Prepub Alert, October 1, 2011
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| In this Article |
| My Picks |
BIG COMMERCIAL FICTION
Barnes, Steven & Tananarive Due. Devil’s Wake. Atria: S. & S. Feb. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9781451617009. $15; eISBN 9781451617016. PARANORMAL THRILLER
Brockmann, Suzanne. Born to Darkness. Ballantine. Feb. 2012. 416p. ISBN 9780345521279. $26; eISBN 9780345521293. ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
Eastland, Sam. Archive 17. Bantam. Mar. 2012. 272p. ISBN 9780345525734. $25; eISBN 9780345525758. THRILLER
French, Nicci. Blue Monday. Pamela Dorman: Viking. Mar. 2012. 336p. ISBN 9780670023363. $26.95. THRILLER
Kellerman, Jonathan (text) & Michael Gaydos (illus.); adapted by Ande Parks. Silent Partner: The Graphic Novel. Villard. Mar. 2012. 128p. ISBN 9780440423638. $23. THRILLER/GRAPHIC NOVEL
Kellerman, Jonathan. Victims. Ballantine. Mar. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780345505712. $28; eISBN 9780345505712. lrg. prnt. CD: Random Audio. THRILLER
Lutz, Lisa. Trail of the Spellmans. S. & S. Feb. 2012. 400p. ISBN 9781451608120. $25; eISBN 9781451608144. Downloadable: S. & S. Audio. MYSTERY
Novik, Naomi. Crucible of Gold. Del Rey: Ballantine. Mar. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780345522863. $25. FANTASY
Perry, Thomas. Poison Flower: A Jane Whitefield Novel. Mysterious: Grove/Atlantic. Mar. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780802126054. $24. THRILLER
FICTION
Alger, Cristina. The Darlings. Pamela Dorman: Viking. Feb. 2012. 352p. ISBN 9780670023271. $26.95. Downloadable: Penguin Audio. POP FICTION
Son-in-law of billionaire financier Carter Darling and much accustomed to the good life à la New York, pink-slipped attorney Paul Ross gratefully accepts the offer to head the legal team at Carter’s hedge fund. Then a regulatory investigation materializes, leading to scandal, and Paul must choose between saving himself or standing by the family and its business. A former Goldman, Sachs analyst whose father was CEO of Alger Management until 9/11, Alger seems to write with a certain sharp and knowing elegance. Lots of good noise about this one.
Barden, Dan. The Next Right Thing. Dial. Mar. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780385343404. $26; eISBN 9780679644354. LITERARY/THRILLER
Big-time Southern California homebuilder Randy Chalmers owes it all to friend, lawyer, and Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor Terry Elias. So when Terry is found dead of a heroin overdose after years of sobriety, Randy is not only shocked but angry enough to launch his own investigation (he’s a former policeman). Sounds like a typical suspense novel, but since Jennifer Egan and Jonathan Lethem are raving about it, it’s obviously something more.
Begley, Louis. Schmidt Steps Back. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9780307700650. $25.95; eISBN 9780307957351. LITERARY
Hispanic waitress Carrie has spurned his marriage proposal, and daughter Charlotte remains chilly, but lawyer Albert (“Schmidtie”) Schmidt is back for another round (after About Schmidt and Schmidt Delivered). Now that both women are otherwise engaged, Schmidt is wondering how good he’ll be at persuading the French widow of a former partner to take an interest in him. Begley is always sparkly and acerbic; buy where he has a following.
Behrens, Peter. The O’Briens. Pantheon. Mar. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9780307379931. $25.95; eISBN 9780307907097. LITERARY
Joe O’Brien starts out in the Canadian wilds and becomes both a railroad magnate and patriarch of the family at the heart of this amazing epic, as the folks at Pantheon describe it. Given all the in-house excitement and Behrens’s having won the Governor General’s Literary Award in Fiction for his previous novel, The Law of Dreams, I’m chagrined to admit that I’m unfamiliar with his work and am eagerly anticipating this introduction.
De Robertis, Carolina. Perla. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780307599599. $25.95; eISBN 9780307957382. Downloadable: Random Audio. LITERARY
During Argentina’s Dirty War, a period of military repression lasting from 1976 to 1983, some 30,000 citizens were “disappeared”—including about 500 pregnant women whose newborns were given to military families. This story is at the heart of De Robertis’s second novel, after the international best seller The Invisible Mountain. The daughter of an icy mother and upright naval officer father, Perla Correa learns from a pushy houseguest just how she figures in the tragedy of the Dirty War era. Expect richly observed detail and real human drama.
duBois, Jennifer. A Partial History of Lost Causes. Dial. Mar. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9781400069774. $26; CD/downloadable: Random Audio. LITERARY
Chess champion–turned–dissident Aleksandr Bezetov tilts
at windmills when he takes on Vladimir Putin in a political campaign, while American Irina Ellison faces the certainty that she has inherited Huntington’s disease, which killed her father. What ties them together is Irina’s quest to meet Bezetov, to whom her father had once written a letter asking how one copes with a lost cause. Moving between the gray 1970s Soviet Union and up-for-grabs contemporary Russia, this debut would seem to address our fighting spirit in the best way possible. A good first move for Stegner Fellow duBois; I’m reserving time for this one.
Harkaway, Nick. Angelmaker. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 496p. ISBN 9780307595959. $26.95; eISBN 9780307595973. SF/THRILLER
In stark contrast to his London gangster father, Joe Spork makes a living repairing clocks. But the device he repairs for Edie Banister, not just a sweet old lady but a former superspy (think Helen Mirren in Red or The Debt?), turns out to be a 1950s-era doomsday machine. That prompts sharp reaction from both the British government and a South Asian dictator Edie sparred with ages ago, and soon hapless Joe is brought into the renewed hostilities. Harkaway repeats the sometimes funny sf-tinged thrillerish tone of his well-received debut, The Gone-Away World. Buy wherever that book did well.
Harrison, Kathryn. Enchantments. Random. Mar. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9781400063475. $26; eISBN 9780679644231. CD: Random Audio.LITERARY
Harrison’s novels always chart heated, dangerously emotional territory, and this one sounds no different—with the added benefit of being set during the Russian Revolution, as riveting a time as one can imagine. After Rasputin is killed, the Romanovs take responsibility for his daughters—and ask 18-year-old Masha to assume her father’s job of tending to ailing tsarevitch Alyosha. The two become close, and their very different perspectives give historic scope to a country in turmoil. This should appeal to a wide range of readers—there’s history and passion, told in a literary voice. Book club gold.
Hawley, Noah. The Good Father. Doubleday. Mar. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780385535533. $24.95. LITERARY
Dr. Paul Allen faces the worst thing a parent could imagine: his son, likable and reasonably smart but increasingly dislocated after his parents’ divorce, has dropped out of school and, after floating around the country, has been caught on camera shooting a Democratic candidate for President. This story of guilt and love by Hawley, both a novelist and a screenwriter/producer (he was responsible for Bones), should do especially well with book clubs.
Julavits, Heidi. The Vanishers. Doubleday. Mar. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780385523813. $25.95. LITERARY
Madame Ackermann, who heads up an elite school for psychics, refuses to cede power to talented student Julie Severn and eventually cripples her with a fierce psychic attack. Julie returns to the humdrum world but is soon asked to help find a missing person—an artist with ties to Julie’s mother, who committed suicide when Julie was an enfant. Sounds like another layered, ambitious novel from Julavits. Attractive to your not-average reader.
Kelly, Erin. The Dark Rose. Pamela Dorman: Viking. Feb. 2012. 336p. ISBN 9780670023288. $26.95. THRILLER
Forced into petty theft that ended gruesomely in murder, 19-year-old Paul testified against a bullying friend to avoid prison. Louisa works to restore a faded Elizabethan garden while suppressing an infatuation that ended badly. But Paul brings it all back (he looks markedly like the man who wrecked Louisa’s life), and the two start a secret affair. Too bad the past intervenes. Kelly made a name for herself with The Poison Tree; get this follow-up wherever twisty suspense is popular.
Lee, Krys. Drifting House. Viking. Feb. 2012. 224p. ISBN 9780670023257. $25.95. CD: Penguin Audio. SHORT STORIES
This first collection encompasses the Korean immigrant experience, ranging from children fleeing famine in North Korea to a patched-together family in America upended when a shaman moves next door. Lots of excitement about Lee, a 2006 finalist for Best New American Voices; a seven-city tour is planned for this book, and her first novel, How I Became a North Korean, is already scheduled for publication in 2013.
Levine, Sara. Treasure Island!!! Tonga: Europa. Jan. 2012. 176p. ISBN 9781609450618. pap. $15. LITERARY
In this sassy first novel from an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago, a woman needing a life fix hooks onto Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island as her salvation. After all, there’s so much to learn from hero Jim Hawkins: courage, resolution…and horn-blowing. Clearly, this rather spoofs the whole heal-myself memoir genre and sounds like delicious good fun. And since Alice Sebold selected it for publication, you should pay attention.
Ohlsson, Kristina. Unwanted. Atria: S. & S. Feb. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9781439198896. $25; eISBN 9781439198933. THRILLER
When a child is abducted from a packed train, then found dead in chilly northern Sweden with the word unwanted inscribed on her forehead, Inspector Frederika Bergman gets down to the business of finding a particularly nasty killer. Yes, another example of Scandinavian derring-do, though Ohlsson, formerly a security police analyst for the National Swedish Police Board, is now a counterterrorism officer living in Vienna. This won the 2010 Stabilo Prize for Best Crime Writer of Southern Sweden, so you probably can’t go wrong.
Riley, Lucinda. The Orchid House. Atria: S. & S. Feb. 2012. 464p. ISBN 9781451655780. pap. $15; eISBN 9781451655803. HISTORICAL
Mourning the loss of her husband and young child, Julia Forrester returns to Wharton Park, where she enjoyed wandering through her grandfather’s hothouse. She discovers an old diary with Kit Crawford, heir to the estate, and they seek the truth behind a love affair that nearly destroyed the family on the eve of World War II. Published as Hothouse Flower in the UK and a best seller there and in Germany, this should be great escapist reading.
NONFICTION
Arieff, Adrienne. The Sacred Thread. Crown. Feb. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780307716682. $24. MEMOIR/MEDICAL
In San Francisco, thirtyish Arieff despairs of having a child after a miscarriage. In India, Vaina has a husband and three children but not enough money. So they work out something between them. International surrogacy is big business, projected to hit the $2 billion mark in India alone by 2012. A memoir about shared motherhood but also divergent culture; e-blasts will be sent to travel and yoga blogs as well as mommy blogs. And look for an excerpt on Scribd.com. I’m thinking that this could be big.
Broad, William J. The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards. S. & S. Feb. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9781451641424. $26; eISBN 9781451641448. YOGA
A best-selling author (Germs) and multi-award-winning senior writer at the New York Times whose purview has ranged from science to the spread of nuclear arms, Broad has practiced yoga since 1970. Here he covers what he calls a burgeoning global industry, separating scientific fact from hustle, benefits from dangerous delusions. For all those yoga folks who really want to understand what they’re doing.
Cordery, Stacy A. Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts. Viking. Feb. 2012. 400p. ISBN 9780670023301. $27.95. BIOGRAPHY
Rebellious Southern belle Juliette “Daisy” Gordon married a British aristocrat but took no pleasure in upper-crust life. Then she met Boy Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell and was inspired to create a similar organization for girls. This biography by Cordery, who previously tackled Alice Roosevelt Longworth, is out in time for the Girl Scouts’ centennial. Lots of Scouts out there will want to read.
Crouch, Gregory. China’s Wings: War, Intrigue, Romance, and Adventure in the Middle Kingdom During the Golden Age of Flight. Bantam. Mar. 2012. 272p. ISBN 9780553804270. $30. HISTORY
An endeavor jointly undertaken by China and America, China National Aviation Corporation was formed in 1929 to facilitate transportation and communication over China’s huge distances and eventually served as the only supply route (across the looming Eastern Himalayas, famously called “the Hump”) when China was blockaded after the Japanese invasion. West Point grad Crouch brings us a story that’s part adventure, part unearthed history. Not just for history buffs.
de Botton, Alain. Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. Pantheon. Mar. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780307379108. $26.95; eISBN 9780307907103. RELIGION/PHILOSOPHY
The author of The Consolations of Philosophy interrupts the argument between God-is-all believers and religion-is-dangerous nonbelievers to propose the following: so God doesn’t exist, but religion was still dreamed up for reasons that remain germane (consider the comforting rituals and ethical focus). To make it work for us, we simply need to separate cant from helpful content. Perhaps easier said than done, but in a time of tragedy it worked for me. With a five-city tour.
Dodson, James. American Triumvirate: Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, and the Modern Age of Golf. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9780307272492. $27.95; eISBN 9780307957399. SPORTS
Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan: three near-mythic golf champions dominant from the 1930s to the 1950s. They were all born in 1912, so what better time than their centenary to celebrate their accomplishments? From Dodson, a former Golf magazine writer responsible for Hogan’s authorized biography; with a four-city tour.
Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do. Random. Mar. 2012. 368p. ISBN 9781400069286. $28; eISBN 9780679603856.
CD: Random Audio. PSYCHOLOGY
Cue, routine, reward: that’s how habits are formed. Duhigg, a George Polk Award–winning business reporter for the New York Times, relies on scientific research, classroom experiences, and business case studies to explain how habits are acquired, how they can be changed, and how changing just one can radically remake your life. Lots of media interest from places like the Today show, plus rights to 15 countries; it may sound like just another self-help title, but this one is looking big.
Dykstra, Natalia. Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life. Houghton Harcourt. Feb. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780618873852. $26. BIOGRAPHY
Dykstra sets out not only to write a biography of Clover Adams, wife of the redoubtable Henry and a luminary who dominated Gilded Age Washington, DC, but to solve the mystery surrounding her death. Adams, who had begun enthusiastically teaching herself photography, killed herself in 1885 by drinking potassium cyanide, a chemical used in developing film. Dykstra investigates the Adams’s 13-year marriage to determine what went wrong. Highlighted at the Librarians Shout and Share at BEA; I’m anticipating a fresh and absorbing read about someone not that well documented.
Dyson, George. Turing’s Cathedral. Pantheon. Mar. 2012. 512p. ISBN 9780375422775. $29.95; eISBN 9780307907066. SCIENCE
In the 1940s and 1950s, scientists at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, worked to realize Alan Turing’s dream of a universal machine, which led to computers, digital television, modern genetics, and more. Because their work was funded by the government, which therefore expected to benefit from the results, it also led to the creation of the hydrogen bomb. Distinguished science writer Dyson is the son of renowned physicist Freeman Dyson, who worked at the institute in the 1950s, so you can expect an insightful book. With an eight-city tour.
Feingold, Russ. While America Sleeps: A Wake-Up Call for the Post-9/11 Era. Crown. Feb. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780307952523. $26. CURRENT EVENTS
A former senator from Wisconsin following in the footsteps of great Midwest progressives from LaFollette to Humphrey and beyond, Feinfold offers his take on what has gone wrong in the decade after 9/11. In particular, he discusses how our whirlwind response to 9/11 has weakened both constitutional guarantees and national security. Bound to raise both cheers and hackles.
Feldman, Deborah. Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. S. & S. Feb. 2012. 272p. ISBN 9781439187005. $23; eISBN 9781439187029. MEMOIR
It’s hard to imagine life in any strict religious community, and the Satmar Hasidim seem particularly remote from the experiences of many Americans. Raised in a Satmar Hasidim community in Brooklyn, Feldman gives us special insight into a closed and repressive world. Abandoned by her mother and married off at 17 to a man she had known for less than an hour, Feldman started taking classes at Sarah Lawrence College and soon determined that she had to leave the community, together with her young son. At first glance, her memoir is fresh and tart and quite absorbing.
Kandel, Eric R. The Age of Insight: The Quest To Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present. Random. Mar. 2012. 448p. ISBN 9781400068715. $35. PSYCHOLOGY
Kandel won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2000 and a Los Angeles Times Book Award in 2006 for In Search of Memory. All of which suggests that this study of how we came to recognize the unconscious will make great reading. Kandel starts in 1900 Vienna and focuses on five individuals—Sigmund Freud, Arthur Schnitzler, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele—whose work laid the foundations for today’s brain science. Science and art as partners—I love it! For your smart readers.
Kennedy, Paul. Engineers of Victory: The Making of the War Machine That Defeated the Nazis. Random. Mar. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9781400067619. $30; eISBN 9781588368980. HISTORY
Master historian Kennedy dates his coverage of World War II from January 1943, when the Allies convened at the Casablanca Conference to plan their European strategy. But he’s not interested in an overview. Instead, he wants to show us how the Allies actually executed the war, moving men and matériel into place in a demonstration of the organizational prowess that finally facilitated D-Day. This should be unimpeachable reading for those passionate about World War II and military history generally.
Lester, Toby. Da Vinci’s Ghost: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Famous Drawing. Free Pr: S. & S. Feb. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9781439189238. $26.99. ART HISTORY
A contributing editor at the Atlantic and author of Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist The Fourth Part of the World, Lester tells the story behind one of the most revered drawings in art history: Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man>, whose splayed legs and arms seem to encompass our imagination. At the same time, he aims to portray da Vinci’s resounding era, when the world opened up and art, science, and philosophy bloomed together gloriously. Great idea!
Luhrmann, Tanya. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780307264794. $26.95; eISBN 9780307957504. RELIGION
Stanford psychological anthropologist Luhrmann truly throws herself into her studies. To understand the depth of evangelical belief and its consequences for believers, she not only conducted experiments to determine how extended prayer affects the mind but also joined an evangelical congregation. The result is reportedly a fair and balanced study on why people believe and what religion can do. I’d like to push this toward thinking folks.
Negev, Eilat & Yehuda Koren. The First Lady of Fleet Street: The Life of Rachel Beer, Crusading Heiress and Newspaper Pioneer. Bantam. Mar. 2012. 384p.
ISBN 9780553807431. $30; eISBN 9780345532381. BIOGRAPHY
The marriage of Rachel Sassoon and Frederick Beer united two leading Jewish families in Victorian London, but the socially aware Rachel didn’t want to be just a rich matron. So she ended up owning and editing a national newspaper—the first woman to do so, at a time when women did not yet have the vote. The authors specialize in intriguing, little-known lives, e.g., a dwarf family that survived the Holocaust, so Rachel Beer seems right up their alley. I’m intrigued.
Pagels, Elaine. Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation. Viking. Mar. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780670023349. $27.95. RELIGION
Pagels, who changed forever how we look at Christianity with books like The Gnostic Gospels, here rethinks the Book of Revelation, which has always been regarded as a near-fantastic vision of the world’s end. Pagel instead sees it as an attack on Roman decadence at a time when Jews were rebelling against the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. Only later was it repurposed by the emerging Christian sect as a sword thrust to anyone challenging its primacy. Of tremendous interest to educated readers.
Rashid, Ahmed. Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Viking. Mar. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780670023462. $26.95. CURRENT EVENTS
If you follow the Washington Post, the New York Review of Books, NPR, or the BBC World Service, you’ll know Rashid as the far-sighted Pakistani journalist who envisioned the emergence of Pakistan and reemergence of Afghanistan as important factors in the current Middle East equation. Here he considers what withdrawal from Afghanistan will mean for America, particularly as it reconsiders its relationship with Pakistan. Serious reading; with a six-city tour.
Shapiro, Ian. The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis. PublicAffairs: Perseus. Feb. 2012. 448p. ISBN 9781586489366. $29.99. GOVERNMENT
Back in the Sixties and Seventies, the Senate cast aside political divisions and passed transformative civil rights and Great Society legislation while challenging the administration regarding Vietnam and Watergate. Then came the conservative triumph of the 1980s. Having worked for Senators Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd, and Jay Rockefeller, Shapiro has the wherewithal to explain what was so right about the “Last Great Senate”—and what went so wrong. Important.
Shipler, David K. Rights at Risk: The Limits of Our Liberty. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 400p. ISBN 9780307594860. $28.95; eISBN 9780307957627. CURRENT EVENTS
Following hard on the heels of Shipler’s The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties, out in trade paperback in February 2012, this book expands on Shipler’s argument that our civil liberties are under attack. Shipler’s examples include an Iraqi refugee arrested on transparently false charges and an impoverished woman sentenced to life in prison owing to her lawyer’s conflict of interest. Sobering reading for the serious-minded.
Stoessinger, Caroline. Kind of Prayer: A Century of Wisdom from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor. Spiegel & Grau. Mar. 2012. 400p. ISBN 9780812992816. $23; eISBN 9780679644019. CD: Random Audio. BIOGRAPHY/INSPIRATION
As an inmate at the Theresienstadt concentration camp who performed more than 100 concerts for her fellow inmates, pianist Alice Herz-Sommer is now 107—the oldest living Holocaust survivor. Though she lost many family members and friends to the Nazis, she opted to move on. This work by Stoessinger, a pianist and founding director of the Mozart Academy of New York, seems less a biography than an inspirational life-lessons piece (which does leave me unsettled, given the subject). Rights sales to ten countries and Herz-Sommer’s YouTube popularity suggest that this book will be big.
Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 336p. ISBN 9780307592736. $25.95; eISBN 9780307957658. MEMOIR
Another how-I-healed-myself memoir—but consider the source: Strayed is the author of Torch, a lyric yet tough-minded first novel that got some attention, and the story is arresting. Shattered at 26 by her mother’s death and the end of her marriage, she did something way out of the realm of her experience—she took a solo 1100-mile hike. Wish I had her guts.
Tillman, Barrett. Enterprise: America’s Fightingest Ship and the Men Who Helped Win World War II. S. & S. Feb. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9781439190876. $27; eISBN 9781439190890. HISTORY
The most decorated warship of World War II, first to sink a Japanese vessel after Pearl Harbor and ultimately responsible for downing 911 enemy aircraft and 71 ships, “the Big E” gets its own history from Admiral Arthur Radford Award winner Tillman. For all World War II devotees.
Titus, Mark. Don’t Put Me In, Coach: My Incredible Journey from the End of Ohio State’s Bench to the End of Ohio State’s Bench. Doubleday. Mar. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780385535106. $24.95. SPORTS
At Ohio State, Titus played basketball alongside seven future NBA picks and holds the record for career wins. During that time, as you’d know from reading his three million–plus–hit blog Club Trillion, he scored a total of nine points. A paean to the average guy, and Titus has already had media exposure, so expect demand.
Vikmanis, Laura & Amy Sohn. It’s Not About the Pom-Poms: How a 40-Year-Old Mom Became the NFL’s Oldest Cheerleader—and Found Hope, Joy, and Inspiration Along the Way. Ballantine. Mar. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780345532909. $25.
MEMOIR/INSPIRATION
Overweight and separated after a brutal marriage, Vikmanis got in shape by joining a pole-dancing exercise class, where she was encouraged to try out for the Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader squad. At 40, she became the NFL’s oldest cheerleader. Lots of media buzz, and New Line bought the film rights. Okay, not a path open to me, but the idea that one can remake oneself at any age has considerable appeal.
Weber, Doron. Immortal Bird: A Family Memoir. S. & S. Feb. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9781451618068. $25; eISBN 9781451618082. MEMOIR
When Weber’s son Damon was born, his heart lacked a second ventricle. Two open-heart surgeries allowed him to manage a full life that included a love of acting (he appeared in the HBO series Deadwood). Then, at age 13, Damon’s heart rebelled. In language that seems at once vivid, heartfelt, and angry, Weber recounts the medical battle that followed while powerfully conveying his love for his son. This one will disrupt your sleep.
Winterson, Jeannette. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Grove. Mar. 2012. 224p. ISBN 9780802120106. $25. CD: Brilliance Audio. MEMOIR/LITERATURE
Raised by adoptive parents in a grimy north England industrial town, Winterson endured a religious fanatic of a mother with two sets of dentures and a tendency to lock her daughter out of the house at night. When her past caught up with the author, literature saved her—a lesson worth repeating. For anyone who loves Winterson’s scalding fiction and memoir generally; with an eight-city tour.
MY PICKS
Kunzru, Hari. Gods Without Men. Knopf. Mar. 2012. 384p. ISBN 9780307957115. $26.95; eISBN 9780307957498.
LITERARY FICTION
The author of such cogent, sharply observed works as The Impressionist and My Revolutions, Kunzru returns with his first book set entirely in the United States. (British-born Kunzru recently moved from London to New York, where he is a Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.) While New Yorkers Jaz and Lisa Matharu are vacationing in the starkly beautiful Mojave Desert, their autistic son goes missing. As they desperately hunt for him, they discover that the desert is hardly empty; in an isolated town called the Pinnacles, they encounter a host of unusual characters, including a wasted British rock star, a former UFO cultie, and a black marine who has befriended an adolescent Iraqi immigrant serving as a “villager” in a military simulation exercise. Top of the pile for me.
Seung, Sebastian. Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. Houghton Harcourt. Feb. 2012. 368p. ISBN 9780547508184. $27. SCIENCE
Identity. It’s not in our genes, argues hugely upcoming MIT neuroscientist Seung, but in the connections among our brain cells. Seung leads a team that aims to map these connections, neuron by neuron, in an effort to disclose the basis of personality, intelligence, and memory and perhaps also the cause of conditions like schizophrenia. Seung writes for rags like the New York Times and the Economist, so he knows how to craft prose that won’t be daunting to nonscientists. In fact, I’ve checked him out; he’s a lucid communicator whose well-wrought imagery effectively explains complex issues. Important reading, even for science sissies.
