It’s gardening season again, so plenty of authors are making the rounds offering their routine gardening tips and suggestions. Wendy Johnson isn’t one of them. In her new book, Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate, she writes not of ways for us to make our plants better, but of the ways plants make us better. Through . . .

Muhammad may have been the prophet of one of the world’s great religions, but little-known developments after his death set the direction for human events even today. “The future history of much of the world was decided by the actions of a small number of men arguing and debating in the city of Medina,” writes Hugh Kennedy. In The Great Arab Conquests, the British historian investigates how the disunified Arab tribes and towns . . .

Many young girls dream of being the most popular, adored girl in school. But the truth is, only a tiny fraction of them end up as the cool and popular ones, while the rest of us are left to find a different way in the social ranks, a way to define who we truly are inside. In the deliciously twisted memoir Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love and Spain (Atria), Lori L. Tharps, a native Milwaukeean now living in Philadelphia, takes readers down the winding roads of her journey of love and self-discovery across the Iberian Peninsula and back again.

Dogs can bring great joy to their owners, but can they change lives? They do in storybooks, especially the canine chronicle called Sandy & Garbo. According to Milwaukee author Chuck Hajinian, Sandy, the literate and well-spoken yellow Labrador of the title, is an imaginative re-creation of his own dog.

Don’t worry, carnivores; Catherine Friend isn’t going to tell you not to eat meat. She eats it herself. But in her acclaimed new book The Compassionate Carnivore, the author and sustainable farmer lays out some simple guidelines for eating humane, healthy meat, mostly by focusing on where the meat was purchased and . . .

Lavinia, a princess in Virgil’s The Aeneid, was merely a walk-on character in the historical epic. She is transformed into the reluctant protagonist of her own story in Ursula Le Guin’s novel. An acclaimed author of science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin turns to the past for an imaginative reconstruction of Italy in the days . . .

It’s no coincidence that some of the most controversial and widely discussed books of the last century have been coming-of-age novels. Evidently there’s something about a young person’s path through the minefield of adolescence that can capture the anxieties of an epoch. Milwaukee native Paul McComas’ new novel, Planet of the Dates, offers readers a glimpse into the shifting political and cultural climate of the late-1970s and ’80s through the eyes of an ardent youth. It speaks of an era when the public’s anxiety . . .

The Planet of the Dates is an alien and sometimes hostile territory, but Phil Corcoran, the teenage protagonist of Milwaukee-native Paul McComas’ new book, is determined to conquer this unfamiliar habitat. He talks about how he combined autobiographical elements and fiction in this humorous and engaging look at adolescence.

Just 11 pages into In Search of the Blues (Basic Books), author Marybeth Hamilton comes right out and attempts to shatter accepted visions of Mississippi Delta blues purity. She desperately wants to play the iconoclast. “In fact,” she begins, “the Delta blues was not born in the bars and dance halls of Mississippi. That Robert Johnson and Charley Patton came to dominate blues history owes more to elusive mediators and shapers of taste.

John Coltrane took jazz as far as it ever reached before his death in 1967. He remains a touchstone for young musicians and the subject of many books. The latest, by New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff, is true to its name. The Story of a Sound isn’t a compendium of anecdotes about the saxophonist’s life, but a thoughtful . . .