[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Goodreads.]

Zona, by Geoff Dyer (2/21)

The subtitle is “A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room.” It’s a rumination on Stalker, a weird old Russian sci-fi movie considered to be one of the best films of all time. So far this sounds utterly boring, but Dyer has a secret weapon: he’s unpredictable and his thought process is entirely unique. A really weird book is at least better than a bad book. The flap copy says, “the film is only the entry point for a radically original investigation of the enduring questions of life, faith, and how to live.” And James Wood, in the New Yorker, says Dyer “combines fiction, autobiography, travel writing, cultural criticism, literary theory, and a kind of comic English whining. The result ought to be a mutant mulch but is almost always a louche and canny delight.” Sounds like a dice-roll, but one with a good prize for a winner.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, by Nathan Englander (2/7)

Englander has a world of talent, and his books are reliably very good, if perhaps not always phenomenal. The eight stories in Englander’s second collection explore themes as big in scope as the nature of evil and justice, and as personal as sexual longing and intimacy. One of these stories even apppears in the Best American Short Stories of 2011.

Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan (2/28)

When the Booker prize shortlist was announced five months ago, several of the books weren’t yet available in America. Rather miraculously (if the incompetence of publishers can be considered a miracle), one of them still isn’t available, and it’s the one I wanted to read most (except for the one I’d already read). Half Blood Blues follows a black German trumpeteer who gets vanished by the Nazis during WWII. Fifty years later, his bandmates embark on a journey to find out exactly what happened to him, and who betrayed him.

The Technologists, by Matthew Pearl (2/21)

In post-Civil War Boston, the fifteen-member inaugural class of the newly formed Massachusetts Institute of Technology is nearing graduation, when a series of mysterious explosions in Boston Harbor pits them against the more well-renowned (but less scientifically masterful) Harvard. That appears to actually be the premise of Matthew Pearl’s new thriller. It sounds pretty far-fetched for historical fiction, but Pearl comes highly recommended. I’m on the fence. …
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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Goodreads.]

A brand-new year kicks off with a metric ton of notable books. Here we go:

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith (out 1/5)

Tom Rob Smith’s first book, Child 44, is one of my favorite thrillers ever, and his second book, which I’m reading now, is damn good, too. Agent 6 completes the trilogy, about Leo Demidov, an ex-State Security agent in Stalinist Russia, whose conscience strains against the needs of survival in a fascist regime. If you haven’t read the first two, start there (here’s my review of Child 44)—I won’t say more so as not to give anything away. If you’ve already read the first two, you won’t need my convincing to pick this one up.

The Operators, by Michael Hastings (out 1/5)

Michael Hastings instantly became one of the most famous journalists in the country when his profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, got McChrystal fired. (Hastings also turned in a couple of posts for this very website, just before he took off, which obviously didn’t hurt.) The Operators is his book-length investigation of the war in Afghanistan. Weirdly, it was canceled by his first publisher, Little, Brown, before being snapped up by a Penguin imprint. I haven’t seen any reviews yet, but since the Rolling Stone piece was such a hit, The Operators is a pretty safe bet.

Distrust That Particular Flavor, by William Gibson (1/3)

The father of cyberpunk is back with a collection of journalism and essays culled from a thirty-year career. As his last novel showed, Gibson remains a foremost talent when it comes to cultural analysis, so an entire book full of that kind of thing should be awesome.

Blueprints of the Afterlife, by Ryan Boudinot (out 1/3)

This is one of those books whose official flap copy is a checklist of the weird ideas it features. It’s the post-apocalyptic future, called the “Afterlife.” The human nervous system, thanks to computerized health care, can be hacked. North America has been ravaged by a sentient glacier named Malaspina. An Olympic medal-winning dishwasher (as in, he’s the best dishwasher in the world) gets a note from his future brain. So on and so forth. It’s one of those conceits that could be wildly successful or entirely unbearable. I’ve just started it, but so far it’s been wildly successful. Look for my full review next week.

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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

It’s a scrappy month for Book Radar: several of the books I was watching for were pushed back to January. In any case, here’s hoping one of these tickles your fancy. If you’re anticipating a book I missed, let me know in the comments.

420 Characters, by Lou Beach (out 12/6)

These stories started as a Facebook project in which Beach wrote a story per day as a status update. Normally, that conceit would be enough for me to write off the entire thing. But since Machine Man, one of my favorite books this year, started as a blog experiment, I’m giving this one a shot. (It doesn’t hurt that everybody from Jonathan Lethem to George Saunders have given the thing raving blurbs.) The short-shorts come accompanied by Beach’s illustrations (and illustrating seems to be his first love), and you can find samples of them, and audio files of several being read by no less than Jeff Bridges and Ian McShane, at the book’s website.

The Artist of Disappearance, by Anita Desai (out 12/6)

Multiple Booker prize shortlistee Anita Desai turns in three novellas about the art world. The Guardian calls it her best work in years, and also calls her “India’s best living writer.” Worth taking notice.

Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of the Maya, by Gerard Helferich (out 12/6)

When modern archaeologists first excavated Maya cities, they discovered a trove of stunning jade artwork, but they couldn’t find the source of the stone. Helferich’s account of the 300-year search for Maya jade claims to be a rollicking jungle adventure tale. I like those.

Angel Makers, by Jessica Gregson (out 12/6)

This creepy debut novel, based on a true story, follows an ostracized medicine woman who lives outside a remote village in early 20th century Hungary. When the men of the village return after World War I, the women decide their lives are better without them, and start killing them off. Sounds like a decent option for the right kind of reader.

[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

Love and Shame and Love, by Peter Orner (out now)

Orner’s second novel follows three generations of the Jewish Popper family, centering around Alexander and Kat, and then branching back to follow the lives of both sets of their parents. I started it last week and it’s quite good. It jumps around among perspectives and time periods and illuminates the perilous lives of its subjects in quite excellent prose. Tune in next week for my full review—in the meantime, here’s more about Orner and how you’ve never heard of him.

You Are Not So Smart, by David McRaney (out now)

McRaney’s thesis is that our lives and our sense of ourselves are almost entirely fictional, confabulated by our unconscious minds. To demonstrate this, he cites and analyzes dozens of studies with alarming findings—e.g., that wine experts are so completely brainwashed by the presentation (price, name, color, etc) of wine that, without those external cues, they can’t tell whether a wine is good or bad, or even red or white. Good stuff.

At the End of the Road, by Grant Jerkins (out now)

I quite liked Grant Jerkins’s first crime novel, so this one deserves a look, even if its trailer and premise aren’t exactly… riveting. It’s about a young boy, a car crash, some secrets, and “genuine evil.” This isn’t the kind of simple premise that sells books these days, but Jerkins’s writing is nuanced and precise, and I’m willing to bet this book is more compelling than the flap copy implies.

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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

1Q84, by Haruki Murakami (out 10/25)

When this book came out in Japan, more than two years ago, its plot was a closely guarded secret and it sold a million copies in a month. Here and now in the West, details have necessarily leaked out, and they bring a familiar Murakamian bizarreness: a young woman commits several murders in a parallel world, and a struggling writer agrees to rewrite a manuscript by a teenager, only to find out it doesn’t exist. I’m just finishing a 1000-page novel now, and I’m not too eager to start another one, but this looks pretty good (same goes for Parallel Stories).

Voyage of the Rose City, by John Moynihan (out now)

I spent a formative year of my early 20s working on tall ships in various capacities and locales, and I vividly remember what Dwight Garner, in this review of Rose City, calls a “kind of squirming wanderlust,” the force that sent John Moynihan, the comfortably wealthy son of a senator, on a 4-month trip in the merchant marines. Moynihan never meant this memoir to get published, which could free it from the contrived feeling you get reading about the adventures of journalists who just went looking for material, but that honesty might also rob it of the polish given a work created for public view. …
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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of interesting books coming out this month. Follow it here. Click the pictures or the title links to find these books at Powell's.]

Reamde, by Neal Stephenson (out 9/20)

The title of Stephenson’s new novel makes zero sense until you see the cover, and then it becomes slyly intriguing. Reamde centers around an online game called T’Rain, and a contagious virus that gets released through the game. As a longtime fan of Stephenson’s other information-disease epic, Snow Crash, I’m really looking forward to this one, even though I recused myself from the entirety of Stephenson’s massive Baroque Cycle. Comparisons to Ready Player One, a virtual-reality novel that was fun but entirely hollow, have me slightly worried, but at the very least Reamde, weighing in at over a thousand pages, will be significantly longer than Player.

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (out 9/13)

In the black and white striped tents of Le Cirque de Rêves, or “the Circus of Dreams,” waits a menagerie of “breathtaking amazements,” along with a pair of magicians who’ve been dueling for years, and will continue to do so until one of them wins. How? They do not know. This is the kind of book that can’t be fairly summarized, it seems, and it’s probably one that will live or die on the quality of its writing, which is too subjective to fairly predict. But it could be entertaining, or even great, and I’m willing to give it a sizable chance.

The Revisionists, by Thomas Mullen (out 9/28)

“A fast-paced literary thriller” … I should know better than to trust words like these, but I can’t help myself. Mullen’s premise seems to fall neatly into a modern archetype: a time-traveling agent from a future society comes back to the present day in order to ensure that history turns out properly. It’s not an original idea, but the promise of a ripping good story from a writer whose prose won’t make me wince is enough to draw me in, even if I know it’s probably a ruse.

The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach (out 9/7)

The Art of Fielding follows five people loosely involved with Westish College, especially the baseball team’s star shortstop. The pre-publication summaries I’ve read all mention “a routine throw that goes awry” but each fails to explain exactly how it happens, or what effect it has. So it seems this is a high-literary novel, whose pleasures don’t lie in plot encapsulations. That can be excellent, or it can be maddening. All the lock-step raving reviews make me nervous—usually the hive-mind is woefully wrong—but The Art of Fielding is definitely a title to keep an eye on.

Life Itself, by Roger Ebert (out 9/13)

Roger Ebert is a critic after my own heart. Just read the back cover of a collection of his most scathing reviews, Your Movie Sucks, and you’ll see his unique blend of fearless criticism and mannered civility. He also has a lot to write about, including a recent bout with cancer that left him without a jawbone. So: a memoir of an epic life, written with rare insight and intelligence? Yes, please. …
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[This new feature is a brief monthly summary of new books on my radar, roughly in order of my personal interest in them. Follow it here. Click the pictures to find these books at Powell's.]

Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline (out 8/16)

This is one of those books that interests me mostly because I have no idea how the author’s going to pull off his premise (danger: the last book that fit this category was Dominance, which disappointed). Ready Player One‘s premise is this: in a dystopian 2044, a young boy finds the first clue toward solving an elaborate quest played in an all-consuming virtual reality called OASIS. The clues are all evidently based on 1980s geek-nostalgia trivia. Having a novel’s plot follow a virtual reality game is risky enough, but how in the hell will this tie back into Dungeons & Dragons and Monty Python without feeling completely contrived?

Low Town, by Daniel Polansky (out 8/16)

Perhaps it’s a sign of my disappointment with the literary novels I’ve read this year, but I’m excited for Low Town solely because of the genres it mixes: “dytopian fantasy” and “hard-boiled crime,” according to PW. One part Robert Jordan and one part Child 44? Maybe this could be the kind of epic genre-busting mystery The City & The City should’ve been.

The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson (out 8/9)

Buster and Annie Fang, known as Child A and Child B to their public (and their performance artist parents), get wrapped up in the bizarre world their mother and father have created, until Mom and Dad disappear in what might be their artistic coup de grace. Comparisons to the unbearable Tenenbaums will be inescapable, no doubt, but the art world offers enough material weirdness to make a pretty hilarious novel. …
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[This feature is a brief monthly summary of new books on my radar, roughly in order of my personal interest in them. Follow it here.]

The Devil All the Time, by Donald Ray Pollock (7/12)*

Pollock’s debut story collection got a rave from our own David Duhr, and Pollock’s upcoming first novel sounds like a hell of a ride, too. A husband-and-wife serial-killing team, a demented veteran, an orphan boy, a priest on the lam, and a lot more. Mix in some violence, some hopelessness, and some “taut narrative” and you’ve got the makings of a depressing novel, but also an engrossing one.

Iron House, by John Hart (7/12)*

John Hart’s last book won the Edgar for best novel last year, and it remains one of the most gripping mysteries I have ever read. So I’ll definitely be checking this one out.

Supergods, by Grant Morrison (7/19)*

Grant Morrison is a comic book writer and insane person. He’s written a book about the lessons comic books can teach, the history of the superhero, and how he, Grant Morrison, is insane and does insane things. For instance, he once wrote for 50 hours straight in order to induce delirium. Sounds like a nutty little ride.

The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma (out now)*

In a steampunk Victorian London, time machines might be real. A man tries to go back in time to save his love from Jack the Ripper, a woman investigates what looks like a weapon from the future, and H.G. Wells cavorts with the Elephant Man. …
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[This new feature is a brief monthly summary of new books on my radar, roughly in order of my personal interest in them. Follow it here.]

Oil On Water, by Helon Habila (out now)

A pair of journalists try to track down the kidnapped wife of an oil executive, and embark on a dangerous journey through the Nigerian river delta. They discover a country—not to mention scores of people—ruined by the no-holds-barred Nigerian oil industry. Civil wars, crimes against humanity, a political expose, and a suspenseful adventure “set in a haunting world of mangroves, floating villages, and jungle shrines” (PW)? Yes, please.

The Profession, by Steven Pressfield (out 6/14)

In 2032, dozens of private mercenary armies fight for anyone with money (especially oil companies). The most powerful group, a Blackwater-like global corporate army called Force Insertion, is led by a megalomaniacal ex-U.S. general with plans for vengeance that only his right-hand man can stop. Supposedly, Pressfield’s extensive research makes this thriller great.

Eleven, by Mark Watson (out now)

British comedian Watson’s third novel looks at a gaggle (roughly a dozen) of disparate characters tied together by cutesily self-monikered late-night radio DJ Xavier Ireland. When Ireland witnesses a “bullying incident,” the consequences unfold in a semi-postmodern narrative, but one that you won’t need a full semester and a PhD to unravel. This could be excellent or it could be terrible. Reviews say Watson’s not trying to be funny (ignore the flap copy); if all else fails, at least Steve Martin has the makings for a lawsuit. …
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