Autumn 1946 finds war-weary brothers reunited in their beloved Hartgrove Hall, a country house much the worse for wear after years of billeting British and American troops "with mightier preoccupations than pruning the roses or sweeping the drawing room chimney." Natasha Solomons piques readers' interest in the tale of the Dorset estate and its heirs by opening The Song of Hartgrove Hall with a funeral in the year 2000.

In an effective to-and-fro, Solomons (The House at Tyneford) teases out the story of the narrator, renowned composer Harry Fox-Talbot (or "Fox"), his brother Jack and the famous songstress Edie Rose--who arrives at Hartgrove in 1946 as Jack's paramour, and for whom Fox is mourning in the opening pages, as his late wife.

In impeccably proper British prose, Fox relates the story of the near-loss of the family estate to the wrecking ball and the love triangle that led to his marrying Edie. Knowing how these crises end does not detract from the novel's suspense, as the connecting theme--music--develops through an additional storyline: Fox's grief abates when his four-year-old grandson reveals his astounding, precocious gift as a pianist.

Fox, whose career was sidelined by Edie's death, devotes himself to nurturing young Robin's musical development, reaffirming the grandfather's affable character and eventually rewarding him with renewed peace and optimism. Descriptions of the verdant British countryside, the grandeur of the manse, and Fox and Edie's devotion combine in a novel as engaging as Downton Abbey and as literary as a Brontë work. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

After making a name for himself in self-publishing with his Greatfall series, Jason Gurley published a story about a girl called Eleanor who in 1985, lost her twin sister, Esme, in a car crash at the age of six. In the early 1990s, Eleanor, now a teenager, lives in the shadow of her sister's ghost, her family irrevocably unwound by Esme's death. The only brightness in her life comes from her longtime friend Jack, the one person she can trust.

In a different but intersecting world, two entities called Mea and Efah watch Eleanor. More than anything, Mea wants to pull Eleanor into her world. Mea resists trusting Efah, who wants to control her, but he promises to teach her how to bring Eleanor close to them. When Mea's early attempts fall short of their mark, Eleanor suddenly finds herself yanked out of her reality and into bizarre new realms. Although she's afraid to tell anyone about her experiences, Eleanor knows she is not hallucinating--not when her returns happen violently enough to send her to the hospital. As she is torn from our reality again and again, Eleanor travels unknowingly closer to the pain eating away at her shattered family.

Ethereal prose and off-kilter fantasy worlds wait around every bend as Eleanor gets caught up in forces beyond her control. Gurley flings genre boundaries to the wind and finds his own way through the intertwined threads of trauma, magic and love. By turns adventurous and contemplative but always heartfelt, Gurley's first foray into major publishing will surely not be his last. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

One part madcap farce, one part chamber of horrors, one part modernist look at the jumbling of political, national and personal narratives, Sony Labou Tansi's The Shameful State is purposeful chaos. The Congolese writer is known for his powerful political novels, and he uses depravity as a cudgel, showing how absolute power creates seething, merciless creatures who demand ownership of every person and thing within their grasp. Faced with the corruption in The Shameful State, it's hard to know whether to cry or laugh.

Dominating the book is Colonel Martillimi Lopez, a man who becomes president of an undisclosed African country and proceeds to rape and pillage, pushing aside both rebellion and conspiracies amid his own government. As if to show Lopez's complete control, the third-person narration in The Shameful State sometimes shifts suddenly to first, with Lopez now speaking on behalf of the story. In other places, the narrator speaks with the voice of the people, or as the personification of the country itself.

The book rushes from one outlandish situation to the next, usually involving bloodshed and murder. The Shameful State is not for the faint of heart (for example, Lopez and the narrator continually refer to his penis as "my hernia," as if it is so engorged as to be a symbol in and of itself), but it's clear from the gonzo tone throughout the book that Tansi isn't interested in depravity for its own sake. Like the work of William S. Burroughs, The Shameful State exists beyond the scope of normal narrative, forcing the reader to confront evil in its purest absurd form. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.

After a lucrative turn at a Cambodian casino, 28-year-old Englishman Robert Grieve walks away with two grand--a fortune in the Southeast Asian nation--and into a web of danger and deceit. This unexpected windfall drives the narrative in Lawrence Osborne's new novel, Hunters in the Dark, an intriguing story of luck, fate, human nature and colliding cultures.

Word of the winnings pocketed by a foreigner precedes Robert to Battambang in western Cambodia, a destination he chooses on a whim. He crosses paths with motorbike-riding American expat Simon Beaucamp and takes him up on an invitation to be a guest at Simon's home that evening. The next morning, though, Robert wakes up aboard a small boat motoring along a river, driven by a stranger who doesn't speak English. Dressed in Simon's elegant linen attire, Robert is missing everything else.

Making Hunters in the Dark an especially compelling read is the Cambodian setting. The story plays out along dusty, deserted roads, in the dense, steamy jungle, in the shadows of ancient temples and in lively Phnom Penh, a city of possibility and danger. As a visitor in a foreign land, he doesn't understand the nuances of a culture steeped in superstition and the belief that fate and karma dictate lives and actions.

Hunters in the Dark has garnered comparisons to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith, deservedly so. The twist-filled narrative smolders with an ominous undercurrent, and the wheel of karma keeps on turning, unleashing its powerful forces. --Shannon McKenna Schmidt

Actress Maggie Smith seems to be at the height of her power, enjoying worldwide acclaim and success for her roles in the Harry Potter and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel films, as well as the TV series Downton Abbey. In Maggie Smith: A Biography, Michael Coveney, one of Britain's most respected theater critics, presents the storied influences of Dame Maggie's life.

Coveney explores Smith's exceptional talent by first examining her "spartan, though... not deprived, childhood." Because she was "not particularly welcomed" by her two elder brothers, Smith, in her loneliness, developed a voracious reading habit and a sharp instinct for privacy and cultivated her tart spirit and independence. An acting teacher who harbored reservations about Maggie's acting ability fueled the teenager's drive for the stage.

Coveney spends the bulk of the biography chronicling, in great depth, Smith's acting roles, her analytical approach to craft and the often nomadic existence required by her transatlantic career. Along the way, Coveney touches upon Smith's great loves, marriages and children. Smith's trademark self-preserving wit--along with her class and energy--enliven the narrative throughout.

Though the actress granted Coveney permission to write this biography, he asserts that Maggie Smith, even to those who know her well, is an enigma, and he accentuates Smith's difficulties in trying to balance her "private life with the public demands of her talent... career always came first." Therefore, it is fitting that this thorough and well-researched biography is anchored on Dame Maggie's exemplary body of work and the demanding drive of her dedication and genius, all of which have earned her critical acclaim and lasting appeal. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

More than two centuries before Barack Obama became the first African American president, black slaves lived and worked behind the scenes in the White House. In The Invisibles, Jesse Holland (Black Men Built the Capitol) has written an in-depth account of slaves who were footmen, butlers, maids and cooks to the presidents and their wives from 1782 to 1862, when slavery ended with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Although our first presidents often spoke against slavery, Holland writes, "twelve of the first eighteen U.S. presidents owned Africans as slaves at one time or another in their lives." The names of hundreds of these enslaved people may never be known, but Holland has scoured historical documents, letters and diaries to piece together the stories of many enslaved blacks who lived in the shadows, serving the presidents and their families by making beds, cooking the food, preparing the clothes, and working on the plantations that many of the first leaders owned. These narratives are engrossing as they shed more light on aspects of early American life and give a voice to a large segment of the population that was instrumental in building the nation, but that have largely been ignored. The written excerpts and quotes from eyewitnesses bring The Invisibles to life, creating detailed vignettes of men and women whose lives were dictated by those who owned them rather than their own dreams and desires. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

According to psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman (Ungifted) and writer Carolyn Gregoire, "[Creativity] is both deliberate and uncontrollable, mindful and mindless, work and play. It is both the realm of a select group of geniuses through history, and the domain of every human being." Wired to Create combines Kaufman's psychological research and Gregoire's viral Huffington Post article about habits of highly creative people to explain how these paradoxes work in the messy minds of innovative people, as well as how readers can improve their own propensity for creativity.

Wired to Create is organized into 10 sections, each dissecting a behavior that artists of all types perform differently from the average person. There is no discussion of right brain/left brain dominance; instead, the authors examine things like play, daydreaming and sensitivity. This is not to say that the brain is disregarded. Kaufman and Gregoire explain how the brain functions in the presence of each habit and in turn what it means for creativity.

Illustrating their concepts using both scientific data and specific examples of individuals, the authors show how creativity can be found in both introverts and extroverts, why it is sometimes mistakenly connected to mental illness, and how each of the 10 behaviors support and enable each other.

At times the presentation of the scientific data may bog down, but the insights, examples and explanations are exhilarating and inspiring. Anyone wanting to understand or promote a fertile environment for living creatively will certainly find a wealth of riches in this book. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

Mark Mincolla (Whole Health), who has performed tens of thousands of nutritional therapy consultations, describes himself as "a holistic problem solver" whose patients have often been abandoned by traditional medical practitioners. He has assisted with a variety of ailments, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, IBS and ADHD.

While many of Mincolla's patients are overweight when he begins treating them, the weight loss that occurs under his care is incidental and not the result of formal diets. In fact, Mincolla calls his Whole Health Diet (WHD) "the anti-dieting diet plan." He instead focuses on holistic transformation through optimal nutrition, emotional freedom and spiritual sentience. He believes that once an individual is able to achieve balance in body, mind and spirit, health (and weight loss) is inevitable. To achieve this balance, the WHD provides concrete strategies to realign an individual's superconscious, electromagnetic and life force energies, including six keys to resetting metabolism; quantum energy healing practices; identification of foods that are toxic, neutral or medicinal; visualization techniques; acupressure; yogic breathing; electromagnetic feedback; homeopathy; essential oils; and sample food plans. In addition to eliminating toxic, inflammatory and allergenic foods, the WHD rotates "clean" foods every three days to control the way our genes behave and to avoid food allergies and intolerances.

Mincolla believes a "chronic overweight and obesity problem is directly related to negative thoughts and feelings" and focuses on transforming the energy they produce. The WHD is a personalized system based on an individual's specific metabolism, energy and food intolerances. --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics

American Ace is a graceful, buoyant novel in short verse by the award-winning Marilyn Nelson (How I Discovered Poetry; A Wreath for Emmett Till). Sixteen-year-old Connor Bianchini is from a big, warm, Irish-Italian family. But when his Italian grandmother, Nonna Lucia, dies, Connor's father "went weird," spending joyless nights in front of the TV drinking Chianti. Connor is worried: "I googled depression. And I got scared./ A blue glacier was growing between us."

Connor's dad finally "breaks the bubble" at a family feast. When Nonna died, she left her son "a ring, a pilot's wings, and a letter," and with them, a life-changing family secret: the man he called Dad was not his biological father. His father was an American nicknamed Ace. Connor ponders: "One quarter of me was American:/ Did that take me back to the Mayflower? The ancestors I knew were innocent/ of the white guilt of Indian slayers/ and slave owners. Did this new grandfather/ connect me differently to history?"

In the months that follow, Connor and his father work first to unravel the mystery of the birth father's identity, and then to come to grips with their own sense of identity when their research reveals that the mystery man was a Tuskegee Airman, an African American pilot who fought discrimination at home in order to be allowed to fight on the European front in World War II. Nelson's exquisite free verse follows Connor as he begins to examine his own notions of heredity, race, family and the lenses through which one views the world. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor