“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
I’ve been in a bit of a reading and reviewing rut. I was focused on reading and interviewing authors for the Savannah Book Festival, which was great fun. I enjoy it every year, but this time around I got to talk to Soniah Kamal, Deborah Blum and Marie Benedict about their newest books. I hope to get back on track this month. Click any cover to get more information.
Theory of Shadows
By Paolo Maurensig
Translated by Milano Appel
from the publisher: On the morning of March 24, 1946, the world chess champion Alexander Alekhine—“sadist of the chess world,” renowned for his eccentric behavior as well as the ruthlessness of his playing style—was found dead in his hotel room in Estoril, Portugal. He was fully dressed and wearing an overcoat, slumped back in a chair, in front of a meal, a chessboard just out of reach.
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Picador; Translation edition (January 15, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1250310318
ISBN-13: 978-1250310316
Smoke and Ashes
By Abir Mukherjee
from the publisher: India, 1921. Haunted by his memories of World War I, Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force. With the aid of his quick-witted Indian Sergeant, Surrender-Not Banerjee, Sam must try to solve the two murders, all the while keeping his personal demons secret, before somebody else turns up dead.
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Pegasus Books (March 5, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1643130145
ISBN-13: 978-1643130149
Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 inches
Our Man down in Havana
By Christopher Hull
from the publisher: When U.S. immigration authorities deported Graham Greene from Puerto Rico in 1954, the British author made an unplanned visit to Havana and discovered that “every vice was permissible and every trade possible” in a Caribbean fleshpot of mafia-run casinos and nude revues. The former MI6 officer had stumbled upon the ideal setting for a comic espionage story. Three years later, he returned in the midst of Fidel Castro’s guerrilla insurgency against a U.S.-backed dictator to begin writing his iconic novel Our Man in Havana.
The Story Behind Graham Greene’s Cold War Spy Novel
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Pegasus Books; 1 edition (March 5, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1643130188
ISBN-13: 978-1643130187
Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 inches
Sea People
By Christina Thompson
from the publisher: For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Harper (March 12, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0062060872
ISBN-13: 978-0062060877
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
The Stranger Diaries
By Elly Griffiths
from the publisher: Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare’s colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R. M. Holland’s most famous story, “The Stranger,” left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the storylines of her favorite literature.
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (March 5, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1328577856
ISBN-13: 978-1328577856
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
What are you reading in March?