A battered boxer springs his young daughter from an orphanage and they hitchhike to Las Vegas, seeking a better life, in the gritty You've Got Something Coming by Jonathan Starke.

Wisconsin. Winter. A 41-year-old washed-up boxer named Trucks sneaks into the children's home where social services placed his deaf daughter, Claudia. He has $30 in his pocket, and big dreams of steady work and a stable life for himself and his child.

Trucks and Claudia cling tightly to each other as they flag down their first of many rides traveling west. Various strangers along the way offer help to improve their situation, but a prideful and untrusting Trucks turns down what he sees as handouts. Claudia begins to lose faith in Trucks's ability to provide for them. Things go quickly from bad to the very worst as the two each separately realize how ill-prepared they are for both the weather and their lot in life.

Starke's novel is peppered with heartbreaking father-daughter moments, such as when Claudia stops to touch each of her sleeping friends before leaving the orphanage, but refuses to take her own father's hand, and when a desperate Trucks tries to explain to Claudia the difference between "need borrowing" and outright stealing. You've Got Something Coming suggests some people create good karma, some sow bad karma and that there is a balance to all things, but the outcome for these characters obliterates all that. The novel is a slap in the face of every happy ending ever written, but will resonate with readers long after it's finished. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

A down-on-her-luck musician finds dark secrets lurking beneath the polished exteriors of glamorous New York City moms in this pointedly funny satire-thriller from Laura Hankin (The Summertime Girls). 

Twenty-eight-year-old Claire Martin's band has finally hit the big time with a chart-topping single but, unfortunately, they dumped her first. Her savings account depleted, she takes a job as a playgroup musician, seeing endless refrains of "If You're Happy and You Know It" as less demeaning than returning to her judgmental family in Ohio. To her surprise, she finds the glossy gaggle of moms charming, even aspirational in their cocooned world of money, wellness products and apparent inner peace. Little does she know Amara, the coolest mom, hides her spending from her husband, or that Instagram-famous Whitney's passionless marriage has her contemplating an affair with another mom's spouse. When she blunders into a bombshell that affects the entire group, Claire learns how flawed and human the women are, and also realizes they're in more danger than they know.

Hankin confronts the ironies of parenting and the "endless ways to do motherhood wrong." Though not the first to mine this territory, her sly wit puts a dry, welcome spin on the issue. Third-act revelations turn the story completely on its head; what seems straightforward and earnest morphs into a delightfully screwball thriller. Quirky and surprising, Happy and You Know It's sharp humor, empathetic portrayal of motherhood, and complex female relationships will have readers clapping their hands. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

With more than 100 titles to her credit, Lori Foster delivers another feel-good contemporary story that will resonate with readers who admire strong female protagonists, sensual romance and a love of animals.

In The Somerset Girls, two sisters run an animal rescue farm inherited from their grandparents in rural Kentucky. Autumn and Ember Somerset share a bloodline and a converted duplex house, and both maintain day jobs. That's where the similarities end, however. Autumn, 32, is a decorator and designer--the girl-next-door, homebody-type. Having been jilted at the altar, Autumn has sworn off men and romance. She is reliable and responsible, tending to her colorful parents, including a father who is a stroke survivor. Ember--younger, an outgoing free spirit--is a girly-girl with an edge who loves to flirt with cute guys. She works as a builder. When Ember runs into a former local, Tash Ducker--a handsome widower and father who was Autumn's high school crush--she volunteers the sisters' help in redesigning his house to cheer up his traumatized seven-year-old daughter. As the remodel ramps up, a romance develops between Autumn and Tash, while Ember becomes entangled in a new relationship of her own.

With compassion, wit and charm, Foster (Sisters of Summer's End) presents well-defined characters who, along the road of romance, reveal unspoken burdens. A surprising plot twist, steamy romance and endearing animal stories will delight faithful readers and win over new ones. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Michael Connelly is most famous for creating Detective Harry Bosch, but the author's newspaperman Jack McEvoy, introduced in 2003's The Poet, is no less arresting. When McEvoy chases a story, he's just as relentless as Bosch on a case. In Fair Warning, McEvoy's first appearance after 2009's The Scarecrow, he identifies the chilling link between the deaths of four women.

McEvoy now works at FairWarning, a real-life consumer watchdog news site. A chance encounter with a woman who ends up murdered plunges McEvoy into an investigation in which he discovers recently killed women all submitted DNA samples to the same company for analysis. This puts him in the killer's crosshairs and, due to McEvoy's liaison with one of the victims, the LAPD also considers him a suspect. He contacts former colleague Rachel Walling for help but must tread carefully, because on a previous story he destroyed her FBI career and their romantic relationship. The two still have trust issues, but must work together in order to snare a vicious killer who's already targeted his next victims.

Connelly (The Late Show), a former journalist, excels in making investigative reporting as enthralling as any action scene. Fair Warning shines a spotlight on the shocking lack of government oversight in the field of DNA analysis and ancestry identification. Patrons who submit samples have no control or knowledge of where their DNA ends up, and Connelly spins a skin-crawling, cutting-edge mystery about the dangerous ways the data can be mined. The scariest part? According to the author's note, the depictions of genetic research and government oversight are based on fact. Fair warning, indeed. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Liv Constantine's fast-paced The Wife Stalker begins with Piper having recently relocated from San Diego, Calif., to seaside Westport, Conn., reinventing herself in the process. She's changed her name from Pamela and bought a wellness center in town.

Joanna is hoping to enter a new phase in her life, too. She's been patiently taking care of the kids and maintaining the household while waiting for the man she loves, Leo, to come out the other side of his depression. After going to a wellness center, he does seem happier--especially when spending time with the center's owner, Piper. Before Joanna can grasp the full extent of the situation, she's been removed from the house, served with papers and cut off from the kids.

But she refuses to go quietly. Joanna starts digging into Piper's past, and finds Leo's new woman has had not only one but two husbands, who both came from money. And now they're both dead, from "accidents" while in Piper's company. Joanna is certain Leo and the kids are in danger, and she's willing to sacrifice everything to keep them out of Piper's clutches.

Sisters Valerie and Lynn Constantine (The Last Mrs. Parrish), who write together as Liv, return to familiar territory with a story about envy and manipulation set in Connecticut, involving people in seemingly perfect lives and women with mysterious pasts. The characters can be frustrating and behave in confounding ways, but the story's swift pace and twist in the final act should keep domestic thriller fans engaged. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Writing together as Tash Skilton, Sarvenaz Tash (Virtually Yours) and Sarah Skilton (Fame Adjacent) run an update on You've Got Mail in this romantic comedy of errors. 

Love is "a smokescreen for future heartbreak," according to New Yorker Miles, currently couch-surfing after his girlfriend left him. Unfortunately, love is his job. Miles ghostwrites chat messages on dating sites for clients too busy to keep up with their own profiles. After an on-the-job meltdown, his boss tells him to succeed with his next client, or else. Two obstacles stand in his way: the aggravating woman who fights him for day-old biscotti at his favorite coffee shop, and his chemistry with his client's top match. Meanwhile, Los Angeles native Zoey came to the Big Apple for inspiration, but feels too overwhelmed to venture farther than the coffee shop across the street, where a cute jerk steals her stale biscotti and her favorite table. Struggling to make ends meet as a dating service ghostwriter, she takes comfort in chatting with her latest client's beau. As their enmity shifts to friendship, Zoey and Miles don't realize the online lovers they're pining after are really each other.

This tale of two Cyranos puts a sweet and funny spin on dating in the fast lane as Zoey and Miles advise their clients based on chat conversations with each other, with predictably disastrous results. Rom-com lovers will enjoy watching this pair of matchmakers find their app-ily ever after. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Readers of Canadian author Alison Wearing's touching Moments of Glad Grace will understand her conflict long before the author herself does. As she embarks on a trip to Dublin with her father in pursuit of genealogical records, she envisions precious adventures with Joe, her 80-year-old father who's struggling through the first debilitating signs of Parkinson's. Desperate to learn why their ancestors left Ireland for Canada centuries ago, Joe insists instead on lugging tombstone-sized tomes and microfilm reels through the halls of the National Library. Throughout the memoir, Wearing voices her disdain for this; she does not understand genealogy's purpose. The connections to problematic, privileged ancestors make her feel sticky and deceived. Plus, for a writer naturally dependent on imagination, it's just so mind-numbingly dull.

Of course, anyone else can see this mission isn't really about genealogy at all--it's about Wearing making peace with her little family and the time it has left. She and her father make no grand discoveries, nor is there much of anything compelling to be found in their long lists of daily activities. Moments of Glad Grace does not thrive on plot. But its characters are lovely. Joe is a tender, triumphant hero, a formerly closeted gay man who now celebrates his sexuality with admirable enthusiasm. He's hilarious, and you can feel Wearing's love for him in every page. Wearing's own evolution is what makes the book more than just sentimental, however. Slowly, she begins to understand her complicated relationship with Joe, the legacy of her lineage, and the importance of small moments in the making of who we are. --Lauren Puckett, freelance writer

Questions about why serial killers do what they do evoke answers as varied as the new mysteries they generate. Carlos Busqued, Argentine radio producer, engineer and professor at the University of Córdoba, had the opportunity to spend more than 90 hours with imprisoned serial murderer Ricardo Melogno. In Magnetized, Busqued compiles the transcripts of their conversations along with details of the crimes and Melogno's troubling history.

Busqued recorded interviews with Melogno in 2014 and 2015, relating to "a series of brief, strange, and almost restrained murders" in Buenos Aires in 1982. During a one-week period, the bodies of four taxi drivers were found slumped in their seats with .22 caliber bullet holes in the temple. The only items taken were vehicle registrations and victim IDs. The police were stumped. A week later, Melogno's brother turned him in.

Melogno, then 22, was an enigma. Described as unimpressive, "a regular, skinny kid," he expressed no motive or rationale for killing and felt nothing afterward. His affect resulted in a complete lack of consensus on his psychiatric status. The Federal Capital declared him unfit for trial due to insanity; the Province of Buenos Aires tried him and sentenced him to life in prison.

In his own words, Melogno describes his violent upbringing and his mother's use of religion as a weapon. Busqued, nominated for the Premio Herralde for his debut novel, Under This Terrible Sun, provides a chilling glimpse into the psyche of a killer wrapped in a meek facade. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Told in overlapping timelines--with multiple scene do-overs--this thought-provoking YA novel plays with the idea of parallel universes as a teenager grapples with love, understanding and forgiveness. Plus a bunch of unruly dogs.

The summer after her junior year at a boarding school, Adelaide attempts to recover from an unexpected breakup with her boyfriend ("I am an egg yolk of misery inside a membrane, and the name of the membrane is Mikey broke up with me"), come to terms with her younger brother's drug addiction and fall in love with someone(s) new. Those are the facts readers can be (mostly) sure of. How all this happens is where it gets tricky.

In Again Again, E. Lockhart, known for tinkering with timelines in Genuine Fraud and for twisting plots in We Were Liars, imagines different but concurrent scenarios for Adelaide's every step. For much of the story, she goes down one path: she pursues a boy she meets during her summer job of walking dogs. But alternate details of the relationship, as represented in different fonts, unfold along parallel routes, much like a choose-your-own-ending story, except "you" don't get to choose--Lockhart does.

In spite of the unusual timeline, Lockhart keeps the action moving. Scenes are short and just repetitive enough that readers know it's a re-do, but different enough that it's clear this is a synchronous event. What makes Again Again especially intriguing is that this is not a sci-fi novel. The worlds are not defined or literal. They are, simply, other possibilities. We make small choices all day long, every day, and others react. The layers of possibility are infinite and exciting. Or disappointing. Or catastrophic. Or... different. It's a way of looking at the world(s) that will come back to readers, again and again. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor