It's not often a main character dies in the first chapter of a literary novel, but that's what happens in Sally Koslow's The Widow Waltz. The story opens from the point of view of Ben Silver, a charming, seemingly successful Manhattan lawyer who goes for a run in Central Park and suffers a massive heart attack. His sudden death comes as a complete shock to those who love him--most especially, his devoted wife, Georgia Waltz. What's even more troubling is the news that he has left his well-to-do family practically insolvent.

His widow and their two adult daughters had been living, thanks to Ben, an upscale, privileged existence; now they face financial ruin. Ben's death might make him physically absent from the lives of his loved ones, but his presence becomes more palpable as the trio slowly begins to uncover reasons why the family's fortune might have evaporated. Was Ben the man they thought he was? Was he harboring secrets? As Georgia and the girls reinvent their lives by selling off assets and scrambling to find work to support themselves, unforeseen circumstances, people and impulses--some romantic--alter their plans in unpredictable ways.

Koslow (The Late, Lamented Molly Marx) is a skillful, meticulous writer attuned to the absurdities of life, death and the multi-generational bonds of family. Pitch-perfect details and alternating narrative voices allow her to explore fully the emotional intricacies of these richly woven characters in crisis. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

"Journeys are not only about places, they are also about people, and it may be the people, rather than the places, that we remember," Alexander McCall Smith writes in Trains and Lovers, a compact stand-alone novel about four people, strangers to one another, on a train bound from Edinburgh to London. As they ride through the British countryside, the foursome strike up a conversation and share stories of how love has touched each of their lives.

Andrew, a recent college graduate from Scotland, is trying to launch a career as an art historian. He tells of how he became smitten with a female coworker from a different social class and how that impinged upon their relationship. Forty-something David, an American, recounts how he met the great love of his life as a teenager when he summered in Maine. Kay, a 50-year-old woman, conveys the story of her parents' marriage and how their union changed the course of their lives--and hers--in the Australian Outback. And finally, there is Hugh, a 20-year-old Brit who once exited a train at a wrong stop and met a woman with a mysterious past who played a significant role in his perceptions about trust.

The four characters might be onboard, riding the same rail, but they are all at different stages of life. As each interwoven story gracefully unfolds, trains themselves play a part in the individual narrative arcs where the fleeting nature of love emerges as a unifying theme. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

In London, in 1976, a record-breaking heat wave makes everyone uncomfortable and on edge. One morning, Gretta Riordan discovers that her newly retired husband, Robert, has cleaned out his bank account and disappeared. Maggie O'Farrell (After You'd Gone; The Hand that First Held Mine) starts Instructions for a Heatwave with this premise, then takes readers on journeys interior and exterior--recounted in flawless prose that will have you reading while strap-hanging, standing in line or waiting at a stop light.

Gretta calls upon her three children--Michael Francis, Monica and Aoife--to help her suss out what happened. The baggage they bring is not in suitcases. History teacher Michael Francis is perpetually disappointed that he had to cut his Ph.D. studies short to provide when his wife became inconveniently pregnant, and she knows it. Everyone loved Monica's first husband, Joe, but he left her when he found out that she did something he found unforgivable; now she's married to a distracted antiques dealer whose two daughters loathe her.

Problem child Aoife is bright, intuitive and creative, but she still can't read, and has arranged her life so that no one knows. She's been in New York for the last three years, estranged from her sister, Monica, all this time--for the same reason Joe left Monica. Gretta, meanwhile, is hooked on pills given to her by helpful doctors; still, she keeps herself together most of the time.

Long-held personal and family secrets are unearthed when they all go to Ireland because someone has seen Robert there. Gretta knows more than she has ever told anyone--even Robert--but all is revealed. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

A Hundred Summers, the unrelentingly romantic second novel from Beatriz Williams (after Overseas), delivers swoons and intrigue against the backdrop of the 1938 New England hurricane.

During their college days in 1931, New York socialite Lily Dane and handsome quarterback Nick Greenwald fell desperately in love. Seven years later, though, Lily is single and helping to raise her six-year-old sister, Kiki, while Nick is married to party girl Budgie Byrne, Lily's sometime best friend. In alternating chapters, Williams unravels the bittersweet story of Lily and Nick's young romance and their reunion when Lily and her family make their usual move to their summer home in Seaview, R.I., only to find Nick and Budgie taking up residence nearby.

Budgie immediately tries to wriggle back into Lily's good graces while Lily and Nick struggle against their reawakened feelings. Although Lily clings to the moral path, as the summer passes she cannot ignore Nick, especially since Kiki adores him. When she discovers the truth behind Nick and Budgie's marriage, Lily also unleashes a storm of secrets--about her family's rejection of Nick, about Budgie, even about Kiki--that rivals the vicious hurricane that could rip Nick and Lily apart just when they might have a second chance at love.

Williams evokes the era effortlessly and delights in ripping the rug out from under the reader just when the riddles seem easiest to solve. Filled with delicious scandals, catty socialites and true love, this beach read deserves pride of place in every vacationer's tote bag. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

Fina Ludlow is a private investigator for her family's law firm, but the case she gets assigned in Ingrid Thoft's debut novel, Loyalty, is personal. Her sister-in-law Melanie is missing, and the police are looking at the obvious suspect--her husband, Rand, Fina's brother and a partner at the firm. Carl, the steely patriarch, wants Fina to find Melanie and make the bad publicity go away.

Fina has help from two hot guys: Milloy, her friend with benefits, and detective Cristian Menendez, with whom she exchanges sexy sparks. Neither can protect her from dangerous situations, however, as Fina's investigation leads her to money launderers, porn mongers and someone with a vendetta against the Ludlows. How far will Fina go to uncover the truth? Will it destroy her loyalty to her family?

The setup of a female private investigator working for the family business calls to mind Lisa Lutz's Spellman series, and Fina's vacillation between two attractive men echoes Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, but Loyalty is much darker than either series--and Fina is way deadlier. She doesn't hesitate to use her gun and gets scrappy in bloody fights. She's no fancy martial artist, just a resourceful, impatient woman who refuses to be a victim.

Thoft is adept at showing the Ludlows' dysfunction, and the impossible mother is someone readers might love to hate. Thoft also has a good ear for dialogue, a nice eye for character-revealing details and a firm handle on a PI's shoe-leather process. If she keeps it up, she'll gain the loyalty of fans as this series continues. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, writer and editor blogging at Pop Culture Nerd

Anne Holt's Death of the Demon brings back Oslo detective Hanne Wilhemsen, the protagonist of 2012's 1222--although this novel was published more than a decade ago in Norway and is just now appearing in English.

Hanne, recently promoted to chief inspector, is having a hard time letting go of fieldwork and delegating to her colleagues. Trying to be everywhere and do everything is not endearing her to her subordinates, even though everyone reluctantly admits she's a very clever detective. She will need all her brilliance in this case: Agnes Vestavik, director of Oslo's only group foster home for troubled children, has been found dead--an Ikea knife shoved into her back. A 12-year-old boy named Olav, who hadn't been in the home long, has vanished. Olav was notoriously troubled; could he have stabbed Agnes and fled?

As Hanne and her team delve into the case, she is troubled on several levels. Secrets about foster home staff members keep emerging, proving that nearly everyone is hiding something. Meanwhile, Hanne's own personal life is getting rocky; her girlfriend wants to have children, and Hanne adamantly doesn't.

Holt makes Hanne's prickly intelligence all too real, as are the troubled children in the foster home and the variously motivated people working with them. Death of the Demon brings questions of "nature versus nurture" into play, as the police are forced to determine whether a 12-year-old is truly capable of the crime, and as Hanne struggles with her reasons for not wanting children. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

After a successful run of five novels (starting with 1983's A Dime to Dance By), Walter Walker took a two-decade hiatus from writing to build his San Francisco law firm. Now, with Crime of Privilege, he's back, his legal know-how focused on the power of the wealthy to protect themselves from laws that routinely punish those less connected. His target: a Massachusetts senator whose legacy of wealth and influence insulate his family from the consequences of their profligacy, alcohol-fueled rapes and murder.

The senator's nemesis is George Becket, a divorced, low-level assistant district attorney in Cape Cod. His life took a critical turn when he witnessed two members of Senator Gregory's family at a Palm Beach blowout molesting a drunken teen socialite. He was persuaded not to say anything about it, and he's regretted his silence ever since. Now he coasts at his job, eating his dinners alone at the local tavern. Then Bill Telford takes a barstool next to him and tells the story of his daughter's murder nine years earlier. He claims she was killed at a party at the Gregory family's compound--which the police and district attorney's office conveniently didn't investigate.

Telford's urgent plea rouses Becket from his lethargy, and the investigation takes him across the world to wherever the Gregory's hush money has hidden potential witnesses. Walker manages the entangled plot with sure-footed writing and more than a touch of irony--and if the fictional senator and his family sound familiar, well, so be it. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway gives us a refreshingly bizarre twist on the classic private investigator. Readers of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead will recognize Claire's copious and indiscriminate drug use (she never fails to check a medicine cabinet and pocket the contents; she seeks dealers like she seeks clues) and her generally hard-bitten lifestyle. Similarly unconventional is her somewhat metaphysical style of detection, guided in part by a controversial dead French detective who speaks to Claire through his book.

When Claire's ex-boyfriend Paul is murdered, and several of his valuable guitars go missing, his wife, Lydia, hires Claire to look into things. A simultaneous case involves a diminishing herd of miniature horses up in Marin County: Claire suspects they may be committing suicide. The action shifts from contemporary San Francisco, where Claire hunts Paul's guitars and his killer, to the Brooklyn of Claire's adolescence, where she and two friends once investigated a missing girl. One of those friends will later go missing herself; and the whispers of the missing Tracy, the dead Paul and the possibly suicidal miniature horses haunt Claire as she tries to keep it together and solve a murder through the haze of various uppers and downers.

Strange, distinctive characters are one of Gran's greatest strengths, coupled with a strong sense of place and a gritty atmosphere of depravity and mysticism. Dark, classic PI adventures with an unprecedented zaniness mixed in make Claire DeWitt a rare reading experience. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

As the digital world gets closer and closer to approximating a human brain, this mind-bending novel by Max Barry (Syrup; Jennifer Government) imagines the workings of the human mind as a sort of machine itself--a machine that can be sabotaged by a carefully chosen word, lobbed like a sabot into its gears. Funny, fast-paced and remarkably unmuddled for this type of reality-warping story, Lexicon is an action novel that nicely exercises the brain as well as the heart rate.

Emily is living as a street hustler in San Francisco when she is discovered by "the poets," a secret society that invites her to attend its exclusive boarding school. There, after years of training, she becomes a master of the poets' method of persuasion through a perfectly calibrated collection of syllables to disable their victims' thought processes. Obviously, sinister work is afoot among the poets and, in a whirl of global manhunts, recovered memories, car chases, epic battles--and one mysterious town in the Australian Outback full of corpses--the true nature of their plans comes to light.

With hints of Scientology's cultish approach to higher thinking and a whiff of apocalyptic frenzy, Lexicon takes its clever premise and races through all the delectable stations of sustained suspense. By the final, body-filled showdown, Barry's chilly yet entertaining vision of free will rendered inert by sounds has turned every adage about actions and words on its head. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic

The overall theme of NFL punter Chris Kluwe's Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies can be summed up in a sentence from his piece called "Graduation." He advises his audience, "Our world is only as good as we're willing to make it, and that means treating others how we want to be treated, letting others live in freedom so they'll let us do the same." In the letters, essays and stories that make up this debut, Kluwe emphasizes empathy with humor, passion and even philosophy.

The collection includes some content previously posted to Kluwe's former blog on the Pioneer Press website, as well as his famous open letter in defense of same-sex marriage (with a revised version for those who took issue with the profanities in the original). He employs side-splittingly funny analogies, like a comparison of toilet paper to short-term/long-term gains. When he talks to or about his family, there's genuine warmth under his clever wit. But he's also vehemently frank when he addresses topics such as societal values or gun control, challenging readers to "never be afraid to stand your ground for something worth fighting for."

These pieces are short, but Kluwe's unpredictability will keep readers curiously turning the pages all the way to his self-composed eulogy that includes a funeral drinking game and mandates cake and ice cream. Intelligent and thought-provoking, Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies is relentlessly honest; Kluwe pulls no punches, spares no language and writes a rip-roaring debut. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

It's the fear of every goody-two-shoes: getting in trouble for trying to do the right thing.

When Sierra Shepard accidentally takes her mom's lunch to school, she goes from teacher's pet to troublemaker so quickly that she doesn't have time to finish her lunch. Her mom's lunch included a small knife to cut an apple, and when Sierra tries to be good by turning it in, she's told she's in violation of the school's "zero tolerance" policy. Her principal and her lawyer dad stake their positions. Neither will back down, and Sierra is caught in the middle--and stuck with an in-school suspension. The TV cameras come to town, and everyone in school starts to take sides--including her crush. But Sierra just wants things to go back to normal.

Most readers will be aware of a zero tolerance policy but likely will never have seen it challenged, and the conflict here provides an accessible entry point into the world of moral ambiguity. The book is engaging, and Sierra's voice is pitch-perfect. Readers who are feeling the first pangs of rebellion will be thrilled by the depiction of Sierra's principal and father behaving badly for all the right reasons, as well as by some of Sierra's anti-establishment choices.

The book resolves neatly, but discussion about it will be heated. Though there is some mature (though well-chosen) language, ultimately it's a great choice for book groups, and any reader looking for more complexity in a novel. --Stephanie Anderson, head of readers' advisory at Darien Library and blogger

This hilarious window into the world of adolescent males, based on the Zits comic strip, also reveals moments of surprising poignancy.

Author and artist create a hybrid of text and comics, as 16-year-old Jeremy Duncan describes his life with insight and humor. Readers meet Jeremy's girlfriend Sara ("the 'H' is invisible") and her best friend, D'ijon ("coolest dreads since Bob Marley"). They also meet his best friend since age four, Hector ("6'6" and pushing 230 pounds"), with whom he started a band called Chickenfist, along with a drummer named Pierce and bass player Tim. Tim has given Jeremy and Hector tickets to the band Gingivitis ("Their music is the basis for everything our band is and wants to be"). The only wet blanket on this high point of Jeremy's life thus far is the reason Tim can't use the tickets: his mother has cancer, and Tim has to undergo a marrow transplant for her.

Scott and Borgman hit all the right notes. When Tim tells them the sad news, Pierce says in a speech balloon, drumsticks aloft, "This is not supposed to be happening!! Cancer is supposed to just belong in stupid direct-to-cable movies!!!" Sara and Jeremy have a fight because she doesn't think he's supportive enough of Tim. One of the book's funniest moments is Borgman's illustration of girls "deal[ing] with each other... like three-dimensional chess" and contrasting that with the way guys "keep things simpler." Readers will hope this is just the start of Jeremy's adventures. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness