Elin Hilderbrand (The Identicals, The Perfect Couple) is well known for her Nantucket settings and familial drama. But Winter in Paradise stands apart, as it's not set on Nantucket. This novel is still full of family tension amid a gorgeous island setting--this time in the Caribbean.

Irene Steele has been happily married for 35 years when she gets a shocking call. Her husband, Russell, has died in a helicopter crash off the coast of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Since Russell was supposedly on a business trip, Irene is left reeling. She and her two grown sons--Baker, a stay-at-home Houston father, and Cash, a ski instructor in Colorado--head to the Caribbean to find out more about Russell's death.

To her horror, Irene discovers that Russell had a second life in St. John, including a massive villa and a mistress, Rosie, who also died in the crash. Things get more complicated when Irene meets and likes Rosie's father. Meanwhile, Cash and Baker, who have never gotten along, are busy keeping secrets from each other and their mother as they, too, grapple with their father's betrayal.

Hilderbrand has created an entertaining, poignant and immensely likable family in the Steeles and an irresistible setting in her depiction of St. John. Sure to inspire wanderlust and leave readers desperate for the next entry in this projected trilogy, Winter in Paradise is a perfect blend of beach read and cozy winter novel. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

In a year that may or may not be the present, but is certainly not too long ago, an unnamed man hires an unnamed woman to investigate the disappearance of his second wife. Except her disappearance may not be one at all, but rather a flight--from him, with another man, to the taiga, a boreal forest that might be in any number of cold, northern countries.

There's a lot we don't know in The Taiga Syndrome, but the lack of detail makes Cristina Rivera Garza's (The Iliac Crest) strange story all the more haunting. Allusions to classic fairy tales (the crumbs left behind Hansel and Gretel, and wolf of Little Red Riding Hood) underscore the dark nature. Garza doesn't stop with fairy tales, however; she inverts traditional tropes from any number of genres to great effect. The subject of the mystery is not the crime or even the victim, but the detective. The unreliable narrator reports on her own unreliability. She and her translator never believe they will succeed in their search, but start--and continue--anyway.

Garza's prose, translated from Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, is stark and strange and lyrical, told in a series of memories written down by the unnamed narrator. "I remember the passage of the light. The word: 'filter.' The word: 'wedge.' Above all, I remember that everything we see, we see through a crack. I remember, right now, how it saves us." It's unclear whether anyone is indeed saved by this in the end--but that's not the point, really. The Taiga Syndrome is not about answers, but about questions: Where is the line between the real and imagined, and does it even matter in the end? --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Kathleen Kaufman's atmospheric novel takes its mood from foggy moors and craggy highlands. In Hag, Scotland is home to long lines of women with mystical and powerful energies, all waiting for one who will be the culmination of their destiny.

Call them what you will: hags, goddesses, witches--certain women have been endowed with mysterious and sometimes frightening gifts for centuries. Kaufman builds on the Gaelic myth of Cailleach, a divine hag. Cailleach bears daughters with powerful gifts, and these daughters bring their daughters into the world, preserving their clan and powers. However, as generations pass, the daughters become removed from their origins and remember little of the purpose for their gifts. Alternating with lore is the contemporary story of Alice Kyles--a descendant many times removed from Cailleach--whose gift of seeing the future is sublimated even as her daughter, Coira, is learning to harness unimaginable forces.

Hag moves across time, showing how the past and present are paths "occurring on top of each other, none greater than the next, but different." Hags live among men but, as Alice's mother tells her, are "never entirely in this world; even now, we both have one foot on the other side of the mist." The culmination of this story of divine women is Coira's predestined path to the other side, bringing "a time of infinite peace to the world of man." Hag is a mystical story of strong feminine power, perfect for fans of The Power and Circe. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

In 2041, antibiotic-resistant bacteria have wiped out millions across the globe. Microbiology student Rory and her meteorologist father, Byron, are among the lucky ones who've survived and are searching for a cure. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has its own team of scientists looking for a way to halt the progression of these deadly germs. There's reason to believe, though, that General Kessler, the man in charge of this elite group, is less interested in finding an antidote than in the money he can make if a cure is discovered. He believes an answer lies with Rory and the experiments her mother, another scientist, performed on her, which may have changed her DNA. When Rory and her father come under attack, she flees their farm with a mysterious stranger named Navy who appears suddenly, vowing to protect her and lead her to safety.

Debut novelist Rachael Sparks has taken a very plausible concept of a mass human die-off due to super-bacteria, thrown in some romance and espionage and written a fast-paced sci-fi thriller. Although the characters are a bit predictable, they are likable and creative in their endeavors. The concept of a high government official interested solely in monetary gain is credible, and the settings and romantic scenes are well-written, with rapidly shifting points of view. Resistant brings us into a world that may be approaching sooner than you might realize. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Jasmine Guillory (The Wedding Date) opens her lively novel The Proposal at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Nikole "Nik" Paterson--a young freelance journalist and not a baseball fan--is sharing a day out with Fisher, her "perfectly nice, incredibly boring" beau of five months. Nik gets the surprise of her life, though, when Fisher proposes marriage to her on the stadium JumboTron. With a crowd of 45,000 baseball fans eagerly awaiting her answer, Nikole renders a rejection. That's when "perfectly nice" Fisher turns perfectly insulting and nasty. But Nik is rescued when Carlos Ibarra and his sister Angela swoop in, pretending to be long-lost friends of Nik, and usher her away.

The fortuitousness of this meeting soon sparks a fling between Nik and Carlos, a conscientious, handsome young doctor. Carlos is very much involved with the demands of his self-appointed responsibility to everyone in his family, especially a beloved cousin during her difficult pregnancy, marred with medical complications. For Nik, the fallout from the JumboTron disaster resurrects insecurity and self-esteem issues from painful past relationships. These respective dilemmas pull Nik and Carlos in opposite directions, creating impediments to their deepening romance. They must confront what they truly want for their lives, their futures and their relationship.

Through snappy dialogue and short scenes, Guillory explores the traps, pitfalls and triumphs of contemporary young love in the age of social media and viral videos. And Carlos's dynamic extended family and Nik's wisecracking girlfriends enliven and fortify the appeal of the fast-paced story. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Midnight passed on "the last night of this world," December 31, 1999, and Casey Gerald still sat in his grandfather's Texas church. He felt too young to die, but the Rapture's failure left Casey to fight his way in a world unfit to embrace him. There Will Be No Miracles Here is Gerald's intimate memoir of trying to find a space to call home as a gay black man in America.

Gerald yearned to break free from his legacy. His grandfather was a popular pastor, his father a legendary athlete whose gridiron sacrifices cost him his family and brought him a prison sentence. Gerald's mother came and went until he found it easier to conclude she was dead. Aided by his grandmother and sister, Gerald managed to avoid the institutionalized cracks that threaten to swallow boys like him and wound up playing in a Yale football championship game and interviewing as a Rhodes Scholar finalist in a two-day span. Still, he struggled to find himself.

In this conversational, nuanced, political, meandering yet pointed memoir, Gerald, co-founder and CEO of MBAs Across America, reflects on the conflicts of becoming part of a system that uses "salvation stories" like his to perpetuate itself. Bitingly humorous yet brimming with pain, Gerald's book lays bare his yearning to be "a normal person" when, in reality, "the way we were taught to be men, to be human beings even, was a dead end." Knowing the "folks in charge" weren't looking out for him, he turned "at last, and in desperation, to books." As books helped save him, so may his save others. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

In her powerful memoir, nurse and humanitarian aid worker Roberta Gately (Lipstick in Afghanistan) explains "the refugees are often friends, people I've come to know and love... like precious gems, I carry their names and memories tucked safely into my heart." Footprints in the Dust shares Gately's cherished experiences in a world that is apprehensive and unsure about the millions of individuals displaced by war and violence. Through her words she illustrates the humanity of a sea of nameless individuals "who fight against the odds to live simple lives of dignity and grace."

Gately knew little about Afghanistan when she volunteered for her first humanitarian effort in 1986. But television images of starving children fleeing their homes during the Soviet invasion were all the motivation she needed to sign up and fly to a foreign land to provide health care in a refugee camp. Her first trip was only a couple of weeks, but it was long enough to intrigue her. She returned to the United States determined to save money for her next experience. This turned into the regular rhythm of her life: saving money to help save lives. Gately's dogged determination resulted in placements in Kenya, the Balkans, Iraq and Darfur. Footprints in the Dust skillfully highlights both the horrors and the joys she encountered.

Compassionate, insightful and honest, Gately's inspiring story is a timely reminder of the bonds we share, those that make us human and far more alike than different. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

As the first in her family to attend college, Tanya Smith went to SUNY Geneseo to study biology in hopes of following the paths of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, observing African mountain gorillas in the wild. Instead, she became fascinated by microscopy and the human history it revealed when fossilized teeth were imaged. The Tales Teeth Tell is a first-person account of her work as an associate professor at Harvard and at the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution at Griffin University in Brisbane. She offers a fascinating history of dental paleoanthropology and the role of teeth in human evolution. As she notes: "Not to knock rings in trees... but there is far more to discover inside our own mouths."

Filled with illustrations, charts, graphs and photographs, Smith's first book could easily have turned into one of those dry academic research papers that only other researchers read. But she is having none of that. The Tales Teeth Tell is an accessible, personal, often funny and occasionally controversial look into the murk of human evolution. Like Hope Jahren's recent highly lauded memoir Lab Girl, it at times drifts off-piste into cultural folklore, such as the "tooth fairy," "long in the tooth" and "gain a child, lose a tooth." She wanders into discussions of primates' use of toothpicks, tooth fossil evidence about the real "paleo" diet, the background of early tooth decoration with jewel implants and blackening, and the nascent experimentation in stem cell bioengineering of replacement teeth.

The Tales Teeth Tell is chock full of fascinating science, but it's also the personal story of a woman of science immersed in her work. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

On November 3, 1957, a small dog named Laika was launched into space as part of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 2 mission. This 13-pound mutt, collected from the streets of Moscow and given rigorous training, became the first living thing to orbit the Earth. Laika was also doomed to die. In the rush to mark 40 years since the Bolshevik Revolution, and under pressure from the competing United States, Soviet scientists did not have time to develop a method of bringing Laika back. She died in space, having beaten Yuri Gagarin to his famous milestone. Despite the technical achievements displayed by the launch of Sputnik 2, world opinion turned against the Soviets for sending a dog to her death.

In Laika's Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog, professor Kurt Caswell (In the Sun's House; Getting to Grey Owl) takes a nuanced, philosophical look at Laika's life and death. Moreover, he considers the Soviet space dog program in the context of animal aerospace tests around the world (including U.S. experiments, which involved the use of electric shocks to make space-borne chimps pull levers). For all the understandable ethical problems with Laika's fate, Caswell finds great meaning in her sacrifice as a landmark in space exploration and in human-dog relations. Like the domestication of canines so many thousands of years ago amid the move to agriculture, mankind's oldest friend joined our next giant leap of civilization. Laika's Window is a beautiful, humane examination of what many would consider an inhumane act. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Matt Lucas, the BAFTA-award winning comedian, screenwriter and actor best known for the many characters he created on TV's Little Britain, has written a "sort-of autobiography." Rather than writing a straightforward chronological memoir, however, Lucas arranges his beguiling and heartfelt chapters by topic alphabetically. "I have no attention span left," he confesses; "I give up halfway through reading a text message." And so, for instance, he offers "B--Baldy": at age six, he lost all his hair due to alopecia. See also, "E--Eating": "I go through phases where I get myself together, lose a couple of stone, but I always seem to return to my solace, my pleasure, my pain--food." And in "G--Gay," he concludes this angst-filled section: "Even gay people probably found this chapter a bit over-gay."

Lucas's wit and warmth shine throughout Little Me. Readers will root for him during his career trajectory from stand-up to his comedic partnership with David Walliams, and solo success on TV's Doctor Who and in supporting roles in films like Bridesmaids and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. He does keep some parts of his life private, like the suicide of his domestic partner, Kevin McGee ("the man I loved and lost, a kind, warm, beautiful being who didn't have the armour for this world"). But he deftly discusses his deep grief--"When Kevin died, half of me died with him"--and its aftereffects: "I downloaded Grindr and went on an empty sexual rampage that would have put Casanova to shame."

Matt Lucas's disarming, honest and charming memoir is sure to delight fans and create new ones. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

In Blanca & Roja, Mexican-American author Anna-Marie McLemore (The Weight of Feathers) tells a story that readers will, at first, likely interpret as fairy tale. All the elements are there: two sisters (one fair and gentle, one dark and fierce), a curse, handsome "princes." But McLemore takes the fairy-tale mold and reforms it to suit her own artistic needs.

Although the sisters, whose last name means "of the swans" in Spanish, have always known that one of them is destined to be turned into a swan, they are determined to fight this curse. As the legend goes, the swans will arrive soon after the younger of the two del Cisne girls turns 15. But, at an early age, sweet Blanca began feeding her fierce younger sister herbs and berries and white rose petals to sweeten her nature and confuse the swans. "If the swans can't tell us apart," she says, "they can't decide which of us to take." Roja's 15th birthday has come and gone, and the swan bevy has not shown up. However, a yearling bear and a baby swan have appeared. Are these creatures the nahuales their mother told them about, humans that can transform into animal forms? When the animals disappear and two missing local teens (one a boy, the other gender fluid) reappear, the possibility becomes closer to a certainty. Tension grows between the close sisters as they begin to question each other's actions and motives.

What sets McLemore's writing apart is the way her rich, beautifully ornamented language is shot through with a vein of proud feminism and the importance of owning one's identity. In the end, Blanca & Roja is about, as Blanca says, "giving up the stories we thought we already knew." --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda) and Adam Silvera (They Both Die at the End) join literary forces to bring readers an offbeat, contemporary romance told from dual perspectives.

Sixteen-year-old Arthur is from Georgia, a "five-foot-six Jewish kid with ADHD and the rage of a tornado." He's living in New York City for the summer while he interns at his mom's law firm. Arthur, a believer in "love at first sight... [f]ate, the universe, all of it," feels ready for whatever "nudges" the universe might have in store for him. Ben is a video game-playing aspiring fantasy writer with big dreams and even bigger expectations. Also in New York City, he is stuck in summer school with his cheating ex-boyfriend. His thoughts about the universe? He's been burned one too many times. 

Arthur and Ben meet-cute in a post office where Ben is trying to mail a box of "leftovers from [his] breakup." When the price to mail the box is outrageously large, the two get into a conversation about the universe's plans--for that box and maybe for them, too. But a flash-mob proposal prevents them from getting any further than, "You think the universe wanted us to meet?" With only a crumpled shipping label for contact info, Arthur leaves a real-life missed-connection post on a bulletin board in a coffee shop.

What follows is an imperfect, epic romance between two flawed teens ready to challenge the universe. A seamless collaboration, What If It's Us is certain to be well-received by fans of both Albertalli and Silvera. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader