Books by Hersh, Morton among picks
Some recently released paperbacks to add to your reading list.
› “Reporter: A Memoir” by Seymour M. Hersh (Knopf, $18). “Just as there are few books about the inner workings of sausage factories, good books about the making of journalism are few and far between, and Hersh’s memoir is a welcome addition,” wrote The Washington Post in a review of Hersh’s book.
› “The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai (Penguin, $16). This elegant, gripping novel is set in alternating chapters in 1985 Chicago and 2015 Paris. Makkai takes us back to a time many would like to forget: the early years of the AIDS epidemic and a group of young men facing the ravages — and the hellish randomness — of the disease, never knowing who next would be taken.
› “Ohio” by Stephen Markley (Simon & Schuster, $17). Set in a fictional Ohio town and starting off with the funeral of a former football hero killed in Iraq, Markley’s first novel follows 10 members of the town’s high-school class of 2003. A New York Times review noted: “The real core of this earnestly ambitious debut lies not in its sweeping statements but in its smaller moments, in its respectful and bighearted renderings of damaged and thwarted lives.”
› “The Clockmaker’s Daughter” by Kate Morton (Simon & Schuster, $17). The sixth novel by the Australian novelist is told in multiple voices across many years, beginning with a little girl trained as a thief in Victorian London. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it an “outstanding, bittersweet” novel.
› “Lake Success” by Gary Shteyngart (Random House, $18). The author of “Absurdistan” and “Super Sad True Love Story” kicks off with a hero on the run: a drunk, bleeding billionaire at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, fleeing his life in search of the real America.
› “The Summer Wives” by Beatriz Williams (HarperCollins, $17). Spanning the 1930s through the ’60s, it involves a murder, a patrician Long Island Sound community and a vengeance-minded actress. A starred Kirkus Review described it as “satisfyingly tempestuous — and eminently beachworthy.”