In lawyer Brittany K. Barnett’s passionate memoir A Knock at Midnight (Crown. 2020. ISBN 9781984825780. $28), she recounts fighting the draconian sentences meted out to Black Americans in the “war on drugs.” Barnett, a Black woman, grew up in a Texas neighborhood ravaged by the social impacts of the so-called “crack epidemic” in the ’80s and ’90s. Determined to leave the neighborhood, she became a corporate lawyer, then began devoting more of her time to advocating for people serving excessive sentences for non-violent drug-related charges. One such client of Barnett’s is Shandra Jones, a Black single mother from the rural South, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a first-time drug offense. Barnett narrates her and Jones’s fight for a presidential pardon, which is Jones’s last chance at release. The urgency of Barnett’s cause and its human costs are vividly detailed; the sentences for drug offenses, given mostly to Black Americans, are clearly unjust. Barnett’s book is compulsively readable and deeply necessary. SUGGEST NEXT: Offer readers Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, or The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander.

Breasts and Eggs (Europa Editions. 2020. ISBN 9781609455873. $27) is Mieko Kawakami’s fresh novel about three women (masterfully translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd). It explores aspects of identity, fertility, gender roles, body image, sexuality, and motherhood. Teenage Midoriko is confused about what it means to become a woman; unhappy with her body, Makiko is considering breast enhancement; and the main protagonist, Natsuko, wants to have a child through artificial insemination (a procedure that, in the imagined Japan of Kawakami’s novel, is illegal). Kawakami has crafted a sharp, captivating, and intimate portrait of women facing their own uncertainties and struggling for freedom from oppressive social mores in contemporary Japan. SUGGEST NEXT: Hand readers the work of modern feminist Japanese novelists such as Yoko Ogawa (The Memory Police) and Hiromi Kawakami (The Ten Loves of Nishino).

The perils of parallel universe travel are vividly portrayed in Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds (Del Rey. 2020. ISBN 9780593135051. $28). On the dystopian Earth Zero, Cara works as a traverser, traveling to worlds where her parallel selves have already died—and Cara excels at dying. Visiting 372 other Earths, she exploits their resources for a powerful corporation. Through her work, Cara sees the social and racial inequities of her own society mimicked and maintained, until she stumbles on information that could reshape her world. Johnson’s tour de force features a strong character voice; deft worldbuilding that incorporates racism, classism, and inequity in ways that are organic to the story and thought-provoking for readers; and story twists that land like revelations. SUGGEST NEXT: Readers might next try The Future of Another Timeline, by Annalee Newitz.

With horror of a kind having descended on us in 2020, some patrons might seek to escape reality by reading something even more frightening—which makes now a good time to hone RA skills. A key source in this effort should be Jess Nevins’s Horror Fiction in the 20th Century (Praeger. 2020. ISBN 9781440862052. $50). Nevins seeks to broaden the range of works readers think of when heading for the horror shelves; Praeger says that the book aims to correct “decades of sexist, racist, colonialist, and provincial horror criticism.” This exciting promise is fulfilled in material that, in addition to covering classic 20th-century horror, examines authors unfamiliar to some U.S. readers, works that have only recently become available in English, and horror in graphic novel formats and in magazines. SUGGEST NEXT: Try offering T. Kingfisher’s The Twisted Ones, the 2020 Reading List award–winning title in the horror genre.

There are plenty of cookbooks devoted to cookies, and most bakers probably already have a selection of beloved favorites. Or perhaps their best cookie recipe has been saved to a cell phone, passed down on a notecard from a grandparent, or concocted through delicious late-night baking sprees. To these treasures add 100 Cookies, by Sarah Kieffer (Chronicle. 2020. ISBN 9781452180731. $27.50), an exquisite collection of U.S. kitchen staples, lovely new suggestions (just look at her Neapolitan gems), and ruffled cookies with crisp edges. The recipes are presented in lavish visual detail, and the entire book has a high design sensibility, making it a joy to page through even for readers who don’t bake. SUGGEST NEXT: Cookie fans might also find Dorie’s Cookies, by Dorie Greenspan, a sweet treat.