When David moves home to Detroit after more than two decades away, he's fleeing memories of his dead son and ex-wife. What he finds is a murder mystery involving his high school sweetheart. Scott Lasser's novel captures the soul of a city on the ropes and one man's attempt to save himself and his hometown by taking justice into his own hands.

In the spirit of My Antonia and There Will Be Blood, an orphaned 18-year-old girl heads west in search of her only living relative -- and finds herself in the middle of a war between sheep herders and cattle ranchers that threatens to keep the railroad from extending to their patch of wilderness. A Discover Great New Writers selection.

When young American Boyd Darrow relocated to the Southeast Asian country of Puchai, he'd hoped to find his future in this tiny nation in which a wink can have hundreds of meanings.  But the tangles of heartbreak, it turns out, can be found anywhere on Earth -- even in a land where the spirits of turtles will curse the unwary.  A delightfully funny and heartfelt novel from a fresh voice in fiction.

When he spots a pair of would-be thieves trying to hot-wire his car, mild-mannered wine steward Jim Sandusky gives in to impulse and takes off in -- and wrecks -- the thieves' van. But a moment's defiance sets off a chain of deadly consequences in Kevin Desinger's work of suspense.

In Savages, Don Winslow spun a memorably hardboiled tale of love and loyalty among Southern California pot dealers. With the film adaptation of that arresting story about to hit theaters, his latest novel digs deeper into the events that brought Ben, Chon, and O together  -- and forced them to choose between their families and one another.

A young man in love with a quirky, upper-class British girl finds himself caught up in her troubled brother's obsessions with the healing power of music. Benjamin Wood's gripping novel of psychological suspense reminds us of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. A Discover Great New Writers selection.

Mark Haddon captivated readers worldwide with the haunting mystery The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. His playful new novel follows one family's weekend in the countryside with explosive results. A bittersweet, funny, and heartfelt performance from a storytelling wizard.

Tom Wrights's craftily seductive tale brings together two young people from broken homes -- quiet James and his feisty cousin L.A. -- in 1970s Texas, where they face a mysterious evil. A haunting coming-of-age story (and great beach read) with a tinge of the supernatural.

Disgraced journalist Gavin Sasaki returns home to coastal Florida in search of a former flame and a young girl who may be the daughter he never knew he had. A fan of dimestore detective novels, Gavin quickly finds himself in over his head as he chases answers in Emily St. John Mandel's gripping novel.

Three women -- a runaway bride, a recovering alcoholic, and a minister's wife desperate to escape her marriage -- go on the lam together until their car breaks down on a rural highway in North Carolina. Which is where they meet Marcel, a retired circus lion. And that's when the adventure really begins in Delia Ephron's madcap novel.

After the sudden death of her lover, Catherine Gehrig finds solace in her work as a curator of intricate antique devices in a London museum. But her connection to an ingenious 19th-century automaton will change her in ways she can scarcely imagine. Man Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey once again astonishes.

When he receives a significant sum of money as part of his divorce settlement with an English woman, Harris, the patriarch of a large Pakistani family, must decide which of his relatives to give it to. Rosie Dastgir's debut novel reveals her gift for capturing characters and cultures complicated by a burden of riches.

After his wife's mysterious death, a man finds sinister messages hidden around his house -- one buried in a bag of sugar, another carved into the side of his TV. What do they mean? The answer proves essential to solving the riddle at the heart of Amelia Gray's unsettling debut.

Scott's doomed Antartic expedition and the haunting mysteries surrounding its failure lead to obsession in Richard Pierce's debut novel. As painter Birdie Bowers pursues her fascination with the explorer and his death, she risks both her body and her heart for answers.

When a hard-drinking Sri Lankan sportswriter faces liver failure, he decides it's finally time to track down once-great  cricket star Pradeep Mathew. Shehan Karunatilaka's big-hearted, madcap novel reverberates with echoes of A Fan's Notes and Netherland. A Discover Great New Writers selection.

When Jack Luxton hears that his estranged brother has been killed in combat, long-buried memories begin to well up like groundwater, and difficult choices Jack thought he reconciled himself to years ago turn out to be close at hand. Man Booker Prize-winner Graham Swift's novel plumbs timeless themes of regret, renewal, and the bonds of love.

On a chilly Thanksgiving day, 19-year-old Billy Lynn and the other surviving members of Bravo Squad wait to be hailed during a Dallas Cowboys halftime tribute. But Billy is only thinking of family and fallen comrades. The most affecting fictional treatment of the Iraq War to date.

Fans of Deadliest Catch will be drawn to the arresting story of an Alaskan boyhood growing up in the shadow of the men who fish the treacherous Bering Sea.  But the piratical joys of Treasure Island also cast a spell over Nick Dybek's bewitching, ocean-haunted tale.

Robert Olmstead's breathtaking coming-of-age story is subtitled "A Novel of Love and War" and with good reason: Henry Childs' unforgettable first love and nearly unendurable trial-by-combat in one of the Korean War's most harrowing battles are captured in a revelatory language -- and implanted in a story as suspenseful as it is true to the extremes of human experience.

The new novel by Joyce Carol Oates explores the high price of professional success in the life of one woman, M. R. The first female president of an Ivy League university, she has lofty goals for changing the academic climate on campus, but her ambition clashes with the militaristic post-9/11 political environment. And all the while, the Mudgirl lurks in her past. Oates combines richly observed descriptions and a burgeoning sense of dread to engrossing effect.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, D. J. Taylor's novel captures the Victorian passion for horse racing, as enthusiasts from every walk of life converge on Epsom Down one summer. Much rides on the performance of proven winner Tiberius, but "sporting gentleman" George Happerton secretly wants his horse to lose so that he can win big at the betting window. A gripping tale rife with romance and rivalry, period detail and Dickensian scope.

A failed novelist develops a taste for online poker, but trouble starts when opponents call his bluff in the real world. Ted Heller's inventive, incisive comedy finds his hapless hero going all-in, as the stakes grow higher than at any Vegas table.

A Discover Great New Writers Selection. This debut novel radiates with the enchanted atmosphere of the Russian folktale that inspired it, transplanting a magical story to the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness of the 1920s. A middle-aged, childless couple fashion a child out of snow in a playful moment; the next morning, they find a little girl skittering through the nearby woods. Author Eowyn Ivey brings to life a captivating and mysterious fable of love's power. 

Everything's a shock to the system for Jonas, a teenager from an unnamed Central Asian country, when he's granted asylum in the U.S. His struggles to assimilate and come to terms with his life -- and the American soldier who saved it -- make a story that could have been spun from yesterday's headlines. But in Stephen Dau's careful hands, it touches the deepest truths of loss and healing.

Winner of the 2011 Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction. David Darby and his son -- known only as The Kid -- struggle to move on after the unexpected death of David's wife. The Kid hasn't spoken since losing his Mom and retreats into a growing collection of notebooks where he records his thoughts and imagines a safer world. Alternating between the bewildered voices of father and son, Scott O'Connor leads readers along a spellbound path to the heart of a mystery.

In his spirited, darkly funny debut novel, Adam Wilson introduces soft-bellied slacker Eli Schwartz, whose couch-potato life is upended when wheelchair-bound former TV star Seymour J. Kahn rolls through and tucks Eli under his peculiar wing. Perverse, subversive, and hilariously outrageous, the book delivers memorable characters, a rollicking plot, and a new voice that comes across as anything but flat.

In this comic novel, the sequel to Lars Iyer's Spurious, two British academics -- narrator Lars and his friend W. -- journey across America on a literary lecture tour. In pubs and at bus stops along the way, they discuss religion, capitalism, and philosophical matters delivered with a droll sense of humor that buoys the weighty topics. A madcap road trip of the mind.

Now out in paperback, the novel our reviewer, Stefan Beck, called, "a prismatic metafictional wonder: a fake memoir that blasts fake memoirs, while speaking passionately on family, memory, and identity; a publishing-world satire; a literary mystery; a comedy; a tragedy; and a pretext for [Arthur] Phillips's virtuoso, full-length imitation of a Shakespearean history play, The Most Excellent and Tragical Historie of Arthur, King of Britain."

In her debut novel, Tupelo Hassman channels the brash but vulnerable voice of Rory Dawn Hendrix, a young girl growing up in a seedy Reno trailer park. Determined not to follow the going-nowhere path prescribed for her -- the one her Mama is currently on -- Rory checks out the Girl Scout Handbook from her school library over and over again, even though she isn't in a troop. Will advice on subjects like "Finding Your Way When You Get Lost" help her escape?

Alice Albinia's fascinating travelogue, Empires of the Indus, traversed more than two thousand miles of riverbank and several milennia of south Asian history. Now, one of the most promising writers of her generation turns to fiction in her first novel. The story of a disastrous wedding becomes so much more in Albinia's hands: a portrait of cultures clashing and a meditation on storytelling itself.