Welcome to Night Vale originated as a scripted podcast from Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, who fused elements of Lovecraftian horror with small-town radio programs in creating the cultishly adored series. In their novelistic adaptation of the eerie yet comic landscape of Night Vale, Fink and Cranor have managed to create an excellent stand-alone book perfect for newcomers while also including plenty of winks to longtime fans.

They introduce the reader to a phantasmagoric world through Jackie Fierro, a pawnshop owner who is inexplicably decades-old and exactly 19 at the same time, and Diane Crayton, the emotionally distant single mother of an angsty, shape-shifting teenager. The plot is relatively simple: Jackie and Diane must find a town called King City for bizarre reasons involving a man who wears a tan jacket and carries a deerskin suitcase and, we are told, "had normal human features" (the book thrives on the juxtaposition of odd specifics with broad vagaries).

Fink and Cranor adopt a sink-or-swim attitude to Welcome to Night Vale's readers, gleefully throwing them headfirst into an ocean of weird. Some newcomers will undoubtedly be put off by sentences like this description of Night Vale's library: "Off the hallway were various reading rooms, for reading, and community rooms, for communing, and bloodletting rooms, for a different kind of communing"--but many more will be delighted by Fink's and Cranor's dry wit. In other words: "All hail the mighty Glow Cloud." --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books

Mention of Mark Twain evokes riverboats, wry quips, Americana, a white suit and an ever-present cigar. But as in her novel Mrs. Poe, Lynn Cullen reveals another side of a literary icon in Twain's End, exposing a volatile and narcissistic Samuel Clemens, a controlling father and a partner in a complex relationship with his secretary, Isabel V. Lyon, his "Lioness."

By 1902, when 67-year-old Clemens hired 39-year-old Isabel, he was internationally revered as the king of American humor. Cavalier with his public, privately he was beleaguered: his wife, Olivia, was bedridden; his headstrong daughter Clara manipulated him; daughter Jean, epileptic, avoided him; and he'd lost his beloved Susy to meningitis. Isabel Lyon intrigued him--smart and attractive, she was forced to work following her father's financial downfall. While Sam hired her as Olivia's secretary, he claimed Isabel's time and, in short order, her affection. As part of the household, she suffered the maid's jealousy, Clara's temper and Sam's moods, yet forgave him all. He expressed his love, but even after Olivia's death would not make a commitment to Isabel.

With the blessing of her "King," Isabel wed Sam's business manager, Ralph Ashcroft, in 1909. Within a month, however, they were abruptly fired. Sam and Clara hurled slanderous accusations, plus charges of impropriety and embezzlement. The spurned couple settled in Wisconsin, and Isabel remained gracious, never speaking against Samuel Clemens.

Twain's End is a well-researched love story and history. Cullen based the novel on Isabel's extensive daily journals, newspapers and memoirs, and readers will savor this accessible view of the enigmatic Mark Twain. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

The glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age glitters in Adriana Trigiani's All the Stars in the Heavens, a novelization of the life of Loretta Young. But behind the scenes every star had a supporting cast, and Alda Ducci, Loretta's secretary, confidante and friend, shares Loretta's story.

The decades-long saga opens with Alda's dismissal from a San Francisco convent. Loretta's family, devout Catholics, needed a secretary and hired Alda, whisking her to Sunset House, their swank Bel Air home. The kind, fun-loving and down-to-earth family embraced Alda, who soon accompanied Loretta to the MGM studio.

At 21, Loretta was already a star. She worked hard, resisting Hollywood's temptations, mindful of the industry's code of ethics. In 1934, "good taste was in style, so were the traditional values of home and hearth." It was not a good time for her to fall for Spencer Tracy, Loretta's married co-star of Man's Castle.

Loretta and Spencer settled for friendship, but the next year Clark Gable and Loretta were alone on Mount Baker, Wash., while filming Call of the Wild, and the allure of the iconic Mr. Gable was too much. True love blossomed. Alda, too, lost her heart on location, and both women returned to Los Angeles forever changed.

As in her Big Stone Gap novels, Trigiani captures setting and time in descriptive prose and true-to-life characters. Classic movie figures come to life: Gable, Tracy, Niven, Harlow and more move through All the Stars in the Heavens, but Loretta and Alda steal the scenes. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

In August of 1933, on the night of the Edevanes' Midsummer party, 10-month-old Theo vanished from his bedroom in the family's stunning Cornwall estate, Loeanneth. Despite the presence of hundreds of guests and Theo's nanny sleeping in the same room, no one saw anything and the case went cold.

Seventy years later, London detective Sadie Sparrow inadvertently encounters Loeanneth while running in the countryside. The estate is abandoned, and the once beautiful gardens, long neglected, are grown over. Sadie's curiosity about the grand old home leads her to the decades-old investigation and Loeanneth's owner, Alice Edevane. Theo's older sister and a successful fiction writer, Alice prefers her family secrets stay locked in the old lake house.

Driven by a desire to conceal her own secrets, Sadie picks at the Edevanes' and releases more surprises than anyone--even Alice--could have anticipated.

With a sumptuousness that mirrors the opulent gardens of Loeanneth, Kate Morton (The Secret Keeper) recounts a tragically beautiful saga of love and deception. She constructs an intricate psychological mystery, to which many hold clues but no single individual the answer. Her dynamic use of perspective in the novel builds a creeping suspense while the vibrant characters encourage emotional connection with readers.

Morton's robust plot is complemented by her vivid setting, an atmosphere that stimulates the senses and envelops the audience in a long-ago world of grand fetes and high society. Long-time fans and fledgling readers alike will readily--and willingly--lose themselves in the rich world of Kate Morton's The Lake House. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

In Hope City--an Argentinian colony in Antarctica that produces nuclear energy for the mainland--not long after Last Night festivities (one evening of revelry before the citizens batten down for the long, cold winter to come), a woman of the aristocracy walks into Eliana's dingy office. Marianella Luna's business is delicate, she says. Like any PI worth her salt, Eliana responds that discretion is her specialty. Well known for her support of the independence movement, Marianella has come for help because some documents have been stolen from her home. Eliana takes the job, enticed by the exorbitant paycheck offered.

Cassandra Rose Clarke's Our Lady of the Ice has all the markings of a classic noir thriller: gangsters and PIs, corrupt politicians and femmes fatales, yet this is more than Raymond Chandler with a sub-zero setting. Marianella isn't human. She's a cyborg, a human-machine blend universally regarded as an abomination. There is a natural kinship between sci-fi dystopias and noir mysteries. They share a bleak view of human nature--these are tales where evil is chaotic and entropic, a feature of society rather than an aberration. All the characters, human and otherwise, are suffering from broken programming of one kind or another.

When everyone is at their worst, even the most fallen have a shot at redemption. In Our Lady of the Ice, Cassandra Rose Clarke (The Mad Scientist's Daughter) uses old tropes to their very best effect, showcasing the chilling wisdom of genre fiction at its best. --Emma Page, bookseller at Island Books in Mercer Island, Wash.

According to Hebrew legend, there are 36 righteous men (the lamed vav) per generation who keep the world from destruction by their own merit or being. Nebula Award-nominated author (and amateur Yiddishist) Matthew Kressel takes this legend and expands it in his fascinating first novel, King of Shards, set across a multiverse that includes Earth as well as accursed places from Hebrew lore, like Sheol and Gehinnom.

Daniel Fisher is unaware that he's one of the lamed vav until a strange old man with glowing eyes interrupts his wedding. This demon in human form, called Ashmedai, abducts Daniel from the ceremony, to save him from his bride-to-be, Rebekah, whom the old man claims is the demon Mashit.

Ashmedai and Daniel arrive in Gehinnom, a shard of reality that contains various Bronze Age cultures, intent on meeting Rana, a young woman who aspires to great works of architecture and sculpture. They enlist her help as they journey to see Ashmedai's brother, the angel (or demon, depending on perspective) Azazel, who has power enough to send the adventurers across the multiverse to stop Mashit from killing other lamed vav.

King of Shards is the first entry of the Worldmender Trilogy, and its use of Hebrew culture and legend to build a complex, dynamic setting serves to imbue every page with an epic mythos. Kressel presents a compelling alternate reality that readers can escape to while also pondering the nature of what is real. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by public radio's favorite historian, Sarah Vowell (Unfamiliar Fishes), reminds readers who the Marquis de Lafayette was, and how he came to aid the Yankees in the War of Independence.

Lafayette was a gallant, if occasionally inept, ally, to the colonies that declared independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776. He was the first in a steady influx of French soldiers promised prestige in the colonial army. However, this war was severely underfinanced. Good humored as she is, Vowell isn't one to sugarcoat the past, and her depiction of the American rebels frequently points out the fledgling nation's shortcomings, shortsightedness and shortness of cash. Armed with Benjamin Franklin's politesse, George Washington's valor, Thomas Jefferson's brains and young Lafayette's optimism, the colonial soldiers had little else to their names, including clothing, a fact that frequently left their French comrades clutching their pearls. With plentiful archives of letters and diaries, and educational vacations taken with her sister and nephew, Vowell brings to life a chapter in American history as only she--and the handful of kooky reenactors she meets along the way--can.

Though Lafayette's early fame is documented by names of roads, parks, squares and buildings throughout the United States, it's clear "that Americans [have] forgotten France's help in our war for independence in general and the national obsession with Lafayette in particular." With wit and candor, Sarah Vowell does fine work to undo this amnesia. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness

Ted Koppel (Off Camera) is a broadcast news icon. In Lights Out, his first book of investigative journalism, he builds a strong case that a cyber attack on U.S. electrical power grids is likely, potentially devastating, and that the government has failed to prepare for it.

Cyber attacks may come from nations or small groups, and are deniable in ways that a nuclear attack is not, which means that attackers need not fear immediate retaliation. Koppel refers to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission analysis that found that "if nine of the country's most critical substations were knocked out at the same time, it could cause a blackout encompassing most of the United States." It might be tempting to dismiss these extreme scenarios as fearmongering, if it weren't for Koppel's reliance on reams of studies and reports, and interviews with top-ranking national security experts and policy makers from all levels of government and industry, including power company officials, the military, NSA, FEMA and Homeland Security.

Lights Out is suffused with the anxiety that comes from trying to predict an uncertain future. Readers may want to retreat from this mass of alarming facts and figures. However, Koppel offers British World War II civil defense measures of his childhood as an example of national training that put "an organized structure in place. There was a level of civilian discipline that served the country well." No matter what disasters come our way, he believes we could benefit from building prepared communities and a national emergency plan to hold society together until the lights come back on. --Sara Catterall

In Two Dogs and a Parrot: What Our Animal Friends Can Teach Us About Life, Joan Chittister (a Benedictine nun and author of The Gift of Years) provides readers with spiritual guidance in the form of touching personal stories about her pets. Though the meaning she derives from each story is profound, part of what makes them so sweet is that they are not of the heroic or headline-making variety. Rather, they are the most ordinary occurrences--spotting one of her dogs playing with butterflies in the garden or catching another stealing a plate of sweets off a table. Each story is a sort of parable, containing a gem of wisdom about modern life, from the importance of self-awareness to the perils of overwork.

As co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women and executive director of Benetvision, a resource and research center for contemporary spirituality, Chittister has served for many years as a spiritual leader and speaker. As such, Two Dogs, in addition to honoring animals, sheds lights on the lives of those who've devoted themselves to faith. Recalling a time when her dog played for hours in an automatic door, Chittister uses the story to stress the value of play. The idea that the spiritual world is populated by "the dour of soul, the dry of heart, and the neurotically well-disciplined," she explains, is a myth that does a great disservice. On the contrary, Chittinser and her fellow nuns, like the animals they've loved so dearly, seek joy, fun and warmth in everyday life. --Annie Atherton

"Being a feminist means one thing to me: it means letting women make the decisions for themselves, and women having the opportunities and the equal playing field it takes in order to make those decisions for themselves. To me, everything else is just noise." The Frenemy blogger Alida Nugent (Don't Worry It Gets Worse) reiterates this belief in each of the essays that make up You Don't Have to Like Me. With unguarded honesty, blunt language and astute sarcasm Nugent confronts dieting, female friendships and sex. She humorously shares advice she's received and lessons learned in an attempt to invalidate negative stereotypes associated with the label "feminist."

While the content is presented in a playful manner, the underlying messages remain serious. Nugent dissects the logic of expecting women to be flattered by catcalling and highlights the dangers women confront daily, which require them to take precautions and be alert. She makes a stand against the discrepancies in subconscious lessons we teach boys and girls, how those messages need to change in order to create an equal playing field for both genders.

Nugent is forthright and at times quite explicit, which may make some readers uncomfortable. She doesn't expect every reader to want or need the same things she does. Her goal is, however, to have each reader realize those decisions are hers to make, and it's okay if their choices are different. You Don't Have to Like Me is wonderfully empowering and delightfully entertaining. For women or men, this collection of essays has valuable insight for everyone. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts

This uplifting, heartrending story by British author Michael Morpurgo (War Horse) opens in May 1915 in the Scilly Islands, 25 miles off the English coast of Cornwall.

Jim Wheatcroft and his son, Alfie, are fishing near the island of St. Helen's, when Alfie hears an "almost human" crying coming from the centuries-old quarantine site, the Pest House. Alfie and Jim discover a half-starved waif and row her home to their farm on Bryher. "Lucy" is the only word she speaks, but her blanket, marked with the name Wilhelm, identifies her as possibly German--"a lousy Hun," jeers Cousin Dave. Still, "Lucy Lost," who is a mystery, a silent mermaid or ghost child to the whispering locals, is a welcome distraction from the growing list of wartime casualties in France and Belgium. As Lucy gets color back in her cheeks, it's as satisfying as when sickly Mary Lennox starts to blossom in The Secret Garden. The bountiful love of the generous Wheatcrofts, her music and drawing, and a "whiskery old horse" named Peg that won't let anyone but Lucy ride her slowly bring her back to the world. Morpurgo invites readers into the sights, sounds and smells of island life, with vivid descriptions of the screeching gulls, boats and changing tides, as well as the delightfully nuanced characterizations of the colorful islanders themselves.

Listen to the Moon is a story that, refreshingly, unwinds at its own pace, mirroring the steady day-to-day kindness and patience of the Wheatcroft family that form the cornerstone of this beautiful novel. Indeed, kindness from unexpected corners saves many lives in this touching wartime story. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Esteemed Australian fantasy writer Garth Nix (Sabriel and the rest of the Old Kingdom series; A Confusion of Princes) infuses a witty, engaging 19th-century Regency romance with the right touch of magic to shake up that tried and true genre.

At the 18th birthday celebration of Lady Truthful, nicknamed Newt, her father, Admiral the Viscount Newington, wishes to show off the huge, heart-shaped and magical Newington Emerald. Unfortunately, the Admiral, a weather-wizard, inadvertently conjures up a gale, and in the ensuing chaos, the priceless stone is stolen right off the dinner table. Eager to recover the heirloom, Truthful heads to London, where she thinks the thief will go to sell it, and takes up residence at the fashionable Grosvenor Square home of her great-aunt Ermintrude. A proper lady can't exactly wander about London talking to pawnbrokers, so Ermintrude casts a glamour spell to disguise Truthful as a man, specifically her French cousin Chevalier de Vienne. With her charmed mustache in place and some sorcerous powers of her own, Truthful obtains the help of the surly but handsome Major Charles Harnett, and they set out to locate the lost emerald. They soon discover that the jewel theft may have involved a malignant sorceress and several murders! The pair encounters ruffians, turncoats and spies in their dangerous pursuit. By the end, many secrets--and secret identities--are revealed, and romance is in the air.

Newt's Emerald has all the societal trappings, banter and misconceptions necessary for a satisfying period piece, and the addition of magic--along with an appealing cast of characters--makes for a truly enjoyable, action-packed romp. --Lynn Becker, host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators

Big things are contrasted with little things--and then tiny things--in this stylish, tall and skinny picture-book exploration of relative size by Lizi Boyd (Inside Outside, Flashlight).

It's not the usual contrasts of big and small, like elephant and mouse. For example, Boyd pairs a "Big Zebra" with a "little broom." Zebra's standing on his hind legs with his broom, sweeping up a big pile of... something like soap flakes. What is that pile? Each graphically bold, gouache illustration has a crisp linocut quality, a perfectly composed tall rectangle in black, white and gray, with red spots of color. And each illustration, simply labeled, hints at a bigger story. There's a "Big Forest." What's that "little tent" doing there? Who might be camping there? As the book progresses, "tiny" things are added to the mix, labeled in a tiny font. There's a "Big Penguin" wearing a "tiny hat," perched atop a "little iceberg." A story-within-a-story quietly unfolds between little bear and Big Bear. On the opening page, "Big Bear" contemplates the empty "little chair," but a few pages later, "little bear" is reaching up to an empty "Big Chair." Later still, little bear (next to "little chair") is sweetly reaching up to "Big Bear." In a warm and friendly scene, "Big Bear" is sitting on his big chair next to "little bear" on his little chair.

Boyd's final spread celebrates "tiny stories... everywhere!" in a graphic mélange of the book's menagerie... and by this time, happily, little bear's made it all the way into Big Bear's lap. --Karin Snelson, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness