Ann Patchett's new tragicomedy, State of Wonder (Harper), dares to send women into decidedly masculine territory—violence and corruption in the jungle—but with a 21st-century twist.

In this charming piece of participatory journalism, Foer—the younger brother of novelist Jonathan Safran Foer—explores the role of memory in both public and private life, while also telling the story of his efforts to compete in the U.S. Memory Championship.

Each story takes you to a different place and time; from a British cartographer's circa 1930 exploration of the Arabian desert to a futuristic take on global warming, these exterior worlds are as fantastically fashioned as the characters themselves.

To most readers, Melissa Fay Greene is the prizewinning author of such journalistic gems as The Temple Bombing and Praying for Sheetrock. To her neighbors in midtown Atlanta, she's also known as the lady who, in 1999, the year before her oldest child left for college, decided to adopt more kids, at least partially to ward off empty-nest syndrome. At last count, she and her husband, Don Samuel, a defense attorney, have added five kids to their "bio" group of four: one from a Bulgarian orphanage and four from Ethiopia. Why they did it—and how they do it—is the subject of Greene's moving, enlightening, and surprisingly funny new memoir, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet (Sarah Crichton/FSG), which folds an adoption primer into a meditation on family.

In lyrically elegant prose, Mira Bartók's The Memory Palace explores not just relationships but the slippery nature of memory itself.

Six years ago, Richard Louv wrote his groundbreaking book Last Child in the Woods, in which he examined how today's kids were coping with what he termed "nature-deficit disorder." This year, in The Nature Principle, he's back, looking at how the same condition affects grownups.

Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad is a wildly ambitious novel about the music business, media technology and culture.

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