!['The Lightkeepers' by Abby Geni](http://media.chicagomag.com/images/2016/0816/C201608-Best-of-Chicago-Breakout-Novel.jpg)
The Evanston resident who pitted man against wild in her 2013 short-story collection The Last Animal crafted a thrilling first novel this year. The Lightkeepers (Counterpoint, $25) is set on the hellish Farallon Islands, where gulls, sharks, and mice skew murderous—and a nature photographer becomes entangled in her colleague’s mysterious death.