Our dreams drive us to adventure, sustain us, and teach us about ourselves. Indulge in the dreams of competitive Olympic cyclists, a Seattle woman who disappears, and two famous artists and their unique adventures in life.

Gold by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster, $27)

What is more important in life — ambition or love? This is the question around which the story of two competitive women cyclists pivots. Cleave, who wrote the critically acclaimed Little Bee, knows how to tell a compelling story while probing complex conundrums in human experience. Professional cyclists Zoe and Kate are friends and rivals over the years, through body-breaking training and competitive races, as they each seek Olympic glory. Yet the dramatic interplay between these women occurs both inside and outside the velodrome, the arched track where they ply their speed and pedal madly toward their hearts’ desires. Kate’s edge is softened by her love for her husband, Jack, and her daughter, Sophie, who has leukemia. Zoe and Kate also share a coach, Tom, whose own glory days were stolen by mere seconds. Tom sees the drive of these two women, what propels them forward, and what holds them back, even before they see it themselves. A gripping story of the drive to achieve a dream and the hard choices life casts along the way, Gold will leave you in awe of the world of elite athletes and the stamina and endurance that life requires. At the same time, it will reveal a universal truth about how everyone faces this central question, choosing between ambition and love, every day in ways both great and small.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (Little, Brown and Compant, $25.99)

Bernadette Fox and her husband, Elgin Branch, move to Seattle when he takes a job at Microsoft, but as Elgin delves headfirst into tech-geekery, Bernadette blazes a bitterly funny trail through Seattle’s aloof, inscrutable culture. While Bernadette embraces mothering, her daughter Bee comes to actively dislike Seattle and its passive-aggressive, irksome denizens. Bernadette, previously a well-reputed architect, lets her talent and even her Queen Anne home grow fallow, shunning face-to-face interactions while cultivating an increasingly codependent relationship with her virtual assistant. Narrated through a series of emails and letters that Bernadette’s 15-year-old daughter, Bee, pieces together after her mother disappears, the mystery at the heart of this send-up of corporate and playground politics is just what drove Bernadette to flee, leaving her daughter and husband behind. Through her correspondence, Bernadette coalesces as an opinionated, hilarious, infuriating, brilliant and  confused woman at a crossroads in her life. How did things ever get this bad, and how far down the rabbit hole will Bernadette go? Prepare to laugh and wince in this tragicomedy of winsome proportions. Semple, who used to write for the television series Arrested Development, allows her wit and whimsy free reign in this Emerald City satire.

Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco, $16)

In the summer of 1967, Patti Smith met Robert Mapplethorpe. New York was a kaleidoscope of color and possibility, a newly adopted home for two drifters with passionate dreams of creating art. Patti and Robert struggled to pay rent, to buy food and art supplies, but their fervent belief in one another kept them going. If you aren’t already familiar with Smith’s career as a rock musician and poet or Mapplethorpe’s provocative photography, don’t worry — you needn’t be to appreciate this memoir. Smith writes unassumingly about the well-known cast with whom she and Robert associated, from poet Allen Ginsberg and playwright Sam Shepard to musician Janis Joplin, in the heady days of their stay in the infamous Chelsea Hotel. What emerges is the passion, deprivation and dedication it took for Patti and Robert to achieve their dreams. The influence of Robert’s life (and untimely death of AIDS at the age of 42) on Smith’s life fills each page with a haunting beauty as she shares their story and how she saw “the boy who loved Michelangelo.” In this National Book Award-winning memoir, Smith recreates her starving, striving youth while unfolding one of the central relationships of her life. Open yourself to a moving memoir about two artists who defied and defined their times.