New York City in the mid-1970s was on the skids. Its municipal bonds were under water, graffiti was splashed over subway cars and stations, Times Square was a porno sleaze-pot. Those times, that city and its citizens are the stars of Garth Risk Hallberg's galactic first novel.

With more than 900 pages, City on Fire is an ambitious, omnivorous story of dozens of characters whose lives increasingly intersect despite their economic, social and ethnic differences. At its center is the Central Park shooting of Samantha "Sam" Cicciaro, a young fanzine publisher and groupie of the storied punk band Ex Post Facto. Everybody seems to love Sam, and nobody knows who tried to kill her. On this New Year's Eve shooting, Hallberg builds a complicated story, as much a crime thriller as a social commentary on a time when New York wasn't the expensive playground of the hip and rich that it seems today.

Hallberg thinks big and writes small. Whether describing a steamy summer with its "dog-slaying, hydrant-bursting, power-sucking July days" or the poverty of a Vietnamese gallerist trying to sustain "another few months of loosies and ramen and rent," Hallberg takes on the whole city. If there is a little of Richard Price, Lawrence Block and Tom Wolfe hovering behind City on Fire, the novel is nonetheless all Hallberg all the time. He culminates his powerful saga in the July 13, 1977, blackout, when the strings of his story tie satisfyingly together. Despite its somewhat seedy ambience, New York City in the '70s may also have been the city at its most lively. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

In Short Measures marks food and nonfiction writer Michael Ruhlman's first foray into fiction, and it is a spectacular debut with crisply written prose, packing an intense emotional punch and immediately drawing readers into its bittersweet love stories. Ruhlman (The Book of Schmaltz) creates flawed characters who wrestle with moral quandaries in order to fulfill their artistic and romantic destinies. The thread connecting the three pieces is the subject of writing fiction, particularly what it means as an artistic endeavor.

Ruhlman's first and longest novella, "In Short Measures," is a masterpiece about love, loss and regret in the pursuit of art, its title nodding to Ben Jonson's poem "To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison." Narrated in first person by Grimsley Feller, Duke University's archivist and curator of rare collections, the story unfolds in flirty reminiscences as Grimsley reconnects with former flame and Hollywood script doctor Emerson Randall at a professor's memorial. Despite the 25-year separation and different career paths, their shared history becomes too strong a temptation for Grimsley to resist, and both are left to wrestle with the repercussions of Emerson's infidelity. The second and third novellas are shorter variations of the first; each depicts regret over missed chances, which continue to haunt Ruhlman's protagonists beyond the safety of their carefully orchestrated suburban lives.

Ruhlman has a keen gift for dialogue, and his protagonists' imperfect quests to recapture fleeting memories of youthful bliss become compelling commentaries on middle age. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

"Houses, lovers, children, cats"--Audrey Niffenegger (Raven Girl) has collected 16 stories that feature hauntings of familiar domestic relationships and objects. She has chosen them because she likes them, "and what I like about them is their intimacy, their off-kilter matter-of-factness and their vivid evocations of order disrupted, sudden awful knowledge, the human condition as cosmic joke."

Ghostly's stories span 170 years, most of them first published before 1950. Not all will be to everyone's taste, but there is something here for anyone by a selection of brilliant writers. Several stories, such as Neil Gaiman's "Click-Clack the Rattlebag" and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," are true horror stories. Others, including P.G. Wodehouse's "Honeysuckle Cottage" and Saki's "Laura" and "The Open Window," are pure comedy. There are stories by Edith Wharton, M.R. James, Kelly Link, Ray Bradbury, one by Niffenegger ("Secret Life, with Cats") and a new one by Amy Giacalone.

Niffenegger introduces the book and each story with a full-page original black-and-white illustration and a short preface. The ghosts of the title don't always appear to the expected person, and sometimes they appear through a letter on a table, or the sound of a comb through invisible hair. They attract the living away from life, though not always intentionally. The living sometimes respond with terror, sometimes with longing and love, and in a few cases with healthy practicality, though more often they do what perhaps they shouldn't: open that door, walk toward that sound, say hello to the intriguing stranger. --Sara Catterall

Martin Limón's The Ville Rat opens in 1974, with the body of a strangled Korean woman wearing a traditional chima-jeogori found on the shore of the Sonyu River in South Korea. Sergeants George Sueño and Ernie Bascom from the U.S. 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division in Seoul are called to the scene. They discover that the case is under the jurisdiction of the army's 2nd Infantry Division military police, which controls the area.

But the 8th Army's provost marshal assigns Sueño and Bascom another case--involving a black soldier shooting a white officer--that gives them a legitimate reason to be in the area. While investigating the soldier's motivation, the duo continues following clues in the Korean woman's murder, leading them to a blind calligrapher and an American civilian, who is possibly a former member of the army and known as the Ville Rat. The investigators soon realize they've uncovered decades-old corruption, and powerful people will pay to have them stopped--permanently.

Sueño and Bascom, in their 10th series outing, are a good team, with Sueño's calm, bookish demeanor balancing out Bascom's hotheaded tendencies. Sometimes Sueño has to guide his partner toward a logical conclusion, while Bascom is usually the first to take decisive action when the two are in trouble. The villain would be more arresting if the motivation for his cruelty had been explored further, but The Ville Rat, set 40 years ago, provides insight into tensions and conflicts--racial and otherwise--in the military and society as a whole that are still relevant today. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Benjamin Gold is a steampunk airship captain, now without a dirigible--sacrificed in an attempt to keep pirates from attacking a hidden city. Worse, his longtime enemy Malik has captured him and his scientist girlfriend, Miranda. In exchange for Miranda's safety, Ben must find lost technology needed to keep Malik's ocean vessel from sinking.

To make any headway, however, Ben and a team of adventurers from the secret island of Tamoanchan have to avoid Ferals, vicious zombie-like humans who've been infected with a virus that turns them into single-minded killing machines who stop at nothing to kill and devour non-feral humans.

In their search for the pumps Malik needs, Ben and company discover that a rival government has captured Miranda's scientific comrades. The team had been researching the virus that turns humans into Ferals, and now their progress will come to a grinding halt, at the very time Miranda is on the verge of a breakthrough.

While it's fairly formulaic for a new viral outbreak to occur, similar to the old one but producing different deadly symptoms, Rajan Khanna (Falling Sky) keeps suspense high with the disclosure of Tamoanchan's location and its subsequent siege. The island natives blame Ben. Can he ever catch a break?

The plot alternates between Ben's narrative and Miranda's journal, letting readers in on various facts that either character may not be aware of, while also offering insight into the emotional strain created by their separation. Rising Tide is an enjoyable, worthy read, a welcome voyage for fans of zombie, post-apocalyptic and steampunk fiction. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

Rescue Road Trips founder Greg Mahle says, "Every job in rescue is essential to the process. Some risk life and limb, some their financial security, but all risk losing and regaining pieces of their hearts over and over again." Journalist Peter Zheutlin embeds himself in the emotional world of dog rescue to tell the stories of its dedicated and unsung heroes, all the while stealing pieces of his readers' hearts.

Due to a culture that views dogs as property and denounces spaying and neutering, states such as Louisiana and Texas are overrun with unwanted canines. These animals roam the streets and overwhelm the kennels. If they don't die from disease, thousands of adoptable pets are euthanized because there isn't enough space or money to care for them. Volunteers like Kathy Wetmore of Houston Shaggy Dog Rescue and Keri Toth of the Humane Society of Central Louisiana work tirelessly, often spending their own money to provide care and find homes--primarily in northeastern states--for these forsaken creatures, while also attempting to advocate for change in attitudes and policies.

Mahle bridges the miles between rescuing angels and adopting families, driving the adoptees twice a month in his truck, fitted out especially for canine transport. Zheutlin travels with Mahle on his route to experience first-hand the ups and downs, the struggles and the rewards, as well as the links in the rescue chain most people never see.

At turns both agonizing and uplifting, Rescue Road is eye opening and hopeful. It's highly recommended for any and all dog lovers. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

As a writing teacher at University of California, Berkeley, Kaya Oakes (Radical Reinvention) is surrounded by an inclusive community full of young minds searching for meaning and learning to live with doubt. She was raised Irish Catholic: "my love for the church is innate. My family is buried in Catholic graveyards, we went to Catholic schools, and like every other Irish Catholic family in America, we had a dusty photograph of our martyrs RFK and JFK in silhouette hanging in the kitchen." But what most appealed to her about faith was "the social justice lean of my parish community, the courage of the women religious, the relentless messages of a loving God who waits patiently for us."

In February 2014, Oakes identified herself as "an agnostic-leaning believer" and sought responses from people who have discovered a spiritual community beyond the walls of a church and spiritual fulfillment beyond the bounds of traditional orthodoxy. Those responses became The Nones Are Alright (referencing those who check "None" as their religious affiliation--up to one-third of people in their 20s, 30s and 40s according to a 2012 Pew Research study). Respondents have identified as Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, atheist or agnostic at some point in their lives, but now "engage in a kind of spiritual mix and match, blending many traditions and adhering strictly to none." The many perspectives that Oakes candidly presents weigh how religion can be a bastion of judgment, condemnation and political tension, but also a great source of community, solace and structure. --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics

Broadway theater lovers and fans of scandal, intrigue and back-stabbing will delight in Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway, an acerbic, juicy and well-researched history of the Great White Way by Michael Riedel, bi-weekly columnist for the New York Post and co-host of the PBS series Theatre Talk.

Epic in scope, this history of the rough and tumble business side of Broadway begins in the 1960s--when the financial ledgers were kept in pencil and, thanks to black market ticket sales, kickbacks, price gouging and illegal money handling, everyone was making a lot of undocumented money, except the show investors. (Rudy Vallee, then starring in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, personally scalped his free house seat tickets every night in Times Square.) Riedel traces ticket corruption back to 1850, and when the New York State attorney general begins to unravel this scam in 1963, it implicates everyone from ticket sellers to theater owners.

Although the bulk of Razzle Dazzle covers the theater world from the 1960s through 1990s, Riedel backtracks to the origins of the family-run theaters, where disputes were sometimes settled with murder. There are no dull decades in this Broadway history, at least not with Riedel at the helm to detail feuds, jealousies and bad behavior on and off the stage. He brings energy and insight to his portraits of the legendary and volatile show people who continually reshaped Broadway musicals including Oklahoma!, Hello, Dolly!, Pippin, A Chorus Line, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Dreamgirls and Les Misérables. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Youngsters may have encountered Nigerian-born storyteller Atinuke's Anna Hibiscus in both picture books and chapter books, and if they have, they know she's an exuberant, biracial girl who "lives in Africa. Amazing Africa." This warm, appealing picture book opens with Anna, leaning her head against her redheaded Mama's big, pregnant belly. This, it turns out, is the calm before the storm, because the "double trouble" in the book's title means twins.

" 'It is brothers,' Anna Hibiscus tells her cousins. 'That big bump was brothers.' " The trouble begins right away. The very first day, Mama is too tired for her morning cuddle with Anna, and Uncle Bizi, who always makes her ogi (a pudding-like cereal) for Sunday breakfast with Grandmother, is busy cooking for Mama. Grandmother is sleeping, because she was up all night helping with the birth of the baby boys. Anna thinks "More trouble!" in what becomes a refrain of sorts. Anna Hibiscus is getting mad. When she finally bursts into tears--"Everybody is busy with Double Trouble!"--her dad laughs, kindly, explains that she'll have to share the family with her new brothers and lovingly embraces the wriggling, protesting girl. Soon enough, her ogi is ready, her Grandmother's awake, and Mama even has time to cuddle. In fact, when her baby brothers start crying, Anna rallies around to kiss and comfort them: "Don't cry, little Trouble" and "Don't cry, little Double."

Lauren Tobia's joyful, thoroughly charming illustrations, with their soft, textured lines and rich, festive colors--often with lively African prints on clothes and blankets--reflect the warmth of a close-knit extended family in the face of "double trouble." --Karin Snelson, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness