"Sometimes writing a sentence can be harder than serving one," says Frankie Abandonato, the narrator of James Magnuson's hilarious Famous Writers I Have Known. Frankie's speaking to us from a writing class in prison, but he soon rewinds his story five years to New York City, where he and his buddy pull a scam on someone who turns out to be a mob relative.

After Frankie finds his buddy shot dead, he's on the first flight out of town--to Austin: "Texas has always scared the hell out of me but...." Turns out a famous reclusive writer was supposed to be on that plane, on his way to teach at a university creative writing program--and Frankie looks a lot like this guy. He decides to play along with the case of mistaken identity, collecting a cool $75,000 right off the bat, but how long can he keep it up?

Frankie starts boning up on V.A. Mohle and his only novel, Eat Your Wheaties (which he read as a kid), and finds out that a very wealthy writer who had a terrible public argument with Mohle years ago is on the campus. Now he wants to make peace--and of course Frankie is hell bent on scamming this guy out of his money, all while he fulfills his duties to the university, including teaching class, giving talks and holding readings. This is a fun-filled literary romp to set alongside Lucky Jim and Nice Work. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Discover: James Magnuson, director of the University of Texas at Austin's Michener Center for Writers, brings a hilariously creative perspective to the college novel.

Hauntingly familiar yet dazzlingly subversive, Chang-rae Lee's (Native Speaker; A Gesture Life) dystopian parable On Such a Full Sea grafts ethnic otherness to iconic Americana. In one chapter, for example, a large Zen-like mural of the heroine, Fan, with black hair framing an open circle meant for her face, evokes Tom Joad's "I'll be there" speech from The Grapes of Wrath.

The novel begins with Fan's departure from B-Mor--a future Baltimore transformed into an industrial colony of ethnic Chinese created mainly to service the needs of America's Charter class--in search of her mysteriously vanished lover. Fan's literal transgression galvanizes her community to explore the meaning of happiness, which consequently undermines the accepted wisdom. Lee's vision of the future is of a society in constant peril, as its ambivalence toward class, race and gender clashes with a deep yearning to transcend these issues. On another level, though, Lee exuberantly celebrates the creative impulse, a force described as not entirely "natural" to the circumspect Asian-American mindset: "Fan was different," his unnamed narrator tells us. "In this way she startles us, inspires us. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well as an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite understand or see but wholly believed." --Thuy Dinh, editor, Da Mau magazine

Discover: A heroine's quest simultaneously affirms and upends the ideas of community and the pursuit of happiness in a dystopian future--from the author of Native Speaker and A Gesture Life.

In Louise Doughty's Apple Tree Yard, a respected English geneticist and married mother of two looks back mid-trial at how she ended up in the dock at the Old Bailey. Yvonne Carmichael shares her legal peril with the first man who tempted her to cheat on her husband. He's an enigmatic government employee, also married, whose name and exact job title were happily mysterious to Yvonne until a traumatic trajectory transformed the nature of their dalliance from naughty to incriminating. Although Yvonne's husband remains in her corner, Doughty has her heroine address her interior ruminations to her lover.

The first intimation of high stakes occurs in the prologue/teaser, when we witness the crux of Yvonne's testimony without knowing the full gravity of her charges. The first chapter jumps back to the inauguration of her affair, and then proceeds chronologically through its aftermath. The last third of the novel reprises and resolves, for better or worse, the prologue's courtroom drama; these trial scenes are among the best in the book.

Several themes in Apple Tree Yard elevate its racy thriller profile. DNA struts throughout the text in hereditary and research guises, and two turns of the plot hinge upon forensic analysis. A defense barrister summarizes a study of primate altruism under stress that functions as a morality metaphor for several characters' choices. Finally, the novel raises the question of how guilt should be assigned. It's the reader, not the jury, who hears enough evidence to decide who is guilty, who is innocent and who is gallant. --Holloway McCandless, blogger at Litagogo: A Guide to Free Literary Podcasts

Discover: A titillating, suspenseful and thought-provoking novel about a London affair gone awry.

Whether the subject is race relations (Ragtime), the Civil War (The March) or the Rosenberg case (The Book of Daniel), over his more than half-century long career E.L. Doctorow has shown an abiding interest in U.S. history. While Andrew's Brain doesn't have the epic feel of those earlier novels, in a less direct fashion it finds its way back to the same preoccupation, this time looking at our country in the post-9/11 era.

Most of the novel unfolds in conversations between Andrew, who's a cognitive scientist, and an unnamed analyst. Their exchanges rove over considerable stretches of Andrew's past; they also discuss, as Andrew's ex-wife describes it, "that gift you have of leaving disaster in your wake."

Andrew's love affair with Briony, a beautiful and guileless college student enrolled in one of his classes, provides the story's emotional center. "For a person congenitally unable to be happy," Andrew recalls, "I was, with Briony, happy." But it's the abrupt end of their relationship that propels Andrew into the novel's concluding section, which connects it thematically with Doctorow's body of work.

Through an improbable meeting, Andrew enters the White House of Bush 43, a man he says is "feckless, irresponsible, in over his head." What he sees inside the Oval Office transforms Andrew into someone who "mourns for his country."

Much like Doctorow's cerebral City of God (2001), Andrew's Brain is a novel that seems aimed more at the mind than the heart. Like the process of analysis on which its narrative is built, it's focused on questions, not answers. Readers who want to tease out those answers for themselves are likely to find it a satisfying work. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Discover: E.L. Doctorow's 12th novel explores some of the mystery of human consciousness in the post-9/11 United States.

Ike (pronounced ee-kay) is a Nigerian cab driver in New York with a degree from Amherst who hates that everyone notices his accent. He's borrowed a fortune to buy an airline ticket back to Nigeria and his remote village, where he'll steal the wooden god Ngene, then make his fortune selling it to a Manhattan gallery that specializes in exotic deities.

In Utonki, he comes face-to-face with his elderly mother, who hasn't received any support from her son since he became addicted to gambling; his uncle, Ngene's chief priest, whose commitment to the god is utterly sincere; Pastor Godson Uka, a Christian preacher who's been convincing villagers to fear each other's evil magic while he drains them financially for protection; and his first love, now a frumpy woman with five kids, her wealthy deceased husband fleeced by the greedy pastor.

Nicely rounded secondary characters include Bernita, Ike's sexual tornado of an ex-wife, and Ike's former classmate "Tony Curtis," now a politician with two houses and a six-car garage. Still, Ike is the focus as two gods, two priests and his mother battle over his soul.

Ndibe writes with a folksy inclusiveness. The village humor, the greetings and teasing, lend the Utonki sequences a lyrical magic, interrupted by the ubiquitous ringing of cell phones. Into this richly stocked brew of characters, Ndibe skillfully introduces suspense in the final stretch, guiding readers through the tension of getting through customs Nigerian-style. As an author with a foot in Nigeria and the U.S., he expertly brings both worlds to life. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

Discover: A taxi driver in New York City decides to steal the wooden god from his remote Nigerian village and sell it to a gallery specializing in exotic deities.

Terry Shames (A Killing at Cotton Hill) brings retired police chief Samuel Craddock back for another investigation in The Last Death of Jack Harbin. A little crusty around the edges, Craddock is concerned when Bob Harbin has a fatal heart attack, leaving his son, Jack--who lost a leg and his eyesight in the Gulf War--without care. No one in the small town of Jarrett Creek, Tex., knows how Jack is going to manage without his dad to take care of him.

Jack, a high school football star who signed up for the military because of a girl (who then married his best friend), is bitter about his situation and devastated at the loss. Then, less than a week later, Jack is murdered.

Jarrett Creek's current police chief is an alcoholic, so the mayor quietly asks Craddock to investigate the death. Craddock knows all the key players: Was the killer Jack's erstwhile best friend or his creepy brother who was involved in a Branch Davidian-type cult or someone who'd resented Jack's status as a football star and war hero? For that matter, did Bob really die of a heart attack?

Craddock's methodological investigative strategies and occasionally curmudgeonly ways of thinking (narrated in the first person) are a joy to read. The Last Death of Jack Harbin brings the rivalries and secrets only possible in a small town to the forefront, creating a host of entirely believable minor characters. Football fans, mystery lovers and anyone who's ever lived in a small town will all enjoy The Last Death of Jack Harbin. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Discover: Terry Shames's second novel is an excellent mystery starring a retired Texas police chief who's still spry enough to catch a killer.

Charlotte Williams's debut novel, The House on the Cliff, takes readers to the rocky coastline of Wales for a mystery driven by the inner turmoil of two families.

Jessica Mayhew thought she had it all: a loving family and a successful career in psychotherapy. When her husband confesses to an affair with a much younger woman, though, she finds the betrayal difficult to forgive. At the same time, a charismatic and dramatic new patient shakes up Jessica's routine. Handsome young actor Gwydion Morgan seeks Jessica's help, supposedly for koumpounophobia (the fear of buttons). Soon, though, Jessica receives a call from Gwydion's controlling mother, who claims her son is suicidal and begs Jessica to make a house call. At the Morgans' beautiful and remote coastal mansion, Jessica is pulled into the family's scandalous mystery and the roots of Gwydion's trauma: did his childhood au pair really drown accidentally, or did his father murder her within the boy's earshot when she spurned his advances? As Jessica and Gwydion's attachment and attraction grows, she is driven to solve the mystery, but her determination may cost her her life.

Although Williams's pacing is more of a slow burn than the usual thriller, her ability to build an eerie atmosphere and her attention to characters' psychology create a more immediate and intimate feeling of suspense. Readers will hope Jessica saves her marriage even as she struggles to save Gwydion, and the mystery's satisfying solution leaves hope for the futures of the innocent. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

Discover: A psychologist struggles to solve a patient's dangerous family mystery while her marriage falls apart.

One night in a small Michigan town in the late 1970s, a young woman named Beth leaves her job as a hotel receptionist and disappears into the snow. When the ice thaws, her remains surface by the side of the road; her unsolved murder becomes another dark moment in the town's history. Twenty-five years later, a group of college students decide to reopen the case for a class project.

The writing in Andrea Portes's Bury This is appealingly lush and well-crafted, flashing between past and present as the students conduct interview after interview in the hopes of unearthing a juicy story for their documentary film class. In the 1970s, we follow Beth and her best friend Shauna from their early teens until the fateful day of the murder, and we begin to see how one girl ended up dead and the other ended up depressed and alone, waiting for her turn to be released from a purgatory-like life. No one is innocent; behind every door there's a sordid secret.

Portes's story is heavy on depraved, abusive men and desperate women with no way out, a murder mystery with many victims and no heroes. Even the college students trying to solve Beth's death are upsettingly eager for scandal, until they realize too late the horror they have uncovered. --Emma Page, bookseller at Island Books, Mercer Island, Wash.

Discover: A lush, voyeuristic whodunit set in a small Midwestern town with plenty to hide.

The recent Iraq and Afghan wars made "embedded journalism," with reporters riding along with soldiers at the front lines, a new genre of reportage. In Demon Camp, Jennifer Percy embeds herself into the post-combat life of Caleb Daniels, a helicopter maintenance enlistee who humped his way through SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape) school to get into the illustrious "Night Stalkers" Special Forces 160th Regiment.

After two Iraq deployments and eight in Afghanistan, Daniels came home with a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Haunted, suicidal, unable to work or stay married, he was convinced he was controlled by "demons" who included his dead best friend, an unarmed Iraqi he killed, even his harshly critical father. He found some measure of peace at a trailer house parish in tiny Portal, Ga., where Pentecostal preacher Tim Mather claims to have exorcized 5,000 demons.

Percy drives with Daniels cross-country, gathering other suicidal veterans to have their demons purged by Mather. Percy briefly succumbs to the "easy, luminous desire to be saved [where] everything is soft-looking and cries with the Holy Spirit." But she always steps back from the personal to record what she sees and hears.

If the traditional VA hospital treatments don't offer much to Caleb Daniels and similarly broken vets, the Demon Camp seems to hold their nightmares at bay. In Percy's telling, it's a crazy place--or maybe just a place full of crazies. You can't walk away from Percy's strong debut without feeling like you've spent a frightening moment inside the heads of soldiers who come home from war. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kans.

Discover: In an auspicious debut, Jennifer Percy delves deep into the life of an Army vet suffering from post-traumatic stress to understand the effect of war on returning soldiers.

As he's demonstrated in highly original novels like Einstein's Dreams and Mr g, Alan Lightman possesses the mind of a theoretical physicist and the soul of an artist. Those qualities animate each of the seven elegant essays of The Accidental Universe, as he enlightens us about the "many universes within our one universe, some visible and some not."

There's no better example of Lightman's ability deftly to reconcile the two sides of his intellectual heritage than "The Spiritual Universe." He's a self-described atheist, though not of the Richard Dawkins fire-breathing variety. Indeed, he's critical of Dawkins's "wholesale dismissal of religion and religious sensibility." Despite his lack of belief, Lightman argues that there is "room for both a spiritual universe and a physical universe," and that science and religion share a "sense of wonder." Another essay, "The Temporary Universe," begins with a description of the pain he experiences on the day of his daughter's wedding as he muses about the swift passage of time and ends with a description of the cereus, a plant that blossoms for only one summer night, "as delicate and fleeting as a life in the universe," wrapping the affecting stories around a wistful meditation on our mortality. At the book's end, "The Disembodied Universe" reveals the scientist's dismay at how, through technology, we have "marginalized our direct sensory experience."

While Lightman hopes "there will always be an edge between the known and the unknown," he offers intriguing glimpses of how the gulf we too often perceive between science and the rest of life might be bridged. A good start would see us opening our minds and allowing the expansive, generous intellect of someone like him to show us the way. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Discover: Novelist and theoretical physicist Alan Lightman bridges art and physics in these seven smart and lively perspectives on our world.

Kadir Nelson's (Heart and Soul) exquisite picture book follows a bear cub lost at night, who finds his way home with the guidance of his fellow woodland friends.

"Excuse me, dear Mountain Lion. I'm lost. Can you help me find my way home?" says Baby Bear. Mountain Lion responds, "When I am lost I try to retrace my steps." Frog suggests the bear "trust himself." And in a humorous exchange, two squirrels advise him to "hug a tree and think of home." Each animal Baby Bear encounters offers words of wisdom, but the hero ultimately must make his way alone. Nelson shows the many-faceted colors of the night in spectacular oil paintings. As a full moon moves across the sky, the backgrounds shift from the midnight blue behind the mountain lion bathed in a tangerine glow to the emerald green moonlight of a night sky filtered through forest leaves, as Moose approaches Baby Bear. At the story's climax, a white owl that matches the moonbath of light below assures Baby Bear that he is not alone: "I am here with you." As Baby Bear looks up at the night sky, his eyes reflect back the moon, and the expression is one of pure trust and faith.

This book will resonate with children starting their first day of school or moving to a new home. It's a story readers may return to again and again, as they face times of great challenge or transition. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: An exquisitely understated picture book that charts a bear cub's journey to find his home, with guidance from his fellow woodland creatures.

Russell Freedman (Lincoln) delves deeply into the layers of the former site of the immigration station located in San Francisco Bay, which served as the entry point for more than half a million people hoping to enter the United States from 1910 to 1940.

Many of those arriving at Angel Island had led sheltered lives and experienced it as a jail. "I had never seen such a prison-like place," said one woman. Freedman does not flinch from describing the barbed wire surrounding the barracks and the terrifying, dehumanizing medical examinations. The hospital had separate facilities for whites and Asians, and Asians were subject to "intensive" exams, conducted by doctors and nurses wearing white--the color worn at funerals in China. The vast majority of those arriving at Angel Island came from China, and Freedman devotes most of the book to the reasons for their immigration (first, the California Gold Rush; later, the Transcontinental Railroad), as well as the angry reactions of white Americans to their arrival (the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred many Chinese from becoming naturalized citizens, was not repealed until 1943). He also includes stories from Japanese, Korean and Russian immigrants.

As the debate about immigration continues today in the U.S., Freedman's account demonstrates how deep and complex the issue's roots are. Readers may find it painful to learn of the wrongs committed at Angel Island, but Freedman's expert research and accessible writing come at the right time. --Allie Jane Bruce, children's librarian, Bank Street College of Education

Discover: An exploration of the dark history of the hopeful arrivals at the Angel Island Immigration Station.