New Year’s resolutions are meant to be harsh and unforgiving, but who wants to start off the year feeling dour or Puritanical? Maybe, for now, you’re on the straight and narrow, and maybe you’re doing an admirable job of it. But even the saints among us need an outlet now and then. Why do we have writers around if not to help us imagine what it’s like to live as someone who’s different from ourselves? The bad boys and girls in these 10 books will let you slip into some naughty, scandalous lives—people who willingly disappear (or are disappeared), cads, philanderers, murderers—you know the types. Just make sure you wake up as your resolution-abiding self in the morning.
FICTION
Released: Dec. 4, 2012
"The overwhelming sadness of the events in both stories is leavened by the matter-of-fact firmness with which Vine measures them out. Not even fans who expect more felonies will be able to put this one down."
Vine's 14th (
The Birthday Present, 2009, etc.) is a novel within a novel--well, within a novella, anyway--in which both tales revolve around a straight woman's unexpected relationship with a gay man.
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NONFICTION
Released: Nov. 13, 2012
"A sexy story resting on a bed of comprehensive scholarship and pursued with Sherlock-ian imagination."
A noted Dickens scholar and biographer traces the story of Dickens' relationship with young actress Nelly Ternan, an affair that has titillated Dickens fans and scholars since the mid 19th century.
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FICTION
Released: Nov. 13, 2012
"It's not the game, but how well you play it, and Haas plays it very well indeed in what clearly seems a series launch."
Once more to Moscow and the Russian tundra on a supersecret mission goes a solitary hero in a thriller that makes the familiar seem fresh.
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FICTION
Released: July 17, 2012
"A sweetheart of a novel, complete with a hazy ending. "
Sometimes things just don't work out, no matter how hard we wish they would. But there's irony, so we have that going for us. Right?
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