Sociopathy, class structure, devotion and betrayal play roles in the twisted buildup to the titular soiree of Elizabeth Day's The Party. Three weeks post-gathering, one attendee remains in critical care and Martin Gilmour sits in a police station undergoing questioning. Martin, an art critic from a tough background, admittedly "finds it difficult to be normal." The one thing that comes naturally is loyalty to childhood friend Ben Fitzmaurice, Martin's polar opposite and one of Britain's most connected men.

The night of Ben's 40th birthday/mansion-warming bash, Martin and his long-suffering wife, Lucy, argue about the lack of an invitation to stay at the Fitzmaurice estate. Although silently aggrieved, Martin defends his friend, as he has since they were in school together. Ben is his best mate, the Hutch to his Starsky, a man Martin dotes on to the extent that Ben's wife, Serena, dubs him "LS"--Ben's Little Shadow.

Day (Paradise City) spellbindingly spools out the evening's events through Martin's interrogation, interlaced with internal reflections of his history with Ben and caustic commentary on his challenges with others and society as a whole. As the conflict within the couples and among the foursome builds to a head, excerpts from Lucy's diary clarify the evening's events while adding a new dimension of mystery regarding their provenance. When Ben requests they all meet for a private discussion, Martin's devotion to Ben, Ben's life aspirations, Serena's temper and Lucy's patience with the lot of them are pushed to the brink. The Party is a splendid, stunning slow burn. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

A year after the death of her young son, Emma Hazelton is still deep in her grief. She and her husband, Noah, were blindsided when their Joey was diagnosed in infancy with Canavan disease, a rare genetic disorder. Then, Emma's grandfather dies, too. As she helps her mother clean his house, Emma finds her great-grandparents' wedding picture, which unlocks Emma's curiosity about how she could have been a Canavan carrier. As far as she knows, she has no Jewish ancestors, and the disease primarily occurs when both parents have Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

As her life spirals out of control, Emma pushes Noah and her mother away. Avoiding thoughts about the future, she focuses solely on the past and the mystery of who her grandfather really was. Can she unlock the secrets of her ancestors before she irreversibly damages all her relationships?

Ella Joy Olsen (Root, Petal, Thorn) has created an absorbing novel. Emma's grief is vivid, and her quest to find out more about herself is universal. Avid genealogists are sure to enjoy reading about Emma's research, and even novices will be intrigued by the way Olsen slowly unfolds the story, connecting events from Emma's past with the fraught relationships of her present. A charming, interesting story, Where the Sweet Bird Sings is an excellent blend of history, mystery, loss and familial connection. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans

In Lisa Scottoline's fifth Rosato & DiNunzio novel, Exposed, a new case pushes the law firm partnership to its limits--and perhaps beyond.

Mary DiNunzio comes from a closely knit South Philly community. She is surprised when her father and his friends come to her law firm with pastries and the intent to hire her to represent an old family friend from the neighborhood, Simon. He's had a rough few years: a single dad after losing his wife, he has a young daughter with cancer and recently lost his job. Mary agrees to represent Simon in a wrongful termination suit, but she discovers that her partner, Bennie Rosato, has represented the parent company for many years, creating a serious conflict of interest for the firm.

Mary's loyalties to her family and friends go head-to-head against her loyalties to Bennie and their firm in a clash that could mean the end of the partnership. Gradually, as both partners dig further into the details from opposite sides, the simple case becomes something far more complex and sinister.

This legal thriller is an exciting roller-coaster ride. The first half moves along steadily as tension builds, and halfway through, the novel breaks into a sprint. Both longtime fans and new readers will be riveted by the suspense and shocked by the surprises in store for Mary and Bennie in their latest twisty case. --Suzan L. Jackson, freelance writer and author of Book by Book blog

Some crime novel protagonists drive an old beater, some drive a hot Mustang and some just take the subway. In Adam Abramowitz's debut, Bosstown, ponytailed bike messenger Zesty Myers seems to have a GPS map of Boston in his head as he weaves his Fat Chance through the chaotic streets of the city. One hungover morning, a Buick rams into him on Boylston, smashing his slick bike, knocking him unconscious and sending the contents of his torn delivery package into the street--a deluge of Grants and Benjamins. He slips out of the hospital ER before "they stick me in a hospital bed, wake me every couple hours to shine a light in my eyes, and then sic their bill collectors on me." When stubborn Zesty launches his own investigation into his "accident," it gets gnarly in a hurry.

Abramowitz gives his young narrator hero the mouthy jive of an old school Southie hip to rare Boston rock bands and closed down clubs. Zesty's father is an aging hustler who once ran a back-room poker game for dirty cops, small-time pols and courthouse trolls. His mother was a hippie firebrand put away for a robbery and homicide in her radical youth. His brother, Zero, runs a semi-legit moving company and is on-call muscle. As Zesty and Zero try to sort out the story behind the money and their parents' shady pasts, Bosstown zips along like a good old-fashioned Beantown caper. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Maggie Shen King's absorbing dystopian novel, An Excess Male, takes as its premise the dire future of men under China's one-child policy.

King grew up in Taiwan and moved to Seattle when she was a teenager. She's studied in both Chinese and American schools, and her short stories, written in English, have appeared in journals like Ecotone and ZYZZYVA. An Excess Male, her first novel, demonstrates her great imagination and dexterity as a storyteller. Set in Beijing in the not-so-distant future, the story follows Wei-guo, a single and successful personal trainer who belongs to a surfeit of unmarried men caused by China's one-child policy and a cultural preference for males. Because the number of available women has declined dramatically, the state has set up a system under which women take up to three spouses based on their reproductive and financial viability. This reversal of patriarchal polygamy is fascinating to experience as Wei-guo tries his hardest to win the hand of the lovely May-ling, who already has two husbands.

King elicits an entertaining degree of poetic justice in making men classifiable objects and pitting them against each other as they compete for a limited number of women. But she also cracks open the failed promises of communism and the evils of eugenics and social engineering. In King's China, for instance, those with autism and other disorders are called "Lost Boys" and are sterilized and institutionalized. Gay people are deemed "Willfully Sterile." Though they're incorporated and included in society, they're forced to register their identity and are prohibited from reproducing. That one of May-ling's husbands is closeted creates some of the book's most compelling and painful moments.

Boldly envisioned and executed, An Excess Male is thrilling, provocative and genuinely frightening in its implications. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

There are more than a dozen full-length biographies devoted to volatile two-time Oscar-winning actress Bette Davis (1908-1989), but none offer the up-close and personal view of Davis's final decade as Kathryn Sermak's engaging, outrageous and heartfelt memoir Miss D & Me. Davis hired the 23-year-old Sermak as her personal assistant in 1979, and immediately lived up to her difficult reputation. She started retraining Sermak on how to walk, talk, eat, dress and act in public. Davis even convinced her to change the spelling of her name from Catherine to Kathryn. On their first trip abroad, fire alarms forced the two to evacuate their hotel, but Davis insisted that Sermak run back in--not to save her family photos or passport, but her cigarettes.

After a rocky start, the two developed a friendship. Sermak's devotion helped Davis through some devastating health crises. In 1983, Davis's breast cancer diagnosis resulted in a mastectomy. Nine days later, Davis suffered a major stroke, paralyzing her left side and slurring her speech. Although Sermak describes Davis as "a fighter, a champion, and a bon vivant--and always a survivor," the road back from her debilitating stroke was long and hard fought. "No heartache or tragedy... had ever thrown her into such hopelessness," writes Sermak. Then came the betrayal of Davis's daughter's scathing tell-all book.

Sermak's affectionate, intimate and clear-eyed memoir lucidly explores Davis's conflicting actions and emotions as an actress who often put work above relationships--to her personal detriment. Film buffs will appreciate discovering new shadings to the movie icon. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Kurt Andersen's (True Believers) comprehensive history of American bunkum and balderdash, Fantasyland, is the work of a man with a particular picture to paint and a willingness to follow wherever the bizarre facts lead him. As he says, "I enjoy having my mind boggled." While it may have been sparked by the presidency of Donald Trump, Fantasyland puts the latest political pandemonium into the broader context of the origins of the United States--a country built from scratch "where all citizens were officially freer than ever before to invent and promote and believe anything. So Americans promptly began believing almost everything."

A longlist of religious sects, out-there beliefs and fruitcake leaders kicks off Andersen's history, and he rolls out their appearances with both facts and farce decade after decade. When Fantasyland hits his own early years in the 1950s, however, Andersen's range and depth of examples of American delusions grows exponentially. The border between real and unreal disappears in the minds of those endlessly in "pursuit of happiness." Access to broadly disseminated media makes every tangent seem like a big deal, and Andersen mines the mother lode.

After all his research, he concludes that "Donald Trump is a pure Fantasyland being, its apotheosis... a stupendous Exhibit A." If centuries of American hogwash are too frightening, Andersen attempts to leave us with some indication that the pendulum may soon swing back to sanity: "The good news, in other words, is that America may now be at peak Fantasyland. We can hope." Whether this forecast proves accurate or not, his look back is one of the most audacious and entertaining American histories on any bookshelf. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

For almost five decades, Peter Wadhams has been studying the way the ice at both poles has been changing. What he reveals in A Farewell to Ice is a chilling view of how much influence humankind has had on the steady disappearance of polar ice and what that will mean for all living things on the planet as it continues to vanish. This highly scientific and heavily researched treatise leads readers through the ways in which polar ice forms and dissolves. Furthermore, it covers the earth's glaciation history and discusses the current theory that the steady rise in greenhouse gases will effectively knock the earth out of its normal cycle, creating a progressively warmer planet--one with no ice at the North Pole.

Wadhams analyzes numerous terrible scenarios: what might happen if an oil spill occurs due to drilling under the Arctic ice cap; the effect melting ice will have on rising sea levels, ocean acidification and the release of trapped methane gas; and a host of other issues that will certainly affect millions of people worldwide. His calm and informed tone throughout, however, backed by data and his own observations, takes what some could claim is a Hollywood apocalypse scenario and makes it very real and plausible. He leaves readers with the knowledge that it's not if these events will take place, but when--with changes apparent from the present day and beyond. Fortunately, Wadhams offers some possible solutions, but they would be effective only if people take immediate action to stop the melting of polar ice. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

It has been more than 20 years since the publication of then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's bestseller It Takes a Village. This picture book with the same title takes the focus of Clinton's original work--children--and, instead of highlighting how adults can make a world for children, depicts instead the individual agency of children and how "sometimes it takes a child to make a village."

Marla Frazee's (The Farmer and the Clown) illustrations tell the story behind the text. The double-page spread with the words "We all have a place in the village, a job to do, and a lot to learn" depicts a large, diverse group of children and adults coming together under a leafless winter tree to sort through building materials. "Every child needs a champion. Or two. Or three. Or more" shows children working alongside the adults to haul materials, use tools and begin building what will eventually be a playground. "Every family needs help sometimes"--children and adults take breaks from working to share food and drink--"Kindness and caring and sharing matter."

As with all of her works, Frazee's illustrations explode with life: as the beginning of spring touches the tree with light pink blooms, children play catch, families hold picnics, an adult pulls two children and a dog down the hill in a wagon. Her pencil-and-watercolor art is vibrant and action-packed, the story told entirely through her illustrations of the everyday ups and downs of the people working together to create something new and beautiful. This work is a welcome reminder that all people "are born believers. And citizens, too." --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness