Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction.  The Other Side of Prospect, by Nicholas Dawidoff (Norton). The result of eight years of reporting, this deft chronicle delves into the story of Bobby Johnson, a sixteen-year-old from New Haven, who, in 2006, was coerced into confessing to a brutal murder he didn’t commit. Dawidoff presents portraits of the individuals involved, juxtaposed with research on segregation, the Great Migration, and mass incarceration. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The Beloved Vision, by Stephen Walsh (Pegasus). This musical study charts the rise of Romanticism, in the nineteenth century, as composers came to see individual voice as the key to emotional expression, and began to assert their “existential being through a recognizable, even idiosyncratic musical language.” Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. The Hero of This Book, by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco). It is August, 2019, and the unnamed narrator, sightseeing in London, is haunted by the presence of her late mother, who grew up “disabled and Jewish in small-town Iowa,” was stubborn and bad with money, and was also brilliant and effervescent and a great appreciator of life. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Properties of Thirst, by Marianne Wiggins (Simon & Schuster). Set around the time of Pearl Harbor, this poignant saga centers on the town of Lone Pine, in California’s Central Valley, where Rocky Rhodes has built a beautiful home for his wife, a doctor and a cook of some renown. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. | 
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