With her debut story collection, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” (Vintage, 256 pages, $13.95), Karen Russell finds herself in good company. New York magazine put her on a list of 25 promising writers under age 26, and in April, Granta magazine brought international attention when it included Russell on its list of best young American novelists.

Such lists are subjective, but Granta’s track record is impressive; more than a decade earlier, Granta lauded emerging writers Lorrie Moore, Edwidge Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides and Madison Smartt Bell.

It’s too early to say whether Russell will join the pantheon, but she writes with a narrative verve and energy that push the 10 stories of “St. Lucy’s” to odd, wonderful places. Many of her stories are set in the swampy regions of Florida. In “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” a 12-year-old is left to look after her family’s alligator theme park with her older, possibly possessed sister.

Other tales play around with the fantastic, such as the title piece that has nuns trying to educate girls who have been raised by wolves, and “Haunting Olivia,” in which two brothers search for the ghost of their sister. The scenarios here are absurd and bizarre, and the characters are even stranger, but Russell’s writing points to great things to come.

“The Looming Tower,” by Lawrence Wright (Vintage, 496 pages), $15.95

Subtitled “Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,” Wright’s stunning book traces the development of Islamic fundamentalism after World War II. Critics universally praised the book as a standout in the flood of 9/11-related titles. Plain Dealer Book Editor Karen R. Long called the book “indispensable” and found Wright’s reporting “so good that it will matter in 100 years.” “The Looming Tower” won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

“Pound for Pound,” by F.X. Toole (HarperCollins, 400 pages), $14.95

Toole’s first novel after his story collection “Rope Burns” returns to the boxing ring, where aging trainer Dan Cooley takes on a troubled young boxer. Published posthumously, the novel was edited from a 900-page manuscript, and while critics found flaws with the book’s sprawl, they liked its verisimilitude. Sports Illustrated said Toole’s characters “inhabit a world no writer ever understood better, and speak a language as real as a boxer’s bruises.”

“The Lost,” by Daniel Mendelsohn (Harper Perennial, 528 pages), $15.95

Mendelsohn’s memoir is also a detective story documenting his search for information about his grandfather’s brother Shmiel and his family, who remained in their Polish-Ukrainian village after Mendelsohn’s grandfather fled the coming Holocaust. In The Plain Dealer, David Walton called the book “extraordinary” and said Mendelsohn’s writing “harks back to the Greeks and Hebrews,” evoking “the richness of that lost culture – its resiliency and its sad foreknowledge.”

“A Field of Darkness,” by Cornelia Read (Grand Central, 336 pages), $12.99

Read’s debut mystery centers on Madeline Dare, a small-town reporter torn between the values of her family’s wealthy heritage and those of her working-class husband. When Madeline learns about a 20-year-old local murder, she investigates the crime and discovers a family connection. Plain Dealer reviewer Michael Leone described Read as “a natural, fluent storyteller” who “paints all characters – major and minor – with enjoyable depth.”

“Tiger Force,” by Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss (Back Bay, 416 pages), $14.99

Sallah, Weiss and fellow reporter Joe Mahr won a Pulitzer Prize for the investigation that forms the basis for this book on Tiger Force, an elite platoon that committed hundreds of atrocities during the Vietnam War. The San Francisco Chronicle pointed to the book as “one shining example of how journalism can fulfill its most noble aims: informing and, consequently, empowering the public.”