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• Drew Magary: Someone Could Get Hurt -

  C+ With his first parenting book, a sports writer joins a crowded genre.

• Brandon Sanderson: The Rithmatist -

  C Established genre tropes weaken an interesting premise in Sanderson’s first foray into YA.

• Julie Sarkissian: Dear Lucy -

  C- A lack of plotting and character authenticity make for a slow, wandering read.

• John Le Carré: A Delicate Truth -

  A- A master at spycraft finally channels his anger into a concise narrative.

• Christopher Hacker: The Morels -

  B+ An arresting debut novel picks apart the details and consequences of sexual taboos.

• Marc Maron: Attempting Normal -

  B- A gifted comedian doesn’t quite hit the mark with his second book.

• David Sedaris: Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls -

  B- The humorist’s newest effort stretches for incisive observation via contrived wackiness.

• DC Pierson: Crap Kingdom -

  B+ Coming-of-age fantasy explores the ethics of artificial self-improvement.

• Joe Hill: NOS4A2 -

  A The author of Horns and Locke & Key returns with his biggest, most expansive, funniest horror-fantasy to date.

• Ryan McIlvain: Elders -

  B+ This novel about young Mormon “elders” isn’t as fun as Book Of Mormon, but it has plenty to say about the church.

• Elizabeth Strout: The Burgess Boys -

  A- Elizabeth Strout’s follow-up to her Pulitzer-winning Olive Kitteridge is surprisingly absorbing for a low-key family drama.

• Neil Gaiman: Unnatural Creatures -

  B+ A fantasy master curates a lumpy group anthology about fantasy beasties.

• Manil Suri: The City Of Devi -

  B- Unlikely partners seek out their mutual lover in terrorist-torn India in this colorful but unlikely novel.

• Napoleon Chagnon: Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -

  B- A famed anthropologist clears up his controversial research, flames his detractors, and reveals the vulgar practical jokes his tribal subjects played on him.

• Jonathan Cott: Days That I’ll Remember: Spending Time With John Lennon And Yoko Ono -

  C+ A Rolling Stone writer swoons over John Lennon and angrily defends Yoko Ono in this memoir of meetings and interviews with the ex-Beatle and his wife.

• Michael Moss: Salt Sugar Fat: How The Food Giants Hooked Us -

  B- This entertaining, horrifying look at food-industry tricks and secrets is long on chilling reveals, but short on fixes or answers.

• William Friedkin: The Friedkin Connection: A Memoir -

  B+ One of the 1970s’ premier directors exorcises his past with self-aware frankness.

• David Toomey: Weird Life: The Search For Life That Is Very, Very Different From Our Own -

  A- From SETI to the ocean depths, a writer sums up how scientific exploration has expanded the definition of “alive.”

• Carol Burnett: Carrie And Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story -

  B- A comedian’s memorial to her daughter takes the form of a scrapbook of her life and work.

• Melanie Warner: Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over The American Meal -

  B An experiment to see how quickly processed foods decay becomes an eye-opening book about the things we eat that aren’t really food anymore.

• David Shields: How Literature Saved My Life -

  A- This quick-hitting collection of erudite thoughts on many topics is the literary equivalent of a Girl Talk album.

• Amity Gaige: Schroder -

  B- Based on a famous case of false identity and family kidnapping, this novel tells a rich story, but pulls too many punches.

• Glen Weldon: Superman: The Unauthorized Biography -

  B+ A smart, savvy overview of 75 years of Superman tracks how the character has changed to meet the needs of every era.

• Richard Hell: I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp -

  B+ The pioneering punk behind Television and The Voidoids alternates between conventional and eccentric in an autobiography that ends too soon.

• Ron Currie Jr.: Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles -

  B+ This bizarre piece of autobiographical fiction features the author faking his own death to become famous, somewhat inadvertently.

• Owen King: Double Feature -

  B Stephen King’s son and Joe Hill’s brother joins the family profession with this debut novel about a debut film gone terribly wrong.

• Alexander Theroux: The Grammar Of Rock: Art And Artlessness In 20th Century Pop Lyrics -

  C+ Are modern rock lyrics all banal and empty? A particularly cranky novelist and biographer thinks he’s the first person to ask.

• Jamaica Kincaid: See Now Then  -

  B- Poetry trumps content in this lyrical, emotive novel about divorce, which follows the author’s life in some respects.

• Sam Lipsyte: The Fun Parts: Stories -

  A- The author of The Ask returns with a collection of stories about the hapless and the helpless. 

• Jay Farrar: Falling Cars And Junkyard Dogs -

  D The Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt vet takes potshots at his former bandmate Jeff Tweedy in this dull memoir, but that’s its only spark of life.

• Stephen Dobyns: The Burn Palace -

  B A character-packed horror novel in the Stephen King tradition has a huge cast looking for a kidnapped baby amid an endless array of suspects.

• Sean Ferrell: Man In The Empty Suit -

  B+ A fascinating, twisty, Looper-esque time-travel novel has a man trying to solve his own murder, with other versions of himself interfering or helping.

• Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman: Top Dog: The Science Of Winning And Losing -

  A A new pop-science book from the authors of NurtureShock explores studies that define how people compete and succeed or fail.

• Tom Folsom: Hopper -

  C A new Dennis Hopper biography goes awkwardly gonzo.

• Karen Lord: The Best Of All Possible Worlds -

  B Massive events spark small-scale romance in this frustratingly micro-focused but well-executed science-fiction novel.