Lifestyle

This week’s must-read books

The Guts
by Roddy Doyle (Viking)

Twenty-seven years after Doyle introduced us to Irish lad Jimmy Rabbitte and his band of musical misfits in “The Commitments” (made into a wonderful 1991 film), Jimmy is getting the band back together, kind of. The thread that ties it all together is that middle-aged Jimmy has cancer, and he has to tell family and friends. Along the way, he meets up with his old soul-music mates. The opening conversation at a local pub between Jimmy and his dad (Jimmy Sr.) is hilarious, even as he reveals the bad news.

My Life in Middlemarch
by Rebecca Mead (Crown)

The New Yorker writer kept returning to a pastoral, 19th-century English village: George Eliot’s fictional “Middlemarch,” where she watched a cast of characters cope with the coming societal change. In her new book, Mead chronicles the life of English author Eliot, the daughter of a provincial land agent who became one of the dominant intellectual forces of her time. One need not read the 88-page 1874 classic to appreciate this new work, which pays tribute not only to Eliot, but also to all book lovers who see novels as good friends worthy of frequent revisits.

Hundred Days
The Campaign That Ended World War I
by Nick Lloyd (Basic Books)

As the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I is marked, military historian Lloyd brings us the end of the war — dedicated to his great uncle, Tom Cotterill, who was killed in action at age 19, just six weeks before the armistice. Lloyd argues that the allied commanders learned from their mistakes earlier in the war, and along with better weaponry, that’s why they were able to defeat the Germans.

Without Mercy
The Stunning True Story of Race, Crime, and Corruption in the Deep South
by David Beasley (St. Martin’s Press)

On Dec. 9, 1938, six quickly convicted black men were executed in Georgia’s electric chair — at the same time two white “thrill killers” were spared. Beasely shows how a corrupt governor in thrall to the KKK’s imperial wizard in Georgia (he handed him a monopoly on the state’s asphalt biz) gave out pardons at his request.

The Man Who Loved Dogs
by Leonardo Padura (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A novel about the real 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City takes on the history of communism in the 20th century and the intersection of several colorful lives. Cuban author Padura’s (“Havana Gold”) long novel centers around Jaime Lopez, a dog-loving Spanish senior citizen who thinks he knows Trotsky’s killer, and Iván Cárdenas Maturell, a writer who befriends Lopez. At the same time, the novel covers Trotsky’s exile, the training of his assassin and their eventual meeting, with stops along the way in 1930s Spain, 1940s Mexico and later the Prague Spring of 1968.