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Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the August 12th issue include:

City of Promise, by Beverly Swerling. Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print length: 432 p. HISTORICAL FICTION. EW's slant: "...nimbly weaves fact-based history and fast-paced fiction into a vivid tableau of 1870s Manhattan." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (3 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.62. Text-to-Speech: Disabled. Following City of Dreams, City of Glory, and City of God, this is the fourth novel in Swerling's sweeping saga of two Manhattan family dynasties - the Turners and the Devreys.
"It is 1864. The South’s surrender is inevitable, and Manhattan is at the heart of the recovering nation’s surge to prosperity...Joshua Turner returns home from the War with only one leg, but his ambition intact, and sees opportunity in the exponential growth of vital city workers - the managers and clerks who churn New York’s economic life. He aspires to build the city’s first apartment houses for everyman, a daring vision that will make him New York's first true real estate titan but will also attract the dangerous attention of a shadowy figure from Josh’s days in a notorious Confederate prison. Meanwhile, the irresistible and clever Mollie Brannigan, raised by her extraordinary Auntie Eileen in perhaps the toniest bordello in town, is resigned at age twenty-two to spinsterhood...till Joshua finds her at Macy’s, the city’s largest emporium, and takes her coaching in Central Park... Vividly imagined and awash in period detail and the unforgettable characters that only Beverly Swerling can conjure, City of Promise delivers a historical adventure of suspense and intrigue, daring plot twists and bitter rivalries, and the captivating love story of two people struggling to forge their own destiny. " - Publisher.

The Submission, by Amy Waldman. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print length: 320 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "A memorial intended to honor the dead reveals much more about the living in Amy Waldman's masterful debut novel..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (6 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $15.60. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Ten years after 9/11, a dazzling, kaleidoscopic novel reimagines its aftermath. A jury gathers in Manhattan to select a memorial for the victims of a devastating terrorist attack. Their fraught deliberations complete, the jurors open the envelope containing the anonymous winner’s name - and discover he is an American Muslim. Instantly they are cast into roiling debate about the claims of grief, the ambiguities of art, and the meaning of Islam. Their conflicted response is only a preamble to the country’s. The memorial’s designer is an enigmatic, ambitious architect named Mohammad Khan. His fiercest defender on the jury is its sole widow, the self-possessed and mediagenic Claire Burwell. But when the news of his selection leaks to the press, she finds herself under pressure from outraged family members and in collision with hungry journalists, wary activists, opportunistic politicians, fellow jurors, and Khan himself..." - Publisher.

The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson. Ecco, 2011. Print length: 320 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Wilson writes with the studied quirkiness of George Saunders or filmmaker Wes Anderson, and there's some genuine warmth beneath all the surface eccentricity." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $10.99; Hardcover $14.39. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief. Performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang dedicated themselves to making great art. But when an artist’s work lies in subverting normality, it can be difficult to raise well-adjusted children. Just ask Buster and Annie Fang. For as long as they can remember, they starred (unwillingly) in their parents’ madcap pieces. But now that they are grown up, the chaos of their childhood has made it difficult to cope with life outside the fishbowl of their parents’ strange world. When the lives they’ve built come crashing down, brother and sister have nowhere to go but home, where they discover that Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance - their magnum opus - whether the kids agree to participate or not..." - Publisher.

Girls in White Dresses, by Jennifer Close. Knopf, 2011. Print length: 304 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...breezier than most, a lightly sardonic chronicle of a group of recent Boston College grads whose ambitions seem to hinge largely on finding a decent guy and a doorman building without a rodent problem." Amazon customer rating: 3 1/2 stars (2 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $14.22. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Isabella, Mary, and Lauren feel like everyone they know is getting married. On Sunday after Sunday, at bridal shower after bridal shower, they coo over toasters, collect ribbons and wrapping paper, eat minuscule sandwiches and doll-sized cakes. They wear pastel dresses and drink champagne by the case, but amid the celebration these women have their own lives to contend with: Isabella is working at a mailing-list company, dizzy with the mixed signals of a boss who claims she’s on a diet but has Isabella file all morning if she forgets to bring her a chocolate muffin. Mary thinks she might cry with happiness when she finally meets a nice guy who loves his mother, only to realize he’ll never love Mary quite as much. And Lauren, a waitress at a Midtown bar, swears up and down she won’t fall for the sleazy bartender - a promise that his dirty blond curls and perfect vodka sodas make hard to keep. With a wry sense of humor, Jennifer Close brings us through those thrilling, bewildering, what-on-earth-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life years of early adulthood..." - from the hardcover edition.

The Killer is Dying, by James Sallis. Walker Books, 2011. Print length: 240 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "Sallis fills his world with cold realism and populates it with dark characters, but loses sight of his complex narrative..." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (1 review). Kindle edition $9.99; Hardcover $14.54. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"A hired killer on his final job, a burned-out detective whose wife is dying slowly and in agony, a young boy abandoned by his parents and living alone by his wits. Three people, solitary and sundered from society. In what is at one and the same time a coming-of-age novel, a realistic crime novel and a novel of the contemporary Southwest, The Killer Is Dying is above all the story of three men of vastly different age and background, and of the shape their lives take against the unforgiving sunlight and sprawl of America's fifth largest city, Phoenix." - Publisher.
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