Things are a bit different this week, as most of the really exciting new releases fall into the nonfiction category, and even include a cookbook! You’ll also find riveting accounts of surviving war, running for President, and making a movie, along with a thoughtful examination of the rise of A.I. and what it means for us going forward. Those looking to escape into fiction have some great choices as well, like a new short story collection from the always clever Curtis Sittenfeld, thrilling suspense from John Sandford and Iris Johansen, and a debut romance novel by Julia Whelan that has already been optioned for a movie!
FICTION
You Think It, I’ll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
In ‘The World Has Many Butterflies’, a married woman flirts with a man she meets at parties by playing You Think It, I’ll Say It, putting into words the bitchy things she guesses he’s thinking about their fellow guests. But she is in for a shock when, in time, she finds out what was really in his mind. ‘The Nominee’ sees Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, confessing her surprising true feelings about a woman journalist she has sparred with over the years. In ‘Gender Studies’, a visiting academic sleeps with her taxi driver, for what turns out to be all the wrong reasons.
The theme that unites these stories in this dazzling first collection by Curtis Sittenfeld is how even the cleverest people tend to misread others, and how much we all deceive ourselves. Sharp and tender, funny and wise, this collection shows Sittenfeld’s knack for creating real, believable characters that spring off the page, while also skewering contemporary mores with brilliant dry wit.
Description from Goodreads.
“Sittenfeld spins magic. Reading these consistently engrossing stories is a pleasure.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“In her first collection of stories… [Sittenfeld] writes with her trademark wit.” – Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Available Formats:
MYSTERY & SUSPENSE
Twisted Prey by John Sandford
Lucas Davenport had crossed paths with her before.
A rich psychopath, Taryn Grant had run successfully for the U.S. Senate, where Lucas had predicted she’d fit right in. He was also convinced that she’d been responsible for three murders, though he’d never been able to prove it. Once a psychopath had gotten that kind of rush, though, he or she often needed another fix, so he figured he might be seeing her again.
He was right. A federal marshal now, with a very wide scope of investigation, he’s heard rumors that Grant has found her seat on the Senate intelligence committee, and the contacts she’s made from it, to be very…useful. Pinning those rumors down was likely to be just as difficult as before, and considerably more dangerous.
But they had unfinished business, he and Grant. One way or the other, he was going to see it through to the end.
Description from Goodreads.
“Thoroughly entertaining…a deadly cat-and-mouse game that will keep the reader turning the pages up to the exciting climax.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“One of the best in an always-strong series. Given the current geopolitical reality, it’s timely, too, and the conclusion is a rockin’ ‘didn’t see that coming’ beauty.” – Booklist
Available Formats:
Print Book | Audiobook | Playaway | eBook | eAudiobook
Shattered Mirror by Iris Johansen
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a new explosive thriller featuring forensic sculptor Eve Duncan.
Iris Johansen returns with a thrilling novel of action and danger where fan favorite Eve Duncan is thrown once more into a deadly game of intrigue.
It begins when Eve receives a package containing a skull—and instructions for Eve to do her work reconstructing it. When she does, a beautiful woman’s face emerges. But when Eve is introduced to the dead woman’s mirror image, a game is on where her twin’s life hangs in the balance.
Description from Goodreads.
“Fans of paranormal suspense will be rewarded.” – Publishers Weekly
“Mystery, murder, and chaos are found in this new thriller. I absolutely loved it.” – Urban Book Reviews
Available Formats:
ROMANCE
My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan
American Ella Durran has had the same plan for her life since she was thirteen: Study at Oxford. At 24, she’s finally made it to England on a Rhodes Scholarship when she’s offered an unbelievable position in a rising political star’s presidential campaign. With the promise that she’ll work remotely and return to DC at the end of her Oxford year, she’s free to enjoy her Once in a Lifetime Experience. That is, until a smart-mouthed local who is too quick with his tongue and his car ruins her shirt and her first day.
When Ella discovers that her English literature course will be taught by none other than that same local, Jamie Davenport, she thinks for the first time that Oxford might not be all she’s envisioned. But a late-night drink reveals a connection she wasn’t anticipating finding and what begins as a casual fling soon develops into something much more when Ella learns Jamie has a life-changing secret.
Immediately, Ella is faced with a seemingly impossible decision: turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with to follow her political dreams or be there for him during a trial neither are truly prepared for. As the end of her year in Oxford rapidly approaches, Ella must decide if the dreams she’s always wanted are the same ones she’s now yearning for.
Description from Goodreads.
“This pull-at-the-heartstrings yet sexy debut novel by Whelan, an award-winning audiobook narrator, is all about the choices we make for ourselves and others. It will delight Anglophiles as well as Jojo Moyes fans.” – Library Journal
“Whelan has created a beautiful, romantic story that focuses on big ideas—love, death, poetry, and what really matters in the end.” – Kirkus Reviews
“This debut novel has a preponderance of heart while offering respite from heady emotions with light wit. Whelan draws from her own Oxford experience, creating a richly rendered setting of not just the university’s spires but of the surrounding chip shops and grubby pubs that are just as vital.” – Booklist
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NONFICTION
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya & Elizabeth Weil
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were “thunder.” In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries, searching for safety–perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted asylum in the United States, where she embarked on another journey–to excavate her past and, after years of being made to feel less than human, claim her individuality.
Raw, urgent, and bracingly original, The Girl Who Smiled Beads captures the true costs and aftershocks of war: what is forever destroyed; what can be repaired; the fragility of memory; the disorientation that comes of other people seeing you only as broken–thinking you need, and want, to be saved. But it is about more than the brutality of war. It is about owning your experiences, about the life we create: intricately detailed, painful, beautiful, a work in progress.
Description from Goodreads.
“This book is not a conventional story about war and its aftermath; it’s a powerful coming-of-age story in which a girl explores her identity in the wake of a brutal war that destroyed her family and home. Wamariya is an exceptional narrator and her story is unforgettable.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“At once heart-breaking and hopeful, [Wamariya’s] story is about power and helplessness, loneliness and identity, and the strange juxtaposition of poverty and privilege…. This beautifully written and touching account goes beyond the horror of war to recall the lived experience of a child trying to make sense of violence and strife. Intimate and lyrical, the narrative flows from Wamariya’s early experience to her life in the United States with equal grace. A must-read.” – Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW
“In this eloquent and engaging memoir, Clemantine Wamariya recalls a childhood spent as a refugee on the run from war, violence, and terror, and a womanhood shaped by those experiences. Affecting and utterly eye-opening, The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a powerful reminder of just how strong and indomitable the human spirit can be.” – Bustle
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Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling by Amy Chozick
For a decade, award-winning New York Times journalist Amy Chozick chronicled Hillary Clinton’s pursuit of the presidency. Chozick’s front-row seat, initially covering Clinton’s imploding 2008 campaign, and then her assignment to “The Hillary Beat” ahead of the 2016 election, took her to 48 states and set off a nearly ten-years-long journey in which the formative years of her twenties and thirties became – both personally and professionally – intrinsically intertwined to Clinton’s presidential ambitions.
Chozick’s candor and clear-eyed perspective—from her seat on the Hillary bus and reporting from inside the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters, to her run-ins with Donald J. Trump and her globetrotting with Bill Clinton— provide fresh intrigue and insights into the story we thought we all knew. This is the real story of what happened, with the kind of dishy, inside details that repeatedly surprise and enlighten.
But Chasing Hillary is also a rollicking, irreverent, refreshingly honest personal story of how the would-be first woman president looms over Chozick’s life. And, as she gets married, attempts to infiltrate the upper echelons of political journalism and inquires about freezing her eggs so she can have children after the 2016 campaign, Chozick dives deeper into decisions Clinton made at similar points in her life.
In the process, Chozick came to see Clinton not as an unknowable enigma and political animal but as a complex person, full of contradictions and forged in the political battles and media storms that had long predated Chozick’s years of coverage.
Trailing Clinton through all of the highs and lows of the most noxious and wildly dramatic presidential election in American history, Chozick comes to understand what drove Clinton, how she accomplished what no woman had before, and why she ultimately failed. Poignant, illuminating, laugh-out-loud funny, Chasing Hillary is a campaign book like never before that reads like a fast-moving political novel.
Description from Goodreads.
“Poignant, insightful…perceptive, pithy and surprising.” – Washington Post
“[A] funny, raw and female take on the campaign memoir.” – People
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The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity by Byron Reese
As we approach a great turning point in history when technology is poised to redefine what it means to be human, The Fourth Age offers fascinating insight into AI, robotics, and their extraordinary implications for our species.
In The Fourth Age, Byron Reese makes the case that technology has reshaped humanity just three times in history:
– 100,000 years ago, we harnessed fire, which led to language.
– 10,000 years ago, we developed agriculture, which led to cities and warfare.
– 5,000 years ago, we invented the wheel and writing, which lead to the nation state.
We are now on the doorstep of a fourth change brought about by two technologies: AI and robotics. The Fourth Age provides extraordinary background information on how we got to this point, and how—rather than what—we should think about the topics we’ll soon all be facing: machine consciousness, automation, employment, creative computers, radical life extension, artificial life, AI ethics, the future of warfare, superintelligence, and the implications of extreme prosperity.
By asking questions like “Are you a machine?” and “Could a computer feel anything?”, Reese leads you through a discussion along the cutting edge in robotics and AI, and, provides a framework by which we can all understand, discuss, and act on the issues of the Fourth Age, and how they’ll transform humanity.
Description from Goodreads.
“In The Fourth Age, Byron Reese offers the reader something much more valuable than what to think about Artificial Intelligence and robotics—he focuses on HOW to think about these technologies, and the ways in which they will change the world forever. If you only read just one book about the AI revolution, make it this one.” – John Mackey, co-founder & CEO, Whole Foods Market
“Reese frames the deepest questions of our time in clear language that invites readers to make their own choices. Using 100,000 years of human history as his guide, he explores the issues around artificial general intelligence, robots, consciousness, automation, the end of work, abundance, and immortality. As he does so, Reese reveals himself to be an optimist and urges us to use technology to build a better world.” – Bob Metcalfe, UT Austin Professor of Innovation, Ethernet inventor, 3Com founder
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Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story by Chris Nashawaty
“Caddyshack” is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working class kids and the white collar buffoons that make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn’t start out that way, and everyone who made it certainly didn’t have the word “classic” in mind as the cameras were rolling.
In Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story film critic for Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty goes behind the scenes of the iconic film, chronicling the rise of comedy’s greatest deranged minds as they form The National Lampoon, turn the entertainment industry on its head, and ultimately blow up both a golf course and popular culture as we know it. Caddyshack is at once an eye-opening narrative about one of the most interesting, surreal, and dramatic film productions there’s ever been, and a rich portrait of the biggest, and most revolutionary names in Hollywood. So, it’s got that going for it…which is nice.
Description from Goodreads.
“In Nashawaty’s hilarious depiction, the production is shown to have been utter chaos, albeit with some creative genius tossed in… [Caddyshack] provides both an entertaining showbiz chronicle and, by the conclusion, an unexpectedly moving tribute to Kenney’s short life and lasting comic legacy.” – Publishers Weekly
“An everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about look at a cult movie whose reputation has grown in the four decades since its initial release. Nashawaty provides an eye-opening pleasure for Caddyshack fans.” – Kirkus Reviews
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Magnolia Table: A Collection of Recipes for Gathering by Joanna Gaines
Magnolia Table is infused with Joanna Gaines’ warmth and passion for all things family, prepared and served straight from the heart of her home, with recipes inspired by dozens of Gaines family favorites and classic comfort selections from the couple’s new Waco restaurant, Magnolia Table.
Jo believes there’s no better way to celebrate family and friendship than through the art of togetherness, celebrating tradition, and sharing a great meal. Magnolia Table includes 125 classic recipes—from breakfast, lunch, and dinner to small plates, snacks, and desserts—presenting a modern selection of American classics and personal family favorites. Complemented by her love for her garden, these dishes also incorporate homegrown, seasonal produce at the peak of its flavor. Inside Magnolia Table, you’ll find recipes the whole family will enjoy, such as:
Chicken Pot Pie
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Asparagus and Fontina Quiche
Brussels Sprouts with Crispy Bacon, Toasted Pecans, and Balsamic Reduction
Peach Caprese
Overnight French Toast
White Cheddar Bisque
Fried Chicken with Sticky Poppy Seed Jam
Lemon Pie
Mac and Cheese
Full of personal stories and beautiful photos, Magnolia Table is an invitation to share a seat at the table with Joanna Gaines and her family.
Description from Goodreads.
“[T]he recipes are not overly complicated, and that’s exactly the point. Gaines hopes you spend less time stressing in the kitchen and more time socializing over something delicious.” – Brit + Co
“Joanna’s recipes and gorgeous photography feel home-cooked, farm-raised, and restaurant ready all at once.” – Cooking Light