Editor’sChoice
Viola in Reel Life, by Adriana Trigiani, $16.99. Trigiani (“Big Stone Gap”) takes the familiar boarding- school milieu and gives it some welcome nuance and a refreshingly grounded feel in her debut Young Authors work, first in a proposed series. Trigiani uses Viola’s droll humor and a colorful supporting cast to great effect. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
Little Bird of Heaven, by Joyce Carol Oates, $25.99. This novel is classic Oates. Its depiction of violence, families falling from grace and social-class disparities, as well as its location, recall her 1996 best seller, “We Were the Mulvaneys.” Fans of Oates will delight in this offering, and newcomers will receive a first-class introduction.” Bookpage
Hell, by Robert Olen Butler, $24. Prolific Pulitzer-winner Butler features a colorful cast of underworld dwellers in his latest novel and, as in “Severance and Intercourse,” captures stream-of-consciousness in delicious, unleashed rhythm. Butler’s lust for the tabloid romp and his stream of the never-ending punch line both irritates and illuminates. Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
Born Round: The Secret History of a Full- Time Eater, by Frank Bruni, $25.95. Outgoing New York Times restaurant critic Bruni admits he was even a baby bulimic in his extraordinary memoir. While Bruni includes such entertaining bits as the campaign trail seen through Weight Watcher lens and ample meals from his years as the Times’ restaurant critic, in the end, his is a powerful, honest book about desire, shame, identity and self-image. Publishers Weekly
Nurtureshock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, $24.99. The central premise of this book by Bronson (“What Should I Do with My Life?”) and Merryman, a Washington Post journalist, is that many of modern society’s most popular strategies for raising children are in fact backfiring because key points in the science of child development and behavior have been overlooked. Publishers Weekly
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew B. Crawford, $25.95. (Crawford) reminds readers that in the 1990s, vocational education (shop class) started to become a thing of the past as U.S. educators prepared students for the “knowledge revolution.” Thus, an entire generation of American “thinkers” cannot, he says, do anything, and this is a threat to manufacturing, the fundamental backbone of economic development. Library Journal
PAPERBACKS
Pieces of My Heart, by Robert J. Wagner, with Scott Eyman. The handsome actor reminisces about the passing of a more glamorous Hollywood, settles some old scores and examines his passionate relationship with Natalie Wood. A diverting meander through a life in show business. Kirkus
The Resurrectionist, by Jack O’Connell, $13.95. A father struggles to reclaim his son from a long-standing coma in O’Connell’s dark, wildly inventive fantasy. The shadow world of comic books provides O’Connell (“Word Made Flesh”) with material for a nightmarish story that’s hallucinatory, tightly structured and ultimately redemptive. Kirkus
Second Violin, by John Lawton, $14. Lawton’s engrossing sixth entry — but the first chronologically in his Inspector Troy thriller series (“Black Out”) — chronicles the major events leading up to Germany’s annexation of Austria during WWII, Chamberlain’s peace efforts and Kristallnacht, while providing a disturbing picture of anti-Semitism and class frictions in England at the time. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
9 Dragons, by Michael Connelly, $27.99. The murder of a liquor-store owner whom Harry Bosch has known for years hits the detective hard, and he promises John Li’s family that he’ll find the killer. (October)
