Though there are many books of which I am fond, there are few instances in which, upon finishing a book, I find myself thinking, with some sadness, of how much I would have missed out on had not some happy accident brought said book into my life. This is the thought I had from nearly the first page of James Kennedy's The Order of Odd-Fish. This book will likely receive complimentary comparisons to such literary greats as Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl, along with contemporary favorites like Lemony Snicket and the perhaps less widely celebrated but no less loved Norton Juster, and while such comparisons rarely set the reader up for anything more than disappointment, they are entirely justified here. Even if Kennedy never again sets pen to paper, he will always be remembered lovingly for the one great contribution he has made to young adult literature today.

The Order of Odd-Fish is at once a coming of age story and a fantastical journey into a middle world where gigantic cockroaches are butlers, knights spend their lives engaged in fruitless endeavors and a legend threatens to destroy an entire community. Jo Larouche is thirteen when her life is uprooted and she finds herself vomited out of a giant fish into the strange world of Eldritch City and an order of knights known as Odd-Fish. Along with her is her eccentric Aunt Lily, who cannot remember anything before Jo's birth, a boisterous Russian named Colonel Korsakov, who literally puts all his faith in his gut and bases his decisions on his digestive sensations, and Sefino, Korsakov's uppity and self-absorbed cockroach butler. It is here that Jo must learn the truth about her birth and how she is inexplicably linked with the Ichthala, the true legend that predicts the return of a goddess known as the All-Devouring Mother and the end of Eldritch City.

Lest Jo's story appear to be more of an inner journey, Kennedy pits her against a couple of formidable and highly comical villains. First up is Ken Kiang, a bored Chinese millionaire whose goal is to be "thoroughly, intentionally EVIL." Here is a man who proudly boasts that he has drunk kitten blood, who concocts a plan for a man to sell his soul in exchange for consuming delicious pies, who "[makes] a mental note to practice his diabolical laughter for fifteen minutes a day," for he knows that the devil is in the details. Acting in opposition to both Kiang and Jo is the Belgian Prankster, known for his ability to pull off world-class pranks like covering New York with orange carpet and standing the Eiffel Tower on its point. To say more about the Belgian Prankster would be to reveal too much, but suffice it to say that he will stand as one of the more memorable and satisfyingly disgusting villains in literature.

If the story in The Order of Odd-Fish is at all great, which it is, it is because Kennedy's writing is so extraordinary. He has a knack for creating outrageous characters and vivid scenes where the subtlest turn of phrase can make the most hilarious impact. Kennedy's remarkable use of alliteration alone is worth noting: "Infamous Insect Indignantly Irked in Insipid Imbroglio" and "Magnanimous Mayor Makes Merciful Motion Mandating Murder Matter Mended" read the headlines of the "Eldritch Snitch," the city's newspaper. It is not often that we are reminded that language can be so much more than an instrument of necessity, the fork by which we feed ourselves words and ideas. There are few writers who remind us, instead, that language can be an instrument of pleasure, the precise curve of a neck, the density of a wood, the delicacy with which a bow is drawn against a set of strings to produce a melodious harmony. Kennedy reminds us that writing, especially young adult writing, does not have to be simple or tedious or at all reductive, that it can be dense and multi-layered and exquisitely complex. These are the words of a man who knows his instrument well and plays it with the joy of someone who has clearly had the luck of discovering a true love.

If I sound overly laudatory, it is because while there are many good books that I like, there are few great books that I love. Indeed, I loved The Order of Odd-Fish. My only consternation is that I have come across this book at the age that I am. How I envy those who will discover it when they are young.

Alinea
By Grant Achatz (Ten Speed, 400 pages)
An inside look at Chicago's celebrated restaurant.

Rule 53: Capturing Hippies, Spies, Politicians, and Murderers in an American Courtroom
By Andy Austin (Lake Claremont Press, 413 pages)
Austin shares her memories from decades of covering some of Chicago's most well-known trials as a courtroom artist.

For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago
By Simon Baatz (HarperCollins, 560 pages)
A new history of one of the most notorious murder cases in Chicago history.

Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890-1919
By Robin F. Bachin (University of Chicago Press, 448 pages)
A scholarly work that explores the planning and development of Chicago's South Side at the turn of the twentieth century.

Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction
Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev (Seven Stories Press, 240 pages)
In this collection of stories, essays, artwork and photography, female artists candidly express the ways they use their art to heal and survive violence and self-destructive thoughts and behavior. Editor Chapadjiev is a playwright and musician originally from the Chicago area.

Mapping Manifest Destiny: Chicago and the American West
Edited by Michael P. Conzen and Diane Dillon (Newberry Library, 120 pages)
Exhibition book of more than 60 full-color historic maps from the Newberry Library collection.

Ida: A Sword among Lions; Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching
By Paula J. Giddings (HarperCollins, 816 pages)
Well-reviewed biography of activist Ida B. Wells.

Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist
By Nancy Goldstein (University of Michigan Press, 264 pages)
Biography of a nearly forgotten pioneer in cartooning, who came to fame in Chicago.

The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age
By Neil Harris and T. J. Edelstein (University of Chicago Press, 400 pages)
This critically acclaimed book resurrects Chicago's Jazz Age counterpart to the New Yorker.

For Members Only: A History and Guide to Chicago's Oldest Private Clubs
By Lisa Holton (Lake Claremont Press, 314 pages)
A history of some of Chicago's most exclusive social clubs.

Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs
Edited by Ann Durkin Keating (University of Chicago Press, 368 pages)
A guide to the city neighborhoods and communities around Chicago from their beginnings to the present day.

Remembrances of the Angels: A 50th Anniversary Retrospective on the Fire No One Can Forget
By John Kuenster (Ivan R. Dee, 224 pages)
A look back at the tragic fire at Our Lady of the Angels school 50 years later.

Battleground Chicago: The Police and the 1968 Democratic National Convention
By Frank Kusch (University of Chicago Press, 206 pages)
A new account of the protests and aftermath of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, written from the point of the view of the police.

My Fall from Grace: City Hall to Prison Walls
By James Laski (Authorhouse, 432 pages)
Former Chicago City Clerk James Laski, in his own words, including his description of life in prison after being convicted for his role in the hired trucks scandal.

Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties
By Michael Lesy (W.W. Norton, 344 pages)
Lesy explores 17 murder cases from Chicago's Jazz Age.

Architecture by Birds and Insects: A Natural Art
By Peggy Macnamara and John Bates (University of Chicago Press, 148 pages)
A gorgeous collection of paintings of bird and insect nests by Peggy Macnamara, artist in residence at the Field Museum of Natural History.

The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters, and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes
By Ted McClelland (Chicago Review, 352 pages)
Sprawling travel narrative of the people and places that populate our Great Lakes region.

Obama: From Promise to Power
By David Mendell (HarperCollins, 416 pages)
A well-reviewed biography of our president-elect by Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell.

Michelle: A Biography
By Liza Mundy (Simon & Schuster, 224 pages)
Barack isn't the only one to receive the biographical treatment. Here is a biography of our next First Lady, Michelle Obama.

Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise
Foreword by Barack Obama (Crown, 288 pages)
This campaign book outlines Obama's campaign platforms on issues such as the economy, health care and energy independence.

Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City
By Mary Pattillo (University of Chicago Press, 400 pages)
Patillo examines the historic and current shifts in the North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side.

Richard Wright: The Life and Times
By Hazel Rowley (University of Chicago Press, 638 pages)
A critically acclaimed biography of writer Richard Wright, whose best-known novel Native Son was our October 2008 Book Club selection.

Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way
By Brian D. Schultz (Teachers College Press, 173 pages)
A chronicle of what happens when Schultz's fifth grade class at the beleaguered Carr Community Academy in Chicago are empowered to try to solve the problem of replacing their rundown school building.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
By Neil Shubin (Pantheon, 229 pages)
Field Museum provost and University of Chicago professor Neil Shubin provides an accessible account of our evolutionary history.

On the Job: Behind the Stars of the Chicago Police Department
By Daniel P. Smith (Lake Claremont Press, 212 pages)
Smith profiles some of Chicago's finest.

House Rules: A Memoir
By Rachel Sontag (HarperCollins, 261 pages)
Sontag shares her harrowing story of the extreme mental and emotional abuse she suffered from her father while growing up in the Chicago area.

Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life
By Neil Steinberg (Dutton, 288 pages)
Unflinching memoir of Steinberg's journey from alchohol addiction to sobriety.

P. S.: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening
By Studs Terkel (New Press, 240 pages)
Terkel's last book before his death is a hand-picked collection of (mostly) previously unpublished writings which he unearthed while writing his memoir Touch and Go.

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
By Sudhir Venkatesh (Penguin, 302 pages)
As a graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago, Venkatesh infiltrated a notorious Chicago street gang. He relates his experiences in this critically acclaimed book.

The Wordy Shipmates
By Sarah Vowell (Penguin, 272 pages)
NPR contributor Sarah Vowell explores 17th century New England and the Puritans in her new book.

The Transparent City
By Michael Wolf (Aperture Foundation, 112 pages)
Stunning collection of photographs of Chicago's Loop skyscrapers.

"In some ways, we might regard this as the latest act of a tortured genius in the great tradition of other tortured geniuses. The nineteenth century abounded with them, from Captain Ahab and his obsessive quest of his white whale to Frenhofer, Balzac's tortured painter, and Claude Lantier, Emile Zola's novelistic representation of Cezanne. What these driven people have in common is the desire to create, to capture, and to produce something extraordinary. And yet, they all end up ruining the thing they want and destroying themselves in the process."

"Now the author has decided to take this bitters-soaked little fruitcake of a book, tack on a few extra stories from his more recent publications, garnish it with one that is entirely fresh and wrap the whole thing in a shiny new jacket. Well, pardon me for feeling as if I've been regifted!"

"And that's what makes No Coast such an intriguing contribution to the city right now--aside from Quimby's in Wicker Park, no space offers the kind of diversity in stock, and certainly not on the South Side. The studio also offers a series of open workshops and a monthly screenprinting 'lock-in,' where studio members are available for 24 hours to teach the craft. The space has played host to screenings, music shows (including one to launch the store, pictured above), and will help launch the latest Eye Rocket zine on December 11 at 7pm."

Chicago: A Novel
by Alaa al Aswany (Harper, 342 pages)
Set on the campus of the University of Illinois Medical Center in a post-9/11 world, Chicago records the social collisions of Egyptian and American lives. Among the cast of characters are an atheistic anti-establishment American professor, an immigrant who has embraced his new American identity but cannot escape his Egyptian roots when it comes ot his daughter, an Egyptian State Security informant and a student poet who comes to America to fund his literary dreams.

The Kept Man
by Jamie Attenberg (Riverhead Books, 291 pages)
Jarvis Miller has been living as a half-widow for six years: Six years ago her husband, an artist whose career was on the cusp of success, suffered a fall and has been in a coma ever since. It isn't until Jarvis meets a group of kept men - men whose wive's are the breadwinners - at her laundromat that the idea of opening up to new changes becomes a possibility. After learning a devastating secret about her husband, Jarvis is faced with having to decide what to do with what remains of his art and of his life. [You can read my full review of this book here.]

The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation
by Elizabeth Berg (Random House, 242 pages)
The stories in this book focus not so much on food specifically, but on women departing from convention. They ask what you would do if you left Weight Watchers and spent a day eating whatever you wanted; what would happen if you started a dating service for people over fifty; how you can find comfort in aging or friendship in the unlikeliest of places. They are an exploration of the chanllenges ordinary women face everyday.

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories: Volume 2
edited by Ivan Brunetti (Yale University Press, 400 pages)
In this second volume of graphic stories, local comic artist Brunetti collects work from well-known artists like Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns, and lesser-known artists like Laura Park and Matthew Thurber. Also included are classic comic strips, related fine art and historical materials.

The Lagoon
by Lilli Carre (Fantagraphic Books, 80 pages)
Carre's debut graphic novel features a family who is seduced by the song of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and details how each member reacts to the Creature's call. The films Creature from the Black Lagoon and Night of the Hunter served as inspiration for Carre's work.

Diary of a Bad Year
by J.M. Coetzee (Viking Books, 231 pages)
Coetzee's latest novel follows an again author whose German publisher has asked him to record his thoughts on the state of the world. The resulting writings examine a wide range of topics, including an indictment of Bush, Cheney and Blair, and the current states of music, literature, intelligent design and much more. Entering to the writer's life is the young woman with whom he will have a relationship and who, unbeknownst to him, lives with a man who has an interest in his bank account.

Everyday People
by Kevin Coval (EM Press, 91 pages)
This is the second collection of poems by Coval, the founder of the Chicago Teen Poetry Festival and poet-in-residence at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum at the University of Illinois-Chicago and University of Chicago.

You Must be This Happy to Enter
by Elizabeth Crane (Akashic Books, 250 pages)
Crane's third collection of short stories includes a husband and wife discussing what they world take to a desert island, a photographer who time-travels and is arrested for being happy, a suburban zombie who's become a reality TV star, a woman who waits for her adopted child to arrive and more. The story "Donovan's Closet" was originally published as one of Featherproof's downloadable minibooks.

Songs of Insurgency
by Spencer Dew (Vagabond Press, 108 pages)
Dew brings us a collections of short stories featuring a woman who erases history books, a groundskeeper who drags bodies of out lakes at a suicide camp, a driver who continously drives west only to pass the same landmarks time after time. The stories evoke fear, paranoia, alienation and numbness for a view of our post-9/11 world.

My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekov to Munro
edited by Jeffrey Eugenides (Harper, 587 pages)
Edited by the author of Middlesex, this anthology compiles some of the greatest love stories ever written. Included are pieces by James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Lorrie Moore, Miranda July and many more. Proceeds from this book benefit 826 Chicago.

This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record
by Susannah Felts (Featherproof Books, 183 pages)
Set in Nashville, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record follows two girls who form an unlikely friendship and spend a summer together. The relationship intensifies when they each become the subject of the other's efforts - one experimenting with art and the other experimenting with social situations. The book is a coming-of-age story that captures the feeling of growing up in the South and testing adolescent limits.

Travel Writing
by Peter Ferry (Harcourt, 304 pages)
Inserting himself as the narrator of his own novel, Ferry writes himself as a Lake Forest English teacher who witness a car accident that kills a beatiful woman. Ferry becomes obsessed with finding out how the accident happened, if he could have prevented it and even whether it was just a figment of his imagination concocted to demonstrate the power of story to his teenaged students. More importantly, he questions what his obsession with the woman means for his relationship with his girlfriend. Travel Writing is the Book Club's November 2009 selection.

Creatures of a Day
by Reginald Gibbons (Louisiana State University Press, 79 pages)
This poetry collection offers intense encounters with regular people in different historical and social contexts of ordinary life. The poems focus on memory, obligation, love, death, celebration and sorrow. Creatures of a Day was been nominated for the National Book Award.

One Nation, Under God
by Keir Graff (Severn House Publishers, 250 pages)
It's election time and the presidency may be decided by one seat in Tusla, OK. It's here that meth addict Seth Stevens is trying to keep his life together, but his decision to campaign for the candidate the church is supporting forces him to ask himself what you do when following your faith means breaking the law.

The Fifth Floor
by Michael Harvey (Alfred A. Knopf, 277 pages)
A follow-up to Harvey's 2007 novel The Chicago Way, The Fifth Floor follows a murder in present day Chicago and traces it all the way back to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. PI Michael Kelly is hired to keep track of an abusive husband, but his investigation leads him to an old house on the North Side that contains a body and perhaps the answer to who started the Great Chicago Fire and why.

Easy Innocence
by Libby Hellman (Bleak House Books, 396 pages)
Former cop Georgia Fisher is hired as a PI to investigate the death of a young girl and what she finds is must darker than the crime at first suggests. It seems that the these prep school girls on the city's North Shore have learned to sell their innocence to businessmen, but at a cost that few have truly expected.

The Lazarus Project
by Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead Books, 294 pages)
In 1908, nineteen-year-old Lazarus Averbuch is shot while trying to deliver a letter to the chief of Chicago police. A century later, a young writer in Chicago named Brik becomes obsessed with Lazarus's story and retraces his journey from Eastern Europe through pogroms and povery to present-day Chicago. Also an immigrant from Eastern Europe, Brik finds his life becoming intricately entwined with Lazarus's story.

The Order of Odd-Fish
by James Kennedy (Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers, 403 pages)
At the age of 13, Jo Larouche and her Aunt Lily are mysteriously driven from their home in California to the strange world of Eldritch City. Here men and women are knights, teenagers serve as their squires and three-foot cockroaches wearing monocles and top hats work as extremely proper butlers. It is here that Jo must learn the truth of her birth and what her return to Eldritch will mean for the city and the people living there.

Ellington Boulevard: A Novel in A-Flat
by Adam Langer (Spiegel & Grau, 336 pages)
In this novel, Langer takes his focus to New York where Ike Morphy and his dog Herbie Mann stand to be evicted from their apartment on Duke Ellington Boulevard. Centering around the New York real estate boom, the characters include the newly Jewish, alcoholic, womanizing landlord; an out-of-work actor turned real estate broker and his boyfriend; the buyer who falls in love with the tenant; the buyer's husband and the buyer's husband's girlfriend.

Pieces of the Hole
by Tony Lindsay (Third World Press, 178 pages)
This collection of short stories are as different as can be but are linked together by the hip-hop culture on the south side of Chicago. Encompassing vivid scenes of gang violence, drug use and prison life, Lindsay juxtaposes the harshness of urban life with the softer preoccupations of adolescence, romantic possibilities and moments of ordinary family life.

The Norman Maclean Reader
by Norman Maclean (University of Chicago Press, 304 pages)
Maclean published only one book in his lifetime - the wildly popular A River Runs Through It (our February 2009 selection) - but he left behind several works that have been collected here. Included are personal essays, letters and interview excerpts. The Reader also includes pieces from River and the posthumously published Young Men and Fire.

Ghosts of Chicago
by John McNally (Jefferson Press, 228 pages)
In this collection of short stories, McNally evokes the ghosts of some of Chicago's most famous inhabitants - John Belushi, Walter Payton, Nelson Algren and even Richard J. Daley. While some stories focus on resurrecting the city's dead, others tell the stories of ordinary people who deal with their ghosts, both figuratively and spiritually.

Demons in the Spring
by Joe Meno (Akashic Books, 272 pages)
In a limited hardcover print, Demons in the Spring collects twenty new short stories by Meno and illustrations by twenty notable artists including Charles Burn, Archer Prewitt, Kim Hiorthoy and more. The stories explore depression, loneliness and the insanity of the world while incorporating supernatural elements. A portion of the proceeds of this book go directly to benefit 826 Chicago.

The Senator's Wife
by Sue Miller (Knopf Publishing Group, 305 pages)
Miller follows the parallel lives of Meri, a newly pregnant and newly married woman, and Delia, the wife of an adulterous two-term senator, to examine what keeps people toegether and how compromise and disappointment can bring about healing and grace. Both women must learn to navigate the contours of marriage, one working through many complicated years and the other just at the outset of this part of her life.

Bleeding Kansas
by Sara Paretsky (Putnam, 448 pages)
Set in Paretsky's hometown, Bleeding Kansas follows two farm families, the Schapens and the Grelliers, whose shared history dates back to the 1850s. The Schapens keep a close eye on their neighbors and maintain their feelings of religious superiority when their cow gives birth to a Perfect Red Heifer while the death of the Grelliers' son in Iraq forces change not only in the lives of the Schapens, but in the lives of the entire neighborhood.

Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring
by Zach Plague (Featherproof Books, 285 pages)
A book mysterious book goes missing; revenge is plotted against The Platypus; the Punk shows up with a new sex drug; an art terrorism cell threatens an implosion of the White Ball. All this and stylized, graphic text can be found in Plague's debut novel, a satirical skewering of the art world.

Indignation
by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin Company, 233 pages)
In the second year of the Korean War, Marcus is beginning his sophomore year of college and dealing with his father's obsession with the dangers adult life poses for his son. While his mother insists the fears come from love, Marcus finds that he can live with his parents no longer and starts his new life far from home at a Midwestern college. The book is a coming-of-age story, following Marcus's run-ins with love, difficulties with his school's administration and troubles with his parents' meddlings in his life.

At the City's Edge
by Marcus Sakey (St. Martin's Minotaur, 312 pages)
When Jason Palmer returns from Iraq, he finds adjusting to regular life difficult and wants nothing more than to spend time with his brother and nephew. Jason learns of his brother's involvement in an anti-gang community organization after his shocking murder and, with the help of sidelined cop Elena Cruz, Jason must put everything he's learned as a solider into this war on his home turf. [You can read my full review of this book here.]

Good People
by Marcus Sakey (Dutton Books, 326 pages)
Tom and Anna Reed are struggling to become parents and their failed fertility treatments have drained their financial resources. When their downstairs tenant dies and they find $400,000 hidden away in his kitchen, they leap to the opportunity to have the life they've always dreamed of. But the tenant's shady past as a criminal with a rocky history with some of Chicago's most dangerous men forces the Reeds to realize that dreams are never cheap.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames
by David Sedaris (Little Brown and Company, 323 pages)
Sedaris produces yet another collection of semi-autobiographical, semi-truthful, fully amusing essays. Named for the essay in which Sedaris recounts his travels to Tokyo to quit smoking, the book also includes recollections of the author and his sibilings banding together to battle their babysitter, musings on sitting in a doctor's office in his underwear and a record of the more notable mistakes he's made in his life.

Dream City
by Brendan Short (MacAdam/Cage, 375 pages)
Every little boy wants to be a hero, including six-year-old Michael Halligan who imagines himself as "Mike Steele," a righter of wrongs and a friend to memorable comic heroes. But when his mother dies and he's left in the care of his gangster father, his belief in the power of good over evil begins to waver. The book follows Michael's later efforts to track down a copy of his favorite comic book and recapture the comfort that was once his childhood.

When the White House Was Ours
by Porter Shreve (Mariner Books, 280 pages)
As the country prepares to celebrate the bicentennial, Daniel Truitt and his family head to Washington D.C. to start what will become "Our House," an alternative school run by Daniel's parents, his uncle and his wife and the man she is now sleeping with. The school's egalitarian spirit is meant to encourage the students to take control of their own education, but it's what will eventually do them in and deepen the cracks in the Truitts' already tenuous family.

Windy City: A Novel of Politics
by Scott Simon (Random House, 419 pages)
The mayor of Chicago is found murdered in his office, facedown in a pizza box, wearing only his underwear. Though opinions on the mayor vary, the city mourns his loss and over the course of four days, police scramble to find his killer while politicians vy for his throne. At the center of the story is the 48th Ward Alderman, an Indian immigrant who's tiring of politics, but must serve as the interim mayor and figure out what's best for his two teenage daughters.

Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine
by Ben Tanzer (Orange Alert Press, 180 pages)
Tanzer's second novel follows four New Yorkers and the relationships they build with each other. Jen and Geoff suffer the emotional dysfunctions of their families and try to figure out if they can make their relationship work while Paul and Rhonda's rocky start allows for their unexpected connection. Using pop culture references, the characters try to make sense of the confusing lives they lead. [You can read my full review of this book here.]

Armageddon in Retrospect
by Kurt Vonnegut (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 232 pages)
Published after Vonnegut's death in 2007, this collection of writings focuses on the opposing ideas of war and peace. The pieces range in focus from a non-fiction recollection of Desdren during World War II to a short story about three soldiers fantasizing about the perfect first meal at home to a story about protecting our children from the temptations of violence. This collection also includes an introduction by Vonnegut's son, an assortment of Vonnegut's artwork and his last speech.

Crime
by Irvine Welsh (W.W. Norton & Company, 344 pages)
Detective Inspector Ray Lennox of the Ediburgh PD has suffered a breakdown after his involvement in a child murder case. While placed on mental leave, Lennox spends some time in Miami with his fiance where he descends back into his old habits and finds himself the potential savior of a 10-year-old girl who's being targeted by a ring of pedophiles. [Check out parts 1 and 2 of Alissa Strother's interview with Welsh.]

A Father's Law
by Richard Wright (Harper Perennial, 320 pages)
Posthumously published, this is the final book from accalimed author Richard Wright. It follows a black Chicago police officer who has been appointed the police chief of a rich suburb after the current police chief is murdered. The themes of race, class and family dynamics are explored throughout the story.