In The Island of Missing Trees, true love wars with catastrophic division over multiple generations. It is a devastating but magical story from British-Turkish writer Elif Shafak, a 2019 Booker Prize finalist for 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

"Love is the bold affirmation of hope.... You don't fall in love in Cyprus in the summer of 1974," but Greek Christian Kostas and Turkish Muslim Defne do fall deliriously for each other. They hide their taboo relationship from their families, meeting at a tavern owned by two men who understand that love can bring danger. Decades later, the two leave Cyprus for London, Kostas carrying a fig sapling from the tavern and Defne carrying a child. Many years afterward, Kostas and their teen daughter, Ada, struggle to relate to each other and cope with their grief after Defne's death. The arrival of Defne's sister, Meryem, whom Ada has never met, shakes up the fractured household but could hold the seeds of healing. The now-grown fig tree steals the narrative spotlight with asides to readers in her eloquent, sensitive voice, especially when holding forth on the rich, hidden lives of her botanical brethren.

Images of transformation and transition gracefully emerge and recur as Shafak explores what love can and cannot heal. Her moving depiction of inherited trauma will stay with readers, as will her insightful nods to war's effects on the natural world. Despite the unfortunate decision to kill off some important characters, this tragic tale tempered by enduring love and a fantastical ending is an overall triumph. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

In Sarah Hall's fiercely realistic sixth novel, Burntcoat, a sculptor comes to terms with her mortality as she relives experiences of love and caregiving.

Edith Harkness, 59, knows she won't live to see her latest burnt-wood sculpture installed; she's still suffering the aftereffects of the deadly novavirus. Her studio, Burntcoat, was a refuge for her and her lover, Turkish restaurateur Halit, during the pandemic and lockdown, but became a prison as her illness persisted.

Marked by vivid detail and matter-of-fact prose, Edith's reminiscences skip around in time. Gradually, flashes of memory fill in a turbulent past: her beloved stepmother Naomi's recovery from a stroke, their life in a remote English cottage, an abusive relationship during art school, learning woodcraft in Japan and finding early critical success.

It is difficult to avoid reading this as a compact Covid-19 parable. Nova seems worse than Covid, both medically and societally--it's led to looting, violence and breadlines. Through Edith's chronic form, Hall (Madame Zero) imagines the long-lasting effects Covid may have on our societies.

While Hall's picture of human vulnerability--including the rigors and indignities of caregiving for the sick--is bleak, the laser focus on the physical is an opportunity for her to posit sex and creativity as means of coping with trauma and isolation and for building resilience. Death cannot obliterate art for, as the novel's defiant first line declares, "Those who tell stories survive." Unapologetically sensual and intellectual in the vein of Rachel Cusk and Siri Hustvedt, Burntcoat is a story for our times. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

In Trust, National Book Award-shortlisted author Domenico Starnone (Trick; Ties) provides a sharp and unsettling exploration of the dread and tension that undergirds passion. High school teacher Pietro is embroiled in a fervent and volatile relationship with his former student, the brilliant and unpredictable Teresa. Eager to bind the two of them together forever, Teresa proposes that they tell each other their worst secrets. Not long after doing so, they break up and Pietro meets someone new. As the years go by and Pietro marries, has children and rises in academic fame, his paranoia that Teresa will share his terrible secret with the world reaches unmanageable heights, particularly when Teresa is invited by his daughter to speak at a ceremony in his honor.

Pulsating with dread, Trust invites readers into the mind of a man anticipating a drastic reckoning. The slow-burn plot earns its suspense through the intricately connected and constantly shifting relations of power between the novel's two leads. Pietro's conversational first-person narration proves as engrossing as it is cringe-worthy and eye-roll-inducing in its misogyny and narcissism. His mesmeric rise in fame creates an ever-heightening fear of falling for the character and for readers, who, like Teresa, will become invested in Pietro despite their better judgment. Darkly humorous at times and emotionally cutting at others, Pietro's sections of the novel are as fascinating as they are quietly disturbing. But it is the brief sections from his daughter's and Teresa's perspectives that bring Pietro's story into sharp relief, allowing for an ending that is both menacing and cathartic. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Fans of the Constable Twitten series have cause to rejoice--and, as always, worry a little, too. In the incessantly amusing Psycho by the Sea, the lunatics are still running the insane asylum that is 1957 Brighton, England, at least as conceived by mystery writer (Cat Out of Hell; The Man That Got Away) and punctuation czar (Eats, Shoots and Leaves) Lynne Truss.

In the fourth title of the series, Constable Peregrine Wilberforce Twitten has been with the Brighton Police for three months--long enough to have learned that his two superiors are imbeciles. Only Twitten has deduced that the station's charlady, Mrs. Groynes, is a criminal mastermind, although he lacks proof. This may change after he is given an envelope containing a photograph of Mrs. Groynes with London gang boss Terence Chambers, who was recently shot dead by Inspector Steine. Right now, however, the police's top priority is locating Geoffrey Chaucer, an escapee from a psychiatric hospital with an unfortunate habit of murdering cops. ("In the annals of crime," muses the novel's omniscient narrator, "it's surprising how few violent criminals have shared their names with those of the great English poets.")

Once again, Truss has some fun with midcentury preoccupations; figuring into her rewardingly elaborate plot are the "new" science of motivation research, a "futuristic" electric kettle and one dangerously overzealous Freudian. If P.G. Wodehouse had written a mystery starring the Keystone Kops, it would have read something like Psycho by the Sea, but it might not have been as funny. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Wanda M. Morris's fast-paced and thrilling debut, the aptly named All Her Little Secrets, reveals the many, many secrets collected over the years of one woman's life--and what happens when they eventually catch up to her.

Ellice Littlejohn shows the world the woman she wants them to see: "Smart. Tempered. Ellice Littlejohn, the consummate professional." What she hides behind that façade, though, is far more complicated--and potentially dangerous: a childhood spent in poverty in Chillicothe, Ga., with an alcoholic mother and abusive cop for a stepfather. An unlikely scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, and a brother left behind on her departure. A misguided affair with her married boss, executive v-p and general counsel of Houghton Transportation Company, which has only a handful of female employees and even fewer employees of color. These secrets feel entirely disconnected from Ellice's reality as the only Black employee in the legal department--until she finds her boss dead in his office before the crack of dawn one weekday morning.

This brutal discovery falls at the very start of All Her Little Secrets, and Ellice continues that fast-paced run from her past for as long as she can. Her desperation to keep that personal history hidden boxes her and her younger brother into an increasingly impossible corner. Morris's debut will prove perfect for readers looking for thrillers that reveal dark secrets and twisted webs of lies alongside hard truths about racism and sexism in corporate America. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm

Freya Marske begins the Last Binding series with a romantic, fascinating historical fantasy debut, A Marvellous Light. The book starts with an intense scene in which a magic-using government employee, Reggie, is tortured for information, an event that kicks off a race to find a magical contract that could change the world forever.

It's 1908, and Robin Blyth's first day at his government post in London is a bit of a disaster. As Reggie's replacement, he is expected to know about magic, but is instead "unbusheled" and is shocked to learn that there is a magical society operating unseen all around him. His colleague Edwin Courcey has little patience for Robin's ignorance and is eager to find Reggie and bring him back. When Robin is attacked in an alley that night by faceless men and cursed until he retrieves the contract for them, Edwin realizes that Reggie's disappearance is part of something much bigger and more sinister than he imagined.

Robin and Edwin's relationship builds slowly as they work together, their initial bad impressions melting away as friendship and then romantic attraction take hold. Marske's writing strikes the right balance, with lovely descriptions of the world she's built and the relationships between her large but not unwieldy cast of characters. For example, magic-users employ complicated hand gestures to work their spells, a process she likens to the game of cat's cradle: "Edwin pulled out his cradling string and built a spell that created a syrupy rainbow shimmer between his hands, like petroleum on puddles."

A murderous hedge maze, a game of booby-trapped boating, searing intimacy and a doozy of a final act make for a read that's in turn funny, romantic and anxiety-inducing. --Suzanne Krohn, editor, Love in Panels

If it's possible to write a biography of a time and place, then Justine Picardie has done precisely this with Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture. Nominally a biography of fashion designer Christian Dior's younger sister Catherine, who was awarded the Légion d'honneur for her role in the French Resistance, the book is actually a doggedly researched, wide-angle look at the German Occupation's toll on France's beau monde.

In 1944, while Christian's career as a couturier was ascendant, Catherine (1917-2008), who had been an active part of a Resistance network, was arrested in Paris, tortured and deported to Ravensbrück, the women's concentration camp in Germany. When she returned to Paris the following year, Catherine started a flower business and confided little in her family and friends about her wartime ordeal.

Such reticence makes for a tricky biographical subject, as does the fact that Catherine didn't write about herself, had no offspring and, with Christian's sudden death in 1957, moved to the village of Callian, where she devoted the rest of her long life to gardening. (Catherine cultivated the jasmine and roses that were signature fragrances of Miss Dior, the perfume her brother had named for her.) The resourceful Picardie (Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life) taps Resistance archives and memoirs by Catherine's fellow resistants and unearths a wealth of archival photos in order to piece together her subject's experience. Catherine is not always central in Miss Dior, but when she is, she represents exquisite grace under fire. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

In The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning, Yale University psychology professor Paul Bloom makes a spirited argument for the proposition that instead of being motivated by the simple desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain, "under the right circumstances and in the right doses, physical pain and emotional pain, difficulty and failure and loss, are exactly what we are looking for."

Consistent with Bloom's thesis, there's a term--"motivational pluralism"--coined by the economist Tyler Cowen that describes his perspective on the complex, sometimes conflicting desires that drive human behavior. Among his several goals in the book, he says, is to provide a "broader picture of human nature," one that recognizes that, rather than pure hedonism, "we are inclined toward something deeper and more transcendent."

As demanded by the ambitious scope of his subject, Bloom (Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion) marshals a large body of evidence, including numerous scientific studies. In a given chapter he may rely on material from an experiment in the field of happiness studies by the well-known psychologist Daniel Kahneman alongside an account from a mixed martial arts fighter that illustrates how "the terrible can morph into the transcendent," followed by a summary of an Ursula Le Guin short story about a land whose inhabitants pay a terrible price for their happiness. His resources are both eclectic and intellectually stimulating.

The Sweet Spot is certain both to spark reflection and not a few vigorous rebuttals. Regardless of where one lands on its central themes, it's consistently provocative, thoughtful and often sheer fun to read. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Avid skier and climatology journalist Porter Fox (Northland) is worried about the end of winter and what it means for the world. In his compelling, thoroughly researched third book, The Last Winter, Fox chronicles his travels to interview the people who are measuring, researching and trying to preserve winter. He meets brilliant, idiosyncratic characters who love the cold: skiers, climbing guides, dogsledders, earth scientists and glaciologists whose work captures a wealth of data and can help improve climate policy--if only world leaders will listen.

Fox tries to keep up (often literally) with his interviewees, asking questions and doing his best to translate their work into layperson's terms. Despite his best efforts, the data can get a bit dense as well as daunting. But Fox also turns his journalist's eye to his own (sometimes harrowing) journeys across glaciers, over mountains and through frozen tundra, going beyond statistics to remind readers of winter's beauty and power. He discusses the present and potential effects of global warming: sea level rise, habitat loss, stronger wildfires and storms, freshwater scarcity and more. But he also insists that winter matters to the human spirit, that it shapes the identities of communities around the world.

The Last Winter is a travelogue, climatology brief and warning bell: Fox and his colleagues cannot save the climate by themselves. Fox's account is an urgent call to savor winter while it still exists--and figure out a way to ensure it doesn't disappear. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

A cookbook collector who owns several hundred of them, Drew Barrymore wanted her debut cookbook to be "very personal and eclectic and messy and real." Rebel Homemaker is all of those things, but it's also beautifully designed (filled with personal photographs) and enriched with charming, heartfelt and funny personal essays sprinkled between the recipes.

The book's recipes and essays are arranged by meal, beginning with breakfast and ending with dinner, sides and salads. Most recipes include instructions for preparing food in advance (including poached eggs!) with advice on how to preserve them and reheat them properly. Vegetarian, soup and fish dishes are prominent, with standouts including blackened tuna in lettuce cups; Coconut Fish Kilawin (using snapper or blackfish); Stovetop Scampi; squash gratin with cashew cream; and the sweet and salty Korean stir-fried noodle dish Japchae. But meat-lovers will enjoy her Vietnamese lemongrass beef skewers, pepper steak and shredded beef--"It's better the next day," she promises. Some of her simplest recipes look the most delicious--including a brie and apple grilled cheese sandwich and a watermelon with pistachio dukkah dish.

Barrymore's lyrical and relaxed essays range from the joys and struggles of cooking for and with her two daughters during the pandemic shutdown, advice on table seating ("Don't space people out too much, because you immediately lose more people to talk to"), and creating her line of Beautiful cookware, which replaces knobs and dials with touchscreens. Rebel Homemaker is as charming as its author. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant

Readers of Laura Vaccaro Seeger's previous picture-book homages to color--the Caldecott Honoree Green and its follow-up, Blue--may have anticipated the publication of the ravishing Red. What they probably couldn't have foreseen was Seeger's turn toward a dramatic story; as she puts it in her author's note, she's focusing on "red as in anger and discord, but also as in love and compassion."

As with Red's predecessors, Seeger pairs the sparest rhyming text with lovingly labored-over die-cut art. A spread featuring the words "light red" finds a little red fox sleeping on a rock at sunrise; three mushrooms in the scene become, with the turn of a die-cut page, three rocks in an expanse of grass on which the fox finds itself alone: "lost red." One page later, the fox is caught after dark in a car's headlights: "bright red." As the story proceeds, types of red continue to correspond with the fox's circumstances, as when the "rust red" of some nails leads to "blood red"--an injured paw.

Seeger's acrylics are up to the heavy lifting required by a minimal text. Each spread wears its brushstrokes with pride, the paint at times thin enough to let the canvas peek through. The technique reminds attentive readers of the human presence behind Red, which aligns with the book's message: while the specter of danger looms over the fox, human kindness prevails in the form of a girl who plays a key role in the story. In her author's note, Seeger nudges readers to consider that the girl may have played a part in a previous book in the author's mind-expanding triad. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

More than a half century since the publication of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, the young adult novel's message about the perniciousness of classism still needs broadcasting. With Bad Girls Never Say Die, Jennifer Mathieu has rather ingeniously taken the social dynamics of The Outsiders and refocused them on a pack of teenage girls whose low status in 1964 Houston is both a mark against their future prospects and a unifying force.

Fifteen-year-old Evie Barnes considers her four-girl posse at Eastside High her true family: "In my mind we're four corners of a tiny square, drawn close to protect ourselves from the rest of the world." But Evie's friends aren't there to protect her the night Preston Fowler, a rich boy, tries to rape her. Her unlikely rescuer is Diane Farris, who Evie comes to think of as "this strange girl from the right side of the tracks who had the guts to save my life." Diane's only recourse against Preston was a switchblade, and using it proved fatal. After the girls flee the murder scene, they lie low and bond over their predicament. A few days after the murder, the cops pick up an Eastside boy as a suspect; as Evie puts it, "Who was going to believe a bunch of kids from the wrong side of the tracks over tea sippers with daddies in important places?"

Bad Girls Never Say Die offers a guided tour through outdated thinking about gender, especially the idea that it's the girl's fault when she's pursued by an aggressively libidinous male. The book has some stock characters, but Mathieu (Moxie) is supremely good at getting at the intuitive feminism of the disadvantaged teenage girls anchoring her story. Bad Girls Never Say Die isn't a corrective to Hinton's timeless work; it's a worthy expansion. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Christine Lynn Herman (The Devouring Gray) and Amanda Foody (Daughter of the Burning City) bring their darkly beautiful talents to All of Us Villains, an enthralling and bloody YA novel of secrets, betrayals, magic and murder.

In Ilvernath, high magick, "the purest essence of power," is controlled by one family. Every 20 years, seven cursed families must send a teen champion into a secret battle to the death to win the magick. This year, an anonymous author wrote a tell-all book about the families' clandestine route to power, giving haunting insights into the tournament's history. Now, for the first time, an enraged public is watching.

Each of the "Slaughter Seven" (as the tabloids name them) has their own reasons to kill to win: protecting family, restarting life on the other side of this tournament, being taken seriously. Among them are former lovers, ex-friends and mortal enemies, all with grudges informing their strategies and many secretly backed by the best local cursemaker. When an unexpected entrant suggests the tournament system is imperfect, the Seven must bury their base hostilities and lifelong distrust to see if the curse can be broken.

Foody and Herman enchant with vicious battles, a fun magic system and intricate, tenacious characters with deadly charm. Intense interactions precede the tournament, complicating individual motivations and making sympathetic the most brutal champions. Excerpts from the anonymous book add exceptional worldbuilding to the disturbing traditions, familial lore and generational rivalries. All of Us Villains is a suspense-filled, high-stakes magical battle royal with alliances that shift as quickly as they form, queer representation and pairings that will incite revelrous shipping. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer