EDITOR’S CHOICE
The Witch of Portobello Paulo Coelho, $24.95
Many people tell the story of Athena, the “witch of Portobello Road,” who was abandoned by her gypsy mother, raised by adoptive parents in Beirut, and ended up living all over the globe. | Publishers Weekly
FICTION
Consequences by Penelope Lively, $24.95 | Booker and Whitbread prize winner Lively begins her 14th novel, a multigenerational love story, in a London park in 1935, ends it nearly 70 years later after covering several lifetimes of love and heartbreak. | Publishers Weekly
Be Near Me by Andrew O’Hagan, $24 | An impeccably crafted, philosophically framed account of the decline and disgrace of an impressionable Catholic priest. U.K. author O’Hagan turns to questions of insight in a beautiful but ruined 21st-century landscape. | Kirkus
NONFICTION
Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers by Michael Barone, $25.95 | Political journalist and historian Barone (“Hard America, Soft America”) elucidates the template for America’s independence movement in this well-written history of its forerunner: England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. | Publishers Weekly
To the Castle and Back by Vaclav Havel; translated by Paul Wilson, $27.95 | From playwright to dissident to president of Czechoslovakia to president of the Czech Republic to lung cancer patient to supporter of the Iraq war to opponent of that war: Havel has a lot of ground to cover here. | Library Journal
Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See by Robert Kurson, $25.95 | Blinded at age 3, Michael May became a champion skier, CIA analyst, entrepreneur, and more, but his biggest challenge was deciding whether to go through with an operation that could restore his sight. | Library Journal
PAPERBACKS
The Caddie Who Knew Ben Hogan by John Coyne, $13.95 | There’s a doomed romance and a life lesson for a teenager in Coyne’s ninth novel, but the game’s the thing, with a hole-by-hole analysis of two rounds of golf. | Kirkus
Once Upon a Day by Lisa Tucker, $14 | Tucker’s outstanding novel (after Shout Down the Moon) is as structurally dextrous as it is emotionally satisfying, boasting a chorus of extraordinary voices and assured parallel plot lines separated by four decades. | Publishers Weekly
Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons by Tim Russert, $13.95 | Surprised by the overwhelming and heartfelt reception to “Big Russ and Me” (2004), Russert follows that memoir of his relationship with his father with a collection of letters he received recounting relationships between fathers and their sons and daughters. | Library Journal
COMING UP
AUGUST
Bones to Ashes by Kathy Reichs, $25.95 | When Temperance Brennan is called to the discovery of a young girl’s skeleton, she wonders if it is the remains of her childhood friend who went missing.
