Maggie Su's Blob: A Love Story is a funny and pathos-ridden tale of social awkwardness and self-realization; a modern, delayed coming-of-age. Su's narrative voice is perfectly pitched for her inelegant but deeply sympathetic protagonist.

Vi is a 24-year-old townie and college dropout in a midwestern college town. She is still suffering from a breakup eight months ago; her Taiwanese father and white mother are well-meaning and supportive, but they have trouble connecting with Vi. Then, she stumbles upon something new in the alley behind a bar: a shapeless blob with a mouth and two eyes. She carries it home and, under Vi's yearning influence, it grows.

The evolving blob, which Vi will come to call Bob, is the only fantastical detail in a story otherwise rooted in a very familiar world, featuring the casual racism of Vi's hometown and her awkwardness with social situations. Bob takes in lots of television (and Fruity Pebbles), and after examining the pictures Vi shows him of movie stars, fashions himself into a tall, stunningly handsome white man with a six-pack. But their pairing is, in fact, a strain: "For a while, he seemed happy enough to eat and breathe and exist--the perfect companion. I should've anticipated that molding him into a man would trigger something deeper, some sort of existential awakening."

What makes Blob special is its mix of heartrending conflict and silly, self-aware humor. Truly cringy scenes balance sweet ones. In the end, discomfiting though it may be, Blob makes incisive observations about life for a 20-something trying to make it on her own. Blobs and humans alike may yet find home. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Charmaine Wilkerson's powerful second novel, Good Dirt, explores the lasting effects of a long-ago tragedy and its connection to a beloved family heirloom. Through the history of the Freeman family and the provenance of a handmade pottery jar affectionately known as "Old Mo," Wilkerson (Black Cake) considers family secrets, race and respectability politics, the long-term nature of childhood trauma, and the complexity of American history.

On an autumn day in 2000, two armed burglars break into the Freemans' house to find the children, Baz and Ebby, at home unexpectedly. The encounter results in Baz's murder; Old Mo is shattered into fragments, and 10-year-old Ebby experiences a trauma that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Wilkerson continues her narrative years later with a different kind of tragedy, as Ebby's wealthy white fiancé, Henry, fails to show up for their wedding.

Ebby begins to ask questions about Old Mo and the circumstances of its attempted theft, as she reckons with the pain Henry caused her and the lingering trauma from Baz's death. The jar, made under enslavement, holds more history than even Ebby can guess, and Wilkerson reaches back a few centuries to excavate some of that history through the stories of skilled potter Moses, his brother-in-law, Willis, and their descendants.

Wilkerson probes the layers of each family member's connection to the jar; their deep love for one another and fierce pride in their heritage; and the guilt they carry, logical or not, relating to Baz's death. Layered and complex, Wilkerson's novel brilliantly sculpts a story of quiet resistance, skilled craftsmanship, and dedication to family and freedom. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Penitence, an uncommonly impressive debut from Kristin Koval, has the signposts of a traditional crime novel--a murder, a murderer, criminal justice machinations--but it really isn't one. The book's concern isn't why the killer killed; it's the human behaviors that harm without piercing the skin. This gives Penitence the tension of a suspense novel and the gravitas of a family tragedy.

The novel opens with 13-year-old Nora Sheehan sitting in a Lodgepole, Colo., jail cell. She's there because, using her park-ranger father David's gun, she fatally shot her 14-year-old brother, Nico, in his bed, after which she called 911 to confess to the crime. Nora "loved Nico.... That's why none of this makes sense," their mother, Angie, agonizes to Martine Dumont, an elderly lawyer and erstwhile family friend whom Angie and David tap to defend Nora; as David privately tells Martine, "Angie said you should do it because of Diana."

Who is Diana, and how did her death set off a chain of events that redirected several lives? As Nora's case proceeds, Koval uses a roving point of view to fill out key players' histories. Among the questions that haunt the novel: Why are Martine and her son, Julian, a New York criminal defense attorney who takes over Nora's case, practically estranged? And why did Angie, once the love of Julian's life, leave him? With agile and affecting prose, Penitence asks what, if anything, family members owe one another and whether enough acts of selflessness can lead to atonement. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

January 2025 would have marked Yukio Mishima's 100th birthday. Before his death by suicide at age 45, he left a substantial legacy: 35 novels (including Spring Snow and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea), 40 plays, dozens of essays, several films, and 170 short stories. Voices of the Fallen Heroes, with an erudite introduction by Japanese cultural studies scholar John Nathan, gathers 14 compelling tales written between 1962 and 1969, the final decade of Mishima's truncated life. Collection editor Stephen Dodd leads an impressive assembly of notable translators that includes Sam Bett and Juliet Winters Carpenter.

The titular story is the longest. It melds the fantastical with the historical as it gives voice to the spirits of soldiers who sacrificed their lives in defense of Japan, disappointed that their divine emperor ultimately proved to be merely human. Multiple stories examine love from various angles: it's a matter of fresh conquest in "Strawberry"; casual distraction in "Cars"; fatally performative in "True Love at Dawn"; destructively nonchalant in "Clock." Murder recurs as a desperate obsession to witness avicide in "The Peacocks" and as the horrific cost of proving loyalty in "The Strange Tale of Shimmering Moon Villa." Mishima shares autobiographical glimpses: his visit to San Francisco's Union Square inspires "The Flower Hat," and he inserts himself in "From the Wilderness," about an intruder breaking into his home demanding a meeting.

This sampling of Mishima's massive trove provides another intriguing look at his profound accomplishments. As with most collections, resonance may vary with these stories. That said, further access to Mishima's extraordinary oeuvre is an undeniable gift to fans and newbies alike. --Terry Hong

The incredible story of the creation of Barbie is reimagined by Renée Rosen (The Social Graces; Park Avenue Summer) in an entertaining and informative novel about the history of the iconic doll. In the 1950s, Ruth Handler, co-founder of the Mattel toy company alongside her husband, Elliot Handler, realizes that every doll on the market was a baby doll, encouraging young girls to dream only of becoming a housewife and mother. Ruth decides there should be another option.

With the help of Mattel's head engineer, Jack Ryan, and fashion designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, the Barbie team pushes against all hesitations and pours their energy and expertise into creating Mattel's first doll. But after years of designing, tweaking, and finalizing the designs, Ruth's vision of Barbie as a grown woman with endless possibilities, accompanied by an even more endless wardrobe, is harder to market than she thought. Shocked by society's immediate rejection of a doll "with breasts," Ruth is devastated for herself, her team, and the employees that will suffer from her overconfidence. However, just when Ruth loses all hope, Barbie orders start coming in faster than Mattel can fill them.

Rosen's dynamic dialogue and raw portrayal of Ruth Handler, the real-life mastermind behind Barbie, showcase the determined, hardworking woman that she was without ignoring the mistakes she, and the others, made along the way. The immense success of Barbie came with great losses for the team: time with loved ones, struggles with mental health, and painful business and personal decisions. The poignant Let's Call Her Barbie is nonetheless inspiring. --Clara Newton, freelance reviewer

"What happens when the wildness is tamed? What is lost in that erasure?" These are questions Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum ponders in her lustrous first novel, Elita.

This atmospheric mystery takes place on the eponymous Elita Island in Washington State's Puget Sound during the winter of 1951, when "the world is a churning mass of gray sky, gray sea." Lunstrum's evocative, insightful writing captures the nuanced and moody Pacific Northwest landscape and brings to life some very compelling characters, such as a woman with "a face like an apple gone soft with age."

Bernadette Baston, a professor of child development, is summoned to assist in a baffling case: two prison guards have discovered a feral, nonverbal adolescent girl living alone in the inhospitable wilderness. She is given the name Atalanta, after the girl from Greek mythology who was left to die in the woods by her father. Officials work to uncover Atalanta's origins, but the residents of Elita and the neighboring island of Adela remain secretive. Bernadette, who was abandoned by her husband when their daughter was an infant, is no stranger to survival and takes a personal interest in Atalanta.

In Elita, Lunstrum (What We Do with the Wreckage: Stories) explores the challenges women faced during the 1950s, drawing parallels between Atalanta and Bernadette's struggles for autonomy: "How different from a feral child is a grown and educated woman?" As Bernadette contemplates her own life, she realizes that "the entire system of society is set up to stop her from freeing herself." --Grace Rajendran, freelance reviewer

In her debut novel, Grace of the Empire State, Gemma Tizzard constructs an inspiring story of an Irish-American family working to support each other in challenging times. Like the titular landmark, Tizzard's story is built on a strong foundation: family loyalty and the determination to succeed, along with romance, a touch of danger, and more than a few seemingly impossible dreams.

Since their father died, twins Patrick and Grace O'Connell have been working hard to keep their family financially afloat: Grace as a nightclub dancer, Patrick as a steelworker helping to raise the new Empire State Building. When Patrick breaks his arm during a shift, he begs Grace to impersonate him for a few weeks so the three other men on his team won't lose their jobs. Grace, newly unemployed, reluctantly agrees. To her surprise, she comes to enjoy certain parts of the work and forms a deep bond with her teammates. All of them have serious motivation to keep going, even with the risk of Grace getting caught.

Tizzard vividly depicts the glamor and the heartache of Depression-era New York, and she slips in glimpses of iconic Manhattan landmarks like the New York Public Library. She immerses readers in the hot, dusty, dangerous details of working at the Empire State Building through Grace's eyes, honoring the effort and sacrifice of the workers (many of them immigrants) who built the skyline that epitomizes New York City today.

With engaging characters and a vibrant depiction of Manhattan--its glittering possibility and its stark heartbreak--Tizzard's novel soars like its namesake building, and moves along as elegantly as its nimble, determined heroine. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

"It was meant to be a harmless prank." In Alafair Burke's stellar thriller The Note, three friends clearly are waiting for a parking spot when it is grabbed by an entitled couple. The trio, on a girls' trip to the Hamptons, are so incensed they write notes to the couple. One of them says, simply: "He's cheating. He always does."

The childhood friends--law professor May Hanover, real estate heiress Kelsey Ellis, and musical prodigy Lauren Berry--agree to keep the notes to themselves. But unbeknownst to the other two, one woman sticks that note under the windshield wiper of the offending driver's car. After the driver goes missing, the police trace his movements and eventually show up at May's New York City apartment. The three have good reason to worry that their seemingly innocuous note could cause negative publicity, ruin relationships, destroy careers. They've experienced similar chain reactions before: when Kelsey was a suspect in her husband's murder; after a confrontation between May and a man on the subway went viral; and when Lauren was caught having an affair with a prominent married Texas oilman. As the investigation intensifies, each woman faces more scrutiny.

The Note realistically explores the women's relationship; through the years, it fluctuates from friendship to frenemy-ship as the trio support and betray one another. To avoid being recognized, Kelsey lives "her life in disguise," but Burke (The Wife; Long Gone) reveals how this descriptor applies to May and Lauren, too.

Burke's skillful plotting, punctuated by sharp dialogue, keeps The Note churning to a surprising finale. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

A mere whisper that something evil is afoot can blow up into nasty rumors spread by conspiracy theorists, as Edgar winner Alison Gaylin explores in the explosive We Are Watching. Gaylin creates an unpredictable plot in which the gullible are convinced to believe outlandish ideas that infiltrate ordinary lives.

Meg Russo and her husband, Justin, are driving their 18-year-old daughter, Lily, to college in Ithaca, N.Y., when skinheads in a pursuing car harass them. It leads to a horrific crash in which Justin is killed. Months later, Meg, who was driving, is still wracked with guilt, and Lily is living at home, withdrawn into her music, wanting to emulate her rock musician grandfather who lives off the grid. Meg and Lily become targets of a cult that believes a fantasy novel Meg wrote back when she was 15 is a harbinger of doom. The bookstore Meg owns in Elizabethville, N.Y., is vandalized and the intimidation escalates, as do Meg's suspicions that the car crash that took Justin's life is somehow connected.

Briskly paced, We Are Watching demonstrates how ordinary people can overcome outrageous circumstances. Gaylin superbly shows how close relationships in a small town can be both an asset and a detriment, and how the relationship between a parent and child can undergo changes, with Meg acknowledging she must recover from her own grief to save her family from the violent cultists. In the end, Gaylin (If I Die Tonight) delivers a terrifying story about the most innocuous situation being taken out of context and twisted into a weapon. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

In Annabel Campbell's engaging debut, The Outcast Mage, a young woman named Naila is identified as having magical powers and is sent to Amoria's Academia to learn how to control them. All she wants is to return to her life and the people she knew before, but she's never been able to make her magic work. Meanwhile, the tension between mages and the hollows--those without any magical abilities--is growing in Amoria, and the already fragile balance maintained in the glass city on the edge of the desert is crumbling quickly, giving way to violence. Naila ends up in the midst of a power struggle between the elite mages who run Amoria, and tangled in wider political games that might change the world--and possibly mean the end of the home she grew up in. 

Campbell's fast-paced fantasy plunges readers into a new world, filling out the shape of it by bouncing between character viewpoints. This often leads to more questions than answers, but in a compelling way that effectively draws readers along. Her characters are not stereotypical heroes and villains, but rather complex and flawed figures, and the magic system is vast. The Outcast Mage is a contemporary take on classic high fantasy, an update on the genre's hallmarks of magic wielders and political struggles playing out in new worlds. The epic storytelling is full of familiar ideas emerging in fresh ways; just when readers might think they know where they are, the story transforms once again. The cliffhanger ending is sure to keep readers eagerly awaiting what might happen next in Amoria. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

In The Southern Charmer, Janice Maynard returns readers to Blossom Branch, Ga., a charming small town where the hope of romantic second chances blooms.

Gabriella "Gabby" Nolan, a single, hardworking, 27-year-old accountant, hasn't had an easy life. Her mother was 16 and unmarried when Gabby was born. The closeknit pair always struggled to fend for themselves and to find a way out of poverty. While working in Atlanta, Gabby runs into handsome photographer Jason Brightman, an old crush from her hometown who left Gabby's best friend at the altar 18 months earlier. The meeting resurrects feelings from the past secretly rooted deep in Gabby's heart--and in Jason's, too.

Jason comes from a well-to-do family and always appeared to Gabby to be spoiled, someone who took all the sophisticated privileges of his life for granted. After the two share a car ride back to Blossom Branch, romance sparks. Gabby's emotions vacillate and she is forced to reassess her impressions of Jason's selfishness in the face of the vulnerable, caring goodness he's exhibiting now. Can she trust him?

As in Maynard's other novels in this tender, heartwarming series (The Runaway Bride of Blossom Branch; One Sweet Southern Summer), stereotypically stifling small-town living enlarges the worlds of her well-drawn characters. The love story in this endearing installment will greatly appeal to those already familiar with Blossom Branch and will win over new readers as well. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Call it a disappearing act: Why did the successful female alternative rock performers of the 1990s vanish from the mainstream by the early 2000s? Tanya Pearson (Why Marianne Faithfull Matters) handily solves the mystery in Pretend We're Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s. Assisting with the detective work are Liz Phair, Tanya Donelly, Tracy Bonham, and a dozen other 1990s alt-rock high-fliers whom Pearson has interviewed for her Women of Rock Oral History Project.

The backlash began in the late 1990s, as the feminism of male musicians like Kurt Cobain was supplanted by, as Pearson sees it, "overtly misogynist male rock stars, nu metal, teen pop stars, and boy bands." Shirley Manson, vocalist for alt-rock darlings Garbage, identifies another turning point: "It's a blanket fact that after September 11, nonconformist women were taken off the radio," a response to what Phair calls a "patriarchal patriotism" that sidelined girl rockers. What's more, the mid-1990s saw the beginning of the music industry's corporate consolidation, which hobbled college radio and other stations committed to playing female artists.

Pretend We're Dead is fiercely persuasive and should enlighten even readers who came of age with '90s alternative rock. Pearson, a historian born in 1981, frequently touches on her youthful delight at witnessing her subjects' musical ascendancy, and she toggles easily between academic observations ("Throughout American history... marginalized people are blamed for the collapse of American values thought to keep the country safe") and earthier formulations ("I fucking hate Limp Bizkit"). --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

When Lola Kirke and her three older siblings were being raised by their rock star dad, Bad Company's Simon Kirke, and their decorator/clothing designer mom, Lorraine, the question wasn't whether the Kirke kids would become artists but what kind. With the remorselessly oversharing Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1), actress and musician Lola Kirke establishes her artistic bona fides as a writer.

When Kirke was four, she and her loud, loving, hating, fractious family moved from London to New York City. Kirke had all manner of creature comforts--Welsh nanny, Freudian therapist, Park Avenue hypnotist--but with the opulence came excess; at one point when Kirke was a teenager, "everyone in my family was either at Barneys, RISD, or rehab." Through it all, Kirke's sisters, actress Jemima and musician Domino, were her saviors, foils, and rivals.

Kirke puts her spin on the poor-little-rich-girl saga by skipping the pity party. Her book teems with raunchy stories that inevitably morph into vehicles for Kirke's spot-on self-deprecating humor, and when she goes for laughs that are in poor taste, it's with winking awareness ("She had stunted her growth through an eating disorder of her own, but the good kind that made you skinny"). By book's end, Kirke, who wrote Wild West Village at age 33, is onstage enjoying success in a creative field her parents never would have imagined for her--and in which her sisters are, finally, not competition. (Yet.) --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Give it up for Edmund White's can-do attitude. "I have a small penis," he writes in The Loves of My Life, his unapologetic sex memoir, yet "I was stung from ten or eleven by sexual desire." A gay man born in 1940, he has reached an age where "writers are supposed to say finally what mattered most to them." His answer: "thousands of sex partners." This book is only 224 pages long, so a few of those gentlemen didn't make the cut. There's still a large cast here, starting with his "maniacal attachment" to fellow fifth-grader Nick, whom he would wrestle for hours, quickly discovering that it felt good "to rub our crotches against each other." That is, by far, among the book's tamer descriptions of intimacy.

More relationships follow, from the many times in his early teens when "I had sex with young dads in station wagons at the edge of Lake Michigan," to Rory, a half-Filipino "half a century younger than me." White (A Saint from Texas; City Boy) brackets these stories with sober firsthand accounts of gay history, triumph, and sadness, including the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the friends and lovers who died of AIDS. But the bulk of The Loves of My Life is devoted to vivid descriptions of White's prodigious sexual appetite. As always, White is witty company, deploying a mostly "frivolous tone" yet displaying a gentler touch when writing about the struggle for equality. Readers looking for a spirited play-by-play of one author's satyriasis and a moving account of gay history will be captivated. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

The 20th century's titanic struggle for supremacy in Eurasia--Earth's largest landmass--created the world of the 21st century and continues to rage, according to global affairs expert Hal Brands in his brilliant history The Eurasian Century. The Eurasian supercontinent and the oceans surrounding it were "the crucible in which the contemporary world was forged," and they remain "the cockpit of global rivalry," Brands contends.

Holding 70% of the world's population, boundless resources, and industrial might, Eurasia has always been "a prize without equal," the stage on which the drama of two "hot wars" (World Wars I and II) and one cold war played out. Brands unpacks the geopolitical factors that led to these conflicts through the percipient work of now-obscure English polymath Halford Mackinder (1861-1947), whose sharp and prophetic insights posited the nightmare scenario of "a world with a tyrannical Eurasia at its center." As "the march of technology shrank Eurasia's epic geography," Mackinder foresaw "the emergence of totalitarian states with industrial economies" that easily "fueled aggression and conquest" outward. But it was the alliance of liberal superpowers that allowed a "flanking free-world community" to contain bad Eurasian actors.

In the book's sobering second half, Brands draws chilling parallels between the past and the 21st-century authoritarian regimes of China, Iran, and Russia. "Geography shapes but strategy decides," he writes, and The Eurasian Century is Brands's cogent appeal to "learn the lessons of the first Eurasian century" to avoid the "return of history's horrors" in the second. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer and copywriter in Denver

Readers seeking a measured, globally contextualized understanding of the Israel-Hamas war will find much to ponder in Peter Beinart's Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. With characteristic directness, Beinart explains that his book is about "the story Jews tell ourselves to block out the screams," a narrative that allows Jewish people to justify the horrors committed in their name.

Beinart (The Crisis of Zionism; The Good Fight) is a New York Times columnist, professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York, and editor-at-large of Jewish Currents. His family came to the U.S. as immigrants from apartheid South Africa. A steadfast promoter of equality over supremacy, he describes risking "excommunication" from his cherished American Jewish community to voice a new narrative of liberation created by abandoning the oppression of another people. Beinart employs historical examples, such as white people in the American South during Reconstruction who "considered racial equality a monstrous delusion," and Northern Ireland's Protestants who "were terrified" of sharing power with their Catholic neighbors, to illustrate political scientist Mahmood Mamdani's assertion that, over time, "inclusion yields safety" while domination breeds violence.

At the core of the disconnect between the atrocities being committed in Gaza and the apathy of "Jews in Israel and the diaspora," Beinart posits, lies a belief in the "collective victimhood and moral infallibility" of the Jewish people. Yet Beinart believes that this contradicts what "sacred texts say about Jewish ethical responsibility" and the dangers of "unchecked power."

Beinart takes comfort in "the metaphor of Jews as a family," despite deep ideological divisions, and is persuasive in his conviction that shedding the burden of occupation will make way for a new Jewish story. --Shahina Piyarali

Menopause is having a moment in the spotlight after long being something women felt ashamed, scared, or ill-equipped to talk about. Part of this new attention is undeniably due to the efforts of actor and author Naomi Watts, elegantly enumerated in a foreword by expert Dr. Mary Claire Haver (The New Menopause; Demystifying Menopause). In Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known About Menopause, Watts is frank and engaging as she investigates the subject from many angles.

Watts found that there was a dearth of information when she was assessed as being in perimenopause--the phase of years leading up to menopause--at the relatively young age of 36, while undergoing fertility treatments. She wondered why nobody had ever mentioned to her what menopause actually entailed, and she set out to destigmatize these kinds of conversations and provide clear, candid information and guidance: "I thought that by sharing our stories, we could one day live in a world where we've cut away all the stigma associated with middle age, and it's the norm to be fully, authentically ourselves at any age."

Watts shares anecdotes as well as the most current medical knowledge and studies, in straightforward, accessible prose. She covers all aspects of menopause and perimenopause, including libido, nutrition, and medical care. Readers will find something of use in every chapter, delivered with humor and the conversational style of a good, learned friend.

Dare I Say It strips away the social stigma surrounding menopause, and will be useful for anyone wanting a personal guide. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

In the sidesplitting, pitch-perfect middle-grade graphic novel Chickenpox by Remy Lai (Fly on the Wall; Pie in the Sky), eldest sister Abby suffers when she and her four rambunctious siblings catch the itchy virus and are forced to quarantine together at their home in Indonesia.

Twelve-year-old Abby's father has a work trip during the 10-day chickenpox lockdown, meaning Abby's mother is left alone with five sick children between the ages of three and 12. Abby has "all the responsibilities of a big sister," which include caring for and entertaining her "zombie"-like brothers and sisters. The full-fledged tween counts down the days in "the maximum security zoo" and bemoans that "even though I have big sister responsibilities, my parents still treat me like a kid." Yet when Abby's two best friends witness her explode at her relentlessly bothersome siblings, they label her as immature and ostracize her.

Lai's storytelling expertly pairs honest narration and lively dialogue with spirited illustrations that are both funny and achingly relatable. The author/illustrator depicts the siblings in various states of chaos, including as boxers in a ring and as wild animals roaming free. Abby narrates, "My siblings always take my stuff. From my toys... to my dignity... to my sanity." The text accompanies an illustration of Abby leading her youngest brother through a crowd of teens as he proclaims, "I NEED TO WEE-WEE!"

Chickenpox is based on real events from Lai's life growing up in Indonesia in the 1990s. Anyone who has ever struggled with raucous siblings or lived through the social and emotional struggles of adolescence should empathize with Abby and her siblings. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, co-creator of Gender Inclusive Classrooms

The riveting Everything Is Poison takes place in 17th-century Rome, "just across the river" from the setting of Joy McCullough's extraordinary debut, Blood Water Paint. This novel is less harrowing but no less affecting.

When she turns 16, Carmela Tofana is finally permitted to learn the secrets of her mother's apothecary shop. With those secrets come hard-won lessons as Carmela creates and dispenses all manner of tonics and balms. But "the amount Carmela has never considered about the world, about the hair-thin lines people walk every day, knocks her off-balance with each new person she helps." These include Violetta Raso, Carmela's nemesis, who purchases a love potion and returns for a remedy to its results; Eleonora, a sex worker stabbed by a man who didn't want to pay; Nina Santori, Carmela's childhood friend, now pregnant with twins; and Patrizia Moretti, who claims to have "every ache and pain under the sun" because what she truly wants is a cure for her violent but influential husband. When Carmela makes a fateful error in judgment, the consequences threaten not only the future of the apothecary but also the lives of the Tofana women.

McCullough skillfully reveals the origins of the apothecary shop and the women who work there, imbuing her historical novel with a moving sense of its characters' individual but intersecting backstories. Carmela's lessons at the shop are fascinating; even better is the camaraderie and warmth among its workers and customers. McCullough portrays some of life's most gut-wrenching challenges, but she doesn't make Carmela face them alone. In her powerful novel, an open heart proves the ultimate cure. --Stephanie Appell, freelance reviewer

Hyewon Yum specializes in illustrating uplifting picture books centered on brave young girls who discover their strength--in a big swimming pool (Saturday Is Swimming Day), within their small bodies (Not Little), and so on. In that triumphant vein, Yum has written Toto, in which a little girl comes to terms with a prominent birthmark that preoccupies her without defining her.

"Sometimes I wonder," begins the girl, who goes unnamed, "how I would look without Toto," as she calls the bubble-gum-pink birthmark on her forehead. She has never really minded the mark--her cousin Charlie thinks it means she has a superpower--but she's nervous about it in the run-up to the first day of school because "sometimes people only see Toto, not me." Her mother gives her a hairstyle that largely hides Toto, and at school the girl immediately finds a bosom buddy who has no idea of Toto's existence... until the girl hangs upside down from the monkey bars, gravity tugs at her bangs, and her secret is revealed. Now what?

Yum's watercolor-and-pencil art is invitingly roomy and subdued: it's all browns and grays except for the girl's birthmark and the occasional burst of pale pink--the color of her face, say, when she's embarrassed by Toto. And sharp-eyed readers will note that Toto is on proud, pink view in photos of the girl scattered around her home. Toto is an it's-okay-to-be-different book that leaves room for realistically mixed feelings about standing apart. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

In the delightful and droll middle-grade fantasy As You Wish by Nashae Jones (Courtesy of Cupid), a 13-year-old Ghanian American must face the unforeseen consequences of three wishes granted to her by a trickster god.

Birdie attended her first day of kindergarten wearing "latex gloves that stretched up to [her] elbows." Since then, her mother's anxiety has remained consistent, making it hard for Birdie "to just live like a normal kid." Luckily, Birdie has next-door neighbor and "bestie for the restie," Deve. Both are starting eighth grade and Birdie is determined to "make her mark." So, she needs a boyfriend--and, since she and Deve do everything together, he needs a girlfriend. But this suggestion makes Deve upset. Nancy, the new girl at school, reveals to Birdie that she is "Anansi, god of stories and knowledge" and can give the teen three wishes. Birdie is skeptical but hopes wishes can fix her relationship with Deve. However, every wish makes Birdie's situation increasingly worse. How can Birdie maneuver through the tangled web she's woven?

As You Wish is a sweet fantasy that faultlessly portrays the difficulties and delights of tweenhood. Jones approachably discusses mental illness, with Birdie explaining, "my mom was different, and it wasn't her fault, but that didn't make dealing with the fallout from her anxiety any easier." The author also gracefully ties West African culture and mythology into her contemporary novel with stories of Anansi tricking people throughout the years at the start of each chapter. As Birdie deals with the outcome of each wish, she begins to understand that one's life may already be great as it is. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer

Gayle Foreman's After Life is an engrossing portrayal of grief and healing that revolves around a teen hit-and-run victim who comes back from heaven, hell, or "the whatever" and realizes that the lives of her loved ones have been drastically altered by her death.

Seventeen-year-old Amber Crane, "a white girl with honey-colored hair," realizes she's unsure of the day as she rides her bike home from school. When she arrives, Amber learns that she has been dead for seven years. Her at-the-time nine-year-old sister, Missy--now blue-haired and called Melissa--is almost the age Amber was when she died; Amber's mom freaks out and her atheist dad is now a believer and certain a miracle has occurred. Worse, her parents have separated, her "forever" boyfriend is a bartending, "druggy loser," and her once-close Aunt Pauline is now estranged and living in New Zealand. As Amber struggles to understand why she's come back, she begins to appreciate how her life--and her death--had far-reaching effects: on her friends, the school photographer, an English teacher, even a woman who works at a nearby pet shelter.

After Life tackles love and forgiveness, interconnectivity, and the possibility of a "different sort of existence" tangential to life and death. Foreman (Not Nothing; If I Stay) uses flashbacks to enrich Amber's narrative and also weaves in past and present accounts of family members, as well as people who seem at first to be only marginally involved. Earnest and absorbing, After Life describes how one individual may touch the lives of many, in life as well as in death. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author