The Dinner, the sixth novel by award-winning Dutch author Herman Koch and already a bestseller in Europe, arrives in the U.S. with an excellent translation and great deal of well-deserved advance praise. A slow burn creeper, this suspenseful and unsettling novel turns a microscope on parenthood, examining the darkness that may lie just below the thin veneer of civilization, social grace and propriety.

The novel begins innocently enough with narrator Paul Lohman and his wife, Claire, preparing to meet his brother, Serge, and sister-in-law Babette for dinner at an upscale restaurant in Amsterdam. Paul is completely devoted to his wife and their teenage son, Michel, but is out of sorts; he hates the pretentiousness of the fancy restaurant experience, he's concerned about Michel and he doesn't care for his brother. Paul appears to be articulate and quite reasonable and at first it is easy to understand his discomfort. But somewhere between the appetizer and the main course, we begin to suspect that Paul may be that most slippery of guides--an unreliable narrator. By the time we discover that the purpose of the dinner is to discuss what to do about the sons of the two couples, perpetrators of a particularly heinous act of violence, our suspicions are confirmed and we've no choice but to stay inside Paul's disturbed and increasingly disturbing mind.

Throughout The Dinner, Koch raises questions about the nature of our bonds and values, personal and societal, yet he wisely leaves what might serve as answers to the reader. What he does do, definitively, is provide an immensely entertaining and absorbing novel that lingers--as tantalizing as the memory of a particularly satisfying meal. --Debra Ginsberg, author

The mystery in Nick Trout's cozy The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs isn't "Who did it?" but "Will he do it?" Will Dr. Cyrus Mills, returning to his hometown with a new last name, a suspended license, a shady past and a St.-Bernard–sized load of emotional baggage, pay off the debt on his late father's veterinary practice so he can abandon frigid Vermont for a new life in South Carolina? Or will he embrace his father's legacy and settle in among the history and the snow drifts?

After a 15-year estrangement, Cyrus inherits his father's beloved Eden Falls Bedside Manor, but memories haunt the old offices. The bitter Dr. Mills is not receptive to the welcome from his father's longtime business partner and keeps a suspicious distance from the other townspeople--however, the pets of Eden Falls know a good man when they sniff one. Although Cyrus's specialty was pathology, not hands-on care, he has a knack for diagnosis and a love for the critters who appear in his waiting room.

Charming dog-in-stethoscope photos introduce each chapter, and the citizens of Eden Falls are as quirky as the events that guide Cyrus's path, including the lovely waitress with the heterochromic eyes who catches Cyrus's interest from the get-go. Trout, the author of Tell Me Where It Hurts and other veterinary nonfiction, peppers his first novel with Cyrus's thoughts on obscure medical facts, guiding the young vet's care and enlightening readers. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, Book Passage, San Francisco

Guy Saville's The Afrika Reich begins in 1952--12 years after the war in Western Europe ended with French defeat and a British-German nonaggression pact. Since then, the Third Reich has spread to cover large parts of the globe. The head of Nazi Afrika is Walter Hochburg, a crazed racist notable for his viciousness even by Nazi standards. His Kongo is a scary world of slave labor and the rampant looting of natural resources.

Former mercenary Burton Cole is pulled out of retirement to lead a team to kill Hochburg and protect the few remaining British colonies in Africa. It's supposed to be easy money, and it will enable Cole to support his pregnant girlfriend. But, inevitably perhaps, the mission falls apart, and Cole is forced to flee across thousands of miles of Nazi territory. Desperate to find his way home, Cole will do anything to get to the African coast and kill anyone who gets in his path.

The world of The Afrika Reich is vividly imagined, and horrifyingly plausible, as Saville shows us what the world could have become if the Nazis had won. The Afrika Reich is not for the faint of heart--gruesome and gory, it depicts a continent where racist men have had free reign over the native populace for nearly a decade. Burton Cole must fight not only for his life and those of his comrades, but for the lives of thousands of innocents who will suffer unimaginable torments if he fails. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

You may recognize Sampson Davis as the co-author of memoirs such as The Pact, in which he, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt chronicle their friendship and their promise to survive the streets of Newark, N.J., finish college and become doctors--despite a lack of resources or father figures. Jenkins is now a dentist who teaches at Columbia University, while Hunt is an internist with positions at Princeton and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Davis became an emergency room doctor and, in Living and Dying in Brick City, he writes about returning to the Newark neighborhood where he grew up to complete his residency and make the transition to a board-certified E.R. physician.

Davis uses the stories of his encounters with patients at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center to illustrate his path from street kid to physician. Those same medical stories alert the reader to the health issues and social struggles that plague the inner-city population; chapters cover such topics as gang violence, narcotics dependence, domestic abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy, mental illness and obesity. Davis also addresses the problems caused by poor health care access and lack of insurance, and provides additional resources for understanding and assistance throughout the book.

Davis's story is remarkable, and the combination of patient stories and personal recollections in this memoir makes for a powerful reading experience. Hopefully, his book will also be an impetus for change. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore

Poet and children's author Cynthia Zarin unveils her talents as a memoirist with the lyric essays of An Enlarged Heart. Zarin revels in her past: a tattered mink coat, paintings at the Museum of Modern Art, yellow stockings and all kinds of curtains are just a few of the objects that intermingle with reminiscences of her youth, her children and her sense of place in the world. Like a Mobius strip, Zarin begins in one spot and meanders, only to bring the reader back full circle by the end of the piece. She reminds us of the minutiae that fill our lives and have the capacity to bring us back to a precise moment in time, be it a sight, scent or sound.

Illness, eccentricity and national disaster all play key background roles as Zarin moves from one New York apartment to another or cavorts on the shores of Cape Cod and Sperlonga, Italy. With these narratives, the story is in the details, like the waiter who arrives one hot day with "a small silver cart with tiny wheels, and on the cart was a small Byzantine city of silver domes... underneath were their sandwiches, three slices of bread each, with the crusts cut off, festooned with toothpicks decorated with tiny streamers of green, yellow and red cellophane." Like the two scoops of chocolate ice cream delivered at that luncheon--"pale, faintly crystallized at the edges, in a just melted lake of paler cream"--Zarin's sentimental, poetic prose is best read slowly, so it can be savored. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

The Birth of the West resembles the world it describes: this broad-brushed history by former priest Paul Collins is fascinating, complicated, messy, occasionally confusing and dominated by a fundamentally Catholic worldview.

Collins chronicles both the dissolution of order after Charlemagne's death and the first steps toward its return. He begins by quoting an Irish monk's fears of Viking attacks in the mid-ninth century, ends with an account of the widespread apprehension at the close of the first Christian millennium and offers few peaceful moments in between. Tenth-century Europe was under attack from within and without; Charlemagne's empire collapsed into political chaos as his descendants fought for control over smaller and smaller kingdoms. The Roman Catholic Church was both a unifying force in a troubled world and a political weapon for ambitious princes and warlords, but Viking, Magyar and Saracen invaders were a constant threat to what little stability existed.

Two-thirds of the way through his action-packed account of state-building, backstabbing and political and religious intrigue, Collins makes a thematic and stylistic detour to discuss everyday life in 10th-century Europe. It takes several chapters before he returns to politics and religion, this time focusing on two major figures from the end of the century: Gerbert (the future Pope Sylvester II) and Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. Structural problems aside, though, The Birth of the West is an engaging account of an often overlooked era. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

"Blessing, rightly understood, is the invisible bloodstream pulsating through the universe," Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast writes in the introduction to 99 Blessings. As he makes a habit of giving thanks and writing down his gratitude, a gentle rhythm--almost like a heartbeat--develops.

In a world filled with daily frustrations and fraught with larger tragedies, gratitude and blessing can provide grounding and healing for people of any spiritual persuasion. Brother David does not proselytize; his lyrical prose is infused with whimsy and grace. He gives thanks for gifts as mundane as spoons and forks, as ordinary and wondrous as dragonflies, cows, palm trees or the smell of leather. Several familiar subjects make appearances--hospitality, deep friendships, healing hands, memory--Brother David is equally grateful for archetypes, flea markets, the Internet and "moments when nothing happens."

Admitting that words sometimes fail him, Brother David nevertheless calls attention to both small, daily blessings and larger, anchoring joys (including "all that cannot be expressed in words"). After a blessing for "unfinished business," he leaves his 100th blessing as a open-ended template--a nudge for readers to give thanks for their own gifts. Receiving and acknowledging blessings is only the beginning; as Brother David notes, "Blessings are life-giving only as long as we pass them on."

Full of lucent images and quiet humor, 99 Blessings is an invitation to savor the gifts of everyday life and look for ways to share them with others. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In The Searchers, Pulitzer-winning journalist Glenn Frankel suggests there are layers to John Ford's classic 1956 film The Searchers that most of its audience won't have noticed.

First, the history: it was a desperate time for the nomadic Comanches in the winter of 1836. Many had died from hunger and disease; they blamed the white settlers. A hunting party raided the Parker family's East Texas ranch, slaughtering five and capturing five, including a nine-year-old "blonde, blue-eyed princess," Cynthia Ann Parker. She was raised by the tribe, married a Comanche chief and had children. Twenty-four years later, in 1860, she was "rescued" by the Rangers. She never saw her children again, and never readjusted to the white world. She died in 1871.

Alan Lemay was a successful author of westerns when he discovered her story; he knew he had to write a novel about it. The Searchers was published in 1954 to much acclaim; film rights were bought by a businessman who hired Merian C. Cooper as his executive producer. Cooper's other business partner was filmmaker John Ford.

To play Ethan Edwards, the novel's protagonist, Ford cast John Wayne against type as a contemptuous, brutal Indian hater. Once the film was written and filmed, Ford cut it down to its essence, weaving "myth and truth into a seamless fabric."

The "relentless ambiguity" of The Searchers "defeats us," Frankel writes. "We honor its ambition and its artistry. But we have no firm sense of what it means nor how truly great and disturbing it is." Similarly, this book is ambitious, and disturbing, and oh so good. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Aaron Meshon, making his picture book debut, sets up his smart, well-illustrated contrast between America's and Japan's embrace of baseball from the first page.

"I love baseball...," says a freckle-faced boy, "in America... and in Japan." In his right hand, he holds a blue baseball jersey with an American flag, and in his left hand, he holds a red jersey with a Japanese flag. As he introduces each new element from Japanese culture, the boy also exhibits the corresponding familiar American counterpart (and Meshon keeps the color coding). "My American pop pop takes me to watch baseball at the stadium," the narrator says, wearing the blue jersey and matching cap against a light blue background on the left-hand page. "My Japanese ji ji takes me to watch yakyu at the dome," the boy says, sporting the red jersey and matching cap, against a light red background. A glossary fashioned as a scoreboard at the back helps children who can't figure out the word from its context.

Other fun facts come to light: while the boy's family drives a blue station wagon to the ballpark in the U.S., he rides a short red bus that "turns into a train" to the baseball game in Japan. The boy describes what fans eat in the ball park, tells us the names for pitches (fastball in Japanese is "sokkyu") and explains scoring differences (in Japan, if one team has not gone ahead by the 12th inning, the game ends in a tie). Rookie Meshon scores a homuran (home run)! --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Luxurious, sherbet-colored artwork carries this debut from author-artist You Byun about a dream of friendship come true.

Melody, in blonde pigtails, has "a very special friend... in her dreams": a giant white cat sporting a cherry-red bow tie that matches her jumper and boots. She rides him through the skies, and he surprises her with "lovely things," such as a rocking horse and a hat filled with stars. They play hide-and-seek and watch fireworks together. But when day dawns, he disappears and, as the new girl in the neighborhood, shy Melody makes no friends. One day, at the playground, Melody closes her eyes and dances, imagining the friend from her dreams as her dance partner. "Is that a new game?" asks a brown-haired girl in overalls. Soon the whole playground joins in their dance, and Melody confides in her new friend about her dream friend, and they all play together.

Byun's ink-and-watercolor artwork evokes the look of woodcuts. Textured full-page illustrations and smaller dream-like scenes help differentiate Melody's real world from her fantasy life. All of the images--both actual and imagined--share the same palette. This works well once Melody's dream world spills over into the playground, but up to that point of intersection, children will need to look for the large white feline to see which landscape--real or fantasy--Melody inhabits. Children will welcome Byun's message that Melody does not have to give up one friend for the other. In her dreams, and on the playground, all are welcome. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness