| HILLBILLY ELEGY: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J.D. Vance. (Harper, $16.99.) Vance uses the lens of his childhood to analyze the despair and stagnation of his white working-class America. He doesn't hesitate to blame Appalachian culture, which he says "increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it," but offers a compassionate primer on the struggles of the white underclass. COMPASS, by Mathias Énard. Translated by Charlotte Mandeli. (New Directions, $18.95.) The narrator, a Viennese musicologist dying of an unknown illness, spends a sleepless night dreaming of his travels to the Levant; the careers and work of other scholars of the East he has known; and his great love. The novel won the Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize, in 2015. MERCIES IN DISGUISE: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them, by Gina Kolata. (St. Martin's, $16.99.) Kolata, a science reporter for The Times, follows members of the Baxley family, who were blindsided after learning their father had a rare neurodegenerative disorder. As they grapple with their own risk, the story poses a wrenching question: Would you want to know if you carried a fatal genetic mutation? SWIMMER AMONG THE STARS: Stories, by Kanishk Tharoor. (Picador, $16.) In tales that leap across time and space, Tharoor considers the tensions of cultural preservation and loss, and the burdens of power. A princess's gesture has profound consequences for an elephant; diplomats orbiting Earth must choose a new headquarters for the United Nations. And in the title story, ethnographers pay a visit to the last speaker of a language, who tries to invent words for modern terms: astronaut, tractor, prime minister. JANE AUSTEN: The Secret Radical, by Helena Kelly. (Vintage, $17.) In the 200 years since her death, Austen has remained categorically misunderstood, and deserves to be read with an eye to Britain's politics of the time, Kelly argues. She is particularly convincing on the Austen family's designs to neutralize Jane's image over the decades; as our reviewer, John Sutherland, put it, "Colin Firth's wet shirt is hung out to dry." GIRL IN SNOW, by Danya Kukafka. (Simon & Schuster, $16.) After the murder of a beautiful teenager, Lucinda Hayes, three misfit characters offer clues to the crime: the outcast who loved - and stalked - Lucinda; a classmate who couldn't stand her; and even the police officer investigating the case, with a personal connection to a leading suspect. This thrilling debut novel has strains of "Twin Peaks." |
