Violence, loyalty and the tension between American ideals of individual freedom and law and order are at the heart of T.C. Boyle's (San Miguel) riveting and provocative The Harder They Come.

Sten is a Vietnam veteran, ex-Marine and retired high school principal. While Sten is on vacation in Costa Rica with his wife, Carolee, an armed bandit hijacks the group's tour bus. Sten, furious, strangles the gunman and kills him. Despite his initial fears of retribution, the Costa Rican authorities assure him that he's actually done them a favor. Back in Mendocino he's given a hero's welcome, and eventually joins a local citizen's group to guard against the South American drug dealers they fear are establishing themselves in the neighboring forests. Meanwhile, his schizophrenic son, Adam, takes up with the much older and somewhat embittered Sara, whose anti-government activism fuels Adam's paranoia and his embrace of survivalism. When he kills a member of Sten's patrol who has stopped him about his erratic behavior, this sets off a massive manhunt, shattering Sten and Carolee.

The narrative point of view shifts among Sten, Sara and Adam, though the story ultimately belongs to Sten. Each character's voice is convincing. Sara and especially Sten's contradictions are believable even when they shock, like Sten's easy dismissal of anyone who is not white and middle class or his hair-trigger temper. And it's these contradictions, held both individually and in America's cultural identity, that give the novel its power. The Harder They Come uses a larger-than-life plot, told with white-hot tension, to mine its characters' paradoxes with unfailing insight and compassion. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer

Alejandro Jodorowsky's Where the Bird Sings Best follows three generations from both sides of the author's Jewish family--beekeepers on one side, lion tamers on the other--in one gloriously readable, fantastical autobiographical novel.

The saga begins in the Ukraine, when Jodorowsky's grandmother's first son tries to escape on a wooden chest from a flooding river. He doesn't realize it's weighted down with 37 tractates of the Talmud, and drowns. His outspoken mother, Teresa, storms into the synagogue, cursing her religion and giving God a piece of her mind. She is just one of the larger-than-life relatives who dominate this deliciously far-fetched, multigenerational saga. With the author's grandfather, an impractical and saintly man, Teresa emigrates to Chile, where he becomes a shoemaker. After his right hand is caught in machinery, he begins to work miracles with the dead hand.

From the other side of the family, Jodorowsky introduces Alejandro Prullansky, a gigantic male dancer with long golden curls. He trains in Moscow for ballet until he becomes aware of the pain in the world and goes to work in a brutal meat-packing plant. His daughter, who sings while her father sets himself on fire for one last leap, becomes the author's mother.

One outrageous set piece follows another with an exhilarating density of imagination as Jodorowsky juggles tale within tale with Arabian Nights agility. "In memory, everything can become miraculous," he says. "The past is not fixed and unalterable." Jodorowsky expertly harnesses boldly surreal images to capture the gorgeous, brutal essence of life. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

Throne of Darkness is Douglas Nicholas's third book set in 13th-century England and featuring the Irish queen Maeve and her consort, Jack, and her granddaughter Nemain and her husband, Hob. The merry quartet of musician-warriors once again face an evil that threatens to swallow the inhabitants of the English countryside. Maeve is approached by Monsignor Bonacorso da Panzano and his right-hand man, Sinibaldo. Da Panzano tells Maeve, "You may think of me as the shadow of His Holiness [Pope Innocent III]: I do his bidding, sometimes in the dark places of the world, to exert the Church's influence." He wishes to hire Maeve and her family to fight an evil wizard, employed by King John of England, who has conjured up a group of men able to shapeshift into wolf-like creatures--but working with the Pope's men will be close to treason.

What unfolds in this fast-paced read is another delightful story rich with descriptions of old England and swirled with action-packed scenes as Maeve and Nemain use their magical Art to foil the plans of the king. Nicholas intersperses fetching details of Hob and Nemain's love affair throughout the book in just the right proportions, along with specifics of the group's ability to create wondrous music on their Irish instruments. Throne of Darkness is best read as a follow-up to Douglas's first two books, Something Red and The Wicked, but it is also a great introduction to the fantastical world Douglas has created, which spins with magic and mystery. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

In her popular lifestyle blog Yvestown, author and photographer Yvonne Eijkenduijn showcases a personal aesthetic that combines serious DIY skills, a passion for organic food and a strong sense of design with international flair. (Think a Gen-X Martha Stewart with Dutch roots, a Belgian home base and Indonesian influences.) Like her blog, Eijkenduijn's first book, Yvestown in the Kitchen, is both practical and aspirational.

Yvestown in the Kitchen includes recipes for 40 dishes, both familiar (apple-pear crumble) and exotic (coconut soup). The recipes are simple and clearly written. Each is accompanied with a photograph designed to make to make the mouth water. Nonetheless, this is not primarily a cookbook; instead it is a book about living in the kitchen--beautifully.

Eijkenduijn takes readers into not only her own kitchen, but those of 12 of her friends, most of whom are young creative entrepreneurs in Belgium or the Netherlands. The demographic of the kitchen owners is not diverse, but the style of their kitchens is, from sleek and professional to cozy and idiosyncratic. Each section begins with a brief bio of both the cook and the kitchen, followed by photographs that will instill envy in even a non-cook's heart. Each section ends with a quirky "interview" with the kitchen's owners, including a list of online inspirations. Too personal simply to copy, these kitchens offer a springboard to reader creativity. As Eijkenduijn says, "A nosy glimpse into someone else's kitchen can be incredibly inspiring." --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

Scott Simon's Unforgettable is a heartfelt, nostalgic, funny and uplifting celebration of his mother's life. Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, spent his mother's final days with her in an intensive care unit in Chicago, looking back at the life she created for him as a solo parent and working mother.

Patricia Lyons was a glamorous Irish Catholic who married Ernie Simon, an alcoholic Jewish comedian. The suicide of Lyons's mother taught her self-preservation early. When her husband began drinking himself out of jobs and toward an early grave, she left him, determined not to let herself or her son be caught in that spiral.

Working in nightclubs, dress shops and doing some modeling, Lyons created a secure world not only for her son but also for her alternative family of "aunties and uncles"--her circle of tough and funny women pals and gay male friends.

While intermittently detailing the everyday indignities of dying in a hospital, Simon and his mother hopscotch through pivotal and delightfully trivial moments in their life together, remembering numerous gentlemen callers, birthday parties, marriages, jokes and life lessons. Far from depressing, Simon (Pretty Birds) uses precise prose and nimble portraiture to create an inspiring and unforgettable memoir that reassures readers that even the most ordinary life is extraordinary when examined. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

For those who cringe a bit at their teenage photos, the memoir Unabrow: Misadventures of a Late Bloomer is sure to be a source of enjoyable catharsis. Una LaMarche (writer of the popular blog The Sassy Curmudgeon) specializes in confronting the types of memories most of us try to repress--years of puberty absent from many family albums because they've been "crudely defaced with marker or ripped out in order to be ritually burned." Having sported at various points in her life a thick unibrow, troll doll earrings, prominent acne and "bulbous-toed platform sneakers that looked to have been cobbled by cartoon elves," LaMarche is intimately familiar with shame, and knows how to share hers in a way that's hilarious and accessible. Through clever guides, charts and lists (for instance, "The Seven Deadly Sins of DIY Bangs"), LaMarche provides snappy "advice" on some of life's silliest struggles.

Beneath the continuous humor, Unabrow sends a heartfelt message about self-acceptance. LaMarche offers her own past as evidence of universal imperfection, while including sly allusions to the absurdity of beauty standards in general. Having a unibrow, she points out, was once desirable in ancient Greece, Russia and Iran.

Reading Unabrow can feel akin to flipping through a yearbook with a grounded friend--one who possesses an unusual knack for apt pop-culture references, devising belated comebacks and generally making everyone feel better about themselves. --Annie Atherton

Les Standiford (Bringing Adam Home) honed his chops on his Miami-set John Deal crime novels, and this work of narrative nonfiction ups the ante on his already storied career. Water to the Angels: William Mulholland, His Monumental Aqueduct and the Rise of Los Angeles is a history of the water wars between Los Angeles and the Owens Valley, but more specifically, it's an ode to William Mulholland. Considered the father of Los Angeles, this towering, no-nonsense Irishman, the superintendent of the Los Angeles City Water Company, turned an arid desert basin into a starry metropolis of 10 million people in an architectural achievement that endures to this day.

Standiford lays bare the struggles Mulholland faced in taming the abundant Owens River, knowing that in benefiting "the greatest good" he would strip away the livelihoods of Owens Valley residents who depended on that water for their own development and prosperity. The only blemish in Mulholland's complicated yet pragmatic career was the collapse of the St. Francis Dam in 1928, which killed 600 and haunted him until his death.

Los Angeles faces the same do-or-die situation today that provoked Mulholland at the turn of the 20th century to brave a buckboard journey in desperate search of a resource needed for the city's survival. "Still, anyone tempted to doubt any Mulholland anecdote should keep in mind the indisputable facts of the man's legacy, which still keep a major city afloat, and which to this day provoke legislative debate, lawsuits and acts of criminal mischief." --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Saul Bellow lived in rarefied air for American writers--he won the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes and three National Book Awards (the only writer to do so). This year marks the centennial of Bellow's birth, a perfect time to publish a collection of his nonfiction, and Benjamin Taylor, who edited Saul Bellow: Letters, is the ideal person to take this on.

There are 57 pieces, from 1948 to 2000: essays, critical and autobiographical pieces, lectures, interviews and speeches. They deal with Chicago, past and present--Bellow was a "child of immigrants who grew up in one of Chicago's immigrant neighborhoods"--his Jewish heritage and Jewish writers; and his concern over the state of the novel, its past, present and future.

Bellow started out as a leftist, but as he grew older he became more conservative, concerned with the viability of civilization (another common topic for his analysis) and the poor state of "high culture" in America. For him, the most important element in a novel (that "latter-day lean-to, a hovel in which the spirit takes shelter," as he described it in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech) was the "stature of characters." Bellow frequently commented on the absence of such in modern literature.

Taylor has done a great job bringing all these pieces together, though a short introduction or brief paragraphs to situate the pieces would have been welcome. Nonetheless, There Is Simply Too Much to Think About provides us with a fine portrait of the artist. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

This debut graphic novel by Victoria Jamieson--aka Winnie the Pow, a roller derby skater herself--will make readers as fascinated by the world of roller derby as is her 12-year-old heroine, who falls in love with the sport and practices to improve her skills.

Astrid goes from a girl who can barely balance on skates to an "insane" speed demon during her time at Junior Roller Derby Camp. She still struggles with mastering her "plow" (stopping) and falls nearly every time she gets "hit" (blocked) by a teammate. But through practice, she steadily improves in credible ways. As Jamieson explains the sport's juicy language and its mix of skillful skating and aggressive blocking, she also charts the changes in Astrid's friendship with Nicole, her best friend since first grade. Nicole wants to learn to dance en pointe at ballet camp, not master blocking at derby camp. A standout sequence depicts a split-screen of Astrid's growing anger (on the right) as she eavesdrops on Nicole listening to a ballet friend coach her on how to shed Astrid as a friend (on the left). Astrid lets her mother assume she and Nicole are still tight and attending camp together, which results in an emotionally authentic blowout.

In the course of the camp's duration, Astrid learns a great deal about herself as a skater, a daughter and a friend. Jamieson's honest approach and ability to chronicle visually the inner life of her heroine will have readers hoping for more from this talented writer and artist. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness