Percival Everett's So Much Blue is a masterstroke of a novel that blends biting humor, beautiful ekphrasis and heartbreaking pathos in a stirring, unforgettable composition.

Everett (Erasure) is known for his literary skill and probing intelligence. Here he combines three stories from the point of view of painter Kevin Pace. Pace's present-day life entails family troubles with his daughter and wife, and a secretive, giant painting he keeps under lock and key. Intermittent flashbacks form two underlying narratives, one about a tragic experience in El Salvador when Pace was a young man, and the other about an extramarital affair in Paris when he was older. Layered together much like a painting, the three stories harmonize with striking, revelatory power.

To get there, Everett flexes the full range of his talent, including a sly, cynical sense of humor that cuts to the absurdity of the novel's situations and characters. A rundown cantina in the countryside of El Salvador, for example, is "so much a cliché that it wasn't one." With the same deftness, Everett switches tones and finds his characters in more serious moods. Pace's painting becomes an extended metaphor for his life, and Everett uses the device to sublime effect: "If this feeling were a color, I considered, it would be the orange threads of slightly diluted saffron."

So Much Blue explores the dimensions of human experience as few books can. --Scott Neuffer, freelance journalist, poet and fiction author

Legendary classic movie star Evelyn Hugo is famous for her scandalous love life, especially her seven marriages that have been tabloid fodder for decades. However, despite being a household name, nobody who is still alive knows the secrets Evelyn has kept for years. At age 79, she's ready to divulge all--but only on her terms. A woman who always gets what she wants, Evelyn has specifically selected as her biographer Monique Grant, a "puff piece" writer for Vivant magazine with her own marital and career woes.

More than a bit curious about why such an iconic figure would choose an unknown journalist to author her blockbuster biography, Monique gradually learns the hidden truth about the woman behind the gossipy headlines and whirlwind affairs with some of the most famous men in the world. As Evelyn reveals secrets about domestic abuse, backstage machinations and forbidden love, Monique is shocked to discover secrets about herself, including her personal connection to one of the silver screen's luminaries.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is more than escapism fiction sweeping its audience back to an era when show biz glamour danced with real-life intrigue, romantic entanglements and perceived impropriety. With memorable characters rivaling any Hollywood blockbuster, Taylor Jenkins Reid (One True Loves) marries themes of loyalty, betrayal, friendship and love into a soaring, fast-paced and gripping performance. It leaves readers asking if they are merely role-playing with those they love or being true to an authentic self. --Melissa Firman, writer, editor and blogger at melissafirman.com.

The Changeling is Victor LaValle's version of the marshmallow test: forgo the quick thrill of a mass-market mystery/horror and be patient as the author genially paces you through 120 pages of buildup, and you'll receive the kind of shock that fairy tales are made of.

LaValle's (The Ecstatic, The Ballad of Black Tom) fourth novel is about Apollo Kagwa, a rare book dealer in New York City. He's the son of a Ugandan immigrant who disappeared when Apollo was young. Life is going pretty well for him--beautiful wife, new baby, signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird--until it's most definitely, terrifyingly not. When the baby is killed and his wife disappears, Apollo must venture out in an increasingly unreal landscape--forgotten islands in the East River, a cemetery on Long Island--to find answers, if not justice.

Part of the horror and joy of this book is in the turns it takes, lowering the reader by degrees into its strange and pressurized world. Readers are hereby encouraged to jump in with little foreknowledge.

LaValle is clearly in his element exploring the strange worlds that exist at the peripheries of his beloved New York. His brisk tempo and friendly tone are like a Grimms' tale, masking subcutaneous menace. The twists never betray the story logic, which is as much about navigating the shoals of adulthood as it is about losing parents.

Strange, exuberant and haunting, The Changeling taps into the anxieties of fatherhood and revels in the layers of a city. --Zak Nelson, writer and bookseller

Although it is the last of Mexican author and editor Yuri Herrera's loosely connected border trilogy to be translated into English, Kingdom Cons is the first in the series. Short, allegorical and centered in the world of northern Mexico cartels, it is the story of an uneducated street singer and composer of corridos, popular ballads about peasant oppression and the heroes who free them. Drifting through cantinas "offering rhymes in exchange for pity, for coins," Lobo finds his hardscrabble life miraculously changed when a narco jefe drinking with his honchos kills a drunk refusing to pay Lobo for a song. The jefe then takes the young musician back to his fortified, opulent mountain compound to become his bard--celebrating in song his exploits and benevolent outlaw generosity.

The other two volumes of Herrera's trilogy (Signs Preceding the End of the World, winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award, and The Transmigration of Bodies) are centered on the actual border between Mexico and the United States and on those who are mired in the political and legal no-man's land of living on both sides. The allegorical characters here are caught in the metaphorical borders that separate the rich from the poor, the powerful from the weak and the mercenary from the artistic.

In Kingdom Cons, Herrera has created a mythical hierarchy of power where only an artist might elude the jealousy and retribution of those trapped in the struggle to be on top. This is not just a drug cartel hierarchy, nor is it a Mexican mythology. Rather, it illustrates the difficulty of living on borders wherever they may be found. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

When a London building is demolished, an infant's bones are unearthed, having been buried beneath the structure for decades. Three women take special notice.

Reporter Kate Waters wants to know who the baby was. How did it die? Who buried it? Emma, a book editor, is shaken by the news of the tiny skeleton's discovery, and hopes the baby isn't who she fears it is. Angela, still mourning the long-ago kidnapping of her daughter, Alice, from the hospital shortly after the baby's birth, both hopes and fears the bones belong to Alice, so she can finally have closure.

As Kate digs into the past, she discovers that quite a few people who lived in the area around the time of the baby's birth have dark secrets they'd prefer to keep buried. Kate might get the scoop of her career, but is she willing to destroy people's lives for it?

Kate, who also appears in Fiona Barton's The Widow, is an appealing protagonist. She's tenacious yet compassionate with her interview subjects: "The college lecturers who taught Media Studies... banged on about objectivity and balance, but she'd like them to sit down with a rape victim or the mother of an abused child and remain unaffected. Without empathy, without feeling someone's pain, how could you... capture the truth of the situation?" Barton captures the truth in Emma's and Angela's aching hearts, takes readers down surprising paths, and ties complex stories together in a satisfying way. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

The Punch Escrow is a tremendously fun and accessible work of hard science fiction. Tal M. Klein's debut novel takes place in the year 2147, when technological advancements have solved--or at least ameliorated--some of humanity's most pressing challenges. Illnesses and even aging can be reversed by advanced nanotechnology. Clouds of genetically engineered mosquitoes transform pollution into water vapor. Printers can replicate handmade Turkish coffee on a molecular level. Klein's future is thoroughly imagined, and further supported by lengthy footnotes on subjects from quantum foam to steam reforming.

Most importantly, though, Klein's future has adapted to commercialized teleportation, allowing protagonist Joel Byram to take a pricy shortcut to meet his wife early on in the novel. Joel is a "salter"--he interfaces with artificial intelligences, tricking them and telling them jokes in order to make them more intelligent. His wife, Sylvia, works for International Transport (IT), the organization that controls teleportation technology.

Joel's world falls apart when a terrorist incident during teleportation results in his accidental duplication. The two Joels must think on their feet in order to dodge IT and the religious extremists out to end teleportation. The pair must also navigate the difficult ethical and philosophical questions that emerge from their simultaneous existence, much of it swirling around which one of them is the "real" Joel. The Punch Escrow is first and foremost an entertaining thriller, but its head-tripping brainteasers might stick with the reader well after the novel ends. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

"As a member of an underprivileged group I had built a path forward, largely through the efforts of others. I felt like I had no choice but to pay it all back, become a voice for the downtrodden, a vessel for others as so many had been for me." Jim St. Germain's humble words succinctly capture the essence of his inspiring, powerful memoir, A Stone of Hope.

St. Germain, a Haitian immigrant, grew up on the streets of Brooklyn's Crown Heights, living in an overcrowded apartment. When at the age of 15 he was convicted for selling drugs, he encountered one of the people who would advocate for him instead of writing him off. His lawyer negotiated St. Germain a placement in Boys Town, an unsecure detention facility designed to rehabilitate young offenders. The adults who worked with him there, his lawyers, even a dean from his middle school all had faith in the young man who would go on to graduate college and law school, have a son, co-found a nonprofit mentoring organization and contribute to numerous movements for justice system reform.

Through the love entrusted to him, St. Germain learned that being a man doesn't mean being tough and denying pain. That knowledge is reflected in his passionate words and heartfelt admissions. His exceptional experiences facilitate his ability to break open stereotypes and expose the realities hiding beneath. Achingly candid, authentically insightful and compellingly optimistic, A Stone of Hope is destined to help move mountains. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

Lawrence P. Jackson's absorbing and definitive biography of Chester Himes is essential reading for fans of the prolific African American novelist. Though Himes wrote two outstanding memoirs, Jackson--professor of English and history at Johns Hopkins University--shines as an astute literary critic and compelling biographer.

At age 19, Himes was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 20 to 25 years in prison. He started writing short prison stories. When he was paroled early at age 26 in 1936, he had already published stories in Esquire. He spent 16 years trying to get his first novel published. A hard-hitting look at prison life and homosexuality, it was rejected and rewritten numerous times. By the time a toned-down version was finally published as Cast the First Stone in 1952, Himes had already published two other novels.

His contentious relationships with publishers, editors and peers marginalized his career as much as the racial and political content of his novels. In the late 1950s, he moved to France and began writing noir mysteries featuring Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. "The two Harlem detectives solving crimes enabled him to depict black urban life, with its rural slave and blues roots, with a kind of opulence and intrigue that was difficult in books with more obvious political meaning," writes Jackson. These mysteries (including Cotton Comes to Harlem) brought Himes international fame, financial security and stability.

Jackson's outstanding biography is a massive (580 pages) and intimate look at the volatile life and layered fiction of noir expatriate Chester Himes. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Since Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, a number of publishers have rereleased her decades-old classics in English translation, including Voices from Chernobyl and Zinky Boys. Originally published in 1985, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II is a brilliant work of history and reporting that showcases Alexievich's boundless empathy and inimitable style.

Instead of a chronological history focused on military affairs, The Unwomanly Face of War patches together dozens of voices under themes that include love during wartime and the backbreaking, thankless tasks many women performed behind the front lines, such as laundry and baking. "Women's stories are different and about different things. 'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings."

Almost all her interviewees are women, some of the approximately one million who served in the Red Army during World War II. Some of them tell lengthy, gutting stories; others can hardly speak about the war. Alexievich has an eye for odd details that border on the absurd, such as the woman who recalls bringing a suitcase full of candy to war. "Altogether I carried 481 wounded soldiers from under fire," Maria Petrovna Smirnova recalls. The Unwomanly Face of War is a necessary account of almost unbelievable suffering told on a human scale. On the incomprehensibility of war, Alexievich concludes: "There is only one path--to love this human being. To understand through love." --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

"Identity is everything when you live in the periphery," writes memoirist and journalist Stephanie Elizondo Griest in All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands. This poignant and fascinating work of journalism explores two borderland communities, the Tejanos and the Mohawks. Mostly American born, Tejanos live a few miles north of the U.S./Mexico border, largely without heat, clean water or better prospects for the future. Their culture, meanwhile, brims with ancient traditions. In a standout chapter, Griest visits one of many "miracle trees" believed by the Tejanos to predict the future and heal the sick. In another, she speaks with a clutch of nuns trying to convince the Vatican to canonize Mother Julia, a beloved nun who died in the 1970s and whose spirit is believed to be working miracles still in their community.

The book's second half turns north to the Mohawks from the Akwesasne Nation, a sovereign state of indigenous people that overlaps the U.S./Canada border. Like the Tejanos, the Mohawks struggle to maintain their complex belief systems and traditional ways of life. Griest tells the story of Saint Kateri, Native America's first Catholic saint. The Mohawks claim her as one of their own, but her story of canonization highlights how tightly the legacy of colonialism intertwines throughout their history.

Griest also introduces artists and activists in both communities working to bring greater awareness to their suffering. With sensitivity and eye-opening detail, her dispatches reveal both the pain and strength of borderlands people. --Amy Brady, freelance writer and editor

"There was nothing Moose loved more than hello," especially greetings from her human, Zara. But dogs aren't allowed at Zara's school and "There was nothing Moose disliked more than goodbye." Smart pup that she is, for every "goodbye," Moose finds a way to say "hello": she zooms out the door to Mrs. Perkins's classroom for story time ("Moose... loves story time"), she chews through the backyard rope to sneak into Mrs. Chen's library hour and she even manages a cafeteria dash for homemade cookies and a Zara-read book. Getting Moose to "goodbye"--and go home for good--becomes an all-school chase. And then Zara has an idea: therapy dog school. Moose gets tested and certified, becoming the "Class Reading Dog." Hello Goodbye Dog Moose is now the school's official Hello Goodbye Dog. 

Author Maria Gianferrari and artist Patrice Barton are clearly dog people; both highlight canine family members in their back flap bios. That pooch-love is evident throughout: Gianferrari's clever text perfectly embodies Moose's mournful "AAAA-WOOO"s over "Goodbye was tag without an 'It.'/ Goodbye was tug and no war./ Goodbye was hide without seek," while Barton's whimsically energetic drawings showcase Moose's delighted devotion to Zara, her mischievous plotting toward her next hello and her rapt attention to reading.

As mirthful and charming as the story is, even more notable is the easy diversity playing out on every page. Zara's mobility is enabled by her wheelchair; Mom is African American; and the students and adults-in-charge represent multiple ethnicities. Effortlessly inclusive, Gianferrari and Barton's creative Hello Goodbye Dog becomes an inviting mirror or window for any child, welcoming every reader in. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Conversations about refugees are often heated, focused on hypotheticals and unknowns. By making visible three young emigrants--rather than those who fear them--Refugee aims to provide a corrective to this American myopia. Josef, 12, is escaping Germany in the late 1930s; after his father is released from Dachau, his Jewish family scrambles aboard the ill-fated German liner St. Louis. Isabel, 11, is escaping Cuba in 1994, leaving in a handmade boat for a better life, one that includes more opportunities for her future as well as keeping her activist father out of Castro's prisons. And Mahmoud, 12, leaves Aleppo, Syria, in 2015 with his family in a panic after their apartment building is bombed. Moving briskly among Josef, Isabel and Mahmoud, each short chapter brings new tragedy, occasional hope and continued instability to all three children.

Alan Gratz (Code of Honor; Projekt 1065; The League of Seven; Prisoner B-3087) uses his trademark straightforward prose to illuminate the danger facing refugee families. Insightful details help contemporary readers to connect with the story, especially in Mahmoud's chapters, in which smartphones play an important role ("Google Maps told them it would be an eight-hour walk, and they split the journey up by sleeping in a field"). Gratz focuses on individual villains and heroes, rather than structural causes of refugee crises, but nevertheless young readers will finish this book and ask: What should we do? Adults will be similarly struck by the words of Isabel's grandfather: "[A] funny thing happened while I was waiting for the world to change, Chabela: It didn't. Because I didn't change it." --Stephanie Anderson, assistant director for public services, Darien Library (Conn.)