The Quinns of Nantucket reunite again in the final installment of the Winter Street series. As in Winter Street and Winter Stroll, Elin Hilderbrand juggles an ensemble cast in a holiday setting. This time, however, the plot is structured amid four seasons, culminating at Christmas.

Winter Storms launches in the spring. Family patriarch Kelley Quinn--a twice-married father of four adult children and the owner of the Winter Street Inn in Nantucket--is battling prostate cancer. He offers the inn for the wedding of his first wife, Margaret--a TV journalist and mother to three of the children--who has decided to remarry. Before the family convenes for the summer nuptials, Margaret and daughter Ava take a trip together, which complicates Ava's continued romantic woes. Patrick--the oldest child, having served prison time for insider trading--resumes life with his stressed, over-achieving wife, a closeted prescription drug addict. Kevin--the dithering middle child--opens a beachfront food venue that changes the dynamic with his long-term girlfriend. Throughout the seasons, Bart--a soldier stationed in Afghanistan, the son of Kelley and his second wife--remains missing in action.

As each of the Quinn children comes to terms with personal dilemmas, Kelley reflects on his life. And when a nor'easter threatens to disrupt big celebratory plans for Christmas, the tightknit Quinns demonstrate what they mean to each other. Hilderbrand's trilogy reaches a well-resolved conclusion infused with a perfect mix of love, tears and joy. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

With The Flower Arrangement, Ella Griffin (The Heart Whisperer, Postcards from the Heart) perfectly captures the subtle influences in life that tether people to one another. In this case, the connections are formed with flowers from Blossom & Grow, the tiny Dublin shop that Lara owns. Grieving the death of her infant son, Lara opened the flower shop in order to bring joy to others, even though she continues to exist in limbo. As events unfold around her, Lara experiences even deeper grief, followed by shocking and surprising joy.

Her flower arrangements have an effect on many people--including Becca, a single mom struggling to raise her curious son; Mia, an uptight accountant who falls for a free-spirited artist; Emily, an indecisive bride; and Lara's brother Phil, a bicycle courier who's never been in a relationship that lasted longer than a few months. As time passes, these characters' stories intersect in unforeseeable ways, mingling heartache and happiness, and resulting in some surprising new relationships.

Writing beautifully, Griffin demonstrates how something as simple as a bouquet of flowers can make all the difference in a relationship. With themes of sorrow, contentment and new love, The Flower Arrangement is addicting fiction. Its Dublin backdrop is lovely, and its character nuances resist a too-tidy ending; it is sure to appeal to readers of Marian Keyes and Jenny Colgan. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

In a fantasy debut reminiscent of the classic film Death Takes a Holiday and Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality, Colin Gigl introduces Charlie, a hero with the ultimate bummer job description--sending the newly dead onto the next plane--and the adventure that will either cure his case of burnout or kill him for good, something of an accomplishment considering his occupation comes with a lifetime supply of immortality.

He is an employee of the shadowy Ferryman Institute, and centuries of never aging, never feeling cold, hunger or pain, and watching an endless parade of tragic deaths have left Charlie empty and exhausted. His thousands of applications for release have met with rejection, and so Charlie limps through his malaise, until he receives a special assignment from the president of the Institute--to see to the soul of one Alice Spiegel, a soon-to-be suicide--and is surprised with options: "Be a Ferryman or save the girl. Your choice."

Gigl pays homage to Greco-Roman mythology while poking fun at corporate structure, but this fast-paced fantasy has its serious side, taking the real-life problem of getting stuck in a dead-end job to a more mystical but still weighty extreme. Gigl seems to realize his concept treads familiar ground; readers will find easy laughs here, but more introspection than in novels with similar premises. A wild ride with plenty to ponder, The Ferryman Institute reaffirms that it is the bitter in life that lets us taste the sweet. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Maggie Hope has always believed women can do anything. Raised by a no-nonsense spinster aunt who taught at Wellesley College, Maggie has used her wits and her mathematical skills to great effect during World War II. First working (and solving mysteries) as Prime Minister Winston Churchill's secretary, then protecting the Royal Family, Maggie is now a highly trained agent for Britain's Special Operations Executive office. In her sixth Maggie Hope novel, The Queen's Accomplice, Susan Elia MacNeal puts Maggie on a case very close to home.

Returning to London after an assignment in Washington, D.C. (Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante), Maggie takes a desk job while waiting for her German half sister, Elise, to be extradited from Berlin. Soon she gets pulled onto a gruesome Scotland Yard case: a Jack-the-Ripper copycat serial killer targeting young professional women--specifically those associated with the British intelligence service. Working alongside a skeptical police inspector, Maggie must use her analytical skills and her gut instinct to pinpoint the killer before she becomes his next victim.

MacNeal brings back many familiar series characters, including Maggie's friend David and her former flatmates Sarah and Charlotte. Maggie struggles against harassment and condescension in the workplace, which feels realistic but becomes heavy-handed at times. Readers with sensitive stomachs should skim the descriptions of Jack-not-the-Ripper's victims, but Maggie's solution to the case is both plausible and elegant. Like all MacNeal's novels, this one ends on a cliffhanger that will leave readers eagerly awaiting Maggie's next adventure. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Detective Patrik Hedstrom is in charge of a murder investigation in Fjällbacka, Sweden; his wife, Erica Falck, is a writer with extra time on her hands. She is on maternity leave after the birth of their twins, and it happens that she went to high school with the victim, Mats Sverin, the city's financial director.

Erica and Patrik's relationship is amusing, charming and a nice counterbalance to the more disturbing aspects of the case. The police investigation, with Erica's unofficial assistance, soon expands to include Mats's high school sweetheart, Nathalie, who owns a tiny island just off the coast of Fjällbacka--an island with a murky history of its own.

Camilla Läckberg (The Drowning, The Ice Princess) has a knack for creating very believable characters and for mixing the funny moments in everyday life (like how hard it is to have time for sex while raising small children) with dark and twisty crimes that will keep the reader hooked. Fans of other Scandinavian investigators, like Henning Mankell's Wallander and Stieg Larsson's Blomkvist and Salander, are sure to love Patrik and Erica. Some shocking developments are quite likely to keep the midnight oil burning, although thankfully this novel doesn't end with quite as much of a cliffhanger as some of Läckberg's other titles. In fact, The Lost Boy could easily be read as a standalone, although following Patrik and Erica's relationship from the beginning is much more fun. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Returning to her nonfiction roots, Jennifer Weiner (Who Do You Love) shares life experiences with self-deprecating humor and raw honesty in her first collection of personal essays. Weiner, who started her writing career as a journalist, includes some previously published work, like her New York Times article "Mean Girls in the Retirement Home," but the majority of the pieces are new and focused on her theme, "You fall, you get hurt, you get up again."

From body image to breast feeding, diversity in publishing to Hollywood, Weiner opens the gates on the issues and experiences that have combined to define this popular author of 14 books, mother of two children and daughter of a mentally ill father. Her candid discussion of the turmoil her family endures when their patriarch abandons them physically and financially, growing more and more mentally unstable, and the fear she experiences when he shows up unexpectedly at a book signing, reveal a life complete with battle scars and healing wounds. Nevertheless, the humor she injects throughout reflects insights that comes from hard-learned lessons.

As evidenced in these essays, Weiner has had her share of trips and falls, sometimes of her own making and sometimes forced upon her. But her resilience and gumption are motivating. Fans of her work will appreciate the events that have shaped her work, but readers needn't be familiar with her fiction to find emotional connections in these pages. Those in need of the inspiration to "get up again" will uncover plenty in Weiner's Hungry Heart. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

A six-foot-five, 300-pound African American man with size 17 shoes may be an unlikely sight on the stage of New York's Metropolitan Opera, but Ryan Speedo Green commands that position as though he was born to it. Sing for Your Life is Ryan Green's story, a tribute to opera and the power of the arts to pull a young man out of a violent broken home in southeastern Virginia and into Lincoln Center. Through extensive interviews with Green and his family, teachers, directors and voice coaches, journalist Daniel Bergner (In the Land of Magic Soldiers) pieces together this remarkable life with an impeccable knack for storytelling.

With an absent father and a mother plagued by violent men, menial jobs and ramshackle low-rent housing, Green grew up angry, poorly schooled and on his way to prison (like his brother) or death. After a teacher took him under wing and made him learn King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and after a football coach put him in the school chorus to get some easy credits, he discovered that his roughhewn bass-baritone voice might be his ticket out. As a black man in a very white world, Green also faced assumptions that his place on stage belonged in the role of Porgy in Porgy and Bess or as Joe singing "Ol' Man River."

Green's long journey out of poverty and juvenile therapy to professional success took tenacity, luck, dedicated teachers and an extraordinary vocal gift. Sing for Your Life may be a feel-good story in the end, but in the case of Ryan Speedo Green, its title quite literally says it all. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

"All the Real Indians Died Off" sheds light on 21 myths about Native Americans that continue to circulate today. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States) and Dina Gilio-Whitaker dissect harmful stereotypes and reveal how these beliefs contribute to and reinforce a system of injustice and violence against indigenous populations. The authors tackle extensively complicated issues, such as the appropriation of Native culture by non-Native people and the false belief that Native Americans are predisposed to alcoholism.

Rooted in academic training, research and writing, as well as Native American experience, the examples and arguments the authors present are thoughtful and persuasive. When discussing overtly insensitive and destructive myths, they also offer examples of positive change and progress toward healthy, respectful understanding. Concerning the argument that naming sports teams after Natives is an honor, the authors demonstrate that the ban of native nicknames, mascots and imagery by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) helps protect Native populations from dominant white society exerting control over ideas of "Nativeness." The NCAA also allows exceptions to the ban for specific tribes when those tribes grant permission--giving power over the use to Native people. Much as how An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States reframed the past and reclaimed it for people silenced by racism and genocide, this book demands that the United States--and the world--reshape national dialogues for healthier and more compassionate treatment of Native peoples. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company

In the late 19th-century, Rachel Cartland ("with all the flair of a cabbage moth") and Samuel Bolt ("charming, and knew it") both happen to be motherless 17-year-olds with ferociously ambitious fossil-hunting fathers. When they meet at a dinosaur presentation by Sam's father, during which Rachel's father publicly humiliates and discredits him, the stage is set for a rocky Romeo and Juliet–style romance. Each man desperately wants to be the first American to discover the king of dinosaurs, the rex. Their scientifically minded children are equally passionate about finding the rex, if not as unscrupulous in their approach. Eagerly following the same lead, the Cartlands and the Bolts independently set out for the Badlands, little concerned about the treacherous nature of their quest. The landscape is harsh, relations between the Sioux and the Wasicu--white people--are volatile, and the 1870s West isn't called wild for nothing.

Printz Honor author Kenneth Oppel's (Airborn; The Nest; The Boundless) fictional take on a scientifically, politically and socially eventful period in history will keep readers wondering how the tribulations of the star-crossed lovers and their warring fathers can ever resolve. Oppel modeled Professors Cartland and Bolt on real-life rival paleontologists: Edward Drinkwater Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, who discovered more than 100 species of dinosaurs in the 1800s. The story is told in the alternating voices of Rachel and Sam, who are compelling, realistic protagonists in their own right, trying to chisel and hammer their way around a growing distaste for their respective fathers' behavior, family loyalty, societal expectations, sex and young love. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor