On a family holiday in Kent, England, the meticulously organized August and her husband, Andrew, visit Shepherd Neame, Britain’s oldest brewery, for a tasting tour. August is suddenly transported to an alternate timeline when the historic beer, called Five Bees, was first brewed. Waking up naked and confused, August stumbles to a doorstep, guided by a black cat named Hazel. Margaret, a local healer and wise woman, welcomes the strange traveler to the community. Mental to-do lists and a desire to get back to her daughter, Ripley, rage in August’s mind as she slowly learns Margaret’s way of living by the lunar cycle and the healing powers of natural ingredients. But all is not well in the village: The fields of “cosmos” mushrooms that provide sporelock—a turf mixed from “the pulp of the fungi with hay and manure” used for building—are being destroyed at “the hands of the Divine Sphere,” a patriarchal religious organization that threatens Margaret’s way of life and destroys the surrounding ecosystem. A vast mycelium network called the Mother, which women who are in tune with the natural world have connected to for generations, warns, “we must keep the balance.” Margaret and her small group must find a way to resist the Divine Sphere and continue their practice undetected while August searches for a way back home. Youens crafts compelling inner voices for August and Margaret, and the pages radiate with the warmth the author brings to their world. The extended metaphor of weaving effectively emphasizes the connection between the past and present timelines, which is maintained by individuals who work with the natural world to create the contemporary beer. Margaret’s emotional history is delivered with care. At times, the narrative dips into a “telling” rather than “showing” mode, but the magical elements of the story are consistently captivating.

Curtis, a young Black child, would like to be closer to his dad. Curtis’ father spent little time with his own dad; as a result, he vowed to be there for his own son. Curtis’s father is physically present when not at work, but he’s emotionally distant and unable to express his feelings. As Curtis grows into a teenager, he learns from other men in his life (coaches, counselors, uncles) how to listen and relate. When Curtis marries and has a child of his own, he’s able to be both present and emotionally receptive. For Curtis’s son, a well-adjusted father-son dynamic becomes the norm. Davis tells this family story through matter-of-fact, sincere prose. Each page is quite text-heavy, and the life lesson seems aimed more at adults and adolescents than younger children. Nonetheless, the earnest delivery and striking presentation—featuring plain backdrops and foregrounded, emotional characters—will make the book accessible to a wide range of readers. Seif’s full-color illustrations evoke vintage children’s books and make clever use of light and shade to suggest mood and possibility. The positive change that Curtis’ family achieves over generations makes for a sober yet inspiring takeaway.

She’s Cricket Abernathy, owner of the run-down Camp Abernathy by gorgeous Lake Willa in the Poconos; he’s Charlie Thorpe, a Philadelphia lawyer tasked with convincing her to sell the camp to his real-estate developer client—with a promotion to partner riding on his success. When Cricket rejects the offer, Charlie decides to look for secrets that could force her to sell by signing up for the two-week-long Comic-Camp for adult nerds who are into everything from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings. Cricket knows about his subterfuge, but lets him in anyway because of his granite jaw, muscular chest, and adorable dimples. Other campers include Adam, who plays a Sith Lord; Stefan, who dresses as a Viking; Hunter, who portrays a zombie from an apocalypse-set game; 11-year-old Olivia, who’s a dead shot with foam-tipped arrows; Angela, a cougar on the hunt for a fourth husband; and Esther, an old lady who crochets plushie penises as gag bridal gifts. Charlie, who is basically a nice guy and a good sport, bonds with these oddballs and, smitten by her toned physique and infectious humor, falls in love with Cricket. Cricket reciprocates Charlie’s ardor, and their relationship escalates from flirty banter to Cricket inspecting Charlie’s genitals for ticks, thence to skinny-dipping and…nature taking its course. Complications arise when Cricket’s old flame, Patrick, shows up. The situation worsens when Charlie discovers a lien on Camp Abernathy, giving his client leverage to take the land—and threatening Cricket’s home and livelihood.

Chase’s yarn follows a classic screwball-comedy formula, pairing a nervy heroine with a manly but menschy hero amid a constellation of loveable eccentrics in a narrative that’s full of blithe, energetic contrivances. It’s also a valentine to nerdishness and the pop-culture icons it feeds upon, spoofing them but also acknowledging their moral seriousness and relevance. (“Peter becomes a hero when he develops a genuine connection with others,” Adam explains to Charlie in a rather pointed interpretation of Guardians of the Galaxy.) The romantic leads are complicated and unfinished, with Charlie needing to release the emotions that his judgmental parents forced him to suppress and Cricket unable to break free from the safe but isolating cocoon of Camp Abernathy. Chase writes vigorous, evocative prose that crackles with smart and salacious repartee (“Your hand is on my ass, Charles Xavier Thorpe….[e]ither that or this lake has a small octopus”) and makes her characters, unlike many of the bland protagonists who populate romances, feel quirky, colorful, and alive. (“The memory of Cricket’s laughter rings in my head. It was a wicked, bawdy laugh that ought to belong to a gangster’s moll and not the bespectacled woman in the Tree of Mordor or Gondor or one of the ’dors T-shirt”). Readers will heartily root for Cricket and Charlie to get together and save their geeky paradise.

Readers first meet the four Heppenheimer cousins in Frankfurt in 1930, where they have gathered for their grandmother’s funeral. Gertrude, the youngest, is just 10 years old, and she’s excited because she’ll get to see her father, Robert—a rare occurrence since he moved to Strasbourg three years ago, after he and Gertrude’s mother, who’s Lutheran, divorced. Trudi and Gustav are both 16, and Bettina is 19; each is the sole offspring of a different Heppenheimer brother. Over the years, they develop a closeness that continues to evolve as they move into adulthood. Along the way, Gertrud and Gustav create a “cousins’ code”; although it’s designed to help them keep secrets among themselves and signal the uniqueness of their relationship, it also enables them to communicate when the Nazis make their lives increasingly precarious. Germany is in a deep economic depression following its defeat in World War I, and antisemitism is rising around the country. When Adolf Hitler comes to power in 1933, the persecution of Jewish people, and anyone with Jewish relatives, increases exponentially. Suchman’s disturbing family drama, filled with long-held secrets, feuds, and resentments, offers readers a visceral, up-close, and terrifying inside view of life in Germany, Belgium, and France for the Jewish characters, and for their spouses and children who don’t or can’t flee Germany before the borders close. Readers, with the benefit of chilling hindsight, will be pulled into the hellish setting as new Nazi regulations come into effect, banning Jewish people from many stores, from owning businesses, or from holding funerals before sunset; later, the characters experience the burning of temples, have their property confiscated, and endure horrific beatings—all before the terrifying deportations begin.

To be a cat owner is to spend innumerable hours entranced by the things your cats do. The author, a prolific documenter of her cats both in photographs and in verse, knows this all too well. “I have a camera that’s inside my eye,” begins one poem. “My little babies are always posing for me. / Sometimes they run, and sometimes they play, / then my minds eye video stores it all away.” In these 24 poems, McCready praises her many cats, current and former, documenting the joys and trials of cat ownership. She composes odes to particular cats, like Devlin and Rhys, and writes from the perspective of others, like the “terrible and alone” Daisy. Her cats are of the sphynx breed, some short-haired and some hairless, and the poet relishes in the unusual aesthetic of their wrinkled skin and bat-like ears: “A thing that might seem odd and wrong, that looked as ancient as a crone, / someone once found beauty there, and now I’ll never be alone.” McCready grapples with the occasional heartbreak, like the strange illnesses cats sometimes get, or the knowledge that she will outlive them: “Eventually they always go / In the back of our mind we knew, we know. Love in a body will never stay, although we wish it was that way.” The rhyming verses are full of memorable figurative images, as here when the author describes the cats sleeping on her bed at night: “Tonight my bed’s like a sanded shore, / where naked sun worshipers have come to snore.” The poems are accompanied by photographs of the cats by the author and Bray and by McCready’s illustrations, most of them realistic though some fantastical (including, in one disturbing tableau, two cats spliced into Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, reaching toward one another with human hands). The book captures the strange worlds pet owners create for themselves and their animals, and while fellow cat owners may or may not enjoy these highly specific poems, they will undoubtedly recognize some of their own obsession.