John Dalton's debut novel, Heaven Lake, won the Barnes & Noble 2004 Discover Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. With his second novel, Dalton proves that the praise was no fluke.

In The Inverted Forest, an assortment of last-minute replacement counselors arrive at Kindermann Forest Camp in rural Missouri, only to learn that the next several weeks will be spent taking care of a special group of campers: 104 severely developmentally disabled adults. Dalton writes with clear-sighted, simple humanity concerning the disabilities of the campers and the varying abilities of the unprepared counselors. Among the counselors is Wyatt Huddy, an often misjudged young man who is disfigured by a genetic disease known as Apert syndrome. The ambiguity of Wyatt’s proper designation--is he more like a camper than a counselor?--is purposeful and is a clever manifestation of one of the novel's central themes.

With a measured sense of dread, the narrative follows Wyatt's path to a fateful interaction that also involves an empathetic camp nurse, a vulnerable camper and a charming but untrustworthy counselor. Wyatt's actions are life-defining for all of those involved and, in the second part of the book, Dalton moves the reader 15 years into the future to explore the consequences of what happened at Kindermann Forest Camp. The Inverted Forest deserves a place on every must-read summer list, and it should be slowly savored until the very end. --Roni K. Devlin, owner of Literary Life Bookstore & More

The Stronger Sex is narrated by the young Dr. Alex Zabel, a lawyer saddled by his boss with the difficult task of defending an incorrigible elderly womanizer. He is immediately in over his head. The legal situation is thorny enough: Herr Klofft has fired his former mistress, an accomplished engineer, for taking sick time, and she has protested before the employment tribunal. Zabel's real challenge, however, is in human relations: he has to deal with Herr Klofft's ornery moods, ever-looming mortality and off-color humor; the surprisingly sexy and seductive Frau Klofft; and Zabel's own prickly girlfriend. The plot is quiet and unhurried, proceeding sedately toward a resolution that is less important than the journey, and Anthea Bell translates from the German with great skill.

This novel contemplates old age, sensuality and the relationship between the two. The advances (and retreats) between Zabel and Frau Klofft feel deathly serious in their implications. The young attorney is deeply embarrassed by Herr Klofft's vulgarity, as well as by his own attraction to the elderly Frau. He reacts almost as an adolescent to her worldly charms, struggling to fit the Kloffts' eccentricities into his conservative world.

While the events that move the action in this book are muted, the layered, potentially uncomfortable questions resonate. Kettenbach has succeeded in writing a novel that demands reflection. It's not a psychological thriller, but a psychological study with a legal background, filled with black humor to accompany Zabel's slightly bizarre relationships. This meditative novel is mildly disturbing but massively thought-provoking. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pages of julia

Retired NYPD Detective Dave Gurney lives in the Catskills with his wife, Madeleine, trying to adjust to their new life and learn to appreciate nature. Madeleine is content, but Gurney can't seem to halt his obsession with criminal investigations, so when a former colleague offers him the sensational case of a decapitated bride connected to a bevy of juvenile sex offenders and an international crime family, he can't resist. The seemingly impossible and horrifying details fascinate him. Gurney ends up endangering himself and threatening his relationship with Madeleine, who resents the gruesome menace he brings home.

The case of the murdered bride expands and contorts to involve sexual psychology and sexual abuse, and is complicated by police forces so bent on thwarting one another that they seem willing to risk the case itself. The puzzle of the murder mystery, in which we participate alongside Gurney, is suspenseful and challenging, and as a psychological thriller keeps the reader breathlessly turning the pages.

Gurney is a likable character, tortured by his own past, and conflicted in his view of himself as a talented detective but an imperfect husband and father. He worries that he may be uncomfortably similar to the sociopaths he hunts: incapable of compassion and caring, more concerned with the chase than with his family. The reader sympathizes, however, as he grows into a fully developed man, battling an evil that increases as the story progresses, until the suspense and fear come together in a final heart-stopping crescendo. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pages of julia

While visiting Denver to make a presentation at a conference, FBI Agent Maggie O'Dell takes a detour to western Nebraska to look into mysterious cattle mutilations but quickly finds herself responding to an emergency call. A group of teenagers are found in the nearby woods--most of them incoherent and two of them dead by apparent electrocution. Maggie soon learns that the teens were experimenting with salvia, and has to struggle to discern the facts from their eyewitness accounts of the deaths, which bear an unsettling resemblance to the mutilated cattle. Then, just as she starts to make progress, someone starts picking off the survivors. 

Meanwhile, Maggie's partner, R.J. Tully, and friend Colonel Benjamin Platt are called on to investigate food contamination at an elementary school in Virginia. More than 100 schoolchildren recover from their food poisoning, only to become ill again, making it clear to Platt that this is outbreak is not caused by a typical pathogen. Platt's fight to uncover the truth and save the children and Maggie's race to find a killer are soon tightly and inextricably woven together in Alex Kava's latest compelling thrill ride. Kava excels at bringing her characters to life and making the background jump off the page--sometimes with gruesome detail. Her treatment of fictional Washington politics is so authentic that it threatens to turn the healthiest skeptic into a conspiracy theorist. With characters so real and plots so disturbingly plausible, Hotwire is impossible to put down. --Sarah Borders, librarian, Houston Public Library

"Rule 34" is a popular online meme, which holds that "if you can imagine it, there's pornography about it on the Internet,” as author Charles Stross puts it. Stross uses that line as the inspiration for the "Rule 34 Squad" or, as it's officially known, the Innovative Crime Investigation Unit--a division of tomorrow's Edinburgh police department that tracks down pockets of this kind of imagination, as people try to replicate the disturbing things they find online in their own homes and neighborhoods.

The ICIU is run by 38-year-old detective inspector Liz Kavanagh, but it's not her only responsibility in the department--as Rule 34 begins she's assigned to a bizarre homicide case involving a former spammer and an enema machine once owned by Nicolae Ceausescu. Stross interweaves her story with that of Anwar Hussein, an ex-con who's been recruited to run the Scottish consulate for Issyk-Kulistan (a new nation splintering off from the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan), and the Toymaker, a "neurodiverse" (i.e., sociopathic) foot soldier in an international criminal enterprise that's run like a venture capital fund. Stross does an excellent job of shifting among multiple second-person narrators as he maneuvers them into position, and when things start to unfurl, the premises are grounded in fascinating economic and technological speculations, but remain accessible to readers who don't consider themselves science fiction fans.

One of the novel's best aspects, though, is its look at a police force of the future. Although Liz's experience is overlaid by an "augmented-reality interface" known as CopSpace," it's about trying to fight crime while dealing with departmental bureaucracy and tense office politics. Even with the shiny techno-flourishes, it's an instantly recognizable work environment. --Ron Hogan

Wainaina's memoir of his life in Africa begins with his childhood in Kenya, follows him through university in South Africa, to a family reunion in Uganda, and on to his travels throughout Kenya, to land him finally in New York State as a writer and professor. His tale, however, is far from simply a recounting of one man's life. At its heart, the book is the story of an artist, his struggles as a child to adjust to his view of the world and his discovery of writing as an outlet. His perspective as a child verges on the fantastical as he confuses colors with shapes and objects with sounds. The lyrical, imaginative writing throughout the book reflects this unusual vision. Wainaina paints pictures with words; his writing is reflective and playful and worth lingering over. Music, too, plays a role--almost as another character--as he describes his intense reactions to the music of Kenya, of Africa and of the world.

Another worthwhile aspect of this book is its intelligent and informed study of the politics of the African continent and the diversity of Kenyan perceptions. Wainaina tells of the battle between tribalism and a united Kenya, and the richness of linguistic and cultural perspectives there. Politics, however, is never the main subject; it is merely a background to his personal story. The Africa evoked is captivating and will be exotic and new to many readers.

Wainaina's memoir is by turns funny, sad, hopeful and occasionally cynical, but always engaging. Fanciful abstractions of his environment and instructive tales of African politics combine to give us a fascinating vision of his world. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pages of julia

It seems fitting that the "real" David Bowie, long a master of chameleon-like ch-ch-changes, has remained an enigma despite a slew of biographies. Paul Trynka's new book--unauthorized by Bowie and containing no new interviews with him--does not solve the mystery or provide anecdotes of the "never before revealed" variety, but it offers a thoughtful and meticulously researched study of one of rock's few supernovas and his era.

A former editor of MOJO magazine, Trynka packs a great deal about particulars of songs into this book (e.g., how Robert Fripp got that haunting guitar sound on "Heroes"). But there are also plenty of gossipy (albeit restrained) tidbits from the 250 new interviews with Bowie's friends and family that Trynka conducted.

Through a recounting of Bowie's early years, Trynka offers evidence that, although capable, Bowie was not himself a particularly gifted musician. His brilliance was in extracting and combining the musical gifts of others. Of course, the timing had to be right as well, and it was: Trynka does a terrific job describing the scene in London, New York and Los Angeles in the 1970s, including drugs, debauchery and the shift of the music industry into big business. Following a major heart attack and surgery in 2004, Bowie all but disappeared from public view. Trynka speculates on why but doesn't spend much time discussing this (nor much of what many fans consider Bowie's subpar post-Scary Monsters work). What he does do--admirably--with this fine biography is to foster an appreciation of an artist who inspired countless others. --Debra Ginsberg

The first day of middle school as a new student is bad enough. But what if you had to relive it over and over again? That's the premise of R.L. Stine's (Goosebumps) latest horror novel. He packs in plenty of humor, too, with poor 11-year-old Artie Howard besieged by his ravenous pooch and five-year-old brother Eddy, who can do no wrong in their mother's eyes. Artie falls out of bed with his alarm, struggles to pick out just the right outfit, only to have Eddy squeeze syrup into his hair with not a spare moment to shower. A truck plows into a puddle, soaking Artie in just the right places to make it look as though he's peed in his jeans. Could it get any worse? In a word: yes. Artie makes an enemy of the most popular guy in school (a football star, naturally), and other subthemes involve an African scorpion, a psycho principal and the book room monitor, Mr. Blister, who may be homicidal (Mr. Blister's face had "so many chins, it looked like a candle melting onto his shirt").

Stine milks the worst-case scenarios, and the replays of Day One turn out even more agonizing for Artie's attempts to avoid the events from the previous time around. Just when you thought middle school couldn't get any worse, Artie finds a way to prove you wrong. This back-to-school caper will make tweens feel that they just don't have it that bad. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

What could be more fun than a substitute teacher? A green, one-eyed, seven-tentacled substitute Creacher in a brown cardigan and bow tie. Chris Gall's (Dinotrux) exuberant illustrations capture the children's penchant for high jinks. As redheaded Peyton stands on a desk and announces, "Substitute teacher today!," a bespectacled boy balances a teetering tower of books on one hand. Meanwhile, a green limb snakes through the door. "Good morning to all!/ My name's Mr. Creacher./ Ms. Jenkins has asked me/ to step in as teacher." The sub's rhyming speech balloons glow with green slime. As the kids pull pranks, he warns, "Please don't even try;/ in the back of my head, you'll find more than one eye!" How can he anticipate their every move? He's been observing kids' antics for 49 years. "I've collected some tales/ whose lessons are grave/ about boys and girls/ who didn't behave."

Each "case file" unfolds in pixilated panel images that recall Sunday comics. Mr. Creacher tells of Keith, "a hungry young lad" who snacks on glue: "Soon no one could find the boy underneath/ all of the objects that stuck to poor Keith." Sara (case #724C) piles so much in her desk that it blows itself into bits (like Peyton's overstuffed backpack). But the worst fate befalls a boy who steals candy from a "magical gnome." Who might that be? With that story, Mr. Creacher finally gets through to the students, and the ending will stir up much discussion. Doubling as an ideal back-to-school and Halloween tale, Mr. Creacher's story delivers both humor and wisdom. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Mermaids seem to be the new vampires of the young adult paranormal world. Several books now entering the fray are about sirens, the mermaids known for luring sailors into the water with their haunting songs. Author/agent Mandy Hubbard plays with this dark story line in her new novel, Ripple.

Lexi suffers from a curse, handed down for generations, that turns her into a siren on her 16th birthday. Unaware of the power of her voice, she accidentally kills someone and ends up shunned by all her former friends. Things start to change when a new boy shows up at school, and one of her old friends reaches out to her. Soon Lexi is torn between keeping her secret and walking away from love.

This is Hubbard's third novel for the YA market and her strongest to date. Leaving behind the charming antics of Prada & Prejudice and You Wish, Hubbard has crafted a moodier novel with Ripple. Deftly combining an empathetic main character with an engaging plot, she also manages to add a deadly twist to the teenage love triangle. While some questions go unanswered and a few situations seem a bit far-fetched, the tight pacing of the story will keep readers turning the pages. Ripple is a satisfying contribution to the burgeoning ranks of mermaid lore. --Sherrie Petersen, reviewer and blogger