The O'Reilly men have been firefighters in Brooklyn, N.Y., for generations, long before the city's firehouses came under the jurisdiction of the FDNY. As the men pull 24-hour shifts or roll out of bed to answer fire calls in the wee hours, the O'Reilly women--mothers, wives, sisters, daughters--must learn the constant, often bitter lessons of grief and sacrifice. Kathleen Donohoe, a descendant of Irish immigrant firefighters, constructs a sweeping multigenerational story of love, dedication and loss in her debut novel, Ashes of Fiery Weather.

Donohoe's narrative begins with Norah, a young Irish woman who immigrates to the U.S. in her sister's place, ending up as firefighter Sean O'Reilly's wife, and later his widow. Through the intertwined stories of Norah, her daughter Maggie, Sean's mother Delia and four other women, Donohoe explores the difficult legacy of firefighting as a job, a calling and a tightly knit community. Her characters navigate turbulent historical events, including the Irish potato famine and the devastation of 9/11, and Donohoe vividly brings each period to life. But the novel's special strength lies in the quiet moments between characters: intimate exchanges and daily decisions that often ignite far-reaching changes in their lives.

Family, love and legacy are complicated entities, and Donohoe skillfully portrays her protagonists' struggle with each. Her characters vary widely in age and temperament, but they must reckon with their fierce (if complicated) loyalty to the firefighting community, and how their choices will affect those they hold dear. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Karin Fossum (Broken, The Murder of Harriet Krohn) is one of crime fiction's gems, and Hell Fire continues the stellar Inspector Konrad Sejer series, set in Norway. By all accounts, Bonnie Hayden is simply a single mother eking out a living as a caretaker, beloved by her elderly clientele. But someone was enraged enough to butcher Bonnie and her young son in an abandoned camper, and Inspector Sejer must apprehend the monster with little in the way of evidence.

Alternating between the investigation and the months before the murders, Fossum deftly weaves Sejer's perspective with Bonnie's, and draws in the Malthes as well, Mass and her co-dependent 21-year-old son, Eddie. Though not formally diagnosed, Eddie is troubled and obsessed with death. He searches the Internet for execution methods, dreams of frying newborn chicks and tries desperately to find his father's grave. A connection between the families may begin to seem ominously obvious, but Fossum is crafty enough to create doubt.

Fossum doesn't take violence casually, and while Sejer takes a secondary role in the plot, he effectively illustrates the impact of brutality on those in its wake. Hell Fire is more a compelling study of character and hardscrabble living than a strict procedural, and even the most dismal scenes and mundane tasks are absorbing. The plot is a tight, slow burn that details the hardships of two mothers and their sons, putting them through the wringer as the date of the murders approaches and their lives intersect. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

When former Mossad agent Rachel Goldschmitt makes a mysterious call to Ehud, the man who served as her handler, he immediately contacts the clandestine Israeli organization and they go on full alert. Rachel has knowledge of vital secrets, and no one knows where she is or what her intentions are. She's an explosive liability and must be found, but Ehud has always harbored a secret love for Rachel. He's divided between loyalty to his country and affection for this woman. His goal is to ensure both are safe, but the Mossad leaders want only the potential threat neutralized. In Yiftach Reicher Atir's first work translated into English, the former Israeli Army Brigadier General of Intelligence tells the story of the female spy in a series of flashback episodes, as experienced by both Rachel and Ehud, while the Mossad desperately tries to locate its rogue former agent.

Based on actual events, The English Teacher is a slower-moving spy novel that focuses more acutely on psychological aspects than daring exploits and secret operations. Atir dissects the emotional and mental elements of his characters as they cope with their ambiguous identities. The compassionate depiction of individuals expected to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of their country is deeply moving, and exquisitely reflects the complexities--and commonalities--experienced broadly. The passions are not exclusive to a culture or religion; that universality in this meticulous translation makes The English Teacher both insightful and accessible, a welcome addition to the espionage genre. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

Fans of Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache will be thrilled with A Great Reckoning, the 12th entry in her delightful Québécois series. New readers will have no trouble starting with this novel as Armand Gamache leaves his retirement in the idyllic village of Three Pines and takes on a new job--head of Québec's police training academy. Gamache has dedicated his life to catching murderers and quashing corruption within the Sûreté, and now he seeks to discover why Sûreté officers are complaining that recent cadets are boorish and untrainable. Convinced that someone within the academy is brainwashing many trainees to be his or her personal thugs, Gamache undertakes the arduous and ultimately deadly process of revamping the staff and curriculum.

Along the way, a strange map found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines will have far-reaching repercussions, drawing the villagers into Gamache's dangerous task.

With her trademark poetry and wit, Louise Penny (The Long Way Home) perfects her portrayal of the quirky villagers, the truculent students, Gamache's charming wife, Reine-Marie, and the philosophical, achingly courteous Gamache himself. His determination to see the good in everyone around him may be his ultimate downfall, however, as he struggles to rehabilitate students who may have already slipped down the slope of sociopathy. Weighing themes of redemption and loss, and whether a reckoning for injustice will always arrive, A Great Reckoning is a gripping mystery. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson were showbiz royalty and seldom off the radar of the tabloid press, so it's no surprise that, prior to this dual biography by Donald Bogle (Dorothy Dandridge), there were more than a dozen full-length biographies devoted to their lives--plus Jackson's autobiography and four books written by Taylor. Both led fascinating and compelling lives. Although seemingly dissimilar, Taylor (1932-2011) and Jackson (1958-2009) had a lot in common. Both radiated talent, survived the transition from child star to adult performer (Jackson joined the Jackson 5 at age five, and Taylor made her first movie at nine), produced award-winning work (she won two Best Actress Oscars; he won 13 Grammys), and held the public's fascination for decades with their lavish tastes and outrageous behavior.

More than half of Elizabeth & Michael's nearly 400 pages consists of alternating chapters telling each performer's life story prior to their meeting in 1985. Together or apart, there is no lack of drama, which makes for lively and engrossing reading. Apart, there are Taylor's eight marriages, life-threatening health problems (including scoliosis, a broken back, pneumonia, brain tumor, alcohol and prescription drug addiction, and congestive heart failure) and AIDS activism; and Jackson's dysfunctional early family life, sexual abuse allegations, compulsive plastic surgery, two short marriages and financial woes. Together, they forged a fiercely loyal friendship and, according to Taylor, "told each other everything."

Despite having enough material for two solo biographies, Bogle's compressed merging of these two active lives never feels rushed or perfunctory. Bogle's Elizabeth & Michael is a skillful, fast-paced biography filled with compelling anecdotes. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

In the early days of World War II, poet Archibald MacLeish, the director of the Library of Congress, worked with the Secret Service to move the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address and thousands of other precious documents to hiding places, including Fort Knox, where they would be safe in case of enemy bombing. In American Treasures, Stephen Puleo (The Caning) uses the story of MacLeish's undercover librarianship as a framing device for the documents' history as a whole, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, through the development of 21st-century restoration and conservation techniques.

Puleo never loses track of the documents' dual nature as both artifacts and symbols. He describes their drafting and publication as well as the political debates that surrounded their creation, bringing new life to familiar stories in the process. He traces the documents' physical deterioration, attempts to preserve them and bureaucratic infighting over their control. In what is possibly the most fascinating section, Puleo compares the singlehanded efforts of Stephen Pleasonton, a senior clerk in the office of the Secretary of State, to save the documents when the British attacked Washington in 1814, with MacLeish's carefully executed plan. (Pleasonton hid them in an abandoned farmhouse. Not exactly Fort Knox.)

Ultimately, American Treasures is an engaging exploration of Archibald MacLeish's assessment that "they are not important as manuscripts, they are important as themselves." --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

Sports fans love a winner, but they also love a heroic loser. A standout in the lovable loser ranks was the 1976-1977 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Bucs (tagged the Yucks by loyal fans) launched their NFL franchise with 26 straight losses. Their first ever touchdown was a fumble return. After two games, their announcer Jack Harris commented, "when your punter's your MVP, you've got a problem." On one early season kickoff return, they failed to lay a hand on the ball--leading their acerbic, cigar-smoking, quip-spitting coach John McKay to rant: "These guys are getting paid money. They should at least be able to fall on a football."

Writer, historian and childhood Buccaneer fan, The Yucks author Jason Vuic knows his losers--he wrote the book on the car that Time magazine called "the Mona Lisa of bad cars... [like] something assembled at gunpoint": Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car of All Time. With ample research and abundant quotation, Vuic describes the Bucs' local promoters; its Jacksonville owner--notorious tightwad tax attorney Hugh Culverhouse; the politicized franchise negotiations with iron throne NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle; the antics of coach and curmudgeon John McKay; and the revolving door of has-beens, never-wills, rookies, and Canadian and World Football League cast-offs who had the misfortune of donning helmets bearing the creamsicle orange logo of Bucco Bruce ("a cross between a 1970s Bee Gee and a swashbuckler"). The Yucks is a great way to kick-off the new rock-'em, sock-'em NFL season. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

In Why Write?: A Master Class on the Art of Writing and Why It Matters, University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson, author of Why Read? and Why Teach?, first offers readers a multitude of reasons why not to write. The list goes on and on: the lack of any substantial amount of money for most authors; the loneliness inherent in the writing process; the little pleasure revenge writing actually incurs; the probability of receiving a bad review that limits the scope and connotations of one's book. So why do so many people write? Edmundson states, "Because writing is one of the best acts a human being can turn his hand to.... By coming up with fresh and arresting words to describe the world accurately, the writer expands the boundaries of her world, and possibly her readers' world, too."

Edmundson defines writing as that which provides instruction and entertainment, and he offers exemplars of good writers--such as Keats, Yeats, Melville, Whitman, and Woolf--to back his philosophical, sometimes humorous, occasionally snarky, commentary on the writing life. Sex, alcohol, fame and fortune; the ability to think and learn about oneself; and the need for expression play roles and are expanded on in Edmundson's methodical, edifying and pleasurable consideration of the ups and downs of the writing life. Rather than a how-to-write book, Why Write? ponders why so many people try their hand at something that can be so time consuming and contain so many pitfalls, and Edmundson offers satisfying answers for readers and writers alike. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Revered by kids and reviled by (some) adults, Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series launched a generation of graphic novel-adoring readers. Fans of the misbehaving and occasionally ingenious fourth-graders George and Harold will not be disappointed by Dog Man, which is just as full of farcical superheroes, amazing inventions and funny-bone-tickling adventure.

Here, George and Harold, fictional creators of comics like The Invasion of the Potty Snatchers, revive an "epic novella" they wrote in kindergarten, even before "they" wrote Captain Underpants. Through a stupefying chain of events involving a diabolical cat, an explosive "KA BLOOEY" and a quick-thinking surgical "nurse lady," a crime-fighting hero is born who has the body of a strong but not-so-bright cop and the head of a smart but physically limited dog. As in the Captain Underpants series, action, suspense and "laffs" follow. Dog Man outsmarts a giant vacuum cleaner ("Let's get ready to Roomba!"), a villainous mayor ("So, Dr. Scum... How is our evil robot coming along?") and Petey the cat, whose plot to destroy all the books in the world has disastrous results ("Behold! I just invented the Word-B-Gone 2000™"). Dog Man is also always getting in trouble for licking his boss's face, chewing slippers and peeing on the floor of police headquarters.

Naturally the famous "Extra cheesy Flip-O-Rama" is still part of the mix, and Pilkey offers a laughing nod to grownup readers with lines like "Philly, don't be a gyro! Don't be a fool with your life!" Next up: Dog Man Unleashed. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor