Susan Straight has explored the fictional landscape of Rio Seco, Calif., for more than two decades, and while each of her novels can stand on its own, many characters make recurring appearances. Between Heaven and Here continues the stories of the Sarrat families from A Million Nightingales (2007) and Take One Candle Light a Room (2010); the events in this third novel precede those in Take One Candle... by five years. These novels constitute a trilogy by virtue of people and place, rather than plot.

Tied together by blood, marriages and the enclave they'd established across the canal from the city and named for their Louisiana hometown, the Antoines and Picards are both well-known and set apart in Rio Seco, none more so than Glorette, the most beautiful of the Sarrat girls. Sadly, that beauty has never gotten her much more than a teenage son and a crack addiction; now, on the eve of her 35th birthday, it may have gotten her murdered. This is a family matter: after all, will anyone else care about the death of a streetwalker whose body was found in a shopping cart in a back alley?

Between Heaven and Here recounts the days surrounding Glorette's death, the search for her killer and family history from the perspectives of many members of her family. Straight knows her landscape well and renders it vividly. She has created an affecting world in Rio Seco and, even as she brings this story to a close, one hopes she has many more to tell. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

T.C. Boyle returns to California's barren, sea-sprayed Channel Islands--the setting of 2011's When the Killing's Done--in San Miguel, a novel that finds Boyle on his strongest turf: meticulously reimagining real historical lives through luxuriant prose, delivering full and vibrant characters in stories that gently crescendo into heartbreak and resolution. San Miguel is written so beautifully and is so word-perfectly exquisite, in fact, that it may be his most satisfying novel to date.

Inspired by the real-life experiences of two families who, in the late 1800s and 1930s, respectively, attempted to make a go of sheep farming on San Miguel, Boyle delves into the lives of three women for whom the island functions as both liberator and imprisoner. One is a consumptive wife who watches with sadness and alarm as she realizes her family is already planning for life without her; another, a teenage girl whose adolescent angst is amplified by the confines and wildness of the island; finally, a late-to-love newlywed whose ecstatic embrace of the island as idyllic love nest fades as her husband's mercurial moods intensify.

Each of these lives is beautifully and respectfully resurrected in Boyle's careful, elegant prose. And though Boyle's San Miguel is a harsh and lonely place, San Miguel is such an inviting and absorbing novel readers will be sorry to leave it. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic

In Michael Kimball's taut Big Ray, Raymond Carrier's body, all 500 pounds of it, is found when the rent is overdue and newspapers begin to pile up on his doorstep. His son, David, and his sister must remove what's left of Big Ray's life. The apartment tells the story: stained carpet, 1950s Coca-Cola memorabilia, photographs of long-past happier times, pornography and the "smell of death," as Kimball describes, "mixed with my father's particular body odor, which was sharp and bitter but also had a faint sweetness to it."

With simple, declarative, almost diary-like paragraphs, David narrates the life of his father. Big Ray's contribution to his marriage and family life was 35 years of relentless verbal and psychological assault. His early sarcasm toward his son turned to physical violence; demand for proof of his daughter's love became sexual abuse. He grew isolated and obese, his assault turned on himself. "My father wasn't what he wanted to be," David calmly observes as he combs through his father's personal effects. "My father wasn't what I wanted him to be either."

Surpassing the simply grotesque, Kimball's story takes on something of a redemptive, Job-like intensity. Despite the unsparing picture that emerges from Big Ray's personal detritus, David can't quite shake the loss: "I still don't like my father, but I still miss him." Kimball's short, bleak novel may not tell a pretty story, but it is a well-told story that is not easy to forget. --Bruce Jacobs

In Jason Webster's second novel, A Death in Valencia, Detective Max Cámara deals with a murdered paella chef and a kidnapped abortionist while his world literally falls in around him--his apartment complex collapses, killing his young neighbor and her toddler son.

With no where to live and no family to speak of, Cámara forces himself to focus on his job in order to counter the pull of depression and self-loathing creeping into his life. But the politics enveloping both the murder and the kidnapping may prove to be more than Cámara can battle.

Set in Spain, Webster's plot, with its themes of corruption in construction and the moral debate surrounding abortion, could be easily relocated to almost any developed nation. Webster carefully dances around the abortion controversy, forcing his protagonist to struggle with both perspectives. The relevance of such themes will help readers easily identify with Cámara's plight and cheer him on despite his flaws and shortcomings.
Cámara's likability is also enhanced by his relationship with his partner Paco Torres. Cámara is technically Torres's superior, but their interactions take on a brotherly air of easy banter, support and respect.

Readers new to the series may find Cámara's relationship history a little harder to follow, but this lack of knowledge doesn't disturb the overall flow of A Death in Valencia. Spanish words and phrases throughout, though, seem like language lessons, as every occurrence is translated into English. Eliminating what couldn't be interpreted from context would have removed significant diversion from the plot. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

Warm, likable and polite, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini was everyone's favorite boxer in the early 1980s. The lightweight champ's story--he fought to fulfill the dreams of a father whose career had been cut short by a war injury--made for great TV, and his handsome, Italian-American features offered the public a real-life Rocky Balboa. But a pall was cast over his career and, ultimately, over boxing itself when South Korean fighter Duk Koo Kim died from injuries sustained in a 1982 title fight with Mancini.

In The Good Son, Mark Kriegel, a sports journalist and author of biographies of Joe Namath and Pete Maravich, balances the intrinsic drama of Mancini's story with a graceful, contemplative tone that examines how Mancini went from a lovable sports celebrity to a symbol of boxing's brutality. Kriegel takes the reader back through the generations to see where Mancini got the fortitude to endure in the ring, but avoids hero-worshipping or mythologizing a fighter who by all accounts had solid, but not extraordinary, talents. Instead, The Good Son reveals a remarkably human guy whose rise--and fall--resulted more from vagaries of fate and circumstance than superhuman drive or destiny.

Kriegel offers a welcome chapter on Kim--whose  own hardscrabble upbringing dwarfs what Mancini had to overcome--but keeps a nuanced eye on his subject. The Good Son is a thoughtful, fully realized biography that convincingly illustrates how grief, the aura of death and the public's souring affections are complicated burdens for a rather simple man. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic

The Devil's Causeway combines broad military history and intimate biographical details in a fascinating account of 15 American sailors captured at the onset of the Philippine-American War (1899–1902). Matthew Westfall carefully crafts the geopolitical cauldron into which these servicemen are cast: the U.S., by virtue of victory in the Spanish-American War, has acquired the rebellious Philippines from Spain. In Northern Luzon, in the coastal town of Baler, one Spanish garrison remains besieged by insurgents even after Spain relinquishes the territory. The Spanish troops maintain their position in Baler's stone church despite being ordered to surrender by senior officers. The USS Yorktown sails to Baler, hoping to rescue the besieged Spaniards, but the effort fails in spectacular fashion as Lieutenant James C. Gillmore Jr., sent to support a reconnaissance mission, ignores his orders and plunges the tiny boat and its crew of 14 upriver into rebel territory. The resulting battle, more massacre than ambush, leads to the capture of Gillmore's party.

Westfall's research is impressively thorough. Every player in the drama of the Americans' captivity, from the prisoners themselves to the Filipino rebels and the American rescue mission, has biographical depth and justification for their actions. There are no stereotypical good or bad guys in The Devil's Causeway: some rebels are mindlessly cruel, others kind; some American officers are vain and incompetent, others pursue their objectives even at great personal risk. The cat-and-mouse game between captives, captors and rescuers amid the punishing mountain jungles of inland Luzon is ultimately about how individuals strive or falter in the harshest circumstances, how stark morals can become hazy when death is always lurking. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Gretchen Rubin may write about embracing more ways to be happy, but she's no sunshine-blowing saint. She snaps at her kids and husband and procrastinates like the rest of us, then bravely chronicles it all in Happier at Home, a follow-up to The Happiness Project focused on how to capture happiness on the homestead.

Rubin has some novel ideas, from creating special shrines for the things she loves to committing to giving warm goodbyes to each member of her family every time they leave their New York City apartment. An admitted "under-buyer," she doesn't suggest that investing in organization systems is the answer to being happier at home." Instead, she probes deeper into herself to consider what activities and interests light her up and experiments with ways to incorporate them into her home over the course of a year. And unlike others spewing advice, Rubin walks the walk, taking us along on her journey as she personally tests all of these methods out.

Rubin even shares her failures, like her repeated attempts to create a "date night" with her husband. When her efforts are met with frank disinterest, Rubin feels satisfied that at least she gave it a try.

The very best thing about this enjoyable narrative is that it will inspire you to make your own changes at home. Rubin should be commended for doing her part to infuse a little happiness into this world. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend

What are the stars really like? Ty Burr, film critic for the Boston Globe, has heard that question a thousand times. But he addresses far more interesting questions in Gods Like Us: Why do we want to know about celebrities or seek stardom for ourselves? Why do so many people have a need for stars?

Burr traces the history of fame in the U.S., from remotely glamorous actors of the silent film era to more accessible "talkie" stars, up to the Internet and its obsessive celebrity culture. He shares anecdotes about studios and stars past and present, from Charlie Chaplin's spontaneous invention of his "Little Tramp" persona to the way Harrison Ford's impish self-awareness saved Star Wars.

Each decade has its game-changers, legends who transform the future face of stardom. Burr highlights them all, from cultural icons (Bette Davis, Marlon Brando) to stars (like Florence Lawrence) now lost to history. He detours briefly from the movies to discuss Elvis, the Beatles and 1960s rock-and-roll culture, which expanded stardom into a new realm. But most of his luminaries appear on screens, either the large, glamorous silver one or the smaller one that brings stars into viewers' homes.

Burr also examines the business of stardom, from the machinations of movie studios to the rise of self-created celebrity and the lucrative paparazzi industry. Gods Like Us is more than a history lesson: it's an exploration of why we need stars, how we treat them and what they tell us about ourselves. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In Stefan Bachmann's impressive debut--set in a hybrid steampunk-faerieland England--two unlikely paths cross due to a string of murders of changeling children. In the old city of Bath, a door opened between the human and faerie worlds. Since then, some faeries live in slums, while others, once nobles in their own world, learn to manipulate the weapons of the English against them. ("A word could cause a riot, ink could spell a man's death.")

Bartholomew Kettle doesn't bear the markings of a changeling the way his younger sister, Hettie, does, with branches that grow like antlers. Their mother warns them, "Don't get yourself noticed and you won't get yourself hanged." But as Barth watches from an attic window, a pretty lady in a plum-colored dress leads his friend away. The woman also sees Barth. When his friend turns up dead, Barth fears the worst. His sister disappears soon afterward. Mr. Jelliby, a member of Parliament, becomes drawn into the situation when he visits a fellow councilman and spies a woman in plum-colored finery. Readers will make the connection before Mr. Jelliby does. Bachmann weaves a tale that pulls the two characters' fates together as Mr. Jelliby tries to do the right thing and Bartholomew tries to find his sister.

The author taps into the universal childhood impulse to cover up a misdeed with snowballing consequences. Bachmann charts the growth of both main characters to a satisfying conclusion while also leaving the door open for another adventure in this colorful, chilling world. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness