Library Journal

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 build replicas of the Flatiron Building; elsewhere, an aspiring journalist stumbles upon a village (in Russia?) inhabited by women who have starred in the Internet porn he’s watched.

Cumming, Charles. A Foreign Country. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2012. 368p. ISBN 9780312591335. $24.99. CD: Macmillan Audio. THRILLER
Even as an elderly French couple is murdered in Egypt and a young French accountant is snatched from the streets of Paris, Amelie Levene—about to become the first female chief of M16—vanishes in the south of France. Former M16 officer Thomas Kell, now in bad odor with the service, appears to be the only person capable of finding Levene and figuring out what links the three events. One of the publisher’s biggest books of the month and a juicy-sounding follow-up to the best-selling The Trinity Six.

Dabbagh, Selma. Out of It. Bloomsbury USA, dist. by Macmillan. Aug. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9781608198764. pap. $14. LITERARY
As bombs drop on Gaza, unemployed 27-year-old Rashid restlessly awaits word of a scholarship that will take him to London, his wheelchair-bound older brother writes a history of their country, and his twin sister becomes seriously involved in politics. A first novel from PEN and Pushcart prize nominee Dabbagh, likely an important new voice on Palestine (Dabbagh currently lives in London).

Hiller, Mischa. Shake Off. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Aug. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780316204200. $24.99. Downloadable: Hachette Audio. THRILLER
Having escaped from the exploding Middle East, where his family was killed by extremists, Michel Khoury has become an intelligence operative with a desire for peace, a stash of passports and unmarked bills in the bathroom of his London apartment, and a new girlfriend who doesn’t know his true identity. Soon, the truth wills out and turns deadly, forcing the couple on the run from London to Berlin to the Scottish countryside. Hiller, who’s half-Palestinian and half-British, should give texture to his first thriller (and second novel after the award-winning Sabra Zoo). Great quotes from not just the UK but the Jordan Times and Israel’s Haaretz.

Hurwitz, Gregg. The Survivor. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2012. 416p. ISBN 9780312625511. $25.99; eISBN 9781250009722. THRILLER
Some set-up: divorced, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and dying of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, former soldier Nate Overbay stands 11 stories up on the ledge of a bank building, ready to end it all. But when robbers break into the bank and start shooting, Nate rushes down and handily saves the day, only to be kidnapped by the Russian mobster who masterminded the initial break-in. Nate is told that he must return to the bank and snatch what the mobster was after—or watch his ex-wife and daughter suffer the consequences. Great expectations: Hurwitz’s You’re Next was an LJ Best Thriller of 2011.

Jones, Howard Andrew. The Bones of the Old Ones. Thomas Dunne Bks: St. Martin’s. Aug. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780312646752. $25.99; eISBN 9781250015136. FANTASY
Emerging fantasy author Jones follows up The Desert of Souls, a sword-and-sorcery debut set in eighth-century Baghdad, with the continued adventures of scholar Dabir and soldier Assim. Here, the dazzling duo find themselves living comfortably in Mosul—until a young woman approaches them, insisting that she has escaped from a sorcerous cabal and that her memory has been altered by magic. The tools of the cabal? The Bones of the Old Ones. Looking up.

Kenyon, Sherrilyn. Time Untime. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2012. 448p. ISBN 9780312546618. $25.99; eISBN 9781466801981. CD: Macmillan Audio. PARANORMAL
Bad news for the warrior Ren Waya, just back from the dead: to keep a prophecy from coming true and an ancient evil from reemerging to destroy the world, he must kill Kateri Avani, the one person he has always cherished. Meanwhile, Kateri has been plagued by visions of places she hasn’t visited and a man she hasn’t met and has headed to Las Vegas (Las Vegas?) to calm herself. Next in the Dark-Hunter series; note that Kenyon has been No. 1 on the New York Times best sellers list an eye-opening 15 times in the last two years. Multiples, of course.

MacMahon, Kathleen. This Is How It Ends. Grand Central. Aug. 2012. 356p. ISBN 9781455511310. $24.99. Downloadable: Hachette Audio. POP FICTION
You’ll have to read the book to find out how it ends, but it begins in fall 2008 when Bruno travels from America to Ireland in search of his roots and meets unemployed architect Addie, who’s nursing both a broken heart and her ailing dad. Lots of excitement at the London Book Fair for this debut by MacMahon, a journalist RTÉ News, Ireland’s National Public Service Broadcaster; rights have sold to 20 territories so far.

Read, Cornelia. Valley of Ashes. Grand Central. Aug. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780446511360. $24.99. lrg. prnt. Downloadable: Hachette Audio. THRILLER
Read’s a rising author in the scary-reading realm; her debut, A Field of Darkness, was nominated for all the biggies—the Edgar, Barry, Anthony, Gumshoe, RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice, and Audie awards—and her subsequent titles have won stars, best books honors, and regional bestsellerdom. In her latest, Madeline Dare is bored with life as a stay-at-home mom in Boulder, CO, where the family has just moved, so she takes on a freelance newspaper assignment. Unfortunately, a serial arsonist is making her job a whole lot more trouble than she had imagined.

Rich, Simon. What in God’s Name. Reagan Arthur Bks: Little, Brown. Aug. 2012. 224p. ISBN 9780316133739. $23.99. POP FICTION
Founder and CEO of Heaven, Inc., a bored God is about to ditch Earth when Craig and Eliza, two starry-eyed angels from the Department of Miracles, intervene. If they can convince Earth’s two most socially maladjusted souls to fall in love, then the planet will be saved. Former president of the Harvard Lampoon, a four-time Emmy nominee for his writing on Saturday Night Live, and author of the novel Elliot Allagash (the film rights have just been sold), Rich has credentials in the Department of Laughs. Let’s see how this works.

Schneider, Michel. Marilyn’s Last Sessions: A Novel. Little, Brown. Aug. 2012. 416p. ISBN 9780316212991. $25.99. POP FICTION
Dropped into the schedule in time for the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, this translation from the French reimagines the star’s last visits with Dr Ralph Greenson, her psychoanalyst and at the time probably the most important person in her candle-in-the-wind life. In a revealing review when the translation appeared in the UK, John Banville calls this a fascinating if puzzling hybrid, even quoting the author’s observation that “like Marilyn’s hair, this novel is a phony of the bona-fide kind.” Take a look if Marilyn rage is hitting your community.

Tan, Sandi. The Black Isle. Grand Central. Aug. 2012. 464p. ISBN 9780446563925. $24.99. Downloadable: Hachette Audio. HISTORICAL
Cassandra has fled Shanghai with her father and twin brother for the Black Isle, a steamy, teemy British colony in the Indonesian archipelago. It’s crammed not only with immigrants like herself but with ghosts, which only she can see and whose blandishments she studiously resists. Meanwhile, there’s trouble in the world of the living: even as Cassandra wrestles with impossible love and her increasingly important role in the booming colony, war is looming—the book opens in the 1920s and takes us through World War II. An intriguing-sounding debut from filmmaker Tan.

Tsukiyama, Gail. A Hundred Flowers. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780312274818. $24.99. CD: Macmillan Audio. HISTORICAL
In 1957, Mao may have proclaimed, “Let a hundred flowers bloom,” but not long thereafter the Cultural Revolution began. Tsukiyama here portrays the family of Kai Ying, whose teacher husband is sent to the countryside for reeducation after writing a letter critical of the regime and whose young son, desperate for a view of his father, climbs a tree and breaks his leg badly after falling. Winner of the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award and author of best sellers like Women of the Silk, Tsukiyama can be relied on to deliver a powerful sense of the political through the delicately polished lens of the domestic.

Bennett, Amanda. The Cost of Hope. Random. Jun. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9781400069842. $26; eISBN 9780679604846. MEMOIR/HEALTHCARE
Not your standard memoir. Yes, Bennett is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, currently executive editor at Bloomberg and cochair of the Pulitzer Prize board. And, yes, she writes about her marriage to the wacky, delightful Terrence and their struggle when he was diagnosed with cancer. But after Terrence’s death she requested his medical records and learned something about how medical costs are set that she wants to share with us all. A 30,000-copy first printing; not fluff.

Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan. Knopf. Jun. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9780307967146. $27.95; eISBN 9780307958425. Downloadable: Random Audio. CURRENT EVENTS
Having taken on America’s pie-in-the-sky planning for the occupation of Iraq in Life in the Emerald City, an Overseas Press Club Book Award winner, Chandrasekaran is well equipped to consider the “war within the war” in southern Afghanistan in the year of Obama’s surge. There, the military parted ways with President Obama’s directives as nation building gave way to compromise and tacit acceptance of corruption. Important documentation that I hope readers aren’t too jaded to consider; with a 100,000-copy first printing.  

Cohen, Andy. Here’s What: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture. Holt. Jun. 2012. 288p. ISBN 9780805095838. $25. MEMOIR/PERFORMING ARTS
Bravo’s executive vice president of original programming and development, Cohen is the man who gave us Real Housewives. Here he talks about his enduring love for television (as a kid, he wrote home from camp to remind his mother to record the soaps) and his experiences as a gay man. Go for it, pop fans.

Keen, Andrew. Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us. St. Martin’s. Jun. 2012. 272p. ISBN 9780312624989. $25.99. TECHNOLOGY/SOCIAL SCIENCE
Social-media networking is supposed to be bringing us closer together. But in fact, argues Keen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who writes regularly for venues from the Weekly Standard to Jazziz, it ends up dividing rather than uniting us; the desire for individualistic expression (“it’s all about me”) trumps efforts at community building. An informed contrarian; keep your eye out.

McDermott, Terry & Josh Meyer, The Hunt for KSM. Little, Brown. Jun. 2012. 352p. ISBN 9780316186599. $27.99. CURRENT EVENTS
Responsible for al-Qaeda’s recruitment, training, and terrorism, Khalid Sheik Mohammad is considered the chief architect of the 9/11 attacks; he was captured in March 2003 by American and Pakistani intelligence agents and remains in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. This story of his capture is based on hundreds of interviews conducted by journalist McDermott (Perfect Soldiers), author of an eye-opening piece on KSM (as he is known) in The New Yorker, and Pulitzer Prize winner Meyer, whose “Inside al Qaeda” series ran in the Los Angeles Times. Serious politicos will want this.  

McMillan, Tracy. Why You’re Not Married: Straight Talk You Need To Get the Relationship You Deserve. Ballantine. Jun. 2012. 256p. ISBN 9780345532923. $25; eISBN 9780345532930. RELATIONSHIPS
McMillan has two interesting qualifications for writing this book. First, her Huffington Post piece on the subject is the fourth most viewed in Huffington history, having hit 1.4 million views and counting. Second, she has been married three times herself and has some idea of what went wrong. Pretty no-nonsense; one chapter called “You’re a Bitch” examines issues of anger and fear. Given the popularity of the original piece and the subject itself, this looks like a strong purchase.

Samuelsson, Marcus. Yes, Chef. Random. Jun. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780385342605. $26; eISBN 9780440338819. CD: Random Audio. MEMOIR/FOOD
Orphaned in Ethiopia, raised by an adoptive family in Sweden, the youngest chef ever to be given three stars by the New York Times, and recent proprietor of Red Rooster in Harlem, James Beard Award–winning chef Samuelsson has some story to tell. Yes, food memoirs are sizzling, Samuelsson has 30,000 Twitter followers, and the issues here go beyond eating—Samuelsson considers what it’s like to be a black man in the white-white world of upscale cooking.   

Sennett, Frank. Groupon’s Biggest Deal Ever: The Inside Story of How One Insane Gamble, Tons of Unbelievable Hype, and Millions of Wild Deals Made Billions for One Ballsy Joker. St. Martin’s. Jun. 2012. 320p. ISBN 9781250000842. $25.99. ECONOMICS
A discount service offering a deal a day at local merchants in cities worldwide, Groupon was founded by Andrew Mason, who turned down a $6 billion buyout offer from Google in 2010 and is now an online behemoth worth $30 billion. Groupon is now reputedly the fastest-growing company in Internet history. Sennett, who is Time Out Chicago’s editor in chief, profiles the company and risk-taker Mason. If you want to stay au courant.

Shriver, Mark. A Good Man: Rediscovering My Father, Sarge Shriver. Holt. Jun. 2012. 240p. ISBN 9780805095302. $24; CD: Macmillan Audio. MEMOIR
Sargent Shriver founded the Peace Corps and helped bring about President Johnson’s War on Poverty, but this is not an account of his accomplishments. Instead, son Mark portrays a kind and good man whose daily behavior was shaped by the principles articulated here, which the author determined through conversations and examination of notes and letters after his father’s death. A heart warmer.

Stott, Rebecca. Darwin’s Ghosts. Spiegel & Grau. Jun. 2012. 400p. ISBN 9781400069378. $27; eISBN 9780679604136. SCIENCE
There’s so much that’s intriguing about this book. First, the subject: Stott points out that evolution was not an idea dreamed up by Charles Darwin but evolved (pardon the expression) over millennia. Here she provides the history of an idea, starting with Aristotle and working up through the Arab world to the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species. Second, Stott is not a scientist, which at first gave me pause, but a noteworthy novelist (Ghostwalk) and English literature professor. But she’s proved her science bona fides with the well-received Darwin and the Barnacle, and her writing skills should enhance the telling of this tale.

Stutz, Phil & Barry Michels. The Tools. Spiegel & Grau. Jun. 2012. 304p. ISBN 9780679644446. $25; eISBN 9780679644453. CD: Random Audio. SELF-HELP/PSYCHOLOGY
Frustrated with how long standard therapy takes—the complaint of plenty of patients, too—psychotherapist Michels turned to Stutz, a psychiatrist who had devised a set of tools aimed at bringing about quick, decisive change. The results have been good enough to bring the authors a New Yorker profile, and because their Los Angeles–based practices bring celebrity patients as well, testimonials are promised that will surely drive readership. For me, though, the idea of rapid improvement instead of just talk, talk, talk is what appeals. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Tye, Larry. Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero. Random. Jun. 2012. 448p. ISBN 9781400068661. $27; eISBN 9781588369185. CD: Random Audio. POP CULTURE/HISTORY
The best-selling author of Satchel, about Negro Leagues pitcher Satchel Paige, here profiles a very different kind of American hero—one that is in fact imaginary. But as Tye shows, Superman both reflected and affected the American psyche tremendously. Tye uses his skills as a former Boston Globe reporter to interview over 300 people involved with the Superman story and even gives us some little-known facts about this hero—for instance, he’s Jewish. Now that should get people to read the book.