THE POST MISTRESS OF PARIS, by Meg Waite Clayton. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Modeled after a real-life Chicago heiress who used her money and influence to smuggle thousands of refugees to safety during World War II, the heroine of this suspenseful historical novel shows that loyalty and love can flourish even under tragic circumstances. In Clayton’s version, the title character, Nanée, tries to reunite a French widower with his young daughter and lead them to America – but how? “While waiting for the answer to that question,” writes Alida Becker in her latest column on historical fiction, “and wondering about its impact on Nanée’s own future enriches Clayton’s already suspenseful plot.”
SEVEN GAMES: A Human History, by Oliver Roeder. (Norton, $26.95.) Roeder, a games and game theory student, is very aware of the tension between what games are and what people project onto them. In his “group biography” of checkers, chess, Go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble and bridge, Roeder explores not only the history of how we play, but why. He also poignantly shows how computers are changing our relationship with these games. “Each of the major sections of this book reads like a tragedy, a repeating myth of hubris,” writes Peter Sagal in his review. “Every game has its history, its champions, its quirks and its community, and then comes the programmer who believes he can teach a computer to play it. Each time, fans of the game claim that their pastime is a pure expression of inescapable human creativity, and then, as the programs improve, the players are stripped of their illusions.”
JOAN IS OK, by Weike Wang. (Random House, $27.) Joan is a 36-year-old treating physician in an ICU on New York’s Upper West Side who just wants people to leave her alone so she can work. But pressure from her family, HR, and her neighbor leaves her with a rage that keeps Wang bubbling beneath the surface. “In the hands of Weike Wang,” writes Deesha Philyaw in her review, “Joan’s dry humor is downright hilarious, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes as a coping mechanism. … Wang has given us a character so unusual and unashamed that you can’t help but hang out with her, knowing full well that she wants nothing more than to be left alone.”
BLACK CAKE, by Charmaine Wilkerson. (Ballantine, $28.) In Wilkerson’s vibrant debut novel, which celebrates second chances (and family food), a brother and sister learn the truth about their mother only when it’s too late to ask questions. Together they must learn how – and when – to fulfill her last wish. “Wilkerson approaches her plot like a mad chef, grabbing ingredients from all over the world, slicing and slicing with abandon, tossing characters and palm fronds and a few drops of rum into a pot and letting it all come to a boil,” Elisabeth Egan writes in her newest column Group Text. “You are immersed in a swirling soup of family secrets, big lies, big loves, bright colors and strong smells.”
A DANGEROUS PLACE, by Chelsea B. DesAutels. (Sarabande, Paper, $15.95.) The poems in DesAutels’ debut collection swing between landscapes at home and abroad. The past interrupts the present, then life is interrupted again – we cannot leave the present for long. In many of the poems, the speaker deals with cancer, as in “Broken Portrait,” with its stark inversions of expectation: “I’m married to a good man. He loves me and irons his own shirts. I’m spoiled. / I mean, I’m rotting.” Our poetry columnist, Elisa Gabbert, writes: “I feel battered by this poem in a good way. Sometimes I want a poem to abuse me a little, abuse my trust and shock me, be quiet and then suddenly loud. In a poem, as DesAutels writes, there is ‘no threshold between threat and calm’.”