The king of the adventure novel, Bartle Bull, is back with another exotic novel, called “China Star,” a sequel to his “Shanghai Station.” In nonfiction, look for Sandy Tolan’s “The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East.” It continues a story started in 1998 that follows the friendship between a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman. “Beyond Black,” the comic novel by Hilary Mantel featuring a medium who travels England’s “mystic fayres” circuit. And, coming in July, look for Denise Mina’s newest novel, featuring Paddy Meehan, who now is a cub reporter.
FICTION
China Star, by Bartle Bull, Avalon, 448 pages, $28|Set aboard a ship bound for China, the story is full of vengeance and romance – not to mention greed and violence. It continues in the jungles of Ceylon and the streets of Shanghai.
Edge of Battle, by Stuart Woods, HarperCollins, 448 pages, $25.95|When things on the border with Mexico spiral out of control, the U.S. government uses Task Force Talon, and its array of special equipment, to bring order to the region.
Leaving Home, by Anita Brookner, Random House, 224 pages, $23.95|As with most Brookner novels, the narrator of this new novel has an extremely complex inner life that is obscured by a perfectly blank outward one.
NONFICTION
“The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East,” by Sandy Tolan, Bloomsbury, 304 pages, $24.95|
The story of a friendship between a Palestinian man and a Jewish woman that survived over decades offers a window on the history of two peoples.
Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, edited by Jonathan Cott, Wenner Books, 320 pages, $23.95|The interviews, which have never before been collected in one tome, cover the superstar from his days as Robert Zimmerman through his time as probably the most influential singer-songwriter of his time.
Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution, by Simon Schama, Ecco, 496 pages, $29.95|Schama turns history inside out in this story of the American Revolution, as told through the eyes of American slaves, who didn’t share in the promise of liberty.
PAPERBACKS
Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel, Picador, 416 pages, $14|The darkly humorous story of two English women who become all wrapped up in the world of mediums and spiritualists in rural England.
Alburquerque, by Rudolfo Anaya, University of New Mexico Press, 280 pages, $14.95|Taking its title from a New Mexican legend, Anaya’s novel is a story of the search for ethnic roots all wrapped up in political patronage.
Rocketman: Astronaut Pete Conrad’s Incredible Ride to the Moon and Beyond, by Nancy Conrad and Howard A. Klausner, New American Library, 301 pages, $15|Drawn on recordings of interviews with Conrad, some shortly before his accidental death, this is the story of one of our early astronauts who had a streak of cowboy in him.
COMING UP
The Dead Hour, by Denise Mina, Little Brown, 352 pages, $24.99, July|The author of “Field of Blood” and “Garnet Hill,” brings back Paddy Meehan, now a cub newspaper reporter, who stumbles on what she thinks is a trophy wife. When the woman turns up dead, Paddy has to rethink things.
Fear: A Cultural History, by Joanna Burke, Shoemaker & Hoard, 512 pages, $27, June|In this social history, the authors takes a look at things that scare us – and there are many, many things from which to choose.
End in Tears, by Ruth Rendell, Crown, 336 pages, $25, July|Another in Rendell’s Inspector Wexford novels, begins with a piece of concrete being dropped – apparently randomly – from an overpass onto a car traveling below. Of course, it can’t really be a random act.
