Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)
New Yorker cartoonist Chast is known for her frazzled, neurotic old folks and their comments on everyday life. This time, the old folks she’s drawn are her parents, as Chast details her own upbringing and her parents’ decline and death. With her drawings, words and some photos, this is a touching as well as hilarious memoir that only Chast could create.
The Painter
by Peter Heller (Knopf)
A reclusive artist with a temper finds he can’t hide from a past that includes a murdered daughter. In his suspenseful new novel, Heller (“The Dog Stars”) introduces Jim Stegner, a Colorado creator of popular paintings. Life is good for this complacent character, until a random run-in with a horse-abuser results in retaliation. Stegner flees to New Mexico, and tries to begin a new life. But as anyone who has tried to start over knows, you can never really go back.
Auto Biography
A Classic Car, An Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream
by Earl Swift (It Books)
It’s the bromance of the ages: a ruined man and and a ruined ’57 Chevy find happiness in each other’s arms. Swift traces the lives of Tommy Armey, a grade-school dropout, felon and former strip-clup impressario, and the six-passenger wagon with V8 engine, vinyl interior, turquoise exterior and surf-green roof. The car has traveled through several owners and onto junk heap in its 5¹/₂ decades, but then again, so has Armey. The man sets out to save the car but, of course, the car saves the man.
Magnificent Vibration
by Rick Springfield (Touchstone)
He’s not a doctor, but he played one on TV. Now, the Grammy-winning singer who also played Dr. Noah Drake on “General Hospital” puts on a new hat — novelist. Springfield’s debut features Bobby Cotton, who steals a mysterious self-help book and finds that an 800-number scrawled inside is actually a direct line to God. The discovery launches our protagonist on a wild journey but not before, in rock-star style, he picks up an attractive woman to keep him company along the way.
Letters of Note
An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience
compiled by Shaun Usher (Chronicle Books)
With the US Postal Service teetering and texts and tweets replacing notes on paper, Usher has turned his blog into a book that’s kind of a cool museum piece. The letters range from a 1970 missive from Elvis to President Nixon scrawled on pages of an American Airlines pad to a typewritten note from Campbell Soup to Andy Warhol and Jack Kerouac’s single-space, full-page plea to Marlon Brando to make a movie of “On the Road.”