Editor’s Choice
William Trevor: Selected Stories, $35. Gathering 48 stories originally appearing in four volumes, this follow-up collection to 1992’s “Collected Stories, Vol. 1” offers readers the luxury of immersing themselves in Trevor’s unparalleled mastery of short fiction. Library Journal
FICTION
City of Veils, Zoe Ferraris, $24.99. Ferraris’ stellar second novel is again set in Saudi Arabia and features the desert guide Nayir Sharqi and forensic scientist Katya Hijazi. She presents a searing portrait of the religious and cultural veils that separate Muslim women from the modern world. Publishers Weekly Indulgence in Death, by J.D. Robb, $26.99 Lt. Eve Dallas of the New York Police and Security Department returns home from a long overdue Irish vacation to a string of bizarre murders in Robb’s thrilling 32nd future cop novel (after “Fantasy in Death”). Publishers Weekly American Assassin, by Vince Flynn, $27.99. This is Flynn’s 11th Mitch Rapp thriller, but it’s set at the very beginning of Rapp’s death-defying career. It places him in the aftermath of the event that forever changed his life: the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Scotland that killed 270 people, including the woman he loved. Barnes & Noble reviews
NONFICTION
Conversations With Myself, Nelson Mandela, $28. The South African statesman and former political prisoner bares his mind and soul in this inspiring collection of writings and interviews. The material includes reminiscences of the anti-apartheid movement, lessons in revolutionary theory gleaned from his guerrilla training, vignettes of prison life, seething protests to authorities, tender missives to loved ones, canny political strategizing and quiet philosophical reflections. Publishers Weekly Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Depression, Adventure and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals, by Jay Kirk, $27.50. Kirk offers a rollicking biography of Carl Akeley, an American taxidermist who preserved realistic-looking beasts complete with aura of “will” for 20th-century natural history museums. Publishers Weekly Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir, by Fatima Bhutto, $26.95. Writer and poet Bhutto is a member of one of Pakistan’s most newsworthy and controversial political families. What she creates is less of an autobiography and more of a sweeping political history and biography of the Bhutto family (with a special emphasis on her father’s life). Publishers Weekly
PAPERBACKS
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, $16.99. A thoroughly researched, well-paced and occasionally very amusing read. The result is something that conveys the feel, or perhaps more accurately the smell, of one of recent history’s most thrilling elections, and it does so better than any of the other books already on the market. The Economist Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, by Lisa Scottoline, $14.99. Brief, punchy slices of daily life originally published in her Philadelphia Inquirer column allow novelist Scottoline (“Everywhere That Mary Went”) to dish on men, mothers, panty lines and, especially, dogs. Publishers Weekly When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins, $15.99. Collins’ rich, readable account of the past 50 years of the women’s movement . . . reminds us of the triumphs, mortifications and hilarity of the early decades, as well as the personalities. The Washington Post
COMING UP
Strategic Moves, by Stuart Woods, $25.95. Woods turns to his continuing character, Stone Barrington, and to today’s headlines when the villain reminds us of Bernie Madoff. (January)
