Brian Stanhope and Francis Gleeson meet on the job as rookie cops with the New York Police Department in the 1970s. As they settle into their new careers, they each marry and buy houses next door to one another in Gillam, a quiet suburb. Three daughters quickly follow for Francis and his wife, Lena; their youngest, Kate, becomes best friends with Brian and Anne's only son, Peter. One night when Peter and Kate are in eighth grade, a shattering incident changes both families' lives forever. Mary Beth Keane (Fever) explores family, mental illness, heartbreak and forgiveness in her third novel, Ask Again, Yes.

Keane begins her novel with the men's first shift together, then briefly explores their backgrounds and Francis's courtship with Lena. Anne's origins and personality remain in shadow until many years later, when the effects of her mental state and actions have taken their toll on both families. Keane traces Peter and Kate's story from their shared childhoods through their separate teenage years (after Peter moves away), and the life they later build together, as adults. Her characters, especially Peter and Kate, are flawed, thoughtful, hard-working people trying to make sense of ordinary and sometimes impossible events, and dealing with the ripple effects of the past on the present. As Peter fights the demons he inherited from both parents, Kate and Francis struggle with their own burdens of anger, guilt and hope. Ask Again, Yes is a quiet, thought-provoking family drama and a testament to the power of forgiveness. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Rita Khoury has always wanted to be a journalist. Growing up in a sprawling Irish Lebanese family on Boston's North Shore, she longed to be in the thick of the action, reporting on world-changing events. Following September 11, 2001, Rita is sent to Baghdad to cover the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and its effects on ordinary citizens. She becomes close to her interpreter, Nabil al-Jumaili, a talented young Iraqi who is keeping secrets from his family and even from himself.

Tim Murphy (Christodora) tells the story of Nabil and Rita's relationship in his second novel, Correspondents. He begins his story with Rita's return to the North Shore for a family event in 2008. The narrative then unfurls the saga of Rita's ancestors: the Coughlins, hardscrabble Irish who worked their way up to the middle class, and the Khourys, forced to emigrate from Lebanon in search of jobs and opportunity. The stories of Rita's grandparents and parents follow: famine and grief, but also children and love, the tempering of ambition with practicality.

Interwoven are fast-paced chapters detailing Rita's and Nabil's experiences in the Middle East. As they grow closer to each other and to a handful of colleagues, including Nabil's brilliant, impatient older cousin Asmaa, tensions outside their heavily guarded compound continue to rise.

The geopolitical dramas of the early 2000s and the actions in the Middle East by American leaders make the book even more relevant to present-day realities. But the novel's true strength is its cast of vivid, flawed, deeply human characters, who struggle and make mistakes, and do their best to work for good in uncertain, even dangerous, times. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Anthony Horowitz's delicious follow-up to The Word Is Murder once again mixes fact and fiction to create a rollicking, fast-moving and ingenious murder mystery. In real life, Horowitz balances writing British TV series (Foyle's War, Agatha Christie's Poirot) with a successful career as a novelist (including a dozen YA Alex Rider mysteries and his authorized relaunches of James Bond and Sherlock Holmes). The Sentence Is Death features a slightly fictionalized version of Horowitz playing a bumbling assistant to gruff former cop Daniel Hawthorne as they investigate a double homicide.

Richard Pryce, a gay divorce lawyer, is bludgeoned to death with a £3,000 bottle of wine and the number 182 is painted on his wall. Days earlier, an acclaimed feminist poet had threatened to kill him. Things get complicated when it's discovered that an old friend of Pryce was crushed to death by a subway train within hours of Pryce's murder. Horowitz and Hawthorne also learn the two dead friends were previously involved in the accidental death of a third friend.

Part of the delight of this murder mystery is Horowitz's (fictional) reluctance to being Dr. Watson to Hawthorne's Sherlock Holmes. "I like to be in control of my books," he writes. "I had no wish to turn myself into a character, and a secondary one at that: the perennial sidekick." But the antagonistic duo make a great pair. Mystery buffs will love that suspects and motives are repeatedly assessed, giving readers a chance to try to beat the duo to the solution of this outstanding puzzler. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

RITA award-winning author Kelly Bowen returns readers to the coast of England in A Rogue by Night, the third novel in her Devils of Dover Regency romance series. This fast-paced story features beautiful, war-weary surgeon and ex-smuggler Katherine Wright; she returns to her home on the Dover coast after Waterloo, determined to take her smuggler father and brother far away from the family trade. Before she can execute her plan, her surgical skills are needed to save her brother, wounded in a stormy night's illegal work. The sudden appearance of local baron Dr. Harland Hayward is disconcerting. But within moments, the quick-thinking doctor saves them all from discovery by soldiers.

Harland hides them at his home while Kate's brother recovers. The doctor has many secrets, not the least of which is that he uses his position as a wealthy, widowed aristocrat and his occupation as a surgeon to conceal his activities as the man behind the local smuggling ring. Like Kate, he wants his family safe and far from illegal acts, but he owes a debt to a powerful man that ensures he cannot walk away.

Kate and Harland have barely begun to get acquainted, the attraction between them powerful and instant, when his secretive boss demands Harland's help with a perilous mission. The dicey venture requires a second surgeon--Harland needs Kate's expertise. Forced into proximity, surrounded by danger, threatened by exposure, the two will have to abandon wariness and risk their hearts as well as their lives if they are to survive.

Readers who enjoy historical romance seasoned with swashbuckling derring-do, adventure and life-and-death action are certain to be delighted with this marvelous novel. --Lois Faye Dyer, author and reviewer

Even with numerous test cooks, cookware specialists and editors producing magazines, TV shows and cookbooks, America's Test Kitchen has become an internationally recognized and respected name in the food world. Now ATK turns the spotlight on spices--how to grind them, how to blend them and how to keep them from languishing in a spice rack. Spiced: Unlock the Power of Spices to Transform Your Cooking challenges the home cook to throw open their spice cabinet and start getting creative with flavors. It offers technique guidelines, well over 100 recipes, 47 homemade spice blends and the America's Test Kitchen signature rationale behind why something works the way it does.

After an overview of kitchen utensil basics, cooking terminology and an encyclopedic dive into the history and usage of each spice, Spiced gets into the heart of the matter: when and how to make use of them. The organization is thoughtful, with page number listings for spice blends, as well as an at-a-glance catalogue of recipes and the primary spices used in them. The recipes come from all over the world, e.g., Wisconsin Brats and Beer (Dijon mustard and caraway seeds), Lamb Vindaloo (vindaloo curry powder), Spanish Shellfish Stew (paprika, saffron, red pepper flake), Shakshuka (cumin, turmeric) and Sichuan Braised Tofu (Sichuan peppercorn and chili powder).

Full-color photographs provide mouthwatering inspiration, while an introduction at the beginning of each recipe delivers on the America's Test Kitchen promise of creating the best recipe for that dish. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.

Nobel Laureate Ernest Hemingway has been the subject of numerous biographies, ones that cover his entire life, his interests in bull fighting, war, fishing, his multiple marriages, but none has truly detailed his lengthy relationship with Cuba. Andrew Feldman, in Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba, uses documentary evidence, eyewitness accounts and archival materials only recently made available to non-Cuban scholars. The result is a worthwhile additional portrait of a complex and accomplished human being.

While the emphasis is on Hemingway's extended time in Cuba, including his interactions with Castro and other political figures, this biography also covers his life before Cuba, his multiple marriages and his major works--and their critical reception. The particular emphases on fishing, his boat, Pilar, and his relationships with Cuban fishers provide insight into Hemingway's most esteemed work, The Old Man and the Sea.

Feldman frequently employs a novelistic style, as when describing Hemingway commencing A Moveable Feast: "In the eye of a revolutionary storm striking Cuba once again, Ernest, standing in his bedroom beside the bookshelf, and sitting barefoot at the table beneath the thatched arbor beside the swimming pool, had begun to put Paris to paper." This style does not detract from biographical rigor, as Feldman deeply sources his work and provides extensive end notes.

Additionally, this book is a fine companion to Our Man in Havana, about British author and Hemingway contemporary Graham Greene's own time in Cuba. --Evan M. Anderson, collection development librarian, Kirkendall Public Library, Ankeny, Iowa

In the 21st-century world of 24/7 cable news and the Internet, there's no opinion lacking a highly credentialed expert to advance it. David Epstein's well-researched, lively Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World sounds a note of caution when it comes to the credulous acceptance of these oracular pronouncements. Instead, Epstein (The Sports Gene) makes a persuasive case for the "advantages of breadth and delayed specialization" in shaping better leaders and problem solvers in a complex world.

Using his own life as a starting point (he detoured from a career in environmental science to work as an investigative journalist for Pro Publica and write for Sports Illustrated), Epstein offers a plethora of examples to support his thesis that "modern life requires range, making connections across far-flung domains and ideas." To nurture the talents of people best able to achieve that goal, he advocates for the idea of "match quality." It's a term used to describe the congruence "between the work someone does and who they are." As he explains, the search for that match is the defining characteristic in the lives of successful late starters like Vincent Van Gogh or 102-year-old Frances Hesselbein, who took her first professional job at age 54 and now heads a leadership institute that bears her name, after retiring from her much-admired tenure as CEO of the Girl Scouts of America.

Range is by no means a brief for ignorance or for the validation of ill-informed guesswork. Rather, Epstein offers an exhilarating vision of how smart, curious people can more skillfully apply their best thinking to change and improve the world. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

In Picnic Comma Lightning, Laurence Scott follows his first book, The Four-Dimensional Human, by exploring questions of reality in the face of both the 21st century era and his intimate experience of grief. The title derives from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, in which the protagonist Humbert Humbert attempts to encapsulate the death of his mother in a parenthetical aside: "(picnic, lightning)." Scott delves into the death of his own parents as the instigating event for the book and for his own existential questions: What is our experience of reality in this digital, contemporary moment? And how does the experience of sudden loss and illegible grief effect our experience and awareness of that reality?

To say anything about the book is to acknowledge how effortlessly Scott weaves together his sources and examples. Scott slips seamlessly from references to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, to Elizabeth Bowen, to Nietzsche, to viral tweets and political headlines. The diversity and nuance of these connections reveal the quiet brilliance of the book; Scott is not just an expert at the underrated art of noticing, but a master of recognizing larger patterns and gently revealing them to his reader. Never pedantic but endlessly insightful, Scott's noticing is always just a step ahead of the reader's associations, translating his own experiences and those of his readers at once. Whether discussing the larger implications of bedtime stories or reconsidering the thing-ness of the objects in our lives, Picnic Comma Lightning guides readers through its philosophical current with assurance, nuance and its fair share of wit. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Reading Little Glass Planet, Dobby Gibson's newest book of poetry, is a lot like meditation.

Through his linguistic dexterity and strange juxtapositions, Gibson finds infinite space in the small moments and insignificant objects of the day-to-day: a broken microwave flashing, snow falling on a freeway, a fire engine in a suburb, a cat sitting in the shade of a parked car.

He brings a sharp and clarifying focus to the banal and forgotten details of our lives, details that often get lost in the din of life in an advanced capitalist economy. Gibson's world is not idealized; throughout these poems there is a brewing sense of doom: descriptions of microplastics in the oceans, an overdue fire on its way, a mighty nation unwilling to admit its problems, a world depleted. Gibson also writes of language's profound inadequacy in a time like the present, its inability to express truth in light of its omnipresence in roadside signs and gum advertisements. But Gibson's laments appear in equal measure with notes of hope and a desire for everyone to "get better at being alive."

Although Little Glass Planet is not a light read, it is often funny. Gibson balances earnestness with occasionally bizarre imagery and surprising references to cultural memes. He has a particular skill in refashioning familiar adages and aphorisms into strange, fresh pieces of wisdom. His poems are stinging, exceedingly perceptive and, most of all, insistent that there is still a grace to be found in the world, if one is willing to see it. --Emma Levy, bookseller at Third Place Books Seward Park, Seattle, Wash.

Matthew A. Cherry's collaboration with illustrator Vashti Harrison (Little Leaders), Hair Love, was inspired by Cherry's animated short of the same name created to spotlight the lack of appreciation for African American textured hair in animation. The resulting picture book is an ode to the incredible versatility of African American hair and the charming resilience of a dad dedicated to his daughter.

Zuri is an African American girl who introduces readers to her fabulous hair, which "kinks, coils, and curls every which way." Harrison's dreamy digital artwork showcases Zuri's different styles, including a 'fro that sparkles, intricate braids and afro puffs that look as soft as the curling clouds that border the page. This morning, Zuri wants "a perfect hairstyle" for a big event happening later in the day. " 'Can I help?' " Daddy asks, " 'It'll be a piece of cake.' " This overly optimistic statement kicks off a journey through various hairstyles that, one after another, unfortunately do not work out. When Zuri vetoes a final attempt by her dad to pick out her hair ("Daddy, really?"), he leaves and comes back with... a hat. Zuri, tearfully explaining that she needs the right hair to match this special day, has a eureka moment--with the help of a hair blogger, essential natural hair tools and a determined Daddy sweating bullets, Zuri emerges with the perfect style to impress on this special day.

Although Zuri is the only one who literally wears a cape, both she and her father stand as heroes supporting each other and working together to save the day. Nuanced illustrative touches, like family pictures of graduations and weddings, alongside Daddy's own immaculate locs, paint a larger picture of the connected African American family that lives and loves together in their home. --Breanna McDaniel, reviewer

"Last summer, a serial killer paid a visit to Camera Cove. By the time the dust settled, four people were dead."

Mac, Carrie, Doris and Ben's friendship has dissolved since their friend Connor became the Catalog Killer's final victim. They've spent their senior year in a haze as they adjusted to life without the "handsome, charming" Connor, who was the "glue holding the five" together. Now in their last summer of high school, the teens are eager to get away from their hometown. Then, Mac finds a note Connor left for him on the evening he died: "I've figured something out--something important, and I really need your help. Meet me at the beach at midnight." This prompts Mac to start his own investigation into the unsolved killings. As he begins his search, he meets Quill, a cousin of the third Catalog victim, and the two start a sweet, tentative relationship, even as they hunt for a killer. But if Connor had figured something out--if he knew who killed him--that means the murderer could still be around, possibly watching the boys' every move.

Mac and Quill are completely believable teen sleuths--eager, slightly inept and scared--who realistically stumble into what feels like a very dangerous situation. As Mac gets closer to the killer, the tension builds and the risk appears very real. Ryan's (Way to Go) Keep This to Yourself is painfully suspenseful, genuinely creepy and so cleanly plotted, readers may want to start the book all over again once they've solved the mystery. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness