The Residue Years
by Mitchell S. Jackson (Bloomsbury USA)
Here is a rude awakening for everyone who thinks they’re getting all they need to know about Oregon’s largest city from “Portlandia.” In his autobiographical novel it’s crack, not coffee, that feeds the story. Jackson writes chapters alternating between the POV of single mother Grace — just out of prison and drug treatment and trying to stay clean to get her kids back — and Champ, her oldest, who wants to do the right thing but winds up selling crack to achieve it.
The Girl You Left Behind
by Jojo Moyes (Viking)
A student of Henri Matisse goes off to fight in the Great War, leaving behind his exquisite young wife and an even-more-exquisite painting of her. In Moyes’ (“Me Before You”) new novel, Germans soon occupy the couple’s small French village. Almost 100 years later, the widow of a famous London architect attempts to find out what happened next to both the painting and the wife. Most stories about art provenance cover horrific WWII crimes. By looking further back in history, this book offers us a scenario in which the issues are less clear cut.
The Night of the Comet
by George Bishop (Random House)
The comet in question is Kohoutek, which for people coming of age in the 1970s caused some hoopla. In Bishop’s funny and endearing follow-up to his novel “Letter to My Daughter,” Alan Broussard Jr. gets a telescope for his 14th birthday from his amateur astronomer dad, a science teacher at the high school in their Louisiana bayou town. But Junior is less interested in Kohoutec than in lovely Gabriella Martello, whose family lives in a mansion within telescope view — with a lifestyle that catches the attention of Junior’s mom.
These Are the Voyages
Season One
by Marc Cushman with Susan Osborn (Jacobs Brown)
“Trek” fans will die and get beamed up to heaven. Former “Next Generation” writer Marc Cushman launches the first in a three-volume series exhaustively — and we do mean exhaustively — documenting the making of every episode of the original “Star Trek” series. Included are budgets (episode 12 cost $184,859), script timelines, TV ratings, production photos and, best of all, never-before-published notes and memos among creator Gene Roddenberry, his staff and NBC. In one, a network suit objects to calling a woman “frigid.”
In the Shadow of Death
A Chautauqua Murder Mystery
by Deb Pines (CreateSpace)
This fish-out-of-water tale introduces Mimi Goldman, a Yiddish-quoting, single mom from Midwood who leaves her job as a Post reporter and moves to upstate Chautauqua and its small paper. Luckily for her, it’s not as boring as she expects. Not so lucky for her landlord, who drops dead at a local race Goldman’s covering. She suspects foul play and may be next in line. Pines, a Post copy editor, has fun with her debut mystery.