Ekong Udousoro is an editor and literary lecturer in Nigeria who is working on an anthology of stories about the Biafran War on the 50th anniversary of that conflict when he receives a Tony Morrison fellowship for black editors that will allow him to come to New York to learn about publishing in America. New York, My Village is the story of his trip without his wife who could not leave her job and is sure he is cheating with his new colleagues. Beginning with the issues involved in attempting to get an approved visa and moving through his attempts to try and juggle the tribal factions among former Nigerians now in NY and the racism he encounters in his job and his surroundings, the fellowship is far from the joyful learning experience he had been expecting. His host in NY has arranged for an apartment that turns out to be an illegal sublet and then there are the bedbugs. The author moves between horrifying descriptions from the Biafran war and beautifully written longings for all the things Ekong is missing, primary among them being his beloved food. This is a incredibly detailed description of the cultural clashes between racial and tribal groups and a look at how deeply hidden the racial issues are among those who are certain they are beyond racism. An impressive debut novel.

In her debut novel, the Temple House Vanishing, Rachel Donoghue has chosen an unusual structure for a mystery. In the prologue, one of the main characters, a woman who is apparently successful, walks to the top of her ten floor building and jumps off. It is in the story, told from the point of view of her former classmate and a journalist looking back at what happened 25 years ago, that she takes us through the why. It is difficult to talk about the plot without spoilers so I will just tell you that it revolves around what happened at an isolated girls boarding school run by nuns. The main characters are Victoria, the woman who jumped, her friend Louisa, who is a scholarship student, Mr. Lavelle, a handsome young charismatic art teacher at the school, and Helen, the head girl. As the story unfolds you see the clashes of class, the restrictions of religious practices, the toxic atmosphere created by the leading girl clique, and the dangers of handsome young teachers in a school full of girls just beginning to understand their sexuality. This was a complex and interesting read with great insight into the struggle faced by a young woman who is trying to find her way in an unfamiliar world with little support.

This debut novel is a lovely story about what you will do to try and save someone you love and how very difficult it may be to overcome your own fears and losses. Norman is a 12 year old boy being raised by a very insecure single mother. He is bullied because he is small and vulnerable and has a horrible case of psoriasis but his saving grace is Jax - who is his best friend and Norman is sure - the funniest boy in the world. Together they are a team - Norman is the straight man and Jax is the comedian and they are a team with a plan. When they are 15 they are going to perform at the Edinburgh fringe festival. But then Jax dies leaving both Norman and his mother devastated. When Norman decides that he will do the festival alone - even though he isn't the funny one - and along the way, he'll find out who is father is, his mother is faced with trying to help and being unsure of whether helping will just make it worse. This sounds like a sad story and it certainly tugs at heart strings but it is full of wonderful characters who are truly trying to do the right thing. And I promise you'll like the ending.

Andrew Graff's debut novel is set a small town in Wisconsin where he grew up and it's a story about love and what happens to people who lose it or never had it. It begins with two friends - boys about 10 or 11. Fish lost a much-loved father to the war, and Bread lost his mother and lives with his father who is an abusive alcoholic. When Bread's father attacks Bread one too many times, Fish picks up the father's gun and shoots him. Terrified at what they have done the boys flee into the forest around them, sure that they can take care of themselves. Fish has been staying with his Grandfather for the summer. When the Sheriff calls him looking for the boys the grandfather convinces the sheriff to join in a chase on horseback into the woods to try and find them. This is a coming of age book about friendship, a story of people so unsure of themselves that they don't realize what is possible if they would only ask and it's a great page turner of an adventure story. You won't be able to put it down once the boys take to the river.

Australian author Charlotte McConagny's first novel published in the US, Migrations, is set in the (probably nearer than we hope) future when human actions and climate change have decimated animal, bird and fish populations to near or complete extinction. Her main character - Franny Stone - is a seriously damaged woman who has spent her life wandering, unable to deal with enclosure in places or relationships. The story begins when Franny is in Greenland, having successfully banded three Arctic terns, members of what appears to be the last flock on earth. She is convinced that if she can follow their migration - the longest one in nature from the Arctic to Antarctica - she can save the species. But there is much more going on and McConagny cleverly parses out Franny's background story, making the book a page turning thriller. Beautifully written with incredible descriptions of the journey across some of the most dangerous portions of the Atlantic ocean, this is a highly recommended book.

If, like me, you are disappointed in the interpretation that PBS has made of the unfinished novel by Jane Austen, I have a book for you. Miss Austen by Gill Hornby focuses on Cassandra, Jane's older sister, constant companion and the literary executor of her estate. Written with the subtle wit of Jane Austen, Hornby introduces us to Cassandra in her later years, several years after Jane's death. Always concerned about the legacy that Jane will leave, when Cassandra learns that the parsonage where the Fowles - extended family and great friends of the Austen's - lived is being claimed by the replacement clergyman, she invites herself to stay. She is determined to find and censor any letters that might cast a shadow on Jane's life. And as is often the case when you dig in the past, she learns some things she might prefer not to know. As Jane Austen did, Hornby shows us the options open to women during the period, always limited, and the dismal opportunities for single women or women whose husbands are no longer around. I thoroughly enjoyed this chance to explore a different aspect of Jane Austen's life. While this is fiction, the author has been careful to stay within the historical data (and speculation) around the Austen family. The echoes of Mrs Bennett in Mrs. Austen and the depiction of Mary Austen, James' wife who has never met an issue she can't criticize, are another bit of the charm.

It's not often that the main character in a novel dies on page 1 but Henny isn't about to leave the area just because she no longer has a body. She loves the decrepit motel in the small town of Pine Creek in Oregon and she loves her three best friends. She is sure that if she just tries hard enough, she can make sure they will be happy. The publisher describes this book as charming and it is - in spite of being about a town where protestors will try and close down a motel because the manager is a lesbian and the owner is a transexual woman. But you will love these characters.This is a book about roads not taken, communities that can both support and enrage you, and second chances. And you will unexpectedly learn quite a bit about rocks. Katarina Bivald is also the author of "The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend" - you'll want to check that one out too.

Brooke Fossey has set her debut novel, Big Finish, in an assisted living home whose director is eager to move residents out as soon as they begin to need more assistance in order to bring in more lucrative guests. Duffy, who tells us this story, is a man whose life has been spent with alcohol, drugs and quick sex. He is not a man to go gentle into that good night. Now in his late 80's with no family and only one friend - his roommate Carl - he is faced with a situation where he might achieve redemption - if he only has the strength and will to make it happen. Duffy is an amusing curmudgeon when he isn't being an angry one but this book does a great job of looking at how difficult aging can be and how limited life is when someone else controls every activity. There is light at the end of this tunnel and a hopeful - if not totally happy - ending when several of the residents and staff come together for a BIG FINISH. I enjoyed this book and think it will appeal to readers who liked A Man Called Ove.

Kevin Wilson's latest novel, Nothing to See Here, requires you - like the White Queen - to believe an impossible thing. But put that aside because the rest of the book is totally believable. It deals with the incredible devastation visited on children when parents who should be protecting them just check out. It looks at the incredible difference between the lives of the rich and subsequently powerful and the rest of us. It explores what people will do to hold on to that power. And it looks at the possibility of second chances - often not the chance you thought you had. It does this with a thoroughly likable and often humorous character in Lillian. I liked this book and thought that Lillian and her charges were people well worth rooting for.

Ellie and Dan are two of the world's innocents. In her debut novel, Ellie and the Harpmaker, Hazel Prior introduces us to Dan Hollis, the Exmoor Harpmaker, who lives an isolated life in the woods and spends all his days building beautiful Celtic harps. Ellie Jacobs- who describes herself as the Exmoor housewife, lives with her controlling husband Clive, convinced by her mother that she deserves little and should be happy that anyone would want her. She writes poems that no one will ever read and takes long walks. On one of these walks she explores a hidden lane and stumbles across Dan's workshop. The story of their friendship, told with a true appreciation of the beauty of nature and the necessity of music, will clearly have you rooting for a happy ending - that often seems very unlikely. In the look at relationships, this book reminded me of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society - a great favorite of mine.

Andre Dubus III is always worth reading. In his latest book, Gone So Long, he has his character Susan, a teacher and aspiring writer say "…my love for stories that brought me into the dark bottomless hearts of others." And I think that is probably a good description of the stories he tells us. Writing from a depth of knowledge of people who live on the edge, this time he tells us the story of Susan, her grandmother Lois, and Susan's father Daniel who 40 years ago had done the unforgivable thing. And - now at the end of his life - hopes that there may be, if not forgiveness, perhaps an opportunity to be seen. It is a book about despair, anger fueled by guilt, and uncontrollable desperation and yet it is a hopeful book. Dubus' writing is as always beautiful, full of descriptions that will take you to places you probably haven't seen, including deep inside his characters who are doing their best to survive. Highly recommended.

Sometimes when you expect a book to be one thing and it feels - to you - like something else, you may tend to under rate it. This was described as a riotous send-up of high society and while there are certainly some elements of French farce, I found it more sad than funny. The main characters are so self involved that they not only don't follow the rules, they don't appear to know that there are any. They are, however, inexplicably attractive to many people who are drawn into their orbit. So - I didn't love this but think if I had approached it with different expectations, I might have been more positive.

Written with a keen wit and clever turn of phrase, Thisbe Nissen's Our Lady of the Prairie looks at what happens when a 50 year old woman with a life that looks like it will finally be stable after years of upheaval with a very challenged daughter discovers the "love of her life" and jumps into an affair with all the enthusiasm of a teenager who has just discovered sex. Set in Ohio during the campaign for George W. Bush's second term, the personal chaos that Professor Phillipa Maakestad creates is reflected in the division of the country and the author gives us a few hints of what is coming. Since some of the fall out from Phillipa's destruction of her long term marriage is fairly sad, I felt a bit guilty enjoying this book as much as I did but I did.

I was very impressed with Jane Harper's first book - The Dry - and looked forward to reading her new title Force of Nature. I wasn't disappointed. She brings back Aaron Falk from her first book and gives him a new partner - Carmen Cooper - to investigate financial crimes. Still in Australia, they are called out when a women who is cooperating with their investigation turns up missing on a bushland trek as part of a team building exercise. The exercise quickly descends into a Lord of the Flies relationship when the women take a wrong turn and find themselves lost in the bush with no food or water.

I like her characters, think she writes wonderfully, find the setting interesting and the story believable. She does a great job of creating suspense. Here are the first lines from the prologue: "Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things. One: No-one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell. And two: Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you." Doesn't that make you want to read more?

The three Jacobson siblings have agreed to come together for what they expect to be their ill mother's last Seder. But under this pretense lies the more immediate intent of providing their mother with a final few months of peace by eliminating their abusive father. They have, however, all been so damaged by that father that it seems unlikely they can maintain enough focus and cooperation to even get through the Seder. Set in a California in the near distant future where anti Semitic violence has become the norm and the misuse of water is a jail offense, what should be funny outlandish plot points now seem painfully possible. Several years ago Tom Lehrer said that once Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace prize sarcasm was no longer possible. Given the state of the country I found this book -- that I had looked forward to as mostly comic --to be mostly sad. But perhaps an interesting warning light.

If you watched members of your family die from a terrible incurable hereditary disease and if there was a test to see if you carried the flawed gene that caused it - would you take that test? And if the result was positive, how would you live the rest of your life? These were not random questions for the Baxley family from a small town in South Carolina. As older members of the family began to display symptoms of an illness their doctors could not identify, it begins to be obvious that all the members of the family are at risk. Their story, interspersed with the work of the doctors and scientists who are attempting to identify and understand a disease that leaves previously healthy people unable to move or communicate, is a compelling read. Told from the point of view of Amanda, a young woman just beginning her life as a nurse with the man she plans to spend her life with, this is ultimately the story of the depth of the human spirit.

In The book That Matters Most Ann Hood has created a story of grief and the anger that often results from it and a look at the possibilities of recovery. Her two main characters Ava and her daughter Maggie have both had the lives they thought they knew blown apart. It is books - through a book group for Maggie and the discussion of books chosen by the group members - that help them find a way, if not back, then toward a different kind of acceptance of their lives and the possibilities they offer. It is also a look at the impact that decisions we make, perhaps to deal with our own pain, have on others. It will be a wonderful book for book groups, in talking about the books that the book group reads, in talking about the decisions the characters in this book make to allow themselves to continue to function and in thinking about the book that matters most to them.

With a plot based on Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier with a murder thrown in and set in NY during the early 1920's among the rich and well pedigreed, this is a delight. The soldiers are coming back from the war, airplanes are becoming a thing, jazz is the music of the day, speakeasies are making a mockery of prohibition and at least a few women are thinking there must be an alternative to looking for a man to take care of them. Love and scandal among the upper classes is always fascinating, the writing is excellent and the author keeps several surprises to throw to you at the end. Highly recommended. Be sure to read the quotes before each chapter - they are a hoot.

Linwood Barclay has a long string of very successful thriller books. He is now trying something rather new - a series that acts - like a TV show - as segments in a story rather than as a stand alone book. His most recent - Far From True - is set in his mythical Promise Falls and begins when the local drive in movie theater screen is blown up and falls on the audience. The book is full of action, supporting characters who wander in and out, villains so unredeemingly evil they are cartoon characters and lots of cliff hangers. This didn't work for me but if you like the concept of signing on with an author for a long haul story you will probably enjoy this beach read.

Homogenous America with all it's fast food outlets across the country sometimes conceals the cultural differences that still exist when you leave the highway and look at what happens in homes and families. Lizet is the daughter of Cuban immigrants living in Miami who manages to be admitted to an exclusive college in New York - without her parents knowledge or approval. What she doesn't know is how lost she will feel in this new culture or how pained she will be at leaving behind her parents whose unhappy marriage has dissolved, her sister who is living with the consequences of a very bad life choice, or her high school boy friend who is certain that she will marry him. When she faces the possibility of failure in this new environment and has to deal with her mother becoming obsessed with the fate of an emigrant boy (clearly based on the Elian Gonzales case), she has to make some very difficult choices on who she will be and what she is willing to give up. An interesting look at how difficult it is to move from where you grew up that doesn't sugar coat the costs.