HANDS DOWN, my all-time favorite book. There’s no murder but lots of mayhem in this tale of crime and passion. Part mystery, part social commentary, part high-brow romance, part feminist manifesto, it blows the bounds of its genre. Harriet Vane, a “Bloomsbury bluestocking” with a checkered past, screws up her courage to attend the gaudy (alumni reunion) at her Oxford college. Notoriety has been good for her book sales but wearing to her spirit.

Amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey is a caricature of an English peer—fabulously wealthy, impeccably dressed, town and country, urbane, educated, sharp-witted, sensitive—and he knows it. Everything he is keeps him from the person he loves. Harriet met Wimsey at her lowest point in life and she’s been trying to shake him off ever since, but when a dangerous prankster threatens the very fabric of the college, she turns to him for help.

Harriet and Wimsey investigate clues, suppositions, and their deepest values to arrive at the solution in this “romance interrupted by mystery.”

SOMETIMES AN EEL—although the secret of its sexuality deeply frustrated Sigmund Freud—is just an eel. And sometimes it’s a metaphor for the holy grail of the psyche: the meaning of life.

From prehistory, Svensson relates, humans have had a complicated relationship with the eel; we’ve revered and demonized it, depended on it and distrusted it, embraced it and abused it. It plays a major role in many European cultures. Ironically, by refusing moderate their consumption of the eel, those communities threaten to destroy their cherished traditions.

Natural scientists obsessed over the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) for centuries, haunted by the “ghost of Aristotle”: the need to observe in order to know. Their research consumed countless eels, and still they knew very little about the creature. In the 300s B.C.E., after extensive dissection and fruitless observation, the esteemed philosopher himself decided that eels were sexless and spontaneously generated from mud.

A European eel has a singular aim in life: to return to its place of birth, reproduce, and die. Ignorance about its life cycle has contributed to centuries of overfishing, to the point of endangerment; the desire to understand it has done almost as much damage.

The Book of Eels examines humans’ Midas touch on nature: our greed, curiosity, and lack of foresight have brought about the extinction of many species we claimed to value and continue to threaten those that survive, to our own detriment.

IF YOUR DAD’S GHOST tells you he was murdered, you believe it. When he asks you to avenge him, you agree. But when it comes to actually killing the killer, it’s natural to have second thoughts. Especially when you begin to realize there’s more to the story than the ghost is telling you.

Philip finds himself cast as Hamlet in this modern story of a boy who loses his father and sees his uncle immediately move in on his mother. At such an emotionally charged time, when he’s still trying to process his trauma, a teen could be forgiven for losing perspective—but contemplating homicide? How far should loyalty to the dead go when getting revenge has real-life consequences?

Haig perfectly captures the disorientation of a boy whose world is spinning out of control but is expected to move on before he’s ready because his grief is inconvenient to others. As a professional copyeditor, I never expected to say this: The fact that the author only uses end punctuation works. The lack of visual cues conveys Philip’s numbness and feeling of isolation without robbing his words of personality.

This is a story of emotional complexity, told with insight and humor. Absolutely captivating.

SEVENTH-GRADER SAMMY Keyes struggles to fly beneath the radar as her knack for solving neighborhood mysteries keeps attracting attention. She witnesses a robbery in progress—and the criminal sees her. Now she’s looking over her shoulder in case he’s coming after her. As one crime turns into a wave, a hostile beat cop, Officer Borsch, starts to ask awkward questions. Sammy has to dance around the truth about her living situation while uncovering the facts about the burglaries. At the same time, she and her best friend Marissa navigate the minefield of middle school, where they make an enemy on the first day.

Sammy’s snooping—er, unauthorized investigation—brings her into contact with some odd characters: a fortune teller, the manager of a seedy hotel, a blind ice cream vendor, a mysterious tenant, and a grouchy convenience store clerk, to name a few. Someone in Santa Maria is not what they seem to be. Sammy’s curiosity and impulsiveness put her in some risky situations on her way to unmasking a criminal hiding in plain sight.

The Hotel Thief is the first in a fun and funny YA mystery series with a realistic young female protagonist.

ORNAMENTAL IRONWORKER Meg Langslow’s organizational skills are more in demand than request ahead of a series of summer weddings in her hometown. Aided by her “notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe,” she juggles the prenuptial demands of her best friend, her future sister-in-law, and her mother.

The sexy son of a local dressmaker, Michael, makes a pleasant distraction—and a sympathetic sounding board when the brides or members of Meg’s extensive and quirky family test her to her limit. But more is upset than wedding plans when people start dropping dead.

With the enthusiastic encouragement of her murder-obsessed doctor dad, Meg goes hunting for a ruthless killer among the wedding guests. In the course of a madcap investigation, suspects are harder to herd than cats, but Meg gets her man, surviving three weddings and several funerals in the process. Not to mention peacocks.

Murder with Peacocks is the first in a very entertaining series numbering more than 35 titles.