Editor’s Choice
Work Song, by Ivan Doig, $25.95.
Returning to Montana in 1919, 10 years after he pinch-hit as a rural schoolteacher in “The Whistling Season,” Morris Morgan finds the city of Butte roiled by labor unrest. More atmospheric, pleasingly old-fashioned storytelling from Doig, whose ear for the way people spoke and thought in times gone by is as faultless as ever. Kirkus
FICTION
Ice Cold, by Tess Gerritson, $26.
Boston medical examiner Maura Isles is in Wyoming for a conference. Impulsively, she joins an old friend and his daughter on a ski trip. When their vehicle breaks down, they’re stranded in the eerily named Kingdom Come, a small community whose residents appear to have vanished. Then Maura vanishes. Booklist
Red Rain, by Bruce Murkoff, $26.95.
Following up his acclaimed first novel (“Waterborne”), Murkoff again offers a work of historical fiction, this one taking place in the Hudson River port town of Rondout, N.Y., during 1864. An in-depth examination of life in a gritty river town during wartime. Library Journal
NONFICTION
The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier, by Imtiaz Gul, 26.95.
In his first U.S. publication, Pakistani journalist Gul tracks the Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents into the mountainous tribal regions to investigate the tangle of perilous allegiances. In a dense, timely study, the author investigates the complicated makeup of these groups. Kirkus
Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World, by Nick Bunker, $30.
This superb book secures for the Pilgrims their iconic perch among the earliest founders of colonial America. Bunker has succeeded in writing a major history, unprecedented in its sweep, of the Plymouth Colony, a history centered on the 1620s but not exclusive to that decade. Publishers Weekly
The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents, by Alex Butterworth, $30.
Historian Butterworth (“Pompeii: The Living City”) makes a first-rate addition to the growing list of books dealing with terrorism’s origins and history. His focus is the alienated young men and women who, in the late 19th and early-20th centuries, turned to anarchist and nihilist terrorism. Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving, $17.
Irving’s 12th novel — following “Until I Find You” — covers five decades in the lives of three highly memorable characters. Most of Irving’s usual themes and icons appear here, from bears to wrestling to unseen fears, as he uses the character of a writer to define his own fiction-writing process. Library Journal
In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews, by Joyce Carol Oates, $14.99.
A bad joke says writing is easy if you don’t know how to do it. This collection is a personal appreciation and piercing analysis of those who do it sublimely: Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Jean Stafford, Roald Dahl (considered in his adult work), Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth, Claire Messud and others. Publishers Weekly
Stone’s Fall, Iain Pears, $16.
British author Pears matches the brilliance of his best-selling “An Instance of the Fingerpost” with this intricate historical novel, which centers on the death of a wealthy financier. The pages will fly by for most readers, who will lose themselves in the clear prose and compelling plot. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
The Cobra, by Frederick Forsyth, $26.95.
Veteran suspense writer Forsyth returns with the story of a former CIA agent who is given carte-blanche authority to stop a plot — and that means nothing is off the table. (August)
