Readers, rejoice! All the elements Dan Brown used to such dramatic effect in Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol are in full flower in his newest Robert Langdon thriller: impending global chaos and a frantic, day-long chase to avert it, a fanatically resourceful adversary, a beautiful and brainy companion and a pursuit route through some of the world’s most breathtaking architectural monuments. Hovering over the action is a menacing, ill-defined organization blandly called “the Consortium.” The enduring mystery here is why Langdon, who’s always on the run, hasn’t long since traded in his treasured Somerset loafers for a pair of Nikes.

Inferno begins with Langdon waking up in a hospital bed in Florence, Italy, and being told he’s just suffered a bullet wound to the head. Since his last memory is of walking across the campus at Harvard, where he’s a professor of symbology, this news comes as something of a shock. His attending physician introduces herself as Sienna Brooks. But before she can walk him through the events leading up to his present predicament, a spike-haired, black-clad woman assassin invades the hospital, apparently intent on finishing Langdon off. This launches Langdon and Brooks on a flight that will take them through the swankier museums and churches of Florence, Venice and Istanbul before the day is through. Early on, Langdon discovers he’s being chased because he may be able to discover the grand designs of renegade biochemist Bertrand Zobrist, who thinks the only way to save the world from overpopulation is by depopulating it with a plague.

The enduring mystery here is why Langdon, who’s always on the run, hasn’t long since traded in his treasured Somerset loafers for a pair of Nikes.

Even good-hearted Sienna seems swayed by Zobrist’s outlook. “Robert,” she tells him, “speaking from a purely scientific viewpoint—all logic, no heart—I can tell you without a doubt that without some kind of drastic change, the end of our species is coming. And it’s coming fast. It won’t be fire, brimstone, apocalypse, or nuclear war . . . it will be total collapse due to the number of people on the planet. The mathematics is indisputable.” So is Sienna really his friend or foe? Much of the appeal of Brown’s tale comes from never quite knowing where each character’s allegiance lies.

Zobrist, who is dead before Langdon enters the picture, leaves clues to his destructive intent by dropping references to Dante’s multilayered Hell, as described in the “Inferno” section of his Divine Comedy. Like Zobrist, Langdon is a Dante scholar and perhaps the one person who can decipher these clues before the plague is launched. Thus he is caught between the minions of the World Health Organization, which is determined to abort Zobrist’s plans, and those of the Consortium, which is just as resolute in ensuring those plans are carried out.

Although the general tone of the book is apocalyptic, Brown isn’t averse to having some fun at his own expense. At one point, Langdon phones his editor in New York at 4:28 in the morning to plea for the use of a corporate jet. “If you want to write Fifty Shades of Iconography,” his dyspeptic editor grumbles, “we can talk.” But Langdon pushes on, hoping to gain traction by citing his authorial integrity: “Have I ever broken a promise to you?” he persists. “Other than missing your last deadline by three years?” the editor muses peevishly before finally giving in.

Beyond providing readers the excitement of the chase and incidental lessons in art history, Brown also deserves credit for highlighting the very real problem of an increasing population vying for rapidly dwindling resources. Maybe it’s time for Langdon to turn activist.

Edward Morris writes from Nashville, and interviewed Dan Brown before he was famous.

Conway Sax is not, in general, the kind of guy you cozy up to. He has close ties with girlfriend Charlene and her kids, but commitment often eludes him. He’s done time and has a hair-trigger temper that he euphemistically calls a “red mist.” A recovering alcoholic, he’s wildly loyal to his AA band of brothers, the Barnburners, but he’s always getting into catastrophic scrapes and making the same mistakes time and again.

So why is this character so hard to dismiss? Shotgun Lullaby, author Steve Ulfelder's third book in the Conway Sax series, may be your best clue. It’s Ulfelder’s best, most tightly written story so far, following on the successful heels of his first two books, Purgatory Chasm and The Whole Lie.

Conway Sax is a mess—but readers will love him anyway.

Shotgun Lullaby presents readers with a snappy, memorable cast of characters, including a young recovering alcoholic, Gus, who kicks off the train of mayhem by unknowingly reminding Sax of his estranged son. Right off the bat, it’s clear that Sax will throw caution to the wind and make every effort to protect the young man. A murder at Gus’ halfway house sends Sax onto a trail that gets more devious and littered with bodies as the pages turn, involving Gus’ wealthy father, his sexy second wife and Gus’ stoner friend Brad, as well as mobsters, con men and a savvy state-cop-slash-ally.     

The book is riveting because Ulfelder knows how to write: His prose is uncluttered, the dialog matches real-life talk and the humor is actually funny, with a welcome absence of wisecracks.

Sax is riveting because he’s struggling, and we can recognize some of his failings as ours. He suffers from a form of “act now, plan later” adrenaline in his efforts to set things right, and he’s sometimes unwilling to think through the consequences of his actions. His closest supporters, including Charlene, her teenage kids and his best buddy Randall, understand all this about him, but he often ignores their wisest advice—and sometimes places them in jeopardy. In Lullaby, a final harrowing scene brings all of Sax’s messy contradictions to bear in one breath-holding moment readers won’t soon forget. It’s a testament to the author’s skill that we keep hoping Sax will pull things together. We want him to slow down and breathe deeply, and we’re still on his side.

Shotgun Lullaby will make an indelible impression on all readers up for a great ride.

Author Hallie Ephron’s third novel of suspense, There Was an Old Woman, hits all the right notes. As a respected mystery book reviewer for the Boston Globe and one of a talented literary foursome with sisters Amy, Delia and the late Nora Ephron, Hallie Ephron knows just how to tingle the spine or raise the hair on the back of your neck.

After Evie Ferrante’s alcoholic mother is hospitalized after yet another fall, Evie reluctantly travels from Manhattan to clean up her mother’s cottage at Higgs Point, where Evie and her sister grew up. It’s a spit of land at the southern tip of the Bronx between the East River and Long Island Sound, and Ephron atmospherically describes the marshy, semi-wild area in a gripping tale that skillfully connects past and present events.

Hallie Ephron knows just how to tingle the spine or raise the hair on the back of your neck.

Even as Evie notes the impoverished atmosphere and derelict condition of the house, she knows that something else is amiss. She finds an envelope with nearly $2,000 stashed among her mother’s possessions, and what’s with the case of expensive liquor—not the cheap kind her mother always buys? Looking beyond the front yard, she sees a growing number of empty lots where homes used to stand, and learns that some of the owners, though elderly, appear to have met a somewhat unexpected and premature death.

As Evie gets reacquainted with her mother’s elderly neighbor, Mina, the two form an unspoken alliance that will eventually uncover the lies and deception that have held the neighborhood hostage and led to its neglect. The beautifully drawn character of Mina portrays both the vulnerability and wisdom that comes with age, with many memorable portions written from her point of view. Mina’s long-held secrets provide a key to understanding the puzzle at Higgs Point, and she forges an important link with Evie’s life in the present.

Evie runs into Finn, an old childhood flame, and the attraction is rekindled. He adds another twist to the plot, as he is the leader of the Soundview Watershed Preservation neighborhood group that’s working to save the marsh and retain the area’s rural character. An aura of menace pervades, throwing into high relief the ongoing battle between the forces of preservation and those of unfettered development. There Was an Old Woman combines a unique storyline with characters that will stay in your mind long after you’ve put the book down.

Who knows better than “us girls” how cruel young women can be, especially to one another? Perhaps you remember, some years back, the mean and awful dealings amongst the ladies in books such as Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.

Megan Abbott’s heart-stopping new novel, Dare Me, ups the ante on girl competition and angst, dropping readers into today’s high school milieu, complete with deceit and bullying, dangerously updated in high-tech fashion. Written in insistent, startling prose, the tense narrative excels at dramatic imagery as we step into a world where at times we wish we could avert our eyes. The reckless plot never lets up and will get under your skin.

Dare Me introduces readers to a group of elite, varsity cheerleaders who don’t seem to have anything truly useful to do with their toned, bulemic bodies except continue to abuse them. The hard-driving squad has a new coach, and her arrival unseats Beth, a student, from the top of the control echelon. The other girls fall under the spell of the calm and perfectionist Coach Colette French, who’s poised to challenge the team to a whole new level of gymnastic excellence.

Poised on the edge of beauty and darkness, Dare Me is a book you won’t soon forget.

What happens when this teenage hierarchy is thrown into disarray, and control slips from one person to another? Mix drinking, drugging and dieting with the high-tech communication devices these teens can’t escape, and you get a volatile and claustrophobic mix where chips are indeed going to fall. In a tightly constructed series of ominous scenes, Abbott produces a dark story that culminates in a disaster readers knew would occur, as cell phones vibrate back and forth like cunning, insistent hearts. 

And speaking of falling, what about the high-flying new 2-2-1 pyramid routine that Coach is training the girls for? Who will soar and who will fail? We’re left with the nagging, unanswered question of what exactly drives these young women, and what might give their lives a lighter hue. As it is, they badly want to be an organic part of their small, compact troupe. Coach urges them on: “A pyramid isn’t a stationary object. It’s a living thing. . . . The only moment it’s still is when you make it still, all your bodies one body, until … we blow it all apart.”

Poised on the edge of beauty and darkness, Dare Me is a book you won’t soon forget.

Christian novelist Frank Peretti, author of This Present Darkness, Piercing the Darkness and many others, writes about the fascinating blend of physics, enduring love, time travel and faith in Illusion, his first book in seven years.

For 40 years, Dane and Mandy Collins shared a deep love as well as a magic act—until Mandy was killed in a car crash. Dane is left floundering as he seeks to come to terms with his wife’s death and rebuild a life in Hayden, Idaho. Meanwhile, Mandy awakens as a 19-year-old in 2010, even though she was born in 1951. New technologies like cell phones and computers are a mystery to her, and really, all she wants to do is find the (long gone) family farm and her father. Instead, Mandy is held at the Behavioral Health ward of the Spokane County Medical Center on suspicion of mental incompetence.

While held at the facility, Mandy discovers some very unusual powers, including one that enables her to walk out of the building undetected. Maintaining a low profile, Mandy makes her way to Hayden, where she also begins the slow process of building a new life. Fascinated by magic and struggling to make a living as a street performer, Mandy—who now calls herself Eloise—receives some helpful advice from Dane, thus beginning their frequently rocky acquaintance. Dane was warned about the possibility of his mind playing tricks on him, but Eloise bears an uncanny resemblance to his beloved wife. Grudgingly, Dane begins mentoring Eloise, who is just learning about her magical capabilities, like the ability to mentally control objects. While powerful forces rally against Eloise, the mentor and protégé plan a spectacular magic act, the likes of which has never been seen before. But will Eloise be strong enough to survive it?

Illusion is both a mystery/sci-fi story and a sweet tale of timeless love between 60-year-old Dane and the now-teenaged Mandy, although nonbelievers may have difficulty with the obvious Christian message at the novel’s heart. The science behind the plot is sketchy at best, yet that does not take away from the reader’s enjoyment of the story. Excellent character development, a smooth pace and an unusual twist to the time travel theme make for a strong cross-genre story with a satisfying conclusion.

Available Dark is dark, all right. It almost seems as if author Elizabeth Hand is not so much penning a novel as sending a series of cries into the night.

Hand’s main character, Cass Neary, first appeared in the cult hit Generation Loss, and here she has returned in a blistering story that will sear the pages from your fingers. Cass is now a weary middle-aged alcoholic and speed freak who lives on the very edge, her promise as a photographer faded after her one brilliant book, Dead Girls, spiraled briefly into the limelight.

Rewards for the reader are found in the author’s prose, brilliant and acute.

From her bleak corner of Manhattan, Cass responds to an e-mail from a mysterious client in Finland, a collector of the macabre and murderous—a genre Cass is immersed in and drawn to. The collector wants Cass to assess the value and provenance of a small cache of black market photographs taken by an iconic photographer with an “eye for the beauty in extinction.” Cass views the group of five photos depicting violent death scenes, and verifies their authenticity by phone with her client. Later that day she leaves Helsinki on a flight to Iceland, following up on another obsession: the search for a long-ago lover. Iceland overwhelms Cass; she thinks: “The whole … country was like The Birds, if the birds had won.” Once in Reykjavik, she finds herself in escape mode after she learns that both the collector and the iconic photographer have been brutally murdered, and the photo studio destroyed.

There’s no respite on any page in this dark story, as Cass works to save herself and unravel the deadly skein that binds together a handful of people involved in the creation of the photo death scenes. The desolate, perpetual twilight of Iceland’s terrain lends itself to the telling of this tale, which is peopled with a stunning cast of characters—from Quinn, the hollow-eyed lover of Cass’s youth; to an albino dealer in cult recordings; to a reclusive former black metal guitarist who inhabits a Quonset hut in remotest Iceland with his collection of artifacts and Icelandic folklore, and who speaks in a voice “so deep it was as though the stones spoke.”

There are no happy endings in Available Dark. However, rewards for the reader are found in the author’s prose, brilliant and acute, shot through with glimpses of humanity that may come to inhabit your dreams.