David Hopen's dark and enthralling fish-out-of-water novel, The Orchard, questions whether or not intelligence and free thinking cancels out religious education.

Brooklynite high school student Ari Arden's frum (Yiddish for devout or pious) Jewish education has always been supplemented with the works of Shakespeare, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. When Ari's family abruptly relocates to the ultra-rich Jewish not-so-pious community of Zion Hills, Fla., his new community views Ari as an oddity. Luckily, popular jock and nice-guy neighbor Noah takes Ari under his wing, cementing Ari's status as one of the school's elite. Ari's black-and-white orthodox wardrobe morphs into skinny jeans, colorful polo shirts and trendy footwear, as he becomes immersed in a world of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Life is good until Ari is introduced to Evan Stark, the hyper-intelligent de facto leader of Ari's circle, who has just returned from abroad. The recent loss of his mother causes Evan to question the concept of God so severely that he sets out on a drug- and alcohol-fueled quest to see the face of God himself. Evan plans to drag along the other members of the circle, including Ari, to confront the deity, whether they like it or not. Ari must choose between being shunned by the group or following Evan down a path of destruction.

Hopen's first novel provokes fiery sociological debate on whether or not science and religion can coexist. The argument is not new territory, but framing it within a story of a young man on the brink of adulthood makes the themes universal, and the pacing and smart writing cause The Orchard to sizzle. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

Erin Lindsey (Murder on Millionaires' Row; A Golden Grave) seamlessly blends historical fiction and paranormal mystery in her charming Rose Gallagher series. Rose, formerly a maid to the very proper Mr. Thomas Wiltshire, is now his investigative partner. What no one knows is that Rose and Thomas work for a secret branch of the Pinkerton Agency, tracking paranormal activities.

As The Silver Shooter begins, Theodore Roosevelt asks Rose and Thomas to head out west to Dakota Territory to research his massive cattle losses and find out about the death of one of his acquaintances. Bad weather can't explain all of the cattle deaths, and rumor has it that a mysterious violent creature has been mangling the bodies of cattle and humans alike. Off to investigate the purported monster and to see if Roosevelt's friend is truly haunting a local hotel now, Rose and Thomas find that indeed things are not as they seem in Dakota Territory. Tensions are high as local ranchers blame the Lakota, but the Lakota insist that a malevolent presence has been at work. It will take all of the Pinkertons' tenacity and ingenuity to stop the terrible creature and protect the innocent from being blamed.

Well researched and quickly paced, The Silver Shooter is a lovely historical mystery with a magical flair. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Rhys Bowen will appreciate Rose's clever prowess, and lovers of paranormal mysteries will enjoy the way that Lindsey weaves rumors of ghosts, the fae and other magical beings into the historical backdrop of the rough and tumble Dakota territory. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

In the psychological thriller Little Threats, the 15 years that Kennedy Wynn served in the penitentiary after pleading guilty to murdering her best friend pale in comparison to the emotional prison that engulfs her and the families involved. Guilt, grief and teen angst revolve around a perceptive plot with carefully crafted characters, all of whom are trying to rebuild their lives.

Kennedy was 16 years old when she was accused of murdering Haley Kimberson, whose body was found in the woods near an upscale Richmond, Va., suburb. Kennedy doesn't remember that night, as both girls were high on acid. Evidence was sketchy, but Kennedy was coerced by her attorney and her father, Gerry, to take the deal. Now, a 31-year-old woman, Kennedy enters a world she doesn't recognize. The murder--never far from anyone's mind--is dredged up when a true-crime show plans a feature.

Emily Schultz explores the vagaries of complicated characters in Little Threats as she did in her debut, The Blondes. Kennedy doesn't know if she can trust anyone, even herself, affecting all relationships. Guilt wracks Gerry and Carter, Kennedy's twin sister. Revenge consumes Haley's parents, who divorced after her death. Poor before Haley's death, the Kimbersons are now wealthy because of a lucrative civil suit. All of the characters' daily lives are shaded by the murder, augmented by anger and manipulation.

Little Threats avoids the cliches that trap many novels about dysfunctional families as Schultz delivers an energetic plot fueled by incisive character studies. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

Melissa Ferguson (The Dating Charade) has written a lighthearted, wholesome romance in The Cul-de-Sac War. Bree Leake has always been a free spirit, much to the concern of her mother and stepfather. Bree has finally gotten a good job at the Barter, a live performance theater in Abingdon, Va., and she's living in her grandma's former house, which she partially inherited. The only problem is her super-annoying new neighbor, Chip, who is renovating the house next door.

Chip's dog won't leave her alone. He makes all kinds of noises at weird hours, and he seems to love tormenting Bree. She's tempted to leave--except that for her birthday her parents offer to give her their share of her grandma's house if she agrees to stay in the house and at her job for one year. All Bree has to do is settle down and survive a year of her aggravatingly attractive neighbor. Until the owner of the Barter announces that he's switching shows, and the whole cast will have to re-audition. Can Bree pull it together? Or is it just easier to move on?

Funny and sweet, this cute romance will have readers chuckling. Melissa Ferguson does an excellent job of making Chip's and Bree's pranks on each other seem believable in spite of their ridiculousness, and the escalating war between them makes for an enjoyable escape. Readers of Christian fiction or romances are sure to enjoy The Cul-de-Sac War. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

In 2019, after a second World Cup win with the U.S. Women's soccer team, Megan Rapinoe spoke to her fans and asked them to work to make their world better. "We have to love more, hate less, listen more, talk less," she said. "This is everybody's responsibility." Rapinoe expands on this message in her thoughtful memoir, One Life, which takes its name loosely from the famous Mary Oliver quotation that also serves as the book's epigraph: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?"

One Life is Rapinoe's answer to that question: soccer and social justice. The memoir outlines her somewhat meteoric rise from youth leagues to national teams, packed with play-by-plays of some of her biggest and most career-shaping games as a player (including three World Cups and two trips to the Olympics). Rapinoe also reviews her work as an activist; as one of the first openly gay players in soccer history, she realized how much her sense of justice was tied to her success in her sport. "I couldn't imagine being an effective player if I wasn't completely honest. I play my best when I'm free." Since then, she has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, fought against the unequal pay of women soccer players based on their gender, and kneeled during the National Anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement. "Arms out wide, claim your space," she tells her fans and readers--and that's exactly what she does here, with an inspiring memoir that reveals a strong, quick-witted writer whose words are as quirky as her on-field persona and as thoughtful as her activism. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

In 1977, a Jewish man was shot to death in broad daylight leaving a synagogue near St. Louis, Mo. Three years and 15 dead men, women and children later, authorities identified the killer as Joseph Paul Franklin, and arrested him in Kentucky, but Franklin escaped custody. The police turned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Sciences Unit to build a psychological profile on Franklin and find him before he killed again. The Killer's Shadow: The FBI's Hunt for a White Supremist Serial Killer, written by John E. Douglas and regular collaborator Mark Olshaker, is the intense account of the hunt for one of the worst killers in American history.

In May of 1980, FBI Agent John E. Douglas was working in a dingy basement in Quantico. He was the bureau's only full-time criminal profiler at the time, and the request for help in predicting Franklin's next move fell on his desk. Douglas built a profile based on the killer's methods and where his known victims were found. Douglas's meticulousness eventually led the FBI to bring Joseph Paul Franklin to justice.

Franklin, an overly abused and underfed child, read Hitler's Mein Kampf as a teen and decided his goal would be to cleanse the world of those he deemed inferior. He targeted Jews, African Americans and anyone willing to associate with them. The Killer's Shadow is told in a nonlinear way that's sometimes confusing, but it delves deeply into a profiler's struggle to drag killers out of the darkness, without succumbing to the abyss himself. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

The world keeps getting older, but the kids partying through a '70s Austin night in Richard Linklater's beloved 1993 comedy Dazed and Confused stay the same age. Melissa Maerz's oral history of Linklater's shaggy slice-of-life covers Dazed's scripting, casting, shooting, initial box-office failure and welcome ascension to canonical status. For the actors, making Dazed was a summer camp for up-and-comers, a mad season of drugs, crushes, hook-ups and reveling in their own promise--they believed they'd be stars after this. For Linklater, who kept detailed diaries, the shoot was a battle with producers, who didn't understand or support his vision.

Revealing and sometimes riotous interviews with cast, crew and Linklater's high school friends illuminate how Linklater and company captured so much true teen feeling in a movie that the studio, Universal, wanted to be a sex comedy. (Linklater recalls producers offering to bump up Dazed's minuscule budget if he would agree to shoot some nudity.) Like the film itself, Maerz's book boasts a laid-back, hang-out vibe, both innocent and foul-mouthed, as her interviewees dish, reminisce and occasionally contradict each other.

Alright also shares with Dazed a breakout performance from Matthew McConaughey. McConaughey's stories of landing and crafting the role of his cosmic Texas horndog creep mod are gratifyingly weird and longwinded. Still, for all the high spirits, and the film's eventual success, a sense of disappointment clouds Linklater's own feelings about it. He believes Dazed fails in one crucial way: he intended the film to expose the misery of the '70s, not its alluring chillness. --Alan Scherstuhl, freelance writer and editor

While browsing through the contents of her mother's attic, Edith Vonnegut made a remarkable discovery in the form of a white gift box. Inside this battered vessel she found 226 love letters written by her father, Kurt Vonnegut, to her mother, Jane Marie Cox, between 1941 and 1945.

At 19, the couple met at a dance at the Woodstock Country Club in Indianapolis and, from Kurt's letters, they seemed to form a swift and strong connection. Kurt was studying engineering at Cornell, always floating on the edge of academic probation; Jane studied literature at Swarthmore devotedly. Their letters--some typewritten, some written in pencil, many composed in some combination of the two with Kurt's drawings adorning the margins--represent not only a young love developing in the precarity of wartime, but the pure, imaginative work of a young writer who had yet to discover the extent of his talent. He writes to her while on deployment, "I saw the Northern Lights for the first time in my life tonight. It was pretty much like kissing you."

In December 1944, Kurt was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and held as a POW in a Dresden slaughterhouse. His release in May 1945 marked a crucial change in his relationship with Jane. They married that September, and their remaining letters, written from Fort Riley, where Kurt was finishing his army obligations, reveal a mutual intimacy hard to find in earlier correspondence. Kurt's letters, once filled with poems, drawings and pleas designed solely to win the love of Jane, become the means by which Jane reads and edits Kurt's earliest stories. --Emma Levy, writer

Playful, evocative text and art define this creative nonfiction picture book, an author and illustrator debut, which follows the whooshing, whirling and whispering wind as it visits 11 different animals--plus a human child--in various habitats around the world.

This story begins and ends in a city where, despite the "cold and dusky damp," a frisky breeze delights one young girl as it stirs autumn leaves. The wind moves on to "float in a barred owl's flight" above snowy fields, "scale the highest peaks" with a wolverine, race "like a river" with wolves and settle with "musk ox in massive coats... on a starry polar night." It electrifies "the heavens for a festive reindeer picnic," whistles through a "snow leopard ledge" and "serenade[s] some geese" over Everest. On and on it goes, all the while proudly proclaiming, "I AM THE WIND."

Michael Karg's expressive text makes excellent use of alliteration and repetition, and his personification of the wind serves as a perfect vehicle to whisk readers away to far-flung regions of the world. Sophie Diao's digital illustrations evoke the near constant motion of the journey, employing a variety of dynamic viewpoints to bring both wind and animals to boisterous life. Back matter includes a map, a short explanation of the way wind interacts with wildlife and an additional fact or two for each animal featured in the book. I Am the Wind serves as an age-appropriate introduction and global ode to this restless force of nature, one always ready "to lift again, and sing and swirl and soar." --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI