It's Ireland in the 1980s. The Finnegans--Mam and Dad, five daughters and one son, Jim--are, unlike many of their fellow countrymen, not poverty-stricken. Fourteen-year-old Jim spends his days at school and riding his bike with his geeky friend Gary. Jim wants to spend time with the charismatic Mozzo and his posse, but his Mam forbids it. Mozzo's girlfriend is Saidhbh Donohue. Of course, Jim falls in love with her.

So far, it's an average coming-of-age tale, filled with Irish vernacular, good humor, and boyish shenanigans. Enter Father O'Culigeen. He tells Mrs. Finnegan that Jim needs to be an altar boy to sort him out, then forces him to commit heinous acts before every Mass. Jim goes from being a happy-go-lucky innocent to a withdrawn, confused adolescent.

O'Culigeen arranges a job for Mozzo's mother, neatly moving Mozzo out of town and out of the way. What he doesn't foresee is that Saidhgh and Jim become more than casual friends, which is hard for anyone to credit since Saidhbh is a regal 18-year-old beauty and Jim still wears Spider-Man pajamas. Saidhbh gets pregnant, and Jim has to figure out a way for her to have an abortion, which is illegal in Ireland.

With an irresistible, beautifully written combination of poignancy, deep sadness and good humor, Kevin Maher's debut novel explores and explains an Ireland firmly in the grip of the Catholic Church and still feeling the effects of the "Troubles," as well as a young man's leap into adulthood. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

The inn has always fascinated writers as a setting in which strangers cross paths and guests shuffle rooms. Rose Harbor in Bloom, the second installment in Debbie Macomber's Rose Harbor Inn series, follows innkeeper Jo Marie as she welcomes a host of new guests who are all, in some capacity, at crossroads in their lives. The young, idealistic Annie is planning a party for her grandparents' anniversary while privately coping with her own failing engagement; a disgruntled gardener lurks about the inn while refusing to reveal any personal details. Jo Marie herself struggles to accept the loss of her husband, whose body is somewhere in Afghanistan.

The most painful story is that of Mary Smith, a successful businesswoman returning to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in 20 years. Mary has built her career by sacrificing all else, including a devoted man in Seattle who proposed to her when they were young. Her heartbreaks lie deeply buried until she is diagnosed with cancer and compelled to reevaluate her choices. Returning to the only place she felt in love, she must decide how far to reopen old wounds.

With more than 150 novels to her credit, Macomber is an institution in women's fiction. Her principal talent lies in creating characters with a humble, familiar charm. They possess complex personalities, but it is their kinder qualities that are emphasized in the warm world of her novels--a world much like Rose Harbor Inn, in which one wants to curl up and stay. --Annie Atherton, intern at Shelf Awareness

"But what if it ain't who you end up, but who you were or could've been?" That's the question Champ, a painfully hopeful undergraduate, asks himself on a typical night of dealing drugs in Portland. Champ narrates one half of The Residue Years, the debut novel from Oregon native Mitchell Jackson. The other half is devoted to Champ's mother, Grace, who has just been released from prison and is fighting hard to avoid a relapse of her drug addiction.

Their community is a seemingly inescapable web of addiction and crime: "One up, one down," as a man recites in the courtroom during his arrest. Despite her past, Grace has the infallible dignity of a mother who cherishes her sons above all else. Champ, her eldest, vies for responsibility by visiting his younger brothers at school and diverting all of his earnings to his mother. When he realizes he might have the funds to reclaim his childhood home, he becomes fixated on this dream. All of their hope lies in the hands of a strangely generous real estate agent and the prospect that Champ will continue to avoid arrest--a premise that makes Jackson's story relentlessly tense. Still, the real core of The Residue Years isn't the plot, but the depth of the iron-strong bond between mother and son. --Annie Atherton

Andrea Barrett, a National Book Award winner for the story collection Ship Fever, once again navigates the wonders of science in Archangel--a magnificent book that explores five decisive moments in the lives of her characters that have an impact not only on them but also on the advancement of human knowledge.

"The Eclipse" is set during the summer of 1908, when 12-year-old Constantine Boyd is sent to live with an uncle who is an experimenter--with crops, motorized bicycles and an early aeroplane.

In "The Ether of Space," in 1920, a popular science writer and young widow struggles with the new theory of relativity. In "The Particles," several young men study genetics by observing fruit flies. A famous biologist struggles to keep his reputation intact in the eyes of his students as he fights against Darwin's theory of evolution in "The Island." In the last story, "Archangel," Constantine Boyd, a decade older, is now a young U.S. soldier in Russia, wondering about his government's intentions. A bomb blast drives a bone from his friend's body into his leg. What he does to get help is dangerous, foolhardy--and just might work.

Barrett combines fact and fiction in scenarios that bring the reader to a better understanding of the high cost, both personal and public, of scientific advances. For all that is gained, a great deal is lost: reputations, long-held beliefs, years of research. Her own scientific knowledge illuminates these complex questions and discoveries without sacrificing character or story. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

Death, grief and forgiveness are themes that coalesce like a raging storm then settle into a quiet, transformative whisper in Ryan Bartelmay's Onward Toward What We're Going Toward, a haunting novel about two brothers and their wives, lost and lonely individuals searching for connection and meaning in small-town America.

Scarred emotionally by the suicide of their father, Chic and Buddy Waldbeeser each carry this pain into their adult relationships--Buddy as a coin-collecting, self-absorbed hermit who talks to the ghost of his father, Chic as the temperate, aw-shucks type who lusts after Buddy's wife, Lijy, while playing the role of dutiful husband and father. Scandal befalls one brother while the other suffers a tragedy that shakes his faith and belief to the core. One must find it in himself to forgive the other; the other must find it within himself to survive beyond simply existing and satisfying mere appetites.

Yet just as readers expect to suffer through more bitterness and heartbreak, Bartelmay provides Chic and Buddy with a defining moment that absolves them of their despair and self-loathing. His crisp writing reveals the longing we feel for something within our power to experience that nevertheless skirts beyond our grasp--until time takes its final, defiant toll. Onward Toward What We're Going Toward aches for the warmth of a loving embrace, begging us for the forgiveness each character so desperately desires. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

The Boy Who Could See Demons is Alex, aged 10. He began seeing his own particular demon, named Ruen, when he was five, on the day his father was declared "gone." Anya is the new child psychiatrist in town, having returned to her home in Belfast hoping to help patch up children and families damaged by Northern Ireland's "Troubles." Perhaps she should be more concerned about troubles of her own: the day she gets the call about Alex is the four-year anniversary of her daughter's death. Now she sees her daughter, Poppy, in Alex, who may have the same sickness, and she is clearly in danger of getting too close to this case. Worse, the boundaries begin to blur between what is real and what is not, as Anya wonders if Ruen may have a place in the tangible world.

Carolyn-Jess Cooke (The Guardian Angel's Journal) creates in Alex and Anya sympathetic characters, and the traumatized Belfast she evokes comes alive on the page. Child psychology plays an important role, with its questions of medication and whether and when to separate a family. With a suicidal mother, a suicidal child, delusions and possible schizophrenia all jumbled up together, it's no wonder Anya becomes a little unglued. The reader will have as much trouble as Anya does discerning fact from mirage as the story unfolds. The Boy Who Could See Demons is riveting and increasingly fast-paced, as it forces the reader to question everything that seemed secure from page one. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

PZ Myers is serious and unapologetically funny at the same time--and, despite 15 churches in his immediate neighborhood and their fellows worldwide, he is indeed a happy atheist.

The Happy Atheist is irreverent in every sense of the word, experimentally seeking creative acts of sacrilege and poking fun at religion from diverse angles. Short chapters make for quick, easy reading: "The Great Desecration" relates Myers's project of desecrating communion wafers, which inflamed the public to a degree that flabbergasted him.

He offers other reasons for the religious to be offended as he describes "the proper fate for a holy book" and instructs us to "take pride in the example of Eve--she is the author of a real promise of a great humanity." But even in making fun--and he assures us that laughter is the greatest weapon we can wield against religion--Myers is loving and compassionate, and it is clear that he aims to increase everyone's happiness by converting the wayward to atheism. Trusting in his expertise as a biology professor, he moves from more lighthearted larks toward a more serious scientific examination of the shortcomings of religion, especially by comparison. "Science," he quotes Richard Feynman, "is what we do to keep from lying to ourselves."

The Happy Atheist finishes with a heartfelt discussion of The Epic of Gilgamesh on a hopeful and inclusive note. Far from being out simply to insult, Myers genuinely wishes to improve humankind and our lot here on earth. But some hilarity along the way can't hurt. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Fin first becomes aware of Lady, his half-sister, when he overhears his parents discussing her in hushed voices. Child that he is, he is convinced that she is literally one half of a sister (the bottom half) and is unreasonably surprised when he meets her and realizes she is, in fact, an entire person--a beautiful, interesting, fascinating person. Following his parents' death, Lady takes Fin from his family's quiet Connecticut farm to her house in Greenwich Village. Surrounded by Lady and her lovers and the culture of 1960s New York, Fin begins to grow up, but as he does so, he realizes Lady needs as much looking after as he does.

Fin & Lady, Cathleen Schine's ninth novel, is a perfect pick for audiophiles: though the narrator seems to be an uninvolved third party at first blush, subtle clues reveal that she is, in fact, a confidante of Fin's, relaying the story to listeners after hearing it from him directly. This person, brought to life by Anne Twomey's gentle voice, succeeds in capturing at once the innocence of Fin's youth, his loss of innocence as a teenager and his growth into adulthood--all while breathing life into a striking era of New York City history. Ultimately, both unnamed narrator and listener become invested in Fin and Lady and their growth--both as a family and as individuals--as they fight to be free and happy in their lives. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Betsy Lewin's story of a cat who zealously eats a meal and plays with a toy mouse before settling down for a nap, works beautifully when read aloud--preferably to preschoolers.

There are delicious sounds to say together ("Licky licky lick" and "Looky look! Mousy mouse!"). There are actions to try out (children will want to thump their feet and smack their mouths, just like the feline hero). There are body parts to identify such as Thumpy Feet's tongue, tail and active paws). There is even some detective work kids can do (is Thumpy Feet sleepy? Wide awake? How do you know?). Perfectly timed page-turns allow children to progress, with Thumpy Feet, from yawning to nodding to snoozing--before they, like the feline hero, wake up for the next toy (in Thumpy Feet's case, a ball of yarn that begs to be batted about).

Lewin's simple, repetitive text pairs well with her vivid, loose watercolors. The marmalade cat appears on a white background, which throws Thumpy Feet's orange-tinted wigglyness into sharp relief and allows young eyes to focus easily on key spots: Thumpy Feet's flickering tail, scrambling feet and myriad expressions. A lively and fun book for the younger set and their grown-ups to share. --Allie Jane Bruce, children's librarian, Bank Street College of Education