Anyone interested in rollicking adventure, puzzle-solving/code-breaking, the history of books and printing, digital technology, conspiracy theory, secret societies, quirky San Francisco (Did I catch just about everybody?) would find Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore * immensely enjoyable. (Coming out in October, I will be doing a lot of hand-selling in the meantime. Get on the waiting list if I were you. )

It didn't take long for Clay Jannon, an unemployed graphic artist/web designer to realize that Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is anything but the obvious. Working the grave-yard shift, his customers never buy but "borrow" archaic volumes according to some elaborate scheme. Mr. Penumbra's strict missive of never looking into any of the volumes produces just the opposite effect and soon, Clay finds himself, and his willing dot.com recruits plunging (Googlers figure prominently in the plot and the solution) head-long into a heroic quest of complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, and digging at the truth behind secrets that reach back to the famous Venetian printer Aldus­ Manutius. "A gleeful and exhilarating tale".

"With irresistible brio and dazzling intelligence, Robin Sloan has crafted a literary adventure story for the twenty-first century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or a young Umberto Eco, but with a unique and feisty sensibility that's rare to the world of literary fiction."

Debut novelist Robin Sloan, a native of Michigan is a gradate of Michigan State University (Economics). He was a member of the Media Partnerships team at Twitter before becoming a writer and a "media inventor".

* = starred review

In Courtney Miller Santo's debut novel The Roots of the Olive Tree, five generations of the firstborn Keller women live together in the same house on a secluded olive grove in the Sacramento Valley. Headed by Anna, the 112-year-old matriarch, still sturdy in body and sharp of mind, they have an unique ability to live long, healthy lives.

It is this ability that draws the interest of a geneticist who plans to interview them. But his visit, and the unexpected arrival of the youngest member of the clan sparks tension. Old grudges reignite as new revelations and shocking secrets come to light.

"Santo paints a moving portrait of an extraordinary, yet flawed, family". For fans Kaye Gibbon's Charms for the Easy Life; Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas; and the Elm Creek Quilts series by Jennifer Chiaverini.

Two debut novels sharing the same title, each very distinct and worlds apart. But fantastic, just the same.

In Silver * * by Rhiannon Held, Andrew Dare, a werewolf enforcer/protector for the Roanoke pack, picks up a scent no one has ever encountered. It belongs to beautiful "Silver" - wild and crazy, having been tortured and injected with silver into her veins.

She represents a terrible threat to every Were on the continent unless Andrew join forces with her. While tracking down her attacker and the menace behind the threat, they discover their own power and their passion for each other. "Urban fantasy takes a walk on the wild side"

"The combination of engaging characters and a well-developed world will leave readers anxiously awaiting the next installment. A must-read for fans of Kelley Armstrong's Bitten (2001), another compelling werewolf story".

For perilous game of pack politics, try Toby Barlow's award-winning Sharp Teeth * *.

For fans of the recent crop of exceptional urban fantasies of Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf, and Anne Rice's The Wolf Gift.

Silver: return to Treasure Island * by biographer and UK poet laureate Andrew Motion, is a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. It picks up twenty years later and finds Natty, the daughter of Long John Silver, teaming up with Hawkins' son, Jim, on a dangerous voyage to the legendary island in search of their fathers' hidden treasure.

This "clever and satisfying high-seas tale of madness and brutality, treachery and courage, resourcefulness and romance" is not to be missed.

* = starred review
* * = starred reviews

The AADL's Book Clubs to Go collection continues to grow! Book Clubs To Go (BCTG) is a service of the AADL that provides local book clubs with the convenience of complete kits for book discussions. Included in each BCTG are 10 copies of the featured book for discussion (or 10 each of two related titles), 1 copy of movie DVD if available, a resource folder containing the following: summary information and reviews of the title(s); author biography; a list of suggested discussion questions and read-alikes; tips for book groups; and evaluation forms so you can let us know what you think of the service.

The library will be releasing several new BCTG kits in the coming weeks, including the following:

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai is the story of "Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, who finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home."

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, is a non-fiction book that "intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death."

The Greater Journey by David McCullough, also non-fiction, is "the enthralling, inspiring -- and until now, untold -- story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work"

Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet is "the first-ever memoir by an autistic savant, a man who can speak ten languages, who sees numbers with color and texture, who broke a record by memorizing over 22,000 digits of pi --and can write about it all with inspiring and heartbreaking simplicity and clarity."

In Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell, "sixteen-year-old Margo takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother. Her river odyssey through rural Michigan becomes a defining journey, one that leads her beyond self-preservation and to the decision of what price she is willing to pay for her choices."

The Man Booker Prize 2012 shortlist was released today in London.

The Man Booker Prize was first begun as the Booker Prize in 1968. It is one of the most prestigious literary awards and is awarded to the best novel of the year written by an author who is a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.

Among the authors who got the shortlist nod this year are:

Twan Eng Tan for his novel, The Garden of Evening Mists. In 1951, Malaysian prosecuting attorney, Yun Ling Teoh finds a Japanese garden in Malaysia which provides her with unexpected solace as she tries to heal from her horrific WW II experience in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

Will Self for his novel, Umbrella. Zachary Busner, a rogue psychiatrist in a mental hospital in 1970s London, tries some out-there therapies in an effort to reach Audrey Dearth, an 80-something patient whose life story unfolds slowly during her treatment.

Hilary Mantel for Bringing Up the Bodies. In this historical novel, Anne Boleyn is in the fight for her life against Thomas Cromwell.

For a complete list of all six authors named today, check out this link.

The winner will be named on Tuesday, October 16th in London at Guildhall.

Personal Effects is a well-written, highly engaging, debut novel by E.M. Kokie, an attorney in Madison, Wisconsin, who has long been drawn to teen literature. Readers will find humor, compassion, excitement, and a memorable coming-of-age story in these pages.

The story opens as 17-year-old Matt Foster is trying to recover from the death of his older brother, T.J., in Iraq. Matt is failing classes at school, fighting with classmates, and trying to tune out his father's command that he follow T.J.'s steps to the military after high school. When T.J.'s stuff -- some of the “personal effects” in the title -- are shipped home, Matt thinks sneaking to go through them will help put closure on his grief. Instead, he unearths letters and secrets about his brother's identity, strength, honor, and bravery that show him that he did not know T.J. as well as he thought he did.

As Matt comes to terms with his brother’s life and death, he begins to better stand his ground with his dad and to become the hero of his own unfolding young-adult life. Matt’s high-school girlfriend, Shauna, is an intriguing and charming character who contributes much to the page-turning magnetism of the narrative. I hope Ms. Kokie is writing more books!

In Benjamin Wood's The Bellwether Revivals *, bright, bookish Oscar Lowe escapes his squalid upbringing and finds new life amid the colleges and spires of Cambridge as a care assistant at a local nursing home. Lured into the chapel at Kings College by the otherworldly organ music, he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether, a beautiful and enigmatic medical student, and her brother Eden's exclusive circle of the very wealthy and privileged.

Eden, a charismatic but troubled musical prodigy, believes that music can cure, and convinces their close-knit circle to participate in a series of disturbing experiments, thus putting in motion the devastation foretold in the gripping opener, "two people lie dead, and a third sits nearby, barely breathing".

"A sophisticated debut novel about the hypnotic influence of love, the beguiling allure of money and the haunting power of music".

For fans of the PBS Masterpiece Mystery Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis series created by Colin Dexter, many of which are based on his novels, set in Oxford.

Another great academic mystery set in Cambridge is the second in the Detective Constable Lacey Flint series Dead Scared * * (2012) by S. J. Bolton, a brilliant psychological thriller, and a follow-up to Now You See Me (2011).

British-born Benjamin Wood was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend the MFA Creative Writing Programme at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he was also the fiction editor of the literary journal PRISM international. Wood is now a lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

* = Starred review

* * = Starred reviews

Called "majestic," "compelling," and "mesmerizing," debut novelist Amanda Coplin's The Orchardist * * fully lives up to the hype.

Set in early-20th-century Washington State, it follows a makeshift family through two tragic decades. William Talmadge toils alone in his orchard at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains when two starving, heavily pregnant teenage girls, Jane and Della, turn up on his land, and into his care. Their pursuer is an opium addict, and the ensuring violence leaves only Della and Jane's baby, Angelene, to be nurtured by Talmadge and his close friend Caroline Middey, an herbalist. Tragedy strikes again when Angelene is 13, setting in motion a disastrous chain of events that engulfs Talmadge and everyone he cares for.

"Coplin refuses to sentimentalize. Instead, she demonstrates that courage and compassion can transform unremarkable lives and redeem damaged souls. In the end, three graves side by side, yet this eloquent, moving novel concludes on a note of affirmation."

"A breathtaking work from a genuinely accomplished writer."

"Coplin's depictions of uniquely Western personalities and a stark, gorgeously realized landscape" bring to mind Kent Haruf's Plainsong, and The Outlander by Gil Adamson.

Readers might also try the Winner of the 2010 Governor General's Award (and a US debut) , Juliet in August (originally published as Cool Water) by Dianne Warren, set in a tiny Canadian town in Saskatchewan, a blink-and-you-miss-it dusty oasis on the edge of the Little Snake sand hills.

For more on The Orchardist, read NPR's review and interview with the author.

* * = starred reviews

With a lot of the men off fighting at the various fronts, 1943 Berlin is virtually a City of Women * *.

Beautiful Sigrid Schröder stoically copes with a tedious job, a hostile mother-in-law, rationed food, air raids, the constant fear of denouncement and that (Gestapo) knock on the door. Sigrid is sustained by her secrets - afternoons spent at the cinema and the stolen hours with a Jewish lover. Though cautious and street-smart, Sigrid is unwittingly drawn into dangerous activities by a young neighbor's appeal for help. When her husband returns wounded and embittered from the Russian Front, things quickly become treacherous.

"World War II Germany may be familiar ground, but David R. Gillham's (debut) novel—vividly cinematic yet subtle and full of moral ambiguity, not to mention riveting characters—is as impossible to put down as it is to forget."

"This is an exemplary model of historical fiction generously laced with romance, suspense, and exciting plot twists. Readers who enjoy the grim side of historical fiction or who prefer romance infused with eroticism will find this novel appealing."

For fans of Alan Furst whose loosely connected Night Soldiers novels, set just prior to and during the Second World War, are superb historical espionage thrillers, "in the tradition of Eric Ambler and Graham Greene".

Readers might be reminded of Julie Orringer's romantic WWII saga The Invisible Bridge , and Julia Franck's The Blindness of the Heart, a touching depiction of the horrors of war on a human scale.

* * = starred reviews

If you're heading out on an end-of-summer car trip, here's a good book on CD to take along: Chasing the Bear by Robert B. Parker. Written for age 12 and up, the story introduces readers to young private investigator Spenser, star of Parker's bestselling adult novels, at age 14. Speaking to his girlfriend Susan, Spenser reflects on his youth and teen years and how he helped his best friend, Jeannie, when she was abducted by her dangerous dad. This story is memorable because of the humorous parts and the overall suspense of the narrative.