Up All Night: A World History of Nightlife by Imogen Willetts (Grove Press). Reviewed by Karen Heller. “Willetts puts the reader right there in the arena. She’s a master of charming apercus and fetching details. Inspired lighting and libations are often paramount to nightlife, while food is largely an afterthought. Willetts’ interests tend toward decadence, risk, and the prurient, more Hollywood Babylon than, say, Ken Burns. She’s fascinated by urban escapes du jour and all they entail — drink, drugs, carnal and sartorial theatrics — not bowling leagues and Midwestern supper clubs.”

We Want So Much to Be Ourselves: A Novel by Stephen O’Connor (Bellevue Literary Press). Reviewed by Alyson Foster. “This dark era of history has been thoroughly explored; yellow stars and brown shirts have become an almost lazy shorthand for the dangers of unchecked state-sponsored persecution and violence. But O’Connor avoids retreading familiar ground by absorbing us in the drama of Günter’s early life, which is as compelling as it unremarkable. We observe his romance with, and marriage to, a brilliant and impetuous Jewish woman named Josine, his introduction to fatherhood, his tutelage by Sigmund Freud, and his successful career at the real-life Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute.”

The Problem of God: The Challenges of Faith, Religion, and Spirituality Today by Erin M. Cline (Georgetown University Press). Reviewed by Jennifer Bort Yacovissi. “Part of the issue for me, I ultimately diagnosed, is that Cline does not appear to make any real distinction among the elements of her subtitle, when I would argue that spirituality, faith, and religion are different things. Ever since our species achieved self-awareness, we’ve struggled to answer the eternal questions: Why was I born? Why am I living? Isn’t there something more to it than this? Spirituality might be described as our sense that there is, in fact, Something More, a higher purpose to which we can aspire and from which we might derive comfort. But to equate spirituality, even faith, with organized religion is a huge leap, and it’s one that readers may not be willing to take.”

A Year of Marvelous Ways: A Novel by Sarah Winman (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). Reviewed by Marcie Geffner. “Magical realism might account for Marvelous’ spry condition at her advanced age, the curative power of her presence, and the multiple coincidences, but it can’t overcome the jarring effect of the novel’s jumble of other mystical elements, which include Christian images (saints, God, grace, light, Jesus, and heaven) alongside ghosts, mermaids, and — wait for it — egg divination. How this all fits together as a magical system is...well, it doesn’t.”

The Theater: Courage and Survival in the Defining Atrocity of the Ukraine War by James Verini (Simon & Schuster). Reviewed by Chris Rutledge. “The highlight of the book is the courage and compassion of those who fell under Russian attack. ‘Without having to be asked,’ Verini says, ‘Mariupoltsi volunteered to help at the hospitals, and orphanages, and elder homes.’ And some who could’ve fled the battered city chose instead to remain. As Evegenia said, ‘Someone had to stay and help these people.’ Those who did gathered napkins and the theater’s makeup wipes to use as bandages; they served on toilet duty, keeping the facility’s overwhelmed plumbing going; they cooked and cleaned; and some even drew on long-dormant medical training to staff a makeshift onsite infirmary.”

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