New Nonfiction: Paris at the End of the World – John Baxter

If you love armchair travel and France in particular, Baxter is a reliable pleasure. His previous books about living the good life, mostly located in Paris, have been consistently well-reviewed and called “charming” and “splendid” by reviewers. Booksellers know the proof is in the pudding—Baxter sells. It’s clear his fans are devoted and that they are spreading the word.

This new book, again located in Paris, expands the scope of Baxter’s exploration to WWI Paris. He pins the narrative on the experiences of his own grandfather–an Australian serviceman. In 1914 Parisians, under constant threat of invasion, chose to drink the last of wine and live like there would be no tomorrow. The young soldiers, often traveling from home for the first time, were forever transformed by their Parisian experience.

 The most original and unexpectedly beguiling account of the Great War I have ever read. John Baxter is one of the master storytellers of our age, and by telling the tale of his half-forgotten grandfather, plucked out of sleepy Australia and pitched into the European massacre, he has been able to re-create not only the all-too-familiar Hell of the trenches but also the Heaven of sex and food and hedonism that was Paris at the twilight of its golden age. A revelation, an adventure, a joy to read.”
— Kevin Jackson, author of Constellation of Genius:1922: Modernism Year One.

“In lesser hands, the narrative could have easily become confusing, even boring, but Baxter carries it off with aplomb. An enjoyable, swift read, and the author’s final solution to Archie’s wartime dilemma makes it as fun as a work of historical fiction.”
— Kirkus Reviews

Paris at the End of the World: The City of Light During the Great War, 1914-1918 (9780062221407) by John Baxter. $15.99 trade paperback original. 4/15/14 on sale.

New Nonfiction: Dark Invasion – Howard Blum

Howard Blum is one of those authors who writes history so vividly it feels like you’re reading a movie. Part of his talent is finding a character to frame the plot around, giving his histories a strong narrative thrust. So perhaps it won’t be a surprise that this sizzling true-life story of a police inspector who uncovers and stops a German terrorist plot in WWI is being developed as a movie starring Bradley Cooper.

Blum’s previous work has been called “unabashedly entertaining” (Salon) and “wildly compelling” (Kirkus). His American Lightning was a terrific read and won the Edgar Award. I expect that this chilling story of terrorists plotting to use explosives and biological weapons against New York, the Capital and other urban targets in 1915 will have a special resonance and reach a wide readership.

Booksellers, keep an eye on this one. With great advance reviews and coverage by the WSJ, USA Today, Vanity Fair and NPR’s Fresh Air, the one could pop.

Terrifically engaging and pertinent tale of the New York City bomb squad that foiled German terrorist plots against the United States at the outbreak of World War I. Vanity Fair contributor Blum masterly retrieves this largely forgotten, haunting history of Germany’s subversive attempts to halt the U.S. ability to send munitions to the Allies fighting against it in Europe. The author pursues the key players in an episodic narrative…creates some memorable portraits, accompanied by a lively gallery of photos, and keeps the heroic good-versus-evil plot simmering along in a nicely calibrated work of popular narrative history. Instructive, yes, but also as engrossing as good detective fiction.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Blum’s central figure, police inspector Tom Tunney, an experienced undercover operative, was assigned to break what British intelligence had demonstrated to its U.S. counterparts was a terrorist operation…. “There was no specific law against espionage” in 1915, but as his well-financed opponents escalated their efforts to the point of attempted murder—of no less a figure than J.P. Morgan—and to projects for germ warfare, including anthrax, Tunney formed a picture, found “an angle of attack,” closed in, and made arrests. Blum’s narrative of America’s first exercise in homeland security is a worthwhile page-turner, combining the best features of a police procedural and a spy novel with a firm base in verifiable events.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Howard Blum’s story of the sinister and scary German terror attacks on America 100 years ago reads more like a le Carré novel than a meticulous reconstruction of history. But the fact that it’s true makes Dark Invasion all the more riveting. This is a terrific spy story.”
— Cokie Roberts

Check out this nifty video!

Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany’s Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America (9780062307552) by Howard Blum. $27.99 hardcover. 2/11/14 on sale.

New Fiction: A Question of Honor – Charles Todd

“Charles Todd” is a mother/son writing team with two accomplished historical mystery series under their belts. If you’re a fan of mysteries with three dimensional characters, vivid period settings and a compelling mystery driving the plot, you’re in for a treat.

Todd’s first series features Inspector Ian Rutledge, a WWI vet working for Scotland Yard and battling demons he brought back from the war. Books from that series regularly hit the bestseller list and the NYTBR summarized, “Book by book, the mother/son team who writes as Charles Todd continue to delve deeper and deeper into the national psyche of Britain during the unsettled years following World War I.”

In 2009 Todd introduced a second series featuring Bess Crawford, daughter of a distinguished WWI officer. In the first book, A Duty to the Dead, Bess follows her father and signs up to go overseas as a nurse in the Great War. Again, the NYTBR weighed in positively and established that the series was right up there with the best: “Readers who can’t get enough of Maisie Dobbs, the intrepid World War I battlefield nurse in Jacqueline Winspear’s novels, or Hester Latterly, who saw action in the Crimean War in a series of novels by Anne Perry, are bound to be caught up in the adventures of Bess Crawford.”

This is the fifth book finds Bess in back India where she grew up and investigating a long-ago murder in her father’s regiment. PW summarizes:

Bestseller Todd once again demonstrates his talent at depicting the horrors of war in his excellent fifth mystery featuring English nurse Bess Crawford. As the carnage of WWI finally nears its end, Bess finds herself investigating murders committed a decade earlier on two different continents. In 1908, Bess was living in India with her parents when a member of her father’s regiment, Lt. Thomas Wade, came under suspicion of killing his parents. But before he could be apprehended, Wade vanished near the Khyber Pass. Although no body was recovered, he was presumed dead. While Bess is serving in France in 1918, the last words of a dying soldier persuade her that Wade might have survived. Her innate curiosity and knowledge of how traumatizing the scandal was to her father lead her to again play sleuth. In the process, she also examines the triple murder of an entire family that Wade may have committed in England before leaving for India. The extremely clever plot builds to a satisfying resolution.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A Question of Honor: A Bess Crawford Mystery (9780062237156) by Charles Todd. $25.99 hardcover. 8/27/13 on sale.

New Nonfiction: The Sleepwalkers – Christopher Clark

Already well-reviewed in England, PW has also given this book a strong advance review. But for me, the most useful analysis comes from Steve Corrigan, nonfiction critic extraordinaire from The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis. He never writes me that I don’t learn something. Here are his thoughts on The Sleepwalkers:

Clark is another of those British historians, like Ian Kershaw, Anthony Roberts, Max Hastings, John Keegan, and Michael Burleigh who don’t take partisan views.  It’s refreshing to read them, for the narrative style as well as the exhaustive research….But that’s also the strong point of this book, the amazing amount of detail and the wealth of research that went into it.  Clark uses sources from all the major players in the build-up to what became WWI.  As a consequence, he is able to show perspective from several fronts.  To say his approach is non-partisan would be an understatement.

What Clark concentrates on are the entanglements and alliances between the various countries that turned a local Balkan war into a continental one.  The book could be subtitled, “This Is How We Go To War.”  There were American politicians at the time trying to convince President Wilson not to be involved in the labyrinth of European politics, and from reading this book, it’s easy to see why.  Clark spends most of his narrative on the foreign ministers of the countries and their dealings with each, rather than on the kings, kaisers, and tsars.  In this way his book would be a good complement to Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, which dealt more with the familial relationships of the leaders of the countries than with the ministers.

It’s an amazing achievement.  The Germans have often been given the brunt of responsibility for the war, but Clark argues differently.  In the end he comes to the conclusion that war came, not inevitably, but because there wasn’t enough done to stop it.”

“Christopher Clark has written the most readable account of the origins of the First World War since Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. The difference is that The Sleepwalkers is a lovingly researched work of the highest scholarship. It is hard to believe we will ever see a better narrative of what was perhaps the biggest collective blunder in the history of international relations.” — Niall Ferguson

“WWI is frequently described as a long-fused inevitable conflict, yet this comprehensively researched, gracefully written account of the war’s genesis convincingly posits a bad brew of diplomatic contingencies and individual agency as the cause.” – Publishers Weekly

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (9780061146657) by Christopher Clark. $29.99 hardcover. 3/19/13 on sale.