Sara Zarr won over readers and critics — actually, I hate that phrase, because of course critics are also readers, but you know what I mean — with her book, Story of A Girl. The book was a finalist in the National Book Award for Yung People’s Literature. Now she’s back with her sophomore effort, Sweethearts, which is for readers 12 and up. The story revolves around Jennifer and Cameron, two kids who are outcasts and also best friends. Cameron mysteriously disappears, and Jennifer reinvents herself as a popular girl, everything she wasn’t while younger. But then Cameron reappears and complication, as they say, ensue.

Also new this month in fiction is Gone To Ground by British thriller writer John Harvey. Harvey, winner of all manner of writing awards, this time writes a standalone story about two London detectives looking into the death of a gay academic. They end up looking into a family “blighted by a lust for wealth and power and by its perverted sexuality,” according to the press release for the book. Tawdry!

In nonfiction, Richard Zoglin has authored Comedy At The Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America, one of those books in which the subtitle pretty much tells you everything. The books focuses on the work of comedians such as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld (obviously this books moves beyond just the 1970s). The press calls comedians the “forgotten stars of the cultural revolution.” Which is interesting, because I bet fully 75 percent of you recognized the names I mentioned earlier in this paragraph.