Night Theater by Vikram Paralkar is set in an Indian village medical clinic and transpires over the course of one fateful night. With an ethereal twist, as well as subtle humor, it dismantles the stories people might tell themselves about the great beyond. Physician and novelist Paralkar (The Afflictions) wants to make sure readers don't get too comfortable about what awaits them after death.

The clinic sits atop a hillock while the village sprawls below, symbolic of the high pedestal doctors are often placed upon, especially in places where medical care is scarce and the need is great. The clinic is run by an overworked, nameless surgeon and an uneducated woman referred to as "the pharmacist." She is responsible for jobs like disinfecting the poorly lit operating room, making the doctor's lunch and administering the insufficient medical rations the clinic receives from crooked officials in the city. The stink of bureaucratic corruption is a recurring theme.

The other actors in this spare, powerful story are a ghostly family who have suffered fatal stab wounds. They return from the afterlife with one more chance on Earth. Such is the challenge they present to the horrified surgeon: if he can repair their wounds before daybreak, then they will be allowed to stay among the living.

Paralkar's remarkable first novel will intrigue readers of thrillers and ghost stories alike, exploring as it does a macabre premise with spiritual dimensions as well as a host of terrifying earthly dilemmas facing the poor surgeon. Night Theater unfolds in a meditative, trancelike fashion, culminating in an act of divine grace that will take readers' breath away. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer

Lidia Yuknavitch (The Book of Joan; The Chronology of Water) evokes a range of strong and subtle emotions with Verge: Stories, a collection dealing with "the spaces between things." These stories are shocking, stark, pulsing; their power lies in their realism, even when the tone turns dreamy and approaches magical realism. Yuknavitch's clear voice, with its unflinching demand that her readers recognize pain as well as beauty, is as precise and distinctive as ever.

The earthshaking opening story, "The Pull," features a swimmer whose "shoulders ache from not swimming" in wartime, one of two sisters "twinning themselves alive." It feels as if set in a world far from the average everyday--until the final, heart-dropping line. Verge most frequently features female characters, but some male, including a couple of tender stories starring gay men. There are traumas--violent, sexual, emotional--and revenge, as well as quiet recoveries and acts of grace and mercy.

Other stories deal with children employed as black-market organ runners; men working at a fish processing plant in Seattle; a man seeking recovery both physical and psychological in an eye-opening cross-country drive. In "Shooting," a woman's want feels "like a mouth salivating... like the weight of an arm. Like the next sentence."

Disturbing and essential, these stories emphasize the forgotten, the pushed aside, the marginalized. Yuknavitch's storytelling is urgent, raw and inspired, and if Verge is a love letter to those on the edge, it is equally important for all of us. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Melissa Anne Peterson makes her fiction debut with the dark and explosive Vera Violet. The novel's namesake character hails from a rural and hardscrabble small-town named David in rainy Washington State. The narrative follows Vera as she flees to St. Louis and tries to establish a new life working in an urban school. Her life in David is revealed in flashbacks. The narrative slowly circles a series of harrowing crimes and a cast of scrappy, small-town characters, including Vera's love, Jimmy James Blood. The characters get involved in the crystal meth trade with devastating consequences.

Peterson, who grew up in rural Washington, writes visceral and darkly poetic prose. She first entices readers with a reference to a lurid crime and a kind of neo-noir appeal: dark, foreboding landscapes, a rusty white Ford and a .40 caliber handgun. What Vera is fleeing from isn't just an isolated crime, but rather an entire way of life. She contrasts small-town life with her new life in St. Louis. Rather than being an ideal refuge, the city is rife with poverty and inequality but structured differently from her hometown. In the city, she notices economic stratification along lines of race and other factors. In this way, Peterson builds a class consciousness between poor rural whites and disenfranchised people of color living in urban areas.

Peterson brings life to a host of memorable characters whose struggles are seared into readers' brains. Vera Violet announces the arrival of a new writer who is comfortable with her craft and knows how to relay a story in vivid and affecting detail. Vera Violet packs a powerful punch. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset

In one day, 36-year-old Seattle sportswriter Maeve "Mae" Stephens is laid off from her newspaper job, learns that her boyfriend (a left fielder for the Mariners) is cheating on her, and gets mugged for $32 in her wallet. No sooner does down-on-her-luck Mae move in with her parents (who lovingly adopted her as a baby) when she receives a phone call informing her that her birth mother, Annabelle, has died in a freak accident. An old friend of Annabelle invites Mae to attend the funeral in the small town of Timber Creek.

For years, Mae wrote Annabelle letters, which were returned to her unread. But with life at a standstill, Mae sets off for Timber Creek and learns she is the beneficiary of Annabelle's worldly possessions, including her house, an old VW and a moody cat. When a wayward bulldog is found chained to the front porch, Mae extends her stay. She's befriended by curious townsfolk, including a handsome but blocked writer and a group of women as tight-knit as the colorful sweaters they craft to keep local animals warm. Is there more than meets the eye to the idyllic town--and to the story of Annabelle's life?

As Mae learns more about the woman who gave her up and why, she also discovers herself--who she is and what she wants out of life. Annie England Noblin (The Sisters Hemingway, Pupcakes) spins a poignant, heartwarming story about secrets and lies, strangers and lovers. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

The Mercies is a dread-soaked retelling of real events. Kiran Millwood Hargrave (The Girl of Ink and Stars) makes her adult debut with a historical novel based on calamitous events at the far-flung town of Vardø in northern Norway. In 1617, a storm surprises 40 fishermen at sea, killing the majority of the town's male population. The women are left to fend for themselves, the harshness of their situation demanding that they put aside their grief and fulfill roles typically reserved for men if they want to survive.

One protagonist is Maren, a young woman who loses as much as anyone else in the storm: a brother, father and her husband-to-be. When the town divides after the storm, she finds herself drawn to Kirsten, who confidently flouts gender norms. The town's remoteness has offered a degree of freedom to the women there, a freedom that will soon be challenged by the arrival of commissioner--and witch-hunter--Absalom Cornet. His arrival represents an assertion of state and church authority over what Absalom sees as a wild, devilish place.

Absalom brings his new wife, Ursa, who is unprepared for the harshness of Vardø. The Mercies is, in part, about how repression and power imbalances function at different levels. Ursa's experience of marriage is a painful one, but she finds small pockets of freedom where she can, including in an increasingly intimate relationship with Maren. For all the novel's outer grimness, it finds a warm heart in the relationship between Maren and Ursa. By the novel's bloody end, they are the only spark of hope left. --Hank Stephenson, manuscript reader, the Sun magazine

Nick Petrie's The Wild One is the thrilling fifth novel in the Peter Ash series about a wandering Marine veteran of the Iraq War seeking to calm his PTSD demons by doing some good in the world.

On his way to finding some peace in California's Death Valley, Peter gets a call from Tom Wetzel, a former Marine turned corporate fixer, who begs Peter to help a desperate client named Catherine Price. Catherine's eight-year-old grandson, Óskar, has been taken to Iceland by his father, Erik, after Erik was accused of killing Catherine's daughter, and Catherine fears for Óskar's life. She'll finance whatever Peter needs to get the boy back.

In spite of his mental health concerns, Peter agrees to fly to Iceland to look for Óskar. But as soon as he lands, he's met by customs officials and a member of the U.S. Embassy. They tell Peter he has 48 hours to leave the country or be taken into custody--and they won't explain why. With the police, embassy officials and an intensely fierce storm nipping at his heels, Peter races against time, freezing temperatures and impassable terrain to rescue the boy.

According to the author's note, Petrie performed exhaustive research on Iceland to give readers a nail-biting, immersive experience. The storms Peter encounters are bone-chilling in ferocity. The fight scenes are brutal hand-to-hand battles, with huge Nordic locals throwing Peter around like a rag doll. But he gains help from the unlikeliest of sources to unravel this intensely paced mystery of what made Erik and Óskar run. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

In this gripping thriller, John Keddie's wife and daughter are left waiting and confused after his flight home to Melbourne has disembarked and there's no sign of him. Calls to John's office reveal he didn't attend a palliative care conference in London. In fact, John also concealed from Kate that he left Trinity Health's employ three months previously, after the death of an elderly patient hit him particularly hard.

Hours away, on Belport Island, Abby Gilpin, her property caretaker husband, Ray, and their two teens are struggling through the tourist off-season. Abby doesn't think much of it when she finds Ray's work boots and clothes in the trash and she simply moves them to the salvation bin. But Ray's whereabouts have been a bit mysterious lately, and Abby recently heard him crying in the bathroom. 

Kate and Abby's individual points of view begin to merge after Kate receives a call that an alarm has been triggered at the Keddie holiday home on Belport and a body is found at the island's ferry terminal. Kate and her father-in-law head to investigate, putting all the story's principals on the island, but Australian author Christian White has plenty of clues to toss into the mix before the true connections between The Wife and the Widow are revealed.

White, Victorian Premier's Literary Award winner for The Nowhere Child, maintains a steady flow even as he nimbly uses history and secondary characters to create multiple potential scenarios. Misdirects and a terrific reveal midway through the novel add to the pleasure of White's second standalone thriller.--Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review

Both timeless and also a direct response to the war on American women's civil liberties and body autonomy of the late 2010s, Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury and Women's Voices is a manifesto for channeling anger into positive action.

"This is not a book telling women that if they get back into the kitchen and start baking, their rage will be sedated and all will be well," writes James Beard Award-winning co-author Kathy Gunst (Soup Swap). "This is a book about women's voices, women's recipes, women in community with one another."

The community of women Gunst and co-author Katherine Alford (Food Network) got to participate is impressive. Contributors include all-star chefs and restaurant owners, cookbook authors and food writers, Emmy-winning musicians and documentary filmmakers, television hosts and writers. Together, they have produced a distinct combination of more than 50 recipes. From around the world: Arabic baklawa, Baton Rouge lemon bars, Indian thepla, Jewish challah, Swedish visiting cake, bizcocho de ron (Mami's rum cake). For resistance: Impeachment Upside-Down Cake, Drop Dead! Pecan Spice Cookies, Rainbow Cookies, Power Muffs, (Don't Call Me) Honey Cakes. All these are augmented with essays, personal stories, poetry, in-depth interviews and baking tips.

"Here's the bad news, America," writes Tess Rafferty in "The Revolution Will Be Catered," "you've woken a white-hot atomic geyser of rage in women. Here's the good news: we've brought cookies."

In short, a passion for baking + activism = rage baking. A percentage of book sale proceeds goes to EMILY's List, an organization dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men/ Gang aft agley," wrote Robert Burns; in Yiddish, "Der mentsh trakht un got lakht" translates to "Man plans and God laughs." While "To a Mouse" may not have been quoting Yiddish exactly, as an immigrant culture, Yiddish has far-reaching influences throughout Europe, the Americas and beyond. Published in partnership with the Yiddish Book Center to commemorate the organization's 40th anniversary, How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish traces the historical impact of Yiddish and celebrates its vibrant relevancy today.

Editors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert organize the volume into six sections (Politics and Possibility; The Mother Tongue Remixed; Eat, Enjoy, and Forget; American Commemoration; Oy, the Children!; and The Other Americas) and present a veritable who's who of Yiddishists who contribute essays, memoir and fiction (Isaac Bashevis Singer, Michael Chabon, Grace Paley); plays (Moyshe Nadir); poetry (Allen Ginsberg); recipes (Procter & Gamble); songs (Sophie Tucker); cartoons (Liana Finck); oral histories (Fyvush Finkel, Walter Matthau, Alan Alda); and more. There are works in translation--as their creators wrote in either their native tongue (from Belarus, Ukraine, Argentina, etc.), Yiddish, or both--with full credit given to the translators (living in Scotland, Canada, the U.S., etc.), showcasing the breadth and depth of Yiddish reach.

Alan Alda provides a fitting description of this momentous anthology in the included piece "Yiddish Hollywood," in which he says, "[Yiddish stories] are an expression of the character of the Jewish people. They have an acute sense of humor which they're able to express even in the midst of their deepest suffering." Though Alda is not Jewish, his insight proves everyone can appreciate Yiddish's cultural legacy and current importance. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co., Beaver Dam, Wis.

Jesse Owens's performance on the track at the 1936 Berlin Olympics is now legendary, but lesser known are the stories of the other 17 black athletes from the U.S. who competed at those games. The 16 men and two women whom the Nazi newspapers referred to as America's "black auxiliary" had a far-reaching impact on the face of international sports, but the mainstream of history forgot most of them.

In Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, Deborah Riley Draper, Blair Underwood and Travis Thrasher focus on five track athletes--Tidye Pickett, Louise Stokes, Mack Robinson, Archie Williams and Ralph Metcalfe. This history showcases their dual awareness, both as athletes competing against each other and, perhaps more importantly, as black athletes representing a country that did not fully consider them human and facing down white supremacy globally. They knew that no amount of medals won abroad would make the segregation waiting for them at home disappear. The book also demonstrates how different each of their experiences of overcoming the odds was. Particularly in the case of the women, being better than the rest of the field was not always enough in the face of prejudice. Nevertheless, even when robbed of their chances to compete, their presence was enough to push back against racism and indicate that times would eventually change.

In the words of Tidye Pickett, "Politics and sports, sports and politics, they've always gone together." Ultimately this powerful volume reminds readers how true that statement is. By reflecting on this pivotal point in history, it helps to show how much progress is yet to be made. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Kacen Callender's second middle-grade title, King and the Dragonflies, deftly treads familiar, challenging territory--race, sexual identity, death--again in a sensitive and age-appropriate manner.

Kingston Reginald James hates his name. His parents' regal choice was deliberate, "so I'd remember... that I've got ancestors who used to rule their own empires before they were stolen away." King doesn't feel like royalty, though. These days, he's mostly just scared. Older brother Khalid would say, "If you're always too busy hiding, then you're not really living, are you?" But Khalid is dead at only 16, and the family, perhaps King most of all, is struggling to move on. Khalid is buried, but King knows he's just swapped his human form for that of a dragonfly.

King is also afraid to admit how much he misses his friend Sandy, with whom he severed his relationship after Sandy told King he was gay; Khalid overheard Sandy's confession and warned King to stay away because "Black people aren't allowed to be gay." Besides, even if Sandy is nothing like his family, everyone knows they've got multigenerational connections to the KKK.

In conflating Sandy's family's hateful background with King's own rejection of homosexuality, Callender (Hurricane Child) is especially effective at exposing the many ways we unfairly dismiss, reject and harm one another. "You think my granddad is bad because he was a racist.... You're doing the same. Exact. Thing," Sandy schools King about his internalized anti-gay fears. Beyond the robust roster of crucial issues (unpunished murder, racist law enforcement, child abuse, runaways), Callender's King and the Dragonflies is ultimately a resonating family story of tragic loss, shattering consequences and finding "a new normal" enabled by unconditional love. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

The history of voting rights in the United States has been one of constant struggle for many. Susan Goldman Rubin (Maya Lin) outlines this tumultuous evolution in a concise account that includes both those who fought heroically for a voice in their government and those who worked to keep them silent.

African Americans, Native Americans, women and young people have all taken stands--confronting bigotry, intimidation and violence--to demand an equal opportunity to vote. Rubin faithfully portrays how long and hard their fights were (and, in too many cases, continue to be). Suffragists protesting for women in 1919 were imprisoned and some even "lost their jobs." In 1965 when a group of peaceful protestors marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., "they faced Alabama state troopers and Sheriff Clark's posse carrying bullwhips and batons wrapped in barbed wire." But these groups persevered for the precious privilege of casting a ballot. Rubin quotes Marcia McMillan Edwards, a marcher in Selma, "It is the duty of every eligible person in the United States to vote. Too many have fought and died for everyone to have the right to vote."

Give Us the Vote! is an invaluable resource on the development of the U.S. voting process that offers a plethora of avenues for discussion on every page. In addition to Rubin's gripping narratives and powerful anecdotes, she includes a wealth of information in the book's back matter such as a timeline of voting rights in the U.S., sources and an index. A reminder of how priceless voting is, Give Us the Vote! displays how vital it is to protect the right from those determined to suppress it. --Jen Forbus, freelancer