HUGELY ENTERTAINING REVIEW of baseball’s least competent players. Clever fun, well researched. #beachread

GRAVE, ELEGAIC NOVEL explores the bonds that flourish at a Florida “lunatic asylum” during the Civil War. SOLID B

BLUE ASYLUM
Mariner Books
2013

SYLVIA PLATH’S EARLY years, vividly reconstructed in a well-researched bio that sheds new light on her poetry. B PLUS

MAD GIRL’S LOVE SONG: SYLVIA PLATH AND LIFE BEFORE TED
Scribner
2013

GRIM, LUSH, COMPLEX historical mystery, set in a brutal 1927 Poland, has an offbeat metaphysical bleakness. SOLID B

THE END OF THE WORLD IN BRESLAU
Melville International Crime
2013

THE ALWAYS ENTERTAINING, EVER informative Mary Roach turns her attention to the science of digestion. Yum! B PLUS

GULP: ADVENTURES ON THE ALIMENTARY CANAL
Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
2013

RAW, BEAUTIFUL, WRENCHING memoir by a writer of her much-loved son’s life, cut short by a terrible disease. B PLUS

THE STILL POINT OF THE TURNING WORLD
Penguin Press
2013

LYRICAL LITERARY EVOCATION of the devastating impact of a 1925 tornado in rural Illinois. Tragic and timely. B PLUS

FALLING TO EARTH
Europa Editions
2013

HISTORY COMES TO LIFE in this compelling look at the women who were part of WWII’s Oak Ridge atomic project. A MINUS

THE GIRLS OF ATOMIC CITY
Touchstone
2013

THE INTERTWINED STORIES OF a young Irish man’s life and the eerie global coma experiment he joins. Spooky! B PLUS

NOTES FROM A COMA
Soho Press
2013

SPLENDIDLY CREEPY EPISTOLARY novel spins the grim, satiric tale of an almost Nabokovian Internet pest. B PLUS

THE MORE YOU IGNORE ME
Coffee House Press
2013