There is a cool tension between insiders and outsiders in O Beautiful, the spellbinding second novel by Jung Yun, whose debut, Shelter, rightfully drew massive critical acclaim. In the center of it all stands Elinor Hanson, a New York magazine reporter fresh out of a master's program. She's on assignment in Avery, N.Dak., researching a story about the oil boom in the Bakken region--a project handed to her by Richard Hall, a professor who could no longer write the story himself, a man with whom she has a complicated past.

Whereas Elinor is still a little green, Yun is again in perfect control of her story, fully exercising Richard's rule to "learn as much as possible about a subject before deciding what the story was." And there are many angles to consider: the environmental disaster of fracking; the "Avery scale" of sex politics, where men outnumber women roughly 30 to one; a missing white woman from Avery and the many more Mahua women missing from the reservation nearby; the exploding population versus the limited small-town infrastructure creating economic chaos. A windshield sunshade at the gas station runs $39.95, while a piece of cardboard can be bought from the liquor store recycling for a dollar--still a rip-off, "but at least it's the cheapest rip-off in the area." As Elinor investigates, it's her childhood upbringing in the area, as a mixed-race Korean American, that informs her enthralling attention to these subjects and more, having always straddled the line between inside and out. O Beautiful is an exceptional second work by a great American novelist. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness

Discover: Jung Yun leaves no stone unturned in her superbly tense novel about a magazine reporter's intersectional investigation into the oil boom in North Dakota.

A young gay man loves, loses and lives against the backdrop of Seoul in Love in the Big City, a wistful, moving debut in four parts by South Korean novelist Sang Young Park, translated by Anton Hur.

The narrator, a man in his early 30s, attends the wedding of his college best friend, a young woman who "could toss societal norms like used Kleenex." He reminisces about their shared apartment, the Marlboro Reds he bought for her that stood in the freezer beside the blueberries she bought for him, and their fierce support of each other, and he realizes this golden period is over. In the following three parts, he recounts his life through the lens of his romantic relationships, "love that disappeared like light rain over asphalt," longer partnerships that leave a sour aftertaste, and the possible love of his life. Along the way, he struggles to make it as a writer, contracts a life-changing STI, and becomes a carer for his cancer-stricken mother, who had him committed as a teenager for being gay.

Park's leading man will captivate readers with his blend of snarky humor, self-effacement and moments of touching vulnerability as he navigates life and love in a society still unaccepting of queer identities. His misadventures in a world of unappealing jobs, dating app hookups and the existential dread of entering adulthood should resonate especially with anyone who has come of age in the current epoch. Intimate and sharply observant, this bold confessional novel showcases a fresh, striking voice in literary fiction. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Discover: An acerbic young gay man in Seoul struggles with life and love in Park's intimate, sharply observant debut.

Edgar finalist Kathleen Kent (The Outcasts) launches an explosive finale to her trilogy about Detective Sergeant Betty Rhyzyk with The Pledge, which melds a thrilling police procedural with a complicated home life.

The Pledge has barely begun when Kent shows her solid, thoughtful approach to action with Betty pitted against two drug cartels. Betty's clearance rate as a detective with the North Central Dallas Police Department has brought many criminals to justice, but also generated enemies. The drug cartels are led by Evangeline Roy and her rival El Cuchillo, also known as "The Knife," and each wants Betty to eliminate the other.

At home, Betty and her wife, Jackie, are caring for seven-month-old Elizabeth, whose teenage mother, Mary Grace Miller, had been living with the couple before she abruptly disappeared. Worried about Mary Grace's safety and Elizabeth's future, Betty and Jackie hire a private investigator specializing in finding underage runaways. The couple's concern grows when Mary Grace's stepfather, a wealthy real-estate tycoon whose penchant for young girls has resulted in several lawsuits settled privately, also begins looking for the teenager. He's especially interested in the baby.

Kent meticulously juggles plot threads while delving into the intelligent Betty's appealing personality. Betty worries how her recent promotion will affect her close relationship with her squad, and if she is ready for this next level of her career. She and Jackie's strong marriage further elevates The Pledge. Readers will miss Betty, but Kent has done justice to her character's swan song. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer 

Discover: Kent skillfully juggles numerous plot threads in this rousing end to her trilogy about Dallas's intelligent Detective Sergeant Betty Rhyzyk.

Hazel Greenlee likes to throw stuff off Forge Bridge; the objects range from a cheap bracelet to what readers of Hello, Transcriber will come to learn are items of greater significance. Hannah Morrissey's debut is a well-crafted thriller that splits its time between Hazel's professional and personal lives until they converge, a physical point of confluence being what she thinks of as the suicide bridge.

Narrator Hazel, who aspires to be a writer, and her husband, Tommy, an aquatic ecologist, hunter and gun nut, live in Black Harbor, a crime-blighted city outside Milwaukee in which suicide is almost as prevalent as the oxycodone use that so often accompanies it. After Hazel lands a job as the Black Harbor Police Department's new transcriber, one of the first reports that she types up concerns the death of a nine-year-old boy whose mouth exhibits the white foam associated with a drug overdose. The murder was brought to the police's attention by William "Sam" Samson, who confessed that, with the help of drug dealer Tyler Krejarek, he hid the body in a dumpster behind the apartment building in which the kid and Tyler both resided. Meanwhile, Hazel becomes distracted by her blooming crush on investigator Nikolai Kole, who's handling the case, having just returned from a six-month suspension for a reason that no one is disclosing.

Hello, Transcriber is wonderfully attuned to the particulars of Hazel's job, and Morrissey is a psychologically attentive writer who captures the bristly tension between longtime locals and newcomers. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Discover: Hannah Morrissey's debut is an earthy thriller-romance hybrid centered on a married police department transcriber who becomes fixated on a case and on the detective covering it.

Relationships and dreams remain achingly familiar, even in the wildest futures, in the stories collected in Even Greater Mistakes by Charlie Jane Anders (Never Say You Can't Survive).

In "The Time Travel Club," a group that meets to share fictional stories of their time travel adventures is presented with a working time machine but stymied by trigonometry when it comes to using it. A young couple turns to suspended animation to help them balance their relationship with launching their careers in "The Power Couple." The 19 stories in this collection demonstrate Anders's mastery of many genres and tones, including comic space opera, queer body horror and a few set in the present or very near future with only minor speculative elements. Although all of the stories have been published previously, some have been expanded or substantially reworked. Some are intended as epilogues to Anders's novels but are self-contained enough that they can still be appreciated by readers who come to these first, as long as they don't mind spoilers.

Frequently tackling issues around mental health, gender, political turmoil and climate change, Anders toys with expectations and alternately delivers laughter and chills. "Ghost Champagne," in which a woman is haunted by her own future ghost, is a particular standout for the combination of its sharp wit and intense handling of depression. This collection will be appreciated not only by Anders's existing fans but also by readers of Ursula Le Guin and other sociological science fiction. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Discover: This varied collection of 19 short stories showcases the author's sharp insight and knack for defying expectations.

A survivor of a world-altering upheaval reveals how the research she developed to rebuild society was hijacked for purposes beyond what she intended in this suspenseful novel by Jeffrey Cranor (The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home, written with Jeffrey Fink) and Janina Matthewson (Of Things Gone Astray), set in the world of the podcast Within the Wires.

You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is presented as an autobiography of Miriam Gregory, a psychologist who played a pivotal role in an alternate 20th century. Following decades of war in her youth, Miriam becomes involved in the building of the New Society, founded on the basis of eschewing all tribalism, including the bonds between parents and children. How this is accomplished is revealed slowly through both Miriam's narrative and footnotes ostensibly added by an underground publisher when the manuscript was discovered. However, as Miriam's story progresses and becomes darker, the footnotes become ever more insistent that her version of events cannot be verified and contradicts established facts. Is the manuscript actually a work of fiction, a fraud, or an exposé of a conspiracy never otherwise revealed?

Just as each season of Within the Wires is a self-contained story presented as found audio, this novel stands independently, although listeners will recognize elements of the society and enjoy learning more about their backgrounds. Fans and newcomers alike will be engrossed by the mix of alternate history, science fiction and slow-burn horror. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library

Discover: A suspenseful story of survival and loss gradually exposes the creation of a dystopian world order.

Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Philippe Girard (Obituary Man) admirably condenses seven decades into a concise 120 pages in Leonard Cohen: On a Wire. It's a valuable introduction to the tumultuous life of the iconic singer/songwriter/poet perhaps best remembered for his classic "Hallelujah," eventually covered by some 200 musicians.

Girard begins at the end, on November 7, 2016, when Cohen fell out of bed in his Los Angeles home: "Nobody heard me," he utters. "I am going to die here, all alone, like a dog." Rewind to Montreal, Cohen's birthplace, where he's a teen in 1947, desperately looking for his missing pooch, whose frozen corpse he finds under the neighbor's porch. "This is a rotten way to say goodbye," Cohen mourns. Farewells become a repetitive theme throughout his many decades, during which his achievements are often marred by drugs, alcohol and dysfunctional relationships--romantic, familial, professional.  

Girard captures Cohen's impending death in evening shades of blues and greys; as Cohen lays dying, Girard interrupts his final hours with significant life events in a fuller color palette dominated by yellows and browns. Cohen writes, learns guitar, buys the famous blue coat in London, falls in love with muse Marianne in Greece, makes music, gets famous, makes deals, breaks hearts (his own included), fathers two children, loses everything, starts again. For the many famous people sharing Cohen's path, Girard appends a "Rogues' Gallery"-who's who.

For generations unaware of Cohen's remarkable legacy, Girard's insightful biography underscores his unyielding tenacity, even in the worst clutches of depression and addiction. Inspiring and informative, Girard--translated by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle--provides indelible testimony to a legendary creative life. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon

Discover: Canadian cartoonist Philippe Girard presents an insightful, concise graphic biography of fellow Canadian, world-renowned musical icon Leonard Cohen.

In the immeasurably rich A Life of Picasso IV: The Minotaur Years 1933-1943, John Richardson resumes the artist's story like so: "Of all the problems besetting Picasso in late 1932, foremost was the misery of married life with his Russian wife, Olga." The romantically tempestuous decade that Richardson proceeds to cover, which largely corresponds with Picasso's 50s, finds the painter almost unreasonably productive, as if he discovered artistic fortification in unrelenting domestic chaos.

Richardson interweaves the dramas of Picasso's personal life in France (his efforts to divorce Olga, his rotating mistresses, his troubled teenage son) with reports on his artistic output (most famously 1937's Guernica) and updates on his public persona (he sticks to the periphery of the surrealist movement but stands proud as part of the Resistance). If Richardson seems to be able to understand his subject so well, that's probably because the author was an acquaintance of Picasso, as he makes unostentatiously plain throughout the book ("I was present in the 1950s when Picasso revealed the depth of his van Gogh obsession").

Richardson, who died in 2019 at age 95, didn't live to complete Picasso's story, but A Life of Picasso IV, whose illustrations number nearly as many as there are pages in the main text, concludes with a fitting epitaph for the artist, courtesy of his mistress-muse Dora Maar. "It's no wonder Dora turned to religion," Richardson writes of her life after the artist replaced her. "As she would later say, 'After Picasso, there is only God.' " --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Discover: The fourth and final volume in John Richardson's invaluable biographical portrait abounds with fresh insights, some of which the author gleaned from his acquaintanceship with his subject.

People have been enjoying spaghetti and tomato sauce for thousands of years. In A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, professor of history and nutrition writer Massimo Montanari of Bologna, Italy, serves up a fascinating chronology, deconstructing the roots of this beloved food while also unraveling preconceived notions and misconceptions.

Ingredients for this iconic Italian dish were derived and evolved from many cultures and places: pasta, the dried form, came from Arabs--not, as once believed, from Marco Polo on his return from China. Cheese and tomato--once considered lowly peasant foods--arrived in Italy from Spain via South America. It was Italian culinary ingenuity--along with a penchant for cuisine marked with onions, garlic, basil, chili and olive oil--that ultimately put these components together to form what has become a symbol of Italian identity.

This thorough, well-researched and enlightening narrative highlights the ancient approaches to making and shaping noodles, including the origins of lasagna; ways to cook pasta; how explorers, rulers and even physicians influenced recipes; how utensils, like the fork, played a significant role in pasta consumption; and factors that ultimately led to the development of what is now known as the Mediterranean Diet.

Montanari (Medieval Tastes) sets a beautiful table filled with savory information that will appeal to academics, history buffs, the culinary-minded and those eager to learn how and why twirling a fork into a mountain of spaghetti with tomato sauce has become a delicious source of comforting nourishment, as well as a quintessential and beloved cultural phenomenon. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Discover: An Italian food historian serves up a thoroughly fascinating, in-depth study of an iconic comfort food credited to the Italians.

Women, notes journalist Kaya Oakes, often find themselves caught between opposing expectations: what their families and societies want for them, their own dreams and ambitions, and the limits (and surprises) of their experiences. In The Defiant Middle, her thought-provoking fifth book, Oakes examines the lives of women throughout history, with a focus on the medieval era, who "defied expectations and reinvented themselves, along with their world."

Oakes (The Nones Are Alright) organizes her work into several provocative categories of identity, including "Barren," "Angry," "Crazy," "Butch/Femme/Other" and "Alone." Her subjects are sometimes officially saints: women who are now venerated by the Catholic Church and other religious groups. But all of them are gloriously messy humans who, during their lifetimes, elicited powerful reactions in the (mostly male) people who had control over their lives.

Oakes also shares anecdotes and frustrations from her own life (acknowledging her privileged status), and blends them with scholarly research and incisive analysis of what her subjects' stories might mean for women today. After a meditation on Julian of Norwich, she writes about "how to tell the difference between loneliness and its longing for others, and longing for solitude's pitched and heightened awareness." And in a chapter that reimagines "barrenness" as a potentially fertile field of selfhood, she writes, "This is the unexpected second bloom, the surprise spring of water, the stranger appearing, walking on the heat-shimmering road. The woman, emerging, on her own."

Both an unusual feminist text and a tribute to trailblazing women, The Defiant Middle offers a lens and a roadmap for women seeking to grow beyond constricting and conflicting expectations. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Discover: Journalist Kaya Oakes offers stories of trailblazing women and thought-provoking insights on how to defy society's expectations.

Saraciea J. Fennell's introduction to Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed begins with the assertion, "We are so much more than... myths." Edited by Fennell, the anthology successfully brings together 15 authors who interrogate stereotypes about people from the Latin American diaspora. These stories offer a bracing dive into the reality of racist microaggressions, family ghosts and cultural isolation.

The standout "Eres un Pocho," by Mark Oshiro, is boldly told in second person. Oshiro describes their upbringing as a trans-racial adoptee who felt "like an exhibit in a zoo," their story leading readers off an emotional cliff in search of language and community. Language is explored in several pieces, including Ibi Zoboi's "The Haitian Sensation," which describes "trying to pass as 'Spanish' " to fit in with Black Dominican girls in grade school. Zoboi points out that the media is partly responsible in creating Latinx stereotypes in that it "has mostly portrayed the whitest parts of Spanish-speaking countries." The Afro-Latinx authors echo the displacement that comes with being Black and Latinx, and the racism pervasive within Latin American communities. A powerful example is the poetic prose in Julian Randall's "#Julian4Spiderman," in which Randall's coming-of-age story as a boy "begging to be seen" centers on Marvel's AfroLatino SpiderMan, Miles Morales.

The impressive lineup of Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed offers a wide scope of personal essays ranging in narrative voice and structure, the stories unflinching in their earnestness but also filled with music and food and joy. This collection is necessary reading. --Zoraida Córdova, author and editor

Discover: Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed is a remarkable collection of essays depicting the joys and sorrows of the Latinx diaspora.

The father-son writing team of Neal and Jarrod Shusterman (Dry) successfully takes on the opioid epidemic in their riveting, tense sophomore novel.

Eighteen-year-old Ivy Ramey struggles with ADD while her younger brother, Isaac, is on track to become a propulsion engineer. Though Isaac is a year younger than Ivy, he often feels like the older sibling as he repeatedly bails her out of bad situations. On one of these nights, Isaac sustains an ankle injury that threatens his chances of earning a soccer scholarship. His pain, the stress of his parents' financial worries and his sister's behavior turn Isaac to the oxycodone Roxicet--"Roxy"--to soothe his woes. At the same time, Ivy is faced with the possibility of flunking out of high school and chooses to obtain a prescription for Adderall--"Addison"--to help her focus and take control of her life. Addison is always on the periphery--"in the Party, but not of the Party"--while Roxy is "so hot right now." The two "gods" wager to see who can be the first one to bring their "plus-one" to the Party (a stand-in for altered states) and into the intimate, deadly VIP Lounge.

Roxy uses point of view to explore the effects of drug dependency and abuse: third-person limited to get inside the heads of the teen addicts and surprising first-person perspectives from individual drugs. In the opening chapter, one of the Ramey siblings dies from a drug overdose. From there, the authors backtrack two months to follow Ivy and Isaac on their downward spirals as well as the drugs themselves, delivering powerful, tense scenes that elicit empathy and compassion. Roxy is a dark, gritty cautionary tale about the dangers--to oneself and to loved ones--of addiction. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Discover: A pair of siblings become the playthings for two drug "gods"--Roxy and Addison--in this riveting thriller that addresses the opioid epidemic.

Best known for his role in the TV series New Girl, debut author Max Greenfield joins forces with illustrator Mike Lowery (Everything Awesome series) in this hilarious picture book tribute to reluctant readers.

"I don't want to read this book," the unseen narrator declares in childish lettering on the otherwise blank first page. They subsequently delineate their objections in a panoply of fun-for-the-eyes lettering styles across a series of exuberant, colorful layouts. First, they worry the book may have a lot of words, as demonstrated by the word "words" repeated in a range of lettering styles across a full spread. Worse, many books have sentences, also known as "too many words all smushed together." Paragraphs are an even greater threat. "I would love to meet a person who is able to read a full paragraph and not lose their train of thought," the narrator says, the last three words written on a drawing of a train with an uncoupled caboose. Their worries become self-fulfilling prophecies as the monologue turns from words into sentences, paragraphs and a dreaded chapter heading until the narrator realizes they've inadvertently read the entire book.

Greenfield's irreverent text demolishes the fourth wall, and Lowery's peppy pencil and digital-media renderings of his words have a vibe reminiscent of a child's journal, with doodle-style drawings accenting his dynamic renditions of Greenfield's words. For avid and reluctant readers alike, this tongue-in-cheek, metafictive send-up of reading as a chore is delightfully unlikely to live up to its title. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth experience manager, Dayton Metro Library

Discover: This scrappy, funny picture book riffs on a sassy reluctant reader's loquacious refusal to read it.