Stratospheric-selling White Oleander (Fitch's first novel) was translated into 24 languages and anointed by Oprah. Of course, Fitch's long-awaited second novel has media fireworks set on ignite, and here, she picks up the some of the same themes that made White Oleander such a crowd-pleaser. How do you live after great loss? How do you handle betrayal? Edgy punk princess Josie is falling apart after her lover Michael's inexplicable death. As she struggles to understand what happened to her dream life and why, she finds herself drawn into a combustible relationship with Michael's fiery concert-pianist mother. While White Oleander fans may feel that Paint It Black's tone is less turbo-charged and its heroine pricklier, Fitch's intelligence and lush, literate prose still make for seductive reading.

Suzanne Berne (A Crime in the Neighborhood) crafts a heart-stopping psychological drama about the sisterly ties that bind—and strangle—all unfolding over the course of one tense Thanksgiving holiday. Cynthia Fiske is writing a book about Mark Twain's unhappy daughters, a family situation eerily similar to her own. She's in no hurry to attend the family reunion her older married sister, Frances, aches for, particularly because their 82-year-old father is going to be in residence. Cynthia's certain that when she was just 13, he murdered their invalid mother with an overdose of pills, but Frances's version is something stunningly different. What is the real truth, and what's the terrible cost of revealing it? Smart and unnervingly scary, Berne's novel twists and turns, and escalates to a shocking, thrilling conclusion.

What? Deny your child any advantage? Today Mozart serenades fetuses, babies do sign language before they babble, and kids have so many scheduled activities that recess is just a fond memory. But does enriching your child create a kid who is truly special or one who is especially distressed? Nurturing children into following their bliss is different than pushing them into a mold, argues Quart, and parents need to know the difference. Full of incredible portraits of prodigies (there's a tot earning millions for her paintings), Hothouse Kids examines why gifted programs may be a surprise package you wish you hadn't opened so quickly. Whether or not you agree with this book, it's a provocative look at the tightrope parents walk between doing what's best—and what could be the worst—for a child, and how to tell the difference.

According to recent statistics, every three minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer. It happened to fab gal-about-town and New Yorker cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto just a month before her wedding to Silvano Marchetto, the owner of the glittering NYC restaurant Da Silvano. In this graphic novel, Marchetto leads us through her 11-month bout, from the dropkick of the diagnosis to her triumphant cure, along the way peppering the text with hilarious insights about love, life, and what's really important (the answer is not killer shoes). Part love story and part funky spiritual text, Cancer Vixen is also full of important insights and statistics about breast cancer and our health system.

What would we really do for love—or for lack of it? Sophie and Crow are small-town teenagers on the cusp of making love for the first time. In the woods, Crow rushes to his car for a condom, and when he returns, he finds Sophie's been brutally beaten and raped. She has no memory of her assailants, but Crow is charged with the crime. Author Cox gracefully unfolds the mystery of Sophie's attackers, but what she's really discussing is the complicated way tragedy permeates a small town and unravels its guilty secrets and hidden cruelties. Although characters sometimes overexplain their motivations to the reader, this is a lush, elegiac book about the crushed promise of one gorgeous spring night, a tragedy so haunting that one character heartbreakingly asks, "Are we still human?"

Remember the book that changed your life? Editor Joy Johannessen and bookseller Roxanne Coady have gathered together a star-studded roster of authors who do, including Wally Lamb, Susan Vreeland, and Alice Hoffman. You might expect some lofty by-the-book choices, but instead Michael Stern sings the praises of the Sears catalog because this was where a nice Jewish boy from the Midwest could learn about hunting rifles and family bibles. Jacquelyn Mitchard found her calling as a writer (and doubly appreciated her husband) because of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. These glorious authors' passion for their books is downright contagious, making you want to rush to the shelves to pay homage to your own personal bests.