For many years, when the country of Colombia was mentioned, the first thing that came to mind to was the Medellín cartel. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, until 1993, when he was killed, drug lord and narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar warred against anyone who got in his way.

Juan Gabriel Vasquez uses this history as a backdrop in The Sound of Things Falling, as he tries to come to terms with years of drug-related violence that many Colombians would prefer to forget. For Vasquez and his narrator, young attorney and teacher Antonio Yammara, those bygone events were formative, leaving a legacy of fear.

The novel begins in 2009 with the killing of a hippo that escaped from what was the private zoo on Escobar's estate. When Yammara reads of this, he is besieged by memories of the mid-1990s, starting with a casual encounter in a Bogotá billiard parlor. Antonio develops a sort of friendship with Ricardo Laverde, despite his secretiveness; then, one day, Laverde is murdered on the street. Yammara, also wounded in the attack, is compelled to find out Laverde's story and, in the process, sees his own life fall apart. He discovers that Laverde was a pilot and drug trafficker, a mule for Escobar.

Yammara's obsession with Ricardo leads him to Maya Laverde, his 28-year-old daughter, who believed that her father was dead long before he was murdered. She, too, has been damaged by a past whose events she did not participate in. She and Antonio share this bond, one which challenges his shaky marriage.

Vasquez examines, eloquently, how memories can cripple and heal at the same time, how the past must be exorcised before a real future is viable. --Valerie Ryan

Was there a young man anywhere in the 1960s who didn't substitute his home town's name for that of Mobile in Bob Dylan's "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again?" In the case of 16-year-old Jon Mosher, that town is Brewster, N.Y--a blue-collar, small-minded place that he and his unlikely three best friends can't wait to escape. As he watches the "children of God... hitching backward up Route 22," he says, "Woodstock may have been just across the river, but Brewster was a different world."

Jon's German-Jewish immigrant father owns the town's shoe store. After the childhood death of his older brother, his parents turn inward, leaving the alienated Jon on his own to befriend Ray Cappicciano, the brawling son of an abusive alcoholic ex-cop; Frank Krapinski, a zealous Christian track teammate; and Karen Dorsey, a brainy beauty who chooses the pugnacious Ray over the introverted Jon. Together they navigate high school, smoke, drink beer, huddle in their bedrooms "listening to the Stones turned low, which doesn't work," and discuss Camus's The Stranger.

The tight foursome find strength in the shared challenges they face at home and their naïve dreams of escaping to a better future. However, just as Woodstock had its Altamont, a violent confrontation between Ray and his father changes the fates of all of them.

Slouka (God's Fool; Lost Lake) has an ear for the conversational ambivalence of the young in the tumultuous '60s of small-town America as well as a clear view of the fatalism such small-town life engenders. Sometimes, Bob Dylan notwithstanding, Memphis is no better than Mobile. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Juliet "Jules" Belleno is a 34-year-old widow who rarely leaves her house in Wissberry, Maine, since her police officer husband, Jason, died in the line of duty. Every Tuesday, Jules reviews a book on her blog, but when she's disappointed in the latest novel by her favorite author, Patrick Reagan, and posts an unfavorable review, her life changes in unexpected ways.

On the day that would've been her wedding anniversary, Jules sets out to the grocery store to buy ingredients to re-create their favorite meal. Along the way, she meets Reagan, who ultimately kidnaps her, ushering her into a nightmare where she's taken to task and forced to explain her review--and herself--to a deeply troubled man who has suffered heart-wrenching personal losses of his own.

With Jules missing, her worried, alcoholic father, a retired military officer, enlists the help of Jason's former partner on the force. As the two search for Jules, startling revelations begin to emerge about Jason's death. Was it really an accident? Or might Jason's death be connected to Jules's kidnapping?

Misery Loves Company is categorized as "spiritual suspense." The flawed, lonely characters grapple with ideas of faith amid loss, evil and corruption. However, as in Gutteridge's other novels (Listen; Possession), the narrative is never preachy. The fast-paced twists and turns of the plot present an insightful, chilling look at how privacy is often compromised in the Internet age and how choices in life can ripple beyond the scope of personal existence. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Retired actress Diana Poole, the star of Melodie Johnson Howe's City of Mirrors, goes back to work after her screenwriter husband dies, leaving her with a rundown Malibu house and not much money. On her first movie back, Diana discovers her troubled, young costar's dead body. Then another corpse shows up at an old house where Diana used to live as a child with her movie-star mother, Nora. Diana gets drawn into the mystery surrounding these deaths and sets out to solve them, finding she has to not only act like a tough broad but be one if she wants to come out of the experience alive.

Howe was a TV and film actress in the mid-1960s through the late '70s, so the details about Diana's life on set and around Los Angeles ring true. The film industry people are full of insecurities and vapidity and ego, but Diana is sympathetic as a woman over 40 who has to jumpstart her life and career in a make-believe world even harsher than the real one. She wants happiness more than an Oscar, but it's hard to escape her mother's shadow and the lingering sense of loneliness after her husband's death.

Howe has a bit of trouble with dialogue, with characters sometimes speaking melodramatically, sounding like narrative, saying exactly what they mean. Diana quotes Oscar Wilde's observation that when people talk about the weather, they mean something else. One wishes some of the characters would "talk about the weather" more. But the story moves fast enough, and Diana is a clear-eyed narrator to guide readers through the land of illusions. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, writer/editor blogging at Pop Culture Nerd

Ferdinand von Schirach's The Collini Case takes off running and, without manipulation or stunts other than a brilliantly orchestrated plot, proceeds to tell a whopper of a tale.

When an 85-year-old industrialist is brutally murdered, Collini, the huge, sweaty brute who fired four bullets into the back of his head and stamped on the old man's face, refuses to reveal his reason. Caspar Leinen is an idealistic but inexperienced defense lawyer going up against a legendary prosecutor. What Leinen doesn't expect is a phone call from his childhood best friend's sister, sobbing and furious that he is defending Collini. Her reason is a shocker, and it's enough to make Leinen almost back out of defending Collini--until a minor character reminds him, "You're a lawyer, you have to do what lawyers do."

The Collini Case is a novel where the crime and the killer are known from the outset, but not the reasons behind them. The mystery is an eternal one: How can a gentle, loving family member become, in another context, a ruthless killing machine?

Von Schirach is one of Germany's most prominent defense lawyers, and his voice is authoritative and deceptively simple. His non-sensational style only makes his surprises more jolting. As a compassionate, smart and sensitive hero, Leinen is irresistible. The courtroom scenes are riveting without being melodramatic; the wartime sequences at the novel's end are appropriately harrowing. And the undetected loophole in German law around which the plot revolves came under fire just four months after the book's publication in Germany, with legal activists citing this streamlined tour-de-force and its painfully human tragedy. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

Darlene Barnes never expected to become a frat cook, but after quitting a soul-sucking job as a personal chef and finding herself in a new city, she was hired by the Alpha Sigma Phi house on Seattle's University of Washington campus. She quickly gained a reputation as a tough customer by demanding fresh, local food from her suppliers, and gradually found herself embracing the wildly diverse group of college boys who called "the House" their home.

Barnes swings between snark and warmth as she details her time at the House, sharing incidents both cringe-worthy (exploded beer cans in the freezer, food left out overnight) and affecting (the way the community pulled together after the deaths of two members). She debunks a few fraternity clichés while admitting some others often ring true. Her guys may drive her crazy, but she loves them deeply and takes pride in their successes.

The memoir's chronology jumps around a bit, veering from Barnes's previous jobs to her Louisiana childhood (and its simple, delicious food) before settling into a more ordered account of her years with the Alpha Sigs. As she takes command of the kitchen, convinces her customers to try new foods and even helps set up a pig roast, she realizes how much this job is nourishing her as well as her guys.

Witty and irreverent (with a handful of mouthwatering recipes), Hungry provides an inside look at fraternity living and an unconventional story of life around the table. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Although Deborah Yaffe has loved Jane Austen since she was a child, she had no idea how huge, diverse and sometimes bizarre the Janeite world could be. But after an auspicious reading from an Austen-themed tarot card (yes, they exist), she set out to explore the broad spectrum of Austenmania. Among the Janeites is a fascinating blend of memoir and reportage that chronicles her adventures with Austen fans of all stripes.

For decades, most Austenites loved Jane in relative solitude--reading and rereading the novels, memorizing favorite passages. (Yaffe is partial to Captain Wentworth's letter from Persuasion, known to devotees as The Letter.) But since several screen adaptations (including the famous version of Pride & Prejudice starring Colin Firth) and the rise of the Internet, Austenmania has exploded, attracting fans with Austen obsessions ranging from couture to psychology, social history to social graces.

Yaffe's interviewees span the gamut of Austenmania, from pedantic (and passionate) academics to writers of fan fiction, from a psychologist who uses Austen in her therapy sessions to a Texan who orders custom-made Regency gowns every year. She tours Austen spots in England with a group of fellow Janeites and recounts her travails with a bespoke Regency ball gown (and corset). And she is ever mindful of the facets of Austen's enduring appeal over two centuries: her wit, her sharply observed social satire, her complex, skillfully drawn characters and her happy endings.

Like the novels themselves, Yaffe's tour of Austenmania is witty, informative, clever and warmhearted. Jane would approve. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

When the mind is in crisis, it can force the human body to do strange and powerful things to itself and to others. "Mental illness pierces the veil [of invulnerability] and those who suffer from it dwell with their fragility in plain view," psychiatrist Christine Montross writes in Falling into the Fire. "My role is not to try to repair the veil but to strengthen my patients so that they can live, so that they can suffer less, so that they can hope."

Readers are plunged into the depths of mental illness as Montross revisits case studies from her residency and early years as an attending physician. There's the woman who's been admitted 23 times over four years for swallowing items such as broken curtain rods, knives, nails and barbecue skewers; the three men who all believe they are Jesus (arguing among themselves as to who is legitimate and who's lying); and the patients capable of inducing psychogenic nonepileptic seizures in order to receive drugs.

Montross is pragmatic and compassionate in her attempts to understand the complexities of each individual's neurosis, intertwining research into early medical and psychiatric practices with reflections on her family as she searches for a medical treatment that will be effective--and that her patients will be willing to follow. Empathetic and informative, Falling into the Fire is a fascinating look into the convoluted world of psychiatry and mental illness. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

This first murder mystery in a series will appeal to fans of Allie Carter's Gallagher Girls series, who enjoy a bit of humor and fashion with their detective work. 

Debut author Kara Taylor emphasizes the dynamics of a pretty good girl/bad boy attraction. Anne Dowling is not a mean girl, though her sometimes snarky attitude as a New York City private school girl "sentenced" to a Boston boarding school could cause people to think of her as one. She's kind to her roommate, Isabella, and they discover they have some quirky things in common, such as their mutual appreciation for Les Miserables. But Anne's been sent away to boarding school for accidentally setting on fire the auditorium of her Manhattan elite school. As her former headmaster, Bailey, told her, "Trouble has a way of showing up wherever you are, Anne." And now Anne's roommate of less than a week is found in the woods, a victim of a homicide.

Taylor threads the plot with narrator Anne's smart humor. She sizes up her class's queen bee his way: "Alexis is not only a bitch, but a passive-aggressive, Post-it-not-leaving bitch." A detail Anne uncovers early on in the novel, involving an unsolved homicide 30 years ago, links to Isabella's death. Taylor solves the mystery but leaves some open ends for Anne to put to rights in the next book. A guilty pleasure and a fun summer read. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness