Nothing is easy for undocumented Mexican immigrant Solimar "Soli" Castro Valdez in Shanthi Sekaran's second novel, Lucky Boy (after The Prayer Room). Nor is it a piece of cake for Indian American Kavya Reddy, who at 35 is a Cal-Berkeley sorority cook whose husband, Rishi, works at the Bay Area dotcom Weebies. Kavya and Rishi seem to have it knocked, except for Kavya's desire to have a child.

Two thousand miles south, Soli is desperate to escape her tiny Oaxaca farm town. She arrives at her cousin's house in Berkeley after a harrowing ride on Mexico's informal immigrant express train "The Beast" and a gang-rape by bandits. A disheartened and pregnant brown woman without papers among the privileged who prowl farmer's markets, Soli takes a housekeeping job to pay board at her cousin's, send a little home to her parents and save something to seed the American dream for her expected son--her lucky boy.

As the Reddys work through the social services adoption bureaucracy, Soli delivers her healthy son, Ignacio, and for a year she carries him everywhere. When Immigration discovers that she is in the country illegally, however, Ignacio, a U.S. citizen by birth, is taken to social services while Soli is put in a detention center to await deportation. No surprise in who become Ignacio's foster parents. But that is not the end of the story. There are few easy solutions to life's toughest problems, but Sekaran's Lucky Boy goes a long way toward putting a humanizing face on them. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

The Westfall family in Kris D'Agostino's The Antiques is headed by Ana and her dying husband, George, owners of an antique shop in a gentrifying upstate Hudson River village. Their oldest son, Josef, is a hotshot entrepreneur in Manhattan, desperate to sell his precarious company to cover his debts, pay support to his ex-wife and teen daughters, and avoid having to take a job "back schlepping around some soul-draining hedge fund." Charlotte ("Charlie") lives in Los Angeles with a disappointing adjunct film professor and their toddler son, Abbott. Charlie works as a handler for a Paris Hilton-like actress in a string of vampire movies--"Policing YouTube videos.... Making sure Melody always wore panties when she went out."

The youngest, Armand, lives in his parents' basement and crafts wood furniture, moping after a sweet young woman from his mother's church. The siblings rarely talk; George and Ana resignedly live with each other's idiosyncrasies; and a hurricane is bearing down on the East Coast and Manhattan. Should the storm destroy their store's inventory, all George has to leave his family is his prized "lesser Magritte" hanging over their fireplace--appraised once for insurance purposes at a half million dollars.

The Antiques takes place as the hurricane strikes, George dies and the Westfall children return home to sort out how to honor the life of a man who was a distant and difficult father. It is an often funny, often poignant portrait of a quirky family on the skids, but as Ana reflects: "Nobody ever said, 'Here's your family. What do you think?' You just got them. Or you didn't get them." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

One of classical music's greatest mysteries is the secret theme that connects the 14 variations of Edward Elgar's "Enigma Variations." He claimed that, in this work, a "larger theme 'goes' but is not played." Love, one could argue, has something in common with Elgar's masterpiece: a fiber connects each person's attractions, but its nature may not be immediately evident. André Aciman no doubt had the same insight when he borrowed Elgar's title for a portrait of the various loves of Paul, a New York editor whose desires are more complicated than even he seems to realize.

The novel opens when Paul is a boy. He spends his summers on the island of San Giustiniano and falls in love with Giovanni, a cabinetmaker who restores an antique picture frame and two folding desks for Paul's parents. Later sections chronicle the adult Paul's relationships with his girlfriend Maud, who works for a firm that conducts cancer research and whom he suspects of cheating on him with a foreign correspondent; Manfred, a gay man he sees at his tennis club; Chloe, a college friend he bumps into at a book party and has an on-again, off-again romance with over many years; and Heidi, a young woman who wrote an essay that middle-aged Paul rejected about the mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran. The Heidi section feels tacked on, but Enigma Variations is otherwise an elegant, episodic tale of longing that manages the difficult trick of being both cerebral and sensuous. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

For 15 years, Wini and three friends, Pia, Sandra and Rachel, have gotten together for a week's vacation, time they've spent sharing stories, laughing, drinking and generally enjoying life. But when Pia calls and presses the idea of a camping and river rafting trip in the wilds of northern Maine, rather than venturing to some exotic spot to lie in the sun, Wini is less than enthusiastic. The idea of battling whitewater, of fighting off hordes of hungry bugs, of even simply peeing in the woods, is less than appealing, yet Wini is also afraid to say no.

Despite her instincts, Wini musters enthusiasm for an adventure she doesn't feel adequate to face. Like the others, she follows Pia, who is the true leader of the group. Right from the start, though, it's obvious this will not be like other years when the four women have deepened their bonds by sharing tales of love and angst; Pia takes an extra interest in their young, good-looking male guide, instantly separating Wini, Sandra and Rachel from the new twosome.

The River at Night focuses on the five days the women spend on their vacation--a fast-paced race against nature and things that lurk in the woods that no one dreamed could be there, as well as a statement on the importance of friendship, tolerance and acceptance. The writing is taut and engaging, not overly melodramatic; readers are sure to forget the real world for several hours of chilling entertainment. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Belinda Bauer (The Shut Eye) opens The Beautiful Dead with a deeply disturbing scene of a murder about to commence--from the victim's point of view. Afterward, TV crime reporter Eve Singer arrives on the scene to cover the story, and the murderer contacts her. Soon she deduces he has killed before and will do so again, and he wants Eve to have the inside scoop. But even with the clues he provides, she and the cops are unable to stop his murder spree. Then the killer makes his cat-and-mouse game very personal for Eve, and the next murder in the news might be her own.

To read a Bauer thriller is to be hypnotized by her writing. Despite the macabre subject matter, Bauer pulls readers in with insightful portraits of her characters, dark humor and creative descriptions. A forensics officer "had all the calm detachment of a psychopath, but none of the comforting iron bars between her and the rest of the world." When a rival reporter is talking while eating California rolls, "Eve could see it in there--tumbling around like a white wash with added spinach socks."

Eve takes questionable actions sometimes, and because the serial killer story gives her a career boost, she struggles with the murderer's decree that "I need people to die in order to live--and so do you." But she is a sympathetic character, trying to balance work with caring for her beloved, dementia-afflicted father. Eve is a lonely woman surrounded by death who discovers how fiercely she wants to live. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

In chapter one of Valentina Giambanco's Blood and Bone, a woman is accosted in a parking lot at night by two men with nothing good in mind. Instead of being afraid, she gives them more than one warning to rethink their intentions and leave her alone, but like the knuckleheads who gang up on Lee Child's Jack Reacher, the men won't listen. Until the woman teaches them a painful lesson and introduces herself--to the attackers and readers new to the series--as Seattle PD homicide detective Alice Madison. It's a thrilling introduction.

Madison then catches a case involving a man savagely beaten to death in his own home. Clues indicate a possible link to a murder case from seven years earlier--one that was closed when the accused was convicted and imprisoned--and that may not be the only closed case connected to the new one. A serial killer may have gotten away with murder for years by always successfully framing someone else. Worse, the killer has no plans to stop.

Madison is an intriguing character who exudes strength without having to talk tough or behave like a man. Her complicated past and events from previous books are referred to but the details aren't hard to follow or distracting. Madison is no-nonsense, as is Giambanco's lean yet expressive prose: when Madison tells a friend about the murders, "Rachel did not jump in with a reassuring cliché. Madison thanked her for it in her heart." When the crimes are horrific, the understatement says more than enough. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

What does it mean to be a good Muslim? How can observant Muslims help their children to understand the nuanced tenets of Islam, separate from the current messages of violence and extremism being perpetuated by ISIS and other radical groups? For Omar Saif Ghobash, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Russia and the father of two teenage sons, these questions are particularly pressing. In his first book, Letters to a Young Muslim, Ghobash shares a series of thoughtful, engaging, deeply personal reflections on his journey with Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in the modern world.

Ghobash draws on his own experiences to explore the issues facing Islam and the Arab world: the prevalence of violence (his own father died a violent death when Ghobash was young); the segregation of the sexes and discrimination against women; the conflict between radical Islamists and other Muslims. He asks the book's central question in several ways: "How should you and I take responsibility for our lives as Muslims?" While Ghobash always lands on the side of openness and critical thinking, he urges his sons to decide for themselves on all these issues. "Remember that knowledge does not consist simply of answers," he says. "Great knowledge consists of being familiar with the questions, the doubts, the possibility that things might be different."

In a time of global fear and upheaval, Ghobash's letters provide a vital glimpse into Islam and a wise, balanced series of questions for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In 2013, Manjula Martin and Jane Friedman founded Scratch, an online journal dedicated to exploring the intersection between writing as an art and publishing as a business. For two years, they published work about the economics of writing by both well-known authors and authors who struggle to pay the rent. In Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, Martin continues the conversation with a collection of powerful essays and interviews.

Writers who need information on how to write a query letter or prepare an estimate for writing a white paper should look elsewhere. This is not a how-to book. (However, Choire Sicha's essay "Monetization" is a funny and informative look at how Internet sites make money, and Cheryl Strayed gives a clear description of how author advances really work--both useful to anyone with dreams of a writing career.) Instead this is a series of candid and generous discussions of the often problematic relationship between writers and money.

The essays are fundamentally personal and oddly transgressive. Writers share stories of debt and bad financial choices, as well as details of their publishing contracts. They consider the nature of financial security and the artistic value of having a non-writing job. They describe life in and after MFA programs. Several discuss the lie of "writing for exposure."

The collective lesson of these essays is that writing is work and should be treated as such, or as Susan Orleans put it, "I ran the widget factory and I was the widget." --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

Flying Lessons--edited by Ellen Oh and published in partnership with We Need Diverse Books--is a top-notch, eclectic collection of stories by 10 powerhouse authors about everything from basketball ("The beautiful symphony of squeaking sneaks and grunts and the thud of body meeting body" from Matt de la Peña's story) to nervous young love to the legendary "Choctaw Bigfoot."

Middle-grade readers are in for a treat: this anthology's contributors are Newbery winners Kwame Alexander (The Crossover) and Matt de la Peña (Last Stop on Market Street); Newbery Honor author Grace Lin (Where the Mountain Meets the Moon); three-time Newbery Honor author and National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming); Soman Chainani (the School for Good and Evil series); Lambda Literary Award winner Tim Federle (Five, Six, Seven, Nate); Pura Belpré Award winner Meg Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass); three-time American Indian Youth Literature Award winner Tim Tingle (House of Purple Cedar); debut author Kelly J. Baptist (Young); and the beloved, award-winning author to whom this book is dedicated, Walter Dean Myers (Monster: A Graphic Novel).

The book's title story, Soman Chainani's "Flying Lessons," tells the funny and bittersweet tale of an academically ambitious Florida boy whose stiletto-wearing, 69-year-old grandmother takes him to Europe for three weeks, only to abandon him amidst a "dodgy parade" in Berlin and on a nude Barcelona beach in a tiny Chanel swimsuit. She explains, "Because when you're older, no one cares about how many awards you win, Santosh. People care if you have something to talk about." --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

A Squash and a Squeeze--based on a traditional folktale and originally published in the U.K. in 1993--was the first picture book written and illustrated by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, the creators of The Gruffalo, Stick Man and Room on the Broom.
 
A little old lady is feeling hemmed in by her small house, even though she lives there all by herself. She asks for some advice: "Wise old man, won't you help me, please?/ My house is a squash and a squeeze." The white-bearded man suggests that she bring her hen inside. As the hen lays eggs, flaps around and knocks over jugs, the place feels even tinier. The lady returns to the wise man, who advises her to take in her goat: "The little old lady cried, 'Glory be!/ It was tiny for two and it's titchy for three./ The hen pecks the goat and the goat's got fleas./ My house is a squash and a squeeze.' " A pig and a cow move in next.

In the end, the wise old man tells her to evict all the animals. Suddenly, by contrast, her house feels "gigantic," and she has no more cause to grumble: "And now she's full of frolics and fiddle-de-dees./ It isn't a squash and it isn't a squeeze." Refreshingly, the madcap story does not end with her missing the disruptive animals and inviting them back in to live with her. This story-hour standout trips off the tongue in a way that's sure to tickle the wee-est of wee. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness