WELL-CRAFTED REGENCY COZY mystery, complete with an Austenesque plucky, bookish spinster sleuth. Quality fun.

INSIDE THE ANTIQUITIES-LOOTING scandal that rocked the Getty Museum and the art world. Detailed but absorbing.

PREP-SCHOOL INTRIGUE, family conflict from parents’ point of view in YA star Sara Shepard’s debut for adults.

INTRICATE COMPLEXITY IS both a bug and a feature in Neal Stephenson’s latest techno-thriller magnum opus.

WRY LOOK AT GENETICS researchers’ appeal to our yen to know more about our family histories and health future.

A FEISTY HEROINE and a vividly depicted blue-collar Pittsburgh setting enliven this somewhat chaotic whodunnit.

GORGEOUS, CHILLING, POETIC evocation of the lives of early 20th-century Japanese “picture brides” in the US.

NOBODY DOES URBAN soap-opera like Kimberla Lawson Roby, and she’s at her most gloriously melodramatic here!

HEARTFELT MEMOIR OF food, family, and love in exile (in Tehran, Santa Cruz, and Paris); yummy Persian recipes!

CHANNELING HUNTER S. THOMPSON for a Lovecraftian retelling of Nixon’s second victory? An idea so crazy it works!