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Many of us remember a childhood obsession with dinosaurs. Sooner or later, most of us grow out of it – but some never do. Something for which the rest of us should be grateful, because amazing discoveries have been made for the love of dinosaurs. "My Beloved Brontosaurus" follows paleontologist Brian Switek's personal history as a dinosaur geek turned scientist, and paints a thorough picture of how the scientific view of what dinosaurs were – and are – has changed both during his own lifetime and the more than 150 years that have passed since some fossilized bones were baptized as the extinct animal group Dinosauria. It's a story about birds, bones, and feathers that almost ends with death from above. But not quite. No, dinosaurs are still around.

Excellent science writing can be like the Total Perspective Vortex in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – placing your own humble existence in the perspective of the vastness of the known universe. In Brian Switeks book, the reader must grapple with the barely comprehensible lengths of time passed since dinosaurs first walked the land. Just contemplate this fact:  the time passed between the extinction of Tyrannosaurus rex until today is less than half as long as the stretch of time that dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Birds are dinosaurs, and the discovery of fossil feathers completely changed dinosaur science. In the last decade, it has been shown that the "first bird" was in fact likely to have been one kind of dinosaur. If that is hard to comprehend, imagine a large tree. Now imagine you had a chainsaw and cut off all branches but one at breast height. Birds are the leaves on that remaining branch of the last surviving dinosaurs, whereas all other dinosaurs have gone extinct, just like the imaginary branches you cut off. But that's not all – most if not all non-bird dinosaurs also had feathers. This is true for both Tyrannosaurus rex as well as the vicious Velociraptors famous from the movie Jurassic Park – the real animals all had feathers. But they did not use them for flying, they were far too heavy. Instead, the feathers served as insulation, or were a fancy way of showing-off between mates, just as peacocks and ostriches do today.

You gotta love geeks like Brian Switek. His first book, Written In Stone, offered a broader view of fossil science – paleontology – but My Beloved Brontosaurus provides much more heart and passion. True, that enthusiasm could have benefitted from more stringent editing – parts of the book are rather repetitions – but the love of his subject simply pours off the page. I would like to thank Brian Switek for sharing his love with us.

With 2013 already well underway, am I correct in thinking it is high
time to focus on some of the most anticipated new books of the year?
Why yes, of course I am! This is in no way a definitive list, seeing
a) how new releases tend to keep popping up throughout the year, b)
how some of the best reads of the year will be dark horses; titles and
authors that somehow have managed to slip under my radar, and c) how
there is something to be said for spontaneity. It is, however,
somewhat consistent with my current literary cravings. So, without
further ado I give you...

HELENA'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK RELEASES OF 2013 (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)

First of all, a book that is already out: Jennifer Haigh's News from
Heaven: The Bakerton Stories. Ever since I accidentally stumbled over
The Condition five years ago, I have considered Haigh one of the most
promising voices of contemporary US fiction, as deeply readable as she
is stylistically elegant and thought-provoking. This short story
collection, set in the coal mining town of Bakerton, is another
must-read for me.

Also out already are Linwood Barclay's Never Saw It Coming, a further
exploration of 2011 Quick Read Clouded Vision (more from Barclay to
look forward to this summer!), and – shocker – a new novel by Joyce
Carol Oates, the very creepy-sounding Daddy Love.

February

There is something eerily soothing about authors so punctual you can
set your watch to their publishing rhythm, isn't there? For instance,
I take great solace in knowing that every February for the last few
years – bleak, dreary, draining February! – have seen the publication
of a new Jodi Picoult novel. This year's Picoult is called The
Storyteller and the plot, at least to me, bears echoes of Stephen
King's excellent novella Apt Pupil. Whenever someone slams Picoult –
which happens on a regular basis, particularly after her and Jennifer
Weiner's public reaction to The New York Times favouring male authors
– I kind of want to punch them. No, she may not be receiving the Nobel
Prize anytime soon, but she does make you think about complex moral
dilemmas and she always, always makes me cry and feel deeply about her
characters. There is undoubtedly something to be said for cathartic
reading, especially when there is that trademark Picoult "what would
YOU do?" aspect of it. Bring on the Kleenex and ethical pondering, 26
February!

March

5 March marks the publication of Joyce Carol Oates new, delightfully

gothic novel The Accursed, which I have been oohing and aahing over
for quite some time now. Granted, the ever prolific Oates has produced
some less than stellar efforts recently, and the sheer effort of
trying to keep up with everything she writes can at times be draining.
This, though, seems worth it.

Already looking mighty fine on my nightstand, but not technically out
until 5 March is Andrew Pyper's The Demonologist. I loved his previous
books, which successfully blended horror and thriller in a bleak,
literary landscape, and this one is blurbed by the likes of Gillian
Flynn, S.J. Watson, and Michael Koryta.

March is also a good month for thriller buffs as the always reliable
pageturner king Harlan Coben has a new standalone, Six Years, out on
19 March. Like many a Coben novel before this one, it deals with
betrayals and mysteries of the past coming back to haunt us.

April

Okay, let me just say straight away that April looks like a GREAT
month! First of all, we have a new Lacey Flint thriller from S.J.
Bolton out on 11 April – yay! Like This Forever, it is called, and
there is no doubt in mind that Bolton will scare me senseless once
again. Can't wait.

Having read and enjoyed the literary pageturners of Douglas Kennedy
for well over a decade, I can't help but enjoy the blissful
serendipity of his new novel, Five Days, being published the day after
my birthday (30 April – that's the pub date, not my birthday). Happy
birthday, Helena! (Aww, you shouldn't have, Doug. Although of course,
you really, really should.)

More serendipity: on the very same date, the highly anticipated new
novel by Claire Messud, her first since her magnificent The Emperor's
Children, which was published in 2006, will be out. The protagonist of
The Woman Upstairs has been described as "a feminine counterpoint to
the rantings of Dostoevsky's Underground Man". This is definitely one
of the books I'm most excited about so far this year, seeing how I
rate The Emperor's Children as one of the finest novels I read in the
00's.

May

Bizarrely, I haven't been able to find any particularly fetching new
releases for May. Surely just a matter of time, though.

June

Another top contender for this year's most anticipated new release
from a fave author is Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland (25 June) and get
this: it's about identical twin sisters!

July

Julia Heaberlin's debut novel Playing Dead was a pleasant surprise for
me last year, so I will most definitely pick up Lie Still, due out 9
July. If you're into dark, literary thrillers of the Gillian Flynn-ish
breed, do give Heaberlin a try.

August

Is it...? Why yes it is! All Linwood Barclay fiends can look forward to
yet another standalone thriller, the evocatively titled A Tap on the
Window, on 6 August. I've devoured each and every one of his books –
having said that, I thought last year's standalone was particularly
captivating, so I have equally high hopes for this one.

September

Ever wondered what Danny Torrance, the young clairvoyant boy of
Stephen King's horror classic The Shining, may be up to in that
alternate fictional reality we all fantasize of every now and then? On
24 September, King brings Danny into the 21st century, teaming him up
with a tribe of semi-immortal mind vampires feeding off young people
who, like once Danny, have "the shining". Oh, and there is also a
prescient cat. Doctor Sleep sounds like fun, doesn't it? (Might be
slightly out there, though, but then again the best King books are.)

September also marks the publication of the dead lovely Helen
Fitzgerald's latest novel, The Cry, which she was writing during our
chat at Kulturnatten 2011. I'm anticipating heaps of dark, twisty
brilliance of that wickedly funny, slightly morbid Fitzgerald variety.

October

We have waited – oh my, how we have waited. Grey hairs have been
discovered in the process, children have been born, empires have
fallen... and now, finally, what we've all been waiting for looks like
it actually will happen. No, I'm not talking about the second coming
of Jesus Christ; this is something far, far better. Last week, it was
revealed that Donna Tartt's third novel, her first since 2002's The
Little Friend, is to be published this October. Set for publication on
22 October, The Goldfinch is the tale of orphan Theo Decker, who as a
young boy miraculously survives an explosion. Roaming the streets of
New York, he becomes fixated with a small, mysteriously captivating
painting that soon draws Theo into the art underworld. I don't know
about the rest of you, but I already have "THE GOLDFINCH!" written
down in my calendar with indelible ink. 22 October – save the date!

November and December seem so very far away at the moment – not to
mentioned cold, dark, and dreary in a "too close to home" sort of way
– so I will get back to you regarding late 2013 book releases. All in
all, though, I have to say we're looking at a pretty solid year,
sometimes (OMG DONNA TARTT) verging on the spectacular. Let's just
hope that in terms of highly anticipated books, everything really is
as good as it seems. Fingers crossed and all that.

How well do you know yourself? Did you know that your body contains ten times more bacterial cells than its own cells? We are used to having the story of life told to us from a human perspective. The normal way of portraying nature is by telling stories of cheetahs and gazelles, dinosaurs and mammoths, or like in Sweden, stories about moose. This is a book that turns all that upside down.

One the most numerous of the bacterial species within you is Escherichia coli – or E.coli, as it's known to scientists, government officials, and news editors alike. Over the last century it has also been the experimental organism of choice for microbiologists seeking to answer just about any of the great questions within the biological realm, from the core mechanisms of evolution itself to the genetic origin of altruistic behaviour. So, if you want to know more about yourself, learning more about E. coli is a good idea. And there is no better introduction than reading Carl Zimmer's "Microcosm".

If you focus hard enough on a particular phenomenon, it sometimes seems like that phenomenon has been involved in all major historical events. From the E. coli thriving in your own, hopefully healthy, gut to those that spread disease like wildfire through battlefields and cities during World War II and others during the EHEC outbreak in Germany 2011, this is one species of bacteria that keeps drawing attention to itself. It's a survivor. Batter it with antibiotics and it comes back at you with resistance. But in learning to live with E. coli, we can also gain insights into many of life's secrets.

In "Microcosm", E. coli itself drives the narrative. While not offering as original a perspective as Rebecca Skloot's brilliant "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks", it zips through evolutionary and scientific theory with this single, common and in many ways unremarkable bacterium in focus.

The book should be of interest for a more general audience. It describes some of the central problems in biology in a few paragraphs, and by using the scientific problem as a murder in a detective story, Zimmer portrays E. coli providing clues for the scientists so that ultimately the problem can be solved.

This is not only a book for those who are interested in science, it's also a book for those of you who would like to know more about the bugs in your gut. And if your interest in Carl Zimmer has been piqued, you can always check out some shorter pieces at "The Loom", over at National Geographic's Phenomena blogs. I still haven't seen a single posting there on moose, but several on bacteria and viruses.

Helena reads two top-notch literary thrillers from both sides of the pond  (and inevitably ends up buying more books, although she promised she wouldn’t, or at least not until Christmas..).

High school, as My So-Called Life’s Angela Chase would tell you, is a battlefield for your heart. For the characters in Megan Abbotts latest novel Dare Me, it is also a battlefield for your kidney, spleen, stomach, kneecaps, arms, legs, and skull. Among other things. Yes, bones break, perfect,  unblemished teenage skin bruises, dreams are crushed and fulfilled, friendships formed and killed... and yes, there will be blood. Cheerleading has never been quite as cutthroat as portrayed here, and for me, whose previous experience with cheerleading boils down to a few dozen Sweet Valley books and two instalments of Bring It On, it is absolutely fascinating. The narrator, Addy, has been inseparable with Beth, captain and queen bee of the cheerleading squad, all through high school. When a new coach arrives, immediately taking charge and stirring things up, the dynamic between Addy and Beth, as well as all the cheerleaders, changes. Increasingly fascinated with their new coach, Addy finds herself drawn into a grown-up, distinctly dangerous world, and cheerleading - or indeed life - will never be the same again.

Part thriller, part pitch-black high school drama, Dare Me is an absolute must for everyone who is into dark, edgy thrillers, Tom Perrotta’s oeuvre, and Heathers. I, personally, adore all of these things, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I enjoyed every single page. Abbott’s style, cut-glass  sharp, is perfect for the story, and I found myself taking note of particularly captivating phrases, such as “her eyes shot through with blood and boredom”. Abbott is clearly a natural when it comes to depicting the complexity (and absurdity) of teenage life, as well as a deeply readable thriller  writer. I will most definitely read up on her back catalogue, starting with her penultimate novel The End of Everything. 

As soon as I’d finished Dare Me, I picked up Cathi Unsworth’s latest novel Weirdo and was blown away with the realisation of just how many brilliant female literary thriller writers there are out there at the moment. Clearly, these are great times to be Helena, literary thriller reader extraordinaire. You’ve got your Flynn, your Hand, your French, your Bolton, and now, seemingly, your Abbott and your Unsworth. Keep them coming, please! (Yes, I’m looking at you, Jan.)

Weirdo also explores the world of teenage boredom and the combined allure and danger of transgressing into an adult world at too tender an age, although from a different angle. There are no cheerleaders in this story, only outcasts, freaks, Goths and bloody weirdos. For me, never the popular girl at school and clearly more of a Goth than a cheerleader type (I couldn’t do a backflip if my life depended upon it, but I do have everything Nick Cave and Joy Division have ever recorded), these are more comfortable, and relatable, turfs. Weirdo is razor sharp and emotionally intense, a declaration of love to the 80’s Goth scene as well as a pitch-perfect and haunting depiction of small town fear, prejudice, and secrecy. In 1984, the small coastal town - my Morrissey marinated mind immediately starts humming “this is the coastal town that they forgot to bomb” - of Ernemouth was shellshocked by the brutal murder of a teenage boy. Local outcast Corinne Woodrow, later dubbed the Wicked Witch of the East by the tabloids, has spent the last decades locked away in a mental institution after having been convicted of the crime. But did she actually do it? As cop turned private investigator Sean Ward takes on the case, he unearths old memories and secrets kept hidden by a close-knit community. Secrets: dark. Potential danger: yes. Oh yes.

When I first read about Weirdo, I was reminded of the premises of Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places. Both novels are partially set in the 1980’s, a notorious and violent crime at the dark heart of the story. Furthermore, both deal with fear of unknown subcultures and teenage phenomena, and alienation, poverty, and social injustice run deep in both novels so yes, I would say that there are definite similarities although the plots, settings, characters, and style are different. There  is also a nice punky noir feel to Unsworth’s prose that will, I daresay, appeal to fans of Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary books (Generation Loss, Available Dark). I have, ostensibly, issued myself with a book buying ban for the remainder of 2012 (seriously, my “to read” piles have never been higher, or more life threatening, for that matter) but I will make an exception for Unsworth. The Singer and Bad Penny Blues, come to mama! If I need to reason with myself, or those perilously towering book piles, I’ll just think of it as early Christmas gifts. 

Also recommended

The Girl on the Stairs by Louise Welsh

Louise Welsh has been a huge favourite of mine ever since I read her universally praised debut The Cutting Room, and this is the best one she’s written in years. I’d describe it as queer noir with a distinct Hitchcockian vibe. Great stuff.

Dolly by Susan Hill

There’s nothing quite as satisfying as curling up on the sofa on a rainy November night with a brand new ghost story from Susan Hill. Dolly isn’t as terrifying, or as good, as Hill’s number one ghost story, The Woman in Black, but it is atmospheric and intensely readable in that spooky/cosy M.R. James tradition I love so much.