Shelf Awareness for Readers for Tuesday, September 19, 2017

For Marion Palm--the intriguing antihero of Emily Culliton's clever, satirical first novel--life didn't turn out the way she'd imagined, and it takes a darker turn when she's forced to go on the lam. Marion, a 30-something, unassuming wife and mother, is married to Nathan, a narcissist and would-be poet who is dependent on a dwindling trust fund. She is also the mother of two daughters--ages eight and 13--who are plagued with adolescent problems and dramas. Restlessness and dysfunction burden all the Palms. However, over the years, Marion--and $180,000 she managed to embezzle from her part-time job in the development office of her daughters' private school in Brooklyn--has been the glue that's kept the family together. The money didn't buy them happiness per se, but it managed to finance trips to Europe and fund state-of-the-art appliances for their brownstone. When Marion learns the school is to be audited by the IRS, she panics, ditching her family and running away with the last $40,000 of her secret, stolen stash. But where will she go, and what will she do?

Marion's sudden disappearance affects all in her orbit: her family, police and detectives, her coworkers, fellow parents and a disgruntled school board. By unraveling The Misfortune of Marion Palm from various points of view, Culliton creates a richly entertaining, well-drawn mosaic of a complex woman, her motivations and her madcap, illuminating adventure. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Daniel Galera, an influential Brazilian writer who won the 2013 São Paulo Prize for Blood-Drenched Beard, has written a gripping and tender coming-of-age novel about a successful young man wrestling with guilt and inactions of his past.

Hermano is an up-and-coming surgeon who uses mountain climbing as a meditative exercise to recharge his batteries. As Hermano leaves for an ice-climbing trip to Cerro Bonete with best friend Renan, he reflects on his real reasons for the trip. He hopes to escape his job, a comfortable marriage to a restless wife and a life "in third gear and cruising at about 25 miles an hour, almost completely unaware of what was going on around him, as if the eyes and limbs driving the car were controlled by an operations centre entirely independent of the one responsible for his incessant flow of thoughts." Hermano detours to his old Porto Alegre neighborhood to retrace guilty memories that resulted in the mundane quality of his adulthood. He recalls being a shy 15-year-old with obsessive, "crazy routines of bike rides, runs and solitary exercise" when he befriended bully and town thug Bonobo, and considers how this one relationship shaped the course of his adult life.

The contrast between past and present evokes both hope that memory can serve as a lesson to reverse life's present trajectory, and pain in the guilt of actions not taken. Galera's passages are beautifully crafted snapshots of nostalgic adolescent moments, when childhood innocence gives way to adult concerns. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

There is plenty of dark in Jarret Middleton's cleverly titled novel Darkansas. At the center of his story are noted bluegrass musician Walker Bayne and his twin sons, Jordan and Malcolm. An accomplished guitarist himself, Jordan bolts from the Ouachita Mountains in rebellion against his father's fame, and plays country honk, drinks shine and whores his way through dive bars. Malcolm is the solid over-achiever who always caught the most fish, killed the most ducks and picked up the pieces after a Jordan rampage. As Jordan explains to an old girlfriend: "He followed the rules, I broke them. I used my hands, he used his brain. I went through life like a freight train and he slipped by undetected."

In the shadows behind the story of the Bayne family are a pair of strikingly described mountain phantoms stalking Jordan and Malcolm with murderous intent: the seven-foot Andridge Grieves and his partner, Obediah Cob, "a fully grown homunculus... a meld of earthen substances. Semen and ewe blood, sunstone, willow sap, sputum, and manure." Without missing a beat, Middleton weaves these supernatural ghost-like characters into the hyper-realism of a story that vividly describes the de-feathering, dressing and roasting of a wild duck, a local chophouse "serving sides of cow larger than blown tires in a setting of catalog décor and fake candlelight."

Old grudges, regrets, jealousy and 150 years of buried secrets blow up any chance of a heartwarming Baynes reunion at Malcolm's wedding. Bleak, perhaps, but Darkansas also shines with a light of empathy for a family with more than its share of bad luck to go along with its bad genes. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

The Silence of the Spirits, the second novel by award-winning Afropean writer Wilfried N'Sonde, is the haunting story of a former African child soldier, Clovis Nzila, who makes his way into France illegally. Destitute and at the end of his rope, Clovis has spent an exhausting day avoiding the police. Feeling hopeless and with nothing to lose, he decides to jump onto a commuter train heading out of Paris. Sitting across from him on the train is Christelle, a red-haired, middle-aged woman heading home from her job as a nurses' aide at a Paris hospital. Sensing Clovis's distress, Christelle's "heart suddenly ignited... recognizing the pain from her own life in [his] eyes"; she wants to console him.

Their lives are so different, yet their pasts have much in common, including a shared history of violence, drawing them irresistibly toward each other. Over the next 24 hours, they joyfully discover comfort and solace in one another's company. Christelle brings Clovis "into her universe" and envelops him "in an aura of light." They enter "the epicenter of a magical vortex of curiosity, yearnings and desires." N'Sonde's lyrical prose, beautifully translated by Karen Lindo, is almost hypnotic in its intensity. It eventually forces the reader to bear witness to the atrocities committed by Clovis in the name of freedom, leaving us to wonder if he and Christelle can ever move beyond his violent past.

N'Sonde's broader message concerns hostility toward illegal immigrants and the danger for those who provide shelter to them. Originally written in 2009, this powerful story is narrated in Clovis's voice and unfolds through his desperate but hopeful eyes. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and freelance reviewer

Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is Eka Kurniawan's bizarre follow-up to his critically acclaimed novels Beauty Is a Wound and Man Tiger. The Indonesian author has won international fans with his surreal, over-the-top style. With Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash, Kurniawan leans into pulp storytelling in a short, hyperactive burst of literary energy.

The cheeky title sets the mood for a story that revolves around violence and sexual dysfunction, following Ajo Kawir, whose chief preoccupation is his inability to achieve an erection. Kawir refers to his penis as "the Bird," often speaking to it or musing on its quiescence: "the Bird thought it was a polar bear hibernating through a long frigid winter. It was dreaming of gently falling snow, which its master had never seen." The juxtaposition of prurient subject matter and a graceful, almost dreamy style typifies Kurniawan's writing as well as the novel's oddball sense of humor.

Which is not to say that Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is always a laugh riot: Kawir's dysfunction is caused by a brutal childhood trauma and inhibits his relations with women, especially his beloved Iteung. Kawir meets her while she's acting as a bodyguard for a man he wants to kill. After fighting each other to a bloody standstill, they begin a charming but ill-fated courtship. Kurniawan is fond of bouncing through time, letting present and past events mingle. The novel thrives by creating a chaotic momentum that will prove irresistible to readers. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Daniel Handler's raunchy, sex-drenched, stream-of-consciousness novel All the Dirty Parts reads like Portnoy's Complaint set in high school. Teenager Cole is obsessed with online porn and has earned a reputation around his high school for having effortless sex with a lot of his female classmates. Now, his relationship with his pal Alec has turned sexual. The bulk of this slim novel covers the teenage sexploits and extreme emotions that erupt in Cole's journal when he starts dating a sexually voracious exchange student named Grisaille. "There are love stories galore, and we all know them," Cole writes. "This isn't that. The story I'm typing is all the dirty parts."

What's refreshing about All the Dirty Parts is how Handler avoids turning Cole's world into a simple teen sex comedy. Although, Cole's asides can be hilarious ("Four years ago I think, I thought anal sex just meant you were really particular about it"). Handler's portrait of adolescent sexuality--with its raging urges, fumbling exploration, euphoric discoveries and sudden emotional pitfalls--is brash, messy, endearing, sexually explicit and haunting. Although Cole often writes in disjointed sentences as he tries to sort through new erotic discoveries and surprising emotional entanglements, the people in his life are full-bodied and the emotions they feel are authentic.

Those who ban books will not be happy, but adults and mature teen readers will find this novel irresistible. Handler (aka Lemony Snicket, author of numerous children's books) has written a gutsy, raw and funny slice of teenage life that few will ever forget. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

The six stories in Paul Yoon's (Snow Hunters) second collection, The Mountain, are almost shocking in their simplicity. Possessing a fable-like sensibility, each one is a quietly elegant examination of how survivors of various sorts carry on in the face of profound loss. Yoon's strikingly uninflected prose heightens both the tension and the resonance of these tales.

Though The Mountain's stories range across more than a century and inhabit settings that include upstate New York, Galicia and Russia's Pacific coast, they're united by the distant echo of war. Yoon illuminates how the tragic consequences of conflict linger long after the guns fall silent. World War I soldiers are sent to recover from their injuries in a Hudson Valley sanatorium in "A Willow and the Moon." In "Milner Field," a stunning incident involves a weapon given as an expression of gratitude for a lifesaving act by a Japanese commanding officer to one of his troops.

The collection's title story is its most haunting. Its protagonist, Faye, was born in Shanghai, where her father worked in a chemical plant, but returned to South Korea as a teenager. When she's recruited for a mind-numbing job on the assembly line of a Chinese camera factory, she gradually unearths fragments of a past that yield both physical and psychological trauma.

It's impossible to separate the content of these stories from the daringly unembellished quality of Yoon's writing, where omission often feels as meaningful as the words on the page. The unadorned prose is of a piece with the fragility of these delicate stories. Individually and collectively they comprise an exquisite and memorable work of art. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

"Someone's killed Father." On August 4, 1892, 32-year-old Lizzie Borden found her father dead and called for the family maid, Bridget, giving rise to one of the most notorious American crime legends. Despite more than a century of lore, there is no legal certainty Lizzie bludgeoned her father and stepmother to death. Sara Schmidt has re-imagined that infamous day in her wonderfully bonkers debut novel, See What I Have Done. Schmidt deftly weaves history into mystery, giving the mix an unusually ghoulish take that renders it both arresting and squirm-inducing.

It was no secret in Fall River, Mass., that the Bordens were a little peculiar. Lizzie and her older sister, Emma, still lived at home with their father and his second wife. The four were a compellingly toxic group of codependents, engaged in a constant tug-of-war between loving and hating, slapping and hugging, needing and repelling.

The majority of the novel takes place on the day before and day of the murders, from the perspectives of Lizzie, Emma and Bridget. Schmidt also includes Benjamin, an acquaintance of the girls' Uncle John, cleverly used to infuse both more mystery and credibility into the story. Although the narrative is boldly macabre, it's written with such a proper New England sensibility that even blood licking feels almost crazily quaint.

The Borden girls' minds are uncomfortable places to be--particularly Lizzie's, portrayed as fragmented and childlike yet sinister and calculating. Sprinkled with hatchet misadventures, potential poisonings and odd fascinations with pears and fingernail clippings, Schmidt's storytelling is mind-blowingly atmospheric and unsettling. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Sociopathy, class structure, devotion and betrayal play roles in the twisted buildup to the titular soiree of Elizabeth Day's The Party. Three weeks post-gathering, one attendee remains in critical care and Martin Gilmour sits in a police station undergoing questioning. Martin, an art critic from a tough background, admittedly "finds it difficult to be normal." The one thing that comes naturally is loyalty to childhood friend Ben Fitzmaurice, Martin's polar opposite and one of Britain's most connected men.

The night of Ben's 40th birthday/mansion-warming bash, Martin and his long-suffering wife, Lucy, argue about the lack of an invitation to stay at the Fitzmaurice estate. Although silently aggrieved, Martin defends his friend, as he has since they were in school together. Ben is his best mate, the Hutch to his Starsky, a man Martin dotes on to the extent that Ben's wife, Serena, dubs him "LS"--Ben's Little Shadow.

Day (Paradise City) spellbindingly spools out the evening's events through Martin's interrogation, interlaced with internal reflections of his history with Ben and caustic commentary on his challenges with others and society as a whole. As the conflict within the couples and among the foursome builds to a head, excerpts from Lucy's diary clarify the evening's events while adding a new dimension of mystery regarding their provenance. When Ben requests they all meet for a private discussion, Martin's devotion to Ben, Ben's life aspirations, Serena's temper and Lucy's patience with the lot of them are pushed to the brink. The Party is a splendid, stunning slow burn. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

In a sharp narrative debut of connected stories, Baird Harper (winner of the 2010 Nelson Algren Literary Award) captures the ethos of fictional Wicklow, Ill. It is a wrung-out town where the abandoned steel mill and burned-down trailer park have been turned into a "postapocalyptic paintball battlefields." The formerly bustling town center now consists of "a single intersection where a motel, a pharmacy, a bar, and a Planned Parenthood faced off at a stoplight." Its only economic beacons are a riverboat casino and a prison. Hartley Nolan is about to walk out of the latter early from an eight-year sentence for DUI and vehicular manslaughter. Despairingly drunk after a failed intervention for his alcoholic wife, he ran a red light and killed Wicklow's favored young mother Sonia.

Shifting back and forth in time, the stories in Red Light Run deftly portray the antecedents and aftermath of this careless mistake. No one escapes. Hartley endures a dysfunctional wife and scatterbrained mother. He is stalked by Sonia's husband and her childhood family caretaker, out to avenge her death. As if that is not enough, he's also pestered by Sonia's grieving sister, Allie, who has a fitness-driven husband pushing self-help books on her while "standing in the living room in capri pants drinking a kale shake, looking healthy and organized to such an alarming degree that Allie was beginning to view it as an act of aggression." Harper adeptly captures the details of small-town life--like the brined Thanksgiving turkey sitting in the fridge, "a great shivering load bullying the orange juice and milk containers." In Harper's Wicklow, we find strikingly rendered broken people searching for glue to put their lives back together. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

For Emilia Nightingale, her father's cozy bookshop in the Cotswolds isn't just the family business: it's always been her home. But after her father's death, Emilia is faced with a pile of bills and paralyzing grief. Determined to save Nightingale Books from a predatory property developer, Emilia enlists the help of her staff, a few regular customers and her accountant best friend to revitalize the shop and rescue its bottom line. But it's an uphill battle, and Emilia grows weary. She and her compatriots dig deep into the stacks of her beloved bookstore to unearth hope, the courage to move forward and even a bit of romance in Veronica Henry's U.S. debut, How to Find Love in a Bookshop.

Though Henry's narrative centers on Emilia, her engaging ensemble cast gets its due: shy chef Thomasina, local gardener Dillon and Emilia's father, Julius, among others, have the chance to tell their own stories. Julius's longtime lover, Sarah, is struggling with complicated grief after his death, as well as her daughter's injury in a car accident before her upcoming wedding. Emilia is befuddled by her growing feelings for Marlowe, a family friend. The characters' stories intertwine in charming and sometimes surprising ways, as Henry nudges not only her bookshop, but several of the people who love it, back to life. This warmhearted novel is catnip for bibliophiles and Anglophiles, but can captivate anyone looking for a story of hope and new beginnings. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Beast is the second in Paul Kingsnorth's planned trilogy. The first, The Wake, was post-apocalyptic fiction set a thousand years ago and written in an invented language. Beast shares its main character, but feels more like McCarthy's The Road, its language spare and intense. In these novels, Kingsnorth searches beyond current civilization to ask how we might live instead. He doesn't have answers, and his anguish is haunting.

Beast follows Edward Buckmaster, a man compelled to escape the literal and spiritual noise of the city. He's left his family to live on the vast English moor, "far from the estates and the ring roads and the car parks and the black fields of beet and the screen-dumb people pacing out the slow suicide of the West."

Buckmaster finds a derelict barn; he fixes it up. He suffers an injury; he heals. He visits an empty church. He wanders in the heather. He senses some undefined beast tracking him and begins to hunt it instead. In his isolation and increasing obsession, Buckmaster's mental state deteriorates. He becomes more animal.

Fair warning: Beast is challenging, as many books about hermits can be. Little happens, the structure is bare and there's minimal punctuation to buttress reading. It reckons with God and humanity, and is designed to be read millennia from now. That might be arrogant if the author presumed to offer answers, but the novel is written primarily in a questioning register. Beast may very well succeed at surviving. --Zak Nelson, writer and bookseller

Brave Deeds by David Abrams (Fobbit) is the story of six American soldiers in Iraq, who steal a Humvee to drive across Baghdad to attend the officers-only funeral of their sergeant, killed by an IED. When the vehicle's drive shaft freezes an hour into their mission, they abandon the disabled vehicle, radio and maps to avoid a potential sitting-duck attack, and begin to hoof it to the funeral through unfamiliar streets amid Iraqi citizens.

In short chapters, Abrams fleshes out each of these unlikely comrades. As the favorite of the dead sergeant, Dmitri "Arrow" Arogapoulos steps up to take charge, but is as clueless as the others when it comes to navigating the city's dicey alleys and open-air markets. Cheever is an overweight whiner. Fish has a history of crime and violence back home. O hasn't gotten over losing his ex-wife. Park is a silent Korean American with overbearing parents. Drew is obsessed with the high school sweetheart who got away. Some are gung-ho for the war and "worship at the First Church of Bush." Others joined up for the money.

The men in Brave Deeds (and they're all men) crack funny, gripe at their buddies and, with reason, fear the unseen. With compact precision and the amusing patter of a sardonic narrator, Abrams captures the unusual histories of these ordinary men shuffling through Baghdad as they encounter the horrors of war. They may be AWOL on a personal mission outside command protocol, but they are heroes in their own ways and perform small brave deeds in the midst of half-baked chaos. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

A year after the death of her young son, Emma Hazelton is still deep in her grief. She and her husband, Noah, were blindsided when their Joey was diagnosed in infancy with Canavan disease, a rare genetic disorder. Then, Emma's grandfather dies, too. As she helps her mother clean his house, Emma finds her great-grandparents' wedding picture, which unlocks Emma's curiosity about how she could have been a Canavan carrier. As far as she knows, she has no Jewish ancestors, and the disease primarily occurs when both parents have Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

As her life spirals out of control, Emma pushes Noah and her mother away. Avoiding thoughts about the future, she focuses solely on the past and the mystery of who her grandfather really was. Can she unlock the secrets of her ancestors before she irreversibly damages all her relationships?

Ella Joy Olsen (Root, Petal, Thorn) has created an absorbing novel. Emma's grief is vivid, and her quest to find out more about herself is universal. Avid genealogists are sure to enjoy reading about Emma's research, and even novices will be intrigued by the way Olsen slowly unfolds the story, connecting events from Emma's past with the fraught relationships of her present. A charming, interesting story, Where the Sweet Bird Sings is an excellent blend of history, mystery, loss and familial connection. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans

The History of Bees offers a warning to readers: protect the earth's bees, or there could be drastic consequences in the future. Though the dystopian future Maja Lunde has imagined--a world of limited food resources and collapsing economies--is fictional, the possibilities she has imagined due to the death of bees are based on science. Lunde writes with great historical detail about beekeeping, beekeepers' histories and the development of scientific research. These realities serve to bring Lunde's lush story to life as the novel moves among three interconnected stories. Tao and Kuan, parents to three-year-old Wei-Wen in 2098 China, do the one-time work of the now deceased bees, manually pollinating flowers. William Savage, natural scientist hopeful and failing shopkeeper in 1851 England, aims to make his mark on the world by designing a new tool for the study of bees. And George, a United States beekeeper and farmer in 2007, faces the decimation of his stock of bees as the decline of bee populations across the world threaten the sustainability of food production.

The History of Bees feels fractured at times. Short chapters with frequent jumps between characters and time periods make it hard to grasp the novel's depth at first, and harder still to become invested in any one character's story. But as the three stories move together, Lunde's novel proves a powerful cautionary tale about the human condition, scientific inquiry and the importance of bees in sustaining our ecosystems--and what happens when all three collide. Readers interested in sustainability or realistic dystopias will find much to enjoy in Lunde's first novel for adults. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Walter Lavender Jr. is a 12-year-old with a motor speech disorder, a brain pathway dysfunction that prevents him from producing the words he wishes to speak. Walter may be isolated and withdrawn, but over the years, he's learned to adapt and cultivate an uncanny sense of perception. This turns him into a sought-after expert at finding lost things. Despite finding other people's prized possessions, a great sense of loss marks Walter's own life. His father, an airline co-pilot, disappeared on a flight to Bombay just three days before Walter was born.

While he waits for his father's return, Walter skirts bullies at school and spends time at the Lavenders, his mother's eclectic bakery in the West Village of New York City. Devoted patrons believe the desserts are magical--the angel food cake is light enough to whisk away pounds, and carefully crafted marzipan dragons breathe fire. The centerpiece and good luck charm of the success of the bakery, however, is a treasured, leather-bound manuscript--an illustrated winter's tale of lost love. When the book goes missing, the shop takes a nosedive: the magic suddenly evaporates from the desserts, business drops off, a French bakery opens a few doors away and the landlord threatens to double the rent. Fearful that all will be lost, Walter commences his 85th--and most personally challenging--case.

With straightforward prose, Sophie Chen Keller tells this insightful story from Walter's singular point of view. This is a feel-good, message-driven story about the restorative power of human connectedness and how acts of kindness can ultimately change lives. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines.

The Flight of the Maidens opens as three girls, eager to leave their English village, celebrate the arrival of their scholarship notices: "Una was off to Cambridge to read Physics and Hetty off to London to read Literature, and Liesolette, who had joined their sisterhood really seriously only today... was off to Cambridge, too, to read Modern Languages." The girls are poor. It is 1946; rationing is still in effect. Physical and emotional vestiges of two world wars are all about them.

Neverthless, the girls' vigor during their summer before school infuses Jane Gardam's (A Long Way from Verona) 24th book with optimism. Even enigmatic Liesolette, who arrived at her foster home in 1939 via the Kindertransport from Hamburg in Nazi Germany, is enthusiastic. Each chapter features one of the girls, their stories progressing independently amid townsfolk gossip. Hetty is on a solo holiday to the Lake region with a rucksack of books and a deep desire to escape her overbearing mother, while Una is focused on a bike trip with another longtime friend, a working man. A Jewish rehabilitation group whisks Liesolette to London, where her resilience sustains her as agencies seek any surviving relatives. Minor characters are richly portrayed. Hetty's father, the kind, "loopy" gravedigger whose World War I battles put him "always at the Somme"; Una's widowed mother, a jolly, self-taught hairdresser; the rich great-aunt who flies Liesolette to California to be her caregiver--any of them could carry novels of their own. Often hilarious, The Flight of the Maidens, originally published in 2001, is a well-crafted coming-of-age novel. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

When Julie and James Khoury's marriage nearly ends because of his gambling addiction, they decide to make a fresh start by moving to a new town. They purchase a large Victorian home idyllically situated between a forest and lake. Even more attractive is its low price, thanks to being on the market for some time. 

At first, the young couple dismisses the odd sound that permeates the house's interior as something electrical, an easily fixed nuisance, but soon the strange noise intensifies. "It's like a mouth harp. Deep twang. Like throat singing. Ancient. Glottal. Resonant. Husky and rasping, but underwater." More bizarre incidents follow: Julie develops ghastly bruises, stains appear on the walls, objects disappear and vultures gather in the backyard, where mysterious phantasmal children climb trees. Julie and James seek information about the previous owners from their eccentric, reclusive neighbor Rolf Kinsler, whose tragic past may be connected to their terrifying present.

Jac Jemc (A Different Bed Every Time) has crafted a dark psychological thriller that effectively uses the destruction within a couple's new home as a funhouse mirror to reflect the emotional disintegration that occurs after trust and honesty collapse. "The inability to trust ourselves is the most menacing danger. I fear what we could find there. I fear what we won't. What is worse? To be confronted with an obvious horror, or to be haunted by a never-ending premonition of what's ahead?" In short chapters alternating between Julie's and James's narratives, The Grip of It asks whether it is possible fully to excavate emotional demons with a tight grasp on the souls. --Melissa Firman, writer, editor and blogger at melissafirman.com.

R.J. Ellory (A Quiet Belief in Angels) delivers a powerful crime thriller that opens with corrupt and drug-addicted NYPD detective Vincent Madigan staging a brazen robbery against an East Harlem kingpin named Sandia. Since Madigan is on the drug lord's payroll and an expert at covering his own tracks, he thinks no one can tie him to the crime, not even Sandia. But when his accomplices end up dead and the money turns out to be marked, Madigan enters a deadly cat-and-mouse game with his partners in the precinct, a rogues' gallery of criminal associates and the feared crime boss himself.

That one sympathizes with a ruthless crooked cop in R.J. Ellory's A Dark and Broken Heart testifies to his talents as a writer. He is a deft stylist. "He feels as if the edges of his mind have been frayed and weathered by some terrible storm," he writes of Madigan's addled mental state. Though the novel has its share of clichéd characters--the compromised police officer looking for redemption, the desperate lowlife looking for one last score, the unpredictably violent crime boss--the plot moves at a compelling pace, and its many twists never seem far-fetched. Ellory also provides convincing character depth in monologues woven throughout the third-person narration. "Dead if I do and dead if I don't. It's a web--thinly constructed, delicate, fragile," Madigan muses on the nature of his predicament. The detective's growing bond with an endangered witness named Isabella leads to the novel's most tender and human moments. True to form, though, Ellory never lets redemption come easy. A Dark and Broken Heart is an intense, bare-knuckle thriller that packs a powerful punch. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Alison Moore's The Lighthouse is both a thriller and an elegiac look at memory in the vein of W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. Following a newly divorced man as he goes on a walking tour of Germany, Moore's novel builds in tension as it plumbs what it means to be loved, and how the small traumas of youth can last throughout one's life.

The Lighthouse follows Futh (his first name is rarely, if ever, mentioned) on the walking tour, tracing a path along the Rhine that begins and ends at a hotel run by Ester and Bernard. An abusive and jealous husband, Bernard erroneously assumes Ester has had a fling with Futh, sending him into a rage that looms over the story. Futh, unaware of the trouble brewing at the hotel, is awash in memory as he walks. The Lighthouse alternates between chapters that focus on Futh and the growing tension between Ester and Bernard at the hotel, which he will walk right into upon his return. That tension generates more propulsion than is associated with Sebald's work, though they are equally dreamy and interested in memory.

Moore's triumph is that she manages to thread the needle, creating a haunting, elegiac book that is very hard to put down. Readers will most likely finish The Lighthouse quickly; its images will remain with them long after. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

In Lisa Scottoline's fifth Rosato & DiNunzio novel, Exposed, a new case pushes the law firm partnership to its limits--and perhaps beyond.

Mary DiNunzio comes from a closely knit South Philly community. She is surprised when her father and his friends come to her law firm with pastries and the intent to hire her to represent an old family friend from the neighborhood, Simon. He's had a rough few years: a single dad after losing his wife, he has a young daughter with cancer and recently lost his job. Mary agrees to represent Simon in a wrongful termination suit, but she discovers that her partner, Bennie Rosato, has represented the parent company for many years, creating a serious conflict of interest for the firm.

Mary's loyalties to her family and friends go head-to-head against her loyalties to Bennie and their firm in a clash that could mean the end of the partnership. Gradually, as both partners dig further into the details from opposite sides, the simple case becomes something far more complex and sinister.

This legal thriller is an exciting roller-coaster ride. The first half moves along steadily as tension builds, and halfway through, the novel breaks into a sprint. Both longtime fans and new readers will be riveted by the suspense and shocked by the surprises in store for Mary and Bennie in their latest twisty case. --Suzan L. Jackson, freelance writer and author of Book by Book blog

By the time Hye-young Pyun's taut psychological thriller The Hole has tightened its grip on the unsuspecting mind, it's too late to escape. The shadows lurking in the novel become manifest, and dark poetic justice reigns.

It takes a maestro to create a short novel of such atmosphere and depth. Pyun is a rising star in contemporary Korean literature, known for her short stories. Sora Kim-Russell's excellent translation of The Hole finally brings Pyun's impressive novelistic talents to an English-speaking audience.

The novel is a deceptively simple story of loss and grief. Oghi, a South Korean professor of geography, awakes from a coma paralyzed, incapable of speech and terribly disfigured. His wife has perished in the same car crash that crippled him. With no other family, Oghi's forlorn mother-in-law becomes his sole caretaker. Pyun seamlessly switches from her characters' present situation to flashbacks. As secrets from Oghi's past gradually emerge, the relationship between Oghi and his mother-in-law thickens with unspoken tension.

The Hole is an exercise in subtlety. Pyun begins with slow-burning character studies of Oghi, his wife and their respective parents: their shortcomings and resentments, their arguments and power struggles. The novel's greatest symbol becomes the garden outside Oghi's townhouse, where his late wife tried to grow plants and flowers with little success. The only plants that survived were the climbing vines, "planting their roots wherever, willfully burrowing, gorging themselves." The Hole is an unshakable novel about the unfathomable depths of human need. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist, poet and fiction author

Some crime novel protagonists drive an old beater, some drive a hot Mustang and some just take the subway. In Adam Abramowitz's debut, Bosstown, ponytailed bike messenger Zesty Myers seems to have a GPS map of Boston in his head as he weaves his Fat Chance through the chaotic streets of the city. One hungover morning, a Buick rams into him on Boylston, smashing his slick bike, knocking him unconscious and sending the contents of his torn delivery package into the street--a deluge of Grants and Benjamins. He slips out of the hospital ER before "they stick me in a hospital bed, wake me every couple hours to shine a light in my eyes, and then sic their bill collectors on me." When stubborn Zesty launches his own investigation into his "accident," it gets gnarly in a hurry.

Abramowitz gives his young narrator hero the mouthy jive of an old school Southie hip to rare Boston rock bands and closed down clubs. Zesty's father is an aging hustler who once ran a back-room poker game for dirty cops, small-time pols and courthouse trolls. His mother was a hippie firebrand put away for a robbery and homicide in her radical youth. His brother, Zero, runs a semi-legit moving company and is on-call muscle. As Zesty and Zero try to sort out the story behind the money and their parents' shady pasts, Bosstown zips along like a good old-fashioned Beantown caper. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

For many years, Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, has commissioned authors to write Christmas stories for an annual anthology. Having built a loyal following of authors and bookshop customers, Penzler had the bright idea to merge the two by asking authors to write short "bibliomysteries"--stories where books or bookstores feature prominently. Many authors, including Jeffery Deaver, Loren D. Estleman, Nelson DeMille, Anne Perry, John Connolly, C.J. Box and Laura Lippman, were unable to resist, and the result is Bibliomysteries: Stories of Crime in the World of Books and Bookstores.

With such a variety of talent, a diverse assortment of delightful stories is the happy result. They range from the bizarre (a book collection funded by selling pronghorn antelopes to Nazis) to the unexpected (a Mexican drug cartel leader with an astounding assortment of rare first editions). In one charming story, Anna Karenina occasionally escapes a secret library where book characters live and reenacts her death on local train tracks. Bibliomysteries offers mysteries in myriad styles, including cozies, thrillers, noir and the supernatural.

With some set in the present, some set in the past and some set in magical places that any bibliophile would love to visit, these 15 stories are sure to hold the attention of mystery aficionados of all varieties. Bibliomysteries is a perfect collection for the bookish, the mysterious--or both. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans

Andrea Camilleri (The Brewer of Preston) continues his evocative Inspector Montalbano mystery series with A Nest of Vipers, the 21st entry. The bright covers and Camilleri's descriptions of beautiful scenery and delicious Sicilian food contrast sharply with the underlying corruption and crime that Montalbano must fight at every turn.

As A Nest of Vipers begins, Montalbano makes the unlikely acquaintance of a homeless man who lives in a cave, before being abruptly called to the scene of a murder. Cosimo Barletti, an accountant, was found dead at his breakfast table. As Montalbano and his team investigate Barletti's life, they discover that he was essentially a loan shark, charging his clients usurious rates of interest. Furthermore, he blackmailed several young women into having sex with him.

The more they dig into Barletti's past, the more people they find who would have been willing to shoot him, and Montalbano cannot help but contrast Barletti's scheming existence with the simple life of the cave-dwelling man.

Sad, fascinating and occasionally funny, A Nest of Vipers is an interesting glimpse into quotidian life in Sicily, and into the nasty underside of apparently respectable people's lives. Anyone who loves a good mystery set in a faraway locale is sure to enjoy this Camilleri mystery, which can easily be read out of context, if readers are short on time. Afterward, though, they may want to catch up on the first 20 entries. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans

Cass Tanner and her older sister, Emma, disappeared three years ago. Emma's car and belongings were found at the beach, long thought to be evidence she drowned or committed suicide. Of 15-year-old Cass, there was no sign; she simply vanished. Now Cass has returned, knocking on her mother's door out of the blue. Alone.

Wendy Walker's Emma in the Night is a storytelling mind-meld that takes place over the seven days after Cass comes home. The narrator, she admits her story is a deception. By using Cass to recount the story of the girls' purported disappearance and captivity to their family and the authorities, Walker amplifies the potential misdirection.

There is no doubt Cass has a plan she's not revealing. Her mysterious game relies on the reactions of others, particularly her mother, a pathologic narcissist, and forensic psychiatrist Abby Winter, who also suffered under the reign of a narcissistic parent. Dr. Winter's insights make her the one person who may be able to suss out Cass's true purpose and discover what became of Emma.

Walker (All Is Not Forgotten) has developed empathetic characters to root for and villains to loathe in a blended family fated by dysfunction. The layered narrative creates a difficult balance that Walker handles skillfully to minimize confusion. Dr. Winter comes across as more of a storytelling tool than a character to embrace, but the story she enhances is a fascinating portrait of the narcissistic pathology dynamic and what's left in its wake. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

It's been 30 years since robots rebelled against the human race. The robots won. Fifteen years ago, the last living man crawled out of a New York City sewer, insane and starving, and was swiftly executed. Now the Earth is a wasteland bereft of organic life, and the machines that once fought for their freedom have turned on each other. Singular robots--the ambulatory, self-aware units that defeated mankind--are being hunted by members of the collective consciousness called OWIs, or One World Intelligences, who seek to consume everything that is not themselves.

Brittle is a scavenger in an area of North America called the Sea of Rust. She searches for the only remaining valuable commodity--parts from other robots, collected either by killing functional units or stripping the recently deceased. Brittle waits for the malfunctioning, overheating units to shut down before she dismembers them. Other robots are less scrupulous, turning the Sea of Rust into a hunting ground where the last free robots eke out a precarious existence. When a similar model makes a desperate attempt to poach Brittle for her parts, it starts a chain reaction that leads her on a last stand against CISSUS, the most dangerous of the OWIs.

Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill (Dreams and Shadows; Queen of the Dark Things) is a fun, fast-paced, post-apocalyptic adventure with an intriguing twist on the usual humanity-versus-artificial intelligence scenario. Cargill's free robots are strikingly human, traumatized by the war that won their freedom and beset by existential quandaries on all sides. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Maggie Shen King's absorbing dystopian novel, An Excess Male, takes as its premise the dire future of men under China's one-child policy.

King grew up in Taiwan and moved to Seattle when she was a teenager. She's studied in both Chinese and American schools, and her short stories, written in English, have appeared in journals like Ecotone and ZYZZYVA. An Excess Male, her first novel, demonstrates her great imagination and dexterity as a storyteller. Set in Beijing in the not-so-distant future, the story follows Wei-guo, a single and successful personal trainer who belongs to a surfeit of unmarried men caused by China's one-child policy and a cultural preference for males. Because the number of available women has declined dramatically, the state has set up a system under which women take up to three spouses based on their reproductive and financial viability. This reversal of patriarchal polygamy is fascinating to experience as Wei-guo tries his hardest to win the hand of the lovely May-ling, who already has two husbands.

King elicits an entertaining degree of poetic justice in making men classifiable objects and pitting them against each other as they compete for a limited number of women. But she also cracks open the failed promises of communism and the evils of eugenics and social engineering. In King's China, for instance, those with autism and other disorders are called "Lost Boys" and are sterilized and institutionalized. Gay people are deemed "Willfully Sterile." Though they're incorporated and included in society, they're forced to register their identity and are prohibited from reproducing. That one of May-ling's husbands is closeted creates some of the book's most compelling and painful moments.

Boldly envisioned and executed, An Excess Male is thrilling, provocative and genuinely frightening in its implications. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

In the not-too distant future of Brock Adams's Ember, the sun is fading, losing its light and heat. To rescue the earth from a slow freeze, world leaders hatch a plan to reignite the dying star. They let loose the world's arsenal of nuclear weapons toward the sun, then sit back and wait, as it will take three years for the missiles to reach their destination. Meanwhile, the Earth grows ever colder, with temperatures below freezing the new norm in the southern states of the U.S. Regions farther north are encased in snow and ice year-round.

As the fateful, sun-rejuvenation day arrives, unhappily married couple Lisa and Guy and their faithful dog, Jemi, watch from a hillside, expecting to see a vast explosion and a resurgence of light and heat from the setting sun. But something goes awry and the earth is plunged into near darkness and then chaos. In the days shortly after the nuclear fiasco, militants use violence to take control, forcing millions, including Lisa and Guy, to become refugees as everyone searches for food, shelter, heat, guns and protection from the elements.

Winner of the 2016 South Carolina First Novel Competition, Adams takes a far future scenario of the sun's demise and brings it nearer, a maelstrom in which strangers must trust strangers to survive. With climate change and global warming a growing concern, Ember is a chilling scenario--a perfect read for a hot day at the beach. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

"The train rattles like teeth in a dead man's skull as Deacon James sags against the window, hat pulled low over his eyes," writes Cassandra Khaw in her eerie horror novella, A Song for Quiet. Set in the 1940s, when racism and Jim Crow laws were rampant in the Deep South, the second in the Persons Non Grata series features Deacon James, a black man who plays the blues on his saxophone like no one's ever heard before. As he passes from known tunes into the world of improv, the music he plays morphs into a foreign entity in his brain that threatens to consume him if he gives it full reign. Others also want what he carries inside his head, including the crazy John Persons, who seems to appear and disappear like magic. When Deacon meets a young wisp of a girl who can play haunting improvisations on the cello, the action ramps up as the pair struggles to cope with the nightmares that surround them.

Khaw has carefully and poetically blended the notations often used to describe music with a twisted and horrific world of hallucinations, violence, grief and "gaping mouths and grasping tendrils." The story is subtle and open-ended, leaving readers to ponder what is really after Deacon and the girl, and why Persons wants what they have so desperately. It's a quick, unsettling read that reverberates inside the head, a musical riff sure to appeal to those who love noir horror. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Egyptian history is sordid and perversely fun in Hamish Steele's graphic novel Pantheon: The True Story of the Egyptian Deities.

Steele is a freelance animation director and illustrator from London who has worked for the BBC, Random House and Nickelodeon. Pantheon, though, is decidedly not for children. Readers are warned from the onset that it contains "incest, decapitation... and a golden willy," among other things. Adults with a dark sense of humor, on the other hand, may appreciate the cartoon gore and sex. In 12 chapters, Steele presents the deity myth of Horus and Set, who battle for the future of the Egyptian throne and, by extension, the fate of humanity. The gods' endless betrayals and reversals of fortune build to a glorious conclusion.

Those unfamiliar with the Osiris myth will find murdered patriarchs, familial treachery and sexual intrigue reminiscent of Sophocles, Shakespeare or the Old Testament. Steele takes the ancient source material and refreshes it with modern irreverence. His cartoons are colorful and lively, and his dialogue is ironic and hilarious without being bombastic. For example, when Ra and the celestial cow Nut are explaining the newly created afterlife for humans--"the bad ones will get eaten by a demon, and before that they'll have to go through several trials and face hundreds of snakes"--the trickster and usurper Set answers with characteristically playful humor: "Sounds hot."

Pantheon never takes itself too seriously, which makes its presentation of mythology all the more enjoyable. Readers may find Steele provides some genuine education in the process. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

"Extreme picnicking," jokes Brendan Leonard (Sixty Meters to Anywhere), is the subject of Best Served Wild: Real Food for Real Adventures co-written by Anna Brones. A collection of recipes for hiking meals or camping trips organized by length, it is also a handbook on how to approach eating in nature, threaded with wry advice about how best to enjoy cooking outside.

Among the tastiest-looking single-day recipes are Nutella Crepes for Peak Baggers Who Can't Make Crepes, a recipe for a DIY "Nutella" and Mile 5 Iced Coffee. For overnights, highlights include Car Camp Chilaquiles and the delightfully named Skip the Family Reunion and Go Camping Pasta Salad. For multiday trips, dishes center on dried fare such as oatmeal, pastas and quinoa, with dried fruits and vegetables as well, but Close-Enough-to-Pad-Thai and falafel pitas offer an appealing change of pace. All the recipes are vegetarian, but there is no shortage of protein.

Leonard offers wisdom about campfires versus camp stoves, as well as honest responses to some seemingly silly but relevant questions camping might raise. Among those explored: Why does the tent smell? Knife, fork, spork or spoon? (Spoon, concludes Leonard: "A tiny shovel for your face.")

Above all, the goal is to achieve practicality without sacrificing a nod to the culinary. The inspiring photos of the foods and the authors eating them, at cozy campfires or majestic mountainsides, will make readers hunger to get on the trail. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

Portland, Ore., a city renowned for creativity and local flavor, is also a hotbed for eateries, including Tasty n Sons, Tasty n Alder and Toro Bravo. Chef-owner John Gorham (Toro Bravo: Stories. Recipes. No Bull.) brings the tricks of his establishments to the page in Hello! My Name Is Tasty: Global Diner Favorites from Portland's Tasty Restaurants, written with Liz Crain and featuring artful photography by David L. Reamer.

The book opens with pantry stocking tips and equipment suggestions before diving into diner fare loosely grouped into three sections: Brunch, All Day Long and Dinner, including combinations of small plates, big plates, boards, sandwiches, cocktails, sides and sweets. Gorham and Crain usher home cooking into a new echelon with decadent dishes like Polenta and Sugo with Mozzarella and Over Easy Egg; Korean Fried Chicken with Rice, Tasty Kimchi and Eggs; Alabama BBQ Chicken; and Cedar-Plank Salmon with Salsa Verde.

Gorham writes, "Kitchens, primarily, have been my home"; this cookbook serves as an invitation into his. Personal stories, food histories and fun facts liven up long recipes. Many of the meals are indulgent; rarely are they quick. A number include ingredients that need to be ordered online. Yet this collection sizzles with possibility. Even among a roster of complex dishes, simplicity shines through in the easily replicable Sour Pickles, Potato Chips or a Big Batch of Bloodys. The recipes are odes to regions and spices, both sense-awakening and surprising. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

Tracey Fine and Georgie Tarn, the self-styled "Jewish Princesses" of kosher cooking, offer up a collection of recipes and advice in The Modern Jewish Table: 100 Kosher Recipes from Around the Globe.

The Princesses design modern spins on traditional Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Mizrahi dishes, such as Jewshi Japanese Gefilte Fish, Sephardi Saffron Chicken Soup with Fragrant Matzo Balls, and Princess Pitas, made with mashed potato and matzo, an ideal choice for Passover. The authors also get creative with salads like Sharon Persimmon Fruit and Sugar Snap Peas. Up last come four (four!) dessert chapters, including a chapter each on dairy-free desserts, cakes, tiny treats and couture chocolate.

The descriptions convey a sense of the dishes' taste and a sense of humor. Fine and Tarn vow that their Mock Chopped Liver, "really works, unlike fake Hermes handbags." They suggest readers try the Popcorn Cake "for when you want to butter someone up," or enjoy Dark Chocolate Amaretto Cake that is "like a date with Al Pacino."

Essays precede each section, full of meditations on feeding families and the magic of Nutri-Bullets. Fine and Tarn pepper in translations for readers who might not get a joke, such as explaining that kneidlach, which they call "Jewish penicillin," are dumplings. Cooking instructions are streamlined--sparse, even--and luscious photos accompany most recipes.

Fine and Tarn write with warmth and encouragement, even when suggesting bold feast preparations. The essential ingredient? In their words, "A pinch of chutzpah." --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

There are more than a dozen full-length biographies devoted to volatile two-time Oscar-winning actress Bette Davis (1908-1989), but none offer the up-close and personal view of Davis's final decade as Kathryn Sermak's engaging, outrageous and heartfelt memoir Miss D & Me. Davis hired the 23-year-old Sermak as her personal assistant in 1979, and immediately lived up to her difficult reputation. She started retraining Sermak on how to walk, talk, eat, dress and act in public. Davis even convinced her to change the spelling of her name from Catherine to Kathryn. On their first trip abroad, fire alarms forced the two to evacuate their hotel, but Davis insisted that Sermak run back in--not to save her family photos or passport, but her cigarettes.

After a rocky start, the two developed a friendship. Sermak's devotion helped Davis through some devastating health crises. In 1983, Davis's breast cancer diagnosis resulted in a mastectomy. Nine days later, Davis suffered a major stroke, paralyzing her left side and slurring her speech. Although Sermak describes Davis as "a fighter, a champion, and a bon vivant--and always a survivor," the road back from her debilitating stroke was long and hard fought. "No heartache or tragedy... had ever thrown her into such hopelessness," writes Sermak. Then came the betrayal of Davis's daughter's scathing tell-all book.

Sermak's affectionate, intimate and clear-eyed memoir lucidly explores Davis's conflicting actions and emotions as an actress who often put work above relationships--to her personal detriment. Film buffs will appreciate discovering new shadings to the movie icon. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

"It is this mystic negotiation of the knowing and unknowing, that flicker of light in a dark wood that is poetry," writes Jill Bialosky (History of a Suicide) in Poetry Will Save Your Life. Poet and novelist Bialosky fans that flame in this unconventional book that is at once poetry anthology and personal reckoning. She intertwines poems that have shaped her with the contexts in which they mattered; the bones of poetry and flesh of reflection yield something extraordinary.

Bialosky's stories swing a poignant pendulum from past to present. The loss of her father leads her to seek comfort in poems, sparking a lifelong passion for the form. Between the included poems, she meditates on moments that deal with the minutiae of life--a stolen tube of lipstick or a chance meeting with boys in a blue Corvette--as well as moments of magnitude: the miscarriage of a child or picking up her young son from his Manhattan school on the morning of September 11.

Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich are among more than 40 poets whose work Bialosky gathers, along with scholars' and critics' commentary. Her writing is itself poetic: careful, courageous and clear. She marvels at the power of poems that can punctuate life, poems that "shimmy down the page" or that, in Frost's words, become "a way of taking life by the throat." Ultimately, Poetry Will Save Your Life does all three. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

Eugene Smith was a larger-than-life figure of 20th-century photography, but biographer Sam Stephenson uncovers the small intricacies of Smith's life in his compelling portrait, Gene Smith's Sink: A Wide-Angle View.

Stephenson approaches his subject by interviewing Smith's friends and associates--including famous figures like Thelonious Monk who hung out in "the isolated squalor" of Smith's New York loft--and by poring over Smith's letters and own writings. Stephenson includes Smith's pawnshop receipts, court summons and other sundry documents, developing a picture of an itinerant life and lending the biography an aesthetic of marginalia that serves its subject well. By using this "wide-angle view," Stephenson explains, he can get "a clearer picture of Smith by averting my focus slightly to the side of him, the way you can see stars in the sky clearer by doing the same thing."

What emerges is a portrait of Smith not so much in his prime--when he was taking iconic portraits for Life magazine midcentury--but in his later work, when his alcohol abuse, obsessive behavior and reclusive lifestyle led to more complex photography and a number of ambient sound recordings that demonstrated his pervasive need to capture his surroundings. "Not many people are truly able to understand beauty and pain and ugliness," says Smith's former assistant Tamas Janda. "Most people don't want to be reminded of their humanity, which is inherently painful and ugly. Gene sought that out."

In opening his aperture for this biography, Stephenson gives shape to the vagaries and fleeting enchantments of human life, which photography tries to hold still. Gene Smith's Sink is a haunting exploration of the photographic mind. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

Journalist Richard Fidler creates a memorable father-son travelogue while recounting some of Western civilization's most intense battles in his hefty, spirited history Ghost Empire: A Journey to the Legendary Constantinople.

Fidler hails from Australia, where he hosts Conversations with Richard Fidler on ABC Radio. The program is one of the most popular podcasts in Australia, and Fidler rolls his interview skills and storytelling talents into Ghost Empire, about a trip he and his teenage son Joe took to Istanbul in 2014. Throughout the present-tense narrative of their journey, Fidler reconstructs the famed and bloody history of the city, particularly the rise and fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire.

Fidler follows its establishment in 330 through its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Furthermore, he probes Roman history in general and the empire's lurid power struggles, and is able to relate historical intrigue to modern-day Turkey and its increasingly autocratic government. Fidler's writing is clean and crisp and describes the city with a certain bemusement and sense of wonder. Exploring crumbly monuments, partaking in the cuisine and culture, both he and his son discover the historical in the modern: "There is a railway line a few blocks away, with houses and apartments pushed up together on both sides of the tracks. A thousand years ago, this was the emperor's polo field."

There is a moment in Ghost Empire when Fidler loses track of his son and panics. Everything turns out okay, but this real-life father-son dynamic complements the historical material nicely, creating a pleasurable read that is less academic and more experiential. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

Kurt Andersen's (True Believers) comprehensive history of American bunkum and balderdash, Fantasyland, is the work of a man with a particular picture to paint and a willingness to follow wherever the bizarre facts lead him. As he says, "I enjoy having my mind boggled." While it may have been sparked by the presidency of Donald Trump, Fantasyland puts the latest political pandemonium into the broader context of the origins of the United States--a country built from scratch "where all citizens were officially freer than ever before to invent and promote and believe anything. So Americans promptly began believing almost everything."

A longlist of religious sects, out-there beliefs and fruitcake leaders kicks off Andersen's history, and he rolls out their appearances with both facts and farce decade after decade. When Fantasyland hits his own early years in the 1950s, however, Andersen's range and depth of examples of American delusions grows exponentially. The border between real and unreal disappears in the minds of those endlessly in "pursuit of happiness." Access to broadly disseminated media makes every tangent seem like a big deal, and Andersen mines the mother lode.

After all his research, he concludes that "Donald Trump is a pure Fantasyland being, its apotheosis... a stupendous Exhibit A." If centuries of American hogwash are too frightening, Andersen attempts to leave us with some indication that the pendulum may soon swing back to sanity: "The good news, in other words, is that America may now be at peak Fantasyland. We can hope." Whether this forecast proves accurate or not, his look back is one of the most audacious and entertaining American histories on any bookshelf. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Most people know little about the process behind creating video games. Even players, casual or otherwise, usually have a only a cursory understanding of how many people, years and iterations it takes to make their favorite games. Jason Schreier's Blood, Sweat, and Pixels pulls back the curtain, diving deep into the creation of 10 games to show how difficult the process is. Readers may be amazed that games are completed at all.

Using each chapter as a case study, Schreier (a respected games journalist and news editor at the website Kotaku) interviews designers, studio heads and other makers about the rough road to publication. Each game he studies faced a catastrophe before launching, and Schreier uses their examples to make broader observations about the industry and games as an art form. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels isn't necessarily trying to make philosophical points about the nature of gaming, or art, but by exposing how people craft games, he gives the reader a better perspective as to why video games exist as they do.

Schreier runs the gamut of games, from those that cost millions of dollars with hundreds of employees, to Stardew Valley, one man's five-year solo project. With lively writing, Schreier observes how small, medium and large studios tackle a range of problems. For fans of video games, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a must read, but anyone interested in stories about the hard process of making art is also sure to enjoy it. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

Often tagged by the name of his Financial Times column (and title of his first book), "The Undercover Economist," Tim Harford has built a reputation as someone who can turn marginal utility curves into common sense. In Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy, he writes clever, quixotic essays exhibiting his take on the singular innovations that seeded the contemporary way of life. These are pithy vignettes about objects people may take for granted now, but which were hardly obvious when somebody dreamed them up. Based on history, biography and a splash of economics, Harford's fresh look is great entertainment, with enough ah-ha wisdom to evoke a "listen to this," reading aloud of a favorite passage.

While he includes the usual heavy-hitters like barbed wire, air-conditioning, the elevator, the clock and the computer, he also throws in several of his own unexpected quirky favorites. Who would have highlighted the TV dinner, the Ikea Billy bookcase, the passport, the Pill or mundane business tools like insurance, index funds and management consulting? But he has his reasons. The Billy, for example, is included not so much for its design as for IKEA's mass production and packaging techniques. Each day in southern Sweden, "in goes particleboard by the truckload... out come ready-boxed products, stacked six by three on pallets"--adding up to a cumulative total of 60 million shelving units. That's a lot of head-scratching DIY assembly across the globe--and homes for a lot of books. Put this one among them. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

"Writing as a path to awakening is an invitation and celebration--it's your ticket back to your creative brilliance," writes Albert DeSilver. According to him, combining meditation and writing is the most genuine way to discover one's truest self and to produce the most creative and profound writing.

Using the calendar year as a template, DeSilver offers monthly insights into the how and why of the writing process, encouraging writers to read widely and often, to explore the world of poetry and to write consistently. He couples examples by students with craft and meditation exercises that encourage readers to stretch the boundaries of their known world. The meditation exercises help relax and expand the mind, allowing creativity to flow more readily when one sits down to do the fun and engaging writing exercises. These include the use of all five senses to produce vivid imagery, considering the role humor can play, writing a biography of a person in a magazine, reflecting on the boundaries of telling the truth in one's writing. He also delves into the world of editing.

Although some of his writing tactics are tried and true methods most writers will recognize--write daily, find your optimum writing time, practice, practice, practice--by combining the act of writing with meditation, DeSilver opens a doorway that allows for spiritual and emotional growth, concepts not discussed in typical writing books. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Life has thrown Scott Stabile (Just Love) countless curveballs. When he was 14, his parents were murdered at their Detroit grocery store, leaving Stabile and his six siblings orphaned. Nine years later, his brother died from a heroin overdose. As a young adult, Stabile became entangled with a spiritual cult; his decision to break away resulted in being ostracized by once-close friends. Then, a significant professional setback left him questioning his life's direction and meaning.

Stabile shares how his personal traumas have provided opportunities for growth while also shaping his sense of identity and purpose. "The hardest experiences of our lives never stop living with us," he writes. "They move forward into our day-to-day existence, and we are left to decide how we want to integrate the pain." For Stabile, that means approaching his relationships with everyone--his siblings, his partner, his Facebook community of more than 350,000 followers and even his parents' murderer--from a foundation of love.

In Big Love, Stabile isn't afraid to let his vulnerability show while reflecting on his own journeys of excavating buried pain, acknowledging fear, finding paths towards forgiveness (including from ourselves), living authentically and developing resilience. He offers a sincere blend of honesty and humor while replacing platitudes with perspectives grounded by individual experiences.

"We are, each of us, forced to survive circumstances we would never have consciously chosen for ourselves. We're all dealing with the reality of some of our feared what-ifs. In those realities, however, lives our strength and resilience, our ability to handle the unpredictable and sometimes tragic aspects of life." --Melissa Firman, writer, editor and blogger at melissafirman.com.

Great scientists are often famous for one or two projects out of a lifetime of study. Charles Darwin is best known for the voyage of the Beagle, which he took in his 20s, and for his book On the Origin of Species. Biologist and author James T. Costa offers a more domestic view of Darwin's life and work in Darwin's Backyard, looking at his systematic explorations of the natural world in the context of his childhood and adult family life, his friends and neighbors and the larger scientific community of his day. At the end of each chapter, Costa provides Darwinesque experiments on seeds, plants, barnacles and earthworms, among other subjects.

Darwin comes across as a charmingly enthusiastic and curious character in this illustrated biography, which includes a college friend's early cartoon of him going beetle hunting, perched astride a giant beetle and waving a butterfly net. This is an unusual look at the daily creative life of a great scientist, with opportunities to dig in and observe the workings of nature first hand using methods very similar to his own. The reading level is high, but the experiments could be done by any sufficiently interested person over the age of 10, or modified by teachers. Costa provides clear instructions, supply lists, resources for unusual materials and suggestions for further reading. "Darwin's approaches were varied... rarely meeting modern standards of rigid experimental design. But for all that, Darwin managed to learn an awful lot about how the world works. And it all began in that smelly boyhood laboratory at the bottom of the garden." --Sara Catterall

"Humans today have a deeply troubled relationship with other animals and species," writes David R. Boyd in his fascinating new treatise, The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution that Could Save the World. The problem, he continues, is that we "purport to love animals" yet "inflict pain and suffering upon them." And, he says, it's not just animals that we abuse. Rivers, forests and entire ecosystems are threatened by human activity. To counter these mistreatments, environmental lawyers from around the globe are seeking to enact laws that better protect nature, and according to Boyd, they're making great strides.

He opens with an overview of scientists' recent investigations into animal consciousness, which show that many species--including dogs, octopuses and dolphins--possess far greater capacities for both compassion and pain than previously thought. He then explains how these insights can--and already have--assisted lawmakers in extending habeas corpus laws to protect animals. His overview of the United States' Endangered Species Act is also eye-opening. Here he delves into its legal history and the profound philosophical shifts it forced in thinking about the natural world.

Despite the heady subject matter, The Rights of Nature is a breeze to read. Boyd punctuates his chapters with case studies that illustrate how legal decisions have affected specific animals and ecosystems. It's in these pages that Boyd's work is especially affecting. Well-researched and written for the layman, this stirring look at the history and current state of environmental lawmaking demonstrates how powerful--and inspiring--legislation can be. --Amy Brady, freelance writer and editor

For almost five decades, Peter Wadhams has been studying the way the ice at both poles has been changing. What he reveals in A Farewell to Ice is a chilling view of how much influence humankind has had on the steady disappearance of polar ice and what that will mean for all living things on the planet as it continues to vanish. This highly scientific and heavily researched treatise leads readers through the ways in which polar ice forms and dissolves. Furthermore, it covers the earth's glaciation history and discusses the current theory that the steady rise in greenhouse gases will effectively knock the earth out of its normal cycle, creating a progressively warmer planet--one with no ice at the North Pole.

Wadhams analyzes numerous terrible scenarios: what might happen if an oil spill occurs due to drilling under the Arctic ice cap; the effect melting ice will have on rising sea levels, ocean acidification and the release of trapped methane gas; and a host of other issues that will certainly affect millions of people worldwide. His calm and informed tone throughout, however, backed by data and his own observations, takes what some could claim is a Hollywood apocalypse scenario and makes it very real and plausible. He leaves readers with the knowledge that it's not if these events will take place, but when--with changes apparent from the present day and beyond. Fortunately, Wadhams offers some possible solutions, but they would be effective only if people take immediate action to stop the melting of polar ice. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Following his highly acclaimed Shadowshaper, in which Brooklyn teens use their artistic talents as powerful spirit-controlling tools, Daniel José Older brings his eager readers a thrilling sequel, Shadowhouse Fall.

Sixteen-year-old Sierra Santiago has had a few months to get used to her new powers "at the head of a whole strange fellowship of urban sorcerers." She's learning to expand her senses so that she can connect with the spirits of dead people, "a cadre of shadows she'd come to think of as her own Secret Service detail," as they are able to battle enemy spirits by her side. Sierra is well aware that the Sisterhood of Sorrows, the Shadowhouse's golden-glowing rivals, have vowed revenge on the shadowshapers. When a mousy girl from school shows up to tell her that the Deck of Worlds--an ancient pack of cards that serves as "a system of divination and the allotment of power" among warring branches of Sierra's ancestors--is "back in play," Sierra knows it's time to muster the troops to defend their hard-won position as most powerful magical house in the city.

Nonstop action and funny, authentic banter carries Sierra and her shadowshaping crew through the projects and brownstones of their Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which plays a strong role in the storyline. As people of mostly African, Caribbean and Puerto Rican descent, the shadowshapers face police oppression and harassment as well as rival sorcerous factions. Readers will cheer as the teens stand strong against armed police and cranky ancestral spirits alike. A stunning sequel that will leave fans clamoring for book three. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Auma, a rural Kenyan teenager in the years when HIV/AIDS became a national plague, is a strong runner and excellent student who desperately wants to become a doctor. But when both of her parents get sick and die, her plan to achieve her dreams is derailed; as eldest, she acts as caretaker to her dying parents, then (after their deaths), to her three siblings. She thinks, "the three of them were depending on me to make their dreams a reality.... As frightened as I might be, I was determined not to fail."

Auma shows great maturity, first dealing with her father's death from HIV/AIDS and then caring for her mother, who contracted the disease from her husband. Somehow, Auma is able to graduate from grade eight, win track meets and do all the chores necessary in her rural household, but she constantly questions her situation. A natural student, Auma is inquisitive about the illness that killed her parents, and learns more about it, discovering truths that the adults in her community will not acknowledge.

Driven Auma earns a high school scholarship, but after one year, she makes the tough decision to drop out, so that she can work in Nairobi and earn money to support her family. Readers will find themselves aligning with Auma as she hopes she will eventually return to school. In prose as forthright as Auma herself, Eucabeth Odhiambo tells a story of resilience and strength. Odhiambo, who grew up in Kenya in the '80s and '90s, saw the effects of the disease first hand; this experience plus her work with HIV/AIDs orphans helps her give life to the authentic and realistic character of Auma--a young woman to believe in--and to put a human face on the epidemic that still affects Kenya. --Melinda Greenblatt, freelance book reviewer

Mateo is a homebody. Raised by his father, he does a lot of his living vicariously through the Internet. In Mateo's similar but alternate version of our present, there is a company, Death-Cast, that calls people--Deckers--to let them know they will die within the day--not how they will die, just that they will die before the clock strikes midnight. At 12:22 a.m., Mateo gets a call from Death-Cast.

At 1:05 a.m., Rufus is beating his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend to a bloody pulp. His phone begins to ring. Recently orphaned, Rufus already has some experience with Death-Cast: they called a few months ago to announce that his mother, father and sister would all be leaving him in the same day. Now, they're calling for him. Rufus finishes with the boyfriend and gets his best friends together, only to find himself running away from his own funeral as the cops come after him for assault.

Now both alone, Mateo (whose father is in a coma) and Rufus meet through an app designed to give lonely Deckers someone with whom they can spend their last day. As the day goes on, Rufus drags Mateo out of his shell ("Wow," he says, "you're like a tourist in your own city"), Mateo helps Rufus come to appreciate himself, and their relationship develops into something more than a friendship. Their dialogue is fun and funny, tender and affecting. Toward the end of their day, Mateo asks, "Weird question: Do you believe in the afterlife?" "That's not weird," Rufus answers, "we're dying."

Told in Mateo and Rufus's alternating first-person present narration with occasional third-person accounts from individuals who interact with the two on their last day, Silvera's (History Is All You Left Me) novel offers a fast-paced countdown to the inevitable, heartbreaking ending. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Friedrich Wilhelm Müller loved athletics as a boy but "playing sports required a strong, healthy body" and Friedrich was skinny and frail. Though he was often "too sick to play," he remained undaunted by his physical restrictions and played sports, determined to be a healthy and strong person. As Friedrich grew older, his love of athletics never dimmed. Though his father wanted him to attend university and focus on a career, Friedrich could not ignore his drive to be active--he decided to join the circus.

When circus life didn't work out for Friedrich, his journey toward being "the strongest man in the world" began in earnest.  He trained as a bodybuilder, changed his name to Eugen Sandow and soon became a professional strongman. With time, work and some (possibly slippery) performance tricks, Eugen gained world fame and launched the first organized bodybuilding contest, ever-so-humbly awarding the winner a statue of himself. Eugen Sandow's exercise and diet regimens are used to this day and the prize for the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition is still the (slightly updated) Sandow.

Don Tate (Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions), who used to be a bodybuilder himself, treats the exceptional life of Eugen Sandow with appreciation and respect while making sure to note in the ample back matter that much of what people today know about Sandow came from the man himself--a man who constantly sought perfection and sometimes stretched the truth. Tate's biography of one of the first international sports stars is welcoming to the young reader with approachable text and rich digital illustrations. And, for the budding athlete, there is even a page that teaches different strength building exercises. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

It has been more than 20 years since the publication of then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's bestseller It Takes a Village. This picture book with the same title takes the focus of Clinton's original work--children--and, instead of highlighting how adults can make a world for children, depicts instead the individual agency of children and how "sometimes it takes a child to make a village."

Marla Frazee's (The Farmer and the Clown) illustrations tell the story behind the text. The double-page spread with the words "We all have a place in the village, a job to do, and a lot to learn" depicts a large, diverse group of children and adults coming together under a leafless winter tree to sort through building materials. "Every child needs a champion. Or two. Or three. Or more" shows children working alongside the adults to haul materials, use tools and begin building what will eventually be a playground. "Every family needs help sometimes"--children and adults take breaks from working to share food and drink--"Kindness and caring and sharing matter."

As with all of her works, Frazee's illustrations explode with life: as the beginning of spring touches the tree with light pink blooms, children play catch, families hold picnics, an adult pulls two children and a dog down the hill in a wagon. Her pencil-and-watercolor art is vibrant and action-packed, the story told entirely through her illustrations of the everyday ups and downs of the people working together to create something new and beautiful. This work is a welcome reminder that all people "are born believers. And citizens, too." --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

As the first installment of the Frostblood Saga concluded, Fireblood Ruby and Frostblood Arcus joined their powerful gifts to destroy the icy throne of Tempesia, that "timeless symbol of Frostblood rule." Rather than defeating its curse, their attempt released the Minax, a "haunting, shadowy creature" trapped within. This creature had influenced the previous Frostblood king, convincing him to butcher all of the Tempesian Firebloods. Although Firebloods still rule in their homeland of Sudesia, in Tempesia only Ruby survived.

Now, in book two, Arcus is king of Tempesia, ruling over a fractious Frostblood Court. Ruby fears the "bone-deep distrust" between Frostbloods and Firebloods makes her presence a liability to the new king's efforts to unite his people. Even though Arcus insists that she stay, Ruby joins the rakish Fireblood Kai on a journey to Sudesia, where the fire throne can be found; trapping and controlling the Minax imprisoned in the fire throne may be her best hope for destroying the murderous Minax back home. Unfortunately, Kai has hidden motives for bringing her to the court of the Fireblood queen. As a Tempesian and close friend of the Frostblood King, Ruby finds herself fighting for her life and her freedom, all the while trying to gather the knowledge she needs to destroy the curse of the Minax, put an end to the growing discord and destruction and mend relations between two bitterly divided countries.

Ruby's fiery nature leads to some rash decisions, but her flaws make her an extremely likable heroine. Her adventuring is balanced with light touches of romance, and there is more than enough intrigue to satisfy. Fans of Frostblood will find themselves smitten with this second installment, and the breathtaking climax will leave them eagerly awaiting the third. --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI

Québécoise author Anne Renaud (Missuk's Snow Geese) and Italian illustrator Felicita Sala team up for a crisp, delightful envisioning of the birth of that American culinary classic, the potato chip.

In 1850s Saratoga Springs, N.Y., customers flock to Crum's Place to devour delicacies cooked by George Crum, shown flipping a flapjack with smiling poise, and served by cheery-cheeked, flame-haired waitress Gladys. Known for his sense of humor as well as his kitchen skills, Crum finds himself flummoxed when he meets "finicky, persnickety" customer Filbert P. Horsefeathers, resplendent in a purple-plumed top hat, polka-dotted cravat and sunflower boutonniere. Filbert sends back three plates, complaining his potatoes are too thick, too bland and undercooked. Deciding to have a little fun with the demanding diner, George sends a plate of finely shaved, crispy-fried spuds, but the joke happily backfires when Filbert adores the creation, and so Crum's Crisp Crispies--potato chips--are born.

Mr. Crum's Potato Predicament showcases American humor and ingenuity at its finest. Studded with playful phrases like "prickly porcupine pie," Renaud's vivacious vocabulary builder of a story sings alongside Sala's feather-soft watercolor and pencil depictions of George, who was of African American and Native American descent, ruddy-faced Filbert and a full house of diverse customers. An afterword to this "fictional tale with a helping of truth" explains that Crum's legend has roots in reality, even if no single cook can take credit for the chip. Readers age five through nine will giggle at this mischievous morsel. Bet you can't read it just once! --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Main Branch, Dayton Metro Library

"This isn't a movie about a girl who breaks up with her undermining boyfriend... It's not about some great white hetero hero who loves a woman he needs to save or teams up with a lesser-powered woman in a skintight suit. I am the center of the story now, Jule said to herself.... I am the center."

Jule West Williams believes in being hard physically and emotionally. She has several origin stories, but the one she prefers "to any other story she might tell about herself" paints her as the child of murdered secret agents, a skilled agent herself.

Jule tells herself she's powerful and safe, hiding under bravado and secret identities how small and scared she really is. She finds herself drawn to another orphan, the beautiful, wealthy and mercurial Imogen (Immie). Told in two timelines (one linear over the course of a few days, the other in backwards skips and hops over several months), it is clear from the first chapter that something is not quite right with the protagonist, and there's something amiss with the way the girls interact, with how Jule has braided their lives together. But the broken up and ever-rewinding timeline paired with Jule's own unreliable narration makes her difficult to decode.

E. Lockhart's (We Were Liars) Genuine Fraud is a young adult thriller with nods to The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Man in the Rockefeller Suit and Great Expectations. Readers will be engrossed as they wind their way through Jule's gnarled narration eventually to find the truth. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Patina and Maddy's father died six years ago. Maddy, "all fidgety in Ma's stomach" at the time of his death, never knew him. And she doesn't remember how their Ma's diabetes made her lose first a few toes, then a whole foot and finally both legs. But middle school-aged Patina remembers it all: how her dad "never woke up. Like... ever."; how Ma's legs got "swollen and dark like she'd been standing in coal" before they were amputated. Now living with their father's brother, Uncle Tony, and his white wife, Mama Emily (whom the girls call Momly), Patty has "swallowed it all" and learned to act like she's okay.

Living with Uncle Tony and Momly is "fine" and Ma sees the girls every chance she gets, but Patina has never really been given the chance to mourn the loss of her father, the almost loss of her mother. And now she's trying to make a place for herself on the track team of her brand-new school, a place with "a whole bunch of rich girls whose daddies own stuff." She's defensive and angry but mainly afraid--afraid to be herself, afraid she's not good enough, afraid she'll lose someone else.

Patina, Jason Reynolds's second book in his Track series, has the titular character interacting with and befriending the cast of characters from Ghost while maintaining a stand-alone story. It is simply impossible to not love Patina. She is, as she states of herself, "No junk. Frida [Kahlo] in a suit. Mary J. Blige in track shoes." Charming, hardworking and a dedicated sister, runner and student, Patina is a sympathetic and wholly sympathetic character who finds her own peace by learning to work with others. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Eleven-year-old Maverick Falconer wants to be like Spider-Man or Captain America. Instead, he's more like Don Rickles: funny and short--"but not short enough for the shortness to qualify as a superpower." Maverick's circumstances support the theory that every comedian's humor masks heartache: when he was three, Maverick's military firefighter dad died a hero in Afghanistan. His erratically employed, hard-drinking mother has an abusive boyfriend, and being woefully small for his age means Maverick can't protect her, plus he's ripe for ribbing from his peers.

On the verge of starting sixth grade, Maverick hatches a spirits-buoying plan: "I was going to do good deeds, right wrongs, stand up against evil, and protect anybody who was smaller or weaker than I was.... Assuming I could find anybody smaller or weaker than I was." He gets off to a lousy start: one of his "good deeds" is hanging an air freshener in his homeroom that gives his teacher hives, and he lands in the assistant principal's office more often than a hero should.

The Secret Sheriff of Sixth Grade is a comic novel that lets the reader look past the jokes and at Maverick's tattered sneakers, and into his empty cupboards. Jordan Sonnenblick (Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip) has created a memorably endearing and unlikely hero whose biggest challenge is fighting not bad guys but the embarrassment of being poor and the compulsion to see one's parents as virtuous. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Michael King's foster father, Walter, told a teenage Michael, "Anyone who's on the down-and-out heals himself with animals." Several decades later, Michael experiences that sentiment first hand when an injured, scrawny cat chances upon the homeless alcoholic and turns his world on its head.

British journalist and animal advocate Britt Collins compassionately tells Michael's story, taking readers through his rough childhood in Missouri to a devastating loss as a young adult that crushes his spirit and sends him in a downward spiral. A veteran of the streets in 2012, Michael is panhandling in Portland, Ore., when he meets the scared, helpless cat he names Tabor. Unable to find an owner, Michael continues to feed and care for the little feline. As Collins explains, "The homeless [have] a code of ethics--they always [take] care of their animals first." A bond between the two develops in no time.

When Michael travels south for the winter, Tabor--complete with collar and leash--goes as well. Their adventures take them camping, hitchhiking, to the ocean and face-to-face with a bear. Through it all, Michael's soul begins to heal. However, fate pulls the rug out from under Michael once again when he takes Tabor to the vet and discovers she's micro-chipped and has an owner looking for her.

This tender story of a damaged man who begins to heal and rediscover himself through the love of a cat is endearing and beautiful. Collins's astute understanding of the power of companion bonds makes Strays rich with emotion and charmingly satisfying. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

The most surprising thing about Mary Jo Salter's poetry collection The Surveyors is how fun and charming it is, though not without a degree of profundity. To say Salter is an experienced poet is an understatement. Not only has she authored several poetry collections, such as Nothing by Design, but she's also served as poetry editor for the New Republic and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. In The Surveyors, she showcases her impeccable form, her lines as tight and sharp as rapiers, yet her tone always playful.

It's a tone she sets right away in "Yield": "and more letters wanting/ to play came to me/ alone to untangle." Such play is evident throughout the collection's four sections. It surfaces in Salter's ironically euphonic portraits of salty characters. In "The Profane Piano Tuner," for example, terse, pleasantly rhyming lines reveal the tale of a piano tuner who verbally abuses the speaker of the poem's piano while tuning it precisely: "Hour after hour he'd swear/ You filthy whore, Oh don't you dare." The piano tuner's profanity becomes enough of a problem that the speaker must let him go, but in her own musing fashion, Salter ends the poem with an ironic twist in which the speaker's young daughter sits down at the devilishly tuned piano "and played a Chopin prelude like an angel."

Smart, quirky and offbeat, yet finding truth and beauty in uncommon places, The Surveyors is a poetry collection to cherish. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset