Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind) holds nothing back in his exuberant autobiographical novel, Little Boy.

Ferlinghetti, who turns 100 on Sunday, March 24, is famous for his poetry and for founding City Lights Books in San Francisco. He hails from the Beat Generation, which shows in his unpunctuated, stream-of-consciousness style. Little Boy starts out as simply a memoir. The author traces his upbringing with his French aunt and, later, with a foster family in upscale Bronxville, N.Y. Events of his early adult life are also recollected, including his service in World War II and his time spent in Paris. After this brief and sunny summary, something strange happens. The language launches in different directions as Ferlinghetti mashes up his memories with countless allusions, random thoughts and poetic digressions. The rest of the book is one big surging mass of prose poetry in the style of Allen Ginsberg.

Little Boy can be a little tedious and intimidating. But Ferlinghetti's risks pay off. His language surprises and dazzles. He elicits "the very tongue of the soul"--the fourth-person voice, he calls it. He means the unconscious voice of poetry that moves the conscious mind forward into "the ecstatic music of being." He refers to himself as a "would-be anti-hero" and the boy's life (his life) as one of "endless adventures in that wilderness of being on earth." That his work is nonlinear speaks to the way the author views the mind--as both porous and infinitely expanding. As he tries to relive memories on the page, he discovers "the eye at the center of consciousness."

Because of its experimental nature, Little Boy is not for everyone. But it will reward the daring reader with moments of pure lyricism. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

In the same vein that characters from the Archie comics were updated and transported into the noir TV series Riverdale, James Boice (The Shooting) has lifted the cast of the sitcom Happy Days and inserted them into a cozy noir mystery. Who Killed the Fonz? picks up the characters from the show, which was set from 1955 to 1965, 20 years later, in 1984. (The TV series aired from 1974 to 1984.)

Richard ("Richie") Cunningham is now in his 40s and living in Los Angeles with his wife and widowed mother. He has an Oscar-nominated screenplay to his credit but is finding it hard to get the green light for his literary film project when movie studios only want to produce rip-offs of The Terminator and Star Wars. When he learns that his longtime friend Arthur Fonzarelli has been killed in a motorcycle accident, he flies back to Milwaukee to attend the memorial. Once there, he's reunited with his friends Potsie Weber and Ralph Malph, and the trio begins to realize that the Fonz's death was a murder set up to look like an accident.

Who Killed the Fonz? could have easily descended into campiness, but Boice has respect and affection for the characters and skillfully adds layers of dramatic depth to them. Boice also knows how to plot a tight and engaging mystery that embraces both light noir and coziness. Fans of the 11-season sitcom will enjoy being reunited with the cast of familiar faces and will appreciate their lighthearted banter while they play amateur sleuths to solve a murder and cover-up. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

In Midnight: Three Women at the Hour of Reckoning, Victoria Shorr's (Backlands) remarkable literary voice illuminates the lives of three famous women. Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and Joan of Arc each stand at respective thresholds in these well-researched fictionalizations, their extraordinary lives given immediacy and power and even--despite what we already know--suspense.

At 27, Jane Austen is practically an old maid by her society's standards, and essentially homeless. When the younger brother of dear friends proposes the salvation of marriage, Jane agonizes through the night, but decides she cannot marry for less than love, like the best of her heroines.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is on a beach at 24, after the deaths of two children, pacing the shore where Percy Bysshe Shelley has sailed away. He was due back days ago, and now Mary reviews her choices. Might she have been happy if she'd never met Shelley?

Readers find Joan of Arc on the platform beneath the stake where she is to be burned, in the moment when terror strikes her and she renounces her saints and her cause, hoping to avoid death. Over the next week in prison, she relives her triumphs and her faith, then dies at the stake after all. It is a brief interlude in her life, but an enormous one for the reader, who feels in this extended flashback all the intensity she's lived.

Shorr's prose is incisive, thoughtful and personal, deeply exploring the interior lives of her characters. Fans of Austen, Shelley and Joan, as well as fans of rich inner lives in historical fiction, will be riveted. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

London author Abir Mukherjee returns with a third novel featuring his marvelously flawed hero, Captain Sam Wyndham of the Imperial Police Force. The year is 1921 and, scarred by his experiences in World War I, Wyndham is wallowing in Calcutta and spending his evenings in an opium-induced haze. On a particularly eventful night, the opium den he's lying in is raided by police and Wyndham stumbles into a gruesome murder scene while attempting to escape. He can't report the crime without incriminating himself, which leaves him in something of a sticky situation that is made exponentially worse the next day by the discovery of a second, similarly mutilated body.

Wyndham's search for the murderer takes place against the backdrop of British imperialism in India and the movement for Indian independence. With appearances by and references to real historical figures, Mukherjee grounds his mystery in a context of social and political unrest. This tension is mirrored in Wyndham's friend and assistant, Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee--nicknamed "Surrender-not" by the British superiors who couldn't pronounce his name--whose choice of career isolates him from his family and people. Mukherjee writes with an energy and urgency that is well suited to the turbulence of his setting and brings historic Calcutta to muggy, sweaty, visceral life. In Sam Wyndham he has created a complex and entertaining hero, marked by a pragmatic humor that makes Smoke and Ashes not just an excellent historical mystery, but a wonderfully entertaining read. --Judie Evans, librarian

Connections in Death, the 48th full-length novel by Nora Roberts (Shelter in Place, Year One) writing as J.D. Robb, is a gripping addition to this futuristic murder mystery series. The year is 2061, and ever since murder cop Lieutenant Eve Dallas married reformed thief and self-made richest man in the world Roarke, she's had an increasingly difficult time keeping her work life and her personal life separate. So she shouldn't have been surprised at one more set of worlds colliding: one of Roarke's newest employees, Dr. Rochelle Pickering, is the girlfriend of Wilson Buckley, aka Crack, the big, black, Down and Dirty bar owner. He's one of Eve's oldest confidential informants-turned-friends from her early days on the force.

When Rochelle's brother is found dead in her apartment, Crack calls on Eve to investigate the suspicious death. She uncovers secrets that have ties to past investigations and major repercussions for New York City's gangs. It's not just one gangbanger who's going down for this--in typical Eve Dallas fashion, it's all of them. The emotional drama among the characters is kept to a minimum, while the action steadily builds to a crescendo that, of course, brings justice with it.

While this thriller can be enjoyed with no prior world-building knowledge, spoilers relating to previous character development abound by this point in the series. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.

Veronica Speedwell, intrepid lepidopterist and amateur detective, is off-kilter as A Dangerous Collaboration begins. She has feelings for her friend and colleague, Stoker, with whom she is establishing a natural history museum. But the strictures upon married women in the Victorian era have made Veronica refuse to contemplate marriage, leaving her confused about Stoker.

When Stoker's elder brother, Lord Tiberius Templeton-Vane, persuades Veronica to pose as his fiancée for a trip in search of an elusive butterfly, Veronica cannot resist. But when they arrive at the tiny Cornish island where the butterfly resides, Veronica is annoyed to find Stoker there, too. Relations between the Templeton-Vane brothers and Veronica are already strained when they discover that the island holds many more secrets. Malcolm Romilly, owner of the isle and an old friend of Tiberius, has been in semi-seclusion since the disappearance of his bride, Rosamund, on the day of their wedding three years earlier. What can have happened to Rosamund Romilly? Veronica is determined to find out.

Clever and quickly paced, featuring Veronica's typically witty tongue, but with a bit more introspection than she usually engages in, A Dangerous Collaboration is a delightful fourth entry in the Veronica Speedwell series by Deanna Raybourn. Her banter with both Tiberius and Stoker is truly funny, and the reasons behind Rosamund's disappearance are sure to surprise even the most astute of readers. Perfect for fans of historical fiction and mystery alike, A Dangerous Collaboration is an engrossing blend of adventure and romance. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

"She was the best of womankind; she was the worst," says the opening line of Women Who Dared: To Break All the Rules. Jeremy Scott highlights women who were often more infamous than heroic, and who flagrantly broke rules both real and imaginary.

Scott creates a template for defiant women with his opening portrait of Victoria Woodhull. In 1872, she was the first woman to run for president of the United States, when women couldn't even vote. Charismatic and brash, unapologetically promiscuous, she was admired and reviled by men, who were patronizing, and by many women, who were scandalized. "Women have every right," she maintained. "They only have to exercise them."

Action rather than words and a disregard for the opinions of others are hallmarks of the six women profiled in this book. Mary Wollstonecraft published "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" in 1792. Preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, in the early 20th century, didn't believe that women should be subservient to anyone other than God. As one admirer said, "She taught me how to praise the Lord and get out of bondage to Man." Edwina Mountbatten, Margaret Argyll and Coco Chanel are depicted here, too. Their pursuits range from noble to ignoble, but all defied societal expectations for women in the economic, sexual and political arenas. They were publicity-savvy and manipulated the media of their day to advance their purposes. This book is an entertaining, gossipy depiction of women who not only broke rules, but broke trails for generations ahead. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Lindsay Harrel (The Heart Between Us) entwines the stories of three women whose lives are uprooted by failed relationships in her novel The Secrets of Paper and Ink.

Ginny Rose is the struggling proprietor of Rosebud Books, located in Cornwall, England. She and her husband, Garrett, operated the bookstore together. But after five years of marriage, Garrett decides he needs a break. He sets off to London to find himself. Upon his departure, Ginny realizes he's left her and the bookstore in dire financial straits.

This forces Ginny to take in a boarder: Sophia Barrett from Phoenix, Ariz. Sophia is a women's therapist who suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of her abusive, alcoholic husband. Sophia's passion for books set in the English countryside inspires her to escape to Cornwall for respite. There, she takes a job in Ginny's bookshop. The two become friends.

In the storeroom of the shop, Sophie finds a journal. The pages, written by Emily Fairfax, describe the secrets and intimate thoughts of a young woman, a governess from the Victorian era--an aspiring writer pining for a man above her social class. Is the work fiction or drawn from Emily's life? Sophia becomes determined to solve the mystery and learn more about Emily's story.

Harrel unspools a gentle, captivating narrative about women who unknowingly discover their strengths and fortitude. As they learn to let go of the heartbreaks of life, they find joy, enlightenment and romance along the way. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Ryann Bird is known for both "compulsively rescuing people from themselves" and fighting anyone who pisses her off. Ryann is intuitive, with a talent for opening people up; her friends include her selectively mute younger brother (she's his legal guardian) and an eclectic mix of teens who don't necessarily fit anywhere else. When a new student, Alexandria, arrives, a teacher enlists Ryann to engage her.

Alexandria is a minor celebrity: 20 years ago, a privatized space company called SCOUT sent a group of people "to the edge of space." All of the Uninauts chosen for the trip were young women; it was later discovered that one had been pregnant during training. After she secretively gave birth, her child was given to the father months after the Uninauts launched. Alexandria is that child. Ryann works to befriend Alexandria--making some severe missteps along the way-- until she finally convinces the young woman that she and her friends are trustworthy. What follows is a surprising, offbeat journey that includes a developing love, tender loss and messages from space.

K. Ancrum's (The Wicker King) character development is a particular highlight of this unconventional young adult novel--her teens are well-developed, occasionally eccentric and always individual as they interact in unpredictable ways. Their relationships are strongly felt and dearly held, and are more the driving force of the novel than the circumstances of the plot. The Weight of the Stars is a far-out trip that is sure to attract readers looking for something outside the ordinary. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Crescendo takes the reader through human gestation, beginning at the fifth week of pregnancy and extending through the 40th. Each week is honored in a two-page spread featuring Paola Quintavalle's spare, carefully chosen text and a facing illustration. Taken together, every four weeks of snippets read like a freestanding poem. For Month 6: "You are learning to cry/ Your eyes conserve the color of the night sky/ You cannot see, but you sense the light/ As you turn and tip and tip and turn." This is all lovely, but how is an artist expected to produce dozens of engrossing illustrations based on developments occurring entirely within the womb? Alessandro Sanna has come up with a rather ingenious plan: for each featured month, he offers an illustration of a pregnant woman's body in profile followed by four images--one representing each week--that contain a line mimicking that very same swerve of breast and belly.

Is there a picture book out there that better marries art and science? Sanna seems to be working in watercolor with a brush dipped in celestial light and fairy dust, and yet Crescendo is deeply scientific. Quintavalle has loaded her pen not with sunshine and moonglow but with information about human gestation; her narrative, utterly faithful to the stages of embryotic and fetal growth, concludes with the section "Developmental Facts That Inspired the Text." Crescendo is a book that belongs on multiple shelves in the kids' section of a bookstore or library, but the truth is, it wouldn't be out of place in an adult's collection. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author