If anyone can deeply understand a foreign text, the translator surely tops the list. "Like Bae's others, this book is simultaneously a detective novel and a surreal, poetic fever dream," explains Man Booker International Prize-winning translator Deborah Smith. Provocatively demanding, Untold Night and Day is Smith's fourth collaboration with Bae Suah (A Greater Music), considered one of Korea's most significant--and enigmatic--contemporary writers.

Here's what readers know happens: a 28-year-old former actress finishes her last workday, has dinner with her boss, searches for her missing German-language tutor, collects a traveler at the airport for a new temporary job. That's about as clear as Night and Day gets, because the Untold--as in "unknown" and "undisclosed," as Smith suggests--is what makes this novel such an immersive, heady experience.

Kim Ayami's single acting credit was a four-minute film set at a Burger King, but she's the longest-lasting "office worker-cum-librarian-cum-ticket seller" at a Seoul audio theater that's about to close permanently. She dines à deux in darkness at a restaurant that purposefully simulates blindness. The hunt for her tutor and friend, Yeoni, requires that she endure sweltering, stifling streets. Her assigned foreign visitor wakes up in her bathroom-less squat, oblivious to his (or her) purpose. Meanwhile, a peripatetic poet-wannabe obsesses over Ayami as his oneiric "poet woman," while a Chilean fruit-seller begs him for money.

Bae accentuates her labyrinth with exacting descriptive phrases ("coarse-textured white cotton hanbok," "skinny calves corded with stringy muscle"), purposefully meant to obscure who's doing who-knows-what. While disorientation seems unavoidable, astute readers will reap the rewards of her piercing commentary on disconnected humanity, social ills, apocalyptic climate, impenetrable borders and even an all-too-familiar reality. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

For 32 years, Serenata and Remington have bantered with a "dry, Thin Man repartee" and weathered the vicissitudes of marriage, careers and parenthood with grace. Even when Remington, 64, is abruptly fired from a 30-year career as an engineer on bogus charges of racism and harassment, they face it stoically. But when Remington embraces running, then racing, what Seranata sees as a "fetishizing of fitness" creates marital upheaval in The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver (The Mandibles; Property).

A lifelong solo runner, Seranata doubts Remington will persevere among the "mindless look-alikes" she disdains, "pounding in droves over the hills and dales." But he does--with the support of Bambi Buffer, his newly hired personal trainer, who observes Seranata as "dark" and promises "Rem" she can boost his performance a "hunerd percent." Next comes triathlon training, and Remington's obsession drains their savings and excludes Seranata. Meanwhile, her lucrative career as a voice-over artist and audiobook reader is sideswiped by criticism that she culturally appropriates accents. She's postponing overdue knee surgery, which will, ironically, end her own running career. As Remington nears the ultimate competition--"Mettle Man"--Seranata muses that perhaps their banter substituted for honesty. Supporting characters bring additional problems; their long-absent daughter reappears with her kids (singing Bible songs and offering judgment) and their son, whose income source is murky, contributes droll irreverence.

Following a suspenseful climax, Shriver's afterword offers a comforting summary of a couple's renewed solidarity and a philosophical take on aging. --Cheryl McKeon, bookseller, Market Block Books, Troy, N.Y.

You-Jeong Jeong's masterfully plotted Seven Years of Darkness presents two excellent narratives deftly woven together: a thriller inside a thriller. Jeong, author of The Good Son, uses this nesting-doll structure to meditate on the long shadow of trauma and the elusive nature of truth, but it also serves as a clever method for heightening suspense. Jeong makes it obvious that at least one part of the story ends in tragedy, but unfolding why and how it happens reveals a multitude of shocking surprises.

The novel initially follows Sowon, a young man who lives as a pariah thanks to his imprisoned father, infamous for a murder spree that ended in opening a dam and flooding an entire town. Everywhere Sowon goes, a mysterious actor reveals his identity until Sowon is forced to flee to a remote corner of South Korea. When Sowon finds a novel manuscript that seems to describe the events leading up to the so-called Seryong Lake Disaster, readers are launched into a second narrative, a twisty, complicated, potentially truthful account of what really happened in the town by the dam.

Seven Years of Darkness succeeds on the backs of its characters, who can be sympathetic even when they're making mistakes. An accident at the beginning of the novel kicks off events that ricochet unpredictably but remain rooted in the characters' psychological wounds. Jeong's thriller is also part tragedy: a novel about decent men doing terrible things and monstrous men getting away with worse. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine

In Remain Silent, the third book in the Manon Bradshaw series, the Cambridgeshire police detective inspector's life is so hectic that finding a body hanging from a tree while she's at the park with her four-year-old doesn't ratchet things up too many notches. The novel's abundant humor, derived principally from Bradshaw's fried nerves, meshes easily with a serious premise: Susie Steiner dives deep into anti-immigrant sentiment in modern-day England, and what it can mean to risk everything for a fresh start in a new world.

Pinned to the dead young man's pants is a note written in a foreign language; a spin through Google Translate reveals it to be a message in Lithuanian: "The dead cannot speak." Also found on the body is an ID card that names the victim as Lukas Balsys. He isn't traceable online--no surprise if Balsys is one of the undocumented Lithuanians who have been enticed to the U.K. to work as manual laborers for money that they never receive. The note, plus the fact that the body shows no signs of struggle, point to suicide, but the lack of certitude prompts a murder inquiry helmed by the capable but perma-frazzled Bradshaw.

For the Manon Bradshaw series, which began with Missing, Presumed, Steiner has crafted a detective of an entirely original cut. If overwhelmed working mom Kate Reddy of Allison Pearson's comic novels turned gumshoe, she could be Bradshaw, whose "sexual fantasies, such as they are, generally involve men performing minor DIY while retaining their emotional equilibrium." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

A surreal adventure set in a dream world overlaying reality, Out of Body by Jeffrey Ford (The Girl in the Glass) is an alluring blend of the mundane, the metaphysical and the supernatural.

Small-town librarian Owen walks the same way to work and stops in the same convenience store every day. After a robber murders the store clerk and knocks Owen unconscious, he finds that night he can travel out of his body--"a silent, incorporeal witness to the workings of the world." In this ethereal plane, Owen meets a fellow "sleeper" who warns him of predators: "cutters" who can sever the cord to his body, killing it and corrupting his spirit; the miasma that can erase his life and everyone's memory of it. Hyperaware of these threats, Owen uses his ability to spy on the murderer plaguing his sleepy town. But what seems a vicious robbery proves paranormal, and Owen will discover how deep his cowardice is rooted as he debates the risk of protecting the community he loves.

Ford, a Nebula and Shirley Jackson award-winner, plays with the mercurial nature of existence by artfully creating a world from the blurred line between sleep and wakefulness. Owen bears "a special responsibility to see how people live, and to know their joy and suffering," learning they are "most themselves after sunset." Owen shows that acting courageous doesn't mean battling indiscriminately--it means knowing one's limits, trusting others and abandoning habits clung to out of fear. Ford blends this message about the everyday with tactful gore and nightmarish creatures, adding a dose of horror to a genre-bending murder mystery. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

It might be common to think of innovation as the work of isolated geniuses--names that come synonymous with companies, technological advances and singular inventions that reshape the world such, like Jobs, Gates or Zuckerberg. However, in How Innovation Works, British journalist Matt Ridley (The Evolution of Everything) asks readers to instead reconsider what they think they know about how human society makes advances, and consider innovation instead "as a gradual, incremental, collective yet inescapably inevitable process," one that turns "ideals into practical, reliable, and affordable reality."

Ridley considers mechanical developments such as steam engines and turbines, as well as the development of reliable lightbulbs; vaccines and antibiotics; advances in food storage; and public infrastructure such as sanitation and clean drinking water. Through these anecdotal demonstrations, he suggests that world-changing innovation is about bridging the gap between inventions for inventions' sake and making new ideas useful.

The book is accessibly grouped by themes, which include transportation, food, communication and computing, prehistory and energy. It also includes sections on failure, the economics of innovation, resistance to innovation and what conditions are essential to innovation flourishing. Ridley's ultimate argument through his myriad examples is that innovation is a slow, collaborative, not always linear process that the modern age depends on, rather than the fallacy of a great mind driving change, and that the intellectual freedom that fosters it should be protected. How Innovation Works is a provocative and necessary read for considering future directions for societies and governments. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Between Everything and Nothing is an urgent and humane page-turner, and an exposé to weep over. Novelist and journalist Joe Meno's vivid work of immigration reportage traces two Ghanaian refugees' separate treks across South and Central America, and then into the bureaucratic limbo of the United States' overwhelmed, for-profit detention centers.

After thousands of miles of being preyed upon by thieves and bribe-hungry officials, Razak Iyal and Seidu Mohammed both applied for amnesty at the U.S. border. Both then lost months or years caught in a system that demands asylum seekers produce evidence that they have "credible fear" of returning to their homelands. They would face certain violence if deported, but the system offers little opportunity to gather such evidence, especially when it costs refugees thousands of dollars to retain an attorney.

Meno's novelistic approach emphasizes the men's fear, determination and bouts with despair, following both from their Ghanaian youth. Their journey of survival crosses jungles and borders, up to the unlikely moment, in December 2016, when they first encounter each other in a Minnesota bus station in the middle of the night, as both men light out for Canada. Together, they then set out into a snowstorm. Meno (Marvel and a Wonder) summons the cold, the loneliness and the unfathomable will to live as both men press on, even as the border patrol's spotlights circle and frostbite sets in. For all its horrors, though, Between Everything and Nothing at heart stands as a vital portrait of an inhuman system and the desperate souls that it crushes. --Alan Scherstuhl, freelance writer and editor

In Breath, journalist James Nestor (Deep) reveals how humans became the most inefficient breathers on earth, and how intentional changes could improve the quality of our lives.

As humans evolved and discovered new skills, our skulls changed to accommodate larger brains, but this came at a cost, leading to smaller mouths and noses. Along with agriculture and processed food that requires us to chew less, humans also developed crooked teeth, a thoroughly modern malady. We evolved to become smarter at the expense of our airways, which became restricted over time, and taking shallow, quick breaths through our mouths has become the norm. From snoring and sleep apnea to hypertension and anxiety, the way we breathe today is killing us.

But the good news is that we can change how we breathe. Some methods are achievable with practice: breathe through your nose; expand your diaphragm and exhale deeply; and achieve optimum breathing by taking fewer inhales and exhales (ideally 5.5 breaths per minute). Other techniques, from yoga traditions, are considered advanced today but were practiced by ancestors who understood breathing as instrumental to well-being. 

Modern medicine pays little attention to the mechanics of breathing, so Nestor turns to the "pulmonauts" who have advanced our understanding of breathing's impact on health. Among these are Carl Stough, a choir conductor whose exhalation techniques dramatically improved the lives of emphysema sufferers, and Stanislav Grof, a Czech psychiatrist who employed heavy breathing to help patients achieve LSD-like enlightenment. With keen insight, thanks to Nestor's willingness to suffer through uncomfortable experiments, readers will assuredly pay closer attention to this essential yet overlooked bodily function. --Frank Brasile, librarian

The Little Bear starring in Stella Dreis's Little Bear's Treasure wouldn't be out of place in the company of Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak's famous like-named charmer.

The Little Bear created by Dreis (Happiness Is a Watermelon on Your Head) isn't a treasure seeker but a "treasure finder... because he didn't look for his treasures--he found them. Everywhere." Little Bear couldn't be prouder of his haul, but when he talks it up to the other forest denizens, they're dismissive. "Eventually, Little Bear stopped sharing. He became quiet and his little nose drooped down low." When a tiny bird asks him why his nose is so low to the ground, Little Bear says, "I like to find treasure, like... this stick." Incredibly, Little Bird gets it, which is to say that Little Bird gets Little Bear. Together, the two become treasure-finding partners. That night, while watching the night sky together, Little Bird falls asleep, and Little Bear thinks about "how you can find treasure. How treasure can find you. How the best treasures are the kind that snore."

Unlike Minarik and Sendak's anthropomorphized bear, Dreis's Little Bear lives in what is tempting to call a natural habitat: he coexists with other animals, his treasures culled from the forest floor. Yet how likely is one to encounter a donkey among forest creatures? And even if one were to meet what looks like a white goose in the woods, what are the odds that it would be wearing slip-on shoes? Although these pleasingly incongruous visuals appear in illustrations created with careful lines and an earthy palette, the art of Little Bear's Treasure manages to have an ebullient quality that captures the bear's euphoria at the knowledge that he has stumbled upon something more priceless than treasure: someone who understands him. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

First serialized on Webtoon and now published in partnership with GLAAD, Always Human by Ari North is a sweet sci-fi romance about two young women who learn that imperfections contribute to beautifully uncommon personalities.

Sunati first admires Austen at the train station because the young woman is not using mods to change her appearance. Sunati assumes this is because Austen is "brave" enough to be herself. When Sunati finally gathers the courage to talk to Austen, she learns Austen's overactive immune system rejects mods. Still convinced of Austen's courage, Sunati talks her into dating. As their love blooms across cute dates, both mess up. "Incurably honest" Sunati trips over compliments that offend Austen, while quick-tempered Austen assumes Sunati likes an illusion of her: "I can't live up to the pedestal you've put me on." Together, they realize even the most magnetic relationships require hard work.

North nails new love: the nerves ("My heart is too loud. And my head is too empty") that transition to excitement, the amorous teasing and the gushy fawning ("When I see you, the universe comes into focus"). She illustrates how infuriating medical challenges can be and the ways well-meaning assistance can hurt. Using her bright manga art style, she creates characters who exude emotion, while her ethereal, accessible tech world should charm any reader. Further LGBTQIAP+ representation adds refreshing diversity to the couple's social circles. Above all, North's ebullient characters demonstrate that loving someone means more than accepting their differences--it means forgiving their mistakes. Always Human by Ari North is an endearingly feel-good sapphic romance set against a diverting futuristic backdrop. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer