Where My Heart Used to Beat

Sebastian Faulks

Henry Holt

London, 1980. Robert Hendricks, an established psychiatrist and author, has so bottled up memories of his own wartime past that he is nearly sunk into a life of aloneness and depression. Out of the blue, a baffling letter arrives from one Dr. Alexander Pereira, a neurologist and a World War I veteran who claims to be an admirer of Robert's published work. The letter brings Robert to the older man's home on a rocky, secluded island off the south of France, and into tempests of memories--his childhood as a fatherless English boy, the carnage he witnessed and the wound he can't remember receiving as a young officer in World War II, and, above all, the great, devastating love of his life, an Italian woman, "L," whom he met during the war. As Robert's recollections pour forth, he's unsure whether they will lead to psychosis--or redemption. But Dr. Pereira knows. Profoundly affecting and masterfully told, Where My Heart Used to Beat sweeps through the 20th century, brilliantly interrogating the darkest corners of the human mind and bearing tender witness to the abiding strength of love.

Good on Paper

Rachel Cantor

Melville House Publishing

Is a new life possible? Because Shira Greene's life hasn t quite turned out at planned. Shira is a permanent temp with a few short stories published in minor literary magazines and a PhD on Dante's "Vita Nuova "that she abandoned halfway. Her life has some happy certainties, though: she lives with her friend Ahmad, and her daughter, Andi, on the Upper West Side. They re an unconventional family, but a real one, with Friday night dinner rituals, private jokes, and the shared joys and strains of any other family. So when she gets the call from Romei, the winner of last year's Nobel Prize and the irascible idol of grad students everywhere, and he tells her he wants her to translate his new book, Shira is happy . . . but stunned. Suddenly, Shira sees a new beckoning: academic glory, a career as a literary translator, and even love (with a part-time rabbi and owner of the neighborhood indie bookstore). That is, until Romei starts sending her pages of the manuscript and she realizes that something odd is going on: his book may in fact be untranslatable.

Where It Hurts

Reed Farrel Coleman

G.P. Putnam's Sons

A gritty, atmospheric new series about the other side of Long Island, far from the wealth of the Hamptons, where real people live and die. Gus Murphy thought he had the world all figured out. A retired Suffolk County cop, Gus had everything a man could want: a great marriage, two kids, a nice house, and the rest of his life ahead of him. But when tragedy strikes, his life is thrown into complete disarray. In the course of a single deadly moment, his family is blown apart and he is transformed from a man who believes he understands everything into a man who understands nothing. Divorced and working as a courtesy van driver for the run-down hotel in which he has a room, Gus has settled into a mindless, soulless routine that barely keeps his grief at arm's length. But Gus's comfortable waking trance comes to an end when ex-con Tommy Delcamino asks him for help. Four months earlier, Tommy's son T.J.'s battered body was discovered in a wooded lot, yet the Suffolk County PD doesn t seem interested in pursuing the killers. In desperation, Tommy seeks out the only cop he ever trusted Gus Murphy. Gus reluctantly agrees to see what he can uncover. As he begins to sweep away the layers of dust that have collected over the case during the intervening months, Gus finds that Tommy was telling the truth. It seems that everyone involved with the late T.J Delcamino from his best friend, to a gang enforcer, to a mafia capo, and even the police has something to hide, and all are willing to go to extreme lengths to keep it hidden. It's a dangerous favor Gus has taken on as he claws his way back to take a place among the living, while searching through the sewers for a killer.

NYPD RED 4

James Patterson, and Marshall Karp

Little Brown and Company

NYPD RED 4: the elite task force assigned to protect the rich, famous, and connected in the city where crime never sleeps. Detective Zach Jordan and his partner, Kylie MacDonald--a former girlfriend from the police academy who he hasn't quite gotten over--are the best that Red has to offer, brilliant and tireless investigators who will stop at nothing to crack a case, even if it means putting their own complicated lives on the back burner. From celebrity penthouses to the depths of Manhattan's criminal underworld, Zach and Kylie are soon in hot pursuit of a cold-blooded killer with everything to lose, and millions to gain if he can just shake the detectives on his trail. With the city on edge, the mayor out of patience, and the flames of their personal relationship threatening to reignite and ruin everything, Zach and Kylie are facing down their worst fears--and their worst enemy yet.

Shaker

Scott Frank

Knopf Publishing Group

Meet Roy Cooper, stoic, unassuming errand runner for various New York criminals. Roy arrives in Los Angeles to shoot a man named Martin Shine a week after a powerful earthquake has knocked out cell service, buckled the freeways, and thrown L.A. into chaos. Roy doesn t know who Shine is or why he has to die, but he does his job and does it well. Except for one thing: after the hit, Roy can t find where he parked his car. Wandering the streets of North Hollywood, he stumbles upon a jogger getting mugged and beaten by four young gangbangers. Despite his attempt to simply put his head down and walk away, Roy winds up in the middle of another killing. Things get more complicated when the murdered jogger turns out to be a controversial mayoral candidate. Roy himself is shot twice, hospitalized in critical condition, and mistaken for a hero when a local resident leaks a video that goes viral. Now meet the rest of the cast of characters, including Kelly Maguire, a disgraced LAPD detective with an anger management problem and strange feelings about L.A.'s newest hero; Science, the teenage gangbanger/shooter, who needs to keep Roy quiet about what he's seen; Mayor Miguel Santiago, who finds himself facing accusations that he's just had his opponent whacked; Albert Budin, Roy's onetime mentor and one of the scariest, creepiest characters in recent crime fiction; and myriad criminals, politicians, and cops who all need Roy to disappear preferably forever.

How to Talk about Places You've Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel

Pierre Bayard

Bloomsbury USA

Written in the irreverent style that made How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read a critical and commercial success, Pierre Bayard takes readers on a trip around the world, giving us essential guidance on how to talk about all those fantastic places we ve never been. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Places You've Never Been will delight and inform armchair globetrotters and jet-setters, all while never having to leave the comfort of the living room. Bayard examines the art of the "non-journey," a tradition that a succession of writers and thinkers, unconcerned with moving away from their home turf, have employed in order to encounter the foreign cultures they wish to know and talk about. He describes concrete situations in which the reader might find himself having to speak about places he's never been, and he chronicles some of his own experiences and offers practical advice.

The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity

Norman Doidge, M.D. 

Penguin Books

In his groundbreaking work The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge introduced readers to neuroplasticity the brain's ability to change its own structure and function in response to activity and mental experience. Now his revolutionary new book shows how the amazing process of neuroplastic healing really works. The Brain's Way of Healing describes natural, noninvasive avenues into the brain provided by the energy around us in light, sound, vibration, and movement that can awaken the brain's own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Doidge explores cases where patients alleviated chronic pain; recovered from debilitating strokes, brain injuries, and learning disorders; overcame attention deficit and learning disorders; and found relief from symptoms of autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and cerebral palsy. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia, with simple approaches anyone can use. For centuries it was believed that the brain's complexity prevented recovery from damage or disease. The Brain's Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing. As he did so lucidly in The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge uses stories to present cutting-edge science with practical real-world applications, and principles that everyone can apply to improve their brain's performance and health.

Scarlet Women: The Scandalous Lives of Courtesans, Concubines, and Royal Mistresses

Ian Graham

Thomas Dunne Books

In 1965, an impoverished elderly woman was found dead in Nice, France. Her death marked the end of an era; she was the last of the great courtesans. Known as La Belle Otero, she was a volcanic Spanish beauty whose patrons included Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia. She accumulated an enormous fortune, but gambled it all away. Scarlet Women tells her story and many more, including: Marie Duplessis, who inspired characters by both Dumas and Verdi; Clara Ward, a rare American courtesan who hunted for a European aristocrat, but having married a Belgian prince, ran away with a gypsy violinist; Ninon de L'Enclos, who was offered 50,000 crowns by Cardinal Richelieu for one night. Money left in her will paid for Voltaire's education. Courtesans were an elite group of talented, professional mistresses. The most successful became wealthy and famous in their own right. While they led charmed lives, they occupied a curious position: they enjoyed freedom and political power unknown to most women, but they were ostracised by polite society. From the hetaerae of ancient Greece to the cortigiani onesti of 16th century Venice, the oiran of Edo-period Japan to the demimondaines of 19th century France, this captivating book--perfect for readers of A Treasury of Royal Scandals - uncovers the rich, colorful lives of these women who dared to pursue fortunes outside their societies' norms.

Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections (and How It Can Reclaim Its Conservative Roots)

Matt K. Lewis

Hachette Books

In 1963 Richard Hofstadter published his landmark book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Today, Matt Lewis argues, America's inclination toward simplicity and stupidity is stronger than ever, and its greatest victim is the Republican Party. Lewis, a respected conservative columnist and frequent guest on MSNBC's Morning Joe, eviscerates the phenomenon of candidates with a "no experience required" mentality and tea party "patriots" who possess bluster but few core beliefs. Lewis traces the conservative movement's roots, from Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley, and from Goldwater's loss to Reagan's landslide victory. He highlights visionary thinkers who understood nuance and deep ideology and changed the course of the nation. As we approach the 2016 presidential election, Lewis has an urgent message for fellow conservatives: embrace wisdom, humility, qualifications, and inclusion--or face extinction.