In fiction, look for a new novel from the award- winning Orson Scott Card. “Empire” is centered on the collapse of America after plotters assassinate the president and other top officials. Does your messy kitchen mean you are the bane of the Western world? No, according to Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman in “A Perfect Mess.” Paperback lovers can look for “A Man Without a Country,” Kurt Vonnegut’s meditation on his life and the effects on it of American culture. Coming in April, Anita Shreve follows “A Wedding in December” with “Body Surfing,” about love during a New Eng land summer.
FICTION
Empire, by Orson Scott Card, Tor, 352 pages, $24.95 | In this story, the Nebula and Hugo awards-winning author sees an America torn apart by a second civil war.
The Time Seller, by Fernando Trias de Bes, Jossey Bass, 176 pages, $22.95 | Billed as a business satire, this small novel is not a how-to or business model book, but rather a comedic tale of meaning, work and selling out.
NONFICTION
A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder; How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place, by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, Little, Brown, 336 pages, $25.95 | The authors make a case for how chaos can make us all better, in both a larger sense and in our personal lives.
Those Damn Horse Soldiers: True Tales of the Civil War Cavalry, by George Walsh, Forge, 477 pages, $27.95 | Despite the tons of books about the American Civil War, relatively little has been written about the cavalry. Walsh attempts to alleviate the situation with stories of the cavalry from its inception in the spring of 1862 to war’s end.
PAPERBACKS
A Man Without a Country, by Kurt Vonnegut, Random House, 145 pages, $13.95 | One of America’s premiere living writers offers up this memoir that takes on life, art, sex, politics and the state of the country.
The Fugitive Wife, by Peter C. Brown, Norton, 414 pages, $14.95 | Essie, a Midwestern farm girl fleeing a bad marriage, joins with gold prospectors in Alaska in 1900. There she falls for Nate Deaton, but knows her dangerous husband is bound to come looking for her.
COMING UP
Body Surfing, by Anita Shreve, Little, Brown, 304 pages, $25.99, April | The author of “A Wedding in December” returns with the novel about a young widow who is torn between two brothers she meets over one summer in New England.
