No topic is taboo in Avigayl Sharp's irreverent, cutting debut novel, Offseason. The unnamed narrator is a 28-year-old Ph.D. dropout prone to verbal and physical vomiting. She shares her often stimulant-fueled thoughts, including her obsession with Joseph Stalin and musings on pedophilia, with whomever is nearby. This includes the teenage students at the New England boarding school where she's been hired as a temporary replacement for an English teacher.

The novel, in which plot is far from the primary concern, is contained within the school year. What drives Offseason forward are the narrator's swerves, evasions, and digressions about trauma. She likes to tell new acquaintances about her mother's family's Holocaust tragedy, as well as how her mother told her to get rid of her virginity with "a doorman," which eventually led to a date rape that churns within the narrator's psyche. The narrator isn't the only one prone to long, spooling intimate confessions to strangers; throughout the novel, almost every person she encounters does the same, including her students and the person sitting next to her on a plane. While so much is being said, there's a subtle obliqueness in what's left unsaid--for example, what happened with the person she left behind when she dropped out of grad school and moved into her parents' house in the Midwest before taking the coastal teaching job. On a video call with him, she "can't describe [his face] further. It meant too much."

Offseason is a darkly comic tale with a narrator who's a cross between Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant and Hannah Horvath, the protagonist of Lena Dunham's Girls. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

After 14 bestsellers, mystery author Faye Wader is worried she's losing her touch as well as her loyal following, so hosting an island getaway for 50 fans seems just the ticket to secure her status. In The Author Weekend by Laura Zigman (Separation Anxiety), the fretting Faye entreats her capable, exhausted assistant, Jade, to maximize the activities ("Books. Beach. Booze. Buzz.") for their weekend at Great Misery Island, Mass. Fueling Faye's hope is her obsession with besting her nemesis, romantasy-suspense author Abby Schuss and her legendary fan gatherings. Jade notes that Faye "wants what Abby has: the highest level of success and adulation." The anxious author's hopes are dashed, however, when Abby arrives on the ferry with Faye's agent, Hal, and editor, Merry. And in learning that her number-one fan has discovered her deepest secret, one that could end her career, Faye turns quietly desperate, with deadly results.

Zigman structures The Author Weekend to great suspense as it segues from famous-author rivalry and prosecco-fueled festivities to a darker theme. Faye, Jade, Hal, and Merry narrate alternating chapters, each revealing an angle that forecasts impending doom. Dishy references to the publishing world are fitting for a novel about highly ambitious writers. Hal and Merry debate rejecting Faye's latest manuscript, while Faye's cavalier approach to unexplained deaths mirrors how her novels' protagonist might react. Comedic subplots include a hilarious spoof of a publicist and her social-media-celebrity cat, giving The Author Weekend a balance of desperate envy and satire. --Cheryl McKeon, The Book House, Albany, N.Y.

Kim Choyeop's science-fiction short stories in If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light explore profound ideas about the choices characters make and what it means for them and those they love. In the titular story, for example, Kim takes an older woman waiting at a train station, sets that station in space, gives her a mysterious reason for her wait, plays around with the time constraints of near-light-speed travel, and a whole universe of meaning and poignancy opens up.

What if a company could distill emotions into consumer objects, such as a stone that induces sobbing when held? In "The Materiality of Emotions," Jungha is skeptical, assuming the faddish products can't actually work as advertised--and why would someone purchase depression or rage, anyway? His position is complicated by his girlfriend's obsession with "Essential Depression," one of these items. Every choice Jungha makes, including suggesting they marry to appease her conservative family, seems to make her cling all the tighter to her Essential Depression products.

The collection's final story, "My Space Hero," offers an intriguing take on the concept of humans biologically modified for space exploration as it follows an astronaut preparing to cross the universe. Gayun, the astronaut, believes that she is following in her Auntie Jaegyeong's footsteps. In the process, she learns the truth about what happened to Jaegyeong, complicating her own dreams of spaceflight.

These stories build on one another, gaining energy as they go. Beautifully translated from the Korean by Anton Hur, If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light is full of thought-provoking questions and new, imagined worlds rendered in gorgeous detail. --Carol Caley, writer

In the 1840s, a group of freethinkers and intellectuals in Concord, Mass., set out to transform the world and unleash the individual spirit. Bruce Nichols deftly explores their movement in The Emerson Circle. The antebellum United States enjoyed a "market revolution" of "expanded... manufacturing and transportation systems," but it also experienced something "truly new," Nichols argues: "an intellectual revolution." Centering on the popular lecturer and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, this "circle of friends" challenged traditional notions on art, culture, and society, seeking to transcend them. This movement, called "the Newness," had Emerson as its "fountainhead," and included luminaries such as Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Bronson Alcott--and his daughter Louisa May--to name a few.

Nichols crafts an appealing narrative of this brilliant set of Americans, quoting liberally from their letters while analyzing their often-complex relationships with one another. They sought to reform the country and reinvent society--communal living and vegetarianism were but two of the group's outward manifestations--but, as Nichols shows, the country's bitter divisions over abolitionism and slavery forced the Transcendentalists to develop from talk of "the Over-Soul to realpolitik." Nichols offers a key insight into how the "two issues... [of] war and slavery" transformed the Transcendentalists themselves, moving them from "philosophical contemplation and idealistic thinking" to more overt public activism on behalf of antislavery causes. Although meandering at times, The Emerson Circle is an illuminating introduction to the country's first "radicals" and their lasting impact on U.S. letters. --Peggy Kurkowski, freelance book reviewer in Denver

A science writer with a gift for animated storytelling, David Epstein invites readers to ponder the pitfalls of "excessive freedom" in Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. Epstein shares anecdotes from across the spheres of business, technology, art, and design to demonstrate how "helpful boundaries" can spur innovation, yield desirable progress, and shield people from the information overload of 21st-century life.

Inside the Box opens with a striking example of the risks posed to productivity by too much freedom. The technology juggernaut General Magic, founded in 1990, was a company poised to "change the world," starting with a device that was like a smartphone before smartphones existed. It employed the most talented engineers and had plenty of money. With no time, scope, or cost constraints on what its engineers could build, however, General Magic's grand ideas failed spectacularly.

Championing clear boundaries, Epstein (Range; The Sports Gene) describes his experience pitching a story for the radio program This American Life. He was instructed to rework his pitch and was grateful for the producer's "metaphorical bowling bumpers" that guided his successful revisions. "Creative constraints," he explains, can lead to remarkable results. Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham after the cofounder of Random House bet the author he couldn't write a children's book using just 50 words. Self-imposed constraints that guide decision-making choices can preserve mental energy; haiku offer a simple example of how restriction can inspire creativity. Conversely, unlimited choices leave people less content with their final decisions. An enlightening guide, Inside the Box makes a persuasive case for "useful constraints" that fuel creativity and contentment. --Shahina Piyarali

With dozens of successful titles, a string of award-winning collaborations, and an appointment as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, the evidence is overwhelming: Mac Barnett (Triangle; The Three Billy Goats Gruff; Extra Yarn) gets kids. So why would he want to write a book for adults? Because he thinks kids, and the books they love, have something profound to teach grown-ups.

Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children acknowledges an unruly dynamic: there's the power adults hold over what young people can read and the commonly held belief that children's literature is inferior, unworthy of critical attention. "Children's books," Barnett argues, "are often misunderstood, dismissed, and ignored"--a mistake he aims to remedy here.

Barnett takes children's literature seriously, balancing a scholarly erudition with the same lighthearted banter and wit that make his books for young readers so beloved. He romps through discussions of such icons as writer Margaret Wise Brown and editor Ursula Nordstrom, outlines the structures and predilections specific to the children's publishing industry, and secretes further insights within abundant, humorous footnotes. Above all, Barnett insists that the power of children's books does not come from some possible good in the future but from the fact that "kids are human beings right now, with rich interior lives," worthy of respect and the very best storytelling, in books that, like "the best stories for adults, tell the truth about what it means to be a human in the world." A clarion call to elevate children's literature, Make Believe honors the wisdom, beauty, and imagination of young readers. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Mother Tongue, Sara Nović's fourth book, is a defiant memoir of parenthood achieved in spite of the troubled histories of deaf education, religious indoctrination, and international adoption.

Nović (True Biz) reports with amusement being asked if their sons are twins, though five-year-old S has fair skin while six-year-old K's is brown. Like Nović's partner, K was adopted from an overseas orphanage. And, like Nović, K is deaf, but was born so; Nović started going deaf at age 12, mostly managing to pass as hearing during middle and high school.

The touching story of their "motley family" alternates between personal and political realities. Alongside hearing loss, Nović experienced heart arrhythmia. They found a deaf community in college through attending a church that offered American Sign Language interpretation. However, conservative theology delayed acceptance of queerness for Nović and their first husband, who came out as gay in his mid-20s.

Attitudes toward deaf people and their education form a "sordid history": from Aristotle's equation of deafness with stupidity, through Alexander Graham Bell's eugenics, to disproportionate police violence against the disabled, including killings of deaf men of color. There have also been surprising enclaves of support, though, such as colonial Martha's Vineyard, where a high prevalence of deafness fostered tolerance. International adoption is an ethical minefield, but Nović is confident that K will recover from early language deprivation.

This is a fierce defense of deafness as a culture rather than a disability to be eradicated, and a beautiful exploration of the legacies of language and love. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

After a successful decades-long career as a forensic thriller writer, Patricia Cornwell (Scarpetta) shares her own story in her first memoir, True Crime. Cornwell begins with her challenging childhood and her move from Florida to North Carolina. She recounts her parents' separation, her mother's multiple hospitalizations, and her lifelong friendship with Ruth Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham and the subject of Cornwell's first published book, Ruth, A Portrait. Cornwell recounts several failed attempts at novels and the work that went into developing Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for Virginia and protagonist of nearly 30 of Cornwell's novels.

Cornwell narrates her time as a crime reporter, shadowing a medical examiner, and encountering a man on trial for serial killings--a fascinating look into the development of a genre. With a straightforward voice, Cornwell opens up her world, frankly addressing events in the same way she dissects them in her Scarpetta novels. She does not shy away from divulging mistakes, including a car crash in California that nearly killed her and resulted in a conviction for drunk driving.

Thorough and detailed regarding her early years, the memoir speeds up in adulthood as Cornwell's fame increased. She whisks readers through two marriages, the publication of dozens of novels, friendships with Senator Orrin Hatch and the Bush family, and her experiences visiting a body farm, flying helicopters, meeting Princess Margaret, and investigating Jack the Ripper. Engrossing and full of surprising tidbits, True Crime is essential for forensic thriller buffs. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller

A grieving "twelve-year-old with gumption" plunges herself into a library reading contest--and some local corruption--in this funny, humane middle-grade debut by Meghan P. Browne.

When green-eyed, auburn-haired Maisie McMeans's father died, her mother's heart "exploded into a million-trillion pieces" and she developed a problem with "broken-hearted drinking." Although Maisie fears her mother is "too broken to fix," she agrees to spend the summer with her Aunt Gertie in tiny Heaven, Tex., while her mother attends rehab. Maisie plans a quiet, solitary summer of reading in the air-conditioned library (and winning the Wash-a-Rama reading program). But when she forms a prickly friendship with freckled 14-year-old Walter Wise, her quiet plans are disrupted and her summer shifts into high gear. The two discover a plot hatched by the perfectly coifed and sycophantic mayor, who is married to a descendant of Heaven's founding family. Mayor Taylor wants to build a luxury property on the site of the beloved local springs and simply needs to make an environmental report against any development "disappear." Walt and Maisie intend to stop her. But when Maisie learns a devastating secret about her own life, she decides to get "the heck out of Heaven."

Fans of Dusti Bowling and Dan Gemeinhart will likely find the folksy first-person narrative and energetic, multi-pronged plot in The Edge of Forever satisfying. While Walt's manner of speaking sometimes seems beyond his years ("ever since Granddaddy made up his mind to tell the truth, my branch has been totally, completely, and utterly excised from the trunk"), Maisie's spirited, self-aware voice comes through loud, clear, and sincere. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

A nonbinary teen in a remarkably homey post-apocalyptic lakeside town must destroy the monster stalking them in Cale Plett's sophomore YA novel, the fierce and haunting The Saw Mouth.

Ten years ago, the "chopped" up and "sewn together" souls of machines awoke in pain, destroying themselves and the world around them. Survivors, like thoughtful dreamer Cedar, call the event Autumn. Most remaining technology is analog and inert, but newer tech that was "used for a more devious purpose" woke "ashamed," "less stable," and eager to punish humanity. ("Almost every smartphone went faulty.") After a decade of survival with their mother, tragedy strikes, and Cedar has to move in with their grandma in the ground-down town of Sawblade Lake. Cedar befriends other teens including makeshift sheriff Morgyn, siblings-by-choice Ada and Papercut, and effervescent busybody Lucy. But as Cedar attempts to settle in, even juggling two crushes, something is killing the residents of Sawblade. It is ultimately up to Cedar to reckon with the grief that brought them to town, draw on their own grit, and trust their friends' devotion to destroy the monster.

Plett (Wavelength) develops a world where machines thirst for blood and the surviving humans have largely shrugged off transphobia. In its place, there is  comfort and ease in the characters approach to gender--Cedar is "a lanky teenage enby having a femme day"; Ada uses she/they pronouns--that gives trans and ally readers a soft landing. The Saw Mouth offers messy yearning, sensitively rendered trauma, a creeping atmosphere of dread, and an affectionate treatment of analog technology--like pressing cassette tapes into a crush's hands. --Ari Mackoff, bookseller

Two-time Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly (Hello, Universe; The First State of Being) creates a gripping, futuristic survival novel in The Second Life of Snap, in which 12-year-old Zuzu is the reluctant owner of a wildly optimistic robot whose dying battery cannot be recharged.

Zuzu Santos, her father, and three other families live in "the remote flatlands of Barren, Texas" in ramshackle trailers that comprise Subsidized Camp Five. While Zuzu's and her friends' parents go to work at Lockwood Corporation, the children attend school (where teachers are monitored by drones) and play unattended. When Zuzu's father is fired from his job and given an old model guardian robot with a broken charging cable as "a parting gift," Zuzu wants nothing to do with it. But her friend Elias accidentally overrides something in the "Secure Network Android Processor" (Snap) when he attaches his homemade tablet to the wiring. Suddenly Snap has thoughts and impulses of his own. As Zuzu realizes the new Snap is sentient, she knows she must find a way to save him.

Zuzu and her friends inhabit a world that is both foreign and similar to our own. Like many children, they battle with local bullies and make up storytelling games. They also live on a planet where climate change has devastated the land, and a corporation wields seemingly endless control over the people. While Kelly doesn't quite clarify why Zuzu would be predisposed to dislike robots, she certainly gives Snap depth and sends her characters on an immense adventure. The Second Life of Snap is a great read-alike for Peter Brown's The Wild Robot series or Jasmine Warga's A Rover's Story. --Kyla Paterno, freelance reviewer

Olivia A. Cole and Ashley Woodfolk deliver a tightrope-taut "will-they, won't-they" YA rom-com with gay shenanigans, queer longing, and a lovable found family in this excellent stand-alone follow-up to Call Your Boyfriend.

Cheer captain Davie (high school senior, white, lesbian) must get her squad, the Hornets, to nationals to earn a specific scholarship. The funding needed to attend, however, is threatened after the school board alleges that the all-queer crew "is discriminating against... heterosexuals"--Davie must "diversify" or lose the money.

Cheer isn't on new girl Kendall's mind--until "dreamy" Davie asks her to join. Kendall (senior, Black, and not known at this school as bi), is warmly welcomed by a "hella affirming" queer and gender non-conforming squad. She's drawn to Davie, but when the two finally kiss, Davie panics, and Kendall learns she was chosen to be their "token straight." Now Kendall must wear a "heterosexual nose-and-mustache" and only make out with Davie in secret. As Kendall crumbles under this yo-yo romance, Davie realizes she is "hurting a queer girl while trying to keep other queer kids from getting hurt." The choice is clear: lose the squad or lose the girl.

Cole and Woodfolk build a beautifully complex relationship between Davie and Kendall. They are affectionately disarmed by each other as they work through who they are, both inside and outside the Hornets. The compelling plot includes competition against rival squads, a close-knit sister relationship, protests, drag queen fun, and plentiful splits, stunts, people pyramids, and chants. Teen fans of Bring It On and But I'm a Cheerleader simply must check out this spirited high-flier. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer