Weekend picks for book lovers, including 'Mary B,' a riff on 'Pride and Prejudice'

What should you read this weekend? USA TODAY’s picks for book lovers include "Mary B," a companion to Jane Austen's classic "Pride and Prejudice," and a look back at the Flint water crisis.

"Mary B" by Katherine J. Chen; Random House, 322 pp.; fiction

Jane Austen had little to say in “Pride and Prejudice” about the middle Bennet daughter, Mary, and most of it was dismissive.

Elder sister Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy got their happily ever after, while Mary was doomed to be the Jan Brady of Regency romance.

In “Mary B,” the title character gets some attitude, and a measure of revenge, in a story that inhabits and critiques Austen’s novel. “I, too, hoped quietly for romance and also for marriage as much as any of my sisters did,” she insists. She’s just disinclined to compromise her intelligence to achieve them.

Author Katherine J. Chen is mindful, though, that a young woman among the gentry of early 1800s England could only act out so much, especially with parents desperate to land financial security (i.e., husbands) for their daughters

The first third of “Mary B” roughly matches the plot of “Pride and Prejudice,” with a few twists. But once Chen leaps past Austen’s plot, “Mary B” becomes more fully inspired and free to upend Austen’s novel.

Mary, for her part, uses a visit to Pemberley to put her much-mocked reading habits – her “silent rebellion” – to good use. And she finds romance as well – this is still Austen’s world, after all.

USA TODAY says ★★★½ out of four. “An ingenious debut novel … ‘Mary B’ is a tribute not just to Austen but to defiant women of any era.”

"The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy" by Anna Clark; Metropolitan Books, 320 pp.; nonfiction

Examines the health and safety disaster that occurred in spring 2014 after Flint, Michigan, a city with roughly 99,000 residents, most of them African-American, severed its connection with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and reconnected its water supply with the Flint River itself.

USA TODAY says ★★★★. “It’s hard to overstate how important Anna Clark’s new book is … riveting.”

"The Book of M" by Peng Shepherd; William Morrow, 485 pp.; fiction

One day, a man in a market in India loses his shadow, and soon, his memory with it. More and more follow, and entire countries collapse as the new “shadowless” forget their families, their names and their ability to perform basic functions.

USA TODAY says ★★★½. “An apocalyptic thriller with heart … devastating and inventive.”

"Half Gods" by Akil Kumarasamy; William Morrow, 205 pp.; fiction

The Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009) serves as both a backdrop and a catalyst for this debut short-story collection.

USA TODAY says ★★★½. “Inspired … a testament to Kumarasamy’s talent for finding the most tender spots of the human soul.”

"My Twenty-Five Years in Provence" by Peter Mayle; Knopf, 192 pp.; nonfiction

A posthumous collection of previously unpublished essays about Provence, France, by the author of the 1990 best-seller “A Year in Provence.”

Contributing reviewers: Mark Athitakis, Gene Seymour, Grace Z. Li, Ashley Day

WSOC