July 2022 BookPage by BookPage

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

JULY 2022

Travel around the world with this summer’s best mysteries and thrillers, including new books from Ragnar Jónasson, Fiona Barton, Julie Clark and more!

ALSO INSIDE: 4 unconventional takes on the Western • perfect pet picture books • a royal romance remixed

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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BookPage

JULY 2022

features q&a | ava reid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

feature | young adult mysteries. . . . 28 Three teen detectives share a thirst for justice

Unearthing the darkness of fairy tales

behind the book | tracey livesay . . . . . 8

feature | middle grade mysteries. . . 29 Follow the clues alongside two young sleuths

Harry and Meghan—remixed

feature | short stories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Four collections offer visits to the deep

feature | coming-of-age fiction . . . . 23 Changes come fast in New York City

feature | pet picture books. . . . . . . . . 30

reviews fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 young adult. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Life with furry (and not-so-furry) friends

meet | stephanie graegin. . . . . . . . . . 31 Meet the author-illustrator of The Long Ride Home

children’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

columns

PRIVATE EYE JULY interview | julie clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

well read. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 lifestyles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A con artist tricks everyone—except for the reader

feature | international mysteries . . . 12

audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 book clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Your ultimate summer getaway awaits

feature | true crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Real-life gumshoes, long-buried secrets

interview | paul holes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The personal toll of investigating cold cases

feature | killer science . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 whodunit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 cozies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 the hold list. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Agatha Christie looms large in two books PRESIDENT & FOUNDER Michael A. Zibart

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

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well read

by robert weibezahl

H Also a Poet

lifestyles

by susannah felts

H Breadsong

Every childhood is unique, but Ada Calhoun’s, as portrayed in her fearless new memoir, Also a Poet (Grove, $27, 9780802159786), stands out for its blend of adolescent freedom and paternal neglect. The daughter of art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, Calhoun grew up at the vortex of New York City’s East Village bohemia, a world she wrote about in the history St. Marks Is Dead. Young Calhoun, eager and precocious, craved nothing more than the approbation of her father, a complicated, emotionally distant man famously given to saying the wrong thing—a trait from which his daughter was never spared. One piece of common ground that Calhoun and her father shared, however, was a love of the work of Frank O’Hara, the legendary New York School poet who died in a freak accident in 1966. One day in 2018, Calhoun was searching for something in the basement storage of her parents’ apartment building when she found dozens of loose cassette A daughter takes an unexpected tapes from the 1970s, detour from literary biography to labeled with personal memoir in an absorbing the names of famous artists like and insightful new book. Willem de Kooning, Edward Gorey and Larry Rivers. Her father said they were interviews he had conducted with O’Hara’s friends because he’d intended to write a biography of the poet. Circumstances—not least of all a roadblock erected by O’Hara’s sister, Maureen—had killed the project. Schjeldahl told his daughter she could use the interviews for her own purposes, and Calhoun envisioned a new biography of the iconic poet based on these priceless recollections. But the book took on a new shape as she proceeded—in part, again, because of the obstruction of Maureen, who serves as her brother’s literary executor. As Calhoun began to delve into the interviews, short portions of which she shares in Also a Poet, she began piecing together a multifaceted portrait of O’Hara, greatly loved by friends who painted him as gregarious, whip-smart, generous, sexually fluid and happily promiscuous. (The latter two assessments are most likely at the core of his sister’s posthumous protectiveness.) But the interviews also provided Calhoun with insight into the interviewer: her father. Frustrated by the ways Schjeldahl had sabotaged his own project, she plunged back into their often difficult father-daughter relationship with fresh eyes. Lifelong resentments resurfaced as she viewed her father with redoubled awareness. When the aging Schjeldahl, who had smoked three packs a day for decades, was diagnosed with lung cancer, his solipsistic reaction to his illness rankled Calhoun, even as she dutifully stepped in to help. The unexpected convergence of the challenging O’Hara book project and her father’s sudden decline provide Calhoun with a singular perspective on the timeless issues of family relationships, most especially the vulnerabilities of following in a father’s eminent footsteps and the elusive possibility of ever fully understanding our parents. Calhoun’s honesty and willingness to push beyond her own resentments make Also a Poet a potent account of a daughter reaching out to a perhaps unreachable father before it’s too late.

Kitty and Al Tait may not be the first to write of the redemption and delight that can come from watching yeast and heat transform mere water, flour and salt into beautiful, delicious creations. But their memoir-cumcookbook, Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives (Bloomsbury, $30, 9781635578041), is the most charming version of that story I’ve yet come across. In it, the father- daughter team tells their origin story in alternating points of view before sharing over 50 recipes, both savory and sweet. As a young teen, Kitty began experiencing terrible depression and anxiety. Nothing seemed to help, until Al baked a no-knead loaf, sparking Kitty’s curiosity. In no time at all, the duo had opened what has become a tremendously successful family bakery in their tiny village in Oxfordshire, England. Their story is as heartwarming as it gets, accentuated by Kitty’s lively voice and infectious grin splashed across the pages along with her dad’s adorable illustrations. There’s a recipe for a caramel-covered Happy Bread here, which says a lot about this joyful book.

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.

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

Things to Look Forward To When my daughter was young, we enjoyed many books featuring Sophie Blackall’s cozy illustrations. How fun to come across Things to Look Forward To (Chronicle, $22.95, 9781797214481), Blackall’s new picture book for all ages (that best and rarest of all genres). Not surprisingly, this project grew out of bleak days during the COVID-19 pandemic and was nudged along by community input via social media. Some of the assembled things to look forward to are as common as the sun coming up; in fact, that is literally one of them. Who can argue with coffee, finding something you thought you’d lost or seeing the sea? Other experiences here are a bit more nuanced (doing your taxes, looking at maps) or whimsical (drawing on eggs, flowers that look like brains!). What’s certain is that you can’t page through this book without feeling a renewed sense of appreciation for the everyday, and that’s something all of us can use, every day.

Nectar of the Gods For a decidedly elevated sort of toga party, be sure to consult Nectar of the Gods (Adams, $17.99, 9781507217993). The work of mythology podcaster Liv Albert and beverage consultant Thea Engst, this book pairs inventive cocktail recipes with soupçons of Greek and Roman myth. Take, for example, Pandora’s Jar (yes, in fact, it was originally a jar, not a box!): a gin, blueberry and creme de violette concoction. Calypso’s Island Iced Tea, designed to bring out the sexy nymph in each of us, seems like the perfect poolside sipper: hibiscus iced tea, vodka, lemon juice and simple syrup. For a more complex and decadent drink, try the Phaedra Phizz, and pour one out for its ill-fated namesake.

audio

H The Memory Librarian The dystopia envisioned in singer-s ongwriter Janelle Monáe’s album Dirty Computer provides the backdrop for her story collection, The Memory Librarian (HarperAudio, 12 hours). New Dawn, a totalitarian regime that rules through surveillance and memory erasure, has deemed that only the “clean” are worthy. Others—particularly members of the LGBTQ community, people of color and their allies—are labeled “dirty computers” and must be reprogrammed or destroyed. The five stories, each written in collaboration with a distinguished speculative fiction author (Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, Eve L. Ewing, Yohanca Delgado and Sheree Renée Thomas), describe the fear of living under such a regime as well as the courage that can be found in a community of resistance. Monáe’s narration of the preface and first story is elegant and measured, and voice actor Bahni Turpin’s performance of the remaining four tales is electrifying. —Deborah Mason

Ten Steps to Nanette

New audiobooks n that make a n

S PL A S H ! macmillan audio

READ BY STEPHANIE JOHNSON WITH BRANDON STANTON

READ BY MICHAEL LESLEY

READ BY GROVER GARDNER

READ BY A FULL CAST

READ BY PATTI MURIN

READ BY KATHLEEN MCINERNEY

READ BY CARLA VEGA

READ BY A FULL CAST

Ten Steps to Nanette (Random House Audio, 14 hours) takes listeners through Hannah Gadsby’s life up to the release of “Hannah Gadsby: Nanette,” her groundbreaking 2018 Netflix special, in which she declared her intentions to quit comedy while offering a razor-sharp commentary on the industry’s dark side. Gadsby guides us through the story of her life with good humor and a dry wit. —Anna Zeitlin

Bomb Shelter In her new book of autobiographical essays, Bomb Shelter (Simon & Schuster Audio, 7 hours), Mary Laura Philpott writes with gusto about practicing for what will never happen and postponing the inevitable. She reads her audiobook with a Southern lilt, at times laughing or on the verge of tears. —Mari Carlson

Sea of Tranquility Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Sea of Tranquility (Random House Audio, 6 hours) is as vast as an ocean and as ambitious as the determination to cross it. Well-paced performances by narrators John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Moorey and Kirsten Potter foreshadow crises like the calm before the storm. —Mari Carlson

Burning Questions As evidenced by the huge cast for Burning Questions (Random House Audio, 19 hours), appreciation for Margaret Atwood is far-reaching. The author narrates the introduction, and 36 other people read her essays, including authors Naomi Alderman and Omar El Akkad. As Atwood writes, “Have a listen. Confront the urgent questions. Feel the chill.” —G. Robert Frazier

q&a | ava reid

A STORY MOST GRIM(M) Ava Reid’s gothic horror novel, Juniper & Thorn, unearths the darkness at the root of fairy tales. Young witch Marlinchen and her sisters live under the iron thumb of their wizard father. But when Marlinchen falls in love with ballet dancer Sevas, she begins to chafe against her father’s rule. We talked to Ava Reid about her unique Eastern European-inspired world and the gruesome fairy tale that inspired her sophomore novel.

I could. Sevas, a stranger, is in fact Marlinchen’s savior. Marlinchen, plain-faced, unremarkable, is the story’s heroine. The world of Juniper & Thorn is by design deeply cruel and unjust. Once I had my list of tropes and mechanics, I began trying to take them apart. So while I was obviously inspired by fairy tales, my goal was always to turn them on their heads.

Juniper & Thorn is inspired by the “The Juniper Tree,” one The fictional world of this novel is influenced by of the more obscure stories Eastern European culture. from Grimms’ Fairy Tales in Why did you set your story which a woman murders her stepson and the boy’s father in this context? eats him. What drew you to Eastern Europe is the setting this story? of many contemporary fantasy I was always beguiled by its novels, but with few excepunofficial moniker of Grimms’ tions, these books present an darkest fairy tale. One thing I Eastern Europe that is bleak, wintry, remote, forested and noted is that there are very few quintessential fairy-tale tropes very culturally homogeneous. in it. It’s a strangely quiet, intiI was intrigued by writing an H Juniper & Thorn mate story about domestic Eastern Europe that was difHarper Voyager, $27.99 violence within a single family. ferent: wind-chapped steppes, 9780062973160 Once I came to that realiblack sand beaches, boardzation, it seemed most honest walks, smoke-chuffing factoHorror to make this retelling a gothic ries, vibrant with urban life, horror novel. I wanted to maintain this thread of diverse and dynamic. Early 20th-century Odesa, bleak, almost claustrophobic violence, which is Ukraine, the city upon which Oblya is based, the core of the gothic genre. That unnaturalness was considered the jewel of the Russian empire. and upending of a foundational expectation— Enormous change—industrialization, urbanthat parents should love and care for their chilization, immigration—was disrupting tradidren—is what makes “The Juniper Tree” so hortional lifestyles, often violently. I like to set rible, and what makes Juniper & Thorn firmly books during periods of upheaval, uncertainty, a horror novel. transformation and violence, where what has always been is not synonymous with what will always be. How did you toe the line between being inspired by a fairy tale and creating something completely new? Do you think the kind of magic you depict can Fairy tales remain essential parts of our culture coexist with modernity as we think of it? because they contain themes or lessons that feel Magic in Juniper & Thorn represents the old universal, even aspirational: Strangers are danworld, a world that is regressive and stubbornly gerous (“Red Riding Hood”), beauty is goodness resistant to change. When Marlinchen gives (“Cinderella”), justice is always done (take your examples of her father’s transformations, they pick). These beliefs are so fundamental that they are always instances in which he turns someare rarely ever questioned or even remarked thing dynamic or technologically advanced into upon. I wanted to write a book that dismantled something lifeless or outdated: a swan into a as many of these foundational assumptions as swan-vase, an electric lamp into a candle. His

transformation is inherently anti-modernity. It parallels the way a lot of contemporary European ethnic nationalists imagine their countries’ mythic pasts—magical, in touch with the natural world and of course devoid of any “foreign” or “corruptive” element. Is there a place for this way of thinking in the modern world? Unfortunately, yes, but ideally, these prejudicial, violent attitudes would go the way of the spinning wheel. What drew you to the imagery of dance? Ballet is an important part of Russian culture and Russian national identity, particularly in the early 20th century, when the book is set. Iconic ballets like “The Firebird” and “Swan Lake” draw from Russian folklore and fairy tales, and of course, both feature imagery of birds and themes of transformation—so it seemed deeply fitting. I also thought a lot about ballet as both an art form and a sport; it requires incredible physical strength and an almost ascetic level of dedication, especially to achieve the success that Sevas has. But unlike many other sports, aesthetics are crucial to its performance. Ballet’s emphasis on beauty, fluidity and effortless grace while camouflaging the physical toll it takes on the dancers knits together very well with the larger themes of the book. Where would Marlinchen and Sevas be now if they hadn’t met each other? It’s honestly impossible for me to conceive of these two characters apart from each other, because I wrote them to be soulmates: They understand each other instantly to the deepest possible degree, and even though they appear quite different on the surface, they are perfect mirror images. They have been trapped, misused and pushed to the bleakest point of desperation, and that’s when they find each other. I think it’s easy to see Sevas as Marlinchen’s knight in shining armor, but she rescues him just as much as he rescues her. —Laura Hubbard Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of Juniper & Thorn and an extended version of this Q&A.

book clubs

by julie hale

Saddle up! The orphan son of Chinese immigrants, Ming Tsu is brought up to be an assassin by a California bandit in Tom Lin’s one-of-a-kind Western, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu (Back Bay, $16.99, 9780316542142). Ming hopes for a better future after he elopes with Ada, the daughter of a railroad mogul. But when Ada is abducted and Ming is forced to go to work for the Central Pacific Railroad, he’s determined to seek retribution. Supernatural elements blend seamlessly with the epic plot, which makes room to note the prejudices of the 19th century. Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (Milkweed, $15, 9781571311306) looks at the life of an orphaned Ojibway boy in 1960s Ontario, Canada. Saul Indian Horse attends Four innovative takes on a bleak Catholic boarding school. A professional sports the Western breathe new career becomes a possibility for Saul after he joins an life into the genre. Ojibway hockey team, yet he faces prejudice and hostility due to his heritage. As he comes of age, he must also come to terms with his past—and prepare for an uncertain future. Wagamese draws upon Ojibway language and lore as he traces Saul’s remarkable personal journey, and the result is a starkly beautiful neo-Western novel. Set in the American West during the gold rush, C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold (Riverhead, $17, 9780525537212) tells the epic story of a Chinese American family. When their father, a hardworking miner, dies, orphans Sam and Lucy decide to give him a traditional Chinese burial. After being forced to leave their home, they embark on a quest to find the right place to lay their father to rest, traveling through harsh terrain with his corpse carried on horseback. Zhang plumbs myths about the American West as she dissects themes of nature, home and immigration in this rewarding book club pick. Anna North reimagines the traditional Western with Outlawed (Bloomsbury, $17, 9781635578249). In an alternate 1890s, happily married Ada finds that she’s unable to bear children. Afraid that she’ll be charged with witchcraft—a typical occurrence for childless women—Ada flees her home and eventually joins the Hole in the Wall Gang. A collective of female and nonbinary fugitives, the gang hopes to establish a town where marginalized people can flourish. Ada’s adventures with the gun-toting band make for great reading, with gender, community and identity being but a few of the novel’s rich discussion topics.

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

BOOK CLUB READ S OR SUM SP RING FFOR M ER VACATIONLAND by Meg Mitchell Moore “As sophisticated and delicious as lobster bisque.” — AMANDA EYRE WARD New York Times bestselling author of The Lifeguards

ISLAND QUEEN by Vanessa Riley “Richly detailed, vividly depicted, and sweeping in scope, Island Queen is historical fiction at its absolute finest. A stunning must-read!” — CHANEL CLEETON New York Times bestselling author of The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba

BY HER OWN DESIGN by Piper Huguley The incredible untold story of how Ann Lowe, a Black woman and granddaughter of slaves, rose above racial prejudice to create one of America’s most famous wedding dresses of all time for Jackie Kennedy.

DREAM GIRL by Laura Lippman “With this tip of the hat to Stephen King’s Misery , Dream Girl is funny and suspenseful, with a dread-worthy final twist.” — PEOPLE MAGAZINE

t @Morrow_PB

t @bookclubgirl

f William Morrow I BookClubGirl

behind the book | tracey livesay

Tracey Livesay explains how the love story of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex served as the jumping-off point for her latest romance.

A royal romance— remixed

The voracious interest that created an entire industry devoted to the lives of famous people, where the public treats celebrities as if they were our royalty. The courtship, engagement and wedding of Harry and Meghan. Cardi B’s cover shoot for Harper’s Bazaar. In particular, the picture of Cardi in a Vera Wang ballgown running away from a castle, a bejeweled Jimmy Choo heel spotlighted in the frame. These were the sparks that led to American Royalty and the idea of a British prince falling in love with an American rapper. I knew people would see the Harry and Meghan connection, but making my heroine, Dani, a rapper instead of an actor shaped it into a different story with its own avenues for me to explore. Meghan is very fair-skinned, with a white father and an African American mother, and she still had to face overt racism from the British tabloids. (Remember that headline, “Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton”?) What if the woman in question Visit BookPage.com to read our were Black with a darker complexion? More review of American Royalty. famous? And a rapper? How would those attributes change her treatment and people’s feelSo, I was free to challenge the assumption that ings about her possible addition to a historic in relationships between royals and commoners, the nonroyal was the lucky one. By crafting institution? the royal family as a group of people who seem Both Harry and my hero, Jameson, have more like a corporation than a family, it’s clear difficult relationships with the press that are linked to the death of a parent, but unlike Jameson is the fortunate one in this equation. Harry, Jameson has been sheltered and He manages to find someone to truly love him, not because he’s a prince but in spite of it. allowed to hide away from a society that, by virtue of his birth, felt entitled to him. How While writing, I delved into privilege, approwould he handle being forced back into the priation and unconscious bias in the entertainspotlight, and falling for an American enterment industry to highlight the aggressions— American Royalty tainer like Dani, who’d built her career cultimacro, micro or otherwise—that affect Black Avon, $15.99, 9780063084506 vating a larger-than-life public persona and female entertainers. Finally, I also took the who’d need to stay in said spotlight for her opportunity to highlight intentional caring for Contemporary Romance Black women. In fiction, there’s a tendency to own professional purposes? Once the characters evolved from their initial inspirations, I began craftportray us as strong, tough and incapable of being vulnerable, but that ing my story. I always imagined Dani and Jameson’s happily ever after depiction comes at a cost to our humanity. Dani is powerful, independent would look different from Harry and Meghan’s by virtue of the issues that and resilient, but I also show her being cherished, treasured and protected are important to me and the topics I by a prince who could have his pick of chose to address. But I never could’ve partners. And he chooses her. “There’s a tendency to portray [Black anticipated the bombshell game There were so many topics I women] as strong, tough and incapable wanted to explore; the challenge was changer that was the Oprah interview! It didn’t necessarily change what I was in determining how to narrow my of being vulnerable, but that depiction writing, but it created an immediate focus. Because at the end of the day, American Royalty is a romance, and response to any naysayers who may comes at a cost to our humanity.” I didn’t want to lose sight of that. It’s not have wanted their royal romances tainted with the notion of racism. The reactions, conversations and issues lush, fun, sexy and joyful, and it chronicles the journey of two people who raised in my story, although entirely fictional, would now feel plausible, aren’t perfect but who, improbably, are perfect for each other. given what we were learning. —Tracey Livesay

romance

by christie ridgway

H Maggie Moves On Maggie Moves On (Forever, $15.99, 9781538707081) by Lucy Score is a romcom that will especially delight lovers of HGTV and will charm practically everyone else. Happy-to-wander Maggie Nichols makes a living as a house flipper and documents her success on a popular YouTube channel. When she selects a mansion in Kinship, Idaho, as her next fixer-upper, she meets hunky landscaper Silas Wright and promptly loses her heart. Can she learn to settle down with a man who’s firmly rooted in his charming hometown? Silas oozes confidence and charm, especially when he’s crooning impromptu with his stepmother on a bar stage. Maggie Moves On is a sexy, sweet and easy read, but readers may still find themselves wiping away tears at its unabashed and all- encompassing happily ever after. Relax and enjoy this one while dreaming of dream houses, blissful blended families and Idaho finger steaks. Sign up for our romance newsletter at BookPage.com/enews.

H You Were Made to Be Mine Julie Anne Long offers a historical romance to savor with You Were Made to Be Mine (Avon, $8.99, 9780063045101). For an exorbitant fee, former British spy Christian Hawkes agrees to find Lady Aurelie Capet, the Earl of Brundage’s runaway fiancée. Christian has his suspicions about the earl, suspicions that prove horribly true when he tracks down the beautiful Aurelie, who has taken a new name and is hiding out at the Grand Palace on the Thames boarding house in an effort to escape from her wicked fiancé. Long’s third-person narration allows for entertaining glimpses into the cast, from would-be footmen to the delightful proprietresses of “TGPOTT” (as embroidered on signature handkerchiefs). Christian and Aurelie’s desperate yearning and aching tenderness are sure to linger long in readers’ hearts.

WORLD WAR II Historical Fiction for Summer

THE RESISTANCE GIRL by Mandy Robotham

She knows she has no choice but to risk her life for her country once more…

THE RED CROSS ORPHANS by Glynis Peters A journey into war, but not one she’ll take alone…

THE LIGHT WE LEFT BEHIND by Tessa Harris When the walls have ears, who can you trust?

The Romance Recipe Two women deal with career, family and romantic turmoil in The Romance Recipe (Carina Adores, $15.99, 9781335506917) by Ruby Barrett. Amy Chambers, the owner of struggling restaurant Amy and May’s, and Sophie Brunet, the restaurant’s chef, are each harboring a secret crush on the other. Sophie has recently realized that she’s bisexual, and Amy’s confidence in herself makes her as intimidating as she is alluring. Amy isn’t wont to open up to anyone, especially someone like Sophie, whom Amy worries might be looking for new experiences instead of commitment. Sensual feasts abound, both in luscious culinary creations and detailed sex scenes, as Barrett masterfully portrays the sensation of infatuation growing into true love.

THE POLISH GIRL by Malka Adler COMING IN AUGUST from author of international bestseller The Brothers of Auschwitz!

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

private eye july | julie clark

CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET? In a new thriller by the author of The Last Flight, a sly con artist tricks everyone except for the reader. Meg Williams, the magnetic central character of Julie Clark’s new novel, principal resulted in a deeply traumatic experience. Meg is the person The Lies I Tell, is a highly intelligent woman with a gift for transformwho started Kat down that path, and once Kat realizes the con artist is back ing social graces into social engineering. She’s always learning, adept at in California, she decides it’s time for a reckoning. She figures she’ll take a innovating on the fly. But unlike other “dispage from Meg’s playbook and gain her trust ruptors,” such as the tech bro founders of before making her pay for what she’s done. hot new startups, Meg is a con artist with 10 Readers who admired the alternating years of experience (and counting). points of view in The Last Flight will be happy Despite that decidedly dodgy resume, to know that Clark returns to that structure Meg makes for a compelling protagonist as in The Lies I Tell. Details of the pain and she attempts to right both personal and sysinjustice that drive both women toward rettemic wrongs, one awful man at a time. Her ribution—their origin stories, if you will— methods are strategic and well tested: She unspool across the pages, and both chartrawls social media to ascertain things like acters struggle to maintain their relentless a target’s wealth, trusted friends or favorsense of self-righteousness, even as they ite coffee shop. Then she insinuates herself deceive others with relative ease. into their life in a way that seems casual but The process of gradually realizing—scam by scam, layer by layer—what compels Meg is absolutely calculated, playing whatever to lie, cheat and steal is as captivating as the role is required to breach their boundaries and defenses. beguiling con artist herself, and Kat comes As The Lies I Tell begins, Meg is back in to a similar realization as she spends time California after many years away, and she in close proximity to the woman she thinks has set her sights on Los Angeles politician is the locus of all her miseries. “I want to Ron Ashton, who tricked Meg’s mother out climb inside Meg’s mind, inside her life, and of their family home some 15 years ago, a piece it all together, dot by dot,” Kat muses. “Take something from her, the way she took life-altering injustice Meg has long wanted to rectify. everything from me.” But what Kat doesn’t In a call to her home in Santa Monica, anticipate is that they will end up becomCalifornia, Clark says her deep dive into the ing friends of a sort, establishing an easy world of chicanery and subterfuge involved (albeit lie-saturated) camaraderie. There is research on everything from business devela delicious tension as they circle each other, probing for the truths that lie beneath each opment to the California real estate market to the typical mindset of the successful other’s facades, determined to get what they grifter. “I learned about the psychology of want before they’re found out or somebody skips town. it, the different types of cons and con artists throughout history,” she says. “At the beginning of the book,” Clark The Lies I Tell Clark is familiar with con women promsays, “Kat thinks she knows what she wants, Sourcebooks Landmark, $27.99, 9781728247595 inent in the current zeitgeist, too, from which is to expose Meg, get her career back the likes of disgraced Theranos founder on track, be the writer she wanted to be Suspense Elizabeth Holmes to the imprisoned faux when everything was pulled out from under socialite Anna Delvey. But Clark says that The Lies I Tell’s Meg is a very her. But by the end of the book, she realizes she needs something different. different type of person. “I didn’t want her to be working with a team of It’s a theme the author often returns to in her work. “I talk a lot about an people; she needed to be isolated and on her own,” she says. “But I also emotional third rail,” she says, “the way the characters grow and change wanted her to be likable. And I wanted her to not leave destruction and as a result of trying to get what they want and what they need. And what despair in her wake.” they want and what they need are often not the same thing. I think that Whether she’s writing about two women who make a spur-of-the- is the heart of every book I’ve written so far and probably will continue moment decision to swap identities to be part of every book that I write.” Clark gets a lot of practice identifyin a busy airport (the plot of her 2020 “I love it when you can root for New York Times bestseller, The Last ing and exploring characters’ evoluFlight) or pitting Meg against her somebody who’s doing something wrong tions in her other job as a fifth grade dauntless rival, journalist Kat Roberts, teacher. “At the end of every book we and still want them to succeed.” read, my students have to answer the Clark nimbly avoids misogynistic question, what is this book really about? What is it that the author wants stereotypes. “That’s just not what I do as a writer,” she says. “The women you thinking about when you’re done?” she says. “I have to answer that that I write, they’re strong, they’re savvy, they’re quick on their feet.” Kat is convinced that Meg is the reason her life went terribly awry same question with every book that I write. . . . With The Last Flight, it was ten years ago, when Kat’s investigation into a predatory high school about female empowerment, it was about trauma, it was about reclaiming

MEET YOUR NEW FAVORITE MYSTERY from Simon & Schuster

HC: 9781982177003 By John Connolly 9/27/22

HC: 9781982196189 By Adam Hamdy 9/27/22

HC: 9781501101786 By Nelson DeMille 10/11/22

HC: 9781982168926 By Cherie Priest 11/1/22

HC: 9781668003053 HC: 9781982198992 By Janet Evanovich By Jacqueline Bublitz 11/1/22 11/1/22

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of The Lies I Tell.

your voice, it was about getting a second chance. And then with The Lies I Tell, it’s about justice, it’s about taking back what you think belongs to you.” As Meg says in the book, “The difference between justice and revenge comes down to who’s telling the story,” and it’s important to Clark that readers feel some empathy for and identify with her central con woman. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments where you won’t trust what she’s saying or wonder what her motivation is—but at the same time, you’re still rooting for her,” she explains. “That’s what I wanted more than anything. I love it when you can root for somebody who’s doing something wrong and still want them to succeed.” It’s particularly easy to root for Meg when she encounters sexism everywhere and doesn’t let her justifiable anger keep her from adroitly turning it to her advantage. Smugness and condescension from men, she realizes, can have its benefits. “She realizes that it’s actually really easy for her to [con people] because she’s a woman, because people don’t take women seriously,” Clark says. While other characters may not take the novel’s leading ladies at their word, it’s important to Clark that readers do. “When I sat down to write [these] female characters . . . it just didn’t feel right to me to portray them as unreliable. I love the unreliable narrator as a reader! It’s super fun to figure out! But I’m not really inclined to perpetuate that stereotype for women, being a woman myself.” Fortunately, Clark says, “people have been really receptive. I haven’t had a single reader say, ‘I wish you would’ve made them more unreliable.’ In fact, I get the opposite.” She adds, “I think people are hungry for that. I think they like to see characters they can count on. A character doesn’t always have to be 100% honest with the reader—we’re not 100% honest with people in our lives or even with ourselves—but the intention has to be good.” Clark says that she feels an obligation to herself, her sons and her readers to portray women in an empowering and positive way. “We’re hardworking, sane, determined people who are not going to back down from a challenge. Those are the women that I know,” she says. “So that’s who you’re going to get when you pick up a book from me.” —Linda M. Castellitto

HC: 9781982166182 HC: 9781501146121 By Rebecca Roanhorse By Sam Lipsyte 11/15/22 12/6/22

Simon & Schuster

private eye july | international mysteries

HAVE YOUR PASSPORTS AND ALIBIS READY Pick up one of these six mysteries and thrillers for the ultimate summer getaway.

TAKE NO NAMES

OUTSIDE

Location: Mexico

Location: Iceland

Daniel Nieh’s Take No Names (Ecco, $28.99, 9780062886675) is a blast from start to finish. Chinese American Victor Li is keeping a low profile after being wrongfully accused of killing his father, who secretly worked for a Chinese criminal syndicate. But Victor’s drinking buddy Mark Knox soon enlists him in a lucrative job: breaking into a storage yard to steal and then sell items seized from deported immigrants. It’s on one of these ventures that they discover a rare gem worth a cool $250,000. The pair smuggle the gem to a buyer south of the border, forming uneasy alliances along the way with Victor’s estranged sister, Jules, and Sun Jianshui, who worked for the same syndicate as Victor’s father. Nieh maintains a steady balance of humor, action and thrills while making some barbed commentary on American capitalism and Chinese globalization. Halfway through, what starts as a Joe R. Lansdale-esque crime thriller morphs into an espionage caper à la Mission Impossible. If it sounds a bit over the top, it is—but that’s what makes Take No Names such an irrepressibly fun read. —G. Robert Frazier

In Outside (Minotaur, $27.99, 9781250833457), Ragnar Jónasson turns the snowy “fjord-indented coastline [and] reindeer-haunted wilderness” of Iceland’s eastern highlands into an antagonist just as dangerous to the book’s central characters as the murderer (or perhaps murderers?) in their midst. Four college friends reunite for a woodsy weekend hike to hunt ptarmigan and catch up on one another’s lives. An unexpected blizzard catches the quartet off guard, but once they find a cabin to wait out the storm in, things get even scarier as frustration transforms into fear and life-or-death decisions are made more difficult by years-old resentments boiling up to the surface. Jónasson’s spare prose and brisk pacing make for an immersive read that’s less about the individual characters and more about what they become when they’re forced together, no longer able to dissemble or hide. Outside is an intriguing study of isolation, claustrophobia and the particular menace to be found in beautiful yet unforgiving terrain. —Linda M. Castellitto

MISS ALDRIDGE REGRETS

THE DROWNING SEA

Location: The Atlantic Ocean

Location: Ireland

Louise Hare’s Miss Aldridge Regrets (Berkley, $27, 9780593439258) is a deliciously suspenseful, Agatha Christie-esque mystery set on an ocean liner. The year is 1936 and the star of the show is 26-year-old singer Lena Aldridge. Every day, Lena wonders: Will her big break ever come? Then, a stranger named Charles Bacon appears with an astonishing proposal. His employer is offering Lena a role in his Broadway play, and he’ll pay for first-class passage from London to New York City aboard RMS Queen Mary. Readers will be enchanted by the period charm of Hare’s ocean liner setting and will swoon as Lena gets to know Will, a Black musician who notices right away that Lena is also Black, even though she’s been successfully passing as white for years. As the ship glides across the Atlantic, its posh sheen gradually dulls in the wake of destructive secrets and murder. One of the Abernathys, a wealthy family that Charles insisted Lena spend time schmoozing, is killed, and everyone’s a suspect. The red herrings pile up as Lena tries to solve the case and reach New York unscathed. —Linda M. Castellitto

In Sarah Stewart Taylor’s atmospheric The Drowning Sea (Minotaur, $27.99, 9781250826657), retired Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy is spending the summer in Ireland with her Irish boyfriend, his son and her teenage daughter. Their idyllic trip to the picturesque village of Ross Head is cut short when human remains wash up on the shore near their cottage. The body is that of Polish immigrant Lukas Adamik, whose disappearance months earlier led many to assume that he had returned to Poland. But when the police determine that the body was only recently deceased and rule out an accident or suicide, the mystery of where Lukas has been—and what happened to him—consumes the small community. Taylor creates a rich and gothic atmosphere, with the ocean beating against the treacherous, wind-swept cliffs. Maggie becomes obsessed with the case, her dogged detective work serving as a distraction from the reasons for her retirement and the question of whether to uproot her and her daughter’s lives by permanently moving to Ireland. The Drowning Sea’s gorgeous backdrop and stalwart sleuth will satisfy and impress mystery readers, particularly fans of traditional whodunits. —Elyse Discher

private eye july | international mysteries

LOCAL GONE MISSING Location: England Nothing ever happens in Ebbing— until one horrific weekend. Local Gone Missing (Berkley, $27, 9781984803047) follows a variety of residents in the tiny English seaside town, from an inquisitive cleaning lady with a dark past to vacationers with a secret agenda. It all comes to a head during a musical festival that ends with dual overdoses, a possible murder and a host of spilled secrets. New York Times bestselling author Fiona Barton spins a tangled web of dirty money, bloodshed and deceit. For Dee Eastwood, the wife of a recovering addict, it’s business as usual until one of her housekeeping clients, the demanding Pauline, asks if Dee has seen Pauline’s husband, Charlie. Meanwhile, Detective Elise King, newly in remission from breast cancer, recalls seeing Charlie pre-disappearance at the festival—right before two young people overdosed on drugs of unknown origin. Are the two events related? When Elise finds Charlie’s decomposing body, even more questions arise. Though Local Gone Missing’s plot is wonderfully twisty with a surprising and satisfying conclusion, it’s the characters who stand out. Foremost among them is the compelling and well-drawn Elise, who’s struggling to adjust to life back on the force after returning from medical leave. Thanks to Barton’s airtight plotting and impeccable characterization, a minibreak by the sea will never seem relaxing again. —Lauren Emily Whalen

BOOK IN ADVANCE Clear your schedule for more transporting reads in the weeks to come.

DEATH DOESN’T FORGET by Ed Lin Soho Crime, $27.95, 9781641293273 Location: Taiwan Release Date: July 19

THE HALF LIFE OF VALERY K by Natasha Pulley Bloomsbury, $28, 9781635573275 Location: Russia Release Date: July 26

LITTLE NOTHINGS Location: Greece

THE SHADOW LILY

In Julie Mayhew’s Greek island-set thriller, little cuts do lasting damage and friendships are as intense and heartbreaking as romantic relationships. Liv Travers never felt like she belonged, but bonding with Beth and Binnie at a singalong music class for mothers and babies radically shifted her perspective. When shiny, bossy interloper Ange comes along and rocks their happy triad, it’s intolerable to Liv. Ange seems to want to run Liv off, and the hostilities increase during an expensive group vacation to the Greek island of Corfu. In a way that’s reminiscent of both Nikki May’s thriller, Wahala, and the novels of Patricia Highsmith, the women’s intense relationships are vital to their identities. Anchored by a deliciously layered and desperately unreliable narrator, Little Nothings (Raven, $26, 9781526606341) enriches the familiar setup of an intruder shaking up a happy idyll with a compelling, creative structure and a distinctive voice. It’s a good choice for fans of relationship-driven stories with a sinister edge, hitting the same sweet spot as the works of Lucy Foley and Liane Moriarty. —Carole V. Bell

by Johanna Mo Penguin, $17, 9780143136699 Location: Sweden Release Date: August 2

YOU’RE INVITED by Amanda Jayatissa Berkley, $27, 9780593335123 Location: Sri Lanka Release Date: August 9

whodunit

by bruce tierney

H The Hidden One Police chief and former Amish person Kate Burkholder returns in The Hidden One (Minotaur, $27.99, 9781250781055), the 14th entry in Linda Castillo’s popular series. This time, church elders call on Kate after the police unexpectedly make an arrest in a high-profile murder case that dates back more than a decade. It’s a little outside Kate’s bailiwick, but special circumstances apply: The suspect is Jonas Bowman, her firstever boyfriend. He’s accused of killing Amish bishop Ananias Stoltzfus, whose remains have been unearthed in a recently cleared field. The murder weapon, an antique rifle found buried alongside the deceased, belonged to Jonas, a fact he freely admits while maintaining he had nothing to do with the crime. Kate’s nosing around brings to light some disturbing information about Ananias, suggesting that he had not been the upright individual one might expect a bishop to be. Thus the suspect list lengthens, and then lengthens some more, as stories surface about Ananias’ malicious actions toward some of his parishioners. With great suspense, well-drawn characters and a totally unexpected ending, The Hidden One is a standout installment in a rightfully beloved series.

Vera Kelly: Lost and Found Rosalie Knecht’s stylish and addicting Vera Kelly series returns with Vera Kelly: Lost and Found (Tin House, $15.95, 9781953534163). The titular character is a PI (and ex-CIA operative) who lives with her girlfriend, Max, in Brooklyn in the early 1970s. When Max’s wealthy parents summon her to their home in Los Angeles, Vera joins her for moral support, although Max’s homophobic family would more likely refer to it as immoral support. Max disappears the next morning, and her parents’ cluelessness about what could have happened to her seems highly suspect to Vera. Seeing as she’s already persona non grata, Vera liberates Max’s Avanti sports car from the ludicrously large garage and sets off in search of her missing lover. And then, as they say, hijinks ensue. In addition to providing a fascinating and spot-on look at the LA of the 1970s, LGBTQ communities of the era and the lifestyles of the wealthy, entitled and dysfunctional, Vera Kelly: Lost and Found also contains my favorite line of the month: “To my surprise, I saw she was trying not to cry. It was like watching watercolor wick through paper.”

Hatchet Island Paul Doiron returns with Hatchet Island (Minotaur, $27.99, 9781250235138), a new adventure featuring Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch. As the tale opens, Mike and his girlfriend, Stacey Stevens, are en route by kayak to Baker Island, home of the Maine Seabird Initiative, a project to restore puffin habitats and protect endangered avian species. The project’s scientists are convinced that someone nefarious is dogging their steps, and now their manager, an irascible woman named Maeve McLeary, has gone missing, perhaps because of her anti-lobster fishing activism and the threats that followed. Three other researchers share the island with Maeve. In the following days, two of them are murdered and the third, Garrett Meadows, disappears. It is unclear whether Garrett is another victim or the perpetrator, and the fact that he is the lone Black man in the lily-white community does not improve his prospects for vindication. Doiron paints a complex portrait of coastal Maine and the inescapable squabbles and uneasy alliances among townsfolk, the fishing community, eco-activists and wealthy summer visitors. It is a comparatively rare thing for tensions to rise to murderous levels, but when they do, it is a mighty fine thing to have a Mike Bowditch on hand to sort things out. Fans of C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett mysteries, which also star an indomitable game warden, will particularly enjoy this gripping tale.

H Little Sister Detective Chief Inspector Jonah Sheens has just settled in for a pint of lager in the garden of the Spreading Oak pub when a teenage girl covered in blood emerges from the trellised gateway adjacent to the road. Concerned, he asks if she needs some help. She replies, “I don’t. But maybe Nina does.” When queried as to Nina’s current whereabouts, the girl replies enigmatically, “Oh, I’m not going to tell you yet, detective. That would be too easy.” And thus begins Gytha Lodge’s Little Sister (Random House, $17, 9780593242919), the fourth mystery starring DCI Sheens and his dedicated team. It’s a cat-and-mouse game between the seasoned Sheens and the girl, Keely, all while the life of Nina, her younger sister, may hang in the balance. The story unfolds at a tantalizing and deliberate pace, especially in the first-person chapters from Keely’s perspective that detail years of abuse in the English foster care system leading up to her bloodstained entrance into Sheens’ orbit. Jonah and his team begin to notice small discrepancies in Keely’s narrative that they take for clues, despite worrying that these breadcrumbs might just be clever manipulations on her part. And the clock ticks on. . . . Despite its borderline improbable premise, Little Sister is suspenseful to the nth degree as Lodge raises the bar for twists and turns to lofty nosebleed heights and saves a deliciously diabolical surprise for the very end.

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.

cozies

by jamie orsini

Death by Bubble Tea Jennifer J. Chow kicks off a new series with Death by Bubble Tea (Berkley, $8.99, 9780593336533). After Yale Yee loses her job, her father talks her into running a food stall for the family’s dim sum restaurant at a night market. Yale agrees to help out, even though it means working with her cousin Celine. The women are polar opposites: Celine is a foodie Instagrammer, and Yale doesn’t even own a cellphone. Then one night, Yale literally stumbles over a body. Police believe the victim was poisoned, possibly by something from the family’s food stall. Chow’s choice to set the mystery in a night market is a stroke of genius. Not only are there dozens of witnesses and potential suspects, but the impermanence of the pop-up market makes it even more difficult for Yale and Celine to solve the crime. The women learn to trust and rely on each other, finding out what it’s like to have not just a cousin but also a friend.

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Smile Beach Murder Alicia Bessette’s Smile Beach Murder (Berkley, $27, 9780593336885), brings readers to Cattail Island in North Carolina, where the sun shines and murder is in the air. Former reporter Callie Padget moves back to Cattail and gets a job at the local bookstore. Callie’s love for the island is complicated, as her mother died after falling from the town’s famed lighthouse when Callie was 12 years old. When another woman’s body is discovered at the base of the lighthouse, Callie sets off to uncover a murderer. Bessette captures the charm of the Outer Banks with her vivid descriptions of laid-back island life. Readers who have lost a loved one will relate to Callie’s journey to process the loss of her mother. Her emotional development is made all the sweeter as she embraces Cattail Island and all it has to offer.

Jamie Orsini is an award-winning journalist and writer who enjoys cozy mysteries and iced coffee.

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A Botanist’s Guide to Parties & Poisons In 1923, Saffron Everleigh, the only female research assistant at University College London, hopes to make a name for herself in botany. When one of the professors’ wives is poisoned, Saffron’s mentor is accused of the crime and she begins her own investigation to clear his name. Kate Khavari brings 1920s London to life in A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons (Crooked Lane, $26.99, 9781639100071), taking full advantage of the lush greenhouses and gardens where Saffron conducts her research. The trauma of World War I still affects the characters, particularly Alexander Ashton, a fellow scientist who joins Saffron in her quest. Alexander’s experiences with what we now know is post-traumatic stress disorder feel authentic and contribute to this mystery’s realistic depiction of the ’20s.

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the hold list

These are a few of our favorite sleuths It takes a certain spirit to leap into action and pursue the slightest of clues. These five investigators, both real and fictional, get right down to business exposing the evidence and solving seemingly unsolvable quandaries, and we love them for it.

The Stranger Diaries When you’re dealing with a murder mystery set in a possibly haunted high school, you need an analytical lead investigator whose sense of humor is solidly intact. Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur is my methodical queen, her assessments of characters both living and dead as sharp as a jagged piece of glass, her self-deprecation just the right amount of wicked. She’s been under estimated enough in her life—and experienced enough prejudice—to gain a chip on her shoulder, which is more pronounced now that she’s been called back to her alma mater to investigate a murder in Elly Griffiths’ The Stranger Diaries. A line written by fictional gothic author R.M. Holland is found with the body, so Kaur pays special attention to English teacher Claire Cassidy. Scenes from Kaur’s family life (she lives with her Sikh parents) provide a soft place to land after her most biting appraisals. —Cat, Deputy Editor

Inheritance

I Want My Hat Back

She may not wear a trenchcoat or carry a magnifying glass, but Dani Shapiro can investigate a mystery with the best of them. In her 2019 blockbuster memoir, Shapiro does an at-home genealogy test on a whim and accidentally uncovers a 52-year-old family secret: Her late father was not her biological father. This revelation kicks off a search that winds its way through all manner of thorny questions. What role did the emerging field of fertility science play in Shapiro’s conception? Were her parents aware that she was conceived using donor sperm? Did they intentionally keep this a secret? Were they duped by their doctor? Is her biological father still alive? Shapiro’s chops as a novelist shine in Inheritance, which is plotted as well as any mystery, with enough twists to keep you guessing about what detail she might uncover next. She’s as indefatigable, dogged and determined as any fictional gumshoe. —Christy, Associate Editor

The ursine protagonist of Jon Klassen’s debut picture book, I Want My Hat Back, is an exemplary detective. Faced with the mystery of his hat’s location, he immediately begins questioning potential witnesses. He’s polite and thanks everyone he meets for taking the time to speak with him, even though they offer no useful leads. He stays focused on the task at hand and isn’t waylaid by existential meanderings, such as when an armadillo asks, “What is a hat?” He’s helpful to his community, as we see when he offers assistance to a turtle who’s been trying to climb a rock all day. He believes the best of everyone, even rabbits wearing familiar red hats who claim they would never steal a hat. When he hits an investigative wall, he does exactly what I would do: He lies down and despairs until the solution comes to him. And he would never, ever, ever eat a rabbit. Not even a rabbit who stole his hat. —Stephanie, Associate Editor

The Devil and the Dark Water Sammy Pipps is basically a globe-trotting, 17th-century Sherlock Holmes. When a mysterious, seemingly demonic force begins to haunt Saardam, the ship he’s sailing on from the Dutch East Indies back to the Netherlands, you’d think that Sammy would immediately be on the case. But Sammy is locked in the brig, and he’s to remain there for the entire voyage. Enter his bodyguard, Arent Hayes, a former mercenary and allaround nice guy. As author Stuart Turton tilts things into Grand Guignol horror, Arent is the down-to-earth port in the storm: humble to a fault, possessed of a somewhat flexible sense of justice and instinctively feminist when faced with a few female passengers who might be better at this whole sleuthing thing than he is. Turton maintains that he never conceived of Arent as being, well, sexy—but rather tellingly, many readers insist that he very much is. —Savanna, Associate Editor

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

None Shall Sleep To catch a teenage serial killer, the FBI recruits Emma Lewis and Travis Bell, who are teenagers themselves, for their capabilities as well as their atypical circumstances: Travis lost his father to a serial killer, and Emma is the sole survivor of one. The heroes of Ellie Marney’s thriller None Shall Sleep are remarkably refreshing as their personal and professional involvement in the investigation builds genuine tension and inner conflict. However, despite the novel’s many plotlines, Emma is at the heart of it all. I felt attached to her early on, especially when witnessing her navigate her sense of duty toward solving the case while grappling with the crime’s triggering nature. Her unique perspective and talents provide forward momentum, as she comes to conclusions that people who lack her insight would never think of. At the novel’s end, I wanted to keep following her as she drove away. —Jessie, Editorial Intern

private eye july | true crime

REAL-LIFE GUMSHOES UNCOVER LONG-BURIED SECRETS Scientists and journalists are on the case in three brilliant true-crime books. True-crime books are frequently framed as guilty pleasures. Often sensational or even lurid, they feed our inner rubberneckers. But in the hands of a tenacious reporter, true crime can also expose devastating truths about human nature.

H We Carry Their Bones We Carry Their Bones (William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063030244) is Erin Kimmerle’s firsthand account of the discovery, exhumation and identification of 51 bodies buried in unmarked graves on the grounds of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. Truthfully, it is obscene to call Dozier a school. The inspiration for Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, Dozier was a prison where boys and young men were exploited, abused and often left to die from their injuries, beginning in 1900 and lasting until its closure in 2011. Kimmerle, a professor of forensic anthropology, led the team of volunteers and students who combed through layers of obstinate Florida clay to find and reclaim these lost boys, despite fierce opposition from townspeople and politicians. Kimmerle’s commitment to finding the truth was grounded in her identity as a scientist. She didn’t fit facts to a predetermined answer but allowed the facts to lead her. Her dedication to clarity is reflected in her writing style as well. Without ever losing the thread of her story, Kimmerle outlines precisely, patiently and clearly each step of her task—including dealing with court appearances, bureaucratic battles and hostile town officials, as well as the myriad engineering and scientific difficulties she faced. But We Carry Their Bones is not just a procedural: Kimmerle’s account of how her investigation unfolded also illuminates why it was so important. Unearthing these boys’ bodies likewise unearthed Dozier’s history, forcing onlookers everywhere to confront the racism and classism that sanctioned the crimes Dozier employees committed against so many young people. And most of all, restoring the boys’ names and returning their remains to their families brought both healing to the survivors and a measure of justice to the dead, demonstrating that something like peace is possible if amends are sincerely made.

H Trailed In 1996, Julianne Williams and Laura Winans, two young women deeply in love, were murdered while backpacking in Shenandoah National Park. Kathryn Miles, a journalist and science writer, learned about their murder several years later while teaching at Unity College, where Laura had been a popular student. An enthusiastic backpacker herself, Miles was fascinated by the case and set out to write an article about the double murder. Instead, she ended up writing her fifth book, Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders (Algonquin, $28.95, 9781616209094). Reading Trailed is like taking an interesting and often treacherous hike with a friend who is not afraid to explore the side trails. The main trail in the book is, of course, the story of Julianne and Laura, their deaths and the investigation that followed. But as Miles became more immersed in

their story, she discovered other trails that looped back to Julianne and Laura: similar murders in and around the National Park System, especially of young women, members of LGBTQ communities and people of color; the lack of law enforcement resources allocated to park rangers; the many flaws in the initial investigation of Julianne’s and Laura’s murders that eventually led to the prosecution and persecution of a man who was probably innocent; and the community of cold case investigators and exoneration attorneys who helped Miles hunt for the real killer. Like Kimmerle, Miles uses a true-crime story to shed light on society’s ills. Miles believes that Laura and Julianne weren’t murder victims who happened to be lesbians; they were murder victims because they were lesbians. Similarly, the flawed investigation shows the disastrous impact that confirmation bias can have on an innocent man—while letting the guilty man remain free. Meticulously honest and lyrically written, Trailed is an elegy to two young women and an indictment of the system that failed them.

H Rogues In Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks (Doubleday, $30, 9780385548519), a collection of 12 articles previously published in The New Yorker, author and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe undertakes a different kind of sleuthing. There is no single crime that unites these pieces; for that matter, not every piece concerns a crime. The article on Anthony Bourdain, for example, is remarkably crime-free, if you discount his use of illegal drugs. Instead, Keefe focuses on “rogues”—not the jolly scallywags that the word often evokes but rebels, outliers, rule-breakers and operators who recognize no boundaries between themselves and the objects of their obsessions. Keefe introduces readers to a notable rogues’ gallery, including a woman who must spend her life in hiding after informing on her mobster brother, an assistant professor who went on a shooting spree after being denied tenure, an IT guy in a Swiss bank who spilled the beans on hundreds of tax evaders and a lawyer who defends only death penalty cases. “Buried Secrets,” which details the struggle between an honest Guinean president and an unscrupulous Israeli diamond merchant over the world’s richest iron ore deposit, could easily have come straight out of a John le Carré novel. “The Avenger,” on the other hand, is a heartbreaking account of a man’s search for his brother’s murderer, the Lockerbie bomber. Keefe has written several lengthy investigative books, including Empire of Pain, the comprehensive story of the Sackler family’s complicity in the opioid crisis. By contrast, he is working within the confines of 10,000-word articles in Rogues, so there is little room for self-reflection or digression. Instead, he makes full use of journalistic tools for fact-finding: keen observation, meticulous research and insightful interviews with the rogues, their associates and their victims. As a result, each essay is a taut, highly honed yet powerful reflection on the creative and corrosive effects of obsession. —Deborah Mason

private eye july | paul holes

THE PRICE OF PROWESS Former cold case investigator Paul Holes reveals the personal toll of his onerous career. At this moment in our collective obsession However, Holes now realizes that he may with true crime, we have a pretty good idea of not have been as good at compartmentalizing what compels audiences to look into the darkas he originally thought. His obsessive nature est parts of human nature. Some people like to made him a dogged investigator of cold cases, feel as though they’re contributing to a real-life but he wouldn’t have won any awards for being whodunit. Some people want to feel the victory an attentive husband or present parent, both of seeing the bad guys punished. And some peobecause of the urgent demands of his work and because of how its lingering effects spilled over ple, frankly, might just enjoy the morbidity. Less certain, however, is into his personal life. In this what compels a key characregard, Unmasked depicts an aspect of working in law ter of every true-crime tale: enforcement that surpasses the investigator. What motithe reductive binaries that vates someone who can’t just turn off the podcast or change have calcified around discusthe channel? What drives sions of police in recent years. someone to make their entire Addressing mental health career about investigating chilissues in law enforcement is a dren’s deaths, women’s rapes murky area and is often hanor the crimes of people who dled within the profession with are severely mentally ill? Paul machismo and gallows humor. Holes, a former cold case invesBecause of this, Holes didn’t exactly leap at the chance to tigator for Contra Costa County in California, tries to explain in address his own mental health his memoir, Unmasked. for most of his career. Holes is best known for And yet he became an devoting years of his life to author who writes on the very first page of his memoir, “I’ve catching the serial killer and Unmasked rapist known as the Golden looked at a woman, and rather Celadon, $28.99, 9781250622792 State Killer, but he hadn’t than seeing the beauty of the planned on writing a memoir female body, I dissected it, True Crime about that experience. “My layer by layer, as if she were on initial intention was to write a book like [an] the autopsy table. I have visualized dead women encyclopedia of the Golden State Killer invesduring intimate moments and I shut down.” tigation,” he explains by phone. But his agent, as Readers will know straight away the unsettling mental glue traps that lie ahead in Unmasked. well as his co-author, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Robin Gaby Fisher, saw potential in But Holes’ candor about his work, and his eventual diagnosis of and treatment for adding more of Holes’ life story to the book. When Fisher interviewed Holes about his expepost-traumatic stress disorder, provide helpful riences, she found the other cases he’d worked context for some of the personal casualties of on—such as Laci Peterson’s murder and Jaycee his former profession. “Law enforcement has Dugard’s kidnapping—just as impactful. one of the highest divorce rates, and you can see Most importantly, though, Fisher picked up why,” Holes says. “A lot of it is just the cynicism on “this undercurrent that I have—that most that develops in officers as they interact with the people in this field have—in terms of the trauma public in usually bad situations. . . . They bring of having to work these cases,” Holes explains. that home. You know, I brought that home. And “So she was trying to draw that out of me. And that does impact relationships.” then when we finally got a publisher involved, Fisher interviewed Holes’ ex-wife and his curthe publisher said, ‘We need more Paul.’ ” rent wife to incorporate their perspectives into But providing “more Paul”—especially openUnmasked as well, and a legal review was coning up about his traumatic experiences hunting ducted about cases covered in the memoir. “But rapists and murderers for 27 years—didn’t come nothing in the book was passed by anybody for preapproval,” Holes says. “What I put in there, easily to Holes. He had spent decades compartmentalizing painful memories about the worst the intention was to be as authentic as possible.” things humans are capable of and, somewhat In addition to Holes’ mental and emotional understandably, developed a mistrust of people. evolution, the memoir’s other throughline is

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of Unmasked.

tracking down the Golden State Killer—at first known as the East Area Rapist and the Original Nightstalker, until those two criminals were discovered to be the same person. Holes sought the Golden State Killer for 24 years with many twists, turns and false starts along the way. Law enforcement agencies from several California counties eventually tied the crimes to a former police officer named Joseph DeAngelo, thanks to the work of Holes and the late crime journalist Michelle McNamara (whose posthumous book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark details her experience trying to solve the Golden State Killer case). When DeAngelo was finally caught in 2018, he turned out to be living a fairly mundane life in a suburban neighborhood. The details of Holes’ investigative work will fascinate any “Dateline” viewer or “Serial” listener; the book is practically a love letter to forensic DNA technology. But it’s the psychological component of Unmasked that is most compelling. Holes writes both chillingly and movingly about how tracking the Golden State Killer for so many years forced him to become very familiar with the killer’s mindset. Why did he rape some victims with a certain pattern of behavior? Why did he kill certain victims but not others? Why did he sometimes cry after committing his crimes or whimper for his “Mommy”? These are unnerving questions to explore, even for a professional. “I felt as if I’d come to know him well enough to get in his head when I needed to,” Holes writes. “Sometimes it worried me how easy it was for me to feel what I thought he was feeling. . . . As even-keeled as I was, there were times when I was shaken by the darkness I’d invited myself into.” Many readers will be eager to venture into that darkness with Holes, but he cautions them to tread lightly. “I want the true-crime fans to make sure that people understand that true crime is real crime,” he says. “There are real people whose lives have been lost, whose families have been impacted. And the professionals that are working these cases are also impacted.” —Jessica Wakeman

private eye july | killer science

PICK YOUR POISON The legacy of Agatha Christie looms large in two books about the scientific ins and outs of murder.

scream in the night. A tangle of clues. Befuddled police being led by the nose as a sharp-eyed and unlikely detective examines the evidence. The drawing room denouement. All these are, of course, well-known tropes of the classic murder mystery—a genre made famous in part by the queen of the sleuthing story herself, Agatha Christie. Christie’s works are so engrossing, and enduring, because they manage to tread that thin line where the cozy mystery and the high-stakes whodunit meet. While readers are wrapped up in the fantasy of an English country home or hamlet, the imminent danger is truly spine-tingling. Somewhat less examined, however, are Christie’s reputation as a meticulous researcher of forensics, a field that was newly developing in the early 20th century, and her medical and pharmacological background. A perfectionist who volunteered as a nurse and pharmacist during World War I, Christie was businesslike about blood and gore, more than aware of the effects of certain chemicals on the body and keenly curious about the new scientific methods being used to investigate real-life murders. Her appetite for the crossroads of science and crime was so great, in fact, that she co-founded the Detection Club, a social club of crime writers who gathered for supper and lively discussions on murder. In The Science of Murder: The Forensics of Agatha Christie (Sourcebooks, $16.99, 9781728251844), Carla Valentine, a longtime mortician, curator of a museum of Victorian pathology and voracious Christie reader, expertly moves through the study of fingerprints, toxicology, ballistics, blood spatter and wounds. (A memorable example: The practice of “gloving” involves the autopsist wearing the skin of the deceased’s hand like a glove in order to collect finger prints.) Christie ignited Valentine’s own curiosity about the forensic sciences, and with the enthusiasm of the true fan, Valentine illuminates Christie’s meticulous genius by dissecting some of her most famous fictional murders and illustrating how both the crime and the solution are supported by science. It’s an engrossing read for any Christie lover, or simply any true-crime obsessive. However, a strong stomach is recommended; Valentine, like Christie, has no qualms about gore. Of all the ways there are to kill a person, poison is the one

most inextricably associated with Christie. Dispatching over 30 of her victims in this way, Christie was well versed in toxins from her wartime days in a pharmacy. In fact, she wielded her toxic substances with such descriptive accuracy that her novels have been used to detect symptoms of poisoning in real murder attempts. Author and toxicologist Neil Bradbury pays homage to this fact in his book A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them (St. Martin’s, $27.99, 9781250270757) by opening three of his chapters with excerpts from Christie’s novels. All together, this is a book that Christie herself would have found excellent fireside reading material, as Bradbury devotes a chapter each to 11 major poisons used throughout history, including real-life murder cases in which they were used and, sometimes gruesomely, how they work on a molecular level to kill their victims. Bradbury’s poisons run the gamut from the unexpected (insulin) to the gothically romantic (belladonna and wolfsbane). There’s even a section on polonium, the radioactive poison carrying a very famous victim count of one. Far from being dry molecular science, A Taste for Poison makes the reader horrifyingly aware of the devastating effects these substances have on the body—from corroding their organs to interrupting their essential electrical impulses to death. Yet it is with an excitement and love for his subject matter that Bradbury discusses these baneful materials, frequently reminding us that they are themselves blameless and often used in smaller doses to heal. Christie’s murder mysteries were so steeped in science and so brilliantly complex that some think her novels were used as manuals to carry out attempts at the perfect murder. (Note: The would-be criminal masterminds failed in every known case.) Both Bradbury and Valentine seem to nod at this with their own warnings to readers who might use the knowledge their books impart to nefarious purposes. Forensic science will catch you, warns Valentine. Bradbury absolves himself in the appendix with a note informing us that his book is educational in nature and strictly not for the encouragement of murder. However, as Christie knew, the best murder is the well-researched murder. Happy reading. —Anna Spydell

feature | short stories

Small pools of great depth Four must-read story collections offer brief visits to the deep. Short stories allow novelists to flex a whole different set of skills. The season’s most exciting story collections come from three beloved authors and one remarkable debut writer.

H The Angel of Rome If it were possible to sum up Jess Walter’s The Angel of Rome and Other Stories (Harper, $27.99, 9780062868114) in a word, it would be humane. In the 12 wide-ranging, consistently empathetic stories that compose his second collection, he creates a memorable assortment of characters who bump up against life’s inevitable obstacles, large and small, then stumble through or surmount them. The collection’s titular novella embodies all these qualities. Its protagonist, Jack Rigel, is an unhappy 21-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, who improbably receives a scholarship from the local Knights of Columbus to study Latin in Rome in 1993. After he arrives, he inadvertently encounters an Italian actress he’s idolized and an American TV star whose career is on a downward trajectory. The story of Jack’s coming-of-age is both wistful and often comic. Walter makes use of his hometown of Spokane, Washington, as the setting for several of these stories, among them “Mr. Voice,” selected for Best American Short Stories 2015. The eponymous character, who’s a ubiquitous presence on local radio, turns out to be more than a set of well-tuned vocal cords. The concluding story, “The Way the World Ends,” is representative of Walter’s ability to expose his characters’ flaws with candor and sympathy. The tales in The Angel of Rome aren’t easily categorized, but each one provides a refreshingly honest glimpse into what it means to be alive. —Harvey Freedenberg

Night of the Living Rez The 12 linked tales in Morgan Talty’s debut collection give Night of the Living Rez (Tin House, $16.95, 9781953534187) the heft, movement and complexity of a novel. All of the stories are narrated in the first person by David, a Penobscot man living on a reservation in Maine. About half the stories occur during David’s childhood and adolescence; in the other half, he’s a young man in his 20s, passing the time drinking and smoking with his friend Fellis, struggling with the effects of opioid addiction and longing for a place to belong in a confusing world. There is so much beauty in these stories, but also heaviness, including sexual assault, inherited trauma and violence toward Indigenous people. Talty writes truthfully and openly about the challenges faced by David and his family but never reduces any of them to their pain. They try their best and make mistakes; they get in fights and let one another down. They also look out for one another, express their affection through food and laughter, tell stories and share ceremonies. The stories in Night of the Living Rez build on themselves the way a life builds: messily, unpredictably, with love and heartache and never quite in the way you expect. —Laura Sackton

H Learning to Talk Two-time Booker Prize-winning British author Hilary Mantel’s books pack a memorable punch, no matter what she writes. Fans have devoured her Wolf Hall trilogy and her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, and now they’re in for a decidedly different yet equally rich treat: a brief collection of stories that she intriguingly describes as “autoscopic” rather than autobiographical. Learning to Talk (Holt, $19.99, 9781250865366) consists of seven stories, arranged chronologically, in which Mantel reflects loosely on her English childhood and explores, as she writes in the preface, “the swampy territory that lies between history and myth.” These are evocative, precisely drawn, ghost-ridden tales about impoverished, difficult times, yet they are also filled with a growing awareness that better things await. In “King Billy Is a Gentleman,” the narrator describes her gradual realization that her mother created a scandal by bringing in a lodger who became her mother’s lover. In the arresting “Curved Is the Line of Beauty,” the narrator and her family take a day trip to Birmingham, where the narrator becomes hopelessly lost in a junkyard with another girl. In “Learning to Talk,” the narrator is beginning to find her voice while taking elocution lessons to learn to “talk proper.” Learning to Talk is an unusual and ultimately fascinating amalgam of fact and fiction as Mantel sorts through the puzzle pieces of her past. —Alice Cary

You Have a Friend in 10A The road to success is often long. In Maggie Shipstead’s case, as she explains in the acknowledgments of You Have a Friend in 10A (Knopf, $27, 9780525656999), her path began with stories written while studying at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Stanford University. This collection of 10 works of short fiction, all previously published, gives readers the inspiring experience of charting the maturation of one of America’s finest authors. Most impressive is the book’s range of perspectives, from the chilling “La Moretta,” in which a honeymooning couple realizes their marriage may have been a mistake, to “Souterrain,” a tale of a dying Parisian man and his housekeeper’s son, who believes the man to be his father. In a few pieces, it’s clear that Shipstead was still discovering what her words could do, but the best are exceptional portraits of characters unaware of the effects of their actions. Highlights include “The Cowboy Tango,” in which a Montana man who runs a ranch for tourists becomes smitten with the teenage girl he hired as a wrangler, and the story “Acknowledgments” (not to be confused with the author’s own acknowledgments), in which a pompous author uses hilariously Nabokovian sentences like “Let us skip that Rabelaisian era known as adolescence and hop jauntily to my twenty-fifth year.” In one story, a character reflects that “even a life lived properly, lived better than she was living, could bring so much grief.” The finest stories in You Have a Friend in 10A show that perpetual grief may not necessarily lead to great lives, but it can produce scintillating fiction. —Michael Magras

reviews | fiction

H Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow By Gabrielle Zevin

Literary Fiction It’s impossible to predict how, exactly, you’ll fall in love with Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Knopf, $28, 9780593321201), but it’s an eventuality you can’t escape. Sadie Green and Sam Masur might never have crossed paths as kids in Beverly Hills, California, were it not for personal tragedies. For Sadie, it is her older sister’s cancer. For Sam, it is a broken leg from an accident that takes his mother’s life. Forced to spend an inordinate amount of time at the hospital, Sadie and Sam meet in the drabby game room, and they are comfortable with each other from the start. Born from their shared love of video games, their friendship seems written

H The Kingdom of Sand By Andrew Holleran

Literary Fiction “There is no wealth but life,” wrote John Ruskin near the end of his 1860 book, Unto This Last. The unnamed narrator of Andrew Holleran’s doleful fourth novel, The Kingdom of Sand (FSG, $27, 9780374600969), cites Ruskin midway through, by which time readers know the reason this quotation is on his mind. A gay man in his 60s, the narrator is living alone in conservative North Florida, surrounded by dying neighbors and contemplating the harsh reality of impermanence. A nonlinear, episodic novel focused on the transient nature of life could have been depressing, but Holleran’s thoughtful, poetic treatment makes this material deeply moving and an important contribution to the literature of mortality. It’s one of the most beautiful novels of the year. Each of the book’s five chapters touches on aging and the adjustments a person must make as they get older. Among the characters are the narrator’s 84-year-old father, who sees no reason to avoid having “four fried eggs and a rasher of bacon every morning” while his wife

in the stars and is devoid of the sadness that otherwise surrounds them. Years later as college students—Sam at Harvard and Sadie at MIT—the two are thrust back into each other’s lives on a subway platform. Their reunion on that winter day is completely serendipitous yet somehow fully anticipated, as if each were patiently waiting for destiny to do its thing. It’s the 1990s, and gaming is on the cusp of something big. Almost instantly after meeting again, Sadie and Sam decide to collaborate on a video game that is unlike anything they’ve seen before. Powered by friendship, naivete and youth, they seem to pull it off, too. The game, Ichigo, becomes a worldwide hit, turning Sam and Sadie into gaming celebrities.

lies paralyzed in a nursing home after a fall. Now that the narrator is closer to the end of his life than to the beginning, he has found many ways to take his mind off the inevitable, from visiting a Gainesville boat ramp where men congregate for sex to watching gay porn on his laptop. A more meaningful connection is his friendship with Earl, 20 years the narrator’s senior. After decades of teaching accounting in South Florida, Earl moved north to a house big enough to hold his books and opera records. He and the narrator share a platonic friendship that revolves around meeting at Earl’s house to watch old movies, and as the years pass, the narrator becomes Earl’s caregiver. The novel gains considerable power from its recognition that no attempt at immortality, whether through art or other means, guarantees success. Classical radio stations change their format to all-talk, azaleas and camellias eventually droop, and every life, no matter how privileged, comes to an end. The Kingdom of Sand is not for readers interested in lighthearted fare, but it’s a stunning meditation on what happens, as the narrator says, “when old age gets its claws in you.” Around the same time he cites Ruskin, the narrator reads a book on dying that offers sobering advice: Live a good life, because you’re not going to have much control over your ending. This exquisite novel offers similar counsel: The final destination may be grim, but with luck and a good set of directions, one can at least enjoy the ride. —Michael Magras

Success follows, but not without a cost. The latest novel from Zevin, a lifelong gamer and internationally bestselling author (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry), is spellbinding and layered with details. Her artistic, inclusive world is filled with characters so genuine and endearing that you may start caring for them as if they were real. Above all, her development of Sam and Sadie’s relationship is pure wizardry; it’s deep and complex, transcending anything we might call a love story. Whether you care about video games or not is beside the point. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is the novel you’ve been waiting to read. —Chika Gujarathi

On Rotation

By Shirlene Obuobi

Popular Fiction “A d u l t i n g ” is hard, and no one knows this better than Angela Appiah, the feisty 20-something protagonist of Shirlene Obuobi’s bighearted debut novel, On Rotation ( Av o n , $27.99, 9780063209145). As the dutiful eldest daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, Angie has spent most of her life striving to meet her parents’ sky-high expectations that she become a wellpaid, respected doctor and secure an acceptable husband (meaning: a lawyer, engineer or doctor, preferably of Ghanaian descent). At the start of her third year of medical school, Angie thinks she’s finally got all her ducks lined up, only for everything to spectacularly fall apart. Her lawyer boyfriend dumps her hours before a family event, and rather than rocking the most important test of her med school career, she receives an embarrassingly low score. Now her entire future as a doctor hangs in the balance. Right when she’s at her lowest, Angie meets Ricky, a smooth-talking, disconcertingly sincere artist who gives her atrial fibrillations in the best possible way. The chemistry between

reviews | fiction them is off the charts, but Ricky is off the market, so Angie decides to refocus on grinding her way to the top. But fate, it would seem, has other plans, and she and Ricky keep crossing paths. Angie soon discovers that in love—and in life—the best decisions come not from listening to your head but by letting your heart take the lead. Like its multihyphenate creator (Obuobi is a Black physician and cartoonist who now adds author to her impressive list of accomplishments), On Rotation goes above and beyond, blending rom-com, medical drama, women’s fiction, coming-of-age tale and immigrant story. Even more incredibly, it balances all these elements well, tackling them in interesting and satisfying ways. Obuobi’s choice to explore various types of love—platonic, familial and self—rather than focus exclusively on romantic love, is particularly gratifying and refreshing. It’s clear that Obuobi appreciates and respects her characters, all of whom are quirky and dynamic but—critically—never caricatures. Buoyed by Obuobi’s vibrant and strong authorial voice, Angie, Ricky and their friends leap off the page, their dreams and aspirations made palpable alongside their fears, flaws and hangups. A genuine delight from start to finish, On Rotation will appeal to fans of Rainbow Rowell, Talia Hibbert and Ali Hazelwood, and resonate with any reader who enjoys multicultural, multifaceted, inclusive love stories starring unapologetically strong and complex women. —Stephenie Harrison

H Hawk Mountain By Conner Habib

Literary Fiction Conner Habib, host of the podcast “Against Everyone With Conner Habib,” brings his curiosity about psychology and philosophy to fiction with Hawk Mountain (Norton, $26.95, 9780393542172), his mesmerizing debut novel about the intricacies of the human psyche and the effect of destructive behavior on love. Thirty-three-year-old Todd Nasca is sitting on a New England beach while his son, Anthony, plays nearby. A man approaches the boy. Todd recognizes him as Jack Gates, whom he hasn’t seen in 15 years. Back then, Jack tormented Todd. Now seemingly amiable, Jack inserts himself into Todd’s life, bonding with Anthony, confronting Todd’s estranged ex-wife and making himself welcome in Todd’s home, while Todd

drowns in memories and trauma, self-doubt and confusion. The narrative’s uneasy edginess is supplemented by flashbacks to Todd and Jack’s adolescence, including a transformative field trip to Hawk Mountain in their senior year of high school. Additional perspectives from other characters build backstory and ramp up the precariousness of Todd’s relationships and sense of reality. Tension spirals as Habib leads the reader to wonder what the truth really is, who is telling it and who is believing it. Habib’s unique examination of his flawed and fascinating characters as the victims and sources of violence is both disturbing and insightful. His exploration of the tangled web of human desire, emotions and abuse, and how it becomes a legacy passed down through generations, is gritty and chilling. With haunting prose and deeply atmospheric descriptions, Hawk Mountain is a disturbing descent into the convulsions of the human mind and heart. —Maya Fleischmann

H Fire Season By Leyna Krow

Western Leyna Krow’s 2017 book of short stories, I’m Fine, but You Appear to Be Sinking, is an eccentric mashup, complete with giant squid and space travels, told with a down-to-earth candor. Krow brings that same practical empathy and eye for the odd to her debut novel, Fire Season (Viking, $27, 9780593299609), a picaresque story of three schemers whose paths cross in 19th-century Spokane just as the Washington Territory is striving for statehood. For sad sack bank manager Barton Heydale, the 1889 fire that devastates Spokane is a blessing in disguise. Paranoid and unpopular, Barton is on the verge of taking his own life when he realizes that, because of the disaster, the citizens of Spokane will be flocking to the bank for loans to rebuild. He takes advantage of their desperation by charging exorbitant interest rates and hiding the extra money in his house. Barton also opens his home to Roslyn Beck, an alcoholic sex worker, after her residential hotel burns down. Unable to continue working without a room to call her own and determined to control her addiction, Roslyn is savvy enough to see through Barton’s intentions and also nurse her hidden talent: levitation. Barton and Roslyn must face the limits of their manipulative powers when they meet Quake Auchenbaucher,

a con artist who’s impersonating a government fire inspector. Quake realizes that with statehood on the horizon, his days as a grifter might be numbered. Within this darkly whimsical reimagining of the American West, Krow places micro vignettes—miniature tales of magic, trickery and deception—in and around the novel’s main action. She plays fast and loose with the tropes of the frontier novel, leaning in to the notion of the unsettled West as a place where people could reinvent themselves. In Fire Season, con artists risk getting caught in their own traps, and the “fallen woman” lacks the proverbial heart of gold, but she emerges as the one character who can remake herself enough times to make it through. —Lauren Bufferd

Horse

By Geraldine Brooks

Literary Fiction Endurance isn’t always a desirable quality. When the goal is admirable—creating art that will survive for generations, or persevering to achieve a noble dream— fortitude is a strength worth demonstrating. But if the goal is deplorable, such as when reinforcing the continuance of racist behavior, the determination to triumph merits no such respect. Many forms of endurance are at the center of Horse (Viking, $28, 9780399562969), Geraldine Brooks’ return to themes she explored so well in previous works, such as her Pulitzer Prizewinning novel, March, which chronicles many of the injustices that occurred during America’s Civil War. Loosely based on a true story, Horse involves a discarded painting and a dusty skeleton, both of which concern a foal widely considered “the greatest racing stallion in American turf history.” Brooks shifts her narrative among three related stories in as many centuries. In 2019, Theo, a Nigerian American graduate student at Georgetown University whose thesis is on 19th-century American equestrian art, makes a felicitous discovery, albeit from an unfriendly source. A racist widow who lives across the street from his apartment allows him to pick through the unwanted items she has put out on the sidewalk. His choice: an oil painting of a bright bay colt with four white feet. Coincidentally enough—and indeed, some readers may find that the events in Horse rely too heavily on coincidence—a young white Australian woman named Jess, who runs the

feature | coming-of-age fiction Smithsonian Museum’s vertebrate Osteology Prep Lab, discovers the articulated skeleton of the horse depicted in Theo’s painting. Theo and Jess eventually meet, although it’s a mortifying moment for her: Jess intimates that Theo is stealing her bike, when in fact he’s unlocking his identical model. Together they investigate the history of the horse. That history is detailed in sections set in Kentucky and Louisiana in the 1850s and ’60s. Paramount among characters from the past are Jarret, an enslaved Black man who becomes the groom for the horse; Thomas J. Scott, a white Pennsylvania man who has come to Kentucky to paint animals; and Richard Ten Broeck, a wealthy white man whose interest in the horse is more mercenary than sportsmanlike. The book’s third sections, set in 1950s New York, involve Martha Jackson, a real-life art dealer and equestrian lover who gains possession of the famous painting. Her sections add little, but Horse is brilliant when Brooks focuses on the 19th century and dramatizes American prejudice and discrimination before, during and after the Civil War. Jarret is a particularly memorable character, especially in his scenes with the horse and the painter, as is the slippery Ten Broeck, whose motivations are brilliantly set up and whose actions will resonate with chilling familiarity. Brooks’ novel is an audacious work that reinforces, with sobering immediacy, the sad fact that racism has a remarkable capacity to endure. —Michael Magras

H Venomous Lumpsucker By Ned Beauman

Dystopian Fiction Albert Einstein is frequently—falsely— attributed with having said, “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” It’s quite the line, but it does beg the question: How do you tell how smart a fish is? That’s the problem facing animal cognition scientist Karin Resaint in Venomous Lumpsucker (Soho, $27.95, 9781641294126), the fifth novel from award-winning British novelist Ned Beauman. In the novel’s dystopian near-future, Earth’s climate is in free fall, and species are disappearing faster than beers at a frat party. When Chiu Chiu, the final giant panda, chomps on his last tiny bamboo shoot, the outrage is so great that 197 nations, “acting basically at economic gunpoint, [sign] up to the

Neighbor girls Changes come fast when you’re growing up in New York City. In two debut novels from native New Yorkers, a girl in Harlem learns to take up space, and two women in Queens must reevaluate their childhood friendship.

Big Girl Mecca Jamilah Sullivan allows the reader no time to pause or get situated within her debut novel, Big Girl (Liveright, $27, 9781324091417); once you’re in, you’re in. It unfurls in one long stream of messy, painful, big Black girlhood, and this intense interiority gives the novel a breathless, almost unbearable momentum. Malaya is a fat Black girl growing up in Harlem in the 1980s and ’90s. For her mother and grandmother, Malaya’s weight is her defining characteristic, a problem to be solved. She grows up swathed in her mother’s shame, learning to count calories, hide her desires, hate her body and strive toward thinness as the ultimate ideal. As she enters her teen years and her body becomes more unruly, it gets harder for Malaya to locate herself in the cacophony of voices telling her how she should look, think and be. She finds some solace in the music of rap artists like Biggie Smalls and with her small group of Black friends. But it’s not until she faces her first catastrophic loss that she’s finally able to see—and love—herself on her own terms. This is a painful book about body shaming, fatphobia, patriarchal violence, white beauty standards, familial trauma and the male gaze. It’s about how much work and courage it takes to live in the world as a Black girl, a fat girl, a woman, a human with a body that doesn’t do what bodies are “supposed” to do. Malaya can’t escape the ways people see her and treat her, and Sullivan brilliantly captures this endless, exhausting trauma of being looked at but never seen. Big Girl is also full of moments of tenderness, joy and even hilarity. As Malaya slowly comes into her own, she learns to live loudly and take up space, to embrace her size, name her hungers and claim her desires. Sullivan’s novel is

expansive and exuberant, loud and fierce, a celebratory, redemptive coming-of-age story. —Laura Sackton

The Girls in Queens Even in the dawning years of the 21st century, there are women and girls who would give up anything for a man. That man doesn’t have to be good. His needs and wants, no matter how fickle, would be prioritized over everything. This is the bruised and bruising world of Christine Kandic Torres’ debut novel, The Girls in Queens (HarperVia, $26.99, 9780063216778). The story unfolds from 1996 to early 2007, beginning in an era in which egregious misogyny and slut shaming are rampant, and ending just after Tarana Burke launches the #MeToo movement. Of course, the protagonist, Brisma, and her best friend, Kelly, who live across the street from each other in Woodside, Queens, have no inkling of the changes to come. In 1996, the girls are 11 years old and lack political consciousness, though they know that puberty is making boys and even grown men notice them in ways they don’t particularly like. Handsome Brian is one of Kelly and Brisma’s childhood friends. As they enter adolescence, he takes a liking to both girls, which causes them to fall out (but just as quickly fall back in; they’re sisters from different mothers). Then in 2006, Kelly and Brisma discover something about Brian that pushes their tolerance of male misbehavior to the limit. At first the women support him instinctively, until Brisma, a budding journalist, can’t any longer. Kandic Torres’ way with her characters is superb. Kelly’s toughness hides an almost sickeningly intense fear and vulnerability, and Brisma’s mother, who first modeled female deference for her daughter, blesses Brisma’s ambitions to leave their neighborhood behind. The Girls in Queens is a moving debut from a writer to watch. —Arlene McKanic

reviews | fiction newly formed World Commission on Species Extinction.” “The giant panda will be the last species ever driven to extinction by human activity,” proclaims a Chinese official at the WCSE’s founding. Of course, that’s not what happens; instead comes the extinction industry. Everybody in the free market world knows that if you want to make an economic omelet, you’ll have to break a few environmental eggs. In this future culture, extinct animals’ DNA is digitally stored in biobanks, and the disappearance of a species is treated like carbon emissions, with taxes offsetting the habitat destruction that goes hand-in-wallet with surging profits. As in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, though, some animals are more equal than others. It costs a lot more under this scheme to snuff out a sentient species, so Karin has been charged with evaluating the intelligence of the venomous lumpsucker, and she’s feeling pressure from Brahmasamudram Mining, who’s funding the analysis. When a mid-level executive shows up aboard Karin’s research vessel with a special plea, the stakes suddenly leapfrog into the stratosphere and set the two on a frantic hunt for the last living lumpsucker. If all this sounds heavy for a summer read, not to worry. Beauman’s acerbic outlook breezes through what could otherwise be a portentous plot; think Smilla’s Sense of Snow as percolated through an Andy Borowitz filter, a mid-apocalyptic comic thriller ideally suited for a post-pandemic audience. —Thane Tierney

Joan

By Katherine J. Chen

Historical Fiction To the 21st-century reader, Joan of Arc may feel faraway and quaint, like a figure in an ancient stainedglass window. And yet the martyr’s name calls up an array of familiar mythic images: a pious, perhaps delusional 15th-century French maiden visited by visions and voices, a young woman with a sword in her hand, in a time of endless war between France and England. Katherine J. Chen’s second novel, Joan (Random House, $28, 9781984855800), leaves behind the pious maiden and her visions and voices. Chen’s reimagined Joan is hungry, earthy and scrappy—a natural fighter. What drives Joan isn’t the voice of God but the destruction of her village by brutal English soldiers, along with an intensely personal loss. The novel follows Joan’s

trajectory from lowly peasant to confidant of Charles VII (the Dauphin and dispossessed heir to the French throne) to leader of the French army and sudden folk hero. When we first meet Joan, she’s a child observing other children fight in her tiny village of Donrémy. Joan is brutalized by her physically abusive father, but she has the love of her elder sister, Catherine, and best friend, Hauviette, and an easy friendship with her uncle, Durand Laxart. Durand, “a thinker, a teller of stories, a wanderer,” teaches Joan about the larger world, equipping her for life beyond her village. By 17, Joan is strong, taller than most men and a quick study. As word of her abilities spreads to the French court, Yolande of Aragon, the Dauphin’s mother-in-law, offers Joan a kind of patronage, dressing her in a man’s velvet doublet. “This suits you,” Yolande says. “One must wear the clothes for which one is built. And you must put on the mantle of God.” Thus attired, Joan sets out to meet the Dauphin and persuade him that she will lead an army to take back the city of Orléans. Joan traces the woman’s quick rise and sudden fall, propelled by battles in which she shows almost supernatural powers. Chen’s often- gorgeous prose moves smoothly from Joan’s village to the luxurious, treacherous French court. Throughout, Joan’s musings on the hampered roles of women and peasants in a disorganized, beleaguered France are progressive yet still historically believable. The novel features a large cast of characters, listed at the book’s opening, and occasionally I had to turn to the list to remind myself about a character. For readers who love Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, Joan offers similar pleasures with its immediacy and somewhat contemporary tone. It’s an immersive evocation of a character whose name everyone knows, all these centuries later, but whom, perhaps, none of us knows at all. —Sarah McCraw Crow

H Fellowship Point By Alice Elliott Dark

Literary Fiction At one point in Alice Elliott Dark’s marvelous second novel, a character says, “Howards End reminds me of Leeward Cottage.” Another character quickly responds: “I can see that. Except for the conflict about who will inherit it.” This short exchange wonderfully encapsulates the drama in Fellowship Point (Marysue Rucci, $28.99, 9781982131814), whose intricate plot

and precise prose sparkle like the waters off the Maine coast where the book is set. The Fellowship Point peninsula hosts a handful of old-money summer cottages, including those owned by two wealthy matriarchs, lifelong friends Agnes Lee of Leeward Cottage and Polly Wister, who lives next door at Meadowlea. The tip of Fellowship Point contains 35 acres of undeveloped land known as the Sank (short for “sanctuary”), where a developer intends to build a resort. Therein lies the novel’s central conflict. The cottage homeowners are part of a small association that manages the Sank, and Agnes has one goal before she dies: to dissolve the association and preserve the land forever. Polly would also like to see the land protected, but her eldest son is friends with the developer, so things get complicated. Agnes and Polly could hardly be more different. Agnes, who never married, is the author of a successful series of children’s books and (anonymously) a series of popular adult novels. Polly has devoted her life to the happiness of her professor husband and now-grown children. Despite their differences, Polly and Agnes are united by their long lives together and the tragic losses they’ve experienced, which Dark gradually reveals. As with old cottages, there is plenty of history to relate, and the story unfolds via alternating viewpoints from 2000 through 2008, with lengthy letters flashing back to the early 1960s. There’s also a host of well-drawn characters, including Maud, a young editor who’s urging the reluctant Agnes to write a memoir. The contemporary conflict occurs during a time of millennial sea change, and Dark trains a sharp eye on the shifting tides of money, class, marriage and land ownership. She has created a phenomenal portrait of aging and the consequences of choices we’re forced to make. Along with these concrete, realistic details, Fellowship Point also has a sort of fairy-tale quality when ruminating on literature and the struggle to create it, as well as the relationships between writers and their readers. Dark (Think of England) intended for this epic saga to resemble a classic 19th-century novel featuring female landowners instead of men, and it took her nearly 20 years to write. Such a long rollout seems appropriate for a story of this nature, and her exquisite craftsmanship shines throughout. (Dark is also the author of two story collections, and her tale “In the Gloaming” is included in the Best American Stories of the Century.) Reading this novel is a transportive experience, similar to spending a long, luxurious summer on the shores of a picturesque Maine peninsula. It’s full of memorable adventures, tense moments of family drama and opportunities for restorative contemplation. Through it all, Fellowship Point harkens back to one of Howards End’s big messages: “Only connect.” —Alice Cary

reviews | nonfiction

H Under the Skin By Linda Villarosa

Social Science Linda Villarosa grew up in a high-achieving Black family in a mostly white suburb of Denver. When she began writing about Black women’s health for Essence in the mid-1980s, her articles were all about self-help and self-improvement, based on the assumption that poverty and poor education were the reasons for detrimental health conditions among Black people. But then she discovered that well-educated, upper-middle-class Black women were also having underweight babies and higher rates of maternal death than white women. She found herself wondering, “Why is the current Blackwhite disparity in both maternal and infant mortality widest at the upper levels of education? And what was it about our health-care system that exacerbated this problem?” Under the Skin (Doubleday, $30, 9780385544887) answers these questions and many more. In one of the most interesting chapters, Villarosa writes about “weathering,” a concept developed by Dr. Arline Geronimus,

H An Immense World By Ed Yong

Science Readers may be most familiar with Ed Yong from his Pulitzer Prize-winning science writing for The Atlantic. His first book, the New York Times bestselling I Contain Multitudes, explored the world of microbes. In An Immense World (Random House, $30, 9780593133231), Yong tackles the realm of animal senses, taking readers on a fascinating journey backed up by impressive research. Yong’s scope is far-reaching, and the issues and scientific concepts involved are sometimes complex. But much like a skilled mountain guide, he takes the time to prepare readers for what lies ahead. In the introduction, Yong not only identifies basic terms (such as stimuli, sense organs and sensory systems) but also provides guideposts for the journey ahead, challenging readers to use their imaginations in order to overcome blind spots when trying to understand sensory systems different from our own. As Yong writes, “Our intuitions will be our biggest liabilities, and our imaginations will be our greatest assets.”

a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Weathering is the idea that “high-effort coping from fighting against racism leads to chronic stress that can trigger premature aging and poor health outcomes.” It draws the throughline from systemic failure to a harmful bodily response. Villarosa, who now writes for The New York Times Magazine, explores many more aspects of American prejudice and health in this book. In a chapter recounting a visit to Appalachia to write about the addiction crisis among poor white people, she suggests that many of these people suffer from the debilitating effects of class discrimination, with similarly negative health repercussions. She examines myths about Black genetics— that Black people are less sensitive to pain than whites, for example—that persist within the medical community to the detriment of Black Americans. She looks at how racism in housing

Subsequent chapters do indeed engage the imagination. Yong’s book is organized by different senses, some which are familiar—such as smell, taste and sound—and others much less familiar. In a chapter titled “The Rippling Ground: Surface Vibrations,” we learn about scientist Karen Warkentin’s groundbreaking discovery that embryonic tadpoles can hatch early if they sense a snake attack. Other such fascinating anecdotes abound throughout this book, and it’s safe to say readers will have a hard time not sharing newfound knowledge in daily conversation. For example, did you know that Philippine tarsiers emit sounds with frequencies above the ultrasonic boundary, or that 250 species of fish can produce their own electricity? Yong brings to this project a supreme mastery of science writing for the general reader, so don’t be intimidated by the nearly 50-page bibliography. An Immense World is an accessible, illuminating and endlessly exciting reading experience. Yes, nonfiction about science can be page-turning! While this title is perfect for adult nature lovers, the accessibility of Yong’s approach also makes this a wonderful gift for high school or college students interested in science. For at its heart, this treasure of a book is a sober reminder of what’s at stake in the 21st century—and today’s students will be tomorrow’s researchers and citizen scientists. —Deborah Hopkinson

forces many Black families into environmentally hostile neighborhoods. And, based on her reporting, she offers several ideas for improving community health that she believes will change American health care for the better. Under the Skin is wonderfully written. It’s not an inaccessible academic work or a polemic. Rather, its points are made amid moving narratives of real people’s experiences. The book also serves as a stake in the ground for Villarosa as she powerfully discloses what years of reporting have led her to understand: “The something that is making Black Americans sicker is not race per se, or the lack of money, education, information, and access to health services that can be tied to being Black in America. It is also not genes or something inherently wrong or inferior about the Black body. The something is racism.” —Alden Mudge

H The Crane Wife By CJ Hauser

Essays Ten days after ending her engagement, CJ Hauser (Family of Origin) joined a scientific expedition to study cranes. She felt like a fraud: Should a person take such a trip days after a relationship’s end? Should a writer—a novelist, no less—take up space on a scientific excursion? As she wrestles with these questions in the titular essay of The Crane Wife (Doubleday, $28, 9780385547079), which received over one million views after its July 2019 publication by The Paris Review, Hauser compares the dissolution of her relationship with her ex-fiancé to the tale of the crane wife. In that fable, the bird wants so desperately to be with a man that she spends every night plucking her feathers, tricking him into seeing her as a human woman. She withers, ignoring her own needs, but succeeds in becoming what she thinks the man wants. The 16 other pieces in Hauser’s memoir-inessays likewise explore love’s many forms with frank, raw honesty, charting an artful path

reviews | nonfiction through one woman’s experiences. Hauser often draws from both myth and the mundane as she seeks to understand her relationship to the world. She explores the aftermath of romantic relationships, particularly those in which she lost her connection to not only a partner but also his child, as well as an array of her particular fascinations, such as with The Wizard of Oz and with the romance between Mulder and Scully in “The X-Files.” Hauser’s wry, introspective investigation of her assumptions about love will likely free readers to examine their own personal narratives as well. Sometimes Hauser intentionally peels apart commonly intertwined ideas. For example, in “Uncoupling,” she challenges her ideas about parenthood and her body. Hauser separates the ideas of being a parent, giving birth and dating someone she might want to parent alongside. As she examines these desires, Hauser also interrogates her body: What are her tits (her word of choice) for if they aren’t for feeding someone or giving someone else pleasure? She explicitly rejects the idea that her body exists to serve other people and asks, “Who told you these things went together? What stories were you told, and not told, about the shape of love, the shape of yourself, the shape of a happy life?” When her writing students claim that Hauser dislikes happy endings, she turns the whole idea of happy endings on its head. “The rare happy ending I appreciate is one that makes room for the whole painful fact of the world at the same time it offers the reader some joy,” she writes. The Crane Wife embraces this philosophy again and again as Hauser excavates her past loves and losses, thoughtfully examines them and declares the pain of love to be worth the risk. —Carla Jean Whitley

H One Person, One Vote By Nick Seabrook

American History “The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing—one person, one vote,” wrote Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas in 1963. It seems simple enough. However, as we learn in fascinating and depressing detail from Nick Seabrook’s wide-ranging history, One Person, One Vote (Pantheon, $30, 9780593315866), when politicians intentionally draw boundaries for partisan advantage,

politicians pick their voters rather than voters picking politicians. The practice known today as gerrymandering began long before the term first appeared in 1812, when Governor Elbridge Gerry (pronounced with a hard G) of Massachusetts signed a bill that seriously distorted voting districts for political purposes. He was not directly involved in preparing the legislation and found it distasteful, but his name nonetheless became attached to it. Gerry later served as vice president under James Madison. Earlier in Madison’s career, Patrick Henry had used the tactic in an unsuccessful attempt to keep Madison from being elected to the House of Representatives. If Madison had lost the election, we might not have his Bill of Rights. Prior to the 1970s, when the constitutional mandate to redistrict every 10 years went into effect, gerrymandering was the exception rather than the norm. Politicians only used this tactic when it was necessary or expedient, which was rare—especially since the detailed election data and computer technology that has become so crucial to modern election strategy was not yet available. Those who benefit from gerrymandering are determined not to lose their advantage. Even the Supreme Court has failed to address the harms of the practice. On three separate occasions, challenges to the most pervasive partisan gerrymanders of the 21st century have come before the Supreme Court, but reformers came away disappointed. Instead, change has almost always come from concerned citizens who convinced elected officials to take on the issue. Seabrook’s important book should be of interest to every citizen who wants to better understand what goes on behind the scenes as political parties seek power. —Roger Bishop

H In the Houses of Their

Dead

By Terry Alford

American History Ten-year-old Tad Lincoln loved the theater, especially one animated performer he watched at a Washington, D.C., playhouse in 1863. “I’d like to meet that actor,” he said. “He makes you thrill.” Tad quickly got his wish: After the performance, the stage manager escorted him and his friend into the actor’s dressing room, where John Wilkes Booth greeted them warmly. “The future murderer of Tad’s father gave a rose

to each child from a bouquet presented him over the footlights,” writes historian Terry Alford in his endlessly fascinating book In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits (Liveright, $27.95, 9781631495601). Alford knows his subject inside and out, having written Fortune’s Fool, a landmark biography of Booth that Karen Joy Fowler has praised as a major resource for her novel, Booth. In the Houses of Their Dead explores both the Lincolns’ and the Booths’ enthrallment with spiritualism, the belief that living people can communicate with deceased people’s spirits. Members of both families were shattered time after time by a litany of heartbreaking, often torturous illnesses and deaths, which inspired a desire to communicate with their dead loved ones. The two families even sometimes turned to the same mediums, which is just one of many historical threads that tie these two tragedy- bound families together. And yes, there were numerous White House seances, one of which was said to have levitated Abraham Lincoln in the Red Room as he sat atop a grand piano! Alford seamlessly tells the two families’ stories, starting with the major players’ childhoods and continuing until their deaths—and after. He’s a fair-minded narrator of these complicated historical figures, never casting judgment but rather letting the historical record speak for itself through his riveting, elegant prose. He presents, for instance, Lincoln as a young man playing a prank on a friend by persuading two other friends to dress as ghosts as they walked home one dark night. “Never have I seen another who provoked so much mirth and who entered into rollicking fun with such glee. He could make a cat laugh,” wrote one admirer. That characterization certainly contrasts with the more common portrayal of a brooding, whip-smart but sometimes awkward Lincoln. Alford sets the historical stage well, allowing readers to understand the emotional underpinnings of Lincoln’s assassination, which he memorably describes. Particularly fascinating are the details of its aftermath—how, for instance, Mary Todd Lincoln was left with restricted funds, living in boarding houses and rented rooms as she tried to deal with the deaths of her husband and, ultimately, three of her beloved sons. In 1872, a noted “spirit photographer” produced an image of her that supposedly showed Lincoln standing behind her, hands on her shoulders, with one of their lost sons nearby. Other spiritualists of the day reported that Booth’s spirit ultimately repented for his crime and apologized to Lincoln’s spirit. “They became friends,” according to one account. “Sometimes they took walks together in fields of lovely summer flowers.” History can hardly be more surprising than it is in Alford’s hands. —Alice Cary

reviews | young adult

Our Crooked Hearts By Melissa Albert

Fantasy Ivy and her boyfriend are driving home from a party to kick off the beginning of summer break when a strange girl appears in the middle of the road. She’s naked and unafraid, and she seems to recognize Ivy. After this, even more strange things start to happen. Ivy finds a decapitated rabbit in her driveway, and that night at the dinner table, her mom, Dana, spits a rabbit’s tooth out of her mouth. Dana seems increasingly upset by the disturbing string of events—until she disappears, leaving Ivy to figure out what’s going on, protect her family, unearth her mother’s secrets and discover her own true identity. Alternating between “the suburbs, right now” and “the city, back then,” Our Crooked Hearts (Flatiron, $18.99, 9781250826367) unravels both

H A Year to the Day By Robin Benway

Fiction Nina, Leo’s sister, died 365 days ago. Robin Benway’s A Year to the Day (HarperTeen, $18.99, 9780062854438) opens on the first anniversary of Nina’s death, and each chapter takes the reader one step further back in time. From the moment Leo regains consciousness after the car crash, she struggles with grief—not only for her sister also but for the memories of the night that she can’t quite grasp. Leo’s first year without Nina is marked by changes, as the accident impacts her friendships, her family and her relationship with Nina’s boyfriend, East. Leo must find a way to live without her sister and learn to navigate her sorrow—and to love again, despite it. The novel’s unconventional narrative structure reflects the connection between memory and mourning: The story that unfolds for the reader is comprised of confusing, intertwining moments, just like the memories Leo longs to recover. While Nina’s death is established in the book’s very first sentence, the novel unveils its circumstances and the year that follows slowly, and every chapter contains a new revelation.

Dana’s and Ivy’s stories. As a teenager in Chicago, Dana experiments with witchcraft and gets in over her head. Twentyfive years later, Ivy must deal with the catastrophic results. Readers will be enchanted as the two young women’s storylines hurtle toward each other, past and present colliding in a supernatural climax that will transform mother and daughter completely. Melissa Albert (The Hazel Wood) delivers the twisted fairy-tale magic that fans of her Hinterland novels have come to love, along with sharp prose, dark family secrets and a captivating coming-of-age journey for its teenage protagonist. Albert expertly blends mundane high school drama (romantic breakups, getting grounded, navigating crushes)

with black magic (a jar of dirt and blood that Dana buries in the backyard, the mysterious rippling visions in Ivy’s mirror, the aforementioned rabbit). Presented against the vividly rendered and decidedly realistic backdrops of 1990s Chicago and present-day suburbia, all of these elements come together to create a truly bewitching novel. Every gripping chapter of Our Crooked Hearts is packed with suspense, spellbinding prose and impossible decisions. Despite their otherworldly proclivities, Albert’s dimensional characters feel wholly believable as they grapple with questions of protection, betrayal, friendship and the price of power. —Sarah Welch

Benway’s narration fluctuates between wistfully poetic and painfully direct as she captures how Leo is shaped by both big moments, such as funerals and anniversaries, and poignantly portrayed smaller moments. Songs transport Leo back in time, the scent of Nina’s shampoo makes Leo’s heart shatter anew, and looking through the photos on Nina’s phone leaves Leo breathless. A Year to the Day is simultaneously gut-wrenching and heartening, as grief and love so often are. Ultimately, Leo’s story is a lesson in self-compassion and hope, reminding readers that moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting the past and that, although love can be painful, it’s worth holding on to. —Tami Orendain

9780358468318) is a winning addition to this canon. It’s a perfect bubblegum pop of a read— light and sweet but with plenty to chew on. Charlie Owens longs to escape her hometown in the Berkshires. The area’s charm has faded, and visions of an exciting future in architecture and design fill her head. When Charlie’s not fretting about her family’s historic farmhouse or her parents’ love lives, all of which are increasingly in disrepair, she’s driving for a local ride-sharing app and saving her earnings for an epic road trip she hopes will help her discover where she’s meant to be. That is, until she rear-ends a parked car belonging to Andre Minasian, a cute but standoffish classmate. Keating could teach a master class in concocting a natural meet cute and keeping the sparks flying between her characters. Charlie agrees to become Andre’s personal driver; in exchange, Andre agrees not to report the fender bender. To Charlie’s annoyance and intrigue, Andre is as enchanted by their hometown as she is jaded. The tug of war between the two teens is paced to perfection. Ride With Me also makes room for real depth amid all this delicious froth. Keating cleverly foregrounds questions of home via Charlie’s rundown house and the small town she’s so desperate to leave. Can you change your home? Should you? Or is it better to cut and run and find a new home somewhere else? Watching Charlie and Andre grapple with these questions as they fall for each other is pure pleasure. Ride With Me is well worth the trip. —Luis G. Rendon

Ride With Me By Lucy Keating

Romance We are in a golden age of gentle YA romcoms. There’s no shortage of reads for anyone who loves swooning over winsome leads who don’t get it right until the excruciating final pages, or curling up with novels tailor-made for Netflix adaptations. Lucy Keating’s Ride With Me (Clarion, $18.99,

private eye july | young adult mysteries

CRACK THESE MYSTERIES WIDE OPEN Can you solve these cases before their teenage sleuths? There’s only one way to find out. In these remarkable mystery novels, three teen detectives have curious minds, a knack for sussing out secrets and a thirst for justice.

H Hollow Fires In Samira Ahmed’s powerful Hollow Fires (Little, Brown, $18.99, 9780316282642), 17-year-old aspiring journalist Safiya Mirza describes herself as “a giddy teen rom-com cliché, but with more panic and terror churning in the mix.” True, the high school senior enjoys fun times with friends and a budding romance with a handsome classmate at Chicago’s private DuSable Preparatory High School, where she’s a scholarship student. But Safiya is also troubled by the disappearance of 14-year-old Jawad Ali, a freshman at a nearby public school. When Jawad brought a cosplay jetpack to class, his teacher mistook it for a bomb and he was arrested, suspended and dubbed “Bomb Boy” by right-wing media. Jawad was quickly cleared of all charges, but he and his family became the targets of harassment, unfounded accusations of terrorism and death threats. Jawad’s disappearance attracts scant press coverage or police interest, so Safiya decides to investigate on her own. She’s urged on by a soft but insistent voice that she realizes is Jawad, imploring her to find him so his parents can have a measure of closure amid their fear and grief. When Safiya discovers Jawad’s body, some questions are answered, but even more are raised about who killed him. Classism and racism abound at school and in Safiya’s neighborhood; could the culprit be someone she’s encountered? After all, as Jawad muses, “The most terrifying monsters are the ones you know.” Ahmed unfurls this story through chapters that alternate between Safiya’s and Jawad’s perspectives, while also layering in news articles, blog posts, phone transcripts, tweets and more. The result is a compelling portrait of how hate spreads, radicalization takes root and danger grows. In an author’s note, Ahmed shares that she wrote Hollow Fires to call on readers to “step forward, to face the truth of all we are.” Her devastating and inspiring book is at once a gripping thriller and a passionate call for change that’s urgent and timely—and sadly, also timeless.

Murder for the Modern Girl As 1927 turns to 1928 in Chicago, Ruby Newhouse toasts the new year in a “party frock that was practically required by law to set heads turning.” The sassy 18-year-old daughter of the Cook County state’s attorney is gorgeous, and she knows it. She also knows what everyone around her is thinking, because she can read minds “like a supernatural radio antenna.” Ruby keeps that power secret, while using it to reduce the number of men who prey on women in her city. Poison is her preferred method (the lethal stuff fits nicely in hollowed-out hairpins), and so far, she’s gotten away with it. But in Kendall Kulper’s sparklingly clever Murder for the Modern Girl (Holiday House, $19.99, 9780823449729), Ruby’s anonymity and freedom

are threatened when a young morgue employee named Guy Rosewood begins investigating a strange series of poisonings in an effort to impress Dr. Gregory C. Keene. The doctor’s research on cellular metamorphosis has been met with derision, but Guy is a shape-shifter who desperately wants to control his abilities, and he believes Dr. Keene could help him learn how. When Guy meets Ruby, he wants to impress her as well—not realizing she’s the vigilante he seeks. And when Ruby discovers Guy’s secret, she agrees to keep it quiet while charming him into assisting her as she tracks down the people responsible for an attempt on her father’s life. Ruby leverages sexism (underestimation!) and sexiness (distraction!) to her advantage as she pursues her quarry; Guy assists when he’s not pursuing his own mysterious goals. Both characters are intelligent, caring and driven by a shared belief that, as Ruby says, “you’ve gotta protect the weak and punish the wicked.” Murder for the Modern Girl is a smart, suspenseful and action-packed period piece that thoughtfully explores whether all crimes are truly criminal.

Gideon Green in Black and White As the title of Katie Henry’s winning and inventive Gideon Green in Black and White (Katherine Tegen, $18.99, 9780062955739) indicates, 16-year-old Gideon Green spends a lot of time immersed in absolutes. For example, since honesty is the best policy, Gideon doesn’t understand why everyone gets mad when he merely states the truth, however inconvenient. Gideon’s penchant for clarity is bolstered by his favorite noir films, which he watches every day after school. He finds comfort in the movies’ familiar beats and emulates his noir detective idols by wearing a trenchcoat and fedora, never mind that he lives in sunny California. Although Gideon is impressively astute, he didn’t understand why his best friend, Lily Krupitsky-Sharma, ghosted him in middle school. As the book opens, Lily reaches back out because she wants a promotion to editor-in-chief of the school newspaper next year and thinks a splashy investigative feature will do the trick. Will Gideon help her secretly investigate the recent uptick in their town’s nonviolent crime rates? Lily gets Gideon a copy editing gig as a cover, and he revels in being welcomed to the tightknit staff, led by editor-in-chief Tess. For the first time, Gideon feels like he’s part of something, but too soon, there’s another first: discovering a dead body in the course of the investigation. Gideon’s interactions with his town’s police officers are a hoot, thanks to the cops’ exasperation at his confident matter-of-factness. His blooming romance with Tess is delightful, too, as is his growing awareness that there might be more to life than being precisely correct. It’s enjoyable to watch Gideon discover meaning in the grays. Gideon often contemplates how scenes might unfold differently if his life were a noir film, complete with excerpts from the movie scripts in his imagination, upping the fun factor in this highly entertaining, empathetic mystery. —Linda M. Castellitto

private eye july | middle grade mysteries

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Follow the clues alongside these young detectives. The answers may be closer than you think. Young sleuths searching for great mystery novels know exactly what they’re looking for: engaging characters, a suspenseful story, a satisfying resolution and a touch of heart. They’ll find all that and more in these books.

Duet If the menagerie of Deborah and James Howe’s classic Bunnicula series had included a goldfinch, the result might have been something like Duet (Christy Ottaviano, $16.99, 9780316311359). Like Bunnicula, Duet features an animal narrator. Mirabelle is a goldfinch who helps her favorite people find answers to perplexing questions. Mirabelle has kept Mr. Starek company from the trees outside his windows since the death of his sister, Halina. He has retired from teaching piano, but he makes an exception for Michael, a talented sixth grader. Mirabelle sings along while Michael learns pieces composed by Frédéric Chopin, including the challenging Ballade in F Minor. As Mirabelle searches for a way to join Michael at an upcoming competition, Michael and Mr. Starek are joined by Emily, Mr. Starek’s former protege. Emily used to teach Michael piano, but now she’s studying music history at the conservatory. Together, the trio search Halina’s house for a Pleyel, a rare type of piano like the one Chopin used to compose music. However, Halina was a hoarder, which author Elise Broach depicts with empathy, and her house contains more secrets than anyone suspects. Duet is filled with evocative details of Mirabelle’s avian life, including adventures with her brothers and a harrowing description of a thunderstorm. Broach incorporates intriguing stories about Chopin and his artistic friends, as well as an author’s note that explains how the conclusion of the novel’s mystery connects to fascinating real-life events. At one point, Emily acknowledges her limitations as a pianist, providing a refreshing and mature balance to the other musicians’ focus on perfect performances. Music, Duet suggests, can be enjoyed by everyone—including goldfinches. Find a recording of Chopin’s ballades

and let Broach sweep you away on wings of word and song.

Chester Keene Cracks the Code Chester Keene values his routine more than your average sixth grader. Every day, he knocks down pins at the local bowling alley until his mom gets off work. His routine does not include finding an envelope with his name on it that contains two riddles bearing the numbers one and four. And it especially does not include meeting the outgoing Skye, who’s holding riddles number two and three. Chester thinks the clues were left by his absent father, whom Chester has long been convinced is a spy. What if the riddles are Chester’s dad’s way of communicating that he’s in trouble? As Chester and Skye decode the puzzles, which seem designed to require them to work together, they form a friendship. When they overhear a group of bowlers plotting a heist, they wonder whether stopping the crime could be the key to rescuing Chester’s dad. But is Chester’s reliance on careful observation leading him astray? Readers who pay attention to detail will be rewarded with not just the solutions to the riddles but also the answers to the novel’s larger mysteries. The revelation of the riddles’ true purpose takes Chester Keene Cracks the Code (Wendy Lamb, $16.99, 9781524715991) in a direction that’s as fitting as it is unexpected. Maybe what Chester longs for most is actually closer to him than he realizes. Diversity is a part of Chester’s world in quiet ways: Chester and Skye are biracial, and Skye encourages Chester to “break free of traditional gender roles.” Chester’s town’s small businesses evoke a working-class setting. His solitary habits and reliance on down-to-the-minute schedules also suggest a neurodivergence that acclaimed author Kekla Magoon leaves unspecified. Chester Keene Cracks the Code is a heartwarming puzzle mystery whose narrator has multiple codes to crack: the code of the riddle messages, the code of friendship and the code of family. —Jill Ratzan

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feature | pet picture books

Animal, vegetable, wonderful A trio of picture books capture all the joys of life with pets, whether they’re traditional or unconventional.

There’s nothing quite so marvelous—or as challenging—as bringing a new pet into the family. These three picture books showcase the happiness that these companions add to our lives.

Every Dog in the Neighborhood Louis lives with his determined, free- spirited grandmother. When neither she nor City Hall can tell him how many dogs live in their neighborhood, Louis takes Grandma’s advice to heart: “Sometimes if you want something done you’ve just got to do it yourself.” Louis decides to go door to door to take a census. Along the way, he learns a lot about his neighbors and their pets. Two corgis named Wilbur and Orville enjoy bird-watching, while a small white terrier named E.B. “dreams of writing stories.” Such clever references elevate the story, even if younger readers might not immediately grasp their meanings. An older man tells Louis that he has learned many lessons from his dogs, Aesop and Fable, while a house in which musicians practice saxophone and flute is also home to a pair of hounds named Thelonious and Monk. All of these touches are artful and light, just there for the taking. Meanwhile, Grandma is occupied with a project of her own, as she’s unsatisfied that the city has fenced off an abandoned lot. Her efforts and Louis’ dovetail pleasingly, and there’s a lovely surprise for Louis in the end. Every Dog in the Neighborhood (Neal Porter, $18.99, 9780823444274) is an easy book to fall in love with. Philip C. Stead’s writing is exquisite, and illustrator Matthew Cordell’s artwork portrays a delightful menagerie of humans and their four-legged friends. Stead (author of the Caldecott Medal-winning A Sick Day for Amos McGee) makes every word count, while fellow Caldecott Medalist Cordell (Wolf in the Snow) brings the bustling sidewalks of Louis’ neighborhood to life. His signature loose, expressive lines have fabulous energy and personality reminiscent of the work of Quentin Blake and Jules Feiffer. Every Dog in the Neighborhood is a memorable story about energetic grandparenting, the importance of being a good neighbor and the fruits of civic engagement.

The Pet Potato Move over, Sophie’s Squash: Albert’s potato has arrived. In Pat Zietlow Miller and Anne Wilsdorf’s beloved 2013 picture book, a young girl befriends a squash she finds at the farmers market. Josh Lacey and Momoko Abe’s The Pet Potato (Roaring Brook, $18.99, 9781250834157) pays similar tribute to the power of imagination through the story of Albert, a playful boy with circular red glasses and a mop of curly hair who longs for a pet but whose parents have squashed all of his suggestions. Despite his parents’ firm stance, Albert pleads unrelentingly until, one day, his father hands him a small wrapped package, which turns out to contain a potato. “You wanted a pet,” Dad tells Albert. “It’s a pet potato.” Albert sets the potato aside, then notices that it looks sad. The next day, he gives the potato a ride on his train set, and soon the pair are inseparable.

British author Lacey is no stranger to unusual pet tales; he’s also the author of the Dragonsitter chapter book series. Here, he employs excellent comic timing as he describes Albert and the potato’s adventures at home, on the playground and even at the library, where, “for some reason, the potato particularly liked books about pirates.” Abe’s illustrations capture it all, from Albert and the potato palling around on the playground to Albert drifting off to sleep at night, the potato resting on the pillow next to him. A limited color palette of greens, reds, yellows and browns allows Albert’s and the potato’s facial expressions to shine. Using minimal linework and an arsenal of adorable potato-size hats, Abe creatively animates the potato, who becomes an intrepid safari explorer, a railway engineer and more. Of course, like all pets, potatoes don’t live forever, and Lacey crafts a satisfying ending that leaves everyone happy, including Albert. A final spread portrays a diverse array of neighbors discovering how much fun a pet potato can be. With great style and gentle humor, The Pet Potato demonstrates how a vivid imagination can transform an ordinary spud into an extraordinary buddy.

The Surprise When Kit receives a guinea pig as a surprise birthday gift, her household’s other animals are perplexed by the creature. Bob the pug, Dora the cat and Paul the bird pronounce, “If you’re not a cat or a dog or a bird, you’re an oddball.” Co-authored by award-winning novelist Zadie Smith (White Teeth) and her husband, Nick Laird, The Surprise (Viking, $17.99, 9780593525975) is a spirited celebration of the unexpected. In the world of this story, anything can happen—and it does. The Surprise (as the newly arrived guinea pig is called for most of the book) is dressed for judo, which she loves, but her new companions abandon her to watch TV, leaving her feeling sad and lonely. As she experiments with ways to fit in, the Surprise winds up in big trouble. Fortunately, she is rescued by a fellow oddball, an older woman named Emily Brookstein who lives in a flat below Kit’s. “Life’s too short not to be an oddball,” Emily advises. Illustrator Magenta Fox’s artwork is well suited to this tale. The guinea pig is an adorable and sympathetic protagonist. Ginger-haired, exuberant Emily Brookstein and loving new pet owner Kit make perfect foils to the disapproving trio of Bob, Dora and Paul. Fox excels at facial expressions, whether it’s a smug yet puzzled look on a bespectacled pug’s face or the Surprise’s downcast eyes as the other animals talk about her as though she can’t hear them. There’s plenty of action, too, including an airborne guinea pig and a series of panels that depicts an exciting elevator journey. When Kit returns home from school, she finally christens her new pet Maud. It’s clear that Maud will fit right in with the animals and humans of her new family, but she has also gained an appreciation for what makes her stand out, too. —Alice Cary Illustrations from The Pet Potato © 2022 by Momoko Abe. Reproduced by permission of Roaring Brook Press. Illustration from Every Dog in the Neighborhood © 2022 by Matthew Cordell. Reproduced by permission of Holiday House Publishing, Inc.

reviews | children’s

By Zoraida Córdova

Middle Grade Sometimes when tragedy strikes, a family weaves itself into a tightly intertwined bulwark against heartache. Other times, tragedy can drive family members apart as they try to avoid feeling—let alone expressing—their grief. The titular protagonist of Zoraida Córdova’s heartfelt and imaginative Valentina Salazar Is Not a Monster Hunter (Scholastic, $17.99, 9781338712711) would never have predicted the latter outcome for her family. The Salazars are monster rescuers who scoop up magical beings and send them back to the realm of Finisterra before monster hunters can find and kill them.

But the Salazars have been living a more ordinary life since their father’s death on a mission. They moved to the country and retired their camper van, the Scourge, to the garage. Everyone has adjusted, but Valentina can’t stop wishing she could repair her family’s close bonds and get them all back to doing what they were born to do. A viral video provides the opportunity Valentina needs: A boy discovers what he thinks is a dragon egg. Millions watch online as the egg seems ready to hatch at any moment, but Valentina knows it’s a recipe for disaster. She convinces her siblings to climb back into the Scourge and race to the egg before any TV reporters or monster hunters get there—and before

something terrible happens. Córdova sends her characters on a delightful and detailed ride. Valentina and her siblings encounter monsters of all stripes, from threatening beasts to creatures so cute and fluffy you’ll wish they were real. Monsters appear in unexpected places, as do humans scarier than any mythical creature. Valentina Salazar Is Not a Monster Hunter swirls fantasy, adventure, comedy and even a few hints of romance into a magical, memorable elixir of a story. Córdova makes a powerful case for friendship, imagination and hope as she reminds readers that “not everything that looks like a monster is monstrous.” —Linda M. Castellitto

meet STEPHANIE GRAEGIN How would you describe your book?

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Valentina Salazar Is Not a Monster Hunter

Koala reflects on places that remind her of Cheetah, who moved away, in Stephanie Graegin’s The Long Ride Home (Random House Studio, $17.99, 9780593426029), a lyrical, emotional ode to the enduring power of friendship. The author of Fern and Otto and Little Fox in the Forest, Graegin has also illustrated more than 20 children’s books by authors including Patricia MacLachlan, Kelly DiPucchio and Liz Garton Scanlon. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.