Skip to main content

November 12, 2013

November 12, 2013

The following are lists of books releasing the weeks of November 11th and November 18th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers.

May we ask that you forward this newsletter to friends who you think would enjoy reading it?

On Sale the Week of November 11th in Hardcover


November 11th

KNITTING YARNS: Writers on Knitting
edited by Ann Hood

Why does knitting occupy a place in the hearts of so many writers? What’s so magical and transformative about yarn and needles? How does knitting help us get through life-changing events and inspire joy? In KNITTING YARNS, 27 writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow.

W. W. Norton & Company * 9780393239492


November 12th

A CHRISTMAS HOPE
by Anne Perry

Claudine Burroughs, who works with William Monk's wife Hester at the women's clinic, expects nothing but an unbearably boring several hours from a Christmas party she attends with her husband. However, when an endearingly romantic poet has his prostitute companion crash the glittering event --- and the woman winds up dead --- Claudine has more on her hands than she bargained for.
Ballantine Books * 9780345530752


DEATH OF THE BLACK-HAIRED GIRL
by Robert Stone

A brilliant but careless professor, Steven Brookman has determined that for the sake of his marriage --- and his soul --- he must extract himself from his relationship with Maud Stack, his electrifying student, whose papers are always late and too long yet always incandescent. But Maud is a young woman whose passions are not easily contained or curtailed, and their union will quickly yield tragic and far-reaching consequences.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt * 9780618386239


DUST: A Scarpetta Novel
by Patricia Cornwell

The body of a young woman named Gail Shipton has been discovered on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's rugby field. Physical evidence links the case to a series of uniquely weird homicides in Washington, D.C., where Kay Scarpetta's FBI husband has been deployed to help capture a serial killer dubbed the Capital Murderer. The cases all connect and yet seem to conflict.
Putnam Adult * 9780399157578

END OF DAYS: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
by James L. Swanson

The assassination of John F. Kennedy has been the subject of enduring debate, speculation and numerous conspiracy theories. But James L. Swanson's account follows the event hour-by-hour, from the moment Lee Harvey Oswald conceived of the crime three days before its execution, to his own murder two days later at a Dallas Police precinct at the hands of Jack Ruby, a two-bit nightclub owner.
William Morrow * 9780062083487

THE FIRST PHONE CALL FROM HEAVEN
by Mitch Albom

THE FIRST PHONE CALL FROM HEAVEN tells the story of a small town on Lake Michigan that gets worldwide attention when its citizens start receiving phone calls from the afterlife. Is it the greatest miracle ever or a massive hoax? Sully Harding, a grief-stricken single father, is determined to find out.
Harper * 9780062294371


HILD
by Nicola Griffith

In seventh-century Britain, small kingdoms are merging, frequently and violently. A new religion is coming ashore; the old gods are struggling, their priests worrying. Hild is the king’s youngest niece, and she has a glimmering mind and a natural, noble authority. She will become a fascinating woman and one of the pivotal figures of the Middle Ages: Saint Hilda of Whitby.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux * 9780374280871


THE MAN HE BECAME: How FDR Defied Polio to Win the Presidency
by James Tobin

With a painstaking reexamination of original documents, James Tobin uncovers the twisted chain of accidents that left FDR paralyzed; reveals how polio recast Roosevelt’s fateful partnership with his wife, Eleanor; and shows that FDR’s true victory was not over paralysis but over the ancient stigma attached to the crippled.
Simon & Schuster * 9780743265157

AN OLD BETRAYAL: A Charles Lenox Mystery
by Charles Finch

On a spring morning in London 1875, Charles Lenox agrees to take time away from his busy schedule as a Member of Parliament to meet an old protégé’s client at Charing Cross. But when their cryptic encounter seems to lead, days later, to the murder of an innocuous country squire, this fast favor draws Lenox inexorably back into his old profession. Soon he realizes that, far from concluding the murderer’s business, this body is only the first step in a cruel plan, many years in the plotting.
Minotaur Books * 9781250011619

A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE FAMILY
by Russell Banks

The 12 stories in A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE FAMILY examine the myriad ways we try --- and sometimes fail --- to connect with one another, as we seek a home in the world. The book charts with subtlety and precision the ebb and flow of both the families we make for ourselves and the ones we're born into, as it asks how we know the ones we love and, in turn, ourselves.
Ecco * 9780061857652


THE SECOND-CHANCE DOG: A Love Story
by Jon Katz

After moving to a dilapidated farm in upstate New York, Jon Katz meets a woman and a dog who will change him forever. The woman is Maria Wulf, a sensitive artist, and the dog is Frieda, a half Rottweiler/half Shepherd former junkyard dog and Maria's staunch protector and only friend. Maria will eventually become Jon's second chance at happiness, but to win her heart, Jon will first have to win over Frieda.
Ballantine Books * 9780345531179


SINS OF THE FLESH: A Carmine Delmonico Novel
by Colleen McCullough

In the sleepy college town of Holloman, Connecticut, in 1969, two anonymous male corpses turn up, emaciated and emasculated. After connecting the victims to four other bodies, Sergeant Delia Carstairs and Lieutenant Abe Goldberg realize that Holloman has a psychopathic killer on the loose. Police Captain Carmine Delmonico’s team begins to circle a trio of eccentrics, who share family ties, painful memories, and a dark past.
Simon & Schuster * 9781476735337

STELLA BAIN
by Anita Shreve

When Stella Bain is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in. A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield.
Little, Brown and Company * 9780316098861

TATIANA: An Arkady Renko Novel
by Martin Cruz Smith

Arkady Renko has survived the cultural journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find the nation as obsessed with secrecy and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship. In TATIANA, the melancholy hero --- cynical, analytical and quietly subversive --- unravels a mystery as complex and dangerous as modern Russia itself.
Simon & Schuster * 9781439140215

WHITE FIRE
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Special Agent Pendergast’s arrival at an exclusive Colorado ski resort to rescue his protégée, Corrie Swanson, from serious trouble with the law coincides with the first attack of a murderous arsonist who begins burning down mansions with the families locked inside. Eventually, he uncovers a mysterious connection between several miners who were killed 150 years earlier and a fabled, long-lost Sherlock Holmes story --- one that might just offer the key to the modern-day killings as well.
Grand Central Publishing * 9781455525836



November 14th

MOZART: A Life
by Paul Johnson

Acclaimed historian and author Paul Johnson’s focus here is on the music --- Mozart’s wondrous output of composition and his uncanny gift for instrumentation. In addition, Johnson challenges the many myths that have followed Mozart, including those about the composer’s health, wealth, religion and relationships.
Viking Adult * 9780670026371

On Sale the Week of November 11th in Paperback


November 11th

MAGNIFICENCE by Lydia Millet

Susan Lindley is a woman adrift after her husband’s death. Suddenly gifted her great uncle’s Pasadena mansion, Susan decides to restore his extensive collection of preserved animals, tending to “the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails.” Meanwhile, a menagerie of uniquely damaged humans --- including a cheating husband and a chorus of eccentric elderly women --- joins her in residence.
W. W. Norton & Company * 9780393346855



November 12th


THE BUGHOUSE AFFAIR: A Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery
by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

In 1890s San Francisco, former Pinkerton operative Sabina Carpenter and her detective partner, ex-Secret Service agent John Quincannon, undertake what initially appear to be two unrelated investigations. The two cases eventually connect in surprising fashion, but not before two murders and other felonies complicate matters even further. And not before the two sleuths are hindered, assisted and exasperated by the bughouse Sherlock Holmes.
Forge Books * 9780765331779


CHANEL BONFIRE: A Memoir
by Wendy Lawless

Wendy Lawless deftly charts the highs and lows of growing up with her younger sister in the shadow of an unstable, fabulously neglectful mother. Georgann, a real-life Holly Golightly who constantly reinvents herself as she trades up from trailer park to penthouse, suffers multiple nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts, while Wendy tries to hide the cracks in their fractured family from the rest of the world.
Gallery Books * 9781476745480


GOOD KINGS BAD KINGS
by Susan Nussbaum

Inside the halls of ILLC, an institution for juveniles with disabilities, we discover a place that is deeply different from and yet remarkably the same as the world outside. In this isolated place on Chicago’s South Side, friendships are forged, trust is built, and love affairs begin. It’s in these alliances that the residents of this neglected community ultimately find the strength to bond together, resist their mistreatment, and finally fight back. And in the process, each is transformed.
Algonquin Books * 9781616203252

HOUSE OF THE HUNTED
by Mark Mills

Set in the dark days just prior to the onset of World War II, Mark Mills --- whose previous novels include AMAGANSETT, THE SAVAGE GARDEN and THE INFORMATION OFFICER --- deftly unfolds an electrifying story of betrayal, love, and the inescapable pull of the past, as an ex-spy finds himself drawn back into his treacherous former life.
Random House Trade Paperbacks * 9780812980219


THE LABYRINTH OF OSIRIS
by Paul Sussman

While researching the murder of a well-known Israeli journalist, Detective Arieh Ben-Roi of the Jerusalem police discovers a puzzling connection to an uncovered labyrinth-like gold mine in Egypt. Ben-Roi's investigation takes him from Israel to Egypt, Vancouver and Romania as he attempts to unravel the mystery of the journalist's death.
Grove Press * 9780802121806

LISTENING FOR MADELEINE: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices
by Leonard S. Marcus

Madeleine L’Engle is best known to the world as the author of A WRINKLE IN TIME. But to those who knew her well, L’Engle was much more: a larger-than-life persona, an inspiring mentor, a strong-willed matriarch, a spiritual guide, and a rare friend. Renowned literary historian and biographer Leonard S. Marcus reveals L’Engle in all her complexity through a series of incisive interviews with the people who knew her most intimately.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux * 9780374534202


MARCHING TO ZION
by Mary Glickman
Paperback Original

MARCHING TO ZION is the tragic story of Minerva Fishbein and Magnus Bailey, a charismatic black man and the longtime business partner of Minerva’s father. From the brutal riots of East St. Louis to Memphis, Tennessee, during the 1920s and the Depression, Mary Glickman's latest novel is a tale of passion, betrayal and redemption during an era in America when interracial love could not go unpunished.
Open Road Media E-riginal * 9781480435629

ON THE SEVENTH DAY by T.D. Jakes
Based on the film Woman Thou Art Loosed: On the 7th Day, executive-produced by T.D. Jakes, this novel follows the lives of a couple whose love and commitment are tested when their only child is kidnapped right from under them in their gated community in New Orleans.
Atria Books * 9781439170519


PLAIN PEACE: A Daughters of the Promise Novel
by Beth Wiseman
Paperback Original

Anna Byler wants to honor her grandparents, the two most important people in her life, but her heart is divided by the rules that guide their little Amish community and the growing love she has for handsome newcomer Jacob Hostetler. How can she be true to both?
Thomas Nelson * 9781401685942


THE RIPTIDE ULTRA-GLIDE
by Tim Dorsey

When newly unemployed Midwestern couple Patrick and Barbara McDougal decide that a vacation in Florida is just what they need, awful accommodations, a robbery, and a not-so-helpful police department make them rethink their decision to drown their troubles in paradise. Luckily, charismatic (and crazy!) tour guide Serge Storms and his sidekick, Coleman, are up for another action-packed adventure.
William Morrow Paperbacks * 9780062092793


TOO BRIGHT TO HEAR TOO LOUD TO SEE
by Juliann Garey

Greyson Todd is a successful Hollywood studio executive who leaves his wife and young daughter, and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years. This novel intricately weaves together three timelines: the story of Greyson's travels; the progressive unraveling of his own father seen through Greyson's eyes as a child; and the intimacies and estrangements of his marriage.
Soho Press * 9781616953447

WASH
by Margaret Wrinkle

Richardson, a troubled Revolutionary War veteran, has spent his life fighting not only for his country but also for wealth and status. When the pressures of westward expansion and debt threaten to destroy everything he’s built, he sets Washington, a young man he owns, to work as his breeding sire. This leads to Wash’s encounter with a potent healer named Pallas, who inspires him to forge a new understanding of his heritage and his place in it.
Grove Press * 9780802122032

On Sale the Week of November 18th in Hardcover


November 19th

THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL
by Jane Maas

Jessica Lavery, a beautiful London actress, breaks off her romance with Owen Thomas, a poor Welsh coal miner. Broken-hearted, Owen wraps the Christmas angel he made in her likeness in his mother’s shawl and brings her to America. There, she looks down over five generations, witnessing peace and war, triumphs and tragedies, reminding all who see her that Christmas is the time when families and sweethearts can come together.
Thomas Dunne Books * 9781250037572

FIVE DAYS IN NOVEMBER
by Clint Hill with Lisa McCubbin

On the night JFK was assassinated, a photo ran on the front pages of newspapers across the world, showing a Secret Service agent jumping on the back of the presidential limousine in a desperate attempt to protect the President and Mrs. Kennedy. Now Secret Service Agent Clint Hill commemorates the 50th anniversary of the tragedy with a book containing more than 150 photos, each accompanied by Hill’s insider account of those terrible days.
Gallery Books * 9781476731490

KING AND MAXWELL
by David Baldacci

Teenager Tyler Wingo learns that his father was killed in action in Afghanistan. Then the extraordinary happens: Tyler receives a communication from his father after his supposed death. Tyler hires Sean King and Michelle Maxwell to solve the mystery surrounding his father. But their investigation quickly leads to deeper, more troubling questions. Could Tyler's father really still be alive? What was his true mission? Could Tyler be the next target?
Grand Central Publishing * 9781455521319

THE LOST GIRLS OF ROME
by Donato Carrisi

Sandra Vega, a forensic analyst with the Roman police department, mourns deeply for a marriage that ended too soon. A few months ago, her husband plunged to his death at the top of a high-rise construction site. The police ruled it an accident, but Sandra isn’t buying it. Her eventual investigation is deeply entwined with a series of disappearances that has swept the city, and brings Sandra ever closer to a secret society that will do anything to stay in the shadows.
Mulholland Books * 9780316246798

MY MISTAKE: A Memoir
by Daniel Menaker

Daniel Menaker started as a fact checker at The New Yorker in 1969. With luck, hard work, and the support of William Maxwell, he was eventually promoted to editor. Never beloved by William Shawn, he was advised early on to find a position elsewhere; he stayed for another 24 years. Now Menaker brings us a new view of life in that wonderfully strange place and beyond, throughout his more than 40 years working to celebrate language and good writing.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt * 9780547794235

A NASTY PIECE OF WORK
by Robert Littell

Former CIA agent Lemuel Gunn works as a private investigator from his mobile home. Into his life comes Ornella Neppi, who’s making a hash out of her uncle’s bail bonds business. The source of her troubles, Emilio Gava, was arrested for buying cocaine. He’s jumped bail and now she’s about to pay the price for it. Curiously, no photographs of Gava seem to exist. Once Gunn begins his search, it becomes unclear whether Gava even existed in the first place.
Thomas Dunne Books * 9781250021458

REPORT FROM THE INTERIOR
by Paul Auster

REPORT FROM THE INTERIOR is Paul Auster’s follow-up to last year’s WINTER JOURNAL, a memoir in which, at age 64, he looked back on joyous as well as painful memories of his life. In his latest book, he writes about the salient events of his childhood, analyzes films that affected him in middle school, and shares letters he wrote in his late teens and early 20s to Lydia Davis, who would become his first wife.
Henry Holt and Co. * 9780805098570

SOMEONE ELSE'S LOVE STORY
by Joshilyn Jackson

SOMEONE ELSE'S LOVE STORY is beloved and highly acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Joshilyn Jackson's funny, charming and poignant novel about science and miracles, secrets and truths, faith and forgiveness; about falling in love, and learning that things aren't always what they seem --- or what we hope they will be.
William Morrow * 9780062105653

TAKEDOWN TWENTY: A Stephanie Plum Novel
by Janet Evanovich

When powerful mobster Salvatore “Uncle Sunny” Sunucchi goes on the lam in Trenton, it’s up to New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum to find him. Uncle Sunny is charged with murder for running over a guy (twice), and nobody wants to turn him in. Even Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, has skin in the game. The godfather is his actual godfather, and his grandmother is doing everything she can to throw Stephanie off the trail.
Bantam * 9780345542885

On Sale the Week of November 18th in Paperback


November 19th

ASHENDEN
by Elizabeth Wilhide

When brother and sister Charlie and Ros discover that they have inherited their aunt’s grand English country house, they must decide if they should sell it. As they survey the effects of time on the estate’s architectural treasures, a narrative spanning two-and-a-half centuries unfolds. We meet those who built the house, lived in it and loved it, worked in it, and those who would subvert it to their own ends.
Simon & Schuster * 9781451697896

BOTH FLESH AND NOT: Essays by David Foster Wallace

BOTH FLESH AND NOT gathers 15 of David Foster Wallace’s essays never published in book form, including "Federer Both Flesh and Not," considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece; "The (As it Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2," which deftly dissects James Cameron's blockbuster; and "Fictional Futures and the Conspicuously Young," an examination of television's effect on a new generation of writers.
Back Bay Books * 9780316182386

THE HOLY OR THE BROKEN: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah"
by Alan Light

When music legend Leonard Cohen first wrote and recorded “Hallelujah,” it was for an album rejected by his longtime record label. A decade later, Jeff Buckley reimagined the song for his much-anticipated debut album. Three years after that, Buckley would be dead, his album largely unknown, and “Hallelujah” still unreleased as a single. How did one obscure song become an international anthem for human triumph and tragedy?
Atria Books * 9781451657852

MARMEE & LOUISA: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
by Eve LaPlante

Since its release nearly 150 years ago, Louisa May Alcott’s classic LITTLE WOMEN has been a mainstay in American literature, while passionate Jo March and her calm, beloved “Marmee” have shaped generations of young women. In this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante draws on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa’s “Marmee,” Abigail May Alcott, was the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter’s world.
Simon & Schuster * 9781451620672

NOTORIOUS NINETEEN: A Stephanie Plum Novel
by Janet Evanovich

After a slow summer of chasing low-level skips for her cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds agency, Stephanie Plum finally lands an assignment that could put her checkbook back in the black. Geoffrey Cubbin, facing trial for embezzling millions from Trenton’s premier assisted-living facility, has mysteriously vanished from the hospital after an emergency appendectomy. Now it’s on Stephanie to track down the con man.
Bantam * 9780345527769

RAISED FROM THE GROUND
by Jose Saramago

In Alentejo, a southern province of Portugal known for its vast agricultural estates, the Mau Tempo family --- poor landless peasants --- faces changing fortunes in the midst of the coming of the Republic of Portugal, the two World Wars, and an attempt on the dictator Salazar's life. Yet nothing really impinges on the grim reality of the farm laborers’ lives until the first communist stirrings.
Mariner Books * 9780544102736


TUSCAN ROSE
by Belinda Alexandra
Paperback Original

Florence, 1914. A mysterious stranger known as The Wolf leaves an infant with the sisters of Santo Spirito. Fifteen years later, young Rosa must leave the nuns and become governess to the daughter of an aristocrat and his strange, frightening wife. Their house is elegant but cursed, and Rosa --- blessed with gifts beyond her considerable musical talents --- is torn between her desire to know the truth and her fear of its repercussions.
Gallery Books * 9781451679076


Don't forget to forward this newsletter to a friend or to visit the websites in TheBookReportNetwork.com:
Bookreporter.com, 20SomethingReads.com, ReadingGroupGuides.com, GraphicNovelReporter.com, FaithfulReader.com, Teenreads.com, Kidsreads.com and AuthorsOnTheWeb.com.

The Book Report Network
250 W. 57th Street - Suite 1228

New York, New York 10107

connect with us twitterfacebook