Dean Koontz knows exactly what story you'll be thinking about after the opening chapters of Innocence. His narrator-protagonist Addison Goodheart, a shunned outcast who lives alone deep below the city streets, comes up to the surface late one night and, making his way through the public library, catches sight of a haunting young woman fleeing an angry pursuer. Once the threat has passed, Addison figures out where she must be hiding and reaches out to her; she agrees to meet and talk with him. "I have no illusions about romance," he tells her during that first conversation. "Beauty and the Beast is a nice fairy tale, but fairy tales are for books."

Addison soon becomes Gwyneth's companion, but their relationship is heavily circumscribed. She forbids him even the most fleeting of physical contact, while he buries his face in a hooded sweatshirt and a scarf lest she catch a glimpse of his face. As we learn from the periodic flashbacks, there's something in Addison's appearance that so disgusts others that anyone who sees him is overcome by a murderous impulse.

Addison and Gwyneth's city, blanketed in snow, has an ethereal quality to it. The novel's highly detailed scenes feel tenuously connected to each other the way disparate elements coalesce in dreams. By the time we learn the truth about Addison's condition, so many of our initial assumptions have been upended it may feel as if we've been given a completely different book--what started out as a fairy tale has become something much more allegorical. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com

Hall of Famer Ted Williams is considered the best hitter in the history of major league baseball. While other books have chronicled Williams's ascent and his 22 colorful years with the Boston Red Sox, Ben Bradlee, Jr.--a reporter and editor for the Boston Globe--goes a step beyond that familiar story in The Kid. Via extensive research, access to private papers and interviews with more than 600 of Williams's former teammates, associates, friends and family, Bradlee delves into Williams's troubled, impoverished childhood in San Diego, the fraught relationships he endured with his parents and his years as a "top gun" Marine pilot in World War II and Korea, as well as the life he lived away from the baseball diamond and his retirement.

Bradlee's respect and admiration for the "self-made and intellectually curious" Williams is evident on every page. This hefty, meticulously researched biography--replete with photographs--unveils new aspects of Williams's eccentric persona: his hiding his Mexican-American roots; his impulsiveness and intense temper, which often made his life dysfunctional on the field and off; his overlooked charitable work and innate kindness; his passion for fishing. Also included are in-depth details of Williams's relationships with his girlfriends, wives and children. Bradlee bookends Williams's story with a chilling, fascinating examination of the slugger's death and the dispute among his heirs to have Williams's corpse cryonically preserved. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

To understand the complex U.S. political landscape, it helps to look to those who planted its ideological origins. Yuval Levin, the founder and editor of National Affairs, explores the country's first public discourse in The Great Debate. In this rigorous yet accessible work, Levin contextualizes the positions of British philosopher Edmund Burke, who has been viewed as both the founder of modern conservatism and an example of classical liberalism, and Thomas Paine, the author of several classic political texts, including Common Sense and The Rights of Man. Both supported the cause of the American revolutionaries, but Burke opposed the French Revolution--a cause Paine defended on ethical grounds.

Their clashing ideas spawned the two main factions that persist in politics today--although both of them inspired rhetoric that alters or elaborates on their original views. Revolutionaries have infused Paine's memory with socialist sensibilities that, Levin says, "would have been largely foreign to Paine himself," while contemporary conservatives have lacked Burke's emphasis on community, opting instead for hyper-individualism. "Each group," he suggests, "might find some of its worst excesses alleviated a bit by carefully considering the Burke-Paine debate." By understanding what these two political philosophers believed, we can better see how today's debates have selected and rearranged the foundations of American thought. --Annie Atherton

Since 2003, Nick Hornby (High Fidelity; About a Boy) has written a column for the Believer, a magazine with a baked-in whimsy that suits his contributions. The column is supposed to be devoted to a general consideration of books and the reading life, but from the get-go, he's strayed topically from books into other concerns. In Ten Years in the Tub, a collection of those columns, Hornby provides wry insights into subjects such as parenting, religion and "the literary equivalent of grilled kangaroo," but always makes his way back to the books.

Ten years is a good run, and Hornby has made outstanding use of it. As a guidebook to finding new avenues of reading to explore, his column is excellent; there likely aren't more than a handful of readers who could walk away with less than a dozen new authors to investigate. Hornby reads broadly, across genres, and isn't afraid to poke fun at the books he's reading, but he does so thoughtfully, as likely to pin the blame on himself as a reader when a book doesn't settle with him the right way. Is it over-the-top to say that Hornby's column is essential reading, that his approaches to reading can inspire us to engage fully with the written word? If so, then let's leave it at a request: keep grilled kangaroo on the menu for another 10 years. --Matthew Tiffany, counselor, writer for Condalmo

The trio of editors who have collected the 55 creative essays, short stories, dramatic works and poems found in Unruly Catholic Women directly confront the Church's doctrine, addressing issues of gender and religion, social justice and equality that remain central to the lives of many Catholic women today.

The anthology is structured in three sections subtitled to match the traditional mysteries of the Holy Rosary--the contemplative prayer associated with Mary, the Blessed Mother of God, for whom many Catholics hold a special affinity and devotion. Section one, "The Joyful Mysteries," highlights themes pertaining to contemporary responses toward motherhood, childbearing and childrearing, as in Renee Bondy's essay about how the nuns of her childhood inspired her to become a "feisty feminist." Pain and death, and the emotions of women who feel alienated from the church due to divorce or sexuality, are the focus of "The Sorrowful Mysteries." Dolores DeLuise offers a meditation on sexuality for Catholic clergy. Mary Rice's short, moving poem, "Resurrection," delving into the role of women and the miracle of the empty tomb, is one of several pieces in "The Glorious Mysteries" which examine the ways in which sacraments and rituals empower female Catholics despite the limitations on the role of women in the Church.

Conveying a range of feelings from anger to appreciation, the confessional expressions and recollections gathered together in Unruly Catholic Women offer a versatile, entirely feminist view of the Roman Catholic experience. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Henry Strozier gives voice to Russian investigator Arkady Renko, who returns in Tatiana, the eighth novel featuring Martin Cruz Smith's somber protagonist (introduced in Gorky Park). Strozier's slow, weary cadence brings out Renko's melancholy as well as the destitution of his environment.

Renko is unconvinced that fearless reporter Tatiana Petrovna chose to  jump to her death. He wants to investigate, but once it's deemed a suicide he has no cause. The pieces don't add up, though, and when Grisha Grigorenko, a powerful mob boss and a target of Tatiana's reporting, is shot to death the same week, Renko's discomfort intensifies. He gets his opportunity to investigate when Tatiana's body winds up missing from the morgue. As he follows the clues to Kaliningrad, the tone grows only grimmer.

Strozier's approach maintains the dark tone while differentiating each character (without resorting to a Russian accent in the dialogue). His pitch doesn't change much throughout the narration, but he manages to bring out the playfulness of scenes involving a pug dog and the naiveté of Renko's teenage charge, Zhenya, who thinks he will find glory in joining the army. He is also acutely aware of Smith's subtle humor, adding just the right vocal adjustments to drive home the amusement and elicit a laugh from the audience.

The overall production of Tatiana is crisp and free of superfluous noises, allowing listeners to focus on the story and fully experience Renko's world. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

The on-court action is fast and furious in Kevin Waltman's (Nowhere Fast) launch to a planned four-book series, which will especially appeal to basketball fans.

The author portrays adeptly a small town in Indiana obsessed with hoops, where coaches can influence generations of families and patterns can be hard to break. African American narrator Derrick Bowen ("D-Bow") may be only 6'3" (that's right, only) and a freshman at Marion East, but he knows the moves. Starter Nick Starks sees 15-year-old D-Bow as a threat and would rather have the team lose than pass to the newcomer and risk his first-string status. The main tension of the novel grows out of an opportunity D-Bow gets to move from his public school high school, where he's gradually building the trust of his coaches, to upscale Hamilton Academy, in another county and ranked #1. If he goes, his unemployed father has been promised a job. A protracted subplot about D-Bow's Uncle Kid and his suspicious interest in his nephew moving to Hamilton unfolds somewhat awkwardly, but the relationships between D-Bow and his brother and parents, as well as with his best friend, Wes--together with the on-court scenes--more than carry the novel.

Credible characterizations, catchy dialogue ("At the end of the day, the ring is the thing," D-Bow thinks, at the prospect of winning a championship) and growing suspense as to which school D-Bow will choose will hold readers' attention. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

From the opening endpapers of Sophie's journey on a Robinson Projection ("Scale 1: 134 million") to the closing endpapers that map the Antarctic, this picture book brims with fascinating facts in a conversational style that will captivate readers.

In 2005, author and artist Alison Lester traveled for six weeks as an Australian Antarctic Arts Fellow. She translates her trip through the eyes of nine-year-old narrator Sophie Scott, whose father is captain of the Aurora Australis (the ship Lester sailed on her own trip). Sophie gets in all the details children crave: "My bunk is called a berth, the window is a porthole, the kitchen is the galley and the dining room is the mess." A mechanical drawing of the ship shows more official labels ("tweendeck hold"; "fuel overflow"), while handlettering points out the spots important to Sophie. Her descriptions give children a flavor of her experiences in terms they'll understand, as when they hit a rough patch and the dining-room portholes get submerged: "It's like we're eating inside a washing machine." She also mentions the diverse missions of the ship, from carrying supplies to Antarctica to retrieving an underwater microphone for scientists who'd deposited it a year earlier to record whale communications.

The book's design gracefully accommodates dramatic photographs of the Antarctic, illustrations by children in collage, marker and watercolor (created in response to Lester's e-mail updates to schools and families), and Lester's own artwork. Sophie's handwritten text distinguishes her amusing asides from the typeset narrative. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness