Look for a couple of big names on the shelves. In fiction, there is a new Alex Delaware novel from Jonathan Kellerman, and Larry McMurtry moves into nonfiction to tell the real story of Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley. New in paperback is a quirky little book about a guy who fulfilled a lifelong dream of making a boat completely out of wine corks.
FICTION
“The Company Car,” by C.J. Hribal, Random House, 402 pages, $24.95|While driving across country to his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, Emil
Czabeck has a chance to ruminate on his own marriage and his past.
“Making It Up As I Go Along,” by Maria T. Lennon, Shaye
Areaheart, 320 pages, $21|Saffron Roch is traveling abroad as a war correspondent when she meets and falls in love with Oscar, a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders. Saffron can’t see what is right before her eyes, including Oscar’s infidelities and her own attraction to another man.
“Rage,” by Jonathan Kellerman, Ballantine, 365, $26.95|Kellerman returns to a favorite character, L.A. psychologist Alex Delaware, as the good doctor revisits a terrible crime from the past that has returned to haunt him.
NONFICTION
“The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America,” by Larry McMurtry, Simon & Schuster, 243 pages, $26 |The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (“Lonesome Dove”) turns to nonfiction to take a look at America’s first superstars, separating fact from fiction.
“Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” by Robert A. Pape, Random House, 335 pages, $25.95|The author, a University of Chicago political scientist, uses his prodigious research to try to debunk many of the myths surrounding suicide bombings and offers tools to forecast when some groups are likely to resort to suicide attacks.
“The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley,” by Leslie Berlin, Oxford University Press, 402 pages, $30 |The author tells the story of the co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor and co-inventor of one of the most important technologies of the century: the integrated circuit.
PAPERBACKS
“Rising From the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class,” by Larry Tye Owl, Henry Holt, 314 pages, $15|As the Civil War was drawing to a close, former slaves flocked to the Pullman Co., which was recruiting Southern blacks to serve as porters on its new sleeping rail cars. It offered a steady job and a chance to see the world.
“Cork Boat: A True Story of the Unlikeliest Boat Ever Built,” by John Pollack, Anchor, 285 pages, $13.95|Since he was 6 years old, John Pollack wanted to build a boat out of wine corks and sail it to exotic places. At the age of 34 he did just that, sailing the boat down the Douro River in Portugal.
“The Pearl Diver,” by Jeff Talarigo, Anchor, 240 pages, $12.95|A teenager’s dream of diving for pearls all her life in Japan’s Inland Sea is scuttled when she learns she has leprosy. While the spread of the disease is thwarted at a leper colony, she still cannot leave and dedicates her life to helping others in the colony.
COMING UP
“Mission Road,” by Rick Riordan, Bantam, 416 pages, $24, July |The author’s sixth Tres Navarre novel centers on Ralph Arguello, Navarre’s friend, whose wife is about to implicate him in an 18-year-old unsolved murder case.
“Map of Bones,” by James Rollins, Morrow, 448 pages, $24.95, June |Here is yet another “Da Vinci Code”-style thriller featuring biblical objects, Vatican spies and a deadly centuries-old cult.
“Thomas Paine and the Promise of America,” by Harvey J. Kaye, Hill and Wang, 352 pages, $25, August|According to the author, Paine was one of the key figures in the American Revolution and the years immediately following the war. The author of “Common Sense,” according to Kaye, has continued to influence American rebels down through the years.
