Buried secrets

 by Joseph Finder. A total wow of a read, Finder's second novel starring Nick Heller (after Vanished, 2009), who does intelligence work for private clients, backed up by staff including a digital forensics expert, gets off to a quick start and keeps the throttle wide open for the whole ride. This is the kind of book you have to look up from, every once in a while, just to collect yourself. A teen girl meets a handsome stranger in a bar. He offers her a lift home, and she, who suffers from claustrophobia, ends up buried alive in a coffin 10 feet underground. Her father, billionaire hedge-fund manager Marshall Marcus, reaches out to Heller, but Heller knows Marcus is withholding something vital, even though his daughter's life is at stake. The novel shuttles between the buried-alive girl (whose scenes are excruciating to read); the kidnapper, in flashbacks as well as the present; and Heller's attempts to crack the double mysteries of the daughter's whereabouts and of what Marcus is hiding. Great tension results from the knowledge that Marcus feels he has to keep his secret. About as perfectly plotted and suspenseful as possible, this is a tremendous high-wire act. --Booklist Starred Review (Check Catalog)

A place of yes : 10 rules for getting everything you want out of life

 by Bethenny Frankel. Frankel, the star of the TV show Bethenny Getting Married, and before that, The Real Housewives of New York City, and before that, the Martha Stewart of The Apprentice, and before that . . . well, you get the picture. Frankel has her fingers in lots of pots (she's also a chef). Brash and brusque, she nevertheless has plenty of appeal, partially because she has never made a secret of her insecurities, deficiencies, and messed-up past. So, having dealt with all that, she now turns author, offering a 10-point program to help readers get what they want out of life. The advice itself is nothing special: break the chain of your past; find your own truth; make things happen; and own your successes and mistakes. But, coupled with Frankel's compelling personal story and her heartfelt gratitude for the lemonade she has made out of the lemons in her life, this makes for a surprisingly readable self-help book starring a most likable heroine. Reality TV fans will be standing in line for this one, and Bethenny, of course, will be making the talk-show rounds. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Room : a novel

 by Emma Donnoghue. Five-year-old Jack has never known anything of life beyond Room, the 11-square-foot space he shares with his mother. Jack has learned to read, count, and process an imaginary world Outside through television. At night he sleeps in a wardrobe in case Old Nick comes to visit, bringing supplies and frightening intrusion. Worried about his curiosity and her own desperation, his mother reveals to Jack that the Outside is real and that they must escape. She tells him that she was kidnapped by Old Nick and has been held secluded in Room for seven years. Jack is brave enough to carry out their plan, and the two of them are compelled to adjust to life Outside, with its bright lights and noise and people touching. What is reconnection for his mother is discovery for Jack, who is soon overwhelmed by the changes in his mother and a world coming at him fast and furiously. Room is beautifully written as a first-person narrative from Jack's perspective, and within it, Donoghue has constructed a quiet, private, and menacing world that slowly unbends with a mother and son's love and determination. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

I wore the ocean in the shape of a girl : a memoir

 by Kelle Groom. Poet Groom's stunning memoir reads more like poetry than prose and leaves th. brain singing with neurons like a city at night. Precise diction and punchy syntax coupled with raw subject matter give birth to an intense narrative containing some matter-of-fact passages almost too grueling to accept. Already an alcoholic at 19, Groom was pregnant and slated to surrender her son to relatives. While her addiction provides sufficient subject material, she reaches beyond external experiences to explore the fear, shame, and deception involved in her self-destructiveness. That self-examination makes her pain palpable as she exposes an otherwise unimaginable inner conflict. Furthermore, Groom's introversion is distinct in its intensity from that found in many other memoirs and fuels a major shift in tone as she reports enduring her son's death. In her search for validation, forgiveness, and redemption, Groo. died and came back to life. Her astonishing struggle and unique resurrection illuminate the universal human effort to embrace one's self, accepting personal flaws, demons, and methods of survival. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The Amish nanny

  by Mindy Starns Clark. Bestselling author Clark and coauthor Gould team up for the second in the Women of Lancaster County series. The authors present characters in likable and realistic settings and circumstances. Ada Rupp, a formerly sickly Amish-raised wanna-be schoolteacher, falls for Will Gundy, Amish widower. Ada herself is surprised when adventure takes her to Europe, where she prays she can finally meet her birth mother. Unused to travel, Ada is stretched by circumstances when asked to act as Will's daughter's nanny during the trip. She finds herself working overtime to reach beneath the grief-stricken preteen Christy's aloofness. Toss in some comedic happenings involving the travelers and their Mennonite traveling companion, Daniel Hart, who has taken a romantic interest in Ada. Confusion reigns until Ada decides where to build her future and with whom. Clark and Gould succeed in developing a fascinating story while simultaneously instructing readers on the Amish lifestyle, building a strong case for Plain living within a thoroughly modern world setting. --Publishers Weekly. (Check Catalog)

One nation under sex : how the private lives of presidents, first ladies and their lovers changed the course of American history

 by Larry Flynt. Assisted by history-professor Eisenbach, Flynt, the controversial publisher of Hustler and highly vocal First Amendment crusader, takes readers on a rousing and surprisingly educational history of the U.S. OK, it's not your grandmother's history textbook: this one focuses on the seamier side of American history. But, let's face it, the country didn't get where it is today without its share of sex scandals and shenanigans. From Alexander Hamilton's financial arrangement to sleep with another man's wife, to Bill Clinton's, um, indiscretion, the country's history was shaped, in a very real sense, by the lusty behavior of its movers and shakers. Readers expecting a sleazy and unpleasant book (those who, perhaps, associate Flynt's name with certain disreputable elements) will be surprised: the book is well reasoned, well written, and well documented. Flynt and coauthor Eisenbach aren't saying, Hey, look how much sex our forefathers (and -mothers) were having. They are saying, If you think modern-day sex scandals are unusual, blots on the otherwise noble history of our country, you'd better think again. And that's always good advice. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Caleb's crossing

 by Geraldine Brooks.  *Starred Review* Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her Civil War novel, March (2006), here imagines the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. The story is told by Bethia Mayfield, the daughter of a preacher who traveled from England to Martha's Vineyard to try and bring Christ to the Indians. In 1660, when Bethia is 12, the family takes Caleb, a Wampanoag Indian, into their home to prepare him for boarding school. Bethia is a bright scholar herself, and though education for women is discouraged, she absorbs the lessons taught to Caleb and her brother Makepeace like a sponge. She struggles through the deaths of her mother, a younger sister, another brother, and her father. When Caleb and Makepeace are sent to Cambridge, Bethia accompanies them as an indentured servant to a professor. She marries a Harvard scholar, journeys with him to Padua, and finally returns to her beloved island. In flashbacks, Brooks relates the woes of the Indian Wars, the smallpox epidemic, and Caleb's untimely death shortly after his graduation with honors. Brooks has an uncanny ability to reconstruct each moment of the history she so thoroughly researched in stunningly lyrical prose, and her characters are to be cherished. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The heart and the fist : the education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL

 by Eric Greitens. This modest, compelling autobiography addresses the question of whether virtue can prevail unless it has armed defenders. Rhodes scholar and White House fellow Greitens was not the first man to say yes. He may have gone farther than most, though, because he joined the Navy SEALs. His account of feeling himself turning from an activist in a business suit into another kind of activist in a flak vest is particularly absorbing. He saw combat in Afghanistan and Iraq that he describes vividly, and after being wounded in Iraq, he was obliged to leave the navy. He has now started and continues to run the Mission Continues, a foundation for wounded veterans seeking jobs and otherwise adjusting to civilian life. The story of a useful man. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Summer rental

 by Mary Kay Andrews. In this tailor-made beach read, three longtime friends escape for a month-long vacation in North Carolina's Outer Banks. The break comes at just the right time for each woman. Ellis has just been laid off, and she hasn't been with a man since her disastrous, short-lived marriage years ago. Julia's modeling career is coming to a close, but she's not sure if she's ready to settle down to marriage and children with her longtime boyfriend. Dorie's husband left her just as she found out that she's pregnant. In their ramshackle rented beach house, Ebbtide, the women share laughs, tears, plans, and setbacks. They cheer Ellis on as she starts a fling with Ebbtide's handsome, surly owner, and plot how to save Ebbtide from foreclosure. Andrews, author of The Fixer Upper (2010), writes another charmer with a picturesque southern setting and winsome female characters. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Dog sense : how the new science of dog behavior can make you a better friend to your pet

 by John Bradshaw. Bradshaw (Waltham Director, Anthrozoology Inst., Univ. of Bristol) presents a wide-ranging review of canine psychology and behavior intended for a more general audience than his 1995 chapter on social behavior and communication in James Serpell's The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People. Beginning with wolves and domestication and using examples mostly from the U.K., Bradshaw moves through cognition, emotions, senses, traits, and attention to humans, ending with a cautionary tale of genetically manipulated modern dogs. He reveals a wealth of scholarly literature in biology, psychology, veterinary medicine, and zoology through detailed analyses and uses those findings to support and critique popular dog-training methods. Clear and charming black-and-white drawings illustrate key points and provide a welcome break in the text. Complex sentences and terminology require close attention, but the information is worth the effort. VERDICT Pet owners and those interested in the animal mind will learn from this balanced, well-referenced guide to the science of canine behavior. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The uncoupling

 by Meg Wolitzer. Life begins to imitate art when Stellar Plains' edgy new drama teacher decides to stage Lysistrata as the high school's annual production. Faculty, administrators, and students alike are literally enchanted by Aristophanes' mordant antiwar comedy. Women and girls who are otherwise happily married or in a blossoming relationship suddenly decide to withhold their affections from their husbands, lovers, and boyfriends. The once passionate sex life of popular English teachers Robby and Dory Lang abruptly ends, as does the nascent relationship of their daughter Willa, who sharply breaks up with her first boyfriend. Most affected of all, however, is Marissa Clayborn, the charismatic young black girl cast in the play's lead, who decides to stage her own bed-in sex strike in protest of the war in Afghanistan. When Marissa fails to appear on opening night, all hell breaks loose as spurned men storm the stage demanding the resumption of normal relations. While zestfully exploring the nexus between complacency and desire, Wolitzer's hip, glib, impish scenario shrewdly examines the intricate connections between war and sex and perceptively illuminates the power of timeless literature. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The man in the Rockefeller suit : the astonishing rise and spectacular fall of a serial imposter

  by Mark Seal. Prepare yourself for one of the most intriguing, compelling stories of audacious criminality you're likely to read this year. In 2008, Clark Rockefeller, of the wealthy Rockefeller family, was arrested for kidnapping his daughter. But this criminal act was quickly overshadowed by some more startling revelations: Clark Rockefeller doesn't exist. He was the creation of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a German immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1978 and built for himself a series of fake identities, including Christopher Mountbatten Chichester, descendant of Lord Mountbatten, and Christopher Crowe, a television producer. But Clark Rockefeller was by far his finest creation, an identity he used for more than 15 years, including a 12-year marriage to a woman who was unaware of the deception (although, to be fair, there were plenty of hints that something was not quite right about Rockefeller). The book is a chronological account of Gerhartsreiter's life, dating back to his early childhood (when, as a teenager, he posed as other people as pranks), and it's a deeply fascinating story. Gerhartsreiter is a con artist, no doubt, and there is some suggestion he might be a murderer, too, but he is also an undeniably personable and persuasive fellow. It is impossible to read the book without getting caught up in his story on an almost hypnotic level. Full marks to author Seal, too, for making this true-life story as suspenseful as any crime novel. --Booklist  (Check Catalog)

What Alice forgot

 by Liane Moriarty. Twenty-nine-year-old Alice Love is pregnant with her first child, adores her husband, Nick, and has never set foot inside a spinning studio. Thirty-nine-year-old Alice Love suffers a sudden fall in her Friday spin class, wakes up with a splitting headache, and finds out she has three children and is in the middle of custody proceedings. Without any concrete memories of the past 10 years, Alice tries to figure out how her free-spirited 29-year-old self became a volunteer-coordinating, spin-class-attending 39-year-old woman. Like Sophie Kinsella's Remember Me? (2008), What Alice Forgot is an often funny, sometimes heartrending, deeply personal portrait of a woman attempting to unravel her own mystery. Moriarty is an admirably versatile author, using various characters to offer readers a full picture of Alice's life even when Alice isn't entirely sure of her own surroundings. Before your friends are talking about it, before Hollywood casts the inevitable screen adaptation, pick up What Alice Forgot and enjoy a thoroughly rewarding, deftly executed walk through the last decade of Alice Love's life. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Malcolm X. : a life of reinvention

 by Manning Marable. It is truly a shame that Marable passed away just days before this epic masterwork reached stores. This is a book whose reputation preceded itself and would have required little promotion; allegations by Marable that Malcolm both participated in a homosexual encounter with an early patron and was unfaithful to his wife Betty had already raised the ire of two of Malcolm's daughters, as well as others in the black community for whom Malcolm X has been raised to near-sainthood over the 40-odd years since his assassination. But neither claim is based on much evidence, and neither takes away from the overall impact of the work. Indeed the towering achievement of this book, which took Marable almost two decades to complete, is his ability to present Malcolm X as a flawed, struggling human being, as much at odds with his government as with himself. Marable deftly follows the same narrative path as did Haley's autobiography, but filling in the gaps and fine-tuning the exaggerations of that best-selling volume. Combing through FBI and NYPD files, gathering Nation of Islam interviews, and fleshing out Malcolm's post-NOI activities abroad, Marable succeeds spectacularly in painting a broader and more complex portrait of a man constantly in search of himself and his place in America. Publishers Weekly. (Check Catalog)

In Zanesville : a novel

 by Jo Ann Beard. I'm sick of being a teenager, says the 14-year-old narrator in this moving coming-of-age novel set in the 1970s. So far the teen years of Beard's nameless heroine, an everygirl from Zanesville, Illinois, have been filled with nameless longing; she felt plenty of that as a younger child, too, but this kind involves boys and cliques and comes with an extra layer of confusion. Her family a harried, brash, mother; a temperamental big sister; and a practically nonexistent little brother struggles financially while barely coping with her father's pathetic drunkenness. Our heroine is a late bloomer, stuck being the almost inseparable sidekick to her best friend, Felicia. Then the girls find their social circle expanding, soon including the most popular kids in school. Betrayal follows, and the girls must find their way back to friendship. Beard's hilarious, awkward, hyperreal dialogue drives the narrative, as slow-building squabbles morph into tense bursts of familial bickering. The 1970s setting allows for a slower-paced coming-of-age, but Beard travels the well-worn road of budding young womanhood with a surprising freshness. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The post-American world : release 2.0

 by Fareed Zakaria. It's not that the U.S. has fallen behind, argues Newsweek editor Zakaria; it's that the rest of the world is catching up. The globalized economy of the twenty-first century is in many ways an American-style capitalist system, but countries formerly in thrall to the world's superpowers are increasingly able to keep up with, and in some cases beat, the U.S. at its own free-market game. Though, from a military and political standpoint, it remains a unipolar world, the actual ability of the U.S. to leverage its sole superpower status for economic gain is fading as it proves (somewhat ironically) less able than other nations to adapt its economic policies to the emergent facts of globalization. The rise of the rest and resultant economic vibrancy is a generally positive development for global peace and prosperity, claims Zakaria, resisting the apoplectic or apocalyptic tenor of some other commentators. And America can be optimistic too, provided that it can get over its fear, purge itself of toxic politics and nostalgic ideologies, and remind itself of its core virtues. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The silent land : a novel

 by Graham Joyce. Tragedy threatens Zoe and Jake on a ski holiday in the Pyrenees when they are buried in an avalanche. Against all odds, they free themselves from the snow and make it back down the mountain to the safety of their hotel. Once there, they are left with many questions. There are no people in the hotel or town, and something seems to be preventing them from leaving on their own. Alternating between waiting for help and trying to find a way out, Zoe and Jack have the run of their abandoned town. But time seems to be moving more slowly than it should; food does not spoil, and candles do not melt. This latest tale of supernatural suspense by O. Henry Award and British Fantasy Award winner Joyce (How To Make Friends with Demons; The Tooth Fairy) will keep the reader intrigued. Its slow pace and beautiful prose build to a clever apex. -VERDICT Fans of the supernatural will enjoy this original love story. --Library journal (Check Catalog)

Stories I only tell my friends : an autobiography

 by Rob Lowe. Lowe, in case you haven't been living on planet Earth for some time, is a significant TV and movie actor. Again, unless you've been out of the loop lately, his career was nearly scuttled when a sex tape featuring him with two young women surfaced. But the point of bringing that sad and not-really-anyone's-business incident up is to say that Lowe survived to thrive again, and his charming, honest, even affectionate memoir is the story of strong guts behind a strikingly handsome face. Lowe recalls his early life in Ohio, his move with his mother and brother (Chad, that is, also an actor) to California, and his early advent into movies and television. A stable family life was never his to enjoy until he began his own. He certainly does not downplay the wild parts of his life, but neither does he act entitled to the high points of his career. Readers will appreciate learning of his hard work and of his learning from his past mistakes. A book to recommend widely. . HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: First serial rights sold to Vanity Fair (May issue), author appearances, and national media and review attention will generate buzz. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Save me

 by Lisa Scottoline. Suburban mom Susan Pressman is forced to make a split-second decision after an explosion goes off in the school cafeteria in which she volunteers. Should she rescue her own daughter, Melly, trapped in the bathroom, or lead the girls standing in front of her, who constantly bully her daughter, to safety? Her choice reverberates throughout the little town of Reesburgh, Pennsylvania, as she is cast as the villain by the local news anchor, parents, and the school. While her attorney and husband construct a defense plan that includes filing a lawsuit against the school, Susan sets out to seek the truth behind this mysterious, accidental fire. With the help of a construction worker who may know the cause of the explosion as well as an incognito visit to a local factory, Susan slowly unravels the truth and along with it some hidden secrets in Reesburgh's dark past, including one horrifying buried memory of her own. At the quick pace of a thriller, Scottoline masterfully fits every detail into a tight plot chock-full of real characters, real issues, and real thrills. A story anchored by the impenetrable power of a mother's love, it begs the question, just how far would you go to save your child? --Booklist (Check Catalog)

My thoughts be bloody : the bitter rivalry between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth that led to an American tragedy

 by Nora Titone. If one chooses to do so, one could probably discover a complex of personal demons that supposedly motivated every lone political assassin. So Oswald was acting out his frustration over his failures as a husband and political activist. Sirhan Sirhan was seeking relief from loneliness rather than striking a blow for Palestine. And so on and so on to the point of absurd psychobabble. Yet, given the limitations inherent in such efforts, this is actually a very well-done examination of the trials and tribulations of a remarkable family. The family patriarch, Junius, was a heralded Shakespearean actor, an alcoholic, and an often emotionally abusive parent. His favored son, Edwin, was generally regarded as the greatest American actor of the nineteenth century. Then there was poor John desperate for his father's approval, intensely jealous of his brother, and frustrated by his reputation as a mediocre performer. Titone does a fine job of contrasting the personalities and even the acting styles of the brothers. Her portrait of Edwin as a decent man haunted by his brother's act is often moving. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The summer without men : a novel

 by Siri Hustvedt. So traumatized is poet Mia when her neuroscientist husband of 30 years tells her that he needs a "paus" because he's smitten with a young colleague, she spends a brief spell in a psychiatric ward. Upon her release, she flees Brooklyn for he. backwate. hometown in Minnesota. It's good to see her mother, and meet her mother's friends, who are aging with various degrees of grace, denial, and suffering. Mia also teaches a poetry class for seventh-grade girls. The contrast Hustvedt draws between the solidarity of the women and the diabolical bullying of the hormone-riled girls is breathtaking in its insights into femaleness and age. And then there are Mia's penetrating, often hilarious musings on creativity, sparked, in part, by Abigail, who, over many years, has made a series of wildly subversive needlepoint designs, he. secret amusements. What joy to see Hustvedt, the author, heretofore, of such elegantly dark, labyrinthine novels as The Sorrows of an American (2008), have such mordant fun in this saucy and scathing novel about men and women, selfishness and generosity. In Mia, Hustvedt has created a companionable and mischievous narrator to cherish, a healthy-minded woman of high intellect, blazing humor, and boundless compassion. --Booklist (Check Catalog)