Here’s what’s new in bookstores this week:
▪ The Deep by Nick Cutter (Gallery Books, $26) — The author uses a pen name for his horror tales (his debut, 2014’s The Troop, scared even Stephen King). He’s back with what press materials call The Abyss meets The Shining. When a mysterious worldwide plague, the incurable ’Gets, ravages the human race, a possible universal cure — “ambrosia” — is found on the ocean floor deep in the Marianas Trench. A research lab is set up 8 miles beneath the surface and then all communication is lost — along with humanity’s only hope? Now, that’s scary.
▪ The Secret Wisdom of the Earth by Christopher Scotton (Grand Central Publishing, $26) — The author’s debut novel took 15 years to complete and has earned an Indie Next pick designation. It’s a coming-of-age, how-I-spent-my-summer-vacation saga that follows Kevin (who narrates as an adult) as he and his grieving mother seek refuge in 1985 with Pops in the once-prosperous Appalachian coal-mining town of Medgar, Ky. Now, the mountaintops are being plundered for what coal remains and Kevin finds himself on the front lines of the conflict.
▪ The Global War on Morris by Steve Israel (Simon & Schuster, $26) — The author is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York and has been in office since 2001. Although he’s a Democrat, he takes a bipartisan swipe at both sides of the aisle in this satirical debut about government overreach. Morris Feldstein, a pharmaceutical salesman from Long Island, has his life torn apart when he charges a nonbusiness expense to his company credit card. No big deal? Not to NICK, the super-computer behind the government’s surveillance program.
— Celeste Williams
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