Nick Hornby, the popular author of High Fidelity and About a Boy (among others) has nailed it again with Juliet, Naked, a slow-paced comedy revolving around a love of music.

David Grann, staff writer for The New Yorker, begins by describing himself as a "disinterested reporter" who is able to avoid personal involvement in his stories. Two pages later, however, he reveals his true position: lost in the Amazon without a guide, food or water, questioning how he ended up there.

Jeannette Walls simultaneously amazed and horrified readers with her best-selling memoir The Glass Castle, and although her newest "true-life novel" - Half Broke Horses - is not as gripping, it is a satisfying prequel to the Casey-Walls legacy.

A lacuna, a missing part, is exactly what bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver creates with in her newest novel, The Lacuna. Beautifully written, Kingsolver paints an image of life without a history, living with gaps.

Once again, Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time Traveler's Wife, displays her uncanny ability to create a plausible plot with an undeniably paranormal conflict.

Although Dan Brown's highly anticipated sequel to The Da Vinci Code, entitled The Lost Symbol, has a relatively captivating storyline, Brown's writing seems to have taken a dive.

David Benioff, the successful author of three books, two of which have been adapted into films, has incorporated his screenwriting career into his latest novel, "City of Thieves."