Olivia Blacke continues her quirky, warmhearted Brooklyn Murder Mysteries series with No Memes of Escape, her second book featuring amateur sleuth Odessa Dean. Small-town Southern girl Odessa, whom readers met in Killer Content, is loving her summer in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, N.Y., staying at her aunt's bougie apartment and waitressing at Untapped Books & Café. But things take a turn when Odessa and her friend Izzy join an escape-room adventure that ends in murder--and Izzy is a prime suspect. Determined to clear her friend's name, Odessa runs around the city (in her cowboy boots) interviewing other suspects. Then her Aunt Melanie comes home early, and Odessa has a new worry: she might have to leave New York City and head back to Louisiana unless she and Izzy can find another place.

Blacke's love for Brooklyn shines through in her writing, which celebrates the anything-goes range of New York lifestyles and the particular hipster bent of Williamsburg. Odessa's coworkers are an appealing bunch, and Izzy is a stalwart friend (though Odessa suspects she's hiding something). A return visit to the escape room provides fresh insight, and despite a couple of minor plot points that border on implausible, this second fish-out-of-water NYC adventure is great fun. Readers will want to pull up a seat at Untapped Books and order the day's special from Chef Parker (while hoping grumpy manager Todd is distracted by his Tinder dates). Odessa's roots may be pure Louisiana bayou, but her adventures in Brooklyn make for entertaining reading. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Secrets and gossip--and the fear that those confidences may leak out--seep through the upscale Cottonwood Estates community, where every resident has something to hide. The poignant and often amusing The Neighbor's Secret, L. Allison Keller's third novel, takes a deep dive into the personalities of a group of women and how they keep themselves sane and their families intact while dealing with betrayal. A monthly book club serves as their salvation.

The neighborhood used to revolve around wealthy Lena Meeker, whose elaborate parties united the residents--until 15 years ago, when a teenager was killed in an automobile accident following one of her gatherings. Now a recluse, Lena avoids neighbors, speaks only sporadically with her nearly estranged daughter and thrives on online shopping and "a rotating cast of paid friends," such as landscapers or cleaners. New neighbor Annie Perley desperately wants to be Lena's friend, pressuring her to join the book club. A much-needed social outlet, the club allows the women's personalities to surface as they discuss books, social issues, their children's problems and a vandal destroying neighborhood decorations. As the truth behind that car accident surfaces, more violence unexpectedly enters the women's homes.

Heller's fine hand at humor realistically illustrates the absurdity that can arise daily--an attempt at a woke potluck backfires; silly drinks concocted to match the book discussion (Pernod, champagne, lemon juice); regifted soaps with two bars missing. Heller (The Never Never Sisters) shows an affluent neighborhood's dark side, where threats and violence lie below the polished surface. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

It Started with a Dog, the second installment of Julia London's cheerful Lucky Dog rom-com series, is set in Austin, Tex., during the Christmas season. London cleverly brings together two 30-something dog lovers with personalities and agendas as different as caffeinated versus decaffeinated coffee.

Aeronautical engineer Jonah Rogers leaves his job to help out at the Lucky Star, a charmingly humble--however lagging--coffee shop run by his parents, his aunt and uncle. With his father ill, Jonah--reliable and devoted, sacrificing and loyal--steps in to assist the longstanding family business that offers no frills, old-school coffee and desserts. Matters become complicated when he accidentally swaps his phone with Chicagoan Harper Thompson, in town to launch Deja Brew--a trendy, two-story coffee house accented with gleaming chrome coffee makers that serves upscale coffee and vegan food choices. The driven, only-child overachiever is up for a promotion riding on the success of Deja Brew. However, can she contend with Lucky Star, a local fixture in town, and a Starbucks situated in the very same neighborhood?

Along the way, Jonah and Harper and their swapped phones lead them to romance as they discover they are business rivals. The local King Mutt dog competition ups the ante, pitting the couple--and their dogs, the lovable three-legged Dachshund mascot of Lucky Star versus Harper's mean old bulldog--against each other.

A perfect blend of coffee, dogs and romance permeates London's (You Lucky Dog; Charmer in Chaps) frothy rom-com that will leave readers thirsty for a third helping in this sweet, enjoyable series. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Egyptian-British author Nadia Wassef's gorgeous, entertaining memoir recounts the launching of a modern bookstore, the first of its kind, in Egypt's chaotic capital of Cairo at the turn of the 21st century. With chapters corresponding to the different sections of the bookstore and its cafe, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller celebrates the remarkable success of the venture while sharing with humble honesty and wry humor the personal and professional challenges it created for the author.

Named Diwan, an Arabic word for "meeting place," the bookstore embodies Wassef and her sister Hind's dream to establish a female-led literary hub in patriarchal Egyptian society, where culture had atrophied, illiteracy was common and book lovers had few options to satisfy their intellectual cravings. Wassef's exuberance at realizing her dream was tempered by the reality of Egyptian society's cultural aversion to women in power and the suffocating encroachment of governmental bureaucracies. A shipment of The Naked Chef by Jamie Oliver placed Diwan directly in the crosshairs of Egypt's archaic censorship laws, and Wassef worked hard to convince the censorship bureau official--via her male lawyer--that The Naked Chef was not offensive to public morals.

Wassef's debut brims with wistfully elegant musings on the consolation and inspiration offered by literature, and the struggles of parenting two young daughters while serving at the helm of Diwan's expanding empire. From a visionary who is passionate about the written word, Wassef's memoir is both an intimate reckoning with motherhood, marriage and feminism and a thoughtful meditation on Egyptian literary culture and history. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer

Richard Antoine White's memoir I'm Possible: A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream begins onstage, with a professional orchestra performance facing "the plumage of red seats," then flashes back to the narrator's childhood, homeless on the streets of the Sandtown neighborhood in Baltimore, Md. The tension between these two scenes outlines his story. White is the first African American to earn a doctorate of music in tuba performance; his family and community background has included addiction, violence, poverty, instability and racism. In his prologue, he sets the upbeat tone he'll hold throughout this memoir. "I want you to read this story and feel like you are a superhero," he writes. "I am possible. You are possible. Everything is possible."

White recounts how he survived his mother's addiction, childhood homelessness, unforgiving Baltimore winters and much more. His journey takes him from Sandtown to the suburbs to the Baltimore School for the Arts, then to the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins, graduate school at Indiana University and eventually the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra. He enjoys strong friendships and excellent mentorships, and becomes a hard worker. Music is an escape, "a light going on in the dark. Like seeing a star for the first time."

White writes passionately, his tone disarmingly direct, with flashes of lyric brilliance: "The look on her face was flint and it struck against the steel in me and sparked." His casual, earnest storytelling style beautifully suits this moving narrative, and admirably achieves a tone that is stirring but not saccharine. Readers will find his account touching and inspirational. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Journalist Janine di Giovanni, a Guggenheim Fellowship winner, turns her keen reportorial eye to the plight of ancient--and quickly disappearing--Christian communities in The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, and the Twilight of Christianity in the Land of the Prophets.

After years of reporting from some of the world's most dangerous places, di Giovanni begins her intensely personal journey into the realm of faith during a Covid-19 lockdown in Paris, France, in 2020. Observing the empty streets, she sees it as a somber metaphor for the alarming disappearance of Middle Eastern Christian communities from Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Egypt--lands where Christianity was born, but now where it is dying out. Moving effortlessly from past to present, she describes the "then and now" situation of vanishing Christians in these four regions, personalizing them with a rich repository of individual stories and interviews of people struggling to stay Christian (and alive) in war-torn and Muslim-majority countries. Fascinated by how believers manage to hold onto their faith amid oppression, poverty and war, she realizes that "their faith, in many ways, is more powerful than any of the armies I have seen trying to destroy them."

Di Giovanni's mesmeric narrative is an elegant balance of journalism and history that also includes semi-autobiographical reflections of the role faith plays in her own life. Seeking to illuminate those "worlds and communities of people who might, in one hundred years' time, no longer be on this earth," di Giovanni grants life forever on the page to those vanishing now. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver, Colo.

After 20 years as a Christian pastor and environmental activist, Victoria Loorz was burned out in both roles. Church of the Wild candidly traces how she integrated her twin callings by cofounding the ecumenical Wild Church Network, and paints an appealing picture of a nature-rooted theology.

Christianity's hierarchical language has set up a false division between humanity and nature, Loorz believes. Some Christians view God as a remote creator uninvolved in the everyday; when she mentioned feeling connected to animals and trees, churchgoers chided her for embracing pantheism. Yet she sees nature as "shimmering with divine presence." Observing a doe and fawns up close in her yard becomes a particularly sacred experience for her.

Nowadays, Loorz considers herself an "edge walker" of the "Christ tradition," with mystics from all faith traditions modeling proper reverence. Through convincing studies of the notion of wilderness in scripture (biblical depictions of the wild include Jesus going up a mountain to pray and John the Baptist's subsistence lifestyle in the desert), Loorz develops the refreshing insight that the life of the spirit is primarily about relationships and "conversation with others who are not human."

Invoking a sense of mystery, Loorz makes theology accessible to laypeople. A closing "Resources" section gives sample outdoor liturgy from the Church of the Wild she started in Ojai, Calif.

This engaging work blends exegesis and anecdotes, citing thinkers like Robin Wall Kimmerer and Robert Macfarlane as it encourages a spirituality that is in touch with nature and unconfined by doctrine. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Essayist Kimberly Harrington (Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words) brings her signature wit to But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits, 30 essays reflecting on the quiet unraveling of her marriage. Though each piece is decidedly personal, the collection feels universal, encouraging all readers--partnered or not, happily or less so--to reexamine the common narratives around marriage and divorce.

If that all sounds a bit heavy, trust Harrington to supply the biting humor she is known for while avoiding any hint of malice toward her former husband, noting that he approved every page. These choices support Harrington's argument that divorce need not be a tragedy, ultimately answering her own question: "Could we want the best for each other even when that 'best' wasn't each other?"

An amicable divorce is not unusual, so why this book? Perhaps because of the couple's unconventional decision to separate formally while continuing to live and parent together, maintaining the family structure for themselves and their children. Harrington navigates the quirks of this arrangement (separate bedrooms, dating apps, family vacations?) but never gets bogged down in the minutiae of her experience. Instead, she chooses to focus on those questions that weigh on everyone: How did I get here? What do I still have to discover? When is good enough not good enough? Never claiming to know the answers, Harrington invites readers into her story, giving them the chance to empathize or relate, regardless of relationship status. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian-in-training

The People Remember uses a rhythmic and poetic style to link the seven principles of Kwanzaa to the history of African descendants in the Americas.

The book begins with Africans being stolen from their homes; Ashanti, Fulani, Ibo, Yoruba, Akan and many other peoples were bound and taken across the ocean to the Americas. When "they landed on the shores/ of South Carolina and Virginia,/ Hispaniola and Brazil," speaking different tongues, they had to learn how to communicate with each other in order to become "all one." The people remember slavery, freedom and the Great Migration "to new lands,/ to new borders" where they could grow and eat a slice of the American pie. But it wasn't easy. The accounts of historical resilience and solidarity work together, building to one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa, such as Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination) or Nia (purpose).

Accompanying Ibi Zoboi's inspirational text is Loveis Wise's digitally rendered artwork. Wise (Say Her Name) creates bold, jewel-toned illustrations that break literal boundaries--a lick of flame, a leg outstretched in dance, a flying bird that acts as an artistic interpretation of poetry all slide across the gutter to make double-page spreads. This, the detailed faces and the intricate backgrounds of Black people perfectly reflect Zoboi's words and show that the people, their creativity and their faith cannot be boxed in. In her debut picture book, Zoboi (Punching the Air; American Street) invites people of all ages to dive into a lyrical telling of the plight of African descendants in the Americas, their tenacious spirits and their ability to find their own culture. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer