Justin Cronin created a stir in 2010 with The Passage, a literary thriller that spans nearly 100 years in setting the story of a vampire apocalypse, the result of a military experiment gone terribly wrong. Many readers have been waiting impatiently for the second book in the series, and now The Twelve continues the story with a handful of survivors introduced in the first book meeting an intriguing cast of new characters.

As in The Passage, Cronin deftly moves between timelines. At time zero, readers follow three dominant characters who must cope with the evolving viral epidemic and its horrifying consequences of death, despair and ultimately slavery. Then, about a hundred years in the future, Cronin picks up the story of Amy, Peter, Alicia and others from The Passage as they come together with new leaders of the post-apocalyptic revolution to take down the original vampires in a dramatic climax.

Cronin fulfills the hope of many fans by living up to the intricately plotted, character-driven story of The Passage. Though The Twelve leaves the reader with a satisfying ending, one can't help wondering how he'll conclude the epic tale in the final volume of the trilogy. If you haven't yet read The Passage, then you need to get started immediately; you'll have time to catch up before the third book's arrival in 2014. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore

Wild Girls, Mary Stewart Atwell's debut novel, draws readers deep into the terrors of adolescence: the insecurities of friendship, first loves and high school parties. In case high school is not daunting enough on its own, these terrors are further multiplied by the dark rumors that swirl around Swan River Academy, an all-girls boarding school nestled in the Appalachians. Teenage girls gone wild, they say, setting fire to local buildings, breaking windows, killing their friends and families: "wild girls." The locals try to pretend that everything is perfectly normal in Swan River, but Kate Riordan knows that something is very, very wrong with her hometown. As one of the only day students attending Swan River Academy, Kate dedicates her teenage years to becoming anything but a wild girl, but quickly finds herself pulled back into the stories of her youth by those closest to her.

Wild Girls proves a cleverly reimagined take on the classic coming-of-age tale, combining boarding school politics and typical teenage romances with an undercurrent of dark magic and even darker power plays that chills to the bone. The result is a compelling novel filled with enough small details of the high school experience to keep an otherwise fantastical tale grounded in the real world. Readers will be waiting for more from Atwell in the future. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Martha Moody's Sharp and Dangerous Virtues follows in the footsteps of novels like James Howard Kunstler's World Made by Hand and Brian Francis Slattery's Lost Everything, offering an emotionally resonant and intelligent vision of a cataclysmic dystopia brought on by the collapse of 21st-century technology. The year is 2047; the United States has experienced massive food and water shortages and has created a "heartland grid" near Dayton, Ohio. Meanwhile, a multinational group in Cleveland vies for power and makes overtures to Lila, the commissioner of water. Chad and Sharis, a married couple, attempt to help their children navigate their uncertain future while retaining knowledge of the past, while Tuuro, the gentle church custodian, becomes entangled, through compassion, in an unthinkable crime.

Moody creates a wonderful, workable vision of one possible future where new technologies seem real and the powers that maneuver for control over them even more so. She excels in the quieter, mundane moments, frail domestic set pieces that would ring true in any era. Character after character comes alive in her hands.

Sharp and Dangerous Virtues is a great hybrid of smart, well-plotted, science fiction and a literary novel where characters of depth and recognizable humanity struggle to keep their loved ones alive and their souls intact. It's an admirable book and a pleasure to read. --Donald Powell, freelance writer

As the Second World War draws to a close, several inmates manage a successful escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp; there will be consequences for those remaining. Ten prisoners are locked inside Block 11, the "prison within the prison," and given instructions: by dawn, they must choose one member of the group to be turned over to the firing squad. If they fail to comply, they'll all be shot. Meanwhile, at home with his son, the camp's commander engages in a game of chess, through which he attempts to mirror and predict what is occurring in the block that night.

The selected prisoners are intentionally representative of the camp's population, and in some cases their complicated relationships with one another predate their current circumstances. These relationships will be revealed and reshaped over the course of the night, through conversation and argument and momentary outbreaks of horrific violence. And as they struggle with their orders, the commander--who seems to possess a surprisingly intimate amount of knowledge about each of these prisoners--tweaks the rules, orchestrating a human chess game from afar.

Piero degli Antoni manages keep the large cast individually distinct as the night goes on; the prisoners will surprise each other as they confront their terrible conflict, and they may surprise the reader too. First published in Italian in 2010 and now translated into English for the first time, Block 11 is an intense, morally complex psychological thriller. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

Bowl of Heaven is the first collaboration between Larry Niven and Gregory Benford and the first book in a planned trilogy. These two masters of science fiction bring their combined talents to a galaxy-spanning tale of space exploration and alien encounter that will hold any reader's attention long into the night.

Cliff Kammash and his wife, Beth, take to the stars to discover a new world, sleeping through the centuries-long journey in suspended animation. Far sooner than planned, however, the watch crew wakes Cliff. There is an artificial object ahead, a massive bowl-shaped alien ship, larger than the solar system the colonists left. An exploration team is sent out. Soon after landing, half the team is captured; the other half escapes. Beth is among those held by the bird-like aliens who seem to be in charge of the ship.

A third of the story is told from the perspective of Memor, one of these aliens, a third from Cliff's perspective and the final third from Beth's. Memor's logic is delightfully alien; she thinks and feels in not-quite expected ways. Cliff learns how to lead, connecting to another married woman in his group in a predictable though graceful way. Beth confronts the alien life forms convincingly, though not always successfully.

The novel races along to a cliffhanger ending, yet still finds time to observe what it is to be human, or alien, within a story that's got all the hallmarks of master-level science fiction. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

An increasing number of Americans describe themselves as "spiritual, not religious." In Distilled Spirits, Don Lattin probes the origins of this evolution of belief and finds roots in interactions that took place--mostly in the open-minded air of California--among Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, the British writer Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard, an influential spiritual seeker and philosopher.

Lattin juxtaposes the legacies of these three men with his own experiences growing up in California in the 1960s. With searchingly personal reflections, he sees that his decades of altering his consciousness, studying world religions and nearly losing himself to addiction were not separate parts of himself but, perhaps, interrelated steps in a universal spiritual quest that Huxley, Wilson and Heard had taken long before, and in doing so set in motion ideas and practices that would transform Lattin's generation.

While his research on the historical trio is fascinating, it is Lattin's description of his own humble journey that is the heart of Distilled Spirits. Though he may never fully convince the reader that the butterfly wings of Huxley's move to the U.S. directly resulted in the hurricane of his own drug use, Lattin's intriguing assemblage of vignettes illustrates how much of the eruption of new spiritual ideas in 20th-century California can be traced to a surprisingly few key people and moments. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic

For seven weeks, Jayne Amelia Larson spent nearly all her waking hours chauffeuring the women of the Saudi royal family and running their errands. The result is a delightful and surprisingly introspective memoir, Driving the Saudis.

As an actress, screenwriter and producer trying to build her career in Los Angeles, Larson took a job as a chauffeur, figuring it would give her a steady income and some freedom to ponder her creative projects, as well as rub shoulders with those who might put her work in front of an audience. When the chance to drive the Saudis (whom Larson calls "the family") appeared, she took it. Rumors of hefty tips and Rolex gifts abounded, and so did curiosity: here was a chance to drive for members of the world's largest and richest royal family.

Larson's seven weeks behind the wheel are an exhausting and sometimes baffling whirlwind of activity punctuated by beautifully rendered moments of genuine human connection. When Larson wasn't driving 13-year-old princesses to the movies, she was frantically trying to collect two dozen bottles of Hair-Off or 30 $500 bras at the behest of one princess or another, or introducing the family's maids to the marvels of the 99 Cents Only store. In between, Larson paints a portrait of the royals, their staff and her fellow drivers that are warmly human and strikingly intimate. Driving the Saudis is a wild ride, but a deliciously friendly one as well. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket

Readers often want to know a lot about the lives of great writers, in particular, the ailments and illnesses that might have influenced a writer's work. Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough satisfies that curiosity.

John J. Ross is an infectious disease physician and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research began while preparing a lecture on syphilis; a simple check on William Shakespeare's references to disease led him to write an article exploring the possible connection between Shakespeare's literary obsession with the pox and his progressively tremulous handwriting. This article is now his opening chapter; a subsequent examination of George Orwell's cough closes out the book. In between, he discusses the maladies of such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Brontës, Herman Melville and James Joyce.

It is fascinating to read about Hawthorne’s mystery illness, with symptoms that included prolonged weight loss, pale skin, stomach pain and weakness. Though his doctor suspected cancer, the standards of the time precluded the physician from sharing the terminal diagnosis with the patient. Hawthorne died a week after seeing his doctor, never knowing that his likely diagnosis (as proposed by Ross) was gastric cancer.

Ross has nicely merged biographical data for each author with insightful discussions of his proposed medical diagnoses, and how their symptoms and treatments might have affected their work. While those in the medical community will find this book of interest, it is wonderfully engaging, often witty and quite intriguing to those of us outside of it, too. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore

Kelly Barnhill (The Mostly True Story of Jack) vaults an unlikely hero to success, and twists the foundation of classic fairy tales for humorous and haunting results.

Princess Violet is "ugly" by storybook standards, but she is adventurous, smart, curious and strong. She meets Demetrius, a boy her age who becomes her constant companion, when he saves her from a bull at pasture. Violet's father, the king of the Andulan Realms, is obsessed with finding the last dragon. As Violet and Demetrius explore tunnels in the castle, they discover a secret book. An image of a not-human being ("instead of hands and feet it had four sharp points") standing on a mound of dragon hearts leads them to believe that Cassian, the royal storyteller, has not told them this tale. It is Cassian who perpetuates the cliché that a princess must be beautiful, planting a seed of doubt in Violet.

In her pursuit of the meaning of the secret book, Violet discovers a 13th god, Nybbas, so evil that the other 12 gods removed his heart to render him powerless. The king's pursuit of the dragon takes him to the lands of the Mountain King, who wages war in retaliation. Fear spreads. Violet's quest to seek the truth, to keep Nybbas at bay, and to make the last dragon whole will keep readers turning pages. Iron Hearted Violet is a coming-of-age story, a mystery and an adventure about embracing one's strengths, regardless of how unorthodox they may appear to others. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness