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Writer Kaleb Nation admits that he buys books for their covers — that's why he first picked up Gayle Forman's If I Stay. But he was quickly drawn into the story of Mia, a young cellist who must choose whether to return to her destroyed life, or simply let it all go.

The Daily Beast editor chats with Renee Montagne about the best things she's been reading lately. The focus this month: the perils and pleasures of the personal chronicle, whether it's on the Internet, in a diary, or in a juicy tell-all memoir.

Post-modern writer David Mitchell pulls off an old-fashioned yet action-packed tale in his fifth novel, The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob de Zoet. The story follows Jacob, a bookkeeper at an outpost of the Dutch East Indies Company, as he falls for a local midwife in early 19th century Japan.

His third novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is a black comedy set in a futuristic America — where books don't exist and where the economy has collapsed. Shteyngart explains why he decided to write a love story in this dystopic vision of the future — and why he thinks technology is changing the way we think.

Chicago was inspired by the trials and acquittals of two real-life ladies, and Douglas Perry tells their stories in delicious, devilish detail. Critic Glenn Altschuler calls The Girls of Murder City entertaining and informative -- this summer's "not guilty" pleasure.

Gary Shteyngart's dystopian novel narrates two doomed romances: one between a man and a woman, and one between a writer and his country — or what he fears his country may become. By turns fierce, funny and frightening, Super Sad True Love Story deserves a place on the shelf beside 1984 and Brave New World.

Japanese novelist Shuichi Yoshida straddles the boundary between the pre- and post-Internet world, and his latest book is a crime thriller challenging assumptions about real and virtual identities. Villain contrasts Japan's welcoming embrace of the wired world with its strong roots in tradition.

Classical Greeks and Romans dreamed up some fantastic inventions — including an analog computer to track the sun, and amphitheater surround sound (of sorts). Historian Vicki Leon discusses these innovations and more in her new book, How to Mellify a Corpse: And Other Human Stories of Ancient Science & Superstition.

Jonathan Eig's new book Get Capone reveals new insights about the famous Chicago gangster — including how freely he spoke to reporters, the time he shot himself in the groin, and how venereal disease eventually robbed him of his health and sanity.

Lifelong angler Paul Greenberg fuses investigative journalism, travelogue and personal memoir into one grand meditation on humankind's relationship with the ocean. Four Fish asks readers "to reevaluate whether fish are at their root expendable seafood or wildlife desperately in need of our compassion."