Fall is nearly here. The weather is starting to change and, thankfully, we have another bounty of great books for November. Pour yourself a warm mug of apple cider, grab a comfy chair, and download one (or more!) of these great eGalleys.
And remember, voting for the November LibraryReads list ends on October 1st.
From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans’ other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent City.
“In the vein of Erik Larson’s bestseller The Devil in the White City, Gary Krist’s exposé of New Orleans at the turn of the century…proves that truth really is stranger than fiction by detailing the prominent figures within Storyville, the Crescent City’s red-light district….Fans of Boardwalk Empire would enjoy this crime thriller as well.”
—Library Journal, Top 10 Editors’ Picks BEA 2014
From the award-winning author of Waiting: a spare, haunting tale of espionage and conflicted loyalties that spans half a century in the entwined histories of two countries—China and the United States—and two families as it explores the complicated terrain of love and honor.
“As a novel of espionage, the latest from the prize-winning author satisfies like the best of John le Carré, similarly demystifying and deglamorizing the process of gathering information and the ambiguous morality that operates in shades of gray. . . . [T]he issues of love and loyalty that permeate the novel aren’t merely political, but deeply personal. . . . Subtle, masterful and bittersweet storytelling that operates on a number of different levels.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Sister Jane and the Jefferson Hunt Club have traveled from Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to the Bluegrass State of Kentucky to ride with the members of the Woodford Hounds—in the teeth of foul weather. Sister knows better than anyone that an ill wind blows no good. After the hunt, Sister Jane and her boyfriend, Gray Lorillard, head to a sumptuous party on a nearby estate, also home to a historic equine graveyard. The revelry is interrupted by jarring news: The discovery of grisly remains in the cemetery that are decidedly not equine.
“[Brown’s] foxhunting titles are great for readers who like gentility with a wicked little twist.”—Library Journal
From the winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature—and one of our most beloved writers—a new selection of her peerless short fiction, gathered from the collections of the last two decades, a companion volume to Selected Stories (1968-1994).
Family Furnishings brings us twenty-four of Alice Munro’s most accomplished, most powerfully affecting stories, many of them set in the territory she has so brilliantly made her own: the small towns and flatlands of southwestern Ontario. Subtly honed with her hallmark precision, grace, and compassion, these stories illuminate the quotidian yet extraordinary particularity in the lives of men and women, parents and children, friends and lovers as they discover sex, fall in love, part, quarrel, suffer defeat, set off into the unknown, or find a way to be in the world.
Maeve Binchy once confessed: “As someone who fell off a chair not long ago trying to hear what they were saying at the next table in a restaurant, I suppose I am obsessively interested in what some might consider the trivia of other people’s lives.” She was an accidental journalist, yet from the beginning, her writings reflected the warmth, wit, and keen human interest that readers would come to love in her fiction.
From the royal wedding to boring airplane companions, Samuel Beckett to Margaret Thatcher, “senior moments” to life as a waitress, Maeve’s Times gives us wonderful insight into a changing Ireland as it celebrates the work of one of our best-loved writers in all its diversity-revealing her characteristic directness, laugh-out-loud humor, and unswerving gaze into the true heart of a matter.