Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult transports readers in fluid, dreamlike prose back to March 2020, a few days before lifetimes of plans were turned upside down.

Diana O'Toole is a striving, nearly 30-year-old associate specialist at Sotheby's. She is ready for a much-needed vacation to the Galapagos Islands, where she is confident that her boyfriend, Finn, a resident at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, will propose. Everything in her life is going according to plan. But just before departure, Finn's job directs him to stay--19 cases of a novel coronavirus have been diagnosed in the city.

With Finn's encouragement, Diana travels alone to the Galapagos. The final ferry for two weeks drops her off on Isabela Island, where she finds that the hotel she'd booked is closed indefinitely. Wandering, she meets Gabriel, a farmer and former tour guide, and his daughter, Beatriz, who is struggling in isolation. She explores the island with them, learns their secrets and discovers a new life within an abundance of time. As the ferry keeps being delayed and one thing leads to another, Diana realizes getting back will not be easy and that she will not be the same when, or if, she returns.

Picoult balances a portrait of millennial New York City life with quarantine diaries from a remote beach and the front lines of an overflowing hospital. A peek into the art world and a meditation on the nature of the mind, Wish You Were Here satisfies a multitude of curiosities. --Walker Minot, teacher, freelance writer and reviewer

Dark Night, book three in Paige Shelton's Alaska Wild series, continues the adventures of thriller writer Beth Rivers in the insular small town of Benedict, Alaska. Like Thin Ice and Cold Wind, this installment offers intrigue in a low-gore, cozy package.

Beth is known to the rest of the world under her pseudonym, Elizabeth Fairchild, but after an abduction and skin-of-the-teeth escape, she's retreated to this remote hamlet to live quietly and anonymously: only the local police chief knows who she really is. With winter closing in and a few friends kept at arm's distance, Beth tries to heal from the trauma and go on with her writing, hoping to hear that her abductor has been caught. Instead, her mother turns up unexpectedly. Mill Rivers is a loose cannon, on the run from the law herself--and she may be Beth's best hope at finding peace and finally feeling safe again. A local murder, of course, spices things up. Between Beth's reluctant romantic interest in the comically named Tex Southern, the propensity of Benedict's residents to keep their secrets, an ill-mannered, unwanted census taker and yet another fugitive in town, mother and daughter will have their hands full solving mysteries large and small.

Shelton's plot is twistier than a path through the dark Alaska woods. Suspicions shift and suspense builds in this novel of discovery, growth, relationship building and investigatory hijinks. As a bonus, Dark Night ends with a lead-in to the next episode: Beth Rivers's trajectory will surely extend and continue to complicate as she deepens her roots in the captivating town of Benedict. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

If Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan was Chinese American and did her private investigating not in Baltimore but in Manhattan, she might be Lydia Chin, who drives the hard-charging but thought-churning Family Business, another welcome offering in Edgar Award winner S.J. Rozan's Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery series. Like Tess, Lydia protects more than her clients: she'll be damned if someone is going to mess with her city.

As Family Business begins, crime boss Big Brother Choi has just died--of natural causes, of all things. Choi owned a Chinatown building occupied by the New York branch of the Li Min Jin, the tong over which he presided for decades. Developer Jackson Ting wants to buy the property, which would mean the building's demolition and, as Lydia grouses, "that whole gentrification thing." The decision to sell is now up to Mel Wu, a real estate attorney who inherited the property from Choi, her uncle. Mel hires Lydia and Bill Smith, Lydia's partner (in both senses), to escort her to the building, where Choi's top lieutenant said he would give her the message her uncle intended for her. She never receives it.

Family Business contains some gasp-making reveals and leaves readers with lots to ponder--about loyalty, about assimilation. Rozan embroiders her story with references to Chinese customs courtesy of chatterbox narrator Lydia, who uses her background to professional advantage. Still, her ultra-traditional mother considers her a disappointment: Why date a white guy like Bill when she could date Jackson Ting? --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

From Cain and Abel to The Silence of the Lambs, The Graphic Canon of Crime & Mystery, Volume 2 selects accounts of murder and intrigue and presents them as an eye-catching gallery of graphic shorts.

By employing a different illustrator for every piece, the book showcases the breadth of comics stylings. Landis Blair depicts Kafka's The Trial through detailed cross-hatch drawings, limericks and choose-your-own-adventure twists. It's one of several black-and-white renderings, alongside Rebecca (illustrated by Emily Rose Dixon) and "The Tell-Tale Heart" (illustrated by Dame Darcy). By contrast, Katherine Hearst's version of Chaucer's "The Pardoner's Tale" is in abstract watercolors, and Till Lukat's take on the Ellery Queen story "The Lamp of God" has a turquoise and magenta palette.

Within thematic sections such as "Killers" and "Revenge," pieces appear in chronological order. Editor Russ Kick's prefaces provide background information and an appreciation of the artist's approach. Most tales are extracted or condensed into 10-page segments. A few stretch to encompass the full plot, such as Anthony Ventura's adaptation of Shakespeare's gruesome Titus Andronicus. Some illustrators return to the source material rather than a better-known movie, as Rachel Leah Gallo does in a largely wordless reworking of Psycho.

Besides familiar names such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett, Kick highlights lesser-known authors like sensation novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Lady Audley's Secret) and Emmuska Orczy, whose Lady Molly was an early female detective.

With styles varying from gothic to manga, this is a perfect tasting course for crime readers new to graphic novels. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

In her memoir, Sex Cult Nun, lawyer Faith Jones sensitively explores her traumatic experiences in the Children of God cult.

Also known as the Family, the religious movement--founded by her grandfather, David Brandt Berg--interpreted Christian scriptures to allow free love and link seduction with evangelism. Jones's father kept two wives. Growing up on a Family compound in Macau, Jones would sometimes accompany her mother on "flirty fishing" outings, and was encouraged to spend time alone with adult men and learned how to perform sexual favors.

Readers are sure to be compelled, despite some horrifying situations, because of how Jones re-creates her innocent child-self's point of view as a fluid present-tense narrative. This makes the Family's policies seem natural--this way of life was all she knew. And although her strict parents employed corporal punishment, her upbringing wasn't all bad: she vividly evokes the sultry tropical heat, the purposefulness of waking up at 4:30 a.m. to start farm chores and the feeling of being set apart from the "Systemites" outside the cult.

Only after mission journeys in Europe and Asia and a return to the U.S. for college did Jones awaken to the truth of the child abuse she suffered. It took a boyfriend using the word "rape" for her to realize she had been taken advantage of. This haunting memoir provides a thorough history of the Family as well as a personal record of a journey to understanding consent and being able to declare "I own me!" --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Readers will have no complaints with Sharon Gless's bawdy, blisteringly candid and no-holds-barred memoir that grips from the first page to the last. "The one consistent love of my life has always been my acting career," writes Gless, who learned her craft for more than a decade as the last contract player at Universal Studios. In 1982, after twice turning down the co-lead role in Cagney and Lacey, she relented and joined Tyne Daly in the iconic police drama, which earned her two Emmy awards, a Golden Globe and legions of fans. During the series' seventh season, she began an affair with the show's producer, Barney Rosenzweig, and checked herself into rehab for two months after decades of blackout drinking.

Gless recalls being sent to a Jesuit university at 19: "Within three months I had become a weekend drunk and was having an affair with a married man." Gless writes with sardonic humor and fearless honesty about her alcohol addiction and decade-long relapse after 15 years sober. She also chronicles her battles with weight and self-esteem. She married Rosenzweig in 1991, and she's open about their marital struggles, decades of therapy and near-divorce.

Apparently There Were Complaints offers rollicking show-biz anecdotes (a date with Steven Spielberg) and times when she was "sucked into a haze of booze and cocaine.... Hey, it was the '80s." Gless also writes affectionately of working on Queer as Folk, Burn Notice and Nip Tuck. Gless may remind some of Carrie Fisher, but she has her own tart-tongued, funny, endearingly original and brave voice. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Journalist Claire Dunn once spent a year living off the grid in the Australian bush, a transformative experience she chronicled in My Year Without Matches. After moving to Melbourne, Dunn found herself not only overwhelmed by the urban bustle, but craving ways truly to connect to the wildness that was sometimes hidden under the city's concrete heart. In her second book, Rewilding the Urban Soul, Dunn charts her experiments in foraging, observing and learning about local wildlife species, kayaking a city river and even making herself a (locally trapped) fox fur coat.

Much as Dunn was shaped by her time in the bush, she knew she couldn't stay there. But she didn't want a typically fast-paced urban life, either. In warm, insightful prose, Dunn relates her experiences building a new life from scratch: settling into a communal house, leading "Rewild Friday" groups at a local park, teaching others to see the physical world in the city while re-seeing it herself. She delves into the disconnect that sometimes exists between urban dwellers and their surroundings, and tries different ways of bridging the gap. Though the details of Dunn's landscape are vividly Australian, her strategies are available to many urban dwellers: anyone can learn the names of local birds, trees and other species, or make an effort to find out where their food and water come from. Dunn's humility, thoughtfulness and curiosity make her an excellent guide to finding and following a thread of wildness in any city. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Six decades since its 1959 publication, Marcel Duchamp by Robert Lebel et al. is back in print, and it's a must-have for anyone who wants better to comprehend an artist who made a career of doing the semi-incomprehensible. The book--Duchamp's first monograph and catalogue raisonné--swarms with photographs and reproductions of his work and is faithful to the French Dadaist's original design. Marcel Duchamp is an art book, a time capsule and a portrait of the artist by four contributors, including the artist himself.

Duchamp (1887-1968) made his first big splash in 1912 with his titillatingly titled but eroticism-free painting Nude Descending a Staircase, which, Marcel Duchamp reports, one flummoxed critic described as conjuring "an explosion in a shingle factory." That same triumphant year, Duchamp quit painting and turned to ready-mades; writes Lebel, "He would spruce up the Mona Lisa with a beard and moustache or recommend, as a 'reciprocal ready-made,' the use of a Rembrandt 'as an ironing-board.' "

Marcel Duchamp highlights the artist's love of wordplay, perhaps most famously employed in his pseudonym Rrose Sélavy (pronounced "C'est la vie"). This humor coexisted with Duchamp's easy-to-miss seriousness. In his exultant essay about their friendship, writer H.P. Roché offers, "When he submitted a porcelain urinal to the New York Independents, he was saying: 'Beauty is around you wherever you choose to discover it.' " The New York Independents thought the urinal, which Duchamp titled Fountain, was saying something else: after the 1917 show opened, he was forced to withdraw it. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Spell Sweeper by Lee Edward Fodi (The Secret of Zoone) is a middle-grade magic school adventure that features a sassy and smart-mouthed heroine who wants to be recognized as a real wizard instead of as one who cleans up after them.

Seventh-grader Cara Moone attends Dragonsong Academy for the magically gifted, but she's not learning how to brew potions or cast spells. Rather, Cara is learning to clean up messes. Equipped with her trusty broom, she is a MOP, a Magical Occurrence Purger, who "sweeps" the spell dust left behind when "real" wizards do magic--real wizards like 15-year-old Harlee Wu, the "so-called Chosen One" and Cara's sworn enemy. After one of Harlee's magical feats, Cara is faced with sweeping a slime-oozing rift in the Field of Magical Matter, which is what wizards access when spellcasting. Though Cara closes it--by herself--Master Quibble, the MOP department head (who thinks Cara a "disobedient failure"), doesn't believe her. Worse yet, Cara is sure he won't believe her theory that Harlee is using an occuli, a forbidden magical talisman.

Spell Sweeper is a genre-loyal magic school tale full of mischievous antics told from the point of view of a gutsy girl wizard who never lacks a comeback. Daring leap-before-you-look moments, hilarious mishaps and tense family drama add excitement, levity and depth. Interspersed between chapters are quirky guides on the "wizarding world" and tender reflections on Cara's most private memories. Together, Cara and her wizard companions show that people are not always who they seem on the outside and, if given the chance, they can truly shine. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

Our Violent Ends continues the satisfying, high-stakes tale of forbidden love that began in These Violent Delights. Chloe Gong brings the duology to a close amid a culture of moral decay and an ever-increasing body count.

This sequel picks up four months after the "monster of Shanghai" was killed, and the madness associated with it has abated. But even as citizens celebrate, the bloody gang war between Scarlets and White Flowers rages on. Confrontations between Communists and Nationalists heat up as well and, in the emerging political landscape, both Scarlets and White Flowers stand to lose all their hard-won power and territories. Scarlet heir Juliette Cai hasn't seen ex-lover and White Flower heir Roma Montagov since she saved his life by pretending to shoot one of his closest friends. In the ensuing months, Roma, certain Juliette betrayed him, has become a bitter, angry killer intent on vengeance. But now the pair must work together again to track down a blackmailer who demands payment in exchange for the city's safety: while only one monster caused chaos and destruction before, "I have five," the blackmailer's note warns. "Do as I say, or everyone dies."

Chloe Gong revisits Romeo and Juliet--"one of Shakespeare's best plays" Gong states in her bio--and sets it in the "uproarious decadence" of an alternate 1920s Shanghai in political and social turmoil. At the heart lies the smoldering romance between Roma and Juliette, which simultaneously threatens to blaze into deadly violence and amorous love at any moment. Against such a ruthless backdrop, with loyalties tested, how can true love possibly win out? --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author