The opening scene of Becky Masterman's debut thriller, Rage Against the Dying, announces the arrival of a major talent on the crime fiction scene. As a killer preys on a seemingly fragile old woman, the scene is fraught with tension; the reader wants to scream for the woman to save herself, but it's the killer who's unlucky, because he just picked the wrong person to mess with.

Masterman's heroine is Brigid Quinn, a 59-year-old retired FBI agent who still carries guilt about an unsolved case from years earlier, in which her protégée disappeared and is presumed dead. Then a man is arrested and confesses to being the serial killer in that case, spouting information only the murderer would know. When young FBI agent Laura Coleman doubts his confession, her life is endangered. Brigid refuses to let history repeat itself, and realizes she may be the only one who can close the case.

Masterman, an acquisitions editor at a publisher of forensic medical textbooks, knows about the creepy, perverse stuff murderers are into, but she doesn't go too far, using just enough detail to chill readers' spines. Brigid seems as if she sprang fully developed from Masterman's imagination, striding confidently into the world despite using a walking stick. The title is a reference to the Dylan Thomas poem about how one should "not go gentle into that good night" and instead "rage, rage against the dying of the light." Brigid's light isn't even close to dying, and hopefully she'll continue raging for a long time. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, writer and editor, blogging at Pop Culture Nerd

The Andalucian Friend, Alexander Soderberg's debut novel, begins with a chance encounter in a hospital between a nurse, Sophie Brinkmann, and her patient Hector Guzman. Sophie and Hector's relationship continues past his stay in the hospital. As Sophie finds herself drawn in by Hector's charms, she also finds herself pulled into the unfamiliar world of gang warfare--Hector is the head of a powerful international crime ring smuggling drugs and weapons out of South America.

When members of a German crime ring target Hector, intent on stealing his smuggling routes for themselves, Sophie begins to question their relationship. Then she is confronted by the police and asked to spy on Hector, becoming the center of a major investigation. Sophie, used to a quiet life with her son, is suddenly unmoored, facing a world full of uncertainty, and must choose her way carefully or risk her life--and her son's.

Soderberg has packed The Andalucian Friend with everything a thriller fan could want: deranged cops, gang warfare, gun smuggling, drugs, bribery and even secret romances. With so many characters and storylines, it can be hard to keep track of everything without taking notes--but it all comes together in the end, resulting in a satisfying thriller that is successful because of its convoluted concepts, not in spite of it. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Snake Oil delves into both personal memoir and traditional history, explaining how Becca Stevens, an Episcopal chaplain at Vanderbilt's St. Augustine, came to found both Magdalene, a network of homes for abused women, and Thistle Farms, the all-natural cosmetics company that both funds Magdalene and employs its residents.

Stevens refers to both enterprises as "snake oil selling," but she doesn't mean it in the pejorative sense. Before "snake oil" became a catchall term for shady characters hawking questionable remedies, she explains, it described concoctions--including oil blends containing real snake venom--known for centuries for their ability to heal a number of ills. Snake Oil uses this original meaning as both theme and metaphor. Not only does Thistle Farms create oil blends intended to soothe and heal, the very process of creating both the blends and the organization itself are powerfully healing to the women Magdalene serves.

In Snake Oil, Stevens introduces readers to the concept of healing work through her own stories about the creation of Magdalene and Thistle Farms, as well as through the stories of those who live and work there. She describes how her own childhood experiences with abuse and her father's untimely death equipped her to understand that, while many lives seem broken, no life is irredeemable. Snake Oil is a powerful testament to the limitless capacity of love and dignity to heal even the most wounded lives. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at The Book Cricket

Mad Men has won several Emmys and has a loyal following of viewers that dissect the television show's every retro outfit, chauvinistic comment and sip of scotch. But you don't have to love the series to enjoy Mad Men, Mad World--although, if you don't watch it already, you may very well start after reading the essays Lauren M.E. Goodlad, Lilya Kaganovsky and Robert A. Rushing Goodman have brought together.

Every theme in the series--from infidelity to gender roles to homosexuality--is laid bare against the intense backdrop of its 1960s setting, such as the civil rights movement, the Kennedy assassinations and the discovery that smoking was in fact hazardous to one's health.

But Mad Men, Mad World's brilliance is that it analyzes storylines and characters from completely unexpected angles. In "The Homosexual and the Single Girl," for example, male feminist and queerness expert Alexander Doty takes the show to task for its shoddy treatment of show's only lesbian. One essay delves into the role of fashion as empowerment; another particularly poignant piece examines the way the show portrays its Jewish characters. Cultural scholar Lynne Joyrich offers a fascinating dissection of protagonist Don Draper and his relentless shifting from one identity to another in "Media Madness." And, of course, this collection tackles the wild sexcapades at Mad Men's fictional Manhattan ad agency. These are deeply considered pieces that truly spark intellectual discussion. It's a mad world, indeed, but this book helps to bring some order to the chaos. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend

Powerful, evocative imagery and prose infuse Brent Hendricks's haunting, ruminative memoir, A Long Day at the End of the World. This compact, carefully crafted book centers on the Tri-State Crematory in Nobel, Ga. The owner had stopped cremating the bodies he received and, until he was caught in 2002, dumped the corpses in sheds, vaults and in the woods around his property--339 bodies in all. One of those decaying bodies was Hendricks's father, who had lain abandoned for five years after he was supposed to have been cremated.

The reasons behind the crematory owner's decisions seem as elusive as the closure Hendricks seeks in packing up his father's burial flag and setting off on a pilgrimage across Alabama to revisit the crematorium site. During the road trip, Hendricks, now a middle-aged man, grapples with the past. He reflects on life and death, his familial and cultural upbringing in the South, the biblical stories of Lazarus and the apocalypse and even the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto.

An ironic twist of fate leads to the identification of the remains of Hendricks's father, unearthing feelings that had been left unreconciled. Ultimately, the story of Hendricks's turbulent relationship with his father--the "dislocated son of a dislocated father"--emerges as a searing, deeply personal portrait of one man's quest to understand, love and let go. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

An American Caddie in St. Andrews opens at Oliver Horovitz's high school graduation. He's awaiting a decision from Harvard, which finally comes. He's in--but next year. So he decides it would be an adventure to spend a year at St. Andrews University, in Scotland near the historic Old Course, the most famous golf course in the world. Once established, he decides to enroll in the course's caddie trainee program--he has caddied before--and is accepted.

For golfers, this is where the story gets good. We learn what it's like to caddie at this legendary course, with all kinds of inside scoops on caddie life, great stories about the people from all over the world he caddied for and, most importantly, advice on how to get big tips--upward of £100 for one round.

After 30 rounds of looping, Oliver passes his tests, including a written exam. Can you (for example) name the small bunker on the Old Course's 17th hole? Yes, he still goes on to Harvard, but he's back at St. Andrews every summer, loving the experience of working on a piece of sacred land. (And frequently playing the course, too--lucky guy!) This is an enjoyable and hilarious tale from a young man many golfers will envy for living his dream. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

John Coy (the 4 for 4 series) here blends his proven knowledge of sports with a fascinating picture-book history of basketball.

Following in the footsteps of two failed teachers, James Naismith hopes that three's the charm. In December 1891, he takes on a "rowdy" gym class in Springfield, Mass. The first day, Naismith tries indoor football, the next day, indoor soccer, and on the third day, lacrosse. All are too rough, but Naismith will not give up. Instead, he comes up with a whole new game. Coy shows that, for Naismith, necessity is the mother of invention. Building on a game from his childhood in Canada, "Duck on a Rock" (for which "accuracy was more valuable than force"), Naismith added the idea of a goal that required "an arcing throw." On December 21, 1891, with a soccer ball, two peach baskets and a posted list of rules, he found success. Joe Morse's (Casey at the Bat) illustrations in a limited palette stay true to the era in style and detail, yet also convey the unbridled enthusiasm and kinetic energy of the players.

Readers will quickly see why the young men couldn't wait to teach their friends and neighbors the new game, and why it caught on. Naismith was also ahead of his time in permitting women to play the game (and it paid off--one of them later became his wife). Naismith's original rules of the game on the endpapers top off a terrific story to share with basketball fans of all ages. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Inspired by her mother's own experience with Katrina and its aftermath, Sherri L. Smith (Flygirl) offers dystopian realism in Orleans.

By 2025, after the storms, the fever and the quarantine, the "Delta States" have been cut off from all other society. Vestiges of the modern world still exist, but a new society has emerged as well--a primitive, violent place where blood tribes mean more than family.

Twenty years later, Fen de la Guerre aligns herself with a blood tribe. After an ambush, Fen is left with the newborn of the tribe's former leader. Fen knows that the infant's only chance of survival is for them somehow to breach the wall to the Outer States before the plague can enter the child's blood stream; they have only two weeks. Fen is helped by Daniel, a scientist from the Outer States who has entered the delta to find a cure for the disease. Daniel is protected by a bio-suit and stocked with some food, but without Fen to guide him, he'll never survive. They make a deal: Fen will help him in exchange for taking the baby to the Outer States for a chance at a normal life.

The book brims with adrenaline-pumping action, high-stakes escapes and depictions of a faded city cut off from civilization and eroding from within. The author's details take us into a chilling world that we recognize as one possible future. --Nan Shipley, literary scout for the film industry

A man asks his great-granddaughter to pick an item from among his miscellany of antiques, books and knick-knacks, and he will tell her its story. It's an engaging way for them to get to know each other, and to draw in readers.

The child chooses the man's matchbox collection, from the days when matches were wooden and each box opened like a secret drawer. The matches are long gone, and in their place are everyday objects. The man tells his great-granddaughter the collection is his diary, "a way to remember what happens to you." At her age, he had a lot he wanted to remember, but he couldn't read or write. So these matchboxes served as a record of daily events. As a boy, the great-grandfather promised his own grandmother he'd never forget her or Italy and, as he waited for the steamship to take him across the Atlantic, he hit on the matchboxes a way to record his memories: his first soda (a bottle cap), the steamship (a hairpin from a wealthy passenger) and 19 sunflower shells, one for each day of the ship's journey.

Bagram Ibatoulline gets the vintage look of the matchboxes just right, while also planting both protagonists firmly in the present. Scenes of the man's impoverished childhood in Italy appear in sepia tones to distinguish his memories from the present-day exchange between the girl and her great-grandfather.

At the center of Fleischman's (Joyful Noise) story is a love of family and respect for education, which leads to the great-grandfather's vocation--and inspires an avocation for the young heroine. A heartwarming, universal immigrant story made poignant through specific details. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness