Despite being East Long Beach's most famous private investigator, Isaiah Quintabe (IQ for short) is still solving low-level crimes and getting paid in "casseroles, cookies, needlepoint homilies, leftover Christmas presents, home repairs, and knitted woolen scarves so perfect for the California weather." His buddy Juanell Dodson, a former hustler and occasional partner in solving crimes, has gone legit with a food truck business. But Dodson is being blackmailed and needs to make some real money. He convinces a reluctant IQ officially to join forces as investigators, but will they survive their first case?

Their client is Grace, an artist looking for Sarah, her mother who disappeared 10 years earlier. Despite Dodson's objections to the case, the investigators begin their pursuit. It's not long before the trio discover they're up against members of a Blackwater-type paramilitary force who engaged in unspeakable atrocities at Abu Ghraib, led by the merciless Stan Walczak. Sarah has damning photos of Walczak and his crew torturing Iraqis, and the villainous mercenaries will kill anyone who threatens to publish them--or even knows they exist.

Joe Ide has given mystery readers a truly distinctive protagonist in his 26-year-old, socially challenged African American sleuth. With Wrecked, the third installment in the series (IQ, Righteous), Ide adds new dimensions to IQ, with Grace as a love interest and his awkwardness around her in stark contrast to his proficiency as an investigator. Ide's commitment to character and ear for dialogue are a treat; even supporting characters like Dodson's girlfriend, Cherise, and business partner Deronda are well-rounded. Ide's ability to find comedy and vulnerability amid the violence make the IQ series a refreshing addition to the genre. --Frank Brasile, librarian

Horsemen of the Sands collects two novellas by Russian historian and novelist Leonid Yuzefovich. The novellas address vastly different subjects, tied together by the author's hallucinatory style. "The Storm" follows students and teachers at an elementary school during what begins as an average day but eventually takes unlikely turns. Yuzefovich is skilled at concise characterization, getting across complex psychological profiles in a few paragraphs. He also possesses a welcome sense of humor--a dry, compassionate wit that notes one character's "mature married man's natural, nonbinding interest in a mature married woman."

In the titular "Horsemen of the Sands," Yuzefovich has crafted a mini-epic. It covers a strange historical episode in the early 20th century wherein a Russian monarchist officer, R.F. Ungern-Shternberg, makes a quixotic attempt to revive the Mongol empire and oppose Bolshevik forces. The novella begins in 1971, with a Russian soldier involved in preparations for a possible Chinese invasion on the Mongolian steppe. His conversations with a local named Boliji lead to protracted flashbacks depicting Ungern's increasingly messianic aims, prompted in part by his fanatical devotion to Buddhism. Traveling from village to village, Ungern stages demonstrations where bullets are fired at him point-blank. The "Mad Baron" repeatedly survives, claiming divine protection. Ungern's story ends in tragedy and failure, but his legend persists a half century later, when Boliji and Russian soldiers argue over his legacy. "Horsemen of the Sands" and "The Storm" are both thoughtful reflections on anxieties buried just beneath the surface of Russian society. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

When Samuel Johnson is 12, the town of Unityville, Pa., (pop. 30 religious zealots) is rocked by the arrival of a television set ("less likely than a stigmata"). A loner and a mope, Samuel brightens as television transports him outside his tiny town. His viewing sessions with fellow preteen Emily blossom into romance. They eventually marry, but tragedy strikes when Emily dies in childbirth.

Four years into parenting by himself, Samuel dies protecting his son from a crazed stranger. Struck by the "odd turns" of his afterlife, Samuel realizes his soul now resides in the body of the lunatic who killed him. That horrible fate is altered when his murderer then dies, propelling Samuel into an occupant of a passing airplane. Hurtling ever farther from his boy, Samuel feels punished by God for his shortcomings as a father (and for watching too much television).  

Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return is a quirky, multi-bodied story of the peculiar road trips Samuel's soul takes as he desperately tries to maneuver back to his son. Martin Riker, English lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis and co-founder of the feminist press Dorothy, evidences an engaging narrative voice in his enjoyable debut.

Samuel's perceptions change as he observes through what are, in essence, human televisions. The television theme is mined to useful and comic effect, and fans may enjoy revisiting programming lineups and their reflection of society from the 1960s forward. Riker dips into the existential, but the navel-gazing feels natural to Samuel's predicament and lends itself to a heartwarming and rewarding conclusion. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Welcome to Nightvale podcast creator and writer Joseph Fink expands on the hit serial podcast Alice Isn't Dead in this flesh-crawling horror thriller with a heart.

"This isn't a story," Fink begins. "It's a road trip." When her wife, Alice, disappeared, Keisha searched for months, eventually held a funeral and then tried to overcome her grief in a world that no longer made sense. Things turned upside-down again when she began noticing Alice on the news, always in the crowd at the scene of tragedies across the United States. A year and a half later, Keisha works as a long-haul trucker so she can search the country for Alice.

On the road, she attracts the attention of an unkempt creature in a dirty polo bearing the word "thistle," who eats a living victim in front of her. Though human in appearance, the Thistle Man is "like a boogeyman from a vaguely recalled nightmare," and police officers turn a blind eye to his activities. Stalked by the predator, Keisha picks up a teen girl, Sylvia, who lost her mother to the Thistle Man. Their ensuing investigation puts Keisha on the path to uncovering a dark world hidden within the shadows of our own.

In his third novel, Fink (author, with Jeffrey Cranor, of It Devours) achieves an eerie, off-kilter atmosphere that induces a constant sense of paranoia. Fans of the podcast will no doubt enjoy this expansion of Keisha's quest, but readers who have no familiarity with the story will likely appreciate its surprises and chills even more. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

At the center of Jenny Hale's feel-good romance Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses are handsome, wealthy workaholic Nick Sinclair and single mother and overworked nurse Abbey Fuller. In Richmond, Va., Nick has settled his elderly grandmother Caroline into a small cottage adjacent to his Georgian Revival-style mansion on the banks of the James River. He never wanted the sprawling estate--the oversized house was his wife's idea. Since the couple's acrimonious divorce, the mansion has been stripped bare.

Having been lured by Nick from her job at an upscale retirement home, Abbey assists and cares for Caroline, and the two women become friends. Abbey shares her passion for interior design and explains that she was forced to put her design dreams on hold in order to raise her son, Max. Caroline offers Abbey the chance to decorate her cottage, and the result is so pleasing that Caroline convinces Nick to hire Abbey to redesign his mansion in time for Christmas, when Nick's sister and her family will arrive to spend the holidays. The salary Nick offers for the job is beyond Abbey's wildest dreams, but can she meet the decorating deadline while accommodating Caroline's and Max's needs?

An opposites-attract romance riddled with complications ensues between private, standoffish Nick and bubbly, inquisitive Abbey. Hale (The Summer House) playfully captures the light, fluffy spirit of true love and the meaning of family at the most wonderful time of the year. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Finding one's roots is a pastime for curious genealogists. But for Nora Krug, it meant laying to rest fears that her family was complicit in World War II atrocities. In Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, she shares her trip back in time, to the very streets her grandparents shared with Nazis.

"Heimat" means homeland, the place with which one identifies. Krug's is elusive, and she determines "the only way to find the Heimat I've lost is to look back." In this scrapbook-style memoir of drawings, photos and ephemera linked with short passages chronicling her quest, Krug imparts a sense of immediacy that reflects her trepidation. Was her grandfather Willi a Nazi? Why didn't anyone speak of the war as she was growing up in the German region where her family had lived for generations? Krug avoided questioning, and her aunt advised when she traveled, "Just say you're from the Netherlands." Twelve years after she came to the U.S. for college, Krug confronted the guilt of her heritage: "Not even marrying a Jewish man has lessened my German shame."

Krug returned to Germany to excavate her family's past, piecing together sometimes contradictory information through interviews and archives, including a military file untouched for two generations. As she turns pages, readers may hold their breath in empathy: What will she learn, and will it ease her guilt and secure her Heimat? --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Aaron Mahnke, author of the creepy and engaging The World of Lore: Dreadful Places, launched his immensely popular Lore podcast in 2015. Today he draws an audience of millions with spine-tingling stories culled from actual folklore and couched in his own historical research. Amazon Video adapted the podcast for television in 2017, and now there are three Lore books. Dreadful Places is the third and somehow even scarier than the first two.

Featuring expanded retellings of stories he's told on the podcast as well as new material, Dreadful Places hit shelves in time for Halloween, but it makes for a fascinating read throughout the year. That's because Mahnke is as much a historian as storyteller. Each chapter delves into the history of the city where the story is set, revealing odd facts and terrifying personalities. Most of the stories contain supernatural elements, but some focus on the monstrosity of ordinary human beings. In "Echoes," for example, Mahnke tells the tale of Dr. Walter Freeman, who in 1936 directed the first prefrontal lobotomy in the U.S. The doctor performed the brain procedure using an ice pick and no anesthetic on children as young as four years old. Many of those patients, we learn, died on the operating people. "Ironically," writes Mahnke, "some people still don't believe in monsters."

Mahnke's writing style balances breezy humor with rigorous research, making these stories a scary pleasure to read. Dreadful Places continues to haunt long after the last page is turned. --Amy Brady, freelance writer and editor

The weather affects everyone on a daily basis; we check the forecast to see if it'll be rainy or sunny, or to track the latest storm, yet how many of us completely understand how and why there are clouds, storms and seasons? In 18 Miles, essayist and poet Christopher Dewdney (Acquainted with the Night) explores the complex and multi-layered atmosphere that lies like a thin film over the earth. At its deepest, it is only 18 miles thick, yet without this skim layer, none of us would exist.

Using humor, personal stories, details of meteorological history and an incredible amount of scientific data, Dewdney describes each level of our atmosphere, explaining how clouds are formed and the evolution of the atmosphere on the planet. He shares the way hurricanes and tornadoes are born, the scales used to classify them and his experience of living through Hurricane Katrina. Thunderstorms and the various types of lightning--sprites, blue jets, elves, pixies, gnomes and trolls--are described in lush detail. He includes fascinating tidbits about the early rainmakers and the way the U.S. and other countries "seed" clouds in order to create rain. Covering the driest places on the planet and the wettest, the mildest clouds and the most destructive, Dewdney has written a complex, entertaining and highly informative book that rivals the information one might find in a college classroom. For anyone interested in the air we breathe, 18 Miles is a great addition to any library. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

The Boneless Mercies's 17-year-old narrator, Frey, is an adult in her own right. Her parents died when she was 12, and her uncle sold her to a Bliss House; when she was considered old enough to make the move from the "kitchen to the bedroom," she fled. She was found by an older woman named Siggy who took her in and introduced her to the death trade. "They called us... the Boneless Mercies," Frey tells the reader. "They said we were shadows, ghosts, and if you touched our skin, we dissolved into smoke. We made people uneasy, for we were women with weapons. And yet the Mercies were needed. Men would not do our sad, dark work."

Though Siggy has passed on to Holhalla, Frey is not alone: she is accompanied by the Sea Witch Juniper; Runa and Ovie, two young women who "under[stand] darkness and carr[y] it with them"; and Trigve, a young man the Mercies saved from freezing to death. Frey, Runa, Ovie and Juniper barely make a living as purveyors of merciful death and have grown weary of killing. "I was a Mercy-girl with no family, no home, no fortune," Frey says to the reader, "and yet my blood sang of glory." Frey and the Mercies decide to seek fame and fortune by traveling across Vorseland to defeat a beast that has been terrorizing the northern jarldom.

April Genevieve Tucholke's (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea) genderbent Beowulf is as dark and quietly mysterious as the fantastical winter in which it takes place. Her alternate Scandinavia is a land of powerful magics and eerie landscapes, bloodlust and genuine, deep friendships that is full of foreboding, menace and eventual (though not unfettered) glory. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

A magical journey broadens a young child's horizons in this mostly wordless import by South Korean illustrator JiHyeon Lee (Pool).

In a world of dour, gray-penciled humans trudging through life against a blank cream background, a blue-and-red insect leads a child to a mysterious key and then on to a forgotten, cobwebbed door. Curiosity trumps apprehension, and the child steps through the doorway to a brightly colored land inhabited by cheerful red creatures whose beaked heads gently evoke Tim Burton's Beetlejuice. The strangers' speech bubbles contain incomprehensible squiggles to indicate the protagonist's inability to understand their words. However, the language of kindness proves universal when a child from a family of the creatures issues an invitation to join them for a picnic and walk in the country. As they walk, the child begins slowly to take on the colored pencil hues of the pastoral landscape. Eventually, they reach a field with doors of all shapes and sizes that release various whimsical creatures into the world; everyone is gathering to celebrate the wedding of a short, hamster-like groom to a pink, antelope-horned bride. After a joyful party, the now-rosy child returns to the black-and-white world, purposely leaving the wooden door wide open.

Lee's charming use of the magic portal and the transition from a black-and-white mundane world to a colorful fantasyland recalls such favorites as The Wizard of Oz, Lewis Carroll's works and Aaron Becker's Journeyseries. The densely colored pencil drawings look fresh enough to smudge, as though a friend drew them for the reader mere moments ago. Preschoolers may find reassurance here that different can mean fun, while older readers can use Door to start discussions on diversity, inclusion and acceptance. This quiet fable feels both relevant and timeless. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services division manager at Main Branch, Dayton Metro Library