A legendary assassin joins a support group of murderers hoping to cure themselves of their addiction to violence in Hart’s nail-biting latest (after The Paradox Hotel). Mark, who works under the moniker the Pale Horse, has kept his murderous impulses in check for months, but his progress is threatened when he’s attacked after a meeting of Assassins Anonymous. His Russian assailant stabs him in the chest before stealing a notebook with the names of everyone Mark plans to atone to. With the help of his former medic, Astrid, Mark recovers from his injuries. When his apartment is blown up a few days later, Astrid joins him on the run, and the pair head to Singapore, where Mark hopes to track down an old contact and ferret out whether his ex-employers in U.S. intelligence are out to get him, or if someone connected to a former target has come for revenge. Mark’s continued efforts to stay “clean” from violence provide welcome humor to the otherwise breakneck proceedings. Strong characters and rattling suspense lift things further above par. Hart remains a formidable rising talent. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

A Connecticut high school teacher stops a mass murder only to be targeted by a blackmailer in this hair-raising standalone from bestseller Barclay (The Lie Maker). Richard Boyle looks out his classroom window one afternoon just in time to spot Mark LeDrew, a “benign fuckup” of a former student, approaching the building while wearing a vest loaded with dynamite. Boyle tells his class to call 911 and lock themselves in, then goes to confront Mark. He convinces the 20-something to leave—but then Mark trips and sets off the explosives, killing himself and wounding Boyle. The fallout is swift. First, Mark’s parents, who blame Boyle for their son’s death, slap him with a lawsuit. Then Billy Finster, whom Boyle coached on the wrestling team, claims the news about Mark dug up memories that Boyle sexually abused him, and that he won’t go to the cops if the teacher comes up with an unspecified sum of cash. As Boyle scrambles to pay off Billy and hire a lawyer, he discovers links between Billy’s threat and a local crime network. Barclay makes his protagonist’s plight devastatingly immediate, and keeps readers on tenterhooks throughout. This is difficult to put down. Agent: Helen Heller, Helen Heller Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this enthusiastic account, journalist Fairbanks (Wizards) traces the roots of today’s alt-country music to the outlaw movement of the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser joined forces to record 1976’s Wanted: The Outlaws! which blended rock chords with hillbilly rhythms, eschewing the “slick” Nashville sound that characterized country music at the time. Inspired by the album’s success, Jennings, Nelson, and fellow Nashville “outsiders” Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash formed the Highwaymen in the mid-1980s. Their “outlaw” sound was “more ragged than the classic rock of the ’60s, and generally free of the Music Row polish that has doomed everyone before or since to the dollar bin,” Fairbanks writes. Outlaw country evolved through the 1990s and influenced such bands as Uncle Tupelo, who combined punk, rock, country, and “a certain DIY, antiestablishment ethos” to create what became known as alt-country. The style was later adopted by Brandi Carlile, Melissa Carper, and others who challenged mainstream country’s views on gender, race, and sexuality. Fairbanks paints a sprightly if familiar portrait of an important chapter in country music, though his tendency to rehash lengthy conversations between his subjects sometimes takes things offtrack. Still, it’s a diverting look at how a noteworthy strain of country music came to be. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Brand’s sharp debut sets a murder mystery amid the cutthroat world of fitness influencers. Gemma Jorgenson is a model, bodybuilder, and personal trainer with half a million Instagram followers. After placing second in the national Bikini Olympia competition several years in a row, she’s confident she can finally take gold, boosting her following and potential brand deals in the process. Her path becomes clearer when Bianca Summers, who regularly stands between Gemma and the trophy, turns up dead in her hotel room. Gemma’s mixed feelings about Bianca’s murder give way to full-blown fear when more Bikini Olympia contestants are killed. Meanwhile, software engineer Ashley Sherma, who’s been yo-yo dieting since the fourth grade, has her life changed when she meets the charismatic and eccentric Lydia Wright, founder of the Fat Activist movement, which seeks to reduce the stigma around being overweight. Ashley puts her dark web skills to work for the organization, but soon learns its aims might be less liberatory than Lydia first let on. In short, punchy chapters that alternate perspectives between Gemma and Ashley, Brand—herself a former bodybuilder—sets the two women on a deliriously entertaining collision course. The mix of top-notch suspense and gleeful social satire makes this sing. Agent: Jackson Keeler, Inkworks Entertainment. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Dwight Eisenhower’s steady wartime leadership is limned in this meticulous account of the planning of D-Day. Historian Paradis (Last Mission to Tokyo) tracks Eisenhower’s tactful navigation of tricky problems and personalities involved in orchestrating the Allied invasion of occupied Europe. These include his overseeing of multiple countries’ land, sea, and air forces, a finely tuned combination of which Eisenhower theorized would make possible a successful amphibious invasion of heavily defended beaches (a feat military experts had deemed foolhardy since the failure of the British invasion of Gallipoli during WWI) and dealings with Winston Churchill, whose “great literary imagination” made his military calculations unrealistic. Making matters even more complicated were tensions arising from the influx of U.S. troops stationed in Britain, especially outrage among the British public over segregation in the American military and harsher penalties for Black troops accused of rape (Eisenhower commuted one such death sentence when he learned the evidence was nonexistent). Paradis peppers his narrative with glimpses of Eisenhower’s sly humor in letters to his wife, building a sharp portrait of a man whose suspicion of extravagance led to his ascendance on the world stage as a trustworthy figure. The result is a discerning examination of Eisenhower’s personal hand in establishing America’s reputation as levelheaded “leader of the free world.” (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Enormous yachts embody the sins of capitalism, according to this caustic debut polemic. University of Lille sociologist Salle indicts superyachts, defined as yachts more than 80 feet long, for their wasteful excess (one yacht designer offers showers that spray champagne); exhausting work regimens for employees; heedless mobility, which allows their wealthy owners to dodge taxes and sail away from social obligations; collective carbon footprint, which exceeds those of some small countries; and other environmental ravages, such as damaging beds of ecologically important seagrass off the southern coast of France. Above all, Salle argues, superyachts bear out an “eco-socialist” critique of “the entire fabric of fossil-industrial capitalism” by making manifest the connection between soaring inequality and “climaticide.” Salle writes in a sardonic, jokey style, occasionally lapsing into the preening first-person voice of a yacht (“I’ve been accused of looking like a submarine, but we’ll let that pass. What I have found less easy to accept is that people jeer at my bar made of Baccarat crystal”). Unfortunately, his critique, which never amounts to more than that superyachts are another way for rich people to act obnoxiously rich, founders under so many layers of interpretive weight. It’s a belabored denouncement of a gaudy but rather marginal example of class privilege. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

This excellent debut investigation from Somerstein, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, explores the history of and controversies surrounding the C-section. She explains that the operation emerged in the 500s and was usually performed on “dead or dying women in an effort to save,” or at least baptize, their babies, few of whom survived. The operation was still considered controversial for imperiling mothers’ lives in the 1800s, when American physicians began testing how to reduce its mortality rate by experimenting on enslaved Black women, who received no anesthesia and were said to “not feel pain as deeply as civilized, white women.” C-sections became safer by the end of the century and doctors started marketing them to upper-class white women, who “were believed to be delicate and constitutionally unable to withstand” labor pains. Today, C-sections comprise about one in three births in the U.S., despite research showing they’re 80% more likely than vaginal births to cause serious complications. According to Somerstein, hospitals overuse the procedure because it’s faster and allows more patients to be seen (and charged) per day. The damning history highlights how sexism and racism have shaped women’s healthcare for centuries, and Somerstein includes her own harrowing account of having an unplanned C-section while insufficiently anesthetized, an experience that left her with PTSD. This is a must-read. Agent: Veronica Goldstein, Fletcher & Company. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Rushdie follows Victory City with a forceful and surprisingly good-humored account of the 2022 knife attack that nearly killed him. At a speaking engagement in Chautaqua, N.Y., a 24-year-old man Rushdie refers to only as “A” rushed the stage where he was speaking and stabbed him multiple times, including in the eye. Authorities swiftly connected the assault to the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini after Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988. Rushdie chronicles the year following the attack, during which he recovered from liver damage, the removal of part of his small intestine, and the loss of his right eye. Though he writes of being plagued by nightmares and gory memories of the assault, Rushdie’s wit shines through (“Let me offer this piece of advice to you, gentle reader: if you can avoid having your eyelid sewn shut... avoid it”). Just as arresting is an imagined conversation with A, which sees Rushdie trying to parse his attacker’s religious convictions. By the time the narrative comes full circle, with Rushdie speaking on the same Chautaqua stage a year later, he’s opened a fascinating window into perhaps the most vulnerable period of his life. It’s a rewarding tale of resilience. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Ofori’s chilling debut, the recognition of the Ghanaian Year of Return—commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans reaching the colony of Virginia—heralds the mass manifestation of the ghosts of those who did not survive the journey. Ghana-born journalist Adwapa, who’s traveled home from the United States for the occasion, is on hand to observe and document this phenomenon. The spirits he dubs Coasters appear in the ocean before making landfall and ultimately possessing select living individuals, bringing with them an overwhelming sense of depression and despair. As society reacts with confusion, fear, and lockdowns, Adwapa strives to record and understand the restless ghosts, especially after a girl named Gyebiwaa possesses his mother. Ofori brings the setting to vivid life, but her narrator is more observer than protagonist, which keeps the reader somewhat at arm’s length. Still, this stark tale impressively probes the complex emotions surrounding the history of the slave trade, exploring guilt, trauma, and culpability. It’s a powerful, unflinching ghost story that feels as though it’s only scratched the surface of Ofori’s talent. Agent: Bieke van Aggelen, African Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Charlamagne (Black Privilege), cohost of the Breakfast Club radio show, opines on mental health, social media, and the power of comedy in these punchy if occasionally clichéd essays. The most successful selections showcase Charlamagne’s comic chops and idiosyncratic thinking, as when he argues that delivering big ideas in a humorous way can encourage people to engage in difficult debates with “the same level of focus you acquire with post-nut clarity” (the alleged lucidity of mind that follows an orgasm). Serving up frank personal reflection, Charlamagne discusses straining to keep his ego in check as his career took off in the mid-2010s and recounts how writing a book about his mental health struggles led his father to open up for the first time about living with depression. Other essays offer tired takes on how social media is allegedly ruining society. For example, he contends that unrealistic lifestyle standards set by influencers have created a generation of entitled brats who lack the hustle that he displayed during his rise to fame (“Kids today really believe that they should receive the fruits of one’s labor without having to do one’s labor”). The author’s charisma and candor buoy the selections, even as they’re sometimes dragged down by finger-wagging platitudes. Still, Charlamagne’s listeners will find much to enjoy. Agent: Jan Miller, Dupree Miller & Assoc. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink