As titles go, Elizabeth L. Silver's The Execution of Noa P. Singleton is bluntly straightforward, and the directness continues as Noa introduces herself to us from death row in the Pennsylvania Institute for Women, where she's been sentenced after the murder of Sarah Dixon. Her guilt is never in question: "I know I did it," she says. "The state knows I did it, though they never asked why.... I was lucid, attentive, mentally sound, and pumped with a single cup of decaffeinated yellow zinger tea when I pulled the trigger. Post-conviction, I never contested that once."

And yet, six months before her scheduled execution, Noa receives a visit from Oliver Stansted, a British attorney, whose boss is Marlene Dixon, Sarah's mother--who petitioned the court vigorously for the death penalty at Noa's sentencing. Ten years later, though, Marlene has created Mothers Against Death, or M.A.D., in an effort to secure clemency for her daughter's killer.

At this point, the straightforwardness ends. It's clear from their initial conversation that both Noa and Marlene are holding back from each other--and from Oliver--and Silver dedicates the novel to exposing their secrets.

The Execution of Noa P. Singleton depends on Noa's strength as a character--and, to a lesser extent, Marlene's--to keep us caring long enough to get to the why of Sarah's death, and why Noa believes that she deserves to die. Why does she eventually allow Oliver to raise her hopes? What secrets is she taking with her to the grave? In her debut novel, Silver gives Noa a voice powerful enough to make us want to know the answers. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com

Discover: In Elizabeth Silver's debut novel, a sympathetic anti-heroine reveals a story that is ultimately tragic, yet flecked with dark humor.

Susan Nussbaum's debut novel, Good Kings Bad Kings, invites readers into the dysfunctional world of ILLC, an institution for juveniles with disabilities. The residents of ILLC, tucked away in an isolated corner of Chicago's South Side, are alone in the world or come from families that cannot afford to give them the care and attention their disabilities demand. There is Yessenia, an aggressive but also witty teen with no one to care for her after her aunt's death. There's Mia, who has lived at the center since she was 11 after being removed from an abusive family. And Teddy, who dresses in a suit every day and is madly in love with Mia; his father visits regularly but cannot afford to bring Teddy home.

Nussbaum brings these and other characters to life, moving from one perspective to the next flawlessly, building a voice for each character that is so authentic it is easy to forget they are fictional. Ultimately, their voices come together to tell a heartbreaking story of cruelty and hardship, but also a hopeful tale of resilience, love and friendship. Good Kings Bad Kings will make readers stop and reconsider--or perhaps consider for the first time--what it means to be disabled and why we fear those who are different from us. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Discover: The 2012 winner of Barbara Kingsolver's PEN/Bellwether Prize for fiction centers on a dysfunctional institution for juveniles with disabilities.

In 1930, as the Great Depression sets in, 15-year-old Thea Atwell is sent away from her secluded Florida home after a family tragedy that leaves her estranged from her parents and twin brother. The title of Anton DiSclafani's debut novel, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, reveals her destination.

DiSclafani's lush descriptions evoke the rich, unspoiled acres of Thea's Florida home, contrasting it sharply with the spare, beautiful setting of Yonahlossee, a camp-cum-boarding-school in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Thea's narrative voice is compelling; she may be naive and sheltered, but she is far from innocent. Although she accepts some responsibility for the scandal that shattered her world (the details of which are gradually revealed to the reader), she also begins to question the wisdom of her parents and teachers--as well as the norms of a society that limits the power of women to direct their own lives. Headstrong and impulsive, Thea gains a new sense of the impact of her actions on others, though this wisdom does not stop her from relentlessly pursuing what she wants.

At Yonahlossee, Thea earns distinction in her riding lessons while making sharp, incisive observations about her fellow campers and their artificial world of Southern gentility. Despite her efforts to keep her distance from others, Thea eventually must leave Yonahlossee and face both her family and the prospect of a life in the wider world. DiSclafani's debut is a vividly written, heartbreaking story of one girl's struggle to grow up. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Discover: A vivid, heartbreaking story of a family tragedy, an equestrienne boarding school and one headstrong girl's struggle to grow up.

Lionel Shriver elevates the "issue novel" by unleashing her literary imagination on the latest controversies--whether she's tackling school shootings from the mind of the shooter's mother (We Need to Talk About Kevin) or looking at a family trying to cope with the American health care system (So Much for That). With Big Brother, Shriver turns to the American obesity epidemic and asks what we owe to our siblings, spouses, and children--and what we are willing to sacrifice.

The novel's protagonist is Pandora Halfdanarson, the daughter of an almost-famous television actor whose claim to fame was a sitcom portraying a facsimile of Pandora's own family. "Refusal to forge views for social consumption made me dull," Pandora says, "but I loved being dull. Being of no earthly interest to anyone had been a lifelong goal." Despite her attempts to remain anonymous in Iowa, however, Pandora has become a successful entrepreneur of hand-crafted, pull-string gift dolls who spout customized exclamations modeled after the recipient ("ridicule paired with affection"). She has found happiness with her husband and his two children. Then her brother arrives--but he's not the dashing, accomplished jazz pianist she expected.

What follows is not just the cutting humor and unflinching wisdom we expect (and find) in all of Shriver's novels, but an unsettling exposé of the myriad ways we deceive ourselves and those we love. --Kristen Galles, blogger at Book Club Classics

Discover: Lionel Shriver delivers searing truth with biting wit, effulgent imagery and characters too familiar to be imaginary.

What John Irving has done for prep school wrestling, Ron Irwin does for rowing in Flat Water Tuesday. Rob Carrey is a tightly wound singles sculler at the blue-collar Black Rock Rowing Club in upstate New York. After barely graduating from high school, he is recruited by Charles Channing, the old-school coach of the tony Fenton School, who needs a strong third seat in his varsity four to beat rival Warwick Academy.

To lure Rob and convince his widowed father to let him leave the family construction business, Channing dangles a full ride to Harvard (unofficially promised by its rowing coach) if Fenton wins. Rob arrives on Fenton's campus, with its "immense, unending, perfectly manicured splendor" and "kids and parents with good forehands and firm handshakes," feeling as out of place as he does in a four-man boat.

Before Irwin dives into this coming-of-age plot, though, he opens with an e-mail sent to Rob 15 years later, from another member of the four-man crew--hinting at a fatal event at Fenton that caused the team members to split apart without any future contact. Rob, too, suffered from this event, refusing the Harvard scholarship and instead shooting freelance documentary films. Weaving past and present, Rob tells a story of learning to win and to lose--on and off the river. Sports metaphors permeate our lives. In rowing, Irwin has found one that is not only original, but also engaging. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Discover: A debut novel where a young man's passion for competitive rowing leads both to celebration and suffering.

South African author Lauren Beukes loves genre-bending. Her first novel, Moxyland, created a futuristic cyberpunk world; Zoo City is a noir thriller with magic. The Shining Girls, her best yet, turns The Time Traveler's Wife upside down with a mixture of time travel and serial killing that works wickedly well.

Beukes offers 62 short chapters in a nonlinear time sequence. At the story's center are Harper Curtis, a sadistic killer, and Kirby Mizrachi, one of his victims. Harper first visits Kirby in June 1974, giving the 6 1/2-year-old girl an orange plastic pony that she thinks looks "kinda dopey." When he leaves, he tells her: "I'll see you when you're all grown up."

1931: Harper kills an old woman in Chicago and steals her big warm coat. The pocket holds an old key--for The House. Inside The House is a room filled with souvenirs. Why do they seem familiar to him? Harper soon understands the time-traveling power of the room--and its demand for "potential."

Harper uses the room to pursue strong women--his "shining girls"--like Zora ('43), Alice ('51) and Jin-Sook ('93). Then he visits a grown-up Kirby. This time, however, it's different. His brutal attack fails, and she survives. He returns to the room and the past, to escape--for now.

Kirby gets a job as an intern at the Chicago Sun-Times. Through old newspaper files, she learns about similar attacks and odd souvenirs left by the bodies of the women who died over the decades.

Interesting subplots add depth to Beukes's powerful and unsettling hybrid of a story, as she crosses a feminist novel with narrative twists and turns reminiscent of Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Voyeur. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Discover: Readers will unwind the subtle narrative knot as a serial killer and his only surviving victim hurtle toward each other across time for a second confrontation.

In The Doll, Taylor Stevens (The Informationist) brings mercenary Vanessa Michael Munroe back to eager readers for another round of full-speed international intrigue. At the start, Munroe is tranquilized, kidnapped and forced to deliver a Hollywood starlet overseas as part of a human trafficking ring. Munroe's boyfriend, Bradford, and the associates at his security firm are hot on the case, but the task of rescuing Munroe is complicated because all the other people she loves most in the world have also been kidnapped as collateral against her cooperation. Additionally, "the doll" turns out to be a spitfire with past trauma of her own, determined to give Munroe a run for her money.

With her near-savant linguistic skills, almost obsessive love of and skill with weapons and androgynous appearance, Munroe is a formidable tool in the hands of the "Doll Maker," the mastermind behind the trafficking trade. But he hasn't figured on her unpredictability. Even faced with difficult decisions and with her loved ones held hostage, Munroe might be capable of anything.

Stevens again crafts a lightning-swift plot that races across continents and inflicts extreme trauma upon characters she's taught us to care about. Intelligent action and pacing are a bonus, and other characters like those on Bradford's team are engaging and provide banter; but it's Munroe herself who stars, with her wondrous and myriad abilities and her surprisingly soft heart. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Discover: The latest international exploits, daring escapes and rescues of Taylor Stevens's heroine for hire.

Pieter Aspe, well known in Belgium for his series of novels starring Assistant Commissioner Pieter Van In, makes his English-language debut with The Square of Revenge, the first Van In mystery (originally published in 1995). A bit dated technologically because of its delayed translation, The Square of Revenge is nevertheless a gripping thriller.

Ludovic Degroof, owner of one of the most exclusive jewelry stores in Bruges and one of the powers-that-lurk in Belgian politics, has asked the police not to investigate a robbery at his store. Nothing was removed from the premises, but the entire inventory was taken to the back room and dissolved in aqua regis, a powerful acid.

The bizarre nature of the crime, along with Degroof's even stranger request, sparks Van In's curiosity. The fact that the beautiful new DA, Hannelore Martins, is also interested doesn't hurt. Van In and Martins decide to do a little digging on their own to see what the Degroof family is hiding.

What they discover are disturbing secrets that run back half a century, including strange connections to the Templars. There are also extremely complicated Belgian politics at play, which force Martins and Van In to pursue the case in an unorthodox fashion in order to stay beneath the radar.

Pitted against such political powers, Van In is a dogged, yet likable, force of nature. Surprisingly erudite, stereotypically alcoholic, happily quick-witted, Van In is a welcome addition to the pantheon of international detectives. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Discover: The first Pieter Van In mystery, which pits the wily detective against one of Bruges' most powerful families.

Jerome Kagan, emeritus professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of The Nature of the Child, is one of the pioneers of developmental psychology and among its most influential thinkers. His focus has been in the area of children's cognitive and emotional development, especially the genetic or environmental roots of temperament. In the thought-provoking The Human Spark, Kagan identifies the development of cognitive, emotional and moral stages that children reveal at common ages and shows what variances can be traced to environmental factors like parenting, birth order or social norms.

Far more than another round in the nature/nurture debate, Kagan describes how flawed research based on cultural assumptions can lead to widely accepted conclusions that influence public policy. For example, he presents research that disproves infant determinism, the common notion that certain negative early childhood experiences doom a child to an unhappy adulthood. In one of many fascinating asides, he suggests that this idea developed out of a larger historical trend favoring a middle class with nuclear families, where a new class of stay-at-home mothers were given social responsibility for infant emotional and intellectual development and behavior--an idea that continues to drive policy and shape cultural expectations.

Authoritative and surprising, Kagan guides us through the most current research in the field, tracing its shifting intellectual fashions from emphasizing "nurture" to the current reliance on neuroscience and showing how these fashions play out culturally. This wise and affirming book is essential reading for anyone interested in what makes us human. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer

Discover: Jerome Kagan, a leading developmental psychologist, offers a fascinating assessment of the factors that contribute to a child's individual and cultural development.

Despite the pornographic reputation attached to it, the original intent of burlesque served a much deeper purpose. Burlesque had its roots in European commedia dell'arte and vaudeville, but the Americans took the comedy and embellished it with the striptease in the 1920s. At its height, between the 1930s and 1950s, burlesque was a pre-feminist movement offering women economic empowerment and escape from poverty, as well as a "show that cost a few pennies and gave out-of-work men some semblence of hope." This era enthralled filmmaker Leslie Zemeckis, inspiring her to capture burlesque in all its naked glory. Behind the Burly Q is a companion volume to her 2011 documentary, which in turn arose from her own one-woman Mae West–style burlesque show.

Zemeckis introduces us to performers like Lili St. Cyr, Blaze Starr and Tempest Storm, as well as the comedians who opened for them, including Red Buttons, Phil Silvers and Abbott and Costello, and theater managers like Harold Minsky who promoted the tease to wider audiences. Alan Alda and Erik Lee Preminger, sons of straightman Robert Alda and Gypsy Rose Lee, respectively, provide intimate details of life in the shadow of parents always "on the wheel."

Zemeckis's easy rapport with the women who teased and seduced their way into the hearts of America gives voice to a generation of performers whose reputations have been maligned and largely forgotten--until now. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Discover: A well-researched, intimate portrait of burlesque and the women who teased and seduced their ways into the hearts of the American public.

In Joelle Charbonneau's taut psychological novel, the Earth has been ravaged by the Seven Stages War, and its inhabitants suffer--economically, ecologically and emotionally. Few people own cars; food, fuel and paper are precious, and water is scarce. But 16-year-old narrator Malencia ("Cia") Vale remains hopeful that if she's selected for the Testing, she'll be able to change things for the better.

When Cia is chosen, her father confides to her his recurring nightmares that seem to be connected to his own experience of the Testing. He tells her that her mother's distance stems from the possibility that the Testing could mean the family will never see Cia again. Her father cautions Cia to trust no one. This dystopian novel stands out for its nuanced exploration of the tension that often develops between parents and children on the cusp of adulthood. The author fully exploits the possibilities of standardized testing as a gauge to determine a young person's future in our own society, and asks teens to question whether it's truly a measurement of their self-worth. Charbonneau puts her characters through not just tests of physical, ethical and emotional stamina, but also tests their loyalties to friends, family and to the Commonwealth itself.

There is nothing standardized about this Testing. Charbonneau's imagination will surprise readers at every turn, including the chilling ending. She wraps things up satisfyingly while still hinting at other revelations to come in books two and three of this planned trilogy. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: A strong teenage heroine must endure every imaginable test by her government to see if she is leader material.

This beautifully designed and intelligently produced retelling of the flood expands the bounds of bookmaking. Illustrated by Joydeb Chitrakar (Tsunami) in the Bengali Patua–style of scroll painting, the story of Noah and the flood literally folds out like a giant mural between hard covers and tucks snugly into an attractive slipcase.

Each "page" may be read like a book by turning its accordion folds. But the book's true genius comes to light when it's laid out end to end. Each individual scene connects to the larger story of the flooding of the world and the receding of the waters to begin a new life. Gita Wolf (Do!) writes with the voice of a true storyteller. Chitrakar portrays Noah and his wife Na'mah building the ark together, as fish float by on a calm river. In a perfectly engineered shift, as soon as the reverse side of the accordion fold begins, with the animals herded aboard the ark, the rain arrives in a gray sheet. As the rain continues for 40 days, water sweeps away the trees, people and animals as if they are sleeping comfortably. The dove brings back the olive branch ("an offering of peace, a sign of trust from God"), and the author makes their last act "to set the creatures they had nurtured free."

With a text that pays homage to a time-honored oral tradition in a mural-like sequence of interconnected scenes that calls to mind Egyptian scrolls and the Bayeux tapestry, The Enduring Ark is a testament to what great bookmaking can do. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: An eloquent retelling of Noah and the ark with scenes that unfold--literally--as a Bengali Patua–style scroll.