Wonderkid
by Wesley Stace (Overlook)
Stace, who used to record as John Wesley Harding, takes on the burgeoning world of kiddie music in his new novel. Brit rocker Blake Lear takes a turn into Dan Zanes territory when his management guarantees success. He and his brother take America by storm — and fall for the typical rock ’n’ roll pitfalls along the way. It’s all narrated by Sweet, a kid Blake adopts along the way and who becomes the band’s merch and damage-control guy.
Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (With Great Hair)
by Rosie Perez (Crown Archetype)
The lesson from Perez’s breezy and sassy memoir is: Don’t Mess With Rosie. The Brooklyn native was shunted to a Dickensian Catholic children’s home as a young girl, where she kicked at a nun who spanked her. Much later, when she got a part in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” which called for graphic nudity, Perez made the director get permission from her family. Lee met her brother-in-law, who was cleaning his machete as he asked: “So, you want my sister-in-law to do what?” It all worked out.
Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life in the Minor Leagues of Baseball
by John Feinstein (Doubleday)
Feinstein (“A Season on the Brink”) shows us not every kid can turn into a Derek Jeter. He follows eight men in Triple-A ball — the top rung of the minor leagues — through the 2012 season. Among his players on the way up, on the way down or going nowhere are John Lindsey, who spent a record 16 years in the minors before a 2010 call-up, White Sox 2005 World Series hero Scott Podsednik, a pair of managers and an umpire.
Long Man
by Amy Greene (Knopf)
Unemployment and rising water levels get even worse in Depression-era Tennessee. Greene sets her novel during three days of the summer of 1936, as the government plans to dam the state’s Long Man River, bringing jobs and electricity to the region but also flooding the tiny town of Yuneetah. Just when the town’s evacuating residents think they’ve hit rock bottom, a 3-year-old child disappears. A tense tale of the sacrifices people make in the name of progress.
Bread & Butter
by Michelle Wildgen (Doubleday)
A story of family feuds and foie gras. In Wildgen’s latest novel, brothers Britt and Leo find it’s no longer business as usual for Winesap — the successful restaurant they’ve run together for 10 years. Their younger brother Harry opens a hotter, hipper eatery (lamb neck with salt cod is selling like hotcakes) on the other side of the small Pennsylvania town in which they all grew up — and steals Winesap’s pastry chef. This story of sibling rivalry is peppered with lots of restaurant-insider detail. And each brother’s romantic woes spice things up.