Like a stomach-churning midway octopus ride, Rawi Hage's Carnival is a swirl of oddballs, criminals, revolutionaries, whores and taxi drivers. An independent immigrant hack in a city much like Hage's Montreal, Fly knows his fellow drivers only by their car numbers and nicknames. Most are "spiders" who park at taxi stands waiting for business, while Fly is, of course, one of the "flies"--wanderers "who drive alone and around to pick up the wavers and whistlers." Raised in a circus by a bearded lady, he is comfortable with the misfits who prowl his city, particularly during the annual Carnival bacchanal. He also has an insatiable appetite for books, after acquiring the collection of a doctor who ministered to the freaks, a collection so large that it overwhelms his apartment with "towers of books... a tunnel of books [where] a carnival of heroes bounces from every corner."

Fly is a fine foil for Hage's funny and acerbic observations on everything from religious hypocrisy to aberrant sex--all told with a linguistic virtuosity and lusty bravado that echo James Joyce and Henry Miller. Told in short vignettes, Carnival is the novel of a city defined not so much by its citizens as by the whirling chaos of those who are only wandering visitors. Fly is an observant guide to this circus of humanity and knows that "after this grand act of life, nothing is left but the dust beneath the elephants' feet and the sound of monkeys' clapping." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Terrence Kerrigan is beginning the second half of his life with little consolation, as he travels to Denmark to pour himself into his two remaining loves--drinking and research. So begins Kerrigan in Copenhagen: A Love Story, the third work in Thomas E. Kennedy's Copenhagen Quartet (after In the Company of Angels and Falling Sideways). Kerrigan's sole ambition is to write a guidebook to the Danish capital's bars, but the charm of a sharp, green-eyed research assistant adds an element of longing and sliver of possibility to his quest.

Lovers of Scandinavia and philosophy will both find joy in this meticulously detailed novel. It gives one the sense of wandering through another person's mind--and Kerrigan's mind is a crowded hall of quotations, music, poetry and, in what scarce space is left over, personal nostalgia. Through a lens of colloquial inebriation, he draws connections between such seemingly unconnected figures as Kierkegaard and Duke Ellington. As these observations reappear in new ways and are anachronistically connected, we can eventually see the faint outline of a brilliant analytical web.

Coursing below the noise of Kerrigan's endless internal narrative is his awareness that his true needs are painfully simple. He may have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and Danish history, but he would give anything for a second chance with his ex-wife or the affection of his research assistant. These desires are as urgent and elusive as the sense that some "ultimate existential conclusion" lies at the heart of modern theory. --Annie Atherton, intern at Shelf Awareness

It's tough to earn the Trident badge of the Navy SEAL, but for real toughness, a medal should go to the single mother whose only child joins the SEALs. That is the premise of Lea Carpenter's memorable debut novel, Eleven Days--a story about smart, sensitive Sara who becomes pregnant at 19 with Jason. Five years after his birth, Jason's enigmatic military father "disappears," leaving Sara to raise their son alone.

She is a freelance editor of government documents who hopes to inspire Jason toward study in "English, business, law: the late 20th century's most glittery trifecta." Jason, however, is drawn first to the Naval Academy, then to the SEAL ideal of one who "did the right thing, did it quietly, and did it well." Eleven Days opens on the day that Sara is notified that Jason is missing from a sensitive, clandestine "no prisoners, no losses" mission.

Carpenter (a columnist for BigThink.com) knows the details of Special Warfare training. As much as Eleven Days is the tale of Jason's military evolution, though, it is more Sara's story. Carpenter deftly chronicles her waiting: the rote gardening, the daily running, the mindless editing work, the sleepless nights trying to read--all to stem "the scope creep of her chaos." Sara must make peace with both the life her son chose and the life she has chosen for herself. Like any peace, that is not easy to achieve. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Anonymous Sources is a fast-paced adventure from an author who knows the international journalism scene: former NPR correspondent and occasional guest host of All Things Considered Mary Louise Kelly.

When young Thom Carlyle falls from the top of a Harvard bell tower to his death, the upper crust of American society is shocked. An Oxbridge-educated star athlete who was about to propose to his beautiful girlfriend, Thom seemed an unlikely candidate for suicide, but a drunken accident doesn't fit the bill, either. Gorgeous but troubled journalist Alexandra James smells murder, not to mention a story that could make her career.

However, while sneaking into crime scenes and wheedling information out of detectives may be Alex's forte, a trip to Cambridge, England, to chase a lead soon has her in over her head. Not only does she have to contend with Carlyle's jaded girlfriend and a young English lord who may not be what he seems, the deeper she digs, the closer Alex comes to uncovering a network of nuclear terrorists who don't want to be found. She must unravel the mystery and discover the terrorists' ultimate target, but if she isn't careful, she may find herself in the same crosshairs as Thom Carlyle.

Kelly's debut novel is intricate, heart-pounding and occasionally romantic. Tough and bright, Alex is nonetheless made vulnerable and easier to relate to by a traumatic past, and Kelly's years of journalistic experience show in a skillfully constructed thriller that genre fans will love. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

In Antonio Hill's dark debut novel, The Summer of Dead Toys, Inspector Hector Salgado is in a tricky position. Though he's Argentinian by birth, he's been on the Barcelona police force for years. He's currently on probation, though, after beating an old man, Dr. Omar, who was complicit in the trafficking (and death) of a young African girl.

In addition to his professional problems, Hector's wife, Ruth, left him (for another woman) and Dr. Omar, who is involved in voodoo, made some threats that make Hector uneasy despite his professed atheism.

Luckily, Hector's boss still supports him and has set him unofficially to look into the death of teenager Marc Castells, who fell from his bedroom window--it's unclear whether it was an accident, suicide or murder. Teamed up with young, eager Leire Castro, Hector sets out to question Marc's friends and family members unobtrusively.

The Summer of Dead Toys delves into the nature of family and the lengths that people will go to protect those they love. Hector's increasing disquiet about the disappearance of Dr. Omar mingles with the surprisingly dark aspects of Marc Castells's apparently idyllic life. Leire Castro is hiding some secrets of her own, and the emerging partnership between Leire and Hector adds a needed comforting aspect to the sad story.

Hill has done an excellent job bringing Barcelona to life and creating a tense, intriguing mystery. Fans of international thrillers will be waiting eagerly for his next book to be translated into English. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Enigma of China is the eighth novel starring Chief Inspector Chen Cao, the Shanghai investigator who wanted to be a poet as a youth but was assigned by Communist officials to the police squad. It begins with Zhou Keng, the corrupt head of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee, found dead in his hotel room. The Communist Party quickly determines Zhou's death was a suicide, and Chen is expected to sign off on that--instead, he and his colleague Inspector Wei begin a quiet investigation.

Nothing much is uncovered until a beautiful young reporter brings Chen some enlightening information, and Wei is the victim of a hit and run. Wei's death confirms Chen's suspicions about Zhou, and he and the reporter start poking further into Zhou's secrets. But those secrets reflect badly on the Party, and the Party's image must be maintained at all costs. The lie of equality, in the face of the obvious extravagance of top Party officials, is preposterous, but Chen is expected to uphold it. And certain Party officials emphatically disapprove of Chen's recalcitrance about the investigation.

Chen's poetical musings about the world around him add a philosophical bent to this look at death and corruption in modern China. Qui Xioalong brings the suspicious nature of the Communist state to vivid life, clearly showing how much control the government holds over the Internet and every aspect of Chinese life. Fans of introspective mysteries won't want to miss Enigma of China. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

When a man returns to the Sussex country town where he grew up, he is inexplicably drawn toward the house at the end of the lane where he met Lettie Hempstead, her mother and her grandmother. When he was seven, a lodger at his parents' house stole the family car, drove it to the nearby beach and committed suicide in it. That act released a terrible, ancient power, putting the young boy and his family in danger. Meeting Lettie and her wise and loving family is the only hope he has left to keep himself from utter and terrifying destruction.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman's first novel for adults since Anansi Boys (2005), shows his continuing power as a storyteller for any age. The subtle and elegiac tale manages to maintain its mystery while remaining grounded in reality. This is fiction as truth, in the way that all of Gaiman's best work exists in reality even while exploring the fantastic or otherworldly.

What matters in the end, really, is the journey that the narrator experiences. This man's time with the Hempsteads has affected him profoundly, disconnecting him from the ordinary and mundane. The events of the past are both real and unreal at the same time, a metaphor for the transition from child to adult, naiveté to wisdom and fantasy to reality. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

In The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting Lost) takes what could have been a conventional memoir about an adult child confronting the advancing dementia of a mother with whom she's had a troubled relationship and turns it into a collection of impressive essays on empathy and the power of stories. This book overflows with Solnit's characteristically intriguing juxtapositions of ideas, drawn from a deep well of learning on a staggering range of topics, then filtered through the prism of her broad associative intelligence.

The improbable thread that unites these essays is the delivery of 100 pounds of apricots from a tree at her mother's home in the midst of her prolonged struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Like Proust's madeleine, the fruit "became a catalyst that made the chaos of that era come together as a story of sorts." Solnit's effort to deal with that fruitful overabundance propels her into a consideration of subjects that range from climate change to leprosy to cannibalism, many of them related at least obliquely to considering "the capacity to feel what you do not literally feel."

Disclosing that Solnit's essays consider figures as diverse as Mary Shelley, Che Guevara and Siddhartha Gautama only begins to hint at the breadth of her knowledge, presented in a style that's understated, not ostentatious. There's an unaffected quality to her prose that's always deployed in the service of telling a good story.

Solnit describes The Faraway Nearby as "the history of an emergency and the stories that kept me company then." The pain she experienced as her mother's condition deteriorated was all too real, but it requires a writer of her gifts to turn that suffering into art. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Part travel guide, part history, Suzannah Lipscomb's A Journey Through Tudor England introduces modern-day readers to 50 historical sites that remain worth seeing today--not just the surviving castles, cathedrals and tombs, but also museums, colleges and smaller locales such as the Elizabethan theater at Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare.

Beginning in the greater London area, Lipscomb (1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII) sketches in historical details that bring each place to life for those unfamiliar with the stories behind the royal dynasty. (In some locations, there is little to "see" in a modern sense; the site of the Battle of Bosworth is a field, and Pontefract Castle, where Richard II is said to have made his last stand, today lies in ruins.) Lipscomb, a frequent presenter on television documentaries about the Tudor era, also includes several vignettes that shed light on the details of the nobility's day-to-day life.

For travelers, A Journey Through Tudor England is a handy guide to many English historical sites worth seeing whether or not one is a Tudorphile; for others, Lipscomb provides an engaging view of England as the Tudors saw it, lived in it and altered it. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket

Published in 2006, Max Brooks's World War Z took the world of zombie fiction by storm. Presented as a series of interviews with survivors of the "zombie war," the novel depicts a world much like our own--except that the human population has been devastated by a zombie virus, by starvation and by nuclear attack. Brooks's story brings up issues like the military strategy required to fight an enemy whose ranks grow as yours shrink; the power of fear of the unknown to turn neighbors against one another; and the role of patriotism when fighting a global enemy. His interviews span the world, from those who witnessed the first outbreaks in China to Americans fleeing north to Canada--as well as a group of Australian astronauts who watched the mounting horrors from orbit.

This second edition of the audio of World War Z offers a full-cast recording of the interviews. Though slightly abridged from the original text, it includes five hours of content that weren't in the original audiobook. Max Brooks reprises his role as the Interviewer, while an all-star cast of more than 40 actors join him--including Martin Scorsese, Alan Alda, Jeri Ryan, Common and Nathan Fillion. The diversity of voices and talents ensures a captivating retelling of a story that couldn't be boring if it tried. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

In this uplifting tale of unlikely friendship, a pig, seeking solace and a breathtaking vista in his home high above the valley, is crestfallen when a duck moves in to spoil his view--until he realizes what he'd been missing.

Author-artist John Kelly shows the wide-open space where Pig has built his home atop a grassy crest. The white smoke wafting from his chimney matches the snowy peaks of the mountain range and the cumulus clouds adrift over a river that winds its way through the peaceful scene. Pig bakes cakes, makes model planes and reads books while nibbling on chocolate: "His life was perfect." But one day, Pig opens the curtains, and a duck is standing there. "Beautiful day, isn't it?" says the duck. "Pig agreed, but secretly wished the duck would just go away."

Kelly plays with elements of the comic-book format to nicely pace the flow of the events and to play with perspective. On a full-page image of the duck playing drums, Kelly adds an inset of Pig holding up a clock that reads 2 a.m. and picking up the phone ("There were the normal disagreements"). Even though the humor borders on adult sophistication, both characters present a universal dynamic of opposites that--eventually--attract. They help each other out, and even build a bridge--literally and figuratively--between their houses.

Children will likely glom onto this tale of eccentric individuals who thrive as joined forces, and will also appreciate the way it plays with illustration and design elements. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

This second entry in the Grisha Trilogy starts off right where Shadow and Bone ended and lives up its high standards. If you've not yet read the first book, be forewarned: there are spoilers in this review.

Mal and Alina are reunited but on the lam, after Alina thwarted the Darkling's efforts to take over the world and the power of the Fold. But before chapter one has ended, the Darkling returns, stronger than ever, with a newfound ability to create matter--creatures more terrifying than the volcra and more human in shape. In his quest for more power, the Darkling enlists Mal's skills as a tracker to find the legendary Rusalye, a white sea dragon that can serve to heighten Alina's power as a Sun Summoner. He blackmails Alina and Mal: if either one steps out of line, the Darkling will punish the other.

The author continues to build on the eerie chemistry between Alina and the Darkling, in which the heroine is both repulsed by and strangely drawn to this complex villain. Bardugo also introduces a new character into the mix, Sturmhond, a reckless, unpredictable fellow who purports to be a privateer and also a member of Ravka's ruling family. Even though he comes to Alina and Mal's aid and claims he wants what's best for Ravka, they suspect his motives. Bardugo continues to build out her world and build up the suspense. Readers will be eager for the trilogy's conclusion. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Zachariah OHora, whose first charming picture book featured a noisy sleeper, Stop Snoring, Bernard, here zeroes in on a child grappling with her gorilla buddy's tendency for temper tantrums.

Nilson, a blue gorilla, and Amelia, sporting a cherry-red jumper, do everything together. However, Nilson struggles to stay calm in the face of  life's ups and downs. When Amelia accidentally hits Nilson's block building with her scooter, "Nilson throws the biggest, most house shaking-est fit ever!!" As blocks fly, his shape contorts to cover the entire two-page illustration. Both of them get a time-out at opposite ends of the room; Amelia quietly weeps. Amelia then tries to be proactive. When she sees her blue pal start to get upset, she says, "No fits, Nilson!" When his patience wears thin at the crowded post office, she whispers, "No fits, Nilson," and passes him her froggy coin purse as a diversionary tactic. Amelia's mom steps in to avert trouble on the train ("No fits, Nilson!"), with a promise of banana ice cream. When the tables turn and Amelia needs a tantrum intervention, Nilson returns the favor.

OHora wisely leaves Nilson's identity ambiguous--he could be a stuffed animal or an imaginary friend, allowing plenty of room for youngest children to find reassurance in the dynamic portrayed here. He also depicts Amelia's mom as an active participant in Amelia's friendship with Nilson, and a supporter of Amelia's efforts to aid Nilson in tamping down his anger before it's full blown. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness