Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche (Knopf)
After taking on her county’s brutal civil war in the novel “Half of a Yellow Sun,” Nigerian author Adiche looks at her nation’s diaspora. Here, we meet Ifemelu and Obnze, classmates at a Lagos secondary school who fall in love and plan their future together. But real life interrupts — Ifemelu flees the military dictatorship for America. Post-9/11, Obnze is unable to join her but gets to London. She attends Yale and Princeton and becomes a writer known for her blog on race. He gets by on menial jobs. Years later, he is a wealthy businessman back home and she returns. But is Ifemelu more Nigerian or American now? And can they return to what they had in their youth?
The Wolf and the Watchman
A Father, a Son, and the CIA
by Scott C. Johnson (Norton)
Growing up, the Johnson family moved a lot — India, Pakistan, Yugoslavia, a military base in Virginia. When Scott was 14, his father came clean: He was a CIA spy. And he had to keep that secret. The teen grew up to become a war correspondent, for Newsweek and others, dedicated to uncovering the truth, and reported from his father’s old stomping grounds.
And the Mountains Echoed
by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Books)
For the first time, doctor-turned-writer Hosseini (“The Kite Runner”) moves his story outside of his native Afghanistan. Motherless children 3-year-old Pari and her 10-year-old brother, Abdullah, are as close as could be. So when their father, a laborer in a small village, sells Pari to a wealthy childless Kabul couple, the boy is heartbroken. Hosseini’s story radiates outward from these children, showing how an action in a village has an effect in San Francisco, Paris and even the small Greek island of Tinos.
Norwegian By Night
by Derek B. Miller (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
From Boston born and bred author Miller — who now lives in Oslo with his family — comes a Nordic crime thriller with a twist. Sheldon Horowitz, an 82-year-old watch repairman and Korean War vet, grudgingly moves in with his granddaughter and her Norwegian husband in Oslo. One morning, he stumbles on a dispute between a neighbor and a stranger. As things turn deadly, he rescues the neighbor’s young son from the violence. The unlikely pair are then pursued by his family, the police and a violent Balkan gang.
It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll
30 Years Married to a Rolling Stone
by Jo Wood (It Books)
There were times when Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood was such a mess on drugs and drink that even Keith Richards warned his wife, Jo, that Wood was out of control. Of course, that didn’t stop Richards from jumping into the couple’s white Bentley on the way to their 1985 wedding reception to share a “celebratory line” of coke. Describing the Woods’ Los Angeles home as “Freebase Central for much of celebrity LA,” Wood goes on to say, “I was always a good mum. We never did drugs in front of the kids.” But she did offer her kids drugs when they were teens, figuring it was better if they indulged with her. Little sympathy here for these devils.