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Thomas Pynchon, author of Shadow Ticket

Milwaukee, 1932. The Great Depression is going full blast, the repeal of Prohibition is just around the corner, Al Capone is in the federal pen, and the private investigation business shifts from labor-management relations to the more domestic kind. Hicks McTaggart, a onetime strikebreaker turned private eye, thinks he’s found job security until he gets sent out on what should be a routine case: locating and bringing back the heiress of a Wisconsin cheese fortune who’s taken a mind to go wandering. Before he knows it, he’s been shanghaied onto a transoceanic liner, eventually ending up in Hungary. By the time Hicks catches up with the runaway heiress, he will find himself entangled with Nazis, Soviet agents, British counterspies, swing musicians, practitioners of the paranormal, outlaw motorcyclists, and the troubles that come with each of them.

Week of October 5, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of October 5th include the 20th installment in Steve Berry's Cotton Malone series, THE DEVIL’S BIBLE, a tale of mystery and intrigue stretching back over four centuries; SHADOW TICKET, Thomas Pynchon's first novel since 2013’s BLEEDING EDGE, which is set during the Great Depression and follows a private investigator in Milwaukee on a mission that ultimately takes him to Hungary amidst political and criminal intrigue; THE LADY ON ESPLANADE, the third entry in Karen White's Royal Street series, in which people and secrets from the past threaten to disrupt Nola Trenholm’s new life in New Orleans; and THE BOYS IN THE LIGHT by Nina Willner, an epic story of the triumph of good over evil that follows the parallel journeys of Company D and Eddie Willner, the author’s father, as they are caught up on two sides of World War II.