One could write an old-fashioned horror novel, but an even better way to terrify modern readers is to show them the parallels between a gut-wrenching period of American history and today, as Karen Joy Fowler does in Booth. In this canny and disturbing piece of historical fiction, she creates a portrait not just of a killer but also of the killer's family. Readers meet the large Booth family--Junius, the father and a Shakespearean actor on tour more than at his home near Baltimore; his wife, Mary; and their 10 children, only six of whom live beyond childhood. Among them are Rosalie ("Nothing is expected of her"); "artistic, sensitive, and maybe a touch eccentric" Edwin, who becomes a celebrated stage actor; tomboy Asia; and John, who is neither the actor nor the staunch abolitionist his brother is and who believes that "nothing will destroy the American black faster than freedom."

Interspersed among scenes of the Booth family, Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves) charts the career of Abraham Lincoln, starting with his 1838 speech in which he responds to the lynching of a free Black man in St. Louis. In describing the warnings in Lincoln's speech, Fowler's words read as chillingly apt today: "The gravest peril will come if the mob and the dictator unite." That's what makes Booth so unsettling and thrilling: the many parallels between the Booth family's era and the present day. "What is it like to love the most hated man in the country?" Fowler asks. It is a grim reminder that, throughout history, families of murderers have had to discover the answer, and more are likely to follow. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Rhys Bowen (The Last Mrs. Summers) teams up with her daughter, composer Clare Broyles, for Wild Irish Rose, the 18th installment of the charming Molly Murphy historical mystery series. Molly has hung up her detective hat and now spends her time caring for her children and Daniel, her husband and a New York City police captain. But Molly feels restless, especially given the presence of her critical mother-in-law, who is temporarily living with the family. Society may expect Molly to be content to be at home, but Molly misses her detecting days.

In order to keep herself busy, Molly engages in some charitable work. Delivering clothing to new arrivals at Ellis Island stirs up memories of her own arrival from Ireland some years earlier. But then a man is stabbed, and the presumed murderess, Rose McSweeney, turns out to be Molly's doppelgänger. Molly is convinced that her presence on Ellis Island that day was meant to help Rose. Much to Daniel's dismay, Molly plunges into her own investigation, trying to clear Rose's name. Will Molly be able to help Rose without putting herself or her marriage in danger?

Bowen and Broyles aptly capture the complicated social hierarchy of early 20th-century New York City. Molly challenges stereotypes and boundaries at every turn, making her a delightful lens for modern readers to learn more about this era, while simultaneously enjoying the twists and turns of her investigation. Fans of Deanna Raybourn or T.E. Kinsey are sure to appreciate Molly's introspection and intrepidity. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Flagstaff, Ariz.

The Heretic, Liam McIlvanney's gritty, meaty and propulsive follow-up to The Quaker, finds Detective Duncan McCormack back in Glasgow, heading up a Serious Crime Squad unit after six years with the Met in London. For some of McCormack's Glasgow colleagues, the mystery of why he has returned is as worthy of investigation as something on a police docket.

It's 1975, and McCormack is working full bore to nail Glasgow crime lord Walter Maitland. McCormack is sure Maitland is behind a recent tenement fire that killed four, including a child. But McCormack's boss, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Haddow, wants him to switch gears: the body of an elderly man, a well-heeled local businessman and former politician, has turned up in a rubbish dump. McCormack refuses to sideline the Maitland case. He "marches to his own bloody drum," grouses Haddow, who isn't the only officer to bear a grudge against McCormack for professional fallout from the Quaker case. McCormack cracked that case six years earlier--and it haunts him still.

The Heretic is a hard-charging thriller infused with something not typically associated with tartan noir: tenderness. The novel's scale and roving point of view ensure that all the principal characters' stories can be told and their socioeconomic circumstances fleshed out. When Detective Constable Elizabeth Nicol sums up the "magical strangeness" of her work--"You moved around the city and people opened their doors and gave you little glimpses of their lives"--she could be describing the experience of reading McIlvanney's capacious, immersive novel. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Lynn Painter's romantic comedy Mr. Wrong Number is perfect for readers looking for a semi-epistolary escape. Advice columnist Olivia Marshall isn't the average comedic-disaster heroine--she just accidentally burned down an entire apartment building after her boyfriend cheated on her. With only a gym bag and cell phone to her name, she leaves Chicago for her brother's apartment in her hometown of Omaha, Neb. When she arrives, however, she finds that her brother's irritating lifelong best friend, who owns the apartment, still lives there. The hits just keep coming, so when she engages in some surprisingly fun banter with a texter who has reached the wrong number, Olivia clings to this anonymous, no-pressure exchange like a lifeline.

Financial analyst Colin Beck has never allowed himself to consider his best friend's little sister anything more than an entertaining annoyance. But when he realizes that the woman that he's been sparking with in his apartment is the same woman who's been heating up his phone, he must decide how--or if--to come clean.

Painter (Better than the Movies) employs several classic rom-com staples: a best friend's sibling, a secret identity, an incredibly unlucky heroine, roommates and antagonists-turned-lovers, but the plot doesn't feel derivative. She cleverly subverts the trope of the clumsy heroine and, though the banter is charming and funny, the characters bond in a deeper way as well. Pair that with just enough steam and conflict, and readers have a rom-com sure to please--an especially good fit for fans of The Hating Game or television's The New Girl. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer

In Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe delivers a cutting, artful thrashing of settler colonialism and a sensitive exploration of ways of healing and forging space for community and connection through storytelling. LaPointe, a poet and songwriter from the Nooksack and Upper Skagit Indian tribes, recounts a coming of age abundant with love as well as instability, punk rock, skepticism and, at times, trauma. Via written word and grounded journeys, she honors ancestors who have modeled ways to heal, love, preserve stories and language and leave legacies. Their names reverberate throughout: Comptia Koholowish, Aunt Susie and Vi taqʷšəblu Hilbert.

LaPointe's intimate prose is introspective, raging and funny. Vivid details mark salient memories of falling in love, navigating conflict and asserting value. She wrestles with the desire to honor the bravery of those before her and anger at people and institutions that relentlessly demand it. LaPointe writes: "I hate the word 'brave.' Like I hate 'victim,' 'survivor,' or 'squaw.' " Instead, she writes, "call me Coast Salish or poet. Call me a girl who loves Nick Cave, and night swimming, and ramen, and old Bikini Kill records. I no longer wish to be called resilient." Indeed, reducing Red Paint to a story of resilience does a disservice to LaPointe's nuanced offering: meditations on self and legacy, thoughts on the urgency of listening and representation, and a model for creating space to connect across communities inherited and created.

And night swimming. And ramen. And records that are old, new and unforgettable, much like LaPointe's words. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

This debut book is a touching memoir of growing up as the only child of "not just a strict single parent, but something different. Something to be cautious of." Liz Scheier, a former editor at Penguin Random House, reveals the many ways her mother, Judith, was Never Simple, and the singular parent-child bond that endured through this fraught relationship.

It's reassuring to realize the author is alive and well; her opening chapters reveal the bizarre, even abusive, behavior she survived in 1980s Manhattan, where her "retired" mother, vague about Scheier's father, orchestrated their "secluded life in the center of a massive city." Scheier eventually realized Judith had borderline personality disorder, explaining the "whole fake world" she created. In a compelling, even humorous narrative ("Kids scattering like spiders in front of my mother when she strode into the school"), Scheier parallels her life story--itself a fascinating journey to career, marriage and motherhood--with her mother's erratic existence. Scheier illustrates how a child can not only heal from trauma, but evolve into forgiveness. As Judith's charisma failed to keep creditors from her door, and as "mental illness was... vying with dementia," Scheier had to make decisions for her mother's care. In poignant, often horrific and darkly funny ways, she describes "the fraying hemp of the last ropes tying me to her creak to their breaking point." Yet in a heartfelt conclusion to Never Simple, Scheier hopes she can "let the good stories surface and the bad ones sink for good," remembering her mother as "flawed, but well-intentioned." --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

Many bookshelves sag under the weight of creative writing instruction manuals, but few are as engaging--in little more than 150 pages--as Matt Bell's Refuse to Be Done. Bell (Appleseed), professor of creative writing at Arizona State University and the author of three novels, has written an enthusiastic and highly practical guide to completing this challenging artistic effort successfully.

The first section of Refuse to Be Done is its lengthiest and most stimulating. In it, Bell describes an array of strategies designed to help the aspiring novelist continue to generate fresh material. The goal here is simply to get words on paper. Bell, who's not a proponent of outlining before beginning a novel, strongly advocates for that process at the beginning of the work's second stage. This outline is "less a document of what exists and more a plan for the better book you want the second draft to be, discovered among the material of the first draft's more organic creation." In his final section, Bell offers a host of helpful practices for tightening a manuscript, which he concedes the writer may be weary of confronting by this point, to create a highly polished work. At this stage, he argues, it's especially important for writers to "refuse to be done," finally urging them to read the novel aloud one last time, "a beautiful gift you can give yourself, before you give the gift of your novel to everyone else."

By implementing even some of Bell's myriad of sound and ingenious tips, writers will almost certainly find their journey a more rewarding one. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Danny Pellegrino, comedian and podcast host, delivers a warm and humorous collection of stories about his childhood, including his experience coming out as well as building a career out of his love of pop culture. Many readers will find a kindred spirit when reading "I've never had a second glass of wine that didn't end with me on Allison Janney's IMBD page." Although Pellegrino (The Super Carb Diet, with Bob Harper) can't pinpoint when he realized he is gay, he does remember as a preteen recording The First Wives Club on VHS tape over his brother's copy of The Terminator and his love for Chris O'Donnell in Batman & Robin.  

His rollicking tale of his family enduring an endless time-share tour for free vouchers to Florida theme parks is made even funnier by his frequent diversions, including why Diane Keaton, Alfre Woodard and Dianne Wiest should play superheroes in Marvel movies. In fact, every chapter in How Do I Un-Remember This? includes a "Detour," in which Pellegrino sidetracks his story for tributes and tirades on everything from late-1990s boy bands to The Nanny, Magic Mike and some of his favorite places to shop: "Marie Kondo wants us to get rid of shit, but I can only assume that's because she's never been inside of a HomeGoods."

Readers will laugh when he postpones flying home to his grandmother's funeral for what became a bad first date. But then, as an example of how his stories perfectly blend hilarity and poignancy, he reveals years of unprocessed grief. This is a winning collection of tales from an unforgettable voice. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Define verbal. Better yet, define nonverbal, a word sometimes used to describe autistic individuals who don't speak. As a poet, Hannah Emerson knows that words and their meanings matter and thus prefers to describe herself as "non-speaking autistic." Her debut poetry collection, The Kissing of Kissing, proves the wisdom of that choice: it decisively shows that speaking aloud is only part of being verbal.

Emerson makes great use of repetition, such as with phrases ("yes yes" or "please get") that spiral in and out of the poems. This signals a certain urgency and makes the tone at once familiar and fresh. The rhythmic quality of each piece is similar, creating a steady pulse throughout the collection. Every poem feels alive with a fierce energy, a force that is balanced by the book's design. Each full page of white space grounds readers, creating a stillness within the movement. The pause allows reflection on such insights as "Looking oblique littles/ the moment into many/ helpful moments" from "Peripheral" or, as in the poem "I Live in the Woods of My Words," to sit with a tangle of ideas and words: "I live in the branches/ of the trees. I live in/ the great keeping/ freedom of the really/ helpful down yearning/ in the grown of the forest/ floor."

This arresting collection is the first in Milkweed's Multiverse series, titles written and curated by the neurodivergent. It makes a remarkable statement, both visually and verbally. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Outlawed by Anna North (America Pacifica; The Life and Death of Sophie Stark) is a wild, ripping western with a feminist bent, set in an alternative North America.

After the Great Flu decimated the population, the U.S. government collapsed and, in its place, the people established Independent Towns west of the Mississippi. Ada has grown up in Fairchild, where her mother is a skilled midwife. Ada excels in her own midwifery training and helps care for her beloved three younger sisters. She marries at 17 and tries to become pregnant. But when six months pass, Ada worries. To be barren in Fairchild is a crime punishable by death. At the end of a year, her husband's family rejects her, and Ada's mother sends her to the Sisters of the Holy Child. Ada's hunger for knowledge drives her west, where she joins up with the infamous Hole in the Wall Gang, led by the Kid. He is charismatic, beloved and possibly dangerous in entirely different ways than the rumors insist.

Outlawed--a Reese's Book Club Pick--is a delightful tale of adventure, rebellion, the importance of knowledge and the value of family, however it is made or defined. With the Hole in the Wall Gang, Ada finds unexpected freedoms and fluid gender roles, and is forced to consider what she has to offer her new friends and the world. North's narrative is often lighthearted, with style, humor and a sense of fun, but her protagonist never forgets the high stakes. Part of the genius of Outlawed is that its feminist themes juxtapose neatly with the traditionally male-dominated western genre. --Julia Kastner

Lakelore, the eighth YA novel by Anna-Marie McLemore (Mirror Season), is an exquisite and impassioned story about two neurodivergent Mexican American teens, both queer and nonbinary, who find solace in a magical lake world.

Sixteen-year-old Bastián Silvano crafts alebrijes (figures of mythical creatures) as an outlet for their ADHD-related anxiety. Bastián pours their "worst moments into the painted papier-mâché then releases the alebrijes into a magical world under the lake. There, the mythical animals come alive and stay beneath the surface. That is, until the day Lore Garcia appears, and the lake world slips into the real world. Lore's family has relocated to Bastián's town after Lore hurt someone at school. Lore is dyslexic and the learning disability has earned them jeering taunts from classmates and insensitive urging from a teacher that Lore should "just sound it out." These memories haunt Lore as the clatter of the lake world mysteriously floods their home. Only the two teens can see the lake world, so only they can solve the mystery of why it's following them to land.

Lakelore delivers mesmerizing magical realism, brilliant portrayals of gender transitioning and genderfluidity, and sensitive representations of living with ADHD and dyslexia. The candidness and specificity with which Bastián and Lore divulge how they think, how hard they work and how racism affects them stems from McLemore's experience as a nonbinary Mexican American diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Through alternating first-person points of view, this magnificent YA novel urges acceptance and support, reminding readers that different isn't wrong, it's beautiful. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

Edgewood by Kristen Ciccarelli (Iskari series) is an enjoyably romantic, otherworldly saga that features a young woman hellbent on escaping her superstitious hometown--that is, until she must win back her aging grandfather from a wicked king and save an entire kingdom.

Nineteen-year-old Emeline Lark is a "folk singer with a pop vibe" who wants nothing more than to chase her dream of "making a living with just her voice." She's getting close, too, with reps from prestigious Daybreak Records on the verge of offering her a contract. But ever since Emeline fled Edgewood, the backwards town where she grew up, it feels as if the woods are calling her, begging her to "sing us a true song." Now her grandfather, who's suffering from dementia, has gone missing and his neighbors say he's been tithed to some "fairy tale" Wood King. Emeline refuses to believe this madness but, even though the Daybreak reps won't wait, she hurries back to search for her beloved Pa. When she ventures into the woods, she meets mysterious Hawthorne and his huge, impossible mare--and discovers that magic is real. Emeline will have to sing like never before in order to save Pa and break the curse that's poisoning the forest.

A finely tuned fantasy, Edgewood is an enchanting mix of magical quest, mystery and romance. Ciccarelli's headstrong Emeline is as much modern-day woman as she is timeless hero, and Hawthorne is as sensitive and broody a love interest as readers could hope for. Add in the delightfully lyrical prose and this neo-fairy tale hits all the marks. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Loujain Dreams of Sunflowers by Lina AlHathloul and Uma Mishra-Newbery is a picture book about a brave girl who learns to fly and inspires other girls to take flight.

Every morning when Loujain wakes, she remembers her dreams of flying "to a place her baba described as the carpet of a million sunflowers." But girls are not allowed to fly. So every day, Loujain and Baba put on their wings and Loujain pretends to fly as Baba soars away. She loves bright colors and taking pictures with her camera; her favorite picture of all is one Baba gave her that features the sunflower field and makes her feel like she is "floating in a sea of color." At school, when Loujain tells her friends that one day she will fly, they laugh and call her silly. But Loujain is determined. Eventually, she convinces her reluctant Baba to teach her, and Loujain's unthinkable dream comes true. 

Human rights activists AlHathloul and Mishra-Newbery wrote this story for AlHathloul's sister, Loujain, who was imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for fighting for women's right to drive. The heroic and emotional text is accompanied by the striking illustrations of Rebecca Green (How to Be a Good Creature illustrator). Green uses acrylic gouache, colored pencils and earth tones to create brilliant, detailed art full of spirit and warmth. This gorgeously illustrated book inspires hope and reminds readers always to fight for justice. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer