A Hundred Small Lessons is a reflective, mystical meditation on interconnectedness and shared experiences. With parallel narratives and quietly evocative prose, Ashley Hay (The Railwayman's Wife) unfolds the similarities between two women of different generations, alongside their shifts in identities and expectations, as they grow as mothers amid familiar questions, decisions and insecurities.

At age 89, Elsie Gormley prides herself on living independently in her Brisbane, Australia, home. After Elsie suffers a fall and reluctantly moves into an assisted living community, her beloved home is sold to Lucy Kiss and Ben Carter, a young married couple with a toddler. With the house serving as the connection between their families, Lucy begins to feel a bond with Elsie, whose emotional presence becomes stronger even as she declines physically and mentally. Upon discovering a hidden box of old, mysterious photographs, Lucy's curiosity intensifies, as does her sense that Elsie represents her vardøger, a spiritual predecessor "who traveled ahead of you in time."

A Hundred Small Lessons is a novel of small mysteries and coincidences that will prompt readers to reflect on how one life can be commingled with the past as well as be a first draft of the future. "Maybe these days most of us are vardøger, living versions of a finite set of lives.... Did you have just one vardøger, scurrying ahead, or did new iterations of yourself peel off whenever you made a decision?" Just as our stories and nuances have a way of becoming invisibly etched into the walls, floorboards and foundation of a beloved home, the same is true of our shared experiences alongside others traveling a familiar path. --Melissa Firman, writer, editor and blogger at melissafirman.com

1984 is George Orwell's masterpiece and is considered one of the great novels of the 20th century. Dennis Glover's The Last Man in Europe fictionalizes the creation of Orwell's seminal work, depicting the small moments throughout the writer's life that eventually culminated in the book's genesis and completion. Orwell in many ways worked himself to death writing 1984, and Glover's fabulous book shows why.

Beginning with Orwell's time as a poor clerk in a bookstore, The Last Man in Europe tracks him as he becomes radicalized, eventually going to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He then loses his faith in political structures during the Battle of Britain and Stalinist purges in Russia. Never entirely a cynic, Orwell instead develops a healthy skepticism for utopian thinking, using his pen to ravage those worthy of criticism. Glover is at his best when he's depicting the moments of Orwell's political epiphany, giving the man's positions and concerns due time so that the reader understands just how complex his writing was. Toward the end of the book, as 1984 is becoming a bestseller, Orwell, nearly destroyed by a decades-long battle with tuberculosis, uses what little strength he has left to pen a clarification to critics, arguing that he's not picking any particular political side in the novel. Because Glover has brilliantly laid the groundwork for Orwell's choices by taking the reader through his earlier decisions, moments like these feel all the more pregnant with importance. The Last Man in Europe demonstrates that Orwell the man was just as worthy of praise as the works he created. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

Engineer Mary Davies has long loved her work at an Austin, Tex., tech startup, coming up with innovative ideas and figuring out the math to make them run smoothly and efficiently. But she's in a slump and afraid she might lose her job if the new fast-talking consultants in the office have their way. When Isabel, Mary's prickly childhood best friend, invites her to a two-week immersive Jane Austen experience at an English manor house, Mary reluctantly agrees to take a break. Once they arrive, Mary thinks she might actually enjoy herself, until Isabel's memory takes a strange turn and she starts to believe the costume party is real. Katherine Reay explores the gap between illusions and realities--both Mary's and Isabel's--in her fifth novel, The Austen Escape.

Reay (The Brontë Plot, Lizzy & Jane) tells her story in Mary's voice, noting wryly that "Austen really had a thing against Marys." As Isabel slips farther into her own mental world, Mary calls on her fellow guests for help, finding connection and aid in unexpected places. The eventual resolution of Isabel's problem feels abrupt, but Mary's messier efforts to grow and change (unlike Austen's Marys, she gets the chance for both) feel much more authentic. Like Austen, Reay weaves love stories into her plotlines, but her main focus is the personal discoveries her characters make about themselves. Dripping with period detail but fundamentally a modern story, The Austen Escape is a clever, warmhearted homage to Austen and her fans. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Lydia Kramer says, "I once asked my dad if he believed in magic, and he said he believed in possibilities.... Call it a miracle, call it magic, call it whatever you want, but I was looking right at it." Her foster brother, Weylyn Grey, is the focus of Lydia's sight during this statement. Orphaned as a small boy, raised by wolves and the center of myriad unexplained events in nature, Weylyn is a marvelous mystery. Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance pieces together his curious existence through tales from those who experience this unexplained phenomenon.

The various narrators of Ruth Emmie Lang's debut tell Weylyn's life story through their interactions with him. Friends, family and colleagues each relate an amazing anecdote about a man who appears unremarkable on the outside, but in reality is anything but common. Living with wolves, stopping a hurricane, growing trees overnight, even producing energy from fireflies, Weylyn's existence defies logic, even to himself. But Weylyn doesn't want fame or attention; he simply wants the love of his life. As his character comes to light through the astonishing encounters with nature, his mystery intensifies and the magic entangles readers in his narrative.

Ruth Emmie Lang's debut glitters with the glow of fireflies, explodes with the force of fantastically strange events and warms with the love of a man who has so much possibility contained within him it overflows in miraculous ways. Skeptics who shun magic on page one of Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance will be converts by the end. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

When best friends Isla and Sophie were in college, they made bucket lists of things they wanted to do someday--from the ordinary, like learning Italian and making pasta from scratch, to the extraordinary, like learning to fly on a trapeze or taking tango lessons in Buenos Aires. But, a decade on, neither woman has fulfilled many of the things on her list. Isla is living in Amsterdam, working as an actress and dating a handsome Mexican man. Sophie still lives in Bristol, England, but is married to Liam, the love of her life. Although the moodiness of Liam's teenage daughter puts a bit of a damper on things for Sophie, both women are very happy.

That is, however, until they both receive shocking revelations that turn their lives upside down. In the midst of all the chaos, Sophie and Isla cling to each other, and to their lists of dreams.

Vanessa Greene (The Vintage Teacup Club) has created two likable, believable women in Isla and Sophie. As one of them faces a romantic dilemma and the other is beset by terrible personal news, their friendship and companionship ring true. Readers will enjoy the journey of each woman, and the way their friendship grows as they face their challenges and help turn each other's dreams into reality. The beautiful and evocative Amsterdam and Bristol settings add to the charm of The Little Pieces of You and Me, making it an irresistible read. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson

Acclaimed celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa earned his reputation with a fusion cuisine he developed called Nobu Style, "Japanese cuisine that belongs anywhere in the world." In this memoir, he distills the personal influences and philosophy that inspired this benevolent yet uncompromising sushi master to reach the greatest heights of haute cuisine.

Left fatherless at seven and having been expelled from high school for driving without a license, Nobu started working at his family's lumber business until a sushi bar owner in Shinjuku, Tokyo, took on the 17-year-old as an apprentice. There, Nobu worked his way up to sushi chef from dishwasher and delivery boy. Six years later, he headed off to Peru to run a friend's sushi restaurant and then to Alaska to open his first restaurant with his wife. After tragedy all but destroyed his dream of restaurant ownership, he found redemption at a 38-seat Beverly Hills sushi bar that he named Matsuhisa. There he honed his personal philosophies on food and service, drawing the attention of Robert De Niro, who partnered with Nobu to open an international conglomerate of restaurants and hotels espousing the same style that made Nobu a star.

This memoir reads not so much as a personal tell-all as it does an inspirational how-to on hospitality. He eagerly imparts the pearls of wisdom he has acquired over the years to encourage innovation, so long as that innovation remains firmly rooted in Japanese cuisine. Nobu's strict adherence to empathic service created a management style that appears simple on the surface, but has proven revelatory and inspiring in its single-minded focus. Many fans of Matsuhisa will no doubt recognize, "No matter where you go, food and heaven will follow." --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

Bollywood Kitchen is a one-of-a-kind cookbook by Indian American filmmaker and lifestyle expert Sri Rao.

According to Rao, Indian cuisine and Indian cinema have much in common: both feature bold colors, flavors and drama. Mingling gorgeous photography with colorful storytelling, he guides the reader on an exploratory journey of both healthy Indian American home cooking and well-loved Bollywood films, each one packed with dazzling songs and dances. Rao inherited a treasure trove of recipes from his mother and clearly these are some of his most precious links to the past. He has painstakingly updated these recipes for the modern American kitchen, combining easy-to-follow recipes with interesting cooking anecdotes and a variety of vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options. Light and healthy eating and uncompromising flavor are Rao's focus, a refreshing change from the heavier fare available in most Indian restaurants.

Rao's menus are tailored to the geographical and historical focus of each movie that he recommends. For example, the Oscar-nominated colonial drama Lagaan is paired with British-influenced masala-encrusted salmon, grilled asparagus and creamy mint chutney. Meanwhile, for the thriller NH10, set in the capital city of New Delhi, Rao recommends a quintessential North Indian spinach chicken curry and a popular vegetarian dish of chickpeas and masala.

By pairing full menus (starters, entrees and desserts) with thematically matched Bollywood films, Rao has created a distinctive guide for "dinner and a movie" experiences at home. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer

In The Dawn Watch, Maya Jasanoff (Liberty's Exile) highlights the position of early 20th-century fiction modernist Joseph Conrad at the height of Britain's leadership in commercial globalization. She focuses on four of Conrad's novels: The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness and Nostromo. All four grew out of his own experiences and touch on the great issues of his time: imperialism, moral conflict, immigration and global trade. Born in the Russian Ukraine, Conrad grew up with Polish nationalist parents shuttling in and out of prison. Largely raised by a taskmaster uncle, he went to Marseilles, France, at age 16 to become a sailor. Discouraged, Conrad left for London four years later to join Britain's merchant marine--an experience that made him fluent in English, provided a raft of stories and helped him understand many races and cultures of the world. As Jasanoff summarizes, "Conrad's novels are ethical injunctions. They meditate on how to behave in a globalizing world."

A history of the British shipping industry, colonialism, the commodity trade, slavery and indentured employment, The Dawn Watch is also a fine piece of biographical literary criticism. Illustrated with photographs, maps and facsimiles, it paints a picture of a solitary but attentive man comfortable with a world grown smaller by his travels. Perhaps Conrad was spurred by his uncle writing him after an attempted suicide in Marseilles: "You're a lazy-bones and a spendthrift... you fell into debt, you deliberately shot yourself... you have exceeded the limits of stupidity permitted at your age!" After that, "lazy-bones" Conrad became, and still stands, a towering master of modern English literature. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s openly challenged traditional perceptions of gender roles, particularly the notion that women were reliant on men for sexual pleasure. In Buzz, Hallie Lieberman reveals the fascinating role that sex toys played in the burgeoning feminist movement of mid-century America.

Sold as non-threatening "marital aids" in the early 20th century, these devices quickly turned political by the 1950s when they became symbols of female self-reliance. By the 1960s, sex educator and provocateur Betty Dodson taught women to explore their sexuality with vibrators and to let go of the shame associated with masturbation. Even within the feminist movement, there was reluctance to accept sex toys. While some women were unable to shake the stigma of using inanimate objects to achieve orgasm, radical feminists believed sex toys were symbols of male dominance. Meanwhile, dildos--unyielding symbols of aggressive male sexuality and distributed by sleazy male-run monopolies--slowly changed thanks in part to Gosnell Duncan, a paraplegic whose desire for sexual feeling led to the development of the modern silicone dildo.

Sex toys were instrumental in the emergence of the first feminist and LBGT bookstores and sex shops, which survived despite rejection by mainstream advertisers and a paternal government that equated them with deviance and obscenity. Today, sex toys have gone mainstream, with appearances in Sex and the City and Fifty Shades of Grey. Lieberman's history is an informative journey that goes from taboo to transcendence. --Frank Brasile, librarian

Seven Fallen Feathers tells the story of seven students, all of whom died in Thunder Bay, Ontario, between 2000 and 2011. All were Indigenous students forced to leave their family homes to seek an education; their deaths were glossed over by officials. But as Toronto Star journalist Tanya Talaga looked into the stories of these students' deaths, she was struck by the similarities the modern system bore to the one-time residential school system in Canada--a system that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has, in 2015, deemed a tool of cultural genocide against Canada's Aboriginal peoples.

Talaga draws the parallels between the historical school system and the deaths of these students in her detailed account. In doing so, she gives readers a history of residential schools--with their many horrors and abuses. Her research unveils a legacy of racism and colonialism that has resulted in poor educational prospects, abuse and mistreatment, high suicide rates and broken family structures, among other injustices.

Much of Seven Fallen Feathers feels imbued with a strange sense of déjà vu, in part because Talaga repeats facts multiple times across as many pages. But that impression also comes from the eerie similarity between the lives and deaths of these seven students--and, indeed, the similarities between these seven and the many who died or disappeared from residential schools as far back as the late 19th century. The repetition is what Talaga works hard to warn against: look at what's been done. Remember what has happened. Do not let it happen again. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

As Chirri and Chirra: The Snowy Day begins, the indistinguishable, ever-bicycling girls featured in two previous picture books consider the season's first snowfall a fine time for a ride. While pedaling through the woods, they spot a door made of ice. It opens into a café, where animals serve them hot punch. Chirri and Chirra proceed on their bikes through the icy structure, arriving at a great hall, where animals are enjoying activities like knitting, reading and napping. The girls join a game of marbles, which are "the frozen buds of many kinds of flowers," after which everyone heads to an indoor hot spring, where Chirri and Chirra submerge themselves and their marbles--"The water, now scented with flowers, is just the right temperature." Next up: sugar-sprinkled, rainbow-colored steamed buns. Although they're tired from their arduous afternoon of eating, marble play and aromatherapy, the girls follow everyone outdoors and end up snuggling with some bears in their igloo and watching shooting stars through a skylight.
 
Kaya Doi is on to something with her fantastical-nonsensical Chirri and Chirra books. While spa treatments and allaying stress may seem like grown-up interests, modern-day kids are living in an adult-made world of media supersaturation and technological pyrotechnics; the Chirri and Chirra books allow young readers to escape into an adult- and complication-free dreamscape of animals, sweets and unimpeded fun. Each of Doi's prettily delicate, pointillism-precise illustrations seems to be topped with a gauzy scrim, as if in effort not to overtax beleaguered young readers. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Note: Love, Santa is for children who are definitely, absolutely, positively ready to hear the truth--or already know it--about Santa Claus.

Sooner or later, families that celebrate Christmas arrive at a crossroads when the children begin to question just who this jolly fellow with a beard and a red suit really is. How exactly does he get down those chimneys? How does he know what all the little children wish for? And why does his handwriting on gift cards look strangely familiar?

In Martha Brockenbrough and Lee White's tender picture book, a girl named Lucy approaches that intersection between childhood and whatever-comes-next with trepidation. After years of sending Santa letters, doubt is beginning to curb her epistolary enthusiasm. Finally, when she is eight, Lucy writes one more letter, this time addressing it to her mother: "Dear Mom, Are you Santa?" Her mother's wise, loving response should win her the Mom of the Year award. "Santa is bigger than any one person," she writes to her daughter. "Santa is love and magic and hope and happiness...." It's the gentlest possible letdown to a childhood fantasy, just right for children who are ready to hear the truth about Santa.

Brockenbrough (The Game of Love and Death) manages to merge honesty and magic to help families in one of the most poignant of growing-up moments. Children will love opening the real envelopes attached to the pages of the book to pull out the letters between Lucy and Santa. Watercolor and mixed media illustrations by Lee White (What Are You Glad About? What Are You Mad About?; Emma and the Whale) capture a young girl's slow, natural dawning of understanding. Love, Santa is a coming-of-age story that will have readers of all ages wiping away a sentimental tear or two. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Although she has been writing letters to famous indie rock star Julian Oliver for three years, 16-year-old Taliah Sahar Abdallat is stunned when he shows up on her doorstep one day. This is not a case of a superfan worshiping at the altar of her celebrity hero, though. Ever since she found an old letter from Oliver to her Jordan-born mother, Taliah has suspected he is her father. All the clues add up, from the "glacier-like blue" eye color they share ("I mean exact same eyes, dude") to the fact that Oliver is from the same small town in Indiana where Taliah's mother, Lena, got her undergraduate degree. And then there's that letter: "Lena. Please give me one more chance. This time it will be different. I promise. Always, Julian."

Now Taliah is face to face with her rock-star father at her Ohio door, her unwitting mother is in Paris for work, and Taliah is presented with an invitation to go on a road trip--literally and figuratively--through her secret family history.

Teen readers of Here We Are Now, even those who don't have long-lost celebrity fathers, will relate perfectly to Taliah. She is confused, feeling simultaneously angry at her mother for keeping her father a secret and disloyal to her mother for going with Oliver to Indiana: "My heart pulling me in one direction, my head pulling me in the other. There was a tectonic shift happening inside of me." Jasmine Warga (My Heart and Other Black Holes) writes with fluid authenticity about seeking (and finding) one's identity in the most unlikely places. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor