Ron Rash (Serena) returns to the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina to tell the riveting story of Laurel Shelton, presumed to be a witch by the townsfolk of Mars Hill, and an itinerant stranger who arrives in Mars Hill with a silver flute.

Review of The Cove by Ron Rash

_{Photo: HarperCollins}

Like an Israeli Kafka who embodies the notion of brevity as the soul of wit, Etgar Keret (The Nimrod Flipout) spins stories about men - men who have recently been left by their wives or girlfriends, men who are insecure in their current relationships, men who want to be loved.

Suddenly, a Knock on the Door is a slim book of only 188 pages, but it contains 36 of Keret's gems, each of which combines humor with human frailty to great effect.

Review of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret

_{Photo: Farrar, Straus and Giroux}

Karen Russell won the New York Public Library's 2012 Young Lions Fiction award last night for Swamplandia, her debut novel about an average, everyday family and their alligator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades.

Written in 1998 and published this year, Lionel Shriver's The New Republic is a surprisingly timely and insightful satire hitched to the old quip, "What if they threw a war and know one came?" Shriver's reporter protagonist, Edgar E. Kellogg travels on assignment to the Southern tip of Portugal to cover a fictitious terrorist group and, while there, finds something else entirely.

Review of The New Republic by Lionel Shriver

_{Photo: HarperCollins}