Often long and heavily plotted, John Irving's fiction regularly features troubled childhoods, violent maiming, sexual promiscuity, circuses, sports, religion, writers and writing, domesticated animals, travel and memory. Avenue of Mysteries sits right in the sweet spot of Irving's obsessions--and as with his past books, its imaginative storytelling overcomes its plot complexity and characters' often over-the-top behavior.

Irving tells a rambling story that moves in and out of chronological time. At 14 years old, Juan Diego lives in a shack with his younger sister, Lupe, and their suspected father, Rivera, outside Oaxaca, Mexico. They are the "dump kids," and Rivera the "dump jefe." Along the journey of Juan Diego's life, he and Lupe join a traveling Oaxacan circus, and Rivera accidently runs over Juan Diego's foot, giving him a permanent limp. By the time he is 54, the novelist-protagonist Juan Diego is visiting Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Manila, Philippines, ruminating on the many ghosts and memories from his past.

Juan Diego is an inspired character who provides Irving with a platform from which to explore the mysteries of growing old, of religious fanaticism and fantasy, of language, of companionship and love, and especially of writing. Regarding his maimed foot, Juan Diego thinks: "A cripple's life is one of watching others do what he can't do, not the worst option for a future novelist." From wherever it came, Irving's knack for telling a good story is as strong as ever. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Daniel Sada (Almost Never) died in 2011, but the prolific Mexican writer left behind many short stories, novels and poems, and Katherine Silver has translated his humorous novella One Out of Two into English for the first time.

"Now, how to say it? One out of two, or two in one, or what?" Constitución and Gloria Gamal are identical twin sisters, and this is their shared identity and life's work. At 13, they were orphaned by a car wreck, but they did not notice for weeks, not until they ran out of food, so consumed were they with one another. Now in their 40s, they dress alike, wear the same makeup and hairstyle; whoever gets up first in the morning gets to choose that day's attire for both. They have practiced the same gestures and mannerisms until they are indistinguishable. They even switch names from day to day. ("Why shouldn't they!") Then a problem challenges the Gamal sisters' contented tricks of identity: one of them meets a man.

Sada's winding, lyrical, frequently abstract language is one of the great joys of this comical, silly and touching story. Of course, the introduction of a suitor raises questions for the twins. Separate or share? But the tension of One Out of Two is related to illusion, deceit and identity, as Constitución and Gloria discover envy and competition for the first time. Sada dances his reader through these conflicts and on to a joyfully droll and loving conclusion. His readers' only regret is that it is over so soon. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Narrated by 34-year-old middle daughter Helen, All the Houses is really two stories. Just a teen in the 1980s, Helen watched her father, Tim, a mid-level White House adviser in the Reagan administration, lose his job in the frenzy of the Iran-Contra scandal. The resulting stress led to her parents' divorce and her eventual drift to Los Angeles to write and sell an Iran-Contra screenplay. Her mother moved to Philadelphia to do nonprofit fundraising; her hip younger sister became an adjunct professor in New York City; and her older sister, Courtney, worked and married her way into the suburban Washington wealthy. When Tim has a heart attack in 2005, Helen comes back to Washington to help with his recovery--a return that drops her into the same taxing, frustrating relationship with her sisters and parents that she fled 20 years earlier.

Much of All the Houses tellingly describes the back rooms and secrets that characterized the now mostly forgotten covert efforts of "a few bureaucrats and a gang of freelance old hands drawn to the rush of counterrevolution and back-channel deals" to supply arms to Iran in order to raise unauthorized funds to support the Contra rebels against the "Communist-leaning" Nicaraguan government. But the heart of Karen Olsson's (Waterloo) novel is Helen's gradual acceptance of her sisters' comparatively greater successes, understanding of her father's weaknesses and recognition of her own professional writing flair.

Politics and family may make strange bedfellows, but in the knowing and amusing novel All the Houses, Olsson makes them inseparable. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Shortly after graduating from Yale in 1995, novelist Benjamin Markovits (You Don't Have to Live Like This) departed for Germany. There he spent a year playing basketball for a minor league team while searching for his identity as a writer. He's transformed that experience into the frank, disarming autobiographical novel Playing Days, originally published in England in 2011, now in print in the United States for the first time.

Though he never played college basketball, on the strength of a homemade video showcasing his shooting skills, the Texas-born Benjamin Markovits of the novel improbably lands a contract with a second division team called the Yoghurts in the small medieval town of Landshut, about an hour's train ride from Munich. He joins a ragtag band of teammates that includes American Bo Hadnot, at age 30 aching for one last shot at the NBA, and Karl, an undisciplined German teenager whose preternatural talent already has him marked for greatness.

In scenes that are striking both for their insight and for the chasteness of their characters' behavior, Markovits effectively portrays Benjamin's stumbling entry into the adult world. He nails the mind-numbing repetition of the team's twice-a-day workouts and the tedium of traveling for hours by bus through the German countryside to play a game before a few hundred fans. Readers who aren't basketball enthusiasts may find themselves skimming the novel's intermittent game scenes, but those who love the sport will grasp quickly Markovits's talent for describing the rugged ballet that is its essence.

That he's done it so artfully makes Playing Days such a pleasing novel. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Lieutenant Danielle "Dan" Lewis has been with the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Navy for 18 years, most recently with the Crimes Involving Loss of Life Division, also known--to her distaste--as the Kill Squad. She's obstinate, she's a loner, she has the balls to request green tea at the officers' mess. She's also deeply troubled since her go-it-alone style almost got her killed and made her an outcast within the naval community.

Dan is in Portsmouth, waiting for a new assignment. Several days earlier, Tenacity, a nuclear hunter-killer submarine, docked with Stewart Walker aboard. That evening his wife, Cheryl, was beaten, raped and murdered. He was informed Monday morning; Tuesday evening he was found hanging in the engine rooms. Since Tenacity is due to sail again in four days, the sub's commanding officer wants the investigation wrapped up before departure. But when the sailing date is moved up, the investigation barely begun, there is one, and only one, berth available. If the inquiry is to continue, either Dan or Granger can leave with the sub. Dan takes on the challenge with trepidation, desperate to find Cheryl Walker's killer.

In his debut novel, J.S. Law has crafted thrilling suspense in a setting that offers many opportunities for confined, oppressive menace. He has also created a compelling character in Dan Lewis. She is headstrong, she is relentless, she is tough to befriend, but she is undeniably brave. Law ends Tenacity with a perfect segue into a sequel. It can't come too soon. --Marilyn Dahl, editor, Shelf Awareness for Readers

Nonfiction author Sally Andrew (The Fire Dogs of Climate Change) stirs up a satisfying mystery in her debut novel, Recipes for Love and Murder. Tannie ("Auntie") Maria van Harten enjoys writing her recipe column for the newspaper in her small South African town. When the Gazette's editors decide to nix the recipes in favor of an advice column, Tannie Maria tries her hand at mixing culinary and romantic tips. Soon the letters are flooding in, and Tannie Maria finds herself helping readers with matters of both the table and the heart.

When Martine, an abused woman who has written to Tannie Maria, ends up dead under suspicious circumstances, the cook-cum-journalist and her colleagues are drawn into a murder investigation. Against the backdrop of the vast South African veld, Tannie Maria and fellow reporter Jessie attempt to trace the killer before he or she strikes again.

Andrew has created a charming protagonist in Tannie Maria, who sprinkles her first-person narration with baking tips and Afrikaans words. "My mother was Afrikaans and my father was English and the languages are mixed up inside me," she explains. "I taste in Afrikaans and argue in English."

"We can be sure that our lives will all end with death," Tannie Maria writes to a reader. "There's not much we can do about that. But you can add love and good food to your life. That is your choice." With a dash of South African history and a pinch of social consciousness, Tannie Maria's first adventure serves up a satisfying mix of romance, humor and crime solving. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

After his standalone hit Suspect, Robert Crais returns to his popular Elvis Cole and Joe Pike series with The Promise, bringing along Suspect's LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his canine partner, Maggie. PI Cole is hired to find Amy Breslyn, a missing explosives expert who seemingly embezzled funds from her employer, a company with ties to the Department of Defense.

Cole's search for Amy intersects with James and Maggie's pursuit of a murder suspect when they end up at a house containing a dead body and an even bigger surprise. Cole becomes a person of interest to the LAPD, but due to the sensitive nature of Amy's government work, he can't divulge the truth about his case. When it looks like al-Qaeda might be involved, Cole asks for a little help from his friends--agency partner Joe Pike and private military contractor Jon Stone. Together the men attempt to bring Amy back, but can they keep her alive?

The procedural aspects of The Promise are timely and engrossing, the prose tight, and dialogue snappy, but the novel's--and series'--chief appeal lies in the humanity of the characters. Cole, Pike, Stone and James sometimes commit brutal acts, but only to mete justice and protect those most vulnerable. Don't even think about threatening the dog in their presence. These are tough men capable of deep compassion, and if they make a promise, they will keep it at all costs. When Crais promises readers a crackling new thriller, he keeps his word, too. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

History teacher Jack Felter returns to his hometown in Ohio to care for his sick father. While home, he picks up the trail of his old friend Tony, a psychiatrist who went missing three years before. As he pursues the truth about what happened, he meets Cole, Tony's last patient, who could very well be at the center of one of the largest conspiracies ever fathomed.

What if history was neither the official narrative nor shared memory at all? What if history was everything that had been forgotten?

The Great Forgetting depicts an alternative reality where the United States lost World War II and the Nazis conquered America, a world where Nikola Tesla invented the atomic bomb and Stephen Hawking invented a machine that allowed everyone collectively to forget the past. In search of these histories' origins, Jack and Cole wind up in the farthest flung reaches of the earth--from a secretive underground facility in the Catskills to a lost island in the Pacific--in order to discover the truth about their own pasts and the project known as "The Great Forgetting."

This book is a conspiracy goldmine. Working their way through this heady plot are aliens, Area 51, HAARP, 9/11, fluoride, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the lost continent of Mu and much more. There is a conspiracy for everyone, and it is evident Renner had as much fun putting them together as readers will have figuring them out. --Jarret Middleton, author, freelance editor

Rock 'n' roll song lyrics are a weird hybrid genre that run the gamut from elementary-level school doggerel to literary art. At the high end of the spectrum, witness Patti Smith, who in addition to being an acclaimed memoirist (Just Kids; M Train) and respected poet (Auguries of Innocence), is one of the foremost rock lyricists of the last 40 years. Her Collected Lyrics is a valuable addition to the imprecise art of matching profound word play to primitive rhythms.

From the beginning of her career, Smith has walked a tightrope between controversy ("Jesus died for somebody's sins/ but not mine") and reverence, the topical and the surreal ("Standing outside the courthouse in the rain/ seemed like a lost soul/ from a chapel of dreams"). She can punch like a street thug one minute and offer the tender embrace of an earth mother the next. This wonderful range helps lift her lyrics to authentic poetry; they don't lay inert on the page without the galvanizing force of her shambolic howl and the power punk chords of her band behind her. These lyrics protest war, celebrate the sensual, movingly remember the dead, and serve as Buddhist and (non-traditional) Christian devotionals ("Even Christ yearns to be/ to possess the skin/ and bones of man the blood of man").

Collected Lyrics is a physically beautiful book, too, packed with facsimiles of Smith's handwritten lyrics, concert posters and other eye-catching treats. This is a worthwhile addition for rabid Patti Smith fans or for any student of literate rock. --Donald Powell, freelance writer

" 'Congratulations,' said the doctor, backing away. 'You have a ninja baby.'" Nina, the ninja baby, is in full-on combat mode from the moment she's born, when she karate-chops the doctor for thumping her gently on the bottom.

When Nina's mother tries to feed her, she discovers her little one (now a toddler) has already "launched a sneak attack" on a box of doughnuts. As her parents watch TV on the sofa, Nina stands very still on top of a side table, disguising herself as a lamp, ninja-style, "training herself in advanced infiltration." Being a self-sufficient ninja is a lonely life, but it gets even lonelier when her new baby brother shows up. This tiny Kung Fu Master could "disarm his captors with a single look." He never does anything by himself. In a dance of delicately kinetic spot illustrations, a furious, red-faced Nina flips out, expertly kicking her toys and knocking things over... but no one comes. She goes in search of the baby Kung Fu Master to learn his secret to winning their parents' affection, but "it was like listening to the wind in the bamboo." He just looks at her and gurgles. She takes note of his brilliant technique, and together, the two little ninjas join forces. Watch out, parents!

Lug author David Zeltser's Ninja Baby is a witty take on both new-sibling angst and the wobbly line between independence and loneliness. With breezy pen-and-ink lines splashed with color, Caldecott Honor artist Diane Goode's (When I Was Young in the Mountains) comically captures the wee ninjas and sets just the right tone. --Karin Snelson, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

In 16-year-old Fei's remote mountaintop Chinese village, where the entire population is deaf, there are three main jobs: artists, miners and suppliers. The responsible, fiercely loyal Fei has worked hard to make sure she and her sister, Zhang Jing, keep their high-status jobs as artists, painting the daily news. Their work, as the elders say--in sign language--is part of an "ancient and exalted tradition." It began generations earlier when their ancestors mysteriously lost their hearing, some say due to the mythical winged lion, the pixiu, looking for some peace and quiet on the mountain.

Living atop a steep, unstable mountain peak with no safe egress and no way to sustain themselves with crops or livestock, the near-starving villagers rely on the supplies sent up via zip line from the township below, in exchange for precious metals. But when the deaf villagers also begin going blind, their tiny civilization becomes more precarious than ever. Fei decides to join her forbidden childhood love, Li Wei, in his bold, dangerous quest to save the village from sure extinction... a goal made significantly more realistic by Fei's sudden, miraculous ability to hear.

In Soundless, the thrilling stand-alone fantasy by Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy and the Bloodlines series), the surreal shattering of a lifelong silence challenges readers to examine the nature of sound and its role in human communication. Myth, magic and romance underlie the suspenseful, intensely dramatic scenes of the two star-crossed lovers dodging avalanches and escaping from vigilantes of the valley kingdom that cruelly exploits the vulnerable mountain community. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor