The long tendrils of a shocking act in an Amish community tangle up the fates of three women 12 years later in Jaclyn Gilbert's powerful novel, Butter Road.

In 2006, a gunman shot 10 students at school in Lancaster County, Pa., before taking his own life. In 2018, the victims and their families are still haunted by the tragedy. Emma Walsh is an 18-year-old in her rumspringa year prone to panic attacks--a relic of the day she was shot and witnessed her older sister, Beth, killed. Ruth Walsh, her mother, buries her anger in baking, Bible reading, and caring for her son, who has a genetic disease. Sara Caldwell, the non-Amish wife of a doctor researching genetic disorders among the community, searches for purpose in her childless, gilded life.

Chapters alternate among the three. Emma's first-person viewpoint is raw and unflinching in its vulnerability: "Where was the sense in our wounds?" Sara recruits Emma for housework and gardening, and a new world of books and ideas teases a freedom Emma never dreamed of. Ruth, meanwhile, resents Sara's secular influences on Emma; she cannot lose another daughter. The narrative arc is straightforward and uncomplicated, but there are time jumps (from 2018 to 2019) that require close attention. With exquisite prose, Gilbert excavates the layers of grief and regret that accrete in lives touched by horrific loss. Told with profound sensitivity toward the Amish community, Butter Road is an indelible meditation on sorrow, second chances, and the courage to choose. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver

In Julie Orringer's extraordinary fourth book, Luna, Phoenix, Queen, dementia threatens the marriage and writing of two Midwestern academics, but familial and erotic bonds endure. And through it all threads one exceptional dog.

To call this a story of adultery and betrayal would sell it short. After literature professor Dava Pennington is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and moves into a nursing home, her husband, Barr, discovers a hidden manuscript in her study. It's a messy yet brilliant novel of the love between two women who direct a Maine women's shelter. Dava's mother's life story is instantly recognizable, but the text also confirms something Barr has long suspected: Dava's affair with her best friend and colleague, Svetlana White. He edits her handwritten draft of The Refuge, alters the style, tones down the lesbian sex, and publishes it as his own--to great acclaim.

Orringer's title incants the names borne by Barr's assistant Evie's rescue dog, who was badly burned in a house fire. As Luna, she's Barr's confessor; as Phoenix, she's Dava's therapy animal; as Queen, she symbolizes the pull of home, tacit communication, and the hope that memory might surpass words. The chapters range over several decades and as far afield as Dublin and Rome. They resemble linked stories; each is as intricate as a whole novel and reveals a fresh perspective and backstory, including Dava and Barr's sons and Svetlana's daughter. Orringer (The Flight Portfolio) is never less than stellar, and Luna, Phoenix, Queen--which calls to mind Amy Bloom and Meg Wolitzer--is unforgettable. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

In Victorious, the conclusion of the Villains trilogy by V.E. Schwab, the final resolution to the hostility between two lifelong friends turned nemeses emerges out of a struggle for the future of the superpowered world.

Years ago, Victor Vale and Eli Ever discovered they could induce superhuman abilities, turning themselves into "ExtraOrdinaries," or EOs. The fatal results of testing their theory on themselves ignited a decades-long clash that expanded throughout the EO community and attracted the attention of an agency that would imprison them all. Although only one of the two was at large at the close of Vengeful, the second volume, new EOs continue to upset the balance of power, and the alliances that rose around Victor and Eli grapple over who will be conquered and who will endure.

From the beginning of the trilogy in Vicious, Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue; Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil) has built the bloody, beating heart of her conflict around the destructive but undeniable bond between Eli and Victor. They are in many ways two of a kind yet destined to oppose each other. Whereas Vengeful broadened the scope of the EO community, Victorious represents a return to form and a refocusing on themes of found family and love that twists into a horrible form. The superpowers make for a cinematic scale, but the trilogy finishes as it began: with the determination of the human soul to endure and connect. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Demonic trouble lurks in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery in Lauren Willig's fetchingly adventurous, historically informed paranormal romance set in 21st-century New York City. When Jess, an unmoored 37-year-old woman who is single and childless, reluctantly accompanies her best friend, a well-known author who's married with four children, on an evening cemetery tour, dark mischief ensues. Jess ends up on the gothic doorstep of the cemetery's arborist, Adam, a 40-year-old, good-natured, attractive, widowed father of two. Adam lives in a historic mansion on the cemetery grounds and is more fascinated by trees than the surrounding statuary. Former start-up CFO Jess may live in "a swanky modern high-rise," but is soon contending with a Gilded Age curse that connects her ancestry with that of Adam's wife, who was from an old Dutch New York family. Jess and Adam team up to rid themselves of a havoc-causing, murderous demon while romantic friction brews.

What Happens at Nightfall is a slight departure from Willig's usual historical fiction, with its spiritual turns, but Willig's signature warmhearted humor and cleverly incorporated research are happily still present. For instance, the demon is drawn from a Niccolò Machiavelli short story, but here it possesses a Cookie Monster stuffie (among other objects and people) and occasionally helps out with Latin homework. Willig (Band of Sisters; The Girl from Greenwich Street) plays with gendered assumptions, upending them to wonderful effect. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

Ally Carter's witty second holiday-themed mystery, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder, reunites a housekeeper's hardworking daughter with the rich boy who was her childhood playmate and frenemy and is now the target of a cold-blooded killer.

Ella Chambers has spent her entire life working: first assisting her mother, Mallory, in her duties for the wealthy Montgomery family, then doing thankless jobs for everyone in her small town. When Liam, heir to the Montgomery fortune, returns home for Christmas after his grandfather Trip's death, it becomes apparent that someone is trying to eliminate him--and thus get their hands on both his money and the rights to develop the family's valuable mountain property. As a massive blizzard approaches, Ella and Liam join forces to find the would-be killer, survive the holiday, and (maybe) address their unresolved history together.

Carter (The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year) writes sensitively of Ella's challenges, including constant belittlement from Liam's family and her struggle to pay off her mother's medical debts since Mallory's death from cancer. After leaving as teens, neither Liam nor Ella expected to return to their insular town, which is thoroughly dominated by Liam's family and their snobby associates. But as they investigate suspicious circumstances surrounding Trip's death and Liam's attempted murder, they dig up a lot more than old holiday decorations--a highly inconvenient mutual attraction, for example. With a fast-paced plot, plenty of witty banter, and holiday-themed hijinks, Carter's mystery will entertain those who like their romance (and their murder) with a side of eggnog. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

When Julianna Glasse's now ex-husband discovered her beloved books and accused her of heresy, neither of them imagined that one day she'd adapt his scornful declaration of "this is what happens when you read!" for both her memoir's title and the name of her global nonprofit organization that promotes "the liberation of women through education and literature."

This Is What Happens When Women Read details Glasse's challenging path from a childhood based in evangelical Christianity, through a marriage of "dutiful submission," and into a role as the leader of a global foundation committed to helping women escape oppression. As a wife, she was half of a well-known power couple, a popular Christian-pop singer married to a major-league baseball player. She prayed to save her marriage but simultaneously realized that as she "spread the Word," she was discouraging the women she wanted to help liberate. Her husband's scorn for her books was the catalyst for action. After a vitriolic divorce, she descended into self-loathing and began drinking alcohol, but eventually she immersed herself "in books instead of booze."

Glasse describes her quest to be her "own guiding light" and cites the many works she absorbed, including Dante's Inferno, the Bhagavad Gita, Clarissa Pinkola Estés's Women Who Run with the Wolves, and Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me. She embraced new experiences, achieved spiritual and sexual autonomy, earned a degree from the University of Oxford, and parented her three children. As CEO of her foundation, Glasse presents her memoir, This Is What Happens When Women Read, as an inspiring reminder of her belief that "we read to free ourselves." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House, Albany, N.Y.

How to Travel Incognito by Ludwig Bemelmans is a social drama steeped in an aura of faded French grandeur. From the creator of the beloved Madeline series for children, the work takes the form of a fictionalized, satirical memoir recounting the author's madcap adventures accompanying an eccentric Parisian nobleman on a road trip from Paris to Cannes in 1950s France.

Bemelmans first encounters the tall, lanky Count of St. Cucuface in the first-class compartment of a Paris-bound train. St. Cucuface is a charming, penniless aristocrat who subsists on cocktail-party fare and is known around town as one of the "authentic antiques of France." What the count lacks in money he makes up for in imagination and savoir faire. When the two experience difficulty with a dining reservation, St. Cucuface suggests that Bemelmans pose as "Prince de Bavière." Suddenly, all manner of doors fly open for them: restaurant table upgrades, lavish complimentary meals, and royalty discounts at the best hotel in Paris.

Embracing his new royal persona, Bemelmans mingles easily with foreign dignitaries, including the heavily bejeweled "Maharajah of Bengal-Something-or-other" and the jovial Madame l'Ambassadrice, wife of the U.S. ambassador. A cameo by the Duke of Windsor is cleverly tucked into a scene on the French Riviera. As his whimsical illustrations prove, Bemelmans is a keen observer of the leisure class making mischief.

Originally published in 1952, How to Travel Incognito is a nostalgic throwback to a post-World War II "time of plenty," a story the author crafted to "cheer up the sorry world." --Shahina Piyarali

Kathleen Burke excavates the layers of civilization through a single, intoxicating lens. Wine: A Global History is an account of viticulture and fermentation as well as an exhaustive, breathtaking exploration of how deeply human culture is steeped in libation, proving that to understand wine is to understand the architecture of society, commerce, and art.

Burke, professor emerita of modern and contemporary history at University College London, traces wine's evolution from its accidental discovery in Neolithic clay jars through historical medicinal applications, and up to complex 21st-century global supply chains. She maps ancient trade routes across the Mediterranean, details the economic mechanics of monastic vineyards during the Middle Ages, and examines the political intrigues surrounding royal cellars. She explains how ancient Greeks and Romans routinely mixed their wine with seawater, lead acetate, or resin not merely for flavor but also as a method of preservation before temperature-control technology.

Burke uncovers the surprising role played by the Catholic Church as the primary steward of agricultural science during the chaos that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire; the church preserved grape clones through centuries of turmoil. She explores how the 19th-century phylloxera epidemic completely restructured the geopolitical and economic landscape of European agriculture, forcing nations to reinvent their industries from the root up.

Wine's central thesis is that culture is utterly and inextricably wine soaked. Burke illustrates how rituals, laws, and even spatial architectures, from the design of amphorae to the layout of modern vineyards, have been fundamentally shaped by humanity's enduring relationship with this beverage. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

The prickly, poignant, slice-of-life YA graphic novel Second Generation Blues depicts the collision of immigrant parents' expectations with their U.S.-born son's big dreams.     

It's summer in New York City and teen Luis Menendez would love nothing more than to spend it going to concerts, reviewing them, and working toward his goal of being a music journalist. Instead, he's stuck working at his family's Cuban restaurant, taking commands from his militant and borderline-cruel father, Manny. Luis cheers up when he meets Yara, a sympathetic customer from a wealthy family, and one of his reviews catches the attention of a local music blog. Manny, however, believes both Luis's music writing and Yara are distractions and excuses for Luis to not contribute to the restaurant: "I didn't dream of a life in America just so I could raise a lazy child who doesn't know the value of sacrifice," he says.  Luis, with his own hopes and dreams on the line, must navigate his responsibilities to his parents and himself.     

Eisner Award nominee Julio Anta (Frontera) effectively turns up the tension to an almost uncomfortable degree in this convention-defying family graphic novel. The combination of Anta's precise writing and debut illustrator Red Dryer's emotive art makes palpable the anxiety of the titular second-generation blues. Dryer builds pressure into stressful moments by thickening the panels' black outline and adding inky splashes of black dread to the white space surrounding the image. Fans of Rex Ogle's sensitive, catharsis-driven YA novels will find similar satisfaction in Anta's exploration of life as a child of immigrants. --Luis Rendon, freelance reviewer

Like Glass, by YA author and William C. Morris and Stonewall Award Honor winner Jen Ferguson (The Summer of Bitter and Sweet; A Constellation of Minor Bears), paints a passionate portrait of grief through a Métis teen's captivating, chaotic determination to understand her sister's death and why her father refuses to leave the place where it happened.

One year ago, Tate's older sister, Bronwyn, died of an aneurysm while living in a small town in the French Alps. Tate's Métis father and "white settler" mother left Toronto to bring Bronwyn's body home, but only Tate's mother came back. Now, the 16-year-old arrives in Chamonix with one goal: convincing her father to leave this snowy place. While there, Tate meets queer American ski jump athlete Agatha, who makes her heart beat like "a drum in a circle of other drums."

Ferguson precisely encapsulates the desolation of a tragic loss and the desperation to understand it. There is no fantasy here, but there is a familiar and near-mystic entropy in the foreboding undercurrent that Tate feels among the people who knew her sister and the places where she lived and died. Ferguson also adroitly depicts an eggshell-lined path to mending between an imperfect yet loving father and the only daughter he has left. She seamlessly folds racism into Tate's interactions with locals and plants a satisfying queer romance in stuck elevators, heart-stopping break-in missions, and a stealth road trip. Tate, who cuts the collars from her shirts and isn't a hugger, is a fully realized teen who acknowledges that "personhood is hard" in this deeply felt novel about sorrow and reconciliation. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal winner Kevin Maillard (Fry Bread; And They Walk On) tenderly explores belonging in the picture book The Ones Who Came Before. The lively artwork of Sibu T.P. (Home, Home) accompanies Maillard's melodic prose, producing a thoughtful collaboration that encourages young readers to consider the legacy of the land on which they live.

Maillard's protagonist, Aabanya, visits her grandfather, Big Jimmy, every summer "at his cottage on Early Mountain." Despite the joy she feels with her grandfather, she is still very much "a city child in a country place." Aabanya helps Big Jimmy with his garden and begins to "bloom... under the warmth of the sun." At night, he tells her stories of the mountain and the Earlies, the people who "were here before the town": "We sang the music of life and danced the rhythm of freedom in the village at the end of the road." When Aabanya unexpectedly encounters a curious bear, Big Jimmy gently calms her fear. "Why is it here?" he asks. Remembering his words, Aabanya realizes the bear and its kin "are the ones who came before" even the Earlies.

T.P.'s graphite pencil and acrylic illustrations are an excellent match for the text's themes. His distinct shadows and spills of light create an atmosphere that conveys a comfort with the unknown; his use of reflection emphasizes the ideas of naming and belonging, such as when a crowd of Earlies are mirrored in Aabanya's glasses. Deeply saturated colors make every page of the stunning, compassionate The Ones Who Came Before a visual enchantment. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

A young explorer and his friends search for a long-lost treasure in the boisterous, bouncy middle-grade graphic novel The Moonlit Spiral by Mike Maihack (Cleopatra in Space series).

In the land of Helix, "treasure hunting was once a way of life." Explorers "unearthed the artifacts of past civilizations," and magical creatures known as guardians protected "treasure and sacred places." Then the guardians disappeared. Years later, Orion Flynn, the most famous treasure hunter in Helix, also vanished after venturing out to find a "final, mysterious discovery." And thus the "great era of exploration" came to an end.

Punky blond-haired, brown-skinned Orion "Rion" Corsair grew up hearing stories about his namesake from his treasure-hunter parents. Rion lost interest in exploration and the possibility of magic after his parents died searching for Flynn's treasure. However, when his parents' old journal reveals clues hidden on previously empty pages, Rion is burdened with new information about Flynn's lost treasure. He sets out with two friends to travel "in the same footsteps of Orion Flynn and [Rion's] parents," solving puzzles, fighting beasts, and rediscovering magic.

The Moonlit Spiral is a zany, earnest story of adventure and friendship set in an elaborate, whimsical fantasy world filled with creatively imagined fauna. Maihack's eye-popping illustrations brim with color and detail as Rion and his companions trek through mountainous cities, verdant jungles, and spiny caverns. Although some of the novel's plotlines become muddled, the focus on the trio's evolving friendships shines bright. Fans of detailed world-building and offbeat humor should enjoy this inventive romp. --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer