We Are Called to Rise

Laura McBride

Simon and Schuster

"Your heart will break...then soar" (Redbook) when, far from the neon lights of the Vegas strip, three lives collide in a split-second mistake and a child's fate hangs in the balance. Avis thought her marriage had hit a temporary rut. But with a single confession in the middle of the night, her carefully constructed life comes undone. After escaping a tumultuous childhood and raising a son, she now faces a future without the security of the home and family she has spent decades building. Luis only wants to make the grandmother who raised him proud. As a soldier, he was on his way to being the man she taught him to be until he woke up in Walter Reed Hospital with vague and troubling memories of how he got there. Now he must find a new way to live a life of honor. Every day, young Bashkim looks forward to the quiet order of school and the kind instruction of his third grade teacher. His family relocated to Las Vegas after fleeing political persecution in their homeland. Now their ice cream truck provides just enough extra income to keep them afloat. With his family under constant stress, Bashkim opens his heart to his pen pal, a US soldier. When these lives come together in a single, shocking moment, each character is called upon to rise. "You'll be thinking about these characters long after you finish this haunting, heart-wrenching, and hopeful book" (Houston Chronicle).

The Last Bookaneer

Matthew Pearl

Penguin Press

On the island of Samoa, a dying Robert Louis Stevenson labors over a new novel. The thought of one last book from the great author fires the imaginations of the bookaneers, and soon Davenport sets out for the South Pacific island. As always, Davenport is reluctantly accompanied by his assistant Fergins, who is whisked across the world for one final caper. Fergins soon discovers the supreme thrill of aiding Davenport in his quest to steal Stevenson's manuscript and make a fortune before the new treaty ends the bookaneers' trade forever. But Davenport is hardly the only bookaneer with a mind to pirate Stevenson's last novel. His longtime adversary, the monstrous Belial, appears on the island, and soon Davenport, Fergins, and Belial find themselves embroiled in a conflict larger, perhaps, than literature itself.

The Memory Painter

Gwendolyn Womack

Picador USA

What if there was a drug that could help you remember past lives? What if the lives you remembered could lead you to your one true love? What if you learned that, for thousands of years, a deadly enemy had conspired to keep the two of you apart? Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist whose paintings have dazzled the world. But there's a secret to his success: Every canvas is inspired by an unusually vivid dream. When Bryan awakes, he possesses extraordinary new skills...like the ability to speak obscure languages and an inexplicable genius for chess. All his life, he has wondered if his dreams are recollections, if he is re-experiencing other people's lives. Linz Jacobs is a brilliant neurogeneticist, absorbed in decoding the genes that help the brain make memories, until she is confronted with an exact rendering of a recurring nightmare at one of Bryan's shows. She tracks down the elusive artist, and their meeting triggers Bryan's most powerful dream yet: visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer's, died in a lab explosion decades ago. As Bryan becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the scientists' deaths, his dreams begin to reveal what happened at the lab, as well as a deeper mystery that may lead all the way to ancient Egypt. Together, Bryan and Linz start to discern a pattern. But a deadly enemy watches their every move, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that the past stays buried.

The Keillor Reader: Looking Back at Forty Years of Stories: Where Did They All Come From?

Garrison Keillor

Penguin Books

The first retrospective from New York Times-bestselling author Garrison Keillor celebrates the humor and wisdom of this master storyteller. With an introduction and headnotes by the author, along with accompanying photographs and memorabilia, The Keillor Reader brings together a full range of Keillor's work. Included are the "Pontoon" monologue, in which twenty-four Lutheran pastors capsize a boat as a parasail and hot-air balloon maneuver above; the Alaska adventures of professional wrestler Jimmy "Big Boy" Valenti; a new version of "Casey at the Bat"; an imaginative memoir of life at the "New Yorker"; and a set of precepts for life, "What Have We Learned So Far?