In Woman Running in the Mountains, the late great Japanese novelist Yūko Tsushima (1947-2016) unflinchingly confronts the judgmental challenges an unwed woman faces when she defiantly chooses single motherhood. Takiko Odaka is 21 and already an independent spirit. As she goes into labor, she leaves her family home for the maternity hospital to give birth to her son, Akira, alone.

Akira's father is long gone. Takiko's own father remains brutally abusive--as he has been her entire life. Her long-suffering mother attempts to seem detached, having initially urged Takiko toward abortion. Her already embarrassed younger brother, still in high school, wants no involvement. Despite lacking any semblance of support, Takiko learns to care for her infant, arranges childcare, endures grueling parttime work and eventually finds a rewarding job--and meaningful companionship--at a plant nursery. While her adoration for Akira grows, Takiko also manages to retain her own selfhood, seeking adult company when she can, even casually claiming her youthful sexuality. As constricting as social and familial expectations may be, Takiko continues to experience motherhood on her own terms.

Originally published in 1980 and translated by Geraldine Harcourt in 1991, Tsushima's re-launch is skillfully introduced by Lauren Groff (Matrix), another lauded author who subversively empowers women in her fiction. The 40-year-old narrative retains timeless resonance, despite Harcourt's jarring word choice of "retarded" to describe Down Syndrome. Twenty-first-century women readers, especially, will immediately recognize the stifling consequences of other people's definitions for womanhood and motherhood, and find rewarding inspiration in Takiko's many rebellions, large and small. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Ambition can come at great cost as well as deliver great rewards, as three classmates discover in Run and Hide, a challenging novel by Pankaj Mishra (From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals who Remade Asia). The three Indian men, all from lower-class backgrounds, meet as students at the Indian Institute of Technology. All seem destined for greatness. Aseem, whose hero is V.S. Naipaul and whose favorite word is "career," becomes a novelist and celebrated intellectual. Virendra becomes "a freshly anointed billionaire" in the U.S. But Arun, the book's narrator, moves to a Himalayan village to care for his aging mother and works as a translator. In later years, a woman named Alia, whom Aseem describes as "rich, but with some brain cells," visits Arun's village to interview him about a book she's writing, "an 'intimate account' of the New India" with a focus on "the minute particulars" of the more egregious activities of Arun's former classmates.

Portions of the book's latter half feel as if Mishra has elbowed his way into the narrative to comment on the world. Fortunately, those points are thoughtfully argued, including concerns such as global capitalism and multiculturalism, social media's role in their furtherance and the price of upward mobility. The result is a searing indictment of unchecked materialism and its consequences. As the book suggests, likes, clicks and retweets might get people the attention they seek, but if they land them in trouble, there's nowhere to hide. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Catriona Ward (The Last House on Needless Street) places mundane frustrations alongside profound chills in a novel of family, tough choices, secrets and terror. "It's the chicken pox that makes me sure--my husband is having another affair." At the beginning of Sundial, readers wonder what feels just a little off about the suburban household where Rob and her husband, Irving, bicker and feud and raise their two daughters, Callie and Annie. Irving has a nasty temper; Rob is bitterly frustrated. Annie is a sweet, docile child; Callie has a discomfiting fascination with murder and death. When the bones of small mammals begin to show up in Callie's room, Rob feels that things have gone far enough, and takes her elder daughter away for a spell--to Sundial, Rob's family home in California's Mojave desert, an abandoned hippie commune and site of terrible unnamed wrongs.

Through flashback-style stories Rob tells Callie, readers learn of Rob's past: she had a twin sister named Jack, and the sisters shared an unusual upbringing, surrounded by half-wild dogs, scientific experiments, wayward graduate students and shadowy, evil acts. Something dark lived or lives in Rob, or Jack, or Callie, or possibly all of them, and it gradually dawns on readers that Rob is mulling the unthinkable choice to save one daughter or the other.

With the special horror of creepy children and the torture of abusive adults, Sundial serves up a deeply, deliciously disturbing family mystery, populated by ghost dogs and misguided scientists as well as apparently nonthreatening neighbors. A slow burn leads into a quick ratcheting up as this psychological horror deals its final blows. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Tessa Bailey returns to the seaside town of Westport, Wash., in Hook, Line, and Sinker, a breezy rom-com full of music and banter. Hannah and Fox met in It Happened One Summer, when her sister fell for his best friend. Bailey smartly chooses to build a foundation of friendship for her protagonists, who've been texting regularly during the seven months Hannah has spent living in Los Angeles.

A production assistant, Hannah has dreams of one day scoring films. When her film director boss starts having issues with his latest project, she convinces him to relocate the shoot to Westport. Fisherman Fox Thornton, meanwhile, is avoiding a promotion to ship captain, convinced that the playboy reputation foisted upon him at a young age will always get in the way of him garnering the respect needed for the job.

In Westport, Hannah stays in Fox's spare room, and the two bond through song recommendations and teasing, but it's their belief in each other that forms the core of Hook, Line, and Sinker. Despite Fox's attempts to prove to Hannah that he's only good for one thing, she refuses to get physical with him until he admits that he deserves to be treated as a whole person. Fox will do anything to support Hannah's goals, even if it means she reaches them without him. This book is less steamy than many of Bailey's others, but it's certainly no less intimate.

Readers may be sad to say goodbye to Westport, but they'll love to watch these two sail off into the sunset. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer

Readers of Ruth Brandon's lusty Spellbound by Marcel: Duchamp, Love, and Art can be excused for wondering if, with all the bed-hopping and heart-breaking going on in its pages, the featured artists actually managed to get any work done. Happily, the book's art reproductions attest to the artists' productivity and facility, if not always their integrity.

Here's what happened: in 1916, budding American artist Beatrice Wood fell in love with French Dadaist Marcel Duchamp in New York but, to her dismay, Marcel saw no need to link sex with fidelity. Redirecting her affections, Beatrice romanced fellow Marcel fancier Henri-Pierre Roché, who rather inconveniently fell in love with the married Louise "Lou" Arensberg; Henri-Pierre and Lou had an affair. Lou--along with her husband, Walter--hosted a salon in an apartment they owned in Manhattan. Here, Marcel had a studio and paid his rent with his art. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the overlapping free spirits ricocheting through the mischievous Marcel's orbit at this time in history.

Spellbound by Marcel is about not the art but the art-makers, and cultural historian Brandon (Ugly Beauty) has everyone's number, especially Duchamp's, whose "particular talent" she shrewdly defines as "his unerring ability to slide needles under the art world's fingernails." The book is a juicy, assiduously researched probe into the lives of an international cadre of artists who, on the eve of the U.S. involvement in World War I, found a hot spot and kept it warm with their hearts and bodies. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Running is one of the most egalitarian sports, given that what is needed to start the practice is merely a pair of shoes and a place to run. But there is still a large gap between amateur runners and professional ones. Elite running coaches Matt Fitzgerald and Ben Rosario bring their expertise to the masses in Run Like a Pro (Even if You're Slow), through which all runners can learn the habits and techniques that help elite runners stay at the top of the field. Instead of offering a prescriptive text, Fitzgerald and Rosario emphasize the many different philosophies in training for running, and highlight patterns and studies that can help readers make the best choices for themselves. One of these is the 80/20 principle, where 80% of workouts are run at low intensity, and the other 20% are done at a higher intensity. Although the text is focused on running, the discussions on rest, recovery, nutrition, pacing and stress management will serve readers across a variety of sports.

The authors gently but firmly redress what they refer to as the misconceptions and assumptions amateur runners hold--ones that can be detrimental to training and, more generally, to a runner's health, such as restrictive elimination-based diets and that progression must be constant. They also provide alternative methods to replace bad habits. Helpful advice also includes cross-training exercises, with demonstrative photos and even directions to YouTube resources. Fitzgerald and Rosario treat all runners--in a holistic and approachable way--as if they have the potential to become pros. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

In her second novel, The Paris Library, Janet Skeslien Charles (Moonlight in Odessa) weaves the story of a woman in Paris just before and during the Nazi Occupation together with that of 14-year-old Lily Jacobsen, growing up in Montana in the mid-1980s.

Fresh out of library school, Odile Souchet lands a job at the American Library in Paris and is immediately enamored of her new workplace and its cadre of international patrons. She especially admires Miss Reeder, the library's sharply intelligent, imposing directress. But then the Nazis invade.

In Montana, young Lily, reeling from the loss of her mother and her father's remarriage, finds herself adrift. Intrigued by her reclusive elderly neighbor, Odile, Lily talks her way into Odile's house and begins asking questions. Odile, long accustomed to solitude, nonetheless strikes up a friendship with Lily that flourishes with their French lessons and shared love of books. But Odile is hiding a secret, the revelation of which will force Lily to rethink what she has come to believe about her new friend.

Charles's narrative shifts between Paris and Montana, bringing in Odile's perspective as well as that of her friend Margaret, a lonely Englishwoman who seeks out the library as a place of refuge. When the Nazis begin eyeing the library's collections, as the net tightens on the people of Paris, Miss Reeder and several others refuse to leave. Her colleagues' quiet heroism makes a deep impression on Odile, and, nearly four decades later, on Lily.

All of Charles's characters must face the consequences of their actions and do what they can to move forward with grace. A testament to courage under fire and an honest exploration of complex friendships, The Paris Library is a treat for book lovers, Francophiles and anyone whose life has been changed by a dear friend. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro (The Buried Giant) steps into a possible near future in this heartwarming story of an AI learning about the curious and complicated heart of humanity.

As a B2 model Artificial Friend, Klara does not have the same acrobatic abilities as the new B3 series and, despite industry specifications, her series is known for having difficulties staying fully charged. Still, the manager of the shop where Klara and other AFs have their first home believes Klara has something special, an "appetite for observing and learning" that gives her "the most sophisticated understanding of any AF in this store." When a woman buys Klara for her teen daughter, Josie, Klara finds living among humans more challenging than watching them through a plate-glass window. Josie has a mysterious sickness that could kill her, putting strain on the family. Her personal life is fraught with social pitfalls. As a "lifted," or genetically enhanced, child, Josie's potential bright future drives a wedge between her and the "unlifted" boy next door, whom she has loved all her life. Determined to help Josie, Klara makes an impossible bargain with an unusual partner.

Ishiguro sketches a world in vague strokes for this futuristic setting, giving readers a few clues and letting them fill in the empty spaces. Though it possesses some trappings of sci-fi, Klara and the Sun (a Good Morning America Book Club Pick), offers painstaking character portraits and gently examines grief and the rejection of mortality. As he did in Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro again gives an ethical dilemma its own beautiful, bittersweet life. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Adam Rubin (Dragons Love Tacos; Gladys the Magic Chicken) proves that "writing is magic" in his middle-grade debut, a hilarious collection of six stories, illustrated by different artists, that share the same title: "The Ice Cream Machine."

The six stories include Shiro Hanayama and his robot best friend, Kelly, who travel the world in search of the best ice cream; two sisters deciding to challenge the repeat winner of their town's annual ice cream eating contest; a sorcerer's assistant unexpectedly filling in for the sorcerer. The titular machine defies definition and is personified in each iteration as something slightly different. In "(the one with the ice cream eating contest)," it's a nickname. In "(the one with the sorcerer's assistant)," it's an enchanted object whose creations bring joy to a kingdom.

Set in space, on a farm, in the future and in the past, every story in this collection is distinct and original, imaginative and inventive. Each is its own world, written in a different genre with characters who feel as real and vivid as those in the last. The writing style for every tale is similar enough to allow the book to feel cohesive, with humor reminiscent of Louis Sachar and an outlandishness that brings Roald Dahl to mind. The illustrations--by Daniel Salmieri, Emily Hughes, Charles Santoso, Nicole Miles, Liniers and Seaerra Miller--help create a feeling of continuity through their grayscale palettes and make each story an individual art piece. The Ice Cream Machine brings as much inspiration as it does laughter. --Kyla Paterno, freelance reviewer