In her first novel in more than five years, National Book Award Finalist Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven) abandons apocalyptic settings for another kind of crisis, but again thoughtfully examines the rebuilt lives people precariously arrange after a major collapse.

Mandel opens with the 2018 drowning of beautiful, adventurous young woman Vincent Smith, "plummeting down the side of the ship in the storm's wild darkness." A dying desire to see her older half-brother, Paul, brings her to him somehow, the first of several ghostly visitations that haunt the characters. Mandel then steps back through time to the late 1990s and travels a circuitous route to the moment of Vincent's death, twisting through the '90s club scene, the isolated wilderness of Vancouver Island and a Ponzi scheme that highlights the scams and excesses of the U.S. economy on the cusp of the Great Recession. During a stint as a bartender at a remote hotel, Vincent catches the eye of financier Jonathan Alkaitis and she becomes his companion in "the kingdom of money." When his subterfuge unravels, the repercussions impact Vincent, a chorus of office staff and many innocent investors. 

Half mist and dreams, this sophisticated take on the fragility of human connection and the ability to make do with less after the loss of success is a far cry from an acting troupe traveling the post-apocalyptic world. However, its concern with the sanding of life's jagged edges remains true to readers' expectations of Mandel's incisive vision. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

As in her debut, The Dinner List, Rebecca Serle adds a splash of magic to In Five Years while grounding the story in reality. Dannie Kohan's life is unfolding exactly as she's planned. On the same day she nails an interview for her dream job, her boyfriend, David, proposes. She falls asleep that evening and wakes up in an unrecognizable apartment with a strange man, and, shockingly, realizes this is where she is in five years. Which is impossible, because it looks nothing like her plans.

Serle's novel then brings Dannie back to her current life, with the young woman unable to shake what she saw and what it means. It felt too real to be a dream--was it a premonition? Four and a half years pass, and she and David remain unmarried, supposedly because their high-powered lives have allowed little time to plan a wedding. Until Dannie meets her best friend Bella's new boyfriend, potentially "the one"--and he's the man from Dannie's vision years earlier. Soon after, Bella shares more big news, and Dannie rushes to get married to prevent her foresight from coming true and ruining everyone's lives.

Dannie and David make more money than most millennials and Bella is a trust-fund socialite/artist, but they remain sympathetic as they strive to find romance, rewarding careers and a sense of security in an uncertain world. The moving love relationship at the center isn't between obvious suspects; Serle's understated prose allows heartbreaks to resonate quietly and the final note of hope to land beautifully. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd

Alka Joshi draws an evocative mid-century portrait of a woman fighting for independence and security in her debut novel, The Henna Artist. After fleeing her abusive husband, Lakshmi Shastri has made a name for herself drawing elaborate henna designs for Jaipur's wealthy women. Along with her intricate designs, Lakshmi provides special sweets and teas for her clients to cure headaches, stimulate desire and (secretly) prevent unwanted pregnancies. But just as Lakshmi is close to achieving financial stability, the arrival of her teenage sister, Radha, upends her carefully constructed world.

Narrated by Lakshmi, Joshi's novel takes readers from the elegant mansions of Jaipur's upper crust to the noisy, chaotic markets where Lakshmi and her savvy street-urchin assistant, Malik, buy the supplies for her business. Already juggling a full appointment book and overseeing the construction of her house, Lakshmi must also take charge of Radha, who has made her way to Jaipur after becoming orphaned. The sisters share the same fierce pride and dogged determination, which serve them well but cause them to clash often. Radha's impulsive decisions, and Lakshmi's reactions, will have far-reaching consequences for them both. Through her strong female characters--Lakshmi, Radha, Lakshmi's wealthy clients and even the city's two maharanis--Joshi's narrative highlights the personal, economic and social challenges of being a woman in a traditional but rapidly changing society. The Henna Artist is a lushly detailed story of family, womanhood and finding the courage to make difficult choices. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

In this sparkling romantic fantasy, TJ Klune (Into This River I Drown) pits a mild-mannered paper pusher against the forces of discrimination, inhumane bureaucracy and precocious children, with hilarious and inspiring results.

"Make sure the children are safe... from each other, and themselves," Extremely Upper Management of the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY) instructs 40-year-old Linus Baker. Linus's thankless task is inspecting orphanages that house magical children. When administration dispatches him to remote Marsyus Island Orphanage, home of six especially unusual children, Linus balks at the group: a distrustful forest sprite, a button-hoarding wyvern, a female garden gnome who swings a mean shovel, a boy who turns into a Pomeranian when frightened, a green blob who likes to play bellhop and "Lucy," the six-year-old son of the Devil. However, their gentle, unflappable caretaker, Arthur Parnassus, unsettles Linus most of all. He exhibits no intimidation at parenting the magical equivalent of a nuclear warhead, and Linus, "a consummate professional," finds himself attracted to the orphanage's master in a most unprofessional manner.

Stuffed with quirky characters and frequently hilarious, this inclusive fantasy is quite possibly the greatest feel-good story ever to involve the Antichrist. Klune constructs a tender, slow-burn love story between two endearingly flawed but noble men who help each other find the courage to show their true selves. Charged with optimism and the assertion that labels do not define people or their potential, The House in the Cerulean Sea will delight fans of Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series and any reader looking for a burst of humor and hope. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass series) creates the beautifully rich setting of Crescent City for House of Earth and Blood, her first novel for adults. A half-human, half-faerie living in the bustling metropolis, Bryce Quinlan was never expecting her world to be turned upside down. She's enjoyed a carefree life with her friend Danika. But when a demon brutally murders Danika and her werewolf pack, Bryce abandons her party lifestyle and becomes a complete recluse for years. She's endeavored to move on and continue her semi-legal job as an antiquities dealer. But when the events that scarred her reemerge, and the human convicted for summoning the demon that murdered Danika appears to be innocent, Bryce is dragged back into the world she desperately wanted to leave.

Bryce navigates her city by walking the edges. While paranormal entities rule everything, humans are pushed to the bottom of society. Her bodyguard and partner, the infamous Archangel Hunt, is not very excited to help this seemingly spoiled "party princess" solve the crime, but his forced service to the rulers of Crescent City doesn't give him a choice. As Bryce, Hunt and Bryce's half-brother (and heir to the Autumn Court) Ruhn get closer to solving the mystery, the three learn more than they bargained for about the political and cultural turmoil of their world.

Maas's novel adroitly mixes paranormal fiction and urban fantasy, evoking the work of contemporaries like Nalini Singh. With romance, action and an intricate mystery at the novel's core, new and old fans of Maas will become instant fans of Bryce and her story. --Amy Dittmeier, adult services librarian, Brookfield Public Library, Ill.

Emily Dickinson wrote 1,789 poems that she hid in a dresser drawer. The majority were published posthumously, catapulting her into history as one of America's best-known and prolific poets. Her poetry is genius in its simplicity and accessibility, both internally focused and observant of the natural world. It is additionally remarkable that Emily Dickinson traveled little, never married and was a famed recluse who preferred to live in her parents' home. While biographies and literary criticism of her poetry abound, in These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Dickinson scholar and recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship Martha Ackmann (Curveball) adds meticulous detail to the scholarship by placing Dickinson's work in the context of seminal moments in the poet's life.

Ackmann has been surrounded by Dickinson's landscape for years. Living in western Massachusetts (where Dickinson is from) and teaching at Mount Holyoke College (which Dickinson attended when it was the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary), Ackmann is particularly familiar with Dickinson's home, her community and even the views Dickinson would have seen day-to-day. Calling upon her own observations (Ackmann actually wrote sections of the book at Dickinson's desk) and using primary source material, Ackmann centers her work on critical events and influences. These include the monumental, like the Civil War, and the intimate, like the poet's internal struggle between wanting to be distinguished and her hesitancy to publish her poetry. Though at times Ackmann loses the forest for the trees, These Fevered Days will resonate with the many fans Dickinson has accrued since her death. --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co.

As historian Stephen Puleo (American Treasures) points out in Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine, and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission, the repercussions of the Irish famine of the 1840s still linger. Broad swaths of American society are descendants of the countless Irish people who fled their homeland during the devastation. English-Irish relations were poisoned for decades, because of the appalling decision of the English leadership to allow thousands of Irish people to starve to death while continuing to force Irish farmers to export their crops to England to meet quotas.

As the potato blight tore apart Irish society, and the English turned a blind eye, the Americans came to the rescue. Spurred by cries for aid from such illustrious statesmen as Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, the American populace donated generously. The Jamestown was fitted as a relief ship, and Captain Robert Bennet Forbes was commissioned to undertake the voyage to Ireland with his hold full of supplies, which, in a "happy coincidence," were loaded aboard the Jamestown on St. Patrick's Day, 1847.

Having overcome terrible tragedies in his own life, Forbes was determined to help alleviate the suffering of the Irish. His journey not only marked a pivotal point in American history, but it also laid the groundwork for "the collaborative public-private blueprint... that has guided America's international charitable relief for more than a century and a half."

In this meticulously researched, yet eminently approachable book, Stephen Puleo provides a fascinating glimpse at a little-known facet of a well-known trauma. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

In The Hunt for History: On the Trail of the World's Lost Treasures--from the Letters of Lincoln, Churchill, and Einstein to the Secret Recordings Onboard JFK's Air Force One, rare documents dealer Nathan Raab tells spellbinding stories of tracking down and identifying rare historical documents and artifacts. He includes the announcement of Napoleon's death from a British admiral stationed on St. Helena, an outraged letter from Susan B. Anthony to a clueless autograph dealer and, yes, previously unknown recordings made on Air Force One on November 22, 1963. (He also shares heartbreaking moments of telling someone their family treasure is neither valuable nor authentic.) 

Despite its title, The Hunt for History is more than a series of treasure hunts. Writing in a light, conversational style, Raab uses these accounts to illustrate both his education as a documents dealer and his growing fascination with history. Working alongside his father, he learns to authenticate documents, to identify forgeries and to recognize whether an authentic document has the historical significance of a major find. At the same time, he comes to understand how a piece of the past can provide an attachment to history. That understanding becomes deeply personal in the penultimate chapter of the book, in which Raab describes a historical discovery that changed him--the letters and library of a Jewish scientist smuggled out of Germany prior to World War II.

The Hunt for History is a delightful account of one man's engagement with the past. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins

While most film buffs cite 1939 as the year the largest number of great films were released, in Cinema '62, Stephen Farber (Hollywood on the Couch) and Michael McClellan persuasively argue that 1962 deserves that honor. The two film scholars write that 1962 was "a rare confluence of art, studio craftsmanship, and commerce that has never been surpassed." By succinctly examining acclaimed, underappreciated, hidden and neglected films, the authors showcase 1962 as a spectacularly varied and vital year in film. This was a year where Golden Age directors (including John Ford, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, Busby Berkeley) released films alongside young maverick directors (John Cassavetes, Sam Peckinpah, Roger Corman) and newly imported international filmmakers (Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman).

Even veteran directors were breaking movie taboos. Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent and Edward Dmytryk's Walk on the Wild Side battled decades-old Production Code restrictions to represent homosexuality on screen. Stanley Kubrick's Lolita was restricted to viewers over 18 (which meant its star Sue Lyon couldn't see the film). McClennan, who served on the MPAA ratings board, is an astute historian on the changing morals in films. Other outstanding movies discussed include The Manchurian Candidate, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Cape Fear, The Music Man, To Kill a Mockingbird and one entire chapter on the obstacle-filled making of Lawrence of Arabia (1962's top grossing film and Best Picture Oscar winner).

Cinema '62 is a compelling and entertaining assessment of the films released in 1962 and will help budding film buffs assemble a list of must-see movies. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author (House Made of Dawn in 1969), Oklahoma Centennial State Poet Laureate and acclaimed Kiowa artist N. Scott Momaday comes a vibrant collection of more than 100 new and selected poems, The Death of Sitting Bear.

Presented in three parts, some poems are quick tributes to natural phenomena ("It was full of angry sound/ It was not, but its fury was visible," from "This Morning the Whirling Wind"), but no less impactful for their brevity. Simple moments--a childhood recollection of the sound of fry bread sizzling--are exquisitely detailed. The poet explores complex questions about the nature of animals and humans, and their meanings and representations to each other. God, as an entity, as a spirit, as in nature, is called upon. Other pieces are long-form poetic narratives, such as Part II, "A Century of Impressions," which describes an era in a "one hundred haiku/ elemental exercise/ to nourish the mind." The title poem, "The Death of Sitting Bear," gives voice to the great man himself in stanzas of poetic prose, paying tribute to the elite Kaitsenko warrior's life and death.

Firmly steeped in Kiowa heritage and indigenous oral storytelling traditions, Momaday breathes in the spirit of the Southwest and breathes out masterful imagery onto the page. The poems beg to be read aloud in order to savor the taste of the language, each word carefully chosen to evoke shape, sound, sight, feeling and history with the weight of its intention: "a blackbird holds still/ in the center of sight/ and I cannot/ look away." --BrocheAroe Fabian, owner, River Dog Book Co.

Echoing a style used by the subject himself, Lori Mortensen (Away with Words) and Chloe Bristol use "words and pictures. And pictures and words" to capture the essence of well-known, eccentric creator Edward Gorey (1925-2000).

Gorey was born in Chicago, a brilliant, self-taught child who "gobbled up adventures and mysteries. Comics and poetry." Young Edward skipped grades in school and moved many times with his family, but "scribbled and sketched, sketched and scribbled, wherever he went." As an adult, he took a job in the art department of a publishing company, where he began jotting down and illustrating "stories that mingled sweetness and innocence, danger and darkness, all mixed up with his own brand of silliness." Publishers weren't interested in his work so Gorey published it himself. The "strange stories with curious titles" featured "odd and unfortunate endings" that made some parents angry. But Gorey refused to explain himself, insisting his books should not be taken seriously.

Throughout Nonsense!, Mortensen's stylishly poetic prose calls attention to the element of fun in Gorey's work. Illustrator Bristol's (the Winterhouse Mysteries series) pencil and digital art evokes the sketchy black lines used by Gorey himself. Text and illustration together paint a satisfying picture of an eccentric who developed an endearing (and unusual) way of expressing himself--and garnered an enduring following in the process. As Mortensen's end notes point out, Lemony Snicket, Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman "must all tip their hats to Edward Gorey." As should anyone else lucky enough to happen upon this biography about Gorey's darkly "curious" work! --Lynn Becker, blogger and host of Book Talk, a monthly online discussion of children's books for SCBWI

In this middle-grade novel about a boy's worst-case scenario--on practically every level--author Rob Harrell (Life of Zarf) deftly tells a cancer story that is authentic, wry, even hilarious and comes with a side of rock and roll.

Like most seventh graders, Ross doesn't want extra attention from his peers. So suddenly showing up at school with an eye patch or a big cowboy hat for sun protection (even inside) or having to use ointment that makes him look like "a scaly, oozing goo-monster" isn't ideal. But shortly before school started, Ross was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in an eye gland, and these horrifying indignities become realities. Not only does he have to deal with sci-fi-like proton radiotherapy treatments, he's also facing bullying at school and ghosting by one of his best friends. Luckily, he still has his other best friend, Abby, who will joke with him about cancer and his art: the goofy Batpig comics he creates are a fun escape. And then, unexpectedly, Ross finds another outlet for his anger, sadness and fear. His charismatic radiation tech, Frank, appalled by Ross's insipid music choices during treatment, introduces him to "music that doesn't suck." Ross is smitten and begins learning guitar himself.

Based on Harrell's own experiences with cancer, Wink cannily captures the lows and highs of middle school. Ross's self-conscious, self-deprecating first-person voice pulls readers in close; we feel his humiliation, his awkwardness, his joy. Harrell's writing has a spark and a flow that makes the juxtaposition of cancer, middle-school drama and head-banging guitar solos the most natural thing in the world. Spot art and comic panels add a sweet, funny bonus to an already spectacular book. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

The delightfully adventurous Jasmine Green series makes its Stateside debut with the adorable A Piglet Called Truffle. Spirited Jasmine is a veritable animal expert thanks to her farmer father, her veterinarian mother and all the inhabitants (including, ahem, her two siblings) that thrive on the family's Oak Tree Farm. When her mother goes to assist a bovine breech birth, Jasmine tags along for the promise of seeing Mr. Carter's pigs. "There's a sow just farrowed," ever-scowling Mr. Carter reveals. "Eleven, she's had." But visiting the sty, Jasmine discovers a 12th, "a poor little thing" too tiny to survive on its own. Convinced Mr. Carter would kill the runt, Jasmine commits a stealthy pignapping. (Thank goodness she's such an avid reader of her favorite magazine, Practical Pigs.) Jasmine knows she can't keep it a secret from her family for long, so what she really needs to do is convince her parents to let Truffle--named for the remarkable porcine ability to root out valuable mushrooms--stay.

Enhancing Helen Peters's farm adventures with whimsical illustrations, Ellie Snowdon charms with delightful black-and-white, penciled glimpses of pastoral fields, cozy kitchens and two- and four-legged friends. Peters (Evie's Ghost) balances her bucolic narrative with a few realistic reminders of inevitable loss, including a lamb that doesn't survive and a fox's fatal chicken coop attack. With at least three more Stateside installments scheduled, readers are guaranteed additional Jasmine rescues for needy creatures big and small. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon