We Run the Tides by Vendela Vida (The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty) is a dreamy, tricky tale of girlhood, secrets and the shifting sands of truth set in mid-1980s San Francisco. This captivating coming-of-age novel asks readers to consider friendship, cruelty, deception and consequences.

Narrator Eulabee begins her story with the first-person plural point of view. "When I say 'we,' I sometimes mean the four of us Sea Cliff girls who are in the eighth grade at the Spragg School for Girls. But when I say 'we,' I always mean Maria Fabiola and me." The foursome is close, but it is beautiful Maria Fabiola who enraptures Eulabee and, apparently, everyone else--children as well as adults--in their rarified world of au pairs, chauffeurs and views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Earnest, awkward, devoted Eulabee is less polished than her friends, or perhaps it only seems so because readers are privy to her insecurities. The trouble begins when she and Maria Fabiola fail to see a minor event in the same way, literally. Did Eulabee miss a small, important detail? Or did Maria Fabiola make it up? The truth almost doesn't matter; what matters is that the girls are equally firm in their divergent truths.

We Run the Tides is an enchanting, literary novel, realistic but a little unreal. Vida gives a tender, incisive portrayal of adolescence. The girls' cruelties are visceral and impermanent, the stressors of Sea Cliff somehow both superficial and profound, in this cleverly woven story about honesty, betrayal, charm and illusion, about what matters in youth and what matters always. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

In countless little ways, even an ordinary person on a lackluster day is actually quite fascinating. A Common Person and Other Stories, the third illuminating collection of short fiction from R.M. Kinder, puts the mundane lives and irrational fears of regular folks at center stage: a young man who plots to save a neglected dog; a lonely single mother desperate to connect with her distant daughter; an older couple who wind up stuck in a cave during a tornado.

In these 17 stories, the characters' lives feel dreary yet somehow astonishing, described with the same dreamlike detail and withering nostalgia that might accompany tales of a long-lost friend. In many cases the characters aren't particularly striking or even likable, but their simple heroism and fateful interactions are often uncomfortably familiar. One example is "Small Courtesies," which places a Midwestern couple at a science fiction and fantasy conference. Here, an outlandish facet of humanity intrigues and unnerves the nondescript pair--but the costumed attendees insist they're not that strange. "A gnomish man in green velvet looked up at the doorman and said in a low, soft voice, 'We're not freaks. During the year we're just normal people with normal jobs. This is our holiday. Our chance to be different.' " In "Little Garden," a college student's paralyzing phobia of snakes seems like excellent fodder for pranks--until one friend takes it too far. The outcome suggests that even common people spend their lives lingering on the precipice of either greatness or tragedy. --Angela Lutz, freelance reviewer

Small-town Louisiana girl Odessa Dean is enjoying her summer in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, cat-sitting for her aunt and waitressing at a local bookstore-cum-cafe. But when her co-worker Bethany ends up dead (coinciding with a flash mob in a nearby park), Odessa can't believe it was an accident. In Olivia Blacke's charming debut mystery, Killer Content, Odessa roams Williamsburg in her signature cowboy boots, looking for clues and getting into plenty of trouble. 

A dedicated true-crime podcast listener, Odessa soon discovers that real-life sleuthing is hot, boring, even grungy work (as when she digs through the garbage in search of Bethany's cell phone). Her co-workers--an eclectic bunch--are mostly helpful and kind, though most of them don't share her suspicions of foul play. (A handsome NYPD detective seems to be equal parts frustrated and amused by Odessa's crime-solving attempts.) Odessa's amateur investigation leads her to multiple Brooklyn tropes, such as consignment shops, the local soap-making scene, the nearby dog park and a chef who moonlights as a beekeeper (with 3D printed hives). Blacke gently skewers the stereotypes while writing about the city and her characters with real affection. Odessa is an appealing narrator, though she's perhaps a bit too trusting for her own good. When many of the slightly zany characters visit her building for an informal wake in Bethany's honor, the details of the crime may finally come to light.

Fast-paced and funny, with a vivid setting and plenty of sass, Blacke's first mystery is as engaging as its heroine. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In the sixth entry in Kelley Armstrong's suspenseful Rockton series (after Alone in the Wild), Detective Casey Duncan and her boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Dalton, confront attacks in the Canadian wilderness and dark secrets concealed by their town's founders.

Rockton is an off-the-grid settlement where victims of crimes and criminals alike can disappear for two to five years, for a price. It's not a place open to outsiders, but when Casey and Eric stumble upon a hiker suffering from apparent stab wounds, they must bring her there. The victim speaks only Danish, but with the interpreting services of a new resident, they determine that her attacker seems to be one of the hostiles, people who live outside of Rockton who have reverted to a primal state. But some evidence suggests a different answer, and a possible connection to Casey's theory about the origin of the hostiles.

Although the Rockton series is set in the contemporary, real world, the town's isolation and limited access to technology creates an atmosphere similar to a historical western or post-apocalyptic science fiction. Fantasy fans who appreciate the level of detail required to bring an invented world to life may also enjoy that this intricately twisted mystery comes with equal attention to how such a community could function. New readers will quickly be brought up to speed, and series fans will eagerly consume new answers about questions at the core of Rockton's history. All will hotly anticipate the next installment. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Director Mike Nichols (1931-2014) won an Academy Award, a Grammy, three BAFTAs, four Emmys and nine Tony awards during his prolific career, and Mark Harris has written a superb and definitive biography that Nichols and his fans deserve. Harris (Pictures at a Revolution) is part film historian, theater buff and investigative reporter, which makes this rich, compassionate and candid biography soar with fresh, first-hand anecdotes from Nichols's co-workers and Harris's astute observations about the director's work.

What may surprise many is how often Nichols's career bounced from universal acclaim (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate were his first two films; Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park was his first Broadway production) to failures (Day of the Dolphin and Catch-22) and back again. A perfectionist with a short temper and a lacerating tongue, Nichols was a neurotic, insecure workaholic who was in therapy for decades and by the 1980s had suffered a heart attack, a nervous breakdown and was addicted to cocaine and crack. When he married his stabilizing fourth wife, Diane Sawyer, in 1988, he said she "turned Pinocchio into a real boy." This biography offers a treasure of backstage gossip (including the nightmare of directing Plaza Suite starring two alcoholic lead actors in three different roles in three acts). Despite missteps, Nichols was king of the comebacks (Silkwood in 1983, The Birdcage in 1996, Angels in America in 2003) and generally beloved by his co-workers.

Harris's definitive biography of the iconic director, producer and comedian is the ideal gift for anyone interested in the creative arts. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Peter Behrman de Sinety has translated French philosopher Maël Renouard's insights about the Internet as Fragments of an Infinite Memory: My Life with the Internet, preserving the delicacy and nuance that make Renouard such a stimulating thinker. The book is broken into vignettes in which the author ponders the transformative nature of the Internet--his life before and after its advent--and poses philosophical questions about its relationship to the self, to the mind, to art and immortality. The vignettes sometimes border on impressionistic as Renouard recalls personal experiences with Facebook and Google. The majority are discursive reflections on other thinkers, like Derrida and Baudrillard, and how their work informs, and sometimes predicts, the mass digitalization of human life. He also critiques movies and books and digital "graffiti" he's found on the Internet, such as comments on YouTube.

Renouard's most interesting takes on what he calls the "recollection machine" revolve around human mortality and the Internet's ability to extend "the digital signs of life." He argues that the Internet subsumes the material world and offers a digital space in which attributes of life--not whole beings--live forever. He also explores the way morality has changed, or must change, to match this new eternal and very public life. Things no longer lost but preserved through ethernet are subject to a new moral landscape. "There is a latent tribunal in digital exhibition," he says.

Fragments of an Infinite Memory can be intellectually challenging, paradoxical, even fatalistic. But the book is always fascinating and provides a deep, nuanced view of a quickly changing world. It has a charm of its own. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing is another compulsively readable, highly impressive work of reportage from Sonia Faleiro, author of the acclaimed Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars. The Good Girls investigates the deaths of a pair of young girls, Padma and Lalli, in a small village in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India. The girls' disappearance one night sets off a chain of events where "who they were, and what had happened to them, was already less important than what their disappearance meant to the status of the people left behind." When the girls are found hanging from a tree, Faleiro shows how their families' search for justice became entangled in some of modern India's most complicated and intractable problems.

Faleiro carefully reconstructs the investigation into the girls' deaths in all its dysfunctional detail, indicting a justice system that was woefully undertrained and unprofessional; a sweeper performed the girls' post-mortems with butcher knives. Conflicts over caste and politics further complicated the investigation, with the apparent truth of the matter coming to light only after dozens of false starts helped wild theories proliferate. While Faleiro has used extensive interviews to portray Padma and Lalli as more than the symbols they became--unearthing their hopes, dreams and familial conflicts in almost novelistic detail--the book is equally valuable as a document of the many complicated, interwoven issues that face India. The truth behind what happened to Padma and Lalli is more banal than it might at first seem, but no less horrific in its implications. The Good Girls is excellent, deeply felt nonfiction. --Hank Stephenson, the Sun magazine, manuscript reader

Jim Davies has spent his professional life--as a writer and professor of cognitive science--examining how humans can better understand their minds and unlock their full power and potential. He's written about myriad feelings and emotion centers of the mind (Riveted), and he's explored facets of creative human thought, for better and for worse (Imagination).

In Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are, Davies once again generously shares his technical expertise to show--and also deconstruct--how the science of the mind can help people focus on things that matter and, thus, lead to more fulfilling lives. He frames his optimistic narrative very loosely around the idea that our dogs look up to us with awe and love, and everyone has the power to live up to that perceived potential, improving themselves and world around them.

Davies explores three key areas: personal productivity, happiness and moral goodness. He shares concrete stories and examples of how to live more mindfully by strategizing ways to overcome distraction and self-sabotage; the benefits of setting up reward systems; and how to cultivate happiness from within. He blends the personal with the universal, addressing larger issues of morality, charity, partnering and parenting, and the role of activism.

As in his other books, neuroscience is the cornerstone of Davies's material, which is deeply rooted in psychological literature on human cognition. However, his lively, accessible presentation demonstrates how the science of the mind and its operating systems can be richly entertaining and utterly inspiring. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Courtney Summers (Sadie) wants to break your heart. She has said as much of her captivating and harrowing seventh YA book, The Project: it's "just going to ruin your day." She's right. This gripping depiction of love, abuse, control and loss will steal your time--there is simply no putting it down--and Summers doesn't coddle feelings.

Nineteen-year-old Bea's parents died when a semi crashed into their SUV; the EMTs were able to pull Lo, her 13-year-old sister, from the wreckage. At the hospital, Bea discovered Lo near death. Desperate, she went to the chapel: "God, she whispers... over and over and over again. God, I'll do anything. Please, God.... And then He appears."

Six years later, Lo is alive, mostly well and pursuing a career in journalism. She has spent the past half decade cut off from Bea--while Lo was still recovering, her older sister joined the Unity Project, a group run by the enigmatic Lev Warren that aims to "bring salvation to the ends of the earth." Lo, certain the Unity Project is holding her sister against her will, decides to prove her journalism chops and get her sister back by taking down the cult. But the group--and Lev--are significantly more powerful than she could have imagined.

Books about cults are popular in contemporary YA, but few have done what Summers does here: create ambiguity, humanize those involved in the group and painstakingly blur the line between loving care and abusive control. Both Bea and Lo tell their stories linearly, but the time difference between them--both young women are 19 when they begin--builds the mystery and creates intense suspense. Yes, The Project will ruin your day. Yes, you want it to. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness