The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée (Pantheon)
It’s nice to see the CIA involved in something other than, say, drones. In this fascinating piece of Cold War history, we see the agency spreading literature. Boris Pasternak’s epic love story in the time of the Russian Revolution (adapted to film with Omar Sharif and Julie Christie) was banned in the USSR. The CIA noted its “humanist message” as a threat to the Kremlin’s point of view, so through an academic publisher in the Hague and the Vatican, a Russian-language version was spirited into the hand of Soviet citizens. A great story.
The Last Magazine
by Michael Hastings (Blue Rider Press)
The fictional story of a struggling young intern at a high-flying newsweekly, just as the magazine begins to fade in the Internet era comes from former Newsweek correspondent (and onetime intern) Hastings. The intern, also named Michael Hastings, looks up to a self-important, dysfunctional foreign correspondent, and even though he recognizes the problems at the mag — including a fight for space between celeb fluff and news — he loves it there. Hastings died in a car crash a year ago — his widow found the novel on his computer after his death.
The Silkworm
by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland)
OK, for those who don’t know or forgot, Galbraith is really J.K. Rowling. This one’s a sequel to her post-Potter penned detective yarn “The Cuckoo’s Calling.” Hero Cormoran Strike is a one-legged private eye (he lost it in the line of duty as an investigator for the Royal Military Police) who is hired by a woman whose writer husband, Owen Quine, has gone missing. Shortly after Strike and his enthusiastic assistant Robin get to work, Quine turns up as a corpse and their client is the main suspect. Now it’s their job to clear her.
West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776
by Claudio Saunt (Norton)
“We the People,” wrote the Founding Fathers in 1776 — but what about America’s other people? Things did not go well that year for the Native American population, history professor Saunt (“Black, White, and Indian”) explains in his new book. European officials vied for control of the US West, Alaska and the Caribbean. A sobering reminder of the blunders that led to later conflicts like the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Rogues
Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (Bantam)
Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” finale on HBO doesn’t have to mean total withdrawal. Co-edited by “GoT” author Martin himself, this short-story collection includes a new “Game of Thrones” tale about one of the biggest rogues in the entire history of the fictional land of Westeros: Daemon Targaryen, terror of the civil-war period called the Dance of the Dragons. But this 832-page anthology is not all historical fantasy. “Gone Girl” author Gillian Flynn writes a darkly comedic tale of contemporary female ambition. Other contributors include Neil Gaiman and Steven Saylor.