February 2023 BookPage

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

FEB 2023

SONORA JHA

“IT’S IMPORTANT FOR ME TO TRANSGRESS.”

ALSO INSIDE

THE LAUGHTER puts a subversive twist on the classic tale of campus obsession.

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FEBRUARY 2023

features

columns lifestyles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

q&a | tessa bailey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Uncork a new romance series set in Napa Valley, California

book clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . 4

feature | workplace romances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Discover the delicious tension of falling in love on the clock

Explore the USA’s National Parks with Lonely Planet

sci-fi & fantasy. . . . . . . . 6

feature | art mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Masterpieces lead to murder in two engrossing whodunits

shelf life | jane harper. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

whodunit. . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The acclaimed mystery writer shares her library habits

the hold list. . . . . . . . . . 16

cover story | sonora jha. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The Laughter twists the classic trope of campus obsession

feature | black history month. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

reviews

Four books illuminate vital moments in American history

California & Southwest USA’s National Parks 1 9781838696061 US $19.99

fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

behind the book | lamya h. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Explore an intimate memoir—written under a pseudonym

young adult. . . . . . . . . . 27

feature | horror. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Terror that stems from family trees

children’s . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

New England & the Mid-Atlantic’s National Parks 1 9781838696078 US $19.99

feature | book to film. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Three books to read before they hit screens

q&a | julian winters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The YA author is writing his way into happily ever after

q&a | kim taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Rocky Mountains & Pacific Northwest’s National Parks 1 9781838696085 US $19.99

The textile artist brings history to life with needle and thread COVER IMAGE © JOSIANE FAUBERT

PRESIDENT & FOUNDER Michael A. Zibart VP & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Elizabeth Grace Herbert CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy MARKETING MANAGER Mary Claire Zibart SUBSCRIPTIONS Katherine Klockenkemper Phoebe Farrell-Sherman CONTRIBUTOR Roger Bishop

EDITORIAL POLICY

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BookPage is a selection guide for new books.

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B O O K P A G E • 2 1 4 3 B E L C O U R T AV E N U E • N A S H V I L L E , T N 3 7 2 1 2 • B O O K P A G E . C O M

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Florida & the South’s National Parks 1 9781838696092 US $19.99

Great Lakes & Midwest USA’s National Parks 1 9781838696108 US $19.99

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lifestyles

by susannah felts

H Flower Philosophy I almost missed out on Flower Philosophy (White Lion, $29.99, 9780711268579), thinking it just another floral design guide; then I spied a mushroom altar. Curiosity piqued, I discovered florist Anna Potter’s gorgeous writing about the solace of returning to the wild, the gifts that come with close observation and the wisdom of bending our lives further toward the seasons. Potter’s flower-forward project ideas are first-rate, but even if you never clip a section of floral wire, there is such sweetness and beauty to discover in these pages.

book clubs

by julie hale

Fruit of the family tree

Anita Yokota is both a licensed counselor and an interior designer, and she marries the two paths ingeniously in Home Therapy (Clarkson Potter, $35, 9780593233238). She goes deep on how to counteract our own limiting beliefs through the physical spaces we occupy. For example, Yokota suggests creating an “individual domain” in certain rooms to support a personal goal, from daily exercise to eating healthy, creating art, wrestling with difficult emotions and more.

Not everything here will apply to all homes or families, of course, but I dare you to read this book and not come away with an actionable tip that serves your mental health as well as your house.

In Olga Dies Dreaming (Flatiron, $18.99, 9781250786180) by Xochitl Gonzalez, the titular character, who’s a successful wedding planner, and her brother, Prieto, who’s a congressman, are both prominent members of their Puerto Rican community in Brooklyn, New York. The two were brought up by their grandmother after their mother, Blanca, deserted them to become a political activist. Their lives are turned upside down when Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico and an unexpected family reunion ensues. Gonzalez enriches this funny, stirring story with themes of loyalty, honesty and forgiveness, and reading groups will find plenty to talk about in her provocative novel.

Kimberly Duffy’s remarkable mother-daughter tale, The Weight of Air (Bethany House, $16.99, 9780764240386), is set in the intriguing world of turn-of-the-century circus performers. It’s 1911, and Mabel MacGinnis, known as Europe’s strongest woman, is a member of the Manzo Brothers Circus. After the death of her father, Mabel decides to The drama of parentfind her mother, an aerialchild relationships takes ist named Isabella Moreau.

When the two finally meet, center stage in these Isabella must come to terms with herself, even as she and unforgettable novels.

Mabel adjust to their roles as mother and daughter. Past and present collide in Duffy’s fascinating chronicle of circus life.

In Chibundu Onuzo’s Sankofa (Catapult, $17.95, 9781646221585), Anna, a middle-aged woman living in London, decides to find her father, whom she has never met. Anna comes across his diaries among the possessions of her late mother and learns that he pursued politics, becoming president of a tiny West African country. After discovering that he is still alive, Anna sets out to find him in what turns about to be the quest of a lifetime. Filled with humor and compassion, Onuzo’s novel is a rich exploration of race, identity and the nature of family.

Set in Quebec, Joanna Goodman’s The Home for Unwanted Girls (Harper, $16.99, 9780062684226) is a moving portrayal of family dynamics in the 1950s. When English-speaking Maggie Hughes falls for a Frenchspeaking boy and becomes pregnant, her parents insist that she give up the child: a girl named Elodie. Although she comes of age in a miserable orphanage, Elodie’s spirit and intelligence blossom. Maggie eventually marries, and when she decides to locate Elodie, her life is changed forever.

Discussion topics such as motherhood and the meaning of home make Goodman’s novel a great choice for book clubs.

Susannah Felts is a Nashville-based writer and co-founder of The Porch, a literary arts organization. She enjoys anything paper- or plant-related.

A BookPage reviewer since 2003, Julie Hale recommends the best paperback books to spark discussion in your reading group.

Red Carpet Oscars Dijanna Mulhearn’s Red Carpet Oscars (Thames & Hudson, $70, 9781760763022) chronicles the biggest celebrity event of the year from its beginnings in 1929, “a quiet blacktie dinner,” to the 94th edition in 2022, when the slap seen ’round the world overshadowed the dresses by a long shot. Photographs offer an incredible parade of silver-screen talent throughout, and Mulhearn’s text helps tell the couture story, providing social context and a taste of each evening’s drama and the actors’ personalities. In sum, what we have here is a fascinating, particular angle on American culture.

Linocut I’ve long been drawn to the simultaneously bold and delicate look of linocut art, a hands-on type of relief printmaking wherein ink is transferred to paper via a carved linoleum block. U.K.-based artist Sam Marshall’s Linocut (Herbert, $26, 9781789940701) makes doing it yourself feel approachable, with friendly, precise instructions and projects that build in degrees of complexity.

That’s not to say Marshall oversells the ease of this medium. She admits she struggled with it at first, but the act can be meditative once you’ve mastered the feel of the tools, and it’s an art form that can be practiced right at your kitchen table.

Home Therapy

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audio

Madly, Deeply There’s wit, honesty and insight in Madly, Deeply (Macmillan Audio, 19.5 hours), a collection of the late actor Alan Rickman’s succinct yet keenly observant diary entries spanning 1993 to 2015. Voice actor Steven Crossley does a fabulous job of capturing Rickman’s delivery and pacing.

Bonnie Wright (who played Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter films) narrates the stirring foreword by Emma Thompson, bringing out Thompson’s admiration and fond memories of her dear friend. Equally affecting is the afterword, written and narrated

by Rickman’s wife, Rima Horton, in which she reveals how even in his last weeks, he lived life with poignancy and celebration.

—Maya Fleischmann

The Escape Artist

Escape with an

AUDIOBOOK

READ BY SUSAN ERICKSEN

READ BY SCOTT BRICK

READ BY ROSALIE CRAIG

READ BY NICOLA BARBER

READ BY ARIEL BLAKE

READ BY THÉRÈSE PLUMMER

The Escape Artist (HarperAudio, 12 hours) begins with a perilous escape attempt from Auschwitz and expands into a larger story about Rudolf Vrba, the first Jewish person to escape from the notorious concentration camp. As author and narrator of this probing biography, Jonathan Freedland reinforces Vrba’s place within the annals of history.

—Mari Carlson

My First Popsicle For My First Popsicle (Penguin Audio, 7 hours), actor Zosia Mamet has gathered a who’s-who of creative folks, from Patti Smith to David Sedaris. The collection of nearly 50 essays offers a veritable smorgasbord of cuisines and emotional resonance. Many contributors read their own works; others are read by notable audiobook narrators or actors. If you like to pop on an audiobook or podcast while you’re cooking, this might be just the thing for dinner tonight.

—Norah Piehl

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man In the 1980s, Paul Newman began composing an oral history about his life. The project remained incomplete after Newman’s death in 2008—until the arrival of The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man (Random House Audio, 9 hours). The audiobook is superbly narrated by actor Jeff Daniels, whose heartfelt passion and sincerity come through loud and clear. The voices of family and peers, including Newman’s daughters Melissa Newman and Clea Newman Soderlund, fill in the rest of the story.

—G. Robert Frazier

READ BY RENIER CORTES, CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON, ALFRED VINES, HANNAH CHURCH, SUEHYLA EL-ATTAR, MARIA LIATIS, ANTHONY LOPEZ, ELIANA MARIANES, BRAD SANDERS, JAIME LINCOLN SMITH, XENIA WILLACEY, HENRIETTE ZOUTOMOU

Waypoints In Waypoints (Hachette Audio, 8 hours), Scottish actor Sam Heughan, best known as Jamie Fraser in the TV series “Outlander,” describes the experience of hiking the West Highland Way, from his journey’s impulsive beginning to its funniest and most painful moments, all the way to its successful end.

—Mari Carlson

from

MACMILLAN AUDIO 5

sci-fi & fantasy

ENEWSLETTER PERSONALIZE YOUR TBR

Don’t Fear the Reaper Stephen Graham Jones’ Don’t Fear the Reaper (Saga, $27.99, 9781982186593) returns to Proofrock, Idaho, four years after the Independence Day massacre at the center of the first book in his Indian Lake Trilogy, My Heart Is a Chainsaw. When a vehicle convoy transporting serial killer Dark Mill South wrecks outside of Proofrock, a whole new terror is unleashed on the town. Don’t Fear the Reaper is a love letter to horror classics, but it doesn’t just deftly employ the tropes of slasher films. Jones expands them, giving his cast of teen characters depth and motivation. A perfect mix of compelling writing, characters who never cease to surprise and just the right amount of schlock, Don’t Fear the Reaper is a modern essential for anyone who loves rooting for the Final Girl.

—Laura Hubbard

The Terraformers

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Warm, imaginative and often funny, Annalee Newitz’s The Terraformers (Tor, $28.99, 9781250228017) thoughtfully examines corporate colonialism and humanity’s ever-present need to expand. In the distant future, Destry is a ranger who works for the Environmental Rescue Team, a group tasked with terraforming the planet Sask-E, which is owned by the corporation Verdance. Destry and the ERT consider whether to stand against Verdance, and centuries later, the fallout from that conflict resurfaces. This is an expansive, entertaining book, and Newitz giddily explores the convergence of digital and ecological systems with infectious enthusiasm. The Terraformers is full of parallels to contemporary issues, and while Newitz intensely examines these topics, the reader will never feel lectured at, bored or disconnected from the characters.

—Chris Pickens

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries Set in the isolated backwaters of Ljosland, an alternate version of Iceland, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Del Rey, $28, 9780593500132) follows the eponymous Dr. Wilde in her quest to investigate the mysterious faeries that inhabit the land. Author Heather Fawcett’s world is simultaneously cozy and threatening, allowing her to explore sentimental themes without being maudlin and delve into dark magic without dwelling for too long on its horrors. The novel’s early conflicts are domestic, even homey, but Fawcett’s fae are not the domesticated beauties of much of modern fantasy.

Coldly beautiful rather than sexy, utterly alien in terms of their motivations and goals, these fae are as likely to curse you as they are to help you. A tale of community and chilling adventure with a bit of romance, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries explores the darker side of the fae.

—Laura Hubbard

romance

by christie ridgway

Be seen, be loved Old wounds and emotional walls are no match for true love.

In many romance novels, love requires exposure: of one’s true desires and inner secrets, often of one’s most vulnerable self. In this month’s best romances, characters can only find happiness after first finding themselves—and sharing that truth with their partner.

H Behind the Scenes

Do I Know You? (Berkley, $17, 9780593201954). In honor of their fifth anniversary, Eliza and Graham Cutler head to a luxury resort in Northern California, hoping a vacation might revive their stalled marriage. Upon learning that there’s been a hotel mix-up and they have two rooms booked instead of one, Eliza impulsively proposes that they sleep separately. Moreover, she suggests they take on new personas so they can meet as strangers and possibly rediscover a spark between them. While hiking, eating and exercising together as their alter egos, Graham and Eliza each come to value new things about the other and recall what led to their original commitment. Readers will root for both characters in this mature and intimate examination of a relationship.

Karelia Stetz-Waters pens a tender love story in Behind the Scenes (Forever, $15.99, 9781538709252). Director Ash Stewart is preparing to pitch a movie near and dear to her heart—a rom-com about two lonely women who fall in love—so she turns to successful business consultant Rose Josten for help polishing the proposal she’ll present to movie executives. While the entertainment industry is not Rose’s forte, she’s intrigued by the idea of the film as The Duke Gets Even well as by the cool yet vulnerable Ash. The story unfolds at a leisurely pace that suits the cautious main characters; while A happy ending seems impossible in Joanna Shupe’s The Rose and Ash fall fast, they don’t trust that their attraction Duke Gets Even (Avon, $9.99, 9780063045071). Andrew will result in anything real. Readers will cheer for these Talbot, the Duke of Lockwood, is desperate to wed an capable, talented and mature women, both of whom have heiress and fill his family’s coffers. But then his antagfascinating careers and interesting hobonistic relationship with free-­spirited Five romances to American Nellie Young transforms into bies. They just need to find the right person to help them fill the empty spaces and heal passion. The duke lost out make you laugh, aonburning love in the previous installments of their wounds. Rose and Ash’s feelings for each other are never in doubt thanks to Shupe’s Fifth Avenue Rebels series, and cry and sigh Stetz-Waters’ expertly written longing and it doesn’t seem like his luck will change: He needs to marry for money, and Nellie can’t imagine lush love scenes. And a fairy tale-perfect happy ending guarantees smiles as the last page is turned. life as an English duchess. An affair with Andrew as he seeks the right bride will have to be enough, except, of course, it quickly isn’t. The appealing Nellie wants more Not Your Ex’s Hexes for herself and other women of her time, and she’s not at all ashamed of her sexual appetites. Honorable Andrew After Rose Maxwell’s sister took over her role as witch feels the weight of his responsibilities, yet the fiery ardor leader-in-waiting, Rose is in need of some new life goals.

An ill-advised horse-napping at the beginning of April he shares with Nellie—featured in feverish love scenes— Asher’s second Supernatural Singles paranormal romance, turns his world upside down. Sensuous and sophisticated, the dashing and delightful Not Your Ex’s Hexes (Griffin, The Duke Gets Even is a satisfying climax to a wonderful $16.99, 9781250808011) results in Rose sentenced to comand romantic series. munity service at an animal sanctuary under the close supervision of half-demon vet Damian Adams. All kinds Make a Wish of sparks fly between them, but he’s grumpy and she’s not interested in relationships. But a friends-with-­benefits Romances between a single father and a nanny are a arrangement seems possible and maybe even sensible beloved genre staple, but author Helena Hunting explores until they must face danger—and all the emerging emothe trope sans rose-colored glasses in the third installment tions they’ve vowed not to feel. In fact, Damian is sure in her Spark House series, Make a Wish (Griffin, $16.99, he can’t actually be feeling them, having been hexed as 9781250624741). When she was 20 years old, Harley Spark a teen, but all signs are pointing to the opposite. Asher’s worked as a nanny for newly widowed Gavin Rhodes. She second installment in the Supernatural Singles series is full fell in love with his baby daughter, Peyton, and perhaps of action and well-constructed characters. Heart-tugging with him, before Gavin and Peyton moved away. Seven animals and steamy love scenes make this otherworldly years later, Gavin and Harley reconnect after he returns to romance a charmer. town—and there is an obvious attraction between them.

Their happily ever after appears inevitable, until grief, guilt and in-laws step in. Make a Wish chronicles Gavin’s Do I Know You? and Harley’s authentic doubts and fears, with sizzling Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka have writlove scenes and sweet moments creating a sigh-worthy ten an intriguing twist on the second-chance romance in love story.

Christie Ridgway is a lifelong romance reader and a published romance novelist of over 60 books.

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q&a | tessa bailey

An unexpectedly delicious blend Tessa Bailey uncorks a new series set in sunny Napa Valley, California. finding common ground. There are so many opportunities for them to teach each other new perspectives on everyday life and really unlock something momentous in each other.

For instance, in Secretly Yours, Hallie has an organic, unplanned approach to flower placement. Julian wants rows and structure, but when he sees Hallie’s finished product, he acknowledges that the lack of structure is what makes the garden beautiful and interesting.

Secretly Yours is the start to a new duology, A Vine Mess. Can you tell us a little bit about this new book and the overall setting for the series?

The setting is Napa! After writing a series in the misty Pacific Northwest, I was in the mood for a sundrenched vineyard. In this duology, we’re going to find love for the Vos siblings, heirs to a vineyard that is influential and respected but has seen better days.

Julian Vos, a regimented history professor, is my first victim in Secretly Yours. He begins receiving mysterious love letters at the same exact time that he begins falling for his gardener, Hallie, a Secretly Yours free spirit who flouts conAvon, $17.99, 9780063238985 vention and comes with a trio of slobbery dogs.

Hallie and Julian are total opposites in a grumpy-meets-sunshine sort of way. What do you enjoy about writing an opposites-­attract romance?

I cannot seem to quit opposites-attract romances. There is something very satisfying about two extremely different personality types

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Visit BookPage.com to read our review of Secretly Yours.

the story needs a break from carrying a heavy emotional load.

For those who may be picking up a Tessa Bailey book for the first time, what can they expect?

Heat, humor and heart. In any of my books, a reader can expect lovable, relatable characters who are usually at a transition point in their lives—such a coincidence that they happen to meet their love interest at the same time! Expect to laugh and even get a little misty during the quieter moments. Perhaps most notably, expect open-door love scenes. Like, way the heck open.

While Secretly Yours is very funny, Julian and Hallie are also dealing with serious things.

As someone who has read many a Bailey Julian has anxiety and experiences romance, I know things can get steamy. Where panic attacks, while Hallie is grieving would you rate this one on a scale of 1 to 10?

I usually put my books around a 7, but it’s all a the death of her grandmother. How matter of perspective. Some will say 10! Others do you keep a romance from feeling too light or too dark? will say 5. A lot of readers lately come to my This is the challenge going into a modern books having been fooled by the cute, illustrated romantic comedy. Readers expect there to be cover into expecting a closed-door rom-com, high stakes on the but there will always, road to happily ever “I drank a lot of wine as my always be ample after. We don’t need steam in my books. main form of research and the path to be easy, I love experiencing simply because the the more intimate found it very educational.” moments with my book has a humorous tone. A lot of us deal with the heavier aspects characters and putting them in those vulnerable of life by laughing or creating levity. So that is scenes on the page. Their walls come down and my balancing act—making sure there is depth they connect on a physical level . . . and afterto the characters and their struggles, while also ward, something usually goes wrong. Like one making sure the champagne bubble, fizzy feelof them gets a job offer in Milwaukee. Mwahaha. ing of romance is on the page. I can usually Romance writers are evil at their cores.

—Amanda Diehl feel when I need a more poignant scene or if

Contemporary Romance

Since wine and vineyards feature prominently, did you do any research on winemaking or vineyard upkeep?

Yes, I drank a lot of wine as my main form of research and found it very educational. I also watched a lot of documentaries on winemaking.

The process is a lot more complicated than I could have imagined. There is no set method or recipe for wine. It is a constantly evolving art form. If I learned anything from the eight documentaries I binged, it’s that grapes are extremely temperamental, vintners are more like scientists and I just want to drink the wine.

Why did you decide to have Julian receive physical love letters rather than “wrong number” texts or anonymous social media messages?

I took the old-school route because physical letters are more classically romantic and felt more appropriate for this particular series.

Letters are a Big Gesture.

They would be more of a surprise to receive than a direct message on social media, and have a little more gravity to them. If someone took the time to write words on actual paper and send them to me, in my opinion, those words would carry a lot of weight.

© NISHA VER HALEN

When Tessa Bailey’s Bellinger Sisters duology (It Happened One Summer and Hook, Line, and Sinker) went megaviral on TikTok, readers everywhere learned what romance fans had known for years: If you want rom-com hijinks and a high heat level, there is no one better than Bailey. Her latest book, Secretly Yours, is a steamy opposites-attract love story that will only increase her legion of admirers.

Illustrations from Secretly Yours © 2023 by Tessa Bailey. Reproduced by permission of Avon.

feature | workplace romances

Falling in love—on the clock Three books explore the delicious tension of crushing on a co-worker.

Whether the setting is a digital media company, the set of a TV show or an undercover operation, a love story between co-workers is always rife with complex dynamics and pining you can feel on the page.

Just My Type Falon Ballard’s sophomore novel, Just My Type (Putnam, $17, ​​9780593419939), is a clever, upbeat rom-com that will leave a smile on readers’ faces and joy in their hearts.

Lana Parker is an expert dating and relationships columnist, but she’s also a serial monogamist who’s uninterested in (and perhaps incapable of) being single. Lana gets dumped by her latest boyfriend, rather than engaged to him, as Just My Type begins, but that’s not even the worst thing to happen to her that week. That honor belongs to the moment when Seth Carson, her high school boyfriend who is now a big-shot freelance journalist, takes an assignment from the website that publishes Lana’s column. Lana’s boss soon instructs the pair to write a dueling series of relationship articles in which Lana records her attempts to stay and enjoy being single and Seth tries to stop being a serial dater and instead become boyfriend material.

Since Seth is the one who got away, the assignment immediately proves difficult—in a delicious way—for Lana. Just My Type might have felt a bit less predictable if Ballard had flipped the gender stereotype, making Seth the one who needed to stop jumping into relationships and Lana the one who needed to learn to settle down. However, Just My Type is still a great showcase for Ballard’s talents: Her voice is fresh and flirty, her characters well developed (Lana’s unfailingly loyal, foulmouthed friend May is the kind of person we all need in our lives), and her pacing brisk and never boring. Romance readers—of all types— will be immensely entertained.

—Dolly R. Sickles

The Reunion We’re living in an age of reboots. Everywhere you turn, another classic show or movie is getting a fresh start or a cast reunion. So it feels very much of the moment to have a romance set during the production of a beloved TV series’ 20th anniversary special.

The Reunion (Atria, $17, 9781668001943), Kayla Olson’s adult debut, opens as Liv Latimer, star of the groundbreaking, wildly popular six-season smash-hit series “Girl on the Verge,” steps back into the shoes of her character, Honor St. Croix. Her return to playing Honor comes with a return to the spotlight—which she mostly shunned after the show ended, choosing to stick to smaller indie movies instead—and a return to Ransom Joel. Ransom was Liv’s co-star, best friend, on-screen love interest and longtime real-life secret crush. In the years since “Girl on the Verge,” he’s become an international action movie star. Liv’s been out of touch with Ransom for years, but it only takes minutes in his company for all the old feelings to come back twice as strong. And after all this time, it seems like her feelings might be reciprocated . . . but falling in love is hard enough when the whole world isn’t watching.

There’s plenty of Hollywood glitz in The Reunion (with luxe descriptions of houses and events), but underneath all the glamour is the poignant aura of a high school reunion. There’s nothing like being surrounded by people who knew you as a kid to help you realize how much you’ve grown up and which opportunities you’ve let pass you by. Olson’s characters are easy to root for all the way through, to the point that I found myself caring deeply about the reboot of a show that never existed. In fact, “Girl on the Verge” sounds so great that I’m sad I can’t watch it myself. And when love finally happens for Ransom and Liv, I felt all the thrill of a dedicated fan, finally seeing my OTP come to life.

If The Reunion has a weakness, it’s how perfect Ransom and Liv are for each other. They seem so mutually smitten right from the start that I half expected this to be one of those romances in which the heroine finally gets a chance with the man of her dreams but then discovers that it’s someone else she’s meant to be with after all. But on the other hand, it’s nice to think that love can be that simple, that clean. Maybe that’s what we like about all these reboots: the idea that we can go back to what we loved before and find it right there waiting for us—just as sweet as we remember, with a payoff that’s just as satisfying as we always hoped it would be.

—Elizabeth Mazer

Radiant Sin Katee Robert returns with Radiant Sin (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $16.99, 9781728257006), the fourth installment of her popular Dark Olympus series, which gives sexy updates to the classic love stories of Greek mythology. This time around, Robert uses the tale of Apollo and Cassandra as inspiration for a modern workplace romance.

In the original myth, Apollo was the god of prophecy (among many other things) and Cassandra was one of his priestesses whom he cursed: She would be able to predict the future, but no one would ever believe her. In Robert’s version of the story, Apollo is the spymaster of the isolated city of Olympus, as well as Cassandra’s boss. The pair go undercover as a couple to attend a weeklong house party in order to figure out what Minos, a mysterious new arrival in the city and the host of the gathering, is up to.

A deliciously twisted plot of fake dating, sneaky intrigue and forced proximity unfolds. Cassandra and Apollo realize just how much their quirks (and kinks) complement each other, all while unpacking the class issues within their relationship that arise from their disparate backgrounds.

While Radiant Sin is lighter on the love scenes than the preceding three books in the series, there’s still plenty of steam. And Robert cleverly peppers in details that anchor the myth-inspired story in the real world, such as broken elevators, traffic delays and office politics.

While fans of Greek mythology will be tickled by Robert’s reinterpretation of Apollo and Cassandra, you need not be a classics expert to enjoy this sultry romance.

—Dolly R. Sickles

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whodunit

by bruce tierney

Encore in Death

H The Bullet Garden

The Sanctuary

H The Twyford Code

J.D. Robb’s Encore in Death (St. Martin’s, $29.99, 9781250284082) is the—are you ready for this?— 56th entry in the wildly popular series featuring Eve Dallas, a police detective in 2060s New York City who, by my calculations, should be celebrating her first birthday just about now. Despite being set in a Blade Runner-esque future of androids, airboards (think hoverboards) and the much-appreciated automated chefs, Robb’s mysteries don’t need to rely on sci-fi trappings to engage the reader.

They are straight-up classically constructed whodunits. And this case features a time-honored murder weapon: cyanide. Just as A-list actor Eliza Lane takes the stage for an impromptu song at her latest high society Manhattan party, there is a crash of glass, and Eliza’s husband, equally famous actor Brant Fitzhugh, collapses to the floor—dead, with the smell of bitter almonds emanating from his lips. The initial thinking is that Eliza was the intended victim, as Brant sipped from a poisoned cocktail he was holding for her, but alternative possibilities present themselves. Robb is the pen name of legendary romance author Nora Roberts, and while that’s certainly evident in her descriptions of her male leads (“Those sea-green eyes still made her heart sigh, even after a decade . . .”), the suspense is also there in spades.

After writing a trio of books about ex-Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger, author Stephen Hunter launched a second series featuring Bob Lee’s father, Earl Swagger, who is also a Marine and a Medal of Honor recipient to boot. It’s been 20 years since Hunter’s last installment in the senior Swagger series, but it comes roaring back this month with The Bullet Garden (Emily Bestler, $28.99, 9781982169763).

The book serves as a prequel to the three Earl Swagger books that preceded it (Hot Springs, Pale Horse Coming and Havana), chronicling his adventures in France during the days immediately following D-Day. Swagger spearheads a secret mission to track down and kill German snipers who are systematically picking off Allied soldiers crossing the Normandy meadowlands (which the troops have nicknamed “bullet gardens”).

A sniper himself, and known as one of the best shots in the Allied military, Swagger is a natural fit for the job at hand, but even his legendary skills will be sorely tested in this milieu. Fans of firearms history will find lots to like in The Bullet Garden, as will military strategy buffs, but there is truly something for everyone: a budding romance; layers of duplicity and intrigue courtesy of competing intelligence agencies; and an omnipresent sense of the importance of working together for a greater cause.

Of all the awful ways to die, being vertically bisected by an industrial saw like the murder victim in Katrine Engberg’s final Kørner and Werner mystery, The Sanctuary (Scout, $28.99, 9781668002278), must rank right up there at the top. The unidentified man’s left half turns up in a partially buried leather suitcase in a public park, and Copenhagen police detective Annette Werner is on the hunt for the killer. Clues lead to the remote island of Bornholm, where Werner’s partner, Jeppe Kørner, is currently on vacation. Bornholm is an insular enclave where everyone knows everyone else’s secrets, but nobody seems disposed toward sharing any of that knowledge with the police. Subplots abound: a missing young man, possibly on the lam from the law, possibly the victim in the suitcase; a zealous preacher who roundly rejects the biblical teaching of turning the other cheek; a biographer whose scholarly visit to Bornholm to examine a deceased anthropologist’s letters is stirring up some old, long-quiet ghosts; a garbage bag full of money that nobody seems to be able to account for. The identity of the culprit is an enormous surprise, but more surprising still is the closure Engberg brings to long-running storylines, resulting in a very poignant moment for fans of the series in addition to a satisfying solution to the central mystery.

Janice Hallett’s impressive second novel, The Twyford Code (Atria, $27, 9781668003220), consists of 200 fragmented voice transcriptions made by Steven “Smithy” Smith, who has only recently been released from prison in England.

At loose ends, he decides to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his secondary school English teacher some 40 years back. Miss Iles (who often humorously appears in the transcriptions as “missiles”) had something of an obsession with the children’s books of one Edith Twyford, a character loosely based on reallife bestselling children’s author Enid Blyton. On a class field trip to Bournemouth to visit Twyford’s wartime home, “missiles” dropped off the map, never to be heard from again. As Smith’s belated investigation proceeds, he becomes increasingly obsessed with Twyford’s books as well, uncovering what may be hidden messages therein. State secrets, buried treasure, buried bodies? The clues are all there, but it will take a canny puzzle-solving mind to decipher them before Hallett is ready for the big reveal. The Twyford Code is easily one of the cleverest and most original mystery novels in recent memory, with an engaging main character, dialogue that grabs (and requires) your attention and more head-scratching suspense than any other three books combined.

Bruce Tierney lives outside Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he bicycles through the rice paddies daily and reviews the best in mystery and suspense every month.

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feature | art mysteries

shelf life | jane harper

Jane Harper wouldn’t dare snack in a bookstore

Masterpieces lead to murder in two new mysteries.

The acclaimed mystery writer shares her library habits and personal philosophy on shelf organization.

The privileged, insular art world serves as the backdrop for a pair of engrossing whodunits from debut author Alex Kenna and veteran Jonathan Kellerman.

In Kenna’s What Meets the Eye (Crooked Lane, $28.99, 9781639101849), disgraced police officer Kate Myles, now a private investigator, tackles the death of painter Margot Starling.

The police have deemed it a suicide, but Margot’s father is convinced she didn’t kill herself and enlists Kate to get to the truth.

At first reluctant to take on the case and disappoint her client (most deaths suspected to be suicides turn out to be just that), Kate is surprised when she unearths enough evidence to suggest that foul play may have been involved after all. A litany of former lovers, jealous art students and conniving agents and art dealers lend further credence to her suspicions, leading Kate to believe that Margot was the target of individuals attempting to exploit her. But the more she digs, the more Kate realizes that Margot’s ego and pride, and not just her talent, may have created a number of potential suspects as well.

Kenna ensures that Kate is similarly complex, delving into how her addiction to painkillers led to the loss of a promising job with the police department, the dissolution of her marriage and the possible removal of custody of her daughter. The vivid portraits of both women, and the absorbing mystery that surrounds them,

signal a master in the making.

Kellerman is already an accomplished artist in the medium of mystery novels. Unnatural History (Ballantine, $28.99, 9780525618614), the 38th installment in the author’s Alex Delaware series, finds the psychologist lending his insights to longtime partner Detective Milo Sturgis as they work to solve the murder of wellto-do photographer Donny Klement.

Donny had recently received media attention for a project titled “The Wishers,” which featured portraits of members of Los Angeles’ homeless community as the people they fantasized about being.

Several critics, however, maintained that Donny was simply exploiting his subjects for his own benefit. Alex wonders if, having given people a taste of a different life and then discarding them, Donny sowed the seeds of his own destruction. But there are plenty of other suspects to go around. The wealthy son of an even wealthier father, Donny is surrounded by an eccentric family, any member of which may have had reason to kill him.

In typical Kellerman fashion, the story is painted in clear, linear fashion, with nothing left abstract. As such, the book is easily accessible to new readers of the series, who will immediately understand what loyal fans have known for years—that they are in the confident hands of a real artist.

—G. Robert Frazier

Jane Harper’s debut novel, The Dry, immediately established her as one of mystery’s brightest stars and her thoughtful sleuth, Aaron Falk, as one of the genre’s most beloved characters. Exiles (Flatiron, $27.99, 9781250235350), Aaron’s third and final case, will be published on January 31, and to mark its release, we talked to Harper about her favorite librarian and the joys of grouping books by size.

Tell us about your favorite library from when you were a child.

School libraries were always a real sanctuary for me. Anytime things got a little tough, anything from heated playground politics to bad weather, the library was always somewhere quiet and peaceful to go and just get away from it all for a while.

While researching your books, has there ever been a librarian who was especially helpful?

One of my favorite librarians is a woman called Monica who works at the lovely Albert Park Library in Melbourne, Australia. Her help has been less in the name of research and more in the name of keeping my sanity while I’m writing, because she runs the most fantastic storytime sessions for toddlers.

While I’m writing, it’s really hard to get quality time with my children, so my 3-year-old son and I will go to Monica’s sessions every week.

I love them because they create positive memories around books for my little boy, and he loves them because they’re really fun and end with some parachute games.

I recently discovered Monica has a side hustle in stand-up comedy, which doesn’t surprise me at all: If she can keep the attention of 30 toddlers, she can keep the attention of anyone.

© EUGENE HYLAND

Blood beneath the brush strokes

What’s the last thing you checked out from your library or bought at your local bookstore?

Every week after library storytime, my son and I return an armful of kids’ books and replace them with a fresh stack. For my own shelf, I spontaneously borrowed a book

by Australian author Wendy Harmer called Friends Like These because there was a line on the second page that caught my eye and made me laugh.

How is your own personal library organized?

I find size order quite soothing to look at. I’m not overly strict about it, but I tend to put taller books at the outer edges of the shelves, tapering down to paperbacks in the center.

Bookstore cats or bookstore dogs?

Our family has two very cute cats of our own—Zoe and Gingernut— so I’ll choose cats out of solidarity, although all pets are welcome.

What is your ideal bookstore­browsing snack?

Oh my goodness, absolutely nothing! I’m way too paranoid of smudges and spillages to snack around books I don’t own. Wait until I get them home, and then everything’s fair game.

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cover story | sonora jha

© JOSIANE FAUBERT

CRITICAL FACULTIES In her second novel, Sonora Jha sharpens the classic trope of campus obsession into a brilliant indictment of exoticization.

“It’s important for me to transgress. It’s important for me to be suband political turmoil makes for a contemplative yet thrilling and ultimately versive,” says novelist, essayist and professor Sonora Jha (How to Raise a devastating read.

While certainly a work of fiction, The Laughter pulls from Jha’s journalFeminist Son) during a video call to her home in Seattle, Washington. “For those of us on the margins, I think having our agency and transgressing istic background, her experiences as a faculty member at Seattle University like crazy will better everything.” and her life as an American immigrant. (She grew up in Mumbai, India.)

The Laughter is subversive in its approach, form and content. As an The seeds of the book were planted in 2016, after Jha learned that French authentic and nuanced character study, it demands that readers grapple towns were beginning to ban burkinis, swimwear that covers both the head with issues of race, sexuality, power, tradition and academia. It carefully and body to align with Muslim values. The bans appeared after a terrorist and systematically explores how conflicts over privilege and control are attack in Nice and reflected forced Muslim assimilation into French secular enacted on our minds and bodies. culture. This attempt to regulate Muslim “When can we tell our boys that you The story centers on Oliver Harding, identity prompted Jha to consider the a middle-aged white male English provisceral impact of both anti-­Muslim don’t have to connect with this toxic fessor at a liberal arts college in Seattle. conditioning and cultural marginalizaOliver is a decorated academic whose masculinity of protector and provider?” tion in general, both central themes in personal and professional identity is The Laughter. “I definitely wanted to wrapped up in the focus of his research, the early 20th-century British build a story around them. And I kept visualizing this image of this boy writer G.K. Chesterton. Divorced from his wife, his relationship with his watching his mother being asked to take off her hijab,” she says. daughter strained, Oliver turns his focus on Ruhaba Khan, a Muslim law Jha explains that Oliver is the type of man who obsessively fights for professor at the university. Ruhaba is dealing with the reality of being a control, both in his personal life and in society at large. He’s seemingly at woman of color on a predominately white campus while building a relaodds with himself, and due to his own personal failings, he lives a lonely life. Despite this, he exhibits an intense sense of entitlement and a need tionship with Adil Alam, her nephew who recently emigrated from France for authority over both Ruhaba and the on-campus protests. after getting into some trouble.

Both Oliver and Ruhaba find themselves caught up in social upheaval Men like Oliver, says Jha, “are all around us. They’re in academia. They’re on campus, as a multicultural student movement demanding progressive our friends. I have felt that sense of control [from them], especially the transformations draws ire of aging white faculty. This mixture of personal moments in which they feel like they are losing that control or handing it

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Detail image from The Laughter by Sonora Jha, © 2023 by HarperVia. Jacket art by Nousha Salimi licensed via Getty Images.

cover story | sonora jha her own relationships with people, on campus or otherwise.” over to someone else. This happens even if they were encouraging you all Adil is also a beautifully crafted character who exhibits a level of comalong. I’ve had experiences where mentors of mine, when I finally came into my power, were like, ‘Wait, you’re supposed to be grateful. You’re supposed plexity that we rarely see in depictions of young men of color. A teenage boy to take up just enough space as I give to you.’ . . . It’s almost like they will who is as sensitive as he is intelligent, Adil is willing to be open about his hopes and his fears. At the same time, his urge to protect is what upends mentor you and give you just enough, but they want to still be in charge.”

A reader could wonder how Jha, a woman of Indian descent, was able to his life on multiple occasions. In the spirit of How to Raise a Feminist Son, provide such a richly authentic first-person portrayal of a privileged middle-­ Jha uses Adil’s character to explore and challenge constructions of masculinity. “When can we tell our boys that you don’t have to connect with aged white man. She notes that she first attempted to write the novel in third person, but almost in an instinctive way, the first-person voice began to take this toxic masculinity of protector and provider?” Jha asks. “I wanted Adil over her writing. She believes that it emerged, forcefully, out of a lifetime of to have that tenderness, and even a refusal of that kind of masculinity.” engaging with Western literature.

The college campus is very much a character in the novel as well. It is a “This white male voice is so domiforce with its own nuances and actions, nant in my imagination because this is and competing groups of social actors who we read when I was growing up in seek to harness this energy to execute India,” she says. “It was creepy that this their own visions of the future. Political voice already existed and is the literdialogue is often reduced to simply right ary voice in my imagination.” To further versus left, but Jha’s depiction of campus capture the voice, she immersed herlife complicates this, showing how politself in the white male literary canon. ical conflicts are often rooted in issues “As the rest of the world was starting to of power and privilege. Innovative gradread more women of color, I was readuate students are attempting to transing the likes of John Updike and Saul form the campus into a more inclusive Bellow,” she quips. and progressive space. Meanwhile, white middle-aged tenured profesFrom Oliver’s perspective, we witness his insidious exoticization, shown sors, who once considered themselves most prominently through his sexual progressive, are actively resisting this attraction to Ruhaba and his suspicions change. This results in a series of micro­ of Adil. Oliver fixes his sexual gaze on aggressions and racist commentaries the parts of Ruhaba’s appearance that that undermine the college’s purported are nonwhite; he has both a figurative liberalism. and literal fetish for her Indian-ness.

“I think what’s happening with white At the same time, he responds to her folks in academia is a sense of displacenonphysical differences with conment, the worry that fun can be had fusion and disgust. Similarly, Oliver without them, that there’s a lot of brilperceives Adil’s identity as a dangerous liance that is ‘not of my kind,’” Jha says.

“BIPOC folks and other folks are re­de“otherness” that needs to be surveilled, tested and controlled. fining culture. So we keep hearing these Jha explains that this two-faced white academics say, ‘We worked hard’ response is a common conflict that or ‘There are more restrictions for us’ immigrants face in their interpersonal or ‘We played by the rules,’ because any relationships. “You have to be exotic kind of displacement is going to cause enough for me to fetishize you, but not discomfort, even in the life of the mind.” so much that it’s a whole other thing Despite the rampant personal and that I have to deal with,” she says. “I will political turmoil, The Laughter is not a nihilistic story, due to a throughline provide for you, and I will protect you from your own kind who are not good of hope from the student body. They for you, but to be in my protection, you channel a transformative energy. “I have to be a little bit more like me.” advise the newspaper on my campus, H The Laughter Despite Oliver’s control over the and the kids truly believe in something, HarperVia, $27.99, 9780063240254 narrative, Ruhaba emerges as a deeply and they truly care about change,” Jha complicated character full of intersays. The novel’s students display Literary Fiction unapologetic ideological indepennal conflicts. As a Muslim immigrant woman, she exhibits a seemingly naive hope about the possibilities of dence and an unflinching courage to stand up for themselves, which American life that’s at odds with the fetishizing, distrust and exclusion means sometimes standing against faculty and administration. that is enacted upon her. She also wears a hijab despite her complicated To BIPOC people working in academia and other white-dominated feelings about her Muslim heritage. spaces, Jha offers a sharp final word of advice: “Find your own people and “For immigrant women, I think there’s the excitement of coming to a have your own agency, and let’s see what [we] do,” she says. “Decenter the place that promises all kinds of freedoms, but there’s also the pressure to white male narrative and the white imagination on our campuses, and it can only enrich things and make us more comfortable.” conform to a certain sort of cultural performance, because we need com—Langston Collin Wilkins munity,” Jha says. “That’s the part of me that is maybe reflected in Ruhaba, that I exist on the fringes of every sense of community. We crave belonging Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of and community, but we don’t want it to be prescribed for us. So Ruhaba’s The Laughter. relationship with the hijab is a way to control her own appearance and

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feature | black history month

Black history, well told Four sweeping, novelistic nonfiction books illuminate important moments in American history.

Master Slave Husband Wife Everyone should know the story of Ellen and William Craft, the subjects of Ilyon Woo’s Master Slave Husband Wife (Simon & Schuster, $29.99, 9781501191053). In 1848, Ellen, a light-skinned Black woman, disguised herself as a wealthy white man in a wheelchair.

William, her husband, accompanied Ellen as an enslaved man, tending to his “master’s” needs. Together they traveled in disguise from the mansion in Georgia where they were enslaved to freedom in the North.

Yet the Crafts’ story is more than a romantic adventure, and Woo does an excellent job of providing historical context for the dangers they faced without losing the thread of a terrific story. The Crafts’ lives were not magically transformed merely by crossing the Mason-Dixon Line, Woo explains. The North, while free, was still hostile territory for selfemancipated Black people. However, the greatest danger to Ellen and William was the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which required everyone to return formerly enslaved people to their enslavers.

The real strength of Master Slave Husband Wife comes from Woo’s exploration of how Ellen was perceived and treated after her spectacular escape catapulted her into celebrity. Woo makes the excellent point that Ellen’s method of escape was not only brilliant but transgressive, defying conventions of gender and race. With empathy and admiration, Woo details Ellen’s quiet refusal to conform to the racist, classist and sexist expectations of her enemies, benefactors, supporters and even her husband. Thanks to Woo, Ellen is finally at the center of her own story as someone who heroically challenged America’s myths of equality and freedom.

—Deborah Mason

A Few Days Full of Trouble Sixty-seven years after the savage murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, his cousin still seeks justice. Haunted by the 1955 hate crime that ignited the civil rights movement, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. brings everything and everyone back to life in A Few Days Full of Trouble (One World, $28.99, 9780593134269).

Till’s murder became international news when his mother insisted on an open casket at the boy’s funeral, inviting the world to see her mutilated son. People fainted, the press raged— and yet the two white men accused of his murder were soon acquitted by an all-white jury. Four months later, Look magazine published an admission by Till’s killers that they shot Till and rolled him into the river. Their confession earned them $4,000 and had no significant consequences.

In 2017, Timothy Tyson published a bestselling book that contained a quotation from Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman who claimed that Till had accosted her at the grocery store, motivating her husband and brother-in-law to pursue and eventually murder Till. In the quote, Donham recanted part of her original story. But as the Mississippi district attorney worked to confirm the quote in Tyson’s book, evidence of the author’s conversation with Donham vanished—if it ever existed.

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Parker and his co-author, Christopher Benson, take a hard look at everything that has transpired since 1955 in A Few Days Full of Trouble. As Benson writes in an afterword, “The work to achieve justice has just begun.”

—Priscilla Kipp

H I Saw Death Coming You may have learned in school that the postCivil War Reconstruction was an inevitable failure. In I Saw Death Coming (Bloomsbury, $30, 9781635576634), historian Kidada E. Williams demonstrates that, far from dying a natural death, Reconstruction was destroyed in a not-so-secret war waged against Black citizens.

Williams argues that the end of Reconstruction was the explicit goal of Confederates who refused to accept their military defeat. Abetted by war-weary white Northerners who wanted to put the Civil War behind them, a president who had no interest in securing civil rights for Black people and authorities who didn’t care to enforce the law, armed militias and Klansmen engaged in a concerted battle to destroy Black citizens, invading homes and subjecting Black Americans to arson, torture, rape and murder.

Williams lays out her case with forensic precision. But her most compelling evidence comes from the victims themselves: witness testimonies from the Congressional hearings on the Ku Klux Klan in 1871 and transcripts of Works Progress Administration interviews with the last survivors of slavery in the 1930s. Williams honors these testifiers’ suffering by placing them at the center of this important, overdue correction to the historical record.

—Deborah Mason

Saying It Loud Journalist Mark Whitaker’s riveting Saying It Loud (Simon & Schuster, $29.99, 9781982114121) chronicles the shift in 1966 from the nonviolent organizational tactics associated with Martin Luther King Jr. to an emergent focus on Black Power.

On January 3, 1966, Black civil rights worker Sammy Younge was murdered by a white gas station owner in Tuskegee, Alabama, for asking to use the restroom. As Whitaker points out, Younge’s death “reverberated through a generation of young people who were reaching a breaking point of frustration with the gospel of nonviolence and racial integration preached

by Dr. King.” Whitaker tracks many such seismic events and the ways they shifted the leadership within core civil rights organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, leading to the development of the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party. He concludes by demonstrating that the defiant rhetoric of the Black Power movement in 1966 planted the seeds for the Black Lives Matter movement and other responses to police violence against Black Americans over the last 50 years.

Whitaker’s striking insights offer a memorable glimpse of a key period in American history.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

A memoirist who shall remain anonymous The author of Hijab Butch Blues reflects on what was gained and what was lost by writing her intimate debut memoir under a pseudonym.

© LIA CLAY FOR THE QUEER ART COMMUNITY PORTRAIT PROJECT

behind the book | lamya h

My friend writes a book. It’s a utopian work of I’m complicating prophetic figures who are important in a lot of religions, writing about speculative fiction, clever and imaginative and hopeful—a brilliant blend of art and activism. I them as flawed, as making mistakes. I’m specbring flowers to her book launch and find a seat ulating about their sexualities, not for the sake near the back of the cozy community garden of provocation but because these prophets where we’re gathered. Even before the reading feel like my friends—beautiful and messy and starts, the space is abuzz with conversations real—and their journeys have helped me figure about the worlds in her book and the limitaout how to live. That it’s scary to anger peotions and radical possibilities ple with power; it’s scary to of our current world. The evebe Googleable. That I want Visit BookPage.com to read our to write in complicated ning feels magical. Apartment review of Hijab Butch Blues. ways about Islam and still buildings tower above us and keep going to my mosque. fairy lights twinkle. not being able to thank my friends by name in the acknowledgments.

As the event planners set That I want to write in comup the stage, I turn to the perplicated ways about the But my choice to write anonymously hasn’t son sitting next to me—one of Islamophobia of queer comstopped me from experiencing the joys of my book starting to go out into the world. A few the few people I don’t know munities and still be invited weeks ago, someone whose name sounded here—and introduce myself, to potlucks and spoken word excited to talk to someone readings. familiar commented on my Instagram. It turns I wrote a book so open and new during the social scarcity out she had written a beautiful essay some of the COVID-19 pandemic. honest that it was only posyears ago that was foundational in teaching me to use stories and vignettes to talk about bigger This person is easy to consible for me to write under a verse with: They tell me about pseudonym, but what I didn’t concepts such as racism and homophobia, an their recent move to the city anticipate was the grief I essay that I had annotated and read over and would feel, even though I over. I sent her an advanced copy of my book to start an MFA program and don’t regret my decision. the angry activist nonfiction in gratitude, and it felt exciting to connect virGrief like in this moment at they write. I am intrigued; I tually, despite the anonymity. Another person the book launch, unable to love angry activist nonfiction. emailed me about doing an event about racism Hijab Butch Blues against South Asians in the Arab country I grew I promise to introduce them speak about my book with my Dial, $27, 9780593448762 to some of my activist-writer new friend. Grief in a broader up in, and they said I can present with my camera friends, give them suggessense, too: the limitations my turned off, that her organization will do whatMemoir tions of bookstores to check anonymity places on my abilever needs to be done to protect my privacy. It’s a reminder that I don’t owe using my real name out and places to write. I want to know so much ity to use the book as a starting point to create more about the project they’re working on, and intentional spaces and communities. After opento anyone. I don’t owe my face being on the jacket I’ve gotten through only a tenth of my questions ing night for a play called Coming Out Muslim 10 cover. I’m allowed to write on my own terms. It’s possible to stay safe while still using my book as when they say, “What about you, Lamya? You years ago, I joined a space created by the artists a tool for connection and conversation. seem like a writer. What do you write?” for queer Muslims to connect, which led me to I freeze. find the chosen family and organizing commuAt my friend’s book launch, in the moment I, too, wrote a book. A memoir: a retelling of nity that I still participate in and am infinitely before I respond to my neighbor’s question stories from the Quran as queer, brown, immigrateful for. My book won’t be able to do that for about my own writing, I think of that joy, that others in the same way. grant narratives, interspersed with stories from sense of connection. I think about how I can And there are smaller pangs of grief, too: the my queer, brown, immigrant life—a book I hope selectively choose to invite people in, that my is both art and activism. But I don’t know how loss of specwriting anonyto answer my new friend’s question because I ificity in my mously is also “What I didn’t anticipate was book when an act—howwrote under a pseudonym. the grief I would feel, even though critiquing cerI wrote anonymously for many reasons, most ever small— of wanting to of which are predictable and boring. Privacy. tain spaces for I don’t regret my decision.” homophobia Safety. That I’m not out to my family. That my make the world or racism, which inadvertently ends up prowriting—in which I talk about God as non­ a better place. I take a deep breath. binary, the queerness of Musa’s (Moses’) mirtecting these spaces; not being able to share my “I do write,” I say. “We should get coffee acles, Maryam (the Virgin Mary) as not liking book with the myriad folks who helped me learn sometime. I’d love to tell you about my work.”

—Lamya H men—could be considered controversial. That how to write at writing retreats and workshops;

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the hold list

Diverting doorstoppers Although February is the shortest month, it’s also a time when it can feel as though spring will never arrive. Amid these gray days, it can be a comfort to escape into a book that’s as long as winter seems.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois I read the entirety of award-winning poet and novelist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ masterwork, all 816 pages of it, on the tiny screen of my phone during a trip throughout Washington.

I can’t think of any other epic book that would be worth that kind of reading experience, but The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is special. While driving across the state, I regularly came across attempts to recognize and honor the Indigenous peoples who once populated that land, gestures that I don’t often see in the South where I live. For this reason, the long gaze of Jeffers’ novel felt like the answer to a prayer. It tells the full history of an American family— whose heritage is African, Creek and Scottish—and their centurieslong connection to a bit of Georgia land, as revealed by the research of one descendant, Ailey.

It made me wish that all American lands could have their chance to tell their full stories.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

Empire of Pain It is rare that a book checks the boxes of timely, important, in-depth and narratively gripping. But the 640 pages of journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain walk the line between an impressively researched tome and a page-turning, propulsive story. Keefe’s 2021 tour de force recounts the damning tale of the Sackler family and their dealings at Purdue Pharma, the company that produces OxyContin. The Sacklers worked hard to keep their name from being associated with OxyContin, and Empire of Pain makes it clear why—from their invention of the concept of marketing prescription drugs, to their tactic of offering sales reps monetary incentives for getting more doctors to prescribe more of their drugs, to their outright lies about how their product would not lead to addiction.

It is a harrowing story of one family’s catastrophic contributions to the opioid crisis, masterfully told by a topnotch writer.

—Christy, Associate Editor

The Priory of the Orange Tree

The Vanity Fair Diaries

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“You have fished in the waters of history and arranged some fractured pieces into a picture . . . but your determination to make it truth does not mean it is so,” declares Ead in The Priory of the Orange Tree. Reading Samantha Shannon’s 848-page novel can feel like arranging fractured pieces into a complete picture, as it depicts the intersecting journeys of four narrators from different corners of a fantasy world. Ead, Tané, Niclays and Loth have deeply held beliefs about good and evil, and a crisis brings those beliefs into conflict.

I picked up the book for its Sapphic love story, which was tender and gorgeous, unfolding slowly enough to surprise me even though I was looking for it. However, when the casualties become devastating, what keeps you going is the thrill of connecting fragments of history and mythology, knowing you will “see soon enough whose truth is correct.”

—Phoebe, Subscriptions

There are many reasons that journalist, writer and editor Tina Brown could land on one’s radar. She’s the founding editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast, the first female editor of The New Yorker and the author of two books on the British royals. But the achievement that cemented Brown’s reputation was her turnaround of Vanity Fair.

Resurrected by Condé Nast in 1981, VF was floundering.

After being hired in 1983, Brown quickly engaged talent like Dominique Dunn, Gail Sheehy and Helmut Newton, and wooed advertisers like Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. Controversial stories grabbed headlines; so did provocative covers.

(Who can forget the shot of a nude, pregnant Demi Moore?) Brown loves gossip and has a sharp wit, and her behind-the-scenes stories of the 1980s NYC glitterati alone could carry 500 pages of memoir. The Vanity Fair Diaries will leave you hoping Brown chronicled her time at the New Yorker too.

—Trisha, Publisher

The Caldecott Medal is awarded each year to “the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.” In 2008, it was won by this love letter to French inventor and film director George Méliès. To make a 544-page story short, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is extraordinary, with 158 pencil drawings that will make you rethink what picture books can be. Author Brian Selznick begins by inviting you to “picture yourself sitting in the darkness, like the beginning of a movie” and then captures your imagination via 21 wordless spreads. It’s a story about small things that combine to form a creation greater than the sum of its parts, from a boy who steals toys from the cantankerous owner of a trains station toy booth to paragraphs filled with exquisitely yet economically observed details. Few picture books can be described as perfect, but this is one of them.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

Each month, BookPage staff share special reading lists—our personal favorites, old and new.

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reviews | fiction

H The End of Drum-Time

By Hanna Pylväinen

Historical Fiction Set in the 1850s in a remote Swedish village close to the Arctic Circle, Whiting Award winner Hanna Pylväinen’s second novel, The End of Drum-Time (Holt, $28.99, 9781250822901), tells the story of Lutheran minister Lars Levi Laestadius, known as Mad Lasse for his impassioned sermons and strict religious observance.

Mad Lasse’s goal is to convert the Sami people to Christianity and break the cycle of alcohol dependency that he believes threatens the very souls of the Indigenous reindeer herders.

When shaman and prominent herder Biettar Rasti experiences a religious awakening in Mad Lasse’s church, it sets off a string of events that rips through the small village, leaving it profoundly shattered. Biettar leaves his diminished herd to his son, Ivvár, and takes up residence in

H I Keep My Exoskeletons

to Myself

By Marisa Crane

Dystopian Fiction Marisa Crane’s debut novel is a remarkable feat of speculative fiction, its premise so strangely familiar that to call it speculative feels like a misnomer. I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself (Catapult, $27, 9781646221295) is set in an off-kilter version of the United States, but the emotional truths it untangles are so sharp that its intricate world building feels less like fiction and more like an excavation of the country we already live in.

In a U.S. governed by the ominous Department of Balance, criminals are given an extra shadow instead of being incarcerated, which serves as a reminder to themselves and everyone they meet of what they’ve done. This system, enforced by state-run surveillance, creates a culture of pervasive public shame: Shadesters, as they’re called, are shunned wherever they go and have few civil rights.

Kris is a Shadester whose wife dies while giving birth to their daughter, who is immediately given a second shadow because of the death.

Grieving and unprepared, Kris stumbles through

Mad Lasse’s home, where he can study by the pastor’s side.

Abandoned and angry, Ivvár begins to come into town more frequently, purchasing liquor from the village store and trying to rekindle a romance with Risten, a Sami woman from a successful herding family. But when Lasse’s daughter Willa crosses paths with Ivvár, they become infatuated with each other, and eventually Willa breaks ties with her family and community to join the Sami for their annual migration from the tundra to the sea.

Pylväinen’s first book, We Sinners (2012), was a collection of interlocking stories about a deeply religious family struggling with loss

of faith and the temptations of the secular world in modern-day Michigan. The final story, “Whisky Priest,” introduced Mad Lasse and his wife, Brita.

Along with these characters, Pylväinen carries forward her sensitivity to the power, comfort and destructiveness of belief into her second novel.

With engrossing details of reindeer herding, a beautifully rendered setting and powerful echoes of America’s own dark history of settlers forcing their religion on Indigenous peoples, The End of Drum-Time will leave a lasting impression on all readers of historical fiction.

—Lauren Bufferd

motherhood in a daze. She worries and wonders and analyzes, observes her daughter, gets lost in her own brain. Her first-person narration is dreamy and frenetic, so intimate that it’s often difficult for the reader to bear, as well as nearly impossible to know how much time is passing.

How does a person repent and forgive and reinvent? What kind of healing can only occur in community, and what kind of healing requires privacy? What happens when mistakes and misunderstandings are punished in the same way as abuse and deliberate violence? These are the turbulent, murky and unsolvable questions that roil inside of Kris, that define her life—but slowly, the kid grows up, and Kris is drawn back into the world.

Ruptures and tension propel the plot forward, but there’s a deliberate, underlying slowness to the story, too. On the surface, it’s all explosive force; underneath, it’s introspective and intimate. And always, Crane’s prose is gorgeous. Short, searing sentences depict ordinary moments perfectly, while long, melancholy meanderings are broken up by bleak humor and inventive pop quizzes that speak to the impossibilities of living through grief.

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is an assured and surprising ode to queer family.

It’s an untame story about motherhood and survival and the quiet, daily work of building a livable world. It’s about what humans can bear and what we can get used to, about the choices we make and that are made for us, about the worst things we do to each other and the most astonishing. Some books have the power to

wake you up, shake you out of the old and push you toward something new and exciting and a little scary. This is one.

—Laura Sackton

Really Good, Actually

By Monica Heisey

Popular Fiction Have you ever had an awful day that you’d love to forget?

And then another, and another? Yet you don’t want to admit the pattern to yourself, let alone to anyone around you, so you keep pretending that everything is OK? We’ve all been there, and this empathy is at the heart of Monica Heisey’s debut novel, Really Good, Actually (William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063235410).

As she approaches 30, Maggie has been busy as a graduate student in Toronto, building a life with her new husband—until that disappears in a moment, with the shock of a breakup. She can’t figure out how to move forward, even as everyone around her, from her graduate school adviser to her friends, tries to help her see a way through. She can’t quite pick up the pieces, which readers witness in obsessive emails, Google searches, group chats and conversations. Instead, she tries to convince everyone

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reviews | fiction (particularly herself ) that actually, she really is good—even great.

Maggie’s voice is engaging, allowing readers to feel her pain, cringe at her adventures and communication attempts, and root for her to find her footing. She’s a quintessential mess, making decisions that aren’t what anyone would advise, and yet she doesn’t wallow (at least not for too long). We cheer her on, hoping that she’ll figure it all out, or at least some of it.

There’s humor and grace in Really Good, Actually—a lightness of touch, a wry wit.

Maggie is a woman disembarking from traditional romance to find herself. And while her marriage might have been short, her voice is enduring, and her journey is engaging, surprising and fresh.

—Freya Sachs

H Essex Dogs

Victory City

By Salman Rushdie

By Dan Jones

Historical Fiction For the last decade, Dan Jones has been one of the brightest voices in popular nonfiction and a go-to expert on all things medieval. If you want a thorough yet entertaining look at the making of the Magna Carta, for example, or the rise and fall of the Knights Templar, Jones is one of the first authors you should reach for.

But making the leap from nonfiction to fiction isn’t easy, which means Jones’ debut novel carries an air of suspense, even among his longtime fans, to see if he can pull off the transition.

Happily, Essex Dogs (Viking, $30, 9780593653784) is a thoroughly enjoyable achievement that brings medieval warriors to bright, crackling life. The titular Essex Dogs are a group of English mercenaries who land on the beaches of Normandy in 1346, just a few years into the conflict that will eventually be known as the Hundred Years’ War. Like every other English fighter on the beaches, the Dogs seek fortune and glory as hired swords for King Edward III, who’s determined to reclaim France for his domain by any means necessary.

But while the nobles leading the army are bent toward that purpose, the everyday work of keeping the war machine going falls to men like the Dogs, whose triumphs and struggles make up the meat of Jones’ intimate story.

The Essex Dogs are anchored by their leader, Loveday, who leads readers through the humdrum days of marching and the often terrifying up-close brutality of real war when the French stop retreating and start defending. There is,

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of course, an instant credibility to it all that stems from Jones’ other work, but what makes Essex Dogs especially impressive is his focus on character. Loveday and his comrades Pismire, Scotsman, Father and the rest are the true center­pieces of this story, not the war unfolding in the background. Jones keenly understands this, and it allows him to craft a remarkable story about the price of war and the way violence weighs on men’s souls while never losing sight of the sweeping, epic scale of his narrative.

Rich in historical detail and told in tight, endearing prose, Essex Dogs is a historical fiction triumph for both longtime Jones fans and newcomers. It belongs on the reading list of every medieval history buff.

—Matthew Jackson

Historical Fiction With a magical protagonist and a vivid cast of heroic and devious characters, it’s easy to imagine Salman Rushdie’s fantastical 15th novel as a thrilling, multi­ part Bollywood epic. Victory City (Random House, $30, 9780593243398) marks the author’s return to the long arc of Indian history, taking readers on a frisky romp through nearly three centuries of south Indian lore.

Rushdie’s endnotes cite numerous historical works he consulted about the Vijayanagara Empire (14th–17th centuries) while composing the novel. Google Vijayanagar, the city in which the novel is set, and you’ll discover its translation from Sanskrit is indeed “City of Victory.”

Search the internet for the shepherd brothers Hukka and Bukka, and you’ll find they were the first kings of the empire. Look for Domingo Nunes, a character who humorously reappears in various incarnations to Pampa Kampana, the novel’s heroine, and you’ll encounter an amalgam of two Portuguese men who wrote with amazement about their early travels through the empire.

But search for Pampa Kampana, and nothing.

She is Rushdie’s marvelous invention. At 9 years old, she witnesses the downfall of the old king.

She sees the submissive women of the defeated kingdom, including her mother, go willingly to their deaths by fire. But Pampa rejects this path, steps away from the fire and, in anger and anguish, is overtaken by the voice of the gods.

She becomes a prophet who gives the shepherd brothers the magical seeds to grow Victory City.

She whispers the history of the future empire into the ears of its newly formed citizens. She gives them a past and a present.

Over the 247 years of her life, Pampa sees the birth of the empire, suffers exile in the Forest of Women, stealthily returns to eventual triumph and then experiences the empire’s final fall. She writes this history down as the empire collapses and hides her account in an urn. Four hundred years later, her words are discovered.

Victory City is accessible in a way that suggests Salman Rushdie had fun writing it, but this is no lightweight novel.

Rushdie tells his tale with a generous and irreverent spirit. Victory City is accessible in a way that suggests he had fun writing it, but this is no lightweight novel. Pampa is the incarnation of the humane values of this (or any) empire, and when she is in ascendance, the empire’s arts and beneficial technologies are ennobled.

Women serve as warriors and empire officials.

People of all religions are embraced. The empire comes close to being what today we would call an open society, and its collapse is a direct result of turning its back on these values.

—Alden Mudge

Endpapers

By Jennifer Savran Kelly

Literary Fiction As Jennifer Savran Kelly’s debut novel, Endpapers (Algonquin, $27,​​ 9781643751849), opens, main character Dawn Levit has stalled.

She’s in her mid-20s, dissatisfied with her art (she designs, prints and binds handmade books) and unable to make anything new. She’s also feeling stuck in her relationship with Lukas, whom Dawn is pretty sure would love her more if she were a man. Dawn has been exploring her own gender and sexual identities since high school, taking tentative steps to find her way, but she’s still doubting her instincts and herself. Lately, she and Lukas have found comfort in “slipping back into the closet,” where neither has to worry about feeling accepted. But neither of them is content, either.

While at work in the book conservation lab at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dawn finds a torn-off paperback cover bearing the title Turn

feature | horror Her About, which depicts a woman looking into a mirror and seeing a man’s face. On the back is a letter handwritten in German; the correspondents’ names (Gertrude and Marta) and Ich liebe dich (“I love you”) are the only words Dawn can understand. But this letter, apparently from the 1940s or ’50s, sends Dawn on a quest to learn more about the pulp novel, and about Gertrude and Marta.

Following Dawn through the spring of 2003, Endpapers depicts a New York City still shrouded in post-9/11 gloom, evoking an uneasy mood and underlining Dawn’s sense that even in early 21st-century New York, being different isn’t safe. Out at a bar one night, Dawn, Lukas and their friend Jae are harassed by two men, which leads to a hate crime that Dawn feels she incited.

Dawn’s introspection is at times painful; she’s young, self-absorbed and prone to missteps with her friends and co-workers. But as the story progresses, the mystery of Gertrude and Marta converges beautifully with the artwork that Dawn begins to conceive. Kelly is a bookbinder and book production editor, and the novel’s details of book and print restoration ground and add depth to Dawn’s story.

Endpapers is a coming-of-age story about growing as an artist and learning to trust and build relationships in a world that doesn’t want to make room for you. Despite its early 2000s setting, Endpapers still feels timely, leading us to reflect on how far we’ve come in accepting differences and how far we still have to go.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

A Spell of Good Things

By Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Literary Fiction Some of the most fascinating novels explore the tensions between traditional ways of life and the lure of more modern ways of being. This is what roils the plot in Ayọ̀ bámi Adébáyọ̀ ’s second novel, A Spell of Good Things (Knopf, $28, 9780525657644).

For at least two of its main characters, teenager Ẹniọlá and fledgling doctor Wúràọlá, the tension is all but intolerable.

The story begins in a southwestern state in present-day Nigeria, nearly a year before an election that will usher a corrupt (or even criminal) politician into the governorship. Schools are lousy; students, including Ẹniọlá and his sister, are flogged if their parents don’t pay their school fees. Hospitals are even worse; more than one patient dies in the hospital where Wúràọlá works because of a lack of simple antivirals.

Flesh and blood In two horror novels, terror branches from family trees.

Whether they’re returning home or fleeing from it, the characters in these books must confront threats that are a generation in the making.

H Our Share of Night Our Share of Night (Hogarth, $28.99, 9780451495143)

by Mariana Enriquez is a dark, twisted tale of a cult in Argentina called the Order that sacrifices humans to an occult entity known as the Darkness.

Mediums possess a natural ability to channel this figure into reality. Juan has served the Order as a medium for his entire life, but as the story begins, he attempts to sever ties with the cult to protect his son, Gaspar, from its clutches.

Our Share of Night follows Juan’s first-person viewpoint for several hundred pages, then jumps to Gaspar’s perspective, then goes 30 years into the past to tell the story of Juan’s wife, Rosario. Enriquez creates a sense of mystery with every aspect of her prose, even down to the way speech is written. Dialogue is sometimes in quotes, sometimes not; sometimes it necessitates the start of a new paragraph, sometimes it doesn’t. Enriquez uses these structural elements to reveal details when the reader least expects it. When Juan channels the Darkness for the first time, his hands lengthen and his nails turn into golden claws, but the explanation for why mediums are affected by channeling in this way is not revealed until another storyteller has taken over.

Even with such an unpredictable writing style, Enriquez perfectly paces solutions to the novel’s various mysteries, enticing readers through her chaotic dreamscape with answers that are as intriguing as they are frightening.

Spooky and atmospheric, Our Share of Night is a constantly surprising and bloody ride.

—Ralph Harris

How to Sell a Haunted House Louise Joyner left home as soon as she could, fleeing the humidity of Charleston, South Carolina, for a career in industrial design in Silicon Valley. Her brother, Mark, stayed put,

his meandering and dysfunctional lifestyle patronized to his face and savaged in his absence by his family, as is so often the case with mildly disappointing scions of good Southern families. But now, Louise and Mark must figure out what to do with the relics of their recently departed parents’ lives: their father’s idiosyncratic economics research, their mother’s vast collection of Christian puppets and their house. However, some revenants will not go quietly into that good night. There are burdens this family has politely buried for far too long, and the Joyners are about to discover that some hauntings are neither stagecraft nor hellspawn. Some hauntings are homemade.

Author Grady Hendrix is a Charleston native, and How to Sell a Haunted House (Berkley, $28, 9780593201268) completely nails its Lowcountry setting. This reviewer is also a South Carolinian and can confirm that neither the idea of a Christian puppet ministry nor the actual Fellowship of Christian Puppeteers are made up. The depiction of Carolina culture is also accurate, especially Hendrix’s portrayal of how someone who grew up in it, left and then came back would perceive it: familiar and peculiar, unsettling and comforting, prompting a reckoning with how deeply strange its version of normal truly is. Hendrix only departs from this reality in one way: In no gauzy South Carolina summer that I can recall did the knickknacks acquire a vengeful sentience and wreak havoc on the strained psyches of a family’s prodigal offspring.

How to Sell a Haunted House effectively marries tropes ripped straight from the pages of a midcentury pulp magazine to a Pat Conroyesque chronicle of Lowcountry generational trauma. Families are warm and lovely but also stifling, just like the summers; rituals are banal but also sacred, their violation the gravest of transgressions; and there are always skeletons (or puppets) in the sewing closets. How to Sell a Haunted House may be a heightened tale of horror, but it is built on something true. And it’s a lot of fun, as well.

—Noah Fram

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reviews | fiction There is no safety net, and inequality is atrocious. Ẹniọlá, his mother and sister must beg in the street. The children’s father, fired from his job, is in such a state of despair that he won’t get out of bed. On the other hand, Wúràọlá’s family is well-off enough to pay for her education and throw a lavish party to celebrate her mother’s birthday.

Yet both impoverished Ẹniọlá and financially comfortable Wúràọlá feel hogtied by the traditions of the somewhat matriarchal society in which they were raised. Deference to elders and those in authority is so absolute that Ẹniọlá’s parents don’t even consider going to the school and insisting that the teachers stop beating their kids. Wúràọlá’s profession as a doctor isn’t what warms the cockles of her family’s hearts the most; it’s that she’s getting married before she’s 30. Ẹniọlá and Wúràọlá are destined to meet, and they do so in the most innocent and pedestrian of ways. But after that first encounter, the events that follow reveal the profound irony of the novel’s title.

Adébáyọ̀ (Stay With Me) has a sprightly writing style that’s pleasurably at odds with the devastating story she tells. She captures the almost musical speech patterns of her characters and doesn’t trouble to translate snatches of Nigeria’s many languages. The novel’s cast is large, but each character is distinct; you won’t confuse Ẹniọlá’s mother with Wúràọlá’s, even though they’re quite alike. Both suffer, and so do their families.

A Spell of Good Things is a wonderfully written, tragic book.

—Arlene McKanic

personal assistant, performing soul-crushing drudge work in offices where she is often the only Black person. When she’s not at work, she cares for her father, who has Parkinson’s disease, because her mother spends most of the year back in Ghana, only checking in to ask for money or hound Maddie about when she plans on getting married. Maddie’s older brother is never around and rarely takes her calls. So at the tender age of 25, Maddie has never had sex, still lives at home and finds herself wondering if her mother’s pet name was meant as a term of endearment or a curse.

When her mother unexpectedly returns to England, Maddie takes the chance to stretch her wings, fly the nest and reinvent herself. With plenty of growing pains along the way, Maddie navigates flat-sharing, new friendships, online dating and sex, racism, career changes and grief.

Slowly, she transforms from a sheltered girl who had adulthood prematurely thrust upon her into a woman of her own making.

Masterfully balancing comedy, tragedy and tenderness, Maame is a nuanced and powerful coming-of-age story. George candidly captures the false starts, heartbreak and awkwardness of early adulthood with empathy and a necessary dose of humor. Maddie easily joins the highest ranks of memorable and lovable “hot mess” characters. Like Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones, Candice Carty-Williams’ Queenie Jenkins and Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant before her, Maddie is a good reminder that through all of life’s hardships, we can be the authors of our own happy endings, and it is never too late to become who you might have been.

—Stephenie Harrison

Maame

The Sun Walks Down

By Jessica George

By Fiona McFarlane

Popular Fiction Shakespeare’s Juliet famously pondered, “What’s in a name?” and although she may have concluded that names fail to reflect any intrinsic qualities of a person, the protagonist of Jessica George’s compassionate debut novel, Maame (St. Martin’s, $27.99, 9781250282521), knows better. Dubbed “Maame” by her mother as a baby, Madeline Wright has struggled with the weight of her nickname her entire life. The seemingly innocuous five-letter Twi word is heavy with multiple meanings: “the responsible one,” “the mother,” “the woman.”

Now in her 20s, Maddie believes that her life in London has well and truly stalled. In order to keep her family afloat, she works as a

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Historical Fiction While a child’s disappearance can shock a community into coming together, it’s also the kind of event that can reveal fissures among residents, heighten conflicts within families and prompt reevaluations of relationships.

Fiona McFarlane explores these possibilities and more in her leisurely novel The Sun Walks Down (FSG, $28, 9780374606237).

In 1883, the potential tragedy of a 6-yearold boy’s disappearance strikes the town of Fairly in “the arid middle of South Australia.”

This Outback region is known for dust storms, hilly ranges that were “laid down, long ago and slowly, in layers of rock,” and a sun so red and

fierce that the boy in question fears “the gods must be angry.” The boy is Denny Wallace. His mother, Mary, deaf since age 22, sends him out with a sack to gather bark and twigs while his five sisters attend a wedding and his father, Mathew, plants parsnips. But Denny gets lost in a dust storm and doesn’t return home.

The bulk of McFarlane’s novel focuses on the efforts of the townspeople to help the Wallaces look for their son and the stories of the family members left behind as the search continues.

This includes Minna Baumann and Mounted Constable Robert Manning, whose wedding was attended by Denny’s sisters; 15-year-old Cissy Wallace, Denny’s oldest sister, who doesn’t understand why the other women won’t join the search party and who secretly falls in love with Robert; Bess and Karl Rapp, Swedish artists fascinated by the reds in “this disastrous South Australian sky”; and Mr. Daniels, a courtly vicar prone to fainting spells.

The Sun Walks Down should be read not for narrative action but rather for the minutely observed relationships among its characters, as Denny’s disappearance is less of a mystery than it is a plot device that allows McFarlane to explore her themes. She does this beautifully, such as when she depicts the relations between white people and Australia’s native Aboriginal people, the wayward behavior that can come from an excess of ambition, and the question of who does and does not constitute a British subject.

“Don’t you like people to be happy?” Denny’s sister Joy asks Cissy. “Happiness won’t find Denny,” Cissy replies. As McFarlane makes clear in this fine work, the quest for contentment can be as elusive as a 6-year-old lost in a dust storm.

—Michael Magras

Hungry Ghosts

By Kevin Jared Hosein

Historical Fiction Set in Trinidad in the 1940s, Kevin Jared Hosein’s debut novel, Hungry Ghosts (Ecco, $30, 9780063213388), has the mesmerizing power of a tale told on a bone-chilling night.

A science teacher living in Trinidad and Tobago, Hosein explains in his author’s note that he drew on Caribbean oral traditions of “ghost stories and dark domestic parables and calcified wisdoms rooted in the bedrock of an island nation.” Inspired by his grandfather’s stories in particular, Hosein captures Trinidad’s lush flora and fauna, as well as its explosive mix of cultures, races and religions,

feature | book to film within a novel that slowly but steadily builds toward a climax of Shakespearean proportions.

In the opening chapter, titled “A Gate to Hell,” readers meet four teenage boys performing a blood oath by a river. They name their union “Corbeau, for the vulture, a carrion feeder,” because the bird “must eat corpses for breakfast, knowing to savour bowels and maggoty flesh, realizing those too are meals fit for kings.”

At the heart of the novel is the family of one of these boys, Krishna Saroop. They live in a sugar cane estate barrack, one of many “scattered like half-buried bones across the plain, strewn from their colonial corpse.” The barrack is a “place of lesser lives,” with a yard for communal cooking and five tiny adjacent rooms that house five families who can hear everyone’s sounds and feel the rain dripping through their shared, dilapidated roof. Krishna’s parents are mourning the death of their infant daughter, and his mother, Shweta, prays they can soon buy their own home in the nearby village.

Krishna’s father, Hans, works just up on the hill on the grand estate of Dalton Changoor and his younger wife, Marlee. Their opulent manor is filled with goose-feather cushions and velveteen rugs, and from their box radio drift the sounds of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. One stormy night, Dalton vanishes.

Marlee, understandably fearful for her safety, asks kindhearted, fit Hans—with whom she is infatuated—to be her night watchman. It’s an epic setup for a collision of poverty and wealth.

Hosein excels at setting this volatile stage and letting events simmer. Along the way, he delicately explores the often tortured backgrounds of numerous characters in his large cast, revealing their motives and desires. But the heart of Hungry Ghosts is haunted. It’s bleak and visceral, with brutal details of violence and animal cruelty. Readers will long remember this one.

—Alice Cary

H The World and All That It

Holds

By Aleksandar Hemon

Historical Fiction Aleksandar Hemon’s literar y career has been nothing if not diverse, with works that range from the comic novel The Making of Zombie Wars to his acclaimed The Lazarus Project, from collections of essays and stories to his collaboration with Lana Wachowski and David Mitchell on the script for The Matrix Resurrections. The World and All That It Holds

(MCD, $28, 9780374287702) launches him yet again into new territory, as his ambitious, elegantly wrought novel melds two love stories that play out amid the devastating global conflicts of the first half of the 20th century.

Rafael Pinto, a poetry-writing Bosnian Jew with a weakness for opiates, witnesses the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife just outside his Sarajevo apothecary shop in August 1914. Shortly afterward, Rafael finds himself conscripted into the army of the AustroHungarian Empire and fighting in the bloody trenches of World War I, where “nothing happened all the time, and also very slowly.” Rafael falls in love with Osman, another Sarajevan member of his unit, a Muslim man and gifted storyteller with “a knack for fixing problems.”

Aleksandar Hemon’s ambitious, elegantly wrought novel melds two love stories.

Rafael’s entanglement in the brutal, pointless conflict is only the beginning of an odyssey that takes him from Europe’s battlefields to the Asian wilderness and on foot across the Chinese desert, then to Shanghai where he experiences life as a refugee in the period that extends from a few years preceding the Japanese invasion of 1937 to the Communist takeover in 1949. For most of that journey, he’s accompanied by Osman’s daughter, Rahela, after Osman disappears. But even after Osman’s physical presence is gone, his bond with Rafael is the source of a sustaining power within this harsh new life, one that slowly deepens Rafael’s affection for Rahela.

The World and All That It Holds mostly follows the perspectives of Rafael and Rahela, with occasional detours into the memoirs of colorful British spy Edgar Moser-Ethering, who becomes a ubiquitous presence in Rafael’s life.

Hemon’s ability to pack such an epic narrative into 352 pages is impressive. Across all its settings, the tale is enriched by the accumulation of closely observed details. Vivid action sequences are neatly balanced with scenes exploring the characters’ interior lives. Although the story is not overtly religious, Hemon alludes frequently to the biblical account of the Tower of Babel and God’s decision to “confound their speech, so that nobody shall understand,” as well as the Samsara wheel, the symbol of reincarnation in Buddhism and Hinduism. “Just love each other whatever the world you think you might be in,” a character tells Rafael and Osman. The power of love to give meaning to life, even in the worst of circumstances, suffuses this quietly passionate story.

—Harvey Freedenberg

Read it before you see it Is the book always better than the movie or TV show? Check out these soon-to-be adaptations ASAP so you can decide.

Daisy Jones & The Six

By Taylor Jenkins Reid Streaming, March 2023 This runaway 2019 bestseller about a 1970s rock star is making its way to Amazon Prime Video— starring Riley Keough, the granddaughter of the ultimate 1970s rock star (Elvis) . Told in a documentary style, just like the novel, the 10-episode series also stars Sam Claflin, Camila Monroe and Nabiyah Be.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret

By Judy Blume Theatrical release, April 2023 Blume’s 1970 comingof-age story about an 11-year-old who moves from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs is a true classic, and it sounds like this film adaptation, which stars Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret and Rachel McAdams (a literary adaptation veteran after starring in The Notebook and The Time-Traveler’s Wife) as her mother, Barbara, has the potential to become one too.

Killers of the Flower Moon

By David Grann Theatrical release, Summer 2023 Legendary director Martin Scorsese will be taking the 2017 National Book Award finalist, which tells the true story of the shocking murders of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s, to the screen. Frequent Scorsese collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro star alongside Native actors Tantoo Cardinal, Lily Gladstone and Tatanka Means.

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reviews | nonfiction

H A Mystery of Mysteries

By Mark Dawidziak

Biography It’s no accident that Mark Twain scholar Mark Dawidziak begins A Mystery of Mysteries (St. Martin’s, $28.99, 9781250792495) with Poe’s mysterious death in 1849 at the age of 40. As Dawidziak reminds us throughout his ambitious, well-researched book, the circumstances of Poe’s death remain a topic of debate and conjecture, as much a part of the Poe mystique as his short, stormy life. “It is,” Dawidziak notes, “one of the great literary stage exits of all time,” and its notoriety has done much to keep Poe’s reputation alive, making him one of the most famous American authors of all time, with a pop culture following as well as a solid place in middle school and high school literary curricula.

Dawidziak adopts a clever—and appropriate—organizational approach, alternating

What’s Gotten Into You

By Dan Levitt

Science Even if the word science only conjures up bad memories of frog dissections and failed lab experiments, you’ll find much to enjoy in Dan Levitt’s What’s Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body’s Atoms, From the Big Bang Through Last Night’s Dinner (Harper, $32, 9780063251182). Levitt, a writer and producer of science and history documentaries, delivers a survey of life’s building blocks that’s intelligent, accessible and just sheer fun.

Levitt launches his inquiry with two fundamental questions: “What are we actually made of? And where did it come from?” His subsequent hunt for answers begins with the discovery of what became known as the Big Bang

by Belgian physics professor and Catholic priest Georges Lemaître. Lemaître’s story is especially interesting for the way it encapsulates the tension between science and religion that looms over Levitt’s wide-ranging account.

Most of the book’s chapters follow a similar format. Levitt will open his investigation of a specific topic, such as how water appeared on Earth or the race to discover the structure of DNA,

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chapters set in the last months of Poe’s life with chapters exploring his early family life, career and influences. Readers who know little of Poe’s origins may be surprised to learn that this quintessential American author spent part of his formative years abroad. Poe’s mother was a talented actor who died at the age of 24, leaving three children behind. Poe became the foster child of John and Fanny Allan (thus his middle name), who, during the War of 1812, moved to England, where Poe spent five years soaking up impressions of old houses and graveyards that fed his literary imagination.

Throughout the book, Dawidziak draws readers into the mystery of Poe’s death, which occurred shortly after he was found wandering the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, delirious and disheveled. Dawidziak, of course, has a

with an economical but informative biographical sketch of one or more of the scientists whose work proved pivotal in the field. Then he’ll dive into the science, with a special enthusiasm for the controversies that pitted one expert against another. While some of these researchers—such as Nobel laureates James Watson and Francis Crick, of DNA fame—are well known, others— such as Justus von Liebig, the 19th-century German chemist who pioneered research in the field of nutrition—are not. Levitt devotes extra attention to women in science, noting the discrimination that has often prevented their work from receiving the recognition it deserves.

Levitt has the ability to present abstruse subject matter in a form that’s easily digestible by lay readers. He’s scrupulous about giving equal time to warring scientific combatants and is especially sensitive to the biases (among them, the “Too Weird to Be True” bias) that have dogged even the most brilliant scientists. One especially stimulating discussion plays out in the chapters titled “The Most Famous Experiment” and “The Greatest Mystery,” describing the controversy over the origin of life and whether it was sparked in the Earth’s atmosphere, in outer space or in the depths of the ocean. Extensive endnotes and a bibliography that stretches to 20 pages reveal that Levitt has done his homework.

Readers of What’s Gotten Into You will come away better informed while still appreciating that some of our most fundamental scientific questions have yet to be answered.

—Harvey Freedenberg

favorite theory about the likely cause, gleaned from the various opinions of medical experts, Poe scholars, historians, horror specialists and others—but it would spoil the mystery to reveal it here. Nonetheless, his argument demonstrates one of the pleasures of Dawidziak’s excellent book: his ability to weave quotations from Poe together with first-person observations from Poe’s 19th-century contemporaries and commentary by modern experts. In this way, Dawidziak’s biography reaches beyond the myth of Poe to reveal the actual man and writer, all while painting a vivid picture of the era in which he lived. A Mystery of Mysteries makes possible a deeper appreciation of a complicated, often troubled author whose success after death surpassed anything he knew in life.

—Deborah Hopkinson

Dinner With the President

By Alex Prud’homme

American History Journalist and Julia Child’s grandnephew Alex Prud’homme (My Life in France; Born Hungry) has crafted a finely balanced, scrupulously re­s earched account of gastronomy and culture, history and politics in Dinner With the President (Knopf, $35, 9781524732219).

Even for those of us who paid the barest of attention in history class, Prud’homme’s exceptional writing and good nose for a lively anecdote make the book’s portraits of 26 American presidents vibrant, entertaining and relevant. Food in the White House is both “sustenance and metaphor,” he writes. In a literal sense, these meals reflect the preferences of presidential palates. For example, George H.W. Bush despised broccoli; Barack Obama had a “global palate”; Abraham Lincoln loved his cornbread; and Lyndon B. Johnson doted on Texas barbecue. In a broader sense, whatever food is served in the White House influences the nation’s economic, social, cultural and political climate. Food even has the power to bring together disparate parties for productive political

reviews | nonfiction debate, such as Thomas Jefferson’s “Dinner Table Bargain” and Jimmy Carter’s Camp David peace brokering efforts between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.

Prud’homme also gives credit to the less visible figures who have wielded food’s power, such as the many Black chefs and diverse cooks who have staffed the White House kitchen throughout history. He also shows the powerful influence first ladies have had over the presidential diet and their canny oversight of White House entertaining, from State dinners to receptions and more.

The book’s coda is a short curation of presidential families’ favorite recipes, including Martha Washington’s preserved cherries, Jefferson’s salad with tarragon vinaigrette, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “reverse martini,” Dwight D. Eisenhower’s steak and Lady Bird Johnson’s Pedernales River chili. A captivating epicurean history with a political twist, Dinner With the President is a fascinating look at life in the “People’s House.”

—Alison Hood

Confronting Saddam Hussein

By Melvyn P. Leffler

History On February 28, 2003, as President George W. Bush prepared to authorize military action, he asked his advisers if they had thought enough about “what they hoped to achieve in Iraq.” Plans were made and carried out, but in a short time, the Iraq policy went awry. Historian Melvyn P. Leffler explores the many reasons why in Confronting Saddam Hussein (Oxford University, $27.95, 9780197610770).

After 9/11, the president felt some responsibility for the attacks (there had been warnings not heeded), along with guilt, anger, fear, a sense of political expediency and a need for revenge, the mixture of which led him to declare war on terrorism. After the decision to invade Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda was based, other potential dangers were considered.

The president said repeatedly “that his most compelling fear was the prospect of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction from rogue regimes,” Leffler writes. Eventually the Bush administration turned its focus to Saddam Hussein, a ruthless tyrant in Iraq thought by some to have weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush national security team was often regarded as unified and militant, Leffler

explains. But in reality, the members were pragmatists with different approaches and interests who feuded with one another. Leffler shows that there was not a careful assessment of their proposed strategy for dealing with Hussein and Iraq. Hubris was a major factor, and no one person can be blamed. The president acted with the best of intentions, but his advisers who urged caution did so too hesitantly and ineffectively. Contrary to other accounts, Leffler claims that the president was not manipulated by others but was in charge at all times. He merely delegated too much authority and was indifferent to acrimony among his advisers, which adversely affected his policies.

As Leffler writes, President Bush “failed because his information was flawed, his assumptions inaccurate, his priorities imprecise, and his means incommensurate with his evolving ends.” Based on prodigious research, this superb account helps readers understand the many complexities of America’s attempts to keep our citizens safe in the face of very real dangers after 9/11.

—Roger Bishop

sat beside each other at the family dining table.

Meanwhile, Tate had shared a bathroom with her father and brother, who also separated her from her mom and sister at meals.

Tate explores these memories and her adult friendships with the same vulnerability that made Group such a captivating read. She’s unafraid to share the unvarnished truth about her insecurities, such as when a friend with whom Tate felt competitive considered joining one of her therapy groups, and Tate reacted by gouging a bloody line into her own arm.

But Meredith modeled lasting friendship for Tate, even when it was uncomfortable.

One memorable day after Meredith had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, Tate told Meredith she planned to write about their friendship. Meredith gave her blessing: “Tell them how we changed by holding each other’s hand as we looked honestly at ourselves. Tell how one life can alter another.”

B.F.F. is an openhearted examination of the power of friendship from people who love us exactly as we are.

—Carla Jean Whitley

B.F.F.

All the Beauty in the World

By Christie Tate

By Patrick Bringley

Memoir Christie Ta t e confronted her eating disorder head-on.

She worked through her tendency to date men with alcoholism and even found a healthy relationship with a man she would eventually marry. This meant she’d tackled her issues, right?

Tate recounted this recovery process in the New York Times bestseller Group, but it turns out the work of healing doesn’t end at “I do.”

Her fear of intimacy had improved in some areas of her life, but Tate soon realized that her friendships needed attention, too.

In B.F.F. (Avid Reader, $28, 9781668009420), Tate writes about her journey toward friendship using the language of recovery and 12-step programs. Such meetings brought numerous influential women into Tate’s life, including Meredith, who pledged to work through her own friendship issues alongside Tate.

Tate had previously allowed friendships to fade whenever she moved from one life phase to the next. When Meredith came along, however, she pushed Tate to reflect on why she felt separate from others, which allowed Tate to begin recognizing patterns from her childhood.

For example, Tate’s mom and sister had shared a bathroom when she was growing up, and they

Memoir The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is a treasure trove of world art, with its own stately corps of guardians: the hundreds of people in blue uniforms who keep order and help perplexed visitors find the Renoirs and the restrooms. Behind their sober miens, the Met security guards are an interesting bunch. For example, there’s Joe, who fled political persecution in Togo; Emilie, a working artist with a Brooklyn studio; Mr. Haddad, who moonlights as a professor of Islamic art history; and Patrick Bringley, who has written a lovely book about all of them and their unusual workplace called All the Beauty in the World (Simon & Schuster, $27.99, 9781982163303).

After college, Bringley had a promising job at The New Yorker magazine. Then his adored older brother, Tom, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Emotionally gutted by Tom’s death, Bringley realized he needed a different path while he healed. So he applied for “the most straightforward job I could think of in the most beautiful place I knew.”

Bringley liked working at the Met so much that he stayed for 10 years. A lifelong museum lover, he reveled in his daily proximity to masterpieces, formed friendships and never stopped enjoying

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reviews | nonfiction the museum’s visitors, especially the newbies.

Among the book’s most delightful passages are those detailing Bringley’s encounters with harried moms looking for dinosaurs (there aren’t any, so he sent to them to the mummies instead), rambunctious school kids who want to touch everything and stunned first-timers who can barely fathom it all.

Bringley gives readers descriptions of his personal favorite artworks, as well, and directions for how to find them. Even better, he describes what’s below ground, outside the public gaze: forklifts carting around crates of priceless art, the security command center, the locker room, the craft workshops—even a real armory.

The author eventually decided to move on, but his joyous experience at the Met still lives within him. If you’ve been to New York, there’s a good chance you’ve been one of the Met’s millions of annual visitors. If you go back, pack this memoir; you will see the museum with new eyes.

—Anne Bartlett

Hanging Out

By Sheila Liming

Social Science Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out (Melville House, $27.99, 9781685890056) is a thoughtful manifesto on the inherently subversive and joyous act of socializing. In seven chapters about different types of hanging out (“Dinner Parties as Hanging Out,” “Hanging Out on the Job,” etc.), Liming explores the fading art of leisure and its cultural roots.

Liming defines hanging out as a conscious act of refusal in a production-obsessed society.

“Hanging out is about daring to do nothing much,” she writes, “and, even more than that, about daring to do it in the company of others.”

She acknowledges that it is a peculiar time— amid the COVID-19 pandemic—to call for a return to the in-person hang, but this context is precisely why we are realizing the importance of spending idle time in physical communities.

We cannot let corporate capitalism snatch away what is left of our free time, Liming argues.

“Time is being stolen from us—not for the first time . . . but at newly unprecedented rates.”

Hanging Out reads as a chattier, slightly more precious version of How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. The book embraces its call for intentional meandering with wide-ranging references and a loose narrative structure. An English professor, Liming is unsurprisingly the most compelling when she incorporates literary criticism into her treatise. While the personal stories drag, the

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fiction references crackle. This is particularly true in her analysis of “party literature” in the chapter “Hanging Out at Parties,” in which Liming looks at several 20th-century novels and examines the different ways parties have functioned as social mechanisms.

What is quickly revealed in Liming’s contemplative writing is that hanging out— and all of its possible ramifications, limitations and effects—is too enormous a subject to comprehensively discuss. Instead, Liming uses her time to argue for the importance of mingling with others and finding time, even in an increasingly virtual world, to enjoy the hang.

—Celia Mattison

The Love You Save

By Goldie Taylor

Memoir Goldie Taylor’s absolutely stunning memoir is dedicated to “the women who made me.” Taylor’s mother, her Auntie Gerald, Auntie Killer and Grandma Alice come to shimmering life in this tough and tender book. The Love You Save (Hanover Square, $28.99, 9781335449375) depicts Black life in East St. Louis in the 1970s and ’80s, evoking Taylor’s family’s voices and experiences with cinematic detail and novelistic prose.

Taylor has a robust public role as a news correspondent at MSNBC and CNN, a journalist, an editor and a human rights advocate. These professional successes, however, are shadowed by a legacy of childhood sexual abuse. This memoir tells the whole story of Taylor’s experiences with rape and sexual violence, which were terrible for her as an individual and terrifyingly common in her community.

Taylor’s traumatic personal history ran parallel to her adolescent accomplishments as a gifted student and public orator. Her intellectual development via public libraries and a few good teachers buoys the narrative, as a young Taylor reads James Baldwin, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison. The reader will cheer as her teachers recognize Taylor’s exceptional intelligence and grit, even as Taylor reminds us that Black excellence is often forged in the crucible of systemic racism and sexual violence.

This memoir is an important read for several reasons. It shows how complex trauma shapes a person’s life and psychology, especially someone who is a high-achieving public figure.

It also shows how important public schools and libraries are as places to cultivate children’s creativity and intelligence, particularly for

low-income and BIPOC children. And finally, in its portrayal of a Black family’s dynamic women, it offers a vibrant portrayal of survival and love.

—Catherine Hollis

Unraveling

By Peggy Orenstein

Memoir Although sheep­ shearing typically involves a bit of frustrated grunting from shearer and shearee alike, when done right, the act can resemble a ballet: two bodies bending and swooping in sync, the whirring of wickedly sharp clipper blades their only accompaniment. As readers will learn in Peggy Orenstein’s illuminating, informative and often funny Unraveling (Harper, $27.99, 9780063081727), doing that dance with any grace takes a lot of practice.

It all happened during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, when the journalist and bestselling author decided that, rather than baking bread or gardening, she would fill her “indefinitely empty calendar” with a dream project: making a sweater from scratch. The lifelong knitter was taught the craft by her beloved late mother; it “bridged the generation gap, created reliably neutral ground where we could meet,” Orenstein writes.

Over the course of Orenstein’s quest, a talented group of teachers shared their expertise and passion for ranching, shearing, spinning, dyeing and knitting. Along the way, she explores how textile creation has influenced human history and culture, from language (gathering wool and counting sheep) to politics (yarnbombing and pussy hats) to pivotal inventions.

For example, the spinning wheel “has been credited with everything from establishing trade routes . . . to catalyzing the Renaissance.”

But progress had an eventual cost. Today, “the fashion industry is an ecological disaster, responsible for more greenhouse gases than all international flights and maritime shipping combined,” Orenstein writes. Indeed, concern for the Earth’s uncertain future is woven throughout Unraveling. So, too, is the inexorable passage of time, as the author considers the “amount of sand at the bottom of my personal hourglass” and the ways her personal identity has shifted and changed.

Orenstein is an impressively intrepid figure throughout this charming and candid memoir in essays—even when her goal requires her to wrestle recalcitrant sheep and pick bugs and poop out of fleece. She even fully embraces the fact that her goal requires her to do something

reviews | nonfiction many people avoid: allowing “ourselves, as adults, to be in a position of being absolute rank amateurs.” Perfectly imperfect like a handmade sweater, Unraveling is an entertaining chronicle of a challenging year wonderfully well spent.

—Linda M. Castellitto

H Shielded

solutions, such as educating the public on the failures of criminal justice law and requiring the police to pay a portion of civil settlements.

Shielded is a meaningful, well-researched and readable work that will open many discussions about this important social issue.

—Sarojini Seupersad

H Fieldwork

By Joanna Schwartz

Social Science In 1967, the S u p re m e Court invented a new legal pr inciple called qualified immunity that limited the public’s right to sue certain government employees. Seemingly designed to protect government officials from frivolous lawsuits, in practice, it shields the police from being sued for misconduct, even if they’ve violated someone’s constitutional rights. In effect, it makes it perfectly legal for the police to infringe on citizens’ rights.

How did we get to the point where the people who are sworn to protect the law do not have to follow it? In her book, Shielded (Viking, $30, 9780593299364), UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz deftly explains the complicated web of laws and policies that exist in the United States for the sole purpose of protecting the police. In the process, she shines a light on every aspect of the justice system, from the federal jury system, which is disproportionately white and middle class, to Supreme Court decisions that make little sense in the context of everyday life.

After studying police accountability for decades, Schwartz’s expertise in criminal justice law shines in Shielded. The book is part research and part history, and it’s filled with important case law, most of which the average person won’t have heard of. These important courtroom precedents determine how the police are allowed to engage with the public, such as whether or not police need a warrant to search you when you’re minding your business walking down the street. (They don’t.) But this is no legalese-filled academic treatise. It’s incredibly engaging because Schwartz smoothly weaves the human story into each case she explains. After all, there is a real person behind every story of police misconduct. Someone was brutalized or their rights were ignored, and this book explains exactly how the police were allowed to get away with it.

Although these laws have been in place for decades, Schwartz doesn’t believe that they are unstoppable or that police misconduct will continue to go unpunished. In addition to dissecting the problem, she also offers ideas for

By Iliana Regan

Memoir Occasionally, a book appears like a shimmering treasure stumbled upon during a forest walk. This is certainly the case with Iliana Regan’s memoir Fieldwork (Agate Midway, $27, 9781572843189). Her first book, Burn the Place, was a finalist for the National Book Award, chronicling growing up gay on an Indiana farm and creating her own Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago. In both memoirs, Regan is a hypnotizing writer who speaks to readers in a deeply personal way, writing in a natural voice that artfully interweaves past and present.

Regan’s exquisite, carefully planned prose paradoxically feels like a casual chat, the sort that might unfold spontaneously during a long weekend visit. As it turns out, some very lucky people can experience exactly that, because in 2020, Regan turned over her restaurant, Elizabeth, to her employees, and now she and her wife run the Milkweed Inn bed and breakfast in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Deep in the Hiawatha National Forest, 10 guests are treated to Regan’s culinary magic each weekend. Regan hopes they will experience something similar to the “magic of the farmhouse I grew up in.”

Fieldwork invites readers into this world, as Regan explores and forages in the nearby forest and river for food to use in meals at the inn.

She also forages in her own mind for childhood memories, including those of her beloved parents and her grandmother Busia, a gifted cook who emigrated from Poland. Busia’s duck blood soup, or czarnina, exists in the author’s memories as a sort of magical potion, something akin to Marcel Proust’s madeleines. Regan also shares her ongoing struggles with recovering from alcoholism, the difficulties of running an inn during the COVID-19 pandemic, her fears of losing her parents, her anxieties about the world and her desire and attempts to become a parent. Alongside these thoughts, she captures the great beauty and comfort of the outdoors with the voice of a naturalist.

Regan has led an intriguing, unusual life,

which gives her memoir a unique and compelling perspective. She notes, for instance, “Sometimes I think I would still like to be a man because I don’t feel like a woman. But I don’t feel like a man either. I feel more akin to a mushroom.”

With both Burn the Place and Fieldwork, Regan has earned her place as not only a world-class chef but also a gifted memoirist.

—Alice Cary

Holding Fire

By Bryce Andrews

Memoir “We’re getting it wrong in this beautiful, ravaged place,” writes author Bryce Andrews (Down From the Mountain) in Holding Fire (Mariner, $28.99, 9780358468271).

“Over and over, we find a lovely valley, shoot it through the ecological heart, grind its bones to dust, and pour the foundation of an edifice less interesting than what existed before.” It is his ah-ha moment in this vibrant, candid account of his experiences working as a cowboy in Montana.

Although it’s labeled as a memoir, Holding Fire also has many elements of regional nonfiction, natural history and even social science. As a result, it is structured in a fresh and unpredictable way, with each chapter opening a new window into Andrews’ thoughts, feelings and prior experiences. Framed around the inheritance of his grandfather’s gun, a Smith & Wesson revolver, each reflection focuses on a particular idea that has helped Andrews comprehend the fragility of life and inevitability of death.

As Andrews ruminates on his personal history, he dots his musings with descriptive, emotive prose. “In quiet moments all through childhood,” he writes, “I entertained a Western fantasy in which the sky’s broad dome appeared first, its sun a magnet tugging upward on my heart.” Guns were never a big part of his life until he lived and worked on a ranch, where he had to hunt and keep critters at bay. These encounters provided life lessons and new proficiencies, particularly when hunting with fellow rancher Roger, whom he calls “the lodge’s wrangler and outfitter.” But the more Andrews lived with the gun, the more it led him to realize the destruction caused by violence. He eventually forged the gun into a useful gardening tool, learning blacksmithing in the process.

Holding Fire is a meditation on the past, present and future of not only Andrews’ own life but also the lives of all mortal creatures.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

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q&a | julian winters © VANESSA NORTH

Julian Winters is writing his way into happily ever after The acclaimed YA author reflects on taking dares, being honest and writing stories about finding joy in who you are.

When Theo’s promposal during the biggest house party of the year doesn’t go as planned, he escapes to an empty bedroom to regroup.

Over the course of the evening, four more teens, each with their own troubles, join Theo in the mermaid-themed bedroom. What follows is a night of heartfelt conversation and more than one revelation as the five unlikely allies form a plan to confront their respective emotional hurdles. Joyful, funny and deeply felt, As You Walk on By (Viking, $18.99, 9780593206508) is a story of friendship, love and standing up for the life you want.

Your publisher describes As You Walk on By as The Breakfast Club meets Can’t Hardly Wait, and the book itself references a number of other movies, including House Party. How have movies influenced you as a writer?

Movies have been a huge influence on my writing.

Like I do with any great book, I find myself dissecting the movies I really love to discover why they make me feel the way I do. Why am I crying? Laughing? Why am I so invested in a protagonist or side character?

There have been some great teen films over the years that have stuck with me, and I took this opportunity to pay homage to them while also giving queer, BIPOC characters their shine.

As You Walk on By opens as Theo is dared to prompose to his crush. Have you ever accepted any wild dares that you could share with us?

Unfortunately, I have accepted one too many dares in my life. One of the wildest was my senior year of high school. I was in Junior ROTC, and we were traveling by charter bus to Orlando, Florida. My best friend dared me to lick one of the windows. It was not the cleanest of buses, but as a queer teen, I think I was more afraid of sharing a truth about myself with my peers than ingesting the germs from a window. Not much has changed!

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The book features five central characters, but we experience the story from Theo’s point of view. Tell us about Theo and why this is his story.

Theo is a funny, loyal, determined 17-year-old who’s one dare away from learning that he’s also a complete mess. He has a tightknit friend group, a solid relationship with his father and big (romantic) dreams he’s scared to chase.

I wanted to show this messy, queer Black boy who makes awful decisions and is forced to come to terms with the toxicity he allows to exist in his relationships with people. I’d never written a character like Theo, but I wanted to.

While each character has a very important, meaningful storyline, Theo’s felt like the core of what I wanted to explore with this novel: growing, learning and owning our mistakes so we can become the people we want to be.

The alliance that forms between the five teens hiding in the same bedroom becomes central to their growth as characters. Have you ever found support or encouragement from an unexpected source?

Yes. As a queer Black person, I’m always searching for spaces where I feel safe, valued and understood.

Although I’ve had the same core group of friends since high school, sometimes my deepest and most personal conversations have happened with people I’ve known for weeks or hours. Vulnerability is infectious. One moment of honesty from someone can unlock so much about yourself.

Young adult books tend to gravitate toward portraying romantic relationships, but much of your work focuses instead on friendships.

What do you hope readers take away from your books to help them navigate their own friendships?

I hope readers see that friendships are complex and complicated. Even messy! There’s so much to gain from a friendship, but also so much to

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of As You Walk on By.

lose. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. But when you find that person or group of people, especially as a queer person, you’ll learn what love and growth truly mean. Not just for someone else, but yourself.

Many of your books deal with queer Black boys as they struggle with how the stories around them don’t reflect their experiences. Theo, for example, finds it hard to picture himself in the fairy-tale-esque prom romances that his straight and/or white classmates take for granted. How does it feel to know that your books are helping real-life Theos imagine their own happily ever afters?

It has been the most rewarding, unexpected part of being an author. Hearing from readers is my favorite thing. I grew up wanting so many of the things I write about. Most of my teen years and early 20s were spent thinking happily ever afters weren’t possible for people like me. There weren’t a ton of examples that I could have one, so I started writing them for myself. Now I get to show young readers we’re more than deserving of the magic promised to everyone else.

Although the characters in As You Walk on By deal with serious issues, the book itself is so uplifting, funny and warmhearted. Is it always your goal to center joy in your writing? Why? Always. I was given too many books as a kid where the queer or Black person’s storyline was about trauma, pain, discrimination and death.

Their existence was a lesson for the readers who didn’t look or identify like them. It left me in a dark place. I refuse to let the next generation of BIPOC and/or queer people feel as though their lives are a lesson for someone else instead of being about finding joy in who they are.

—RJ Witherow

reviews | young adult

H The Long Run

By James Acker

Romance Two South Jersey boys find love in this beautifully wrought debut novel from New Jersey native James Acker.

Rising senior Sebastian “Bash the Flash” Villeda is a popular track star at Moorestown High School, which has allowed him to get away with being a jerk for years. Grieving the death of his mother, Bash won’t let anyone in—not his hardworking stepfather, his ex-girlfriend, Luce, or even Matty, his supposed best friend, whom Bash can’t stand hanging out with anymore. Bash is weary of his tough-guy facade, but he doesn’t know how to change it. He’d rather sprint away from his feelings than face them.

Enter Sandro Miceli, whose shot put is as good as Bash’s 200-meter dash. Cruelly nicknamed “the Italian Yeti” by his classmates because he’s tall and hirsute, Sandro also struggles with the deep-seated anger issues he’s developed due to

The Buried and the Bound

By Rochelle Hassan

Fantasy Three teens fight sinister s u p e rnatural forces in Rochelle Hassan’s The Buried and the B ound (Roar ing Brook, $19.99, 9781250822208), the first volume of a planned trilogy.

Lebanese American hedgewitch Aziza El-Amin’s gift—and responsibility—is maintaining magical boundaries. Her hometown of Blackthorn, Massachusetts, borders the magical realm of Elphame, so Aziza makes regular patrols, closing gaps and ensuring visitors from Elphame don’t harm the humans of Blackthorn.

While on patrol, Aziza arrives on the scene of a shocking magical attack, where she meets Leo, who has been trying to break the curse placed on his family. Meanwhile, a lonely teen named Tristan is desperate to escape his contract with a cruel hag. The weakening boundary between Blackthorn and Elphame brings Aziza, Leo and Tristan together to solve these problems and more.

In this story of friendship and family, folkloric creatures such as kelpies, hags and the Fair Folk collide with the mundanities of contemporary high school life, with a strong helping of

the behavior of his oppressive, insensitive family. He is terrified that his homophobic father and brothers will find out that he’s gay, and he dreams of attending college out of state, where he’ll be able to love who he wants without his family knowing.

When Bash and Sandro connect at an end-of-­ summer party, all of that begins to change. During the year that follows, what starts as a genuine friendship leads to romance and forces the boys to explore aspects of themselves they both hoped never to confront.

The Long Run (Inkyard, $18.99, 9781335428622) is a raw, emotional love story anchored in two journeys of self-discovery.

Sandro knows who he is: an angry, neglected softy who can’t stand up to his family, which he describes as “a screaming match in a crowded restaurant personified.” Meanwhile, Bash only

knows who he doesn’t want to be: a high-profile athlete who gets roped into fistfights with kids from the rival track team.

The most honest bond the two boys have is with each other, and Acker handles every aspect of their relationship with great care. His frank depictions of their sexual interactions are particularly well done, with awkwardness and enthusiasm that feel romantic yet realistic. There’s plenty of humor, too, including excellent banter that’s resplendent with New Jersey vernacular and slang.

The Long Run is a stunning novel about two boys who discover happiness and hope in the unlikeliest of places: each other.

—Kimberly Giarratano

romantic melodrama on the side. Dead parents, lost loves and desperate acts drive the plot and add a touch of gothic flair, and the theme of generational trauma is skillfully woven throughout.

As she brings a Lebanese American family into the heart of a witches-in-New England tale, Hassan deftly highlights magic’s global presence. Although Aziza’s magical specialty is maintaining borders, her sprawling world of magic illustrates the rewards that await readers when fantasy reaches beyond white, Eurocentric inspirations and characters. Imaginative and urgently paced, The Buried and the Bound will be enjoyed by fans of Holly Black, S. Jae-Jones and Alix E. Harrow.

—Annie Metcalf

boyfriend. The essay goes viral, landing her an internship offer from Craneswift, her favorite online publication—if she’ll keep writing about her relationship for them. Desperate to keep up the charade, Eliza forms a pact with her new classmate Caz Song, who also happens to be a handsome up-and-coming actor. Together, they put on the performance of a lifetime. That is, until it starts to feel a little too real for Eliza.

Author Ann Liang captures facets of modern adolescence in a funny, clever and moving voice. Eliza’s narration is filled with thoughtful reflections on everyday experiences. Though she tries to maintain emotional distance from her peers, she’s wonderfully open with the reader about her feelings of angst, confusion and even fear.

Eliza’s fabricated romance with Caz is a highlight of the novel, but Liang also explores Eliza’s connections with her family, her long-distance best friend and her new boss at Craneswift.

Ultimately, This Time It’s Real (Scholastic, $18.99, 9781338827118) satisfies because all of the parts of Eliza’s life—romance, vocation, friendship and more—are inextricable from her changing understandings of home, love and identity. Though romance is a key element in Eliza’s story, the novel’s true focus is on Eliza as she learns to embrace honesty and vulnerability and rises to the challenge of becoming a fuller, braver version of herself.

Readers in search of a sweet romance with a meaningful coming-of-age story at its heart should look no further than This Time It’s Real.

—Tami Orendain

This Time It’s Real

By Ann Liang

Romance Thanks to her mom’s job at a global consulting firm, Eliza Lin is used to starting over, but she’s tired of becoming “attached to people only to grow apart” when she inevitably moves again. So when she has to write a personal essay at her new school in Beijing, she tries to fly under the radar with a piece about how she met her lovely but totally fictional

Visit BookPage.com to read a Behind the Book essay by James Acker.

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reviews | children’s

H Just Jerry

By Jerry Pinkney

Middle Grade When Caldecott Medalist Jerry Pinkney died in late 2021, he left behind an inspiring legacy, including the illustrations for more than 100 published books. It turns out that he also left behind an unfinished memoir about his boyhood during the late 1940s and ’50s, when he grew up on an all-Black block on East Earlham Street in Philadelphia.

According to a note from Pinkney’s editor, Andrea Spooner, Pinkney had not yet completed the dozens of graphite drawings he had intended to incorporate into Just Jerry: How Drawing Shaped My Life (Little, Brown, $17.99, 9780316383851) when he died. But he had finished the text and created many preparatory sketches as well as specific instructions for the book’s design. Fortunately for readers, Pinkney’s publisher chose to move forward with publication, using the available materials to achieve Pinkney’s goal of creating a visually immersive effect while also giving the book a lively, improvisatory feel. As it so happens, using sketchbook pages to illustrate

Evergreen

By Matthew Cordell

Picture Book Evergreen the squirrel has a long list of fears, including germs, heights and thunderstorms.

When her mother asks her to take soup to Granny Oak, Evergreen responds, “I can’t do it!” But her mother insists, so Evergreen puts on her shawl and heads out.

In an era of picture books that often contain sparse text, Evergreen (Feiwel & Friends, $18.99, 9781250317179) stands out for its length and detail. Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell treats readers to an epic tale filled with lively dialogue and hand-lettered onomatopoeia.

In one spine-tingling moment, a hawk named Ember swoops down, picks up Evergreen and soars into the sky. Fortunately, Ember just needs Evergreen to remove some painful thorns after an encounter with a bramble. “I . . . can do it,” Evergreen whispers, a self-directed pep talk that becomes her refrain. With each creature she

28

a memoir about a young person’s growing identity as a visual artist is particularly apt: The narrator, like the art, is a work in progress.

Pinkney, who had five siblings, describes seizing any available area in his overstuffed childhood home for drawing, including a favorite spot under the piano.

He recalls how visits to his New Jersey relatives inspired his lifelong love of nature, and how much he admired his father’s ability to build things with his hands. Pinkney also writes frankly about the obstacles in his path, including segregation at school and coping with a learning disability. (He was diagnosed with dyslexia as an adult.)

The most powerful aspects of Pinkney’s story

involve the adults who recognized his innate artistic talents and gave them space to flourish. An elementary school teacher appointed Pinkney “class artist” to alleviate his difficulties with reading, and the owner of the newsstand where Pinkney found his first job allowed him to sell his drawings along with newspapers and introduced him to his first artistic mentor.

Even Pinkney’s father, who worried about his son’s ability to make a living as an artist, encouraged his talents by letting him draw on the walls of his bedroom.

Just Jerry is a moving and vivid reminder that a life in art can be made possible through hard work and dedication, and by giving talented young people the tools and support they need to succeed.

—Norah Piehl

meets, Evergreen faces one of her fears, and she prevails every time—even when she meets “the Bear,” whose identity is a gratifying surprise.

Evergreen is packed with entertaining details.

Evergreen delivers Mama’s “magic soup” in an empty acorn with a screw-on cap, her shawl is red like another well-known woodland delivery courier and earth tone borders that look like tree branches frame many vignettes. Cordell hints at a sequel through a map beneath the dust jacket and another delivery request from Evergreen’s mother toward the story’s conclusion. Readers would be so lucky.

—Julie Danielson

faster and tougher is all that 12-year-old Trevor cares about.

As the book opens, Trevor’s life has been turned upside down. His stepdad has been arrested for hitting his mom and has threatened revenge against her for calling the police. In that moment, Trevor promised himself that no one will ever hit his mom again. It doesn’t matter that grown-ups keep telling him that he shows promise—academic promise, artistic promise, athletic promise—or that his dad and uncles wanted him to stay in school so he could get out of the projects. Sometimes, Trevor thinks, you just have to solve things with your hands.

Trevor throws himself into getting stronger and learning to fight, first on his own and later with his friend P. But when the trainer at the rec center refuses to help with training because he promised Trevor’s Uncle Lou that he would help Trevor “not to think with his fists,” Trevor begins to wonder whether fighting will solve his problems or just make new ones.

Hands is a fast-paced novel narrated in a poetic, stream-of-consciousness style.

Maldonado uses short, staccato sentences like feinted boxing jabs to draw readers in, then rocks them with explosive uppercuts of words and emotions. Trevor’s journey through fear, anger and abandonment toward finding support and true strength is authentic and hopeful.

At just 128 pages, Hands is Maldonado’s

Hands

By Torrey Maldonado

Middle Grade Jab. Duck-bap-bap.

Jab. Duck-bap-bap.

Find your rhythm.

Feel your fists against the pads. Know where your next move is and who’s on your side. In Torrey Maldonado’s Hands (Nanc y Paulsen, $16.99, 9780593323793), getting stronger,

reviews | children’s shortest work. Although its length makes it approachable for older but less adept readers, the book never sacrifices linguistic or narrative complexity. Readers who enjoy realistic, sliceof-life fiction will be quickly engaged by Trevor’s story, and Maldonado will keep them hooked through all 10 rounds.

—Kevin Delecki

The Swifts

identity while serving up a compelling murder mystery and a twisty treasure hunt. As Lincoln notes in her introduction, “The thing about language is that it can’t stay still. Restless and impatient, it races forward without waiting for our dictionaries to catch up.” Word nerds will emphatically agree—and they’ll be delighted to know that a sequel is in the works, too.

—Linda M. Castellitto

In Every Life

By Beth Lincoln

Middle Grade It can be fun to speculate about nature versus nurture, to consider which of our quirks might be innate and which might have been shaped by how we grew up. We can also ponder that Shakespearean question: What’s in a name?

But Shenanigan Swift, the clever and engaging hero of Beth Lincoln’s The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels (Dutton, $17.99, 9780593533239), has recently realized that for her, such musings aren’t so enjoyable. Although Shenanigan’s name earns her a pass when she’s done something an eensy bit destructive (like putting the family cat in the empty coffin before the monthly rehearsal of her aunt’s funeral), it also makes her feel misunderstood when others insist on seeing her solely as an embodiment of her name instead of as an individual.

For generations, the Swifts have used their family dictionary to randomly select names that somehow become destinies. Shenanigan’s sisters are named Phenomena and Felicity, her uncle is Maelstrom, her ancestors include Calamitous and Godwottery, and the Swift family matriarch is Arch-Aunt Schadenfreude.

Hilariously, the aforementioned cat is simply “John the Cat.” Shenanigan will meet even more relatives with dictionary-dictated names at the Swift family reunion. Far-flung folks will descend upon the stately yet decrepit Swift House, a 17th-century manor that’s the perfect setting for the keystone activity of every reunion: the hunt for Grand-Uncle Vile’s long-lost fortune, which Shenanigan is determined to find. Alas, Shenanigan’s plans are interrupted when someone shoves Arch-Aunt Schadenfreude down the stairs, and other murders soon follow.

Amid the shock and chaos, Shenanigan and Phenomena team up to solve the crimes before anyone else is harmed.

Rife with delicious tension and charmingly dry wit, The Swifts explores and celebrates the wonders of wordplay and the complexity of

By Marla Frazee

Picture Book Two-time Caldecott Hon­ or recipient Marla Frazee brings her c o n s i d e rab l e talents to a timeless celebration of life in In Every Life (Beach Lane, $18.99, 9781665912488), a wonder of a picture book.

In an introductory note, Frazee shares the long history of her book’s inception. In 1998, she witnessed a call-and-response-style blessing for a new baby. She’s made a number of attempts to illustrate the blessing, but it took her more than 20 years to find the right way to finish the project. The book, dedicated to her first grandchild, is certainly worth the wait.

The format of In Every Life is deceptively simple. Spreads alternate between text and gorgeous, wordless, full-bleed paintings created with a palette resplendent with golds, blues, pinks and violets. Frazee’s prose lends a lyrical, comforting rhythm to the textual spreads, which contain a single phrase rendered in large type and interrupted by the gutter: “In every birth, / blessed is the wonder”; “In every smile, / blessed is the light.” Beneath each phrase are spot-art depictions of families, with one shade dominating each spread. In the “birth” spread, for instance, we see a diverse array of parents, grandparents and siblings welcoming newborns, all highlighted in pink tones.

As its title suggests, In Every Life plumbs deeper expressions of the mysteries of human experiences, including sadness, illness, pain and love. Frazee doesn’t shy away from scenes that will be best shared with children by adults in quiet, one-on-one settings. Vignettes that accompany a line about sadness and comfort include a crestfallen child next to a soccer ball, a family mourning their pet and a young patient in a hospital bed. Yet there is light humor here, too: In a spread about hope, Frazee portrays two people with a kite checking the sky for a breeze, a child on the potty and a family preparing a turkey for roasting.

Frazee’s love both for her art and for life itself shines from each page of In Every Life. This gentle, luminous book is a treasure.

—Deborah Hopkinson

Nell Plants a Tree

By Anne Wynter Illustrated by Daniel Miyares

Picture Book Run away to Granny’s house, where the fields are vast and the pecan tree is old and tall and perfect for climbing.

But before we can do that, a girl named Nell must bury a seed in a pot. Before we can find out how high we can climb in that pecan tree, Nell must water a sprout. Before we can discover “a nest filled with eggs” and witness “three chicks hatching free,” Nell must ensure that her potted seedling gets plenty of sunlight. And before we can find treasures (“a long strip of bark / and a shell / and a stone / and a leaf flecked with holes”), Nell must plant her tree in the ground.

In Nell Plants a Tree (Balzer + Bray, $17.99, 9780062865779), author Anne Wynter draws on many of the techniques that made her debut picture book, Everyone in the Red Brick Building, so successful. She leverages her eye for detail to highlight the loveliest moments of a child’s day spent playing in a field, finding the ideal spot for reading at Granny’s house and baking a delicious pie with the tree’s pecans.

Wynter’s prose is spare, lighting like a little blue bird on the moments that matter, and it combines with Daniel Miyares’ recognizable ink and gouache artwork to skillfully elicit the feel of a lazy summer day.

Wynter’s text travels back and forth in time, as do Miyares’ illustrations. We see, for instance, Granny pouring lemonade for her grandchildren as they all gather on her porch, then we turn the page and find a young Nell giving her sprout a drink from a metal watering can. Nell’s and Granny’s dresses are similar shades of yellow, offering a hint that the young girl and the grandmother are the same person. This becomes clear as Nell’s tree grows along with her, her children and then her grandchildren.

Text and image couldn’t be better paired than they are here. The concept underlying Nell Plants a Tree is a tricky one that would be difficult for any writer and illustrator to pull off, yet Wynter and Miyares succeed handily.

Generations of readers will be inspired by this sweet story to plant seeds of their own.

—Lisa Bubert

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q&a | kim taylor

A JUNETEENTH JUBILEE Debut author-illustrator Kim Taylor brings history to life with needle and thread.

In A Flag for Juneteenth, Kim Taylor tells the story of Huldah, a Black girl who lives with her enslaved family on a plantation in Texas. It’s June 1865, and tomorrow is Huldah’s 10th birthday—but it’s also the day that Huldah will witness the historic reading of the proclamation that President Abraham Lincoln has freed all enslaved people.

Taylor is a self-taught textile artist, and her illustrations for the book are exquisitely detailed quilts that fill the story with a spirit of joy and freedom.

Galveston, Texas, where my story takes place. I thought that it was important to demonstrate that enslaved people were often given the last names of their enslavers to erase any connections to their own family lineages.

You’ve said that each of your quilts feels as though it is created “through [you], rather than by [you]” and that you feel a “deep connection with [your] ancestors during the creative process.” What was the journey of writing this book and creating its quilted illustrations like for you?

Tell us about Huldah and what’s hapI felt that I was being somehow guided pening in her life at the beginning of while writing and creating the illustrations your book. for this book. I saved the pictures that I disHuldah is a mature, curious, insightful little covered during my research and looked at girl. She has the very grown-up responsibility them often when writing, trying to connect of caring for her baby sister while her parents in some way. work on the plantation. We meet Huldah the I fell in love with Huldah very early day before her 10th birthday, which falls on on. Because the people in this book have a Sunday. Sundays during this time were a no faces, I had to figure out how to give Huldah depth and to showcase her perday for rest and reconnecting with family and community. Huldah’s mom has baked sonality in other ways. I also needed to Huldah’s favorite, tea cakes, for her upcommake her consistent and recognizable in ing birthday, a luxury she may not have had every illustration. That is no easy task when time for during the week. working with fabric on such a small scale!

H A Flag for Juneteenth I remember telling a friend that I felt as Neal Porter, $18.99, 9780823452248 What did you research to write this book? though Huldah had become like a daughI devoured everything I could read about ter to me. I felt a deep connection to her Picture Book Juneteenth, but that was only the beginning! character.

The illustrations took a little over a year to create. It was an enormous I was curious about what life was like for enslaved people when they were not working and how they connected with their immediate and extended undertaking and very emotional. When I was finished with all of the illusfamilies. I was very interested in understanding how they built a sense of trations, I was amazed that I had actually achieved it! I don’t think that I community despite such oppressive circumstances. could have done it if I did not know on some level that my ancestors were I Googled, listened to podcasts and read books about that time. I watching over me and guiding me throughout this journey. also looked at pictures of enslaved people, which helped me to Tell us about your quilting journey and how you began to imagine their personalities and lives. One picture of a little girl make story quilts. that I found on the Library of Congress website seemed to embody the spirit of my Huldah, and I kept her When I was young, I loved to color, paint and lose image in mind as I developed the character. myself in arts and crafts projects. I liked to make clothes for my dolls using my mother’s scarves.

Many of the characters’ names in the story are When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I discovered my symbolic. Will you tell us about some of these mother’s Singer sewing machine, and I wanted to learn to use it. My mom didn’t sew but encouraged names and what they represent?

I wanted my main character’s name to be unusual, me to try it out. I taught myself how to work it and a name that would be new to my readers. I envisioned began trying to make clothes for my dolls. Throughout my this character to be a prophet, one who could bear witness to the childhood, I used art as a vehicle to relax or to create something that I needed, such as pillows or simple paintings for a new apartment. announcement of the end of slavery as a legal institution and could also foretell a future free of bondage. I Googled biblical female prophets, and It wasn’t until I discovered story quilting that I began to use art as a vehicle an image of a beautiful Black woman appeared on my screen. Her name to process deep emotion. When Barack Obama was elected to be our 44th was Huldah. As soon as I saw her, I knew that this would be the name of president, I had feelings that I found difficult to verbally express. I wanted my main character. to create something to mark the historic event but felt it important to use Eve, the name of Huldah’s baby sister, is also biblical. It is derived from an art form that had some connection to my ancestors. I thought about my a Hebrew word meaning “to breathe” or “to live.” In my story, Eve is an West African ancestors and how women there are master weavers and texinfant. She will have the opportunity to live her life without the legal burtile artists. I thought about enslaved African and African American women den of enslavement. and how they used quilting not only to keep their families warm but also to tell stories about family memories and ancestral history. I decided to try One other character in my story has a name. Mr. Menard is the oldest man my hand at this art form and fell in love immediately. on the plantation. He has the last name of Michel B. Menard, the founder of

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Illustrations from A Flag for Juneteenth © 2023 by Kim Taylor. Reproduced by permission of Holiday House Publishing, Inc.

q&a | kim taylor

What is your favorite part of the process of creating a quilt?

I love exploring different colors and texture combinations when I am just beginning a new quilt. There are so many different possibilities! There is no need to commit to anything in that early planning stage because nothing is sewn down yet. I am free to move fabrics around and discover what feels right for that unique piece.

I would love to hear about how you composed these illustrations. How did you choose the fabrics? Do any of them have special significance?

When planning the illustrations, I tried to keep the text in mind and made decisions about what aspects needed to be enhanced. For example, the first page describes tea cakes, a traditional cookie that enslaved people made using simple pantry ingredients. I thought it was important to help readers visualize a tea cake, so I set out to create them using one of the brown

review | H a flag for juneteenth When you gaze at the quilted cover of A Flag for Juneteenth, you will want to reach out and touch it. The artwork depicts a girl wearing a fuchsia dress and kerchief standing proudly in front of a flag, the bright colors of her outfit vibrant against the flag’s soft yellows and greens. The girl’s brown face has no features—nor do the faces of any of the book’s characters—because author-illustrator Kim Taylor wants readers to be able to imagine themselves into this story.

Then you open A Flag for Juneteenth and discover that Taylor quilted all of the illustrations in her debut picture book, and you realize that her textile art perfectly complements her evocative prose, creating an excellent portrayal of Huldah, a Black girl living with her enslaved family on a Texas plantation in 1865.

fabrics from my stash that had some color variations. Tea cakes were not fancy, but they were delicious and smelled amazing, so I used hand­embroidered lettering to show the movement of the scent wafting through the air. Embroidery was the new thing I taught myself for this project.

I chose fabrics that I felt would have matched the period. Nothing flashy or too modern. I did want to depict a difference in how my characters were dressed before and after the announcement about freedom. Some of the clothing was inspired by my love of African fabric and styles. © ERSKINE ISAAC FOR IVISIONPHOTO

How has your artistic process changed or evolved since you began quilting?

At the beginning of my journey, I worried about making mistakes but quickly came to the realization that art quilting is very forgiving. Many things that I saw as mistakes enhanced my pieces and made them more visually interesting.

I decided early on that I would teach myself something new for each quilt. I researched techniques online and bought many books about art quilting to help me to learn the basics. I have become a better artist over the years because of this decision. I am more mindful now about fabric color and texture and how they work together to set the mood of a piece. It’s all been trial and error though. I did not go to art school, so it’s been a wondrous learning journey!

What is your favorite illustration in the book?

I love them all for one reason or another, but my favorite is the illustration of Huldah high up in her favorite tree, catching a sunbeam. It is such a visually stunning illustration. I love how big the sun is in comparison to Huldah. She bravely faces the sun, taking some of its strength and wisdom back home with her in her little jar. In my imagination, the sun represents life and freedom, and that jar is her heart. I fell in love with nature at a very young age while camping every summer. Nature always felt so big to me, yet I was never overwhelmed by it. Instead, I always felt at home and peaceful, just like Huldah.

What aspect of the book are you most proud of?

I am very proud to tell the story of Juneteenth in a way that I hope will encourage children to want to learn more about this historic event. I felt it was critical to highlight the beauty and resilience of African and African American people during their enslavement, as well as to showcase the importance of strong family and community ties. I am also incredibly proud to have illustrated this book with an art form that was used by my ancestors to tell their own stories.

—Alice Cary

As the book opens, it’s the morning of Huldah’s 10th birthday. Taylor’s embroidering transforms mottled brown fabrics into textured tea cakes, a special treat baked by Huldah’s mother for her daughter’s birthday.

“The scent of nutmeg and vanilla floated through our cabin,” Taylor writes, and her stitched text forms a winding ribbon of words that waft up from the plate as Huldah breathes in the sweet smell.

Soon, Huldah hears the “loud clip-clippity-­ clop of heavy horses’ hooves” as soldiers ride onto the plantation. She witnesses their historic announcement: President Abraham Lincoln has freed all enslaved people! Taylor emphasizes the importance of this declaration by placing a lone soldier onto a white quilted background. She embroiders the proclamation that he reads “in a booming voice,” forming four lines of text that radiate from his figure.

Elation follows, and Huldah hears shouting and singing. Images of celebration feature the outlines of surprised, ecstatic people jumping and raising their hands in the air for joy. Taylor sets their multicolor silhouettes against gentle yellow-orange ombre fabric that’s quilted with sunburst lines, as though the people have been caught up in rays of light.

Huldah watches as a group of women begins to sew freedom flags. Children gather branches to use as flagpoles, but Huldah goes one step further. She climbs her favorite tree and captures a sunbeam in a glass jar, preserving this extraordinary moment in time forever.

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, and A Flag for Juneteenth exquisitely conveys this day’s spirit of jubilation and freedom.

—Alice Cary

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Your Next Great Read

FEBRUARY 2023 #1

PICK

Big Swiss: A Novel

By Jen Beagin

(Scribner, 9781982153083, $27, Feb. 7, Fiction)

“Big Swiss is an I-can’t-stop-thinkingabout-this kind of book. When I first read the concept, I was shocked, but intrigued. Now that I’ve read the book, I want everyone else to share in my cringing, laughing, and heart palpitations.”

—Lily Sadighmehr, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA

How to Sell a Haunted House: A Novel

By Grady Hendrix

(Berkley, 9780593201268, $28, Jan. 17, Horror)

“Imagine returning to the hometown you couldn’t wait to leave, then staying in a haunted house while you’re there. Now imagine horror, humor, and entirely believable characters. Grady Hendrix does it best. I’m crazy about this book!”

—Robert Hawthorn, Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books, Mendocino, CA

Secretly Yours: A Novel

By Tessa Bailey

(Avon, 9780063238985, $17.99, paperback, Feb. 7, Romance)

“Get ready to dive into a new favorite book! Chaos meets order and grumpy meets sunshine in this adorable romcom full of steamy scenes, mental health rep, secret love letters, and the occasional petty crime. Secretly Yours is a delight!”

— Bridey Morris, R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT

Exiles: A Novel

By Jane Harper

(Flatiron Books, 9781250235350, $27.99, Jan. 31, Mystery)

“What do you look for in a mystery?

I look for Jane Harper’s name under the title. Detective Aaron Falk returns in Exiles, set in lush Australian wine country; despite his ‘clues,’ you’ll not

guess the ending!”

—Mary Hembree, House of Books, Kent, CT

Don’t Fear the Reaper

By Stephen Graham Jones

(Gallery/Saga Press, 9781982186593, $27.99, Feb. 7, Horror)

“Not just a worthy sequel to My Heart is a Chainsaw, but one that, after you’ve read it, you can’t imagine the first book without. Jones has a true gift — he can make you shudder in horror and tear up in the same sentence.”

—Olivia Morris, Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA

Pandora

By Susan Stokes-Chapman (Harper Perennial, 9780063280021, $17, paperback, Jan. 17, Historical Fiction)

“Pandora is the best kind of historical novel, filled with mystery, a cursed artifact, dashing academics, and a hint of romance. This novel will appeal equally to readers of myth and mystery.”

—Keith Glaeske, East City Bookshop, Washington, DC

Georgie, All Along

By Kate Clayborn

(Kensington, 9781496737298, $16.95, paperback, Jan. 24, Romance)

“Kate Clayborn always delivers, and Georgie, All Along is no different. The writing is engrossing and diverting and it’s impossible not to love Georgie as she finds herself and her way. This is an excellent winter read to curl up with.”

—Preet Singh, Eagle Eye Book Shop, Decatur, GA

Brutes: A Novel

By Dizz Tate

(Catapult, 9781646221677, $27, Feb. 7, Fiction)

“In her outstanding debut, Dizz Tate has created a searing look at a group of young friends, the Brutes, who move as one and disrupt as they go. Set in Florida and traveling across time, Brutes illustrates childhood devoid of innocence.”

—Caitlin Baker, Island Books, Mercer Island, WA

Maame: A Novel

By Jessica George

(St. Martin’s Press, 9781250282521, $27.99, Jan. 31, Fiction)

“Maame is a deeply moving story about growing up, moving on, grief, and tradition. Jessica George has created a deeply funny and tragic protagonist, and perfectly conveys the challenges of a twenty-five-year-old navigating modern life.”

—Kyle Churman, Werner Books, Erie, PA

The Guest Lecture: A Novel

By Martin Riker

(Grove Press, Black Cat, 9780802160416, $17, paperback, Fiction)

“Riker’s smart and offbeat story takes place over one night, as a newly-unemployed economics professor mulls over a lecture she’s about to give and explores her consciousness as though wandering through her own house. Funny and unique.”

—Erika VanDam, RoscoeBooks, Chicago, IL

To purchase and find more recommendations visit your local independent bookstores or IndieBound.org.

Copyright 2023 American Booksellers Association