Editor’sChoice
The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Edith Grossman, $25. Although the novel sometimes feels like a semiautobiographical summary of the author’s life, it’s energized by crisp writing, wry humor and a brilliantly deployed cast. Kirkus
Fiction
The Worst Thing I’ve Done, by Ursula Hegi, $25. Hegi (“Sacred Time”) is an accomplished storyteller; she inhabits different characters and blends the past with the present to tell a rich story of love, death, loyalty and survival. Publishers Weekly
Invasive Procedures, by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, $25.95. In this intriguing medical thriller from best seller Card (“Ender’s Game”) and screenwriter Johnston, George Galen, a disgraced geneticist, feeds and medicates the downtrodden with the help of a genetically altered band of helpers known as Healers. Publishers Weekly
Nonfiction
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, by Susan Faludi, $26. Faludi has written a brilliant, unsentimental, often darkly humorous account of America’s nervous breakdown after 9/11.
Publishers Weekly
(Not That You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions, by Steve Almond, $21.95. What do Joyce Carol Oates, snotty bloggers, right-wing radio freaks and a VH1 reality show have in common? They all get on this author’s nerves – and thank goodness. Kirkus
Nureyev: The Life, by Julie Kavanagh, $37.50, A lovingly crafted biography of the dancer who leaped out of the Soviet Union in 1961 and settled into a spectacular if erratic orbit of the ballet world. Kirkus
Paperbacks
The Lives of Rocks: Stories, by Rick Bass, $13.95. “The Lives of Rocks” digs deeply into the geology of the human condition. (These are) highly polished gems to be turned over in the mind again and again. Seattle Times
The Miernik Dossier, by Charles McCarry, $13.95. A good companion to le Carré, McCarry’s 1973 espionage novel finds several international agents together on a car trip from Switzerland to the Sudan. The story unfolds through a series of dossier entries written by each character. Library Journal
Postcards From Ed: Dispatches and Salvos From an American Iconoclast, by Edward Abbey, $16. The vibrant and audacious letters collected here confirm what his readers have long known. Even in the comfort of his eternal desert solitaire, Abbey remains a true American Cassandra. Kansas City Star
Coming Up
The Venetian Betrayal, by Steve Berry, $25.95. A new thriller from the author of “The Alexandria Link” centers on the search for the final resting place of Alexander the Great, a goal of archaeologists and treasure- hunters for centuries. (December)
What the Gospels Meant, by Garry Wills, $24.95. After his New York Times best-selling books “What Jesus Meant” and “What Paul Meant,” Wills turns his attention to the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. (February)
The Commoner, by John Burnham Schwartz, 24.95. The author of “Reservation Road” returns with a story inspired by the lives of the reigning empress and crown princess of Japan. (January)
