"Runoff"

Coming in November from Bleak House Books: Runoff by Mark Coggins.

About the book, from the publisher:

When her hand-picked mayoral candidate fails even to carry the predominantly Chinese precincts, Leonora Lee — the all-powerful “Dragon Lady” of San Francisco’s Chinatown — hires private eye August Riordan to investigate the possibility that someone has rigged the election by hacking the city’s newly installed touch-screen voting machines. As the days to the runoff election between the two remaining candidates click down, it becomes clear there are many groups with wildly different agendas that had a motive.

An anarchist organization called Feral Collective and a radical, anti-gentrification group called Cuidad Verde (Green City) want the progressive Green party candidate to win because of his promise to increase affordable housing. Wo Hop To, a powerful gang in Chinatown with connections to a Hong Kong triad, want to sabotage the chances of the Dragon Lady’s candidate. “Downtown interests” with links to big business and real estate development want the relatively conservative Democratic candidate to maintain the business and development-friendly policies of the current administration.

Did these factions act separately or work together? Did they suborn employees of the Election Department or the company that produced the electronic voting machines? These are the questions Riordan must answer, all while dealing with an entanglement with the Dragon Lady’s beautiful daughter, Lisa, who is the reigning Miss Chinatown.

"The Dead Travel Fast"

New from Thomas Dunne Books: The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula by Eric Nuzum.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Dead Travel Fast is about vampires, death, chickens, fear, things that smell bad, the love of a good woman, and germs… but mostly it’s about vampires.

The undead are everywhere. They’re not just in movies and books, but in commercials, fetish clubs, and even in your breakfast cereal. If you look, you’ll discover that bloodsuckers have gone from guest spots in rural folk tales to becoming some of the most recognizable bad guys in the modern world. Eric Nuzum wanted to find out why and how this happened. And he found the answer in Goth clubs, darkened parks, haunted houses, and… chain restaurants.

Nuzum was willing to do whatever it took to better understand the vampire phenomenon. He traveled across Transylvania on a tour hosted by Butch Patrick (a.k.a. Eddie Munster), sat through Las Vegas’ only topless vampire revue, hung out with assorted shady characters, and spent hours in a coffin. He even drank his own blood -- just one more step in his quest to understand the weird, offbeat world of vampires and the people who love them.

The Dead Travel Fast is the hilarious result of this bloody, gory, and often foolhardy journey. With his unmatched firsthand experience, Eric Nuzum delivers a far-reaching look at vampires in pop culture, from Bram to Bela to Buffy, and at what vampires and vampirism have come to mean to us today.

And the blood? Let’s just say it doesn’t go with eggs.

"The Sound of Butterflies"

New from William Morrow: The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King.

About the book, from the publisher:

Amateur naturalist Thomas Edgar is offered the chance of a lifetime: to travel to the Amazon as part of a scientific exploration. Hoping to discover the mythical butterfly of which he has long dreamed — his Papilio sophia — he eagerly accepts. Yet when he returns, the optimistic young Edwardian gentleman is gone, replaced by a weak, nearly mute shadow of the man.

Unable to break through Thomas's silence, his beloved wife, Sophie, is forced to take drastic measures to discover what has happened. But as she gleans what she can from Thomas's diaries and boxes of exquisite butterflies, she learns as much about herself and their marriage as about the secrets he harbors.

Written in rich, sensuous prose and taking the reader from the demure gentility of turn-of-the-twentieth-century England to the lush, dangerous jungles of Brazil, The Sound of Butterflies is a breathtaking and compelling debut.

"The Night Climbers"

New from Simon Spotlight Entertainment: The Night Climbers by Ivo Stourton.

About the book, from the publisher:

When James Walker arrives at Tudor College, Cambridge, he tries to create a vague air of mystery about himself in the hope of making the right kind of friends. By accident or fate he encounters a member of the Night Climbers, a wealthy, secretive, and tantalizingly eccentric circle of undergraduates who scale the college towers and gargoyles at night in pursuit of the kind of thrill-seeking danger that makes them feel truly alive.

Seduced by their reckless charisma and talent for decadence, James falls for both Francis, the group's ringleader, and Jessica, his beautiful best friend. Their extravagant living is financed, unwittingly, by Francis's father, but when he suddenly cuts his son off, the friends are left floundering as they try to maintain a lifestyle they can't afford. That is, until Francis embroils them in a plan that will test the limits of their friendship and link them to one another forever.

Humming with intellectual energy and grace, The Night Climbers portrays the intensity of early relationships, when people are at their most impressionable, and explores the ties that bind with a keen eye.

"Rigged"

New this month from William Morrow: Rigged: The True Story of an Ivy League Kid Who Changed the World of Oil, from Wall Street to Dubai by Ben Mezrich.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the author who brought you the massive New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House, this is the startling rags-to-riches story of an Italian-American kid from the streets of Brooklyn who claws his way into the wild, frenetic world of the oil exchange.

After conquering the hallowed halls of Harvard Business School, he enters the testosterone-laced warrens of the Merc Exchange, the asylumlike oil exchange located in lower Manhattan. A place where billions of dollars trade hands every week, the Merc is like a casino on crack, where former garbagemen become millionaires overnight and where fistfights break out on the trading floor.

This ordinary kid has traded Brooklyn for the gold-lined hotel palaces of Dubai. He keeps company on the decks of private yachts in Monte Carlo — teeming with half-naked girls flown in by Saudi sheiks — and makes deals in the dangerous back alleys of Beijing.

But the Merc is just a starting place. Taken under the wing of another young gun and partnering with a mysterious young Muslim, the kid embarks on a dangerous adventure to revolutionize the oil trading industry — and, along with it, the world.

Rigged is the explicit, exclusive, true story behind the headlines that dominate the world stage.

"Spaceman Blues"

Recently published by Tor Books: Spaceman Blues: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery.

About the book, from the publisher:

When Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González disappears, Wendell Apogee decides to find out where he has gone and why. But in order to figure out what happened to Manuel, Wendell must contend with parties, cockfights, and chases; an underground city whose people live in houses suspended from cavern ceilings; urban weirdos and alien assassins; immigrants, the black market, flight, riots, and religious cults.

Painted in browns and grays and sparked by sudden fires, Spaceman Blues is a literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel, the debut of a true voice of the future, and a cult classic in the making.

"Matrimony"

New from Pantheon Books: Matrimony by Joshua Henkin.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the moment he was born, Julian Wainwright has lived a life of Waspy privilege. The son of a Yale-educated investment banker, he grew up in a huge apartment on Sutton Place, high above the East River, and attended a tony Manhattan private school. Yet, more than anything, he wants to get out–out from under his parents’ influence, off to Graymont College, in western Massachusetts, where he hopes to become a writer.

When he arrives, in the fall of 1986, Julian meets Carter Heinz, a scholarship student from California with whom he develops a strong but ambivalent friendship. Carter’s mother, desperate to save money for his college education, used to buy him reversible clothing, figuring she was getting two items for the price of one. Now, spending time with Julian, Carter seethes with resentment. He swears he will grow up to be wealthy – wealthier, even, than Julian himself.

Then, one day, flipping through the college facebook, Julian and Carter see a photo of Mia Mendelsohn. Mia from Montreal, they call her. Beautiful, Jewish, the daughter of a physics professor at McGill, Mia is – Julian and Carter agree – dreamy, urbane, stylish, refined.

But Julian gets to Mia first, meeting her by chance in the college laundry room. Soon they begin a love affair that – spurred on by family tragedy – will carry them to graduation and beyond, taking them through several college towns, over the next ten years. Then Carter reappears, working for an Internet company in California, and he throws everyone’s life into turmoil: Julian’s, Mia’s, his own.

Starting at the height of the Reagan era and ending in the new millennium, Matrimony is about love and friendship, about money and ambition, desire and tensions of faith. It asks what happens to a marriage when it is confronted by betrayal and the specter of mortality. What happens when people marry younger than they’d expected? Can love endure the passing of time?

In its emotional honesty, its luminous prose, its generosity and wry wit, Matrimony is a beautifully detailed portrait of what it means to share a life with someone – to do it when you’re young, and to try to do it afresh on the brink of middle age.

"Midnight Rambler"

New from Ballantine Books: Midnight Rambler by James Swain.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explosive. Pulse-pounding. Heart-racing. From the bestselling author The Wall Street Journal hails as “one terrific writer,” Midnight Rambler is the breakout thriller of the year – a brawny, brainy novel of suspense that pairs James Swain’s trademark smooth-as-silk prose with a plot bigger and bolder than anything he’s done before.

In South Florida, Jack Carpenter is infamous. He’s the cop who busted the notorious serial killer Simon Skell – aka the Midnight Rambler – and sacrificed his badge and marriage in the process. Haunted by the Skell case, Carpenter now works as an abduction specialist in Fort Lauderdale, reuniting families with their missing children.

But the body of one of the Midnight Rambler’s victims has just been uncovered–and forensic evidence suggests Carpenter jailed the wrong man. With Skell just days away from release, the tarnished hero must reopen the case that shattered his life and the lives of eight murdered women.

As waves of heat and rain wash over the steamy streets, Carpenter races against the clock to reaffirm the case against Skell. Yet the deeper he digs, the more he starts to realize that Skell is just one piece in a terrifying puzzle of predation and murder, just one player in a shocking conspiracy that ranges across the state of Florida. And as the relentless Carpenter draws the net tighter, his enemies prepare to spring a devastating final surprise.

From the seaside bar that Jack Carpenter calls home to the glittering tourist kingdom in Orlando to the funky jungle of Coconut Grove, James Swain unleashes a wild ride into the heart of evil – with the Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Rambler” as the throbbing, terrifying soundtrack.

"Sweetheart Deal"

New this month from William Morrow: Sweetheart Deal by Claire Matturro.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sarasota lawyer Lilly Cleary has had her share of odd cases. She's defended everyone from a pet psychic to an orange libeler, and she's done so with finesse. But it's another situation entirely when she finds out that her phobic and dysfunctional mother has been accused of murder.

Although she's been estranged from her family for years, Lilly drops everything to return to the little town of Bugfest, Georgia, and steps into more than she bargained for. For one thing, her mother's house is beyond a mess. Important papers are missing, and on the back porch there's a freezer whose contents are very odd. Bugfest itself is under attack by developers who want to turn it into a resort community, a plan that would displace many of the longtime residents.

And then someone tries to murder Lilly's mother with red ants while she's strangely oversedated in the hospital.

Lilly has come to the rescue, but can she get to the root of these mysterious doings in time to save her mother's life?

"The Day of Battle"

New from Henry Holt: The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the second volume of his epic trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson tells the harrowing story of the campaigns in Sicily and Italy

In An Army at Dawn — winner of the Pulitzer Prize — Rick Atkinson provided a dramatic and authoritative history of the Allied triumph in North Africa. Now, in The Day of Battle, he follows the strengthening American and British armies as they invade Sicily in July 1943 and then, mile by bloody mile, fight their way north toward Rome.

The Italian campaign’s outcome was never certain; in fact, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their military advisers engaged in heated debate about whether an invasion of the so-called soft underbelly of Europe was even a good idea. But once under way, the commitment to liberate Italy from the Nazis never wavered, despite the agonizingly high price. The battles at Salerno, Anzio, and Monte Cassino were particularly difficult and lethal, yet as the months passed, the Allied forces continued to drive the Germans up the Italian peninsula. Led by Lieutenant General Mark Clark, one of the war’s most complex and controversial commanders, American officers and soldiers became increasingly determined and proficient. And with the liberation of Rome in June 1944, ultimate victory at last began to seem inevitable.

Drawing on a wide array of primary source material, written with great drama and flair, this is narrative history of the first rank. With The Day of Battle, Atkinson has once again given us the definitive account of one of history’s most compelling military campaigns.