Editor’s Choice
Swan Peak, by James Lee Burke, $25.95. Dave Robicheaux and his former partner, Clete Purcel, find trouble in western Montana in bestselling novelist Burke’s fine 17th book to feature the New Iberia, La., sheriff’s deputy (after “Tin Roof Blowdown”). Despite all the nastiness, love and redemption retain the power to heal some very wounded souls in a surprising denouement. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
For a Sack of Bones, by Lluis-Anton Baulenas, $25. The brutality and carnage that comprise the legacy of Francisco Franco’s “Republican” regime reshape and afflict several lives in Catalan playwright and screenwriter Baulenas’s accusatory novel. Publishers Weekly
Requiem, Mass., By John Dufresne, $24.95. Dufresne (“Johnny Too Bad,” etc.) travels to Requiem, Mass. The characters here are way beyond quirky — on a good day they might aspire to be wildly eccentric. Dufresne fills this novel with plenty of postmodern references; the writing itself is as much a subject as the oddball family. Kirkus
NONFICTION
Tuna: A Love Story, by Richard Ellis, $27.95. Ellis (“The Book of Sharks”) covers everything one could want to know about the “biggest, fastest, warmest-blooded, warmest-bodied fish in the world,” describing the various species of tuna and giving a thorough account of the history of recreational and commercial tuna fishing. Publishers Weekly
A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America In the Middle East, by Kenneth M. Pollack, $30. A former supporter of the Iraq invasion, former National Security Council director for Gulf Affairs Pollack now admits it was a terrible idea. Yet America must not only remain involved in the Middle East, he declares, it must bring harmony to that volatile region. A persuasive but painful solution for dealing with the mess in the Middle East. Kirkus
Still Alive: A Temporary Condition, by Herbert Gold, $25. A working novelist well into his ninth decade, just about the last of the San Francisco Beats, offers a smart and philosophical valedictory. Good, acerbic reading imbued with the writerly spirit the author has expressed for nearly half a century.Kirkus
PAPERBACK
Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician, by Daniel Wallace, $13.95. An inept African- American illusionist is dogged by the deal he struck with the devil in Wallace’s fourth novel (“Big Fish,” “The Watermelon Man,” etc.), a circus picaresque that barnstorms its way through the 1950s American South. Publishers Weekly
Big Russ and Me, by Tim Russert, $13.95. The late journalist Tim Russert gives a warm tribute to his father, a Buffalo garbage man, World War II veteran and one- man greatest generation, whose simple lessons of hard work, humility and consideration for others guided his son through his Catholic-school upbringing, his political education at the feet of Sen. Daniel Moynihan, and success as the host of TV’s “Meet the Press.” Publishers Weekly
The Things They Carried (reprint), by Tim O’Brien, $14.95. Winner of a National Book Award in 1979 for “Going After Cacciato,” O’Brien again shows his literary stuff with this brilliant collection of short stories, many of which have won literary recognition (several appeared in O. Henry Awards’ collections and “Best American Short Stories”). Library Journal
COMING UP
Bob Schieffer’s America, by Bob Schieffer, $24.95. The longtime CBS newsman, host of “Face the Nation” and author of “This Just In,” offers his observations about America and Americans. (September)
