Just after dawn, Caren walks the grounds of Belle Vie, the historic plantation house in Louisiana that she has managed for four years. Today she sees nothing unusual, apart from some ground that has been dug up by the fence bordering the sugar cane fields. Assuming an animal has been out after dark, she asks the gardener to tidy it up. Not long afterwards, he calls her to say it's something else. Something terrible. A dead body. At a distance, she missed her. The girl, the dirt and the blood. Now she has police on site, an investigation in progress, and a member of staff no one can track down. And Caren keeps uncovering things she will wish she didn't know. As she's drawn into the dead girl's story, she makes shattering discoveries about the future of Belle Vie, the secrets of its past, and sees, more clearly than ever, that Belle Vie, its beauty, is not to be trusted.

A magnificent, sweeping story of the south, The Cutting Season brings history face-to-face with modern America, where Obama is president, but some things will never change. Attica Locke once again provides an unblinking commentary on politics, race, the law, family and love, all within a thriller every bit as gripping and tragic as her first novel, Black Water Rising.

One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared. While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.

Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.

Flight Behavior transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman's narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire. In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel's inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and reader alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith, and everyday truces between reason and conviction. Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.

This stunning novel introduces Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband's death. Suddenly gifted her great uncle's Pasadena mansion, Susan decides to restore his extensive collection of preserved animals, tending to “the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails.” Meanwhile, a menagerie of uniquely damaged humans—including a cheating husband and a chorus of eccentric elderly women—joins her in residence.

Millet's "flawlessly beautiful" (Salon) prose creates a setting both humorous and wondrous as Susan defends her inheritance from freeloading relatives and explores the mansion's many mysterious spaces. Funny and heartbreaking, Magnificence is the story of a woman emerging from the sudden dissolution of her family. Millet's trademark themes—evolution and extinction, children and parenthood, loss and wonder—produce a rapturous final act to the critically acclaimed cycle of novels that began with How the Dead Dream.

When Penelope O'Shaunessy, "an incoming freshman of average height and lank hair" steps into Harvard Yard for the first time she has lots of advice from her mother: "Don't be too enthusiastic, don't talk to people who seem to be getting annoyed, and for heaven's sake, stop playing Tetris on your phone at parties." Penelope needs this advice. She is the kind of girl who passes through much of her life with coffee spilled on her white shirt, who can't quite tell when people are joking, and who, inevitably, always says the wrong thing. But no amount of coaching will prepare Penelope for the people she meets at school.

Gloriously skewering the social hierarchy of college, Penelope is the brilliantly funny story of one of the most singular, memorable heroines in recent fiction.

An extraordinary debut novel that challenges the definition of family and explores the intricate ties that bind us together. Ida grew up with Jackson and James—where there was "I" there was a "J." She can't recall a time when she didn't have them around, whether in their early days camping out in the boys' room decorated with circus scenes or later drinking on rooftops as teenagers. While the world outside saw them as neighbors and friends, to each other the three formed a family unit—two brothers and a sister—not drawn from blood, but drawn from a deep need to fill a void in their single parent households. Theirs was a relationship of communication without speaking, of understanding without judgment, of intimacy without rules and limits. But as the three of them mature and emotions become more complex, Ida and Jackson find themselves more than just siblings. When Jackson's somnambulism produces violent outbursts and James is hospitalized, Ida is paralyzed by the events that threaten to shatter her family and put it beyond her reach. Kathleen Alcott's striking debut, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, is an emotional, deeply layered love story that explores the dynamics of family when it defies bloodlines and societal conventions.

In her new novel, Schutt delivers a pitch-perfect, timeless and original work on the spectacle of love. Prosperous Friends follows the evolution of a young couple's marriage as it is challenged by the quandaries of longing and sexual self-discovery. The glamorous and gifted Ned Bourne and his pretty wife, Isabel, travel to London, New York, and Maine in hopes of realizing their artistic promise, but their quest for sexual fulfillment is less assured. Past lovers and new infatuations, doubt and indifference threaten to bankrupt the marriage. The Bournes' fantasies for their future finally give way to a deepened and mature perspective in the company of an older, celebrated artist, Clive Harris, and his wife, Dinah, a poet. With compassionate insight, Schutt explores the divide between those like Clive and Dinah who seem to prosper in love and those like Ned and Isabel who feel themselves condemned to yearn for it.

Set on a struggling farm in a colonial country teetering on the brink of civil war, Gone to the Forest is a tale of family drama and political turmoil in which fiery storytelling melds with daring, original prose. Since his mother's death, Tom and his father have fashioned a strained domestic peace, where everything is frozen under the old man's vicious control. But when a young woman named Carine arrives at the farm, the tension between the two men escalates to the breaking point. Hailed by the "Boston Globe "as "a major talent," Kitamura shines in this powerful new novel.

An eerie, unforgettable story of power, loss, and family curses in early 20th century Princeton New Jersey, where soon-to-be commander-in-chief Woodrow Wilson is president of the University. On a nearby farm, Socialist author Upton Sinclair, enjoying the success of his novel The Jungle, has taken up residence with his family. This is a quiet, bookish community—elite, intellectual and indisputably privileged. But when a young bride is seduced and abducted from the altar by a dangerously compelling man, a horrifying chain of events is initiated—until it becomes apparent that the families of Princeton have been beset by a powerful curse. The Devil has come to this little town and not a soul will be spared. An utterly fresh work from Oates, The Accursed marks new territory for the masterful writer—narrated with her unmistakable psychological insight, it combines beautifully transporting historical detail with chilling fantastical elements to stunning effect.

In her third novel, Motherless Child, Marianne Langner Zeitlin explores the world of classical music, where powerful managers can make—and break—the careers of aspiring artists. The book opens with Elizabeth Guaragna, under an assumed name, taking a job in the new agency of famed music impresario Alfred Rossiter, a man she was raised to despise. She wants to glimpse the man who had destroyed her father's piano career and family life years earlier, when he took Elizabeth's mother as his lover.

As Elizabeth is given opportunities to exercise her artistic judgment in her new job, she becomes involved in the business itself, despite her continuing misgivings. Soon she meets George Wentworth, who is writing a biography of Rossiter. Through him and the relationship they develop, she learns that the truth she is seeking is quite different from what she was raised to believe. When her fear of identifying her real background to Rossiter threatens her own love of George, she must finally confront Rossiter and her own past, learning that there are no villains in the tale.

Set in Long Beach, California, beginning in the 1970s, The Salt God's Daughter follows Ruthie and her sister, Dolly as they carve out a life in a place filled with natural beauty, meteorological myths, and exotic folklore. Raised by a mother drawn to the ocean and guided by the moons, their heritage is a mystery and their mother often absent, forcing the two girls to confront the social and sexual mores of the time on their own, caught in the riptide of a culture that alternately glorifies and demonizes female sexuality. Ruthie's daughter, Naida, is born into this conflicting landscape with a secret she tries to keep hidden, bullied and harassed by her peers as she seeks out the father she never knew. Woven with a traditional Scottish folktale and hints of Jewish mysticism, this novel examines how far we'll go to find our place in a world that is often hostile to those who are different.

Two-Part Inventions begins when Suzanne, a concert pianist, dies suddenly of a stroke in the New York City apartment she shares with her producer-husband Philip. Rather than mourn in peace, Philip becomes deeply paranoid: Their life is based on a fraud and the acclaimed music the couple created is about to be exposed. Philip had built a career for his wife by altering her recordings, taking a portion of a song here and there from recordings of other pianists. Synching the alterations seamlessly, he created flawless pieces of music, with Suzanne getting sole credit.

In this urban, psychological novel, author Lynne Sharon Schwartz brilliantly guides the reader through a flawed marriage and calculated career. Beginning with Suzanne's death and moving backward in time, Schwartz examines their life together and Suzanne's remarkable career, while contemplating the nature of truth, marriage, and the pursuit of perfection.