Sabahattin Ali's heartbreaking novel Madonna in a Fur Coat spins a beguiling love story. Between the first and second world wars, Raif, a young Turkish translator, travels to Berlin for work. There he falls in love with Maria Puder, a cabaret performer and art model depicted as Madonna in a city-famous painting. The two begin a tumultuous but genuine relationship that's interrupted when Raif is called back to Turkey.

The story is at first narrated by Raif's nameless clerk, then in the translator's own voice through a diary the clerk reads. With perceptiveness and compassion, Ali depicts the sexual politics of the time and the heady tension between his male and female characters. "Why is it that even in the way you beg, there is dominance, and pity in the way we refuse?" Maria asks Raif in what becomes a powerful monologue on female empowerment. In equal measure, Ali explores preconceptions of masculinity through Raif's vulnerability and his capacity for intimacy. Relationships are endangered, he shows, by misunderstanding and misjudgment more than malice.

Ali was a Turkish literary icon, imprisoned more than once for his writings. Madonna in a Fur Coat was first published in 1943, and this English translation conveys the author's emotional intelligence and crisp lyricism. Its sad tinge of fatalism belies its deeper, more dynamic aspects. Love both tortures and redeems the soul. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki looks at loneliness and loss with uncommon detail and understated force. Taro, a passive, divorced man who lives in a Tokyo apartment building slated to be torn down, becomes acquainted with Nishi, a young woman in the same building who is fascinated by a house in their neighborhood. This sky-blue house, larger than most and with a private garden, has been documented in an obscure book of photography titled Spring Garden. The ethereal photos of the house and its former celebrity inhabitants preoccupy Nishi and, soon, Taro. Although the current occupants are distressingly conventional, the house symbolizes a past when urban living was not as isolated and traditional values were carefully cultivated. Nishi says of Tokyo life, "things get better so quickly but then they deteriorate just as fast."

Shibasaki's characters stay at arm's length from each other, and their transactional relationships mean they never connect on more than a surface level. Numazu, Taro's coworker, is "just voicing the thoughts passing through his mind, and not looking for an answer." The perspective of an omniscient narrator abruptly changes toward the end, and Taro's disaffection is seen from a more compassionate vantage point.

Spring Garden won the 2014 Akutagawa Prize in Japan. Polly Barton, winner of the Kyoko Selden Memorial Translation Prize, makes sure that Shibasaki's minimalist language comes across with poetic sensibility. Every word matters in this unflinching and quietly powerful novella. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

It's nice to imagine Bill McKibben (The End of Nature; Oil and Honey) enjoying some chuckles writing Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance, his first novel. After 13 books and decades of work on the environment and climate change, Radio Free Vermont is both a madcap story of Vermonters engaging in civil disobedience and "the beginning of a movement."

Reminiscent of Edward Abbey's 1975 Monkey Wrench Gang, McKibben's novel brings comedy to the chaos of the post-November 2016 United States with the laugh-out-loud antics of a group of quirky Green Mountain patriots. Vern is a wanted man following a tiff with his former radio station employer and a debacle involving a Walmart opening and a sewer line. He broadcasts his Vermont secession message from his hideout in the woods, the house of an activist named Sylvia, with the help of his enthusiastic assistant, young computer whiz Perry. Olympic biathlon medalist Trance's skiing and sharpshooting complete the ornery group's skills. Arrests, a house fire, high-speed ski chases and ongoing broadcasts climax in a hilarious scene and the cocky governor's comeuppance--a battle won, but the war goes on.

McKibben's message is clear in his epilogue: "When confronted by small men doing big and stupid things, we need to resist with all the creativity and wit we can muster, and if we can do so without losing the civility that makes life enjoyable, then so much the better." --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

In the second book of Rosie Millard's the Square series, well-to-do couple Jane and Patrick pack for an Ibiza vacation with their eight-year-old son, George, and his nanny, Belle. Coinciding with their holiday is the filming of a reality TV show, Ibiza (or Bust). Two of Jane and Patrick's London neighbors--TV financial adviser Alan Makin and artist Phillip Burrell--are starring in the production alongside a cast of eccentric small-time stars, and Jane is desperate to weasel her way onto the show.

As Ibiza (or Bust) director Simon puts the show's actors through a series of humiliating, reckless and well-scripted challenges, Jane keeps busy on the island. All the childcare responsibilities are left to Belle, who's been sneaking out every night to meet up with her boyfriend. So when she falls asleep on the job and George turns up missing, the Ibiza (or Bust) troupe teams up with the child's parents to scour the island.

This zany representation of feigned reality and privileged disconnect from normal existence makes for satirical fun on a Mediterranean island. Mix in a donkey, a professional soccer star and a lesbian encounter, and things can't get much more exciting. But in the realm of reality TV, it's every man or woman for him- or herself, so the contestants will stop at almost nothing to earn their fame--and cash prize.

A humorous, lighthearted read, The Brazilian will likely charm fans of Bridget Jones or provide a welcome escape for anyone needing an entertaining diversion. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

Lee Child's The Midnight Line, number 22 in the Jack Reacher series, picks up exactly where number 20, Make Me, left off (number 21 was set in 1996). Reacher's female companion, Michelle Chang, just left Milwaukee, and he's also on his way out of Wisconsin when he sees a tiny West Point ring in a pawn shop's window. The size indicates the original owner was a woman, and the engraving says 2005, meaning the cadet enrolled at the military academy the year 9/11 happened. Reacher doesn't believe the hard-earned ring was given up easily.

Feeling a sense of obligation that he can't explain, Reacher decides to find the owner and return the ring to her. He encounters resistance from nefarious characters as he backtracks the ring's journey to that pawnshop. Sometimes he must use his full 6'5", 250-lb. bulk to plow through to the truth. He also discovers he's not the only one looking for the woman.

Reacher Creatures will be satisfied by tight pacing and action scenes in which their hero shows bad guys who's boss, but Midnight Line is also moving and timely. Along with touching on an epidemic the U.S. is battling, Child sheds light on the quality of life of veterans who return after wartime service, showing that some wounds are visible and others not, but all are deep and devastating. The dedication reads: "So far in our history, nearly two million Purple Hearts have been awarded. This book is respectfully dedicated to each and every recipient." It's a fitting tribute. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Journalist Melanie Mühl and psychologist Diana Von Kopp team up to examine universal themes concerning food choices in How We Eat with Our Eyes and Think with Our Stomach: The Hidden Influences That Shape Your Eating Habits. In our modern age, according to Mühl and Von Kopp, people have lost the carefree attitude toward food that was once enjoyed by past generations. Anxiety over diets, manipulation by supermarkets and the food industry, and an overabundance of choices have led to a relinquishment of joy and ease in our relationship to food.

Eager to re-create that carefree attitude, Mühl and Von Kopp ask why we make certain food choices and how we can liberate ourselves from external influences that work against our best interests. The answer, they write, lies in understanding why we eat with our eyes, how we savor with our ears, think with our stomachs, feast with our feelings and choose with our tongues. People are conditioned to respond to food in different ways according to their environment, the color of the plate, the music playing in the background during meals and the artistry of a dish's presentation. We are particularly susceptible to celebrity endorsements of new food products, even if the celebrity in question has no expertise in the product they are endorsing.

Mühl and Von Kopp bring a refreshing perspective to the field of food psychology with a well-curated selection of research studies. Easy to read and entertaining throughout, How We Eat with Our Eyes and Think with Our Stomach provides welcome clarity for those seeking to understand and change long-ingrained food habits. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer

Before Anne Fadiman was known for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and At Large and at Small, she was an "oakling," withering (according to an adage she quotes) in the shadow of an oak. Her father, Clifton Fadiman, enjoyed a long, successful career as a reader, book reviewer and wordsmith. Most of all, however, he loved wine.

Fadiman's The Wine Lover's Daughter is a beautifully composed memoir of her father's life, viewed through the lens of his oenophilia. She recalls discovering his essay "Brief History of a Love Affair" at age 10, and being disappointed that it did not describe love for a woman. She should not have been surprised, as even at that age she knew the names of the Premier Cru Bordeaux and which were the Great Years (capitalized as such). Clifton's passion for wine was prodigious, and it was his daughter's shame and consternation that her palate never came to appreciate any of its forms. This memoir is in part the story of that struggle--her repeated attempts to love wine, and all the fine bottles wasted on her.

Fadiman's prose is clear and precise, and while not overtly poetic, perfectly composed as to rhythm and sound. As in her past work, she writes with equal skill of her own memories, family history, science and the finer points of wine appreciation (which she knows by heart and inheritance, if not by personal experience). The Wine Lover's Daughter is a beautiful remembrance and a loving and well-deserved tribute to a literary figure--and to the joy of imbibing. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

"Love, unions, ecology, poll tax, abortion, Thatcher, Iraq, you name it and I made a song for it." Now singer-songwriter Peggy Seeger has written a book about it.

She was raised in Maryland by progressive parents who hosted the likes of Lead Belly and Jackson Pollock. Adept at guitar and banjo, Seeger recorded her first album in 1954, while a student at Radcliffe. Two years later, the legendary American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax summoned her to London: he wanted her for an English version of the Weavers--an obvious recruit, given that her much-older half brother was Pete Seeger. The gig fizzled, but she met "my next thirty-three years"--the English singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl, two decades her senior. MacColl was married when Seeger conceived their first child, and he conceived another with his wife shortly thereafter. While Seeger's judgment throughout her book can irk, readers will root for her, including when she starts life over with a female partner after MacColl's 1989 death.

First Time Ever offers a catbird seat overlooking a long marriage of wandering minstrels who were catalysts for the British folk revival. When MacColl first heard Roberta Flack's 1972 Grammy-winning version of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," which he had written years earlier for Seeger to sing, he was stunned. "Ewan said he wrote it as an hors d'oeuvre," writes Seeger, "and it had been turned into the main course." Bursting with lyrics, footnotes, photos and fine turns of phrase, First Time Ever is a feast. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and author

Despite its somewhat corny title, Beeronomics is a well-researched history and economic analysis of the world's favorite alcoholic beverage and its role in turning mankind from hungry hunter-gatherers to frolicking, leisure-loving adults. A joint effort between the scholarly Johan Swinnen (professor of economics at the University of Leuven) and marketing maven Devin Briski (Vox Media and Stanford Social Innovation Review), it has enough tables and charts to please the dedicated economist, leavened with ample colloquial asides to entertain the rest of us. It even sports a telling chapter epigraph by Frank Zappa: "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least, you need a beer."

Briski and Swinnen trace the first mention of beer to The Epic of Gilgamesh chiseled into stone around 2000 BC, although Mesopotamian beer recipes from 6000 BC have also been authenticated. From there, it has been one breakthrough after another (e.g., using hops for preservation, bottom fermenting for clarity and lightness, mass production of glass bottles, steel and aluminum cans with pull-tops, TV advertising, etc.) that shifted the beer business from isolated monasteries to global corporate behemoths (led by Swinnen's hometown Belgium giant AB InBev). With its long history of mass consumption, government regulation and taxation and technical innovation, beer has been at the center of every major economic trend--an argument the authors make convincingly, even if you can't "find your beach" or "climb on... whatever your mountain." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone puts the spotlight on an understudied and generally underappreciated marine animal, showing how its fate may be tied to manmade changes in the natural world. Spineless is also the story of Juli Berwald, an ocean science Ph.D., reigniting her passion for science and nature through her immersion in the world of jellyfish. Berwald puts herself in the narrative, bringing the reader along as she prepares and cooks jellyfish, raises specimens in her dining room, swims near an enormous bloom off an Israeli beach and much more. Berwald excels at depicting the wonder and appreciation she has gained for the strange, gelatinous creatures and the ocean that sustains them.

Her interest in jellyfish was prompted by the appearance across the world of massive aggregations known as blooms. In some cases, the jellyfish were so numerous that they dominated the ecosystem and transformed productive fisheries into "a sea of goo." Jellyfish and people are increasingly getting in each other's way. Masses of the aquatic animal have clogged power plants, desalination plants and even a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Jellyfish can also ruin a trip to the beach: the National Science Foundation estimates that there are 150 million stings each year. The creatures are fascinating in part because there's so much more to find out about them. In Spineless, Berwald demonstrates that our oceans represent a scientific frontier at least as exciting and promising as space, and posits jellyfish as a prime candidate for study and appreciation. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Ollie Gnome, an 11-year-old elf, loves Christmas more than anything in the world. In Santa's Workshop, near his North Pole home, he studies "mapomatics, toyology, list-erature and Santa Studies," and he creates new toys in the Games & Puzzles (G&P) department. His best friend, Celia Pixie, is a genius inventor at G&P. Every July 2, all the elves gather for Santa's traditional kick-off speech. But this year, Santa has a shocking surprise: Mr. and Mrs. Claus have decided that there will be a competition to determine the next Santa. This person--whether human like the Claus family or elf like everyone else--will inherit the mysterious Quantum Kringle, a small globe containing the magic that allows Santa to deliver presents to children around the world in just one night.

Ollie and Celia decide to enter, if only to keep their nemesis, Buzz Brownie, from winning. Thus begins six months of insane challenges, packed as full as Santa's sleigh with family rivalries, strokes of technological brilliance, masterful strategizing, colossal failures and a strange old guy masquerading as a child competitor.

Caleb Zane Huett's debut novel is fun and exciting, perfect for readers who will not be shocked at the idea of a Santa named Matthew or technology-fueled sleighs. The cast of characters is broad, and includes a reindeer punk rock band; a perpetually grease-stained Mrs. Claus, who's in charge of Wish Generator maintenance and repairs; and cameos by a bickering Heatmiser and Snowmiser. And, of course, Ollie. Ollie is charmingly reminiscent of Keats in Christian Burch's The Manny Files, swooning over fabulous Big Red Suit designs and always believing the best in everyone, even as they are taking advantage of him. Top Elf is an exhilarating Christmas read, any time of the year. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

"Paving the way/ to a future that's bright./ Helping the world with their/ skills, smarts, and might./ Little trailblazers cause great big changes."

With This Little Trailblazer in hand, the smallest tots won't have to go far to discover the amazing feats of almost two dozen women all over the world, all through time. Each two-page spread in this chunky little board book features one remarkable woman and a succinct description of what makes her special. On the left is a cartoonish illustration by Daniel Roode, each woman with huge round eyes and simply drawn features. Joan Holub's rhyming text tells about the subject in broad terms: "This little trailblazer/ had the courage and skill/ to organize hospitals/ and care for the ill." The page opposite goes into a bit more detail, but still minimal enough for the youngest readers to absorb: "Florence Nightingale began the first professional school for nurses." The beauty of this book is that adults reading aloud can elaborate as much or as little as they--or their charges--want.

This Little Trailblazer is a smart companion to Holub and Roode's This Little President and This Little Explorer, celebrating some of the not-so-little giants in American and world history. Young readers will learn about civil rights activist Rosa Parks, Olympic gold medalist Wilma Rudolph, nurse Florence Nightingale, fashion designer Coco Chanel and Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. The final spread asks, "Computers, lawmaking, designing, ballet--/ how will you change the world someday?" and includes a dozen additional trailblazers mini-portraits, plus a final blank spot for... "YOU!" --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Being part of a Jewish and South Asian Indian family has delicious perks: "Making Indian food that my mom ate as a kid for a Jewish holiday that my dad grew up with--that was a lucky combination." For the first-night-of-Hanukkah meal, a boy looks forward to making dosas--a crispy-on-the-edges, paper-thin South Asian-style crepe--with his mother and his Amma-Amma (maternal grandmother). His one concern is his mischievous toddler sister, Sadie, who climbs up just about anything.

When the family heads to Little India Market for ingredients, the boy knows Sadie will require a careful eye. Her first scaling attempt is "a pyramid of coconut milk," which sends cans rolling. When she refuses to descend, the boy remembers a favorite Hanukkah song which he cleverly personalizes: "I had a little dosa; I made it out of dal," he sings to the tune of "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel." With a "big grin" of recognition, Sadie "amazingly... climbed down." Three more times, the boy serenades Sadie before the celebrations commence.

As the family goes to greet their guests, they manage to get locked out. The boy realizes that Sadie's climbing prowess might save the day--but only if he can finish his song and convince Sadie to open the door.

In her back-flap bio, author Pamela Ehrenberg confesses to locking her own family out of the house as a toddler. Ehrenberg enhances her toddler-tale by adding delicious diversity, substituting delectable dosas (recipe included at the book's end) and sambar for traditional latkes and applesauce for this multicultural crew. British artist Anjan Sarkar's bright illustrations add a celebratory feel; he's also careful to include visual reminders of the family's blended cultures throughout. Parents, educators and readers seeking opportunities to expand awareness across multiple cultures will appreciate this tasty start. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon