Prepub Alert, May 1, 2011
May 1, 2011PREPUB ALERT NOW ONLINE
Barbara Hoffert’s Prepub Alert is now online (blog.libraryjournal.com/prepubalert). The online edition, which posts every Monday, previews more titles one month earlier than the print edition. Going forward, book reviews that reference Prepub Alert will cite the online edition. Sign up for free weekly alerts to the online edition at bit.ly/g2UqaT.
FICTION
Barry, Sebastian. On Canaan’s Side. Viking. Sept. 2011. 272p. ISBN 9780670022922. $24.95.
Lilly Bere’s complex life spans 20th-century America: owing to IRA death threats, she flees Ireland with her fiancé, he’s killed, she marries and survives the Depression, her husband disappears, she raises a son who’s called up for Vietnam, then he disappears, leaving a young son behind. Summed up that way, this book sounds implausible, but the award-winning Barry (e.g., Costa Book of the Year) has the skill to make it work. With a six-city tour.
Bruen, Ken. Headstone: A Jack Taylor Novel. Mysterious Pr: Grove Atlantic. Oct. 2011. 256p. ISBN 9780802126009. $24.
Mystery champion Otto Penzler recently bought back the Mysterious Press, which he founded in 1975 and then sold; he’s relaunching it with Grove Atlantic. Among the new imprint’s first books is this latest in Irish crime writer Bruen’s Jack Taylor series, which debuted with The Guards, a Shamus winner and Edgar, Macavity, and Barry finalist. Here, Jack is up against a completely amoral bunch called Headstone that’s terrorizing Galway. A brief, hard-bitten extract turned my blood to ice. Definitely buy for your thriller readers.
Child, Lee. The Affair: A Reacher Novel. Delacorte. Oct. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9780385344326. $28; eISBN 9780440339359. CD: Random Audio.
Who was Jack Reacher before he became a vigilante hero? That’s the story Child answers in this 16th Reacher thriller. Having won Anthony, Barry, and Nero awards, sold rights in 50-plus territories, and sold film rights to all the books, Child achieved the pinnacle with two No. 1 New York Times best sellers last year. He’s on top; buy multiples.
Erickson, Carolly. The Favored Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII’s Third Wife. St. Martin’s. Sept. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9780312596903. $25.99.
Having published The Last Wife of Henry VIII (among other works, both fiction and nonfiction, about female royalty), Erickson backtracks to tell the story of Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, who married him somewhat reluctantly days after Anne Boleyn’s unceremonious beheading and died giving birth to the male heir he so wanted. Erickson is loved by the historical fiction set; buy accordingly.
Frazier, Charles. Nightwoods. Random. Oct. 2011. 256p. ISBN 9781400067091. $26.
Here, Frazier is far from the Civil War–era territory of his hugely best-selling debut, Cold Mountain, and his subsequent Thirteen Moons. In late 1950s North Carolina, lonely Luce struggles to care for murdered sister Lily’s inward-turned twins while slowly warming to a man who could help her. Meanwhile, Lily’s husband (and killer) is looking for money he’s sure Lily has hidden. More portrait, less epic, I think; with an eight-city tour.
Grossman, Lev. The Magician King. Viking. Sept. 2011. 448p. ISBN 9780670022311. $26.95. CD: Penguin Audio.
If Time book critic Grossman’s The Magicians was Harry Potter with a darker edge, then this sequel sounds like “The Chronicles of Narnia” way updated. Quentin and his friends now rule as the kings and queens of Fillory, and it’s getting dull. So he and Julia board a magical sailing ship to sojourn to the edge of the kingdom—and end up back at Quentin’s parents’ home in Chesterton, MA. That’s horrifying enough, but they’re suddenly in danger, and Julia’s weird black magic comes in handy. Since The Magicians was a New York Times best seller and New Yorker Best Book of the Year—and a mind-stretchingly fun read—you might want to consider multiples. With a ten-city tour.
Grozni, Nikolai. Wunderkind: A Novel. Free Pr: S. & S. Sept. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9781451616910. $24.
Grozni is certainly qualified to write a novel starring a piano prodigy behind the Iron Curtain before communism falls; he was one. Born in Bulgaria, he started studying classical piano at age four and won his first big prize at nine. Subsequently, he studied jazz at Boston’s famed Berklee College, spent four years in India as a Buddhist monk (which inspired three works in Bulgarian and his English-language memoir, Turtle Feet), got an MFA in creative writing at Brown, and here delivers a roman à clef that I, for one, am wholly intrigued to read.
Guterson, David. Ed King. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 320p. ISBN 9780307271068. $26.95; eISBN 9780307700421.
Milquetoast actuary Walter Cousins sleeps with his underage British au pair; the babe that results is subsequently adopted and grows up to be Edward Aaron King, billionaire Internet tycoon. His life is fated to end in tragedy; this is a modern retelling of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. Snow Falling on Cedars author Guterson is getting really ambitious; with a 75,000-copy first printing and a reading group guide.
Harrison, Jim. The Great Leader. Grove. Oct. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780802119704. $24. CD: Blackstone Audio.
The “great leader,” who has gathered his little tribe in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, seems like just another genial religious nutcase. But then divorced, hard-drinking, and ready-to-retire Detective Sunderson starts tracking his past, and the leader looks like trouble indeed. Expect brilliantly tough-edged writing from the beloved Harrison.
Hollinghurst, Alan. The Stranger’s Child. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 464p. ISBN 9780307272768. $27.95; eISBN 9780307700445. CD: Random Audio.
In 1913, while visiting the family of Cambridge classmate George Sawle, Cecil Vance, heir to Corley Court, pens a poem in the autograph album of George’s worshipful younger sister. After Cecil is killed in World War I, the poem becomes famous nationwide. Decades later, a revisionist biographer comes snooping. I was truly taken by the award-winning Hollinghurst’s quietly elegant The Line of Beauty and am anticipating this next novel—his first in seven years. With a 75,000-copy first printing, a four- or five-city tour, and a reading group guide.
Ice-T & Mal Radcliff. Kings of Vice. Forge: Tor. Sept. 2011. 336p. ISBN 9780765325136. pap. $14.99.
Yes, famed rapper/actor Ice-T has penned a debut novel, and, not surprisingly, it’s a gritty street piece. When former gang leader Marcus “Crush” Casey leaves the pen after 20 years, the New York he rediscovers is verging on collapse. He’s there to help shore it up—but first he must reassemble his gang and get even with the traitor who handed him to the Feds. Note that Ice-T’s wife, model and actress Nicole “Coco” Marrow, has a debut novel of her own coming out from Forge in September (see below). Expect lots of interest.
Liss, David. The Darkening Green. Random. Oct. 2011. 432p. ISBN 9781400068968. $26; eISBN 9781588369628.
Liss got his start as an author of historical thrillers with A Conspiracy of Papers, which won Barry, Macavity, and Edgar best first novel honors. In this Regency-set novel (rather cheeky, that), the well-bred Lucy Derrick is forced to live with her ungracious uncle after her father’s death. She’s saved from marriage to the local miller when an ethereal and clearly ill young man knocks on the door and demands that the marriage not take place. Then he collapses. Some setup; with a six-city tour.
Marrow, Nicole “Coco” & Laura Hayden. Angel. Forge: Tor. Sept. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9780765330239. pap. $14.99.
This debut by actress/model Coco, wife of Ice-T (see above), starts out on a plane that’s about to crash into the Hudson. (There’s realism for you.) A woman on board is told that, given the passenger list, she must be Angela Sands—but she has no recollection of who she is and is convinced that she was murdered and has somehow leapt into the body of a stranger. Whoa, let’s see where Coco goes with this.
Meyer, Deon. Trackers. Atlantic Monthly. Sept. 2011. 400p. ISBN 9780802119933. $24.
Three people collide in this latest from South African crime-writing phenomenon Meyer: a freelance bodyguard who agrees to smuggle two precious black rhinos out of Zimbabwe, a woman who’s left her nasty husband and nastier son and supports herself by writing intelligence reports, and a former detective handling his first case as a private investigator. No doubt the collision will be explosive. With a four-city tour.
Murakami, Haruki. 1Q84. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 928p. ISBN 9780307593313. $30; eISBN 9780307957023.
Masterly Japanese novelist Murakami returns with what seems rightly billed as his magnum opus, published in Japan in three volumes in 2009–10. The title plays with the Japanese pronunciation of 1984, and indeed this is Murakami’s homage to George Orwell’s great novel. The lead characters include a young woman assassin and an unpublished novelist charged with punching up a manuscript that a reticent and possibly dyslexic teenager appears to have submitted to a literary contest. Another mind-blowing Mura- kami puzzle box that’s essential for high-end readers; with a 100,000-copy first printing and a reading group guide.
Prcic, Ismet. Shards. Black Cat: Grove Atlantic. Oct. 2011. 400p. ISBN 9780802170811. pap. $14.95.
Safe in California, a young man curiously named Ismet Prcic, who’s fled Balkan violence, tries to bridge past and present by writing out memories (real and imagined) of his homeland. His story is soon infiltrated by that of another young man, Mustafa (real? imagined?), who stayed home to fight. Born in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Prcic came here as a young man in 1996; he recently won a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Fiction; his first novel seems bold, imaginative, and wrenchingly germane. Watch this one; with a four-city tour.
Sís, Peter. The Conference of the Birds. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Oct. 2011. 160p. ISBN 9781594203060. $27.95.
A MacArthur Fellow and Caldecott Honor–winning children’s book author and illustrator, Brno-born Sís can create breathtaking images. Here he offers his first book for adults, which illustrates a key Sufi poem. Led by a hoopoe, a band of birds flies through the valleys of quest, love, understanding, friendship, unity, amazement, and death in search of the true king, Simorgh. What they find is even more remarkable. Not just a gift book; with a national tour.
Tuck, Lily. I Married You for Happiness. Atlantic Monthly. Sept. 2011. 208p. ISBN 9780802119919. $24.
As this novel opens, a woman sits holding the hand of her husband, who has died unexpectedly. She reflects on their tender and tumultuous life together, starting with their meeting in Paris as artist and mathematician; they are united in love though they are from such different worlds. Expect the author of the National Book Award winner The News from Paraguay to turn in something burnished and sophisticated.
NONFICTION
Bastianich, Lidia Matticchio & Tanya Bastianich Manuali. Lidia’s Italy in America. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 432p. ISBN 9780307595676. $35; eISBN 9780307700612.
Five of restaurateur Bastianich’s first six cookbooks were companions to nationally syndicated public television series, and her next follows suit (look for the series in fall 2011). Here, she joins with her daughter to explore Italian American cuisine. Muffaletta sandwiches from New Orleans? New York’s Neapolitan pizza crust? Will sell lots; with a 150,000-copy first printing.
Bergreen, Laurence. Columbus: The Four Voyages. Viking. Sept. 2011. 544p. ISBN 9780670023011. $35. CD: Penguin Audio.
After encountering the Americas in 1492, Columbus made three more voyages, aimed at showing that he could whip together a crew bound for China and get the heathens there converted. Those voyages failed in many ways but demonstrated that Columbus was a skilled, gutsy sailor. Having assayed other bold explorers (Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe has sold 200,000 copies), Bergreen seems like the right man to bring us up to speed on Columbus. Officially publishing on Columbus Day, though it’s on sale beforehand, this seems like good, serious reading. With a six-city tour.
Blanford, Nicholas. Warriors of God. Random. Oct. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9781400068364. $26; eISBN 9780679605164.
The Beirut correspondent of the London Times and Christian Science Monitor, Blanford has been called the leading expert on Hezbollah—by 60 Minutes, no less, so I guess I have to believe it. Expect an eye-popping account; Blanford had access to the militant Shia organization’s insiders.
Bowden, Mark. Worm: The Story of the First Digital World War. Atlantic Monthly. Sept. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780802119834. $24.
Not those squishy things but something much more revolting: the Conficker computer worm first noticed in November 2008 that goes after the Microsoft Windows operating system. It’s now said to control millions of government, business, and home computers worldwide. Bowden (Black Hawk Down) helps us worry about the consequences.
Brenner, Joel. America the Vulnerable: New Technology and the Next Threat to National Security. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Oct. 2011. 352p. ISBN 9781594203138. $27.95. CD: Penguin Audio.
The Chinese steal a radar system from the U.S. Navy. Corporations yearly lose an average of $5 million worth of intellectual property each to cybertheft. Brenner, a former senior counsel at the National Security Agency, argues that we have done nowhere near enough to protect our government, our industries, and ourselves from the security risks posed by the Internet. Scary; hope folks pay attention.
Casey, Nell, ed. The Journals of Spalding Gray. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780307273451. $28.95; eISBN ISBN 9780307700520.
Gray originated the autobiographical monolog, but these journals are evidently even more revealing, covering his childhood, love affairs, marriage, children, and travels, as well as his experiences as a significant part of the 1970s New York art scene and struggle with depression. Award-winning editor Casey (An Uncertain Inheritance) rifled through 5000 pages of text and further interviewed Gray’s associates to offer this document seven years after Gray took his own life. With a 35,000-copy first printing.
Curtis, James. Spencer Tracy: A Biography. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 1056p. ISBN 9780307262899. $39.95; eISBN 9780307595225.
Having profiled W.C. Fields and Preston Sturges, Curtis here turns to quintessential actor Spencer Tracy. From Tracy’s 73 films to his Catholic faith, battles with alcohol, and longtime affair with Katharine Hepburn, it’s all here—or had better be, given the astonishing 1000-plus pages. Tracy’s daughter gave Curtis unparalleled access to the actor’s journals and papers. For all film nuts; with a 60,000-copy first printing.
Davis, Wade. Into the Silence. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 672p. ISBN 9780375408892. $35; eISBN 9780307700568. CD: Random Audio. A celebrated anthropologist who’s currently National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Davis details Great Britain’s protracted efforts to scale Mount Everest, which he traces back to 19th-century imperial ambitions and the huge sense of loss following World War I. Everest always fascinates, and this is about more than climbing; with a 75,000-copy first printing and a six-city tour.
Dorfman, Ariel. Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile. Houghton Harcourt. Sept. 2011. 368p. ISBN 9780547549460. $27.
Novelist, poet, essayist, playwright, and filmmaker, Dorfman fled Chile after the coup that put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power. His works, as exemplified by the play Death and the Maiden, which concerned an encounter between a torture victim and the man she believes tortured her and was made into a film directed by Roman Polanski, always carry a political edge. This memoir recalls what exile has been like for Dorfman and his family, as they ran from Santiago to Buenos Aires, Paris, Amsterdam, and, finally, America, where Dorfman grew up. And it revisits the moment when Dorfman could return to Chile. Likely a forthright and affecting book.
Glenny, Misha. DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780307592934. $26.95; eISBN ISBN 9780307700551.
A former BBC Central Europe correspondent whose many books include Overseas Press Club Award winner The Fall of Yugoslavia, Glenny explores the escalating phenomenon of cybercrime. He spoke not only to police, lawyers, and victims but to the hackers themselves and, refreshingly, offers some solutions. Read with Joel Brenner’s America the Vulnerable, previewed above; with a 60,000-copy first printing and five-city tour.
Inskeep, Steve. Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Oct. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9781594203152. $27.95.
Megacities keep mushrooming up in our overcrowded world, and Inskeep, the cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition, uses Karachi, Pakistan, as an example. In 1941, it was a sleepy port town of 350,000; now it’s home to more than 13 million, often violently divided over religion, ethnicity, and politics yet noted for innovative projects aimed at helping the poor help themselves. So much literature on the Middle East, but this goes behind the headlines and has that NPR advantage. With a national tour.
Katz, Jon. Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die. Villard. Oct. 2011. 176p. ISBN 9780345502698. $22; eISBN 9780345529282.
Katz has written seven novels and 12 works of nonfiction focused mostly on the lives of animals, particularly those on Bedlam Farm, where he lives in upstate New York. Now he offers a book on coping with a pet’s dying. For the country’s 77.5 million dog owners and 93.6 million cat owners, this account of the essential grieving process should be extremely helpful. With a five-city tour and outreach to libraries.
Marlantes, Karl. What It Is Like To Go to War. Atlantic Monthly. Sept. 2011. 448p. ISBN 9780802119926. $25.95.
Author of Matterhorn, a first novel about Vietnam that was one of last year’s successes, Marlantes now offers a nonfiction account of being a 22- year-old second lieutenant trying to survive fighting in Vietnam and later trying to reconcile himself to having had to kill the enemy and watch comrades die. He argues that today’s young soldiers are not emotionally prepared for war, as they once were through ritual, religion, and literature. If you care about the cost of war; with a 14-city tour.
Naifeh, Steven & Gregory White Smith. Van Gogh: The Life. Random. Oct. 2011. 800p. ISBN 9780375507489. $40.
It’s nice that this book was written with the cooperation of the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and that the BBC has signed on to do a series on the book’s making. It’s even more intriguing that revelations about Van Gogh’s life and death are promised, as are a 32-page color insert and 100 black-and-white illustrations. But what really sells me on this book is that Naifeh (responsible for numerous titles with coauthor and fellow Harvard Law grad Smith) wrote the Pulitzer Prize–winning Jackson Pollock. Expect the energy of The Starry Night; with a seven-city tour.
Reiss, Diana. The Dolphin in the Mirror: Exploring Dolphin Minds and Saving Dolphin Lives. Houghton Harcourt. Sept. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9780547445724. $27.
Reiss is a leading dolphin expert and advocate for improved treatment of creatures she sees as among the smartest on the planet. (They even play underwater keyboards for her.) Since she is professor of psychology at Hunter College, director of Dolphin Research at the National Aquarium, adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia, and a member of the Animal Welfare Committee of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, she can deliver the science as well as the sense of emotional connection. A smart and humane book, and who doesn’t love dolphins?
Rodgers, Nile. Le Freak: The Life and Times of Nile Rodgers. Spiegel & Grau. Oct. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780385529655. $26; eISBN 9780679644033.
A musician, composer, arranger, and producer, Rodgers has sold millions of albums and hung out with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Madonna, Michael Jackson, the B52s, and Laurie Anderson. So this memoir promises to be good and juicy. A real insider’s account from the guy responsible for “Like a Virgin”; buy wherever pop music books move.
Tomalin, Claire. Charles Dickens. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Oct. 2011. 496p. ISBN 9781594203091. $35.
Tomalin having won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Hawthornden Prize, and the Whitbread Biography Award, among others, I don’t think we’ll have much quarrel with her life of Charles Dickens. Tomalin aims to show us that the perspicacious creator of Tiny Tim was a genius, yes, but also a stormy type whose obsessions drove him from family and friends. Essential if you’ve got literary readers.
Weir, Alison. Mary Boleyn. Ballantine. Oct. 2011. 432p. ISBN 9780345521330. $28; eISBN 9780345521354.
She was the “other Boleyn girl,” as Philippa Gregory styled her, and the lover of both Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. The author of serious nonfiction (The Lady in the Tower) and juicy fiction (Innocent Traitor) about Tudor England, Weir has a good chance of bringing Mary alive. With a tour by request and decent if not overwhelming promotion.
MY PICKS
Ondaatje, Michael. The Cat’s Table. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 256p. ISBN 9780307700117. $26; eISBN 9780307700452. CD: Random Audio. FICTION
One of the first books I reviewed at LJ was Ondaatje’s In the
Skin of a Lion, and I have loved him for his luscious language and penetrating insights ever since. So I’m thrilled he has a new novel forthcoming. His hero, an 11-year`-old bound for England aboard a ship chugging through the Indian Ocean, finds himself seated during dinner at the unpropitious “cat’s table.” His tablemates include two other boys, with whom he has some wild adventures, and some outré adults who talk to him of literature, jazz, and women. More than shipboard entertainment, this novel promises to plumb our first painful steps toward growing up. With an 11-city tour, a 100,000-copy first printing, and a reading group guide.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Jerusalem: The Biography. Knopf. Oct. 2011. 672p. ISBN 9780307266514. $35; eISBN 9780307594488. CD: Random Audio. NONFICTION
There at the creation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Jerusalem—now more than ever—is central to the history of the world. Montefiore tell the city’s story by recounting the lives of individuals who have shaped it—a smart approach from someone whose Young Stalin won a passel of biography awards (e.g., Los Angeles Times Book Prize). Montefiore ranges from King David, Jesus, and Muhammad, to Cleopatra and King Hussein, to Sir Moses Montefiore, his ancestor, who in the 1860s helped found the first new Jewish settlements in Palestine, just outside Jerusalem’s city wall. An important topic, and Montefiore is a felicitous writer. With a four-city tour; a 60,000-copy first printing.
