The Worst Kind of Want by Liska Jacobs (Catalina) is an atmospheric exploration of female middle age, in steamy modern Rome.

Cilla is only 43--too young to feel this way or be mistaken for her mother's sister at the nursing home. Having just taken care of her father to his end, she feels stifled by her ailing mother's needs and neediness. When her brother-in-law Paul asks for her help with her teenaged niece Hannah, she jumps at the chance to get away from one caregiving situation and into another. Paul and Hannah live in Italy, where Cilla imagines good food, good wine and romance--not that she expects any romance to befall her personally. But what Italy offers turns out to be very different. Hannah reminds Cilla painfully of an earlier teenager, Cilla's sister and Hannah's mother, a gorgeous and tragic figure. And anyway, Cilla is disinclined to serve as chaperone; she instead drinks and parties with her niece's friends, including one boy in particular who makes her yearn for something more than what her own adulthood has offered.

The sultry city of Rome is evocatively described in this novel filled with the challenges of womanhood from adolescence to menopause, and about the ends of lives. The loss of Cilla's sister and father, her mother's illness and the ancient ruins of Rome all whisper of death, and suggest the novel's conclusion. Erotic and moody, The Worst Kind of Want draws readers with momentum toward its heartbreaking end. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

In 1912, four extraordinary women met as students at Somerville College, one of the first women's colleges at Oxford: mystery novelist and theologian Dorothy Sayers, historian Muriel St. Clare Byrne, child-rearing expert and birth control advocate Charis Barnett Frankenburg and Dorothy Rowe, who founded an important amateur theater company. Together they formed the heart of what Sayers dubbed the Mutual Admiration Society (MAS), a not entirely accurate description of a group devoted to candid criticism and high intellectual and artistic standards.

In The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, historian Mo Moulton examines the lives and the changing relationships of the members of MAS from their college years to the death of the last surviving member in 1988. Moulton considers the nature of female friendships, and explores the women's lives as both insiders and outsiders who benefited from positions as members of the social elite, yet found their choices limited by legal and social barriers based on gender. (Even at Oxford, the women were second-class citizens: able to take classes and sit for examinations but not eligible to receive degrees.) More importantly, Moulton looks at the ways in which each of the four pushed against those boundaries and created new versions of women's lives in a changing world.

The result is not only a picture of four complex lives across a diversity of experience, but a rich discussion of what it means to be both human and female. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

Creative researcher Heather Frigiola approaches beasts of lore as cultural artifacts in Monsters and Mythical Creatures from Around the World, illustrated by Sky Cybele (creator of The Mythical Creatures Oracle).

In her introduction, Frigiola explains that many myths have come to their current forms through cultural blending or appropriation, but she aims to examine them in the context of their origins. Instead of categorizing by habitat or appearance, she separates the monsters into 10 geographical regions represented by 24 entries each. Western readers will find the chapters on mythos-dense Ancient Greece and Rome, and fairy-tale origin point Western Europe mostly familiar, but readers from all over the globe might spot familiar fanged faces in chapters on North and Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific.

In Cybele's color illustrations, a roc flies home to her chicks with an elephant as dinner; a blue, fork-tongued Tiamat brandishes snakes at readers; and a dog-headed, purple-winged simurgh perches peacefully in the treetops. Frigiola's accessible overviews explain each creature's appearance, behavior and the known evolution of its history. Most, like the Greek gorgon or Slavic kikimora, are magical creatures from ancient myth or folklore, while others, such as the Khaiyr Monster, originate in sightings that, though debunked, nevertheless achieved legendary status.

Intended as a sampler rather than a comprehensive listing, Monsters and Mythical Creatures from Around the World will intrigue fantasy readers and casual consumers of mythology, leaving them wishing for additional volumes of captivating creatures. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Mary Balogh (Someone to Honor, Slightly Married), the author of more than 60 historical romance novels, knows how to set a romantic scene. When Someone to Remember begins, 56-year-old Matilda Westcott becomes flustered when she hears the name of Charles Sawyer, Viscount Dirkson--her onetime love.

Thirty-six years earlier, Matilda and Charles had asked for permission to marry, but given Charles's wild and rakish reputation, Matilda's father, the Earl of Riverdale, refused. Matilda obediently broke things off with Charles. She's spent her life tending to the needs of her irascible mother, now the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, and wistfully watching Charles's marriage, fatherhood and many liaisons from afar.

But fate conspires to throw them together, when Matilda's niece marries the illegitimate son that Charles had never known. After discovering the truth, however, Charles is determined to make things right. He tries to build a relationship with his son and to reestablish a connection with Matilda, for whom his feelings have never completely gone away.

Someone to Remember is a charming novel, slowly paced and sweet, perfectly reflecting the gentle middle-aged woman at its center. Aptly capturing the bittersweet nature of rediscovering romance after so many years apart, Balogh creates engaging and believably nuanced characters in Matilda and Charles. The seventh entry in the Westcott series, Someone to Remember is sure to appeal to Balogh's many fans, or to anyone who likes romances about women beyond the typically youthful heroines. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

"My parents taught me that the universe is enormous and we humans are tiny beings who get to live on an out-of-the-way planet for the blink of an eye," writes Sasha Sagan. "And they taught me that, as they once wrote, 'for small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.' "

Sagan's beloved father is the late astronomer Carl Sagan, whose death in 1996, when Sasha was 14, continues to be a defining event in her life. ("Every loss you withstand in your life reopens all the others.") Her mother, Ann Druyan, co-wrote the acclaimed 1980 PBS documentary Cosmos. In Sagan's astonishingly beautiful and wiser-beyond-one's-years debut, her lineage bursts forth on each page like a literary and scientific big bang.

But even with a title that pays homage to her parents' legacy, For Small Creatures Such as We is very much Sasha Sagan's personal quest. She explores through memoir, cultural excavation, history and scientific curiosity how rituals--the secular, the simple and the special small moments--help people discover the reasons for their existence. Sagan, who describes herself as a secular Jew, writes that the desire to seek answers through wonder and connection is timeless, as old as the stars themselves.

"The idea of marking the longest, coldest night with the knowledge that the warmth and light is not too far off, that is ancient. And no matter where we're from, what religion we are, or to what ethnic group we belong, we can be sure that our ancestors, all of our ancestors, contemplated Earth's place in the universe with awe." For Small Creatures Such as We very much deserves to be read in the same way. --Melissa Firman, writer and editor at melissafirman.com

In 2014, Sir Ian McKellen was paid £1.2 million to write his memoirs. Nine months later, he returned the advance, saying, "I don't want to go on a voyage of discovery." Fortunately, acclaimed biographer Garry O'Connor signed on for that voyage and has produced the definitive biography of the award-winning actor and tireless international gay activist.

O'Connor, who befriended McKellen in 1958 at Cambridge, offers an intimate, critical and comprehensive biography that incisively evaluates his extensive stage and screen career. He also delves into McKellen's private life, sharing his struggles, triumphs, sacrifices and foibles to create a fully drawn portrait of an actor who found his greatest rewards after he publicly came out as gay at the age of 49. O'Connor notes McKellen's 1988 coming out: "He was awake now with a rich vivid self-awareness, an almost romantic religiousness not apparent before, and a burning social purpose that went beyond a need for personal love, a stable giving relationship, the need for a family."

The strong film career that had eluded him finally arrived when he was approaching 60. In 1998, he starred in Stephen King's Apt Pupil, and earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Gods and Monsters. The following year, he was cast as super-villain Magneto in X-Men and heroic Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. Suddenly, he was headlining two mega-blockbuster film franchises.

O'Connor (who has written biographies of Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness and William Shakespeare) offers an entertaining, insightful, opinionated and unauthorized biography of a remarkable actor and activist. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

After his first sip of baijiu, Derek Sandhaus is ready to "consult a war crimes tribunal." But the bitter and fiery drink is enmeshed in Chinese social life and Sandhaus knows he can't exist in China without learning how to stomach its grain-based liquor.

It's an acquired taste; Sandhaus is told he must drink 300 glasses before he'll enjoy the experience. Reaching that point after a mere 70 glasses, he begins to explore the culture and history of baijiu. Nine thousand years ago, Neolithic Chinese created "the world's oldest alcoholic beverage." With the Qin empire came grain alcohol, which was taxed to become a primary source of government revenue. Alcohol production and consumption spread across China.

Later, influenced by Mongolia's fermented mare's milk, distilled alcohol hit China, and baijiu, cheap and strong, took over the entire country. Until recently baijiu figured heavily in corruption scandals. "The Chinese government's annual liquor tab was at 600 billion yuan ($94.5 billion)" in 2011, Sandhaus writes, "roughly three times that year's stated national defense budget." On a lower level, bribes were sweetened with bottles of baijiu that cost up to $200. When president Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign began, baijiu sales plummeted.

With the onset of globalization, young Chinese drinkers have discovered foreign liquors, so baijiu manufacturers are targeting elegant cocktail bars worldwide in attempts to bolster their profits. Recipes for baijiu cocktails are sprinkled throughout Drunk in China, and Sandhaus is helping to launch a new brand in the West. After all, sake and mezcal have become household words. Why not baijiu? --Janet Brown, author and former bookseller

Self-care is not selfish. That simple but tricky truth props up Anna Borges's delightfully easy-to-digest A-to-Z resource The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care. As the self-help and wellness industries have become highly commercial, Borges, a mental health advocate and senior health editor at SELF, urges readers to tear themselves away from the advertisements and return to a fundamental principle: people must take necessary care of their bodies so those bodies can function and care for others.

With humility, humor and a keen understanding that the practice is difficult, if not impossible, for marginalized communities, Borges lays out dozens of methods for self-care, thereby directing readers to options rather than instructing them in exactly what they must choose. Throughout the book, she scatters anecdotes from real-world interviews that demonstrate exactly why every human from every background deserves their own curated routine.

In a volume that can be read in one quick sitting or scooped up as a handy resource, Borges asks questions that are meaningful without becoming demanding: "If you were being your happiest self--not the one you beat yourself up for not being, not some idealized version of yourself who does everything perfectly--how would you spend your week? Write it down, down to the hour." By erasing the stigma around health and self-nurturing, Borges strips the buzzword of its buzz and reminds readers that true self-care is not always easy, comfortable and accompanied by scented candles. True self-care takes work. But Borges makes that work a little bit easier--and a lot more accessible. --Lauren Puckett, freelance writer

"The little rover likes to roam. It leaves long, straight tracks as it goes./ The tracks play hide-and-seek... waiting for the rover to find them again." This rover sounds like a puppy dog--it's certainly as inquisitive and tenacious as one--but in reality it's an aluminum-wheeled, camera-outfitted vehicle combing the surface of Mars. Richard Ho lays out the mixed blessing that is this rover's fate midway through Red Rover: Curiosity on Mars: "The air is thin. The storms are strong./ You might get stuck in the sand./ Everything is..."--here the reader must open a gatefold--"RED as far as the eye can see. But it is beautiful." Until this point, readers have every reason to believe that the narrator is omniscient and without physical form, but this isn't so. The text resumes, "They call me Mars. I am not like your world."

Picture book first-timer Ho succeeds with a tough assignment: imbuing a rolling pile of nuts, bolts and gadgets with personality. Illustrator Katherine Roy (How to Be an Elephant) also has quite the challenge, given that the red planet isn't known for its rainbow color scheme. While faithful to a largely peach and russet palette, Roy offers variation by importing other hues in order to create shadows and watercolor-y skies. She also incorporates lots of popping inset art that will appeal to space cases whose pulses quicken at the sight of National Geographic spreads. Red Rover is a fine launchpad for kids with a budding interest in outer space, and it can also enhance the understanding of confirmed science geeks. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Being a child in the adult world presents all sorts of challenges, but size is perhaps the most obvious, immediate hurdle. For young Soe-In, the "once upon a time"-hero in Hanna Cha's delightful debut picture book, Tiny Feet Between the Mountains, her smallness even determined her name: Soe-In means "tiny person." Although Soe-In took four steps to others' two, her size never stopped her. She lived "in a large village" where the villagers would confidently boast that "they were bigger and more fearless than the spirit tiger rumored to protect the surrounding mountains and forest."

And then the darkness came: "the villagers woke up to find the sky was filled with thick black smoke and red embers.... And the sun was nowhere to be seen." The chieftain requests for a volunteer to trek "into the mountains" and see what "made the sun disappear." Soe-In alone speaks up: "Sir, I will go." Though she's met with a cacophony of doubting resistance, Soe-In's tenacity never wavers. She packs her pink bojagi (traditional wrapping scarf) and bravely ventures forth. Nothing stops her until she's eye-to-eye with the spirit tiger himself.

Korean American author/artist Cha explains in her author's note that she drew from her cultural history, celebrating the "tigers [that] constantly appeared in Korean stories and images, sometimes as deities, sometimes as threats." As artist, the Rhode Island School of Design-trained Cha seems to attenuate the tiger's spirit: while all her richly hued spreads swirl with inviting action, her tiger-themed panels especially burst forth in flaming swaths of gold, orange, brown and black strokes, as if the tiger's energy can hardly be contained on the printed page. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon