Esther Freud's ninth novel, Mr. Mac and Me, is a sensitive coming-of-age story and a clear-eyed, sympathetic look at everyday life in a small English coastal village in 1914. Freud (Hideous Kinky) took inspiration from a historical episode concerning a real-life artist and her home in Suffolk.

Thomas Maggs, son of a pub owner, is an imaginative boy whose sketches fill the margins of his books. He befriends the Macs, the Glaswegians who have taken a cottage nearby, and they open a new world for him. Mr. Mac is Charles Rennie Macintosh, a famed architect suffering through a period of self-doubt and professional setbacks. He and Mrs. Mac encourage Thomas to paint. They lend him books, some in German, and they write letters, some to people in Germany, which Thomas posts after steaming them open to read--he's curious about these strangers and their very different lives. Meanwhile, the war takes the young village men, and locals whisper that Mac must be a spy, given his German correspondence and daily walks, spyglasses in hand.

Thomas is brilliantly drawn on the cusp of maturity, loyal to home yet yearning for adventure, torn between the Macs and his fear that suspicions might be true. Freud is also deft at conveying how the terror of war recedes behind the urgent desires of boyhood. While the novel's conclusion feels under-realized as Freud rushes Tom into adulthood, Mr. Mac and Me is a wonderful, layered novel and a tribute to an iconic architect told by a boy in the historical moment and at the age that everything changes. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer

Serge Storms, protagonist of 18 previous Tim Dorsey (Tiger Shrimp Tango) novels, has discovered a passion for both the law and legal films set in Florida. In Shark Skin Suite, Serge is a hurricane of intensity and logorrhea who's obsessed with movies like Body Heat, Cool Hand Luke and Absence of Malice. His story--a road trip to visit filming locations in Florida with his constantly drunk or high companion, Coleman--dovetails with that of his old flame Brook Campanella.

Brook is a newly minted lawyer sent by her firm to go up against a huge mortgage company and its coterie of high-powered lawyers in a class-action lawsuit for fraud. Her only asset is another of her firm's lawyers: Shelby, an untested font of legal knowledge who has never been in court before. Dorsey rounds out the cast of colorful characters with Ziggy (a joint-toking, island-style, Bob Marley-esque lawyer who brings Serge in on the case), Molly (Serge's femme fatale of an ex-wife) and witnesses who have been seduced by expensive gifts from the mortgage company (like Ruthy, an old woman who pets an imaginary dalmatian when she gets nervous).

The story here is less important than the set pieces and character shenanigans, as Dorsey gets to opine on various modern-day issues, like housing-loan inequality, legal loopholes and relationships. Readers of Dorsey both new and old will love every crazy moment of this one. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

In London in November 1968, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen has two burned and mutilated bodies to investigate. He's also getting death threats at his police department desk. As one of the few Irishmen on the force, he's become something of an outcast at work, and he's a little too straight-laced to fit in with the hippies and freaks who seem to be popping up everywhere in the city.

The second body turns out to be the son of a prominent politician who wishes for nothing more than the police quietly to bury the evidence and keep the public from knowing about the details of his son's salacious activities, including gay sex and heroin use. Breen becomes obsessed with both cases as he also deals with the recent death of his father. Through it all, the threats continue, and beleaguered Breen tries to keep from completely falling apart.

William Shaw's second novel starring Breen and constable Helen Dozer--the only female cop on the force--presents a portrait of London in the late '60s that feels utterly authentic, complete with excessive smoking, drinking, corruption at every level and casual misogyny and racism. The forces of social change are just getting started in the music and art world, but the rank and file of the London police department is having none of it. There's more at stake here than a couple of dead bodies, and to solve the mystery Breen must learn to cope with the changes in his life and in society at large. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

At the conclusion of Greg van Eekhout's California Bones, Southern California's magical kingpin, the Hierarch, has been unseated, and Daniel Blackland, major thief and osteomancer, is more powerful than ever. Pacific Fire picks up right where that story stopped with Daniel and the Hierarch's golem son, Sam, on the run from the trio of evil osteomancers now vying for the head position of power in Los Angeles. The threesome intend to re-create a Pacific Firedrake dragon from bits and pieces of bone and tissue along with items formulated in a lab, but they'll need Sam's powers to make the manufactured beast a viable creature of mass destruction.

To help keep Sam safe, Daniel reconnects with the many Emmas--multiple versions of the same woman who helped Daniel fight the Hierarch in the previous novel--and some of his former crew. But when Sam and one of the younger Emmas decide to destroy the dragon on their own, Daniel must race to find them before the powerful osteomancers do. In this surrealistic and magical vision of a futuristic California, Van Eekhout adds new well-rounded characters to the established cast--people who may not always do the right thing but have the best intentions at heart.

Pacific Fire is a fast-moving continuation of the battle between good and evil, filled with vivid descriptions that place readers firmly in the netherworld of magical con men, potion masters, do-gooders and those who want to save the world they know before disaster strikes. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Walter Mosley (Rose Gold) has earned fame with his crime novels, most notably his Easy Rawlins series, which combine uniformly high literary quality with fast-paced noir thrills. He has also carved out a niche as a science-fiction writer. In the latter genre, Inside a Silver Box is a trippy, violent, mind-expanding blend of pulp fiction and New Age cosmology.

Ronnie Bottoms, an angry young black man, and Lorraine Fell meet in a way that is decidedly uncute and are then taken under the wing of "the Silver Box," a fully self-realized artificial-intelligence system that deputizes them in a battle against its nefarious maker, the Laz. The stakes are high: the fate of earth and maybe all creation. As Ronnie and Lorraine battle their personal and our collective fates, it's easy to get swept up in the visionary weirdness of limitlessly powerful aliens and cosmic events.

Mosley always makes for an entertaining read, and his typical mix of social commentary, violence, gender and race consciousness turns this hurtling freight train of a plot into the coolest literary gumbo imaginable. His characters are vivid; the sci-fi ideas are presented in a subtle and cohesive way, and the themes of spiritual and bodily transformation grant the reader a good little creative buzz that is the next best thing to an epiphany. Inside a Silver Box will inspire readers to think about the capacity to change while facing the entropy of everyday existence and contemplating the end of the world. --Donald Powell, freelance writer

The Mime Order is the second novel in Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series, a planned run of seven books set in a dystopian future where half of the population has clairvoyant powers and is hunted by the government because of those powers. Shannon picks up where The Bone Season left off: Paige Mahoney is racing back to London after narrowly escaping Sheol I, where she had been held prisoner for months because of her unusual clairvoyant powers. In London, she must decide whether to rejoin her old crime syndicate or go it alone--with the full force of both the government and the criminal world set against her.

Shannon spends little time rehashing the events or explaining the world established in the previous novel, so those new to this world will likely want to start with the first book. Those eager to continue Paige's story will not be disappointed by Shannon's sophomore showing, which boasts all of the suspense, intrigue and mystery of the first volume as well as an addictive storyline that will leave readers clamoring for the next chapters in Paige's ever-intensifying life.

The series characters have matured, which means Paige and those around her are becoming more nuanced, and their motivations clearer, as the story unfolds. Similarly, and perhaps more excitingly, Shannon's prose has also matured, and this deft effort to build on the complex world she constructed in the first installment will solidify the series' rightful place among the best of fantasy, sci-fi and dystopian fiction. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

In Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen, Lisa Shannon, author of A Thousand Sisters and founder of Run for Congo Women, returns to the troubled land of Congo to document the continuing horrors unfolding in this African nation. She and Francisca Thelin, a Congolese woman who had moved to the United States with her American husband and two children, traveled to Thelin's hometown, Dungu. There they wanted to see if any of Thelin's family members were still alive after the dreaded militia--the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed prophet who ruled the region--terrorized and killed men, women and children indiscriminately.

The story unfolds in bits and pieces as Shannon interweaves personal accounts taken from long interviews with Thelin's family with her own reflections on the tense and dangerous situations in which they found themselves. Shannon immerses the reader in the food, the clothing and culture as Thelin's relatives and neighbors move through the rotation of the seasons, collecting coffee, rice, millet and other foods, or preparing supplies of termite oil, considered a delicacy, in the years before the LRA came.

For those unfamiliar with Congolese history, in an appendix, Shannon provides a useful synopsis of the LRA and Kony, listed by the International Criminal Court as "The World's Most Wanted Man." Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen is an eye-opening account of the atrocities still being conducted in Congo and a beautiful story of an extended family holding on to its pride and connections despite the horrible odds. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

The Danish carry the title "happiest people on Earth" courtesy of the Gallup World Poll and the United Nations World Happiness Report. Norwegians are the richest people, thanks to their healthy supply of oil. And the Finns lay claim to the best education system. Scandinavia as a whole enjoys a glowing reputation around the globe.

British journalist and travel writer Michael Booth (Eat Pray Eat) set out to examine both the assets and shortcomings of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. With a lighthearted, humorous tone, Booth shares data, history, anecdotes and his personal experiences--he's lived in Denmark and is married to a Dane--as they relate to each nation.

Speaking to economic, political, sociological and other experts, Booth plays devil's advocate, posing pragmatic questions (how can the Danes be so happy when they pay the highest taxes?) and pondering cultural conundrums (why are the Finns so obsessed with their saunas?). Quick to point out when the authorities seem to have their heads buried in the sand, Booth is also open to new theories and follows their leads in fascinating directions--even when they take him to a Swedish crayfish party. Booth visits each country independently, but finds common links in their often comically unfavorable views of one another.

The good, the bad, the ugly and the amusing in The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia make this tromp through the Nordic countries both educational and entertaining. Whether readers are intimately familiar with or ignorant about the subject, there's something for everyone to take away. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

April Pulley Sayre's (Rah, Rah, Radishes!) arresting photographs and precisely chosen words take readers through a rainstorm, start to finish.

First, a tree frog peers out from the inside of a leaf and seems to make eye contact with its audience: "Rain is coming./ You can feel it/ in the air." Two pages later, "Insects take cover." A grasshopper dominates the spread, perching on a red leaf amid drops of rain; on the right, in separate photos, appear "a firefly below a leaf" and "a fly inside a pod." A rash of golden flowers behind the pod helps children see the fly's golden eye and the firefly's stripe (have you ever seen one in daylight?). Later, a bluebird embraces the rain, looking toward an image of a stream dotted with raindrop undulations: "It patters./ It spatters." A stunning trio of photographs depicts a dragonfly at rest, its powder-blue body creating a triangle of primary colors with a red rose and the center of a daisy in the other two photos: "Yet raindrops remain./ They gather./ They glob together." Raindrops transform spider webs into chandeliers ("They cling to curves") and "cover cocoons." In the closing double-page spread, a bee finds purchase on a flower as "raindrops slowly dry"; its golden fuzz matches the petals.

In the endnotes, Sayre explains the various roles rain plays in her photographs. "Raindrops aren't really the tear shape shown in cartoons and diagrams," she writes. "Water molecules... cling together to make a sphere shape." A gorgeous close-up view of rain's effects on nature. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness