The 1950s were an exciting time in Sydney, Australia. World War II had recently ended, ushering in an era of hope and prosperity, along with immigrants looking to rebuild their lives. Traditional roles were slowly evolving, as many young women headed off to university instead of focusing on marriage and family. Madeleine St. John (The Essence of the Thing) illustrates these developments in a delightful and uplifting slice-of-life view of the changing social and economic climate by offering an in-depth look at the lives of several saleswomen in the Ladies' Frocks Department of Goode's Department Store, aka The Women in Black.

Magda, Patty, Fay and Lesley/Lisa each represent a different stage and role of womanhood, weaving in and out of each other's lives on their paths toward reaching their dreams. Magda, a Slovenian immigrant, runs the Model Gowns department, throws fabulous parties with her husband and other cultured, émigré friends and dreams of owning her own boutique. Patty and Fay, in Ladies' Cocktail Frocks, are more focused on home matters: Patty and her husband have yet to produce a child after a decade of marriage; meanwhile, Fay approaches a birthday despairing that she will ever get married. And Lesley, who's waiting to hear if she did well enough on her end-of-school exams to receive a university scholarship, is trying on a new persona as "Lisa," and working as a holiday temp in Ladies' Frocks.

Originally published in Australia in 1993, The Women in Black remains a striking debut novel of wit, charm, female friendships and universal dreams. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.

Discover: This delightful and uplifting romp through 1950s Sydney, Australia, shares the experiences of women working at a department store.

Three cheers--heck, make that four--for the writer who pulls off a fairly plotless novel. Naturally, it helps when a protagonist is unusually engaging, smart or sympathetic. In a neat hat trick, Lily King (Euphoria) plants all three qualities in Casey Peabody, the narrator of her plot-light but payoff-heavy fifth novel, Writers & Lovers.

Things aren't going well for 31-year-old Casey, and the novel on which she has been working for six years is so far from completion that it doesn't even have a title. She has recently returned to the Boston area, and to chip away at her debt, she works at Iris, an upscale restaurant in Cambridge's Harvard Square. One night, at a book party for the novelist Oscar Kolton, Casey meets another writer, Silas, and later accepts a date with him, which he proceeds to break.

Later, Casey encounters Oscar Kolton having brunch at Iris with his two young sons. A 47-year-old widower, Oscar woos Casey, and they start seeing each other. Eventually, Casey dates both men until Oscar invites her over for Sunday dinner so that she can get to know his kids. Now she feels obliged to pick a side: "I've reached the elimination round."

Despite Casey's habitual teariness, her wit and chirpy optimism carry Writers & Lovers. With its timeless themes--choosing between the practical and the creative life, choosing between "fireworks and coffee in bed"--the book's title, with its fulcrum-like ampersand, makes perfect sense. While romance is often a conundrum, resolving an artistic dilemma can be equally flummoxing. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Discover: Lily King's sparkling fifth novel centers on a young woman trying to find love and artistic success, not necessarily in that order.

Susan Mallery (Barefoot Season; Three Sisters) has created a lovely little world in Blackberry Island, Wash. Located near Seattle, it was once home to three very different cousins. Kristine stayed on the island and has been married to her high school sweetheart for 16 years. Sophie moved to Southern California to start a business empire selling cat-related items. And discontented Amber remains dependent on her family amid perpetual victimhood.

When Sophie's business burns down, she takes the insurance money and moves back to Blackberry Island for a new beginning. She enjoys spending time with Kristine, her "sister by choice," who is trying to launch her own bakery, as well as with Kristine's handsome tai chi instructor, Dugan.

Kristine's husband, Jaxsen, however, attempts to prevent her opening the bakery, because he wants her to continue being a stay-at-home mom, effectively forcing her to choose between her dream and her marriage. Amber's problems continue to worsen, making things complicated for the cousins. And Sophie herself is struggling both to get Clandestine Kitty Industries up and running again--and to define her relationship with Dugan.

Nuanced and realistic, showing the complicated problems that family can create, Sisters by Choice is a satisfying read. Mallery knows how to capture her readers; Sophie's stubbornness, Kristine's real dilemmas and Amber's imaginary woes make all three women interesting in their own ways. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Discover: In this heartwarming story set on a small Washington State island, three cousins find themselves at personal crossroads.

There's something twistedly thrilling about watching full-grown adults lose their minds over juvenile drama. Kathleen West's delicious debut, Minor Dramas & Other Catastrophes, features a posse of upper-middle-class snowplow parents making way for their gifted children. But unlike similar setups like Big Little Lies, there's no violent mystery at the heart of the story. West relies instead on commonplace but no less contentious conflicts: Do politics belong in the classroom? Should parents involve themselves in the everyday goings-on of their children? What about teachers? How far is too far?

West, a former middle and high school teacher, addresses these questions first and foremost with Isobel Johnson, a progressive English teacher at Liston Heights High School. She's determined to atone for her family's past wrongdoings by encouraging privileged students to see "multiple perspectives," i.e., read from a point of view other than upper-middle-class, male, white, heteronormative and nationalistic. But when parents protest this perceived deviation from curriculum--or, rather, deviation from the status quo--tensions bubble. Tack on the ever-growing popularity of a Facebook gossip page for Liston Heights parents, with a suspicious number of posts from an anonymous insider at the school, and Julia Abbott, a particularly over-attentive Liston parent, can't wait to wade in. That is, until she, too, is sucked into controversy.

This juicy but thoughtful story is a treat for parents who understand the frustrating temptation to hover--as well as their grown children who learned to break free. --Lauren Puckett, freelance writer

Discover: Privileged parents and progressive teachers clash in this humorous but humbling dive into the misadventures at a Minnesota high school.

Hang on tight, the branches of Lisa Gardner's literary family tree are becoming wonderfully twisted. After more than 15 years of writing about (mostly) female law enforcement protagonists, Gardner (Never Tell) still finds new ways to push the boundaries of her series and characters. When You See Me features Gardner's most prolific heroine, Boston Homicide Detective D.D. Warren. Flora Dane, introduced as an abduction survivor in one of D.D.'s recent cases, continues in her third straight entry as an informant, providing insight to D.D. from the "victim" perspective. 

New to this mix is FBI Agent Kimberly Quincy, who has appeared in other books, solo and with her father, part of the Quincy & Rainie Profiler series. The joining of so many characters is plot-specific and feels organic. Quincy's investigation into a set of human remains uncovers a connection to Flora's infamous abductor. D.D. and Flora's knowledge is an incredible asset, so Quincy assembles the team in the hills of an insular Georgia town to find answers and deal with long-hidden demons.

Gardner presents the case through the lenses of D.D., Flora, Kimberly and a wonderfully rendered mute girl in peril. The author melds and shifts perspectives superbly to move the investigation forward. The final push is rushed and a touch theatrical, but her powerful character work carries the day. Despite extensive history, these women are always evolving. Gardner brings them together in a tour de force and provides answers to questions from prior cases while still masterfully generating a yen for more. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Discover: Characters from Lisa Gardner's multiple mystery series come together to solve a murder that has tentacles deep within a small town and personal implications for the team.

"I'm not going to tell you everything. Just the things I think you should know." These thoughts from the mind of a Mary Kubica character perfectly encapsulate her maddeningly tantalizing style. The Other Mrs., her fifth standalone thriller, solidifies Kubica (When the Lights Go Out) as a master of the multi-perspective mind-twister.

Sadie and Will Foust leave plenty behind in Chicago when they relocate to Portland, Maine--most of it bad: Will's affair, Sadie's legal problems at work and oldest son Otto's expulsion from school. Unfortunately, their "fresh start" is marred by its own troubles. The home bequeathed to them by Will's sister, who hung herself in the attic, comes with his openly hostile teen niece. There's history they just can't shake, including threatening messages, inklings of Will's infidelities and Sadie's random disappearing acts. When a neighbor is murdered, all signs point to something amiss in the Foust home.

Kubica dangles bits of bait only to yank them from view and replace them with three more. Despite the swirl of characters and activity, past and present, the narrative always feels under control. Its outlandishness is a purposeful, compelling level of chaos that Kubica deftly manipulates. Through the voices of Sadie, Camille (Will's former mistress) and a mysterious, mistreated girl nicknamed Mouse, Kubica doles out a psychological whopper of a tale. The Other Mrs. is a roller coaster with tracks that dip from view and turn unexpectedly, creating unease enhanced by a compulsion to race forward for an answer to the burning question: "Who is Mouse?" --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Discover: In this mind-bending thriller, a family looking for a new start is thwarted by hostile forces, some of which might be under their own roof.

The relentless pursuit of the truth beneath a mountain of falsehoods makes Joanna Schaffhausen's All the Best Lies a compelling read.

In 1975, young mother Camilla Flores struggles to make ends meet as a Las Vegas waitress. She's engaged to a cop and about to testify against a drug dealer, but then is brutally murdered. Her case goes unsolved because the only witness is her infant son, Reed.

Forty years later, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department informs Reed, who's now an FBI agent, that the case is being closed due to the lack of new leads. Reed refuses to let that happen without trying to crack the case himself. He enlists the help of Ellery Hathaway, a cop he rescued from a serial killer when she was a teenager and he was a young officer. The two have since solved cases together, and Ellery is currently suspended from her job for shooting a killer in the previous book in the series (No Mercy).

The pair heads for Vegas but receives a cold reception from local police when they ask to review Camilla's murder file. LVMPD Sheriff Brad Ramsey worked the case years ago and he insists Reed and Ellery are wasting their time; all suspects and leads were thoroughly exhausted. But Ramsey has his own reasons for wanting the case to remain closed. Reed and Ellery are followed, their tires are slashed and some big lies are exposed, but new ones get in the way as they get closer and closer to solving this complicated mystery.

Joanna Schaffhausen's everyman plot and accessible prose rams home an eternal truth: lies left alone will fester and turn everything rotten. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

Discover: Uncovering ugly truths and the healing power of redemption make for a thrilling mystery.

Chasing Cassandra is the sixth and final novel in the Ravenels series (Devil's Daughter, Marrying Winterbourne), set in Victorian England. This excellent tale easily stands alone, although readers will surely wish to explore earlier books in the series.

Wealthy businessman Tom Severin is accustomed to buying anything he wants. He believes acquiring a wife will be equally simple. Unfortunately, the lady he decides he must have is committed to marrying for love. Lady Cassandra Ravenel's long-held desire is to marry and have a happy home and family. Sadly, none of London's eligible gentlemen stir anything more than a desire for friendship, until she meets Tom. She's both intrigued by and extremely attracted to the brilliant railroad magnate but is convinced a marriage will not suit. He can't offer her love, insisting his heart is frozen and he's incapable of emotion. Fate, however, has other plans for the two: they move in the same social circles, share a set of friends and are thrown together on multiple occasions. Interactions with Cassandra and the young street urchin Tom befriends slowly begin to erode the walls around his cynical heart. When Cassandra desperately needs his help, will he have the courage to face his demons and claim a future with her?

This lush and romantic novel boasts an absorbing plot with fascinating historical details, intriguing main characters, an engaging secondary cast and wonderfully witty dialogue. Readers will love this Ravenels family finale. --Lois Faye Dyer, writer and reviewer

Discover: An English lady who vows to marry for love meets a business tycoon who offers only money; hijinks, heartaches and life lessons ensue.

There's always been a strong autobiographical current coursing through Rebecca Solnit's politically engaged writing. In Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir, however, the prize-winning journalist, critic and activist departs from the piecework of collections like The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness for a more sustained encounter with the events and ideas that have defined her work. In this account--a multifaceted description of identity formation and social commentary--Solnit remains both provocative and eloquent.

Solnit's memoir is rooted in the soil of the 25 years she spent in a small studio apartment in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood. She moved to the predominantly African American area in 1981, at age 19, watching it slowly gentrify in the face of the technology industry's invasion of the region. In that apartment--where she says she "was a hermit crab who had crawled into a particularly glamorous shelter, until, as hermit crabs do, I outgrew it"--Solnit describes establishing herself as a writer and forging her identity as a woman and a feminist.

It's to that latter subject that Solnit devotes much of her attention. She begins with her writing desk, the gift of a female friend who survived a knife attack. Solnit then expounds on the subject of violence against women, and even the less mortally dangerous ways she experienced altercations. The book's title is based, in part, on her persistent but sadly necessary attempts at self-erasure as a means of avoiding these and other confrontations. Rebecca Solnit's work suggests what Joan Didion might have produced if she had been, in addition to a compelling writer, a passionate political activist. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Discover: In a stirring memoir, Rebecca Solnit unearths key elements of her personal and professional origin story.

In 1905, an unlikely marriage made headlines around the world. Rose Pastor was a young Jewish woman who immigrated from Russia as a child. She worked in cigar factories from the age of 11 to support her family and turned a talent for language into a job writing for a Yiddish-language newspaper. James Graham Phelps Stokes was the Ivy League-educated oldest son of one of "the 400"--the families that dominated New York society in the Gilded Age. In Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes, Adam Hochschild (King Leopold's Ghost; Spain in Our Hearts) tells the story of their marriage within the broader history of the American socialist and labor movements in the first half of the 20th century.  

In fact, their marriage followed a trajectory similar to that of the movements they supported. They met at a time when patrician reformers were not uncommon, and their home became a salon for visionaries of all types. Their approaches to reform diverged as Rose became a rising star in radical circles. World War I and the Russian Revolution drove them further apart. Like many socialists, Graham discovered national patriotism mattered to him more than international brotherhood. Rose remained passionately socialist.

While Hochschild's historical account is both gripping and occasionally heartbreaking, in the end, the immigrant Cinderella and her American prince found their differences too great to overcome. They divorced in 1926 and returned to their natural social habitats, at roughly the same time socialism lost its momentum as a mass movement in the United States. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

Discover: One woman's bittersweet story illuminates American reform movements in the early 20th century.

Bren MacDibble's first middle-grade novel is a startling cautionary tale about the dangers of losing the bee.

"If me and Mags don't do our job the trees suffer, the fruit suffers. What we do is important." Peony and her sister Mags work as "pests" on a farm, shoo-ing insects from the crops. At night, they crowd into their tiny shed with Gramps, and Peony dreams of becoming a bee. Since real bees disappeared 30 years ago, selected children now pollinate fruit trees by hand--Peony is certain she'll become a bee soon. But then Ma forces Peony to move with her to the city. Secretly intent on running away, Peony begins work as a maid in the Pasquale household. As she settles in, Peony forms a tentative partnership with the Pasquales' cosseted and fearful daughter, Esmeralda: Peony will teach timid Esmeralda to be brave, and Esmeralda will get Peony back to the farm.

MacDibble's quiet dystopia subtly hints at the chaos and devastation of earlier famines by showing their aftermath, yet the author keeps the crime and poverty at a distance through Peony's youthful, upbeat narration. Peony's point of view keeps the story moving quickly forward; MacDibble trusts her audience to understand nuance and never includes unnecessary, overt explanations. Peony's family showcases the different levels of acceptance in each generation: Gramps adapts, Ma desperately chases financial success, and Peony and Mags love their impoverished farm life. In contrast, the Pasquales maintain an upper-class lifestyle but are unable to break through the wall of fear around Esmeralda. How to Bee is a chilling look at a broken future and a beautiful story of how those from vastly different backgrounds can inspire change in one another. --Kyla Paterno, freelance reviewer

Discover: On a farm, Peony dreams of becoming a bee: a child chosen to pollinate fruit trees by hand now that real bees have disappeared.

In her version of "The Little Mermaid," Susann Cokal (The Kingdom of Little Wounds) uses lush, lyrical writing and multiple perspectives to tell a lasting story of darkness and beauty.

Sanna's "motherline was a bound secret" because "the witch of [her] flok worked a magic of forgetting" on the night Sanna was born. It wasn't until age 14 that she learned her mother was "landish" and not marreminde at all. Sanna then began to apprentice with the witch Sjældent to learn magic that would allow her to walk on land and find her mother. Now 16 and finally ready to embark on her quest, Sanna arrives at Baroness Thyrla's castle on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands, where Sjældent said she'd find a woman who could help her. Instead, she finds the baroness is able to harvest the lives of people weaker than her to grow stronger and live longer. Stuck in this unfamiliar place with foreign people, Sanna must overcome the baroness's trickery before she's trapped forever.

In Mermaid Moon, Cokal takes her time unveiling Sanna's story, revealing details and background information in a nonlinear fashion, then backtracking in subsequent chapters to fill in the blanks. This technique gives breadth to her storytelling and allows for discussions of faith, beauty and feminism to emerge naturally. Cokal's descriptive language further enhances the story: "the tide of red washes through the flowers of the ancient vine that has suckled on the courtyard stone." Mermaid Moon is a beautifully told, immersive novel that layers fairy-tale elements with more modern themes, allowing for a different experience with every reread. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Discover: In this YA interpretation of a classic fairy tale, a mermaid leaves her matriarchal society to find her landish mother and gets caught in the crosshairs of a powerful, immortality-obsessed baroness.