Previews, Reviews, and Collection Development
Prepub Alert is your first-buy guide to what's new in publishing, featuring in-depth coverage of leading titles from a wide range of publishers up to six months in advance of publication. Plus recommended picks, breaking news, editor/author interviews, and more. Contact Barbara via email or on Twitter @BarbaraHoffert.
In September 2011, one of my Picks was Anthony Shadid’s House of Stone, a memoir about his working to restore his grandfather’s estate in Lebanon. Shadid spent time there after being released from his six-day detention, with four other New York Times reporters, by forces loyal to Colonel Qaddafi. The book is currently set for [...]
Kitamura, Katie. Gone to the Forest. Free Pr: S. & S. Aug. 2012. 224p. ISBN 9781451656640. pap. $15. LITERARY Since his mother died, Tom and his father have dwelled together uneasily on their farm in an unnamed colonial country close to violence. Then a young woman named Carine enters their lives, forming a triangle and [...]
Barnes, Steven & Tananarive Due. Devil’s Wake. Atria: S. & S. Aug. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9781451617009. pap. $15. PARANORMAL Plague is sweeping the country, brought on by odd, uncontrollable biting attacks by the victims. The victims don’t die or join the realm of the undead, however; they’re simply front runners for an alien life force [...]
Baker, Nicholson. The Way the World Works: Essays. S. & S. Aug. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9781416572473. $25. ESSAYS Having stirred us up with his latest novel, House of Holes, Baker offers a second essay collection that should prove just as thought-provoking, whimsical, and physically detailed as that novel and indeed all his work. These essays, [...]
On February 8, instead of slaving at my desk, I hopped a train for King of Prussia, PA (named not for royalty but for a bar), to participate in a Book Chat led by Upper Merion Township Library Director Karl Helicher—also a longtime friend and longtime LJ associate, whose Reviewer of the Year plaque hangs [...]
Black, Benjamin. Vengeance. Holt. Aug. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780805094398. $26. CD: Macmillan Audio. THRILLER Here’s John Banville in Quirke-y mode, as the consultant pathologist of Dublin’s Hospital of the Holy Family helps Detective Inspector Hackett investigate the bizarre death of hotshot businessman Victor Delahaye. Delahaye has taken his partner’s son out for a sail, then [...]
Cohen, Joshua. Four New Messages. Graywolf. Aug. 2012. 208p. ISBN 9781555976187. pap. $14. STORIES Not for everyone, but please let the cognoscenti know that the brilliant Cohen, author of the shape-shifting Witz, is back with four expectedly weird and imaginative stories. In one, a writing teacher won’t read his students’ stories but asks them to [...]
Auster, Paul. Winter Journal. Holt. Aug. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9780805095531. $26. MEMOIR This book is called a memoir, but as might be expected of the brilliantly offbeat award-winning author of The New York Trilogy, it’s not a standard retelling of life events. Instead, as he approaches his mid-Sixties, Auster considers bodily pain and pleasure, the [...]
At the request of many librarians, who need to make purchasing decisions as early as possible, when Prepub Alert was launched online the timeframe for reporting was moved up a month. Now books are featured six months in advance, though I do go back and cover big titles that drop in last minute—which always happens, [...]
Armstrong, Kelley. Thirteen. Dutton. Aug. 2012. 400p. ISBN 9780525952831. $26.95; CD/Downloadable: Penguin Audio. PARANORMAL THRILLER Bittersweet news, Otherworld fans: after a dozen books, here’s the grand finale of the series. Savannah Levine has rescued her brother from supernatural medical testing, though he’s not exactly back on his feet, and with supernaturals battling one another—and in [...]
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