The Paper Magician by Charlie N Holmberg (2014) 47North

A woman, Ceony, is apprenticed to a paper magician and must save him when another magician literally steals his heart for dark magical purposes.  She follows the woman (Lira, his former wife) who stole the heart on a magically enhanced glider to the seashore.  There Lira uses blood magic to put Ceony into the heart and she must go through all four chambers to find her way out.  She sees some of his memories and learns a magic ritual from him.  When she gets out, she performs the ritual, freezing Lira and manages to take the heart back to her teacher.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (1934) Knopf

A Nick and Nora story wherein Nick, a retired PI, is approached by a young woman to find her father, an inventor and prior client of Nick’s.  He doesn’t want to be involved, but between a scam and getting shot, he decides to pursue the mystery.  Nora is a device to get him to explain, which he avoids until the end. 

Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes (2003) Greenwillow Books

Olive died, but she left a note for Martha, whom she saw as the only person who was nice to her, she wished she’d seen an actual ocean.  Twelve-year-old Martha is about to visit her grandmother, Godbe, at the ocean.  Martha has some growing up to do and wants to be a writer, but her father is already trying to be a writer and not doing very well.  A local boy takes advantage of Marth’s naivete while filming things and films himself kissing her, then reveals it was a bet.  Marth feels terrible and wants nothing to do with the older boy after that.  She collects a bottle of water to take to Olive’s mother as Olive’s Ocean.  The boy’s brother, who is Martha’s age steals the film and gives it to her at the end of the vacation.  When Martha gets home, she goes to Olive’s house to give her mother the bottle of ocean, but she has already moved too far away.  So, Martha paints Olive’s name with the ocean water and watches it evaporate in the heat.

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume (2015) Knopf

In 1952, three airplanes crashed into Elizabeth, New Jersey in a span of 38 days.  We follow Mira, a fifteen-year-old living with her single Mom, while she navigates school, summer and getting introduced to the father she’s never known.  This is all about coming of age.

Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs (2017) Ace

Mercy, a descendent of Coyote, a shapeshifter and wife of the Adam Hauptman, a werewolf and alpha of the Columbia Basin pack, is intentionally hit by a semi and kidnapped by the Lord of the Night, the master vampire of Milan, Italy.  This launches a panic search for Mercy by the pack.  When she comes-to in Italy, she escapes, is chased by a local werewolf who is in thrall to the vampire.  Mercy leads her into the path of a bus.  Riding in the luggage compartment of a bus, she makes her way to Prague.  There, she runs into the golem made by rabbi Loeb.  She asks for protection from the local wolfpack.  One of her ‘talents’ is being able to see ghosts and communicate with them.  She can also command them.  The golem is dead.  While under the protection of the second and third wolves in the Prague pack, she wanders into a second seethe of vampires and too late, realizes there are wards that prevent the wolves from seeing the building.  To them, she just disappeared.  She is captured and placed into a magical cage that she cannot get out of in a basement that is filled with ghosts.  The golem appears and gets her help to consume all but one of the ghosts.  This gives him the power break down the wards protecting the building.  It’s even more complicated than that.  In the end, of course, she is rescued.

Britt Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman (2016) Simon & Schuster

A woman who was cheated on insists on making a new life elsewhere and finds it hard to change, and then finds herself changed anyway, by life, by people, by understanding more about herself.
Britt Marie has let life pass her by, watching her father, then her mother, give-up over time since the death of their other daughter, spending her time raising her husband’s children, and taking care of him  Then he had a heart attack and the other woman called her.  Britt-Marie saw that he was on the mend, then went home, packed a bag and left.  Now she’s in Borg, a small town that has been shutting down, working as the caretaker of the Recreation Center.  She’s inherited a soccer team, actually just a group of local kids.  She likes things to be neat and tidy.  So, she changes Borg, and it changes her.