In Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across the World of Literature John McMurtrie collects succinct, insightful discussions by literary critics, scholars, and other writers of literary fiction titles in which travel is a primary theme or narrative element. Readers will find what might be old favorites like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (floating along the Mississippi River) and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (an expedition from Spain to Egypt) alongside possibly less familiar odysseys like those in Icelandic author Halldór Laxness's 1927 The Great Weaver from Kashmir and the more recent Out of Darkness, Shining Light from Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah.

A pleasure to look at as well as to read, the book is stunningly illustrated, inviting readers on a global literary adventure that will help satiate anyone's wanderlust. Each of the more than 75 titles is complemented by visual components: maps, book jackets, author photos, or other impressive photography. Literary Journeys is a surefire gift for any book or travel lover--an inspiring introduction to new novels, authors, and excursions. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.

Turning the Tables, a multiplatform series intended to highlight women's often sidelined role in popular music, launched on NPR in 2017. With the rabble-rousing How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music, Alison Fensterstock has assembled a Turning the Tables greatest-hits compilation, with bonus tracks culled from half a century of NPR chatter with tuneful women.

Built around photo-flush themed chapters--"Shredders," "Empaths," and so on--How Women Made Music is bursting with feisty essays by Turning the Tables contributors. The book also teems with interview excerpts (as with Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell) and freestanding quotes (Taylor Swift's begins, "I was never convinced I was going to make it"), all pulled from NPR lodestars like Morning Edition and Fresh Air. Throughout, Turning the Tables contributors agitate for their picks for the discussion-provoking list "The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women." A representatively strong salvo, from Andrea Swensson, on the self-titled first Runaways album: "The Runaways is the sound of a handful of untested chemicals being poured into a beaker and exploding." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Writer and "plantsperson" Lucy Bellamy (Brilliant & Wild) promises a "bulb-rich year" for gardeners, selecting more than 150 bulbs for A Year in Bloom: Flowering Bulbs for Every Season. Lavishly photographed, Bellamy's collection is a vibrant coffee-table book and an inspirational guide for planting to enjoy year-round blossoms. Organized by season, the bulbs of A Year in Bloom were nominated by renowned gardeners worldwide; as people who "grow and observe bulbs every day," they enthusiastically share tips for cultivating their favorites.

While enhancing landscapes with breathtaking beauty and fragrance, flowering bulbs are also valuable as pollinators, and contributors offer advice on considering sustainability and biodiversity when choosing bulbs. A profusion of two-page photo spreads--tulip gardens, meadows of grape hyacinths, lilies in dappled shade--are interspersed with pages dedicated to individual flowers. From "gardeners happy to rootle on their hands and knees" seeking early spring snowdrops to plant-lovers content to force a paperwhite narcissus to bloom in an indoor pot in winter, anyone eager to anticipate flowers through the seasons will savor A Year in Bloom. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.

Gemma Padley's The Women Who Changed Photography: And How to Master Their Techniques delivers brief, punchy profiles and incisive assessments of what is revolutionary about these underappreciated photographers. In short chapters, Padley presents 50 women--some well-known, some all but unknown--from all over the world, born from 1799 through 1992. Profiles and portraits are followed by photographs, with Padley's instruction on how to mimic what is special about the work. This includes technical advice (how to combine and blend portraits; hand-tint a photo; play with angles, color, and flash) and the conceptual (how to use photo stories to raise awareness on an issue). Photographers include Anna Atkins, who "privately published the first book to be illustrated using photography," and Anne Wardrope, the "first woman in America to photograph her own nude body." They work in documentary, portraiture, art, photojournalism, and cover war, fashion, conservation, and more. Wide ranging and diverse, with fascinating storytelling, these contents are visually stunning and technically detailed, and will please readers with a variety of interests. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Animal photographer Traer Scott, while "utterly and fiercely obsessed with dogs," and extremely allergic to cats, nevertheless decided to create a cat book, and what a delight it is!

The stories are poignant, but with happy endings. Barn cat Moose was hit by a car and army-crawled his way back home, grinding his nails down to nubs. With a shattered pelvis and leg, which had to be amputated, he had a long recovery, but now Moose is retired, content to stay inside. Gorgeous, silky white Juliette was found next to a dumpster with multiple fractures. A loving and gentle cat, she healed and thrives in her forever home. Several cats are blind--dark gray Dusty, and Stinky with scarred corneas, whose opaque bluish eyes give her an otherworldly gaze. Tuxedo cat Izzy was born with a cleft lip; her face is enchantingly goofy. Sweet and happy paraplegic Toshi tugs at one's heart.

Ailurophiles will love this charming book; hopefully some will be moved to adopt a rescued feline. Rescue Cats shows how rewarding that can be, for both owner and adoptee. --Marilyn Dahl

For those who appreciate both meaningful words and modern art, Phaidon's Vitamin Txt (the first thematic entry in its long-running Vitamin series) is a vivid, fascinating feast of visual art that employs text as a key element. Color photos of paintings, sculpture, mixed media, and other forms of art appear alongside thoughtful essays by art critics, art historians, professors, and curators. Each of the book's more than 100 artists is featured in a spread highlighting several key works alongside an essay exploring their work through a cultural, political, or artistic lens. Some pieces make pointed statements or ask bold questions, like Patrick Martinez's Struggle and Progress or Judy Chicago's What if Women Ruled the World? Other pieces blur the text, scramble it, or obfuscate it altogether. Advertising, religion, political propaganda, portraits, and other traditional forms of art and media become something different when text is applied with wit or provocation. Diverse in form and cultural background, the artists in Vitamin Txt and their work provide a thought-provoking array of words in art--and as art. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World is a gorgeous showstopper of a book celebrating the humble tree in its many forms. More than 300 images of tree-inspired art grace the pages of this oversized coffee-table tome. These full-color images showcase an astonishing range, including tapestries, Aboriginal taphoglyphs, and National Park Service posters. Each is buttressed by a few paragraphs of text explaining and contextualizing the image. For instance, artist Shota Suzuki's sculpture Heaven and Earth is described as "a reflection on the Japanese concept of Mono no aware, or the transitory nature of life." Process is also detailed for many of the included pieces; with a photograph of a Tiffany laburnum table lamp, readers will learn that Louis Comfort Tiffany, along with Englishman Arthur Nash, "developed a technique whereby he blended different colours of pigment together while the glass was still molten." An intro by horticulturalist Tony Kirkham, plus an overall timeline of trees (starting 470 million years ago!), glossary, artist bios and suggested further reading all deepen the enjoyability of the book. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator

For six decades, Melody Barnett has helped numerous Hollywood stars look fabulous in movies like La La Land and Everything Everywhere All at Once and TV shows like Mad Men, all known for characters wearing memorable outfits. That's because Barnett owns, curates, and runs a vintage costume-rental emporium spotlighted in Mimi Haddon's gorgeous Palace Costume: Inside Hollywood's Best Kept Fashion Secret.

Because vintage clothing is fragile, only costume designers and stylists can peruse inside Palace Costume, where Barnett also lives. For everyone else, Haddon's striking photographs of the vast collections of clothes and accessories provide glorious armchair window shopping. Imagine Willie Wonka's factory but all the eye-popping, delicious bursts of color are on clothes instead of candy. The book contains fascinating interviews with Barnett and her business partner, Lee Ramstead, as well as conversations with Academy Award-winning and -nominated costume designers who have pulled items from Barnett's showrooms or been inspired by something they saw there. The next time readers spot a stunning piece of clothing onscreen, chances are Palace Costume had something to do with it. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, reviewer and freelance editor at The Edit Ninja

Ronald Orenstein's Orangutans is a thorough, lavishly illustrated guide to the three critically endangered "red ape" species. All live on Borneo (Indonesia/Malaysia) and Sumatra (Indonesia), which have lost 80% of their rain forests over the past 50 years. Playful and intelligent, orangutans are the most solitary apes but form strong mother-baby bonds. They make nightly nests and are crucial to ecosystems, creating gaps in the canopy and spreading seeds in their droppings. But deforestation and palm oil plantations pose grave threats to their survival in the wild. "Can we coexist?" asks Orenstein, a zoologist, lawyer and wildlife conservationist. Though honest about orangutans' imperiled situation, he expresses hope. Protection of forest, captive breeding programs, and reintroductions make a difference. In addition to the science, he gives an engaging précis of orangutans' cultural role: Queen Victoria visited one at the London Zoo; naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace spread knowledge; and orangutans have featured in literature and in Hollywood films. Moreover, certain Indigenous people believe they are reincarnated ancestors. The book inspires fondness and wonder--not least with its gorgeous photographs, so detailed they show individual facial hairs. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Like the books featuring her beloved Moomins, the nature journal Notes from an Island by Tove Jansson moves fluidly between modes, alternating between tones of detached humor and earnest poignancy. This beautiful volume represents the most transparent collaboration between Jansson (The Summer Book; The Woman Who Borrowed Memories) and her partner in life and art, Tuulikki Pietilä (known as Tooti). Pietilä's paintings provide visual coherence to an otherwise fragmented but never jumbled recollection of the two women's 30 summers together on Klovharun, an island in the Gulf of Finland.

An introduction from Alexander Chee notes the draw of this island life, but it is Jansson who explains it best, the way visitors would come and "sometimes they brought a friend and sometimes the loss of a friend and they talked and talked about their yearning for the simple, the primitive and, most of all, their longing for solitude." Jansson, however, did not merely talk about it; she and Pietilä lived it, and Notes from an Island provides what Chee calls "something like a map as to how to live like Tove and Tooti did." --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees reveals the inner workings of the forest from the perspective of an illustrious forester. Now, with beautiful, full-page illustrations, The Hidden Life of Trees: A Graphic Adaptation tells the story of Peter's journey in a fresh, vibrant, and imaginative way.

Benjamin Flao visualizes the author's personal reflections and educational insights with a delightful drawing of Peter acting as the book's narrative guide, walking readers through abridged sections of the original text that artfully communicate the details of forest systems and beauty. Peter appears in inviting speech bubbles and short passages alongside elaborate artwork of the forest he describes. "Welcome to the forest," he begins. "I've always been fascinated by the beauty of this place. It's magical and its majestic. And it's kind of mysterious, too. There's so much more to it than meets the eye."

Organized by season, graphics ranging from spring blossoms to winter snow remain true to Peter's original intent--to convey how trees communicate with each other, their environment, and how humans are called to protect them, "while there's still time." --Clara Newton, freelance reviewer

Solo traveling is rising--more than 83 million Americans are projected to have ventured alone in 2023. Traveling by yourself can be exhilarating, as you're freed from having to coordinate schedules or compromise activities. Such pleasures and more are extolled in the joyful, detailed entries of Fifty Places to Travel Solo: Travel Experts Share the World's Greatest Solo Destinations, geared for both experienced and novice travelers.

The late Chris Santella and DC Helmuth have assembled a variety of knowledgeable travel experts who vividly describe the sites around the world with a mind to budgets, comfort, and safety. Each piece is accompanied by beautiful photographs. In Vienna, Lorrain Moteagut, writer and teacher, "felt most comfortable being alone in all of Europe." Amanda Black, founder of the Solo Female Traveler Network, shares that despite a lack of "frills," Cuba is welcoming to solo travelers. Amanda Williams, award-winning travel blogger, says the same of Iceland, where "the most dangerous thing... is probably the weather." Those interviewed also suggest that solo travelers consider joining a small tour in some places, such as Egypt. Fifty Places to Travel Solo offers abundant insight to enhance visits to U.S. cities and international sites. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer

Interior designer, business owner, party planner, hostess, and mother Lorna Gross is a type A personality who has always held a "heightened appreciation for human connection." This "Louisiana girl who was born in New York" developed an unrelenting passion for food and a joy for entertaining by traveling the world and making friends from all walks of life. In Entertaining by Design, she demystifies the often overwhelming prospect of pulling together brunches, formal dinners, intimate parties, or casual gatherings. Gross shares practical, time-saving suggestions on how to assemble stylish presentations with a big impact--but with a lot "less work." Gross also divides the book by seasons, with striking photographs and easy, scrumptious recipes in each section. She offers inviting ideas for preparing buffets, luncheons, barbecues, game-day and cocktail parties, and formal holiday feasts. Her creative concepts and her meticulous attention to detail--accents on invitations and place settings; flowers and serving pieces; and background musical suggestions--will inspire those on-the-go to plan and host gatherings filled with lively, tasteful ambience. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

"As bookworms know, home is where the books are. As stylists know, books are an essential part of home décor." Book Nooks: Inspired Ideas for Cozy Reading Corners and Stylish Book Displays perfectly encapsulates both of these maxims, with pages packed with appealing, full-color photography of drool-inducing book displays and inviting reading spots. Book Nooks combines this imagery with tips and advice for styling shelves and using books as decoration around the house, like opting for monochromatic looks, grouping books by hobby, following the rule of threes, and even upcycling unused books into decorative crafts. There's a little bit of something for every kind of shelf enthusiast--those with spaces large or small, those with kids and those without, those who collect books to read every page and those who collect books as decoration, those with neutral spaces and those with homes drenched in color. Book Nooks is a bit like a bibliophile's inspirational Pinterest board come to life in stunning hardcover form, itself a perfect addition to any booklover's well-curated shelf. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer

Bel Canto: The Annotated Edition is the ideal gift for fans of Ann Patchett and her fourth novel (published in 2001). This insightful, often humorous volume also serves as a master class in fiction writing.

Patchett reveals in her introduction the outcome of the guerrilla invasion of the vice president's home in an unnamed South American country; it took place during a birthday party for a powerful Japanese businessman (and passionate opera fan), with a goal of convincing him to build factories there. The lure: Roxanne Coss, the preeminent U.S. soprano. With full transparency, Patchett marks in brackets the phrases or words she'd remove if she were writing the book today. A favorite: "Some words are repeated pages apart. Fingers should only be allowed to flutter once per novel"; then she flags the two instances (on pages 34 and 68). For diehard fans, she points out a paragraph in Bel Canto that served as the seeds for State of Wonder (10 years later). There is much to savor here, for fiction writers and Patchett aficionados alike. --Jennifer M. Brown, reviewer

Writer-editor, researcher, and collector-archivist Amy Sall's The African Gaze: Photography, Cinema and Power provides an impressive overview of pan-African artistic expression through the work of 25 photographers and 25 filmmakers. Inspired by Columbia University courses Sall developed and taught in 2016, her gorgeous, significant compilation "serve[s] as skeleton keys for unlocking and demystifying elements of African history and culture distorted through a Western colonial paradigm and gaze." She balances a representative combination of photographs and film stills--in black-and-white and full-color--with biographical introductions to makers and creators. Acknowledging and celebrating their work is an undeniable act of reclamation: "Colonial photography and moving image were significant contributing factors to the dehumanizing of African people and the propagation of the colonial project." Through self-made portraiture and cinema, "African image-makers liberated themselves, their sitters, their viewers, their communities from the definition and categorizations imposed on them by the West." For further enlightenment, Sall also includes essays from historian Mamadou Diouf and scholars Zoé Samudzi and Yasmina Price, and intimate interviews with photographer Samuel Fosso and filmmaker Souleymane Cissé. --Terry Hong

In 1911, Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre, and yet, people continued to flock to the empty gap left behind. They came to witness evidence of the theft, and to bear witness to the impact of art theft on culture. The piece was eventually recovered, and in Art Heist, Susie Hodge, who has written numerous books on art, carefully details instances where works disappeared or were stolen and recovered, and the repercussions of their absence.

Split into two sections--"Lost" and "Found"--the book is filled with brief but engaging accounts of thefts and attempts at restoration, each illustrated with investigation documents and photos on record of the lost art. Hodge discusses heists like the mass plundering of European art engaged in by the Nazis during their rise to power and those conducted in the last few decades. Hodge provides context for the motivation behind some of the thefts, such as obscuring cultural heritage or solidifying Mafia power. Art Heist is a beautiful coffee-table book that is sure to spark plenty of conversations. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Wally and Amanda Koval, founders of the Accidentally Wes Anderson project--a collection of photographs from around the world that look like stills from the director's films--follow up their first volume with Accidentally Wes Anderson: Adventures. Packed with images from every continent, this book is, delightfully, more of the same.

Highlights include a 111-foot octagonal lighthouse that is "the only light in Quebec that operates with a non-automated system of weights and cables during the day"; the pool at the Hans Cottage Botel in Ghana, with a helpful sign under a statue of the Virgin Mary that reads "No Drowning"; the "blinged-out beauty" that is Seoul's Suguksa Temple; and Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago "where cats are not allowed, humans cannot be buried, and a primary attraction is a doomsday vault containing the recipe for the Oreo cookie." In that same spirit of preparedness, the authors caution tourists, "Call, email, or send a carrier pigeon to confirm details before you make travel plans." This book is a treat. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer