Tayari Jones (Silver Sparrow; An American Marriage) knows how to write the intricacies of intimate relationships; complex ties within families and marriages abound in her stories. With Kin, she gives voice to two young women, Annie and Vernice, not sisters but "cradle friends" who maintain an unshakable bond across years and distance. Jones also writes a pitch-perfect South, the culture of 1940s Louisiana rolling off the page through sharp-tongued dialogue or when Annie explains the meaning of the word "trifling."

Annie and Vernice grew up without their mothers, raised by their Granny and Auntie, respectively. When Annie runs away to Memphis in search of her mama and Vernice goes off to college in Atlanta, their paths begin to diverge, physically and socially. Despite those widening differences, they stay connected, understanding that "What you have the same isn't what binds you. Hearts grow strings because of what you know that's the same, what happened to you that's the same."

Told in their alternating voices, Kin shows off Jones's considerable skill through strong pacing and a plot that is emotionally taut without feeling unnecessarily dramatic. Without fail, Jones delivers a brilliant turn of phrase, at turns witty and insightful. When Annie and Vernice reunite, they show their devotion to one another in ways both empowering and heartbreaking, proving that "Blood alone can't give you kinship." Especially as it spins to its difficult conclusion, Kin feels ambitious and accessible, emotionally challenging without pushing readers away. This is a moving story best shared between friends. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

In Rebecca Kauffman's sixth novel, The Reservation, the staff members of a fine-dining restaurant each have a moment in the spotlight during the attempt to solve a theft.

Aunt Orsa's is the top restaurant in its Midwestern college town. The staff has been gearing up for one momentous fall day: author John Grisham has reserved a dinner table for his entourage, and Orsa is desperate to make a good impression to counteract some negative online reviews. To her dismay, everything starts going wrong: 22 steaks are stolen, the dishwasher breaks, and there's an injury in the kitchen--not to mention the daily frictions among her employees. Pantry chef Shannon is jealous of host Julia. Server Byron is rumored to be writing a novel about his coworkers. Julia and Byron were dating until he posted a Photoshopped image of her on Facebook. Orsa's nephew, operations assistant Danny, has a crush on the Mennonite pastry chef, Jane. However, when she needs a favor she confides in the prep cook, Edgar, instead of Danny.

Kauffman (Chorus; I'll Come to You) explores her characters' interactions and backgrounds with aplomb in linked short stories--a format she's previously employed. A number of chapters could even function as standalone short stories, with killer last lines. The table of contents is presented as a "Menu" with 16 chapters, each focusing on a different customer or member of staff via close third-person narration. It's a pleasure to go deep with each character, discovering hidden sorrows and motivations while awaiting the finale of "Grisham Day." The Reservation is a big-hearted novel perfect for J. Ryan Stradal's fans. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

Most people can remember fondly at least one teacher whose classroom became a place where the lessons transcended the mundane subject matter and whose tutelage may even have been life-altering. In his wistful The Optimists, Brian Platzer (Bed-Stuy Is Burning) evokes those memories with the story of an enduring bond between a dedicated teacher and the exceptional student he profoundly influenced and who left an equally indelible mark on his life.

John Roderick Keating, thwarted novelist, aficionado of bad jokes, and passionate New York Yankees fan, spends his career teaching eighth-grade English at St. George's Episcopal School. His signal achievement is something he calls the Ember Exam, a yearlong, 200-question test that progresses through levels of increasing difficulty. At its pinnacle is the status of Archon, one that's never been reached--until, that is, Clara Hightower, student from a troubled home whom he thinks of as "playful, thoughtful, and a little bit dangerous," enters his classroom.

After suffering a stroke in his 70s, Rod resorts to eye blinks directed at a computer screen to write what he calls a novel. He recalls his relationship with Clara, along with her classmate Jacob Smeal, who's smitten with the bright but challenging girl. In describing Rod's gentle obsession with an exceptional student like Clara, Platzer, a middle-school English teacher, deftly evokes the connection teachers feel with their pupils long after they've moved on with their lives and the corresponding "familial feeling toward teachers without any of the stickiness of family." The Optimists is warm, funny, and frequently touching. If the impulse to contact a favorite teacher arises after reading it, don't be surprised. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

It's no small feat to plot a novel with multiple points of view, nor to plot one that jumps through time, and yet Grant Ginder (The People We Hate at the Wedding; Honestly, We Meant Well) does both without missing a beat in So Old, So Young, his sixth novel. Mia, Adam, Sasha, Theo, Richie, and Marco have been friends since college. Ginder tracks their friendships and romances across two decades and five pivotal gatherings: the New Year's Eve party at Richie's small New York City apartment where mid-20s Mia first met Marco, the love of her life; a nightmare of a destination wedding in Cancún (which Sasha and Theo opt out of since they're honeymooning in Hawai'i); a disastrous birthday getaway Adam throws for Richie's 35th birthday; a children's Halloween party Sasha insists everyone attend at her and Theo's new house in the New Jersey suburbs; and a tear-stained funeral where the friends say goodbye to one of their own.

Each event is tinged with the realities of being human, the fact that the only true constant is change. Birthday parties place exes together with their new partners in ways that spark regrets and jealousies alike. Weddings reveal the best and worst of love. Side texts make friends feel left out, accidentally or intentionally, while deep conversations invite intimacy where perhaps it shouldn't exist. Ginder juggles this all without ever allowing the plot to falter, delivering a laugh-out-loud funny, emotionally gripping story that explores what it means to grow up, grow apart, grow together, and grow old(er) within friendships that stand the test of time. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer

As one might glean from the title, Murder Bimbo, Rebecca Novack's debut novel is a boldly errant story that gleefully upends narrative and character expectations. The plot centers on a 32-year-old sex worker, Murder Bimbo, recruited to kill a toxic political figure she calls "Meat Neck." Novack begins her tale after the murder, when Murder Bimbo is in hiding, e-mailing her story from a cabin in the woods to a podcast host whose show, Justice for Bimbos, she deems ideal for sharing her experience with the wider world.

"There are two stories," Murder Bimbo states later, the one about Meat Neck and the one about X, Murder Bimbo's ex-girlfriend, who introduced her to the language of radical theory and for whom her obsessive ardor still lingers. "And then there's the third story about how I mounted both of those tales before I knew where either was going and corralled them into one perfect, wild saga." To say more would ruin the twists that fuel the brilliance of this primarily epistolary novel.

Novack fantastically skewers straight, white men in Murder Bimbo, including their sexual desires and their ability to fail upward, but what makes the jabs hit deeper is Novak's careful character complexity, which accumulates in layers of complicity as the plot progresses. White women don't escape evisceration as Novack aims some of the most analytically sharp send-ups at politically aware former activists who return to comfortable upper-middle-class life after dabbling in radicalism in their youth. Murder Bimbo is a phenomenally impish debut. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

A brilliant young woman who sees the dead is caught up in a dangerous mystery surrounding a foreboding estate and the merciless man obsessed with it in the gorgeously atmospheric and adventurous gothic fantasy Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity, the beginning of a trilogy.

Leena Al-Sayer must make a terrible bargain to save her deathly ill brother. She has no money for his medicine, so she approaches the ruthless man known as the Saint of Silence, a play on his real name, St. Silas. The Saint pays for confessions, and Leena offers to sell him her innermost secret--that she has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. St. Silas maneuvers Leena into a deeper bargain: he will save her brother, but in return, she will work for him until she finds the ghost of Percival Avon, the former master of an estate known as Weavingshaw.

Every mystery Leena encounters draws her further into the ominous shadow of Weavingshaw and a more intimate understanding of the enigmatic Saint and the forces that ensnare him. Al-Wasity builds a vibrant fantasy world infused with international conflict in which the political interacts with the paranormal. Leena and her family are refugees from a war-torn country building a new life in a setting that resembles Britain during the Industrial Revolution. The deep-seated yearning that develops between Leena and St. Silas has its roots not only in their potent chemistry but also in their mutual abuse at the hands of the systems in power. Packed to the brim with mystery, pathos, and that which goes bump in the night, Weavingshaw is a gothic fantasy lover's dreamland. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In Cameron Sullivan's The Red Winter, Professor Sebastian Grave has been alive for longer than he can remember, thanks to his demonic "indwelling Spirit," Sarmodel, but he can never forget what happened with the Beast of Gévaudan 20 years ago. Now, in 1785, he learns that the beast has returned, to devastating effect, and the previous events, which also cost him the love of Antoine Avenel d'Ocerne, are coming home to roost. In trying to right the wrongs of that last encounter, Sebastian harbors hopes for a reconciliation with his former lover as he is pulled back into a hunt that, for him and Sarmodel, goes back centuries, each time at great risk to themselves and anyone else caught up in the pursuit.

Grave relates events of European history that crisscross his personal history with the beast as he tries to find the truth that will finally defeat it, while France and Europe once again stand on the precipice of great change. Sullivan's debut novel is an ambitious, captivating blend of history and myth peppered with romance and darkness, not just of the arcane but of the human heart, as he remakes the werewolf legend in an expansive way for a new age. The Red Winter is a haunting fantasy-horror romance that spirits readers to imperial Rome, the rise of Saint Joan of Arc, and the brink of the French Revolution. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Julia Cooke's sharp, insightful third book, Starry and Restless, follows the lives, careers, and connections of Martha Gellhorn, Rebecca West, and Emily "Mickey" Hahn--three pioneering reporters and writers whose work changed journalism and took readers to places few other writers dared go. Cooke (Come Fly the World) draws on each woman's correspondence, plus interviews and their extensive bodies of published work, to paint a nuanced portrait of three women who refused to sit quietly on the society pages, but who also struggled to balance professional and personal success.

Cooke details the early circumstances that inspired in each woman a hunger for storytelling, travel, and independence. In alternating chapters, she takes readers through the careers they built around (and sometimes against) political events and headwinds. She takes them seriously as practitioners of their craft, praising Gellhorn's daring journeys to various front lines during World War II; West's prolific, genre-crossing work on travel, politics, and family life; and Hahn's persistence in building relationships in Shanghai (which led to her writing a biography of Madame Chiang Kai-shek and her sisters).

Making one's way as a female writer has always carried with it certain challenges, and Cooke is honest about those difficulties and her subjects' dogged attempts to overcome them. She also highlights how Gellhorn, West, and Hahn supported one another, through lunches, letters, and professional encouragement. Starry and Restless emphasizes the ways these three women helped shape the popular understanding of major events and conflicts in the mid-20th century--and the ways their lives and work helped set a new standard for female journalists who craved adventure, success, and a good story. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In the sincere and touching middle-grade novel Hail Mariam by Huda Al-Marashi (Grounded), a sixth-grade Muslim girl attempts to find her voice amid the complexities of familial relationships, personal responsibility, and faith.

Twelve-year-old Iraqi American Mariam Hassan will be the only Muslim at her new Catholic school. "If you are good," her father tells her, "the people will think good things about the Arabs and the Muslims." The pressure to represent an entire religion and culture is immense, and sitting underneath the "bony, bloody body" of Jesus doesn't ease the burden. Mariam feels like she "landed in a different country, with its own writing, customs, and clothing." But Mariam knows her roles: "teacher's sunshine" at school; eldest daughter and sister at home. When her younger sister, Salma, is diagnosed with a lung condition, Mariam tries even harder to be a perfect Muslim to lighten her family's load. In fact, Mariam is so busy trying to be perfect, she can't summon the courage to tell her parents she's been cast as Mary in the school Christmas play.

Al-Marashi explains in an author's note that, like Mariam, she also attended a Catholic middle school and wondered if she was "doing something wrong... looking at the crucifix in my classroom." Al-Marashi expertly captures the girl's stress as she tries to be what everyone wants, thus suppressing her own emotions and needs (like some gentleness from Mama). Mariam's anxieties and daily pressures are depicted with honesty and tenderness, and Al-Marashi skillfully incorporates Ramadan, cultural and religious practices, and Arabic phrases. An excellent read for fans of Andrea Beatriz Arango's Iveliz Explains It All and Shifa Saltagi Safadi's Kareem Between. --Hadeal Salamah, blogger, librarian, freelance reviewer

Author and editor Nora Shalaway Carpenter (Fault Lines) pulls together an inspiring and varied collection of cli-fi short stories, all designed to encourage hope in their readers. Onward includes dystopian, speculative, and realistic fiction as well as poetry and essays that highlight the myriad ways the climate crisis manifests and contributes to the "intense climate grief and hopelessness" of young people. But as Carpenter points out in her foreword, "it is story--much more than facts--that changes minds."

Onward opens forcefully with "The Care and Feeding of Mother" by two-time Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly. This dystopian story features a girl in an overfarmed world who finds and nurtures a virtually unheard-of resource: seeds. Kelly's brief narrative is cynically hopeful, reminding the audience of what they take for granted and showing that there's still time for change. Jeff Zentner uses poetry to tell a fictionalized account of "Tellico Lake," the Tellico Dam, and the near extinction of the snail darter. Zentner emphasizes that "it's easy to think something will never happen/ if you can't see it happening right away." In Xelena González's essay "The World Within," she shares a personal experience from a college writing class where she realized that "when we look at the world through a lens of familial love, destruction becomes harder to inflict."

The vast array of voices, perspectives, topics, and styles make Onward a distinct and intriguing collection. A QR code following the acknowledgements leads to a slew of additional resources that will "allow readers to take some kind of action immediately," helping them to move onward... and to save the world. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

Seasons hover on the brink of change as the world waits for spring in the gentle, hopeful picture book Is It Spring?, written and illustrated by Caldecott Medalist and Children's Literature Legacy Award winner Kevin Henkes (Sunflower Lion; Still Sal).

"Is it spring?" an unseen speaker asks. First, there is a chorus of yeses from a riot of blossoming tulips and daffodils, from "the buds on the branches in the park," and from birds fluttering in the clear blue sky. The speaker repeats the question, and the answer shifts to "not yet" from an "icy and sharp" wind that whips a red-polka-dotted scarf through the air past clouds "turning thick and gray." A third repetition of the question brings a flurry of nos as enough snow falls for a well-bundled child to build a small snowman amid the now-drooping flowers. Finally comes the question "Will it ever be spring?" and the sun itself answers, "Yes, yes, yes," breaking through the clouds to melt snow, wake animals, and warm the wind. "And it was spring," the story concludes from beneath a nest full of hungry baby birds, the spotted scarf now draped on the flowering branch under their nest.

Henkes once again proves himself a master of beauty through simplicity with this minimalist yet affirming narrative and its dreamily soft watercolor and ink illustrations. The assurance that spring will come even after icy weather and false starts feels readymade for talking with young children about the natural world or simply for offering a message of steadiness and comfort. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library

Brooke Hartman and Michael Slack's Exca-Gator! is a rhythmic, rollicking picture book about an alligator in an excavator who learns to collaborate with his friends when his unfettered enthusiasm causes chaos on a construction site.   

Readers meet Gator as he bursts from his home "in the deepest jungle swamp" and hops into his yellow excavator. Ready to build ("Here he comes, it's Exca-Gator!"), Gator joins his crew: a frog operating a plow, a duck in a cement truck, and, fittingly, a crane in a crane. Gator's first job goes smoothly, but subsequent attempts to take over jobs better suited to other vehicles go awry, culminating in the excavator crashing into an almost-finished tower. Finally, the crew confronts a remorseful Gator: "We're excited just like you, But--/ We build the best when we're a crew!" Many hands make light work as the crew repairs and rebuilds, finishing up the beautiful park, small pond, and play tower. Still excited after work, Gator draws up plans for the crew's next building project, then slips into sleep.

Hartman (Cute Animals that Could Kill You Dead) builds a text with all the makings of a lively, participatory read-aloud: bouncy meter, consistent call-and-response refrains ("'I will!' hollers Exca-Gator"), and decisive action words ("Clearing! Digging! Clumping! Dumping!"). Michael Slack's digital illustrations have a matte quality to them, giving the primary color-focused art a textured and comforting look. Slack (Squash & Pumpkin) is especially skilled at rendering construction vehicles--with surrounding lines that suggest motion--and depicting facial expressions. Fans of the Little Blue Truck and Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site series will likely have a ball with Exca-Gator!. --Cristina Iannarino, children's book buyer, Books on the Square, Providence, R.I.