Mo Yan's re-creation of the Boxer Rebellion begins, as it will end, with first-person narratives by voluptuous Meiniang and the four men in her life: her father, an opera singer leading the rebellion against German railroad workers; her husband, a dull, muscular butcher of dogs and pigs; her father-in-law, the imperial executioner assigned to punish the rebel leader; and her rich lover, the magistrate who betrays her father to the foreign invaders. The plot of Sandalwood Death has all the ingredients of an operatic tragedy; indeed, the monologues that form the opening and closing chapters each begin with lyrics from a Chinese folk opera based on the same story.

Zhao Jia, the imperial executioner, is such a cold-blooded, ruthless fellow that only the novel's first sentence, revealing that the heroine will stab him to death in seven days, gives the reader the courage to continue as Zhao Jia performs hideously cruel executions, as well as abusing and tormenting the more likable pawns in this dark, suspenseful love story. Fortunately, the heroine's not-so-bright husband provides comic relief, blundering along good-naturedly, blind to the obvious, falling out of bed when she screams in her sleep with desire for another man.

Mo Yan is a mesmerizing and daring storyteller, constantly showing the other side of characters you thought you knew. It's only near the end of this huge novel that Mo Yan gives us a glimpse of the staggering finale he has painstakingly prepared--a once-in-a-lifetime ending no reader will ever, ever forget. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle

In The Light of Amsterdam, David Park (The Truth Commissioner) puts three families on the same flight from Ireland to Amsterdam. They have different reasons for making the trip, but they all bring the problems of home with them.

A father, with a ticket to a Bob Dylan concert, tries to recapture the person he was when he was an art student in Amsterdam, but his ex-wife is going on a trip with her new man, so he has to bring his sullen and uncommunicative 17-year-old son along with him.

A mother is invited to go on a "hen party" with her daughter and her friends. She is reluctant because it is costly and she isn't interested in drinking and carousing--but she will do anything for her daughter, which she proves before story's end.

A 60-something couple want to get away from business and their everyday lives, the husband treating his wife to a birthday weekend. She is a bundle of insecurities because he gave her a gym membership as well. Does he have a younger woman? Is she beginning to fade in his eyes? How can she make his stay more pleasant? Her "solution" brings into sharp relief the disparity between his attitude toward their marriage and hers.

Park has these characters occasionally cross paths as they make their separate ways through Amsterdam--sometimes just a glance, other times sharing a more meaningful exchange. They will all leave significantly changed in just a few days, knowing more about themselves than when they left. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

People often cite financial independence or the desire to become "masters of their own destiny" as reasons for starting their own businesses. These two reasons, as well as financial hardship after her divorce, pushed Kathy Sidell into the restaurant business following a successful stint as a film producer. After working as a cook in her sister's restaurant, Sidell went into business on her own and launched a Boston restaurant empire providing sophisticated, upscale cuisine to casual diners. When I Met Food offers glimpses of her tony past and a love of food passed down from her father, a restaurant financier who backed some of Boston's most renowned celebrity chefs, including Todd English, Jasper White and Steve DeFillippo.

Sidell's self-promotional personal history also contains many revelations about her success--from her sage business acumen and a discerning eye for great hospitality to the ability to anticipate trends before they happen. (There are also recipes culled from family, friends and her restaurants' menus.) Confident, bold and with a strong sense of self, Sidell offers the most obvious, but often forgotten, tips and tricks on the art of managing and growing a business while describing how she preserved her personal and artistic integrity in a male-dominated profession. In her brief stint as a restaurateur, Kathy Sidell has managed to create her own take on the American Dream. --Nancy Powell

"There's more to a cookbook than its recipes," Marguerite DiMino Buonopane notes in the introduction to this new edition of her classic cookbook. So true. Based on Buonopane's family recipes, The North End Italian Cookbook was originally published as a fundraiser for her local community center, where she hosted popular weekly luncheons and taught cooking classes at night. The volume quickly sold, becoming a staple in the kitchens of her Boston neighborhood and beyond. In the late 1980s, Buonopane was approached by a major publisher, and The North End Italian Cookbook has been in print ever since. For the new edition, Buonopane has added to her collection of family-style recipes and updated the preparation recommendations, hoping she can help a new generation of cooks create delicious Italian meals at home.

The cookbook is arranged from antipasto to dessert, and each recipe has been chosen with simplicity and practicality in mind. Buonopane prefers to take her readers through each recipe with clearly numbered steps, and complements them on the page with personal anecdotes and an assortment of photographs that feature food and other aspects of Italian life. While she includes all the expected classic Italian dishes, those interested in moving beyond the tried-and-true favorites won't be disappointed.

If The North End Italian Cookbook is already in your collection, this might be a good time to update your edition. If it isn't yet on your shelf, this new version will make the perfect addition. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore

"This book will bring little joy to the reader," Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942) warns on the first page of the posthumously published Death in Persia, but she's dead wrong. The exhilaration of her writing far outweighs the desperate sadness of her vision. Schwarzenbach was a Swiss lesbian who dressed like a man, quarreled with her wealthy, Nazi-supporting family, married a homosexual French photographer, became a morphine addict, befriended the suicidal son of Thomas Mann, rejected the love of young Carson McCullers and ultimately died after falling off a bicycle at age 34.

This collection of fragments chronicles her four trips to Persia between 1933 and 1939, beginning a few weeks after the Shah gave women the right to go unveiled. Wrestling with mysterious, debilitating illnesses, fighting off loneliness and depression, struggling through the vast, hostile landscape--not to mention several conversations with an angel--it isn't long before Schwarzenbach is running out of strength and wishing to die in the solitude of the Persian plains.

Only the slim thread of hope generated by her secret passion for the lovely Jalé threatens to interrupt the hopelessness of the desert, but Jalé's father nips it in the bud, and the loss of her lover removes the narrator's last real reason for living.

This is travel writing on the edge of hallucination, prose poems that are half-Kerouac and half-Rimbaud, elliptical, lyrical sketches of a Persia lost forever. Her writing sweeps past the solitary columns of Persepolis, through sand-swept cemeteries and ruins, haunted by the sorrowful clanging of caravan bells on passing camels. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle

Many people may not know Saul Steinberg by name. Show them a few of his thousands of New Yorker illustrations, and they might know who you're talking about. But then mention the work that most embodied his irony and sketchbook way of storytelling--his endlessly reproduced and adapted New Yorker cover from 1976 "View of the World from 9th Avenue"--and everyone nods and says "Oh, that guy."

The accomplished biographer Deirdre Bair (Samuel Beckett, Anaïs Nin) admirably fleshes out the complicated life of a man who brought smiles, puzzling looks and outright laughs to so many. Saul Steinberg was an immigrant Romanian with a tyrannical mother who fell in love with his adopted United States. Although an inveterate traveler, he was considered the quintessential New York City resident. He leveraged a modest annual New Yorker stipend into a significant fortune by preserving the rights to his art and carefully investing the proceeds from reprints and commercial commissions. A lifetime philanderer, he nonetheless remained attached to two women for decades and financially supported them both after separation. Shy and introverted, Steinberg became a devoted and generous friend to everyone from Ionesco to Ian Frazier and conversationally dominated the frequent dinner parties in his robust social calendar.

With access to Steinberg's friends, letters and personal archives, Bair is able to weave together the subtleties of the contradictory man behind the art, a tribute to the life of an artist who defined the ambience of the New Yorker for nearly five decades. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

For mystery novelist Lisa Scottoline and her daughter, Francesca Serritella, every odd, humorous or touching incident is worth writing down (and calling each other about). In Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim, the third book of essays collected from their weekly Philadelphia Inquirer column, they discuss dating, fashion, life in the country with assorted pets (Lisa) and in tiny New York apartments (Francesca), and the ins and outs of their loving but complicated relationship. Lisa's octogenarian mother Mary--half deaf, sharp-tongued and feisty--also makes frequent appearances; estrogen-induced arguments are common, but fortunately all three women are as warmhearted as they are sarcastic.

Lisa, now an empty nester, worries constantly about Francesca in the big city. Is her building secure enough? Will she find a nice guy? Will she remember to bring a sweater, even in the summer? Francesca, for her part, struggles with the vagaries of online shopping, starting her career and growing mushrooms (a gift from Lisa) in her apartment. And Mother Mary drives Lisa nuts by watching TV at FULL VOLUME, but Francesca deploys her skills as the Grandmother Whisperer to keep the peace.

This collection is a mixed bag: some essays are truly hilarious, while others are bogged down by mundane details and Lisa's constant wisecracks about her two divorces. But the brief essays provide a quick shot of humor, and the honest musings on the mother-daughter bond will resonate with many women. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

For readerly readers, Through the Window, a collection of trenchant essays by Booker Prize-winner Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending) will be a joy. In the preface, Barnes ruminates on the art itself--reading, that is--and even chimes in on the great 21st-century debate: "I have no Luddite prejudice against new technology, it's just that books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information."

In spirited, insightful essays, Barnes speaks well of his fellow British writers: Penelope Fitzgerald, Orwell, Kipling, Arthur Hugh Clough and (on more than one occasion) Ford Madox Ford. The Good Soldier, Ford's masterpiece, "is a novel which constantly asks how to tell a story, which pretends to fail at narrative while richly succeeding," Barnes observes, then comments, "It needs the Good Reader."

He also writes about foreigners, including some Americans. Many of his French subjects are surprising--Chamfort, Merimee, Feneon, Houellebecq--but he also touches upon Flaubert and the impossibility of translating Madame Bovary. Then it's on to Edith Wharton, the "clever, witty" Lorrie Moore, an "Homage to Hemingway" (that's the short story) and a remembrance for John Updike. On hearing of Updike's death, Barnes writes, he had a "feeling of disappointment that Stockholm had never given him the nod." He admits, like many, to not reading all Updike's books, but he honors him with a "reader's raised glass," a toast to his prodigious output and to, above all, the Rabbit Quartet, which considered as a whole, is "still the greatest postwar American novel." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Ken Jennings holds the record for the longest winning streak on Jeopardy! so it should come as no surprise that he is a quintessential trivia junkie with a knack and passion for disseminating nerdy truths. In Because I Said So!, he sets about debunking or proving 125 of the white lies parents innocently pass onto their offspring, applying scientific research to evaluate each one.

Among the rules of thumb Jennings reveals as false are the myth of the poisoned Halloween candy (absolutely no reported instances, ever), the vaunted five-second rule (it's dirt when it hits the ground) and the saying that the first answer is always the right one ("students are more likely to remember the times that an answer worked out badly because they feel cheated by the last minute switch that cost them the question"). While flushing toilets do release an untold amount of flying filth, bathroom sinks are an even worse culprit. One particular insight that should invoke the "I told you" card by parents lies in the adage, "These are the best years of your lives... enjoy them." The thought generates a cheeky response: "Studies always demonstrate that having kids around, no matter how old, is a great way to lower your net happiness."

Fast-talking, witty and filled with puns that will amuse as much as they educate, Because I Said So will make most readers think twice before passing on these falsehoods--until the desire for revenge sets in and the gleeful rites of hereditary karma continue. --Nancy Powell

Eileen Cook (Unraveling Isobel) creates the ideal read for teens who are sure they were switched at birth.

Sadie's home is a trailer. Her mother works as a maid and her father is a career criminal who spends more time in jail than with his family. Sadie desperately wants to leave all this behind, so she's counting the days (and the money she makes on petty cons, thanks to a few tips from her father) until she can leave for college. No, Sadie is not like her dad; she just needs money for books and expenses. But when her mom wipes out Sadie's entire bank account, which was meant to be her down payment to UC Berkeley, Sadie knows she's screwed.

Then Sadie sees a flyer for Ava McKenna, a child who went missing 15 years earlier, and the age-enhanced photo looks a lot like Sadie. There's also a reward of $250,000. With the help of her best friend, Brendan, who's "like a con genius savant," Sadie has hopes of getting the reward and "leaving the old me behind." As they investigate the disappearance to find an angle for the con, strange coincidences suggest that Sadie might, in fact, be Ava. But this seems like just another escapist fantasy. And who would Sadie be, anyway, if she's not who she believes herself to be? Readers will be swept along on the twists and turns of Sadie's journey to find her true identity, inside and out. --Lynn Becker, host of Book Talk, the monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI