The McBride brothers, Billy and Tommy, live with their parents and younger sister on a cattle ranch in Queensland, Australia. It hasn't rained for more than a year, the cows are dying and there's hardly any food left in the house. Then, it rains, a blessing for everyone--until tragedy strikes the homestead, a scenario that leaves the brothers turning to the one man their father has always distrusted and disliked, John Sullivan, the local land baron.

Set in 1885, Paul Howarth's debut novel Only Killers and Thieves is the complex story of the McBride brothers, both on the verge of manhood. Overnight they must grow into men when they witness the tragedy, and then navigate its aftermath. Howarth tells the story primarily from the perspective of Tommy, the younger brother, who struggles with doing what he knows is right or doing what is expected of him by his brother and the older men they fall in with. The racial tension between the Aboriginal peoples and the white settlers who have claimed the land for their own purposes is visceral. The imagery the author uses is both brutal and beautiful. Howarth pulls no punches in describing the white settlers' cruelty toward Indigenous peoples--reminiscent of early American pioneers and their dealings with Native Americans. The effects of Tommy's actions haunt him long after the deeds are done, just as this story lingers in the mind long after the book is closed. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Every one of the short stories in Jacob M. Appel's The Amazing Mr. Morality hinges on a choice, most often ethical. The first story, "The Children's Lottery," follows a terrifying selection process where children are chosen to live with pedophiles while their teachers look on helplessly. In the titular novella, a young doctor rediscovers the man who abused him and his mother during childhood, and has the chance for revenge. And in the most tragic story, "Right of Way," a squabble over renaming a street forces a tween to face what he owes his hometown and his family.

Each time, the main character is called to choose, sometimes with obvious ramifications. What makes The Amazing Mr. Morality so delectable is that these characters rarely make the "right" choice. The stories collected here aren't morality plays, with Appel serving judgment on his character's actions through the resolutions to his tales (though a couple of them might get served with poetic justice). Instead, the author is interested in watching the ripple effects of when everyday people break bad: What are the unforeseen consequences for the health of a community when one person decides to stray from the common good? That's where these stories get interesting, especially "Right of Way," the standout story and one which most rigorously follows Appel's ethical experiments to their logical conclusion. The wrongdoers aren't always punished (or rewarded), but someone around them is. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

Australian Jane Harper took the mystery genre by storm with her 2017 debut, The Dry, which won numerous awards and is being made into a motion picture. With Force of Nature, the stellar second entry in her Federal Agent Aaron Falk series, Harper has swerved about as far around a sophomore slump as one can get.

The briefest dip into the prologue results in stomach-tightening anticipation that begs the reader to continue: "Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things. One: No-one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell. And two: Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you." Alice's failure to make the rendezvous point following a corporate retreat in the vast Giralang Ranges outside Melbourne--"land that was reluctant to let anything escape"--is of keen interest to Falk and his new partner. Alice is the key to their high-pressure investigation into her employer's possible money-laundering.

Still smarting from the events of The Dry, Falk heads to the dense forest to observe the search and to interview the co-workers who returned without Alice, each with his or her own version of events. Although Falk is mostly outside the hunt and remains enigmatic, Harper skillfully uses him and retreat-participant flashbacks as perfect story lenses. She infuses the narrative with energy and atmosphere as Falk plumbs professional and personal relationships for clues to Alice's fate. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Few places in the United States evoke as much mystery and potential for danger as Florida's muggy, alligator-ridden swamplands, which is where James Grippando has set his latest legal thriller, A Death in Live Oak. Brimming with tension, this whip-smart novel brings back Jack Swyteck, a criminal defense attorney from Miami with a record of just barely escaping disbarment. This is Grippando's 14th Swyteck novel, but his work shows no sign of easing off the suspense.

In this installment, Swyteck is asked by a white, well-to-do Gainesville family to represent their frat-boy son, Mark, who's been convicted of a murder so heinous it's causing national riots: the lynching of a black college student on a bank of the Suwannee River. Swyteck has never shied away from representing guilty defendants and, at first, he's not entirely sure that his latest client is innocent. But the more he learns about Mark and his family, the more he starts to believe that they might be part of a much larger and more complicated story that goes back decades.

Moving to and fro in time, A Death in Live Oak presents a fast-paced, tautly written story of race, love and justice that speaks to the contemporary moment--while eschewing expectations at every turn. Indeed, it's a novel that will keep even the savviest fans of legal thrillers guessing throughout. Smart, complex and of-the-moment, A Death in Live Oak is the product of an author with a powerful imagination and a finger on the political pulse of a nation. --Amy Brady, freelance writer and editor

Shortly before her death in 2016 at age 69, actress Patty Duke (with coauthor William J. Jankowski) surveyed her six-decade career on TV, film and stage and produced In the Presence of Greatness. It is a delightful, engaging and upbeat salute to the talented people with whom she worked. "Some of this book is going to sound like I lived an enchanted life, but when I went to work, I often did," writes Duke.

When 16-year-old Duke won an Academy Award re-creating her Broadway performance of Helen Keller in the film The Miracle Worker, she had already co-starred with Richard Burton, Kim Stanley, Laurence Olivier, Helen Hayes, David Niven and Gloria Vanderbilt (who provides the book's heartfelt foreword, calling Duke "the daughter I never had."). Although this memoir focuses on her career with incisive, thoughtful and revealing anecdotes about her coworkers, there is plenty of juicy details about her personal life, including her romantic relationships (dating both Frank Sinatra and his son), a suicide attempt and her battles with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. This is an essential follow-up to her 1987 autobiography Call Me Anna. She corrects misinformation from her earlier book (John Astin is not the father of her son Sean Astin) and revises old perspectives (she learned to embrace Valley of the Dolls and devotes six chapters to the creation of this camp classic).

Patty Duke was a dazzling talent who never stopped working. Her insightful reflections on her 60-year career and coworkers will be catnip to movie buffs. This photo-filled book is a total delight. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Rivers have inspired many a song verse--including Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene" and Robeson's sensitive rendition of Kern and Hammerstein's "Ol' Man River." To Duke University environmental science professor Martin Doyle, however, the country's bountiful rivers shaped the very history, government and economics of the U.S. from its very beginnings. George Washington went surveying out west to look for an easy way to connect the East Coast rivers with the fertile Ohio River Valley. Since then, the nation's 250,000 navigable rivers have powered engines of commerce, migration and leisure. Doyle's illustrated The Source affirms the critical place rivers held in the growth of the country and the valuable role of federal oversight of this rich resource.

New York's Ohio and Erie Canal was the first successful commercial attempt to modify topography by connecting the Hudson River to the Ohio River. From there, the government's controversial role in "channelizing" and managing our inland waters greatly expanded with the establishment of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the construction of miles of levees along the Mississippi River and public works projects like the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Drawing on anecdotal interviews and primary research, The Source covers them all. It is both a solid history and a thought-provoking primer on the role of the federal government in managing natural resources. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Tennessee native Elizabeth Catte gets to the point: popular discourse is wrong about the "who" and the "where" of Appalachia. The United States' current fixation with the region as "the other America" and "the heart of Trump country" distorts the facts and, in her brief book, Catte maintains that the diversity and travails of the people of this region defy the stereotype.

What you are getting wrong about Appalachia, Catte claims, includes the naïve belief that it's primarily West Virginia. Appalachia was officially defined during 1965's federal War on Poverty and includes about 700,000 square miles in 13 states--and was branded as impoverished. While mainstream culture portrays Appalachians as Scots-Irish coal miners, the region's forgotten workers include home healthcare and retail employees, mostly women, and significant Hispanic and African American populations. Economic exploitation (e.g., environmental destruction) and corporate welfare (e.g., tax breaks to big businesses) are well-documented.

Catte's challenges to J.D. Vance and his memoir Hillbilly Elegy start on page one and recur frequently. She characterizes his book, now widely embraced and assigned in classrooms, as "our political moment's favorite text," and Vance as "chief analyzer of the white working class." Her doctorate in public history supports her documentation countering Elegy and other popular media images. Her targets run from "local color" writers and photographers who perpetuated 1880s-era cultural stereotypes through multiple media outlets' broad characterizations of "Trump Country." Highlighting decades of suppressed workers' rights movements, as well as prison facilities that still exploit low-cost labor, Catte expands the perspective on Appalachia. Readers will indeed get more right about this slice of the country after reading her book. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

The Genius Within: Unlocking Your Brain's Potential by British journalist David Adam explores the neuroscience revolution igniting the global scientific community. Cognitive enhancement, in the form of pills, therapy and electrical stimulation, is increasingly relevant in a world where one quarter of the population struggles with some sort of mental disorder. Adam was inspired to research the field after undergoing successful cognitive behavioral therapy to treat his severe OCD (which he wrote about in The Man Who Couldn't Stop). The therapy helped rewire his brain and, much to his astonishment, led to improvements outside his original concern.

Beyond treatment, there are people who try cognitive enhancement for the additional brain boost or mental upgrade it provides. Some turn to ethically dubious "smart" pills, while others experiment with deep electrical brain stimulation--which can activate and release knowledge and behavior from the subconscious mind. Adam compares it with a potential side effect of brain injury, as when a blow to the head causes a person suddenly to develop astute recall skills. In the name of scientific research, Adam experiments with pills and subjects himself to amateur electrical stimulation, sharing the results with a healthy dose of caution.

Adam's approachable and mild-mannered tone, entertaining historical anecdotes and thorough command of the field make this a compelling investigation. It's a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the future of dementia and mental illness treatment. After all, if the performance of one's heart can be improved by medical intervention, then why not one's brain? There is much to admire in Adam's continued effort to investigate ways in which people with mental disorders might gain relief. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer

Kestra was raised as a privileged child of the Dallisors, a clan that holds its power through the patronage of the foul Lord Endrick and his magic. As a member of the ruling class, she hasn't always learned to think about others: "It wasn't my fault," she says, justifying a prank that drove her handmaid away. "I was bored." But Kestra is no ordinary spoiled princess. The 16-year-old has spent three years in happy exile avoiding her cold father and learning to fight. On her way to the compound, in response to a summons from her father, Kestra is captured by rebels who force her to help them with a plot against her family--a plot that will likely get her killed. Kestra's rebel guards don't make her situation any easier. Trina is a hothead who loathes Kestra on principle, while Simon was Kestra's servant and childhood friend--until she got him banished to the dungeons.

Jennifer A. Nielsen (Mark of the Thief; the Ascendance trilogy) whips up an edge-of-your-seat plot in this opening volume to a trilogy. As in Nielsen's other work, no one is quite who they seem to be, and many of the best plot twists are tied to learning a new aspect of a character. Kestra in particular is tested as she realizes that her family may not be the good guys she had assumed them to be. Kestra's narration is shared with Simon, allowing Nielsen to give a broader perspective even while hiding information from the reader. It's sheer pleasure to watch Trina, Simon and Kestra scheme by turns to help and to hinder each other in this classic adventure with a little something extra. --Ali Davis, freelance writer and playwright