July books

Notable New Releases

compiled by Sally Brewster

The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt

Bob Comet, a retired librarian, is passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Ore. One morning on his daily walk, he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob — and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past — the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet’s straight-man façade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses.

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Whitehead brings back furniture salesman Ray Carney in this equally ambitious follow-up to Harlem Shuffle, moving the action to the grimy 1970s in a triptych of stories. In the first, Carney seeks red-hot Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter but soon realizes that the path to Madison Square Garden runs through a corrupt cop. In the second, Carney’s associate Pepper works security on a blaxploitation film whose star has gone missing, a darkly amusing story that allows Whitehead to comment on the commodification of Black art. In the final section, set during the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, Ray and Pepper look for the arsonist who lit up an apartment, introducing a political angle to the novel. As in the first installment of this planned trilogy, Carney lives in a world where everyone is a potential mark and playing it straight is a sucker’s game. The real star is Harlem, with troubles that seem more buried than during the tumultuous 1960s but are always a moment’s notice from boiling over.

Somebody’s Fool by Richard Russo

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls returns to North Bath in upstate New York and to the characters that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers in his beloved best sellers Nobody’s Fool and Everybody’s Fool.

Ten years after the death of the magnetic Donald “Sully” Sullivan, the town is going through a major transition as it is annexed by its much wealthier neighbor, Schuyler Springs. Peter, Sully’s son, is still grappling with his father’s tremendous legacy as well as his relationship with his own son, Thomas, wondering if he has been all that different a father than Sully was to him. Meanwhile, the towns’ newly consolidated police department falls into the hands of Charice Bond, after Doug Raymer, the former North Bath police chief and Charice’s ex-lover, resigns. When a decomposing body turns up in the abandoned hotel between the two towns, Charice and Doug are drawn together again and forced to address their complicated attraction to one another. Amid the turmoil, the town’s residents speculate on the identity of the unidentified body and wonder who among their number could have disappeared unnoticed. Infused with all the wry humor and shrewd observations that Russo is known for, Somebody’s Fool is another classic from a modern master.

Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning by Sarah Weinman

True crime, as an entertainment genre, has always prioritized clear narrative arcs: victims wronged, police detectives in pursuit, suspects apprehended, justice delivered. But what stories have been ignored? In Evidence of Things Seen, 14 of the most innovative crime writers working today cast a light on the cases that give crucial insight into our society. Wesley Lowery writes about a lynching left unsolved for decades by an indifferent police force and a family’s quest for answers. Justine van der Leun reports on the thousands of women in prison for defending themselves from abuse. May Jeong reveals how the Atlanta spa shootings tell a story of America. Edited by acclaimed writer Sarah Weinman, with an introduction by attorney and host of the Undisclosed podcast Rabia Chaudry, this anthology pulls back the curtain on how crime itself is a by-product of America’s systemic harms and inequalities. And in doing so, it reveals how the genre of true crime can be a catalyst for social change. SP

Sally Brewster is the proprietor of Park Road Books. 4139 Park Rd., parkroadbooks.com.