Banned by King Louis XIII, yet highly desired by courtiers and merchants, Flemish bobbin lace was both currency and contraband in 17th-century France. Through seven points of view, Iris Anthony weaves the intricate story of a single length of lace and its impact on many lives in The Ruins of Lace.

Katharina has woven lace under the watchful eyes of nuns until she has nearly lost her own sight, but she cannot imagine doing anything else. Since Lisette incurred the wrath of a visiting count, he has threatened her family with ruin unless they can provide the lace he craves. Denis, a border guard, struggles to understand lace's appeal, while a dog used to run lace from Flanders to France understands only that lace must be very important to humans. These and other stories begin as separate threads, but Anthony weaves them together until each strand becomes essential to the novel's overall pattern.

The complex plot is the strongest feature of The Ruins of Lace; the multiple narrators make it difficult to get a clear picture of any one character. However, the historical detail is fascinating, from the methods used to run lace (coffins, dogs, hollowed-out loaves of bread) to the strict social boundaries expressed through fabrics, weapons and household goods. The abrupt ending feels as though Anthony snipped off all seven threads at once, but the glimpse she offers into the 17th-century's passion for fine lace are both intriguing and entertaining. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Charles Portis wrote one of Garrison Keillor's favorite novels; Jonathan Lethem calls him "everybody's favorite least-known great novelist"; and Roy Blount, Jr. says Portis "could be Cormac McCarthy if he wanted to, but he'd rather be funny." When the New York Herald Tribune folded and Portis quit his journalism job, according to Tom Wolfe, he moved back to Arkansas, wrote novels and got rich off the royalties after his novel True Grit became one of John Wayne's last great films: "It was too goddamned perfect to be true," Wolfe wrote, and yet there it was." Then, like Salinger, Portis pretty much disappeared to live an ordinary life, laboring over his writing until he got it perfect.

He continued to write, including four more brilliant novels, the last of which came out in 1991. (All of them have been reissued and kept in print by Overlook Press.) In editing Escape Velocity, Jay Jennings has done a terrific job of tracking down many of Portis's works, including some stunningly good examples of his early newspaper reporting, as well as short stories, travel pieces, a memoir and a never-before-published comic three-act play, Delray's New Moon.

Escape Velocity, following Joel and Ethan Coen's remake of True Grit, could bring about a well-deserved revival for the nearly 80-year-old Portis. The title comes from his novel The Dog of the South: "A lot of people leave Arkansas and most of them come back sooner or later," Portis wrote. "They can't quite achieve escape velocity." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher/Arkansas resident

Fiona Griffiths, the protagonist in Harry Bingham's debut novel, Talking to the Dead, will likely be compared with a certain Swedish girl with a dragon tattoo, but she's no imitation. Rather, she's one of the most unusual characters to come along in crime fiction in recent memory. Despite a psychological condition that makes her feel disconnected from emotions, she's a fiercely smart, highly efficient detective constable in Cardiff, Wales.

When Fi investigates a former cop accused of embezzlement, she soon becomes involved in the case of a prostitute killed, along with her six-year-old daughter, in a filthy squat house. A credit card belonging to a multimillionaire is also found at the scene. The problem? He's been dead for months. Did the prostitute know the millionaire? Do the murders have anything to do with the embezzlement case?

It's good news that this is the first in a series because Fi is an indomitable character whose mysterious past should provide fodder for a few more books. As she points out: "Fi. That's if backward. Griffiths... two more ifs lurking at the heart of it. My name, literally, is as iffy as you can get." Though she feels removed from those around her, the first-person narration and witty observations (though perhaps they're not funny to her) make her accessible to readers. Furthermore, her supportive family is a welcome break from the cliché of heroes coming from broken homes. Fi isn't damage-free, but she's fully dimensional--and not iffy at all. --Elyse Dinh-McCrilllis, freelance writer/editor, blogging at Pop Culture Nerd

Food writer and historian Bee Wilson delves into the lineage of the cookware, utensils and appliances we use to prepare our meals in Consider the Fork, a surprisingly entertaining history of kitchen technology.

Here technology simply refers to any tool invented for a purpose. Wilson says, "It took countless inventions, small and large, to get to the well-equipped kitchens we have now." She considers how cultural influences have changed the way people prepare and eat their meals throughout history, as well as how cooking implements have left their mark on civilizations. Some ancient cultures, such as the Funnelbeaker culture of Neolithic Europe, are even named for the distinctive types and shapes of their pottery. Wilson primarily addresses the birth and growth of Western cooking, but also covers countries and tribes the world over, including the Maori of New Zealand, who traditionally cooked their food over the naturally occurring boiling pools of the Whakarewarewa hot springs.

Wilson's sprightly, knowledgeable voice skips nimbly through the narratives of pots and pans, knives, grinding implements and eating utensils, working up to the theme of the kitchen as a whole. Short asides on particularly interesting niche items such as the mezzaluna, rice cooker and toaster provide quick, fascinating epilogues to each chapter. Her insights will change the way you look at your kitchen accoutrements. Take the blunt butter knife, descendent of the deadly and versatile medieval belt knife: "It takes a civilization in an advanced state of politesse--or passive aggression--to devise on purpose a knife that does a worse job of cutting." --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger, Infinite Reads

Hanta virus, West Nile virus, SARS, Q fever--these are just a few of the deadly diseases David Quammen (The Song of the Dodo) dissects in his haunting and authoritative Spillover. Quammen explains: "When a pathogen leaps from some nonhuman animal into a person, and succeeds there in establishing itself as an infectious presence, sometimes causing illness or death, the result is zoonosis." This process of "spillover" occurs all around the world, with the spread of infection from new or previously unknown diseases becoming more rapid as people travel for work and pleasure. Outbreaks can happen suddenly and rapidly--transmitted by a sneeze, a cough, a mosquito bite--whenever the number of nonimmune individuals is higher than those who are immune.

Well-researched and descriptive, but not lurid (think The Hot Zone), Spillover takes readers from the jungles of Africa in search of Ebola to rat farms in China (rats and bats carry many "spillover" diseases and are also on many Chinese dinner menus) to the Netherlands in search of the viruses and bacterium that can jump from an animal host to a human. Quammen provides in-depth analysis of each disease, its effect on humans and a sympathetic view of the men and women who are putting their lives on the line to study them. Spillover is full of death--painful, bloody and shocking--and the stuff of nightmares: bats, rats, snakes and "walls... alive with thirsty ticks." But this should not detract readers from Quammen's engrossing and scientific investigation. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

In his foreword to Ride, Boldly Ride, Clint Eastwood tells us the "public's recognition of the Western movie as a genuine art form was a long time coming." This is the paradox at the heart of this fascinating book: How could our most popular film genre take so long to get the respect it deserved? Thanks to Mary Lea Bandy and Kevin Stoehr, we now have a clear and thorough explanation.

It was D.W. Griffith, they explain, who "helped to establish the western film as a specific form of visual and narrative art." Subsequent movies further shaped the Western's defining themes: the "Westerner" himself, his weapon, survival on his own terms, the land (especially water) and the importance of law and order.

Bandy and Stoehr touch upon many of the genre's greatest icons, including Red River ("one of the most enduring of westerns"), The Searchers ("now considered one of America's greatest films") and the "brilliant and bloody" The Wild Bunch. There's a whole chapter on Eastwood's contributions to the genre, as both an actor and a director, focusing on The Unforgiven. Even the postmodern era is represented by films like No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Cowboys and Aliens, all with their "self-conscious response to a wide-ranging era of western films." As the credits roll, we are reminded that the Western's "clearest expression of journey, adventure, and expansionism has been the journey, adventure, and expansionism of the genre itself." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

In this bewitching companion to A Tale Dark and Grimm, Adam Gidwitz blends Grimm tales with the works of Hans Christian Andersen.

"Once upon a time, fairy tales were horrible," says the snarky narrator, who returns to share the truth behind these fairy tales. Often the narrator's gallows humor balances warnings to readers about the depths of the stories' darkness, cruelty and bloodshed. A wishing well grants a frog his desire to speak to a beautiful sky-eyed princess, in hopes that she will be his friend. Instead, she attempts to murder him by hurling him against a wall and breaks his heart (and his leg). Then: "Things get worse." After Jill, daughter to a beautiful yet cruel queen, is humiliated ("Emperor's New Clothes"–style) at a royal procession, she encounters that same talking frog, and together they run away to her cousin Jack. A deceptive old woman gets Jack and Jill to swear on their lives (literally)--despite the first of the frog's many protests--to find the Seeing Glass, lost for 1,000 years. In return, they will be worshipped by the whole world. From there, a magic bean sprouts into a beanstalk, and an adventure with brutal giants, cunning goblins and mermaids begins. (Oh, and Jack falls down the hill, and breaks his head wide open--pool of blood included.)

Readers will once again appreciate the narrative logic Gidwitz weaves through these otherwise unconnected retellings and will laugh past his warnings to an uplifting theme about accepting oneself. --Adam Silvera, reviewer and former bookseller

Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty) braids together the sensuous underworld of 1920s speakeasies, the glamour of the Ziegfeld Follies and a sense of evil greater than Prohibition-era police corruption in her edge-of-the-seat new series.

Seventeen-year-old Evie O'Neill is as complex as Bray's previous series heroine, Gemma Doyle. Her sense of entitlement masks deep sorrow and an intelligence that often goes unappreciated in a male-dominated society. Gemma's tragedy was the death of her mother; Evie's is the death of her brother, James, in the Great War. When Evie gets tipsy at a soiree and performs a party trick that involves holding and "reading" Harold Brodie's class ring, she divulges his shameful secret. Evie's parents send her from Zenith, Ohio, to New York City to board with her Uncle Will until things cool down. Evie's thrilled to head for Manhattan, where her uncle runs the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. When a string of murders seems to have supernatural ties, New York detectives draw on Will's expertise, and Evie's own "gift" comes into play.

Bray's writing is at her spine-tingling best here (e.g., "Blackened gravestones tilted like crooked teeth in a rotting mouth"). The book is thick, but the pages fly, and Bray leaves hints of a "coming storm" to lure readers back for the next installment. With romance, mystery, glamour and history as bait, Libba Bray is sure to hook new readers as well as welcome back her legion Gemma Doyle series fans. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

This literary thriller haunts like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (from which Sangu Mandanna's inscription is taken) as it explores the line between being a human and a monster.

Eva is an "echo," a creation stitched together by the Weavers using a bit of Amarra's soul. Amarra's family commissioned Eva in case Amarra were to die, to ease their grief. Eva stays in Windermere and studies her other's life with the help of her caretaker, Mina Ma; Erik, who tutors her using Amarra's lesson plans; and her guardian, Sean. Eva desperately wants to be human, and while Sean glorifies her life as an angel among mortals, others view echoes as abominations. Amarra herself considers Eva to be a thief and withholds information about her boyfriend, Ray, to spite her. Eva is forbidden to love anyone who is not Ray, and must follow the life course Amarra would lead. If exposed as an echo, Eva faces the threat of being unwoven by those who created her--or killed by those who fear her.

Like Victor Frankenstein, the Weavers don't love their creations, only their own accomplishments. Frankenstein is banned reading for echoes, to prevent insubordination. Still, Eva proves herself capable of rebellion, time and again.

Mandanna's emotional debut novel is a creation as grave as an echo's life, yet shows how one must rebuild after disaster demolishes everything. --Adam Silvera, reviewer and bookseller emeritus