“Looking for Jane” by Heather Marshall (Atria)
Gripping from the moment it begins, Heather Marshall’s novel “Looking for Jane” is getting a well-deserved re-release to hit the post-Roe v. Wade United States market.
NEW YORK (AP) — “Central Places,” by Delia Cai (Ballantine)
Delia Cai’s debut novel has all the trappings of a breezy rom-com: Audrey, a successful 27-year-old New Yorker with a glamorous job in ad sales and handsome photojournalist fiancé, returns home to the Midwest to be confronted with old tensions with family and friends she thought she’d left in her past -- including an unrequited high school crush.
“The Aftermath: the Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America” by Philip Bump (Viking)
At the outset of his book, columnist Philip Bump makes it clear that he's writing about an America undergoing massive shifts as the baby boom generation ages.
“The Guest Lecture,” by Martin Riker (Black Cat)
If you’re ever spent a sleepless night worrying about your career, your family and the gross inequality of American life, then chances are you will love, or at least relate to, “The Guest Lecture” by Martin Riker.
“The House at the End of the World” by Dean Koontz (Thomas & Mercer)
Like the “fusions” that terrify the main characters, Dean Koontz’s new thriller feels not quite fully formed. It starts as a mystery — what sort of dangerous experiments is the U.S.
NEW YORK (AP) — “Vintage Contemporaries,” By Dan Kois (Harper)
Emily Thiel, fresh to New York City by way of college and Wausau, Wisconsin, often has her nose stuck in a book. It’s 1991, so it’s usually a Vintage Contemporary — a Random House imprint started in 1984 that showcased new authors with striking graphic covers featuring dot matrix accents and blocks of color.
“The Shards,” by Bret Easton Ellis (Alfred A. Knopf)
It’s the 1980s and rich prep school students in Los Angeles are living the life of absentee parents, fancy cars, drugs, sex and disaffection.
"Rikers: An Oral History," by Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau (Random House)
In these times, when people disagree about seemingly everything, just about everyone interviewed for this book concurs on the thesis: the New York City jails on Rikers Island stand as a failure in every way.
“Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory,” by Janet Malcolm (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
When Janet Malcolm died 18 months ago at 86, her New Yorker colleague Ian Frazier wrote a eulogy for the magazine noting that the famed and feared journalist had been working on a series of essays based on old family photographs.
“The Book of Everlasting Things” by Aanchal Malhotra (Flatiron)
Star-crossed lovers. Intoxicating scents. Old war journals containing ghosts and secrets. What more could you want in a work of historical fiction?
“Dogtown,” by Howard Owens (Permanent Press)
Willie Black is a multi-racial, 60-year-old reporter who covers the night-cops beat for a dying Richmond, Virginia, newspaper. He smokes, drinks, and falls in love too much, knows the sleazy side of his city as well as he knows his own face, and is fiercely dedicated to a profession that has not been kind to him.
“The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest 1800-1900” by Jon K. Lauck (The University of Oklahoma Press)
Dismissed as Flyover Country. Romanticized as the Heartland. Now, historian Jon K.
“A Dangerous Business” by Jane Smiley (Alfred A. Knopf)
After a fall publishing season filled with Big Books by John Irving, Cormac McCarthy and Barbara Kingsolver, to name just a few, it’s refreshing to read this taut tale from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley (“A Thousand Acres”).
“Terra Nova” by Henriette Lazaridis (Pegasus Books)
Hunger takes many forms. While Viola becomes fascinated with London's suffragette hunger strikers, her husband, Edward, and her lover, James, come closer to starvation with each mile in their journey to the South Pole.
“Tracers In The Dark" by Andy Greenberg (Doubleday)
The year was 2011. Cryptocurrency was a little-understood novelty, and Sen. Chuck Schumer called a news conference to vent outrage over a one-stop online shop for illegal drugs whose technology made sellers “virtually untraceable.”
“Three-Edged Sword,” by Jeff Lindsay (Dutton)
After the Cold War, former Soviet spy Ivo Balodis built himself a fortress in an abandoned missile site on an island in the Baltic Sea. There, he has continued to deal in secrets — but for profit instead of for country.
“The Light Pirate” by Lily Brooks-Dalton (Grand Central)
Wanda is named after the hurricane she was born in. It’s also the hurricane that changes the trajectory of her life.
“The Light Pirate” by Lily Brooks-Dalton takes place at a time not far from our reality — ostensibly now — and goes on to imagine a frighteningly near-future of encroaching waves and crumbling, unsustainable infrastructure completely changing the landscape and life itself.
“The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America,” by H.W. Brands (Doubleday)
Though they're mentioned in the subtitle, William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo often feel more like supporting players in H.W.
“Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius,” by Nick Hornby (Riverhead Books)
Nick Hornby has been writing about pop culture since the 1990s, most famously his obsessive love of soccer in 1992’s “Fever Pitch” and of music in “High Fidelity,” three years later.
“Now Is Not the Time to Panic,” by Kevin Wilson (Ecco)
For the past 25 years the bestselling author Kevin Wilson has repeated to himself a semi-poetical, semi-nonsensical phrase that evokes the self-mythologizing bravado of outlaw musicians: “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers.
“The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams” by Stacy Schiff (Little, Brown and Co.)
Aside from the namesake beer, Samuel Adams in many ways feels like the forgotten Founding Father. Despite his contributions, no biography was written about him until about six decades after his death and no statue erected until the Revolution's centennial.
“The Passenger” by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)
It’s been 16 years since Cormac McCarthy released “The Road” and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, cementing his reputation as a master American novelist.
“Someday, Maybe” by Onyi Nwabineli (Graydon House Books)
“Someday, maybe” is a phrase that noncommittally encapsulates hopes and fears alike. It's a response that lacks urgency, stagnating in the purgatory between “yes” and “no.”
“It’s Not TV: The Rise, Revolution and Future of HBO” by Felix Gillette and John Koblin (Viking)
Streaming and on-demand services are so commonplace nowadays, one can take for granted how revolutionary HBO was when it was first launched.
“Ted Kennedy: A Life,” by John A. Farrell (Penguin Press)
In his new biography of Ted Kennedy, John A. Farrell describes a letter Joseph Kennedy sent his youngest son telling the teenager he had to choose between a serious or non-serious life.
“Murder at the Jubilee Rally” by Terry Shames (Severn House)
Samuel Craddock, the amiable police chief of mythical Jarrett Creek, Texas, is good at his job, but he’s got a lot to deal with in “Murder at the Jubilee Rally,” Terry Shames’s ninth novel in this genre-bending mystery series.
“In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, a Coverup, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press,” by Katherine Corcoran (Bloomsbury)
The confluence of corrupt governance, poverty, drug trafficking and reporters who can be bought is a dangerous place for reporters and democracy.
“Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper)
“Demon Copperhead,” the latest from Barbara Kingsolver, is a modern reimagining of “David Copperfield,” set in Appalachia. But you don’t need to have taken an English lit seminar to enjoy this novel.
“The Last Chairlift” by John Irving (Simon & Schuster)
After 54 years and 15 novels, John Irving’s finally done it. He’s written a book longer than most editions of “Moby-Dick.” And by the time you’re done reading it, you’ll chuckle every time you see the hyphen in Melville’s title.
“Liberation Day,” by George Saunders (Random House)
George Saunders is back with a new collection of short stories that feature his usual dystopian worlds and heartland characters whose lives and language have been fractured by social and economic pressures they barely understand.
“Dinosaurs,” by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton)
Besides moving on from a bad breakup, Gil, the protagonist of Lydia Millet’s “Dinosaurs,” walks from New York to Phoenix because he “wanted to pay for something.” He explains this to his new next-door-neighbor, Ardis, and her best friend, Sarah, over drinks later into this resettlement, saying, “When you have a lot of money, you never pay for anything.
“Cradles of the Reich” by Jennifer Coburn (Sourcebooks Landmark)
Gundi, Irma and Hilde all find themselves at a Lebensborn Society house for future mothers who are deemed to be racially fit. Each woman is there for the same reason: to usher life into the world.
Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries,” by Greg Melville (Abrams Press)
It turns out that America’s graveyards are much more than keepers of our bodily remains until the organisms within the soil reclaim everything.
“Our Missing Hearts,” by Celeste Ng (Penguin Press)
Celeste Ng takes us into a dystopian future where people are judged on their embrace of American "customs and traditions" and people of Asian descent are viewed with suspicion, sometimes even hate.
“The Hero of This Book” by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco)
Don’t be fooled by the fact that this slim new volume from Elizabeth McCracken has the words “a novel” on the cover. It’s a memoir. The reason it’s not referred to as such is clear from the dedication page — a handwritten note from McCracken to her mom in 1993 promising that she’ll never appear as a character in her work.
“Jackal” by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
Something sinister lurks in the woods enveloping the fading industrial town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. If you sense its presence, parents warn their children, “Don’t look.” If you do, the myth will become real.
“Treasure State” by C.J. Box (Minotaur)
Former police officer turned Montana private detective Cassie Dewell has two bizarre mysteries on her hands.
First off, a wealthy matron who’d been bilked by a conman needs her help — not to find the conman but locate the private eye she originally hired to solve the case.
“Fall Guy” by Archer Mayor (Minotaur)
A Mercedes sedan, stolen a few days earlier in New Hampshire, is found abandoned in Vermont. It is crammed with stolen goods from a two-state crime spree.
“Lucy by the Sea," by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
Returning to characters of previous novels, Elizabeth Strout folds them into COVID-19’s twist of fate in “Lucy by the Sea.” Lucy’s world is on the verge of collapse, a pandemic wreaking havoc on a country on the brink of a civil war.
“Less Is Lost,” by Andrew Sean Greer (Little, Brown)
Andrew Sean Greer's “Less Is Lost” is the highly anticipated follow up to his 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning novel “Less,” a satire about an American abroad who travels the globe from Mexico to Germany to Japan to avoid going to an ex-boyfriend's wedding.
“From Saturday Night to Sunday Night: My Forty Years of Laughter, Tears and Touchdowns in TV,” by Dick Ebersol (Simon & Schuster)
Anyone who’s followed the TV industry since broadcasts went color will know the name Dick Ebersol.
“The Enigma of Room 622” by Joel Dicker (HarperVia)
In Joel Dicker’s fat new thriller, a famous novelist named Joel, vacationing in room No. 623 of the Hotel de Verbier in the Swiss Alps, is intrigued that the luxury resort has no room No.
“I Walk Between the Raindrops” by T.C. Boyle (Ecco)
An alcoholic author gets a strange visit that dredges up old memories. A couple becomes trapped on a cruise ship at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir” (Little, Brown)
Jann S. Wenner takes us on a long, strange trip with his accessible and entertaining rock ‘n’ roll memoir.
As the founder, co-editor and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, Wenner had an unusual back stage pass to the rock ‘n’ roll revolution as he chronicled how the Baby Boomer generation reshaped postwar America.
“Lessons,” by Ian McEwan (Alfred A. Knopf)
“Roland occasionally reflected on the events and accidents, personal and global, minuscule and momentous that had formed and determined his existence.” That one sentence in Ian McEwan’s new novel, “Lessons,” nicely sums up the book.
“The Unfolding,” by A.M. Homes (Viking)
If you ever wondered who was behind the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, pick up a copy of A.M. Homes’ new novel, “The Unfolding.” The book, Homes’ 13th and her first novel in a decade, imagines what might have happened if a powerful cabal of wealthy, white, Republican men, horrified by the thought of a Black man in the White House, conspired to undo the 2008 election of Barack Obama and restore America to their nostalgic view of the way things used to be.
“Like, Comment, Subscribe,” Mark Bergen (Viking)
YouTube has become such a part of daily life and popular culture in its 17-year history that it's easy to forget how simple of a concept the site began with.
“Diary of a Misfit,” by Casey Parks (Alfred A. Knopf)
Growing up gay in rural Louisiana, Casey Parks always felt like a misfit. When she came out as a lesbian in college to her Southern evangelical family, it did not go well.