Book News Wednesday

Some book news for Wednesday:

For 55 years, To Kill a Mockingbird has been Harper Lee's only published novel. Now a sequel of sorts, Go Set a Watchman, will be published on July 14, 2015, by Harper/HarperCollins. Lee wrote it in the mid-1950s before TKAM, but it's set 20 years later, when the adult Scout returns to Maycomb, Alabama, to visit her father, Atticus Finch. The announcement of the manuscript's discovery and pending publication (Harper's senior vice president states it will not be altered from the original manuscript) comes months after the death of Lee's sister/lawyer and makes me somewhat uneasy as well as excited (see the New York Times article here).

A reminder about some books out this month:

Sara Blaedel, The Forgotten Girls (translated from the Danish by Signe Rød Golly; Grand Central, February 3): An unidentified corpse is found in a Copenhagen forest, and Louise Rick, the new commander of the Missing Persons Department, and her journalist friend, Camilla Lind, investigate.

Tom Cooper, The Marauders (Crown, February 3): After the BP oil spill, residents of Jeannette, Louisiana, pull out all stops on schemes to make money.

Peter Swanson, The Kind Worth Killing (William Morrow, February 3): This is a re-imagining of Patricia Highsmith's classic, Strangers on a Train.

Michael Kardos, Before He Finds Her (Mysterious Press, February 3): Fifteen years ago, Ramsey Miller murdered his wife and three-year-old daughter, Meg, before he disappeared; however, Meg (now Melanie) actually survived and plans a return to New Jersey.

M. O. Walsh, My Sunshine Away (Amy Einhorn, February 17): An unsolved crime in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, alters the victim, the suspects, and their neighborhood.

James Grady, Last Days of the Condor (Forge, February 17): Set in Washington, D.C., it's the third book in the Condor spy series.

Laura Lippman, Hush Hush: A Tess Monaghan Novel (William Morrow, February 24): Melisandre Harris Dawes returns to Baltimore years after being found not guilty by reason of insanity for the death of her 2-month-old daughter in a hot, locked car.

Ariana Franklin and Samantha Norman, Siege Winter (William Morrow, February 24): In 12th-century England, a couple of travelers give archery exhibitions against the backdrop of a civil war between Queen Matilda and King Stephen.

Jussi Adler-Olsen, The Alphabet House (translated from the Danish by Steve Schein; Dutton, February 24): The author's first stand-alone novel, a psychological thriller, is set during World War II and features two British pilots who are shot down behind enemy lines.

Edvard Munch's portrait of Kessler (1906)

And a recommendation for those who like reading other people's diaries. You'll find these diaries more elegantly written and of more historical interest than your older sister's journal when you were in middle school, I promise:

Harry Kessler, Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918 (translated from the German and edited by Laird M. Easton; Knopf, 2011) and Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918-1937) (translated and edited by Charles Kessler; Grove, 2000): Harry Graf Kessler was a writer and diplomat who lived in Berlin; traveled extensively; and met many world leaders, philosophers, writers, and artists. The observations and evolving thinking in the 1500 pages of his diaries make fascinating reading.