Feel like getting away? Go ahead and dive into Arthur Conan Doyle’s London, explore the world of women in early Mormonism or journey across the Rocky Mountains to get a sense of how America’s geography has shaped its role in the world. Not far enough afield? A debut novel toggles between Russia and the U.S. across three generations, a South African novelist remembers her sister’s life (and death) in Johannesburg and a collection of poetic short stories is largely set in Louisiana.
Pamela Paul
Editor of The New York Times Book Review
Editor of The New York Times Book Review
ARTHUR AND SHERLOCK: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, by Michael Sims. (Bloomsbury, $27.) How did an obscure 26-year-old doctor achieve the most enduring literary accomplishment of his generation in just six weeks? Sims, who recently wrote a beguiling book about the origins of “Charlotte’s Web,” proves an ingenious investigator in this magnificent work of scholarship.
A HOUSE FULL OF FEMALES: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. (Knopf, $35.) Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the descendant of generations of Mormons, consults diaries and letters to uncover how women experienced the contentious new practice of polygamy, embraced by the church in the 1840s.
EARNING THE ROCKIES: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World, by Robert D. Kaplan. (Random House, $27.) Describing a cross-country journey, Kaplan, a distinguished writer on foreign affairs (my favorites: “Balkan Ghosts,” “The Ends of the Earth”) argues that geography and union made the United States a world power. But he observes that globalization diminishes America’s geographic advantages and erodes its unity. Yes, there are implications for our contemporary political situation.
THE CROSSING, by Andrew Miller. (Europa, paper, $18.) Andrew Miller is better known in England than he is here; this book may change that. A closed-off, mysterious woman leaves her husband and child and sails across the Atlantic alone in this elegantly written novel.
ONCE WE WERE SISTERS:A Memoir, by Sheila Kohler. (Penguin, paper, $16.) A South African novelist writes with “eternal regret” about her sister, who was abused and possibly killed by her husband, in this moving memoir of sisterhood, love and sorrow.
SIGNALS, by Tim Gautreaux. (Knopf, $26.95.) The 21 stories in this collection, many of them set in Louisiana, begin as realistic fiction but march inevitably into poetry. They reflect the influence of Gautreaux’s teacher, James Dickey, as well as Flannery O’Connor.
