13 1/2

With 13 ¿, Nevada Barr, New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning Anna Pigeon novels, has written a taut and terrifying psychological thriller. It carries the reader from horrifying 1970's murder spree of a child-dubbed "Butcher Boy" by a shocked public- in Rochester, Minnesota, to Polly, the abused daughter of Mississippi "trailer trash," to post-Katrina New Orleans.

In Jackson Square in the French Quarter, a tarot card reader told Polly Deschamps she would be a success. Thirt...