Winter Book Preview: February 2014, Part II |

Yesterday, I shared the first half of the books I’m most anticipating in February. Following is the second, slightly longer, list of books I’m looking forward to! Once again, I’ve included the publisher’s summary. Click on the image to preorder the book!

The Bear by Claire Cameron (Feb. 11): A powerful suspense story narrated by a young girl who must fend for herself and her little brother after a brutal bear attack. While camping with her family on a remote island, five-year-old Anna awakes in the night to the sound of her mother screaming. A rogue black bear, three hundred pounds of fury, is attacking the family’s campsite — and pouncing on her parents as prey. At her dying mother’s faint urging, Anna manages to get her brother into the family’s canoe and paddle away. But when the canoe runs aground on the edge of the woods, the sister and brother must battle hunger, the elements, and a wilderness alive with danger. Lost and completely alone, they find that their only hope resides in Anna’s heartbreaking love for her family, and her struggle to be brave when nothing in her world seems safe anymore.This is a story with a small narrator and a big heart. Cameron gracefully plumbs Anna’s young perspective on family, responsibility, and hope, charting both a tragically premature loss of innocence and a startling evolution as Anna reasons through the impossible situations that confront her. Lean and confident, and told in the innocent and honest voice of a five-year-old, THE BEAR is a transporting tale of loss — but also a poignant and surprisingly funny adventure about love and the raw instincts that enable us to survive.

Where Monsters Dwell by Jorgen Brekke (Feb. 11): An international bestseller—A brutal murder in Norway, a murder in Virginia—both connected to sixteenth century palimpsest of a serial murderer’s confession. A murder at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, bears a close resemblance to one in Trondheim, Norway. The corpse of the museum curator in Virginia is found flayed in his office by the cleaning staff; the corpse of an archivist at the library in Norway, is found inside a locked vault used to store delicate and rare books. Richmond homicide detective Felicia Stone and Trondheim police inspector Odd Singsaker find themselves working on similar murder cases, committed the same way, but half a world away. And both murders are somehow connected to a sixteenth century palimpsest book—The Book of John—which appears to be a journal of a serial murderer back in 1529 Norway, a book bound in human skin. A runaway bestseller in Norway, Where Monsters Dwell has since sold to over fourteen countries. Where Monsters Dwell is the most awaited English language crime fiction debut in years.

The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick (Feb. 11): From the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook comes a funny and tender story about family, friendship, grief, acceptance, and Richard Gere-an entertaining and inspiring tale that will leave you pondering the rhythms of the universe and marveling at the power of kindness and love. For thirty-eight years, Bartholomew Neil has lived with his mother. When she gets sick and dies, he has no idea how to be on his own. His redheaded grief counselor, Wendy, says he needs to find his flock and leave the nest. But how does a man whose whole life has been grounded in his mom, Saturday mass, and the library learn how to fly? Bartholomew thinks he’s found a clue when he discovers a “Free Tibet” letter from Richard Gere hidden in his mother’s underwear drawer. In her final days, mom called him Richard-there must be a cosmic connection. Believing that the actor is meant to help him, Bartholomew awkwardly starts his new life, writing Richard Gere a series of highly intimate letters. Jung and the Dalai Lama, philosophy and faith, alien abduction and cat telepathy, the Catholic Church and the mystery of women are all explored in his soul-baring epistles. But mostly the letters reveal one man’s heartbreakingly earnest attempt to assemble a family of his own. A struggling priest, a “Girlbrarian,” her feline-loving, foul-mouthed brother, and the spirit of Richard Gere join the quest to help Bartholomew find where he belongs. In a rented Ford Focus, they travel to Canada to see the cat Parliament and find Bartholomew’s biological father . . . and discover so much more.

While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell (Feb. 20): I am not the sort of person about whom stories are told. And so begins Elise Dalriss’s story. When she hears her great-granddaughter recount a minstrel’s tale about a beautiful princess asleep in a tower, it pushes open a door to the past, a door Elise has long kept locked. For Elise was the companion to the real princess who slumbered—and she is the only one left who knows what actually happened so many years ago. Her story unveils a labyrinth where secrets connect to an inconceivable evil. As only Elise understands all too well, the truth is no fairy tale.

Deep Winter by Samuel W. Gailey (Feb. 20): In this spellbindingly compelling rural noir, a devastating murder in an isolated small town sets off an unstoppable chain of events made more complicated—and more dangerous—by the town’s dark secrets.
Danny, a simpleminded gentle giant, doesn’t know what to make of the body he discovers one cold winter evening. It’s Mindy, his only friend in the small town of Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, where most people avoid Danny, even though a childhood tragedy left him parentless and with limited mental capabilities. Wary of the damage he could cause with his unchecked strength, the town has labeled him as dangerous, whether he intends to be or not. So when the local bully-turned-deputy finds Danny with Mindy’s body, it seems obvious to everyone that the normally kindhearted man has finally hurt someone. But Mindy’s gruesome murder and Danny’s arrest gravely upset the delicate balance of the town order, and the violence threatens to spin out of control as the deputy, the sheriff, and a state trooper investigate. Richly atmospheric and ingeniously plotted, Samuel W. Gailey’s debut novel chillingly depicts a small town where not everything is as it seems, and something sinister lurks just below the surface.

The Stolen Ones by Richard Montanari (Feb. 25): In Richard Montanari’s chilling new suspense novel, a sealed-off network of secret passages connects all of Philadelphia to the killer hidden within. Luther Wade grew up in Cold River, a warehouse for the criminally insane. Two decades ago the hospital closed it doors forever, but Luther never left. He wanders the catacombs beneath the city, channeling the violent dreams of Eduard Kross, Europe’s most prolific serial killer of the 20th century. A two-year-old girl is found wandering the streets of Philadelphia in the middle of the night by detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano. She does not speak, but she may hold the key to solving a string of murders committed in and around Priory Park. As the detectives investigate, more bodies are found at Priory Park, and they’re drawn closer and closer to the doors of Luther’s devious maze and the dark secrets of Cold River.

The Headmaster’s Wife by Thomas Christopher Greene (Feb. 25): Beautifully written and compulsively readable, The Headmaster’s Wife is a haunting and deeply affecting portrait of one couple at their best and worst—”a truly remarkable novel” (Richard Russo). An immensely talented writer whose work has been described as “incandescent” (Kirkus Reviews) and “poetic” (Booklist), Thomas Christopher Greene turns in a more literary direction with The Headmaster’s Wife, his most ambitious work to date. As the founder and president of Vermont College of Fine Arts, a graduate school in Montpelier, VT with a top-ranked MFA program, Tom is a well-known figure in the literary world, and is uniquely positioned to promote this book to a wide audience of literary and commercial readers. Inspired by a personal loss, Greene explores the way that tragedy and time assail one man’s memories of his life and loves. Like his father before him, Arthur Winthrop is the Headmaster of Vermont’s elite Lancaster School. Found wandering naked in Central Park, he begins to tell his story to the police, but his memories collide into one another, and the true nature of things, a narrative of of love, of marriage, of family and of a tragedy Arthur does not know how to address emerges. The Headmaster’s Wife explores the nature of family, of the hidden world of boarding schools, and how a love can both deepen and change over time. A beautifully written, profoundly emotional book, it is perfect for fans of Anita Shreve and Richard Russo, and stands as a moving elegy to the power of love as an antidote to grief.

The Troop by Nick Cutter (Feb.25): “The Troop scared the hell out of me, and I couldn’t put it down. This is old-school horror at its best.”—Stephen King

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip—a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. Te boys are a tight-knit crew. Tere’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there—which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier. But for some reason, he can’t shake the feeling that something strange is in the air this year. Something waiting in the darkness. Something wicked . . .It comes to them in the night. An unexpected intruder, stumbling upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry—a man in unspeakable torment who exposes Tim and the boys to something far more frightening than any ghost story. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine. And so it begins. An agonizing weekend in the wilderness. A harrowing struggle for survival. No possible escape from the elements, the infected . . . or one another. Part Lord of the Flies, part 28 Days Later—and all-consuming—this tightly written, edge-of-your seat thriller takes you deep into the heart of darkness, where fear feeds on sanity . . . and terror hungers for more.

A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain by Adrianne Harun (Feb. 25): The seductive and chilling debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of The King of Limbo. In isolated British Columbia, girls, mostly native, are vanishing from the sides of a notorious highway. Leo Kreutzer and his four friends are barely touched by these disappearances—until a series of mysterious and troublesome outsiders come to town. Then it seems as if the devil himself has appeared among them. In this intoxicatingly lush debut novel, Adrianne Harun weaves together folklore, mythology, and elements of magical realism to create a compelling and unsettling portrait of life in a dead-end town. A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is atmospheric and evocative of place and a group of people, much in the way that Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones conjures the South, or Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children provides a glimpse of the Las Vegas underworld: kids left to fend for themselves in a broken world—rendered with grit and poetry in equal measure.

The Sound of Broken Glass by Deborah Crombie (Feb. 25): In the past . . . On a blisteringly hot August afternoon in Crystal Palace, once home to the tragically destroyed Great Exhibition, a solitary thirteen-year-old boy meets his next-door neighbor, a recently widowed young teacher hoping to make a new start in the tight-knit South London community. Drawn together by loneliness, the unlikely pair forms a deep connection that ends in a shattering act of betrayal.

In the present . . .
On a cold January morning in London, Detective Inspector Gemma James is back on the job now that her husband, Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, is at home to care for their three-year-old foster daughter. Assigned to lead a Murder Investigation Team in South London, she’s assisted by her trusted colleague, newly promoted Detective Sergeant Melody Talbot. Their first case: a crime scene at a seedy hotel in Crystal Palace. The victim: a well-respected barrister, found naked, trussed, and apparently strangled. Is it an unsavory accident or murder? In either case, he was not alone, and Gemma’s team must find his companion-a search that takes them into unexpected corners and forces them to contemplate unsettling truths about the weaknesses and passions that lead to murder. Ultimately, they will begin to question everything they think they know about their world and those they trust most.

Island 731 by Jeremy Robinson (Feb. 25): Mark Hawkins is out of his element, working on board a research vessel studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But his work is interrupted when the ship is plagued by strange malfunctions and battered by a raging storm.When the sun rises, the crew awakens to find themselves anchored at a tropical island. They quickly discover evidence of a brutal history left behind by former occupants: Unit 731, Japan’s ruthless World War II human experimentation program. As crew members start to disappear, Hawkins realizes that they are not alone. In fact, they were brought to this strange island. While Hawkins fights to save his friends, he learns the horrible truth: Island 731 was never decommissioned and the person taking his crewmates may not be a person at all—not anymore.