Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach. One of our best - and definitely our funniest - science writers, Roach has focused in previous books on the likes of cadavers, sex, and the afterlife. Here she heads down the hatch and headlong into an exploration of the digestive tract. In the course of her journey, she seeks answers to tough questions that plague  scientists: Why doesn't the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? Roach takes readers on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. It may seem hard to digest all that, but Roach's gifted prose makes it pure pleasure.


The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout. The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge returns to her Maine roots in this story of two brothers who, haunted by the accident that killed their father when they were children, escape from their Maine hometown for New York City. Jim, a successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives. Bob, a Legal Aid attorney, idolizes Jim and has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan, urgently calls them home to help her deal with her teenage son and the big trouble he's in. That return to their childhood roots releases long-buried tensions that will irrevocably change the Burgess boys' relationship with each other.