May 2022 BookPage by BookPage

MAY 2022

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

E M I LY H E N R Y The bestselling author of Beach Read reveals how her latest book is an ode to the big-city career woman M O T H E R ’ S D AY 7 books for adults and children honor the prismatic experiences of motherhood

MAJOR NEW RELEASES FROM

Jennifer Egan, Casey McQuiston, Kim Stanley Robinson

HERNAN DIAZ The Pulitzer Prize finalist treats historical fiction fans to a beautifully composed masterpiece in Trust.

Adventurous Canadian mountain romance.

Heartfelt post-Civil War cowboy romance.

A HEALER’S PROMISE BY MISTY M. BELLER

TO TAME A COWBOY BY JODY HEDLUND

B R I D E S O F L AU R E N T # 2

C O L O R A D O C OW B OY S # 3

May 3 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3844-4

May 3 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3974-8

May 3 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3641-9

May 3 | $15.99 | 978-0-7642-3805-5

12 Must-Read Novels for Historical Fiction Lovers

Sweeping Colonial and Gilded Age time-travel tale. WHEN THE DAY COMES BY GABRIELLE MEYER

Dramatic Gilded Age novel that highlights the TransSiberian Railroad.

TIMELESS #1

WRITTEN ON THE WIND BY ELIZABETH CAMDEN

Swoon-worthy cowboy romance set in nineteenth century Texas.

A TIME TO BLOOM BY LAURAINE SNELLING

IN HONOR’S DEFENSE BY KAREN WITEMEYER

LE A H ’ S GA R DEN # 2

H A NGER’ S HOR SE MEN # 3

Vivid biblical fiction from the sister of the Apostle Paul’s perspective. THE APOSTLE’S SISTER BY ANGELA HUNT

Tender WWII-era romance set in Toronto. A FEELING OF HOME BY SUSAN ANNE MASON

San Marcial, Mexico comes to life in this sweet tale. BEYOND THE DESERT SANDS BY TRACIE PETERSON

R EDE MP T ION ’ S LIGH T # 3

L OV E O N T H E S A N TA F E

June 7 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3515-3 W HEN HOPE CA LLS # 3

July 5 | $15.99 | 978-0-7642-3959-5

July 5 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3732-4

J E R U S A L E M R OA D # 4

Charming companion novel to the Hallmark TV show, When Hope Calls. UNFAILING LOVE BY JANETTE OKE AND LAUREL OKE LOGAN

August 2 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3880-2

June 7 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3209-1

June 7 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3572-6

Captivating Western migration story in postCivil War Nebraska.

July 5 | $15.99 | 978-0-7642-3521-4

June 7 | $16.99 | 978-0-7642-3387-6

T H E B L AC K S T O N E L E G AC Y # 2

Humorous romance set in the American West. INVENTIONS OF THE HEART BY MARY CONNEALY T H E LU M BER BA RON ’ S DAU G H T E R S # 2

Inspiring dual-time story split between present day Atlanta and the WWII home front. BY WAY OF THE MOONLIGHT BY ELIZABETH MUSSER

A division of Baker Publishing Group | bethanyhouse.com

BookPage

MAY 2022

features shelf life | mary laura philpott. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

feature | mother’s day picture books . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

The beloved memoirist reflects on her life among the stacks

Mom, Mommy, Mama and other words for love

behind the book | a.j. jacobs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

meet | frank morrison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Meet the author-illustrator of Kick Push

It’s all fun and games until you have to sit down and write

feature | health care. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 A more humane benchmark for patients and providers

reviews

feature | mother’s day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

True stories about the complicated women we call mom

nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

feature | aviation history. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

young adult. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Meet the flight attendants who fought for their rights

behind the book | emily henry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The Beach Read author celebrates the “Big City Woman”

feature | nice boys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

children’s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

columns book clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Warm, gentle rom-com heroes are the men of the hour

lifestyles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

feature | horror. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

well read. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

These two books will absolutely terrify you

q&a | claudia gray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Pride, prejudice—and murder

romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

cover story | hernan diaz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

the hold list . . . . . . . . . . 14

The Pulitzer Prize finalist investigates the framed narrative

sci-fi & fantasy. . . . . . . . 15

interview | jennifer egan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

whodunit . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

The author returns to A Visit From the Goon Squad

q&a | hanna alkaf. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The world of competitive Scrabble takes a deadly turn

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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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shelf life | mary laura philpott © HEIDI ROSS

Mary Laura Philpott never met a bookstore she didn’t like The bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink reflects on her life among the stacks. Author Mary Laura Philpott has crafted another witty, heartfelt memoir-in-essays with Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives. To celebrate its release, we asked Philpott a few questions about her favorite bookstores and libraries, both real and imagined. What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store? I go right to that front table to check out new fiction and nonfiction. I’m also a sucker for a good display. It’s fun to see what booksellers are showcasing on a given day.

bookstore. I can’t even remember what city I was in, but I had just gotten off a plane and checked my email. A newspaper editor had asked if I could write about a book, but the deadline was going to be tight. I knew if I could get the book in my hands before I got on my connecting flight, I could use my airborne time wisely and start working on it. So I dashed into a Hudson Booksellers shop and explained all this in a breathless and verbose and probably nonsensical way. The staffer knew exactly the book I was talking about. She also helped me find a new travel charger for my phone, because I realized I’d left mine in a hotel. I love airport bookstores!

Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of Bomb Shelter.

shop I haven’t seen before. Thankfully my children are used to this by now, so no one balks when we’re on vacation and I make everybody detour into a book spot.

Do you visit bookstores How do you organize your own personal differently after having library? Not alphabetically or by genre or color. I shelve worked for Parnassus in Nashville? books together that have something thematic I pay more attention to Do you have a favorite in common or that I feel would be friends. the shelf-talkers—the litlibrary from literature? For example, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station tle cards on which book I can’t stop thinking Eleven is next to Karen Thompson Walker’s about the virtual library sellers write up their books, which are next to Ling Ma’s Severance. in Anthony Doerr ’s favorite reads. That’s All the end-of-the-world gals have their own H Bomb Shelter partly because I often Cloud Cuckoo Land. One little neighborhood. Atria, $27, 9781982160784 know the people writing of the plotlines involves them! But I also know a teenage girl all alone What’s the last thing you bought at your local Memoir on a spaceship; the idea now how hard booksellers bookstore? I marked the publication date of Taylor Harris’ work every day, and I know it takes extra time is that she was part of a mission to populate a to come up with a concise blurb that somehow distant planet after Earth became uninhabitmemoir, This Boy We Made, on my calendar and conveys what they love about a book. Same goes able, but somehow she ended up as the only went to buy it the day it came out. for librarians. A lot of librarians and booksellers one alive on the vessel. are really good writers! She has a headset she Bookstore cats or “I love any bookstore can put on to enter a bookstore dogs? animal. Give me bookstore I’m more likely to pet Tell us about your favorite library from when library where she can you were a child. find any book ever bookstore dog than a lizards, bookstore chickens, abookstore written, plus video I went to an elementary school for a few years that cat because archives of human held chapel services in the mornings, and for the I’m allergic to cats, bookstore goats!” littlest kids the services were conducted in the history. There’s more but I like the cats just library. We sat cross-legged on the floor in rows. to the story about the importance of reading as much. I love any bookstore animal. Give me It was my favorite room of the school, but it drove and the evolving life of literature from generbookstore lizards, bookstore chickens, bookme crazy to be expected to concentrate on singing ation to generation, but I don’t want to spoil store goats! hymns when all the books were RIGHT THERE. anything. Everyone should read this book; it’s a big, strange, amazing masterpiece. What is your ideal bookstore-browsing snack? While writing your books, has there ever been Oh, I can’t eat in a bookstore—I’m too nervous about spilling things, and I need my hands free a librarian or bookseller who was especially Do you have a “bucket list” of bookstores and helpful? libraries you’d love to visit but haven’t yet? for making book piles—but I love a hot beverage Oh my goodness, so many! The first thing that Not a list, per se—more of an open YES to every once I’m home and settled on the sofa with my new reads. comes to mind is actually from an airport opportunity I get to see a beautiful library or

book clubs

by julie hale

Short, sharp and sweet In Love in Color: Mythical Tales From Around the World, Retold (William Morrow, $16.99, 9780063078505), British Nigerian author Bolu Babalola re-envisions traditional love stories from West Africa, the Middle East and Greece with a focus on empowered female characters. In “Nefertiti,” Babalola casts the famed Egyptian ruler as a defender of women, while in “Osun,” she draws upon a Yoruba folktale to tell the story of a love triangle. Babalola displays wonderful range throughout this inventive collection, and reading groups will enjoy discussing topics like the nature of desire and traditional notions of love and romance. Yoon Choi explores the Korean American experience and the complexities of connection in her beautifully crafted collection, Skinship (Vintage, $17, 9780593311455). “First Language” is the story of Sae-ri, who struggles to make her arranged marriage a success while dealing with a difficult son. In “The Art of ” Mo-sae Providing the pleasures of large- Losing, grapples with the effects of scale fiction in miniature, these A l z h e i m e r ’s story collections offer fresh disease. In this assured debut, perspectives on relationships, Choi investirace and the human condition. gates what it means to be an immigrant, writing with compassion and wisdom throughout. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life (Random House, $18.99, 9781984856036), George Saunders digs into seven classic stories—all included in the book—by Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and other greats, integrating insights from his graduate course on Russian literature along the way. As he unpacks the meaning of each story, Saunders examines the mechanics of narrative and considers what makes a work of short fiction succeed. His discerning study of the form will appeal to readers and writers alike. The Office of Historical Corrections (Riverhead, $17, 9780593189450), Danielle Evans’ powerful second collection, explores racial dynamics and the difficulty of connection in contemporary culture. “Alcatraz” is a poignant depiction of a family devastated by the wrongful conviction of a relative. In “Boys Go to Jupiter,” Claire, a white college student, faces fallout when she’s photographed in a Confederate flag bikini and the picture is shared online. Evans lays bare the loneliness and displacement that so often define modern existence, setting up book clubs for meaningful conversations surrounding identity and loss.

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

BOOK CLUB READ S F OR SP RING COVER STORY by Susan Rigetti Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” and Hulu’s “The Dropout” meets Catch Me If You Can , a captivating novel about an ambitious young women who gets trapped in a charismatic con artist’s scam.

GIRLS OF FLIGHT CITY by Lorraine Heath Inspired by true events, a breathtaking WWII historical novel about the brave American women who trained the British Royal Air Force, by New York Times bestselling author Lorraine Heath.

THE CARETAKERS by Amanda Bestor-Siegal “ Riveting...Bestor-Siegal had me at Paris and she never let go. The Caretakers is extraordinary.” —LAURA DAVE, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me

LOST AND FOUND IN PARIS by Lian Dolan “ Lost And Found In Paris sparkles like the City of Light itself and will have you flipping the pages quickly as you’re drawn deeply into its mysterious world of art, intrigue, and redemption.” —KRISTIN HARMEL New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Names

t @Morrow_PB

t @bookclubgirl

f William Morrow I BookClubGirl

THE MISSING PIECE It was all fun and games for puzzle nerd A.J. Jacobs— until he had to actually sit down and write his latest book.

behind the book | a.j. jacobs

I was only six months late turning in The But this book on puzzles was on another level. Puzzler to my publisher. I say “only” because, The research for this one was just too alluring, honestly, I’m shocked I finished writing this like brain candy. I embarked on this puzzle book after spending several months working book at all. This is for two reasons. First, like most writers, on another book, about the post-truth era, and finding it slow going. So my agent, who knows I hate writing. By which I mean, the actual act of I’m a puzzle-head, suggested I write about my writing: sitting in a room alone, hunched over passion, and my editor at Crown kindly let me the keyboard, struggling through sentence after switch topics. sentence with no feedback for weeks or months. I much prefer, as Dorothy Parker quipped, havImmediately, I was joyfully overwhelmed. I went down hundreds of rabbit holes. I even ing written. Second, I love the subject matter of my book. went down a rabbit hole about the phrase “rabThis may not seem like a bit holes,” which is from Lewis problem at first glance, but it Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Visit BookPage.com to read our turned out to be a huge chalWonderland, a book that constarred review of The Puzzler. lenge. The trouble was that I tains dozens of puzzles. For loved the topic too much. my chapter on secret codes, eyes sparkle—or if they’re busy looking at their I spent three days trying to phones. I love the immediacy of it. During the I’ve been a puzzle nerd initial writing phase, though, months often go since childhood, when I’d decipher the encoded teenage by before I get any response. spend my days poring over diary of legendary psycholoSo how’d I finally buckle down and write the Games magazine and drawgist Abraham Maslow. That darn thing? I give credit to puzzles. ended up resulting in about ing huge pencil mazes that filled up my living room. five words in the final book. A few months into writing The Puzzler, I had When I decided to write a Then I started researcha conceptual breakthrough: What if I reframed book on the history, joy and ing a chapter on Sudoku and the act of writing? Instead of seeing it as a chore science of puzzles, it meant other Japanese grid-based to finish, what if I saw the act of writing itself as my research would consist a puzzle? When I had to arrange the chapters, I puzzles. The problem is, there of, in part, doing puzzles all are many, many variations on decided to see them as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, day—crosswords, Sudoku, Sudoku—hundreds of them, and this was empowering. It was, if not fun, at jigsaws, mazes, logic puzleast not torture. with names like “Moon or Sun” or “Two Not Touch.” I zles. I’d start my morning of As I solved each writing problem, I focused convinced myself I should “work” by doing a crossword on the aha! moment and learned to relish it. H The Puzzler puzzle. But after finishing one try them all out for the sake Consider my chapter on secret codes, for examCrown, $28, 9780593136713 from the Wall Street Journal, of comprehensiveness. That ple. Much of it is devoted to a sculpture on the I’d tell myself, “Well, I should took days out of my schedule. grounds of the CIA’s headquarters, part of what Arts & Culture probably do the crossword It was as if I were a food writer is considered one of the hardest unsolved puzfrom New York Magazine too. It’s research, zles in the world. (The sculpture itself contains doing an article about spaghetti and had conafter all!” After I finished that, I’d say, “Maybe I vinced myself I had to try every form of pasta a secret code that not even the CIA has cracked.) should also do the crossword from The Week.” ever created, from tagliatelle to pappardelle. “Well,” I thought, “what if I wrote this chapter This went on for hours every day. But I couldn’t help myself. I love the feeling of as if it were a spy thriller?” Puzzle solved. I got my dopamine hit. Was this useful research that would yield doing puzzles. I love the aha! moment, that rush insightful passages in my book? No. But I’m a of dopamine, when you solve it. I love that feelAnd it turns out, reframing problems as ing of certainty in this increaspuzzle addict, and I’m good at self-delusion. So puzzles became one of the big ingly uncertain world: There is “Like most writers, themes of The Puzzler. I’m I’d continue my “research.” an advocate of what I call the The thing is, I’ve always preferred researching a right answer, and I’m going I hate writing.” my books to writing them. As a nonfiction writer to find it! Puzzle Mindset. Instead of seewhose mission is to immerse myself in my topI knew I had to eventually distill all this ing the world as a series of hard-to-win battles, ics, I like nothing better than diving deep into a research into a written text, but I dreaded it. I I try to view it as a puzzle—to see the world subject. I wrote about religion in a book called find the writing part lonely, depressing even. As through the eyes of an engineer, not a warrior. The Year of Living Biblically, which is exactly James Joyce said, “Writing in English is the most Even using the word puzzle can help. When I what it sounds like. I spent a year following all ingenious torture ever devised for sins commithear about the climate crisis, I want to curl up in the rules of the Bible as literally as possible, from ted in previous lives.” a fetal position. But if I think about the climate puzzle, I feel motivated to find solutions. obeying the Ten Commandments to growing a Partly, the pain is due to the lack of feedhuge Moses-like beard. The research was a joy; back. After having written, I love to give talks Without the Puzzle Mindset, this book would I relished learning about every obscure part of at bookstores, where I can see the audience’s still only be about 10% written—if that. the Bible. —A.J. Jacobs faces. I can see if they’re laughing or if their

lifestyles

by susannah felts

H Wild Witchcraft In Wild Witchcraft: Folk Herbalism, Garden Magic, and Foraging for Spells, Rituals, and Remedies (Simon Element, $17.99, 9781982185626), North Carolina-based forager-witch Rebecca Beyer provides a wellresearched history of European witchcraft and American folk healing practices, followed by a solid introduction to growing and foraging healing herbs. Readers learn how to use herbs in rituals and remedies and in harmony with the Wheel of the Year, a series of seasonal observances including the fall and spring equinoxes. Beyer covers much ground efficiently and makes a strong case for why these practices are especially necessary now. Amid rapid and cataclysmic climate change, “inspiring people to see value in plants and ecosystems can help to preserve them,” she writes, and “combat the total divorce of humans from their fellow animal, vegetable, and mineral kin.”

T R AV E L W I T H U S THIS SUMMER

Booze & Vinyl 2 During the COVID-19 pandemic, vinyl record sales outnumbered those of CDs for the first time since the 1980s. This vinyl renaissance presents a timely backdrop for Booze & Vinyl 2 (Running Press, $26, 9780762475223), which builds on the genius of sisterand-brother duo André and Tenaya Darlington’s 2018 volume of album and craft cocktail pairings, Booze & Vinyl. How about a glow-in-the-dark vodka tonic paired with Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine or a moonshinebased sipper with Van Morrison’s Moondance? Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstong get a “Silver Fizz” to match Ella’s “silvery voice,” and citrus meets prosecco and brandy for two drinks inspired by Beyoncé’s Lemonade. There are even a few themed appetizers, such as “Deeez Nuuuts” for munching while spinning Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. The design freak in me loves how the book’s aesthetic shifts with each album, each turn of the page setting a vibe. Dim the lights, drop the needle and sip to the sounds.

My America In My America: Recipes From a Young Black Chef (Knopf, $35, 9780525659600), a follow-up to his 2019 memoir, Notes From a Young Black Chef, James Beard Award winner Kwame Onwuachi filters the cuisine of the African diaspora through the lens of his family, his travels and peripatetic childhood, and the journeys of his ancestors. As Onwuachi notes, a close look at the cuisines of the American South, the Caribbean and Nigeria reveals many common threads and flavor echoes—from the jambalaya of Louisiana to the jollof of Nigeria. Black food tells a story—from groundnut stew and callaloo to crawfish pie and baby back ribs—and the recipes collected here tell it powerfully.

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

feature | health care

Health care with heart The personal stories in these nonfiction books set a more humane benchmark for patients and providers. Theresa Brown and Anita Hannig paint compassionate pictures of how we and our doctors could approach illness and death with more empathy, honesty and courage. Healing (Algonquin, $27.95, 9781643750699) is Theresa Brown’s searingly honest and deeply personal account of her experiences as a breast cancer patient. As a former oncology and hospice nurse, Brown knew that patients often got a raw deal, but only after her own diagnosis did she realize how needlessly cruel that deal could be. Brown faced a host of necessary evils during her treatment, including invasive diagnostic procedures, painful surgeries and debilitating side effects from chemotherapy. But in a series of devastating vignettes, she also details the many unnecessary evils she endured in a system that favors profit over the needs of the patient: Diagnoses were delayed, questions left unanswered, test results undelivered. She was even forced to negotiate byzantine regulations on her own because her health care providers were stretched too thin to ensure that these basic duties were fulfilled. Even though Brown was a seasoned health professional with extensive knowledge and professional contacts, she had to fight to be treated humanely. Healing is both a moving memoir and a clarion call to action. When health care becomes a profit-making industry, dominated by hedge funds and corporate interests, we all lose. Instead, Brown argues, we must return to a system where meeting the patient’s needs—physical, emotional and social—is the priority.

In The Day I Die (Sourcebooks, $27.99, 9781728244914), anthropologist Anita Hannig describes how, after becoming interested in Oregon’s assisted dying law, she embedded herself in a volunteer group that helps terminally ill patients take advantage of the law. Her case studies of patients who have enough luck and resources to meet the demands of the statute demonstrate that assisted death can be, paradoxically, life- affirming. Autonomy can be restored to patients who have long been at the mercy of their diseases, and knowing when one will die can be an opportunity for reconciliation, reunion and gratitude. But the law can also be horrid. It is reasonable to have strict conditions surrounding assisted dying to ensure that the decision to end one’s life is freely made. But those conditions can have devastating effects upon patients who cannot meet the requirements. Patients with ALS, for example, might lose their ability to communicate their assent before the deadline. Advanced Alzheimer’s patients are categorically denied access to assisted dying because they have lost the ability to fully understand their decision. In her introduction, Hannig acknowledges the anthropologist’s dilemma: The act of observation is an imperfect tool for research, since it can change both the observer and the observed. However, it can also change the reader, since it is impossible to read Hannig’s book without being moved. The Day I Die will make you reconsider how dying could and should be. —Deborah Mason

well read

by robert weibezahl

The High Sierra Much of Kim Stanley Robinson’s prodigious science fiction has ecological underpinnings—so it comes as no surprise that the oft-decorated writer has a reallife passion for wilderness. More specifically, Robinson loves the Sierra Nevada, the geological backbone of California, where he has lived most of his life. In The High Sierra (Little, Brown, $40, 9780316593014), a capacious and truly original work of nonfiction, Robinson expresses his enduring appreciation for these mountains and the time he has spent there. A mashup of travelogue, geology lesson, hiking guide, history and meditation, all wrapped in a revealing and personal memoir (and illustrated with scores of gorgeous color photographs and illustrations), the book is, in essence, an exuberant celebration of finding purpose in nature. The Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award-winning writer first visited the Sierra as a college student almost 50 years ago, and since then he has made more than a hundred return visits, spending untold hours in its eternal landscape. There have been group excurThe venerable sci-fi writer sions and solo treks shares his lifelong devotion in every season. In his hippie days, he even to hiking the high Sierra in a enhanced the mounhigh by dropping kaleidoscopic love letter to tain acid. Accounts of these experiences, somea majestic landscape. times risky, sometimes funny, but always deeply meaningful, give shape to Robinson’s larger narrative. The memories are intercut and augmented by chapters delineated by categories such as geology, Sierra people, routes and moments of being. These disparate chapters coalesce into a surprisingly seamless narrative that conveys the full measure of Robinson’s deep affection for the place and its past, as well as its significance to him personally. Robinson’s writing is companionable and welcoming, never dry or preachy, as any field guide worth its salt should be. There is unconventional humor—he classifies place names as the good, the bad and the ugly, for instance, and his chapters on fish, frogs and bighorn sheep are all grouped under “Sierra People”—but cases of appalling human behaviors, past and present, are never glossed over. Robinson introduces the usual suspects in the history of the Sierra— John Muir, Clarence King—but devotes equal attention to less familiar faces. He taps into the work of other Sierra-loving writers, too, including early feminist Mary Austin and the poet Gary Snyder, who is Robinson’s friend and mentor. He even shares some of his own youthful, heartfelt poetry, composed amid the elation of the mountain terrain. Although Robinson’s mountaineering focus is the Sierra, he does take readers on brief forays into the Swiss Alps (including an account of his ascent of the Matterhorn). But The High Sierra should not be narrowly viewed as a book only for the die-hard outdoorsperson. Robinson’s greater project, at which he succeeds splendidly, is to share the magic of his personal happy place, to promote not only its admiration but also its preservation. When asked why this is a lifelong project of his, Robinson says there is no satisfactory answer, except to pose a question of his own: Why live?

Robert Weibezahl is a publishing industry veteran, playwright and novelist. Each month, he takes an in-depth look at a recent book of literary significance.

audio

In the Shadow of the Mountain In Silvia Vasquez-Lavado’s immersive, inspiring memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountain (Macmillan Audio, 15.5 hours), scenes from her life—including her childhood in Peru, her sexual abuse by a trusted adult and her later estrangement from her mother following her coming out as a lesbian—are interspersed with scenes from a climb on Mount Everest, where she’s accompanied by fellow sexual violence survivors who, like the author, have found healing and empowerment through physical challenges. Through her narration, Vasquez-Lavado, whose first language is Spanish, conveys a lifetime of warmth, humor and steely determination. —Norah Piehl

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One Italian Summer After the death of her mother, Katy undertakes a pilgrimage to Italy’s Amalfi Coast in bestselling author Rebecca Serle’s stirring novel One Italian Summer (Simon & Schuster audio, 6.5 hours). “Gilmore Girls” actor Lauren Graham brings sincere tenderness to her narration of this heartwarming tale, capturing Katy’s grief through deliberate pacing and a voice that often breaks with emotion. —Maya Fleischmann

Lost & Found Like a game of hide-and-seek, Kathryn Schulz’s memoir is both whimsical and a little terrifying. In three sections, titled “Lose,” “Find” and “And,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning author combines etymology, personal narrative, philosophy and even a meteorite. But the heart of Lost & Found (Random House Audio, 7.5 hours) is Schulz’s focus on herself, the father she loses and the partner she finds. She reads her own audiobook, delivered with a slight lisp and certain breathlessness, and nearly every sentence comes through in a meditative, soothing cadence. —Mari Carlson

Devil House Devil House (Macmillan Audio, 11.5 hours) is bestselling author John Darnielle’s most bizarre novel to date. A singer-songwriter for the Mountain Goats, Darnielle brings a lyrical, literary tone to a novel that’s part crime, part horror and wholly original. —G. Robert Frazier

With Love From London In bestselling author Sarah Jio’s novel With Love From London (Random House Audio, 11.5 hours), a recently divorced Seattle librarian named Valentina heads to London to settle the estate of her late, estranged mother, Eloise. Voice actors Brittany Pressley and Gabrielle Glaister animate daughter and mother with equal warmth and exuberance, leading listeners into a cozy world that’s alive with intrigue and the fellowship of book lovers. —Mari Carlson

MACMILLAN AUDIO 9

feature | mother’s day

Multifaceted mothers Three nonfiction books consider the complicated women we call mom and their invaluable work as parents. In these books, mothers aren’t saints or villains; they’re human beings doing their best to make a better world.

H Tasha To say that novelist Brian Morton’s mother, Tasha, was “a woman of stubborn energy” is an understatement; from start to finish, she was a bona fide contrarian. For instance, after agreeing to a trial stay at an assisted living residence in New Jersey, she did an about-face on move-in day. “I’m not going in there,” she said. “Take me home instead. Or take me to the city dump. Just dump me with the chicken bones.” Refusing to step inside, she simply walked away, and Morton later found her sitting on someone’s porch, eating a banana. Such are the myriad confrontations Morton describes in his hilarious yet tender memoir, Tasha (Avid Reader, $28, 9781982178932). He had spent much of his life trying to maintain distance from his mother, whose concept of boundaries could generously be described as “loose.” However, once her health began to fail in 2010, Morton knew he had no choice but to step in. At the age of 60, Morton was already juggling the demands of both his career and his family, including two sons in middle school. He is wonderfully honest about his hesitation to take on additional responsibilities for a parent. He’s also careful to paint a complete picture of his mother’s life, including her educational activism as a pioneering elementary school teacher. When Tasha’s husband suddenly died in 1984, she retired and sank into a despondency that she never overcame. Hoarding ensued, and in one memorable scene, Morton can’t convince his mother to throw away even one of five swizzle sticks—the mere tip of a true iceberg. Morton excels at bringing his novelist’s eye to many such standoffs. As he addresses the harsh realities of taking away a parent’s independence, trying to make that parent happy and trying (and failing) to procure adequate care, his superb storytelling skills add a helpful dose of levity. As a result, Tasha takes a difficult topic and transforms it into a soulful and often funny memoir about spirited mothers, refreshingly told from a son’s point of view. —Alice Cary

Essential Labor Consider all the universal mundanities of caregiving: the endless feedings, diaper changes, cleanups, sleepless nights and confining days, not to mention all the laundry. What if, with the help of journalist Angela Garbes (Like a Mother), we could radically reconsider the incredible value of this work? In Essential Labor (Harper Wave, $25.99, 9780062937360), Garbes swoops from the universal to the personal to the downright intimate, offering an all-encompassing vision of a more socially and economically just way of caring for one another that would improve our individual and collective lives. Garbes serves up her own experiences as a first-generation Filipina, daughter, wife and mother. She calls Part I of Essential Labor “A Personal History of Mothering in America” and uses it to delineate her social relationship to motherhood, including her own family’s origins in the U.S.,

beginning when her parents emigrated from the Philippines in 1970. Part II, “Exploring Mothering as Social Change,” expands into the kinds of activism that mothering can and should inspire to create a more equitable world. At the same time that workplaces gave way to home “offices” during the COVID-19 pandemic, nursing homes became off-limits, schools and child care centers closed, and families were left with the work of finding other ways of caring for young people, elderly people and themselves. The myth of a self-sustaining family was no longer viable, Garbes observes; mothering needed the support of communities and multiple generations. In the process, caretaking was revealed as “some of the only truly essential work humans do.” There is a great deal to digest here, and Garbes’ analyses will certainly resonate with people whose caregiving responsibilities increased during the pandemic. Yet by identifying the inherent power of mothering as a force for change, Garbes makes her message relevant to a broader audience. Indeed, as Essential Labor makes clear, all our fates are intertwined. —Priscilla Kipp

H Where the Children Take Us When Zain E. Asher was 5, her father was touring his Nigerian homeland with his 11-year-old son, Chiwetel. Not long before they were expected home in London, Asher’s pregnant mother, Obiajulu, received a life-changing phone call: The pair had been in a car accident, and only one had survived. “There is tragedy in my story, but my story is not a tragedy,” Asher writes. Throughout Where the Children Take Us (Amistad, $27.99, 9780063048836), she is a master storyteller, interweaving her parents’ life stories with her own upbringing. Thoughtful emotion and striking immediacy fill every scene, making for a mesmerizing read from start to finish. After Obiajulu learned that her husband had died, her life’s work became ensuring her children’s success. She began a family book club, requiring each child to read and discuss a book every week. She plastered their walls with inspirational photos of “uplifters”—successful Black people, especially Nigerians. When 9-year-old Asher experienced racism from her peers, her mother sent Asher to live with relatives in Nigeria for two years. There, she had to walk a mile to a river to fetch water for her family, and electricity was rare. As Asher reminisces, “Nigeria, for all its faults, was the perfect place to toughen me up. . . . Survive in Nigeria for ten years and you can survive anything. Thrive in Nigeria and you can change the world.” Thanks to Obiajulu’s determination, Asher and her siblings are doing just that. Asher is a news anchor for CNN International. Her sister is a physician; her oldest brother, an entrepreneur. And Chiwetel Ejiofor is an actor who received an Oscar nomination for his role in 12 Years a Slave. It’s important to note that Obiajulu, for all her single-minded focus on achieving excellence, doesn’t come off as overbearing. She empowered her children to believe in themselves and focus on personal achievement, not competition. Where the Children Take Us is an enlightening and entertaining read that will likely challenge readers’ views on child rearing. —Alice Cary

feature | aviation history

Women take wing Soar into a bygone era of air travel and discover the complex, exciting lives of flight attendants. A veteran travel journalist and a beloved novelist offer insight into the sexism women faced in the early decades of commercial flight, as seen through the eyes of the women who lived it. In The Great Stewardess Rebellion (Doubleday, $30, 9780385546454), journalist Nell McShane Wulfhart recounts the midcentury fight to overturn airlines’ sexist requirements for flight attendants. In the 1960s, stewardesses were often fired after their 32nd birthdays, or upon marriage, or upon becoming pregnant—whichever came first. Their employment was dependent on regular weigh-ins, and they were required to meet other physical expectations, too, such as cutting their hair to their employer’s standard or wearing gloves while in uniform. Wulfhart traces flight attendants’ union and legal battles throughout the 1960s and ’70s, focusing on two women whose experiences help make the political personal. Patt Gibbs and Tommie Hutto became American Airlines flight attendants as young women and, once they saw how poorly they were treated, got involved in union work—first as adversaries, then as passionate advocates for better pay and fewer discriminatory rules. Wulfhart tells the story of airline unions through Gibbs’ and Hutto’s experiences while weaving in the tales of dozens of other bold women—such as Sonia Pressman, who fought for airline industry change as an attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Cheryl Stewart and Sharon Dunn, Black flight attendants who challenged their colleagues’ racism. With stylish flair,

The Great Stewardess Rebellion explores the nuances of these spirited women and the sexism they battled. Ann Hood (The Book That Matters Most) is now a bestselling novelist, but in the late 1970s and early ’80s, she was a TWA flight attendant. She always wanted to write, but first she wanted to see the world beyond her Rhode Island home. Hood’s memoir, Fly Girl (Norton, $26.95, 9781324006237), brims with details and personal anecdotes that air travel buffs will love. She recounts both happy memories of the glamorous days of flying and the horrifying ways that misogyny affected her workplace, including unwanted advances from badly behaved passengers. However, as the industry changed in the 1980s, Hood experienced furloughs and had to take jobs with less affluent airlines, bouncing from plane to plane. Through all the ups and downs, jet lag was her normal. With time, Hood’s self- confidence grew, with regard to both her ability as a flight attendant and her understanding of people and cultures. She began to use her time in the jump seat to write, and steadily she made her way toward the writer’s life she’d always dreamed of. “Life unfolds on airplanes,” Hood writes. “People are flying to funerals and weddings, they are on their honeymoon or leaving a partner, they are carrying a newborn on their first flight to meet grandparents or taking a kid to college or on their way to adopt a baby. And they fall in love.” In Fly Girl, Hood paints a first-class portrait of chasing your dreams and coming of age in the sky. —Carla Jean Whitley

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romance

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by christie ridgway

H Never a Duke In Never a Duke (Forever, $8.99, 9781538706985) by Grace Burrowes, a determined lady teams up with an almost-gentleman to search for women who have gone missing in Regency London. Ned Wentworth, who was adopted into a wealthy ducal family as a child, is intrigued to receive a note asking for aid from Lady Rosalind Kinwood, known for her dedication to charitable causes. Rosalind’s beauty and her fear for her missing lady’s maid calls to him, and a slow-burn romance full of understated yet heart-aching yearning begins. Burrowes’ writing style evokes classic Regency romance with its witty repartee, and tortured-yet-tender Ned is an unforgettable hero who learns to value himself as much as those around him do. Fans will revel in glimpses of past couples from Burrowes’ Rogues to Riches series and feel delighted that the worthy Ned has found love at last. Sign up for our romance newsletter at BookPage.com/newsletters.

Mad for a Mate

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MaryJanice Davidson pens a furiously paced, full-of-fun shifter romance in Mad for a Mate (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $8.99, 9781492697077). Magnus Berne, a brown were bear of Scottish extraction, is surprised when Verity Lane washes up on the beach of his private island. He’s fascinated to learn she’s a squib—a werecreature that cannot shift—and is part of a club that takes dangerous dares to prove their worth. When fellow club members begin dying, Magnus worries about Verity, and though usually reclusive, he opens himself up to her world and heart. Nimbleminded readers will delight in Davidson’s almost stream-of-consciousness style and occasional authorial interjections. She never spoon-feeds readers the rules of her paranormal world, which keeps the pace brisk and suits Mad for a Mate’s all-around quirkiness.

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Amanda Quick returns to the glamorous 1930s resort town of Burning Cove, California, in When She Dreams (Berkley, $28, 9780593337783). Maggie Lodge resolves to discover who is blackmailing her employer, a popular advice columnist. She travels to a conference in Burning Cove along with her newly hired PI, Sam Sage. The conference’s subject is also one of Maggie’s personal interests: lucid dreaming, a state in which dreams act as a conduit to psychic abilities. After a conference attendee’s suspicious death, the pair realize this might be more than a case of simple blackmail. Maggie’s can-do attitude is the perfect complement to Sam’s world-weariness. Love is an unexpected delight for both of them, but longtime fans will not be surprised by Quick’s imagination and mastery of storytelling.

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

behind the book | emily henry

Justice for the “Big City Woman” © DEVYN GLISTA, ST. BLANC STUDIOS

In her latest romance, Book Lovers, Emily Henry celebrates the much-maligned archetype of the urban career woman. She wears impractically high heels, no matter where she goes. She’s always on a treadmill or a stationary bike, barking orders at her long-suffering assistant via her AirPods. When she gets off the elevator, she hurls her jacket out and expects someone to materialize and catch it—and place a perfectly heated latte in her hand at the same time. She’s the archetypical Big City Woman, and I love her. Perhaps more importantly, I’m curious about her. Every time some new iteration of her shows up in a show or movie or book, I find myself wondering where she’s coming from, and when the last page ends or the credits roll, I wonder where she’s headed. types, and no one type is any more or less worthy of love. That’s where Book Lovers—in its earliest draft, But what does it say if this titled City Person—came one character, the high-strung from: my fascination not only Big City Woman, only ever shows up to act as another with this kind of character woman’s foil, to prove how and her potential origins but worthy and good that other also with the way that stories tend to treat her. Like she’s woman is by comparison? someone else’s cautionary Or if, when the Big City tale, a villain to be defeated, Woman finally gets her love the foil to the small-town story, it’s the same kind as the sweetheart the hero actually ones she’s been making cambelongs with. eos in for all these years? The H Book Lovers In this last scenario, she’s kind where she leaves her life Berkley, $17, 9780593334836 often a symbol of the life the in the city, meets a man who’s hero needs to leave behind. her polar opposite and finds Contemporary Romance She’s an addendum to the the true meaning of life on a charming Christmas tree farm. high-pressure job that keeps him from answering his parents’ phone calls. The one calling to What does it say about the way we see women check on how his business trip is going and to like this if they’re never allowed a love story hound him for taking so long when the mass unless it hinges on them giving up everything firing he was supposed we find so compelling to conduct at the local “It takes all types, and no about them? toy factory should have That’s why I wrote been an in-and-out job. one type is any more or less Book Lovers. Not just She’s representative because I thought it worthy of love.” of the shallow, empty would be a blast to figure out what made this kind of woman tick but life he needs to break free from to take hold of his happy ending. because I wanted to give her a different story, Don’t get me wrong: I love these kinds of one where she wasn’t a foil or a villain or a cautionary tale but just another person, deserving transformational fish-out-of-water stories. of life-changing love and a happy ending—her I’m also a big believer in not taking one parversion, not somebody else’s. ticular character’s journey as an indictment of —Emily Henry a different kind of journey. Just because one guy decides to give up his high-powered job in the Visit BookPage.com to read our city to work at his new girlfriend’s small-town starred review of Book Lovers. bakery doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. It takes all

feature | nice boys

Decent doesn’t mean dull Think of the traditional alpha male romance hero. Now think about his polar opposite: gentle rather than domineering, warm rather than arrogant. Male characters like this have grown increasingly popular in the genre.

A Brush with Love In Mazey Ed dings’ debut, A Brush With Love (Griffin, $16.99, 9781250805980), Dan Craige and Harper Horo witz’s first meeting is an absolute disaster: Harper crashes into Dan at the dental school they both attend and smashes his class project. She offers to help him remake it, and their immediate connection only gets stronger from there. Dan is adorably tongue-tied in Harper’s presence. It’s clear that he gets and respects Harper for who she is and supports her as she deals with her anxiety, and their sweet connection is bolstered by meaningful conversations.

H Part of

Your World

W h e n e m e rgency room doctor Alexis Montg o m e r y ’s ca r lands in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, a tattooed, hunky mystery man in a pickup truck comes to her aid. She soon finds that there’s more to her rescuer than his good looks. Gentle and kind, Daniel is something of a small-town renaissance man: He’s an artist and a bed-and-breakfast proprietor who caters patiently to his rescue dog and nurses his friend’s baby goat in his spare time. Author Abby Jimenez’s special blend of humor and angst is polished to perfection in Part of Your World (Forever, $15.99, 9781538704370). —Elizabeth Mazer Visit BookPage.com to read the full feature.

the hold list

A dollop, a dash, a sprinkle of magic Sometimes the best way to understand reality is with just a hint of unreality. In these five books, fantastical elements reveal hidden or unexpected truths about our not-so-ordinary world.

The Mirror Combining fish-out-of- water humor and historical detail, time-travel stories must deftly balance magic and reality. A bestseller when it was published in 1978, Marlys Millhiser’s novel The Mirror is now something of a cult classic, and it’s easy to see why. On the eve of her wedding, 20-year-old Shay falls through an antique mirror into the body of her grandmother, Brandy, whose life on the Colorado frontier in 1900 involves strict gender roles, physical danger and structured undergarments. In exchange, Brandy is transported to Shay’s body in 1978 and must deal with that era’s comparatively lawless (and braless) abandon. The details of both settings are spot on and evocative, lending a sense of reality to the novel despite its absolutely chaotic premise. Along the way, Millhiser digs up some timeless truths about how the women who came before us are often reflected in the ones who come after. —Trisha, Publisher

Nothing to See Here My reading preferences vary widely, but I rarely gravitate toward fantasy novels whose first few pages consist of maps, family trees, timelines and other hallmarks of extensive world building. I get too overwhelmed! But I love when a work of fiction contains just a touch of the supernatural. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief if the magical or otherworldly elements are woven into the story in a way that feels effortless. Kevin Wilson’s 2019 novel, Nothing to See Here, is about two children who burst into flames when they’re upset. The kids’ newly hired nanny, Lillian, transitions from reluctant caretaker to fiercely protective parental figure over the course of the book. A note for other fantasy-averse readers like myself: If the whole catching-on-fire thing seems like too much, don’t let it deter you. You’ll miss out on a delightful story that’s as funny as it is moving. —Katherine, Subscriptions

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel It may seem unusual to single out a nonfiction book for having a sprinkle of magic, but Alexander Chee’s exceptional essay collection, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, is the first title that comes to mind when I think of books with an under current of enchantment. In 16 spellbinding pieces, Chee explores the stuff of everyday life—work, writing, family, activism— alongside more super natural subjects, such as his lifelong pursuit of tarot and being tested for psychic abilities as a child. These brushes with the mystical elevate Chee’s more commonplace topics until the whole book seems to hover in that liminal space between the sacred and the profane. Magic is all around us, Chee seems to say. Read it in the cards. Produce it with your mind. Find it in a well-tended rosebush in your own backyard. —Christy, Associate Editor

The Raven Boys The first time I read The Raven Boys, the first novel in Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle series, I was a high school junior in the midst of a reading slump. I occasionally found a book that I enjoyed, but not with the same ferocity that kept me plowing through stories in my childhood. Although I had seen fan-made content for Stiefvater’s series online, I didn’t know the plot until a friend described it to me. By the time I finished reading the first chapter, I was electrified by the prose and already attached to the characters. While I love fiction that includes speculative elements, I have a harder time feeling immersed in the worlds of high fantasy or sci-fi novels. The Raven Boys kept me rooted in reality while introducing me to Welsh mythology and women with psychic powers. These elements are expanded in the series’ subsequent three novels, but the foundational connection to the real world is never severed. —Jessie, Editorial Intern

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

The Midnight Library In the tender reading year of 2020, Matt Haig published what a friend of mine called a “cheerful book about suicide.” I had recommended The Midnight Library to her, but she was skeptical about reading it—understandably so, as so many of us were picky about the types of books we were willing to read while riding out the first year of the COVID19 pandemic. But Haig has been open about his experiences with depression for years, and all of his books have explored the terrain of mental health for both children and adults. In this gentle novel, a woman dies by suicide and is transported to a special library between life and death. There, with help from a kind librarian, she is able to step into the different lives she could’ve lived, as a rock star, intrepid explorer, parent and more. It’s such a smart and empathetic story, and exactly what it needs to be: a cheerful book about depression, yes, but also about making it through. —Cat, Deputy Editor

sci-fi & fantasy

feature | horror

by chris pickens

H The Bladed Faith David Dalglish’s beautiful and expansive The Bladed Faith (Orbit, $17.99, 9780759557086) begins at the roots of a rebellion. Cyrus Lythan, heir to Thanet’s throne, witnessed his parents’ capture and execution when their small island nation was invaded by the Everlorn Empire. Years later, he is freed from captivity by Thorda Ahlai, a wealthy aristocrat bent on overthrowing the empire. Cyrus is all too happy to join the effort, but the price of reclaiming the country may be steeper than he realized. Dalglish grounds the story in reality as he charts his hero’s rocky path forward. At every turn, The Bladed Faith feels fully formed, without so much as a single haphazard description. Yes, rebellion against an evil empire is a familiar plot in fantasy. But this is a rebellion with soul that promises to reach even greater heights as the series continues.

The Kaiju Preservation Society Food app delivery driver Jamie Gray has just about had it—with work, New York City and the pandemic. But a chance encounter leads Jamie to Tom, an old friend who offers Jamie a job working for a mysterious animal rights organization called the KPS. On another Earth, one warmer and devoid of humankind, gargantuan creatures called Kaiju roam. It’s up to the Kaiju Preservation Society to make sure the incredible, powerful monsters don’t hurt anyone—and that no one tries to hurt the Kaiju. The Kaiju Preservation Society (Tor, $26.99, 9780765389121) revels in its own nerdiness: The dialogue practically skips along, and the richness of the alternate Earth is clearly the result of a creative mind let loose. It’s impossible to read this book without sensing how much fun author John Scalzi had while writing it.

Book of Night Young adult fantasy veteran Holly Black’s adult debut, Book of Night (Tor, $27.99, 9781250812193), is a wildly entertaining, magic-filled mystery. Charlie Hall slings drinks at a seedy bar, but she’s happy to have some stability after her involvement in the world of gloamists, magicians who can manipulate shadows. Gloamists alter shadows for entertainment, but also use them to influence someone’s thoughts or even commit murder. When a mysterious millionaire from her past returns, Charlie is forced to revisit her former life. Black’s plot is expertly crafted and her characters are wounded and very human (well, most of them anyway). The book’s magic system is simple yet interesting, and a consistent atmosphere of dread gives shadow magic a sharp, dangerous edge. Book of Night will have you looking over your shoulder, out of the corner of your eye, wondering if your shadow just moved.

Chris Pickens is a Nashville-based fantasy and sci-fi superfan who loves channeling his enthusiasm into reviews of the best new books the genre has to offer.

Fear and trembling An apocalyptic sci-fi debut and an eerie historical novel have one thing in common: They will both absolutely terrify you. These two novels explore the facets of fear to great effect, creating worlds that are both fantastical and terribly real. Set along Oregon’s foggy coast, Black Tide (Tor Nightfire, $15.99, 9781250792693) by KC Jones is the story of two strangers who are thrust together when the world comes to an end. The night before everything changes, housesitter Beth meets Mike, a film producer with no new projects in sight. In the early morning hours after their champagne-soaked one-night stand, they realize that something is terribly wrong. The power is out, cellphone service is down and the beach is littered with bowling ball-size meteorites that smell as if they have been pulled from a landfill in hell. Soon the unlikely pair learn a horrifying truth: Far from being an isolated incident, the meteor shower was the harbinger of an apocalyptic encounter with creatures from another world. Stranded together on the beach, Beth and Mike must rely on each other if they are to have any chance of survival. Jones’ debut novel reads like a summer blockbuster stuffed with adrenaline-pumping action scenes and moments of heart-stopping suspense. Jones lets both Mike and Beth take turns as first-person narrators, demonstrating the difference in how they see themselves (flawed to the point of worthlessness) and how the other person sees them (flawed but essentially good). Black Tide is just over 250 pages, and anything longer would have detracted from Jones’ perfectly simple, extremely frightening

premise: two people trapped at the end of the world, desperate to not be eaten by monsters. While Black Tide is the microhistory of an apocalypse, Alma Katsu’s The Fervor (Putnam, $27, 9780593328330) casts a wider net. It starts in 1944, during the waning days of World War II. Meiko Briggs is a Japanese immigrant and wife of a white American man. Even though her husband is serving in the U.S. Air Force, she’s still torn from her new home by the American government and forced to live in an internment camp in the remote reaches of Idaho with her daughter, Aiko. When a mysterious illness starts to move through the camp, rage and distrust rise, threatening the fragile corner of relative normalcy Meiko has tried to create for her daughter. In light of the rash of anti-Asian violence of the 2020s so far, Katsu’s terrifying historical parable about the horrors—and the virulence— of racism and xenophobia feels particularly pressing. Delivering a punch that’s equal parts psychological horror and jump scare, The Fervor offers readers a glimpse into one of the darkest moments of American history. It gives the already-terrifying ethos of that time a new and frightening shape: As the disease spreads from person to person, it is often accompanied by mysterious, possibly supernatural spiders. The image of near-invisible spiders crawling from one person to another, over eyelids, mouths and bodies, is an indelibly creepy illustration of just how pervasive mistrust and prejudice are. —Laura Hubbard

whodunit

by bruce tierney The Wild Life

Joe Brody, aka “The Bouncer,” actually holds a more important position in the New York Mafia than that title might suggest: He serves as the in-house “sheriff” for the organization. Joe even wears a sheriff’s badge, though not the sort that gets pinned to an elected official’s khaki shirt pocket. His is tattooed on his chest, a lifetime appointment, albeit one with a shorter life expectancy than his counterparts on the other side of the blue line. In David Gordon’s The Wild Life (Mysterious Press, $25.95, 9781613162774), Joe goes in search of some missing sex workers who have disappeared without a trace, leaving behind their passports and savings. High on the suspect list are Jim Hackney, a well-connected property developer with a history of employing prostitutes, and his namesake son, a daddy’s boy with a penchant for biggame hunting. Joe’s smart-aleck attitude quickly gets him crosswise with the pair, and the situation deteriorates rapidly. Complicating matters is Joe’s budding romance with FBI agent Donna Zamora, a situation that must be kept secret from both their employers—which is not easy when they are investigating the same case. I must admit to being partial to mysteries in which one of the protagonists works within the framework of the law and the other suffers no such constraints. I usually find myself drawn to the outlaw of the pair, especially if they’re as gritty and funny as Joe Brody.

Overboard At the beginning of Overboard (William Morrow, $28.99, 9780063010888), Sara Paretsky’s 22nd V.I. Warshawski novel, the Chicago PI loses control of her two large dogs while walking them alongside Lake Michigan. Scuttling down some treacherous rocks in pursuit of the disobedient doggies, V.I. is horrified to find a battered teenage girl barely clinging to life. At the hospital, the victim’s vital signs are stabilized, but she has no identification and seems unable or unwilling to converse in any language. It is clear that she is terrified of something or someone, and she escapes from the hospital at her first opportunity. As V.I. looks into the case of the missing girl—pro bono, which she can ill afford—disturbing connections come to light in relation to some questionable legal shenanigans involving a synagogue and a prime piece of Chicago waterfront property. And then the murders begin. The COVID-19 pandemic plays a key role in the story’s backdrop, something we will certainly see more and more often in literature as the pandemic wears on. V.I., who narrates in the first person, has some strong left-leaning feelings on how the crisis has been handled in America, but they never detract from Paretsky’s compelling, fastpaced and original mystery.

The Dark Flood South African writer Deon Meyer returns with The Dark Flood (Atlantic Monthly, $27, 9780802159601), the seventh installment of his series featuring Cape Town police detective Benny Griessel. Griessel, a confirmed disobeyer of orders from above, is once again in the soup. He has been demoted and reassigned to a suburban outpost where nothing much happens. Well, nothing much until Griessel arrives, and then—as has been known to happen before—all hell breaks loose. First, a college honor student goes missing, and then there’s the disappearance of a businessman who allegedly engineered an economy-toppling scheme. In a parallel storyline, we follow the financial woes of Sandra Steenberg, a young real estate agent who has fallen behind on her mortgage, her car payments and the tuition for her young daughter’s school. Sandra needs some quick cash, and she is willing to bend a few rules to facilitate that end, even if it means covering up an unexpected death. As with the previous entries in the series, The Dark Flood is a character-driven novel, and Griessel’s history of alcoholism is one of the main characters (albeit one without a speaking role). Larceny abounds, and in at least a couple of the cases, readers will almost hope that the perps get away with it. Even the book’s villains are laden with backstory, and it is borderline impossible to avoid feeling some level of sympathy for one and all. Fans of Jo Nesbø’s similarly character-driven Harry Hole mysteries will find lots to like here.

H Geiger Gustaf Skördeman’s debut novel, Geiger (Grand Central, $28, 9781538754375), is a story of the modern-day repercussions of Cold War espionage—not the first thing you’d expect from a thriller set in Sweden, which was a decidedly neutral country for most of that conflict. The story centers on the murder of a retired TV personality, Uncle Stellan, who was at one time the Johnny Carson of Sweden, beloved by adults and children alike. We know who the killer is from the moment the bullet exits the gun. What we don’t know is the reason Agneta, Stellan’s wife of 50-odd years, chose to kill him after answering the phone and hearing a one-word message: “Geiger.” Detective Inspector Anna Torhall has been assigned to the case, and she brings Officer Sara Nowak on board since Sara has known Uncle Stellan’s family since she was a child. The two friends attended police academy together, and they value each other’s insights, at least to a point. Sara and Anna initially presume Agneta was either abducted by the killers or perhaps dead herself, and for quite some time, nobody even floats the notion that she might be the murderer. But as their investigation wears on, some disturbing connections to Communist East Germany come to light— connections that may lay the groundwork for an act of terrorism that would make 9/11 pale by comparison. Geiger is a truly excellent first novel: deeply researched, painstakingly crafted and thrilling on every page.

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.

PRIDE & PREMEDITATION

q&a | claudia gray

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a good dinner party must be in want of a murder. If you’re a Jane Austen fan, chances are you’ve always wanted to see your favorite couples from her various novels interact with one another. But what if you could do that and watch them deal with a murderer in their midst? In Claudia Gray’s The Murder of Mr. Wickham, the titular cad is killed during a house party at George and Emma Knightley’s estate. It’s up to Catherine and Henry Tilney’s daughter, Juliet, and Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy’s son, Jonathan, to catch the culprit. We talked to Gray about revisiting Austen’s most beloved characters in their married lives and why George Wickham was her first and only choice for her novel’s victim.

characters were suspects, as I had assumed they would be. So I had this big crash of disappointment that had less to do with the quality of James’ writing (which is, of course, superb) and more to do with my assumptions. I imagined the book I wanted to read, which then became the book I wanted to write.

How did you create and navigate the conflicts between the members of each couple? For the most part, the conflicts the couples face call upon issues they dealt with before they married, but in new ways. Darcy and Elizabeth are burdened with grief, but that grief is worsened by Darcy’s refusal to reveal his emotions. Emma’s been chasWhat is your favorite Jane tised by Knightley for her Austen novel? meddling, so how does she Pride and Prejudice: the react when he feels obliged answer everyone gives, to intervene in someprobably, and for very good one else’s life? Colonel The Murder of Mr. Wickham Brandon and Marianne reasons. Name another Vintage, $17, 9780593313817 novel written more than have yet to work out how 200 years ago that still gets much his past will deterHistorical Mystery read regularly, by non mine their future, and so academics, purely for pleasure. I don’t think on. They’re all the same people they were there is one, at least not in the English landuring courtship, and though they’re older and guage. That said, I truly love all her novels, and wiser, they can still fall prey to subtler versions the one that perhaps intrigues me the most is of their previous mistakes. Mansfield Park. The one that moves me the most How did you stay true to Austen’s voice? is Persuasion. And I have to stop now, because you didn’t ask for a treatise about my feelings I’m tremendously flattered that the voice rang regarding all six novels. true to you. I didn’t mimic period style exactly, but I tried to let that be the guide as much as posWhat made you want to write a mystery set in sible—which involved a ton of rereading Austen’s Austen’s world? work, some reading of other Regency-era novels, It was reading Death Comes to Pemberley and . . . reading some of the Austen family letters and not digging it. I watching my favorlove P.D. James, so “I imagined the book I wanted ite adaptations. my anticipation to read, which then became the Which character for the book was sky-high. It comes was the most fun book I wanted to write.” out, I get it, and I to write? Were discover that the murder victim in that book is there any who were surprisingly challenging? (SPOILER ALERT) Denny, a minor character in The most fun to write were Elizabeth Darcy, of course, and Marianne, as well as the new charPride and Prejudice. My first thought was: Who cares who killed Denny? None of the beloved acters of Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney. Most Art from The Murder of Mr. Wickham © 2022, designed by Perry De La Vega. Reproduced by permission of Vintage.

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of The Murder of Mr. Wickham.

challenging was Fanny from Mansfield Park: Her personality is naturally timid, her moods fragile, her responses often passive. She is the antithesis of what we look for in a main character in modern fiction, and yet Fanny is capable of great courage when she knows herself to be right. So making her both true to her depiction in Mansfield Park and engaging to readers today was definitely a challenge. What made you decide to make neurodivergence a part of Jonathan Darcy’s character? At first, my only goal was for Jonathan to be more Darcy than Darcy. But as I dug into the story, I had to ask what might be driving that. Once I recognized that Jonathan might be neurodivergent, it opened up so many interesting questions about how he would navigate the Regency world. I did a lot of reading and research in the hopes that he would feel authentic on the page. One point that was important for me to remember, though, was that neither Jonathan nor his parents—nor anyone else in the novel— will ever think of him as neurodivergent. That’s not a frame of reference any of them would have; that’s not how he would be understood in that era. What led you to decide on Mr. Wickham being the murder villain? Wickham was the first and only candidate I considered. The victim had to be someone whom many, many people would have a motive to kill, and who incites quite as much fury as Mr. Wickham? Will we see Juliet and Jonathan again in future books? Juliet and Jonathan proved a delight to write. Rest assured, they’ll team up again. —Elyse Discher

cover story | hernan diaz

iterature has always had the power to create realities around itself. Indeed, this ability has been one of fiction’s obsessions over centuries. As different literary devices come in and out of style throughout history, one of them has remained relevant for at least a couple of millennia: the framed narrative. We are all familiar with this form of storytelling, which can be found in works as dissimilar as the Odyssey, the One Thousand and One Nights, the Decameron and Ethan Frome. For expediency’s sake, here’s a made-up example:

This, of course, is followed by the story that explains how the man came to hop on board a fast-moving train in the middle of the night. But that’s not quite relevant right now. The most important part of this example is that final colon.

The express train had been streaking through the stormy night for hours, which is why it was curious that the man who came into my compartment was shivering and soaked to the bone. He took the seat opposite mine, wiped his face, and, after struggling to light a wet cigarette, started to speak in a whisper that grew louder as he warmed up:

LET ME TELL YOU A TRUE STORY Pulitzer Prize finalist Hernan Diaz, author of Trust, investigates the joys and mysteries of the framed narrative. This is the graphic boundary between two different planes of reality—and what a beautiful coincidence it is that the colon should resemble a hinge! Of course, not all framed narratives feature this punctuation mark (although a lot of them do: Borges, a master of the framed tale, often uses them just like this), but it provides a helpful way of seeing how these two levels interact. On this side of the colon, what passes for the real world; on the other side, the realm of storytelling. Part of why this is such a successful device has to do with the geography of the text. The frame is quite literally closer to you, the reader, than the story it contains. And it’s this physical closeness to reality (to the person holding the book) that makes the framing story more believable. Meanwhile, the framed story, by virtue of being removed, serves as a tacit reminder of that closeness. (Also, the soaked man’s tale may turn

out to be outlandish, but wouldn’t that, by congradation of reality. And in this scale, the frame trast, make the circumstances of the narrator is the closest we can get to the referential world. in the compartment even more plausible and Yet when we read Don Quixote, Frankenstein believable?) We experience this more acutely or Wuthering Heights, we think of the in those stories where we forget there was a knight-errant fighting windmills, of the creature frame, only to, in seeking revenge the final chapter, “We understand the world through on its creator, return to it. After of the mercurial stories. Is it that surprising, antihero roamthe soaked man’s account of his ing the Yorkshire then, that their texture, slant and adventures, we moors. These find ourselves, are the charactone should condition what we once again, in ters and events perceive to be true?” the safety of the that immediately compartment. come to mind. The feeling upon returning to the frame— However, this is not what these novels are, and this is quite telling—can resemble that of strictly speaking, about. Don Quixote is about waking up from a dream. We are back in “the a person reading a translation of an Arabic real world.” In short, framed stories create a manuscript. Frankenstein is about a sea captain

cover story | hernan diaz writing letters to his sister. Wuthering Heights is about a housekeeper talking by the fire as she does her needlework. This is all that happens in these novels—on this side of the colon. The fact that we tend to forget these scenes containing the stories shows how effective these frames are at mimicking “the real thing.” Because it is always there, reality can afford to be taken for granted, disregarded and even forgotten. These stories (about the mad knight, the friendless monster, the haunted lover) have severed their ties to the referential world. They are quite literally surrounded by fiction (the tales about the translator, the captain, the servant). Their context is no longer life but literature. This, of course, enhances the verisimilitude and lifelikeness of the novels—because literature is no longer trying to copy anything outside itself. Framed narratives show us something important about the way in which we understand the world through fiction. If a proper context can be created around a story, it will stand a much better chance of being believed, since the parameters of truthfulness have been established beforehand. The referent for this sort of fiction is another fiction. And it is we, in the end, who have been framed. These were some of the thoughts behind my latest novel, Trust. What is the relationship between literature and reality? To what extent is our everyday life a framed narrative? And what are the stories that frame our quotidian experience? I became interested in how many historical accounts regularly reveal themselves to be, at

least to some extent, up with a possible verfabrications—narrasion of the truth behind these stories. Part of this tives distorted for political gain. Still, these quest will challenge fictions have a direct the contracts we enter impact on our lives. into when we engage with narratives of any Although we know that kind—literary, historiwith some regularity they will be questioned, cal, political, financial. More than asking itself transformed and even how literature imitates debunked, a great part life, Trust interrogates of our identity is defined how the stories we tell by these stories. Another of these pubshape the world around lic fictions is money. It’s them. We understand the world through stoan all-encompassing illusion with all-too-real ries. Is it that surprising, effects. There’s nothing then, that their texture, slant and tone should material or tangible that links a dollar bill to condition what we perthe value it represents ceive to be true? (and in this, money I wouldn’t say that resembles language). Trust, as a whole, is a framed narrative in a Its value is the result of traditional sense. But a long series of convenH Trust each layer in the novel tions. It’s make-believe. Riverhead, $28, 9780593420317 All money is, at heart, creates a reality for the play money. And all of others. It’s hard to reveal Historical Fiction us have gathered, volmore without giving too untarily or not, around the board. much away. Let’s just say, expanding the little Trust, then, explores the very material conseexample I made up at the beginning of this quences fiction can have. The book is made up of essay, that once the soaked man is done with four different “documents”—a novel-within-the his story, neither his listener nor the reader will novel, two memoirs and a diary—and the reader be so sure about that train’s destination. —Hernan Diaz is enlisted as a textual detective in order to come

review | H trust Like a tower of gifts waiting to be unwrapped, Trust offers a multitude of rewards to be discovered and enjoyed, its sharp observations so finely layered as to demand an immediate rereading. The second novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Hernan Diaz (In the Distance), Trust consists of four distinct but related parts. Like Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life or the Netflix series “Russian Doll,” each section contains a compelling perspective that builds upon the one that came before, beginning with a 124-page novel titled Bonds by Harold Vanner. Bonds tells the story of financial tycoon Benjamin Rask, a poor little rich boy who grows up to make a killing in the stock market in the 1920s, and his gifted but unstable wife, Helen. Their biographical tale unfolds in engaging period prose that’s reminiscent of Henry James and Edith Wharton. Next comes 60-odd pages of an unfinished memoir by Andrew Bevel, the magnate upon whom Bonds is based. Bevel wants to set the record straight, emphasizing his belief that his accumulation of wealth has been very much for the public good. He also wants to put a stop to the speculation that his days of financial wizardry have ended. And finally, Bevel wants to carefully curate the image of his late wife Mildred, a generous philanthropist whom he insists was not mentally ill, as portrayed in Vanner’s novel. After a slow, steady build, Trust shifts into high-octane gear in part three, an engrossing memoir by noted journalist Ida Partenzan. The

daughter of an anarchist Italian immigrant, Ida was hired by Bevel to take dictation and help him craft the memoir of section two—a job that launched her writing career. Now in the 1980s, as Ida turns 70, the Bevel House has become a museum, and she begins to explore the mansion and reconsider her role there. Ida’s memoir offers riveting details about the creation of Bevel’s autobiography as well as her impoverished background, which she portrays in stark contrast to the “cool rush of luxury” that surrounds her employer. During her time in Bevel’s employ, Ida felt “as if I were a displaced earthling, alone in a different world—a more expensive one that also thought itself better.” Her memoir is also a quest for the truth about Mildred, and it reads like a detective story, heightened with moments of potential danger. As she ponders the way she and Bevel characterized Mildred, she writes, “I cringe at the trivial scenes I made up for her. . . . He forced her into the stereotype of ill-fated heroines throughout history made to offer the spectacle of her own ruin. Put her in her place.” If this series of interconnected narratives already sounds complicated, don’t worry: Each section flows easily into the next in Diaz’s supremely skilled hands, with increasing momentum and intrigue. Throughout, he examines the wide disparities between rich and poor, truth and fiction, and the insidious ways in which these divides have long been crafted. The fourth and final section, pages from Mildred’s diary, contains a startling twist to this literary feast—a wonderfully satisfying end to Diaz’s beautifully composed masterpiece. —Alice Cary

interview | jennifer egan

There’s no machine quite like fiction In The Candy House, Jennifer Egan returns to the unfinished business of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad. More than 10 years ago, Jennifer Egan published A Visit From the Goon not as inventions to intentionally explore in a novel. “We are so used to Squad, her groundbreaking novel of 13 interrelated stories in which she being able to find someone on social media, and yet there are so many pushed style and theme to the limits of fiction’s people that we don’t have quite enough points boundaries. Not quite a sequel but connected to of reference to find, and that sort of unknowthat earlier novel by several of the same characability makes them more tantalizing,” she says. ters, The Candy House remains true to Egan’s “What would be the vehicle for finding them? curiosity about technology and her commitHow could I make that even possible? Suppose ment to experimenting with unusual narrative there was a machine that could do that?” structures. Bix’s consciousness-sharing product cer“Goon Squad never felt like a book I exactly tainly doesn’t seem a far cry from our present finished,” Egan says with an easy laugh, speakreality, in which people eagerly offer their DNA ing via Zoom. It’s a sunny January morning, and to be evaluated and uploaded to genealogical she sits in a comfortable chair beside a window databases. At the heart of The Candy House is that overlooks her wintry Brooklyn street. “The the seduction of life online; even as we acknowlquestion was not whether I would keep writing edge the risk of sharing personal details, we’re about those people—because I always knew I lured in by the sense of knowledge offered by would—but could I find a way to make a book ingesting other people’s information. We run viable on its own terms and not just an echo?” toward the danger, eager to gobble up all we can One of the characters who returns in (and before the witch comes out and spoils it for us. in a way, bookends) The Candy House is Bix “I am almost always curiosity- and desireBouton, Sasha’s college classmate in Goon driven, and that underlies a lot of what I end Squad who now takes center stage as a hugely up imagining,” Egan says. “Usually, if there is innovative and wildly successful media magtechnology I invent, even as I know that there nate. Bix’s social media company, Mandala, would be grave disadvantages, there’s somedeveloped the technological innovations thing attractive to me.” One example of this Own Your Unconscious, which allows users double-edged sword is found in the chapter to store their memories on a cubelike device, titled “What the Forest Remembers,” in which and Collective Consciousness, which allows Charlie accesses her dying father’s memories the sharing of those memories to a database, of a life-changing trip to a redwood forest, but where they can be accessed by anyone. the viewing comes with devastating knowledge “Bix has a tiny role in Goon Squad, but I knew about the dissolution of her parents’ marriage H The Candy House when I wrote [his] chapter that he would go and the roots of her own awkward relationship Scribner, $28, 9781476716763 on to invent something that would change with her father. social media,” says the author. “I also knew As to be expected, Bix’s inventions spur the Literary Fiction that Mindy, who was on safari in Goon Squad, rise of an opposition. “Eluders” choose to exerwould become a famous sociologist, and oddly, I knew that Susan, the wife cise their right to be forgotten, and a company called Mondrian allows of Ted Hollander, would have a relationship with one of her son’s friends.” them to erase their digital footprints or, more disturbingly, create false The challenge, Egan explains, was determining how to fold these inevavatars to conceal their true locations and identities. Bix’s son Greg, a itable plot points into the narrative styles she most wanted to use. “I was would-be novelist who makes his living selling weed, is an eluder, and so is waiting for those to coalesce and feel alive, which is the only way I can Lily, the daughter of Goon Squad’s morally compromised publicist Dolly. seem to get to writing anything successfully. It’s trial and error. I’m like Lily is also a former spy whose brain has been infiltrated by a “weevil” that a windup toy. I bump and I turn and bump and turn again, and I keep tracks and reports her every thought. “Each new iteration of technology seems to bring about a kind of analgoing until I find a pathway.” ogous unfolding of discoveries,” Egan says. “For example, there are huge It is impossible to read The Candy House and not marvel at Egan’s skill, from the range of techniques and shifting points of view used throughout advantages to the ease of DNA analysis, and yet once you’ve had your the novel’s 14 chapters, to the skillDNA analyzed, it’s part of a worldful incorporation of to-the-minute “Fiction comes the closest to giving us a wide database. It’s no different [in the tweets and emails. Surely Egan had novel]. With every discovery, there’s sense of the play of another human mind, a reaction to that discovery. In The a wall of Post-its to keep the characters straight. “Well, I am a PostCandy House, it’s the two organizathe intimacy of another consciousness. its maniac,” she concedes good- tions Mandala and Mondrian—one naturedly, “but seriously, I think that offers access, the other the abilThat is the secret weapon of fiction.” there is something that has to flow in ity to disappear. As the technology a book like Candy House, where there’s a back and forth between finding unfolds, it becomes a dialectic between the lure of access with all that it brings, including the loss of privacy, and the counter to that is the will to material that feels alive and some of these approaches that I wanted to try.” vanish, a real-life wish to be unavailable.” The technologies in The Candy House came to the author “inductively,”

DOESN’T STOP HERE.

Divided We Stand H.W. Brands In Our First Civil War, historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist during illuminates the intensely personal convictions of the Patriots and Loyalists the American Revolution.

Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of The Candy House.

Egan is quick to point out that something already exists in our world that offers access to people’s inner thoughts in a manner similar to Mandala’s technology: fiction. “I realized as I was writing that this machine, which I created, can do what fiction already does,” she says. “The fun, voyeuristic nature of fiction lets us peek into people’s minds. I love the idea that, in a way, I was reifying the kind of advantages of fiction as a Silicon Valley device.” In the chapter “Eureka Gold,” Greg makes this connection as well, as he realizes that writing a novel is an act of shared consciousness. This idea connects him to his father’s greatest creation. “I feel it’s what fiction can do that nothing else can do,” Egan says, “and it’s why it has remained relevant to the degree that it has. Nothing else suggests an inner life quite that way. Fiction comes the closest to giving us a sense of the play of another human mind, the intimacy of another consciousness. That is the secret weapon of fiction.” By the novel’s end, despite the myriad storylines and characters, The Candy House all comes together—though, fittingly, not without a few enticing threads left dangling. “My job is to bind what I have in such a way that it really metabolizes into one creature,” Egan says, “but I’d never want to totally wrap things up. Fiction is about confronting and honoring the mystery at the heart of human experience, so I would never give the book a tidy ending. In the end, to me, the enormity of what I am trying to evoke is that using language to capture human experience and human consciousness is magic. More magic than any machine.” And will we see these characters again? Will Greg become a novelist? Will Charlie find peace? What happens to Lily and the weevil in her brain? “I’ve got things I know and things I haven’t done yet,” Egan admits with a smile. “I’m already concocting!” —Lauren Bufferd

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reviews | fiction

H Kaikeyi By Vaishnavi Patel

Literary Fiction To understand the brilliance of Vaishnavi Patel’s debut novel, Kaikeyi (Redhook, $28, 9780759557338), we must step back—way back, to ancient India, when humans walked a strict line of tradition, sacrifice and devotion to Hindu gods in exchange for a life free of curses and other bad surprises. Questioning authority was not part of the human agenda. The ancient Indian epic Ramayana is one of South Asia’s most famous and important religious texts. It tells of King Rama, the human incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who is banished to the forest by his stepmother, Kaikeyi. Full of miracles, virtues and vices, the epic has been passed down for generations, making it an indispensable part of the cultural consciousness and, more importantly, providing a clear distinction between good and evil. Into this long history comes Patel with her

H The Good Left Undone By Adriana Trigiani

Family Saga The Cabrelli family has lived on the Italian coast for generations as local jewelers and pillars of their community. On her 80th birthday, family matriarch Matelda is grappling with her slowly failing health and unresolved family traumas. As she takes stock of her life during a series of visits with her granddaughter Anina, Matelda reflects on the great love stories woven through her family history and the bitter losses the Cabrellis have endured. In 1939, Matelda’s mother, Domenica, is sent from her home in Viareggio, Italy, to work in a French hospital. Domenica’s initial homesickness quickly subsides as she and the other nurses go to pubs and dance on the pier. When anti-Italian sentiment sweeps through much of Europe, the hospital nuns move her to a convent in Scotland. There, Domenica meets the first love of her life. But after tragedy befalls their young family, Domenica brings 5-year-old Matelda back to the family home in Viareggio, where Domenica finds a second chance at love with a childhood friend, and Matelda begins her new life in a strange country. Adriana Trigiani is the author of many

bold reimagining. A student of constitutional law and civil rights, Patel grew up hearing stories from the Ramayana from her grandmother, and during one of these storytelling sessions, Patel’s mother planted a seed of doubt regarding Kaikeyi’s characterization. Patel now recasts Kaikeyi, who has always occupied the role of wicked stepmother, a source of doom and the cause of unimaginable suffering for an entire kingdom and beyond. In Kaikeyi, she becomes the protagonist, the feminist, the godforsaken underdog. Born on a full moon as a princess to the kingdom of Kekaya, Kaikeyi grows up knowing that her destiny is to be powerless and ornamental,

yet she is resolute in her determination to change the world. With her twin brother’s help, she secretly learns how to ride horses and fight like a warrior. At 16, she is married off as the third wife of a king, and she gives birth to Bharat, who is promised to succeed his father, even though he is not the firstborn son. For better or worse, the events of Ramayana unfold no differently with the reinvention of Kaikeyi’s character, but Patel’s changes certainly make the story much more engaging. Even readers unfamiliar with the ancient Indian epic will find a lot to love in Patel’s spellbinding details of mythological characters and ancient times. —Chika Gujarathi

beloved books, including Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker’s Wife. The Good Left Undone (Dutton, $28, 9780593183328) is deliciously told, with fully explored characters, mouthwatering descriptions of Italian food and charming yet quirky towns. What’s exceptional about the novel is how seamlessly she knits together different stories from many places and times, bringing it all together in one poignant and satisfying book. This is a gorgeously written story about intergenerational love and heartbreak, the futility of regret and the power of a life well lived. It’s also a love letter to Italy and its beautiful and painful history. —Amy Scribner

Staying active sustains her, as she is still reeling from her son’s mysterious disappearance many years ago. Tova begins to form a cautious bond with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who lives in the aquarium and sneaks out to explore the other tanks and corners of the building. As Marcellus and Tova become increasingly curious about each other, he notices details and secrets that help her find a new direction and purpose. Remarkably Bright Creatures introduces other narrators and perspectives that are seemingly disconnected from Tova and Marcellus, albeit still engaging enough to propel the story forward. The chapters are short, making it easy for readers to dive into each subsequent voice, wondering what secrets will be uncovered. It’s a delight to piece the many stories together. While the individual characters—human and cephalopod alike—are charming and complex, Remarkably Bright Creatures also emphasizes the importance of community. Locations such as the aquarium, a grocery store, a camper and the Sowell Bay area bring people together, providing spaces to foster conversation and gossip. As everyday lives overlap, the reader wonders if crushes will be requited, if families will find each other and if estrangements will end. Will Tova learn more about what happened to her son? And what does Marcellus know? As Van Pelt’s zippy, fun-to-follow prose engages at every turn, readers will find themselves rooting for the many characters, hoping that they’ll find whatever it is they seek. Each character is profoundly human, with flaws and eccentricities crafted with care. But what makes

Remarkably Bright Creatures By Shelby Van Pelt

Popular Fiction Imagine an octopus, trapped in an aquarium : What might he notice, share, taunt and attempt? In R e m a rka b l y Bright Creatures ( Ec c o, $27.99, 9780063204157), firsttime author Shelby Van Pelt asks such questions about life in a tank— and outside of it. Each evening, recently widowed Tova Sullivan works as a cleaner at the Sowell Bay Aquarium.

reviews | fiction Van Pelt’s novel most charming and joyful is the tender friendship between species, and the ways Tova and Marcellus make each other ever more remarkable and bright. —Freya Sachs

H Forbidden City By Vanessa Hua

By its end, Forbidden City has brought the reader into the beating heart of human history. It is literary historical fiction at its finest. —Alden Mudge

H When Women Were Dragons By Kelly Barnhill

Historical Fiction In a note at the end of her masterful second novel, Vanessa Hua writes that “fiction flourishes where the official record ends.” Imagination fills in the details. Forbidden City (Ballantine, $28, 9780399178818), the story of an impoverished peasant girl caught up in the tumult of Chairman Mao Zedong’s China, comes to life through the fullness of Hua’s imagination. In 1965, the novel’s narrator, Mei Xiang, is approaching 16 years old when a government official ventures into the countryside in search of young girls to join the chairman’s dance troupe. Mei is not the prettiest girl or the best dancer in her desperately poor, rural town, but she is the smartest, wiliest and most ambitious, with dreams of becoming a revolutionary icon. She blackmails the town headman and is soon ensconced in the Lake Palaces, Mao’s residence in Peking, along with other comely young dancers recruited from across China. Mei seizes the attention of the 72-year-old chairman with her aggressive intelligence and peasant wisdom. She becomes his confidant and relishes her special status. Mao teaches her to swim. He is sometimes funny and appreciates her jokes. Except for the sex, she enjoys his company. Mao also falls into fugue states. Mei witnesses his impassive lack of empathy for others and his depression about his semi-retirement. For a while, Mei believes she is cunning enough to avoid losing his interest. His affection for her incites envy from the other girls and concern from Madame Mao, his wife. Hua brilliantly conveys the emotional and physical reverberations of the rivalries among the girls, who are more vulnerable and less worldly than they understand. Similarly, Hua keenly portrays the discord among Mao’s underlings, who fear, adore or loathe him. It is apparent that, soon enough, shivers of turmoil will burst forth in the brutal Cultural Revolution. For her part, Mei eagerly participates in Mao’s plan to humiliate an important political rival, and this becomes the slow-burning match that ignites the national conflagration. It is Mei’s highest moment and just two steps away from her lowest.

Speculative Fiction In 1955, hundreds of thousands of women disappeared. They were oppressed mothers and wives. They were brides on their wedding days and switchboard operators harassed by their male managers. Later reports—at least, those that were publicly acknowledged—omitted a key detail about this mass disappearance. The women didn’t vanish; they became dragons. As Kelly Barnhill writes in When Women Were Dragons (Doubleday, $28, 9780385548229), “people are awfully good at forgetting unpleasant things.” Just look at our own world, in which willful silence around the injustices of the past affects how history is taught (or isn’t taught) in American schools. The mass dragoning meets a similar fate, but despite her best efforts, Alex Green can’t forget. Alex’s Aunt Marla was one of the disappeared women. She was also one of the most influential people in Alex’s life; after all, Marla gave birth to Alex’s cousin and best friend, Beatrice. After Marla’s dragoning, Alex’s parents raised the two girls as sisters, but questions about Marla’s disappearance lingered at the edges of Alex’s consciousness. Barnhill writes from Alex’s point of view as an adult, looking back on a remarkable period in history that coincided with her formative years. Through teenage Alex’s perspective, readers witness dragons marching with civil rights protesters—because if we aren’t all free, none of us are free. Some dragons seem drawn to one another, rather than to the men they left behind, in a way that young Alex accepts intuitively. Interspersed throughout these events, Barnhill includes research documents that Marla left in Alex’s care, offering thoughtful context for this eerily familiar world. In her first novel for adult readers, Kelly Barnhill (The Girl Who Drank the Moon) offers the same sort of magic she’s brought to her middle grade readers for years. A close examination of the patriarchy and cultural inequalities, When Women Were Dragons is fantasy that is both political and personal. —Carla Jean Whitley

By Michelle Huneven

Literary Fiction G.K. Chesterton once said that he had “searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.” In Michelle Huneven’s fifth novel, Search (Penguin Press, $27, 9780593300053), we see why Chesterton’s hunt proved so fruitless. Pastor Tom Fox has been dialing it in lately, and his Southern Californian congregation is becoming restless. Some of the church’s executive committee members approach a fellow congregant, restaurant critic and food writer Dana Potowski, with the suggestion that she take him to lunch and have a come-to-Jesus chat about the situation. Well, not exactly come-to-Jesus; the Unitarian Universalists don’t work that way. For readers unfamiliar with it, the Unitarian Universalist Association is a spiritual organization that’s open to theists, atheists, agnostics and believers of all stripes, formed from the union of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America. When Pastor Fox lets it slip that he’s planning to retire from ministry, this sets into motion a replacement search committee, which Dana semireluctantly joins. Previous committee meetings had taken place over potluck dinners, so Dana plans to get her next cookbook out of it. James Beard and Whiting Award winner Huneven gleefully digs into the sausagemaking of a New-Agey church committee trying to reach consensus. They go on retreat. They hold meetings. And they talk—with one another, over one another, behind one another’s backs, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes lovingly, sometimes angrily. They also consume a great deal of food. If it’s true (as Napoleon may have said) that an army marches on its stomach, then a church committee bears some resemblance to a platoon. Here Huneven sparkles, with chop-licking descriptions of their potluck delectables, and she includes a baker’s dozen recipes as appendices. But there’s also a profoundly spiritual dimension to Search. It raises difficult questions about living one’s beliefs in a faith-based community and doesn’t flinch when principles and practice come into conflict. Like a challenging sermon or a great restaurant’s tasting menu, Search leaves the reader hungry for more. —Thane Tierney Visit BookPage.com to read our Q&A with Michelle Huneven on Search.

reviews | nonfiction

H Because Our Fathers Lied By Craig McNamara

Memoir Robert S. McNamara served as secretary of defense in the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations and was the primary architect of America’s war strategy in Vietnam in the 1960s. Even as the war became increasingly unpopular, Robert continued to insist that victory was just around the corner. He didn’t admit his mistakes, even when doing so could have changed history. Many veterans and protesters still believe Robert never fully apologized for his role in the war—including his only son. Craig McNamara’s loving but brutally honest account of his difficult relationship with his father, Because Our Fathers Lied (Little, Brown, $29, 9780316282239), tells of his father’s reluctance or inability to engage him in serious discussion about the evils of the war, or to apologize to the country. Veterans wanted Robert to understand

I’ll Show Myself Out By Jessi Klein

Essays Jessi Klein’s second essay collection, I’ll Show Myself Out (Harper, $26.99, 9780062981592), finds Klein in her 40s, parenting a toddler and trying to regroup in Los Angeles, a world away from her beloved New York City. “I constantly feel like I’m a leaky raft in open water,” she writes in “Listening to Beyoncé in the Parking Lot of Party City.” It’s a thoughtful essay that laments the changes of midlife and motherhood; it also had me laughing out loud. Some of Klein’s essays are light—the one about her love for designer Nate Berkus, for instance, or learning to live with her ugly feet— while others dig a little deeper. She builds one essay around the “underwear sandwich,” a contraption postpartum moms wear to cope with bleeding and birth injuries, somehow managing to make fresh, feminist points in the process. These voicey, funny essays give unexpected dimension to familiar topics, such as how widowers remarry faster than widows or that the mommy wine-drinking trend is out of hand. One of the collection’s themes is anxiety— Klein’s, her partner’s and her child’s—and how

the true cost of the war in human terms of lost lives and limbs rather than “lessons learned in the war,” as Robert put it in his 1995 book, In Retrospect. When that book was published, Craig asked his father why it took 30 years for him to try to explain himself. “Loyalty” was his father’s only answer. For Craig, this meant loyalty to the presidents he served without regard for ordinary people. “Loyalty, for him, surpassed good judgment,” Craig writes. “It might have surpassed any other moral principle.” After Robert was out of government, but as the war continued, Craig received a draft notice. During his physical, he was found medically disqualified to serve, which made him feel overwhelming guilt despite his opposition to the war. To cope, he set off on a motorcycle trip through Central and South America, where he

discovered his love of farming and began a new direction for his life. He is now a businessman, farmer, owner of a walnut farm in Northern California and founder of the Center for Land-Based Learning. By making different choices than his father, Craig has begun to make peace with his family’s complicated legacy. His mother always played a positive role in his life (the memoir is dedicated to her memory) and acted as a “translator” between father and son, but it took years for Craig to understand how dysfunctional his family was with respect to speaking the truth. Because Our Fathers Lied gives readers a vivid, front-row view of the divisiveness in one very prominent family, and through that family, a view of the national divisiveness that continued long after the Vietnam War. —Roger Bishop

it can rear up in the most innocuous-seeming moments. Another is Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey, which Klein muses on to marvelous effect throughout the book. She turns the narrative template on its head, positing that pregnancy, birth and early motherhood are full of rigors and pitfalls, as difficult and life-altering as any masculine adventure. “We just feel the guilt of being terrible monsters, ironically, at the exact moments that we actually, as mothers, become the most heroic,” she writes. Klein, who has produced and written for shows such as “Saturday Night Live” and “Big Mouth,” fills in the picture of a woman at midlife who’s beginning to make sense of it all. The result is entertaining, heartfelt, personal and comic. —Sarah McCraw Crow

Signal, $27, 9781982178420), Isen writes about the disparity between the “token apologies and promises” made by white people and what Black people actually want and take for themselves. The strongest essay, which lends its name to the book’s title, examines the relationship white women have to power and pain. Continuing a thread from the previous essay about the popularity of Black trauma writing, Isen looks at how self-indulgence has been romanticized by white female artists. “If you’re always in pain you’ll never want for material,” she writes of these white artists’ impulse to glamorize their sadness. Another standout essay is “Hearing Voices,” Isen’s personal exploration of voice acting as a transformative and potentially empowering art form. In addition to outlining her own experiences as a Black voice actor, she discusses “Big Mouth,” “Central Park” and “The Simpsons,” three animated shows that cast white actors to voice nonwhite characters and then apologized for this choice in 2020. This essay also underlines a central weakness of the book: It already feels dated. Scanning the table of contents feels like reading a list of Twitter’s most popular trending topics from 2020. In the churn of the modern news cycle, it seems inevitable that not every moment referenced would have cultural staying power, but it’s especially frustrating when Isen chooses intentionally ephemeral data points. Nonetheless, in the book’s most compelling moments, Isen makes the churn the point: Whatever Starbucks or Lena Dunham did and

Some of My Best Friends By Tajja Isen

Essays Ta j j a I s e n ’s debut essay collection reveals her as a multihyphenate talent—voice actor, singer, editor, writer, law school graduate— with a delicious knack for wordplay and language. In Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service (One

reviews | nonfiction subsequently apologized for in 2020 is something they’ll do again in 2030. Throughout the collection, Isen engages the greatest hits of leftist Twitter discourse with the type of nuance that’s impossible in 280 characters—but it’s Isen’s original perspective and clever language that will win over readers. —Celia Mattison

Start Without Me By Gary Janetti

Essays If Gary Janetti’s keenly obser ved memoir of his formative years, Start Without Me: (I’ll Be There in a Minute) (Holt, $27.99, 9781250225856), is any indication, he’s always had a sharp eye and a sharper tongue. That sarcastic sensibility has earned him fame and acclaim as a writer and producer for “Will & Grace” and “Family Guy,” creator of the British sitcom “Vicious” and star of the HBO Max animated show “The Prince.” Now, in this follow-up to 2019’s Do You Mind If I Cancel?, which focused on his career beginnings, the raconteur extraordinaire journeys back to his precocious childhood in 1970s and ’80s Queens, New York. Those years had many glorious moments for Janetti, and readers will gleefully snort at his hilariously spot-on recollections. In grammar school, “The Carol Burnett Show” provided life-affirming joy. In freshman gym class, he discovered a prodigious talent for and love of square dancing. During his sophomore year, horrified by the prospect of football, he cleverly manipulated the system by spending gym periods with a guidance counselor (and drawing from soap operas to keep her hooked on his imaginary troubles). Always, movies and TV were a balm for his inability to connect with other kids and his fear of people finding out who he really was. “The things I liked, I liked too much. The things I didn’t, all other boys did,” he writes. Some essays give insight into how things got better for the grown-up Janetti, providing moments of loveliness among the operatic complaining. For example, after a lengthy critique of destination weddings, Janetti reveals with a wink that he married TV personality Brad Goreski on a Caribbean cruise. Start Without Me is equal parts acid and heart. It’s a collection of sardonically funny stories about a firecracker of a kid who hadn’t yet found his kindred spirits. It’s a series of

entertaining tirades about life’s indignities. And it’s an engaging look at the origin story of a man who, despite years of self-doubt, has finally embraced his particular superpowers. —Linda M. Castellitto

us out of darkness can be surprising.” The Year of the Horses shows how the willingness to put aside fear and take on a new challenge in adulthood can unlock a happier life. —Harvey Freedenberg

The Year of the Horses

H Shine Bright

By Courtney Maum

Memoir You don’t need to know anything about the titular subject of Courtney Maum’s The Year of the Horses (Tin House, $27.95, 9781953534156) to appreciate this candid and engaging memoir of how rediscovering a long-abandoned passion helped lift her out of a crisis. Four years after the birth of her daughter, Nina, novelist Maum found herself drowning in a whirlpool of insomnia-fueled depression, creative stasis and dissatisfaction in her marriage to Leo, a French filmmaker. “I am a blob,” she writes, “struggling through the hours with eyes that will not close.” In search of the relief that even medication and a wise-beyond-hisyoung-years therapist couldn’t provide, Maum turned to one of her childhood pursuits: horseback riding. It had been 29 years since Maum abandoned riding lessons at age 9, but she never lost her love for these majestic creatures. Her first lesson as an adult—when “the heat of that beast underneath me, the breadth of his body and the pump of his great heart, had touched something primitive inside”—instantly rekindled her affection. That encounter eventually led her into the “weird sport” of polo, where she learned that putting aside the futile quest for mastery in favor of simply having fun was the path to finding joy. Through flashbacks to her privileged childhood in Greenwich, Connecticut, Maum also explores some of the roots of her adult angst. Her parents divorced when she was 9, and her younger brother, Brendan, developed some rare and serious medical problems that added to the family’s stress. She traces how some of her more troublesome personality traits from that period—notably a perfectionism that eventually expressed itself as anorexia—continued to manifest in adulthood. Maum emerged from finding her footing in the world of horses “clearer and braver regarding what I needed in my marriage,” simultaneously discovering a focus and patience that allowed her “to reconnect with the daughter I’d lost track of.” While Maum’s prescription isn’t for everyone, her story reveals how “what pulls

By Danyel Smith

Music Novelist, journalist, editor and television producer Danyel S m i t h’s Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop (Roc Lit 101, $28, 9780593132715) radiates brilliance. In dazzling prose, she casts a spotlight on the creative genius of Black women musicians including Mahalia Jackson, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Mariah Carey, Marilyn McCoo and many more. Weaving together the threads of memoir, biography and criticism, Smith illustrates how her intense love of music has been shaped by Black women’s art. These women helped her find her way as a Black girl in 1970s Oakland, giving her strength and the confidence to write about the music that defined her life. Now, when people ask Smith, “Why does Tina Turner matter? Why is Mary J. Blige important?” her answers, she writes, “are passionate and learned because I want credit to be given where credit is due.” For Smith, this especially includes giving Black women credit for being the progenitors of American soul, R&B, rock ’n’ roll and pop. For example, Smith traces the career of Cissy Houston who, as part of the singing group the Sweet Inspirations, shaped the sound of megahits such as “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Son of a Preacher Man”—works that became foundational to the classic rock format and went on to influence everyone from the Counting Crows to U2. As Smith writes, “The Grammy Awards of the artists they have influenced would fill a hangar,” yet the Sweets are rarely mentioned in connection to these and other iconic songs. As Smith teases out the immeasurable influence of both underappreciated background singers and idols who are household names, she illuminates the qualities these artists have in common, “most of which revolve around the transmogrification of Black oppression to fleeting and inclusive Black joy.” Combining the emotional fervor of a fan and the cleareyed vision of a critic, Smith charts a luminous new history of Black women’s music. —Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

q&a | hanna alkaf

TRIPLE WORD SCORE FOR

Hanna Alkaf’s new YA novel is a murder mystery set in the cutthroat world of competitive Scrabble. Malaysian author Hanna Alkaf’s Queen of the Tiles combines two irresistible elements: wordplay and murder. It’s the story of Najwa Bakri, a Scrabble whiz whose best friend, Trina, collapsed mid-game during the Word Warrior Weekend tournament a year ago. As Najwa continues to deal with her grief, she competes in her first tournament since Trina’s death, where she discovers that her friend may have been murdered—and the killer could be sitting on the other side of the Scrabble board.

was played by Karl Khoshnaw in 1982: caziques, for 392 points. But Dan Stock from Ohio worked out that, in theory, the highest scoring Scrabble word possible is oxyphenbutazone, which, if the stars somehow align and all conditions on the board are just as they need to be, can get you a ridiculous 1,778 points. Yes, I am very fun at parties.

At the beginning of each chapter, you feature a word with its definition and Scrabble point value. Did you already have words in mind for What initially sparked your interest this when you began writing? in writing about Scrabble and the I kept a Google Doc called WORD LIST, and every time I came across competitive Scrabble community? I love Scrabble. Malaysia has a thriva word and definition that I thought ing, active Scrabble community, and I could work into the plot—whether as a teen, my older brother had been for the words at the beginning of part of it. I remember many weekends each chapter, tournament scenes or spent ferrying him back and forth Najwa’s own internal monologues—I’d from our house to the Parkroyal Hotel note it down. in downtown Kuala Lumpur, where Sometimes I needed something specific, like, “Oh, for this chapter, meets were usually held. Naturally, I I need an obscure word that means ended up representing my school at ‘enemy.’ ” I’d open Thesaurus.com, a few competitions when I was in my plug the word in and find the most teens as well. The strategies employed obscure but still relevant synonym. by top Scrabble players have always fascinated me, and when you comThen I’d cross-check it with an online bine that with my love of wordplay, Scrabble word checker to make sure Agatha Christie mysteries and teen it was valid and read what the official definition and point value would be. angst, well, that’s how Queen of the Tiles was born. Najwa’s internal dialogue was harder to work through. She floats The Scrabble competition in Queen from word to word depending on the of the Tiles is suspenseful and increddefinition or how that word is tied to ibly detailed. How did you research her memories or her analysis of that aspect of the book? What did you other people. It’s a tricky thing to learn that surprised you? pull off, and every time I did it I watched many hours of Scrabble felt like a tiny miracle. H Queen of the Tiles competitions, documentaries and One of my favorite such Salaam Reads, $18.99, 9781534494558 moments happens early on in the interviews, read as much and as widely as I could on strategy and gameplay, book. Najwa’s thought process takes Young Adult and mapped out moves on a Scrabble her from the word arenite (a sediboard that I kept by my desk throughout the entire process. mentary clastic rock) to clastic (composed of fragments) to fragment I am now a repository of absolutely fascinating and utterly useless (to break into pieces), and that’s how she feels right in that moment: Scrabble trivia. For instance, the highest scoring Scrabble word ever like she’s falling apart.

q&a | hanna alkaf The tournament aspect of the novel is thrilling on its own, but Queen of the Tiles also contains a murder mystery! Do you enjoy reading mysteries? What was challenging about plotting one yourself? I grew up raiding my older sister’s collection of Agatha Christie novels and still go back to them as comfort reads—particularly the Poirot books. Yes, you read that right: I read murder mysteries for comfort. The most challenging part of it all was laying down the breadcrumbs. It’s easy to say this big reveal needs to happen in this chapter, or this plot twist goes here, but if you don’t show a logical path to get there, then you’re not really earning it. Mysteries work best when readers can play along; they’re most fun when you can go back and realize the clues were there waiting for you, and you just didn’t realize at the time that they were clues at all.

In her grief after Trina’s death, Najwa experiences memory issues, intrusive thoughts and more. Your portrait of Najwa is so real and raw. What was it like for you to craft this moving depiction of loss and healing? I did some research on therapy and coping mechanisms for loss, grief and PTSD, but to be honest, writing Najwa was difficult not because I couldn’t understand what she was feeling, but because I understood it too well. I mined my own memories and emotions and buried shards of my own remembered grief in Najwa; if she feels real to readers, then I’m grateful, because the emotions were all too real to me. I loved how often Najwa refers to her therapist when she talks about what she’s been going through. Why was it important to you to include therapy as part of Najwa’s experiences and to depict her openly relying on its lessons? In Malaysia, we’re still working on destigmatizing mental illness and therapy. I really wanted to show a Malay Muslim teen struggling with her mental health and the ways in which she reaches out, gets help, develops coping mechanisms and puts those tools in practice—all things that I think we need to work on normalizing.

Najwa has developed an obsession with Trina’s Instagram account, and social media plays a vital role in the story. Why was it important to you to include this in the book? Trina was a social media star; she had a large following and we catch glimpses of how obsessed she was with maintaining a certain image for her public. But the more we get to know Trina, the more we see how much more depth and darkness lie behind the facade. And it isn’t just Trina. In all instances where we see social media use in Queen of the Tiles—and we see it a lot—there’s always the underlying question of what we present to the world versus who we really are. How much is being shown, and how much is being hidden? How do you evaluate what is real when you don’t know how much is being shared and how much has been withheld?

Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of Queen of the Tiles.

We should have stories that showcase all of that! Our pain and our joy and our fears and our loves and our friendships—the sum of our lives and not just one aspect of it

What do you think draws us to word games like Scrabble, crossword You recently tweeted, “I cannot tell you what it means to me to see a hijabi on the cover of a book that has absolutely nothing to do puzzles or, recently, Wordle and makes us want to play them time with Muslim pain or oppression. and again? A book where she just gets to play I can only really speak for myself, “Mysteries work best when readers Scrabble and solve a mystery and be but in my case, I am endlessly fascican play along; they’re most fun when a teenage girl.” That’s such a pownated by language and the way that erful statement. What do you hope the smallest changes in letters, word you can go back and realize the clues Najwa and her story might mean for choice, tone, inflection or emphasis teen readers? can entirely change the message we’re were there waiting for you.” All too often, Muslims and hijabis trying to get across. My dedication in have to perform our pain in order for our stories to be taken seriously. this book reads simply, “This one’s for the word nerds.” I might as well And those stories are important and necessary. But they’re not all we are. have said, “This one is for me.” —Linda M. Castellitto The Muslim experience is varied and colorful; we contain multitudes.

reviews | young adult

H I Kissed Shara Wheeler By Casey McQuiston

Fiction Chloe Green and Shara Wheeler have nothing in common except their goal of becoming valedictorian of Willowgrove Christian Academy. Chloe is a queer former Californian with two moms and a mean streak; Shara is the principal’s daughter and the de facto princess of their small Alabama town. So when Shara corners Chloe at school one day and kisses her, questions arise. Then Shara vanishes in the middle of prom, leaving the school buzzing with rumors. Chloe is determined to find Shara, but she’s not the only one looking. Star quarterback Smith, Shara’s boyfriend, and Shara’s neighbor, bad boy Rory, have also been “kissed and ditched” like Chloe. This unlikely trio reluctantly band together to track down Shara. I Kissed Shara Wheeler (Wednesday, $19.99,

H The Summer of Bitter

and Sweet

By Jen Ferguson

Fiction For Lou, the months before college are full of change and uncertainty. She’s newly single and exploring her ambivalence toward the idea of sex. Her mother, Louisa, is away selling beadwork on the powwow circuit, and her former best friend, King, is back in town for the first time in three years. And her family’s ice cream business is going under. Then a letter arrives from Lou’s father, a dangerous, manipulative white man who has just been released from prison and demands to be involved in her life. Lou was conceived when he sexually assaulted her mother, and the pair ran from that history and their Métis heritage for most of Lou’s life before finally settling down with Lou’s uncles. If Louisa learns that Lou’s father is out of prison, Lou fears that her mother will want them to disappear again, and Lou will lose all the stability she’s managed to find. Lou spends a pivotal summer learning to embrace who she is, who she loves and what she stands for. In The Summer of Bitter and Sweet (Heartdrum, $17.99, 9780063086166), Jen Ferguson portrays many weighty subjects,

9781250244451) brilliantly deconstructs tropes common to YA novels published during the first decade of the 21st century, including troubled popular girls, outsider heroes and high-stakes drama, complicating them by incorporating queerness, religious trauma and characters with deep interiority. The result is a more grounded take on YA fiction that will appeal to current and former teens alike. Shara is the most impressive accomplishment here. As if anticipating comparisons to the oft-derided manic pixie dream girls of John Green’s novels, author Casey McQuiston takes an affectionate jab at Paper Towns: “Of course Shara cast herself as the main character of her own personal John Green novel,” Chloe thinks. Then McQuiston twists the

trope, peeling back Shara’s layers and revealing her to be deeply complicated— no one’s manic pixie anything. Shara’s desperation to be found speaks to her sublimated desire to find herself. In a letter included with advance editions of the book, McQuiston writes, “I Kissed Shara Wheeler started off as a feeling.” The book’s most potent impressions are also feelings: the rush of nerves before the opening night of the school musical; the strange magic of driving familiar streets at night; your crush’s name appearing on your phone screen. I Kissed Shara Wheeler assures readers that although hurt is real, love is complicated and friends can let you down, the world is wide and nothing is impossible. —Mariel Fechik

including Lou’s sexuality, her relationship to her Métis heritage, her quest to save her family’s ice cream shack, her father’s threats and her burgeoning relationship with King. Ferguson impressively blends these storylines together in a complex depiction of one teenager’s struggle to find her center when every aspect of her life seems on the verge of collapse. Readers will appreciate that Lou’s journey toward strength and self-acceptance is not neat or linear. They’ll empathize with her when she reaches for King and when she pushes him away. It’s moving and inspiring to witness Lou’s tenacious drive to understand, on her own terms, what family and identity truly mean. —Sarah Welch

students, including smug, wealthy Three, her sworn enemy. To aggravate Three, Doe proposes a fake relationship with his cousin, Wells. As their lies begin to unravel, Doe uncovers a dark secret plaguing the Weston School, which forces her to rethink her commitment to pranks and rivalries and decide where her priorities truly lie. This May End Badly (Wednesday, $18.99, 9781250799180) is fun and insightful. Doe and her prankster girlfriends are easy to root for, their pranks are ingenious and clever, and her relationship with Wells is buoyant and charming. For all the levity offered by dueling schools and prank wars, the novel thoughtfully explores serious issues as well, including harmful family dynamics, childhood trauma and sexual harassment. Doe must take responsibility for her actions and use her voice, even when that means partnering with people she once considered enemies. Author Samantha Markum captures the transitions many teens experience during their final year of high school. Doe finds it difficult to say goodbye to adolescence, which is compounded by the changes her friends and school are undergoing. At first, Doe is willing to go to great lengths to keep everything in her life exactly the same. But as her friends choose colleges, the Weston School enters a new era and her love life blooms, Doe acknowledges that it’s time to grow up. Along the way, she discovers that becoming an adult isn’t so bad—especially when it means growing with the people you love. —Tami Orendain

This May End Badly By Samantha Markum

Romance Dorothy “Doe” Saltpeter and her friends are ready to make their senior year at the Weston School for girls their best yet, which means pulling outrageous pranks on Winfield Academy, the rival boys’ school. But when the schools announce a shocking merger, Doe is forced to interact with Winfield

feature | mother’s day picture books

Mom, Mommy, Mama and other words for love Four picture books celebrate motherhood in its many forms. This Mother’s Day, cuddle up with a bundle of picture books that capture the best parts of being a mom.

H Let’s Do Everything and Nothing Illustrator Julia Kuo makes her authorial debut with Let’s Do Everything and Nothing (Roaring Brook, $18.99, 9781250774347), a simple yet powerful salute to mothers and daughters and the time they spend together. With spare prose and phenomenal illustrations, Kuo pays homage to epic scenes, intimate moments and everything in between. As the book opens, a mother and her young daughter stand atop a hill, tiny figures amid a gorgeous landscape depicted in rich shades of indigo. The girl’s bright red dress brings the pair into sharp focus. “Will you climb a hill with me?” the text asks. Subsequent pages offer invitations to “dive into a lake” and “read the starry sky.” Kuo’s illustrations transform these into grand adventures, and we see the pair diving among giant manta rays and reaching the summit of a snowy peak in mountaineering gear. Throughout, Kuo uses a color palette of deep blues and purples and highlights of reds, oranges and yellows. Her striking graphic style crisply illuminates these shared moments between mother and child. In closing scenes, the mother gives her daughter a bath, then the pair rest together and “watch the shadows stretch.” This exquisite book would be a perfect gift to bring to a baby shower. “We’ll do everything and nothing,” Kuo writes, “for being together is the best journey yet.”

Me and Ms. Too A spunky girl has a bumpy transition after her father marries a children’s librarian in the fresh, funny Me and Ms. Too (Balzer + Bray, $17.99, 9780062894335). “Before Ms. Too, my house looked like my house and nobody else’s,” Molly announces. “My dad was my dad and nobody else’s.” Molly feels increasingly out of sorts as Ms. Too changes the living room wallpaper and fills their house with her belongings, including lots of books. Award-winning young adult author Laura Ruby (Bone Gap) conveys Molly’s desire to resist this life change. Her narrative pacing is spot on as she captures how Molly warms up to the new arrangement, and the trio form a tightknit “funny kind of family” that Molly adores. Exuberant, cartoon-style illustrations from Dung Ho energize this welltold tale. Molly’s exaggerated facial expressions, which shift from obstinate and indignant to happy and loving, are particularly well done, while Dad and Ms. Too are fully realized in artful strokes by both Ho and Ruby. With warmth and honesty, Me and Ms. Too validates the emotional challenges of welcoming a new stepmother while shining a light on the wonderful outcome that can result.

H Also E.B. Goodale’s Also (Clarion, $17.99, 9780358153948) is a lovely book about memory and intergenerational connections, told with accessible sophistication.

The book’s unnamed narrator begins by describing a visit to her grandmother’s house. She spends the afternoon among the blueberry bushes and is joined by her mother, her grandmother and her grandmother’s orange cat, Nutmeg. As the narrator introduces herself and each character (including Nutmeg), she describes what they are doing that day, then describes a memory that each is recalling at that very moment. For instance, the narrator’s mother remembers sitting in the kitchen when she was a child, sorting blueberries and laughing with her sister. Goodale paints these remembered scenes using blueberry ink, which results in a purplish duotone effect and distinguishes the characters’ memories from the vivid hues of the present-day setting. A cardinal (a bird commonly associated with departed souls) appears on every page, and its lively spirit helps peel back the book’s many layers of memory. Toward the end of the book, the cardinal swoops and glides across blueberry-ink spreads, trailing the bright colors of the present in its wake and uniting past, present and future along the path of its flight. Also is sure to prompt conversations about meaningful memories between adult readers and young listeners, while its subtext—that people and places we love are always with us in our hearts—offers quiet comfort to children experiencing loss. Also is a colorful portrait of three generations of mothers and daughters and the bonds they share.

Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle In Nina LaCour and Kaylani Juanita’s Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle (Candlewick, $17.99, 9781536211511), a young girl in California spends a week at home with her Mama while Mommy is away on a business trip to Minnesota. LaCour’s day-by-day account spotlights fun times (projecting a movie on the side of the garden shed) as well as lows (when Mama is “too busy to play”). A midweek video call cheers everyone up and gives Mommy the opportunity to share that she’s missing Mama and her daughter as much as they miss her. “I miss you as much as all the snow in Minnesota,” she tells them. In a touching scene at the girl’s school, the teacher asks if anyone else in the class is missing someone. Several students are, including a boy whose father “is in a faraway country” and a girl whose older sister is away at college. Juanita’s illustrations are packed with small details that will entice and hold young readers’ attention, from the plants that fill the family’s living room to the cakes and pastries in the window of the café, where an apronclad employee sets out food for neighborhood cats while Mama laughs at her daughter’s milk mustache. Juanita perfectly captures the girl’s mutable emotions over the seven days that Mommy is away. At lunch on Wednesday, the girl slumps over the table next to Mommy’s empty chair. On Sunday, as Mommy’s trip nears its end, she frolics through a community garden and eagerly gathers a welcome-home bouquet. Mama and Mommy and Me in the Middle is a gently reassuring and inclusive look at what it feels like to be separated from and reunited with a parent. —Alice Cary

reviews | children’s

The Marvellers By Dhonielle Clayton

Middle Grade Ella Durand’s family can work wonders. As Conjurors, they can traverse the underworld, make plants grow with a song and more. Ella is proud of these gifts, although Conjure folk have long been excluded from magical Marvellian society. When Conjurors are granted citizenship and the right to attend Marvellian schools, Ella becomes the first Conjuror to enroll at the Arcanum Training Institute. Ella arrives at the Institute eager to make friends and share her skills, but her goodwill is met by anti-Conjuror prejudice from many peers and adults. The dreamlike delights of a school where stars deliver the mail, cafeteria dumplings dance and sugar snowflakes fall from enchanted balloons are dampened by the harsh realities of bullying and exclusion. But Ella is not completely without allies, and when her beloved teacher, Masterji Thakur, goes

Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone By Tae Keller

Middle Grade Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone (Random House, $17.99, 9780593310526), Tae Keller’s first book since winning the 2021 Newbery Medal, begins at “the end of everything” for friends Mallor y, Reagan and Tess. During a school orchestra concert, Reagan’s phone buzzes with a text message: Jennifer Chan has run away. The news spreads quickly through the Gibbons Academy chapel, but only Mallory, Reagan and Tess have any idea where Jennifer might have gone or why. Mallory never felt she fit in until sixth grade, when Reagan moved to town, became her best friend and taught her the secrets of popularity and “how the world worked.” So when Mallory meets Jennifer, the new girl in their seventh grade class, and learns that Jennifer has no interest in following Reagan’s unspoken rules, Mallory knows that befriending her is a terrible idea. But Jennifer is a very hard person to say no to, and Mallory finds herself swept up in Jennifer’s epic mission to become the first person to contact aliens. As Mallory’s new friend and best friend clash, Mallory is caught between them—with devastating consequences.

missing, Ella and her friends must work together to rescue him. As Ella untangles the dangerous secrets at the heart of her teacher’s disappearance, readers will be captivated by hints at even larger mysteries to come. Dhonielle Clayton’s The Marvellers (Holt, $16.99, 9781250174949) bursts with charm and whimsy as every corner of the Arcanum Training Institute comes alive with magical details drawn from cultures all over the world. Readers who appreciate copious, intricate world building will find much to love as students take pride in their unique magical talents and heritages while also learning from and connecting with magic users from other backgrounds. Ella, who is fascinated by Marvellian society but never turns her back on her Conjuror

identity, exemplifies how The Marvellers vibrantly celebrates both common ground and difference. Her inner strength propels her through obstacles with optimism and courage to spare. In every scene, her emotions shine, whether she’s feeling love for her family, uncertainty about her future at the Institute or determination to stand up for what’s right. It’s clear that The Marvellers is only the start of Ella’s journey, but Clayton has carefully given Ella everything she needs to one day join the likes of Percy Jackson, Morrigan Crow and Aru Shah in the middle grade fantasy hall of fame. —RJ Witherow

Shifting back and forth in time between Jennifer’s arrival in town and the aftermath of her disappearance, Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone depicts the difficult choices many young people face. It takes courage to be yourself instead of fitting in, to do the right thing when everyone else is doing something that you know is wrong. Middle school can be the hardest years of a child’s life, and Keller honestly explores many of the reasons why, including bullying, racism and the fear that one false move can bring your whole world tumbling down. Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone is a frank, thought-provoking, sometimes painful but ultimately uplifting story about looking outside yourself to discover who you really are. —Kevin Delecki

The first-person narrator evokes the world of her childhood through sensory details as well as through reflections on the thoughts and feelings of her younger self, offering a joyful vision of a time in her life when the future seemed bright and full of possibility. Summer begins when someone opens a fire hydrant, soaking children who are already giddy with new freedom as they walk home on the last day of school. Every sunny day after, “from the end of breakfast to the beginning of dinner,” kids play a marvelous litany of games: double Dutch, kick the can, stickball, tag, hide-and-seek and more. They chase the ice cream truck and share frozen treats with friends. Sometimes knees get scraped, but older kids tell reassuring stories until “hurt knees [are] forgotten.” Pura Belpré Honor illustrator Leo Espinosa (Islandborn) depicts a vibrant and diverse neighborhood filled with lots of visual callouts to the 1970s, from the cars to everyone’s groovy hairstyles and clothes. Colors, patterns and styles popular during this period abound, including mustard yellows, avocado greens, plaid bell-bottom pants and knee-high white socks worn with tennis shoes and athletic shorts. Adult readers will even pick up on the throwback vibe of the bubbly typeface used on the cover and throughout the book. Young readers will find The World Belonged to Us to be far more engaging than a generic lecture about “the good old days.” It’s an immersive, hyperspecific invitation for readers from different generations to form connections with one another, fueled by the unmistakable, joyful

The World Belonged to Us By Jacqueline Woodson Illustrated by Leo Espinosa

Picture Book Prolific and critically acclaimed author Jacqueline Woodson transports readers on a nostalgic journey to a summer in Brooklyn “not so long ago” in The World Belonged to Us (Nancy Paulsen, $18.99, 9780399545498).

Visit BookPage.com to read our Q&A with Dhonielle Clayton.

reviews | children’s energy of childhood summers. Adults should be prepared to share stories about what summer was like when they were young after reading this bright and emotionally engaging book. —Autumn Allen

The Last Mapmaker By Christina Soontornvat

Middle Grade Twelve-year-old Sai is an assistant to master mapmaker Paiyoon. Sai loves her job and is good at it, but she has a secret mission: to save enough money to escape the kingdom of Mangkon, where prospects for the future are inextricably bound up with family lineage. On Sai’s 13th birthday, she will not receive a ceremonial

lineal, the chain of golden links that symbolize her ancestry, because her family has no history—at least, not one to celebrate. Her father is a con man, and much of Sai’s skill for duplicating maps and charts stems from helping him with forgeries. As Sai’s birthday approaches, the queen issues a new directive: Now that Mangkon has finally achieved peace for the first time in 20 years, it’s time for the kingdom to rededicate itself to exploration. Master Paiyoon asks Sai to accompany him on a southbound ship, which will journey past the 50th parallel, also called the Dragon Line. Sai soon discovers that everyone on board the ship has a secret, including Master Paiyoon, Captain Sangra and the charismatic Miss Rian, who earned her lineal through wartime heroism. As the voyage gets underway, Sai learns that even their mission is built on a secret. A rich prize awaits any crew who can locate the elusive Sunderlands, a remote and inaccessible continent where, according to legend, Mangkon’s long-departed dragons now dwell.

In 2021, author Christina Soontornvat received Newbery Honors for two different books in the same year, a first in the award’s centurylong history. (E.L. Konigsburg previously received a Medal and an Honor in 1968.) Soontornvat returns to high fantasy to create the Thai-inspired world of The Last Mapmaker (Candlewick, $17.99, 9781536204957), a standalone tale in which she seamlessly incorporates themes of colonialism and environmentalism. Sai, whose first-person narration keeps the action moving faster than a ship under full sail, is a complicated and compassionately flawed character. It’s easy to sympathize with her dual struggles to identify whom she can trust and reconcile with her family’s past. If The Last Mapmaker has a fault, it’s a tooquick resolution. Readers who grow invested in Soontornvat’s characters will wish they had just a little more time to spend with them. On the whole, however, the novel is a compelling quest narrative brimming with adventure, surprises and betrayal. —Norah Piehl

meet FRANK MORRISON

Epic loves skateboarding, but when his family moves to a new neighborhood, he struggles to make friends who appreciate his amazing tricks. Frank Morrison’s Kick Push (Bloomsbury, $18.99, 9781547605927) is an exuberant tale about the power of self-esteem and sick moves. Morrison, whose accolades include the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award and two Coretta Scott King Honors, lives with his family in Atlanta, Georgia.