Fiction & Nonfiction
 A Moment in the Sun
by John Sayles (McSweeney's)
Sayles has written a stunning, epic, panoramic, historical novel that reminds me of the writing of Dos Passos. Beginning in 1897, and spanning a five-year period, Sayles captures the era which includes the Yukon gold rush, a white insurrection in North Carolina, and the U.S. imperialist wars in Cuba and the Philippines. It is the "little people" who make the story. The scope and depth of this novel is hard to match. This is one of my favorite types of novels, historical and political, played out on the large stage of the world, and so all-embracing that it is positively Whitman-esque. -Greg
 Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
by Thor Hanson (Basic Books)
It turns out feathers aren't just interesting to birders as Thor Hanson entertainingly shows here. Peppered with historic anecdotes and interviews with both scientists and feather fanatics, his book guides the reader from the controversial fossil record (which sparks hot debates such as the "ground-up" vs. "tree-down" flight theories) to Vegas show girls in their elaborate feathered costumes. The enthusiasm of the people he encounters and his own passion for the topic is surprisingly contagious, turning a book on the niche study of feather evolution into an unexpectedly fast paced read. -Pamela
 Illuminations
by Arthur Rimbaud
trans. by John Ashbery (Norton)
For translators, few books pose as formidable and seductive a challenge as Rimbaud's unpaginated, fevered masterpiece, Illuminations. Here, seasoned translator and Pulitzer prize-winning poet John Ashbery answers that call and succeeds splendidly. Presenting each English translation alongside its French original, this dazzling edition breathes new life into the nineteenth century voyant's kaleidoscopic world while still preserving its intense vision and incomparable immediacy. The results are incandescent. Proof-positive that more than a century after he put down his pen and abandoned writing forever, our little Arthur is still miles ahead of everyone else. -Matthew
 Jamrach's Menagerie
by Carol Birch (Norton)
An escaped tiger swallows Jaffy Brown, but when the enigmatic Jamrach saves him, our street-urchin is pulled from playing in gutters into the magical world of Jamrach's menagerie. Jaffy longs for the sailor's life, and with youthful naïveté, he accepts Jamrach's offer to embark on a quest to catch a mythical dragon as part of the ill-fated Lysander's crew. Birch gives the reader a graphic historical portrayal of life at sea, which reads similarly to Melville's Moby-Dick led by a Dickensian protagonist. Long-listed for the 2011 Orange Prize. -Alex
 Netsuke
by Rikki Ducornet (Coffee House)
When a successful psychoanalyst carefully constructs his practice to fulfill his extravagant and insatiable erotic desires, well—things definitely get interesting. The risks and consequences of his indiscretions pile up until he is unable to tell whether he is running away from his downfall or towards it. This is a superb creation; Ducornet has compressed this explosive world of emotion and deceit down to its terrible essence. In the end, it is a stunning display of how someone can spend his whole life thinking only of himself and still have no idea who he is. -Casey O.
 The Good Muslim
by Tahmima Anam (HarperCollins)
Writing of her Bangladeshi homeland, Tahmima Anam follows her exquisite, award-winning 2007 debut A Golden Age with a no less powerful tale of a nation on the brink of civil war and violent reinvention of itself, of a harrowing time of supposed peace. A young woman and her brother find different means of healing—she trains to become a doctor; he, after having fought in the war, withdraws into fundamentalist religious practice. Benign enough, until his young son is put in peril. One family's small story illuminates larger questions of faith, belief, practice, and empathy in a novel both telling and beautiful. -Rick
 Centuries of June
by Keith Donohue (Crown)
Centuries of June proves that Keith Donohue, author of The Stolen Child and Angel of Destruction, is a narrative chameleon. In the middle of the night, our hapless narrator, Jack, is beaned on the head in his bathroom. While he collects his wits and susses out the situation, he is accosted by eight disgruntled, ghostly women. Each tells her story and locks onto Jack as the surrogate for the man who let her down. Fans of David Mitchell and Italo Calvino might recognize his genre-bending technique, but will discover here a master storyteller at the top of his game. -Leighanne
 Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away
by Christie Watson (Other Press)
Twelve-year-old Blessing's story quickly transports us to vibrant Lagos, Nigeria, where life with her parents and beloved brother seems full of joy and promise. But Father's abrupt departure necessitates moving to their grandparents' village home in the Niger Delta. With a child's uninhibited curiosity and candid emotion, Blessing tells of adjusting to rural traditions, to the extended family's colorful characters, and to the sometimes violent, oil-drenched politics of village life. Her apprenticeship as a midwife reveals the cultural challenges women face, but also their resilience, eventually giving this novel's wonderfully authentic narrator a maturity that yields love, purpose, and compassion. -Erica
 Ten Thousand Saints
by Eleanor Henderson (Ecco)
It's 1987, and two malcontent youths are smoking pot from a Coke can under the bleachers at Lintonburg's big event: a high-school football game. Jude and Teddy are outcasts, the former an adopted son of two estranged 1970s parents, the latter abandoned by his alcoholic mother. Henderson writes a coming-of-age tale of two punks as they cope with friendship, addiction, girls, pregnancy, death, AIDS, indifferent guardians, and their hope to start a hardcore band. Ten Thousand Saints is a window into youth-punk culture from small town Vermont to New York City's CBGB. –Alex
 The Upright Piano Player
by David Abbott (Nan A. Talese)
Few circumstances are as suspenseful as the quiet brutality of a stalker. Nor are there many trials harder than the loss of a loved one. Entwined with the life of one so unassuming as Henry Cage, the jolting events in David Abbott's debut novel are written so lyrically, the twists are all the more wrenching. Hung deftly on a spare, direct, literary voice, Abbott's characters experience occasions savory and severe; transatlantic tension, foreboding suspicions, and emotional wires all crossed against a placid British backdrop, making this novel one that will stay with you long after the last page is turned. -Dave
 My American Unhappiness
by Dean Bakopoulos (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Much like the American economy, Zeke Pappas's life began to unravel in 2008. As the director of the Great Midwestern Humanities Initiative, a federal program designed to "slow the brain drain...in that region," Zeke started the extensive American Unhappiness Project, dedicated to answering the question: Why are we so unhappy? With his funds drying up, government agents questioning his work, and his mother nudging him to find a wife, Zeke struggles to complete his thesis and make sense of a life that he thought he had all figured out. With a deft hand, Bakopoulos has created a poignant look at a man's descent from grandeur to delusion. -Casey S.
 A Queer History of the United States
by Michael Bronski (Beacon)
In the tradition of Howard Zinn and Gail Collins, Michael Bronski's new history of the United States is an accessible, highly-readable exploration of our nation's past. Bronski's approach to writing history is integrative and inclusive, and provides a panoramic view of what was once just a snap-shot. Bronkski's A Queer History of the United States is not just a history of famous Queer people, things they did, and events that shaped their lives—it's a history of everyone, of our entire country. Bronski's refusal to segregate Queer history from the history of all people is wonderfully refreshing and illuminating. -Candra
 Bright Before Us
by Katie Arnold-Ratliff (Tin House)
Katie Arnold-Ratliff creates a superb debut novel, depicting her characters with wit and depth. Francis Mason, an elementary schoolteacher, becomes tossed between past and present, real and imagined, after the discovery of a dead body on a field trip—a body Francis believes to be his high school love. Wedged between today's unhappy marriage and his romanticized past, Francis spirals into obsession, fear, and addiction. Francis must confront his past and find the woman he believes holds his heart before he can live his "real" life. -Seth
 The Map of Time
by Félix J. Palma (Atria)
Our omniscient narrator takes us on an adventure in Victorian London with author H.G. Wells and Time as our central protagonists. This is genre-busting historical fantasy of the first order, in which three different narratives cross one another. Wells's own novel, The Time Machine, has made the public desire time travel, and showman Gilliam Murray comes along to fulfill that desire. Can this be for real? What happens if the fabric of time is messed with? To find out you're going to have to read Palma's glorious "scientific romance." -Greg
 Turn of Mind
by Alice LaPlante (Atlantic Monthly Press)
The unsolved murder of an aging surgeon's best friend is just the first layer of many stories explored within Alice LaPlante's debut novel. As dementia erodes this once brilliant and always difficult woman's personality, her struggle to hold on to her sanity (and her daughter's efforts to connect with an increasingly elusive, unraveling parent) reveal painful truths about familial love, friendship, and sacrifice in the context of one of life's most difficult challenges. How much of the person remains as her illness progresses and the essence of who she is becomes more elusive? LaPlante is hopeful, but realistic in the end. -Karen
 Walking to Hollywood: Memories of Before the Fall
by Will Self (Grove)
In his new book, a perpetually wayward Will Self investigates all manner of madness the only way he knows how—by strapping on his boots and walking to airports. Staged as a "memoir," we follow the author as he meanders from London to LA to Yorkshire Cliffs. Along the way, he gleefully prods at conceptual art, dissects a bloated, self-reflexive Hollywood, repeatedly catalogs his compulsive disorders, and peers into the void of his own diminishing mind. A fantastical skewering of psychosis and modern culture, Walking to Hollywood is yet another riotous trip from this mordant and masterful twenty-first century satirist. -Matthew
 Embassytown
by China Miéville (Del Rey)
On Arieka, a distant planet populated by humans and an indigenous race called the "Host," a delicate balance is kept between species. Genetically enhanced ambassadors are the only people who can communicate directly with these enigmatic, seemingly benevolent creatures. But when a new ambassador arrives in Embassytown, the equanimity that once reigned may never be again, and Avice, a human colonist recently returned to Arieka, may be the lone voice of reason. Miéville turns his inimitable eye to science fiction in this tale of the machinations of aliens and men, proving that whatever subject he takes on will thrill literary audiences. -Casey S.
 Color Me English: Thoughts About Migrations and Belonging Before and After 9/11
by Caryl Phillips (New Press)
Saturated with musings on art, politics, pop culture, history, ethnicity, nationality and identity, Philips lets his thoughts (and body) meander around the globe. His ability to find new ways to examine and convey crucial topics seems never-ending. In every essay, a variety of cultural giants from multiple places around the world appear, stringing Philips's reflections together in an intriguingly complete way. It's this "completion," a process that begins in his personal experiences and preferences, but ends up absorbing us all, that makes this collection so very interesting. -Shannon
 The Sisters Brothers
by Patrick DeWitt (Ecco)
It's just another day at the office as two men on horseback embark from Oregon City to the California gold country to kill a man who has offended their boss. They may be professional killers, but first and foremost Eli and Charlie Sisters are brothers, and their hilarious banter alone is worth the price of admission. The gripping adventure of an epic quest collides with brutal comic timing, and the shock of remorseless violence is countered by the fragile hope that a rough man like Eli could leave the murdering life behind, settle down with a nice lady, and maybe even improve his dental hygiene in the process. -Casey O.
 Good Fish
by Becky Selengut (Sasquatch)
Fish and shellfish, the author suggests in this beautiful cookbook, are as seasonal as produce, and we need to think about them in the same fashion, bringing ourselves closer to the food source. With that in mind, and a few uncomplicated tips on shopping, home cooks will be delighted to learn how to cook scallops, black cod, sumptuous trout and salmon, and much more—even geoduck. Well laid out so as not to intimidate the novice, including online links to how-to videos on a variety of techniques, and suggested wine pairings, Good Fish is a welcomed addition to every kitchen. -Holly
 The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer
by Colin Grant (Norton)
History has come to view Bob Marley as the conquering lion of reggae music; shaking his mane of dreadlocks in a haze of ganja smoke while extolling the virtues of peace and love. While accurate, this mythos ignores his menacing ghetto-bred toughness, volatile temper, and extensive philandering. His lionized legacy also minimizes the significance of two equally complex fellow founding bandmates: Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. In this remarkable book, Mr. Grant explains the social and historical factors in Jamaica that made reggae's international rise possible, while evoking an astonishingly comprehensive portrait of three flawed men who would make flawless music. -Jamil
 Oil on Water
by Helon Habila (Norton)
A poignant and timely story about the human consequences of oil dependency, Habila's new novel takes place in the Nigerian Delta, and follows a brief, but critical interlude in the lives of two Nigerian reporters as they attempt to gain access to the front lines of their divided world in search of the kidnapped wife of a British oil executive. As they negotiate the complex moral terrain of ruthless rebels and military men, every clear preconception is blurred, except one: when people are the sacrifice, there is no gain. -Candra
 Millennium People
by J. G. Ballard (Norton)
What if the middle class decided it was the new proletariat—became a group so oppressed and restless that they refused to pay their mortgages, set their BMWs ablaze, and pulled their kids from private school—rioting in the streets over the price of parking, and the incessant mendacity of dinner parties? The unveiling of J.G. Ballard's posthumous publication, Millennium People, will explore the possibilities of how and why such a revolution could occur, and might just make you wonder why it hasn't already. -Candra
 State of Wonder
by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins)
Dr. Marina Singh, a researcher for a Minnesota-based pharmaceutical company, is sent deep into the Amazon jungle to check on the work of secretive head scientist Annick Swenson after a beloved work colleague who was investigating the field team is reported dead. Traveling by river to the village of the Lakashi Tribe where Dr. Swenson is purportedly developing a new drug, Marina is thrown headlong into a world where nothing is what it seems and her deepest fears are laid bare. Fans of Patchett, and readers discovering her for the first time are in for a treat. This is a lush and spellbinding tale that will grip you from the get go. -Laurie
 The Last Werewolf
by Glen Duncan (Knopf)
Vampires...please. Zombies...so 2006. Here at last is the novel that gives werewolves their depraved literary due with a toothsome lupine grin (but also a genuine heart). Although, at their basest, these creatures are but beasts who fornicate incessantly and eviscerate innocent victims to slake their monthly bloodlust, they are also part human, which elevates them with superior intelligence and emotional complexity. This humorously macabre debauch follows the exploits of Jake Marlowe who is precisely the type of impeccably dressed, perfectly coiffed werewolf you might see drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's—although in Jake's case it would probably be a Scotch. -Jamil
 Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects
by Amy Stewart (Algonquin)
Amy Stewart follows her award-winning book, Wicked Plants, with a look at the high drama of insect and human confrontation in Wicked Bugs. Among the many stories Stewart collects are that of an Arizona woman who, upon awakening from surgery for a supposed brain tumor, discovers that she is harboring a huge tapeworm. Readers will also find out about the chemical weapons brandished by the bombardier beetle (famous for avoiding being eaten by Darwin), and discover that bed bugs can live in overgrown toenails. Here's more proof that fascinating stories live close to home. -Karen
 Orientation: and Other Stories
by Daniel Orozco (Faber and Faber)
From start to finish, Orozco's stories unfold in brisk and thoughtful patterns. Like the accelerated time-lapse photography of millions of cells coming in and out of existence, they are mesmerizing. The reader is held rapt from the hyper-detailed, twisted delivery of an office worker's first day in the title story "Orientation," to the three-tiered perspective of what it is to be alive (or not) in "Only Connect," to the whip-like unwinding of the consequences of a great California earthquake in "Shakers." Orozco throws it all into the pot and comes at you with some of the most innovative stories around. -Shannon
 You Are Free
by Danzy Senna (Riverhead)
In her first short story collection, Senna continues to tackle complexities in previously unseen ways. Issues of ethnicity and class meet the routine concerns of love—that which informs all our fleeting or constant relationships. Senna seats her stories in a kind of airy darkness where nothing is certain and anxiety thrums below the surface. A mother struggles to overcome her own insecurities through her child's schooling in "Admission." Often times power plays out in unsettling ways, as in "The Land of Beulah." Despite the discomfort, it is this uncertainty in the order of things that makes Senna's ideas so sincere, important, and real. -Shannon
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Beauty Queens
Chike and the River
Wow! Ocean!
Noah Barleywater Runs Away
Divergent
Earth to Clunk