"The Lost Tomb"

New from Dell: The Lost Tomb by David Gibbins.

About the book, from the publisher:

For centuries, people have speculated about the fabled lost libraries of antiquity. If one were found, what marvels would it contain? Now a fearless team of adventurers is about to unearth that long-hidden secret, and it will lead them to the most astonishing discovery ever made.

In the treacherous waters off the rugged Sicilian coast, marine archaeologist Jack Howard and his team of scientific experts and ex-Special Forces commandos make a shocking find while searching for the legendary shipwreck of the apostle Paul. And when a second artifact is uncovered in the ruins of a buried city, Jack is on the verge of a discovery that could shake the world to its foundations: the handwritten words of Jesus Christ himself.

As he follows a hunch from the dying confession of an emperor to the burial crypt of a medieval pagan queen, Jack is chasing a conspiracy whose web stretches to the highest levels of international power–and he will have to risk everything to stop the controversial document from falling into the hands of a shadowy brotherhood determined to fulfill their murderous vows.

Visit David Gibbins' website.

"November 22, 1963"

New from Tin House Books: November 22, 1963 by Adam Braver.

About the book, from the publisher:

November 22, 1963 chronicles the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination and explores the intersection of stories and memories and how they represent and mythologize that defining moment in history.

Jackie's story is interwoven with the stories of real people intimately connected with that day: a man who shares cigarettes with Jackie outside the trauma room; a motorcycle policeman flanking the motorcade; Abe Zapruder, who caught the assassination on film; the White House servants waiting for Jackie to return; and the morticians overseeing President Kennedy’s autopsy.

Visit Adam Braver's website.

"Midnight's Daughter"

New from Onyx Books: Midnight's Daughter by Karen Chance.

About the book, from the publisher:

Dorina Basarab is a dhampir—half-human, half-vampire. Unlike most dhampirs, though, Dory has managed to maintain her sanity. Now Dory’s vampire father has come to her for help— again. Her Uncle Dracula (yes, the Dracula), cruelest among vampires, has escaped his prison. And her father wants Dory to work with gorgeous master vampire Louis-Cesare to put him back there.

Although Dory prefers to work alone, Dracula is the only thing that truly scares her—and when she has to face him, she’ll take all the help she can get…

Read an excerpt from Midnight's Daughter.

Visit Karen Chance's website.

"Caravaggio's Angel"

New from Soho Constable: Caravaggio's Angel by Ruth Brandon.

From Marilyn Stasio's review in the New York Times.

A painterly eye for a scholarly subject confers considerable charm on Ruth Brandon’s CARAVAGGIO’S ANGEL (Soho Constable, $25), in which an ambitious art curator, Reggie Lee, tries to make a good impression in her new job at London’s National Gallery by mounting a small Caravaggio exhibition. Reggie is a bit of a romantic goose when it comes to men; even her appreciation of the painter’s 17th-century altarpiece of a saint and an angelhas carnal undertones. (“Whichever way that Angel swung he was a sexy creature.”) But once she starts making trips to France to secure the Louvre’s copy of the painting and finds yet another version in the country home of an old woman who frolicked with the Surrealists in her youth, the contrivances of the plot yield to the appeal of the setting. This part of France was the beating heart of the Resistance, and Brandon catches past and present in one frame, juxtaposing the picturesque beauty of the countryside with vestigial war memories and glimpses of the dark political clouds just beyond the horizon.

Visit Ruth Brandon's website.

"Sinatra in Hollywood"

New from Thomas Dunne Books: Sinatra in Hollywood by Tom Santopietro.

About the book:

Sinatra in Hollywood details the brilliant, fascinating, and occasionally inexplicable film career that earned Frank Sinatra standing as one of the last legends from Hollywood's golden age, and grants Sinatra status as an actor equal to his fabled career as vocalist and recording artist. Laced throughout with Sinatra's own observations on his film work, the book deals head-on with the tumultuous marriages to Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow and directly addresses the rumors of Mob involvement in Sinatra's career. The complete arc of Sinatra's astonishing 60 year run as an actor is traced, from his rise in musicals like Anchors Aweigh and On the Town, through his fall from grace with legendary flops like The Kissing Bandit, to the near-mythic comeback with his Oscar winning performance in From Here to Eternity. In the process, Sinatra in Hollywood comes to examine just how Sinatra's iconic screen image did nothing less than embody America at the height of its standing in the second half of the twentieth century—the "American Century."

Visit Tom Santopietro's website.

"Blackbird, Farewell"

New from Frog Books: Blackbird, Farewell by Robert Greer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Shandell “Blackbird” Bird has everything going for him, or so he thinks. Recently selected number two overall in the NBA draft, the 6'8", 250-pound superstar has a gleaming new ride and a salary and athletic shoe contract that make him an instant millionaire. What he doesn’t have is the ability to bury secrets from his past. When Shandell is found shot to death at mid-court, his best friend and college teammate Damion Madrid sets out to find the killer. Damion is well meaning but naïve; luckily his godfather is gumshoe CJ Floyd. Floyd and his partner, Flora Jean Benson, are there to watch his back as Damion stumbles down a shadowy trail that leads to Shandell’s purported peddling of steroids and big-game point shaving. When he discovers a “Blackbird” he never knew and is able to put a face on Shandell’s killer, Damion finds himself in over his head. Will CJ be there in time to prevent his godson from joining Shandell? Featuring the vivid characters and streetwise dialogue that have made the CJ Floyd series a critical and commercial success, Blackbird, Farewell is a punch-packing whodunit that exposes the dark side of the pro-athlete good life.

Visit Robert Greer's website.

"Descartes' Bones"

New from Doubleday: Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto.

About the book, from the publisher:

On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, the Frenchman René Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely death far from home. Sixteen years later, the French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France.

Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who was hounded from country to country on charges of atheism? Why would Descartes' bones take such a strange, serpentine path over the next 350 years—a path intersecting some of the grandest events imaginable: the birth of science, the rise of democracy, the mind-body problem, the conflict between faith and reason? Their story involves people from all walks of life—Louis XIV, a Swedish casino operator, poets and playwrights, philosophers and physicists, as these people used the bones in scientific studies, stole them, sold them, revered them as relics, fought over them, passed them surreptitiously from hand to hand.

The answer lies in Descartes’ famous phrase: Cogito ergo sum—"I think, therefore I am." In his deceptively simple seventy-eight-page essay, Discourse on the Method, this small, vain, vindictive, peripatetic, ambitious Frenchman destroyed 2,000 years of received wisdom and laid the foundations of the modern world. At the root of Descartes’ “method” was skepticism: "What can I know for certain?" Like-minded thinkers around Europe passionately embraced the book--the method was applied to medicine, nature, politics, and society. The notion that one could find truth in facts that could be proved, and not in reliance on tradition and the Church's teachings, would become a turning point in human history.

In an age of faith, what Descartes was proposing seemed like heresy. Yet Descartes himself was a good Catholic, who was spurred to write his incendiary book for the most personal of reasons: He had devoted himself to medicine and the study of nature, but when his beloved daughter died at the age of five, he took his ideas deeper. To understand the natural world one needed to question everything. Thus the scientific method was created and religion overthrown. If the natural world could be understood, knowledge could be advanced, and others might not suffer as his child did.

The great controversy Descartes ignited continues to our era: where Islamic terrorists spurn the modern world and pine for a culture based on unquestioning faith; where scientists write bestsellers that passionately make the case for atheism; where others struggle to find a balance between faith and reason.

Descartes’ Bones is a historical detective story about the creation of the modern mind, with twists and turns leading up to the present day—to the science museum in Paris where the philosopher’s skull now resides and to the church a few kilometers away where, not long ago, a philosopher-priest said a mass for his bones.

Visit Russell Shorto's website.

"Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio"

New from Harcourt: Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio by Anthony Rudel.

About Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio:

Long before the internet, another young technology was transformed--with help from a colorful collection of eccentrics and visionaries--into a mass medium with the power to connect millions of people.

When amateur enthusiasts began sending fuzzy signals from their garages and rooftops, radio broadcasting was born. Sensing the medium's potential, snake-oil salesmen and preachers took to the air, at once setting early standards for radio programming and making bedlam of the airwaves. Into the chaos stepped a young secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, whose passion for organization guided the technology's growth. When a charismatic bandleader named Rudy Vallee created the first on-air variety show and America elected its first true radio president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, radio had arrived.

With clarity, humor, and an eye for outsized characters forgotten by polite history, Anthony Rudel tells the story of the boisterous years when radio took its place in the nation's living room and forever changed American politics, journalism, and entertainment.

Visit Anthony Rudel's website and blog.

Read about Rudel's list of the five best books on the golden age of radio.

"The Good Thief's Guide to Paris"

New from St. Martin's Minotaur: The Good Thief's Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan.

About the book, from the publisher:

The moment I’d scanned the outside of the building, I turned to Bruno and said, “First impressions, it looks straightforward.” Looking back, I can’t help but wonder what I was thinking. I mean, put that line at the opening of a crime novel and it’s practically a guarantee that everything is about to get complicated.

Charlie Howard—globe-trotting mystery writer, professional thief, and poor decision maker—is in Paris. Flush with the success of his latest book reading, not to mention a few too many glasses of wine, Charlie agrees to show a complete novice how to break into an apartment in the Marais. Fast-forward twenty-four hours and Charlie’s hired to steal an ordinary-looking oil painting—from the exact same address.

Mere coincidence? Charlie figures there’s no harm in finding out—until a dead body turns up in his living room and he finds himself evading the law while becoming caught up in a quite outrageous heist. And that’s before Charlie’s literary agent, Victoria (who’s naive enough to assume that he looks like his author photo), finally decides they should meet face-to-face.

Nobody ever said a life of suspense was easy, but Charlie, the most disarmingly charming burglar since Cary Grant, soon finds things are getting way out of control.

Visit Chris Ewan's website and blog.

"Fools' Experiments"

New from Tor Books: Edward M. Lerner's Fools' Experiments.

About the book, from the publisher:

We are not alone, and it’s our own damn fault ...

Something demonic is stalking the brightest men and women in the computer industry. It attacks without warning or mercy, leaving its prey insane, comatose--or dead.

Something far nastier than any virus, worm, or Trojan horse program is being evolved in laboratory confinement by well-intentioned but misguided researchers. When their artificial life-form escapes onto the Internet, no conventional defense against malicious software can begin to compete. As disasters multiply, computer scientist Doug Carey knows that unconventional measures may be civilization’s last hope.

And that any artificial life-form learns very fast ….

Visit Edward M. Lerner's webpage.