With her Outline trilogy (Transit; Kudos), Rachel Cusk confirmed her status as a thoughtful, provocative novelist, one that appears even more secure with the publication of Second Place, a psychological novel that's a serious exploration of themes that include female identity and the meaning of art.

The titular location refers to a cottage the narrator, identified only as M, and her second husband, Tony, have built on reclaimed wasteland adjacent the isolated coastal marsh where they live. Her plan is to use the dwelling as a home for "the higher things... that I had come to care about one way or another in my life." To further that goal, M impetuously decides to extend an invitation to an artist named L, whose work, she says, "picked me up off the street and put me on the path to a different understanding of life." There's nothing casual about M's invitation. A writer whose own output has been modest, she's dogged by a lifelong identity crisis. After L initially accepts, and then rejects M's hospitality, he arrives with Brett, a much younger woman whose relationship to him is ambiguous.

Cusk meticulously charts the rising tension between L and M as the two come into a conflict that L seems to have sought from the beginning, and that involves a shocking amount of asymmetric psychological warfare. Cusk is a patient, elegant writer, in some respects like her creation M, who admits she needs to "get at the truth of a thing and dig and dig until it is dragged painfully to light." Second Place is the admirable product of that determination. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

The first novel by Chris Power (Mothers) is an exhilarating literary thriller about the nature of fiction itself. A Lonely Man follows an author who must confront the dangers of inhabiting another person's story.

Robert Prowe is a British writer living in Berlin with his wife and two daughters. With a book of stories published years earlier and his first novel long overdue, his career seems to be at a standstill. But then he encounters an intriguing stranger, who confides in him a dangerous secret: Patrick, a ghostwriter, claims to have been employed by Sergei Vanyashin, an exiled Russian dissident, to write a book exposing the crimes of the Russian oligarchy. Now Vanyashin is dead--his death dubiously ruled a suicide--and Patrick believes the assassins will soon come for him. Sensing a way out of his creative rut, Robert takes Patrick's incredible story and shapes it as his own.  

With a deft and subtle hand, Power structures his novel in such a way as to draw out the kind of tantalizing ambiguity that only precise writing can produce. His protagonist sees "life not as a vast sprawl, but a series of stacked realities"; Power reflects this view by nesting one man's account within another, raising questions of reliability that reverberate through multiple layers of narration. These questions gather into an atmosphere of uncertainty, lending Power's metafiction a charge of suspense. Exploring the shifting borders of fiction and reality, A Lonely Man locates peril in the disputed territory between the two. --Theo Henderson, bookseller at Ravenna Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash.

Mhairi McFarlane (If I Never Met You; Don't You Forget About Me) has a gift for writing nuanced romances with grieving or complicated heroines. Often her characters are women in their mid-30s coming out of unfulfilling long-term relationships or emotional affairs, and Just Last Night is true to form.

Eve, Susie, Justin and Ed have been friends since their schooldays in northern England. For more than 15 years, their foursome has met for Thursday night trivia each week. Eve has been secretly in love with Ed all this time, but he's had a long-term, annoying girlfriend, so she's never acted upon her feelings. They've stayed in their enjoyable, mundane routine for all these years, until one Thursday night when Ed gets engaged to his horrible girlfriend, Eve goes home with a handsome bartender, and a sudden tragedy strikes, leaving their foursome permanently fractured.

Heartfelt and introspective, Just Last Night explores the nature of grief and unexpected loss, but with a deft touch that never approaches the maudlin. Eve, the main protagonist, ends up learning things about Ed and Susie and Justin that she never knew, despite their many years of friendship, and realizes also that she herself is a much more capable person than she ever suspected. Perfect for fans of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird or The Happy Ever After Playlist, Just Last Night is a truly lovely, and achingly funny, depiction of friendship and the hope that new beginnings bring. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Laura Dave (Eight Hundred Grapes; Hello Sunshine) sustains the suspense as a woman grapples with her husband's sudden disappearance--plus the terror of not knowing whom to trust--as she commits to finding him and truths about the life she thought they shared in The Last Thing He Told Me.

Married just a year, Hannah and Owen are happy in their floating home in scenic Sausalito, Calif. A widowed father when they met, Owen is devoted to 16-year-old Bailey, while Hannah patiently works to gain the girl's acceptance. The night Owen doesn't come home, Hannah and Bailey are forced to become a team. Both have received cryptic notes from him within an hour of hearing an NPR report: the FBI and SEC have raided his software company, his boss is in custody and other staff are under suspicion of fraud. The next morning a U.S. Marshall appears and bluntly tells her: "Owen's not who you think he is."

Gentle with Bailey, Hannah also knows the girl likely holds memories leading to truths about Owen. Clues take them to Austin, Tex., a trip heavy with anxiety and suspicion of what, and who, they might find. This tension, paired with a bittersweet camaraderie between Hannah and Bailey, propels the plot, supported with passages from their past that eventually mesh with what they discover. Dave weaves a complex yet well-supported explanation of Owen's past, and offers a poignant, thrilling conclusion. But an epilogue provides an even more surprising--and satisfying--ending. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

Two princesses from Greek mythology step from the shadows to tell their stories in Jennifer Saint's passionate, assured debut novel. Ariadne, eldest daughter of King Minos of Crete, and her younger sister Phaedra live under the pall of their family's shame. Thanks to their father's impiety, their mother, Pasiphae, gives birth to "Minos' greatest humiliation and greatest asset. My brother, the Minotaur." Although Ariadne and her mother try to love the carnivorous creature, his vicious nature makes him a natural weapon.

In Ariadne's 18th year, she helps Prince Theseus of rival Athens end the nightmare of the Minotaur's Labyrinth. In return, Theseus betrays Ariadne, marooning her on an apparently uninhabited island. Rescued by the gentle god Dionysus, she finds a measure of happiness, while Phaedra, who believes Ariadne has died, must enter a loveless political marriage. Over the course of their lives, both sisters repeatedly experience "a truth of womanhood: however blameless a life we led, the passion and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do." Separated by deceit, the daughters of Crete must fight for meaning in lives controlled by the whim of gods and men.

Saint's background in classical studies is apparent in her portrayal of self-interested gods and hapless mortals. Her focus on Ariadne, usually treated as a supporting character or footnote, allows her to highlight the powerlessness and scapegoating of women in patriarchal systems. Filled with luxuriant descriptions of pastoral ancient Greece, and unflinching, intelligently developed emotion, this shrewd commentary on the inner lives of overlooked women should resonate with fans of Madeline Miller's Circe. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

The Secret Bridesmaid, Katy Birchall's adult fiction debut, is a breezy romantic comedy about a Londoner with an unconventional job. Instead of an actual wedding planner, brides hire Sophie to act as the bridesmaid who's there to help, not to take over. In her words, "As a professional bridesmaid, I'm merely there to aid the bride in producing her vision for the day and be a helping hand to her. I'm not there to take control, but rather help the bride feel in control."

Sophie's life is so consumed by the weddings of others that she hardly makes time for a social life of her own. When an aristocratic mother hires her on behalf of her daughter--who absolutely does not want Sophie's services--Sophie finds herself working harder than ever to be a helpful fake best friend.

The Secret Bridesmaid is full of situational humor and sparkling banter with the bride's brother, Tom, but readers will be also invested in Sophie's character growth. She is a young woman so good at mitigating risk for others that she takes none of her own. If her job is to pretend to be someone else and take care of everything the brides desire, who is the real Sophie and what does she want?

Sophie goes to great lengths to help her clients, with results that will make readers laugh or shake their heads at all manner of wedding antics. Those looking for escapism and a bit of romance will find a lot to enjoy in The Secret Bridesmaid. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn't Ours by Sarah Sentilles is an astonishing account of motherhood experienced through the complex lens of foster parenting. Sentilles gracefully articulates the spiritual and emotional preparation she and her husband, Eric, undertook for their role as foster parents, and shares with raw honesty the challenges of dealing with the overburdened and underfunded bureaucracy of the Department of Human Services (DHS).

At the heart of Stranger Care is sweet Coco, a calm, happy baby who inspires in her foster parents a deep joy and devotion. She thrives in their care. Visits with her birth mother, Evelyn (a pseudonym), result in Coco regressing and falling ill, yet her fate is dependent on DHS metrics that favor the unstable, untruthful Evelyn without regard to Coco's best interests. Sentilles (Breaking Up with God) is careful not to paint Evelyn in broad brushstrokes that diminish her humanity, yet is critical of DHS protocols that often result in children returning to unsafe conditions with volatile biological parents.

A writer and scholar of religion, Sentilles is a co-founder of Alliance of Idaho, an organization dedicated to protecting the basic human rights of immigrants. Each chapter of Stranger Care celebrates the interdependence of our fragile world while chronicling Sentilles's heartrending foster care journey. As she points out, our shared humanity lies in our willingness to care for society's most vulnerable. And so it is with fostering a child for whom love, stability and compassion are among the greatest gifts a foster parent can offer. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and freelance reviewer

In Eartha & Kitt: A Daughter's Love Story in Black and White, Kitt Shapiro, with Patricia Levy, has written both a loving biography of her mother, one of the best-known Black performers of the last century, and a memoir of their special bond.

Eartha Kitt, a self-described "poor cotton picker from the South" (even as she collected Tony, Oscar, Grammy and Emmy nominations--her "Santa Baby" still defines pop Christmas music), arrived in New York City in 1935 at age eight, rescued from an abusive South Carolina childhood. A diligent student "up North," she was performing professionally by 1950, establishing her "feline, sultry and exotic" style. She had Kitt in 1961, during a brief marriage to a white man. "I was really the first blood-related 'family' she had ever known," Kitt writes, and they were inseparable, "from the first day of my life to the very last day of hers."

Eartha, of African American and Cherokee heritage, delighted in defying stereotypes and called blue-eyed blonde Kitt her "walking United Nations." Kitt savored their world-wide travels for Eartha's bookings, as well as their home with gardens and animals in the California hills. Blacklisted after criticizing the war in Vietnam at a 1968 White House event, Eartha was a life-long activist: "She always did what she could to defend the underdog." Kitt notes that besides funding, "she devoted her time," including at Kittsville, a cultural arts program for inner-city youth, which continues today. Eartha Kitt traditionally closed her shows with the song, "Here's to Life," and her daughter's memoir is a generously documented tribute to the world-renowned performer who was, nonetheless, "a mother first." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

Readers share with a family the joy of a mindful nocturnal hike in Marie Dorleans's The Night Walk. This picture book is full of vivid sensory details and atmospheric illustrations that create an experience of nature that both the young and young at heart will certainly cherish.

Dorleans (The Epic Race) hooks her audience on the first page as the parents wake two sleeping children snuggled in their beds, "Wake up, you two... Let's go, so we get there on time." Where could the family need to go so late at night? What happens if they don't get there on time? The mystery is set. They walk through town, noticing the smell of flowers, the pavement "still warm from the heat of the day" and lights in various buildings. They continue on into the countryside where Dorleans entertains them with the wonders of nature: "We walked slowly, lulled by the rustling of the leaves above. Then suddenly.../ ...a lake! We stopped to play with the moon." Through the forest and up a hillside (with a break for a chance to admire the night sky), the family's nighttime exploits cover an array of outdoor wonders. The whole time, readers are reminded, "We need to keep walking, so we get there on time." The mystery is solved in a wonderfully satisfying, spectacular fashion at the book's conclusion.

In The Night Walk, Dorleans depicts the vastness that can be explored in a picture book with minimal words and a limited palette of primarily blue, black and white. Her text pairs with her beautifully detailed graphite pencil and watercolor art to emphasize the expanse of the natural world. The result is awe-inspiring. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

On June 19, 1982, 27-year-old Chinese American Vincent Chin was bludgeoned with a baseball bat by Ronald Ebens and stepson Michael Nitz. The two white men, like too many others, were driven by anti-Asian resentment over Detroit's declining auto industry due to Japanese competition. "It's not fair," Chin said before losing consciousness. His final words inspired Paula Yoo's impressively thorough From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement.

Chin died four days after the vicious assault, just five days before his wedding. Ebens and Nitz pleaded guilty to manslaughter and each received a $3,000 fine and three years' probation without imprisonment. That egregious lack of justice emboldened a pivotal moment in Asian Pacific American activism and civil rights history. Yoo opens her extensive examination with an unexpected new voice: Jarod Lew, who, 30 years after Vincent's murder, learns his mother was Vincent's fiancée, Vikki Wong. Jarod's personal discovery is Yoo's framing narrative for the book; his journey becomes an ingenious reminder to all readers--just as Jarod must understand his history so, too, does each new generation.

As a former Detroit News reporter and TV writer/producer, Yoo initially considered making a film about Vincent Chin. But the spikes in anti-Asian violence after Trump became president convinced her to transform her celluloid intentions onto the page. From a Whisper is arguably the most comprehensive overview of the gruesome events and the aftermath of trials, protests, convictions, reversals and civil suits, and is enhanced with photos, newspaper clippings and significant backmatter, including a timeline, endnotes and sources. Yoo is determined: "not knowing" is no longer an option. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon