Calvin Bledsoe lives an unremarkable life in rural Maine until a heretofore-unknown aunt appears at his mother's funeral. Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? by Brock Clarke (An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England) is a coming-of-age story told by a middle-aged man. "I may have been Calvin Bledsoe," he says, "but for perhaps the first time ever I wondered what it meant to be him." Reminiscent of Aunt Augusta in Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt, Calvin's flamboyant aunt Beatrice whisks her stodgy nephew to Europe: "My aunt had an aim and I just didn't know what it was at the time."

Calvin is named after the theologian John Calvin, on whom his mother was an expert; the preacher was an outsized presence in his life. Calvin's natural inclination to fade into the background, because his namesake always overshadowed him, is upended by Beatrice's dynamic personality and mysterious history. They become involved with spies, thieves and adulterers, to Calvin's shock and his aunt's equanimity. When the trip's purpose becomes clear, Calvin realizes, "Learning lessons is like hard exercise, especially if the lessons you're learning are the opposite of the lessons you've already learned."

The dialogue is quick and witty, with John Calvin quotes perfectly and sometimes hilariously integrated into Calvin's thoughts and conversation. This novel deals with sober subjects (life, death, betrayal) in an uplifting and often humorous manner. Readers who enjoyed Andrew Sean Greer's Less will find this novel equally satisfying. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Discover: In this humorous and warm novel, a middle-aged man takes an unwelcome European trip with his aunt, leading him to question everything he's accepted about his life.

In Bottle Grove, Daniel Handler's seventh novel for adults, love buzzes in the air like a diseased cricket. Padgett, a drunk with local family wealth (and a knack for being fired from menial labor), meets barkeep Martin Icke at a wedding in a San Francisco forest. The story follows the pair, as well as the fleetingly happy married couple, Ben and Rachel Nickels. Then there's the Vic, a hip moniker for a local tech tycoon who invented some majorly invasive software.

Handler's (All the Dirty Parts) story isn't so much a romantic comedy as it is a reckoning for romantic delusion. The tune may be perfect, but everyone keeps hearing it differently. Once again, his dialogue serves as a driving force for the story. Padgett and Martin share playful whispers over a stolen barrel of booze when they first meet in the frigid woods behind Ben and Rachel's wedding. And the prankster spirit Reynard (a shapeshifter, naturally) offers otherworldly wisdom. These and more turn every syllable into whimsical perfection.

The setting for Bottle Grove--a modern San Francisco in the throes of immense (and largely unwanted) change--also adds to the strange yet familiar version of the city that Handler has returned to throughout his career, stretching back to 1998's The Basic Eight. Taken together, these elements turn Handler's novel into a timely satire of love, wealth and the meaning of home. --Zack Ruskin, freelance reviewer

Discover: Acclaimed novelist Daniel Handler delivers a hilarious yet bittersweet love letter to San Francisco with a story centered on two very different couples. 

The Body of the Beasts, Québécois author Audrée Wilhelmy's third novel but first translated into English, explores the animalistic side of human nature and female sexuality. Mie, who lives with her mother and siblings near a remote fishing village, has the ability to cast her consciousness into the minds of wildlife. In this way, she explores her sublime but brutal homeland through the eyes of other creatures. But at the age of 12, Mie becomes curious about her own, human form and is determined to learn about it through sex with her older uncle, and her mother's lover, Osip. As she pursues her goal, Mie learns more about her mysterious and distant mother, Noé, the desire that drew Osip and his brother to Noé in the first place and her own body that was formed as a consequence of that desire. 

With its childlike perspective, lyrical prose, ruggedly beautiful landscapes and sense of foreboding, The Body of the Beasts is first and foremost a dark fairy tale. The novel's centerpiece scene--in which Noé tells the story of a trapped Queen while brutally skinning a whale--brings this style together with the novel's larger themes of violence, sexuality and animalism. The fierce sensuality and visceral descriptions prove haunting--in the cases of Mie's longings, the wilderness's violence and the ruthlessness of male desire--but also awe-inspiring. In Wilhelmy's practiced, poetic hand, the flight of a heron and the panic of a crab are brought joyously to life. Nevertheless, the heart of the novel remains with Mie, whose competing curiosity and anxiety vie for the reader's attention until the final page. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Discover: The Body of the Beasts is a celebration of the body and nature as well as a nightmarish acknowledgement of the violence that is inherent to both.

A year after her young daughter was abducted and murdered, Copenhagen's Minister for Social Affairs Rosa Hartung returns to work. On the same day, a woman is found murdered and mutilated, with a nearby figurine of a man--made out of chestnuts.

Detective Naia Thulin catches the case and is partnered with Mark Hess, a detective recently suspended from Europol and sent back to Copenhagen for disciplinary reasons. Neither Thulin nor Hess is ecstatic about the work arrangement, but they must come together to chase a killer who makes it clear he has quickly escalating plans for multiple victims. At each crime scene is a chestnut man, with a shocking link to an earlier case. How many women will die before Thulin and Hess stop the sinister figure, and what do the murders have to do with Minister Hartung?

Fans of the series The Killing should find The Chestnut Man up their alley since it's written by Søren Sveistrup, creator of that international TV hit. The Chestnut Man has the same creepy, slow burn, and is headed by a dogged pair of detectives who don't always agree but learn how to serve a common cause. The torturous killings are not for the squeamish, almost every man besides Hess is a lecher who objectifies women and Hess's logical ideas are frustratingly dismissed by colleagues, but Sveistrup offers commentary on adults who inadequately protect children and the lengths those children go to survive when the odds are overwhelmingly against them. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Discover: Copenhagen detectives chase a serial killer who leaves behind crude figurines made of chestnuts.

In 2017, more than 28,000 people in the U.S. died from the use of synthetic opioids, journalist Ben Westhoff reports in Fentanyl, Inc. The most dangerous of those opioids is fentanyl, "lethal at only two milligrams, an amount barely visible to the eye." Often added to other drugs or sold as pills that pose as "name-brand prescription tablets," fentanyl is like a game of Russian roulette. Its users don't always know that it's in the drug they've purchased and underestimate the power of the dosage. Others seek it out for its high, which is far greater than what they find in heroin.

Developed for medical use as a morphine substitute, fentanyl is so addictive that both the U.S. and the U.K. made it a controlled drug in the early 1970s. But by "tweaking its chemical structure," manufacturers produce substitutes that are equally effective, a strategy that's popular, lucrative and seemingly unstoppable.

Exploring the world of synthetic opioids, Westhoff interviews drug users and the dealers who are sheltered by the anonymity of the dark web. He also investigates manufacturers in China that ship fentanyl and the chemicals from which it's made to Canada, Mexico and directly to U.S. customers via FedEx and UPS under fake packaging.

Westhoff finds an effective solution to the opioid threat in European countries that concentrate on "harm reduction" and safe consumption sites instead of punishment, while the U.S continues its unsuccessful War on Drugs at the cost of $58 billion a year. Meanwhile, opioid deaths are "driving down life expectancy," enriching some and bringing tragedy to many others. --Janet Brown, author and former bookseller

Discover: A detailed and far-ranging investigation into the production, marketing and usage of fentanyl reveals an intertwined business network that spans continents and kills thousands.

During a service at Holy Family Church, six-year-old Grace Weathers, her brother, Jamie, and their mother, Julianna, witness the appearance of an angel named Sylous, who warns of demons scorching the land and killing the unfaithful in three years' time. The angel's prophecy shakes the entire church. The rafters begin to crumble and the pews rip away from bolts holding them to the floor. The congregation panics and scramble to build a hidden community and escape the clutches of eternal damnation.

Thirteen years later, the utopian town of Haven Valley lies in the middle of the woods encircled by a simple red rope Sylous says keeps the demons out. Church leader Rose Pierce and her council members insist it's still not safe to rejoin society, while Sylous cautions of strangers pretending to be people of light who will enter Haven Valley.

Grace isn't happy about Haven Valley's strict, pious ways, especially the arranged marriages, but it's Jamie who escapes the town confines to see if the dangers beyond the red rope really exist. Grace covers for him and both rule-breaking siblings are brought before the council for punishment. Then an old man and a smiling child companion suddenly appear, asking for Grace and her family. Are these the strangers Sylous warned the town about?

The father-daughter writing team of Ted Dekker (The 49th Mystic), and Rachelle Dekker (The Choosing) have crafted a dark, fast-paced parable about fear-based religious zealotry running amok and the price of being a true believer. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

Discover: Teen siblings risk their lives to see if demons really do surround their hidden church community.

Any doubt that seeking therapy is courageous will be put to rest by the patient profiles detailed in Good Morning, Monster. Catherine Gildiner is a clinical psychologist and author of a trilogy of memoirs (including Coming Ashore). As pseudo-memoirist for five of her most layered and poignant clients, Gildiner clearly demonstrates the value of analysis, the resilience of the human spirit and the vast generosity of sharing one's life story.

The patients vary in culture, socio-economic background and temperament. Within their treatments, Gildiner highlights tools available to clinicians to facilitate acknowledgment and change. Despite these interesting instructive moments, Good Morning, Monster is not aimed at academics; rather, it provides a window for the lay person to bear witness to the most intimate of processes.

The levels of despair and dreadfulness underlying each of the five stories can't be overstated. There is abuse, violence and neglect of every gradient. But there is also growth, buoyancy and wonderful wit and humor ("Laura" on intimacy: "Christ! Why not just dance naked in the streets?").

Gildiner is a talented narrator and admirably summarizes years of sessions without the accounts feeling choppy or incomplete. She's also wonderfully frank about her own mistakes and misreads as a psychologist, and she is quick to seek outside guidance when beneficial (finding cultural resources to aid a Cree man, for example). With hard work, each client reckons with the demons they wake with each morning, even when they've been told they themselves are the monster. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Discover: A clinical psychologist presents five patient profiles to demonstrate the value of therapy and the determination and resiliency of those who engage with and face down their traumas.

Depending on one's perspective, there are few nicknames greater than "the snot lady," the sobriquet earned by Welsh forensic ecologist Patricia Wiltshire for developing a method to obtain pollen particles from the nasal cavities of the dead. In The Nature of Life and Death, Wiltshire describes that method in terrific detail, part and parcel of her 45-year career studying the world of plants and, since the early 1990s, helping the police solve crimes through ecological trace evidence (pollen, fungal spores, soil, etc.) taken and left behind by victims and perpetrators.

Along with her practical history and pioneering of her profession, Wiltshire walks readers through numerous case studies recounting how her work helped locate a murder victim's body or linked a suspect to a crime. Those interested in plant and animal sciences or forensics will be particularly rapt at the microscopic levels of proof Wiltshire obtains.

Even as she writes for a broad audience, Wiltshire comes across as enigmatic as her subject matter. She writes from a self-centered but somewhat aloof point of view and in a straightforward manner befitting a lecturer. Wiltshire is under no obligation to share herself; her credentials and the case studies speak for themselves. Yet, at the three-quarter mark, she unexpectedly shows her animal-loving side and "explains" her "arrogance." Her disclosures can't help but thaw both writer and reader, serving not to change the absorbing material, but to heighten appreciation and understanding of its source. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Discover: Forensic ecologist Wiltshire shares how her profession came to be and how she uses microscopic portions of the natural world to help nail the bad guys.

"I've been living in western Japan for more than thirty-two years," Pico Iyer begins, "and, to my delight, I know far less than when I arrived." In A Beginner's Guide to Japan, Iyer--born to Indian parents in England, raised in California, married with children in Japan--ruminates on what he adores and what still eludes him after three decades in his adopted homeland.

Through brief anecdotes and the occasional essay, Iyer (Autumn Light) explores many facets of Japanese culture. Strangers on trains routinely sleep on the shoulders of their seatmates; "love-hotels" abound, as do companies that hire actors to act as loved ones for people who are going through personal crises. Largely apolitical and irreligious, the Japanese value emotional and social intelligence over analysis and introspection: "they turn their backs on the public sphere, and make fantastic worlds out of their passions, counter-societies out of their hobbies." Iyer challenges the Western view of the Japanese as impersonal and robotic, noting how inanimate objects, even the simplest gift, are given "so much spirit and life." Striking observations, such as the ubiquity of small but jam-packed convenience stores in a nation that values minimalism, and the abundance of professional gangsters in an otherwise law-abiding country, speak to its contradictory nature.

Despite his deep affection for Japan, Iyer does not shy away from its unflattering aspects. Recent surveys reveal, for example, that a majority of Japanese men would never consider working for a woman and most Japanese women imagine being single is preferable to marriage; the country's reluctance to accept asylum-seekers speaks to its insularity. Iyer's Japan is a captivating, and sometimes maddening portrait of a nation unlike any other. --Frank Brasile, librarian

Discover: This meditative and occasionally cheeky guide to Japan from Pico Iyer will delight Japanophiles and armchair travelers alike.

Inspiring generations of women and authors, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women can be argued to exhibit an influence and staying power few contemporary novels have. For the 150th anniversary, four prestigious authors explore their connections to the four March sisters.

Like groomed Meg at the Moffats' ball, Kate Bolick (Spinster) has experienced the anxiety of fitting in and the concept of "frock consciousness," which she calls "a curious feedback loop of self-perception." Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart) empathizes with fan-favorite Jo, whose temper bucks the traditional feminine stereotype: "To be a woman is to know anger. To be underestimated, treated as inferior, have one's concerns classified as minor... how could one not feel angry?" Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties) argues that Beth's frailty (and eventual death) acts not only as a plot point but also dictates her quiet, sweet demeanor, eliminating the possibility of personal ambition. As one who also endured childhood illness, Machado focuses on personal independence and asks, "How do you stay out of other people's stories?" Jane Smiley (Golden Age) offers a fresh perspective on Amy, suggesting that instead of the spoiled and vain baby sister, she is the most self-realized and modern of the four women, "the thoughtful feminist... more like what we aim to be today."

Heavily autobiographical, Alcott's novel "lured readers not with fantastical adventures and talking animals, but with a realism that was radical in its forthrightness, giving voice to female adolescence." As much an exploration of what it means to be a woman in our modern world as it is an homage to Alcott's classic, March Sisters packs a thoughtful, empowering punch. --Jennifer Oleinik, freelance writer and editor

Discover: Four esteemed authors explore their own connections to each of the four March sisters in this insightful 150th-anniversary celebration of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

It's the summer before seventh grade, and 12-year-olds Ofelia Castillo, Lane DiSanti, Aster Douglas and Cat Garcia have no plans to ruffle feathers in their small Florida town. In fact, they don't even know each other. Lane, visiting her wealthy grandmother, leaves the daughter of the woman who cleans her grandmother's house an anonymous invitation to a secret meeting. She leaves two more invitations in the girls' restroom of the public library, figuring that "kids who spent time in places she liked were more likely to be kids she could potentially hang out with."

All three invitees show up, and the Ostentation of Others and Outsiders convenes. The girls fashion themselves as a kind of anti-scout club in reaction to the Floras, a prestigious local girls' troop that focuses on social etiquette. The Ostentation quickly solidifies around an unusual passion project: Cat wants the Floras to discontinue their yearly tradition of crowning Miss Floras with a 100-year-old hat made of bird feathers. Though at first the girls seem to have little in common, they rally around this mission. Unfortunately, while their zeal and moral righteousness are laudable, their techniques are not always wise or safe.

All four girls narrate in alternating chapters, giving context and depth to their individual and collective stories. The age of 12 can be both magical and miserable. In Strange Birds, author Celia C. Pérez (The First Rule of Punk) gathers up all the messy, wild, confusing pieces of early adolescence and offers them back to the reader as a lovely mosaic made with sparkly bits of independence, tradition, principles and friendship. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Discover: Four girls awkwardly come together to form a new club to protest the outdated traditions of an elite scout troop in their town.

Newbery Medal winner Erin Entrada Kelly (Hello, Universe) makes her fantasy debut with Lalani of the Distant Sea, about a young girl who makes the deadly decision to try to rescue her community.

The Sanlagitans live under Mount Kahna's "shadow of vengeance, impatience, and fear." The island villagers believe the mountain punishes those who disturb it, so, every night, they offer Kahna benedictions. Across the Veiled Sea, "bathed in light" and offering "all of life's good fortunes," is Mount Isa. No human has ever actually "laid eyes on her," but "the Sanlagitans are certain the mountain calls to them. They die trying to answer." The strongest men are chosen to sail to Mount Isa; none--Lalani's father included--have survived.

Now, Lalani entertains herself with folktales. Her favorite is that of the mountain beast that lives in Kahna's woods, of "his mangled face, his house of stolen treasures, and his penchant for evil trickery." Her best friend Veyda, however, thinks the myths are "silly": "Why are we asking a mountain to remain quiet? Mountains are mountains." But it does seem that the Sanlagitans are being punished: everything is dying because of a drought. Lalani has no intentions of setting off on a journey to save her home, but when she wanders into Kahna's woods, consequences, danger and magic find her.

Inspired by Filipino folktales, Lalani of the Distant Sea is brimming with injustice, beauty, pain and wonder. Throughout are chapters with imaginative, elegant line drawings by Lian Cho introducing creatures that inhabit Lalani's world, some taken directly from Filipino myth, some created entirely by Kelly. Lalani is a fluid, intentional novel grounded strongly in emotional reality and overflowing with the fantastic. Absolutely bewitching. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: Erin Entrada Kelly's debut fantasy is an enchanting, nuanced middle-grade adventure.