In her new collection of short stories all set in Montana and Idaho, “Labors of the Heart,” Claire Davis discusses what it takes to make relationships work. On the nonfiction front, in “Overblown,” history professor John Mueller posits that the terrorist threat to America is nowhere near as ominous as many would have us believe. In paperbacks, Jonathan Harr, the author of “A Civil Action,” once again tackles a true-life mystery in relating the search for a missing masterpiece in “The Lost Painting.” Coming in January, look for “Something in the Air: Radio, Rock and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation,” an accessible and comprehensive history of AM pop radio from reporter Marc Fisher.
FICTION
Labors of the Heart, by Claire Davis, St. Martin’s, 228 pages, $24.95 |Novelist Davis (“Winter Range,” “Season of the Snake,” here gathers 10 short stories about marriage and family relationships.
Almost a Crime, by Penny Vincenzi, Overlook, 672 pages, $27.95 |What happens when a couple that apparently has everything – wealth, power and privilege – has to cope with the fact that one of them is having an affair.
The Book of Dave, by Will Self, Bloomsbury, 416 pages, $24.95 |A cab driver whose life is falling apart writes a book for his young son. When it is found 500 years later, it becomes a sacred text.
NONFICTION
Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them, by John Mueller, Free Press, 272 pages, $25 |The author, a history professor at Ohio State Unviversity, contends that we have wildly overreacted to 9/11 and that it is time to rethink that reaction.
Tunney: Boxing’s Smartest Champ Upsets Jack Dempsey, by Jack Cavanaugh, Random House, 496 pages, $27.95 |Claiming that Tunney was the Mike Tyson of his era, Cavanaugh makes a case that the Manassa Mauler has been undervalued as a boxer.
Casanova’s Women: The Great Seducer and the Women He Loved, by Judith Summers, Bloomsbury, 365 pages, $25.95 |As the story goes, the Venetian philanderer weasled his way into the bedrooms of some 200 women. Here, told from the perspective of some of these women, is his story.
PAPERBACKS
The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece, by Jonathan Harr, Random House, 293 pages, $13.95 |Harr (“A Civil Action”) recounts the story of a graduate art student who tries to solve the mystery behind a missing Caravaggio painting titled “The Taking of Christ.”
Tenth Circle, by Jodi Picoult, Simon & Schuster, 416 pages, $15 |The story of a family that goes through its own version of hell when the daughter is date- raped by the local high school sports hero.
The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova, Little, Brown, 686 pages, $15.99 |A retelling of the Dracula story set in the present – and the near-past – in which the real person, Vlad the Impaler, upon whom the legend was based, figures prominently.
COMING UP
Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation, by Marc Fisher, Random House, 400 pages, $27.95, Jan. |Fisher uses minibiographies of people in the business to tell the fascinating story of AM pop radio from its early days to today, a time when it is being marginalized.
The Ravenscar Dynasty, by Barbara Taylor Bradford, St. Martin’s, 496 pages, $25.95, Dec. |Bradford’s “A Woman of Substance” became one of the best selling novels of all time and launched a series of sequels. Now, Bradford begins another series, set during the Edwardian era.
A Miracle of Catfish, by Larry Brown, Alagonquin, 464 pages, $26.95, March When Brown died in 2004, he left behind this almost-completed sixth novel, the story of a year in the lives of four men and a boy in Mississippi.
