Expiration Date (Tim Powers)

This modern ghost story ties together movies, electricity, drug trafficking, and the ghost of Thomas  Edison in a complex magical tale. An 11-year-old boy, in preteen rebellion against his parents, triggers a series of events that brings up the dark history of several other people: twins mourning the death of their father decades ago, a psychiatrist whose pretend therapy became fatally real, and a dead man clinging to the world in a run-down apartment building. They come together to battle those who stay alive by eating the lives, and deaths, of others, and to fight their way to clean lives of their own. It is a fascinating story, though I found myself confused by the mechanics of it all in many places.

Hotel World (Ali Smith)

In this strange short novel, six women tell their stories one after the other, each in her own unique voice that reveals the chaotic pattern of her free association, her stream of consciousness. They are all tied together by an event at a hotel, where a young chambermaid fell to her death. The author undeniably drew the reader inside the head of each person, but I found the nontraditional writing tough going. The fifth tale, which contained pretty much no actual sentences but fragments and paragraphs loosely laced together with &s, was too much for me and I skipped over most of it. Someone with a more literary turn of mind would be more open to this book.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick)

This "novel in words and pictures" tells the charming story of a young boy living in the walls of a train station in Paris who gives up everything for his dreams. He tends to all the stations clocks, as his uncle taught him to do before he disappeared, and works to repair an automaton his father left to him. Along the way he meets people who alternately help and thwart him. The book is an adventure and a series of beautifully drawn images, but mostly it is a testament to the thrill and magic of movies.

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

I wanted to read this book to find out what everyone was talking about. It was better than I expected; I actually did get caught up in the story of survival, and I enjoyed reading it. A 16-year-old girl in a brutal, post-apocalyptic world volunteers to take her young sister's place in an annual spectacle in which 24 teens are dropped into a vast arena and forced to fight to the death on live TV. The plot is rather far-fetched, even for science fiction, and the characters and dialogue rather flat and unconvincing. There was altogether too much emphasis on food and clothing for my taste. Still, I liked the tough, ass-kicking heroine.

Rules of Civility (Amor Towles)

This is an elegant and touching story about the high life and lowlife in New York City in the 1930s. Katy, her friend Eve, and a high-class young man they recently met become entangled in webs of debt and dependence, trust and betrayal, even though pretty much everyone is trying to do the right thing. The story is a flashback, so you know Katy came out all right, but you have a hint from the beginning that all didn't go as well for Tinker.the young man they became tied to. There are surprises along the way that were satisfyingly unexpected. I enjoyed the story and the lives these people lived.