Based on traditional Vietnamese folktales, the nine stories in Violet Kupersmith's The Frangipani Hotel take the reader through matters fantastic, chilling and ghostly. There are many hauntings recounted in the stories, most particularly the haunting hangover of the Vietnam War and the ways it has affected so many people.

In "Boat Story," a young girl wants her grandmother to tell her about escaping in an open boat for a school assignment. The girl wants the hard facts, the rigors of the crossing, maybe a storm at sea--and her grandmother weaves a tale of a man walking on water (a dead man at that) and how she and her husband got away from him. Her granddaughter says: "But I want the real story! Why can't you tell me how you escaped?" Grandmother's response sets the tone for the rest of the stories: "It's simple, child: Did we ever really escape?"

In "Turning Back," an aimless Vietnamese-American girl, Phuong, finds an old Vietnamese man, stark naked, behind a convenience store. She's horrified to discover that he can turn into a giant python, then back into a man--over and over again. Naked or scaly, he tells what it's like to be a snake: "How to taste smell, how to taste heat, seeing the world in motion, not in colors. The feeling of coiling, of lengthening, of squeezing."

Each of the stories is replete with characters both fabulous and ordinary, stories out of this world and firmly rooted in it. Each is meticulously told by a storyteller talented and wise beyond her years. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

The addictive mystery in The Cemetery of Swallows has nothing to do with who committed the murder. Manuel Gemoni is a devoted father and husband, a man so gentle and centered he was nicknamed "Little Gandhi" as a boy. But with no warning, he leaves his wife and daughter back home in Paris, flies to the Dominican Republic and calmly murders Tobias Darbier, an elderly man whom he has never met before. After shooting Tobias twice, Manuel pauses before firing the bullets that will end his life. "Time stops. Seconds rub their black paws together." Manuel pulls the trigger, and so begins a sinister and terrifying journey.

Legendary police superintendent Amédée Mallock travels from his home in Paris to the jungles of the Dominican Republic, but his investigation of Manuel's crime keeps stalling as he descends deeper into disturbing realms that defy categorization. The drama swirls around Mallock's paradoxical character, at once empathetic and misanthropic. The persistence and insight that made him famous force him to pursue a line of inquiry that will shake the very foundations of his professional and personal identity.

Writing under the pseudonym of his story's hero, Jean-Denis Bruet-Ferreol leads us across the globe and back and forth through time, punctuating his dark tale with moments of humor as well as moments of staggering brutality. The Cemetery of Swallows combines the straightforward tone and quick pacing of a police procedural with a conjectural curiosity that challenges the boundary between life and death. --Casey O'Neil, bookseller, Elliott Bay Book Company

Eden is an alien world without a sun, a planet of bioluminescent life otherwise steeped in eternal darkness. It has been six generations since an interstellar accident stranded two astronauts on Eden. Their 532 offspring have become Family, an inbred tribal society of hunter-gatherers surviving among the geothermal lantern trees of Circle Valley, an oasis ringed by the freezing mountains of Snowy Dark. Family keeps the half-forgotten rituals of Earth alive, waiting for the "waking" when sky boats will cross Starry Swirl to rescue them from Eden. Adolescent John Redlantern, however, sees a dwindling food supply and stagnant society as a reason to break with tradition and discover what really lies beyond Snowy Dark.

Chris Beckett (Holy Machine; The Turing Test) has created a bizarre world of astounding imaginative vision grounded by fundamental human conflicts. Dark Eden wavers between extended parable and character-driven drama, achieving the best of both efforts. The novel's setting is its strongest point, evoking wonder, terror and the same sort of curiosity that drives John Redlantern beyond the edge of Family's known world. Beckett alternates between first-person perspectives for each chapter, though the voices of many secondary characters feel either underdeveloped or like another outlet for an omniscient narrator. His characters also use speech patterns some readers might find abrasive. These minor issues aside, Dark Eden is a fantastic novel that will certainly appeal to speculative fiction fans--and already won Britain's Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel when it was published there in 2013. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip focuses on one year of Kevin Brockmeier's life: the seventh grade. This period was short but defining, a difficult year marked by rapidly changing relationships with friends, teachers and the greater world. The young Kevin Brockmeier was bullied as much by those he once called his friends as by those in higher grades; the grown author Kevin Brockmeier (The Illumination; A Brief History of the Dead) reflects on those bullies, and on the islands of kindness he found between them, as well as on the lock-ins, outings to the movie theater, trips to the comic book store and nights watching television that generally made up his life as a seventh-grader.

Brockmeier's first work of nonfiction is told in the third person--an unusual choice given the subject matter, but one that ultimately gives Brockmeier the ability to act as the observer of himself in his own past, much as he once acted as an observer of his classmates and teachers. The voice makes it easy to forget that the stories in A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip are real, not imagined--young Kevin really did pee on his sandwich to stop the mystery lunch thief from stealing his meal each day; he really did write a play about the teacher-napping of his English teacher; young Kevin's first kiss really was at a youth group meeting. And despite the tough times that Brockmeier faced as a boy, any reader can find comfort in the humor in these stories--and the knowledge that the struggling 13-year-old did, eventually, find his place in the world. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Sometimes you have to leave a place in order to appreciate it. Such was the case for Frances Mayes, who here charts and examines her formative years before she wrote her blockbuster memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun. As a child, Mayes longed to escape her hometown of Fitzgerald, Ga.; she lived most of her adult life in Italy and California. But a trip to Oxford, Miss., for a book signing served as a conversion moment for Mayes. She and her husband relocated to Hillsborough, N.C., a small, historical enclave on the Eno River where many writers and artists reside.

"Often, seemingly spontaneous acts come from a deep, unacknowledged place," Mayes writes, as she reimagines and re-creates the solitary, bookish, willful childhood she had in the pre–civil rights South. Mayes's unhurried, stream-of-consciousness narrative provides an intimate look into her upbringing, an "intense microcosm" of family, friends and a home where pride seemed to prevail over realism.

"Secretive, inverted things informed my childhood," writes Mayes, as she traces the complex connections of a small town. She renders the trajectory of her life story--the people and the places she's fled--via pivotal scenes infused with colorful characters and sensory imagery. In describing one of the first funerals she ever attended, Mayes writes, "The smell of roses feels so heavy it's as if we've stepped inside a flower. Pink shades on hanging lamps make the room glow like inside a shell." Such vivid, poetic prose serves to enhance the bittersweet journey of a natural born storyteller who rediscovers her Southern roots. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire is neither a straightforward biography of Muir nor a simple study of the global significance Alaska's glaciers. Rather, Kim Heacox (The Only Kayak) is concerned with the relationship between Muir and the glaciers that rivaled Yosemite in his affections, and the impact that pairing had.

From a humble background in Scotland and Wisconsin, and between stints as a surprisingly apt businessman, Muir lived as a self-described tramp, ardent nature lover and student of flowers, trees, mountains and--upon finally reaching Alaska--glaciers. His famed role as author and activist came late in life, and not easily: he found writing hard work and political activism distasteful, though necessary. However, Muir made perhaps the greatest impact on conservation of any individual in United States history.

Heacox meticulously researched and lovingly describes Alaska's rivers of ice and Muir's path toward them, his emergence as writer and preservationist, and his far-ranging influence in legislation, literary legacy and new traditions--including the birth of the conservation movement as we know it. Though often descriptive rather than persuasive, Heacox lends his own voice to the cause in his final chapters: "To debate [climate change] is to give credibility to an argument that shouldn't exist." He closes by adding the arguments of Aldo Leopold, Bill McKibben and Derrick Jensen to Muir's, in the interest of preserving our wild spaces--thereby continuing Muir's work. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

After working for millennia to map the world, we have at last solved the problem of location. Smartphones, wi-fi routers and other transmitters can pinpoint our exact positions at any time--but they can also share that information with advertisers, corporations and government agencies.

Beginning with the age of exploration and mapmaking, veteran tech reporter Hiawatha Bray charts the history of location technology through two world wars, the growth of the U.S. space program and the rapid evolution of now-ubiquitous portable GPS devices. After examining the military origins and civilian uses of radar, satellites and other tracking systems, You Are Here focuses on the recent swift growth of location tracking software, wireless signals, GPS and the instantaneous, detailed mapping they make possible. Bray also delves into a raft of privacy issues, asking whether companies and governments ought to use software to track users' activities, preferences and locations. While many users are happy to trade a bit of privacy for a bit of convenience--say, entering their location into a smartphone to obtain driving directions--Bray questions how far surveillance can go before it becomes invasive.

Timely and thought-provoking, You Are Here provides an entertaining overview of location technology and a set of important questions to ask as we keep mapping the world and our place in it. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Historian William C. Kashatus believes "if we seek to do justice to the examples of Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, we must look at the condition of contemporary race relations and ask ourselves, 'What can I do?' " Jackie & Campy is evidence he follows his own advice. In this enlightening look at baseball in the early part of the 20th century, Kashatus describes the role America's pastime played in the civil rights movement, as well as the way "Ebbets Field became a microcosm of the American Dream."

The title players don't truly take the field until the second half of the book. Kashatus first sets the stage, providing general history of the U.S. and the evolution of baseball that enabled Branch Rickey to break "the gentleman's agreement"--an unwritten law barring African-Americans from major-league baseball--by hiring Jackie Robinson.

Robinson and the men who followed him could not afford the luxury of simply playing the game. Instead, they carried the weight of integration's success on their shoulders. It seemed that one wrong step could set progress back years. Robinson and Campanella approached that obligation with diametrically opposite philosophies, which led to the destruction of their friendship.

Jackie & Campy is the story of heroes--heroes who gave young men of color reason to hope and dream. Like all heroes, they were "disappointingly human," which, Kashatus points out, is still inspiring; there is much to learn from these trailblazers. His obvious respect for his subjects and their critical role in baseball's history drives a fascinating story home for an uncontested win. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

In Panic, Lauren Oliver (the Delirium Trilogy) brings the intensity of The Hunger Games to contemporary upstate New York.

Most residents of Carp see the small town as a dead end. From Fresh Pines Mobile Park to "Meth Row," there isn't "much to smile about in Carp." When Heather Nill's boyfriend dumps her for someone else, Heather joins the crowd of high school seniors who will compete in Panic, a summer-long series of challenges beginning the day after graduation. The winner will get $67,000, collected from everyone who attends Carp High--a sum representing a dollar a day for every day school's in session, starting freshman year, for each student. Panic is a way out of town for one lucky senior. But in its seven-year history, the game has resulted in four deaths and one person becoming paralyzed.

Dodge Mason is playing Panic this year, too. It was Dodge's sister who was paralyzed when her car was tampered with on a final challenge; Dodge wants revenge. Heather's best friend, Natalie, plays for a chance to go to Hollywood. And Bishop just wants them all to survive. As the summer progresses, the challenges grow increasingly dangerous. Alliances are made and broken, secrets are revealed, and no one emerges unscathed. But each player might well learn some important truths.

In alternating chapters told in third-person from Heather's and Dodge's points of view, Oliver spins a compulsively readable plot, with high-stakes action and just the right amount of romantic intrigue. --Lynn Becker, host of Book Talk, the monthly online discussion of children's books for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators

Oskar searches the streets of Vienna for "the perfect gift" for his mother's birthday in this sweet story of good intentions and coincidences.

Alison Jay (Picture This...) takes readers back to a time when men doffed top hats, women wore petticoats, and people traveled by stagecoach. We first spy Oskar peering through the window of a millinery shop. But he has "only a single coin." Aha! A flower seller's beautiful yellow rose will make the perfect present, Oskar thinks. But a painter thinks the rose Oskar holds would be perfect for the portrait he's painting, so he trades Oskar for a paintbrush. Now a conductor who's lost his baton thinks Oskar's paintbrush would make the ideal substitute, and trades him a newly minted melody. And on it goes, with Oskar's "perfect gift" always needed urgently by someone else. Jay portrays other things gone astray, such as a runaway Dachshund pilfering a sausage, then chasing a black-and-white cat. But just as the errant pup returns to its owner, so, too, is Oskar reunited with his perfect gift--under the watchful eye of the black-and-white cat, just as dusk falls. Jay provides points of reference for readers, such as the shifting position of a Ferris wheel, depending upon Oskar's location, a green carriage that arrives in the morning and departs at dusk, and the shifting play of light as the day progresses.

This lovely story rewards Oskar's noble purpose and celebrates Vienna's many gifts as the boy does present his mother with the perfect acknowledgment of her birthday. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness