Twelve-year-old Mei Mei is barred from attending public school with white children in San Francisco; instead, she attends a Chinese school. Her parents are indebted to brokers who paid for their passage to America, and now they’re threatening to take Mei Mei. For her safety, Ma Ma and Ba Ba reluctantly send her hundreds of miles north to Eureka, where schools are integrated. But when Mei Mei arrives, she’s made to labor in the kitchen of the rich (and mean) Bobbitt family. The kindness of their cook, Mrs. Yu, provides her with comfort, and Sara, the Bobbitts’ daughter, befriends Mei Mei and secretly teaches her to speak and read English. Learning fills Mei Mei with joy, but her literacy is a fraught subject during this racially divided time. When a tragic death leads to the expulsion of Chinese people from Eureka, Mei Mei returns home to an emotional family reunion. This verse novel told from Mei Mei’s first-person point of view is divided into 10 date-stamped sections from September 1884 to March 1885. The lyrical free verse transports readers into the vividly realized historical setting. Feet form a running metaphor highlighting freedom; award-winning poet Chang contrasts Ma Ma’s debilitating, bound lotus feet with Mei Mei’s energetic stride.

When she was a baby, Naomi Ward was kidnapped from a grocery store. Over a decade later, the woman who took and raised her was arrested and imprisoned. Now, 16-year-old Naomi has been reunited with her family, who know her as Camryn Stoakes. Her parents try to make the homecoming as smooth as possible, but Naomi grieves the loss of her old identity. Determined to unify the family, which includes siblings Maya and Blake, Dawn and Andre Stoakes rent a cabin in Virginia for a few weeks. But soon after their arrival, Naomi feels deeply unsettled: A rotten stench that only she detects permeates the air, she’s visited by the ghost of a Black girl, and she learns that Sparksburg, Virginia, was a sundown town. When Naomi hears about two recent missing persons cases, she becomes convinced they’re related to the town’s evil history. But will anyone believe her? This well-paced YA debut’s immersive narrative and descriptive language support its strong characterization. Stratton effectively crafts complex family dynamics, and Naomi’s struggle to reconcile the love she feels for her kidnapper with the heinous crime is compelling. The nail-biting final act, which leads to a shocking reveal, will make readers feel as though they’re right beside Naomi, fighting for survival.

Delaney Huger is running late—a last-minute phone call from her boss delayed her departure. She has already missed the sunset wedding ceremony on the beach; she slips into the reception tent and meets up with her younger sister, Haven, who leads her to the singles table. Delaney grew up on the island and knows most of the attendees, but across the table is an attractive new man, Luke Sullivan, who, she learns, is Gull Island’s most eligible single dad. Luke arrived at the island a year ago and runs a burgeoning charter business, Sullivan’s Lark. But Delaney now lives in Virginia, is visiting for only 48 hours, and has an on-again off-again attorney boyfriend back home, so she dismisses any idea of getting into a relationship with the admittedly handsome newcomer (although “She had to admit this hunky, self-assured guy’s entrepreneurial spirit piqued her interest”). Delaney and Haven are co-owners of a wine shop on the island called Wine Haven. When Delaney learns that their business is in serious need of her marketing expertise, her plans to leave change, jeopardizing her position as marketing director at an award-winning winery in Virginia—and so the fun begins. Haven entices Luke to include the charcuterie boards, as well as tackle boxes filled with finger food, as an up-charged extra to his charters, adding the intrigue and creativity of a new business venture to the drama of a potential Luke/Delaney romantic relationship. This is Vido’s third entry in her Gull Island series, and her simple, conversational prose deftly captures the evocative atmospherics of life on the small, Lowcountry island off the coast of South Carolina—the salty sea breezes, the old lighthouse, Southern comfort food, the few sun-basking alligators. Although there are few surprises in narrative’s trajectory, there are enough miscommunications, jealousy, and self-doubts to keep Luke and Delaney off balance and readers engaged.

“New Orleans shimmies,” Sussler writes at the outset of her strangely haunting debut: “formed from a swamp into a Creole capital, it’s all sweat and longing, the sweet smell of decay and wild, wild wails.” This is a novel full of longing—and wild wails, for that matter—though not so full of straightforward plot. Here’s what we’re given: Daryl Monroe, our intrepid hero, returns to his backwoods Louisiana home after his mother dies and he’s disinherited by his wealthy father. Turns out Daryl has a plan to set up an illegal smuggling operation to undermine his father, an operation that draws on the talents of his former childhood friend Michael Duvet. Duvet, meanwhile, absolutely does not, in any way, have any resentments about the different opportunities the two boys grew up with or the ways they each put those opportunities to use. But that’s all neither here nor there: The heart of the novel is in Sussler’s narrative voice, which favors a uniquely lyrical style. For the most part, this is a welcome approach: No one else writes like Sussler, the editor-in-chief of BOMB Magazine. But there are parts—and they seem to come more and more often as the novel progresses—where even the simplest, most literal meaning is sacrificed to something more florid. As a reader, you might prefer a time-out to untangle the basics of a given scene: Who else is sitting in the car right now, you might wonder. What day is it? A bit more restraint on Sussler’s part would have served her well.

A little over three years after he returned in triumph from his epic exploration of the North American West with William Clark, Meriwether Lewis was found dead in October 1809 of gunshot wounds at a small inn along the historic Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Ever since, historians have debated how he died, with most opting for the official explanation that Lewis, in a state of “mental derangement,” died by suicide—while others insist he was murdered. Turnbow joins the fray with a lucid account of the events leading up to Lewis’ death, which he calls “one of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries in American history.” The author devotes much of this volume to Lewis’ activities as a “point man, agent, or spy” for Thomas Jefferson. He became particularly useful to the president, per Turnbow, as a source of information about James Wilkinson, a rogue U.S. Army general whom he replaced as governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory in 1807 and who had not given up on his own plans “to control the West.” After Lewis set off from St. Louis in September 1809 to defend himself in Washington against critics of his administration, the author asserts that Wilkinson “could have anticipated that Lewis would fight him for his own influence and survival.” Another possible enemy of Lewis’ was a “land cabal” in Tennessee that included future president Andrew Jackson (“More than a few could see Lewis as a threat to their interests”). Meticulously researched and documented, the book may prove heavy going for those who are not aficionados of the history of the early American Republic. Turnbow doesn’t explicitly state where he stands in the historic debate, but he does appear to be siding with the “murderists,” noting, for example, that Clark “never wrote that he believed Lewis committed suicide.”