Here's another roundup of new paperback releases for the perpetually book-deprived.
"I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer" by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins, $17.99). True-crime writer McNamara died tragically in 2016 at the age of 46, before finishing the book she was writing about a famous cold case of serial murder. It was finally published last year; two months later, the identity of the killer was found. McNamara's book, which includes an introduction by Gillian Flynn ("Gone Girl") and an afterword by McNamara's husband, the actor Patton Oswalt, is now the basis for an upcoming HBO documentary series.
"Down the River Unto the Sea" by Walter Mosley (Mulholland Books, $15.99). Mosley, beloved for his Easy Rawlins mystery series, here launches a new character: Joe King Oliver, a private detective scarred by his past. This book, Mosley's 53rd, is "as gorgeous a novel as anything he's ever written," wrote a Washington Post reviewer. "And with Joe King Oliver I'm betting, and hoping, he's given us a character we haven't see the last of."
"The Winter Sisters" by Robin Oliveira (Penguin, $17). Seattle author Oliveira ("My Name is Mary Sutter") set this novel in 1879 New York, in which two orphan girls disappear in a blizzard. Though the book was marketed as a thriller, wrote Seattle Times reviewer Adam Woog, "it's really much more: a meaty historical novel that sensitively addresses issues-among them gender equality, the rights of minors, corruption and child abuse-that plague us even today."
"The Huntress" by Kate Quinn (William Morrow, $16.99). Quinn, author of the best-selling "The Alice Network," returns with another tale of historical fiction, in which three story lines intertwine as the Huntress-a woman on the run, accused of unspeakable war crimes against children in Poland during World War II-is pursued.
"Girls Burn Brighter" by Shobha Rao (Flatiron Books, $17.99). Named a best book of 2018 by a number of outlets, Rao's debut novel is about the friendship between a pair of young women born into an impoverished Indian village. "Rao writes cleanly and eloquently about women who, without their brightness, might have been left to die in their beds," wrote a reviewer in the Los Angeles Times. "She writes them into life, into existence, into the light of day."
"Eat the Apple" by Matt Young (Bloomsbury, $16). Young, who lives in Olympia, Wash., wrote this memoir about his years in the Marine Corps, which he joined at 18 and which included three deployments to Iraq. Seattle Times reviewer Kevin J. Hamilton described the book as "jarring and emotionally raw."