Pedro Mairal's The Woman from Uruguay follows a contemporary Argentine writer named Lucas for a single fateful Tuesday, as he travels from Buenos Aires to Montevideo and back again. Lucas narrates these events, with flashes forward and back in time, in a lengthy direct address to his wife, Catalina. "You told me I talked in my sleep. That's the first thing I remember." He is stumbling, if not entirely failing, as a writer, in debt to nearly everyone he knows, and fairly sure that Catalina is cheating on him. The purpose of the day trip to Uruguay is ostensibly to collect a significant sum of money in cash (advances on two books), which Lucas expects will change his fortunes. His hidden, secondary purpose is to visit the titular woman with whom Lucas has been captivated since they met at a writers' festival months earlier. He calls her Guerra--war--and is obsessed by their so-far-unconsummated affair.

Lucas is self-pitying, a bit sleazy in his adulterous aspirations and at best a mediocre husband and father. But readers will be drawn in by the mysterious Guerra and the pathetic and darkly comic narrative of Lucas's unlucky day. He can be woefully misguided by desire (for Guerra, for escape from responsibility), artful in his telling (Lucas is a writer, after all), wry, clever and even wise. The translation from Spanish by Jennifer Croft (Homesick) handles such moods and idiosyncrasies perfectly. Readers may not be precisely rooting for Lucas to get what he wants (which is a bit unclear even to Lucas), but they will certainly be eager to find out what happens next. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Ivory Shoals, the story of an intrepid trek across Florida, is filled with deadpan humor, exquisite landscapes and the musings of a precocious young man who calls it like he sees it. The novel follows 12-year-old Gussie Dwyer, a boy traveling across the state after the Civil War, searching for the father he never met. In his fourth novel, John Brandon (A Million Heavens) explores the loneliness of a child alone in the world (the aftermath of the death of his prostitute mother) and the unexpected companionship he finds during his journey. The inner musings of other Floridians--an oblivious inventor, a scheming half-brother, a jealous servant and a cutthroat bounty hunter--are interjected throughout Gussie's narrative, rounding out a brilliant set of bizarre, original and intriguing characters.

Although there are bits and pieces of action throughout (including murders, train hopping and nighttime raids), this is first and foremost a work of historical fiction. Florida--and particularly Florida in 1865--is as much a character as Gussie or anyone else. Throughout the adventure, the prose is dotted with sumptuous details, delivered with flowing beauty: "The great naked cypresses towering above, while their smooth-skinned knees jutted up from below like lost monks in their robes. Yellow-tongued cow lilies and floppy canna flowers. Above, a bodiless ceiling of ash." Brandon places readers in this vivid setting, and populates it with thieves, heroes, desperate souls, emancipated people, vengeful sons and kindly old men. The result is a novel of total immersion. --Simone Woronoff, freelance writer and reviewer

Sheriff Quinn Colson's mission to clean up Tibbehah County, Miss., doesn't get easier, as Ace Atkins (The Lost Ones) shows in The Heathens, the 11th novel in this exciting, multi-layered series that has earned two Edgar nominations. Atkins's series forcefully tackles racism, war veterans, small-town corruption and greed. The Heathens adds issues of children raising children and social media influence.

Quinn, a former U.S. Army Ranger, is used to varied criminals--some uncannily sharp, many downright dumb. But The Heathens has Quinn chasing his most unusual criminals: 17-year-old Tanya Jane ("TJ") Byrd, accused of murdering her mother, Gina, a drug addict with a penchant for abusive men. TJ has fled with her nine-year-old brother, John Wesley, boyfriend Ladarius McCade and best friend Holly Harkins. Along the way, they pick up wealthy teenager Chastity Bloodgood, who joins after they break into one of her father's houses and has too much fun making TJ a social-media darling (300,000 likes!). TJ has a reputation for being meaner than a snake, but Quinn doesn't believe she would murder her mother. Despite the many cars TJ and her friends have stolen and the homes they've broken into as they travel to California, Quinn believes they're running because they're scared, not guilty. Quinn's search for the real killer puts him at odds with his friend and former employee Lillie Virgil, now a deputy U.S. marshal, as well as the county's usual miscreants.

Atkins's skillful blend of an action-packed pursuit, complicated relationships and a heavy dose of compassion for the young gang elevates The Heathens. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer 

Asian Australian writer Shelley Parker-Chan reimagines the founding of a dynasty in She Who Became the Sun, a bold, breathtaking historical fantasy debut seething with intrigue and action.

In 1345 CE China, a village in its fourth year of drought lies "flattened under the sun like a defeated dog." Once 11 in number, only three of the Zhu family survive: 11-year-old Zhu Chongba, his father and his 10-year-old sister. Because of his lucky birth order, Chongba is expected to achieve greatness, while the village fortune teller prophesies his sister's fate as "Nothing." When bandits kill their father, though, Chongba succumbs to grief and starvation. Hungry for survival, his sister (hereafter referred to as Zhu) decides to take his name, his clothing and his fate. Disguised as Chongba, she finds food and shelter as a monk but never forgets that to evade the nothingness of her true fate, she must achieve her brother's promised greatness instead. A civil war brings the opportunity she craves, but standing in her way is General Ouyang, a eunuch renowned for his beautiful face and military prowess. The last of his line, Ouyang pretends to faithfully serve the family who murdered his own while secretly plotting vengeance. Evenly matched in strategic brilliance and both outsiders in a society of rigid gender roles, Zhu and Ouyang are pitted against each other in a deadly battle of wit and will to determine their own futures and that of China.

Vibrant and passionately inventive, She Who Became the Sun gives the aphorism "live life like your head is on fire" dazzling new meaning. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In this epic historical fantasy, the second in the Shadow Histories series (following A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians), H.G. Parry paints intimate portraits of not-quite-historical figures.

After Robespierre broke the Concord by raising an army of the dead, Europe became engulfed in a war of magic for the first time in centuries. Now the blood magician who brought Robespierre to power has allied himself with Napoléon Bonaparte. In England, William Wilberforce's fight for abolition and the free exercise of magic conflicts with the war effort, straining his friendship with William Pitt the Younger, who has his own magical secrets known by only a few. But the blood magician is not interested just in Europe; in Saint-Domingue, Fina works her magic to support Toussaint Louverture while spying on the stranger.

Parry (The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep) blends genres in A Radical Act of Free Magic and its predecessor, and succeeds in all of them. The introduction of a new character, commoner weather mage Kate Dove, opens possibilities for naval battle sequences that will excite any historical military fiction fan. The political issues surrounding magic and who has the right to practice it intertwine with the abolition movement and Enlightenment politics in a way that will strike readers as perfectly natural, in spite of the supernatural material. Most of all, Parry depicts both the original and the fictionalized characters with true heart. Readers should be prepared to shed tears for historical figures. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

A book about a possible murder, award-winning French Canadian Pascal Girard's Rebecca & Lucie in the Case of the Missing Neighbor guarantees delight--if nothing else but to laugh with Girard himself. Here in his vivid graphic world, translated by Aleshia Jensen, Pascal Girard is Rebecca's partner (he just wants a romantic, childless date night) and eight-month-old Lucie's father (he's still struggling with the logistics of parenthood).

Girard is definitely no star; that superhero title instead goes to Rebecca, who's making the most of the final weeks of her maternity leave. She's attuned to Lucie's every need while managing a social life through mommy-and-me classes, which occasionally require chasing away shutterbug perverts. One dark night while nursing Lucie, she witnesses suspicious activity on the street below. The news at her local café soon thereafter announces the disappearance of Eduardo, a home nurse familiar to many for his helpful kindness. Rebecca recalls that late-night "CLONK," and is inspired to start her own investigation. Of course, Lucie proves to be the ideal sidekick none of Eduardo's employers, family or colleagues can resist.

Girard (Petty Theft) saturates his borderless six-panels-to-a-page with riotously vibrant color--as if his admiration for Rebecca's clever energy can't be fully contained. And is she for real? That line between fiction and memoir blurs further when he credits her by full name for the several pages recounting Lucie's birth story. A bit of sleuthing confirms Pascal and Rebecca are a Montreal couple, that Rebecca works at a bookstore and their bebé Lulu exists. Whether the rest is verifiable doesn't quite matter--because this is undoubtedly one family affair worth thoroughly enjoying. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Since ancient times, humans have been captivated by the color blue--sometimes to the point of obsession. In Blue: In Search of Nature's Rarest Color, German science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt takes a fascinating and well-researched look at all aspects of this moody hue, including how people create it, talk about it and see it (or don't see it). Along his globetrotting journey, Kupferschmidt confirms that blue in the natural world is extremely hard to find--and some objects appear blue due to an elaborate trick of the light. As one example, cornflowers don't actually absorb any blue light at all. "In a sense, blue is what the plant rejects. Calling it 'blue' is a bit like calling a country club 'feminist' because it doesn't allow women."

Because of the color's scarcity, some scientists have devoted their careers to engineering blue plants and pigments. When Kupferschmidt travels to Japan to see blue chrysanthemums, the breathtaking results are bolstered by scientific fact. "I think of the retinal in the cones of my retina. We owe it to this plant molecule that we are able to see colors at all. Perhaps it is only fair that, in return, we have taught chrysanthemums how to be blue." As he examines the color's history--from the jewelry of the pharaohs to the accidental development of poisonous cyanide--Kupferschmidt writes with a welcoming mix of knowledge and childlike wonder. The book also features striking illustrations of pigments, flowers and stones that underscore his message that the experience of blue is both universal and deeply personal. --Angela Lutz, freelance reviewer

So much has been written about the Star Wars movies--is there anything people still don't know about them? The answer is yes, as revealed in Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman's engaging, nearly 600-page Secrets of the Force: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Wars.

Organized chronologically, the behind-the-scenes anecdotes take readers from the development of 1977's Star Wars (since retitled Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope) through 2019's Star Wars, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, also covering the franchise's standalone movies, such as Rogue One, and TV projects.

The stories come from interviews--both new and archived--with creator George Lucas, the actors and key creative minds behind the movies. It's unclear which excerpts are fresh or old (besides those from people now deceased), but Gross and Altman do state that all of Lucas's quotes are from previously published materials; Lucas didn't make himself available for this book. Regardless, there's enough material here for even diehard fans to learn something new. Such as Episode IV having roots in the Vietnam War because Lucas wanted to direct Apocalypse Now but the job went to Francis Ford Coppola. Peter Cushing, who played the evil Grand Moff Tarkin, was a lovely man who smelled of lavender, making it difficult for Carrie Fisher to pretend to hate him on camera. And Episode IX would have been much more philosophical had original writer/director Colin Trevorrow's version made it to the screen instead of J.J. Abrams's. Even if fans already know everything, Secrets of the Force will likely inspire them to rewatch the films and revisit the magic. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Coming of age can be rough, even for the supernatural. In this humorous, highly entertaining middle-grade graphic novel, a witch, a wolf girl, a pumpkin head and a hijab-wearing ghost band together to Scooby-Doo a solution to an inter-dimensional portal breach.

A young witch named Abby, who is stirred and angered by a bullying incident she witnesses, is startled when her magic surges, causing her accidentally to open a door to another dimension. The hordes of Chaos Bunnies that are unleashed are cute enough... until they bare their fangs and begin chewing through electrical wires and decimating pumpkin patches. With backup from her loyal and hilarious friends, Abby labors to close the gap before the bunnies have destroyed the entire town.

The full-color digital art of webcomic artist and illustrator Mari Costa, who lives in Portugal, captures both zany action and the sweetness of friend, family and community relationships. Stephanie Cooke, co-creator of the Oh My Gods! graphic novel series, develops a fully-fleshed, well-rounded world with a light touch: ranges of gender identities and sexual orientations are unremarkable here, as are inter-super relationships. Paranorthern and the Chaos Bunny A-Hop-Calypse also touches on single-parent households, finding a sense of belonging as an immigrant, sibling dynamics and choosing good over corruption and power. Magical puberty is no picnic, either. Abby is facing weird new ebbs and flows of her powers and Gita the wolf girl can't stop herself from chasing the Chaos Bunnies. ("My mom says it's part of maturing into wolf adolescence and that I'll be able to control the urges soon....") We can totally relate. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor