Scott O'Connor's Zero Zone sets itself apart from the literary thriller pack thanks to its highly original premise and empathetic range. The author of Half World and Untouchable, O'Connor once again plumbs the depths of trauma with careful attention to psychological detail. Zero Zone's central narrative follows the installation artist Jess Shepard in late-'70s Los Angeles. Jess has become a figure of unwanted celebrity after a strange series of events at her desert art installation, Zero Zone, culminated in a cult-like group barricading themselves inside. Several years after she was attacked by a survivor, Jess is preoccupied with the imminent release of her attacker from prison, as well as her own complicated feelings of culpability for the events at her installation.

O'Connor approaches the story from various angles: brief, punchy chapters skip back and forth in time and among a half-dozen characters' points of view. O'Connor excels at sympathetically depicting the extremes of human thought, building careful psychological portraits of characters yearning for something like transcendence. Zero Zone shows how its damaged characters' beliefs that "this world was simply a mask hiding another, more beautiful place" led to the shocking events at the installation. O'Connor takes care not to paint anyone as an uncomplicated villain, an approach that pays off as the novel becomes a reflection on forgiveness, letting go of the past and healing. While it builds to a suitably harrowing climax, Zero Zone quickly reveals itself to be a meditation on art in the body of a thriller. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine

Rumaan Alam (That Kind of Mother) thrills and unsettles with Leave the World Behind, a novel about family and other relationships, getting what's desired and reactions in the face of crisis.

The story begins mid-road trip, a white family of four on their way from the city to their vacation rental. Amanda, an account director in advertising, and Clay, an English professor, plus their two kids. They have an apartment in Brooklyn and a mid-range sedan somewhere between luxurious and bohemian. And yet they are jealous of their well-appointed Airbnb, its idealized decor and the imagined lives of its owners. Alam's writing is gorgeously detailed and impeccably paced, so that this is a story for readers to sink into, effortless and comfortable, even sumptuous. Until a knock comes at the door.

Ruth and G.H. are the owners of the vacation home, and the arrival of the older couple in the middle of the night is disturbing enough, but their story is stranger: a blackout in New York City, fear driving them out into the country, invading the family's perfect getaway. Amanda is suspicious. Unexpectedly, Ruth and G.H. are Black. Amanda wonders if it wouldn't make more sense for them to clean this beautiful house, rather than own it.

The resulting tension touches on generational differences, gender dynamics, class and race--Clay and Amanda are self-conscious of their faux-benign racism, and the story serves subtly as a criticism of social norms. Leave the World Behind is pitch-perfect in atmosphere, easy to read and deceptive in the high polish of its setting. Alam has crafted a deeply bewitching and disquieting masterpiece. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

What makes When No One Is Watching, a thriller by Alyssa Cole (A Princess in Theory; An Extraordinary Union), so psychologically haunting is that it could easily be true. Cole has taken the gentrification of historically Black and other marginalized identity neighborhoods and plumbed that reality to its darkest depths for a tale that's eerily uncomfortable due to its chilling familiarity.

When Sydney Green comes home to Gifford Place, the historically Black Brooklyn neighborhood where she grew up, she's not surprised to see new white faces living among the brown ones. When a perky blonde relates white-dominant history to groups of tourists--part-sightseeing, part-house hunting--tromping through Sydney's neighborhood, Sydney designs her own tour centering Black stories, even as her childhood neighbors' homes become re-occupied at surprising speed. People she was sure would die in their family homes surrounded by loved ones and memories are suddenly gone without saying goodbye.

Thus begins the descent into conspiracy-theory madness that turns out not to be crazy at all, but rather a web of kidnapping and lies whose threads reach into all aspects of society: the cops, the press, the lawyers, the realtors, some of the very neighbors themselves, and the new medical research center in the neighborhood, the one intended to provide groundbreaking opioid addiction treatment. If everyone is in on it, even those in Sydney's own community whom she would never think to suspect, how can she trust Theo, the male half of the white couple living in Mrs. Payne's former house, who also suspects something sinister about the neighborhood's rapid transformation? Told from both Sydney's and Theo's perspectives, their suspicions converge in action-packed final chapters that don't shy away from the depths of human greed and depravity, nor the grim actions of exactly what it takes to rebel against them. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co.

Early on in Man Booker Prize-winner John Banville's Snow, a murder suspect asks Detective Inspector St. John Strafford, "Will you be calling us all together at dinnertime to explain the plot and reveal the killer's name?" It's part of Snow's good running joke about its unmissable resemblance to an old-school mystery, although readers will be hard-pressed to name one of those with a castration at its center.

On a pitilessly snowy December morning in 1957, a body is found in the library at Ballyglass House, owned by the aristocratic Osborne family and located in southeast Ireland's County Wexford. The corpse, which has been worked over with a knife, is that of Father Tom Lawless, a parish priest and frequent visitor to Ballyglass House, where the elements forced him to spend the night before his body was discovered. As Strafford and his junior officer conduct the business of interviewing the Ballyglass House residents and staff, they find that no one has an alibi for the night of the murder, nor is there evidence of forced entry.

Snow represents the first time that Banville (The Sea; Ancient Light) has wrested credit for a mystery novel from his crime-writing alter ego, Benjamin Black, and with good reason: Snow is a beautifully executed, nostalgia-churning throwback that directs the occasional wink at the reader. Of the fact that Father Tom was not only stabbed in the neck but also "gelded," Strafford thinks at one point, "No newspaper in the country would dare print such shocking facts." Those were the days. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Nigerian-Canadian author Jane Igharo's debut, Ties That Tether, explores love across cultural divides in a sweet, thought-provoking romance about finding happiness while remaining true to one's background.

Right before her family emigrated to Canada when Nigerian-born Azere was 13, she promised her father on his deathbed that she would marry only an Edo man. After yet another blind date orchestrated by her mother fails epically, Azere falls headlong into a mind-blowing one-night stand with sexy stranger Rafael. She knows her mother will never accept a white suitor, so Azere walks away from their connection, only to have Rafael show up as a new hire in her workplace. However, their chemistry is irresistible, and hiding their feelings becomes impossible when Azere learns their night together left her pregnant. 

Igharo shows great promise, particularly in her examination of the catch-22s of trying to remain true to one's culture of origin while also embracing and fitting into the culture of a second home country. Rafael's family is Spanish, adding an extra layer of complexity as Azere worries that her Nigerian roots will take a backseat to his family's traditions when their baby is born. Some readers may become impatient as Azere struggles to find her voice, but Igharo does a fine job of communicating her heroine's desire to remain close with her family. Rafael has tragic secrets of his own, but his care and respect for Azere help keep readers' sympathies engaged. Happily ever after is hard-won and satisfying in this #ownvoices romance. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

When poet Maggie Smith's marriage fell apart unexpectedly, she began writing "notes to self": brief meditations on dealing with times of intense turmoil and darkness. Each one contained a kernel of advice: "Let the hard days be hard." "Tell yourself kinder truths." "Believe there is peace up ahead.... Even if you can't see it yet." She began posting them on Twitter, ending each note with "Keep moving." In her wise luminous sixth book, Keep Moving, Smith (Good Bones) combines some of those notes with longer essays about dealing with grief, upended expectations and the surprising new spaces created by upheaval.

Smith brings her poet's sensibility to loss, asking questions about the gifts of darkness, delighting in words and concepts with multiple layers. (Revision, a favorite writing practice, also becomes "re-envision," a chance to change one's outlook.) She draws in stories from when her children were small, trying to help them make sense of this confusing world and its transient, heartbreaking beauty. Smith's daughter offers the idea that the sky fills in the space when a tree is cut down, expanding into its new possibilities. As she walks through the aftermath of divorce, Smith also learns to stretch out, filling in her new, unfamiliar space. Her essays trace her journey from darkness to layered light, and her nudges to readers offer wise companionship for their own difficult journeys. "Fill yourself to the skin," she says. "Let yourself be changed, and trust that change is not erasure. Keep moving." --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

The Douglas-fir is complex and chock full of enigmas, even regarding something so seemingly simple as its name. "Douglas-fir" was not formally settled until 1950, despite the tree being centuries old and specimens first collected by a non-indigenous person in 1791. The tree's secrets are spilled in Douglas Fir, so titled by forestry pioneers Stephen Arno and Carl Fiedler because this is how (incorrectly) the name is used in common parlance--all the more amusing when one learns it isn't a true fir.

The Douglas-fir was once the world's premier construction lumber and changed the course of history on several fronts. Douglas-fir is a "mix of distinctive structural features and physiological attributes [producing] a tree that is puzzling, exceptional, and in ways a marvel of nature." It yields more quality lumber than any other tree in the world and its genetic diversity allows it to range from mere head-height to hundreds of feet tall. It tends to be fire-resistant, adding to the chance it can live for centuries. Coastal Douglas-fir even contributes to its own irrigation by collecting fog droplets on its needles. "Though this tree has long played an integral role in the lives of humans and animals, many of its secrets are only now being understood through modern science."

Arno and Fiedler have written other books together about the natural world (Ponderosa) and present a seamless and engaging history of one of its marvels. The narrative includes historical photos and detailed sketches and is followed by a visitor's guide to notable North American Douglas-firs--altogether a trip-inspiring package. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

"Why can't I find a man like 21?" a friend asks Rick Mcintyre. This bemoaning might seem strange when one learns 21 is a Yellowstone wolf, but The Reign of Wolf 21 amply explains the dismay. Picking up where he left off in The Rise of Wolf 8, his award-winning story of a runty wolf pup who rose to alpha male status, McIntyre provides another fact-filled and science-based tale that can't help but also warm hearts. The detailed daily observations of mating, feeding and hunting habits for what became the largest pack ever recorded are also a love story for the ages.

"At its height, the Druid Peak pack, led by wolf 21, comprised thirty-eight wolves and held sway over an enormous territory in Lamar Valley. The intrepid alpha male achieved all this by being fearless in battle, never backing down, never killing a rival wolf, and, even more importantly, having an equally loyal, fearless, and wise companion by his side, wolf 42." The story of how 21 and 42 became who they were, particularly through the early influence of other pack members, and their devotion to each other give soul to the story.

Wolf 21 was raised and mentored by 8, his adoptive father, and McIntyre shares enough of their relationship to evidence 8's impact. But those interested in 21's ultimate reign over the wolves infamously reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995 will certainly want to start at the beginning or go back to fill in the details of this legendary saga so skillfully told. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

There's something new under the sun: Sun Flower Lion is a fresh spin on the traditional cumulative tale. Not only does it depart from the breakneck pacing and seemingly endless unspooling characteristic of "This Is the House That Jack Built" and its kind, in Kevin Henkes's book, imagination, not action, fuels the narrative.

"This is the sun," Henkes begins, "Can you see it?" This introduces a white circle rimmed with lacelike yellow trim. Throughout the book's six whisper-short chapters, this simple image--it conjures a color-reversed fried egg--keeps changing its look and, hence, identity. For starters: to illustrate "This is a flower. Can you see it?" chapter one's sun has grown a stem and two leaves. And, hey, what's this? "It looks like a little lion." Later in the book, the lion sleeps: "He dreams he is in a field of flowers.... The flowers are cookies."

For the book's art, Henkes sticks with yellows, grays and black and white, which serve his mission: to spur toddlers to look for similarities among images. The book concludes with a cozy, applause-worthy curtain call for its featured players: the sun and a flower flank a lion family that includes the little cub, whose tail tuft will remind keen-eyed readers of... something. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author