On My Radar:

Off the Rails: A Train Trip Through Life
by Beppe Severgnini
Berkley
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

"I’ve gone around the world in installments. Every trip has been a revelation. I’ve watched regions, nations, and continents change moods and I’ve met more people on trains than in forty years of airplane flights. Every train trip has been a spectacle. Trains are stages, cafés, bazaars. The only talk show that will never go off the air…”

Beppe Severgnini has spent his life traveling the world, and not just because he’s a journalist; he’s a passionate, unflagging train buff. Off the Rails recounts some of his favorite trips across Europe, Australia, Asia, and the United States, each journey bringing readers not only to a different place but to a different time, from his honeymoon on the Trans-Siberian Express (in a four-person compartment!), to a winding journey from Russia to Turkey during the last summer of communism, to a recent coast-to-coast trip with his son from Washington, D.C., to Washington State.

Off the Rails is the perfect getaway for anyone with a touch of wanderlust, who dreams of escape or just likes to laugh. Filled with memorable characters and perceptive observations, it demonstrates–hilariously–what unites us.

With the world in chaos and life in perpetual fast-forward, it’s always the right time to hop on board with Beppe Severgnini and meet your charming, hapless, quarrelsome, romantic, shifty, quirky, endearing neighbors.

On My Radar:

Unlucky Number: The Murder of Lottery Winner Abraham Shakespeare
by Deborah Mathis with Gregory Todd Smith
Berkley Books
Mass Market Paperback

From the publishers website:

It sounded like a fairy tale: A homeless man named Abraham Shakespeare spent his last dollars on a Florida State lottery ticket—and miraculously won $31 million.

Unprepared for his newfound fortune, Abraham hired Dorice “Dee Dee” Moore to help manage his winnings and field the numerous requests for loans and assistance that he received. But somehow, Dee Dee was the only one benefitting.

When Abraham quietly disappeared from his home in Florida, friends and family grew suspicious—though he could not read or write, his only form of contact was through odd letters and texts.

But it wasn’t until investigators began to question Dee Dee about her role in Abraham’s finances that a complicated web of lies—and the desperate lengths to which one woman would go to cover it up—was exposed…

On My Radar:

I've Still Got It…I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty
Jenna McCarthy
Berkley Trade
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Jenna McCarthy might be forty-something, but she doesn’t feel forty-something. She certainly doesn’t look forty-something. (Actually she does, but she’s in denial so maybe don’t mention it?) And between complaining about how tired she is, trying to remember what she came in here for and wondering whether she drinks too much, she does not have time for a crisis.

She has, however, had time to crack the mysterious midlife code. She’s figured out how to tame her muffin top, keep the spark in her marriage and probably not die a fiery hoarder’s death. She’s learned the trick to looking ten years younger and the secret to feeling ten times happier (and it only cost $14.99 plus shipping and handling). And she’s discovered the one thing she will need to do for the rest of ever if she’s going to continue to refuse to “dress her age.”

Tackling everything from cosmetic surgery and financial panic to skinny jeans and the meaning of life, I’ve Still Got It… is a middle age manifesto filled with hilarious misadventures, humiliating confessions and occasional (hot) flashes of genius.

On My Radar:

Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing: 100 More Mistakes That Lost Elections, Ended Empires, and Made the World What It Is Today
by Bill Fawcett
Berkley / Penguin
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

Hindsight hurts.

* The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act, having the American colonies pay for their own defense—which instead starts a revolution.
* In 1929, President Herbert Hoover decides to let the economy fix itself…and the Great Depression gets greater.
* Nixon tapes everything he says in the Oval Office, believing it will all be of great historical value. He turns out to be right when those same tapes cost him his presidency.
* Charles the First cuts a deal with the Irish to fight Parliament that instead loses him public support—and later his head.

Along with 100 Mistakes that Changed the World, Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing proves once again that when global leaders drop the ball, the whole world shakes. With a hundred more bombshell blunders—from Pickett’s Charge to the Lewinski scandal—this compendium takes a fascinating look at some of history’s greatest turns for the worse.