March 23, 2021
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 Wednesday, March 24th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of ETERNAL by Lisa Scottoline, which is now available and will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!
Lisa Scottoline
Even if it's not what you planned, you can make a life for yourself on your own and be happy.
Attribution
Cynthia Ozick
To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.
Attribution
Ram Dass
As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be, you can't see how it is.
Attribution
Rainer Maria Rilke
It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
Attribution
March 19, 2021
Ah, Daylight Saving Time. It once again brought me the chance to feel jet lagged without leaving the house. Yes, in a year when going to the grocery store’s international aisle was the closest that I came to travel, my dragginess (yes, I coined that word) reminded me what it felt like to fly to Chicago without packing a bag or going through security. How can just one hour wreak so much havoc on my life?
Editorial Content for Not Dark Yet: A DCI Banks Novel
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
I may be assuming too much, but NOT DARK YET seems to be the run-up to the conclusion of Peter Robinson’s series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks of the Eastvale, Yorkshire police force. Robinson has depicted Banks’ aging naturally (for the most part), so this latest installment finds the iconic protagonist somewhat faded, if not weary, as the world around him moves ahead with him. Read More
Teaser
When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. They hope that they’ll find answers --- and the culprit --- among the video recordings. However, instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead.
Promo
When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. They hope that they’ll find answers --- and the culprit --- among the video recordings. However, instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead.
About the Book
One of the world's greatest suspense writers returns with the 27th novel featuring the legendary detective Alan Banks in the mystery series Stephen King calls “the best now on the market.”
When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. The team hope that they’ll find answers --- and the culprit --- among the video recordings.
Instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, however, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead.
Meanwhile, tensions are rising between Banks and his friend, Zelda. A super recognizer --- able to recognize faces significantly better than most people --- Zelda is determined to bring the men who abused her to justice. But stirring up the murky waters of the past will put her in far greater danger than ever before, and Banks worries that he won’t be able to stop her from plunging too deep before it’s too late.
Audiobook available, read by Simon Vance
Editorial Content for Foregone
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Throughout his long and impressive career, in books like CONTINENTAL DRIFT and THE SWEET HEREAFTER, Russell Banks has often focused on the stories of society’s underclass. But in his latest novel --- his first in 10 years --- he leaves behind that preoccupation to explore the life of an artist racing against his failing body to make peace with himself in his final days. Read More
Teaser
At the center of FOREGONE is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of 60,000 draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late 70s, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.
Promo
At the center of FOREGONE is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of 60,000 draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late 70s, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.
About the Book
A searing novel about memory, abandonment, and betrayal from the acclaimed and bestselling Russell Banks
At the center of FOREGONE is famed Canadian American leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife, one of 60,000 draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Fife, now in his late 70s, is dying of cancer in Montreal and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bare all his secrets at last, to demythologize his mythologized life. The interview is filmed by his acolyte and ex–star student, Malcolm MacLeod, in the presence of Fife’s wife and alongside Malcolm’s producer, cinematographer and sound technician, all of whom have long admired Fife but who must now absorb the meaning of his astonishing, dark confession.
Imaginatively structured around Fife’s secret memories and alternating between the experiences of the characters who are filming his confession, the novel challenges our assumptions and understanding about a significant lost chapter in American history and the nature of memory itself. Russell Banks gives us a daring and resonant work about the scope of one man’s mysterious life, revealed through the fragments of his recovered past.
Audiobook available, read by Stephen Mendel
Editorial Content for 2034: A Novel of the Next World War
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
The monument to General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg is on the edge of the battlefield, over by what is now (at least as of this week) called Confederate Avenue. The statutory Lee is on horseback, gazing towards Cemetery Ridge, where Pickett’s Virginians would make their famous charge. That is one way to view a battle, or a war, back behind the front lines. This is not exactly a safe place, you understand --- one errant Union cannonball could have unhorsed Lee --- but at least it’s away from the mud, the blood and the fixed bayonets. Read More
Teaser
On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand.
Promo
On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand.
About the Book
From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034 --- and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration.
On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. Iran and China have clearly coordinated their moves, which involve the use of powerful new forms of cyber weaponry that render US ships and planes defenseless. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand.
So begins a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically outmaneuvering America's most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophistication and human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters --- Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians --- as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power.
Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors' years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid.
Audiobook available; read by Emily Woo Zeller, P.J. Ochlan, Vikas Adam, Dion Graham and Feodor Chin
Editorial Content for So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin' True Story of the New York Mets ― the Best Worst Team in Sports
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
New York is unique in that it has two Major League teams. Back in the day when there were just 16 teams, this was not uncommon, with dual clubs in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis. In fact, prior to 1957, New York supported three teams. The Mets were only born out of necessity after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants departed for the west coast, leaving the National League without representation in the country’s most populous area. Read More
Teaser
In SO MANY WAYS TO LOSE, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after he got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again.
Promo
In SO MANY WAYS TO LOSE, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after he got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and then snatching defeat right back again.
About the Book
The Mets lose when they should win. They win when they should lose. And when it comes to being the worst, no team in sports has ever done it better than the Mets.
In SO MANY WAYS TO LOSE, author and lifelong Mets fan Devin Gordon sifts through the detritus of Queens for a baseball history like no other. Remember the time the Mets lost an All-Star after he got charged by a wild boar? Or the time they blew a six-run ninth-inning lead at the peak of a pennant race? Or the time they fired their manager before he ever managed a game? Sure you do. It was only two years ago, and it was all in the same season. The Mets have an unrivaled gift for getting it backward, doing the impossible, snatching victory from the jaws of defeatand then snatching defeat right back again.
And yet, just ask any Mets fan: amazing and/or miraculous postseason runs are as much a part of our team's identity as losing 120 games in 1962. The DNA of seasons like 1969, the original Miracle Mets, and the 1973 “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets, who went from last place to Game 7 of the World Series in two months, and the powerhouse 1986 Mets, has encoded in us this hapless instinct that a reversal of fortune is always possible. It’s happened before. It’s kind of our thing. And now we have Steve Cohen's hedge-fund billions to play with! What could go wrong?
In this hilarious history of the Mets and love letter to the art of disaster, Devin Gordon presents baseball the way it really is, not in the wistful sepia tones we've come to expect from other sportswriters. Along the way, he explains the difference between being bad and being gifted at losing and why this distinction holds the key to understanding the true amazin’ magic of the New York Mets.
Audiobook available, read by Jeremy Arthur





