Shelf Awareness for Readers for Friday, May 26, 2017

"What kind of maniac travels in time?" The answer is Dr. Rachel Katzman--a Jane Austen fan with a keen desire to retrieve the manuscript of the author's supposedly unfinished seventh novel, and to identify the mysterious disease that caused her death at age 41. Under the auspices of the Royal Institute for Special Topics in Physics, Rachel and her colleague Liam Finucane travel to 1815, where they pose as a wealthy brother and sister newly arrived in England from Jamaica. From there, Kathleen Flynn spins an entertaining story of time travel, complicated romantic connections and Austenalia in her debut novel, The Jane Austen Project.

Rachel's wry, observant narrative voice teaches readers the delights and hardships of life in 1815 with rich historical detail. Flynn renders the whole Austen clan vividly: charming Henry, self-absorbed James, neurotic Mrs. Austen, disapproving Cassandra. Jane is as witty and wise a friend as Rachel could wish for, but the latter can never forget that she has a set return date and a task to complete. As Jane's health worsens and their time begins to run out, Rachel also must face the fact that her feelings for Liam are decidedly un-sisterly. Flynn's conclusion raises (and leaves lingering) a few unsettling questions: How much change is too much? Can anyone travel back in time without drastically affecting the future? And is a manuscript--even a completed version of The Watsons--worth a life?

Witty, well-researched and thought-provoking, Flynn's debut is a fun and unusual addition to the canon of Austen tributes and pastiche. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

The Witchfinder's Sister by Beth Underdown opens in 1645, as Alice Hopkins, pregnant and newly widowed, returns in disgrace to her brother's house near London. The two siblings were close as children--after Matthew was disfigured as an infant, Alice was his constant companion--but as adults they have been estranged since Alice, raised Protestant, married a Catholic. Now, dependent upon her brother's favor, she is appalled to realize that Matthew has begun a campaign to ferret out witches by exploiting the pettiness often found in small villages. "Once you have said a name, there is no unsaying," Alice realizes. This debut novel illuminates the malevolence of a flawed and self-righteous man obsessed with women who flout society's expectations.

Matthew's indiscriminate hunt to eradicate witches gains power with every woman he convicts. "The number of women my brother Matthew has killed, as far as I can reckon it, is one hundred and six," Alice writes in her daily book. She is determined to stop him, and in doing so puts her own life in peril, for Matthew's monstrosity means that even his sister can be silenced.

Matthew Hopkins was a real man who instigated numerous witch trials in England between 1645 and 1647. While the trials in Salem, Mass., may be better known, an estimated 40,000-60,000 people, mostly women, were killed as witches in England. Fans of Geraldine Brooks and Sarah Dunant will welcome this well-researched and emotionally charged historical novel, told from the often invisible woman's perspective. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

What happens if you take a piece of Silicon Valley and drop it near Manhattan's Madison Square Park? In BuzzFeed culture writer Doree Shafrir's first novel, Startup, you get the same laid-back techie incubator open offices with nerf guns, iced coffee kegerators and lunchtime yoga classes--but you also get huddled sidewalk-smoking employees and 4 a.m. Uber rides to shotgun flats in Greenpoint. Hers is a funny, grittier New York version of kids in their 30s wearing fat do-not-disturb earphones while coding, Slacking, Tweeting and Instagramming to hustle a new app company from nowhere into that rarified billion-dollar unicornland.

Mack McAllister is the wunderkind founder/CEO of TakeOff, whose corporate motto is "Do good work, and the work will help the good." He's approaching a second round of a $500-million venture capital valuation when he inadvertently texts Isabel, the company v-p, a dick pic outside of their usual ephemeral Snapchat sexting. Katya, a young edgy journalist, sees it at a networking bar party when Isabel carelessly leaves her phone while on a bathroom break. With a screengrab of the pic, Katya has a story that could take her from trolling endless tweet and retweet gossip and "into that scrum... with the quote or angle that no one else has found yet."

As Shafrir's story unfolds, it moves easily from the sendup of techie emoji, acronyms, and marketing and business palaver into the more tangled politics of startups. She doesn't miss a lick and she's clearly having a good time. But Startup is more than entertainment--it pushes lots of the right buttons. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Inspired by the true story of Maine's largest fire in 1947, Anita Shreve takes readers into the fictional life of Grace Holland; her husband, Gene; their two children; and their respective in-laws. Grace is a stay-at-home mom, content for the most part, despite the controlling influence of her husband and the lack of passion she feels toward him.

Suddenly an out-of-control fire races along the Maine coastline, threatening her family. With Gene gone to fight the flames, it's up to Grace to save herself and her children by cowering in the ocean. When the danger passes, she is homeless, penniless and cannot find her husband, but without his dominance, she finds inner strengths and passions she never knew she had. She learns to drive, gets a job and discovers that life is rich and vibrant, full of open doors she only dreamt of finding when living with Gene.

In this mood-centric, romantic novel, Shreve interweaves Grace's musings about her desires with the day-to-day details of life for a woman with two small children who has few worldly experiences, but must forge ahead if she hopes to live. Authentically set in a postwar coastal town, where the year-round residents and the rich don't usually mingle, Shreve conveys the proper tone of obedience and married obligations while exploring the ambitions, desires and drives of a woman suddenly experiencing freedom and her own strength for the first time. Grace's gradual awakening to her own abilities is deftly depicted and leaves readers haunted by her story long after the last page. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

The stories in Osama Alomar's collection The Teeth of the Comb and Other Stories skirt the line between poetry and prose. They are exceptionally brief, even for the realm of short stories, varying in length from one sentence to a few pages. They read like fables, whimsical and sometimes dark reflections on life, death, struggles, happiness and the human condition, packed into tales of talking animals, anthropomorphized objects and metaphorical searches.

In the title story, the teeth of a comb are envious of the class differences of humans and so strive to increase their length, only to be discarded as useless upon success. "I turned into a swamp of inactivity, and because of this no one was able to see the gems in my depths," forms the entirety of "Swamp." Two monetary bills discuss agency and dignity in "The Sold Nations," and a feather questions the wind's cruelty in "The Feather and the Wind." A person searches the globe for humanity in "Journey of Life," and lion cubs learn the limits of their mother's power in "The Strongest."

The stories, translated from Arabic by Alomar and translator C.J. Powell, leap from subject to subject. Each is unexpected, new and distinct, but carries within it a lesson in morality. It is impossible to read the collection and not take Alomar's meanings to heart. Be kind, the stories seem to say. Be wise. Be human. Be present. Stand up. Take risks. Try and fail and try again. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

In her debut novel, Amita Trasi addresses poverty, human trafficking and the power of true friendship through a story of searching and self-discovery.

In early 1990s Mumbai, two little girls from very different worlds are thrown together and form a deep bond. Quiet Mukta, a low-caste girl born to a destiny of temple prostitution, is rescued from her fate at age 10 by an upper-middle class foster family with an eight-year-old daughter, Tara. Although Tara's parents treat Mukta like a favored servant, their daughter treats her like a sister and helps her learn to read. But one night in 1993, a man kidnaps Mukta from the room where she and Tara lie sleeping.

Eventually, Tara and her family immigrate to the United States, where Tara's father commits suicide in 2004. She learns afterward that he believed Mukta was alive. Despite the enormity of the task, she returns to Mumbai in search of her foster sister, aided by a former street boy from her past who now runs a nonprofit. In alternating flashback chapters, Mukta reveals the truth of her disappearance to the reader in heartrending detail.

While Tara's narrative sometimes feels like an afterthought to Mukta's more compelling and dramatic history, Trasi breathes astounding complexity into both main characters, avoiding a simple victim/rescuer relationship. Themes of remorse, social taboos and family weave together into a surprising and affecting climax. The Color of Our Sky portrays India as a complicated society where tradition sometimes wars with human rights. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

As a Nepalese native living in the United States, Samrat Upadhyay (The City Son, Buddha's Orphans) has a particular viewpoint on the connections between his former and adopted homes. And while Mad Country takes its title from a story set entirely in Nepal, other pieces in this collection of short works prove that the name could easily describe the United States. Indeed, Upadhyay's writing is best when it blurs the line between experiences, showing how people can conflate cultures as they look for meaning in their own lives.

That conflation is best represented in standout pieces like "Freak Street," in which an American from Ohio identifies so closely with her Nepalese hosts she begins to think of herself as native to a country she's lived in for six months. In the Kafkaesque "Dreaming of Ghana," a young man's dreams of an indistinct African country bleed into his real life, with heartbreaking consequences. And in the final story, "America the Great Equalizer," a Nepalese graduate student loses his sense of identity after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the resulting riots.

A lesser author might use such stories to push a "humans are all the same" theme or, worse, attempt to judge cultures against each other. But Upadhyay is less interested in culture clash than culture shock, and how people's identities can be rewritten in the face of that shock. If anything, that is the unifying theme Mad Country skillfully illuminates: the attempt by the psyche to re-create itself in the face of trauma. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

In Orly Konig's debut novel, it's been 16 years since protagonist Emma Metz has set foot in her Maryland hometown. A terrible accident at the local Jumping Frog Farm involving her two best friends--a girl named Jilli and a horse named Jack--drove her away and she's never looked back. Until now.

Her emotionally distant father, who'd never recovered from the death of Emma's mother, has just passed away. As she organizes his affairs and sorts through his belongings, Emma is reminded of her deep and surprisingly abiding love for the farm where she spent the happiest years of her childhood. She also discovers a series of letters and drawings that reveal a closer connection between her damaged family and the farm than she could have guessed. Can Emma let the pain of the last 16 years go in the hopes of a happier future?

Gently paced and introspective, The Distance Home is told in the present, with important points in Emma's past featured through a series of flashbacks. Emma matures from an eight-year-old riding for the first time to a 16-year-old winning competitions left and right, coming full circle through her rise toward horse-riding superiority, fall from grace and journey back to the Jumping Frog Farm. A moving story of homecoming, forgiveness and reconciliation, The Distance Home will appeal to readers of Kristin Harmel or Katherine Reay. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

The unnamed protagonist in Fuminori Nakamura's The Boy in the Earth is struggling with depression and despair. On the days he manages to show up to work, he drives a cab aimlessly around Tokyo; on the days he stays home, he contemplates the many ways he could die. "My own existence was futile, utterly powerless--even if I devoted my entire being I couldn't leave the slightest mark on this world."

There's very little in the way of plot, making Nakamura's short book read more like a character study than a traditional novel. That's not to suggest that it's dull, however. Its lack of plot proves compelling from the very start, and its occasional aimlessness and moody darkness feels true to the main character's inner thoughts and feelings.

An impending sense of doom and violence pervades The Boy in the Earth: the taxi driver is robbed at knifepoint, contemplates killing himself and reflects on the horrible abuse he suffered at the hands of his adoptive family as a child. Though these trials are particular to this character, Nakamura's telling of them makes the taxi driver's troubles feel universal. To what lengths will an individual go to survive? What makes that survival meaningful? Who--and what--matters? Who does not? Translated from Japanese by Allison Markin Powell, The Boy in the Earth offers readers a darkly philosophic musing on violence, history, purpose and what it means to be alive, told in elegant prose. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Claire Cameron (The Bear) explores the lives of a modern-day archeologist and the skeleton she discovers in the compelling novel The Last Neanderthal.

Rose Gale is an ambitious archeologist obsessed with her latest find in a cave in France: the remains of a female Neanderthal buried intimately with a male Homo sapiens. The artifacts Rose uncovers, as well as the burial of the two species together, cast doubt on long-held theories about Neanderthals and modern humans. In a race against time, she works to unearth more evidence despite her advancing pregnancy.

About 45,000 years earlier, a Neanderthal family is living in that same region of France. Big Mother, the matriarch, is becoming frail as her oldest remaining daughter, Girl, comes of age. Cameron puts the reader in the mind of Girl to experience the world as she does: the comfort of family, the excitement of the summer fish run and the serious dangers inherent in her daily life.

The Last Neanderthal is emotionally engaging and, as it alternates millennia, echoes of the past arise in Rose's modern life. She and Girl are both pregnant and experiencing great changes in their lives. As Rose continues to excavate the skeleton, readers learn more about Girl's life in this immersive story that unites the two women across time. Cameron infuses the interrelated stories with warmth, enhanced by vivid details about Neanderthal experiences. --Suzan L. Jackson, freelance writer and author of Book by Book blog

Michael Callahan (Searching for Grace Kelly) possesses a deft and winning skill at re-creating the dreamy romanticism and archaic sexual politics of America in 1949. He also crafts compelling and empathetic characters who capture the imagination and concern of readers. Callahan gives a contemporary edge to a nostalgic era, much like the way Todd Haynes's films Carol and Far from Heaven saluted and updated Douglas Sirk's great 1950s melodramas. Callahan essentially takes those wonderful Rona Jaffe page-turners about 1950s "working girls" and retrofits them with modern insights and sensibilities, without winking asides but rather loving attention to period detail.

To please her mother, 19-year-old Betty Jane Welch enters the Miss Delaware contest and wins. This propels her to Atlantic City and the 1950 Miss America pageant, where she meets and immediately falls in love with her pageant-assigned escort, Griffin McAllister. Betty is slow to realize that her dream man is more of a nightmare--psychotic with violent voices in his head. After she wins the pageant, Betty starts feeling hemmed in by its restrictive rules and, fearing she will lose the first man she's loved, she agrees to sneak away with him to New York City. When the newly crowned Miss America is reported missing and perhaps kidnapped, the police and press join the chase, and soon Griffin's paranoid delusions have flesh-and-blood pursuers--which leads to murder.

Callahan's fast-paced psychological thriller is exciting and entertaining. And the vintage Miss America pageant setting is as fascinating as the characters. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Lush, edgy, lyrical, bad-ass, pensive, taxing--it's hard to paint Oola into a picture that captures its striking prose and fearless curiosity about identity and obsession. In performance artist, drag queen, recent Stanford graduate and Pushcart nominee Brittany Newell's first novel, 25-year-old Leif housesits for his moneyed New England family's network of friends with empty domiciles around the world. Oola is a striking six-foot music student raised by a metal band roadie and a casino hostess. They meet at a hipster London flat party; and with the impulsiveness of unencumbered youth of means, they take off on a global romance in great houses across Europe, the Middle East, Canada and, finally, at a remote cabin in Big Sur.

As the sparkle of discovery shines on the hidden pleasures of sex, drugs, food, conversation and the mysteries of each other, Leif becomes obsessed with Oola's body and habits, turning his observations into what he envisions will be a novel of celebration. He boasts: "I loved to watch Oola in the shower.... I came to memorize her postures, the hygienic loop (rinse, wash, repeat) that, like prayers of digestion, lent me a glimmer of infinity via the banal."

Like Leif's book, Oola is a novel of discovery--ever shifting and digging deeper. It is a diary, a romance, a dark trip over the edge. Capturing today's zeitgeist of an experimental, hungry, indulgent youth, it also harkens back to the masculine, queer, trippy work of William Burroughs and Hubert Selby. But Newell is very much her own woman, and make no mistake. As the title suggests, this is Oola's story--not Leif's. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

When V.I. Warshawski is asked to look for an aspiring filmmaker who has become the main suspect in a break-in, the Chicago private detective follows the young man's trail to Lawrence, Kansas. Apparently August, the filmmaker, was headed there with former Hollywood actress Emerald Ferring, to make a documentary of her early years spent in the area.

But August and Emerald disappeared not long after they arrived in town. When a troubled woman calls V.I. to say she saw them, an attempt is made to silence the woman before she can talk. Then people start dying--residents who might have information about August and Emerald's whereabouts, as well as what happened three decades ago around a missile silo in town. The military says the silo has been decommissioned, but V.I. discovers it may not be as harmless as it appears.

After more than 30 years, V.I. remains an appealing protagonist in Sara Paretsky's Fallout. The private eye's forthright manner and low tolerance for lies are a tonic in an age when falsehoods dominate current events. Her assistant, the golden retriever Peppy, is a joy, as is the humor V.I. shows regarding residents who claim to know nothing about August and Emerald, despite knowing everything about everyone's business.

But Fallout covers deadly matters, too, and tackles social issues, including racial tensions in the South. Paretsky's writing remains relevant while reminding readers of lessons from the past, for as one character says, what's happening now is "just another chapter in a long book." --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train) delivers another dark, spellbinding suspense novel with Into the Water. This time, the search to unravel a mysterious death focuses on the river that cuts through Beckford, a small, northern British town. Nicknamed the "Drowning Pool," the river is where, over the centuries, local women--outsiders as well as misfits from within the community--have died under tragic, often suspicious, circumstances.

Danielle "Nel" Abbott--a single mother, successful photographer and lifetime Beckford resident who had been writing a book about the Drowning Pool, its history and its secrets--has become a suicide casualty at the very place of horror she had been researching. Her younger sister, Jules Abbott, gladly fled Beckford years before. An unmarried social worker in London whose bitterness and resentment kept her estranged from Nel for years, Jules returns to Beckford to sort out the "bloody mess" and care for Nel's outspoken and rebellious 15-year-old daughter, Lena. Neither believes that Nel killed herself, and Lena also has doubts about the suicide of her best friend, Katie Whittaker, at the Drowning Pool six months earlier. Katie's inconsolable parents are wracked with guilt. Were they so focused on their anxious, sensitive son that they didn't give proper attention to their confident, over-achieving--yet obviously vulnerable--daughter?

Hawkins keeps readers guessing while exploring the overt and subtle ways trauma, grief and long-buried secrets can affect minds, hearts and motivations. A growing undertow of suspense builds as some characters, consciously and subconsciously, cannot face who they are, so they reinvent themselves and their memories. This intricate story is filled with red herrings and surprising reversals that probe the tangled depths of family loyalty. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

In a viciously delicious thriller, Lee Irby (The Van) introduces a charming, refined protagonist who could be a monster, a deranged jilted lover or simply one of love's losers. From beginning to end, the only thing readers can rely on is that the narrator is a liar.

Edwin Stith is a mild-mannered, unassuming English professor at a "leafy liberal arts school" in Ithaca, N.Y., whose failed writing career, recent divorce and sexual impotency provide ready fodder for sympathy. A dutiful son, he's headed home to Richmond, Va., for his mother's wedding. However, he's aware this story in and of itself has no teeth, so he mentions to the reader that he may also be on the run for murdering his ex-wife, Bev. Or maybe he didn't. Or maybe he killed a waitress at a truck stop--or maybe not. Maybe Eddie himself is the murder victim. "It doesn't much matter," he devilishly assures us. "Mine, hers, his. You want a body and I want to give you one."

To find out, readers must come along for the ride as Eddie reconnects with his wealthy, aging mother, who's marrying a man Eddie's age; his long-lost high school sweetheart, Leigh Rose; and a handful of old school nemeses and acquaintances who mean Eddie and his rekindled romance no good. Riding shotgun with Eddie will have even the doughtiest reader feeling claustrophobic, hostage to a man who will say anything to keep an audience. Irby sculpts every thrill of terror out of pure psychological manipulation, adeptly batting the reader around like a catnip mouse. Unreliable is tense, hypnotic and elegantly assembled. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In the 22nd century, humanity has colonized the solar system, including the moon. The Society of Cousins is the most misunderstood lunar colony, a matriarchy where men are given enormous social and sexual liberties, but not the right to vote. The leaders of other colonies--particularly the patriarchal Persepolis--are suspicious of tyranny, and send a delegation to investigate the condition of men.

When the Society of Cousin's biggest male celebrity tries to gain custody of his son, he unwittingly fuels a rebellion led by his volatile lover. In Persepolis, an expat from the Society has married into a wealthy ice-mining family. When he's sent back on a dangerous mission, he must choose between conflicting loyalties.

If the literary zeitgeist has been dominated by dystopias, The Moon and the Other evokes Dickens and H.G. Wells. It's science fiction with heart, romance with ideas. It's utopian and it's savvy. Kessel's droll, sideways humor surfaces periodically, as in "uplifted" dogs and casual allusions to punitive "debtors freezers." He explores gender identity and politics, portraying the complexity of social customs and relationships with neither jaundice nor bullishness. Focused on the lives of his characters, Kessel keeps pace yet makes room for his meticulously thought-out future world.

It's a grownup vision: not because it's serious, but because it's wondrous. It extrapolates not just society and technology, but real-world emotions and human behavior as well. This moon is a place we've never seen before in fiction. --Zak Nelson, writer and bookseller

Millions of people around the world are dead thanks to the flesh-eating black spiders that flowed across the earth like a tsunami. China used nuclear bombs to try to contain the infestation, cities have set intentional fires to burn them out, and President Stephanie Pilgrim and her cabinet have Los Angeles under military quarantine. If troops can locate and destroy the thousands of egg sacs laid everywhere, the human race might survive. That is, until a much larger, glowing egg sac is found in Japan, and changes everything.

Picking up where The Hatching left off, Ezekiel Boone's Skitter takes readers on another scary, whirlwind ride around a world where death awaits those unfortunate enough to be in the path of the creepiest spiders ever. New characters demonstrate the grisly demise that lies ahead for many; one man becomes a prophet with thousands of followers. Those who have survival instincts go to great lengths to protect their loved ones, but the focus remains on the central characters who played crucial parts in book one: Stephanie Pilgrim; Manny, Steph's lover and White House chief of staff; Melanie Guyer, expert on spiders; Mike Rich, Minneapolis cop and devoted father; and Shotgun and Gordo in their survival bunker in the desert. The narrative jumps quickly from location to location, building tension and momentum as the spiders continue to spread, following their own agenda. Boone has written another unsettling cliffhanger, destined to increase arachnophobia worldwide. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

In the post-apocalyptic ruins of an unnamed city, a woman named Rachel survives by scavenging for food, water and biotech--living experimental refuse cast off by the defunct Company. She braves desperate fellow humans, inhuman organic horrors and the predatory Mord, a behemoth bear that terrorizes the city. Rachel brings her discoveries to Wick, her partner in love and survival, whose mysterious past with the Company helps him turn Rachel's treasures into drugs--for profit and personal use. Balcony Cliffs, their hidden compound, is precariously perched between Mord's territory and the territory of a rival biotech dealer called the Magician.

Rachel's latest find threatens to upend their uneasy existence. It's a blob clinging to Mord's fur, a thing neither plant nor animal that quickly becomes as threatening as it is unusual. Rachel names this amorphous entity Borne, and decides to keep it despite Wick's reservations. Borne speaks, grows and learns under Rachel's care, ever curious about its possible personhood and purpose--one that may decide the fate of Rachel, Wick and the city itself.

Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance), proves himself a wizard of weird fiction with Borne. The titular creature is lovably charismatic, vaguely menacing and presents a peculiar parable of parenthood in its relationship with Rachel. The setting is a delightfully bizarre mix of post-apocalypse, dystopia and light science fiction, blended with the creeping unease of the unknowable that made Southern Reach so memorable, and delivered with VanderMeer's keen eye for natural--and unnatural--detail. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Cory Doctorow--Internet doyen and successful author in a range of genres, from YA novels like Little Brother to the nonfiction manifesto Information Doesn't Want to Be Free--returns to adult fiction with Walkaway. The novel opens in a dystopia where bantering malcontents Seth, Natalie and Hubert, Etc. (so nicknamed for his 20-odd middle names) meet at a "Communist party"; they flirt with counterculture ideas while dodging the watchful eye of the establishment. When the party ends in tragedy, the trio is inspired to drop out of society and join the "walkaways," a group of people resembling technophilic hippies in their idealism and revolutionary lifestyle. Each character finds his or her place among the dreamers after making the harsh adjustment to a society organized in direct counterpoint to the dog-eat-dog, wildly unequal capitalist norms of what they come to refer to as Default.

The walkaways' idealism is supported by nearly miraculous technological achievements--they live in a "post-scarcity" society where questions of food and shelter are more or less solved by printers capable of manufacturing almost anything at a moment's notice. They even seem to have cracked a problem that Default's hyper-rich "zottas" have failed to solve for years: how to live forever. That discovery prompts a vicious crackdown from Default, escalating quickly into a war pitting hacktivist egalitarians against tyrannical robber barons.

Walkaway is awash in unrestrained nerdery. Doctorow is teaching, but he's also having fun, and it's a pleasure to watch him twist the two together. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Using euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation techniques," the George W. Bush administration assured the world it was treating terror suspects humanely. However, in 2009 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence learned otherwise. The CIA had been sanctioning brutal interrogations that went against the laws of war the United States helped to write and promised to uphold.

Staff from the committee spent the next five years examining every possible bit of evidence that could illuminate the CIA's practices. Their work culminated in a 6,770-page "torture report." From that massive report, a summary of more than 500 pages was made available to the general public, leading Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón--authors of The 9/11 Report--to collaborate once again, to depict the Senate Committee's summary in their graphic novel The Torture Report.

Jacobson and Colón have the unenviable responsibility of delivering shocking, disturbing, horrific details of torment and persecution to readers who may prefer to know little about these acts. But the result is exemplary. The illustrations portray the immense suffering without extremely gory details, thereby encouraging civilian citizens to take note, understand and be educated to the truth of torture. The Torture Report respects the gravity of the subject matter, but eliminates much of the governmental and law enforcement jargon.

The authors portray the victims with compassion without ignoring the circumstances of imprisonment. Their work is far from uplifting, but it is informative and vital to U.S. citizens. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

In the cold northern countries of Scandinavia, short growing seasons and fertile soil mean a few months of ripe, abundant fruits and vegetables. Then, as Beth Dooley notes in her introduction to Savory Sweet, cooks and gardeners must try to "keep all that's ripe from racing to rot." In this lavishly illustrated cookbook, Dooley and Mette Nielsen share dozens of flavorful, Nordic-inspired recipes to preserve the best of the season: relishes, pickles, jams, chutneys and more.

Divided into three main sections (vegetables, fruits and seasonings), Savory Sweet takes readers through the garden alphabetically, starting with pickled asparagus and applesauce, and ending with squash, strawberries and zucchini. The authors emphasize bold flavors and unfussy cooking techniques (explained in the first few chapters) over long-term storage. These jams and chutneys might not last in the pantry all winter, but they'll be perfectly fine in the fridge. Fresh herbs and surprising spices, such as anise, cardamom and juniper, make frequent appearances, giving new life to pantry standbys like ketchup, fruit compote and barbecue sauce.

While Dooley and Nielsen's recipes will likely appeal to canning aficionados, their simple, practical guidelines and helpful definitions of terms--the differences between jam, marmalade and preserves, for instance--will appeal to novices. The instructions invite experimentation, but provide a clear road map for first-time canners. Meanwhile, the range of flavors--spicy, smoky, sour, savory and sweet--will send cooks of all stripes straight to their local farmers market for fresh, colorful ingredients. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Richard Blais, winner of Top Chef All-Stars and a regular on Food Network, professes to be "a little cr-a-zy in the kitchen," and So Good: 100 Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours has an eclectic collection of recipes to match his persona. Although he's a successful restaurant chef, in this fun cookbook, Blais focuses on the dishes he loves to make at home for his family.

His curiosity in the kitchen has led Blais to experiment with many styles of cooking, and thus So Good contains a range of recipes. Many have an Asian influence--oysters with a kimchi cocktail sauce, Chinese chicken and rice porridge, a Hong Kong bowl with trotters and wontons. Others have a Southern flair, like fried chicken, cornbread and campfire baked beans. He also reimagines many old favorites, like vegetarian Horse Carrot Pot Roast, Spaghetti and Bone Marrownara Meatballs, and a delectable Brown Sugar Cheesecake in Oreo Crust with Honeyed Blueberries.

With fresh, unusual ingredients, cute pictures of his family and funny introductions to each recipe, Blais's personality and reputation for being a little unorthodox in the kitchen shine on each page. Sure to be popular with fans of Top Chef and home cooks looking for inspiration, So Good is a beautiful cookbook featuring 100 recipes from this delightfully quirky chef. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Knife: The Culture, Craft and Cult of the Cook's Knife by food writer and self-proclaimed "food geek" Tim Hayward (Food DIY; The DIY Cook) showcases a ubiquitous kitchen tool, from lowly paring knives to handcrafted objets d'art. This may not be the cookbook that gets spattered with grease and smeared with chocolate, but it will take a place of honor on the serious cook's shelf.

Essays and lists accompany the 40 featured knives--each photographed in color, with lighting that complements their cool steel blades. Topics covered include the reason for proper grip, 10 rules for carving, and the difference between working and specialized variations. Hayward interviews knife makers and chefs, illuminating an ongoing fascination with the tool. "The knife has a spirit imbued into it by the bladesmith that enables the user to give it character, so I almost look forward to the moment I get a first scratch on the blade."

Along with features of knives themselves, Hayward reviews the proper ways to cut food (who knew there were so many precise names for vegetable slicing!) and, helpfully, what to do when you cut yourself. As he says, "The knife is one of the few objects to which we give house room while simultaneously fearing."

In this beautifully designed book, Hayward's deft writing skills and culinary knowledge provide an intriguing reference for both the casual reader and the serious knife user. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Brooklyn food writer Stacy Adimando, co-author of Nopalito: A Mexican Kitchen, says, "Hearing about Mexican cuisine from someone who loves it so much makes you almost homesick for a place you may have never even been to."

Chef Gonzalo Guzman, born in Veracruz, wants home cooks to explore and experiment with Mexican cooking, and shares the recipes "that have made the deepest impression on my heart and live on in my memory since being away from home." While still a teenager, he worked in one of Nopalito founder Laurence Jossel's kitchens. He rose rapidly in the business, and now in his 30s works as the sole chef of both Nopalito restaurants in San Francisco.

Fresh, seasonal ingredients are the hallmark of Guzman's Mexican-by-way-of-California food. He packs tips, secrets and passion into his cookbook, noting the "intricacy, variety and layers of flavors involved." Complexity of flavor doesn't require "fussiness," but does emphasize authenticity. He includes specifics on building a Mexican pantry, including a glossary of chiles and other basics. He stresses making components ahead of time and storing them (pickled jalapeños, fresh cheese and pork sausage are in the early chapter "House Recipes").

Guzman coaches the home cook in a conversational tone: an avocado "should feel slightly spongy but not smushy." Small plates, big plates, drinks, desserts and 15 salsas pack this beautifully photographed cookbook. He is proud that his mama could walk into Nopalito and see "the heart of our family cuisine is still intact in our restaurant kitchen." --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Morgan Ring's So High a Blood: The Story of Margaret Douglas, the Tudor that Time Forgot is a deft, rollicking history full of drama of the highest order. It is addicting in the same way as Game of Thrones, providing political intrigue, forbidden love, royal scandal, shocking reversals and murder. But as the book's hefty notes and bibliography reveal, Ring has carefully grounded her dramatic narrative in historical fact. After all, no one could make up the erratic machinations of 16th-century English monarch Henry VIII, as infamous for splitting with the Roman Catholic Church as he was for executing his wives.

Ring uncovers a lesser known story of the Tudor period, that of Henry VIII's niece Margaret Douglas. From the beginning, Ring characterizes Douglas as a mixed child of torn allegiances, half-Scottish, half-English, whom power players in both countries try to use to their own advantage. What emerges, though, through Ring's skilled storytelling, is the portrait of a woman who is smart, shrewd and independent, who follows her own heart in matters of love but also protects her children and dynastic legacy through political maneuvering. Ring gloriously describes the atmosphere of the Tudor royal court, the festivities and weddings that take place, as well as its many scandals. But more importantly, Ring creates a well-rounded, painfully human portrait of her leading lady, incorporating Douglas's own words into the portraiture.

So High a Blood excites and entertains with grand historical drama and produces some potent pathos in the process. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist, poet and fiction author

Liza Jesse Peterson is a poet, actress and ex-model, a bohemian from Philadelphia, with an inspirational style and hard-nosed classroom control skills. All Day is her first book, about her year teaching a class of teenage boys full-time at Rikers Island after a few years as a visiting artist at the prison.

"I have quite a spirited group of drama kings, court jesters, flyboy gangsters, tricksters, and wannabe pimps all in my charge, all up in my face, to educate. Corralling this motley crew of bad-news bears to do any lesson is like running boot camp for hyperactive gremlins." Wild as the students are, she also sees them as confused children jailed as adults, with every reason to despair. Some work hard, some don't. She tries to give them fresh visions for their lives before they are released or sent to an adult prison. She is honest about her fears and mistakes, but her cultural understanding and experiences with teaching and performance serve her well. While preaching the gospel of education, she maintains order with her verbal fluency and rewards of music and magazines. An open letter from Obama in Vibe inspires an assignment to write back to him, and she includes several of the teens' letters here. Her work is ongoing, and she hopes to make a living from her art someday, but she makes a strong case for supporting creative sympathetic teachers for the most difficult students. "A little attention and compassion go a long way with a kid who's been ignored throughout his years at school and probably even at home. All kids want to be seen, heard, and encouraged, even the most thuggish of thug." --Sara Catterall

From our earliest moments, we accumulate memories through images, scents, sounds, etc., and as we accrue the vocabulary to describe those senses, the words become the links to those past moments. We use words in speaking, writing, reading and in our internal thinking. So what happens when the ability to form words--to access memories, to speak, write and read or to have an inner monologue--disappears?

When an aneurysm ruptured in Lauren Marks's brain at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, she woke in a hospital and discovered she had lost much of her language abilities. In A Stitch of Time, her soul-searching debut, Marks recalls how she struggled to find the words that had seemingly always been there, but were now beyond her grasp. She ponders who she was and the interactions she had with long-time friends, experiences she could not readily remember. Her aphasia gradually improves as she enters speech therapy classes and learns new ways to process information, yet there is always a piece or two missing in her comprehension.

Feeling as though she'd become someone new in the flash of a second, Marks dives into research about aphasia and the way words play a vital role in human connections. She depicts the support she received and challenges she faced with her long-time boyfriend and with immediate family and close friends. Marks's story is humbling and hopeful, a demonstration of the mind's flexibility and resourcefulness to heal, morph and press on, even when met with potentially life-threatening circumstances. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning doesn't lend itself to the popular "if you liked..." formula for recommending books. Claire Dederer (Poser) defies comparison as she explores her sexuality, femininity, life as a writer and coming of age in a Seattle that has continually grown and transformed over the decades.

Loosely based on her journals, chapters are dated but not chronological. Their 23 titles are often comical; Dederer's wit is irrepressible. "A Is for Acid: An Oberlin Abecedarium," for instance, about her college years. Or "How to Have Sex with Your Husband of 15 Years": A bed is required. Demur if your husband suggests the floor or the couch. Family spaces are "marked by the product of sex: children." 

Dederer reflects from the vantage point of midlife, as a wife, mother of two and successful author, asking how the wild girl she was became the well-mannered woman she is now. In 1980, at age 13, she had been eager to impress an older guy, "kitted out with the signifiers of cool--filthy clothes, long hair, laconic speech, all the stuff I knew to be aces, all the stuff I myself aspired to." Dederer hilariously and poignantly analyzes her "near-rabbit levels of sexual activity" during adolescence to understand better the desires resurfacing in her 40s.

Love and Trouble explores the challenges of growing up female, and will no doubt speak to readers of any age, about feminism and objectifying girls, as well as friendship, family and devotion. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Tatiana de Rosnay is the author of 10 contemporary novels, including A Paris Affair and The Other Story, whose themes often deal with the dark underpinnings of love, romance and secrets. In Manderley Forever, she explores the life of Daphne du Maurier, who made an indelible impression on de Rosnay from the time she was 11 years old, when she read Rebecca, du Maurier's most popular novel. Published in 1938, Rebecca is psychological suspense about secrets, old flames, jealousy and the looming manor Manderley. Like her subject, de Rosnay hails from a British and French bloodline, a factor that contributed to her fascination with du Maurier and ignited her quest to write a comprehensive biography and uncover the secrets of du Maurier's life, work and inspirations.

Du Maurier was a shy, observant, sensitive child who was largely shaped by patriarchal influences, as well as her two, equally creative sisters, an often aloof mother who was chronically neglected by her wandering, limelight-seeking husband. Du Maurier would later fall in love and marry Major Thomas Browning, 10 years her senior. The demands of his decorated military career--along with the pressures of marriage, motherhood and war--posed significant challenges to her freedom, aspects of which were often reflected in her work, which included dark, gothic romances as well as biographies.

The narrative is distinguished by de Rosnay's esteem and empathy. This deep and thoroughly researched biography offers riveting drama while presenting compelling reasons as to why du Maurier--whom many claimed was funny and cheerful--produced such a gloomy oeuvre, beloved by legions of fans but often scorned by the critics. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Jessica B. Harris (High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America) is a noted culinary historian and author. She is a member of the James Beard Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America and helped develop the concepts behind the critically admired Sweet Home Café at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. But once, she was a young woman starting her career and in a confusing relationship with a charming, sophisticated, bad-tempered older man. That man was Sam Floyd, her teaching colleague at Queens College, one-time lover of Maya Angelou and close friend of James Baldwin.

Harris emphasizes that she is a secondary player in this memoir, but she was an interesting young woman in her own right, raised in Queens by bohemian black parents who gave her piano lessons, dance recitals, etiquette lessons and a good education. The couple bonded over shared loves of cooking, language and literature. He introduced her into Baldwin's literary circle, and between his connections and her work as a literary and theater critic, she landed on the front line of 1970s New York culture, where she met authors, activists, actors, musicians and chefs.

Harris's culinary expertise winds through her stories, and each chapter ends with a recipe, including her mother's Sunday roast chicken and Goujonnettes de Sole with Ersatz Sauce Gribiche, inspired by her favorite after-opera meal. No doubt a few of Harris's friends have been saying for years that she had to write this memoir, and if so, they were right. --Sara Catterall

Each person's experience of profound loss is different. Novelist Martha Cooley (The Archivist) has chosen to describe hers in Guesswork: A Reckoning with Loss, a collection of lyrical personal essays. The 16 shimmering pieces pay homage to a group of recently departed friends while affirming, with a poet's sensibility, life's fragile beauty as Cooley experienced it in a sabbatical year she and her husband spent in a tiny Italian town.

The eight friends whose deaths Cooley experienced over the decade preceding her arrival in Italy include the writers David Markson and Nuala O'Faolain, along with others not as well-known but no less dear to her. Cooley admits that these "accumulated losses have upended me," describing herself as "still down in an emotional crouch, hands over head." Yet one of these deaths--that of her husband Antonio's first wife from cancer--gave birth to the new life of their relationship, prompting Cooley to recall how the two of them stood "the autumn after Valeria's death, arms wrapped around each other, both of us astonished by a love so visceral and unexpected." At some moments explicitly and at others more obliquely, the looming mortality of Cooley's ailing mother, Nancy, also shadows many of these essays.

Cooley's description of a sky that is a "jeweler's pitch-black velvet cloth sprinkled with diamonds" is only one of many examples of her poetic gift of observation. Guesswork is anything but a maudlin work. It's a tribute to the enduring power of friendship and of the ability of love to outlast death. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

When David Letterman retired in 2015, after 33 years hosting his late-night comedy talk show, "he received a send-off befitting a secular saint," writes Jason Zinoman, comedy critic for the New York Times. Letterman's two TV series (CBS's Late Show and NBC's Late Night) were wildly inventive, outrageous, combustible and influential. But backstage they were a hotbed for dysfunction, with Letterman the nucleus of it. Described as "a spectacularly committed hypochondriac," Letterman "never enjoyed the successes and scrutinized every failure, musing darkly about the implications and pivoting from self-criticism to despair in a blink," writes Zinoman (Shock Value).

His uncompromising and eye-opening biography is a love letter to the magic created on both shows, but never ignores the hostile and combative atmosphere behind the scenes with a "difficult, fascinating and self-lacerating character who hated revealing himself in his work but couldn't help doing so." Zinoman's knowledge is encyclopedic and his insights are perceptive. Letterman is filled with surprisingly candid recollections culled from Zinoman's interviews with the comedian, his writers (including co-creator and ex-girlfriend Merrill Markoe), producers, directors, production staff and frequent guests like Steve Martin and Sandra Bernhard.

This biography offers a fascinating look at how David Letterman's comedy and personality evolved over the years, and how his TV shows mixed absurdist, conceptual, satirical, slapstick, silly and sophisticated humor--and somehow made it cohesive. Letterman is a frank tribute to the painful process of creating comedy. Fans of TV, comedy and celebrities behaving badly will find it irresistible. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Richard Rothstein (Grading Education) is a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute and the author of numerous books and reports on race, ethnicity and education. In The Color of Law, he brings clarity and firm evidence to a topic that has often been glazed over with omissions and euphemisms.

Rothstein systematically refutes the popular idea that segregated neighborhoods are the de facto result of personal choices. He makes a sound argument that they are a de jure ghetto system built by 20th-century government policies that violated the 13th Amendment. He demonstrates how city ordinances and housing projects, many promoted by the New Deal and the Federal Housing Administration, enforced existing segregation and expanded it to previously integrated areas. These initiatives were often supported by liberal progressives who argued that they would promote racial harmony. He also examines wage suppression for African Americans, industrial rezoning, the segregation efforts of white homeowners, churches and colleges, and the roles of corrupt landlords, realtors, lenders and regulators. All these factors twisted together into a choking net that could trap even the most resourceful and hardworking individuals.

This is everyone's problem, says Rothstein. "As a nation, we have paid an enormous price for avoiding an obligation to remedy the unconstitutional segregation we have allowed to fester." He is not optimistic about the political will for change, but he makes both radical and moderate recommendations, and identifies the many obstacles to reform. The first step is to learn and accept the historical truth. --Sara Catterall

In Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe and the Brotherhood that Helped Turn the Tide of War, historian Lynne Olson looks at the seldom-told stories of how European refugees--both governments-in-exile and individual patriots--continued to fight Nazi Germany from a (relatively) safe base of operations in London.

Taken individually, their stories are dramatic, and occasionally tragic. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was outraged when the captain of the British destroyer on which she escaped Amsterdam refused to put her ashore at Zeeland: she had been determined to "be the last man to fall in the last ditch" in defense of her country. Jacques Allier, a young French banker traveling on a fake passport, smuggled the world's supply of heavy water from German-occupied Norway to Scotland under the nose of Abwehr operatives--hamstringing Germany's efforts to develop a nuclear bomb.

Told in combination, these stories challenge traditional accounts of the war. Olson reminds readers that French forces guarded British troops during the heroic evacuation at Dunkirk. Polish pilots played a critical role in the Battle of Britain and in defending London during the Blitz. And Britain's successes in breaking the Enigma codes rested on the work of the Polish underground, who were able to decipher a high percentage of Enigma intercepts by early 1938.

In the English-speaking world, Britain and the United States are often portrayed as standing alone against the Nazis in World War II. Last Hope Island demonstrates how that was never true. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

Fascinating true crime stories still require compelling narrators, and Michael Cannell (The Limit) demonstrates he's perfect for the task with Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling. The New York Police Department of the 1940s and '50s relied heavily on strong-arm methods, which proved ineffective against a schizophrenic serial bomber. The Mad Bomber confounded authorities for 16 years, planting more than 30 devices in public areas. Pressure to catch the faceless bogeyman ultimately forced the department to embrace a method of detection previously used only by literary icons such as Sherlock Holmes.

Psychiatrist James Brussel, the acknowledged father of modern criminal profiling, played a key role in the bomber's arrest. After looking through the police files, he provided details about what type of man he believed the villain to be, describing him down to the suit he would be wearing when captured. The subtitle's emphasis on profiling is, however, somewhat misleading; Incendiary provides a broad view of the case from several intriguing fronts, including psychiatry, forensics, bomb squad technology, the role of media and the changing landscape of criminal insanity laws. 

Cannell captures his audience like quicksand with a brief prologue, then sets off on a manhunt rich with historic details and a fantastic sense of time and place--a New York full of trench coats, brimmed hats, long-finned sedans, Checker Cabs and the greatest individual menace the city had yet to face. Incendiary is a firecracker of a case history about one of the country's first terrorists. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Nick Bilton (Hatching Twitter) describes the rise and fall of a very different Internet start-up in American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road. The titular subject is Ross Ulbricht, an idealistic millennial who often seems less like a criminal mastermind and more like a kid way in over his head. An ardent libertarian, Ross put his beliefs into practice by starting the Silk Road, a site on the anonymizing Dark Web where people could buy and sell drugs using a recently invented (and supposedly untraceable) digital currency called Bitcoin. By the time the website was closed down in 2013, global sales had reached $1.2 billion.

As the Silk Road takes off, Bilton flits between Ulbricht and the eccentric civil servants across the FBI, CBP (Customs and Border Protection) and IRS who took the lead in unmasking the "Dread Pirate Roberts"--Ulbricht's online handle, a reference to The Princess Bride. Bilton does a lot of work to understand the characters, but he's ultimately upstaged by the astonishing events themselves. Ulbricht, with a minimum of soul-searching, approves expanding the websites' wares to include guns, poisons, hacking tools and even human organs. His ethical lapses are almost matched by a few bad actors on the law enforcement side who attempt to steal huge amounts from the website and cover their tracks with torture and a faked contract killing. Fictional shows like Breaking Bad have nothing on Bilton's wild true story. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books

"Data is the new oil," argues Jonathan Taplin in Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook, Google, and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy. In this incisive work, Taplin makes the case that Internet monopolies have reshaped the online marketplace, via data mining and advertising, to enormous, unconstitutional profit. And as the title--a motto attributed to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg--implies, this is happening quickly and devastatingly.

Taplin posits that for Google and Facebook, "the difference between the supreme artistry of a Martin Scorsese short film and an amateur cat video lies only in the number of views that can be sold to advertisers." Quality no longer matters. Cat videos aside, Taplin quotes Zuckerberg again regarding his desire to spread free Internet to an untapped Third World market: "Who could be against it?"

Many, it turns out. The ramifications of modern colonialism in the name of "progress" and illegal online distribution have precedent. Taplin draws on his own experience in the entertainment industry, wherein he worked as a tour manager for artists like Bob Dylan and the Band, and as a producer for Scorsese. He employs a measured, persuasive tone, and makes a compelling case for re-envisioning the Internet and reinstating value in creating meaningful art. He considers solutions such as a universal basic income, artist co-ops and greater emphasis on community in order to salvage creative cultural output and assess its value.

Who could be against that? Again, the answer is likely many (especially the companies cited), but Taplin's topic is as important as his arguments are enlightening. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

In Raven Rock, Garrett Graff (The Threat Matrix) has written a thorough analysis and history of disaster contingency plans, from the end of World War II into the Obama administration. He describes how the world entered a new era of warfare when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, which unleashed fear for the safety of government personnel. Suddenly the threat of a nuclear war became all too real, and President Truman set into motion contingency plans for the continuation of American democracy in the event of such a disaster. These plans have morphed and changed over the past seven decades, but the core idea behind them remains the same: if under attack, have safe places well stocked with provisions and up-to-date communications systems, so the highest people in government can be protected and continue to work--while the masses of citizens fend for themselves.

Graff discusses the complexity of the presidential order of succession, the logistics of finding caves large enough to house personnel, the costs involved in building and stocking these massive underground bunkers with sufficient supplies, and the difficulty of maintaining them as deterioration sets in. Throughout, he consistently points out that the average citizen is not allowed into these protected zones, as well as the numerous executive orders (some written during the Cold War) that would go into effect, giving the administration extreme power. Graff's words leave a chill as he depicts just how insignificant most of the population is in the eyes of the government. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Perhaps only in a Tom McCarthy essay would profound philosophical insight be pulled from both William Faulkner and M.C. Hammer. Such is the brainy, playful and always subversive power of McCarthy's first collection, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish.

McCarthy (Remainder) is a novelist and ardent defender of the avant-garde. This collection includes 15 of his most provocative essays, many of which have appeared in publications like the Believer and London Review of Books. Almost every essay involves the interpretation of art and literature--classics, pop music and movies sucked into the grind of his intellect. Blended with an encyclopedic knowledge of modern science, especially physics, McCarthy's writing branches out and electrifies new conceptions of reality, much like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

A recurrent theme in the collection is that of the "recessional," or what McCarthy describes as a perceptual space between normal measures of time, between life's inevitable pretenses, where the art of fiction finds raw experience. This is the heart of artistic modernity, McCarthy concludes: a private space always incomplete in its becoming, resisting categorization. If McCarthy relies too much on postmodern skepticism at times--that is, a reflexive aversion to logical positivism--he makes up for it with the sheer, careening energy of his prose, at once wordy and incisive. He's an adept stylist, in the vein of Nabokov, and never fails to deliver dazzling twists of language and meaning. Each essay impresses with the author's preternatural intelligence. Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish will entice lovers of art and literature. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist, poet and fiction author

For most people, having their car break down on the highway during a stormy night would be a crisis. The mishap, however, inspired Laura Everett, a minister in the United Church of Christ, to abandon nearly all driving in favor of bicycling. With encouragement from "cycling sherpas" in her congregation and social circle, Everett began navigating Boston's labyrinthine streets as an all-weather cyclist, which quickly became an enjoyable challenge and essential component to her spiritual life.

"Runners, swimmers and rowers sometimes speak of this--the repetitive motion that allows one's mind to clear.... And so my time on the bicycle became reflective. My internal conversation became chatty, even. As I came to know Boston's roads better and better, my mind would drift and mull over my prayers: the triple-decker house with the foreclosed sign, the roadside shrine to a child killed by a stray gunshot, the despair that seemed to cling to every building on some blocks, the defiant signs of life on others."

Marrying practicality with philosophy, Holy Spokes provides detailed historical overviews of the sport, descriptions of bicycle construction (Everett has become skilled at building bikes), the mechanics of riding and the sport's physicality. With chapter titles representing various bicycle parts and their symbolic qualities to life ("Saddle ǀ Endurance," "Lights ǀ Visibility," "Brakes ǀ Limitations"), Holy Spokes is structured as a series of interconnected essays, blending Everett's appreciation for urban design along with mindfulness writings by a 17th-century monk named Brother Lawrence (a non-cyclist, to Everett's knowledge).

Although occasional repetition causes some narrative wobbles, Everett's insights gleaned from viewing Boston by bike can be appreciated by dedicated cyclists and non-athletes alike who seek a broader spiritual perspective to life. --Melissa Firman, writer, editor and blogger at melissafirman.com

Anxiety disorders don't discriminate. As Wall Street Journal science and health reporter Andrea Petersen learned as a student in college, the debilitating fears that paralyze about 40 million adults in the United States, and the racing heart and strangled breaths of panic attacks, don't care about socio-economic status, race or sexual orientation. While women are more likely to suffer from the disorder ("There is no greater risk factor for anxiety disorders than being born female"), men are vulnerable to it as well. Even the young aren't safe from anxiety; in fact, the rate of diagnosis among college students is on a startling rise.

In On Edge: A Journey Through Anxiety, Petersen shares her experiences battling panic attacks and fears as she explains the biological and psychological research underlying current treatments of the 11 anxiety disorders recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). They encompass a wide spectrum of symptoms and are closely tied to other afflictions, such as depression. Those who can identify with any of the evils of anxiety will discover solid research that offers options, understanding and hope. They'll even find some humor. On Edge can even help those who are fortunate enough to elude the irrational fears of anxiety. Petersen quotes Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry Jordan Smoller: "People underrecognize the toll that [anxiety] takes on people's lives." For those with a family member, friend or employee who is battling with this invisible demon, On Edge can shed light down the dark cavern and help them support their loved ones when "uncertainty far too easily morphs into inescapable catastrophe." --Jen Forbus, freelancer

In Climate of Hope, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg joins forces with former Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope to illustrate how climate change is a series of manageable problems that can be addressed not by the federal government but instead by local administrations, businesses and individual citizens. Their theme throughout emphasizes that "each part of the problem of climate change has a solution that can make our society healthier and stronger." Instead of focusing on politics or long-term consequences, they identify the most immediate threats and how the best solutions not only save the environment, but are economically beneficial as well.

Following George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, Pope stood at the helm of the Sierra Club as the organization worked tirelessly to block the creation of new coal-fired plants in the United States; about the same time, Bloomberg was leading the charge for PlaNYC, an initiative, among other goals, to help the city of New York combat climate change. Using these significant vantage points, Bloomberg and Pope alternate chapters sharing pertinent science and data, as well as their experiences with the various parts of the climate change problem. They address renewable energy resources, housing, food and transportation. Their divergent insights offer a three-dimensional examination of the crisis as well as accessible solutions, innovative suggestions and a plethora of benefits. Most importantly, their positive, forward-looking attitude is inspiring and attainable. Bloomberg and Pope's collaborative work epitomizes the unity needed to solve climate change, and they set an example to follow. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

As editor Paul Hawken (Blessed Unrest) writes in the introduction to the immensely compelling Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, "reversing global warming requires a change in how we think and what we do." To help initiate these changes, Hawken--who's written seven books on ecological business solutions--and more than 120 scientists formed Project Drawdown, a think tank designed to draft, model, fact-check, review and validate scientific data surrounding climate change and the solutions proposed to end it. Drawdown contains 100 of the most viable solutions they found.

The collection comprises a variety of approaches, including the installment of more green energy generators like wind turbines and solar panels, and the repopulation of land above the Arctic Circle with grass-grazing mammals. The scientific reasoning that supports each solution is offered in layman's terms, and important numbers--such as a plan's total cost, cost per capita and predicted total reduction of carbon from the atmosphere--are highlighted for easy comparison.

Impressively, each strategy also includes a discussion of its inherent challenges. In the section devoted to wave and tidal energy, for example, scientists explain that saltwater damages equipment over time and that waves are less predictable than wind and sunlight--making their energy more difficult to harness. By acknowledging these challenges, the Project's scientists have collated a highly persuasive collection that world leaders--and community activists--can discuss frankly and with the intent of further improvement. Drawdown is not only comprehensive, it's crucial to our world's conversation about climate change. --Amy Brady, freelance writer and editor

In Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense, evolutionary biologist Bob Holmes serves up insightful connections about some strange bedfellows. He pairs subtle aromas of wine, the crunch of fresh Pringles and the nuances of a frozen chicken nugget with the particulars of neuroscience, and the results are a sheer delight.

Holmes quickly admits that he lacks a formal culinary background and is no "supertaster." Yet that makes Flavor all the more digestible; his explanations of technical aspects of taste rely not on foodie or scientific jargon but plain English. Even better, Holmes is as funny as he is enlightening. On taste buds, he writes, "Those mushroom-shaped bumps on the surface of the tongue that most people call taste buds are, technically speaking, really fungiform papillae, an impressive-sounding Latin term that means 'mushroom-shaped bumps.' " He also convincingly compares the human brain to a layer cake.

A broad cast of experts populates Holmes's exploration. He hops between continents visiting conferences, labs and restaurants, meeting with scientists, chefs, researchers and wine growers. All five senses, he learns, shape the perception of flavor, as do genetics, neurobiology, culture and the timing of exposure to new foods. Holmes navigates olfaction research, wades through molecular gastronomy and even braves a taste test of a variety of hot peppers, or as he calls it, a "pursuit of pain." He grants that much about flavor remains to be understood, but as studies on the subject continue, Holmes makes a compelling case that its appreciation is a learnable, worthy pursuit that literally makes sense. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

Using years of research and case studies, heart surgeon Steven Gundry takes a close look at the intriguing science behind plants, their defensive tactics against predators and how one particular protective measure can cause many illnesses. The large plant protein called lectin, found in seeds, grains, skins, rinds and leaves, is often indigestible for humans, and Gundry analyzes how this protein wreaks havoc on bacteria in the intestinal tract. One well-known lectin is gluten, but there are thousands more in all types of food, including gluten-free grains such as buckwheat, oats and quinoa, as well as in fruits, legumes, certain nuts and animals fed a diet of corn and soybeans. Gundry expertly illustrates how lectins are responsible for multiple health issues, including inflammation, heart disease and a susceptibility to viruses and bacterial infections.

Patients who switch to Gundry's plant paradox eating lifestyle claim to have reversed the effects of diabetes, MS, RA, fibromyalgia, IBS, Crohn's disease, cancer, obesity and a host of other ailments. Gundry's logical and extensive investigation into lectins provides readers with more than enough evidence to take this information to heart and try his method. A comprehensive list of foods with and without lectins, sample menus, multiple recipes and a list of recommended supplements help readers make the switch to a diet that Gundry declares will eliminate numerous illnesses that plague modern humans. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

When Nazis conquer Poland in the fall of 1939, 16-year-old Abra Goldstein--known on the streets as the "Arab of Warsaw" ever since she forsook her "filthy-rich Jewish parents"--is determined to survive in any way possible. Tall, with blue eyes and chopped-off blonde hair, she masquerades as an Aryan boy, running with a gang of petty thieves. The occupation provides unlimited opportunities for her small-time black market business selling cigarettes and whatever else anyone wants, "from a Polish tart to Chopin's heart." Meanwhile, she keeps a discreet eye on her beloved younger sister, Ruthie, still living with their parents in the "posh" Jewish quarter. In her father's disgust at his older daughter's unseemly behavior--getting kicked out of her fancy school, stealing, joining a street gang--he has placed a gravestone in the cemetery with the inscription: "Abra Goldstein/ Gone and Forgotten." But Arab thinks of herself as "the girl who wouldn't die" and spends the early war years proving this truth again and again, even when she is asked to take part in a dangerous act of resistance.

In fluid, almost contemporary dialogue and action, Randall Platt (The Likes of Me) never flinches from the violent, heartbreaking realities of Nazi-occupied Europe. The Girl Who Wouldn't Die is about the measures Jews, gay people and allies took to survive in a savage time--Arab wearing cynicism like armor, for instance. "Trust me," she tells a fellow street kid, "evil trumps good every time." It's possible, though, that even seemingly cold-blooded Arab has a heart bigger than the entire Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Riveting. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

When 13-year-old Chase Ambrose wakes up in a hospital after four days in a coma, there's a woman weeping at his side. "Where am I?" he asks. "Who are these people?" Turns out the woman is his mother, and Chase has developed amnesia after falling off his roof. Once he's recovered from his more acute injuries, he's free to return to most of his normal activities. The trouble is, he has absolutely no idea what those activities were, or with whom he did them. He's told he was a football star. He knows who his best friends are because he finds a picture of them on his phone. But why do so many people cower and cringe when he walks by? Why does a girl dump frozen yogurt on his head? And why do his supposed buddies now seem like "the worst people [he] know[s]?"

As he navigates life post-accident, Chase is horrified to learn that he used to spend his days terrorizing less popular kids. But he also begins finding happiness and satisfaction in things his old self never would have considered: the video club, for instance, and his volunteer work at the assisted living facility. As he learns more about the kinds of things he used to do--blowing up pianos and worse--Chase wonders about the person he was--and the person he is now. Meanwhile, those around him also struggle to understand who the "real" Chase is.

Told in the alternating viewpoints of Chase and his classmates, Restart, by master middle-grade storyteller Gordon Korman (Schooled; Ungifted; The Hypnotist #1), explores what happens when a boy who doesn't even know he needs a second chance gets one. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

"No one needed a hidden, half-forgotten pond more than Jessie that summer, and right from the beginning--their first day on the raft--Terri Carr seemed the perfect person to show it to her."

Jessie Kettel "was in a separatist mood that year, her twelfth, and in a state of irritation with everyone around her." When her family rents a rustic seaside cottage with a pond in Rhode Island for the summer, she sees the pond as her place, especially since her "pathetically nice" beautiful older sister gravitates toward the ocean beach and the teens she finds there, her little brother is absorbed with a new friend, her writer father is distracted and her mother is notably absent, back home in Pittsburgh, working day and night.

Jessie discovers an old raft, and a local girl, Terri, discovers her. Terri regales Jessie with stories about long-ago quicksand drownings and murders and wrongful arrests. Jessie is intrigued but also wary--Terri lives in a broken-down house with a violent, alcoholic father, and Jessie's never sure how much to trust her. As the summer and their friendship progresses, Jessie grapples with ethical questions: Is it all right to use the tools from a senile old woman's shed without her knowing? Is it fair to accuse Terri of stealing Jessie's father's laptop just because she's needy and has a shifty look about her? Mysteries from the past begin to overlap with present-day puzzles and, in spite of herself, Jessie begins to distance herself from Terri.

Quicksand Pond by Janet Taylor Lisle (Newbery Honor Book Afternoon of the Elves; The Art of Keeping Cool) is a beautiful, realistic story about trust, self-doubt and judgment. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

"Green green/ fresh and clean./ Brown brown,/ dig the ground." With a little digging, raking, planting and watering, a garden can grow just about anywhere--even in a cramped lot between city buildings. Green Green is husband-and-wife team Marie Lamba (What I Meant) and landscape architect Baldev Lamba's ode to a greener world, gorgeously illustrated by Barcelonian Sonia Sánchez (Here I Am).

The picture book opens with children frolicking in verdant meadows, butterflies and bees like confetti flung among them. With each passing page, though, the concrete and steel of a city encroaches, shrinking the "green green" to tiny spaces "in between." The city is growing and the children are in danger of losing their green play spaces altogether... until they see the potential in a vacant lot: "Squirrel gray,/ pigeon blue,/ weeds and wildflowers,/ litter, too." They ask the adults, "Brown brown,/ dig the ground?" and soon neighbors join together to create a beautiful community garden that pushes back against the gloomy gray of the city.

Sánchez's illustrations are full of sweet-faced multi-ethnic families in cozy cardigans and mixed-patterned outfits. There's always something new to catch among the pages: a watering can on a fire escape, an old refrigerator in the yard, gardening gloves hanging out of one mom's pocket. The final spread provides ideas to "Make Your World More Green Green" and explains how we can help bees and butterflies. With its simple text and lush artwork, Green Green serves as pure inspiration. Readers of all ages will want to run for their spades and seed packets as soon as the last page is read. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

When Michael sees Mina, it's love at first sight. Unfortunately, they're on opposite sides of an immigration protest at the time. Michael is with his father, the founder of an anti-immigration, anti-Muslim group called Aussie Values. Mina, who escaped Afghanistan with her mother, is holding a sign that says "It's Not Illegal to Seek Asylum." The next day, Michael sees her again, because Mina has moved to the North Shore of Sydney to attend 11th grade at the same private school he does. Though they clash in their first shared class and argue each time they see each other, a crush develops as they spend more time together, confusing both of them. Their arguments inspire Michael to question his family's beliefs, but Mina remains protective of her family and hesitant to trust him. Although their conversations are serious, a healthy dose of humor and their cautious romance brings both Michael and Mina to life. "Can you actually die of a brain aneurysm through overanalyzing whether your date is, in fact, a date?" asks Mina, and Michael is equally unsure.

In alternating chapters, Australian author Abdel-Fattah (Does My Head Look Big in This?; Ten Things I Hate About Me) provides two thoughtful points of view, avoiding cliché or easy answers. As Mina relives flashbacks from her arduous journey to Australia and Michael confronts his parents, Abdel-Fattah's writing brings their struggles to life with compassion. Teen readers will learn from Mina and Michael's experiences even as they swoon over the sweet love story at the book's heart. --Stephanie Anderson, assistant director for public services, Darien Library (Conn.)

"For the last time, NO PET!" Colette is told. But for this creative new-kid-in-town, an empty moving box quickly becomes the perfect device for introducing her titular "lost pet" to the neighborhood gang. "It's... a parakeet," Colette initially tells Albert and Tom, who appear outside her backyard. The boys propose seeking out Lily, because she has "huge binoculars" to help locate Colette's avian ally who, Colette next declares, is blue "[w]ith a bit of yellow on its neck." Colette continues to divulge delightful details during each encounter with a new friend, until the missing Marie-Antoinette is revealed to speak mostly French, have flown all over the world and last ate a rattlesnake in the jungle. Suddenly, Colette has an entourage ready to revel in all her "truly amazing" adventures--at least until she gets called home for dinner.

Isabelle Arsenault, who lives in Montreal and is a three-time Governor General's Literary Award winner, makes her charming debut as both writer and illustrator (her previous solo title, Alpha, was an ABC book). Her whimsical artistry sparkles here, as she uses just two colors--Marie-Antoinette's blue and yellow--to emphasize the enchanting power of a child's creativity. Colette's yellow hoodie stands out on every page, as the children fall in line to follow her creative lead. Arsenault emphasizes the growing elaborateness of Colette's fowl descriptions by adding color to what could be Marie-Antoinette's domain--the bird feeder, a tree's leaves, water fountain droplets; the more outrageous Colette's avian adventures become, the more colorfully spectacular Marie-Antoinette grows. For picture book readers of all ages, Arsenault's imagination celebration will prove irresistible. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

A few boring weeks after her mother forces her to move to London from Illinois, all 12-year-old Hyacinth Hayward wants is a sink that combines hot and cold water. An attempt at amateur plumbing unleashes a magic drop of water into London's sewers, and Hyacinth learns she has until midnight to track it down and exchange it for her mother--who has been kidnapped. In the sewers, she meets a giant pig with index cards for every occasion (including "A YOUNG LADY OF QUALITY, TREATED MOST RUDELY BY RATS"), an old lady who's keeping secrets and an unknown side to the Royal Mail, among other surprises. As Hyacinth encounters toshers (aka sewer scavengers), anarchists and Inheritors of Order (or, as the anarchists see it: Elitists and Egalitarians), she realizes that she is the only one she can trust to use London's many secrets to save her mom.

In his first book for children, Jacob Sager Weinstein uses plentiful humor to hold together the boisterous plot as Hyacinth stumbles through her adventure. Her wry, self-aware voice ("Now, usually, I wouldn't be thrilled to have a giant underground cathedral collapsing around my ears") keeps Hyacinth and the Secrets Beneath light even in intense moments.

"I made up much less of this book than you might think," Weinstein writes in his brief author's note, and parents and teachers may find that readers are so excited for the next installment of this series that they willingly research London history to prepare. --Stephanie Anderson, assistant director for public services, Darien Library (Conn.)

Clayton Byrd's "lungs and soul were ready to pour out his own story through the ten square holes of his blues harp" (harmonica). All he wants is to play the blues with his grandfather, Cool Papa Byrd. Although Cool Papa lets him play gigs with his band, the Bluesmen, in Manhattan's Washington Square Park, he won't let him take a solo. Cool Papa says, "When you can bend that note proper, I'll wave you in... a bluesman ain't a bluesman without that deep-down cry."

But before Clayton has a chance to prove himself, trouble finds him, as the song goes. Cool Papa falls asleep reading to Clayton one night, and never wakes up. After a lifetime of resentment over her musician father's long absences, Cool Papa's daughter--Clayton's mother--promptly gives away all his things: the records, the guitars and even Cool Papa's trademark porkpie hat (before Clayton yanks it back). Heartbroken and fed up, Clayton goes underground, skipping school to hop the downtown train in hopes of joining up with the Bluesmen. Trouble keeps finding him, though, in the form of beatboxing young subway hustlers.

Rita Williams-Garcia, author of the Newbery Honor Book One Crazy Summer and their sequels, Gone Crazy in Alabama and P.S. Be Eleven, is masterful in her use of music to tell the story of one boy's coming of age. Clayton is so squarely on the cusp of adolescence; the downbeat of his grief falls in with the sharp percussion of his rage against his mother to produce "that round-the-corner, back-to-tell-the-tale blues bend" the Bluesmen talk about. Readers will willingly accompany Clayton and his family in this aching blues riff. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Serving much the same function that manga and comic books do today, ukiyo-e (meaning "the floating, transient world"--the art of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings) arose in 17th-century Japan to satisfy public appetites for escapism from the rigidity of everyday life. Ukiyo-e offered safe ways to explore fears and experience the sensual pleasures of taboo subjects; they also served as advertisements for kabuki productions and as ringing endorsements for travel to the Edo capital. Hokusai X Manga developed from a permanent exhibit of ukiyo-e at Germany's Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. It captures the many facets of this art form: the haunting religious imagery in yōkai ("hybrid spirits"); the quiet spirituality of geometrically layered, Prussian-blue landscapes; erotica, forbidden love and heroic battles. 

The anthology does a wonderful job of exploring the art form's origins and providing cultural context behind its mass appeal. The editors also analyze the visual techniques used in creating woodblock art, particularly in the development of the first comics, kibyōshi, which were cheaply assembled booklets of sequential pictures. Kibyōshi would become the precursors to the modern manga movement and influence anime greats such as Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Shigeru Mizuki (Kitaro). Though Hokusai X Manga fails to address the more widespread influence of these 17th-century Japanese artists on the West, this collection and its colorful commentary should serve as a valuable reference tool for manga enthusiasts and art collectors, with a good sampling of the best ukiyo-e prints. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

This 50th anniversary edition of W.S. Merwin's groundbreaking poetry collection The Lice introduces the poet's bold experimentation to a new generation of readers.

These poems are unrestrained by meter or rhyme. But while many poets who write in free verse adhere to some punctuation, Merwin abandons the comma and the full stop, creating heady juxtapositions through run-on sentences and enjambment. His lines flow in a moody stream-of-consciousness, taking shape both literally on the page and metaphorically, eddying around persistent themes. Like T.S. Eliot, Merwin mines antiquity for symbols. His imagery has an archaic feel. Here are moons, shadows, stones, hands and moths. But he repurposes these motifs in a modernist style to match his impressions of a dark, unaccountable, mid-20th-century world drifting toward annihilation. If The Lice is about anything, it's about the way death both eludes and rules the mind.

The best poems in the collection punctuate the poet's general dreaminess with stark, comparatively plain insights. "And once more I remember that the beginning/ Is broken," reads the terse "Whenever I Go There." In a single, unmoored line, it concludes, "Today belongs to few and tomorrow to no one." When Merwin's thoughts alight on the natural world outside the mind, away from the mythos of the self, the results are breathtaking. "The Widow," for example, opens with a beautifully humble image: "How easily the ripe grain/ Leaves the husk/ At the simple turning of the planet." The same poem produces one of the collection's most powerful lines: "Everything that does not need you is real."

The Lice is inquisitive, bleak and, at its best, profound. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist, poet and fiction author

For several years, Alan Felsenthal, together with Ben Estes, has run the superlative small press the Song Cave, publishing some of the strongest new voices in contemporary poetry. Now comes Felsenthal's debut, Lowly, from Ugly Duckling Presse, and it is well worth the wait.

Not uncommon to first collections assembled over a long period, Lowly is a smorgasbord of styles and forms. Gnomic utterances yield to poker-faced double entendres, while hints of humor leaven delicate self-consciousness. Possessing a sly wit ("I regard all men/ I knew as boys, as boys") and a nuanced faith ("In myself I will call my soul a she, and to her be singular"), the poet flirts with riddles but ultimately draws back from the chasm of meaninglessness.

This is refreshingly subtle poetry, quiet even, yet remaining alert to the sheer physicality of language, resulting in a musically sophisticated mouthfeel. Witness the hard consonants in a line like "True power gilds the moth, most/ haled then forgot like a loathed toad."

The poems in Lowly repeatedly invoke legends and myths both familiar and obscure (Atlantis, the Sphinx, astrology). In a time obsessed with facts and their obvious dissemblance, Felsenthal values alterity, writing toward a less binary sense of truth. "I'm not expecting to become the gate-/ keeper of these mysteries. I only want time to read,/ to feel a story well, stare at my beloved/ and make of all my discomfort a household/ shrine." Hear, hear. --John Duvernoy, bookseller, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, Wash.

In the tradition of Milton and Donne, Diane Gilliam's Dreadful Wind & Rain is an inspired collection of loosely connected poems derived from the Book of Genesis story of Leah and Rachel, and from a 300-year-old folk song of sororicide. Pushcart Prize-winner Gilliam's work is plainspoken and haunting, with an everywoman's voice of wanting and wondering. The narrator of the prose poem "Lots of Ships," for instance, learns with her "pens and pencils rowing for some kind of shore."

Gilliam pins her perspective in the first poem "Girls," describing a young woman's thoughts while peering out a window: "Whatever it is she is wanting, it is not/ too much to ask."

In "Tender" the wanting is to be out of a difficult marriage:

"Loving him is too much
cereal and milk
when what she wants

are platters of fried eggs and ham,
biscuits and gravy, fried apples
in big steaming bowls."

In the overtly biblical "Psalm of Leah," the protagonist laments her hard farming life: "the twisted grimace of husbandry,/ the face beaten like a plowshare/ into the shape of what happens to it."

Like the ragged abraded squares of an old quilt in "Oh, Honey" ("the wear and tear of what happens in bed"), the poems in Dreadful Wind & Rain tell an unforgettable story deep in tradition but singularly modern. This one belongs on the not-to-be-missed list. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.