In this monthly feature, The Sunday Times picks out 10 books from around the world that have just hit shelves.
Top Of The Stack
1. Non-fiction
Noise
By Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein
William Collins/ Paperback/ 454 pages/ $30.98/ Available here
5 out of 5
We make judgments all the time – for example, about people, future events and investments – and are often beneficiaries – or victims – of judgments made by others.
But judgments are wrong more often than we think. Sometimes they are verifiably wrong. We can check, for instance, if an investment we made turned out as expected. At other times, they may not be verifiable, but can still be wrong.
Master psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has made a career of exploring the cognitive limitations of the human mind.
In his latest book Noise, co-authored by Professors Olivier Sibony of HEC Paris and Cass R. Sunstein of Harvard, Kahneman does a deep dive into the world of judgment, exploring how and why judgments go wrong and what can be done to correct them.
READ MORE HERE
2. Thriller
The President’s Daughter
By Bill Clinton and James Patterson
Century/ Paperback/ 594 pages/ $28.89/ Available here
Former United States president Clinton teams up with best-selling thriller writer Patterson for their second political blockbuster after 2018’s The President Is Missing. This time, it is the daughter of a retired president – a different one from the last book – who has been kidnapped by terrorists. Her desperate father will defy the current commander-in-chief and do whatever it takes to bring her home, like a more presidential Liam Neeson from the Taken films (2008 to 2014).
3. Non-fiction
The Premonition
By Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company/ Hardcover/ 304 pages/ $27.82/ Available here
This non-fiction thriller tells the stories of the medical visionaries who attempted to warn America of the Covid-19 pandemic, even as former president Donald Trump’s administration downplayed the threat.
They include 13-year-old Laura Glass, whose science project on airborne pathogen transmission developed into a model for disease control, to a secret team of dissenting doctors dubbed the Wolverines, who had the resources and experience to fight the pandemic – but lacked official permission to carry out their work.
4. Non-fiction
The Anthropocene Reviewed
By John Green
Ebury Press/ Paperback/ 304 pages/ $30.90/ Available here
Green is best known as the bestselling novelist behind young-adult hits such as The Fault In Our Stars (2012) and Turtles All The Way Down (2017). In 2018, he started a podcast in which he reviewed facets of the Anthropocene – the geological epoch dominated by human impact – on a five-star scale.
In this book, he collects his podcast episodes as a series of essays on things as diverse as sunsets, scratch-and-sniff stickers and the Super Mario Kart racing video game.
5. Fantasy
Honeycomb
By Joanne M. Harris, illustrated by Charles Vess
Gollancz/ Hardcover/ 420 pages/ $54.94/ Available here
“There is a story the bees used to tell, which makes it hard to disbelieve,” begins this enchanting book of stories by the author of the novel Chocolat (1999), exquisitely illustrated by fantasy artist Vess.
Set in the Nine Worlds, these are dark tales of figures like the Lacewing King of the Silken Folk, who live in the shadows and cast none themselves, and the Moon Queen of the Undersea.
6. Non-fiction
Unwell Women
By Elinor Cleghorn
Weidenfeld & Nicolson/ Paperback/ 470 pages/ $32.95/ Available here
British cultural historian Cleghorn examines the troubling history of how women’s ill-health, from hysteria to endometriosis, has often been misinterpreted or overlooked, even as a woman’s right over her own body remains continually challenged.
Cleghorn draws on her own experience as an unwell woman, after seven years of strange pains that were repeatedly dismissed or misdiagnosed, until a rheumatologist finally diagnosed her with lupus.
7. Non-fiction
How The Word Is Passed
By Clint Smith
Dialogue Books/ Paperback/ 321 pages/ $34.60/ Available here
American journalist and poet Smith takes the reader on a tour of how the legacy of American slavery is addressed in nine sites such as the Whitney Plantation in New Orleans, US President Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation and Blandford Cemetery, the resting place of thousands of Confederate soldiers.
8. Fiction
Animal
By Lisa Taddeo
Bloomsbury Circus/ Paperback/ 336 pages/ $29.95/ Available here
American author Taddeo, who made waves with her provocative non-fiction bestseller Three Women (2019), makes her fiction debut.
Joan flees New York for Los Angeles after the boss she was having an affair with bursts into a restaurant where she is having dinner with another man and shoots himself in front of her.
Embarking on a descent into depravity, she befriends a yoga instructor called Alice, who might be able to help her make sense of her own traumatic past.
9. Thriller
I Know What I Saw
By Imran Mahmood
Raven Books/ Paperback/ 355 pages/ $29.99/ Available here
Xander Shute, a wealthy banker who is now homeless, takes shelter in what he thinks is an empty flat and witnesses a woman’s murder.
But he is told by the police that the murder could not have happened, and his mental health comes under scrutiny.
10. Fiction
Barcelona Dreaming
By Rupert Thomson
Corsair/ Hardcover/ 215 pages/ $39.22/ Available here
British writer Thomson takes the reader back to the eve of another crisis – what now feels like the long-ago financial crash of 2008.
Three novellas set in Barcelona, Spain – narrated by an Englishwoman who runs a gift shop, an alcoholic jazz pianist and a translator tormented by unrequited love – are all connected by a crime committed against a young Moroccan immigrant.