New Releases for the Week of March 17, 2014

The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger (Crown, March 18, 2014). A delightful epistolary novel told in company memos, emails, and legal files, The Divorce Papers is the story of one marital breakdown and the young attorney who unwittingly finds herself in the middle of a divorce case she never asked for. Sophie Diehl isn't even a divorce attorney. She specializes in criminal law. But when her boss tells her she is going to be representing wealthy Mia Durkheim in her highly contentious divorce, well...Sophie is now a divorce attorney, like it or not. Although the story is supposed to be about Sophie, the divorcing Durkheims steal the show with laugh-out-loud moments despite the seriousness of the topic. Witty and sharp, the novel is ultimately quite sensitive and puts an entirely new spin on the subject of divorce. This is Rieger's debut novel and is very well done.

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer (Minotaur Books, March 18, 2014). One of the reigning kings of espionage fiction, Steinhauer returns with a stand-alone novel already named Amazon's Best Book of the Month. For those who haven't ventured into good espionage fiction, this would be an excellent place to start. A disloyal wife, her ex-lover, an Egyptian intelligence agent, and a CIA analyst provide the multiple narrative in this geo-political story that pulls from recent events like Wikileaks. If you enjoy an intelligent read that makes you think, Steinhauer is your man....our modern day Le Carre.

The Death Factory: A Penn Cage Novella by Greg Iles (HarperCollins, March 18, 2014). I'm including this small novella for those who are anticipating the April arrival of Iles's new thriller/mystery Natchez Burning, the first of a trilogy set in Mississippi during the Civil Rights era (a tantalizing bit: I've read it and it is very, very good stuff!). This novella, available in e-book only, ties in perfectly to the plot of Natchez Burning and at 100 pages and a price tag of $1.99, this is a no-brainer for those planning on delving into the trilogy! I've already pre-ordered it and you can probably guess what I'll be doing when it's released tomorrow.

Cambridge by Susanna Kaysen (Knopf, March 18, 2014). Kaysen, author of Girl, Interrupted, returns with a novel told from a child's perspective. Young Susanna, daughter of a university professor and his homemaker wife, is uprooted throughout her 1950s childhood and longs for the home she remembers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As she matures from early youth into adolescence, Susanna struggles with feelings of exclusion and loneliness that she believes is due to being taken away from Cambridge....but is it really? Kaysen has a real talent for capturing the essence of adolescence and I'm truly looking forward to this novel, especially given it's 1950s setting.

Seducing Ingrid Bergman by Chris Greenhalgh (St. Martin's Press, March 18, 2014). Greenhalgh's fictionalized account of the real life affair between the legendary actress and the world's most famous war photographer has been getting a lot of buzz and interest. Bergman and Robert Capa's affair isn't well documented (hence this fictional account) but fans of the legendary actress might appreciate this look at one of the more joyful, yet ultimately painful, periods of her life.