Yoko Ogawa's Revenge is a delicious mosaic that concerns much more than its titular subject. These 11 compulsively readable tales that become increasingly multilayered and interlocked are elegant and literate, unvarnished outtakes from reality, disturbing glimpses at the calamities of urban existence.

Every story is told by a different unnamed character. A woman stops into a bakery that appears to be momentarily untended and waits for a clerk who never appears. A shy, lonely girl asks her school friend to accompany her on a lunch date with the wealthy father she's never known. A writer takes a room in an old apartment house where the widow who owns it is growing five-pronged carrots that look remarkably like human hands. A beautiful nurse gets tired of waiting for a married doctor to tell his pregnant wife that he wants a divorce.

Ogawa's characters are subtle and quirky; they have real-world jobs and notice different kinds of details. The stories unexpectedly dovetail: the narrator of one story, for example, is the mother of another's narrator. These are tragedies within tragedies, so that an accident on the highway that slows down traffic in one story becomes the subject of the following one.

By the end, Revenge has circled around to its own beginning in an elaborate spiderweb of storylines, and the reader is left facing the terrifying interconnectedness of life, where our narratives all crisscross and our pivotal moments are merely plot bumps in everyone else's stories. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

In a fresh take on the coming-of-age road trip, the heroine of Sharon Short's poignant novel has a goal: for her little brother to realize his dream of claiming to own My One Square Inch of Alaska.

Teenager Donna Lane narrates her story, which lends a sweet honesty to the tale (and suggests its suitability for a mother-daughter book club pick). In postwar industrial Ohio, Donna has successfully combined high school, after-school jobs and de facto mothering to Will, her 10-year-old brother. Ever since Daddy told them he'd taken their mother to a cancer clinic in Florida, from which she never returned, he's been listless and often absent, providing Donna and Will with bare-bones sustenance and intermittent parenting.

Even with her responsibilities, Donna manages to maintain a social life and a secret modeling job, tucking away her small savings for a planned post-graduation escape to New York City and a career in fashion design. But when Will becomes gravely ill and begs Donna to take him and his rescued Husky to see Alaska, she follows her philosophy and "makes a small choice" that sets the story in motion.

Full of heart, My One Square Inch of Alaska evokes a specific slice of 1950s Americana, a rural town that appears bucolic but simmers with McCarthyism and labor strife. In Donna, Short presents a heroine forced into a youthful maturity that doesn't rob her of optimism, loyalty and amazing good sense. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco

Ros Barber knows about poetry--she has written three collections--and she knows about Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), the subject of her doctorate in English literature and additional scholarly articles. What better way, then, to introduce the Elizabethan poet and playwright to a greater readership than for Barber to write a novel in verse, narrated by the man himself? The Marlowe Papers was first released in the U.K. to great acclaim; now available to readers here, it is a must-read for anyone interested in Marlowe, William Shakespeare or 16th-century English history.

In blank verse (as Marlowe used in his plays), Barber chooses to let Marlowe narrate his own story, beginning with his supposed death in a bar fight. In this fictionalized memoir, Marlowe escapes the knife and is forced into hiding. While exiled, he continues to write under an assumed name: William Shakespeare. In addition to addressing the Marlowe-Shakespeare authorship question, Barber allows her Marlowe to confess much of what has been ascribed to him by historians: his intelligence and charm, his sexual liaisons with both men and women, his dealings as a spy on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, his alleged atheism. Barber's use of verse may surprise readers initially, but the writing is superb, the plot moves quickly and Marlowe's story is compelling. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore

Jennifer Haigh (Faith) sets the interconnected short stories of News from Heaven in fictional Bakerton, Pa., a tight-knit community that was once a thriving coal-mining town. She shines a spotlight on some of the townspeople--those who have stayed and those who have fled--and how Bakerton remains a part of who they are, the fabric of their very being, even amid a world that's ever-evolving.

The stories take place from World War II through the end of the 20th century. The past might be past, but it remains active amid each of these 10 sensitively drawn tales: a young Polish girl moves from Bakerton to New York City to become a housemaid for a Jewish family; a teenager's life is upended when a long-lost aunt returns to town; the tragic homecoming of a wayward brother transcends his sister's perceptions; a 50-year-old woman finds love for the first time; a widow is forced to view the sad truth about her deceased husband's life.

Themes of struggle, loss, regret and acceptance emerge as Haigh weaves subtle glimmers of spirituality amid personal epiphanies that surprise in unexpected ways and reform each story with deeper meaning. Fans of Haigh's work will be pleased to find some characters returning from her debut novel, Baker Towers, but it's not necessary to have read that book before savoring these poignant, compassionately told stories. News from Heaven, however, might prove the perfect inspiration to seek it out. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce gets more clever with age. In Speaking from Among the Bones, the fifth mystery in Alan Bradley's popular series (with several more promised), Flavia is still the smartest prepubescent sleuth in the history of whodunits.

Something's up in the crypt at St. Tancred's Church, and the organist has gone missing. St. Tancred himself is being exhumed, and Flavia is not welcome at the proceedings. But how can she resist? Using her wile, wit, wide-eyed innocence ("After all, I was christened Flavia Tancred de Luce," she insists) and reliable skills as a chemist, Flavia works her way beneath the village church and into the double mystery: What happened to the organist? And why all the secrecy surrounding the tomb?

Flavia narrates her adventures, informing readers that the Christmas holidays were "just a couple of months ago," a reference to I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, the fourth in the series. Fans will nod, while newcomers to Bradley's British cozies easily catch on. The familiar characters return: Father de Luce; Mrs. Mullet, housekeeper of the perennially endangered Buckshaw estate; the badgering older sisters, Feely and Daffy; and Inspector Hewitt, once again certain he'll solve the crime but forced to defer to Flavia. The youthful detective also joins forces with a new character: Adam Sowerby, fellow sleuth and chemist, who knows how to use a daffodil when necessary.

All ends well, as Flavia's adventures do. But this time, there's a clifhanger ending. Stay tuned. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco

Fans of Charles Todd's Inspector Ian Rutledge will be happy to see him back in action in Proof of Guilt. The book opens with a hit-and-run victim; the only clue to the dead man's identity is a rather ornate watch in his pocket. Rutledge traces the watch back to French, French, and Traynor--a firm of wine importers--and deduces that the dead man must be Lewis French, the head of the English branch of the firm.

But then Lewis French's sister informs Rutledge that the dead man is not her brother, and the inspector is back at square one: Who is the dead man? Where is Lewis French? Was he involved in the murder?

The questions get bigger as people connected to the case keep disappearing; Rutledge suspects another dead body may be linked to the case. The investigation will send him from Essex to London to Surrey and back again, in an attempt to find the truth.

As always, Rutledge's character is what makes Todd's story most interesting. The shell-shocked World War I veteran is haunted by the voice of his slain comrade Hamish, who offers Rutledge advice--and has a knack for warning him to duck in the nick of time. The mystery itself is a bit convoluted, but the authentically likable personality of Inspector Rutledge rescues it. Devotees of World War I-era fiction--such as the Charles Todd's other series starring Bess Crawford or Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs novels--will doubtless find Proof of Guilt fascinating. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Victoria Alexander (My Wicked Little Lies, The Perfect Mistress) delivers another delightful and engaging historical romance in The Importance of Being Wicked. Alexander's spirited heroine, the widowed Lady Miranda Garret, has been the driving force behind her late husband's architectural firm since his unexpected death three years ago. As if that weren't scandalous enough, she has also been the artistic force, working secretly as the company's sole architect and building a reputation that outshines even her most stringent competition. But when circumstances force Miranda personally to oversee the rebuilding of historic Millworth Manor, she meets what may be her greatest challenge: the undeniably attractive owner, Lord Winfield Stillwell. As Miranda and Win clash at every turn, sending up sparks of frustration, defiance and desire, they begin to reevaluate their perspectives and conclude that a wicked compromise is much, much better than no compromise at all.

In past novels, Alexander has shown a knack for characterization and she puts it to excellent use here. Miranda and Win are presented as works in progress, stubbornly attached to opinions and characteristics that they slowly realize they have outgrown. Realistic and well-drawn character development can be an all-too-rare thing in the romance genre, but Alexander does it with a particularly deft hand. With engaging characters, atmospheric settings and just a dash of intrigue, The Importance of Being Wicked is firing on all cylinders and will be a sure hit with fans of period romance. --Judie Evans, librarian

Self-proclaimed treehugger Zac Unger wanted to make a statement, and what better way to do that than to take his family to one of the most desolate places in Canada--Churchill, Manitoba--where the local population of humans barely outnumbers that of polar bears and write a book about their experience? "I went there because I wanted to be a hero of the environmental movement," he writes. "Everything bad about the world could be easily expressed by the image of a lone bear on a melting piece of ice."

In the well-researched, highly detailed Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye, readers are introduced to tourists who spend thousands of dollars to catch glimpses of the bears during their migration to the sea ice, scientists who endure months of cold, endless darkness and bad food to study the creatures--and locals who depend on the income the tourists bring to make it through the other 10 months of the year, when Churchill is all but forgotten. Unger's prose is gritty, sometimes snarky, but well-intentioned. He opens the gateway to discussions on the plight of the polar bear, the poster animal for climate change; some scientists foresee a future without any bears, while others believe small groups will adjust and survive as they have for hundreds of years. Since few of us will ever see a polar bear in the wild, Unger gives us as close a look as we're likely to get, even in Churchill. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

These 15 poems by Children's Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis cover a broad range of people and events that have contributed to the furthering of Civil Rights around the world.

Some of the subjects will be familiar to young readers, such as Mahatma Gandhi ("The Voice of the Voiceless"), who has some of the book's most moving lines: "For we are not the ones to say/ What will erode and what endure,/ Where the iron, where the clay,/ Who the foul and who the pure." R. Gregory Christie's soulful portrait shows Gandhi in the foreground with a crowd gathered behind him, a fitting representation of Lewis's focus on the championing of the lowest in India's caste system. The poet also celebrates lesser-known heroes, such as Sylvia Mendez, whose case, a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education, brought suit against Westminster, Calif., for restricting Sylvia and her brothers to a "Mexican school." Science, sports and economics as engines for social change also come to the fore in poems such as "Banker to the Poor," a tribute to Muhammad Yunus's development of microcredit.

Young people may need an adult's guidance to understand how baseball player Josh Gibson and the gruesome death of Emmett Till fit into the larger picture of the Civil Rights struggle. It takes some sleuthing to find out which of the five artists created which portrait.  But this introduction to the many individuals who contributed to social change may well lead readers to further exploration. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

In this emotional debut novel, a young couple hits the road in order to put their pasts in the rearview mirror.

Eighteen-year-old Will rescues his 15-year-old girlfriend, Zoe, in his Camaro from her often-drunk and abusive father. Will has to fight off her intoxicated father before they can flee North Dakota for Las Vegas. The kidnapping and assault charges are the first of many they face, which cast an unwanted spotlight on the couple while they're on the run. Will and Zoe narrate in alternating chapters, their voices distinct: foster-boy Will struggles to contain his temper ("This anger person: he needs to go away before I destroy us both"), and naive Zoe romanticizes her boyfriend ("he's become my new belief"). Their compelling love grows on the road as they dig deeper into the dark secrets behind their escape.

Kristin Halbrook writes of doomed love in a way reminiscent of Gayle Forman's If I Stay and Tabitha Suzuma's Forbidden. These optimistic teenagers continue fighting for a future, even when the odds are stacked against them--including a warrant out for Will's arrest. A poignant scene of Will driving to his old home sets the mood for the devastating final chapters.

Nobody But Us illustrates the consequences of impulsively running away from what's chasing you without carefully considering what lies ahead. --Adam Silvera, Paper Lantern Lit intern