Amitav Ghosh's Gun Island captures the reader's imagination with a bold rendering of accelerated climate change and migration. It follows on the heels of the author's nonfiction work, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, in which he challenged fiction writers to confront the greatest existential threat to mankind. Ghosh rises to the summons himself by crafting a surreal, fantastical story of displacement caused by extreme weather.

Deen is an Indian American rare books dealer dividing his time between New York and Kolkata, a solitary life that has experienced its share of romantic disappointments. While in India, he is drawn to Bengali folklore about a gun merchant and the goddess of snakes who pursues him. Deen's friend and mentor Cinta is also drawn to the story and encourages him to venture further into mythology as a possible tool for understanding the bewildering present.

As Deen travels from Kolkata to Los Angeles and then on to Venice, retracing the gun merchant's steps, he witnesses wildfires, cyclones, tornadoes and sinking lands. Deen meets marine biologist Piya, who opens his eyes not only to the oxygen-starved waters that are wreaking havoc on sea life but also the stagnation of his own sheltered heart.

In a Venetian lagoon scene reminiscent of epic mythological battles, a migrant boat is confronted by warships and protestors intent on denying it access to shore. The anti-migration crusaders fail to realize that the forces of climate change will sooner or later render them utterly homeless, too. Ghosh's (River of Smoke) mesmerizing storytelling style, honed over a prolific career, positions him as one of the leading contenders of contemporary South Asian literature. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer

"I go to work thinking of death. Hardly anyone in Seoul is happy during the morning commute, but I'm certain I'm one of the most miserable."

At the opening of Ji-Min Lee's The Starlet and the Spy, Alice J. Kim works as a translator for the American forces a year after the armistice and ceasefire. Her life and outlook are as dour as these introductory lines: the traumas of the war have left her hopeless and joyless. When her boss tells her about an upcoming assignment, he expects she'll feel excited and honored to serve as escort, interpreter and handler for Marilyn Monroe, on a tour to entertain U.S. soldiers. Alice is unmoved--what does she care for an American movie star?

During the course of four days with the bombshell, however, Alice will be forced to broaden her perspective on her own life and options. There seems the hint of a chance that she will find someone she's lost. As Alice struggles with her will to live, the American beauty surprises her. Stunning, sexy, charismatic, yes; but Monroe is also unexpectedly approachable. And she will make a small but essential difference in the life of the less famous woman.

Born of a curiosity about human relationships in unusual times, The Starlet and the Spy asks the questions: What if we met across a divide? What if a despairing young Korean woman reached into Marilyn Monroe's makeup bag for a lipstick, or a way out? In a decidedly optimistic turn, Lee leaves her ending open, and her reader free to wonder what might be next for Alice. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

After 16 "kills" (nuclear/bioweapons programs neutralized), Defense Nuclear Agency team Roberto Diaz and Trini Romano think they've seen it all. Then, in 1987, they encounter Cordyceps novus, a fungus more pernicious, adaptive and threatening than anything they've ever seen. The government destroys all but a small sample, which it buries safely in cold storage in the Atchison mines, "sealed inside a biotube three hundred feet underground in a sub-basement that didn't officially exist."

Thirty years later, the former government space has been turned into Atchison Storage. One night, employees Travis "Teacake" Meacham (an oddly charming ex-con) and Naomi Williams (a single mom working her way through veterinary school) hear beeping behind a wall, which leads them to the discovery of hidden subbasements and a government vault with an odd fungus spreading across the floor.

After three decades, nobody but Roberto and Trini remembers the deadly fungal threat, so when Teacake and Naomi call the military, Roberto is summoned out of retirement for what his superiors think is an unnecessary assessment. Enacting a secret contingency plan, Roberto goes off grid and races the clock--and the newly awoken fungus--to keep it from spreading. The threat is real: if he fails, it will "[bring] about a Sixth Extinction, a mass die-off" of all life on Earth, and he'll do anything to stop it.

Cold Storage is the debut novel by screenwriter and director David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Panic Room), and his riveting combination of distinctive characters, thrilling pace and deadly threat make it a fun ride. --Jennifer Oleinik, freelance writer and editor

In A Song for a New Day, novelist and musician Sarah Pinsker (Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea) imagines a future where avoiding human interaction has become the norm. After a series of high-profile bombings and mass shootings leaves thousands dead, the United States government outlaws public gatherings. Technology allows people to live in their own homes where, they believe, they'll be safe.

The narrative moves between two voices. Luce is a musician who fronted the band that was the last major concert headliner before the congregation laws went into effect. After concerts are outlawed, she's lost without a live audience. But, to her surprise, she discovers an illicit network of live venues. As dangerous as it is--the government is ruthless in jailing perpetrators and destroying venues--she opens her own underground club and begins performing again.

Rosemary is a young woman who doesn't remember a time before gatherings were illegal. Her schooling, shopping and dating have all been virtual. Her first experience at a virtual concert where everyone is an avatar, however, is transformative. She becomes an artist recruiter for StageHoloLive, the company that organizes and sponsors virtual concerts and events. This necessitates actual traveling to find underground musicians in order to convince them to join the virtual world. Her first major recruitment effort is to convince Luce to be a SHL entertainer.

The power of speculative fiction comes from the realistic depiction of future consequences of contemporaneous actions and beliefs. Pinsker uses the world of music, with its power to bring people together, as an urgent warning about the dangers of society withdrawing into itself. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Vegetarians and carnivores alike will rejoice at the bold, inventive recipes in Umami Bomb: 75 Vegetarian Recipes that Explode with Flavor. If your vegetable recipes are sweet, salty, bitter or sour, but still missing that special something, you need to increase the fifth flavor, and up the umami factor. Umami is often considered to be meaty, but Umami Bomb proves that you can have recipes packed with savory richness without using any meat.

Seventy-five flavorful recipes are grouped into chapters organized by eight umami-rich ingredients: aged cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, soy sauce, miso, caramelized onions, smoke and nutritional yeast. After the end of these eight main chapters there is a bonus fish chapter, with umami-rich ingredients like anchovies adding extra savory power for pescatarians.

Filled with bright pictures, clear fonts and easy-to-follow recipes that will leave mouths watering, Umami Bomb is sure to please any eater. Add a splash of soy sauce to marinara to create depth of flavor. Surprise brunch guests with a Savory Mushroom Breakfast Porridge that will knock their socks off. Keep a jar of caramelized onions in the fridge to have on hand for Caramelized Onion Focaccia with an Everything Bagel Seasoning. And even add savory flair to desserts, using smoke to make delicious Grilled Banana Splits. Perfect for vegetarians wanting to improve their dinner parties, or anyone interested in a more plant-based diet, Umami Bomb is a welcome addition to any cookbook collection. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

Windows on the World was a fixture in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It occupied nearly 50,000 square feet on the 106th and 107th floors--a quarter-mile high--and it was once the top-grossing restaurant in the country. With painstaking detail, journalist Tom Roston (I Lost It at the Video Store) relied on more than 125 sources to craft a superbly drawn portrait of an esteemed restaurant that was once a sophisticated pillar of New York City, catering to elites and tourists alike.

Windows launched in 1976. Roston shares a behind-the-scenes history of how the restaurant was conceived; the many culinary, creative and business challenges surmounted; and juicy stories about the power players, politicians and patrons who pioneered--and maintained--its legendary existence. Most notable was restaurateur Joe Baum, a forward-thinking, innovative perfectionist who demanded the same from his peers and subordinates.

Roston's richly detailed narrative chronicles how Windows rose in prominence, shining like a beacon of hope during the tumultuous 1970s. Stories about management and employees--many of them immigrants, some undocumented--reveal how diversity played a significant role in the success of a restaurant that was forced to adapt and evolve, including when Windows went dark for three years following the 1993 bomb attack on the World Trade Center. Sections chronicling events leading up to, through and beyond 9/11--how everyone working and dining at the restaurant that day perished--are particularly riveting and utterly heartbreaking. Through it all, Roston shows how this lavish destination restaurant in Manhattan--"Versailles in the sky"--is a landmark to be remembered. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

When Puerto Rico fell to the United States in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, it was "an afterthought," named a territory only because of its "strategic importance." By 1996, U.S. industries began to abandon the island when they lost federal income tax exemptions that had made Puerto Rico a manufacturing haven. Unemployment skyrocketed and, by 2013, Puerto Rico was $87 billion in debt. Four years later, the government had closed more than 300 public schools.

On September 12, 2017, Hurricane Maria hit the island with winds reaching 165 miles per hour. Buildings collapsed, homes were flooded and 80% of Puerto Rico's crops were destroyed. Communication, electrical power and municipal water systems were almost nonexistent island-wide. Five days later, FEMA's director arrived to assess the disaster, leading a Florida congressman to observe, "We've invaded small countries faster than we've been helping American citizens in Puerto Rico."

When the Sky Fell gives a vivid account of Puerto Rico's dark colonial history and the economic difficulties that have befallen the island while under U.S. control. Journalist Michael Deibert (Haiti Will Not Perish) shows how depredations of the past created fertile ground for the tragedies of the present, giving voice to the words of a San Juan resident in 2018: "The United States is a superpower, one of the greatest in the world, and they can't get the lights on and the water running for a 100 by 33 mile island...? They can take their citizenship and get out of here. Let us have our island." --Janet Brown, author and former bookseller

Most of Lonely Planet's guides cover the ground beneath us: hotels and restaurants, landmarks, museums, day trips and everything in between. Many of these destinations suffer from a common plight--light pollution. In his introduction to Dark Skies: A Practical Guide to Astrotourism by Valerie Stimac and Lonely Planet, Phil Plait (aka the Bad Astronomer) cites a study claiming that 80% of the planet is afflicted by light pollution, including 99% of the United States. This means most people can see only a relatively few stars, even on a clear night.

Observing the Milky Way in a place with little or no light pollution can be a life-changing experience. Much of Dark Skies is dedicated to a global listing of sites accredited by the Dark Sky Association for stargazing, such as Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania, Uluru in Australia and NamibRand Nature Reserve in Namibia. Beyond traveling to see the stars, Dark Skies also guides astrotourists to major observatories, rocket launch sites, solar eclipse paths, meteor shower schedules and the best places to see the aurora borealis (despite visa complications, Russia is apparently underrated).

Dark Skies may be a new frontier for Lonely Planet guides, but its format will be familiar to anyone who has used its earthly counterparts. Though many of the destinations are ambitious (good luck seeing Chinese rockets in the Gobi desert), there are enough locations in the Western hemisphere to make Dark Skies worthwhile to U.S. readers, and perhaps it will launch some illuminating trips. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer

Classical music can be a divisive genre--some people love it, others dislike it, still more are intimidated by it. But no matter what one's relationship to classical might be, this meditation on the genre by esteemed conductor John Mauceri (Maestros and Their Music) is sure to give all readers a new, or deeper, insight into what they are listening to when they listen to a piece of music.

Despite the title, For the Love of Music isn't really a how-to, and instead peels back the decades and the histories and the dialogues entered into when a piece of classical music is heard. Mauceri invites listening as an active process, one that questions what we are hearing, what we are feeling, what is evoked in us. For him, a journey through classical music is a journey through narratives encoded in an invisible art form, one that will always be up to the listener to interpret. He takes a historical view of the genre and wraps it in his experiences as both a fan and a performer, always emphasizing the symbolic mode of storytelling at the heart of the notes and its ability to induce a sense of wonder. For the Love of Music returns to the idea of music as a compendium of memory, tied to nostalgia, to personal experience and, overall, to the pleasure one might find in the endless variation of how it might be listened to yet again. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

In Matthew Zapruder's fifth collection of poetry, the themes of fatherhood and uncertainty for the future loom large. Father's Day is not a drastic departure from Zapruder's previous books. It features concise poems that often stem from an unexpectedly poignant--or, in some cases, bleak--moment he's encountered in everyday life. At the center of this volume is Zapruder's son, who appears in various poems as a human about to be born, an infant capable of renewing hope and a young child on the autism spectrum learning to navigate the world--and asking his father to do the same.

In an afterword, Zapruder (The Pajamist) clarifies that his son is "not a symbol, or myth, nor, for that matter, a diagnosis," and the complexity and care reflected in poems like "My Life" and "Today" make this sentiment exceedingly clear. Anxiety and political turmoil also make frequent appearances, often as poems addressed directly to high-profile subjects like Paul Ryan and Roseanne Barr. In other cases, Zapruder's work takes the form of letters or musings to some of poetry's most acclaimed creators. He is exceptionally skilled at this form, which allows for observational patter as one might have found back when letters were a primary means of communication. Engaging with everyone from Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun, W.S. Merwin and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Zapruder proves that poetry is often at its most effective when posited as a conversation. --Zack Ruskin, freelance reviewer

Papa is an elderly creature of habit: every day begins with a cup of tea, tending to his plants, tidying up and getting dressed to ride the bus into town. His regular walk takes him by familiar stores and lands him at the same restaurant for his "usual" lunch of dumplings before he makes his return homeward. Thursdays, however--although they start the same, with tea, plants, town--are different: he shops at the craft store and takes his double order of dumplings to go. Back at home, the ecstatic cry of "Papa!" joyfully interrupts his routine, as a little girl races from parked car into his open arms. Dumplings are shared and artful creations are made.

Korean-born, New York City resident Joowon Oh makes her picture book debut with Our Favorite Day, a poignant celebration of multi-generational, unconditional love. Working in watercolor with gouache and paper collage, Oh enhances her spare prose with subtle, resonating additions. Papa is a reader with thick books scattered by his bed and on his living room table. He's a widower, sleeping solo, but surrounded by photographs of his late wife. He's a little lonely, meandering always by himself, seated at a table for one. But Oh also reminds us that his granddaughter's presence must be a regular event: her smaller cup and saucer with its goofy grin on the kitchen table, the stepstool at the sink for washing up, framed photographs that show her progression from toddler to little girl. Oh, who dedicates her Favorite Day to her own "dad, with love," gently reminds parents and young children the absolute necessity of extended connections and the resulting rewards of routine interruptions. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

"For thousands of years, people have loved stories about heroes. Mythical heroes, historical heroes, and even... ordinary heroes. Like this guy: Todd."

Todd Bol was "pretty ordinary." As a child, he found reading difficult and was often in trouble in school. His mother, a teacher and book-lover, "told him he was gifted and had something big to offer the world." Years later, when Todd's mother died, he comforted himself with memories of her, including her teaching kids how to read. This gave him an idea: he would create a tiny "library" to "share his mother's love of reading." Made from an old door and "hammered... together to make a tiny one-room schoolhouse," this was the very first Little Free Library.

Miranda Paul's (Nine Months) straightforward, accessible text walks readers through Little Free Library's history, from Bol's first mini schoolhouse in Hudson, Wis., to the more than "75,000 registered LFLs" now found around the world. Paul dives into specifics, telling readers about six-year-old Nikki, who became an LFL "steward" after distributing hundreds of books in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; librarian Ms. López, who built Texas's first LFL to bolster the school district's reading program; volunteers who set up both a school and an LFL in Uganda in a refugee camp. John Parra's (Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos) fully saturated, acrylic illustrations are lively, each many-hued page full of motion and unrestrained energy. The award-winning pair both dedicate Little Libraries, Big Heroes to their childhood librarians, happily pointing out that ordinary book heroes can be found on the street and in the open arms of a child's local library. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness