Broken Harbor (9780670023653 $27.95) ~ Tana French
Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy, the brash cop from Tana French’s bestselling “Faithful Place,” plays by the book and plays hard. That’s what’s made him the Murder squad’s top detective–and that’s what puts the biggest case of the year into his hands. On one of the half-built, half-abandoned “luxury” developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children are dead. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care. At first, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie, think it’s going to be an easy solve. But too many small things can’t be explained. The half dozen baby monitors, their cameras pointing at holes smashed in the Spains’ walls. The files erased from the Spains’ computer. The story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder who was slipping past all the locks. And Broken Harbor holds memories for Scorcher. Seeing the case on the news sends his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family one summer at Broken Harbor, back when they were children. With her signature blend of police procedural and psychological thriller, French’s new novel goes full throttle with a heinous crime, creating her most complicated detective character and her best book yet.
Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless 
Drought, Rising Seas, and the Weather of the Future (9780307907301 $22.95) ~ Climate Central
Produced by Climate Central–a highly regarded independent, nonprofit journalism and research foundation founded in 2008–and reviewed by scientists at major educational and research institutions the world over, “Global Weirdness” summarizes, in clear and accessible prose, everything we know about the science of climate change; explains what is likely to happen to the climate in the future; and lays out in practical terms what we can and cannot do to avoid further shifts.
Sixty easy-to-read entries tackle such questions as: Is climate ever “normal”? Why and how do fossil-fuel burning and other human practices produce greenhouse gases? What natural forces have caused climate change in the past? What risks does climate change pose for human health? What accounts for the diminishment of mountain glaciers and small ice caps around the world since 1850? What are the economic costs and benefits of reducing carbon emissions?
“Global Weirdness” enlarges our understanding of how climate change affects our daily lives, and arms us with the incontrovertible facts we need to make informed decisions about the future of the planet and of humankind.
Where We Belong (9780312554194 $27.99) ~ Emily Giffin
The author of five blockbuster novels, Emily Giffin, delivers an unforgettable story of two women, the families that make them who they are, and the longing, loyalty and love that binds them together Marian Caldwell is a thirty-six year old television producer, living her dream in New York City. With a fulfilling career and satisfying relationship, she has convinced everyone, including herself, that her life is just as she wants it to be. But one night, Marian answers a knock on the door . . . only to find Kirby Rose, an eighteen-year-old girl with a key to a past that Marian thought she had sealed off forever. From the moment Kirby appears on her doorstep, Marian’s perfectly constructed world–and her very identity–will be shaken to its core, resurrecting ghosts and memories of a passionate young love affair that threaten everything that has come to define her. For the precocious and determined Kirby, the encounter will spur a process of discovery that ushers her across the threshold of adulthood, forcing her to re-evaluate her family and future in a wise and bittersweet light. As the two women embark on a journey to find the one thing missing in their lives, each will come to recognize that where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves–a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.
A Perfect Time for Pandas (Magic Tree House #48) (9780375868269
$12.99) ~ Mary Pope Osborne
Time-traveling brother-and-sister team Jack and Annie have to find a certain kind of food–the fourth thing needed to save Merlin’s beloved penguin, Penny. The magic tree house whisks them off to a village in the mountains of southeast China, close to a world-famous panda reserve. Will it be their easiest adventure yet? Not a chance! Jack and Annie don’t know it, but they’ve arrived on the day of a historic earthquake!
How will Jack and Annie survive when the giant quake strikes? Will they be able to rescue the pandas? And how will they ever get back to the tree house so that they can fulfill their quest to save Penny as well?
Mary Pope Osborne conjures up another fast-paced adventure filled with danger, mystery, and magic in the bestselling Magic Tree House series.
Pandas and Other Endangered Species (9780375970252 $5.99) ~ Mary Pope Osborne
When Jack and Annie got back from their adventure in “Magic Tree House #48: A Perfect Time for Pandas” they had lots of questions. What do pandas eat? Where do they live? Why are snow leopards so scarce? How can we help? Find out the answers to these questions and more as Jack and Annie track the facts. Filled with up-to-date information, photos, illustrations, and fun tidbits from Jack and Annie, the Magic Tree House Fact Trackers are the perfect way for kids to find out more about the topics they discovered in their favorite Magic Tree House adventures.
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (9780307278241 
$16.95) ~ Charles C. Mann
A deeply engaging new history of how European settlements in the post-Colombian Americas shaped the world, from the bestselling author of “1491.” Presenting the latest research by biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the post-Columbian network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City–where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted–the center of the world. In this history, Mann uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars. In “1493,” Mann has again given readers an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.
There But For The: A Novel (9780307275240 $15.00) ~ Ali Smith
When a dinner-party guest named Miles locks himself in an upstairs room and refuses to come out, he sets off a media frenzy. He also sets in motion a mesmerizing puzzle of a novel, one that harnesses acrobatic verbal playfulness to a truly affecting story.
Miles communicates only by cryptic notes slipped under the door. We see him through the eyes of four people who barely know him, ranging from a precocious child to a confused elderly woman. But while the characters’ wit and wordplay soar, their story remains profoundly grounded. As it probes our paradoxical need for both separation and true connection, “There but for the” balances cleverness with compassion, the surreal with the deeply, movingly real, in a way that only Ali Smith can.
11/22/63 (9781451627299 $19.99) ~ Stephen King
Dallas, 11/22/63: Three shots ring out.
President John F. Kennedy is dead.
Life can turn on a dime–or stumble into the extraordinary, as it does for Jake Epping, a high school English teacher in a Maine town. While grading essays by his GED students, Jake reads a gruesome, enthralling piece penned by janitor Harry Dunning: fifty years ago, Harry somehow survived his father’s sledgehammer slaughter of his entire family. Jake is blown away . . . but an even more bizarre secret comes to light when Jake’s friend Al, owner of the local diner, enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession–to prevent the Kennedy assassination. How? By stepping through a portal in the diner’s storeroom, and into the era of Ike and Elvis, of big American cars, sock hops, and cigarette smoke. . . . Finding himself in warmhearted Jolie, Texas, Jake begins a new life. But all turns in the road lead to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald. The course of history is about to be rewritten . . . and become heart-stoppingly suspenseful.
In Stephen King’s “most ambitious and accomplished” (NPR) novel, time travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.
