In The Reason You're Alive by Matthew Quick (Love May Fail), 68-year-old David Granger is a politically incorrect, profane, gun-toting, right-wing widower with a very dark past. He is haunted by murky memories of the atrocities he committed while serving in the Vietnam War and blames himself for his wife's suicide. When he crashes his BMW at the beginning of the novel, he discovers he has a brain tumor that resulted from his exposure to Agent Orange. This brush with mortality sets him on a crusade to improve his relationships with best friend Sue, a Vietnamese American; his son, Hank; and adoring granddaughter Ella. David also seeks to make amends with Clayton Fire Bear, a fellow Vietnam vet who used to scalp the enemy soldiers he killed--and whose hunting knife he stole.

David's attempt to maneuver these pieces of his life with a fragile heart and fragile psyche resonate genuinely and suspensefully. The novel builds toward his confrontation with Fire Bear, tugging at readers' heartstrings and offering food for thought about current political rhetoric. David is a memorable protagonist who mixes prejudiced rants with true wisdom and noble behavior. Quick insightfully presents a person who is more than the sum of his personal politics, showing how selfish instincts battle nobler ones--a valuable lesson in increasingly politically stratified times. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

The League of Pensioners, led by Martha Andersson and four feisty, resourceful retirees in their late 70s and 80s--escapees from a Stockholm senior residence--are back. The stolen millions from their previous Robin Hood-style art robbery, the caper featured in The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules, benefited the conniving quintet and funded retirement homes, cultural institutions and supported other "less-fortunate members of society."

This second installment of their adventures is set six months later. The group has been keeping a low profile in Las Vegas while coordinating a casino heist. During their planning, they accidently cross paths with dangerous jewelry store thieves and, through a series of laugh-out-loud mix-ups and mishaps, the pensioners come into possession of a cache of stolen diamonds and other gemstones worth millions. When the "Outlaw Oldies" ultimately decide to return to Stockholm, a significant portion of their windfall--stuffed inside walking sticks that are crammed into a golf bag--goes missing at the airport. This launches Sweden's geriatric most-wanted on a suspenseful, bumbling mission to steal back what was already stolen, while trying to sidestep customs officials, the Swedish police and a host of quirky characters--including a biker gang and a fortune teller.

The well-drawn strengths and weaknesses of Ingelman-Sundberg's devious yet charming criminal masterminds work together to benefit mankind. They also deliver a hilarious story. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

In Brian Platzer's first novel, one of Brooklyn's last gentrifying neighborhoods is having a bad day. Racially charged Bedford-Stuyvesant's history of shoot-first policing has the locals on edge. Their anger builds when a cop opens fire on an unarmed 12-year-old. The fuse is finally lit when police begin rounding up teens joy-jumping the turnstiles at the Utica Avenue A train station and then cuffing those who swarm the area to protest. Shouting gives way to baseball bats, guns, looting--until all hell breaks loose.

This is especially bad news for Aaron, who, with his journalist girlfriend, Amelia, and their newborn son, Simon, are the only whites on a block already pricing out long-time black owners. Aaron has a gambling problem and was kicked out of the rabbinate for stealing from his synagogue to cover his bookie debts. He and Amelia are on center stage of Bed-Stuy Is Burning, but Platzer's novel also includes an ensemble of engaging support characters. Simon's nanny is a devout Jamaican immigrant in the process of converting to Islam. The block's unofficial maintenance super, Jupiter, is a migrant from Georgia with an angry teenage son caught up in the melee.

Platzer paints with a broad brush, but his characters are robust. His story is about more than big social issues. It is about the masks people wear to hide insecurities--masks that are stripped off in the face of violent confrontation. A bad day in Bed-Stuy is a vivid microcosm of the United States, but the hope Platzer suggests with his characters' healthy unmasking offers optimism for the whole country's days ahead. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Knots is an inventive short story collection from one of Norway's most acclaimed writers, Gunnhild Øyehaug. Originally published in 2004 in Norway, Knots is a collection of surreal stories that range from traditional short story length to less-than-a-page-long microfictions.

Øyehaug often introduces a comic touch to stories about despair and uncertainty, shedding a satirical light on the intellectual agitation common to brainy short fiction. Her characters frequently take self-consciousness to an extreme, such as in "Nice and Mild," where a trip to IKEA pushes the protagonist to a crisis of circular reasoning: "I'm thinking such simple, positive things, I try not to see myself from the outside, I try not to think idiot, idiot, get away from here, can't you see that being here and thinking positive thoughts is just building to an enormous anticlimax." In a much shorter story, "The Deer at the Edge of the Forest," a hart despairs that "no one sees me" even though "the whole point is that I am supposed to be difficult to see, I know that.... But it's the very premise of my life that is now making me miserable."

The rest of the stories are as bizarre, told sometimes in odd script-like formats ("An Entire Family Disappears") or with incredibly lengthy footnotes ("Compulsion"). One of the most memorable stories, "Small Knot," follows a mother and her son tethered by an unbreakable umbilical cord, but none of these stories are straightforward or easy to forget. Knots is the work of an idiosyncratic master. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Jenny D. Williams's first novel, The Atlas of Forgotten Places, is a gripping story of two women whose lives become entwined in war-torn Uganda in 2008.

Sabine is living a quiet life in Germany when she finds out that her 22-year-old American niece, Lily, went missing in Uganda after completing her volunteer work there. Sabine spent 20 years as an aid worker in Africa, including a stint in Uganda, so she sets off for the region, determined to track down her beloved niece.

Rose is a native of Uganda in her early 20s who was abducted by rebels at 13 and only recently returned to her family and her home village. She lost her right arm during her years in the bush and now works as an assistant to Christophe, an aid worker from Switzerland. Rose's boyfriend, Ocen, is also missing--she hasn't heard from him in a month.

The novel alternates between Sabine and Rose, two separate stories at first that gradually intertwine as they search for their loved ones in the lush jungle of East Africa, dodging dangerous rebels, gunfire and smugglers. Christophe accompanies the two women, each with secrets from their pasts, in their tense and treacherous quest. The narrative moves between Sabine and Rose in this suspenseful, compelling story set in a perilous region that many readers may have only heard about on the news. --Suzan L. Jackson, freelance writer and author of Book by Book blog

The Danish sister-and-brother duo Lotte and Søren Hammer (The Vanished) has created characters and smart plots that lend themselves beautifully to the police procedural. The Lake, fourth in the series featuring Detective Superintendent Konrad Simonsen, focuses on the unsolved murder of an unidentified young woman.

No great police effort or public concern was initially expended on the case, as the victim was a Nigerian immigrant. But all hell breaks loose after a chief constable publicly uses a racial slur to describe the woman. Mounting pressure for justice results in the assignment of the case to Simonsen's crew.

Clues are scarce, leaving the unit with their contacts, powers of observation, dogged determination and experience to dig up a suspect. On the other side of the case is an ambitious crime family with their own fermenting issues coming to a head. The Lake opens with the woman's death almost a year prior, offering full view of the case from both sides of the law from start to finish.

Scandinavian thrillers are often described as cold, harsh and violent, terms that are not unfair or even unwelcome in crime fiction. Along with the unforgiving landscape and local sensibilities, stories melding these elements have created their own fingerprint on the genre. The Hammers bring their distinctive spin to the formula, ratcheting the camaraderie and humor, and lending some compelling warmth to the mix. Their well-rounded characters are as much a draw to this fine series as their plots. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

The night after Matthias Glass arrives at Blackburne, a prestigious prep school in the mountains of Virginia, he sobs with homesickness into his pillow. Soon, however, a schedule of rigorous classes and a tight circle of friends appease his loneliness. His closest friend is Fritz Davenport, a Blackburne golden boy and the son of rich parents. He seems destined for greatness, but after a fight with Matthias their senior year, Fritz takes off into the woods and is never seen again. Ten years later, Matthias returns to Blackburne as a teacher and failed novelist. When another student goes missing, Matthias is overcome by memories of Fritz and decides to investigate his disappearance. What follows is a riveting literary mystery about power, privilege and the need to find the truth no matter how devastating it might be.

Shadow of the Lions is Christopher Swann's debut, but it unfolds with a maturity characteristic of works by more seasoned novelists. A product of boarding school himself, Swann is now the chair of an English department at a private school in Georgia. It perhaps comes as little surprise, then, that this mystery is so well observed: its richly drawn characters are motivated by circumstances that feel true to life, and they speak with a rare authenticity. Swann also demonstrates a talent for setting--his Virginia woods feel either menacing or soothing depending on who enters them. Unsettling and beautifully written, Shadow of the Lions challenges the idea that we ever truly leave high school behind. --Amy Brady, freelance writer and editor

Daniel H. Wilson (Robopocalypse) looks to the past in a novel about a race of robots more ancient and yet more advanced than humans can comprehend, hiding in plain sight among us.

Years ago, June Stefanov's grandfather opened a locked box in his shed and showed her a "crescent-shaped slice of metal the size of a seashell" with "a labyrinthine pattern of grooves--a language of bizarre angles." Before he immigrated to the United States, he told June, he fought in World War II and witnessed a man of supernatural strength withstand a hail of bullets and turn back a German tank singlehandedly, speaking to no one and leaving behind the metal artifact. He called the man an angel of justice, something old and alien and able to appear human, and entrusted June with the relic upon his death. June, now a grown woman, spends her life in pursuit of the mystery behind the story and the relic. An anthropologist specializing in ancient technology, she hunts worldwide for examples of antique automatons. However, her investigations have been noticed by the very beings she seeks out.

The Clockwork Dynasty is a hybrid: engrossing historical fiction starring ancient androids and mile-a-minute present-day action thriller. Wilson's novel sweeps readers from imperial courts to blood-soaked battlefields and tinkerer's workshops both futuristic and arcane. June's mad dash to flee a secret society bent on taking her knowledge and her life evokes the best moments of Dan Brown. Although the ending gives some closure, Wilson allows gears of mystery to tick away, leaving the reader hopeful for a sequel exploring the workings of the clockwork angels. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Emma Reyes was a Colombian painter who worked with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and spent most of her adult life in Paris. The Book of Emma Reyes is her childhood memoir, written between 1969 and 1997, in the form of 23 letters to a friend who suggested this method for finally putting down her horrifying and enthralling stories.

Nothing about this memoir is sentimental. Reyes's earliest memories are of extreme poverty in a slum of Bogotá, living with her older sister and a brother who was taken away without explanation. The head of this household was an abusive erratic young woman who Reyes barely realized was her mother, "a woman I remember only as an enormous tangle of black hair." She would lock the children into their windowless room for days at a time while she went away, and eventually she abandoned the sisters to a convent when they were five and six years old.

There the girls joined 150 others in working 10-hour days to earn their keep. Reyes had no schooling until she was 10, and not much thereafter. These horrors and deprivations are told with the same open innocent perception as the many wonders she remembers as well: a spectacular neighborhood fire, a general made by her friends out of clay, a pet pig, an adored baby, a player piano. Each time Reyes found someone or something to love, she lost them through some catastrophe. This is a memoir of extreme hardships told in a clear, restrained style, with an ending that leaves the reader wishing for more. --Sara Catterall

Philosopher and avid surfer Aaron James (Assholes: A Theory) draws deep meaning from the ocean's waves in his thoughtful and life-affirming treatise Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Journey into a Life of Meaning.

In the tradition of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, James analyzes his personal pastime from a philosophical standpoint, uniting the habitual and quotidian with the profound and metaphysical. Surfing with Sartre is divided into three sections: epistemology, metaphysics and political philosophy. James explores these topics through his own surfing anecdotes blended with explication of philosophical concepts. He presents the ideas of many philosophers but homes in on the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, questioning how Sartre's conceptions of freedom and moral responsibility pertain to surfing.

To answer these questions, James examines the psychological reality and philosophic assumptions underlying the popular, surfer-like dictum, "Go with the flow." "To surf, in general," he writes, "is to be adaptively attuned to a changing phenomenon beyond oneself, for its own sake." This is the nature of existential freedom, James argues, the ability to flow within one's circumstances and to find transcendence and sublimity in the activity itself. He urges individuals to extend grace to others and connects this surfer mentality to globalization and a new conception of capitalism in which people work less, love more and live in harmony with their environment rather than dominate it.

Funny, enthralling and above all wise, Surfing with Sartre offers fresh insights into the human condition that will interest the academic theorist, the casual surfer and everyone in between. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

Wicked Bugs is not for the faint of heart. Author/bookseller Amy Stewart's (Lady Cop Makes Trouble) young readers edition of her adult nonfiction title featuring insects, spiders, worms and other creepy-crawlies is sure to thrill budding entomologists, but may leave others feeling mysterious prickles on their skin. Briony Morrow-Cribbs's illustrations throughout enhance the sinister nature of these creatures, giving the book a powerful gross factor--perfect for the middle grade target audience.

Wicked Bugs is divided into six categories of vicious vermin: Deadly Creatures, Everyday Dangers, Unwelcome Invaders, Destructive Pests, Serious Pains and Terrible Threats. Within each category readers will discover species discussed with spine-tingling details and amazing facts. Marching across the pages of each chapter are Morrow-Cribbs's realistic illustrations, complete with texture and depth. The lifelike appearances evoke double takes to ensure they're drawings and not unexpected guests settling in to read along. Wicked Bugs is the entomophobe's version of a car wreck: Stewart has compiled such interesting information on otherwise repellent critters that readers can't help but keep turning the pages in anticipation of what will come next.

This accessible, middle-grade version of Wicked Bugs combines science, anthropology and history with a powerful yuck-factor. It's sure to be a hit with even the most reluctant readers--just be prepared for some serious goose bumps and skin tingles along the way. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

After a night of drinking and poor decision-making at their small Irish town's annual bonfire, Olive, Rose, Ivy and twins Hazel and Rowan all lose something. Coincidentally, a spellbook that fetches lost items appears, and the teens take the chance to right their situations, quickly discovering the spell may have drummed up some possessions--and people--they would rather stay hidden.

Moïra Fowley-Doyle (The Accident Season) uses three protagonists--Olive, Hazel and (through diary entries) Laurel--to tell this dreamy, bewitching story that walks the line of real and surreal. Before the characters even meet, they're connected to one another through small coincidences: Hazel finds Olive's lost shoe in her bike spoke and Olive picks up Hazel's jacket at the bonfire. Fowley-Doyle effortlessly (almost sneakily) places these acts of fate into the narrative, begging readers to read her book in one sitting without missing the smallest of plot points that may tie everything together. Her eerie, atmospheric storytelling--parents in trancelike states doling out strange warnings, blustery summer storms and crossword clues predicting the immediate future--is the perfect backdrop to the real-life problems the teenagers face, including alcoholism, sexual assault and abandonment. When the stories finally collide, the twists and turns come fast and furiously, making shocked readers wonder how they missed what was right in front of them the whole time.

Spellbook of the Lost and Found is an enchanting sophomore novel about friendships, family and everyday magic. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Returning to Los Angeles from boarding school, Suzette is excited to see her old friends, especially her crush Emil and her stepbrother Lionel, whom she calls "Lion." She is disappointed to find that Lionel, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, has disconnected from their group of friends (he thinks "people ask too many questions"), especially because her parents' desire to focus on his treatment was the reason Suzette was sent to boarding school in the first place. Suzette (whom Lionel calls "Little") thinks her mother "really thought she did what was best for all of us by sending me away," but she knows "how easy it is to believe you're doing the right thing if you say it to yourself often enough."

At a welcome-home party, Suzette meets Rafaela, who starts dating Lionel. Things seem to be perking up between Suzette and Emil until she discovers she also has feelings for Rafaela. Suzette is overwhelmed by guilt: she has a crush on someone even though she's dating someone else; she wasn't there for her brother; and she left things unsaid with her roommate, with whom her secret relationship ended when homophobic classmates outed them.

Little & Lion unfolds in alternating "then" and present-day chapters, allowing Suzette to understand what happened while she was away and what happened to send her away. Brandy Colbert (Pointe) paints a realistic, nuanced portrait of bipolar disorder, showing Lionel's high energy and irrational anger while also depicting the long process that begins with identifying symptoms and leads to diagnosis and management. Suzette's coming to terms with her bisexuality and Lionel's bipolar disorder are given the gravity and time they deserve without pat outcomes. Sexy moments and raucous but realistic teen parties round out this passionate, contemporary bildungsroman. --Sarah Hannah Gómez, freelance writer and doctoral student in children's literature