The Snow Queen

Michael Cunningham

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Michael Cunningham's luminous novel begins with a vision. It's November 2004. Barrett Meeks, having lost love yet again, is walking through Central Park when he is inspired to look up at the sky; there he sees a pale, translucent light that seems to regard him in a distinctly godlike way. Barrett doesn't believe in visions-or in God-but he can't deny what he's seen. At the same time, in the not-quite-gentrified Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, Tyler, Barrett's older brother, a struggling musician, is trying-and failing-to write a wedding song for Beth, his wife-to-be, who is seriously ill. Tyler is determined to write a song that will be not merely a sentimental ballad but an enduring expression of love. Barrett, haunted by the light, turns unexpectedly to religion. Tyler grows increasingly convinced that only drugs can release his creative powers. Beth tries to face mortality with as much courage as she can summon. Cunningham follows the Meeks brothers as each travels down a different path in his search for transcendence. In subtle, lucid prose, he demonstrates a profound empathy for his conflicted characters and a singular understanding of what lies at the core of the human soul.

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

Scribner Book Company

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge.

The Garden of Burning Sand

Corban Addison

Quercus

The New York Times bestselling author John Hart raved that "If you like stories of good people struggling to do right in the world's forgotten places, there is no one better suited than Corban Addison to take you on the ride of your life." In The Garden of Burning Sand, Addison, the bestselling author of A Walk Across the Sun, creates a powerful and poignant novel that takes the reader from the red light areas of Lusaka, Zambia, to the gilded chambers of the Washington, D.C. elite, to the splendor of Victoria Falls and Cape Town. Zoe Fleming, an accomplished young human rights attorney, has made a life for herself in Zambia, far from her estranged father-an American business mogul with presidential aspirations-and from the devastating betrayals of her past. When a young girl with Down syndrome is sexually assaulted in a Lusaka slum, Zoe joins Zambian police officer Joseph Kabuta in investigating the rape. Piecing together clues from the victim's past, they discover an unsettling connection between the girl-Kuyeya-and a powerful Zambian family who will stop at nothing to bury the truth.

The Painter: A novel

Peter Heller

Knopf

Peter Heller, the celebrated author of the breakout best seller The Dog Stars, returns with an achingly beautiful, wildly suspenseful second novel about an artist trying to outrun his past. Jim Stegner has seen his share of violence and loss. Years ago he shot a man in a bar. His marriage disintegrated. He grieved the one thing he loved. In the wake of tragedy, Jim, a well-known expressionist painter, abandoned the art scene of Santa Fe to start fresh in the valleys of rural Colorado. Now he spends his days painting and fly-fishing, trying to find a way to live with the dark impulses that sometimes overtake him. He works with a lovely model. His paintings fetch excellent prices. But one afternoon, on a dirt road, Jim comes across a man beating a small horse, and a brutal encounter rips his quiet life wide open. Fleeing Colorado, chased by men set on retribution, Jim returns to New Mexico, tormented by his own relentless conscience. A stunning, savage novel of art and violence, love and grief, The Painter is the story of a man who longs to transcend the shadows in his heart, a man intent on using the losses he has suffered to create a meaningful life.

Seven Lives and One Great Love, Memories of a Cat

Lena Divani

Europa Editions

If you have ever lived with cats you know how cunning, tender, ferocious, underhanded, ingenious, foolish and completely adorable they can be. The same words can be used to describe the hero of this novel, Sugar. This is the story--a love story of epic dimensions--of Sugar, a cat with a keen wit and a reflective nature, and his human, Madamigella, a writer with a frenetic and impossibly dispersive life. In this his seventh life, Sugar has countless stories to tell and a remarkable talent for telling them. But his real area of expertise lies in his preternatural ability to domesticate his humans--whatever you do, don't even suggest that we are the ones who domesticate him and his feline relatives! With wit and a broad repertoire of cultural references, Sugar recounts his days and nights spent with Madamigella in a novel that fits squarely into the illustrious tradition of feline literature a la T.S. Eliot, Edgar Allen Poe, Baudelaire, Bukowski, and Celine.

Murder in Merino: A Seaside Knitters Mystery

Sally Goldenbaum

NAL Hardcover

Fall is usually a relaxing time in Sea Harbor, but it's turning out to be a busy season for Izzy Chambers Perry. Not only is she helping the Seaside Knitters make a magnificent throw to celebrate the fortieth wedding anniversary of her aunt and uncle, but she and her husband are finally selling the cottage she lived in before she got married and had a darling baby girl. To Izzy's surprise, newcomer Julia Ainsley seems determined to buy the home-although she's never set foot inside. But on the day of the open house, things take a dark turn. A body is uncovered in the cottage's backyard. When the police find Julia's name and phone number in the victim's pocket, this slender thread of evidence makes her a person of interest. Soon the spotlight of suspicion widens to include old friends and town leaders as a tragic happening, long buried in the sleepy seaside town, is slowly brought to the surface. Before the joyful anniversary celebration can be realized, the Seaside Knitters must work to unravel the real reason Julia Ainsley has come to their town-and the tangled and troubled ties from the past that bind friends and townsfolk together.

The Bone Season

Samantha Shannon

Bloomsbury USA

It appeared on every summer reading list for 2013, from Entertainment Weekly to USA Today. Now, the debut that thrilled readers everywhere is available in paperback. Enter the world of Paige Mahoney, a gifted clairvoyant, a "dreamwalker," in the year 2059. Her natural talents are considered treasonous under the current regime. Snatched away to a secret prison, she encounters another race, the Rephaim, creatures who wish to control the powers of Paige and those like her. One in particular will be assigned as her keeper, her trainer. But his motives are mysterious. To regain her freedom, Paige must learn to trust, in the prison where she is meant to die.

The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death

Colson Whitehead

Doubleday

On one level, The Noble Hustle is a familiar species of participatory journalism--a longtime neighborhood poker player, Whitehead was given a $10,000 stake and an assignment from the online online magazine Grantland to see how far he could get in the World Series of Poker. But since it stems from the astonishing mind of Colson Whitehead (MacArthur Award-endorsed!), the book is a brilliant, hilarious, weirdly profound, and ultimately moving portrayal of--yes, it sounds overblown and ridiculous, but really!--the human condition. After weeks of preparation that included repeated bus trips to glamorous Atlantic City, and hiring a personal trainer to toughen him up for sitting at twelve hours a stretch, the author journeyed to the gaudy wonderland that is Las Vegas - the world's greatest "Leisure Industrial Complex" -- to try his luck in the multi-million dollar tournament. Hobbled by his mediocre playing skills and a lifelong condition known as "anhedonia" (the inability to experience pleasure) Whitehead did not - spoiler alert! - win tens of millions of dollars. But he did chronicle his progress, both literal and existential, in this unbelievably funny, uncannily accurate social satire whose main target is the author himself. Whether you've been playing cards your whole life, or have never picked up a hand, you're sure to agree that this book contains some of the best writing about beef jerky ever put to paper.

Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites

Kate Christensen

Anchor

"To taste fully is to live fully." For Kate Christensen, food and eating have always been powerful connectors to self and world-"a subterranean conduit to sensuality, memory, desire." Her appetites run deep; in her own words, she spent much of her life as "a hungry, lonely, wild animal looking for happiness and stability." Now, having found them at last, in this passionate feast of a memoir she reflects upon her journey of innocence lost and wisdom gained, mistakes made and lessons learned, and hearts broken and mended. In the tradition of M. F. K. Fisher, Laurie Colwin, and Ruth Reichl, Blue Plate Special is a narrative in which food-eating it, cooking it, reflecting on it-becomes the vehicle for unpacking a life. Christensen explores her history of hunger-not just for food but for love and confidence and a sense of belonging-with a profound honesty, starting with her unorthodox childhood in 1960s Berkeley as the daughter of a mercurial legal activist who ruled the house with his fists. After a whirlwind adolescent awakening, Christensen strikes out to chart her own destiny within the literary world and the world of men, both equally alluring and dangerous. Food of all kinds, from Ho Hos to haute cuisine, remains an evocative constant throughout, not just as sustenance but as a realm of experience unto itself, always reflective of what is going on in her life. She unearths memories-sometimes joyful, sometimes painful-of the love between mother and daughter, sister and sister, and husband and wife, and of the times when the bonds of love were broken. Food sustains her as she endures the pain of these ruptures and fuels her determination not to settle for anything less than the love and contentment for which she's always yearned. The physical and emotional sensuality that defines Christensen's fiction resonates throughout the pages of Blue Plate Special. A vibrant celebration of life in all its truth and complexity, this book is about embracing the world through the transformative power of food: it's about listening to your appetites, about having faith, and about learning what is worth holding on to and what is not.

Since You've Been Gone

Morgan Matson

Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Emily is about to take some risks and have the most unexpected summer ever in this new novel from the bestselling author of "Second Chance Summer "and "Amy and Roger's Epic Detour." Before Sloane, Emily didn't go to parties, she barely talked to guys, and she didn't do anything crazy. Enter Sloane, social tornado and the best kind of best friend--someone who yanks you out of your shell. But right before what should have been an epic summer, Sloane just...disappears. No note. No calls. No texts. No Sloane. There's just a random to-do list with thirteen bizarre tasks that Emily would never try. But what if they can lead her to Sloane? "Apple picking at night?" Okay, easy enough. "Dance until dawn?" Sure. Why not? "Kiss a stranger?" Wait...what? Getting through Sloane's list will mean a lot of firsts, and with a whole summer ahead of her--and with the unexpected help of the handsome Frank Porter--who knows what she'll find. "Go Skinny Dipping?"

This Is a Moose

Richard T. Morris, Tom Lichtenheld

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Lights! Camera! Moose! MOOSE? Yes, Moose! When a movie director tries to capture the life of a moose on film, he's in for a big surprise. It turns out the moose has a dream bigger then just being a moose--he wants to be an astronaut and go to the moon. His forest friends step in to help him, and action ensues. Lots of action. Like a lacrosse-playing grandma, a gigantic slingshot into space, and a flying, superhero chipmunk. In this hilarious romp, Richard T. Morris and bestselling illustrator Tom Lichtenheld remind us to dream big and, when we do, to aim for the moon.