Elizabeth Letts's sweeping seventh novel, Fallen for France, follows the fortunes of a magnificent Arabian horse and the people who care for her as World War I transforms the physical and political landscape of Europe and the Middle East.

Letts (The Ride of Her Life; Finding Dorothy) opens her narrative with Beddou, a shepherd boy who makes his way to Meknes, Morocco, to work for the sultan's saddle maker. As the boy gains new skills, he also learns to care for the sultan's horse, whom he names Tassa ("beloved"). But when the mare becomes a political pawn in the sultan's dangerous game of diplomacy, both boy and horse find themselves displaced. In rural France, Tassa (brought overseas by Beddou's former supervisor, Hassan, now serving in the colonial forces) catches the attention of a young woman named Estelle; Jean-Baptiste, a French deserter posing as a German soldier; and Thomas, an English veterinarian struggling to reckon with his past. The intertwined fates of all these characters form an intricate narrative that immerses readers in wartime life on both sides of the Mediterranean.

While Tassa the horse is certainly beautiful, Letts's skill shines in illuminating the inner lives of her human characters, who must fight to hold onto their better selves as war tests their resolve and courage. None of the characters, including Beddou, end up where they expect to, but Letts's novel highlights the gifts to be found in unplanned journeys, as well as the capacity of human beings to show compassion and dignity under fire. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Natalie Sue's warmhearted follow-up to I Hope This Finds You Well similarly focuses on the life of a sharp-witted, lonely female narrator living in Calgary. In You'll Love It Here, Mona, an Iranian Canadian in her early 30s, is placed on leave from her marketing manager job after a client rubs salt into the open psychological wound caused by her difficult, recently deceased father, who struggled with alcoholism.

Mona's subsequent one-night bender sets off a chain of events that fuels this well-paced romp of a novel. She makes an impression on a cute Persian guy, Sami, and his father, Abu, whose family owns and operates the diner next door to where she lives. And after an incident--which may or may not be Mona's fault--leaves her landlady, Irene, temporarily incapacitated, she volunteers to serve as the aging building's superintendent. However, Mona doesn't just volunteer out of a sense of guilt--she makes a deal with Irene's niece, Lana, a realtor who's angling to sell the building, to help get the place ready to list. In exchange, Lana will set Mona up with a shiny apartment in one of the many new high rises in the gentrifying neighborhood. But the more time Mona spends in her own 16-unit building, finally meeting the neighbors she's avoided for years but tagged with nicknames such as Old White Perv and Fancy Widow, the stronger her attachment to the people and place--and Sami--grows. This puts her in the ultimate pickle when her scheme with Lana succeeds. Luckily, it's a joy to watch Mona untangle her mess and grow into herself. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

A young woman visits her late fiancé's estranged family and discovers their terrible plans for her in Hannah Whitten's chilly eldritch venture, Reliquary. Cosmic and body horror combine with classic gothic atmosphere in a truly unsettling read that establishes Whitten (For the Wolf) as an author to watch in this genre--and ensures readers will never look at the ocean the same way again.

Rocked by Elias's unexpected death, adult orphan Claire feels compelled to agree when his family invites her to visit their isolated and private island home, which is funded by their successful corporation that deals in submarines and marine research. Claire's need to please makes it easy for the undeniably creepy Ashburys to assume control of her life: they control where she sleeps, what she eats, and the extendable bridge to the mainland. Claire's unease builds as Elias's parents and extended family handwave away upsetting events and seem to speak in code. The only person not playing along is Elias's older half-brother, Ash, an angry man Elias called irresponsible. Claire must decide if the hope of familial love and the stability of wealth is worth ignoring the signs of rot on Harrow Point. Waiting too long will cost her in ways she can't imagine.

Mixing themes of repulsive family legacies that maintain extreme wealth like those in Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic with the unspeakable, immense terrors of H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones, Reliquary is well suited for longtime fans of the genre and those visiting from the darkest side of fantasy. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian

Most people dread the task of going through an inbox exploding with e-mails. But Janice Hallett (The Examiner), queen of epistolary mysteries, has made a career of hooking fans on reading other people's messages, and The Silent Appeal, sequel to Hallett's Dagger award-winning debut, The Appeal, delivers the same charms as its predecessor.

The Fairway Players, an amateur theater company, return with all their drama intact, on and off the stage. Married couple Kevin and Sarah-Jane MacDonald are now co-chairs of the troupe, and they have chosen to produce Agatha Christie's The Hollow as their next play. Tensions rise as not everyone gets the role they want, especially when newcomers to the group are cast in juicy roles over veteran members. But is that enough reason to kill? Because someone ends up dead on opening night, and the murderer is pleading guilty. A former mentor asks young lawyers Femi Hassan and Charlotte Holroyd to review the Players' correspondence from the months leading up to the opening, just in case something between the lines--"something unsaid"--could provide a reason for the confessed killer to appeal.

It might be work for Femi and Charlotte, but for readers, it's pure fun to peek into the Players' private thoughts. They gossip and talk trash about one another in text messages but then proceed to write perfectly polite e-mails to those they've been complaining about. In a neat trick, Hallett manages to have the Players discuss and rehearse The Hollow throughout the novel without revealing whodunit in Christie's classic play. The actors may be amateurs, but Hallett's performance is top-notch. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja

The Art of Charming a Changeling is an endearing, enthralling fantasy-romance by Sylvie Cathrall (A Letter to the Luminous Deep), whose imagination takes readers through Folk and Fairy lands, into a painting, and back again.

Florrie Hyverfell loves her work as an art conservator. It's people she finds challenging. Constantly arranging her face, rehearsing conversations ahead of time, seeking out comforting textures, and managing her interactions with the world exhaust her. She feels fortunate to be hired by Prince Ardant at the Commonplace Palace Museum. The painting he cares the most about is The Resolute Portrait of Vibrant Lord Vernal Mauve Among the Ruins; but to her dismay, Florrie quickly determines it has been replaced by a Fairy forgery. Worse, the counterfeit painting is holding hostage a changeling, a minuscule, near-perfect copy version of Lord Vernal Mauve, who asks that she call him Vern.

Florrie feels a little overwhelmed. To save her job, and to help Vern escape from the beautiful but closed world of his painting, Florrie is compelled to find the original stolen painting. She must travel into Fairy lands, where Folk seldom travel. Meanwhile, there is the utter magnetism of Vern, and does he have tiny, impossibly adorable dimples?

The Art of Charming a Changeling offers an absorbing foray into an imaginative setting populated by art-focused princes, fanciful Fairies, and the occasional predatory duck. This whimsical fantasy of changeling art contains a sweet and cozy romance, a woman's journey of self-actualization within a society that undervalues her, and a quest. The first in a planned series, it will leave all sorts of readers hungry for more. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Faith and reality are pushed to the breaking point when an ancient power stirs in the gripping, inventive apocalyptic fantasy novel The Salt King by Natasha Pulley (The Bedlam Stacks; The Lost Future of Pepperharrow).

A wheelchair user visits the English salt-mine village of Hreodwater and suddenly regains the use of his legs but, days later, transforms into "a person-sized stone that glittered ruby where the light shone through its crystalline places." Young Jesuit priest Avelyn is dispatched to Hreodwater to determine whether the occurrence was a miracle, a hoax, or something more sinister. Avelyn knows Hreodwater well, having grown up in its closed society until a mining accident took the lives of his family. He has spent the years since devoting himself to a God he cannot feel and adjusting to a world that doesn't revolve around the Salt King, a powerful being the Hreod people believe sleeps below their mine shafts. Avelyn's return dredges up unwanted memories and kindles inconvenient new feelings when he meets the village's attractive doctor, Jericho. The pair work together as tourists around them are healed before "halifying" into salt rocks; meanwhile, strange phenomena at salt mines across the globe signal that something old and dangerous is waking.

Pulley takes belief's ability to shape human perception of truth literally, creating a meditation on the nature and power of faith. Theology, folklore, and science spark off one another in this eerie descent into a perilous adventure where faith may save or doom the world.--Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Liana De la Rosa (Gabriela and His Grace) steps away from the 19th century and into the 21st with Mutual Discord. Sofia Mendoza loses her job after a man steals her ideas, so she starts a TikTok series highlighting women through history who have met similar fates. She soon gains a following, which includes a budding friendship with one commenter in particular, who calls himself A. As they plan a video together, they discover that they have excellent digital chemistry. Then Sofia's friend, Caitlin, introduces Sofia to Alex, who has just moved to their city of Phoenix, Ariz. Face-to-face in real life with A, Sofia must fight her attraction to whom she assumes is Caitlin's new boyfriend.

Alex is a green-flag man: supportive, funny, and kind. It's obvious to everyone except Sofia that Alex isn't with Caitlin and is absolutely smitten with Sofia. Sofia and Alex develop a connection as they pine for each other but never take the next step for completely different reasons. Mutual Discord is not a novel for those who hate the miscommunication trope; readers will be screaming at the pages for Sofia to just ask Alex if he is dating Caitlin. Aside from the delightfully frustrating romance, De la Rosa brings a love of Puerto Rican culture to Mutual Discord; in addition to showing him around Phoenix, Sofia introduces Alex to the Puerto Rican staples like tostones and mofongo that he missed out on as a child.

Full of the charmingly witty banter and romantic tension readers have come to expect from De la Rosa, Mutual Discord is an excellent first entry into contemporary romance for the author. --Alyssa Parssinen, freelance reviewer and former bookseller

An oracle must team up with a sexy demon who witnessed the most humiliating moment of her life in the hilarious paranormal fantasy romance World's Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon by Olivia Dade (Zomromcom).

Middling oracle and avid cheese connoisseur Gwen Wexloff first meets elegant demon Hugh Blacke minutes before she takes her Delphi Academy graduation exam to verify the strength of her magical foresight. Hugh is thoughtful, considerate, and listens intently to Gwen's opinions on her favorite cheese-themed book series. Then he turns out to be a member of the testing panel and watches as Gwen attempts to fake a premonition that closely resembles the plot of Jurassic Park. She's too ashamed to speak to him until 20 years later, when she has a powerful apocalyptic vision after some zombies mysteriously escape the Containment Zone. She needs help against a possible Fae conspiracy, and she also can't help noticing that Hugh has eyes the "same rich hue as the smoked honey she'd always imagined drizzling over a lavender-infused wheel of goat cheese." A plot targeting high-powered oracles might cut short their chances at happiness. Even if Hugh and a handful of Gwen's friends can keep her safe, she still has no idea how to tell Hugh she recently became pregnant.

Readers who prefer an emotionally evolved hero and plenty of explicit consent will likely find the infinitely respectful Hugh a refreshing male lead. Dade's expansive, cheese-obsessed paranormal world of demons, Fae, trolls, and other supernatural creatures comes with action, quips, and steamy romance. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

The buoyant, celebratory middle-grade graphic novel Raise the Bar by Fernanda Frick H. features a young, self-taught Chilean weightlifter who earns the chance to train under her Olympian idol.

Sam "didn't choose to be strong... at first." When she was a small child, she saw Brazilian lifter Eva Dos Santos become the first Latin American woman to win a gold medal for lifting, and it lit a fire inside of her. Now, Sam learns to weightlift by watching videos and using the limited equipment available to her at the Santiago Municipal Gym. When Santos comes to Santiago seeking recruits, Sam impresses the Olympian with her grit: "Someone like you... shouldn't have been able to lift that weight." Sam travels to Corazón where she almost immediately becomes rivals with Santos's other recruit, National USA Champion Barb Miller, whose weightlifting journey has been comparatively charmed in the form of sponsorships and fancy equipment. As the girls agitate each other, trying to "become champions by sacrificing everything they got and more," Sam pushes herself--and her body--too far. But Sam is determined to win the gold.

Frick H.'s background as an animator can be seen in every expressive character, flash of exuberant movement, and feat of incredible strength; she uses speed lines to embellish the motion with anime-inspired flair and diagrams to cheerfully break down the components of competitive weightlifting for the uninitiated. Colorist Lauren "Perry" Wheeler uses color washes to create emotional beats and limited palettes to make figures pop. Raise the Bar should appeal to lovers of sports, anime, and any kid who has been told they dream too big. --Ari Mackoff, bookseller

Tense action and steadily building suspense collide with high stakes and a paranoid atmosphere in Demon in the Sand, the follow-up to the YA Titan of the Stars by E.K. Johnston.

Apprentice engineer Celeste should have died when Titan, the Mars-bound luxury spaceship on which she worked, crashed--her friends watched as she sacrificed herself for them. But Dominic, Celeste's new confidant and the child of an engineer who helped harbor alien specimens on the ship, watches medics pull Celeste out alive. Dominic is convinced this Celeste must be inhabited by an alien. Ren, Celeste's best friend, isn't sold on the "possible alien possession," but for now, Celeste is unconscious. Just as Ren and Dominic start integrating into the Mars base, Celeste wakes up and weird things start happening: a human arm is found in one of the waste recycler filters; a "virus" is running rampant; and Dominic and Ren discover a nest of alien eggs. Some have already hatched.

As in Titan of the Stars, Johnston uses dual first-person perspectives, featuring Dominic's and now Ren's point of view. This keeps readers guessing about Celeste's alien (or not) status, while free-verse vignettes from the aliens' perspective provide eerie moments of unsettling foreshadowing. Themes of class disparity and survival remain at the core of this gripping sci-fi horror thriller that's just as gory as the first, with aliens projecting themselves out of humans and splattered bodies "flayed down to the bone." This atmospheric space adventure keeps readers on edge as it barrels toward an unexpected ending. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Erin A. Craig (Sisters of the Salt series; Small Favors) taps into her vast imagination to develop Our Strange Duet, a dark and passionate YA adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, told from the first-person perspective of soprano Christine Daaé.

Twenty-year-old Christine's father died four years ago, in 1891, leaving her alone in Paris. She is now a dancer at the glamorous Opera Populaire but "secretly, in the deepest recesses of [her] heart," she longs to be a singer. One evening she hears the mysterious voice of a man in her dressing room. He declares himself her "Angel of Music," the spirit of "divine inspiration" that her father had promised would train her to become the singer she had always dreamed of being. Christine's singing improves and her status in the company rises. But she is uncertain whether the voice belongs to her Angel or the notorious and fabled Opera Ghost, also known as the Phantom of the Opera. Her feelings for the Angel deepen at the same time Raoul, her adolescent sweetheart, becomes the opera's newest patron. Soon, the "delicious frivolity" of Christine and Raoul's youthful passion sparks anew.

Craig interviewed Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote the music for the famous musical (itself inspired by Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel), and was inspired to add new depth and breadth by digging into the characters' back stories. The fiery layers of relational complexity between Christine, Raoul, and the Angel are likely to satisfy romance and drama lovers, and Craig's dedication to retaining the original plot gives fans of the play multiple levels of entertainment and understanding. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Korean graphic designer and illustrator Park Sun-jung makes her picture book debut with Snowfall, a (nearly) wordless adventure showcasing white fluffy snowflakes that somersault, whirl, wriggle, and wobble through the night skies into the wee hours. Eventually, gravity helps them softly touch down to blanket a city with a shimmering layer of icy white.

Park's opening spread cleverly introduces the scene from above, revealing a colorfully lit outline of roads and highways not unlike those in Seoul, where the Han River curves through Korea's dense capital. Cloud-like, roly-poly white puffs gently tumble toward the city below. All are anthropomorphized with stubby arms, short legs, and expressive eyes, each rotund body carrying the distinct mark of a multipronged snowflake. They're clearly enjoying their every-which-way descent, rolling, twirling, reaching, and relaxing as buildings, trees, parks, and bright streetlamps come into focus. The icy-white floofs take every opportunity to entertain themselves until they're ready to settle down as exhausted singles, pairs, and clusters, creating a beautifully calm, freshly covered snowy new daybreak.

Park produces her inviting spreads with mixed media (acrylic paints, pastels, and digital) and works mostly with a palette of white and ever-deepening blues, interrupted only by the warm glow of urban lights. She imbues joyfully energetic movement onto each unique snowflake as it lightly, weightlessly journeys down from the heavens. Snowfall's buoyant result is an immersive, interactive opportunity for even the youngest readers to independently, cozily delight in an enveloping snowfall... without the need to bundle up and brave arctic temperatures. --Terry Hong