Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami
Knopf
Another tale of thoughtfulness, dreams and consequences from Japan’s Murakami (“1Q84,” “Kafka On the Shore”). In high school, a group of five friends is so close, they are like five fingers on the same hand. But when in college, Tsukuro is inexplicably cut off by the rest and driven nearly to suicide. In his 30s, he has settled into a quiet life in Tokyo, designing train stations, when, at the suggestion of his girlfriend, he visits the friends he hasn’t seen in years and find out what happened. This, the girlfriend hopes, will allow him to move forward with his life their relationship.
The Kennedy Connection by R.G. Belsky
Atria
Veteran newspaperman Belsky — a former metro editor at The Post — spins a great tabloid yarn that not only puts a serial killer on the front page, but also has flawed reporter Gil Malloy trying to solve the mystery of JFK’s assassination. All this, he hopes, will resurrect his career and his marriage. Along the way, we meet the new hot-shot reporter at Malloy’s paper, Lee Harvey Oswald’s ailing son (holed up in a Washington Heights apartment) and a variety of NYC cops.
Someday You Will Understand: My Father’s Private World War II by Nina Wolff Feld
Arcade
The story of World War II and postwar America and Europe through the eyes of a German-Jewish refugee. In 1941, Walter Wolff landed safely in New York after a exodus through war-torn Europe. Shortly before his death in 2006, he handed over a box full of letters and mementos to his daughter, Nina Wolff Feld. From these letters, Feld put wrote this biography of her father, who returned to Europe to fight the war, interrogated Nazi officers at the Nuremberg trials and even got back property stolen from his family during the war.
A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray
Ballantine
“The Book of Mormon” with an English accent. Bray’s debut novel delivers the story of the Bradley family, British Mormons who must reconcile their beliefs with life’s cruelties when their youngest child dies. Dad Ian, a Church of Latter Day Saints bishop, turns away from his family and focuses on leading his congregation. Zippy, 16, falls in love and Facebook chats; Al, 14, eschews church for soccer; and Kevin, 7, attempts to resurrect his goldfish. No miracles occur, but the characters do find ways to cope in this book about the real vs. the divine.
Unmanned by Dan Fesperman
Knopf
A novel that never drones on. In Fesperman’s new thriller, ex-fighter pilot Darwin Cole lives alone in a trailer in the Nevada desert where he drinks to drown a dirty secret — an unmanned Predator drone he navigated over Afghanistan might have hit a group of local children. Everything changes when intrepid reporter Keira Lyttle knocks on his door. Her mission: to find the nefarious rogue CIA agent responsible for Cole’s tragic mission. Together, the duo enter the multibillion-dollar world of high-tech surveillance and discover the scandal doesn’t stop at overseas wars.