Forthcoming Books: Stay Awake by Dan Chaon

I didn’t know Dan Chaon had a new book coming out until I read Benjamin Percy’s short preview in the February Esquire. It’s a collection of stories called Stay Awake, following Chaon’s well-reviewed  novels Among the Missing and Await Your Reply. 

Percy says this: “If Chaon’s 2001 novel, Among the Missing, which was nominated for a National Book Award, contained some of the best fiction written in the past 20 years, Stay Awake is its darker, more unsettling cousin. These stories are defined by disturbing unreliability, with just enough room between the characters’ memories, like the space between trees in a dark forest, to slip through, get lost.” [Note to self: include lines like this in future book reviews so that other people will quote them.]

Publication date is February 7, 2012, from Ballantine.

Forthcoming Books: The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey will be published later this month. Margot is a terrific writer, and I suspect this will be a very popular book. Described as a modern take on Jane Eyre, it's set in the 1960s, in Scotland.

I really liked her previous book, The House on Fortune Street, which I reviewed here. I noted then that Jane Eyre was referred to often in the novel, and I wondered if there were parallels that I was missing. I guess it's time for me to read that one . . . (That's right. I confess. I've never read Jane Eyre.)

Anyway. Look for the new Margot Livesey. Coming soon to a bookstore near you.

Forthcoming Books: The Mindful Writer by Dinty Moore

[Note: I'm beginning this new feature, Forthcoming Books, to draw attention to titles I'm looking forward to that haven't yet been released. If you've got a book coming out in the near future, leave a comment or send me an email and I'll look into it.]

The Mindful Writer by Dinty Moore is scheduled for release in May 2012. I'm looking forward to it because Dinty Moore is the editor of the excellent publication, Brevity, but also because I just read his book The Accidental Buddhist, about his exploration of the various branches of Buddhism in America. And this new book about the creative process with, apparently, a Buddhist slant, looks like it's right up my alley.

Here's a recent Interview with Dinty Moore.