Sigrid Schröder has an office job in World War II Berlin, a live-in mother-in-law and a husband on the eastern front. She also has a Jewish lover and a secretive young neighbor who needs help evading police inquiry. Daily life with rationing and British bombing raids is hard enough before Sigrid gets dangerously drawn into the lives of people who rarely are quite what they seem to be.

Ling (later named “Cassandra”) sees ghosts. As a child, she moves from Shanghai to The Black Isle, where she grows up through colonialism, war and independence, all the while aware of the haunted souls that share the island with the living. Her struggles take her from poverty to comfort to the horrors of wartime occupation in this debut novel by Sandi Tan.

In Gregory Hill’s award-winning debut novel, Shakespeare Williams returns to his family farm to bury a dead cat. He finds his father’s mental state and the farm have deteriorated alarmingly so he stays on and tries to rebuild. He hooks up with former schoolmates whose lives have stagnated and together they bungle their way toward a get-rich and get-revenge plan.

Younis and Christopher share a cave in the mountains above a destroyed village. Younis is a teenage refugee from the village. Christopher is an American soldier. Christopher treats Younis’ wounds and writes in his journal. Younis changes his name to Jonas and comes to America. Christopher doesn’t return. While Jonas tries to adapt to life in the United States, his memories keep returning him to those last days in his homeland. The memories are incomplete as he shares them with his counselor, Paul, but he can’t escape them. And he can’t escape the connection he had with Christopher.

Jock Boucher is no sooner appointed a U.S. District Judge than he has to take over the caseload of an ailing senior judge and immediately steps into a 20-year-old case of corruption, murder and intrigue. Scientist Bob Palmetto and lawyer Ruth Kalin emerge from hiding long enough to entangle Boucher in the race for undersea methane hydrate – a volatile and dangerous, but extremely valuable new source of energy. Some will stop at nothing to get it, including murdering anyone who gets in their way, even a federal judge or two.

In Stay Awake, Dan Chaon uses the uncanny to show how it feels to be alive now. The characters in his latest short story collection are haunted by the ghosts of their own past.

In Alex Adams’ debut, apocalyptic novel, White Horse, death does ride a pale horse, but in this case, it is the name of a disease manufactured and loosed on the world by an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company. Zoe, a lowly employee who cleans their lab, becomes a pawn in this plan when a mysterious jar shows up in her apartment. As disease, deformity and death spread across the globe, Zoe ponders the meaning of the jar, and takes off on a journey of survival through devastated lands, determined to maintain her humanity and to reach her destination.

Evvie and Ben were always soul mates, from college on. Now, in their forties, Ben wants a divorce and it’s making Evvie crazy. Jane McCafferty’s second novel, First You Try Everything shows just how far she’ll go to get him back.

Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne had it easy just wearing a scarlet “A” compared to Hillary Jordan’s Hannah Payne who is scarlet following her conviction for murdering her unborn child – the product of her adulterous affair with superstar pastor Aidan Dale in a not-too distant future when the line between church and state has faded. Raised to unquestionably follow the church’s teachings, Hannah’s life as an outcast brings her new understanding of the world and of her own strengths.

Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron Buy this Book at Amazon.com An Exclusive Authorlink Interview with Naomi Benaron, Author of Running the Rift     By Diane Slocum January 2012 Benaron’s debut novel tells the story of a young Rwandan whose goal is to run in...