The gap year : a novel

 by Sarah Bird. With her daughter in the throes of senior-year jitters, Cam Lightsey reflects on the events of the previous 12 months that catapulted the abnormally headstrong Aubrey into a downward spiral of disrespect and deception. As a single mother, Cam had always prided herself on the open camaraderie that had existed between them, but as Aubrey's attitude continues to deteriorate, Cam begins second-guessing the choices she made, from moving into a pretentious suburb to dissolving her marriage to Martin some 16 years ago. For her part, Aubrey pinpoints her transition from Marching Band Geek Girl to Miss Popularity to the day when Parkhaven High's football hero, Tyler Moldenhauer, singled her out for special attention. When Aubrey's involvement with Tyler begins to jeopardize her departure for college, Cam desperately wishes for help in handling her wayward daughter, only to receive guidance from an unexpected source. The novel is told from alternating points of view, and Bird's handling of the familiar parent-teen clash of wills is accomplished with memorable, memorably realistic poignancy. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Tolstoy and the purple chair : my year of magical reading

 by Nina Sankovitch. Reading was paramount in Sankovitch's Evanston, Illinois, home, so she turned to books for solace in the wake of her oldest sister's cruel death at age 46. While Sankovitch knew she could rely on books for wisdom, for succor, and for escape, she realized that as the mother of four sons, and as an attorney on hiatus, she needed structure to cope with her grief. Hence the book-a-day project. Nestled in her beloved old purple chair, Sankovitch read a book each day, primarily novels, then reviewed each title on her book-exchange website, Read All Day. She now recounts the year of magical reading in a beautifully fluid, reflective, and astute memoir that gracefully combines affecting family history--her parents immigrated to America after surviving WWII in Belgium and Poland with expert testimony about how books open our minds to the complexity and entirety of the human experience. Sankovitch's reading list in all its dazzling variety is top-notch, and every ardent reader will find her perceptive thoughts about stories, remembrance, resilience, and book bliss incisive and affirming. --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)

A tiger in the kitchen : a memoir of food and family

 by Cheryl Lu-lien Tan. Tan embraced the rebelliousness associated with the Year of the Tiger, leaving her native Singapore first to study and then to work in the United States-not as a lawyer as her father had hoped but as a journalist. A desire to reconnect with her family and culture led her on a yearlong project to learn to cook the food of her childhood, commuting between her homeland and her chosen home, taking "lessons" in Singaporean cooking from her aunts. In this humorous and heartfelt memoir, she charts her progress with a deft hand, whether focusing on cooking, negotiating family dynamics, or what she thinks of herself. Tan, who also maintains a blog of the same name (www.-atigerinthekitchen.com), includes ten recipes. VERDICT Those wishing to school themselves in the dishes of Singapore are better off with a cookbook, but this warm, witty chronicle of growing up and finding one's place between cultures will be widely enjoyed. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Anatomy of a disappearance : a novel

 by Hisham Matar. The author of In the Country of Men (2007) limns a boy's complex relationship with his father. Nuri El-Alfi is 10 when his mother dies, leaving him in the care of his remote father, Kamal, a former minister in an unnamed Arab country's regime who is now a dissident living in exile in Cairo. It is Nuri who first catches sight of Mona, a beautiful young woman who captivates him when he is 12. Kamal romances and then marries Mona, inciting deep jealousy in Nuri, who is sent off to boarding school soon after. Two years later, Nuri travels to Geneva to meet Mona and his father for a holiday. Mona arrives first, but his father never shows up, and the pair discovers in the newspaper that Kamal has been abducted from a Swiss woman's apartment. Over the next decade, Nuri is left to patch together the truth about his father's political and amorous activities, leading him to a startling revelation. A subtle and graceful character study. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Precious objects : a story of diamonds, family and a way of life

 by Alicia Oltuski. Oltuski's fascinating look at the diamond industry weaves together an intricate, comprehensive study of the origins and future of the trade and a family narrative. Oltuski's father is a veteran jeweler in New York's Forty-Seventh Street Diamond District, one of the major centers of the industry. Here deals based on reputation and connection are haggled over, and transactions closed by spoken word. Oltuski explores the intricacy of such negotiations as well as the nature of the industry, from its deep history to such more current controversies as those concerning conflict or blood diamonds and the effect of list pricing in the marketplace. Oltuski also covers basic diamond science and how emerging technologies are changing the way the precious gems are manufactured. Throughout, she highlights a variety of persons who rely on diamonds for income, including her father, and how the ever-changing industry, rooted in old traditions, poses threats to their livelihoods. An inclusive, intimate account of a complex business. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The accident : a novel

 by Linwood Barclay. Building contractor Glen Barber is shattered to learn that his wife, Sheila, has died in an automobile accident that she caused, apparently the result of drinking and driving. Desperately searching for answers (his wife, he knows, would never have driven if she had been drinking, and she was not a habitual drinker), he soon discovers that the mother of his young daughter was not the woman he believed she was. Thematically, the novel is similar to Barclay's Never Look Away (in which a man also discovers that his wife has a hidden past), but this one is not a retread but rather an exploration of the theme from a different angle. Fans of the author's previous novels will find The Accident just as tightly plotted and economically written as its predecessors. Barclay definitely belongs in the company of Harlan Coben, Lisa Gardner, and Gregg Hurwitz. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The takedown : a suburban mom, a coal miner's son, and the unlikely demise of Colombia's brutal Norte Valle Cartel

 by Jeffrey Robinson. Organized crime expert Robinson (The Sink) tells the dramatic saga of an assistant U.S. attorney and a federal agent who bring down the violent drug lords of the largest drug empire since the heady days of Pablo Escobar. Bonnie Klapper, a hard-nosed prosecutor (not your run-of-the-mill "suburban mom"), with Agent Romedio "Rooney" Viola, plows ahead with her dogged 12-year campaign against the Colombian bosses and couriers, isolating their U.S.-based operatives and turning them to provide state's evidence against their superiors. Robinson writes candidly of the national appetite for illegal drugs: "Organized crime is the planet's biggest business and North America is its most lucrative market." Klapper and Viola wage war with the corrupt Colombian authorities and the joint American law enforcement agencies, trapping the top killers Guzman, Monsalve, and Bustamente, into snitching on the overlords of the Norte Valle Cartel. Impressive from start to finish, the book is a tribute to Robinson's storytelling and the courage of the crime-fighting duo. 8 pages of b&w photos. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

The lantern : a novel

 by Deborah Lawrenson.  Eve and Dom meet and instantly fall deeply in love. So when Dom decides to move to Provence to a ramshackle farmhouse, Les Genevriers, Eve can do nothing but follow. Once there, mysterious scents waft through the house, a party guest raises disturbing questions about Dom's former wife, Rachel, and Dom vehemently refuses to talk about her. Add to that the isolation of the house and mysterious bones found under an old concrete pool, and you have all the makings of a modern gothic novel with plenty of shadows, figures in the night, and a ghostly lantern that appears on the path to the house. The story unfolds in Eve's modern voice and the diary of Benedicte, former owner of Les Genevriers. The two stories move slowly together, revealing just enough to keep the reader on edge. Lawrenson builds characters and suspense with a deft hand, creating an atmospheric and moody story, with the beauty of Provence and its culture, past and present, as backdrop. --Booklist (Check Catalog)