Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, it embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on “Top of the Pops,” the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon and San Francisco during the autumn of ’68. David Mitchell’s novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper; of music, madness and idealism. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us?

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents --- an odd brother and sister --- extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late.

Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart and self-aware 13-year-old boy with autism, THE REASON I JUMP demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives and responds in ways few of us can imagine. Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. He shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself.

Following a terrible fight with her mother over her boyfriend, 15-year-old Holly Sykes slams the door on her family and her old life. Now, as she wanders deeper into the English countryside, visions and coincidences reorder her reality until they assume the aura of a nightmare brought to life. For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics --- and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’ s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.