If she aces her report card, precocious Bee Branch, the 15-year-old narrator of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette, is promised a trip by her over-the-top, over-achieving parents. But when Bee--an only child, born with heart problems--makes perfect grades and picks Antarctica as the family destination, all hell breaks loose.

Bee's mother, Bernadette Fox, a once-renowned architect, has been in an anxious, emotional funk for years that has forced her to outsource the minutiae of her life (at a rate of 75 cents per hour) to a woman in India. It doesn't help matters that Bee's father, Elgin Branch, a workaholic bigwig at Microsoft, uprooted the family from Los Angeles to Seattle, a city Bernadette feels has "zero architectural integrity," is filled with "the slowest drivers you ever saw" and has become overrun with tourists and overly compassionate do-gooders. Add a meddling, Seattle-born secretary at Microsoft and a neighbor obsessed with destroying Bernadette because she views her as rude and antisocial, and what emerges is an acerbic, dark, satirical comedy. The day before the family's departure, Bernadette, who is dreading the South Pole vacation, disappears. Amid the search, surprising discoveries are made and bombshells are dropped.

Semple (This One Is Mine) stitches together this funny, inventive story via e-mails, letters, FBI reports, magazine articles and interspersed narrative passages told in Bee's voice. This fresh, original dramatic structure brings levity to harrowing and complex domestic issues. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Karen Nieto is a remarkable character, and Mexican playwright/poet Sabina Berman's rendering of her unusual voice and personality in ME, Who Dove into the Heart of the World is equally remarkable. This debut novel wouldn't work well as anything other than a first-person narrative; a large part of its success depends on making the reader engage with the world as Karen does, and Karen's ways of engagement are very particular, beginning with the fact that animals and nature make far more sense to her than people do.

A college psychology test classifies Karen as a "highly functioning autistic," with scores at the level of a young child--except in certain areas, where she performs at the genius level. With support from her aunt and an unusual business partnership, Karen is given unexpected opportunities to develop that genius. It might seem paradoxical, given her affinity with animals, that the work that saves her family's fishery business and ultimately brings her renown and riches involves developing more humane ways to cultivate tuna for the high-end consumer market, but she doesn't see it that way. However, it does attract the unwelcome attention of a militant animal-rights group.

Through Karen, Berman explores some of the issues of modern agriculture in a way that never feels heavy-handed; more importantly, she makes a potentially off-putting character sympathetic. ME, Who Dove into the Heart of the World is a beautifully written, emotionally affecting debut featuring a protagonist whose "different abilities" include surprising and charming the reader. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

The Inn at Rose Harbor begins a new series that returns to Cedar Cove, a community based on Debbie Macomber's own hometown in Washington State (and the setting for an earlier sequence of novels and stories). Jo Marie Rose, a recent widow in her late 30s whose husband died in the war in Afghanistan, purchases a bed-and-breakfast in the quaint, seaside town in the hope it will give her a fresh start at life and mend her broken heart.

The first to board at the inn is Joshua Weaver, a young man who has returned to town to collect a few of his late mother's treasured mementos from his stepfather, who is facing serious illness. The two men share a tumultuous history and many years of hard feelings. Will they--can they--reconcile?

Abby Kincaid is also staying at the inn, having returned to Cedar Grove (reluctantly) to attend her brother's wedding. Abby has not been back to town in 10 years, as she is still riddled with guilt, believing she caused the vehicular death of her best friend in high school. Will her former hometown sit in judgment or welcome her warmly?

Underlying spiritual forces and the pull and tug of burgeoning romance underscore this gentle narrative. Macomber writes wholesome stories of ordinary people who seek out ways to make peace with life after hardships and loss. With The Inn at Rose Harbor, themes of hope, forgiveness and revival once again rise to the top. -- Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

On a quiet street in London, a chauffeur is sleeping with his master's daughter--and his master's wife. Down the street, in exchange for pocket cash, another family's au pair helps sneak into the house her mistress's lover, a man who happens to be a famous soap opera actor and grand-nephew to the stuck-up housekeeper of a princess of dubious origin. The local gardener believes that his god is speaking to him through his cell phone, setting him on a mission to destroy the evil spirits he sees around the city. This unlikely cast of characters bands together in a haphazard society that they call the St. Zita Society, named for the patron saint of domestic servants.

The St. Zita Society, a standalone novel from the delightfully imaginative mind of Ruth Rendell, is a gripping portrayal of the London world of servants and their masters, all marching toward an inevitable--and violent--conclusion. Rendell approaches the inner lives of her characters with a detailed, probing eye, bringing them to life with her sharp and clever writing. Her shockingly normal characters--a housewife with an obsession for exercise and tight jeans; an absent husband who throws himself into his work; a lazy au pair with a knack for doing as little as possible--only make the suspense all the more striking. Rendell has written more than 50 novels, and the The St. Zita Society, a brilliantly crafted novel of psychological suspense, further enforces her rightful place as the queen of British mystery writing. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Shon Hopwood came from a loving, church-going Nebraska family. He wasn't into drugs, but he really wasn't into agriculture--the farmer's son robbed five banks by the time he was 23. But Shon's tale, as told in Law Man, is as miraculous as it is shocking, as he managed to find both his life purpose and redemption in a prison system that so often fails its inmates.

During a decade behind bars, Hopwood learned how to survive and gain respect in a harrowing hell. He recounts acts of brutal violence, race wars and the anguish of missing his family and the love of his life. He also includes some fascinating information about the ins and outs (mostly ins) of jail. It's like the shark tank at the aquarium--riveting as long as you're not in it.

When Hopwood begins acting a jailhouse lawyer to his fellow inmates, he finds his passion. He becomes so adept at thinking critically about the appeals process that he writes a brief that makes it all the way to the Supreme Court, knocking 10 years off the sentence of a young man. Granted, Hopwood gets paid in sandwiches and stamps while in the joint, as all of his "clients" are fellow criminals. But when his decade of incarceration is over, Hopwood has more to show for it than just a prison tattoo. If there's such a thing as a feel-good prison memoir, Law Man is it. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend

Tuna, once valued more as a source of oil than of sustenance, did not become standard cuisine until wartime rationing raised its profile in the American diet. Andrew F. Smith (Potato: A Global History) chronicles tuna's transformation from immigrant gruel to the most commonly consumed fish in the country in the entertaining American Tuna.

Smith pinpoints the rise of interest in tuna to the enthusiasm of sport fishermen off the Pacific coast, but it was not until 1910 that canned albacore piqued public interest--and only when its flavor and smell were adulterated to resemble white-fleshed chicken (thus "Chicken of the Sea"). Tuna's popularity rose during the two world wars, when rationing created an international demand for alternative protein sources. Overconsumption and overfishing drove industry fishermen to pillage tuna-rich stores off the coast of South America, forcing the U.S. government to create protective economic policies and foreign alliances that turned the tuna market into a parallel of Big Oil, with Americans dependent on foreign suppliers to meet their increasing demand.

Smith's thoroughly researched history forces us to consider the larger picture of how consumption affects the renewability of food sources and how economic power can damage more than sustain. If American Tuna stimulates a broader discussion on the problems of food production as a whole, Smith will have achieved a major victory. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer

Robert Hass has won all the awards the United States has to offer for poetry, including (from 1995 to 1997) the title of poet laureate. In What Light Can Do, a collection of 31 essays, Hass offers up a healthy serving of what he calls "acts of attention," casting his light and instructs on a stunning range of subjects, from Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" to Jack London, the Epistles of John and landscape photos by Robert Adams that provide Hass with his title.

Hass loves his subjects with a youthful excitement and joy. He writes about experiencing a Wallace Stevens poem when he was in college: "I was stunned by the poem. And I am still stunned by the poem." He reflects upon the way poems happen in a life "when they are lived with rather than systematically studied." Discussing Emily Dickinson, he writes about a group of poems she wrote between 1861 and 1862, "two hundred of which anybody would cut their wrists to write." And he describes an amazing moment when he heard Ezra Pound's daughter read her father's poems in the same cadence Pound heard Yeats read his in--"that rhythm of hearing the movement of language was still alive and was being transmitted."

These essays are humane, instructive, illuminating. And Hass's style is so readable, so rich in words and ideas, that it's like a full-bodied wine you want to savor, roll around in your mouth, before swallowing whole. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Nick Hornby is the guy who writes the monthly "Stuff I've Been Reading" column for the Believer, the magazine piece of the McSweeney's publishing empire (he's also the novelist whose bestselling High Fidelity made "top five" pop culture lists a staple of barroom banter). In More Baths Less Talking, a collection of his last two years of Believer columns, he reviews--or rather riffs on--everything from old-school Twain ("That Tom Sawyer is a pill, isn't he?") and Wordsworth ("There is more in these poems about the natural world than is strictly necessary") to the contemporary novel American Rust by Phillip Meyer ("Unlike most first novelists, Meyer knows that we're all going to die, and that before we do so we are going to mess our lives up somehow").

Although Hornby had a traditional background that led him to discover "that I didn't want to read or listen to anything that anybody in any position of educational authority told me to," he finally "discovered that some old s*** isn't so bad." And so his reading selections range broadly across all eras and genres, and this collection might best be described with the same words he uses to praise Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist and its protagonist: "It's a wonderful novel, I think, unusual, generous, educational, funny. The eponymous narrator, Paul Chowder... might be an awful mess, but you trust him on all matters related to poetry." It is equally easy to trust Hornby on all things books. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

If you're reading this, likely you once had a teacher who changed your life. Minnie McClary Speaks Her Mind celebrates one of those teachers, as well as the girl who changes the most as a result.

Minnie is a shy girl who's just moved to Mojave. All her family members have changed in the wake of her father being laid off--especially her uncle, recently returned from the Iraq war. When new teacher Miss Marks takes over their sixth-grade classroom, she immediately attracts and scares Minnie with the way she teaches and the questions she asks. As tensions mount from a group of parents working to oust Miss Marks, as well as escalating bullying and racism, Minnie finds herself torn between her need to act in the face of injustice and her fear of being embarrassed. She realizes she must figure out the answers to some of Miss Marks's questions and say them out loud.

Hobbs's (Defiance) clear writing is ideally suited for middle-grade readers of varied reading levels. She illuminates adult matters without being patronizing and handles middle-school issues with compassion. Though the ending may feel a little pat, Hobbs skillfully maintains several different story lines and allows readers to experience the full range of pressures that Minnie is feeling. Ultimately, the moment in the book when the title comes true could well inspire the shy kid in every reader--and maybe plant the seeds for a few future life-changing teachers, too. --Stephanie Anderson, readers' advisor at Darien Library and blogger

David Catrow's trademark brand of over-the-top humor makes the perfect match for a bare-bones tale aimed at beginning readers about a fly that interrupts a performance.

The paper-over-board book begins on the title page, as the fly nears a doorman with an overlong nose and a pair of spectacles perched upon them. It's an ideal landing spot: "The fly flew on," says the first line. The uniformed fellow responds with a healthy sneeze: his hat flies up, his feet leave the ground, and "The fly flew off." Into the auditorium it goes. A man loses his toupee and hearing aid, a woman her tiara, and a child his lollipop ("The fly flew in, out, and on"). Catrow repeats the key words and introduces just enough new words to keep things interesting, as when the fly disrupts the orchestra and the pest becomes a target. "Get that fly! Bang!" says a drummer, crashing a cymbal (and inadvertently hitting the violinist). "Get that fly! Boom!" cries the drummer (rapping the hand of the actress).

The fly not so much upstages as upends the performance. Until at last "The fly flew out. Bye, fly!" The unspoken smaller dramas will be just as entertaining to youngsters as the overarching plot of the fly's antics (e.g., the conductor, reading and chowing down pizza does not see the child's lollipop headed straight for his long white hair). Catrow proves how much may be done with a few well-placed words and a comical scenario. Encore! --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness