books The Taking of Jemima Boone
by Matthew Pearl Harper, $27.99 Just weeks after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 13-year-old Jemima Boone and her friends disappear near the Kentucky settlement of Boonesboro, the echoes of their faraway screams lingering on the air. A Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party led by Hanging Maw has taken the girls as the latest salvo in the blood feud between American Indians and the colonial settlers who have decimated native lands and resources. With Daniel Boone in pursuit, Hanging Maw devises a plan that could ultimately bring greater peace both to the tribes and the colonists. Matthew Pearl unearths a forgotten and dramatic series of events from early in the Revolutionary War that opens a window into America’s transition from colony to nation, with the heavy moral costs incurred amid shocking new alliances and betrayals. The Forever Dog: Surprising New Science to Help Your Canine Companion Live Younger, Healthier, and Longer by Rodney Habib and Dr. Karen Shaw Becker Harper Wave; $27.99 Like their human counterparts, dogs have been getting sicker and dying prematurely over the past few decades. Why? Scientists are beginning to understand that the chronic diseases afflicting humans— cancer, obesity, diabetes, organ degeneration, and autoimmune disorders—also beset canines. As a result, our beloved companions are vexed with preventable health problems throughout much of their lives and suffer shorter life spans. Because our pets can’t make health and lifestyle decisions for themselves, it’s up to pet parents to make smart, science-backed choices for lasting vitality and health. The Forever Dog gives us the practical, proven tools to protect our loyal four-legged companions. Nameless Ones by John Connolly Emily Bestler Books/Atria Books, $28 In Amsterdam, four bodies, violently butchered, are discovered in a canal house, 12
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the remains of friends and confidantes of the assassin known only as Louis. The men responsible for the murders are Serbian war criminals. They believe they can escape retribution by retreating to their homeland. They are wrong. For Louis has come to Europe to hunt them down: five killers to be found and punished before they can vanish into thin air. There is just one problem. The sixth. Smithsonian Micro Life: Miracles of the Miniature World Revealed by DK DK, $50 With spectacular macro photography and microscope images, this book reveals a hidden, living world full of intricate structures beyond the naked eye. Included are the tiniest insects and spiders; but looking deeper, you will discover truly microscopic creatures—even bacteria and viruses. Earth is home to more microbes, and more different types of microbes, than any other living organism. Bacteria on Earth outweigh humans by 1,100 to 1; and without them, all world ecosystems would collapse. This book reveals this vital, unseen realm, but it includes large life-forms too, in extreme close-up, so that you can wonder at the beauty of a pollen grain, a butterfly egg, the spore of a fungus, and the nerve cell of a human. Harlem Shuffle Colson Whitehead Doubleday, $28.95 “Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked...” To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it.
Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel by Anthony Doerr Scribner, $30 The heroes of Cloud Cuckoo Land are trying to figure out the world around them: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for an exoplanet, decades from now. They’re all dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of peril. An ancient text provides solace and mystery to these unforgettable characters. Doerr has created a tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness— with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us and those who will be here after we’re gone. The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III by Andrew Roberts Viking, $40 The last king of America, George III, has been ridiculed as a complete disaster who frittered away the colonies and went mad in his old age. The truth is much more nuanced and fascinating—and will completely change the way readers and historians view his reign and legacy. In The Last King of America, Roberts paints a deft and nuanced portrait of the much-maligned monarch and outlines his accomplishments, which have been almost universally forgotten. Two hundred and forty-five years after the end of George III’s American rule, it is time for Americans to look back on their last king with greater understanding: to see him as he was and to come to terms with the last time they were ruled by a monarch. n
