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.

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!

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

STEAMPUNK AND THE TALL TALES of the 19th century American frontier combine in a clever Twain-like picaresque.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL ABOUT H.G. Wells would probably have worked better as a biography than this queasy hybrid.

FAST-PACED MYSTERY FEATURES women bodybuilders, a decades-old murder, and newly minted honeymooner private eyes.

INFERTILITY, INFIDELITY, COMAS, and sisters as rivals: crisp writing can’t redeem soap-operatic UK chicklit.