12 new paperbacks to pick up in January

Works by Chris Bohjalian, Amity Gaige and William Boyle are among this month’s new releases:

American history

‘The Church Committee Report,’ edited by Matthew Guariglia and Brian Hochman

In 1975, a congressional committee led by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) began investigating possible illegal activity at the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other governmental agencies that were operating in great secrecy. Its findings, published in 1976, stunned many Americans and led to lasting reforms. As Beverly Gage writes in a foreword to this newly edited version of the report, “No investigation before or since has yielded quite the same shock effect or level of detail.”

‘The Containment’ by Michelle Adams

Adams, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, writes about Milliken v. Bradley, a 1974 Supreme Court decision that she deplores as the end of “the country’s serious efforts at school integration.” Milliken centered on the Detroit school system and indicated the significant hurdles that integration faced even outside the South. She chronicles the case with a compelling blend of academic rigor, reportorial legwork and engaging prose.

Sociology

‘The Sirens’ Call’ by Chris Hayes

In his new book, the host of “All In With Chris Hayes” argues that our sense of agency has dwindled to a minimum in the face of personal technologies and the corporations that own them. Our attention is scattered to the winds. Hayes is concerned not just with the ability or inability to pay attention, but also with the deeply human need to receive it.

Mysteries and thrillers

‘Saint of the Narrows Street’ by William Boyle

The characters in Boyle’s novel — Jane the Stain, Religious Pete, All Bad Allie, Widow Marie — are a colorful bunch. Denizens of Gravesend, a working-class Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, they are bound by a curse common among Americans: the unrealized hope of leaving their enclave for a better life. In The Washington Post, E.A. Aymar wrote: “This isn’t a crime novel that relies merely on suspense. Rather, we eagerly read ‘Saint of the Narrows Street’ because of its beautifully rendered characters and haunting sense of place.”

‘The Jackal’s Mistress’ by Chris Bohjalian

Bohjalian’s latest, inspired by true events, creates a moving tale about the difficult choices people must make in dangerous circumstances. Since her husband, Peter, was captured by the Union army, Libby Steadman has kept the family’s gristmill running on their Virginia farm with the support of a freedman and his wife. As battles rage ever closer to their Shenandoah Valley property, Libby discovers a gravely injured Union soldier. She vows to keep the man alive, just as she hopes a Yankee woman might do for Peter, but hiding him proves treacherous.

‘Heartwood’ by Amity Gaige

Gaige’s fifth novel follows a nurse who takes a leave of absence to recover from the stress of the COVID pandemic by hiking the Appalachian Trail. When she disappears somewhere in the wilds of Maine, an engaging cast of characters, including a dogged game warden and a salty retiree, race to piece together what happened to her and why.

Literary history

‘Jane Austen’s Bookshelf’ by Rebecca Romney

A few years ago, rare-book dealer Romney bought a copy of the 18th-century novel “Evelina” by Frances Burney. She eventually discovered that Jane Austen probably got the title “Pride and Prejudice” from a phrase in another novel by Burney. Romney began scouring Austen’s letters and novels and learned that there were many other female authors who influenced her. Romney invites readers to join her on a thrilling journey of adventure and self-discovery as she reads books by these women and learns more about their lives.

Fiction

‘Dream State’ by Eric Puchner

Puchner’s novel traverses half a century, coalescing into a family history that feels monumental. It begins in Montana in the days before a wedding in 2004. Cece, the bride, meets the groom’s brooding best friend, and emotional complications ensue. The rest of this absorbing novel keeps jumping ahead in time to see the effects on these characters as they age and mature, rage and forgive.

‘Reboot’ by Justin Taylor

Taylor’s second novel is a very serious story about the perniciousness of conspiracy thinking, wrapped in a very funny yarn about the shallowness of celebrity culture. The humor comes in the form of a TV-world satire, revolving around the relaunch of a beloved teen drama in the vein of “The O.C.” Taylor is putting a present-day spin on the kinds of concerns that Don DeLillo stuffed his novels with in the ’70s and ’80s, and he seems inspired by his predecessor’s paranoia — by the idea that living in a mediated reality is messing with our heads.

‘Tartufo’ by Kira Jane Buxton

When a massive, impossibly valuable truffle is discovered, the residents of a dying Italian town are swept up in a comic storm of fungus mania. Buxton glides around the lovely doomed village in a cloud of mirth, introducing us to a charming cast of humans and animals while serving up one buttery page of comedy after another.

‘Too Soon’ by Betty Shamieh

Shamieh’s debut novel emerges from a robust theater career: She is a Guggenheim fellow, playwright, actor and artistic director. “Too Soon” grafts elements of theater and novels to give us intergenerational romantic quests, feuds and betrayals on a Shakespearean scale, filtered through the present-day story of a struggling midcareer director who reluctantly agrees to stage an Arabic translation of “Hamlet” in the West Bank.

‘Witchcraft for Wayward Girls’ by Grady Hendrix

Hendrix’s bestselling books take classic horror tropes and twist them, daring readers to accept new forms. His latest follows a teenage girl in 1970 who is sent to a maternity home in St. Augustine, Florida, after becoming pregnant. It does include witchcraft, but it also explores the found families people in difficult situations acquire, coven or not.

This is an excerpt from a Washington Post story.