AARP Preview: 27 of Winter’s Best New Books

Vigil by George Saunders (Jan. 27)

The Booker Prize winner (for 2017’s Lincoln in the Bardo) writes a fanciful, comic morality tale about an oil company CEO, K.J. Boone, who’s on his deathbed when he’s visited by a bumbling ghost named Jill Blaine. Her job is to ferry him to the afterlife, although first she needs to help him reckon with his regrettable deeds, environmental destruction among them. As she “entered the orb of his thoughts” to discover how she might comfort him before he leaves the mortal realm, she discovers a problem: Boone has no regrets. What’s an immortal ferrywoman with a conscience to do?

Brawler by Lauren Groff (Feb. 24)

We’ve loved Groff since her brilliant 2016 novel, Fates and Furies, but she’s also a particularly masterful short-story writer (check out 2018’s Florida). This collection of nine tales showcases the author’s skill in portraying slices of life with color, depth and meaning. Particularly good: “Between the Shadow and the Soul,” about a long-married couple’s evolution, and “Birdie,” in which four high school friends come together decades later to support one on her deathbed, and their complicated history resurfaces.

Also of note:

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes (Jan. 20): The esteemed English writer (a Booker Prize winner for 2011’s The Sense of an Ending) offers a heavily autobiographical tale featuring a British writer named Julian ruminating on his 80th birthday, illness and mortality.

When We Were Brilliant by Lynn Cullen (Jan. 20): Cullen fictionalizes the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and photographer Eve Arnold, “captur[ing] the halcyon days of an icon and the grit of women determining their own futures,” as her publisher puts it.

The Seven Daughters of Dupree by Nikesha Elise Williams (Jan. 27): This sweeping tale follows seven generations of Black women and the ripple effects of their actions, from 1917 onward, in a family that doesn’t produce sons. 

Kin by Tayari Jones (Feb. 24): The author of An American Marriage, a bestseller that made the long list for the National Book Award, tells the story of two young Black women who are best friends in rural Louisiana during segregation, and whose lives take very different turns. Years later, a tragedy reunites them.

Thrillers/mysteries/crime

The Invisible Woman by James Patterson and Susan DiLallo (Jan. 5)

Elinor, an FBI agent whose career is in decline, views herself as an “invisible woman.” As she puts it: “No, not the kind who can walk through walls, or make a deck of cards look like it’s shuffling itself. The other kind, facing uncertainty in middle age.” Her boss uses her unobtrusiveness to the agency’s advantage, sending her undercover as a live-in nanny for a wealthy family to investigate their ties to organized crime. Her job becomes increasingly complicated as she develops affection for the children in her care, and the danger of her situation intensifies. 

The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave (Jan. 6)

Oh boy, this one will be big: Dave’s 2021 novel, The Last Thing He Told Me, was a blockbuster hit, adapted into an Apple+ TV series (the second season starts Feb. 20). The sequel is set five years later, with Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, trying to move on after her husband Owen’s disappearance. Well, guess what. He’s back, and their lives are, again, in danger.

The Final Score by Don Winslow (Jan. 27)

Although Winslow, 72, declared he was retiring from writing a few years ago, his fans are likely pleased to learn he’s back — and with major kudos for his new collection. No less than Stephen King dubbed it “the best crime fiction I’ve read in 20 years” in a tweet. The Final Score includes six new short novels, most of which fall within the crime-thriller genre that the author has mastered. One, “Collision,” has already been bought for adaptation, with Jake Gyllenhaal set to star and produce. Winslow, who’s won a long list of awards for his fiction, is probably best known for his Cartel trilogy, which kicked off with 2005’s The Power of the Dog. 

I’m Not the Only Murderer in My Retirement Home by Fergus Craig (Feb. 17)

We’ve seen quite a few murderous retirees in fiction lately (as in this year’s comic Too Old for This by Samantha Downing). Comedian Craig offers his own humorous take on the concept in the form of Carol, a notorious former serial killer who has just been released from prison to spend her later years in a luxurious retirement home. But when a fellow resident (a retired police commissioner) is murdered, Carol, of course, is suspect number one. She sets out to find the real killer to clear her name.

Also of note:

The Friend of the Family by Dean Koontz (Jan. 20): A young girl in Depression-era America is exploited as a traveling carnival sideshow act. A kind couple later takes her in, but haunting dreams reveal a looming danger.

The Method by Matthew Quirk (Jan. 20): In this thriller by the author of The Night Agent (which was adapted into a series on Netflix), an actress goes undercover to search for her best friend who mysteriously disappeared. Working with an FBI agent who’s also on the case, she enters a dangerous criminal world.

Her Cold Justice by Robert Dugoni (Jan. 27): When a man is accused of a double murder, defense attorney (and former chess prodigy) Keera Duggan discovers a web of corruption behind the accusation in this twisty legal thriller — the third book in Dugoni’s Duggan series. Each can be read as a stand-alone.

It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica (Feb. 3): Kubica’s 10th book is set at a Wisconsin lake resort, where one night Courtney Gray hears screams and finds her brother and sister-in-law dead in their neighboring cottage. As the crime is investigated, disturbing secrets about her family and the small town emerge.

Nonfiction

How to Cook a Coyote: The Joy of Old Age by Betty Fussell (Dec. 2)

At 98, the talented essayist and James Beard Hall of Fame award winner for her cookbook writing describes her latest book as “a tell-all memoir of the century I’ve lived, loved, despised and relished. A recipe for survival.” She writes, usually with humor, about her move from New York to a retirement home in California (where Julia Child also lived), dating later in life and much more, all with an awareness of her looming mortality. For her, the “old man coyote,” as she puts it, is a metaphor for the things in life one can’t control. Publishers Weekly calls the book “a graceful, gutsy ode to the pleasures and pains of growing old.”

Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China by Jung Chang (Jan. 13)

In her bestselling 1991 memoir, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung recounted the story of her family’s life under the Communist regime, spanning a period through the late 1970s, when, at the age of 26, she left to study in Britain. Now she addresses the following decades, using her personal story to shed light on her ever-transforming, increasingly powerful homeland. Jung’s first book is banned in China, where she’s been unable to return, fearing imprisonment (she wrote a frankly unflattering biography of former leader Mao Zedong).

The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg — and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema by Paul Fischer (Feb. 10)

Imagine cinema history without The Godfather, Star Wars and Jaws. In this must-read for movie buffs, Fischer describes how their directors — Francis Ford Coppola, 86, George Lucas, 81, and Steven Spielberg, 78, respectively — became friends when they were struggling young filmmakers and how their mutual support and rivalries transformed Hollywood. 

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan (Feb. 24)

Pollan, who found fame for his brilliant food writing (2001’s The Botany of Desire, for one), has shifted his focus to the mind. First there was his exploration of psychedelics in 2018’s How to Change Your Mind, and now he dives into a particularly elusive subject: Who am I? Or, rather: What is “me”? What is this sense of a self, with feelings, thoughts and a subjective experience of the world? He lays out the latest research and theories on consciousness, which, he concludes, “is a miracle, truly, and remains the deepest of mysteries.”

Also of note: 

The Bookie: How I Bet It All on Sports Gambling and Watched an Industry Explode by Art Manteris, written with Matt Birkbeck (Jan. 13): Manteris is a longtime sports-betting insider, described by ESPN as “the dean of Las Vegas sports book directors.” Here he offers a look at this strange and often corrupt billion-dollar enterprise.

Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America by Eugene Robinson (Feb. 3): The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist traces America’s racial history through his family’s journey. He argues that the nation still has far to go before achieving a truly “post-racial America.”

Health and well-being

Heal Faster: Unlock Your Body’s Rapid Recovery Reflex by Victoria Maizes (Jan. 13)

Dr. Victoria Maizes, a pioneer of integrative medicine, reveals the remarkable power of what she calls the “rapid recovery reflex” — your body’s built-in ability to heal from illness, injury and stress. Packed with insights such as why gargling with a licorice solution can lead to a faster recovery from surgery, the best temperature for a good night’s sleep and the truth about whether garlic really can help fight off a cold, this book offers evidence-based strategies to heal faster and more completely.

How to Live a Meaningful Life: Using Design Thinking to Unlock Purpose, Joy, and Flow Every Day by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (Feb. 3)

Burnett and Evans are the Stanford University professors behind Stanford’s Life Design Lab, where they teach design thinking principles to help people navigate complex life and career decisions — the topic of their first book, Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. Now they focus on using similar processes to help readers of all ages find meaning in their everyday lives.

In Sickness and in Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America’s Caregiving Crisis by Laura Mauldin (Feb. 10)

A sociologist and professor of disability studies, Mauldin once found herself an unpaid caregiver for a partner with leukemia — a transformative, destabilizing experience that she details in this book. But she also steps back and explores the emotional and financial cost of family caregiving while addressing unique complexities of spousal caregiving, which, she writes, is “particularly isolating … in a world that holds up our romantic relationship partner as the one meant to give us ‘everything.’ ”