Editor’s Choice
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz, $24.95. Diaz’s book is funny, street-smart and keenly observed, and it unfolds from a comic portrait of a second-generation Dominican geek into a harrowing meditation on public and private history and the burdens of familial history. Mr. Diaz has fashioned both a big picture window that opens out on the sorrows of Dominican history, and a small, intimate window that reveals one family’s life and loves. The New York Times
FICTION
Beaufort, by Ron Leshem, $24. Leshem’s debut, which won the 2006 Sapir Prize in Israel and was made into a film, is an alternately grim and blackly comic war/coming-of-age novel set at an Israeli outpost in southern Lebanon in 2000. Kirkus
T Is for Trespass, by Sue Grafton, $26.95. The 20th Kinsey Millhone crime novel, a gripping tale of identify theft and elder abuse, displays best-seller Grafton’s storytelling gifts. Grafton’s mastery of dialogue and her portrayal of the limits of good intentions make this one of the series’ high points. Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Frontier, by Joel Hafvenstein, $24.95. All over Afghanistan, development projects are underway aimed at winning over the Afghan people, depriving the Taliban of popular support and propping up Hamid Karzai’s government. The obstacles are as steep as the surrounding mountains, as Hafvenstein discovered and ruefully recounts in this bitter but affectionate book about his three stints in Afghanistan from October 2003 to May 2005. The New York Times
The Nuclear Jihadist, by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, $25. A pair of determined journalists trace the dark career of Abdul Qadeer Khan, who led Pakistan’s successful quest for a nuclear weapon, then sold supplies and plans for similar devices to eager clients like Libya and Iran. Kirkus
PAPERBACKS
The Pure Land, by Alan Spence, $14.95. Scottish writer Spence (Stone Garden) fictionalizes the life of Thomas Glover, a 19th-century Scots entrepreneur who built a mercantile empire in Japan, and whose life inspired Madame Butterfly and Miss Saigon. Thoughtful and vivid, the novel adds detail to a life known mostly in broad strokes. Publishers Weekly
Voices From the Street, by Philip K. Dick, $14.95. This previously unpublished novel is remarkable for a number of reasons, probably the least of which is novelistic merit. Like much of Dick’s fiction, the plot skims ambiguously along an abstract surface, only occasionally revealing concrete motivation or connection. But that’s what endears Dick’s novels to millions of readers nearly 25 years after his death. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, by David Kaiser, $35. The author, a Naval War College historian, shows that the killing of President Kennedy has to be linked to the U.S. government’s campaign against organized crime and its efforts to eliminate Fidel Castro. (March)
The Dark Lantern, by Gerri Brightwell, $24.95. When two women’s dark secrets are revealed, the lives of all the people associated with a Victorian home are changed forever. (March)
