If there is any concern about the health of the short story in the next generation of Irish writers, Colin Barrett's Homesickness: Stories, his second collection, should help put that to rest. Like novelist Sally Rooney, Barrett (Young Skins) is well-attuned to the attitudes and preoccupations of mostly younger Irish men and women, though his subjects are markedly dissimilar to the highly educated, intensely verbal characters in Rooney's work. In these eight stories, Barrett offers glimpses of an assortment of characters for whom it seems life's richest rewards will always remain just out of reach.

All of the stories save one in Homesickness are set in County Mayo, on Ireland's west coast--a region one character describes as "very presentable from a distance. It's only up close it lets you down." The book begins there with a literal bang in "A Shooting in Rathreedane," as Sergeant Jackie Noonan is dispatched to the scene after a petty criminal has been gravely wounded by a local farmer who claims he acted in self-defense; Noonan must try to save the trespasser's life.

"The Alps," one of the collection's strongest entries, is noteworthy for the way Barrett subtly toys with readers' expectations. In it, a rough-hewn trio of brothers--"shortish men with massive arses and brutally capable forearms"--whose nickname provides the story's title, arrive at a local pub for an evening of drinking. From the beginning, the threat of violence looms, but when it appears, it does so in a completely unexpected, and even moving, fashion.

Characters like Barrett's may be humble, but there's nothing unimpressive about their portrayal in these thoughtful, well-wrought tales. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

The fates of two Sacramento families in the 1980s collide most spectacularly in All the Secrets of the World by Steve Almond (Bad Stories; Against Football). This sweeping drama follows 13-year-old Lorena Saenz and a troubled scientist whose disappearance sets in motion a flawed criminal investigation that will ultimately ensnare Lorena's undocumented brother, Tony.

Nerdy and academically brilliant Lorena and popular rich girl Jenny Stallworth are middle-schoolers who exist in different social spheres, their paths unlikely to cross if not for their teacher pairing them for a science project. Lorena finds herself invited to the Stallworth mansion, where she develops an all-consuming crush on Jenny's father, Marcus, a scientist who studies scorpions. A quiet academic, Marcus is barely able to contain his inner demons and struggles against his worst impulses and temptations, especially when it comes to Lorena's fast-emerging womanhood and her tendency to show up at his study uninvited.

Tracking his characters from the Sacramento suburbs through the desert toward Yuma, Ariz., and beyond, Almond paints a satirically astute portrait of Reagan's America, with California the epicenter of the president's anti-crime campaign. When Marcus disappears and his Jeep is found abandoned south of Death Valley, foul play is suspected and Tony, the lowest-hanging fruit of possible suspects, is arrested.

With cleverly overlapping subplots and a memorable cast of characters that includes a polygamous cult leader living on a Mexican ranch, Almond's meticulously researched first novel is a triumph of storytelling powered by a central theme: the perilous disconnect between those who control or abuse systems of power and the individuals who are at the losing end of the power dynamic. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer

Any new book by Newbery Medalist Kelly Barnhill (The Ogress and the Orphans) is cause for excitement for fans of children's literature. Though her books appeal to adults and children alike, When Women Were Dragons is her first written for adults. It takes readers to Wisconsin during the 1950s. In addition to the McCarthy hearings and the burgeoning civil rights movement, history must grapple with another significant event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955.

Barnhill grounds her work in a realism colored by elements of the fantastic, specifically the idea that women can and will transform into dragons. That many of these women have been marginalized, underappreciated or forced into societal norms that shrink and contain them is a clue to why they may have dragoned and to what Barnhill is doing in this evocative story. Writing from the end of her life, the narrator, Alex, reconsiders the silences she was forced into as a child and reflects on her fractured relationship with her Auntie Marla (who dragoned) and her mother (who did not). Her story slowly unfolds as she reckons with her own power, asking, "Was I the immovable object, or was I the unstoppable force? Perhaps I was both. Perhaps this is what we learn from our mothers." Balancing the story between Alex's recollections and historical documents, Barnhill explores the taboos around women and anger, resizing paradigms of choice, freedom and the complicated roles of gender in society. --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Fans of Alan Parks's grim, gritty and somehow reliably funny Harry McCoy thrillers will be unsurprised to learn that the hard-drinking, speed-taking Glasgow detective is a terrible patient. May God Forgive, the topping good fifth entry in the calendrically titled series that begins with Bloody January, finds McCoy freshly sprung from the hospital, where he was recovering from a bleeding ulcer. Doctors have prescribed another month of bed rest: "No work, no stress, no smoking and no drinking." McCoy is determined to bat oh for four.

On May 20, 1974, his first day back on the job, McCoy watches a lorry smash into a police van that carries three prisoners, adolescent boys who had set fire to a hair salon and are being charged with murder. The boys are whisked away in a car after the crash. Was this a rescue or a hijack? McCoy's boss wants him to sniff around to find out who put the lads up to starting the fire, telling him: "For once you have my permission to go and have a chat with all the low-level chancers you call your pals."

Alternating between swigging booze and Pepto-Bismol, McCoy faces a barrage of adversarial forces, including turf-warring criminals, Glasgow's punishing rain and, as usual, himself. May God Forgive is a fleet, dialogue-powered, satisfying story full of all the violence and depravity that readers have come to expect from Parks. But the novel's most devastating scenes involve McCoy's personal history, which his work won't do him the courtesy of letting him forget. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Harini Nagendra's engaging first mystery in a projected series, The Bangalore Detectives Club, introduces a whip-smart, charming sleuth and provides a glimpse into intercultural relations in 1920s India. Kaveri Murthy, a newlywed and budding mathematician, is adjusting to her married life in Bangalore when a man is murdered at a dinner Kaveri is attending with her husband, a doctor named Ramu. Shocked and also intrigued, especially because the dead man has an unsavory connection to their milkman, Kaveri begins investigating the murder. She is able to offer some useful insight, despite her husband's protests. Even when several other attacks follow, Kaveri continues to follow the trail, with the help of her elderly neighbor.

Nagendra (Nature in the City) portrays a vivid Bangalore through Kaveri's eyes. Quick and perceptive, she is a shrewd observer of the people she meets and the different social classes she encounters. Readers get a taste of India's rigid caste system as well as the practices of British colonial officers and their wives. Ramu and Kaveri make an intriguingly progressive couple: both of them are more interested in living their own way than in following outdated rules, but they must observe certain protocols for the comfort of their colleagues and neighbors. (Ramu is forced to confront his own long-held prejudices when Kaveri befriends a prostitute who is a suspect in the case.) The danger ramps up as Kaveri gets closer to solving the murder, but the narrative wraps up satisfyingly without excessive gore. Both Nagendra's amateur sleuth and her new series are insightful and promising. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Isabel Cañas takes readers to the 1823 Mexican countryside in her debut, The Hacienda, a dark gothic novel in which a house is haunted by more than just the supernatural. Set right after the Mexican War of Independence, The Hacienda follows Beatriz, a young woman trying to build a better life for herself after her father is executed. After suffering at the hands of relatives who disdain her for her mixed heritage, Beatriz marries Don Rodolfo Solórzano and leaves the city for what she assumes will be a stable life as mistress of a thriving estate.

What she finds instead is an empty, poorly maintained, menacing house and a sister-in-law who seems to hate her on sight. Determined to make the best of things, Beatriz begins restoring the gardens, furnishing the house and attempting to settle into the pueblo. The house has other ideas: "Darkness clawed at me; cold hands yanked my hair, pawed my nightdress."

Desperate for help, Beatriz appeals to the local church, but only the young mestizo priest Andrés believes her. As Beatriz spirals, sleepless and terrified, into possible madness, she uncovers secrets just as monstrous as the house about her husband, his dead first wife, his sister and maybe even Andrés.

The pages of The Hacienda are drenched in these secrets, but also in the real-life horrors of colonialism, patriarchy and the complicated and harmful casta system that reverberates through the generations. Cañas's writing is immersive, and she skillfully builds a robust sense of tension and terror. This chilling read exposes the rotting soul of colonialism and manages to be wildly entertaining while doing so. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer

In Be My Baby, Ronnie Spector presents a wild ride of a memoir that moves at a breakneck speed. Whether Ronnie, the lead singer of the 1960s girl group the Ronettes, describes hanging out with the Beatles at a 1964 sex party ("I may have been dumb back then, but I knew when it was time to get up off a guy's lap," she writes), having cocaine-laced sex with David Bowie or being kept prisoner in her 23-room mansion by husband Phil Spector for five years, Spector has a knack for compelling storytelling.

Much of the memoir focuses on her courtship and eventual marriage to Phil Spector. She lost her virginity to him while listening to a Ronettes record. "And every two minutes and fifty seconds," she writes, "Phil would reach over from the bed and lift the needle back to the beginning of the record." Once married, his paranoia, rages and jealousies take over. Although he threatens to have her killed if she leaves, she is finally able to escape. And like Tina Turner, she attempts restarting a career while being viewed as a has-been.

Originally published in 1990, this revised edition includes a new foreword by Keith Richards (replacing Cher's original) and a very short, 11-page postscript covering the last 32 years. This includes winning a $2.6 million lawsuit against Phil Spector for back royalties; the Ronettes' induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; and Phil's 2021 death in prison. Ronnie Spector died at 78 in January 2022--before this republication but after recording the audiobook. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Horoscopes based on Sun signs are a fun way to examine the day-to-day and perhaps glimpse into the future, but they are only a small part of the astrological houses. Enter The Moon Sign Guide by Annabel Gat (The Astrology of Love & Sex), an astrologer certified by the International Society for Astrological Research. Gat, who has been writing the daily and monthly horoscope column at Vice since 2015, offers The Moon Sign Guide as a way of exploring one's inner life. "While our Sun sign symbolizes our ego and will," Gat writes, "and is an outward-facing part of our personality, the Moon sign represents our internal environment--our emotions, memories, and subconscious... all our wants and worries are touched by our Moon sign." Her exploration of where someone's Moon sign was at birth (readers will have to discover that through an astrologer or online birth chart calculator) provides insights into "what those who fall under that sign may need to feel comforted and secure."

Each Moon sign is explored in multiple sections: an overview, a deeper examination, and insights relating to home and family life, work, friendships and love and compatibility. The latter section also highlights how each Moon sign interacts with the others. Gat also includes a section on the "progressed moon," as a person's Moon sign will shift throughout their lives. Those with an interest in alternative forms of self-examination will find The Moon Sign Guide an engaging way to better understand themselves and others in their lives. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Travel journalist Kate Wills's frank, funny memoir, A Trip of One's Own, weaves together anecdotes from intrepid female explorers with Wills's own travel experiences and also provides practical tips for people (especially women) interested in traveling alone. Having spent years relishing her solo trips to far-flung locales, Wills was disappointed when travel lost some of its magic after her marriage fell apart. Wills, determined to recapture the joy of being on the move, began researching stories of pioneering female travelers--wealthy society women, fame-hungry journalists and women, like herself, nursing broken hearts. Their stories provided inspiration, a sense of kinship and a renewed idea of travel as "both medicine and liberation."

Wills freely owns up to her traveling mistakes, wryly recounting mishaps both dramatic and mundane. Although she advocates doing a bit of research and packing a medicine bag, she's also a fan of letting trips take shape in the moment, as that's often where the best memories are. For both Wills and the traveling women who inspire her, the trick is remaining curious and present, whether chatting with locals, sampling new cuisine or trying to hang on through a turbulent flight. Similarly, Wills learns to hang on through the lonely months after her divorce, gradually building a life that includes a few brand-new adventures, including motherhood (and, later, pandemic lockdown). Breezy and insightful, Wills's memoir is an ideal companion for both novice and seasoned solo travelers. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

"It hasn't always been easy being a woman in this industry," writes Megan Jasper, CEO of indie-rock record label Sub Pop. Her essay, "Losers," is one of 16 offerings collected by writer Sinéad Gleeson and musician Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth in This Woman's Work: Essays on Music. Substitute "the arts" for "this industry" in Jasper's statement, and her conclusion sums up pretty much any of the pieces in this fearsome and eclectic anthology.

Apart from Gordon's interview with Japanese musician Yoshimi Yokota and Juliana Huxtable's "praise poem" for singer Linda Sharrock, This Woman's Work gathers critical, biographical and autobiographical music-themed essays by women. There's strong work throughout the collection, but the most reverberant pieces tend to take the form of emotions-front girl-on-girl tributes: Anne Enright on Laurie Anderson, Maggie Nelson on Lhasa de Sela and, heartrendingly, Margo Jefferson on Ella Fitzgerald, whose tendency to perspire mid-performance unsettles the writer. As Jefferson--who, like Fitzgerald, is Black--writes in "Diaphoresis": "even as she swings, scats and soars, Ella Fitzgerald's sweat threatens to drag her back into the maw of working-class Black female labor."

This Woman's Work is richer for the fact that Gleeson (Constellations: Reflections from Life) and Gordon (Girl in a Band) have sought out contributors who see the politics in making art. As Fatima Bhutto writes in "Songs of Exile" of music's capacity to galvanize the disenfranchised, "Tyrants hate music because no matter their force and their power, they will never, not ever, be able to control what is beautiful." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Every character, big and small, depends on one another in this funny and heartwarming early chapter book.

Bee is bored of pollinating the backyard. That is, until Flea, in "purple horn-rimmed glasses and a matching fanny pack," rides by on the back of a sleepy dog whom she is failing to direct. "What's a professional parasite gotta do to get some decent help around here?" she demands. Bee, thinking this might be her chance to escape the "dreary dandelions," volunteers to fly Flea to the compost heap. Upon arrival, Bee discovers "an entire universe of the teeniest-tiniest proportions."

At the heap, Flea, sole agent of the Fenced-in-area Law Enforcement Agency (F.L.E.A.), issues tickets to wrongdoers (mites eating their families; nematodes gobbling bacteria) while Bee is horrified by them. "Pollinating flowers may be boring, but at least it's useful," she thinks--until she realizes that "disgusting" might be subjective and the critters' actions are important. But that means agent Flea's ticketing work isn't!

Bee & Flea and the Compost Caper by Anna Humphrey (Megabat) is a chapter book with lots to love. Author and artist seamlessly incorporate STEM facts: they introduce parasites and bacteria, describe what shouldn't go into a compost heap and explain the miniature ecosystem in compost. Humphrey ensures an unendingly humorous read with endearing interactions between "stickler for correctness" Bee and happy-go-lucky Flea, through their creative antics and perfect puns. Illustrator Mike Deas (Star Wars: A Jedi You Will Be illustrator) adds to the fun with laughter-inducing black-and-white illustrations, like Flea using a crazy straw to drink blood or mites pooping on Bee. A sure favorite. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

This sophomore YA title from Sajni Patel (The Knockout) is a contemporary rom-com set during an Indian wedding that is a lavish and joyful celebration of family ties, first love and creative expression.

Zurika "Zuri" Damani plans to attend a performing arts college to study "violin and hip-hop and rock... the music that moved my soul." First problem: this pursuit conflicts with her Indian family's expectations. Second? Her dream school rejects her. When Zuri learns about a musical contest judged by college scouts that offers the winner a full-ride scholarship, she thinks it may be her only chance to achieve her goals. Unfortunately, the contest takes place during the week of celebrations leading up to Zuri's sister's wedding. Worse: Naveen, the charming relative of the groom with whom Zuri's mother is determined to set Zuri up, turns out to be a gifted singer and her biggest threat in the scouting competition. Somehow Zuri must survive the wedding chaos, conquer the competition and reconcile her own ambitions with her family's hopes for her future.

Patel describes "the love and splendor and energy" of an Indian wedding--including traditional ceremonies, clothing and food--in opulent sensory detail. Madcap wedding antics and Zuri's rapid-fire banter with Naveen provide humor while there are still plenty of genuine emotional moments between Zuri and her family. Patel's imagery dazzles, but her portrayal of the often messy, always loving relationships between her wide cast of characters is what truly makes My Sister's Big Fat Indian Wedding shine. --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer

An inquisitive but bored child enlists a bird's help for an imaginative journey in Elly MacKay's diaphanous and fanciful picture book In the Clouds.

A girl with round red glasses perched on her nose and braids trailing down her back greets a yellow bird through a narrow crack in a rain-spattered window. The girl, suddenly the bird's size, asks, "Is the sun shining above the clouds? Will you take me there?" and the pair take flight. Through changing skyscapes, they explore coral crusted islands, a volcano and a thunderstorm, the sun's rays shining through diffuse light to splendid effect. The child poses a stream of questions both factual and rhetorical as the two explore: "Do you think there are clouds on other planets? If so, are they as beautiful as ours?" Their flight of fancy concludes in a burst of sunlight and joyful exuberance back at the windowsill once again.

MacKay (Red Sky at Night; The Secret Fawn) brings depth and dimension to each page with luminous photographs of layered paper dioramas. The child's meandering inquiry conveys wonder and genuine curiosity, which melds seamlessly with the glowing full-page artwork. Some of the child's questions are answered in the backmatter while others may prompt deeper thought and conversation.

Fans of Soyeon Kim and Samantha Cotterill's diorama artwork should appreciate the radiant effect MacKay achieves here, and the text is an excellent companion to the philosophical inquiry of K.A. Holt's I Wonder. An imaginative and incandescent escape. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf