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Denzel Washington

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you're prepared for it.

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Denzel Washington

March 16, 2020

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we know people will be talking about this spring. Read more about it, and enter our Spring Preview Contest by Tuesday, March 17th at 11:59am ET for a chance to win one of five copies of BIG LIES IN A SMALL TOWN by Diane Chamberlain, the audio version of which is a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Morgan Freeman

Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen --- that stillness becomes a radiance.

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Morgan Freeman

Rodney Dangerfield

I looked up my family tree and found three dogs using it.

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Rodney Dangerfield

John Ruskin

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

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John Ruskin

March 13, 2020

Yes, I was supposed to be in Tucson this weekend for the Tucson Festival of Books, but alas, that --- like a number of other book and author events --- has been canceled. Yesterday, I realized that if an author handed aneditor a manuscript for a novel with everything that is going on right now written into it, I am betting they would redline about 1/4 of it and say, "Over the top; there is no way all of this would happen." This is a time when real life is absolutely crazier than fiction.

Editorial Content for Trace Elements: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Joe Hartlaub

If you have never read one of Donna Leon’s marvelous Guido Brunetti mysteries, don’t let the unfamiliar locale and culture --- Venice --- or the fact that the newly published TRACE ELEMENTS is the 29th installment in the series dissuade you. These novels are written so that one can pick them up in any order at any time without missing a beat. As for the culture of Venice, there are elements of it that remain a mystery to all, including the Venetians themselves. Read More

Teaser

When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. “They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no,” Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him, Brunetti softly promises that he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region.

Promo

When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. “They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no,” Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him, Brunetti softly promises that he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region.

About the Book

From the New York Times bestselling author of UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN comes one of her most dark and thrilling mysteries yet.

A woman’s cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region in Donna Leon’s haunting 29th Brunetti novel.

When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding.

“They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no,” Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him Brunetti softly promises he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. They discover that Fadalto worked in the field collecting samples of contamination for a company that measures the cleanliness of Venice’s water supply and that he had died in a mysterious motorcycle accident. Distracted briefly by Vice Questore Patta’s obsession with youth crime in Venice, Brunetti is bolstered once more by the remarkable research skills of Patta’s secretary, Signora Elettra Zorzi. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region. But justice in this case proves to be ambiguous, as Brunetti is reminded it can be when, seeking solace, he reads Aeschylus’s classic play THE EUMENIDES.

As she has done so often through her memorable characters and storytelling skill, Donna Leon once again engages our sensibilities as to the differences between guilt and responsibility.

Audiobook available, read by David Colacci

Editorial Content for Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Jane Krebs

In RUST: A Memoir of Steel and Grit, Eliese Colette Goldbach introduces Cleveland, her hometown, a city nicknamed “the Mistake on the Lake” and an underdog town marked by a spirit of dogged perseverance. Clevelanders are a unique breed of optimism in the face of dire odds. Readying the city for the 2016 Republican National Convention, city officials erected three white signs with Cleveland written on them near the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the coast of Lake Erie, and in Tremont, a stone’s throw from the mill. Read More

Teaser

To ArcelorMittal Steel, Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America. In RUST, Eliese brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she's come to love.

Promo

To ArcelorMittal Steel, Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America. In RUST, Eliese brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she's come to love.

About the Book

One woman's story of working in the backbreaking steel industry to rebuild her life --- but what she uncovers in the mill is much more than molten metal and grueling working conditions. Under the mill's orange flame she finds hope for the unity of America.

Steel is the only thing that shines in the belly of the mill...

To ArcelorMittal Steel, Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America.

In RUST, Eliese brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she's come to love. The people she sees as the unsung backbone of our nation.

Faced with the financial promise of a steelworker’s paycheck, and the very real danger of working in an environment where a steel coil could crush you at any moment or a vat of molten iron could explode because of a single drop of water, Eliese finds unexpected warmth and camaraderie among the gruff men she labors beside each day.

Appealing to readers of HILLBILLY ELEGY and EDUCATED, RUST is a story of the humanity Eliese discovers in the most unlikely and hellish of places, and the hope that therefore begins to grow.

Audiobook available, read by Kelly Pekar

Editorial Content for The Bramble and the Rose: A Henry Farrell Novel

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Joe Hartlaub

THE BRAMBLE AND THE ROSE is a dark, blinding joy to read. Author Tom Bouman writes neither long nor frequently; when he does, he makes every sentence --- every word --- count. This newly published work, the third entry in his series, is impossible to put down when you start reading it and impossible to forget when you are finished. Read More

Teaser

A headless stranger is found in the woods of Wild Thyme, a small town in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. All signs point to a man-killing bear, and Officer Henry Farrell would just as soon leave this hunt to the Game Commission. But doubts arise when he discovers the victim was a retired investigator. What drew the investigator to sleepy Wild Thyme? Before Henry can find answers, his own nephew disappears into the hills. Then an old flame dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving Henry as the prime suspect. Torn between protecting his family and clearing his name, Henry fights to protect the most he’s ever had to lose.

Promo

A headless stranger is found in the woods of Wild Thyme, a small town in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. All signs point to a man-killing bear, and Officer Henry Farrell would just as soon leave this hunt to the Game Commission. But doubts arise when he discovers the victim was a retired investigator. What drew the investigator to sleepy Wild Thyme? Before Henry can find answers, his own nephew disappears into the hills. Then an old flame dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving Henry as the prime suspect. Torn between protecting his family and clearing his name, Henry fights to protect the most he’s ever had to lose.

About the Book

A headless stranger is found in the woods of Wild Thyme, a small town in the Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania. All signs point to a man-killing bear, and Officer Henry Farrell would just as soon leave this hunt to the Game Commission. But doubts arise when he discovers the victim was a retired investigator. What drew the investigator to sleepy Wild Thyme? Before Henry can find answers, his own nephew disappears into the hills. Then an old flame dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving Henry as the prime suspect. Torn between protecting his family and clearing his name, Henry fights to protect the most he’s ever had to lose.

Audiobook available, read by Perry Daniels

Editorial Content for Docile

Book

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Maya Gittelman

DOCILE takes place in Maryland, in a tautly set dystopia a few shades off from America today. The wealth gap has split the world largely into debtors and trillionaires. Inheriting their family’s compounding debt, debtors’ only alternative to prison is registering as a Docile for a trillionaire Patron, who pays their debts in exchange for services. Nearly all debtors who “opt” for this (it’s not an option when there’s no viable alternative, author K.M. Read More

Teaser

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. Too bad Elisha’s contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects --- and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.

Promo

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. Too bad Elisha’s contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects --- and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.

About the Book

K.M. Szpara's DOCILE is a science fiction parable about love and sex, wealth and debt, abuse and power, a challenging tour de force that at turns seduces and startles.

There is no consent under capitalism.

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future.

Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug that took his mother from him.

Too bad his contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects --- and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.

Content warning: DOCILE contains forthright depictions and discussions of rape and sexual abuse.

Audiobook available, read by Mark Sanderlin and Vikas Adam