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Unflinchingly honest account of an ex-Marine's struggle to re-acclimate to civilian life after returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

When documentary film producer Scotti returned home in 2003 from a two-year tour of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq, he knew that “something was wrong.” The former lieutenant was whole in body but not in mind. Rather than own up to the fact that he was suffering from PTSD, Scotti charged ahead with his postwar plans to work Wall Street, “[w]here men waged financial warfare upon one another.” But the more time passed, the more the ambitious ex-Marine found himself engaged in a private battle against alcohol-fueled rages and the “blue cascade” of depression. Haunted by scenes of battlefield savagery he could not forget, Scotti contemplated suicide. A film project that involved footage he had shot while in Iraq became his path to personal salvation. Narrating the often brutal scenes allowed Scotti to come to terms with the human “weakness” that his training as a Marine had taught him to disavow. As he began to heal, he turned his thoughts to earning the MBA that he believed was the key to finding the stability and peace he craved. But he quickly discovered that the world of high finance was more about scheming and selfish politicking than working toward a common goal. Rather than accept the golden handcuffs of Wall Street, Scotti instead embraced his true work: helping veterans find the courage to express the unspeakable pains of war they carried like lead weights in their hearts.

An unapologetic gut-wrencher of a book.

Economist Tehran correspondent De Bellaigue (Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town, 2010, etc.) uses plenty of local insight to provide general readers with an intriguing combination of biography, history and strategic study.

Muhammad Mossadegh's influence still lives in the imagination of Iranians. His family estate is a place of pilgrimage, even while the Ayatollahs denounce him as a British agent. The author dissolves the black and white of this posturing into more ambiguous grays, portraying Mossadegh as a constitutionalist attempting to combine the movements of democrats and the Islamic faithful who, known for nationalizing the country's oil, also introduced wide-ranging reforms of property ownership, education and women's rights, many of which were later repealed. Months before the 1953 coup, Mossadegh failed to recognize the agreement offered to him. De Bellaigue portrays the young Shah as a fearful, vacillating leader who frequently undercut his own supporters, thereby providing opportunities to opponents like Mossadegh. The author also examines the profound rift between America and Britain, with the latter, particularly under Churchill, stubbornly reluctant to make concessions on oil even as its position was undermined by American profit-sharing agreements with other producers. Ultimately, Cold War politics brought the two countries together. De Bellaigue's history brings together elements of miscomprehension, accident, chance, surprise, mistaken loyalties and revenge-driven shifts in political alliances. In exploring the story of Mossadegh and his family, the author also shows how Iran, because of its oil, became a pawn in the Anglo-Russian rivalry.

A pleasing combination of intriguing local color and cultural and historical depth.

A bloody Western set during the 1930s, Holbert’s debut novel follows an amoral lawman hunting an amoral killer in the rugged, rapidly changing rural counties of Washington State.

Holbert’s unsettling book demands a strong stomach: The violence is graphic, and sublime prose is cheek-by-jowl with ridiculous conceits. Whether the violence is gratuitous is a question the book begs but avoids answering, but one’s pleasure may turn with one’s stomach. At the end the reader will feel relief or satisfaction or some combination, and tip a sweat-stained hat to Holbert for raising the stakes of the Western genre. The protagonist Russell Strawl’s name says it all, rhyming with drawl and squall, but the participle of another rhyme is the best word to describe him: appalling. Pure antagonism, Strawl travels light as a contagious disease and falls like a curse. He has superhuman hearing, which seems a prerequisite for his in- or sub-human behavior. We are expected to believe in types: in Keystonish cops, fops, sots and a young man who answers only to the name of a prophet. The plot is as tortured as the killer’s victims. Holbert’s sympathies seem to align with the quality of his prose: The land is rendered in loving, even exquisite detail, so too the crimes. The characters’ minds are infernal, and at its best the prose makes the darkness visible.

Holbert has gone all-in: This book is audacious. It reaches the heights and then keeps rising so far over the top one doesn’t know how to take it.

Lucas Davenport takes the scenic route toward a confrontation with the two practiced crooks who had the bad luck to rob him.

Just as he’s leaving an ATM with $500, the star of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is held up by a pair of obvious meth users, a man and a woman. Naturally, Lucas vows vengeance. Before he can catch up with the pair, however, he and his team will have to wade through a thicket of unrelated violence visited on the Midwest by a trio of Mexican gunslingers. The hit men, whom Sandford (Buried Prey, 2011, etc.) inventively dubs Uno, Dos and Tres, first pop up on Lucas’ radar when they torture and execute Patrick Brooks, founder of Sunnie Software, and his wife and children. A preliminary investigation ties the murders to a money-laundering operation that crosses the border, and the connection is strengthened when the Mexican government sends Inspector David Rivera and Sgt. Ana Martínez north as observers. They end up doing a lot more than observing because the three killers are just getting started. On orders from their mysterious boss, Big Voice, they’re pursuing a fortune in gold that’s gotten stuck halfway through the money-laundering chute and cauterizing any leaks among the system’s conspirators while they’re at it.

Despite the high mortality rate, the procedural work is more grueling than fascinating, and the criminals are mostly as nondescript as their monikers. But the climactic gunfight is deeply satisfying, and the very last line of dialogue is perfect.

Was Columbus Jewish? The answer may matter a lot more than you think.

Five hundred years after his fourth and last voyage to the New World, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea is back in the news again, and wealthy Austrian Jew Zachariah Simon and Jamaican crime lord Béne Rowe have taken notice. Convinced that Columbus, of whose life nearly nothing is known for certain, took to his grave the secret location of a gold mine in Jamaica, they team up, at least briefly, to put pressure on disgraced ex-journalist Tom Sagan to tell them what he knows. And since Tom, who’s fallen into depression since a questionable Mideast news story forced him to return his Pulitzer and condemned him to life as a ghostwriter, is about to kill himself, he’s going to need special motivation. This Simon supplies in the form of a live video of Sagan’s estranged daughter, Alle Becket, groped by mercenaries as she writhes bound and gagged on a bed. Tom’s not to know that Alle, still seething with hatred for the father who neglected her, has helped stage her videotaped victimization. Also in the hunt are Brian Jamison, who says he’s an American intelligence officer from something called the Magellan Billet; Frank Clarke, of the Charles Town Council of Elders; and the 102-year-old Rabbi Berlinger, of Prague’s Old-New Synagogue, who’s convinced that the apostate Tom is the latest Levite. This being a Berry production (The Emperor’s Tomb, 2010, etc.), every alliance is of course fragile, and the bonds among even the heartiest teammates are up for grabs. So is the ultimate goal, for the author gradually reveals that Columbus’ lost gold mine is only chicken feed compared to the real bonanza at stake.

Less The Da Vinci Code than American Treasure. Think of Nicolas Cage tearing up the scenery as Tom Sagan to the background beat of popping corn, and you’re halfway there.

A popular historian revisits the most stirring siege in American history.

On Feb. 24, 1836, vastly outnumbered and defending an old Spanish mission in San Antonio against Santa Anna’s Mexican army, garrison commander William Barret Travis issued a plea for reinforcements. To the people of Texas and “all Americans in the world,” he declared, “I shall never surrender or retreat.” He did neither, and the slaughter of the Alamo’s defenders has reverberated ever since. Donovan (A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Big Horn—The Last Great Battle of the American West, 2008, etc.) rightly deems the Battle of the Alamo the signal event of the Texas struggle for independence. The two-week siege bought precious time for the fledgling provincial government to organize, for settlers to recognize the immediacy of their peril and for Sam Houston’s Army of the People to assemble and train. The siege bogged down Santa Anna’s avenging force, killing many of his best troops. When, seven weeks later, Houston’s army surprised and routed the Napoleon of the West’s exhausted soldiers at San Jacinto, the Texans’ battle cry was “Remember the Alamo!” Donovan’s thoroughly researched and agreeably told story focuses on the 13-day standoff, but he also supplies crucial context, helping us to understand the history of the breakaway province and notable characters in the revolution like Houston, Stephen Austin, Ben Milam and James C. Neill. He explains how the principal actors in the Alamo drama—including, of course, former congressman and frontiersman David Crockett and knife-fighter James Bowie—arrived at this juncture in history. Yes, the Alamo is remembered, but not without controversy. What really happened inside those battered walls? Did Travis really draw a line in the sand, asking all who would stand with him to step across it? Without breaking the flow of his compelling story, Donovan reliably separates fact from legend, persuasively assessing the evidence and artfully setting the scene.

An authoritative, moving retelling of an enduring episode of sacrifice and courage.

An on-the-ice view of the struggle over offshore oil exploration in Alaska.

With U.S. demand for oil skyrocketing, major petroleum companies believe the last huge undiscovered oil fields will be found north of the Arctic Circle beneath the sea. Out front in the search is Shell Oil Company, which plans to sink an exploratory well in the seabed off Alaska’s North Slope this summer. In this brisk, revealing account, veteran author and journalist Reiss (Black Monday, 2007, etc.), a former correspondent for Outside magazine, tells the story of two men whose dealings are critical to the region’s future. Pete Slaiby is the Shell employee charged with clearing the way for exploratory drilling. Edward Itta, an Inupiat Eskimo whaler and the Barrow-based mayor of the North Slope of Alaska, must protect his people’s natural resources (“The ocean is our garden,” he says) while ensuring that acceptable oil drilling generates much-needed tax revenue. Based on interviews with these men and others, the author describes the misunderstandings, suspicions and interactions between Slaiby and Itta in 2010 as they discussed plans that would transform a pristine region whose waters have sustained tribal cultures and subsistence hunting for many generations. Itta, concerned at first about the possibility of oil spills and that seismic work might scare off whales, helped build safeguards into Shell’s drilling plans for 2011, which were eventually thwarted by U.S. agencies. While Russia and other nations have clear-cut policies on Arctic oil, the U.S. has long remained indecisive. With Itta working to convince environmental and other groups to hold off on further lawsuits to block Shell’s exploration of its offshore leases, both he and Slaiby gradually became “uneasy allies” who recognized that their common enemy was a byzantine federal government mired in regulations and policies.

A rewarding glimpse behind the Alaska oil headlines.

Lightweight answers to FAQs about such subjects as birthdays, libraries, pets and road trips.

In question-and-answer format—with each one allotted a two-page spread and accompanied by Ritchie’s loose-line, pastel-colored artwork—Ripley fields a range of questions. They include how batter turns into cake and how birthday candles stay on fire, why hamsters run on wheels and why they stuff their cheeks with food, why you hear the sea in a seashell and why the ocean is salty. The answers are both fruity with humor and specific as to the immediate explanation, but there is not much meat on the bones to many of the answers, even for the intended age group. This is true especially when it comes to secondary clarifications that would deepen understanding, because these answers are going to elicit plenty more “hows” and “whys.” Some of the questions ignite the “duh” factor: “Why do we wrap presents? Because surprises are fun! And because wrapping makes gifts look extra special.” There is a modest sense of repetition: “Why are some books hardcover and some paperback? Because different readers like different kinds of books!” (nor does the extended response do any better a job of answering the question) and “Why are dogs different sizes? Different dogs for different folks!” Then come really sharp explanations as to why tarantulas have hair and why gasoline has a strong odor.

An uneven effort that is too often unhelpfully simplistic. (Nonfiction. 5-8)

A class assignment blossoms into friendship as a fourth-grade (later fifth-) Californian showers a young soldier stationed in Afghanistan with letters, e-mail messages and postcards.

Scotto supplies only chatty Felix’s side of the continuing correspondence, though the general drift of the replies from his new buddy Lt. Marcus Greene is easy enough to catch. In nearly daily missives, Felix queries his pen pal about what soldiers do while detailing his own interests, teachers, town, hard-working Filipino American parents (and their reactions when his restless big brother enlists) and his newfound delight in taking snapshots. Several of these, along with handmade picture postcards, are reproduced in Williams’ evocative drawings. He also charts emotional ups and downs, notably after Felix brings a sudden end to years of harassment by punching a bully in the nose and in the wake of news that Greene has been hospitalized with a serious wound.  In the end Greene remains a shadowy stand-in for any soldier, while Felix comes across clearly as an everylad modeling a high level of respect for what his adopted pal is doing, as well as the anxiety common to any family who has a member in today’s armed forces.

An uncomplicated but fervent and timely show of support. (Fiction. 10-12)

“Uncle” Bob Harris is a world traveler, adventurer and, quite possibly, a spy for the U.S. government.

Julianna revisits her relationship with her late father’s best friend, “Uncle” Bob Harris. Julianna suffered from a rare form of arthritis that sometimes left her bedridden. Her vibrant uncle visited the family between mysterious trips to foreign locations; the rumor was that he spied for the CIA. Yet he surprised Julianna one day with an offer to travel with him, insisting that the experiences would benefit her body and mind. While in the Sahara, Julianna asked Bob to tell her his life story. He began doling out details with every trip they took together. She learned he worked in box production—editing an industry publication, selling products and acting as a liaison between American and overseas companies. His connections led to a covert gig with the U.S. State Department, for which he acquired information about a region’s need for box production facilities. Did this mean he was really a spy? More creative nonfiction than memoir, the book captures a charming, exciting personality in Bob. Julianna articulates his tales, true or not, in an engaging way. And while some moments in the book drag, specifically regarding the box industry, readers will be relieved to know the next adventure is only a few pages away. Forays to the Middle East, across Russia on the Trans Siberian Express railroads, and up Mt. Everest read like the greatest of adventures. Though these depictions are fascinating, Julianna has neglected to relate her health problems to these experiences; clearly, Bob is an interesting guy whose story is worth telling, but readers may wonder why the author felt the need to mention Julianna’s arthritis at all if she failed to follow up on the topic. The message to live life to the fullest is still clear, regardless of physical limitations.

Worth a peek for armchair voyagers.

In a thought-provoking twist on the usual immigrant story, a village lad elects to stay put.

Though Jimmy’s town is just a scattering of shacks on a broad beach, there is a tiny gym, owned by Don Apolinar. He gives Jimmy a box full of books and clippings about Muhammad Ali that sparks a yen in the boy to become a boxer. Yockteng depicts the tall, dark-skinned lad running across a sun-drenched landscape at the head of a gaggle of laughing children. He shadow boxes and demonstrates his strength by letting a goat butt him in the chest, carrying huge loads of fish and other feats. But when Don Apolinar departs for the big city, where there are "real jobs," Jimmy decides to stay, taking over the gym and adding a library to it. “Maybe one day he’ll get a match,” the narrative concludes, but then it gives Jimmy the last words: “Listen to me. / This is my town. / … / We dance and we box / and we don’t / sit around waiting / to go someplace else.” Idealized as it may be, the idyllic setting and smiling, bright-eyed faces on view in the illustrations make his choice easy to understand.

Eye-opening inspiration in this unassuming import from Colombia. (Picture book. 6-8)

A Pixar film with an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short is transformed into a picture book with decidedly mixed results.

The textures and colors, blues, greens and golds, are simply beautiful, as the three characters, a boy, his hugely mustachioed father and his hugely bearded grandfather take their little boat, La Luna, out. The boy is going to work with the men for the very first time. The great moon rises from the sea, and the boy climbs a ladder to the moon, finding its surface covered in glittering stars. This family’s job is to clean up the moon, but his father says one way and his grandfather another. A huge star crashes into the moon, and while his father and grandfather argue about how to deal with it, the boy taps it. The star breaks into a plethora of tiny stars, and the three sweep them all up, “each in his own way.” The film, which won’t be seen until June, when it precedes Pixar’s Brave, is visible in 30-second clips online and is almost entirely wordless. (The book's text writer gets a tiny credit line, “Words by Kiki Thorpe.”) Its tender story about generations and carrying on the work, alas, does not quite come across with words on paper.

Rich and lovely to look at, but probably much more evocative as a memory of the animated short rather than a thing in itself. (Picture book. 5-9)

Creative worlds collude and collide in this contemporary rendering of a well-known 17th-century English poem.

Seldom does a book review address a book’s design, but in this visual stunner from publisher Tara, the literal setting of the words is as key to the volume’s success as are its text and illustrations. Urveti, an acclaimed artist from Madhya Pradesh in central India, chooses for his subject an oft-anthologized anonymous c.-1665 “trick” poem, depicting the wily text with ravishingly detailed black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings in a style typical of Gond tribal art. The other third of this global collaboration is Brazilian designer Yamakami’s exquisitely thoughtful setting of the 12-line poem, which highlights the reflexivity of the six couplets. The meanings of these couplets can be gleaned reading each line with the rhyme from beginning to end, or—the tricky part—against it, from the middle of one line to the middle of the next. Take, for example, the poem’s opening: “I saw a peacock with a fiery tail / I saw a blazing comet drop down hail / I saw a cloud….” Through the use of intricate die cuts, Yamakami subtly leads readers from a spread featuring a plumped-up peacock to the image of a comet with its “fiery tail” of metaphorical “hail,” then onto a cloud dropping the more literal icy phenomenon. These careful cuts draw readers through the work from cover to cover, brilliantly underscoring both the poem’s dizzying, dreamlike essence and its thematic obsession with the subjective nature of seeing.

Indian folk art triumphantly meets 17th-century English trick verse in this sophisticated graphic venture fit for middle graders on up. (Picture book/poetry. 10 & up)

Another paint-by-numbers quest fantasy that (surprise!) kicks off a series.

Neglecting to spare any significant roles for females in her unmanageably large cast, Reyes sends an old wizard’s young apprentice and five other boys on a ritual quest that all 14-year-old boys on the Isle of Imaness must take. Accompanying them are a “half-breed” man-cat and a tricksy shapechanger who fall in along the way. Their search for the titular “Rock,” who turns out to be the exiled husband of long-dead Princess Ivanore, takes them to the Isle’s only major town. Along with an army of newly freed cat-people slaves leaping to defend their former captors (a case of Stockholm Syndrome if ever there was one) and one-eyed giants who are inexplicably impervious to attacks from fire-breathing dragons, they repel an invading force from the mainland. Even attentive readers will have trouble keeping track of who is where as the characters scramble about amid a blizzard of choppy chapters and shifting points of view. Closing with revelations about hidden siblings and parentage that are not only predictable but telegraphed, this anemic tale is free of both suspense and surprise.

An irascible talking wizard’s staff is the only memorable element in this otherwise trite outing. (Fantasy. 10-12)

Born with hemophilia, Massie’s childhood combined bouts of intense pain and disappointment with unabashed joy and lavish family affection. In this moving memoir, the author (Loosing the Bonds, 1997) recounts how this doubled-edged environment laid the foundation for a life filled with compassion and activism.

Frequently bedridden and shut out of normal adolescent activities, the author became a reader and thinker. “As I observed others, I also inched away from my self-centered view,” he writes. “I realized that many, if not most, other people faced their own struggles.” Massie continually questioned perceived injustices or institutional unfairness. Whether these unjust conditions existed in the form of racism, cultural and class divides in college, a haphazard and unjust system of free-market health insurance or belligerent corporate attitudes, Massie sought change for those affected. His educational and professional credentials are impressive. He attended Yale Divinity School, Harvard Business School, completed “a valuable stint at the Kennedy School of Government,” taught at Harvard Divinity School and ran for political office in Massachusetts. No matter which issue Massie faced, his goal remained the same: “I want everyone to thrive.” Massie faced a severe health challenge in the form of Hepatitis C, which debilitated him for years until he received a liver transplant, and years earlier, he had contracted HIV during a blood transfusion, though the disease never developed into AIDS. Massie offered himself to Massachusetts General Hospital as a research subject, resulting in a seismic shift in how the medical field looked at HIV. Without sentimentality or a partisan point of view, Massie offers a refreshing alternative from the divisive discourse rampant within much of today’s culture. “Let us choose a new way of talking to each other that honors each other’s dignity even as we disagree, perhaps profoundly, with each other’s views,” he writes in the epilogue.

A testament to the strength and goodness within the human spirit.

A six-month journey in search of the secrets behind the world's fastest runners.

Guardian production editor and Runner’s World contributor Finn is an avid running hobbyist. Fueled by the desire to improve significantly, the author set his sights on training in Kenya, home to the top marathoners in the world. In 2011, he uprooted his wife and three small children to live in the high-altitude small town of Iten, sometimes referred to as the running capital of the world. Finn was a good runner in England, but in Kenya, he was slower than the slowest "junior girl" racer. After reading Christopher McDougall's Born to Run (2009), he tried running barefoot, which he counts as one of the keys to Kenyans' speed because "it forces you to adopt a better running style." Finn notes additional secrets to their success: training camps, running to school, getting plenty of rest and eating a primarily vegetarian diet. As the author and his family adjusted to the cultural differences, including roaming lions and a night watchman, Finn prepared to run a marathon by training with a group of excellent runners. Even among those who have no chance of going to the Olympics, there's an attitude of reverence for the sport. "After a run," Finn writes, "you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled.” The same could be said of his quest, which strikes a balance between memoir and applicable lessons for those interested in learning the reasons for the success of Kenyan runners. Finn's writing is accessible, and he threads entertaining familial vignettes through the book.

Recommended for runners as well as the sport's fans.

The short life and times of Henry VIII's fifth wife, as seen through the eyes of her friend.

Cat Howard styles herself Queen of Misrule in the Duchess of Norfolk's maidens’ chamber (a misnomer if ever there was one). When Cat is selected to be one of Anne of Cleves’ ladies-in-waiting, she soon catches the king’s eye, and the rest, as they say, is history. Cat rescues mousy friend Kitty to attend her in her chambers, giving Kitty and readers an intimate view of that history. Hewing closely to what little is known about Howard's circumstances, Longshore allows Kitty to thread the maze of alliances that was the court of Henry VIII. She concentrates on domestic details while brushing with broad strokes the politics of the men’s world. Kitty's narration is formal, but her language is modern, a balance between authenticity and readability that is mostly successful. Her sense of her own powerlessness, and by extension all women's, even the queen’s, comes through clearly. The mounting terror as lusty, luxury-loving Cat’s fortunes fall is palpable, as is the sense that the queen is no innocent. The author’s adherence to historical detail is admirable, clashing with both title and cover, which imply far more froth than readers will find between the covers.

A substantive, sobering historical read, with just a few heaving bodices. (Historical fiction. 13 & up)

A set of loosely concatenated stories that don’t quite add up to a novel but are nonetheless rich in character and in the exploration of contemporary urban life in Poland.

In the title story a man reminisces about a time 40 years before, when at the age of 12 he first had the impulse to take his life. He’s heard from Pastor Kalinowski (one of the recurring characters) about the “other world” and has some curiosity about the passage from This World to That. The possibility of his own self-destruction curiously liberates the narrator, so he gives himself permission to violate some taboos—like watch an adult film and read a forbidden book he’s found at the bottom of a cupboard. Pilch manages to inject a great deal of humor into the story—as well as tragedy, for it’s also about the narrator’s relationship to his drunken and dissolute father. “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” announces its subject grandly, though the narrator is forced to admit she might only be in the top ten—or the top 100. He’s nevertheless pleased to have found her, though his sexual fantasies about her turn out to be at one and the same time both indulged in and quashed. In “The Double of Tolstoy’s Son-in-Law,” the narrator develops an obsession about an old photograph of Tolstoy playing chess, while in “A Chapter about a Figure Sitting Motionless” the obsession is with Anka Chow Chow, a virginal soccer fan who has a weakness, or perhaps a fetish, for girls with backpacks.

It’s hard to do justice to the outré and eccentric, but gorgeous quality of Pilch’s prose. Here he manages to pull off some neat literary tricks, frequently and self-consciously undermining the seriousness of his subjects with pricks of irony. 

When 14-year-old Teddy is classified as troublesome, disrespectful and defiant of authority, his despised stepfather sends him off to St. Ignatius Academy for Boys, an isolated Roman Catholic boarding school.

St. Iggy's is run by priests who ruthlessly enforce discipline through intimidation and abuse. Narrator Teddy befriends the wisecracking, Wordsworth-loving Cooper. The boys use their wits and humor to cope, but the endless beatings and humiliations take their toll, especially on the fragile Cooper. He reaches his breaking point when he becomes the victim of Father Prince, a pedophile. Teddy watches helplessly as Cooper withdraws into his own private nightmare, and Prince targets Teddy himself as his next victim. The only positive adult relationship the boys have at school is with the janitor, who takes them to his farmhouse outside of town on Saturdays to enjoy a brief period of normalcy. The priests are either bullies or predators; even Brother Joe, who seems sympathetic to Teddy, betrays his trust. Although set in a well-realized 1959, Vasey's brisk, sharply written, riveting narrative transcends any time period.

A vivid, disturbing and all-too-real topical story. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

The author of the Breadwinner trilogy turns from fictional Afghani children to real ones.

The 10- to 17-year-olds interviewed for this collection mostly don't remember the Taliban's fall more than a decade ago, but they can't help but be shaped by the damage the Taliban did to their country. In a country that's been at war for more than 30 years, childhood is very different—or is it? After an over-earnest opening, with teens who have overcome great hardship and want only to succeed in school, this collection diversifies. Parwais has never been to school and wants only to keep his warm, dry job as a museum cleaner. Palwasha, who studies computer science at university, plays for the Afghan Women's National Football Team and aims "to become the best referee in Afghanistan." Fareeba doesn't speak for herself; the mental-hospital inmate has a cognitive disability and no access to the medical or educational opportunities that might help her find language. Angela, meanwhile, attends American University in Kabul and hopes to attend Brown. One girl is imprisoned for fleeing a forced child marriage, while another's mother is a member of Parliament; one boy's damaged by a landmine, and another's proud to be a Scout. The most cutting words are those of 14-year-old Shabona: "Do you have war in Canada? Maybe it is your turn, then." Clear introductions to each young person provide historical, legal and social context. This nuanced portrayal of adolescence in a struggling nation refrains, refreshingly, from wallowing in tragedy tourism and overwrought handwringing.

Necessary. (Nonfiction. 10-14)