Emily Franklin's ravishing Regency drama, Love & Other Monsters, is inspired by real-life literary luminaries of the Romantic period and the Englishwoman whose ghost lingers in some of their most consequential works. Resurrecting the talented aspiring writer Claire Clairmont from the dusty pages of historical archives, Franklin (The Lioness of Boston) delivers a sexually charged saga of thwarted love set on the banks of Switzerland's Lake Geneva.

The novel opens in 1879; Claire is an octogenarian taking a backward glance through the pages of a journal she penned during 1816 as a vivacious teenager on the brink of life. She finds adventure in the arms of Lord Byron, a celebrity poet and regular fixture in the gossip pages. That summer, Claire decamps from London to Villa Diodati, Byron's Swiss vacation home, with her stepsister, Mary, and Mary's beau, Percy Shelley.

Franklin's storytelling is saturated with the lush atmosphere and mystical undertones of a torrentially wet summer. Mary hunkers down to create her masterpiece, Frankenstein, and the men to write their poetry. Tired of Byron's growing cruelty and Mary's intellectual condescension, Claire turns in on herself like the "cold-worn poppies" in the garden. When relations with Byron take a sharp downward turn, resourceful Claire must salvage what she can of her power over him by grafting her own secret literary legacy onto his.

Blending history with heart-quickening fiction, Love & Other Monsters introduces readers to an obscure, unashamedly sensual writer consistently underestimated for the ambitions that eventually render her immortal on the page. --Shahina Piyarali

Alexandra Oliva explores the tangled bonds between mothers and daughters, and the implications of generational cycles, in her thought-provoking third novel, The Radiant Dark.

In a small Adirondacks town in 1980, new mother Carol is stunned and thrilled to hear that a strange flickering of light in the sky indicates a strong possibility of intelligent life on another planet, 11 light-years away from Earth. As she struggles to care for her newborn son, Michael, Carol becomes fascinated by odd transmissions from a planet known as Ross 128 b, eventually coming to believe the Rossians' messages have spiritual implications. Many years later, Carol's daughter, Rosanna, will grow up to become a scientist whose work deals with transport and communication to other planets. The prospect of contact with interstellar beings, and the implications for life on planet Earth, powerfully shapes the lives of Carol and her children.

Oliva (Forget Me Not); The Last One) draws her characters with sharp, keen-eyed compassion, examining Carol's lingering trauma from her abusive childhood, and the ways it influences her fierce, often misguided love for her children. Michael, a peacemaker drawn to a life outdoors, spends his young adulthood wandering the country, searching for something he can't quite define. Meanwhile, Rosanna--prickly, analytical, driven--earns a spot at Yale and fights to carve out a place for herself in academia, while holding her mother at arm's length. Oliva sensitively guides her characters apart and back together. Tender and quietly luminous, The Radiant Dark asks how we relate to our fellow beings (interstellar or otherwise) and highlights the ways the past echoes through the present and shapes the future. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In her barbed and immensely engaging debut novel, The Scoop, Erin Van Der Meer skewers the business of tabloid journalism through the struggles of a young editor trying to make her mark. Laid off from her dream job at Marie Claire and mourning a breakup with the boyfriend she thought she would marry, Francesca "Frankie" Miller is desperate for a stable income. Against her better judgment, she takes a job as a night editor at the Scoop, a trashy online tabloid (think the National Enquirer) owned by media conglomerate Johnson News. David, the editor-in-chief, offers Frankie a large salary and promises he will see to it that she's transferred to the respectable Business Day (think the Wall Street Journal), also owned by Johnson, so Frankie tells herself she won't be there long. At first, Frankie is able to keep herself above the fray, offering pointed observations of a business where "paparazzi photos were often treated with the hysterical sense of urgency other news outlets reserved for the most serious of events," but it doesn't take long before she is swept up in the frenzy. She abandons her integrity by digging up dirt on Amanda Myles, a 1990s rock star trying to live quietly out of the spotlight. Frankie's relentless invasion into Amanda's past leads to devastating consequences for Amanda and a harsh reckoning for Frankie.

Van Der Meer, a former journalist, knows this terrain well. Her depiction of the well-meaning but naïve Frankie shows how easily morals and ethics can be swayed in the pursuit of success. Sharp and provocative, The Scoop is a smart and satisfying read. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor

Inspired by the real-life tragedy in November 2021 when 27 migrants drowned trying to cross the English Channel from France, French philosopher and writer Vincent Delecroix's slim and searing novel Small Boat limns the failings of conscience and complacency in the face of human suffering. Told mostly from the viewpoint of the French radio operator who falsely assured the migrants during their distress calls that help was coming, Delecroix imagines the thought process behind her callousness. Under investigation for negligence, the narrator is questioned by a policewoman who looks "exactly like me," a resemblance that repels her. She toggles between blaming the victims--"it really wasn't me that asked them to leave"--and expressing self-pity for being singled out for a problem created by societal inequity beyond her control. She notes that her job does not entail feeling sorry for anyone. "Empathy," she says, "is an idiotic luxury indulged in by people who do nothing."

The narrator's account is broken into two sections by a short passage in the middle of the novel that tells the story of the fateful night from the migrants' viewpoint. The language shifts in this section to an unadorned and unsparing description of slow horror as they drown, one by one, "without even noticing." As monstrous as the narrator seems, however, Delecroix avoids painting her as an easy villain. It is, rather, her all-too-human capacity for indifference and moral justification that is chilling. Aided here by Helen Stevenson's subtle, brilliant translation from the French, the timely, thoughtful, and unsettling Small Boat is a powerful and necessary read. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor

The entertaining fifth volume of Ed Lin's popular Taipei Night Market series, The Dead Can't Make a Living, gathers the familiar crew of Unknown Pleasures, which specializes in grilled skewers in Shilin Night Market. Reunited are proprietor Jing-nan, a UCLA dropout who returned to Taiwan to salvage the family business in challenging times; his brilliant biomedical researcher girlfriend, Nancy; and loyal employees Dwayne (yes, a nod to "the Rock"), who is Indigenous Amis Taiwanese, and Frankie the Cat, a former soldier and political prisoner.

Jing-nan may be persona non grata with the local police precinct, because they blame him for their chief's recent death, but customers still come to his booth in droves for the delectable food, the inviting social media presence, and of course death. In this installment, the corpse is a young man who turns out to be a Filipino migrant factory worker. The government sees him as merely collateral damage that can be erased with a financial settlement, but his family needs justice, which sends Jing-nan undercover to the factory to expose what really happened. Dangers aside, in case of trouble, he can always name-drop his powerful gangster uncle's moniker, right?

Lin cleverly ensures each volume easily stands alone, but reading in order reaps significant benefits; for example, check out the fourth entry, Death Doesn't Forget, for details explaining police animosity. Lin continues to write with an irresistible nonchalance, adroitly balancing heavier themes of migrant exploitation, criminal organizations, and government corruption with well-timed humor. Murder is never funny, but discovering whodunit here certainly has rollicking, comical moments. --Terry Hong

Kritika H. Rao (The Legend of Meneka) expands on a fantasy universe based in traditional Hindu stories as she concludes the Divine Dancers duology with the adventure-rich, introspective fantasy novel The Rise of the Celestials.

Meneka, an apsara (celestial dancer) from the heavenly city of Amaravati, is now living among mortals with her lover, the sage Kaushika. "Living here with him in stillness has been a quiet rebellion, a slow warfare... deliberate in its nourishment," she reflects. However, their passionate relationship is tarnished for Meneka by external pressures. Shachi, the wife and sometimes adversary of Indra, Amaravati's ruler, has asked Meneka to win Kaushika to her side against Indra. Meneka is unsure of her place in Amaravati after recent events. Then Indra calls her home, only to send her forth again on a mission to the underworld. Meneka can refuse, but if she does, Indra will never allow her to return to the mortal world and Kaushika. Her travels route her through the most hellish corner of the immortal lands, then to the lush paradise of the underworld, where she becomes entangled in Indra and Shachi's power struggle. Their battle will decide the fate of Amaravati forever, and Meneka's choices could cost her Kaushika--or worse, herself.

Rao's unabashedly sexy epic centers the journeys and fellowship of women but portrays the feminine aspect of the divine as potent and aspirational regardless of one's gender. Readers of the duology's first volume will enjoy Meneka's powerful path to self-understanding and finding her place. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Amy Crider's introspective memoir, Catching an Orange, illuminates her mental health struggles. The intriguing title refers to a dream Crider had just before she learned of her long-ago psychiatrist's death. Reading his obituary, she felt she'd lost a valued confidant: "I want to tell you everything, and you are gone."

Chicago-based novelist/playwright Crider (Kells) highlights the turning points in "a lifetime of crippling anxiety." While in graduate school in upstate New York, she reunited with a high school friend whose brother she married. Together she and her first husband bought farmland and built a house. Her husband took on big DIY projects and had ideas for inventions but never followed through. Learning of her mother's personality disorder and her husband's paranoid schizophrenia explained their behavior and interactions with her. Her own bipolar diagnosis accounted for her manic episodes and the occasional hallucinations and delusions that resulted in hospitalizations. During one of these, she met Dr. L. and started writing to him--a habit she maintained for 30 years, even though their acquaintance lasted just three days.

Crider's recollections constitute a warm, frank confession addressed "Dear Dr. L." Dissolution of her first marriage became inevitable; her ex's boat-building disasters came to symbolize failure to keep the relationship afloat. The title image suggests newfound control ("I caught a ball for the first time") as Crider takes ownership of her past and future. She imagines Dr. L. replying, "Who do you think threw it to you?"--proof that even brief connections matter profoundly. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

Though the Pulitzer Prize she received for her 2023 novel, The Night Watch, was well deserved, it didn't take that honor to confirm Jayne Anne Phillips's status as one of America's preeminent contemporary fiction writers. But in a career that has spanned nearly 50 years, Phillips has never produced a work of nonfiction. Small Town Girls, her varied and confiding memoir in essays, remedies that omission and further demonstrates the breadth of her talent.

Born in 1952, Phillips grew up in the tiny town of Buckhannon, home to West Virginia Wesleyan College and, during her childhood, a thriving coal-mining industry. Roughly half of the 22 pieces in the collection touch on how that upbringing helped shape her identity. It's a place--"geographically isolated and relentlessly exploited by outsiders and some insiders, all looking to sell paradise and make a buck"--that she views with a mixture of pride and candor tinged with melancholy.

The "star-crossed, dramatic life" of Phillips's mother, the descendant of a wealthy family that lost its fortune in the Great Depression, is a recurring subject. Phillips, who holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, also offers several impressive examples of her literary sensibility and journalism. Among them are tributes to novelist Stephen Crane and to Phillips's West Virginia contemporary Breece D'J Pancake, whose prose, she writes, "has the clarity of a struck bell" and who died by suicide in 1979, at age 26. In these and the other essays, she consistently penetrates to a subject's emotional core, in the process revealing to her readers her own life alongside a bit of their own humanity. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Three teenagers enter the Labyrinth of Greek myth and fight nightmarish supernatural creatures in the high-adrenaline, blood-stained YA dark fantasy The Labyrinth of Waking Dreams by Michelle Kulwicki (At the End of the River Styx).

The Labyrinth is "a plane of darkness," filled with "horrors," separated from the world by an invisible magical barrier. A secret society of blood magicians, all "children of gods," protect the Earth by keeping the barrier closed. However, the barrier is breaking down and wears especially thin over Barren's Peak, a small West Virginia town. Eighteen-year-old, blonde Thea is a lifelong Barren's Peak resident who dropped out of high school to care for her disabled father. Her only escapes are parties and Callum, the mysterious new boy in town with "dark olive skin and weirdly grey eyes." Thea doesn't know Callum is a magician, ordered to spy on her by the magicians' Council. When tan, chestnut-haired Oliver, Callum's first love and an exiled magician, arrives, flesh-eating fairies attack Thea and Callum. The only way Oliver can think to escape is into the Labyrinth--but once there, the minotaur "is only the beginning." Thea, Callum, and Oliver must fight their way out again "through monsters and trials [they] can't even begin to consider."

Kulwicki's plot races at a breakneck speed, forcing the teens on a bloody race through a world of fearsome monsters and shadowy magicians in this first title in a series. Thea, Callum, and Oliver have distinctly different POVs, personal arcs, and complex relationships that Kulwicki skillfully uses as motivations and corruptions throughout their perilous quest. --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer

In the delightful picture book My Sister, Goose, prolific author Alyssa Satin Capucilli (Biscuit series) presents a supremely uplifting relationship between two sisters: the elder, Miranda, nurturing and encouraging; the younger, Goose, inimitable and imaginative. Artist Hyewon Yum (Toto) works in colored pencils on paper, giving texture to the girls' world of whimsical wonder.

Miranda couldn't pronounce "Graciela Rose" when her sister was born, simplifying it to Goose and "the name stuck." Now, Miranda knows, "No matter what we're doing... Goose will make some unusual decisions." Before their story even begins, Goose takes over the title page, already taking a bow, acknowledging she provides a memorable performance simply by existing. Goose expends her most creative energy on fashion statements: "When Goose gets dressed, I never know what to expect," Miranda confesses, deftly pivoting Goose's impractical choices without dampening the child's infectious enthusiasm. With Miranda's gentle recommendations, Goose forgoes the high heels and dons light-up high-tops for the playground and (eventually) exchanges the "too hot"-zebra costume for pajamas at bedtime. Despite what could be mistaken for (charming) self-absorption, Goose proves her appreciation for Miranda's stalwart kindness, ready to share her extraordinary wardrobe with her gracious older sister.

Capucilli and Yum are an indubitably complementary pair: the former provides the invitingly chatty text, and the latter's wonderfully winsome illustrations deftly mirror Goose's kinetic energy while highlighting the sweetly engaging sororal interactions. Together, they elevate the art of dressing up to enthralling new levels while celebrating the incomparable joys of supportive sisterhood. --Terry Hong

Sayantani DasGupta (The Serpent's Secret; The Chaos Monster) takes readers on a riveting, wild excursion through New York City as three seventh graders race to return an iconic jewel to its rightful home while eluding an onslaught of nefarious villains.

Twelve-year-old Ria Bailey is furious when her art historian mom is mysteriously fired from her job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ria will be leaving friends, school, and her diverse Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in New York City to live in some "dinky butt town" in Germany. Her mom has gone ahead to start her new museum job, while Indian British American Ria and her dida wait in the city. Then, a mysterious package addressed to Ria's mom arrives. Thieves recently attempted to steal the Met's "fancy, jeweled" Lotus Sword, but only managed to take the Heart of the Lotus, the brilliant ruby set in its hilt. In the box is the (possibly?) real Heart of the Lotus! Ria, along with besties Miracle Owusu and Annie Hernandez, must skirt "danger and death" to protect the gem. On their grand expedition through the streets of Ria's beloved New York City, the trio encounters a mysterious boy who makes Ria's chest feel "oozy-woozy," a potentially zombie "all-woman art thief gang," and a billionaire tech bro who is inordinately interested in museum artifacts.

Theft of the Ruby Lotus is a twisty-turny middle-grade caper with plenty of peril that is balanced by ample doses of pitch-perfect humor. Ria's bright, snappy dialogue pegs her as the sassy heroine she is, and her well-defined supporting cast nicely balances the dynamic. DasGupta gives middle-grade readers an exciting action-adventure-mystery that provides plenty to ponder. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Two distinctly dissimilar sisters react very differently to an alien invasion in this tremendous middle-grade graphic novel about what it means to be "normal."

The Seaver sisters--popular high school freshman Al and 10-year-old sci-fi lover and school "freak" Mary--couldn't be more unalike. Most importantly, the peachy-skinned girls don't agree that aliens have invaded their hometown. Then Mary is attacked by one. And Al? She unleashes her secret superpowers and defeats it. Turns out, Al was adopted from aliens but is simply trying to be a "normal, boring teenager." Unfortunately, her abilities have now been reactivated and she keeps losing control. Al just wants to find where she fits: with the dress-shopping, dance-fevered, school championship-loving crowd, or with brown-skinned nonbinary short-film maker and sci-fi artist "witch" Meg, with whom Al feels comfortable. But Mary keeps finding ominous extraterrestrial warnings that Al ignores, leaving Mary to conclude she'll have to save her "butthead" sister herself.

My Sister, the Freak by artist and writer Dani Jones, illustrator of the PopularMMOs series, is upbeat and uproarious. Jones's lively, thickly lined art has a cartoon-like quality reminiscent of Dan Santat and Raina Telgemeier and her use of light allows for Al's epic superpowered battles to glow gorgeously. The visual humor is admirably, unabashedly hammy and features classic onomatopoeia as well as tongue-in-cheek jokes (one girl woefully settles for "Mild Jared" over "Hot Jared"). There are gasp-worthy twists, snippets from Mary's own comics, and a budding queer romance. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer