New Fiction

A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead)

In Khaled Hosseini's second novel, two women from strikingly different backgrounds are brought together through the tragedies of war.

Spanning thirty years of Afghanistan's history, from the Soviet invasion to present day, the story follows these women through their early upbringing, from loss to love, marriage, and children. It is a novel of exquisite artistry—a lucidly written thing of beauty and a story that is human, vivid, and moving. -J. Ditzel

Landing
by Emma Donoghue (Harcourt)

In this novel, Donoghue—author of the excellent Victorian-set novel Slammerkin—has written a classic love story. Jude, a sexually adventurous young woman content to live out her life in the tiny Ontario town of her birth, falls in love with Síle, a middle-aged Irish stewardess who would just as soon never wake up in the same city twice. Landing documents the first year of their long-distance relationship and reveals that, despite modern-day cheap airfares and e-mails and shifting sexual identities, love is still—and will always be—just as mysterious and familiar and giddily ecstatic as it ever was. -P. Constant

Divisadero
by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf)

Neither Canada nor Sri Lanka, as one devoted reader has asked, is the setting of Michael Ondaatje's new novel. Instead, Ondaatje presents the surprisingly close, surprisingly recent time and place of 1970s Northern California. There, archetypal scenes of death (in childbirth), adopted orphans, sex, betrayal, mayhem, and banishment are played out to a surprising end. A second story brings one of the characters to France in self-imposed exile. She delves there into another man's past, which has hints and suggestions that link it to the book's first part—links the reader makes to breathtaking effect, thanks to Ondaatje's beautifully wrought, allusive prose. –R. Simonson

The Yiddish Policeman's Union
by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

In 1940, Congress nixed a proposal that would have opened Alaska to European Jews. What if they hadn't? Welcome to Michael Chabon's Sitka: Yiddish flows fast, thick, and rich; formerly Hasidic heroin addicts tie off with their tefillin; and the Jews' lease is about to expire. This is a terrific detective story in its own right, but woven throughout are subtleties that work on your subconscious as you read. What is homeland? Do we need one? Who is "we"? The biggest question, though, lies in the anguished cry of the secular Jew: Why can't we let Israel go? -R. Crawford

Landsman
by Peter Charles Melman (Counterpoint)

Twenty-year-old Elias Abrams has fled his New Orleans hometown on a spurious murder charge and enlisted in the Confederate army. For his scant years he is a hard man, having lived a hard life among the city's least savory, and he carries his hardness to the battlefield—that is, until chance sends him a letter from the charming Miss Nora Bloom. Elias is stirred and a correspondence begins. Eventually the pair meets, but can Elias have a love he dreams of? This wonderful debut moves fluidly between the horror and boredom of war and the tenderness of the heart with genuine grace. -H. Myers

The Excecution Channel
by Ken MacLeod (Tor)

Ken MacLeod's novel takes us to a place in the not-too-distant future where terrorism has won and where we can look forward to the ultimate "reality" show, executions—always an audience favorite The story spirals around a nuclear device going off at an air base in Scotland, killing several thousand people, leaving spies, political activists, bloggers, and the like trying to determine who is responsible. MacLeod has written of a world that is very much like our own, where the violence or threat of violence is very real and paranoia is a reasonable response. -G. Berry

The Big Girls
by Susanna Moore (Knopf)

Set primarily at Sloatsburg women's prison, Moore's darkly compelling novel uses alternating narrators to explore the inner workings of an inmate, a corrections officer, a starlet, and a psychiatrist. Helen has been incarcerated after killing her young children, Dr. Louise Forrest feels a sisterly connection to her new patient, actress Angie really does have a sisterly connection to Helen, and Captain Bradshaw lends some testosterone to the mix. As the novel progresses, the fine psychological lines between these four characters begin to blur, and the reader is left to question the sanity of insanity and vice versa. -J. Darrah

Falling Man
by Don DeLillo (Scribner)

Don DeLillo's latest work begins with Keith Neudecker, walking, ash covered and bloody, from the charred remains of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After fleeing the first tower, Keith instinctively retreats to his estranged wife's apartment rather than to the emergency room. In the months following 9/11, the reunited family is faced with ever-present reminders of the attacks, be it horrifying performance art or a child's overactive imagination. Intricately weaving this story with the tale of a terrorist beginning his journey to martyrdom, DeLillo treats his subject with grace and the beautiful prose of a seasoned genius. -C. Stryer

On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese)

It is a young couple's wedding night in 1962. Both Edward and Florence have anxieties over what is to come on this, their first night together. As the couple dwells on all that could go wrong, while maintaining fronts of happiness and ease, McEwan loops Edward's and Florence's pasts into the story. We begin to understand that Florence's nerves are more serious than those of an average bride, and tension builds as it becomes only too clear how this mess of a night could end.

McEwan has crafted another stunning novel. Its slim length only adds to its force. -D. Cronin

The Ministry of Special Cases
by Nathan Englander (Knopf)

Parents of unruly teenagers may identify with Kaddish Poznan's sentiment when, after a particularly heated exchange, he wishes that his son had never been born. In the Buenos Aires of the 1970s, this type of fleeting fancy is easily made a reality by roving squads of secret police who "disappear" anyone they see fit. Readers are ushered into a family of Argentine Jews and share their experiences through a thin slice of this tempestuous period in South American history. On every page the everyday and the extraordinary coexist with equal brilliance, and that is what makes these pages sing. -J. Zaidi

The Descendants
by Kaui Hart Hemmings (Random House)

This debut novel revolves around a tragedy in the privileged Hawaiian family the Kings, direct descendants and heirs of the princess Kekipi. Matt King grapples with his wife's imminent death and also the newfound knowledge of her infidelity; their precocious ten-year-old daughter, Scottie, still desperately tries to impress her comatose mother; their fractious seventeen-year-old daughter, Alex, can't quite give up the resentment toward her mother; and the mother herself, Joanie, commands, even from a coma, a powerful influence over her family. Surprising humor peppers this heartbreaking story, leaving the family with a sense of freedom and a new beginning. -P. Yearby

Rant: The Oral Biography of Buster Casey
by Chuck Palahniuk (Doubleday)

The characters presenting themselves in this fictional oral history inhabit a malign world. Second-class citizens are relegated to nighttime hours. People "boost" packaged experiences through ports on the backs of their heads. The daring and the bored seek thrills from a playful, voyeuristic demolition derby called "Party Crashing." The radio delivers "Graphic Traffic" updates on especially juicy accidents. In a reality so maladjusted, death is closer to life. Thus salvation is delivered by Rant Casey, black-toothed and rabid, carrying a collection of black widow spiders. Palahniuk's genius presents a flaming car wreck as a moving and evocative moment of redemption. -C. Sabatini

The Maytrees
by Annie Dillard (HarperCollins)

Annie Dillard is back with her first novel since The Living, a historical saga of the Pacific Northwest written in 1992. Dillard's newest book, set on Cape Cod sometime after the Second World War, is the tale of Lou and Toby Maytree, a bohemian couple living on the shores of Provincetown. When Toby leaves the marriage for a local woman, the Maytrees are forced to examine the nature of love: its power, transience, and possibilities for transformation. Written in Dillard's signature spare and poetic prose, this is a beautifully nuanced novel, alive with a naturalist's sensibility and lyric moments of grace. -L. Paus

A Good and Happy Child
by Justin Evans (Shaye Areheart)

Evans's debut novel is a mind-bending thriller. When George Davies develops a phobia of touching his newborn son, a therapist suggests George examine his repressed childhood. Through journals he re-experiences his history. As an eleven-year-old, George was a topic of war between exorcists and pill-pushing doctors. He swore he was battling his deceased father's demon, but unsolved beatings, sabotage, and murder were leaving blood on his hands. Taken into the mousetrap of George's mind, we chase demons but never know if they are ever really gone. Rituals and institutionalization both feel sadistic. This is a rewarding but ultimately terrifying read. -T. Radebaugh

The Sea Lady
by Margaret Drabble (Harcourt)

Ailsa and Humphrey, having led long and distinguished lives, are summoned back to the British coastal village where they had spent a summer together with two other children. This present-day journey produces memories of lives deeply affected by those pivotal months, and the eventual reunion provides a satisfying retrospective for everyone involved.

Far from being a dry recounting, the self-analysis and interactions of these charismatic characters are dense, engaging, and often wickedly wry. From the precise, acutely emotional depiction of childhood to the revelation of what the characters mean to one another, this novel sparkles with Drabble’s social commentary and masterful prose. -E. Dorfman

Michael Tolliver Lives
by Armistead Maupin (HarperCollins)

Followers of Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin's long-running, San Francisco–based serial, will be glad to catch up on the adventures of the former residents of 28 Barbary Lane, now aging as colorfully as ever. Michael Tolliver Lives reads like a phone call from a friend whose mother you've never met but who seems nearly as familiar as your own. This book brings back the time when many could only dream (through Maupin's books) that gay and straight people could not only annoy each other but also share each other's dreams and become family. -K.M. Allman

Be Near Me
by Andrew O'Hagan (Harcourt)

David Anderton is a priest who takes up a new parish in the small town of Dalgarnock, Scotland. As he befriends two delinquent students, hostilities rise in this blue-collar town that is well past its heyday. Through these conflicts, the life that Father Anderton led before becoming a man of the cloth is slowly revealed. Did he leave that life behind? Or did that life abandon him? This novel shows what happens to a man who tries to reconcile his past with his present. -A. Gee

The Pesthouse
by Jim Crace (Nan A. Talese)

The once prosperous United States, after its fall, is now a lawless dystopian skeleton of its former self. The few people who remain scratch out an existence and go to the east to escape to Europe. Franklin Lopez is a refugee who stumbles across a young woman named Margaret, who is suffering from the "flux," a highly contagious and often deadly fever, which confines her to the Pesthouse. When she recovers, Franklin and Margaret make their way east together in search of an uncertain future. -G. Berry

Acacia Book One: The War with the Mein
by David Anthony Durham (Doubleday)

The Acacian kingdom stands on the verge of collapse. Unbeknownst to the king, a great disharmony blackens the northern lands of the "known" world. The chieftain of the Mein people, enraged by the injustice of twenty-two generations of Akaran rule, plots to assassinate the king and bring an end to the subjugation of his people. Awash with warring kingdoms and blood-drinking hordes, Acacia is intensely vivid and unflinchingly brutal. It's a Martinesque tale of political intrigue, betrayal, and murder that is sure to delight the casual or hard-core fantasy reader. -C. Stryer

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself
by Young-Ha Kim (Harcourt)

Originally published in Korea in 1993, Kim's haunting debut novel lures the reader to take a decidedly un-American look at death and love. For an unnamed (but highly cultured) narrator, suicide is an art form and a business opportunity. Two women unknown to each other, one who is always sucking on a Chupa Chups lollipop and the other a beautiful camera-shy performance artist, will both cross his path. And two brothers, one a high-speed taxi driver and the other a video artist, will wonder after the women. -J. Darrah

Ghostwalk
by Rebecca Stott (Spiegel & Grau)

Where do obsessions start? What makes them grow in power? After the mysterious drowning of Elizabeth Vogelsang, a noted Cambridge scholar, Lydia Brooke is hired to finish Vogelsang's controversial book on Isaac Newton. Lydia moves in to the dead woman's home and delves into the manuscript. She is almost at once laden by the intense mystery that surrounds it as she begins to probe events of the 17th century and Newton's shadowy involvement in the alchemical world. This is a truly atmospheric novel that weaves the natural and supernatural into the past and present in a multilayered story of obsessions. -H. Myers

New Non-Fiction

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins)

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family moved to a farm where they would eat only what was locally grown, they knew their lives would change. They didn’t expect Kingsolver's husband to be the target of a seductive turkey, or for her youngest daughter to become an entrepreneurial success, or that Kingsolver would feel the beginning of life, peeping and trembling, in a small piece of "breakfast food."

Urging readers to ignore supermarkets in favor of farmers' markets, Kingsolver shows that America's fossil-fuel addiction can be alleviated by a kitchen revolution and an economical, environmentally sound, pleasurable way of eating. -J. Brown

The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, from Samurai to Supermarket
by Trevor Corson (HarperCollins)

From slicing radishes and rolling kappa maki to forming nigiri and popping the beak out of a cooked octopus, follow a class of students through a semester at the California Sushi Academy. Corson builds on the lessons with an extracurricular look at the history of sushi from its earliest (inland) roots. Also included is a crash course in marine biology and aquaculture, as well as tips on sushi-bar etiquette (mixing your soy sauce and wasabi is a big no-no). A futo maki of fishy facts, this is the book for American sushi lovers! -J. Darrah

One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding
by Rebecca Mead (Penguin Press)

Some rings, a white dress, and a cake. These are the most iconic elements of traditional American weddings. In this lighthearted yet eye-opening exposé, Mead illustrates how the wedding industry (an amorphous and sinister cabal similar in ambiguous definition to today's oft-blamed media) is subtly adding to these standards, making a constantly growing list of necessities (and expenses) for any "self-respecting" American bride. One Perfect Day provides readers with an essential look at some "traditional" aspects of the American wedding and is required reading for anyone who is engaged, or is even considering getting married. -J. Zaidi

The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman (St. Martin's)

What would happen to the earth if humans disappeared tomorrow?

Alan Weisman provides a portrait of this future, beginning with how the world was before us, including an era with pygmy elephants and giant ground sloths. He then takes the ways we have already changed this planet, with farms, refineries, and even the seemingly harmless domestic cat, and extrapolates the effects of our impact into the future. His compelling prose inspires hope based on Earth's resilience, but also an awareness of the permanence of our legacy, including nearly indestructible plastics and television broadcasts that will travel through space forever. -M. Hickner

Thick as Thieves: A Brother, a Sister—a True Story of Two Turbulent Lives
by Steve Geng (Henry Holt)

Though his sister, Veronica, was the famed writer and wit in the family, Steve Geng proves himself a natural storyteller with his memoir Thick as Thieves. As Veronica rises in rank at the New Yorker, Steve looks on, astonished at her ability to live a "normal life." He affably chronicles his drug abuse, legendary thievery, stints in jail, serious illness, disastrous love affairs, and sustaining affection for his sister, who, as he slowly comes to realize, has troubles of her own. His is a life lived hard and full, and he shares it with good humor, little sentimentality, and surprising grace. -E. Staudt

Pure Heart Enlightened Mind: The Life and Letters of an Irish Zen Saint
by Maura O'Halloran (Wisdom)

At twenty-seven Maura O'Halloran, having traveled widely and studied problems of poverty, is inspired to devote her life to the study of Buddhism. In 1979 she leaves for Japan. Three years later she emerges as a bodhisattva with plans to return to Dublin, to teach and serve the poor. This new edition of a Buddhist classic includes an appendix with poems, fiction, and early journals. After reading O'Halloran's words, the term "enlightenment" no longer is about saintliness, but seems like a step in an ordinary, exuberant human's life. O'Halloran's candor shows a modern, practical Buddhist, but also avoids oversimplification. -T. Radebaugh

The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory
by Kenny Fries (Carroll & Graf)

Born with a congenital deformity marked by an absence of bones in his legs and feet, Fries is ambulatory only because he wears specially made orthopedic shoes. Alternating between accounts of Charles Darwin's and Alfred Russel Wallace's investigations of adaptation and variation and his own challenging odyssey as a disabled man, the author offers us a unique take on the idea of "survival of the fittest." Not only a riveting and colorful account of Darwin's and Wallace's journeys and discoveries but a story of personal evolution and the capacity for change under duress, this is an unforgettable and inspiring book. -L. Paus

Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics
by Gino Segrè (Viking)

This is a well-researched and well-rounded introduction to the world of high science in the early 20th century. Centering on a conference organized by Niels Bohr in 1932, Segrè shows us how the solutions to old problems in physics created newer and ever-more-complex puzzles as the world began to devolve into the Second World War. He invites us into the hearts and minds of some of the most famous physicists in history, illuminating the men behind the discoveries and providing a clear and eloquent introduction to the profound new science they were pioneering—quantum physics. -D. Short

Awkward: A Detour
by Mary Cappello (Bellevue Literary Press)

The term "awkward" brings to mind gangly adolescence and uncomfortable silences—a glitch or inconsistency in an otherwise perfect system. But Mary Cappello sees this glitch as the rule, not the exception, and shows us examples of its dominance everywhere—in all ages of life, in speech as well as in silence, and in the psychological, cultural, social, and spiritual worlds we inhabit. On this autobiographical and poetic "detour" she talks of Emily Dickinson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and her immigrant grandparents with enough candor and dedication to possibly achieve awkwardness's opposite&#!51;grace. -C. Schwennsen

Children's & Young Adult Books

Eggs
by Jerry Spinelli (Little Brown)

Nine-year-old David's mother recently died, and his father often travels. Primrose—thirteen, and loads tougher than her name suggests—has an absent father and a mother who, though technically around, is anything but present. David and Primrose have little in common apart from their anger and loneliness, but they become inseparable, trolling nightly for curbside treasures to sell at flea markets and slowly sharing the secrets that they've guarded so tightly. Eggs is an unerring portrait of an unlikely friendship, and of the way we figure out not how to get over our losses, but how to live with them. -E. Staudt

Nacky Patcher and the Curse of the Dry-Land Boats
by Jeffery Kluger (Philomel)

This sprawling, Twainian yarn is the best thing since Robert McCloskey, and any child or adult who picks it up will be pleasantly engrossed within minutes. Nacky (a sweetly earnest con man) and Teedie (his sharper, scrappier eleven-year-old protegé) are heading home from the pub one night when they witness the wreckage of a giant ship emerging from the landlocked lake that is the center of their town. Aiming to break the long-standing curse on their land, they set out to rebuild the boat and haul it to the ocean. What happens next is the stuff of legends. -R. Crawford

Taking a Bath with the Dog and Other Things That Make Me Happy
by Scott Menchin (Candlewick)

This charming new picture book is perfect for a grumpy day. "Sweet Pea," as she is called by her mom, is down in the dumps and decides to go on a quest for happiness. She interviews everyone from the dog to the moon on what makes them happy until she discovers her own simple joys. This story rings of the movie Amélie in its delightful absurdity and is sure to leave readers with a smile. -T. Radebaugh

The Dangerous Book for Boys
by Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden (Collins)

With The Dangerous Book for Boys, the brothers Iggulden attempt to inspire children and adults alike to go out and play the way kids used to before the advent of information superhighways and whiz-bang electronic gadgets. It is loaded with adventure stories to inspire along with instructions for various sunny-Sunday-afternoon activities like tree-house building and making a go-kart, as well as activities for not-so-sunny days like playing chess or building a periscope or a simple electromagnet.

This book is the ideal nonrequired summer reading. -P. Egan

Don't Say That Word!
by Alan Katz
illus. by David Catlow (McElderry Books)

The infamous author/illustrator team of the Silly Dilly series is back again with their latest tale. Michael, the epitome of a "snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails" little boy, has a love of crude, stinky little words. He's trying to tell his mom about all the fantastic, gross things that happened at school, but every time he gets to the punch line, his mom censors the last word. Have fun laughing while you try to guess what word Michael was about to say. -T. Radebaugh

New Summer Paperback Recommendations

Non-Fiction

The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher by Debby Applegate (Three Leaves Press)
The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps amd Bones by Anthony Bourdain (Bloomsbury)
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper (Harper)
Bound to Please: An Extraordinary One-Volume Literary Education by Michael Dirda (Norton)
Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times by Amitav Ghosh (Mariner)
Blink: The Power of Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell (Back Bay)
Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan (Harper Perennial)
Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the Briths, and the American Revolution by Simon Schama (Harper Perennial)
The McSweeney's Book fo Poets Picking Poets edited by Dominic Luxford (McSweeney's)
All Will Be Well: A Memoir by John McGahern (Vintage)

Fiction

Best of Young American Novelists 2 edited by Ian Jack (Granta)
Cellophane by Marie Arana (Dial)
Malinche by Laura Esquivel (Washington Square Press)
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (Algonquin)
The Midnight Choir by Gene Kerrigan (Europa)
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (Vintage)
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl (Penguin)
Everyman by Philip Roth (Vintage)
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart (Random House)
A Death in Vienna by Frank Tallis Random House)

Children's and Young Adult

The Boy, the Bear, the Baron, and the Bard by Gregory Rogers (Roaring Brook Press)
Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse by Judy Schachner (Puffin)
Roger the Jolly Pirate by Brett Helquist (HarperTrophy)
Totally Joe by James Howe (Aladdin)
The Melting of Maggie Bean by Tricia Rayburn (Aladdin)
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan (Miramax)
The Shadow Thieves by Anne Ursu (Aladdin)
The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall (Yearling)
The Fetch by Chris Humphreys (Knopf)
An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming by Al Gore (Viking/Rodale)