Folkloric elements blend with pure romance in Rhonda Riley's startling The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope, a debut novel that raises questions about how well we ever know our loved ones.

In the aftermath of World War II, the course of Evelyn Roe's life changes forever when she unearths a horribly scarred person buried in the red clay of her family's North Carolina farm. As the scarring quickly transfigures itself into new skin and features, Evelyn realizes something fantastical is at work. She finds herself in charge of a fully grown being who remembers nothing of its past, who can change form as well as gender, who is both otherworldly and completely human.

Determined to protect this innocent life, Evelyn makes up a history for Adam that will allow them to live a normal life--they marry, work the land and produce children, their love and commitment strengthening as the years pass. Questions remain, though: Who--and what--is Adam? How much of their father's nature have their daughters inherited, and how can Evelyn explain that to them?

Riley's unusual meditation on the private worlds we build to shelter our partners and our children is written with earthiness and deep appreciation for the power of the land. Evelyn's guilt over the lies she tells her family is mitigated by the discovery that her parents have in turn kept a secret to protect her--that humans use layers of deception not only for evil purposes but out of love.

Both dreamily erotic and filled with the relatable minutiae of day-to-day life, Evelyn and Adam's love story will make readers reassess their own origin stories. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Latah County Library District; blogger at Infinite Reads

If Isabel Allende hadn't chosen to alternate between the past and present narratives of Maya's Notebook, the suspense in her 10th novel (not counting her YA books) would have been unbearable.

Maya Vidal is boarding an airplane in San Francisco as the novel opens, bound for Chile with a fresh notebook from her beloved grandmother Nini and an admonition "to write down the monumental stupidities you've committed." At 19, Maya has been lovingly banished to the islands of Chiloé where she can be kept out of trouble--and safe from her pursuers.

Maya's fresh, direct narration is endearing, although her "stupidities" are monumental. Raised by her Chilean Nini and Popo, Maya has overcome her mother's abandonment and her father's neglect. But Popo's death sends Maya into a downward spiral, and she embraces every temptation her Berkeley environment offers until her innate sense kicks in, buttressed by Nini's courageous tenacity.

Maya's story is woven with mysticism, revelations of complex family relationships, spirituality of several stripes and memories of the dark years after Chile's 1973 military coup. Allende's irrepressible humor brightens her journey to self-discovery, and readers will cheer her on as, under the care and gentle tutelage of Nini's old friend Manual Arias and the villagers of Chiloé, she revives physically and emotionally. The story of Maya's recovery, as she takes to the simple challenges of daily tasks and learns to savor small pleasures, alternates with details of the addiction and brutalities of her past--ultimately confirming the young woman's redemption... but not before a thrilling last-chapter twist. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco

Deanna Raybourn (The Dark Enquiry) brings to life the splendor of 1920s Kenya in a romantic story of finding oneself by leaving home.

Beautiful young socialite Delilah Drummond is the outrage of two continents (three, if she counts South America) with her string of failed marriages, reckless behavior and constant drinking. Her newest scandal, a property dispute with her late ex-husband's heirs, has even raised eyebrows in her current home city of Paris. Her devil-may-care attitude finally sees Delilah exiled to Kenya at the behest of her mother and stepfather until talk dies down.

Packed off to her stepfather's African estate, Delilah faces challenges beyond the harsh heat and wild animals: The house is falling apart, the feckless steward is cheating the estate and the local native tribe looks to her for succor. Most challenging of all is her attraction to Ryder White, a Canadian guide as intense and untamed as Africa itself. Through him, she learns to see the beauty and majesty of Kenya as well as its brutal, uncompromising nature. When blood is spilled on her land, Delilah sees the difference between brazenness and true bravery, between what we cling to out of fear and what's truly worth a fight.

Watching prickly, complicated Delilah go from carefree to caring without losing a modicum of style is as entrancing as Raybourn's relationship-driven plot and loving descriptions of the Kenyan landscape. Readers won't want Delilah's sensual safari to come to an end. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager at Latah County Library District and blogger at Infinite Reads

The poet Denise Levertov (1923-1997) is finally getting the biographical treatment she deserves. Less than a year after the publication of Dana Greene's A Poet's Life, Donna Krolik Hollenberg presents the comprehensive, in-depth A Poet's Revolution--an effort, she says, to "observe the connections between life and work in a way that illuminates the greatness of the major poems."

Levertov was born in England into many cultures: Jewish, German, Welsh, English. Well educated, she began writing poetry early. At 12, she sent some poems to T.S. Eliot for comment; he was encouraging. After her first book, The Double Image, was published in 1947, she married and moved to the U.S., where she came under the influence of such poets as Robert Duncan and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

With her title, Hollenberg places Levertov's life in the right place, revolution--which the poet embraced as "the only word/ we have." Her poetry was filled with political and anti-war material; some felt it detracted from her art, but she kept at it until her later years when, after converting to Catholicism, her work took on a very religious, contemplative tone.

Hollenberg quotes extensively from the poems to show that Levertov's life was a "process of growth" personally and artistically. In the end, she points to the poem "Hymns to the Darkness" and its line about "embracing the dark." Levertov died in a Seattle hospital on December 20, 1997--the darkest night of the year. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

Ten years after her pioneering transgender memoir, She's Not There, Jennifer Finney Boylan's Stuck in the Middle with You reveals how making the transition from a man to a woman affected her wife, Deedie, and their two young sons. Boylan describes being "a father for six years, a mother for 10, and neither or both--a parental version of the schnoodle, or the cockapoo--for a time in between."

At 40, James Boylan committed to becoming Jenny; when this memoir opens 10 years later, Jenny is reflecting on what a good life she has. She loves her teaching career, she and Deedie have a strong marriage and their boys are thriving teenagers. In a seamless updating of her journey, she relates stories (often hilarious) of her parents and childhood, the acceptance of their Maine community and the strength of her nuclear family. Cavalier about their father becoming their second mother, the boys opted to call her "Maddy."

What is parenting? "Every family is a nontraditional family," Boylan suggests, alternating her autobiography with 11 illuminating and heartrending interviews with Richard Russo, Augusten Burroughs and other writers, along with an adopted adult reunited with his birth mother, a father who adopted an autistic son and others who, as they tell their stories, posit thoughtful questions to Jenny as well.

While Boylan is writing as a transgender parent, Stuck in the Middle with You is ultimately an inspiring tribute, full of endearing wisdom and humor, to unconditional family love regardless of labels and gender. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco

Christine Byl's Dirt Work adeptly intermingles stories of life as a trail dog--"a laborer who works in the woods maintaining, repairing, building, and designing trails"--with reflections on her natural surroundings. The stories are grounded by the ax, rock bar, chainsaw, boat, skid steer and shovel she learns to use to clear deadfalls, haul away brush, clean ditches and build rock staircases and log walkways. Cold, dirty and wet are some of the adjectives Byl consistently uses to describe her 10- to 14-hour days slogging through thick brush or fording icy cold rivers thigh deep to reach a designated work site.

Covering 16 years and hundreds of miles of trails in the Glacier and Denali national parks--plus one steadfast relationship--Byl reflects on the tools she needed, her fellow trail dogs, the wildness that surrounds her and the meaning of labor--hard, physical labor, the kind that either makes or breaks a person. Byl discovers herself amid the sweat, bugs, dirt and dirty jokes, and rejoices in the way her body feels and responds to the demands she places on it. Her expressive and descriptive prose opens the doorway to a hard but fulfilling way of life that few people notice or get to experience firsthand. "[The] outdoors," she reminds us, "is not playground but homeschool, where I am taught to settle in, over and over until being outside isn't about endurance or leisure, but life." --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

After the close of his first memoir, Dishwasher, Pete Jordan moved to Amsterdam for a semester to study urban planning, with a focus on his passion: bicycles. He never left.

Jordan's decision to move was rather capricious--he knew almost nothing about Amsterdam--but he found a city packed with bicycles and rich with cycling history. In the City of Bikes is the story of his journey from itinerant dishwasher to settled family man, as well as a thoroughly researched history of the bicycle in Amsterdam. Beginning with the early bikes of the 1800s and cycling's golden age in the 1890s, when the safety bicycle hit the streets, Jordan moves on to the tire shortages and (in this case, bicycle-related) atrocities of the city's Nazi occupation before concluding with his own place in modern cycle-crazy Amsterdam.

Joining Jordan are his new wife, Amy Joy, and their son, Ferris, a passenger and later pilot of Amsterdam bicycles since his conception. When Amy Joy becomes proprietor of a local bike shop, the Jordans have truly found their home in the Dutch capital. Considering his reason for going in the first place, Jordan is especially well suited and qualified to tell this story, and he lives up to expectations with a meticulous detailing of Amsterdam's bikes. Full of personal anecdote, self-deprecating humor, local lore and a history of cycling that positively bursts with enthusiasm, In the City of Bikes is both a memoir and an ode to bicycles. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Thomas Day was an 18th-century aristocrat whose progressive political views, rooted in the ideals of liberty, equality and philanthropic good, clashed wildly with his constrictive views on women. While Day's experiments in grooming the perfect mate became a source of mirth among his peers, they provide fresh fodder for Wendy Moore's How to Create the Perfect Wife, which examines the age-old debate on nature versus nurture through painstaking historical research.

By the the time he turned 20, Day had already suffered two broken engagements and considerable heartbreak, leading him to conclude contemporary education was instilling women with corrupted values and that perfection could come only from schooling them in the virtuous ideals of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. So he hatched a scheme to groom a wife who would be "strong-willed and self-sufficient yet utterly doting and dedicated to his every whim." To that end, he kidnapped two preteen orphans under the guise of an apprenticeship, renamed them and subjected them to a battery of torturous mental and physical tests. Even finding a young girl who could rise to this challenge, though, failed to bring him satisfaction.

Moore frames Day's life through its ironic twists, contrasting his lofty political ambitions against his hypocritical views toward women. She even manages to impart varying degrees of sympathy for the morally repugnant Day--a testament to her ability to look beyond surface appearances and give the reader meaty philosophical quandaries to ponder. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Kimberley Griffiths Little (Circle of Secrets) lyrically captures the complex feelings of grief and renewal for 12-year-old Tara Scarlett Doucet, "daughter of one of the oldest families in New Iberia Parish, descendant of the original Paris Doucet family," after the sudden death of her beloved Grammy Claire.

Tara's mother often slides into melancholy absences, and her older sister, Riley, seems to care more about boys and rock music than keeping the family together. But Grammy Claire anticipated what Tara might need, and leaves her granddaughter a legacy of adventure and surprise, beginning with 10 keys, a warning of danger and notes that lead Tara to a series of interlocking questions and answers. All revolve around the mysterious nipwisipwis (butterflies), which seem to be dying off prematurely, one by one. Could whoever is responsible for that also have caused Grammy Claire's car accident? As in Maureen Johnson's 13 Little Blue Envelopes, the journey brings the heroine closer not only to the loved one she misses, but also to herself.

The author discloses some delectable facts about butterflies and their habitats, as well as some insights about human nature. As her mother clings to the past glories of her family, Tara works to remain present, and to slowly build a future for herself--with the help of her grandmother. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Gripping, haunting, and fascinating, Wild Boy carries the same emotional impact as its subject--a feral child discovered when he was about age 10 in Southern France in the late 1700s. The boy was taken to the mountainous village of Lacaune and instantly became a magnet for scientists, doctors, tourists, teachers and bullies.

Mary Losure (The Fairy Ring) lyrically and smoothly tells a story full of discovery and pain, as some "men of science" declared the boy an "imbecile," while others, particularly Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, sensed untapped potential in him. Losure does an especially fine job of exploring the gray area between science and humanity as Dr. Itard struggles to be a teacher, psychiatrist and, at times, father, to the boy he dubbed "Victor." Quotations from Itard's journals tell of his conflicting feelings. Though Losure researched her subject exhaustively and includes extensive back matter that makes this exemplary nonfiction, she never bogs down the story with too many facts or jargon. Her writing emphasizes story over science--a choice that honors Victor himself.

Timothy Basil Ering's smudged charcoal illustrations highlight Victor's facial expressions, which range from tormented to angry to joyful to wondering. Though Victor could never speak beyond simple vocabulary, those who knew Victor were always impressed by the starkness of his emotions, a quality Ering captures beautifully. Working together, Losure and Ering never leave readers in doubt as to Victor's humanity. Readers will be struck by the differences between themselves and Victor, but also haunted by the similarities. --Allie Jane Bruce, children's librarian, Bank Street College of Education