Featuring: Andrew Lewis Conn, Ron Currie, Charles Cumming, Patrick deWitt, Carey Dunne, Susan Fox, Chrystia Freeland, Paul Grimstad, Anne Meredith, Tore C. Olsson, Meredith Mileti, Louise Willder

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Andrew Lewis Conn, I SWORE I’D BURN THIS BOOK (Simon Six)

A Nabokovian mystery about the ultimate literary scandal, in which the son of a world-famous author is faced with the Hamlet-like dilemma of whether or not to publish his father’s final, unfinished work, which he had promised to destroy upon the author’s death, evoking the Nabokov of Lolita and the Philip Roth of the Zuckerman novels.

I Swore I’d Burn This Book is a brilliantly irreverent, propulsive account of a literary heir whose late, world-famous novelist father, reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov, has left behind an unfinished book. Loosely inspired by the dilemma faced by Vladimir Nabokov’s son around whether or not to publish his father’s final, unfinished book, this twisty novel spans from New York to Russia to the Swiss Alps. When his father’s reputation is threatened, the writer’s son is faced with a terrible decision. I Swore I’d Burn This Book succeeds as a wild comedic caper with much to say about fathers and sons, our current times, and the mysteries of artistic creation.

Interesting premise, and looking forward to reading it. I Swore I’d Burn This Book is due to be published by Simon Six in North America and in the UK, on February 9th, 2027.

Follow the Author: Goodreads
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Ron Currie, WE WILL SEE YOU BLEED (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

It’s late summer 1984, and Babs Dionne’s hometown of Waterville, Maine is on the verge of collapse. A strike at the paper mill has dragged on for a year, pitting neighbor against neighbor, leaving everyone broke and exhausted.

As head of the union local, Babs has presided over Little Canada’s decline. She’s sworn off violence since killing a man when she was a teenager, and has stuck to this vow even as it’s become clear that only violence can save their community. When Babs’ best friend Rita returns home after five years away, she is shocked by the state of things. And as the strike comes to a head, Rita notices something else: the men may be broken, but the women are furious, ready to do whatever necessary to take back Little Canada.

They just need Babs to be the fearless woman who emerged from the woods fifteen years ago, drenched in blood. They need Babs to face what she already knows: that the only way to fix things is to assume control. Completely. Mercilessly.

The second novel in Currie’s Babs Dionne series, and the follow-up to Currie’s excellent The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, which was the first of his novels that I read. I’ve been looking forward to this ever since I saw it announced in a publisher’s catalogue. We Will See You Bleed is out now, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in North America and Atlantic Books in the UK.

Also on CR: Review of The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads

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Charles Cumming, ICARUS 17 (Hemlock Press)

Lachlan Kite should have left fieldwork behind by now.

As director of covert intelligence agency Box 88, he’s at the apex of his espionage career. But when Martha Raine – a woman he hasn’t seen in twenty years – begs for his help, Kite finds himself back in the game, racing to avert disaster.

Kite must find Martha’s son, Max, who vanished in Athens with his girlfriend, Yasmine. But the couple aren’t just missing, they’re running for their lives. Two rival agencies are hunting them, both with orders to kill on sight.

Max and Yasmine are carrying a dizzying secret, one which could pull apart the foundations of the Middle East for a generation. If Kite fails to save them, the costs – both personal and professional – will be catastrophic.

This is the fourth novel in Cumming’s Box 88 excellent spy series. I’ve been a fan of the author’s work ever since I read an ARC of Typhoon (2008), and he’s been a must-read author ever since. This has been on my must-read list ever since I learned that it was on the way. Highly recommend all of his novels, if you’re a fan of spy fiction and/or thrillers in general. Icarus 17 is due to be published by Hemlock Press in the UK (July 2nd) and The Mysterious Press in North America (July 7th).

Also on CR: Reviews of Box 88, Judas 62, Kennedy 35, Typhoon, The Trinity Six, A Foreign Country, A Colder War, and The Man Between

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram
Review copy received via NetGalley

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Patrick deWitt, DODGE CITY (Ecco)

It’s 1967 in Los Angeles and Lee Clarke has received his draft notice, calling him up to fight in the Vietnam War. A straitlaced, apolitical twenty-three-year-old from Concrete, Washington, Lee is studying at UCLA until a fistfight leads to his expulsion — and his removal from the deferment list. The draft notice forces him to make the first political decision of his life, and though he’s happy in California and loves his girlfriend, he will leave the country and head for the border.

He signs up at a drive-away car-delivery service, chancing into a showroom-new Jaguar bound for the East Coast. Bringing only a single suitcase and a bag of amphetamines, he makes his stimulated progress against the width of the country, pining for the life he’s left behind and wondering what his decision will mean for his future.

But he is not just saying goodbye to the country of his birth. In four different towns strung out along the northern United States, Lee visits each member of his immediate family: his father, a World War II veteran in a state of degradation; his mother, engaged in a buoyantly manic and never-ending performance with her shut-in sibling; his heartbroken, misanthropic brother, Harry; and finally his twin sister, Grace, a brash, young nurse-in-training mired in romantic drama at a Manhattan psychiatric hospital.

The latest novel from the best-selling and beloved author of, among others, The Sisters Brothers, French Exit, and The Librarianist. I haven’t actually read that much of deWitt’s work, which is strange given how intriguing and interesting each of his books sounds. Typically, it’s a case of eBooks-out-of-sight, I think (I have bought all of his books). This one sounds particularly interesting, so I’ll be reading this very soon. Dodge City is due to be published by Ecco in the US, House of Anansi Press in Canada, and Fourth Estate in the UK, on September 29th.

Follow the Author: Goodreads
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Carey Dunne, MIRACLE CURES (Simon & Schuster)

When Nelly lands a job as a fact-checker at a glamorous media conglomerate, she’s certain that her life will finally begin. She’ll escape her mother’s grimy house in New Jersey, meet the man of her dreams, and maybe even secure employer-sponsored healthcare before her twenty-sixth birthday. Tasked with checking the company’s newest venture — a magazine spearheaded by a controversial actress turned wellness guru—it soon becomes clear that the magazine has very few facts to check. Nelly spends her days wading through pseudoscience, cold calling self-proclaimed animal psychics, and trying to resist the pull of shiny face creams and exotic essences that promise youth, inner glow, and an end to her chronic yawning.

But after a health scare, Nelly starts to wonder if there might be something to the celebrity’s methods after all. She embarks on a quest to discover a miracle cure of her own — until a shocking turn of events topples it all in one fell swoop.

In an age of alternative medicine, establishment skepticism, and a collapse of the grey area between fact and fantasy, Miracle Cures is a hilarious look at the belief systems we build for ourselves — and what happens when they come crumbling down.

Celebrity-endorsed treatments, cures, supplements; alternative treatments, medicines, etc… They seem ubiquitous these days. I’m looking forward to reading how Dunne approaches the subject in this new novel. Miracle Cures is due to be published by Simon & Schuster in North America on March 16th, 2027.

Follow the Author: Goodreads, Instagram
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Susan Fox, CHARLOTTE CRANE (Harper)

A writer in her sixties enjoying an unexpected career resurgence is threatened by anonymous allegations of a long-ago scandal in this searing and provocative debut novel in the vein of Rebecca Makkai and Julia May Jonas, that explores complicity, moral ambiguity, and the shifting cultural expectations that challenge the stories we tell ourselves.

Charlotte Cane is the type of character rarely given center stage. Now in her sixties, she is revered yet relegated to a shelf of canonical aging women writers. Throughout her career she’s done what she had to do to succeed in the male-dominated literary world.

After years of increasing irrelevance, Charlotte is shocked to learn that her latest book has landed her a coveted spot on a prestigious prize’s longlist. It seems that Charlotte might finally have her long-awaited chance in the sun, until she is confronted by Ana, a former student she barely remembers from twenty-five years ago.

Ana is not a fan. Over an increasingly uncomfortable drink at a hotel bar, she hints at a dangerous shared history with Charlotte. As the older woman escapes to her room, Ana utters a name that triggers an avalanche of memories. A few days later, someone with the handle “@ana93” begins posting a serialized “short story” that mirrors a painful chapter from Charlotte’s past: an affair that spiraled into tragedy, and the damage inflicted on a writer’s young family.

As Charlotte grows desperate to stop Ana from exposing her secrets — secrets that could not only derail her career, but also her marriage and the mental stability of her only son — she is forced to reckon with the role she’s played in other people’s stories.

Suspenseful and thought-provoking, Susan Fox’s gripping, expertly wrought novel shatters the binary of “right” and “wrong,” questions the fallibility of memory, and explores the way guilt can warp over time. Ultimately, Charlotte Cane asks the questions we are desperate to avoid: what — or who — will we sacrifice to achieve success, and how far will we go to avoid being portrayed as the villain?

Thought this sounded like an interesting premise. Also the second book I’ve received recently for review featuring an older writer as the protagonist. The blurb from Richard Russo (which I only saw later) also increased my interest. (Longtime readers of CR will know he’s one of my favourite authors.) Charlotte Cane is due to be published by Harper in North America on February 9th, 2027. (At the time of writing, I couldn’t find any UK publication details, but I imagine there will be one, soon.)

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Chrystia Freeland, UNRELIABLE BOYFRIEND (Simon Six)

Unreliable Boyfriend is a book that only Chrystia Freeland could write — about a globe-trotting journalist who covered oligarchs and then became a political leader; what she learned about power, international relations, and global trade from her years in government; and how the United States can be seen in revelatory ways through the eyes of a Canadian who had to deal with American chaos.

Unreliable Boyfriend is a different kind of political memoir: a candid, deeply personal account of power, politics, and globalization from an unlikely insider — a five-foot-one journalist turned Deputy Prime Minister who now turns her reportorial eye on her own life, her battles with authoritarians and plutocrats, and the fragile future of liberal democracy.

Before rising to the heights of Canadian politics, Chrystia Freeland was one of the first Western reporters to chronicle the rise of the Russian oligarchs in the 1990s. She spent decades reporting from Moscow, Kyiv, Washington, Beijing, and beyond, exposing how global elites and authoritarian regimes exploited economic upheaval while hollowing out the lives of ordinary people.

Then she crossed into politics herself.

Inside Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, Freeland became one of the world’s most influential negotiators, helping broker trade agreements that united labor activists and business leaders, nationalists and globalists. At a moment of rising tariffs, economic anxiety, and democratic instability, she offers a rare insider account of how deals are really made — and how coalitions fracture when governments fail to deliver for working people.

Part polemic, part memoir, Unreliable Boyfriend is the story of a globe-trotting journalist who brought the lessons she learned covering dissidents and oligarchs into the halls of power — only to encounter a new generation of plutocrats, this time in the West itself.

Freed from the constraints of office, Freeland writes with unusual candor about leadership, ambition, compromise, and betrayal. She reveals how power operates behind closed doors, how alliances are forged and broken, and why trade, security, and democracy can no longer be separated. At a time when authoritarianism is resurging around the world, she argues that democracies must build new alliances strong enough to resist both foreign autocrats and homegrown oligarchs.

In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Klein, and Samantha Power, Chrystia Freeland has written a searching and provocative account of life as both outsider and insider, journalist and politician, activist and policymaker—and as a Canadian who may understand America’s dangers, and possibilities, more clearly than many Americans themselves.

The latest book from the author of Plutocrats, and also my former Canadian MP and Deputy Prime Minister… I’ve been aware of Freeland’s writing for a very long time, and had her first book before moving to Canada. I’m very much looking forward to reading this. Unreliable Boyfriend is due to be published by Simon Six in North America on October 13th.

Follow the Author: Goodreads, Instagram, BlueSky
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Paul Grimstad, COLD FUSION (Simon & Schuster)

It’s the start of another fall semester at a midwestern university in the 1990s. Arriving on the foliage-and-flannel-filled campus is an unusual, unnamed freshman. Grieving the recent death of his father, he lives in a hotel instead of a dorm, finds himself afflicted by a mysterious hallucinatory illness with an even stranger home remedy, and is tasked by his wealthy mother to track down the son of a family friend — a charismatic and elusive student rumored to be pursuing “cold fusion.”

As his search leads him through dive bars, bus stations, abandoned churches and other bizarre locales, and he has increasingly disorienting encounters with a variety of eccentrics — including drug dealers and fringe intellectuals—his mental state deteriorates and the boundary between experience and delusion begins to dissolve.

Cold Fusion is a darkly funny fever dream — an absurdist yet poignant examination of the fragile narratives we construct to make sense of an inescapably chaotic world.

The new, short novel by Yale academic and actor Paul Grimstad (One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme). An interesting take on the campus novel, and one I’m looking forward to reading soon. It’s pitched as perhaps appealing to fans of John Williams’s Stoner, Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys and Elif Batuman’s The Idiot. Cold Fusion is due to be published by Simon & Schuster in North America on January 5th, 2027.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Tore C. Olsson, RED DEAD’S HISTORY (St. Martin’s Griffin)

Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II, set in 1911 and 1899, are the most-played American history video games since The Oregon Trail. Beloved by millions, they’ve been widely acclaimed for their realism and attention to detail. But how do they fare as re-creations of history?

In this engaging book, award-winning American history professor Tore Olsson takes up that question and more. Weaving the games’ plots and characters into an exploration of American violence between 1870 and 1920, Olsson shows that it was more often disputes over capitalism and race, not just poker games and bank robberies, that fueled the bloodshed of these turbulent years. As such, this era has much to teach us today. From the West to the Deep South to Appalachia, Olsson reveals the gritty and brutal world that inspired the games, but sometimes lacks context and complexity on the digital screen. Colorful, fast-paced, and dramatic, Red Dead’s History sheds light on dark corners of the American past for gamers and history buffs alike.

Red Dead Redemption II is easily one of my all-time favourite video games. Not an original or unique opinion, to be sure, but I spent a loooong time playing it, and felt a genuine sense of loss when I realized I was running out of stuff to do on it that was fun. (Completing the compendium was just going to take too long.) I remember seeing Olsson’s book in the publisher’s catalogue when it was published in hardcover, but (for some reason) promptly forgot about it. I was browsing a bookstore the other week, saw the paperback edition, and bought and started reading it the same day. It’s a very engaging, enjoyable read, and a must for fans of the games and history. I’ll hopefully put together a review soon. Red Dead’s History is out now, published by St. Martin’s Griffin in North America.

Also on CR: Review of Red Dead’s History

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram

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Anne Meredith, JADED (S&S/Summit Books)

When a mysterious young woman comes between two married professors, their carefully crafted cat-and-mouse game crumbles, as prey becomes predator.

It’s the summer of 1986 on the Kelsey College campus. Sam and Vera Ward got married decades ago and haven’t slept together since. With little desire to satiate Sam’s sexual appetite, Vera agrees to a certain tradition at the start of every school year. Sam is allowed to sleep with one woman of his choosing, with two ground rules: she must be a student at the college, and the affair cannot last beyond a year. This year, their target is a mysterious young woman named Jade, who, unbeknownst to the Wards, is a hand grenade poised to destroy everything they’ve carefully built.

Alluring and sharp as a tack, Jade breaks all their rules. With a plan of her own, she holds Sam in the palm of her hand and grips Vera in a dance of obsession and desire. What unfolds is not a romance but a reckoning, where every touch conceals a move, and every secret becomes a weapon, spiraling into an explosive ending that will leave Vera, Jade, and Sam completely undone.

Jaded is an electric, provocative novel about power, the abuse of and submission to it, where each character is forced to confront the messy web of complicity, lies, and lust in which they have unwittingly entangled themselves.

Thought this sounded like it might be interesting, and an intriguing twist on the campus/affair genre. Jaded is due to be published by S&S/Summit Books in North America (January 12th, 2027) and in the UK (April 22nd).

Follow the Author: Goodreads
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Meredith Mileti, GLASS HOUSES (Harper)

A comedic and moving story of one family’s fraught reunion at their adulterous father’s astonishingly designed Berkshires lake house — and the decades’ worth of fiercely kept secrets that unravel when the family is once again under the same roof.

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

For the Stein family, the adage is especially fitting. Decades back (and with a little help from his formidable first wife, Hannah), Allen Stein built a modern marvel of glass architecture on the shores of a beautiful lake in the Berkshires. The family only enjoyed two summers at the house together before Allen’s affairs imploded his and Hannah’s marriage, leaving forty-plus years of acrimonious estrangement in its wake.

Now nothing — not even a lifetime achievement award—could lure Allen back to that house… at least while his bitter ex-wife is there. But when Allen and Hannah’s children Sam and Sara send their mother thousands of miles away on an Arctic cruise, Allen reluctantly agrees to return.

Then Hannah’s trip is cancelled last-minute, and—much to everyone’s horror — the family is marooned in the house together. Sam and Sara — each bearing different scars from growing up in their parents’ crossfire — are forced to batten down the hatches to deal with the storm. The unfolding drama only heightens the hilarity as it compounds the crises brewing in their lives, including Sam’s daughter Esme, on a journey of self-discovery that is causing her to re-evaluate her relationship to marriage and partnership, infidelities past and present, and several generations of emotional baggage. As every piece of their dirty laundry is aired, the Steins must face a long overdue reckoning with themselves and one another.

A potentially interesting family drama. Not really sure there needs to be more of a reason than that to be interested? Glass Houses is due to be published by Harper in North America on April 20th, 2027.

Follow the Author: Website, Goodreads, Instagram
Review copy received via Edelweiss

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Louise Willder, THE BOOK WAS BETTER (Oneworld)

Is the book always better than the film?

Yes, book lovers cry! Hollywood never gets it right – they gloss over crucial moments, the dialogue sounds bizarre and the characters never look like they’re supposed to.

But then what about Jaws or The Godfather? These films are so much better than the potboiler novels they came from. And then there are some perfect adaptations. Doesn’t every reader’s heart sing when they watch Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility?

In this rollicking adventure through the towering heights and unplumbed depths of book to screen adaptations, Louise Willder, the critically acclaimed author of Blurb Your Enthusiasm, uncovers what makes a good adaption, how some can be so bad, and why we insist on telling the same stories over and over and over.*

*As but one example: Pride and Prejudice 1940, 1980, 1995, 2005, 2027, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Austenland, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Fire Island, Lost in Austen, Bride and Prejudice…

The new book by the author of Blurb Your Enthusiasm (which I really enjoyed). As someone who loves both books and movies/TV, I have often found myself engaged in discussions about whether or not the “book was better”, so I am very much looking forward to reading this, and hopefully soon. The Book Was Better is due to be published by Oneworld Publications in North America and in the UK, on October 1st.

Follow the Author: Goodreads
Review copy received via NetGalley