Editor’s Choice
The Rule of Nine, by Steve Martini, $26.99.
In Martini’s nail-biting 11th Paul Madriani thriller, the California lawyer once again crosses paths with hired assassin Liquida Muerte (a.k.a. the Mexicutioner), whose enmity he earned in the previous book, “Guardian of Lies.” Bent on revenge, Liquida makes a clumsy attempt to implicate Madriani in the death of Jimmie Snyder, a 23-year- old congressional gofer. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
The Ice Princess, by Camila Läckberg, $25.95.
At the start of Läckberg’s haunting U.S. debut, the first of her seven novels set in the Swedish coastal town of Fjällbacka, biographer Erica Falck returns home to sort through her deceased parents’ belongings and work on her next book. But this is not the same hometown she grew up in. Publishers Weekly
Frankenstein: Lost Souls, by Dean Koontz.
“Lost Souls” continues the saga of the seemingly unkillable Victor Frankenstein, now a megalomaniac bent on — what else? — world domination. Koontz does his dance of grisly suspense, wry dialogue, sharp characterization, outlandish but charming comic relief, and cultural criticism more adroitly than almost ever before. Booklist
NONFICTION
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizzare Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, by Ben Macintyre, $25.
In 1943, British intelligence conceived “a spectacular con trick” to draw German attention away from the Allies’ obvious next objective, Sicily. The bait was a briefcase full of carefully forged documents attached to the wrist of “Major William Martin, Royal Marines” — a fictitious identity given to a body floated ashore in neutral Spain. Publishers Weekly
The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World, by David Kirkpatrick, $26.
This business history and biography of Facebook’s founders, especially visionary Mark Zuckerberg, chronicles Facebook’s surprising Ivy League beginnings in a Harvard University dormitory and how it spread to other college campuses and high school audiences before opening up to the general public. Library Journal. Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century, by Sam Kashner and nancy Schoenberger, $27.99.
Life outdoes movie melodrama in this raucous, intimate, dual biography of Hollywood’s ultimate “It Couple.” Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride, by Daniel James Brown, $14.99.
Brown delivers a skillful, suspenseful study of the Donner Party, narrated from the point of view of a newly married woman. Wading through the many previous accounts of the ill-fated journey, Brown creates a thorough and unique narrative. A moving man-against-nature tragedy that still resonates today. Kirkus
Little Bee, by Chris Cleave, $14.
Cleave has carved two indelible characters whose choices in even the most straitened circumstances permit them dignity — if they are willing to sacrifice for it. “Little Bee” is the best kind of political novel: You’re almost entirely unaware of its politics because the book doesn’t deal in abstractions but in human beings. The Washington Post
L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City, by John Buntin.
Buntin chronicles the complex, interlocking lives of brutal gangster Mickey Cohen and durable police chief William Parker, telling their stories against the backdrop of Tinseltown from the 1930s to the ’60s. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
The Last Lie, by Stephen White, $26.95.
White returns to Boulder and continuing character Alan Gregory for another of his popular mysteries. (August)
