Meet: Bob Comet, a 71-year-old retired librarian who has lived alone for nearly 50 years in the same Portland, Oregon, house he grew up in.

 

What happens: A chance meeting with a confused elderly woman leads to Bob volunteering at a senior center, which offers him a place to belong as well as a few surprises.

 

Why you might like it: Award-winning author Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers) also revisits Bob as a recently wed (and quickly betrayed) young man in his 20s and as an 11-year-old runaway in this "quietly effective and moving character study" (Kirkus Reviews).

Coastal Maine: In their small town, the teenage Kindred sisters are growing up loved and happy in the 1950s, friends with the daughter of the only other Black family around and a poor white girl. But as the girls become teens and the civil rights movement accelerates, their relationships are tested and racism and violence become all too real.

 

Don't miss: the lyrical, richly detailed writing that saturates this powerful debut novel by an acclaimed poet.

 

Try a sample: "We mourned summertime’s ending and made predictions about autumn and ourselves."

Home again: After being held in a Japanese American internment camp, Aki Nakasone returns to a much-changed 1946 Los Angeles. Working as an aide at the Japanese hospital, she asks questions about an abused elderly man, which leads to a murder she feels compelled to solve.

 

Series alert: This atmospheric follow-up to the award-winning Clark and Division combines memorable characters and little-known L.A. history into a moving mystery that's "a must-read" (Library Journal).

 

For fans of: Lisa See's historical novels, Sujata Massey's Rei Shimura mysteries, and gripping, well-researched World War II-era mysteries.

How it begins: In 1993 Mexico City, Montserrat Curiel works as a sound editor while her friend Tristán Abascal toils away as a soap opera actor. A chance encounter with Abel Urueta, the pair's favorite cult director, leads to their involvement in helping him finish one of his films.

 

What happens next: Urueta claims his unfinished film was cursed by a Nazi occultist, and that completing it will finally bring him the success he was promised. But once the trio finish their work, a terrifying magic is reawakened that threatens to consume them all.

Welcome to... Camp Damascus, a conversion therapy program in Montana that boasts a 100% success rate.

 

Until... autistic high school senior Rose Darling, a once-proud member of the church that runs Camp Damascus, begins having demonic visions tied to her crush on another girl and makes startling discoveries about the human and supernatural threats harbored at the camp.

 

Book buzz: This dread-fueled mainstream debut from cult erotica author Chuck Tingle ("Space Raptor Butt Invasion") "should win [him] a slew of new fans" (Publishers Weekly).

1970s New York City: Ray Carney, a furniture store owner and ex-criminal, is drawn back into the game. Covering three time periods, the action deals with acquiring tickets to a Jackson 5 concert by any means necessary, a missing Blaxploitation actress, and the hunt for an arsonist.

 

Series alert: This 2nd in a trilogy by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead offers "not just crime fiction at its craftiest, but shrewdly rendered social history" (Kirkus Reviews).

 

Read this next: Secret Identity by Alex Segura, another evocative 1970s-era New York City novel.

 

Reviewers say: "a paean to the horse and the American West, both of which Grant writes about with beauty and precision" (Washington Post).

 

Read this next: For more evocative equine travelogues, pick up Elizabeth Letts' The Ride of Her Life or Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail.

What it's about: how the ideals of Enlightenment Britain inspired the American Revolution.

 

What's inside: an evocative account of the tense relationship between Britain and the colonies on the eve of revolution.

 

Why you might like it: Historian Peter Moore's accessible and engaging history has "the readability of fiction" (Booklist Reviews).

What it's about: In 1982, Dublin socialite Malcolm Macarthur murdered two people; after his release from prison nearly 30 years later, he met with author Mark O'Connell for a series of interviews.

 

Read it for: a compelling true crime tale reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock film.

 

Further reading: John Banville's award-winning novel The Book of Evidence, inspired by the case.

What it's about: Decades after her high school philosophy teacher encouraged her to embrace conspiracy theories, Sarah Viren was left reeling when her wife was falsely accused of sexual misconduct at the university where they both taught, prompting her to explore the meaning of "truth" in relation to these experiences.

 

Book buzz: Viren expands upon her viral 2020 New York Times piece of the same name in this "mesmerizing page-turner pulled tight with psychological tension" (Publishers Weekly).

What it is: a collection of nine candid travel essays that covers trips taken over the course of several years by journalist Connie Wang and her mother.

 

Places include: China (twice), Disney World, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Versailles, Amsterdam, time share resorts, and a United States road trip.

 

Why you might like it: Something of a dual memoir (Wang's mom had input and edit power), this "creative and entertaining" (Kirkus Reviews) travelogue offers an intriguing look at various locales through the lens of one mother-daughter relationship.

At Camp Mirror Lake: attendees pay to live out the plot of a 1980s slasher movie.

 

The final girl: Charity, who decides if anyone “wins” this immersive terror game. When some coworkers are mysteriously absent, she realizes it’s no longer a game at all. And she’s unwilling to submit to the horror trope of the Black person dying first.

 

Who it’s for: fans of cult horror movies and author R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series.

Meet: writer, gamer, and 7th-grader Wesley Wilder, whose family is from the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe near Seattle, Washington.

 

What happens: During a single day, disappointments pile up as Wesley's plan to ask out a fellow gamer goes wrong and a teacher disrespects her poem about Indigenous People's Day. Maybe the powwow that night can help her feel like herself again…

 

Why you might like it: If you, like Wesley, worry about being "enough," you might relate to this realistic yet hopeful story.

What it is: a deliciously eerie reimagining of a Tyrolean folktale about Otilla, a young runaway who befriends a talking skull in a remote old castle.

 

What's inside: strikingly minimalist art, deadpan humor, a poignant friendship, and warmhearted heroine with nerves of steel.

 

Who it's for: Jon Klassen fans who appreciate the subtle menace of his Hat trilogy or the quiet suspense of The Rock from the Sky; as well as any readers who relish the macabre.

Bait and switch: Just as she's about to leave for performing arts camp, Maggie discovers that her parents are actually sending her to a weight-loss camp run by "wellness" celebrity Sylvia Sylvania.

 

What happens: While Maggie's happy to make friends with her bunkmates, the camp's red-foods-only diet and required blood donations are not just weird, they're suspicious…especially after campers start going missing.

 

Read it for: supernatural thrills, sly humor, and heroine who likes herself just the way she is.