Duane Swierczynski's Fun & Games, the first in a trilogy, is aptly titled--like an amusement-park ride, it blows your hair back and leaves you gasping for more. What the title doesn't tell you is that the games being played are deadly, and the fun is had by stone-cold killers.

Protagonist Charlie Hardie is a professional house-sitter whose latest assignment is minding a film composer's lair in the Hollywood Hills. All he wants to do is spend the week on the couch drinking and watching DVDs. Instead, he finds drugged-up actress Lane Madden hiding in the house, yammering about how "they" are out to get her. Her claims are soon proven true, and Charlie gets caught up in her life-or-death struggle, trying to vanquish the ruthless people who are determined to trap and kill the two of them. Along the way, Charlie discovers why the killers are targeting Lane, a reason almost as terrible as his own secrets.

Charlie is the most entertaining protagonist I've met in a long time. He's a reluctant hero who fights back only when he's angered, like a sleeping bear who's been poked with a stick. Once on the warpath, though, there is no stopping him. Lane is a resilient yet vulnerable character whose life hasn't been made easier by her fame and beauty.

The pulp noir-ish story has more turns than the twisty L.A. canyon roads that provide its setting, and the pacing is as fast as a car careening down those same roads without brakes. Charlie Hardie is a winning protagonist I'll follow to Hell--Hell & Gone, that is, the next installment, coming this October. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, chief nerd and blogger at Pop Culture Nerd.

Karin Slaughter's latest work of suspense has all the elements her readers have come to expect: likable, well-developed characters; an array of strong women; fast-paced action; and surprising plot twists. This story of family relationships, with its underlying threads of romance, violence and taut suspense, will satisfy fans of Lisa Gardner or Lisa Scottoline as well as Slaughter's own.

When Georgia Bureau of Investigations Special Agent Faith Mitchell arrives at her mother's house to pick up her daughter, Emma, there's blood on the door, and the baby's been hidden in the shed. Retired Atlanta police captain Evelyn Mitchell is missing, but her house is not empty; Faith goes in with guns blazing, and the blood flows.

The clock ticks in the search for Evelyn as the case is further complicated by shifting suspicions and questioned loyalties. We share Faith's concern for her family and her need to be involved, despite a clear lack of professional detachment. Her partner, Will Trent, aches to help her, but his past investigation of her mother's unit compromises their relationship. Sara Linton, a local doctor with ties to law enforcement, struggles to balance her role in the case with a budding personal relationship with Will. Meanwhile, Amanda Wagner, Will's boss and Evelyn's best friend, might be playing both sides of the fence.

Slaughter weaves intense and unrelenting suspense while compelling readers to care about the very real and human characters involved, whose backgrounds and conflicting loyalties we sympathize with even as we see their flaws. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pages of julia

The first years of the 20th century saw a U.S. frontier "settling up" at astonishing speed, with dugout homes and canvas-roofed log cabins hanging on alongside new hotels and ever-increasing railroad lines. It also brought a number of changes for women, with the suffrage movement in full swing and young ladies of means being urged to work for the social good before (or in addition to) arranging a "good" marriage.

Into this world came best friends and fellow Smith graduates Rosamond Underwood and Dorothy Woodruff, later grandmother of author Dorothy Wickenden (executive editor, the New Yorker). Bored with the endless round of tea parties, picnics and dances in New York but not yet ready to marry, Ros and Dorothy set out in 1916 to teach school in Elkhead, Colo., miles from the nearest town.

Nothing Daunted, based on the women's letters home during those nine months, is more than mere history. It's also an enthusiastic and clear-sighted look into the lives of two women who started teaching as an adventure and finished better than they began. To Dorothy and Ros, everything in Colorado was exciting, from the beautiful mountain views to the neck-deep winter snows and the knee-deep spring mud.

Although their tale could easily have become a stereotypical "rich woman's burden" story, Wickenden skillfully avoids this trope by focusing on the humanity of the settlers, the schoolchildren and her main characters. The result is an intimate and joyful work that captures the best spirit of the 1910s--and today. --Dani Alexis Ryskamp, blogger at Intractable Bibliophilia

If you get up for a refrigerator break when they hand out the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, this book is not for you. French Cinema by Charles Drazin (In Search of the Third Man), arguing that French films are usually better than American ones, is for the true believer, she or he who says "oeuvre" as easily as "Godard."

The book is not a general introduction to French cinema, but a carefully researched and detailed argument that, in essence, defends the "art" of French movies against the crass commercialism of Hollywood (read: American) films. Drazin begins with the birth of film in France, with Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers, and argues that ever since, the history of French cinema has been a distinguished one, while the history of American film has been about the search for huge audiences and revenue. While the French film exudes a "timeless" quality, the Hollywood blockbuster reeks of the "ephemeral."

Along the way, Drazin provides exceptional insights and pithy summaries about successful French directors (Duvivier, Renoir) who went to America only to find their artistic voices stifled; a fascinating analysis of how the famous Cahiers du Cinéma crowd elevated French cinema as "art" as it denigrated American film as "popular"; and gives interesting social and political reasons why a few French films (Amélie, A Man and a Woman) found success in American markets.

Drazin gets a bit too snobby at times, but his critiques are perceptive. French Cinema will be enjoyed by informed cinéastes who love to debate the nuances between "good" and "bad" movies. --Tom Lavoie

There are two kinds of mid-century jazz fans: my father, who's all Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong--you know, dance and swing; and me, who's all Miles, Trane, maybe Oscar Peterson and even Bad Plus--the introspective artists of improvisation. His old guys were just entertainers who played their fans' favorites; my guys played the music for the music's sake and themselves. Wrong!

Ricky Riccardi (jazz pianist, graduate of Rutgers' famous Institute of Jazz Studies and currently archivist for the Louis Armstrong House collection of Satchmo's audio tapes) tackles my common misperception in his first book, What a Wonderful World. Drawing on a wealth of original papers and personal tapes of the writing-averse Armstrong, Riccardi colors in the second half of Pops' remarkable career, the half critics wrote off as his "Uncle Tom," clown years. Riccardi shows that Armstrong was a consummate musician to the end, one whose goal was to give fans the best music he could while taking no guff from people who made his and his fellow black Americans' lives difficult, at best.

Through countless references, conversations, anecdotes and taped private moments of anger and frustration, Riccardi brings to life a complex man who was a genius in many ways. He shows us an Armstrong whose goodwill and big pop-eyed smile brought his native New Orleans music to millions of fans throughout the world, earning him a comfortable living and paving the way for the often brooding, and reclusive Miles and Parker and Trane who created their own modern jazz followings. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Lilly, Lexy and Zeph, the irrepressible crew of Raider's Ransom, continue their struggle in the broken 23rd-century world that's left after an environmental and technological collapse. The swift-paced action begins where their debut adventure left off. Thirteen-year-old Lilly, primary user of possibly the world's last computer (the charmingly irritable PSAI), sets out to bring Lexy back to her father, England's prime minister. Zeph, now Boss of his marshland raider Family, is having trouble establishing his leadership. When the Family is threatened, Zeph must make a choice: betray Lilly or see his Family taken into slavery.

The trio who once traveled by sea now heads to London by land (in wind cars), where they hope to find Lexy's father and repair PSAI. Along the way, Lilly realizes, "They changed the land to fit the road!" She wonders about "them olden-times folks, who fought against their world even just to get about." Scenes such as this throughout the novel seamlessly deliver Diamand's environmental concerns. Eventually, all factions converge in a London that is in "a State of Violent Barbarism," according to the now-activated super computer. The English military, the raider Families and gigantic robotic spiders come together in a climactic clash. Lilly learns through her many losses that there is also an equal measure of gains. --Bette Wendell-Branco

Goofy comics abound for young kids and, in the adult section, Scott Pilgrim has conquered many hearts and minds, but it's been hard to find a title in the YA section that strikes that pitch-perfect balance of silly and serious. Astronaut Academy is here to change that.

Hakata used to be the leader of a team of superheroes, but now he's being forced to go to school like every other kid. The Astronaut Academy floats out in space and offers classes in fire throwing, "wearing cute hats" and advanced heart studies, but it turns out to be just like any other high school when it comes to unrequited crushes, boring classes and cliques. The plot starts with Hakata and loosely revolves around him (and his would-be robot assassin), but the heart of the book is in Roman's unveiling of the hero's classmates through a progression of short vignettes from many perspectives. Their friendships, rivalries and backstories are so well-written that the book feels twice its length. This combination of average high school drama with outer space superhero hijinx is potent and addictive, especially against the backdrop of Roman's art, which is definitely manga-inspired but has a life all its own.

It's a book that's got all the fun stuff--watches that stop time, a panda who teaches Spanish and, "randomly," a full panel of Tori Amos references--and all the good stuff, like love and friendship and learning what makes you happy, as well. --Stephanie Anderson, manager of WORD in Brooklyn, N.Y.

At the start of summer, it seems as though anything is possible. Elise Broach (whose Masterpiece won the 2009 E.B. White Read Aloud Award) affirms this sentiment through the experiences of the Barker boys--Simon, Henry and Jack--who have just moved with their parents to Superstition, Ariz. The small desert town lies in the shadow of a reportedly haunted mountain that's absolutely off-limits, though no one will explain why. When the brothers, who range in age from six to 11, follow their beloved cat up the mountainside during the first week of summer and discover three human skulls on a rocky ledge, they know they've got a mystery to solve.

A spine-tingling adventure unfolds over the course of swift-moving short chapters, enhanced by Caparo's engaging black-and-white illustrations throughout. The Barker brothers' personalities vary widely, which makes for humorous dialogue, and the addition of their plucky friend Delilah ensures that this title will appeal to boys and girls alike. Broach fills her page-turner with legends based partly on facts, according to her fascinating author's note. (She writes, "To call Superstition Mountain a land equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle does not seem a stretch.") This first book in a planned mystery series is the perfect antidote to those summer doldrums. --Molly McLeod