The Real-Town Murders, Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

One of the great joys in reading an Adam Roberts novel is the stuff that goes on in the background, behind the story he’s telling: the interweaving subtexts, subtle linguistic cues, shifting points of view, and blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em references that hint at the nature of complex world he’s created. The Real-Town Murders is the story of …

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Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou (Knopf)

Have you heard about Theranos? It was only a handful of years ago that its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, convinced people – and by people I mean investors with fistfuls of cash – that the company would soon be manufacturing a machine that would transform the medical industry. Theranos’ machine would make the old …

Westlake Soul, Rio Youers (ChiZine)

Westlake Soul used to be a surfer dude with a beautiful girlfriend. Now, after a tragic accident, he’s trapped inside himself, living in a permanent vegetative state but with the ability to project his consciousness outside himself and to communicate with his dog (although it must be stated that, as we read the book, we …

The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, J.W. Rinzler (Del Rey)

For Star Wars fans looking for a way to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the release of The Empire Strikes Back, this book will seem heaven sent. Rinzler follows up his magnificent The Making of Star Wars (2007) with this in-depth account of the production of the second act in George Lucas’ original three-act epic. The author distills information …

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, Michelle McNamara (Harper)

Anne Rule’s classic The Stranger Beside Me told two stories at once: the story of the pursuit and capture of a serial killer, Ted Bundy, and the story of a true-crime writer who came to realize that one of her closest friends was a monster. Similarly, Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in the Dark tells …

The Republic of Thieves, Scott Lynch (Del Rey)

Announced as early as 2008, the long, long, long-awaited sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006) and Red Seas under Red Skies (2007) finally arrives. The story picks up almost immediately after the end of Red Seas. Locke Lamora, professional thief and con artist, has been poisoned (“He was being unknit from the inside; his veins and sinews were …

Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch (Bantam)

The science-fiction caper novel constitutes a small genre to begin with (Keith Laumer and Harry Harrison may be its best-known names), but Lynch added something entirely new to it with his debut, The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006). That novel, which told the story of a young boy taken under the wing of a master thief, was …