Christmas morning of 1908, Santa brought Ruth a set of jacks while June received a lovely blonde doll. The sisters' fates seem predestined. By 1934, June is a wealthy doctor's wife working as a Betty Crocker, writing recipes in the Gold Medal Test Kitchen. Ruth toils on the family farm, caring for four kids and a bedridden husband. The Sisters of Summit Avenue, not surprisingly, are estranged yet linked by love and loyalty. As Lynn Cullen (Mrs. Poe, Twain's End) tells their story, their secrets reveal the complexities of their relationship as well as the suffering of a Depression-era nation.

The sisters' childhoods are recalled as inequitable, but the real schism comes in 1921, when John is courting June. June is plagued by self-doubts, and her ambivalence leaves Ruth an opening--she snags the handsome farmer. In spite of her subsequent marriage and wealth, June is unhappy. Ruth, meanwhile, is immersed in motherhood, and after John contracts the mysterious "sleeping sickness" sweeping the country and becomes bedridden, she struggles endlessly. The sisters' sorrows, however, are matched in a third storyline: their mother has a deep, painful history that is never revealed yet infuses her every decision.

Cullen's carefully woven plot and sensitive character development are enhanced by her historic detail. A young Ruth and John dance the Charleston; in stark contrast just 12 years later, Ruth, exhausted, struggles to survive a dust storm. As "a Betty," June markets Gold Medal to a "plain penny-squeezing Jane," in a groundbreaking marketing technique. Eventually, honesty opens the door to renewing the family's affections, and together the women enter the 1950s as a confident, loving team. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

Constance Kopp has found a fulfilling career as the first female deputy sheriff in the U.S. But after being fired from her job by a new sheriff, Constance is bored and frustrated--not to mention depressed. In her fifth novel, Kopp Sisters on the March, Amy Stewart takes Constance and her sisters, Norma and Fleurette, in a new direction, sending them to a National Service School camp to train for war work.

Stewart (Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit) blends real-life facts about the National Service camps with the Kopp sisters' colorful personalities in her narrative. Though the camps claim to prepare women for battle, Constance is disappointed to realize the courses mostly consist of bandage-rolling and other "feminine" tasks. But when the camp matron is injured, Constance is thrust into a position of authority, while Norma shows off her trained pigeons and Fleurette tries to organize (and make costumes for) camp theatricals. Meanwhile, their tentmate is hiding a secret: she's posing as society girl Roxanna Collins, but she's really Beulah Binford, a poor, uneducated Richmond girl running from a scandal that landed her in the papers. Stewart shifts between the women's adventures at camp (including secret rifle practices in the woods) and Beulah's sordid life story, using both narrative strands to comment on the era's pervasive sexism and double standards for women. While less of a traditional mystery than Stewart's previous books, Constance's fifth adventure is still a smart, witty, richly detailed slice of little-known but fascinating history. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In the past 10 years, the cosmic horror and weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) has seen increasing popularity as well as critical interest. Now Liveright is releasing a second volume of his work, after 2014's The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, complete with analysis and biographical information. Beyond Arkham collects 25 stories alongside key images, an index of story locations and annotations by editor Leslie S. Klinger (In the Shadow of Agatha Christie). And while these books are likely best for fans of the Providence, R.I., writer, newer readers will appreciate how Klinger--and novelist Victor LaValle's introduction--puts Lovecraft's fiction into historical perspective. 

Klinger's notes throughout are exhaustive, providing context for Lovecraft's classicism and often esoteric references. To his credit, Klinger is as rigorous about Lovecraft's bigotry as he is on his literary influences; both LaValle and Klinger write insightfully about how the man's repellent views influenced his body of work while refusing to dismiss him as a whole. As for Lovecraft's stories themselves, they continue to be captivating even when inconsistent in quality. His imagination created (or perhaps revealed) a terrifying universe so indifferent to humanity's existence that it could drive the characters of "The Rats in the Walls" and "Dagon" to madness. And in 2019, as the Internet and social media create a kind of constant awareness of everything, Lovecraft's fear of unlimited knowledge now seems prophetic. The commentaries, context and images contained within Beyond Arkham are a testament to Lovecraft as a writer of real vision and insight. --C.M. Crockford, freelance reviewer

Mark was one of Jeannie's best friends in high school and early college--until the night when she got drunk for the first time and he sexually assaulted her. By the definition of the times, that's what it was called: sexual assault. Under the FBI's legal definition as of 2013, it is called rape.

Words matter. And so Jeannie Vanasco delivers Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl, a thoughtful, conflicted, harrowing examination of what Mark did--with his words alongside her own.

From the outset, she worries about the fallout from her choice to include Mark: she feels she should hate him, and she doesn't want to be a bad feminist. But Mark was such a good friend; many of her memories of him remain positive ones. "I doubt I'm the only woman sexually assaulted by a friend and confused about her feelings." Like her first book, Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl is aware of itself, frequently commenting on process and prospective readership. This kind of self-regard is difficult to pull off, but it is clearly Vanasco's natural style, and she wields it expertly.

The memoir alternates between transcriptions of recorded conversations between Jeannie and Mark, and Vanasco's reactions to those recordings. Some of her brave and difficult work here is to consider the line between good and bad people, and good and bad actions. This narrator is tough, vulnerable and meticulous; the resulting memoir is heartfelt, painful and essential. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

They Will Have to Die Now is a powerful work of reportage and history providing a frontline account of the Battle of Mosul, in 2016-2017. A flurry of hysterical media attention covered the Islamic State's sudden, shocking takeover of large parts of northern Iraq, but journalist James Verini's book is concerned with the less sensational aftermath: the slow, bitter fighting by the Iraqi military, the Kurdish Peshmerga and various other groups that desire to recapture Caliphate territory. The recapture of Mosul, an enormous, populous city with an ancient history "would effectively mean the end of the Caliphate as a place, if not the Islamic State as an idea." Much of Verini's book details the often mundane, occasionally terrifying process of Iraqi forces advancing through Mosul, neighborhood by neighborhood. 

Verini has an eye for small details that add up to something larger. In one aside, he reflects on khubz, the dense bread that was ubiquitous on the battlefield: "Some days it seemed the whole war was fueled by khubz." Verini also reflects at length on the history of Mosul and Nineveh, an ancient city that Mosul now encompasses, occupied by great conquerors from the Assyrians to the British. In the Battle of Mosul, ancient history seems to collide with smartphones and WhatsApp. This gives rise to horrors--"Everyone knew someone who'd been killed on the Internet"--and absurdities--"The jihadis took selfies, too. A disturbingly high percentage of them included house cats." They Will Have to Die Now is a brilliant account of this strange new era of warfare. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine

New York State has four federal courts. Two of these, the Southern and the Eastern District Courts, are located within New York City, with the Southern District known as "the most competitive and coveted U.S Attorney's Office in the nation."

In The Districts, Johnny Dwyer (American Warlord), claims the Southern District outshines the Eastern only because of "the cult of personality surrounding the head of their office." Many former United States Attorneys for the Southern District are famous: Rudy Giuliani, James Comey, Preet Bharara. But both courts exceed the national average in convictions against defendants. "When a line prosecutor in New York City types a name on a charging document, there is only one expectation: victory."

Dwyer seems to have a soft spot for the Eastern District. Three of his court narratives take place there: Mafia wise guys who never made it big, a college student returning from a visit to Jamaica with cocaine in her luggage and a 17-year-old who was "held in solitary confinement for nearly six months" on charges of "attempting to support the Islamic State." These are stories that threaten to make the white-collar criminals of the Southern District turn pale and fade away.

Still, Dwyer makes it clear that the majesty and power of the Southern District Court is unassailable. This is where Wall Street criminality and political corruption receive punishment. This is where Michael Cohen was convicted. This is where history is made.

And in both of these courts, Dwyer reminds readers, this is "where we still turn to address the most fundamental human longing: justice." --Janet Brown, author and former bookseller

Following her Outline trilogy, a series of novels that challenged the boundaries of genre, Rachel Cusk offers a collection of essays that explore her most poignant thematic preoccupations. The collection is split into three distinct sections: Coventry, A Tragic Pastime, and Classics and Bestsellers. Part one consists of personal essays that begin with deeply private moments--from her estrangement with her parents to her divorce--only to expand into larger meditations on femininity and motherhood. A Tragic Pastime, which melds personal essay with criticism, contains pieces that look more directly at questions of art and writing practice. Finally, Classics and Bestsellers uses criticism as a form to make larger social and artistic commentaries about canon, genre and the power of literature to impact the larger socio-political world.

Part memoir, part literary criticism, part personal essay, Coventry, like Cusk's previous works, presses upon the boundaries of genre to provide something wholly new and endlessly thoughtful. Essays like "Coventry," "Lions on Leashes" and "Aftermath" are particularly moving meditations on the ways in which the personal and the universal interact. As the collection continues, Cusk's razor-sharp insights and intellect rip open the fabric that might have contained these anecdotal pieces to release a larger model for how criticism, art, literature, feminism and domestic life may not only interact but depend and feed on one another. A ravenous and witty continuation of Cusk's talent, Coventry is the beginning of a new chapter both for Cusk and our literary landscape. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Linda Geddes (Bumpology) illuminates the importance of one singular star in our human lives with Chasing the Sun: How the Science of Sunlight Shapes Our Bodies and Minds. The sun is life, allowing photosynthesis, warming the earth, providing solar power. It's no wonder humans have long worshipped it. We have "assimilated starlight into the very fabric of our beings."

People have resorted to the sun for medical purposes since early times, as well, and it is health and wellbeing that concerns Geddes in this lively, enlightening study. Circadian rhythms, her research reveals, are vital to many aspects of human life, governing blood pressure, body temperature, alertness, immune reactions, sleep cycles and quality and much more. "Almost half of our genes are under circadian control, including ones associated with every major illness investigated so far." In other words, the importance of sunlight to human existence can scarcely be overstated.

While helpful to those interested in seasonal affective disorder or jet lag, this journey to the sun and back will certainly expose any reader to new concerns and marvels as well. Chasing the Sun offers many sobering lessons (sunlight and sleep cycles are life-and-death issues) and helpful tips (the utility of melatonin and vitamin D, and the importance of putting down that smartphone at least 30 minutes before bedtime). Geddes brings a sense of wonder to her work that is infectious and makes scientific and medical concepts easy to understand through simple, serviceable prose. Caution: Chasing the Sun may inspire readers to try eating by candlelight and waking with the sun. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Amara wants nothing more than to spend her upcoming 12th birthday in New York City. Despite using all the arguments in her arsenal--including pointing out that her extended family lives there--her mother says no, believing that New York City is "no place for a little girl." A place for her or not, Amara wants to spend time with her New York family because she knows so little about them: she only speaks with her grandfather on the phone for special occasions; her Aunt Tracey has come to Beaverton, Ore., to visit, but Amara's family never returns the favor. Her desire to know her family better increases when she discovers that her father hasn't talked to her Grandfather Earl in 12 years, their last words spoken on the day Amara was born and her Grandma Grace died--could Amara be at fault?

Luckily, an opportunity to investigate her family arises at school in the form of "The Suitcase Project," a time-capsule assignment that requires students look into their family histories. The project sends Amara on a quest--with her mother's reluctant approval--to Harlem to reconnect with her family. Amara has two goals in mind: discover what happened in her family's past and help mend her father and grandfather's relationship.

Renée Watson (Betty Before X) perfectly encapsulates in Amara the sincere, authentic voice of a young girl struggling to form a personal identity through her family and their culture. The city comes alive as Watson's Some Places More Than Others tells a deep and emotionally rich coming-of-age story about reuniting severed ties and exploring history, ancestry and selfhood. --Tasneem Daud, blogger and booktuber, Nemo Reads