In The Ice House, her second novel, Laura Lee Smith (Heart of Palm) weaves another intricate, heartfelt tale of a family pushed to its extremities by tragedy and drawn close by newfound resilience.

Johnny and Pauline MacKinnon are in a tough spot. They've spent the last few years avoiding the topic of Johnny's estranged son, Corran, whom Johnny disavowed after years of heroin relapses. They are also facing the closure of their Florida ice factory due to a gas leak. To make matters worse, Johnny may have a brain tumor and must undergo surgery in a few weeks. He decides to return to Scotland to end the silence between him and his son and to meet his newborn granddaughter, but his plan is soon derailed by another tragedy. Meanwhile, Pauline faces her own moral and emotional struggles on the home front.

Like most of Smith's characters, Johnny, Pauline and their supporting cast are delicately constructed, a testament to Smith's rich perception. While the bulk of this novel, like her first, focuses on the steamy, hidden complexities of Florida life, Smith has now widened her canvas to include Scotland and the transatlantic complications of generational identity. She crafts each setting with specificity and care, balancing these outwardly opposite atmospheres with ease and grace. Despite its seemingly simple prose style, The Ice House's complex characters, settings and subplots pack an emotional punch that is sure to impress readers with its insight and heft. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

On the Mediterranean Sea, four boats come into contact. One is an old commercial vessel, another a luxury ocean liner with thousands of passengers, the third a water rescue and patrol boat for the Spanish government, and the last a lonely raft of Algerian migrants trying to make their way to a better life. Collision, by acclaimed German author Merle Kröger, shows the reverberations of small decisions across our modern, globally connected world, where the difference between life and death for one person is the product of a thousand offhand choices by others.

Based on the current European migrant crisis, Collision focuses on the hours before and after a small encounter between the raft, piloted by a human trafficker, and the cruise ship, strikingly named The Spirit of Europe. Pivoting among characters on those boats (plus people on a trade ship that happens to be in the area and on the ship sent out to rescue the migrants), the novel has a massive cast for its small page count. But it's a testament to Kröger's verve that she is able to widen the scope of her narrative without ever losing her sense of direction. The book is about what happens when people and projects unexpectedly collide, and by having such a large cast, she can frame her plot from a healthy plethora of perspectives. Collision brilliantly weaves many disparate threads together, showing how everyone is far more connected than they think. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.

Anca Szilágyi is one of Seattle's emerging stars, having written impeccable pieces for the Stranger, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Electric Literature. Her debut novel, Daughters of the Air, takes Szilágyi's sharp sense of detail and fabulist sensibilities to new heights in the story of young Tatiana "Pluta" Spektor.

Alternating between Buenos Aires in 1978 and New York City in 1980, reverberations from the absence of Pluta's father haunt her coming of age. An unwavering academic, he is one of the disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War. Pluta's mother and aunt devise a plan to save the girl from further trauma by sending her to boarding school in Connecticut. Left to her own devices, however, Pluta flees to the city to escape her exile. There, she discovers a guileful metropolis, rife with the machinations of men, as she wrestles private demons and the unnerving new flesh protruding from her back.

Szilágyi writes sinewy, visceral prose. She evokes the noise, smells and grime of late 20th-century Brooklyn streets, the lush serenity in an Argentinian home prior to tragedy and a family shattered by a faceless political force. All the while, the specter of magical realism lurks just behind Pluta, enhancing the anxious nature of solitary adolescent fumbling, and complicating the hubris of her first independent steps. A striking debut from a writer to watch, Daughters of the Air is gritty yet gorgeous, severe yet convivial, as it navigates uncertain times in a treacherous world. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness

The Years, Months, Days contains two novellas by Yan Lianke, translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas. The title story, featuring just two characters, opens: "In the year of the great drought, time was baked to ash; and if you tried to grab the sun, it would stick to your palm like charcoal." All the other residents of a tiny mountain village have fled, but an old man known only as the Elder does not think he'd survive the trip. He stays behind, with a blind dog for companionship, to tend a single stalk of corn, in the hopes that when the villagers return, the kernels he nurtures will restart their community.

The second novella, "Marrow," is also about a grim struggle for existence. The father of four disabled children, out of guilt for his heredity, kills himself, leaving his wife to raise them alone. His ghost remains to accompany her and converse with her, in a twist that could be magical or merely her fantasy.

The common themes of these bleak stories are clear: hunger, solitude, the searing strain of existence. In a brief, insightful translator's note, Rojas observes that Lianke's work often transforms such abstract needs into literal ones. Indeed, the author's descriptions are synesthetic: smells "roll noisily"; gazes produce a "crackling sound"; and a wolf's roar is purplish-red. In a spare but artful style, Lianke presents the sun's rays as physical realities, which have measurable mass and can be cut or shattered. His characters inhabit a bleak, harsh world. The Years, Months, Days is for readers who appreciate grim lessons, magical realism and lovely, lyric prose. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Nary a seashell bustier nor a golden singing voice makes an appearance in this aquatic horror thriller from Mira Grant (Feedback), a pseudonym of urban fantasy author Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway).

In 2015, the Imagine Entertainment corporation sent the Atargatis into deep waters to film a cryptozoological documentary about mermaid sightings. The crew vanished, the only clue to their fate a shadowy, violent video showing an attack by voracious creatures evocative of mermaids. Now, seven years later, Imagine readies its new ship, the Melusine, to answer once and for all the question of what lurks in the deep. The crew includes Olivia, a media personality popular with the nerdy set; Tory, a marine biologist whose sister disappeared on the Atargatis; and Dr. Jillian Toth, the world's foremost scientific expert on mermaids. At their disposal is a facility with sign language that may allow for communication with the creatures, and three dolphins that volunteered to help in exchange for release at sea. The voyage steers hard toward disaster when the ship's presence awakens the terrors that dwell in the Challenger Deep, bringing clawed fins and hungry mouths of needle-sharp teeth to the Melusine for an easy meal.

Grant draws inspiration from clearly thorough research into marine biology, using it to create legitimately terrifying monsters that could have inspired folktales around the globe. Engrossing and adrenaline-fueled, Into the Drowning Deep succeeds Grant's novella Rolling in the Deep with blood-soaked scares that balance thought-provoking philosophical dilemmas. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

When Herbert Hoover characterized Franklin D. Roosevelt as "a chameleon on plaid," he intended his remark to be derogatory. Historian Robert Dallek does the opposite in this expansive biography, choosing to portray the insult as testimony to Roosevelt's political acumen and reflective of his status as one of the three greatest American presidents.

In this in-depth, engaging narrative, Dallek (An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963; Nixon and Kissinger) explores Roosevelt's focus on the importance of considering public opinion while governing. ("It's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead--and to find no one there," Roosevelt once remarked to his speechwriter.) Dallek successfully argues that while reliance and emphasis on polling data may appear to be a product of contemporary campaigns, Roosevelt's keen understanding of trends, views, patterns and demographics--knowledge he acquired early in his presidency--helped to establish the foundation for today's practices.

Roosevelt knew "never to get too far ahead of public opinion in reaching for a policy goal. To him, politics was an art, and he was an exceptional practitioner of the craft that underlay it." As Roosevelt demonstrated, Dallek notes that knowing where your followers are at any given time and being able to move them slowly in your intended direction without losing sight of them is among the qualities of successful political leaders in any era.

Historians often regard Roosevelt's extensive life and legacy as befitting multi-volume biographies. While his focus is on Roosevelt's political prowess, Dallek doesn't distill any aspects of his subject's wide-reaching legacy as he offers scholars and casual students of history alike a thorough and comprehensive overview of the United States' 32nd president. --William H. Firman Jr., historian and writer

Ezra Pound is one of the most enigmatic of American poets. As early as 1916, Carl Sandburg suggested that Pound was both a "wanton and mocker, poseur, trifler and vagrant," and as important as "Keats [was] in a preceding epoch." In 1943, after hundreds of rambling anti-Semitic, pro-Mussolini, anti-war radio broadcasts in Italy, Pound was indicted for treason. A jury quickly concurred with his plea of insanity. Told in the first person by Daniel Swift (Shakespeare's Common Prayers), The Bughouse is the history of Pound's 12 years in Washington, D.C.'s Saint Elizabeths Hospital for the criminally insane. It is the story of a world-renowned poet gone off the rails--a poet known less for his rarely read 800 pages of "Cantos" than for his encouragement of fledgling poets, his advice to established stars like Hemingway and Cummings, and most famously, his line editing of Eliot's "The Waste Land."

While incarcerated in Saint Elizabeths' almost 300-acre campus with more than 7,000 other "patients," Pound skirted institutional restrictions to enjoy a steady stream of visiting poets like William Carlos Williams, Robert Lowell and T.S. Eliot. Immersed in the story, Swift walks the grounds of the long-closed hospital, combs archival letters and case files, and interviews as many surviving members of Pound's entourage as he can find. With an English professor's eye, he explicates many of the poet's pieces, and those of his visitors, to better understand the man and the milieu. Less interested in his polemics and "madness," Swift instead focuses on Pound's impact on emerging poets. He sees that time after time "a young man goes out to the bughouse and returns a poet." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

"American kids now find themselves... overworked, underplayed, gold-starred, and tired, wondering where all their time went." This observation forms the foundation of Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, Malcolm Harris's compelling examination of not just what characterizes millennials (at minimum, a birth year between 1980 and 2000) but the forces that have shaped the generation and the hyper-competitive state it finds itself in.

Harris (who was born in 1988) argues that millennial experiences are broad and complicated, but at their core are labor and competition. He cites research from a variety of echelons and specialties, probing how and why millennials have emerged to be super-educated yet underemployed, calling out both conservatives and progressives for exacerbating or misrepresenting the situation.

Harris culls from studies, journals, novels, sports writing, economists, sociologists and psychologists, exploring what it means to be a millennial. His research is creative and well-curated, quoting Hanna Rosin (NPR, Slate) one minute, and comedian Chris Rock the next: "Do you know what it means when someone pays you minimum wage? I would pay you less, but it's against the law."

Humor keeps Harris's project from being altogether frightening. He considers possible responses to contemporary problems with delightfully deemed "Bop It Solutions," in reference to a popular 1990s toy. Among these are Buy It, Vote It, Give It and Protest It, but Harris acknowledges that none of the options are as simple as they sound. They exist alongside each other, each with distinct possibilities and problems--just like generations. --Katie Weed, freelance writer and reviewer

Fans of Michael Perry (The Jesus Cow)--author, musician, pig farmer, EMT volunteer and radio host--know that his book on Montaigne will be a look at the 16th-century French philosopher through a 21st-century Midwestern lens. Readers new to Perry will soon feel he's an old friend, as his conversational style makes Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy thoroughly accessible and entertaining.

"The journey began on a gurney," Perry writes, explaining how the Wisconsin storyteller became fascinated with the French nobleman. They shared an affliction, and once Perry discovered Montaigne's kidney stone essay, he was hooked, "all thanks to a crippling pain in my flank." He pairs his study of Montaigne with personal experiences and reflections, and thinks the nobleman would approve. "He shares up-culture and down-culture with equivalent alacrity," but also notes, "the desire to write about Montaigne puts me in heavy traffic on a tricycle." His reflections circle back to what he knows. Of aristocracy, Montaigne writes it is "inhuman and unjust to make much of this accidental privilege of fortune." Perry applies this to America's "blithe riche." Ambling from Montaigne tales to anecdotes about Perry's days on the farm, the parallels always surface. A hilarious, self-deprecating bit on Perry's absentmindedness in the chapter "Confound the Fool" quotes the Frenchman, "I change subject violently and chaotically. My pen and my mind both go a-roaming."

Perry's down-to-earth take on centuries-old writings invites slow reading, perhaps not straight through, with equal time for reflection and laughter. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

According to clinical psychologist and popular TED speaker Meg Jay (The Defining Decade), before age 20, some 60%-75% of children and teens encounter at least one significant adverse event or circumstance--such as the death of a parent; verbal, physical or sexual abuse; life in a household with a drug addict or alcoholic. Jay's Supernormal is a wide-ranging study of young people who overcome more than the average amount of such adversity and don't merely endure, but go on to "soar to unexpected heights." Both disturbing and inspiring, it offers an unretouched picture of the profound challenges facing millions of American youth and a map of the path some may be able to follow out of their despair.

Rejecting a simplistic definition of resilience as merely the ability to "bounce back" from adversity, Jay argues that it represents a "much more complicated and courageous" form of adaptation, what she calls a "heroic, painful, wondrous and often perilous journey." The many remarkable accounts she offers provide dramatic support for that thesis and justify the "supernormal" tag she attaches to her subjects.

Jay draws extensively on her clinical practice. With empathy and the observational talent of a good storyteller, she reveals the painful memories her patients have shared with her. She blends these accounts seamlessly with the stories of well-known people--politicians, businesspeople, entertainers and athletes--who overcame profound childhood trauma and went on to lead lives of surpassing achievement. For all its darkness, Supernormal's inspiring message and Jay's portraits of how to act on it make this a valuable and important book. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

From "a Big Bang" to the existence of humans, Sibert Honor medalist Don Brown (Drowned City; America Is Under Attack) and geologist Mike Perfit boil down more than 14 billion years of planetary evolution in Older Than Dirt, a delightful, informative and engrossing work of graphic nonfiction. Using a brainy groundhog to narrate, Brown and Perfit educate their readers--and the groundhog's worm friend--about the incredible stages of Earth's history.

In an effort to make billion- and million-year time spans accessible to young readers, the work uses a metaphorical 24-hour day, plotting the course of Earth's explosive beginning, through numerous transformations, to the age when humans came into existence. That the arrival of humans occurred at the very final minute of this "day" highlights our relatively new presence on Earth more forcefully than the concept of thousands of years. With a combination of humor and analogies ("Earth's crust cracked like the shell of a hard-boiled egg") that middle graders can relate to, the pair turn highly complex scientific evidence into fun, engaging and memorable content.

Brown's powerful illustrations emphasize the extraordinary interactions of nature and the results of those interactions: an image of thriving ocean life next to a sea of fish skeletons, a lush landscape juxtaposed with a scorched earth, a plate collision resulting in extensive mountain ranges. He conveys elaborate movement, temperature and energy through basic color, stroke and texture. The small details added to his storytellers, like earmuffs, sunglasses and swimming flippers, inject ticklish humor that adds to their small, witty side comments.

Older Than Dirt is aimed at middle-grade readers, but the entertaining illustrations and fascinating information will enthrall audiences of any age. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

From the moment eight-year-old Aly Raisman saw a tape of the 1996 U.S. Olympic women's gymnastics team winning the gold medal, she was "absolutely convinced that [she] would one day go to the Olympics, too." She understood these were "strong, confident young women--and [she] wanted to be just like them."

Even though young Aly assumed her future was all planned out, she had no idea how tough it would be to accomplish her goals. Aly had already begun taking gymnastics classes, which she loved, and she was prepared to work hard for her dream. She marveled at the "power and coordination" of the more advanced girls and vowed, over and over, to be "as good as they are." Aly enjoyed the challenges and kept moving up to more elite tiers of competition. There were plenty of times that she knew people doubted her--she says "the story of my life in gymnastics is an underdog one." But her love for the sport never wavered and her fierce work ethic meant "she always tried her best... always gave what she had."

Aly's ability to stay the course in the face of negativity is inspiring. Criticism of all kinds, and even sexual abuse at the hands of a team doctor, did not deter her. She has emerged, post-Olympics, as a strong advocate for empowering young women to feel good about themselves, and to speak up, no matter what. Her story is heartfelt and funny, exciting and inspiring. Aly concludes this must-read with "The Fierce Guide to Life," 20-plus encouraging points for her readers to consider. --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI