The Best New Under-the-Radar Reads
If you're packing books for a summer getaway or looking for a great read to whisk you into its pages, consider these notable new fiction and nonfiction titles that go beyond the bestseller. With so many outstanding new reads flying under the radar of current bestseller lists, get ready to dive right in!
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. As the situation becomes ever more complicated, Yoli faces the most terrifying decision of her life.
All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer
Six years ago, terrorists hijacked a plane in Vienna. Somehow, a rescue attempt staged from the inside went terribly wrong and everyone on board was killed. Members of the CIA stationed in Vienna during that time were witness to this terrible tragedy. So when it all went wrong, the question had to be asked: had their agent been compromised, and how?
Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris
A New Yorker copy veteran presents laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing errors in the language and usage, drawing on examples from classic literature and pop culture while sharing anecdotes from her work with celebrated writers.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years. Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war.
Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh
Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life.
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Otto finds a note left by his wife in the kitchen of their farmhouse in windswept Saskatchewan. Eighty-three-year-old Etta will be walking 3,200 kilometers to see the ocean, but somehow, Otto understands. He took his own journey once before, to fight in a faraway land. With Etta gone, Otto struggles with his demons of war, while their friend Russell initially pursues the woman he has loved from afar.
Every Day I Fight by Stuart Scott
"When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and the manner in which you live." This book is the fearless, intimate and inspiring story behind ESPN anchor Stuart Scott's unrelenting fight against cancer.
The Half Brother by Holly LeCraw
Fresh out of college and barely older than the students he teaches, Charlie longs to find his place in the rarefied world of Abbottsford. He is particularly drawn to the school chaplain, Preston Bankhead, and Preston's beautiful daughter, May. Then Charlie's younger half brother Nick arrives on campus and May Bankhead proves susceptible to his magnetic draw. As Charlie sees the unmistakable connection between his first love and his half brother, he struggles with emotions far more complicated than mere jealousy.
On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks
Physician and writer Oliver Sacks recounts his experiences as a young neurologist; his physical passions--weight lifting and swimming; his love affairs, both romantic and intellectual; his guilt over leaving his family to come to America; his bone with his schizophrenic brother; and the writers and scientists who influenced him.
Skylight by Jose Saramago
Skylight tells the intertwined stories of the residents of a faded apartment building in 1940s Lisbon. With his characteristic compassion, depth, and wit, Saramago shows us the quiet contentment of a happy family and the infectious poison of an unhappy one. Skylight is a portrait of ordinary people, painted by a master of the quotidian, a great observer of the immense beauty and profound hardships of the modern world.
The Swimmer by Joakim Zander
A deep-cover CIA agent races across Europe to save the daughter he never knew. Klara Walldeen was raised by her grandparents on a remove archipelago in the Baltic Sea, learning to fish and hunt and sail a boat through a storm. Now, as an EU Parliament aide in Brussels, she is learning how to navigate the treacherous currents of international polities: the lines between friend and enemy, truth and lies.
So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
For the past three years, Jon Ronson has traveled the world meeting recipients of famous public shamings, often while their shamings are in full force. Ronson's journey results in an entertaining and eye-opening book about public shaming, and about shame as a form of social control. This is a powerful, funny, unique, and very human dispatch from the front lines in an escalating war on human nature and its flaws.
Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm
After a heist she planned lands two men she loves in prison, a woman flees Paris and assumes a new identity, furtively checking news from her hometown as her web of deception unravels.
World Gone By by Dennis Lehane
Working as a consigliore to the Bartolo crime family, traveling between Tampa and Cuba, former crime kingpin Joe Coughlin, who has everything--money, power, anonymity and a beautiful mistress--is forced to pay for his lifetime of sin when the dark truth of his past emerges.
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