Narrator Rika Horauchi’s new position at the local museum isn’t the kind “you [come] across every day.” For a few hours every Monday when the institution is closed to the public, Rika talks with a beautiful Roman statue of Venus. The job is as dreamy as it is deeply ironic: Latin is easier for Rika to speak than her own language. This unusual juxtaposition of characters is key to understanding Rika, whom Yagi depicts as having long been garbed in an invisible yellow raincoat that protects as it also stifles her: “The coat was always present, regardless of what other clothes I was or wasn’t wearing…like a second skin.” At first Rika searches for reasons to leave a job that puts her in proximity to a naked marble goddess that makes her self-conscious about the “many layers” covering her own body. Over time, the color of her raincoat fades from “blinding yellow” to “the hue of pre-griddle French toast” and Rika realizes that she’s in love with Venus, who tells her of the emptiness she feels at being a perennial—but misunderstood—center of attention. But only when Rika finds herself challenged for Venus’ love by another equally ardent “suitor” does she discover how much she and Venus have transformed each other. Yagi’s characters and the world they inhabit are as inimitably charming as they are whimsical. Through them, the author explores weightier themes like loneliness, love, sexuality, and the meaning of art with flair, zest, and a refreshing touch of the surreal.

Eight-year-old Dante awakens screaming from a terrifying nightmare of a shadowy figure pursuing him. His mother holds him and shows him photographs of two ancestors, his maternal great-great-grandmother, Taloa Homma, a Choctaw woman “stronger than” the Trail of Tears, and his paternal great-grandmother, Ora Lee Scott, a Black woman “stronger than” the Tulsa Race Massacre. When Dante asks about those events, his mother encourages him to seek the answers himself; at the public library the next day, he immerses himself in history. The violence, cruelty, and destruction that his people faced sadden him, but he discovers another feeling—pride in the people who were “stronger than a nightmare” and confidence that he must be, too. Grimes and Well’s (Choctaw) quiet text feels a bit didactic at times, but it’s wholly edifying, and Dante’s journey hits poignant emotional notes. Lewis’ (Lenni Lenape) signature watercolor art uses vibrant color for present-day scenes and sepia tones to distinguish the historical figures and moments; he welcomes young people into Dante’s world yet offers them a level of remove from the events he reads about so that readers can decide when and how to learn more.

Of course, there are a few changes. Yes, widowed anthropologist Harry Lancaster, homebound with a fractured hip, starts out by accepting a gift of high-priced binoculars from his daughter, Ceci, a State Department employee stationed in Delhi. And he depends on his home caregiver, Emma Stockton, for help above and beyond. But when his neighbor Sue Daniels is poisoned with death camas, a plant that looks like wild onion, suspicion is spread over all of Lakeview Estates, a development outside of Columbus. The neighborhood’s principal suspects—retired executive Gautam Patel and his wife, Sakshi; glamorous boutique owner Rachel Valucci; trucking company owner Milo Czesiak; retired chef Jimmy Chatimont; accountant Jack Buchanan, whose teenage son, Conner, Harry sees tossed from a moving car; and local government zoner and planner David Dubois—are hiding so many secrets that by the time Emma, who plays a much more active role than her counterpart in Alfred Hitchcock’s film, muses, “Maybe Sue was blackmailing the entire lane,” her supposition seems more likely than not. First-timer Cullen tosses in two more violent attacks, some late-blooming references to a series of other classic movies, a rushed engagement between Emma and surgeon Blake Derrickson, whom she’s known since childhood without ever really knowing, and a spirited neighborhood debate over installing security cameras that reveals how sharply the denizens of Lakeview Estates are divided against each other on the topic of communal security versus anti-surveillance paranoia. Wonder what those holdouts might be hiding?

For years, Pia and her little brother, Max, have lived with their father, Leo, on a farm in rural Maine. Leo swears that secrecy and strict discipline are the only way to keep them safe from unspecified foes, and until the winter of her sixteenth year, Pia has had no reason to doubt him. But when Leo breaks his leg in a fall, Pia’s world opens up as she takes over his mysterious delivery business, making frequent trips into town where, for the first time in nine years, she interacts with new people. Helpful librarians, troubled customers, and a handsome, hauntingly familiar 17-year-old boy named Felix disrupt Pia’s understanding of her home, her father, and the stories she’s been told about her life. Cardi handles the novel’s darker themes with aplomb, navigating domestic abuse and drug addiction with sensitivity and realism. The book is a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and readers familiar with the play will recognize certain elements in the novel—Leo’s violence and cruelty reframes Leontes’ mistakes with the benefit of a contemporary sensibility, and there’s a bear to boot—but despite being a variation on a classic, the novel works independently of its source text. Main characters read white.

Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.