In Owens's evocative debut, Kya Clark is a young woman growing up practically on her own in the wild marshes outside Barkley Cove, a small coastal community in North Carolina. In 1969, local lothario Chase Andrews is found dead, and Kya, now 23 and known as the "Marsh Girl," is suspected of his murder. As the local sheriff and his deputy gather evidence against her, the narrative flashes back to 1952 to tell Kya's story. Abandoned at a young age by her mother, she is left in the care of her hard-drinking father. Unable to fit in at school, Kya grows up ignorant until a shrimper's son, Tate Walker, befriends her and teaches her how to read. After Tate goes off to college, Kya meets Chase, with whom she begins a tempestuous relationship. The novel culminates in a long trial, with Kya's fate hanging in the balance. Kya makes for an unforgettable heroine. Owens memorably depicts the small-town drama and courtroom theatrics, but perhaps best of all is her vivid portrayal of the singular North Carolina setting. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Owens' (Secrets of the Savanna, 2006) first novel is a leisurely, lyrical tale of a young woman growing up in isolation in the 1950s and 60s, in a marsh on the North Carolina coast. Kya is abandoned by her troubled mother when she is only six. Soon after, her four, much-older siblings leave, as does her alcoholic father a couple of years later. As Kya matures and teaches herself to be a naturalist, she is torn between two slightly older boys: kind, observant Tate and rascally, attractive Chase. Chase dies falling from a fire tower in his twenties, and the investigation of his possible murder, which alternates with the story of Kya's coming-of-age, provides much of the novel's suspense. Because the characters are painted in broad, unambiguous strokes, this is not so much a naturalistic novel as a mythic one, with its appeal rising from Kya's deep connection to the place where she makes her home, and to all of its creatures.--Margaret Quamme Copyright 2018 Booklist

A wild child's isolated, dirt-poor upbringing in a Southern coastal wilderness fails to shield her from heartbreak or an accusation of murder."The Marsh Girl," "swamp trash"Catherine "Kya" Clark is a figure of mystery and prejudice in the remote North Carolina coastal community of Barkley Cove in the 1950s and '60s. Abandoned by a mother no longer able to endure her drunken husband's beatings and then by her four siblings, Kya grows up in the careless, sometimes-savage company of her father, who eventually disappears, too. Alone, virtually or actually, from age 6, Kya learns both to be self-sufficient and to find solace and company in her fertile natural surroundings. Owens (Secrets of the Savanna, 2006, etc.), the accomplished co-author of several nonfiction books on wildlife, is at her best reflecting Kya's fascination with the birds, insects, dappled light, and shifting tides of the marshes. The girl's collections of shells and feathers, her communion with the gulls, her exploration of the wetlands are evoked in lyrical phrasing which only occasionally tips into excess. But as the child turns teenager and is befriended by local boy Tate Walker, who teaches her to read, the novel settles into a less magical, more predictable pattern. Interspersed with Kya's coming-of-age is the 1969 murder investigation arising from the discovery of a man's body in the marsh. The victim is Chase Andrews, "star quarterback and town hot shot," who was once Kya's lover. In the eyes of a pair of semicomic local police officers, Kya will eventually become the chief suspect and must stand trial. By now the novel's weaknesses have become apparent: the monochromatic characterization (good boy Tate, bad boy Chase) and implausibilities (Kya evolves into a polymatha published writer, artist, and poet), yet the closing twist is perhaps its most memorable oddity.Despite some distractions, there's an irresistible charm to Owens' first foray into nature-infused romantic fiction. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

HO-HO-??, kiddies. Here comes Bad Santa with another gift sack filled with mysteries, crime stories and body parts. Ugh, what's that gooey red stuff dripping out of Santa's bag? Not to worry, just some melted candy canes. Now, on to this year's rundown of the best Good Books for Bad Grown-Ups. MOST ORIGINAL MURDER method: For lashing a guy to his wheelchair, sealing his mouth with superglue and tossing him into a river, a Christmas angel goes to Ken Bruen's IN THE GALWAY SILENCE (Mysterious Press, $26). Better double the angels, though, because there are two victims - twins, no less. SOFTEST HARD-BOILED PRIVATE EYE: That would be Isaiah (IQ) Quintabe, Joe Ide's brainy P.I. from Los Angeles, who is paid for his services in casseroles, cookies and reindeer sweaters. In WRECKED (Mulholland, $27), the detective accepts a painting from a beautiful client who hires him to find her mother. But this modest missingpersons case leads to a vengeance drama involving an electric cattle prod with enough volts "to knock a steer sideways." MOST UNPRINTABLE DIALOGUE: Lots of competition here, but the angel goes to John Sandford's madly entertaining Virgil Flowers mystery HOLY GHOST (Putnam, $29). Virgil, an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, brings a wry sense of humor to the miraculous when the Blessed Virgin pays a visit to a church in Wheatfield, making a bundle of dough for the tiny town. CREEPIEST SETTING: No contest! Anne Perry wins that one with her latest Victorian mystery, DARK TIDE RISING (Ballantine, $28). William Monk, commander of the Thames River Police, takes us to Jacob's Island, a place "like death," where rotting houses are slowly sinking into a "thick, viscous mud that sucked anything of weight into itself, like quicksand." MOST CUTTING WIT: Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski walks away with this angel. In SHELL GAME (Morrow, $27.99), the Chicago P.I. slips into an office after hours by posing as a maid, reasoning that "anyone who's cleaning up after you is part of your furniture, not a person." Needing a foreign language to hide behind, she improvises with the lyrics to "Vissi d'arte." TOUGHEST PUZZLE: I dare you to match wits with Keigo Higashino. Giles Murray's translation of NEWCOMER (Minotaur, $27.99) presents Higashino's fabled Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective, Kyoichiro Kaga (he of the "razor-sharp mind and bloodhound nature"), with a series of minor enigmas wrapped around a brainbusting central mystery: Who murdered a woman with no enemies? PRETTIEST LANGUAGE: That makes two angels for Ken Bruen, whose Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor, talks like an angel himself - only dirtier. IN THE GALWAY SILENCE (Mysterious Press, $26) gives this hotheaded detective good cause for rage, being a fictional treatment of, among other things, a notorious case of systemic fetal death and infanticide in Irish convents. BEST MILEAGE FROM A ROLLING STONE: There's no moss on Jack Reacher. In PAST TENSE (Delacorte, $28.99), Lee Child's peripatetic hero wanders with a purpose, all the way to his father's birthplace in Laconia, N.H. Reacher's search for his roots in this sad old mill town ("a horrific tableau of clouds of smoke and raging fires") is surprisingly sentimental, but brace yourself for the subplot. BEST CHARACTERS OUT OF THEIR DEPTH: What better definition of George Pelecanos's great guys, so human and so doomed? In the man who came uptown (Mulholland/Little, Brown, $27), Michael Hudson emerges from prison a bona fide bibliophile, thanks to the librarian who turned him away from crime and onto books. But this can't last when bad friends realize they need a good guy to drive a getaway car. BEST NATURE STUDY, RED IN TOOTH & CLAW: Delia Owens speaks softly in WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Putnam, $26), a tenderly told first novel that begins in 1969, when two boys on bikes come upon a body half submerged in a swamp. The rest of the story reveals how the corpse got there and why we might wish it had never been found. MOST COLORFUL CHARACTER NAMESJames Lee Burke is rightly admired for his lush Louisiana bayou crimescapes. But ROBICHEAUX (Simon & Schuster, $27.99) reminds us of his talent for naming locals like Baby Cakes Babineau and Pookie the Possum Domingue, along with a contract killer called Chester Wimple. ("Sometimes people call me Smiley.") LOUDEST BANG FOR THE BUCK: Half the members of the Los Angeles Police Department's bomb squad are blown to smithereens in Thomas Perry's THE BOMB MAKER (Mysterious Press, $26). "Bombs were acts of murder," Perry allows, but "they were also jokes on you, riddles the bomber hoped were too tough for you." WEEPIEST WEEPER: Wounded World War I veterans and grieving widows make up much of the shrunken population of the town of Wolfpit, encountered by Inspector Ian Rutledge in THE GATEKEEPER (Morrow, $26.99). Charles Todd's hero, himself a victim of shell shock, is one of the moodiest detectives in the genre. COOLEST DEBUT: By their taste in music shall ye know them. Joe King Oliver, a New York private eye who makes his debut in Walter Mosley's new crime novel, DOWN THE RIVER UNTO THE SEA (Mulholland/ Little, Brown, $27), went into prison with a love of classic jazz masters like Fats Waller. He emerged with a taste for the tormented sounds of Thelonious Monk. MOST SIMPÁTICO DETECTIVE: Donna Leon's Venetian policeman, Commissario Guido Brunetti, bares his bleeding heart in THE TEMPTATION OF FORGIVENESS (Atlantic Monthly, $26) when he aids a woman whose 15-year-old son is taking drugs. He advises her to cook dinner for her children, "to show them you're all right and life is normal." CRUELEST MURDERER: Jeffery Deaver indulges his singular flair for ghastly irony in THE CUTTING EDGE (Grand Central, $28). HIS killer unkindly murders couples at their happiest moments - when, say, they're buying an engagement ring or picking out a bridal gown. Don't plan your wedding until you've read this one. NASTIEST TWIST: The F.B.I. agent in Michael Koryta's HOW IT HAPPENED (Little, Brown, $27) is double-crossed by a fiend who leads him to a false dumping ground of murder victims. "The Bureau rarely fires agents," a colleague pitilessly reassures the disgraced agent. "We just bury them." QUIRKIEST SLEUTH: Charlie Parker, John Connolly's private eye, is chronically depressed, which makes him both endearing and unpredictable: "If there's trouble, he'll find it. If there isn't trouble, he'll make some." That predilection suits his heroic role in the woman in the woods (Emily Bestier/Atria, $26.99) as the savior of battered women. MURDER MOST BESTIAL: Poachers are killing black bears in the Turk Mountain Preserve in rural Virginia, which riles Rice Moore, the nature-loving hero of James A. McLaughlin's BEARSKIN (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99), a loner who finds the "complex social network" of bears far more interesting than the human dynamics at the local bar. MARILYN STASIO has covered, crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.