8 New Books We Recommend This Week

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/books/review/8-new-books-we-recommend-this-week.html

Version 0 of 1.

A psychic backgammon player, Eleanor Roosevelt’s other great love, Eisenhower’s Middle East crisis, and a massive new novel by the author of “Watchmen,” Alan Moore. These are just a few of the subjects that have editors this week at The New York Times Book Review madly turning the pages.

Personally, I’m a shoo-in reader for anything Roosevelt (one of my kids is in part named after T.R.; another after Eleanor), so the book I’m most looking forward to is “Eleanor and Hick,” by Susan Quinn. First ladies seem to be having a moment as the terrific tribute to Michelle Obama this week in T Magazine attests. Isn’t it time first ladies came a little closer to first?

Pamela PaulEditor of The New York Times Book Review

A TRUCK FULL OF MONEY, by Tracy Kidder. (Random House, $28.) Tracy Kidder, author of “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” is a contemporary master of narrative nonfiction. His latest recounts the intriguing, zigzagging life of a software engineer and entrepreneur, shedding light on the start-up culture.

JERUSALEM, by Alan Moore. (Liveright, $35.) I won’t hide the fact that this book clocks in at 1,266 pages. But Moore devotees will eat up every page of it. The hinge for this ambitious, imaginative, Joycean novel about life, death, time and space is a single day in Northampton, England, in 2006.

A GAMBLER’S ANATOMY, by Jonathan Lethem. (Doubleday, $27.95.) This novel won a rave review from the very smart critic, novelist and radio host Kurt Andersen on our cover. A backgammon hustler with telepathic powers returns to Berkeley, Calif., for surgery in Lethem’s inventive 10th novel, the theme of which is remaining open to possibilities.

BLOOD AND SAND: Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower’s Campaign for Peace, by Alex von Tunzelmann. (Harper/HarperCollins, $32.50.) This book offers a shrewd, exciting history of the Suez crisis of 1956, and makes a clear case for its relevance today. (For the record, my favorite TV show on the Suez crisis remains the massively underrated BBC America series “The Hour.”)

ELEANOR AND HICK: The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady, by Susan Quinn. (Penguin Press, $30.) Who was Lorena Hickok, and why was she so important to Eleanor Roosevelt? Quinn’s book explores the relationship between the journalist and the first lady.

HIS BLOODY PROJECT, by Graeme Macrae Burnet. (Skyhorse, $24.99.) What fun to see a good crime novel among the books shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize. This thought-provoking fiction relates the story of three murders committed by a 17-year-old tenant farmer in the Scottish Highlands in 1869.

THE WANGS VS. THE WORLD, by Jade Chang. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26.) This clever and generous debut novel about racial identity left our reviewer, Kevin Nguyen, “overjoyed.” He wrote: “If there is a stereotype that Asian-Americans kids are quiet, unpopular and studious, that their parents are strict disciplinarians (think Tiger Mom), then Chang has conjured up the Wangs to prove otherwise.”

THE GUINEVERES, by Sarah Domet. (Flatiron, $25.99.) In this debut novel, four girls, all named Guinevere, plot to break out of their convent. Our reviewer, Maile Meloy, called it “deft and lovely” – and perfect reading for a vacation. Getting the book may be easier than getting the vacation, but one out of two’s not bad.