Previews, Reviews, and Collection Development
Bass, Rick. All the Land to Hold Us. Houghton Harcourt. Jul. 2013. 320p. ISBN 9780547687124. $25; ebk. ISBN 9780547687438. LITERARY FICTION It’s not surprising that exemplary nature writer Bass’s fourth novel, set in Texas, features salt miners and oil and gas wildcatters. But you’ll also meet Baptists, high school football players, a local beauty, a [...]
Adler, Elizabeth. Please Don’t Tell. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Jul. 2013. 384p. ISBN 9781250019899. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250019905. WOMEN’S FICTION One stormy night on the California coast, elegant 58-year-old Fenny Dexter opens her door to a blood-soaked man claiming to have been in an accident. He departs after a cozy night (they feel a spark), and [...]
So many eye-popping short story collections, so many revelatory small-press literary novels, and such little space on those end-of-the-year Best lists. Fortunately, I have a venue for featuring Best Indie Novels and Best Stories Collections of 2012, which you’ll find presented below. In addition, since I get far too much good material throughout the year [...]
Brown, Eli. Cinnamon and Gunpowder. Farrar. Jun. 2013. 272p. ISBN 9780374123666. $26. HISTORICAL Evocative title, and the plot sounds like a hoot. In 1819, the pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot kills the lord of a booming tea concern but will spare his chef, the famous Owen Wedgwood, as long as he manages to serve her an [...]
Glass, Charles. The Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). Jun. 2013. 400p. ISBN 9781594204289. $27.95. As author of the much-praised Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation, former ABC News correspondent Glass proved that he could writes rigorous but accessible history. Here he considers deserters during [...]
Campbell, Drusilla. When She Came Home. Grand Central. Apr. 2013. 336p. ISBN 9781455510351. pap. $14.99. POP FICTION The author of satisfying human dramas like Blood Orange and Little Girl Gone, Campbell returns with a deeply relevant story. Back from Iraq, Frankie Byrne must confront her daughter’s trouble with school bullies, her husband’s contentiousness, her career [...]
Aldrich, Alexandra. The Astor Orphan: A Memoir. Ecco: HarperCollins. Apr. 2013. 256p. ISBN 9780062207937. $24.99; eISBN 9780062207968. lrg prnt. MEMOIR The name Astor conjures up the glorious Gilded Age, but by the time Aldrich came along, the Astors were a pretty tarnished bunch. Aldrich lived with her family in the servants’ quarters of Rokeby, the [...]
Aslam, Nadeem. The Blind Man’s Garden. Knopf. Apr. 2013. 336p. ISBN 9780307961716. $26.95; eISBN 9780307961723. LITERARY FICTION Winner of Betty Trask and Kiriyama honors and shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (for Maps for Lost Lovers), Aslam is among an outstanding group of Pakistani-born writers now working in English (e.g., Daniyal Mueenuddin, Mohammed Hanif, [...]
Bagli, Charles V. Other People’s Money: Inside the Housing Crisis and the Demise of the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made. Dutton. Apr. 2013. 416p. ISBN 9780525952657. $27.95. BUSINESS/REAL ESTATE In 2006, real estate behemoth Tishman Speyer and its partner, BlackRock, bought Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, a middle-class housing complex on New York’s [...]
Bill, Frank. Donnybrook. Farrar. Mar. 2013. 256p. ISBN 9780374532895. pap. $15. LITERARY FICTION Bill’s debut story collection, Crimes in Southern Indiana, raised a collective gasp, so this first novel has been greatly anticipated. The subject is a bloody, three-day, bare-knuckle fight called the Donnybrook, held on a 1000-acre plot in isolated southern Indiana. As bettors [...]
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