Prescription coverage should include Elinor Lipman (The View from Penthouse B), surely an antidote to gloomy times. Laughing is therapeutic, and the chuckles keep coming in On Turpentine Lane, Lipman's 12th novel. Also an essayist and dedicated political tweeter (her 2012 election tweets were collected as Tweet Land of Liberty), Lipman writes with the comedic grace of Jane Austen and an ear for up-to-date dialogue and predicaments.

Faith Frankel, like Lipman's previous protagonists, has a sunny disposition, excusing her fiancé Stuart's walk across America (sponsored by Faith's credit card) in search of himself. She opts to overlook the many flaws in the "doll house" at 10 Turpentine Lane, a cozy fixer-upper she can swing on her salary as an assistant in a private school development office. Just as her suspicions about Stuart's on-the-road escapades are confirmed, a donor inadvertently casts doubt on Faith's honesty. Home-sweet-home is not a refuge, either: a photo album found in the attic suggests her bungalow has an unsavory history. Among a supporting cast are handsome co-worker Nick, Faith's very involved mother, a legally art-forging dad, and Stuart's multiple moms (it's complicated). Madcap developments include Stuart's self-serving return "without a scintilla of Faith-based anything," and Nick's adding housemate to office-mate status. Turmoil reigns when the photo album leads to a murder investigation and the (presumed deceased) original homeowner shows up in Faith's charming linoleum kitchen. Harrowing segues to hilarious, and Faith perseveres to a happily-ever-after. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Having won the Nobel Prize, two Booker Prizes and cemented himself in the literary canon, one might expect J.M. Coetzee (The Childhood of Jesus) to slow down at the age of 76. Instead, he seems to be embarking upon one of his grandest projects. The Schooldays of Jesus is the second novel in a world that is best described as Kafka-esque, full of strange bureaucracy and even stranger mysticism.

David and his two caretakers, Simon and Ines, have fled the city of Novilla for the provincial town of Estrella. A nominal family, the bonds among the three become quickly frayed as David starts school at a prestigious academy of dance, becoming enamored with his beautiful teacher and her strange philosophy, which Simon and Ines can make neither heads nor tails of. David is headstrong, and while not exactly fitting the picture of Jesus with which the title saddles him, he swimmingly takes to the academy's transcendental concepts, chiding Simon's lack of understanding without ever really explaining what is going on. There's a murder and a trial, but the plot is ancillary to the conversations between Simon and the rest of the cast. The Schooldays of Jesus is less about what happens to David and Simon and more about Simon's concerns as to how to raise the boy.

It's odd to say The Schooldays of Jesus argues that parenthood is much like a Kafka story. But, like Kafka's work, the novel illustrates the struggle of logic against the ineffable. In this case, what cannot be described is the internal life of the little creatures raised into adults. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

Paul La Farge, author of novels such as Haussmann, or the Distinction and Luminous Airplanes, has, with The Night Ocean, crafted yet another that defies categorization. La Farge frequently mixes fact and fiction with wild abandon, and The Night Ocean is no exception: its characters, real and fictional, orbit around the life of H.P. Lovecraft, the genre-defining horror writer from the early 20th century.

Marina Willett is a psychiatrist forced into the role of amateur sleuth in order to discover the whereabouts of her husband, Charlie, who recently disappeared after escaping from a psychiatric hospital. The police believe that he drowned in a nearby lake, but Marina isn't so sure. Her investigation delves into Charlie's notes and his obsessive, unhealthy research concerning the relationship between H.P. Lovecraft and the real-life fan and fellow writer Robert Barlow.

La Farge reveals his nesting-doll narrative structure gradually, leading readers to feel as if they're participating in the investigation into Lovecraft's life and the lives of his enemies and devotees. Along the way, La Farge delves into controversial subjects such as Lovecraft's rumored homosexuality, his racism and the merit of evaluating works of art using the lives of their creators as context. La Farge rarely delivers neat conclusions--his method somehow produces insights while muddying the historical waters even further. Instead, the fact of what may have happened becomes less important--maybe even less fun--than the many imaginative possibilities La Farge provides. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

The United States capital has long been home to ambitious egos and an army of sycophants and influence peddlers. Debut novelist Tom Rosenstiel's Shining City, like a mashup of The West Wing and House of Cards, captures the high stakes political maneuvering behind pushing an iconoclastic Supreme Court nominee through a divisive Senate confirmation hearing.

Conservative Peter Rena ("ex-military, Special Forces, one of those crazy guys who swim across alligator-infested waters to slit your throat") and his liberal partner, Randi Brooks, run a nonpartisan "problem-solver" consulting firm. Charged with thoroughly scrubbing the background of Edmund Roland Madison, they must prep the blunt independent jurist for the inevitable high-profile committee grilling. Meanwhile, the psychopathic brother of a man convicted of murder and rape in Madison's California courtroom is systematically killing the cop, public defender and prosecutor in the case--and his ultimate target is Madison himself.

A former journalist with the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek, Rosenstiel (Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload with Bill Kovach) salts his Washington political thriller with contemporary issues and D.C. characters--like the leader of a look-alike Tea Party caucus who wears a Heritage Foundation T-shirt and takes his coffee in a Cato Institute mug, and "Craggy" Aggie Tucker, "the feral boy senator of Texas." Shining City is a diverting look behind the capital's political curtain with enough barbarity to give it plenty of propulsive juice. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Romanian E.O. Chirovici's first novel written in English is a psychological thriller about a murder investigation reopened years after it happened. The Book of Mirrors uses varying points of view to demonstrate, as Chirovici says on his website, "the human mind's capacity to cosmeticize and even falsify its recollections."

Literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial manuscript for Richard Flynn's firsthand account of events leading up to--but ending just before--the murder of charismatic professor Joseph Wieder. Katz tries to contact Flynn but discovers that he died weeks earlier. Frank Spoel was convicted of Wieder's murder, but the partial manuscript seems like a confession, or perhaps a revelation of the true murderer. Katz is compelled to learn how the story ends, and hires investigative journalist John Keller, who ferrets out those closest to the case--finding out that while they may have been involved in the same event, everyone's perceptions are quite different "The boundaries between fiction and reality don't exist, or else they're very slender." He tracks down Spoel (still in prison), as well as Derek Summers (handyman for the murdered professor) and Lauren Baines (the professor's mysterious protégée and Flynn's love interest). He recruits the original police investigator, Roy Freeman, to examine the case anew, but what Keller and Freeman piece together leads to a surprising and sorrowful conclusion.

With language both direct and fresh, and a plot full of unexpected twists, Chirovici illustrates the rash consequences of taking action when memories are so deceiving. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

London book editor Samantha Clair is used to juggling cranky colleagues, needy authors and epic hangovers from launch parties. But on a morning when she's dealing with all three, Sam gets drawn into a neighborhood mystery on her market run: a missing man, a burned-out building (possibly a case of arson) and a possible drug-dealing network. Never able to leave well enough alone--much to the chagrin of her boyfriend, police inspector Jake Field--Sam begins investigating. Judith Flanders delivers another whip-smart plot in her third mystery featuring Sam, A Cast of Vultures.

Readers of Flanders's previous novels (starting with A Murder of Magpies) will recognize Sam's supporting cast: her irritatingly competent mother, Helena; agoraphobic neighbor Mr. Rudiger; and multitalented assistant, Miranda. (Despite his professional interest in the case, Jake fades into the background for much of this installment.) Sam's wry first-person narration and her compulsive nosiness drive the story--landing her in a few sticky situations, but drawing her ever closer to the mystery's solution. Flanders, a social historian, also uses the plot to explore several facets of modern urban living: knowing one's neighbors (or not), the ins and outs of property and tenants' rights, the problems caused by gentrification and the issues facing at-risk youth. (Sam's friend Sam, a local unemployed teenager, comes through for her in surprising ways.)

Witty and thoughtful, with a twisty plot and engaging characters, A Cast of Vultures is Sam's most entertaining adventure yet. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Judy Collins is a breathtakingly forthright and uncompromising writer. Cravings uses the same adroit prose and relentless soul searching found in her best songs and her six previous books (especially The Seven T's, about surviving her son's suicide). She begins by labeling herself "an active, working alcoholic with an eating disorder" and admits, "I am not a medical doctor, just a survivor who has learned more in my lifetime about eating disorders than most doctors."

Cravings is an unsparingly frank autobiography of Collins's multiple addictions (food, drugs, alcohol, prescription pills), multiple hospitalizations, bulimia and even a teenage suicide attempt. It is also a self-help guide with chapter-length profiles of "the gurus of dieting," including Robert Atkins, Andrew Weil, Jean Nidetch, Herman Tarnower, Linus Pauling and Adelle Davis, and the origins of both Alcoholics Anonymous and GreySheeters Anonymous (an organization helping people recover from compulsive overeating). Collins's knowledgeable and concise history of decades' worth of diet plans and medical theories elevates the book with first-hand evaluations of each one's strengths and weaknesses. By the time she finds a life plan (rather than diet) that works for her, readers who have been on similar quests will appreciate her exhaustive and useful search for a solution.

"We must each find our own way," Collins acknowledges. But readers who have struggled with their own addictions will feel less alone after reading Collins's eloquent, carefully researched and blazingly honest account of her potentially deadly 60-year struggle with food disorders. Cravings is a roadmap toward solutions that could save lives. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

To some, the increasing role of neuroscience in the courtroom is the modern equivalent of 1970s comedian Flip Wilson's plea of innocence: "The devil made me do it." However, as Kevin Davis shows in The Brain Defense, technological advances in the scanning of brain activity are providing defense attorneys with ever more sophisticated tools to build a case. A former crime reporter and professor of journalism and writing, Davis (Defending the Damned) builds his study from one of the first instances where a brain scan entered the courtroom--the lurid case of Herbert Weinstein, who in 1991 confessed to strangling his wife and throwing her body out the 12th-story window of his Upper East Side apartment. An MRI of Weinstein's brain showed a cyst "the size of an orange" over his temporal lobe, or, according to one specialist who evaluated the scan: "he is not rowing with all his oars in the water."

It would be easy for a subject as steeped in scientific jargon and legalese as "neurolaw" to lead to a big yawn, but Davis smoothly guides his narrative through the quagmire of acronyms and precedents with arresting participant interviews. He demonstrates that "broken brains" apply not just to violent criminal behavior, but also to the "abnormal" acts of athletes who play contact sports, juveniles, addicts and military veterans. The Brain Defense concludes that the role of neuroscience in the courtroom is still evolving. Its most prevalent application today is not in establishing guilt but in mitigating death penalty judgments. As one attorney active in the field summarizes: "The real issue is what the hell do we do with people when it comes to sentencing." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

If there were any question whether Patricia Smith (Blood Dazzler) is one of the best poets working in the United States today, her powerful collection Incendiary Art answers with the full force of veritable genius.

Rooted in the contemporary African American experience and revolving around historical incidents of violence against black men and black children, Incendiary Art sets the conscience on fire. Smith employs a dazzling array of poetic forms--from the formal sonnet to the free-flowing prose poem--and an arsenal of stark and sublime images to convey the perspectives of countless victims of police brutality and racial violence. Victims and their family members get a voice in these poems--and at one point, in a brilliant twist, the gun used in a crime does, too. Smith leaves no angle overlooked, no point of view forgotten, in what becomes a thoroughly moving, multifaceted reckoning of recent history.

Yet as much as physical violence plays a central role in this collection, Smith explores the cold spaces of loss to discover warmth, human affection and some recognizable form of grace. In "Elegy," a 10-page prose poem, she searches the legacy of her murdered father and finds an almost irrational, abiding love, one that "breaks and breaks and rearranges," born of little more than "your sweet inability to put me down." Even in this most personal of poems, Smith has a way of imbuing lines with historical significance. She imagines her own infant body as "holding/ the whole promise of north in your grasp." --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist and fiction author

At age six, Priscilla falls in love with gorillas after reading a book about them with her dad "a million skillion times."

She draws pictures of their habitats, learns about Dian Fossey and writes in her "private GORILLA GAZETTE." She tells her mother what she loves most about gorillas: "They always get their way." But Priscilla's obsession with gorillas starts getting her in trouble at school. She tries to teach a friend her gorilla dance during nap time. She's rude to her teacher. She refuses to take off her gorilla costume for the class picture. Mr. Todd, her rumpled, harried teacher, invites her to the Thinking Corner whenever she misbehaves. It's not until Priscilla's wise dad re-reads aloud the part of the beloved gorilla book about how these great apes are known for cooperating with each other that she grudgingly recognizes the error of her ways. She tells Mr. Todd, "My ALL ABOUT GORILLAS book says even gorillas don't always get their way." Ever gracious, Mr. Todd responds: "If that is an apology, I accept it, Priscilla."

In Priscilla Gorilla, Barbara Bottner and Irish illustrator Michael Emberley, who also "cooperated" on Miss Brooks' Story Nook, have created a perfect gem of a picture book, complete with a troublemaker, canny adults, droll humor and a gently proffered lesson. Priscilla's home is a comfortably cluttered haven, filled with books, laptops, art supplies and love. Strong-nosed, slightly potbellied Mr. Todd is like one of those memorable teachers from just about everyone's childhood: firm, grumpy and goodhearted. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Claude Ponti's gorgeous, deliciously oversized French picture book My Valley may feel to adults like one of those childhood favorites whose illustrations are forever etched in their minds.

In fact, it's difficult to imagine anyone, young or old, able to resist the charms of this inventively imagined valley world and its tiny bear-beaver-monkey hybrids called Twims. Narrated with heart and humor by young Poochie-Blue Twims, the book begins: "This is my valley. I was born in the House Tree on the Blue Cliffs. I'm a Twims. All the Twims live in my valley. It's the most beautiful valley in the world." Lush paintings reveal mountains, a winding river, wildflowers, craggy trees and exposed boulders, and the intricate details invite close scrutiny. My Valley is firstly elaborate world-building; its real storytelling lies in distinct vignettes illuminating aspects of Twims life, such as "The House Tree," a place where every child on Earth would wish to live (big library! trapeze room! swinging bench room! star room!). Then there are the rules, such as "Whenever a Twims makes a wish, he or she goes and sticks a gold leaf on the Singing Stone. When the wind blows in a certain way, the stone sings and the wishes come true. It has been this way since the Goochnies' time. The Goochnies are shy and they look like mushrooms."

Poochie-Blue goes on to matter-of-factly spin fantastical stories about the "Tree of Secrets," how the Blue Cliffs turn blue when it's foggy, "The Very Sad Giant" and "The Theater of Hissy Fits" (where you can shout and stamp your feet). A wonder. --Karin Snelson, freelance writer and editor