AUGUST 2011

Fall literary season. "Make good use of your freedom." Freedom stands in New York harbor - it's the cornerstone idea America built itself on. But what does freedom actually mean today? That's the ambitious question Franzen tackles here. Spoiler: it's complicated, messy, and he nails it.

"When choosing between an easy path and a hard one, pick the hard one and you'll be fine." Nothing destined Golden Richards to become a polygamist. Between a gold-prospecting father who was always gone and eventually never came back, he had zero training for this life...

While some people were conquering the West, I took a little vacation to Montana with the sexiest fishing guide around. After his football career got wrecked by a dirty hit, Dahlgreen Wallace signed up as a guide. Big sky country, trout streams, murder. You know, the usual.

Anna and Francesca have been friends forever, grew up in the same housing project in an industrial Italian town. They're almost fourteen, beautiful, fearless, arrogant. Summer means the beach, showing off their teenage bodies. Steel mills behind them, blue water in front. Coming of age, Italian style - raw and real.

The grizzly - Ursus arctos horribilis to be exact - is embedded in Wild West mythology. One of the largest land carnivores, can reach ten feet tall, notoriously aggressive. Bass writes about them like they're disappearing ghosts. Which they basically are. Montana wilderness, last stands, elegiac prose.

North Carolina, 1930s. George Pemberton runs a timber operation. On a trip to Boston he meets and marries the beautiful, ambitious Serena. From then on, the couple - driven by greed - has one goal in mind: get rich, strip the forests bare, destroy anyone in their way. Lady Macbeth meets logging country.

Justine gets married. Her sister Claire throws a reception at her fancy country estate. The evening is as lavish as it is traditional - silver cutlery, family drama, the works. But underneath the champagne toasts, something's coming. A planet named Melancholia is heading toward Earth. Von Trier does apocalypse his way.

A young woman is found hanged in her country house. Looks like suicide. But her best friend isn't buying it and convinces Erlendur to investigate. Doesn't take long for him to discover things aren't what they seem. Iceland, cold cases, colder weather. Indridason always delivers.