Janine Kessler is a former child actor who lives with her many anxieties in a tiny New York City apartment. Her father, Marty, an award-winning director, has always supported her. So when Marty ends up in Directions, one of California's most posh rehab facilities, yet again, Janine reluctantly comes to help. For the first time in years, Janine ends up spending time with her sister, Amanda, who has always resented her, and Amanda's beautiful teenage twin daughters--although one is slightly more gorgeous than the other, which has led to more tension.

And then, to the surprise of Janine and Amanda, they discover that Marty had a wife they never knew about. His first wife, Bunny Small, the wildly popular author of the Henry Holter books, one of the most popular kids' fiction series in the world, has been out of his life for decades--until she too is admitted to Directions. As Marty and Bunny get reacquainted, hilarious drama ensues in both the Kessler and Small-Holter families. Readers will be amused as Janine wrestles with her past, and Marty and Bunny look toward the future, leading to all sorts of hijinks.

In There's a Word for That Sloane Tanen has brought together a cast of rich, self-indulgent characters, and made them surprisingly accessible, a bit like a literary version of Arrested Development's Bluth family. Tanen, the author of a series of illustrated books that includes Bitter with Baggage Seeks Same, has an eye for human foibles and a knack for sharp, funny dialogue. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Stella Maris, Michael Carroll's follow-up to his debut short story collection, Little Reef, offers more tales set in the sex-drenched city of Key West, Fla. One story narrator sums up the city's appeal: "The town is full of strangers with their stories, all horny mostly. Key West is sexy-ish." Among the characters are aging gay men dealing with illness; young gay tourists bored with their surroundings and their choices for sexual partners; and the eternal war between waning and raging libidos.

Many of the same characters appear in several of Stella Maris's eight stories, creating a strong tapestry and community. One such character is Perry Knight, an esteemed gay writer with a rapidly dying readership. "His first crop of readers had died of AIDS a while ago," writes Scott, his younger husband. "Now old age was hacking away with scythe precision at their survivors, but only those who still read." Scott is trying to finish a memoir about their life together but fears revealing too much. In the story "Key West Funeral," numerous people attend the funeral of a former Marine and beloved drag queen and compare conflicting notes on the man they knew. In "Stella Maris, Star of the Sea," a man who has recently lost his wife starts to make tentative moves toward accepting his homosexuality and carnal drives.

Carroll's spare but evocative prose cast a haunting spell. Although death and dying is the uniting factor in all of these tales, there's still humor, passion and desire simmering below. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Dave Patterson's first novel, Soon the Light Will Be Perfect, is a rough-edged coming-of-age story. Set in a poverty-stricken Vermont community at the beginning of "the desert war," it spotlights a family in crisis within a town in despair.

The narrator is a 12-year-old boy. Along with his older brother, father and mother, he remains nameless, although more peripheral characters have proper names. As the story opens, the family has recently moved out of the trailer park--an important social step up--and they have given away their old kitchen table in an act of charity. The father is supposed to be building a new one, but this project serves as a metaphor for larger troubles.

The 15-year-old brother gets a girlfriend and distances himself from the narrator, although the boys still smoke weed together in the garage, where the kitchen-table project progresses slowly. This is a devout Catholic family, and guilt plagues the young narrator, whose burgeoning sexual interests, for example, give him trouble. His mother's suffering at the hands of cancer, chemotherapy and radiation seems senseless.

While Patterson's gift for description brings beauty to this novel, the tone is bleak. The father labors helplessly; the sick mother delivers food to those needier than herself but also covers up a small crime, as her younger son sneaks cigarettes and self-flagellates. Soon the Light Will Be Perfect is an ambitious work about what it is to be young and facing problems that challenge the most capable adult. At its end, much remains unresolved, just as in life, but readers can recognize just how true that ending rings. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Jojo Moyes (Me Before You; Still Me) originally wrote The Peacock Emporium more than a decade ago. With this new edition, American readers can enjoy the story of Suzanna Peacock and her infamous mother, Athene.

Athene Forster was an "it" girl in the 1960s, a debutante who took London society by storm with her scandalous activities. Suzanna has always struggled with her mother's legacy, and her own strong resemblance to Athene.

Suzanna and her husband, Neil, who lost his job, have had to move back to the country to be supported by her parents, much to her dismay. Suzanna's relationship with her family, which has never been easy, has deteriorated. Furthermore, her marriage is tense, so she decides to open a small shop in town, hoping to find an outlet for her frustration and a way to redeem herself in everyone's eyes.

Told in alternating chapters that depict the lives of Suzanna and Neil, her parents and several patrons of the Peacock Emporium, Moyes neatly weaves together story lines across many decades. As Suzanna begins to connect with the patrons of her quirky little shop and learn their stories, she comes to realize surprising truths about her life, and the things she's always believed to be true. Readers who already love Moyes are sure to like The Peacock Emporium, and new readers will enjoy the blend of contemporary and historical fiction. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Two lovers, Michael and Caitlin, fight against the frigid weather as they walk along the bleak, deserted Coney Island boardwalk. The skyline is "a bullying slob of grey running into grey, slaughtering detail and definition." The air, "mean with cold," highlights their intimacy as they brace together against the wind, draw close and speak into each other's breath. Then Michael softly says, "Barb's got cancer," and realization breaks through the veneer--Michael and Caitlin are married to others, carrying on an illicit affair.

Billy O'Callaghan begins My Coney Island Baby with a lyrical struggle of a couple against nature, allowing the reader to invest in their relationship before providing any opportunity to drop the hammer of judgment. He then winds through Michael and Caitlin's histories--separately, within their respective marriages and through their monthly meetings over the course of their 25-year relationship, fleshing out the humans that underlie the indiscretions.

O'Callaghan won the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award for his short fiction, and his prose displays minute attention, finding beauty and meaning in the smallest of details, every page a goldmine of life reflected in its elements, even those that are worn down and busted. The work is infused with musicality, from the jazz saxophone scoring Michael and Caitlin's first meeting to the resonant sounds of an infant on life support. Over the course of the day, Michael and Caitlin's secret but sustaining relationship must bear up to new facts and long-denied decisions. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Stewart O'Nan has perceptively mined the lives--and quiet dramas--of the Maxwell family of Pittsburgh, Pa., in two previous books. In Wish You Were Here, O'Nan introduced the family matriarch, Emily Maxwell, one year after the death of her husband, Henry. Emily offered her adult children--a floundering son and his family and an alcoholic daughter on the brink of divorce and her children--one last rendezvous at the family's summer home in upstate New York. In Emily, Alone, O'Nan thoughtfully presented Emily, years later, in her 80s, entrenched in widowhood and forced to re-invent herself again when her sister-in-law, a beloved companion, physically declines. In Henry, Himself, O'Nan offers a prequel to the previous Maxwell family books, focusing on the life of Henry, the patriarch, who has been absent thus far.

This story is set in 1998. Henry, a 75-year-old retired engineer, is slowing down and taking stock of his life--marriage and fatherhood, his work, what he's proud of and what he regrets. As in the other books, living through the mundane of everyday life resurrects memories of the past and raises existential questions. Henry considers his worth, whether he is a good person and what the future holds for him and Emily and the complicated lives of their offspring who chronically bewilder and disappoint.

O'Nan is a graceful, meticulous writer. Carefully chosen details woven into a stream-of-consciousness narrative magnify small, ordinary moments that ultimately lead toward profound enlightenment. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

The seventh book in Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde mystery series, Oscar Wilde and the Return of Jack the Ripper, is the first that is not told from Wilde's viewpoint. Instead, this witty and fast-paced outing is recounted by Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and a real-life friend of Wilde. Not surprisingly, this deliciously twisty mystery works just fine as a stand-alone thriller. And although this entry is a bit darker than the previous mysteries, it is still an enjoyable romp. There are plenty of charming scenes between the two bantering friends, and Wilde's clever and acerbic observations are constantly entertaining.

Six years after the notorious Jack the Ripper murders in London's impoverished Whitechapel district, Chief Constable Melville Macnaughten contacts the two amateur sleuths about a new murder that appears to be the work of the same psychopath. Except this murder has taken place in an alley behind Tite Street--where both Wilde and Macnaughten have homes. With the permission of the police, the duo studies the case files of the first five victims and start eliminating previous suspects and interviewing new ones. Meanwhile, Wilde's messy personal life brings him dangerously close to ruin when his devoted and loving wife begins circling the same orbit as his latest male infatuation.

Fans of Doyle and Wilde will find the pair fully developed and fascinating company. And Brandreth's extensive research into the Whitechapel Murders produces a solution that is sound, satisfying and original. A delightful police procedural not to be missed. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

"Flavors," Kwame Onwuachi writes, "are my first language," and since childhood, his life has been shaped by flavor. In the frank and fascinating memoir Notes from a Young Black Chef, co-written with Joshua David Stein, Onwuachi shares seminal stories and recipes from his culinary life.

Onwuachi grew up in the Bronx, N.Y., in a household scented with his mother's Creole and Jamaican cooking. Following his parents' divorce, he alternated staying with his abusive father and his supportive but financially struggling mother. When she was laid off from her accounting job, she started a catering company, and money became tighter--catering was literally a "feast-or-famine business."

That didn't stop Onwuachi from entering the same business himself after an adolescence that included, among other adventures, a two-year stint in Nigeria; a go at college that resulted in getting kicked out for selling drugs; and a gig cooking on a ship in the Gulf Coast following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Finally came culinary school, where entering the highest echelons of his industry also meant reckoning with being a person of color in it. He likens his experience at the Culinary Institute of America to attending Hogwarts, and he parlayed his kitchen wizardry into eventually running multiple restaurants. But conflict always struck: his relationship with his father fizzled. On Top Chef, Onwuachi lost. His first restaurant failed.

Through it all, Onwuachi focuses on his first language of flavor--and his memoir and the recipes within tell that story with humility and heart. Readers will hunger for more. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

"People came from far and wide to see the sculpture of the man and his horse." Then one day, the bronze horse vanishes! Detectives search high and low, combing through nearby villages, to no avail. Where could this valuable horse have gone?

Lyra, a lonely girl living in the far-away forest in a house "taller than any of the trees surrounding it," is astonished when a bronze horse appears outside her window: "A horse... My wish came true!" Together they pick flowers, take walks and play hide and seek. Despite their lovely adventures, though, "every now and then, Lyra [thinks] the horse [looks] sad," as if he is "missing something." When a great bronze man appears looking for his horse, Lyra knows what the horse was missing: "his friend." Though she understands, she is sad to lose him. Until, that is, the horse speeds back to the city's museum, bringing both her and the bronze man with him. Greeted as a hero who returned the lost horse, Lyra is welcomed into the city, where she discovers a wide world to explore; she promises to visit her sculpted friends often.

The Lost Horse is illustrator Mark Nicholas's (The Story of Tantrum O'Furrily) whimsical picture book-writing debut. Nicholas uses a muted gray palette for his illustrations, Lyra's red dress and a few scattered flowers the only pops of color. Lyra's red edges blend into the gray background, giving her the illusion of depth and movement, and the horse and man are dreamlike in their rendering, little more than shadowy, elongated sketches against a more defined backdrop. Nicholas's sweet story explores the importance of companionship and empathy and highlights the adventures possible when in possession of an imaginative spirit. --Jennifer Oleinik, freelance writer and editor

Anna Humphrey and Kass Reich's fast-talking, short-nosed fruit bat worries he's lost his Favorite Pet status in this follow-up to Megabat, Megabat and Fancy Cat.

It's Megabat's first Christmas in Canada and he's having trouble understanding the human traditions: "The man is too fattish and oldish to be climbing stairs?" Friend Daniel explains that Santa comes down the chimney because he doesn't have keys. "Santa is being a rotten robber!" Megabat exclaims. But gifts? Megabat understands gifts. He is immediately enamored with one of Daniel's presents, a "bunny-rabbit soft," "creamy white" purebred cat named Prudence. Unfortunately, when Megabat "really, really" likes something, he tastes it. Prudence, skittish in her new environment, runs from the slurping bat tongue and launches herself at the Christmas tree, bringing it down "with a glittery, howling crash." Megabat soon finds that, whether it's knocking over the tree, spilling paint (because Megabat painted her) or breaking a porcelain Christmas village (because Megabat scared her), it doesn't matter what bad things Prudence does--the family grows ever fonder of her. Convinced Daniel can't love both Prudence and him, Megabat hatches a scheme to get rid of the cat.

Humphrey's second early chapter book in this series is just as sweet and wacky as the first. Megabat's version of English is charmingly off-kilter and Reich's graphite illustrations of the adorably expressive animals match the text in exuberance and silliness. Megabat hopefully has many more adventures to come and, if we're lucky, Prudence will be by his side. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness