September 2022 BookPage

SEPT 2022

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

B ESTS EL L ER WATC H

I SAAC BLU M

The latest and greatest from Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth Strout & more

How the debut author created the funniest YA narrator of the year

GRA N D PA R EN TS’ DAY

RE AL- LI FE M I RACL ES

4 books celebrate the grandest people in the lives of young readers

After Dopesick, the healing powers of Beth Macy’s Raising Lazarus

M A R GA R E T

W I LKERSON SEXTON

On finding hope in historical fiction with On the Rooftop: “Our ancestors have done it, and our descendants will do it. We’re not all alone in this.”

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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Popular Fiction Romance Young Adult

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SEPTEMBER 2022

features

reviews

behind the book | moiya mctier. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 How did the Milky Way galaxy come to publish its autobiography?

fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

behind the book | mazey eddings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The romance author wants a happily ever after for everyone

feature | sci-fi & fantasy romances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Nerdy love stories have never been hotter

cover story | margaret wilkerson sexton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The author’s third novel is set in the heart of San Francisco’s 1950s jazz scene

interview | beth macy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 The bestselling author of Dopesick revisits the opioid crisis and finds hope

feature | bestseller watch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

young adult. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 children’s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

columns book clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 the hold list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Keep an eye on these upcoming books from five beloved authors

feature | parenting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Staying connected with your child makes a difference at every stage

feature | inspirational fiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

whodunit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 well read. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 lifestyles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Two novels of friendship will warm readers’ hearts

q&a | isaac blum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Explore faith, friendship and family—with the funniest YA narrator of 2022

feature | grandparents’ day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Picture books to celebrate the grandest people in the lives of young readers

meet | aimée sicuro. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Meet the author-illustrator of If You Find a Leaf Cover photo © Smeeta Mahanti. Cover and pages 12–13 include art from On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton © 2022, used with permission from Ecco.

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behind the book | moiya mctier

Moiya McTier is the oracle of the Milky Way How does an ancient galaxy come to publish its autobiography? The Milky Way explains in this Behind the Book essay, as dictated to astrophysicist Dr. McTier.

© MINDY TUCKER

I have been asked to give you a peek into my universe. Every time I got into the groove of telling my story, I ran bulge-first into a dead process for creating my autobiography, The end of human ignorance. I promised myself Milky Way. Apparently you still have questions I wouldn’t tell you anything your scientists about how a galaxy could “land a book deal,” didn’t already know, but that rules out all of as you say.

The truth is that navigating your human the most exciting stuff! Instead, I was confined publishing system is to the simplest concepts, nowhere near as difficult like one of your preschool as some of your writers teachers trying to explain make it seem—at least, the color purple to a not if you’re a celebrity. creature who only knows And if you’ve read the about red and blue. I had book, you know that, to use small words and historically speaking, speak slowly.

I’m humanity’s biggest Moiya was more helpful in this whole superstar. For a VIG (very process than I expected important galaxy) like me, publishing a book was of a human. She added a just a matter of finding valuable . . . empathetic the right human to do perspective, let’s say, and softened some of all the stuff I didn’t want the sharper edges of my to do. You know, all the judgment of humanity tedious typing and factchecking, the fretting over by explaining your more money and legal deals frustrating quirks. (What across your ephemeral do you mean you have to borders . . . the disgusting shut your body down for human busywork. That’s a third of each day?) So I where Moiya came in. I was lucky to find a human was much more excited like Moiya who met all of to solve the puzzle of my transcriber criteria. how to sculpt my story Whoever channeled into a shape that your my story had to be one fleshy brains could of those precious few astronomers who had comprehend. dedicated their lives to Talking about myself studying me, someone was the easy part. I’ve who already knew the been regaling my peers basics so I could skip with tales of my fabulous to the good parts. But achievements and galactarian good deeds they also had to be open for longer than your puny to the possibility of accepting my narrative planet has existed. (How without making too do you think Draco, the Leos and all my other many changes. And then H The Milky Way dwarf galaxy neighbors I found her! Your Dr. Grand Central, $27, 9781538754153 learned to make stars?

Moiya McTier, who knew They don’t have the gas to me by way of both math Science spare on trial and error, so and myth, is an insatiably I taught them what I knew.) But I didn’t expect curious scientist who had been waiting most it to be so difficult to limit myself to your human of her life for the sky to talk back. And she just level of knowledge and understanding of the happened to be well positioned—honing her

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communication skills in that Big Sleepless Apple of yours—to break into the publishing industry.

A literary agent found her after one of her public talks. He seemed to both of us like a nice and smart enough fellow, and together they crafted a proposal to write the Milky Way’s autobiography. Editors, of course, couldn’t resist such a juicy project, and we had our choice of publishing companies. I told Moiya to pick her favorite since she would be the one dealing with them. And the rest, as you humans say, is history.

The book is static like history can be, too. The stories we galaxies share across the cosmic web are remolded whenever there’s something to change or add. Your human books are crude physical objects, stuck in the time that they were written. That’s normally fine, but your science progresses so quickly that there have already been breakthroughs announced since Moiya turned in the final draft of the book.

For example, you finally snapped a picture with your Earth-size telescope of the event horizon of my supermassive black hole, a full five years after the data were collected. Besides that, your astronomers recently discovered their 5,000th exoplanet, saw the first eyeopening images from the James Webb Space Telescope, found a new type of star with odd pulsing patterns and learned a whole lot about the planets in your stellar backyard. Keep up the pace, humans. I don’t want to get bored again.

You know, the Fornax galaxy thought humans were too simple to relate to my story.

It thought you would shun what I said because you couldn’t understand it. That’s an insult to you and to my storytelling abilities! Thank you, dear readers, for the (small) part you played in helping me prove it wrong.

—The Milky Way (via Moiya McTier) Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of The Milky Way.

book clubs

by julie hale

Lab coats not required Mary Roach investigates the uneasy relationship that exists between humans and wildlife in Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (Norton, $16.95, 9781324036128). Traveling to India, Vatican City and other locales, she meets with a wide cast of characters that includes predator attack investigators, a bear manager and a human-elephant conflict specialist, all in an effort to understand how humankind is striving to coexist with the animal kingdom. Roach mixes expert reporting with moving insights into the natural world while unearthing pertinent questions about wildlife and habitat preservation.

In Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives (Mariner, $15.99, 9780358108450), Mark Miodownik examines the prominence of liquids (drinking water, bottled soap, the list goes Readers who slept through physics, on) and the critical take note! You don’t have to be an roles they in the expert to enjoy these entertaining, play modern world. The offbeat science books. narrative is framed by a transatlantic flight during which Miodownik notes the ubiquity of liquid matter, from the fuel that powers the plane to the offerings on the airline’s refreshment cart. Illustrations and photos add an appealing visual dimension to the book, and topics like climate change and conservation will inspire lively dialogue among readers.

Bill Bryson’s The Body: A Guide for Occupants (Anchor, $17, 9780804172721) is an engaging survey of the human physique. Bryson delves into the history of anatomy, examines the nature of disease and pain, and generally explores the ways in which our bodies function. He blends scientific fact and input from experts with humanizing anecdotes, and his trademark wit is on display throughout the proceedings. An illuminating look at the systems, organs and processes that define the human organism, The Body is filled with fascinating facts. From start to finish, it’s vintage Bryson.

Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life (Norton, $15.95, 9780393355475) by Helen Czerski is a reader-friendly overview of the ways in which physics shapes our lives. Making connections between common­ place activities (popping popcorn, for instance) and larger phenomena, from weather patterns to medical technology, Czerski demonstrates that scientific processes large and small take place all around us. Over the course of nine chapters, she covers a range of fundamental physics concepts, writing in an accessible, offbeat style. With a gift for intriguing anecdotes, Czerski makes physics fun.

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

BOOK CLUB READ S F OR RING F ORSPFAL L GROUPIES

by Sarah Priscus “With deep intelligence and massive heart, Sarah Priscus captures both the allure of fame and its dangers.

I loved this novel.”

—JOANNA RAKOFF international bestselling author of My Salinger Year

AFTER THE HURRICANE

by Leah Franqui “A love letter to the diaspora of Puerto Rican Americans whose heritages straddle an ocean in geography and heart.

I cried. I laughed. I wanted to reach out and hold her characters’ hands.”

—SARAH MCCOY New York Times bestselling author of Mustique Island

THE MANHATTAN GIRLS

by Gill Paul “Oozing with passion and wit...this is a story for those who enjoy their novels with a side order of gin, jazz and sass. An absolute treat!”

—HAZEL GAYNOR New York Times bestselling author of When We Were Young & Brave

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

by Julia Whelan “A witty, clever, and open-hearted love story full of delicious twists on all your favorite romance tropes....A must-read for anyone who loves a good love story.”

—TAYLOR JENKINS REID New York Times bestselling author of Malibu Rising

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the hold list

Page-turning and pious Whether your own approach to religion is devout, irreverent or somewhere in between, you’ll find characters to relate to in these five dynamic books.

A Hat for Mrs. Goldman Sophia’s next-door neighbor, Mrs. Goldman, knits hats for everybody she knows, and Sophia helps by making the pompoms that go on top. “Keeping keppies warm is our mitzvah,” Mrs. Goldman tells Sophia, explaining that “a mitzvah is a good deed.” When Mrs. Goldman gives her own hat away, Sophia wants to knit her something special, but knitting turns out to be harder than she realized. I love this sweet introduction to the Jewish concept of mitzvot. Author Michelle Edwards’ text has lots of delightful little details, like when Sophia notices that a hat she and Mrs. Goldman began knitting together many years ago still smells like chicken soup. But what gets me every time is Edwards’ description of Sophia’s emotions when she realizes the perfect solution to her knitting woes: “Sophia feels her heart grow bigger and lighter, like a balloon.” If ever a book were a mitzvah, it would be this one.

—Stephanie, Associate Editor

America

Open Book

The Sparrow

Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher whose obsessive analysis of the effects of unchecked consumerism becomes more prescient with each passing day. In his 1988 essay collection, America, Baudrillard follows Route 66 across the United States as he seeks to answer a seemingly simple question: What makes an American? The thing that synthesizes American identity, he finds, is faith: from the evangelical fervor of Salt Lake City, to Las Vegas’ ascendant belief in the dollar, to the ever-elusive future of San Franciscan tech lords. Everywhere he looks, Baudrillard finds sprawling cities not built on trade or natural resources but suspended on dust clouds, spinning rivers of capital and an unshakable belief in American mastery over nature. Even if you disagree with Baudrillard’s sometimes biting analysis of the United States, his nuanced poetry, complex worldview and foreign perspective still make for an engaging read during these dynamic times.

—Anthony, Editorial Intern

Growing up in the 1990s and 2000s, I knew that Jessica Simpson had started out singing in church. What surprised me when I read her memoir, however, was how much Simpson’s Christian faith still matters to her. The book opens with the day she decided to stop drinking, after years of using alcohol to quell her anxiety through tough relationships and even tougher career breaks. As she gets honest with friends about her dependency on alcohol, the group decides to pray together. This moment of honesty and faith is a good entry point, since these values are Simpson’s guiding lights throughout Open Book. She’s honest with readers about childhood sexual abuse, the demands of record labels, her marriage to Nick Lachey, her relationships with family and the wild ups and downs that have shaped her life’s terrain. At every point, Simpson’s Baptist roots ground her and keep her from straying too far from her authentic self.

—Christy, Associate Editor

First published in 1996, Mary Doria Russell’s science fiction classic The Sparrow examines organized religion and faith on a cosmic scale.

Spanning the years 2014 to 2060, the novel follows an interstellar mission led by skilled linguist and Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz to discover the source of hauntingly beautiful music on a planet four light-years away.

Accompanied by a motley yet qualified group of friends, Emilio feels called

by God to make contact with the planet’s alien inhabitants, the music makers.

But as the trip unfolds, the group’s well-meaning intentions have catastrophic consequences that cause Emilio to have a crisis of faith.

Raised Catholic, Russell left the church at an early age, identified as an atheist for several years and later converted to Judaism. This background, combined with her skills as a multilinguist and her career in paleoanthropology, provide a unique perspective from which to tell such a rich, multifaceted story.

—Katherine, Subscriptions

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

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Hana Khan Carries On Uzma Jalaluddin’s enemies-­ to-lovers romance Hana Khan Carries On is a joyful homage to the classic 1990s rom-com You’ve Got Mail, with an Indian Canadian family’s halal restaurant subbing in for the Shop Around the Corner.

Hana is our leopard-print hijab-wearing heroine, and she dreams of someday telling true stories that honor her Muslim culture and community. The local radio station where Hana interns is hyperfocused on Muslim stereotypes, so she creates an anonymous podcast to express her true thoughts. Meanwhile, her family’s business has run up against a competing restaurant, with an attractive man named Aydin leading the charge. Despite micro­ aggressions at the radio station and outright racism on the streets of Toronto, Hana remains strong in her culture and religion. She finds happiness by being her whole self—a lover, a fighter, a devout Muslim woman and a heroine to believe in.

—Cat, Deputy Editor

audio

H I Kissed Shara Wheeler Supersmart, beautiful Shara Wheeler has disappeared, but not before kissing Chloe Green, her academic rival at conservative Willowgrove Christian Academy.

Casey McQuiston’s young adult debut, I Kissed Shara Wheeler (Macmillan Audio, 9.5 hours), is both a mystery (of sorts) and an unconventional romance, as Chloe’s hunt for Shara shakes up Willowgrove’s senior class. Narrator Natalie Naudus admirably voices more than a half-dozen significant characters, imparting individuality and personality to teens embracing a variety of identities.

—Norah Piehl

__ An __

Audiobook K EVERY LISTENER from

Macmillan AUDIO

______ FICTION ______

H Sparring Partners For his many fans, a new book from John Grisham is always a reason to celebrate, but audiobook listeners are in for a treat thanks to the excellent voice talents of actors Jeff Daniels, Ethan Hawke and January LaVoy. Sparring Partners (Random House Audio, 10 hours) comprises three legal-thriller novellas, including a new story starring Jake Brigance.

—G. Robert Frazier

READ BY SUSAN ERICKSEN

READ BY JANINE BIRKETT

READ BY ROSSMERY ALMONTE & KIMBERLY M. WETHEREL

READ BY A CHRISTINA DELAINE

H Bittersweet As a meditation on the importance of melancholy, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (Random House Audio, 7.5 hours) requires just the right amount of energy—enthusiasm, even—to keep listeners forging ahead. With her easygoing, conversational pace and a voice full of curiosity and optimism, author Susan Cain convinces us that pushing past any ambivalence about sorrow will be rewarding.

—Autumn Allen

______ NONFICTION ______

We Were Dreamers In 2021, Simu Liu became a household name after starring in Marvel’s first superhero movie with an Asian lead character, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Liu narrates his own memoir, We Were Dreamers (HarperAudio, 8 hours), with a calm, laid-back demeanor and passionate voice.

—G. Robert Frazier

H A Lady for a Duke Alexis Hall leaps from the world of contemporary romantic comedies to the realm of Regency romance with A Lady for a Duke (Hachette Audio, 15.5 hours).

Justin de Vere, the Duke of Gracewood, has been moping around his family’s country estate ever since his closest friend died at the Battle of Waterloo. What Gracewood doesn’t realize is that his friend is not dead but finally living as her true self, Viola Carroll. British voice actor Kay Eluvian delivers on the moodiness and longing of Hall’s novel, portraying Viola with feminine strength and Gracewood as a dashing, brooding hero.

—Anna Zeitlin

READ BY THE AUTHOR

READ BY THE AUTHOR

READ BY LESSA LAMB

READ BY THE AUTHOR

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behind the book | mazey eddings

‘EVERY BRAIN IS BEAUTIFUL’ Mazey Eddings wants a happily ever after for everyone.

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It’s wonderful and challenging and unique and nuanced, and something we need to talk more about in a positive light to destigmatize it.

Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake, my sophomore novel set in the same world as my debut, A Brush With Love, features a woman in her late 20s dealing with ADHD and the general chaos of adulthood. Lizzy is messy. Impulsive.

Clever. Wonderful. I love her deeply. But she’s been raised (as many neurodiverse people are) with the narrative that her disability is a burden to others and something that must be leashed instead of reveled in.

She navigates workplaces and relationships and the world at large while being constantly reminded that these systems and places weren’t designed to accommodate the way her brain works.

This isn’t a novel about how Lizzie “overcomes” her disability. It’s a story about how Lizzie accepts her disability, unlearns the internalized ableism attached to it and honors her diagnosis and her beautiful brain, finding comfort in her wonderful bits and her frustrating ones. It’s a story of breaking away from people and systems that tell us we need to reconfigure ourselves to fit. It’s a love letter to neurodiverse people and the found families that not only accommodate us but celebrate us, giving us the support to unabashedly thrive because we all deserve to exist in spaces that are excited to welcome us.

Writing about neurodiverse characters means the story won’t be relatable to every reader. The pacing of neurodiverse love stories won’t always match what we see with neurotypical relationships, and we need to get comfortable with that fact! People who are neurodiverse often experience trust, connection and intimacy at different speeds than neurotypicals, and it’s important to honor that. It’s time to lean into special interests and disorganized thoughts. It’s time to talk about living with sensory issues and varied processing, to put on the page what makes the world more accessible so everyone can thrive.

Every brain is beautiful. Every brain is worthy of profound love and supportive friendships and, above all, the happiest of endings.

—Mazey Eddings © BEN EISDORFER

The titular character of Mazey Eddings’ Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake (Griffin, $16.99, 9781250806000) is dealing with some very rom-com-appropriate problems—namely, that her two-night stand with a hot Australian guy resulted in an unexpected pregnancy, and she’s now trying to platonically cohabitate with him.

But alongside all the tropey hijinks, Lizzie also gains a better understanding of and more acceptance for her attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. As Eddings explains in this essay, that combination of rom-com fizz and a neurodiverse perspective is central to what she hopes her books can achieve.

••• Getting my ADHD diagnosis was like receiving a key to a door I’d been trying my whole life to unlock. On the other side was an expansive horizon of endless possibilities. I finally had words and a framework and tools to understand how my brain operates: why my thoughts do loop-theloops when I’m supposed to be focusing, why my mind deep dives into special interests or makes me avoid certain tasks. It felt so indescribably good to finally understand that I wasn’t lazy or undisciplined or reckless, as neurotypical society so often branded me, but was instead wired in a way that is worth celebrating.

And after seeing myself in this new diagnosis, I was hungry to see myself reflected in fiction too.

Unfortunately, people with neurodivergencies are often represented in stories that focus on their trauma or hardships. We rarely see these characters experiencing unfettered joy or having desires, sex, love; so many amazing human experiences aren’t explored through the unique lens of neurodivergence. ADHD, in particular, is a condition often represented from a male-centric, adolescent point of view.

Even in nonfiction, ADHD is often written about by neurotypical people with an undertone of what ADHD-ers can do to conform and make life “easier” for the neurotypicals in their life, as though the ADHD neurotype is something to be ashamed of or is a burden to others.

It’s not.

review

lizzie blake’s best mistake

Lizzie Blake knows that she’s a lot. A lot of energy and enthusiasm. A lot of creativity and vibrant warmth. But also a lot of mess and chaos. Her attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder can make things difficult, given that she lives in a world built for people whose brains don’t function like hers. It’s clear to her that “a lot” translates to “too much” for most people, particularly when it comes to long-term romance. She sticks to one-night stands until a birth control screw-up during a fling with Rake, a gorgeous Australian on vacation, results in a very permanent relationship—with the baby she decides to carry to term. When Rake insists on moving stateside so they can coparent, Lizzie knows that the smart move would be to avoid getting attached to him. But that proves trickier and trickier when they start living together, then sleeping together and then falling in love in spite of themselves.

Mazey Eddings’ Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake doesn’t shy away from the very real problems that the titular character’s ADHD causes. You understand why Lizzie’s boss gets aggravated with her chronic lateness and her habit of losing track of important projects. You flinch a little on behalf of her roommate when Lizzie admits to losing yet another borrowed item. But Eddings also explores the depths of shame that Lizzie feels every time she’s made aware of another mistake. It’s easier for Lizzie to dwell on what she’s doing wrong instead of what she’s doing right, and it takes a lot of soul-searching—and a lot of encouragement from Rake—for her to realize that the ratio between her wrongs and rights isn’t what she thought.

Despite his own internal conflicts, including a commitment-phobic approach to romantic entanglements, Rake’s main role in the story is to open Lizzie’s eyes to all she has to offer. Even when she sees herself as a mess, he sees her as beautiful, charming, clever and endearing. Is he a little too perfect? Perhaps. But readers turn to romance novels because we want to believe that there are men like Rake out there: gorgeous, kind men who will come through even when things get messy; men who will love their partners the way they deserve to be loved. Though the romance is a bit unbalanced—Lizzie doesn’t spend an equal amount of time showing Rake that he deserves to be loved as well—it’s hard to complain about seeing a woman who doubted her own value get showered with love, appreciation and respect.

—Elizabeth Mazer

romance

by christie ridgway

H Ruby Fever In Ilona Andrews’ Hidden Legacy series, the world is dominated by magical families known as Houses. Catalina Baylor is the Deputy Warden of Texas and a Prime, an extremely powerful magic user.

She’s moving her House and her fiancé, assassin Alessandro Sagredo, into a new compound when an important politician is killed and a powerful family friend is severely injured. An assassin kingpin is responsible for both events, and now he has his sights set on Alessandro. Can they stop him before he succeeds? Ruby Fever (Avon, $9.99, 9780062878397) starts with a bang and races on from there. This installment has everything Andrews’ readers love: a large cast of magical characters, fast-paced plot and dialogue, and imaginative scenes of electrifying combat described in Technicolor detail. Told in Catalina’s engaging first-person voice as she capably handles all that’s thrown at her, this superlative romance doesn’t have a single dull moment. Sit back and happily immerse yourself in Andrews’ unparalleled paranormal world.

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Do You Take This Man The central couple of Denise Williams’ Do You Take This Man (Berkley, $17, 9780593437193) doesn’t really have a meet cute. In fact, it’s more of a meet mad. RJ Brooks is a high-­powered, ambitious divorce attorney with a surprising side gig: She officiates marriage ceremonies.

Which is why she keeps meeting and mutually antagonizing event planner Lear Campbell again, and again, and again. The enemies-­ to-lovers trope is a romance fan favorite for a reason, and when RJ and Lear finally succumb to their attraction, their love scenes sizzle. There’s enough authentic angst between the two, both of whom have been hurt badly in the past, to keep the reader doubting and wishing for their happily ever after in equal measure.

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Aphrodite and the Duke First loves try to get it right the second time around in J.J. McAvoy’s “Bridgerton”-esque Regency romance, Aphrodite and the Duke (Dell, $17, 9780593500040). Aphrodite Du Bell can’t help but feel her acclaimed beauty might be something of a curse. The only man she ever cared for, Evander Eagleman, the Duke of Everely, married someone else. In the four years since, she’s retreated from society. But when it’s her sister’s turn to hunt for a husband, Aphrodite gets dragged back to the London season. There, she’s reunited with Evander, who’s newly widowed and immediately begins to pursue Aphrodite. She thinks she’d be mad to trust him again with her heart, until he reveals what prompted his first marriage and they begin to work through their differences. The characters’ somewhat formal voices lend a verisimilitude that balances the enjoyable escape of McAvoy’s Regency world of balls, gowns and romance.

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

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feature | sci-fi & fantasy romances

EPICALLY EVER AFTER Sci-fi and fantasy romances have never been hotter.

Given our culture’s widespread embrace of all things nerdy and the ever-increasing popularity of romance novels, it’s no surprise that readers are flocking to stories of true love in magical realms and soul mates bantering their way through intergalactic intrigue. Here are three you won’t want to miss.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches Mika Moon has built a large following online, dazzling her audience with potions and her sparkling personality.

The difference between Mika and other young women posing as witches with vlogs is that Mika is actually a witch. Taught to keep her abilities under wraps by her overbearing guardian, Mika knows that the biggest rule of witchcraft is that you never talk about witchcraft. Still, she believes her online activities are innocuous enough: After all, who would truly believe that witches exist? When a mysterious estate called Nowhere House entreats her to come and train a group of three young witches who don’t have control over their powers, Mika is immediately intrigued—and worried. After all, generations of witches have stayed safe by not congregating or doing anything suspicious. But she goes anyway, armed with nothing but her trusty dog, Circe, and a winning smile. At Nowhere House, Mika quickly runs into problems, not just from her young charges but also from Jamie, a testy librarian with trust issues who can’t decide if Mika is the answer to their problems or an even bigger problem herself. But as Mika settles into her role, she begins to understand that Jamie’s thorny exterior guards a man who may not be nice but is kind. And his steadfast presence might just be enough for Mika to lower the walls around her own heart.

In The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches (Berkley, $17, 9780593439357), author Sangu Mandanna tells a story of found family, taking chances and, of course, romance. Mandanna combines two classic rom-com tropes—forced proximity and a grumpy-sunshine pairing—with the charm of the English countryside, evoking restrained yet fluffy tales of governesses and duty but in a modern setting. Like a good cup of tea, Mandanna’s novel warms you from the inside out. It’s got just enough sugar and cream to bring a smile to your face but not so much that you’re at risk of a toothache.

—Laura Hubbard

Eclipse the Moon Jessie Mihalik returns to her Starlight’s Shadow series with Eclipse the Moon (Harper Voyager, $17.99, 9780063051065), an action-packed sci-fi romance with a central couple that readers will adore.

A hacker and bounty hunter aboard the spaceship Starlight’s Shadow, Kee Ildez needs a break from the ship’s close quarters and the presence of one of her alien crew mates, steely Valovian weapons expert Varro Runkow. Kee thinks a few weeks of solo investigation on the space station Bastion,

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where someone seems to be trying to start a war between the humans and the Valovians, will help her shake off her frustrating attraction to Varro. But her plan is upended when she realizes that he has followed her onto the space station. As tensions rise between human and Valovian designers during a fashion exhibit, Kee tries to stay professional and keep her mind on her mission. The peace between the two races has been tentative at best, and even something seemingly innocuous could plunge the galaxy into war.

Mihalik moves the plot along quickly, mixing deadly intrigue, fast-paced action and political diplomacy.

Kee and Varro are incontrovertible heroes, and Mihalik embraces the idea of good triumphing over evil, giving Eclipse the Moon a vaguely old-fashioned, space Western-esque feel. Their romance unfolds slowly, as their mutual attraction comes to a head amid the danger on Bastion. The mystery plot often takes center stage, which will please more drama- and action-oriented readers. But Mihalik knows her audience and makes sure to include some very steamy moments amid all the dangerous tension and close combat.

—Amanda Diehl

A Taste of Gold and Iron A Taste of Gold and Iron (Tordotcom, $27.99, 9781250800381) is a slow-burn romance wrapped in a fantasy novel full of court intrigue. Alexandra Rowland’s latest novel opens as Prince Kadou of Arasht has made a grievous political misstep, one that leaves two of his own bodyguards dead and angers both his sister, who happens to be the sultan, and the father of her child.

In an attempt to save face for the royal family, Kadou is temporarily banned from court and assigned a new bodyguard, Evemer. Evemer’s disdain for Kadou is matched only by his commitment to formality and protocol, but what he lacks in congeniality he makes up for in skill and dedication. As Kadou and his household are pulled into a conspiracy of break-ins and money forgery, Kadou will have to trust Evemer if he is to pull the royal family out of harm’s way.

Political intrigue dominates much of A Taste of Gold and Iron, so those looking for a book that primarily centers a love story would do well to look to other avenues.

However, for readers who enjoy forced proximity and bodyguard romances, A Taste of Gold and Iron offers both, wrapped in a delightful package of espionage and royal duty. In addition to their deft handling of multiple conspiracies and political disputes, Rowland also impresses in their nuanced depiction of anxiety. Kadou has panic attacks that leave him vulnerable to manipulation from both political opponents and his own staff. The story’s acceptance of Kadou’s anxiety expands A Taste of Gold and Iron’s focus from romantic love to trust and vulnerability as well.

—Laura Hubbard

Illustrations from The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches © 2022 by Sangu Mandanna, art by Lisa Perrin, cover design by Katie Anderson. Reproduced by permission of Berkley.

whodunit

by bruce tierney

Fox Creek Author William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor is an unusual sort of protagonist, a fast-food restaurateur who doubles as a private investigator. One might not necessarily think that a man with those qualifications would find a lot of sleuthing work in rural Tamarack County, Minnesota, but one would be mistaken. In Fox Creek (Atria, $28, 9781982128715), the 19th entry in Krueger’s long-­running series, Cork is approached by one Louis Morriseau, whose wife, Dolores, has gone missing. Louis is concerned that she has run off with another man, Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe healer who also happens to be the uncle of Cork’s wife, Rainy. This scenario seems . . . unlikely, as Henry is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 years old. As it turns out, Dolores actually is with Henry, but he’s guiding her through a sweat lodge ceremony. However, Louis is not actually who he claims to be but rather a member of a team of mercenaries bent on kidnapping Dolores for reasons unknown. Henry senses trouble and narrowly escapes upcountry with Rainy and Dolores in tow, but an expert tracker and two gunmen are in hot pursuit. Not far behind them, Cork and a tribal cop with a vested interest in the case join the fray. Tension mounts as Krueger pits modern tech against Ojibwe traditions, with unexpected twists abounding until the very end.

Bad Day Breaking A bit to the east of Krueger’s Tamarack County lies Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, the setting of John Galligan’s riveting Bad Day Breaking (Atria, $17, 9781982166564). Beleaguered Sheriff Heidi Kick is facing uphill battles on at least two fronts: first, a personnel issue involving an overly aggressive deputy, and then a strange, Jonestown-esque cult that has taken up residence in a self-storage facility (to the chagrin of many locals, who are starting to resemble the torch-bearing, pitchfork-wielding villagers in dystopian horror movies). Sheriff Kick attempts to placate both the cult and the locals, with limited success at best. The pressure ratchets up dramatically after one of the cult members is murdered. And if there wasn’t enough on her plate already, Sheriff Kick must deal with the reappearance of a very difficult ex-boyfriend, a man whose imprisonment she caused who now, unsurprisingly, seeks to exact revenge upon her for his incarceration. Bad Day Breaking is a page turner of the first order, with a killer cliffhanger that will have readers anxiously awaiting Sheriff Kick’s return.

WAKE In rural New South Wales, Australia—part of the legendary Outback where spiders, snakes, crocodiles, etc., are all eagerly waiting to kill you—it bodes well to remember that sometimes the human inhabitants can be lethal as well. Such is the case in Shelley Burr’s debut, WAKE (William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063235229), which centers on the 20-yearold cold case of missing (and now presumed dead) Evelyn McCreery.

Evelyn’s twin sister, Mina, soldiers on, now something of a recluse in her remote farmhouse. All these years later, she remains a suspect in the disappearance of her sister, particularly in online forums where the acronym WAKE is used to mean “Wednesday Addams Killed Evie,” a nod to Mina’s resemblance to actor Christina Ricci in the 1990s films about the creepy, unorthodox Addams family. Mina is forced to revisit Evelyn’s disappearance when Lane Holland arrives in town. A freelance private investigator, Lane makes his living via the rewards he collects after solving missing persons cases.

Mina’s late mother established a reward of $2 million, but Lane isn’t just motivated by the money; something altogether deeper, darker and more personal has led him to Mina’s door. Burr won the 2019 Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger award for WAKE, and after reading it, you’ll be applauding their choice right along with me.

H From the Shadows In James R. Benn’s From the Shadows (Soho Crime, $27.95, 9781641292986), Captain Billy Boyle is snatched from some much needed R & R in Cairo and tasked with a dangerous new mission: Billy must locate an English operative in the wilds of Crete, after which they will head to newly liberated France via Algiers, liaise with the French Resistance and weed out enemies from allies. As is the case with the 16 previous books in the Billy Boyle series, the action takes place against a backdrop of real-life operations and personnel. The reader is introduced to Jack Hemingway, son of iconic writer Ernest; to Wells Lewis, son of author Sinclair; to the heroic 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the most decorated unit in U.S. military history, which was composed primarily of Nisei, second-­ generation Japanese Americans; and to Daniel Inouye, who lost his right arm to a grenade in France and went on to serve as a U.S. senator for Hawaii. Without a doubt, I have learned more about WWII history from Benn’s novels than I ever learned from a textbook. Where he excels, though, apart from superb suspense plotting, is in documenting vignettes of humanity and its blacksheep cousin, brutality. Benn makes combat feel real and immediate to his readers, even those who have never experienced it firsthand. It would be impossible to depict war accurately without killing off some of the good guys, and there are a couple of losses here that will truly hurt, as they should.

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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cover story | margaret wilkerson sexton

A NEW GROOVE In Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s third novel, the sweetest song comes from the heart of San Francisco’s 1950s jazz scene.

© SMEETA MAHANTI

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s third novel, On the Rooftop, is a welcome is a Louisiana transplant who lost her husband, Ellis, long ago, and whose disruption, both to literary trends and in her own publishing career. In a own musical dreams were stunted by her difficult life. This is not, however, time of immense social upheaval, when many African American writers your typical parent-living-through-their-child story. “I feel like Vivian are foregrounding issues of race, ecohas some challenges around when to let go, but I think she ultimately does nomics and oppression in their books, “The music really exemplified the Sexton chose to write a novel that cenlearn to do so,” Sexton says. “At her ters on Black ambition and resiliency. endurance of this community. They came best level, she has learned when it’s “With [my previous two novels, A time to step aside, and I think that’s here with so much optimism.”

Kind of Freedom and The Revisioners], what parenting is—surrendering to it felt like most of my interviews were sociological conversations,” Sexton the child’s metamorphosis into an adult.” says from her California home, “but I wanted to be talking about the work.”

The distinct relationships between Vivian and each of her daughters So for On the Rooftop, she didn’t have a rigid agenda. Instead, her novel reflect their divergent personalities, histories and ambitions. Vivian emphasizes “the endurance and the puts much of her faith in Ruth—the joy of a community . . . while also eldest, the quintessential rock, the de drawing attention to the history of facto leader of the sisters. Ruth has the issues and the fact that they still a strained relationship with middle continue to exist.” sister Esther, who dreams of making Set in 1950s San Francisco, On the an impact but has conflicting ideas Rooftop focuses on the multi­faceted about how to do so. Chloe, the youngyet endearing Vivian, who has comest daughter, yearns for her mother, plicated relationships with her three sisters and community to recognize daughters, Ruth, Esther and Chloe. her gifts.

The widowed Vivian dreams of Sexton notes that despite their stardom for her musically gifted differences, all four women are ultimately searching for the same thing: daughters, who sing together as the security. “I love that through each of Salvations. The young women are the girls, you get a different window popular performers at a local spot called the Champagne Supper Club, into what security means,” she says. and Vivian has hooked the attention “The goal is for all of them to feel safe of an enigmatic talent manager. in their own separate worlds.”

However, just as the Salvations are The past is ever-present for each of on the cusp of fame, Vivian’s aspithem, and nodes of memory function rations are challenged by personal as creative forces, influencing the trauma and their neighborhood’s women as they navigate generational changing landscape. Her daughters trauma, interpersonal violence and are also beginning to prioritize their grief. Vivian, for example, grapples own desires over their mother’s prewith recollections from her Louisiana scribed plan. Loosely inspired by homeland and the afterFiddler on the Roof and told from mulmath of Ellis’ death. tiple perspectives, On the Rooftop is As Sexton notes, these memories a masterful examination of family and catalyze Vivian’s community that celebrates the legacy goals for her of Black dreams and determination.

Readers of Sexton’s previous hisdaughters, her self-­ torical novels will recognize On esteem and her abilthe Rooftop’s exploration of the ity to love again. often-complex relationships between “I feel like honoring the memories that you hold mothers and daughters. “I can’t escape it,” Sexton says. “There is just is a symbol for the entire book,” so much to be mined. They are such she says. “For Vivian . . . she has Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of primal relationships, and even the these painful memories of segreOn the Rooftop. best ones are fraught.” gation in the South, of humiliation In the novel, Sexton describes Vivian’s feelings about motherhood with in the South and of her father’s tragic death in the South. She can’t forget those memories. She can’t erase them, and she can’t bury them. She has care and nuance, successfully avoiding tropes and instead creating a character who embodies very specific personal and cultural dynamics. Vivian to somehow continue to hold those memories and almost transform them

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cover story | margaret wilkerson sexton into something educational for herself in order to allow this new world From blues to jazz to gospel and hip hop, music has been the lifeblood to enter into her space.” of Black people in America, conveying emotion, building community Vivian’s memories were also an important factor in Sexton’s writand offering pathways to freedom. Music feels like its own character in ing process. After setting her previous two novels in her hometown of On the Rooftop, a vibrant entity that seems to breathe, occupy space New Orleans, the author wanted to explore the Bay Area, her home of and impact social activity.

15 years. The former lawyer, who has a degree in creative writing from “Setting [On the Rooftop] in the jazz era really enlivens the book,” Dartmouth College, was cautious, however, feeling that she had yet to Sexton says. “The music really exemplified the endurance of this compossess the cultural authority to imagine her adopted home. “It made munity. They came here with so much optimism and so much hope, you sense to me to make Vivian know, to work in the shipyards. someone who had been born in They had more money than they ever had before. They re-­created Louisiana, so we were both coming from the same place,” Sexton this community so it felt like home. And this musical scene says. “She was basically a visitor.

Her lens and my lens are not any was part of this.” different.”

In the book, the communiDuring the 1950s, San ty’s camaraderie and stability are undermined by white busiFrancisco’s Fillmore District was considered the “Harlem of the nessmen who begin buying up property in the area. For these West,” a nod to its similarity to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s businessmen and their partners and ’30s. The Fillmore’s Black in government, the Fillmore was community began to emerge a blight, despite being a strong Black residential and business during what is known as the Great Migration, a national trend of base. Some property owners sold northern and western movement out for a quick windfall, while others resisted until the seemas many African Americans left the South in search of new resiingly benevolent offers turned into harassment. Some contindential and occupational opportunities and to escape the horrors ued to fight, as Esther does in of Jim Crow. The predominantly the novel.

Black neighborhood became the This process, known as “urban center of San Francisco’s vibrant renewal,” affected African American communities across jazz scene, where transcendent the country in the 1950s and legends collaborated with local ’60s and is an antecedent to musicians in the many clubs that lined the streets. present-day gentrification. While Sexton has a personal consome Black neighborhoods were nection to the Great Migration. wiped out through this process, Similar to her characters, memothers were able to persist and still exist in some form. With bers of her own family moved On the Rooftop, Sexton hoped from Louisiana to California in the 1940s and ’50s. When Sexton to present a portrait of commuarrived in the area decades later, nity resiliency for contempothese family members welcomed rary neighborhoods resisting her with open arms, allowing gentrification.

“I want people to be aware of her to immediately feel a sense the fact that it’s been around for of community in her new home.

She inscribes this sentiment into a long time and that it continOn the Rooftop. ues,” Sexton says. “We need to “I love that they brought start having conversations, and Louisiana to the Bay Area,” we need to start creating policies H On the Rooftop Sexton says, “and that they crethat preempt it, right, that abolEcco, $28.99, 9780063139961 ated this mini-community that ish it. And I want people to expewas an echo of their own that rience the joy and the endurance Historical Fiction they had left back home, [where] of a community that has undergone it and still continued to flourish.” they could access all of the sources of comfort. . . . They founded the same churches that they would have gone to back home.”

Sexton’s work entertains and inspires at the same time, and with On In the novel, Vivian and her daughters dream of musical stardom as the Rooftop, she urges us to find comfort in the triumphs of our past. “I hope that it will relay the security of knowing that we’re not all alone in a way to secure liberty in the face of racial and economic oppression, this,” she says. “Our ancestors have done it, and our descendants will do and as the Salvations channel their existential angst into jazz and blues it. We’re not all alone in this. We kind of have a blueprint for how to fix it numbers performed at Black-owned Fillmore clubs, they share stages and how to heal ourselves in the process.” with iconic musicians such as Dinah Washington and Lena Horne. While —Langston Collin Wilkins brief, these cameos ground the story in very real historical dynamics.

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interview | beth macy

Beth Macy still has hope The bestselling author of Dopesick shines a light on the helpers who are making a difference in the opioid crisis. grew up with. “The idea that drug users are worthy human beings—that After the publication of her landmark 2018 book Dopesick, which featured six years of reporting about how the opioid crisis affected famithey are, in fact, equals—is harm reduction in a nutshell,” she writes. They lies in her adopted hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, Beth Macy vowed need access to things like clean needles, hepatitis tests and buprenorto herself, “I’m not writing about this phine, or “bupe,” an FDA-approved again.” Her physician feared Macy might medication to treat opioid use disorder. have PTSD after bearing witness to so People with SUD also need simple things, such as casseroles, instead of many tragic deaths, including that of a 28-year-old mother named Tess Henry, stigma and reproach. “It doesn’t always whom Macy had grown close to while smell like flowers, and you might get a reporting Dopesick and whose body little something on you,” Rev. Mathis was found in a Las Vegas dumpster on says in the book. “But the people who Christmas Eve 2017. Macy’s husband are willing to work at the face-to-face suggested that she should write about level get to see the miracle and look it happy things this time, like food and garin the eye.” Many such solutions, Macy dening, while her late mother, who had points out, “are kind of low-tech and advancing dementia at the time, advised high-touch,” and the good news is that her about “eight times a day” to “write a they’re working. “That’s the view that love story instead.”

America needs to see,” she says, “not Not surprisingly, Macy didn’t listen. just the dark but the miracles.”

Yet today she is feeling happy and hopeThe first time Macy visited a needle ful, chatting by phone about Raising exchange program in Roanoke, “I just Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the kind of had to take a breath and turn around and get a hold of myself,” she Future of America’s Overdose Crisis says. She thought of Tess Henry, who from her mountain cabin an hour outside of Roanoke. Midway through our had verbalized a need for urgent care for conversation, she becomes even more people with SUD before she died. “She ebullient, shouting, “Oh my God. I’m didn’t know what that meant, because looking at an eagle!” she had never seen it,” Macy says, “but she knew it needed to be as easy as the Macy explains that writing Raising Lazarus was a very different experiurgent care center that first prescribed ence from writing Dopesick, and in some opioids for her.” Tess, she believes, ways, it was healing. “I’m not writing would have loved this needle exchange about just death,” she says of her most and its welcoming, comfortable vibe. recent book. “I’m mostly writing about It’s run by a “sweetheart of a guy,” Macy helpers, as Mr. Rogers called them. I’m says, who brings his two little white dogs writing about people who are actually with him to work and provides things making a difference. It feels really good like deodorant, food, computers and to give them a platform, a voice.” help with housing and job applications One of the book’s many fascinating to anyone who needs it, in addition to heroes is the Reverend Michelle Mathis clean needles.

H Raising Lazarus of Olive Branch Ministries in western Macy admits that she has at times Little, Brown, $30, 9780316430227 North Carolina, who uses the biblical struggled to forgive those with SUD, story of Lazarus to encourage people especially in the case of her father, Social Science to extend help rather than judgment to whose substance was alcohol. As a result those with substance use disorder (SUD). Mathis “tells the story to get of his addiction, she grew up in poverty; he even failed to attend her high school graduation. Every now and then, she thinks, “Wow, I really didn’t well-meaning Christians to check their blind spots,” Macy says. “Jesus does the miracle, but the people who are following him have to go in there have the experience of having a father.” But she also knows that he had and get their hands dirty. They have to roll an illness. “So in some ways,” she says, “I’m the stone and unbind Lazarus.” trying to figure all that out for myself too.”

“That’s the view that America Blind spots play an important role in Macy knows that she could have become needs to see, not just the dark examining issues related to SUD. The opiaddicted, too, if things had played out a oid crisis is everywhere, but in rural areas little differently in her life. “I was a wild but the miracles.” it’s often hidden in plain sight—“literally,” thing,” she says, “but in my small town, it Macy says, “right under the bridges you drive across.” She and the helpers was just marijuana and beer. I’m sure if everybody was doing [opioids], I would’ve wanted to get in on it too.” she profiles in Raising Lazarus encourage an alternate approach to the war-on-drugs, “just say no,” victim-blaming approach that so many of us At that time, however, the Sackler family had yet to unleash the pain

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© JOSH MELTZER

feature | bestseller watch

BIG RELEASES FOR SEPTEMBER Discover new books from five beloved authors.

Desperation in Death

By J.D. Robb

St. Martin’s, $28.99, 9781250278234

September 6 J.D. Robb’s 55th novel starring Lieutenant Eve Dallas, head of the New York City Police Security Department, follows a murder in 2061 that cracks open a case of human trafficking.

The Mosquito Bowl

By Buzz Bissinger

Harper, $32.50, 9780062879929

September 13 The author of Friday Night Lights tells the incredible true story of the football players who fought at the battle of Okinawa during World War II.

Lucy by the Sea

By Elizabeth Strout

Random House, $28, 9780593446065

September 20 medication that would eventually cause the opioid epidemic: OxyContin.

With fascinating detail, Raising Lazarus describes major players in the class-action lawsuit against this “cartel of the opioid crisis,” as Macy describes them. Paul Hanly, a high-profile litigator who led the legal fight against opioid makers and distributors, told Macy, “I’ve taken 500 depositions in my career, and I have never deposed a person whose ability to exhibit empathy is zero. . . . Compared to [Perdue Pharma chairman and president Richard Sackler], Donald Trump looks like Jesus Christ.”

“The idea that drug users are worthy human beings—that they are, in fact, equals— is harm reduction in a nutshell.”

Macy says she would love the chance to question the Sackler family herself, but only if they first took a truth serum. “They hid so much of it for so many years,” she says. “I think when the full truth comes out, it’s going to be even more shocking than it is now.”

Still, Macy wonders whether the Sacklers wish they could have done things differently—even though board member Kathy Sackler has already testified before Congress that they do not. “They started this thing that has hurt roughly a third of American families, and they’ve taken no responsibility for it,” she says. “I just want to hear them say they’re sorry.”

—Alice Cary Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of Raising Lazarus.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout returns to her beloved character Lucy Barton, who shelters in a small Maine town with her ex-­husband, William, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We Spread

By Iain Reid

Scout, $26.99, 9781982169350

September 27 The new novel from the author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Foe (both of which have been adapted for film) dives into the unsettled mind of an aging artist.

The Winners

By Fredrik Backman

Atria, $28.99, 9781982112790

September 27 This popular series, set within a small hockey town, comes to its much-anticipated finale.

Prices and publication dates are subject to change.

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well read

by robert weibezahl

H Afterlives Soon after it was announced in October 2021 that Tanzanian British novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah had won the Nobel Prize in literature, a New York Times headline asked, “Why Are His Books So Hard to Find?”

Though Gurnah had received acclaim in Britain, including being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, his books had never sold well in the United States, and few American readers were familiar with his work. The Nobel, of course, changed that—not just in our country, where the handful of his novels that were in print in the U.S. quickly went out of stock, but around the world. The belated arrival on our shores of Gurnah’s 10th novel, Afterlives (Riverhead, $28, 9780593541883), is a full-fledged literary event—and rightfully so, for it is a captivating, engrossing and edifying work of fiction.

Set in what is now Tanzania during and after the First World War, Afterlives, like much of the Zanzibar-born writer’s work, excavates the colonial and postcolonial history of East Africa. Gurnah offers a rare glimpse into an often-overlooked period at the beginning of the 20th century when Germany flexed its imperial muscles in the region. The narrative takes a pretty quick sweep through the relatively brief history of DeutschOstafrika, providing a backdrop for the masterful portraits Gurnah paints of arresting, interconnected The engrossing new novel characters. There’s Khalifa, a good-natured from Nobel laureate clerk whose father was Abdulrazak Gurnah is filled Indian and mother was African, and his less with human compassion good-natured wife, Bi Asha. When Khalifa’s and historical insight. friend Ilyas goes off to fight with the Germans during the war, the couple takes in his little sister, Afiya, who has endured brutality but remains fearless. There are also German soldiers and missionaries, wealthy and unscrupulous merchants, generous and churlish neighbors—a panoply of life.

Most of all, there is Hamza, one of nature’s pure of heart. The wanderings and fate of this princely young man, whose life trajectory provides the spine of the narrative, are comparable to those of a Dickens faux-naïf, akin to some of literature’s greatest picaresque lives—albeit without the roguish aspects. Meanwhile, the persistent mystery of what has happened to Ilyas, revealed only in the final pages, pointedly underscores the fates of myriad displaced victims of colonialism and war, then and still.

In the deceptively gentle texture of its depiction of everyday life among seemingly inconsequential people (who, of course, are anything but), Afterlives may remind readers of the work of another African Nobelist: Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz. Yet Gurnah has his own incomparable, distinctive voice. He is a writer who wraps his anger at historical injustice in a misleading cloak, as his characters seem to acquiesce to the inevitable but repeatedly push against what history has prescribed for them. For the many readers coming to Gurnah’s novels for the first time, Afterlives seems the perfect introduction, supplying the impetus to explore much more of his work.

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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lifestyles

by susannah felts

H The Curanderx Toolkit In her expansive look at ancestral and herbal healing and wellness, Atava Garcia Swiecicki introduces us to curanderismo, a multifaceted approach to healing that draws from the folk medicine traditions of the Latinx diaspora. In The Curanderx Toolkit (Heydey, $28, 9781597145718), readers will learn about the teyolía, or heart center, akin to the soul. Teyolía is one of our four energetic bodies; when it is harmed or imbalanced, we may experience depression or sadness. As founder of the Ancestral Apothecary School of Herbal, Folk and Indigenous Medicine and an expert in herbal medicine, Garcia Swiecicki provides an overview of herbalism and brujeria, or witchcraft, in Mexico and profiles the healers she has studied or practiced in community with for decades, most of whom are based in California. As Garcia Swiecicki observes, the effects of white supremacist patriarchy are all but impossible to ignore, and as a result, space is being claimed during this cultural moment for traditions and ways previously sidelined, silenced and dismissed. This book is part of that important work.

The Future Is Fungi Count me curious about the mysteries, magic and medicine of mushrooms. There’s so much to learn and so much yet to be unearthed by science. If this is the kind of thing you like to geek out about, too, you’ll be captivated by Michael Lim and Yun Shu’s The Future Is Fungi (Thames & Hudson, $34.95, 9781760762780), with its 360-degree view of shrooms, spores and such.

As if mirroring the depth and range of a mycelial network, the book covers mushrooms’ culinary and medicinal uses, psilocybin and even mycorestoration and mycoremediation (fungi deployed to fight pollutants and break down plastics). While this is a text-rich book, not scrimping on research and detail, the visuals are equally stunning.

Mission Vegan Mission Vegan (Ecco, $39.99, 9780063012981), the inventive new cookbook from Danny Bowien, co-founder of Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco and New York City and subject of the sixth season of “The Mind of a Chef,” makes my mouth water for dishes I could have never imagined, like smashed cucumbers with tingly granola and microwave mochi with sesame ganache. A Korean adoptee with white parents who raised him in Oklahoma, Bowien made his way to Korean cuisine peripatetically via kitchens on both coasts, and along the way he laid off the beef. While his new book doesn’t limit itself to straight-up Korean food—there’s a pomodoro recipe tucked within, in fact—it does draw fond inspiration from Korea’s traditions and ingredients, including many takes on kimchi and other banchan. With Mission Vegan, Bowien is, in his own words, “embarking on a new journey rather than documenting one I’ve already been on.”

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

feature | parenting

Books for every parent’s nightstand Staying connected with your child makes a difference at every stage.

Whether you’re a brand-new parent to an infant or a grizzled veteran trying to get your teens to actually talk to you, some days you can’t help but wonder if you’re doing it all wrong. These parenting books are here to help.

Good Inside Becky Kennedy’s Good Inside (Harper Wave, $28.99, 9780063159488) is the book I wish I’d had when my kids were little. Kennedy, a psychologist, argues for finding the good inside your child when they throw a tantrum or say they hate you. To start, we need to see our kids’ behavior as clues to what they need rather than who they are. Using anecdotes from clients and her own family, Kennedy decodes behaviors (lying, squabbling, perfectionism) and offers connection strategies for each. When a parent strengthens their relationship with their child, she writes, they’ll see improved behavior and cooperation. Kennedy also shows how parents can help kids name their emotions. It’s a warm, good-­humored book.

How to Raise an Intuitive Eater Food is a common battleground for parents and kids at all stages. Sumner Brooks and Amee Severson’s How to Raise an Intuitive Eater (St. Martin’s Essentials, $27.99, 9781250786609) link those family battles to diet culture, the messages about weight and appearance that we’re all bombarded with. They connect diet culture, including medical messaging, to shame, mental illness and negativity about food and the body. The good news is that kids are born intuitive eaters, their brains and bodies wired to know when and how much to eat. To build an intuitive eating family framework, the authors offer strategies such as their “add-in, pressure-off” approach: Instead of limiting foods, or labeling some foods bad and others good, focus on adding more variety. And instead of rules and commentary (“You must eat two bites!”

“I can’t believe you’re not eating that!”), focus on providing the meal and letting the child decide how much to eat.

Though sometimes dense, How to Raise an Intuitive Eater is a thoughtful and comprehensive resource.

The Teen Interpreter In The Teen Interpreter (Norton, $27.95, 9781324006510), England-based psychologist and researcher Terri Apter aims to help parents engage with their teens’ struggles. Drawing on 35 years of studying teens and families, Apter describes some of the biggest challenges for teens and parents through the lens of teen brain development. As the teen brain re­models itself, changing dramatically, so do teens’ relationships, behavior, sense of identity and emotional responses (outbursts, rudeness, grumpy silences). Throughout, The Teen Interpreter threads together research and teens’ stories, along with exercises for parents to communicate better and build stronger relationships with their teens, which in turn can help teens build resiliency through the challenging teen years and into young adulthood. It’s a clear and reassuring guide.

The Sleep-Deprived Teen In The Sleep-Deprived Teen (Mango, $18.95, 9781642507911), journalist Lisa L. Lewis lays out why sleep matters to teens’ well-being: A lack of sleep affects their mental health, their ability to learn and play sports, and their behavior. But paradoxically, it’s tough for teens to get a good night’s sleep (8 to 10 hours) because their body clocks have shifted; they’re biologically primed to wake later in the morning and fall asleep later at night. The Sleep-Deprived Teen opens with the story of the first teen sleep studies at Stanford University, emphasizing how little experts knew about sleep and the teen brain until recently. Since then, studies have found that teens who start school later are more likely to show up at school and do better on standardized tests, and less likely to get into car crashes or trouble after school. The last chapters of Lewis’ book even offer a map for parents aiming to change school start times in their districts.

Raising Antiracist Children Antiracist and anti-bias educator Britt Hawthorne is also a home-schooling mom of multiracial children, and she draws on research, teaching and her own family’s experiences in Raising Antiracist Children (Simon Element, $17.99, 9781982185428). Part primer, part workbook with activities for different age groups, Raising Antiracist Children breaks down concepts like bias and white immunity to help parents initiate, rather than avoid, conversations on race. If you’re the parent of a child of color, the book can help you encourage their self-confidence. If you’re a white parent, the book can help you see aspects of racism you might not have seen before (for instance, the way our culture assumes white skin is the default). The book’s principles reflect a broader parenting philosophy that includes setting healthy boundaries, building community and following your child’s desire to learn.

Reading for Our Lives The introduction to Maya Payne Smart’s Reading for Our Lives (Avery, $26, 9780593332177) makes note of a quiet crisis: American basic literacy rates are weak compared to those in other industrialized nations. Parents want to raise readers, but they may not know what to do beyond reading aloud to their children before bed. Reading for Our Lives aims to change that. The book first maps out the milestones and skills—oral language, sound and print awareness, letter knowledge, phonics and spelling—that lead to reading. Smart then offers a range of strategies, games and play suggestions that help parents build those skills organically. For instance, with babies, parents can converse in a number of ways: talk, then pause to listen to their coos; ask them questions; label everyday objects for them. With older kids, parents can play “I spy” with sounds, not just colors. (“I spy something that rhymes with tike.”) Smart’s book is an empowering manual for readers and their kids.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

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reviews | fiction

H Lessons

By Ian McEwan

Literary Fiction Some people never learn, or so history would suggest. One doesn’t have to look hard to find repeated patterns that can cause lingering trauma, from interpersonal cruelties to larger events such as wars and other human-made disasters. This is just the sort of material that Ian McEwan—that eloquent virtuoso at mining life’s barbarities—likes to exploit for narrative effect, and he does so yet again in Lessons (Knopf, $30, 9780593535202), a scathing novel about the ways brutality, intentional or otherwise, can shape a life.

The life at the center of this exceptional work is that of Roland Baines. At the start of the novel, it’s the late 1950s, when Roland is 11. His parents, a tough-love father who was an infantryman in Scotland and a mother who betrayed her first husband, have sent Roland 2,000 miles away from their home in North Africa to attend boarding school in England.

Among Roland’s formative experiences are the overtures, musical as well as physical, of a piano teacher in her 20s. “This was insomniac

H The Marriage Portrait

By Maggie O’Farrell

Historical Fiction Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet hit at the right moment; her 2020 novel about the tragic death of William Shakespeare’s son from the bubonic plague made for compelling reading as many of us quarantined during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her next novel, The Marriage Portrait (Knopf, $28, 9780593320624), is a vivid depiction of the harsh manners and rigid expectations for women within ducal courts in 16th-century Italy.

Lucrezia de’Medici was born into one of Italy’s most illustrious families. With parents eager to strengthen ties to other noble Italian houses, Lucrezia’s older sister Maria is betrothed to Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. When Maria dies of an unspecified illness just days before the wedding, 15-year-old Lucrezia is offered in her place. Less than a year later, Lucrezia is dead, probably from tuberculosis—but at the time, it was alleged that she was murdered by her

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memory, not a dream,” Roland says of his adult recollections of those days, among them the time she pinched his bare thigh after he made a mistake while performing a piece from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, leaving a “secret oval mark.”

Young Roland’s relationship with his teacher progresses in unsettling ways, but an equally disfiguring scar appears later.

His wife, Alissa, whom he met in 1977 after enrolling in her German language class, abandons him and their 7-month-old son because, as she puts it (with shades of Doris Lessing), motherhood “would’ve sunk me” and kept her from becoming “the greatest novelist of her generation.”

McEwan’s novel moves back and forth in time to record the salient events of Roland’s life: adapting to single parenthood, eking out a living as a lounge pianist, learning of his and Alissa’s families’ pasts and more. As McEwan recounts seven decades of Roland’s life, the author places

husband. This long-lasting rumor became the basis of Robert Browning’s dramatic 1842 poem “My Last Duchess.”

As imagined by O’Farrell, Lucrezia is a free spirit and artist, attuned to the natural world and accepted, if not warmly embraced, by her large Florentine family. Once married, she is out of her league in the tense, gossipy Ferrara household, where she is frightened by her husband’s mercurial moods and his sisters’ cagey secrets. Lucrezia quickly realizes that the longer it takes her to produce an heir, the more danger she is in. As she sits for a formal marriage portrait and cautiously makes a connection with the artist’s apprentice, she remains not only on the periphery of the court but also fearful for her life.

O’Farrell is a marvelous stylist, and The Marriage Portrait is full of the same kinds of intense details that made Hamnet come alive.

Her characters are captivating and believable, and the landscape of Renaissance Italy is a veritable gift to the senses, so powerfully does O’Farrell evoke the sights, sounds and smells of forest, castle and barnyard.

From Lucrezia’s early encounters with a tiger in her father’s menagerie to her final days in a wooded fortress, The Marriage Portrait will please readers who relish good historical fiction as well as anyone looking to the past to better understand the present.

—Lauren Bufferd

his character’s personal events in a global context and focuses on such international milestones as the Cuban missile crisis, the disaster at Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lessons is designed to unsettle, which is nothing new for McEwan. Although some readers may disagree, the novel posits that knaves and heroes come in all guises, and that everyone is capable of lies, predation and selfishness. The book has moments of warmth that are surprising in a work from McEwan, but there’s plenty of his classic cruelty, too, perpetrated by men and women alike. Lessons may not be optimistic, but as Roland notes, “Only the backward look, the well-­researched history could tell peaks and troughs from portals.” Which is another way of saying that, with enough hindsight and sentience, there’s a chance that mistakes can be corrected and lessons learned.

—Michael Magras

Other Birds

By Sarah Addison Allen

Popular Fiction What does it mean for a story’s setting to really act as an additional character? It can’t just be a well-­ defined place where players act out their roles. Rather, it must feel like an extra layer where secrets might be kept—and possibly revealed. An apartment building on Mallow Island, South Carolina, beautifully illustrates this principle in Sarah Addison Allen’s sixth novel, Other Birds (St. Martin’s, $27.99, 9781250019868).

After turning 18, Zoey moves to the island to live in the apartment left by her late mother.

Zoey finds herself at the Dellawisp, a quirky building that hosts a flock of nosy, noisy birds for which it is named. So, too, has it become a home for a number of interesting people. From Zoey’s artist neighbor, Charlotte, to the property manager, Frasier, each tenant of the Dellawisp is haunted by ghosts—of who they were, whom they love, pasts they don’t understand or want to flee. In time, each resident seeks to build

reviews | fiction connections with one another and to understand how their lives are intertwined.

Magical elements are hewn into the marrow of Other Birds. Ghosts and birds—imagined or real, but all mysterious—guide the meandering cast, allowing opportunities for joyful circumstances. The fictional dellawisps—curious, loud and loitering—shape both the setting and how the characters interact within it. Zoey even has a bird named Pigeon that only she can see. Pigeon prods and cajoles Zoey, helping her grow.

If you’re looking for a bit of mystery, whimsical characters and a keen sense of place, Other Birds offers all these delights and more. Allen immerses readers in this island world, as well as in the process of self-discovery, the experiences of being haunted and the gift of surrendering to what we can and cannot control.

—Freya Sachs

H If I Survive You

By Jonathan Escoffery

Literary Fiction The flame that burns brightly on the colorful cover of Jonathan Escoffery’s debut is an appropriate image, because If I Survive You (MCD, $27, 9780374605988) is a blazing success. With a profoundly authentic vision of family dynamics and racism in America, this collection of connected stories explores the young adulthood of a character named Trelawny, whose parents fled political violence in Jamaica only to face hard luck in Miami.

These eight stories are completely immersive, humorous yet heartbreaking. The first, “In Flux,” sets the stage well, describing Trelawny’s 1980s childhood and his tortured, complex search for clarity about his identity. The questions are invasive: “What are you?” people ask him, and he turns to his mother, wondering, “Are we Black?” His confusion at school is loaded with cynical truths, such as his take on his fifth grade lessons about the history of slavery in the United States: “It’s: That was a long, long time ago. It’s: Honest Abe and Harriet Tubman and M.L.K fixed all that nasty business. It’s: Now we don’t see race.”

Sixth grade brings disaster: “A hurricane named Andrew pops your house’s roof open, peeling it back like the lid of a Campbell’s soup can, pouring a fraction of the Atlantic into your bedroom, living room—everywhere—bloating carpet, drywall, and fiberboard with sopping sea salt corrosion.” After the hurricane, Trelawny’s family rips apart, with his older brother and father moving out together. This parting is

further explored in “Under the Ackee Tree,” told from the perspective of Trelawny’s father.

Trelawny’s brother, Delano, who longs to be a musician, shines in his own story set on the eve of Hurricane Irene, titled “If He Suspected He’d Get Someone Killed This Morning, Delano Would Never Leave His Couch.”

Hoping to be a writer, Trelawny goes to college in the frigid Midwest, only to find himself back in Miami amid the Great Recession, living out of his SUV and scrambling for work. As Trelawny notes, he “had faithfully followed the upward mobility playbook, only to wind up an extraordinary failure.” This quest is at the center of a trio of riveting, memorable and surprising stories: “Odd Jobs,” “Independent Living” and the exquisite titular tale.

Escoffery brings an imaginative, fresh voice to his deep exploration of what it means to be a man, son, brother, father and nonwhite immigrant in America. As Trelawny notes, “If I don’t create characters who look like me, who will?

Visibility is important. Otherwise, it’s as if we don’t exist.”

—Alice Cary

All That’s Left Unsaid

By Tracey Lien

Family Drama Denny Tran is dead.

No one seems to know how or why, even though he died in a popular and crowded restaurant where he and his pals had gone to celebrate the end of the high school year.

Improbable though it may sound, everyone seems to have been in the restroom or have been averting their eyes at that moment. But Denny’s sister, Ky, the protagonist of Tracey Lien’s suspenseful debut novel, All That’s Left Unsaid (William Morrow, $27.99, 9780063227736), is determined to get answers.

Ky is a journalist living in Melbourne, Australia, and to find out what happened to her sweet-natured, brilliant, beloved younger brother, she’ll have to return to her hardscrabble hometown and interrogate people from her own community. The Vietnamese émigrés of Cabramatta—a suburb of Sydney—spend their lives sacrificing and compromising, trying to stay out of trouble and sometimes falling short. This includes Ky and Denny’s checked-out father and loud, infuriating yet surprisingly lovable mother.

Coming back to her parents’ home, Ky must resist lapsing into the role of obedient daughter—the child who never causes trouble, who nearly wrecks herself trying to meet familial expectations. If Ky wants to expose the truth

of her brother’s gruesome death, she’s going to have to make some people uncomfortable.

Fortunately, Ky has a superpower, even as she struggles to acknowledge it. Part of her conscience—the voice that can cut through the nonsense and get at some cold, hard truths—comes from her former friend Minnie. This connection bolsters Ky as she demands answers at the local police department and gives her the nerve to interview her former high school teacher, the restaurant’s wedding singer, Denny’s best friend and other people who were present on that terrible, fatal night.

All That’s Left Unsaid might remind some readers of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, another novel about a journalist daughter returning to her fractious hometown to investigate a murder and having to engage with both a difficult family and former neighbors who are reluctant to talk. Yet Lien’s novel, by turns gripping and heartbreaking, makes room for forgiveness and understanding. Ky knows all about her people, and to know all is to forgive all.

—Arlene McKanic

H Bliss Montage

By Ling Ma

Short Stories With Bliss Mon­ tage (FSG, $26, 9780374293512), all the promise and power of Ling Ma’s 2018 novel, Severance, is gorgeously applied to the art of the short story. It’s a lyrical, potent anthology that blends fantasy and reality to dazzling effect.

The eight tales in Bliss Montage are rooted in familiar, deeply human moments. For example: A pair of friends have an unhealthy relationship with drugs and each other, a woman is haunted by her romantic history, and a wife deals with losing track of her husband at an airport. But within these familiar beats, Ma inserts fantastical conceits, tilting our view of reality until something strange and new creeps in. In “G,” the two friends take a drug that renders them temporarily invisible. In “Los Angeles,” the woman shares a house with her husband and 100 ex-­boyfriends.

And in “Returning,” the wife arrives in an unfamiliar country and learns about a burial ritual that might change her marriage forever.

In each story, Ma seamlessly blends the real and the unreal with astonishing confidence and care. Laden with apt, surprising metaphors, her supernatural elements provide incisive, bittersweet commentary on human longing, loss and love. Her tightly structured sentences are little

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reviews | fiction blades of wisdom and wit that slip into you when you least expect it, opening you up with bursts of raw, emotive power.

Bliss Montage is another triumph for Ma. Fans of elegant, well-crafted short fiction should not miss it.

—Matthew Jackson

Haven

By Emma Donoghue

Historical Fiction How do you discern whether a vivid dream is a holy vision or just someone’s own desire?

Haven (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316413930), the latest novel from celebrated Ir ish Canadian writer Emma Donoghue, hinges on a monk’s ascetic dream of an island set apart for God’s glory.

Scholarly priest Artt selects timeworn monk Cormac and an awkward young monk named Trian to sail west and establish a new community for Christ. Their trinity seeks a place far from civilization and temptation, since Artt plans to withdraw from the world entirely. Finding two remote islands after a week’s journey fills Artt with zeal and confirms God’s call upon him. But as Artt intones early in the novel, “Monkish life is one long war against the devil.” As he leads his two reluctant followers in an increasingly erratic and unyielding manner, questions abound: Will this haven be a true refuge? Did Artt hear God rightly? Or has he lost his way?

Inspired by the true history of an early Christian monastery founded on Ireland’s Skellig Islands, Haven explores the mix of superstition, lore, faith and basic need that accompanies humanity on a mission. As in her hit bestseller, Room, Donoghue’s powers of description expand small, confined spaces until they contain worlds of universal depth.

Haven sensitively considers hubris, humility and selfishness, who God is and how he might interact with his creation. Artt, Cormac and Trian grapple with this relationship as they face hourly trials in a new world that’s as solid and real as it is mysterious. Much of the action takes place in the hearts of these men, so the story’s pace is a slow, intriguing burn, building enjoyably until a somewhat jarring climax and disappointing denouement. Shock-value shift aside, Donoghue’s talent for storytelling captivates.

Thoughtful and thought-provoking, Haven captures the gulf that can grow—especially during times of hardship—between what we say we believe and how we live.

—Melissa Brown

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H Natural History

By Andrea Barrett

Short Stories For 25 years, beginning with her National Book Award-winning story collection, Ship Fever, Andrea Barrett has devoted vast amounts of her creative energy to vividly imagining several generations of a family and their friends living in central New York. In Natural History (Norton, $26.95, 9781324035190), the publisher tells us, Barrett “completes and connects the lives of the family of scientists, teachers and innovators she has been weaving throughout her books.”

First, let’s hope that this isn’t truly our final opportunity to spend time with Barrett’s characters. Long may they prosper! Many of them are female naturalists leading deeply compelling lives in provincial places, corresponding fruitfully with each other and with renowned scientists. They’re not simply unmarried teachers or traveling lecturers concerned with the science lab and the beauty of nature; they’re also devoted family members, lonely visionaries and rivals for the attention and approval of others.

Their relationships, professional and emotional, are the understory to the science that seems to so fascinate Barrett.

Second, you need not have read earlier stories to be informed and dazzled by Natural History.

(I have read less than half of Barrett’s books and still found myself astounded.) While the larger narrative of Barrett’s collected works has not emerged chronologically but instead episodically, this collection of six stories does contain a basic chronology, following schoolteacher and citizen-scientist Henrietta Atkins (born in 1852) into the early 20th century. A helpful family tree at the end of the book illustrates the range and complexity of family relations as well as the ties “beyond blood or marriage” that link characters.

Third, Barrett is sometimes described as a historical fiction writer. There’s truth in that.

Many of these stories are set in the 19th century and offer rich sensory glimpses of smalltown American life of that era. At the same time, Barrett has a more modern view of the winnowing processes of history. In one of the collection’s best stories, “The Regimental History,” Henrietta is a bright child serving in the home of a prominent local family, and she reads horrific and confusing first-person accounts of Civil War battles from two brothers in the family.

Later, an older Henrietta, now a teacher, helps one brother attempt to clarify and defend his unit’s sullied reputation by contributing to the

regimental history. And later still, an even older Henrietta visits a historian who possesses all the soldiers’ testimonials and will now refine and generalize and make everything clear.

Or maybe not. In Natural History, Barrett demonstrates that while history organizes and distills events, fiction brings messy humanity gloriously to life.

—Alden Mudge

The Lost Ticket

By Freya Sampson

Popular Fiction We all have a story about the one that got away, but not everyone takes that obsession to the lengths the hero does in Freya Sampson’s charming second novel, The Lost Ticket (Berkley, $17, 9780593201411).

Smitten with a young woman he met on London’s 88 bus line in 1962, Frank Weiss has spent a considerable portion of his adult life riding public transport in hopes of meeting her just once more. Only problem is, there are 9 million people in London, Frank doesn’t know the woman’s name, and the information he has on her (red hair, art student, bus rider) is several decades old. Oh, and one more problem: Frank is evincing the beginning stages of dementia, so if he’s going to find her while he still remembers her, the clock’s ticking pretty loudly.

As luck would have it, the 88 bus affords Frank a second meet cute. This time, it’s a young woman named Libby Nicholls, who is in the midst of her own relationship crisis. Intrigued

by Frank’s plight, she decides to distract herself from her own problems by taking on his. She enlists the help of Frank’s caregiver, Dylan, and his friend Esme, who has Down syndrome, to leaflet along the bus route in hopes of turning up a clue. This is how you find a lost cat, after all, so why not a lost love?

Meanwhile, Libby is thrown a few curveballs, both emotional and physical, that make her efforts for Frank more challenging. We discover that, just like unconsummated rendezvous, words left unspoken can provoke profound repercussions. And while all this is going down, occasional chapters introduce a character named Peggy, who may or may not be connected to—or even be—the object of Frank’s affection.

Sampson’s true gift is bringing to life an improvised family of three-dimensional characters with real struggles and real humanity. In a way, The Lost Ticket is the ultimate literary British Invasion, uniting the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” with the Rolling

feature | inspirational fiction Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

As Mick Jagger says, if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need.

—Thane Tierney

H The Fortunes of Jaded Women

By Carolyn Huynh

Family Saga A war bubbles at the core of The Fortunes of Jaded Women (Atria, $27, 9781982188733), but perhaps not the one you’d expect. Rather than retreading the conflict that has been the focus of most Vietnam-centric literature for the past 70 years, Vietnamese American author Carolyn Huynh offers up a refreshingly buoyant and irreverent debut novel about a fiery group of estranged mothers and daughters.

Ever since their ancestor Oanh left her husband for another man, the Dương women have been cursed to be unlucky in love and only give birth to daughters. Despite all living in Orange County, California, sisters Mai, Minh and Khuyến haven’t spoken to one another— or to their mother—for the last 10 years. The sisters’ relationships with their own daughters are hardly any better.

All this changes when Mai visits her trusted psychic adviser in Hawaii and is rocked by the revelation that this will be the year her family experiences a marriage, a funeral and the birth of a son. But Mai is warned that if she isn’t careful, it will also be the year she loses everything.

In the riotous year that ensues, the fractious and feisty Dương women finally reconnect, heal their wounds and forge a new future as a family.

Fantastical elements and an abundance of sisterly squabbles and scandals keep things juicy and bring plenty of laughs, but the characters are the real stars of the show. Each woman is joyfully rendered and fully developed, offering a welcome contrast to cliched depictions of meek and docile Asian women, and a powerful subversion of monolithic depictions of a people who have for too long been solely defined by tragedy.

The Dương women have fire in their bellies, desire in their hearts and the grit needed to overcome any obstacle. The Fortunes of Jaded Women will certainly appeal to fans of overthe-top excess à la Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, but readers who love rich explorations of thorny mother-daughter relationships and the ways we weather trauma and grief will also find much to enjoy.

—Stephenie Harrison

No one is an island Two inspirational novels seek to warm readers’ hearts.

Authors Yvette Manessis Corporon and Sandra Byrd intertwine past and present in two stories of love, courage and survival, both with island settings. From the Greek isle of Corfu to Washington’s Whidbey Island, hope can always be found in friendship.

plot points and surprising revelations to create a powerful, soaring story. This is a spectacular novel about the enduring devotion of family and the steadfast loyalty between friends.

H Where the Wandering Ends

Bestselling author Sandra Byrd blends romance, laughter, community and family secrets in her novel Heirlooms (Tyndale House, $15.99, 9781496426888), a delightful story of uplifting female friendships.

After her husband’s death, Choi Eunhee, a Korean woman living in the United States, turns to Helen Devries for help. It’s 1958, and both women are Navy widows.

While living together in Helen’s farmhouse on Whidbey Island, Washington, the women assist each other through their losses and develop a lifelong friendship.

In the present day, Helen’s dying wish is that her granddaughter Cassidy Quinn will pack up the attic at the Whidbey Island house with help from Eunhee’s granddaughter Grace Kim. While going through Helen’s hope chest, Cassidy and Grace discover a family secret. Meanwhile, Cassidy must work to save her grandmother’s property from foreclosure, so she turns to her ex-­ boyfriend Nick for help. Helen’s house was the setting of many beloved summers for Cassidy, and she dreams of reinstating her grandmother’s garden to its former glory.

Helen and Eunhee’s friendship is much like the garden, tended with loving care over many years. As the women draw faith and strength from each other, their bond becomes akin to sisterhood. From this foundation grows Cassidy and Grace’s own connection, and the two young women learn to lean on each other throughout Cassidy’s fight for her grandmother’s house and garden and as Grace begins to doubt her chosen career path.

With warmth and sensitivity, Heirlooms examines the challenges faced by immigrants living in the U.S., and the difficulties for women seeking health care and financial security for both themselves and their children throughout American history. Readers will marvel at the strength found in community and the deep connections that can exist between generations.

—Edith Kanyagia

The latest novel from bestselling author and three-time Emmy Award-winning producer and journalist Yvette Manessis Corporon is a work of incredible depth, brimming with turmoil, compassion and remarkable historical detail.

Set on the gorgeous Greek island of Corfu, Where the Wandering Ends (Harper Muse, $27.99, 9781400236077) is a multi­ generational, decades-spanning story that begins in 1946, when Greece appears to be on the verge of civil war. Despite the brewing unrest, life in Katerina’s village of Pelekito remains calm. She even has the opportunity to go to school, unlike provincial girls in older generations. As the conflict between communists and monarchists escalates, the war eventually reaches Pelekito, and the villagers are forced to flee. Katerina is separated from her best friend, Marco, but they both promise to someday return.

Corporon’s characters are indelible and authentic. Katerina’s father, Laki, is horrified by the divisions in his country: “Greek killing Greek. Cousin killing cousin. Brother killing brother. . . . Laki never would have imagined that his own people would turn against each other the way they had.”

Meanwhile, Marco’s mother, Yianna, holds fast to the stories told by her own mother, who was a maid to Princess Alice, wife of Prince Andrew, both of whom were exiled from Greece after the Greco-Turkish War of 1922.

Written with a perceptive eye, Where the Wandering Ends considers the challenges faced by people during wartime and highlights the determination to survive despite painful circumstances. Corfu’s beauty, which Corporon describes in sumptuous detail, is juxtaposed against the turbulence and devastation caused by war. Fascinating historical facts and references to mythological Greek tales intertwine with moving scenes, tension-building

H Heirlooms

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reviews | nonfiction

H Strangers to Ourselves

By Rachel Aviv

Social Science Rachel Aviv’s first book explores questions of self-knowledge and mental health, subjects she’s previously examined in her award-­winning journalism for The New Yorker. Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us (FSG, $28, 9780374600846) is a stunning book, offering sensitive case histories of people whose experiences of mental illness exceed the limits of psychiatric terminology, diagnosis and treatment.

Aviv begins with her own experience as a 6-year-old who stopped eating or drinking, for reasons she can no longer remember. She was eventually diagnosed with anorexia, the youngest child in the U.S. to receive such a diagnosis, and hospitalized for “failure to eat.” At the hospital, she met anorexic girls twice her age

Animal Joy

By Nuar Alsadir

Essays Though Nu a r Alsadir set out to write a book about laughter, Animal Joy (Graywolf, $17, 9781644450932) is a far deeper study of how we express and understand our most powerful emotions, told through meticulous psychoanalytic research and Alsadir’s own experiences.

Animal Joy opens at a clown school where Alsadir enrolled to explore laughter. The only nonactor of the group, Alsadir sought to understand a specific laugh: the spontaneous outburst. “Spontaneous outbursts of laughter express meaning outside of reason and . . . unveil a whole dimension of being and bodily aliveness that short-circuits logic,” she writes. Alsadir explores a wide variety of social outbursts, including the laughter Christine Blasey Ford recalled hearing from Brett Kavanaugh when he allegedly sexually assaulted her, the tradition of professional mourners and the fake laughter purposefully generated in a laughter yoga class. This research provokes an intimate examination of impulsive and unconscious communication in all of its “savage complexity.”

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and learned to mimic their strategies for losing weight.

But which came first: the diagnosis or her symptoms?

This misfit between psychiatric terminology and lived experience is the core issue driving Aviv’s subsequent chapters.

Western psychiatry has a long history of ignoring how issues of racial violence and systemic oppression drive mental illness. Aviv’s reporting on Naomi, a woman experiencing psychosis, grounds Naomi’s mental illness in the intergenerational trauma she has experienced as a Black woman, which has been largely ignored by the institutions that have offered her treatment. Western psychiatry, as developed within a white European framework, also fails to account for cultural difference, as in the case of Bapu, a devout Hindu. Bapu’s mystical visions of ecstatic union with Krishna could be reduced

As a poet and psychoanalyst—readers might recognize her as one of the counselors from the Showtime documentary series “Couples Therapy”—Alsadir is uniquely positioned as an excavator of human emotion and the things that evoke those emotions. She draws a constellation of interactions, with points made out of Anna Karenina’s doomed love affair, Blade Runner’s obedient replicants and Dick Cavett’s 1985 interview with Eddie Murphy.

These references are not tangential or tacked on but essential components of her thinking.

“Other people’s speech, like it or not, lives inside us, buoys us, metastasizes,” she writes. “We are quantum entangled with our universe and everything in it.”

Rather than feeling dated or overly niche, these deeply specific references only heighten the intimacy Alsadir offers. There is plenty of serious academic analysis to admire in Animal Joy, with her detailed discussions of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes, but what is more spectacular is how she entangles theory with the tender anecdotes about her two daughters that ground the book. Though the terrain Alsadir covers is vast and often feels tenuously connected, the resonant beauty of her prose helps guide the reader through a deliberately cluttered and complicated narrative.

Animal Joy is a challenging and deeply rewarding meditation on laughter and communication that will stand up to multiple readings; as Alsadir herself reminds us, “Understanding often occurs retroactively.”

—Celia Mattison

to symptoms of schizophrenia, but to categorize them as such would be to ignore how Bapu herself interprets these visions and how they are understood by other Hindu worshippers.

Other chapters show how painfully limited and limiting psychiatric language is when measured against a person’s own sense of themself, a pressing issue in the context of the overmedication of young people. When adolescents are prescribed multiple medications for anxiety and depression, they risk—as in Aviv’s final case history—limiting their self-definition to the diagnoses they have received.

Strangers to Ourselves is a compassionate and necessary exploration of the complex relationship between how we understand ourselves and how psychiatric diagnoses define us.

—Catherine Hollis

H Diary of a Misfit

By Casey Parks

Memoir “A few months after my pastor asked God to kill me, my mom ran to the bathroom, and I ran after her.” You can’t look away from the riveting opening sentence of Casey Parks’ spellbinding Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir (Knopf, $29, 9780525658535). It draws you quickly in to her atmospheric tale of selfdiscovery after coming out as a lesbian to her mother in her small Louisiana town.

After Parks came out, her grandmother revealed that she “grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man” named Roy Hudgins in the town of Delhi, Louisiana.

Astonished, Parks asked if Roy was happy, and her grandmother replied that she didn’t know but that she’d always wondered what happened to him. Parks announced to her grandmother, “I’ll find out about Roy.” Seven years later, Parks, then working as a reporter for The Oregonian, made a series of visits to Delhi in search of clues about Roy, interviewing anybody who would talk to her.

Although she was on a quest to find out about Roy for her grandmother, Parks also started to unravel clues about herself, her sexuality

reviews | nonfiction and her fraught relationships with family and church. The more she learned about Roy, the more she learned about her own yearning for the love and acceptance that Roy seemed to have felt in a town where the church had rejected him but where his neighbors looked out for and took care of him. Then, as she flipped through Roy’s journals, she discovered a poem titled “The Town Misfit” in which he had written, “When my life on earth is over, and it’s time for me to die, / No one here will miss me. There will be no one to cry.” Parks had hoped “reading Roy’s diaries would settle something inside me. . . .

But I understand now that most of what haunted me before might haunt me forever.”

Like Harper Lee, Parks evokes the simmering suspicions of a small Southern town. Like Eudora Welty, she tells a poignant story of people trying to fit into a way of life that once suited them but no longer wears well. And like Truman Capote, she packs her memoir with eccentric characters—especially her mother, whom Parks describes as “bright and joyous when she was off the nose spray, vacant and mean when she was on.” Parks’ dazzling narrative gift imbues Diary of a Misfit with all the makings of a great Southern story that readers won’t be able to get out of their minds.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

H A Place in the World

By Frances Mayes

Memoir In Frances Mayes’ sparkling new collection of essays, she ponders the meaning of home. It’s a subject about which she knows plenty, having made so many homes over her lifetime. In A Place in the World (Crown, $27, 9780593443330), Mayes’ fans can revisit some familiar places, such as Bramasole, the villa in the Tuscan countryside that she famously renovated in Under the Tuscan Sun, and the humid and fragrant Fitzgerald, Mayes’ Georgia hometown and the subject of her memoir Under Magnolia. Readers will also visit some new locales, namely Chatwood, the North Carolina farmhouse where she and her husband, Ed, live when they’re not in Italy.

Chatwood spoke to Mayes much like Bramasole did: It was instant love. “When the agent turned in at the lane leading to an upright farmhouse with book-end chimneys, a porch along the front, magnolia trees, and a meadow along a river, I was ready to sign the dotted line before I opened the car door,” she writes. “Ed agreed, this was Eden. Inside the house smelled

like closed-up chapels I’ve come across in the Italian countryside. The kitchen fireplace had a swinging arm for hanging a pot over the coals.

Copper sinks, bookcases everywhere, staircases that twist, many-paned windows splashed with green views—we are home. That fast.”

There are many such lovely descriptions of Mayes’ houses in A Place in the World, but this is not a book about buildings. It’s about the concept of home, that intangible thing to which countless magazines and blogs are dedicated.

Mayes examines home from many angles. She devotes gorgeous chapters to the Chatwood garden, filled with tea-scented camellias, jasmine, honeysuckle and magnolia, not to mention an enormous veggie garden she put in at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

She also writes mouthwateringly about cucina povera, or the poor kitchen—the simple rustic Italian fare eaten during times of war—and how skills such as foraging, using every ounce of the pig and eating seasonally are learned at home.

She even recalls temporary homes, rentals in Mexico and Capri that nourished her creativity.

My favorite essay might be “Home Thoughts: A Litany.” Here, in almost stream-of-consciousness prose, Mayes recalls the homes of her dear friends. “What an intimate act, to invite someone into your home,” she writes. And it’s true! She remembers in striking detail the sculptures, books, kitchens and fireplaces of her friends’ homes around the world. It’s a whirlwind home tour and homage to friendship in 10 pages.

Tempered by a dash of wistful examination as Mayes enters her 80s, A Place in the World is a beautiful, thought-provoking read.

—Amy Scribner

Year of the Tiger

By Alice Wong

Essays Alice Wo n g ’s memoir is a moving addition to her celebrated body of work as an activist, community organizer, media maker and editor of the 2020 anthology Disability Visibility. In Year of the Tiger (Vintage, $17, 9780593315392), Wong creates a collage of blog posts, artworks, interviews and other ephemera with disability at its center, seasoned generously with her quick wit and fierce calls to action.

Wong emphasizes connection with others as a generative, necessary force in her life, and she incorporates a chorus of voices in these fragments to illuminate the experiences of people who are constantly confronted with a

world built without disabled people in mind.

In seven thematically distinct sections, Wong collects conversations with artists, activists and thinkers, each offering new perspectives and delights. She chats with W. Kamau Bell about disability representation in the 1999 film The Bone Collector and riffs on reframing ideas of beauty and attraction with the artist and author Riva Lehrer. Though they are often brief, these dialogues and excerpts come together into a kaleidoscopic image of Wong’s life, illuminated by her revolutionary ideas of interdependence and care. Access is love, she says, and love for the disabled community resounds throughout.

Wong’s thoughtful use of multimedia elements—cheeky cat-themed graphics, photographs from her Indiana childhood and a clever crossword puzzle, to name a few—adds playfulness and dimension to Year of the Tiger.

She maintains the compelling conviction that pleasure and joy are crucial to activism and liberation, and these offerings demonstrate that belief. They also imbue the book with the scrappy spirit of zine-making, and others looking for creative encouragement will certainly find it here.

In “No to Normal,” Wong writes, “Every day I experience the very real distance between myself and the nondisabled world, which, by the way, is the default we all exist in,” and this notion is the undercurrent that moves through the entire book. As this stylish memoir demonstrates, each person, disabled or not, can demand more from a world that is largely built without access in mind. Wong wants better for us all, and she will stop at nothing to get there.

—Claire Fallon

H Africa Is Not A Country

By Dipo Faloyin

Social Science In Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent (Norton, $30, 9780393881530), Dipo Faloyin contends with an issue he summarizes this way: “For too long, ‘Africa’ has been treated as a buzzword for poverty, strife, corruption, civil wars, and large expanses of arid red soil where nothing but misery grows. Or it is presented as one big safari park.”

Faloyin, a Nigerian currently living in London and writing for Vice, is a smart, often scathingly funny writer. In a chapter on Hollywood movies about Africa, he offers a brilliant sendup of the persistent stereotypes needed for a film to seem “realistic”: open savannahs where lions roam, rather than cities like Lagos, Nigeria, with its 24

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reviews | nonfiction million residents, “loud and plagued by joy.”

In another chapter, Faloyin mocks “white saviour imagery” such as crying superstars pleading for donations while holding Black children with flies in their eyes. Yes, the impulse is kind and worthy, Faloyin acknowledges. But the assumptions carried by these well-meaning “White Men In Khakis,” out to save a failed continent, are demeaning.

Where did these assumptions come from?

One point of origin was an 1885 conference in Berlin where European and Northern American powers met to divvy up the wealth and resources of Africa without resorting to war among themselves. At the time, 80% of Africa was independent and self-governing. Yet these great powers drew new borders around their areas of interest on a large map, ignoring the religious, ethnic and cultural differences of the locals. No African governments were invited, of course.

The American representative wondered aloud if what they were doing was illegal and unethical, which it was, but that was ignored. And in short order, beginning with horrendous brutality in the Belgian Congo, colonization began.

While much of the history of Western involvement in Africa is sordid and depressing, Africa Is Not a Country is not. It brims with the sort of outrage that speaks of hope, of change.

Faloyin points to the younger generation of Africans: educated, business-savvy, united

by Afrobeat and Nollywood, moving toward a leaderless revolution. In a late chapter, Faloyin writes about the friendly competition among African nations about who has the best Jollof rice, “a proxy for national identity and regional status” and, through enslaved Africans, the basis for America’s Southern cooking. Throughout, the continent of Africa—home to 1.4 billion people in 54 countries where more than 2,000 languages are spoken—comes alive as a diverse, creative and complicated place.

—Alden Mudge

H One Hundred Saturdays

By Michael Franks

Biography Reading One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World (Avid Reader, $28, 9781982167226)

by Michael Frank is like watching an artist piece together a mosaic. A splash of blue sea here. A mother’s song over there. The smell of Purim pastries. The flash of first love. But the mosaic is never completed. Instead, a terrible wind descends, leaving the artist to pick up the

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pieces as best she can and begin a new image.

Here, the artist is Stella Levi, a 99-year-old Jewish woman living in New York City. The mosaic is the Juderia, the main Jewish quarter on the island of Rhodes, where Levi was born in 1923. And the wind is the Holocaust, which reached the Juderia in the last months of World War II and scattered Levi’s parents, family, friends and community. One Hundred Saturdays is the story of that time and place, but it is also much more: a story of friendship, survival, reinvention and courage.

Frank, author of The Mighty Franks and What Is Missing and a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, met Levi by chance—or perhaps serendipity— when he rushed in late to attend a lecture, and the elegant older woman in the chair next to him struck up a conversation. The following Saturday, he found himself in Levi’s Greenwich Village apartment, the first of 100 Saturdays that he would spend with her over the following six years. Over the course of those visits, Levi became both a friend and muse as she recounted the minutest details of her life, from its rich beginning to its remarkable present.

Maira Kalman’s illustrations, heavily influenced by Matisse with their deceptive simplicity, rich colors and delicate textures, are perfect complements to Levi’s story, portraying vanished scenes from life on Rhodes before the Holocaust. Together with the text of Frank’s beautiful book, they create a sensitive portrait of an extraordinary woman. Fiercely independent, keenly intelligent and remorselessly honest, Levi refuses to be defined solely by the tragedy of her youth. Her life has been a constant evolution, and her final years are being lived with the same vitality as her earliest ones.

—Deborah Mason

Survival of the Richest

By Douglas Rushkoff

Social Science There are any number of events that could trigger a global apocalypse: climate change, a virus, nuclear war, an asteroid, the rise of artificial intelligence.

Would anyone be able to survive? A group of elitist technology billionaires have seriously pondered this very question, spending a great deal of time and money to plan how they alone might outlive this inevitable catastrophic event, leaving the rest of us in the dust.

In Survival of the Richest (Norton, $26.95, 9780393881066), professor of media theory and digital economics Douglas Rushkoff (Team

Human) explains how this evacuation plan came to be and what it means for the future.

When Rushkoff was invited to an exclusive desert resort for what he thought was a speech on the future of technology, he was shocked to find that his audience was just five super wealthy men “from the upper echelon of the tech investing and hedge fund world.” As it turned out, they had summoned him to pick his brain about how best to insulate themselves from “the very real and present danger” of a mass extinction, even asking him whether New Zealand or Alaska would be rendered less uninhabitable by the coming climate crisis.

Each chapter of Survival of the Richest focuses on a different aspect of how these tech billionaires have gotten to this place in our society and the origins of their entitled way of thinking. Rushkoff calls this Silicon Valley escapism “The Mindset,” a frame of mind that “encourages its adherents to believe that the winners can somehow leave the rest of us behind.” He skillfully uses his extensive background in media theory to explain The Mindset in such clear terms, it’s scary. For example, he proposes that The Mindset allows for the easy externalization of harm to others: Its very structure requires an endgame, with a clear winner and loser, in which the winners are the ones who have found “a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.”

Of course the irony in all of this is that “these people once showered the world with madly optimistic business plans for how technology might benefit human society,” Rushkoff writes.

“Now they’ve reduced technological progress to a video game that one of them wins by finding the escape hatch.” Numbing and mind-blowing in equal measure, Survival of the Richest is a true story that seems straight out of a science fiction tale.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

H All of This

By Rebecca Woolf

Memoir The final separation of death is so frightening, so thorny and so difficult for humans to grasp that we tend to distill it into something simpler, with easy-tofollow directives and guidelines. Perhaps the most well-known guideline is that we do not speak ill of the dead. Instead, we rewrite history. Fights and foibles are mysteriously erased. Troubling moments dissolve into nothingness. We loved them, we say. We miss

reviews | nonfiction them every day. We do not know how to go on without their goodness. We would give anything to have them back again.

But in Rebecca Woolf’s case, her relationship with her late husband wasn’t just imperfect but toxic. Her memoir, All of This (HarperOne, $26.99, 9780063052673), eschews any such flattering postmortem revisions in favor of the messy, freeing truth.

Woolf had been planning to leave her husband, Hal, when he was diagnosed with an advanced form of pancreatic cancer and given only months to live. With four children, they had hacked it as far as they could through a relationship riddled with acrimony, casual cruelty and Hal’s control issues, which left Woolf feeling desperate and stifled. Their impending divorce felt like a rapidly approaching springboard to freedom for Woolf, until Hal’s diagnosis threw up a confusing and painful wall. Suddenly she found herself fulfilling the wedding vow she had been determined to escape: that she would stay until the end.

Woolf does not mince words or deal in niceties in this memoir. Hal was frequently difficult to like even as he was dying: He was demanding and childish about the fast-moving course of his illness. He was distant from his children, and the stress he caused his wife seemed deliberate. Shortly after his death, Woolf began looking for new partners, mostly brief hookups, as her joy and relief became braided with her grief. Along the way, Woolf reveals more of Hal’s humanity, showing that within the strife and heartbreak of their marriage, there were bright moments as well. Aptly titled, All of This is an all-encompassing portrait of a marriage that didn’t work, and Woolf is as unflinchingly honest about that marriage as she is about the experience of loss that terminated it.

“I loved this man once and then I hated him and then I loved him and then I hated him and then I loved him and then I hated him and then I loved him again, and then he died,” Woolf writes. “This was our love story.”

—Anna Spydell

How to Speak Whale

By Tom Mustill

Science Documentary film­ maker Tom Mustill has seen all manner of wondrous things.

But those aweinspiring experi­ ences, including collaborations with David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg, still could not prepare him for the astounding

close encounter that fundamentally changed his life.

As the British debut author details in How to Speak Whale (Grand Central, $29, 9781538739112), the year was 2015; the location, the waters off Monterey Bay, California; and the context, a kayak tour with his friend and co-paddler, Charlotte, wherein they witnessed 120 humpback whales, each “the size of an airport shuttle bus,” enjoying a massive group buffet. Suddenly, one of the whales breached and landed atop the duo with “a release of energy equivalent to about forty hand grenades.”

A YouTube video of the event went viral, and Mustill found himself the subject of news reports and memes, as well as “a lightning conductor for whale fanatics.” He became a bit of a fanatic, too, when his whale specialist friend Dr. Joy Reidenberg said it seemed as if he and Charlotte had survived because the whale decided to veer to one side in midair. Of course, Mustill mused, there was no way to really know if the whale attempted to spare them. It’s not like he could ask—or could he?

Mustill’s findings offer hope that someday a book called How to Speak Whale might be more dictionary than discussion.

In How to Speak Whale, a mix of thoughtfully explained hard science and colorfully described hands-on adventures (a beachside whale dissection is particularly memorable), Mustill chronicles his incredible journey into the fascinating and profound world of animal communication. He interviews and observes people who are specialists in everything from whale song to bat chirps to interspecies sign language, as well as psychologists, computer scientists, historians, cryptographers, artificial intelligence experts and more.

Thanks to Mustill’s gift for storytelling, it’s as interesting to learn about these experts as the creatures they study. Reidenberg is a particular delight, as is Dr. Roger Payne, whose album of whale song recordings went multiplatinum in 1970. Through it all, there runs an undercurrent of appreciation and wonderment as Mustill gulps down knowledge and determinedly questions whether “decoding animal communications [is] no longer a fantasy but a technical problem.”

Wild (and thrilling!) as that may seem, Mustill’s findings offer hope that someday a book called How to Speak Whale might be more dictionary than discussion, more conversation than exploration.

—Linda M. Castellitto

American Rascal

By Greg Steinmetz

Biography Mark Twain wrote that “Jay Gould was the mightiest disaster which has ever befallen this country. The people had desired money before his day, but he taught them to fall down and worship it.”

Gould’s fellow Gilded Age robber barons were more positive. Cornelius Vanderbilt called him “the smartest man in America,” and John D. Rockefeller said Gould had the “best head for business” of anyone. In American Rascal (Simon & Schuster, $28.99, 9781982107406), Greg Steinmetz briskly tells financier and railroad leader Gould’s rags-to-riches story and gives a nuanced view of this man of contradictions and why he matters.

Gould originally made his money through various ventures in New York. However, when the Civil War ended, railroads became the most important and powerful industry in the country, and thus the focus of Gould’s business dealings.

By investing in various railroads, Gould did as much as anyone at the time to generate economic growth and steer the country toward becoming a world power. As the owner and manager of multiple railroads, Gould was one of the largest employers in the country and made rail travel faster, safer and more comfortable. At the same time, he bribed politicians and used deception to ruthlessly manipulate competitors.

The qualities Gould demonstrated in taking control of the Erie Railroad illustrate his strengths throughout his career: “his brilliance as a financial strategist, his deep understanding of law, a surprising grasp of human nature, and a mastery of political reality,” as Steinmetz writes.

Above all, Gould was a pragmatist. He could be a visionary, but only when it didn’t clash with his primary objective, which was to make as much money as he could for himself.

Outside of work, Gould seemed to be less ruthless. Most evenings, he left his office to have dinner with his wife and six children and to read in his library. He did not drink alcohol. He loved flowers, owned the largest greenhouse in the country and cultivated a new breed of orchids.

Despite their wealth, he and his family were not part of the city’s social aristocracy. “I have the disadvantage of not being sociable,” he once said.

Steinmetz’s fast-moving and eminently readable biography shows how Gould thrived within the context of his times but also that his greed led to necessary reforms.

—Roger Bishop

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q&a | isaac blum

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll really want some Starburst A debut novelist explores faith, friendship and family—and creates the funniest YA narrator of 2022.

When Orthodox Jewish teen Hoodie Rosen sees a girl dancing on the sidewalk outside the window of his yeshiva classroom, he has no idea that the connection they’ll form will lead them to question everything they believe and change both of their lives forever.

Debut novelist Isaac Blum’s The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen might be the funniest YA book of the year, thanks to Hoodie’s often hilarious, deeply authentic narration.

It’s also an unflinching portrait of how hate can take root in a community—with tragic results.

Blum spoke with BookPage about balancing humor with heartbreak and horror, and why his novel’s intense emotions will ring true for teen readers.

Tell us about Hoodie and Anna-Marie when we first meet them.

Yehuda “Hoodie” Rosen is goofy and sarcastic. He attends yeshiva, where he studies Jewish stuff plus “regular” school stuff. He doesn’t take much seriously. He hates zucchini.

Anna-Marie Diaz-O’Leary is a more “typical” teenager. She goes to public school and spends time thinking about boys. She practices dances and makes TikTok videos with her friends. Compared to Hoodie, she’s serious, thoughtful and confident about her place in the world.

When the book starts, Hoodie has just moved to a new town, where his father is helping their Orthodox community build a high-rise apartment building to house more Orthodox families. Anna-Marie is mourning her father, who has recently passed away. She’s lived in Tregaron, Pennsylvania, all her life, and her mother is the mayor and hellbent on preventing the Orthodox community from growing in their town.

relationship they do create more meaningful, because they had to work to get there. It’s hard-earned. You’re going to deeply trust somebody who works hard to know you.

My list of favorite supporting characters in this book is not short. (The list is topped by Hoodie’s sisters Chana and Zippy and his friend Moshe Tzvi.) Who was your favorite supporting character to write?

You and I have the same top three. I’d probably even put them in that order, so that makes Chana my favorite. She was definitely the most fun to write.

The thing about Zippy and Moshe Tzvi is that they both have some heavy lifting to do in the book. Zippy has to help Hoodie come of age, show him that she’ll love him unconditionally and then cede the eldest sibling position to him. Moshe Tzvi has to be the studious foil to Hoodie’s slacker, and then he has to have his own comingof-age arc, in which he grows into a place where he can disagree with his father about Hoodie’s place in the community.

Chana has no such responsibilities.

She just stands up on the roof and throws soup at people. Writing her was just me sitting around thinking of silly pranks for her to pull.

Hoodie narrates from some unknown point in the future. It’s right there in the opening line: “Later, I tried to explain to Rabbi Moritz why it was ironic that my horrible crime was the thing that saved the whole community.” Was this perspective always part of the novel?

Why did you employ it?

That perspective is there because of the opening line, or at least the first couple paragraphs. Before I’d outlined the novel The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen at all, those first lines came into my head, Philomel, $18.99, 9780593525821 You do a great job of representing how and I never changed them. But I like this narrative tool for a couple reasons. neither Hoodie nor Anna-Marie see each Young Adult Fiction other clearly, and yet they form what It establishes tension and a bit of susturns out to be a life-changing connection. What was challenging and pense right off the bat. Hoodie tells the reader that the events of the novel what was fun about writing their relationship? “humiliated him on a global scale,” “put him in the ICU” and “ruined his The difficult part was making their respective confusion feel true. I needed life.” Hopefully the reader wonders how all that went down and looks them to have very different understandings of their relationship, but for forward to reading about it. both of their perspectives to feel valid to the reader. I asked myself over That narrative device also lets the reader know that Hoodie makes it to the end of the novel alive and on good enough terms with Rabbi Moritz and over, “Will the reader buy what Hoodie’s thinking here? Will the reader that Hoodie can try to explain the story’s ironies to him. I’m not categoriunderstand why Anna-Marie thinks about this so differently?”

The fun part was that once I got that balance where I wanted it, I could cally against having horrible things happen to my protagonist, but there’s use Hoodie’s and Anna-Marie’s inability to read each other for some enough grave stuff going on already in this book, and I didn’t see the need funny and surprising moments. Their initially crossed signals make the for the reader to worry about Hoodie’s fate.

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You’ve taught English at Orthodox schools. How did those experiences come into play as you worked on the novel?

I think that being a high school teacher is a great job if you’re going to write YA. Whether you want to or not, as a teacher you learn a ton about your students’ worlds. And if you forget what it’s actually like to be a teenager, you’re reminded every day. In this case, if you happen to be writing a book from the point of view of an Orthodox yeshiva student, it certainly helps if you spend your days surrounded by Orthodox yeshiva students.

While the novel is not based on my students—I don’t think that would be fair to them—it’s certainly influenced by them: their struggles to balance modernity with tradition, their fears of antisemitism and the way the rest of the world sees them, and their humanity and sense of humor.

The novel was inspired by a real-life event. Can you tell us about that?

On December 10, 2019, there was a shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey. Two shooters opened fire on shoppers in a targeted antisemitic attack. It was one of a number of violent attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions around that time, but this one in particular moved me. Within a week of the shooting, I started outlining the story of an Orthodox Jewish teen who finds himself caught in the middle of violent antisemitism—plus all of the normal things teens are caught in the middle of, like crises of identity, first love, etc.

The shooting at the market followed months of growing tension—in Jersey City and elsewhere—between long-established communities and new influxes of Orthodox Jews. I created my own long-established community, the fictional town of Tregaron, and put Hoodie at the center of his community’s move into the town.

© MILTON LINDSAY

q&a | isaac blum

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen.

writing goofy scenes. I enjoyed reading them later. But it’s hard to judge What do you hope readers take away from Hoodie’s deep connections your work, and you don’t know if the reader will share your sense of humor. to his family and his community?

To that end, I have a critique partner—let’s call him Rob, because that’s In many mainstream depictions of Orthodox Judaism, the protagonist is his name—who functions as a kind of snark police. When I’m too self-­ depicted as oppressed by their own community. There are lots of “leaving indulgent with the goofiness, especially to the point where it distracts from narratives,” where the main character is fleeing the religion, leaving their the narrative, he forces me to trim the excess stuff, and I’m very grateful. family behind. And while any orthodoxy won’t be for everybody—Hoodie This novel has some awful events. I’d like the humor to show that while isn’t sure if it’s for him—a close-knit community like Hoodie’s has so much existence contains innumerable ills, such as bigotry, hate crime and zucwarmth and love to offer. I wanted to make sure chini, it’s worth keeping your sense of humor.

“You can take the world readers saw the positive, supportive qualities of Sometimes in the most horrific moments, levity Hoodie’s community alongside the flaws. really does help. You can take the world seriously, All families and communities are generally like seriously, confront its horrors confront its horrors and still find time to laugh. that: flawed. I hope readers see Hoodie’s story as and still find time to laugh.” an argument that it’s worth finding ways to mainHoodie asks himself big questions about whether the life he thought he was supposed to want is the life he tain connections to your family or community, even when you’re angry at them or they’ve wronged you. It’s totally cool to be furious with the people actually wants. What advice would you give teens asking themselves similar questions? you love. While that’s a painful feeling, it can be a starting point for growth.

Oh man. I’m certain that I’m not qualified to give this advice. But here The novel swings very quickly between humor, contemplation and are two thoughts: First, you can only be you. So once you figure out who that person is, heartbreak. Why was this important to you? What was the key to getting just be that person. Hoodie finds a way to be himself and still be part of these shifts right?

I think that’s the adolescent experience. Teens feel stuff really strongly. We his community, but that’s not possible for everybody. And if you figure all cycle through our moods and feelings, from humor to contemplation out who you are, and the people around you won’t accept that person, to heartbreak and back again. But I think teens cycle quicker, and they then the flaw is with them, not with you.

Second, lean on people you trust, people who will support you unconfeel each one more intensely. It’s important to show that those seemingly ditionally. Find those people and let them help you. contradictory feelings are going to exist next to each other, that you can experience heartbreak with a sense of humor, or that you can ask yourself important life questions without being overwhelmed by the gravity of them.

Hoodie memorably waxes poetic about his love for Starburst, so I have The key to the shifts for me, honestly, was self-restraint. It’s my instinct, to ask: What is your favorite Starburst flavor? What is your least favorlike it’s Hoodie’s, to turn everything into a quip or a joke, to deflect from ite? What do you hope never becomes a Starburst flavor? the serious back to the humorous. So when I thought Hoodie should take Most flavors should not be Starburst flavors. Starburst flavors should be a step back and ask a big question, or when I knew I had to write a heavy limited to fruit. I tend to think of them in terms of color. Pink is my favorite. scene, I tried to rein in that side of me and let those moments breathe.

I assume pink is everyone’s favorite. I don’t understand why they make nonpink flavors. Yellow and orange are bad. Those are the ones you give How did you make sure the humorous moments were actually funny? away to your friends when you pretend to be a good sharer.

—Stephanie Appell I still have no idea if the humorous moments are actually funny. I had fun

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reviews | young adult

H The Epic Story of Every Living Thing

By Deb Caletti

Fiction Seventeen-year-old Harper Proulx lives her life on Instagram. Her lattes and lunches, her enviable day trips, even (if she’s being honest) her artsy boyfriend—they’re all curated for maximum appeal to her growing list of followers, whose validation she craves.

When one of those followers leaves a comment about Harper’s resemblance to a person named Dario, Harper is momentarily taken aback but not entirely surprised. Since she was young, Harper has known that she was conceived through a sperm donation, and she soon connects with her doppelgänger and confirms that they are, in fact, half siblings. But Harper is stunned when Dario tells her that they have at

Nothing More to Tell

By Karen M. McManus

Thriller Brynn Gallagher has recently moved from Chicago back to her Massachusetts hometown, a welcome if difficult change. She’s also starting over at her old private school, Saint Ambrose. When Brynn lands a coveted internship at a buzzy true crime TV show, her first assignment is digging into the unsolved murder of William Larkin.

Four years ago, the body of the Saint Ambrose teacher was found in the woods by three students. One of those students is Brynn’s former best friend, Tripp Talbot, who ended their friendship in humiliating fashion. As the anniversary of Mr. Larkin’s death approaches, Tripp is haunted by the lies he told, and he’s drinking more than ever. Danger mounts when secrets from Mr. Larkin’s past collide with Brynn’s investigation. Brynn and Tripp are surrounded by suspects, and it begins to look like everyone at Saint Ambrose has a motive for murder.

Nothing More to Tell (Delacorte, $19.99, 9780593175903) is another suspenseful page turner from bestselling author Karen M. McManus (One of Us Is Lying). McManus never gives readers a moment to relax, drawing out

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least 40 more half siblings out there in the world— and that their sperm donor appears to be a beach bum named Beau Zane.

Reeling from a breakup and on something of a whim, Harper decides to join Dario and two other half siblings on a summer trip to Hawaii to meet Beau. She’s nervous about the idea, but at least the photos of Hawaii will look stunning on her Instagram, right? But nothing could prepare Harper for what she discovers on her trip, including a new understanding of identity and family, and a renewed appreciation for the world itself.

Deb Caletti (A Heart in a Body in the World) is far from the first YA author to tackle the hazards of a life lived online and the potential toll on teen mental health and relationships. But Caletti’s

sophisticated, intricate storytelling brings complexity and richness to The Epic Story of Every Living Thing (Labyrinth Road, $18.99, 9780593485507) as the award-winning author explores themes of anxiety, found family and the natural world. Even the novel’s love story plays out in remarkable fashion, with subtlety and insight.

Caletti takes readers on a voyage that unfolds gradually and mirrors Harper’s own journey of discovery as she learns to witness “the whole of it, the grand tapestry.” The Epic Story of Every Living Thing is both deeply introspective and profoundly engaged with the world, making for a novel that embraces imperfection and inspires empathy.

—Norah Piehl

suspects and secrets in rapid succession. As the novel’s momentum increases, so will readers’ desire to see how all the clues tie together.

However, the most compelling element of McManus’ storytelling is neither the crime nor the victim but the trauma of the survivors left behind. As Tripp drinks to numb his pain, Brynn makes sacrifices to help him, stoking romance and healing between them. The novel’s wellrounded cast of characters includes Brynn’s feisty genius of a sister; her uncle, who has a troubled Saint Ambrose connection of his own; and Regina, who owns the bakery where Tripp works and is a supportive breath of fresh air.

Brimming with twists and turns, Nothing More to Tell is a fine addition to the genre that McManus helped popularize.

—Kimberly Giarratano

the secrets in Ketchum’s past—and in her own personal history. With help from Nora, Ashley’s grieving older sister, Georgia must decide how she fits into the complicated web of power that seems to run their world.

I’m the Girl (Wednesday, $18.99, 9781250808363) is a slow convergence of overlapping mysteries: Who killed Ashley?

What happened to Georgia’s mother when she worked at Aspera? And what was Georgia doing on the road when she discovered Ashley’s body, anyway?

Although the novel’s plot hinges on solving its many mysteries, author Courtney Summers (Sadie) is just as interested in excavating the roles intimacy and power play in Georgia’s life.

Georgia quickly finds herself at the mercy of people and organizations much more powerful than she. As Georgia uncovers more about Ashley’s life and comes to terms with her own identity as a young queer woman, she confronts physical and sexual abuse, corrupt law enforcement and stark disparities of wealth. Ultimately, Georgia must determine how to participate in these systems—or whether she wants to participate at all.

I’m the Girl is raw, vulnerable and, at times, difficult to read, although Summers demonstrates that hope and joy are possible even amid the struggle against seemingly insurmountable power. Readers are left to reckon with provocative questions: Can you accept the ways of the world you live in? If not, what will you do about it?

—Tami Orendain

I’m the Girl

By Courtney Summers

Thriller Georgia Av i s dreams of working at Aspera, the world-class resort that looms over the town of Ketchum. But when Georgia finds the body of 13-yearold Ashley James in a ditch by the road that leads to Aspera, she’s thrown into investigating

feature | grandparents’ day

Grand tales Celebrate the grandest people in the lives of young readers: grandparents!

Just in time for Grandparents’ Day comes a quartet of joyful books perfect for sharing with the young and the young at heart alike.

and grow, becoming generous enough to include others and strong enough to allow our memories to comfort and sustain us.

Brand-New Bubbe

A Grand Day

After Jillian’s mom gets married, Jillian finds herself with a Brand-New Bubbe (Charlesbridge, $16.99, 9781623542498) in Sarah Aronson and Ariel Landy’s vivacious picture book.

Bubbe has glorious red hair, a mean jump shot and an upbeat attitude, but her new stepgrandchild refuses to be charmed.

When Jillian’s mom reminds her that “family is more than blood,” Jillian reluctantly agrees to be open to Bubbe’s overtures. Matzo ball soup turns out to hold the key, as an afternoon of cooking with Bubbe melts Jillian’s defenses. After all, who can resist a soft, fluffy matzo ball bobbing in a bowl of steaming, delicious broth?

But as she spends time with Bubbe, Jillian questions whether embracing Bubbe will leave her other grandmothers feeling left out. Jillian quickly realizes the perfect way to bring her whole family together. Spoiler alert: It involves more soup.

Landy accompanies Aronson’s playful prose with a clever subplot-in-pictures: Jillian’s cat initially gives Bubbe’s dog serious side-eye, but as Jillian warms to Bubbe, their pets bond too. It all culminates in a gathering of family, food and love. Three detailed soup recipes and a collection of resources for interfaith families end Brand-New Bubbe with a chef’s kiss. Mazel tov and bon appetit!

A kaleidoscope of family fun swirls through A Grand Day (Paula Wiseman, $18.99, 9781534499768), a lively grandparentstravaganza of joy and imagination.

Jean Reidy salutes the magic of days spent with grandparents. She begins with cheery hugs then progresses through an array of activities—gardening, baking, dancing, attic expeditions, a starlit campfire.

Reidy spotlights lower-energy pursuits, too, such as relaxing by a pond and napping—crucial recharging for marshmallow-­toasting time! Throughout, characters revel in sharing their favorite endeavors, highlighting the importance of learning from one another: “Try a two-step, maybe ten. / All that’s old . . . is new again.”

Illustrator Samantha Cotterill’s detailed, immersive 3-D artwork is dazzling. Every page has a dioramic vibe. Her impressively engineered cut-­paper sculptures range from massive trees to minuscule sticks of sidewalk chalk. You’ll marvel at intricate wallpaper, wooden benches, hungry cardinals descending on a bird feeder and more.

A Grand Day is a visual feast of a book that will inspire readers to cherish time spent with people they love.

Dadaji’s Paintbrush Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Ruchi Mhasane offer a quietly moving tale of love, loss and community in Dadaji’s Paintbrush (Levine Querido, $18.99, 9781646141722).

In a village in India, a boy and his grandfather live in a house surrounded by colorful flowers. The inside of their home is a wonderland of color, too, thanks to their artistic endeavors.

Dadaji has spent countless hours teaching his grandson to paint. Some days, the pair love to paint together, just the two of them, while other days, they’re joined by children from the village. Grandfather and grandson are constant companions in a sweet, serene life filled with creative expressions of love.

And then one day, the boy is left all alone. Illustrator Mhasane drains the color from the boy’s life, surrounding him with shades of gray. Just one small spot of red remains: a little box that contains Dadaji’s favorite paintbrush.

But the boy puts the box up on a high shelf and turns away from art to spare his aching heart. Color makes a tentative reentry when a girl comes knocking on the door and asks the boy to teach her to paint. Will the boy let the girl in—and open himself up to carrying on Dadaji’s legacy?

In an author’s note, Sirdeshpande explains that Dadaji’s Paintbrush was inspired by her relationship with her late grandfather. “That feeling that the people you love will always, always be with you? That’s just how I feel,” she writes.

Dadaji’s Paintbrush is a touching exploration of how love can deepen

I’ll Go and Come Back Rajani LaRocca and Sara Palacios’ I’ll Go and Come Back (Candlewick, $18.99, 9781536207170) depicts how, when there is love, the miles cannot truly separate us.

When Jyoti travels from the U.S. to India to visit her relatives, her grandmother, Sita Pati, coaxes Jyoti into having fun despite their language barrier. They play games, create rangoli designs with colored sand, and cook together. Before bed, they sip warm milk with saffron. Gradually, their shared pursuits become their common language. When Jyoti’s trip ends, she recalls that “no one in India just said ‘goodbye.’ ” Instead, they say poitu varen, which means “I’ll go and come back.”

Happily, Sita Pati soon visits America. This time, it’s Jyoti who shares her favorite activities: sidewalk chalk instead of rangoli, quesadillas instead of chapatis, and drifting off to sweet dreams after mugs of hot cocoa.

Palacios’ art showcases beautiful textures and patterns. She conveys an astonishing range of emotions through faces comprised of simple lines and shapes. The hopscotch court that Jyoti and Sita Pati draw on the sidewalk outside Jyoti’s house incorporates floral elements similar to those in the rangoli design they made together in India, sparking a lovely parallel.

I’ll Go and Come Back provides an affirming perspective on our relationships with loved ones. Instead of focusing on our sadness when they depart, why not embrace the anticipation of their eventual return?

—Linda M. Castellitto

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reviews | children’s

H Tumble

By Celia C. Pérez

Middle Grade Life would be easier if it were more like professional wrestling. It would be simple to tell the good guys from the bad guys, the “faces” from the “heels.” Everyone would know who will win, and it would be simple to decide who to cheer for.

In Pura Belpré Honor author Celia C. Pérez’s Tumble (Kokila, $17.99, 9780593325179), 12-year-old Adela “Addie” Ramírez is struggling with the fact that life isn’t quite as clear-cut as the wrestling matches she watches with her beloved stepfather, Alex, who has helped raise Addie since she was young. Addie will soon have a new sibling, so Alex has asked if she would consider allowing him to legally adopt her. But Addie can’t stop thinking about the one part of her life that Alex and her mom won’t talk about: the biological father she’s never met.

Professional wrestling is a big deal in Addie’s small town of Thorne, Texas, because the Cactus

The Twilight Library

By Carmen Oliver Illustrated by Miren Asiain Lora

Picture Book When darkness falls, nocturnal animals and insects get busy hunting, foraging, building nests, carrying on conversations and visiting their local library. In The Twilight Library (NorthSouth, $18.95, 9780735844964), author Carmen Oliver and illustrator Miren Asiain Lora dream the dark away with these critters amid the cozy collection of a truly unique library.

Oliver’s text is a storyteller’s delight. She opens the book with sparse phrases, but as the story unfolds, her narration blossoms into lush descriptions and meticulously polished turns of alliteration, repetition and rhythm. Like the finest silken spiderwebs, Oliver’s prose is delicately woven, each word chosen with care, and her tightknit sentences create a feeling of safety and comfort.

Meanwhile, Asiain Lora tucks readers into a soft berth on the forest floor and provides a bug’s-eye perspective on the vast gloaming sky above. Perhaps the most striking aspect of Asiain Lora’s art is her use of color. Muted

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Wrestling League holds its matches in Esperanza, the town next door. With some help from her best friend, Cy, and the local historical society, Addie discovers that her biological father is Manny “The Mountain” Bravo, of the famous Bravo family of wrestlers. Eager to learn more about him, she insists that they be allowed to meet before she will discuss adoption further. As Addie gets to know the Bravos, she begins to learn that life is never as simple or as easy as right or wrong, good or bad, family or not family.

Tumble is a complex, emotional story about loss, self-discovery and belonging, about forgetting who you were and remembering who you are. Pérez’s depiction of Addie’s journey to connect with Manny and her extended family of grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins— all of whom she feels were unfairly kept

from her by her mother— shines with honesty and touching authenticity.

Addie experiences fear, awkwardness and a growing sense of connection and acceptance as she comes to understand that sometimes, people cannot change who they are, even if it hurts the ones they love.

Addie confronts a series of difficult choices, and although she wishes she could be like a luchadore and hide behind a mask, she must fight for what she wants and who she wants to be. Tumble reminds readers that sometimes heroes (and villains) are not who they seem—both in life and in a wrestling ring.

—Kevin Delecki

background tones give the spreads a dusky feel, ideal for snuggling up close. Bursts of light and vibrant hues pop and glow wondrously against this backdrop.

Insect-averse readers will find themselves charmed by Asiain Lora’s gentle-faced creatures—especially the bespectacled arachnid Night Librarian—while dedicated bookworms will be envious of the library’s spiderweb bookshelves. As the Night Librarian reads aloud, the library becomes an enchanting realm where everything is warm and welcoming and happy.

The Twilight Library is a perfect bedtime read. It contains no grand declarations, no sweeping adventures and no high-minded morals. It has only one simple thing to say: Cuddle up, relax, let go, and for a moment, just imagine.

—Jill Lorenzini

A couple raises 12 children in the house, and two-time Caldecott Medalist Blackall captures the details of their everyday lives. We see marks on the wall to note the growing children’s heights; the “serious room” where the family gathers for important discussions; the attic bedroom where the children sleep and dream under its sloping ceiling; the farmhouse where they milk the cows “no matter the weather”; and much more.

Despite all this bustling activity, Blackall’s text is written in the past tense; she’s commemorating a home that once was, but is no more. She devotes one brief spread to the children’s adult lives, describing what they did after leaving the farmhouse. Once the last grown child leaves, the house falls into disarray. A bear even makes its home in the basement!

Soon, Blackall herself enters the book and relates how she found the house and filled her arms with as much as she could carry away.

Wallpaper, clothing, books and newspapers, handkerchiefs and more—all from the house itself—were incorporated into the artwork for “this book that you hold” so that the house and everyone in it will “live on . . . like your stories will, so long as they’re told.”

In a lengthy author’s note, Blackall explains that she purchased a farm in upstate New York that included the house that inspired the book.

Farmhouse is an openhearted ode to that house, with 48 spectacular pages that absolutely beg to be read aloud. Blackall’s spreads brim with life and hum with magic, yet skillfully avoid being too crowded or hard to follow.

H Farmhouse

By Sophie Blackall

Picture Book “Over a hill, at the end of a road, by a glittering stream that twists and turns, stands a house,” begins Sophie Blackall’s deft, sophisticated Farmhouse (Little, Brown, $18.99, 9780316528948).

Visit BookPage.com to read a Behind the Book essay by Celia C. Pérez.

Vividly realized, Farmhouse is filled with a tenderness and a longing that aches as you confront its bittersweet memories. Yet it leaves you with gratitude that an artist like Blackall, with the observational prowess of a poet, stumbled upon it and brought it to life again.

—Julie Danielson

Ride On

By Faith Erin Hicks

Middle Grade “Why is that new girl on our new horse?” Norrie asks her best friend, Hazel, as the two arrive at Edgewood Stables, where they ride and help out around the barn along with their friend, Sam. It turns out that the new girl is Vic, who used to ride at tony Waverly Stables. The four preteens form

the heart of the wonderful ensemble cast in graphic novelist Faith Erin Hicks’ Ride On (First Second, $14.99, 9781250772824), a lively tale of horses and friendship.

By the end of Ride On, readers will be ready to jump in the saddle.

Vic has begun riding at Edgewood after falling out with her best friend at Waverly, and she and Norrie get off to a dramatically rocky start.

Passionate Norrie reacts to the newcomer with a short fuse, declaring that Waverly is Edgewood’s rival (an opinion that no one else, particularly shy, reserved Hazel, seems to share). Vic, meanwhile, tells Norrie she’s not looking to make friends at Edgewood; she just wants to be left alone to ride.

The story of Vic and Norrie’s relationship includes twists, turns and plenty of emotional fireworks that feel immediate and authentic.

Hicks captures the angst and confusion that so

often characterize the early teen years as interests change and friendships blossom and wane.

Hicks’ sharp, focused illustrations enliven character interactions by zeroing in on facial expressions, especially Norrie’s cavalcade of wide-eyed, accusatory looks as she feels increasingly threatened by Vic. Onomatopoeia punctuates various scenes, such as a large, bright yellow “FWUMP!” when Vic falls onto her bed in frustration. Hicks skillfully uses color to spotlight characters within panels: Vic’s bluetinged braids, Norrie’s pink polo shirt and Sam’s blue and gray hoodie all stand out against the browns and blacks of Edgewood Stables.

Of course, horses are also at the center of the story. Ride On contains plenty of riding action informed by Hicks’ childhood as a “horse girl,” as she explains in an author’s note. Hicks movingly conveys the love between riders and horses, as well as the nerves and challenges experienced by both during competitions.

Ride On will leave readers eager for more of Hicks’ animated tales and ready to jump in the saddle themselves.

—Alice Cary

meet AIMÉE SICURO 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?

Illustrator Aimée Sicuro makes her authorial debut with If You Find a Leaf (Random House Studio, $17.99, 9780593306598), a playful autumnal ode to the power of creativity and imagination.

Sicuro incorporates real leaves into her watercolor artwork as she envisions endless possibilities for leafy adventures. In an author’s note, she shares her method for preserving leaves so that young readers can create their own leafy artwork too. Sicuro has previously illustrated such picture books as Elizabeth Brown’s Dancing Through Fields of Color, Tim McCanna’s In a Garden and Lauren Rille’s I Feel Teal. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

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