Though he received a full scholarship after graduating high school in 1971, the author took a detour to embrace his interests in music and exploring some of America’s most remote wild places. The detour became an adventurous road that he ably chronicles in this memoir. Leaving behind his Long Island, New York, nightclub-junk-food-drug-filled life for healthy living in California, he encountered the first of his travels’ trials in 1978, when a poisonous scorpion sting sustained in remote Yelapa, Mexico, led to a near-death experience and a spiritual awakening. After recovering in Long Island, he returned to California. Backpacking en route to the Great Western Divide in 1980, Cooper saw a backpacker who had navigated an off-trail course; this was “the inspiration for [the author] becoming an expert cross-country navigator, planning and executing over the following decades scores of remote wilderness routes far from paint-by-number trails.” In 1981, he moved to Oregon, where he was successful as an audio engineer and could pursue his wilderness adventures. Classes and expeditions with the Sierra Club and the Obsidians (a club devoted to outdoor experiences in the Pacific Northwest) improved his mountaineering skills. With like-minded friends, he organized a series of risky and sardonically named Desert Death Marches, starting in 1994 with a 50-mile expedition through the Joshua Tree National Monument and culminating in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park in 2015. By then, at age 61, health issues and years of rugged backpacking had taken a toll on his body. Whether climbing, backpacking, whitewater rafting, or undergoing brain surgery, Cooper portrays his adventures in immersive detail. His descriptions of his experiences in untouched areas are lyrical: “I had that priceless feeling one gets only in very remote wilderness: a deep and abiding calm, primitively simple and absent of thought, unshackled from all obligation and carefree.” Throughout the book, the author depicts his friends and family with empathy. Lovers of the outdoors and armchair travelers alike will enjoy adventuring along with him.

Even though they’ve already had extensive experience courtsiding—that is, getting a tennis umpire to slow down his calls so they can place bets a second or two before the odds change—Halston Graham and her older brother, Skip, can’t do this on their own. So in the first of many deliberately engineered setbacks, Halston arranges to get caught at her job and spirited away by Blaggy Danchev, the big muscle for crime lord Anton Nikolov, so she can turn around and entice Nikolov and his minions into the heist. Armed with Nikolov’s backing and a perfect replica created by Wolfgang, her friend and accomplice, Halston worms her way into the confidence of fashion designer and art buff Enzio Bergamo and Echelon CEO Charles Waxman, both of whom will be instrumental to the scheme in ways they could never have imagined. The heist doesn’t go off without a hitch; there are many hitches, some real, some fake, before the prize is carried off and replaced with the copy. But that turns out to be only the opening act in an endless series of head-spinning felonies, complications, betrayals, and unmaskings that will keep the target audience turning pages far later into the night than they should. Canny fans will realize early on that they can stop reading any time and still have the satisfaction of having digested all the plot twists they can handle, and then some.

Marcia Farrar loses her Italian lover when she is young and pregnant. A settlement awarded after his death helps to support the single mother as she raises their son Howie while working at various dead-end jobs, but it also ties her to the town of Round Stone, home to her rival and former foster sister, Nina. Marcia unexpectedly finds herself an empty nester when Howie receives and accepts a linguistics fellowship. Marcia worries about Howie, who leaves to conduct research on What Island, near Kanz-_ika, which is run by a murderous dictator. Then, her ancient dog Orson dies just after Howie’s departure. The grieving Marcia takes him to a pet crematorium, where, instead of Orson’s cremains, she receives the ashes of Mr. Whiskey, a cat who soon reconstitutes himself. Mr. Whiskey, in addition to being able to communicate telepathically with Marcia, can also time travel. (“This was ridiculous. She was talking to an ash-cat about the fact that they’d just time-tripped back to the past.”) He convinces her that they should use his ability to return to her college years in Chicago and attempt to change the direction of her life. It takes some time for the pair to get the hang of what they’re doing—it’s an engaging trial-and-error adventure for the lonely woman and her new feline best friend. Somers cannily builds this narrative on an everywoman battered by adversity; Marcia has always rolled with the punches while managing to provide a good childhood for her precocious son, so it’s easy for readers to appreciate her wish for a better life. She also employs a clever structure for her tale, blending the present and flashback sections with segments from the memoirs of author Socraties Love (a friend of Marcia’s father) and Internet search results from The Information Hatch (think Google). Readers must assemble all the clues to uncover the path that Marcia has been manipulated into following throughout the book—it’s an often tortuous journey, but well worth the trip.

It’s difficult parenting an unusual child. Silas doesn’t sleep much, wears a cape with an actual wolf head to school, disappears in the woods for days at a time, and claims his best friends are Golnaar, a giant, and Shjineluft, a wizard. Unlike most kids, Silas muses deeply about subjects such as maturity (“If you surround yourself by the right elements, they all feed off each other”) and death (“The forest tells some of us to thrive and it tells some of us to die”). His caretaker Leigh has difficulty coping with some of his behavior, but their bond is profound; when Silas was a baby, his family’s van hurtled over a bridge, plunging them into the river. Leigh, riding by on a bike, managed to save Silas and his older brother from drowning, and Silas’ eccentric grandma, Dolly Doubloon, then gave him to Leigh, recognizing that she herself wasn’t the right guardian. Silas and Leigh collaborate on a YA graphic novel about his exploits called Wolf Boy & the Doubleback Giant, which unexpectedly becomes a bestseller. Silas’ disappearances from home lengthen, leading to Leigh finally discovering the surprising truth about Golnaar and Shjineluft. Glassman’s book is a mish-mash of many disparate ideas. It explores love—both romantic and between a parent and child—and nonconformity; elements of mysticism are also thrown in, such as the concept of Whulaks, “souls in limbo” who return to Earth through another’s death in order to give help. The writing can feel messy and slapdash—some passages have long confusing sentences and strange word choices (“[Leigh] looked up at him with adornment”), and four characters are given the same problem of alcohol addiction. The casual and folksy voice frequently used to narrate can seem jarring (“Then he really shocked the shit out of her”), but the imaginative reach of the story shines bright.

Ellis Dunaway is an unusual and unlikely detective. A struggling television writer who only took on detective work after inheriting his father’s P.I. firm and Porsche (and nearly destroying them both), he’s a recovering alcoholic with few close connections aside from his former secretary and her troubled teenage son. Just as he’s on the verge of landing a profitable if unfulfilling new TV writing gig, he’s thrown back into the shamus business when Larry Price, a sleazy Hollywood agent (“Only occasionally did he look up from his phone to offer non-sequiturs about ‘Sundance,’ ‘marketing synergy,’ and ‘digital rights management’ without taking the swizzle stick out of his mouth”), is killed right next to him. Ellis’ investigation sends him all over LA—the city is rendered here with obvious love and appreciation even for its seediest corners. Detective stories live or die on the strength of their leads, and Ellis carries the novel wonderfully. Funny, flawed, self-deprecating, and charming, he’s a mess in a way that will make readers want to root for him. Vaughn has crafted a character who stands out from his peers, especially when it comes to his earnestness; Ellis, a modern, relatable spin on classic detective characters, is no jaded, hard-edged flat foot. He’s a guy readers will feel they know and wish the best for who displays some skill at investigative work when he gets into it. The fact that he’s always more interested in getting back to writing for television than in solving murders is a source of humor and pathos that sustains narrative. It doesn’t hurt that he’s surrounded by a substantial but not overwhelming cast of colorful characters who, despite falling into some familiar tropes, each have their own clearly defined quirks and motivations. As the tension and the pace pick up toward the end, the novel never loses the heart and tongue-in-cheek attitude that make it so engaging.