It's 1958, New York City. Cliff Nelson is a Hemingway wannabe who feels destined to be a famous writer, if only his editor father would help him--and if he could get some ideas for great stories. Eden Katz, fresh from Indiana, wants desperately to be an editor, but encounters prejudices because of her gender and surname. Miles is a poor Harlem kid who attended Columbia on a scholarship. He has raw writing talent and gripping stories to tell, but struggles with personal crises that threaten to destroy him. These characters' paths collide in Suzanne Rindell's Three-Martini Lunch.

Rindell (The Other Typist) evocatively captures the city--and the publishing world--as the Beat Generation takes hold. Her descriptions and dialogue have realistic rhythms, and readers can almost hear jazz playing in the background. The distinctively voiced narrators are engaging, although Cliff becomes barely tolerable after he starts complaining about his (lack of) career while not doing the work. He enjoys his privileges and yet has the fewest accomplishments to show. But that's Rindell's point: stop whining and earn your success.

Eden is much more interesting, but unfortunately her chapters get shorter and shorter toward the end of the novel, as if her point of view becomes less valuable. Miles's story is heartrending, though that's expected because of the era's intolerance. Three-Martini Lunch is profoundly sad, while perhaps making readers glad society has changed since the 1950s. Or, considering the political and social climate of 2016, maybe the melancholia comes from wondering, has much progress been made? --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Mix a rebellious teen fleeing her fundamentalist Mormon community, a love-struck admirer, 1970s devil-may-care bravura and wide-open Western highways. Add Evel Knievel, and you get Daredevils. In Shawn Vestal's (Godforsaken Idaho) debut novel, Loretta leaps from a polygamous marriage into a road trip of risk, danger and joy, daring the reader to keep up.

At 15, Loretta's luck runs out when her father catches her sneaking in after a typical night "out there, into the worldly world, and then back home, to reverence and boredom." With her "soul in peril," her father marries her to Brother Dean Harder, who lives with his wife and children in Short Creek, Ariz. Loretta tolerates her fate, comforted by a secret romance with persistent Bradshaw, a fringe community member who works for Dean. In Idaho, meanwhile, Brother Harder's nephew Jason and his grandpa share a clandestine fascination with daredevil cyclist Evel Knievel. When the Harders move to Idaho, Jason meets Loretta. His crush on her edges out his already wavering spirituality, and their friendship paves the way for a joint escape.

Short interjected chapters of "Evel Knievel Addresses an Adoring Nation" follow Jason's hero and add a quirky mythic perspective to the coming-of-age tale, until eventually the characters' paths intersect. Or do they? Would Evel, the daredevil himself, cavort with the teens? Wild as they are, Loretta, Jason and Jason's half-Native American friend, Boyd, are delightful, sympathetic escapees, and Vestal's novel thrums with excitement and hope. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Weina Dai Randel (The Moon in the Palace) brings her Empress Wu duology to a conclusion in a passionate drama that portrays Mei Wu's rise to power, but at terrible cost.

When the old emperor dies, all childless concubines receive orders to become Buddhist nuns and spend the rest of their lives praying for him, never to have contact with another man. Gaozong, the new emperor and Mei's lover, fights Mei's exile but gives up after his uncle, the Regent, feeds him false reports of her death. Despite dark days in the monastery, Mei perseveres and manages to reunite with her love, but his devotion to her puts Mei in danger from Gaozong's first wife, the cruel and powerful Empress Wang. Mei and Gaozong must pull together through profound grief and hardship, otherwise they will lose China to the machinations of the Regent and the Empress.

A fascinating vision of ancient China concludes far too soon in this suspenseful, romantic finale. Mei uses her formidable wits to defend her family and secure her country's future. Randel introduces new challenges for Mei, as well as new friends, including Princess Gaoyang, a female warrior-philosopher. The author also imagines the inspirations for Mei Wu's real-life passions, including equal access to education and support for the Buddhist monasteries, which in turn supported the poor. Published just one month after its predecessor, The Empress of Bright Moon provides gratifying closure to readers who fell in love with Mei's tenacious spirit the first time around. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

At the start of Michael Robotham's return to his series character psychologist Joseph O'Loughlin (after the standalone Life or Death), Joe's estranged wife invites him to move back in with her and their daughters for the summer. Joe is happy--until Detective Chief Superintendent Veronica Cray asks him to consult on a double-murder case. Joe's involvement marks the beginning of yet another nightmare for him.

The mystery in Close Your Eyes surrounds a mother and her teenage daughter who were killed in their farmhouse, but with remarkably different methods. The girl was suffocated and her body rearranged almost reverently after death, while the mother was mutilated by multiple stab wounds that indicate extreme rage. The community is demanding answers and an arrest. Complicating matters is a former student of Joe's, who's using Joe's name to insinuate himself into the investigation, releasing details to the media while anointing himself the Mindhunter--a new and improved version of Joe, the one who best knows the mind of the killer. Joe doesn't care about publicity--he just wants to solve the case, though he has no idea of the cost he'll have to pay.

The killer's motivation is well-trodden territory, and italicized chapters from the perp's point of view are a familiar M.O., but Robotham skillfully keeps the murderer's identity hidden until almost the very end. He writes with sharp insight into the tangled psychological webs formed from love and loathing and fear; the subplots involving Joe's family give Close Your Eyes emotional resonance and make this a series changer. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Ever since J.R.R. Tolkien's death in 1973, his estate has released his unfinished work in dribs and drabs, expanding his mythos with short stories, essays and unfinished novellas that deepen fans' understanding of the man and his genre-defining world of Middle-Earth. The Story of Kullervo shines light on an early obsession of Tolkien that led to one of his most famous incomplete works, The Children of Húrin.

Based on a collection of Finnish epics, The Story of Kullervo follows a traditional mythical plot. A young man, imbued with magical powers, sets out on a mission of revenge, only to betray his family while trying to reclaim their honor. But Tolkien, in his early 20s when he began Kullervo, is a deft author, turning a very old story into something with more gravitas and character depth than the original.

Although the text is incomplete, editor Verlyn Flieger provides ample illuminating endnotes, and grounds the work in Tolkien's career with two informative essays, one preceding the text and one at its end. She also provides two versions of a talk Tolkien gave around the time he became fascinated with Finnish sagas, "On 'The Kalevala,' or Land of Heroes," and it is the best part of the book. It's a reminder that Tolkien was first and foremost a strong academic, able expertly to convey tricky concepts and win over his listeners. The unfinished story of Kullervo is interesting, especially for Tolkien completists, but "On 'The Kalevala' " is worthwhile for any reader interested in myth, saga and how stories transcend boundaries. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.

Poet and critic Maggie Nelson's The Red Parts is the piercing story of the murder of Nelson's aunt and the trial of her accused killer 36 years after the event. Blending a poet's passion and a journalist's cool eye, Nelson (The Art of Cruelty) has produced a distinctive story of an otherwise ordinary family's encounter with unspeakable violence.

Jane Mixer was a first-year student at the University of Michigan Law School when she decided to accept a ride with a stranger to her home in Muskegon in March 1969. She never made it past a cemetery a few miles from Ann Arbor, where her body, shot twice in the head and strangled, was found. It wasn't until 2004, when an unrelated DNA test connected retired nurse Gary Earl Leiterman to the crime, that this cold case was cracked.

Maggie Nelson is too wise to attach a facile label like "closure" to the end of the experience she and her family endured over the course of more than three decades. As the jury files out after rendering its verdict, she observes, " 'Justice' may have been done, but at this moment the courtroom is simply a room full of broken people, each racked with his or her particular grief, and the air heavy with them all." Murder trials efficiently serve to assess guilt or innocence, Nelson understands, but they only incidentally heal the wounds these violent crimes inflict on those who live on in their aftermath. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Thomas Piketty may be the most important economist of the era. His Capital in the 21st Century robustly argued for a return to progressive taxation across borders in the face of the ever-growing wealth of the very rich. Piketty is known for his lucid, effective writing, and delivers more of it in Why Save the Bankers?, a collection of essays he wrote for the French newspaper Libération.

The essays date from 2008 to 2015, and mainly focus on the increasingly chaotic dealings within the Eurozone. Anyone with an interest in politics, monetary policy or international diplomacy will get a kick out of Piketty's clear discussion of choices that figures like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy made. Piketty also examines the United States' recovery from the Great Recession, the Syrian refugee crisis and the particular tax acrobatics that France's wealthiest perform to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the government.

While Why Save the Bankers? may be criticized by some as leftist, careful readers will easily see that Piketty is critical of all politicians (for example, he's ruthless toward both Sarkozy and François Hollande, his Socialist successor). Why Save the Bankers? is not a work of ideology, but a series of short, sometimes very funny, calls to common sense. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.

Digitalization is often considered one cause for people's diminishing connection with the natural world, but in Animal Internet, Alexander Pschera proposes that the time we spend online has the ability to change our relationship to the wild for the better. At a time when animals and plants are going extinct at shocking rates--in rain forests alone, there is an estimated one extinction every six minutes--the natural world seems disconnected from modern human life. According to Pschera, most people know exceptionally little about how animals live and, in order to help them, he believes we need to understand more about them. This education can come through technology he calls the Animal Internet, a hyper-real way to experience the natural world.

Pschera discusses how animal reintroduction programs take data from transmitters embedded in animals and present the information on Facebook pages, creating a live-stream blog. Through social media, people can "friend" the animals and support initiatives that directly benefit them. This collaborative data sharing makes the animals part of the conversation for at least some humans and sensitizes people to the plights animals face. Just as social media has helped reveal the diversity of people and dismantle stereotypes, Pschera suggests that it can similarly increase our understanding of animals. He envisions a world where digital technology will allow for a new image of nature to emerge, one that is sensory, concrete and accurate. Animal Internet proposes this image will help save animals and preserve nature more effectively than any campaign or habitat ever will. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company

Even the squeamish will be attracted to The Big Book of Bugs like a bee to a flower, a moth to flame, a dung fly to "animal poo."

Laypeople often use "bug" to describe all the creepy-crawly things that fly, wriggle and sting. But "[t]o a scientist," states the opening spread, "a bug is a particular kind of insect with sharp mouthparts to stab and suck up food." British author-illustrator Yuval Zommer (The Big Blue Thing on the Hill), along with "bug expert" Barbara Taylor, employ the more inclusive definition of "bug" that allows for this gorgeously illustrated explosion of beetles, ladybugs, ants, bees, termites, dragonflies, pond bugs, spiders and more. Bugs have never looked better than in Zommer's colorful, often comical little portraits and glorious natural backdrops, from gardens to ponds.

Each artfully composed, oversized spread teems with life and mini-bug dramas, and the brief text is fun and accessible, a handful of catchy headlines with very short descriptions: "How does a beetle beetle along? A beetle scuttles on six legs. It has a hard shell, like a suit of armor, to keep its wings safe." "How does a butterfly flutter by?" "Does a centipede really have 100 legs?" Along the way, readers will be asked to find "two insects that look like leaves" or a funny blue fly that buzzes through all the pages. (There's a key to all the "Did You Finds...") By the end, two-legged whippersnappers will be convinced that bugs are not only intriguing and marvelous, but useful and deserving of respect. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness