In German novelist Dörte Hansen's wry, tender debut, two women take shelter from their wounds in their family's tumbledown farmhouse.

Vera's connection to the old house in northern Germany begins in 1945, when she and her mother, Hildegard von Kamcke, arrive as refugees from East Prussia. Five-year-old Vera is destined to follow their stingy, resentful hostess, Ida Eckhoff, in calling the house her own; Hildegard marries Ida's shell-shocked son, only to abandon husband and daughter for another man after a tempestuous period of family life that culminates in Ida's suicide. Left to fend for herself and her damaged stepfather, Vera perseveres and becomes a dentist as well as a farmer, but her irascible temperament and immodest habits don't lend themselves to fitting in or finding a spouse.

In the present day, Vera's niece Anne, daughter of her half-sister, Marlene, needs a refuge when she catches the father of her preschool son naked in their kitchen with another woman. She turns to the aunt she barely knows for a place to grieve and rebuild.

Frequently humorous, This House Is Mine nevertheless strikes deep chords of isolation and abandonment. Hildegard leaves Vera a legacy of never feeling welcome or wanted; Anne inherits the same from Marlene. Overall, its message that outsiders sometimes have the power to reach out and defeat their own loneliness is hopeful, and readers who enjoyed Frederik Backman's A Man Called Ove or Monica Wood's The One-in-a-Million Boy will take eccentric, caustic Vera to their hearts. Hansen's first novel is as challenging and comforting as rural life itself. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

For those who have resented sitting through drawn-out, tedious work meetings, Greg Bardsley's second novel will immediately strike a chord. Both a searing corporate satire and absurdist comedy, The Bob Watson follows the adventures of Rick Blanco, a mid-level employee working in bottom-tier data collection at a company for which he feels no affinity. Inspired by former employee Bob Watson, Blanco survives his job by mastering the art of escape. He dodges meetings, whole afternoons, even corporate retreats in such a smooth and subtle way that no one notices.

Most days, Blanco's motives are almost pathetically innocent--to get back to his desk to get actual work done, maybe run across the street to grab a coffee. That changes when the woman of his dreams issues him a challenge he can't turn down: pull the ultimate Bob Watson and help his nephew duck school, Mandarin lessons and SAT prep so he can unwind for a day. The goal seems attainable until an odd turn of events leads Blanco to Mama, an elderly woman with a questionable grasp on reality. Mama mistakes Blanco for her ex-husband, an HR executive notorious for replacing employees with convicted felons. She leads Blanco down a rabbit hole involving drunken ex-convicts, break-ins and some repressed personal issues he was unprepared to face.

The fine line between despair and humor is familiar territory for Bardsley, a former Silicon Valley speechwriter and ghostwriter whose debut novel, Cash Out, also satirized corporate culture. Through his colorful, cinematic lens, even the most mundane settings contain hilarity and humanity. --Annie Atherton, freelance reviewer

Rick Montoya wears cowboys boots in espresso bars, speaks nearly flawless Italian and is as comfortable dodging bullets in an Etruscan necropolis as he is hiking outside his native Santa Fe, N.Mex. Rick is the likable and inventive amateur sleuth in David P. Wagner's thoroughly enjoyable Return to Umbria, the fourth installment in a series (following 2015's Murder Most Unfortunate). Return to Umbria finds Rick in the medieval hill town of Orvieto. His uncle has sent him there to track down his young cousin, who is having an affair with a married woman. What Rick hopes will double as a mini-vacation with his girlfriend quickly turns deadly when an American tourist is found murdered. Rick teams up with an old friend, Inspector Paolo LoGuercio, and delves into a crime whose solution could disrupt the social fabric of Orvieto.

Wagner spent nine years in Italy as a foreign service officer and writes with a fluency and love of Italy, transforming what could be a staid travelogue cum cozy mystery into an engrossing and intelligent novel. The reader learns about the origin of "red tape" (thank the Vatican for that) and the architectural history of Orvieto's famed cathedral and receives a primer on the Red Brigades, while vicariously enjoying a true Margherita pizza and dodging stray bullets. With taut pacing and enough credible suspects to keep the reader guessing until the end, Return to Umbria makes for an engaging read. --David Martin, freelance writer

Anyone who follows actress Anna Kendrick on Twitter or has seen her on talk shows knows she doesn't need scripted lines to be entertaining. Now fans can get more of Kendrick in her own words with Scrappy Little Nobody, an amusing collection of personal essays.

The title refers to the version of her former self Kendrick sometimes misses--a "single-minded and pugnacious" kid who used to take the bus into New York City from Portland, Maine, to audition for Broadway shows, the girl who was nominated for a Tony Award at the age of 12. By the time Kendrick was twice that age, she'd moved to Los Angeles by herself and been nominated for an Oscar. After paying her dues in independent films, including some cult favorites, Kendrick sang her way to mainstream stardom as the sarcastic leader of a ragtag bunch of a cappella singers in Pitch Perfect.

But with fame and privileged Hollywood life comes a fear of getting too comfortable: "Lazy is something I've always been, but complacent and entitled I want to avoid." So Kendrick fights to remain grounded even in glamorous situations. On red carpets, she wants to be asked: "McDonald's All-Day Breakfast--blessing or curse?" She avoids cocaine because it "makes you feel like the most important... person in the room. Why on EARTH would anyone do this drug...? Self-doubt keeps me in check!" The self-deprecation, sharp wit and conversational tone give the impression Kendrick is still scrappy, just no longer a nobody. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Robert Wagner (Pieces of My Heart) made his film debut in 1950 at the age of 20 and has continued to work nonstop in films and television ever since. In I Loved Her in the Movies, Wagner looks back at actresses he's worked with or known socially and offers first-hand tales of their temperaments and talents. He also examines Hollywood's treatment of actresses, why the younger ones are cast opposite older actors, and why women fared better on screen in specific decades.

I Loved Her in the Movies is a treat for movie buffs. Wagner is not only a devoted film historian but also a very social lifelong participant. Most of his assessments are positive, but he's not blind to many who had troubled lives or difficulties behind the scenes. He adored his Madame Sin co-star Bette Davis, but she saw life and work "as a battle to be won" and "if there weren't any obstacles, Bette was quite capable of creating them." His Harper co-star Shelley Winters was "a difficult woman on the best of days, and a massive pain in the ass on the worst of them." Wagner's friendship with Marilyn Monroe gave him a relaxed view of the star, but he notes that producers grew leery of her because "schedules and budgets were kindling for her wavering temperament."

Wagner and co-author Scott Eyman arrange the book chronologically, so actresses and careers are seen within the context of specific decades. This is a chatty, relaxed but well-researched memoir, filled with zingy comments and juicy backstage tales. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Augustus Owsley Stanley III, soundman for the Grateful Dead, joined up with the band in 1965. A self-taught electronics wiz, he mixed and taped more than a thousand Dead concerts and designed their unwieldy, 40-foot-tall, 70-foot-wide touring Wall of Sound system. The music may have sustained the Grateful Dead as the most popular live band in rock history, but it was amateur chemist Owsley's branded pure tabs of Blue Cheer, White Lightning or Monterey Purple that first elevated the audiences (and the band) into that "long, strange trip."

Robert Greenfield's Bear is the first full biography of the man whose obsessive drive for perfection gave the Dead their dedication to quality in their performances and recordings. The former Rolling Stone associate editor includes archival photos of the justifiably paranoid, camera-shy Owsley, interviews with the man himself and conversations with the surviving Dead and members of their global posse.

If Bear slows a bit in the second half, it's because Owsley also trimmed his sails. Busted many times, he quit the acid business and worked his last gig with the Dead in 1978. In 2011, his body wracked by chemo treatments for cancer, Bear died in a car wreck in Australia. In memory, his son placed some of his ashes on the soundboard for the Grateful Dead's 50th-anniversary Fare Thee Well concert in Chicago in 2015. Drummer Mickey Hart commented on his death: "At least now Jerry and Pigpen will have someone to talk to." Greenfield's anecdotal Bear feeds a Deadhead's jones--those who were there during that Summer of Love or their children and grandchildren. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

A selection from his half-dozen poetry collections is perhaps the best way to savor the breadth, wit and uncanny ear of Christian Wiman, former editor of Poetry and a professor of literature and theology at Yale. Hammer Is the Prayer ranges from the early, more formal poems of his 1998 The Long Home to those of the 2014 Once in the West, where his poems are less inhibited by structure, even playful, despite their more sober themes of loss, grief and metaphysics. Raised a strict West Texas Baptist, Wiman developed an early uncomfortable relationship with the spiritual, and his poems reflect this personal struggle. He quit writing during a spell of mild depression, then fell in love with his wife in his late 30s, before being diagnosed a year later with a rare, deadly blood cancer with no predictable life expectancy despite aggressive treatment.

Probably reminiscent of the poet's personal medical condition, "Darkcharms" paints a chemotherapy waiting room of patients "alive together, alone together..../ Radiated, palliated, sheened gray like infected meat." With an easy shift of tone, Wiman moves from poems of heavy ecclesiastical meditation to the clever monologue of "The Preacher Addresses the Seminarians," in which the somewhat churlish narrator rants about a church service: "Here it comes, brothers and sisters, the confession of sins,/ hominy hominy, dipstick doxology, one more churchcurdled hymn/ we don't so much sing as haunt."

Wiman's poetry is filled with the sounds of wonder, despair, fond memory, and, not infrequently, laughter. Hammer Is the Prayer is a welcome overview of this fine poet's best work. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Powerhouse YA author Neal Shusterman (Challenger Deep; Unwind series) returns to futuristic dystopia with an eye-popping series debut set in a time when humans have conquered death. The "Age of Mortality" is long gone.

To prevent world overpopulation, an independent society of robe-wearing men and women known as scythes--"no more supernatural than tax collectors"--selectively "glean" human lives, bringing true death to a chosen few. Feared and revered in equal measure, scythes may also grant immunity from death. When highly respected Scythe Faraday of MidMerica chooses 16-year-olds Citra Terranova and Rowan Damisch to compete for the role of his apprentice, the unwilling teens enter a secretive world of poisons and power, killing and compassion. Though warned against developing a relationship, ambitious Citra and warmhearted Rowan strike up an uneasy rapport. When shocking circumstances see the teens transferred to new masters, Citra lands with wise and venerable Scythe Curie, while Rowan finds himself under the sadistic thumb of Scythe Goddard, who shatters the 10 Scythe Commandments at every turn and leads his minions on killing sprees. Pulled into different spheres, Citra and Rowan must battle corrupt influences threatening to tear apart the scythehood.

Fast-paced and provocative, this plot-driven dystopian thriller will capture the imaginations of readers 12 and older. The action scenes deliver, and the gallows humor--a group of scythes is called an "elegy"--strikes the perfect minor chord. Where Scythe truly sets itself apart, however, is with its deeply felt moral quandaries and meditations on life and death that are sure to spark fascinating conversations. --Jaclyn Fulwood, lead librarian at Del City Public Library, Okla.

Joining Los Pollitos/Little Chickies in Susie Jaramillo's endearing Canticos series of Latino nursery-rhyme board books, Elefantitos/Little Elephants is a delightful and energetic read-aloud or sing-along, especially during bilingual story times.

"One little elephant
balanced oh so elegant
right on the web of a spider..."
"Un elefante
se balanceaba
sobre la tela
de una araña..."

A second elephant joins the first on the precarious tightrope of a spider's thread, and then a third and a fourth. In this cleverly designed "reversible" board book, a traditional Mexican counting song comes alive in two languages; the book's accordion design features the verses in Spanish on one side and English on the flip side. (A sturdy cardboard case keeps those accordion pages contained.) The growing parade of pachyderms, each identifiable by subtle differences in her ears, is increasingly desperate to hold on to the spider web. Will the thread support three elephants? Four? Five? As the suspense builds, preschoolers can break the tension by pulling tabs to make the elephants' trunks and ears wag. The rhythmic, rollicking tune (as heard on the app) is as catchy as can be. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Celebrated Argentinian paper engineer Gérard Lo Monaco (The Little Prince; Moby-Dick; The Small World of Paper Toys) outdoes himself in A Sea Voyage, a pop-up book that is both a cheerful rhyming maritime adventure about two sailors and their dog and a marvelous pop-up gallery of boats of all shapes and sizes.

The story begins "Our little ship bobs on the sea,/ There's room for two and Dog makes three./ A pilot boat passes as we set sail,/ It drives on bravely through the gale." The lovely and dramatic pop-up scene shows a three-dimensional "little ship" bobbing in the foreground of a tempestuous ocean. Peer inside it to see a wee man with a striped shirt and tall hat, a woman in a blue gown, and a shaggy dog's head. In the background, cut-out waves toss a big pilot boat, described in the caption as "The Madeleine-Jeanne, the last Dundee pilot boat to serve the Île de Groix, France, built in Lorient in 1922." And then: oh no! A storm! And "Dog overboard! Our ship's in trouble,/ Call a lifeboat on the double!" (An actual elastic string connects a red-sailed late 19th-century English lifeboat to the life preserver that's tossed to the poor pup.) The jolly adventure rolls along: the dog is rescued, the skies clear, a big black whale breaches, the little ship chases an ocean liner for fun, and a lightship guides the trio safely to land.

Anyone would appreciate Lo Monaco's masterful paper engineering, but fans of all things nautical and nice will be over the moon for A Sea Voyage. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness