In 1853 Boston, a wealthy Englishwoman, Lady Jane Franklin, secretly recruits experienced trail guide Virginia Reeve and a dozen other women for an all-female Arctic expedition. The women aim to find--or find out the fate of--Lady Jane's husband, Sir John, who disappeared in the Arctic with his men. A year later, Virginia is back in Boston and standing trial for murder. In her gripping fourth novel, The Arctic Fury, Greer Macallister (Woman 99; Girl in Disguise) weaves together two timelines and multiple narrative strands, exploring what happened on the women's brief expedition, and why several of them did not return.

Macallister tells her story chiefly from Virginia's point of view, bringing in her past experience as a trail guide in the American West and her complicated relationship with a fellow guide. But each of the women gets at least a chapter to tell her own story: artist Christabel, taciturn nurse Dove, officers' wives and dear friends Ebba and Althea, spoiled socialite Caprice. Things start going wrong even before the group leaves Boston, and Virginia must muster all her tact and courage to lead her ill-assorted crew to the far north.

The Arctic Fury is not for the faint of heart: at times Macallister thrusts her characters almost aggressively into hardship, peril and gruesome situations. It is not a clear-cut narrative of adventure, love or justice, although it contains the seeds of all those things. But it is certainly compelling. Readers who love historical fiction, strong women and unusual settings will find all three--as well as a couple of truly inventive twists--in Macallister's novel. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Michelle Gallen's debut novel, Big Girl, Small Town, offers an irreverent look into daily life in small-town Ireland as it follows its winning protagonist through a series of setbacks and new beginnings. Majella O'Neill spends her days working at the local chip shop and her nights curled up in her duvet watching Dallas. She hates most things (and most people), but especially small talk and gossip, the two activities that keep Aghybogey, a Northern Ireland town still haunted by the violence of the Troubles, running. Despite caring for her alcoholic mother and missing her absent father, Majella has settled into accepting what her life is going to be. That is, until her beloved grandmother is murdered and leaves her with the family farm.

Bawdy and bold, Big Girl, Small Town may focus on everyday activities, but its narrative voice, captivating protagonist and textured setting will keep readers eager to know what its eccentric cast of characters will do next. The novel's humor is dry, sometimes grotesque, and yet never at its characters' expense. Instead, a surprising sensitivity emerges from even its most brutal of jabs, making readers root for Majella no matter how she acts. Majella's own unspoken desire for more gives the novel its poignancy, particularly as the small opportunities to break free from the confines of her town and familial obligations mount. The novel's no-nonsense approach to feelings and the absurdities of existence prevent the story from ever falling into sentimentality or despair. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Comfort food and family feuds are centerpieces of the fun, first novel by KJ Dell'Antonia (How to Be a Happier Parent). The author plunges readers deep into the complicated lives of two families, the Moores and Pogociellos--rivals who share roots dating back to the 1800s in Merinac, Kan., where two sisters originated a fried chicken business. Familial tensions flowed through generations, down to Amanda Moore, who worked for her mother's traditional, old-school fried-chicken establishment, Chicken Mimi's--and fell in love with and married Frank Pogociello. Amanda's romantic choice created a mother-daughter rift that deepened when Amanda went to work for Chicken Frannie's, the competing restaurant offering a more innovative fried chicken menu.

With both eateries facing financial crises, Amanda reaches out to a reality TV show where two restaurants compete for a $100,000 prize. Once Amanda's pitch is accepted, it's game on for the fighting, frying families. Amanda enlists her widowed mother-in-law at the helm of Chicken Frannie's to battle against the Chicken Mimi's team: Amanda's estranged mother and Mae, Amanda's Brooklynite sister, who returns to Merinac after her successful TV career and marriage suddenly start to fray.

As the two eateries face off ruthlessly amid the limelight of TV cameras and producers eager to stir the drama pot, long-simmering family history infused with old resentments and scandalous secrets rises to the surface. Dell'Antonia's delightful story dishes up juicy messages about the strength and fortitude of the female spirit, the meaning of happiness and the valuable bonds of family. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Anthony Horowitz (Magpie Murders; The Word Is Murder) has created an astoundingly clever mystery in Moonflower Murders. The book opens with Susan Ryeland, a former editor, who now runs a small hotel on Crete. She's approached by the Trehernes, a wealthy couple who are alarmed by the sudden disappearance of their daughter Cecily. Cecily had called to tell them she found a clue to a murder that took place at the family's exclusive hotel eight years earlier. She found this hint in a book by Alan Conway, a dead author whom Susan represented. Immediately after the phone call, Cecily disappeared.

The Trehernes have a proposal for Susan: come back to England, stay at their hotel, and see if there is a connection between Conway's book Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, the earlier murder and Cecily's disappearance. Susan needs the money, so she agrees.

The true brilliance of Moonflower Murders lies in its book-within-a-book status, as Susan rereads Atticus Pünd Takes the Case, looking for clues to her dual investigations: into the murder of a hotel guest named Frank eight years earlier and the recent disappearance of Cecily. Horowitz does an excellent job of layering clues within the fictional Pünd's investigation, which Susan in turn uncovers in her investigation and which will keep Horowitz's readers guessing until the very last page. Reminiscent of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and John Buchan, Moonflower Murders is golden age detective fiction at its finest. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.

In Reza Farazmand's irreverent, read-it-in-one-sitting graphic novel, City Monster, a young forest monster relocates to the city so he can become the titular creature.

Finding purpose in the city has him stymied, but he becomes fast friends with others also facing a quest for self-discovery. His apartment comes with a marijuana-smoking ghost struggling to recall who he was as a human and the cause of his demise. Kim, City Monster's neighbor, is an introspective vampire. They often get together for coffee and wander the city discussing career options. During one outing, the two friends are taunted by Demon Bird, a self-proclaimed reflection of City Monster's inner critic, and a judgmental cat Kim swears is stalking her. Just as Kim is about to reveal the one big regret of her immortal life, she and City Monster spy Ghost entering a museum and follow him. They find Ghost floating near a painting of a famous Spanish king, which Ghost thinks is himself. The three are galvanized to discover the full story of Ghost's past, hoping that doing so will help them find their own paths.

City Monster's world is populated with absurdity so infectious that giggling and even snorting laughter may occur during reading. The pastel artwork is flat and quirky, showcasing unexpected details, and words are all caps. Narration floats freely within each frame, but dialogue settles nicely into word balloons. Profanity and drug mentions keep Monster from claiming a place as a preteen novel about finding one's way in life, so adults might care to keep it on a high shelf for themselves. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis, freelance reviewer

Bakers craving homemade sourdough bread will find an expert coach in Anita Šumer, Slovenian baker, teacher and author of Sourdough Mania. She boasts tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, and has traveled worldwide presenting workshops and spreading her passion for bread that "tastes incomparably better than bakes made with baker's yeast," and is healthier and more digestible.

"First of all, I advise you to give your mother starter a name, as this will make it easier to care for it: my 'Rudl' and I are inseparable," Šumer writes in her detailed directions for making starter (the fermentation element that replaces yeast) using just four ingredients: "flour, water, time and patience." She describes various flours, "locally sourced and organic when possible," noting their relative merits. European measurements and references may be daunting to a novice baker, but Šumer balances these with encouragements, and a lengthy "SOS" chapter of "What If's." She includes gluten-free recipes, too. Photo illustrations show the progress of a proper jar of starter, kneading techniques and the artistry of decorating loaves. Dozens of recipes beyond the classic round boule include baguettes, croissants and desserts, such as chocolate babka.

In addition to her workshops and online outreach, Šumer is an ambassador for the Sourdough Library in Brussels, home to 128 sourdough samples from 24 countries plus an online collection.

With the enthusiasm of an artist and the precision of a scientist, Šumer leaves little to chance, and readers can anticipate success as well as conversion to Sourdough Mania. --Cheryl McKeon, bookseller, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse: 1935-1943 is an accessible overview of fascist Italy's overambitious military ventures by John Gooch, a leading scholar on Italy and the two world wars. Gooch shows how Mussolini's dream of creating a new Roman Empire was doomed to fail for a variety of reasons--from poor leadership and an inadequate manufacturing base to the disastrous decision to ally with Nazi Germany. Mussolini's War is especially illuminating as a summary of the successes and failures of arguably the least of the Great Powers, whose role in World War II is often minimized or ignored by popular histories.

From the start, Gooch makes it clear that fascist Italy's territorial ambitions were at odds with the nation's capacities. While Italy's armies found early success in Ethiopia and Spain, they were unprepared for the scale and complexity of a modern world war. Mussolini's decision to ally with Nazi Germany dragged a poorly organized and underequipped military into conflict with much wealthier nations. Italy's overstretched armies were far from the only ones who suffered and died for Mussolini's dreams: Gooch explains how Italian occupations allowed devastating famine in Greece and genocide in former Yugoslavia.

Casual students of World War II might be used to narratives that present Italy as a bumbling, almost inconsequential participant. Gooch instead offers a nuanced account of overmatched and undertrained soldiers, who often fought bravely, being asked to succeed against impossible odds. Mussolini's dreams proved to be nothing more than costly delusions. --Hank Stephenson, the Sun magazine, manuscript reader

Readers in the mood for an eccentric adventure story will be captivated by journalist Ed Caesar's The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest, the fast-moving account of Englishman Maurice Wilson's doomed quest to scale the world's highest peak in 1934.

Considering Wilson's size in relation to the scale of his audacious project, the moth of Caesar's book title could have referred to the man himself, but instead it describes a Gipsy Moth biplane manufactured by the de Havilland Aircraft Company. While visiting Germany in 1932, Wilson--a World War I veteran--hatched his improbable plan to fly that aircraft some 5,000 miles from England to India, crash land the tiny plane at an elevation of 10,000 feet and then become the first man to ascend to the summit--alone.

Wilson's scheme would have been wildly ambitious for a seasoned aviator and skilled mountaineer, but considering that he had completed his flight training only a short time before he took off from England and hadn't climbed anything higher than some mountains in the country's Lake District and Wales, it bordered on the suicidal. Confessing to a near obsession with Wilson's story, and aided by the discovery of a cache of documents in the possession of his subject's septuagenarian great-nephew, Caesar is a deeply sympathetic biographer. Whether viewed as an inspiring tribute to one brave man's indomitable spirit, or a chronicle of sheer madness, what Caesar calls the "whole sorry, beautiful, melancholy, crazy tale" is one of truth that often seems far stranger than fiction. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

The history of postwar West Germany is often simplified into one of triumphant renewal, with the former Nazi state reborn as a democracy that faced its past head-on. The reality is much more complicated, as history professor Monica Black explains in her revelatory A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany. Black's history of postwar Germany focuses on the outbreaks of superstition and messianic religious belief that consumed the war-torn nation, including charismatic faith healers that drew crowds of thousands, predictions of the end of the world that dominated newspapers and even a rash of witchcraft accusations. Black argues that these outbursts were fueled by the sublimated guilt, shame and suffering of a society where many had committed or tolerated terrible crimes.

In contrast to the modern view of Germany as a nation that has reckoned with its history, postwar West Germans were eager to put it behind them and rebuild their nation. This necessitated a remarkable silence about the past on the part of many citizens, who would refer to the Nazi era only euphemistically. In the absence of a public reckoning, Black argues, many expressed themselves through superstition and fervent religion. Accusations of witchcraft exposed the rifts in communities where neighbor had turned against neighbor under the Nazis, for example, and the many faith healers that emerged seemed to heal spiritual injuries as often as physical ailments. Black's portrayal of postwar Germany as a morally and spiritually damaged nation is a fascinating and necessary corrective to popular redemption narratives. --Hank Stephenson, the Sun magazine, manuscript reader

David Katz's captivating, heartwarming and uplifting photo book Barack Before Obama selects more than 200 photos from the 900,000 shots Katz took between 2004 and 2008. The period covers Obama's 2004 Senate campaign, his time working in the Senate and his 2008 presidential campaign. Katz began as an unpaid intern and soon became Obama's personal photographer. The book concludes with images from the night Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States.

The stunning photographs are supplemented with succinct paragraphs of background information by Katz and anecdotes collected from Obama's inner circle, including personal aide (or "body man") Reggie Love, campaign manager David Plouffe, sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, Michelle Obama's chief of staff Melissa Winter and others. Readers learn that Obama loved to play DJ for his campaign staff; Oprah Winfrey was so unimpressed with Obama's Chicago apartment that she conducted their first interview outside; Michelle joked with her husband to help him relax before debates; and Obama played online Scrabble with his sister during his entire presidency. But the real star of this book is the beautiful, crisp and vibrant photography that captures Obama and his family playing, laughing, campaigning and relaxing. Some of the most haunting images include Obama massaging his daughter Malia's neck as she draws with crayons and a single tear running down Obama's cheek after hearing that the grandmother who raised him has died.

Katz's impressive collection of photos and anecdotes is a charming and moving tribute to the four-year period where Obama's political career gained traction. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

In her seventh book for young readers, Coretta Scott King Award Honoree Tanita S. Davis (Mare's War) gives a genuine look at the confusing and sometimes painful changes that take place in middle school.

Sixth grader Serena St. John aspires to be a vlogger like her older sister, Fallon, and she has a lot to get off her chest this year. She's smarting from a rejection to be one of her homeroom's morning announcements reporters, and her best friend, JC, recently homebound after a kidney transplant, seems to have traded Serena in for a new model: cool girl Leilani Camacho. "It's not like Leilani isn't nice," and Serena has no reason to not like her, "none at all, except that it seems like JC likes her... more than me." All of a sudden Serena and JC's science projects, gossip and homework sessions are all Lani-centered and either exclude Serena entirely or include her only as an afterthought. Serena is so mired in sadness that she doesn't recognize the ways she personally shines or that other classmates do want to be her friend.

Davis captures the tumult of middle school realistically and undramatically, not shying away from the inadvertently insensitive and catty comments typically made by preteens and treating topics like mental illness with the gentle care they deserve. With a diverse cast of characters (Serena is Black; JC and Leilani are Filipina; their classmates are multicultural), Serena Says will fit in any home, classroom or public library. And adults having trouble understanding the middle schoolers in their own lives should find the novel eye-opening as well. --Sarah Hannah Gómez, freelance reviewer and author

William Still (1821-1902) lived a fascinating life, though few have heard about it. Don Tate (illustrator of Carter Reads the Newspaper) attempts to correct this unfortunate historical oversight in his third solo picture book, William Still and His Freedom Stories. The Brown Bookshelf co-founder pairs striking illustrations with approachable text in this story of a Black boy--born to formerly enslaved parents--who dedicated his life to reconnecting families.

William, the youngest of 15 children, grew up working on the family farm in New Jersey. Though "William looked forward to sharpening his mind... attending class was no easy walk in the woods" and his education was haphazard. At 17, William "studied spelling. Defined words. Practiced enunciation. Learned math," and "before long, he knew how to write too." His rise to prominence as an activist and successful businessman began in earnest when he secured the job that would involve him in the Underground Railroad: an office clerk position at the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. His employers "were abolitionists who spoke loudly against slavery. They sponsored meetings. Signed petitions. Published newspapers." Those who escaped slavery went to them for help. "From that point forward, William recorded every detail about each freedom seeker who passed through his home or office." Still's documentation preserved key details about notable individuals' use of the Underground Railroad, and he personally assisted many runaway slaves in their search for missing relatives.

The legacy of an American hero is told here using accessible, factual text; lifelike illustrations rendered digitally; and informative backmatter that includes a timeline, author's note and bibliography. --Rachel Werner, Hugo House and The Loft Literary Center faculty