More Than You Know
By Penny Vincenzi; Doubleday, 589 pp., $26.95; fiction
Just in time to fill the gap between seasons of Downton Abbey, Penny Vincenzi's juicy More Than You Know captures all the elements Anglophiles love: romance that crosses social boundaries; meddling matriarchs; witty dialogue; and characters so richly drawn you'll feel as if you've lost friends when the novel is over.
Eliza Fullerton-Clark is a fashion magazine editor in swinging 1960s London when she encounters handsome, headstrong Matt Shaw. Matt comes from a working-class family and is carving his way through the city as a self-made real-estate developer; Eliza grew up in an "old money" family that's fallen on hard times. Matt is a traditional man who wants his wife home with their overindulged daughter, Emmie. Can this marriage be saved?
USA TODAY says *** ½ out of four. "Brew a pot of tea and grab some biscuits. You'll enjoy this More Than You Know."
Farther Away
By Jonathan Franzen; Farrar, Straus Giroux, 336 pp., $26; non-fiction
The literary talent whose acclaimed novels include The Corrections and Freedom now collects essays on subjects ranging from bad cellphone manners to the diminishing relevance of the novel to examining the troubled life and suicide of his close friend, author David Foster Wallace.
USA TODAY says *** ½ out of four. "Franzen writes smart, incisive prose that finds deeper societal meaning in almost anything."
The Flight of Gemma Hardy
By Margot Livesey, Harper, 443 pp., $26.99; fiction
How do you recast a classic? Follow Margot Livesey's lead in The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a riveting retelling of Jane Eyre that puts the familiar feminist heroine in the pre-feminist world of early 1960s Scotland. The result is distinct and even daring â€" and far from derivative.
USA TODAY says *** ½ out of four. "As we cheer on the journey of (Livesey's) plucky, perspicacious and still-pioneering protagonist, it becomes clear that Gemma is a gem."
The Presidents Club: Inside the Wo rld's Most Exclusive Fraternity
By Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy; Simon Schuster, 527 pp., $32.50; non-fiction
Time magazine's Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy bring "brilliant investigative work" to their study of the Oval Office, uncovering a powerful secret fraternity in which ex-leaders stay in the game by counseling inexperienced successors.
USA TODAY says *** ½. "A lucid and well-written glimpse into the modern presidency and its self-sustaining shadow organization."
Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York
By Richard Zacks; Doubleday, 431 pp., $27.95, non-fiction
Zacks describes the 1890s battle between future president Teddy Roosevelt and graft-loving Tammany Hall pols who turned a blind eye to a city with more than 30,000 prostitutes. Named police commissioner in 1895, Roosevelt set about "with a zealot's self-confidence" to rid the city of illicit pleasures.
USA TODAY says *** ½. A "delightful and often hilarious ode to Manhattan."
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