"Boxing was never my sport, but the fights look better in the past tense, the distance has given them charm, if not glamour." This line from The Distance by author and professor Ivan Vladislavić (Portrait with Keys) perfectly captures one of the main themes of the novel: the fallibility of memory.

In 1970s Pretoria, young Joe has been obsessively collecting newspaper clippings about his childhood hero, Muhammad Ali. Decades later, he is a novelist ready to use that scrapbook as the starting point of a memoir and enlists the help of his brother, Branko, to help remember details of their shared past. Through their back-and-forth narratives, readers get a peek into the life of an ordinary family in Apartheid-era South Africa, and the Ali fights echo the global politics of that time.

The Distance is a skillfully conducted chorus of language and voices. The brothers' perspectives are joined by the gregarious words of the sportswriters, and Vladislavić gives numerous examples of 1970s Pretorian slang and headlines from South African newspapers. All of this creates a fully immersive literary experience.

Vladislavić deftly alternates between the two narrators with a speed that, in the hands of a lesser linguist, could leave readers with verbal whiplash but, in this case, serves to highlight the fact that even shared memories can be vastly different.

In the novel, Branko asks, "Can a story ever belong equally to two people?" This is certainly the book to help ponder that question. --Grace Rajendran, freelance reviewer and literary events producer

With The Thursday Murder Club, British TV personality Richard Osman (The World Cup of Everything) has crafted a very funny cozy mystery set in an upscale assisted living community in bucolic Kent, England.

In the luxury facility, four elderly residents--each retired, sharp and energetic--meet once a week in the Jigsaw Room, where they covertly gather to crack actual cold case murders. The group was founded by resident Elizabeth, a shrewd and devious former spy, and Penny, a retired police detective inspector who provided the cases to solve. With Penny now in a coma, however, Elizabeth keeps the club in session, continuing to work cold cases with other fellow residents and mystery aficionados. They include dapper Ibrahim, a psychiatrist; brassy, tattooed Ron, a former trade union official; and unassuming Joyce, a nurse whose interspersed diary commentaries enlighten readers to the often zany inner workings of the club.

When a real-life murder happens at the facility--the bludgeoning of the builder who constructed the retirement community--the club and its members employ their offbeat skills and talents to root out the killer. They skillfully manipulate the help of a 26-year-old female police constable--an ambitious transplant from London--and her Detective Chief Inspector boss, who follow a host of leads and red herrings.

Osman's suspenseful, complex and deeply entertaining storytelling--along with rich characterizations depicting the quirky absurdities and power of pensioners--transforms darker themes of murder and crime-solving into smart, clever fun. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

"All the disturbances of the planet seemed to be made flesh in her," Québécoise debut novelist Christiane Vadnais writes in Fauna, a superbly unsettling eco-apocalypse that finds climate change altering not just the world but the very idea of humanity itself. In 10 short, tense, interconnected stories set in snowed-in labs and floating lake villages, Vadnais examines humans' unraveling, from outside and within, in the years after extreme weather remakes their biomes.

Vadnais's approach to genre is amphibious, much like her conception of the relationship between people and the natural world: the literary and the horrifying slosh together here, just as the lake people of her future Canada become increasingly pale and viscous. She creates extreme situations in which doom threatens in the skies above and lurks beneath characters' skin. Two strangers wait out a weather apocalypse at a remote spa; a pregnant scientist studying a new parasite starts experiencing contractions in a snowed-in laboratory. Her prose, translated from the French by Pablo Strauss, can be terse when describing action but flowers into scarifying ickiness, equal parts clinical and poetic, when she links the pulsing mess of bodies to a natural world thrown out of balance.

The horror here doesn't concern monsters or villains, although one scene finds a woman pursued across tundra by a starving bear. Instead, Vadnais stirs terror at the possibilities of what we could become, what humanity might evolve or mutate into. Scariest of all: the sense that our potential extinction is something of a corrective. --Alan Scherstuhl, freelance writer and editor

S.L. Huang's Burning Roses is a complex and thought-provoking adventure story following two middle-aged lesbians as they hunt monsters and reckon with their own monstrous pasts. Though they are both famed monster-slayers and heroes, Rosa and Hou Yi aren't exactly deserving of those titles. They've made terrible choices in the past, shameful decisions that broke apart their respective families. Through fairytale-inspired memories, including Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast and Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Huang (Zero Sum Game) gradually reveals Rosa's past, and the roots and effects of her prejudice against intelligent, human-like animals. Hou Yi's story is slower to emerge, but when it does, readers will be surprised at how these two "heroes" could have done such things and still be sympathetic characters.

Huang's work as a professional stuntwoman and weapons expert is evident in the the detailed and exciting action scenes, and her writing skill makes these parts progress smoothly and slot seamlessly into the narrative. Despite all the action, and perhaps because of the insertion of classic but updated fairytales and their resonant themes, Burning Roses is unexpectedly emotional and introspective. While confrontation of prejudice and a focus on antiheroes are not uncommon in the fantasy genre, this level of self-examination is. Rosa in particular sees and resents her own life-long biases, something all too rare in fiction and in reality.

Huang packs a lot into this novella: regrets, reconciliation and reflections on what it means to be a good person. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

The Roommate, Rosie Danan's debut romance, is sexy, funny and absolutely charming. When Clara leaves behind her wealthy Connecticut family to move in with her childhood crush in California, she's shocked to find that he's taken off on tour with his band and in his place is Josh, a complete stranger who turns out to be a performer in the adult entertainment industry. As outgoing as Clara is reserved, Josh is easy to like and to live with. If only they could shake this pesky chemistry between them.

Danan treats her subject matter with a great deal of respect. The Roommate is feminist and sex-positive, and Danan makes sure to present both the good and the bad within the adult entertainment industry. When Josh is threatened by the unethical production company holding his contract, he and Clara, along with Josh's performer ex, develop a project aimed at educating viewers on female pleasure. Although the book is high on steam and humor, it's not sexy simply because of the fact that the male lead is a sex worker. While both characters are initially attracted to each other, their physical relationship builds over time with their emotional connection. Both have their own hang-ups to work through, and their self-conscious pining is evident.

Incredibly sweet and romantic, The Roommate serves up a passionate but buoyant love story between two slightly lost people who figure out they have more to offer the world than they ever thought. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

Earnest and compelling, Stakes Is High argues that the U.S. should acknowledge an ideology of oppression, abandon the fiction that its people are equally united, and take collective action for a better future.

Mychal Denzel Smith (Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching) presents what he sees as the delusions keeping the American Dream alive. He highlights a pattern of cherry-picking--how the country's "faults are not American, only the progress." Yet even its progress effects minimal change; milestones like abolishing slavery or letting women vote didn't reform the beliefs underlying those inequalities. It is, he maintains, "a society resistant to justice for all," where not all citizens "survive and thrive" but are policed--particularly those protesting their lack of basic American liberties. In conjunction, the retributive prison system offers no incentives for change, preventing accountability. "Nothing will be solved when Bill Cosby dies in prison," for example, because rape culture still prevails. This landscape of injustice, Smith argues, is excused by the American Dream--by the lie that America is innately good.

Smith's galvanizing rhetoric implores a commitment to honesty. Admitting that he was a "product of American thinking," Smith models a solution on Americans rejecting a national identity of exceptionalism and supporting revolution. Bolstering his argument are quotes from intellectuals like Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Ella Baker, Gil Scott-Heron and Iceberg Slim. What emerges is an undeniable account of America's dangerous mythmaking. Smith is the passionate, guiding voice the U.S. desperately needs. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

Naomi Novik (Uprooted; Spinning Silver) starts her Scholomance series with A Deadly Education, an aptly named novel about a teen wizard in a magic school full of things that would like to kill her. Intricate world-building, a nuanced and diverse cast and a thrilling plot culminate in the kind of pulse-pounding ending that resolves much, but sets up the next installment with unanswered questions and dangers both new and old.

El attends a school suspended in "the void" that's designed to protect magical youth from attacks by maleficaria (mals), but it requires regular feedings in order to keep existing. At the end of every year, this ever-shifting tower twists down one level, dropping the graduating students back into the real world and straight into a pit of hungry monsters, able to lurk there due to a broken automated monster-killing system. Although enrollment in this school has drastically reduced youth death rates, small mals are able to sneak into the upper levels via heating ducts and plumbing, killing a not-insignificant number of students, feeding both themselves and the school.

As a junior, El isn't in immediate danger of graduating, but because of her magical affinity for destruction, she has always been a magnet for mals, so they find her anyway. Privileged and powerful, Orion Lake doesn't have any friends who don't want something from him, so he starts following El around. She's caustic, sarcastic and absolutely unimpressed with his heroics. She's also the only person who treats Orion like a person.

A Deadly Education delivers a heroine working hard to thwart a dark destiny. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

If mountaineering were a more publicized sport, Dave Hahn would be likened to Michael Jordan. The subject of Jennifer Hull's gripping first book, Hahn not only shattered records, he did it "while climbing as a working guide, with nonprofessional climber clients safely in tow." Known as an elite climber, Hahn has also received numerous awards for daring rescues and unselfish valor. Perhaps most amazingly, Hahn helped find the body of famed British explorer George Mallory, missing on Mount Everest since 1924.

In other words, if you're going to climb Everest, where "the ratio of deaths to summits... [hovers] at around one death for every five successful summits," you want to hire Dave Hahn. This may never have been truer than in 2015, a year after an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Sherpas. Ongoing tectonic action wed with global warming means the mountain is changing. As Hahn's group attempted to reach the summit in 2015, their biggest worry was the rebuilt Icefall. Little did they know they would also face a 7.8 earthquake that struck Nepal, killing 22 people (the deadliest Everest disaster) and trapping the team on the mountain.

In Shook, Jennifer Hull deftly merges the story of how Hahn became the icon he is with a detailed account of the 2015 expedition that ended with so much death and destruction. The small details are magnificent, adding to the personalization of Everest, its pull and its power. Hull's narrative smoothly transitions and covers the rescue, never overshadowing the lives of the locals who sacrifice to make dreams possible. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

In The Reindeer Girl, the second in her Winter Journeys series, prolific British author Holly Webb (Animal Magic series; Emily Feather series) creates a magical intergenerational story likely to appeal to readers of animal stories and historical fiction.

Lotta travels to Norway from the U.S. for her oldemor's (great-grandmother) 90th birthday. When Lotta arrives, the older woman, Erika, starts to spin childhood stories about her youth as a member of the Sami Indigenous culture. She tells Lotta she resembles Erika's younger cousin (also named Lotta), with whom she shared an extraordinary journey. That is, before they were forced to go to school to learn Norwegian and forget their Sami traditions. As Lotta grows sleepy during the birthday party taking place alongside the Little Christmas Eve (December 23) celebration, she falls into a dream. Or is it? She wakes in a reindeer-skin tent, "inside the story" Oldemor had been telling. It is 80 years in the past, and Lotta, with 10-year-old Erika, is in the midst of the spring reindeer migration. The girls leave their families to rescue a mother reindeer and end up in a frightening situation strongly depicted in the Artful Doodlers' double-page illustration of the two girls surrounded by wolves.

Even though Lotta wonders how she could be with the young Erika, readers will almost certainly be swept up in her experiences, with no qualms of their own. With pleasingly retro gray-scale drawings, a glossary and informational pages on reindeer and the Sami people, this short novel is an attractive and pleasing read. --Melinda Greenblatt, freelance book reviewer

Author-illustrator duo Sili Recio and Brianna McCarthy bring to life If Dominican Were a Color, a vibrant celebration of the Dominican Republic that makes for a splashy debut.

Recio breaks down the diverse Caribbean island's palettes, starting with the sky: "If Dominican were a color.../ it would be the sunset in the sky,/ blazing red and burning bright." The narrator's family history is explained through a set of grandmothers: one has "mahogany skin" and the other shares the narrator's "yellow tint." Recio incorporates the Dominican Republic's complicated history with Haiti by including a color that is "the Haitian black on my Dominican back." Everything from the color of natural lips to the texture of hair is not just present on the page, but celebrated as beautiful. The rhymes have a quiet pace, like the soft tapping of drums. Spanish is woven into the text and elevates the big picture of what Dominican looks like, as in, "It'd be the maíz coming up amarillo with green." Though some native English speakers might reach for a translation, the illustrations paired with the text give enough context.

The sparse text makes the double-page spreads rendered in McCarthy's jewel-toned mixed-media illustrations feel larger than life. Blues and greens of the Caribbean Sea and trees, reds and browns of dancing and coffee invite readers to linger in each frame. The varying shades of white, brown and Black skin hues emphasize the title, breaking down the idea that there is a single way to "look" Dominican.  

The author's note gives personal insight to the racism and colorism Recio faced and offers a balm to children who may be experiencing the same. --Zoraida Córdova, author and freelance book reviewer