The past is a powerful force of reckoning in excellent new books such as Margrét Ann Thors's tense Icelandic thriller, Freyja, about a single mother haunted by a friend who went missing in childhood. Emil Wilson excavates a poignant time period for the coming-of-age graphic novel The Nightingales, while Michael Cunningham brings "uncommon elegance" to his hybrid memoir and writing guide Unsayable. Discover Kiyoshi Tanimoto's harrowing account of surviving an atomic blast, Hiroshima, 8:15, and learn how a trio of waterways shaped the European continent in Robert Winder's curious and expansive history Three Rivers. Understanding where we've come from helps immensely in the task of figuring out where to go from here.
--Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness