Actor Sean Patrick Flanery captures the essence and angst of a teenaged boy's life in his first novel, Jane Two. This authentic coming-of-age story is told through the wholly masculine, first-person perspective of Mickey, who looks back at his formative years in Houston, Tex., when he was tucked inside the cocoon of small-town family life, tumultuous schoolyard bullies and friends, and also captivated by first love.

Flanery opens the novel with Mickey on his first day of sixth grade in the 1970s. Mickey is determined to retrieve a pair of sneakers--an "unpatriotic eyesore"--thrown and looped over the flagpole on school grounds. The shoes belong to an enigmatic girl, Jane, who lives in a house behind Mickey's family. A transplant to town, Jane becomes the object of Mickey's affection--and also a muse and catalyst for his ideas, secrets and dreams. The only way for Mickey to express his true feelings is to write and mail letters to Jane, which are regularly returned to him--unopened. Mickey continues to send the notes anyway--they become a way a life, a means of therapy--until he eventually sets off for college and later, to work in California.

When Mickey returns home in the mid-1990s to attend a friend's wedding, he is confronted with Jane--and his insecurities and emotions--all over again. Flanery brings the 1970s to robust life, with Pontiac Firebirds, Converse sneakers and eight-track players blasting Lynyrd Skynyrd, in this tearjerker. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Hill, Jean Giono's first novel, won the Prix Brentano in 1929 and has been newly translated into English by Paul Eprile. Focused on the conflict between humans and nature in a tiny French village, the story's imagery and atmosphere offer a thrilling, disturbing, visceral experience in an unassuming package.

A small Provençal hamlet known as the Bastides Blanches (the White Houses), or simply the Bastides, has been for some time slouching back toward a state of nature. In these crumbling houses now live four families comprising a dozen residents--plus one, a mute vagabond they call Gagou, "who throws off the reckoning." The eldest resident, an old man named Janet, falls ill, takes to his bed, and here the troubles begin: an ill omen is noted, the town's water supply runs dry, and the surrounding landscape takes on a sinister cast. Janet begins to speak in tongues, and "in the old man's talk there are chasms where untold powers rumble." The men of the village meet to strategize as the natural world encircling the Bastides advances.

Hill runs just over 100 pages, but its impact is powerful. Giono sketches his characters sparingly. The character of Gagou presents ominous questions that are left unanswered: Are his differences malevolent, or merely another force of nature? The individualities of human characters are not the point; instead, this story is about the shape of the world, the breadth and agency of nature independent of humankind. Eprile's translation emphasizes language and a brooding tone. The result is a curious, intriguing novel of wind, earth, water and fire, both threatening and luminous. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Few authors portray the emotional landscape of the American family as sympathetically as Anna Quindlen. Her eighth novel, Miller's Valley, is Mary Margaret Miller's story, as a daughter, wife and mother in the rural Pennsylvania town that shares her name.

The novel opens with the adult Mary and her mother joining their neighbors at a town meeting, where an official pressures the people to accept a government plan to flood their region. After the brief prologue, the novel follows "Mimi," beginning in childhood and into years beyond the first scene, with the specter of the dam looming. The Miller's Valley townspeople carry on, resisting and eventually dealing with the impending obliteration of their land. But like a "drowned town," many truths about the families in Miller's Valley lie hidden.

Mary's parents don't have much time to ponder the town's fate. "My mother was a nurse and my father was a fix-it man. But if they'd ever applied for passports, which they never did, where it asked for profession they probably would have written 'farmer.' " Obedient and studious, Mary earns college scholarships, but postpones her plans when her reckless, charismatic brother returns from Vietnam with a self-destructive volatility, and her beloved dad suffers a stroke. Confused by first love and family loyalty, Mary nevertheless pursues her dream of studying science, and comes back to Miller's Valley as a respected professional.

Quindlen captures an era with spot-on detail--roadside sweet corn stands, white patent shoes, local beer from cans--as well as the timeless themes of family love and controversial government edicts. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Lisa Beazley draws a keen-eyed, entertaining portrait of sisterhood in the age of social media in her debut novel, Keep Me Posted. Cassie and Sid Sunday have always adored one another, but they've grown apart in recent years. Sid is living the glamorous expat life in Singapore, while Cassie struggles to find a moment of peace as a New York City-dwelling mom of twins. Over Christmas at their parents' house, they make a pact to reconnect by exchanging snail-mail letters for a year.

Narrated by Cassie, the book intersperses letters written by both sisters with scenes from Cassie's increasingly harried life in Manhattan. Thrilled by her sense of renewed closeness to Sid and pleased to have a project, Cassie scans the letters onto her computer to save them for posterity. But when a technical glitch causes the letters to end up on the Internet, the sisters' relationship, and other aspects of their lives, may be in serious jeopardy.

Beazley's breezy, welcoming writing style draws readers right in, and her evocation of the bond between Sid and Cassie--occasionally competitive, but never catty--rings true. As the fault lines in Sid's marriage begin to show, and Cassie admits her frustrations with the life she has fought so hard to build, the sisters must put aside their embarrassment at being publicly exposed and figure out how to help each other move forward.

Warmhearted, insightful and often funny, Keep Me Posted is a tribute to sisterhood, forgiveness and the power of a handwritten letter. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In Alice & Oliver, Charles Bock (Beautiful Children) draws on the experience of his late wife's battle with leukemia to create an intensely realistic and harrowing portrayal of a young woman's desperate fight for life against a relentless disease.

On the way from her New York City home to an idyllic family Thanksgiving in Vermont in 1993, with her husband, Oliver, and infant daughter, Doe, fashion designer Alice Culvert nearly succumbs to a pneumonia-like illness. After serious but less dire conditions are ruled out, a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia follows and the family embarks on what one of Alice's doctors calls the "marathon of sprints" that will be their reality for the next year.

But Bock's novel is more than a chronicle of cancer's ravages and the battle against it. Oliver is a software developer who is racing to finish a word-processing program he hopes will save his fledgling company. A rationalist who's skeptical of Alice's exploration of Eastern religion and her resort to alternative therapies as an adjunct to conventional treatment, he makes a foolhardy choice that threatens to undermine his marriage. This depiction of a relationship in crisis is every bit as taut and unpredictable as the medical drama in the novel's foreground.

In this vivid novel, Charles Bock takes readers on a journey that never moves far beyond the confines of an Upper East Side hospital and a loft in the Meatpacking District, and yet it encompasses a world. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Simon Callow's Orson Welles, Volume 3: One-Man Band is the penultimate volume in his magnificent epic biography of the Academy Award-winning international filmmaker, covering his prolific years of 1947-1964. During this period, Welles directed five films (Touch of Evil, Othello, Mr. Arkadin, The Trial and Chimes at Midnight), wrote, helmed or starred in seven stage productions (which included directing Laurence Olivier in the acrimonious production of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros) and acted in more than three dozen films (including The Third Man, Moby Dick, King Lear, The Long, Hot Summer, Compulsion and The V.I.P.s). He also married his third wife, fathered his third daughter and burned a lot of bridges in Hollywood.

Actor, director and biographer Callow (Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor) writes with energy, fluidity and the astute knowledge of an industry insider and historian. While Callow has great admiration for the filmmaker, he is not blind to Welles's excesses, ego, volcanic rages and his constant need for new stimulation that often left projects abandoned in the hands of others--whom he would later rail against for destroying his work. As Eartha Kitt observed, "If one was not quick enough, Orson lost patience."

Three volumes in, Welles (1915-1985) continues to be a ceaselessly fascinating subject--an artist with unbridled enthusiasm and creativity for his projects, who could not abide any form of constraint or interference. Callow's insightful, analytical and entertaining biography captures the magic and mania of Orson Welles and his work. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Love That Boy: What Two Presidents, Eight Road Trips, and My Son Taught Me About a Parent's Expectations offers many things: memoir, parenting advice, meditations on Asperger's Syndrome and even short discursions into the lives and personalities of various presidents. In other words, Love That Boy is not the straightforward narrative one might expect from Ron Fournier, an experienced journalist who's covered multiple presidents for the Associated Press. Instead, Fournier has written a searching, introspective book that examines his relationship with his son Tyler, diagnosed at an early age with Asperger's.

Fournier presents himself in a surprisingly unforgiving light when he regretfully recalls how his workaholic tendencies combined with the requirements of his profession led him to leave his family for lengthy periods. These bouts of self-criticism, as well as the exhortations of his wife, Lori, lead Fournier to the conceit of the book: so-called "guilt trips" where he would use his professional connections to take Tyler to various historical sites dedicated to deceased presidents as well as meetings with Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama.

Love That Boy starts in a very personal place, expanding its scope as it goes along. By the time it reaches the point of broad policy proposals and sweeping parenting advice, Fournier's insights feel earned and evidence-based. Love That Boy presents a particular story about Tyler and a universal story about parenthood--its conclusions are born out of this moving interaction between personal experience and time-honored truths. Love That Boy is a must-read for parents and the parented. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books

Less a biography than an analysis of James Brown's cultural legacy, Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul is reflective and fascinating. As a child, James McBride's family lived across the tracks from Brown's home in Queens, N.Y. McBride's youngest sister braved the singer's front steps to knock on the door, something no other kid ever had the courage to do. Brown stepped onto the porch to greet her and said, "Stay in school, Dotty. Don't be no fool!"

Brown's message never changed: stay in school, work hard, be proud of who you are. McBride (The Good Lord Bird; The Color of Water) details how the Godfather of Soul's significance as a successful African American entertainer and singer has no analogue. In addition to a profound influence on American music and culture, Brown left his considerable wealth to poor children in Georgia and South Carolina (although in the 10 years since his death, none of it has gone anywhere but into the pockets of lawyers hired by Brown's family to contest his largesse).

Kill 'Em and Leave also looks at what's left of James Brown's non-financial legacy via a sort of travelogue, with author, musician and educator McBride's informed commentary about environments that shaped Brown's life. It's impossible to separate McBride's own experience from the story he tells, and the book is all the better for it. This is an insider's look at the racial, musical and cultural effects of the supreme force of will that James Brown brought to every endeavor he was involved in, from the deep South to New York City. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

The age-old tattoo tradition is loud and proud in modern American culture, and in Alison McGhee's (Firefly Hollow; Bink and Gollie: Two for One) picture book Tell Me a Tattoo Story, a young boy asks his father, once again, to share the stories behind his ink.

Dad's intricate, delicately wrought tattoos embody major touchstones in his life: his loving parents, meeting his wife, his military service, the birth of his son. He tells the inquisitive boy the stories, tattoo by tattoo, through bath time and all the way to bedtime. The mountain dragon inked on his father's shoulder is from a favorite childhood book. Eliza Wheeler (Miss Maple's Seeds) illustrates the story behind the dragon tattoo with a cozy, golden-hued scene of the father's mother reading out loud from The Ho----. (The title is cut off, but bets are on The Hobbit.) The upper-arm tattoo of fireworks and a Ferris wheel reminds his dad of a pretty girl: "Have you ever met her? You sure have." (It's the boy's mother, whom his father met when she was waiting tables at the Café de l'amour.) Wheeler uses India ink with dip pens and watercolors to make the tattoos spring to life, just as the affection and memories behind the tattoos live and breathe for the boy. Tattoos of ships, dragons, skulls, hearts, waves, fish, fields, keys and numbers combine in a magical jumble on the endpapers.

Tell Me a Tattoo Story is a tale of love and ink and the staying power that both promise. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness