The sound of "CLANG-DONG" and a voice saying "hello, welcome" greets customers of the Funiculi Funicula café in Before I Knew I Loved You, Toshikazu Kawaguchi's emotional, heartwarming sixth novel in his Before the Coffee Gets Cold series (Before We Say Goodbye). Translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, the novel transports readers to a small, magical basement café in Tokyo where people can travel in time, but only until their coffee gets cold. As in previous volumes, the novel contains four interconnected short stories, each following a different café patron. Although the staff and some regular customers reappear throughout the series, readers need not have read earlier entries to enjoy this one.

Kawaguchi introduces Rikako Kabe, who yearns to know whether she will survive a cancer diagnosis so she can decide whether to agree to marry her boyfriend; Azami Kishimoto, who regrets never calling her stepmother "Mum"; and many more characters. He tells each story lovingly, with great compassion and understanding for the choices characters make and the emotional aftermath. The attentiveness of the staff--owner Nagare Tokita, his daughter, Miki, and cousin Kazu--envelop readers in the café's warmth.

"If you could go back, who would you want to meet?" asks the novel's dedication. It's a question to consider as Kawaguchi reveals each customer's history and reasons for--and hesitations about--wanting to time travel. Thoughtful and introspective, Before I Knew I Loved You is an exceptional addition to a stellar series. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller

"Rose-gold" peaches and the "glory of a freshly baked bread" are simple luxuries the heroine craves in Catherine Kurtz's Feast, a tantalizing 19th-century drama fueled by royal intrigue and culinary decadence. Shifting from the English Channel to the French countryside, Feast is the story of Minha, a young woman coerced into servitude as a "poison taster" for Duc Nicolas at the majestic Château Bellefalaise, and her miraculous path to freedom.

The staff at the château are hostile toward the poison taster, suspicious of Minha's dark complexion and her extraordinary sense of smell ever since she detected rat poison in a roasted duck prepared for the duc's birthday. Who was responsible for the toxin is a question that lingers menacingly in the stifled air of the servants' quarters, a sense of danger that lurks between the upstairs and downstairs worlds of the castle. One night, Minha stumbles upon a young man hiding in the stables. Weak and starving, he awakens in her a sense of purpose. It is here that Kurtz's thrilling saga plunges into the adventure at the heart of Feast, as Minha finds herself falling for this curious stranger whose destiny, she is convinced, is tied to her own.

An artist and food journalist, Kurtz skillfully layers strong flavors, scents, and emotions into her imagery of Minha's world. Color seeps through the page, from the "gentle dove gray" of dawn to the "pink-blushed" velvet of the royal horses Minha secretly visits for companionship. Readers will devour Kurtz's marvelous debut, cheering Minha as she takes center stage in her own story and, for the first time, truly feasts on life. --Shahina Piyarali

With Ghost-Eye, Amitav Ghosh presents a thoroughly gratifying return to the full-form novel, his first since 2019's Gun Island. In 1969, three-year-old Varsha Gupta slaps away her ayah's hand ready to feed her, demanding, "Give me some fish." The impossible request in this strictly vegetarian Marwari household leads to a shocking revelation: Varsha can remember her past life with another mother, living along a river where they regularly caught and ate fish. Varsha's pediatrician is called, but he finds nothing physically amiss and suggests the family consult his wife, Shoma, "a highly qualified therapist and psychologist... [who] has dealt with several cases of... children who remember past lives."

A half-century later, as the world shuts down "during the plague year of 2020," Indian-born Brooklynite Dinu can't return to Calcutta to now-octogenarian Shoma, his maternal aunt. Dinu is Shoma's closest relative, a responsibility he bears with gratitude, affection, and deep love. Meanwhile, Tipu, the "semi-adopted son" of his friend, is back in India to run an environmental trust in the Sundarbans and urgently needs Dinu's help with information involving Shoma's mysterious 1969 visit there. And so the narrative threads align, crisscrossing for revelatory connections.

While Ghost-Eye stands alone, Ghosh's faithful readers will thrill to make connections to previous titles. Such reappearances seem fitting in a narrative centering reincarnation. Moving seamlessly between decades, Ghosh intertwines family, sociopolitical history, capitalism, environmental crises, and a myriad of (sur)realities. Always an exceptional storyteller, he brilliantly combines what can be touched and seen with the documented otherworldly. Ghosh gifts readers a magnificent story ready to be believed, appreciated, and celebrated. --Terry Hong

Sofia Montrone's first novel, Nymph, handles the coming-of-age of a girl named Leo, alongside the aging of her family's Italian agriturismo. Leo and her family--her Italian mother, American father, and one-year-younger brother, Max--spend every summer at the rural hotel, helping to run the family business. Readers watch Leo move toward adulthood over the course of two summers, when she is 10 and when she is 18.

When she is younger, Leo cleans rooms and helps prepare food alongside her Nonna Tina. Max works at the front desk. Their mother is unwell and mostly sleeps. Their father, a professor and a heavy drinker, reads and tells stories; his renditions of Homer's epics are among the many threads that keep Leo captivated. By the novel's second part, the shape of her family will be changed irrevocably, and is still changing. Her Nonna Tina, the hotel's faithful employee Davide, and Leo's immediate family are maturing or withering. The hotel is in decline. Leo herself is on the cusp of the next stage of her life, as a newcomer--an American teenager, curious, creative, and enthralling--captures her attention.

Nymph tracks these processes in prose as lovely, fleeting, subtle, and shocking as growing up ever is. Ten-year-old Leo experiences the fallibility of her most beloved elders, and 18-year-old Leo finds her first love and still more loss. These tentative steps toward adulthood are set against a striking rural and natural setting, punctuated by the World Cup games that hold Italy rapt. Nymph is concerned with growth, shedding, and origins. This nuanced, wise novel expands with quiet understatement to reach profundity. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

A request from the ghost of a missing woman at a séance draws Detective Mallory Atkinson and Dr. Duncan Gray into an investigation of her possible murder--and whoever might have known about it.

In addition to lending his forensic knowledge to criminal investigations, Duncan inherited his family's undertaking business. So when, at the beginning of An Ordinary Sort of Evil by Kelley Armstrong (Death at a Highland Wedding; Disturbing the Dead), he and assistant Mallory, who's actually a time-traveling detective from the 21st century, are summoned late at night to the house of a wealthy client, they expect the cause to be a death in the family. Instead, they discover that Lady Adler hosted a séance at which a ghost allegedly declared herself to be a recently missing maid who insisted that Duncan investigate her murder. Duncan and Mallory agree to take the case despite suspecting the maid simply walked off the job, but as their investigation unfolds, they discover a possible link between the missing woman and another death. Since neither of them believes in ghosts, they come to the conclusion that if the maid was murdered, someone involved in faking the séance must have known about the crime.

In this fifth Rip Through Time mystery, Armstrong once again combines a twisty puzzle with an appealing cast of characters and a well-researched Victorian setting. Fans will be as excited to follow developments in the personal relationships of the recurring characters as to solve the crime. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Five amnesiac children find one another in a magical labyrinth of memory and horror in Francis White's mysterious, harrowing dark fantasy novel, The Bone Door.

A boy awakens in a chamber where snow is falling, his only companion a skeleton. He remembers he is 11 years old and has long blond hair, but he has "a great gaping hole where a name should be." He meets a young girl with amber drops instead of eyes who also remembers nothing, and she names him Hop for his enthusiasm. A glowing doorway leads them to a chamber overseen by a human-size owl with eyes "the deep dark blue of galaxies," who tells them they are in a labyrinth made of memories with only one way out: the Bone Door. They can find it and escape the labyrinth by passing tasks set for them in a series of four rooms, but if they fail, their souls will meet a fate worse than death. They take on the tasks and along the way meet more nameless children, each missing a body part. They realize that the tasks relate to the history of a world they can't remember but whose horrific past is inextricably linked with the truth of their identities.

This meditation on inherent nature versus individual choice pits an extroverted, life-affirming hero against visceral horrors. White (Voyage of the Damned) counteracts violence and cruelty with friendship and humor as she excavates the memory of an ancient, noble love. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Two women quietly defy convention at the turn of the 19th-century Vermont in Charity & Sylvia, an intricately researched depiction of queer love and early United States life by star cartoonist Tillie Walden (Spinning). Walden draws from sources that include letters and journal entries, family writings, a single silhouette of the pair, and even an adult-size cradle to piece together the partnered life Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake maintained for 44 years.

In February 1807, Sylvia lives a quiet life in Weybridge, Vt., with her sister's large family, helping tend the household and children. Plagued by rumors and cast out by her parents, family friend Charity arrives from Massachusetts and joins the household. Readers follow the two as they grow their tailoring business, secure a home, gain and lose loved ones, and, finally, say good-bye. They reckon with familial, religious, and societal expectations and find tolerance as others grow accustomed to their "friendship."

Charity & Sylvia is painstakingly hand-lettered, with black inks washed in sepia tones and set primarily in grids of 12 panels. A map of historical Weybridge is a charming highlight. Charity was born in 1777 and Sylvia in 1784, and the women grow with the newly formed nation they inhabit. The result is a fascinating slice of life that manages to be completely ordinary, amid extraordinary social, political, and technological developments.

The overall impression is one of deep affection, everyday struggle, and even hope. While same-sex marriage didn't become legal in the U.S. until 164 years after Charity Bryant's death, Charity & Sylvia is a revealing portrait of two women and the love that sustained them for decades. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian

Ben Rhodes's deft third nonfiction book, All We Say, examines the history of U.S. self-conception through 15 key moments in U.S. rhetoric. Through powerful speeches delivered by titans such as Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass, as well as lesser-known figures such as Seneca leader Red Jacket and suffragette Anna Dickinson, Rhodes (The World As It Is) chronicles the shifting ways that people in the U.S. have defined themselves as a nation through words.

Rhodes, a former speechwriter and adviser to President Barack Obama, explores the remarkable power of public addresses--to comfort, to warn, and to sway the tide of public opinion. He provides historical context for the events surrounding each speech, including wars and conflicts, the Great Depression, social movements related to suffrage and civil rights, and the profound 21st-century divisions in U.S. political society. With a keen understanding of rhetorical strategies and a lucid view of the country's triumphs and failures, Rhodes shows how each speech reveals layers of U.S. identity, capturing the nation as it is (or was) at each moment, and the nation as it aspires to be. Throughout, he calls on U.S. speakers to hold the country accountable to its founding principles: the ideals of equality and freedom that have never quite become reality for all who live in the U.S.

"Nations, like people, choose who we are," Rhodes notes in his epilogue. All We Say urges people in the U.S. to acknowledge their nation's checkered history and work toward a future where the country's lofty rhetorical ideals match its civil and political realities. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

The Dog Who Was (Almost) Perfect by Jack Kurland (The Cat Who Couldn't Be Bothered) is a delightful picture book about a "perfect" dog who derails into a guilt spiral after discovering she's committed a heinous act.

Adorable, pink, long-bodied Doris is "the perfect dog." She can skateboard, fetch sticks, play dead, high-five, swim, and chase squirrels, all perfectly. No matter the weather, Doris begins every morning by waking up Bill, fetching his slippers, and taking him for a walk--until one terrible morning she sees that she's "bitten a hole in Bill's slipper!" Doris panics as a black-and-white cat (Greg, who couldn't be bothered) watches from the bed. Not knowing if Bill will be angry, sad, or both, the dog races outside, where she buries the slipper. Her neighborhood friends find her floppy ears hanging in shame but are unimpressed by her transgression: "we've done much worse." (A small blue dog "set the curtains on fire.") Doris is mollified and hurries home to confess to Bill, who does indeed reassure her that mistakes happen and nobody is perfect. The relieved dog relaxes enough to realize she doesn't "even remember" chewing the slipper... and a page turn reveals the real culprit.

Subversive humor highlights Kurland's message about the unattainability of perfection while also adding a complexity that makes this appealing story an entertaining reading experience. The text is conversational, affirmative, and always supportive. Playful, highly stylized illustrations portray Doris and her canine companions in colorful hues with expressive eyebrows, and ample white space keeps the small pup--and her big emotions--at story's center. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Japanese author/artist Yuichi Kasano combines an invitingly simple narrative with delightful, fully saturated color illustrations in his undeniably humorous picture book The Fluffy Futon, smoothly translated byCathy Hirano.

"On a warm, sunny day, Grandma spread a futon on the porch to air." Left out there so soft, and fluffy, and empty, it beckons a kitty-cat who lets out "a great big yawn" then drops down--"plofff!" After her initial surprise, Grandma, too, releases "a great big yawn" and joins the kitty. Their comfy "ploff!"s and soporific "yw-aahhn"s prove contagious: hen and three little chicks snuggle in, then a little boy and his dog, then the goat, and finally the pig and her piglets, until the entire menagerie is cozily entangled on the fluffy futon. When Grandma rolls over and stretches "long and wide," she doesn't notice she's scooched everyone off--except her still-drowsy feline. "Ah, what a lovely nap!" Grandma contentedly announces.

Even before the title page, Kasano's whimsical art--reminiscent of a charming woodblock Pied Piper scene--cleverly introduces the cast, as Grandma carries the futon ahead of her anticipatory companions. Kasano effectively varies viewpoints: at a distance above, as Grandma and kitty bask in the weather; a straight shot of the traditional Japanese home (with a few peeks of the furry and feathery friends lurking). Most of his spreads feature that fabulous futon getting ever more crowded as the pages turn, while the onomatopoeic sleeping noises ("hnym-nyam-nyam," "rff-rff-rff," "prrrrrrr") enhance the comical energy. Note to readers: such rollicking fun may not induce much slumber. --Terry Hong

In the playfully self-referential picture book The Greatest Bedtime Story Ever by author/illustrator Jessie Sima (Not Quite Narwhal; Harriet Gets Carried Away), a friendly yet prideful elf describes to readers how they crafted a literary masterpiece.

The elf greets readers before the title page: "I have just the tale for you." It all begins "on an evening stroll" in search of a perfect spot to compose a story. However, "inspiration [is] nowhere to be found." When a sound escapes from a cave, they wander among "damp, twisting tunnels" to find the source. There, the elf stumbles upon a very sleepy dragon who says there are only two ways he can doze off: "a little bedtime snack" or "THE GREATEST BEDTIME STORY EVER." The elf (not interested in becoming a snack) writes a "hilarious... profoundly moving... informative... dazzling" and "suspenseful" tale. When the dragon drifts off, the elf sneaks out--only to realize they left the book behind. The decision to save the manuscript seals their fate, partially evidenced by a wordless double-page spread of the dragon's gaping, toothy maw.

The elf--surrounded by darkness--periodically interrupts their narration to boast about the story being told. Their dramatic hubris is farcical, and repeated references to "THE GREATEST BEDTIME STORY EVER" add to the absurdity. Sima uses saturated purple hues to evoke a cavernous darkness and luminous golds to add emphasis and humor. The digitally created illustrations hint at the story's conclusion, such as the inclusion of tiny skulls and bones around the dragon's nest. Sima deftly develops a nuanced yet accessible adventure in which the child-coded dragon holds the power and young readers are in on the joke. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, co-creator of Gender Inclusive Classrooms

A colorful cadre of cheerful, (many) potato-shaped monsters bring enthusiastic instructions and affirmations for body care and love in the cartoonish picture book It's My Body: A Book About Body Positivity by Elise Gravel (This Is My Brain!).

The text opens with the assured statement, "There are ALL KINDS of bodies," explaining that bodies have different shapes, skin colors, hair types, and abilities. The illustrations add emphasis through a variety of tube-, blob-, and kidney-shaped beings, including a few who use vision, hearing, or mobility aids. "Your body is your BEST FRIEND," the narrator asserts alongside an image of a gray monster with perked ears hugging their own body. The creatures demonstrate self-care activities and model consent conversations about hugging. "Hugs are best when everybody wants them," the text advises as four stubby-armed monsters squeeze into a group hug. The conclusion reiterates that bodies deserve respect and appreciation for all they do; a yellow-spotted blue monster thanks its body and says, "Without you, I would be a NO-BODY!" The narrator encourages readers to hug themselves--"but only if you want to!"

Gravel perfectly simplifies and summarizes the basics of living in a body for young readers learning to understand and appreciate their physical selves. The frank, positive wording leaves no room to doubt the usefulness and rightness of one's physical being. Gravett illustrates the monsters in a simple style and autumnal palette, and they feel relaxed and friendly, like they would make wonderful companions for discussions around hygiene, nutrition, and body positivity. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library