Alice McDermott's intimate character study Someone is the latest in a line of works, including her National Book Award-winning Charming Billy and At Weddings and Wakes, that should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the 20th-century Irish-American experience.

Someone is an episodic journey through the life of Brooklyn-born Marie that spans from the eve of the Great Depression almost to the end of the century. Plagued by poor eyesight from birth, Marie is a "shy child and comical-looking," overshadowed by her intense, intellectual older brother, Gabe, who is destined for the priesthood, a vocation he inexplicably abandons. Marie is a dutiful daughter and eventually a devoted wife and mother of four children. But she possesses an independent streak that surfaces in her comical rebellion against her mother's efforts to teach her how to make soda bread. "Once you learn to do it," she protests, "you'll be expected to do it."

Marie seasons her first-person account with memorable supporting characters: a Syrian-Irish woman with the improbable name of Pegeen Chehab; Bill Corrigan, a man blinded in a World War I gas attack, who serves as the "umpire" of the neighborhood stickball games; and a compassionate funeral director named Fagin who hires Marie to serve as the "consoling angel" to grieving families. Incidents like an accidental death, a suicide and a shocking revelation that follows the wedding night of a teacher from the neighborhood ensure the novel never loses its narrative momentum.

McDermott shows how the simple people who populate this working-class world deal humbly and honorably with the inevitable reversals and tragedies of life, and invests their stories with a quiet dignity and, in their best moments, transforms them into something approaching heroism. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Toni Jordan's Nine Days is an Australian family saga focused on a handful of moments in the lives of the Westaway family between 1939 and 2001. The book begins with Kip Westaway, 15, who lives in a working-class Melbourne suburb. He's recently quit school to work at the furniture shop next door after his father's death (his twin brother, Francis, is still in school and mighty haughty about it). His mother, a sourpuss and a bad parent, has taken in a boarder. Every scintilla of information the reader receives about this first day--Kip's day--is important and relevant through the years, even the shilling given to Kip by the good-hearted Mr. Hustings, his employer.

In the story's eight other days, we learn of life-changing decisions. One is about Kip's daughter, Stanzi, who is a counsellor. Today's client is a kleptomaniac, and when Stanzi leaves her office, she realizes that her father's shilling, which she was going to have framed for him, has disappeared. A logical conclusion is drawn, but it is the wrong one--with immediate consequences.

The days skip back and forth in time, touching on the lives of Mr. Husting's son Jack, who returns to Melbourne from a rural sheep station and becomes smitten with Kip's sister Connie; Francis, who never lived up to the expectations of others; Kip's grandson Alec, who performs a kindness to his grandfather--and saves his own life in the process. Jordan (The Addition) renders this extended family's interwoven story in gorgeous layers of warmth, understanding and casual cruelties, interspersed throughout with good humor and perfectly rendered dialogue. ---Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

The sudden death of an old friend leads Ned, a political activist, to leave his California home for the funeral in the Catskills. Furiously pursuing Ned is his wife, Nina, who is trying to get pregnant and, currently ovulating, needs her husband. As Subtle Bodies, Norman Rush's first novel in a decade, begins, then, the main character flies toward death with a representation of life (or the potential for life) at his back. This sort of symbolism pervades the novel, which has the feel of an allegory ripe for decoding.

Douglas, whose accidental death sets Ned (and the plot) in motion, was the charismatic leader of a group of friends at New York University. It becomes apparent that Ned has always measured himself against Douglas, most sharply manifest in Ned's relationship prior to Nina with the beautiful Claire, once Douglas's lover.

In keeping with the highly cerebral nature of Subtle Bodies, Rush's characters appear to represent ideas. Ned, in Nina's mind, is a "secular Jesus," a role he tirelessly enacts throughout the book in organizing a rally against the war in Iraq. Ned spends the time leading up to Douglas's funeral attempting to convince his friends to sign a petition against the war. Nina may be Mary Magdalene--nurturing, unshakably loyal and strongly sexual. Meanwhile, Ned's long-lost friends (the apostles, perhaps?), now reunited, are each defined by specific qualities: the cynical intellectual, the faithful if rather simple-minded friend, the pragmatist. And as Nina and Ned investigate the past, the identity of Judas--a betrayal to which Ned blinded himself for years--is at last revealed. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer at the Huffington Post

Laurie R. King is perhaps best recognized for her novels starring Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell, so it is perhaps not surprising she's a master at creating--and solving--intricately detailed historical mysteries. The Bones of Paris, which re-introduces Harris Stuyvesant, the star of her 2007 novel Touchstone, is no exception.

It's 1929, and Stuyvesant, a former federal agent now working as a private detective, is broken-hearted in Berlin--and broke. When the opportunity to work a plush case locating a missing girl in Paris comes his way, he leaps for it. His search leads to a series of encounters with the great cultural figures of the period: Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, Sylvia Beach. As the days drag on and he turns up less and less about the missing girl, his simple, cushy case gradually becomes something much more sinister.

King's knowledge of the era and the Surrealist art scene, and her appreciation of the minute details that make up a well-crafted mystery, work to create a thoroughly entertaining mystery that mixes fact in with the fiction. The story is peppered with references to Stuyvesant's past, providing background for those not familiar with Touchstone but occasionally slowing the pace. Nevertheless, readers will soon find themselves racing ahead, following carefully placed clues to a shocking conclusion nobody--except Harris Stuyvesant, of course--will see coming. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Hank Phillippi Ryan's The Wrong Girl is a sequel to her 2012 novel The Other Woman--and it's another mile-a-minute mystery featuring star-crossed sleuths Jane Ryland and Jake Brogan.
With her Boston newspaper preparing for a round of layoffs, Jane has more motivation than ever to nail a lead story. Her ex-colleague Tuck's sudden assertion that an adoption agency has just reunited her with a woman who isn't actually her birth mother won't make the front page, but Tuck is insistent that only Jane can help her investigate.

Meanwhile, Jake initially believes the murder of a young woman is a cut-and-dried domestic violence case, but the true story behind the two small children and empty crib found at the scene will rock his assumptions. While others shrug off the crib's presence, Jake keeps thinking an empty crib could mean a missing baby.

As always, Ryan's plot doesn't stall for a second, and she deftly presents the realities of the foster-care system with a reporter's objectivity. While the mystery is excellent, fans of the series will no doubt want to know if Jake and Jane will finally find a way to be together. The two continue their tightrope walk between friendship and something more as their separate investigations cross paths again and again, each constantly weighing their careers against matters of the heart. Fans of mystery's cutest non-couple will love this second outing, and readers new to the series will have no trouble starting with The Other Woman. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

If you discovered the fun and ease of baking bread through Richard Bertinet's debut cookbook, Dough, or its follow-up, Crust, you'll be thrilled to hear that the French-born British chef and cookery teacher has turned his attention to showing home cooks his tried-and-true methods for producing delicious pastries. In Pastry, a series of professional pointers, step-by-step photos and skill-honing recipes, Bertinet shows that while making perfect pastry at home may not be exactly as easy as opening a can of refrigerated pie crust, it's not the arduous process most of us imagine.

Bertinet's instructions cover a range of techniques for preparing savory, sweet and puff pastries--as well as choux, the light, airy base needed for éclairs and profiteroles. Readers will primarily find classic European recipes here, such as pork pies, churros and tarte Tatin, but may be surprised by variations that change pastry dough into the base for shortbread and other cookies.

The gorgeous photography alone makes Pastry worth a look, the perfectly browned and sugar-dusted miniature mince pies spilling forth from a parchment-lined gift box and peaks of blowtorch-kissed meringue on lemon tartlets begging the reader to fire up the oven and dig out the piping bags. Since the text runs the gamut from simple how-tos to complex recipes, novice bakers and veterans who know the way around a tart pan will both find a treasure trove of flaky, scrumptious possibilities from a master chef and wise teacher. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

Robin Robertson calls One-Dish Vegan, a revision of her 2007 cookbook One-Dish Vegetarian Meals, "new and improved" in health, ease and taste. Her recipes now include less oil and fat and more whole grains, as well as a focus on gluten and soy-free options and globally inspired recipes.

One-Dish Vegan focuses on main dishes that include "a green, a grain, and a bean." Robertson gives a short but thorough overview of how to store and prepare grains (rice, quinoa, barley, oats, bulgar) and beans, as well as other proteins like tofu, tempeh and seitan (with an easy recipe for homemade seitan that is low in fat and calories and high in protein, vitamin C and iron). Unconventional tips include adding Kombu seaweed to the water when soaking beans to enhance flavor, aid digestion and add minerals; it also efficiently tenderizes the beans and decreases the cooking time. She provides a list of ingredients for the vegan pantry, recipes for vegetable broth and chili powder and easy-reference charts for cooking both grains and beans.

The 150-plus recipes include "soups that make a meal," main-dish salads, stovetop simmers and stews, chili, pasta dishes, stir fries and sautés and "oven to table" meals like artichoke spaghetti pie and spinach and quinoa tart. Her focus is on quick and nutritious meals that are just as delicious the next day. Any cook looking for easy, efficient, healthy meals is sure to enjoy Robertson’s latest offering. --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics

David Schickler's The Dark Path is a soul-searching memoir--a sometimes humorous, sometimes harrowing look at one man's pursuit of God, the writing life and a good lay. Schickler, who grew up in a devoutly Catholic family, recalls his boyhood fascination with God and his burgeoning obsession with becoming a priest. However, this is not a traditionally pious autobiography; as a child, Schickler finds solace in "the dark places" away from church, in the out-of-way lots and parks of his boyhood. Then, as Schickler matures and heads to a Jesuit college, encountering women in an intimate and lasting way for the very first time, it becomes an almost mystical event, something as soul-nourishing and God-revealing as anything he's felt in a physical church.

The Dark Path asks tough questions about religion and the presence of God in Schickler's life, yet he never descends to name calling or easy judgments. Schickler is hip to the disparity that sometimes exists between normal, pious behavior and the way God or "lack of God" manifests in the world, and he writes about the transcendent aspect of courtship and sex as well as anyone. He is a master scene setter, quietly finding the emotional jugular time after time, and conveys emotional bravery as he fumbles between faith and flesh, between art and making a living as a writer, with the searing honesty central to all great memoirs. --Donald Powell, freelance writer

In Knocking on Heaven's Door, science writer and journalist Katy Butler has rendered a beautifully balanced, stirring memoir of a dutiful, middle-aged daughter, one of three siblings, who traces her life-long relationship with her parents and how she stood by, often powerlessly, through their prolonged illnesses and deaths. Woven into the details of Butler's impassioned personal story are thoroughly researched facts and staggering statistics about the money-driven, technologically advanced, biomedical U.S. health-care system and how it tends to overtreat illness and prolong the process of death--often to the point of "medical torture."

Butler centers her story on the decision to have a pacemaker implanted in her elderly father, Jeffrey, after he has a stroke. The medical intervention aided a minor heart arrhythmia, but over time, it extended Jeffrey's suffering as his physical and mental decline accelerated and his quality of life diminished. Her mother, Val, who acted as her husband's full-time caregiver for years, ultimately asked to have Jeffrey's pacemaker disabled so he could experience a merciful death. Initial requests were denied, prompting Butler to investigate the troubling aspects of modern medicine and the tendency to maximize costs, forgoing "slow medicine" and honest, more natural ways of letting go via "old-fashioned" dying.

Other peoples' stories and an extensive compendium of additional books and resources supplement the text, which will benefit readers facing similar situations. The contrast Butler paints between Jeffrey's death and, later, Val's, supports her case, which is both compassionate and convincing. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

In The System, investigative journalists Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian have written an explosive book about America's most popular sport. In 2012, Johnny Manziel ("Johnny Football") was on his way to a Heisman (his star now tarnished by an autographs-for-money mini-scandal; the NCAA tarnished by benching him for a mere half game); the child abuse sex scandal at Penn State University blew up; Ohio State was "bruising" its way to an undefeated season while barred from competing in a bowl game; dozens of schools were on probation for academic cheating and money shenanigans. Major conference realignments meant a bigger share of TV revenue but eroded the trust and friendships college presidents and athletic directors had fostered for decades. And "student-athletes" are still essentially slaves, working an 11-month-a-year job with the benefits of season-ending injuries and long-term brain damage.

Benedict and Keteyian write with depth, insight and graceful prose ("long, languid Louisiana athleticism"). They leaven the scandalous (and merely eyebrow-raising) with the glory they allude to in their subtitle--the coaches who care about their guys, who actually want them to graduate and thrive; the players for whom football may be the only thing to save them; the college presidents who make difficult decisions, knowing that football revenue benefits more than football. In Ricky Seals-Jones, we meet an upstanding, outstanding honor student, a new touchstone for recruiting madness: $600,000 offered (and refused) under the table. And Ezekial Ansah from Ghana, who asked for a walk-on at BYU, having never played football or lifted weights. Two years later, he got a scholarship and is now a pro player.

This book is definitive and, even better, as addictive as the sport it covers. --Marilyn Dahl, editor, Shelf Awareness for Readers

Kevin Henkes, master at conveying the interior life of a child, here introduces Billy Miller, who begins second grade "worried that he wouldn't be smart enough for school this year." Billy has good reason: when his new baseball cap flew off during a visit to the Jolly Green Giant statue, Billy leaned over the guardrail to catch it and wound up in the hospital when he fell and hit his head. Later at home, Billy overhears his mother tell his father that she's worried that "down the line something will show up. He'll start forgetting things."

Henkes's characters always solve their own problems. Billy confides his worry to his teacher, and she tells him he's smart: "That one word said in Ms. Silver's voice made him feel as if he were filled with helium like a balloon and might rise off the floor." In each of four sections, Billy has a conflict to resolve with the most important people in his life: his teacher, his father, his three-year-old sister and his mother. Henkes's incisive writing gets to the heart of a second-grader's thoughts, hopes, worries and dreams. Billy grows from being someone who reacts before he thinks to someone who can sit quietly with his emotions. The spare language leaves room for children to read between the lines of what Billy says and does. They will close this book with renewed confidence that if Billy can steer his way through his life at home and school, they can, too. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Eleven-year-old Arthur Whipple, one of 13 children in the famously record-breaking Whipple family, is not the fastest. Or the slowest. Or the shortest or tallest or anything-est.

In fact, the "extraordinarily ordinary" Arthur is well on his way to a record-breaking number of failed attempts at world records, painstakingly logged by his ever-disappointed father. It seems Arthur will never be immortalized in Grazelby's Guide to World Records and Fantastic Feats: even as his older brother Simon is attempting "Longest Continuous Time Playing an Accordion" in the bedroom next door, Arthur can't even manage "Longest Time Without Sleeping." Still, as a rash of disasters plagues the Whipples--from a near-deadly giant French toast incident to a violently explosive birthday cake--it is Arthur who steps up with record-breakingly good instincts. The story of his courage and "hopelessly decent" conduct in the face of "bitter failures, terrifying encounters, and horrific catastrophes" will have readers cheering for the likable underdog.

While the premise and plot of this action-packed novel are as wild, elaborate and appealingly ridiculous as rhinoceros polo, the finely wrought, deadpan-funny narrative never strays too far from the unlikely hero and his struggle for acceptance. Along the way, readers will learn about curiosities from leap years to penny-farthings as they contemplate the existence of undomesticated hamsters, whether clowns really are evil, and how the heads of the World's Smallest Moose and the World's Largest Mouse might be roughly the same size. A superlatively giddy debut. --Karin Snelson, freelance writer and children's book editor