Steven Rowley (Lily and the Octopus) explores the complicated relationship between mothers and sons in his wise and deeply engrossing second novel, The Editor. Set in Manhattan in the early 1990s, the story centers on James Smale, an aspiring writer in his late 20s, who has worked "a never-ending string of toxic, depressing temp jobs" and is in a committed--although maybe not forever--relationship with Daniel, a loving and spirited companion who works in the theater.

The book opens with a dramatic and dynamic scene that establishes the tone of the novel: James is summoned to the high-powered offices of Doubleday--the book company has expressed interest in his novel, The Quarantine, a semi-autobiographical story about an emotionally estranged mother and son. Nerves and self-consciousness plague James as he waits in a conference room, and matters grow even more overwhelming when in walks Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis--former first lady of the United States who has become an esteemed editor in the last third of her life.

That moment marks the start of a working relationship that will later turn into friendship. Perceptive, analytical and astute Jackie becomes a literary mentor to James. She also raises questions--on the page and off--that gently nudge James to dig deeper into the emotional landscape of his fraught relationship with his mother and the rest of his family.

The resonance of Rowley's originality and sensitivity shines on every page. He has written a refreshing, superbly crafted novel of hard-won self-discovery filled with big, well-paced scenes and a pitch-perfect blend of humor and compassion that will charm and fully engage readers. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines.

In Outside Looking In, the prolific T.C. Boyle follows up his previous novel, The Terranauts, by continuing to probe the intimate lives of those who aim to see god. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology graduate student at Harvard in the 1960s, is pulled into the orbit of Timothy Leary, a prominent psychologist experimenting with a new drug. Fitz and his wife, Joanie, begin to engage in Tim's "sessions"--parties filled with self-important academics who take LSD and record their experiences. Soon, Fitz's desire to be on the inside of these cutting-edge academic circles becomes a self-imposed exile as he and his colleagues are expelled from Harvard and form their own cult-like community in a mansion. While Joanie's high begins to fade, Fitz's is just getting started.

Boyle's writing remains crisp and restrained in this novel, despite its ecstatic and elastic subject matter. As Joanie and Fitz tumble further into a world of dazzlingly depicted sensations and pounding emotions, Boyle's prose remains on firm ground, serving as the sober guide to the reader that his characters so sorely need. Despite this even-handed narrative style, Outside Looking In manages to build dizzying tension as its characters sink deeper and deeper into a world that is portrayed as both astonishing and increasingly nauseating. By the end, readers, like Joanie, are eager to get off the roller-coaster ride of 1960s obsession and detritus, if only to stand back and admire the larger desires and fears that drove it in the first place. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Napoleon's reign is drawing to a close, and the rest of the European powers are jockeying to fill the void left by France's defeat. The Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg and her retinue are in the middle of a formal visit to London when the body of the sadistic Lord Ashworth is found hacked apart in his bed.

Ashworth, known to have exotic sexual habits, also happened to have recently married Stephanie, the beloved but troubled niece of Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. So naturally Sir Henry Lovejoy, the local magistrate, calls in Sebastian to help investigate Ashworth's death.

Sebastian wishes he could believe that Stephanie is innocent, but is worried that perhaps she regretted her hasty marriage to the dissolute lord. On the other hand, he hears rumors that a certain Russian princess, part of Catherine's household, shared Ashworth's erotic interests and may have played a part in his demise.

As Sebastian digs into Ashworth's circle of friends and shady acquaintances, his wife, Lady Hero Devlin, continues on her quest to document the atrocities committed against London's poorest denizens, much to the irritation of her father, Lord Jarvis.

With panache, C.S. Harris (Why Kill the Innocent, What Angels Fear) brings the dark side of Regency London to life. Many readers are familiar with the balls and amusements of the ton. But in Who Slays the Wicked, Harris shows the seamy underbelly of society, and through Lady Hero makes a scathing denunciation of the upper-class people who allowed millions to be suppressed for the furtherance of their own pleasures. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

The economy of colony world Cassandra-V is based around one thing: resource extraction. Below the settled surface run massive cave systems, many prospected for minerals, others unmapped. Early explorations of these caves invariably ended in disastrous attacks by native monsters called Tunnelers. Years later, cave prospectors have learned how not to attract the Tunnelers by donning hi-tech, fully sealed suits. Still, the profession is notoriously dangerous.

Gyre Price wants nothing more than to escape Cassandra-V and find her missing mother. Despite the many risks, she signs up for a caving operation with fake credentials and the promise of a large paycheck. She also expects a full surface team to monitor her suit and surroundings. Instead she gets Em, a lone young woman with massive resources and a dangerous obsession, who has no qualms about remotely controlling Gyre's suit, withholding information and administering drugs without consent. Missing equipment, Em's deadly stubbornness and the constant rumble of a stalking Tunneler drive Gyre into a mental darkness as entombing as the cave itself, and the lower she goes, the more she can't help feeling as if she's being followed.

The Luminous Dead is a master work of science-fiction psychological horror. Caitlin Starling's debut is a claustrophobic's nightmare, with plenty of tight spelunking and murky cave-diving done in something like a space suit. Gyre's tense progress and her evolving relationship with Em make for a propelling read. The Luminous Dead should find fans across genres. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Seven decades after the end of World War II, the stories of key players in the Allied intelligence services are still coming to light. Virginia Hall, a fearless American who spent much of the war working undercover in France for Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), is one of these formerly unsung heroes. Journalist Sonia Purnell (Clementine) tells Hall's story in her fast-paced, meticulously researched (and ironically titled) biography, A Woman of No Importance.

In her 20s, Hall spent time in Paris and Vienna, studying languages and absorbing the culture, before working as a clerk for the U.S. State Department. A hunting accident in Turkey left her disabled (she lost part of one leg) but never slowed her down, and in 1940, Hall was recruited by the fledgling SOE.

Purnell traces Hall's trajectory from fresh-faced recruit to battle-hardened, savvy Resistance fighter, and brings her comrades and civilian supporters to life. She follows Hall's movements around occupied France: organizing air drops, setting up Resistance cells, finding safe houses for refugees and radio operators. The woman's bravery and brilliance are on constant display, but Purnell also highlights the quiet heroism of ordinary people who risked their lives daily to fight fascism. She also minces no words about the sexism Hall and other women faced at the State Department and in SOE--both agencies having started as well-heeled boys' clubs.

Purnell's book is a gripping account of an extraordinary woman, and a celebration of courage, ingenuity and grit. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Despite the American presidency having been tested by several unforeseen and tragic circumstances, the selection of a vice president traditionally has not been given the scrutiny it deserves. In Accidental Presidents, Jared Cohen (The New Digital Age) thoughtfully examines how American history changed each time a vice president ascended due to their predecessor's death. Eight vice presidents--John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson--became president upon such sober occasions.

Cohen argues that Andrew Johnson succeeding Abraham Lincoln was "the biggest catastrophe of the eight," and details how Johnson changed the course of Reconstruction, leading to a 100-year delay in civil rights for African Americans. Cohen views Truman's ascension as the most positive due to his ability quickly to overcome his unpreparedness. (He adds that Truman must bear some blame for being uninformed, noting that before and after Yalta, Truman "made no inquiries, sought out no meetings, and took no proactive steps to better understand the situation he was about to inherit," despite his suspicions that Franklin Roosevelt was dying.)

Other changes in the course of history include Fillmore's signing of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 (which Zachary Taylor promised to veto); Theodore Roosevelt's championing of the progressive movement ("Had [William] McKinley survived, progressivism may have taken decades to gain steam."); and LBJ's far more liberal stance than John F. Kennedy's outlook on civil rights and the role of the government.

Accidental Presidents explores each of these pivotal moments and others that highlight the vagaries of history and how its trajectory changed eight times with the cessation of one beating heart. --William H. Firman Jr., presidential historian and writer

In her essay collection All the Fierce Tethers, Lia Purpura (On Looking) offers poetic meditations on daily life.

The title piece considers the minutiae and routines of humans and animals, and how a small moment functions in relation to an entire life. "My Eagles" looks at the national, spiritual, biological and metaphorical power of the bird. And in an especially resonant series of four essays, "Bloodspots (I)" through "Bloodspots (IV): Coda," Purpura walks to the scene of a shooting in her Baltimore neighborhood and considers the racial divides therein.

Purpura's prose is sustained and melodic, like a rich thrumming alto or footfalls on soft ground. In "Three-Legged Branch" she writes, "Once I believed--though believed isn't right. I, child-wise, knew the not-indifference. I was given no church, no practice, no prayer (no under-the-breath rote anything to lean on) so it happened with color, with tide pools, with trees--which called me to them, and in their sight, I was heard, a see-hearing, a searing." She uses unexpected, singular words to great effect; in just one page readers are met with "hummock," "catkins" and a late summer afternoon described as "sun bright-but-downshifting." Purpura finds stories and life in everything around her--a lightning-split tree, a stained quilt, fire ants, landfills--thus deepening our relationship to them. Her essays, like her ambling reflections, are as full as they are quiet. --Katy Hershberger, freelance writer and bookseller

Nathaniel Rich's Losing Earth began as a New York Times Magazine article examining the rise and fall of climate science's prominence in the United States. Now fleshed out into a compelling, short history bordering on the prophetic, Losing Earth recounts the crucial years from 1979 to 1989 that set the stage for the turn of the 21st century.

Rich reports as if he were a journalist abreast of the movement in the 1980s, vividly rendering the movement's key initiators. Alarmed by the silence around the issue in the houses of government, Rafe Pomerance, environmental activist and lobbyist, spearheads an effort to bring the climate crisis to the forefront of public discussion.

Against all odds, the motley group of scientists consciously branches into strategists and activists to address the biggest moral, economic and scientific threat to life on earth. Even with the vast support they garner, their movement's denouement is sudden, buckling with the close of the decade. Rich bookends these 10 years with striking calls to action, echoing the words of renowned climate scientist James Hansen, as he addressed the press: "It is time to stop waffling so much... and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here."

The strength of Rich's synthesis of historical information and documentation is the profound underlying tensions of past and present that delineate an uncomfortably familiar trajectory. The result is a windswept read with the incline of a Keeling Curve. --Amanda Ibarra, events manager, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Kathleen Morton, Jonny Dustow and Jared Melrose are partners at the blog Vanlife Diaries, a community of and for nomadic types, where they promote relevant nonprofit organizations and meetups and other events, and vanlifers share their stories. A few years and a few hundred thousand followers later, Vanlife Diaries: Finding Freedom on the Open Road is available as a beautiful collection of photographs and essays, tips and tricks, celebrating this way of life and offering inspiration to those setting out.

Contents are organized by motivation to travel: for family, for love, for art, for nature and so on. Each section includes an essay by a featured vandweller, with helpful how-to pieces slotted throughout: guides to cooking in small spaces, traveling with pets, finding wifi and other finer points of life on the road. More than 200 accompanying photographs feature van set-ups and their human, canine and other inhabitants in breathtaking natural settings around the world. Even readers who thought they were immune to wanderlust can't help but be swept away by such stunning images. And the more serious consumer of vanlife literature will be impressed by the balance of these impressive images with the kind of gritty, realistic details that rarely accompany Instagram versions of the trending lifestyle.

Vanlife Diaries is for anyone who's ever considered nomadism as a means to reduce their carbon footprint, pursue nontraditional work or simply live more slowly and simply. With practical advice and inspirational full-color photos, this book has something to offer readers at every stage of the journey. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Sunbathing on Tyrone Power's Grave by Kim Dower brims with the vitality and preoccupations of everyday living. Life and death are inextricably entwined in Dower's poetry: the distinct grief of losing a parent, bidding farewell to a pet, but also the joys of naming a puppy and the pleasure of using a favorite fountain pen.

While the death of her father hovers over Dower's fourth collection, the focus is on remembering the good times and celebrating the small victories that add up to a productive day. From the comic irony of a grocery store clerk commenting on her "beautiful aura" to the keen sense of accomplishment when successfully parallel parking her car, Dower pays tribute to the power of mundane everyday activities to spark happiness and wonder.

Dower's wicked sense of humor fuels poems about alternative facts, the indignities of air travel and the misunderstood color pink. Pockets of anxiety open up here and there, with lingering concerns over mental decline. In "Letters to My Son," as profound a piece as anything Dower has ever written, she admits to a primal fear of losing her mind to dementia.

An L.A. transplant from the East Coast, Dower was named City Poet of West Hollywood, Calif., in 2016 and held the post until 2018. The title poem features Dower's father's favorite actor, Tyrone Power, a swashbuckling American icon from the '40s. The cemetery where he is buried among other Hollywood royalty is a place of celebration, awash in sunshine, memories of great movies and "angels in bikinis smoking KOOL Lights." --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer

Gondra is a dragon. Her "mom's family comes from the West" and her "dad's family is from the East"; Gondra "was born somewhere in the middle." In Linda Sue Park and Jennifer Black Reinhardt's second collaboration (Yaks Yak), young Gondra playfully explores the benefits of inheriting two very different cultural backgrounds.

This charming narrative unfolds in bantering dialogue among the three family members. Gondra's mother explains that "in the West, dragons breathe fire," while Dad says that "in the East, dragons breathe mist." When Gondra shares a baby photo of herself, she points to "a teeny tiny flame... coming from one nostril and a wisp of mist from the other." Young readers will understand perfectly that lucky Gondra reaps the benefits of both branches of her heritage. The affection between Gondra's parents is always obvious as they cheerfully tease each other about their attributes: Dad thinks fire is dangerous; Mom thinks mist is "pretty boring." Certainly, both adults agree that Gondra was "adorable... the most beautiful baby ever."

Reinhardt inventively illustrates the various points of Gondra's narrative, perfectly expressing the enthusiasm and awkwardness of the not-quite-grown protagonist. The colorful ink and watercolors depict a cozy, if slightly zany, household, where mist causes rain to fall in the living room if Dad gets too excited. The character design may be somewhat silly but the dignity and grace of Gondra's dragon family is undeniable and, though they have their differences, the love they share is evident. An interesting author's note provides some historical information on dragons, but the focus of the story is clearly on Gondra's ancestry, and how she is the beautiful product of her mixed heritage. --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI

Fossil the Quiet Crocodile loves the beach. While his many friends float, paddle, bob, dive and boogie board, Fossil prefers to "contemplate the waves, look for shells, take a nap, enjoy the moment." Observation might suggest he isn't moving, but he is engaged in active pursuits like "teach[ing] his friends how to swim, how not to splash" and "how to kick." But there's something "gnawing" at Fossil, "bothering him, and stressing him out." Although it seems impossible for a giant, beach-loving crocodile, "Fossil is scared to go in the water." Thank goodness he is surrounded by friends, who encourage him with kindness--and floaties. As the tide creeps up, Fossil finds that he can face his fears and enjoy the ocean after all.

This follow-up to Andriamirado and Renon's first book about Fossil (The Quiet Crocodile) is endowed with even more charm and off-beat humor than the original. The text is straightforward and feels as if it's being delivered with an affectionate smile, and the detailed colored-pencil and pen illustrations manage to depict plenty of activity and an abiding sense of calm at the same time. The gentle, mostly stationary Fossil is joined by a large cast of active, personable animals, such as Fippo the Hippo and Sonny the Bunny, all of whom are introduced in the endpapers, each sporting elaborate beachwear. A note instructs readers to "find, name, and count all of [Fossil's] friends as they play in the water," as well as to look for additional specific "hidden" objects, including rings and racquets, a fishing net, some chewing gum and "the sparrow, aboard a tiny boat." Young readers will surely dive into the fun! --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI