Toussaint Batiste doesn’t care much for being addressed by his nickname, “Troubleman,” or “Trouble” for short. But having just finished a stretch in prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while he was still with the Philadelphia PD, Toussaint can’t seem to be anywhere, not even in a car belonging to the son of a trusted friend, without trouble finding him. The car—or in street parlance, “whip”—belongs to Jay-Jay Wei, son of John Wei, owner of a successful restaurant in the city’s Chinatown district, who’s offering Toussaint a job and a place to live in gratitude for having saved him from a protection racket. Jay-Jay’s taking Toussaint to his parents’ house, but first he’s stopping to make a bag drop with some unsavory characters who, it turns out, will kill them both if Toussaint doesn’t take some quick and brutal defensive measures. It’s only the beginning of Toussaint’s harrowing reintroduction to the not-so-brotherly street life in the City of Brotherly Love. Before long, Jay-Jay is arrested for murder, his distraught father is contemplating taking matters into his own hands with his .22-caliber pistol, and Toussaint, who only wants to be left alone to make his own, preferably peaceable way back into society, now finds he must navigate by fair, foul, and mostly violent means through the city’s Black and Chinese underworlds while dealing with his one-time co-workers in the police department, including the sultry Sgt. Natasha Dobbs, who seems to hanker being more to him than an inside source. To say the least, there’s a whole lot of page-turning stuff packed in this latest thriller from K’wan, who in addition to an aptitude for orchestrating and propelling action sequences, displays a knack for colorfully droll dialogue and antic set pieces bordering on the surreal. He seems to be channeling Elmore Leonard, Walter Mosley, and Chester Himes in one rollicking stream.

Lavery, a former voice of the “Dear Prudence” advice column at Slate, continues to share keen insights into the human psyche in a touching—and often hilarious—portrait of a woman heading into her 60s without the support and companionship of the nine best friends she’s lost to death or misunderstandings (more than one of these) over the years. At 57, Barbara is a twice-divorced mother of one son (with whom she has a contentious relationship) and works in an upscale food market in Brooklyn. She’s been confronted, recently, with a list of relationship-based grievances compiled by a purported friend, which launches her into protracted musings over why she hasn’t really had a best friend since the death of her last one more than 15 years prior. (Startlingly, in the years leading up to her death from cancer, that woman removed Barbara from the “casserole list” of friends providing her with meals and comfort.) Mining her memories for clues about what went wrong, Barbara sets out to find a new BFF. Peppered with acerbic observations about the vagaries of others, her unfiltered narrative covers issues ranging from whether a potential younger new friend is age-appropriate to how to deal with the information that the widower of the friend who dismissed her years ago is now remarrying. The resolution of Barbara’s quest for connection is not linear, but readers are treated to her thoughts about religion, neighbors, aging, and cooking. (The assembly directions for a double-crusted bitter greens pie called erbazzone seem impossible to ignore.) Barbara’s prickly personality illuminates Lavery’s exploration of who is worthy of our love and attention and why friendship is so often a zero-sum game.

At Spero School, a punishing facility to which 17-year-old Scott Theriault was shipped out by his mother and stepfather, flimsy behavioral modification methods and open bullying make life miserable for residents. Scott’s death is ruled accidental—he had been drinking before falling into a local river—but his imprisoned father is sure that foul play, not alcohol, was responsible. From behind bars, he hires private eye Parker to investigate; long haunted by the murder of his daughter, Jennifer (who has remained an active afterlife presence for him), Parker is especially sensitive to crimes against children. Meanwhile, an evil club of wealthy men with ties to Spero has reconvened to play “the Game,” which has them abduct carefully targeted women whom they rape, kill, and discard. Then there’s the unexplained targeting of Parker’s best friend, Louis, by hidden forces, a mystery that Parker asks a medium, Sabine Drew, to solve by making contact with the dead. Her report: “I’ve never before come into contact with a congregation of the dead, bound together with hostile purpose, not like this one.” Though Parker is offstage as much as on, there is no drop of interest when the focus is on other characters. The suspense is rather contained—there are no real edge-of-your-seat moments. But Connolly’s subtle handling of the supernatural element is one of the book’s distinguishing qualities. So is its occasional humor. Told that Sabine is training to be a psychotherapist, one character asks, “For the living or the dead?”

In this series opener that was originally self-published in 2020, mermaids, who are described as light-skinned, start learning mer-magic in middle school. Lavender-haired sixth grader Brynn Finley can hardly wait to join the ranks of the sea guardians. But her new school presents challenges Brynn hadn’t anticipated: traveling by speed-current without her parents, getting lost in the halls between classes, and not being able to conjure as quickly as her peers. Luckily, Brynn has a community that’s there to support her—if only she could bring herself to ask for help. A series of poorly thought-out decisions leads Brynn to showdowns with classic underwater villains—a sea witch with lustrous skin (“like the inside of an abalone shell”), selkies (who have “dark faces”), and an evil, green-scaled dagon, or fish person—during which she finally learns the importance of honest communication. Nothing about the treatment of Brynn’s life lessons is subtle. Troubling incidents, such as Brynn’s trading her pet turtle for a dark magic talisman, unfold against a backdrop of familiar imagery, like kelp forests and friendly, helpful dolphins, and the dialogue often feels flat. The book works hard to reinforce widely accepted values, such as the importance of effective collaboration and being good environmental stewards.

When the Columbus family goes on vacation, a toy named Dino Boy falls out of the car at the last minute without anyone noticing. Dino Boy, who’s shaped like a small white-skinned and blond-haired child dressed in a green dinosaur costume, refuses to stay home, so he embarks on a trip of his own through each of the 50 U.S. states to try to catch up to the Columbuses. His journey begins in his home state of California, where he explores landmarks from Hollywood to the Golden Gate Bridge. He soon gives up and moves on to Oregon (“He rode up north on his family’s tail, / From Crater Lake to the Oregon Trail”) and the other Pacific Coast states before looping around to the West, the Midwest, and eventually the rest of the country. Each state he visits receives its own dedicated page in the book, including an illustrated state map, a smaller map indicating its location within the U.S., and fun facts like the state’s nickname, flag, and capital. Occasionally, friends like Hamburger Hippo and Tina the Ballerina accompany him for a leg of the journey, but in the end, it takes a return all the way home to California for Dino Boy to find what he’s looking for. In this sequel to Shampanier’s first book, Lost and Found (2022), the hero demonstrates persistence and resourcefulness to an audience who ideally has an interest in geography. The book’s mentions of famous landmarks may leave readers with questions for further research, as will the financial logistics of Dino Boy’s travels, which stretch credibility. Pavón’s bright and dynamic art highlights a single location per page alongside detailed inset maps and better demonstrate all of what each state has to offer.