Editor’s Choice
Remembering the Bones, by Frances Itani, $24. Octogenarian Georgie Danforth Whitley has always noted similarities — including their birth dates — between herself and Queen Elizabeth, whom she privately imagines as Lilibet, a kind of parallel life-mate … (A) momentary distraction on a drive to the airport ends with Georgie’s car falling to the bottom of a ravine — with no one, except maybe Lilibet, knowing she is missing. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbø; translated by Don Bartlett, $24.95. In the latest Scandinavian crime fiction import, award-winning and best-selling Norwegian author Nesbø introduces Detective Harry Hole, a talented, dedicated detective with drinking issues. Library Journal
Girl Meets Boy, by Ali Smith, $18. Veteran British novelist Smith returns from 2006’s Whitbread Award-winner “The Accidental” with a cheerful, sexy, disorienting take on the gender-shifting myths of Iphis (as told in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”). Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse, by Jane Kamensky, $29.95. A narrative of financial chicanery and real-estate flimflam that foreshadows our own times. Kamensky returns to prominence the once-notorious speculator Andrew Dexter Jr. (1779-1837), a pioneer currency trader and prototypical hedge-fund operator. Kirkus
Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe, by James J. Sheehan, $26. After two cataclysmic wars, argues the Stanford historian, Europe transformed from a place where the state was defined by its capacity to make war into “civilian states” that have “lost all interest” in making war. They are marked by a focus on economic growth, prosperity, personal security. Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Body Surfing, by Anita Shreve, $14.99. Set adrift at 29 by the sudden death of her second husband (her first divorced her), smart, underemployed Sydney (no last name) signs on for a quiet New England oceanfront summer of tutoring 18-year-old Julie, the intellectually slow but artistically talented and strikingly beautiful daughter of the fractious Edwards clan. Publishers Weekly
Ludlow: A Verse-Novel, by David Mason, $18.95. One of the most shameful horrors of the long battle for union organizing rights occurred near tiny Ludlow, Colo. Mason interjects his own memories of learning about Ludlow and his family’s tangential connection to it, as well as the rage and pity, and the solidarity with the poor and oppressed, that Ludlow still evokes. Booklist
Travels in the Scriptorium, by Paul Auster, $12. Auster coyly celebrates the power of the imagination and marvels over the labyrinthine nature of the mind in an archly playful and shrewdly philosophical tribute to the transcendence of stories. Booklist
COMING UP
The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, The Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction, by Charles Lane, $26. The story of the mass murder of more than 60 black men that moved a small Louisiana town into the center of the nation’s consciousness on Easter Sunday in 1873. (March)
Delusion, by Peter Abrahams, $24.95. The author of “Echo Falls” returns with a novel about a young woman who witnesses the murder of her boyfriend. Her testimony put a man behind bars and led to her husband, Clay, the gentle detective who solved the case. They’ve been happy since, but one phone call changes everything. (April)
