Niquette Delongpre and her parents vanish under mysterious circumstances one night. Authorities discover the remains of a car wreck, but there are no human remains. Soon after, Marshall Ferriot throws himself out a window and winds up in a coma. No one makes a connection between the events, because no one knows about the secret rendezvous between Niquette and Marshall--or how they were exposed to a strange parasite released from the swamps outside New Orleans. But when Marshall regains consciousness, he sets off for revenge and much more than the teens' brief fling is about to be exposed.

In a slight departure from previous thrillers like Blind Fall or The Moonlit Earth, Christopher Rice's The Heavens Rise delves into the paranormal. While realists may struggle with some of the supernatural elements, the depth of character, chilling atmosphere and moral dilemma are all marks of a superb story.

Ben, Niquette's best friend, and Anthem, the boyfriend she'd just gotten back together with before the accident, forge a bond through their shared grief after her disappearance. Rice's depiction of this friendship is gripping. The two teens grow into men with a deep, compassionate understanding and acceptance of each other, and the authenticity of Rice's portrayal of their relationship may cause readers to care more about their story than Niquette's.

Rice draws upon his New Orleans roots to create a Louisiana that may seem familiar but is a bit more terrifying, bringing about a perfect blend of spooky and memorable. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

The Circle of Thirteen, the debut novel from William Petrocelli--co-owner of Book Passage, one of the West Coast's best-known independent bookstores--is equal parts mystery, thriller, dystopian fiction and feminist polemic--all of it compelling from first page to last. It opens in 2012 in Dallas, as a little boy crouches in a closet, clutching a medal his father earned fighting in Iraq and trying to block out the voices in the next room. His father, Jack, is screaming that his mother, Linda, is no good because she is no longer attentive to the Reverend's teaching and he's calling her girlfriend a dyke. The fighting ends with gunshots, leaving three people dead. Who is the killer? What are the ramifications of Jack's bullying behavior toward his wife and son? For how many years, and in how many ways, will this violence roil in the boy and then in the man?

The story moves on to 2082 and an explosion at the dedication ceremony of the new United Nations headquarters in New York City. Part of the ceremony was the unveiling of a sculpture dedicated to the "Circle of Thirteen," the 13 founders of Women for Peace, who gave their lives to achieve world peace and justice. It seems likely that Patria, a misogynistic gang of terrorist thugs, would want to destroy the monument and the movement. Security director Julia Moro has been looking for Patria's leader; the search will take her deep into her own past, to places too painful to imagine.

Petrocelli gives us a richly imagined story that also incorporates themes of climate crisis and economic disparity--and amid an abundance of characters and plot lines, what stays with the reader is the bond between and among women of character, integrity and action. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

With The Death of Santini, Pat Conroy returns to the autobiographical roots of one of his first successes, the 1976 novel The Great Santini. In this memoir, he recalls father, a larger-than-life Marine hero who was an abusive monster to his family, from the perspective of decades passed. This is, he promises, the last story he'll tell of his father--and of his mother, the beautiful false Southern belle.

Conroy's style and ability to portray time and place are as mesmerizing and evocative as ever; the painful, neurotic (or, as he frequently says, "f-ed up") family dynamics among the seven Conroy children and their mythically proportioned parents are peppered with humor. After his brother Tom's suicide, for example, the family is shocked to realize that the funeral cards list the information for another brother, Tim, but then they start razzing him mercilessly. Another sibling notices the animosity their sister has for Conroy and reflects how hard it must be to hated so much. "No, I hate all you guys that much," Tim says, to which brother Jim replies, "Shut up, Tim. You're dead."

As Conroy takes us through his convoluted relationship with a man he hated and feared, but eventually loved and felt close to (more or less), his gift for storytelling makes his story perfectly understandable and sympathetic. Don Conroy never ceased denying that he was falsely accused, but he softened over time and, it seems, in his dying years finally learned how to be a father. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Born into a close-knit, loving church community, Addie Zierman grew up memorizing Bible verses and dreaming of wedded bliss with a handsome missionary. As a teenager, she donned multiple "What Would Jesus Do?" bracelets and spent her babysitting money on Christian rock CDs and pastel-covered novels of chaste love. Eventually, though, the hyped-up language of the evangelical subculture began to feel hollow and false; when depression descended like a gray cloud, Zierman found herself flailing blindly, unsure if she belonged in the church where she had once felt so much at home.

Zierman writes with honesty and grace in When We Were on Fire, describing the gawky teenage years when she felt like the only Christian at her school and her time at a small Christian college, where every aspect of campus life was filtered through a spiritual lens. She draws deft, realistic portraits of the people she encounters on her journey: well-meaning "Church People" who are kind but speak in faded clichés, the two girlfriends who stick by her even when their own beliefs change and the calm, steady man who becomes her husband. Her wine-fueled downward spiral of grief and loneliness eventually gives way to a slow redemption, a gradual turning back to the genuine faith buried under a pile of evangelical platitudes.

Heartbreaking, wry and completely sympathetic, When We Were on Fire is a grace-filled story of leaving the religious clichés behind in search of a wild, genuine, beautifully complex faith. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Peter Baker's Days of Fire revisits the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency to examine the inner dynamics of a White House in turmoil. Baker, the senior White House correspondent for the New York Times, has done his homework--his account is meticulously researched and buttressed by interviews with key figures from the administration as well as a treasure trove of declassified documents, internal memos and e-mails. (He also benefits from the willingness of several parties involved to speak freely now.)

Baker focuses on several themes he sees as key to interpreting Bush's presidency--prominent among them, his complex and unprecedented relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney and how everyone else interpreted that relationship. Baker deftly debunks many of the myths surrounding their arrangement. In his second term, for example, Bush gradually began to remove members of Cheney's inner circle from his foreign policy advisory council, and his views shifted into alignment with those of Condoleezza Rice's more internationalist, diplomatically focused approach. Cheney was no longer--as the myth goes--"pulling the strings."

Baker also portrays a dysfunctional national security apparatus marked by political infighting, countered by Bush's own dislike and avoidance of conflict and his desire to stand apart from his father's legacy. In all, Days of Fire is a magisterial panorama that manages to present very recent history with the urgency and drama of a political potboiler. --Benji Taylor, freelance writer, student, blogging at Destructive Anachronism

In the frenetic pace of modern society, many of us forget the simple pleasure of taking life just a tiny bit slower, having what Jessica Jenkins describes in All the Time in the World as "an agenda turned upside down in favor of the impractical and the ephemeral: drinking hot cocoa, taking a nap, waltzing until dawn." Revolving around the seasons and the clock, these tidbits of historical sketches come from all parts of the world. Food, love, writing, music and travel are among the many topics Jenkins touches upon as she meanders through history. 

Japanese kabuki dances, cherry blossom festivals and an excerpt on the joys of making fruit jam mingle with essays on American circuses, Roman baths and how Madame de Pompadour applied her make-up, not once but twice each morning, for the entertainment of the likes of Voltaire and Diderot. The articles explore the minutiae and leisure activities of daily life; needlework was considered a virtuous pastime for young women, but reading a novel might "affect the nervous system, leading [the women] to the verge of hysteria, or worse."

Entertaining and informative, All the Time in the World gives readers a chance to breathe deeply and to savor moments in ways that were likely easier to experience before computers and cell phones took control and the rushed, stressful speed of today became the norm. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

"The hunt is one of man's most ancient endeavors," begins The Hunted Whale. James McGuane's photographic exploration into the bygone practice of whaling transports the reader back in time, when whale oil lit the streetlights of the world's major cities and lubricated the burgeoning textile industry. Whaling was a significant economy unto itself, employing countless young men who were convinced to ship out for years at a time by employment agents known as "land sharks." It was a trade performed by hand, and McGuane looks at its many aspects: hunt, ship, whaleboat, crew, whale, tools and more.

McGuane's text is accompanied by more than 200 fine, detailed color photographs depicting whaling artifacts, including several examples of scrimshaw--the art of painted, engraved or carved whalebone or teeth. Photographs of twisted and mangled--but intact--harpoons give visceral evidence of the whale's power to resist human efforts, and McGuane details the methods in practice. Also showcased are innovative technologies, such as toggled harpoons or "irons."

Selections from Logbook for Grace, a diary kept by naturalist Robert Cushman Murphy aboard the whaleship Daisy in 1912, add a valuable firsthand perspective and bring McGuane's subject to life. With all its salty flavor, The Hunted Whale is an obvious choice for fans of Moby-Dick, but history or naval buffs and fans of pre-mechanized times will be equally charmed by this detailed pictorial view of the ancient industry of whaling. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Billy Collins's gift--a rare one--is taking the everyday and turning it like a prism, holding it up to the light to reveal its different facets. Aimless Love, a compilation of new and selected poems, is laced with Collins's signature whimsy and depth, exploring ordinary moments and touches on themes playful and profound.

The collection takes its title from a poem first published in Collins's 2002 book Nine Horses, one of four volumes excerpted here. The poem details his affection for "the miniature orange tree,/ the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,/ the highway that cuts across Florida." As Collins falls in love with the minutiae of the everyday again and again, readers will find their hearts, like his own, "propped up/ in a field on [a] tripod,/ ready for the next arrow."

Ranging from Florida to Paris, from a public bath in Istanbul to quiet country lanes, Collins travels through space and time, aiming only to notice and savor. He pokes sly fun at his own profession ("If This Were a Job I'd Be Fired") and muses on mortality ("Writing in the Afterlife," "Cemetery Ride"). But even when his poems begin in jest, they end in quiet, sincere grace. The final poem, "The Names," is so deeply moving that, as Collins says, "there is barely room on the walls of the heart."

By turns tender and mischievous, wryly humorous and contemplative, Aimless Love is Collins at his best. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Sibert-winning author Catherine Thimmesh (Team Moon) takes a brilliant and fresh approach to dinosaurs--through the viewpoints of the paleoartists who paint their portraits.

"Recreating dinosaurs is like putting together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle--with plenty of pieces missing," the author writes. When a dinosaur bone is discovered, paleontologists, geologists and paleobotanists working together ask themselves a series of questions: What kind of dinosaur is it? How old are the fossils? What did the dinosaur eat? Thimmesh explains, "Finally, the paleoartists (who are often scientists as well) attempt to create an image." One spread pairs a 1901 painting of Triceratops by Charles R. Knight with another by Mark Hallett painted nearly 100 years later. Thimmesh ticks off four major differences in scientists' understanding of dinosaurs in the intervening century. John Sibbick's color series of Parasaurolophus demonstrates the challenge of determining a dinosaur's outer markings ("Color is a real problem," Sibbick said).

With reproductions of the paleoartists' paintings and sculptures, Thimmesh's unusual approach allows her to discuss the history of dinosaur research. For instance, after a "virtual standstill" during the Great Depression and World War II, "dinosaur science came roaring back" with a "seismic shakeup," mostly thanks to John Ostrom's 1964 discovery of Deinonychus, which supported the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Stephen Czerkas describes the move from scales to feathers on the model he created with Sylvia Czerkas for Deinonychus saying, "You have to change what you think in the face of new scientific evidence." This book will be a hit among dinosaur lovers and budding scientists alike. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness