On My Radar:

Girl, 11
A Novel of Suspense
by Amy Suiter Clarke
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover



From the publisher's website:

Elle Castillo once trained as a social worker, supporting young victims of violent crime. Now she hosts a popular true crime podcast that focuses on cold cases of missing and abducted children.

After four seasons of successfully solving these cases in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Elle decides to tackle her white whale: The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago, TCK was terrorizing the community, kidnapping and ritualistically murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. Then, after he took his eleven-year-old victim, the pattern—and the murders—abruptly stopped. No one has ever known why.

When Elle follows up on a listener tip only to discover the man’s dead body, she feels at fault. Then, within days, a child is abducted—a young girl who seems to fit suspiciously into the TCK sequence halted decades before. While media and law enforcement long ago concluded that TCK had suicided, Elle has never believed TCK was dead. She had hoped her investigation would lay that suspicion to rest, but her podcast seems instead to be inciting new victims.

On My Radar:

Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty
by Jeff Pearlman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

In the history of modern sport, there have never been two high-level teammates who loathed each other the way Shaquille O’Neal loathed Kobe Bryant, and Kobe Bryant loathed Shaquille O’Neal. From public sniping and sparring, to physical altercations and the repeated threats of trade, it was warfare. And yet, despite eight years of infighting and hostility, by turns mediated and encouraged by coach Phil Jackson, the Shaq-Kobe duo resulted in one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history. Together, the two led the Lakers to three straight championships and returned glory and excitement to Los Angeles.  

 

In the tradition of Jeff Pearlman’s bestsellers Showtime, Boys Will Be Boys, and The Bad Guys Won, Three-Ring Circus is a rollicking deep dive into one of sports’ most fraught yet successful pairings.  

On My Radar:

Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump
by Peter Strzok
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

When he opened the FBI investigation into Russia’s election interference, Peter Strzok had already spent more than two decades defending the United States against foreign threats. His career in counterintelligence ended shortly thereafter, when the Trump administration used his private expression of political opinions to force him out of the Bureau in August 2018. But by that time, Strzok had seen more than enough to convince him that the commander in chief had fallen under the sway of America’s adversary in the Kremlin. 

In Compromised, Strzok draws on lessons from a long career—from his role in the Russian illegals case that inspired The Americans to his service as lead FBI agent on the Mueller investigation—to construct a devastating account of foreign influence at the highest levels of our government. And he grapples with a question that should concern every U.S. citizen: When a president appears to favor personal and Russian interests over those of our nation, has he become a national security threat? 

On My Radar:

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

One of the New York Times' 20 Books to Read in 2020 

"Unforgettable...Behind her brilliantly witty and uplifting message is a remarkable vulnerability and candor that reminds us that we are not alone in our struggles—and that we can, against all odds, get through them." —Lori Gottlieb, New York Times-bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Part memoir and part joyful romp through the fields of imagination, the story behind a beloved pseudonymous Twitter account reveals how a writer deep in grief rebuilt a life worth living. 

Becoming Duchess Goldblatt is two stories: that of the reclusive real-life writer who created a fictional character out of loneliness and thin air, and that of the magical Duchess Goldblatt herself, a bright light in the darkness of social media. Fans around the world are drawn to Her Grace’s voice, her wit, her life-affirming love for all humanity, and the fun and friendship of the community that’s sprung up around her. 

@DuchessGoldblat (81 year-old literary icon, author of An Axe to Grind) brought people together in her name: in bookstores, museums, concerts, and coffee shops, and along the way, brought real friends home—foremost among them, Lyle Lovett. 

“The only way to be reliably sure that the hero gets the girl at the end of the story is to be both the hero and the girl yourself.” — Duchess Goldblatt

New Release:

Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien"
by Jeremy N. Smith
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

This taut, true thriller dives into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker — a woman known only as Alien.

When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien was quickly drawn to the school's tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original "hacking."  Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead and two others were arraigned. Alien's adventures were only just beginning.

After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her cache of virtual weapons — and the trespassing and social engineering talents she had developed while "hacking" at MIT. The company tested its clients' securit by every means possible — not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite.

Alien now runs a boutique outfit that caters to some of the world's biggest and most vulnerable institutions — banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft. In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, fast-paced treatment it deserves.

New Release:

Football For A Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL
by Jeff Pearlman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The United States Football League—known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL—was the last football league to not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. It spanned three seasons, 1983-85. It secured multiple television deals. It drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic owner—a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. The league featured as many as 18 teams, and included such superstars as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, Reggie White, Doug Flutie and Mike Rozier. 

  

In Football for a Buck, the dogged reporter and biographer Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals, to some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and also how, thirty years ago, Trump was a scoundrel and a spoiler. 

  

For fans of Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls or Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and of course Pearlman’s own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment—and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

In My TBR Stack:

It's Not Yet Dark: A Memoir
by Simon Fitzmaurice
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive. 

  

In It’s Not Yet Dark, the young filmmaker, a husband and father of five small children, draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose, it is an astonishing journey into a life that, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully than most, revealing at its core the potent power love has to carry us through the days. 

  

Written using an eye-gaze computer, It's Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people, and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive.

On My Radar:

Gunslinger: The Remarkable, Improbable, Iconic Life of Brett Favre
by Jeff Pearlman
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A towering figure on the field for two decades who breezed into the Hall of Fame, Brett Favre was one of the game’s last cowboys, a fastball-throwing, tobacco-chewing gunslinger who refused to give up without a fight. This peerless quarterback guided the Green Bay Packers to two Super Bowls and one championship win, shattering countless NFL records along the way.  

Gunslinger tells Brett Favre’s story for the first time, drawing on more than five hundred interviews, including many from the people closest to Favre. Jeff Pearlman charts an unparalleled journey from his rough rural childhood and lackluster high school football career to landing the last scholarship at Southern Mississippi to a car accident that nearly took his life. Favre clawed back, getting drafted into the NFL by the Atlanta Falcons, then finding his way to Green Bay, where he restored the Packers to greatness and inspired a fan base as passionate as any in the game. Yet he struggled with demons: addiction, infidelity, the loss of his father, and a fraught, painfully prolonged exit from the game he loved, a game he couldn’t bear to leave. 

Grand, gritty, and revelatory, Gunslinger is a big sports biography of the highest order, a fascinating portrait of the man with the rocket arm whose life has been one of triumph, of fame, of tragedy, of embarrassment, and—ultimately—of redemption. 

On My Radar:

Billy Martin: Baseball's Flawed Genius
by Bill Pennington
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Billy Martin is a story of contrasts. He was the clutch second baseman for the dominant New York Yankees of the 1950s. He then spent sixteen seasons managing in the big leagues, and is considered by anyone who knows baseball to have been a true baseball genius, a field manager without peer. Yet he’s remembered more for his habit of kicking dirt on umpires, for being hired and fired by George Steinbrenner five times, and for his rabble rousing and public brawls. He was combative, fiery, intimidating, and controversial, yet beloved by the everyday fan. He was hard on his players and even harder on himself. He knew how to turn around a losing team like no one else—and how to entertain us every step of the way.

Now, with his definitive biography Billy Martin, Pennington finally erases the caricature of Martin. Drawing on exhaustive interviews with friends, family, teammates, and countless adversaries, Pennington paints an indelible portrait of a man who never backed down for the game he loved. From his shantytown upbringing in a broken home; to his days playing for the Yankees when he almost always helped his team find a way to win; through sixteen years of managing, including his tenure in New York in the crosshairs of Steinbrenner and Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin made sure no one ever ignored him. And indeed no one could. He was the hero, the antihero, and the alter ego—or some combination of all three—for his short sixty-one years among us.

New This Week:

My Mistake: A Memoir
by Daniel Menaker
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

Daniel Menaker started as a fact checker at The New Yorker in 1969. With luck, hard work, and the support of William Maxwell, he was eventually promoted to editor. Never beloved by William Shawn, he was advised early on to find a position elsewhere; he stayed for another twenty-four years.

Now Menaker brings us a new view of life in that wonderfully strange place and beyond, throughout his more than forty years working to celebrate language and good writing.

He tells us his own story, too—with irrepressible style and honesty—of a life spent persevering through often difficult, nearly always difficult-to-read, situations. Haunted by a self-doubt sharpened by his role in his brother’s unexpected death, he offers wry, hilarious observations on publishing, child-rearing, parent-losing, and the writing life. But as time goes by, we witness something far beyond the incidental: a moving, thoughtful meditation on years well lived, well read, and well spent. Full of mistakes, perhaps. But full of effort, full of accomplishment, full of life. 

On My Radar:

I intentionally search for books that might be "under the radar" because they might not have the advertising support of other titles.  These are typically titles I'd like to read.  I also like to promote books that often get placed "spine out" on release day, having been unfortunately buried by the James Pattersons and Nicholas Sparks of the world.  That's why I call this "On My Radar."  I hope they show up on your radar too.

World Peace and other 4th Grade Achievements 
by John Hunter
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hardcover

From the publisher website:

In John Hunter’s classroom, students fearlessly tackle global problems and discover surprising solutions by playing his groundbreaking World Peace Game. These kids—from high school all the way down to fourth grade, in schools both well funded and underresourced—take on the roles of politicians, tribal leaders, diplomats, bankers, and military commanders. Through battles and negotiations, standoffs and summits, they strive to resolve dozens of complex, seemingly intractable real-world challenges, from nuclear proliferation to tribal warfare, financial collapse to climate change.

In World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements, Hunter shares the wisdom he’s gleaned from over thirty years teaching the World Peace Game. Here he reveals the principles of successful collaboration that people of any age can apply anywhere. His students show us how to break through confusion, bounce back from failure, put our knowledge to use, and fulfill our potential. Hunter offers not only a forward-thinking report from the front lines of American education, but also a generous blueprint for a world that bends toward cooperation rather than conflict. In this deeply hopeful book, a visionary educator shows us what the future can be. 

On My Radar: Tuesday Edition

Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater Than the People in Power - A Memoir
by Wael Ghonim
Hardcover

Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt

From the book publicity:

The revolutions that swept the Middle East in 2011 surprised and captivated the world. Brutal regimes that had been in power for decades were overturned by an irrepressible mass of freedom seekers. Now, one of the figures who emerged during the Egyptian uprising tells the riveting inside story of what happened and shares the keys to unleashing the power of crowds.

Wael Ghonim was a little-known, thirty-year-old Google executive in the summer of 2010 when he anonymously launched a Facebook page to protest the death of one Egyptian man at the hands of security forces. The page’s following expanded quickly and moved from online protests to a nonconfrontational movement.

The youth of Egypt made history: they used social media to schedule a revolution. The call went out to more than a million Egyptians online, and on January 25, 2011, Cairo’s Tahrir Square resounded with calls for change. Yet just as the revolution began in earnest, Ghonim was captured and held for twelve days of brutal interrogation. After he was released, he gave a tearful speech on national television, and the protests grew more intense. Four days later, the president of Egypt was gone.
  
The lessons Ghonim draws will inspire each of us. He saw the road to Tahrir Square built not by any one person, but by the people. In Revolution 2.0, we can all be heroes.

On My Radar (Friday Edition)

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail
by David Miller

Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (reprint)
Trade Paperback

From the publisher website:

In 2003, software engineer David Miller left his job, family, and friends to fulfill a dream and hike the Appalachian Trail. AWOL on the Appalachian Trail is Miller's account of this thru-hike along the entire 2,172 miles from Georgia to Maine. On page after page, readers are treated to rich descriptions of the valleys and mountains, the isolation and reverie, the inspiration that fueled his quest, and the life-changing moments that can only be experienced when dreams are pursued. While this book abounds with introspection and perseverance, it also provides useful passages about safety and proper gear, with a view into a professional hiker's preparations and tenacity. This is not merely a travel guide, but a beautifully written and highly personal view into one man's adventure and what it means to make a lifelong vision come true.