Death and immortality: The former is definitely real, but what about the latter? That question has vexed authors since The Epic of Gilgamesh. Good topics never go out of fashion, however, as Pulitzer Prize finalist Joy Williams (Concerning the Future of Souls) demonstrates in The Pelican Child, a collection of a dozen excellent stories in which she puts her deceptively minimalist spin on the subject of finality. Consider "Stuff," in which a 63-year-old nature writer for a community newspaper learns he's dying of lung cancer--the poor guy smoked too many "work sticks"--and visits his 100-year-old mother in her care facility. Add to the mix the fact that she's a gnostic prone to philosophical musings, and the result is a beguiling dialogue spun from a simple premise.

Williams does the same in all of these stories. In "Chaunt," a woman in yet another nursing home comes to grips with the death of her young son. "Chicken Hill" is a story about a woman who, after attending a funeral for a little boy, befriends a little girl who quotes Thomas Aquinas and asks provocative questions such as, "What would you say your discomfort level is right now, on a scale of one to ten?" And then there's "Baba Iaga & The Pelican Child," in which the "bony, ill-tempered" supernatural witch from Slavic folklore smells "cruel death" when John James Audubon asks to draw her pelican-child daughter and "make her immortal." Alternately creepy and magical, these stories are further evidence of Williams's skill at concocting unsettling works that are more profound than they first appear. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Connie Berry's intriguing sixth Kate Hamilton mystery plunges the antiques expert and her police officer husband into a tricky case centered on a 14th-century Suffolk grave site--and a few 21st-century murders.

Kate is thrilled to be asked to appraise some valuable goods, including a stunning pearl, found with a well-preserved female body on the grounds of a local estate. But when the lead archeologist, charismatic, arrogant Simon Sinclair, is found murdered at the dig site, Kate's husband, Tom, asks her to assist in unearthing his killer. Meanwhile, Tom and his team hunt for a killer in a different case, and aspects of Sinclair's death display some startling parallels to yet another unsolved murder from nine years earlier. Kate must draw on her appraisal experience and diplomatic skills to navigate the prickly mix of personalities on the archeology team, plus the strange warnings from an eccentric local woman who has led protests against the dig.

Berry (A Collection of Lies) delves into the Suffolk area's medieval history, sending Kate down several research rabbit holes that have bearing on the cases past and present. A subplot involving Kate's pregnant veterinarian friend, Angela, provides a bit of needed levity. Kate and Tom make a thoughtful investigative team as they sift through evidence and attempt to identify both the medieval body and the modern-day killer--before the latter gets to them first. Readers will appreciate the novel's fascinating local history, well-constructed plot, and meditations on death, legacy, and love. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Author John Allison and artist Max Sarin, the entertaining graphic creators of The Great British Bump-Off, return with another rambunctious episode, The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt. This time, thanks to Uncle Jim's generous loan of his boat, Shauna Winkle's off on a summer holiday through England's canals. She makes her first stop, three hours after departure, in Barton-on-Wendle, where she meets Bryn, whose charms are so irresistible that she barely notices the barge coming unmoored. It then scrapes against concrete posts and handrails. The damage, she'll learn soon enough, is a whopping £4,000 to fix, which means she needs to find work ASAP.

Bryn takes her to Canalside Crafts, his mother's quilting shop. "If you can make a cup of weak tea, work a computer, and put an order in a Jiffy bag... you've got a job," Daphne offers. That night, when arson claims Daphne's car, she's convinced it's sabotage--by a disgruntled former employee, Pat, who left to start her own rival shop, Stitch Pickings. With Quiltfest coming that weekend, Daphne can't risk losing to her nemesis: "We're putting you in undercover with the other lot." Shauna, who insists she's "been solving mysteries for more than half [her] life," just might figure out who's doing what to whom.

Allison's delightful cozy mystery gets mirthfully enhanced with Sarin's quirkily (over)dramatic characters, populating brilliantly saturated, riotously colorful panels. Sarin excels in capturing all manner of expressions in convincing detail--particularly those of unstoppable Shauna, who plots, hallucinates, worries, and vanquishes her way to hopefully, finally return to smooth sailing. --Terry Hong

Much has been written about Oscar-winning screen queen Joan Crawford--most notoriously by her daughter Christina in her knives-out 1978 tell-all, Mommie Dearest, whose movie treatment imprinted the high-camp Crawford persona on the public's imagination. With Joan Crawford: A Woman's Face, Scott Eyman presents an admiring corrective that also honors his subject's objectively outsize personality.

Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur, probably in San Antonio, Tex., probably in 1905 (the records are sketchy). When she and her working-class family were living in Lawton, Okla., she became besotted with the movies. Crawford chose dancing as her path to show business and eventually earned a chorus-girl job in New York, where Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screen-tested her; on January 1, 1925, she was Hollywood-bound.

Eyman (Cary Grant; Charlie Chaplin vs. America) is surely the preeminent living biographer of Old Hollywood, and Joan Crawford is yet another showcase for his fathomless film knowledge and wit. (On one shaky early Crawford vehicle: "Romantic comedies about archaeology are few and far between, and I Live My Life shows why.") Crawford's self-curated image of indomitability was so fortress-like that she may not be truly knowable, but Eyman gets damned close. His book incorporates his interviews with Crawford's surviving colleagues, her deceased peers' offspring, and her grandson, who shared his fondly remembered grandmother's papers with Eyman. As for Crawford's diva reputation, Eyman notches many episodes but dispatches the Mommie Dearest persona with a perfect swipe at the movie: "The film's sole positive attribute was that it seriously damaged the careers of everyone connected with it."--Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

In The Idea Machine, Joel J. Miller celebrates the book as the quintessential information technology that shaped--and continues to shape--the world. Books, he suggests, "do for ideas what mosaics do for stones," and in this sweeping study, Miller identifies the distinctive circuitry of writing, ideas, and portability that books represent in spurring and forming thought across the millennia. From ancient Greek book culture to Roman poets, the Renaissance, and beyond, Miller highlights not only the importance of the book as a vessel of recorded thoughts but also as a tool for facilitating further idea generation: an "idea machine."

Underscoring his theme of writing as thinking, Miller provides examples from history; the scroll evolved to the codex and made the dissemination of knowledge and ideas--and the reactions to them--easier and faster. The codex form allowed authors to create "with a larger scope at a grander scale," Miller writes, and its contents lived beyond the author, thereby extending the reach of the author's ideas. He also praises monastic monks for their contributions: not only did they laboriously copy manuscripts by hand but they also improved the way books were written and read, introducing lexical technologies such as space between words, upper- and lowercase letters, chapter headings, paragraphs, and more. Miller includes a clunky "idea grid" to visualize the book's impact across time, but his chapter-ending "marginalia" vignettes are far more engaging. Overall, The Idea Machine is a diverting tour of bookish history that bibliophiles should gobble up. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver

Italian journalist Cecilia Sala plunges readers into three turbulent regions in her unflinching Fire: Voices of a Generation in Iran, Ukraine, and Afghanistan, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky. Beginning with Iran, Sala brings readers close to recent conflicts, such as the protests that erupted after Mahsa Amini's death in 2022. She shares the perspectives of personal friends, including Nabila, a gay kickboxer and wrestler, and sources like Sadira, who is part of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

Though parallels can be loosely drawn between the three countries and the people Sala reports on, who are mostly in their 20s, Fire is essentially three accounts in one, tenuously connected by Sala happening to have been a reporter in these places at key times. Fortunately, Sala provides plenty of necessary context and relevant history to catch up readers who may not be familiar with the intricacies of each country's conflicts and revolutions. These include Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Euromaidan protests, and the Haqqani network's origin and impact in Afghanistan.

The section on Afghanistan highlights U.S. interventions in the region. Here, Sala cross-examines and finds wanting the aftermath of the 2020 Doha agreement, negotiated by Donald Trump's administration with the Taliban, and Joseph Biden's disastrous 2021 withdrawal from the country. Sala turns her sharp eye on the loss of Afghan women's rights, safety, and future with a poignancy that cuts.

Sala pulls off a tricky feat, keeping the page count extremely reasonable while creating a book that feels thoroughly researched and reported. Fire is a whirlwind trip through three countries that gets to the heart of what matters. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

The 13 absorbing autobiographical essays in My Little Donkey, Martha Cooley's fifth book, employ braided structures to reflect on aging, family relationships, her recent move to Italy, and life's fateful moments.

Befriending a donkey on a Venetian lagoon island, Cooley (Guesswork) examines mulish stereotypes. Has she shed her burdens and proved her stubbornness in retiring from New York City to Tuscany in her 60s? She prefers to think of it as adopting John Keats's "negative capability. This entails a balancing of perceived opportunities and losses." Age poses challenges: Italian cobblestone accidents in "Falls," ceding the joy of music to tinnitus in "No Such Thing," and clearing her parents' apartment in "The Box." And in the heartbreaking "Something to Pay," Cooley bids farewell to her old, ill cat before moving overseas.

Most essays interweave multiple strands. For instance, "Bonnie and Clyde" starts with childhood pets and segues into the Aeneid, fatherhood, and duty. Often, a personal story reminds Cooley of someone else's. Musing on sibling bonds in "Out of Hand," she recalls a friend's brother's financial misconduct and delves into the history of Ponzi schemes. A few pieces overstretch with their long asides, but it's generally delightful to follow the narrative thread. In "The Spitter," Cooley wonders why an unhoused man spat on her at a subway station--and also tracks the Holocaust experiences of Franz Kafka's sister. "Flukes," detailing a 1963 Italian landslide, is a fascinating meditation on contingency. By turning struggles and tragedies into stories, these intricate essays make sense of randomness. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

From the 1911 theft of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa at the Louvre to the Ocean's Eleven movie franchise, heists have long fascinated audiences. Walter Marsh's The Butterfly Thief: Adventure, Fraud, Scotland Yard, and Australia's Greatest Museum Heist will appeal to nature lovers and true-crime aficionados alike.

Australia's unusual biodiversity was a boon for lepidopterists (those who study butterflies and moths) seeking new species. Naturalists established massive collections in the early 20th century, and George Lyell donated his assemblage of more than 51,000 specimens to the National Museum of Victoria. It was displayed, 60 cases at a time, in a rotating exhibit expected to last years. But on January 13, 1947, hundreds of butterflies were found missing, and panic quickly spread as natural history museums across Australia realized that their collections had also been robbed.

Well-researched and methodical, The Butterfly Thief traces the lives of museum staff, Australian lepidopterists including Lyell and Athol Waterhouse, and the backstory of Colin Wyatt, the man eventually suspected of the thefts. A member of a famous English family, Wyatt was a mountain climber, skier, and adventurer whose swaggering exploits often made the British tabloids. He also was a gifted artist and naturalist who traveled the world to explore, paint, and photograph nature.

Marsh's narrative becomes increasingly engrossing as the investigation unfolds, particularly once Scotland Yard comes onto the case. Even more than 70 years later, museum researchers are still finding errors and falsifications meant to conceal the thefts. The Butterfly Thief is an excellent history and a captivating work of modern crime. --Jessica Howard, former bookseller, freelance book reviewer

The 25 poems of tenderness, humor, and pathos in Billy Collins's Dog Show celebrate the canine characteristics that resonate with humans most. These short, accessible verses are accompanied by artist Pamela Sztybel's striking full-color watercolor illustrations. Collins, the author of 15 poetry collections (Water, Water; Aimless Love) and a two-time United States Poet Laureate, dedicates Dog Show to 85 dogs, arranged alphabetically from Adele to Zeke.

The joy in dogs' carefree approach to life recurs in the poems. "Dharma" begins: "The way the dog trots out the front door/ every morning/ without a hat or an umbrella,/ without any money/ or the keys to her dog house/ never fails to fill the saucer of my heart/ with milky admiration." Collins ends the poem by acknowledging the dog owner's emotional dependence: "If only she were not so eager/ for a rub behind the ears,/ so acrobatic in her welcomes,/ if only I were not her god." He describes the "anthropomorphic skylarking" when a dog "will sometimes allow itself to be dressed up" and the contentment of breakfast time, when "we hold our mutual gaze,/ me reading his mind and he reading mine." Collins also honors the heartbreak of a beloved dog's passing, "when the collar/ is slipped,/ over his ears,/ and off his body,/ freeing him for good."

Dog Show's whimsical poems concisely reflect the canine-human relationship. Readers might even attach their own beloved canines' names to Sztybel's fetching, heartwarming portraits--the terrier with one cocked ear, the regal collie, the smiling beagle--whose intense eyes cast soulful gazes from the page. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

Break Wide the Sea by Sara Holland (Phoenix Flame) is the first installment of a captivating, darkly romantic series containing aquatic fae and a tidal wave of betrayed love and ruinous curses.

Eighteen-year-old, "dark blonde"-haired Annie Fairfax is cursed. "In the old days," when finfolk magic was stronger, "they could curse an entire... bloodline." The Fairfaxes, who run one of Kirkrell's prosperous whaling companies, are one such family, doomed by a monstrous "heartbreak" curse that passes through the generations. A brokenhearted Fairfax becomes a scaled, clawed creature blinded by bloodlust.

Annie's curse activated six years ago when her parents drowned in a finfolk attack and Annie took control of the Fairfax Whaling Company. Whalers hunt Livyati, magical whales prized by the seafaring people of Kirkrell. However, Livyati sightings are decreasing as finfolk attacks increase. At least Annie has stalwart fiancé August by her side. When half-finfolk captain Silas Price seeks Annie out to tell her the curse can be broken, he insists she must agree to stop killing Livyati. If she doesn't, devastating war with the finfolk is inevitable. And, Silas says, Annie desperately needs to lift the curse soon--August is about to betray her.

Holland's oceanic setting is inherently high-stakes, and the author capitalizes on the danger and romance that long days and nights on a whaling expedition afford. Holland undoubtedly succeeds at the difficult task she has set for herself: create a compelling plot with a main character who is, in her own words, "weak and avoidant and fragile." Hand this title to fans of Tricia Levenseller's Daughter of the Pirate King or Bethany C. Morrow's A Song Below Water. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Color, creativity, and culture are front and center in Duncan Tonatiuh's energetic Vida: The Mice, the Cat, and the Alebrije, a worthy entry in Tonatiuh's growing series of Mexican-inspired folktale picture books (Feathered Serpent and the Five Suns; The Princess and the Warrior).

Vida is a mouse who lives in Mousetepec, a bustling city full of music, mercados, and fiestas. She lives with her banda-playing dad, piñata-making mother, and younger brother, Máximo. One night a wild cat pounces from the shadows, trashing the city and scaring the mice into hiding. With the markets empty of the people, their food, and music, Mousetepec begins to turn lifeless and gray. When Vida has a dream featuring an alebrije, a fantastical Mexican folk creature, she rallies the community to build their own alebrije. Together, the mousefolk use the alebrije, instruments, and their voices to scare off the villainous feline and return the city to its bright, bustling glory.

A brief note at book's end explains that Mexican artist Pedro Linares is "known for coining the word and concept of 'alebrije.' " Included alongside this description is an image of one of Linares's sculptures, painted in bright, clashing colors with several different patterns. Using thick black outlines and fully saturated colors, Tonatiuh's expressive hand-drawn and digital collage work mirrors the tactile and prismatic elements of such sculptures. Innately political, and bursting at the seams with color, Vida is a reminder that creativity and community are valuable tools to defeat the shadows that threaten peace and happiness. --Luis G. Rendon

The information silos of the digital world are challenged in the engaging, fact-filled Burst Your Bubble! by the duo behind the Gabby picture book series, author Joyce Grant, co-founder of TeachingKidsNews.com, and illustrator Jan Dolby. The algorithms that organize the Internet help users stay in their comfort zones, but Grant argues "that might not always be a good thing."

Dolby's illustrations of digital bubbles fill the pages with friendly figures akin to those of Chanel Miller or Charles Schulz, creating a welcoming atmosphere as Grant distills complicated ideas into easy-to-understand comparisons. "Algorithms are not 'good' or 'bad'--they're just tools" but "tools can be programmed, by humans, to do things you may not like." For example, choices that can at first seem harmless, like seeing posts about cats or dogs, can become more serious when "it's not only dogs or cats in your bubble but... only people who have the same skin color as you." Sidebars encourage readers to consider their echo chambers and lean into creative discomfort by expanding their bubbles. Grant's explanations of how "AI" and Google work to re-enforce bubbles are much needed, though more criticism could have been levied at the misinformation found in "artificial intelligence" and Google's biased algorithms.

Burst Your Bubble is a useful primer for young readers who want to learn more about the Internet and for librarians and teachers looking for a useful aid in the fight against digital misinformation. --Nicole Brinkley, bookseller and writer