Canadian author Giles Blunt returns with his fourth Detective John Cardinal mystery, “By the Time You Read This,” and this time it’s all personal. James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of “Battle Cry of Freedom,” is back with “This Mighty Scourge,” a collection of essays giving fresh insight into America’s Civil War. Just out in paperback, look for Elliot Perlman’s novel “Three Dollars,” the story of an honest family man who finds himself nearly penniless at age 38. Coming in April, look for “Body of Lies,” by David Ignatius, a thriller in which the CIA plays for keeps in attempting to catch a terrorist in an intricate web of deceit.
FICTION
By the Time You Read This, by Giles Blunt, Henry Holt, 330 pages, $19.95|Detective John Cardinal has to deal with his wife’s apparent suicide. But he and partner Lise Delorme have reason to believe it was really murder.
The Lying Tongue, by Andrew Wilson, Atria, 306 pages, $24|When an aspiring novelist becomes assistant to a reclusive novelist in Venice, he discovers some long held, dark secrets in the writer’s past.
The Edge of Winter, by Luanne Rice, Bantam, 339 pages, $24|The best-selling Rice, known for her tales of family life in New England, offers a tale of mother and daughter as they struggle to make a life on the Rhode Island shore.
NONFICTION
This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War, by James M. McPherson, Oxford, 260 pages, $28|The Civil War scholar gives his take on such topics as Harriet Tubman and John Brown, as well as Confederate military strategy and the failure of peace negotiations.
Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado, by Nancy Mathis, Touchstone, 237 pages, $24|In May 1999, a massive Tornado hit Oklahoma with 300-mph winds. Mathis, a journalist, tells the story of this killer storm.
The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures, by Louis Theroux, Da Capo, 266 pages, $24|A decade after hosting a BBC series on weird American subcultures, the author returned to his sources to find out how their lives have changed.
PAPERBACKS
Three Dollars, by Elliot Perlman, Penguin, 370 pages, $14|The author of “Seven Types of Ambiguity” takes a novel approach to a man who is forced to come to terms with his place in the American corporate world.
The Colony, by John Tayman, Simon & Schuster, 421 pages, $16|This is the largely untold story of the leper colony on the Hawaiian Island of Molokai and the people who struggled to survive there.
Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell, Random House, 294 pages, $13.95|Following the author’s “Cloud Atlas,” this funny and poignant novel tracks a year in the life of 13-year-old Jason Taylor.
COMING UP
Body of Lies, by David Ignatius, W.W. Norton, 320 pages, $24.95, April|The Washington Post columnist’s novel deals with the labyrinthine plot to bring a shadowy member of al-Qaeda to justice.
The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace, by Ali A. Allawi, Yale, 400 pages, $28, April|A longtime leader against the Saddam Hussein regime, Allawi draws on his understanding of Iraq to answer questions that persist about that country’s current situation.
The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard, HarperCollins, 224 pages, $24.95, June |The Pulitzer Prize-winning author is back with a story of love on the shores of Cape Cod.
