Wild Thing

Josh Bazell

Reagan Arthur Books 

It's hard to find work as a doctor when using your real name will get you killed. So hard that when a reclusive billionaire offers Dr. Peter Brown, aka Pietro Brnwa, a job accompanying a sexy but self-destructive paleontologist on the world's worst field assignment, Brown has no real choice but to say yes. Even if it means that an army of murderers, mobsters, and international drug dealers-not to mention the occasional lake monster-are about to have a serious Pietro Brnwa problem.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories

Nathan Englander

Knopf

The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver's masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the outlandishly dark "Camp Sundown" vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. "Free Fruit for Young Widows" is a small, sharp study in evil, lovingly told by a father to a son. "Sister Hills" chronicles the history of Israel's settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child. Marking a return to two of Englander's classic themes, "Peep Show" and "How We Avenged the Blums" wrestle with sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity and peril. And "Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side" is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who seems constantly to be expanding the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form.

Restoration

Olaf Olafsson

Ecco Books

A sweeping story of love tested by the terrors and tragedies of war set in the gorgeous hills of Tuscany in the 1940s. Having grown up in an exclusive circle of British ex-pats in Florence in the 1920s, Alice shocks everyone when she marries Claudio, the son of a minor landowner, and moves to San Martino, a crumbling villa in Tuscany. Settling into their new paradise, husband and wife begin to build their future, restoring San Martino and giving birth to a son. But as time passes, Alice grows lonely, a restlessness that leads her into a heady social swirl of wartime Rome and a reckless affair that will have devastating consequences. While she spends time with her lover in Rome, Alice's young son falls ill and dies, widening the emotional chasm between her and her husband-and leaving her vulnerable to the machinations of a nefarious art dealer who ensnares her in a dangerous and deadly scheme. Returning to San Martino, Alice yearns for forgiveness. But before she can begin to make amends, Claudio disappears, and the encroaching fighting threatens to destroy everything they have built. Caught between loyalists and resisters, cruel German forces and desperate Allied troops, Alice valiantly struggles to survive, hoping the life and love she lost can one day be restored.

Wonder

R. J. Palacio

Knopf Books for Young Readers

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school-until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?