In a debut novel devastating both in its sorrow and its beauty, Azerbaijani-American musician Ella Leya delves into the oppression of artists under the Soviet regime as well as the human spirit's unending capacity to follow art and music to freedom against all odds.

In 1979 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Leila epitomizes the perfect Soviet teenager. She proves her dedication to her government by competing for the glory of her homeland as a gifted concert pianist. Leila, daughter of a prominent oilman and born into privilege, lives a life with advantages, such as residence in a luxury apartment and access to music lessons. When Comrade Farhad, an important city committee member, judges Leila's attitude too elitist, she redeems herself by spying on a suspected capitalist sympathizer who runs a music shop.

Expecting corruption, she instead finds Tarhid, a passionate consumer and creator of art, music and literature whose time in the West opened his eyes to a liberated world. He unveils Communism's hypocrisy, showing her the poverty in their allegedly classless city and his family's sad history; he also introduces her to the smoky, forbidden flavor of jazz.

Leya captures a tense period in the history of a country that blended Turkish, Persian and Soviet cultures, where communist corruption mingled with the remnants of sharia law. She inexorably shrinks the cage around Leila until her wings beat at the bars and she must show that she is no canary but rather the Firebird of her homeland's folktales. Breathing music and color into the direst moments with her lyrical prose, Leya shows that she herself is a talent who cannot be confined. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In his novels, Nick Hornby (About a Boy) has demonstrated a keen talent for warmhearted portrayals of flawed but ultimately sympathetic characters. Funny Girl, the story of a reluctant beauty queen who becomes an unlikely BBC sitcom star in mid-1960s London, shares the same delightful literary DNA.

From the moment Barbara Parker renounces the crown of Miss Blackpool and heads south to London in pursuit of her ambition to become the British Lucille Ball, it's clear there is something special about her. The theatrical agent who discovers her and wants to turn her into a swimsuit model is quickly disappointed when Barbara improbably finds herself a leading role on a television comedy that focuses on the domestic life of a young housewife and her husband, an employee of Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Her show is entitled Barbara (and Jim), the parentheses a not so subtle statement about nascent feminism and the impetus for one of the story's many sharp comic scenes. The novel's plot traces the TV show's steadily growing popularity over several seasons (alongside the tensions that creates in Sophie's personal life), as it deals more frankly with sexual and gender issues.

Hornby's genial temperament and accessible style make it easy to become engrossed in the emotional lives of Sophie and her colleagues. As much as Funny Girl provides an entertaining glimpse inside the world of television and of a society at a time of ferment that will leave it forever changed, it's a timeless, winning portrait of a young woman striving to realize her life's dream. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Attention, fans of George Saunders and Karen Russell: if you haven't yet read the stories of Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners), jump now at the chance to read her collection Get in Trouble. Link graduated from the steampunk, sci-fi and fantasy schools of writing, so in her world, there's no idea or situation too strange to explore.

"The Summer People" is an O. Henry Prize winner that turns "there's no place like home" on its head. Teenage Fran takes care of homes that belong to the summer people. One is inhabited by strange creatures who have created a "pocket universe" within their house--here, a full tent folds up to fit in your wallet and a bed, when slept in, reveals "your heart's desire." Fran, bored with her work, is under a magical contract to stay unless she can find someone to take her place.

Young girls build pyramids on the California coast in the dark "Valley of the Girls," where most people have a "Face," a sort of real-life stand-in who interacts with the world on a person's behalf. A girl with two shadows inhabits "Light." A dilapidated Land of Oz theme park is home to a young female superhero in "Origin Story."

Link tiptoes up behind these characters and gives them a push; get in trouble, she seems to say, show us what you can do. She perfectly captures the same weirdness of the classic Adventures into the Unknown comics, but her controlled, simple prose makes the unreal seem downright dazzlingly real. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

The questionable health-care and housing conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center serve as the inspiration for Blue Stars, which imagines the experiences of two very different families brought together at Reed by their wounded soldiers.

Ellen Silverman, a literature professor at the University of Wisconsin, is the widowed mother of adult children Jane and Wesley and legal guardian of Michael, a high-school friend of Wesley. At Jane's 19th-birthday dinner, Michael offhandedly mentions that he's enlisted in the Marines. Jane is simply furious, while Ellen's responses to his departure for training and later deployment to Afghanistan are more complicated. When Michael's foot is nearly blown off and he's shipped to Walter Reed, Ellen knows she has to go to him, but she's unsure what else will be expected of her.

Personal trainer Lacey Diaz is married to an Army Reserve captain and most of her friends in the Bronx are fellow "mil-wives" ready to support their troops and one another. Once Eddie ships off to Iraq, Lacey learns the hard way that much of the official support system for military families is sadly inadequate. By the time Eddie winds up at Reed, brain-injured and blinded, Lacey has grown accustomed to working the system, but the hospital presents a new set of challenges.

Emily Gray Tedrowe (Commuters) takes her time with Ellen and Lacey's individual experiences until the women meet at the hospital. Their alliance soon grows into a friendship, the kind that blooms in shared adversity. Blue Stars is a timely and engrossing novel of the challenges faced--and connections formed--on the home front during wartime. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

After prolific Jim Harrison mastered other genres, he turned to the mystery. The Great Leader introduced us to retired Detective Sunderson from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In The Big Seven, another "faux" mystery, Sunderson is enjoying rest and recuperation after a brief foray to New York City to track down his runaway adopted daughter.

Using $50,000 he secured via a creative bribery scam when he was in New York and now recovering from a fractured back that said scam led to, Sunderson has purchased a nice cabin in the woods to help fuel his fishing passion and control his drinking. But now he has to deal with the neighboring Ames family, fond of shooting at each other for fun and mistreating their women--a "human junk pile." He hires pretty Lily Ames to clean his cabin, but after finally settling in, all is disrupted when Lily is killed in a "duel" with her brother Tom, who had been abusing her for years.

Sunderson then hires Monica, Lily's sister, to help with cleaning, cooking and, unexpectedly, warm sexual sustenance. While Tom's recovering in the hospital from Lily's bullets, he's poisoned with cyanide. Days later, two more Ames men are poisoned--a woman's weapon. Monica? Harrison's trenchant, straightforward, nearly comma-less prose mirrors his detective. He's smart and honest, clear in his thoughts and feelings. Harrison lovingly shows us how this "lucky old fool" of a man tries to navigate the seven deadly sins, death and evil in rural Michigan. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher

In The Kind Worth Killing, a masterful modern reworking of Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train, Peter Swanson (The Girl with a Clock for a Heart) introduces his two protagonists, Ted Severson and Lily Kintner, on an airplane. Ted is a wealthy, successful businessman who discovered that his beautiful bohemian artist wife is cheating on him with the contractor building their new dream home. Lily is a woman with a difficult past--some experience of unhappy families, cheating and murder. Playing a game of truth after several drinks and the full telling of his tale, Ted casually admits, "What I really want to do is kill her." And that makes sense to Lily: "Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner...."

The resulting intrigues follow Highsmith's outstanding original in atmosphere and spirit more than in specific details, which is a fine choice, because the new plot lines showcase suspenseful twists and turns, expert pacing and a breathless race to a surprise ending. Thus Swanson brings the best elements of Strangers on a Train--compelling but increasingly worrisome characters, the momentum of a chance meeting--to a fresh new setting, split between the Boston metro area and the rugged coast of Maine. Even readers unfamiliar with Highsmith will be enchanted by this captivating, powerful thriller about sex, deception, secrets, revenge, the strange things we get ourselves wrapped up in, and the magnetic pull of the past. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

The Spanish Civil War was a precursor to World War II, and served as a practice field where medical and military leaders experimented with new technologies and refined strategies. Creative minds from around the world drew inspiration and horror from the conflict, yielding Picasso's Guernica, Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Miro's El Segador and Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. In Hell and Good Company, Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) examines the Spanish Civil War not in exhaustive chronology or complex international intrigue--although both are present--but in its gifts, good and bad, to the world that followed.

As Germany and Italy begrudgingly contributed to the Spanish nationalist (fascist) side, and the Soviet Union just as reluctantly supplied the republicans, new military technologies met old. Advances in aircraft were matched by new strategies, including "carpet bombing," a term used for the carnage at Guernica. In response, doctors and nurses from Spain and abroad innovated as well: while reliable blood typing and preservation for blood banking had been under development since World War I, safe transfusions in the field were born in the Spanish Civil War, as was the autochir (a mobile, sterile surgical unit).

Rhodes follows various individuals, famous (Hemingway, Picasso) and less so (volunteer doctors, nurses and soldiers from around the world), providing a vivid, wrenching view of war, art and love. While it scrutinizes world-changing new technologies and ways of life, Hell and Good Company is also a fine, accessible introductory history of the Spanish Civil War, and an evocative human story. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

This Is What You Just Put in Your Mouth was inspired by the following drunken inquiry at a Super Bowl party: "Did you ever, like, really wonder what's, like, really in [Kraft Easy Cheese]?" This simple question evolved into a monthly column for Wired magazine where Patrick Di Justo investigated the ingredients in common household items--from food to lotion to just about everything.

Di Justo's intent is not to provide "shocking stories of the gigantic corporation conspiracy to poison America through its processed foods... [my] purpose isn't to scare you, or to enrage you, or to get you to e-mail your congressman." Di Justo is simply curious, so his inclusion of chef Alton Brown's (Good Eats) witty asides in the first entry on A.1. Steak Sauce is a perfect fit. Di Justo also interviews scientists, doctors, inventors, food manufacturers and product marketers to discover what each ingredient is and provides the information in a humorous, easy-to-understand manner. Some of the more interesting items under the microscope include Beano ("Like the Kardashians, industrial-quality potato starch is a flavorless, odorless, colorless substance that exists mainly to take up space") and coffee ("cocainelike brain chemicals and juice of death"). Di Justo also includes a section on things we don't put in our mouths, examining products like Axe deodorant, contact lens cleaner solution, mascara and Noxzema. Di Justo's curiosity is contagious--and quite funny--and the result is primarily informative, secondarily entertaining, and only slightly worrisome --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics

A Matter of Breeding should be required reading before the purchase of any pure-bred dog. After spending years as a dog walker in New York City, caring for breeds whose exaggerated anatomical features clearly reduced their quality of life, Michael Brandow--whose background includes journalism and community activism--decided to explore why so many dog owners embrace inbreeding despite the great cost to their canine companions. He begins with the wildly popular English Bulldog, which requires "rape stands" and Caesarean births to breed and is so compromised physically that a simple walk around the block is torture, and moves on to include many other favorite breeds like the Boston terrier (a descendent of today's "pitbull"), Labrador and Golden Retrievers, and German Shepherds.

Since studies confirm that inbreeding leads to higher rates of cancer, structural deformities, eye and ear infections, skin conditions and many more genetic afflictions, Brandow wondered where the desire for physical characteristics that impair quality of life first arose (Victorian England and Nazi Germany), and why so many "dog lovers" support an industry that perpetuates suffering. He concludes: "Dog breeding... is a favorite hiding place for values and beliefs we're no longer supposed to have... [including the] crackpot notion that officially 'recognized' dogs are racially superior to dogs that are not.... If we're going to impose human values and belief on non-humans, shouldn't we at least use the ones we profess to have?" Brandow argues our canine companions should no longer be sacrificed to outdated beliefs in eugenics, racial inequality and class distinctions. --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics

S O S: Poems, 1961-2013 provides a comprehensive compendium of the best of Amiri Baraka's 50 years of poetry. Selected by Los Angeles poet, broadcaster and anthologist Paul Vangelisti, these poems cover the modern African-American struggle for freedom and identity--but always in the lively, street-savvy, music-centric, angry voice with which Baraka shouted on the doorsteps of academic critics, Harlem organizers and Upper West Side intellectuals.

Forerunners of rap and hip-hop, his poems toast the earthy heart of the black man's experience. In these concluding lines to "Monk's World" from his 1995 collection Funk Lore, Baraka sings of the power and beauty of black culture:

"Oh, man! Monk was digging Trane now 
w/o a chaser he drank himself 
in. & Trane reported from  
the 6th or 7th planet deep in 
the Theloniuscape.

Where fire engines screamed the blues 
& night had a shiny mouth 
& scatted flying things." 

Even in his mellowing old age, Baraka could brandish his political voice, as in the recent poem "Mississippi Goddamn!" (referencing Nina Simone's 1964 song) to challenge black support of Hillary Clinton:

"I saw Hillary Clinton in Mississippi with two giant coons
One on each side, like Mandrake the Magician
With her own two Lothars...
Is this the meaning of integration or the effects of segregation?"

S O S is the perfect place to hear the voice that influenced, if not defined, decades of black political struggle when few were listening--and even fewer were doing anything. Baraka did something. Man, he did plenty. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Winnie-the-Pooh fans can get the real story behind the bear that inspired A.A. Milne's stories of the Hundred Acre Wood in Sally M. Walker's (Written in Bone) picture book account.

Veterinarian Harry Colebourn spies the cub from a train window and hops out onto the platform to "see the bear for himself." When the man holding the cub's leash says, "She's for sale," Harry buys her for $20 and climbs back on the train. Debut artist Jonathan D. Voss shows a rail car filled with men in uniform, as Harry assures his captain that he'll take care of the cub. "Winnipeg can be our mascot," Harry says. (He named the bear after their military company's hometown.) Several vignettes depict man and bear playing hide and seek and sharing bear hugs, and Winnie sleeping under Harry's cot. When the company ships out to England, Winnie goes, too, and fares better than poor seasick Harry does. But after the soldiers are ordered to a battlefield in France, Harry must leave Winnie behind in the London Zoo. The scenes of Henry and Winnie parting are among Voss's most emotional paintings. But readers will be uplifted by images of Winnie settling into her new surroundings and a blossoming friendship with frequent visitor named Christopher Robin that served as inspiration to the boy's author father. An endnote gives a timeline for the book's events.

Children will be delighted to learn more about an extraordinary bear whose spirit is so aptly captured in Milne's stories. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

In Kat Yeh's (The Magic Brush) first novel, she introduces a smart, winning narrator in 12-year-old narrator Galileo Galilei ("GiGi") Barnes.

As much as GiGi loves her older sister, DiDi, who's raised her ever since their mother's death, she misses her mother terribly. And somewhere deep down, she's not convinced her mother's dead. DiDi, determined to get her and GiGi out of their South Carolina trailer park, wins a bake-off contest to the tune of $1 million and moves them to Long Island in New York. Throughout the narrative, Yeh scatters recipes with funny names such as Mama's Turn Over a New Leaf Turnovers, Love at First Salad and the title's Famous Twinkie Pie. Gigi also has her own Recipe for Success; chief among the ingredients is "hang out with real friends my own age." And that's what happens when she meets Trip: "I've always been what you might call a Front Row type of girl, but Trip led me all the way to the back," she says. Certain that her mother is still alive, GiGi returns to South Carolina to search for her. What she finds down South surprises her, and what she discovers about Trip (aka "Perfect Boy") and Mace (aka "the evil supervillain) surprises her, too.

GiGi's authentic voice will pull readers into her story, with universal themes of leaving a town you love, making a friend, having it threatened and redefining your recipe for success. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness

Debut author Jane Bahk introduces a charming young heroine with an imagination that helps her deal with her best friend leaving the neighborhood. 

After Juna's family empties the large jar of kimchi, she gets to keep it, and it becomes a vessel for flights of fancy. Juna and her best friend, Hector, use it in the park to capture a caterpillar. Felicia Hoshino's (A Place Where Sunflowers Grow) soft watercolor illustrations depict a diverse, thriving city neighborhood with small vibrant shops, people and pets. One morning, Hector isn't there when Juna goes to visit. His Abuelita takes Juna in her arms to tell her that Hector has moved away with his parents. Juna wasn't home when he came to say good-bye. The look in Juna's eyes expresses her profound sense of loss at Hector's departure. Her big brother, Minho, helps fill this void by buying a fish for her kimchi jar. While everyone else sleeps, "Juna put on a diving mask and fins and dove into the water." A Van Gogh–esque perspective of Juna's room gives way to an underwater scene of her swimming with her fish. Hoshino's playful approach makes clear what's real and what's in Juna's imagination.

The jar becomes a bean plant–turned-jungle, then a home for a cricket that takes her on a ride through the night sky, to Hector's house. The trip assures her of Hector's well-being, and opens her up to the prospect of a new friend by story's end. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness