New York, NY: Random House (2012)

In this magnificent biography, Jon Meacham, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the bestsellers American Lion and Franklin and Winston, gives us an intimate portrait of Thomas Jefferson, the human being, the president, the politician, enabling us to understand Jefferson as never before. “A true triumph. In addition to being a brilliant biography, Thomas Jefferson is a guide to the art of power  . . . a fascinating look at how Jefferson wielded his driving desire for power and control.” (Walter Isaacson)

The father of the ideal of individual liberty, of the Louisiana Purchase, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and of the settling of the West, Jefferson recognized that the genius of humanity—and the genius of the new nation—lay in the possibility of progress, of discovering the undiscovered and seeking the unknown. Flawed, contradictory, elusive, Jefferson was at heart a man engaged in the wars of his times. “Jon Meacham understands Thomas Jefferson. . . . It is no small task to capture so capacious a life in one volume. Meacham has succeeded, giving us a rich presentation of our third president’s life and times. This is an extraordinary work.” (Annette Gordon-Reed)

Jefferson’s story resonates today, not least because he embodies an eternal drama: the struggle of a leadership of a nation to achieve greatness in a difficult and confounding world. “This is possibly the best single-volume biography of Jefferson ever written.” (Gordon S. Wood)

New York, NY: Black Dog (2012)

In My Bookstore our greatest authors write about the pleasure, guidance, and support that their favorite bookstores and booksellers have given them over the years. The relationship between a writer and his or her local store and staff can last for years or even decades. Often it's the author's local store that supported him during the early days of his career, that continues to introduce and hand-sell her work to new readers, and that serves as the anchor for the community in which he lives and works.

My Bookstore collects the essays, stories, odes and words of gratitude and praise for stores across the country in 76 pieces written by our most beloved authors. It's a joyful, industry-wide celebration of our bricks-and-mortar stores and a clarion call to readers everywhere at a time when the value and importance of these stores should be shouted from the rooftops.

Perfectly charming line drawings by Leif Parsons illustrate each storefront and other distinguishing features of the shops.

New York, NY: Mysterious Press (2012)

The first debut novel from the newly relaunched Mysterious Press introduces a phenomenal new voice in the realm of crime fiction.
Will, Jeffrey, and Nolan are lifelong friends. Each have gone their separate ways as adults, living their own lives while forging their own careers. They have no reason to believe anything extraordinary will befall them. Until one shocking moment changes everything...
Will is a part-time drummer who spends the rest of his time in recording studios. He has lived a sheltered existence. Then one night Jeffrey attempts to rob a convenience store, drags a young woman into Will's car, and shouts a single word: "Drive!" Shaken and confused, Will obeys.
Suddenly three ordinary men find themselves completely out of their element, holding a young girl hostage without the slightest idea of what to do next. They are already guilty of kidnapping and robbery; it is only a matter of time before they find out just what else they're capable of. For these four people, three days will decide their fate--between freedom and prison, innocence and guilt...and life and death. In the tradition of Scott Smith's classic A Simple Plan, THE THREE-DAY AFFAIR marks the emergence of a truly talented new crime writer.

New York, NY: Doubleday (2012)

In the history of the United States, only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five. His body is found in his remote lakeside cabin. There is no sign of forced entry or struggle. Just two dead bodies: Judge Fawcett and his young secretary. And one large, state-of-the-art, extremely secure safe, opened and emptied.

One man, a former attorney, knows who killed Judge Fawcett, and why. But that man, Malcolm Bannister, is currently residing in the Federal Prison Camp near Frostburg, Maryland. Though serving time, Malcolm has an ace up his sleeve. He has information the FBI would love to know. Malcolm would love to tell them. But everything has a price—and the man known as the Racketeer wasn’t born yesterday.

New York, NY: Bloomsbury (2012)

Thirty years after the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness left him maimed, Abel Truman has found his way to the edge of the continent, the rugged, majestic coast of Washington State, where he lives alone in a driftwood shack with his beloved dog. "Wilderness "is the story of Abel, now an old and ailing man, and his heroic final journey over the snowbound Olympic Mountains. It's a quest he has little hope of completing but still must undertake to settle matters of the heart that predate even the horrors of the war.

As Abel makes his way into the foothills, the violence he endures at the hands of two thugs who are after his dog is crosscut with his memories of the horrors of the war, the friends he lost, and the savagery he took part in and witnessed. And yet, darkness is cut by light, especially in the people who have touched his life--from Jane Dao-Ming Poole, the daughter of murdered Chinese immigrants, to Hypatia, an escaped slave who nursed him back to life, and finally to the unbearable memory of the wife and child he lost as a young man. Haunted by tragedy, loss, and unspeakable brutality, Abel has somehow managed to hold on to his humanity, finding way stations of kindness along his tortured and ultimately redemptive path.

In its contrasts of light and dark, wild and tame, brutal and tender, and its attempts to reconcile a horrific war with the great evil it ended, "Wilderness "tells not only the moving tale of an unforgettable character, but a story about who we are as human beings, a people, and a nation. Lance Weller's immensely impressive debut immediately places him among our most talented writers.

New York, NY: Knopf (2012)

A riveting, powerful debut novel from an award-winning adventure writer: the story of a pilot surviving in a world filled with loss--and of what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life--something like his old life--exists beyond the airport.

Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return--not enough fuel to get him home--following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face--in the people he meets, and in himself--is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.

New York, NY: Gotham Books (2012)

The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our time

Playing 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty "Billboard" hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, and until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interviews with more than 100 people who knew Brown personally or played with him professionally. Using these sources, award-winning writer RJ Smith draws a portrait of a man whose twisted and amazing life helps us to understand the music he made.

"The One" delves deeply into the story of a man who was raised in abject-almost medieval-poverty in the segregated South but grew up to earn (and lose) several fortunes. Covering everything from Brown's unconventional childhood (his aunt ran a bordello), to his role in the Black Power movement, which used "Say It Loud (I'm Black and Proud)" as its anthem, to his high-profile friendships, to his complicated family life, Smith's meticulous research and sparkling prose blend biography with a cultural history of a pivotal era.

At the heart of "The One" is Brown's musical genius. He had crucial influence as an artist during at least three decades; he inspires pity, awe, and revulsion. As Smith traces the legend's reinvention of funk, soul, R&B, and pop, he gives this history a melody all its own.

New York, NY: Ecco Press. (2012)

"First, I'll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later."

Then fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons' parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed.

His parents' arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American whose cool reserve masks a dark and violent nature.

Undone by the calamity of his parents' robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he knew. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.

A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of our greatest writers, "Canada" is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose, both resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a classic.

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New York, NY: Ballantine (2012)

In the first novel of a spellbinding new trilogy, "New York Times" bestselling author Jeff Shaara returns to the Civil War terrain he knows best. "A Blaze of Glory" takes us to the action-packed Western Theater for a vivid re-creation of one of the war's bloodiest and most iconic engagements--the Battle of Shiloh.

It's the spring of 1862. The Confederate Army in the West teeters on the brink of collapse following the catastrophic loss of Fort Donelson. Commanding general Albert Sidney Johnston is forced to pull up stakes, abandon the critical city of Nashville, and rally his troops in defense of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.

Hot on Johnston's trail are two of the Union's best generals: the relentless Ulysses Grant, fresh off his career-making victory at Fort Donelson, and Don Carlos Buell. If their combined forces can crush Johnston's army and capture the railroad, the war in the West likely will be over. There's just one problem: Johnston knows of the Union plans, and is poised to launch an audacious surprise attack on Grant's encampment--a small settlement in southwestern Tennessee anchored by a humble church named Shiloh.

With stunning you-are-there immediacy, Shaara takes us inside the maelstrom of Shiloh as no novelist has before. Drawing on meticulous research, he dramatizes the key actions and decisions of the commanders on both sides: Johnston, Grant, Sherman, Beauregard, and the illustrious Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Here too are the thoughts and voices of the junior officers, conscripts, and enlisted men who gave their all for the cause: Confederate cavalry lieutenant James Seeley, Private Fritz "Dutchie" Bauer of the 16th Wisconsin Regiment--brave participants in a pitched back-and-forth battle whose casualty count would far surpass anything the American public had yet seen in this war.

By the end of the second day of fighting, as Grant's bedraggled forces regroup for what looks like a last stand, two major events--one of them totally unexpected--would turn the tide of the battle and perhaps the war itself.

"A Blaze of Glory" brings the exhilaration of battle to life and illuminates a pivotal clash-at-arms that changed the course of American history.

New York, NY: Ecco Press (2012)

In their little cabin set in the shadow of a deep cove, Laurel Shelton and her brother Hank have built a home. The locals whisper about the cove being cursed and perhaps it is: good fortune rarely seems to wind its way down the long overgrown trail that leads to their clearing in the woods.

One day the course of both their lives seems altered when Laurel happens upon a stranger hiding among the trees. With only a simple haversack of worldly belongings, the alluring and mysterious Walter is soon drawn in to life in the cove, helping Hank on the farm and bringing Laurel the only real comfort she has ever known. But as soon as the dark cloud hanging over the cove finally begins to lift, a secret is uncovered that threatens to shatter their newly found happiness.

As their neighbors begin to stoke a fire of rage against the cove and its inhabitants, Laurel, Hank and Walter come to understand the terrible danger they are in ...

A breathtaking, lyrical novel with a profoundly moving love story at its heart, The Cove confirms Ron Rash as a masterful novelist at the height of his powers.

New York, NY: Doubleday (2012)

A surprising and moving novel of fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption, set in the world of Major League Baseball.

Whatever happened to Calico Joe?

"It began quietly enough with a pulled hamstring. The first baseman for the Cubs AAA affiliate in Wichita went down as he rounded third and headed for home. The next day, Jim Hickman, the first baseman for the Cubs, injured his back. The team suddenly needed someone to play first, so they reached down to their AA club in Midland, Texas, and called up a twenty-one-year-old named Joe Castle. He was the hottest player in AA and creating a buzz."

In the summer of 1973 Joe Castle was the boy wonder of baseball, the greatest rookie anyone had ever seen. The kid from Calico Rock, Arkansas dazzled Cub fans as he hit home run after home run, politely tipping his hat to the crowd as he shattered all rookie records.

Calico Joe quickly became the idol of every baseball fan in America, including Paul Tracey, the young son of a hard-partying and hard-throwing Mets pitcher. On the day that Warren Tracey finally faced Calico Joe, Paul was in the stands, rooting for his idol but also for his Dad. Then Warren threw a fastball that would change their lives forever...

In John Grisham's new novel the baseball is thrilling, but it's what happens off the field that makes CALICO JOE a classic.

New York, NY: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (2012)

Troubled by his wife's disturbing mental state and concerned about a mysterious plague that is sweeping through the plantation in the pre-Civil War South, Master Satterfield purchases a slavewoman known as a healer. But the master gets more than he bargained for when Polly's sharp tongue and troubling predictions cause unrest throughout the plantation.

New York, NY: Random House (2012)

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, "The Orphan Master's Son" follows a young man's journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world's most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.