For those of us who may be subtitling our memoirs "Waiting for the Paperback," here's an armful of newly released titles for early-summer reading.
"The Good Son" by You-Jeong Jeong (Penguin Random House, $16). Jeong is a popular writer of psychological thrillers in South Korea; this book, about a young man's desperate search to understand his mother's murder, is her first to be published in English. (The publisher describes it as "The Talented Mr. Ripley" meets "The Bad Seed," which sounds quite catnippy.)
"Manhattan Beach" by Jennifer Egan (Scribner, $17). Winner of the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction last year, Egan's jewel-like novel takes place in World War II-era New York City, and follows a young woman as she becomes the first female diver in the Brooklyn Navy Yard _ and tries to understand the strange disappearance of her father.
"Mother Land" by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15.99). Both travel writer and novelist, Theroux combines both roles for this 2017 novel, narrated by a successful travel writer about his petty tyrant of a mother. Stephen King, reviewing for The New York Times, praised Theroux's "fabulously nasty sense of humor."
"Saints for All Occasions" by J. Courtney Sullivan (Vintage, $16.95). Sullivan's best-selling novel _ shades of Colm Toibin's "Brooklyn" _ is about two Irish sisters who journey to America. Mary Ann Gwinn, in The Seattle Times, wrote that the book "follows the fortunes of this family over five decades with compassion, humor and a deep understanding of Irish-American culture."
"The Vineyard" by Maria Duenas (Washington Square Press, $17). Set in 1860s Mexico, Cuba and Spain, this sweeping, old-fashioned novel is a family saga, beginning with an impoverished gambler's bet that wins him an old house and a vineyard _ an ocean away. Duenas' 2009 debut, "The Time In Between," became a popular television series known as "the Spanish 'Downton Abbey' "; it's out in paperback as well.
"The World of Tomorrow" by Brendan Mathews (Little, Brown, $16.99, available June 19). I got happily lost in this novel _ Mathews' debut, and may it be the first of many _ last fall; my mother, upon whom I pressed my copy, loved it too. Taking place during one week in 1939 during the World's Fair in New York City, it's an intoxicating, interweaving bustle of stories, with three Irish-immigrant brothers (two of them posing as toffs at the Plaza Hotel) at its center.
