Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston have quite a thriller-writing career going, but Child has a new one out on his own, “Deep Storm,” centered on a group of scientists excavating an extraordinary undersea discovery that isn’t what it seems. In nonfiction, look for “The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis,” in which Middle East expert Alireza Jafarzadeh takes a look at the man around whom Iran’s nuclear activities revolve. Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” explores the author’s marriage, in good times and bad. Coming in May, Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Chabon has a new novel, “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.”
FICTION
Deep Storm, by Lincoln Child, Doubleday, 370 pages, $24.95|Child sets his mystery/thriller in a dome thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean where scientists are excavating what appears to be the greatest archaeological find in history.
Shopaholic and Baby, by Sophie Kinsella, Dial, 358 pages, $24|Kinsella follows her “Confessions of a Shopaholic” with this novel of a woman who “has” to have her husband’s ex-girlfriend serve as her pediatrician.
Napoleon’s Pyramid, by William Dietrich, HarperCollins, 376 pages, $24.95|A thriller featuring ancient religion, battle scenes, greed and romance, centered on Napoleon’s army.
NONFICTION
The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis, by Alireza Jafarzadeh, Palgrave, 284 pages, $24.95|The author promises to reveal the motives of the Iranian president and new details about his nuclear weapons program.
Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, a Personal Biography, by Charlotte Chandler, Simon & Schuster, 334 pages, $26|Here is the life of the famous actress and the mother of Isabella and Isotta Rossellini, filled with remembrances from those who knew her.
Cry Havoc! The Crooked Road to Civil War, 1861, by Nelson D. Lankford, Viking, 308 pages, $27.95|In the spring of 1861, the American Civil War was on the near horizon. But it didn’t have to be this way. Lankford describes how a few decisions by Abraham Lincoln pushed the nation toward war.
PAPERBACKS
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, Vintage, 227 pages, $13.95|Didion’s National Book Award-winning memoir chronicles the year after the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, while her daughter was in a coma.
Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog, by Boris Akunin, Random House, 266 pages, $9.95|This unusual whodunit focuses on Sister Pelagia, a young nun in a remote Russian province who is called upon to investigate the death of a rare canine.
The Time of the Uprooted, by Elie Wiesel, Schocken, 300 pages, $14|In this novel, Gamaliel Friedman flees Czechoslovakia with his parents to Hungary. But when persecution follows the family, Gamaliel is put in the care of a Christian cabaret singer.
COMING UP
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, by Michael Chabon, 432 pages, $26.95, May|Chabon’s first adult novel since “Kavalier & Clay” is a whodunit, love story, take on 1940s noir fiction, a little history and a look at exile and redemption.
The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring, by Richard Preston, Random House, 298 pages, $25.95, April|The author of the scientific creepers “The Hot Zone” and “The Demon in the Freezer” is back with a fascinating story about the world that exists above the ground in the canopy of California’s giant redwood trees.
You Don’t Love Me Yet, by Jonathan Lethem, Doubleday, 240 pages, $24.95, March|Lethem (“Motherless Brooklyn,” “Fortress of Solitude”) centers his new novel not in the usual Brooklyn, but rather in Los Angeles, where an alternative rock band has yet to get a gig.
