Based on actual events, Wiley Cash's third novel, The Last Ballad, relates the story of Ella May Wiggins and the early fight for unions in the North Carolina Appalachian region. Cash, as in his previous novels, deftly employs multiple voices to recount a story about the violent struggle for workers' rights and the tragedy of Wiggins's murder.

Mother of four with a fifth on the way, Wiggins works nights in a textile mill to support her family. Earning $9 a week, the white woman labors and lives alongside African Americans in abject poverty. Abandoned by her husband, Wiggins can't stay home to care for her sick child without the threat of losing her job. So when she learns of a union rally, she risks attending and dares to hope for a better life. Wiggins's story and her singing talent quickly turn her into the movement's poster child. The mill owners, however, have no intention of allowing the "bloody red flag of Communism" to fly over their businesses; they will stop the union efforts whatever the cost.

Cash (A Land More Kind than Home; This Dark Road to Mercy) juxtaposes the beauty of Wiggins's love and devotion--to her family and to her black friends and neighbors--against the hideousness of racism, classism and hate in 1929 North Carolina. These contradictions illuminate the novel's intense sense of place as much as the compelling physical details. Told with grace and compassion, The Last Ballad is an enthralling narrative and a powerful reminder of the immense sacrifices made for workers in the United States. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker, The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza is a slim volume that pushes the boundaries of the male-female spectrum, mental health and the stories one tells oneself and others. Two women visit an unidentified male narrator, a doctor who lives by the ocean; one is a former lover, the other a stranger who instills desire and fear in the narrator. Both women settle into a comfortable routine, leaving the doctor to ponder past, present and future aspects of his life. When these two women state they know his biggest secret--that he is in fact a woman--the narrator begins a downward spiral into a state of mental confusion and anxiety that pushes him to perform acts he might otherwise avoid.

Garza's work draws heavily on the writings of Amparo Dávila, a Mexican author whose female protagonists often have mental illnesses. These often lead to violent and dangerous scenarios. Other themes both writers explore are death, ghosts and time. In The Iliac Crest, ghosts are prevalent. Time ebbs and flows between past and future--reflected in the motions of the ocean, a setting the narrator is drawn to time and again.

Although modest in length, Garza's creative piece is a complex puzzle that might take multiple readings to unravel fully. A background in Amparo Dávila's work would be useful, but it is certainly not necessary, as an afterword by Elena Poniatowska helps clarify some of their shared themes. Despite the novel's brevity, Booker's translation makes clear the intricate and delicate poetic dance Garza crafts among the three main characters. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum are sure to adore Cyd Redondo, Brooklyn, N.Y., travel agent extraordinaire, who has never been further than New Jersey. Cyd works for her uncle's agency, specializing in package tours for retired vacationers. She is desperate to travel and escape her mundane life, where the only recent excitement was the death of the neighboring pet store owner. After meeting a handsome man named Roger at a travel conference in Atlantic City, Cyd can't resist asking him to be her plus one when she wins a safari to Tanzania.

But plans for a romantic vacation with Roger go awry when they arrive in Africa to discover that some of the elderly clients she'd booked on this same tour have been arrested. Then, inexplicably, Roger disappears with their luggage. Cyd Redondo of Redondo Travel can't let that slide, and sets off on a mission to save her clients from prison and figure out what happened to Roger. Soon she's knee-deep in poachers, smuggled animals and vegan tour guides as she staggers through the jungle in her stilettos on her quest for the truth.

Laugh-out-loud funny and enchantingly ridiculous, Lost Luggage, first in a series by Wendell Thomas, is a highly entertaining peek into the world of smuggling and the lengths people will go to for money. Cyd's spunky attitude and Brooklyn twang might bewilder the Tanzanians she meets, but the funny scenarios that surround her will have readers roaring. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Winner of the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in the U.K., Naomi Alderman's (The Liars' Gospel) sci-fi thriller The Power asks how humanity's oldest balance of power would shift if women suddenly had strength beyond that of men.

After the Day of the Girls, the world is never the same again. Video online shows teenage girls delivering electrical shocks with their bare hands that can leave a grown man crying in agony. Soon the isolated incidents become widespread as young women all over the globe discover the power of the skein, an extra organ that lies along the collarbones and discharges electricity. The power awakens in girls everywhere. Soon governments and families must accept that the power is the new reality. Over the coming years, it will change religions, borders and the order of human society.

Ostensibly the manuscript of a historical novel by a far-future male author, the story is bookended by letters between the humble writer and his condescending female editor, who calls him "you saucy boy" and patronizes the quaint idea of a patriarchal society as "a kinder, more caring and--dare I say it?--more sexy world."

Alderman has built a suspenseful thrill ride filled with deep, contrasting female leads on a scaffolding of philosophical questions about how different men and women are at heart. Reminiscent of the work of Alderman's mentor Margaret Atwood, The Power is perfect for book clubs, where readers will undoubtedly debate the finer points of nature versus nurture and whether a power shift can reverse a lifetime of socialization in middle-aged women. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Merit Voss collects trophies. Not awards she's won, but discarded prizes found at thrift stores or garage sales. She rewards herself when something bad happens by purchasing these mementos: her boyfriend breaks up with her, she fails her driving test, her parents divorce. Given the level of dysfunction in the Voss family, her trophy collection is large.

The seven Vosses live in a former church they refer to as Dollar Voss. There's a marquee in the front yard and an eight-foot-tall statue of Jesus Christ hanging inside. As if that wasn't odd enough, Merit, her twin sister, Honor, and older brother, Utah, live with their father, stepmother and half-brother, while their agoraphobic mother resides in the church basement.

Within the walls of Dollar Voss roam the family's dark secrets. When the household expands--Honor's boyfriend and the stepmother's brother move in--the secrets pile up even higher. Day by day they weigh Merit down until she can't bear the load any longer, and she decides to leave. In her wake, she'll expose everyone's secrets. However, even the best-laid plans don't always work out the way they're intended; Merit's implodes.

Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us) deftly elicits empathy from her audience for a narrator who could easily be unlikable if viewed only from the surface. Merit's complexity, confusion and sense of isolation pull readers to her and encourage them to look deeply into her character, to see everything she's desperately protecting. Engrossing and compelling, Without Merit beautifully illustrates the power of relationships and honesty. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

In 1977, two ambitious young agents in the Gary, Ind., FBI office stumbled on a potential career-making lead to bring down the swashbuckling financial swindler Phil Kitzer. Jim "J.J." Wedick and Jack Brennan had little in common except a drive to climb the Bureau ladder. Fast-talking Kitzer convinced financially desperate small business marks that his various shell banks would provide the funds they needed--for a fee. By the time the shady paper he arranged was exposed as worthless, he had moved on to a new sham bank and new victims. At the time, the FBI was into old-school crimes like kidnapping, extortion and interstate stick-ups. White-collar crime and undercover agents with wiretaps didn't get the big federal bucks.

Chasing Phil is the story of how Wedick and Brennan broke out of the FBI administrative handcuffs to weasel into Kitzer's global circle of financial con men called "The Fraternity"--and got convictions on 50 of them. David Howard (Lost Rights) has combed trial archives and newspaper stories, and interviewed many of the key players. He sketches the late nights of booze, broads and high-end dinners where Kitzer worked out his scams and schemes. As Wedick and Brennan become more deeply enmeshed in Kitzer's world, the crimes escalate from two-bit cons to million-dollar fraudulent international bonds. The FBI takes notice and bumps the investigation to Major Case Number One. When the FBI finally pulls the trigger on Kitzer after eight months of undercover work, Wedick and Brennan are relieved--but sad to see their adventure close. A colorful bad guy is always more interesting than an office full of suits. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

In Forgetfulness, British thinker Francis O'Gorman aims to distill many of the problems of modernity into a single cause. The trouble with our current age, O'Gorman claims, is that humans now solely focus on the future, without properly tending to the past or understanding what that future might truly entail.

O'Gorman delves into the roots of Western culture for a different kind of cultural schema, arriving at the Grecian notion of citizen and family member. The Greeks worshipped their ancestors, keeping the history of their family and city as part of their everyday lives. When monotheistic religion arrived, however, with its focus on a world to come, the future outstripped the past and the West began to succumb to cultural forgetfulness. Tracing that phenomenon into contemporary culture, O'Gorman dissects everything from the English novel to "personal growth plans" at work, showing that global capitalism and art have intensified modernity's fixation on the future. But, he rightfully points out, there is no end game for the forward push of art or economy: a company continues to grow and make profit, while art always searches for the fresh and new.

O'Gorman's eye is keen and his words sharp as he picks apart much of modern life, but he doesn't provide easy solutions. He is well aware that the problems he raises are possibly too vast and far-gone to be dealt with on a cultural scale. Instead, he hopes to instill the reader with an interest in personal remembrance, in not so easily buying into a future that won't ever really come. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

Lithium makes fireworks red, makes batteries charge and makes music journalist Jaime Lowe lead a normal life. In her memoir, Mental, Lowe recounts living with bipolar disorder and examines the enigmatic medication that saved her. At 16, after a manic episode during which she received messages from Michael Jackson and the Muppets, she was hospitalized and given lithium, the favored element of Kurt Cobain, ancient Romans and worldwide spa-goers. As she grows up, moves to New York and works in media, the little pink pills are a constant in her life--until she stops taking them, descends back into mania and is forced to rebuild her relationships and career after she (literally) burns them down. When Lowe later learns that the drug that keeps her mind in check is harming her body, she goes on a journey to hot springs, salt flats and academic conferences to learn more about her psychotropic savior.

Lowe researches her own life through her journal, her therapist's notes and interviews with friends and family, in a way that's reminiscent of David Carr's The Night of the Gun. With humor and rapid-fire prose, she brings the reader into the bliss and grandiosity of a psychotic episode, an experience more intense than drugs. Then, she explains the aftershock: how it feels not to be trusted and not trust yourself, and the guilt of somewhat missing her fearless, thrilled, manic self. Mental is fascinating, shocking, heartbreaking and fun to read. --Katy Hershberger, freelance writer and publicist

To craft the gripping fantasy world of Tochi Onyebuchi's debut novel, Beasts Made of Night, he takes the age-old idea of the haves and the have nots, adds a dose of magic, sprinkles in action and intrigue, then tops it all with a deliciously complex character on his path of self-discovery.

In the walled city of Kos live Mages who wield the power to extract sin from people. The sin-holder is then purified and the sin itself becomes a beast that must be killed and Eaten. The slave-like aki are the only ones who possess the power to Eat the sin-beasts (inisisa). The Mages demand high prices to withdraw sin but then cheat the aki, who consume the inisisa and wear the beasts' images on their skin. In Kos, these tattoos are signs of shame.

Taj, a cocky, talented young aki, describes the arrival of one such tattoo after he slays a sin-dragon: "I know that wings are spreading across my shoulders and sharp claws are burning down my arms to curl around my biceps. I squirm on the pallet as the tattoo of the dragon's neck and head form on the back of my own neck." After defeating a particularly vicious inisisa extracted from the king of Kos, Taj finds himself entangled in a sinister plot to destroy the city. Taj must cut himself off from his fellow aki, team up with a smart, young Mage and find a way to defeat the evil forces or everything he cares about will be ravaged.

Beasts Made of Night is an intense novel that touches on powerful themes of justice, inequality and family. Onyebuchi's inventive realm, combined with the Nigerian influences, ink the reader's soul and are certain to leave a lasting mark on the young adult canon as well. --Jen Forbus, freelancer