Simultaneously a page-turning true crime narrative and a powerful rumination on the nature of identity, truth and belief, Blood Will Out recounts Kirn’s longtime friendship with eccentric billionaire Clark Rockefeller. The only problem is...there is no such person! Years later, the man is unmasked as a serial imposter, conman and murderer who has been at this game for decades. You will be astounded by the audacity of the sociopath known as Clark, but also by the willingness of dozens of smart people to wholeheartedly believe his ruse. In the tradition of In Cold Blood, it’s part memoir, part thriller, part courtroom drama. A riveting and unsettling read that will leave you questioning just how much you can trust anyone.

David MacLean comes to in India. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got there. This is the launching point of MacLean’s harrowing memoir, THE ANSWER TO THE RIDDLE IS ME. Told in sparse, beautiful prose, MacLean recounts how he reclaimed his life after having his memory decimated by Larium, an antimalarial, and the inextricable link between identity and memory. MacLean’s story is terrifying and something that will stick with you for months.

In the world of Elevator Operators, there are two factions: the Empiricists who dilligently seek out and analyze issues and flaws in the mechanism and the Intuitionists who can feel the problems without having to look at anything. Author Colson Whitehead takes this idea and extends it into a world at once familiar and strange. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist. She's also the first black female Elevator Operator, and an elevator has crashed on her watch. Like a grainy flickering image, this novel entices and reveals great wonders. It's no wonder that Colson Whitehead has become one of his generations most innovative authors.

Meet Colson Whitehead when he comes to Brazos Bookstore to sign his new non-fiction book, THE NOBLE HUSTLE on May 27.

THE DINNER, now out in paperback, is the perfect book to cuddle up with while trying not to throttle your least favorite family members this holiday season. Koch slowly reveals the details of a murder mystery, a political campaign, and a family history, all over the course of one fateful dinner. He does so with a master’s hand; this is deception and deep-seated love/hate rendered at its artistic finest. This book will leave you asking yourself how well you truly know the people with whom you share a table.

This January, I started my reading year off right by picking up Chang-Rae Lee’s magnificent new novel, ON SUCH A FULL SEA. There was so much buzz surrounding this book that a casual in-store book club developed around it; four of us now have read the novel and loved it! The novel takes place a few hundred years in the future and tells the story of Fan, a young girl who bravely leaves Baltimore, which has been renamed B-MOR). The reasons for her departure are slowly revealed as the book follows Fan on countless trials, all of it related to us in Lee’s sparkling prose. Like a lot of dystopian fiction, this story reflects the challenges and concerns of our current lives by exploring the future. However, Lee doesn’t fall into any of the traps or cliches of the genre; each twist of the plot comes unexpectedly and feels organic. ON SUCH A FULL SEA is unlike anything Lee has written before, yet it retains his stunning mastery of language and gift for storytelling. If the rest of the year is filled with books as good as this one, a great year in reading it will be!