Nonfiction
A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience, by Emerson Baker (Oxford). Delving into the Salem story beyond the trials, the author — a history professor — looks at the famous cases from the judge’s point of view and the trials’ aftermath. He also examines what was happening in colonial Massachusetts as it was turning from Puritan values to Yankee independence.
Ghosts, A Natural History: 500 Years of Searching for Proof, by Roger Clarke (St. Martin’s Press). In addition to offering a wide-ranging history of ghosts haunting everyone from British royalty and American presidents to WWI submarines, the author examines why we continue to be fascinated with the paranormal.
Fiction
Leaving Time, by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine Books). A woman can’t stop thinking about her mother, a research scientist who disappeared a decade earlier. She combs through her mother’s journals and then uses a psychic and a private detective to lead her to what is ultimately a shocking truth.
The Best American Short Stories 2014, edited by Jennifer Egan (Houghton Mifflin Harc- ourt). Among the works in the latest edition of this showcase are new pieces from T.C. Boyle, Karen Russell, Benjamin Nugent and Ann Beattie.
Biography
Wilde in America, Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity, by David M. Friedman (W.W. Norton & Co). More than a century before the Kardashians and Hilton sisters courted celebrity, this Irishman spent a year in America visiting cities from coast to coast (as well as mining towns in Colorado, among other unglamorous locales), determined to become famous. And while he was often criticized and ridiculed for his “dandyism” and fashion sense, he succeed in getting people to notice — and remember — him before returning to England to work as a playwright (“The Importance of Being Earnest”) and novelist (“The Picture of Dorian Gray”).
Memoir
Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars, by Neil Young (Blue Rider Press). The second memoir from the rock ‘n’ roll icon includes stories and reflections on his life and career by recalling the rides that got him and his band to gigs around Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Among the special autos were a 1948 Buick Roadmaster, a Willys Jeepster, a 1930 Rolls-Royce and 1950 Special Deluxe four-door sedan, which held memories of a time when “our music was not a job. It was a way of life.”
