Jean-Luc Bannalec (Death in Brittany; The Killing Tide) has created a funny, intriguing mystery set on Brittany's exquisite Côte de Granit Rose in The Granite Coast Murders. Commissaire Georges Dupin's girlfriend Claire and assistant Nolwenn have conspired to force him to take a two-week vacation. Dupin, a workaholic, reluctantly lies on a beach towel next to Claire all day, as she basks in the gorgeous setting.

But then, one of their fellow hotel guests disappears, and Dupin begins sneakily to investigate. He skulks around the area, interviewing townspeople, visiting the gossipy hairdresser and stealthily calling Nolwenn to convince her to help him with research. Claire is suspicious as Dupin's hair keeps getting shorter, but he's quite proud of himself for conducting an investigation without her knowledge. When a dead woman turns up in a nearby granite quarry, and the body is not that of the missing hotel guest, Dupin becomes certain that something sinister is afoot.

Clever and amusing, The Granite Coast Murders is a delightful novel that effortlessly transports readers to the astoundingly beautiful Pink Granite Coast. Readers may find themselves doing wistful image searches after reading, but they're also sure to seek out more of Dupin's adventures. Although The Granite Coast Murders is the sixth entry in the Georges Dupin series, because Dupin is on vacation, it can easily be read as a standalone. Perfect for fans of Louise Penny or Mark Pryor, The Granite Coast Murders is not to be missed. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

World-renowned chef Eric Ripert may be known for his lengthy tenure at Michelin- and New York Times-starred seafood restaurant Le Bernardin, but there's not a fish to be found in Vegetable Simple. Explaining this in his introduction to the book, Ripert says, "As I do with fish, I like to pay homage to vegetables and prepare them in a way that enhances their best qualities. I want them to shine, I want to bring out their brightness and beauty."

With the aid of stunning, elegant photos by Nigel Parry, vegetables are presented in all their colorful, delicious glory. Ripert's simple preparations range from surprisingly easy, like seasoned microwave popcorn, to more complex recipes like falafel and the humble ratatouille. In this collection, however, it's the natural flavors and textures of vegetables that matter most. Ripert emphasizes mushrooms, zucchini and tomatoes at the peak of ripeness and includes advice on shopping and caring for produce, as well as a guide to what's in season throughout the year.

Full-page photographs accompany all 110 recipes, making this an unexpectedly beautiful book that will inspire readers to savor every bite as they page through again and again. While some would be reluctant to call it a recipe, even the preparation and photo of a bright red tomato, sliced in half and served with fresh pepper and a drizzle of olive oil is a feast for the senses. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

Trent Preszler, born and raised on a farm, longed to live in New York since watching The Muppets Take Manhattan in a 1986 Faith, S.Dak., theater. He made the dream a reality: he earned two degrees at Cornell and, then, as CEO of Bedell Cellars, created the merlot served at Barack Obama's inauguration. Yet his successes were haunted by his estranged father Leon's words, "You ain't never gonna be man enough." In Preszler's superb memoir, Little and Often, the improbable happens--the non-craftsman builds a canoe from scratch and makes peace with his demons. 

Disowned 14 years earlier, Preszler is stunned when his dad has nice words for him during a rare trip home. Leon dies shortly thereafter, oddly leaving Trent his toolbox. Recalling a fond memory of a time in a fishing boat, Preszler somewhat inadvisably decides to build a strip canoe, following directions from a decades-old paperback he discovers at the lumberyard.

The build begins about as well as expected as Preszler, whose friends think macramé might be more appropriate, rushes in and learns on the fly. But using his father's tools and discovering more about the churchgoing Vietnam veteran and championship rodeo rider helps Preszler understand his life's traumas. Readers learn along with Preszler as he works; he thoughtfully doles out historical details over the course of the boat's construction, as he reveals the family's background. Insightful and humorous, Preszler's memoir is a deep dive to find the father he longed for and the confidence to be his own man. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Lauren Hough grew up in a cult, and left it--more than once. She spent five years in the U.S. Air Force, a gay woman serving during the era of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. She worked as a bouncer, a "cable guy," a writer. She's been homeless, incarcerated, beaten, assaulted, threatened, loved, left, happy, bored. She documents all of this--and more--in the aptly titled Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing, a searing collection of 11 personal essays.

Despite the harsh realities that Hough has faced throughout her life--harder even than living in, or leaving, a cult--Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing is never bleak, infused throughout with Hough's wit and sense of humor. "I've learned, if not to expect the worst, not to be surprised by the worst. I'll cry in frustration when my Internet's out, but when my car bursts into flames, well, that seems about right."

That's not to say Hough's humor lets herself--or her readers--off easy. In every essay in this collection, Hough peels back layers and layers of harsh realities to expose the raw, often violent underside of a society that fails its most vulnerable members time and time again. From that underbelly, Hough emerges as a strong, independent, queer woman: proud of who she is and what she will become, ever reckoning with the systems of injustice that forged her and determined to tear them down as she moves forward. It's impossible to step into Hough's essays and not appreciate her candor and honesty, her willingness to be vulnerable and real--and to see those traits as calls to do the same. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Vince Granata was four when his parents brought triplets home from the hospital. As the family legend goes, thrilled to have siblings, Vince stuck his head in his father's open car window and declared, "This is the best day of my life." Granata was 27 when he got the call that his brother Tim had killed their mother.

Granata's heartbreaking memoir, Everything Is Fine, recounts the years leading up to Claudia Granata's death at her son's hands and the aftermath that left Vince, his siblings and his father with differing scars from the same horrific wound. It is the story of a warm, loving family, yet also one of American tragedy. Granata demonstrates how woefully inadequate mental health care and historically deadly clashes between law enforcement and the mentally ill left his mother fighting for her son's life, yet afraid to call authorities for help.

Granata deals with his traumas through the memoir, but also uses it to educate readers on a misunderstood disease process. Signs of Tim's schizophrenia began in high school, "on an atomic level, a single cell, something misfiring, an electron hitting the wrong synapse, a chemical imbalance slowly putrefying his brain." The progression to demonic delusions is harrowing in hindsight, but in order to inform readers about the terror of the disease, Granata had to "show... the horror it wrought" and the boy it swallowed. Painful on a multitude of levels, Granata's work is thought-provoking and important. It elegantly humanizes a man who has done the most inhumane thing to those he loves most. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

It's best to avoid reading The Haunting of Alma Fielding before bed. Kate Summerscale's atmospheric and insightful investigation based on an actual suburban haunting in 1930s London dives headfirst into the disturbing connection between the supernatural and the subconscious. In particular, this spooky historical tale examines how loss, trauma, heartache and even boredom can manifest as "poltergeists" that terrorize the afflicted in shocking and sometimes violent ways. The narrative follows Hungarian ghost hunter and reporter Nandor Fodor as he checks out the case of Alma Fielding, a 34-year-old housewife whose family is being terrorized by an aggressive spectral being that throws glasses against the wall, overturns furniture and even causes bugs and reptiles to materialize at seemingly impossible times.

Summerscale's in-depth look at Fodor's journey from spiritualist to skeptic and the origin of Alma's otherworldly oddness is underscored by the trusting relationship that develops between the two. Alma's apparitions also heighten Fodor's belief that ghosts are a type of "spectral automaton... living on life borrowed from human wrecks." During one investigation of a particularly miserable couple, he observes, "The ghost had been used as a distancing element, a sort of tranquilizer, which helped hold the family together without bringing their true frustrations into the open." After spending a significant amount of time with Alma and her family, Fodor learns more about her devastating experiences with isolation, chronic illness, grief and regret in her cold and loveless marriage. Given these challenges, Alma seems almost ingenious for finding a way to escape her largely gender-based confines.  --Angela Lutz, freelance reviewer

Whether you want to up your Instagram ante or take eye-catching pictures for a food blog, Picture Perfect Food: Master the Art of Food Photography with 52 Bite-Sized Tutorials is the perfect guide to taking more delectable pictures of food. Joanie Simon, a prolific food writer and photographer, offers dynamic tips on everything from "Using the Right Depth of Field for a Scene" and "Using Implied Movement to Hook the Viewer" to "Navigating the Three-Quarter Shot" and "How to Make Flat Foods Look Fabulous."

Filled with amazing food pictures, helpful strategies and an encouraging tone, Picture Perfect Food is an approachable, useful guide that will appeal to photographers of all capabilities. Some tips are more complicated--offering specific aperture and shutter speed advice--while other techniques are geared especially toward phone camera users. Simon offers challenges to help the photographer practice and improve: capturing an image where you intentionally limit the light in a scene; shooting eggs with different color temperatures; using a specific rubric to analyze food magazine photos that are especially appealing.

Simon's attention to detail is fantastic; she even includes recipes for pancakes and syrup that photograph particularly well. Amateurs and professional photographers alike are sure to appreciate Picture Perfect Food's assistance in taking their photos from mediocre to mouthwatering. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

The Night Marchers and Other Oceanian Tales is the fourth installment in Iron Circus Comics' geographically specific Cautionary Fables & Fairytales series: African tales in The Girl Who Married a Skull, Asian stories in Tamamo the Fox Maiden and European fare in The Nixie of the Mill-Pond. Volume four turns to the Pacific Islands of the Philippines, Hawaii and Fiji to lure, warn, frighten and entertain middle-grade readers. Kate Ashwin and Kel McDonald, who edited the previous three titles, are joined here by cartoonist/author Sloane Leong.

As can happen with any collection, the narrative and graphic quality varies through the compilation's 16 tales. Among the most artistically satisfying is "The Ibalon Epic: A Retelling of Baltog" by Mark Gould, about a renowned warrior who dreams of being a peaceful farmer despite being known as "Baltog the brave... Baltog the strong... Baltog the unrelenting." Gould's exquisitely detailed panels are presented in various sizes and shapes and, as they overlap and overflow, they mirror his character's determination to break through his physical and theoretical borders. Haunting defines the titular "The Night Marchers," an atmospheric Hawaiian tale in which a girl disobeys her mother to risk a final glance at her dead father. Artist Jonah Cabudol-Chalker affectingly manifests the defiance in Kate Ashwin's writing with irregular panels, words beyond borders and images spilling off the page.

Despite the uneven presentation, this majority #OwnVoices offering is an intriguing portal to folklore, ferrying readers beyond more familiar Western myths and tales. These diverse adaptations and imaginative reinterpretations present spirit interactions, unexpected bonds, timeless life lessons and somber reminders of mortality. While the intended audience is middle-grade, older teens (and even adults) will discover potent storytelling here. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Meg Rosoff's The Great Godden is a first-rate coming-of-age novel told by an astute and appealing unnamed narrator over the course of one uncharacteristically fraught seaside summer.

When the narrator and their family arrive for the annual visit at their much-loved, "picturesque and annoying" beach house, each of them--Mum and Dad, the four kids, Dad's cousin Hope and her boyfriend Mal--"radiates optimism" that it will be the best summer ever. But this year there are two surprises: after 12 years together, "Malanhope" will marry at summer's end. And film star Florence Godden's two sons will be staying with Malanhope at Hope's beach house. Kit Godden is a "golden Greek statue of a youth," oozing wealth and privilege, while his brother, Hugo, is "bony and awkward." Kit makes sure to catch the gaze of any and all parties who might find him irresistible, and "within four seconds" he's charmed Mattie, the narrator's 16-year-old sister, "practically to death." What ensues is a summer so full of angst and "apocalypse" that the entire family is left reeling for years to come.

The Great Godden is filled with equal parts drama and reflection, a riveting novel of love and betrayal that is deftly and elegantly written. Rosoff (Picture Me Gone; Jonathan Unleashed) allows her self-aware and observant narrator to speak through the lens of hindsight, leaving a trail of tantalizing clues. The unnamed protagonist, now older and wiser, seems to have weathered a  summer of manipulation and mind games, and readers will find this story a compelling summertime--or anytime--read. --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI