Elin Hilderbrand tugs on readers' heartstrings with great aplomb. In 28 Summers, she begins at the end of a long-term, unconventional romance and weaves the captivating story of star-crossed lovers through 28 years of history. 

The 1978 movie Same Time, Next Year--an American romantic-comedy-drama--serves as inspiration to the structure of the story and to main characters Mallory Blessing and Jake McCloud, who are fans of the film. Mallory and Jake developed an easy, flirtatious camaraderie over the phone while Jake and Cooper, Mallory's brother, roomed together at college. The two meet face-to-face only in 1993, while in their 20s--after Mallory inherits a Nantucket beach house from her aunt. Mallory plays host to soon-to-be-married Cooper and his friends, who gather on the island for his bachelor party on Labor Day weekend. The gathering goes bust on many levels, but Mallory and Jake forge an intimate bond--a soulmate connection--amid the mayhem and vow that every year, on Labor Day weekend, they should meet up again, just like in the iconic film.

For the next 28 years, the couple fulfills their pact, having contact with each other for only one weekend annually, where they secretly rekindle their romance and share the travails of their private lives--the challenges and sacrifices of dating and marriage to other people, parenthood and career pursuits. Careful plotting binds this deeply moving, powerful story. Hilderbrand (Summer of 69; The Perfect Couple) successfully entwines a host of surprising twists where multi-faceted characters become ensnared in thought-provoking romantic dilemmas. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

The norovirus is going around the British cruise ship Amphitrite, and further danger is posed by the very real possibility of a pirate attack. But much more daunting to Jessie Drake, the ship's physician, is accepting the recent death of Kat, her partner of 20 years. Lisa Alther's Swan Song: An Odyssey is a pleasantly bouncy ride down the conduits of later-life grief.

When Jessie, who considers herself to be in "early old age," flew from Vermont, where she lives and works, to Hong Kong to fill in for the Amphitrite's ailing physician for six weeks, she was expecting something "along the lines of the Love Boat." To be fair, the Amphitrite has its share of telegenic characters, including a former priest turned high-seas gigolo and a World War II veteran and his much younger, much randier wife. But Jessie's dealings on board aren't as lighthearted as she had anticipated: the ship's lead medical officer, who did his residency with Jessie and got her the Amphitrite job, wants to revisit their decades-old botched romance, and the Amphitrite's chanteuse may want more from Jessie than she feels ready to give.

Swan Song proceeds not at a brisk clip but languidly, accommodating not only romantic entanglements but various characters' agonized introspection, a shipboard mystery and sightseeing along the Mediterranean. Alther, whose previous novels include the feminist classic Kinflicks, has looked into the heart of late-in-life grief and divested it of the maudlin; the result is something smarter, darker and better. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Unaccepted college admissions offers--a generation apart--symbolize working-class families' thwarted dreams in memoirist Connie Schultz's first novel, The Daughters of Erietown.

When rural Ohio high school senior Ellie gets pregnant in 1957, she and her boyfriend, Brick, trade his basketball scholarship and her nurse training for a rental house and his union card. Brick tolerates the menial labor at Erietown Electric, while Ellie budgets their funds and nurtures firstborn Samantha and their son. They're content, but eventually Brick's frustration and good looks lead him to infidelity, a mistake with devastating repercussions. Ellie's stoicism preserves the family, and both she and Samantha flourish with the rise of feminism. (Ellie buys Sam Our Bodies, Ourselves; Sam gives her mother Marilyn French's The Women's Room.) But when Sam gets a full scholarship to Smith, consistently class-conscious Brick demands she decline the "charity."

Schultz opens the novel in 1975, as the family takes Sam to nearby Kent State, then moves back to 1957, emphasizing that now Sam is fulfilling her parents' dream. Continuing through 1994, The Daughters of Erietown spans four decades of shifting social mores and illustrates how a family's love can temper the impact of even the most hurtful secrets. A Pulitzer-winning journalist, Schultz wrote …And His Lovely Wife: A Campaign Memoir from the Woman Beside the Man, about her role while her husband, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, ran for office. With this novel, she demonstrates a deep affection for working-class families and a knowing eye for regional culture. --Cheryl McKeon, bookseller, Market Block Books, Troy, N.Y.

The Lightness, Emily Temple's debut novel, spins a darkly fascinating tale of female coming-of-age. Teenaged Olivia, left reeling from her Buddhist father's abandonment, arrives at the Levitation Center, a site of spiritual energy her father was known to visit. The area is also home to an isolated camp for troubled teenaged girls, in which Olivia enrolls. There, she is drawn into the orbit of three intense and magnetic girls--Laurel, Janet and their leader, Serena--as well as the attractive, 20-something male camp employee they all claim has special powers. Together, the girls are determined to transcend the mundane and learn to levitate, no matter what sacrifices are demanded.

Temple proves herself to be virtuoso of dark, playful prose. Olivia's first-person narration teases and unwinds her tale, twisting it through claustrophobic sequences at the camp, memories of her abusive childhood and snippets gleaned from spiritual, scientific and literary sources alike. While Olivia's voice controls the novel's sense of gravity, the slick but brittle, hard-shelled but tender-bellied girls around her are just as compelling. As the central foursome descends into more dangerous depths, the novel bears the weight of its slow-burn tension and raw emotion with a firm foundation. Ultimately, despite the story's haunting images and devastating themes, it's the girls at its center who ground this story, which is obsessed with mysticism, physics and fairytales. Dressed in heavy robes and tinged with blood, Temple's novel is ultimately a portrait of young women, vulnerable and powerful, who believe the world has more to offer them. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Key West in the 1930s is a crossroads, drawing local fishermen and their families, World War I veterans sent to work in government labor camps, and émigrés from Cuba. In The Last Train to Key West, Chanel Cleeton's third sweeping novel featuring the Perez family, the paths of three very different women--battered wife Helen, Cuban newlywed Mirta and former New York society girl Elizabeth--intersect as a hurricane bears down on the island.

Nine months pregnant and trapped in an abusive marriage, Helen spends her days serving key lime pie at Ruby's diner and her nights trying not to trigger her husband's temper. Mirta is struggling to adjust to her new reality after being married off abruptly to a New York businessman whose dealings might be on the shady side. And Elizabeth, accustomed to flirting her way through life, hopped a train to Key West (without telling her mobster fiancé) in a last-ditch effort to find her brother, a doctor who has disappeared.

Cleeton (When We Left Cuba) expertly narrates her story through the eyes of all three women, giving a multilayered glimpse into the island's intertwined and sometimes conflicting communities. As the storm gathers force, all three women head (separately) north to Matecumbe Key, where they must make snap decisions that could have far-reaching effects. Cleeton's compelling, vividly described novel combines a scrappy, adventure-filled setting with plenty of action, and three heroines who will each discover their own grit and gumption during stormy times. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

British author Hazel Prior's (Ellie and the Harp Maker) second novel delivers a dose of the warm fuzzies in a story of aging without giving up, the meaning of family and the healing power of baby penguins. 

Wealthy, irascible Scottish octogenarian Veronica McCreedy believes she has no family and prefers to live alone, calling other people "irksome." When an epiphany leads her to Patrick, the grown grandson she never knew she had, his aimless lifestyle fills her with disdain. Suffering through a bad breakup, Patrick finds his chilly grandmother equally disappointing. Turning aside from humans once more, Veronica sees a moving documentary about penguins and decides to bequeath her fortune to the delightful birds. She also decides to travel to Antarctica for a long visit with the scientists who study them, despite the scientists' fervent protests. One voyage south and a purposely missed return trip later, Veronica's adventures on the ice, including bonding with a young woman scientist and raising a penguin chick, begin to thaw her heart. Meanwhile, Patrick gets a package containing Veronica's teen journals from 1940 and learns the devastating truth behind her frosty persona.

Reminiscent of A Man Called Ove mixed with Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, this life-affirming dramedy scores big on the cuteness index. However, Prior also delves into trauma and healing in a serious and sensitive manner. Readers willing to overlook the occasional plot stretch will find a heartwarming story of family and redemption. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Ramsey Campbell is one of the most consistent horror writers working today, and his 33rd novel proves his reputation. Arriving in the British occult footsteps of Arthur Machen and M.R. James, The Wise Friend is an unsettling and eerie novel that will please fans of literary horror and make new ones of those unfamiliar with Campbell's long career. The book opens with Patrick Torrington and his son finding the diary of his aunt, an artist whose mysterious suicide ended her increasing preoccupation with magic. The pair visit the occult sites described in her journal, but the search unearths horrific consequences for Patrick and the people he loves. Now he must stop his son from unwittingly carrying out a dark ritual before it's too late.

Like his literary horror forbears, Campbell uses slow, patient craft and plotting in order eventually to pull the rug out from under the audience. The last hundred pages of The Wise Friend are able to do what they do (i.e., scare the pants off readers) because they're built on a stable foundation, something not all horror novels have. If there's a flaw to the novel, it's that the characters aren't always three-dimensional, but that can be forgiven when the writing is this sharp. An absolute must-have for misty, dark nights. --C.M. Crockford, freelance reviewer

Acclaimed beekeeper Andrew Coté chronicles a year of hard work, adventure and just plain fun in Honey and Venom: Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper. Beekeeping is almost as old as civilization, and the Coté family has been doing it for four generations. "I bleed honey. It runs deep in my veins," Coté explains. His easygoing narrative, recounting his apian experience from his childhood in Connecticut to his current position as president of the New York City Beekeepers Association, will educate and entertain even the most bee-phobic reader.

Coté structures the memoir around the 12 months of both the bees' and the beekeeper's tasks. Winter months in the northeast are quiet, so Coté uses the time to visit beekeepers around the world. His visits to Africa and Asia reveal common interests--"most obviously a shared affection for the little four-winged creatures that transcended language barriers." His nonprofit organization, Bees Without Borders, works to "alleviate poverty via beekeeping endeavors." In summer, bees are active and the possibility for unfortunate interactions between humans and bees means that Coté is on call to, among other things, remove swarms from high above Times Square, pose with bees for advertising and capture bees from neglected hives in Queens. "Beekeeping in New York City is never boring," Coté points out, and thanks to this delightful memoir, readers will have a new appreciation for these complex insects and the humans who care for them. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.

Annye C. Anderson's memoir of her stepbrother Robert Johnson stands as an act of love, a rich oral history, a pointed straightening of the record and, above all else, an illumination. Anderson and music historian Preston Lauterbach (The Chitlin' Circuit; Beale Street Dynasty) flesh out what's publicly known of the Depression-era blues great Robert Johnson, the doomed, epochal singer and guitarist who died at age 27 and is reputed to have sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads.

Brother Robert, assembled by Lauterbach from his interviews with 93-year-old Anderson, strips away the legend to reveal the man, who of course developed his chops the way all musicians do: practice and dedication. Anderson paints Johnson as an enthusiast and showman, a shimmying performer who would ask his audiences, "What's your pleasure?" Far from the haunted figure of lore, this Johnson plays the spoons, yodels along with Jimmie Rodgers on The Grand Ole' Opry and knew every hymn in the book, despite rarely attending church. If Johnson was the hard-living vagabond of myth--if he did have hellhounds on his trail--Anderson never saw it, though she admits, "I didn't have him in my pocket." Revelations abound, both in Anderson's memories of Johnson's short life and in her recounting of his family's struggle, as Johnson's legend grew, to claim their inheritance. (Johnson's "Crossroad" boasts almost 24 million YouTube views.) The book concludes with an interview with Anderson, Lauterbach and music historians Peter Guralnick and Elijah Wald. It pulses with discoveries. --Alan Scherstuhl, freelance writer and editor

By the time a significant number of fathers began publishing books about the trials of parenthood, moms could be forgiven for thinking, "You're a little late to the party, guys." The New One is not an offering that will inspire this reaction. For one reason, comedian and actor Mike Birbiglia (Sleepwalk with Me) has written a very funny book. For another, Birbiglia claims original territory--new-dad jealousy--and marks it with both jokes and, just when the reader is poised for another punchline, devastatingly blunt confessions.

Birbiglia never wanted to be a parent. Among the arguments on his seven-point list of reasons why not: "I don't know anything" ("My brain is like a Snapple cap. It can hold one piece of information at a time"). His no-kids position is uncontroversial when he marries Jen, a poet whose work features in The New One: she doesn't want kids either. Until one day she does.

After baby Oona comes on the scene, Birbiglia can still see the humor in his situation, but he finds himself experiencing an unexpected status nosedive: "I am demoted to the intern of the family." He also didn't foresee that the baby would be an all-consuming force who would hold Jen's attention hostage. Birbiglia writes that at his personal nadir he had this thought: "I get why dads leave."

In The New One, Birbiglia toggles easily between the droll and the pitch-black thanks to what seems to be his innate cheerfulness. He never manages to stay on the dark side for too long. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

An imploring kiwi wonders where it fits into its "feathered family" in David Opie's delightful author/illustrator debut, All the Birds in the World, a guide to birds' distinctive features and commonalities for young readers.

After first dispensing with the species' uniting features, Opie then offers an exploration of the differences among more than 100 birds' attributes and appearances. Opie dedicates a sweeping double-page spread to each feature, surveying eggs, nests, foot shape and more. On a page with 14 bird heads in profile (plus kiwi), the text reads, "All birds have beaks of different shapes and sizes. Birds use their beaks to smash seeds, tear apart meat, sip plant nectar, gulp down fish, and hammer into wood to get grubs." Opie's softly hued and magnificently detailed illustrations celebrate birds from many regions, and his writing, imposed only on the right-hand page of every spread, informs without overwhelming young readers. Meanwhile, Opie punctuates every array with a beseeching brown kiwi whose distinctive font and plaintive questions--"But what about me?"--play empathetically off Opie's straightforward text. Ultimately, to readers' relief, Opie celebrates our featherless friend and situates the kiwi squarely among its peers, despite its unusual appearance.

Opie's comprehensive illustrations invite rereading, the birds' eyes rendered with particularly tender expressiveness. While the kiwi's metaphorical insecurities may prove understated for younger children, its presence affirms one can fit in while standing out from peers. Fledgling bird watchers will appreciate strong backmatter that includes a guide to the title's many colorful birds. Opie (illustrator of Dozer's Run) confides his long-held fascination with birds in an author's note, and his enthusiasm for the avian world shines through this colorful, informative picture book. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf

While talking about race may be complex in 2020, in the 1950s, when the civil rights movement became a topic most in the U.S. could no longer ignore, blatant and subversive racism were the norm in society. This is the background in which Daven McQueen's evocative YA debut, The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones, unfolds.

Ethan Harper, a biracial teen, is sent to spend the summer of 1955 in rural Alabama. Living primarily on the West Coast with his white father, he is unprepared for the prejudices he encounters--a reality, Ethan later learns, his Black mother faced daily growing up. Not long after his arrival, he meets a quirky red-headed girl named Juniper. As their friendship blooms, the two are forced to navigate ignorance and violence as segregation slowly unravels in the South. Ethan watches horrified as innocent lives become collateral damage. Following a series of tumultuous weeks, Ethan thinks back on his summer with Juniper, what he's gained and lost: "She's the reason... The whole reason I made it through this summer. She showed me that people can be good and there can be hope, even when it hurts."

In the foreground of McQueen's novel are characters so vulnerable, their emotional complexities mirror those we struggle with and cherish in our own lives. McQueen's writing also reveals the precarious balance between hope and sorrow related to these controversial themes. How do families navigate shifting perspectives on race from one generation to the next or as relatives migrate to geographical regions with differing cultural norms? How and when do we stand up to confront injustice?

The Invincible Summer of Juniper Jones is a work of historical fiction crafted to hook readers through an accurate depiction of what it means to discover--and grow into--one's identity. --Rachel Werner, Hugo House and The Loft Literary Center faculty

A droll how-to offers guidance for those young readers who would Rather Not. Read, that is.

Much as we hate to admit it, reading is not everyone's favorite activity. I Hate Reading: How to Read When You'd Rather Not is for kids who would prefer to do math, throw up or even look at blank pages over reading. But it's also for kids who love humor in their books, especially humor that includes words like "butt" (as in the oft-repeated refrain: "Eyes on book. Butt on chair"). In the vein of Adam Lehrhaupt and Matthew Forsythe's Warning: Do Not Open This Book! and Ryan T. Higgins's Be Quiet!, this illustrated work of metafiction sneakily leads reluctant readers down the dangerous path to becoming enthusiastic page-turners, even as it explains exactly how not to do so.

Written by a mother (Beth Bacon) as told by her children (Arthur and Henry), I Hate Reading is packed with hilarious tips to avoid reading (get a bloody nose, offer to wash the car). Bacon specializes in books that validate the challenges many young kids experience with reading, including The Worst Book Ever; The Book No One Wants to Read; and Blank Space. Designed with blocks of color, playfully-sized fonts and plenty of white space, this visually appealing book may make striving readers feel less alone even as they discover that books can make them laugh. After all, as one tip says, "Funny books seem to go by fast." Indeed they do. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor