Celebrated American novelist Claire Messud (The Emperor's Children) turns her keen eye to coming-of-age in The Burning Girl, a story of two young women torn apart by the simple act of growing up. While the plot is age old, Messud shows how even well-trod roads may still reveal undiscovered gems.

The Burning Girl is narrated by Julia, a high school senior with a comfortable life in a small Massachusetts town and a bright future ahead of her. Since she was very young, she's been best friends with Cassie, a spirited girl living with her single mother. As puberty hits, Cassie becomes more outgoing and seeks new, dangerous friends; meanwhile, her mother, Bev, begins a romance with a controlling doctor who may or may not have designs toward Cassie. As Julia and Cassie's relationship deteriorates, Cassie's behavior becomes increasingly alarming, until her estranged friend is called on to pull her back from the brink.

The "may or may not" about the doctor's intentions is important for how The Burning Girl reads. Julia is aware of most of what happens to Cassie, but must speculate here and there, building up from what she knows about her former friend and what she hears from others (she often relays information to the reader that is second- or third-hand). Sometimes Julia admits her limits to understanding Cassie, but still speaks with certainty even when it's clearly just her own projection. That bit of unreliability allows Messud some breathing room inside the standard coming-of-age plot. Julia knows how these stories are supposed to work, and maybe--just maybe--she's fitting what has happened into that structure. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

In Bernard MacLaverty's Midwinter Break, Stella and Gerry are a married couple from Glasgow on an Amsterdam holiday in the dead of winter. They've been together 40 years. Gerry is a retired architect who drinks too much. Stella is a retired teacher who does crossword puzzles to stave off a family history of dementia: "What would it be like.... To have slalomed all obstacles only to arrive at a white-out. Then a black-out. Then nothing." Although entangled by years of conjugal idiosyncrasies, clever badinage and the humdrum messiness of married life, they are drifting towards a separation. Gerry observes: "When one strong magnet is aimed at another they refuse, they skid off each other." Stella is less metaphorical as she tells him: "The family is raised--the work's done.... I want to do something with the time I've left. Other than watch you drink."

Booker shortlisted Bernard MacLaverty (Grace Notes) perfectly captures the subtle nuances and habits of the long married. Gerry and Stella know where each sets their reading glasses. He always takes her elbow when crossing busy streets. They habitually brush a kiss when in an empty elevator. Gerry solicitously rides the escalator on her downside lest she fall. Midwinter Break is a remarkable literary achievement. It's an adult novel about an aging couple facing their last years--either together or apart. If together, it will be mostly up to the practical Stella to make it happen, because "she knew about love--how to make it and how to mend it." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

TV writer and playwright Matt Goldman's first novel, Gone to Dust, begins with an eerie crime scene. A woman in Edina, Minn.--a Minneapolis suburb--has been murdered in her bed, and the killer has shrouded her body and entire house in dust from many emptied vacuum cleaner bags. How will the police collect any useful DNA evidence?

Detective Anders "Ellie" Ellegaard asks private investigator Nils "Shap" Shapiro to help with the case. Besides the usual suspects--the victim's former husband and current lover--Shap uncovers surprising relationships the woman, Maggie Somerville, had with people who might've had reason to kill her. But then the FBI tells Shap to back off: the case has much bigger ramifications than he realizes. The directive makes Shap more determined to unmask the killer, and he discovers the feds were wrong--the situation is even deadlier than they say it is.

Though Shap doesn't differ much from fictional PIs who precede him--smarter than cops, ever ready with a quip, unlucky in love, etc.--he's a likable protagonist. He treats friends and witnesses with compassion, and his longing for his ex-wife shows his romantic side. Sharp-eyed readers will spot not-so-subtle clues, and the ending falls into the trap of having long speeches to explain how and why the murder was committed, but because of its heart and humor, Gone to Dust is a promising start to a new series. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

At one point in Ali Land's debut novel, Good Me Bad Me, the narrator, Milly, says her insides look different from everyone else's--"A curious, twisted shape. The shape you made me. The shape I'm learning to live with." The off-stage voice of "you" that twisted and shaped Milly is that of her mother, a serial killer of children.

Milly turned her mother in after the ninth murder--a boy Milly knew. Now she is in foster care with Mike, a psychologist and expert in trauma, and his wife, Saskia, an anorexic alcoholic and pill-popper. Their teenage daughter, Phoebe, Milly soon discovers, is also an expert in trauma, although "more in the causing than the healing." With Mike's help, Milly has a chance to heal, but her mother's voice is in her head.

At school, Milly is an outsider. She speaks "like a robot" and hides her hands because they sometimes shake from permanent damage to her nervous system. When Phoebe and her cohorts push and slap her, Milly thinks, "See me, feel me, but know that I come from a place where this is merely a warm-up.... And I never forget." Milly has a compromised ability to read emotions, but she has no trouble understanding Phoebe and her friends.

With savageries only hinted at, Ali Land coolly ratchets up tension and takes the reader into a damaged mind, exploring the question of nature versus nurture, and the possibility of redemption. Good Me Bad Me is a heartbreaking, breathtaking chill of a book. --Marilyn Dahl

Alex Whitman is haunted by his daughter Ellie's kidnapping and presumed death by a serial killer in Scotland. Since Ellie's disappearance, Whitman dulls his pain by immersing himself in the world of vintage movie memorabilia: "the loss set him on a course for his next find, whatever that might be, wherever it may take him." His obsessions collide in Séance Infernale, Jonathan Skariton's debut thriller.

Whitman, living in Los Angeles, travels to his native Edinburgh for the first time since Ellie's disappearance to acquire the earliest moving picture, "Séance Infernale." There he is stunned to learn that Ellie's abductor may be kidnapping again. In alternating voices the characters come into focus. The serial killer reveals his accelerating madness. Edinburgh Detective Georgina McBride is working against the clock, and outside department regulations, to find the killer before he chooses another child. Whitman, whose nightmares of Ellie have increased as he unravels the film's mystery, makes an alliance with McBride as she moves closer to uncovering the killer.

"Two objects can't interact without leaving traces on each other," says one detective, and indeed the slightest convergence of events are often more than they seem. As the alternating points of view let readers know what is happening outside Whitman's reality, he is still unaware, and the omniscient knowledge creates an emotional investment in the characters and a feeling of urgency as the killer moves closer to his target. When Whitman finally discovers the film's horrible secret, it leads him to the answers that bring down a monster. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Maybe all memoir-writing musicians who survived the '60s eventually find the wisdom and perspective that comes with age. Even the recent memoirs by hard-living hard-rockers like Keith Richards, Chrissie Hynde and Billy Kreutzmann depict them as mellow in their old age. Loudon Wainwright III is no exception, but his Liner Notes refreshingly focuses on the writer side of his singer-songwriter persona and career. Wainwright chooses excerpts from his autobiographical songs, old family photos, newspaper clippings and even examples of his celebrated father's Life magazine columns. As a result, his memoir is the self-effacing chronicle of a privileged kid with a taste for drugs, booze, women and the stage--a man who seldom tried to be anything more or less than he was.

Although Wainwright was heralded by critics after his first album in 1970 as "the new Bob Dylan," the public was not equally impressed. His early records were commercial failures until the unlikely novelty tune "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road" hit the top 20 on 1973's Billboard Top 100. He accepts this somewhat embarrassing fame--resigned that "the skunk thing, I fear, will be the lead item in my obit... [but] better a song about roadkill than one about getting high on a mountain in Colorado."

Wainwright may be a melancholic guy ("I've had the blues for about sixty years now"), but Liner Notes is mostly lighthearted musings at the ups and downs of his life in music (26 albums so far), TV (Mash, SNL) and movies (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up). It is the story of a raconteur with a knack for taking it all in and putting it back into song--or into this dandy self-portrait of a life well lived. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project, Better Than Before) has spent many years analyzing happiness and personality in her writing and on her podcast. In The Four Tendencies, Rubin expounds on her theory of personalities, and the four major groups that people fall into. These she calls Tendencies: Upholder (meets outer expectations and inner expectations), Obliger (meets outer expectations, resists inner), Questioner (meets inner, resists outer) and Rebel (resists both). She then explains how people respond to the pressure and demands that life puts on everyone.

For some people, making a checklist and following through is no problem. Others need accountability partners to make them take action, and still others resist all influence. Rubin explores each of the Tendencies, offering helpful tips on how to understand Questioners or deal with a Rebel spouse, and suggesting good careers for Upholders and Obligers. For each personality type, she analyzes strengths and weaknesses, and breaks down how most successfully to influence each type in personal relationships, in business settings and in terms of health care and parenting.

Readers might nod with recognition as Rubin explains why that stubborn patient refuses the best treatment, or how to convince an uptight spouse that maybe the rules aren't so important all the time. A quick read that nevertheless resonates deeply, The Four Tendencies is sure to be helpful for a variety of people--health-care providers, employers, parents, spouses and friends--who want to improve their social interactions and understand the people around them better. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans

Daniel Tammet's brain processes words a bit differently from many people's: he's a high-functioning autistic with a slight tendency toward synesthesia. A polymath writer, he is brilliant, bilingual and deeply in love with language. Tammet (Thinking in Numbers; Born on a Blue Day) takes a deep dive into the world of language with his fourth book of nonfiction, Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing.

He begins with his own story of acquiring language: the colors and textures he associated with certain words as he tried them out during his London childhood. He then shares the joyous story of the year he spent teaching English to a group of Lithuanian women. With a combination of dictionaries, drawing exercises and the women's eagerness to try new things, Tammet taught--and learned--more than he'd ever expected.

The subsequent essays in Every Word are like thoughtful, extended dictionary entries on obscure words and languages: Esperanto, the disappearing dialect of Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man), the wordplay of lipograms, the linguistic rules and restrictions of American Sign Language and "telephone grammar." Throughout, Tammet's voice--witty, thoughtful and erudite--pulls readers along. His enthusiasm for language makes such niche topics as Icelandic baby names and the intricacies of L'Academie Francaise fascinating and accessible.

Instantly appealing to Tammet's fellow "word nerds," but suited for a much wider audience, these essays--like the titular bird--both soar and sing. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

"FLASHLIGHT.../ ...opens up the night./ Leads you past old post and rail/ along a long-forgotten trail." The "you" to whom the omniscient narrator refers is three adventuresome kids--one clutching a flashlight, another a teddy bear--who climb down from a tree house to explore the night. They find a forgotten trail that goes "into woods no others dare,/ for fear of what is waiting there."

Actually, the kids never leave the backyard. True, in Fred Koehler's broody dark-pencil art, digitally tinted with colors that look cloaked by night, the flashlight's glow illuminates fantastical scenes: a forest where a tiger lurks, a staircase leading to an ancient tomb and so on. But Koehler uses a darker palette to show the spots that the flashlight misses--the real world that the kids occupy as they indulge their imaginations. While the flashlight may reveal a pirate ship at sea, keen-eyed readers will notice that the light misses a backyard swimming pool whose water, in the minds of these fantasy-chasing kids, becomes the ocean.

Poet Matt Forrest Esenwine's first book favorably recalls Where the Wild Things Are, which put the imagination-sparking power of nighttime, with its blank slate-like quality, on the picture book map. But unlike Sendak, Esenwine gives parents the last word. At Flashlight Night's end, the kids, having had a close call with an octopus, return to the safety of the tree house, where they read by flashlight until they hear a gentle admonishment that has the nimblest double meaning: "Shhh.../ ...lights out." --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author