"Delilah"

New from St. Martin's Press: Delilah by India Edghill, author of Queenmaker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Given to the temple of Atargatis as a child, Delilah is raised to be a priestess to the Five Cities that rule Canaan. With her beloved friend Aylah, Delilah grows up under the watchful eyes of high priestess Derceto, who sees the devout young priestesses as valuable playing pieces in her political schemes.

In the hills of Canaan, the Israelites chafe under the rule of the Five Cities, and choose Samson to lead them to victory. A reluctant warrior, Samson is a man of great heart who prefers peace to war. But fearing a rebellion, those who rule the Five Cities will do anything to capture Samson. When Samson catches a glimpse of Delilah, he is ready to risk his freedom to marry her, and Derceto seizes the chance to have Samson at her mercy. The Temple's intrigues against Samson force Aylah and Delilah apart, lead Delilah to question her own heart, and change her future forever.

A glorious and inventive retelling of an ancient story, Delilah is a soaring tale of political turmoil, searing betrayal, passionate friendship, and forbidden love.

Visit India Edghill's website.

"Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising"

New from Forge Books: Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising by Larry Bond and Jim DeFelice.

About the book, from the publisher:

Building off the World War III premise Larry Bond helped Tom Clancy to establish, Red Storm Rising, this new series looks at the world under an omnipresent Chinese superpower. When rapid climate change leads to mass riots in China, a new Communist premier seeks to relieve pressure by marching on traditional Chinese enemies in Southeast Asia. Desperately coping with its own problems, the US wants to avoid nuclear war at all costs - but ultimately must fight to preserve world peace.

Read an excerpt from Red Dragon Rising.

Visit Jim DeFelice's website and blog.

"Wyatt’s Revenge"

New from Oceanview Publishing: Wyatt’s Revenge by H. Terrell Griffin.

About the book, from the publisher:

On balance, retired trial lawyer turned beach bum Matt Royal is a pretty laidback fellow. But when Laurence Wyatt, one of Matt’s best friends, is murdered, Matt trades in his easygoing ways for a hard-hitting quest for revenge. Matt knows the Longboat Key police will do their job in investigating, but for Matt, finding Wyatt’s killer isn’t a job; it’s personal.

Determined to do whatever it takes to solve Wyatt’s murder, Matt takes matters into his own hands and embarks on a clandestine investigation. Soon, Matt finds himself in hot pursuit of a cadre of remorseless criminals and trained killers. But the tables turn and Matt Royal becomes the pursued. Faced with mounting danger, Matt calls for backup from his buddies Jock Algren and Logan Hamilton.

Matt Royal would go to the ends of the earth to exact revenge for Wyatt’s murder, but will he go outside the law?

Expect the unexpected in this wild and dangerous ride from Longboat Key, Florida, to Frankfurt, Germany, because hell hath no fury like Matt Royal scorned.

Read more about the book and author at H. Terrell Griffin's website.

The Page 69 Test: Wyatt’s Revenge.

"The Murdered House"

New from Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books: The Murdered House by Pierre Magnan.

About the book, from the publisher:

From one of Frances’s leading crime writers, whose The Messengers of Death was named by Publishers Weekly as one of their 10 Best Mysteries of 2008, comes this exceptional classic mystery.

At the turn of the century in Upper Provence, a family is violently massacred. The sole survivor of the tragedy is a three-week-old baby. Twenty years later, the orphaned survivor returns home to avenge his family’s killers. Then unexpected secrets set in motion a dreadful unveiling of the past...

"Changing My Mind"

New from Penguin: Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sparkling collection of Zadie Smith’s nonfiction over the past decade.

Zadie Smith brings to her essays all of the curiosity, intellectual rigor, and sharp humor that have attracted so many readers to her fiction, and the result is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary.

Split into four sections—“Reading,” “Being,” “Seeing,” and “Feeling”—Changing My Mind invites readers to witness the world from Zadie Smith’s unique vantage. Smith casts her acute eye over material both personal and cultural, with wonderfully engaging essays—some published here for the first time—on diverse topics including literature, movies, going to the Oscars, British comedy, family, feminism, Obama, Katharine Hepburn, and Anna Magnani.

In her investigations Smith also reveals much of herself. Her literary criticism shares the wealth of her experiences as a reader and exposes the tremendous influence diverse writers—E. M. Forster, Zora Neale Hurston, George Eliot, and others—have had on her writing life and her self-understanding. Smith also speaks directly to writers as a craftsman, offering precious practical lessons on process. Here and throughout, readers will learn of the wide-ranging experiences—in novels, travel, philosophy, politics, and beyond—that have nourished Smith’s rich life of the mind. Her probing analysis offers tremendous food for thought, encouraging readers to attend to the slippery questions of identity, art, love, and vocation that so often go neglected.

Changing My Mind announces Zadie Smith as one of our most important contemporary essayists, a writer with the rare ability to turn the world on its side with both fact and fiction. Changing My Mind is a gift to readers, writers, and all who want to look at life more expansively.

"No Doors, No Windows"

New from Del Ray Books: No Doors, No Windows by Joe Schreiber.

About the book, from the publisher:

When madness is your inheritance, how do you escape it?

Scott Mast thought he got away–first from a family haunted by a dark fate, then from a dull career writing greeting cards in Seattle. But now he has come back to his New Hampshire hometown only to find that his family is in ruins, his nephew needs a home, and a shattering truth is clawing its way into the light.

Fifteen years ago, Scott’s mother died in a fire. And now the shadowy circumstances–the bodies buried beneath the ashes, the lives ripped apart that fateful day–are starting to be revealed. The answers unspool in the pages of a peculiar old manuscript–an unfinished ghost story written in his father’s own hand that beckons Scott out to a strange house in the woods with a lightless corridor that cannot be seen from the outside. Here Scott Mast will uncover all that has been hidden–and perhaps finish his father’s unspeakable work.

Visit Joe Schreiber's blog.

"Dr. Sigmundus: The Resurrection Fields"

New from Knopf Books for Young Readers: Dr. Sigmundus: The Resurrection Fields by Brian Keaney.

About the book, from the publisher:

“Keaney's concoction of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy is remarkably effective. Sigmundus is a villain who will haunt readers.”—The Bulletin

Beginning where Book 2, The Cracked Mirror, left off, this finale to the Promises of Dr. Sigmundus trilogy takes readers into bizarre realms with fanciful creatures, continuing its signature exploration of the price of freedom and self-determination. Focusing on the ongoing struggles of its teenaged protagonists, Dante and Bea, it is a journey at once thrilling and thoughtful, with plenty to offer for pure reading enjoyment and book discussion. This trilogy is satisfying for fantasy fans but also accessible to the less-than-hardcore genre enthusiast.

Learn more about the author and his work at Brian Keaney's website and blog.

"The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China"

Coming soon from Penguin Classics: The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China: The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun by Lu Xun, translated by Julia Lovell with an afterword by Yiyun Li.

About the book, from the publisher:

A major new translation of the complete fiction of the father of modern Chinese literature

In the early twentieth century, as China came up against the realities of the modern world, Lu Xun effected a shift in Chinese letters away from the ornate, obsequious literature of the aristocrats to the plain, expressive literature of the masses. His celebrated short stories assemble a powerfully unsettling portrait of the superstition, poverty, and complacency that he perceived in late imperial China and in the revolutionary republic that toppled the last dynasty in 1911. This volume presents Lu Xun's complete fiction in bracing new translations and includes such famous works as "The Real Story of Ah-q," "Diary of a Madman," and "The Divorce." Together they expose a contradictory legacy of cosmopolitan independence, polemical fractiousness, and anxious patriotism that continues to resonate in Chinese intellectual life today.

Read an excerpt from the introduction at The China Beat.

"Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers & Other Unusual Relationships by Marty Crump, illustrations by Alan Crump.

About the book, from the publisher:

Vampire bats that regurgitate blood for roosting buddies. Mosquitoes that filch honeydew droplets from ants. Reptiles that enforce chastity on their lovers with copulatory plugs. Capuchin monkeys that use millipede secretions as mosquito repellent. The natural world is full of unusual relationships, and negotiation between life-forms striving to survive is evolution at its most diverse, entertaining, and awe-inspiring.

Picking up where her highly popular Headless Males Make Great Lovers left off, tropical field biologist Marty Crump takes us on another voyage of discovery into the world of unusual natural histories, this time focusing on extraordinary interactions involving animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria. Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers & Other Unusual Relationships illuminates the ceaseless give-and-take between species. Occasionally, both interacting parties benefit, like when hornbills and dwarf mongooses hunt together for food. Other times, like when mites ride in hummingbirds’ nostrils to reach their next meal of nectar, one individual benefits and the other is neither helped nor harmed. But sometimes one individual benefits at the expense of the other; you need only recall your last sinus infection to understand how that works.

Throughout, Crump brings her trademark spunk and zest to these stories of intimate exchange. She introduces readers to penguins that babysit, pseudoscorpions that ride and mate under the wings of giant harlequin beetles, and parasitic fungi that bend insects to their will. A lively companion to Crump’s earlier work, Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers & Other Unusual Relationships captures the bizarre and befuddling aspects of the behavior of animals, plants, and microbes. After this entertaining romp through the world of natural relationships, you’ll never look at an orchid the same way again.

Read an excerpt from Sexy Orchids Make Lousy Lovers.

"The Gatekeeper"

New from Mira Books: The Gatekeeper by Michelle Gagnon.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the moment sixteen-year-old Madison Grant is abducted, an unthinkable terrorist plot is set in motion—pitting Special Agent Kelly Jones against her most powerful adversary yet. The kidnapper's ransom demands aren't monetary…they come at a cost that no American can afford to pay.

As Kelly's fiancé, Jake Riley, races to find Madison, Kelly is assigned to another disturbing case: the murder and dismemberment of a senator. At first the two cases don't appear to be related. But as Kelly navigates her way through the darkest communities of America—from skinheads to biker gangs to border militias—she discovers a horrible truth. A shadowy figure who calls himself The Gatekeeper is uniting hate groups, opening the door to the worst homegrown attack in American history.

Learn more about the author and her work at Michelle Gagnon's website.