Editor’s Choice
Beautiful Maria of My Soul, by Oscar Hijuelos, $25.99 In a sequel of sorts to “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love,” Hijuelos examines the life of the muse of that novel as she moves from childhood to the fast lane in mid-20th-century Cuba. An intelligent and playful ending caps off a vivid story here. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
Girl By the Road at Night, by David Rabe, $23 The lives of an American GI and a Vietnamese prostitute briefly intersect in the early years of the Vietnam War. This is no Romeo-and-Juliet story of unrequited love and desire. Instead, the characters play out their roles in both tender and brutal ways. A powerful statement about sex, war and identity. Kirkus
My Name Is Memory, by Ann Brashares, $25.95 A romance that stretches across centuries and past lives constitutes the core of Brashares’ varied second adult novel, the first in a planned trilogy. Brashares’ insights into human nature, meanwhile, should appeal to readers who enjoyed “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
Welcome to Utopia: Notes From a Small Town, by Karen Valby, $25 Entertainment Weekly senior writer Valby debuts with an account of her return to Utopia, Texas, a tiny town she profiled in 2006. The author starts slowly, but once she gets rid of the early-on cliches, she emerges as a sensitive, candid and balanced observer of life in a town that is both everywhere and nowhere.Publishers Weekly
Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds, by Lyndall Gordon, $32.95 This biography is informed by two revelations: first, a bombshell that is likely to be debated as long as there are inquiring readers of Emily Dickinson; and second, the effect of a family love affair on the poet’s long and complex publishing history. Library Journal
American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, by H.W. Brands, $32.95 Bringing his trademark clarity to the tales he tells, bestselling historian Brands (“The First American”) opens in post-Hiroshima days and closes in our own. Brands’ book is a fast-moving, reasonably comprehensive history of more than half a century of American history. Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Far Bright Star, by Robert Olmstead, $13.95 A veteran soldier battles for survival in another meditative, beautifully written novel from Olmstead. The spectacle Olmstead presents is not a pretty one, and its consolations are only for the strong and clear-minded. But the beauty and power of his prose will keep most readers from looking away. Brutal, tender and magnificent. Publishers Weekly
Losing Mum and Pup, by Christopher Buckley, $13.99 Breezy, witty, savvy and perceptive — and occasionally bitchy and biting — “Losing Mum and Pup” displays all the hallmarks of Christopher Buckley’s acclaimed fiction. As testimony to what Pat and Bill Buckley were really like, the book bears supreme witness and delivers many laughs; as an account of what it’s like to watch one’s parents suffer and die, it is moving to the point of tears. Washington Post
Between the Assassinations, by Aravind Adiga, $15 This short-story collection, teeming with life in the small Indian city of Kittur between the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and that of her son Rajiv in 1991, serves as a prelude to Adiga’s Booker Prize- winning “The White Tiger.” Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
The Whisperers, by John Connolly, $26 Charlie Parker is back in this story of set at the border between Maine and Canada where a dangerous smuggling operation is taking place. (July)
