Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm

Mardi Jo Link (Get this book)
In a heart-wrenching, heartwarming, and invigorating memoir, author and farmer Link struggles following her divorce to hold on to the life she had built. Neither sugarcoated nor wallowing in self-pity, Link's storytelling is as tough, honest, and unyielding as one would expect from a Michigan farmer. Her account, told with humor and panache, of pulling oneself up after disappointment and loss will appeal to the bootstrapper in all of us.--Booklist

The Daughters of Mars

Thomas Keneally (Get this book)
Australian novelist Keneally turns to his native country in a time of war. Anticipating the centennial of World War I by a shade, Keneally constructs a Winds of War-like epic concerning figures whom only Ernest Hemingway, among the first-tier writers, got to: military nurses. Fans of Downton Abbey and Gallipoli alike will find much to admire in Keneally's fast-moving, flawlessly written pages.--Kirkus

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

Judith Flanders (Get this book)
Social historian Flanders does a superb job of demonstrating the role that the press and fiction writers played in shaping the British public's attitudes toward crime during the 19th century. She captures perfectly the appeal of bloody fiction and macabre news stories. Flanders's convincing and smart synthesis of the evolution of an official police force, fictional detectives, and real-life cause celebres will appeal to devotees of true crime and detective fiction alike.--Publisher's Weekly

Crazy Rich Asians

Kevin Kwan (Get this book)
Kwan's debut is a scintillating fictional look into the opulent lives of fabulously wealthy Chinese expats living in Singapore. Economics professor Rachel Chu has no idea what she's in for when her handsome boyfriend, Nicholas Young, invites her to join him at his best friend's wedding in Singapore. From its delightful opening scene onward, this sleek social satire offers up more than a few hilarious moments as it skewers the crafty, rich schemers who populate its pages.--Booklist

Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined

Scott Barry Kaufman (Get this book)
Cognitive psychologist Kaufman describes how he overcame a learning disability and defied expectations despite doing poorly on IQ tests. Coupling his own experience with that of Temple Grandin and Daniel Tammet, who describe how they think using images, he suggests that the development of expertise, associative thinking and pattern recognition are aspects of creative intelligence not revealed by IQ testing. An inspiring, informative affirmation of human potential combined with an overview of historical developments in standardized tests, cognitive psychology and current research.--Kirkus

No One Could Have Guessed the Weather

Anne-Marie Casey (Get this book)
A subversively charming debut about a group of happily imperfect New Yorkers from Dublin-based Casey, wife of novelist Joseph O'Connor. The novel is bookended by Lucy's story: After the financial crash, Lucy, Richard and their two small boys are forced out of their posh London lives and move to Manhattan, where Richard makes due at a reduced salary, and they take over the apartment he kept for business. Each chapter feels like a well-composed short story, and the collected whole is fresh and bright with characters that defy expectations. Clever and witty: the best kind of summer book--Kirkus

You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

David McRaney (Get this book)
McRaney's newest, a follow-up to 2012's You Are Not So Smart, explores the ways in which the brain "cheats and edits and alters reality." The Mississippi-based journalist and blogger ranges far and wide in his explication of various theories of individual and social psychology, in the process shedding light on the personal blind spots that skew reality while also allowing us to navigate it. McRaney is a fine stylist, easily balancing anecdote, analysis, and witty asides. Despite a flippant and self-helpy title, this book is seriously informative.--Publisher's Weekly

The ghost bride

Yangsze Choo (Get this book)
Choo's remarkably strong and arresting first novel explores the concept of Chinese spirit marriages in late-nineteenth-century Malaya through the eyes of the highly relatable Li Lan, a poor but spunky young woman, who is approached by the wealthy family of a dead man to become his bride. With its gripping tangles of plot and engaging characters, this truly compelling read is sure to garner much well-deserved attention.--Booklist

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Reza Aslan (Get this book)
A well-researched, readable biography of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth is not the same as Jesus Christ. The Gospels are not historical documents, nor even eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life. In fact, most of the incidents in them are pure fiction. The Gospels weren't written during Jesus' lifetime, but rather between A.D. 70 and 120, and they certainly weren't written by the men whose names are attached to them. In fact, every word written about Jesus was written by people who never knew him in life--even though Paul claimed to know Jesus intimately, not as man, but as God. Why has Christianity taken hold and flourished? This book will give you the answers in the simplest, most straightforward, comprehensible manner.--Kirkus

Drift

Jon McGoran  (Get this book)
McGoran impressively integrates concerns about genetically modified produce with an action-filled storyline and fleshed-out characters. Det. Doyle Carrick of the Philadelphia PD, suspended after putting a gun to a drug dealer's head to coerce information, uses his mandatory vacation to take residence in the house he's inherited from his recently deceased parents in the rural community of Dunston, Pa. The disturbing, but scientifically plausible, secret at the heart of the bad guys' schemes is an original one, and McGoran makes the most of it.--Publisher's Weekly

The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving

Leigh Gallagher (Get this book)
While the baby boomers helped fortify the notion of the suburban single-family house as the American dream, the millennials are headed in another direction, according to Fortune writer Gallagher. The recession, rising fuel prices, and demographic shifts that mean smaller families and fewer and later marriages are contributing to a decline in the appeal of the suburbs. Gallagher points to research and analysis showing rising populations in urban areas and suburbs who adapt the ideals of green living and walkable communities. Fascinating reading on changing trends in how and where we live.--Booklist

Prairie Song: A Novel, Hearts Seeking Home Book 1 ( Hearts Seeking Home )

Mona Hodgson (Get this book)
Hodgson continues the stories of Anna Goben and Caroline Milburn, first introduced in The Quilted Heart e-book novellas. Anna, her mother, and grandfather continue to grieve for the loss of Anna's brother, killed in the Civil War. Hoping a new environment will revive their spirits, the trio make plans to join the Boones Lick Company wagon train headed to California. The rustic setting of the trail lends itself to drama, while the sheer number of unattached men and women allows for ample doses of romance and rejection. A bonus for lovers of light historical fiction.--Publisher's Weekly

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Kenneth Niel Cukier (Get this book)
Plenty of books extol the technical marvels of our information society, but this is an original analysis of the information itself--trillions of searches, calls, clicks, queries and purchases. Mayer-Schonberger and Economist data editor Cukier begin with a jolt by pointing out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spends weeks evaluating reports from doctors and clinics before announcing a flu epidemic. Data mining is so efficient that today's privacy protections are irrelevant. Once enough of your activities, however anonymous, are "datafied," a computer can identify you. A fascinating, enthusiastic view of the possibilities of vast computer correlations and the entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of them.--Kirkus

Queen's Gambit

Elizabeth Fremantle (Get this book)
Just when historical fiction fans were beginning to feel the dearth of new works, Fremantle fills the void with this outstanding debut novel that follows twice-widowed Katherine Parr as she falls in love with courtier Thomas Seymour but is compelled to marry King Henry VIII. This guaranteed best seller will appeal not only to your die-hard Tudor buffs but also to readers who enjoy Hilary Mantel's novels about Thomas Cromwell ("Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies"). Be sure to include this on your summer must-read list.--Library Journal

Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism

Karima Bennoune (Get this book)
A human rights lawyer scours the global hotspots for stories of Muslim push back to fundamentalism. Fired with a sense of outrage, Bennoune applies the lessons she learned from her professor and activist father, Mahfoud Bennoune--put on the "kill list" by fundamentalist extremists in Algeria in the early 1990s--in meeting the challenge of today's fundamentalists.  The author's account brings to light the courageous few who do stand up at the peril of losing their lives--e.g., many women who have had enlightened fathers who supported their education, like the author. Bennoune, and those she profiles, bravely meets the tide of extremism with a sense of shared community and nonviolent purpose--Kirkus

The Gravity of Birds

Tracy Guzeman (Get this book)
Guzeman's debut examines the impact of a dissolute artist's self-absorption on already fractured families. When Thomas Bayber, scion of a wealthy family he's disappointed with his painterly ambitions, runs into the Kessler sisters during a 1963 summer vacation, he unknowingly seals all their fates. At times burdened by overblown prose and the weight of its own ambitions, this novel exhibits, particularly in characterization and dialogue, glimmers of genius.--Kirkus

Undercover Cop: How I Brought Down the Real-Life Sopranos

Mike Russell, Patrick W Picciarelli (Get this book)
Billed as a true-crime version of The Sopranos, the story of Russell's violent life as an undercover cop cum trusted associate of the Genovese crime clan in Newark, N.J., has more plot twists than the acclaimed TV series. Russell's bravery and professionalism along with some crucial surveillance eventually led to the busts of more than 50 "wiseguys" and public officials. This tell-all page-turner is all the better for being true.--Publisher's Weekly

A Tap on the Window

Linwood Barclay (Get this book)
Early in this intricately plotted stand-alone from Arthur Ellis Award winner Barclay, middle-aged PI Cal Weaver hesitates to pick up a teenage girl hitchhiking one evening outside a bar in Griffon, N.Y., just across the Canadian border. He decides to give her a ride after she says she was a friend of Cal's teenage son, Scott, who died a few months earlier while under the influence of ecstasy. Barclay offers one surprise after another in a mystery that unfolds with the mundane heroism and tragedy of a local news story.--Publisher's Weekly

Alexandria: The Last Nights of Cleopatra

Peter Stothard (Get this book)

A thoroughly enjoyable combination of history, autobiography, travel and general musings about Alexandria. Times Literary Supplement editor Stothard (The Spartacus Road, 2010, etc.) started writing about Cleopatra when he was in elementary school, and this book is the eighth version of his work. It is a joy to watch the classically trained mind assemble the story. Don't try to categorize this book; just read it and let it flow over you.--Kirkus

& sons

David Gilbert (Get this book)
Acutely aware that his time is short after the death of his lifelong friend, Charles Topping, Andrew Dyer, a revered, famously reclusive New York writer, is anxious for his youngest son, 17-year-old Andy, whose birth destroyed Andrew's marriage, to connect with his two half brothers. Their chaotic reunion becomes the catalyst for Gilbert's intricately configured, shrewdly funny, and acidly critical novel. A marvel of uproarious and devastating missteps and reversals charged with lightning dialogue, Gilbert's delectably mordant and incisive tragicomedy of fathers, sons, and brothers, privilege and betrayal, celebrity and obscurity, ingeniously and judiciously maps the interface between truth and fiction, life and art.--Booklist

Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith

Fred Bahnson (Get this book)
A soul-searching memoir and travelogue about finding God in the food produced by community agriculture. "What does it mean to follow God?" Bahnson asked. "How should I live my life? And what does all this have to do with the soil, the literal ground of my existence?" To answer these questions, Bahnson immersed himself in the connections between Judeo-Christian faiths and the burgeoning food movement, while also reflecting upon his life in God. A profound, moving treatise on finding God in gardening.--Kirkus

Visitation Street

Ivy Pochoda (Get this book)
A mystery about a missing girl and the ghosts she leaves behind. One summer evening, teenagers Val and June float on a rubber raft out into the bay off Brooklyn's Red Hook section. Only Val returns, her near-dead body washed upon the shore. But Val can't seem to tell anyone what happened to them or why June disappeared without a trace. A terrific story in the vein of Dennis Lehane's fiction.--Kirkus

Gettysburg: The Last Invasion

Allen C. Guelzo (Get this book)
A stirring account of the "greatest and most violent collision the North American continent [has] ever seen," just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Though the battle site was not inevitable, the actual battle was: The giant armies of North and South were destined to lumber into one another in a time when, as Guelzo cites a Confederate officer as observing, they "knew no more about the topography of the country than they did about Central Africa."  Robust, memorable reading that will appeal to Civil War buffs, professional historians and general readers alike.--Kirkus

The Good Luck Girls of Shipwreck Lane

Kelly Harms (Get this book)
When Janine Brown of Cedar Falls, Iowa, is announced as the winner of a dream home in Maine, two women who share the same name may just be what the other needs for a brand new lease on life. Janey Brown's Great Aunt Midge has entered her name in a Free House Sweepstakes, and when she wins the house in Maine, Janey would like nothing more than to crawl into the safe, warm haven of her kitchen and make it all go away. A perfect recipe of clever, quirky, poignant and fun make this a delightful debut.--Kirkus

The Working Memory Advantage: Train Your Brain to Function Stronger, Smarter, Faster

Ross Alloway, Tracy Alloway (Get this book)
A lucid how-to on ways to strengthen your processing of everyday information. Alloway and her husband, Ross, are leading researchers in the emerging field of working memory, a cognitive skill that allows the brain to focus on and process information for the task at hand. In this informative book, they describe recent studies, including their own, indicating that working memory is a stronger predictor of success in school and in later life than IQ. Perhaps overly upbeat, but it contains useful new insights into thinking well.--Kirkus

The Forgotten

David Baldacci (Get this book)
Mysterian Baldacci serves up a gently ironic tale of mayhem, this time set in idyllic Florida. John Puller is a classic Baldacci character, a combat-wise Army special agent whose life has been spent in service. The cliches are refreshingly few, and Baldacci writes sympathetically of the not-so-golden years at the end of life, when Puller's father, once the commander of 100,000 men in battle, is "now intently watching a TV show where people guessed the prices of everyday stuff in an attempt to win more stuff." A solid thriller.--Kirkus