Traer Scott (96 pages, hardcover, Merrell Publishers, $19.95; www.merrellpublishers.com)

A new book of animal portraits, Shelter Dogs, captures homeless pooches at their most profound, vulnerable, and funny. Photographer Traer Scott writes that though she’s a longtime dog lover, she happened upon the world of shelters almost against her will: “I have always extolled the many virtues of mixed-breed dogs, urging friends and neighbors to adopt from local animal shelters rather than buying from breeders,” Scott writes. “Yet, in all those many years of advocacy, fund-raising, and dog obsession, the one thing I never did was actually volunteer at a shelter.” When she did start volunteering in Rhode Island, she took pictures of the dogs for records and the shelter website; later, she decided to start taking real portraits. The result is a collection showing dogs at their most human—and, simultaneously, their most doglike.