Those who live on Washington state's Loyalty Island depend upon the king crab trade for their livelihood, but the fleet's owned by the wealthy Gaunt family. It's a dangerous life made tenuous when John Gaunt dies and his son, Richard, considers selling the fleet to the Japanese. Looming larger in 15-year-old Cal Bollings' mind -- larger than his own future in the fishing industry or his parents' struggling marriage -- is the terrible secret he discovers in the basement of his house after his father has shipped out to sea and his mother has fled for her native California. Folded into this literary debut are clever homages to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, but it's "the fast whirlpool of lies, murder, and moral dilemma that drives the book" (Outside Magazine).

Grace Covey, mother of two, and her daughter, Jenny, are comatose in the hospital after a fire destroys the school where Jenny is a temporary teaching assistant. But while their bodies are still, Grace and Jenny are very much on the move, following their families and friends like ghosts around the hospital (and outside of it) as they all try to discover who set the fire -- and why. Though the mystery is both more complex and more central to the story than that aspect of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, the heart-wrenching emotions of grief and acceptance are similar. What it's like to be a parent is also of huge import in this highly charged novel.

When sure-footed Michael dies in a mountain-trekking accident, his young widow, Maya, leaves Hyderabad for a remote Himalayan mountain village near where he died. Though she is overcome by grief and loneliness, over the years she builds a place for herself in the community. But this is upended by the arrival of her landlord's son, with whom Maya begins a tentative relationship, and by the sudden appearance of  big-city politicians. With evocative, descriptive details of life in the hills, this poetic, perceptive novel intertwines both Indian history and culture with Maya's heartbreaking, heartwarming story.

Whether he's writing a travel book or a novel, prolific author Paul Theroux is known for choosing exotic locales and taking the hard way to get there. That's certainly the case in his latest novel, in which former Peace Corps volunteer Ellis Hock turns his back on a failed marriage and a failing clothing store to return to Malawi, the only place he ever felt he belonged. But the area's changed in the four decades since he was last there, and his idealistic hopes are slowly, ominously destroyed by resentful villagers, greedy leaders, and scenes of devastation wrought by misguided outsiders. Readers interested in Africa and Western aid efforts there will not want to miss this gripping, provocative tale.

In 2007, billionaire genius Julian Lawrence falls in love with transplanted Midwesterner and Wall Street analyst Kate Wilson. Pretty and smart, she's attracted to him, but there's clearly more to him than meets the eye. The mystery has something to do with what transpired in 1916, when an American named Kate gave British officer Julian Ashford some sensitive information. What's the connection? Fans of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander might have some clue, but this debut novel stands on its own. "At heart this is a delicious story about the ultimate romantic fantasy" (Publishers Weekly), but in addition to romance it offers suspense, drama, and appealing lead characters.

Brought together by circumstance, five unlikely friends protect and provoke each other while they struggle with limited prospects, troubled pasts, and vulnerable hearts. Central to the novel is churchgoing African American nursing-home attendant Lorraine and her two favorite charges, both white women -- Margaret (mentally sharp but in failing health) and Bernice (gaga but physically vibrant). The hairdresser who comes on Sundays, Rhonda, rounds out the group, while Lorraine's daughter April, studying to become a doctor, is eventually drawn in as well. Moving back and forth through time and treading lightly on themes of race, class, and, of course, aging, this North Carolina-set novel offers irresistible characters and a paean to the power of friendship.

In this "sequel" to the bestselling Wish You Were Here, orderly, elderly widow Emily Maxwell does what she can to keep her life running smoothly, but as she ages -- and sees those around her doing the same -- she is saddened by her limitations, including an inability to connect with grandchildren who seem to live in an entirely different world. In Emily, Alone, the plot is not the point, for the novel is not powered by one (which may turn some readers off) -- rather, it's an indelible, luminous portrait of a woman from a dying era trying to do the right thing with the time and energy she has left.

Revenge, best served cold, is downright frigid in this compulsively readable, darkly comedic novel. In fact, 77-year-old Marylou Ahearn has been plotting vengeance for 50 years, ever since Dr. Wilson Spriggs gave her -- and other pregnant women -- a devastating radioactive cocktail as part of a secret government study. The doc -- no spring chicken himself -- is now senile, but Marylou leaves Memphis for Florida, where Spriggs lives, intending to kill him. But once she's insinuated herself (under the name "Nancy Archer," which readers might recognize from the 1958 B-movie Attack of the 50-Foot Woman) into his family, she realizes...well, she actually likes them. Mischievous and sly, this off-kilter novel is also a touching read.

At 80-something, Ella Robina is dying. Rather than spend her last moments in treatment for terminal cancer, she kidnaps her husband and takes off in their RV for one last grand adventure down Route 66 to Disneyland. Naturally, her kids (and her doctors) demand that she return home to Detroit, especially since her husband, John, has Alzheimer's. But Ella knows what she wants, and as the two navigate their way down the road, they share memories of their life together (interspersed with Ella's ever-feisty one-liners). "Joyous, painful, funny, moving, tragic, mysterious, and not to be missed," says Booklist.