Something for all ages today by Minnesotans and a few who no longer live here. We have bestselling fiction from Tami Hoag, a story involving history and diversity for middle-grade readers, a challenging satire, and two nonfiction accounts of brain dysfunction. (Penguin Random House) “Bad Liar”: by Tami Hoag (Dutton, $30) At a dead-end road near the Louisiana swamps a body is found with the face blasted away by gunshot, making identification impossible. Two men are missing from the small town; which one is the corpse? Is it the charming former high school hero living on past athletic glory, or a recovering drug addict whose mother is frantic to find him? Bestselling author Hoag gives us an involving, complicated crime story in “Bad Liar,” which also delves into the dynamics of relationships between two brothers and the lengths to which a mother will go to fight for her son’s recovery from addiction. The cases are worked by sheriff’s detective Nick Fourcade and his wife, sheriff’s detective Annie Broussard, who is returning to work after suffering a brutal attack. As the detectives dig into the pasts of the two missing men, they realize nothing is as it first seemed. Hoag has written more than 30 books with more than 40 million copies in print in 30 languages. What her fans might not know is that she began her career in Minnesota as a romance writer in 1994 when the genre was transitioning to the broader genre of women’s fiction. Hoag, who grew up in Harmony, Minn., already had millions of books in print when her romantic suspense novel “Dark Paradise” was chosen by Bantam Books for a major promotional tour. In 1995 she made a major career leap with publication of her first hardcover, “Night Sins.” When “Night Sins” was published Hoag said in a Pioneer Press interview: “Not only is it tricky to move from paperback to hardcover, but Bantam is marketing ‘Night Sins’ as suspense, and that is another new thing for me as a writer. My books have always combined mystery and romance, but I consider (this book) more of a suspense with romance.” The two-part TV miniseries based on “Night Sins” aired on CBS in 1997 starring Harry Hamlin and Valerie Bertinelli. Hoag married her high school sweetheart in 1977. She had been a self-described “book snob” until their vehicle broke down. With nothing to do while it was being repaired, she began reading a historical romance by Kathleen Woodiwiss that she’d reluctantly accepted from her sister-in-law. To her surprise, she found that the book had a good plot and interesting characters, and she continued to read romances while she pursued odd jobs, finally deciding to write one herself. By 2004 Hoag was divorced and living in California, where she still resides. Thanks, Tami, for your new novel that sent us down memory lane. Who would have thought time at a garage would lead to a stellar writing career? (Carolrhoda Books) “The Rule of Three”: by Heather Murphy Capps (Carolrhoda Books, $19.99) Heather Murphy Capps (Carolrhoda Books) Seventh-grader Wyatt, who is multi-racial, lives by rules of three. His three-part plan for life begins at tryouts for the local travel baseball team. If he can make the team he won’t feel like an outsider in a mostly white town anymore. But things turn ugly when racism infects his relationship with the other players and the entire school. Always looking out for Wyatt’s best interests is Dallas, a girl pitcher for the team and editor of the school paper. Here’s Wyatt explaining his rules: “Three was something I could do. Three was something I did all the time. Pretty much everything had a rule of three: math had one, chemistry had one too. Survival depended on threes: you could live three minutes without air, three hours without shelter. Three strikes and you’re out. Three outs and you’re done with an inning. And then there was the rule of bad things happening in threes — though to be honest, so many bad things had happened in my life lately that I’d kind of lost count… But good things can happen in threes too.” When racist messages appear on lockers, Wyatt believes he doesn’t make the team because the coach cannot be fair to him. As tensions rise in the school, Wyatt realizes his anger manifests as smoke literally coming from his hands and feet, the same reaction that his father shows when stressed. (Although this part of the story may seem like magical realism, it is based on science.) Wyatt’s dad has been distant to his son, but when they share their strange smoke the older man reveals secrets in his past about the 1985 real-life government raid on a house in Philadelphia where members of MOVE, a Black separatist group, were living. (Police dropped a bomb on the house, killing 11.) A starred review of “The Rule of Three” in School Library Journal said “this book belongs in all middle-school libraries; it deftly discusses important histories and hot topics facing young readers today… a must read.” Publishers Weekly calls the book “a noteworthy novel” and Booklist says it “…will resonate with middle-grade readers who see the injustices around them and struggle to control their own emotions.” Capp, who is biracial, is an award-winning author of books about history, social justice, science, and magic. She lives in West Virginia but grew up in Northfield, Minn. After college she moved to Kenya to teach English and realized she wanted to be a writer and reporter. After 15 years of reporting on politics, the military and war, she transitioned to her first writing dream: middle-grade fiction. (Courtesy of Coffee House Press) “Lesser Ruins”: by Mark Haber (Coffee House Press, $18) This satirical novel is an example of why small literary presses such as Minneapolis-based Coffee House are so important. This third novel by Haber (after “Reinhardt’s Garden” and “Saint Sebastian’s Abyss” ) is not for everyone. But those who value the unusual in their reading will enjoy it. After the death of his wife, a former professor finally has all the time he needs to begin the project he’s dreamed about — a book-length essay about 16th-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne. But he just can’t seem to get going. The phone is a constant interruption, especially if he’s listening to his son go on and on about reviving home dance music. Like his father, the young man has the project in his head but can’t seem to actually get it done. Meanwhile, the professor keeps getting distracted by his love of coffee, the making of which consumes a lot of his day and might have gotten him fired from teaching when an illegal coffee maker exploded under his desk. Besides obsessing about a perfectly made cup of coffee, he spends hours thinking up hundreds of titles for his non-existent book. Even after he returns from a fellowship at a prestigious research institute he is no closer to beginning the project as his thoughts roam from old grievances against the community college where he taught to his marriage, Holocaust art and the lives and influence of artists, writers, sculptors and poets. Haber challenges his readers. The novel has no chapters and no paragraphs. It’s one long stream of consciousness that demands the reader pay close attention without taking a break. Ploughshares literary journal calls Haber “one of the most influential yet low-key tastemakers in the book world.” Literary Hub chose the novel as one of the most anticipated books of 2024. “Friendly Fire: A Fractured Memoir”: by Paul Rousseau (Harper Horizon, $14.99) On April 7, 2017, Paul Rousseau’s life changed forever just a month before graduation from the University of St. Thomas. He and his roommate and best friend, Mark, were alone in their room when Mark accidentally pulled the trigger of a gun that shot a bullet through two walls and struck Paul in the head. Mark delayed calling the police, then lied about what happened. After months in the hospital, Paul had to move in with his mother and her partner. (The author doesn’t give the name of the college, but the shooting was reported in Twin Cities media.) “Beneath the five-inch seam across my head is my prefrontal cortex, the epicenter that maintains planning and emotion,” he writes. “The tissue here is irreparably damaged. I no longer have control of what irks me or how I react to those irks. Small things become magnified. At any given moment, I fight the urge to cry, scream, laugh. I feel as though I’ve been grown in a lab in some alternative reality; as though I’ve been lobotomized by a railway spike; as though I’m entering the United States after a long time away, unsure what kind of citizen I am or what I should declare at customs. This is what if feels like to leave the hospital.” Besides writing about recovery from a brain injury, the author recalls years of litigation with the college, as well as rethinking his friendship with Mark, who he hadn’t spoken to since the shooting. Was attention-seeking Mark really that good a friend? Why did he make “jokes” at Paul’s expense that weren’t funny and sometimes hurtful? The friendship was over, but with therapy Paul learned to keep Mark from living in his head. Thanks to Paul’s stalwart mother and his girlfriend, as well as physical and psychological therapy, Paul was living on his own and working a year after the shooting. His amazing journey is so well-written a reader feels his pain from the moment he woke on the floor after being shot, covered in blood. “I Hope I Get Well: A Memoir of Bipolar Disorder”: by Adam Gerhardstein (Luminare Press, $13.95) It was September 2022 in St. Paul and Adam Gerhardstein was a full-time lead teacher who had “turned into an irritable, short-tempered jerk.” His bipolar disorder was ramping up again. Gerhardstein had first been diagnosed as a college student in Ohio after he stopped sleeping for six days and wound up lashed to a bed in a psych ward. For two years bipolar disorder dominated his life. Working his way back to stability, he left his hometown and was hired as a Montessori  teacher in St. Paul. Thanks to his wife, friends and a super therapist, he finds a new way of being bipolar. 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