June 2022 BookPage

JUNE 2022

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

e k i l s l e e F

r e m m u s Akwaeke Emezi’s first romance novel is glam, hot and bold. Discover You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty and 27 more summer reads.

Also inside:

DOESN’T STOP HERE.

2022

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.

Sign up to receive reading recommendations by email at BookPage.com/newsletters Get more ideas for your TBR list, in all your favorite genres: Audiobooks Biography/Memoir Children’s Books

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JUNE 2022

features

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q&a | mohsin hamid. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 A powerful new audiobook recording

fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

q&a | alexis hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 A rom-com master takes on the Regency

young adult. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 children’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

SUMMER READING cover story | akwaeke emezi. . . . . . . . . . 10

columns

Introducing this summer’s hottest read

feature | your summer vibe. . . . . . . . . . . 12

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

Reading ideas to match your vacay mood

well read. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

interview | tabitha carvan . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Celebrating the joy of being a superfan

feature | celebrity memoirs. . . . . . . . . . . 17 ’Tis the season for a Hollywood tell-all

feature | beach picture books. . . . . . . . . 30 Soak up the sun, sand and sea

book clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 lifestyles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 the hold list. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 whodunit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

PRIDE MONTH feature | pride memoirs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 LGBTQ authors put queerness in context

q&a | eliot schrefer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Queer ducks, deer, dolphins and more

feature | pride for kids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Books for younger readers celebrate Pride

PRESIDENT & FOUNDER Michael A. Zibart

PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Trisha Ping

VP & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Elizabeth Grace Herbert

DEPUTY EDITOR Cat Acree

CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy MARKETING MANAGER Mary Claire Zibart SUBSCRIPTIONS Katherine Klockenkemper CONTRIBUTOR Roger Bishop

Cover and pages 10–11 include art from You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi © 2022, used with permission from Atria.

EDITORIAL POLICY

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Stephanie Appell Christy Lynch Savanna Walker BRAND & PRODUCTION MANAGER Meagan Vanderhill EDITORIAL INTERN Jessie Cobbinah

Correction: In our May issue, the feature “Decent doesn’t mean dull” was attributed to the wrong contributor. It was written by Carole V. Bell.

BookPage is a selection guide for new books.

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The voice in your head Fifteen years after its initial publication, The Reluctant Fundamentalist gets a haunting new audiobook recorded by its author.

© JILLIAN EDELSTEIN

q&a | mohsin hamid

Booker Prize finalist Mohsin Hamid possesses transportive powers as an audiobook narrator, and with his new recording of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, he has now narrated all five of his books. Told in a first-person monologue by a Pakistani man named Changez to an unnamed American at a cafe in Lahore not long after 9/11, The Reluctant Fundamentalist makes for a powerful listening experience as, over the course of one evening, a sense of dread builds. For his first ever interview on his work as a narrator, Hamid discusses this “one-man play.”

When writing this book, how much did you think about stepping into the role of narrator?

I really do think of literature or fiction as something we absorb through our aural circuitry more than our visual circuitry. Many of us read books with our Visit BookPage.com to read our starred eyes—some people read with their fingers or with their review of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. ears, as with audiobooks—but so many of us grew up reading with our eyes, so it’s a very visual experience, and the way things look should be important. now 15 years old, so it’s past the Russell Banks 10-year But I tend to feel that the circuitry involved is still very law, and I think people still seem to be reading it. much the circuitry of sound and language and rhythm I wrote that book very much with the idea of the H The Reluctant Fundamentalist reader as a kind of character. . . . This dramatic monoand cadence.

Penguin Audio, 4.5 hours One of the formative moments for me as a writer logue is really akin to a one-man play. So in doing an was taking a creative writing workshop with Toni audiobook, I was performing that one-man play. I’d Audiobook Morrison back in 1993. . . . One thing she did in her always imagined it as this almost stage story, and sudclass is that she would read our work aloud back to us. She could make denly I was on this stage, and it felt oddly like coming full circle. a Corn Flakes box sound like poetry. She was the greatest reader I ever encountered, and when she would read . . . I thought, “Wow, I can really That dramatic monologue is so effective as an audiobook. The listener write! I’ve got it!” is called upon in a very different way than with other novels. We feel like we’re being addressed.

She said things like, “You want to keep your reader a sort of half-­ heartbeat ahead of the action, so that what comes next can be a surprise, It is a very direct form of address. It has to be. And in that book in particular, but it should feel like it was inevitable.” . . . One of the ways we do that in voice is so important because Changez, we learn, is ostensibly Muslim. cinema, for example, is through the soundtrack, which suggests moveBut he doesn’t pray, he drinks, he has sex, he doesn’t quote the Quran or ments and motions and directions even while the visuals are doing somethink about the doings of the Prophet. . . . His Islam appears to be a sort of thing else. In written fiction, cadence and sound and rhythm can begin to tribal [affiliation]. It’s sort of “these are my people, I belong to something,” establish these sorts of movements and directions, so that you have the much more than it is an operating system, you know, like MacOS. chance of this feeling of inevitability.

Some people might imagine that Islam has a kind of . . . rigidity or formality, that it has a kind of, you know, menace. I think these sorts of perAs we revisit this 9/11 novel with the gift of hindsight, what do you ceptions that many people do have about Islam—who are not Muslims think is its place in our current reading environment? or don’t know very many Muslims, particularly in that post-9/11 environIt’s hard for me to answer that. I remember once being at this literary fesment—the novel doesn’t give those attributes to Changez, but it does tival in Mantua, Italy. And as I say this, I should make clear that my life is use a voice that can invoke those attributes. So you can end up believing not spent at literary festivals in Mantua, Italy. It was as exotic for me to be things about this guy, not because he thinks in a certain way or even does there as it is to say it to you now, but there I was under some clock tower anything, but just because it sounds like he might. in the open air, the stars above us, and Russell Banks was there. . . . I knew Are you a frequent audiobook listener? that a book of his had come out recently, and I had asked him if he was happy with how it had done and, you know, the usual chitchat you try to You know, I’m now reminded of this thing that Philip Gourevitch once said make with some literary icon when you’re this young kid who’s written a to me when he was editor of The Paris Review. He said, “It’s strange, but book or two. And he said something that stuck with me. we get more short story submissions than we have subscribers.” . . . I feel He said, “You know, it’s too soon to say. . . . It’s not until about 10 years a little bit like that, where I’ve recorded this handful of audiobooks these after a book comes out that you begin to have a sense of what it’s doing. last few years, but how many have I listened to? I think I’m like the Paris And the reasons why people are still reading it 10 years on are probably Review submitter of audiobooks. I talk a good game, but I don’t really walk what you actually did. That’s what people got from it.” This is the kind of the walk as far as listening is concerned. So it’s a bit shameful, but anyway, thing you go to literary festivals for, so that some much more experienced I’m a writer, so I make the things. I don’t listen that much.

—Cat, Deputy Editor writer can unload this wisdom on you. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is

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audio

H Run, Rose, Run To enjoy James Patterson and Dolly Parton’s Run, Rose, Run (Hachette Audio, 10.5 hours) to the fullest, you must listen to the audiobook. Not only is it a necessary companion to Parton’s album of the same title (featuring songs inspired by the novel), but the cultural icon also voices one of the main characters, veteran country music star and bar owner Ruthanna Ryder. Up-and-coming singer-songwriter AnnieLee Keyes, expertly voiced by country pop singer Kelsea Ballerini, brings youthful exuberance and hopeful naivete to the story, providing a counterpoint to Ruthanna’s sage advice about navigating the music industry. Additional characters come to life through the voices of Soneela Nankani, James Fouhey, Kevin T. Collins, Peter Ganim, Luis Moreno, Ronald Peet, Robert Petkoff, Ella Turenne and Emily Woo Zeller, creating an ensemble experience for listeners to enjoy.

—G. Robert Frazier

Longer days mean more time for

LISTENING

macmillan audio

READ BY BARRIE KREINIK

READ BY BEN ONWUKWE

READ BY ALI AHN

READ BY JULIA WHELAN

READ BY JULIA WHELAN

READ BY THE AUTHOR

READ BY DANIEL GILLIES

READ BY BARRIE KREINIK

H Atlas of the Heart Brené Brown invites listeners to get vulnerable in Atlas of the Heart (Random House Audio, 8.5 hours). Drawing from her research and personal experiences, Brown offers a new framework for building healthy relationships by analyzing common emotions such as compassion, fear and anger. Brown narrates this audiobook with gentleness and expertise, and when she speaks about serious topics, she is sincere without being somber. Tune in for a challenging and inspiring listen.

—Tami Orendain

H Gallant There are times when only a gothic novel will do, and such times call for Gallant (Greenwillow, 7.5 hours) by V. E. Schwab, author of the Shades of Magic series. Actor Julian Rhind-Tutt sounds like he’s sitting with you in a darkened room, confiding a secret so profound that only you, his listener, can be trusted with it.

—Deborah Mason

H The Nineties Chuck Klosterman has found a treasure trove of 1990s history, nostalgia and pop culture relics to explore in The Nineties (Penguin Audio, 12.5 hours). Klosterman narrates the audiobook in an almost tongue-in-cheek fashion, with acclaimed voice actor Dion Graham reading the footnotes and quotations. If you’re listening on your smartphone, you’ll connect even stronger with Klosterman’s examination of an era that marked the “end to an age where we controlled technology more than it controlled us.”

—G. Robert Frazier

5

well read

by robert weibezahl

Translating Myself and Others We tend to believe that some things get lost in translation, but perhaps, as Jhumpa Lahiri suggests in her absorbing new collection of essays, Translating Myself and Others (Princeton University, $21.95, 9780691231167), some things are also gained. Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her debut collection of short stories and has subsequently enraptured readers with her penetrating novels and stories. She famously moved to Rome in 2015 and began writing in Italian, publishing in Italian and translating the work of Italian novelist Domenico Starnone into English.

This linguistically bifurcated existence has inspired much thought on the art of translation, which Lahiri says has always been a controversial literary form. The short essays she collects here—some written in English and some translated into English from Italian—explore her passion for translation, a subject she previously taught at Princeton. Yet interwoven with some of the more arcane nuts-and-bolts issues that face the literary translator are other Master storyteller Jhumpa Lahiri things that Lahiri, as a writer of ficspins thoughtful and personal tion, has learned from the process essays on the unsung art of of rendering the words of other literary translation. writers, as well as her own, into a new tongue. “Now that I have become a translator in addition to remaining a writer, I am struck by how many people regard what I am doing as ‘secondary’ and thus creatively inferior in nature,” she writes. “Readers who react with suspicion to a work in translation reinforce a perceived hierarchy in literature between an original work and its imitation.” Indeed, translators rarely even get recognition on a book’s jacket, or enduring recognition outside of academic circles. And yet, so much of the world’s literature would be inaccessible to us without their intensive work. Throughout these essays, Lahiri shows how painstaking and full of care the process of translation is.

Essays on translation might seem an unlikely conduit for a writer’s most intimate thoughts and feelings, but Lahiri is an engaging guide, and her pensive ruminations provide a window into her soul. In “Why Italian?” she ponders the longstanding connection that she, a woman who was already fluent in English and Bengali, felt to Italian even before learning it and why she was compelled to write in it. “Where I Find Myself,” fulfilling the clever double meaning of its title, examines how Lahiri finds new intentions when she translates her own work from Italian into English (something she long avoided doing but has now embraced), sometimes revising the original Italian in the process in a kind of reverse engineering that she compares to a tennis game. In a very moving afterword, “Translating Transformation,” she reconsiders her mother’s recent death through the prism of Ovid, whose masterwork she is currently co-translating. “In the face of death,” she writes, “the Metamorphoses had completely altered my perspective.”

Translating Myself and Others is a subtle yet ultimately engrossing work, somewhat academic at times, yet infused with the kind of understated, often startling capacity for observation that has always been Lahiri’s literary superpower.

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.

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book clubs

by julie hale

Talking points for armchair travelers Following a breakup with his fiancée, “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent Conor Knighton sought distraction in travel. He spent a year touring the nation’s 63 national parks, and in Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-toZion Journey Through Every National Park (Crown, $17, 9781984823557), he provides a funny, fascinating account of his trip. Knighton, who started his trek at Acadia National Park in Maine, shares hilarious anecdotes from the road and provides insights into the history of the park system. Reading groups will enjoy digging into themes of nature, conservation and the allure of travel.

In The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America (Ballantine, $18, 9780525619345), Elizabeth Letts chronicles the extraordinary travels of Annie Wilkins.

Four epic travel tales—all true— In 1954, Wilkins learned that she will inspire reading groups to had only a few years to live. embark on their own journeys.

Determined to see the Pacific Ocean, a lifelong dream of hers, the 63-year-old set out on her horse, Tarzan, riding from Maine to California and attracting national attention along the way. Letts brings Wilkins’ adventures to vivid life in this unforgettable book.

Mark Adams’ Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier (Dutton, $16, 9781101985120) is a spirited tribute to one of America’s most idiosyncratic states. Inspired

by Edward H. Harriman’s famous 1899 exploration of the Alaskan coastline, Adams (Turn Right at Machu Picchu) traveled the same route as Harriman and his crew. He documents the ways in which Alaska has changed in the intervening years and crosses paths with an array of colorful characters, providing astute observations about environmentalism, Alaskan history and the oil industry in the process.

Kate Harris was a Rhodes scholar studying at Oxford and MIT when she set out to travel the Silk Road by bike, an excursion she recounts in Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road (Dey Street, $16.99, 9780062846662). Harris, who had long dreamed of exploration, was accompanied by her best friend, Mel. Together, they cycled their way into Turkey, India, Nepal and China, traveling for nearly a year.

Harris mixes history, geography, travel writing and personal reflection to create a richly detailed narrative that’s a testament to the transformative power of travel.

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 MUSTIQUE ISLAND

by Sarah McCoy “Historical fiction lovers will luxuriate in this novel about a 1970s enclave, and a mother and her daughters who find their new beginnings there. A big-hearted, enchanting gem.”

—LAURA DAVE author of The Last Thing He Told Me

THE LAST QUEEN

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni A dazzling novel of the last queen of India’s Sikh empire, who transformed herself from daughter of a royal servant to powerful monarch…based on true events.

THE ESSEX SERPENT

by Sarah Perry NOW AN APPLE TV+ SERIES “A novel of almost insolent ambition...it’s part ghost story and part natural history lesson, part romance and part feminist parable.”

—NEW YORK TIMES

THE SCHOOL FOR GERMAN BRIDES

by Aimie K. Runyan “A moving and memorable tale of sisterhood, strength and survival, which will resonate deeply with readers of historical fiction.”

— PAM JENOFF New York Times bestselling author of The Woman With the Blue Star

t @Morrow_PB

t @bookclubgirl

f William Morrow I BookClubGirl

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feature | pride memoirs

Queerness in context LGBTQ authors beautifully capture the places that shaped their identities.

Three memoirs explore what happens when someone’s sexuality collides with their cultural and geographical surroundings.

ASYLUM Edafe Okporo’s aptly titled memoir, Asylum: A Memoir and a Manifesto (Simon & Schuster, $26.99, 9781982183745), recounts his experience growing up gay in Nigeria, a place known for having harsh laws against “known homosexuals.” Okporo writes with sensitivity about the scenery that shaped his childhood, his powerful familial relationships and the friendships that formed his identity. One night in 2016, however, all of these things were threatened by a mob that gathered outside his home. Okporo tried to escape out a window, but before he could, they broke down his door and beat him until he was unconscious.

It was his 26th birthday.

This event marked the beginning of Okporo’s oneway journey to America as a refugee. Once he arrived in New York City, there was a potent juxtaposition between his experiences as a Black gay man from a place of repression and the freedom he encountered as an asylum-seeker. Still, the cruelty of America’s immigration system and the overwhelming whiteness of New York’s gay community presented stark new forms of injustice. With clarity and grace, Okporo casts light on the racism and oppression he discovered lurking within communities that are themselves oppressed.

Okporo was able to explore new relationships in New York, sexual and otherwise, and ultimately found both professional and personal purpose in America as a global gay rights activist. Along the way, Asylum chronicles a range of hardships, from the severe laws of the author’s home country to the bitter realities of immigrating to the U.S. Throughout these difficulties, Okporo weaves a thread of hope that he will find freedom while remaining true to himself. If you are seeking a read that couches complex issues in a heartfelt personal narrative, Okporo’s memoir will surely delight.

H BOYS AND OIL In Boys and Oil (Liveright, $27.95, 9781324090861), environmental activist Taylor Brorby masterfully recounts his upbringing in coal-fractured North Dakota. Growing up, Brorby was teased by his peers because he played with girls and didn’t gravitate toward sports. Like many queer boys, his sexuality was in conflict with traditional models of what men were meant to do and how they were supposed to act.

Brorby’s memoir opens with superbly detailed insight into North Dakota’s geography, which becomes a powerful symbol throughout Boys and Oil. This jagged imagery grounds the narrative and the author’s journey, and Brorby’s attention to it

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throughout the book feels nearly ekphrastic, with sweeping, alluring descriptions of a land that is at once beautiful and damaged.

It’s within the context of this landscape that Brorby’s life unfolds, from a taunted child whose grandmother lovingly painted his fingernails, to a young man being physically assaulted outside of a small-town bar, to an out poet and environmentalist. In many parts of the country (and world), defying your culture’s expectations comes with a price. Whether as a boy in love with books or as an adult fighting to protect the broken land of his youth, Brorby writes about the personal price he has paid with striking honesty.

Queer politics calls perceived norms to task, subverting the status quo and making it possible for new structures to emerge. In his unique and breathtaking memoir, Brorby does just this, creating wonderful new categories for rural communities and American masculinity, and for gay kids’ places within both.

H MA AND ME Putsata Reang was born in Cambodia amid civic turmoil and unrest. Her family fled in 1975, when she was only 11 months old, and her journey would become legend. Aboard the ship her family escaped on, the infant Reang was believed to be dead. A Navy captain suggested that she be thrown overboard, but her mother resisted. Upon arriving at a U.S. naval base in the Philippines, her mother handed Reang to the doctors, and under their treatment, she survived— accruing a lifelong debt to her mother in the process.

Reang’s relationship with her mother is a strong feature in Ma and Me (MCD, $28, 9780374279264) as the author examines her past with a surgeon’s precision and artist’s view. Reang takes a kaleidoscope of influences into consideration—including cultural expectations for girls and women, the institution of marriage and trauma caused by war and flight—as she inspects her upbringing as an immigrant in Oregon, learning to balance her Cambodian identity with the pressure to assimilate. Up close, she handles these influences on her mother with grace and compassion, even when her mother severs their relationship because she can’t handle Reang’s engagement to a woman. Reang does an excellent job of portraying the permeability of accepting loved ones for who they are and finding the limits of that acceptance.

In the world of Ma and Me, stories grow larger than life and queer identity creates conflict as it becomes a part of the long-woven tapestry of family lore. With great care, Reang addresses the legacy of trauma—both as a child of war who is displaced geographically and as a gay woman who is estranged from her family. The layers stacked together in this memoir, and Reang’s treatment of their complexity, are simply brilliant.

—Timothy Burger

lifestyles

by susannah felts

H Edible Plants In Edible Plants (Red Lightning, $25, 9781684351718), Jimmy W. Fike takes native North American plant specimens—such as dandelion, rocket, sassafras, spicebush and pawpaw—out of their natural surroundings and meticulously digitally photographs them against black backdrops. In each image, the stark contrast makes visible the magical potency and potential of these common living things, many of which are often dismissed as weeds. Fike colorizes the edible portions of each plant, while the inedible parts are kept a delicate, even eerie gray. These striking photographs seek to inform, similar to the horticultural photography and illustrations of eras past, perhaps making foragers of us all. But what’s more, they are painstakingly beautiful. This book would make an impressive gift for the naturalist in your life.

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Cats & Books How can we not give a shoutout to Cats & Books (Universe, $19.95, 9780789341181), a slim-and-trim, adorable celebration of felines sprawled amid TBR piles and perched on bookshelves? This is a hashtag-to-print project: The photos are crowdsourced from Instagram users worldwide who tagged their photos #CatsandBooks. Now compiled in print, short captions give glimpses of these kitties’ personalities. For example, George from Germany “is a gentle soul and the best office buddy one could ask for.” (Sweet George is shown with a paw flung possessively over a copy of Sally Rooney’s Normal People.) Any person who loves cats and also loves books obviously needs to own this small treasure.

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Things You Can Do Last night at dinner, my daughter complained about the absence of meat in her tacos, which led to a discussion of sustainable eating. She didn’t grasp the connection between a carnivorous diet and climate change, so I brought to the table Things You Can Do (Ten Speed, $19.99, 9781984859662) and read from Chapter 3, “A Climate-Friendly Diet.” I daresay I got through to her, and I imagine New York Times journalist Eduardo Garcia’s compact, well-sourced guide to fighting climate change and reducing waste will continue to help us play our small but mighty part. Grounded in science, this approachable book offers a 360-degree view of the causes and effects of a warming planet, from reliance on coal to the excesses of modern life, including the overuse of air conditioning, increased meat consumption, car culture and much more. I for one am glad to have this resource, rounded out by beautiful watercolor and gouache illustrations by Sara Boccaccini Meadows, at my fingertips for family meals and beyond.

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

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9

s e i t i l i b i s n e s e h t A shock to

cover story | akwaeke emezi

Akwaeke Emezi’s first romance novel is this summer’s hottest read.

Akwaeke Emezi is known for their literary flexibility, having already displan was to do literary fiction first, because it seemed easier to start in literary played a mastery of fiction, poetry and memoir, but You Made a Fool of fiction and then move to other genres, rather than go in the other direction.”

Death With Your Beauty is a shock to the system in more ways than one.

Both in its own right and in the context of Emezi’s literary game plan, The differences between the prize-winning writer’s first romance novel and You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty (whose title comes from a their previous work go beyond genre boundlyric in the song “Hunger” by Florence + the “I wanted to both read and write Machine) is an exciting achievement that reparies and readers’ expectations.

Like Emezi’s debut, Freshwater (2018), and resents a particular kind of artistic freedom. their bestselling novel The Death of Vivek Oji something more joyful, something And after Emezi’s most recent publishing suc(2020), You Made a Fool of Death With Your cesses, the timing seems right for them to take that had a happy ending.”

Beauty is a bold work of art. But while those this leap. Plus, many readers will relate to the earlier books possess what Emezi calls “a quality of the other,” the author’s author’s inclination toward lightness. Emezi has long been a romance fan, first romance reflects a different voice—one that is truer to their own story but the past few years have rendered romance’s appeal more immediate. of love and heartbreak when they were a 20-­something in New York City.

“The world is such a heavy place—always has been, but it seems to be The novel follows Nigerian American artist Feyi Adekola, who’s restartgetting heavier,” Emezi says. “I wanted to both read and write something ing her life in Brooklyn five years after the death of her husband. As Feyi more joyful, something that had a happy ending. And that’s one of the things becomes romantically entangled with a man named Nasir and then with I love about romance, that it gives you a soft place to land.”

Make no mistake, Emezi is very clear on what kind of book they’ve writhis father, a celebrity chef named Alim, she discovers the healing she needs.

The novel takes Emezi in multiple new directen: “It’s not a literary novel pretending to be tions. It’s light, optimistic and fun while maina romance. Like, no, I wrote it for the genre.” taining a significant throughline of lyricism They display a clear knowledge of romance conventions, readership and fan base, and and drama. However, there’s a certain vulnerability and rebellion whenever an author flips they selected a publisher with a track record the script on their readership. When a voice of embracing the popular genre. “Part of the emerges that’s different from what came before, reason why I published with Atria is because there’s a real potential for blowback.

I’m not doing literary fiction. I’m doing com“I don’t know if all readers are going to enjoy mercial fiction,” Emezi says. “I wanted to be it suddenly being so, you know, contemporary very firmly rooted in the genre.” This intention and vulgar,” Emezi says. “I think that will chalpermeates the novel, which readers of other hardcover contemporary romances, such as lenge certain readers, because I do think there’s a kind of reader—and to be very honest, I think Tia Williams’ Seven Days in June, will gravitate toward immediately. of a white liberal reader when I think of this reader—who’s coming to the work looking for Like Williams’ novel, Emezi’s book has a sexy, that otherness, you know, looking for someglam 2000s Brooklyn vibe, and its Caribbean thing that’s a little foreign and well out of reach.” scenes are equally alive. Emezi has lived in both That’s an unsettling but not entirely unfaNew York City and Trinidad, and while they miliar sentiment. For some readers, stories of never insert a representation of themself into African spirituality set within African settings their fictional narratives, this novel is clearly are more palatable than portraits of young influenced by real life. Feyi and her best friend and roommate, Joy, are radiant. Messy, single queer Black women disregarding the boundaries of American propriety. “I’ve seen a couple and free, they have known loss and are trying to of early Goodreads reviews, and some people make the most of their time on Earth. really do not like this book,” Emezi says.

“I spent my entire 20s in Brooklyn,” says the author, who is 34. “This is what we were A strong audience response is a hallmark of our modern interactive literary landscape, doing. . . . We were being hoes, and we were parwhich could be intimidating to an author and tying, and we were having a great time.” From consummate artist like Emezi. But despite any page one, the novel throws off the cultural conpre-publication speculation about the novel’s straints of a judgmental white or male gaze. Feyi H You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty reception, the author’s enthusiasm and fightand Joy consciously reject the unwritten rules Atria, $27, 9781982188702 ing spirit are unmistakable. Emezi is clearly up of modern respectability that Black women are for the challenge, with an attitude that’s more often expected to follow. “bring it on” than nervous.

This full-hearted and playful embrace of As Emezi ruminates on the topography of the literary market, they reveal Black joy and romance also manifests in Feyi’s impeccable older love intera sophisticated understanding of both their career and the positioning of est, Alim. His portrayal is one of fluid beauty and sensitivity that happily genre fiction. “I actually was a speculative fiction writer,” the author says, flirts with wish fulfillment. In fact, conjuring a dream man on the page com“but when I decided to write professionally, I had a game plan, and the game plicated Emezi’s personal life during the novel’s incubation: “When I first

Romance

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© VO

Sensational Summer Reading!

She’ll do anything for the perfect family.

“Eerie, darkly funny, and very touching…

Great, plain and simple.”

—Stanley Tucci

Her unfinished play is the second act they never saw coming.

“Beautifully authentic.”

Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty.

started writing him as a character, I was dating this guy in New York. And the guy was jealous of Alim because he was like, ‘I feel like you’re writing your perfect man.’ Of course I am. I absolutely am.”

For all its lightness, the novel does pose its share of challenges, and while Emezi fiercely respects the traditions of romance, they’ve also made some provocative choices. Like many modern romances (especially ones by independently published authors), Emezi’s novel departs from the old-school concept of “there can only be one” love interest. Sometimes in romance novels, there is one true love, and if you lose that one but then find someone else, there must have been something wrong with the previous experience.

But both Feyi and Alim experience deep love before they meet each other, and the connection between them never calls those prior commitments into question. Feyi also sees other men before she meets her ultimate love interest, and there’s no shade in the way those sexual experiences are presented.

Through the expertly crafted narrative and the way Feyi and Alim bond on so many levels, including sexually and spiritually, Emezi’s novel demonstrates that you don’t have to diminish the past in order to love someone thoroughly in the present. This is a driving theme of the novel: seizing a second chance after a previous true love. It’s a motif close to Emezi’s heart.

“I got married really, really young, when I was in my early 20s. And when that marriage ended, I was like, this is it. I’m never falling in love again,” they say. “[But] once you move past the limitations of ‘it can only happen once,’ then you can use that first time to be like, well, if it happened before, it means that it’s possible for it to happen again.”

In the end, Emezi believes, it comes down to a choice: “You can either choose despair or hope, and I wanted to show both Feyi and Alim choosing hope and working their way toward it.” In this, they have certainly succeeded. The idea that love is conscious and regenerative comes through beautifully in their characters’ growth and in the relationship’s progression. The result is a gorgeous affirmation: Second chances are real, even for characters with a few scars and miles on them.

—Carole V. Bell

—Kal Penn, author of You Can’t Be Serious

Her ambition is everything, but could she give it up for her passion?

“Wildly fun and completely delightful.”

—Eric Smith, coauthor of Jagged Little Pill: The Novel

Diving for pearls is dangerous. Discovering the truth may be deadly.

“An expert tale of corruption, fate, and family.”

—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone

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feature | summer reading

Maybe your perfect summer read is pure escapism, heady fun, nonstop thrills or great big heaps of feelings. Whatever your summer vibe, we’ve got a book for you.

EMOTION Family drama, friendship and romance

H Nora Goes Off Script

The Shore

H Flying Solo

The plot of Nora Goes Off Script (Putnam, $27, 9780593420034) may be a classic formula—bigcity hotshot finding his real self with help from a small-town sweetheart—but nothing about this warm, witty and wise novel is predictable.

Author Annabel Monaghan tells the truth about love’s ups and downs, all the way to the novel’s triumphant finale.

—Elizabeth Mazer

A tale of slowly revealed secrets and evocative sensory details of the Jersey Shore, Katie Runde’s debut novel, The Shore (Scribner, $26.99, 9781982180171), is a vivid portrait of a family caring for a dying father. It’s perfect for readers who loved Tracey Lange’s We Are the Brennans and Rachel Beanland’s Florence Adler Swims Forever.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

NPR pop culture reporter Linda Holmes’ first novel, Evvie Drake Starts Over, is beloved by readers and critics alike. Flying Solo (Ballantine, $28, 9780525619277) is another absolute winner. It’s hilarious and insightful, with vivid characters, a mystery, shady con artists, a fabulously funny and supportive friend group and even a steamy romance.

—Amy Scribner

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Happy-Go-Lucky

H This Time Tomorrow

David Sedaris’ essay collection Happy-Go-Lucky (Little, Brown, $29, 9780316392457) finds the author in late midlife, mining his life and the lives of his family for comedic stories. It’s full of perfect Sedaris essays: ones that lure you in with funny family anecdotes and self-deprecation, give a sideways look at some aspect of society, then end with an unexpected emotional punch.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

Alice spends her free time caring for her dying father, but she wakes on the morning of her 40th birthday to find that she’s 16 again and back in her childhood home. Emma Straub’s timetravel novel, This Time Tomorrow (Riverhead, $28, 9780525539001), has a lot of heart, some satisfying plot twists and a bittersweet, openended finale.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

feature | summer reading

E S CA P E Capers, adventures and magical journeys

Great books for dad

FIRST CLASS FATHERHOOD

By Alec Lace 9780785241034

Counterfeit

H Nettle & Bone

A former college roommate drops into Ava Wong’s perfect life after 20 years and wreaks havoc in Counterfeit (William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063119543), Kirstin Chen’s lively caper about importing counterfeit high-end handbags from China. It’s a breezy read with unexpected twists, carried along by Ava’s seemingly heartfelt confession to a police detective.

—Alice Cary

Who wouldn’t want to go on a magical road trip with a demon-possessed chicken? Hugo Award winner T. Kingfisher balances horror with well-placed levity in Nettle & Bone (Tor, $25.99, 9781250244048), a dark feminist fantasy that follows Princess Marra, an unlikely heroine who takes matters into her own hands to free women from a system of abuse.

—Amanda Diehl

The Hiking Book From Hell

The Stardust Thief

Are Kalvø didn’t understand the lengths to which people would go in pursuit of an “authentic” experience with nature. In The Hiking Book From Hell (Greystone, $18.95, 9781771645850), he recounts his journey into the Norwegian wilderness, telling his story with such affectionate irony that all you can do is laugh at his misadventures.

—Deborah Mason

Chelsea Abdullah’s debut fantasy kicks off in a world of sand and magic. Loulie al-Nazari, aka the Night Merchant, is a trader of illegal magic who is ordered by the sultan to find a powerful relic. The Stardust Thief (Orbit, $28, 9780316368766) is an enjoyable and enchanting read, full of captivating intrapersonal conflict and well-paced world building.

—Ralph Harris

RADICAL LOVE

By Zachary Levi 9780785236757

For more visit harper-horizon.com

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feature | summer reading

E N LIGH T EN M ENT Engaging histories and smart social commentary

Tracy Flick Can’t Win

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven

H Ten Tomatoes That

Fans of Tom Perrotta’s 1998 novel, Election (the inspiration for a beloved movie starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick), will be delighted by Tracy Flick Can’t Win (Scribner, $27, 9781501144066). With a light touch, Perrotta raises thoughtful questions about the true measure of success and how we judge what counts as a meaningful life.

—Harvey Freedenberg

In Her Majesty’s Royal Coven (Penguin, $17, 9780143137146), a civil war among witches and warlocks has left their community in shambles. British author Juno Dawson uses a fraying alliance of magical women to comment on the failures of real-world feminism, weaving a gripping, clever story in a conversational tone that recalls Neil Gaiman or Diana Wynne Jones.

—Laura Hubbard

In Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World (Grand Central, $27, 9781538753323), William Alexander takes readers on a world tour through history, from the tomato’s regional origins in Mexico to its ubiquitousness in the present day.

Along the way, his playful sense of humor makes his book endlessly surprising.

—Jessica Wakeman

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Changed the World

Two Wheels Good

H The Mutual Friend

Jody Rosen’s Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle (Crown, $28.99, 9780804141499) is not a “journey from early conception to modern-day racing and e-bikes” type of history book. Instead, these unconventional stories emerge from Rosen’s love of bikes, coalescing into an amusing, offbeat history of the bicycle as a great cultural disrupter.

—Alden Mudge

Like his sitcom “How I Met Your Mother,” Carter Bays’ funny debut novel is a New York City-set ensemble comedy with a central character. The Mutual Friend (Dutton, $27, 9780593186763) is also like The Bonfire of the Vanities for the era of reality TV and social media, as Bays paints a slightly heightened, insightful and terrifying vision of life in our age of distraction.

—Carole V. Bell

feature | summer reading

E XC I T EM ENT Thrills, twists and pure suspense

Two Nights in Lisbon

The Lioness

Wrath Goddess Sing

Packed with stay-awake-all-night thrills, Two Nights in Lisbon (MCD, $28, 9780374604769) follows recently married couple Ariel Price and John Wright, who have shirked their former identities for new lives. As Chris Pavone reveals their secrets slowly and deliberately, he seeds the novel with intrigue and suspense, one page at a time.

—G. Robert Frazier

A movie star and her entourage are kidnapped

by Russian mercenaries during an all-­expensespaid photo safari in Chris Bohjalian’s The Lioness (Doubleday, $28, 9780385544825). The fast-paced novel allows little time for contemplating sunsets as these pampered folks fight for survival against scorching sun, a lack of resources and, worst of all, dangerous animals.

—Arlene McKanic

In Maya Deane’s poignant debut, Wrath Goddess Sing (William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063161184), Achilles is a transgender woman who is granted the opportunity by her mother, Athena, to fight in the battle of Troy with the body she’s always wanted. This reinvention for the ages provides entrancing depictions of iconic mythological figures.

—Mya Alexice

The Lunar Housewife

H Blood Sugar

H Sleepwalk

Caroline Woods’ historical thriller is equal parts intelligent introspection and nail-biting suspense. The Lunar Housewife (Doubleday, $28, 9780385547833) follows magazine writer Louise Leithauser, who rubs elbows with the likes of Truman Capote in New York City. But after overhearing a conversation, she begins to wonder about the secrets behind the magazine.

—Lauren Emily Whalen

Accused of her diabetic husband’s murder, the protagonist of Sascha Rothchild’s Blood Sugar (Putnam, $27, 9780593331545) has plenty of time to think back on her checkered history as she waits in a police station. What follows is a Promising Young Woman meets “Dexter” thriller that’s both highly suspenseful and strangely empowering.

—Laura Emily Whalen

Both a fast-paced dystopian thriller and a touching exploration of the power of familial love, Dan Chaon’s Sleepwalk (Holt, $27.99, 9781250175212) follows an endearing hit man and his dog across an eerie near-future America.

—Harvey Freedenberg Visit BookPage.com to read our full reviews of these summer reads.

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Extra pleasure, hold the guilt Tabitha Carvan describes her plunge into obsession, followed by her ascent into unabashed superfan joy.

© JIMMY WALSH PHOTOGRAPHY

interview | tabitha carvan

Tabitha Carvan’s This Is Not a Book the smile that spread across her face when she About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of thought about him.

Loving Something—Anything—Like Your Carvan says that, as her desire revved up, Life Depends on It is very funny. She introso did her curiosity. After all, it’s one thing to duces herself by telling readers, “I am writing appreciate an actor’s art and skill and another this from inside Benedict thing for that appreciation Cumberbatch.” (But don’t to kick off—for millions of worry; she means a sweatpeople—what she viewed as a swoony regression. shirt with his face on it, not a So the science writer put skin suit.) When describing Visit BookPage.com to read our her investigatory chops to the book, she quips, “What’s starred review of This Is Not a Book something that this book has work, determined to figure About Benedict Cumberbatch. that Benedict Cumberbatch out, “Why was this happendoes not? That’s right! An ing to us? Why Benedict in childhood. “I think my parents and siblings appendix.” From start to Cumberbatch? Why did contributed to my idea of ‘smart people,’ ” she it happen at that particfinish, the author is impressays—including the idea that smart people sively informed and hilariular time?” “don’t care about trivial feelings. . . . We focus ously enthusiastic about the The author dove into on the things that really matter, which is being English movie and TV star. books like Brigid Schulte’s clever and being academically good.”

Overwhelmed, about the But as she shares in a Then there are the societal norms around delightful phone call to infatuation. If a man blankets his home in components of modern life her home in Canberra, that eat away at our leisure sports or Star Wars memorabilia, for example, Australia, Carvan wasn’t time, and Ethel S. Person’s it’s acceptable, even cool. But if a woman does always so upfront about

By Force of Fantasy, about something similar, it’s odd or inappropriate, her infatuation with the the value of having fantasies. especially if she’s a mother. As Carvan writes man whose fans call themShe also interviewed numerin her book, “Women mature out of their pleaH This Is Not a Book About selves “Cumberbitches.” ous fellow Cumberbatch sures. Men, on the other hand, get to hang on Benedict Cumberbatch (See also: Cumbercookies, fans, who spoke openly to theirs, turning them into a lifelong passion, Putnam, $17, 9780593421918 Cumbercommunity and about the whats and whys or even better, a career.”

Benaddicts.) Rather, she Living in a culture that worships the hustle of their devotion. For examMemoir viewed her sudden surge of ple, there’s Kyndall, a high-­ can make people “feel like our free time has interest in him as an alarming signal that somepowered executive who makes digital paintings to be used to do everything, to make us fitter, of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock in lingerie; a profesthing was wrong with her. look better, tick boxes for being good citizens,” Carvan, a mom of two, says her fascination sor named Emma who writes copious fan fiction; Carvan says. Through writing her book, however, she’s learned that finding “a way to have with the actor sparked several years ago, at a and Lea, a nail salon owner in Ohio who adorns completely pointless fun in your life seems to time when she was “completely strung out by the shop’s walls with photos of the actor and be quite a transformative step—a way to open motherhood—that sense of having just nothchats about her Cumberlove with clients. ing left in me.” She’d recently moved from Carvan says their conversations “were affectup your emotional memory of what makes you Vietnam, where she had a flourishing career, ing me hugely in the way feel good and what you back to Australia with her husband. “Here I I saw myself.” And over “When something brings actually want to do.” time, she says, “I began was, alone at home in a new small town with no Carvan says she hopes to realize that [the fan- people so much joy, why This Is Not a Book About job,” she says. “The extent of the feelings I had at that time were tiredness and busyness. I think dom] was not the most Benedict Cumberbatch can’t we just let it?” there was just a part of my soul that needed to interesting thing that was helps readers realize that be filled up with something that allowed me to happening to us. The most interesting thing was “if it was in you once, the ability to lose yourself feel alive—allowed me to feel anything.” that we were all so happy.” in something purely fun, I assure you the ability When a newspaper ad for the BBC television But that happiness was clouded by self-­ is still in there somewhere, and you shouldn’t show “Sherlock” caught her eye, Carvan expeconsciousness. “So many of them would be feel guilty.” Happily, she adds, “I do not feel rienced an unexpected yearning. She began like, ‘Don’t tell anyone about it, don’t share it, I guilty at all anymore.” to watch that show, and then other shows and don’t want anyone to know,’ ” Carvan says. “And And what of Carvan + Cumberbatch: Are they still a thing? She says with a laugh, “It’s movies and interviews featuring Cumberbatch, so that became the real question of the book: until she was fully hooked. But it wasn’t just his When something brings people so much joy, been six years, so our relationship is now just “eyes that are too far apart . . . and yet somehow why can’t we just let it? Why can’t we just be a fond, everlasting love, not a fiery passion.

We’re lifelong companions; he just doesn’t also perfect,” as she puts it in her book, or even open to feeling that?”

The author, who is the youngest of four chilhis “Cumberbottom” that enchanted her; it was know about it.”

—Linda M. Castellitto the giddiness she felt when she watched him, dren, says some of her own hesitancy began

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feature | celebrity memoirs

Things are even more dramatic off-screen This summer’s best celebrity memoirs reveal that even out-of-this-world stars have down-to-earth problems.

All three of these gorgeous and talented authors have played pivotal roles in movies that are meaningful to fans worldwide. Their Tinseltown lives are glamorous, to be sure, but their heartfelt life stories reveal a darker side to fame, where inspirational journeys and cautionary tales collide.

H Out of the Corner Jennifer Grey knows that her life has been charmed from the beginning. As a child, her famous parents took her to holiday parties with the likes of Stephen Sondheim, Patti LuPone and Leonard Bernstein. But although she breathed in rarefied air, Grey felt lonely and lacking. The rising star of her father, Joel Grey, meant the family moved numerous times, and so many instances of starting over, with her parents largely absent, took a heavy toll.

In Out of the Corner: A Memoir (Ballantine, $30, 9780593356708), Grey writes, “I’d been so consumed by feeling abandoned that I hadn’t seen the ways I had abandoned myself.” In the decades before she reached that perspective, the actress searched—for affection, connection, approval— even as she achieved great fame.

Grey became America’s sweetheart in 1987, thanks to her indelible work as Baby Houseman in Dirty Dancing, but as she reveals with raw and moving candor, her sunny smile at the premiere belied her physical and emotional suffering. Just before the film’s debut, she and then-boyfriend Matthew Broderick were in a head-on car crash in which two people died.

Even before that, her relationship with Broderick had turned toxic, and she’d had other unhealthy relationships earlier in her life. “My first drug of choice was romantic fantasy,” she writes. Other drugs followed, amplifying behavioral patterns from which she’s worked to recover—efforts she recounts with empathy for her former self and encouragement for those with similar struggles.

Grey also addresses what she calls “Schnozageddon”—when a revision rhinoplasty famously and irrevocably altered her face and professional identity—with bravery and clarity. And when she writes about dance, her prose sings with gratitude for the lifelong pursuit that’s taken her marvelous places, from Dirty Dancing to “Dancing With the Stars.” Time and again, Grey reveals herself to be tenacious and dedicated to the show going on—a fitting metaphor for a singular life, which she shares with wit, warmth and wisdom.

H We Were Dreamers Simu Liu’s fans are enchanted by his previous work as a stock photo model. They loved him in the Canadian sitcom “Kim’s Convenience.” And they rejoiced when he landed the lead in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. He shares these stories and more in his engaging, uplifting memoir, We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story (William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063046498).

Liu has had an incredible journey so far, but as with any origin story, it hasn’t been without painful obstacles. We Were Dreamers begins with his 1989 birth in Harbin, China, where he lived with his loving grand­ parents for four years. Then his parents, engineers who had moved abroad

after he was born, brought Liu to Canada to join them. After so many years of pursuing a better life, they were not interested in Liu’s dreams for his own life, and they emotionally and physically abused him when he couldn’t achieve their definition of perfection.

As a young adult, getting laid off from an accounting job for which he was spectacularly ill suited brought shame but also opportunity, as Liu finally felt free to try out performing gigs, from acting to stunts to playing SpiderMan at kids’ parties. He recounts his step-by-step approach, providing a helpful blueprint for other aspiring artists who lack a supportive family or industry connections. For him, this plan worked marvelously: He obtained life-changing work as an actor in the U.S. and became an advocate for Asian representation in media in the process.

As an adult, Liu forged a truce with his parents, and he writes that “families today could learn from us and steer themselves from the same mistakes.” A compelling case for pursuing an authentic life, We Were Dreamers provides fascinating insight into a newly minted Marvel superhero who wants readers to take to the skies along with him.

H Mean Baby Since birth, Selma Blair has struggled to unstick the labels others applied to her. As an infant, she had a sneer on her tiny face that caused neighbors and family to call her a “mean baby.” As she grew older, her mother said she wasn’t enough—pretty enough, thin enough, good enough, talented enough . . . the list goes on. And yet, as Blair writes in her painfully lovely Mean Baby: A Memoir of Growing Up (Knopf, $30, 9780525659495), “I lived for her approval.”

Although that approval was ever elusive, Blair loved her mother. However, she had learned from her mother that if she showed she was in pain, it would only be met with laughter. So even as Blair began to experience strange sensations in her limbs, facial pain and other ailments that lasted for decades, she told herself she was fine. Fans already know where this is going: In 2018, Blair was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As she writes with a poignant mixture of grief and relief, “There is great power in words. In an answer. In a diagnosis. To make sense of a plot you could hardly keep up with any longer.”

Blair writes about what fans may not know, too, such as her alcohol addiction that began at age 7 and surged and receded over the years. Blair also shares many thrilling Hollywood encounters, vividly conveying the profound feeling of disorientation that was her constant companion even as she starred in movies like Cruel Intentions, Legally Blonde and Hellboy; modeled for high-end fashion magazines; and developed friendships with the likes of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Karl Lagerfeld and Carrie Fisher.

Blair drew from her journals, her favorite books and her love of writing to craft this memoir, which is an elegiac contemplation of her life through the lens of a chronic illness that only recently made her past clear. For those seeking a similar sense of enlightenment, reading Mean Baby is a worthy and affecting undertaking.

—Linda M. Castellitto

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the hold list

Our personal summer reading philosophies Every year, the BookPage editors must once again ask the question: What, exactly, does “summer reading” even mean?

Here are our definitions, in literary form.

The Season

Deacon King Kong

Group

All That She Carried

The Diviners

I devour lighthearted, escapist novels during the summer. If it can hold my attention at a packed pool, it’s going in my tote bag.

However, to keep my brain from snapping in half when I turn to more challenging books in the fall, I also reach for a few weightier yet still seasonably appropriate titles. Kristen Richardson’s history of the debutante is my gold standard.

Impeccably researched but unabashedly glam and gossipy, The Season describes gorgeous gowns with the same rigor it applies to unpacking the intersections of race and class. In its various permutations, the debutante tradition encapsulates cultural ideas about femininity; it can be regressive or liberating, stifling or affirming. (The chapter on African American debutante balls alone is worth the price of admission.)

Make this your afternoon poolside read, and you’ll be the most interesting person at dinner later that night.

—Savanna, Associate Editor

When my yard is alive with bugs and birds, when they’re screaming and singing and zipping through the trees, I want a book that crackles with that kind of electricity, like Deacon King Kong.

Set in 1969 Brooklyn, James McBride’s seventh novel opens in the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing projects where, in broad daylight, a 71-year-old alcoholic church deacon known as Sportcoat shoots the ear off a 19-year-old drug dealer. That seemingly gritty opening leads into an affectionate village novel that follows a multitude of characters, including congregants of the Five Ends Baptist Church, a lovelorn police officer and an Italian mobster known as the Elephant. As readers learn the truth about Sportcoat’s actions, they also follow foibles and treasure hunts and slapstick party scenes. The dialogue is some of the best you’ll ever read, and many scenes are gut-bustingly funny. Summer is a joy, and so is this book.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

I am not a great lover of summer­time. The heat, the dirt, the bugs—all of it sends me indoors with a glass of lemonade. This makes a book like Group

by Christie Tate my perfect summer read. I tore through this book on vacation last year, using every moment alone in the empty, air-­ conditioned house to fly through a few more chapters. Tate’s memoir of the years she spent in an unconventional group therapy setting is salacious, vulnerable and truly touching. All she has to do is show up to these sessions and be honest— about everything. Sexuality, food, relationships, family, death—everything. As Tate slowly opens up to her fellow group members, she builds real friendships for the first time and learns to defuse the shame and low self-worth that marked her first 26 years. Perfect for a weekend trip or plane ride, this book’s got heart, hope and enough juicy confessions to keep you turning the pages at lightning speed.

—Christy, Associate Editor

Whether traveling on a plane or installed under an beach umbrella, summer inspires me to decenter screens and their attendant distractions. This means I have the capacity to focus on books that reward a reader’s attention, like Tiya Miles’ National Book Award-winning All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake. Miles, a historian and MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient, uses a single artifact—a cotton sack given to a 9-year-old child named Ashley by her mother when Ashley was sold to a different plantation—to offer insight into the often undocumented lives of Black women. As she traces the journey of the sack from 1850s South Carolina to its eventual discovery at a Nashville flea market, Miles honors family ties and fills gaps in the historical record. This book will make you both think and feel, providing a reading experience to remember.

—Trisha, Publisher

There is nothing I want more in the summer than a big honking series. (Especially if it’s complete. No cliffhanger endings for me!) I want to dive into a fictional world for as long as possible before coming up for air, and Libba Bray’s quartet of novels about supernaturally gifted teens solving mysteries in New York City during the Roaring ’20s fits the bill to a T. The series opener is replete with positutely delicious period vernacular and horrors both imagined (a murderous ghost resurrecting himself with body parts carved from his victims) and all too real (“color lines” at jazz clubs where Black Americans perform on stage but aren’t allowed to enter as customers). The Diviners is exactly the sort of tale I love to stay up into the wee hours of hot summer nights reading— which is good, because in Bray’s talented hands, some scenes are so terrifying that I wouldn’t be able to turn off the lights anyway.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

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

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whodunit

by bruce tierney

H Rock of Ages Junior Bender, burglar by profession but crime solver by avocation, doesn’t get much of a chance to pursue his ostensible career in Timothy Hallinan’s wildly entertaining Los Angeles-set caper Rock of Ages (Soho Crime, $27.95, 9781641292184). Junior’s sleuthing skills are requested by nonagenarian gangster Irwin Dressler, which in Junior’s world is akin to being summoned

by God. Dressler has invested in a rock ’n’ roll revival tour, but now none of his co-investors, who are also criminals of note, are returning his calls. Sensing that he is about to get stiffed, Dressler hires Junior to ascertain whether his worries have merit and, if so, to stymie the efforts of his potentially larcenous partners. No salary is mentioned for the gig; it is a simple exchange of favors, with Dressler’s favor to Junior being Junior’s continued existence.

Hallinan worked in the music industry for years before becoming an author, and his insider familiarity with the LA music scene shines through in Rock of Ages. Those of us who remember classic rock when it was just “rock” will be amused to recognize the real-life stars Hallinan’s fictional doppelgängers represent. As a special added attraction, Junior’s smart and sharp-tongued daughter, Rina, plays a more central role than previously in the series, and she is seemingly poised to follow in her dad’s furtive footsteps.

H Last Call at the Nightingale At first blush, Vivian Kelly, the protagonist of Katharine Schellman’s Prohibition-era mystery, Last Call at the Nightingale (Minotaur, $27.99, 9781250831828), displays little in the way of sleuthing credentials. By day, Vivian is a seamstress in what we would now consider a sweatshop, and by night she is a regular at the Nightingale, a Manhattan speakeasy of some note among Jazz Age cognoscenti. She dances, she flirts without gender bias, she drinks, and for a while each evening, she forgets about her daytime drudgery. But when Vivian stumbles upon a dead body in the alley behind the club, the speakeasy’s hitherto bon vivant ambiance begins to melt away, revealing something altogether more sinister. Vivian is hauled off to jail in a police raid that happens soon after she discovers the body, and Nightingale boss Honor Huxley puts up her bond. In return for this kindness, Vivian agrees to have a quiet look into the murder of the man in the alley. She discovers early on that she possesses quite a knack for investigating, though she is often oblivious to the dangerous ripples she’s causing.

The well-developed supporting cast is diverse in race, gender and sexuality, and the suspense will keep readers guessing until the end.

H Wild Prey Wild Prey (Minotaur, $27.99, 9781250779076), the second book in Brian Klingborg’s series featuring Chinese police inspector Lu Fei, takes him from his home in the northeastern corner of China to the steamy wilds of Myanmar.

The story starts with Tan Meirong, a doggedly persistent teenage girl who insists that her sister, Meixiang, has gone missing. Meixiang worked at a gangster-owned restaurant that provides rare foods for wealthy clients to gorge on, ostensibly for medicinal purposes. (People in China have long consumed parts of bears, rhinoceroses, tigers and more, often for use as aphrodisiacs.) Lu launches an investigation and soon comes around to his supplicant’s way of thinking: Something is clearly amiss. However, Lu excels at incurring the wrath of his superiors, and this time is no exception. He gets pulled off the case, then suspended. Soon afterward, he is quietly approached by a Beijing bureaucrat who asks him to spearhead an undercover operation targeting a wild-game preserve in Myanmar. The bureaucrat believes the preserve is central to the illegal exotic animal trade into China, so perhaps this investigation will help Lu find Meixiang as well. Klingborg nails the atmosphere of Myanmar—the longyi, the flip-flops, the works. Lu is well drawn, world-weary but not beaten, and he has markedly upped his game in this second adventure.

H Razzmatazz Christopher Moore’s latest novel, Razzmatazz (William Morrow, $28.99, 9780062434128), is a mystery, to be sure, but one with snippets of science fiction and the supernatural, blended with the author’s legendary irreverent humor. Very few noir novels have ever begun with a tongue-incheek minihistory of China’s Qing dynasty. (“The sky is black with the smoke of burning villages, and it is widely agreed throughout China that the soup of the day is Cream of Sadness.”) As this sequel to 2018’s Noir opens in 1947 San Francisco, bartender and fixer Sammy Tiffin has been tasked with a couple of jobs: 1) tracking down the killer of Natalie Melanoff, aka Butch, a bouncer at a lesbian nightclub who was found floating faceup in San Francisco Bay; and 2) locating a mysterious dragon statuette that is of keen interest to the Chinese criminal underworld. Much of the story centers on Jimmy’s Joynt, the club where Butch worked, which is a relative oasis of joy in an era not noted for its acceptance of LGBTQ people. Racism rears its ugly head as well, particularly toward the Chinese community of the City by the Bay. Moore provides a warning in the preface, noting that “the language and attitudes portrayed herein regarding race, culture, and gender are contemporary to that time, and sadly, all too real.” Be warned, but know that Moore and his merry band of miscreants are firmly on the right side of history—and they will make you laugh until it hurts.

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

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q&a | alexis hall

Alexis Hall is seizing his moment The master of the contemporary rom-com takes on the Regency with A Lady for a Duke.

Alexis Hall, the bestselling author of Boyfriend Material and Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake, is conquering historical romance with A Lady for a Duke, which follows Viola Carroll, a trans woman who fakes her own death in order to live as the person she has always been. But two years later, her dearest friend, Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood, is still devastated by her supposed death. We talked to Hall about the thorny questions that come with writing about queer characters in a historical setting and why he’s such a prolific author. (A Lady for a Duke is his second release in 2022, with two more to come!)

It’s been a busy few years! Do you ever sleep?

Well, I don’t sleep much, and I have no social life.

I kind of joke about this, but it’s genuinely not sustainable for me. Basically, because the market changed quite a lot and quite quickly in terms of how receptive people are to queer romance, this is sort of the first time in my career that these kinds of opportunities have been possible for me. So I did what any reasonably neurotic person would have done and said yes to everything. I’m hoping to get to a more sensible pace in a year or two.

think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with writing historical fiction like A Knight’s Tale instead of The Lion in Winter.

I think one of the more subtle questions it’s important to address is whether you are going to use modern perceptions of identity or, as best you can, historical perceptions of identity. It’s ultimately more important to me that my queer stories resonate with modern queer readers than it is for them to portray what I think a person at the time might actually have perceived their identity to be. Not least because that’s unknowable.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing A Lady for a Duke?

In any romance, you need an emotional nadir of some kind, because otherwise the journey toward the happily ever after can feel like it lacks stakes or tension. This usually happens at 70% into the story, but that didn’t feel right for this book.

I knew the main source of conflict was going to be what happened at Waterloo, but the idea of having that hanging over the book, the characters and the reader for 200 to 300 pages was just super grim. Viola and Gracewood also have a lot to work through both personally and socially, and I didn’t think I’d be able to squoosh that into the last third of the book. All of which meant that I actually hit the emotional nadir at about (spoiler) 30% or 40%. It took some finessing to make sure the rest of the book still felt like it had something to say and the characters had somewhere to go.

A Lady for a Duke takes place after the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, which Viola fought in and after which she was presumed dead. Why did you choose to make Waterloo the pivotal turning point in her life?

Firstly, and most simply, Waterloo is a big, iconic, H A Lady for a Duke central feature of the Regency, and I wanted to Forever, $15.99, 9781538753750 engage with it in a meaningful way. Otherwise, it would be like setting a book in 1916 and never Historical Romance mentioning the First World War. What was the most interesting aspect of the It was also important to me that neither the text nor really anyone in research you did for this book?

There have always been people who have lived as a gender that is not the the text should meaningfully question that Viola is a woman because, frankly, I don’t think anyone benefits from fiction legitimizing that particgender they were assigned at birth, but we can’t know how those individular “debate.” And so that meant I needed uals understood their identities. Hannah Viola to have transitioned and to be comSnell, for example, dressed as a man to “I don’t think there’s anything fortable in her identity from the moment fight in a war but afterward told her story wrong with writing historical fiction she arrived on page. in a way that framed her as a woman. But there are also people like Dr. James Barry like A Knight’s Tale instead of How did you ensure the poignancy of who lived as men and made it clear that Viola’s emotional initial interactions with they wanted to be thought of, known and The Lion in Winter.” remembered as men after their deaths.

Justin without slowing down the pace?

An ongoing problem with queer history in general and trans history in I think some of it is just trusting my audience. One of the hardest (and most freeing) things about writing genre romance is that people recogparticular is that mainstream culture tends to demand a very high burnize that the emotions are the plot. I mean, you can have other plots as den of proof. Dr. James Barry is a really good example. Here we have a well, but it’s not like you’re ever going to get a romance reader saying, man who lived as a man, explicitly stated he was a man and wanted to “Nothing happened in this book except some people got together, where be remembered as a man, but most of his biographies present him as a are the explosions?” woman who cross-dressed to access privileged male spheres. And while I’m not a historian, as a human being my personal feeling is that if someone says they’re a man, you should, like, believe them.

How is writing about queer love in the Regency era different from —Amanda Diehl writing a contemporary queer romance?

The philosophy I take about writing in a historical setting is to keep clear sight of the fact that I’m still a modern writer writing a modern book for Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of A Lady for a a modern audience. And how far I’ll steer into that will vary, but I don’t Duke and an extended version of this Q&A.

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romance

by christie ridgway

H The Bride Goes Rogue

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Joanna Shupe sets the pages on fire in the passionate Gilded Age romance The Bride Goes Rogue (Avon, $8.99, 9780063045064).

Katherine Delafield has always looked forward to marriage, even though her own union has been arranged by her father. So she’s stunned and humiliated when she learns that her intended, New York City tycoon Preston Clarke, has no intention of honoring his agreement with her father.

Intent on making up for lost time, Katherine attends a scandalous masquerade ball and enjoys an exciting dalliance with a masked man—who turns out to be none other than her ex-betrothed. Despite their shock at discovering each other’s identity, neither truly regrets that steamy encounter . . . and all the others that follow. The ruthless Preston proves to have a heart after all, and despite being a naive ingenue, Katherine surprises him with her ardent desires. Shupe skillfully brings the opulent setting to life, and Katherine and Preston’s love story will leave readers with racing hearts and satisfied smiles.

From Bad to Cursed The peace of the magical town of Thistle Grove is threatened in From Bad to Cursed (Berkley, $16, 9780593336083) by Lana Harper. Four supernaturally gifted families live side by side in this Illinois community. The paranormal citizens provide exciting, supposedly fake experiences to tourists, aka “normies”—at an occult superstore, for instance, or a haunted house.

But during one of the town’s celebrations to mark the festival of Beltane, a mysterious curse nearly strips young witch Holly Thorn of her powers. Holly’s upstanding cousin Rowan Thorn and town wild child Isidora Avramov are ordered to investigate. Rowan and Issa have been enemies for years, but as they hunt down the person who cast the curse, their antagonism morphs into attraction. An all-senses escape into a vivid and inventive world, this snarky paranormal rom-com is sure to delight.

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Something Wilder Lily Wilder, the heroine of author-duo Christina Lauren’s Something Wilder (Gallery, $26.99, 9781982173401), leads tourists on fake treasure hunts through the beautiful desert landscapes of Utah. It’s a career path made possible by Lily’s treasure hunter father, Duke Wilder—and made necessary after his death due to his lack of financial planning. To her unpleasant surprise, Lily’s latest group of clients includes Leo Grady, the man who got away (or, more specifically, left her) 10 years ago. Even as they grapple with what drove them apart, unforeseen danger requires Leo and Lily to combine their reserves of courage and cleverness to survive. The authors clearly hold the red rocks and canyons of Utah dear and describe them in loving detail throughout. Something Wilder is laden with suspense, intrigue and fun as its main couple faces down danger and learns to love again.

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

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reviews | fiction

H Yerba Buena

By Nina LaCour

Literary Fiction Longtime fans of Nina LaCour’s teen novels will be enchanted by the quietly powerful Yerba Buena (Flatiron, $26.99, 9781250810465), her first book for adult readers. It unfolds without any fanfare through a series of intimate and brilliantly observed details about growing up and into yourself. From one seemingly ordinary scene to the next, the relentless momentum of our imperfect, chaotic lives pulses through LaCour’s prose.

At 16, Sara is desperate to flee her small hometown on Northern California’s Russian River and get far away from her difficult childhood, her drug-dealing father and memories of her dead mother. When her girlfriend dies suddenly, Sara seizes the first opportunity to run. Pushing aside the traumas of her past, she begins to make a life for herself in Los Angeles.

Emilie is an LA native struggling with more nebulous challenges. She’s not sure what she wants, so she flits from major to major in college, and then from job to job. She doesn’t feel at

More Than You’ll Ever Know

By Katie Gutierrez

Literary Fiction Katie Gutierrez’s debut novel burrows straight to the heart of our cultural true crime fixation through an intense emotional dance between two seemingly different women.

Cassie Bowman is a true crime blogger who dreams of more. After years of trafficking in the seediest corners of the genre, she wants to take her journalism prowess to new heights and prove that she has something to say about the ways people hurt each other.

When she stumbles upon the story of Dolores “Lore” Rivera—a banker whose double life led to one of her husbands murdering the other in 1985—Cassie thinks she might have finally found a tale worth telling. Once the two women finally meet, though, the tension between their personalities kicks off a series of conversations that reveals the truth about both of their pasts.

Told across two time periods set decades apart and narrated through both Cassie’s and Lore’s perspectives, More Than You’ll Ever Know (William Morrow, $28.99, 9780063118454) has all the ingredients necessary for a good thriller. But

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ease in her family, as she’s still grieving the loss of the closeness she used to share with her sister.

Emilie and Sara meet at a restaurant where Sara tends bar and Emilie arranges flowers. They spend one meaningful night together, but it’s a long time before they connect again.

Yerba Buena is not a simple romance. It’s a layered story about the process of learning to love yourself, of holding onto and letting go of painful history, and of building your own home. Along the way, LaCour captures all the aches and hurts and betrayals and sensual delights of being in your 20s. Emilie and Sara get tangled in messy relationships—romantic, platonic and familial.

They make impulsive choices as well as smart ones. They yearn for each other, but they aren’t ready for each other, and so they return, again and again, to their own lives, tumbling forward,

muddling through, making mistakes and starting again.

LaCour’s prose has a soft, flowing quality and a lushness that readers of her previous books will recognize. She’s adept at describing the things that matter most to her protagonists: the colors of a flower arrangement, the quality of light on a wooden floor, a facial expression, the taste of a beloved gumbo recipe.

She’s even better at describing tumultuous emotional landscapes. Sara and Emilie are such fully realized characters that by the end of the novel, you will feel as though you’ve spent time with cherished friends.

Bursting with emotionally resonant moments and vivid details of LA neighborhoods, Yerba Buena is a remarkable story of queer love and childhood trauma, addiction and forgiveness, family legacies and new beginnings.

—Laura Sackton

beyond the novel’s well-executed, suspenseful structure, Gutierrez also clearly understands her characters, where they’ve come from and what they want and need. Both women are searching for something, longing for understanding in a world full of mysteries that are never solved.

Whether it’s Lore’s emotional journey or Cassie’s deep dive into her chosen journalistic genre, Gutierrez has crafted detailed, vulnerable portraits of women searching for clues to their own survival. In the process, she unearths some truly compelling insights about our cultural obsession with true crime.

—Matthew Jackson

even if he deserves) to be happy, he marries and fathers triplets. His wife, Johanna, wants children more than anything, so she endures fertility procedures to conceive Harrison, Lewyn and Sally. But the triplets don’t fill the emotional vacancies created by her husband, and when the children leave for college, Johanna tells Salo she’s going to return to the couple’s remaining blastocyst. Seventeen years after their births, the Oppenheimer siblings reluctantly welcome a fourth.

In The Latecomer (Celadon, $28, 9781250790798), Jean Hanff Korelitz (The Plot) guides readers through the Oppenheimers’ tumultuous—and often emotionally impoverished—family history. The novel sprawls across 45 years and more than 400 pages, offering each segment of the family ample time to tell their stories: the parents, the triplets and the latecomer herself, Phoebe.

Korelitz embeds a vast range of details within the tale, from the procedures necessary for the children’s births to the art collection that pulls Salo away from his family, from the family’s Jewish history to a character’s fascination with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. An extensive network of subplots helps to define the characters’ relationships to one another, though all this groundwork-laying can feel frustrating; the promised title character, whose birth is an intrusion to her siblings’ lives, isn’t mentioned until more than 100 pages in and doesn’t step to center stage until the novel’s final third. But

The Latecomer

By Jean Hanff Korelitz

Family Saga When college student Salo Oppenheimer’s Jeep tumbles off a road near campus, two of the vehicle’s passengers—Salo’s girlfriend and a close friend— are killed on impact.

While Salo’s physical injuries are barely noticeable, his emotional scars will shape the rest of his life.

Despite Salo’s skepticism about his ability (or

reviews | fiction this delay allows Korelitz to develop both the rich plot and the nuanced characters who populate it.

Ultimately, Phoebe’s late arrival encourages the rest of the Oppenheimers to realize how their father’s life-changing car crash altered all of their lives. The Latecomer’s blending of family history and research explores how generational trauma can change everything, even for those who don’t know about the incident at its center.

—Carla Jean Whitley

Neruda on the Park

By Cleyvis Natera

Family Drama Whether finding home or building a home or leaving home, fiction frequently centers on belonging—what it means and how it moves us.

In Neruda on the Park (Ballantine, $28, 9780593358481), the Guerrero family struggles with belonging not just in their New York City neighborhood but also to each other.

When a decrepit building in Northar Park is torn down to make way for luxury condos, the Guerreros and their neighbors are forced to confront the realities of the price-raising, white­washing menace that is gentrification. But for Lux, the daughter of Eusebia and Vladimir Guerrero, the changes are both external and internal: After being fired from her cutthroat legal job, Lux realizes that she has transformed along with the neighborhood, and perhaps not for the better.

The novel is split into three parts—titled Demolition, Excavation and Grounding—and unfolds through the perspectives of Lux and Eusebia, showing not only how the evolution of Northar Park is linked to the evolution of the Guerreros, but also how the discourse of belonging is fraught with generational conflict. Eusebia and Vladimir left the Dominican Republic to give their children a better life, including law school and high-paying corporate jobs. But Luz falls in love with the man who’s developing Northar Park, which causes a divide between where she comes from and where she’s going, and directly links her choices to the destruction of the home that her parents have created.

Debut novelist Cleyvis Natera’s writing style is detailed and intimate but leaves plenty to the imagination. The mother-daughter dynamic propels the novel and creates its dramatic tension, but Natera also includes interludes from the Tongues, the blabbermouth neighborhood chismosas, or gossips, who hear everything and know everything. Through these voices, Natera’s

depiction of Northar Park becomes lively and vibrant, which brings the reader back to the novel’s central focus: home. As the Guerreros’ dreams shift, the reader is encouraged to ask what home really is. Is it a place? A peace? Natera doesn’t give answers but rather lets the reader and the Guerrero family decide for themselves.

—Eric Ponce

Nuclear Family

are felt across generations. Han’s characters— both dead and alive—are haunted by the past, even as they seek to escape it. Darkly funny, delightfully surprising and with a sprinkling of unusual formatting that reveals hidden subplots, Han’s debut bears witness to the brutal realities of war and imperialism while honoring the many kinds of magic that exist in the world.

—Laura Sackton

H The Cherry Robbers

By Joseph Han

Literary Fiction Joseph Han’s beautifully strange debut novel, Nuclear Family (Counterpoint, $26, 9781640094864), is full of ghosts and spirits, real and metaphorical. At first it seems to be a relatively straight­ forward intergenerational saga about a Korean family in Hawaii, but soon the inventiveness of Han’s storytelling becomes apparent, and readers are submerged in a world where nothing is quite as it seems.

Hoping for a fresh start away from his family, 20-something Jacob Cho takes a job teaching English in Seoul. Not long after his arrival, he attempts to cross the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, and is taken into custody. Back in Hawaii, his family is consumed with worry. His parents are struggling to keep their restaurant in business, while his sister, Grace, spends more and more of her time getting high.

None of them know that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his dead grandfather, Taewoo, who is desperate to get across the DMZ. In Jacob, Tae-woo sees his best chance to get across the wall that has kept him—and countless others—separated from those they love, even in death. Through this literal possession of a young man by a sly and grieving grandfather, Han tells a moving and specific story about more symbolic possessions—how violence possesses bodies, how history possesses the present and how a person’s stories remain alive in their descendants, even if those stories go unspoken.

Events unfold through a dizzying array of voices: Jacob, Grace and their parents; Tae-woo and his fellow ghosts; Jacob’s other grandparents; and a kind of Greek chorus of local Hawaiians, both Native and immigrant families. Han zooms in and out, moving between perspectives, times and places. These quick shifts in tone and voice can be disorienting, but they also give the novel its momentum.

Nuclear Family is about the trauma of living with invented borders, about dispossession and exile, and about the unhealed wounds of war that

By Sarai Walker

Gothic Fiction Seven years after Dietland amassed a cult following for its skewering of the diet and beauty industries, Sarai Walker’s second novel is finally here. With The Cherry Robbers (Harper, $27.99, 9780358251873), Walker has concocted another slyly subversive feminist fable, this time in the form of a grief-laced gothic thriller that takes on weighty topics such as marriage, women’s health and generational trauma.

In 2017, Sylvia Wren is a world-renowned, notoriously private painter living in New Mexico.

She’s rarely seen in public and turns down virtually all requests for interviews. However, in a moment of errant curiosity, Sylvia reads a letter from a journalist who plans to write an exposé detailing what she has uncovered: that Sylvia Wren is in fact Iris Chapel, the sole surviving heiress of the Chapel Firearms fortune, who disappeared 60 years ago.

Suddenly the secrets that Sylvia has spent decades running from catch up to her, and with nowhere left to hide, she attempts to exorcize the ghosts of her past by chronicling the family curse that claimed the lives of her five sisters, relegated her mother to an asylum and prompted Sylvia to abandon her life as Iris.

Exquisitely tense and satisfyingly spooky, The Cherry Robbers masterfully blends psychological and supernatural horror. In sensual yet spritely prose, Walker conducts a darkly erotic exploration of female desire, duty and destiny via an ensemble of nuanced female characters, each with distinct personalities and rich inner lives. Readers know the grisly fate that awaits the Chapel girls, but Walker still manages to maintain a high degree of suspense and intrigue that will keep readers frantically flipping pages.

For fans of Diane Setterfield and Shirley Jackson, as well as readers who relish multilayered, thought-provoking family sagas, The Cherry Robbers is not to be missed.

—Stephenie Harrison

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reviews | nonfiction

H Raising Raffi

By Keith Gessen

Essays As a mother of three, I can attest that parenting often feels like it comes at you fast: the meals and snacks, bedtimes and books, laundry and more laundry; the hat-straightening, screen time-monitoring, play date-booking and chore-reminding whirlwind of it all. That’s why it’s fantastic when someone thoughtful manages to hit pause on the relentless motion and reflect on what it all means. In Raising Raffi: The First Five Years (Viking, $27, 9780593300442), Keith Gessen does just that.

Covering everything from the surprises of a home birth to the days of desperately reading parenting manuals through a sleep-deprived haze, Gessen’s essays are at once intensely specific (he lives in New York, is the son of Russian immigrants and works as a literary writer and editor) and deeply relatable (even to me, a woman who lives in a suburb in the Midwest).

We Refuse to Forget

By Caleb Gayle

American History When Ethan Allen Hitchcock, a white U.S. military officer who in 1842 traveled to what is now Oklahoma, wrote in his diary about a smart, skilled Black man who was serving as a language interpreter for a Native Creek chief, he assumed “Negro Tom” was enslaved by the chief.

That Black man’s descendants would beg to differ. According to their family lore, the man more widely known as Cow Tom was not enslaved. He later became a Creek Nation chief, honored for negotiating a landmark treaty after the Civil War that established Black Creeks as full tribal citizens. But they lost their status in 1979 because of the same racist perspective that skewed Hitchcock’s vision. Journalist Caleb Gayle’s absorbing We Refuse to Forget (Riverhead, $28, 9780593329580) explores how this happened, and what contemporary Black Creeks are doing to reclaim their legacy.

Gayle, a Black American of Jamaican descent who was raised in Oklahoma, traces the history of Black Creeks from the early days, when some but not all were enslaved by Native Creeks, through the considerable prosperity of many Black Creeks

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For instance, he writes that fatherhood opened up heretofore unexamined aspects of his personality.

Why, he wondered, did he want to speak to Raffi in Russian, even though all of their relatives are able to speak English? It is a mystery, more of a gut instinct than a bilingual regimen, that prompts his wife (the novelist Emily Gould) to nickname him “Bear Dad.” Throughout Raising Raffi, Gessen’s profound ambivalence over his Russian heritage feels pressing, heartfelt, sad and real. He also writes about the COVID-19 pandemic with a clarity that parents who have been raising young children during the last few years will appreciate and remember.

Gessen’s book raises the big questions: Who am I as a parent? What exactly am I passing

down to my kids? And can I even really control what I pass down to them?

Gessen’s essay about sports, for example, gently probes the pros and cons of getting Raffi to play hockey, eventually folding back and looking at itself as Gessen realizes that his own attachment to hockey wasn’t the best thing for him. Other essays, like his one on picture books, demonstrate the deep, abiding connection one can feel with a child through repeatedly reading poetry and stories.

This book is thoughtful, companionable, funny and memorable. Readers will return to it again and again—and will hope, like I do, that Gessen publishes a follow-up about Raffi’s next five years.

—Kelly Blewett

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Cow Tom’s descendants became wealthy pillars of the Oklahoma civic establishment, largely because their Creek status gave them access to capital that other Black Americans did not have.

Gayle blends that story with his own encounters with racism and his personal identity: Is he Jamaican or Black? The Black Creeks’ ongoing legal fight to reclaim Creek heritage has inspired him to reexamine his own perspective, he writes. He is Black and Jamaican and American, just as the Black Creeks are “fully Black and fully Creek.” The United States, he argues passionately, would be a richer, more beautiful society if we recognized and honored those complexities.

—Anne Bartlett

populations and did not use his moral authority to work for peace. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David I. Kertzer explores the truth of how Pius XII handled this situation with great skill, combining extraordinary documentation and elegant writing, in The Pope at War (Random House, $37.50, 9780812989946).

Early in his papacy, which began in 1939, Pius XII decided to tread a careful path. Once World War II began, his public pronouncements were crafted so that each side could interpret them as supporting their cause. The pope often said, for example, that true peace required justice—a familiar theme to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, who complained that the Treaty of Versailles was not a true peace because it was unjust. The pope insisted it was his role to attend to spiritual, not political, matters. Using this excuse, he didn’t criticize Italy’s anti-Jewish racial laws. He didn’t denounce totalitarian states, until the only one left was the Soviet Union. In his first speech after the war, he emphasized the Nazi regime’s campaign against the Catholic Church and didn’t make any mention of the Nazis’ extermination of European Jews nor Italy’s part in the Axis cause.

The Vatican archives of this period were sealed when Pius XII died in 1958, but they became available to researchers in March 2020. This book is based on many sources but is the first to take advantage of these previously unexplored materials. (Among their revelations are secret negotiations between the pope and Hitler.)

Kertzer believes, based on this new evidence, that “Pius XII saw his primary responsibility to

H The Pope at War

By David I. Kertzer

History The role Pope Pius XII played during World War II has long been a subject of controversy. Under great pressure to align himself with the Allies or Axis powers, he chose silence and diplomatic neutrality. Some saw him as a heroic champion of the oppressed. Others thought he turned a blind eye to the killing of Jews and other vulnerable

reviews | nonfiction be the protection of the institutional church, its property, its prerogatives, and its ability to fulfill its mission as he saw it.” But Pius XII was also aware that, to many people, he failed to provide courageous moral leadership, which Kertzer outlines in gripping detail in his outstanding book.

—Roger Bishop

H This Body I Wore

By Diana Goetsch

Memoir For LGBTQ people coming of age in the 1970s and ’80s, there were often no words for the experience of discovering one’s sexuality or gender, and usually no family support—much less legal protections—to nurture an adolescent’s emerging identities. A person muddled through and, with any luck, found community in adulthood, while the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic often compounded the traumas they incurred.

In her exquisite memoir, This Body I Wore (FSG, $28, 9780374115098), poet Diana Goetsch harnesses the power of language to describe truths that went unspoken for too long.

Goetsch’s skill as a poet informs the beauty of her prose as she recounts the decades she spent evolving alongside the trans community, until her own late-in-life transition in her 50s. As the language used by and about trans people changed over time, so too did Goetsch’s understanding of her own identity.

This Body I Wore spans Goetsch’s abusive childhood on Long Island, her attraction to the beauty of women as she grew up, confusing sexual encounters she had in college, and her professional work as a teacher, both for privileged students at Stuyvesant High School in New York City and for incarcerated youth. Goetsch’s talent for teaching rests in her deep compassion for her students and her sense that finding the right words, for the students as well as for herself, is the key to unlocking one’s identity.

I was utterly riveted by the narrative Goetsch crafts and was reminded of many now-lost friends and acquaintances from my own college years in New York in the 1980s. Goetsch’s memoir, like Sarah Schulman’s Let the Record Show, offers a significant contribution to the documentation of LGBTQ history and culture in New York during that era. But perhaps more importantly, the hard-won wisdom contained in This Body I Wore offers a new generation of trans and nonbinary youth a guiding hand from a previous generation.

—Catherine Hollis

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World

By Barry Lopez

Essays The world is on fire—metaphorically, yes, but also sometimes literally. Climate change is having its way with Earth, altering so many landscapes across the world. Yet our time here is limited; even as we try to intervene, our individual bodies are breaking down.

In the face of these dueling realities, the late nature writer and National Book Award winner Barry Lopez still celebrated the world around him. His posthumous essay collection, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World (Random House, $28, 9780593242827), is an apt swan song, an ode to places both far-flung and close to home.

The essays, some previously unpublished, span from 1989 to the final years of Lopez’s life, which ended on Christmas Day 2020. They spring from a variety of sources—responding to a photography collection depicting the American West, paying homage to the Western writer Wallace Stegner, documenting Lopez’s own global explorations—but together they offer insight into the drive and heart of a thoughtful observer of the modern world. Lopez wrote that his life’s mission was “to know and love what we have been given, and to urge others to do the same,” and that mission is tenderly woven throughout these pieces.

As he explored the planet, Lopez also turned his attention to his interior landscape. In one essay, California’s terrain reminds him of the freedom of his childhood, when the miles around Los Angeles were still agricultural. But it also prompts him to reflect on the pedophile who abused him, and the ways that trauma shaped him for decades afterward.

The collection is organized in a way that brings its focus home, with the final pieces highlighting both the Oregon woods where Lopez lived for half a century and his dawning awareness that the end was near. He wrote, “I have traveled to nearly eighty countries doing research as a writer, and when I am asked where I would most like to go in the world, I always say the same thing: here. Here is where I have had the longest conversation with the world outside myself.

Here is where I have tested the depths of that world and found myself still an innocent. Here is where the woods are familiar and ever new.”

Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World is a powerful reminder from a great writer that

we can learn about ourselves from the world around us, and that we have an obligation to care for the Earth as we care for ourselves.

—Carla Jean Whitley

H Corrections in Ink

By Keri Blakinger

Memoir By most measures, Keri Blakinger lived a charmed life. As the daughter of a successful lawyer and a schoolteacher, her upper-middle-class suburban existence seemed, from the outside, perfect. Her childhood was filled with loving parental support, academic success and a fierce pursuit of competitive figure skating that took her all the way to nationals. But when that pursuit ended in disappointment, Blakinger’s life came undone.

In her exceptional debut, Corrections in Ink (St. Martin’s, $28.99, 9781250272850), investigative journalist Blakinger reflects on an important decade of her life that took her from figure skating to drug addiction, to selling drugs and sex, to an arrest on a drug charge while she was a college student at Cornell University. She got clean during the almost two years she was imprisoned, but afterward she still had to grapple with the inhumanity of being behind bars.

Blakinger details the cruelties, big and small, that she endured while she was incarcerated.

She also acknowledges that, as a white woman, she was in a position of privilege and that Black and brown people are treated far worse, get tougher sentences and have worse outcomes than their white counterparts. It is a sad and powerless position for anyone to be in, as the prison system is designed to slowly strip away one’s humanity. To hold on to her humanity, Blakinger had to find joy in unexpected places.

Corrections in Ink is written with deep insight and urgency, and Blakinger’s gripping insider knowledge and experience is supported by research, strong analysis and a blistering indictment of the criminal justice system. It’s this rare combination of personal narrative and reporting that makes Corrections in Ink such a singular reading experience.

Blakinger’s raw and important memoir isn’t only a drug recovery and success story. It’s a searing condemnation of our cruel and unjust project of caging human beings, a firsthand account of what this entails and a challenge not to look away from America’s flawed and punitive carceral system.

—Sarojini Seupersad

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reviews | nonfiction

H Serious Face

By Jon Mooallem

Essays If you’re not familiar with Jon Mooallem’s writing, his new book of essays, Serious Face (Random House, $28, 9780525509943), is calling your name.

Mooallem (This Is Chance!) has been writing for The New York Times Magazine for more than 15 years, and his latest book rounds up 11 of his best pieces from those years, plus one more written in 2022, into a transporting series of deep dives into surprising characters and situations.

Mooallem excels at writing about everything from climate change-fueled natural disasters to eccentric individuals. In “The Precise Center of a Dream,” for example, readers meet a man named Jacques-André Istel, who happens to be the father of modern skydiving and who created his own town (Felicity, California) in the middle of the desert. Mooallem’s observations can be beautifully delicate; about Felicity, he writes, “It was as if the entire town had sprouted from some preverbal place in his imagination— some need for beauty and meaning.” From that quirky end of the spectrum, Mooallem’s range as a writer stretches all the way across to quieter, more poignant essays like “A House at the End of the World,” his portrait of noted hospice worker B.J. Miller of the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco and of a 27-year-old man who died from mesothelioma under Miller’s care.

Mooallem can also be deeply personal. The title essay describes his uncanny resemblance to the Spanish bullfighter Manolete, who was hugely famous not only for his bullfighting skills but also for being ugly. “Why These Instead of Others?” is his completely captivating, edgeof-your-seat account of a remote kayaking trip he took with two friends at age 23 to Glacier Bay, Alaska—and the life-and-death rescue that ensued. His writing is equally riveting in “We Have Fire Everywhere,” about a group of people’s narrow escape from the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, in 2018. Mooallem typically lets his subjects speak for themselves and isn’t one to make many pronouncements, but here he writes, “It was all more evidence that the natural world was warping, outpacing our capacity to prepare for, or even conceive of, the magnitude of disaster that such a disordered earth can produce.”

Like the very best essay collections, Serious Face takes readers to unexpected places, exploring a meaningful mix of joy, tragedy and downright absurdity. The subjects vary widely,

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but Mooallem is such a gifted storyteller that it almost doesn’t matter what he’s writing about; readers like myself will be ready to follow.

—Alice Cary

The Monster’s Bones

By David K. Randall

History Dinosaurs are such a large part of our culture—from books, movies and amusement park rides to children’s toys and even dino-shaped chicken nuggets—that it’s hard to imagine a time before we knew these huge beasts walked the Earth before us.

The backstory to that revelation is thrillingly outlined in a new book by Reuters senior reporter David K. Randall (Dreamland) called The Monster’s Bones (Norton, $27.95, 9781324006534). While on an outing to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Randall and his family kept circling back to the captivating, terrifyingly surreal Tyrannosaurus rex exhibit, prompting his son to ask, “Who found these dinosaurs?” This perfectly reasonable inquiry inspired Randall to consider “the human stories behind prehistoric bones.”

In The Monster’s Bones, Randall delves into early fossil discoveries and scientists’ subsequent interpretations of these bones’ origins.

As it turns out, industry titans weren’t the only ruthlessly determined men of the Gilded Age. This era also inspired the “bone wars,” literally a race to find the largest and most complete dinosaur skeletons.

Randall focuses on the stories of two very different men who participated in this competition: paleontologist and Princeton graduate Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Barnum Brown, a farmer’s son from Kansas who was a skilled fossil hunter. Brown would travel thousands of miles, from the American West to Patagonia, in order to hunt down prize specimens for Osborn’s American Museum of Natural History.

Their intertwined story is full of adventure, intrigue and conflict, leading up to Brown’s world-changing discovery of the ferocious T. rex.

Exciting as any action tale, The Monster’s Bones features characters from all walks of life, from cowboys and ranchers to scientists, railroad magnates and university scholars. As with any valuable assets, greed was a big factor driving this race to succeed. However, it also pushed science ahead by leaps and bounds, leading to findings that still inform paleontologists and biologists today.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

H River of the Gods

By Candice Millard

History The Nile’s mythic reputation as the longest river in Africa, and arguably the world, once inspired generations of European explorers to seek its source—and exploit Africa’s vast resources in the process. Now, thanks to this richly detailed story well told by historian Candice Millard, a colorful and controversial chapter in world history resurfaces. In River of the Gods (Doubleday, $32.50, 9780385543101), 19th-century explorers’ egos loom godlike over expeditions, their abused local guides save lives and prompt discoveries, and the second largest continent on Earth finally gets mapped.

Millard, the prize-winning author of Hero of the Empire, among others, introduces a cast of characters and succeeds in making each of them unforgettable. Richard Burton, “an army of savants in a single man,” was chosen by the Royal Geographical Society in 1856 to head the expedition to locate the source of the Nile—“one of the most complex and demanding expeditions ever attempted.” But he soon ran afoul of his quirky colleague, John Hanning Speke, and barely survived their quest. It was Speke who earned the discoverer’s fame and glory, though his character flaws (paranoia and narcissism among them) marred his reputation and may have cost him his life. Sidi Mubarak Bombay, the previously enslaved man who guided the expedition and repeatedly saved them from treachery, disease, injury and themselves, didn’t immediately receive recognition for being integral to their success. Burton’s wife, Isabel Arrundell, was a fervent Catholic who defied her mother to marry Burton, a proclaimed agnostic who proposed by dropping off a note on his way to Africa.

Millard excels at describing it all, balancing narrative flow with abundant details that give a vast landscape its weight and power, clarify complicated people and arduous journeys, and add those who have gone largely unseen to the historical stage. Take, for example, such memorable details as a beetle burrowing into Speke’s ear; the thieves, deserters and raiders thwarting these yearslong expeditions; diseases and infections leading to blindness, deafness and death; the hardships of Bombay, who was once traded for cloth; and two huge, breathtakingly beautiful lakes, one of which, it was finally proven, spawned the Nile.

—Priscilla Kipp

reviews | young adult

H Man o’ War

By Cory McCarthy

Fiction This is what River McIntyre knows about who they are: They are a competitive swimmer. They were born and raised in Haley, Ohio, a town infamous for its failing marine park, SeaPlanet, and they feel a bitter kinship with the park’s captive­-raised creatures. They have two parents and an older brother, and they’re Lebanese on their mom’s side. These are the facts River knows for certain.

River begins to realize that everything else is a lot more complicated after a run-in at SeaPlanet with Indigo Waits, an out and proud teenager from River’s past. Seeing Indy forces River to admit that they’ve been drowning under the tide of gender dysphoria and internalized homophobia for far too long. In the absence of the words to process their feelings, however, River jumps into SeaPlanet’s shark tank and sets off a chain of events that will forever link Indy’s and River’s lives.

Author Cory McCarthy engages with every

Together We Burn

By Isabel Ibañez

Fantasy Zarela Zalvidar is practically royalty in Santivilla. Her mother was a celebrated flamenco dancer before she was killed by dragon fire, and her father is a respected Dragonador whose family has owned and run La Giralda, a dragonfighting arena, for more than five centuries. After some dragons escape during a show at the arena, killing many spectators and gravely wounding Zarela’s father, she must find a way to save La Giralda from financial ruin and unmask a traitor who is sabotaging her family’s business.

In order to lure back La Giralda’s audience, Zarela must enter the ring herself, but she’ll need a trainer if she’s to leave the ring with her life. Arturo, a handsome former Dragonador turned trainer who scorns dragonfighting, seems like the perfect choice—if Zarela can convince him to help. With only one chance to secure her family’s future, Zarela will do anything and risk everything to succeed.

Headstrong, resourceful and tenacious, Zarela is eager to emerge from the shadow of

aspect of River’s life to create Man o’ War (Dutton, $18.99, 9780593353707), an extraordinary story with incredible depth. River’s experiences as a competitive swimmer enable McCarthy to explore the complex relationships that trans athletes have with their bodies, while River’s Arab American heritage raises discussions about biracial identity and passing in a world that’s prejudiced in favor of white, cis­ gender people.

McCarthy’s prose is suffused with emotion and often employs SeaPlanet’s sharks, orcas, Portuguese manof-wars and other creatures as beautiful metaphors for River’s feelings. The jagged edges of dysphoria, the suffocating pressure of familial expectations and the all-encompassing need for love bleed through River’s internal monologue with biting clarity.

The novel’s exploration of queer identity ferociously resists the idea that coming out is

a simple or straightforward process. River’s journey of self-discovery takes years, and Man o’ War follows them through high school and college. They try on different labels, experience both acceptance and rejection from their queer peers and navigate the joys and trials of medical transition.

Along the way, McCarthy’s story provides space for every uncertain step, portraying River’s attempts to untangle the snarl of confusion and self-loathing inside themself with empathy and patience.

In Man o’ War, McCarthy validates how finding your name, accepting your name and telling others your name can all be separate, unique battles. Despite the pain those battles sometimes bring, River’s transition is driven by an irrepressible hope—a hope that will assure readers their true happiness is always worth the fight.

—RJ Witherow

her mother’s fame. Arturo is a worthy foil who challenges Zarela to rethink her long-held beliefs regarding dragonfighting. He’s also one of only a few people in Zarela’s life who doesn’t underestimate her, and their crackling chemistry will please fans of the enemies-tolovers romance trope.

In Together We Burn (Wednesday, $18.99, 9781250803351), Isabel Ibañez (Woven in Moonlight) grounds her fantasy world in the culture of medieval Spain, including its food, art and language. Packed with high stakes, a wellexecuted mystery and an appealingly swoony romance, Together We Burn has what it takes to entertain a wide range of genre fiction fans.

—Kimberly Giarratano

Upon learning that her estranged mother has died, Minah is forced to reconcile memories she’d rather forget. She returns to Obsidian for the first time in five years to confront the truth about her family’s deepest secrets.

Break This House (Dutton, $17.99, 9780525556237), Candice Iloh’s second novel, explores Minah’s joys and heartaches through immersive first-person narration. Minah is insightful and observant, offering vivid descriptions of everything from the smells on subway cars to the cacophony of songs that play from different speakers at a party. Neither the humor nor the horrors of her family’s past escape the broad scope of her pensive reflections.

Iloh’s visceral prose makes Break This House’s themes of loss and grief all the more impactful. As Minah sifts through her muddled memories and her family’s fragmented recollections, she begins to determine what she really thinks about herself, her parents and her faith. Suspended between her past and her future, she must craft an identity that honors her family but gives her the agency to make her own choices.

Break This House is a tender, poetic story about what it’s like to experience loss and learn to continue living anyway. It’s heart-wrenching to follow Minah as she tries to answer impossible questions that everyone eventually faces: What must we leave in the past, and how can we move forward without it?

—Tami Orendain

Break This House

By Candice Iloh

Fiction Minah Okar is content with the home that she and her father have built in Brooklyn, New York. With her hilarious best friend, Nikki, and loving boyfriend, Mike, by her side, Minah feels that she has left her old life in Obsidian, Michigan, behind for good.

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q&a | eliot schrefer

THE BIRDS AND THE BEES (AND THE BONOBOS, BULLS AND BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS) Eliot Schrefer explores the wild world of same-sex behavior in the animal kingdom.

A two-time National Book Award finalist, Eliot Schrefer is best known for novels that explore the relationships between humans and animals.

In Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality, Schrefer turns to nonfiction to present cutting-edge research on a plethora of same-sex animal behaviors, from male doodlebugs observed “doing the dirty” by German scientists in the 1830s, to trios of greylag geese that care for nests and raise fledglings with higher success rates than pairs. The book incorporates personal anecdotes from the author, comics by illustrator Jules Zuckerberg, interviews with working scientists and plenty of humor to create an absorbing, enlightening and entertaining read.

What inspired you to make the leap to nonfiction?

I’m in the animal studies M.A. program at New York University, and part of that coursework has been reading the long tradition of writers who have dared to question the assumption that humans are the pinnacle of creation. My fiction has long explored what bonds us with the natural world, but I hadn’t really considered working on a piece of nonfiction that would do the same. Then I happened across the burgeoning research into same-sex sexual behavior in animals and realized how much a young Eliot would have loved to have heard about that. That’s when I knew I had to write Queer Ducks.

animals, the Japanese macaques served as an introduction to feminist biology, the dolphins let us explore the question of whether sexual orientation is a relevant term for animals at all and so on.

You also include your own life experiences as a closeted queer teenager.

These moments really anchor the book. How did you feel as you worked on these sections?

I’ve been watching “RuPaul’s Drag Race” for years, and my favorite moment each season is when the contestants speak directly to a photo of themselves as a baby, telling them the advice they most needed to hear. I had 11-year-old Eliot in my mind while I was writing Queer Ducks. I was terrified that someone would find out the feelings that had risen up inside me. I felt weird and unnatural.

I’m grown up now and doing fine, but the thought that I might be able to help another young person feel like they are a natural part of the world after all was a big part of my inspiration. When I talk about Queer Ducks in public, I go in thinking that I’ll just be rattling through really cool animal facts, but I wind up tearstruck.

Throughout the book, you often mention that it’s impossible to know what animals think about all this. If you could interview some members of one of the species in the book, which would you H Queer Ducks (and Other Animals) choose to talk to and why?

Katherine Tegen, $17.99, 9780063069497 Ha! Love this question. I think I’d sit (or How did you arrive at the book’s unique should I say float?) with a wrasse fish.

Young Adult Nonfiction blend of formats?

They have a mostly female society, with For my young readers, there’s a good chance that the only science writing one male at the top of the hierarchy. When that male dies, though, one they’ve encountered is in their textbooks. There’s such a healthy amount of of the females changes sex within an hour or two and assumes the patriarchal position. science nonfiction for adults (like Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus I’d love to talk to a wrasse fish who transitioned. What did his body feel or Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights) that allows the author to take some like while it was happening? Did he have any volition in it? How did the space on the page to give readers more of an intimate access point to the group know that she—this particular fish—would be the one to become science, and I wanted to create a similar work for teens. male? Wrasse fish also swim into the jaws of moray eels to clean their Same-sex sexual behavior has been confirmed in more than 1,500 teeth, so I’d be curious if this fish had any dentistry tips. animal species. How did you begin to organize this breadth of scienAs you worked on this book that’s mostly about animals, what do you tific information? feel you learned about humans?

I decided to focus on 10 representative animal species and to have each I think we underestimate how fixated our current cultural moment is on chapter tackle an important research question. The wrasse fish enabled narrowly identifying sexuality. Homosexuality is a word and concept that me to look more generally at evolutionary explanations for sex change in

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© PRIYA PATEL

feature | pride for kids

Books for younger readers celebrate Pride The past is present in three books that powerfully remind us how young people will one day lead us all into the future.

The Civil War of Amos Abernathy Thirteen-year-old Amos Abernathy wonders why the voices of LGBTQ people aren’t reflected in the history he reenacts at his beloved living history park. But then he discovers Albert D.J. Cashier, a transgender man who fought in the Civil War. Can Amos find a way to tell Albert’s story?

Michael Leali’s The Civil War of Amos Abernathy (HarperCollins, $16.99, 9780063119864) is an inspiring, intersectional portrait of determined young people helping their community become more inclusive.

Visit BookPage.com to read an extended version of this Q&A and our starred review of Queer Ducks (and Other Animals).

didn’t exist before the second half of the 19th century. For the majority of human societies and for the vast majority of our history as a species, acts could be same-sex but there was no persistent identity attached to them.

Without that need to define what a person is, someone would be much freer to have occasional same-sex sexual behavior—which is exactly what we see play out in species after species in the wild.

“Queer Ducks makes a space to think about how expansive and diverse the natural world is, how many ways there are to love and to be.”

In the book’s final chapter, you discuss possible reasons why much of the information in the book has remained largely unknown for decades, including unconscious or even intentional homophobia within the sciences, and you address readers who may feel that such information challenges “the natural order.” What would you say to an adult who thinks teens shouldn’t read this book?

Given the dishonest tactics that politicians are currently using to score points by smearing gay people, it’s worth repeating that sexuality is not something that can be locked out of your schools or your family. The feelings crop up within, and when a young person feels alone and unnatural because of who they are, it’s potentially deadly. Queer Ducks makes a space to think about how expansive and diverse the natural world is, how many ways there are to love and to be. Of course the majority of animal sex is heterosexual. No one’s trying to argue against that. But knowing that same-sex sexual behavior has its place in the natural world might save the life of a young person.

—Luis G. Rendon Cover art from Queer Ducks (and Other Animals) by Eliot Schrefer © 2022. Reproduced with permission of Katherine Tegen Books.

H Different Kinds of Fruit Sixth grader Annabelle Blake is bored with life in her small town until Bailey, a nonbinary kid, moves to town. Bailey seems really cool, so Annabelle is confused when her parents discourage her from getting close to them. Then Annabelle’s parents reveal a big secret: Annabelle’s father is a transgender man and is the person who gave birth to her.

Kyle Lukoff ’s remarkable Different Kinds of Fruit (Dial, $17.99, 9780593111185) will be as meaningful to young readers today as Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was for generations of readers before them.

The Rainbow Parade Emily Neilson draws on childhood memories to offer young readers a front-row seat to The Rainbow Parade (Dial, $17.99, 9780593326589).

On the day of the Rainbow Parade, Emy loves to take the train to the city with Mama and Mommy. She enjoys the loud motorcycles and all the colorful costumes. But when the rainbow fairy queen invites Emy and her moms to join the parade, Emy isn’t sure whether she’s “loud enough or proud enough” to join the festivities.

Neilson’s first picture book as both author and illustrator is a dazzling celebration of queer families that captures how empowering it is to be accepted for who we are.

—Brittany Sky Visit BookPage.com to read the full feature.

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feature | beach picture books

Sun, sand and sea

Take a trip to the beach without even leaving your house.

“I must go down to the seas again,” begins English poet John Masefield’s “Sea-Fever.” This trio of picture books is the perfect remedy for such an ailment. They capture the wonderful ways that beach days offer respite from our routines as we cool down, splash around and play.

H Little Houses Little Houses (Greenwillow, $18.99, 9780062965721) is a quietly marvelous book about a girl’s day at the beach with her grandparents. Frequent collaborators (and husband-and-wife team) Kevin Henkes and Laura Dronzek have created an ode to curiosity that urges readers to open their minds and wonder at the world.

The young narrator of Little Houses loves to visit her grandparents at a cottage “so close to the water you can hear the waves.” As they comb the beach, the girl’s grandmother reminds her to collect only empty shells, because some might be “little houses.” This prompts the girl to ponder what sorts of creatures might have lived in the shells she sees. She even muses about the possibility that vacant shells might harbor the ghosts of their previous inhabitants.

Then the girl overhears her grandmother say “ . . . things we cannot see” above the din of the waves. In a deft and strikingly realistic narrative move by Henkes, the girl imagines what her grandmother might have been talking about.

She describes “all the things that might be under the water,” from “fish as big as cars” to “lost toys, lost coins, lots of lost things that were cried over.”

Dronzek gives form and shape to the girl’s speculations in a brightly colored scene. An enormous dark blue fish with friendly eyes swims in cerulean waters surrounded by marine life—jellyfish, an octopus, a sea turtle and more.

Young readers will love spotting items scattered along the ocean floor, including a chain of pearls, a toy sailboat and a white toy kitten that will be familiar to longtime Henkes fans.

Every page of Little Houses reminds readers of the infinite ways that oceans, animals, plants and people are connected.

A Day for Sandcastles As Little Houses looks out at the big world, A Day for Sandcastles (Candlewick, $17.99, 9781536208429) keeps a tight focus on three children who spend a day in the sand.

In this wordless picture book, the children work diligently together to build the sandcastle of their dreams.

The journey starts with a bus ride out of the city, and spot illustrations show each character’s excitement as they catch their first glimpses of the sandy beach and ocean water. While always present, the two adults who accompany the children remain largely on the sidelines and allow the children to create their own fun.

JonArno Lawson creates a detailed narrative that Qin Leng’s ink and watercolor artwork brings to life. Leng nimbly alternates between smaller, narrowly framed views of the children’s construction efforts and larger panels, pages and double-page spreads that depict wider scenes of the beach. These views convey the changing position of the sun throughout the day and the rising tide, which is a constant threat to the children’s castle. Leng’s images give this beach day rhythm as readers experience

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everything from the wrenching agony of a destructive wave to the uniquely attentive pleasure of using a twig to carve tiny windows into sandy towers.

A Day for Sandcastles is a delightful story about perseverance and the joy of seeing a work in progress to completion. It’s lovely to see the children cooperate as they defend their castle from a windblown hat, a wayward toddler and more, but there are plenty of successes too, as shown by Leng through the children’s facial expressions and energetic movements.

The journey home—packing up beach chairs and umbrellas, trudging up a grassy dune, yawning and boarding (or being carried onto) the bus and, finally, gazing out at waters that glimmer against a blazing sunset as the bus drives back to the city—neatly concludes this summer story. A Day for Sandcastles will leave readers longing for a beach trip of their own.

Hot Dog A lively, lovable city-dwelling dachshund is the star of Doug Salati’s joyful author-illustrator debut, Hot Dog (Knopf, $17.99, 9780593308431).

With spare text, the book opens as its canine protagonist overheats while out for a walk on a summer day in a crowded city. Eventually, the poor pup lies down in the middle of the street and refuses to go any farther. Fortunately, the dog’s human companion knows just the solution.

Salati’s illustrations are full of whimsy and soul. The bustling city scenes are masterfully detailed, and these pages radiate heat via shades of orange and yellow. A particularly effective illustration shows the sun blazing down on our furry hero right before the dog melts down.

What makes Hot Dog so memorable and fun are all the interactions between the pup and the pup’s person, a tall redhead who wears round blue glasses, a turquoise fanny pack and a floppy yellow hat. It’s heartwarming when she kneels down in the crosswalk, ignoring the cacophony of honking cars as she gazes into her exhausted dog’s eyes, one hand under her pup’s chin, the other grasping a paw.

Soon, the woman and her four-legged friend board a ferry. The sweltering glow lifts and Salati’s palette fills with sky blues, verdant greens and clean, creamy sands. Readers will feel relief from the heat as the sea breezes billow, providing “a welcome whiff of someplace new.” A series of playful action scenes show the dog relishing every moment on the shore. The pup chases waves and seagulls, rolls around and digs in the sand, and collects rocks for the woman.

Splendid touches of humor pop up, such as a large rock that turns out to be a seal and a dachshund silhouette that the woman creates out of stones, shells, driftwood and seaweed.

Canine and human return home on a crowded subway to a beautiful summer night in their neighborhood. The day’s heat has faded and a fresh wind blows as families relax around a plaza with a big fountain. Back in their apartment (a clever visual homage to Vincent van Gogh’s well-known painting of his bedroom), Salati offers the perfect summation: “What a day for a dog!” Hot Dog captures a much-needed summer excursion that readers will enjoy taking again and again.

—Alice Cary Illustrations from Little Houses © 2022 by Laura Dronzek. Reproduced by permission of Greenwillow Books.

reviews | children’s

H Answers in the Pages

By David Levithan

Middle Grade Donovan didn’t mean to leave the book on the kitchen table. Gideon hadn’t planned to ask the new boy, Roberto, to be his partner for their school project. And Rick didn’t know that the courage Oliver displayed on their latest adventure would make him realize “just how deeply he loved Oliver.” In David Levithan’s Answers in the Pages (Knopf, $17.99, 9780593484685), these boys’ stories—separate but inextricably connected—intertwine to explore the impact of a book challenge in a small community.

When Mr. Howe passes out copies of a book called The Adventurers to Donovan’s fifth grade language arts class, Donovan accepts one without much thought and leaves it on the kitchen counter after reading the first chapter. It’s only when his mom asks him about the book and

then goes to see the principal the next day that Donovan begins to realize something might be amiss. The situation spirals as Donovan’s mom begins a campaign to remove the book from the curriculum because of its supposedly inappropriate themes.

Answers in the Pages unfolds in three skillfully balanced threads: There’s Donovan’s first-person narration, as well as amusing chapter-­length excerpts from the fictional Adventurers novel, which follows the exploits of Rick and Oliver as they make daring escapes, track down evildoers and save the day. Finally, third-­person chapters introduce Gideon and Roberto, two boys who don’t quite know where they fit in among their peers until they find each other.

Each thread would be compelling on its own, but Levithan pulls them together in the book’s conclusion to create an ending even more

moving than the sum of its individual parts.

As long as books have been published, efforts have been made to restrict the ability of readers—particularly young readers—to access them. With nuance and grace, Answers in the Pages explores the dramatic impact that such restrictions can have on the readers who need those books the most. Notably, the novel refuses to villainize Donovan’s mom, instead depicting her actions as the result of a misplaced sense of care. “I know you’re on my side,” Donovan tells his mom. “Just not this one time.

This one time you thought you were on my side, but you got it wrong.”

Answers in the Pages is an uplifting portrait of the strength it takes to fight for your story. It’s an important book with an essential perspective on a vital, timeless question.

—Kevin Delecki

meet JOHN PARRA How would you describe your book?

What books did you enjoy as a child?

Who has been the biggest influence on your work?

What one thing would you like to learn to do?

Who was your childhood hero?

What message would you like to send to young readers?

While spending the day with his father, a landscape contractor, Juan finds lots of inspiration for his sketchbook and uses his artistic talent to help his father’s business.

John Parra draws on childhood memories to create Growing an Artist (Paula Wiseman, $18.99, 9781534469273), an affectionate and colorful tribute to the love between a father and his son.

An acclaimed illustrator, Parra has created art for six postage stamps in addition to many picture books. He lives with his wife in New York City.

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