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FICTION

Literary Fiction Stars

Bennett, Claire-Louise. Checkout 19. Riverhead. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593420492. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

Having wowed astute readers with her debut, the Dylan Thomas Prize short-listed Pond, Bennett returns with the story of a young woman from a working-class town near London who discovers the glories of writing as a schoolgirl. As she grows older, she is befriended by a Russian man who gives her a copy of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, fueling a reading habit, and even after a terrible betrayal she keeps loving the characters she creates.

Bulawayo, NoViolet. Glory. Viking. Mar. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780525561132. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. LITERARY

The long wait is over after the 2013 publication of the multi-award-winning, Man Booker Prize finalist We Need New Names, which led to Bulawayo’s being given National Book Award 5 Under 35 honors. In her new book, Old Horse, the oppressive leader of the fictional country of Jidada, finally plummets from grace, and the country’s animal kingdom seeks liberation in a story that aims to show us that power can be crushed as long as those who counter it remain smart, imaginative, and relentlessly optimistic. Meanwhile, Destiny returns from exile to bear witness to the country’s makeover and to record the role women have long played in Jidada’s survival.

Ditlevsen, Tove. The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories. Farrar. Mar. 2022. 224p. tr. from Danish by Michael Favala Goldman. ISBN 9780374605605. $26. LITERARY

Danish author Ditlevsen died a suicide in 1976 after the tumultuous life she illuminated in The Copenhagen Trilogy, a tripartite memoir that has recently caught fire in the Anglophone world as an important work of literature; comparisons have been made to Elena Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Quartet.” Never before translated into English, this story collection often embodies quiet but awful meanness: a husband chases away his wife’s beloved cat, and a woman angry with her own circumstances dumps a beloved housekeeper. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

Griffin, Anne. Listening Still. St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250200617. $27.99. CD. LITERARY

Jeanie Masterson can hear the dead, an inherited gift that has helped her undertaker family thrive in their small Irish town. It’s not easy—sometimes, she carefully doesn’t share what the dead have said—and after leaving school nearly two decades ago to join the business and settle into mindless marriage, she has a chance to follow another path. Following Griffin’s debut, When All Is Said, a No. 1 Irish Times best-seller. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Handke, Peter. The Fruit Thief: Or, One-Way Journey into the Interior. Farrar. Mar. 2022. 336p. tr. from German by Krishna Winston. ISBN 9780374906504. $28. LITERARY

Stung by a bee, Handke’s protagonist decides to change his life. He crosses Paris in search of a young woman called the Fruit Thief, who is also interested in traveling to an area in northwestern France called the Vexin Plain. The simple act of traveling to and finally through the plain’s special topography captures more interior and personal travels in this latest from Nobel laureate Handke. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Hubbard, Ladee. The Last Suspicious Holdout: Stories. Amistad: HarperCollins. Mar. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9780062979094. $24.99. LITERARY

Bearing Ernest J. Gaines and Hurston/Wright Legacy honors forThe Talented Ribkins and an LJ-starred review for The Rib King, Hubbard now offers a collection of stories set in a Black neighborhood in the South and dating from the Clinton to the Obama administrations. Involved fathers, grandmothers and granddaughters, cousins and uncles—all represent the close family bonds depicted here. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Kauffman, Rebecca. Chorus. Counterpoint. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781640095182. $26. LITERARY

Readers like me who have admired Kauffman since the publication of Another Place You’ve Never Been, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, will be happy to see her return with this packed family tale. Set in the first half of the 20th century, it features the Shaw siblings and how they grew, each offering a distinctive version of their mother’s death and one sister’s scandalous pregnancy yet bonding as they take on new and different roles and caretake their aging father.

Meginnis, Mike. Drowning Practice. Ecco. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780063076143. $27.99. LITERARY

Meginnis has a wild if intimately involving imagination—his debut, Fat Man and Little Boy, offered a surreal slant on the terrible atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II by reconceiving the bombs as human and in fact brothers—and he’s at it again. His second novel posits that one night everyone on Earth has the same dream of being escorted to death by a loved one on November 1, spurring the conviction that the world will end after Halloween. Lyd and her daughter, Mott, join a troupe of travelers aiming to live fully until the end, regardless of the uncertainty, though Mott’s estranged father has a different idea of what they should be doing. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Mohamed, Nadifa. The Fortune Men. Knopf. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593534366. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

A Granta Best of Young British Novelists, Mohamed ( Black Mamba Boy) draws on real-life events in this story of young Somali sailor Mahmood Matton, the last individual to be sentenced to death in Cardiff, Wales. In 1952, Mahmood was falsely accused of killing a shopkeeper in Tiger Bay but steadfastly believed that justice would prevail. He didn’t count on how racism and a corrupt legal system would combine to defeat him.

O’Nan, Stewart. Ocean State. Grove. Mar. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780802159274. $27. LITERARY

A young woman is murdered in 2009 working-class Rhode Island, and events unfold from the perspectives of characters: Angel, the murderer; Birdy, her victim; Carol, Angel’s mother; and Marie, Angel’s younger sister, who looks back on a tragedy spurred by Angel’s and Birdy’s love for the same teenage boy. From O’Nan, author of the nationally best-selling Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist Last Night at the Lobster.

Osunde, Eloghosa. Vagabonds. Riverhead. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593330029. $28. Downloadable. LITERARY

Vagabonds: in Lagos, Nigeria, says first-timer Osunde, they’re the poor, the queer, the displaced, the renegades, here including a driver for a politician who holds scary power over others, a lesbian couple tenderly in love and into their BDSM work, and a woman seeking escape from her violent husband. A Plimpton Prize winner and Lambda Literary Fellow, among other honors, Osunde introduces us to this diverse list of characters by escorting us through the city’s markets, churches, underground clubs, and hotels, showing us lives lived as resistance. This debut looks to be big.

Shepherd, Peng. The Cartographers. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780062910691. $27.99. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Following her eerie and suspenseful debut, The Book of M, Shepherd returns with another literary mind twister. Nell Young’s great, fiery passion is cartography, so she is devastated when her father, a legendary cartographer, fires her and seeks to undermine her reputation—all because of an argument over a much-folded, much-faded gas station highway map. When he’s found dead in his office—at the New York Public Library, no less—she discovers the map in a desk drawer and sets out to uncover the secrets surrounding this particular artifact and her own family. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Straight, Susan. Mecca. Farrar. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780374604516. $28. LITERARY

Descended from both the Indigenous people and the Spanish colonizers of California, Johnny Frias feels completely at home in its small town, canyons, and byways, and his story as unwound here by the sharp-minded, lush-voiced, multi-award-winning Straight creates a portrait of the state itself. Johnny works for the California Highway Patrol, ticketing speeders whose racist insults he brushes aside and trying to forget an incident from his rookie year. At the time, he killed a man who was assaulting a young woman, and two decades hence the consequences of his actions are exploding. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

 

Literary Fiction Debuts

Ali, Kasim. Good Intentions. Holt. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250809605. $26.99. LITERARY

Banwo, Ayanna Lloyd. When We Were Birds. Doubleday. Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780385547260. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. LITERARY

Chou, Elaine Hsieh. Disorientation. Penguin Pr. Mar. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780593298350. $28. Downloadable. LITERARY

Clark, Andrea Yaryura. On a Night of a Thousand Stars. Grand Central. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781538720295. $28. CD. LITERARY

Friedman, Olivia Clare. Here Lies. Grove. Mar. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9780802129390. $27. LITERARY

Kravetz, Lee. The Last Confessions of Sylvia P. Harper. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780063139992. $25.99. lrg. prnt. LITERARY

Nawaz, Zarqa. Jameela Green Ruins Everything. Mariner: Houghton Harcourt. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780358621232. $26. LITERARY

Ronan, Kelsey. Chevy in the Hole. Holt. Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250803900. $26.99. LITERARY

Stringfellow, Tara M. Memphis. Dial. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780593230480. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. LITERARY

Following some attention-getting short stories, Ali’s Good Intentions features a young British Pakistani man named Nur who must break it to his family on New Year’s Eve that the woman he truly loves isn’t Pakistani but Black (60,000-copy first printing). Set in Trinidad and Tobago, Banwo’s When We Were Birds brings together Yejide, raised in a Port Angeles house built on the remains of a plantation whose owners enslaved her ancestors and left unprepared by her mother for her task in life—ferrying the city’s souls into the afterlife—and Darwin, who must disregard the religious commandments of his true-believing Rastafarian mother and accept the only job he can find: that of grave digger. Stuck on her dissertation about the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou, Taiwanese American Ingrid Yang follows down a mysterious archival reference in Chou’s Disorientation and ends up acknowledging her anger with academia and white institutions generally. Following up Clark’s own questions about the children of victims of Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s, On a Night of a Thousand Stars features Paloma, an Argentine diplomat’s college-age daughter, whose probing questions about her father’s involvement in the military dictatorship put her family, her sense of self, and her very life in danger (30,000-copy first printing). In Friedman’s Here Lies, climate change–mauled 2040s Louisiana requires cremation rather than burial at death, and Alma fights to reclaim her mother’s ashes for a final journey. Cofounder of the Lit Camp Writers Conference, Kravetz reimagines events surrounding the composition of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar in The Last Confessions of Sylvia P., which are related from the perspectives of Plath’s psychiatrist, a nasty rival poet, and a curator years later (100,000-copy first printing). A Canadian film and television producer (she’s responsible for the hit CBC series Little Mosque on the Prairie), Nawaz crafts the story of a feckless young woman whose new imam expects better of her, and though there’s the risk that Jameela Green Ruins Everything, she is on the case in an absurdist sort of way when he disappears. In Ronan’s Chevy’s in the Hole, a white man struggling to kick his drug habit and a Black woman working as an urban farmer try to make a go of it together in Flint, MI, as the water is becoming poisoned, with family histories woven in (50,000-copy first printing). In Stringfellow’s Memphis, ten-year-old Joan flees her father’s violence with her mother and sister to the house built in the historic Black district of Memphis by her grandfather, who was lynched only days after becoming the city’s first Black detective.

 

Veteran Chills: Mystery

Black, Cara. Murder at the Porte de Versailles. Soho Crime. (Aimée Leduc Investigation, Bk. 20). Mar. 2022. 360p. ISBN 9781641290432. $27.95. MYSTERY

One-of-a-kind Parisian investigator Aimée Leduc returns, and, as always, New York Times best-selling author Black invests the task at hand with political/historical urgency. Paris is already on edge post–9/11 when a bomb explodes at the police laboratory, leaving Boris Viard—the partner of Aimée's friend Michou—unconscious amid the rubble. Boris’s fingerprints are found on the remaining bomb shards, but Aimée is convinced of his innocence, and soon the French Secret Service hires her to follow up a lead regarding an Iranian Revolutionary Guard and fugitive 1980s radicals.

Bowen, Rhys & Clare Broyles. Wild Irish Rose. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Molly Murphy Mystery, Bk. 18). Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250808059. $26.99. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

Anthony and Agatha honoree Bowen joins forces with her musician/teacher daughter on the next Molly Murphy mystery, which finds our protagonist home in 1907 New York and no longer in the detective game. But her skills are still required when she goes to Ellis Island with friends to help distribute clothing to those in need; later, her policeman husband reports that a murder on the island seems to have been committed by someone looking exactly like Molly. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Brown, Rita Mae. Thrill of the Hunt. Ballantine. (“Sister” Jane, Bk. 14). Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593357606. $28. MYSTERY/COZY

No word on the plot of this next “Sister” Jane novel from the New York Times best-selling Brown, but it’s no mystery that horses and hounds will be on the hunt, splashing all over Brown’s popular Crozet, VA, setting.

Deveraux, Jude. A Relative Murder. Mira: Harlequin. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780778311836. $27.99. MYSTERY

After the events featured in A Forgotten Murder, mystery writer Sarah Medlar has returned from the UK with her niece Kate and their good buddy Jack to face new challenges. A stranger’s corpse is found on a friend’s property, and Sarah must confess to Kate that her father is not dead but has been in prison for years and is about to be released. Romance queen Deveraux’s newish murder mystery series has drawn praise, so let’s see how this fourth book pans out. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Evanovich, Janet. The Recovery Agent. Atria. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781982154912. $28.99. MYSTERY

Initially seen in 2020’s Fortune and Glory, another Stephanie Plum escapade, Gabriella Rose gets to do her own thing in the first new series Evanovich has launched on her own in a while. Stephanie’s adversary in the last book, Gabriella is a designer-clad supercook and recovery agent from Miami's Little Havana, and she’s starting out big; there’s a 500,000-copy first printing. Originally scheduled for June 2021.

James, Miranda. Hiss Me Deadly. Berkley. (Cat in the Stacks Mystery, Bk. 15). Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593199497. $26. MYSTERY/COZY

A troubled soul in high school who dropped out to become a major music star, Wilfred “Wil” Threadgill has returned to town to work with students in the college music department. His band is there, too, and he’s getting threats that lead to a band member’s death, which sets librarian Charlie Harris into action; friend Melba still harbors feelings for Wil, and he worries that she is in danger. Of course, bewhiskered kitty Diesel will help investigate. Next in a New York Times best-selling cozy series.

Leon, Donna. Give Unto Others. Atlantic Monthly. Mar. 2022. NAp. ISBN 9780802159403. $27. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

Celebrated Commissario Guido Brunetti is conducting a private investigation in this latest from celebrated mystery writer Leon. The daughter of one of his mother’s close friends needs help; her son-in-law has confided that his family might be in danger because of his business, which seems to involve uncontroversial clients like an optician to a restaurateur. Then a scary act of vandalism prompts Brunetti’s colleagues to join in the investigation.

Margolin, Phillip. The Darkest Place. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Robin Lockwood, Bk. 5). Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250258441. $27.99. CD. MYSTERY

Attorney Robin Lockwood is left completely undone by a difficult case she’s taken on as a favor to a judge, so she leaves Portland, OR, for her small hometown of Elk Grove to recover. But there’s no rest for the weary; she’s soon drawn into a case involving a surrogate, now living under a false identity, who is accused of spiriting away the baby she carried for a couple and of assaulting them. From New York Times best-selling Margolin.

Rosenfelt, David. Citizen K-9. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (K Team, Bk. 3). Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250828934. $27.99. CD. MYSTERY/PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

Hounds, humor, and homicide: sounds like another mystery from the best-selling Rosenfelt. K Team members Corey Douglas and Laurie Collins get help from German shepherd Simon Garfunkel when the Paterson Police Department forms a cold case division and hires them to investigate a case that hits home. Two of Laurie’s friends vanished mysteriously at the time of Laurie’s tenth high school reunion, and it’s time to find out what happened. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Walker, Martin. Bruno’s Challenge: And Other Stories of the French Countryside. Knopf. Mar. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780593534229. $27. MYSTERY/SHORT STORIES

A man breaks parole to see his son for the holidays. Small-town merchants challenge a Senegalese competitor whose coffee outstrips theirs at the market. The local tour bus business is sabotaged, local families are incensed about a romance that began over the fruit-and-veggie stall, and stolen oysters could lead to renewed romance. It’s all in a day’s work for Bruno, chief of police in the Dordogne village of St. Denis. A first collection from the popular Walker.

Winspear, Jacqueline. A Sunlit Weapon. Harper. (Maisie Dobbs, Bk. 17). Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780063142268. $27.99. lrg. prnt. CD. MYSTERY

In September 1942, British ferry pilot Jo Hardy is delivering a Spitfire to Biggin Hill Aerodrome when gunfire whistles her way. She later learns that another ferry pilot has also died flying the same route, and her fiancé was killed in the area a year previously. When she discovers coded material in a nearby barn, she heads straight to Maisie Dobbs, who faces a hard truth: these events may have compromised First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s upcoming diplomatic mission to the U K. With a 100,000 copy first printing.

 

Rising-Star Authors: Mystery

Bennett, SJ. All the Queen’s Men. Morrow. (Her Majesty the Queen, Bk. 2). Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780063051140. $27.99. lrg. prnt. MYSTERY

Following The Windsor Knot, YA author Bennett’s triumphant first foray into adult mystery, Elizabeth II returns to sleuth again with the help of Assistant Private Secretary Rozie Oshodi. As the queen worries about a missing painting, Rozie does not immediately share news of the troublesome letters received by some of the staff. Then a staffer winds up dead in the pool house at Buckingham Palace, and it’s time to act. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Cranor, Eli. Don’t Know Tough. Soho Crime. Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781641293457. $24.95. MYSTERY/SPORTS

After pulling up his California roots to become head coach of a high school football team in Arkansas, Trent Powers invites star running back Billy Lowe to live with him and his family. Billy is wound knot-tight and is sometimes explosively angry with teammates owing to dread of his unsteady mother’s violent boyfriend. Then the man is murdered, and the town shatters into violence of its own. Winner of the Peter Lovesey First Crime Novel Contest.

Garrett, Kellye. Like a Sister. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780316256704. $28. Downloadable. MYSTERY

When the body of Black reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found in a Bronx playground, the police quickly surmise death by overdose. But estranged half-sister Lena will have none of it; despite Desiree’s hard partying, she would never have sojourned above 125th Street in Manhattan, far south of the Bronx. Now Lena is hunting for the ugly truth. From Agatha/Anthony award winner Garrett, cofounder with Walter Mosley of Crime Writers of Color; a 35,000-copy first printing.

Luna, Louisa. Hideout. Doubleday. (Alice Vega, Bk. 3). Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780385545532. $27. Downloadable. MYSTERY

After two well-received outings (e.g., The Janes), Alice Vega returns to demonstrate her talent for uncovering seemingly unrecoverable truths. This time she’s seeking Zeb Williams, who vanished three decades ago after running out with the ball during a tied college football game. Alice traces him to southern Oregon, where a white-supremacist hate group called the Liberty Boys is menacing the community. Alice must take them on even as she deals with troubled partner Max Caplan at home.

McTiernan, Dervla. The Murder Rule. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780063042209. $27.99. lrg. prnt. MYSTERY

The winner of Ned Kelly, Barry, and International Thriller Writers honors, McTiernan again stirs up tension with the story of a young lawyer who appears to be urgently challenging a corrupt system to save an innocent man from death row. But she’s got other designs, tied to her outing a secret her mother has been hiding. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Montgomery, Jess. The Echoes. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Kinship, Bk. 4). Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250623423. $27.99. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

In 1928 Kinship, OH, Sheriff Lily Ross faces an abundance of trouble. Just as an amusement park created by county commissioner Chalmer Fitzpatrick prepares to open, a young woman’s drowning death on his property reveals secrets dating back for generations. Then there’s the baby left on his doorstep. Meanwhile, the daughter Lily’s brother fathered with a Frenchwoman before his death is expected to arrive any moment, but it seems she may have been kidnapped. Fourth in Montgomery’s popular series; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Pandian, Gigi. Under Lock & Skeleton Key. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Secret Staircase Mystery. Bk. 1). Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250804983. $26.99. MYSTERY

In this series launch from the multi-award-winning Pandian, actress Tempest Raj recovers from a terrible accident by returning to her childhood home in California, where she ends up working for her father’s construction company. The company reinvents family homes by installing such amenities as secret staircases and hidden nooks, and one project delivers an unexpected surprise: the dead body of Tempest’s former double, encased within a supposedly long-sealed wall. Was Tempest the intended victim? And is the Raj family curse for real? With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Segura, Alex. Secret Identity. Flatiron: Macmillan. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9781250801746. $27.99. MYSTERY

Segura, who writes the “Pete Fernandez Mystery” series and has penned comic books as well, combines his passions in a story featuring aspiring comics writer Carmen Valdez. It’s 1975, the comic book industry is slumping, and Carmen treasures her job at Triumph Comics, where a colleague asks her to help him create the first female superhero. Then he’s found dead, having turned in the scripts they worked on together without crediting her, and a stubborn cop starts making connections. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

 

Spotlight: Anne Tyler’s French Braid

Tyler, Anne. French Braid. Knopf. Mar. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780593321096. $27. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. LITERARY

Author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Breathing Lessons and the recent Man Booker Prize finalist Redhead by the Side of the Road, Tyler has always had a way with families. Her protagonists here are the Garretts, who don’t necessarily seem that close. Mercy is more invested in creating artwork than tending to husband Robin or their three children—dependable Alice, wild-eyed Lily, and the youngest, David, who appears more than a little eager to forge his own way far from the homestead. In fact, the Garretts have only taken one vacation together, way back in 1959. Yet they clearly influence one another powerfully over the decades depicted here.

 

Domestic Spills, Espionage Chills: Thrillers 

Box, C.J. Shadows Reel. Putnam. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593331262. $28. lrg. prnt. THRILLER

A moose-poaching incident investigated by Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett turns out to be ugly—a local game warden has been tortured to death—just as a bland, unmarked package delivered to the library proves traumatic. When it’s opened by Joe’s wife, Marybeth, it contains the devastatingly awful photo album of a Nazi official. Where did it come from, and what does it mean for the entire Pickett family as Thanksgiving approaches?

Brown, Graham. Untitled. Putnam. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593419670. $29. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. ACTION & ADVENTURE

Launched in 1999 as Cussler’s first series not featuring Dirk Pitt, “NUMA Files” titles have proved to be perennial New York Times best sellers; the most recent title, Journey of the Pharaohs, debuted in the third spot on the paper’s best sellers list. No plot details on this latest in the series, continued by longtime Cussler coauthor Brown after Cussler’s 2020 death.

Coben, Harlan. The Match. Grand Central. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781538748282. $29. THRILLER/DOMESTIC

Wilde, the child rescued from the wilderness and grown to manhood in 2020’s No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Boy from the Woods, returns to follow clues to who his parents were and why they abandoned him. Complicating matters, these clues are linked to a present-day disappearance that has been presumed suicide—but who knows? With escalating sales and an exclusive multiyear deal with Netflix to develop published and future projects, Coben is booming bigger than ever.

Finlay, Alex. The Night Shift. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9781250268884. $27.99. THRILLER

Having scored lots of attention (and LibraryReads credentials) when he debuted with Every Last Fear, Finlay returns with the tale of two nights in Linden, NJ. On New Year’s Eve in 1999, three teenage girls working at a Blockbuster Video were left dead in an attack, with a fourth just managing to survive. Flash forward 15 years, and four girls are attacked one night at the local ice cream parlor. Again, only one girl survives, and FBI agent Sarah Keller, who investigated the first event, is hauntingly tasked with investigating the second. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Hendricks, Greer & Sarah Pekkanen. The Golden Couple. St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250273208. $28.99. CD. THRILLER/DOMESTIC

Never mind that Avery Chambers’s approach to therapy is so controversial that she’s lost her license. Marissa Bishop willingly signs up herself and her husband because Avery says she’ll take on only clients whose problems she can mend in ten sessions. Marissa intends to confess her infidelity, but far more dangerous secrets sneak into the room when the “golden” Bishops join their new therapist to talk. With a 350,000-copy first printing.

Macmillan, Gilly. The Long Weekend. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780063074323. $27.99. lrg. prnt. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

Tough former soldier Jayne, diffident newlywed Emily, and Ruth, ambitious doctor and overwhelmed new mom, travel together for some down time at Dark Fell Barn in a remote corner of the British Isles, regretting only that recently widowed friend Edie can’t join them. When they arrive, they find a note saying that one of their husbands will be murdered, and without phone or cell service they don’t know what to do. Echoes of the Academy Award–winning film A Letter to Three Wives (1949); with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Meltzer, Brad. The Lightning Rod: A Zig and Nola Novel. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780062892409. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER/ESPIONAGE

Remember Meltzer’s No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Escape Artist, which saw U.S. Air Force mortician Jim "Zig" Zigarowski desperately seeking mercurial U.S. Army artist-in-residence Nola Brown? He’s seeking her again in this follow-up. As he prepares the body of star military man Archie Mint, killed while trying to prevent a robbery at his home, Zig realizes that Archie had a connection both to Nola and to a top-secret military group that could compromise the nation. Finding Nola requires linking up with her equally difficult brother. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Patterson, James & Dolly Parton. Run, Rose, Run. Little, Brown. Mar. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780759554344. $30. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Yes, that’s the Dolly Parton, contributing plot points to this story of a talented young singer-songwriter who has followed her dream to Nashville but remains terrified of the seething troubles she left behind. Will shadowy figures from her past come get her? Parton wrote 12 songs especially for the book. With a one-million-copy first printing.

Pitoniak, Anna. Our American Friend. S. & S. Feb. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781982158804. $27. THRILLER/ESPIONAGE

Fed up with the outré behavior of President Henry Caine (sounding familiar?), White House correspondent Sofie Morse is about to quit her job when she gets a call from First Lady Lara Caine, who wants Sofie to write her official biography. The enigmatic Lara was born in the Soviet Union, raised in Paris, and worked as a model; little else is known about her. But does she have some amazing Cold War secrets to spill. From the author of Necessary People; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Scottoline, Lisa. What Happened to the Bennetts. Putnam. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780525539674. $28. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. THRILLER/SUSPENSE

As star court reporter Jason Bennett drives his family home from his daughter’s lacrosse game, two men in a pickup truck attempt to carjack his shiny new Mercedes. As a result, Jason’s daughter is killed, and the rest of the family is placed in the witness protection program; the would-be carjackers are associated with an ominous criminal enterprise that distributes illicit opioids. Soon, though, Jason senses that the government isn’t being straight with him and sneaks out to do some investigating on his own.

Searles, John. Her Last Affair. Custom House: Morrow. Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780060779658. $27.99. lrg. prnt. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

Still living on the grounds of the now-shuttered drive-in movie theater she ran with her husband, Skyla is mourning his death and contemplating its inevitable little infelicities of their marriage until she rents a cottage to British charmer Teddy Cornwell. Meanwhile, Teddy is conducting an online affair with Linelle, dissatisfied with her marriage and jobless after a compromising photo from her youth bubbles up on social media. Teddy was Linelle’s first love, and embittered writer manqué Jeremy is hunting for his first love as well. These lives come together combustibly in these latest from the New York Times best-selling Searles. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Swanson, Peter. Nine Lives. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780062980076. $27.99. lrg. prnt. THRILLER/SUSPENSE

Nine strangers find their names on a list mailed anonymously, and soon bad things start happening to them, from a beloved older man’s drowning at the beach to a young father’s being shot while running in his quiet neighborhood. What links them? FBI agent Jessica Winslow would surely like to know, because she is on the list. Swanson sells brilliantly here and abroad, and a handful of his books have been optioned for film. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Ward, Annie. The Lying Club. Park Row: Harlequin. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780778333180. $28.99. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

An office assistant at a fancy private school in Colorado, Natalie has nothing in common with wealthy school moms Brooke, a controlling heiress, and perpetually worried Asha—except that all three are attracted to the school’s dashing young assistant athletic director, Nicholas. What’s that got to do with two deaths at the school that eventually overturn the entire community? Ward is back after debuting with the LibraryReads pick Beautiful Bad.

 

Thrillers in Translation

Gu Byeong-mo. The Old Woman with the Knife. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Mar. 2022. 304p. tr. from Korean by Chi-Young. ISBN 9781335425768. $19.99. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

At 65, Hornclaw is slowing down at work and content to live quietly in a small apartment with her rescue dog. She should be cashing out her share of the company, but she’s made the mistake of growing close to a doctor and his family after an emergency visit. Such connections are dangerous stuff in her business—actually, she’s an assassin routinely hired to do in cheating spouses, corporate enemies, and the like—and there are repercussions. From an award-winning, internationally best-selling South Korean author making her English-language debut; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Sten, Camilla. The Resting Place. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. 336p. tr. from Swedish by Alexandra Fleming. ISBN 9781250249272. $27.99. THRILLER/SUSPENSE

Here’s more from the author of the nerve-scraping debut The Lost Village, a LibraryReads pick that sold to 17 countries. Eleanor walks in on her grandmother’s murder but won’t be able to identify who did it; she suffers from prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. Obviously, she’s worried about what she doesn’t know —the assailant could be sitting right next to her—and her fears intensify when she inherits a house from her grandmother. It’s chilly, remote, and the place her grandfather died unexpectedly. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Ulstein, Silje. Reptile Memoirs. Grove. Mar. 2022. 400p. tr. from Norwegian by Alison McCullough. ISBN 9780802158864. $26. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

New to the Kristiansund police at age 60, Det. Roe Olsvik is investigating the disappearance of 11-year-old Iben, abandoned on a shopping trip by her exasperated mother, Mariam, because of repeated pesky requests to buy a magazine. Naturally, Roe suspects Mariam of malfeasance, and naturally things aren’t as they seem. The very suggestion that this story is linked to a young woman’s purchase of a baby python 13 years earlier is enough to bring on shivers. A big-deal best seller in Norway, with rights sales to 13 territories, this debut plays to thriller and literary fans alike.

 

SF Previews

Broaddus, Maurice. Sweep of Stars. Tor. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9781250264930. $27.99. SF/SPACE OPERA

Afrofuturist author Broaddus (the “Breton Court” trilogy) rides into space with the Muungano empire, a utopia ranging from Earth to Mars and beyond that was built on the wisdom of ancestors as a means of escaping oppression. But old enemies are set to destroy the empire, and beating them down will take the combined efforts of young leader Amachi Adisa, Fela Buhari and her elite fighting unit, and Stacia Chikeke, captain of the starship Cypher. With a 125,000-copy first printing.

Chen, Yu & Regina Kanyu Wang, eds. The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories: A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation. Tordotcom. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781250768919. $26.99. SF/FANTASY

Roses enacting Shakespeare. Giant fish carrying travelers to the island of the gods. Restaurants perched at the edge of the universe. Written, edited, and translated by a female and nonbinary team, the short stories here aim to encompass the best of past and present Chinese sf and fantasy while pointing toward what’s to come. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Harkin, Jo. Tell Me an Ending. Scribner. Mar. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9781982164324. $27. CD. DYSTOPIAN

A psychologist at a London clinic that removes all those bad memories we don’t want, Noor is worried. She has encountered several people—from Finn, who suspects his wife of infidelity, to Mei, puzzled that she recalls a city she has never visited, to Oscar, equally puzzled that he can’t recall much at all—whose memories seem to have been tampered with unduly. Has Louise, the clinic’s high-flying boss, gone over the edge? A high-flying debut, too, with a 175,000-copy first printing

Neuvel, Sylvain. Until the Last of Me. Tordotcom. Mar. 2022. (Take Them to the Stars, Bk. 2). 304p. ISBN 9781250262110. $26.99. SF

Mia’s family has always lived by the dictum “Always run, never fight,” and now, with the space race looming, she’s ready to “take them to the stars,” as the series title suggests. But their enemies are closer than ever, and for the first time in 100 generations, Mia might have to turn around and fight. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Onyebuchi, Tochi. Goliath. Tordotcom. Jan. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250782953. $26.99. SF

In the 2050s, those with the means are leaving the big U.S. cities for colonial outposts in space, and the infrastructure left behind is sinking groundward as materials are pilfered for transport to the colonies. For anyone who remains, that means scrambling to survive A Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Award finalist and Alex and New England Book Award winner, Onyebuchi weaves together the stories including a space dweller seeking his beloved in New Haven, civil servants trying to rescue what’s left of the cities, and a marshal wondering if justice is possible any longer to examine issues of race, class, and gentrification. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Scalzi, John. The Kaiju Preservation Society. Tor. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780765389121. $26.99. SF

In this standalone from sf champ Scalzi, COVID-19 has devastated New York City, and Jamie Gray barely gets by as a driver for food delivery apps. Then a friend offers him what sounds like a cool gig—stepping in to manage the next visit of an animal rights organization—but fails to mention a little detail. The animals in question are Kaiju, gigantic creatures from an alternate universe that are both dangerous and endangered. Unforunately, other organizations have found a way to slip into this universe behind the Kaiju Preservation Society, which may ultimately pose a threat to Earth. Billed as a light, uplifting COVID-19-escapist story, which does give pause; with a 200,000-copy first printing.

 

Fantasy Previews

Akers, W.M. Westside Lights. Harper Voyager. Mar. 2022. (Gilda Carr Tiny Mystery, Bk. 3). 288p. ISBN 9780063043954. $27.99. FANTASY/HISTORICAL

In 1920s Manhattan, where a sturdy fence divides the wealthy Eastside from the criminal and sometimes fantastical Westside, private eye Gilda Carr addresses “tiny mysteries.” Now she’s comfortably ensconced on a stolen yacht with former gangster Cherub Stevens, docking near the teeming-with-trouble White Lights District. When there’s a bloodbath onboard (passed-out Gilda missed it all), she finds herself pursued by both the police and the mob. Next in a praised series; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Elliott, Kate. Servant Mage. Tordotcom. Jan. 2022. 176p. ISBN 9781250769053. $19.99. FANTASY/GASLAMP

A Lamplighter who can illuminate the surroundings with a flick of her hand, Fellion is rescued from indentured servitude by rebel Monarchists who want help freeing comrades trapped underground. Along the way, they are drawn into a movement to end the monarchy, but Fellion doesn’t just trudge along as the mission evolves. From “Crown of Stars” author Elliot; with a 60,000-copy first printing.

Jimenez, Simon. The Spear Cuts Through Water. Del Rey: Ballantine. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593156599. $28. Downloadable. FANTASY

In the Land of the Strangled Throat, ruled by a cruel emperor and his sons, the Three Terrors, a warrior standing guard encounters the Moon Goddess, who has escaped from imprisonment. He should turn her in—but maybe he’ll join her efforts to bring down the government. Following Locus Award finalist The Vanished Birds.

McGuire, Seanan. Where the Drowned Girls Go. Jan. 2022. (Wayward Children, No. 7). 160p. ISBN 9781250213624. $19.99. FANTASY

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children serves as a sanctuary for children who have passed through portals to other worlds and can’t cope with their old home upon return. Not every child fits there comfortably, however; stubborn Cora asks Eleanor to transfer her to the Whitethorn Institute, which is not warm or cuddly or particularly safe. With a 60,000-copy first printing.

May, Francesca. Wild and Wicked Things. Redhook: Hachette. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780316287159. $28. Downloadable. FANTASY/HISTORICAL

On 1920s Crow Island, Annie Mason witnesses an unpleasant exchange and gets caught up in the world of scandalous Emmeline Delacroix and her wildly over-the-top parties. That’s how Annie learns that magic really does exist on the island, as she has heard, and that blood debts might lead to death. British-based May writes psychological thrillers and gothic suspense as Fran Dorricott; with a 30,000-copy first printing.

 

Horror Previews

Taff, John F.D., ed. Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror. Tor Nightfire. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9781250817327. $27.99. HORROR

In homage to the 1980 classic horror anthology, Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley, Bram Stoker finalist Taff collects 12 white-knuckle tales from horror greats including Josh Malerman, Stephen Graham Jones, and Priya Sharma. Ranging from traditional to neo-noir, as ominous hallways yawn and dead men walk. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Ward, Catriona. Sundial. Tor Nightfire. Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250812681. $26.99. HORROR

The multi-award-winning Ward returns with more psychological horror after September 2021’s LJ-starred The Last House on Needless Street. Rob grew up at Sundial, her family’s remote property in the Mojave Desert, with only research assistant and suspicious canines for companions. Now, with a husband, children, and a nice suburban home, she feels that she has finally escaped Sundial’s creepy reach. Then a scary development proves her wrong. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Wilkes, Ally. All the White Spaces. Emily Bestler: Atria. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781982182700. $27. HORROR

After World War I, Jonathan Morgan sneaks onto a ship heading off on an Antarctic expedition with celebrated explorer James “Australis” Randall aboard. A trans man, Jonathan is excited to be in a man’s world, living out his true gender, but it’s not so much fun when the expedition lands in an unmapped region of Antarctica, freezing cold, cut off from the world, and pursued by supernatural forces. From the Reviews Editor for Horrified, the British horror website; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

 

Contemporary Pop Fiction  

Bellefleur, Alexandria. Count Your Lucky Stars. Avon: HarperCollins. Feb. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780063000889. pap. $15.99. CD. ROMANCE

In this latest from Lambda Literary Award winner Bellefleur (Written in the Stars, Hang the Moon), much-, relationship-shy Margot Cooper has opted for easy hookups but is feeling envious of all her friends who are settling down. Then she encounters childhood friend and first love Olivia Grant, who’s been through marriage and divorce by age 30, and Margot’s got to decide whether to risk her heart again. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Burton, Tara Isabella. The World Cannot Give. S. & S. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781982170066. $27. CD. COMING OF AGE/CONTEMPORARY

At St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, wide-eyed newbie Laura Stearns becomes enthralled with queen-of-students Virginia Strauss, who virtually runs the school’s chapel choir (while running miles each day before dawn) and draws Laura into her obsession with transcendent music, obscure ritual, risky cliff-diving, and the Christian faith. Then the new chaplain intervenes, and Laura must decide just how committed she is to the increasingly power-hungry Virginia. A queer coming-of-age story from Burton, who debuted with the multi-best-booked Social Creature; a 60,000-copy first printing.

Colgan, Jenny. Welcome to the School by the Sea. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780063212763. $27.99; Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN 9780063141711. $16.99. CONTEMPORARY

Set at a prestigious boarding school in Cornwall, Colgan’s four-part “Little School by the Sea” series has appeared in the UK (under the name Jane Beaton) but not in the United States and is now being rolled out one at a time through winter 2023. In this first volume, new teacher Maggie arrives at the school exhilarated by her job but fearful of losing her boyfriend, while scholarship student Simone wants to fit in and rebellious Fliss wants to get out. With a 75,000-copy paperback and 30,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Gorcheva-Newberry, Kristina. The Orchard. Ballantine. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593356012. $28. Downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

Echoing Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Gorcheva-Newberry’s debut opens in the 1980s USSR with best friends Anya and Milka enjoying themselves at Anya’s family dacha. Later, as the girls reach their mid-teens (and the Soviet Union reaches collapse), they link up with classmates Trifonov and Lopatin. Unexpected tragedy tears this group apart, and when Anya returns to Russia after years in America, she learns that Lopatin has become a preening businessman set on buying Anya’s dacha. A tale of memory and grieving from Russian Armenian émigré Gorcheva-Newberry, winner of Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker honors for her story collection What Isn’t Remembered.

McCoy, Taj. Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell. Mira: Harlequin. Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780778311843. pap. $15.99. CD. ROMANCE

Stuck with a feckless boyfriend, an aging kitchen, and a high-stress, low-yield job, plus-size protagonist Savvy Sheldon decides to redo her life. Meeting with her handsome contractor—someone she is embarrassed to have inadvertently insulted in the past—makes her realize that her priorities are all wrong; she must first look to caring for herself. A debut #ownvoices romantic comedy from part-Black, part-Thai author McCoy; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Mallery, Susan. The Summer Getaway. HQN. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781335479990. $27.99. CONTEMPORARY

With her former husband behaving badly (again), her son spurning college for the family charter-boat business, and her daughter now an obsessive bride-to-be, Robyn Caldwell is only too happy to oblige when Aunt Lillian asks her to come to Santa Barbara. Lillian, who was a second mother to Robyn, needs help putting her affairs in order, but on this trip Robyn is set to discover more about herself. From the New York Times best-selling author; with a 250,000-copy first printing.

Murphy, Jennifer. Scarlet in Blue. Dutton. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593183465. $27. Downloadable. COMING OF AGE

Blue has been on the run with her mother, Scarlet, for as long as she can remember, and though there have been some exciting moments, she is now 15 and glad they have settled in a small Michigan town where she has found friends, romance, and a supportive piano teacher. What she doesn’t know is that her increasingly on-the-edge mother is staying put for a reason; she’s working with a psychoanalyst to throw off the terrors of her past. From the author of I Love You More, a Nancy Pearl Fiction Award winner.

Novic, Sara. True Biz. Random. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593241509. $27. Downloadable. COMING OF AGE

At the River Valley School for the Deaf, new transfer Charlie struggles to adjust, popular Austin faces the birth of a hearing sister, and the students generally just want parents, doctors, and politicians to stop telling them how to live their lives. Then there’s headmistress February, who’s worried that both the school and her marriage will get closed down. Novic, author of the Alex Award–winning Girl at War, is herself Deaf and writes frequently on the Deaf community.

Serle, Rebecca. One Italian Summer. Atria. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781982166793. $27. CD. CONTEMPORARY

Mourning the death of the mother to whom she was incredibly close, Katy travels trepidatiously to the Amalfi Coast for a vacation they had planned together. There, she has a real shock: she spots her mother, alive, tanned, and decades younger, as she was when she summered in Positano before meeting Katy’s father. Magically, Katy gets the chance to know her mother as she was then. From the author of the New York Times best-selling In Five Years; with a 250,000-copy first printing.

Smith, Jennifer E. The Unsinkable Greta James. Ballantine. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593358276. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

Indie musician Greta James has made her mark despite her father’s insistence that she choose a more practical career. But after her devoted mother dies, Greta suffers a calamitous breakdown onstage and stops performing altogether. Accompanying her father on the Alaskan cruise her parents had booked for their 40th wedding anniversary might help her find a way back to music, as might her meeting with historian Ben Wilder, who is facing down his own demons. From top YA author Smith.

Spencer, Kate. In a New York Minute. Forever: Hachette. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781538737620. $26. Downloadable. ROMANCE

What a way to meet: sparkly Franny has just been laid off from her lousy job when a closing subway door catches her silk dress, ripping it to shreds, and Hayes Montgomery III comes to her rescue by volunteering his Gucci suit jacket. Then he dashes off—evidently, he’s the bashful type—and Franny doesn’t expect to see him again even if an online posting of their outré encounter has gone viral. But New York City still isn’t big enough to keep them from repeatedly running into each other, with finally winning results. From the award-winning co-host of the podcast Forever35; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Steel, Danielle. High Stakes. Delacorte. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781984821713. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CONTEMPORARY

When Jane Addison joins the elite New York talent agency Fletcher and Benson, she encounters an array of dedicated women agents battling personal problems: recently widowed Hailey, with three young children; recently single Francine, struggling to support her own kids; carefree Allie, whose career may be wrecked by an ill-advised affair; and CFO Merriwether Jones, whose husband is jealous of her success. Jane wants to solve the problems she sees at Fletcher and Benson, but at what price? Almost a billion copies of Steel’s books are out there.

White, Karen. The Shop on Royal Street. Berkley. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593334584. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. CONTEMPORARY/GHOSTS

In this launch of a spin-off series, fans of White’s New York Times best-selling Tradd Street novels get to visit with Melanie Trenholm’s stepdaughter, Nola, who is busily fixing up her new home in New Orleans. Alas, she encounters a snag; the ghost of a previous occupant doesn’t want to leave. Nola lacks Melanie’s easy way with the spirit world, so she seeks out ghost talker Beau Ryan—reluctantly, not only because he remains haunted by the disappearance of his family during Hurricane Katrina but because he is linked to her house by an unsolved murder.

 

Historical Fiction Previews  

Barr, Lisa. Woman on Fire. Harper. Mar. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780063211261. $26.99; pap. ISBN 9780063040885. $16.99. HISTORICAL/WORLD WAR II

Ambitious young journalist Jules Roth is thrilled to land a job with leading investigative reporter Dan Mansfield but surprised by her first assignment: he needs her to locate celebrated Expressionist artist Ernst Engel’s Woman on Fire, stolen by the Nazis 75 years ago. Alas, sly gallerist Margaux de Laurent wants to find the painting, too. From the author of IPPY Award winner Fugitive Colors, optioned for film; with a 150,000-copy paperback and 25,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Fowler, Karen Joy. Booth. Putnam. Mar. 2022. 480p. ISBN 9780593331439. $28. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL/CIVIL WAR ERA

Author of the Man Booker short-listed, Pen/Faulkner Award–winning We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Fowler here reimagines the life and times of one of U.S. history’s most wrenchingly awful figures: John Wilkes Booth. She starts in 1822 with a remote cabin 30 miles northeast of Baltimore, where gifted but emotionally unbalanced Shakespearean actor Junius Booth presides over a family that finally amounts to ten children, including John. The Booths take center stage as the country’s top theatrical family, but their secrets and scandals mount as the country burns its way toward the Civil War.

Grande, Reyna. A Ballad of Love and Glory. Atria. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781982165260. $27. HISTORICAL

With U.S. troops surging toward the Rio Grande in what would become the Mexican-American War, Texas Rangers kill Mexican healer Ximena’s husband, and Ximena becomes an army nurse to help her country resist the unprovoked invasion from the north. Irish immigrant John Riley also serves the cause, so shocked by the U.S. Army’s treatment of his fellow Irishmen that he swims the Rio Grande to join the Mexican army, eventually leading a company of immigrants and expatriates, mostly deserters, dubbed the Saint Patrick’s Battalion. Ximena and John care for each other, but will their love survive these fiery times? From National Book Critics Circle finalist Grande; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Myers, Adele. The Tobacco Wives. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780063082939. $27.99. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

In 1947, Maddie Sykes joins her aunt’s flourishing sewing business in Bright Leaf, NC, the tobacco capital of the South, and soon becomes lead dressmaker for the town’s most important women. She’s puzzled, though, by the spate of illnesses troubling these women, and as she discovers its cause, she’s in a bind: how can she challenge Big Tobacco, which rules the town and its fortunes? Debuter Myers gets a 100,000-copy first printing.

Quinn, Kate. The Diamond Eye. Morrow. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780062943514. $27.99. lrg. prnt. HISTORICAL

A librarian tending a young son in often snow-blanketed Kiev, Mila Pavlichenko finds her life upended when Hitler’s forces invade the Soviet Union and she is sent to join the fighting. She soon becomes a crack sniper, dubbed Lady Death by the Nazis, and after her 300th kill she is sent to the United States on a goodwill tour. There she befriends First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and draws closer to a fellow sniper, but an enemy from her past is lurking. The author of the New York Times best-selling Rose Code bases her latest on a true story; with a 200,000-copy first printing.

Ryan, Erin Kate. Quantum Girl Theory. Random. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593133439. $27. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

Inspired by the 1946 disappearance of wealthy white Bennington student Paula Jean Welden, this debut considers the mythmaking that often emerges when young women go missing. Mary, as she is called here, is first seen in 1961 as a clairvoyant with a buried past who hustles for reward money. A poster about a vanished white girl draws Mary to a small Southern town, but two Black girls are also unaccounted for—why weren’t they on the poster?—and Mary is also troubled by visions of alternate lives that suggest what might have happened to her. Did she become a circus showgirl? A McCarthy-era informant? Why do false sightings and rumors spring up around such disappearances? Can Mary herself be trusted? Smart, edgy reading from a James Jones First Novel Fellow.

Williams. Sheila. Things Past Telling. Amistad: HarperCollins. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780063097070. $25.99. CD. HISTORICAL

At the heart of this epic is Maryam Prescilla Grace—a.k.a Momma Grace, though she alone knows her birth name—who was born in West Africa in the mid-1700s, captured at age 11, and after the Atlantic crossing enslaved by numerous owners. Having learned midwifery from a Caribbean-born wise woman whose skills blended the practices of African, Indigenous, and European women, Mama Grace lives in delicate balance as she provides her service to both her owners and her community, and she endures, breathtakingly, for more than 100 years. Williams was inspired by the story of a 112-year-old woman she discovered in an 1870 U.S. Federal census report for Ohio and also draws on her own real-life ancestors. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

 

NONFICTION

Health in a Coronavirus Context

Fisher, Thomas. The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER. One World. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780593230671. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. MEMOIR/MEDICAL

A board-certified emergency medicine physician at the University of Chicago, Fisher grew up in a family of community-oriented doctors on Chicago’s South Side. He studied public health at Dartmouth and Harvard before getting his medical degree at the University of Chicago Medical School, and his professional focus has always been on the damage done to underserved and particularly Black communities owing to disparities in health care. Throughout his career, he has always maintained an emergency-room rotation, and here he offers his views on public health from the perspective of the ER in times of COVID-19.

O'Rourke, Meghan. The Night Side: Reimagining Chronic Illness. Riverhead. Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781594633799. $28. Downloadable. HEALTH & FITNESS/DISEASES

Admired poet O'Rourke, who came to the forefront with The Long Goodbye, a memoir about mourning, returns with a work that draws on her own experiences as well as 15 years of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts to examine why chronic and particularly autoimmune disease is escalating in the United States. As COVID-19 emerged, she refocused her efforts to include it in her study, which makes it especially relevant to what’s called “the Long Covid”—that is, the persistence of symptoms from fever to fatigue that have affected some survivors.

Werb, Dan. The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure. Crown. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780593239230. $28. Downloadable. SOCIAL SCIENCE/DISEASES

COVID-19 is the third deadly coronavirus to emerge in the past two decades, following SARS and MERS, so it’s a good thing virologists like Ralph Baric began researching coronaviruses in the 1980s when they weren’t yet perceived as a much of a threat. Baric and his colleagues recognized similarities between SARS and other historical instances when coronaviruses leapt lethally from animals to humans, and they set out to develop vaccines and therapeutics that would counter the pandemic they anticipated would come. As epidemiologist Werb recounts, science, ethics, business, and politics collided just when coronavirus relief was needed the most.

Zaitchik, Alexander. Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines. Counterpoint. Mar. 2022. NAp. ISBN 9781640095069. $26. BUSINESS/PHARMACEUTICAL & BIOTECHNOLOGY

Busy freelance journalist Zaitchik, who has been reporting on COVID-19 for the New Republic, here turns his attention to the larger question of who benefits financially from the creation of lifesaving medicines. With federally funded research having facilitated most major medical breakthroughs since World War II, he asks why the legal rights to these drugs end up with international corporations, which prioritize profits over public health. With perspective dating back to the 19th century; an excerpt focusing on Bill Gates’s efforts to block open-science/pooling advocacy was the New Republic’s most accessed piece last year.

 

Current Issues

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal. Knopf. Mar. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780525658894. $20. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Arce, Julissa. You Sound Like a White Girl: The Case for Rejecting Assimilation. Flatiron: Macmillan. Mar. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9781250787019. $27.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Freedom Writers & Erin Gruwell. Dear Freedom Writer: Stories of Hardship and Hope from the Next Generation. Crown. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593239865. pap. $18. Downloadable. EDUCATION

Henry, Andre. All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep: Hope—and Hard Pills To Swallow—About Making Black Lives Matter. Convergent: Crown. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780593239889. $26. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Kendi, Ibram X. The Antiracist Deck: 100 Meaningful Conversations on Power, Equity, and Justice. One World: Ballantine. Mar. 2022. 100 Cards. ISBN 9780593234846. $22. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Pitkin, Daisy. On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women's Epic Fight to Build a Union. Algonquin. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781643750712. $26.95. LABOR RELATIONS/MEMOIR

Sommer, William. Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Reshaped America. Harper. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063114487. $28.99. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Timiraos, Nick. Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell and the Fed Battled the White House and Saved the Economy. Little, Brown. Mar. 2022. 356p. ISBN 9780316272810. $30. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Williamson, Elizabeth. Sandy Hook: How a Shooting at School Became a Battle for Truth. Dutton. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781524746575. $28. SOCIAL SCIENCE

With We Should All Be Feminists, award-winning, multi-million-copy best-selling MacArthur author Adichie offers an illustrated journal that guides readers on their own feminist journeys. Arce, who worked hard to suppress her accent after immigrating to the United States from Mexico only to be told You Sound Like a White Girl, now rejects assimilation as an illusory and ultimately racist goal meant to keep her from belonging and instead argues for honoring one’s culture; currently, she’s collaborating with America Ferrera to develop Ferrera’s My (Underground) American Dream for television (75,000-copy first printing). Following up 1999’s No. 1 New York Times best-selling The Freedom Writers Diary¸ which inspired a film starring Hilary Swank and an Emmy award–winning documentary, Dear Freedom Writer is a compilation by contemporary Freedom Writers and teacher Gruwell of 50 more stories representing a new generation of high school students. As musician/activist Henry looks back on All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep—they thought he wasn’t sufficiently polite when discussing racism or doubted it even existed—he argues that social justice will be achieved not through civil conversation or diversity hires but more direct ways of disrupting racial inequality and violence. With The Antiracist Deck, No. 1 New York Times best-selling antiracism champion Kendi presents not a book but a pack of 100 cards, each with a conversation starter—When did you first become aware of racism? When did you first become aware of your race? What does “resistance” mean to you? —meant to get people talking. In On the Line, Pitkin recalls working as a newly hired organizer for UNITE, an international garment workers union, to unionize Arizona’s industrial laundry factories with the help of a second-shift immigrant factory worker pseudonymously named Alma Gomez-Garcia. A political reporter for the Daily Beast who has spent the last several years tracking QAnon, Sommer explains what it is, why it has gained traction, what dangers it poses, and how to shake adherents loose from its dogma in Trust the Plan (100,000-copy first printing). Chief economics correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Timiraos argues in Trillion Dollar Triage that the pandemic did not result in economic collapse owing to the efforts of Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (60,000-copy first printing). New York Times reporter Williamson’s Sandy Hook reveals the ongoing tragedy of the killing of 26 people—including 20 children—at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, with the parents of young victims harassed online, stalked, and even shot at and the very truth of the massacre denied by a group of conspiracy theorists whom she sees as profit motivated.

 

Looking at the Past To Understand the Present

Bird, Christiane. A Block in Time: A New York City History at the Corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street. Bloomsbury. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781632867421. $28. HISTORY

Chollet, Mona. In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial. St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. tr. from French by Sophie R. Lewis. 288p. ISBN 9781250271419. $28.99 SOCIAL SCIENCE

England, Vaudine. Fortune’s Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong. Scribner. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781982184513. $27. HISTORY

Frank, Jeffrey. The Trials of Harry S. Truman: The Extraordinary Presidency of an Ordinary Man, 1945–1953. S. & S. Mar. 2022. 576p. ISBN 9781501102899. $32.50. CD. BIOGRAPHY

Galor, Oded. The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. Dutton. Mar. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780593185995. $28. Downloadable. HISTORY

Haynes, Natalie. Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths. Harper. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063211315. $26.99; pap. Harper Perennial. ISBN 9780063139466. $17.99. LITERARY CRITICISM

Kershaw, Alex. Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II. Dutton Caliber. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593183748. $30. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. HISTORY

Kleiman, Kathy. Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World’s First Modern Computer. Grand Central. Mar. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781538718285. $30. BIOGRAPHY/SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Lowenstein, Roger. Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War. Penguin Pr. Mar. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780735223554. $30. Downloadable. HISTORY

Rappaport, Helen. After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War. St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250273109. $29.99. CD. HISTORY

Ranging from when New York City was inhabited by the Lenape people to the present day, from grubby brothels to chic hotels, Bird tells the story of New York by focusing on A Block in Time that’s bounded east-west by Sixth and Seventh avenues and north-south by 23rd and 24th streets and is overlooked by the famous Flatiron Building (45,000-copy first printing). Chief editor for Le Monde diplomatique, Chollet argues In Defense of Witches, whom she sees as symbolic of female resistance to male oppression throughout history, with the women most likely to be perceived as witches—independent-minded, childless, or older—still being outcast today (75,000-copy first printing). Having reported from Hong Kong as well as South East Asia, journalist England offers Fortune’s Bazaar, the story of kaleidoscopic Hong Kong through the diverse peoples who have made the city what it is today (75,000-copy first printing). A former senior editor at The New Yorker and author of the multi-best-booked Ike and Dick, Frank returns with a reassessment of our 33rd president in The Trials of Harry S. Truman. Influential Brown economist Galor, whose unified growth theory focuses on economic growth throughout human history, tracks The Journey of Humanity to show that the last two centuries represent a new phase differentiated from the past by generally better living conditions but also a radically increased gap between the rich and the rest. Following A Thousand Ships, which was short-listed for Britain’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and a best seller in the United States, Haynes’s Pandora’s Jar belongs to a growing number of titles that put the female characters of Greek mythology front and center as less passive or secondary than they’ve been regarded (25,000-copy hardcover and 30,000-copy paperback first printing). In Against All Odds, popular historian Kershaw tells the story of four soldiers in the same regiment—Capt. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, West Point dropout Michael Daly, soon-to be Hollywood legend Audie Murphy, and Capt. Keith Ware, eventually the most senior US general to die in Vietnam—who became the four most decorated U.S. soldiers of World War II. After World War II, six women were given the daunting task of programming the world's first general-purpose, all-electronic computer, called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) and meant to calculate a single ballistic trajectory in 20 seconds rather than 40 hours by hand; internet law and policy specialist Kleiman interviewed four of the women over two decades, eventually writing Proving Ground and producing the award-winning documentary The Computers (50,000-copy first printing). From former Wall Street Journal reporter and New York Times best-selling author Lowenstein (e.g., When Hubris Failed), Ways and Means shows how President Abraham Lincoln and his administration parlayed efforts to fund the Civil War into creating a more centralized government. New York Times best-selling author Rappaport (Caught in the Revolution) shows what happened After the Romanovs to the aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who fled the Russian Revolution for Paris (60,000-copy first printing).

 

Spotlight: Reshma Saujani’s Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think)

Saujani, Reshma. Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think). One Signal: Atria. Mar. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9781982191573. $27. SOCIAL SCIENCE

In the pandemic’s first year, women worldwide lost $800 billion in wages, with unemployment among them rising from 3.1 percent to nearly 15 percent. Mothers in particular have reported encroaching anxiety, with almost 70 percent experiencing health problems owing to pandemic-induced stress. Saujani found herself stressed, too—and angered by the ongoing absence of support for mothers. Here she follows up her New York Times best-selling Girls Who Code and Brave, Not Perfect to propose The Marshall Plan for Moms, arguing for structural changes like government payments and workplace and cultural rethinking to help working women. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

 

 

Memoir  

Bloom, Amy. In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss. Random. Mar. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780593243947. $26. MEMOIR

Bruni, Frank. The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found. Avid: S. & S. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN82108571. $28. CD. MEMOIR

Davis, Kathryn. Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir. Graywolf. Mar. 2022. 128p. ISBN 9781644450789. pap. $15. MEMOIR

Haart, Julia. Brazen: My Unorthodox Journey from Long Sleeves to Lingerie. Crown. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780593239162. $27. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Humphreys, Helen. And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life. Farrar. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780374603885. $27. MEMOIR

Irankunda, Pacifique. The Tears of a Man Flow Inward: Growing Up in the Civil War in Burundi. Random. Mar. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9780812997644. $27. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Krouse, Erika. Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation. Flatiron: Macmillan. Mar. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250240309. $28.99. MEMOIR

LaPointe, Sasha. Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk. Counterpoint. Mar. 2022. 208p. ISBN 9781640094147. $23. MEMOIR

Newton, Maud. Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation. Random. Mar. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780812997927. $28. Downloadable. MEMOIR

Pellegrino, Danny. How Do I Un-Remember This?: Unfortunately True Stories. Sourcebooks Landmark. Mar. 2022. 280p. ISBN 9781728247984. $25.99. MEMOIR

Prado, Ric. Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior. St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781250271846. $29.99. CD. MEMOIR

Segall, Laurie. Special Characters: My Adventures with Tech’s Titans and Misfits. Dey Street: Morrow. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780063016446. $27.99. MEMOIR

With In Love, NBA/NBCC finalist Bloom (White Houses) takes us on a painful journey as her husband retires from his job, withdraws from life, and finally receives a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s; she recalls both the love they experienced and the love it took to stand by him as he ended his life on his own terms. In The Beauty of Dusk, New York Times columnist Bruni contemplates aging, illness, and the end of the road as he describes a rare stroke that deprived him of sight in his right eye, even as he learns that he could lose sight in his left eye as well. In Aurelia, Aurélia, Lannan Literary Award–winning novelist Davis (The Silk Road) considers how living and imagining interact in a book grounded in the joys and troubles of her marriage and her husband’s recent death. Raised in an ultra-orthodox Jewish household and married off at age 19 to a man she barely knew, Haart made a Brazen decision more than two decades later, surreptitiously earning enough money to break away, then entering the fashion world, and finally becoming CEO and co-owner of the modeling agency Elite World Group. Adding to all those paw-poundingly wonderful canine celebrations that keep coming our way, And a Dog Called Fig is Dublin IMPAC long-listed Canadian novelist Humphreys’s paean to dogs as the ideal companion to the writing life. In The Tears of a Man Flow Inward, Burundi-born, U.S.-based Pushcart/Whiting honoree Irankunda recalls how his family and fellow villagers survived the 13-year civil war in his country—with the help, crucially, of his kind and brave mother, a Mushingantahe, or chosen village leader—and how the war destroyed Burundi’s culture and traditions. As private investigator Krouse explains in Tell Me Everything, she accepted a case of alleged sexual assault at a party for college football players and recruits despite reservations owing to her own experiences with sexual violence, then saw the case become a landmark civil rights case. In Red Paint, LaPointe, a Salish poet and nonfiction author from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes, explains how she has sought to reclaim a place in the world for herself and her people by blending her passion for the punk rock of the Pacific Northwest and her desire to honor spiritual traditions and particularly a namesake great-grandmother who fought to preserve the Lushootseed language. Undoubtedly, book critic Newton has Ancestor Trouble: a forebear accused of witchcraft in Puritan Massachusetts, a grandfather married 13 times, a father who praised slavery and obsessed over the purity of his bloodlines, and a frantic, cat-rescuing mother who performed exorcisms, all of which made her wonder how she would turn out. In How Do I Un-Remember This? comedian/screenwriter Pellegrino draws on his big-hit podcast Everything Iconic with Danny Pellegrino (over 13.5 million downloads in 2020) as he renegotiates 1990s pop culture and moments funny, embarrassing, or painful to limn growing up closeted in a conservative Ohio community. In Black Ops, Prado portrays a life that ranges from his family’s fleeing the Cuban revolution when he was seven to his retirement from the CIA as the equivalent of a two-star general while also detailing the agency’s involvement over the decades in numerous “shadow wars” (200,000-copy first printing). Segall came of age as a reporter just as tech entrepreneurs began to soar, and as she interviewed these Special Characters, she also rose to become an award-winning investigative reporter and (until 2019) CNN’s senior tech correspondent (75,000-copy first printing).

 

Literature, Language & the Performing Arts

Douglas-Fairhurst , Robert. The Turning Point: 1851—A Year That Changed Charles Dickens and the World. Knopf. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780525655947. $28.95. Downloadable. LITERATURE

Ferrara, Silvia. The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts. Farrar. Mar. 2022. 304p. tr. from Italian by Todd Portnowitz. ISBN 9780374601621. $29. LANGUAGE

Fierstein, Harvey. I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir. Knopf. Mar. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593320525. $30. Downloadable. MEMOIR/PERFORMING ARTS

Galloway, Stephen. Madly: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and the Romance of the Century. Grand Central. Mar. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781538731970. $30. Downloadable. BIOGRAPHY/PERFORMING ARTS

Miller, Lucasta. Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph. Knopf. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780525655831. $30. Downloadable. LITERATURE

Nafisi, Azar. Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times. Dey Street: Morrow. Mar. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780062947369. $26.99. LITERATURE

Polley, Sarah. Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory. Penguin Pr. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780593300350. $27. Downloadable. MEMOIR/PERFORMING ARTS

Schur, Michael. How To Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question. S. & S. Mar. 2020. 304p. ISBN 9781982159313. $28. CD. HUMOR

Spector, Ronnie with Vince Waldron. Be My Baby: A Memoir. Holt. Mar. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9781250837196. $27.99. CD. MEMOIR/MUSIC

A Duff Cooper Prize winner for Becoming Dickens, Oxford English professor Douglas-Fairhurst argues that for Dickens the emotionally tumultuous year of 1851 was The Turning Point that singularly shaped his oeuvre. A professor of Aegean civilization at the University of Bologna, Ferrera moves from Mesopotamia and Crete to China, Central America, Easter Island, and beyond to chronicle The Greatest Invention—writing. In I Was Better Last Night, Fierstein talks about being a cultural icon, gay rights activist, and four-time Tony Award–winning actor and playwright. Emmy Award–winning writer Galloway, who created the Reporter's famed Oscar Roundtables, revisits Madly in love Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, among the first global celebrities (75,000-copy first printing). In Keats, British literary critic Miller uses verse and epitaph, e.g., “Endymion,” “Bright Star,” to explore the life of the English Romantic and present him less as dreamer than subversive. In a book structured as a series of letters to her book-loving father, Nafisi urges us to Read Dangerously, addressing literature as both solace and subversive power that can challenge repressive politics; originally scheduled for August 2021 (75,000-copy first printing). Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Polley offers six essays capturing moments of her life, from stage fright to risky childbirth to healing herself after traumatic injury by retraining her mind to Run Towards the Danger, i.e., the very things that triggered her recurrent symptoms. The creator of The Good Place and cocreator of Parks and Recreation, Schur offers How To Be Perfect as a laugh-out-loud guide to living not the good life but the better life (200,000-copy first printing). Lead singer of the Ronettes—remember Be My Baby?—Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Spector recounts professional collaboration with and marriage to Phil Spector, then fighting to reclaim her musical legacy and her life (75,000-copy first printing).

 

Last of the Nonfiction  

Code, Merl. Black Market: An Insider’s Journey into the High-Stakes World of College Basketball. Hanover Square: Harlequin. Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781335425775. $27.99. CD. MEMOIR/SPORTS

A Clemson University point guard–turned–basketball pro, Code hoped to build relationships with young athletes when he began working in marketing, eventually becoming a director at Nike. That’s when he began to realize how college basketball—including some of its most fable coaches—bent the NCAA's amateurism rules to exploit athletes and particularly athletes of color and found himself not just caught in the middle but playing fall guy in a bribery scandal. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Cohen, Deborah. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: Reporters of the Lost Generation. Random. Mar. 2022. 592p. ISBN 9780525511199. $30. Downloadable. HISTORY

Reporting not only on the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact but also the sexual misbehavior of the Brownshirts and Joseph Goebbels’s fortune stashed abroad, married foreign correspondents John and Frances Gunther believed that highlighting the personal was as illuminating as reporting on larger historical forces. Northwestern history professor Cohen shows how the Gunthers joined with other U.S. reporters from H.R. Knickerbocker to Dorothy Thompson to fuel a new kind of journalism.

Gilmer, Benjamin. The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice. Ballantine. Mar. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593355169. $28. Downloadable. SOCIAL SCIENCE

When family physician Gilmer joined a rural North Carolina clinic, he was shocked to discover that his predecessor—who coincidentally had the same last name—got up one morning and strangled his father before coming to work. Visiting the “other Dr. Gilmer” in prison, the author immediately recognized a case of untreated mental illness (he was ultimately diagnosed with Huntington's disease), launching often frustrated efforts to secure his colleague the help he needed. Gilmer here expands his story to discuss the high incidence of mental illness in the U.S. prison population and to argue for better treatment—healing rather than punishment.

Gundry, Steven R., MD. Unlocking the Keto Code: How the Revolutionary New Science of Ketones Can Help You Lose Weight, Reverse Disease, and Live Longer. Harper Wave. Mar. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780063118386. $28.99. NUTRITION

Author of the mega-best-selling “Plant Paradox” series, Gundry found in his research that the keto diet is beneficial not only because it allows the body to arrive at a state of ketosis, i.e., it burns fat for fuel, but that ketones—found in a range of foods beyond fat—allow the mitochondria to burn fuel more efficiently. Now, Keto fans can enjoy the benefits of the diet without quite so many restrictions. With a new eating plan, plus food lists and recipes; a 175,000-copy first printing.

Kazin, Michael. What It Took To Win: A History of the Democratic Party. Farrar. Mar. 2022. 416p. ISBN 9780374200237. $35. POLITICAL SCIENCE

A Georgetown history professor and editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, Kazin offers a history and assessment of the world’s longest-running political party: the Democratic Party of the United States. He examines its successes and failures, its commitment to “moral capitalism” even though it also once supported slavery and repression, and its struggle to maintain a majority coalition as its move toward greater inclusivity have led to some people to leave owing to biased attitudes. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Neuman, William. Things Are Never So Bad That They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela. St. Martin’s. Mar. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250266163. $29.99. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Former New York Times reporter and translator-from-Spanish Neuman was stationed in Caracas, Venezuela, serving from 2012 to 2016 as the paper’s Andes Region Bureau Chief. That gave him a close-up view of Venezuela’s ongoing implosion. Here, while supplying details particular to Venezuela’s situation, he also argues that the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998 presaged the appearance of strongmen worldwide who have gutted their countries. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

O’Brien, Keith. Paradise Falls: The True Story of an Environmental Catastrophe. Pantheon. Mar. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9780593318430. $30. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. HISTORY

Journalist and New York Times best-selling author O’Brien (Fly Girls) revisits Love Canal, the neighborhood in Niagara Falls, NY, that suffered environmental disaster in 1977 after toxic waste dumped illegally by Hooker Chemical began to surface with the spring rains. Children of the neighborhood’s 800 families began to fall seriously ill, and three women—Lois Gibbs, Luella Kenny, and Barbara Quimby—spearheaded efforts to make both the corporation and local city officials accountable. As a result, Love Canal became America’s first Superfund site (a term referencing the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980), launching a concerted national response to toxic waste. Look for the forthcoming Showtime production based on the book.

Zerwick, Phoebe. Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt. Atlantic Monthly. Mar. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780802159373. $27. SOCIAL SCIENCE

In 1985 Winston-Salem, NC, Black teenager Darryl Hunt was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a young white copyeditor at the local paper. Efforts to secure his release failed until 2003, when Zerwick published an award-winning series of articles in the Winston-Salem Journal that led to the discovery of DNA evidence exonerating Hunt. Upon his release, Hunt became a national advocate for criminal justice, combatting the systematic racism that put him behind bars, but all the horror he had endured finally led to his suicide in 2016.

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The March 2022 Prepub Alert Index 

FICTION

Literary Fiction Stars

Literary Fiction Debuts

Veteran Chills: Mystery

Rising-Star Authors: Mystery

Spotlight: Anne Tyler’s French Braid

Domestic Spills, Espionage Chills: Thrillers

In Translation: Thrillers

SF Previews

Fantasy Previews

Horror Previews

Contemporary Pop Fiction

Historical Fiction

NONFICTION

Health in a Coronavirus Context

Current Issues

Looking at the Past To Understand the Present

Spotlight: Reshma Saujani’s Pay Up: The Future of Women and Work (and Why It’s Different Than You Think)

Memoir

Literature, Language & the Performing Arts

Last of the Nonfiction Previews

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The March 2022 Prepub Alert posts are also available as:

A downloadable spreadsheet of titles

A print-ready PDF of all Prepub Alert posts