Indonesian author/academic Intan Paramaditha, who lives in Sydney, offers the chilling Night of a Thousand Hells, a sprawling, polyphonic examination of horrific suicide bombings. Stephen J. Epstein returns as translator after The Wandering and Apple and Knife, joined by novelist Tiffany Tsao (The Majesties).

On May 13, 2018, six bombers associated with an ISIS-connected organization detonated three explosions in Kotawijaya, Indonesia. A family of four were among the perpetrators--Annisa, the mother; Muhammad, her husband; Gibran, their nine-year-old son; and Patricia, their two-year-old daughter. Paramaditha introduces Annisa as "the beautiful sister, the pious one, the apple of Papa's eye." Her death means her story must be told by others: "This is a tale of three sisters," Paramaditha promises. "The two who remain seek clues--why, whose fault, when?" Mutiara, the oldest, is "the caretaker," the role both "duty and curse." On the other side of the world is Maya, "the traveler," who first landed in New York City with a graduate school scholarship. The gruesome cataclysm calls her back to resentful Mutiara to face the aftermath of Annisa's incomprehensible decisions. To do so will require confronting the past, including their grandmother's manipulations, their parents' secrets, and their own actions of betrayal and destruction.

Paramaditha likely found inspiration in a May 2018 three-part suicide attack in Surabaya, Indonesia, in which a couple involved their young children. Paramaditha effortlessly blends dysfunctional family epic, haunting folklore and horror, with themes of suffocating traditions, pervasive gender inequity, and LGBTQ+ discrimination and identities. "There is no answer to be found in this story, no magic pill," she warns. Bearing witness is the only alternative. --Terry Hong

In Barbara Kingsolver's bittersweet 10th novel, Partita, a piano teacher revisits a tumultuous period in her life after an old flame makes contact.

Livia Cable looks back from midlife at the multiple misfortunes that seemed to blight her life and recognizes the enduring power of music and the siren call of unhealthy family patterns. One day, she hears from her ex, Sigurd. He asks to meet, regretful at how they left things decades ago. Livia is content with her husband, Charlie, and their dog on their Tennessee farm, but as she clears her late mother's house and plunges into memories of her torrid affair with Sigurd in the week before his visit, her composure wobbles.

Past and present alternate in sections titled after musical terminology ("Overture," "Prelude I," etc.). When Livia met Sigurd, a left-wing community organizer, in spring 1989, she was a music scholarship student at Indiana University in Bloomington--a fish out of water from rural Tennessee, a virtuoso with perfect pitch. With Sigurd she experienced instant, addictive physical passion. When Sigurd is unexpectedly transferred to Phoenix, Livia is forced to choose between love and music. Soon after his departure, though, a career-ending accident made the decision for her--and ruled out motherhood, too.

How to carry on with dashed hopes? Livia is a chastened heroine in the classical vein, but Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead; Unsheltered) is equally interested in foundational wounds such as a cold mother and the loss of a brother to suicide. Patient readers will welcome an elegant, mature work reminiscent of Ann Patchett's. And the ending? Perfection. Partita reassures with its promise of second chances. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

Set amid the cultural wildfires and fraught sexual politics of the #MeToo era, The Radiance by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies) elegantly merges intellectual inquiry, cultural critique, and high drama to spectacular, often satirical effect as its narrator navigates a trifecta of tumultuous changes in his life.

A fictional New Yorker bearing the author's name temporarily relocates to the Hudson River Valley to complete his novel and is hit by a truck while bicycling on a remote country road. The crash, a possible hate crime, unleashes neurogenic changes marked by a "sublime burning calm" and an intensely pleasurable "radiance." The practical impact of this aural shift emerges when the narrator agrees to teach an autofiction class at the local university. Whereas once he would have scoffed at how many of his students consider themselves "disabled in some way," the post-crash Ayad views their "shared agreement in frailty" through a pleasing "brain fog" of nonjudgment.

Ayad's campus colleague Lucie features prominently in his thoughts as a "harmless infatuation," their bond platonic yet erotically cerebral. When Susan, a troubled student, teeters over the edge of self-destruction, it triggers a campus-wide reckoning over her inappropriately close relationship with Lucie that also implicates Ayad. What finally snaps his crash-induced "beguiling inner repose" is a family revelation that sheds heartbreaking light on his late father's troubled life.

A formidable storyteller, Akhtar frames his darkly entertaining third novel as a fictional memoir of a "non-Muslim Muslim-American" still processing the aftermath of his recent adventures in the "Christian-inflect[ed]" rural United States. --Shahina Piyarali

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a ritual that, for many, kicks off the holiday season. Mariah Fredericks's Murder on 34th Street takes place in 1932, with the parade in its ninth year and establishing traditions that are still in play decades later. The event's intricate planning falls to Grace Verlander, assistant to the head of Macy's personnel department, and often the smartest person in the room. Grace fills her days leading up to Thanksgiving juggling the egos and demands of Macy's employees who want to be in the parade and those who don't, deciding where to place balloon animals and floats, and scouring Macy's departments for clothes and accessories for the participants to wear.

At least she's found her Santa Claus: Harry Gardner from children's shoes. But Harry begins receiving death threats before he even dons the red suit. A murder during the parade followed by two more deaths prompt Grace to investigate. Fredericks (The Girl in the Green Dress) utilizes Grace's natural organization skills to create a formidable amateur sleuth as Grace works to find the killer and save Macy's reputation as the place to shop.

Murder on 34th Street taps into New York City's culture during the 1930s, showing the Great Depression's impact on shopping and the iconic parade's beginnings. Fredericks's skill in rendering the historical era is especially notable. She delves into the behind-the-scenes planning of the early parade, simpler than the present-day version but still elaborate for its time. Grace has enough to worry about in Fredericks's engrossing historical thriller without planning Broadway musical interludes, too. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

Terrible secrets and sibling rivalry bedevil two supernaturally powerful sisters in Melissa Anderson Sweazy's first novel, the eerie, suspenseful Southern gothic horror fantasy The Sisters of Crimson House.

Teenager Charley Bryde has spent her childhood in the shadow of the women in her psychically gifted family, each of them marked from birth with a sign called the Seeker's Star. Charley has no Star on her palm and has "never heard the dead whispering back." Her talented sister, Miranda, channels ghosts in the family's exclusive stage shows while Charley watches enviously from the sidelines. Her frustration leads to a disastrous choice that leaves Miranda injured. Their parents rush her to seek care, but their car is found crashed and inexplicably filled with water, both adults drowned inside and Miranda unharmed. Their aunt takes Miranda away but not Charley. Eight years later, Charley fights to stay solvent by passing herself off as a psychic and the Brydes' historic mansion as a haunted attraction. Miranda suddenly returns just as the Seeker's Star begins to appear on Charley's hand, and a dark family secret fights to rise into the light.

Ghosts, mysterious lore, and other assorted bits of spookiness adorn this chilling story of grief and belonging. Sweazy perfectly captures the brooding atmosphere and buried truths essential to the gothic tradition. Readers who enjoyed the sibling dynamics in Rachel Harrison's Play Nice will find similar elements of frayed family ties here, wrapped up in a twisting resolution that will leave its audience satisfyingly haunted. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Childhood rival magicians compete in a tournament while secretly investigating a murder at a Tudor-inspired court full of deception in Court of Venus, a lush romantic fantasy by Bel Banta.

In Alvion, magicians are aligned with one of seven planets. Those aligned with Mercury are gifted with language and communication, those under Venus manipulate desire, and Bianca's exceptionally rare Moonborn transformation abilities are as sought after as they are mysterious. She can alter emotions and shape-shift into animals or other people, but few know the extent of her abilities.

After years of service in a private household, Bianca is summoned by her childhood rival, Roland, back to the court of Alvion for a magicians' tournament to celebrate the coronation of the newest queen. Bianca grew up amid the court's machinations and treachery, alongside the profligate Venusborn Roland and the king's only son, Hal. Now Roland has taken on their executed mentor Prospero's duties as court magician and lord chancellor, and he needs Bianca's help to finally discover the truth behind Hal's death years ago.

Once rivals for Prospero's attention, Roland and Bianca must now work together and use their talents to gather information from an increasingly dangerous court. The more they investigate, the closer they get to each other and the awful truth that altered their lives forever. Fantasy readers who enjoy courtly intrigue, cheeky rivals-to-lovers romance, and Tudor trappings will love Court of Venus. Banta's debut novel is perfect for fans of Holly Race's Six Wild Crowns and Antonia Hodgson's The Raven Scholar. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian

The Agatha Christie Cure: What Reading the Queen of Crime Taught Me About Life begins with a curious question: "Have You Ever Wanted to Run Away?" Agatha Christie did, famously disappearing from home for 11 days in 1926 before abruptly reappearing 184 miles away, in Harrogate. And Cathy Rentzenbrink (A Manual for Heartache) did too. Worn out from a grueling schedule of literary events and a marriage in turmoil, as well as difficulties supporting her son, who has learning disabilities, Rentzenbrink turned to Christie, whose works had been her comfort reads since childhood.

Rentzenbrink decided to reread all of Christie's books as an escape of sorts for herself, and to do so in publication order to watch Christie's development as an author. Throughout this hybrid memoir, Rentzenbrink splits Christie's writing into eras: "The First Six," "Harrogate," "Aftermath," "Trial by Ordeal," "The Elephant Years," and so on. These eras correspond with events in Rentzenbrink's own life as she muses on her marriage, parenting, her father's cancer, and the death of her brother when they were young.

Part biography of Christie, part analysis of Christie's novels, and part memoir, The Agatha Christie Cure is wholly fascinating. Rentzenbrink analyzes Christie's oeuvre concisely and draws sometimes surprising conclusions from her life: "No wonder she wrote so many books with no internet to lure her off her chosen path." The Agatha Christie Cure is perfect for fans of the Queen of Crime or for anyone who's ever found comfort in fiction during a challenging time in their life. --Jessica Howard, former bookseller, freelance book reviewer

The truth behind the Loch Ness Monster transcends the simple question of existence in the playful yet commanding philosophical long-form essay There's a Monster in the Lake by Spanish journalist Laura Fernández, who writes for El País, and translated by Alexis Almeida.

Fernández explores the legend of "Nessie" at its source, a dark body of water in the Scottish Highlands where a plesiosaur allegedly lurks, forgotten by time and rediscovered by a few lucky observers now and then. She charts sightings from the original 1933 incident through decades of fabricated proof to the 21st century, when anyone can post their supposed Nessie run-ins online in the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register. The possibility of the monster brings tourists to a location that "must endure the (MONSTER)," whose inhabitants are seemingly embarrassed at the air of camp the whole charade casts over their community. The essay does not overly concern itself with whether the monster is real but instead with why people want it to be and what the state of reality means in the first place. Fernández invites readers to peer into "the (BREACH) that the Loch Ness (MONSTER) opened. Which opens... the certainty that reality is a construct permanently under construction."

This thought-provoking and quietly humorous meditation on a caricaturized cryptid transforms it into an emblem of imagination and the secret hopes that feed the human spirit. Fantasy-genre readers, travelogue fans, and lovers of new perspectives should enjoy this precisely phrased journey through the philosophy of the fantastical. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

National Book Award and Newbery Honor winner M.T. Anderson (Elf Dog & Owl Head) turned his fascination with Saint Nicholas into Nicked, which he calls a "swashbuckling heist novel" for adults. But after the book's publication, Anderson discovered overlooked, mischaracterized, and forgotten details. He has connected those precious finds with his original research in the absolute treasure Stealing Saint Nick, a YA nonfiction account of Saint Nicholas that is suspenseful, intriguing, and downright fascinating.

Anderson recounts the "legendary" and "notorious" events in the history of this famous saint: imprisonments, miracles, and body thefts. He breaks Nicholas of Myra's story into three parts--"Nikolaos," "The League of Saint Nicolas," and "A Jolly Old Elf"--to mirror the three major religious shifts he considers important to the story of Santa Claus. Nicholas lived through monotheistic Christianity's upheaval of Roman polytheism and became bishop of Myra, in what is now southern Turkey. After his death, Nicholas became one of Christianity's paramount saints and his bones were said to "drip... an ooze that heals all wounds, all diseases." Thieves "translated" (i.e., stole) his remains from Myra to Italy during the second religious movement of which Anderson writes: Christianity to Islam. Finally, Anderson describes the third stage as Christianity to consumerism in the U.S.--when Saint Nick became Santa Claus.

Stealing Saint Nick includes considerable back matter with notes, a bibliography, and even a crime scene analysis. Anderson's historical account is captivating, and he consistently challenges readers to consider sources, analyze and synthesize information, and ask their own questions. This work is a true gift for any reader--especially those with an investment in Santa Claus. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

In The Secret to Belonging, poet and middle-grade author Megan E. Freeman (Alone; Away) delivers an introspective, cathartic YA novel-in-verse about a neglected teen coming-of-age as an exchange student in Norway.

The novel's unnamed narrator, a high school junior in 1980s California, is "the invisible child" in her family--her parents have devoted themselves to managing her older brother's cocaine addiction and criminal behavior. The protagonist fantasizes about going to college to escape her harrowing home life, but her parents use her tuition fund to pay for her brother's latest rehabilitation program. With college no longer an option, the narrator's best friend encourages her to apply for a Rotary Club scholarship to study abroad during her senior year. The narrator receives the scholarship and travels to Norway, where the support of her picture-perfect host family and new friends forces her to confront her fear of getting close to anyone.

Freeman's artful use of the second-person perspective is unusual in poetry and allows for a rousing story with a satisfying catharsis. The protagonist's time in Norway is healing, but her growth while abroad is grounded in realistic highs and lows: first love is exhilarating yet heartbreaking; learning a new language and way of life is rewarding and intimidating. Cultural details, such as the narrator's job at a California video store and the consistent use of Norwegian when she is studying abroad, cultivate a strong sense of time and place. Recurring poetic motifs, such as the image of a bruised, locked-away heart, offer poignant insights into the narrator's inner world. --Cristina Iannarino, children's book buyer, Books on the Square, Providence, R.I.

Styx: The River, the stunning second installment of Nikita Gill's Goddesses of the Underworld trilogy (Hekate: The Witch), is a mournful, moving novel-in-verse about the firstborn child of the Titans.

Styx's sisters and brothers, the Oceanids and Potamoi, respectively, are born as multiples. Styx, the eldest, who was born alone, finds solace in companionship with her cousin, Asteria. Together, the girls discover that they have godlike transformative abilities and powers of creation, despite Kronos's decree that only the Potamoi would be allowed to become gods. Styx and Asteria keep their talents hidden for fear of anyone learning what they can do. As the girls grow into formidable young women, Kronos becomes desperate to maintain control and tightens his rule of the Titans.

Styx is set before the downfall of the Titans and traces the events leading up to their war with the Olympians. Gill breathes new life into one of the chthonic goddesses of Greek myth, a figure typically considered more monstrous than sympathetic, by humanizing the events of her life. The novel shifts perspectives between Styx and Asteria, who each narrate their feelings about their friendship and the turmoil that leads to the overthrow of the Titans. Gill expertly uses these shifts in perspective to highlight Styx's loneliness and the impact of familial neglect. Styx invites readers to consider the choices women have in a world that tries to command them; it will likely be appreciated by fans of Sarah Underwood's Lies We Sing to the Sea or Joy McCullough's Blood Water Paint. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Jillian Tamaki, illustrator of the Caldecott Honor- and Printz Honor-winning graphic novel This One Summer, presents Young Cat, Old Cat, an engaging, visually beguiling picture book inspired by "an opinionated little gray cat named Gretel, who lived to be almost twenty-two years old."

On the opening page, a tiny gray and white "baby cat" mews. On the opposite page, the same kitten is one "hopeful cat" among others as it reaches up for human attention. The kitty's chosen child drops down, eye to eye, to ask, "Be my cat?" And so their bonded lives begin as the "scaredy-cat" travels into the unknown, where it leaps out and lands in a new home as a "finally free cat!" Time inevitably passes, and aging is unavoidable. Seemingly suddenly, the once-energetic furry becomes an "oh-so-tired cat." Eventually, a faraway wave of "goodbye, cat" sends the kitty high into the heavens; a gray/blue night sparkles with stars forming the shape of a cat. The next illustration shows the celestial creature shrinking until a final double-page spread features a small gray and white "brand-new cat" saying hello with a tiny "mew."

Tamaki's spare narrative will likely cause sympathetic tears, though the fanciful, magical ending may also be interpreted as a comforting rebirth to assuage devastating loss. Most striking is Tamaki's art, which gorgeously reveals even more of the plot than her unadorned, straightforward narrative. An author's note details her work in multilayered mixed mediums, which results in amplified complexity, transforming flat pages with notable depth and dimension. Young Cat, Old Cat proves to be a gift to readers and a lingering, celebratory homage to everlasting cat love, memorialized through inventive, exceptional illustrations. --Terry Hong