Helen Oyeyemi's readers have come to expect the unusual from her--rendered in virtuoso prose. Boy, Snow, Bird delivers once again, though it is in many ways more down-to-earth than her previous offerings. While it has surreal fairy-tale echoes, as well as some nearly implausible plot twists, Boy, Snow, Bird feels like a venture into more mainstream accessibility. In Mr. Fox, Oyeyemi reconfigured the tale of Bluebeard; here she takes on Snow White, cleverly weaving together the "white" obsession inherent in the well-known story to explore questions of identity, specifically with regard to race and gender.

Set in 1950s America, much of Boy, Snow, Bird is narrated from the perspective of Boy Novak, a pale blonde girl from New York City. Boy flees the city to escape her abusive father, and the random bus she boards takes her to Flax Hill, Mass. Soon she meets the symbolically named Arturo Whitman, and his stepdaughter, Snow.

When Boy and Arturo have a child, his secret (and the irony of his last name) is revealed. Questions of identity whirl about in the events that unfold--in the character of Bird, their free-spirited, dark-skinned daughter; in Snow and her enigmatic appearance of perfection; and in Boy herself, whose behavior toward Snow shows all the markers of the wicked queen from the fairy tale. But like all the characters in Boy, Snow, Bird, Boy's identity is mercurial, ever-changing; she retains a choice until the end as to what she will ultimately become. --Ilana Teitelbaum, book reviewer and author

When "Jane Doe" was airlifted to her Seattle ICU from the Olympic Peninsula, Dr. Charlotte Reese had no idea how intertwined their lives would become. Gemini, Carol Cassella's third novel, following Oxygen and Healer, presents a medical mystery, an ethical conundrum and a love story, with one question at its heart: Who is Jane Doe?

An answer would make Charlotte's job easier: identification of the unconscious patient would mean a relative could make decisions and guide Jane's fate. But nobody is looking for Jane, until Charlotte's long-time partner, Eric, who lived on the Peninsula as a teenager, realizes that Jane is his old friend Renee.

The novel alternates between chapters titled "Charlotte" and "Renee," and the reader learns how "twinned" the two women become. While Charlotte's chapters are set in the story's immediate present, Renee's encompass her life from childhood--including her friendship with Eric--up to the accident that brought her to Charlotte's care. With Eric's support, Charlotte's compassion for her struggling patient extends beyond the bounds of medicine, leading them to Renee's adolescent son and truths that affect them all deeply.

Cassella includes medical and genetic specifics that in a less-carefully crafted work might overwhelm a reader, but are balanced here by compelling characters and plotlines. The breathtaking, hardscrabble beauty of the rural Pacific coast, the tenacity of Charlotte and Renee, Eric and Charlotte's loyalty and love all mesh in an engrossing story with a miraculous conclusion. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco

Inspector Bordelli, the protagonist of Marco Vichi's Death in Sardinia, is conflicted. It's December 1965, and he's realizing that the war, which still vividly haunts him, is a distant memory to the youth of today. He's also acknowledging that, at 55, he's growing old, and thus tries to quit smoking.

His anti-smoking plans are interrupted by the stress of a new case: a man found dead, a pair of scissors stuck into the back of his neck. He was a notorious loan shark, and countless residents of Florence had reason to want him dead. Bordelli is supposed to be finding Badalamenti's killer, but he finds himself sympathizing with the person who eliminated such a nasty man.

Meanwhile, Bordelli's usual partner, Piras, is recuperating in Sardinia, after being shot in the line of duty. Piras's holiday convalescence takes an interesting twist. however, when he begins to suspect that an apparent suicide in the village wasn't a suicide at all.

Death in Sardinia, the third of Vichi's Inspector Bordelli novels to be published in the United States, mixes modern Italian history, two interesting murders and ponderings on the massive cultural shift that took place in the 1960s, filtering the tumultuous decade through Bordelli and his somewhat antiquated views on loyalty, patriotism and family. Fans of Andrea Camilleri, Donna Leon or Conor Fitzgerald are sure to enjoy Death in Sardinia. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

The maple syrup industry--tapping trees, gathering sap, making and selling syrup--is more complicated than it might appear. Douglas Whynott's The Sugar Season goes deep into the forests of Vermont, Maine and Quebec, visiting sugarhouses (where syrup is made) and interviewing sugarmakers to give readers a peek into the process of creating and selling syrup.

Many sugarhouses in North America are family affairs, the sugaring equipment and the sap-producing maples handed down through generations. The U.S. maple syrup crop, even with the advent of new tapping and boiling technologies, is largely produced by small- or medium-scale operations. Whynott delves into the industry's particulars, shining light on its history, science and politics.

Whynott's love for his subject is clear; his writing grows lyrical when he rhapsodizes about winter walks in the woods or the taste of pure maple syrup fresh off the boil. He also has a deep respect for the syrup producers he meets, such as entrepreneur Bruce Bascom and his family, who control much of the U.S. syrup crop through production and distribution. Whynott walks with the Bascoms through the historically warm winter of 2011, observing every step of the sugaring process and discussing the potential impact of climate change on the industry.

Although Whynott's research threatens to overwhelm his narrative at times, The Sugar Season is a fascinating glimpse into an ancient process that feeds a thoroughly modern industry. It's sure to stimulate cravings for pure maple syrup, with or without pancakes. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

If the mouthwatering strawberry pie on the cover isn't enticement enough, the contents of Pies and Tarts, pulled from the archives of the Culinary Institute of America, will make you want to don an apron and start baking.

Kristina Petersen Migoya, a baking and pastry instructor at the Institute, begins with a primer on tools, equipment (from bakeware to digital scales) and ingredients (including a chart on the seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables). She follows with more than a dozen recipes for crusts, with step-by-step instructions for the aspiring piemaker. By the time readers flip to the recipes for sweet and savory pies, quiches, and tarts, they'll be ready to turn on the oven.

All the classics--apple, cherry, pumpkin--are here, along with a wide range of innovative recipes such as lemon-glazed blueberry hand pies and a raspberry mascarpone tart. The savory section ranges from light, filling quiches to heartier pot pies (vegetarian options included). Finally, there's a handful of recipes for crumble toppings, icings, meringues and creative garnishes.

Packed with helpful tips and delectable photos, Pies and Tarts achieves the perfect combination for a cookbook: informative and delicious. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Julene Bair left the family farm in the high plains of Kansas for the bigger world of San Francisco, then the solitude of a rock house in the Mojave Desert. She returned to Kansas pregnant, worked with her father on the farm for as long as she could stand it, then found security in a cowboy town in Wyoming, where she raised her son alone. She returned again to tour the ever-diminishing creeks and springs on foot and to study the Ogallala Aquifer, which the United States relies upon for 30% of its irrigated crops. Next to a big cottonwood, she meets a cowboy who admires Cormac McCarthy--and falls in love.

For most of The Ogallala Road, this cowboy, Wade, accompanies Bair as she struggles to reconcile the wilderness-loving, liberal-minded, Subaru-driving writer she's become with her roots as a farmer's daughter of Kansas's conservative rural plains. The farm that has sustained generations of her forebears retains a strong hold on Bair's heart, and her family's--and her own--role in depleting the aquifer becomes a central source of conflict. The Ogallala Road meanders through the history of the Cheyenne Indians' longtime residence in the region, seeking insight into a more balanced relationship with earth and water.

In its combination of nature writing, environmental concern and love story, The Ogallala Road is unusual. Bair's contemplative praise of the high plains and the western deserts, her yearning for a father for her son and her lament for a dying way of life will strike chords for many readers. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

The 19th-century civic planner Baron Haussman is often given credit for transforming Paris into a modern city through a massive rebuilding project of bridges, wide boulevards and public spaces. But Joan DeJean argues, in How Paris Became Paris, that the real transformation occurred two centuries earlier, when Henri IV set out to rebuild a city ravaged by 36 years of conflict between Catholics and Protestants during the Wars of Religion. In 1597, wolves roamed freely in the French capital; by 1700, Paris was synonymous with culture, glamour and fashion.

Beginning with the building of the Pont Neuf (literally "the New Bridge"), DeJean (The Age of Comfort) tells the story of a century of royal vision, private funding, innovative real estate development and public planning. She also looks at how physical changes to the city created new behaviors, new institutions and new problems. Many of the things we think of as typically urban first appeared at this time, from public transportation and sidewalks to traffic jams and tourists (not the same thing as pilgrims). Other changes are less familiar: creating public spaces in which to promenade led to the new crime of cloak-snatching.

DeJean is also concerned with more than just 17th-century urban renewal. Using a range of sources including contemporary guidebooks, plays and travel accounts, she explores how the city's image was reinvented--creating a fantasy of Paris as what Claude Monet would later describe as "that dizzying place." --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

In Suspicion Nation, legal analyst Lisa Bloom evaluates the George Zimmerman murder trial, detailing how Florida prosecutors failed to win justice for Trayvon Martin. Bloom takes readers step by step through the areas she identifies as key problems--the prosecutors' refusal to address the issue of race, a lack of trust in the witnesses, the exclusion of vital evidence, even the tendency to pose questions to the jury instead of making firm statements--then shares alternate strategies the prosecution could have pursued.

Bloom also maintains that what happened to Martin is not uncommon. While this case made international headlines, many more frighteningly similar tragedies barely make local news reports. Through a combination of anecdotal and statistical evidence, Bloom illustrates that "our laws, beliefs, assumptions, and blind spots combine to create the conditions that led to the death of Trayvon, and which made Zimmerman's acquittal by far the most likely outcome."

Suspicion Nation is an alarming, somewhat uncomfortable and brutally realistic look at race, stereotypes and violence in the United States. Race continues to be a significant issue in education, in employment, in the justice system--evidence shows continued inequality that has a negative effect on a significant segment of the population. Reading Bloom's analysis and thinking the U.S. no longer has a racism problem would be a major feat indeed. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

An unseen narrator calls after an endearingly scruffy pooch named Fred in Yasmeen Ismail's (Inside, Outside, Upside Down) twist of a bedtime tale, in which the canine hero resists bedtime just as fiercely as a child would.

Clocks sound the witching hour of 8 p.m. all over the house (bong bong). "It's time for bed, Fred!" the book begins. A blur of black fur disappears off the right-hand margin of the next illustration, sending a vase, glasses, letters and shoes willy-nilly: "Oh no, Fred, where are you going?" The playful text makes the most of the double-meaning of a flower bed ("That's not your bed, Fred!"), where the dog gets down in the dirt. His antics in a pile of leaves and a "muddy puddle" lead up to--you guessed it--"Bath time!" Fred looks positively glum in the pink pedestal tub, so it's no surprise that he goes tearing down the stairs, rubber ducky, towel and bubbles trailing behind him. Youngsters will gleefully respond to Fred's other hiding places as he tries his best to shake off his bathwater and pursuers. He gets a story before bed ("But just one") and tries out a number of sleeping spots before tucking into his own.

Fred throws off charm as easily as he does water droplets, careening around the pages and tearing through his house and yard. The author-artist makes evident just how beloved this dog is, no matter how much he misbehaves. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Jennifer Nielsen's suspense-filled trilogy comes to a nail-biting conclusion, as Jaron finds himself--and his kingdom of Carthya--being attacked from all sides.

The first two books will help readers keep track of the players in The Shadow Throne. Fans of the series enter the action precisely where The Runaway King left off. The boy king, Jaron, and Roden (one of the original four orphans), now captain of the guard, fake an argument for the benefit of spies to King Vargan, who still has designs on annexing Carthya to Avenia. If they can get Jaron's betrothed, Princess Amarinda, to safety in her homeland of Bymar, she can convince them to send reinforcements. Imogen, the serving girl who won Jaron's heart and helped ensure his safety in The Runaway King, has been taken hostage. Jaron wants to rescue her; Mott (who trained the orphans in swordsmanship in the first book) insists on taking on that mission so that Jaron can join Roden in the fight against the Gelyn army invading from the North.

It's a chess game of the highest caliber, with kings attempting to outwit one another, and some of the bloodiest battles yet. Nielsen introduces Jaron to his first cannon, pulled by the Mendenwal forces, and how he dispenses with that alone is worth the cover price. This king of Carthya is not afraid to get his hands dirty--or his heart broken. Jaron grows up in this book, and Nielsen fills it with plot twists, setbacks and surprise reunions. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness