Porochista Khakpour's second novel, The Last Illusion, is ambitious, bursting with ideas, vivid characters and lush language. Rooted in the Persian epic poem the Shahnameh, The Last Illusion is the tale of Zal, a boy raised among birds. Born as an albino to a woman obsessed with her feathered "children," Zal is immediately banished to a birdcage for the first 10 years of his life and becomes a feral, fragile thing. Rescued by man who becomes his surrogate father, Zal makes his way to New York City on the cusp of the new millennium.

His heroic quest for normalcy despite his avian imprinting (he still has a hankering for insects) is sad and funny in turn, real and poignant on every page. He meets chic hipster girls with death wishes, an illusionist with the grand idea to make the Twin Towers disappear (how could that go wrong?) and always the city, overflowing with its residents' contradictory impulses. Khakpour's vision of a bustling, multicultural New York--stuffed with layers of idiosyncratic detail, fully alive and fully overwhelming--is literature of the first order. Through Zal's struggles, she is able to state valuable truths about the protean nature of identity and how even those who are trying to heal us can undermine our deeper essence.

Khakpour's disparate characters are drawn together by their shared rootlessness and achieve adulthood only after jettisoning each illusion. Her daring new book is a testament to the relentless search for self and connection to others, no matter how daunting the journey. --Donald Powell, freelance writer

Lisa O'Donnell follows up her award-winning The Death of Bees with Closed Doors, another novel featuring a young narrator. Michael Murray, age 11, lives on the Scottish island of Rothesay and likes to listen behind doors because adults don't tell him everything. One night, he hears his mom screaming downstairs, and when he runs to find her, he sees her face is bloodied.

His father and grandmother tell him Rosemary saw a flasher while walking home from work in the dark and she fell running away from him. Michael believes the story, but is not allowed to tell anyone about the flasher. When his mother refuses to go to the police or discuss what happened, people in the small town start whispering ugly rumors about Michael's father, reaching their own conclusions about Rosemary's facial bruises. Michael is torn between his promise to keep the family secret and the need to defend his father's honor, especially with Dirty Alice, the neighborhood girl he hates.

O'Donnell deftly writes from this young man's point of view; Michael's observations are realistic and often laugh-out-loud funny. Confused when Dirty Alice suddenly bursts into tears at one point, he thinks, "I've heard her cry before but only after a fall or that time I threw a rock at her head." The levity balances out the darker elements, and Michael's innocence spares readers the full horror of "the flasher's" deeds. Michael loses some of that innocence over the course of the story but remains an engaging narrator to the end. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

In her debut novel, The Girl in the Road, Monica Byrne introduces a near-futuristic Earth where global power has consolidated in East Asia and political tensions are shockingly high. In India, a young woman named Meena wakes in her bed with snakebites on her chest. The orphaned daughter of Ethiopian parents, she assumes political antagonists are out to kill her and decides to flee. She heads for a manmade energy bridge known as "the Trail" that spans the sea between Mumbai and Djibouti, planning to brave the thousands of kilometers alone, on foot--a journey that no one has ever completed. At the same time, Miriama, a young slave girl in western Africa, runs away from her master and seeks refuge in a truck convoy carrying oil to Ethiopia.

The Girl in the Road alternates between Meena's and Miriama's stories, highlighting the significant differences between the two women, but also making their commonalities apparent. Given the first-person narrative, it is easy to confuse the two protagonists as their timelines become blurred, but it's hard to believe this was unintentional. While the stories of these two women are enticing in their own right, what is most impressive about Byrne's debut is the way she builds a story without ever telling readers outright what they are encountering. In this elusive way, she explores sexuality, memory, honesty and self-discovery. The Girl in the Road moves forward to a conclusion that offers as many questions as it does answers, but the one thing no reader will doubt is Byrne's place as a strong new voice in science fiction. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

"Each Mrs. Hemingway thought their love would last forever. Each one was wrong." A man of famously outsize appetites, Ernest Hemingway married four times, eventually destroying each relationship through his hunger for another woman. In deft, elegant prose, Naomi Wood (The Godless Boys) tells the intertwined stories of Hemingway's wives: Hadley, Pauline, Martha and Mary. The saga of Hemingway's meteoric career, his many exploits and his tragic end is well known, but Wood fills in the details, drawing on letters and telegrams to create dynamic portraits of the four women behind the man.

Wood opens each section of the novel with the end of a marriage: the holiday in Antibes, France, where Pauline triumphed over Hadley; the hot day in Key West, Fla., when Pauline first met Martha. Each section shifts back and forth in time, tracing the arc of each affair from the glorious, passionate beginning to the final, bitter denouement. Each woman reacts differently to her displacement, from Hadley's gracious abdication to Martha's furious exit. But they remain bound to each other by the man who inspired such passion and heartbreak. Hemingway himself is central but opaque, an unknowable sun who pulls women--wives, lovers, mistresses--into his orbit.

"Each decade has its triptych," notes Mary Welsh, the final wife, after Hemingway's death. Wood's intimate portrayal of all four triptychs is at once a meditation on marriage and a rare treat for Hemingway devotees. Fans of The Paris Wife and Hemingway's Girl will be captivated by this elegiac, exquisitely drawn novel. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Amid the recent wave of successful Scandinavian mystery writers, such as Henning Mankell and Arnaldur Indriðason, Swedish author Camilla Läckberg (The Stranger, The Ice Princess) stands apart from her peers thanks to her dual protagonists. Detective Patrik Hedström and his wife, crime writer Erica Falck, can't help but get involved in each other's cases.

As The Hidden Child opens, Patrik has taken paternity leave to care for their daughter while Erica returns to writing. But Erica becomes sidetracked when she inherits a trunk that belonged to her mother, Elsy. To her bewilderment, the trunk contains not only a set of diaries, but a Nazi medal. Meanwhile, Patrik is having a hard time focusing on childcare and keeping his nose out of police business--especially once he realizes that Erik Frankel, an old man whose death seems linked to a virulent neo-Nazi group, is the Nazi-relic expert that Erica recently consulted to analyze Elsy's medal.

The Hidden Child alternates smoothly between the modern-day life of Erica and Patrik and the dramatic situations Elsy and her friends experienced during World War II, and soon 60-year-old secrets begin to unfold. Fans of the other four books in the series will be happy to see interesting developments in the personal lives of Erica's sister and Patrik's coworkers. New readers are bound to be hooked by Läckberg's unusual blend of personal drama, social commentary and mystery. The Hidden Child is an excellent entry in this appealing series. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Patricia Cowan is very old, and, according to her medical charts, very confused. As she lies in her nursing home, uncertain of the day or the week or even the year, she recalls distinctly two lives: one in which she married her college boyfriend and had four children, and one in which she never married and raised three children with a woman named Bee instead. She remembers a world torn apart by nuclear warfare, and a world at peace. She remembers a wedding on the moon; she remembers Russia, the U.S. and Europe fighting over proprietary space technology.

My Real Children is an exploration of both of Patricia Cowan's lives, or rather, an exploration of what happens when one life splits in two possible but completely distinct versions. Jo Walton (Among Others) uses the two lives of Patricia Cowan to explore the consequences of decision-making: What would have happened had you chosen another option? Though it can feel heavy-handed at times, Walton's exploration of not only the what-ifs but the what-could-have-beens is brought to life by the multilayered lives of Patricia Cowan, whose experiences as a woman, a mother and a partner are at once incredibly different and yet strikingly similar. Both lives unfold at a rapid pace, but the nuance of the characters, family dynamics and political situations in each keep the two story lines distinct--at least until Patricia's own memories collapse into one, leaving readers and Patricia to ponder the question: What if? --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Reinhard Kleist's The Boxer is a violent, sinewy tale of survival and triumph against the odds. Biographic comic artist Kleist (Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness) follows Harry Haft from his hardscrabble youth in Poland on the eve of World War II and his wartime experiences in concentration camps to a boxing career and a middle-class life in the U.S. Haft is tough from the beginning, and while no one was ever raised to survive Auschwitz, Haft's pugnacious attitude served him well. In scenes that Hollywood wouldn't dare to imagine, Haft became a boxer in the camps and was forced to fight other Jews to the death while his Nazi captors laughed and placed bets.

Kleist presents everything simply, with artful lines and seamless storytelling. His panel arrangements move the reader from the broadest strokes of horrific history to the whispered intimacies of inmates on the verge of death. Haft's wartime exploits are balanced with his domestic life in the U.S. as he tries to connect with his son despite his natural macho reticence and the way his experiences have warped his psyche. There is a wonderful last scene that draws the story full circle and points to possible catharsis, underlining what generations of Jews lost when they were dispersed.

The Boxer is a fast-moving graphic work, drawn with aplomb, scripted with the staccato rhythms of a boxing gym. It is also a valuable piece of Holocaust literature, a testament to those who survived and those who didn't--a graphic witness to man's endless capacity for cruelty and man's equally endless fight to withstand that cruelty. --Donald Powell, freelance writer

Tom Robbins, best known for writing flamboyantly imaginative novels (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues) with half-hilarious, half-metaphysical leanings, dishes out a juicy-parts version of his full and unusual life in this collection of autobiographical essays. In the preface, Robbins remarks, "My editor claims some of this stuff is so nuts even I couldn't have made it up," and readers will agree as they join Robbins for a stroll down a version of Memory Lane populated by circus performers, bohemians, the occasional celebrity and a variety of interesting women.

Robbins begins with his upbringing in Appalachian North Carolina during the Great Depression. His childhood nickname, Tommy Rotten, seemed to guide his formative years, and some of his earliest recollections are also his most colorful, including the time he briefly ran away to join the circus--with parental consent. As an adult, Robbins has maintained his habit of telling convention to go do rude things to itself. Readers who hop on board solely to hear about the evolution of a writing career might be surprised at Robbins's unconventional path to selling his first novel.

Robbins defies tradition yet again by throwing the usual linear autobiography format out the window, jumping instead from story to story in a manner that often seems disjointed but repeatedly becomes part of a greater train of thought. His trademark style is earthy and conversational yet simultaneously intellectual; fans and newcomers alike will guffaw and marvel at this most extraordinary life. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

When New Yorker writer Evan Osnos (son of PublicAffairs founder and editor-at-large Peter Osnos) moved to China as a foreign correspondent in 2005, the country had already captivated him with its sweeping metamorphosis into a free-market global superpower, thirsty for new sensations and new ideas despite its thick veil of authoritarian control. He set about trying to understand the changes from the point of view of ordinary citizens. There is the soldier who defected from Taiwan and became the chief World Bank economist; a peasant farmer's daughter whose marriage prospects inspired her to start China's largest online dating service; a young blogger and novelist who became an overnight sensation by sharing youthful views on the current cultural climate.

The reportage goes beyond these everyday men and women to include the controversial figures whose online social critiques and probing questions of party politics have resulted in indefinite imprisonment: Nobel Prize-winning author Liu Xiaobo, internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei and Chen Guangcheng, a peasants' rights advocate whose defection to the United States embarrassed the Chinese government.

"The hardest part about writing from China was not navigating the authoritarian bureaucracy or the occasional stint in a police station. It was the problem of proportions: how much drama was light and how much was dark," notes Osnos. Despite its great leap forward in progress and wealth, China continues to be shrouded in contradictions, a capitalist society whose stability is maintained through censorship and intimidation. Osnos never settles for simple explanations in his struggle to comprehend such dividing forces; there are always currents of sadness, wonder and deep-seated anticipation about what the China of his experience will become. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Don't be put off by the inspirational title of Andrew D. Kaufman's book about another book, War and Peace. It's a serious, thoughtful inquiry into how literature can affect and change people's lives, focused on one great novel. Kaufman knows Russian and he knows his Tolstoy; when Oprah picked Tolstoy's other massive novel, Anna Karenina, as one of her book club selections, Kaufman served as teacher answering her readers' questions.

Here, Kaufman combines biography, history and human interest with literary appreciation to guide us through this "loose, baggy monster of a book." Tolstoy was a 26-year-old soldier when he fought a losing battle with the Russian army during the siege of Sevastopol in Crimea. The war left a deep mark on the writer and influenced War and Peace. The brutal Napoleonic Wars, which ended 13 years before Tolstoy's birth, serve as a key part of the author's classic. As Kaufman points out, it is a war novel, but it's also a family saga and a love story; at its core, it's about "people trying to find their footing in a ruptured world."

Though Tolstoy has been dead just over a century, the wisdom of his most famous novel is relevant today. The specter of war has been too close for too long, we've come close to financial disaster, and the future is uncertain for so many: The "existential angst of Tolstoy and his characters is entirely familiar." Do give this fine, perceptive book a chance; it'll leave you more than ready to tackle Tolstoy's triumphant work. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Jonathan Auxier (Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes) creates a twisted tale both creepy and suspenseful, in the tradition of Washington Irving. 

Fourteen-year-old Molly and 10-year-old Kip McConnachie, two Irish orphans, make their way through the English countryside in search of the Windsor estate, where Molly has secured a place for them as servants. They find the rundown mansion, where a tree has "insinuated itself into the very architecture." Molly cares for the lady of the house and her two spoiled children, while her brother creates a glorious garden from the remains of what felt like "the memory of one." The house and its family are haunted by this mysterious tree with a mind of its own, and the Night Gardener who tends it. The tree casts a spell on those around it, granting them a wish of their choice. However, nothing comes without a price.

Auxier builds suspense through twists and turns, with just the right amount of watering, like the magical tree--just enough so the story thrives but not so much that it drowns in a pool that rots the roots. The eerie setting, the pacing of the plot and the cast of characters--each of whom, in his or her own way, evolves as a storyteller--makes this an ideal family read-aloud and a vacation pleasure. This will appeal to fans of Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz, Jennifer Nielsen's Ascendance trilogy, and The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. --Susannah Richards, associate professor, Eastern Connecticut State University

Together, Arthur Dorros and Raúl Colón capture the way an intimate bond between boy and grandfather can feel like a magical, private world.

As the boy narrator and his Abuelo "ride with the wind, 'el viento'" across the plains ("La Pampa") and into the clouds, "with the sky, 'el cielo,' wrapped around [them]," they discover they have everything they need. When it rains, Abuelo shows his grandson how to use his poncho to take shelter ("tu propia casa"/ your own house), and when a mountain lion threatens, Abuelo models how to stand strong ("fuerte"). Dorros peppers the story with just enough Spanish words for emphasis, and when the boy learns that his family plans to move to the city, Colón's signature swirling watercolors, scratched with color pencils, suggest the whirlwind of feelings that engulf the child. "'No te preocupes,' don't worry," Abuelo tells him. In his new home, the boy remembers all the things Abuelo taught him. A bully threatens him, and he stands strong ("fuerte"), and the wideness of the city stretches like La Pampa. The echoes of the Spanish words close the distance between boy and grandfather, connecting the familiar experiences with the unfamiliar, and making the boy feel at home wherever he is.

This deceptively simple story with its universal appeal reminds children that love and comfort can cross many miles. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness