David Bell (Cemetery Girl; Never Come Back) offers up another gripping thriller with The Forgotten Girl, which describes a desperate few weeks in the life of Jason Danvers. Five years earlier, Jason reluctantly moved back to Ednaville, Ohio, with his wife after he got laid off in New York. Jason and Nora have been leading an uneventful, small-town life until Jason's sister, Hayden, turns up unexpectedly. When Jason last saw Hayden, she was struggling with alcohol addiction, so he's suspicious of her intentions.

Now sober, Hayden asks Jason and Nora to watch her teenage daughter, Sierra, for two days; she doesn't explain why, just says she needs a little time. Jason and Nora hesitantly agree, but two days pass, and Hayden doesn't return. Soon, Sierra disappears, too, and then a body is found in the woods outside of town. Jason must confront Hayden's past and hunt down her high-school drinking buddies in an attempt to find his missing sister and niece.

The Forgotten Girl is not a fast-paced thriller; it's a completely believable chronicle of a family's stress and fear when loved ones go missing. From a prosaic beginning, though, Bell slowly and steadily increases the tension as the secrets in Hayden's life (and possible death) multiply. These events seem like they could happen to anyone--particularly anyone from a small town--and that edginess will keep readers turning the pages. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Sons of Sparta, the sixth book in the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series by Jeffrey Siger, focuses on Detective Yianni Kouros, scion of an infamous Greek crime family on the Mani Peninsula. The Maniots, rumored descendants of Spartan warriors, have carried on Spartan traditions of violence in their isolated corner of the Peloponnese.

Kouros's uncle is retired from his days as a crime boss, but has recently received death threats. He urges Kouros to come home, investigate the threats and prevent his cousins from continuing the cyclical vendettas that have left many members of their family dead. Before Kouros can do anything, Uncle is killed, and Uncle's daughter, Calliope, cries for her brothers to exact vengeance on their father's killer. Kouros must bring Uncle's killer to justice quickly to prevent the spread of familial reparations.

Back in Athens, Kaldis is investigating government corruption at the highest level. To their surprise, Kaldis and Kouros discover a connection between the death of Uncle and the government conspiracy, which forces them to collaborate to unravel the secrets of the Mani.

Surprisingly funny, Sons of Sparta is a raunchy romp that will leave readers chuckling at the antics of the two irreverent detectives. Thanks to his family connections, Kouros easily navigates the dark waters of Mani society, but confident Kaldis demonstrates equal ease among both gangsters and government officials. Larger-than-life characters, an intriguing setting and plenty of twists make Sons of Sparta an irresistible mystery. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

In the impressively researched How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life, historian and BBC documentary star Ruth Goodman (Victorian Farm) outlines everyday life for both working-class and middle-class Victorians in Great Britain in a period of great social and economic change.

Goodman immerses herself in Victorian culture as a guinea pig to report the results of "dry washing" her body without water for months (surprisingly effective), lacing herself into corsets (supportive yet annoying) and washing her face with crushed elderflowers (very refreshing). She covers the dichotomy of the Victorian family unit, the conditions in which people cooked and slept, the fashions of the era and the subtle techniques necessary to advertise feminine-hygiene products. All of her findings on life in the 1800s are nothing short of engrossing, though some readers may be saddened or shocked by a few common practices, particularly the harsh discipline of schoolchildren and the doctor-endorsed drugging of babies all day long so their mothers could go to work.

In providing a thorough account of this era, Goodman doesn't sugarcoat the widespread hunger and poverty. Pulling source material from surviving journal accounts, she shares the hardships many people experienced along with the more charming elements such as luncheon menus of the upper class. Allow Goodman's book to transport you back to this time and you'll have a renewed appreciation for indoor plumbing and microwaves. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend

In the United States, much of the discussion of abortion frames an embryo as a person and a woman as a place for a person to grow, pushing women out of the debate. In Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Katha Pollitt shifts the focus of the discussion away from embryos and back to women.

Pollitt makes clear she is not engaging in a debate about whether abortion should be legal. Instead, she operates from the premise that abortion is--and has been for thousands of years--a common part of a woman's reproductive health. She argues that the abortion debate is a vehicle to control women, largely because many people in this society do not value women. In a country that so fiercely rallies to cries of freedom, choice and government non-interference, many people work to undermine this when it applies to women.

Exploring the beliefs people who identify as "pro-life" have about abortion, which she sees as illogical and frequently contradictory, Pollitt argues that such groups use tactics of fear and misinformation, often stooping to lie outright to women about the procedure, such as claiming that women who have abortions will die of breast cancer. For readers who have been uncertain of their position, this book may help them see through the diatribes surrounding the subject that have obscured the real issues and realize that they support access to abortion. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company

In The Brewer's Tale, homebrewer William Bostwick (Beer Craft) examines beer in history and the history in beer, brewing as he goes.

Bostwick follows the progression of human history, starting with primitive Mesopotamian bread and its immediate companion (rudimentary ale) and moving through the early European shamans who used beer (sometimes laced with hallucinogens) in their practices to the monks whose influence persists in abbey and Trappist ales. He visits the farmer who brewed with his leftover produce, and members of the London working class who passionately consumed the porters that were named after them. With each stop on this tour, Bostwick gives equal play to the past and to characters who maintain or rejuvenate these historic styles. He also attempts his own brews, with mixed results. Through grogs and meads; farmhouse ales like lambics, sours and saisons; porters, stouts and pales; and finally light (and lite) lagers, The Brewer's Tale reminds us that beer is not only the stuff of frat parties or snifter-poured snobbery; it can be experimental, fresh and fun, and has always been at the heart of the human experience.

Bostwick runs a little heavy on symbolism, but his subject is heady and intoxicating, so why not the metaphor as well? The initiate will be well served, but even a well-read beer geek can be excited anew by these reflections, and the homebrewer may well be inspired to fresh projects. The Brewer's Tale is history, a joyful celebration and a call to appetizing action in an easygoing, conversational tone. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

In his foreword, longtime Best American Essays series editor Robert Atwan describes the 2014 collection as "impressively diverse... intense, intellectual, and inventive." In his introduction, editor John Jeremiah Sullivan (author of Pulphead, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award) doesn't comment on individual essays but instead offers up a brief history of the essay, and notes that the form continues to flourish, which is evident from the 21 sterling selections here.

The joy of essays is that they sometimes teach us about the oddest things, as in Wendy Brenner's humorous "Strange Beads," about her passion for bidding on vintage/costume jewelry from eBay seller Bergbay310. These lessons are sometimes serious; in Leslie Jamison's "The Devil's Bait" we learn about the mysterious riddle of Morgellons disease, the key symptom of which is fibers emerging from the skin.

Some pieces are disquieting: Chris Offutt's powerful "Someone Else" deals with his childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a "fatman" and the long-term psychological and emotional effects it had upon him. Kristin Dombek's "Letter from Williamsburg" delves deeply--in few pages--into her conflicted notions of religion, God and sex and the moment she figuratively threw herself "off a cliff into an empty space."

Others strike a less dramatic note. Zadie Smith's "Joy" tries to come to grips with the subtle difference between pleasure and joy. Paul West hilariously writes about a "heroic art form": "On Being Introduced." This sumptuous collection shows us the magic a fine essay--a "loose sally of the mind," as Samuel Johnson described it--can achieve. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

In Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, A.S. King (Reality Boy) turns her piercing gaze on consumerism and feminism, as well as family secrets and depression.

Two high school seniors in a rural town find a petrified bat. When it crumbles to dust, Glory and Ellie mix it with beer and drink it down. The next morning, they wake up to find they can see the past and future of anyone they look at. Glory's mother killed herself when Glory was very young, and Glory and her father have never talked about it. As graduation nears, Glory and Ellie grow farther apart, and Glory is plagued by fears that she'll end up just like her mother. Then she finds her mother's journals, and everything changes. As she begins to understand her mother's depression, Glory also starts to understand herself. She watches Ellie throw herself at one boy after another, and examines the expectations society sets for teenage girls. As the secrets buried in her parents' past come to light, the confusions of Glory's current life begin to clear up. But Glory foresees a grim future in which women are not only banned from working, but kidnapped and controlled by a crazed rogue government.

The chapters alternate between daily life and troubled future, despair and humor, rage and acceptance. King skillfully weaves together two novels: one about a girl struggling to come to terms with her mother's suicide, and another about a future, war-torn America. Glory's ability to see a future, any future, is what ultimately helps her heal. --Jenn Northington, events manager at WORD bookstore

Alaya Dawn Johnson (The Summer Prince) fills her modern-day thriller with spies, intrigue and a deadly pandemic, all filtered through the eyes of a teen who's growing resentful of her mother's oppressive attempts to control her life.

After eight days in a coma, 17-year-old Emily Bird wakes up in a hospital room. Washington, D.C., is in a panic over a serious new strain of flu, released by terrorists. Tanks patrol the streets and quarantines are in place. Emily has vague memories of being drugged at a party and taken away for questioning. She has no idea what her abductors wanted. But her parents are involved, as well as the CIA and a drug company so secretive that her mere mention of its name led her into this mess.

She begins calling herself Bird, questioning who she is and how she will lead her life. Once she was good-girl Emily, who studied hard and whose biggest act of rebellion was choosing Stanford over Yale. Now she questions not only her mother's choices for her, but also why Bird feels a need to fulfill them. With the help of the drug-dealing son of a Brazilian diplomat, Bird investigates what power she may have, both in her struggles with her mother and in the bigger challenge of a Washington under siege.

This fast-moving, compelling novel is complex and smoothly written. Johnson successfully balances issues of race and social responsibility alongside the more personal concerns of a young woman verging on adulthood. --Lynn Becker, host of Book Talk, the monthly online discussion of children's books for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators