Editor’s Choice
Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, by Nadine Gordimer, $21. Thirteen stories from South African Nobel Prize-winner Gordimer offer a staccato demonstration of how people’s origins, inheritances and histories — and loss of them — are inescapable. Gordimer puts big, sweeping disasters (Holocaust, apartheid) in the pasts of flawed, ill-equipped characters and shows how their choices have been little more than wing beats against history. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
The Empanada Brotherhood, by John Nichols, $22.95. A novel from the author of “The Milagro Beanfield War” about a band of metaphorical brothers whose social life centers on an empanada kiosk in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. Kirkus
Bitter Sweets, by Roopa Farooki, $24.95. Farooki’s delightful debut novel commences in India, where Heena Rub and her father trick the Westernized and wealthy Ricky-Rashid Karim into marrying the illiterate Heena. Library Journal
NONFICTION
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein, $28. One of the world’s most famous antiglobalization activists and the author of the best seller “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies,” Klein richly describes the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries, and the human toll. The New York Times
Our Dumb World: The Onion’s Atlas of the Planet Earth, 73rd Edition, by the editors of The Onion, $27.99. Here is “the world’s most famous fake atlas,” as the editors say, is a compendium of “facts” that aren’t and places that don’t exist. It’s irony and parody at its best. The Denver Post
Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman, by Caryl Flinn, $34.95 This comprehensive biography of the Broadway legend (1908-1984) may lack some of the vitality of Brian Kellow’s “Ethel Merman: A Life” (which boasts more than 100 new interviews with Merman’s contemporaries offering backstage anecdotes), but is better written and researched. Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Guide to the Best Family Films, by Michael Booth, $12.95. Denver Post staffer Booth has compiled a list of a year’s worth of family-night movies. He provides a rating, viewing age, genre, run time, awards and nominations, trivia, summary and a list of resources for other family-appropriate movies.
Love Over Scotland, by Alexander McCall Smith, $13.95. The irresistible third entry to the 44 Scotland Street series picks up with the residents of 44 Scotland Street where “Espresso Tales” left off. Publishers Weekly
Midnight in Sicily, by Peter Robb, $16. This is not a travel book but rather a sophisticated attempt to make sense of the ongoing prosecution of the 78-year-old, seven-time prime minister, Giulio Andreotti, and of the intimate ties between the mafia and postwar Italian politics. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War, by Pete Earley, $25.96. Former Washington Post reporter recounts the man who ran the Soviet Union’s post-Cold War spy program in America. (January)
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart, by Patrick J. Buchanan, $25.95. Conservative pundit lays out how the U.S. is being merged with Mexico and embedded in a global economy, threatening American sovereignty. (January)
