RUEFULLY WITTY NOVEL focuses on a Vietnamese-American woman’s quest to understand her family. Smart fiction! B PLUS

PIONEER GIRL
Viking
2014

SPECTACULAR LA NOIR captures the madly extravagant California of 1929, complete with sleuth Raymond Chandler. B PLUS

THE KEPT GIRL
Esotouric
2013

A HORRIFYING SUPERNATURAL TWIST on a Victorian murder mystery. Grim, evocative, chilling novel. B PLUS

MAYHEM
Jo Fletcher
2014

ABOUT “DEATH IN PERSPECTIVE,” a pioneering college course, its indomitable professor, its remarkable students. B PLUS

THE DEATH CLASS : A TRUE STORY ABOUT LIFE
Simon & Schuster
2014

AN UNLIKELY MILITARY MEMOIR: a literary, leftish Yalie Army officer’s take on his service in Afghanistan. B PLUS

AFGHAN POST
The Head & The Hand Press
2014

A LOVE STORY, A PARABLE, a meditation on racial, national, and religious identity, a beautiful dream captured. B PLUS

ADE: A LOVE STORY
New Harvest
2013

A HEADLINE-GRABBING MURDER that fascinated 1890s France, rich with sex and scandal and…hypnotism? Great fun. B PLUS

LITTLE DEMON IN THE CITY OF LIGHT: A TRUE STORY OF MURDER AND MESMERISM IN BELLE EPOQUE PARIS
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
2014

AN ORDINARY ENGLISHWOMAN’S LIFE becomes an extraordinary novel, vivid in detail and powerfully opaque. B PLUS

CLEVER GIRL (P.S.)
Harper
2014

BRUTAL, CANDID, HEARTBREAKING memoir of an unexpected stillbirth and a mother’s grief is thought-provoking. B PLUS

GHOSTBELLY
Feminist Press
2014

WONDERFULLY CREEPY, SATIRICAL thriller about religions and innocence and the potential heroism of losers. B PLUS

THE ATHEIST’S PRAYER
Perfect Edge
2014