Fever
by Mary Beth Keane (Scribner, $26)
The immigrant cook who became known as Typhoid Mary emerges in Mary Beth Keane’s new novel as “a woman of fierce intelligence and wrongheaded conviction,” said Kate Tuttle in The Boston Globe. Keane’s Mary Mallon resents her fate when she’s pulled from the kitchens of New York City’s Gilded Age elite and imprisoned to help arrest an epidemic. Though her story is unique, this “wholly absorbing” fictionalized account makes her blind spots “feel utterly familiar.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The Aviator’s Wife
by Melanie Benjamin (Delacorte, $26)
In their day, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh captivated the nation, said Robin Vidimos in The Denver Post. Their diaries provide “the factual skeleton” Melanie Benjamin has used for an account more concerned with emotional truths than straight history. The book does a “remarkable” job of illuminating Anne’s contradictions: Though an accomplished, well-educated pilot herself, she seemed the weaker half of the couple for decades—until she proved the more resilient.
Above All Things
by Tanis Rideout (Putnam, $27)
Tanis Rideout’s novel takes readers on a “physically and emotionally brutal journey,” said Cindy Wolfe Boynton in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The first-time author imagines the life of mountaineer George Mallory, who died, along with a climbing partner, during a 1924 attempt to scale Mount Everest. Rideout not only creates “a vivid picture” of the mountain’s harsh conditions. She also explores how Mallory’s fanatical drive may have damaged his relationships with his wife and family.
Farewell, Dorothy Parker
by Ellen Meister (Putnam, $27)
A shy movie critic finds an unusual muse in Ellen Meister’s “imperfect but enjoyable” fifth novel, said Hannah Sampson in The Miami Herald. In a Midnight in Paris–like conceit, Violet Epps, whose sharp tongue on paper belies a weak will, receives a visit from the acerbic yet eventually helpful spirit of Dorothy Parker. “As the story moves forward, the pleasure lies less in the unfolding plot” than in the evolving relationship and repartee between Violet and the rapier-witted ghost of Parker.
-
5 thin-skinned cartoons about shooting the messengerCartoons Artists take on unfavorable weather, a look in the mirror, and more
-
Is Trump's new peacemaking model working in DR Congo?Talking Point Truce brokered by the US president in June is holding, but foundations of a long-term peace have let to be laid
-
A tour of southern GreenlandThe Week Recommends New international airport has given this 'bucolic' island a welcome boost
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”