Fiction
Wayfaring Stranger, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster). A chance encounter with Bonnie and Clyde turns out to be more than coincidence in this story that starts in 1937, covers World War II and stretches into postwar Texas and the oil business. When a tycoon threatens to destroy everything a war veteran-turned-entrepreneur has built, it’s time for frontier justice. Land of Love and Drowning, by Tiphanie Yanique (Riverhead Books). The story of three generations of the Bradshaw family in the Virgin Islands after they’ve been transferred from Danish to American rule “through 60 years of fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, husbands and wives and lovers, curses, magic, births and deaths, and triumphs.”
Memoir
The Mockingbird Next Door: Life with Harper Lee, by Marja Mills (Penguin Press). Many writers have tried to get close to the reclusive author of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” but journalist Mills was able to finally do it. She rented the house next to Lee in Monroeville, Ala., after befriending her and her older sister Alice, learned their stories and sets the record straight about many assumptions others had about their lives.
