Editor’s Choice
Follow Me, by Joanna Scott, $24.99. A granddaughter sifts through her grandmother’s rich and mysterious life in Pulitzer finalist Scott’s latest. As a teenager in 1946, Sally Werner experiences something between rape and seduction at the hands of her cousin, resulting in a baby, family shame and her running away. Each time Sally feels her past catching up with her, she finds a new town and assumes a new identity. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
The Venetian Judgment, by David Stone, $25.95. CIA “cleaner” Micah Dalton is in bad standing with the Company but manages to acquire yet another wound and slaughter five bad guys in the first few pages of this suspenseful sequel to the author’s two previous breath-stoppers (“The Echelon Vendetta” and “The Orpheus Deception”). Publishers Weekly
Malice, by Lisa Jackson, $24. A vengeful ex-wife appears to have returned from the dead to stalk her ex-husband in this gripping thriller from best-seller Jackson (“Absolute Fear”). Jackson heightens the creep factor by including the viewpoint of a character whose hatred for (LAPD detective Rick Bentz) for past wrongs inspires another extreme killing spree. Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History, by Barbara Moran, $26. “Nova” staff writer and researcher Moran chronicles a largely forgotten Air Force disaster. On Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 crashed during a routine mission over Spain, dispersing four nuclear warheads across the tomato fields and inciting two months of furor and panic before all the bombs were safely retrieved. Kirkus
West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State, by Mark Arax, $26.95. These swift, penetrating essays from former Los Angeles Times writer Arax (“In My Father’s Name”) take the measure of contemporary California with a sure and supple hand, consciously but deservedly taking its place alongside Didion’s and Saroyan’s great social portraits. Publishers Weekly
Vicksburg 1863, by Winston Groom, $30. Groom’s (“Forest Gump,” etc.) approach to the Civil War follows the examples of Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote. It features learning lightly worn, presented in a narrative format that engages even though the outcome is known. Groom presents grand events from a human perspective . . . Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 pages, by Ammon Shea, $13.95. (A)n oddly inspiring book about reading the whole of the Oxford English Dictionary in one go . . . Shea’s book offers more than exotic word lists, though. It also has a plot. “I feel as though I am eating the alphabet,” he writes halfway through, and you want him to make it to the end. The New York Times
The Lazarus Project, by Aleksandar Hemon, $16. (A) remarkable and entertaining chronicle of loss and hopelessness and cruelty, propelled by an eloquent, irritable existential unease. It is, against all odds, full of humor and full of jokes. It is, at the same time, inexpressibly sad. The New York Times
Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, by Arthur Herman, $20. Herman’s book focuses on two imposing figures who epitomized the clash between traditional imperialism and the gathering anti-colonial insurgency, and he tells their stories stylishly and eloquently . . . Washington Post
COMING UP
“The State of Jones,” by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer, $26. Here is the story of the people of Jones County, Miss., who rebelled against the Confederacy, causing repercussions far beyond the scope of the Civil War. (June)
