The surprise electoral win of Donald Trump in 2016 and its effect on the mental health of liberals has been explored in amusingly anguished novels like Bill McKibben's Radio Free Vermont and Ali Benjamin's The Smash-Up, and now in Dana Spiotta's Wayward. Spiotta (Stone Arabia) offers a spoofy but wrenching tale about a personal crisis befalling a woman who is resisting Trumpism from central New York.

Set in 2017, Wayward centers on 53-year-old Samantha Raymond, who has always been impetuous, but the one-two punch of Trump's election and perimenopause have made her only more so: as the novel opens, she has decided to leave her lawyer husband and suburban home for a dilapidated arts and crafts-style house in Syracuse. While Sam doesn't fully comprehend her motive to end her marriage, it was "a force in motion that couldn't stop once it started."

Meanwhile, Sam is committed to finding the right post-election protest group ("The suggested Caning, Fermentation, and Preserving seemed to exist at the Venn diagram crossover of far right and far left") as Wayward's dramas stack up around her. Just two examples: Sam witnesses an act of violence against a person of color on the streets of Syracuse, and her 16-year-old daughter takes up with a man who is almost 30. With finesse, side-eye and (applied sparingly) heart, Spiotta plays with the question of how a person who is determined to make the world a better place can also be utterly self-absorbed. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Emily Austin's unforgettable first novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, stars an unusual hero: Gilda is profoundly socially awkward, anxious, depressed and perhaps too kind for her own good.

The story begins with a car wreck, when Gilda, who narrates, is struck from behind by a beige van. When she arrives at the emergency room (having driven herself, with a broken arm, because "I do not like to be a spectacle"), she is told, "You are a lot calmer than you usually are when you come in here." Readers begin to understand that Gilda is a little odd.

From this misfortune, she follows an ad for free counseling and is dismayed to find that it is being offered at a Catholic church (Gilda is an atheist). She is too polite to disappoint the priest who thinks she's there for a job interview, and finds herself working as the church's new receptionist--therefore living a double life, posing as a Catholic and sort-of-dating a parishioner's abhorrent brother-in-law (Gilda is a lesbian). While keeping up this increasingly complicated act, she also finds time to worry about her brother (drinking too much) and a missing neighborhood cat, among countless other stressors; topping that list may be the fate of the church's previous receptionist, Grace, who died under suspicious circumstances. Almost without meaning to, Gilda begins investigating Grace's death, and because she doesn't have the heart to break bad news, posing as Grace in e-mails to the woman's old friend. What could go wrong?

Austin's debut is disarmingly sweet even in its grimness. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Mona at Sea is a very funny, darkly comic first novel about a high achiever, on the brink of starting her adult life, who has her hopes and aspirations dashed amid the Great Recession.

In 2008, in suburban Tucson, Ariz., bicultural, 23-year-old Mona Mireles graduates from college--top of her class and with an equally high opinion of herself--and is eager to start a promising new finance career on Wall Street in New York City. When the job suddenly dissolves amid the economic downturn, Mona becomes a "sad millennial" in more ways than one. Down on her luck, she sinks into anxiety and depression. Broke, lovelorn and not happy living at home--her parents' marriage is in a shambles--she is forced by her mother to attend a support group for others also in search of work. There, she meets other defeated, unemployed souls who make Mona's woes pale in comparison as she gets a fuller experience of all that awaits in the real world.

The story of Mona's efforts to reboot her life and find meaning in its pitfalls is filled with unexpected, bittersweet twists and turns. However, it's her intimately rich first-person narration--how her scorching wit and wisdom mask her own vulnerability and foibles--that makes her story come fully alive. Mona Mireles, ever a perfectionist--and unabashed in sharing her cleverly rendered observations, criticisms and insights--will keep readers laughing as she rises above her sad, zany lot in life. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Ike Randolph, who is at the center of S.A. Cosby's brutal and beautiful Razorblade Tears, has no illusions about his mission to avenge the death of his son: "Folks like to talk about revenge like it's a righteous thing but it's just hate in a nicer suit." Ike has been out of prison for 15 years and is making good money running Randolph Lawn Care and Landscaping when his only child, Isiah, is fatally shot, as is Isiah's husband, Derek, in Richmond, Va. At the funeral, Ike meets Derek's father, trailer-dwelling ex-con Buddy Lee: neither man could say that his behavior toward his gay son was supportive, which ratchets up the grief.

The murder case stalls out, in no small part because people who knew Isiah, a reporter, and Derek, a chef, won't talk to the cops, so in a private moment Buddy Lee proposes to Ike that they take charge: "Folks are liable to tell a couple of grieving fathers shit they wouldn't tell the police." Ike is reluctant at first, but not for the reason Buddy Lee suspects: "He wasn't afraid to spill blood. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop."

Buckets of blood are spilled, but in a volume that's proportional to the amount of soul-searching going on and the number of jokes being cracked. If Cosby's previous novel, Blacktop Wasteland, confronted fans of noir with a setting that's miles outside the white urban stronghold typically home to the genre, Razorblade Tears ups the ante by introducing characters forced to grapple with their thoughts on homosexuality and interracial love while Confederate flags fly around them. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Out of Character, Annabeth Albert's fun and nerdy second book in the True Colors series, focuses on healing from the past and looking toward the future.

Jasper never expected his old friend Milo to walk into his gaming store. The two were inseparable as children, but Milo shunned Jasper for the popular soccer kids when they got to high school. Milo was never into gaming, let alone the card game Odyssey. But he's in trouble--he lost his brother's rare Odyssey cards worth a fortune, and he needs a new set. Milo feels like this is just one in a series of disappointments he's put upon his family, so he's desperate to make a deal with Jasper. Jasper decides to help Milo find replacements for the four cards, and in return, Milo will cosplay Prince Neptune (a popular Odyssey character) for Jasper's children's hospital outreach group. As the two work together and get out of their comfort zones, their friendship rekindles and old feelings come back that are too hard to ignore.

Though Jasper has been out since high school, Milo's sexuality is closeted. Milo struggles to come out and be open with his family and new friends, but as he heals his relationship with Jasper, he finds ways to be more himself. Jasper fights his impulse to jump right into a relationship with Milo because of his past hurt. Their slightly angsty courtship is fun to watch blossom, but the sexiest part is watching Jasper and Milo communicate about their feelings and resolve their pasts together. --Amy Dittmeier, librarian, Blue Island Public Library

This second, standalone installment to Roni Loren's Say Everything series is a tantalizing contemporary romance about love's fragility. Andi Lockley is a podcaster sharing true-crime stories about predation on women. It's one way she copes with PTSD after dating a serial killer. But flashbacks hit whenever she considers romance. Her doors are always locked: To intruders. To men. To love.

Hill Dawson never wanted a fresh start. He loved firefighting, his culinary duties for the crew and his ex-fiancée. But a fire stole his leg, his friend took his girl and his future is now takeout for one and sleepless nights plagued by flashbacks.

When someone breaks into Andi's house, she runs into Hill's arms--literally. "Bearded, broad, [and] probably prone to growling in bed," her neighbor Hill is the first man Andi has trusted. And, even as "a cheap imitation" of his heroic self "with missing parts," Hill can at least still offer safety.

What ensues is a provocative friends-with-benefits practice in healing and navigating consent beyond one all-encompassing yes or no. Loren (Yes & I Love You) presents characters who talk through their anxiety, trauma triggers and desires. Andi's horror movie obsession ("The women save themselves") and insistence that society must stop gaslighting women out of being wary of men add a refreshing feminist slant. Loren nails romantic description (Hill's "melted butter and molasses" voice) and every suggestive moment hits ("Listen to your gut. Or you know, parts lower than that"), making What if You & Me an endearingly sexy story about comfort in intimacy. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

In his gorgeous and experimental memoir, Antiman, Indo-Caribbean poet Rajiv Mohabir (The Taxidermist's Cut) delves into his family's history and its tangle of stigmas to locate a powerful literary heritage and the origins of his own artistic life.

From a young age, Mohabir is transfixed by his grandmother's songs, both for the mythological stories they tell and the language in which she sings them: Guyanese Bhojpuri, which he dutifully records and translates. Though his father views their heritage as something shameful, Rajiv is compelled to follow this river of language to its source--to "learn the deep ocean of stories of where we came from and breathe into them new life." Flouting his father's assimilationist attitude ("a kind of postcolonial Stockholm syndrome"), Mohabir travels to India to pursue this project. In his studies, his family's diasporic past becomes a prism through which he comes to understand many facets of his own identity, and his queerness in particular. Ultimately, driven away by his family's virulent homophobia, he lands in New York City. Here, his linguistic fascination blossoms into poetry: "This was the poetry that I descended from and I could hear its music inside of me as I read my own words."

Interspersing experiments in multilingual poetry among sections of conventional memoir, Antiman serves as both a touching account of the author's life and a bold statement of his poetics. Like its title--taken from the homophobic slur Mohabir's own family uses against him--the book itself is an act of reclamation. --Theo Henderson, bookseller at Ravenna Third Place Books in Seattle, Wash.

Kate MacDougall, "tall, gangly, butterfingered," may have had the right background, education and qualifications to work for four years at the prestigious Sotheby's auction house in London. However, a comedy of errors propels her out of her less-than-fulfilling back-office job, inspiring her, on a lark, to start a dog-walking business. Enjoyable, easy to read and thoroughly entertaining, London's Number One Dog-Walking Agency shares humorous, conversational stories of MacDougall serving as a pseudo-matchmaker between the dogs, dog owners and dog-walking employees who shaped her life and her growing business over nine years, starting in 2006.

Met by opposition and belittlement from her mother and some of her peers, who feel her new career is beneath her, MacDougall sets off on an exciting adventure that snowballs through her 20s--through dating, engagement, marriage and motherhood. Her supportive husband is, ironically, scared of and "doesn't like dogs. At all." MacDougall details pivotal experiences, dilemmas and interactions with clients. Some of the dogs are as quirky and neurotic as their owners--and dog-walkers--who, at times, are far more exasperating and difficult to deal with than their canine charges. There's also the tender transformation of a mysterious rescue who is not at all interested in dogs or people, but who is interested in food. And the author's own Jack Russell terrier, who undergoes a battle of the bulge.

MacDougall's fun, brisk storytelling and cleverly rendered details largely focus on growing, improving upon and sustaining her business. However, philosophical undercurrents profoundly define how work--and canine companionship--can enrich the soul and spirit, ultimately giving shape and form to living a more meaningful existence. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

In Half Lives, science and popular culture combine in an engaging survey of the radium craze. Lucy Jane Santos makes her debut with an account of the uses and abuses of radioactivity, primarily in Britain, from its rising popularity as an alleged cure-all until it became an object of fear in the wake of the first nuclear bombs. Some of this history will be familiar to readers of The Radium Girls by Kate Moore; however Santos takes a broader, lighter approach. The realization that radium could have medicinal uses and the assumption that it was an unqualified positive brought more than just the frequently told story of the radium watch painters pointing their brushes with their lips. Spa towns such as Bath in Somerset, England, discovered and advertised the radium content in their waters. There was also a surge of sham patent cures implying they contained radium when they did not, alongside dance performances that incorporated radium-based products into the costumes or merely traded on the name.

Santos studies the effect of radioactivity on the popular imagination while striving not to impose hindsight on those who were inspired by its possibilities and ignorant of its dangers, reminding readers that if we and our contemporaries are more likely to be radiophobes, we still have to come to terms with the fact that radioactivity is everywhere. Fans of Mary Roach will find much to enjoy in this intriguing niche history. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

In her bestselling Transcendent Kingdom--a Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick and finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction--Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing) crafts a superbly nuanced portrait of a Ghanaian American woman trying to make sense of her present through her past--a past tragically rocked by her brother's fatal opioid addiction.

A Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Stanford, Gifty spends her waking hours using mice to study the neural factors in reward-seeking behavior and addiction, and returns home only to sleep, eat and, newly, care for her bedridden and depressed mother. Gifty is undoubtedly brilliant and driven, but she is also detached, save for two friendships with gently determined colleagues. Unbeknown to most, Gifty's research and fervor are born of devastating events during her childhood in conservative and often racist Huntsville, Ala., where she grew up in a religious Ghanaian immigrant family. And thus, Gifty strives to know, "could this science work on the people who need it the most? Could it get a brother to set down a needle? Could it get a mother out of bed?" With her mother a corporeal reminder of shared losses, Gifty scrutinizes her own grief, shame and trauma, turning to memory and revisiting childhood journal entries addressed to God ("Dear God, Please hurry up and make Buzz better. I want the whole church to see").

In this remarkable narrative that is at once beautifully lucid and brimming with emotional complexity, Gyasi examines and challenges the stigmas and stereotypes surrounding addiction and mental health while asking philosophical questions about the power and limits of faith, science and redemption. --Sylvia Al-Mateen, freelance reviewer and editor

Small and little do not mean the same thing. Ask the spunky protagonist of debut author Maya Myers's Not Little. Sure, she'll admit, "I am the smallest person in my family." And add, "Even my name is small: Dot." But whether at rest or play, in the kitchen or outside, Dot is mighty capable. Author/illustrator Hyewon Yum (Saturday Is Swimming Day) makes delightfully, whimsically certain that Dot takes up plenty of energetic space with her vibrant personality and independent tenacity.

Dot is "the smallest person in [her] class." Wherever she goes she finds she must prove again and again, "I may be small, but I'm not little." And then a new boy appears at school. What Dot instantly notices is that Sam "might even be smaller" than she is. She attempts to sidle up to him to compare heights but doesn't want to frighten him. In the lunchroom, however, she proves plenty scary when a lunchroom bully tries "mean boy" tactics on innocent Sam. Suddenly, she might be "the biggest kid [Sam's] ever met," especially when it comes to standing tall against adversity.

Myers clearly channels her elementary school teaching experience in creating Dot and Sam's recognizable exchanges about unfamiliar classrooms and playgrounds, tiptoeing through social dynamics and navigating new relationships. Yum's enchanting color-pencil illustrations elevate Myers's text with ingenious visual enhancements. On every page, Yum includes diverse faces: the opening spread shows Dot's family with parents and grandparents of ethnically different backgrounds. She also imbues characters with energy and motion and her ample use of white space allows them to take center stage. By book's end, Dot proves her whole small body has a mighty big voice that will be heard. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Well, it's about time one of Brian Lies's famous bats buckled down. Until now, they've spent their time playing ball (Bats at the Ballgame), cavorting in the sand (Bats at the Beach), reading for pleasure (Bats at the Library) and making music (Bats in the Band). Little Bat in Night School, like its picture-book predecessors, isn't a story so much as an introduction to an experience. But this time around, Lies departs from precedent: he skips the rhymes and supplies readers with a first-rate young mammalian tour guide.

It's Little Bat's first night of school, and he's prepared for anything--he even has a nifty new batpack--except being snubbed by two bat classmates: "We're already playing... with each other." Fortunately, he meets someone who likes to cower upside down in cubbies as much as he does: an opossum named Ophelia. Together they go about their school night, which includes the occasional setback, such as a mortifying juice-spilling incident (Little Bat: "I didn't mean for that to happen!"). By the time dawn breaks and Little Bat is flying home with his mom and recounting the goings-on ("Somebody almost got in trouble for spilling juice"), he's eagerly awaiting the next school night, knowing that he can bend with any unforeseen curves.

Little Bat in Night School is fueled by disarming humor rooted in the universal queasiness about facing the unknown. As ever, Lies (Got to Get to Bear's) spikes his darkly glossy, neat-as-a-whisker illustrations with visual jokes, perhaps most winningly when Little Bat literally throws himself into his art. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author