INSIDE LOOK AT the 1939 World’s Fair contrasts its official optimism with corruption, terrorism, world war.

REMAPPING THE SOLAR SYSTEM with the astronomer whose discoveries led to Pluto’s demotion. Surprisingly funny!

FUNNY/SAD/QUIRKY/HAUNTING memoir of a difficult childhood and coming of age as an outsider in rural Arkansas.

INTRICATE SOUTH AFRICAN THRILLER contrasts the hunt for a serial killer, a tangle of post-apartheid politics.

ENGROSSING MEDITATION on Russia’s history and geography by an English expatriate scholar is witty, informative.

STARK, POETIC NOVEL provides a resonant glimpse of life and war in Afghanistan as well as a complex love story.

CANDID AND HEARTFELT memoir of a difficult marriage, sudden widowhood tries a bit too hard for simple answers.

TIMELY, TAUTLY PLOTTED thriller with a likable midlife heroine is compelling despite occasionally clunky prose.

THOUGHTFUL, POETIC MEMOIR of an evangelical girlhood by a writer who came to find the divine in nature.

LUCKY 13! The newest caper starring Serge Storms, enforcer of his own quirky Florida justice, is the best yet.