WHAT’S NEW?

“The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People” by Rick Bragg (Knopf): In “All Over but the Shoutin’ ” and other memoirs, Bragg has treated readers to a cast of human characters in Calhoun County, Ala. When cancer treatment landed him back there, in his mother’s basement, Bragg found his first canine character, a bedraggled Australian shepherd with few good qualities and plenty of bad ones. Their love story is one for the ages — bring your Kleenex.

“The Wish” by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing): This bestselling author — with more than 100 million books sold — is back with another one that will “tug at readers’ heartstrings,” says the Chicago Sun-times. This one, about “the enduring legacy of first love,” is about Maggie Dawes, who meets fellow teen Bryce Trickett in a village on North Carolina’s Outer Banks in 1996. Fast-forward to 2019 and Dawes is looking back at her past, specifically one particular Christmas decades earlier. You had us at “Christmas.”