Carol Anshaw (Carry the One) crafts a masterpiece of characterization and pacing with Right After the Weather, a novel of surprises. Cate, a set designer in Chicago, is a bit bumbling and hapless, but charming. A cast of similarly weird, struggling but lovable friends surrounds her. Her ex-husband, Graham, has moved in following his latest divorce, with a perfectly wonderful dog and with all his conspiracy theories, agoraphobia, fancy mail-order meals and "hemp and unbleached cotton, drawstring closures." Her best friend Neale is a comfort, with her wholesome do-it-yourself skills and dear son. Cate's new girlfriend, Maureen, appears to be just what she's been looking for--financially secure, "encyclopedic in matters of fixing things"--but there's something a bit off. Cate's former lover Dana is the opposite: the wrong thing, but entirely, overwhelmingly magnetic. Cate's and Neale's parents are each complicated and intriguing on their own.

Anshaw weaves a delightful tapestry, often laugh-out-loud hilarious, as Cate and the rest fumble through their lives. Halfway through the story, however, the tone changes abruptly when trauma strikes, and Cate must learn to navigate a new version of herself. Right After the Weather is smart and filled with the sort of evocative details Cate infuses into the sets she designs. It is compelling: once invested, the reader is hard pressed to turn away (so schedule a free evening for this one!). And it is populated by charisma and natural stars. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

In the 2019 installment of this annual anthology, author Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See) and series editor Heidi Pitlor have parsed thousands of stories to select 20 standouts from the last year. The stories are penned by both up-and-coming authors, such as Ella Martinsen and Julia Hellion, and well-established literary masters like Jeffery Eugenides and Deborah Eisenberg. A few particularly memorable tales in The Best American Short Stories 2019 include Nicole Krauss's "Seeing Ershadi," a retrospective meditation on female disillusionment and isolation; Karen Russell's "Black Corfu," a darkly vibrant tale of a doctor charged with disabling the undead, who loses his family in the face of medical controversy; and Wendell Berry's "The Great Interruption: The Story of a Famous Story of Old Port William and How It Ceased to Be Told," a bittersweet folk tale about the loss of small communities.

Reflecting Doerr's own literary interests, these pieces often delight in the description of everyday minutiae and time/space-specific settings and atmospheres. Whether mildly futuristic and disconcerting (like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "The Era") or casually nostalgic (as Eugenides's "Bronze" is in its depiction of 1978 New York, "dying. But that was OK"), these stories have deep, physical roots. Berry's "The Great Interruption" displays this theme perhaps most entertainingly, as a narrator, nameless until the last line, unfolds a comical story within a story in order to mourn quotidian pleasures of yesteryear. While these thematic ties weave through the collection, ultimately this anthology rejoices in its range of subject matter, its emotional complexity and its depiction of quietly powerful moments. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

After a car accident kills her father and leaves her mother seriously injured, 24-year-old Nicole moves back into her parents' house to help out. Nicole works as a piano player at a local casino behind a Walmart and doesn't have much going on in life. Until one day, at her father's grave, she turns around and sees Honey, her best friend from childhood.

Honey and her mother disappeared from town six years earlier, to escape Honey's abusive dad. Her mom has since died, and Honey has returned, taking a job at a bank. It's the last job Nicole would have expected her wild, unpredictable friend to have.

Soon Honey's motives become clear, and she seduces Nicole into helping her commit actions Nicole never thought she was capable of. Even when a dead body appears, with a cop hot on the trail, Nicole realizes she'd go to extraordinary lengths to make sure Honey never leaves her again.

In Honey, poet Brenda Brooks takes her time building the characters and setting, and the result is less a mystery than an exploration of obsession and the ignition of latent desires. The pace is languid, and characters speak in long monologues that read more like prose than dialogue, but the book contains many lyrical observations like the one Nicole makes about her friend's easy physicality: "She knew her instrument and... how to improvise error into a kind of magic that was so much better than perfection." The characters may be rough around the edges, but their descriptions contain a sense of grace. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

A creature who named himself Johann steals and kills on the streets of a dark, northern city called Elendhaven. Johann can't be killed and has decided there's only one proper name for what he is: "monster." He stalks fragile-looking, isolated Florian, evaluating him as a victim, until he realizes the young man is a sorcerer. When Johann proposes a partnership that will grow into something at once disturbing and tender, they begin a campaign of revenge that could bring the city down around them.

In The Monster of Elendhaven, debut author Jennifer Giesbrecht has created a beautifully nightmarish blend of horror, dark fantasy and cruel romance. While Johann and Florian carry out their plan for vengeance and evade traveling hunters of sorcerers, readers slowly learn the full history of what drives Florian in his deep bond with Johann. The result is reminiscent of what Frankenstein might have been if the eponymous doctor had more sympathy for his creature and much less for the rest of the world. Elendhaven would be the sort of place a reader might expect Frankenstein's creation to take refuge--a dark, bleak city at the end of the world. Giesbrecht vividly depicts the setting in strong, sometimes lurid prose, all within a story that can be read in one evening.

This brief work transports readers into a haunting, gothic dreamworld in a fairy tale of the darkest sort, which one would never share with children. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Joe Abercrombie offers an approachable jumping-on point to his First Law series with A Little Hatred, which welds Abercrombie's gritty approach to epic fantasy to a world undergoing violent technological change. Many fantasy authors choose to ignore technology, locking their worlds into an eternity of horses and swords. There are still plenty of swords--and bloody death--in A Little Hatred, but also canals, factories powered by child labor, pollution and ruthless investors seeking to maximize profits any way they can. For Abercrombie, a new era merely offers new opportunities for exploitation and cruelty.

Devoted Abercrombie fans will recognize characters previously featured in the First Law series, but A Little Hatred largely focuses on a new slate of characters. There is Leo dan Brock, a young warrior seeking fame and glory in a losing war. Savine dan Glokta profits from her father's fearsome reputation and from an approach to capitalism that would make Gordon Gekko proud. And then--because magic still has its part to play--there is Rikke, who catches glimpses of the future at the cost of terrible seizures. There are many more characters--Abercrombie likes to pivot among them rapidly so there is no possibility of getting bored. They are surprisingly likable inhabitants of a grim world, yet many of their good intentions are perverted by cynical realities.

As ever, Abercrombie's greatest talent is in writing violence, but A Little Hatred shakes up the fantasy status quo enough to intrigue any reader with a strong stomach. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine

The second novel in Lauren Layne's Central Park Pact series (after Passion on Park Avenue), Love on Lexington Avenue follows Claire, a recent widow looking to transform her beige life into something more reflective of her true self. After the death of her philandering husband, she makes a friendship pact with the other two women he betrayed and, with their help, sets about reinventing her life and the outdated Manhattan brownstone she now has all to herself. And though she'd never expect it, flannel-wearing Scott, the contractor she hires for the job, is a match for more than just this renovation.

While Claire is eager to settle into the next phase of her life, Scott makes his living traveling the globe to take on major contracting jobs. Betrayed by a former fiancée, Scott is absolutely not interested in anything long-term--especially with a pampered housewife who spends her days on Pinterest. But there's something about this historic house that turns it from small potatoes to passion project. Claire's predictable life is suddenly full of meddling friends, strawberry-lemon cupcakes, unwanted grief and construction debris. Meanwhile, Scott is growing attached to a woman and a life he never thought he could want again. Aided by smoldering chemistry and a giant goofy dog, the two fall into an unexpected romance. But what will happen when the renovation is done and Scott needs to move on?

Love on Lexington Avenue is a glitzy romantic comedy for fans of Sex and the City, home renovation shows and anyone who wants to believe in the human capacity for reinvention. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

The story of Joseph Joanovici, based on a real Romanian Jew who made a fortune as a scrap-metal magnate, is morally complex. Some saw Joanovici as a hero for the lives he saved on behalf of the French Resistance, while others refuse to believe his friendliness with the Nazis was entirely altruistic. Written by Fabien Nury (The Death of Stalin) and rendered in intense, lavish detail by illustrator Sylvain Vallée, this omnibus edition collects the entire run of the comic series that was originally published in French.

Once Upon a Time in France is presented here in faithful translation by Ivanka Hahnenberger, who manages her feat without sacrificing one iota of this narrative's rich historical tension. Readers journey with Joanovici as he immigrates to France and starts a family after discovering his knack for sorting and accurately valuing scrap metal. Ultimately, Joanovici finds himself thrust into the middle of World War II amid a sea of impossible choices that will have profound ramifications. Nury's shifting narrative never lags as it jumps across Joanovici's timeline to contrast his decisions with their eventual repercussions. A fascinating hybrid of war history, biography and true crime, Once Upon a Time in France is a must-read for graphic novel fans as well as a compelling and artfully imagined story that will likely resonate with readers of all stripes. --Zack Ruskin, freelance reviewer

Clarence Thomas has been serving on the U.S. Supreme Court since 1991--longer than any of his fellow justices--and yet he remains a cipher: a black man who routinely takes positions that would seem to block steps toward racial equality. In The Enigma of Clarence Thomas, Corey Robin, a self-described "longtime reader of the right from the left" and the author of The Reactionary Mind, makes a persuasive case that Thomas is actually "a black nationalist whose conservative jurisprudence rotates around an axis of black interests and concerns."

Robin's book is presented in three chunks: "Race" picks apart Thomas's skeptical attitude toward affirmative action; "Capitalism" distills his opinions that seem to place commerce above the individual; and "Constitution" parses his conservative positions regarding the Second and Eighth Amendments.

How did Thomas transform from a Malcolm X-reciting college radical into a right-winger? While The Enigma of Clarence Thomas isn't a biography, threaded throughout the wonky stuff are illuminating personal details about the man, who was raised in the segregated South without a father, came of age during the civil rights era and grew disillusioned with activism ("I marched. I protested. I asked the government to help black people.... I did all those things. But it hasn't worked"). While liberal minds likely won't come around to supporting Thomas's views, readers of Robin's book will be left with a keen understanding of "the bleakness and brutality of Thomas's racial vision," which can't help but influence his opinions. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

"Two Americas" may be a modern coinage, but the idea of chasm-like social stratification has undergirded fairy tales and folklore for centuries. It's also present in A Bottle of Happiness, Pippa Goodhart's big-hearted homespun fable, which is set on a mountain: on one side the people are rich, while on the other people "grew and made just enough for them all to eat and wear if they shared things." The funny part is, it's the have-nots who have cornered the market on happiness.

This doesn't prevent a young have-not named Pim from setting out in search of the new. When a vendor on the rich side of the mountain agrees to give the boy a piece of fruit in exchange for something that the man's people don't have, Pim suggests happiness as a fair swap. The vendor accepts, and Pim returns home, grabs a bottle and uses it to collect happiness in the form of people's laughter and his uncle's singing. But something gets lost in transit: when Pim opens the bottle for the fruit vendor, nothing comes out--at least at first.

Ehsan Abdollahi's patchwork-style watercolor patterns grace A Bottle of Happiness's buildings, garments, plants and even animals. In a wily touch, Abdollahi reserves a curated palette for the rich people and a homey hodgepodge of color for the regular folk. Readers will note that while one side of the mountain may be more decorous, the other side seems to be having much more fun. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Minaudierès is "a fancy French word for jewel-like handbags." Who could have imagined that a young Jewish woman who grew up in Hungary during the Holocaust would become known as the "Queen of Minaudierѐs"? In Parrots, Pugs, and Pixie Dust, Deborah Blumenthal (author of other fashion-themed books Polka Dot Parade and Fancy Party Gowns) celebrates Judith Leiber, the "queen" who designed glittering clutches in unusual and interesting shapes like "preening peacocks" or "burgers and fries."

Leiber first worked as the only woman in a "handbag house," then moved to a uniform factory where she created bags "with any scraps she could find." Her true career began in the U.S. after she met and married an American soldier. Blumenthal glosses over several decades in the U.S., but the magical quality of Judith's road to success is evident--First Ladies, Queen Elizabeth II and Beyoncé have all carried her creations.

Although the picture book's general mood is upbeat, Blumenthal does not shy away from the grimness of World War II, when Judith and her family first worked as slave laborers "sewing army uniforms," then "were forced to hide out in a dark basement." The text is accompanied by Masha D'yans's (Polka Dot Parade) somber watercolor illustrations, which make clear to young readers that most Jews were not as lucky as Judith. With Leiber's romantic interlude, the palette changes from the muted colors of war to the soft pastels of a new Europe and new love, featuring standout handbags rendered in Seurat-like pointillist images. Children interested in fashion design and creating art will likely find Leiber's story inspiring. --Melinda Greenblatt, freelance book reviewer