After the Crash

Michel Bussi

Hachette Books

GEOFFREY'S TOP PICK FOR THE NEW YEAR!

Just after midnight on December 23, 1980, a night flight bound for Paris plummets toward the Swiss Alps, crashing into a snowy mountainside. Within seconds flames engulf the plane, which is filled with holiday travelers. Of the 169 passengers, all but one perish. The sole survivor is a three-month-old girl--thrown from the airliner before fire consumes the cabin. But two infants were on board. Is "the Miracle Child of Mont Terri" Lyse-Rose or Emilie? The families of both girls step forward to claim the child. Dogged by bad luck, the Vitrals live a simple life, selling snacks from a van on the beaches of northern France. In contrast, the de Carvilles, who amassed a fortune in the oil business, are powerful-and dangerous. Eighteen years later, a private detective tasked with solving the mystery of the girl known as "Lylie" is on the verge of giving up. As he contemplates taking his own life, Credule Grand-Duc suddenly discovers a secret hidden in plain view. Will he live to tell it? Meanwhile, Lylie, now a beautiful university student, entrusts a secret notebook into the hands of Marc, the brooding young man who loves her, and then vanishes. After Marc reads the notebook's contents, he embarks on a frantic search for Lylie. But he is not the only one looking for her.

Winter

Christopher Nicholson

Europa Editions

A November morning in the 1920s finds an elderly man in his eighties walking the grounds of his Dorchester home, pondering his past and future with deep despondence. That man is the revered novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, and Christopher Nicholson's fictionalized account of the final years of the accomplished writer's life is as engrossing as it is heartbreaking. The novel focuses on the true events that occurred around the London theater dramatization of Hardy's acclaimed novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles, including Hardy's hand-picked casting of the young, alluring Gertrude "Gertie" Bugler of The Hardy Players to play Tess. As plans for the play become more concrete, Hardy's interest in Gertie becomes a voyeuristic infatuation, causing him to write some of the best poems of his career. However, when Hardy's reclusive wife, Florence, catches wind of Hardy's desire for Gertie to take the London stage, a tangled web of jealously and missed opportunity ensnares all three characters-with devastating results. Told from the perspectives of Hardy, Gertie, and Florence, Nicholson's novel perfectly captures the often-difficult juxtaposition of fledgling hopes and the unfulfilled life. With expert insight into the struggles of both Hardy and Florence, coupled with poetic yet unassuming prose, Winter is certainly on par with the novels of its central character.

The Guest Room

Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday Books

The spellbinding tale of a party gone horribly wrong: two men lie dead in a suburban living room, two women are on the run from police, and a marriage is ripping apart at the seams. When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She brings their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night. In the aftermath, Kristin and Richard's life rapidly spirals into nightmare. The police throw them out of their home, now a crime scene, Richard's investment banking firm puts him on indefinite leave, and Kristin is unsure if she can forgive her husband for the moment he shared with a dark-haired girl in the guest room. But the dark-haired girl, Alexandra, faces a much graver danger. In one breathless, violent night, she is free, running to escape the police who will arrest her and the gangsters who will kill her in a heartbeat.

The First Order

Jeff Abbott

Grand Central Publishing

Two brothers. One dead, executed by extremists on a grainy video. The other forged into a top undercover agent. But now, Sam Capra has reason to believe that his brother, Danny, may be alive. And if Danny has been living a secret life these past years, where has he been--and what has he become? Sam's desperate search for his brother leads him into a modern heart of darkness: the Russian elite inner circle, a group of ruthless ex-KGB billionaires who owe fealty to Russia's corrupt president, Morozov. One of these men wants Morozov dead. And Danny will be the one to kill him--on American soil. To save his brother--and to save the world from certain war--Sam, along with his mysterious partner, Mila, must stop Danny from killing Morozov. The mission will take Sam from the slums of Pakistan to the hipster galleries of Brooklyn to the Caribbean playgrounds of the superrich. And as Sam untangles the secret past locked in his brother's heart, he may be forced to make a choice between his brother--and the greater good.

Vagabond: A Thriller

Gerald Seymour

Thomas Dunne Books

MI5 officer Winnie Monks has never forgotten - or forgiven - the death of a young agent on her team at the hands of a former Russian Army Major turned gangster. Now, ten years later, she learns that the Major is travelling to a villa on the popular Spanish holiday destination Costa del Sol, and she asks permission to send in a surveillance unit. They find an empty property near the Major's: the Villa Paraiso. It's perfect to spy from - and as a base for Winnie's darker, less official, plans. But it turns out the villa isn't deserted. The owners have invited a young British couple to house sit while they are away. Jonno and Posie, a new couple, think they are embarking on a romantic, carefree break in the sun. But when the Secret Service team arrives in paradise, everything changes.

Shame and Wonder: Essays

David Searcy

Random House

For fans of John Jeremiah Sullivan, Leslie Jamison, Geoff Dyer, and W. G. Sebald, the twenty-one essays in David Searcy's debut collection are captivating, daring and completely unlike anything else you ve read before. Forging connections between the sublime and the mundane, this is a work of true grace, wisdom, and joy. Expansive in scope but deeply personal in perspective, the pieces in Shame and Wonder are born of a vast, abiding curiosity, one that has led David Searcy into some strange and beautiful territory, where old Uncle Scrooge comic books reveal profound truths, and the vastness of space becomes an expression of pure love. Whether ruminating on an old El Camino pickup truck, those magical prizes lurking in the cereal boxes of our youth, or a lurid online ad for Sexy Girls Near Dallas, Searcy brings his unique blend of affection and suspicion to the everyday wonders that surround and seduce us. In Nameless, he ruminates on spirituality and the fate of an unknown tightrope walker who falls to his death in Texas in the 1880s, buried as a local legend but without a given name. The Hudson River School weaves together Google Maps, classical art, and dental hygiene into a story that explores with exquisite humor and grace the seemingly impossible angles at which our lives often intersect. And in An Enchanted Tree Near Fredericksburg, countless lovers carve countless hearts into the gnarled trunk of an ancient oak tree, leaving their marks to be healed, lifted upward, and, finally, absorbed.

Margaret Thatcher: At Her Zenith: In London, Washington and Moscow

Charles Moore

Knopf Publishing Group

In June 1983 Margaret Thatcher won the biggest increase in a government's parliamentary majority in British electoral history. Over the next four years, as Charles Moore relates in this central volume of his uniquely authoritative biography, Britain's first woman prime minister changed the course of her country's history and that of the world, often by sheer force of will. The book reveals as never before how Mrs. Thatcher transformed relations with Europe, privatized the commanding heights of British industry and continued the reinvigoration of the British economy. It describes her role on the world stage with dramatic immediacy, identifying Mikhail Gorbachev as a man to do business with before he became leader of the Soviet Union, and then persistently pushing him and Ronald Reagan, her great ideological soul mate, to order world affairs according to her vision. For the only time since Churchill, she ensured that Britain had a central place in dealings between the superpowers.

Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson

Juan F. Thompson

Knopf Publishing Group

Hunter S. Thompson, smart hillbilly, boy of the South, born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky, son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom, public school-educated, jailed at seventeen on a bogus petty robbery charge, member of the U.S. Air Force (Airmen Second Class), copy boy for Time,  writer for The National Observer, et cetera. From the outset he was the Wild Man of American journalism with a journalistic appetite that touched on subjects that drove his sense of justice and intrigue, from biker gangs and 1960s counterculture to presidential campaigns and psychedelic drugs. He lived larger than life and pulled it up around him in a mad effort to make it as electric, anger-ridden, and drug-fueled as possible. Now Juan Thompson tells the story of his father and of their getting to know each other during their forty-one fraught years together. He writes of the many dark times, of how far they ricocheted away from each other, and of how they found their way back before it was too late.

The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley

Eric Weiner

Simon and Schuster

Travel the world with Eric Weiner, the New York Times bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss, as he journeys from Athens to Silicon Valley and throughout history, too to show how creative genius flourishes in specific places at specific times. In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity. And, with his trademark insightful humor, he walks the same paths as the geniuses who flourished in these settings to see if the spirit of what inspired figures like Socrates, Michelangelo, and Leonardo remains. In these places, Weiner asks, What was in the air, and can we bottle it?

The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health

David B. Agus, M.D. 

Simon and Schuster

Medicine is undergoing rapid change. In the old world, you followed general principles and doctors treated you based on broad, one-size-fits all solutions. In this new golden age, you ll be able to take full advantage of the latest scientific findings and leverage the power of technology to customize your care. Only those who know how to access and adapt to these breakthroughs without being distracted by hyped ideas and bad medicine will benefit. Imagine being able to get fit and lose weight without dieting, train your immune system to fight cancer, edit your DNA to avoid a certain fate, erase the risk of a heart attack, reverse aging, and know exactly which drugs to take to optimize health with zero side effects.

Catfulness: The Path to Inner Peace

Susanna Geoghegan

Andrews McMeel Publishing

The path to inner peace? Let your cat show you the way Cats have nailed how to enjoy living life to the fullest, in the moment, often at our expense. Catfulness is an affectionate take on the things cats do that drive us around the bend, but we love them in spite of their selfish cat-centered behavior. Something important is taking place in our society today: People are being catful. At home, at work, in love and relationships, and curled up on the sofa, being catful is an idea, a new way of being whose time has come. It's an attitude that acknowledges and develops the best of who we are as human beings. The humorous illustrations depict cats displaying characteristic behavior that drives their owners nuts while they remain "catful" so that their actions always give the accompanying mindful quotation an ironic and amusing twist. Containing a large number of recognizable situations for every long-suffering cat owner, this book is guaranteed to raise a laugh and a knowing nod as well as persuade the reader to stop and think.