Fans of the satires of Tom Perrotta (Tracy Flick Can't Win) will find a different but equally rich experience in Ghost Town, a novel about trauma that includes a hint of the supernatural. Jay Perry is a successful novelist and creator of an animated kids' show based on his Ghost Teacher novels. He lives in Los Angeles but grew up in 1970s New Jersey. The current mayor of his Creamwood, N.J., hometown invites Jay to a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a municipal building named for his father. But Jay is reluctant to return and keen to forget a time when he was 13-year-old Jimmy Perrini and his mother died from lung cancer, "a sucker punch from a bright blue sky."

Perrotta presents the events of that summer of 1974 with infectious sincerity. He describes Jimmy's volunteer firefighter dad, "the kind of guy who played softball with a stubby Dutch Masters cigar jutting from the corner of his mouth," as well as other Creamwood residents, all of them white, a factor that comes into play when "hippie cousin Wayne" moves in next door with his olive-skinned wife. Add to the mix Jimmy's friendship with Eddie, "a stringy-haired burnout" with shady associates, and Olivia, a high school valedictorian who says her Ouija board will let Jimmy chat with his mom, and the result is an endearing if troubling portrait of small-town America. A gift for breezy prose helps material like this go down easily; Perrotta demonstrates that gift in this heartfelt work. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

In her tender, lyrical debut collection, Layaway Child, Chanel Sutherland explores the inner landscapes of Caribbean women who immigrate to Canada from their island homes, often leaving behind their children. Through a series of linked stories, Sutherland probes the complexities of motherhood from a distance, the dubious benefits of building a new life, and the complications of living between two worlds--for mothers and daughters alike.

In "My Mother's Hands Are Silver," a daughter admires and pities the streaks on her mother's skin. She remembers her mother taking her to art galleries, giving her a library card, urging her to pursue her education. In a sense, all of Sutherland's mothers do the same: sacrifice their own dreams, hide their longings to give their children a chance at success. For the daughters, the stakes are different but no less high. In "With Friends Like These," immigrant daughter Shelly finds an unexpected connection when she meets her white friend's housekeeper. As they share a glass of malt and a conversation, Shelly gains a glimmer of insight into her mother's life and makes a choice about how to live her own.

Sutherland draws a sharp contrast between the island of St. Vincent--lush and vibrantly warm, crowded with bodies and ripe fruit and memories--and Montreal-- sterile, impersonal, "a city with teeth." Her characters must learn to make lives for themselves in Montreal's unfamiliar landscape, dealing with homesickness and racism while holding onto their bonds of family and identity. Powerful and moving, Layaway Child is a sensitive evocation of lives shaped by immigration, separation, and the tenacious love of mothers for their children. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In Memory House, a posthumous novel by Elaine Kraf (1936-2013), a novelist enters a commune for failed artists. Magical realism and metafiction coalesce in another of this unsung genius's typically weird explorations of memory, creativity, and sexuality.

Marlane Frack is apprehensive as she sets out for Memory House, a retreat with a no-creation policy and an entry prerequisite of faking one's death. When Marlane asks chauffeur Solomon Ito, a film director (and Memory House resident), what state their destination is in, he jokingly replies, "A state of perpetual lethargy." "Expect confusion," he additionally instructs--which turns out to be good advice.

A ritualized welcome involves communal chanting of "These are not our best years!" Marlane soon recognizes poet Nadia Lagoon and composer Garreth Styne. She's troubled by recurring hallucinations that her mentally ill husband, Lenny, is there. Doctor Amazing promises to restore her creativity via "rejuvenation of memory," which unearths recollections of childhood molestation. Oddest of all, though, is the arrival of Marlane's father--whom she believed dead of prostate cancer. Flashbacks and fantasies are delivered in italics; former lovers and artistic endeavors (including ballet) drift through. "This place is stranger than my weirdest novel," Marlane remarks. "If I don't leave soon, I'll have a breakdown."

Readers familiar with Kraf (The Princess of 72nd Street) get the fun of looking out for Easter eggs from her previous work (e.g., Ferdinand the circus performer from I Am Clarence). Kraf left behind several rejected manuscripts; Marlane, her autobiographical stand-in, feels she is passé due to changing literary tastes. Happily, Kraf's work is now being rediscovered. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

Want to run a fool's errand? Ask someone to explain their infatuation with a person who is wrong for them in every way, and wait for a logical answer. One could start by asking the trio that headlines No Way Home, T.C. Boyle's entertainingly cynical novel about a love triangle that quickly turns bloodthirsty. Terrence Tully, better known as Terry, is a single and sleep-deprived resident at a Los Angeles-area hospital. He receives a call from Nevada informing him that his widowed mother has died. He drives out there to arrange her affairs and claim ownership of her house and dog. Once there, he meets Bethany, a hospital receptionist who has broken up with her boyfriend and brushes hair off her face during a meal together "with the hand that clutched the steak knife." After she and Terry have sex in his mother's house, she asks if she can live there. Terry says no. She moves in anyway, and tells people she's Terry's fiancée.

Boyle (San Miguel; The Harder They Come) makes a satisfyingly unnerving narrative edgier by introducing Jesse, Bethany's ex-boyfriend, an eighth-grade teacher prone to stealing her paychecks. He begins stalking Bethany when he learns she's dating a doctor. The novel gets even creepier from there. In a seeming paradox, however, it also grows more nuanced, as Boyle shows the fragility of reason when it comes to romance. Readers who appreciate Boyle's unparalleled skill at serving up benighted reprobates will find much to feast upon in this excellent work. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

"My little brother, Finley, drowned the first time wrestling the Napoleon pianoforte under the galactic starlight of an Arctic sunset." The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos is a wildly imaginative story centered on the adventures and trials of a homesteader family in the Arctic. Kendra Langford Shaw's first novel follows these determined renegades as they establish and struggle to keep lives, livelihoods, homes, and community in a tremendously harsh environment.

Chapters alternate between characters and perspectives: siblings Milda, Finley, and Temperance; their parents; their ancestor Moose Bloomer, who began his immigration to the Arctic Territory as part of a large train of settlers; and the shrinking but hardy next generation. In a fantastical twist, each settler family brought a wildly impractical piece of equipment. "They were required to bring salt pork, botanical texts, and pianos... music being what would elevate the territory from raw, unbroken land into a homeland worth having." Moose's train abandoned pianos across the region before settling and striving; pianofortes, preserved by freezing waters, washed about the floors of the ocean and the Kamikaze River. Later homesteaders work as piano hunters. Readers meet Finley when he is a young boy obsessed with recovering his family's Napoleon, and this obsession will guide several lives.

In this strange Arctic world in which sunken pianos are desirable prey, glaciers melt, sea levels rise, and scant resources dwindle. Shaw's imagination is broad, her characters delightful, and their fates often painful but also transcendent. The Pillagers' Guide to Arctic Pianos is a lovely profile of a singular, stark place and a small, tight cast of indelibly colorful characters: a heart-wrenching, unforgettable debut. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

In Vaishnavi Patel's fiery, defiant contemporary fantasy We Dance Upon Demons, an exhausted Indian American reproductive health care worker becomes the target of demons when she accidentally obtains magical powers.

Ash Wednesday unleashes a deep dread in Nisha, who knows the Lenten season brings even more intense protesting than usual at the Chicago clinic where she works. Nisha decompresses at the Art Institute, where an ancient Nataraja statue catches her attention. She touches it and faints. After she recovers, she contends with hallucinations and then she meets Muya, an aspect of the ignorance demon Muyalagan. He explains that she inadvertently freed him from his prison in the statue and absorbed some of his demonic power, giving her the ability to change reality. Muya demands she return his magic; when she does not believe his story, he charges her to look within herself. Nisha reconnects with her love of dancing Kathak, and it allows her to see the brave, subversive, and marginalized women who have carried Muya's power in past centuries. However, fiercer demons than Muya want Nashi to surrender the power to them, and they will not hesitate to threaten her friends, family, or the clinic she believes in to get it.

Patel's harrowing vision of the fight to provide reproductive health services in a post-Dobbs United States confronts burnout, depression, and the constant threat of violence facing women's rights advocates. Nisha's journey from the disillusioned belief that she can change nothing to an understanding of the power every individual can hold is charged with the strength of women, community, and the belonging she finds in her family and culture. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

When the vicissitudes of life leave one out in the cold, which of the Three Little Pigs should one channel? Why, the bricklayer, of course! With that in mind, Will Quam carefully and systematically excavates the world of brick specific to the Second City in the fresh and inviting history Fire and Clay.

The Great Chicago Fire of October 1871 destroyed 17,000 buildings and left some 100,000 people homeless--but with the development of faster brickmaking machines out east and "more people, more resources, more railroads, more gumption, and more brick," city leaders and builders insisted, "The city would not burn again.... It would be made anew. It would be made of brick."

In this addition to the ambitious Chicago Visions and Revisions series, brick-cognoscente, photographer, architecture historian, and first-time author Quam guides readers through time, from the glacial clay bed of Lake Chicago (Lake Michigan) to the present, where 100-year-old bricks are now sought out to be reclaimed and repurposed. This history is informed by 75 years' worth of the Brick and Clay Record, a published journal begun in 1911, and by great fiction set in Chicago, such as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Richard Wright's Native Son. Quam entices readers via his personal fascination with the topic, along with his humor, expertise, and exemplary and keen-eyed photographs.

Lovers of unconventional approaches to history, architecture, sightseeing, and insightful writing will reap many new and unexpected insights from Quam's book. --Rev. John Michael Barich, former pastor at First Saint Paul's Lutheran Church, Chicago (featured on page 193)

Many observers would insist that U.S. politics have never been more tumultuous than in the first quarter of the 21st century, but even a casual acquaintance with the history of the country's early decades belies that claim. In A Perfect Coincidence, Jim Rasenberger (Revolver) offers ample evidence for that proposition in a lively depiction of the era, seen through the complex relationship between two of its preeminent figures: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

The book's title refers to the remarkable fact that Adams and Jefferson died on the same day--July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But as Rasenberger reveals in this smoothly paced chronological account, their public careers and private lives intersected in innumerable ways. Rasenberger doesn't confine himself to recounting epochal events either, as he devotes considerable attention to the personal lives of both men. He frankly reveals Adams's obstinacy, self-regard, and his uncanny talent for political self-sabotage, alongside Jefferson's hypocrisy on the issue of slavery and his lifelong financial profligacy.

One of the most appealing aspects of this work is how the two men overcame long-simmering political grievances to resume in 1812 what Rasenberger calls "one of the great correspondences of American history." Over their remaining years, they regularly exchanged letters that reflected on their lengthy and productive careers, while sharing the deeply personal joys and sorrows experienced by two men fortunate to live long, fruitful lives. Though some of their fellow members of the founding generation may have come close to matching their achievements, none surpassed them. Jim Rasenberger makes that abundantly clear in this engaging work of popular history. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Author Kyo Maclear (Hello, Rain!) and illustrator Julie Morstad (When Green Becomes Tomatoes) collaborate once again (Julia, Child) for the picture book A Door Is to Open, which offers a tantalizing glimpse into the nature and essence of doors.

A door can be so many things. Most obviously, "a door is to open." It's to "knock on and go through... and close." Beyond the doors there may be a cozy dinner or a large party with balloons and presents. One door might become an opportunity for playing, another for looking in, and yet another for looking out. A door may be for "who will come through" or asking, "Where will it lead?" Some doors are "secret openings"; some are "hidden underwater where it's cold and fishy"; and an extraordinary door might even hide tiny fairy friends. But "the only way to find out... is to go through!"

In Maclear and Morstad's accomplished hands, even the most basic door becomes chock-full of promise. Maclear's crisp, evocative text explores the concept, offering an insightful range of suggestions while establishing "the door" most notably as a portal for imagination. Morstad's mixed-media illustrations add to and advance the narrative, turning "a door is to open" into a train of black kittens coming home and "a screen door is for feeling the night air" into a darkened, outdoor scene with a child happily camping. Reminiscent in tone and style of the classic A Hole Is to Dig by Ruth Krauss (to whom the book is dedicated) and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, A Door Is to Open adroitly sweeps readers into the infinite wonder and potential that awaits behind closed doors. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

The Redwood Bargain, the sophomore novel by Markelle Grabo (Call Forth a Fox), is a sapphic, gothic take on "Hurleburlebutz" or "The Dwarf, the Fox, and the Princess" as collected by the Brothers Grimm.

When Lord Elwood Barras returns alone from a hunt horseless and covered in blood, Katrien and the other manor employees know something concerning is afoot. They're correct: the lord has promised his 17-year-old stepdaughter, Zaviera, to the Redwood Man, a supernatural forest creature "with branch-like limbs" and "needled hair." Zaviera's sisters refuse to surrender her and instead try to (unsuccessfully) trick the Redwood Man. The first corpse "has evergreen needles stuffed down her throat"; the second a "tree branch through her middle"; and the last "is missing her eyes." As the Redwood Man's impatience grows, the forest begins to take over the manor, killing inhabitants. Katrien makes a desperate attempt to save her indentured cousin, Helsa, by agreeing to be girl number four. But as Lord Barras's daughters train Katrien, she and Zaviera fall for each other. Now, Katrien must succeed at tricking the Redwood Man to save both her family and her love.

Grabo's story is divided into three parts, the first from Katrien's perspective, the second from Helsa's, and the third switches between Katrien and Helsa as they grapple with the supernatural creature's threats. Readers get a thorough idea of goings-on at the manor from the viewpoints of two young women who are expected to be quiet and invisible. The Redwood Bargain is a delightfully dark and at times frightening interpretation that feels true to the Grimms' source material, even as it reinvents the fairy tale in a wholly unexpected way. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Two teenagers are stuck in a time loop, reliving the last few minutes before a plane crash, in Rachel Reiss's clever and arresting YA locked-door mystery, Seconds to Spare.

Eighteen-year-old Evelyn Werth is trapped on a mostly empty flight from Hawaii to California, repeating the same 28 minutes before the plane plummets in a "one-person endless time loop of epically shitty proportions." No matter what dark-eyed, brunette Evelyn does, the same four things happen: 1.) "The pilot announces the internet has gone out and warns of upcoming turbulence." 2.) "The plane begins to shake for five and a half minutes." 3.) A woman "in the last row, collapses." 4.) The plane "begins to nose-dive." Evelyn's vision "flashes white for a split second" and the time loop restarts. Evelyn has no idea "what the hell is happening, why it's happening, or how to stop it." Orion James, a boy Evelyn had briefly met and formed a connection with at the airport, has "been asleep the entirety of every loop." On loop 395, blue-eyed, dark-haired Orion wakes up, and the loop is "growing less than a second longer each time." Evelyn worries that the next crash will be permanent.

Characterization is sometimes thin but kinetic pacing and unexpected plot twists make Seconds to Spare a gripping narrative. The time loop element, reminiscent of movies like Groundhog Day and Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall, adds an intriguing speculative angle to the mystery, and the clock ticking toward a permanent plane crash raises the stakes. Reiss (Out of Air) develops visceral action scenes, and the plane cabin setting creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic suspense. --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer

Animal lovers of all stripes will almost certainly find a new creature to adore in the intriguing primer for chapter book readers Weird, Wild, and Rare: Extraordinary Animals of the United States by debut author Elizabeth Eakes and artist Bindy James (illustrator of Curiosity Club). The United States is "a country with many different environments" where "some of the weirdest, wildest, and rarest animals on Earth" reside. Eakes and James deliver a clever, approachable chapter book covering a handful of these incredible animals.

Eakes features bugs (like greater wax moths, which have "the best hearing of any insect"), birds (the blue-footed booby, whose "blue feet become brighter when they have recently eaten"), and mammals (raccoons who eat "ANYTHING"). Rather than break the animals down by size or region, Eakes groups creatures around loose themes, such as residing in extreme habitats or using an unusual method of self-protection. The reasoning for these themes isn't always clear--one grouping is "endangered animals," though different endangered species appear throughout the book--but the fascinating facts about each animal make up for the hodgepodge sorting.

James's charming artwork highlights the "weird" and "wild" features of each animal in semi-realistic spreads. Symbols indicate when an animal is "Near Threatened," "Vulnerable," "Endangered," or "Critically Endangered," and back matter includes a guide on observing animals, a glossary, and tips on how children can get involved in the fight to protect endangered species. For young readers who love nature and trivia, Weird, Wild, and Rare delivers an assortment of absorbing and fascinating animal facts. --Nicole Brinkley, bookseller and writer