Here's a selection of our new and noteworthy titles available at Boswell Book Company. Click on the links for specific categories, the books listed below are a sneak peak of some of the new titles coming out next Tuesday.
| New & Noteworthy Hardcover Fiction | New & Noteworthy Hardcover Nonfiction | New & Noteworthy Paperbacks |
| New & Noteworthy Mysteries | Boswell's Top 25 Bestsellers | Independent Bookstore Day 2020 Exclusives |
In Hendrickson’s biography of the famed architect, it’s the 1914 mass murder at Taliesin (for those who don’t know, his mistress, her two kids, and four folks in his employ were axed by servant Julian Carlton) is his defining moment; most aspects of his life before that lead up to it and those after spin out from it. From Cecil Corwin to Mameh Cheney to Edgar Kaufmann to Carlton, few friends, relatives, patrons, and workers are left unexamined in this exhaustive biography, which also seeks to correct the untruths that have been passed along as gospel. The journey of Plagued by Fire is meandering but always fascinating, detouring to many of Wright’s most famous works, and driven by Hendrickson’s attempt to better understand Wright’s life.
— Daniel Goldin
At the publishing house where she is employed, Violaine Depage worked her way up from the readers’ room, where manuscripts from the slush pile are discovered, to Editorial Director. But after an unfortunate accident that left her in a coma, she’s recovered to find the publisher in a sticky dilemma. It turns out that the hit novel Sugar Flowers (a reader’s room discovery) has just been longlisted for the Prix Goncourt, and Lepage is hiding that she doesn’t know who the true identity of Camille Désencres, the book’s author - what publishers might call a Full Ferrante. What Elena’s publishers didn’t have to deal with is a visit from the police – several of the murders documented in the novel have been duplicated in real life and are now under investigation. The mood is a little darker than Vintage 1954, but the results are no less Antoine-esque. Each character is brought to life with the quirky details Laurain does so well, a few literary figures make an appearance (though aside from Stephen King, perhaps more illusion than reality), and the offers up connections to Laurain’s past works, including French Rhapsody and The Red Notebook, which was recently on the Duchess of Cornwall’s quarantine reading list.
— Daniel Goldin
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, I sure do love European crime dramas, but I wonder what they would be like under pen of a French novelist who delights in toying with all the twists and turns an ‘ordinary’ life can take - well then, have I got the book for you! Laurain is as charming as ever in his latest, and he uses his signature narrative detours to build up a mystery around a hit novel’s missing author and its editor’s missing memories. Particularly enjoyable are the peeks into the world of French publishing – the career twists of an editor, the craze of awards season, and the trials each manuscript faces as it makes its way from its author’s pen to a reader’s hands. While maybe it’s not the right book for the hardest-boiled mystery fans – Laurain more gestures at the genre than fully embraces it, though he does dial up the gritty to multiple-murder levels - anyone who likes a novel that zips from city to city and from decade to decade throughout France with Marcel Proust’s walking stick in tow is going to want to spend an afternoon in The Readers’ Room.
— Chris Lee
