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Morgan Rogers's moving debut is an intriguing blend of mystery and poignant familial drama. Following the abrupt and inexplicable disappearance of her mother, Florine Gilham, a girl who has until now enjoyed an idyllic youth in coastal Maine, must now contend with the uncertainties and complications of young adulthood. Rogers nails the voices of her characters, and evokes the feel of the coast with accuracy. A nicely done coming-of-age for both older teens and adult readers.

In this expansive yet detailed historical gem, David Abulafia covers the full course of human history on the Mediterranean. Beginning more than 20,000 years ago with Cro-Magnon cave dwellers on Gibraltar and stretching to the present, Abulafia treats the Great Sea as “the Liquid Continent,” a place peopled and traveled—where trade, cultural exchange, and empire-building were forces as key to life as currents, tides, and weather patterns. The result is an epic story of trade and conflict, showing how differences in language, religion, law, and other human flashpoints sparked so much of what we think of today simply as culture.

One ordinary winter afternoon on a snowy island, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse in the middle of the frozen channel. While they are exploring the lighthouse, Maja disappears –either into thin air or under thin ice- leaving not even a footprint in the snow. Two years later, Anders, a broken man, moves back to his family’s abandoned home on the island. He soon realizes that Maja's disappearance is only one of many strange occurrences, and that his fellow islanders, including his own grandmother, know a lot more than they’re telling. Lindqvist quietly stormed the horror genre with his previous two novels, and this cements him as the Scandinavian heir apparent to Stephen King. A spooky, atmospheric read.

Fans of John le Carre and Martin Cruz Smith would do well to check out Jones' thoughtful, erudite novel. His sketches of all that is good and bad about London, Moscow, and Berlin seem dead-on, right down to his marvelous detailing of the decadent lifestyle of the new Russian oligarchy, a group where school children receive Ferraris as birthday presents. This is a story of international intrigue that rings very true, and Jones' fantastic prose is sure to win him a loyal following.

No wonder Barbara Kingsolver awarded her 2010 Bellwether Prize, given biennially to an unpublished novel that confronts social issues, to Naomi Benaron's Running the Rift. In her coming-of-age story of young Tutsi Jean Patrick Nkuba, whose extraordinary gift for distance running lands him on the path to become his country's first medalist in track, one of history's most inconceivable chapters-the Rwandan genocide-becomes intensely personal. A vividly told tale with a memorable champion at its heart.

From the moment of her ascension to the throne in 1952 at the age of twenty-five, Queen Elizabeth II has been the object of unparalleled scrutiny. But through the fog of glamour and gossip, how well do we really know the world’s most famous monarch? Smith's scrupulously researched new biography draws on a variety of sources in an attempt to paint a new portrait of a very public woman, and the result is unique. Smith's book is a highly readable new perspective on the monarchy.