fiction science, Don finds himself falling for the most unlikely of women. With The Rosie Project, Simsion has created a wacky, wonderful love story that is just plain fun to read. The ways in which Don and Rosie challenge and complement each other is downright inspiring—not to mention hilarious. Simsion writes with humor and heart, and his story is both original and endearing. The Rosie Project teaches us that it’s never too late to discover who we are, and empowers us to find the people who will love us—quirks and all. —Abby Plesser
Who Asked You? By Terry McMillan
Viking $27.95, 400 pages ISBN 9780670785698 Audio, eBook available
popular FICTION
— A m y Sc r i b n e r
Identical
the conflict between the Giannis brothers and the Kronons. Many characters hold pieces to the mystery of Dita’s death, but no one has been able to put the whole puzzle together. Scott Turow does a masterful job of blending different narrative points of view, leading readers on a twisting, dizzying ride. Without being heavy-handed, Turow also makes Identical a cautionary tale about how money pumped into elections undermines democracy, and subtly asks what justice is. Few characters find any sense of closure concerning Dita’s murder, but suspense lovers will end up with a rewarding resolution to a complicated mystery. —Dale McGarrigle
Mrs. Poe By Lynn Cullen
By Scott Turow
Grand Central $28, 384 pages ISBN 9781455527205 Audio, eBook available
CHOCOLAT
Gallery $26, 336 pages ISBN 9781476702919 eBook available
HISTORICAL FICTION
Vianne Rocher returns to the beautiful French village of Lansquenet where she discovers that things have changed in unexpected ways.
suspense
The dean of the legal suspense genre returns with his 11th novel, set in Midwestern Kindle County. Inspired by the Greek myth of Castor and Pollux, Identical is the story of twins Paul and Cass Giannis and the event that changed their lives forever: the murder of Cass’ girlfriend Aphrodite “Dita” Kronon. Cass pled guilty to the crime and served time in prison, while Paul rose through the legal ranks to become a popular local politician. Now, 25 years later, Cass is about to be released, while Paul is the favorite to become mayor of Kindle County. Neither fact sits well with real estate magnate Hal Kronon, Dita’s older brother, who feels that the whole truth about her murder has never come out. So he employs his considerable wealth to prove Paul’s complicity in the crime. Identical soon becomes a case of “Be careful what you wish for,” as Hal’s investigative team of security chief Evon Miller, a former FBI agent, and aged P.I. Tim Brodie, who investigated the original crime, soon find themselves sucked into
Often the hardest thing for a historical novel to do—especially one centered on a real and very famous figure—is surprise its reader. After all, we know how the stories of people like Anne Boleyn and Joan of Arc and even Edgar Allan Poe end. With Mrs. Poe, Lynn Cullen weaves a dark, sensuous love triangle between three real people, and in the midst of many real historical details, she creates something truly and wonderfully surprising. Cullen’s narrator is Frances Osgood, a struggling writer separated from her husband and trying to support her two children in 1845 New York City. The whole town is under the spell of Edgar Allan Poe and his poem “The Raven,” and when Osgood gets the opportunity to meet the famous author, she finds herself just as captivated by his personal charms as by his literary ones. Their friendship quickly becomes something more, and the pair begin to trade romantic poems and steal quiet moments together, even as Osgood grows closer to Poe’s wife: his young, sickly cousin, Virginia. As Osgood’s relationship with both Mr. and Mrs. Poe grows more complex,
“Worth immersing yourself in.” —The Washington Post
Also available from Penguin Books:
“Delectable . . . Delicious.” —USA Today
Penguin Books penguin.com
r e a d m o r e at b o o k pa g e . c o m
No one does slice-of-life like Terry McMillan, whose latest novel sets us down in a shabby modern-day Los Angeles neighborhood where Betty Jean Butler struggles to make ends meet and keep her family together. Her daughter, Trinetta, is caught in the clutches of drug addiction. Her son, Dexter, is in prison for a foolish carjacking. And her other son, Quentin, is a successful chiropractor who wants nothing to do with his family. Add to all this a husband succumbing to senility, two busybody sisters and a fulltime job at a local hotel, and Betty Jean’s hands aren’t just full—they’re overflowing. Luckily, Betty Jean has a wisecracking best friend across the street to lean on, and a sassy nurse to help care for her husband—even if that care is delivered in a way found in no medical textbook. When Trinetta leaves her two young sons with Betty Jean before disappearing into the streets, Betty Jean knows something’s got to give. “Even though I haven’t told anybody, I’m scared,” she says. “What if I can’t handle all this responsibility? What if I’ve forgotten how to be a parent? . . . I don’t want them to turn out like mine did. I want them to be proud, honest, dignified, civil, kind and loving. I want them to be strangers to trouble.”
Betty Jean has to swallow her pride and ask for help in ways she never imagined. Slowly, in their own ways, friends and family band together to help her raise the boys, who have promising futures despite their troubled past. McMillan will likely always be best known for her runaway bestsellers How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale, both made into movies. But Who Asked You? stands up to any of McMillan’s previous work, with a cast of wholly memorable characters and a plucky heroine you genuinely want to win. Although McMillan writes primarily about African-American families, her ever-present wry humor and keen portrayal of love in all its exasperating imperfection make her work universal.
The tantalizing sequel to the New York Times bestseller
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