Editor’s Choice
Gone Tomorrow, by Lee Child, $27. All good thriller writers know how to build suspense and keep the pages turning, but better ones deliver tight plots as well, and only the best allow the reader to match wits with both the hero and the author. Best-seller Child does all of that in spades in his 13th Jack Reacher adventure (after “Nothing to Lose”). Publishers Weekly
FICTION
Home Safe, by Elizabeth Berg, $25. Love, work and the absence of both figure prominently in Berg’s latest, a rumination on loss and replenishment. Berg gracefully renders in tragic and comic detail the notion that every life — however blessed — has its share of awful loss, and that even crushed, defeated hearts can be revived. Publishers Weekly
The Four Corners of the Sky, by Michael Malone, $24.99. A long but satisfying tale of crime and death foretold that blends hints of “The Great Santini,” “Top Gun” and “Fried Green Tomatoes” with copious draughts of Shakespeare. Secrets and intrigues among the honeysuckle: a sun-washed yarn of the New South, affectionately told. Kirkus
NONFICTION
The Marriage-Go-Round, by Andrew J. Cherlin, $25.95. The book presents a comprehensive historical overview of marriage and family in the U.S. and compares American behavior with that of people in other Western countries (Americans have the highest levels of moving from partner to partner). Publishers Weekly
Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town, by Warren St. John, $24.95. Richly detailed, uplifting account of a young Jordanian emigre who created a soccer program in Georgia for young refugees from war-torn nations. Expanding on his front- page series in The New York Times, St. John shows one determined woman profoundly impacting the lives of dozens of impoverished families. Kirkus
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T.J. Stiles, $37.50. In this whacking new biography of Vanderbilt, Stiles moves with force and conviction and imperious wit through Vanderbilt’s noisy life and times. The book is full of sharp, unexpected turns. This is state-of-the-art biography, crisper and more piquant than a 600-page book has any right to be. The New York Times
PAPERBACKS
The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides, $14. Eugenides’ (“Middlesex”) remarkable first novel opens on a startling note — a suicide. What follows is not, however, a horror novel, but a finely crafted work of literary if slightly macabre imagination. A black, glittering novel that won’t be to everyone’s taste, but must be tried by readers looking for something different. Library Journal
The Turnaround, by George Pelecanos, $14.99. Once again using the ethnic neighborhoods of Washington, D.C., to explore issues of class and race, and the possibility of bridging those gulfs, Pelecanos (“The Night Gardener,” 2006, etc.) constructs a taut narrative in which the past exerts a seismic pull on the present. Kirkus
Driftless, by David Rhodes, $16. After a 30-year absence from publishing due to a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed, Rhodes is back with a novel featuring July Montgomery, the hero of his 1975 novel, “Rock Island Line,” which movingly involves him with the fates of several characters who live in the small town of Words, Wis. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
South of Broad, by Pat Conroy, $29.95. Using Charleston, S.C., as a backdrop, Conroy (“Prince of Tides,” etc.) mixes his usual cast of unique characters with the atmosphere of the Deep South to tell a story that spans from the 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. (August)
