Editor’s Choice
Exit Music, by Ian Rankin, $24.99. Inspector John Rebus has just 10 days to solve the apparently motiveless murder of Alexander Todorov, an expatriate Russian poet, before he reaches 60 and mandatory retirement in Edgar winner Rankin’s rewarding 17th novel to feature the Edinburgh detective (after “The Naming of the Dead”). Publishers Weekly
FICTION
The Butt, by Will Self, $26. From Self, the British master of the satirical fantasy, comes a loquacious and inventive farce about the demise of civilization. This one is at times exhausting, but if you can stick with him, Self successfully presents an ironic and timely metaphor for our post- 9/11 Bigger Brother world. Publishers Weekly
Ritual, by Mo Hayder, $22. Hayder vividly evokes torture and drug abuse, but the violence is never gratuitous. Readers looking for visceral thrills need look no further than this gritty English series. Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
Wild Blue: A Natural History of the World’s Largest Animal, by Dan Bortolotti, $24.95. Balancing comfortably on the cusp between popular and scientifically detailed narrative, Bortolotti summarizes our knowledge concerning the blue whale. He engages readers with a smooth writing style and a storyteller’s easeful tempo, and his subject has an obvious wow factor. Kirkus
John Lennon: The Life, by Philip Norman, $34.95. Novelist and biographer Norman, who recounted the story of the Beatles in “Shout!” focuses here on Lennon’s life outside his legendary band, with particular emphasis on his subject’s tumultuous, unconventional childhood, his strange and sometimes shocking relationships with and attitudes toward his parents, and his two very different marriages. Library Journal
Champlain’s Dream, by David Hackett Fischer, $40. Fischer, a Pulitzer Prize-winner for “Washington’s Crossing,” has produced the definitive biography of Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635): spy, explorer, courtier, soldier, sailor, ethnologist, mapmaker, and founder and governor of New France (today’s Quebec). Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, $14. There are glimmers of warmth, of human connection, in even the darkest of these stories. Strout’s benevolence toward her characters forms a slender bridge between heartbreak and hope, a dimly glimpsed path through minefields of despair. The stifled sorrows she writes of here are as real as our own — and as tenderly, compassionately understood. The Washington Post
Boom! Talking About the Sixties, by Tom Brokaw, $18. Brokaw approaches this magnum opus with warmth, curiosity and conviction, which worked so well for his “Greatest Generation.” He will succeed in prompting readers to step back and do some soul searching. “Boom!” is as interesting for the effects it can catalyze as for those it actually describes. The New York Times
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin, $15.95. Drawing on interviews with the justices and other insiders, best-selling author Toobin weighs in with an absorbing look at the politics and personalities behind the men and women who adjudicate our most compelling issues. Booklist
COMING UP
Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, by C.J. Box, 24.95. A couple’s life falls apart when they learn the father of their adopted daughter didn’t void his rights and a judge wants him to own up to his responsibilities. (January)
Very Valentine, by Adriana Trigiani, $25.95. From the author of the Big Stone Gap series comes a contemporary story about one of the last family businesses in Greenwich Village. The business is on the verge of being wiped out by the Manhattan real estate market and the availability of factory-made goods. (February)
