Read in Ned: Upcoming Titles

By Susan Gerhart

“Publishing is a business. Writing may be art, but publishing,
when all is said and done, comes down to dollars.”    -Nicholas Sparks

Of the three main publishing seasons (summer, fall, and winter), fall is the busiest. As the weather cools, the thinking goes, people head indoors, frequently with a book. It’s also the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

If you are still wondering what happened in the last election, you might find some answers in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new aptly named memoir What Happened (released 9/12/17). Critical reviews of the book have not been kind to Secretary Clinton. Blaming James Comey and Russia among others, Clinton is apparently still unable to recognize her own role in her stunning defeat.

David Lagercrantz again channels Stieg Larsson in The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (9/12/17). Lisbeth Salander is in prison. For most this is punishment, but for a woman with Salander’s gifts it’s a license to run free, if only proverbially. Old friend Mikael Blomkvist visits weekly, and it’s during one of these visits that Salander tells him to investigate Leo Mannheimer, a seemingly reputable stockbroker from Stockholm who is somehow connected to the long-ago death of a child psychologist – and to the psychiatric unit where Lisbeth was an involuntary patient as a child. All this leads Salander closer to solving the mysteries of her early life.

For twenty-four years and twenty-four letters of the alphabet, Sue Grafton has kept Kinsey Millhone, PI, fresh and her adventures interesting. Y is for Yesterday is number twenty-five (8/22/17). Kinsey’s current case starts in 1979 when four teenaged boys gang rape a classmate and film the attack. The film disappears, but three of the boys go the prison; the fourth disappears. In 1989, Kinsey is called when one of the boys, now a man, is released from prison. Someone who claims to have the film is blackmailing him.

Fans of Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, will be pleased to learn there’s been another murder in tiny Three Pines. Glass Houses (9/29/) opens with Gamache giving evidence in a murder trial. Gamache is a representative of the Crown in this case, but he possibly set the events into motion that lead to the murder.

Sleeping Beauties (9/26/17) is collaboration by Stephen King and his son Owen. The Kings invite you to visit a world without women. In a small Appalachian town, the primary business is the women’s prison. But strange things are happening to all the women. When they go to sleep, they are covered in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are disturbed, they become violent and feral. All except one woman, conveniently named Evie . . .

Space doesn’t permit listing all the notable books out this fall, but look for new ones by these authors: John Grisham, Michael Connelly, Ken Follett, Jesmyn Ward, Nicole Krauss, and John LeCarré. Or, if you’re so inclined, check out Bill O’Reilly’s latest alt-history in which he kills England.

See you around the stacks.

Susan Gerhart is a volunteer at Nederland Community Library.