Editor’s Choice
Pandora’s Daughter, by Iris Johansen, $25.95. Orphaned at 15 and raised by her Uncle Phillip, the adult Megan Blair is an Atlanta pediatrician who hears terrified voices. Revelation comes when childhood friend Neal Grady, who is now a shadowy government agent, arrives to apprise Megan of her psychic powers. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
Protect and Defend, by Vince Flynn, $26.95. After taking care of a loose end from “Act of Treason” (2006), Mitch Rapp looks into the destruction of Iran’s secret nuclear weapons facility in best-seller Flynn’s predictable eighth thriller to feature the counterterrorism agent. Publishers Weekly
Midnight Rambler, by James Swain, $24.95. Swain, author of the gambling crime series starring Tony Valentine (Grift Sense, etc.), avoids many of the clichés of the antisocial ex-cop novel in this chilling stand-alone. Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, by Fritjof Capra, $26. Capra, author of the classic “The Tao of Physics,” makes the case in this fascinating intellectual biography for the great artist Leonardo being the unsung father of modern science. Drawing on approximately 6,000 pages and 100,000 drawings surviving from Leonardo’s scattered notebooks, Capra explores the groundbreaking research of this quintessential Renaissance man. Publishers Weekly
City Lights, by Dan Barry, $25.95. Barry’s subjects are mostly local heroes, residents of his great city just going about their business and occasionally doing something that makes them worthy of our contemplation. Readers will thank Barry for bringing these stories to their attention. Publishers Weekly
The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea, by Steve LeVine, $27.95. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a big opportunity for Big Oil, whose exploits are detailed in this fast-paced work of political and economic reportage by Wall Street Journal energy correspondent LeVine. Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, $14. Desai’s somber second novel (a marked contrast to her highly acclaimed comic fable “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,” 1998) looks at cultural dislocation as experienced by an unhappy Indian menage … Desai’s eye for the ridiculous is as keen as ever. Publishers Weekly
Mozart and the Whale: An Asperger’s Love Story, by Jerry and Mary Newport with Johnny Dodd, $15. The realization that “our community seemed to know more about the first twenty years of an autistic person’s life than it did about the rest of that life” leads the Newports to tell their own boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-finds-girl love story but with a difference, for both suffer from Asperger’s syndrome. Publishers Weekly
Treasure Ship: The Legend and Legacy of the S.S. Brother Jonathan, $15.95, by Dennis M. Powers. In his second book, the author of “The Raging Sea” (2005) displays the same talent for research and writing on maritime topics. His subject now is the steamer Brother Jonathan, which sank in a storm off northern California in 1865. Lost were nearly all the people aboard and a consignment of gold coins bound for the Pacific Northwest. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
The Killing Ground, by Jack Higgins, $25.95. Intelligence operative Sean Dillon stops Caspar Rashid at the Heathrow Airport passport check. Rashid begs for Dillon’s help to rescue his daughter, who is in the clutches of one of the world’s worst terrorists. Dillon is more than happy to oblige. (January)
