In Dear Life, each story is a flash of insight into the heart of a distinct character, grappling with the circumstances of his or her life. As in previous collections, Alice Munro's stories cover a broad stretch of time, from World War II to the 1970s and beyond.

If there is a common thread in Dear Life, it may be the theme of women struggling to determine their place in a world that has often already made the decision for them. "To Reach Japan," for example, features a female poet living in a time when a woman "having any serious idea, let alone ambition, or maybe even reading a real book, could be seen as suspect." As is common in Munro's stories, there are no conclusions reached, no voice from behind the scenes to influence the reader's opinion. This is particularly true of the twisted dance of a couple in "Corrie," where a man who has an affair with a wealthy heiress holds the power, even as she holds the purse strings. In the end, it is difficult to judge who has been wronged the most.

Perhaps the most deeply affecting of the stories is "Amundsen," another story about a malleable--though clever--girl seeking to mold herself to the desires of an authoritative male figure. The 21st-century feminist instinct is to judge, and yet Munro presents the undeniable appeal of total submission--even when it proves to be at an untenable cost.

In Dear Life, Munro once again delivers a compelling collection of stories that offer insights, delights of language and multi-dimensional female protagonists. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post

Add T. Frank Muir to the list of Scots, from Conan Doyle to Rankin and McDermid, who write great mysteries: Hand for a Hand, Muir's U.S. debut, is the first in a series of novels starring Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist.

A severed hand is found in the famous Road Hole bunker on the Old Course in St. Andrews, and Gilchrist is brought in to investigate. It's holding a note, addressed to Gilchrist, with one word written on it: "Murder." It's personal. Why? When a second hand, this one with paint in the nails, is found in another bunker of the golf course with another note ("Massacre"), he thinks about his son Jack's girlfriend, Chloe, a painter. When it's confirmed the hand is indeed her's, Gilchrist knows she's dead. Then a leg is found, also near the course, with the word "Bludgeon," branded into the skin, and it all hits him like a "wave of despair." (It doesn't help matters that he's been forced by his supervisor to work with a detective he caught having sex with his teenage daughter.)

The sense of pain and futility hovers over the book like a damp, Scottish fog. Watching Muir slowly and carefully navigate Gilchrist's overcoming it to find the killer is just one of the bright joys in this smart and contemplative novel. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher 

Cherie Priest's 2009 Boneshaker introduced the "Clockwork Century," a steampunk-flavored alternate 19th-century where the Civil War went on for decades and downtown Seattle had been decimated by the release of a subterraneous gas, known as "the Blight," that turned victims into zombie-like "rotters." While the sequels Dreadnought and Ganymede expanded the fictional territory across much of North America, Priest circles back to the Pacific Northwest in The Inexplicables.

When one of Boneshaker's central characters, Zeke Wilkes, wanted to get into the walled-off Seattle, he was shown the way by an orphan named Rector. Six months later, Rector assumes Zeke must be dead. Thrown out of the orphanage on his 18th birthday, Rector decides to break into the walled city to find his friend's corpse. He soon realizes Zeke is thriving among the outcast society in Seattle's underground tunnels.

Priest uses Rector's status as a new arrival to introduce new readers to characters from the previous three novels, but in a way that won't bore longtime fans. Zeke and his mechanically inclined pal Houjin introduce Rector to his new community, then help him when he's recruited by the local crime lord to investigate a possible incursion by rival gangs. Just as Rector and his friends roam up to the edges of their territory, Priest probes the world that she's created, teasing out new aspects of familiar landmarks, then laying out early signs of the next direction--because it's clear that there's at least one more installment of the Clockwork Century coming. --Ron Hogan

"I want to destroy steampunk," Amal El-Mohtar declares in her essay for Steampunk III. It's a sentiment common to many of the contributions, both fiction and nonfiction, to this anthology, but it's not intended in a hostile way. Instead, she's dreaming of "steampunk divorced from the necessity of steam," liberated from the superficial trappings of its cogs and gears--and, for that matter, the imperialist assumptions of Victorian England. Jaymee Goh also discusses how non-white fans engage with the genre's aesthetic, emphasizing its possibilities as an alternative social discourse. As Austin Sirkin says, it's a movement well suited to "the disillusioned and the dissatisfied."

The 27 stories in Steampunk III similarly push the genre in interesting new directions. Carrie Vaughn introduces us to an Indiana Jones-like adventuress in a world where an alien spacecraft crashed in England in 1869, giving the British technological superiority over the rest of the world, while Nick Mamatas speculates as to how Friedrich Engels might have developed Marxism in a world where workers are turned into cyborgs and become literal tools of production. Leow Hui Min Annabeth transports Ada Lovelace to imperial China, and Lavie Tidhar sends Bram Stoker on a mission to Transylvania--but the mysterious figure he'll find there isn't who you might expect it to be. And Bruce Sterling's contribution is about a 21st-century architect rebuilding his corner of collapsed Europe in order to provide for his son. Sterling calls his story "salvagepunk"--but, as Ann VanderMeer notes in her introduction, breaking a genre's most cherished conventions is about as punk as you can get. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com

T Cooper, the author of several successful novels (including The Beaufort Diaries and Lipshitz 6), is fascinated by masculinity, perhaps in part because he's had to work a little harder than the average man to get there: he was born female. Yet even as he explores the essence of masculinity and his own experiences with gender in Real Man Adventures, he expresses some reluctance to delve into the personal.

There is definitely some autobiographical content, but Cooper takes his own privacy seriously, as well as that of his wife and daughters, and is less interested in hashing out the details of his own life than he is in exploring the meaning and role of masculinity in society and the difficulties facing transgender men and women. Real Man Adventures sidesteps the concept of a straightforward memoir, instead compiling a whimsical collection of miscellanea: letters, interviews, lists and original art all help Cooper and his readers explore together what makes a man. This structure works perfectly, and feels like a conversation with Cooper himself.

Deeply honest, even while guarding a few precious items of privacy, Real Man Adventures is a brave book. Cooper does a great service not only to transgender people whose paths might be made a little clearer, but also to their loved ones, neighbors and acquaintances, who should find it a little easier to navigate relationships and communications thanks to this frank discussion. And the irreverent, wry humor throughout keeps Cooper's brash personality at center stage, where it belongs. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pages of julia

In 1987, Miami resident Krishna Maharaj was convicted of the murders of Derrick and Duane Moo Young, a father-son team of Jamaican businessmen engaged in questionable financial dealings with Maharaj's importing company. In The Injustice System, Clive Stafford Smith revisits Maharaj's case--and reveals that the criminal trial system is perhaps even more dangerous for the innocent than the guilty.

Smith is an attorney who began investigating Maharaj's case in the mid-1990s, after an imprisoned Maharaj had spent his personal fortune on unsuccessful legal appeals. Smith is concerned by his first impression of his client; this self-disciplined, gentle and unfailingly polite man seems incapable of shooting someone over a soured business deal. As their relationship develops and the prosecution's original case unravels, Smith begins to realize his client has been convicted of two murders he did not commit. But as time draws on, funds dwindle and judges turn their backs, justice for Krishna Maharaj continues to fade into a mere fantasy.

Most Americans have a sense that our criminal trial system sorts the innocent from the guilty correctly in most cases, and when it does not, a complex system of appeals corrects the problem. As The Injustice System reveals, however, a trial system run by fallible human beings is one that breaks down--and post-conviction appeals aren't always enough to protect the innocent. It's a powerful tale and an eye-opening exposé of the pitfalls of a broken system. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket

In My Ideal Bookshelf, Thessaly La Force asks a variety of authors and other celebrities: If you had to fill a small shelf with the books that represent you, which titles would you choose? Their essays are accompanied by Jane Mount's charmingly colorful drawings of each participant's shelf.

La Force selected a diverse group of participants. In addition to popular authors such as Stephanie Meyer, Malcolm Gladwell and James Patterson, she solicited responses from skateboarder Tony Hawk, French Laundry chef Thomas Keller and New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones. The contents of each ideal bookshelf vary accordingly: James Franco divulges his love of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying for the insight into character it provided him as a teenager; Rosanne Cash reminisces about realizing her passion for social justice through reading Anne Frank at the same age.

There is no shortage of classics among people's picks, but the beauty of the cumulative library lies in the less expected titles. Readers are as likely to find Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus adorning a shelf as they are to find The Tempest, or to run across travel guides, historical accounts, Dr. Seuss, memoirs or cookbooks. Providing reading suggestions from and for every walk of life, My Ideal Bookshelf is a perfect gift for avid and reluctant readers alike--a celebration of the depth and breadth of the written word's shaping of our lives that will guide readers to new favorites while simultaneously causing them to think about their own ideal bookshelves. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

Is Detroit on its way back? Rolling Stone journalist Mark Binelli, a Motor City native, makes a strong case for "maybe" in Detroit City Is the Place to Be. The son of an immigrant Italian knife sharpener, Binelli revisits the streets of his youth, noting the "miles and miles of unplanned obsolescence" as he ticks off such colorfully named landmarks as Kung Food, Wash My Car, Mo' Money Tax Returns and Babes N Braids, but his balanced assessment of the city's current state is built on a solid foundation of good reporting as much as personal nostalgia. He digs into historical sources, conducts interviews and even attends a handgun training class: "If you are not prepared to shoot a 12-year-old, you shouldn't carry a handgun," the instructor warns his crime-frightened students. "If he's big enough to point a gun in your face, he's big enough to take a bullet."

Detroit once had the fourth-largest population of any U.S. city, but the two million citizens of 1950 have dropped to just 700,000 today, and unannexed suburbs control most of what's left of the tax base. Nonetheless, Binelli finds hope in 2010 census statistics showing a new influx of college-educated residents under 35 years old as well as in the migration of European and American artists to what is "the new Brooklyn [or] the next Berlin." Ever the journalist, however, he cautiously concludes: "When your city has 70,000 abandoned buildings, it will not be gentrified any time soon." --Bruce Jacobs

In The Watchers, Cambridge historian Stephen Alford presents the Elizabethan period as a dark and uncertain time in England's history. With no successor to Elizabeth and with the forces of Catholicism arrayed against her, the government's security balanced on the edge of a knife.

Against the backdrop of such uncertainty--where the death of the queen would lead to the government's collapse and leave the nation vulnerable to foreign invasion--a sophisticated system of espionage developed: infiltration, double agents, forgery and cryptography. Agents in Elizabeth's service ranged across Europe to spy on dissident English Catholics in Paris and Rome--and closer to home in Scotland.

Alford populates this engaging study of Elizabethan espionage with a cast of colorful characters and exposes the dark underbelly of a period that is often better known for Shakespeare and the triumph against the Spanish Armada. Secret correspondence, infiltration into the ranks of exile English Catholics in Rome and the betrayal of double agents are some of the thrilling elements that comprise this little-known tale.

Alford draws the obvious parallel between the unscrupulous, brutal methods of the Elizabethan era and the contemporary dilemmas of Homeland Security. He suggests that at times, the fear of danger was greater than the danger itself--yet the end was thought to justify the means. Alford argues that the motives of the queen's counciller Francis Walsingham, when England was embattled on all sides, were clearly in the state's best interests. But his actions were nonetheless questionable, with consequences for the monarchy in centuries to come. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post

In Paul and Jesus, religious historian James D. Tabor (The Jesus Dynasty) focuses on the two decades following Jesus's crucifixion and the early spread of his message. He seeks to shed light on how early Christianity originated not from Jesus or the original apostles who accompanied him during his lifetime, but from the experiences and ideas of one man--Saul of Tarsus, better known as the apostle Paul, who never met Jesus but who spent his life, after his conversion, skillfully fashioning, as Tabor says, "a version of Jesus' message for the wider non-Jewish world."

Tabor devotes chapters to the development of Christianity before Paul, including early views of the resurrection, and the role Paul played in redefining his peers' understanding of the Messiah, the kingdom of God, the people of Israel and the Torah's revelations. Paul's mystical encounters with Jesus changed his life, but he ultimately chose to break away from the original apostles by preaching and promoting views that some found reprehensible, especially James and Paul's arch-rival, Peter.

The thoughtfully researched examination is driven by a careful, critical analysis of the narrative voice of Paul's authentic letters from the New Testament. Tabor's insights make this book intellectually accessible to non-believers as well as those of any faith, whether they seek to expand their view of Christianity or simply want to better understand Paul's life, mission and message as he "completed the work of Christ" this side of heaven. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

A family of thieves creates a con so clever it backfires in Farrey's (With or Without You) page-turning middle-grade adventure with a hint of magic.

In medieval-like Vengekeep, the Grimjinx family has prowled the streets and pickpocketed the rich for generations. The whole family makes sure the top brass sees them all at the annual Festival of the Twins--where the prophetic tapestry that lays out the year ahead is unveiled. Then 12-year-old Jaxter and his father slip off to rob the town's magistrate of his prized flute. But while most Grimjinxes are gifted grifters, narrator Jaxter is a klutz. What he does possess is a skill for mixing herbs to counter magic spells. Jaxter gets them inside their victim's house, but his clumsiness causes a fire. Luckily, his mother has tampered with the tapestry, creating a scene that foretells cataclysmic events--with the Grimjinxes saving the day. When the events start to come true, though, the family looks less fortunate. Jaxter comes up with an antidote to the tapestry's magic, but must travel the Five Provinces to gather the ingredients.

At the core of this gripping quest tale is a wonderful friendship between Jaxter and his newfound friend, Callie. Together they encounter exotic beasts, double-crossing thieves and rogue mages. Jaxter's family never loses faith in him, including his grandmother, who tells him, "The things you learn in books will outshine all of us someday." Farrey creates a complete tale, but readers will be happy to know that two more are planned. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Lauren Morrill playfully employs the Shakespearean question of "to be or not to be?" with a romantic twist in her comedic debut.

Julia Lichtenstein lives a very structured life. She never breaks rules (it's one of her rules), and she even has her future boyfriend picked out. Julia had a pretend wedding with Mark Bixford when they were five, and he has been her MTB ("meant to be") ever since. Julia's destined love for Mark remains present throughout her class trip to London, but she bends her rules when classmate Jason Lippincott takes her out to a wild party, to prove she can let loose. Julia drinks, flirts, lies and even gives her phone number to a cute guy named Chris, who texts her throughout the novel. Adventurous yet inexperienced, Julia accepts Jason's help to teach her how to get a boy to fall in love with her (be it her MTB or Chris) in exchange for doing his homework.

Opposites attract, but Jason is too different from Julia's adored MTB. Jason is not only on her list of things she hates (along with flying, children and models), but he believes true love is a fairy tale and a marketing tool. Their antagonistic relationship makes for an exciting ride, in which Julia slowly learns more about love than she can find inside her books. Readers of Jennifer E. Smith and Stephanie Perkins will revel in this debate about love ruled by the stars or as a matter of the heart. --Adam Silvera, reviewer and former bookseller