificial intelligence, part internet and oddly human --- even funny. The people: divided. The “angelfair” Netted have jobs and, what with the country half under water, literally occupy the high ground. The Surplus live on swampland if they’re lucky, on water if they’re not. The story: To a Surplus couple --- he once a professor, she still a lawyer --- is born a girl, Gwen, with a golden arm. Her teens find her happily playing in an underground baseball league, but when AutoAmerica faces ChinRussia in the Olympics, Gwen finds herself in dangerous territory, playing ball with the Netted even as her mother battles this apartheid-like society in court.
Vintage | 9780525657224
THE SECRET GUESTS by Benjamin Black (Historical Fiction)
Ahead of the German Blitz during World War II, English parents from every social class sent their children to the countryside for safety. In THE SECRET GUESTS, the British royal family takes this evacuation a step further, secretly moving the princesses to the estate of the Duke of Edenmore in “neutral” Ireland. A female English secret agent, Miss Celia Nashe, and a young Irish detective, Garda Strafford, are assigned to watch over “Ellen” and “Mary” at Clonmillis Hall. Soon suspicions about the guests’ true identities percolate, a dangerous boredom sets in for the princesses, and, within and without Clonmillis acreage, passions as well as stakes rise.
Picador | 9781250787606
SHANGHAI SECRETS: A Roland Sinclair WWII Mystery by Sulari Gentill (Historical Mystery)
Paperback Original
Shanghai, 1935. Black sheep gentleman Rowland Sinclair arrives with his bohemian housemates from Sydney, Australia, to represent his family's interests at international negotiations. A beautiful Russian taxi girl --- who once claimed to be the Princess Anastasia and who danced in Rowly's arms the night before --- is found slain in his suite. Out of sympathy for the murdered girl and to clear his name, Rowly and his companions embark upon their own investigation. They soon discover there are many people who may have wanted Alexandra Romanovna dead. As they are drawn deeper into Shanghai society and its underworld, Rowly searches for answers in a strange city determined to ruin him.
Poisoned Pen Press | 9781464213618
SO WE CAN GLOW: Stories by Leesa Cross-Smith (Fiction/Short Stories)
From Kentucky to the California desert, these 42 short stories --- ranging from the ’80s and ’90s to present day --- expose the hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more. On a hot July night, teenage girls sneak out of the house to meet their boyfriends by the train tracks. Members of a cult form an unsettling chorus as they proclaim their adoration for the same man. A woman luxuriates in a fantasy getaway to escape her past. A love story begins over cabbages in a grocery store, and a laundress's life is consumed by her obsession with a baseball star. After the death of a sister, two high school friends kiss all night and binge-watch Winona Ryder movies.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538715345
A STRANGER AT THE DOOR by Jason Pinter (Mystery/Thriller)
Paperback Original
When Rachel Marin discovers an ominous email that her teenaged son’s teacher sent to her just before he was killed, she knows she must help bring the perpetrator to justice. But soon a figure from her past reappears, threatening to expose Rachel’s darkest secrets if she doesn’t tread lightly. And when her son is recruited by a shadowy businessman who may be connected to the murder, Rachel knows this has just gotten very, very personal. Someone out there is dead set on keeping this grisly cover-up good and buried, which means if Rachel isn’t careful, it’s only a matter of time before her dream life becomes her worst nightmare.
Thomas & Mercer | 9781542005944
TROUBLE IS WHAT I DO by Walter Mosley (Mystery)
Leonid McGill has spent a lifetime building up his reputation in the New York investigative scene. His seemingly infallible instinct and inside knowledge of the crime world make him the ideal man to help when Phillip Worry comes knocking. Phillip "Catfish" Worry is a 92-year-old Mississippi bluesman who needs Leonid's help with a simple task: deliver a letter revealing the black lineage of a wealthy heiress and her corrupt father. But when a famed and feared assassin puts a hit on Catfish, Leonid has no choice but to confront the ghost of his own felonious past. Working to protect his client and his own family, Leonid must reach the heiress on the eve of her wedding before her powerful father kills those who hold their family's secret.
Mulholland Books | 9780316491150
WE WISH YOU LUCK by Caroline Zancan (Fiction)
It doesn't take long for the students on Fielding campus to become obsessed with Hannah, Leslie and Jimmy. The three graduate students are mysterious, inaccessible and brilliant. After Simone --- young, bestselling author and erstwhile model --- shows up as a visiting professor, and after everything that happened with her, the trio only become more notorious. Love. Death. Revenge. These age-old tropes come to life as the semesters unfold. The threesome came to study writing, to be writers, and this is the story they've woven together: of friendship and passion, of competition and envy, of creativity as life and death.
Riverhead Books | 9780525534945
WHERE REASONS END by Yiyun Li (Fiction)
The narrator of WHERE REASONS END writes, “I had but one delusion, which I held on to with all my willpower: We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by words.” Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, WHERE REASONS END trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship.
Random House Trade Paperbacks | 9781984801654
THE WORDS I NEVER WROTE by Jane Thynne (Fiction)
New York, present day: Juno Lambert buys a 1931 Underwood typewriter that once belonged to celebrated journalist Cordelia Capel. Within its case, she discovers an unfinished novel, igniting a transatlantic journey to fill the gaps in the story of Cordelia and her sister and the secret that lies between them. Europe, 1936: Cordelia’s socialite sister, Irene, marries a German industrialist who whisks her away to Berlin. The sisters exchange letters, and Cordelia discovers that Irene’s husband is a Nazi sympathizer. As life in Nazi Germany darkens, Irene no longer dares admit what her existence is truly like. Knowing that their letters cannot tell the whole story, Cordelia decides to fill in the blanks by sitting down with her Underwood and writing the truth.
Ballantine Books | 9781524796617
On Sale the Week of January 18th in Hardcover
January 19th
AFTERSHOCK by Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell (Mystery)
There’s a body crushed under a load of pipes on a San Francisco construction site, and medical examiner Dr. Jessie Teska is on call. So it’s her job to figure out who it is --- and her headache when the autopsy reveals that the death is a homicide staged as an accident. Jessie is hot on the murderer’s trail, then an earthquake sends her and her whole city reeling. When the dust clears, her case has fallen apart and an innocent man is being framed. Jessie knows she’s the only one who can prove it, and she races to piece together the truth --- before it gets buried and brings her down in the rubble.
Hanover Square Press | 9781335147295
AT THE EDGE OF THE HAIGHT by Katherine Seligman (Fiction)
Maddy Donaldo, homeless at 20, has made a family of sorts in the dangerous spaces of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. She knows whom to trust, where to eat, when to move locations, and how to take care of her dog. It’s the only home she has. When she unwittingly witnesses the murder of a young homeless boy and is seen by the perpetrator, her relatively stable life is upended. Suddenly, everyone from the police to the dead boys’ parents want to talk to Maddy about what she saw. As adults pressure her to give up her secrets and reunite with her own family before she meets a similar fate, Maddy must decide if she wants to stay lost or be found.
Algonquin Books | 9781643750231
BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED by Lisa Gardner (Mystery/Thriller)
Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged woman, a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she spends her life doing what no one else will --- searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim's wary family tells Frankie she's on her own --- and she soon learns she's asking questions someone doesn't want answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her.
Dutton | 9781524745042
THE CITY OF TEARS by Kate Mosse (Historical Thriller)
August 1572: Minou Joubert and her husband, Piet, travel to Paris to attend a royal wedding that, after a decade of religious wars, is intended to finally bring peace between the Catholics and the Huguenots. Also in Paris is their oldest enemy, Vidal, in pursuit of an ancient relic that will change the course of history. Within days of the marriage, thousands will lie dead in the street, and Minou’s family will be scattered to the four winds.
Minotaur Books | 9781250202185
THE DIVINES by Ellie Eaton (Fiction)
The girls of St John the Divine, an elite English boarding school, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys and chain-smoking cigarettes. For Josephine, now in her 30s, the years at St John were a lifetime ago. She hasn’t spoken to another Divine in 15 years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace. Yet now Josephine inexplicably finds herself returning to her old stomping grounds. The visit provokes blurry recollections of those doomed final weeks that rocked the community. With each memory that resurfaces, she circles closer to the violent secret at the heart of the school’s scandal. But the more Josephine recalls, the further her life unravels.
William Morrow | 9780063012196
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura (Biography)
Elizabeth Blackwell believed from an early age that she was destined for a mission beyond the scope of "ordinary" womanhood. Though the world at first recoiled at the notion of a woman studying medicine, her intelligence and intensity ultimately won her the acceptance of the male medical establishment. In 1849, she became the first woman in America to receive an M.D. She was soon joined in her iconic achievement by her younger sister, Emily, who was actually the more brilliant physician. Exploring the sisters’ allies, enemies and enduring partnership, Janice P. Nimura presents a story of trial and triumph.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393635546
HOMO IRREALIS: Essays by André Aciman (Essays)
André Aciman returns to the essay form to explore what the present tense means to artists who cannot grasp the here and now. Irrealis is not about the present, or the past, or the future, but about what might have been but never was --- but could in theory still happen. From meditations on subway poetry and the temporal resonances of an empty Italian street, to considerations of the lives and work of Sigmund Freud, Constantine Cavafy, W. G. Sebald, John Sloan, Éric Rohmer, Marcel Proust and Fernando Pessoa, and portraits of cities such as Alexandria and St. Petersburg, HOMO IRREALIS is a deep reflection of the imagination’s power to shape our memories under time’s seemingly intractable hold.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 9780374171872
KNOCK KNOCK by Anders Roslund (Thriller)
Seventeen years ago, Criminal Inspector Ewert Grens was called to the scene of a brutal crime. A family had been murdered, and the only survivor --- and witness --- was the five-year-old daughter. The girl was placed in the witness protection program, and the case went cold. But years later, Grens is still haunted by the seemingly random slaying and the little girl who was spared. So when he learns that the apartment where the crime occurred is now the scene of a mysterious break-in, Grens immediately fears that someone is intent on silencing the only witness. He races to find her...before they do.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593188217
LAND: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World by Simon Winchester (History/Economics)
Land --- whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city --- is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. In LAND, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing --- and have done --- with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet. The book examines in depth how we acquire land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do, come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: Who actually owns the world’s land --- and why does it matter?
Harper | 9780062938336
MEET ME IN BOMBAY by Jenny Ashcroft (Historical Romance)
It's New Year's Eve in Bombay, 1913, and Madeline Bright is yearning for all she has left behind in England. Then, at the stroke of midnight, Maddy meets Luke Devereaux --- and as the year changes, so do both their lives. Bold and charismatic, Luke opens her eyes to the wonders of Bombay, while Maddy's beauty and vivacity capture his heart. Only her mother disapproves, preferring the devoted Guy Bowen as a match for her daughter. But while Maddy and Luke are falling in love, the world is falling apart. World War I is on the horizon, and Luke will be given no choice but to fight. They will be continents apart, separated by danger and devastating loss, but bound by Luke's promise that they will meet again in Bombay.
St. Martin's Press | 9781250270269
THE MITFORD TRIAL: A Mitford Murders Mystery by Jessica Fellowes (Historical Mystery)
It's lady's maid Louisa Cannon's wedding day, but the fantasy is shattered shortly after when she is approached by a secretive man asking her to spy on Diana Mitford --- who is having an affair with the infamous Oswald Mosley --- and her sister, Unity. Thus, as summer 1933 dawns, Louisa finds herself accompanying the Mitfords on a glitzy cruise, full of the starriest members of Society. But the waters run red when a man is found attacked. Back in London, the case is taken by lawyer Tom Mitford, and Louisa finds herself caught between worlds: of a love lost, a family divided and a country caught in conflict.
Minotaur Books | 9781250316837
OUT OF HOUNDS by Rita Mae Brown (Mystery)
Although the hunting season is coming to a close, the foxes seem determined to put the members of the Jefferson Hunt Club through their paces. “Sister” Jane Arnold and her friends are enjoying some of the best chases they’ve had all season when the fun is cut short by the theft of Crawford Howard’s treasured Sir Alfred Munnings painting of a woman in hunting attire riding sidesaddle. When another painting goes missing five days later, Sister Jane knows it’s no coincidence. Someone is stealing paintings of foxhunters from foxhunters. But why? Then Delores Buckingham, once a formidable foxhunter, is strangled to death after her own Munnings sidesaddle painting is stolen. Now Sister is not just up against a thief --- she’s on the hunt for a killer.
Ballantine Books | 9780593130063
PIANOS AND FLOWERS: Brief Encounters of the Romantic Kind by Alexander McCall Smith (Historical Fiction/Short Stories)
Pictures capture moments in time, presenting the viewer with a window into another life. But a picture can go only so far. Who are the people in the image? What are their fears? What are their dreams? In the 14 delightful tales in this collection, Alexander McCall Smith imagines the lives and loves of some of the everyday people pictured in these 20th-century photographs. A young woman finds unexpected love while perusing Egyptian antiquities. A family is forever fractured when war comes to Penang, in colonial Malaysia. Iron Jelloid tablets help to reveal a young man’s inner strength. And twin sisters discover that it’s never too late to forge a new path --- even when standing at the altar.
Pantheon | 9780593315750
REMOTE CONTROL by Nnedi Okorafor (Science Fiction/Adventure)
The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From here on in, she would be known as Sankofa --- a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past. Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks --- alone, except for her fox companion --- searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged, searching for answers. But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?
Tordotcom | 9781250772800
THE RIB KING by Ladee Hubbard (Historical Fiction)
For 15 years, August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum. The groundskeeper is part of the household’s all-black staff, along with “Miss Mamie,” the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices. But the Barclays’ fortunes have fallen, and their money is almost gone. When a prospective business associate proposes selling Miss Mamie’s rib sauce to local markets under the brand name “The Rib King” --- using a caricature of a wildly grinning August on the label --- Mr. Barclay agrees. Yet neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime. August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that explodes in shocking tragedy.
Amistad | 9780062979063
SHIVER by Allie Reynolds (Psychological Thriller/Mystery)
When Milla accepts an off-season invitation to Le Rocher, a cozy ski resort in the French Alps, she's expecting an intimate weekend of catching up with four old friends. It might have been a decade since she saw them last, but she's never forgotten the bond they forged on this very mountain during a winter spent fiercely training for an elite snowboarding competition. Yet no sooner do Milla and the others arrive for the reunion than they realize something is horribly wrong. Detailed instructions await them inside the hotel: an icebreaker game designed to draw out their secrets and remind them of Saskia, the enigmatic sixth member of their group, who vanished the morning of the competition years before and has long been presumed dead.
G.P. Putnam's Sons | 9780593187838
TRIO by William Boyd (Historical Fiction/Satire)
A producer. A novelist. An actress. It's summer 1968 --- a time of war and assassinations, protests and riots. While the world is reeling, our trio is involved in making a disaster-plagued, Swingin' Sixties British movie in sunny Brighton. All are leading secret lives. As the movie shoot zigs and zags, these layers of secrets become increasingly more untenable. Pressures build inexorably. The FBI and CIA get involved. Someone is going to crack --- or maybe they all will. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, TRIO asks the vital questions: What makes life worth living? And what do you do if you find it isn't?
Knopf | 9780593318232
On Sale the Week of January 18th in Paperback
January 19th
18 TINY DEATHS: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Invented Modern Forensics by Bruce Goldfarb (Biography)
As America ramps up efforts toward victory in World War II, Frances Glessner Lee stands at the front of a wood-paneled classroom within Harvard Medical School and addresses the young men attending her seminar on the developing field of forensic science. A grandmother without a college degree, Lee may appear better suited for a life of knitting than of investigation of unexpected death. Her colleagues and students, however, know her to be an extremely intelligent and exacting researcher and teacher --- the perfect candidate, despite her gender, to push the scientific investigation of unexpected death out of the dark confines of centuries-old techniques and into the light of the modern day.
Sourcebooks | 9781728217543
DARLING ROSE GOLD by Stephanie Wrobel (Psychological Thriller)
For the first 18 years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. But no matter how many doctors, tests or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with her. It turns out that her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar. After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling, and she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.
Berkley | 9780593100073
FIGHT OF THE CENTURY: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman (Essays)
The American Civil Liberties Union began as a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller and Jane Addams. A century after its founding, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, prize-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the ACLU’s 100-year history. In FIGHT OF THE CENTURY, bestselling and award-winning authors --- including Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth Strout --- present unique literary takes on historic decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, the Scopes trial, Roe v. Wade and more.
Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster | 9781501190414
THE HEAP by Sean Adams (Fiction/Satire)
Los Verticalés once bustled with life and excitement. Now this marvel of modern architecture and nontraditional urban planning has collapsed into a pile of rubble known as the Heap. Orville Anders burrows into the bowels of the Heap to find his brother Bernard, a beloved radio DJ, who is alive and miraculously broadcasting somewhere under the massive rubble. For months, Orville has worked tirelessly to free Bernard --- the only known survivor of the imploded city --- who he speaks to every evening, calling into his radio show. When Orville refuses to drop brand names into their nightly talks, his access to Bernard is suddenly cut off, but he continues to hear his own voice over the airwaves, casually shilling products as “he” converses with Bernard.
William Morrow Paperbacks | 9780062957757
A HOUSE AT THE BOTTOM OF A LAKE by Josh Malerman (Fiction/Magical Realism)
Paperback Original
Young lovers who are anxious to connect agree to a first date, thinking outside of the box. At 17 years old, James and Amelia can feel the rest of their lives beginning. They have this summer and this summer alone to experience the extraordinary. But they didn’t expect to find it in a house at the bottom of a lake. The house is cold and dark, but it’s also their own. Caution be damned, until being carefree becomes dangerous. For the teens must decide: swim deeper into the house --- all the while falling deeper in love? Whatever they do, they will never be able to turn their backs on what they discovered together. And what they learned: Just because a house is empty doesn’t mean nobody’s home.
Del Rey | 9780593237779
I HEART OKLAHOMA! by Roy Scranton (Fiction/Humor)
When Suzie is offered the chance to work with a maverick cinematographer on his road-trip movie about Donald Trump’s America, she’s pretty sure it’s a bad idea. But she signs up anyway, hoping it might help her start over and find something she’s lost: a sense of the future. A provocative, genderqueer, shapeshifting musical romp through the brain-eating nightmare of contemporary America, I HEART OKLAHOMA! moves from our bleeding-edge present to a furious Faulknerian retelling of the Charlie Starkweather killings in the 1950s, capturing in its fragmented, mesmerizing form the violence at the heart of the American dream.
Soho Press | 9781641291897
LAST ONES LEFT ALIVE by Sarah Davis-Goff (Dystopian Fiction)
Raised in isolation by her mother and Maeve on a small island off the coast of a post-apocalyptic Ireland, Orpen’s life has revolved around training to fight a threat she’s never seen. More and more she feels the call of the mainland, and the prospect of finding other survivors. But that is where danger lies, too, in the form of the flesh-eating menace known as the skrake. Then disaster strikes. Alone, pushing an unconscious Maeve in a wheelbarrow, Orpen decides her last hope is abandoning the safety of the island and journeying across the country to reach the legendary banshees, the rumored all-female fighting force that battles the skrake. But the skrake are not the only threat.
Flatiron Books | 9781250235237
THE MAGICAL LANGUAGE OF OTHERS: A Memoir by E. J. Koh (Memoir)
THE MAGICAL LANGUAGE OF OTHERS is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh’s parents return to South Korea for work, leaving 15-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, she finds herself abandoned and adrift in a world made strange by her mother’s absence. Her mother writes letters, in Korean, over the years seeking forgiveness and love --- letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box. Eun Ji fearlessly grapples with forgiveness, reconciliation, legacy and intergenerational trauma, arriving at insights that are essential reading for anyone who has ever had to balance love, longing, heartbreak and joy.
Tin House Books | 9781951142278
NEVER ASK ME by Jeff Abbott (Psychological Thriller)
In the wealthy Austin suburb of Lakehaven, the body of Danielle Roberts is discovered on a park bench. Danielle was an adoption consultant who delivered the joy of parenthood to a number of local families. Perhaps no other family is as crushed as the Pollitts, and her death becomes the catalyst for a maelstrom of suspicion and intrigue. You have been told a huge lie, an anonymous email charges the son, Grant. No one can learn the truth now, thinks the father, Kyle. Never ask me what I'd do to protect my family, resolves the wife, Iris. I'll do whatever it takes to save him, vows the daughter, Julia, of Danielle's grieving teenage son. When each begins to suspect the others of the unimaginable, the strength of their bonds will be tested in extraordinary new ways.
Grand Central Publishing | 9781538717011
RUN ME TO EARTH by Paul Yoon (Historical Fiction)
Alisak, Prany and Noi --- three orphans united by devastating loss --- must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed-out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky. We follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It’s a move with irrevocable consequences --- and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world.
Simon & Schuster | 9781501154058
SHIPPED by Angie Hockman (Romantic Comedy)
Paperback Original
Henley Evans, a marketing manager for a cruise line, is shortlisted for the promotion of her dreams. The only problem? Graeme Crawford-Collins, the remote social media manager and the bane of her existence, is also up for the position. Their boss tasks each of them with drafting a proposal on how to boost bookings in the Galápagos. The best proposal wins the promotion. There’s just one catch: they have to go on a company cruise to the Galápagos Islands...together. But when the two meet on the ship, Henley is shocked to discover that the real Graeme is nothing like she imagined. As they explore the Islands together, she soon finds the line between loathing and liking thinner than a postcard.
Gallery Books | 9781982151591
SMALL DAYS AND NIGHTS by Tishani Doshi (Fiction)
Escaping her failing marriage in the United States, Grace Marisola has returned to Pondicherry to cremate her mother. Once there, she receives an unexpected inheritance --- a house on the beaches of Madras --- and discovers an older sister she never knew she had: Lucia, who has spent her life in a residential facility. Grace’s attempts to leave her old self behind prove first a struggle, then a strain, as she discovers the chaos, tenderness, fury and bewilderment of life with Lucia.
W. W. Norton & Company | 9780393541397
STRIKE ME DOWN by Mindy Mejia (Psychological Thriller)
An anti-corporate, feminist athletic empire, Strike is owned by Logan Russo, a brash and legendary kickboxer, and her marketing genius husband, Gregg Abbott. They’re about to host a major kickboxing tournament with $20 million in prize money, and the chance for the champion to become the new face of the company. But Gregg suspects his wife already has a new face in mind in the form of a young trainer. When the prize money goes missing days before the tournament begins, Gregg hires Nora’s firm to find both the thief and the money --- but Nora has a secret connection to Strike. Her partner pressures her into taking the case anyway, hinting he has information that could change the course of the investigation in a shocking and deadly way.
Atria/Emily Bestler Books | 9781982133245
THE THIRD RAINBOW GIRL: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg (True Crime)
On June 25, 1980, in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For 13 years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders," though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. In THE THIRD RAINBOW GIRL, Emma Copley Eisenberg uses the Rainbow Murders case as a starting point for a thought-provoking tale of an Appalachian community bound by the false stories that have been told about it.
Hachette Books | 9780316449212
THIS IS BIG: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World --- and Me by Marisa Meltzer (Memoir)
Marisa Meltzer began her first diet at the age of five. Growing up an indoors-loving child in Northern California, she learned from an early age that weight was the one part of her life she could neither change nor even really understand. Fast forward nearly four decades. Marisa comes across an obituary for Jean Nidetch, the Queens, New York housewife who founded Weight Watchers in 1963. Weaving Jean's incredible story as weight loss maven and pathbreaking entrepreneur with Marisa's own journey through Weight Watchers, she chronicles the deep parallels, and enduring frustrations, in each woman's decades-long efforts to lose weight and keep it off.
Back Bay Books | 9780316413985
WEATHER by Jenny Offill (Fiction)
Lizzie works in the library of a university where she was once a promising graduate student. Her side hustle is answering the letters that come in to "Hell and High Water," the doom-laden podcast hosted by her former mentor. At first it suits her, this chance to practice her other calling as an unofficial shrink --- she has always played this role to her divorced mother and brother recovering from addiction --- but soon Lizzie finds herself struggling to strike the obligatory note of hope in her responses. The reassuring rhythms of her life as a wife and mother begin to falter as her obsession with disaster psychology and people preparing for the end of the world grows.
Vintage | 9780345806901
WESTWIND by Ian Rankin (Thriller)
In Europe, the Americans are pulling out their troops in a tide of isolationism. Britain, torn between loyalties to America and the continent, is caught in the middle. In America, a space shuttle crashes on landing, killing all but one of the crew on-board: a British citizen named Mike Dreyfuss, who will become vilified by the US press and protesters. Halfway across the world, at English ground control headquarters, Martin Hepton watches with dismay as they lose contact with the most advanced satellite in Europe. A colleague of Hepton's who suspects something strange is going on disappears. Hepton realizes there is much more at stake than anyone knows --- and many more people on their trail than they can possibly evade.
Back Bay Books | 9780316497930
WHAT’S WORTH KEEPING by Kaya McLaren (Fiction)
Paperback Original
The day her doctor says the one word that no one wants to hear, Amy Bergstrom discovers a secret that her husband of 25 years has been keeping from her. Now that the months of treatment and surgeries are behind her, she seeks healing, peace and clarity in an ancient forest. After dropping off his daughter at Amy’s Aunt Rae’s horse ranch, Officer Paul Bergstrom visits the fixer-upper he had bought years ago as a place to retire with his family and lovingly repairs it. Witnessing her mother’s health crisis had been terrifying enough, but learning the cause was genetic leaves Carly with the sense that all of her dreams are pointless. With the help of her eccentric great aunt and a Clydesdale named T. Rex, Carly just may find her faith in her future again.
St. Martin's Griffin | 9781250145093
WHY WE CAN’T SLEEP: Women's New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun (Social Science/Gender Studies)
When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and had a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too? Calhoun decided to find some answers. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked. In WHY WE CAN’T SLEEP, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss --- and keep the next generation of women from falling in.
Grove Press | 9780802148575
WILL: A Memoir by Will Self (Memoir)
Unflinching, intoxicating, heartfelt and propelled by an exceptional energy, WILL is the long-awaited memoir by Will Self, whose works have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into over 20 languages. It spins the reader from Self’s childhood in a quiet North London suburb to his mind-expanding education at Oxford, to a Burroughsian trip to Morocco, an outback vision in Australia, and, finally, a surreal turn in rehab. Echoing the great Modernist writers of the early 20th century in its psychedelic stream of consciousness, WILL is vividly imagistic and mordantly witty. It is both kunstlerroman and confessional, a tale of excess and degradation, a karmic cycle that leads back to the author’s own lack of...will.
Grove Press | 9780802158284
|
