Black Chalk
by Christopher J. Yates (Harvill Secker/Random House)
Set at Oxford University, Yates’ debut novel details an unusual freshman year for six classmates, one visiting from America. Things start in a standard jolly-good-fellow, raise-a-pint British way. But when the pals — four guys, two gals — become involved in a cash-prize mind game though a secret society, friendships unravel as the six find themselves performing deeds they never could have imagined. The threads of mystery gradually come together as Yates, a British New Yorker (and husband of a Post editor), alternates between that fateful school year and 14 years later, in present-day New York. With this dark, sometimes disturbing tale, we may have found a new Stephen King, albeit with a British accent.
Love & Treasure
by Ayelet Waldman (Knopf)
Scrappy New Yorker Jack Wiseman must guard stolen treasure at the end of World War II — and the task will follow him for 70 years. In her new novel, Waldman (“Red Hook Road”) follows Wiseman, an American who must guard the fur coats, wedding rings and Shabbat candlesticks that were confiscated from the Jews. Back in the present day, he asks his daughter Natalie to find the owner of a necklace he still holds from those days as the novel explores the question of the value of precious articles over life.
Nolan Ryan The Making of a Pitcher
by Rob Goldman (Triumph)
For those not aware, Hall of Famer Noaln Ryan started out on the Mets. He wound up with a record seven no-hitters and 5,714 strikeouts. Of course, the Mets traded him before he reached those amazing numbers. But reading Goldman’s account of Ryan’s time in New York, in the early chapters of his book, is an eye-opener. Ryan went from Alvin, Texas, population 6,000 to pitching before 50,000 at Shea Stadium. Even NYC’s alternate-side-of-the-street parking rules flummoxed him. Finally, it was Ryan who asked for a trade at the end of the 1971 season.
A Trust Betrayed The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune and the Poisoning of Generations of Marines and Their Families
by Mike Magner (Da Capo)
A Marine training base since 1941, North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune also became a dumping grounds for diesel and gasoline, toxic cleaning solvents, chemicals weapons, insecticides, mercury and much more. Not surprisingly, these toxins leached into the water supply. And Magner reports the awful results through affected families’ sad stories — along with the Pentagon’s slow and sorry response.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
by Gabrielle Zevin (Algonquin)
A book about selling books and finding one’s soul mate. As Zevin’s latest novel opens, a copy of the most-valuable rare American book in existence (Poe’s “Tamerlane,” worth more than half a million dollars) is stolen from A.J. Fikry’s Massachusetts book store. At the same time, his romance with a pretty publisher never seems to get off the ground. Everything changes when a 2-year-old child is abandoned in Fikry’s store.