Check out these highly anticipated new releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!
FICTION
Playground by Richard Powers. Pulitzer winner Powers (The Overstory) delivers an epic drama of AI, neocolonialism, and oceanography in this dazzling if somewhat disjointed novel set largely on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, where a mysterious American consortium plans to launch floating cities into the ocean. The story centers on three characters: Rafi Young, a former literature student from an abusive home in Chicago . . . Rafi’s onetime friend Todd Keane, the billionaire founder of a social media company and AI platform whose connection to the seasteading project is revealed later; and Evelyne Beaulieu, a Canadian marine biologist who has come to Makatea just as the island’s residents must vote on whether to let the project proceed. For some Makateans, the seasteading initiative raises hopes of economic renewal; for others, it triggers fears of environmental destruction and a return to colonialist oppression. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.
by Anna Johnston. Johnston's feel-good debut begins with a case of mistaken identity. Eighty-two-year-old Frederick Fife is on the edge of despair, but everything changes when he takes the place of Bernard Greer, a missing resident of a nursing home. Now Frederick has food, a found family, and a chance to figure out how to return Bernard's life to him better than he found it. Copyright 2024 Library Journal
The Whitewashed Tombs by Kwei Quartey. Quartey’s fourth mystery featuring PI Emma Djan .(after Last Seen in Lapaz) is the best yet, interweaving an agonizing portrait of anti-LGBTQ prejudice in Ghana with a top-notch whodunit. Djan works for Accra’s Sowah Agency, an investigative firm retained by Godfrey Tetteh to probe the murder of his gay 27-year-old son, Marcelo . . . Godfrey hires Djan’s agency because he doesn’t trust the local authorities with the inquiry, given Marcelo’s status as one of Ghana’s most vocal queer activists. . .Emma’s investigation—which treats Ansah as a primary suspect—grows complicated when she learns that her closeted partner used to date Marcello. To find answers, Emma goes undercover, with one of her least favorite colleagues, to infiltrate the upper ranks of Ghana’s government. Quartey never puts a foot wrong, keeping the plot twists coming fast and furious without sacrificing the story’s heart. Readers will be wowed. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Assoc. Copyright 2024 Publishers Weekly.
NONFICTION
Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II by Elyse Graham. Written like a spy thriller, this work by historian Graham (SUNY Stony Brook; You Talkin' to Me?) details how the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, recruited academics as spies at the start of WWII. Librarians, humanities professors, and more were trained in tradecraft and undertook missions that helped defeat the Nazis. Copyright 2024 Library Journal.
The Third Gilmore Girl: A Memoir by Kelly Bishop and Amy Sherman-Palladino. The Playbill bio that accompanied Bishop's first starring stage role (playing Sheila in the original 1975 Broadway production of A Chorus Line) emphasized the actor's "survival" in show business for, at that point, 12 years. Bishop went on to win a Tony for that role and have a successful career on the stage and screen. Today, she's most known for playing Emily Gilmore, the matriarch of The Gilmore Girls. Bishop's memoir fills in all the scenes of her fascinating life leading up to that role. From her childhood study of ballet to her steep climb to Broadway and Hollywood, her story is one of perseverance and good old-fashioned chutzpah. Though Bishop describes herself as a private person who's not nosy or interested in gossip, her book is a definitively dishy read, written with warmth and refreshing frankness about the hard work and luck that contributed to her career. VERDICT A captivating narrative, engagingly told. Claire Sewell Copyright 2024 Library Journal.
Becoming Elizabeth Arden: The Woman Behind theGlobal Beauty Empire by Stacy A. Cordery. Cordery (history, Iowa State Univ.; Juliette Gordon Low) provides the definitive biography of one of the United States' first businesswomen: Elizabeth Arden (1881–1966). Born in Canada as Florence Graham, Arden came to the U.S. and founded her company in 1910. One of the first women to link inner health with outer beauty, she pioneered makeup use for the masses and the idea of self-care. Throughout her success, she continued to innovate, earning 97 patents and garnering a reputation as a marketer with high standards. Even today, a tube of her Eight-Hour Cream is reportedly purchased every 30 seconds in the U.S. The book sometimes borders a bit on hagiography, and Cordery has a clear fondness for her subject, but many readers will think the praise of Arden is well-deserved. Little time is spent, however, on exploring how white privilege played out for Arden and her business opportunities. VERDICT This well-researched biography is recommended for business history collections. A fun related read, Louise Claire Johnson's Behind the Red Door, offers insight from an Arden intern who worked there in the early 2000s. Maria Ashton-Stebbings Copyright 2024 Library Journal.
