Souleymane "Solo" Camara was a French police detective before a tragedy forced him to flee France. Now a private investigator in Mali (the West African nation was his father's homeland), Solo is approached by a beautiful French lawyer named Farah, who wants him to help her free her sister, Bahia, imprisoned for smuggling cocaine from Mali to France.

Solo successfully bribes a judge to free Bahia, but the day after her release Bahia washes up in the river, with her throat cut. Farah is distraught, and forces Solo's involvement in the case by telling everyone she's hired him to find and kill her sister's killers. The killers, who are connected to some very bad men, decide to eliminate Solo before he can find them.

A fast-paced, hardboiled thriller, White Leopard is over-the-top and violent. Its depiction of the corrupt Malian society is fascinating, giving a detailed look at a country that many Americans know little about. Solo's vague past, his dark demons and his wry sense of humor make him a surprisingly likable antihero. His travels through the developing nation, his descriptions of the vibrant and smelly city of Bamako, and his inability to let the case go, even when it would be in his best interest to walk away, make for an enthralling read. White Leopard is the first of Laurent Guillaume's books to be translated into English, but it surely won't be the last. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

In the second book of the Earthborn trilogy, Paul Tassi picks up where he left off in The Last Exodus. The last survivors of Earth--Lucas, Asha and their adoptive son, Noah--try to rally the population of Sora, a planet populated by humanoids, light-years away from Earth. Sora is engaged in an endless war with Xala, a planet full of genetically modified beings unaware that their warlike nature is the result of a Soran's meddling in the distant past.

Xalan rebels Alpha and Zeta hope to broadcast this shattering truth to their home, a mission both dangerous and nearly impossible, thanks to the security and military might of Xala. Lucas and Asha find themselves caught up in politics they barely understand from the start; they must find out whom to trust and how to behave on an alien world.

Tassi's universe is brightly built with detail and logic. Alpha is alien, intimidating, but always ready with a technological solution or a dry quip. A Soran princess is born to privilege, yet a deep sense of melancholy leads her to champion the war-ending mission. Even the monstrous Desecrator from Xala has a motivational background. Readers will cheer for the heroes as well as understand why the antagonists are out to destroy Sora and its way of life.

The Exiled Earthborn continues the brilliantly told story from the first book, expanding and enhancing the story of two worlds locked in a battle for supremacy, which ultimately caused the total destruction of Earth and its people. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

The two Vonnegut brothers, older Bernard and younger Kurt, were as different as brothers could be. Bernard was a genius scientist who earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from MIT in 1939. Kurt dropped out of Cornell in 1943 to join the army, where he was captured during the Battle of the Bulge and survived the Allied firebombing of Dresden. Bernard was the left brain: analytical, a man exploring the world through math. Kurt was the right: creative, a free thinker who knew he could be a great fiction writer. But until Kurt made his big literary break, he would have to support his new wife and the seven children they vowed to have.

In 1945, Bernard joined General Electric's research lab in Schenectady, N.Y., a playground for scientists nicknamed the "House of Magic." There he became fascinated by weather modification and control as part of GE's Project Cirrus. When the military took interest in Bernard's work he, like other scientists gravely concerned by the recent unleashing of atomic power over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, found himself in a moral morass.

Meanwhile, Kurt got a job in GE's public relations department and chafed under a conformist corporate culture. The Brothers Vonnegut by Ginger Strand (Killer on the Road) tracks Bernard's work with Project Cirrus and Kurt's struggle to start his writing career. Strand connects Kurt's time at GE and Bernard's weather modification efforts with Kurt's writing, especially in Cat's Cradle. The Brothers Vonnegut is an enthralling mix of science and literature surrounding the formative years of a literary icon. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Alex Haley wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to him), and Roots, the story of his family from Africa through slavery and the Civil War. Separately, these books had a profound impact on how the United States viewed race relations and its own history. Together, their influence could hardly be overstated, and that is what Robert J. Norrell argues in Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation, the first biography of Haley and a study of his two seminal works and the controversies they fostered.

Norrell covers Haley's forebears and Tennessee childhood, his three marriages and a writing career growing from the Coast Guard (where ghost-writing personal letters led to public relations assignments) to magazine work, which led to his interviewing Malcolm X for Reader's Digest and Playboy. The process for Malcolm's Autobiography (1965) was dynamic, as Haley walked the fine line between Malcolm's voice and Haley's more moderate political position, and as Malcolm's views on race relations evolved. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Roots (1976) was even harder won, as Haley drew a short book contract out over more than 11 years of research and travel. The effect of the book, and its accompanying television miniseries, was astounding. And yet the rest of his life and work would be shadowed by accusations of copyright infringements and invention in what Haley called a work of nonfiction.

With sensitivity and careful study, Norrell examines Haley's embattled life and extraordinary achievements. His final conclusion about this "likeable narcissist" is that despite Haley's imperfections, his influence was prodigious and deserves our respect and continued study today. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949 by British historian Ian Kershaw, perhaps best known for his enormous two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler (1889-1936 Hubris and 1936-1945 Nemesis), is the first of two new entries in the Penguin History of Europe series. This book marks the "era of Europe's self-destruction" through World War I, interwar economic and political calamities, World War II and the beginning of the continent's division between the United States' influence and the Soviet occupation. The second book will span the Cold War through the modern day.

Even as a standalone volume, To Hell and Back is a monumental work. As Kershaw readily admits in his preface: "for practically every sentence I wrote a plethora of specialist works, often of great quality, was available." In covering such broad and well-trodden ground, To Hell and Back must find success or failure in its clarity and organization. By these measures, Kershaw's work is a triumph. His engaging prose guides readers through details thorough enough to understand fully a given topic without becoming bogged down. Politics, cultural trends and economics alike are coherent in Kershaw's capable hands.

With so much material to cover, Kershaw might have been tempted to gloss over "common knowledge," leaving casual history readers lost in the process. He instead keeps the basics succinct, covering, for example, the course of the Spanish Civil War without boring history buffs or alienating newcomers. The sheer breadth of To Hell and Back gives fascinating insight into the pushes and pulls of the geopolitical tides that shaped the modern world. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

When it comes to parenting, "breast is best" has become cliché, and while its truthfulness isn't usually questioned, Courtney Jung's Lactivism does just that. Her research is extensive, and she devotes each chapter to an issue concerning breastfeeding in the U.S. She separates those who advocate for women's right to breastfeed in public from the "lactivists," a term she uses to describe zealous advocates, policy makers and others who believe breast milk is vital for infant wellness despite the lack of scientific evidence. Jung (The Moral Force of Indigenous Politics) explains that the science that extolled the benefits of breast milk was inaccurate and poorly interpreted, promoting alleged long-term benefits of the "good" bacteria and other breast milk components. 

The dark side of lactivism shames mothers who use formula, and has influenced the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program so that women who do not breastfeed receive grossly unequal benefits compared to breastfeeding recipients. Jung describes how some lactivists have worked to hide the risk of transmitting HIV from mothers with the virus. Ironically, these social and financial pressures encourage women to use breast pumps, removing the only proven benefit of breastfeeding--bonding--from the equation. American women receive no mandatory paid maternity leave, and most of them don't have such leave via medical insurance, yet medical insurance pays for breast pumps. This encouragement to pump is perversely presented as a freedom for women, a choice they can make so they can continue working. Jung's Lactivism illustrates how a woman's choice has become a matter of public health and a socially enforced necessity. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company

Foreign correspondent and Newsweek contributing editor Alex Perry (Lifeblood) takes an ambitious and controversial approach to answering some of the thorniest questions about Africa's contradictions and its epic quest for freedom.

Perry starts from the premise that "outsiders" all too often get Africa wrong. The journalists, academics and foreign aid workers who define Africa for the Western world tend to treat Africa as a monolithic entity or sell their own solution. Aware he's an outsider, Perry avoids interviewing familiar experts in favor of recounting the stories he's been told over the course of a decade crisscrossing the continent. He writes about men and women from Kenya, South Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa and elsewhere. There's Khalima, the 38-year-old mother of nine in Mogadishu, husband near death, her five remaining children left at the city gates while she searches for a burial site for her dying seven-year-old son. The episode gives a human face to an avoidable disaster: southern Somalia was under the control of a militant group with terrorist ties, and a U.S. aid block, part of the U.S. war on terror, was intended to deprive a few thousand militia fighters, but effectively denied emergency food to several million Somalis, resulting in a humanitarian crisis.

Perry does equal justice to seemingly intractable problems, yet also details how the continent has enormous potential: Africa's economic growth has been double the global average since 2003. The Rift is an immensely readable, shocking and important book. It challenges readers to think about how we relate to a changing continent, the suffering around us, and what it means to do good in the world. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer

"Once outside the womb, each human life begins with an inhalation.... To breathe is to live, and mindfulness techniques facilitate and sustain this realization." In Living Mindfully, Deborah Schoeberlein David illuminates how something as simple yet essential as a breath can become the gateway to greater compassion, peace and kindness. Meditation is able to ground us in the present moment and enrich our interactions with others. David shares her own experiences throughout, providing practical examples of how meditation has improved her relationships, parenting and vocation.

She begins with One Mindful Breath, which becomes a foundational gateway to other exercises like Pause, Mindful Counting, Sharing Kindness and many more. David's exercises are concrete and manageable, taking only a second or two, yet demonstrate how "the impact of pausing--at the right time and place--can be infinite." The biological benefits of meditation on stress management and the brain's neuroplasticity are well-documented, so David emphasizes the benefits of learning how to respond rather than react to daily experiences with two basic approaches: "applying mindfulness to promote optimal experience, and... to minimize harm." She spends a chapter on how mindfulness can enrich relationships, child rearing and the work environment, and alleviate times of great pain and loss, as well as encourage the "sense of freedom that comes with recognizing thoughts and feelings as mental events, rather than aspects of a permanent identity." Whether someone is new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, Living Mindfully is a valuable resource. --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics

Concussion is the story of former Pittsburgh Steeler "Iron Mike" Webster's brain and the Nigerian-born forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu, who studied it to discover the cause of Webster's post-football dementia and death at age 50. After graduating from a top Nigerian medical school, Omalu immigrated to the U.S. in 1994, where he worked his way through a half-dozen additional degrees before settling on a neuropathology sub-specialty and working with Pittsburgh's county coroner.

When Mike Webster's corpse was randomly assigned to Omalu's autopsy table, Omalu's relentless curiosity about complicated brain damage, along with dogged persistence, led to his breakthrough insight that Webster's death was caused by repeated concussions from playing football--a published scientific conclusion that brought the weight of the NFL down on him.

GQ correspondent Jeanne Marie Laskas (Hidden America) is the ideal author for this deep-dive into a messy David and Goliath, black immigrant–versus–white power story of subterfuge, lawyering, politics and seasonal Sunday afternoon obsession. With a slam-bam, boffo style buttressed by strong research and interviews, Laskas doesn't miss a thing. She graphically captures Webster's job after the snap to "explode into other guys, head first"; and explains the futility of a helmet when "the brain sloshing around inside that skull was going to bash into the skull walls no matter how much padding you nestled the head in." Concussion is such a well-told story that it is the basis for a forthcoming film starring Will Smith as Bennet Omalu. Smith will have his work cut out to bring Omalu's story to life better than Laskas already has. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

In American Dancing: From the Cakewalk to the Moonwalk, Megan Pugh uses the history of dance in America as a way to explore larger questions about race, class and, ultimately, American identity.

Dance is a continually evolving hybrid in Pugh's account. Black slaves borrow from the French quadrille and Irish step dancing to create the cakewalk and tap dancing. White teenagers adopt and adapt dances from black culture in the 1920s, and again in the 1950s and 1960s. Agnes de Mille and other choreographers use steps from tap and square dancing to transform the ballet into an American form. The borrowing is not always innocent: the blackface of the minstrel show is the most obvious point at which racism is a driving element in the story. The dance floor becomes an arena in which divergent strands of American culture meet, meld, separate and meet again--creating a recognizably American dance vocabulary in the process.

Pugh handles dance as an art form and its historical context with equal deftness. She builds her book around the personal stories of some of the biggest names in American dance: Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, the Castles, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Michael Jackson and choreographers Agnes de Mille and Paul Taylor. Not only does Pugh draw sometimes unexpected connections among them and place them within her larger story, she also describes their dancing so vividly that readers will want to see the dances themselves--something she anticipates with a detailed list of dance films and videos. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

In this weighty, wordless book of exquisite black-and-white pencil drawings by Chinese illustrator Guojing, a cherubic young girl from the city is left alone in the apartment when her parents go off to work.

After staring at the closed door for a while, she busies herself playing dress-up, reading and gazing out at the snowy city. Enough. She dons a snow suit, grabs an umbrella and heads outside. The passage of time marches along in comic-strip panels, pausing here and there in glorious full-bleed spreads. The little girl amuses herself by people-watching and making funny tracks in the snow, and eventually boards bus #25. The world zooms by, she falls asleep, and when she wakes up, the bus is empty. She jumps off somewhere in the forest. (At just this moment, her mother back home finds the note she left, "Gone to visit grandma." Her parents rush to find her.)

Meanwhile, the girl, now frightened, spots a large-antlered stag, which leads her safely into a lake, then up a staircase of clouds, where she has a giddy time bouncing and playing with her adorable new otter-like cloud companions... until they leave her, too.

In an introductory note, Guojing writes, "The story in this book is fantasy, but it reflects the very real feelings of isolation and loneliness I experienced growing up in the 1980s under the one-child policy in China." The loneliness of the little girl is indeed apparent, but her ebullient nature is, too--and this emotional power, combined with the wonder of a cloud adventure and fuzzy animal friends, is sure to mesmerize young readers. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

For anyone who has laid awake at night, wondering what's at the center of the galaxy, why we get old, whether animals have a sense of rhythm, or why junk food tastes better than healthy food--and for the parents and teachers who have despaired of ever being able to come up with answers on the spot--Crispin Boyer's Why? is an all-you-can-eat buffet of knowledge. Packed with fascinating facts and myth-busters, and with hundreds of gorgeous National Geographic-quality photos, Why? is the kind of book kids and adults will pick up again and again.

What sets Why? apart from other big, glossy collections of fun facts is the easygoing writing style that Boyer (That's Gross!; This or That?) is known for. In the chapter about the universe, Boyer writes, "Nothing against the world's largest ketchup bottle in Illinois, U.S.A., or the museum of roller skates in nearby Nebraska, but a voyage through the solar system reveals more awe-inspiring attractions than your typical cross-country road trip." And, in the animal chapter, he vividly describes the taste of different bugs: "giant water bugs taste like a salty Jolly Rancher candy... scorpions taste funky and bitter, like spoiled crab meat... palm weevil larvae taste like bacon soup."

Organized around topics such as technology, the body, pop culture, history and the planet, Why? includes weird-but-true facts, silly questions with serious answers ("What would happen if I never trimmed my nails?"), and "Q:Tips," or advice related to each chapter's topics. Truly, there's something for everyone here. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Drawing on her own experience as a transracial adoptee, first-time novelist Shannon Gibney follows a likable, conflicted heroine as she searches for answers about her families, both real and biological.

Sixteen-year-old Alex "Little" Kirtridge lives and breathes baseball, playing against boys ("pale, skinny Wisconsin kids") and training hours every day to please the team's demanding coach, her father. Her white adoptive family never discusses race, beyond her father's contradictory assertions that they don't see color and that Alex is "only half black." However, half feels like more than enough to Alex--she isn't white, but she feels like an imposter around black people, even Reggie Carter, the handsome pitcher who falls for her. When her 11-year-old sister, Kit, finds a letter to Alex from her black biological father that their parents hid five years ago, Alex must decide whether connecting with him and exploring her identity is worth going against the only parents she has ever known. At the same time, Alex's changing teenaged body begins to slow her down on the diamond, and she starts to wonder if baseball is something she does for herself or for her father.

See No Color is a thought-provoking look into adoption across racial boundaries, deftly combined with timeless coming-of-age themes of independence, self-worth and first love. No matter their background, mature teen readers will find kinship with Alex as she faces the universal struggle to integrate her many parts into a whole self. Gibney knocks it out of the park with a heroine whose courage and humanity will make readers cheer. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services librarian, Latah County Library District (Idaho)