Notable Books

In this novel about the perils of unbridled ambition, Yale Law graduate Audrey Coyne lands a coveted clerkship with a conservative judge on the liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Like the judge, Audrey is female, ambitious, and half-Asian. They share judicial philosophies. But in a case involving gay marriage, Audrey must decide how far she’ll go in pursuit of a clerkship at the Supreme Court. Former appeals court clerk Lat was the blogger behind the gossipy website “Underneath Their Robes.” While not a great novel—and one character has an extremely foul vocabulary—this fable provides an insider’s peek behind judicial chambers’ doors.

Sting of the Drone

From a base outside Las Vegas, drone pilots initiate lethal strikes against High Value Targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In response, international criminal enterprises rent out their expertise to al-Qaeda and hatch a sophisticated plot against the United States. As Ukrainian cyber criminals hack into networks controlling drones and subway systems, other operatives recruit Muslims in the United States to plant bombs. Meanwhile pilots face unseen dangers and the committee that authorizes drone strikes fights to keep the program alive amid controversy. In this often expletive-laden page-turner Clarke highlights the complexities of the drone program.

The Unquiet Dead

A special police unit investigates the apparently accidental death of a Toronto-area man. After a slow and confusing beginning, the novel finds its footing as the two investigators, Rachel Getty and Esa Khat, try to figure out the identity of the victim and his connection to the Muslim community and the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. Will Khat, a Muslim, be able to follow the evidence even if it implicates other Muslims? Despite a few gratuitous swipes at American attitudes toward Muslims, Khan has crafted a novel highlighting through flashbacks the horrors of Srebrenica and the part the international community played in it.

Malice: A Mystery

The murder of best-selling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka shocks Japan’s literary world. It doesn’t take long for Kaga, the investigator who is a former schoolteacher, to realize that things are not as they seem. Almost immediately he settles on the novelist’s friend, Nonoguchi, as the likely murderer, but the motive eludes him. In this psychological portrait of childhood friends and an unreliable narrator, Higashino takes the reader on a ride where the crime’s solution lies in small details that only reveal themselves as the dogged detective keeps digging long after it seems he’s found the answer.

Spotlight

Before Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the Little House books, she penned an autobiography intended for adults. Never published, the manuscript became grist for the series of juvenile novels that made Wilder famous. Her daughter Rose Wilder also borrowed from the manuscript for inspiration for her own fiction. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography (South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2014) contains Wilder’s original edits and additional editorial notes, as well as photographs and maps. The introduction sets the context: a financially strapped mother and daughter trying to find a publisher during the Depression.

In Little Rhody (Longman, Green and Co., 1953), Neta Lohnes Frazier wrote about the day-to-day goings-on of a 10-year-old girl living in Michigan in 1875. Although out of print, the book offers children a gentle story of life in a bygone day. —S.O.