Here’s what’s hot off the presses and on the shelves this week (blurbs provided by the book’s publishers):
HARDCOVER FICTION
Vaclav & Lena by Haley Tanner – Offering a new glimpse at the American immigrant experience, a stunningly gifted young novelist delivers a timeless love story set in New York’s Russian migrant community.
Embassytown by China Mieville – Mieville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war. When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Avice is torn between competing loyalties–to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place.
The Final Storm: A Novel of the War in the Pacific by Jeff Shaara – With a narrative dexterity befitting his status as a master storyteller, Shaara relates the story of the struggle for Okinawa through the eyes of combatants on both sides: Private Clay Adams, Admiral Chester Nimitz, General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., and General Mitsura Ushijima, the Japanese general in charge of defending the island.
The Jefferson Key by Steve Berry – Four United States presidents have been assassinated—in 1865, 1881, 1901, and 1963—each murder seemingly unrelated and separated by time. But what if those presidents were all killed for the same reason: a clause in the United States Constitution—contained within Article 1, Section 8—that would shock Americans? This question is what faces former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone in his latest adventure.
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
On China by Henry Kissinger – An eminent historian and strategist reflects on how China’s past illuminates its 21st-century trajectory, drawing on 40 years of intimate acquaintance with the country and its leaders.
The Long Journey Home: A Memoir by Margaret Robison – The mother of the bestselling memoirists Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison finally tells her own heartbreaking story of her Southern Gothic childhood, tormented marriage, motherhood, mental breakdown, and journey back to sanity and contentment, in luminous, evocative prose.
Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen – It is the most famous military installation in the world.Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it.Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror.
Psycopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson – In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.
PAPERBACK FICTION
The Passage by Justin Cronin – FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he’s done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Brad is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey.
This is Where We Live by Janelle Brown -From the author of All We Ever Wanted is Everything: Claudia and Jeremy, a young married couple are on the verge of making it. Her first film was a sensation at Sundance and is about to have its theatrical release; he’s assembled a new band and is a few songs shy of an album. They’ve recently purchased their first home. But a series of seismic events deal a crushing blow to their dreams of the bohemian life and their professional aspirations and make
PAPERBACK NONFICTION
War by Sebastian Junger – Junger turns his brilliant and empathetic eye to the reality of combat–the fear, the honor, and the trust among men in an extreme situation whose survival depends on their absolute commitment to one another. His on-the-ground account follows a single platoon through a 15-month tour of duty in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.
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