In Rachel Beanland's enchanting third novel, The Half Life, a young navy wife has a sexual awakening and discovers her scientific vocation while stationed on an Italian island.

Twenty-three-year-old newlywed Eileen Archer has never left the U.S.--or even her hometown of Charleston, S.C.--when she and Paul are sent to La Maddalena, an island off Sardinia, in 1974. She joins the spouses' club but forms bonds with locals, too, finding an Italian tutor and helping scientists test the water for contamination from U.S. submarines after the nearby hospital sees several cases of a rare birth defect. She enjoys the research so much that she enrolls in a distance course on biology. Her loyalties are divided: Paul works for RADCON, whose reluctance to share information with the Italian authorities following submarine accidents seems suspicious. But even as time runs short before the Archers' scheduled transfer to Connecticut in 1976, and as the anti-U.S. protests grow increasingly violent, Eileen falls in love with an investigative journalist.

The title cleverly suggests both nuclear fallout and how secrets constrain people. Beanland (The House Is on Fire) adeptly depicts grief, homesickness, and culture shock. Through Eileen's and her friend Laura's varying experiences, she explores choices related to motherhood. The novel also illuminates U.S. and Italian politics of the period, with Eileen shocked to realize that the U.S. presence in the region is about stamping out Communism.

Sensual and intriguing, this belated coming-of-age story reminiscent of Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins and Elizabeth J. Church's The Atomic Weight of Love makes for an absorbing summer read. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

A con artist, an unmarried, middle-aged boardinghouse owner, and the niece she keeps under her thumb become entangled in a web of deceit and seduction in The Intrigue, the tense noir thriller by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (The Bewitching; Silver Nitrate).

The place is Puerco Ahogado, a small town in Veracruz, Mexico, in the 1940s. Ulises ekes out a living bilking lonely women, although he has struggled since the death of his father, who was the brains of their operation. Ulises accepts an invitation to visit a guesthouse run by Perla, an older woman with whom he connected via a lonely hearts ad. Perla shares the run of the guesthouse with Inés, the daughter of her dead sister and a man who vanished long ago. Inés longs for the city, but Perla limits her access to money to keep her at home. Inés catches on to Ulises and offers a deal: she will help Ulises woo her aunt, and they will split her money. But getting Perla to part with cash proves harder than winning her heart, and Perla and Inés are both more capable of deceit than they seem.

Moreno-Garcia nails the essential noir quality of the setting as a character. The claustrophobic feeling of surveillance--particularly over the two women who have lived their lives in that small town and must maintain a standard of "respectability"--heightens the tension and passion in this dangerous triangle. This atmospheric thriller keeps the pressure simmering and restrained until the moment the secrets boil over. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Stacey Yu's first novel, Kitten, is a peculiar, endearing fable about a young woman who identifies with her boyfriend's cat as she works to overcome codependency issues with him and her mother.

Chinese American Katie is a recent college graduate in Manhattan. Her work-study job has ended--leaving her with less than $50 in her bank account--and her roommate keeps reminding her the utilities payment is overdue. When Katie's boyfriend, James, invites her to stay at his parents' second home by the ocean for two weeks, it presents an opportunity to delay her job search. James is white and four years older, comes from money, and has a corporate job. That privilege cushions her, too. When he learns about her rental crisis, he encourages her to move in with him.

Katie grew up the cosseted only child of a single mother. James is her first boyfriend, and the first time she sees the ocean is with him. James's family pet, Silver, is also the first cat she meets. Katie is "struck by the intensity of my affection for her"--somewhere between maternal instinct and envy of the cat's comfort and security. Katie starts to almost imitate Silver, such as by lapping at a bowl of milk and licking James during foreplay.

Yu maintains the uncomfortable ambiguity of the central relationships as literal realities and psychological explanations coalesce. That Katie's estranged mother's nickname for her is "Kitten" connects the novel's major elements. A cross between If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard and Rental House by Weike Wang, this debut is an offbeat charmer. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

In his mesmerizing debut, The Beauty of the Days Gone By, Jason Stone brings the post-Civil War frontier to brutal yet ephemeral life, capturing the clash between white Texas settlers and the Kiowa and Comanche. Deeply researched, the novel is based on the life of legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight and his associates who helped "tame" the sprawling area of West Texas known as Comancheria.

Spanning two eras, the story begins in 1866 with former Texas Ranger RL Terry returning to his burnt-out ranch; his two boys have been taken by a Kiowa war party, and his wife dies in his arms. The other timeline, in the 1920s, sees the nonagenarian Goodnight unspooling his life to a university historian, J Evetts Haley (his real-life biographer). Over 400-plus pages, RL tracks across the Comancheria searching for his sons, while his eldest, Sam, accepts assimilation into the Comanche tribe under the approving eye of chief Quanah Parker. Stone expertly weaves the competing arcs into a propulsive narrative full of mellifluous sentences and unpunctuated dialogue that resembles oral storytelling around a campfire. It all leads to a final confrontation between Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne warriors and Texans in 1874, and the revelation of a long-held secret by Goodnight in 1929. The Beauty of the Days Gone By is an ambitious and gorgeously written tale about survival, redemption, and how memory can shape the past just as much as the future. --Peggy Kurkowski, freelance book reviewer in Denver

Thao Thai's tense, luminous second novel, The Seekers of Deer Creek, explores art, love, loss, and family through the complicated story of two Vietnamese American sisters and their connection to an enigmatic French Vietnamese artist.

Growing up in rural Deer Creek, Wis., Vivi and Calla Nguyễn shared a fierce bond. They were wildly different in temperament but devoted to one another and their art. After their mother left, Vivi became the caretaker for Calla and their father, Tuấn, a mercurial man who rarely spoke of the family he left back in Việt Nam.

As adults, the sisters pursue different life paths: Vivi as a meticulous, respected art conservator at a Chicago museum, Calla as a brilliant artist who moves through the world and her studio with passion and boldness. Months after Calla's latest art opening--site of a dramatic falling-out between the sisters--their father dies, and Calla discovers among his papers a mysterious letter and an unfinished sketch, which bears a striking similarity to a piece called Blue Mirror by the French Vietnamese artist K.P. Lý. She convinces Vivi that these prove their family has a link to Lý. Reluctantly, Vivi agrees to join Calla on a quest that takes them from their native Midwest to the French countryside to their ancestral home in Việt Nam, and--more importantly and more dangerously--into the fraught terrain of their relationship.

Thai (Banyan Moon) deftly captures the nuances of the sisters' connection. Tender and spiky, like the sisters' relationship, The Seekers of Deer Creek mixes art history, family secrets, and psychological insight to create a dynamic portrait of two unforgettable women. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

A woman from Appalachia works in a resort for monsters in the atmospheric fantasy horror novel The Winter Folk by Jen Julian (Red Rabbit Ghost).

Vera has returned to her hometown with her husband and teenage daughter after years away. She hasn't told them she's keeping her eyes open for any sign of the Winter Folk, wondrous but monstrous creatures who came every winter to stay at Deerhaven, a resort that lies through a magical door. Mr. Oslin, Deerhaven's antlered host, recruited Vera to the housekeeping staff when she was a struggling young woman by offering a wish in exchange for her service. Vera had to abide by strict rules, such as going by "Moth" and never speaking her true name, or she'd face dire consequences. She earned the trust of chillingly strange residents (including a "spindly, white-eyed specter who was twelve feet tall"), befriended other human staff members, and fell madly in love with the gentle, mysterious Oslin. She also left under disastrous circumstances. Vera/Moth details her adventures at Deerhaven with interstitial scenes from the present day.

Julian's gothic horror story has the feel of folklore and reads like a Cheshire cat smile with very sharp teeth indeed. Vera's struggles with her family's history of mental illness, addiction, and poverty underscore her drive to make a place for herself at Deerhaven. The dual timelines work together toward a propulsive conclusion that leaves the magic portal ajar for further horrors or healing. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Catch the Devil is ProPublica and New York Times Magazine journalist Pamela Colloff's measured but disturbing account of the outsized role one man played in the Florida court system to send at least 27 defendants to prison, including four to death row, through a series of fabricated confessions.

Colloff recounts the sordid story of Paul Skalnik, a serial con man, pedophile, and bigamist who displayed a preternatural talent for obtaining confessions from fellow inmates and parlayed his usefulness into bargaining chips to win favorable treatment for himself. Colloff focuses on Skalnik's role in the case of James Dailey. Dailey, who served three tours of duty in Vietnam, returned bearing severe emotional trauma, and turned to alcohol and drugs. He moved to Pinellas County, Fla., and in 1986, along with his friend Jack Pearcy, was charged in the savage stabbing death of 14-year-old Shelly Boggio.

With no physical evidence linking Dailey to Boggio's murder, and only the dubious testimony of his co-defendant to establish his involvement in the crime, prosecutors turned to Skalnik, who already had a strong track record as an informant. Their star witness soon miraculously related a "brief but lurid account" of the crime he claimed came from Dailey's mouth. Five days after the trial ended in a conviction, Skalnik was a free man.

"What made him so dangerous," Coloff argues, "was not his intelligence or cunning, but rather how readily the institutions that were supposed to uphold the law and protect the most vulnerable had amplified his lies." Catch the Devil is a sobering glimpse inside a criminal justice system bent on securing convictions at any cost. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Local Gods by Melinda Salisbury (Her Dark Wings) is a twisty, mystical, supernatural folk-horror novel about a teen whose town's fate drops into her hands when she meets its dying god.

"White, slim, conventionally pretty" 17-year-old Sylvie fled her privileged life in Pine Ridge Hollow when the FBI raided her home seeking her missing father on fraud and embezzlement charges. Six months later, Sylvie returns to her hometown, which has fallen into disrepair as the debts of those who were victimized by her dad's investment schemes mount. Now she and her mother live in semi-exile in a half-finished railway station in the West Woods, where the bloodthirsty and "inexplicably" all-white wildlife eat the town's livestock and pets. There Sylvie meets a cryptid named Illican, with a human body, golden eyes, "black ridged horns erupting from its temples," and white hair. She realizes Illican is not, in fact, a cryptid but a horned god bound to the town. Sylvie is drawn to the deity but learns he is dying as the impoverished Pine Ridge Hollow fractures at the seams.

Salisbury expertly includes generational trauma, abandonment, and socioeconomics in a mystery heavily steeped in paranormal and folk horror. Bewildering scenes and creepy animals abound; Sylvie imagines "flaying herself down to the marrow" and dreams of a blossom growing out of her mouth and suffocating her. Salisbury pairs these unsettling intrusive thoughts with deliciously disturbing animal imagery: a single white deer devouring a snake in three bites, a yellow jacket smashing itself repeatedly against a window. These visceral, atmospheric sequences are the perfect backdrop for this absorbing small-town mystery about magic, rebirth, and longing to belong. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Darcy Whitecrow (Across the Ice) and comics author Cail Judy's Makade Asin/Black Stone is a striking and contemplative dual-language picture book based on a traditional Indigenous story. The work opens with a question: "When you are full of fear... how do you stop being afraid?" This query immediately situates readers within an effectively direct emotional and philosophical framework. The abstract tone, though, may require a moment of adjustment for younger audiences before the narrative's action begins.

An unnamed Indigenous child seeks guidance from an elder, who instructs them to find a mysterious black stone that will lessen the hold of fear. The child embarks on a perilous trek through various landscapes: thick jungle, rushing waters, and quicksand. The episodic structure emphasizes moments of confrontation and self-realization as the child faces each challenge with increasing resolve.

The full-bleed digital illustrations by Maya McKibbin (The Song That Called Them Home, with David A. Robertson) make powerful use of the page, even adding panels atop areas of blank space. Swirling, kinetic lines and jagged forms heighten the sense of danger and urgency, and contrasting colors distinguish emotional states. The imagery is dense and immersive, reinforcing the intensity of the youth's experiences.

The bilingual presentation, with text in both Anishinaabemowin and English (translated by Pamela Johnson), adds an important cultural dimension. The narrative underscores themes of inner strength, cultural continuity, and self-discovery. The conclusion remains deliberately open-ended, allowing readers space to consider their own answers. Readers of any age--especially those with an appreciation for Daniel Nayeri and Matt Rockefeller's Drawn Onward--may leave Makade Asin/Black Stone with a feeling of strength, courage, solemnity, and creativity. --Julie Danielson

A vampiric child longs to overcome her fear of the dark in Argentinian author Betina Gonzáles's gently creepy first picture book, Vampire Girl Conquers the Night, lavishly illustrated by Mariana Ruiz Johnson (The Book That Kibo Wrote) and translated from the Spanish by Antonio Gonzales Cerna.

Pale, pointy-eared Vampire Girl "dreams of conquering the Night." The girl "calls out to her," a figure with a crescent-moon head, elongated fingers, and a gown with skirts that teem with nocturnal animals. "But the Night is everywhere," as demonstrated by a dog's bark turning into a segmented, multilegged Night creature. Vampire Girl knows vanquishing the Night would give her power over her fear of the dark and turns to a host of ghoulish monsters (including Disaster Girl and Legendary Vampire) for advice. Vampire Girl, they say, can only become one of them if she finds her Dark Night of the Soul, "the most terrible of nights" that happens "within oneself." Vampire Girl tunes into her worries and exhales a small black cloud. Releasing her fear shadow frees Vampire Girl to fly into the hands of the Night and soar contentedly with the other monsters in the Night's rippling skirts.

Johnson's illustrations of violet darkness and the sharp-eyed creatures who live in it have a strong folkloric influence, filled with details that ask readers to slow down and look closely. Gonzales balances a realistic childhood fear with a wild and wonderful magical world as she stealthily gives young readers a practical strategy for soothing their fears. Vampire Girl Conquers the Night should beguile budding young horror fans during spooky season or all year round. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Allen County Public Library

If the Moon, written by Matthew Burgess (author of the Caldecott Medal-winning Fireworks, illustrated by Cátia Chen) and illustrated by Matthew Forsythe (Mina; Pokko and the Drum), is a quiet, thoughtful meditation on nighttime worry and imagination.

The book, which invites readers to reconsider the phrase "if" as an opening toward possibility, is structured almost entirely in questions. A young child lies awake under a patchwork quilt. "If can be a dark room where worries swell and rise...." In just a handful of words, paired with a single image, the emotional stakes are clear: this is a fearful child. A page turn offers a pivot: "Or." The child dives into a quilt panel as if it's water. The text's tone begins to loosen as the waves of color ripple out from the point of exuberant impact. From there, "if" becomes a launching point rather than a trap. Each scenario builds on the last, gently expanding the child's mental landscape away from worry and toward curiosity. Forsythe's illustrations reinforce this shift with formatting and a soft, cohesive palette. As the child's curiosity deepens, the illustrations expand as well; they move from contained panels to full pages and then to sweeping double-page spreads.

Burgess avoids overt instruction. There is no direct statement about managing anxiety. Instead, the book trusts readers to recognize the transformation: "If" moves from unease to a prompt for creative thinking. Spare in text yet expansive in implication, If the Moon offers a gentle reframing of a familiar childhood experience and positions imagination as a steady, accessible counterbalance to worry. --Julie Danielson

Boo!: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Fear (but Were Afraid to Ask) is a captivating middle-grade treasury of everything scary, written by Clive Gifford (How Airports Work) and illustrated by Rohan Eason (Wildwitch series illustrator).

Gifford delves into the realm of fear, discussing how and why the body reacts to terror; the history of spooky festivals, superstitions, and "scaretainment"; and even how to write scary stories. He uses direct, clear language to show the inner workings of the brain as it processes threats and how the body responds to the brain's signals. Once readers are educated in the science of fear, Gifford takes them through an unsettling maze of spellbinding history and exciting facts. Gifford requires no tricks, but he does treat readers to the history of scary stories and, in a section titled "Terror Teaches," explains the roles those stories have in "encouraging people to act in what their group or society thought was the right way." The final chapter offers writing advice, including story starters, grippers, "deadly descriptions," and twists.

Eason contributes to the text's disquieting tone with his black, white, and red mixed-media art. Blood drips from the tops of pages, a skeleton hand proffers a meaty red brain for viewing, and full- and double-page illustrations feature frightening images. Eason's art, which depicts the straightforward as well as the scary, is realistic, with heavy cross-hatching, fittingly reminiscent of the work of Edward Gorey. Readers should be intrigued by Gifford's extensive examination of this hair-raising subject and, armed with all this knowledge about fear, they may go forth and confidently face all that goes bump in the night. --Jen Forbus, freelancer