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)