Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Jan Burke
Bloodlines
Simon & Schuster
(Read an excerpt)
Buy this at BookPeople.com
Houston native JAN BURKE has reprised salty-tongued reporter Irene Kelly for the first time since 1999 in BLOODLINES (Simon & Schuster), an ambitious thriller that spans decades to deliver a sprawling tale of murder, missing persons, and mistaken identity. The elaborate plot kicks off on one eventful night in 1958, when a family of four disappears and a newspaperman, beaten nearly into a coma, swears that he witnessed a car being buried on a nearby farm. Forty years later, newshound Kelly and her detective husband, Frank Harriman, find themselves with boxfuls of stale clues, trying to sort out killers, kidnappers, heirs, and enemies. The intervening years are rich with subplot and a lifetime’s worth of charmingly flawed characters—and the denouement is worth the wait. Burke has birthed a purebred addition to the American mystery canon.
Nick Kotz
Judgement Days
Houghton Mifflin Company
(Read an excerpt)
Buy this at BookPeople.com
Lyndon Johnson cited passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the proudest moment of his presidency, and in JUDGMENT DAYS (Houghton Mifflin), Pulitzer prize—winning journalist NICK KOTZ puzzles together the complex alliance between LBJ and Martin Luther King Jr. that resulted in the landmark civil rights accomplishments of the sixties. Tapping into re-cently released archival materials, Kotz pegs Johnson as a New Deal disciple who seized the civil rights movement as the cornerstone on which he would build his Great Society and King as the contentious ally he chose to validate his agenda in the eyes of skeptical and impatient black Americans. Painstakingly researched, Judgment Days is a definitive look at the sweeping social victories of a presidency tarnished by the failures of Vietnam.
Lisa Wingate
The Language of the Sycamores
New American Library
There is nothing subtle about THE LANGUAGE OF SYCAMORES (New American Library), the latest novel from LISA WINGATE, a Central Texas writer who moonlights as an inspirational speaker (or vice versa). Wingate delivers a relentlessly uplifting message in the voice of narrator Karen Sommerfield, who is struggling to weather a series of personal storms. While visiting her sister’s farm, Karen finds unexpected solace and guidance in gems of her late Grandma Rose’s wisdom as channeled by young neighbor Dell. This is not hugely original territory, but Wingate is a skilled writer who betrays a genuine affection for gentle, sentimental homilies. Like-minded readers will swallow The Language of Sycamores whole. Cynics and sinners should seek out heartier fare.
