Say Nice Things About Detroit
by Scott Lasser (Norton))
Detroit-native novelist Lasser uses his city as a character — much like Baltimore for “The Wire.” Having settled in Denver, lawyer David Halpert is forced to return home to the decaying city to help his father care for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother. There, he discovers that his white high-school girlfriend, Natalie, and her black half-brother, Derek, were murdered. Connecting with Natalie’s sister, David — still recovering from the death of his own young son and a divorce — tries to understand the murders as he journeys though the white suburbs and the black inner city.
Burying the Typewriter
A Memoir
by Carmen Bugan (Graywolf Press)
Who would put a typewriter into the ground (back when people used them)? A dissident behind the Iron Curtain. The author’s father used it to write anti-Communist leaflets in their native Romania and buried it every night — unearthing it in the morning — to hide it from authorities. Discovered, he was imprisoned and Bugan’s family subjected to constant surveillance. The family fled to the US just before the Ceausescu regime fell.
Amped
by Daniel H. Wilson (Doubleday)
From the author of “Robopocalypse” comes a thriller pitting man against machine and raising the issue of what makes a human human. Owen Gray, a 29-year-old Pittsburgh high-school teacher, has conquered his epilepsy with a medical implant. But when the Supreme Court rules that these so-called “amp people” are not a protected class shielded by law from discrimination, all hell breaks loose, pitting “pure priders” against the amp movement. Meanwhile, Gray finds out there’s more to his implant than he knows.
Agent Garbo
The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day
by Stephan Talty (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Allied forces owe their D-Day victory in World War II to bravery, skill — and a Spanish double-agent chicken farmer named Juan Pujol. According to best-selling author Talty, the Barcelona spy code-named Agent Garbo misled the Nazis into thinking the invasion would occur not in Normandy but in Calais. Using a stunt army that performed fake maneuvers in England and a network of faux spies who reported their moves to the Germans, Agent Garbo so fooled Hitler’s forces that a few troops were still guarding the Calais shores two weeks after the Normandy invasion. A great story for World War II buffs.
The Crowded Grave
A Mystery of the French Countryside
by Martin Walker (Knopf)
Something is rotten in St. Denis, and it’s not just the mysterious corpse. In Walker’s latest novel, police chief Bruno Courreges must deal with more than just a relatively new body that turns up on an archeological dig in the idyllic French town: He’s hamstrung by local officials, beautiful women, terrorists and a group of animal-rights activists who want to banish foie gras.