The Bone Clocks

David Mitchell (Get this book)
Is The Bone Clocks the most ambitious novel ever written, or just the most Mitchell-esque? We begin in the punk years with a teenage Talking Heads obsessed runaway from Gravesend, England, named Holly Sykes. She becomes a pawn in a spiritual war between the mysterious "Radio People" and the benevolent Horologists, led by the body-shifting immortal Marinus. Many more characters and places soon find themselves worked into Marinus's "Script" across the book's six sections. With its wayward thoughts, chance meetings, and attention to detail, Mitchell's novel is a thing of beauty.--Publisher's Weekly

The Secret Place

Tana French (Get this book)
A hint of the supernatural spices the latest from a mystery master as two detectives try to probe the secrets teenage girls keep-and the lies they tell-after murder at a posh boarding school. The Dublin novelist has few peers in her combination of literary stylishness and intricate, clockwork plotting. Here, French challenges herself and her readers with a narrative strategy that finds chapters alternating between two different time frames and points of view. Beyond the murder mystery, which leaves the reader in suspense throughout, the novel explores the mysteries of friendship, loyalty and betrayal, not only among adolescents, but within the police force as well. Everyone is this meticulously crafted novel might be playing-or being played by-everyone else.--Kirkus

One Kick

Chelsea Cain (Get this book)
Abducted by a child pornography ring when she was 6 and held captive for five years, Kick Lannigan, 21, has turned herself into a lean, mean fighting machine. When a boy named Adam is reported missing, she springs into action to save him. The first book in a new series by Cain captures the age of the Amber Alert with hard-edged insight. Distinguished by a wealth of details about how child porn rings operate, this is a gripping thriller in which Kick must apply everything she's learned, and things she's forgotten, to survive again.An unsettling, near-perfect effort by Cain (Let Me Go, 2013, etc.) that leaves you eagerly awaiting the next installment.--Kirkus

Perfidia

James Ellroy (Get this book)
Though it pivots on the Pearl Harbor attack, this worm's-eye view from thoroughly corrupt Los Angeles is a war novel-like no other.It's complicated, and the author wouldn't have it any other way. There's no telling the good guys from the bad in Ellroy's Los Angeles, because there are no good guys. The major distinction between cops and criminals is that the former have the power to frame the latter and kill the innocent with impunity, which they do without conscience or moral compunction, often in complicity with the government and even the Catholic Church. With his outrageously oversized ambition, Ellroy has announced that this sprawling but compelling novel is the beginning of a Second L.A. Quartet. The plot follows a tick-tock progression over the courseof three weeks, in which "dark desires sizzle" and explode with a furious climax. Ellroy is not only back in form-he's raised the stakes.--Kirkus