Though he once was best known for a ferocious reviewing style that produced a collection entitled Hatchet Jobs, Dale Peck's literary career hasn't been confined to criticism. What Burns, his first volume of short fiction, explores some of life's darker corners in eight well-crafted tales written over the past 20 years. The stories here are sturdily constructed, suggestive of the "massive wooden joist spanning the house's central axis" in the story "Summer Beam, pt. 1."

In the opener, "Not Even Camping Is Like Camping Anymore," five-year-old Davis insists that he wants to marry Blaine Gunderson, the teenage boy who's responsible for his afternoon care at the unlicensed day care facility run by Blaine's mother. What was "eerie about Davis," Blaine reflects, is that he "talked the way he did and still managed to pick up on what was happening in the part of the world that existed outside his weird little brain." Francis Kaplan Pelton, the ironic narrator of "Sky Writing," spends his inheritance from an ex-lover in a nonstop series of globe-spanning flights. The story recounts his interaction with an attractive young woman he identifies in the story's first sentence as his "latest victim." "Certain elements of this particular flight are a little too familiar, which means that it has already failed in its mission," he tells her, in the middle of their alcohol-drenched journey.

In each tale, there's some element that induces unease, and there's often an air of menace lurking over the characters. Peck nudges that quality of strangeness to the foreground, even though all of the stories are contemporary and feel firmly grounded in reality. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Two brothers. Two narrators. Two type fonts: serif for "The Older Brother" chapters; sans serif for "The Younger Brother." Their family has shrunk as Mahir Guven's debut, Older Brother, begins: "...there's only two of us left," the older brother reveals, referring to their acerbic father and himself. The younger brother "has f**ked off to the middle of the desert," their mother is dead, her mother also dead, the father's mother in a nursing home. Once upon a time, the father was an international student from Syria who fell in love with a local French (Breton, specifically) student; they married and had two sons. Some three decades later, the father, despite his (unspecified) doctorate, is a disgruntled taxi driver, hoping to soon retire after 20-plus years navigating Paris streets. That his older son drives for Uber is nothing short of betrayal. The younger brother, once a hospital nurse and convinced "the world was calling out to [him] for help," answered by volunteering with a medical NGO to serve in their ancestral Syrian homeland--and disappeared. After three silent years, the younger brother returns, burdened more with disturbing questions than believable answers.

Awarded the 2018 Prix Goncourt for a debut novel and translated by PEN Translation Prize finalist Tina Kover, Older Brother affectingly mines Guven's own experiences of being stateless, as the French-born son of Turkish and Iraqi refugees. His dual protagonists are also perennial outsiders, their relentlessly questioned status magnified in a Paris still nervous after terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan. Despite such gravity, Guven is a sly, ingenious storyteller, infusing black humor and biting wit throughout. His epilogue proves to be a jaw-dropping sleight-of-hand. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

This outstanding second novel in the Movie Palace mystery series from Margaret Dumas can easily be read on its own, but readers will surely want to read the first, Murder at the Palace, as well. Screenwriter Nora Paige fled scandal, the paparazzi and the gossip-driven environs of Los Angeles after her famous actor husband left her for an equally famous actress. Nora headed north, where she's now the manager of the Palace, a historic San Francisco movie theater. She loves classic movies and has grown equally to adore the aging, beautiful theater and its staff, including the ghost of a 1937 usherette who only Nora can see. When a young employee's boyfriend is killed in an apparent robbery, Nora doesn't suspect his death is connected to the Palace. Nevertheless, she sets out to learn the truth about the murder to ease her employee's grieving heart.

She's shocked when her investigation leads to disturbing information about the dead man and his possible connection to a smarmy local real estate developer. Apparently, there are clandestine plans to buy out the businesses on her block and tear down the buildings, including Nora's beloved theater. Just when she's convinced that she's uncovered the villain, another person dies under suspicious circumstances. Is it possible the theater's resident ghost can eavesdrop on suspects and uncover the murderer, or will Nora be next on the list of victims?

Wonderful, warm and engaging characters inhabit this excellent mystery set in modern-day San Francisco. The plot moves along at a swift pace, an intriguing romantic element raises the stakes, and witty postings from a classic movie critic's insightful blog add to the book's charm. --Lois Faye Dyer, writer and reviewer

On the sparsely settled frontier of humanity's galactic exodus, nuns from the Order of Saint Rita provide aid and perform rites where needed. Their ship, Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, is a colossal, photosynthesizing sea slug with habitable cavities. The order's Reverend Mother, vowed to silence decades ago, has long acted with some sense of independence, thanks in part to a generation-old war that severed Earth Central Governance's control over humanity's outlying systems. But old bureaucracies are stirring. A new pope rules the Vatican, one who is less willing to let the church's far-flung functionaries operate on their own. And ECG, despite its catastrophic loss in the last war, remains the most powerful human polity, and its greedy eyes have turned heavenward once more.

Lina Rather's debut, Sisters of the Vast Black, is a science-fiction novella with the wallop of a much larger work. In only 160 pages, Rather builds an intriguing human future populated by layered characters. The book also explores timely Catholic concerns, especially tensions between the Vatican and nuns in the United States, and how political posturing and religious dogmatism interfere with doing good works. Beyond these thematic successes, Sisters of the Vast Black is excellent sci-fi. Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, the sea slug ship, is gratifyingly imaginative, and its occupants hold secrets both heartwarming and shocking. Sisters of the Vast Black breathes new life into the sub-genre of space-based religious orders. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

While readers will want to read the entire collection, this eighth novel in Jill Shalvis's popular Heartbreaker Bay series can be read as a stand-alone tale. Self-taught chef Ivy Snow has pulled herself up by the bootstraps after a hardscrabble childhood that has left her emotionally wary and guarded. Determined to build a settled, secure life, she operates a successful food truck in San Francisco, is saving for a down payment for a condo and has found a solid group of friends. Focused on her goals, she's caught off-guard when she meets vacationing sheriff Kel O'Donnell. Kel is recovering from job-inflicted injuries and is spending his mandatory two-week recovery time in San Francisco, helping his cousin with security at a new condo building.

Despite Ivy and Kel's reluctance to become entangled, they're irresistibly drawn together, although both know this can only be temporary, for Kel has to return to Idaho in two weeks. Neither of them expected to fall in love, and the swift escalation of their connection surprises them. Just when it seems a happy future may be possible, however, someone from Ivy's past unexpectedly surfaces and makes demands she can't ignore. Kel's cop duties compel him to give his job precedence over Ivy's loyalty to family. Can he forgive her for lying to him? Can she forgive him for not trusting her? If they can't move beyond their difficult past lives and open their hearts, there may not be a happy ending to their whirlwind romance.

The novel features an emotionally engaging plot that blends the swift evolution of a heartwarming romance with the resolution of gritty family conflicts. Tart dialogue and absolutely charming, well-developed characters will delight readers. --Lois Faye Dyer, writer and reviewer

From her stage show and subsequent book Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher was known for her comic observations about the trials of being the offspring of flamboyant actress Debbie Reynolds and caddish crooner Eddie Fisher; about sealing her fate (for better or worse) and fortunes (for better) as brainy badass Princess Leia in 1977's Star Wars; and about coping with drug addiction and bipolar disorder. Given Fisher's openness about her life, any Carrie Fisher biographer would have a galactic challenge: What can she tell readers that Fisher hasn't already?

Lots, if that biographer is Sheila Weller (Girls Like Us). She cast a net far and wide to land interviews with subjects famous and not, speaking on the record and off, but Fisher defenders nearly all. In Carrie Fisher, Weller blends their recollections with what she calls Fisher's "provocative, braggingly self-deprecating (a neat trick), honest enough" accounts. The result is a robust, many-faceted portrait of a woman whose longstanding feminism (Fisher marched for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1980s) elevated everything she touched and who left a powerful legacy after her sudden death at age 60 in 2016. The cause was cardiac arrest with a likely assist from the drugs named in her toxicology report--a heartbreaking exit, given her decades devoted to exorcising her personal demons.

The question while reading Carrie Fisher isn't "How did her life veer off course?" but "How did she keep it together for so long?" The answer would seem to lie in Fisher's mutual emotional support system. Going by the company described in Weller's book, it would probably be quicker to list the people who weren't Fisher's friends than the people who were. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

London's River Thames has long been a repository for lost or unwanted objects, and those who seek them out are known as "mudlarks." Writer and editor Lara Maiklem, a long-time visitor to the Thames foreshore, chronicles her adventures in her first nonfiction book, Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames. Her expeditions and the objects they yield--including hatpins, hand-blown glass bottles, buttons and the occasional precious stone--provide a rambling, idiosyncratic, fascinating guide to the city's history.

Armed with a good pair of wellies, a keen eye and endless patience, Maiklem inches her way along the foreshore, sifting through centuries' worth of silt, mud and debris, in search of lost or discarded bits and pieces that might give her a glimpse into the city's past. London's history is layered and sometimes confusing even to locals, but Maiklem's crisp, accessible writing style keeps her readers' interest. She describes her perennial love of scavenging (including the "museum" she kept in her parents' barn as a child) and the eventual outlet she found in mudlarking, along with the friends she has made. Her journeys touch on sociology, anthropology, ecology (climate change has affected both the river and the rest of London) and the complicated interactions between the built environment and the natural world.

Readers will learn much from one mudlark's generous offer of the knowledge she has picked up--a mosaic of different pieces, much like her treasures themselves. Those who live near tidal bodies of water, or even in London itself, may be inspired to do a bit of mudlarking on their own. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

On the last page of A Pilgrimage to Eternity, journalist Timothy Egan (The Immortal Irishman) reflects on his thousand-mile journey. "The Via Francigena is a trail of ideas, and it helps to walk with eyes open--otherwise you miss the bread crumbs of epiphany along the way." Egan's 2017 pilgrimage along the major medieval route from Canterbury to Rome, hardly a step of which was not traveled by "martyrs, madmen or monarchs," was his quest to explore the contemporary moment in history (with its sharp decline in religious participation) and to ponder his personal faith ("to decide what I believe or admit what I don't").

As a Pulitzer Prize winner, Egan excels at detailing history: The Worst Hard Time followed Dust Bowl survivors; The Big Burn covered the politicians and firefighters of the early Forest Service. In A Pilgrimage to Eternity, Egan deftly alternates historic details of Christianity's legends, locales and research with his own experience. Between Epernay and Châlons-en-Champagne, his feet blistered and his water running low, he reflects on Augustine's quote, "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." Egan inspires readers to follow his lead as he "[damps] down his skepticism" and describes sites of mysteries and miracles, including Lourdes in France and the tomb of the undecayed Saint Lucia in Italy. He spares no details in reporting beheadings, burnings at the stake and tortures in the name of religion. But turn the page and revel in reviews of local pasta, wine and cheese, spontaneous friendships with fellow pilgrims, and philosophical musings. When Egan receives his last VF passport stamp, at the Vatican, readers will feel they've trekked right along with him. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

With the premise that people have stopped paying attention to the environment, former chief sportswriter for the Times of London and avid amateur naturalist Simon Barnes has written a magical and lyrical guidebook for the average layperson to use when reconnecting with the natural world around them. Rewild Yourself: Making Nature More Visible in Our Lives draws upon the inspiration of nature-heavy fantasies such as C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series to create magical allegories that encourage openness to the wonders of the natural world.

In the tradition of Thoreau's Walden, Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and the nature-based writings of E.B. White, among others, Rewild Yourself offers charming nature vignettes that reveal the hidden world of plants, insects and animals for the casual observer. Animal tracks across the snow tell "the story of the hungry fox and the hare that lived," while several chapters dive deeply into bird life (Barnes's expertise on that topic was illustrated in his 2018 book, The Meaning of Birds). Some gear recommendations--"A good pair of binoculars is like being teleported across the intervening space"--are sprinkled throughout, and little exercises that test the senses are perfect for all ages. There is also a list of further reading that informed the author's nature awareness (like The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling and My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell). Flowery and metaphorical language provide a quick and engaging read for anyone looking to rediscover and explore what nature has to offer. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.

Before there were regulations and oversight for food and drug manufacturing in the United States, greedy corporations often made monstrous adulterations to products they presented as fresh and safe for consumption. Tonics and potions were also peddled to unwitting consumers with promises of cures for everything as minor as headaches or as massive as cancer. The results (and products themselves) rarely matched the claims. One man, a doctor and chemist, began research into these unscrupulous practices and made it his life's work to protect American consumers. In The Poison Eaters, Sibert Medal honoree Gail Jarrow (Spooked!) engages young readers with the story of Harvey Washington Wiley and his dogged campaign for safe food and drugs; a campaign that would ultimately result in the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. 

Jarrow's gripping narrative of Wiley's life draws parallels between the roadblocks he encountered with current issues readers should easily recognize. For example, companies threatened by Wiley's campaign for a pure food law blackmailed those they advertised with, prompting them to support a rejection of the food law: "the company would cancel its advertising contract if any laws--state or national--were passed that restricted the proprietary medicine business." Jarrow further entices middle-graders and young adults with gruesome details and images (such as malformed body parts) and old product ads that are sure to pique readers' interest.

Startling, informative and fascinating, The Poison Eaters will almost certainly inspire readers to look at food labels, question what goes into the products they're consuming, pay attention to news stories about drug companies and, most importantly, they will come away knowing the man behind all the protections we enjoy today. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

Amy Sarig King's (Me and Marvin Gardens) second middle-grade title explores especially mature subjects--infidelity, parental missteps, mental illness, genetic inheritance, violent triggers--with effective, age-appropriate awareness. On January 18, 2019, "everything changed" in the Johanson home. While 12-year-old Liberty and her nine-year-old sister, Jilly, went out for dinner and ice cream with their mother's friend, their father left. "Dad is a good guy with a bad disease" and, for now, "he needs some time to figure things out." His departure, according to Liberty, was "how it started, our fall from space." Although Liberty "couldn't remember a time when they weren't fighting," her parents' separation, now that it's really happened, provokes sorrow, anger and jarring logistical challenges.

Despite his promises of "you'll still see me all the time," 86 days pass before Liberty and Jilly share an awkward reunion with Dad. He's noticeably thinner, wearing cologne and has lipsticked dirty glasses in his kitchen sink. Meanwhile, Mom's moving on with her "divorce action station"; Jilly's turned agoraphobic except for school; and Liberty, who is something of a stargazing expert, has started talking to a meteorite she found out in the fields. Over the next 10 months, communication, compromises and readjustments will need to happen to realign the family's disjointed, frayed connections.

The Year We Fell from Space is a reminder that failed adult relationships have resonating impacts on children: "Parents are weird to think they can hide yelling from people in their own house," Liberty wisely comments. As her family implodes, King shows the many ways to ask for, find and receive help as Liberty learns to deal with and appreciate what will become her brave new world. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Still grieving the death of best friend Eddie, Tristan Strong bombs his first big boxing bout. To "get some fire in his belly" (as his Granddad says), he travels from Chicago to Alabama to work his grandparent's land for the summer.

On his first night, as he adjusts to the quiet and darkness of the farm, Tristan is attacked by an anthropomorphic doll baby made of sap. In a high-pitched voice, Gum Baby issues hilarious threats, then snatches Eddie's journal, Tristan's only physical reminder of his friend. Tristan chases her and finds her in the woods near "the weirdest tree [he'd] ever seen," with "bottles of every shape and size... stuck on the ends of the branches." During a brief, sticky altercation, Tristan accidentally punches a hole in the bottle tree--which is also a portal--and rends the sky of Alke, Gum Baby's world. Alke is ruled by gods straight out of African diasporic folklore. These gods--such as Brer Rabbit, John Henry, Nyame the sky god--are fueled by the power of story and threatened by sentient chains, slave ships and the haint Tristan's punch released. It's only by putting up his dukes and fighting on the side of Alkeans that Tristan can conquer the spirit, plug the hole and get back home.

Like the African diaspora, Kwame Mbalia's gods are portraits from mixed stories and legends brought together by common, often orally communicated, histories. The world-building is comprehensive, with unapologetically black spaces that speak to a collective ingenuity such as the breathtaking descriptions of Wakanda-esque fortifications in the mountain region, Isihlangu. Although action-filled, slow reveals of important information make the plot lag. Still, Mbalia's debut packs a powerful punch on many levels. --Breanna J. McDaniel, freelance reviewer