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Andi Alper is a teen attending school in modern day Brooklyn.  Her brother died a couple years ago and she feels responsible.  Andi's mother has been despondent since the death of her son and sits around painting all day.  When Andi falls behind on her senior thesis, her geneticist father makes her come with him to Paris, where he has research to do.  While in Paris, Andi is able to work on her thesis about the French musician Malherbeau.  A family friend of her father's allows them to stay in his French residence while it is being converted into a museum.  Andi stumbles upon the diary of Alex, a teenage nanny of the Dauphin, Louis XVII, from the French Revolution.  Through this diary, and with the help of her medication, Andi is transported back to the time of the Terror and great detail.  For fans of contemporary and historical young adult books, Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly is not to be missed.  

This compelling biomedical suspense novel starts with a confession being made in a remote Italian village that the priest immediately goes to Vatican to report what he has heard.  In America, Joe Lassiter is investigating the bizarre murders of his sister and nephew in a house fire.  The arsonist is caught and badly burned, but manages to escape to the hospital.  Lassiter's investigation brings him to an unusal Italian fertility clinic that had performed treatments on his sister before her son was born.  Fans of Dan Brown will enjoy the fast pace and stratling plot twists.

The Bigtree clan are proprietors of Swamplandia!, an alligator “amusement” park deep in the Florida Everglades.  After the park’s star and mother, Hilola, dies an early death, the family must find a way to fill the gap both emotionally and financially. The dad, Chief Bigtree, goes off to the mainland on mysterious money-making trip. The eldest, Kiwi, never an alligator wrestler, also goes mainland for a job at Swamplandia’s main waterpark competition, World of Darkness. Ossie, the eldest daughter, is visited by ghosts and goes on a dangerous trip when she is proposed to by one. Which leaves Ava, the youngest, to try and hold things together. This is an adventure story with some genuinely funny parts (especially with Kiwi’s comrades at the World) as well as creepy elements. Even with a blurb from Stephen King, it is evident that the author has some literary ambitions, using vivid descriptions and deep research to not only bring the story of the family to life but also the story of the swamp. Recommended for readers who like their fiction a little more character-based than action-oriented.

The female narrator, a commercial artist, takes her boyfriend and two friends (a married couple) on a trip to Northern Quebec, where they stay in her childhood home out in the woods. Secretly, the narrator wants to find her father, who has gone missing. Married once before, the main character longs to discover when and how the part of her capable of loving someone else also went missing. Surfacing is an honest portayal of one woman who feels a sense of disconnect from her life and those around her.