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Pat Conroy’s fans have had to endure a 14-year-long, novel-free drought, but his new novel, “South of Broad,“ hit bookstores and best-seller lists last week with the force of a Category 5 hurricane. The tempest-tossed tome is a strange amalgam—by turns a gentle novel of maturation, a gothic melodrama and an ambitious historical novel that spans decades. And like any self-respecting Southern novel, it dwells on a past that seems unwilling to relinquish its death grip on the present.

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The beating of Rodney King. The botched investigation in the O.J. Simpson murder case. Repeated allegations of scandal and corruption. The Los Angeles Police Department has managed to distinguish itself as much for its failings as for its successes, and the sometimes sordid world of the LAPD is brought to vivid life in Connie Dial’s gripping debut novel, “Internal Affairs.“

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The Catholic Church warns us that seven deadly sins lie in wait for wandering souls. For her new anthology of short stories, the award-winning mystery writer Elizabeth George focuses on just two: lust and greed. They’re wide-ranging enough to fill an entertaining book, as it turns out. Five years ago, George edited an anthology of women crime writers whose work spanned nearly a century. “Two of the Deadliest” is a different sort of beast. It includes 23 specially commissioned, previously unpublished stories from contemporary women writers.

It’s fortunate that Stieg Larsson’s hefty new thriller, “The Girl Who Played with Fire,“ is hitting American bookshelves at the height of the beach-going season. Readers are going to need a lot of free time to get through its 506 pages—especially if they haven’t read its predecessor, the international best-seller that made Larsson’s name synonymous with gold in the publishing world.

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In “Finger Lickin’ Fifteen,“ Stephanie Plum is off men. Not to worry. Joe Morelli—the man she’s “currently off”—saunters into Page 6. And Ranger—“the second biggest complication” in Stephanie’s life—is lounging in her bedroom chair by Page 11. Never mind how he managed to get past the three locks and sliding bolt on her apartment door.

Nigeria may be best known for its oil and e-mail scams, but it has also produced such talented writers as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. To that list we can now add Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose accomplished collection of short stories, “The Thing Around Your Neck,“ further burnishes her considerable reputation. A short-story collection resembles a literary spring training, as it allows a writer to experiment, to practice different styles and to rework familiar themes before tackling the majors—another novel. And Adichie, whose two novels, both set in Nigeria, evoked the Biafran War and the pervasive corruption of the military rulers, writes in these stories not only about contemporary Nigeria but also the Nigerian diaspora in America.

Updating successful ideas is a staple in the literary arsenal. Mary McCarthy’s “The Group,“ the piquant tale of life after Vassar, was a best-seller. But J. Courtney Sullivan’s debut novel, “Commencement,“ attempting something similar with four Smith graduates, fails to duplicate McCarthy’s success. “The Group” not only described college friendships but also evoked a seminal era—the early 1940s, when Europe was at war, the effects of the Depression lingered and communism and fascism were thought by many to be the future. Focusing on the Class of 2002, “Commencement,“ instead, reflects a more self-centered zeitgeist preoccupied with issues of gender and self. A plot that plods rather than soars and characters that seem types more than originals also make for a less provocative read.

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If you take the back roads—U.S. 11 through the Shenandoah Valley is but one example—you’ll see them by the dozen. Antiques stores stand as eloquent testimony to Virginians’ love for old things—things that aren’t simply “stuff” but serve as links to a past that isn’t truly past. Such is the view that antiques appraiser Emyl Jenkins of Richmond takes in “The Big Steal,“ her second novel featuring antiques appraiser Sterling Glass. Sterling is a 40-something Virginian who combines charm, savviness and tact—attributes that her job requires when she faces shady practices.

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As a forensic psychiatrist, Jo Beckett is used to examining the minds of the dead. But in “The Memory Collector,“ she is called to assist in a case dealing with a volatile man with “anteretrograde” amnesia. Don’t be turned off by the terminology, Gardiner does a great job of explaining it. A person with this condition is able to retain previous memories, they’re just unable to form new ones. That means, new experiences are immediately forgotten. It’s a brilliant concept, especially when the man is forced to engage in industrial espionage to save his kidnapped family.

FICTION In the Kitchen” follows the stressful life of Gabriel “Gabe” Lightfoot, an executive chef at the Imperial Hotel in London, who is balancing his job, his girlfriend and his family (whom he doesn’t see very often). At 42, the only real obstacle in Gabe’s life is himself. He has a list of wants: to get married and open his own restaurant, but he’s not proactive enough to accomplish his goals.

The British novelist Kingsley Amis famously remarked in his later years that he had no interest in reading books that didn’t begin with the sentence, “A shot rang out.“ One fears that Amis would have sent Ward Just’s 16th novel, “Exiles in the Garden,“ sailing across the room shortly after opening it. Just’s book teems with mystery, but not the sort that would keep Amis reading late into the night. In place of gunshots and secret agents, Just gives us Alec Malone, a former newspaper photographer who lives in Georgetown. And instead of, say, fleeing authorities who have mistaken him for a killer, Malone spends much of the novel mulling over his life choices.

It’s no accident that Story is the name of the family inhabiting Alice Hoffman’s latest novel. “The Story Sisters” is all about the tales people tell: real and imagined, true and false. Then there is Hoffman’s own luminous tale of the three Story sisters—we meet them when Elv is 15, Meg, 14 and Claire, 12—who live simultaneously in two places, Long Island and Arnelle, a secret fantasy world Elv creates for them.

Sometimes, a sprawling historical novel is a perfect ticket to a pleasant escape. A gripping story, engaging characters and descriptions of other times and other places can entertain and educate. And that’s just what Julia Gregson serves up in “East of the Sun.“ As the story begins in London in 1928, 20-something Viva Holloway, a penniless orphan and an aspiring writer, has been hired to chaperone three younger people on their voyage to India. Viva has received word from a woman in Simla that a trunk belonging to Viva’s late parents has been found, and that’s all Viva needs to flee her humdrum life in England, a place she has never felt at home. Both her parents and her sister died in India, and the subcontinent calls to her.

Colum McCann’s powerful new novel, “Let the Great World Spin,“ opens with a moment of lofty magic. It’s Aug. 7, 1974, and a man seems to float in the air a quarter mile above lower Manhattan. He is, in fact, standing on a wire stretched between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. And as he begins walking between the towers, pedestrians below him find themselves mesmerized.

FICTION Two new novels set in the developing world seek to explain social ills in human terms and to make subtle statements on the way to future human progress. As works of social commentary, these novels are quite successful in presenting ideas in an emotionally compelling way without sacrificing values of storytelling or character development.