Editor’s Choice
Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carre, $27.95. Those readers who have found post-Cold War le Carre too cerebral will have much to cheer about with this Russian mafia spy thriller. Le Carre’s most accessible work in years, this novel shows once again why his name is the one to which all others in the field are compared. Publishers Weekly
FICTION
Solomon’s Oak, by Jo-Ann Mapson, $25. Mapson’s (“Hank & Chloe”) latest is an emotionally genuine if predictable story of three lonely, damaged people who find solace in one another. Mapson seems most at ease describing the relationship between human and animal — especially dogs and horses — and in rendering the Western landscape. Publishers Weekly
The Caretaker of Lorne Field, by Dave Zeltserman, $23.95. Zeltserman’s superb mix of humor and horror focuses on Jack Durkin, the ninth generation of firstborn sons in his family who have daily weeded Lorne Field to purge it of Aukowies, bloodthirsty plants that could overrun the world in weeks if not attended to. Publishers Weekly
NONFICTION
Grant Wood: A Life, by R. Tripp Evans, $37.50. Much about Grant Wood’s patriotism and masculinity has been read into the painting’s pitchfork-holding farmer and his dour companion, standing in front of a Midwestern farmhouse. Evans, an art historian at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, argues that even more has been misread, overshadowing a rich and varied artistic career. Publishers Weekly
What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly, $27.95. Kevin Kelly thinks that technology has a mind of its own. He doesn’t mean that in the hackneyed sense of heavy-handed “robots gone wrong” sci-fi stories; instead, in his carefully reasoned new book, he proposes that technology has become a near-living thing, an evolutionary life force that possesses its own trajectories and imperatives. Barnes & Noble
American Grace: How Religion Divides Us and Unites Us, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell. Putnam and Campbell (with their researcher, Shaylyn Garrett) have done the public a great service in not only producing their own mammoth survey of American religion but also drawing from many prior statistical studies, enabling readers to track mostly gradual change over time. Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, by Ken Auletta, $16. “Googled” depicts the company as a brilliant, game- changing behemoth that can be socially inept, and both naive and arrogant, in its dealings with the world. The book, more fair-minded reportage than a polemic, leaves us with a telling portrait of a paradigm-altering company. The New York Times
Summertime, by J.J. Coetzee, $15. Part confessional, part tease, a wholly trumped-up story in which a callow biographer sets out to get the true goods on the novelist. . . . in the end, trying to parse Coetzee’s novel about Coetzee is like trying to pry open the goose that laid the golden egg. Washington Post
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick, $16. Following six North Koreans over 15 years, Demick offers a haunting portrait of life in North Korea. Her subjects are instantly relatable — they fall in love, raise families — but as their country grows increasingly isolated, totalitarian, and repressive, and is ravaged by unemployment and famine, they risk everything to leave. Publishers Weekly
COMING UP
The Red Garden, by Alice Hoffman, $25. Hoffman’s latest takes a heartfelt look into small-town America, giving 330 years of the history of Blackwell, Mass., and all of its secrets, loyalty and redemption. (January)
