August 2022 BookPage

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

AUG 2022

Get hyped for fall’s most exciting releases, including Inciting Joy, Joy, the next lyrical, lovely essay collection from poet Ross Gay. Also inside: A feast of debut novels & Taylor Jenkins Reid’s favorite libraries

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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AUGUST 2022

features behind the book | justin gregg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

feature | back to school. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

The virtues of animals that aren’t so bright

Celebrate the start of a new academic year

q&a | elaine castillo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

meet | zoë tilley poster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Meet the author-illustrator of The Night Wild

Upending our assumptions about reading

interview | anthony marra. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Highs and lows of World War II-era Hollywood

reviews

cover story | fall preview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Prepare for autumn with some of our most anticipated books

fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

shelf life | taylor jenkins reid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

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

The bestselling author spills the tea on her book-loving life

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

feature | bestseller watch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

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

Notable upcoming releases from popular authors

feature | regency romances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 You’re invited to the swooniest love stories of the season

columns

interview | bolu babalola. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

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

Beyoncé meets Jane Austen on a British university campus

audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

feature | first fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

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

Eight talented authors bring us a feast of debut novels

behind the book | natasha pulley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The secret Soviet towns that inspired a terrifying new thriller

feature | sci-fi & fantasy retellings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

well read. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

NEW

sci-fi & fantasy. . . . . . . . 12

from the BESTSELLING author of

New takes on “Rapunzel” and The Island of Doctor Moreau

romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

q&a | mason deaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

whodunit . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

The YA rom-com of the summer

q&a | natalie lloyd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 A deeply personal exploration of fragility and strength PRESIDENT & FOUNDER Michael A. Zibart

PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Trisha Ping

VP & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Elizabeth Grace Herbert

DEPUTY EDITOR Cat Acree

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

EDITORIAL POLICY

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Stephanie Appell Christy Lynch Savanna Walker BRAND & PRODUCTION MANAGER Meagan Vanderhill EDITORIAL INTERN Anthony E. Jones

BookPage is a selection guide for new books.

Our editors select for review the best books published in a variety of categories. BookPage is editorially independent; only books we highly recommend are featured. Stars (H) are assigned by BookPage editors to indicate titles that are exceptionally executed in their genres and categories.

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Cover includes art designed by Christopher Moisan for Inciting Joy by Ross Gay © 2022, used with permission from Algonquin.

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behind the book | justin gregg

I’m with stupid The author of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal extols the virtues of animals that aren’t so bright.

I get excited by stupid animals. That is to But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted peosay, animals that most people consider “stuple to get excited about dung beetles for their pid,” such as insects or chickens. Once, during unintelligence, not their intelligence. a safari trip in South Africa, I shouted for the It wasn’t until I had a conversation with my edidriver to stop the vehitor, Pronoy Sarkar, that I “Evolutionarily speaking, finally figured out how cle so I could get out to chase after a dung to do this, and the idea human intelligence might for If Nietzsche Were a beetle. While the other tourists looked on with Narwhal took shape. It actually be stupid.” pity and confusion, I isn’t a book about anisnapped a million pictures of the beetle with mal intelligence, per se—or even about animal tears of joy in my eyes. unintelligence. It’s really more about human stuI’m simply fascinated by the lives of dung pidity. In it, I call into question the base assumpbeetles. Or hermit crabs. Or chickens. I am fastion that human intelligence—our capacity for cinated with how they behave and what this science and engineering that stems from cognimeans about the way they think. I am a cogtion that is particularly sophisticated and unique nitive scientist by trade, and my main study to our species—is a good thing. Instead of tryanimal is the dolphin, perhaps one of the most ing to elevate “stupid” animals by showing how intelligent nonhuman animals on the planet. they can think intelligently, I show that thinkAnd yet it’s the un­­ ing intelligently in a intelligent ones that humanlike way might have truly captured actually be a crappy biological solution. my heart.

Usually when a Evolutionarily speakscientist studying ing, human intellianimals writes a gence might actually book meant to get be stupid. the public excited Looking at everyabout animal cognithing happening in tion, they focus on the world today—the all the ways in which conflict in Ukraine and the threat of animals think and nuclear war, or the act like humans. I climate emergency, could have written or the deepening about, for example, political division how New Caledonian in many Western crows are able to credemocracies—I am ate complex tools honestly concerned out of twigs to help about the future of them fish insects out our species. Plenty of a log. Then I could of pundits are prehave framed this fact as “crows are able to dicting with alarmmake tools just like ing certainty that humans.” This idea the human species of an animal doing is teetering on the something humanbrink of extinction— like is inherently not because of any H If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal appealing. So the external forces, such Little, Brown, $29, 9780316388061 obvious approach as comets or plagues, would have been for but because we are Science extincting ourselves me to write a book regaling readers with examples of complex through carbon emissions and advanced forms humanlike (or crowlike) behavior in simple aniof holocaust-inducing warfare. Through things mals—such as how dung beetles use the Milky that are, in other words, products of our comWay to navigate the African plains. plex, intelligent way of thinking.

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This is precisely why I am asking people to reevaluate the goodness of human intelligence and consider that dung beetles and chickens might in fact be better designed for life on this planet than we are.

I didn’t write this book because I think humans are idiots. We are not. We are exceptional in many beautiful ways and a wonder of evolution when viewed from some angles.

But from other angles, the human mind is dangerous—capable of both worrying about and bringing about its own extinction. I wrote If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal not to bash humans but to inspire people to widen their love of the animal kingdom. I want people to walk into their garden and marvel at the creatures in it precisely because they aren’t as smart as us.

And yes, I also want people to understand that even the traditionally “stupid” animals aren’t actually stupid. Bees and wasps, for example, are far more cognitively complex than most people realize. They have consciousness, emotions and basic math skills. They can problem solve and use tools. They have individual personalities and can recognize faces. They have a lot of the cognitive skills that we used to believe belonged solely to Homo sapiens. But so what?

It’s not necessarily a good thing to think like a human. In fact, the simplicity of how insects think makes them far more wondrous.

I really hope people take that lesson to heart and are kinder to the creatures around them.

All creatures just want to live a pleasure-filled life for the brief moments that we exist on this planet. Fortunately, you don’t need intelligence to experience joy. And if there’s anything we need more of on this planet right now, it’s joy.

—Justin Gregg Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal.

book clubs

by julie hale

Decorated and discussable Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for fiction, Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book (Dutton, $17, 9780593330982) is a searing portrayal of the Black authorial experience. At the center of the novel is an unnamed Black author on his first book tour struggling to navigate the publishing industry and make sense of the modern world. His narrative is offset by chapters recounting the story of Soot, a young Black boy in the South.

Poignant and often funny, Mott’s novel draws readers in as it scrutinizes race in American society and the power of storytelling.

Marlon James’ epic fantasy Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Riverhead, $18, 9780735220188) is narrated by Tracker, a hunter with an acute sense of smell. Accompanied by These award-winning books a shape-shifter named Leopard and a band will earn additional honors of misfit mercenaries, Tracker travels through from your reading group. a landscape inspired

by African mythology and ancient history on a dangerous quest to find a lost boy. Hallucinatory and violent yet marvelously poetic, this first entry in James’ Dark Star trilogy won the 2019 L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. There are an abundance of potential topics for discussion, such as James’ folkloric inspirations and Tracker’s unreliable narration.

Following the death of her aunt from an uncommon ailment called Chagas, or the kissing bug disease, Daisy Hernández decided to research the illness. She shares her findings in The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease (Tin House, $17.95, 9781953534194). Hernández talked to physicians and disease experts throughout the United States, and her interviews with patients reveal the human cost of the American healthcare system’s inadequacies. Hernández displays impressive storytelling skills in this masterfully researched volume, which won the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.

In the Dream House (Graywolf, $16, 9781644450383), Carmen Maria Machado’s powerful chronicle of a toxic love affair, won the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ nonfiction. In the book, Machado reveals that she fell hard for a magnetic, emotionally unpredictable woman who became abusive. In structuring her memoir, she draws upon various narrative devices and traditions (coming-of-age, choose your own adventure and more), and the result is a multifaceted, daring and creative portrayal of a deeply dysfunctional relationship.

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 SISTER MOTHER WARRIOR

by Vanessa Riley “This book is not only a one-sitting read, it’s a slice of history that needs to be told. Utterly brilliant, powerful, and inspiring.

— KRISTAN HIGGINS New York Times bestselling author of Out of the Clear Blue Sky

THE SOVIET SISTERS

by Anika Scott “Anika Scott pens a fascinating tale of secrets, surveillance, and sisterhood set against the burgeoning Cold War. The Soviet Sisters will suck you in to the very last page!”

— KATE QUINN New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye

SWITCHBOARD SOLDIERS

by Jennifer Chiaverini A bold, revelatory novel about one of the great untold stories of WWI— the women of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, who broke down gender barriers in the military and smashed the workplace glass ceiling.

AS THE WICKED WATCH

by Tamron Hall “Authentic and life-changing—and completely entertaining—this is the first of what is sure to be a long-running series from a beloved and talented journalist.”

— HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN bestselling author of Her Perfect Life

t @Morrow_PB

t @bookclubgirl

f William Morrow I BookClubGirl

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Book smart

© AMAAL SAID

q&a | elaine castillo

Elaine Castillo’s nonfiction debut is required reading for bibliophiles everywhere.

In How to Read Now, Elaine Castillo (America Is Not the Heart) takes our most aspirational notions about reading—that it builds empathy, that it combats prejudice—and turns them on their heads. In the process, she models how to read not just books but also history, culture and the world with an eye toward understanding how the ideas that inform our reading lives came to be.

You write that your book’s title, How to Read Now, is both a comment and a question. Can you say more What’s one characteristic of a really good reader? about that?

I think expecting that you could distill the essence of Like I say in the introduction, there’s some real a really good reader to one characteristic is probably ambivalence on my part in the title: a reluctance, a characteristic of a . . . not . . . great reader? I’m mostly resistance even, to writing a book about the racial politics of our reading culture that might be assumed kidding, but there’s some truth to the cheek. That to serve as essentially a CliffsNotes on anti-racism instinct to say, “What’s the One Takeaway I can get from for the edification of white readers. That being said, this?” is the driving force of reading under neoliberal as a chronically bossy Virgo and an elder sister in an capitalism: reading as a form of market competition immigrant family, my love language, unsurprisingly, and resource extraction, collecting pedagogical or is 24/7 critique. ethnographic data—which is how so many writers of color, in particular, are typically read by white readers But at its core, the title feels most of all like the beginning of an investigation, an exploration. Someone once in this industry—as opposed to reading as a carving asked me if I felt that writing books was therapeutic, out of a uniquely intimate, uniquely vulnerable space H How to Read Now and I don’t feel that the relationship I have to the books in the world, in which a reader is as laid bare to a book Viking, $27, 9780593489635 I write is a therapeutic one exactly. By which I mean as the world of a book is laid bare to her. that I know the curative capacities of writing are posLiterary Criticism How have you changed as a reader over time? sible, of course, but in my experience, they’ve always I think the most stark way I’ve changed is that I try to read more slowly— been unpredictable, unreliable, idiosyncratic; personal and fragile. What feels truer to me is that writing books feels laparoscopic, like exploratory which, for someone who was the proverbial bookworm, a real devourer surgery. Something’s going on; you’re not entirely sure what. You have of literary worlds, hasn’t been easy. For my entire life, I’ve been someone who’ll read anywhere; most of my books as a kid had food stains on them to go in to find out. from reading while I ate. Family members used to make fun of how they’d You write that books were a waypoint on your journey to becoming a never see my face because it was always behind a book. And now, of course, reader. Why is reading bigger than books? with the advent of reading on your phone, it never ends. You’re always While I was lucky enough to have one parent who was a voracious, mostly reading an article, falling asleep in bed reading The Age of Innocence on the self-taught reader who passed his love of Kindle, reading a friend’s PDF proof, reading reading down to me, the majority of the “As a chronically bossy Virgo and a Reddit thread on how to find a Legendary people in my family would never characAnimal in Red Dead Redemption 2 or how to an elder sister in an immigrant terize themselves as readers. In fact, in a get through the Yiga Clan Hideout in Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I’ve never had strict taste larger immigrant family, the older generafamily, my love language, tion’s confidence in reading either Tagalog boundaries when it came to reading. There or English is shaky. That said, those same was never highbrow or lowbrow; everything unsurprisingly, is 24/7 critique.” was on the table, there to be read. So trying people were some of the best readers of the to read more slowly has been the great ongoing failure of my adult life. world I ever knew or will ever know. They taught me by example how to read my way through the world: how they gauged interactions with a boss, how they sighed after a film, what places in the world they built internal What’s one conversation that you hope blows up because of this book? altars to, what losses in the world they mourned. Like I say in the book, Going back to resisting the practice of reduction to the One, I’m going to say I don’t want a book called How to Read Now to speak only to people that for every essay in the book, there’s a conversation—and yes, potentially who had the largely middle-class benefit of the education and leisure an incendiary conversation, as the best ones can be—to be had. Most of those conversations have a common thread: Why do we read the way we space that allows people to become not just literate but literary-minded; do? How on earth did we get here? And how can we imagine—creatively, but equally, I don’t want it to let off the hook the people (like those I culturally, sensually, politically—an elsewhere; an otherwise? love and come from) who say that books aren’t for them, that reading —Kelly Blewett culture isn’t for them. The truth is, we read and are being read by the world every day, in a million languages, in a million minute ways. But Visit BookPage.com to read an extended version of this Q&A How to Read Now is a slightly easier title than How to Dismantle Your and our starred review of How to Read Now. Entire Critical Apparatus.

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audio

lifestyles

H Gathering Blossoms Under Fire Alice Walker’s wit and wisdom are on full display in Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965– 2000 (Simon & Schuster Audio, 23.5 hours). This compilation takes a deep dive into Walker’s private writings, including selected journal entries, poetry and recollections of historical events. Read by Aunjanue Ellis, with Janina Edwards voicing the introduction and footnotes, it’s a uniquely mesmerizing listen. Walker concludes the audiobook with her own narration of the postscript, which she wrote in 2021, emphasizing the personal nature of publicizing her journals.

—Tami Orendain

H Lessons in Chemistry Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry (Random House Audio, 12 hours) is a funny, fearlessly feminist historical novel. Chemist Elizabeth Zott becomes a television sensation as the host of her own cooking show, and her extraordinary journey is narrated in suitably no-nonsense fashion

by Miranda Raison, whose crisp delivery mirrors Elizabeth’s prioritization of rationality over emotion.

Stick around for the lively interview with the author, conducted by writer and podcaster Pandora Sykes.

—Norah Piehl

The Palace Papers In The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and the Turmoil (Random House Audio, 18 hours), English author and journalist Tina Brown gives an energetic and engrossing performance as she shares juicy details about the strife and scandal that have surrounded the British monarchy for decades.

—Maya Fleischmann

H Tracy Flick Can’t Win Tracy Flick, Tom Perrotta’s protagonist from his darkly humorous novel Election, returns in Tracy Flick Can’t Win (Simon & Schuster Audio, 6 hours).

Actor Lucy Liu’s sensitive performance captures every moment of Tracy’s confidence and frustration, and actor Dennis Boutsikaris entertains as retiring principal Jack Weede. Other superb cast members (Jeremy Bobb, Ramona Young, Ali Andre Ali and Pete Simonelli) are equally impressive.

—Maya Fleischmann

H All My Rage Bestselling YA fantasy author Sabaa Tahir’s first contemporary novel, All My Rage (Listening Library, 10.5 hours), is told from three points of view.

Kamran R. Khan, Kausar Mohammed and Deepti Gupta bring personality and insight to their performances, contributing to the believability of this heavy, beautiful novel.

—Autumn Allen

by susannah felts

H Everything, Beautiful In a world unspeakably darkened by crisis, it might seem trifling to even think about appreciating, cultivating or devoting our attention to beauty.

But perhaps a fuller contemplation of what beauty is, can be and has been is in fact one step toward repairing massive-scale damage. Writer and illustrator Ella Frances Sanders believes it is. In Everything, Beautiful (Penguin Life, $20, 9780143137061), she envisions learning to see beauty as a curative, even redemptive process, “like putting a delicate, very broken vase back together.” No matter how broken our world, it is nevertheless full of “tiny, beautiful things,” she writes. Through text, illustration and guided prompts, Sanders upends and expands our notions of beauty and urges us to notice the ingredients for beauty all around us, such as “light, slowness, and the kind of air temperatures that feel like honey.”

Lost Places I live in a boomtown where every old structure seems to either meet the wrecking ball or get a second life via adaptive reuse.

Paging through the images in Lost Places (Schiffer, $34.99, 9780764363948), I’m swept into another world, one where the vestiges of America’s past are left, silent and uninhabited, to be transformed by weather and time. Heribert Niehues’ photographs of abandoned cars, houses, gas stations and other structures tell a story about our country’s past. They are also suffused with mystery: What lives did these places once contain?

Who last passed through these doors? Scenes of decaying diner interiors are among the spookiest, with guests’ checks, condiment containers and fry baskets left behind. Car buffs will enjoy Niehues’ many images of rusted-out, early- to mid-20th-century models. Many of the abandoned edifices captured here fell victim to the interstate system when it rerouted travel in the 1950s and ’60s; one wonders what of our present might be left behind a century from now, as climate change remaps the landscape.

Forever Beirut Forever Beirut (Interlink, $35, 9781623718534), a cookbook with accompanying essays and stunning photographs, was conceptualized

by Barbara Abdeni Massaad as a way to help her beloved home country in the aftermath of a terrible 2020 explosion at the port of Beirut.

In response to economic collapse, the book passionately preserves the treasures of Beirut’s culinary heritage, with recipes for favorites such as kibbeh, a dish of ground lamb, beef or vegetables kneaded together with bulgur; man’oushe, a traditional flatbread; mezze, small dishes served together such as chickpeas and yogurt; and semolina cake. This is the stuff of my culinary dreams: food that is aromatically spiced, uncomplicated and yet bursting with flavor, served within a loving sociocultural context.

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

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ANTHONY MARRA IS LOOKIN’ AT YOU, LOOKIN YOU KID

© PAUL DUDA

interview | anthony marra

Comedy and tragedy collide in the author’s second novel, set amid the highs and lows of World War II-era Hollywood.

“One of the great things about writing a book about 1940s Hollywood is that you can watch a bunch of old movies and call it research,” Anthony Marra says about Mercury Pictures Presents, a sprawling, bighearted tragicomedy set in Hollywood during World War II, with additional story­ lines in Italy and Germany. It took six years to write. “So yeah, I did a lot of research,” he says, laughing. “I’m in my sweatpants watching Humphrey Bogart, saying, ‘Don’t worry, this is work.’ ” Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and the story collection The Tsar of Love and Techno, speaks from his home in New Haven, Connecticut, with a voice that’s full of humor, passion and compassion, just like his prose. After previously setting books in Chechnya and the Soviet Union, he says he wanted to set this novel a little closer to home.

Initially, he was toying with two seemingly separate ideas, the first being a story set in Los Angeles, the author’s former home. “Frank Lloyd Wright supposedly said that if you tip the world over, all the loose pieces will land in Los Angeles,” Marra says. “That was never more true than it was during the ’30s and ’40s, when you had thousands and thousands of European refugees landing there.”

Visit BookPage.com to The other idea focused on southern read our review of Mercury Italy, the home of Marra’s great-grandPictures Presents. mother and her family. But during a trip to the island of Lipari, the author by turning each member into a potennoticed a plaque commemorating tial betrayer,” the author explains. “The anti-Fascists, artists and intellectuals people you’re closest to have the power who had been exiled there during Benito to take away your freedom, or even your life, simply by saying the wrong thing to Mussolini’s regime. the wrong person.”

“It seemed so strange,” Marra recalls, Fifteen years later, in 1941, Maria lives “that this island paradise to which I could trace my own roots had once been in Los Angeles with her mother and Mussolini’s Alcatraz. It occurred to me works as a producer at Mercury Pictures that a number of European refugees International. Maria’s boss is Artie would refer to LA as ‘sunny Siberia,’ and Feldman, described in the novel as a fastI thought the same term could have easily talking, “middle-aged narcissist whose been applied to a place like Lipari.” Marra bald spot had outpaced his toupees.” This realized that he could weave his two is where Marra’s movie watching comes in handy, particularly in the way he mirstory ideas together into one, “about two Siberias on either ends of the world, and rors the screwball-comedy dialogue of this one family divided between them.” the era’s films. It’s apparent that His Girl Mercury Pictures Presents is the story Friday was a big influence, and Maria of Maria Lagana, who flees Rome with her will remind readers of Rosalind Russell’s character, just “a lot more Italian,” Marra mother after Fascists condemn Maria’s Mercury Pictures Presents activist father to confino (internal exile) says. It’s easy to see why Maria was the Hogarth, $28.99, 9780451495204 in a Calabrian village. Devastatingly, it first character that came to him when he was 12-year-old Maria’s actions that accistarted crafting the novel. “I really just fell Historical Fiction dentally led to her father’s betrayal—a in love with her.”

Despite the abundance of World War II novels and movies, Marra was theme that Marra explores in similar ways in The Tsar of Love and Techno.

“Totalitarian ideology invariably undermines the family as an institution surprised to find this chapter of Hollywood history to be “a little hidden.” As

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well read he plunged into researching the 1940s world of madcap moviemaking, he meticulously explored more serious subjects with equal fervor, including wartime challenges, xenophobia and immigration. For example, immigrants were subject to curfews, so Hollywood studios frequently adjusted shooting schedules to ensure workers could get home on time. Immigrants like Maria had to register as “enemy aliens,” confine their movements to a 5-mile radius and surrender certain items like flashlights, radios and cameras—anything that might be used to communicate with the enemy.

“I tried to draw upon the grammar of cinema as I constructed this world.”

Such restrictions are particularly problematic for another central character of the novel, Italian immigrant and photographer Vincent Cortese. As he complains to Maria, “You travel halfway around the world just to end up in confino again. How does an itinerant photographer make a living if he’s prohibited from being an itinerant and a photographer?”

Elements of photography and filmmaking are all over Mercury Pictures Presents, to the extent that Marra considers his role to be as directorial as it is authorial. “I tried to draw upon the grammar of cinema as I constructed this world,” he says. At times, the narrative zooms in and out, cutting from present day to the future and back again. Other scenes have an undeniably cinematic quality, such as when Vincent and another character step outside to discover that it’s snowing in Los Angeles, which really happened on New Year’s Day in 1942. Even the process of editing out unnecessary scenes was informed by filmmaking. “If you look at Dostoevsky,” Marra says, “where people are ranting for pages at a time, you can tell that clearly Dostoevsky was a man who had never seen a movie.”

Marra is especially intrigued by the machinations of fantasy, escapism and propaganda in this period, particularly as the government turned to Hollywood “to use the tools of cinema to mobilize the country for war,” he says. “I was interested in exploring how the camera—and more broadly, art—can be this source of witness and documentation, but also a source of deception. And how we as viewers are asked to tell the difference.”

But for every element of darkness and wartime despair, the novel also contains just as much joy, particularly in moments of comic relief. Marra considers this his “most comic work yet,” and found that humor “collapses the distance between character and reader in a way that nothing else really does. A good joke is really powerful in terms of bringing the reader to care about a character.”

Familial bonds provide some of the most buoyant opportunities for comedy. Most memorably, a lively trio of aunts, inspired by the author’s own great-aunts, provide a lifeline for Maria and her mother in LA. “In their black dresses and sunglasses,” Marra writes, “they looked like Grim Reapers going as Greta Garbo for Halloween.” He even gave them his great-aunts’ real names: Mimi, Lala and Pep. “Even though I initially began working on this book some years ago, it was only during [COVID-19] lockdown that it took off,” Marra says. “I felt like I was drawing more and more on relatives and friends, if only to have the opportunity to keep company with those people again. . . . Obviously, staying inside during COVID is a lot different than experiencing confino, but I think just the sense that you’re isolated from your loved ones and limited in what you can do informed how I approached the characters and their stories.”

As Marra writes in an early scene, “So much of a movie’s meaning came down to who it deemed worthy of a close-up, a perspective, a face.” With Mercury Pictures Presents, he fits a multitude of memorable personalities into his frame, transforming the novel into something quite like an epic film. After all, he says, novels are most like movies in their power to “transport a reader to a place far from their daily life that nonetheless speaks to them in a deep way.”

—Alice Cary

by robert weibezahl

Memoirs Like his acolytes Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell is remembered today as much for his mental illness as for his remarkable poetry.

This legacy is an understandable, if regrettable, consequence of our fascination with the tortured and tragic in art. By the mid-1950s, Lowell’s bipolar disorder had reached a crisis point. While committed to Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, he began a therapeutic regimen that helped him attain a measure of equilibrium. One element of that therapy was a writing project, which Lowell continued over the next three years by working on an autobiography of his family roots and childhood. This narrative, unfinished and unpolished, composes the first part of Memoirs (FSG, $40, 9780374258924), a gathering of Lowell’s unpublished writings about his life, edited by Steve Gould Axelrod and Grzegorz Kosc.

For better or worse, Lowell could not escape his lineage, which dated back on both sides to the founding of New England. His dominant mother, Charlotte, put particular stock in this background, and when his father’s naval career dragged the family away from Boston, Charlotte was never silent about her dissatisfaction. Conversely, in Lowell’s words, his father was “a gentle, faithThe autobiographical writings ful and dim man.”

That ruthless paterof the poet Robert Lowell are nal appraisal comes from the second collected for the first time. section of the writings collected in Memoirs, which the editors call “Crisis and Aftermath.”

These pieces are anchored by an essay, “The Balanced Aquarium,” that recounts Lowell’s time at Payne Whitney. Written in the wake of his mother’s death, the essay also recalls the earlier circumstances of his father’s final days. Shifting seamlessly back and forth in time—to childhood, to the recent past and back to the time of his ancestors—Lowell attempts to make sense of these threads with customary biting observations wrapped in elegant phrases, as he watches the traffic far below the window of his hospital room.

Lowell, of course, mined this material a few years later in one of his finest (one might even say iconic) poetry collections, Life Studies, turning the anarchy of his mind into clear-cut verse. Indeed, the best approach to “My Autobiography,” “The Balanced Aquarium” and the other pieces here is perhaps to view them as dry runs for something far greater and enduring yet to come. These writings give us added glimpses into the life of a poet who made a new art form out of baring the soul, even while expertly keeping his words measured and precise.

The final section of Memoirs collects short pieces Lowell wrote about poets he knew: Plath, Sexton, William Carlos Williams, Allen Tate, John Berryman, Ezra Pound and others. The often sordid specifics of his complicated marriages and romances are skirted, but those coals have been well raked elsewhere. Memoirs should not serve as an introduction to Lowell and his work as much as a supplement, inviting us to discover or revisit his peerless poems.

Robert Weibezahl is a publishing industry veteran, playwright and novelist.

Each month, he takes an in-depth look at a recent book of literary significance.

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cover story | fall preview

Our most anticipated books of fall 2022 Autumn will be here soon, and news about exciting book releases is piling up like the giant mound of leaves under the biggest tree in your yard. We recommend jumping in feet-first.

Babel by R.F. Kuang August 23 R.F. Kuang’s standalone historical fantasy novel might be her most ambitious work yet—which is really saying something, since Kuang’s acclaimed Poppy War series was inspired by the life of Mao Zedong.

Babel (Harper Voyager, $27.99, 9780063021426) is set in an alternate version of Victorian-era Oxford and follows Robin Swift, a Chinese orphan training to become one of the translators who power the British Empire. Words that have been translated from one language to another often lose something along the way, and in Kuang’s world, this dropped element can be manifested into magical silver bars.

Both a celebration and interrogation of the dark academia aesthetic, Babel might be the most thinkpiece-friendly fantasy of the year.

The House of Fortune

by Jessie Burton August 30 The ending of Jessie Burton’s 2014 breakout debut, The Miniaturist, demanded a sequel, so we’re queued up for The House of Fortune (Bloomsbury, $28,​​ 9781635579741). This standalone companion novel picks up 18 years after the preceding book’s finale, in 1705 Amsterdam. Young Thea lives with her patchwork family (all returning characters): her aunt, the widow Nella; Thea’s father, Otto; and the family’s longtime caretaker, Cordelia. Brokering a marriage for Thea could solve some financial

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woes, but she only has eyes for a handsome set painter at the local theater. And then the miniaturist makes a return.

Killers of a Certain Age

by Deanna Raybourn September 6 The author of the Veronica Speedwell series, which are easily some of the best historical mysteries around, is taking a quick break from Victorian England to grace us with this contemporary story of four assassins on the verge of retirement.

In Killers of a Certain Age (Berkley, $27, 9780593200681), instantly lovable Mary Alice, Natalie, Billie and Helen go on an all-expenses-­ paid farewell vacation after 40 years spent working for a network of killers known as the Museum.

It quickly becomes clear that the trip is a trap, and the company is attempting to tie up loose ends.

The Door of No Return

by Kwame Alexander September 27 Poet Kwame Alexander took the world of children’s literature by storm when he won the 2015 Newbery Medal for his novel in verse The Crossover. Not content to rest on his laurels, Alexander won a Newbery Honor in 2020 for The Undefeated, a picture book which also earned illustrator Kadir Nelson the Caldecott Medal. The Door of No Return (Little, Brown, $17.99, 9780316441865) sees Alexander take another exciting, ambitious step forward, this time

into historical fiction. This novel in verse opens in West Africa in 1860 and follows a boy named Kofi who is swept up into the unstoppable current of history.

Our Missing Hearts

by Celeste Ng October 4 With her bestselling 2017 novel, Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng took a relatively familiar setup (escalating divisions within a privileged suburban bubble) and revealed a whole new level of understanding of the situation.

In Our Missing Hearts (Penguin Press, $29, 9780593492543), she continues to track the growing rifts between Americans, but as the situation has escalated to brazen xenophobia, racism and violence, her storytelling style has likewise amplified to contend with these dangers. Her third novel veers into dystopian territory, but as always, she brings deep compassion to her characters.

A Scatter of Light

by Malinda Lo October 4 Until 2021, YA author Malinda Lo was best known for Ash, her groundbreaking Sapphic reimagining of “Snow White.” Then came Last Night at the Telegraph Club, which received so many awards (including the National Book Award, the Stonewall Book Award and a Michael L. Printz Honor) that their circular badges barely fit on the cover. A deeply researched

historical novel, it was the work of a writer who’d been honing her craft for more than a decade. A Scatter of Light (Dutton, $18.99, 9780525555285) is a companion novel set 60 years later, during the summer when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage via their ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Rest Is Resistance

by Tricia Hersey October 11 Tricia Hersey is the founder of the Nap Ministry, which facilitates workshops and art installations that explore rest as a tool for healing. In Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (Little, Brown Spark, $27, 9780316365215), a searing indictment of capitalist grind culture, Hersey addresses the souldeep weariness of Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved.

The system of slavery that treated humans like machines for production, Hersey says, is the same system that drives today’s profit-driven economic system. This book is a call to move toward racial justice by engaging in activities that have nothing to do with productivity, such as daydreaming and napping.

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

by Paul Newman, edited

by David Rosenthal October 18 If any actor in the last 100 years has reached icon status, Paul Newman has. His posthumous memoir, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary

shelf life | taylor jenkins reid

So many books, so little time

Man (Knopf, $32, 9780593534502), grew out of a project that Newman initiated in 1986 to compile an oral history of his life by interviewing friends, family, lovers and colleagues about their most honest impressions of the beloved actor. In turn, Newman gave his own takes, offering up details about his troubled childhood, introduction to acting, marriage to Joanne Woodward, the death of his son and more.

Liberation Day

by George Saunders October 18 Whether he’s guiding us through the Russian literary greats (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain) or getting spooky with Booker Prize-winning historical fiction (Lincoln in the Bardo), George Saunders does marvelous work. We have a special soft spot for his short stories, where his breadth of imagination and balance of ambition and restraint really shine.

Liberation Day (Random House, $28, 9780525509592), Saunders’ first collection in eight years (after Tenth of December, a finalist for the National Book Award), includes four new stories along with five previously published in The New Yorker.

Our Friend Hedgehog: A Place to Call Home

by Lauren Castillo October 18 Caldecott Honor recipient Lauren Castillo published Our Friend Hedgehog: The Story of Us in May 2020. In February of that year, we asked Castillo what message she would like to share with young readers. “Be brave,” she wrote, with no way of knowing how much bravery we were all about to need.

In Our Friend Hedgehog: A Place to Call Home (Knopf, $17.99, 9781524766740), Castillo returns to

Hedgehog’s woodsy world for more stories of adventure and friendship.

Inciting Joy by Ross Gay October 25 Award-winning author Ross Gay has become something of an authority on joy after his 2015 poetry collection, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, and his bestselling essay collection, The Book of Delights. But his next collection is somewhat sneakily about sorrow.

That is, it’s about the ways that sorrow draws us together, causes us to rely on one another and then, rather unexpectedly, squeezes joy out of our togetherness. With language that skips along like a game of hopscotch, Inciting Joy: Essays (Algonquin, $27, 9781643753041) promises to deliver heart-swelling insights into life, death and the joyful necessity of interdependence.

Before I Let Go

by Kennedy Ryan November 15 Kennedy Ryan is one of romance’s most acclaimed self-published authors. Her last traditionally published title was released in 2016, but she’s making a grand return to traditional publishing by releasing the first book she ever wrote. Unpublished until now, Before I Let Go (Forever, $15.99, 9781538706794) is a second-chance romance between divorced couple Yasmen and Josiah Wade. Not only will it introduce new readers to Ryan’s talents, it may also signal a shift away from rom-coms’ dominance of the genre. Where Ryan leads, others will follow.

This is just the beginning of our fall preview! Visit BookPage.com to see our full slate of anticipated titles.

Publication dates are subject to change.

First we met Evelyn Hugo in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Then came Daisy Jones of Daisy Jones & The Six, followed

by Nina Riva from Malibu Rising.

Taylor Jenkins Reid wraps up her quartet of novels about fictional female celebrities with Carrie Soto Is Back (Ballantine, $28, 9780593158685), about a tennis player’s major comeback. In anticipation of its release, we volleyed over a few questions about the author’s favorite bookstores and libraries.

What are your bookstore rituals?

I have a habit of hitting up the front fiction shelves, then making a beeline for the cookbooks and then hitting up fiction again. It’s very hard for me to leave a store without a novel or a cookbook.

Not sure it’s ever happened.

What is your ideal bookstorebrowsing snack?

A very fancy—perhaps even artisanal and overpriced—flavored black iced tea.

What’s the last thing you bought at your local bookstore?

One of the volumes of the Bad Guys series by Aaron Blabey. My daughter absolutely loves that series, and it is such a treat to take her to the store and let her buy a new one. I love watching her come home and go right to her bedroom so she can devour it cover to cover.

Has there ever been a librarian or bookseller who was especially helpful to your writing process?

When I first started writing, I was trying to absorb as many of my contemporaries as I could. The Beverly Hills Public Library had a Friends of the Library store, which would have a used book sale two times a year. I used to go in there and ask the volunteer behind

© MICHAEL BUCKNER

The bestselling author spills the tea on her book-loving life.

the desk what books I should get and come home with a stack of 20. It was such a lovely way to read outside of my own taste, picking those used books up for a dollar or two each.

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

The library at my elementary school felt like such a special place. We only really went there during specific free periods or during the coolest, most magical time of the year: the Scholastic Book Fair. That sense I still get in a library or bookstore, that there are so many books I want to read and so little time, started right there.

Do you have a favorite library from literature?

I’m forever intrigued by Jay Gatsby’s library—all real books and none ever read.

Do you have a “bucket list” of libraries you’d love to visit?

Oh, absolutely. I love literature but also deeply love architecture.

Libraries are such a beautiful way of exploring both. I was blessed to go to college near the Boston Central Library, which may have formed my taste in libraries. It is such a gorgeous building. I hope one day I get to see some of the libraries at Oxford, the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Spain and the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.

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feature | bestsellers

BESTSELLER WATCH Mark your calendars for these upcoming releases from chart-topping writers.

Listening Well

By Heather Morris

St. Martin’s, $29.99, 9781250276919

AUGUST 2 The megabestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz shares true stories from her life about how she learned to become such a talented listener.

Babysitter

By Joyce Carol Oates Knopf, $30, 9780593535172

by chris pickens

A Half-Built Garden In Ruthanna Emrys’ philosophical, warmhearted and intriguing novel A Half-Built Garden (Tordotcom, $26.99, 9781250210982), humanity must decide whether to heal a ravaged Earth or abandon it for life among the stars. In 2083, a massive, sleek spacecraft lands in front of Judy WallachStevens. Out step the Ringers, beings who have been searching the universe for signs of life and hope they can convince humanity to join their civilization before Earth becomes unlivable.

Humanity comes to trust the Ringers, but Judy is fiercely loyal to the work her community and similar groups are doing to heal the planet. Emrys ticks off all the expected futuristic details: wild technology, vast glittering cityscapes and cool spaceships. But the story’s main concern are moments of intergalactic understanding: how the two groups greet each other, raise children and celebrate, how they view themselves and what they believe in.

The Maker of Swans

AUGUST 23 The acclaimed, prolific and quite frankly iconic author returns to thriller territory with Babysitter, which provides a portrait of Detroit in the 1970s along with the chilling story of an unsolved murder spree.

Love on the Brain

By Ali Hazelwood

Berkley, $17, 9780593336847

AUGUST 23 Ali Hazelwood’s debut, The Love Hypothesis, was a contender for TikTok’s top romance rec of 2021. Her sophomore effort is an enemies-to-lovers rom-com that follows scientists Bee Königswasser and Levi Ward.

The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

By Ellen Marie Wiseman Kensington, $16.95, 9781496715883

AUGUST 30 Beloved author Ellen Marie Wiseman has a track record for bringing compassion and a sharp eye to novels that expose little-known history. Her latest takes readers into the Willowbrook State School, a mental institution on Staten Island, New York, that was revealed to be a “dumping ground” for children.

Publication dates are subject to change.

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sci-fi & fantasy

Paraic O’Donnell’s The Maker of Swans (Tin House, $27.95, 9781953534200) dances along the line between literary fiction and magical fantasy. On an estate in the English countryside live Eustace the butler; Mr. Crowe, a preternaturally gifted and magnanimous artist; and Clara, Mr. Crowe’s ward. One fateful night, Mr. Crowe kills a man in the driveway. To give any more details would ruin the particular spell of this book. Alongside the magical elements are questions on the nature of the universe, on art and beauty, on instinct and knowledge. The relationships among the three inhabitants of the house provide the grounding force, particularly the bond between Eustace and Clara. Their relationship is tender, reciprocal and real in a sea of the strange and mystical.

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words In Eddie Robson’s Drunk on All Your Strange New Words (Tordotcom, $26.99, 9781250807342), converting an alien’s thought to speech renders a human translator drunk.

Such is the charm you’ll find at the heart of Robson’s cheeky, breezy sci-fi mystery. When a terrible event throws Lydia, the translator for the alien Logi cultural attache, into the center of an intergalactic crisis, she takes it upon herself to unravel the truth. The fact that intoxication is a central component of Lydia’s work leads to a lot of funny moments, and the mystery’s twists are satisfying throughout. Like Cassie Bowden on HBO’s “The Flight Attendant,” Lydia is not always easy to root for, but watching her commit to her cause will win readers over. This book is perfect for anyone looking for a fun, thought-provoking and unintimidating foray into sci-fi.

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

feature | regency romances

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED The season’s best Regency romances will sweep readers off their feet.

So, you’ve made your way through not only “Bridgerton” but also every other historical miniseries you could find, and now you’re faced with the daunting task of picking out a Regency romance novel from approximately one million titles. Don’t worry—we’re here to help. There are tons of terrific books out there, and because the subgenre has more variety than you might expect, we’ve added a complementary television series to each recommendation below to help you scope out the vibe.

A Duchess by Midnight Miss Drewsmina “Drew” Trelayne is determined to make a name for herself as a guide for young debutantes in A Duchess by Midnight (Avon, $8.99, 9780062984999) by Charis Michaels. When her stepsister, Cynde, uses her connections to secure Drew’s first paying client, Drew has her work cut out for her. How can she teach the Duke of Lachlan’s troubled nieces proper deportment and etiquette when she can’t seem to stop herself from breaking all the rules with the irresistible, scandal-ridden duke?

Read if you loved “The Baby-Sitters Club” Yes, we’re really comparing a Regency romance to a TV show based on a series of chapter books. Both A Duchess

by Midnight and the recent Netflix adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s books take a story that had grown a bit stagnant and make it feel fresh. Drewsmina is a Regency version of the stepsisters from Disney’s Cinderella, and through her, Michaels breathes new life into a slightly dusty fairy tale. Drewsmina becomes the fully realized heroine of her own story by being willing to grow and change. Her less-than-perfect past makes her the ideal person to reach the lonely duke and his two wary girls in this charming twist on an age-old story.

Nobody’s Princess Kunigunde “Kuni” de Heusch is determined to become the first Royal Guardswoman of Balcovia. She can’t get distracted by anyone—not even Graham Wynchester. But when Graham interferes with her mission at the beginning of Erica Ridley’s Nobody’s Princess (Forever, $8.99, 9781538719589), Kuni ends up falling in with the astonishing Wynchester clan—going on adventures, learning acrobatic skills and discovering a brand of heroism that is like nothing she’s ever known.

Read if you loved “The Umbrella Academy” Unlike the characters in the comic book-inspired Netflix series, the Wynchesters don’t have supernatural powers, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to make the world a better place. These adopted siblings use their fortune to right wrongs and protect the innocent. They bicker with and aggravate one another, while still coming together when there’s an enemy to face. It’s lovely to see Kuni fall for not only the eminently lovable Graham but also his family and their appreciation of and support for one

another. Ridley’s take on the Regency period is quirkier and broader than the norm, but that just makes Nobody’s Princess all the more compelling and fun.

The Rake’s Daughter In Anne Gracie’s The Rake’s Daughter (Berkley, $8.99, 9780593200568), half sisters Clarissa and Isobel Studley have no one but each other. Isobel is the illegitimate daughter whom their unscrupulous father had no interest in raising, and only Clarissa’s stubborn loyalty kept the girls together through childhood. When their father dies, they are sent to London to live with their new guardian, Leo Thorne, the Earl of Salcott. Because his opinion of Isobel stems from her father’s viciously cruel descriptions, Leo is appalled by his instantaneous and fierce attraction to her.

Read if you loved “The Good Place” Gracie takes a warmer, sweeter view of Regency high society; there are still challenges and prejudices, but there are also examples of extraordinary kindness, devotion and compassion. Like Eleanor and Michael in the afterlife-set TV show, the characters in The Rake’s Daughter have vibrant, rich personalities that make it easy to root for them. Leo has a particularly impressive character arc, starting off almost as an antagonist before becoming the hero he always had the potential to be.

H A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting

Kitty Talbot, the heroine of Sophie Irwin’s A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting (Pamela Dorman, $27, 9780593491348), is left with four sisters to care for and an ocean of debt after her father dies and her fiancé jilts her.

So it’s off to London and the marriage mart to find a rich match. She’s able to catch the eye of sweet, easily manipulated Archie de Lacy, but his disapproving older brother, Lord Radcliffe, tries to break up the match. Desperate to the point of recklessness, Kitty manages to convince Radcliffe to make a trade: She’ll leave his brother alone if he helps her find another match. But what starts out as a grudging alliance blooms into something more . . .

Read if you loved “Inventing Anna” If you loved the miniseries featuring Anna Delvey’s con artist exploits, then this is the Regency romance for you.

But unlike Anna, Kitty is a heroine you can genuinely like, even as you marvel at her audacity. She’s clever and cunning, but she’s also funny and refreshingly honest, with admirable reasons for her manipulative fortune-hunting.

Her sharp mind and ruthless practicality make the story relentlessly readable, charging scenes with terrific tension and biting wordplay. However, there’s so much more to Kitty than her diamond-hard facade. The more Radcliffe understands her, the more he loves her—as will readers.

—Elizabeth Mazer

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interview | bolu babalola

A new romantic vision Bolu Babalola’s debut novel celebrates the love she wants to see in the world.

Few words related to identity convey a more precise meaning than the the world. Though the book’s premise was dreamed up by Babalola’s pubones Bolu Babalola uses to describe who she is: “I’m a Nigerian child, lisher, it was her vision that made it a breakout hit. Love in Color became eldest daughter.” If you’re familiar with immigrant parents, you know the a mission statement, a calling card that introduced Babalola’s voice to drill: Education is the key to securing your future, with a reliable profesthe broader public. It provided an opportunity to place Black women and sion (doctor, lawyer, engineer) followed women of color from around the world by a judicious marriage by a certain age. at the center of her beloved genre. With Love in Color, and now with Honey and But Babalola, author of Honey and Spice, one of the year’s most ambitious Spice, Babalola wants to “decolonize the rom-coms, didn’t stick to that script. concept of romance . . . because we usuBorn in South London to two striving ally see white women as the romantic heroines, [both the ones] desiring and professionals, one a lawyer and the other a teacher, her artistic journey began at the ones who deserve to be desired.” age 10. She gained attention for her writAs she wrote Honey and Spice, ing from teachers, and the fact that she Babalola wanted to “pay homage not only could do something she loved, then get to my parents’ love story but also to them praised for it in school and by her family, as parents because their love embodies planted a seed. Like a sunflower bending so much of my confidence.” Perhaps toward the light, she leaned in. By 14, she because she’s a woman (and Black and was writing and sharing rom-coms with Nigerian), she gets asked about that friends. So publishing her outstanding aspect of her personality a lot. “Everyone romance debut at 31 has been a long wonders why I’m so confident and why time coming.

I’m so sure of myself, and I’m 100% sure Voice-driven and striking, Honey and it’s because my parents had that confiSpice is Beyoncé meets Jane Austen on dence in me,” she says. “There wasn’t really any space for me not to believe a British university campus. As unlikely in myself, because that was unacceptas that blend sounds, Babalola nails it.

The book’s narrator is budding media able to them.” That’s not the story one usually hears about Nigerian parents, maven Kikiola “Kiki” Banjo, the host of a student radio show that dispenses pop and Babalola’s work provides a realistic, culture commentary, offers advice about progressive portrayal of Black British life. Honey and Spice is grounded in university life and dissects the Black British cliques of Whitewell University.

Whitewell’s complex and tight (if imperWhen handsome and far-too-charming fect) Black community, where love and transfer student Malakai Korede enters joy and feminist sensibilities intertwine the scene, he changes the social equiliband vibrate off the page. rium. Kiki instantly identifies the new big Babalola’s own academic life is another key influence in Honey and man on campus as someone her fellow classmates should steer clear of.

Spice. In graduate school, her focus on But as Kiki gets to know him, she realAmerican politics and history through H Honey and Spice popular culture culminated in a thesis izes that, despite his slick reputation, William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063141483 on Beyoncé’s audiovisual masterpiece Malakai is actually beautifully and wonLemonade, female blues singers and derfully squishy—the perfect sparring Contemporary Romance partner for the prickly yet sweet Kiki. As Black women redefining identity through Kiki notices when she digs into his social media and finds a doting post art. That blend of cultural savvy, empowerment and identity exploration about his niece, Malakai has “a softness to him. . . . There was no way he pervades Babalola’s writing. What’s more, Kiki’s politics, media and culcould fake the adoration with which he looked at that angel.” ture major mirrors an academic concentration the author once designed Babalola also adores him. Malakai is “a kind of distortion of what we for herself, and the fictional adviser who pairs Kiki with Malakai for a think masculinity and Black masculinity should be,” she says, speaking semester-long project is modeled on Babalola’s own grad school mentor. by video call. Malakai’s openheartedness Like her creator, Kiki is a bold, conVoice-driven and striking, Honey and fident woman who already knows she’s reflects an essential part of Babalola’s upbringing, in which her father played loved and won’t settle for anything less Spice is Beyoncé meets Jane Austen with a man, no matter how charming. “I the role of loving cheerleader. Her parents not only nurtured her independent have such a soft spot for Kiki. I relate to on a British university campus. thinking and creativity, but also shaped her. . . . And I think a lot of Black girls Babalola’s romantic sensibility: She was raised by a couple who share the relate to her,” Babalola says. “They think they need to be tough, but they’re exact kind of partnership and abiding love she writes about so devotedly. really just sweethearts deep down.”

Their relationship inspired Babalola’s first book, the story collection Honey and Spice is the book of Babalola’s heart, a novel she’s been Love in Color, a kaleidoscopic reimagining of romantic myths from around developing and refining for years. As in Austen’s books, the romance is

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© CALEB AZUMAH NELSON

romance

by christie ridgway

H Wolf in the Shadows Maria Vale sweeps readers into a compelling paranormal world in her fifth Legend of All Wolves romance, Wolf in the Shadows (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $8.99, 9781728214733). Julia Martel, pampered shifter princess of Montreal, has been kidnapped by the Great North Pack, who live apart from human society and ritualistically shift to their wolf forms every full moon. Though she was raised to be “exquisitely inconsequential,” Julia finds her inner strength as she lives with the pack and gets to know Arthur, a wolf at the bottom of the pack’s hierarchy. Vale’s storytelling is immersive and fascinating as she chronicles Julia’s metamorphosis from plaything to predator. And Arthur is a uniquely appealing love interest: keenly attentive, sensitive and always willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Lushly described set pieces, from Julia’s embrace of her animal nature to the couple’s smoking hot love scenes, make for a fiercely beautiful read.

Husband Material

Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of Honey and Spice.

paramount, but the ensemble cast and the broader world in which the relationship grows are half the fun, allowing Babalola to lay bare the intricacies of cliques, class and color. She weaves together humor and cutting social observations with precise, innovative language. Some of this language, such as mandemologist, Kiki’s joking term for her expertise in male behavior, Babalola invented and some of it, such as wasteman, the pejorative term Kiki initially uses to label Malakai, is Black British vernacular. Babalola says the latter term can describe “a loser, like in the generic sense of the word. But it can also just be somebody who just messes you around.” In contrast with the traditional romance rake, who is often an attractive figure who can be redeemed, wasteman serves as a hard line in the sand. As Babalola puts it, “Signifying that it’s unacceptable [to behave like a wasteman] shows that we’re defining our parameters of relationships and romantic relationships.”

This term and what it says about knowing your worth is emblematic of the author’s outlook on life, gender equality and love. Babalola is single, and over 130,000 followers on Twitter savor both her insight and her celebration of sexy, empowered womanhood. She’s a romantic visionary who hasn’t yet experienced her one grand romance, but she has seen it modeled and knows what she wants. Being willing to be single until she gets the love story she’s looking for is a conscious choice. “I am a romantic,” Babalola says. “And because I’m a romantic, I actually don’t want romance for the sake of romance. It has to be real. I don’t prioritize being partnered above all else, because I really, really respect romance and love.”

The women she creates mirror the ethos she embodies. Babalola champions a romanticism rooted in trust, independence and bravery—both in Honey and Spice and as the star of her own story.

—Carole V. Bell

It’s been two years since Lucien “Luc” O’Donnell and Oliver Blackwood got together in Boyfriend Material, and the opposites-attract pair are happy together—and happy to witness the people around them tie the knot. But does that mean they should follow suit? Narrated

by Luc in a self-deprecating and often sarcastic first-person voice, Alexis Hall’s Husband Material (Sourcebooks Casablanca, $15.99, 9781728250922) follows the next phase in the men’s romance. Family drama adds serious layers and provides an opportunity for soul-searching, even as Hall’s bouncy dialogue tumbles along through plenty of rom-com fun. As they grapple with their future, examining both compatibility and commitment, Luc and Oliver are amusing, authentic and eminently deserving of their happily ever after.

Quarter to Midnight Karen Rose’s latest romantic suspense novel, Quarter to Midnight (Berkley, $27, 9780593336298), begins a new series set in New Orleans. When his father, a former police officer, dies under suspicious circumstances, chef Gabe Hebert hires a PI agency to look into the matter. Molly Sutton, former cop, former Marine and forever badass, takes on the case.

She’s long admired Gabe’s culinary skills and his good looks, and she’s committed to getting answers for him. Rose always constructs an appealing team to aid her main couple and further engage the reader’s emotions; this time, the crew includes a brave young med student, a pair of canny brothers and two witty and determined older women. It’s a twisty, dangerous ride, with the French Quarter setting and the descriptions of Gabe’s food adding an extra je ne sais quoi to this entertaining read.

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

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feature | first fiction

FIRST BITES These eight talented authors have brought us a feast of debut fiction.

We hope you’re hungry, because you’ll want to try them all.

H All This Could Be Different

Briefly, a Delicious Life

By Nell Stevens

By Sarah Thankam Mathews

TASTING NOTES: Overripe

Sarah Thankam Mathews’ debut is one of those rare novels that feels just like life, its characters so specific in their Viking, $27 desires and experiences that 9780593489123 you’re sure you’ve met them— or maybe you’re about to. At 22, Sneha graduates from college into a tanked economy. She lands an entry-level job at a consulting firm in Milwaukee, where she encounters financial successes and catastrophes, makes friends and falls into a heady romance. Though Sneha is preoccupied with her girlfriend, this is actually a story about friendship. Sneha’s new friend Tig tells her that friendship takes a lot of work, and over the course of the novel, we get to see Sneha and Tig do that work.

Lives are made up of so many ordinary moments, so many conflicting emotions, so many messes—some world-shattering, some mundane. It’s all here in this funny, vibrant, heartbreaking book.

—Laura Sackton

In 1838, the French novelist George Sand decided that a winter away from Paris would be good for her, her two chilScribner, $26.99 dren and her ailing lover, 9781982190941 Frédéric Chopin, who had tuberculosis. The group landed on the island of Majorca, taking rooms at a defunct monastery, the Charterhouse, in the remote village of Valldemossa.

This is where the debut novel from Nell Stevens begins.

The novel’s narrator, Blanca, is a ghost, a 14-year-old girl who died almost 400 years earlier. She has lurked in Valldemossa ever since, and she instantly falls in love with George. Blanca can access people’s memories and see their futures, which helps to give the novel its structure, as the story moves between past and present. Briefly, a Delicious Life is an inventive, imaginative approach to historical fiction, full of comic moments but also sorrow, violence and beauty.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

citrus, bursting with juice and sending tingles into your jaw. © MATT SMITH

© DONDRE STUETLEY

TASTING NOTES: The first sip of a sweet, tangy pineapple martini, sent over to your table by your crush.

H The Book Eaters

H Calling for a Blanket Dance

By Sunyi Dean

By Oscar Hokeah

The Book Eaters is a haunting fantasy that follows Devon Fairweather, a Book Eater who subsists on ink and paper and the knowledge they provide Tor, $26.99 her. The young Devon lives a 9781250810182 sheltered life, as female Book Eaters are rare. While her brothers eat books about politics, history and academics, she is limited to the same old fairy tales time and time again.

But Devon has always seen through the facade of the happily ever afters she consumes, and when she gives birth to a Mind Eater son, who will constantly crave human souls rather than books, she searches for a way that they can both be free for good.

Sunyi Dean fully invests readers in Devon’s struggles, both as a young girl attempting to prise tiny snatches of freedom from a patriarchal society and as an adult mother frantic to protect her son. The Book Eaters is a winding, harrowing, deliciously nightmarish story of people taking control of their bodies and destinies after generations of repression and abuse.

—Stephanie Cohen-Perez

Oscar Hokeah’s debut tells the story of Ever Geimausaddle through generations of his family. From these many perspectives, we see Ever grow Algonquin, $27 from an infant into a man, 9781643751474 eventually raising his own kids in the strange double bind of Indigeneity. After all, when your heritage and ancestry are the reasons for your oppression, to whom can you turn in order to survive but to family?

Hokeah’s prose is punchy and descriptive, filled with Native American words and phrases that come naturally to the characters. This blending of languages is still uncommon in contemporary fiction, but the current Indigenous literary and cultural renaissance promises that more voices will grow this singularity into a rich multitude. But of course, renaissance is the wrong word to use here. Hokeah, who is of Mexican heritage as well as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, shows that this tradition has been here the whole time, evolving and surviving.

—Eric Ponce

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© DALTON PERSE

TASTING NOTES: Resinous and peppery flavors of a perfectly slow-cooked dish.

© RICHARD WILSON PHOTOGRAPHY

TASTING NOTES: A dark chocolate cake, dense and supremely rich.

feature | first fiction

H The Rabbit Hutch

A Map for the Missing

By Belinda Huijuan Tang

By Tess Gunty

© ANDREW SHERBURNE

TASTING NOTES: The salty, hearty waft of steam before diving into a heaping bowl of soup.

© NATALIE CAÑA

The Chinese Cultural Revolution, devised by the appalling Chairman Mao Tse-tung, was catastrophic Penguin Press, $27 for most of the people caught 9780593300664 up in it. The really bad news, as seen in Belinda Huijuan Tang’s splendid debut, is that for some, the Cultural Revolution never quite ended.

In January 1993, Tang Yitian receives a call from his mother in China, which is startling in itself because she must travel to even find a phone.

Yitian’s father is missing, she says. No one knows where he is or why he was taken—if indeed he was taken at all. Heeding the call of duty, Yitian, who has lived in the United States for nearly 10 years, flies home to investigate.

At times, A Map for the Missing brings to mind George Orwell’s 1984, though unlike that novel’s dystopian England (called Airstrip One), the chilling and deeply sad China depicted here is real. Yitian’s search for his father makes Winston Smith’s life on Airstrip One seem like a holiday in a warm climate.

—Arlene McKanic

A Proposal They Can’t Refuse

By Natalie Caña

TASTING

NOTES: Crisp greens, bitter radishes and bright carrots drenched in an acidic vinaigrette.

Christian mystics are a point of obsession for the hero of Tess Gunty’s debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch.

Knopf, $28 Blandine is especially inter9780593534663 ested in Hildegard of Bingen, an abbess, polymath, composer and doctor who constantly played up her femininity to make herself less of a threat to male members of the clergy.

As the novel opens, we learn that Blandine, inspired by her 12th-century hero, will “exit her body.”

A former foster kid who’s now living in an apartment building known as the Rabbit Hutch, Blandine is a daring, defiant young woman who’s searching for divinity with scorching ferocity. Despite her persistence, she has not gone unscathed: She dropped out of high school after a complicated, crushing relationship with her charismatic theater teacher, and Gunty’s navigation of this trauma is one of the novel’s quietest strengths.

“We’re all just sleepwalking,” Blandine says. “I want to wake up. That’s my dream: to wake up.” As she moves toward wakefulness, Blandine becomes no less than a bona fide contemporary mystic, cultivating her own sense of belief and solidifying her existence as vital enough to subsist.

Redemption is possible, and Gunty’s novel consecrates this noble search.

—Cat Acree

Wake of War

By Zac Topping

cooked meal of Puerto Rican staples, followed by a nip of Irish whiskey.

A fake relationship is on the menu in Natalie Caña’s A Proposal They Can’t Refuse, which follows a passionate MIRA, $15.99 chef and a whiskey distiller 9780778386094 as they plot to save their businesses while outsmarting their grandfathers.

Talented chef Kamilah Vega feels held back at her family’s Puerto Rican restaurant, El Coquí. Her grandfather, the restaurant’s owner, gives Kamilah the green light to modernize the restaurant on one condition: He wants her to marry his best friend’s grandson, Liam Kane. Liam works for his family’s Irish whiskey distillery, which shares a building with El Coquí. And if Liam doesn’t marry Kamilah, his grandfather will sell the building that houses their businesses.

Liam and Kamilah are wonderful, prickly fun together, and as the two rediscover their childhood friendship and perhaps something more, Caña fills the world around them with nosy relatives, opinionated friends and plenty of workplace hijinks. No detail is spared when it comes to describing Kamilah’s bright, ingenious creations in the kitchen or the heady and sensuous ways whiskey is distilled and consumed. A Proposal They Can’t Refuse is a mouthwatering, satisfying delight; the only thing readers will be left longing for is a corresponding cookbook or cocktail guide.

—Amanda Diehl

© JAKE SNYDER—RED SKIES PHOTOGRAPHY

TASTING NOTES: A home-

TASTING NOTES: A piping hot cup of coffee strong enough to wake the dead.

U.S. Army veteran Zac Topping’s debut novel is a fast-paced military thriller set in the year 2037, a time when the United States is collapsing Forge, $26.99 under decades of public unrest 9781250814975 due to partisan divisions and a malfunctioning economy. A new rebel faction, the Revolutionist Front, has proven to be a haven for all those who are hellbent on justice and revenge.

This includes Sam Cross, a deadly sniper. Fighting for the other side is James Trent, who joined the U.S. Army not out of moral conviction but rather to earn a military scholarship for college.

Topping, who has served two tours in Iraq, does a phenomenal job of using dialogue and scene details to impart the raw and dangerous wartime conditions that surround his characters. He focuses on the impact that unrelenting pain and helplessness have on the human soul—and how the thirst for power can corrupt the best of intentions. Wake of War will resonate with all readers who enjoy thrillers that reflect real-world crises.

—Chika Gujarathi Visit BookPage.com to read our full reviews of all eight novels.

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whodunit

by bruce tierney To Kill a Troubadour

Everyone’s favorite French police chief Benoît Courrèges—aka, Bruno, Chief of Police—faces a new threat to his usually bucolic Périgord existence: Spanish terrorists protesting the Catalonia separatist movement. As Martin Walker’s To Kill a Troubadour (Knopf, $27, 9780593319796) opens, controversy swirls around “Song for Catalonia,” a wildly popular song that, because of its tacit support for the separatists, has recently been banned by the Spanish government. Les Troubadours, the music group that popularized the song, are gearing up for a free concert in Périgord that promises to be the best-attended event of the summer. Meanwhile, Spanish nationalist extremists have been observed crossing the border into France, intent on inflicting mayhem—or worse—on the assembled music lovers who have given voice to the separatist movement. Then a bullet is found in the wreckage of a recently stolen car, a bullet designed for a high-powered sniper rifle that can kill from several kilometers away. Bruno fears snipers will set their crosshairs on the crowd, on the band or on the songwriter, who openly sympathizes with the Catalonia movement, but the real scheme is much, much worse. But do not fear—despite the tenser-thanusual plot, all of Walker’s fan-favorite characters are present and accounted for, as well as all of Bruno’s treasured pastimes: sports competitions, gourmet cooking and, of course, his engaging basset hound, Balzac.

H The Shadow Lily Swedish author Johanna Mo returns with The Shadow Lily (Penguin, $17, 9780143136699), the suspense-laden second book in her series featuring police detective Hanna Duncker, who, after years of working in Stockholm’s urban center, has returned to her small island homeland of Öland. Both Hanna and the other islanders have mixed feelings about her return, as her father was convicted of one of the most brutal murders the community has ever seen. In her latest case, Hanna is tasked with locating a missing man and his infant son, knowing that as the hours tick by, the chances of finding them alive grow smaller and smaller. Mo employs alternating perspectives to great effect, using them to deepen the reader’s understanding of the events and the characters involved. One arc covers the final day of a character who is killed off relatively early in the narrative; in the second, we observe the day-to-day police procedural; in the third, Mo reveals the backstory of the victim from the first arc and the decisions that led to his untimely end. But most compelling of all, The Shadow Lily sheds further light on what drove Hanna back home: the visceral need to know the whole story about her father.

Death Doesn’t Forget Jing-nan, a dumpling stall operator in a Taipei night market, is not your typical food dude. He is a tech-savvy social media influencer, a born marketer—and an inadvertent sleuth. While Jing-nan is cursed with nefarious family members and cronies, Death Doesn’t Forget (Soho Crime, $27.95, 9781641293273) starts out with some good fortune: Jing-nan’s girlfriend’s mother, Siu-lien, wins half of a sizable lottery, which she must share with her ne’er-do-well boyfriend. But by the very next day, the good fortune has all dried up. The boyfriend has been killed, the winnings are in the wind and Jing-nan is on the hook for finding, if not the murderer, at least the missing money. Complicating matters further is the fact that Jing-nan’s girlfriend, Nancy, wants to get married. Barring that, she wants a proposal that she can consider, so that “the egg timer would be set . . . a countdown to either getting married or breaking up for good.” Siu-lien looks on this union with disfavor, but successfully returning her money would go a long way toward warming her chill toward Jing-nan. Author Ed Lin recounts all this cultural and familial interplay with good humor, peppering the text with Taiwanese bromides both old and new. (My favorite is this gem regarding prison terms: “Sentences handed down were longer than the gaps between Ang Lee films.”) With its great suspense and plot development, Death Doesn’t Forget is good fun all-round.

H The Murder Book Mark Billingham’s Detective Inspector Tom Thorne books are consistently excellent: easily some of the best police procedurals in print, with a complicated lead sleuth at their heart. But Billingham’s 18th entry in the popular series, The Murder Book (Atlantic Monthly, $26, 9780802159687), raises the bar considerably. In a twist that will thrill longtime fans, arch villain Stuart Nicklin, described as “the most dangerous psychopath [Thorne] has ever put behind bars,” is back for a return engagement.

This time, Nicklin is serving as Svengali for Rebecca Driver, a female serial killer who mutilates her victims a la the dictates of the three wise monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. For bonus points, she even honors a fourth monkey that is sometimes included in the traditional crew, along with the maxim “Do no evil.” (I will leave the details of Rebecca’s gruesome methodology to your imagination.) Nicklin’s own bad deeds were well chronicled in Thorne’s 12th adventure, The Bones Beneath, and suffice it to say that the intervening years have done nothing to mellow his penchant for brutality. Thorne turns to the ubiquitous British camera surveillance system to bring Rebecca to justice, but as Billingham takes pains to point out, surveillance cameras can be employed with devastating results on either side of the thin blue line. How, exactly? Thorne, and the reader, will soon find out.

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

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behind the book | natasha pulley

Prelude to Chernobyl Natasha Pulley reveals the horrifying true story that inspired her new thriller.

© JAMIE DREW

In The Half Life of Valery K, the titular Soviet scientist is released from a Siberian prison and transported to a town called City 40, which seems to be absolutely suffused with unhealthy levels of radiation. The most frightening thing? As Natasha Pulley reveals, towns like City 40 really did exist.

••• In the 1960s, across the Soviet Union, there were cities without real names. Instead, they had numbers that corresponded to P.O. boxes in towns miles away: Semipalatinsk 21, Chelyabinsk 40. Sometimes, even more ominously, they had code names like the Installation, the Terminal and the Lake. These cities did not appear on maps, the people who lived there couldn’t leave—many couldn’t even contact relatives on the outside—and they absolutely could not discuss what went on there.

These places were atomgrads: secret cities that hid the Soviet nuclear program.

It sounds like the plot of a Bond novel, but this system was actually an answer to the biggest problem the Soviet Union ever faced: how to keep the Americans from doing to Moscow what had been done to Hiroshima.

The Soviet Union had a formidable nuclear arsenal, but the atomgrads made it so that very few people knew where all the parts were, how they fit together—or what the consequences would be if someone tried a hot war instead of a cold one.

I didn’t know about any of this until recently; I just stumbled over it. When the TV show “Chernobyl” came out a couple of years he said. Nobody could accept that there had ago, I loved it so much I read Serhii Plokhy’s been a major nuclear disaster that stayed brilliant Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear secret. But it did.

Catastrophe for background. In it, he menAfter I read Medvedev’s book about the disaster, and saw the declassified CIA doctioned something that nearly knocked me off my chair. One of the reasons the scientists at uments he attached to it, I started writing.

I started learning Russian and looking at Chernobyl had some idea about what to do when the plant’s nuclear reactor melted down archive footage and poking through the webwas that this had happened before, at a place site for Rosatom, Russia’s current nuclear called Ozersk. Plokhy didn’t say anything else agency, which has plenty of information about about it in his book, so I started looking into it.

City 40. I did a course on nuclear physics so Ozersk is a code name, derived from the I could actually understand the documents I was finding. The picture that emerged was so Russian word ozero, which just means “lake.”

The Half Life of Valery K Its other name is Chelyabinsk 40, meaning City strange it could have been from a comic book, Bloomsbury, $28, 9781635573275 40. It was—and still is—part of that network of and I think that’s partly how it stayed secret. secret atomgrads. In the ’60s, City 40’s specialty The truth is so bizarre that it doesn’t sound Thriller was producing weapons-grade plutonium. like it can be right: hundreds of thousands of Late in 1958, something happened in City 40. We still don’t know exactly people exposed to radiation and radioactive land that remains dangerous what. But we do know that thousands of kilometers of land around City 40 today; widespread health problems even now because of it; and at the were irradiated. We also know that hundreds of people in a city 90 kiloheart of it, a facility called Mayak—the Lighthouse—that actually prometers away were admitted to the hospital duced the polonium that killed Alexander with radiation sickness. If people that far Litvinenko, a prominent critic of Russian “The truth is so bizarre that it away were that sick, the amount of radiation President Vladimir Putin, in 2006. doesn’t sound like it can be right.”

All this led to The Half Life of Valery K, released must have been enormous.

But unlike Chernobyl, hardly anyone in which is about a scientist sent to work at City 40 in 1963, and what happens when he starts staring too hard at the West has heard of City 40, even today. In fact, when Soviet scientist Zhores Medvedev broke the news of it to the Western press in the 1970s, its secrets.

—Natasha Pulley nobody believed him. A lot of Western scientists outright rubbished what

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reviews | fiction

H The Last White Man

By Mohsin Hamid

Literary Fiction Like Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel, The Last White Man (Riverhead, $26, 9780593538814), awakens one morning to find that he’s undergone a startling change. But instead of assuming the form of an insect, Anders, who went to sleep a white man, rises to discover that his skin has “turned a deep and undeniable brown.” Hamid, whose previous novel, Exit West, explored the plight of refugees and the issue of immigration through the lens of magical realism, now employs a similar technique to consider the concept of race in this thoughtful allegory.

Once Anders overcomes his initial shock and summons the courage to re-enter the world in his changed condition, he discovers, to his surprise (if not necessarily relief), that his altered appearance is “not unique, nor contagious.”

When he returns to the gym, he finds himself suddenly contemplating the possibility of a

H Cat Brushing

By Jane Campbell

Short Stories Forging an entire short fiction collection around a single theme—and delivering one truly original tale after another—is trickier than it sounds.

It’s too easy to fall into the trap of repetition and rhythm, making each tale read like the last one, just with the serial numbers filed off. Jane Campbell’s first book, which she’s publishing in her 80th year, maintains a thorough sense of originality while delivering a stunning range of works on the inner lives of older women. The stories in Cat Brushing (Grove, $26, 9780802160027) cross genres and boundaries, daring the reader to meditate on previously unexplored (or at the very least, rarely explored) perspectives on aging, sexuality, violence and beyond.

In “Susan and Miffy,” a woman develops an unlikely sensual connection with her beautiful caregiver, challenging both of their notions about attraction. In “Lockdown Fantasms,” extreme pandemic isolation leads to a new program that sends government-sponsored spirits

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different relationship with the “dark-skinned cleaning guy,” but Anders’ interactions become increasingly strained. Through his eyes, and those of his girlfriend, Oona, a yoga instructor who must “will herself to see Anders” in the man who, in reality, is different only in a superficial way, Hamid subtly exposes how judgments of others are so often based on the most superficial characteristics, like skin color.

Hamid only alludes to the dislocation that results from the gradual but inexorable physical transformation of more and more people in the unnamed town and country where the novel is set. Mentions of riots and kidnappings give a sense that society is spinning out of control and hint at the breadth of the disruption, but the struggles of Anders and Oona remain in the foreground.

But Hamid doesn’t confine his attention to The Last White Man’s theme of racial identity. This is also a novel about families, and

into the homes of the “over-seventies” to keep them company. In “Lamia,” a woman returns to the site of an old fling in an effort to recapture something in her own dangerous nature.

In “Kindness,” a retired woman in a beachside retirement complex makes a choice that will change not one life, but three. And in the title story, a woman living with her son and his new wife explores the anxieties and uncertainties of existence while grooming her beloved pet.

The baker’s dozen of tales that make up Cat Brushing are all delivered through lean, incisive, witty prose that calls to mind the calculated directness of Ernest Hemingway and the furious expressiveness of Joyce Carol Oates.

Campbell’s sentences are solid, imposing, often free of adornment in terms of punctuation, and each one seems carefully crafted to get to the core of a certain emotional truth. Whether she’s writing a first-person or third-person narrative, Campbell’s wisdom, passion and honesty come through, imbuing the collection with an elegant, often lyrical power.

Within these women’s stories of loss, desire, pain and memory, we discover the feeling of holding onto something primal even as the world seems determined to forget that side of us. To capture such complexity in one story is powerful, but for Campbell to do so 13 times makes Cat Brushing one of the most compelling fiction collections you’ll find this year.

—Matthew Jackson

specifically about the complex relationships between adult children and their parents. Anders’ father, who’s entering the final phase of a terminal illness, is baffled by his son’s changed appearance, and yet he provides a safe haven when white vigilantes arrive at Anders’ door.

Oona’s mother, in contrast, is terrified by the present events, her anxiety fueled by the apocalyptic conspiracy theories she consumes obsessively on television and the internet. For both Anders and Oona, the limits of filial love are put to the test.

In recent years, and increasingly since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there have been countless sociological and political analy­ ses of Americans’ fraught encounters with the construct of race. Hamid adds a worthy voice to the conversation and reminds us yet again that fiction sometimes provides the most direct path to truth.

—Harvey Freedenberg

H The Librarian Spy

By Madeline Martin

Historical Fiction In spring 1943, Ava Harper is perfectly happy with her job in the Rare Book Room at the Library of Congress, where she spends her days among “fragrant, yellowed pages.” But as World War II rages on, Ava is pressed into service for a covert government operation that involves information-gathering from newspapers, magazines and other texts published in neutral territories. Eager to do her part to end the war in which her brother is fighting, Ava resolves to get to work.

However, when she arrives in the neutral country of Portugal, Ava learns that her job entails so much more than promised. She finds Lisbon filled with refugees, “their arms laden with sacks of belongings, battered suitcases, and children. Languages from all over Europe rose from the crowd, blending French, German, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and many more into the cacophonous hum.” Desperate for passage to the United States, the refugees are all

reviews | fiction scrambling to secure visas and tickets on ships that may or may not arrive.

Among the publications Ava gathers is an issue of Combat, a periodical printed by resistance fighters in Lyon, France. Within its pages is a coded message about a Jewish mother and son in hiding. Deeply affected by the anguish she sees in Portugal, Ava connects with the Frenchwoman responsible for printing Combat, and together they race to save the family.

It feels strange to describe a book about the miseries of World War II as entertaining, but The Librarian Spy (Hanover Square, $17.99, 9781335426918) is a truly captivating read.

Bestselling author Madeline Martin (The Last Bookshop in London) is known for her deeply researched historical fiction and romance novels, and as Ava’s story unfolds, readers can practically smell the bica, a Portuguese coffee drink, and feel the hunger, terror and cold afflicting the French as they endure the Nazi occupation. It is a delight to be carried through these experiences by Ava, an endearing, quiet bookworm who finds her purpose despite the odds.

—Amy Scribner

Mario meet Don Vázquez, the baddest of the bad and the head of the Juárez Cartel, they try to exchange pleasantries: “Thank you, Brian,” Don Vázquez replies, “but I was just telling your friend Mario that meeting me is never a pleasure; meeting me is something that happens to people because they have made a bad decision.”

As with most noir narratives, this one is rife with bad decisions, many of them lethal. Iglesias does masterful work with Mario’s internal narration as he puzzles over which of his partners poses the greatest potential threat. Much of the novel switches back and forth between Spanish and English, and both languages are integral to the story, making them all the more worthwhile to comprehend.

The world of The Devil Takes You Home is harsh and unforgiving, its desert the most treacherous terrain. Iglesias does such a place justice in his brawny, serpentine and remarkably poignant novel.

—Thane Tierney

H The Devil Takes You Home

By Jamie Ford

By Gabino Iglesias

Crime Fiction Somewhere out in the fictional desert between “Breaking Bad” and No Country for Old Men, death is stalking its next victim in Gabino Iglesias’ spellbinding third novel, The Devil Takes You Home (Mulholland, $28, 9780316426916). The word spellbinding is used advisedly here, because the novel’s interweaving of fantastical elements with sudden and savage violence will leave unwary readers stunned.

It’s a story as old as Job: A good guy, beset by horrible circumstances, tries to preserve his faith and sanity in the face of unrelenting misery. In the biblical tale, Job holds fast to his soul; in this one, Mario goes down a darker road. Overwhelmed by medical expenses and offered a chance to make some quick money as a hit man, Mario hesitates only for a moment before packing heat and becoming an avenging angel.

It’s not uncommon for those who live in the shadow of criminality to dream of one big score that will put them on easy street, and Mario's friend Brian offers him a piece of this dream: They will claim one cartel’s shipment of money for a different cartel and thus receive a handsome chunk of the reward. When Brian and

H The Many Daughters of

Afong Moy

Family Saga The bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet returns with another spellbinding tale of memory’s power to bind us together. At once heartbreaking and uplifting, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy (Atria, $28, 9781982158217) connects women who are generations and worlds apart.

Dorothy Moy lives in Seattle in 2045. A depressive and anxious 31-year-old poet, Dorothy experiences flashbacks, but not of her own experiences; she sees people and places that are unfamiliar to her. Then Dorothy’s 5-yearold daughter, Annabel, begins to exhibit peculiar behavior, describing visions she’s seen and talking about a boy looking for her. Hoping to spare her daughter a life of perpetual disquiet, Dorothy turns to epigenetics, the study of how behavior and trauma can be passed down through generations. She begins experimental therapy to discover the origins of her mysterious memories.

Ford’s writing is seductive as he intertwines the lives of Dorothy, Annabel and their ancestors within a rich swirl of history and imagination. We meet Afong, inspired by the first Chinese woman to immigrate to the U.S. in 1834, who tours the country as a spectacle for theatergoers; Lai King Moy, a young girl living

through the bubonic plague outbreak in early 1900s San Francisco; Faye Moy, a nurse in her 50s who’s serving with the Flying Tigers, a combat air squadron, to fight against the Japanese during World War II; Zoe Moy, a student at an unconventional boarding school in 1927 England; and Greta Moy, a single woman in 2014 who develops a dating app just for women.

As Ford unravels the intriguing stories behind Dorothy’s recollections, he leads readers through her process of reconciling inherited memory with her present reality. The unfurling of ancestry and the passage of time are masterfully controlled and poetic, sumptuous and stark. Each time period is as expansive as the next, and within these eras, Ford plumbs the different sociocultural views and the changing roles and expectations of women, all while highlighting his strong characterization.

Exploring the bonds that transcend physical space, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy is an enthralling, centuries-spanning tale, a masterful saga that’s perfect for fans of The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain.

—Maya Fleischmann

The Poet’s House

By Jean Thompson

Literary Fiction Definitions differ, but many people eventually discover the value in approaching life’s challenges with at least a modicum of grace. Grace and its manifestations are at the heart of The Poet’s House (Algonquin, $27, 9781643751566), Jean Thompson’s charming novel about a young California woman with a learning disability who figures out her place in life with the help of an unexpected mentor: the acclaimed poet whose garden she tends.

Carla is in her early 20s and working for a landscaping company in Northern California.

She didn’t finish college, in part because, as she puts it, “I have one of those brains that doesn’t process words on a page very well.” Her world consists mainly of her job, where she works for a guy who, in one of Thompson’s many beautiful pinpoint details, “was always convinced that his sweaty charms impressed the lady clients.”

Carla also maintains relationships with her boyfriend, Aaron, who works in the IT department of a bank, and her mother, who wants Carla to consider a medical career.

Carla has never given any thought to poetry and assumes all poets “wore berets and drank too much.” But then she starts tending the

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reviews | fiction garden of Viridian, a 70-something poet’s poet with only one published book to her name and a considerable air of mystery. Part of the mystery derives from her relationship years earlier with Mathias, “the most famous, brilliant poet of his era.” Many people believe that Mathias destroyed a new cycle of poems before his death by suicide at age 35, but Viridian has a copy of them. The only problem: She won’t tell anyone where the poems are, even though their publication would give her the financial windfall she desperately needs.

Part of the fun of The Poet’s House is in its small details and memorable descriptions, such as when Thompson writes that Viridian’s attire is “equal parts yoga practice and Star Wars costuming.” But the biggest pleasures are Carla’s evolution, the many well-drawn characters and subtle pokes at the competitiveness of the literary world. The novel occasionally takes too long to develop its themes on its way to a tidy conclusion, but this doesn’t distract from its ample joys, not least of which is Carla’s recognition that she is like the finest poems: complex and wondrous, with hidden mysteries and graces that aren’t immediately apparent.

—Michael Magras

H Cyclorama

By Adam Langer

Literary Fiction In Adam Langer’s sixth novel, The Diary of Anne Frank acts as the backdrop to a group of student actors’ formative experiences, which are carried forward into the cultural and political conflicts of the early 21st century.

Cyclorama (Bloomsbury, $27, 9781635578065) begins at a magnet high school in the northern suburbs of Chicago in 1982.

Tyrus Densmore, an imperious and wildly inappropriate director of the school’s drama program, is holding auditions for a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. When the role of Peter Van Daan goes to inexperienced underclassman Franklin Light instead of seasoned senior Declan Spengler, it sets off a series of cataclysmic events, including a sexual assault, among the young cast.

Tyrus is the kind of teacher who exploits his students’ fears and insecurities, especially those who are undersupervised or from single-parent families. When Franklin goes to Tyrus’ home for a costume fitting, two other students, Robert Rubicoff and Eileen Muldoon, witness Tyrus commit what looks like nonconsensual sexual

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actions. Robert and Eileen plan to expose Tyrus on the night of the cast party, but their plot not only fails to entrap their teacher but also puts several other students in grave jeopardy.

Thirty years later, on the eve of the 2016 election, Tyrus is still teaching. His former students may no longer live in his vicinity, but many of them still feel, decades later, that their lives were shaped by his abuse. When someone comes forward with an allegation that dates back to the early 1980s, the consequences ripple through the entire Anne Frank cast in unexpected ways.

Cyclorama is an often funny, slightly messy but mostly deeply moving novel about the ways unresolved trauma affects the life choices we make, including the paths we take in our careers, the partners we choose and the politics we support. It’s also a novel about how the bonds of friendship can transcend adolescent vulnerabilities and motivate us to work for change. Langer treats these teenage upheavals with a light hand, and though the novel occasionally takes some shortcuts in character development, the results are generous to its flawed cast.

In theater, a cyclorama is a cylindrical curtain or wall that’s positioned to form a panoramic background for the staged action. Like such a device, Langer’s novel reveals how the past echoes through the present and continues to shape our futures.

—Lauren Bufferd

H The Kingdoms of

Savannah

By George Dawes Green

Mystery G eorge Dawes Green made a huge splash on the literary scene with his mid1990s bestsellers, The Caveman’s Valentine and The Juror. The release of his critically acclaimed third novel, Ravens, came 14 years later. And now, 13 years after that, Green is back with the intriguing and immersive The Kingdoms of Savannah (Celadon, $27.99, 9781250767448), a darkly mesmerizing mystery that will enthrall readers with its original premise and characters as Green escorts them through the titular city’s glittering society circles, criminal underworld and extensive homeless community, all rife with terrible secrets past and present.

While Savannah, Georgia, has, as one character muses, “all the conviviality and the outrageous beauty and the characters and the sunlight and the aromas,” it also “rests upon a bed of history so vile no novelist could invent it,” as the

author writes in a note at the book’s beginning.

What Green did invent, though, is the wealthy and powerful Musgroves, a white family whose roots in the city reach back to the 1800s.

When Luke, a young man experiencing homelessness, is found stabbed to death in a decrepit building and his friend Stony, a 43-year-old Black woman who works as a contract archaeologist, goes missing, Morgana Musgrove is hired to investigate. (One of her late husband’s many businesses was a detective agency, you see.) The owner of the building where Luke’s body was found is the mobster-esque Archie Guzman, and he’s offering a lot of money for answers as to what happened. But why does Guzman care about Luke and Stony? And why is he insisting Morgana play detective?

Morgana’s granddaughter Jaq, an amateur documentarian, and estranged son Ransom, who’s been living at an encampment under the highway, join her on the case. The trio pingpongs off one another in ways that are both entertaining and poignant, their different life experiences and painful histories affecting how they see both one another and the case. Family secrets bubble up to the surface even as the trio ruffles society-­ people feathers and ignores you’d-better-­backoff threats. Their quest for truth takes them into marvelous mansions and homeless encampments, police stations and dive bars. All the while, ghost-tour carriages rattle by in the background, serving as chilling reminders of tragedy twisted into glib entertainment.

Green’s historical notes at the end of the book offer fascinating details about the real-life people and events that inspired him to write The Kingdoms of Savannah, which is a masterful and multifaceted work: finely crafted mystery, thought-provoking social commentary and an indelible portrait of a complicated city.

—Linda M. Castellitto

H Properties of Thirst

By Marianne Wiggins

Historical Fiction As a longtime teacher of American literature, I find myself with an aversion to novels that claim to be the next American epic in the tradition of John Steinbeck, particularly when they’re about World War II. These novels, purporting to be the next necessary heart-wrenching tale of wartime heroism, are seemingly everywhere, but rarely do they live up to expectations. Properties of Thirst (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781416571261) defies, dispels

feature | sci-fi & fantasy retellings and demolishes those expectations and biases in the best way.

Centered on the bombing of Pearl Harbor and its aftermath, Marianne Wiggins’ masterful novel is a story of land and water, of family, home and connection. For years, the Los Angeles Water Department has impinged upon Rocky Rhodes’ ranch. He’s maintained the property, fought for it and made it a home for his children—twins Sunny and Stryker—as they mourn their mother’s death.

As Stryker heads to war just before the bombing at Pearl Harbor, the Rhodes’ fiercely protected land becomes neighbor to a Japanese incarceration facility. Schiff, a Jewish man from the Department of the Interior, arrives to oversee the project. He finds himself intrigued by Sunny, and their lives twine and overlap over the course of the novel.

It’s a challenge to probe such a dark chapter of American history while properly doing justice to the ways that government policies impact both people and the landscape. The novel’s title, Properties of Thirst, introduces an extended metaphor for this exploration: Each section opens with a property of thirst (“the first property of thirst is the element of surprise,” “the ninth property of thirst is submersion,” etc.), framing the novel’s world as one where water is scarce and desire is rampant. As Wiggins uses this lens to explore questions about our history, readers won’t be able to look away.

Wiggins’ characters are raw and honest; they’re layered and human and fully realized people, from the ways they learn to communicate through their memories of traditions, food and holidays, to the connections they make through literature, particularly that of the Transcendentalists, those purveyors of idealism and individualism.

Wiggins’ writing, which can be fragmented or polished depending on the page, opens up microscopic universes and sprawling landscapes alike. It’s a joy to read. The opening line, “You can’t save what you don’t love,” echoes throughout the novel, grounding and justifying the reader’s journey toward a better understanding of what that love is and the power it holds.

In the novel’s afterword, readers learn that Properties of Thirst was completed after Wiggins’ stroke in 2016. While sitting in the author’s hospital room, her daughter, Lara Porzak, read the unfinished manuscript aloud, hoping that her mother’s “words could and would heal her brain, somehow creating a parallel existence: her shadow self living a shadow life reading her former self’s words.” Over time, the author, her daughter and editor David Ulin brought this book to the world, and in this backstory of creative collaboration, we witness the real process of saving what is loved. We are lucky, as readers, to experience the result.

—Freya Sachs

A matter of perspective New takes on “Rapunzel” and The Island of Doctor Moreau pull readers into worlds both familiar and strange.

These superbly crafted retellings present an opportunity to revisit tales that are all too well known—but still have the ability to surprise.

sense of dread—but will also compel readers to keep going to the very end.

The Book of Gothel

H The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Framed as a medieval text found in a German woman’s attic, The Book of Gothel (Redhook, $28, 9780316393119) centers on the woman who became the witch who imprisoned Rapunzel in her tower. As a young girl, however, Haelewise is neither powerful nor a witch.

She is merely an outsider, marked by both her intermittent fainting spells and her deep, black eyes. Her mother, Hedda, is the respected local midwife, but most in their village believe that Haelewise’s fainting spells are of demonic origin.

After her mother dies and her father remarries, Haelewise takes refuge in a secluded tower called Gothel, where she becomes an apprentice to a wise woman.

But despite her existence on the margins of her world, Haelewise is soon pulled into intrigue, from princesses fleeing cruel fiancés to princes with wicked spells cast upon them. With secrets behind every whisper, Haelewise must tread carefully if she is to survive.

Mary McMyne’s debut novel is dark and moody, full of distrust, doubt and more than a little bit of drama. Far from being a simple villain origin story, it explores Haelewise’s family, her epilepsy and the stark world of 12th-­century Germania.

Despite the bleak nature of the era, McMyne’s prose is full of vivid color, whether it’s the mysterious golden fruit that Haelewise finds growing in Hedda’s garden or the madder-­ red gown given to Haelewise by a childhood friend turned would-be lover. It’s a world where Christianity and older religions and traditions coexist but where even a hint of witchcraft could put herbalists and midwives in danger of being stoned.

This atmosphere, combined with the deep longings and confusion of a girl just entering womanhood and the fact that readers have a good idea of the fate that awaits her, shadows The Book of Gothel with an overwhelming

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (Del Rey, $28, 9780593355336) starts in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in the 19th century, as the titular doctor is looking for an assistant. He hires Montgomery Laughton, an Englishman with alcoholism and a mountain of debt. Montgomery helps the doctor create human-animal hybrids, which are destined to work the plantations of Dr. Moreau’s wealthy benefactor.

Carlota Moreau, the doctor’s daughter, leads a carefree life on the estate, with hybrid companions and her studies to keep her company. The only thing marring her life is a lingering childhood illness that requires her to have weekly injections of one of her father’s mysterious serums.

When the handsome son of Dr. Moreau’s benefactor, Eduardo Lizalde, unexpectedly visits, the estate is thrown into total dis­ array as the Moreaus’ secrets are pulled slowly into the light.

Moreno-Garcia (Mexican Gothic) is a master of dramatic tension. Her decision to reimagine H.G. Wells’ visionary 1896 novel on an isolated estate instead of an island creates a sense of furtiveness, a constant fear of discovery. Carlota, who is not a character from the original book, gives a human face to an inhuman (or, at the very least, inhumane) story, adding something precious that could be lost if the delicate equilibrium of the estate is unbalanced.

Moreno-Garcia revels in her setting’s tropical color palette, which is reflected in the rich green of Eduardo’s eyes and the bold colors of Carlota’s dresses. The author also includes small, down-to-earth details of pastoral life on the estate, resulting in a world that feels immediate enough to slip into. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau will pull readers in even as a pit grows in their stomachs, given all the things they know can—and likely will—go wrong.

—Laura Hubbard

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reviews | nonfiction

H Dirtbag, Massachusetts

By Isaac Fitzgerald

Memoir Isaac Fitzgerald grabs readers’ attention with the title of his memoir—Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional (Bloomsbury, $27, 9781635573978)—and never lets go. He’s a mesmerizing storyteller who deploys unexpected delights from his very first line: “My parents were married when they had me, just to different people.” Not only that, but they “met at divinity school, which is a pretty funny way to start an affair.”

Fitzgerald’s raucous life started in low-­ income housing in Boston’s South End. In the soup kitchen that he frequented, he was “surrounded by stories of the highest comedy and the deepest tragedy, by the sounds of pealing laughter and suffering silence.” True to that upbringing, he fills the 12 essays in Dirtbag,

H Fruit Punch

By Kendra Allen

Memoir Poet Kendra Allen’s Fruit Punch ( Ec c o, $26.99, 9780063048539) is a sensitive and lyrical collage of the sexuality and violence she experienced during her Dallas childhood.

Writing in masterfully composed vignettes as vivid and fleeting as real memories, Allen excavates the anger, powerlessness and wonder she experienced as a young Black girl learning to navigate the world.

Radiating from Fruit Punch’s center is a hauntingly precise meditation on the body, as Allen celebrates the vibrancy of childhood play alongside the many ways this joy can be, and was, squashed when she was sexually abused by a family member. It’s a skillful observation of how Black female bodies are hypersexualized, objectified and aggressed starting in childhood.

Allen’s mother, L.A., also survived this pattern and feared it would repeat with her own children. Allen writes about how, when she was 9, “L.A. gets terrified for me this year; fearing for my whereabouts and making sure to ask me about my body and who is touching it or had it already been touched.”

What makes Fruit Punch truly dazzling is

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Massachusetts with heaping helpings of humor, joy, pain, sorrow, grace and insight. Throughout, Fitzgerald writes in carefully chosen prose that reveals “just enough that you know it wasn’t pretty.”

The topics range from his upbringing in the Roman Catholic Church to life in an old mill town in central Massachusetts where he endured his father’s violence and his mother’s mania. Despite all of this, his parents instilled him with a deep love of literature, and his education continued when he applied to a nearby boarding school as a means of escaping home.

Throughout his gritty life, Fitzgerald has filled an incredible variety of roles: an often drunk, high, shoplifting teenager; a biker who found happiness working in a San Francisco bar; a

relief worker in Myanmar; an actor in porn movies. More recently, he has talked books on the “Today” show and written the children’s book How to Be a Pirate. Indeed, this is a man who writes equally well about Sara Crewe, the heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess, and Gavin McInnes, the founder of the neo-fascist group Proud Boys.

With Dirtbag, Massachusetts, Fitzgerald joins the ranks of some of the very best memoirists, including Tobias Wolff, Tara Westover and Dani Shapiro. This entertaining and thoughtful book reveals Fitzgerald’s talents as a master craftsman of unusual insight and will leave readers eager for more.

—Alice Cary

how Allen hunts for the slippery traces of celebration amid the visceral pain of girlhood. This is not a straightforward lamentation of trauma and the loss of innocence but a fully rendered vision of childhood’s many facets. In that sense, her words both disrupt and sparkle. She doesn’t only experience fear; she also dances in laundromats to Brandy and Britney Spears and breaks the rules of her great-great-uncle’s “No uncrossed ankles / No questions” Southern Baptist church.

Fruit Punch is a startling, unique and deeply poetic work from a writer on the rise.

—Celia Mattison

after 9/11, they have become more uncertain than ever about U.S. missions.

But active duty and retired military personnel have become more uncertain too. In an enlightening new book, Paths of Dissent (Metropolitan, $26.99, 9781250870179), a diverse group of veterans who volunteered and served in those wars tell us what they saw, did and learned. In these original essays, selected by co-editors Andrew Bacevich and Daniel A. Sjursen for their candor and eloquence, the contributors share their reasons for deciding to serve, why they became disillusioned and why they now feel the need to speak out about “military policies that they deem ill advised, illegal, or morally unconscionable.”

Erik Edstrom, a West Point graduate, was an infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan, where he “saw the systematic dehumanization and devaluation of Afghan lives on a regular basis. . . . It’s one of America’s deepest ironies: in efforts to ‘prevent terrorism’ in our country, we commit far larger acts of terrorism elsewhere,” he writes. Joy Damiani was an enlisted public affairs specialist who served two tours in Iraq. “According to the Army’s official narrative,” she writes, “the war was always in the process of being won. There were never any mistakes, never any defeats, and certainly never any failures.” Buddhika Jayamaha was an airborne infantryman in Iraq.

He and many others “felt that the extreme hubris of American politicians and the commentariat was responsible for the mess in Iraq.”

Bacevich, who served for 23 years in the Army, including in Vietnam, writes that “genuine

H Paths of Dissent

Edited by Andrew Bacevich & Daniel A. Sjursen

Military Since 1973, when President Richard Nixon and Congress created the all-­ volunteer force as an alternative to conscripted military service, there has been a division between the American public and the military. Less than one-half of 1% of our population currently serves on active duty. And as the public has watched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue on for years

reviews | nonfiction military dissent is patriotic.” Any citizen who wants to better understand our country’s current military entrapments will want to read this book.

—Roger Bishop

This Story Will Change

By Elizabeth Crane

Memoir ​​“I’m not happy.”

Those three words set the end of novelist Elizabeth Crane’s marriage into motion. After 15 years of repeated promises from Crane’s husband that he wasn’t going anywhere, he changed the narrative. During those years, he had also promised to tell Crane before he became involved with someone else. That promise he kept.

But a relationship is a living thing, and as Crane writes her way through her marriage, she reveals shifts that were taking place all along.

In This Story Will Change (Counterpoint, $26, 9781640094789), Crane uses her narrative skills to excavate her relationship.

Crane (The History of Great Things) writes in the third person, creating emotional distance as though she can objectively describe the dissolution of her own marriage. This technique makes the memoir read more like a novel, akin to Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation with short, punchy chapters and unflinching self-analysis.

(One chapter is, appropriately, titled “Doesn’t This All Seem Pretty Common and Not Unusual or Even Awful at All in a Long-Term Marriage?”

Another chapter, which is only three sentences long, acknowledges that this is a one-sided story, the wife’s story.) But the occasional shift into first person jars the reader into recalling that this intimate recollection is actually the author’s own experience.

Repeating themes surface throughout this retelling, just as a couple often revisits the same arguments throughout their relationship. Among them is Crane’s husband’s claim: “I don’t think you’d be a good mother.” These words haunted Crane for years—until she spent time with an old journal and realized her husband had never actually said that at all. She had sharpened his actual comment—that she would be a good mom but would worry a lot—into a weapon she used for self-flagellation for years.

Memory is unreliable, and our own stories shift through faulty recollection.

As Crane recounts separating from her husband and setting up a temporary home with a friend in New York City, pleasure mingles with pain. Sublimely happy moments—a first Christmas without her husband—dissolve into

her sadness at being alone. But a post-split tattoo reveals Crane’s ongoing optimism: “It says love.

With a period after it, like a decree,” she writes. “I still believe in it. Sometimes like Santa. But I do.”

—Carla Jean Whitley

H Body Language

Edited by Nicole Chung & Matt Ortile

Essays Thirty writers consider the myriad ways a human body can exist in the world in Body Language (Catapult, $16.95, 9781646221318). The thoughtful essays in this anthology, brought together by Catapult editors Nicole Chung and Matt Ortile, touch on everything from death, eating disorders and racism to sex and taking self-portraits while transitioning, but one theme connects them all: how these writers celebrate the existence of their bodies, and what these revelations can tell us about ourselves.

In the opening essay, “The Crematorium,” the late poet Nina Riggs gently folds soft waves of grief and perceptive humor into the details of preparing her mother’s body for cremation. In “Smother Me,” essayist and fiction writer Natalie Lima describes her sometimes funny, sometimes harrowing experiences of dating as a fat woman, including the particular desire her body arouses in men—and the power she has over them. In novelist Bryan Washington’s essay, “View From the Football Field,” readers are rewarded with an intimate look at what it’s like to grow up playing football in Texas as a Black teenager. Poet and novelist Destiny Birdsong serves up a blistering critique of medical racism in “Karen Medicine.” Author Jess Zimmerman begins her essay “It Doesn’t Hurt, It Hurts All the Time” by exploring the sensation of pain before pivoting to a powerful depiction of the ways our society has been traumatized by the COVID-19 pandemic.

All of the essays in this collection are poignant, and readers will find its diverse list of contributors especially refreshing. That, coupled with the sharp quality of the writing, makes Body Language a standout work. Its dedication to showcasing a multitude of voices and perspectives adds excitement to the reading experience; as you turn the pages, you never know what you’ll read or learn about next.

In writer and editor Hannah Walhout’s essay, she explains how being a tall woman has defined her life. This theme—taking up space, perhaps more than society allows—underpins many of the essays throughout Body Language, which

work together to present the central contradiction of life in a physical body. As Walhout puts it, “We do not have inherent control over our own bodies. In fact, human bodies are sometimes not what they appear and have endless potential for change.”

—Sarojini Seupersad

Picasso’s War

By Hugh Eakin

History By the mid-20th century, Pa b l o Picasso’s paintings and sculptures were turning heads in Europe, ushering in cubism. At this same moment, American art was dominated by a devotion to realism and the old masters, and therefore resistant to and repulsed by the “modern art” of Picasso. But in 1939, that all changed. Hugh Eakin’s Picasso’s War (Crown, $32.99, 9780451498489) tells the scintillating tale of how John Quinn, Alfred H. Barr Jr. and others brought Picasso’s work to America and changed the face of American art.

Irish American lawyer Quinn was a great collector of avant-garde art. He wanted to promote painters and writers who could “express the values and forces of his own time,” Eakin writes. After he met Picasso, the artist started reserving his best work for Quinn, who built a modest collection. Quinn dreamed of opening a museum devoted explicitly to modern art, since the Metropolitan Museum of Art excluded such art as “degenerate.” He never saw his wish come true, however. He died of cancer in 1924.

In 1926, Barr took up Quinn’s vision for such a museum and, three years later, opened the Museum of Modern Art using pieces from Quinn’s collection. Barr worked incessantly to open a show devoted to Picasso, but he was hampered at several turns by challenges from Parisian art dealers and even by Picasso himself.

By the late 1930s, though, as Adolf Hitler’s campaign against so-called degenerate art ramped up and museums and galleries in Paris began removing and hiding certain paintings, Picasso and his dealer tried to get as many of the artist’s paintings as possible to America. Such forces enabled Barr to put on his 1939 Picasso exhibit and to secure a place in the American cultural world not only for Picasso but also for the Museum of Modern Art. Eakin’s rapturous storytelling makes Picasso’s War a spellbinding, page-turning read about this illuminating chapter in cultural history.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

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q&a | mason deaver

What a feeling Sometimes our hearts can be so clueless. Neil Kearney finds this out the hard way when his friends-with-benefits catches feelings. Neil doesn’t reciprocate, so now he’s lost not only a steady hookup but also a date to his brother’s wedding.

The solution? Neil ropes his obnoxiously earnest, annoyingly hardworking, aggravatingly kind boarding school roommate, Wyatt Fowler, into pretending to be boyfriends for the weeklong nuptial festivities.

Sure, Neil and Wyatt can hardly stand each other (Wyatt wears Crocs, for goodness sake!), but what’s the worst that can happen in a week?

Acclaimed author Mason Deaver’s third YA novel, The Feeling of Falling in Love, is a rom-com romp about finding love and yourself when you least expect it.

© MASON DEAVER

Mason Deaver’s heartfelt, trope-tastic, laugh-till-your-sides-hurt novel is the best YA rom-com of the summer.

further from the truth. Some trans people want surgery, and nothing can be more affirming. Others are fine with just having one surgery over the other. Some might not want surgery at all or even to undergo hormone replacement therapy. There’s no one singular way to be trans, and so long as you’re comfortable with where you are in your journey, nothing else has to matter.

I very much wanted to explore how different trans experiences can be. Neil is at a place in his journey where he wanted top surgery but not bottom surgery, where he was offered the chance to cover his scars but decided they’re a point of pride for him. He’s very proud of his trans body, and he likes who he is, for the most part.

How would you describe Neil and Wyatt when we first meet them?

Neil and Wyatt start the book in very opposite places.

Neil begins the book in (what I think he’d believe is) a time of contentment. He has friends, he has his thing with Josh, he’s away from his family. Wyatt really is the only thing that concerns him.

Wyatt, however, is frustrated, a fish out of water in a school full of people who make them feel unwelcome, away from their family when they’d love to be H The Feeling of Falling in Love back home, doing double the work just to make sure PUSH, $18.99, 9781338777666 The novel includes a number of what I’d call near they can maintain their place at a prestigious school kisses, when it seems like Neil and Wyatt are defithey’d probably rather not be at.

Young Adult nitely going to kiss, but don’t. Be honest: Did you But as we move along to the wedding, Neil feels ever laugh an evil laugh while writing these? more unwelcome because of who his family is and how they treat him, Absolutely I evil laugh. I love these fake-out moments, these just misses. and while Wyatt might not feel at home around Neil’s family, they’re able It adds so much to the characters, gives them so much to reflect on, these to handle the situation better than Neil. It’s a chance for Wyatt to underfleeting moments when something could’ve happened, but didn’t. stand where Neil is coming from and what he’s gone through, while Neil comes to understand how his actions have made Wyatt feel.

I think that’s what makes them both perfect for each other: They’re missToward the end of the novel, Neil’s cousin tells him, “Love is a risk, ing what the other has, and they’re never afraid to challenge each other. okay? Every single person in love takes a risk every single day of their lives.” What advice would you give someone who, like Neil, finds love absolutely terrifying?

The Feeling of Falling in Love has such great tropes, including a That entire ending is a conversation with myself, I think. Being trans and time-constrained plot, fake dating, a wedding and an enemies-to-lovers romance. What do you love about these tropes? wanting love are two things that always seem at odds with each other.

This book has some of my favorite tropes, even ones you didn’t mention, Wanting a relationship with someone means outing myself and having like a grumpy/sunshine dynamic and a height difference. But enemies­-tothat conversation, something that could potentially go very badly and lovers (or enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, rather) is an absolute favorite of end things. Or, possibly worse, they just don’t understand your identity.

It’s a scary thing, asking someone to love you, and it’s never just once. mine. I love exploring just why these characters dislike each other—someLove is a risk you take every single day, and it’s never one of those things times for valid reasons, other times for something shallow and silly—and watching as they slowly find common ground, a connection. that gets less scary, you just learn how to deal with it on a day-to-day basis.

That’s what Neil is struggling with: letting someone in who could posNeil’s reflections on his relationship to his body after gender-­ sibly hurt him, letting someone see the uglier side of him, working on confirmation surgery are so powerful and complex. Why was it importhimself to keep this relationship alive. It’s the lesson he learns in the book, ant to you to include these moments in the story? that love is a risk worth taking.

—Stephanie Appell Neil’s relationship to his body is a story that mirrors mine and many other trans people’s stories. There’s this idea that surgery is a magical fix for Visit BookPage.com to read an extended version of this Q&A trans people, or that it’s this necessary party of transitioning, and that and our starred review of The Feeling of Falling in Love. once you’ve gotten it, all your dysphoria vanishes—when that couldn’t be

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reviews | young adult

H Beating Heart Baby

By Lio Min

Fiction For many young queer people, life beyond “the now” exists only in the imagination.

Imagine: a home where I’m loved. Imagine: feeling safe. Imagine: living on my own terms.

Lio Min’s debut YA novel, Beating Heart Baby (Flatiron, $18.99, 9781250819093), is a story of high school band geeks, internet friends turned IRL besties and what it’s like when the life you imagined becomes a reality.

Santiago Arboleda is overwhelmed when he arrives at his new school in Los Angeles. The other students are super outgoing, and they’re relentless about not letting Santi fade into the scenery. The Sunshowers marching band is also one of the best in California, so Santi has a lot of catching up to do—a fact that Suwa, a musical prodigy and trumpet section leader, makes

Crumbs

By Danie Stirling

Graphic Novel Ray is a seer who sees the truth of the present. Her ability has made her a realist, but it has also left her lonely.

Ray believes her gift precludes her from forming relationships, so she focuses on joining the Council, where she can help others and learn to see the future. When she needs a break, Ray slips into a magical bakery, where emotions are baked into every sweet treat.

Laurie desperately wants to be a musician, but for now, he works at his aunt’s bakery, smiling at the girl who comes in every day. Masking his own insecurities and grief with that smile, Laurie strikes up a friendship with Ray, which gives way to the possibility of a deeper connection. For the first time, Ray wants to give romance a shot, but if she joins the Council, she’ll be erased from the memories of everyone she knows. Does dedicating her life to helping others mean giving up on her own dreams?

In Crumbs (Clarion, $17.99, 9780358467816), Danie Stirling offers a warm and lightly fantastical slice-of-life tale about choosing your path.

Stirling’s art style is sweet and fluffy, all rounded edges and soft lighting. Though it’s not a manga

abundantly clear. When Santi realizes that Suwa is transgender, Suwa becomes even more antagonistic.

Miscommunication, pride and swirling hormones act like magnets between the two as Santi works to prove that he deserves his place in the Sunshowers.

Meanwhile, Santi is also dealing with the ghost of a soured internet relationship with someone he knows only as Memo. The pair connected online over anime, music and queerness, but when Santi leaked a song Memo composed and it became a viral sensation, Memo disappeared. Clues emerge about Memo’s real identity, but the search takes second chair to Santi’s growing sense of a found family with the Sunshowers—and an emerging romance between Santi and Suwa.

That’s only scratching the surface of this

remarkable novel, which brims with reflections on the music industry, generational trauma, food, anime, sex, heartbreak and love.

Min’s exploration of coming out and owning your story as an artist is particularly exhilarating and nuanced.

Much of the book’s vernacular and aesthetic is informed by Min’s background as a music journalist with experience interviewing such acts as Japanese Breakfast, Mitski and Christine and the Queens. Like the music of these badass queer rock ’n’ roll stars, Beating Heart Baby aches for a softer world. It’s an epic tale of queer validation, filtered through the light of the California sun and Sailor Moon, and an essential read for anyone searching for a blueprint of their soul.

—Luis G. Rendon

aesthetic, the characters’ expressiveness and glittering eyes will resonate with anime fans.

The illustrations exude as much warmth as the story, with subtle visual renderings of magic that become sweet garnishes atop a richer cake.

Crumbs’ cozy vibes will attract fans of Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu’s Mooncakes, but its emotional complexity is what will keep them turning the pages. Stirling has written a poignant book about the danger of putting others’ happiness before your own, the burnout that can come from idealism, and the realization that no one is ever given a single path to follow. As Ray learns to summon visions of the future, she must also learn to see them for what they are: potential futures in a universe of limitless possibilities.

—Mariel Fechik

until Mer discovered his treachery and fled.

Now she longs for a peaceful home of her own, but when her mentor, Renfrew, asks her to join him for one final mission, Mer can’t refuse.

Mer joins a crew that also includes a fighter, a scholar, a thief and a corgi. The mission is simple: Break into the prince’s castle to steal his gold and his magic. Along the way, Mer encounters old flames, uncovers kingdom-shattering secrets and realizes that the heist won’t be nearly as straightforward as she thought.

Emily Lloyd-Jones’ The Drowned Woods (Little, Brown, $18.99, 9​​ 780759556317) is based on a myth sometimes called the Welsh Atlantis.

The novel has all the elements of a classic heist, including a band of experts with specialized skills, a villain in a fortified stronghold and a seemingly impossible goal.

Within this framework, Lloyd-Jones delves deeply into the psyche of each member of the crew to thoughtfully explore themes of morality and grief. Mer seems fiercely independent, but she struggles with guilt over her time spent in the prince’s service. She longs for meaningful connections with others, but her own self-­loathing holds her back. The rest of the crew is just as well developed, and each member brings compelling personal histories, emotional demons and ulterior motives to the collective mission.

Thrilling and perceptive, The Drowned Woods blends the most-loved aspects of a heist narrative with meaningful, profound portraits of characters who satisfyingly defy archetypes and expectations alike.

—Tami Orendain

The Drowned Woods

By Emily Lloyd-Jones

Fantasy A soldier. A runaway. A barmaid.

Mererid has played many roles, but beneath them all, she has always been a water diviner, blessed with the magical ability to control water in all its forms. Prince Garanhir secretly abused her power for years,

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q&a | natalie lloyd

BIG MAGIC IN A SMALL PACKAGE In her best book yet, Natalie Lloyd creates a safe space for readers to explore fragility and strength.

Readers, prepare to meet the most memorable middle grade protagonist of 2022. Twelve-year-old Olive Miracle Martin, the instantly endearing hero of Hummingbird, is, in her own words, a “joy-kaboom.” After being home-schooled due to a medical condition called osteogenesis imperfecta (sometimes known as brittle bone disease), Olive begins attending Macklemore Middle School, where local legend tells of a magical wish-granting hummingbird.

Will finding the hummingbird make Olive’s deepest wish come true?

Author Natalie Lloyd brings a uniquely personal perspective to Olive’s story, imbuing her extra­ ordinary hero with unforgettable warmth, honesty and heart.

she’s not afraid to ask hard questions and love completely, and I adore that about her.

Tell us about the word fragile and the role it plays in this story.

Like Olive, being described as “fragile” has been commonplace for me for as long as I can remember. In a literal sense, it’s true. My bones break easily; my body is fragile. And yet, even though that’s true, there has always been a part of me that bristles at that description. Because I know there is so much more to me—to everybody—than a body.

In 2019, I had a hard reckoning with the word fragile. I walked through the kitchen late one night to check a door and slipped in dog drool. I heard the snap in my thigh before I hit the ground and knew I’d broken my femur. That’s supposed to be the strongest bone in a human body, but my femurs have always been fragile. It’s a painful break and a long recovery, so I felt like my world was paused again because of my fragile places.

I had tried so hard to lean into all the other aspects of who I’d become: I was a writer (which still feels like a dream come true). I was independent. I am married to a kind and wonderful man whom I describe as Gilbert Blythe with sleeve tattoos, and I loved the life we’d built. And then something in me broke, again, and I needed help with everything.

I told my husband that I felt broken all over, and he said, “Your leg is broken. You aren’t broken.” It helped me get a grip on Olive’s whole story. She starts out on a mission to prove to everybody she’s not fragile. But really, the only person she ever has H Hummingbird to prove that to is herself.

Scholastic, $17.99, 9781338654585

You and Olive both have osteogenesis imperfecta. In what other ways are you alike? How are you different?

Initially, I was very hesitant to write about a character who had the same disability that I do. I really wanted Olive’s story to be about more than her body, so I tried to smoosh the “bone stuff” to the background. But the more I revised Hummingbird, the more I realized that Olive’s disability is naturally a source of conflict for her, like it is for me. My disability informs how I move through my daily life and the world, and how I exist in my body. It’s only one part of the big constellation of my life, but it’s still a part. So we do have that Big Thing in common, Olive and I. But we share other things too.

Olive and I are both creative, and we both love love. We’re both ardent fans of Dolly Parton and Judy Blume.

We both think that one true BFF can make all the difference in helping you feel like you belong. And we’re both a little weird. If I were a character in a book, I would be somewhere between Anne Shirley and Olive’s narration sometimes shifts Middle Grade Luna Lovegood, and Olive falls on from prose into verse. How did this that spectrum too. Even though I’ve always been a bit shy, I love theater. choice come about? What role has poetry played in your life?

Olive is the same way. She puzzles over the dichotomy of wanting to stand I wasn’t planning to write any element of Olive’s story in verse, but a whole out (in her heart-shaped sunglasses and bedazzled wheelchair) and wantdraft came out that way. I showed it to my brilliant editor, Mallory Kass, ing to blend in and be “normal.” and told her that something about it felt really freeing and right for this As far as our differences, Olive has a gentle boldness and assertiveness story, so we looked closely at the text together. I realized the places the that I would like to have. Her confidence is still growing, of course, but verse felt the most important to me was when Olive was reflecting on

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© ELAINE LLOYD

q&a | natalie lloyd her body. Those thoughts about her body—how it’s fragile, different and changing—break, just like her bones do. Mallory encouraged me to try writing the story with both forms, and it was the exact blend I wanted. I could lean into Olive’s humor a little easier and explore her world more fully in prose, but verse felt like the right carrier for her weightier thoughts about herself.

Poetry factored big into my middle school era. I wrote some terribly cringey poems that my parents still have. I also got a book of Emily Dickinson poems that’s still on my bookshelf. Back then, I mostly loved Dickinson’s work for its cadence and moodiness. I also loved how she compared big feelings (like hope) to ephemeral things in nature (like “a thing with feathers”). Middle school is also when I wore out Dolly Parton cassette tapes, singing “Eagle When She Flies” to my audience of Popples and Care Bears.

Between Emily and Dolly, I fell in love with poetry, and I still adore it. I used to say that I ate poems for breakfast, by which I mean: I would read a Mary Oliver poem every morning. I still try to do that. It makes my heart feel awake. And of course, I love folk and alt-country, singer-songwriter music—poetry with a banjo in the mix.

Olive’s grandfather is a well-known birder, and it’s a passion he shares with his granddaughter. Did your research include delving into birds and birding? What are some of your favorite things that you learned?

There’s a subtle connection Olive and I have: While my granny wasn’t a birder, she was obsessed with birds. She could name a bird by its song, and I always thought that was such a cool way to be connected to the world.

I enjoy reading about birds and watching them, too.

Sometimes when I see a hummingbird, I gasp. I know they aren’t uncommon, but they feel special to me. I like their bejeweled feathers and buzzy wings. Reading about them was especially fun as I wrote this book. Here are some fun facts: Most hummingbirds weigh about as much as a nickel, they can fly backwards, and—this is my favorite—they remember human faces. There are also lots of legends and folklore connected to hummingbirds. I’m smitten with the idea of big magic existing in a small creature.

Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of Hummingbird.

faith and folklore collide; it felt right for Olive to interact with both. And it felt right—and true—that the people Olive loves all have different relationships to faith, too.

Your books often include elements of magic, and Olive herself loves fantasy and fairy tales. What draws you to incorporating this into your work? What’s magical to you?

I think we all write what we love to read, and I was once (and always) a Olive’s story feels inextricable from its setting, and I think many readqueen in Narnia. I adored books like Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Lynne Reid ers will wish they could visit Olive’s fictional hometown of Wildwood, Banks’ The Fairy Rebel and stories where magic was a flicker in a very real Tennessee. Why was creating such a strong sense of place important world. I’m still drawn to that gentle magic in books. Deep down, I love to you? Do you have any recommendations for real-world spots that that the world is sometimes un-figure-out-able. might feel a little like Wildwood?

It sounds cheesy, but the best magic for me is love. There are certainly It’s fun to create a town in a novel because I get to pack it full of spots moments of little magic in every day: birds singing, dogs that snuggle, I love. But I definitely understand the sunsets smeared on a mountain sky, cherry “So much of what I write comes need to see the real inspiration. Some of Popsicles on a hot day, a perfect song lyric.

But there’s no magic like love, like hearing my favorite go-to towns for inspiration in Tennessee are Lenoir City, Signal Mountain down to how much I love and miss the voice of someone you love. Like hugand Sweetwater. I also like to visit towns in people. Every story is a love story.” ging someone you love and have missed. So the Blue Ridge Mountains, like Franklin and much of what I write comes down to how Hendersonville in North Carolina, when I need some fodder. If readers much I love and miss people. Every story is a love story. are ever able to visit the Smoky Mountains, I highly recommend it. That What did you learn about yourself from writing Olive’s story? would give them a good idea of the scope of Olive’s natural world. It’s a misty, magical place full of woods and babbling brooks. And birdsong.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but what Olive and I both learned is reflected And ghost stories. And a hummingbird, or two. in the last line of the book. And while my first hope for readers is that Hummingbird gives them joy-kabooms, I also hope that it’s found by Hummingbird beautifully depicts so many characters’ relationships to anyone who needs that last-line reminder.

And I also learned this: You get to take up as much space as you want faith and spirituality. Was this an element of the book from the beginning? What was the most challenging part of incorporating it? on this planet in exactly the body you are in. You deserve to move through Olive’s spirituality was always threaded through the book. The biggest the world with joy and confidence. Your experience matters. One thing I love about the KidLit community, and all the readers, writers, teachers, challenge in writing about her faith was this: I want every reader, regardless librarians and publishing people who abide in it, is our determination to of what they believe, to feel safe in my books. Olive’s personal wrestling with her faith is connected to mine. I’m a person of faith, but when bones create safe spaces where kids get to grow into their most authentic selves. break and I’m in pain (or when someone I love is in pain), obviously that’s It’s a deep honor to be a little part of that world.

—Alice Cary hard to process. One of my favorite attributes of Southern fiction is how

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feature | back to school

GET SCHOOLE D Celebrate the start of a new academic year with two picture books.

The first day of school is a momentous occasion for many children.

These picture books capture the experience with sparkle and style.

Lupe Lopez: Rock Star Rules!

Lupe Lopez is ready to rock and roll her way into kindergarten. Fresh from a summer of drumming and perfecting her hip new look, she knows all rock stars make their own rules. Lupe is committed to never letting anyone tell her what to do, being as loud as possible and making “fans, not friends.” Unsurprisingly, this works great for Lupe—but not so well for Ms. Quintanilla, Lupe’s new teacher.

Little by little, Lupe learns that even rock stars have to adhere to the rules (sometimes). Drumming belongs more on a stage than in the classroom, and friends are much better than fans—especially when they start a band together! Best of all, Lupe finds a way to remain the one-of-a-kind, “Texas-size” kindergarten rock star she is.

Lupe Lopez: Rock Star Rules! (Candlewick, $17.99, 9781536209549) is a fun, fresh addition to the back-to-school picture book canon.

It’s perfect for young readers who march to the beat of their own drums but may benefit from a gentle reminder to respect the needs of others around them.

Lupe is the brainchild of a picture book dream team: co-writers e.E Charlton-Trujillo and Pat Zietlow Miller (Be Kind), and illustrator Joe Cepeda. Stonewall Award-winning CharltonTrujillo’s influence as a South Texas native is clear in the familiar and joyful portrait of Lupe’s predominantly Latinx Hector P. Garcia Elementary school, complete with the requisite map of Texas on the classroom wall and bilingual labeling of classroom objects. (Don’t miss the nod to legendary Tejano musician Selena in Ms. Quintanilla’s name.)

Zietlow Miller’s signature voice contributes to the story’s rhythm and narrative structure, both of which make Lupe Lopez: Rock Star Rules! an excellent read-aloud. Children will love drumming along with Lupe when she shouts “¡Ran! ¡Rataplán! Boom-tica-bam! ¡Pit-a-pat. Rat-a-tat. Whamwham-wham! ¡Soy famosa!”

Pura Belpré Honor recipient Cepeda’s crisp, classical illustration style is perfect for a story with this much heart. He spares no detail in bringing Lupe to life on the page, right down to the pigtails in her hair and the pencils she uses for her drumsticks.

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Together, Charlton-Trujillo, Zietlow Miller and Cepeda have created an unforgettable heroine who will leap off the page and right onto your bookshelf.

Fans of feisty heroines such as Russell and Lillian Hoban’s Frances, Ian Falconer’s Olivia and Monica Brown and Sara Palacios’ Marisol McDonald will be clamoring to join Lupe’s band.

One Boy Watching As many children in rural areas know, living in the country often means being the first to board the school bus in the morning and the last to get dropped off at the end of the day. It means mornings of quiet reflection as the world wakes up and evenings spent on winding gravel roads toward home.

One Boy Watching (Chronicle, $17.99, 9781797210889) is a nearly wordless picture book that opens as the sun is just barely beginning to rise, when a school bus arrives at a boy’s rural home. Some introductory descriptions follow the unnamed protagonist as he steps onto the bus (“Twenty-eight empty seats. . . . One bus at sunrise under an infinite sky.”), but the scene’s beauty can be found in the serene spaces between those phrases. The reader is invited to sit peacefully, to breathe deeply, to soak in the prismatic watercolor and colored pencil sunrise skies.

Author-illustrator Grant Snider, the creator of the popular webcomic “Incidental Comics,” reprises the same hushed feeling found in his earlier picture books, including What Color Is Night? and What Sound Is Morning? His artistry seems simple: It’s light on distinct detail and heavy on bold lines, capturing the shapes of objects just barely visible in the early dawn, such as bulbous trees or the peak of a roof. Later spreads contain sights that will be familiar to rural school bus riders: pastures of hay bales, the glow of headlights in the early dawn, fields of rusted cars, water towers, the silhouettes of distant barns and feed silos.

The real wow factor, however, is in the quietly powerful way that Snider uses color. By blending colors, lines and shapes into one another, Snider mimics the blur of what children see from a bus window on the way to school. As the journey continues and more children board the bus, the reader can almost hear the sound of their laughter, the rumble of the bus’s engine and the wail of a train horn at the railroad crossing—all with hardly any words on the page.

Reserved, thoughtful readers who prefer to spend time lingering over illustrations or making up their own stories about the stories they read will especially appreciate One Boy Watching. It vividly conveys the experiences of those first-to-get-on, last-to-get-off students who witness a sunrise every morning and a sunset every evening as they mark the beginning and end of each school day.

—Lisa Bubert

Illustrations from Lupe Lopez: Rock Star Rules! © 2022 by Joe Cepeda. Reproduced by permission of Candlewick Press.

reviews | children’s

By Margaret Aitken Illustrated by Lenny Wen

Picture Book Debut author Margaret Aitken offers up the story of the superhero we didn’t know we needed: Undercover Granny! Bursting with color and movement, Old Friends (Feiwel & Friends, $18.99, 9781250801388) is a sweetly funny story about intergenerational friendship.

Marjorie is a little girl with a penchant for baking, gardening, crafting and listening to Glen Miller records. She used to share these passions with her beloved Granny, the one person who truly understood her. Nobody else in Marjorie’s orbit thinks crafting is cool or wants to spend time perfecting their scones, and she’s too young to join an online hobby group.

Serendipity strikes when Marjorie strolls past the community center one day. A sign

promoting a “senior citizen friends group” not only lists activities that seem perfectly tailored to her interests but also proclaims “New members welcome!”

Alas, Marjorie is prevented from joining the group. “Kids club is that way,” explains a well-intentioned woman. Undeterred, Marjorie acquires a pair of glasses, a fuzzy cardigan and some flour to powder her hair: Undercover Granny is ready for action.

But then—oh, no! Amid all energetic chacha-cha-ing with her new friends, Marjorie’s disguise slips off, revealing her true identity.

(The community center cat’s shocked expression is a hilarious wonder to behold.) What will happen now?

Aitken’s playful use of language, from clever alliteration to suspense-building ellipses, will keep readers turning the pages with anticipation. So, too, will illustrator Lenny Wen’s vibrant, energetic spreads, which brim with tantalizing details such as a rainbow of outfits that celebrate pattern mixing, expertly textured leafy plants and shaggy rugs, and a twirling, whirling dance party. Cha-cha-cha!

The seniors’ compassionate response to Marjorie’s subterfuge is a poignant reminder that there’s no age limit on friendship.

After all, as bow-tie aficionado Arthur reveals, “On the inside, we still feel like kids. Just like you.” Readers of every generation will delight in Old Friends’ joyful tone and affirming message—and its superb surprise ending, too.

—Linda M. Castellitto

meet ZOË TILLEY POSTER How would you describe your book?

What books did you enjoy as a child?

Who has been the biggest influence on your work?

What one thing would you like to learn to do?

Who was your childhood hero?

What message would you like to send to young readers?

© ZOË TILLEY POSTER

Old Friends

One night, Dog slips away from her cozy home and journeys into the very heart of wilderness. She chases fleet-footed rabbits, races through a crashing thunderstorm and meets a new friend who shows her how to be truly wild.

Zoë Tilley Poster’s debut picture book is a lyrical adventure that sparkles with magic and mystery.

Her hazy graphite, pencil and eraser illustrations lend every page of The Night Wild (Dial, $17.99, 9780525553786) an aura of wonder. Tilley Poster lives in central Vermont with her family and their dog, Ida.

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