EDITOR’S CHOICE
Channeling Mark Twain by Carol Muske-Dukes, $24.95
The novel follows Holly Mattox as she becomes increasingly, and perhaps dangerously, involved with the female inmates who attend her jailhouse poetry workshops. | Publishers Weekly
FICTION
The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks, $24.95 | Back from a trip to the bestseller lists, the eponymous hero of The Traveler returns to hunt for his missing father worldwide with the help of the Harlequin Maya. This is the second book in the “Fourth Realm Trilogy.” | Library Journal
Afterwards by Rachel Swiffert, $24.95 | Britain’s ongoing involvement in Northern Ireland threatens the budding romance between Londoners Alice, a physical therapist, and Joseph, a decorator and house painter, in Seiffert’s psychologically acute, relentlessly grim second novel. | Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
Partners in Command: George Marshal and Dwight Eisenhower in War and Peace by Mary Perry, $29.95 | Mark Perry takes another look at how the collaboration of these two men not only accomplished the defeat of the Axis powers but laid the groundwork for the postwar North Atlantic alliance. | San Antonio Express-News
At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman, $22 | These essays not only display the range of Fadiman’s intellect and curiosity but also testify to her strong affection for an antiquarian literary form now largely ignored. | McClatchy Newspapers
Becoming Shakespeare: The Unlikely Afterlife That Turned a Provincial Playwright into the Bard by Jack Lynch, $24.95 | It’s easy to assume that William Shakespeare has always held his position at the top of the literary canon. But the truth is not that simple, as Lynch, a professor of English at Rutgers and longtime student of literary history, demonstrates. | Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
The Keep by Jennifer Egan, $13.95 | Two cousins linked by a shameful secret, a convicted murderer and a reformed meth freak are unlikely co-conspirators in this adventurous new novel by Egan (“Look at Me”). | Kirkus
1776 by David McCullough, $18 | David McCullough … wrestles America’s founding year into a taut 294 pages of text, describing the trying months that followed the heroics at Lexington, Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. | The New York Times
A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read, $12.99 | Snobbery, bigotry and cultural clashes are brought to a boil by malicious talk of an old murder. Read’s sensational debut features spot-on descriptions of New York’s upstate-downstate conflicts, strong characterizations and a fascinating plot. | Kirkus
COMING UP
OCTOBER
Cheating At Canasta by William Trevor, $24.95 | The 12 stories of Trevor’s latest collection blend an orchestra conductor’s feel for subtlety with a monsignor’s banishment of moral ambiguity. | Publishers Weekly
SEPTEMBER
Sweet Revenge by Diane Mott Davidson, $25.95 | Another in the author’s popular series of mysteries featuring Colorado caterer Goldy Schulz.
OCTOBER
Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism by John Updike, $40author | Updike’s sixth collection of essays and literary criticisms examines literary biographies and such subjects as China, books, poker, cars and the American libido.
