Prepub Alert, October 1, 2010
Oct 1, 2010FICTION
Binchy, Maeve. Minding Frankie. Knopf. Mar. 2011. 384p. ISBN 9780307273567. $26.95. CD: Random Audio.
Bless her heart, Binchy tells folks, "Don't expect me to write about my dismal Irish childhood, because I didn't have one!" In her latest, recovering alcoholic Noel agrees to take care of the child an old girlfriend is carrying—she's terminally ill and adamant that the child is his. Fortunately, his friends pitch in, and all's well until a prim social worker intervenes. Binchy is a strong writer who remains strong; her first book with Knopf, 2007's Whitethorn Woods, was one of her biggest best sellers, and 2009's Heart & Soul hardly lost ground in a bad economy that saw book sales really sink. With a 300,000-copy first printing and a reading group guide; wish she were visiting.
Coben, Harlan. Live Wire. Dutton. Mar. 2011. 400p. ISBN 9780525952060. $27.95.
Sports agent Myron Bolitar is back, facing down a pregnant former tennis star whose rock star husband, Lex, has vanished. Was Lex starting to doubt that he was the baby's dad? New Coben fans and old love Bolitar, who's seasoned nicely over the years and after a hiatus has been popping back regularly into Coben's oeuvre.
Cussler, Clive & Jack Du Brul. The Jungle. Putnam. Mar. 2011. 384p. ISBN 9780399157042. $27.95. CD: Penguin Audio.
A WMD first designed in 13th- century China, trouble along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, and a woman missing in the steamy Southeast Asian jungles. Sounds like another Juan Cabrillo adventure. Fun fluff from prolific best seller Cussler (expect a couple from him in 2011), here backed up by Du Brul, who has his own strong series starring geologist/spy Philip Mercer.
Doctorow, E.L. All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories. Random. Mar. 2011. 208p. ISBN 9781400069637. $26.
Six new Doctorow stories, never before in book form! Plus the best of the rest. Doctorow packs worlds into his short fiction: witness the story here about an everyday guy who suddenly opts to live off the grid, or another about a waiter whose immigrant Russian wife entangles him in organized crime. Doctorow's recent Homer & Langley has sold 165,000 copies so far, not as many as the Pulitzer Prize–winning The March or the phenomenal Ragtime, of course, but still a hefty number for any literary author. Can't wait.
Edgarian, Carol. Three Stages of Amazement. Scribner. Mar. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9781439198308. $25. CD: Random Audio.
At last! After 15 years the author of the much-noted Rise the Euphrates (and cofounder of the magazine Narrative) is back with her second novel—which is ripe for the times. Just married, Lena Rusch and Charlie Pepper anticipate a golden future but encounter everyday tragedies from economic woes to a stillborn child. Meanwhile, Lena's Silicon Valley uncle, Cal, and his wife, Ivy, create troubles of their own. Check this out; it should attract good buzz. With a four-city tour to Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle; a reading group guide.
Fairstein, Linda. Silent Mercy. Dutton. Mar. 2011. 400p. ISBN 9780525952022. $26.95. CD: Penguin Audio.
One woman, wearing a Star of David, ablaze on the steps of Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Manhattan. Another, of a different faith, dead in a Catholic Church in Little Italy. Is there a hate crime here for Alexandra Cooper to investigate? Fairstein was Silver Bullet recipient at this year's Thrillerfest, and last March's Hell Gate was her best showing yet, so she is on a roll.
Mankell, Henning. The Troubled Man: A Kurt Wallander Mystery. Knopf. Mar. 2011. 384p. ISBN 9780307593498. $25.95. CD: Random Audio.
Before Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, there was Mankell's Kurt Wallander. Here, he's not on the case when a retired naval officer disappears after a stroll in the forest, but he gets involved anyway because the gentleman is his daughter's father-in-law. Wallander is making his first appearance in more than ten years, and, evidently, it's likely his last. This will be big; with a 150,000-copy first printing.
Mosley, Walter. When the Thrill Is Gone: A Leonid McGill Mystery. Riverhead: Penguin Group (USA). Mar. 2011. 336p. ISBN 9781594487811. $26.95. CD: Penguin Audio.
Bad news for Leonid McGill in his third outing: no jobs, mortally ill friend, crazy stepson, crazy girlfriend, really crazy wife (she's made her old lover mad by taking on a new one), and now there's a client who looks like trouble. She says she's an artist, married to a rich collector, and she's afraid for her life. McGill has Easy Rawlins potential, but he's not there yet. With a national tour.
Shepard, Jim. You Think That's Bad: Stories. Knopf. Mar. 2011. 268p. ISBN 9780307594822. $24.95.
The cognoscenti love -Shepard, deservedly a National Book Award finalist for Like You'd Understand, Anyway. From a French aristocrat who enjoys murdering children to a man in love with the girlfriend of a brother whose death he might have caused, these stories should showcase Shepard's out-there work. With a four-city tour, both East Coast and West Coast.
Thompson, James. Lucifer's Tears. Putnam. Mar. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780399157004. $24.95.
Finnish inspector Kari Vaara gets caught up in two apparently different cases: the investigation of a 90-year-old national hero for war crimes and the torture killing of a Russian businessman's cheating wife, whose lover clearly seems to have been framed. Thompson, an American who has lived in Finland for a dozen years, isn't yet as big as some of the publisher's other thriller authors (see, e.g., Clive Cussler, above). But he's building nicely and has Putnam's complete backing.
NONFICTION
Achatz, Grant & Nick Kokonas. Life, on the Line: Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat. Gotham: Penguin Group (USA). Mar. 2011. 320p. ISBN 9781592406012 . $28.95.
Achatz was a much-decorated chef (e.g., James Beard Rising Star award) and had just founded Alinea, recently named the best restaurant in North America by Restaurant, when he discovered that he had Stage IV cancer of the tongue. He lost his tongue, endured aggressive treatment, and learned to cook with his other senses. A food memoir and a conquering illness memoir rolled into one; it should get lots of -attention.
Burke, Carolyn. No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf. Knopf. Mar. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9780307268013. $28.95.
If you liked La Vie en Rose (bravo, Marion Cotillard, for that Oscar), you'll probably love Burke's account of the Little Sparrow's life. Biographer Burke's other subjects range from Lee Miller to Mina Loy. A personal favorite. With a 30,000-copy first printing.
Hamilton, Gabrielle. Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. Random. Mar. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9781400068722. $25. CD/downloadable: Random Audio.
Another food memoir! The chef/owner of New York's celebrated Prune talks about her unorthodox upbringing (French mom, bohemian dad), backpacking worldwide at 19, and launching her career. Since she has an MFA in fiction and has published in notable venues, she's being positioned as literary.
Orman, Suze. The Money Class. Spiegel & Grau. Mar. 2011. 304p. ISBN 9781400069736. $26.
With nine back-to-back New York Times best sellers, Oprah fame, her own TV show (No. 1 at CNBC, going strong for nine seasons), and a one-hour PBS special airing in March 2011, Orman is the guide to contemporary finance. Here she updates our understanding of retirement for the contemporary era.
Rosenberg, Tina. Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World. Norton. Mar. 2011. 288p. ISBN 9780393068580. $25.95.
Peer pressure. It sounds bad. But Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Rosenberg has a different take, showing how it can help minority students get good grades and even helped precipitate the fall of Milosevic. Pitched as this year's The Tipping Point.
Vowell, Sarah. Unfamiliar Fishes. Riverhead: Penguin Group (USA). Mar. 2011. 272p. ISBN 9781594487873. $25.95.
In 1898, America became the big boss of many lands, invading Cuba and the Philippines and annexing Guam, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. Vowell, who loves to see things slant (see The Wordy Shipmates), is especially interested in Hawaii, where carousing whalers met prim missionaries and the last Hawaiian queen wrote a song performed at Obama's inauguration.
CORRECTION In LJ 8/10, two Prepub titles were listed incorrectly. T. Jefferson Parker's forthcoming January title is The Border Lords, and the author of Damage, correctly spelled, is John Lescroart.
MY PICKS
Obreht, Téa. The Tiger's Wife. Random. Mar. 2011. 352p. ISBN 9780385343831. $25. CD: Random Audio.
In the war-shattered Balkans, a young doctor searches for her grandfather, who has abandoned the entire family at a field hospital. To find him, she realizes that she must track down a strange character called "the deathless man," using clues from Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. Sounds partly fantastical, partly rooted in realities we should attend to, and completely original. An excerpt of this first novel got huge play in The New Yorker's 2009 fiction issue, and Obreht went on to publish in other big venues. There are high hopes for this book, which is being pitched to fans of Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Junot Díaz, and Aleksander Hemon; in other words, it's sharp, fresh, and on the edge. Watch this one.
Foreman, Amanda. A World of Fire: A Saga of the Civil War, at Home and Abroad. Random. Mar. 2011. 464p. ISBN 9780375504945. $35. CD: Random Audio.
It wasn't just Americans who died in the bloody Civil War; 50,000 Britons volunteered, too, fighting mostly for the North but also for the South, defending Big Cotton and the plantation way of life. Foreman details their contributions by profiling several volunteers. Am I pitching this book because it's being made into an eight-part BBC series (those series always land here)? Or because Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was a best-selling Whitbread Prize winner that had an afterlife as a movie? Or because the author is being boosted as mediagenic? Okay, all pluses if you are wondering about buzz, but I'm singling out this book because it sounds truly intriguing and, in a glutted field, original. With an author tour to Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Gettysburg, Richmond, Atlanta, and San Francisco.
