James Salter's sixth novel, All That Is, begins with a gorgeous set piece about American sailors approaching Okinawa during World War II. The prose is classic Salter--lithe, concrete, varied in rhythm, fluidly descriptive ("All night in darkness the water sped past") and brusquely declarative ("Twenty days later, nearly all of them had perished"). Background context is rare and bursts of dialogue reveal the anxious hearts of men ("'Don't try to involve me in your lechery,' Brownell said"). The ensuing chapters of All That Is relate a more linear, character-focused account of Philip Bowman's life after the war as a book editor and a lover of women.

The tension between decorum and libido is a frequent novelistic subject for Salter; the scenes of ex-pat concupiscence and sexual gratification in his third novel, A Sport and a Pastime, are as literary as they are dirty. In Light Years, a more mature work, Salter uses dialogue, gesture and observations of nature to portray the effect of time on a marriage. Although All That Is covers similar territory, it is unlike these two great novels in that it is written in the past tense from a cooler perspective. Its retrospective progress through decades of Bowman's minor professional interactions and major romantic infatuations occasionally feels overly episodic, yet Salter's masterful prose remains irrefutably engaged with the existential perception of life. --Holloway McCandless, blogger at Litagogo: A Guide to Free Literary Podcasts

Ali Liebegott's Cha-Ching! is the story of a lovable screwup, her dog and her quest to "to go to a party and have a conversation that involved anything besides details from true-crime shows" by her 30th birthday.

It's 1994: Theo, like many striving 20-somethings before and after her, has decided that moving to New York will transform her into the person she wants to be. She drives out of San Francisco with no plan, a rescued pit bull named Cary Grant and a hangover--her last, she swears. Theo has few advantages: she's broke, she's gay and she's androgynous enough to joke with her transgender friend about being an exotic creature called a "sirma'amsir." She's also a chain-smoking alcoholic with a gambling problem who's spent her life working terrible jobs and avoiding confrontation. But she's got a big heart and good intentions and knows that she'll survive anything as long as she can get a library card, a haircut and a new pair of shoes.

Liebegott, who won both a Lambda and the Ferro-Grumley Award for her 2007 novel The IHOP Papers, writes with easy-going, straightforward style and without a whiff of pretension. Theo and her ragtag friends are all very flawed but ultimately good people for whom one can't help but root.

Set in depressing casinos and grimy apartments, Cha-Ching! is a surprisingly optimistic, sweetly funny tale--and Theo is a heroine you might have more in common with than you think. --Hannah Calkins, blogger at Unpunished Vice

This collection celebrates the 15th anniversary of Jim Pascoe and Tom Fassbender's underground cult noir novel about a bowling alley, By the Balls (1998), as well as the birth of their crime fiction publishing house, UglyTown. Here are two novels and five stories featuring Testacy City, Nevada's Ben Drake, described as a cigar-smoking, Kant-reading, bourbon-drinking, Galaxie 500-driving detective. With their tongues well placed in their pulpy cheeks, these stories could be read as fairly faithful homages to the classic mystery noirs of the 1930s (and '40s, and '50s) as well as wickedly playful satires.

"We wrote in the spirit of the old pulps... often drunk and pounding the keys," Pascoe and Fassbender say by way of introduction. "Write something fun. And fast.... We thought we knew everything. We knew nothing." But they worked it out. All their first-person stories have the clip, pace and punch of classic Hammer, Spade, and Marlowe narratives. "I could detect the lust in the air," Drake says when he calls on the bowling alley's owner's widow. "Suzi Biggs was nothing like a mourning widow. She was more like a morning window and I could see right through her."

Atmospheric black and white illustrations by Paul Pope feel right out of the pages of Black Mask. In "Kind Words," past UglyTown authors and artists ruminate on what it was like during the press's and Drake's heyday. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

New York City is a food lover's paradise, but sometimes the tastiest treats come to those willing to chow down while standing up. As editors of the bargain-eats website Midtown Lunch and the brains behind the N.Y.C. food blog Blondie and Brownie, Alexandra Penfold and Siobhan Wallace are regularly called upon to drop some knowledge about the city's mobile munchies. In New York à la Cart, their first book, the two enthusiasts provide profiles of the Big Apple's 50 favorite vendors, as well as more than 80 recipes, full-color photos, interviews, even a walking tour, all of which serve to immerse the reader in the hustle, bustle and morsels that make Gotham so great.

Broken into neighborhood, rather than cuisine or meal type, this volume reads more like a travel guide than a cookbook, though there's plenty that will inspire an adventurous home chef. Each recipe is tagged with a difficulty rating (Easy, Medium, Challenging), and those that are vegetarian or gluten-free are also marked. Whether you want a way to jazz up breakfast (Steak and Egg Tacos from the Eggstravaganza Cart) or to try a beloved dish from a Vendy Award winner (falafel from Astoria's King of Falafel & Shawarma cart), it's all here. For New Yorkers, this book will entice even the most neighborhood-loyal eater to hop the train or take a walk to try something new. And for the rest of us, we can at least do a little armchair traveling augmented by the actual (pleasant) aromas of the country's busiest (and most delicious) metropolis. --Heather Young, sales manager, Shelf Awareness

"I'm a bread person," Shauna Niequist confesses in the introduction to her memoir-cum-recipe collection, Bread & Wine: "Flaky, buttery croissants; chewy pita; tortillas, warm and fragrant, blistered by heat." A few lines later, she adds, "And I am a wine person--the blood-red and liquid gold, the clink and glamour of tall-stemmed glasses, and the musty, rich, almost mushroom-y smell."

Niequist (Bittersweet; Cold Tangerines) writes with warmth and honesty about her complicated relationship with food, from diets to allergies to the difficulty of eating well when traveling for work. She insists, over and over, that real life happens around the table: in the planning and chopping, the slicing and pouring and finally in the act of sitting down with family and friends, offering not only meals to nourish their bodies but community to nourish their souls. Amid the daily chaos of marriage, children and work, Niequist urges readers to open their messy homes and their crowded lives and make time to linger around the table.

Each brief chapter highlights a distinct theme or memory, often accompanied by a recipe for mango chicken curry or watermelon feta salad or Niequist's mother's blueberry crisp. Every recipe is linked to people, and often associated with a place, be it Paris or a friend's kitchen table. This intertwining of food and remembrance emphasizes the collection's main point: what we eat, and where, and with whom, is important.

Packed with vivid descriptions and mouthwatering recipes, Bread & Wine provides deep nourishment for the body and the soul. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Rayya Elias was born in Syria in 1960 but fled with her family to Detroit at age seven. Too young to appreciate her family's culture fully, she doesn't fit into her new environment, either, and suffers a rocky youth in Detroit before escaping to New York City with her newfound passions: rock 'n' roll, hairstyling and drugs. The Lower East Side in the early 1980s was a sparkling playground for a young woman trying to find herself, and Elias becomes sought after both as a hairdresser and as a new wave musician.

It will take her years to identify as a lesbian, but the affairs with women that began back in Detroit blossom into full passion (and dysfunction) in New York--and, for a short time, in a shared London apartment with a married woman and her husband. Her drug abuse also blossoms into an addiction to cocaine and heroin, a problem that will take countless stints in rehab and detox facilities--and jail--to conquer. By the end of her story, Elias is clean, back in New York and pursuing healthy musical creativity.

Far from being just another story of addition and redemption, Harley Loco (a nickname the author earned in jail) is unusual in its rawness and feeling. Elias perfectly evokes New York City in the 1980s and '90s, complete with sour odors and pain. Her personality--hard-edged and unrepentant, yet tender and vulnerable--is thoroughly bared and, in the end, irresistibly likable. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

A Chicago lad, William Friedkin got a job in television out of high school, and worked his way up to director. After he saw Citizen Kane, he realized he wanted to direct films. In 1967, he got his first shot: Sonny and Cher's Good Times. Three more films followed before his breakthrough picture, The French Connection--which won him a directing Oscar (as well as Best Picture). The famous chase scene, he says, was "all in my mind’s eye" before he shot a single frame.

Friedkin was author William Peter Blatty's choice to direct The Exorcist. He explains in fascinating detail how they filmed the terrifying exorcism scenes. Then hubris moved in. Given carte blanche to remake the classic The Wages of Fear, he spent $1 million to build a bridge over a raging South American river for a key scene--and the river dried up. They took the bridge apart and rebuilt it over another river; that dried up, too. Friedkin chides himself for being callous and self-involved, and his subsequent films became more obsessive, darker, less audience-friendly.

He made 1985's To Live and Die in L.A., with an even more amazing chase scene than The French Connection. As for his most recent film, 2011's Killer Joe, he believes it will be a long time "before anyone makes another film as provocative and controversial."

Filled with insights into the art of film and its practitioners and honest assessments of his work--and the work of others in the film industry--this is terrific stuff. After reading it, you'll be eager to see all the Friedkin movies you've missed. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

In The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson explores a world of real animals stranger than any imaginary beast--animals we have barely imagined because our knowledge of them is "too cramped and fragmentary to accommodate them." Like the medieval bestiaries on which it is modeled, Henderson's work attempts to understand and celebrate the beauty and diversity not only of beings but also of being itself.

The "21st-century bestiary" is divided into 27 essays, ranging in subject from the axolotl (a kind of salamander) to the zebra fish. The seemingly narrow focus of each essay is misleading. Whether discussing the importance of the human foot or the abundance of real-life unicorns, Henderson considers his subjects in wide-ranging terms. He weaves together zoology, evolution, mythology, cosmology, philosophy, history and ecology with a light touch, quoting poets as often as paleontologists. This is a book of big ideas and carefully chosen details. Philosophical ideas and scientific terms are defined with equal precision in a style that alternates between lyrical and witty. The physical book is as beautiful as the language in which it is written; like its medieval counterparts, its wide margins are home to illuminating marginalia.

Humans are the explicit subject of a single essay, but humankind--our relationship to other animals and our affect on the global ecosystem--is a theme running that runs throughout the book. Henderson challenges us to consider what we value, what we fail to value and how we might change. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

Fans of James Dashner's Maze Runner series will thoroughly enjoy Erin Bowman's dystopian tale.

The boys in the village of Claysoot vanish on their 18th birthday and are never seen again. The mysterious "Heist" forces all the boys to grow up quickly; they become men at 15 and become eligible for "slatings," where they periodically sleep with different girls to reproduce so they won't die out. Whenever a boy escapes over the Wall surrounding the village, he comes back "a charcoaled mess, burned and lifeless." But after Gray Weathersby loses his brother to the Heist, he, along with the girl to whom he's been slated, finds a way over the Wall--in order to avoid the same fate in the coming year and to solve the mystery of his origins.

Readers will root for Gray's pursuit of the truth as they did with Jonas in The Giver because escaping into the unknown is better than surrendering to the fate you do know. The Heist generates a level of anxiety akin to the reaping in The Hunger Games, and Bowman takes readers beyond the Wall to a jarring domed city populated with an abundance of men, young and old, and new dangers to face.

This engrossing debut novel moves at breakneck speed with puzzles to keep readers guessing and an ending that will leave them wanting more. --Adam Silvera, Paper Lantern Lit intern and former bookseller

The little dragon hero could be a boy or girl, and the guardian who shares a bedtime book could be male or female, making this an ideal book to share for aunts, uncles and grandparents, too.

As the adult reads to the wide-eyed dragon child, who clutches a blanket, youngsters see behind them the pages the dragon pair reads. The story-within-a-story, illustrated in full color, stars Cedric the dragon, who is "a bright angry red." Never in his life "(Not once)" has Cedric been to bed. Cedric breathes fire as he carries away a princess from a castle tower to turn into a pie. The adult and child dragon reading the Cedric story appear in a limited palette of green and red in a black outline, so youngsters can easily distinguish the child hero from the characters in the bedtime book. At the close of Cedric's story, the child dragon asks, "Again?" and children watch as the child hero and Cedric begin to swap emotions.

Each time the adult reads the story, the "AGAIN!" uttered by the child is more emphatic. The action within the storybook about Cedric changes as the adult attempts to put the young dragon to sleep, and the child's refrain grows in size and emphasis, "AGAIN! AGAIN!" The now bright-red child dragon (literally) burns a hole in the back of the book readers hold in their hands. Children will delight in the topsy turvy role-playing Emily Gravett (Wolf Won't Bite!) once again exhibits in her playful metafiction. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness