Yesterday, I shared the first part of my most anticipated books of January post. Today’s post is dedicated to all books published the second week of January. As you can see, there are quite a few!
Once again, I’ve included the publisher’s summary and a brief explanation about why I am excited about a particular title.
And
Again by Jessica Chiarella (Jan. 12):Would you live your life differently if you were given a second chance? Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda—four terminally ill patients—have been selected for the SUBlife pilot program, which will grant them brand-new, genetically perfect bodies that are exact copies of their former selves—without a single imperfection. Blemishes, scars, freckles, and wrinkles have all disappeared, their fingerprints are different, their vision is impeccable, and most importantly, their illnesses have been cured.
But the fresh start they’ve been given is anything but perfect. Without their old bodies, their new physical identities have been lost. Hannah, an artistic prodigy, has to relearn how to hold a brush; David, a Congressman, grapples with his old habits; Connie, an actress whose stunning looks are restored after a protracted illness, tries to navigate an industry obsessed with physical beauty; and Linda, who spent eight years paralyzed after a car accident, now struggles to reconnect with a family that seems to have built a new life without her. As each tries to re-enter their previous lives and relationships they are faced with the question: how much of your identity rests not just in your mind, but in your heart, your body?
I think the description alone gives you an indication of my interest!
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (Jan. 12):
At the age of 36, on the verge of a completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi’s health began to falter. He started losing weight and was wracked by waves of excruciating back pain. A CT scan confirmed what Paul, deep down, had suspected: he had stage four lung cancer, widely disseminated. One day, he was a doctor making a living treating the dying, and the next, he was a patient struggling to live. Just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined, the culmination of decades of striving, evaporated.
With incredible literary quality, philosophical acuity, and medical authority, he approaches the questions raised by facing mortality from the dual perspective of the neurosurgeon who spent a decade meeting patients in the twilight between life and death, and the terminally ill patient who suddenly found himself living in that liminality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What happens when the future, instead of being a ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present? When faced with a terminal diagnosis, what does it mean to have a child, to nuture a new life as another one fades away? As Paul wrote, “Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.”
Certainly not a light subject, I’m intrigued to see how a man of medicine embraces and deals with his own mortality. I can’t even imagine…
Writ
ten in Fire by Marcus Sakey (Jan. 12):
The explosive conclusion to the bestselling Brilliance Trilogy
For thirty years humanity struggled to cope with the brilliants, the one percent of people born with remarkable gifts. For thirty years we tried to avoid a devastating civil war.
We failed.
The White House is a smoking ruin. Madison Square Garden is an internment camp. In Wyoming, an armed militia of thousands marches toward a final, apocalyptic battle.
Nick Cooper has spent his life fighting for his children and his country. Now, as the world staggers on the edge of ruin, he must risk everything he loves to face his oldest enemy—a brilliant terrorist so driven by his ideals that he will sacrifice humanity’s future to achieve them.
From “one of our best storytellers” (Michael Connelly) comes the blistering conclusion to the acclaimed series that is a “forget-to-pick-up-milk, forget-to-water-the-plants, forget-to-eat total immersion experience” (Gillian Flynn).
I adore this trilogy so much. As much as I’m saddened to see it end, I can’t wait to devour this book!
Beside Myself by Ann Morgan (Jan 12):
Beside Myself is the story of a pair of identical twins, Ellie and Helen, who switch places when they are six. At first, Helen, who suggests the swap, thinks they are just playing. But the game turns into a trap when Ellie refuses to switch back, forcing her sister to live her life instead. With those around her oblivious to her plight, the girl who used to be Helen withdraws into a spiral of behavioral problems, delinquency, and mental illness, while her sibling blossoms with the approval and praise that their harsh and distant mother used to bestow upon Helen.
Twenty-five years later, her estranged mother calls to tell her that her perfect sister–a celebrity now–has been in a car accident and is in a coma. The woman who was long ago referred to as Helen and now thinks of herself as “Smudge” has the chance to revisit the past. Battling the mental illness and alcohol abuse that have taken over her existence, Smudge seeks to discover what really happened to her sister and herself.
Psychological thriller. Twins. Sold.
What She Left by T.R. Richmond (Jan. 12)
On a snowy February morning, the body of twenty-five-year-old journalist Alice Salmon washes up on a riverbank south of London. The sudden, shocking death of this beloved local girl becomes a media sensation, and those who knew her struggle to understand what happened to lively, smart, and savvy Alice Salmon. Was it suicide? A tragic accident? Or…murder?
Professor Jeremy Cooke, known around campus as Old Cookie, is an anthropologist nearing the end of his unremarkable academic career. Alice is his former student, and the object of his unhealthy obsession. After her death, he embarks on a final project—a book documenting Alice’s life through the digital and paper trails that survive her: her diaries, letters, Facebook posts, Tweets, and text messages. He collects news articles by and about her; he transcribes old voicemails; he interviews her friends, family, and boyfriends.
Bit by bit, the real Alice—a complicated and vulnerable young woman—springs fully formed from the pages of Cookie’s book…along with a labyrinth of misunderstandings, lies, and secrets that cast suspicion on everyone in her circle—including Jeremy himself.
This one is so dark and twisty I can’t resist.
The Crooked House by Cristobel Kent (Jan 12):
A stunning novel about the disturbing secrets of a small British village and its sinister crooked house
Published in the United Kingdom in early 2015, Christobel Kent’s The Crooked House has already drawn comparisons to works by the pantheon of British female literary suspense writers–Daphne du Maurier, Agatha Christie, P. D. James, and Kate Atkinson. In this darkly atmospheric psychological thriller, she accomplishes what those celebrated writers do best: she creates an insular world (a single house, a small town) where something sinister has occurred, and subtly inflects each page with the toxic residue of violence.
Much like the unnamed narrator of Rebecca, Alison lives her life under the radar. She has no ties, no home, and she spends her days at a backroom publishing job. Which is how she wants it. Because Alison used to be a teenager named Esme, who lived in a dilapidated house by a bleak estuary with her parents and three siblings. One night, something unspeakable happened in the house, and Alison emerged the only survivor. In order to escape from the horror she witnessed, she moved away from her village, changed her name, and cut herself off from her past.
Only now her boyfriend invites her to a wedding in her old hometown, and she decides that if she’s going to have any chance of overcoming the trauma of what happened, she’ll have to confront it. But soon Alison realizes that that night’s events have left a terrible mark on everyone in the village, and she begins to suspect that they are all somehow implicated in her family’s murder.
Frankly, I’m quite intrigued by this crooked house. Creepy enough to intrigue me!
The Case of Lisandra P. by Hélène Grémillon (Jan. 12):
Buenos Aires, 1987. When a beautiful young woman named Lisandra is found dead at the foot of a six-story building, her husband, a psychoanalyst, is immediately arrested for her murder. Convinced of Vittorio’s innocence, one of his patients, Eva Maria, is drawn into the investigation seemingly by chance. As Eva Maria combs through secret recordings of Vittorio’s most recent therapy sessions in search of the killer—could it be the powerful government figure? The jealous woman? The musician who’s lost his reason to live?—Eva Maria is forced to confront her most painful memories, and some of the darkest moments in Argentinian history.
In breathless prose that captures the desperate spinning of a frantic mind, Hélène Grémillon blurs the lines of past and present, personal and political, reality and paranoia in this daring and compulsively readable novel.
This is another one in which the cover grabbed my attention. It seem simple, but has so much complexity behind it.
The Good Good-bye by Carla Buckley (Jan. 12):
Two cousins, Rory and Arden, lie unconscious in a hospital burn unit. The fire, which broke out in their shared college dorm room, killed another student, and the police want answers. Tension between Rory and Arden’s parents was already at an all-time high before the fire, owing to a recent financial crisis and the decline of the family business. As the parents huddle anxiously in the waiting room, carefully avoiding the subject of their own unraveling relationships, disturbing truths come to light. This is the deeply moving story of a family’s struggle to hold together while their secrets threaten to tear them apart.
I adored The Deepest Secret so I’ve been waiting for Buckley to write another domestic thriller. I cannot wait to devour this one!
This wraps up the second part of my most-anticipated titles of January. I’ll conclude the list tomorrow with titles publishing the second half of January!
