In this gutsy folktale of a novel, author and singer-songwriter Josh Ritter (Bright's Passage) takes readers into treacherous forests and lawless towns to witness the last days of the era of the lumberjacks.

At 99, retired lumberjack Weldon Applegate lies in a hospital bed, though not for reasons of old age. He was "in my prime, full of Rainier and vinegar, fixing to live forever" until his mortal enemy, the son of a clear-cutting sawmill tycoon, had other ideas. In what may be his last words, Weldon relates the exploits of his youth in the Prohibition-era timber town of Cordelia, Idaho, where the dream of logging a dangerous strip called the Lost Lot lured his father to his death. Orphaned, 13-year-old Weldon has little choice but to pick up an ax and join the loggers on his father's claim. Standing in his way is Linden Laughlin, a giant of a woods boss with a reputation to rival Paul Bunyan's and the sadistic streak of a demon, who wants the Lost Lot. Laughlin leaves a trail of dead jacks in his wake, and Weldon must grow up quickly to survive.

Filled with memorable characters and told by a charmingly irascible narrator, Ritter's folkloric tale raises the spirit of a lost age. Bootleggers, witches and legends walk the town of Cordelia, and Ritter builds a fierce and hungry forest primeval that captures the imagination. Infused with song and history, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All feels like the seed of a new mythology. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In the second volume of Weird Women, editors Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger offer another thought-provoking collection of 16 short horror and science fiction stories by both iconic and overlooked women writers. In "The Lifted Veil" by George Eliot, a man falls under the mysterious and deadly spell of his brother's fiancée. Meanwhile, in "The Dead and the Countess" by Gertrude Atherton, a priest struggles to perform the last rituals for a dead countess. In the collection's perhaps best-known piece, "Spunk," the incomparable storyteller Zora Neale Hurston recounts the suspicious tale of one woman's unusual courtship through the eyes of the porch-gossips who can't stop watching her.

Covering not only 75-plus years but a broad expanse of regional writers, Weird Women: Volume 2 offers a tasting flight of sorts for English-language horror and science fiction enthusiasts. While better-known writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe are included in the anthology, so are gems such as Mrs. S.C. Hall's "The Drowned Fisherman," which have disappeared from the mainstream literary canon. And while most of these stories include macabre subject matter and neo-gothic tones, other pieces, like Edith Wharton's "The Fulness of Life," are more lightly satirical. Most striking, however, are these stories' abilities to masquerade as genre fiction while treading politically and culturally controversial ground. From reevaluations of the femme fatale to condemnations of the unseen evils of men, these "weird" works display their authors' expertise in covertly commenting on the real and gendered horrors that undergird society. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

L.A. Weather is a lovely, compelling and occasionally brutal novel by María Amparo Escandón (Esperanza's Box of Saints) about a family on the brink of disaster, in a city similarly on edge. Captivating, sympathetic, funny characters and never-ending surprises (that even those involved compare with a telenovela) form a world for readers to get lost in.

Patriarch Oscar Alvarado has become a shell of his formerly assertive self; his wife, Keila, a sculptor, is losing patience. Their daughters are Claudia, an author and television chef; Olivia, an architect and mother of twin girls; and social-media maven Patricia. The Alvarados are a close-knit family of successful, high-powered professionals, bridging Oscar's Catholicism, Keila's Judaism and their shared Mexican-American heritage in Los Angeles, a vibrant city beautifully evoked by Escandón's loving descriptions of food, traffic and culture.

In L.A. Weather's opening pages, a horrifying accident befalls Olivia's daughters (parents beware), prompting various responses to trauma and launching the story directly into the Alvarados' family dynamic and cascading failures. Oscar's obsession with drought and wildfire may at first seem random, if not nonsensical, but it reflects a secret he's been keeping from his family, and serves as symbol for their shared concerns. When Keila announces she wants to divorce him, their daughters protest vehemently, although it is soon their own respective marriages that threaten to catch fire. The city crackles with heat as one crisis or shenanigan after another ensues.

This is a story of people, place and connection. Absorbing, moving, comic and tragic, L.A. Weather will capture readers and never let them go. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

William McIlvanney, the father of tartan noir, made his mark on crime fiction with 1977's Laidlaw, the first book in a trilogy revolving around rule-snubbing detective Jack Laidlaw. McIlvanney died in 2015, leaving behind an unfinished manuscript and an opportunity for a from-the-beyond collaboration with his obvious literary heir, Ian Rankin, author of the Rebus series (Rather Be the Devil; Standing in Another Man's Grave; Saints of the Shadow Bible). In The Dark Remains, the Scottish masters make poetry out of the putrefaction that undergirds their unsparing story.

A prequel to Laidlaw, The Dark Remains finds the detective cutting his teeth with the Glasgow Crime Squad, which is investigating the murder of lawyer Bobby Carter, a hireling of gangster Cam Colvin. Carter was found stabbed behind a bar that's the acknowledged turf of Colvin's rival, mobster John Rhodes, which leads to much conjecture about whether Rhodes is behind the hit or being framed.

Unfolding across six days in 1972, The Dark Remains delivers a fully formed story and a fully fleshed Laidlaw, whose physical and verbal muscularity is achingly offset by his vulnerabilities (to migraines, to the lure of women who aren't his wife). Detective Sergeant Bob Lilley, Laidlaw's partner, takes a crack at deciphering the man: "He really believes there's truth to be found on the streets that exists nowhere else." This isn't to say that Laidlaw sees truth as a path to justice: "The law's not about justice," he tells Lilley. "It's a system we've put in place because we can't have justice." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Zoraida Córdova's The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina is a gorgeous work of magical realism that follows the Ecuadoran and Ecuadoran American Montoya family on a spellbinding journey as they fight for their home and their future against dangers from an obscured past.

Orquídea Divina, bruja matriarch of the Montoya family, has outlived several husbands, built an unusually productive farmstead and raised a large family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The novel begins as she summons the entire family back to Four Rivers to "collect" as she prepares for death, with short cinematic chapters following various family members as they receive invitations. The author juxtaposes scenes from Orquídea's early life with present-day events; most notably, at the beginning, Orquídea is in one chapter a half-feral girl fishing in Ecuador and the next an aged woman becoming a tree as her family surrounds her.

Córdova (Incendiary) adeptly depicts this large family, but focuses on three of Orquídea's grandchildren so that readers are quickly caught up in their struggles and dreams. Seven years after the family disperses, people start dying and a mysterious, menacing figure appears to each of the three cousins. Desperate for answers, they reunite and travel to where it all started--Orquídea's first home in Ecuador. As the cousins unearth long-buried secrets and connect with their ancestors, Córdova gives readers Orquídea's experience of the events that would shape her life and that of the Montoya family for decades to come.

The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina is a magical story with complex characters, masterful plotting and a sprawling family encompassing a range of Latinx experiences. Readers will be captivated. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

Along Came a Lady, the launch of the Regency series All the Duke's Sins, is a deeply emotional tale featuring two illegitimate offspring of upper-crust society. When the Duke and Duchess of Bentley hire lovely Edwina Dalrymple to prepare the duke's bastard son to enter society, Edwina is certain that this success will guarantee her business reputation. But first, she must travel to rural Staffordshire and convince her new charge, Rafe Audley, to leave the coal mines and return to London. She assumes he will happily agree, for after all, who would not choose the richness of a life as a duke's son over the dangerous life of a miner?

However, Rafe has already rejected the overtures of five men sent to retrieve him. He hates the duke for failing his family and wants nothing to do with him. Rafe has every intention of chasing away the duke's latest envoy, but there's something about the lovely and very earnest Edwina that charms him.

When Rafe's sister and Edwina join forces, Rafe reluctantly cooperates, but London and the duke's household hold surprises for all of them. Perhaps, they discover, being born out of wedlock isn't the insurmountable barrier they had always believed it to be.

The colorful settings of rough coal mine, village and London's elegant streets provide vivid backdrop for this well-crafted story. Rafe and Edwina are both honorable, stubborn, ultimately vulnerable and extremely likable people. Readers will be fully engaged in this delightful novel as the pair struggle to navigate the web of society expectations and gender prejudices to reach a happy ending. --Lois Faye Dyer, writer and reviewer 

Journalist and novelist Dawn Turner (Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven; An Eighth of August) has spent her career writing about politics, race and class in Chicago and across the United States, including coverage of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. In Three Girls from Bronzeville, those same themes become the lens through which Turner explores her childhood memories, as well as those of her sister and childhood best friend, whose lives started so similarly and diverged in remarkable and heartbreaking ways.

"To understand what will happen to us," writes Turner, "you have to know the place that has begun to shape us." That place is Bronzeville, a historic Chicago community known as the "cradle of the city's Great Migration, the epicenter of Black business and culture." This three-square-mile community is increasingly affected by systemic disinvestment, racially motivated policing and the opioid epidemic. Against that backdrop, Turner recalls growing up with her younger sister, Kim, and best friend, Debra, doing the things kids do: sneaking notes in classes, making up adventures in the neighborhood, trying to do right by their parents. Somewhere along the way, though, their three paths diverged: Turner, heading to college and marriage and a successful career; Kim, struggling with alcoholism and dead of a heart attack at far too young an age; and Debra, caught in the throes of addiction and sent to jail for murder.

Turner expertly combines memoir and social history in her analysis of the many systems that made Bronzeville into the place it is today--and how those same oppressive systems shape the lives of even society's youngest neighbors. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

For years, Ian Frazier has been good-naturedly stuffing the New Yorker's Shouts & Murmurs section with observations filtered through a range of hilariously moronic, incompetent and self-important fictional personas. Cranial Fracking contains 43 choice Frazier humor pieces from the past decade and longer, almost all of which were Shouts & Murmurs, and many of which flambé the newsworthy, or at least news-making, stories of their day.

Frazier seems to have a keen understanding of everything from globalism to arts funding to Prince's oeuvre to the toddler's brain ("CLAIM: Walking backward is better than walking forward"). But the discerning reader will pick up on a favored theme: the self-interest of the unreasonably rich ("Certain billionaires have evolved traits specially adapted to saving rain forests. Others have inherited characteristics well suited for preserving woodlands and open spaces near their multi-thousand-square-foot fourth homes").

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that Frazier (The Cursing Mommy's Book of Days; Hogs Wild) has been in the game for a while, a couple of pieces in Cranial Fracking address the daunting prospect of growing old. In "Of Younger Days," Frazier's narrator rhapsodizes, "I had just turned sixty-three when I began the hesitant, sweet, shy courtship of my first real girlfriend. My wife was furious, of course." And only a philistine would not be moved by the collection's lone poem, "Lines on the Poet's Turning Forty." Here's a snippet: "The big four-oh./ Yes, that is soon to be my age./ (And not fifty-eight. No way. That Wikipedia is a bunch of liars.)" --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Schuyler Bailar's powerful middle-grade debut highlights the triumphs and struggles of an adolescent transgender competitive swimmer.

After Korean American Zechariah-Obadiah "Obie" Chang begins identifying as a boy, he endures transphobic epithets hurled by his coach, abandonment by his two best friends and both physical and verbal assaults in the boys' bathroom. Traumatized but proud of himself and fueled by his passion for swimming, he joins a new team and learns to face school without his old friends.

Obie frequently updates two private lists: "People who believe I'm man enough" and "People who don't." While his parents and brother remain staunch believers in his maleness, the inhabitants of both lists shift, paralleling the conflicts in the narrative and hinting at Obie's allies and changing relationships. Despite joining a new team, Obie continues to be bullied when he encounters his old coach and teammates at swim meets. When a family member dies, though, Obie discovers that his new cis male teammates support him and they swiftly become allies.

Bailar, the first trans athlete to compete in any sport on an NCAA Division One men's team, includes a message and content warning to trans readers, a letter to cisgender readers, a glossary of LGBTQ+ terms and mental health resources. He encapsulates the mind of a seventh-grader by punctuating the traditional narration with Obie's text conversations with peers. Additionally, Obie's journal realistically encompasses thoughtful processing, anxiety about trying on "male" swimsuits and visiting the boys' restroom, and sweet wonderings about his crush. Bailar also dovetails the book's narrative with an evolving personal essay about how Obie's Korean heritage has shaped the young man he is growing to be. It mirrors the setbacks, growth and ultimate successes Obie experiences. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, co-creator of Gender Inclusive Classrooms