The Throwback Special stars a group of middle-aged men gathering for the 16th annual reenactment of a memorable moment in professional football: the 1985 sack, by Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants, that resulted in a career-ending comminuted compound fracture of the leg for Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann. In the hands of Chris Bachelder (Bear v. Shark), this is rich material, by turns poignant and droll.

The 22 men are expertly evoked as individuals, often pathetic but also sympathetic. "It could be said of each man, that he was the plant manager of a sophisticated psychological refinery, capable of converting vast quantities of crude ridicule into tiny, glittering nuggets of sentiment. And vice versa, as necessary." This is Bachelder's specialty: the intersection of the absurd with earnest emotion, neuroses lovingly portrayed. The Throwback Special is endlessly hilarious, ranging from the serious, even the existential--it is true of the play, like everything else, that "while it was happening it was ending"--to the shrewdly wise: a seven-page interior monologue about race relations by the group's one person of color is surprisingly entertaining.

The book takes place over a single weekend, involving a certain amount of action but mostly focused on the men's thoughts and reflections. In this brief window, Bachelder reveals the magic of professional sport spectating, the silliness and profundity of traditions, and the tender illogic of friendship. Obviously, this novel will attract football fans, but there is absolutely something for everyone (even the sports-averse) in this rollicking, irreverent but sweet human drama. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

The stories in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours are strange and wonderful in weird and convoluted ways. In "Books and Roses," two women wear keys around their necks; the keys open unexpected doors for both of them, providing answers to questions about the fates of two lovers. In "Drownings," an evil dictator locks away a traitor and loses the key to the cell. "Is Your Blood as Red as This?" takes readers to a puppetry school, and " 'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea" features a house full of doors that won't stay closed.

Helen Oyeyemi (Boy, Snow, Bird; Mr. Fox) toys with common motifs (keys and locks, both metaphorical and physical, make frequent appearances) throughout the collection. Characters are reintroduced from one story to the next: a puppetry student features as a medium in " 'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea"; the daughter of one narrator's boyfriend becomes the central character in "A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society." Though each piece ultimately stands on its own, what is most fascinating about the collection is the ways in which the stories are woven together. Characters appear and reappear in stories that seem entirely distinct--set in a different time, place, even a different world--allowing Oyeyemi to stretch readers' definitions of time and space and imagination. Individually, and then again as a whole, the stories in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours invite readers to reconsider what is real and what is imagined--not just in Oyeyemi's skilled prose, but also in the world in which we live. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

In Know the Mother, her first collection of flash fiction, Desiree Cooper (two-time Pulitzer nominee at the Detroit Free Press, NPR contributor and 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow) focuses on the daily triumphs and troubles of being a black woman, mother and urban middle-class professional. Like carefully crafted prose poems or the succinct stories of Raymond Carver, Cooper's snapshots capture the currents beneath the calm, the memories behind the "crackling bread, a bowl of boiled turnips, fried fatback." In "Postbellum Love Story," for example, Toya is married to "a shoo-in to become the state's first black US senator... [but] long past the day when she had stopped loving Clarence, she'd found other loves to bind her... their happy children... their sprawling home... her heirloom tomatoes and bright holiday parties... being a revered black family in this sea of white incredulity."

Set in racially charged Detroit, Atlanta and even a military base in Okinawa, Cooper's stories rarely stray into politics, even though they often highlight a racist moment of the black experience. Rather, they primarily focus on motherhood--like the new mother in "Origins of Sacrifice" who can't wait for a "date" with her husband: "just a few hours away from the mewling child, the toe-curling pain of breast-feeding, the smell of sour milk and dirty diapers." And the mother in "The Disappearing Girl," waiting in her minivan at her daughter's private school where "she's the only one with brown eyes and skin to match... a refugee on a hostile shore waiting for an airlift." Each exquisite miniature in Know the Mother provides a mural's worth of life. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Patrick Modiano's novels trade on nostalgia: for lost love, time or ephemeral sensation. Characters like the ones in In the Café of Lost Youth are constantly thinking about their pasts, ignoring their present selves as they search for some doorway (if only through a memory) to a time that was. If there's anything that marks the Nobel Prize-winner's work, it's that yearning for what has been.

In the Café of Lost Youth revolves around Louki, a young woman in 1950s Paris, and examines her from four perspectives as she moves through the lives of the men around her. The narrators are an acquaintance, an investigator hired by her husband to find her, an old flame and Louki herself. A sort of walking ellipsis, Louki has motives that are never really clear, even to herself, and the novel doesn't move along a plot line so much as explore the various ways she is seen. Modiano may want to give a full account of this woman, or instead give the reader the same impression the various narrators have of her: that of a ghost passing through a room.

As is typical with Modiano, even with Louki's interior monologue, the reader feels removed. And although Louki is an unknowable presence in the story, In the Café of Lost Youth expertly re-creates its Paris milieu. From small descriptions of the bars and bookstores the characters frequent to the casual mention of neighborhoods now radically different after gentrification, the novel elicits nostalgia from the reader, even if he or she never visited Paris in the mid-20th century. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.

Commissario Guido Brunetti (By Its Cover) is back, but this time in a case that may not actually be a case. As The Waters of Eternal Youth opens, Brunetti agrees to do an informal investigation on behalf of the elderly Contessa Lando-Continui, an old friend of his wife's family. Fifteen years earlier, the Contessa's teenaged granddaughter, Manuela, fell into a canal and was pulled out brain damaged, left with the mental acuity of a seven-year-old. The Contessa wants to know how Manuela came to be in the canal in the first place.

As Brunetti begins looking into Manuela's life at the time of the incident, with the help of fellow commissario Claudia Griffoni, he finds some surprising connections and learns heartbreaking details about the Lando-Continui family. Long conversations with his passionate wife, Paola, help him to deal with the difficult truths he and Griffoni uncover, especially when one of those secrets leads to someone's death.

Donna Leon's mysteries are never fast-paced, but rather quiet paeans to the city of Venice. Filled with musings on immigration, tourism, the rising pollution in the bay and canals, and the crippling corruption of the Italian government (which Griffoni and Brunetti encounter at nearly every turn as they attempt to investigate), The Waters of Eternal Youth reflects Venice's ability to endure, in spite of centuries of threats. Readers who enjoy Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series or Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs books are sure to enjoy spending an afternoon in Venice with Brunetti. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm

Evoking the bleak territory of Russell Banks's fiction and the spirit of a Patricia Highsmith psychological thriller, Elizabeth Brundage's All Things Cease to Appear blends murder mystery, ghost story and domestic drama to create an engrossing and deeply unsettling novel.

Sharing a marriage that's infected by a "virus of the soul," George and Catherine Clare, with their three-year-old daughter, move to the tiny Hudson River Valley town of Chosen. They purchase the Hale farm, abandoned by the owners' three sons--who remain in town after their parents' double suicide--and are thrust into a world that's haunted by the spirit of Ella Hale, whose life and death prefigure the several tragedies that mark the story, including the murder of Catherine Clare in the novel's opening chapter.

Over the course of the lengthy flashback that composes most of the novel, the depth of George's depravity becomes clear. As she struggles to escape his stranglehold, Catherine finds herself drawing closer to the Hale brothers, even as they seem powerless to escape their fates. For all the inevitability of the tragedy at the novel's climax, Brundage demonstrates a mastery of pacing to arrive there.

Whether she's describing the starkly beautiful rural landscape or exposing the fault lines in the Clares' disintegrating marriage, Brundage's (A Stranger Like You) eye is equally observant. Her skillful use of multiple points of view heightens the tension as the day of Catherine's murder draws closer. Though it ends with a hint of redemption, All Things Cease to Appear remains a trip to the darkest territory of the human heart. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Like an alchemist, Sofia Samatar spins golden landscapes and dazzling sentences. The Winged Histories, a sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winning A Stranger in Olondria, is set amid an empire-spanning civil war, with vampires and mythical beasts adding a layer of luster. But the real sheen of this novel is its author's skill as a builder--of worlds, of characters as rounded as they are flawed, and of sentences with the elaborate construction of cathedrals.

As in the best fantasy novels, Samatar's inventive details ultimately serve to further her characters. The Winged Histories is set in Olondria, and populated by fantastical phenomena, like the winged bird that adorns the cover: it reeks of death, but can carry passengers through the sky. This world contains more familiar elements, too: neglectful and abusive parents; stigma against same-sex relationships; power struggles fueled by religious divisions. The story is divided into sections narrated by four women: a female army captain, Tav; her lover, a tribal girl from the plains; Tav's socialite sister; and the imprisoned daughter of a cult priest. Nearly every detail in this narrative exists in service of asking how is history written and by whom?

The Winged Histories is a fantasy novel for those who take their sentences with the same slow, unfolding beauty as a cup of jasmine tea, and for adventurers like Tav, who are willing to charge ahead into the unknown. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer

Sara Moulton is the founder of the New York Women's Culinary Alliance, food editor of Good Morning America, executive chef of Gourmet, author of numerous cookbooks and the host of various TV shows, so how she found time to create the bible Home Cooking 101 is a mystery. What is not mysterious is cooking with Moulton's expert help. Moulton declares, "If you selected 10 people and handed them the same recipe... you'd end up with 10 different dishes... because good cooking is all about the details."

She begins with the 10 basics of great home cooking (for example, "get organized" and "buy a good knife"), lists 31 of her favorite tools, and makes ingredient recommendations (avocados are Hass, black pepper is freshly ground, etc.). Moulton covers soups, stocks and salads; then Quick and Quicker Entrees (Greek Diner Souffléed Omelet and Quick Tomato, Goat Cheese, and Fresh Herb Penne), Meal in a Pan (like Mushroom and Leek Shepherd's Pie and Stuffed Egg Roulade), and Cooking When You Have More Time (Baked Arctic Char with Chermoula; Roast Turkey). A section on vegetarian and vegan dishes includes Portobello Cheesesteaks, Saag Paneer and Roasted Pumpkin Farrotto. Each recipe focuses on a specific tip or method to "sharpen your sense of taste." Tips proliferate--like why never to buy pre-chopped tomatoes in a can, how to toss a salad properly and suggestions for tastier beans. Home Cooking 101 lives up to its title--a wonderful resource for novice cooks who wish to become experts. --Kristen Galles from Book Club Classics

Often, the loss of a child is inexplicable: words aren't able to properly portray the devastation, the mourning and the attempts to recover from tragedy. Expanding from a story originally published in the New Yorker, Vessels tries to navigate this inexplicable heartbreak, knowing that the tragedies at its center can never truly be depicted. Daniel Raeburn's memoir is one long elegy, a reminiscence whose central theme is grief.

Vessels begins, as the subtitle says, as a love story. Daniel meets Bekah, a former potter, with whom he instantly feels a connection. They grow closer, finally moving in together, getting pregnant and becoming engaged. But Bekah miscarries, and so begins their years of pain as they continue trying to become parents. As a major event in their story, the stillbirth of their second child comes relatively early, and Vessels plumbs the aftermath. Daniel and Bekah try again, succeeding with the birth of their first daughter before yet another loss. There's little levity in his memoir, but Raeburn manages to keep it from becoming burdensome with a quick pace and dream-like tone.

For all its tragedy, Vessels never feels overly dramatic. In fact, that may be its biggest weakness. Many scenes are vaguely rendered, and most characters go unnamed. Raeburn appears to prefer outlining events instead of exploring their depths, and this reticence can harm the narrative (the loss of a dear friend, for instance, feels paper thin when it should be devastating). Mostly, though, Vessels manages to convey its author's heartbreak as best as words can. That's a quite a feat. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.

YouTuber, comedian and reality TV show host Zach Anner has written a laugh-out-loud, self-deprecating, uninhibited, yet poignant memoir, If at Birth You Don't Succeed. Anner, a preemie born with cerebral palsy (which he considers "the sexiest of palsies"), dishes on how he has made the most of his less-than-perfect but utterly charmed life and managed to rise above an identity tied to his disability. He recounts childhood fantasies of Cindy Crawford as humorously as lessons in independent living while interning (unsuccessfully) at Disney World, and the attempts by his devoted cadre of wingmen to find him a girlfriend, using a woman's tolerance for dinners at the Olive Garden as a litmus test for dateability. While studying at the University of Texas in Austin, Anner stumbles upon his talent as an off-the-cuff comedian while interviewing celebrities for the sketch comedy That's Awesome. That earns him a spot as a contestant on Oprah Winfrey's Search for the Next TV Star, which he eventually wins.

As Anner explains, "My life has taught me that sometimes the things that seem like mistakes are really just setups for the punch lines of jokes we don't understand yet." Though the language in his coming-of-age story is sometimes coarse, Anner's infectious enthusiasm and can-do attitude make the off-color commentary easy to enjoy. His memoir is a testament to the healing powers of performance, the ability to laugh at oneself and the humility to appreciate each person's innate talent, no matter their physical limitations. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Eleven-year-old Perry Cook is a kind, openhearted boy who is growing up in the Blue River Co-ed Correctional Facility in Surprise, Neb., a minimum-security facility where his mother is incarcerated for reasons that aren't entirely clear to him.

Perry loves the staff and "rezzies" like they are family, and his Blue River family loves him back, their very own "mouse in the house." Still, he and his mother dream of the day she will get out on parole, and the two can start over "on the outside." When the local district attorney, Thomas VanLeer, decides to play the hero and pull the boy out of the prison, "for his own good," Perry's world falls apart. Sure, VanLeer's home is super-fancy, and Perry will be living with his best friend, Zoey Samuels, who is the DA's stepdaughter... but all Perry wants is to be home at Blue River with his mother. When he undertakes a school project that entails interviewing Blue River inmates--asking "What are you in for?"--he realizes that the specifics of his mother's case don't quite add up. As Perry begins his own investigation, this engaging novel turns into a genuine, suspenseful mystery.

Leslie Connor (Waiting for Normal; Crunch) restores faith in humanity with All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook. Its earnest, compassionate boy hero gives everyone a fair shake, judging others only when wronged, bullied or misled--perhaps the upside to growing up in a prison full of nuanced, heartbreaking stories. The world needs Perry right now, and readers will hold him in their hearts. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Eleven-year-old orphan Stella Montgomery and her three aunts live a circumscribed Victorian life at the Hotel Majestic: the aunts take the mineral waters in the bathhouse or are "wrapped up and propped in cane chairs in the long sunroom," while Stella studies deportment, pianoforte and "French phrases to say to the wife of a bishop whilst drinking tea." She also--secretly, because, as her aunts tell her, "Curiosity is a sign of a vulgar mind"--loses herself in illustrations of jungles and serpent-infested seas in a pilfered atlas. The adventure that unfolds after Stella witnesses a hotel guest burying something in a Chinese urn provides her with more danger and thrills than her beloved atlas could ever offer.

Middle-grade fans of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events will eat up Withering-by-Sea. Australian author-illustrator Judith Rossell packs every page with details such as Aunt Condolence's "Particular Patent Corset of springs and whalebone, which creaked and twanged as she moved," and pencil, ink and watercolor illustrations of curiosities like an evil professor's creepy "hand o' glory." Stella's ill-used but intrepid new friends burble over with a kind of low-brow Aussie-Victorian slang--such as "Nobble me granny" or "Stinking gumbleguts"--that would do Roald Dahl proud.

Stella harbors her own mysteries: Is she fey? Does she have a lost, unknown sibling? But her steadfast commitment to keeping a terrible enchanted object safe, and to saving Ben, a boy who's held in the professor's faded magical thrall, is what drives her, be it to a performance hall or to castle ruins on a desolate island. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor