What We're Reading, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1

Published February 23, 2010 at 7:00 AM EST

This week, a crime novel from the other Swedish superstar; mystery and devilment by the son of a horror legend; and a reporter examines the explosive growth in diagnosing — and dosing — kids with psychological disorders.

The Man from Beijing

By Henning Mankell, Translated by Laurie Thompson

In a long series of novels, Henning Mankell has turned Kurt Wallander, a police detective in Ystad, Sweden, into one of Europe's most famous cops. And Wallander has made Mankell an international best-seller, deservedly so. Wallander fans will miss him in The Man from Beijing, the story of Birgitta Roslin, a 60-something female judge in a stalled marriage who gets caught up in unraveling a bloodthirsty but calculated mass murder in a remote northern village. The investigation leads Roslin back to America of the 1860s and the Chinese workers who built the railroads, and then to the undeveloped expanses of today's Mozambique and the money-hungry Beijing moguls who want to colonize them. It's a wide but crisp trail connected by sophisticated politics and primitive, maniacal revenge.

Hardcover, 384 pages; Knopf; list price: $25.95; publication date: Feb. 16

We've Got Issues

Children and Parents in the Age of Medication

By Judith Warner

Over the past 20 years, the number of kids diagnosed with mental disorders has grown exponentially, and Judith Warner originally set out to write a book condemning these "fashionable diagnoses." Her expose, she figured, would demonstrate that autism and ADHD, pediatric bipolar disorder and Asperger's were not the product of real biological dysfunction, but were the outgrowth of a distorted culture: hypercompetitive parents who simply wanted better performance from their children and were willing to give them psychiatric drugs to get it. We've Got Issues is the story of how Warner ultimately came to the opposite conclusion. Instead of hypercompetitive parents, she found heartbroken mothers. Instead of evil psychiatrists, she found professionals trying to help.

Hardcover, 336 pages; Riverhead; list price: $25.95; publication date: Feb. 23

Horns

A Novel

By Joe Hill

Joe Hill's Horns opens with a striking image, telegraphed in the title: Ig Perrish wakes up one day and finds horns growing out of his head. Those horns, why he has them and what they have to do with solving the gruesome murder of his girlfriend, Merrin — a crime for which Ig is apparently doomed to be an eternal suspect — drive the rest of the story. Ig finds out that the horns give him a few advantages, and he suspects he might be able to use those advantages to get out from under the cloud of suspicion that clings to him. With help from flashbacks to Ig's life with Merrin and others whose actions have brought Ig to this point, the book explores minor themes of guilt and honesty, as well as notions of good and evil that are much, much more ambitious.