In the newspaper, Cy Bellman reads of bones pulled from the Kentucky mud--enormous, ancient bones, belonging to some mythic creature taller than the tallest trees. Grieving his lost wife, he is now transported: he all but stops eating and sleeping, too disturbed to give his full attention to his work as a breeder of mules or to his 10-year-old daughter, Bess. He can't help but go in search of the beasts that have so captured his imagination, and leaves Bess and their small farm in rural Pennsylvania in the care of his hard-edged sister, Julie, with the occasional help of an odd neighbor, Elmer. With some weapons, trinkets for trade and a new stovepipe hat, Bellman travels west, toward the wild frontier.

West is Carys Davies's first novel (after two short story collections, The Redemption of Galen Pike and Some New Ambush), and it is an epic tale of early 19th-century adventure in a small package. With fewer than 200 pages, its scale is nonetheless mighty, conjuring both history and fable. Davies's simple, conversational prose stays out of the way of her gripping plot.

This quick, compelling read is a novel about family commitments, small-town agitations and the irresistible, fanatic pull of the unknown. Bellman is either enchanted or suffering a good old-fashioned midlife crisis. Davies writes of small fates: hopeful young Bess, bitter Julie, the enigma of slovenly Elmer. It may prove as hard for Bellman to find happiness at home as to find the monstrous "animal incognitum" he seeks. Readers, however, are the richer for his efforts. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulie

Loosely linked by a theme--a need to possess--the 12 pieces in Property are succinct standalones, each a satisfying tale of people and their stuff. Lionel Shriver (The Mandibles) sets her stories in both the U.K. and the U.S., with characters like a narcissistic young freeloader "tempted to regard her physical presence as a gift" and a suburban mother resigned to "old-lady the evening away."

One of the collection's two novellas, "The Standing Chandelier" follows a couple's decades-long (mostly platonic) friendship, irrevocably affected by one's engagement; a presentation of an elaborate piece of the other's art as a wedding gift seals the trio's respective relationships. In "The Royal Male," a postman snoops through other people's letters, eventually unsealing a brighter future for himself.

Many tales center on houses. An Atlanta couple's over-30 son "doesn't seem to find adult life especially compelling," but his interest in the family split-level is devious. Graham and Rosalind both love their heavily-mortgaged Georgian in Sheffield, and when they decide to divorce, neither can afford to move out. A New York couple rents a house they dub "the Little Dump," but when they buy it, his sense of humor is subsumed by an obsession with home improvements. In the darkest home-ownership story, a woman celebrates snagging a foreclosed property, until the house clearly tells her to go away. A happier ending awaits the recently-widowed woman who struggles in her late husband's garden, confronting the neighbor whose "Self-Seeding Sycamore" pollinates her yard.

Shriver's stories feel complete, with a sense that the characters have fully embraced their quests for property. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco

German and Japanese novelist Yoko Tawada (Where Europe Begins, Facing the Bridge) has written a strangely beautiful and hauntingly powerful story in The Emissary. It touches on mortality with a far-expanding discourse on the joys of life amidst suffering in a fantastic version of post-Fukushima Japan.

Natural disaster and contamination have devastated a large area of the main island, cutting it off from the rest of the world. Spiders and crows are the surviving wildlife. The hale and seemingly immortal centenarians shoulder the burdens of the labor force, while children are frail and prematurely aged, orphans who barely walk, malnourished due to poor digestion.

Three narrators--108-year old novelist Yoshiro, his wife, Marika, and their orphaned great-grandson Mumei--describe the impact this devastation and isolation has wrought on their lives. Yoshiro, filled with devotion, tenderness and wisdom for Mumei, constantly frets over his maladies while dwelling on the mistakes of the past. Mumei, in turn, accepts his fate with stoicism and resolve, but worries about Yoshiro's immortal burden. Marika is a member of a secret society charged with identifying children to serve as emissaries abroad, scientific subjects in a study to prevent disaster-based diseases. She tries to subvert Mumei's identification as an emissary for fear of losing him.

Tawada paints in stark lyricism a visually stunning metaphor of the separation between youth and elderly, vitality and sickness. Most important, The Emissary illustrates how human companionship--and its impending loss--is the thread by which one ultimately clings to life. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant

When Timothy Gandy's job as a graphic designer is made redundant, the 55-year-old Brit discovers that he's too old to find a new job and too young to retire. Taking stock, he realizes he's invisible in the shadow of his domineering wife--a woman involved with social and philanthropic causes, and to whom he's been married for 40 years. And he doesn't always see eye-to-eye with his adult children. Son Oliver is a successful barrister. He and his wife are highfalutin, materialistic intellectuals. Middle daughter Alice is single, a distant and reclusive librarian. However, good-natured Rosie, a schoolteacher, shares a bond with her father. She understands him. She and her conservationist, naturalist beau struggle to make ends meet, while happily raising their daughter together.

The sting of unemployment followed by a shattering personal loss convinces Timothy to follow his long-repressed yearnings for travel. Despite staunch objections from his family--all except Rosie--he finally asserts himself. He sets off on a grand tour of Europe modeled in the style of those taken by young men of means in the late 18th century. Timothy leaves his Chichester, England, home and begins an exciting journey that takes him through France and Italy, where he makes unexpected new friends that change him and his outlook on life.

Noted gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh (Bring Me Home) plants seeds of hope in another wholesome, richly entertaining story. Readers will be eager to accompany his sensitive, winning protagonist through an itinerary of many adventures. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

William Boyle's The Lonely Witness is a knockout combination of in-depth character work, Brooklyn atmosphere and straight-up gritty noir. The devotion Boyle (Gravesend) demonstrates for character, story and place is perhaps the one unadulterated emotion on display in a story imbued with ambiguous morality and loyalty.

When Amy Falconetti's girlfriend Alessandra leaves her to pursue a career in Hollywood, she rebounds by quitting her bar job, ditching her semi-goth style, moving into a basement apartment and returning to church. Wanting to be of service, Amy volunteers as a Eucharistic minister, providing communion to house-bound parishioners. When elderly Mrs. Epifanio expresses concern that her caregiver's son Victor has been coming in her stead and shutting himself in Mrs. E's bedroom, Amy takes it upon herself to investigate.

Surreptitiously trailing Victor stirs up Amy's childhood recollections of repeatedly following a neighbor she witnessed committing an act of violence. Tracking Victor provides a sense of control over her present turmoil and traumatic memories, but Amy is soon caught up in a risky game she can't, and might not want to, escape.

Boyle beautifully uses the first half of the narrative to set the stage for a volatile, fast-moving back end. The potential cost of Amy continuing her behavior is ramped up by the sudden return of Alessandra and the appearance of Amy's long-thought-dead father, who is willing to do anything to earn her favor. The Lonely Witness is a fabulous character piece wrapped in layers of intrigue and subterfuge. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

The dynamic duo of indie filmmaking, Mark and Jay Duplass, have crafted a heartfelt memoir that doubles as a compelling and insightful instruction manual for those seeking a career in film and television. Together the brothers have written and directed four critically acclaimed movies (including Jeff, Who Lives at Home and Safety Not Guaranteed), created two HBO series (Togetherness, Room 104), produced dozens of award-winning indie films (Tangerine) and acted in various films and TV shows. The "inseparable soulmates" have had an amazing trajectory since 2003, when their seven-minute short This Is John (improvised in one day and shot on a $3 mini-DV tape) was accepted at the Sundance Film Festival.

The engaging and endearing siblings take turns narrating chapters that amiably hopscotch from fine-tuning a 10-best film list to offering a spirited defense of Karate Kid Part II and the musical group Air Supply, and from sharing short stories to instructing future filmmakers on "how to get somewhere when you're coming from nowhere." Throughout the book, the brothers offer a perceptive insider's look. They detail their creative process, how the entertainment industry works and how they have managed to build a successful career with the kinds of projects they want and very little studio interference. The two forged successful careers by bucking traditions (early on, they stopped taking "general meetings" with studios), believing in themselves and being decent human beings.

Film buffs, future auteurs and fans of Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without a Crew and Christine Vachon's Shooting to Kill will find Like Brothers exciting and essential reading. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

If your kids turned outlaw with things like Senior Skip Day and TPing or egging a neighbor's house, count yourself lucky. Journalist and biographer Neal Thompson (A Curious Man) and his wife, Mary, raised two boys with a skateboard obsession and deep immersion in its rogue ways of weed, hip-hop, tats, graffiti and in-your-face rebellion. Kickflip Boys captures the trials of their parenting of Sean and Leo. It's also a reflection on Thompson's own wild youth and an up-close peek into skateboarding subculture. White, liberal professionals, Neal and Mary were raised to be independent and bend the rules. So, as Thompson notes, they "adopted our parents' style of governing--as in: not too much." When their boys shunned academics and traditional sports for freewheeling skateboarding, they scrambled to find a plan B. With eyes glued to YouTube videos of "skaters... graffiti artists, rappers, and street-fight beat downs," and to websites like Vice and WorldStarHipHop, Sean and Leo soon went off the rails.

Rich in the argot of skaters and bursting with all the humor, tears, pride and regret that a parent can't avoid, Kickflip Boys describes the Thompsons' humbling journey to guide their sons safely to maturity. Unlike some memoirs, it has a happy ending: "It wasn't always pretty, but... we emerged on the other side of it all, messy and loving, battle-hardened and intact." In Thompson's self-deprecating, informal prose, Kickflip Boys depicts a wild family trip worth the potholes. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

How many people have considered running away with the carnival when it arrives in town? In The Electric Woman, Tessa Fontaine does just that, joining the World of Wonders traveling sideshow for a season.

Starting out as a "bally girl" in the front of the tent, Fontaine learns to escape from handcuffs, wear a boa constrictor around her neck for hours at a time, eat fire and do simple magic tricks to draw the crowd in toward the inner tent where the main attractions are. As the grueling season progresses, Fontaine moves inside, transforming into the four-legged woman, swallowing swords and eventually becoming her ultimate goal, the electric woman.

Throughout her intriguing memoir, she shares the minute details of the hard, gritty work she does as a carnival hand, and offers portraits of her fellow performers and sketchy carnie men. Hand-in-hand with this lengthy narrative is the story of Fontaine's mother, who suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke, followed by many smaller ones, three years before Fontaine joins the show. Her mother was in and out of the hospital many times, but despite her severe handicaps, she eventually was able to travel with Fontaine's stepfather to Italy, a dream trip they'd been planning for years. The Electric Woman is a story of loss, love and acceptance, of learning to overcome one's fears and insecurities and of letting go of what was in order to accept what is. She shows readers how to live each day to the fullest despite obstacles--or perhaps, because of them. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Before we were defined by our Converse Chucks, Adidas Stans, Puma Clydes and Nike Jordans, canvas-and-rubber shoes were the footwear of choice for British croquet ladies and were called Plimsolls. After rubber entrepreneur Charles Goodyear developed vulcanizing in 1844, to prevent soles from melting in the summer heat, cheap waterproof "sneakers" began their ascent from kids' PE shoes to their arrival on NBA hardwood, Fashion Week runways and the BET Hip-Hop Award stage.

In Kicks, journalist Nicholas Smith recounts the eclectic history of this ubiquitous slice of Americana. Sneakers may have made their first sport appearance on croquet lawns, but their widespread adoption followed the rise of competitive games like tennis, basketball, track and field, and long-distance running. Smith credits the Converse Rubber Shoe Company with the marketing breakthrough of celebrity endorsement when it put its former basketball player and salesman Chuck Taylor's name on its shoe and sent him on the road pitching his kicks--what Smith calls "playing Johnny Basketballseed."

After the success of Converse Chucks, no shoe could capture market share without some kind of star power seal of approval. The big brands courted sports hotshots like Michael Jordan, championship teams like the 1954 West German World Cup winner, underground heroes like skateboarding's Dogtown Z-boys and music luminaries like Run-DMC. Smith runs down many tangents of this $18 billion market and the frequent ups and downs of its global players. An offbeat history of the athletic shoe world with cameo biographies of those who built it, Kicks is a sneakerhead's dream. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Daisy Khan is a highly educated Muslim community leader for whom spirituality, the promotion of peace, gender equality and human dignity all go hand in hand. Born with Wings is an intimate and engaging portrayal of the conflicted journey Khan's faith takes after she moves to the United States from Kashmir, and her activism on behalf of Muslim women worldwide.

Khan is searingly honest about her crisis of faith following the 1979 Iranian revolution and the hijacking of Islam by extremists. Working as a young architect in New York, she found herself unable to share any aspect of religion with those who committed terrible atrocities in its name. Eventually she found grace and a spiritual home at a TriBeCa mosque and married the mosque's imam, a charismatic, thoroughly modern and open-minded religious leader who fully supports her reformist work.

Khan walks a path similar to that of young Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai in her tenacity and fearlessness when faced with ignorance and extremist ideology. Both have that fire-in-the-belly determination to overcome obstacles thrown in their path by religious zealots and both understand that peace often comes at a price. Despite resistance from many quarters, Khan is a tireless ambassador for the rights of women, a tolerant and balanced interpretation of the Quran and the pursuit of peace and inclusion.

Born with Wings is gilded with references to the mystical poetry of Rumi, which serves as serene inspiration and a guiding light for Khan as she embraces her determination to end the harmful practice of patriarchy within Islam. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer

Riding the subway after a visit to the pool with his grandmother, young Julián notices three glamorous fellow passengers he's convinced are mermaids. "Julián LOVES mermaids." On the stroll home, he asks, "Abuela, did you see the mermaids?" Walking in sync, she replies, "I saw them, mijo." That confirmation is all Julián needs to reveal, "Abuela, I am also a mermaid."

At home, Abuela announces she's off to take a bath. Left alone, Julián gets down to the business of self-expression. Stripping his outer layers, he crowns himself with ferns and flowers, drapes himself to create a curtain-tail and strikes a perfect pose. But when his towel-wrapped Abuela re-emerges, her unexpected look of disapproval makes his fronds droop: "Uh-oh."

Her silent exit makes Julián self-consciously reexamine himself in the nearest mirror, until Abuela returns to surprise him with the crowning accessory: pink pearls. "For me, Abuela?" the delighted child asks. "For you, Julián." Abuela takes his hand and leads him outside. Their short stroll culminates in a beachside Carnival-like celebration, where wide-eyed Julián whispers with incredulous joy: "Mermaids." While he shyly peeks around a corner, Abuela confirms, "Like you, mijo," as she beckons him forward with an outstretched hand: " 'Let's join them.' And they did."

The words here are succinctly sparse; the art is spectacular, proof that a picture is worth a thousand words. What Abuela and Julián don't tell one another with their voices, debut author/illustrator Jessica Love inventively shows on the page. Love's Broadway performance background is clearly at play throughout, with many of her characters flowingly, enviably swathed. Across her watercolor, gouache and ink spreads, Love captures the transformative power of being seen. Her affecting combination of the literary and the visual results in a powerful affirmation of individuality, creative expression and unconditional acceptance. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Ship It's 16-year-old Claire is a fan of the television show Demon Heart, a Supernatural-like program with male leads Forest and Rico. Claire is also an extremely popular writer of online gay fanfic (fan-written fiction) about Forest and Rico's characters: demon hunter Smokey and demon Heart. To Claire and many fans of Demon Heart, there are clear on-screen displays of sexual tension between Smokey and Heart. But when Claire challenges Forest about this tension at a local fan convention, Forest adamantly denies it. This is a PR nightmare for the show and Claire is whisked away by the show's producers to travel with the team to other conventions with the hope that this will remedy the situation. Claire, however, sees this as an opportunity to sway the showrunners into making SmokeHeart canon. In one of her early conversations with Forest, Claire retorts, "You think all these people are here for you? They don't know you.... You're just a haircut with a battle ax."

On the road, Claire meets Tess, who has read Claire's fanfic and shares her love of Demon Heart. Claire grapples with her burgeoning feelings for Tess, worrying about defining her own sexuality, especially when she sees the confidence Tess exudes. As Claire stumbles into romance and works to make SmokeHeart a reality, alternating chapters give Forest's perspective (and some very sexy snippets of Claire's fic, too).

Britta Lundin, a staff writer on the television show Riverdale, creates a pitch-perfect teenage voice in Ship It, showing the importance of fandom communities and the emotional growth of fans and actors. Readers unfamiliar with the vernacular of fandom will have no trouble following along with the core of the story and any reader is sure to leave Lundin's work feeling buoyed and ready to take on their own battles. --Clarissa Hadge, assistant bookstore manager, Trident Booksellers & Cafe, Boston, Mass.