Eight Titles to Recommend
The Week of Dec 1
The arrival of books by big names is slowing down to a trickle now that the magic “Black Friday” has passed. The only one this week is Mark Greaney’s continuation of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan franchise, Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect, but both the number of holds and library orders are down considerably from the heights that the Jack Ryan name once commanded.
That clears the decks for attention to some other titles you may want to recommend.
All the titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed, with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Dec. 1, 2014
Advance Attention
God’ll Cut You Down: The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, a Murder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi, John Safran, (Penguin/Riverhead; Blackstone Audio)
Australian author Safran was featured on NPR’s 11/23 Weekend Edition Sunday. As the book'[s subtitle indicates, the tale is tangled and not at all what Safran expected. The NPR interview also mentions that it is very funny in parts, something one might not expect from the subject (also attested to by the blurb from John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, “Frightening and hilarious.”)
How to be both, Ali Smith, (RH/Pantheon), OverDrive Sample
This Booker shortlist title jus won the Goldsmith Prize, for “pushing the novel into thrilling new shapes.’ The author was profiled in the New York Times on 11/25 and on NPR’s Weekend Edition. The L.A. Times‘s lead critic David Ulin gives it a glowing review this week. Some libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering.
Independently Wealthy, Lorraine Zago Rosenthal, (Macmillan.St. Martin’s), OverDrive Sample
Kirstin Hannah calls Rosenthal a “bright new voice in women’s fiction.” A People magazine calls this sequel to the author’s New Money “delicious fun.”
Mai Tai’d Up, Alice Clayton, (S&S/Gallery, Original Trade Pbk.; S&S Audio), OverDrive Sample
People Magazine pick 12/8/14 — “Clayton’s a master at balancing heart, humor and plenty of action between the sheets.”
Best Mysteries and Thrillers
Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart: A Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery, Christopher Fowler, (RH/Bantam; Recorded Books, Feb), OverDrive Sample
In the daily New York Times, by Janet Maslin calls the author’s Peculiar Crimes series “delectably droll … criminally underappreciated by the wider world” and notes the author is “crazily prolific,” giving readers advisors a strong backlist to mine.
The Sweetness of Life, Paulus Hochgatterer, (Quercus/MacLehose Press)
PW Best Book, Mystery/Thriller — “Hochgatterer, a child psychiatrist based in Vienna, makes his U.S. debut with this suspenseful and insightful thriller in which a child psychiatrist treats a little girl traumatized by the discovery of her grandfather’s faceless corpse in the snow outside a fairy tale Austrian town.”
Memory of Flames, Isabel Reid, Armand Cabasson, (Gallic Books Limited), OverDrive Sample
PW Best Book, Mystery/Thriller — “Lt. Col. Quentin Margont investigates a royalist plot to undermine the defenses of Paris as the allied forces advance on the city in 1814 in Cabasson’s third Napoleonic Murders whodunit. The intricate storytelling and sophisticated character development make this one of the best historical mysteries of recent years.”
Enter Pale Death, Barbara Cleverly, (Soho Press), OverDrive Sample
IndieNext Pick, Dec. — “The tales of pre-World War II Scotland Yard’s Joe Sandilands are becoming addictive. Intrigue, political manipulations, the ever-present undercurrent of class differences, and the rising spectre of Nazism run throughout the series. Joe always expected to one day wed Dorcas, a charming girl he watched grow up, and is alarmed to find that she has attached herself to her academic patron, Sir James Truelove. The detective is sent to Truelove’s family estate to investigate the death of Sir James’s wife. Murder investigations, just like true love, never run smoothly. Is Sandilands going to find the way through this snake’s nest?” — Becky Milner, Vintage Books, Vancouver, WA