"Waiting for the Alchemist"

New from Louisiana State University Press: Waiting for the Alchemist by Mark Perlberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

Direct and compassionate, the poems in Mark Perlberg’s final collection tell us things we need to know—about art, history, nature, love, and life. Wholly without pretension, these poems make us feel that we have discovered the truth. The poet accomplishes this partly by his delicate touch with rhyme and assonance, partly by making himself seem almost an accidental instrument of the poem, someone who just happens to be conveying it. A reader cannot help but respond with affection and gratitude.

The title poem reminds us that the philosopher’s stone is more likely to turn up in our backyard—or in our imagination—than in a laboratory. The poems of the second section address history with restraint and tenderness, while those in section three explore contemporary lives. In the final section, Perlberg writes about his family, his friends, and himself. In a poem titled “In My Next Life,” the poet says—perhaps smiling inwardly—he will then be “amiable, mostly, but large / and formidable,” and adds, with a wink, “I’ll insist you be present / in my next life—and the one after that.” Warm and inclusive, Waiting for the Alchemist is a beautiful collection.

"A Short History of Women"

New from Scribner: A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert.

About the book, from the publisher:

National Book Award finalist Kate Walbert's A Short History of Women is a profoundly moving portrayal of the complicated legacies of mothers and daughters, chronicling five generations of women from the close of the nineteenth century through the early years of the twenty-first.

The novel opens in England in 1914 at the deathbed of Dorothy Townsend, a suffragette who starves herself for the cause. Her choice echoes in the stories of her descendants interwoven throughout: a brilliant daughter who tries to escape the burden of her mother's infamy by immigrating to America just after World War I to begin a career in science; a niece who chooses a conventional path -- marriage, children, suburban domesticity -- only to find herself disillusioned with her husband of fifty years and engaged in heartbreaking and futile antiwar protests; a great-granddaughter who wryly articulates the free-floating anxiety of the times while getting drunk on a children's playdate in post-9/11 Manhattan. In a kaleidoscope of voices and with a richness of imagery, emotion, and wit, Walbert portrays the ways in which successive generations of women have responded to what the Victorians called "The Woman Question."

As she did in her critically acclaimed The Gardens of Kyoto and Our Kind, Walbert induces "a state in which the past seems to hang effortlessly amid the present" (The New York Times). A Short History of Women is her most ambitious novel, a thought-provoking and vividly original narrative that crisscrosses a century to reflect the tides of time and the ways in which the lives of our great-grandmothers resonate in our own.

Visit Kate Walbert's website.

"Everyone She Loved"

New from Atria Books: Everyone She Loved by Sheila Curran.

About the book, from the publisher:

A wise and triumphant novel about four women who've come of age together only to discover that -- when it comes to the essentials -- life's little instruction book will always need revising.

Penelope Cameron, loving mother, devoted wife and generous philanthropist, has convinced her husband and four closest friends to sign an outlandish pact. If Penelope should die before her two daughters are eighteen, her husband will not remarry without the permission of Penelope's sister and three college roommates. For years, this contract gathers dust until the unthinkable happens. Suddenly, everyone she loved must find their way in a world without Penelope.

For Lucy Vargas, Penelope's best friend, and a second mother to her daughters, nothing seems more natural than to welcome them into a home that had once belonged to their family, a lovely, sprawling bed-and-breakfast on the beach. This bequest was only one of the many ways in which Penelope had supported Lucy's career as a painter, declaring her talent too important to squander. But now, in the wake of a disaster that only lovable, worrisome Penelope could have predicted, Lucy has put her work on hold as she and Penelope's husband, Joey, blindly grasp at anything that will keep the girls from sinking under the weight of their grief.

With the help of family and friends, the children slowly build new lives. But just when things start to come together, the fragile serenity they have gained is suddenly threatened from within, and the unbreakable bonds they share seem likely to dissolve after all.

In this entertaining and uplifting novel, Sheila Curran explores the faith one woman placed in her dearest friends, the care she took to protect her family and the many ways in which romantic entanglements will confound and confuse even the most determined of planners. A story about growing up and moving on, about the sacrifices people make for one another and the timeless legacy of love, Everyone She Loved is, above all, about the abiding strength of friendship.

"Real Life & Liars"

New from Avon Books: Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sometimes you find happiness where, and when, you least expect it.

For Mirabelle Zielinski's children, happiness always seems to be just out of reach. Her polished oldest daughter, Katya, clings to a stale marriage with a workaholic husband and three spoiled children. Her son, Ivan, so creative, is a down-in-the-dumps songwriter with the worst taste in women. And the "baby," impulsive Irina, who lives life on a whim, is now reluctantly pregnant and hitched to a man who is twice her age. On the weekend of their parents' anniversary party, lies will be revealed, hearts will be broken...but love will also be found. And the biggest shock may come from Mirabelle herself, because she has a secret that will change everything.

Visit Kristina Riggle's website.

Writers Read: Kristina Riggle.

"Stepmonster"

New from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: Stepmonster: The Surprising Truth About Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do by Wednesday Martin.

About the book, from the publisher:

A groundbreaking and truly stepmother-centered way of understanding the tensions that seem to define relations between women and their stepchildren

Half of all women in the United States will live with or marry a man with children. And what woman with stepchildren has not—in order to defuse the often overwhelming challenges of the role—referred to herself as a "stepmonster"?

As Hope Edelman does in her book for motherless daughters, Wednesday Martin’s empowering and original Stepmonster unlocks the emotional mysteries of why stepmothers think and feel and act the way they do. Martin draws upon her own experience as a stepmother, interviews with other stepmothers and stepchildren, and fascinating insights from literature, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology to reveal the little-understood realities of this most demanding role.

Stepmonster illuminates the harrowing process of becoming a stepmother, considers the myths and realities of being married to a man with children, counteracts the cultural notion that stepmothers are solely responsible for the challenges they encounter, identifies the "Five Step-Dilemmas That Create Conflict," and considers the emotional and social challenges men with children face when they remarry.

Finally, in an unexpected twist, Martin shows why the myth of the Wicked Stepmother is our single best tool for understanding who real stepmothers are and how they feel.

Visit Wednesday Martin's website.

"Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal"

New from Hyperion Books: Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Julie Metz’s life changes forever on one ordinary January afternoon when her husband, Henry, collapses on the kitchen floor and dies in her arms. Suddenly, this mother of a six-year-old is the young widow in a bucolic small town. And this is only the beginning. Seven months after Henry’s death, just when Julie thinks she is emerging from the worst of it, comes the rest of it: She discovers that what had appeared to be the reality of her marriage was but a half-truth. Henry had hidden another life from her.

“He loved you so much.” That’s what everyone keeps telling her. It’s true that he loved Julie and their six-year-old daughter ebulliently and devotedly, but as she starts to pick up the pieces and rebuild her life without Henry in it, she learns that Henry had been unfaithful throughout their twelve years of marriage. The most damaging affair was ongoing—a tumultuous relationship that ended only with Henry’s death. For Julie, the only thing to do was to get at the real truth—to strip away the veneer of “perfection” that was her life and confront each of the women beneath the veneer.

Perfection is the story of Julie Metz’s journey through chaos and transformation as she creates a different life for herself and her young daughter. It is the story of coming to terms with painful truths, of rebuilding both a life and an identity after betrayal and widowhood. It is a story of rebirth and happiness—if not perfection.

Visit Julie Metz's website.

"Valeria's Last Stand"

New from Bloomsbury USA: Valeria's Last Stand by Marc Fitten.

About the book, from the publisher:

A comic romp celebrating late-flowering love in a Hungarian village that will appeal to readers of Absurdistan, The History of Love, and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.

When it comes to the sizes of fishes and ponds, Valeria is a whale in a thimble. She harrumphs her daily way through her backwater Hungarian village, finding equal fault with the new, the old, the foreign and the familiar. Her decades of universal contempt have turned her into a touchstone of her little community - whatever she scorns the least must be the best, after all. But, on a day like any other, her spinster's heart is struck by an unlikely arrow: the village potter, long-known and little-noticed, captures her fancy, and Valeria finds herself suddenly cast in a new role she never expected to play. This one deviation from character, this one loose thread, is all it takes for the delicately woven fabric of village life to unravel. And, for the first time in a long time, Valeria couldn't care less.

Valeria's Last Stand is a joyfully wise small-town satire that takes an hilariously honest look at later-in-life romance and the notion that it's never too late to start anew.

"Masters of Sex"

New from Basic Books: Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love by Thomas Maier.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Masters of Sex, critically acclaimed biographer Thomas Maier offers an unprecedented look at William Masters and Virginia Johnson, their pioneering studies of intimacy, and the sexual revolution they inspired. Masters and Johnson began their secret studies in a small Midwest laboratory, and soon became the nation’s top experts on sex. Over the course of more than forty years, they analyzed and explained the secrets of orgasm, emotional fulfillment, and sexual dysfunction. But they divorced after twenty years amid a clash of success, betrayal, and jealousies. Weaving interviews with the notoriously private William Masters and the ambitious Virginia Johnson, Maier offers a titillating portrait of the legendary couple. Entertaining, revealing, and beautifully told, this groundbreaking book sheds light on the eternal mysteries of desire and intimacy, and their complicated roles in the American psyche.

Visit Thomas Maier's website.

"The Case of the Missing Servant"

New from Simon & Schuster: The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall.

About the book, from the publisher:

Meet Vish Puri, India's most private investigator. Portly, persistent, and unmistakably Punjabi, he cuts a determined swath through modern India's swindlers, cheats, and murderers.

In hot and dusty Delhi, where call centers and malls are changing the ancient fabric of Indian life, Puri's main work comes from screening prospective marriage partners, a job once the preserve of aunties and family priests.

But when an honest public litigator is accused of murdering his maidservant, it takes all of Puri's resources to investigate. How will he trace the fate of the girl, known only as Mary, in a population of more than one billion? Who is taking potshots at him and his prize chili plants? And why is his widowed "Mummy-ji" attempting to play sleuth when everyone knows mummies are not detectives?

With his team of undercover operatives -- Tubelight, Flush, and Facecream -- Puri ingeniously combines modern techniques with principles of detection established in India more than two thousand years ago -- long before "that Johnny-come-lately" Sherlock Holmes donned his deerstalker.

The search for Mary takes him to the desert oasis of Jaipur and the remote mines of Jharkhand. From Puri's well-heeled Gymkhana Club to the slums where the servant classes live, his adventures reveal modern India in all its seething complexity.

Visit Tarquin Hall's website.

"The Tehran Conviction"

New from William Morrow: The Tehran Conviction by Tom Gabbay.

About the book, from the publisher:

Tom Gabbay plots his most riveting tale yet: Agent Jack Teller had to make an ugly choice in his youth ... and now, decades later, he and the United States must deal with the blowback.

Tehran 1953. Jack Teller, a new recruit to the recently established Central Intelligence Agency, finds himself in Iran posing as a high-level American oil executive as part of Operation Ajax, the agency's first attempt to overthrow the government of a sovereign nation. Torn between loyalty to his country's policies and sympathy for the hopes of a fledgling democracy, Jack must ultimately pick which side he will betray. It is a decision that will affect the future of the Middle East and, eventually, the world.

Twenty-six years later, in 1979, Jack returns to a very different Iran. The country is in the grip of a religious revolution, and the streets of the capital city are filled with daily rantings against The Great Satan. Jack's attempt to save one man from Islamic justice—a man whom he had, at one time, called a friend—leads him into the heart of an emerging struggle between the West and a new and dangerous ideology.

Divided by conflicting loyalties, a young Jack Teller made a fateful choice that would reverberate for decades. In The Tehran Conviction, Tom Gabbay masterfully interweaves politics and suspense in a searing tale of espionage and betrayal that reveals the unexpected costs our decisions hold for us—and for history.

Visit Tom Gabbay's website.

The Page 69 Test: Tom Gabbay's The Lisbon Crossing.