Non-fiction lovers have a lot to be excited about this week, as the majority of the best new books arriving today fall into that category. And they are an interesting bunch too, covering everything from a possible breakthrough in the fight against cancer, the early days of our country, how love ages with us, and a memoir from Michelle Obama, among others. Of course, if you’d rather escape into a good story, we have a few of those for you as well. So check out this week’s list, and happy reading!
FICTION
Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg
Lucille Howard is getting on in years, but she stays busy. Thanks to the inspiration of her dearly departed friend Arthur Truluv, she has begun to teach baking classes, sharing the secrets to her delicious classic Southern yellow cake, the perfect pinwheel cookies, and other sweet essentials. Her classes have become so popular that she’s hired Iris, a new resident of Mason, Missouri, as an assistant. Iris doesn’t know how to bake but she needs to keep her mind off a big decision she sorely regrets.
When a new family moves in next door and tragedy strikes, Lucille begins to look out for Lincoln, their son. Lincoln’s parents aren’t the only ones in town facing hard choices and uncertain futures. In these difficult times, the residents of Mason come together and find the true power of community–just when they need it the most.
“Elizabeth Berg’s characters jump right off the page and into your heart” said Fannie Flagg about The Story of Arthur Truluv. The same could be said about Night of Miracles, a heartwarming novel that reminds us that the people we come to love are often the ones we don’t expect.
Description from Goodreads.
“Fans of Meg Wolitzer, Emma Straub, or Berg’s previous novels will appreciate the richly complex characters and clear prose. Redemptive without being maudlin, this story of two misfits lucky to have found one another will tug at readers’ heartstrings.” – Booklist
“In Berg’s charming but far from shallow alternative reality, the focus is on the things that make life worth living: the human connections that light the way through the dark of aging, bereavement, illness and our own mistakes.” – USA Today
“The language is smooth and the story moves along at a comfortable pace to a fitting … ending. This pleasant novel highlights the joys that can come from the little things in life.” – Publishers Weekly
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Fox 8: A Story by George Saunders
Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak “Yuman” by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children’s bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people–even after “danjer” arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack. Told with his distinctive blend of humor and pathos, Fox 8 showcases the extraordinary imaginative talents of George Saunders, whom the New York Times called “the writer for our time.”
Description from Goodreads.
“If you like Saunders already, Fox 8 will deliver what you want: humor, pathos, allegory with semi-literate animals. If you haven’t discovered him yet, this novella will hook you. It offers what’s best about Saunders’ warm whimsy and sharp wit: his satirical eye, his ear for voice and character.” – GQ
“The delicious mangling of language that occurs as the fox, known among his vulpine friends as Fox 8, transliterates the words he hears gives the story a chewy textural vitality that is only really effective on the page. … Not many writers could get away with this, but somehow Saunders carries it off.” – Evening Standard
“A charming, funny twist on a fairy tale.” – iNews
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A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for success. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent – but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own.
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful – but desperately lonely – older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.
Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall…
Description from Goodreads.
“A Ladder to the Sky is clever, chilling and beautifully paced; a study of inner corrosion that Patricia Highsmith herself could not have done better… wickedly astute.” – The Times
“Boyne’s fast-paced, white-knuckle plot, accompanied by delightfully sardonic commentary on the ego, insecurities, and pitfalls of those involved in the literary world, makes for a truly engrossing experience.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Skillfully constructed, and above all, compulsively entertaining…The finest novel of the year.” – The Irish Examiner
“As a study in the self-rationalizing ‘ethics’ of a psychopath, this book is fascinating. As a story, it is horrifically plausible.” – The Sunday Independent
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MYSTERY
The Shadows We Hide by Allen Eskens
Joe Talbert, Jr. has never once met his namesake. Now out of college, a cub reporter for the Associated Press in Minneapolis, he stumbles across a story describing the murder of a man named Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern Minnesota.
Full of curiosity about whether this man might be his father, Joe is shocked to find that none of the town’s residents have much to say about the dead man-other than that his death was long overdue. Joe discovers that the dead man was a loathsome lowlife who cheated his neighbors, threatened his daughter, and squandered his wife’s inheritance after she, too, passed away–an inheritance that may now be Joe’s.
Mired in uncertainty and plagued by his own devastated relationship with his mother, who is seeking to get back into her son’s life, Joe must put together the missing pieces of his family history– before his quest for discovery threatens to put him in a grave of his own.
Description from Goodreads.
“A brilliant sequel full of deeply developed characters… Eskens keeps readers guessing until the last pages in this darkly lyrical and brutally intimate story of one man’s journey of self-discovery.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Murder, arson, betrayal, and reconciliation will keep pages turning and leave readers eager for more of Joe Talbert.” – Booklist
“Eskens returns to Joe, Lila, and Jeremy from his debut in this intriguing novel. Joe, after revealing a big scandal in one of his stories, learns about the death of a man with the same name as him. Seeing an opportunity, he travels to a small town to investigate. There, he gets caught up in more than he bargained for. Full of surprises about the investigation and the people in Joe’s life, you don’t want to miss this one from a talented writer.” – New Hanover County Public Library
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SCI-FI & FANTASY
Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri
The Amrithi are outcasts; nomads descended of desert spirits, they are coveted and persecuted throughout the Empire for the power in their blood. Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor and an exiled Amrithi mother she can barely remember, but whose face and magic she has inherited.
When Mehr’s power comes to the attention of the Emperor’s most feared mystics, she must use every ounce of will, subtlety, and power she possesses to resist their cruel agenda.
Should she fail, the gods themselves may awaken seeking vengeance…
Description from Goodreads.
“[A] complex, affecting epic fantasy…Intricate world-building, heartrending emotional stakes, and Suri’s well-wrought prose make this a worthy addition to any epic fantasy fan’s bookshelf.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“[A] fantasy debut that draws from the history and culture of India’s Mughal Empire….[with] deft and textured characterization.” – Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW
“Empire of Sand is an exciting, refreshing and dark debut featuring intricate and intriguing magic. The romantic elements are very well worked as is the unpredictable plot. … Highly recommended.” – Fantasy Book Review
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NONFICTION
Becoming by Michelle Obama
An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.
In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African-American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms.
Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.
Description from Goodreads.
“Becoming arrives like a glass bottle of decency, preserved from a nationwide garbage fire. This is a straightforward … autobiography from a major public figure that stands in remarkably sharp contrast to the state of our discourse — starting with the man in the White House. Yet that contrast isn’t derived from Obama’s scathing commentary on Donald Trump, which is both brief and somewhat expected, but rather, from the rest — as in, the vast majority — of Becoming, which describes one woman’s growth from the South Side of Chicago to First Lady of the United States, through tales of empowerment and overcoming adversity.” – Entertainment Weekly
“Becoming takes her historic status as the first black woman to serve as first lady and melds it deftly into the American narrative. She writes of the common aspects of her story and — as the only White House resident to count an enslaved great-great-grandfather as an ancestor — of its singular sweep.” – Washington Post
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Print Book | Audiobook | eBook | eAudiobook
The End of the End of the Earth: Essays by Jonathan Franzen
A sharp and provocative new essay collection from the award-winning author of Freedom and The Corrections.
The essayist, Jonathan Franzen writes, is like “a fire-fighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames of shame, is to run straight into them.” For the past twenty-five years, even as his novels have earned him worldwide acclaim, Franzen has led a second life as a risk-taking essayist. Now, at a moment when technology has inflamed tribal hatreds and the planet is beset by unnatural calami- ties, he is back with a new collection of essays that recall us to more humane ways of being in the world.
Franzen’s great loves are literature and birds, and The End of the End of the Earth is a passionate argument for both. Where the new media tend to confirm one’s prejudices, he writes, literature “invites you to ask whether you might be somewhat wrong, maybe even entirely wrong, and to imagine why someone else might hate you.” Whatever his subject, Franzen’s essays are always skeptical of received opinion, steeped in irony, and frank about his own failings. He’s frank about birds, too (they kill “everything imaginable”), but his reporting and reflections on them–on seabirds in New Zealand, warblers in East Africa, penguins in Antarctica–are both a moving celebration of their beauty and resilience and a call to action to save what we love.
Calm, poignant, carefully argued, full of wit, The End of the End of the Earth provides a welcome breath of hope and reason.
Description from Goodreads.
“Franzen displays his signature precision and deadpan humor.” – Vanity Fair
“Sparkles with intelligent and insightful forays.” – Kirkus Reviews
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Late-Life Love: A Memoir by Susan Gubar
On Susan Gubar’s seventieth birthday, she receives a beautiful ring from her husband. As she contemplates their sustaining relationship, she begins to consider how older lovers differ from their youthful counterparts—and from ageist stereotypes. While her husband confronts age-related disabilities that effectively ground them, Susan dawdles over the logistics of moving from their cherished country house to a more manageable place in town and starts seeking out literature on the changing seasons of desire.
Throughout the complications of devoted caregiving, her own ongoing cancer treatments, apartment hunting, the dismantling of a household, and perplexity over the breakdown of a treasured friendship, Susan finds consolation in books and movies. Works by writers from Ovid and Shakespeare to Gabriel García Márquez and Marilynne Robinson lead Susan to appraise the obstacles many senior couples overcome: the unique sexuality of bodies beyond their prime as well as the trials of retirement, adult children, physical infirmities, the multiplications or subtractions of memory, and the aftereffects of trauma.
On the page and in life, Susan realizes that age cannot wither love. A memoir proving that the heart’s passions have no expiration date, Late-Life Love rejoices in second chances.
Description from Goodreads.
“Gubar’s wise, honest, and frequently humorous work reveals that even amid the inevitable struggles of old age, personal and conjugal reinvention is not only quite possible, but also quite possibly lovely―both in literature and in life.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“A deeply personal and bittersweet paean to love ‘immune to the vicissitude of time.’…[A] book filled with wit, candor, and poignancy.” – Kirkus Reviews
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The Patch by John McPhee
An “album quilt,” an artful assortment of nonfiction writings by John McPhee that have not previously appeared in any book.
The Patch is the seventh collection of essays by the nonfiction master, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It is divided into two parts.
Part 1, “The Sporting Scene,” consists of pieces on fishing, football, golf, and lacrosse–from fly casting for chain pickerel in fall in New Hampshire to walking the linksland of St. Andrews at an Open Championship. Part 2, called “An Album Quilt,” is a montage of fragments of varying length from pieces done across the years that have never appeared in book form–occasional pieces, memorial pieces, reflections, reminiscences, and short items in various magazines including The New Yorker. They range from a visit to the Hershey chocolate factory to encounters with Oscar Hammerstein, Joan Baez, and Mount Denali.
Emphatically, the author’s purpose was not merely to preserve things but to choose passages that might entertain contemporary readers. Starting with 250,000 words, he gradually threw out 75 percent of them, and randomly assembled the remaining fragments into “an album quilt.” Among other things, The Patch is a covert memoir.
Description from Goodreads.
“[McPhee] provides a bountiful cornucopia of insightful essays that display the wide range of his interests and tastes . . . McPhee delights in cracking open subjects, both ordinary and esoteric, and making them accessible to the layperson in works that testify to his virtuosity as one of the greatest living American essayists.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
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The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer by Charles Graeber
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Nurse comes an empowering and accessible story of the discoveries of the tricks cancer uses to avoid the immune system, and the important new therapies already unleashing the immune system to fight — and beat — the disease.
Four years in the writing, The Breakthrough is an “exciting read” about the discoveries which received the 2018 Nobel Prize in October, and a dramatic and exciting turning point in our relationship with a disease that has for too long defined us.
For decades, scientists have puzzled over one of medicine’s most confounding mysteries: Why doesn’t our immune system recognize and fight cancer the way it does other diseases, like the common cold?
As it turns out, the answer to that question can be traced to a series of tricks that cancer has developed to turn off normal immune responses-tricks that scientists have only recently discovered and learned to defeat. The result is what many are calling cancer’s “penicillin moment,” a revolutionary discovery in our understanding of cancer and how to beat it.
In The Breakthrough, Graeber guides readers through the revolutionary scientific research bringing immunotherapy out of the realm of the miraculous and into the forefront of twenty-first-century medical science. As advances in the fields of cancer research and the human immune system continue to fuel a therapeutic arms race among biotech and pharmaceutical research centers around the world, the next step-harnessing the wealth of new information to create modern and more effective patient therapies-is unfolding at an unprecedented pace, rapidly redefining our relationship with this all-too-human disease.
Groundbreaking, riveting, and expertly told, The Breakthrough is the story of the game-changing scientific discoveries that unleash our natural ability to recognize and defeat cancer, as told through the experiences of the patients, physicians, and cancer immunotherapy researchers who are on the front lines. This is the incredible true story of the race to find a cure, a dispatch from the life-changing world of modern oncological science, and a brave new chapter in medical history.
Description from Goodreads.
“Deft, detailed…fascinating. From the once-discredited pioneer William Coley to immunologist and Nobel laureate James P. Allison, (the characters) form a brilliant, driven, admirably stubborn group that Graeber brings vividly to life.” – Nature
“Crisp and suspenseful…the perfect backstory for this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine.” – BBC
“The risks of tinkering with an intricate immune system are obviously high, even perilous. But the potential reward is a cure. Exciting reading.” – Booklist
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Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants by H.W. Brands
From New York Times bestselling historian H. W. Brands comes the riveting story of how, in nineteenth-century America, a new set of political giants battled to complete the unfinished work of the Founding Fathers and decide the future of our democracy.
In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina’s John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery.
Together these heirs of Washington, Jefferson and Adams took the country to war, battled one another for the presidency and set themselves the task of finishing the work the Founders had left undone. Their rise was marked by dramatic duels, fierce debates, scandal and political betrayal. Yet each in his own way sought to remedy the two glaring flaws in the Constitution: its refusal to specify where authority ultimately rested, with the states or the nation, and its unwillingness to address the essential incompatibility of republicanism and slavery.
They wrestled with these issues for four decades, arguing bitterly and hammering out political compromises that held the Union together, but only just. Then, in 1850, when California moved to join the Union as a free state, “the immortal trio” had one last chance to save the country from the real risk of civil war. But, by that point, they had never been further apart.
Thrillingly and authoritatively, H. W. Brands narrates an epic American rivalry and the little-known drama of the dangerous early years of our democracy.
Description from Goodreads.
“Brands uses the life stories of three consequential early-19th-century American politicians—all with unfulfilled aspirations to become president—to show how tensions inherent in the founding fathers’ vision of the country led to the calamity of the Civil War . . . This fascinating history illuminates rifts that still plague the country today.” – Publishers Weekly
“An engrossing and revealing account of personal rivalries that played out on a national scale.” – Booklist
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Handsome Johnny: The Life and Death of Johnny Rosselli: Gentleman Gangster, Hollywood Producer, CIA Assassin by Lee Server
A rich biography of the legendary figure at the center of the century’s darkest secrets: an untold story of golden age Hollywood, modern Las Vegas, JFK-era scandal and international intrigue from the New York Times bestselling author of Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing…
A singular figure in the annals of the American underworld, Johnny Rosselli’s career flourished for an extraordinary fifty years, from the bloody years of bootlegging in the Roaring Twenties–the last protégé of Al Capone―to the modern era of organized crime as a dominant corporate power. The Mob’s “Man in Hollywood,” Johnny Rosselli introduced big-time crime to the movie industry, corrupting unions and robbing moguls in the biggest extortion plot in history. A man of great allure and glamour, Rosselli befriended many of the biggest names in the movie capital―including studio boss Harry Cohn, helping him to fund Columbia Pictures–and seduced some of its greatest female stars, including Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe. In a remarkable turn of events, Johnny himself would become a Hollywood filmmaker―producing two of the best film noirs of the 1940s.
Following years in federal prison, Rosselli began a new venture, overseeing the birth and heyday of Las Vegas. Working for new Chicago boss Sam Giancana, he became the gambling mecca’s behind-the-scenes boss, running the town from his suites and poolside tables at the Tropicana and Desert Inn, enjoying the Rat Pack nightlife with pals Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. In the 1960s, in the most unexpected chapter in an extraordinary life, Rosselli became the central figure in a bizarre plot involving the Kennedy White House, the CIA, and an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. Based upon years of research, written with compelling style and vivid detail, Handsome Johnny is the great telling of an amazing tale.
Description from Goodreads.
“Server employs evocative phrasing to luridly examine the shady underbelly of movies, moguls, and politics from the 1930s through the ’60s, all through the prism of the charming Rosselli. Filled with crackerjack writing and Damon Runyonesque characters, this entertaining page-turner is a rich look at one of organized crime’s most intriguing characters.” – Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“A definitive rags-to-riches biography… Paced like a fine piece of fiction, this is a handsomely written chronicle of an interesting mob character.” – Kirkus Reviews