The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

It's 1987 in suburban New Jersey and all Billy can think about is using his Commodore 64 to program video games. Billy and his best friends Alf and Clark also cannot stop thinking about getting their hands on the current Playboy issue with Vanna White on the cover--but they are only 14 and you need to be 18 to buy the issue. So how can they get it? The three friends come up with one failed plan after another to get their hands on the magazine, but finally decide to have Billy befriend a girl named Mary, whose father owns the store where it's being sold. It turns out that Billy and Mary both love computer programming and decide to enter a contest to submit Will's game "The Impossible Fortress" so they can win an IBM PS-2. They spend many weeks together, learning machine language to make the game the best it can be. It's also obvious that Billy and Mary have feelings for each other. Will the plan to steal the magazine get in the way? A humorous coming of age tale with lots of heart.

A Stolen Child by Sarah Stewart Taylor

In the last book of the Maggie D'Arcy series, Maggie is finally a policewoman in Ireland--starting at the bottom doing community policing in Dublin. Maggie and her partner, Jason, are involved in a domestic disturbance that turns into murder. A young woman named Jade is killed and her two-year-old daughter, Laurel is missing. With the Garda being shorthanded, Maggie is given special permission to work on the case. Everyone is on edge, desperate to find Laurel. Those who knew Jade aren't very forthcoming with the authorities, so it's tough to move the case forward. Will Maggie and her colleagues be able to bring Laurel home safe and find justice for Jade?

The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai

In this second book in the Kamogawa series, the reader meets six new people who come to Kyoto to have father-daughter duo Nagare and Koishi, recreate a food dish from an important time in their lives. There's Olympic swimming hopeful Kyosuke, wanting to eat the nori-ben his dad made him when Kyosuke was young. Married couple, Yoshie and Masayuki Sakamoto, ask Nagare to make the Christmas cake that their young son, Kakeru loved. Another enjoyable entry in the series.