Recently, I've noticed that many of my contacts on Facebook have hundreds of friends. Yet, I suspect that most of us have just a few close friends we turn to in our everyday lives: ones who have stuck by us through thick and thin, who offer advice when solicited, make us laugh when we feel like crying, and occasionally tell us the last thing we want -- but need -- to hear. We are blessed to have them. Good friends like these are also at the heart of the marvelous new novel, The Supremes at Earl’s All You Can Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore, an outrageously funny yet equally tender tale.

Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean are an inseparable trio. Nicknamed the Supremes in their high school years, Odette is bold and fearlessly outspoken; Clarice is proud and talented, but often in denial; while Barbara Jean is more vulnerable and tends to live in regret. Fiercely loyal, unabashedly supportive, and brutally honest when it counts, their enduring relationship has lasted forty years. Though each has suffered through her share of personal struggles and tragedies, it is their deepening bonds of friendship that have coaxed, pulled, and prodded each other through the harder times, a remarkable testament to sisterhood in any age. And while good humor and wit serve as the trampoline to bounce back from many a sticky situation, they are balanced with the salve of tender mercies in more intimate moments. Ultimately, it is the reactions and interactions of these three women over forty years that are the center of the story and make this book such an inspiring and rewarding read.

Along the journey, Earl’s All You Can Eat buffet has long become the central meeting point for commiseration every Sunday morning, immediately following Baptist church services. Decked out in their Sunday best, the three ladies and their partners take pride of place at a favored table in the crowded establishment where they and other locals, an often rowdy and flamboyant group, gather to dish on the latest gossip as well as some mighty fine cooking. You never know what’s bound to bubble to the surface, but you can bet it will be as delicious as the southern favorites Earl serves.

Some have likened this book to The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg. They are each charming stories of true friendship, with authentic characters living life’s joys and tribulations out loud, yet infused with a genteel grace and doses of downright hilarity. C’mon and sit a spell at Earl’s All You Can Eat. You’re among friends. No Facebook required.

Meg Wolitzer, longtime New Yorker and author of Surrender, Dorothy and The Ten-Year Nap, brings us a delicious new read that covers the mysterious and tragedy-tinged lives of six friends in the city, in her brand-new novel, The Interestings.

At Spirit-in-the-Woods camp during her fifteenth summer, Julie -- soon to be Jules -- Jacobson leaves behind the stifling pain of her father’s death and starts her life fresh. At the artsy utopia, Jules finds her niche -- a group of high schoolers who call themselves (not so ironically) “the interestings.” There are Goodman and Ash Wolf, the lazy “architect” and his loving, perfectionist sister; the mysterious musician, Jonah; the emotional dancer, Cathy; and the talented cartoonist, Ethan Figman. The novel moves from the characters’ teenage forms -- bursting with nearly infinite potential -- to their almost-permanent adult selves in the span of just two chapters. In this massive jump, Wolitzer manages not to give too much away, and despite the novel skipping backward and forward between eras and characters, it manages to feel less confusing and more like a string of shuffled home movies. Her style lends to the characters -- the mostly miserable “interestings” -- an alluring mystery that kept this reader wondering how they moved from one point to the next. What made Goodman disappear at seventeen? What the heck happened to Jonah? How did Ethan and Ash end up married?

After Ethan’s artistic talents are recognized and syndicated, turning him into a Disneyish success, Jules is faced with the realization that her life as a small-scale psychiatrist may be lackluster compared to the glorious lifestyles of her friends. Focused more on the life of her teenage self than the one she shares with her severely depressed husband, Dennis, Jules finds herself withering from envy. Unfortunately, her closeness to Ethan and Ash’s family also puts her in the middle of a very old secret.

At first glance, the novel may seem a terribly sad character study of fifty-somethings looking back on youth, but it is much deeper, and much more hopeful. The book is, in part, a lament for the possibilities and opportunities lost to age, but while much of it is spent on the contemplation of death and other finite ends, the characters are still allowed a natural growth. These characters, like the repressed and much abused Jonah or the invariably jealous Jules, are both hurtful and hurting in turn, but manage to survive and evolve, even in their silvered years. This is the most attractive part of The Interestings; not the well-paced plot or flawed, scarred characters, or even the breathtaking moments of poetic injustice, but the hope that it offers. While I would classify the book as a tragedy, an ultimately tearful contemplation of life’s inability to last, its sadness is softened by the strength of its inhabitants -- their willingness to pick up their lives and move forward, to grow, fail, fight, learn, and be redeemed.

In times of crisis, people have always looked to the words of a leader -- political, religious, familial -- for comfort. In Paulo Coelho's Manuscript Found in Accra, for the people of Jerusalem on the eve of a great battle in July 1099, those words come from a mysterious figure called the Copt. A crowd of scared, confused, and even hopeful citizens is summoned by the articulate speaker not so he can dictate or instruct them; rather, the Copt desires only to address their fears and questions with the truest wisdom he knows.

The citizens have questions: about the lives they've led, in sin or with God, about what's in store for them in the future and in the afterlife. "Speak to us about defeat," they ask. "Tell us about solitude." "Why are some people luckier than others?" "Did I give enough love?" And the Copt does something quite unprecedented: He answers each question.

Eloquent and poetic, the Copt speaks in parables of wisdom and insight, but his voice is very human. He seems to understand that the people standing before him are as flawed as the violent world in which they live. He assures them that there is a way to find a path to peace with themselves and with each other -- even in their errors and misjudgings. Not quite assigned to any one religion, the Copt even joins in conversation with a rabbi, an imam, and a priest.

Coelho is able to capture the soothing voice of religious guidance mixed with the realistic advice of therapist -- the Copt is both of these for the people of Jerusalem. He can offer them no real assurance that they will all survive the battle that's about to befall their city, but what he can give them is the ability to forgive themselves and each other their past errors and to move forward on a righteous path of peace and understanding. As they face their possible demise and the destruction of their city, the people are strengthened with the hope that the Copt gives them, and the reader too can't help but heed his timeless advice: "Only someone capable of honoring each step he takes can comprehend his own worth."

Translated from his native Portuguese, Manuscript Found in Accra is Coelho's imagining of one of the lost scriptures of the apocryphal gospels. Known for his examinations of spirituality, philosophy, and the human condition, his works have been translated into more than seventy-four languages.

Nearly seventy years ago, Robert Penn Warren wrote All the King’s Men, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. The book is a sweeping novel about politics, corruption, morality, and love in the American South of the early twentieth century. It was adapted twice for big screen -- the 1949 version won an Academy Award for Best Picture. It is sometimes found in high school English classes, among modern classics such as The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird. It is a book people respect; it also turns out to be a book that people still really like.

The plot chronicles the rise and fall of Willie Stark, a fictional Southern politician, told from the perspective of Jack Burden, an ex-reporter who becomes Stark’s right-hand man. Willie is loosely based on Huey Long, Louisiana’s populist governor (though I also found plenty of parallels to Robert Caro’s masterful biographies of Lyndon Johnson). The governor needs Jack to "find some dirt" on a judge who has become a political opponent, "and make it stick." Jack obliges, even when it becomes clear that doing so will have disastrous consequences for everyone involved.

Beyond politics, there is love, starting with marital infidelity that seems to be the backdrop to virtually every relationship. There is also the love that Jack has for Anne Stanton, his now-grown-up childhood playmate, and the deep and changing friendship he has with Adam Stanton, Anne’s brother. The novel recalls their idyllic past, but life is always more complicated than that; closer inspection shows that even the past was corrupt with racism, greed, hate, and delusion.

There are plenty of big themes at work. Each character tries his or her own way to deal with the moral corruption. In a way, though, it doesn't matter much whether they embrace it, hide from it, or fight it -- the stink is always there. This examination of history is all the more moving for when and where it was written: at the dawn of the modern Civil Rights era and the disappearance of the “Old South.”

All The King’s Men is a long book, and the narrator knows how to sling a metaphor. But, time after time, just as the reader is about to get exasperated, Warren deftly reels us back in, with a clarity of language and striking purpose. Every word was intentional. We see that we have been played by the author, whose narrator has a fatal flaw. Jack wants to be cynical, and he wants to show us how little he cares. Unfortunately, he knows better, as do we.

If I had to describe Ally Carter’s Heist Society series in one phrase it would be “Oceans Eleven” meets YA but really it’s so much more. I think that’s most apparent in the newest installment of the series, Perfect Scoundrels. Katarina “Kat” Bishop, a sixteen-year-old version of Danny Ocean himself, has had a “colorful” past for one so young. The product of a long line of con men and thieves, Kat has seen -- and stolen -- more priceless artifacts than most people see in their lives. But when the grandmother of her boyfriend, W.W. Hale the Fifth, dies, leaving him with a multibillion-dollar corporation, Kat must decide if Hale’s happiness is worth investigating what could be the longest con yet.

I’ve adored every book in the Heist Society series and Perfect Scoundrels is no exception. Ally Carter infuses such wit and charm into her characters. My only complaint is that while reading Perfect Scoundrels I was torn between wanting to slow down and really enjoy each moment with the characters she’s created -- and flying through the book to figure out what plot twist she could possibly throw at me next. She had me running to Google every five minutes to find out if insane cons like “The Three Blind Mice” or “Where’s Waldo?” were actual grifts. I almost forgot at certain points that these are only teenagers traipsing all over the world leading lives of crime. Though they’re breaking into museums and rappelling into apartments after priceless works of art, Carter’s created a team of “noble thieves” who return stolen goods to their rightful owners or steal from the corrupt and the greedy.

Perfect Scoundrels is much more personal than the other two books in the series, mostly because the con revolves around Hale and the group defending one of their own. While Hale has seemed like such an integral part of the family in the series, in Perfect Scoundrels you really see how different Hale’s childhood was in comparison to Kat. Hale’s life, while full of privilege, is cold and lonely. It’s unsurprising to see how a trust fund kid like Hale fell into the chaos of the Bishop clan, which though dysfunctional, is a tight-knit group.

Perfect Scoundrels may be one of the freshest and most energetic books I’ve read in a long time. I really can’t say enough good things about it. You don’t need to read the other books in the series to enjoy it, but I’d highly recommend the entire collection.

So glad to be back in Star Harbor for another visit with the 'Bad Boy' Grayson brothers. In books one and two of this series by Elisabeth Barrett, Deep Autumn Heat and Blaze of Winter, Theo and Seb settle into very loving relationships. Now, Long Simmering Spring introduces Cole in a way we’ve never seen him before. A highly decorated military hero now employed as Star Harbor's small-town sheriff, Cole is beginning to settle into his life once again. As he adjusts to civilian life, working hard to keep his hometown safe, PTSD begins to plague him once again with heart-stopping nightmares. Upon his military discharge, Army psychiatrists helped him work through his demons, keeping the anxiety temporarily at bay. But as his sleepless nights continue, his brothers urge him to get the support he needs --- Cole agrees but where will he find the time?

Julia (Julie) Kensington, M.D., calls Star Harbor her hometown. She knew the Grayson brothers growing up, and even slapped Cole for trying to steal a kiss when she was fourteen. Having lost her parents in a car accident when she was attending medical school, she has since wanted to return home and become Star Harbor’s small-town doc. Finally getting into the groove with her new practice, she’s ready to find some time for herself. Friends constantly tell her she works too hard and it is time to get out and have some fun. A chance meeting with Sheriff Grayson convinces her that maybe the time is now.

Cole has been my favorite Grayson brother since the first visit to Star Harbor. I think Julie's description says it all. "He had a hardness to him that hadn't been there when he was younger. My God, the man was sizzling! And dangerous. Very, very dangerous." Long Simmering Spring offers the reader a full story with suspense and a lot of sweet love. The mystery of the Siren Lorelei is revisited with the discovery of another key. I guess we’ll have to wait for book four, Slow Summer Burn, to tie up this mystery.

I find this series wonderful to read. There is always humor, strong characters, and the Grayson brothers. What more do you need? Val, the DEA agent, is up next in the final book, Slow Summer Burn, on sale in August. I would highly recommend this novel to lovers of small-town stories that have both suspense and wonderful characters. Robyn Carr fans would adore this book.

Mark Bittman provided one of my all time favorite recipes in a New York Times’ Minimalist column during the height of Summer 2009. It’s just two simple lines (with a one word editorial comment): “Mix wedges of tomatoes and peaches, add slivers of red onion, a few red-pepper flakes and cilantro. Dress with olive oil and lime or lemon juice. Astonishing.” I gave it a try. It actually was astonishing. Since then, I have kept up with developments from Mark Bittman – following him through articles, his fantastic app, videos, columns, editorials, and books in an effort to eat fresh, flavorful food, simply prepared by me at home.

But am I ready to be a vegan before 6 PM? This is the central challenge of his new book VB6.

My first observation about VB6 is that this is more of a lifestyle book than a cookbook. His initial story of an epiphany at the doctor’s office several years back resonates with me. Bittman didn’t want to take Lipitor for the rest of his life, especially with food so central to his life and livelihood. I am primarily worried about long-term brain health (I’ve read widely on how to keep the noggin sharp and research is fairly clear that what you eat really matters), but I wouldn’t say no to dropping a pound or twenty either.

VB6 defines six basic principles that really reflect what Bittman has been preaching (in a really good way) for a long time. The most important principles are to eat only vegetables, fruits, and other plant-based foods before 6 PM and after that hour to reduce your consumption of animal products. He also encourages us to cook our own food – and of course to avoid all junk and processed foods. After these basics he goes rather quickly into helping you determine how to make this new way of eating appealing to you (and your family or your lifestyle).

I confess: I’m having trouble sticking to my reading. One Sunday, after reading the tip on making healthy snacking more convenient, I realized I didn’t even need to go shopping to get down to business and prep some healthy snacks for the week. Suddenly I was digging into the fridge to fish out the carrots, potatoes, and yams to roast them up in sage and thyme for use as sides all week. I had some aging broccoli and cauliflower too, so I steamed, sautéed, and pureed into a fabulous veggie mix as well. And that wasn’t even dinner.

VB6 can serve as an inspiration for healthy eating even if the concept of being a vegan puts you off. I love the balanced approach of this lifestyle – Bittman encourages the readers to adapt as needed to suit your lifestyle. In general he encourages us to stick with it even if we cheat for a day or a month. So he’d probably be okay with my initial adaptation: vegetarian before 6 PM plus splash of milk in coffee (not as catchy -- VB6PSMC -- but potentially more sustainable). It’s early days, however, and I am going to give it a try – check back in a month and I’ll let you know how I have done.

Recipes from VB6 by Mark Bittman.

The concept of free will is inescapable. We see it in religion and morality, in law and public policy, but also on more personal levels in our thoughts and feelings. According to Sam Harris, the author of Free Will, the concept of free will “touches nearly everything we care about.” His argument, however, states that this concept is an illusion and that “our wills are simply not of our own making.”

Harris is the bestselling author of The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. In Free Will, Harris utilizes both his philosophical and scientific backgrounds to break down this fundamental concept.

In regards to the science, Harris cites the EEG results from physiologist Benjamin Libet that showed the brain makes decisions before consciousness becomes aware of them. Three hundred milliseconds may not seem a big distinction, but how can we claim to be the conscious authors of our actions if the results suggest that the brain has already determined what we will do before we are aware of it? Harris expands on these findings by stating, “You can do what you decide to do – but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”

The most interesting aspect of the book is when Harris examines the illusion of free will as a necessary one. He seems to fully recognize how ingrained we are with the concept and how initially the dismantling of the idea can appear off putting. For Harris though, he claims that losing the belief in free will has not made him fatalistic but in fact increased his feelings of freedom due to a deeper understanding of his biochemistry.

Free Will may not be considered beach reading, but if Sam Harris should be applauded for anything, it should be for how accessible he makes the material – and not just for PhD candidates in philosophy or science. The book is not as heavy as it seems. He uses simple, concise language to construct his argument and pulls it together in fewer than seventy pages. It’s the kind of book you can finish in one sitting but think about for days and days.

The authors of most novels operate under the assumption that their readers -- if they have picked up the book, understood the jacket copy, and gone as far as the first several pages -- understand the transient nature of happiness. Protagonists are not people with simple lives, and plots do not describe a plateau of happiness. In The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, Jonathan Evison gives us Benjamin Benjamin, a somewhat unremarkable character whose career (if you can call it that) as a caregiver to a young man with muscular dystrophy belies a dark past and its rippling effect on his misery and self-regard. In fact, the ongoing hints of what has happened to Ben are so horrific as to leave a continual bitter taste in the reader’s mouth. Still, the Homeric odyssey of its characters -- and the book's ultimate destination -- make The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving a poignant (if less-than-uplifting) read.

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving begins with Ben’s interview to serve as caregiver to Trey, the aforementioned MD patient. Evison portrays Trey with enough heart and stereotypical male and teenaged affects that his illness seems secondary; this is essential to keeping the novel from descending into a tedious tale of self-pity. Trey’s father left him as an infant after his diagnosis, and Trey spends his life in a cycle of what Ben would describe as tedium, watching The Weather Channel, eating in the mall food court, and anxiously attempting to ignore the effects of his disease. When Ben -- who himself suffers from seemingly innumerable social blunders and miserable moments alone in his apartment, desperately evading his wife’s subpoena for a divorce -- suggests to Trey that they go on a road trip, they embark on a journey that enables the reader to finally see some hope for both characters.

Along the way Ben and Trey pick up a few other lost souls -- a girl named Dot whose own father is following her down the highway in an attempt to repair their long-severed familial relationship, as well as a young woman who is expecting her first child any day now, and the unreliable father to her unborn son -- and veer off-schedule and off-track, regaining their belief in family and self along the way. Trey loses some of his claustrophobic anxieties about the world and his limitations therein, and Ben regains some of his faith in fatherhood and the future. But when the full realization of what has happened in Ben’s life hits the reader, it is hard to entirely see a way forward for him. Evison ends with the faintest glimmer of repair and upward movement, which maintains the sense of reality in the book. Any larger or happier kind of ending would have seemed disingenuous, and The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving is, at its core, a novel for realists.

Max Brooks' World War Z is the “Patient Zero” of zombie literature: a contagious classic that went “viral” in a way that few horror novels do. Readers everywhere caught the zombie bug, and when they did, the shelves of nearby bookshelves began to fill with with zombie horror (along with zombie crime, zombie sci-fi, and even zombie romance). Although a number of great zombie novels have come along since World War Z, none have been able to match Brooks’s legendary telling.

One of the things that sets World War Z apart from its competitors is its format. Brooks eschewed a traditional narrative format, choosing instead to present his globe-spanning story in the form of an oral history. Every chapter is an individual survivor’s tale, all of them transcribed and arranged in chronological order by an anonymous United Nations employee. By doing so, Brooks dazzles readers with dozens of perspectives on the horror of the zombie apocalypse, beginning with the first case in a rural Chinese village and ending in the near-complete collapse of global civilization.

World War Z’s survivors are a diverse bunch: soldiers, housewives, scientists, and more are on hand to offer their stories of horror and desperation. Not all of them are “good guys,” either: Zombies don’t care who is good or bad, and the greedy, venal, and violent are among those lucky enough to have escaped their grasping hands and gnashing teeth. Every story needs its villains, and in World War Z, there are plenty. The zombies are horrifying, but there’s no true volition behind what they do: They’re automatons -- eating machines. The human criminals of World War Z have no excuse.

The stories fit together like the pieces of a mosaic: Individually, each survivor's tale is interesting enough, but when all of them are put together they form a great work of art -- in this case, a panoramic perspective on an apocalyptic event.

Fans of World War Z have been clamoring for a movie adaptation since the first day the book hit shelves, and clearly Hollywood saw the same thing readers did: a riveting tale that begged to be resurrected on the silver screen. The buzz about the book only got louder when a bidding war for the movie rights broke out between Appian Way and Plan B Entertainment, production companies owned by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, respectively, and then the buzz became a deafening roar when Max Brooks revealed that Brad Pitt would star in the film during a panel discussion at San Diego Comic Con 2010.

It remains to be seen whether the film will meet the high expectations of readers, but the brilliance of Max Brooks’s novel will remain undiminished. World War Z is a reading experience that isn't easily forgotten: It infects the imagination like a virus, leaving the reader -- and his or her expectations of what horror fiction can be -- forever changed.

I dislike deadlines. The only thing I hate more than a deadline is missing a deadline, and I have now missed the deadline for writing the review of Jojo Moyes's Me Before You three times. It's not because I don't want to write the review. As a matter of fact, I asked to write it. So why am I paralyzed? Because I adored the book and am terrified I will not do it justice. But I am now jumping in with both feet because I want you to read and love this novel, too.

Me Before You is that rare and wonderful, firefly-in-a-jar kind of love story -- the unconventional romance between two people who appear to have nothing in common. Will Traynor and Louisa Clark meet when Louisa, an ordinary girl in desperate need of a job, is hired by Will's mother to be his companion following the horrific accident that leaves Will a quadriplegic. Before the accident, Will had it all -- the job, the girlfriend, money. He was an athlete who lived for an adrenaline rush. Now, injured and disillusioned, he has a plan and he knows what he wants. When Louisa uncovers Will's plan, she sets out to change it by showing him that life is worth living, even when it isn't the one you planned for yourself. What happens next will surprise you.

Will and Louisa's relationship is complicated and challenges both of them in new ways. While it is marked with immense pain, it also brims with humor that will make you laugh and want to read lines out loud. But make no mistake: This is no fairy tale. It is an achingly real tearjerker that leaves readers questioning just how far they would go to make someone they love happy.

Me Before You is that rare book that is as good as everyone says it is. Moyes has written a twenty-first-century love story that never becomes sentimental or dramatic. It is at the top of my recommendation list whenever anyone asks me what they should read. It may only be May, but I already know beyond a doubt that Moyes' poignant, compassionate novel will make the cut for my top ten favorite books of 2013.

In Beautiful Creatures, the sleepy Southern town of Gatlin, South Carolina, is shaken awake upon the arrival of mysterious and beautiful newcomer Lena Duchannes. At least that's how it feels to Ethan Wate, whose dreams of escaping his stifling hometown were put aside as soon as he met Lena -- the same girl who inhabited his dreams months before she entered his life. The only hitch in their budding romance is that Lena is a Caster: a powerful creature with supernatural abilities whose sixteenth birthday determines whether she will be claimed by good or evil forces, which are represented by different people in Lena's quirky, supernatural family. Ethan, naturally, gets caught in the crossfire.

When we catch up with Lena and Ethan in the second installment of The Caster Chronicles series, Beautiful Darkness, Lena has just suffered a devastating loss in her family, which was a necessary sacrifice to keep the love of her life, Ethan, alive. Naturally, this causes Lena to pull away from Ethan as she decides to start hanging out with the new, dangerous, and charming Incubus in town, John Breed. Not willing to give up Lena without a fight, Ethan teams up with his best friend, Link, and the new Keeper-in-training, Liv, to reach Lena before it is too late.

Beautiful Darkness succeeds in three important ways where many second novels in a trilogy fail: Co-authors Garcia and Stohl successfully recap the first book early on, pacing moves quickly, and lingering questions from the first book are satisfactorily addressed. My interest in the central star-crossed lovers, Ethan and Lena, continued as I read Beautiful Darkness, and I was delighted by the introduction of new characters such as Liv, the spunky British Keeper-in-training. However, if I had to pick my favorite part of the book (without giving anything away), it would have to be how the town of Gatlin almost becomes a character in its own right: layers are peeled back from the seemingly normal town to reveal a history rich with supernatural elements few townspeople know.

I'd highly recommend immersing yourself in this beautiful trilogy if you have a soft spot for well-told supernatural romances with a comedic band of side characters.

In Peter Clines’ Ex-Heroes, he introduced a world crackling with pop culture resonance: a post-apocalyptic, zombified Earth where a ragtag team of superheroes is all that stands between humanity and the hungry, chattering teeth of the “ex-human” undead horde. It was a tricky balancing act, but one that Clines deftly handled. Ex-Heroes’ sequel, Ex-Patriots, expands on that novel’s characteristic mix of horror, action, and irreverence, pulling readers into Clines’ world with the irresistible strength of a thousand zombie hands.

Months after the epic zombie vs. gangbanger vs. superhero brawl that nearly spelled the end for human colony The Mount, its residents are resuming a somewhat normal life -- or at least what passes for normal in the zombie-blighted streets of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. Fighting zombies and scavenging supplies are still a necessity of everyday living, but the colony is stronger. A Fourth of July celebration reminds residents that as long as The Mount survives, so does the United States. But whose United States?

Following a chance encounter with surviving elements of the US Army, the heroes and citizens of The Mount learn that the country is now officially under martial law, and that includes them. Thanks to a top secret program called Project Krypton, the Army now has their own super-soldiers -- heavily muscled titans equipped with high-caliber weaponry led by a man known as Captain Freedom. Further scientific experimentation has also given them a horde of Exes drafted into service by way of electronic brain implants. This ghoulish new army has plans for The Mount and its heroes -- whether they want to be a part of them or not.

One could say that Ex-Patriots is every bit as good as Ex-Heroes, but that’s not true: This is one case of the sequel being better than the original. The stakes are higher and the action is more explosive. That’s not just a metaphor, either! Captain Freedom and his friends carry massive weaponry and aren’t afraid to use it. These guys make the gangbangers from Ex-Heroes look like a bunch of kids with pellet rifles.

Clines' sense of humor and deep genre knowledge are in top form in his second novel. This is the kind of book where the heroes keep a running tally on the number of celebrities-turned-zombies that they’ve managed to dispatch (an argument about whether the long-dead Vincent Price had somehow reanimated had me laughing loud enough to disturb the other customers at my local coffee shop), and drop one-liners from fan-favorite films like "Ghostbusters." The heroes of Ex-Patriots are all too aware of the the same superhero and zombie movie tropes that readers are: They know that Project Krypton is a Superman reference, and that the surviving elements of the Army are likely to be insane, based on their knowledge of zombie movies like "Day of the Dead." Meta-fictional gags keep the novel rooted squarely in the genre universe, celebrating and subverting it simultaneously.

Ex-Patriots is highly recommended for the horror and comic fan looking for a fresh new take on both.

Mary Roach’s new book, Gulp, is not for the squeamish. But then, none of her books are, and that’s what makes them all so delightful. Her first work, Stiff, looked in detail at everything we think we know about cadavers. Now, this is not a topic that most people find humorous, but she somehow found a way to talk about the science of death in a way that was informative and yes, frequently hilarious. In her newest book, subtitled “Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,” she takes on chewing, spitting, digesting, and, uh, so on. She’s got a chapter called “The Ick Factor.” Sign me up!

Roach takes an immersive approach. To learn about taste science, for example, she visits a company that makes pet food flavor additives. Discussing a new product being tested, “one of the techs mentiones that she tried some earlier, and that the white morsels are chicken. Or rather, 'chickeny.' I must have registered surprise at the disclosure, because Theresa jumps in. ‘If you open a bag and it smells really good -- ‘ The tech shrugs. ‘And you’re hungry …’  Eeew. But, why? For that matter, why do Americans have such a hard time with the idea of eating horse, or dog, or even inner organ meats, when other cultures are clearly comfortable with the idea? (Hey, don’t look at me. I’m a vegetarian.) Anyway, she looks at that too.

When Roach gets to the stomach, things get weirder. Gulp takes on a rumor about swallowing something that could eat its way out from the inside, Alien-style. This really is science, so we find ourselves soon enough at the University of Nevada, where a professor obligingly sets up an experiment. At one point, they are calling around to local markets, trying to find a fish stomach. “’No stomachs of anything? No. Okay.’ John Gray lifts his head and says, in his quiet way, ‘I’ve got a dead leopard frog in the freezer.’ Everyone takes a break while Gray goes to defrost his frog under a warm tap.” The scientific method eventually yields an answer: urban legend.

By the time we get to the bottom half of the tube, I found myself frequently laughing out loud. Emergency rooms and what people put inside themselves? Check. Death by constipation? Check. A visit to a prison to discuss how people smuggle iPhones into the big house? Check. (An inmate tells her, “The rectum will stretch. Believe that.”) There is a chapter titled “Fun with hydrogen and methane,” and a visit to a research institute that investigates flatulence. Look, someone invented Beano. And if you found the anecdote about pet kibble troubling, imagine what these researchers are smelling all day. It’s not just hydrogen sulfide.

In the introduction, Mary Roach addresses her reader. “I don’t want you to say ‘This is gross.’ I want you to say, ‘I thought this would be gross, but it’s really interesting.’ Okay, and maybe a little gross.” She nailed it.

Elizabeth Strout is one of the keenest chroniclers of daily life and family interactions writing today. In The Burgess Boys, the excellent follow-up to her 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, she splits her screen between small small-town Maine and New York City, particularly Park Slope, Brooklyn, to brilliant effect.

Susan Burgess Olson is divorced and still living in Shirley Falls, where she grew up,  but her twin brother, Bob, and older brother and the family star, Jim, both lawyers, have moved on to big city life, one more successfully than the other. The incident that initiates the novel – a crime or a prank, and we’re never quite sure which, by Susan’s son Zach – brings the siblings together. Of course, “together” is a word with multiple meanings, as many and as varied as the frictions among these siblings. Bob and Susan are in contact again after a long hiatus and we get to see some of what underlies the chilliness between them. Jim, set apart by age and celebrity, is supposed to be the shining light and assumes center stage. Yet he is not quite able to live up to expectations, either his own or those of others.

But Strout takes on more than the family’s issues and hidden secrets. The town of Shirley Falls has recently become home to many immigrant Somalis, and Zach has rolled the head of a frozen pig into their mosque during Ramadan, defiling the prayer rugs and putting himself into the precarious position of being accused of a hate crime. It’s a good thing that he has two uncles who are lawyers. Or is it? The novel uncovers not only family dynamics but the ways in which a history of betrayals and reversals affects individuals on a daily basis.

Strout’s characters are so richly drawn that the reader would easily recognize Bob sitting at his favorite Park Slope bar and acknowledge him as a fond acquaintance. Jim and his wife, Helen, may be more recognizable as types, but types we know intimately. Ultimately, there is an underlying and undeniable sadness about these people, the key to which threads through the novel and makes them all the more plausible and memorable.

Bob’s ex-wife Pam, when she first met the siblings, was moved to bake cookies and cakes for the Burgesses because she was always touched by the idea that “these kids had been starved all their lives for sweetness.” In the course of this novel, Strout offers the reader a taste of what sweetness is for each of the characters, at least for the ones who are willing to open their hearts to change. And once you’ve gotten to know them, the characters in The Burgess Boys will stay with you for a long time.

It may be impossible to summarize Edward Rutherfurd’s new book, Paris. Part history, part novel, it falls into the aptly named, yet ever tricky genre called the historical novel.

At 800-plus pages, Rutherfurd’s new book captures some of Paris’s biggest moments — from the building of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, to the reign of King Louis IX and King Louis XIII, to the Black Plague and the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, to the French Revolution and WWII Nazi occupation; it, too, shows some of the Paris’s biggest figures, from Coco Chanel, to Gustave Eiffel, to Monet, to Hemingway; some of its biggest neighborhoods, from Montmartre, to the Latin Quarter, to Montparnasse; and some of its biggest landmarks, from Père Lachaise, to the Arc de Triomphe, to the Louvre.

Yet among all this Parisian history, Rutherfurd does not forget that the real heart of any good novel is its characters, and here, in fact, he gives us quite a few: There is Thomas Gascon from Montmartre, an iron worker and Nazi resistance agent, and his corrupt, street-smart brother, Luc; there is Roland de Cynge, an aristocrat with a seemingly proud family name, and his rival Jacques Le Sourd, who vows to avenge his father’s death; there is the prostitute-turned-brothel madam, Louise, and her child’s father, Charlie, who spends most of WWII hiding Allied fighter pilots. Each of these characters (and many more) is unique in design. They all have different backgrounds, personalities, and circumstances, so that as Rutherfurd weaves one character’s storyline with another’s, and yet another’s, he plays them against each other for maximum irony and tension.

As mentioned before, the historical novel is tricky, and Rutherfurd’s Paris is no exception. With so much history and so many characters, left to an amateur writer you’d get lost within the first couple chapters. You’d drown in the history or, alternately, you wouldn’t get enough; you’d forget a character or, worse, get bored by one. But luckily, Rutherfurd is anything but an amateur writer. Rather, as he has shown in previous books (such as Sarum, London, and New York), and shows again in Paris, Rutherfurd is a very gifted writer and a great history teacher — one of the best in the genre.

Anthony Marra’s powerful debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, is the story of the fallout following a father’s disappearance during the Second Chechen War. Though the action takes place over five days in 2004, Marra includes entire chapters of back story about his main characters, often stories they don’t – and will never – know about each other. In other moments, Marra leaps forward in time, giving readers a glimpse of the future. The setting of Chechnya, a war-ravaged republic on the edge of the Caucasus Mountains, is exotic and somewhat intimidating. The consequences and realities of Chechnya in 2004 serve to heighten and shape the story, but it is Marra’s unforgettable and beautifully realized characters that shine brightest in Constellation.

We meet eight-year-old Havaa as her neighbor Akhmed collects her from the burnt remains of the house she shared with her widowed father, Dokka, who was “disappeared” by the Feds in the night. Now the Feds are searching for the girl. Akhmed takes Havaa to the city hospital because he has heard of a Russian doctor there and believes that she will protect Havaa. The brilliant and brusque doctor, Sonja, reluctantly allows  the girl to stay in exchange for Akhmed’s help at the hospital. As the story unfolds, Marra skips between the present and back to the preceding decade as the surprising connections binding these people through blood, obligation, and love are revealed.

One of the most wonderful things about the book is Marra’s inclusion of a few sentences here and there revealing the future of major and minor characters alike. We might know someone for only a page, but we learn that “in three years, when the hospital issued paychecks again, beginning with a whopping nine years of back pay, the guard would frame his in glass and hang it on his wall without ever depositing it.” A land-mine victim who comes to the hospital will lose his leg but finally receive his first architectural commission seven years later. In a book about people so haunted by the past and trapped by the present, so able to hurt each other in visceral and lasting ways, the hope in these small glimpses of the future buoys the story throughout the despair.

As the chain of events that provoked Dokka’s disappearance is revealed, we understand that not everyone will come out of the five days alive. But amid betrayal, loss, and pain, some hope for a future survives. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is about unexpected bonds during a war between neighbors and family, the senseless tragedy and unspeakable crimes of that war, and what remains in devastation. Refreshingly, it never devolves into the twee or magical; the dogs in Chechnya don’t talk, the ghosts of the forest are only faded portraits of the dead, and the demons live next door. Marra’s impressive debut is a beautiful and heartbreaking novel about sacrifice and rescue, about unforgettable people in a forgotten place. It will haunt you in the best ways long after the last page.

Editor's Note: Broughton Coburn’s latest book, The Vast Unknown: America's First Ascent of Everest, chronicles the first American expedition to Mt Everest, in May 1963. In his telling, Coburn combines riveting adventure, a perceptive analysis of the climb’s historical context, and revelations about a secret mission that followed. Here, the author shares eight facts he uncovered in his research for the book. 

1.In the past century, at least 240 people have died on Everest’s slopes. That’s 1 death for every 25 successful summits. In 1963, twice as many people had died on Everest’s flanks as had reached her summit.

2. The median time of day that summit climbers reached Everest’s peak, and survived, is 9-10 a.m. The median summit time for those who reached the top, but perished while descending, is 1-2 p.m. In other words, with each hour that a climber is delayed in reaching the summit, their statistical chance of death increases dramatically.

3. The mortality rate for climbers above base camp is 1.6% for foreigners and 1.1% for Sherpas. This percentage approximately doubles for those who climb above 8,000 meters (an elevation about one camp below the summit), and most of these deaths occur on the descent.

4. About 14 people have reached the summit of Everest via the West Ridge (or some variation of the route), and about 16 people have died trying. That’s more than a 1:1 ratio of deaths to successful summits by that route.

5. Nepal opened to foreigners for the first time in history in 1950 – the year that high altitude physiologist Dr. Charles Houston was with the first party to visit the Sherpas’ homeland on the south side of Everest. They concluded that the mountain was likely un-climbable from that side.

6. The 1963 American Everest expedition’s transport officer, retired British Army Lt. Col. J.O.M. “Jimmy” Roberts, inherited many of the tents, sleeping bags, pads, tables and chairs at the end of the expedition. The following year, he registered Nepal’s (and possibly the world’s) first “trekking agency” with His Majesty’s Government of Nepal, and named the outfit “Mountain Travel.”

7. 1963 Everest veteran Richard Emerson, the team’s sociologist, was a member of the respected Tenth Mountain Division, and served in Italy during WWII. “Tenth Mountaineers” subsequently founded more than 60 commercial ski areas in the U.S. Nearly a quarter of the troops who survived went on to work in the ski and outdoor industries.

8. Of the 37 Sherpas hired in Nepal to carry loads to high elevations on Everest, at least that many of their children and grandchildren now live in the greater New York City area. The Sherpa community in New York recently purchased a church in Queens, which has been converted into a cultural center and also doubles as an assembly hall for Sherpa Buddhist monks.

In Starstruck, novelist Rachel Shukert paints an alluring portrait of Hollywood in the 1930s: Glamorous muses in designer gowns swan around on the arms of handsome men in tuxedos. It’s all very nice until you look a little closer to notice that no one is smiling. While the view might look beautiful from afar -- much like an Impressionist painting -- up close it’s just a big, incoherent mess.

Margaret Frobisher, the novel’s starry-eyed protagonist, longs to escape her prosaic life in Pasadena and join the ranks of celebrities like Clark Gable and her personal idol, Diana Chesterfield. Fate intervenes when she’s offered a screen test with Paramount Pictures. Her parents -- stuffy, staid, and snobbish -- are not amused. Margaret has to make a choice: abandon the cushy lifestyle she is used to or risk being estranged from her parents in favor of the bourgeois class. Coming out at a debutante ball or coming out at a Hollywood premiere? The choice is too easy.

In no time at all, Margaret Frobisher becomes Margo Sterling, a promising, young ingénue who is destined for stardom. But, like clockwork, unsavory rumors begin to swirl, connecting her to the missing starlet, Diana Chesterfield. There's no denying that Margo bears an uncanny resemblance to Diana -- she was even cast as Diana's replacement in the upcoming film. Some begin to speculate that Margo is looking to replace Diana altogether.

Margo meets some interesting characters along the way, and as you might expect, it’s difficult to tell between friend and foe. There’s Gabby, a chatty, boisterous young thing with a penchant for downers, who instantly takes Margo under her wing. The mysterious Amanda, easily the most ravishing on set, wears all black and stays mum about her past. Then there’s Dane -- Margo’s longtime Hollywood crush and current leading man (on-screen, and potentially off-screen, as well) -- who also happens to be Diana’s former flame.

Starstruck is a clear nod in homage to Jacqueline Susann’s pulp novel, Valley of the Dolls, a seminal work that depicts the horrors of Hollywood and drug abuse. But while Dolls ultimately ends in tragedy, Starstruck has Margo rising straight to the top. The only question remains: At what cost did she get there?

Shukert’s Starstruck reads like a cross between a film noir mystery novel and celebrity tabloid fodder. The ambiguity of characters’ intentions, along with the mystery behind a starlet's disappearance, will keep audiences captivated until the very end. But whatever did become of Diana Chesterfield?

Imagine all the horror of "The Walking Dead" injected with the flash and action of "The Avengers" and you’ve got something that might approximate the sustained, pop culture sugar high that is Peter Clines’ novel Ex-Heroes.

Just because the world has been overwhelmed with the living dead doesn’t mean that a superhero gets to hang up the spandex and wait it all out at the Fortress of Solitude: Lives still need saving and bad guys aren’t going to let a few walking corpses get in the way of their evil schemes. When the zombie apocalypse arrives in Los Angeles, heroes Gorgon, The Mighty Dragon, Stealth, Zzzap, and Cerberus step up to the challenge by serving as the protectors of the Mount: a film studio that has been converted into a fortified shelter.

Keeping peace inside the Mount is a challenge: close quarters, short supplies, and boredom have all taken a toll and patience is wearing thin among heroes and civilians alike. Meanwhile, things on the streets are getting weird -- even for a world taken over by the living dead. Some of the heroes’ super-powered allies have fallen prey to the zombies, and now they’ve resurrected ... with their powers intact. (Fighting a zombie is one thing, but having to go toe-to-toe with a zombie that has the power to manipulate electricity is almost too much, even for a superhero.) To make things worse, a former street gang has formed an army and somehow they’ve managed to enlist the aid of what appears to be “smart” zombies that can talk and think for themselves. A threat unlike anything the Mount has ever faced is just around the corner, and it will take every resource the heroes can muster to defeat it.

Juggling zombies and comic book superheroes is a tall order, but Clines proves himself more than up to the task. Action and humor both abound in Ex-Heroes, but so does real terror: Grueling scenes of bloodshed and gut-munching share equal billing with high-flying super-powered antics. Clines’ heroes embody some of the same broad archetypes famous characters like Iron Man, Batman, and their ilk do, but they’re not carbon copy knock-offs with the serial numbers filed off. Stealth, Gorgon, and the rest of the gang are authentic-feeling protagonists that will be readily embraced by any fan of comic book heroes.

Readers are going to want a lot more of Clines’ zombies-and-spandex universe when they’re done with Ex-Heroes. Happily, there’s a sequel, Ex-Patriots.

By now, all the literary fiction fans and book club members have been thoroughly alerted: Life After Life by English novelist Kate Atkinson is an absolute must-read. And rightfully so. Atkinson’s exquisite novel about the lives of Ursula Todd, born and died and born again on February 11, 1910, is a bit like A Wrinkle in Time for grown-ups. It’s got story, style, and staying-power to spare. Only time (hah!) will tell if Life After Life will be a modern classic, but like L’Engle’s novel, there are passages and chapters that you will never forget once you read them.

It won’t surprise longtime Atkinson devotees that many of those unforgettable pages concern crimes, some devastatingly personal and one a catastrophic blot upon the world. More indelible pages still examine mothers, daughters, and delicate girlhood so perfectly and achingly. But it’s crime that I want to talk about. Because Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series, which began with the excellent Case Histories in 2004, has made her something of a goddess to us crime fiction fans out there. I doubt I was the only one who pretty much refused to believe, right up until the book was in my hands, that Life After Life wasn’t a detective novel despite every sign to the contrary. Now, I love me my Interesting-Family-in-the-English-Countryside-Novels like nobody’s business, especially when there’s a brilliant dollop of weird like a little girl with an infinite number of lives in the mix. But I wanted another Kate Atkinson crime novel, dammit!

Almost immediately, though, Life After Life pulled me in -- and I forgot that I’d wanted something different from this author and fell totally in love with the story and wondered if I could phone the Man Booker Prize office and tell them to save a spot on the shortlist. Kate Atkinson really is a literary goddess. And then as I read further on, I saw that I’d had no reason at all to fear that Atkinson had abandoned some of the subjects that have justifiably made her famous. Into an early-ish chapter of this genre-defying novel Atkinson weaves the first unsettling thread: As a young child, Ursula attempts to murder a house maid, and the game is inimitably on.

Notice to any Kate Atkinson crime fiction fans out there who have not picked up Life After Life because you think it won’t be your beloved cup of tea: reconsider. Life After Life is one of those rare novels with the power to delight a wide swath of readers, crime fiction fans most definitely among them.

Julie Wu’s debut novel, The Third Son, picks up in the heat of World War II Taiwan. A Japanese colony since 1895, Taiwan is very much a target for American bomb raids, and it is during one of these raids that Saburo meets Yoshiko. Saburo, a neglected eight-year-old boy, is enamored by this young girl. While waiting out the bombs, she manages to show him more attention and care than either of his parents ever have.

You see, Saburo is the third son. This means he gets less of everything than his brothers: less than the second son, Jiro, and certainly less than the first son, Kazuo. Saburo is thought to be the dumb one, the insubordinate one, and when asked by Kazuo and Jiro’s tutor why he (Saburo) is left out, his mother says, “Some sons are more deserving than others.” From this favoritism two wishes are born in Saburo: one, to better Kazuo, the most favored brother, in everything; and two, to win the pride and respect of his parents. After the war, these wishes will motivate Saburo – from doing well in school, to professing his love to Yoshiko, to reaching America before Kazuo – and, ultimately, define his entire life.

The Third Son takes place in one of the most tumultuous and anxious times in Taiwan’s history. In a country that seems to have no past of its own, Taiwan struggles after the war to realize its identity. It is taken away from Japan by America (as a punishment for the war) and placed under the control of China – a country, itself, in political conflict – and while the Chinese are welcomed with a great parade, the enthusiasm quickly disappears. The Taiwanese are expected to change everything – their names, their language, their way of life – all the while, fearing government corruption. And so they, the people of Taiwan, are left with old leaders they do not miss and new leaders they do not want. Or as Saburo’s father angrily puts it, “The dogs go and the pigs come.”

In a clear prose, Wu mirrors Taiwan’s struggle for freedom and identity with Saburo’s own, presenting world history alongside personal emotion. Such a macro-micro structure benefits the narrative greatly, adding layers upon layers, perspectives upon perspectives. And while a writer can run into trouble with such a technique – mostly in weighing down the personal, human story with the historical – Wu has no problems here. Instead, Wu gives Saburo the room he demands and deserves, the room the reader wants him to have, so he develops into one of the more likable and inspiring protagonists – leading one of the more likable and inspiring journeys – in contemporary fiction.

As a novelist, Nadeem Aslam possesses a unique talent for bringing a sense of compassion and hope to stories that often deal with the darker themes of our existence – specifically war and the displacement of people and families it engenders. The author of three acclaimed works  (Season of the Rainbirds, Maps for Lost Lovers, and The Wasted Vigil) has a new novel, The Blind Man’s Garden, and spoke with Everyday eBook recently about the inspiration behind this new work, his experience as a citizen of multiple countries (and speaker of multiple languages), and his writing process.

EVERYDAY EBOOK: What inspired you to write The Blind Man’s Garden?

NADEEM ASLAM: We have lived through an extraordinary decade, beginning with 9/11 and ending with the Arab Spring – and between that we have the war on terror, the call to jihad, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the killing of Osama bin Laden. A clash seems to have occurred between an incomplete understanding of the East and an incomplete understanding of the West. Not long ago on Google, I typed in the words ‘Pakistan is’ and the four autofill choices I was given were: Evil, Stupid, Dangerous, A terrorist country. I typed in ‘America is’ and the choices given were: Not the World, Evil, Not a country but a business. So when I began writing The Blind Man’s Garden I wanted to find a story that could hold as many of these elements as possible, without losing shape as fiction. A novelist doesn’t tell you what to think, he tells you what to think about.

EE: You were born in Pakistan and moved to England at the age of fourteen. How did your experience inform your writing?

NA: I am grateful for my knowledge of Urdu, Pakistan’s national language. I don’t just have the twenty-six letters of English – I have the thirty-eight letters of Urdu too. My alphabet is bigger. Readers often speak of the melancholy lyricism of my books and wonder about the influence of Urdu poetry. But I don’t sit down to write in any particular way. It’s not as though one writes a non-lyrical page and then decides to add twenty grams of lyricism to it, or thirty ounces of political thought and five drops of emotional intensity. Language is a deeply private thing – it comes as it comes. I get as much pleasure from looking at an apple as from eating it, so my books are visual. One of the things I remember about The Divine Comedy is that Beatrice has emerald eyes. This is my sensibility. One must not examine these things too much. John Banville said about Nabokov that he did not write in English: “He wrote in a private secret language that was mysteriously comprehensible to English-speaking readers.” That I think is true to all writers to an extent.

EE: Tell us about your writing process.

NA: I often write in isolation, avoiding all contact for weeks and months, and even blacking out my windows. It is a habit I developed when I was younger and had no money. In order to make the best use of the time I had, I wished to eradicate distractions as much as possible. I was quite a dreamy adolescent and I think part of it still survives – I can get lost in the movements of an insect or watch the falling rain. So I would black out the windows and stay in and write. Once I was writing an episode set in summer in Maps for Lost Lovers – I went out into the garden for the first time in about a week and couldn’t understand why it was snowing, how it could be cold.

Bonus: See the author's photos here.

You know a Woman Upstairs; maybe you are one. As the narrator of Claire Messud’s startling new novel, The Woman Upstairs, Nora Eldridge -- her name undoubtedly a nod to Ibsen -- defines her, she is “the quiet woman at the end of the third-floor hallway whose trash is always tidy, who smiles rightly in the stairwell with a cheerful greeting, and who, from behind closed doors, never makes a sound.” Nora is “a good girl”: She stayed by her dying mother’s bedside, she visits her widower father weekly, she is an elementary school teacher and a weekend artist. Nora is also angry; her anger is an acidic, seething volatility that colors the events she recounts as the story simmers, culminating in a sudden burn of betrayal.

Nora aspires/aspired to be an artist, but decidedly settles down to a steady, uneventful life; until the Shahids enter her world. Reza Shahid is the new boy in her third-grade class, a beautiful, “perfect” child, brought to the States by his Iranian father’s position at Harvard as a professor of the ethics of history. When Reza is bullied by his classmates, Nora meets his mother, Sirena -- whom Nora’s best friend tellingly calls “Siren” -- and is immediately infatuated with her, agreeing to share an artists’ studio. Nora finds herself suddenly engaged with her own art again, beginning a series of dioramas of female artists -- Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Alice Neel, and Edie Sedgwick -- in their spaces, and becoming an integral part of the creation of Sirena’s new installation, an interpretation of Alice’s Wonderland.

Nora admits that she falls in love with the Shahids, individually and collectively: “I wanted a full and independent engagement with each of them, unrelated to the others. I needed their family-ness.” Nora is obsessed, and she is transformed by her obsession with the Shahids. She wants to be Sirena in many ways, a successful and talented artist with a family; she has sexual fantasies about Skandar; and she wishes Reza were her child. As she puts it, she “longs” for the Shahids, and her life becomes almost wholly about them and their role in it, and less about her work, her own family. They have inspired in her wild hope and surprising possibility, but she is still the Woman Upstairs, at the edge of success: assistant, not artist; babysitter, not mother.

This is not a simple story of a sidekick woman thwarted by her own fear, and the betrayal that haunts the “Shahid years” explodes in a sudden, cruel flash, forcing Nora’s long-simmering anger to boil over into a justified rage. Messud is an immensely talented writer, and in Nora she gives us a compelling, complex, and unforgettable narrator. The Woman Upstairs is a brilliantly paced story of fearsome love and obsessive longing, and the boundaries and sacrifices of what is to be a woman and to be an artist in the world.

Dance Dance Dance is a prime example of what makes Haruki Murakami such a wonderful and unique author. The story and the writing sparkle, blurring the line between the dream and waking worlds, before obliterating it altogether. The plot drives forward even as the characters remain adrift; part science fiction, part mystery, all Murakami.

I wasn’t even sure it was her own voice. My memories of her weren’t very clear, nor were the movie theater speakers too sharp on audio fidelity. I could remember her body though.

Dance follows a nameless narrator, self-employed and living a solitary life. His work requires little contact with the outside world or other humans. A sudden vision at the movies rattles him, however, and sends him on a wild quest to track down an old girlfriend, Kiki. His search takes him to the Dolphin Hotel in Sapporo, where he’d last seen Kiki. While there he stumbles into another world, where he meets the Sheep Man, a mysterious figure in the bowels of the hotel, who propels him forward.

As he scours Japan and his memories for Kiki, he encounters other people adrift: an old classmate, a loopy teenager willfully ignored by her beat parents, and a striking hotel clerk who seems to know more than she says. The narrator connects with his fellow lonely souls through food, music, and often sex, as he struggles to determine the role they played in Kiki’s life and if they somehow relate to the Sheep Man.

Each character along the way is removed from the social experience of life; the child lost between two parents, the divorced actor who trudges from work to home and back again, the mother who drops everything, including her daughter, to travel around the world.

Murakami’s usual trappings are delightfully present. There is the usual undertow of music – jazz, classical and rock and roll litter the paper soundtrack. The characters drink and eat and cook as Murakami derives meaning and magic from these everyday activities. The author set the bar incredibly high with A Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, and while Dance doesn’t quite reach those heights it is a fun and compelling read reminiscent of his greater achievements. It’s evocative and even derivative of some of his earlier work, particularly A Wild Sheep Chase.

Dance Dance Dance is a good appetizer to the works of Murakami. It’s an energetic story and introduces the dreamworld qualities that will bring you back to his writing again and again. It’s a delightful and transporting read that will leave you wondering where you are when you look up from the page.

Go ahead, judge this book by its cover. From the pastel rays of color to the Sharpie-like title treatment, one does not have to stretch far to grasp the tone of Lauren Morrill’s delightful debut novel, Meant to Be. This book is a romantic comedy befitting dreamy bookworms with a taste for screwball. Consider this literary confection the equivalent of a Cadbury cream egg – a brightly wrapped sweet treat that tugs at the heartstrings of the Anglophile in all of us.

Straight-laced uber-student Julia Lichtenstein can be a royal klutz, sure, but let no one say she isn’t organized. A textbook perfectionist and rule follower, she has planned every aspect of her life to the exact detail, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Fueled by an unwavering belief in true love and fate, Julia has chosen her childhood crush as her MTB ("meant to be”).

Of course, when does anything involving “matters of the heart” ever go according to plan, especially in high school? Julia’s meticulous world is thrown out of orbit when she is partnered with class clown and grade-A slacker Jason Lipponcott on a school trip to London. The very definition of irreverence, Jason wastes no time overturning Julia’s carefully plotted itinerary and heckling her into taking a walk on the wild side. Mischief abounds as the two embark on one crazy escapade after another against a British backdrop.

Brimming with fresh, snappy dialogue and plenty of physical gaffes, Meant to Be reads breezily and quickly. Jason and Julia’s perpetual frustration with each other and the subsequent hilarious banter is pretty predictable, but in a way that feels classic rather than cliche. Morrill does an outstanding job of putting new flourishes on the time-honored plot of “opposites attract.”

But perhaps the most satisfying delight of all, at least for this reader, were the fun details of the book’s London setting. For anyone who has traveled to England, and perhaps left a little bit of his or her heart in it, this book and you are simply meant to be.

Even before Ghana Must Go was released this March, the publishing industry was abuzz about the prospects for Taiye Selasi’s debut novel. Selasi’s tale, about the complicated dynamics in an immigrant family, covers territory that will be both familiar and completely foreign to many readers. Over the past decade, authors such as Gary Shteyngart, Junot Diaz, and Jhumpa Lahiri have given readers views into the experience of characters straddling the old and new worlds. The African continent has remained largely off the literary map until now, but Selasi’s novel is likely to change that.

Ghana Must Go tells the story of Folasadé Savage, a Nigerian woman sent to study in America; her Ghanaian husband, Kweku Sai, who began his medical studies at the same university; and their four children. The book takes its name from a 1983 incident in which Ghanaians, fleeing a drought at home, were forced to leave Nigeria where they had been seeking respite. The novel skirts much of the political history of West Africa, though, focusing instead on the complex expectations, longings, and misunderstandings that percolate among the family members, across both generations and continents.

Selasi’s debut opens with Kweku’s death, a heart attack unfolding in slow motion as the surgeon stands “barefoot and breathless, alone in his garden, no strength left to shout.” At the same time, it crisscrosses time and space with a vision reminiscent of magical realism. From the difficult birth of Kweku’s youngest daughter, to his wrongful termination from a Boston hospital, and finally to his decision to leave his family in shame over his “failure to provide,” this is literally a man seeing his life flash before his eyes.

This is only one of many broken hearts in the novel. Despite her abandonment, Kweku’s ex-wife, Folasadé, finds a way to move on. But the decisions she makes in doing so, and the desperate attempts of her children to make things right by overachieving in anything they pursue, lead to a striking accumulation of sadness and anger. Whether in Lagos, New York, Boston, or Ghana, the characters all act out in ways that are painful, humiliating, and completely real. Selasi ambitiously addresses the common stereotypes of Africa by showing us humans in all their anguish and eagerness to find love. It works.

As the four children join their mother in Ghana for Kweku’s funeral, there is a measure of relief to be had. But Selasi doesn’t rely on any particular dramatic “reveal” to release the emotional tension. Rather, she lets her characters do the heavy lifting, unwinding lifetimes of doing what they were supposed to do at the expense of personal authenticity. Selasi writes with a poetic grace that manages to make the concerns of these “Afropolitans” universal. It’s an impressive feat, and one that signals the arrival of an important new writer.

Robert Stone’s gripping 1975 novel, Dog Soldiers, follows a trio of amateur heroin smugglers as they traffic the drug from a military base in Vietnam through the sleazy underbelly of Los Angeles. Their ineptitude is charming enough at first, but their attempt at easy money quickly exposes their callous, cowardly desperation and underlines Stone’s narrative with bold greed, as the would-be drug dealers stumble through a haze of sex, drugs, alcohol and violence against the backdrop of the Vietnam War.

Heading home on leave from Vietnam, Hicks is convinced by his friend and fellow soldier, John Converse, to smuggle a package of heroin to California. Converse offers fast cash; all Hicks has to do is drop the package off with Converse’s wife, Marge, at their house in California. Hicks agrees – and soon learns that the tense return from the war is nothing compared to the stress surrounding the disastrous events that transpire when Hicks reaches Marge, setting off a drug-fueled chase for money in the jungle surrounding Los Angeles that incorporates pimps, addicts, hoods, and scam artists.

Hicks is driven by self-interest and is undeniably reprehensible – but he is relatable in this sea of filth. His time in the Vietnam War has desensitized him and he returns home hoping to find solace – instead only finding the conditions equally vile. He breaks the law and ethical code but struggles to do the right thing within the criminal context, and in the end wants only to escape the druggy, violent cycle.

In the end there were not many things worth wanting – for the serious man, the samurai. But there were some. In the end, if the serious man is still bound to illusion, he selects the worthiest illusion and takes a stand.

The constancy of drugs and booze seeps out of Stone’s prose and imparts a drunken high. Even without an abundance of cultural references or scenic descriptions, the climate of the ‘70s is evident, laying bare an ugly counterculture and disaffectation of the era.

Stone’s artful storytelling and evocative language elevate a potential pulp thriller to this disturbing, compulsive, literary romp, which earned the author the National Book Award for fiction in 1975. Stone’s Dog Soldiers is told in the kind of cold prose that reflects its subjects’ takes on meaning naturally as it progresses, one drunken foot in front of the other.

My freshman year of college, I was assigned Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in a mandatory first-year literature course. Though I was an avid reader and had always been fond of English class, I didn’t approach the book with much excitement. Most of the books I cherished up until that point had been discovered on my own – assigned literature had a tendency to leave me cold. So it was with a sort of disengagement and hurry that I started reading the book one night.

I jolted into focus at the seventh sentence: “Oh spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India’s arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world.” Sure, the theme of the sentence piqued my interest – as an Indian-American, I am always particularly drawn to stories on identity and nationalism, especially when they involve India. But it was that “oh spell it out” that brought me back to my senses, and struck something inside me. It evoked the same sort of rush I had been feeling through the first (purposefully) stumbling sentences – a tumbling of words, mirroring the tumbling of the protagonist into the world. “This book,” I thought, “this book is special. I feel the words inside me.”

With each page I grew more absorbed and more in love with Midnight’s Children. Not just for the plot, which masterfully reveals reality through absurdity, but for Rushdie’s precise and visceral prose, which manages to evoke complex feelings and themes through unique phrasing. A common complaint I’ve heard about Midnight’s Children, and Rushdie in general, is the sheer volume of prose he employs. Couldn’t he convey the story and themes without half of these descriptions and narratives? But, as the protagonist of Midnight’s Children, Saleem Sinai, says, “To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.” Rushdie’s style and language allows the protagonist’s world to seep into the reader so thoroughly, that the reader understands the life of Saleem Sinai in her bones. How better to explore themes of identity and belonging?

Please, assign yourself Midnight’s Children.

Fans of the 2006 animated film “Paprika” who begin to wade into the re-issue of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel -- which has assumed nearly as many forms since 1993 as its shape-shifting titular heroine -- will quickly find themselves in the Uncanny Valley. Any novel translated into (British) English from Japanese will present special challenges to American readers, and Paprika starts off at a dead run through character introductions and complex scientific ideas, many of which were skimmed over or completely omitted in the movie.

However, perseverance will be rewarded. As the tangled plot strings begin to quiver and pull taut, the book itself begins to feel like a living dream for the reader, swollen with emotional urgency and quotidian fears about life, death, and consciousness. The novel imagines an all-too-near future, in which psychotherapists are routinely able to view and even participate in the dreams of their patients thanks to a new device. When an exponentially more powerful prototype is invented that also organically bonds with its human host, the beautiful Dr. Atsuko Chiba struggles to contain the discovery and prevent it from being abused. Naturally, it falls into the wrong hands almost instantly, becoming a deadly weapon in an already tense game of corporate chess. Along the way Dr. Chiba is both helped and hindered by her past as Paprika, a girlish alter-ego especially designed to provide discreet mental healthcare to Japan’s wealthiest and most prominent figures.

One shock for lovers of the film is that the novel’s timeline begins way earlier. The movie’s story picks up when the DC-Mini devices have already been stolen, and plays out as a detective story to find out who’s to blame, whereas the novel makes almost no attempt to conceal the culprits’ identities, instead offering the reader a voyeuristic inner-space view all characters, both good and evil, as their dreamworlds begin to collide and overlap. When vestiges of those dreams begin to manifest in the “real” world, all these personal and political schemes risk overwhelming the reality of the entire planet.

If you demand an American comparison, Tsutsui’s mastery of plausible pop-scientific rhetoric and his ability to raise the stakes chapter after chapter are reminiscent of Michael Crichton’s glory days, but it’s all achieved with an easy eroticism and gleefully perverse sense of humor that few sci-fi writers (Crichton especially included) would ever dare attempt. Anyhow, the book’s allure is as inseparable from its inherent Japanese-ness, in the same way that the charms of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series seem so reliant upon the author’s identity as a Brit.

Upon finishing the novel, one has to marvel at the “Paprika” film for having achieved the seemingly impossible, pulling an endearing and (mostly) coherent ninety-minute film out of this potent brew of ideas. And yet, afterward you will never be able to rewatch it quite the same way. What once seemed rich and thoughtful will now inevitably seem superficial and hasty -- just as notes jotted down from a dream never manage to capture the power and immediacy you felt while asleep. It’s valuable to have the record, but it never replaces the experience. Fortunately the new edition of Paprika ensures that Tsutsui’s dream will continue to be widely and vividly available for the foreseeable future.

If you read mysteries – and who doesn’t? – you know that there are literally dozens of subgenres. From Sherlock to Stieg Larsson, Matlock to Millhone, each style offers its own approach to detection and its own depiction of human depravity. So, fair notice: Paul Cleave’s The Killing Hour probably won’t appeal to the cats-and-tea-cosies set. Everyone else: Keep reading.

The thriller sets us off balance from the first page. It is early evening in late summer. Charlie, the narrator, wakes up with a splitting headache, covered in blood and scratches. He turns on the television to see lurid coverage of two horrific murders, but the reporters aren’t telling him anything he doesn’t know. After all, he was at the crime scene when it happened. But his New Zealand suburb is quiet, with no sirens or media. For now.

Charlie is a nice guy, without any obvious issues. Well, perhaps it could be said that he has violent tendencies – he once beat up a drunken idiot in bar pretty badly after the idiot groped Charlie’s wife – but one also could argue that this was justified. His wife thought he overreacted, and this made her very unhappy. Still, though they separated, they remain on good terms. For now.

Charlie insists that he did not commit the murders, and that they were committed by a madman named Cyris. Charlie’s wife doesn’t know what to think, but she has her doubts. Kathy and Luciana know what happened, of course, but they're dead. Then there is Landry, the detective with a cancer diagnosis and a desperate desire to see justice done; he wants to wrap up this case, and he doesn’t care if he “goes rogue” to do it. Finally, there is Cyris, a personification of pure evil, whose only problem is that he doesn’t exist. For now.

Civilization and its citizens have a dark side. Mystery writers play on this contrast between law and disorder, and they remind us that the evil lurking in the hearts of men often comes out when the sun goes down. The Killing Hour has its share of blood, and some of the details can be rather grisly, but this is no mere splatterfest. Paul Cleave is interested in the psychological dimensions of his characters, and he explores their motives in ways that make everyone surprisingly sympathetic.

Whoever committed the murders isn’t done, and there are a number of twists to keep readers guessing. I won’t spoil the fun, but I will offer one bit of helpful advice: This evening, before you download this book and kick back in your comfortable chair for some escapist reading? Lock your doors and windows.

One might argue (and this writer does) that episodic writing is more precarious an endeavor than the short story, the memoir, the epic novel, the screenplay. How does one, via the vehicle of the slice-of-life snapshot, engage the reader, capturing him or her and pulling them into the heart of the story, luring readers into that sacred place where one comes to care about a fictional protagonist? This reader doesn’t know how – but does know where. And that is within the pages of Renata Adler’s groundbreaking 1976 novel, Speedboat.

Meet Jen Fain: mid-thirties, journalist, girl-about-town, observer, joiner. Jen’s mind is the one in which readers travel as she makes her way through her life, watching those around her interact and function at parties, in cabs, on sidewalks, in conversation, or in solitude. Men hit on her, she accepts or declines, let’s some upstairs, avoids others altogether. She shares her take on dogs and summer homes, society and flight school, in no immediately discernible order, with no obvious context. But still, the reader comes to know Jen, to start inadvertently dissecting her personality, to like her or not like her. It’s an interesting way to present the content and characters of a novel, without a framework with which to support the meat of the book, with no real commitment to explaining or outlining. It is interesting – and poignant, as our narrator ponders:

“What is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. … The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lost the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life.”

In Adler’s Speedboat, the point seems to constantly shift – not abruptly or haphazardly, but consistently and quietly. As Jen moves throughout the urban landscape that is her world, her experience – clouded by a prevalent liquor-coated haze – resonates still, today. Speedboat is a reminder of the fleetingness of life and the relativity of experience. It is a hazy journey through the life of a woman who could be Any Of Us, but what sets it apart from All Of Us is the beauty of the writing, the ability to narrate both episodically and comprehensively. Speedboat was out of print for years, and has, thankfully, returned to circulation, just in time to inspire all of us to remember that we sometimes just need to forget the point and go with it.

Editor's Note: Maria Padian’s new young adult novel, Out of Nowhere, introduces readers to Tom Bouchard, soccer star, most popular, and third in his class. Everything is idyllic – until 9/11/2011. Today, Maria stops by Everyday eBook to talk about her inspiration, why she went with a quieter post-9/11 story, and more.

Although Out of Nowhere deals with broad themes of racism, immigration, and religious tolerance in a post 9-11 world, the story began for me in a more personal place. Namely, with the novel’s narrator, Tom Bouchard.

I’m a great believer that good writing is character-driven.  When you know your characters well, you can stick them in pretty much any situation, then sit back and watch a plot take shape. I have this fun writing exercise I love to do with students, where we take different characters from various books and drop them into the opening chapter of Kate DiCamillo’s novel, Because of Winn Dixie. By the end of our workshop, the kids all realize that the story doesn’t happen because a stray dog wanders into a grocery store; that beautiful novel unfolds because a lonely but loving and generous girl is standing there when the dog enters.

Out of Nowhere happened because Tom Bouchard was there when Somali refugee kids began arriving at his school.

Although the novel is inspired by actual events that dominated the headlines in Maine for months, the “smaller” story interested me. What was it like, after living in an African refugee camp for years, getting off a plane and seeing snow for the first time? Riding an escalator for the first time? Enrolling in a school where no one speaks your language?

Likewise, what’s it like when you’re a white, Catholic kid from a white Catholic town, and practically overnight your school is filled with black Muslim kids who pray on all fours in the stairwells and wash their feet in the bathroom sinks?

Sometimes, as an author, you just get lucky. I was lucky enough to be introduced to two amazing young men -- one a Somali teen, another a white teen from Lewiston, Maine -- who were friends and played varsity soccer together. Together, they regaled me with stories about their team, their friendship, their town. They helped me to understand what was possible between them, and what was still developing. They helped me to get beyond the adult world of angry people shouting at town council meetings and into the locker room and school bus and the pre-game pasta party. They reminded me that regardless of color and nationality and religion, kids are just kids, and they all want the same things: To make friends. To fit in. To have someone to sit with at lunch, whether lunch is a hot dog or a goat-filled sambusa.

I could have written about the “big” issues by picking up a newspaper, but I was able to write Out of Nowhere because I got to know this imaginary boy, Tom Bouchard. He’s far from perfect, but he’s got a good heart. He makes mistakes but he’s brave and kind. I spent a lot of time getting to know this character, and the novel followed.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Dave Barry. Dave is a funny Florida newspaper columnist who also writes funny books. Many of his books bear his name in the title, such as Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex, which is about exactly what you think it’s about. Over the past decade, though, he has concentrated on writing fiction, which is the best strategy if you want to write about a police chase down Biscayne Boulevard involving a Cadillac Escalade driven by a frantic groom on his wedding day, sitting next a woman who is neither his bride nor a stripper but keeps getting mistaken for both. And an angry orangutan. Actually, the orangutan is in the back seat. And there it is, Dave Barry’s newest creation: Insane City.

Let’s go back to the beginning -- to the start of the book, in fact, where our hero is on the way to the airport, off to get married in Miami.

Two days before his wedding, Seth was in a cab with his best man, Marty, who was advising him on the responsibilities of the groom.
“Your job,” Marty said, "is to get hammered.”
“I’ve seen the movies,” said Seth. “It never ends well.”

At the airport, Marty carries the bags from the car, and soon Seth is explaining to the TSA that he has NO IDEA how that ... thing ... got into his luggage.

Agent Pittowski was peering at the object. “That’s a male sex aid,” he said.
“A what?” said Agent Williams.
“Artificial vagina,” said Agent Pittowski.
Agent Williams dropped the thing. It bounced off the table and rolled, jiggling, across the floor, trailing its cord, like a badly deformed pig having a seizure.

There’s an old saying that plot design involves getting a hero up a tree, throwing rocks him, and then getting him back down. In that regard, Insane City is over the top. Aside from said orangutan and sex aid, there’s a real stripper and her "business manager," some illegal immigrants, lost luggage, a lost ring, a pirate ship, pot brownies, a python, a tycoon with two helicopters, two scowling ex-cops … wait. A pirate ship? Exactly, and much more. Barry clearly had a lot of fun writing this. It’s as if he saw a movie like “The Hangover” and said, “Oh, you guys are amateurs. I’ll show you what ‘throwing rocks’ looks like.” Presto! Groom’s party, cowering behind a tree, naked.

It winds up being a lot of fun, and relentlessly cheerful in a way that will appeal to a broad variety of people.  Dave Barry’s south Florida landscape is rich with weird characters, and he skillfully winds them up and sets them loose. You may find yourself both cringing and laughing as the hero gets farther out on a limb. You'll also wonder how Barry will get him back down, and I won't tell.  As we get toward the season of escapist novels, it’s time to ready the pitcher of margaritas and put Insane City on your list.

Song of Solomon is a moving, at times upsetting, novel of incredible passion, exploring life’s balances. Toni Morrison’s skills are out in full force; she imparts effortless gravity through honest dialogue and simple language, setting Song of Solomon astir.

Morrison’s book tells the story of Macon “Milkman” Dead and the struggles of his family, dating back to the murder of his eponymous grandfather. Through Milkman’s eyes and ears the stories of his parents, aunt, and grandparents are woven together, from the South to the North and back again, from the first years of freedom to the early part of the twentieth century. As a child he is bewildered by his parents’ resentment of one another and intrigued by the mystery of his ostracized aunt and her daughter and granddaughter. Even the basis (and shame) of his own nickname eludes him.

My name’s Macon; I’m already Dead.

This refrain echoes through the pages and the lives of the characters of the story. Milkman’s father looks ever forward, building a small business and network of rental properties. Though an indifferent and sometimes cruel husband and father, he is well known in the community and the recipient of reserved respect – if not affection. Milkman indifferently joins his father’s business as his errand boy before a failed caper leads him on a journey through the South and back into his past. Along the way he meets locals with fond memories of his family and learns firsthand the danger of jealousy and resentment.

Milkman is the protagonist but the family Dead is the main character. As they learn more about their collective and individual pasts, the family’s relationships are strengthened and strained. In the background are a collection of local characters, friendly and hostile, who add color, humor, and horror to the family lives. The titular song is woven throughout the book and filial narratives, connecting the modern Deads to their ancestral home and fractured past. As the family struggles with the meaning and implications of progress, they’re drawn back to their heritage again and again.

An atmosphere of wonder pervades the book, both curious and terrible. The central struggle for and against progress is the backdrop, but Morrison’s prose, with its usual biblical underpinnings, draws the story forward with the perfect dose of narrative greed and emotional weight. Song of Solomon is a prime example of Toni Morrison at her best. The writing is brilliant but accessible, the story is compelling, and her characters leave the strongest impression.

At first glance, you might think you know what’s going to happen in Gone, a literary page-turner about a middle-aged nutritionist, Eve Adams, and her husband Eric, who drives the hot babysitter home one night and doesn’t return. But novelist Cathi Hanauer avoids cliché and digs deep into the truths behind so many seemingly perfect modern marriages. Gone is funny, infuriating, heartbreaking, and ultimately, beautifully written. Cathi was kind enough to answer a few pressing questions for this reader.

EVERYDAY EBOOK: Let’s discuss Eric Adams, rogue artsy husband who seems almost comically a loser at the beginning of Gone. And yet the Eric who ends the book is a surprise that showcases your amazing capacity to live a story from all sides. Did anyone we know inspire Eric? Ben Affleck, in the years before he did "Argo" and seemed to be … floundering about came to my mind.

CATHI HANAUER: Ha -- love the comparison to Affleck. But the truth is, both Eric and Eve, the husband-and-wife "stars" of Gone, are parts of myself. Eric is the more depressive, artist side of me, the side that flounders in between books, unable to produce anything, questioning everything -- and also the side that occasionally just wants to flee my responsibilities and the constricts of family life, which can conflict with the space one needs to write (or, in his case, produce sculptures). Writing a male lead was so much fun -- you can swear, be slutty and narcissistic, all those things women characters are much more judged for. Eric's artwork is loosely based on the work of Massachusetts artist Andrew DeVries.

EE: Eve is a working mom who feels responsible for everything but in control of nothing. What was it like to write her? How have readers responded?

CH: Eve was harder to write than Eric. She started out very ditzy -- I was worried about her being boring, so I overcompensated -- and with each draft she both calmed down and deepened, until she ended up maternal, domestic (but not too), a little sexy, a little wry, a little angry, a little naive. Predictably, some readers relate to her and sympathize, while others feel she was not supportive enough of her husband at the beginning. It's been interesting with Gone to watch some people side vehemently with Eric and others just as strongly with Eve. People project their own baggage on to a novel's characters. But that's okay. It's part of why we read.

EE: Do you think if you’d written Gone at the beginning of your own marriage (to, we must say, a terrific man), it would have been a different book?

CH: It's funny, the second novel I wrote, which wasn't published, was about a young, pregnant, depressed woman fleeing New York -- where I lived at that time (and, yes, was pregnant!) -- and her marriage for Arizona. Back then, I had too much going on and was too self-absorbed to be able to see both sides of a marriage, and also I didn't really understand depression. By the time I wrote Gone, some fifteen years later, I had a much better understanding of marriage and motherhood, not to mention art and depression. Also, I realized that it was better to put my flee fantasy into a male character, since, as I said, readers cut male characters a lot more slack. A female protagonist who leaves her family can only be punished at the end, it seems to me, while a male can be forgiven, even sympathetic. Though plenty of readers did get angry at Eric at the beginning.

EE: Because you’re responsible for the groundbreaking and mega-bestselling anthology The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage and Gone touches upon so many similar issues, I’ve got to ask: What’s your take on the whole Sheryl Sandberg/Anne-Marie Slaughter/Marissa Mayer debate?

CH: I love Anne-Marie Slaughter. I find her arguments so right-on that I actually get chills reading them sometimes, especially her point that the whole idea of cramming full our lives, every single second, from a very young age on, in order to "be successful" -- whether it's getting into a "good" college or having an enormous career alongside a family -- is not a good way to live, at least not for everyone. Some people love that mania, but for many people, something really important is lost by living that way. As for Sandberg and Mayer, Sandberg is compelling to listen to but I think she misses something, namely that not every woman -- or man, for that matter -- can or wants to live as she does, wants to have a family and at the same time "lean in." Mayer, well, I can't relate to a woman who returns to work two weeks after giving birth and builds a nursery for her own baby next to her office while telling other women they can't telecommute even when their babies are infants. More power to her for her accomplishments, but -- she's a different breed from me.

Editor’s Note: Dan Drollette is a foreign correspondent whose book Gold Rush in the Jungle: The Race to Discover and Defend the Rarest Animals of Vietnam’s ‘Lost World’ was just published by Crown. Here, he shares with Everyday eBook an interesting story of a species near-lost – and then found again.

Anyone who’s been to Hanoi has probably seen the lake in the city’s center. Known as Hoan Kiem, or “Lake of the Returned Sword,” it is a murky-green body of water, hemmed in by concrete, surrounded by dense traffic. The lake’s name refers to an ancient legend in which a peasant was given a sword by the gods of the lake, which he then used to rally the Vietnamese and defeat their hated Chinese invaders. After the victory, a turtle – sort of a demi-god in Indochina, where it is considered one of four sacred animals – emerged from this lake to reclaim the sword and return it to the depths, where it could be kept it safe through the centuries until the next crisis.

It’s a charming legend, set in the most unlikely place. It’s hard to believe that anything could live in this slimy, muck-filled, heavily polluted liquid, steps away from the motorcycles and bicycle-cabs, aka “cyclos.” But researchers found that the lake contains at least one giant, six-foot-diameter turtle. And not just any turtle but a specimen of Rafetus swinhoei, or Vietnamese soft-shell turtle, one of the most endangered creatures on the planet.

The species’ surprising, Lazarus-like rediscovery was a wildlife rescue drama with as many cliff-hanging twists as any soap opera. As someone who reports on wildlife biology, I was used to hearing about creatures being on the knife edge of extinction when they were down to the last few dozen individuals. But finding an undiscovered individual when you could count their total numbers on the fingers of one hand?

It seemed amazing, if sad. With no known females of its species, this animal seemed destined to mirror the fate of “Lonesome George,” the Galápagos Island Tortoise who was the last of his kind and died recently. Besides the Hoan Kiem turtle, there were only two other turtles of this species living, both male. One of the males lived in Dong Mo Lake, east of Hanoi, and the other lived in a zoo in China’s Jiangsu province.

Then, in 2008, something miraculous happened. Biologists found an eighty-year-old female Rafetus swinhoei at another Chinese zoo, located in Hunan, China. Nicknamed “China Girl,” it had been purchased from a traveling circus a half-century earlier, unidentified until someone noticed how much China Girl resembled the picture in a notice on a Wildlife Conservation Society “‘Urgent”’ circular. What’s more, while no spring chicken, she was still able to lay eggs. “You can imagine the excitement,” said Tim McCormack of the Asian Turtle Program.

The male turtle from Dong Mo Lake was moved to the Hunan zoo in China and slowly introduced to China Girl. After a few days, the two began sniffing each other through the fence. Considering that the creatures had not seen another turtle of the same species in about fifty years, things went well, and mounting attempts started in a few days.

China Girl has since laid 300 three hundred eggs (still infertile unfertilized as of the time of this writing, but biologists were pleased with the progress). In the time since then, the researchers discovered that the Hoan Kiem turtle is a female, not male as previously thought. If true, that means that there are now two known females and two known males of this exceedingly rare species, like something out of Noah’s Ark – an astounding turn of events which lends credence to the turtles’ reputation for divine connections. It remains to be seen whether the turtle of Hoan Kiem Lake can lay fertile eggs as of this time. But biologists have much more cause for hope about the species’ chances than they used to.

Some children are different. As parents, we have dreams and goals for our kids, but they are individuals with minds, lives, and, sometimes, a fate all their own. The Spark is a memoir of a mother, Kristine Barnett, and her son, Jacob, a special-needs child. Kristine is an unusual woman in her own right. Growing up Quaker in rural Indiana, her grandfather was an inventor and successful designer for the automotive industry, and he had a huge and lasting impact on Kristine. Raised in a hardworking and creative environment, Kristine married and opened a very successful, very progressive day care center; then she gave birth to Jake. She took no maternity leave and her son was raised from infancy at the center. However, Jake's development slowed and he was soon diagnosed with autism.

Kristine followed all of the usual treatments for autism and therapies of the traditional approach, but she found Jake, like most autistic kids, was unusual. And she often found that the traditional therapies Jake was receiving focused more on what he couldn't do, rather than his strengths and what he was able to do. Jake stared at the walls (a common behavior for someone autistic) until Kristine noticed that he stuck to a rigid daily schedule and was determining the time by the movement of the shadows on the walls. Jake would string yarn in every room in the house, but in each instance the shapes Jake made were geometric patterns. He would dump hundreds of crayons on the floor only to arrange them in a true representation of the rainbow, again from staring at the prism effects on the wall. On a trip to their local Barnes & Noble, Jake became so obsessed with an astronomy textbook that they had to buy it in order to leave the store. I won't spoil this book for you by revealing what becomes of this astronomy textbook and Jake's fascination with the stars, but I will say that The Spark is a remarkable book about people in remarkable situations.

One of the lessons from The Spark that resonates most has to do with defining a disability. Who are we to judge? People are remarkable and they are different. The popular metaphor for this is that Jake and others are wired differently. We all are. What Kristine Barnett suggests is that no matter how people are wired, it is up to us to make the connection that produces the spark. This book is not a how-to on autism, though it may help; rather it is a story of a creative person whose source of inspiration and learning is different than most. If you are looking for a book that can lift the heart as it pulls on its strings, then The Spark may be the right choice.

What is the “truth” in fiction? If the narrator of a story never tells you his name, does it make him a liar? He is, after all, not real. Kristopher Jansma’s inventive first novel, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, sets out to deliberately bend and break the understood rules of fiction. Leopards features perhaps the most unreliable narrator ever, it contains meta-fictions, including at one point a novel within a short story within a novel, and it is – blasphemy! – about writers and writing. It’s also a fun read; the book is riddled with playful homages and allusions to writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway – every single chapter begins with an epigraph – and you get caught up in the game of figuring out what’s “real” with a narrator who admits that he is a liar. Amid this trickery, Leopards is a complex novel about storytelling itself. The guiding principle of the book is paraphrased from Dickinson: “Tell the Truth but tell it slant.”

The story centers on a trio of friends made, lost, and found. Our unnamed narrator goes by several nicknames and false identities, and has wanted his whole life to be a writer. His friend Julian is, probably, a more brilliant artist but is often stifled by his social and physical neuroses. Leopards both laments and celebrates the act of being a writer. At one point, our narrator comments that, "The real thing – the true thing – takes more time and effort than most people would ever imagine. Whole productive lifetimes for a few hundred pages that most assuredly won't outlive us." Julian’s childhood friend Evelyn, a stunningly beautiful actress, plays a Daisy Buchanan-like role in the narrator’s life. From the college where the trio meet, Leopards spans the globe from New York City to Iceland, to Africa and Dubai. The narrator steals a friend’s identity and fakes his way into a passport and professorship, Julian becomes Jeffrey, Evelyn’s Indian prince becomes a Luxembourgish prince; details shift, and the “real” story blurs.

The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards exposes and manipulates the very idea of fiction and reality; it’s never clear what is true even within the world of the novel. It reads as a sort-of mystery because of this, but you never expect it to be solved. Jansma has given us a book in large part about what fiction is, and what it is to be a storyteller. As our narrator points out in the “author’s note,” “These stories are all true, but only somewhere else.” What do we want from fiction, after all? A good story, a reflection of our own thoughts and anxieties. At its best, a glimpse of the Truth, capital-T, something universal and theretofore unarticulated. To get that Truth, sometimes you need some slant.

I first came across Beth Reekles and her writing on Wattpad. I was blown away by the number of hugely positive comments The Kissing Booth was receiving and immediately started reading it. What struck me straight away was the natural, authentic voice of the main character, Elle – hardly surprising, as Beth is just seventeen years old herself – and the fact that the plot was so well conceived and constructed, with engaging dialogue and a perfectly pitched teen romance story at its heart.

Rochelle Evans is pretty, popular – and has never been kissed. She has long had a crush on her best friend Lee’s older brother Noah, who is bad-ass, volatile, and a total player. Elle is convinced that he considers her to be no more than his little brother’s annoying mate – but when she decides to run a kissing booth for her school’s Spring Carnival, she locks lips with Noah and her life is turned upside down.

This romance seems far from fairy tale – if Lee finds out then he’d never speak to her again – and headed for heartbreak. But will Elle get her happily ever after in the end?

I e-mailed Beth through the site to see if she would be interested in discussing a potential publishing contract with us, and, happily, she was indeed! Beth and her father traveled from Newport, South Wales, to the Random House UK offices in London to meet myself and our Managing Director. We signed her on the spot for three books. It was so interesting to hear that Beth’s parents had no idea their daughter was a fledgling author; they thought she was up in her bedroom scrolling through Facebook rather than fitting in writing an accomplished novel around studying for her A Levels! Beth is sitting her end-of-high-school exams this summer and hopes to read Physics at Exeter University come fall. She is a multitalented young lady for sure!

It has been such a pleasure working with Beth and seeing the press coverage and plaudits for her and The Kissing Booth grow and grow. She is brimming with ideas for future books – including what I know will be a hugely anticipated sequel to The Kissing Booth. She is writing this now (in between serious revision for her exams!) and this will be the first brand-new, never-before-seen book we publish by her. Her legions of fans on Wattpad who have been clamoring to find out what happens to Elle and Noah after the end of The Kissing Booth will be cheering its release.

She is fantastic at interacting with her already huge fanbase on Facebook, Twitter, and Wattpad; she really is an inspiration to thousands of teenagers dreaming of becoming writers themselves one day. There is nothing I find more rewarding in my job than finding someone with true talent and huge appeal for young readers – and Beth perfectly encapsulates this. She is a star and we’re delighted and proud to be publishing her!