The dizzying high point of Annapurna Potluri's The Grammarian occurs when its two main characters, who differ greatly in origin and circumstance, reach a moment of near-sublime connection. One of them is a Frenchman, the other an Indian girl, and the moment--though innocent--is fraught with taboos.

The beauty and hope of this particular moment is fatally ruptured, but not before it encapsulates the ambitious themes of Potluri's sweeping debut novel--the limitations and possibilities of language, the struggle for love and freedom, an impassable cultural and political divide and the ultimately failed attempt to bridge it.

Written in supple, sensuous prose that aches with memory and regret, The Grammarian unfolds as handsome Alexandre, a young and ambitious academic, travels from Paris to southern India in 1911 to write a grammar of Telugu ("an agglutinating language; a sentence could stream off like bars of opera"). He is hosted by wealthy Shiva Adivi, an "aristocrat sympathetic to Europeans," who has two teenage daughters: the younger radiantly, unfairly beautiful, and the elder, Anjali, disfigured by a childhood illness.

Alexandre and Anjali, both outsiders, form an unlikely friendship. He is drawn to her curiosity and intelligence, while she yearns for love and recognition untouched by the pity and barely veiled disgust she's used to. Though Alexandre's impulsive and tragically misguided kindness has devastating repercussions for her, it also opens her to a joy and freedom she's never known.

Potluri writes with uncommon elegance, her keen empathy and flair for metaphor in artful marriage with her own background in linguistics. --Hannah Calkins, blogger at Unpunished Vice

Discover: A richly drawn portrait of the chaos and color of imperial India--a debut novel that spans more than half a century, three continents and the unreachable distance between two people.

Following the success of Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter's We Live in Water collects 13 stories that previously appeared in literary magazines, Playboy and Byliner.com.

We Live in Water is filled with life's losers: meth addicts, liars, rotten parents, con men--and a con woman--and one particularly heartbreaking story, "Anything Helps." A father "goes to cardboard," making a sign asking for cash and standing on a street corner, hoping to get enough money to buy his son one of the Harry Potter books. He succeeds, buys the book and takes it to his son's foster home, where he is met by a stern foster mother who informs him that such "Satanic" books are not acceptable. In the end, the boy returns the book because he has come to understand his foster parents' objection to its content; he is lost to his father in every way.

In another story, "Thief," a father hatches an elaborate plan to catch one of his three kids in the act of stealing from the Vacation Fund. The ending has an unexpected twist that will make you smile.

"Wheelbarrow Kings" features two druggies who pick up a TV from a dealer who wants to get rid of it. They steal a wheelbarrow and push it, with the TV riding precariously, six blocks to the pawn shop. The owner tells them that they are "like five years late."

Depressing? Not in Walter's hands. He can mine the least scintilla of humor and wit from his characters' broken lives--people whose dreams will surely not come true but who somehow keep trying. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

Discover: Thirteen stories filled with pathos, humor, despair, dead ends and hope from National Book Award nominee Jess Walter.

Jim Crace has written a dozen diverse novels infused with rich language and character particular to whatever story he is telling, whether it takes place in a Bronze Age village or on an imaginary continent. In Harvest, Crace is working at the top of his craft as he shows us the unraveling of a traditional English tenant farm.

Harvest is narrated by Walter Thirsk, a city man who came to the remote village 12 years before as a servant to Master Kent, but chose to join the villagers in the barley fields. Kent is a widower, so, under English law, the rights to the estate will now pass to his wife's brother from the city. Thirsk is a thoughtful, observant narrator who is both a part of the village yet also, always, an outsider. He struggles with the loss of his wife and the impending loss of the farm's paternalistic master.

When a surveyor arrives on behalf of the new master to map the estate and draw up a proposal to "fence and quickthorn all the land and turn everything... into gallant sheep country," Thirsk sees no way to avoid the impending changes. Itinerants set up camp in the "wasted woods" the same day that a fire destroys the master's barn, and the tenants' fears turn them violent.

With Thirsk as our witness, we watch a way of life dismantle before our eyes. Crace's imaginary world is as powerfully engrossing as anything the real world throws our way. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Discover: An isolated English tenant farm collapses in the face of economic and social upheavals in Crace's vividly created world.

In her debut novel, The House Girl, former attorney Tara Conklin uses art to connect the lives of two very different women separated by more than a century.

In 1852 Virginia, 17-year-old house slave Josephine looks after her dying mistress, Lu Anne Bell, while trying to dodge her master's fists. Although her last escape attempt ended in recapture, abuse and the stillbirth of her child, Josephine is ready to run away again. Waiting for her chance, she soothes half-mad Lu Anne by putting finishing touches on the paintings Lu Anne can't complete. Josephine's talent far surpasses Lu Anne's, but her world has no place for a slave with her talents.

In 2004, ambitious young attorney Lina Sparrow is assigned to a landmark slavery reparations case. If she succeeds, she could become a partner at her firm, but her supervisor's indifference and a backstabbing co-worker hamper her efforts. Then, through friends of her artist father, Lina learns of rumors that the celebrated Southern artist Lu Anne Bell's paintings may have been the work of a house slave. If Lina can find a descendant of Josephine to act as plaintiff, their case will have the perfect public face, but first she must solve the mystery of what happened to Josephine more than 150 years ago.

Alternating between Josephine and Lina's points of view, The House Girl draws two distinct portraits that intersect in surprising ways. Skillfully executed and packed with surprises, this novel of the ways in which art saves our humanity is an engrossing, do-not-miss adventure. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Latah County Library District; blogger at Infinite Reads

Discover: A deftly constructed debut novel about a young attorney trying to unravel the mysterious fate of a slave who may have been behind several acclaimed works of art.

Debut novelist Tanis Rideout mingles historical fact and fiction in Above All Things, alternating the story of George Mallory's part in the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition with the life of the loving wife he left behind.

Mallory, the last great English explorer, has already risked life and limb twice trying to become the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest. When a third opportunity presents itself, he cannot say no. While his mission colors him a hero in the eyes of a British people still recovering from the First World War, his wife, Ruth, has a much different reaction. Mallory promised her he was done with his dangerous expeditions, that he wanted to settle down with her and their three small children for good.

Rideout subtly explores possible motivations for his obsession: a chance to give a taste of glory to war-ravaged Britain, an ultimate thrill ride, an escape from flashbacks to the war, even an obligation to Ruth to complete the goal that has kept him from her.

While Mallory and his fellow mountaineers endure freezing temperatures, the loss of comrades and prickly personality conflicts over many weeks, the juxtaposed scenes of Ruth's life in Britain are all taken from one day, the day on which she learns whether or not her husband will return. Interspersed throughout both narratives are flashbacks from the couple's courtship that reveal their love. This combination of nail-biting adventure and tender romance will thrill and move readers right up to the end. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

Discover: A fictional account of George Mallory's third attempt to climb Mount Everest takes readers to the heights of mountains and the depths of the human heart.

One almost has to be a Pinkerton detective to unravel the double crosses and mysteries surrounding the falcon statue in Owen Fitzstephen's Hammett Unwritten--or is it Gordon McAlpine's? In fact, isn't Fitzstephen a character from Dashiell Hammett's The Dain Curse (though his name was spelled Fitzstephan)? 

Leaping around in time, the novel explores why Hammett never wrote another novel after The Thin Man. As he's putting the final touches on that book, he's visited by Moira O'Shea, on whom he based Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the femme fatale of The Maltese Falcon. She tells him the black bird sitting on his desk is made of a magical stone that grants the owner's wishes, and is thus the reason for Hammett's success.

When Hammett scoffs at this notion, O'Shea convinces him that the only way to prove the legend wrong is to give her the statue--and he promptly develops an impenetrable writer's block. Hammett searches for the bird, but O'Shea seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Could the mythology surrounding the falcon be true? Or is O'Shea exacting psychological revenge?

Readers may sometimes feel that Gordon McAlpine is messing with their heads, but it's fun to go along with Hammett as he investigates the legend. Fans of Hammett's work--and The Maltese Falcon in particular--should enjoy the many references to his work and the novel's blending of fact and fiction. In the end, it almost doesn't matter what's true, only that it's a story well told. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, writer/editor blogging at Pop Culture Nerd

Discover: A meta-novel supposedly written by one of Dashiell Hammett's characters explains why he never wrote another book after The Thin Man.

In Three Graves Full, Jamie Mason has crafted an offbeat, menacing tale that is beautifully written and compulsively readable. Irony and dark humor propel the plot in ways that reinvigorate the crime novel, revealing sharp insights into the complexities of the human heart and mind.

"The world was short one human being because of Jason Getty," a lonely young widower and "crackerjack wallflower" who, on a moonlit October night, was pushed too far and killed a man who had it coming. Jason may have hidden the body, burying the corpse in his suburban Stillwater backyard, but he can't live with himself. For 17 months, he goes through the motions of living, most nights "watching through the dining-room window for the unavoidable squad car to turn down the street and ruin his life." But when landscapers come to do a routine clean-up of Jason's property, they discover not one body, but two--another man and a woman--in the flower bed out front. The guilt-ridden nightmare of Jason's life suddenly flares. He is thrust into a harrowing investigation to identify the two corpses--how and why they got there--and forced to shed his isolated existence. Will the authorities find the third body?

Jason's destiny becomes intertwined with a jilted woman looking for the missing pieces of her own life; an upstanding small-town detective and his astute police dog; and a mysterious loner whose own actions and past may very well dictate the fates of all involved. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Discover: An offbeat, menacing tale about a criminal with a conscience who is forced to confront his past and shed his isolated existence.

Roger Hobbs's (a 2011 graduate from Reed College) debut novel, Ghostman, is a superbly written dark crime thriller. It's narrated by the smart, stoic Jack Delton, aka Ghostman, a fixer as meticulous and resourceful as Jason Bourne, who translates ancient texts in his down time. (His code comes from The Aeneid: "If you can't reach heaven, raise hell.") With a story told in short, James Patterson-like chapters  of addictive prose, it's as good a first noir as Nic Pizzolatto's Galveston.

An armored car heist at an Atlantic City casino goes wrong. Marcus, the brutal criminal mastermind who planned it, asks Ghostman--who owes Marcus after a botched heist in Kuala Lumpur five years earlier--to retrieve the money taken by one of the fleeing robbers. This has to happen fast: the money is tagged with an ink bomb that will go off in 48 hours, destroying the cash. As the clock ticks down, Hobbs inserts suspenseful flashbacks to that old job, where Ghostman was mentored by Angela, who taught him to cut off his "last ties with the normal world and how to live like a ghost."

After checking out the site, Ghostman concludes that there was a third person, a shooter, firing from a parking lot at the robbers below. Was this all a set-up, a double cross? Is he now in the cross-hairs? Is Marcus after him? Getting in Ghostman's way is Wolf, a sadistic killer, and a relentless FBI agent. Smart, gripping, shrewdly observed, and oh so well written, this is a sharp, standout piece of fiction. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Discover: An entertaining noir crime thriller as sharp as bloody tacks, edgy, keen in intellect and trenchantly written--one heck of a debut novel.

If you're sick of high-strung parents bragging that their gifted children request sautéed brussel sprouts and conjugate German verbs for sport, Melanie Shankle's Sparkly Green Earrings will be like manna from heaven.

Shankle, creator of the Big Mama blog, paints a very different picture of motherhood than you'll get from the photos posted to Facebook by doting parents. Her daughter, Caroline, can be obnoxious, much like every other child on this planet--and, rather than insisting her beloved daughter is "misunderstood," Shankle freely admits the opposite, creating room for hilarious stories.

Reading this memoir could be the least alone you'll feel as a mother. Finally, there's someone else out there whose kid yells "poop!" at the playground at the top of her lungs. Shankle takes motherhood seriously, but she doesn't take herself too seriously. Her message is clear: if you love and care for your children, everything is going to be fine.

If you've ever wondered when parenting became a competitive sport--and one where we feel we are constantly failing, at that--or why we feel like we need to shield our kids from every disappointment and enroll them in 10 extracurricular activities, you'll marvel at how Shankle manages to keep you laughing while contemplating those questions. You may even find yourself nodding along and hooting "Amen, sister!--until the last couple of pages, where she delivers a whammy that truly underscores the pain, joy and indescribable power of motherhood. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend

Discover: A hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir from the blogger behind the Big Mama.

Fans of Jane Austen know her as a keen observer of social mores; between every knowing glance, every turn in the ballroom, every ironic phrase and heroic action was a woman in firm control of her craft. John Mullan, a specialist in 18th-century English literature (How Novels Work), tackles the intricacies of the Austen novel, revealing the subtle, yet complex, influences of culture and society on her fiction while shedding appreciative light on the continuing relevance of her pioneering literary style three centuries after her death.

Mullan's compendium covers 20 topics, examining Austen's characters by their age, styles of address, physical descriptions, speech, the games they play and so on. He even addresses the media portrayals of Austen characters, noting the flaws in screen adaptations of Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Austen was famous for her ability to filter plots through the consciousness of her characters; the literary device she perfected--free indirect style--brings insight into human nature and a person's interior life that sets her apart from her contemporaries.

"Accuracy is her genius," writes Mullan. "Noticing minutiae will lead you to a wonderful connectedness of her novels, where a small detail of wording or motivation in one place will flare with the recollection of something that went much earlier." Indeed, What Matters in Jane Austen? is one collection that Austenites will unabashedly appreciate. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Discover: A literary critic for the Guardian brings fresh new and insights into the literary details and truths found within Jane Austen's fiction.

Ruta Sepetys's (Between Shades of Gray) second novel takes readers deep inside the underbelly of New Orleans on the eve of 1950.

"My mother's a prostitute," Jo Morraine's narrative begins. Willie Woodley is the madam who runs the establishment where Jo's mother goes to work. There's far more to Willie than first meets the eye. A savvy businesswoman who's tough on the outside but who sees Jo's potential, Willie becomes a vehicle for Sepetys to point out the limits set on women in the late 1940s and early 1950s, especially in the South. As Jo watches Willie navigate the system--legal, financial and otherwise--she picks up some skills of her own.

A few other adults watch out for Jo, including a bestselling novelist with a bookstore, and Willie's kind-hearted driver, Cokie. They balance out a mother with no street smarts and no redeeming qualities. Jo's mother gets mixed up with the mob and draws Jo into it, just as the teen's life is looking up. As Cokie tells Jo, "Call this place 'The Big Easy' shoot, ain't nothin' easy about it." Sepetys slowly builds a mounting tension between the life Jo was born into, and a chance to create a better life for herself and leave her past behind.

This suspenseful novel, framed by a murder mystery, more fully explores the question of who Jo Morraine will become, and proves Sepetys's extraordinary versatility as a storyteller. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: A murder mystery set in seedy 1950s New Orleans where an intelligent, ambitious teen tries to make a better life for herself.

It's time for war in the edge-of-your seat sequel to Tahereh Mafi's dystopian Shatter Me. Juliette, who was confined to isolation in Shatter Me because of her lethal touch, has resisted becoming the villain's weapon. She later escaped with Adam, the boy she loves who's mysteriously immune to her power, and settled in Omega Point with other rebels like her.

Unravel Me opens two weeks after Juliette's arrival at Omega Point, and she's struggling to become the warrior needed to fight off the Reestablishment's soldiers. The psychokinetic leader of Omega Point, Castle, forces Juliette into more training while putting Adam through testing to uncover what makes him immune to Juliette. Warner, the beautiful and sadistic son of the Reestablishment's leader, has been seen hunting for Omega Point's hidden location and for the girl with the lethal touch who got away; his obsession is compelling, and further explored in the e-novella Destroy Me.

Mafi creates characters that readers feel invested in, as they evolve and regress in the face of imminent war. There's a strain on Adam and Juliette's relationship when they learn they'll be at their strongest if they separate. Mafi rigs her love triangle with Warner, a soldier with an unfortunate cause, who gains readers' sympathies even as they remain wary of his ruthlessness. The lyricism of the first book carries over in this installment, while Mafi pumps up the urgency in this war that waits for no one. --Adam Silvera, former bookseller and Paper Lantern Lit intern

Discover: A teenage girl with lethal superpowers making impossible choices to soften the war's blow.

It's a year and a half since the nightmarish events of Doctorow's thriller Little Brother, and Marcus Yallow and his girlfriend, Ange, are enjoying some down time at the Burning Man Festival (where Marcus has a very funny encounter with real-life Internet heroes John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Mitch Kapor and... Wil Wheaton). But then a meeting with his nemesis/ally, Masha, draws Marcus back into the hacktivist scene.

Masha gives Marcus a thumbdrive filled with evidence of corporate and government wrongdoing, and asks him to release it, Wikileaks-style, if she goes missing. But, unable to afford college, Marcus has landed a dream job as tech guru for a crusading political candidate, and doing so could cost his employer the election. Back in San Francisco, Marcus is being tailed by the same officials who kidnapped, interrogated and tortured him in the earlier novel--only now they're working for a private corporation, and even more dangerous. As Marcus rallies his friends, both virtual and IRL, to help, Doctorow ratchets up the suspense, telling another frightening tale of technology and homeland security gone out of control--while discoursing on how to keep what you do on the Internet private and how to make the perfect cup of coffee.

Marcus may remind readers of Aaron Swartz; in fact, the late Internet activist wrote an afterword to Homeland. While it isn't necessary to have read Little Brother to enjoy Homeland, together these novels will inspire teens to question how they use technology--and how it uses them. --Robin Lenz, managing editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: Doctorow's suspenseful follow-up to Little Brother, which will inspire teens to question how they use technology--and how it uses them.