Hot Off the Press: 7 Sensational Reads

The latest book from Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick Modiano is reminiscent of the tightly controlled prose of Georges Simenon, and while also billed as a detective story it seems that memory, not an unsolved murder, is the real mystery. Set in Paris from the 1950s to modern day, the book follows an aging writer as he investigates the strange and traumatic events of his childhood, only to realize the elusiveness, and in some ways sheer inaccuracy, of the memories that formed his adult life.

How well do you really know the person you’re married to? Imagine discovering your devoted husband of nearly twenty years is anything but – and in the worst possible way. (Hint: we’re not talking about another Ashley Madison kind of betrayal.) Karen Slaughter’s new page-turning psychological thriller shows how easy it is to get people, even those closest to you, dangerously wrong.

Even as the world faces a very real refugee crisis with millions of people fleeing Syria and other troubled countries, Canadian author Lawrence Hill tells the story of a fictional man, Keita, who escapes genocidal violence in his fictional home country, an island in the Indian Ocean. After he ends up in a wealthy nation with a strong anti-refugee sentiment and a government determined to deport “illegals,” Keita is forced to go underground in yet another country that does not want him.

Sleep deprivation has been called the plague of modern times, but what about sleep disappearance? From celebrated author Nino Ricci comes this story of a successful professor whose mid-life becomes more catastrophe than crisis: his brain misfires and he develops a rare disorder which denies him any real rest, and his search for a cure drives him to violent extremes.

A novel for the twentieth century, Sweet Caress follows the story of Amory Clay who defies the conventions of her era and becomes one of the few female photographers to capture on film the seminal moments of the century, from Weimar Berlin and the Blackshirt riots in 1930s London all the way to the ravages of war-torn Vietnam. Illustrated with period photographs from over the decades, the book reads more memoir than fiction.

Welcome to Manhattan in the 1980s — when the enfants terribles of Wall Street achieved staggering wealth and power that gave them access to just about anyone and anything they wanted. It’s an intimate, all-holds-barred story of the excesses and decadence of a generation, told with an insider knowledge — and a mix of yearning and regret (although perhaps not in equal measure).