In the New York Times best-selling Henry's People We Meet on Vacation, vivacious travel writer Poppy once vacationed yearly with straight-and-narrow best friend Alex, but their last vacation left their relationship in shreds, and Poppy must talk him into one last trip so they can right the balance. In Jenoff's The Woman with the Blue Star, 18-year-old Sadie Gault is hiding in the sewers after the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto when she forms a tentative friendship with wealthy Polish girl Ella Stepanek (500,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Just Last Night, the latest from the internationally best-selling McFarlane (If I Never Met You), Eve is still crushing on Ed, among their group of four forever best friends, but her questions about what might have been are interrupted by a catastrophe upending all their lives (50,000-copy first printing). Best-selling novelist/memoirist Maynard returns with Count the Ways, which tracks the fate of a family when the parents break up after an accident that permanently injures the youngest child (50,000-copy first printing). Oakley follows up You Were There Too, a LibraryReads pick whose film rights have been sold, with The Invisible Husband of Frick Island, featuring an ambitious young journalist disgruntled about having to cover a fundraiser on Chesapeake Bay's Frick Island until he discovers the townsfolk pretending to hear and see a man who's not there—all for the sake of his widow. Inspired by a real-life individual, Phillips's The Family Law stars a crusading young family lawyer in early 1980s Alabama whose efforts to help women escape abusive marriages brings death threats that eventually endanger a teenager she has befriended. In Shipman's latest, terminally ill Emily wants the lifelong friends she made at summer camp in 1985 to scatter her ashes at the camp, and The Clover Girls find another life-affirming request from her when they oblige (100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). No plot details yet on Weiner's That Summer, but the setting is sunstruck Cape Cod, and there's a 350,000-copy first printing. Weir's Katharine Parr, The Sixth Wife, tells the story of twice-widowed Katharine, cornered into marriage with Henry VIII and shamelessly used by an old lover after Henry's death.

In 1942 Poland, 18-year-old Sadie Gault and her pregnant mother flee the Nazi's liquidation of the Kraków ghetto and take refuge with another family in the city's sewers. Ella Stepanek's life could not be more different; she and her stepmother, a Nazi collaborator, live in relative wealth, and all Ella can think about is her fiancé's return from the front. One day Ella accidentally spies Sadie underneath one of the sewer grates, and they form an unlikely friendship. As the war starts to go poorly for the Axis powers, each of the girls will need to find the strength to make decisions that will either allow them to survive or condemn them to death. VERDICT An inspired-by story centered around Sadie and Ella's friendship, Jenoff's latest book (after The Lost Girls of Paris) takes place entirely in Kraków and moves back and forth between the perspectives of the two young women as they navigate war, love, loss, friendship, and family. This is a heartfelt, emotional tale about human connection, hope, survival, and struggle during one of humanity's darkest moments.—Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO

Jenoff's spellbinding latest (after The Lost Girls of Paris) follows a Jewish family hiding from the Nazis in Kraków, Poland. Famished 18-year-old Sadie Gault's parents insist she hide in a crawl space of their ghetto apartment in 1942, to spare her from grueling forced labor. A year later, facing intensifying raids, the family escapes into the sewer system with help from a worker who explains the tunnels and brings them food. Sadie bonds over books with the 20-something son of another family hiding with them, and their friendship blossoms into romance. Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative, a young Catholic woman named Ella Stepanek dreams of marrying her boyfriend and yearns to flee from her cruel Nazi collaborator stepmother. While running an errand at the market, Ella happens to glance down at a sewer grate in the street and sees Sadie looking up at her. Thus begins a lifesaving friendship in which both young women discover great inner resources neither one knew she possessed. Jenoff drew on a true story for this harrowing narrative, and shapes it with precise details of the subterranean world and of the city's churches, markets, and cafes. This moving tale of young women's will to survive on their own terms will appeal to readers of all ages. Agent: Susan Ginsberg, Writers House. (May)