December 2022 BookPage

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

BEST

BOOKS of 2022

As another remarkable reading year winds down, we reveal our top titles.

ALSO INSIDE: GIFTS FOR THE HOLIDAYS

DEC 2022

BookPage

®

DECEMBER 2022

features

reviews

gifts | baking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 For fans of “The Great British Baking Show”

q&a | kennedy ryan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 A hard-won happily ever after

gifts | picture books. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Infinite love in 32 pages

feature | thrillers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Globe-trotting, page-turning adventures

gifts | celebrity memoirs. . . . . . . . . . . 19

fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 young adult. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 children’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

columns audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 well read. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Six stories of glitz, glamour and fame

gifts | history. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The armchair historian’s wish list

gifts | literary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 book clubs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 whodunit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

For the dedicated readers in your life

cover story | best books . . . . . . . . . . . 22

lifestyles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Introducing our favorite reads of 2022, across all genres and categories

gifts | teens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Four anthologies contain whole new worlds

feature | holiday picture books. . . . . 30 Shed joyful light on seasonal celebrations

meet | e.g. keller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Suggestions for every reader on your list in 2022

Meet the author-illustrator of Murray Christmas

PRESIDENT & FOUNDER Michael A. Zibart VP & ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Elizabeth Grace Herbert CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy MARKETING MANAGER Mary Claire Zibart SUBSCRIPTIONS Katherine Klockenkemper Phoebe Farrell-Sherman CONTRIBUTOR Roger Bishop

pages 4–11

EDITORIAL POLICY

PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Trisha Ping DEPUTY EDITOR Cat Acree ASSOCIATE EDITORS Stephanie Appell Christy Lynch Savanna Walker BRAND & PRODUCTION MANAGER Meagan Vanderhill

BookPage is a selection guide for new books.

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

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

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NONFICTION Explore the world with Lonely Planet Pack your bags and hit the open road! These great books offer the gift of travel this holiday season. $24.99–$40 | Lonely Planet

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Celebrate Black voices this holiday From travel to football to social justice, these books will make a lasting impression. $26.99–$35 National Geographic, Andscape Books

Mesozoic Art Steve White & Darren Naish This stunning illustrated book is perfect for dino-loving kids, art enthusiasts and Jurassic Park fans. $40 Bloomsbury Wildlife

The world’s favorite adventurer shares the tips he has used to overcome fears and achieve superhuman feats. They’ll help you face whatever life throws your way. $24.99 | Hodder Faith

The LEGO Story

Anthony Barboza

Jens Andersen

Explore the celebrated photographer’s first monograph. Publishers Weekly calls it a “gorgeous addition to the shelf.”

This extraordinary inside story of LEGO is based on unprecedented access to company archives and rare interviews with the founding family.

$40

$32.50 Mariner Books

Unique gifts from National Geographic!

Looking for advice on birds or eating for longevity? Want to excite kids about the wonders of our world? National Geographic has exactly what you need. $24.99–$30 | National Geographic, National Geographic Kids

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Bear Grylls

Eye Dreaming

J. Paul Getty Museum

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Mind Fuel

NONFICTION

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Perfect picks for everyone on your list Uncover the story behind the most popular songs since 1964, or dive into a riveting history of the most important WWII generals. $27–$30 | Atlantic Monthly Press, Grove Press

The West Wing and Beyond Pete Souza Go behind the scenes of the West Wing with former presidential photographer Souza.

Make the holidays delicious Every chef will savor these books. $28.99–$35 | Gallery

Give the gift of inspiration This holiday season, give a book that inspires. From memoirs to self-help, cookbooks to health and wellness titles, check out the latest releases from Harper Horizon. $29.99–$34.99 | Harper Horizon

$50 | Voracious

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams Stacy Schiff Gripping and revelatory, this book from a Pulitzer Prize winner illuminates an overlooked chapter of the American Revolution. $35 | Little, Brown

Gifts for every fandom Give the gift of pop culture with Insight Editions! We dive deep to deliver behindthe-scenes access to your favorite shows, films and more. $29.99–$39.99 | Insight Editions

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gifts | baking

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Gifts for the star baker in your life The contestants and judges of “The Great British Baking Show” share their signature styles and technical tips.

Bake With BAKE (Bloomsbury, $40, 9781635579291), judge Paul Hollywood shares his go-to recipes for the classics, from cakes and cookies to breads, doughnuts, pastries and pies.

Chetna’s Easy Baking 2014 contestant Chetna Makan showcases mouthwatering sweet and savory offerings in Chetna’s Easy Baking (Hamlyn, $29.99, 9780600637394), such as pear, chocolate, star anise and hazelnut tarte Tatin and mini saffron vegan cheesecakes.

Simply Vegan Baking In Simply Vegan Baking (Harper Design, $27.99, 9780063272613), vegan contestant Freya Cox takes 70 recipes for familiar treats and shows bakers how to make them without eggs, milk or butter—and without sacrificing that comforting flavor.

Baking Imperfect Lottie Bedlow felt ill-prepared for her time as a contestant on the show in 2020. With Baking Imperfect (Thunder Bay, $24.99, 9781667202013), she vows to tell the truth about her baking struggles and imperfections so that others might feel brave enough to give baking a go.

Showstopping Cakes Winner of the 2018 season Rahul Mandal’s first book, Showstopping Cakes (Kyle, $34.99, 9781914239236),

Give the gift of fun!

In this beautifully designed full-color book, New York Times bestselling author Downs invites you to 100 delightful days of discovering fun right where you are. $18.99 | Revell

6

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breaks down each element of an eye-popping cake so that bakers can construct their own masterpieces at home.

Inspiring books for everyone on your list Give the gift of positivity! These family- and faith-filled books make perfect stocking stuffers or Secret Santa surprises. $19.95–$26.95 | K-LOVE Books

Cook as You Are Ruby Tandoh is one of the most published “Great British Baking Show” contestants, and Cook as You Are (Knopf, $35, 9780593321546) is her fourth release. This collection focuses on recipes that are easy, affordable and accessible to everyone, no matter what relationship you have to food or to your body.

Bake, Make, and Learn to Cook Vegetarian David Atherton, winner of the 2019 season, thinks kids should be able to whip up their own meal, snack or treat when they’re hungry.

Bake, Make, and Learn to Cook Vegetarian (Candlewick, $17.99, 9781536228434) will teach them how, with adorable illustrations by Alice Bowsher that break down each step of the process.

Giuseppe’s Italian Bakes When Giuseppe Dell’Anno won the 2021 season, fans everywhere shouted “Saluti!” Now he’s packed all his favorite home bakes, inspired by his dad’s recipes and notes, into Giuseppe’s Italian Bakes (Quadrille, $29.99, 9781787139282).

Every recipe is rustic, delicious and authentically Italian.

—Christy Lynch

Chicken Soup for the Soul for everyone Comfort, hope and inspiration. Holiday miracles and magic. Ten keys to happiness.

These gifts have something for all ages, and will be opened again and again. $14.95 | Chicken Soup for the Soul

BOLD STORIES

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Books that make readers wonder, dream, imagine and strive for change make great gifts! $17–$28 | Astra House

See reviews and more at astrahouse.com

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FICTION

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Unwrap, read, love, repeat!

Book of Night Holly Black Holly Black’s instant New York Times bestseller is a modern dark fantasy of betrayals, secret societies and a dissolute thief of shadows.

From heartwarming to heart pounding, these novels make great gifts. $17.99–$28.99 | Gallery

$27.99 | Tor Books

From the bestselling author of Sold on a Monday comes a sweeping WWII tale of an illusionist who is recruited by British intelligence. $27.99 | Landmark

Novels for everyone!

The Memory Man. Kay Scarpetta. Verity.

From favorite characters to a #BookTok sensation, these novels will thrill any reader on your holiday gift list.

From an exhilarating military thriller to a sparkling Western romance to a gripping WWII novel, these are books to savor and enjoy.

Perfect picks for everyone on your gift list Discover a propulsive story of corruption and murder or a gripping thriller that races through Motor City. $27 | Atlantic Monthly Press

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Kristina McMorris

Blockbuster thrillers

$29 | Grand Central

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The Ways We Hide

$16.99–$27.99 | Tyndale House

q&a | kennedy ryan

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

From a dramatic Regency family saga to an atmospheric thriller to a sweeping royal romance, give the readers in your life stories that will captivate them this Christmas season. $16.99–$17.99 | Bethany House

In Kennedy Ryan’s emotional new romance, love isn’t easy—and that’s what makes it so precious.

Before I Let Go (Forever, $15.99, 9781538706794) honors the work that a successful relationship requires with the story of Yasmen and Josiah, a divorced couple who fight their way back to each other after the death of their child drives them apart.

This book explores weighty themes of mental health and redemption. What was challenging and what were the benefits about doing this within a romance?

I lean into real and raw. Sometimes, love shines brightest when it’s tested.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a good swoon like the next girl. I do, but we also fall in love while losing jobs, facing health crises or working through depression and grief. Love takes place in the context of real life.

Writing a character who is recovering from depression meant going to tough, dark places, but also reflecting the joy of healing. I consulted with several therapists to ensure that it felt real and true.

One of the benefits has been hearing from early readers that several of them are actually seeking therapy they’ve been delaying for, in some cases, years. That feels like such a huge win and like the time and care it took to create this story was definitely worth it.

How did it feel to work on this story during a difficult handful of years?

I had my annual checkup right before COVID hit, and my doctor expressed concern that I had early indicators for depression.

Pandemic conditions exacerbated those early symptoms. I never understood how debilitating

© PERRYWINKLE PHOTOGRAPHY

Six heartfelt fiction reads to gift this Christmas

A hard-won happily ever after

depression could be until I couldn’t get out of bed. There was no room for creativity because I honestly was just trying to survive.

Once I could even approach this story, I realized I had all this personal experience to draw from. There was this intersection of my life and Yasmen’s that I hope infused the story with empathy, compassion and authenticity because so much of it came from my lived experience.

What were some of the impacts of mental health on a marriage that you wanted to convey?

I always resist the idea that love conquers all. These two people, who loved each other so very much, had a lot to work through on their own. Time apart reformed them into people who could be happy and healthy together.

I wanted this to be about a woman who esteems her personal, emotional and mental well-being above all else. Choosing herself becomes a matter of survival.

As she and her partner mature, heal and discover what they need as individuals, they come back together. I’m glad in my story, the love was still there waiting for them.

—Dolly R. Sickles

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of Before I Let Go and an extended version of this Q&A. Shop these titles at bookpage.com/holiday

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gifts | picture books

Infinite love in 32 pages Beautiful picture books make timeless gifts.

MANGA, YA & KIDS or Most Wished F from

All That Is You Bestselling author Alyssa Satin Capucilli offers an imaginative series of rhymed metaphors for love. Her text playfully twists colloquialisms (“you’re the wide in my world”), striking on heartfelt truths rather than cloying sentimentality. Illustrator Devon Holzwarth’s vibrant artwork matches the elegance and emotion of Capucilli’s prose and elevates All That Is You (Holt, $18.99, 9781627797023) from very good to breathtaking.

The Birthday of the World A young girl’s grandfather recounts how “the world of a thousand thousand things” was created when a beam of light pierced the darkness and scattered sparks into “everyone and everything.” Author Rachel Naomi Remen adapted The Birthday of the World (Cameron, $18.99, 9781951836344) from a tale originally told to her by her grandfather, an orthodox rabbi. Remen writes in unadorned, moving prose about the power in finding the lights inside ourselves and others, while illustrator Rachell Sumpter’s artwork is suffused with warmth and wonder.

DEMON SLAYER: KIMETSU NO YAIBA—THE FLOWER OF HAPPINESS (Novel)

By Aya Yajima, from an idea by Koyohara Gotouge $10.99

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Five Survive Holly Jackson In a bold new thriller from the #1 bestselling author, Red and her friends are on a road trip.

But someone wants them dead. Will they all survive the night? $19.99 Delacorte Press

Skandar and the Unicorn Thief A.F. Steadman

KAIU SHIRAI × POSUKA DEMIZU: BEYOND THE PROMISED NEVERLAND Story by Kaiu Shirai, Art by Posuka Demizu $9.99

THUS SPOKE ROHAN KISHIBE Vol. 1 Story and Art by Hirohiko Araki $17.99

The More You Give Marcy Campbell’s deceptively simple The More You Give (Knopf, $18.99, 9780593372739) follows three generations of a family as they share gifts and plant seeds both literal and figurative. Campbell anchors the story in wonderful specifics and skillfully repeated phrases, such as the “wild and wooly caps” of acorns that each generation plants in the field surrounding their house. Illustrator Francesca Sanna’s bold colors and stylized figures enable readers to track characters as they grow from child to adult, their faces clearly expressing the love they feel for one another.

—Stephanie Appell

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Soar into a breath­ taking world of heroes and unicorns in this fantastical debut that’s perfect for fans of Percy Jackson! $18.99 | Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Keeper of the Lost Cities: Stellarlune Shannon Messenger In the ninth book in the bestselling series, Sophie and her friends discover the true meaning of power—and evil. $21.99 | Aladdin

BLACK PARADOX Story and Art by Junji Ito $19.99

KIMETSU NO YAIBA SHIAWASE NO HANA © 2019 by Koyoharu Gotouge, Aya Yajima/SHUEISHA Inc. SHIRAI KAIU×DEMIZU POSUKA TANPENSY © 2021 by Kaiu Shirai, Posuka Demizu/SHUEISHA Inc. KISHIBE ROHAN WA UGOKANAI © 2013 by LUCKY LAND COMMUNICATIONS/SHUEISHA Inc. BLACK PARADOX © 2009 JI Inc./SHOGAKUKAN

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The Shonen Jump Guide to Making Manga The makers of the world’s most popular manga share their secrets! Use them to sharpen your skills, whether you’re just starting or a veteran. $16.99 | Shonen Jump

YA & KIDS

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

Bethlehem Barn

Moo, Baa, Fa La La La La!

Debra Westgate-Silva Illustrated by Marcin Piwowarski

Sandra Boynton This new Christmas board book from the beloved Boynton will have everyone singing.

Share the Christmas spirit with this retelling of the nativity story from the animals’ perspectives.

$6.99 | Boynton Bookworks

$19.95 | Stillwater River Publications

Standing in the Need of Prayer

The Frustrating Book!

Carole Boston Weatherford

Mo Willems

Illustrated by Frank Morrison

Based on a spiritual hymn, this deeply moving picture book is a timeless keepsake. $18.99 | Crown Books for Young Readers

A nighttime adventure. An epic saga. A winning finale.

Discover new favorite reads for book lovers of all ages! $17.99–$18.99 | Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Special delivery for young readers!

This holiday season, discover the perfect books for the kids in your life. Astra Books for Young Readers has titles for explorers, performers and dreamers. Deliver the gift of imagination to your budding bookworm! $17.99–$18.99 | Hippo Park, mineditionUS, Calkins Creek, Astra Books for Young Readers

Zoom Squirrel wants to feel brand new emotions in the fifth book in the Unlimited Squirrels series by bestselling author and illustrator Willems. $12.99 | Hyperion Books for Children

Giftable, helpful nonfiction for middle schoolers These books offer what kids need to have fun, navigate middle school with confidence and be the amazing humans they already are. $16.99 | Magination Press

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HISTORICAL FICTION forthe HOLIDAYS THE HIDDEN PALACE

by Dinah Jefferies A rebellious daughter.

A sister with a secret.

A rift over generations.

HER LAST BETRAYAL

by Pam Lecky When working for the British Secret Service, Sarah Gillespie can trust no one . . .

LOVE IN A TIME OF WAR

by Adrienne Chinn When war erupts, three sisters begin a new era of uncertainty.

THE DRESSMAKER’S SECRET

by Lorna Cook She will risk everything to save a life . . .

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audio

H The Milky Way Astrophysicist Moiya McTier gives a stellar performance of her book The Milky Way (Hachette Audio, 6.5 hours), a thoroughly entertaining and mind-expanding exploration of our galaxy as told in the first-person voice of the Milky Way itself. McTier’s unique portrayal is refreshing, engaging and funny as she imbues the galaxy with a sassy, grandiose tone—rightly so, given its galactic grandness. This is an out-of-this-world listening experience for anyone who has ever looked up at the sky with wonder.

—Maya Fleischmann

H All the Living and the Dead From childhood, death neither repulsed nor frightened Hayley Campbell but instead spurred her curiosity. So it was only natural that Campbell, a freelance journalist based in London, would interview people who make a living from death: not just a funeral director and an embalmer but also a crematorium operator, a crime scene cleaner, an executioner and more. In All the Living and the Dead (Macmillan Audio, 9 hours), Campbell is a probing investigator whose tone is always even, quietly emphasizing that death is the most natural thing in the world.

—Deborah Mason

H Making a Scene Actor Constance Wu (known for her lauded roles in “Fresh Off the Boat,” Crazy Rich Asians and Hustlers) narrates her thoughtful and revealing memoir in essays with an endearing blend of passion and playfulness. Evocative, provocative and always heartfelt, Making a Scene (Simon & Schuster Audio, 8 hours) is a great audiobook for fans of Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart.

—Maya Fleischmann

H If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal Who would have thought a discussion about the intelligence (or lack thereof) of humans and animals could be so fascinating and fun? Such is the case in If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal (Hachette Audio, 7 hours), thanks to the conversational prowess and keen (I’ll go ahead and say it) intellect of behavioral scientist Justin Gregg. All in all, it’s a joy for listeners.

—G. Robert Frazier

H Diary of a Misfit After Casey Parks came out to her family, her stern, conservative grandmother took her aside and told her a secret: “I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man.” Parks’ search for this person sent her back to her childhood homes in Louisiana and Mississippi, and her investigation, recounted in Diary of a Misfit (Random House Audio, 14.5 hours), becomes entwined with her own story of growing up gay in the Deep South.

—Deborah Mason

well read

by robert weibezahl

A Private Spy The art of letter writing seems all but doomed in our age of digital communication, and one wonders where future literary biographers will turn for the singular insights that a writer’s correspondence affords. Scholars of John le Carré will have no such concerns. Le Carré, real name David Cornwell, who died in December 2020, was perhaps the most thoughtful and erudite purveyor of the spy novel in the second half of the 20th century, a crackerjack storyteller who elevated the thriller to literary heights. He was also a prolific correspondent, and in A Private Spy (Viking, $40, 9780593490679), Tim Cornwell has assembled a generous collection of his father’s letters spanning a lifetime.

Fans of le Carré’s fiction know the outline of his own story—how, when working for British intelligence, masquerading as a junior diplomat in postwar Germany, he began to publish espionage novels that precipitated the end of his budding career as a spy but rapidly brought him fame and unaccustomed wealth.

The letters from this The collected letters of seminal period paint John le Carré, the master of a portrait of an enthusiastic and ambitious the spy novel, reveal and young man not fully conceal in equal measure. comfortable in his new garb. Some of that discomfort, we discern, stemmed from the lingering effects of an alienated childhood and his god-awful relationship with his huckster father, Ronnie, whose unwelcome presence, both real and psychic, hovers over much of le Carré’s early story. The letters also imply that another casualty of le Carré’s newfound success was his first marriage; but while Cornwell fills in gaps with helpful background commentary, the letters often skim the surface about this and other personal events. Not for nothing is the book called A Private Spy. The sweep of le Carré’s formidable 60-year career resists easy encapsulation, but through these letters readers encounter a panoply of the interesting people he called his friends and colleagues: fellow MI6 agents; writers such as Graham Greene, Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard; actors Alec Guinness and Gary Oldman, who each portrayed le Carré’s bestknown recurring character, George Smiley. There are many insightful letters to his stepmother, Jean, another survivor of the Ronnie long game, that reveal le Carré as a man who often contributed to his family’s well-­ being by assuming the roles of benefactor, confessor and substitute patriarch. Letters to publishing colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic, while more formal than the personal missives, offer a window into a literary life pursued with meticulous and demanding professionalism.

“I hate the telephone. I can’t type. Like the tailor in my new novel, I ply my trade by hand,” le Carré once wrote. The engrossing letters in A Private Spy—curated with great affection and care by Cornwell, who sadly passed away in May 2022 before seeing the book published—are not unlike an exquisite bespoke suit crafted by a master: careful to both accentuate the assets and conceal the flaws.

Top Ideas to Inspire Kids this Christmas

For ages 9 - 12

For ages 9 - 12

The Weather Book 9781838695309 RRP $19.99

Ocean Animal Atlas 9781838695262 RRP $18.99

For ages 9 - 12

Explorapedia 9781838695200 RRP $19.99

For ages 6-8

Atlas of Dogs

9781838694463 RRP $17.99

For ages 3-5

A Time to Celebrate 9781838695323 RRP $12.99

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.

13

romance

by christie ridgway

Cold hands, warm hearts Whether you like your romances merry or melancholy, these books will make the season bright.

Holiday love stories are almost always good-natured, but this year’s standouts take good cheer and good will to another level. Personal transformations and turning points abound in these empathetic and festive happily ever afters.

H So This Is Christmas Author Jenny Holiday takes readers on a third trip to the fictional country of Eldovia in So This Is Christmas (Avon, $16.99, 9780062952127). Management consultant Cara Delaney arrives in the small Alpine country to modernize the operations of a luxury watch company partly owned by the royal family. Matteo Benz, equerry of the king (think executive assistant), has been tasked with helping Cara but gives her a cold welcome. A traditionalist, he’s concerned her proposed changes might adversely affect his beloved country and its citizens. They parry, they clash, they kiss and find themselves consumed with thoughts of each other even as they investigate problems at the company. There’s time for hot chocolate and admiring the snowy beauty of Eldovia, but can two high-powered professionals from different countries find a way to be together? This delightful charmer is the ultimate holiday escape.

Kiss Her Once for Me Comics artist Ellie Oliver is at a low point in her life when she agrees to marry Andrew, a near-stranger, in Kiss Her Once for Me (Atria, $17.99, 9781982191139) by Alison Cochrun. He needs a wife to secure his inheritance, and she desperately needs the money he offers her to become that wife. What could go wrong? Only that Andrew’s sister, Jack, is none other than the woman Ellie fell in love with over one magical night the year before—and now they have to spend the holidays together. To make matters even worse, Ellie and Jack’s fling didn’t end well and Ellie has promised Andrew she’ll pretend they’re marrying for love.

From there, Cochrun piles on the rom-com fun: stranded at a snowy cabin with a single bed, the obligatory admiring of wood-chopping prowess, the “we better get out of these wet clothes” gambit. It’s not all holly jolly, however. Ellie’s vulnerable first-person voice gives readers intimate insight into a mind and heart prone to second-guessing, and the family drama that occurs is a reminder that Christmas rarely proceeds as planned. It’s a satisfying romance with a few tears to balance its fresh-baked sweetness.

A Merry Little Meet Cute A plus-size adult film actor stars in a Christmas TV movie in A Merry Little Meet Cute (Avon, $21.99, 9780063222571)

by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone. Bee Hobbes (aka Bianca Von Honey) hopes to keep her sexy alter ego secret from everyone at the decidedly PG-rated Hope Channel,

including her co-star, former boy band wild child Nolan Shaw, who is trying to take his personal brand in a more straight-laced direction. Nolan was Bee’s biggest teenage crush, and unbeknownst to her, he is one of Bianca Von Honey’s biggest fans. They keep those truths from each other for a short while, but soon their mutual attraction is burning up the set. What happens next is as predictable as it is enjoyable: multiple fiery love scenes and hilarious attempts to fool their co-workers. Bee and Nolan are energetic, self-deprecating and honest narrators, and a fab cast of supporting characters adds more sparkle to this spicy holiday fare.

Just Like Magic Sarah Hogle’s Just Like Magic (Putnam, $17, 9780593539859) is the type of book the words over the top were made for. Narrator Bettie Hughes unwittingly summons the Holiday Spirit—call him Hall—just in time for a Christmas vacation with her dysfunctional extended family. Bettie is way, way down on her luck, so she’s elated when Hall tells her that he will make all her wishes come true . . . until she’s expressing sufficient holiday cheer, of course. (Bettie mischievously supposes that accomplishing that task could take just about, oh, forever.) The plot’s frenetic pace matches Hall’s feverish ideas for how to make this Christmas the best ever; as a human for the first time, he wants to experience it all. Bettie and her relatives are insufferable at first, but as Hall’s magic takes hold, their charm begins to shine through. It’s impossible to predict where this clever romance will go next. Bettie and Hall are an unlikely pair, and their unlikely story will steal hearts.

Season of Love A Jewish artist gets a chance to save the family Christmas tree farm in Season of Love (Forever, $15.99, 9781538706534) by Helena Greer. When her estranged but still beloved Great-Aunt Cass dies, Miriam Blum discovers that Cass named her part-owner of Carrigan’s, a tree farm and inn that caters to über-fans of the holiday season. The farm’s manager, Noelle Northwood, is one of the other new owners. Noelle sees Miriam as an interloper and is resolved to dislike her, no matter how sexy Noelle may find her.

While determining what to do with the property, Miriam and Noelle are forced to face their pasts and end up intimately connecting over family, regrets and momentous mistakes. Told from both women’s perspectives, Season of Love is an emotionally driven holiday romance with definite heft. Miriam and Noelle both have baggage to unpack before they can risk falling for someone, and Greer shows how the season of snow and hope can also be a time of self-reflection. Readers will root for Miriam and Noelle to heal their hearts and begin to fully live—and love.

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

14

book clubs

by julie hale

End the reading year with a bang In Lauren Groff ’s Matrix (Riverhead, $18, 9781594634505), 17-year-old Marie de France becomes prioress of a run-down abbey in 12th-century England.

Ill-suited to a life of privation, Marie struggles in her new role, but she forms strong bonds with the women in her charge, and the abbey begins to flourish. When tensions rise between the abbey and the outside world, Marie’s work and leadership are challenged. Fans of historical fiction will savor this gripping, atmospheric novel, which poses questions related to faith and female desire that will inspire great discussion among readers.

Anthony Doerr’s ambitious, sweeping Cloud Cuckoo Land (Scribner, $20, 9781982168445) follows a group of characters across the centuries, all of whom endure transformational events and share a love for an ancient tale called “C l ou d Cu cko o Lovers of great fiction need Land.” Doerr tells the these paperback releases. stories of Anna and Omeir, two youngsters in Constantinople in the 1400s; Zeno, an octogenarian librarian in modern-­day Idaho; and Konstance, a teenage girl traveling on a spacecraft in the 22nd century. Inventive and accomplished, Doerr’s novel is an unforgettable tribute to the power of stories and the endurance of the human spirit.

Set in the 1970s in Illinois, Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads (Picador, $20, 9781250858702) chronicles the lives of the Hildebrandts, a suburban family going through a period of change. Russ Hildebrandt, an associate pastor and church leader, has decided to split from his wife, Marion.

Their daughter, Becky, and son Perry are dabbling in drugs and a more radical lifestyle, and Clem, the oldest son, makes a drastic choice that shocks the family. Franzen’s wonderfully detailed, emotionally intimate novel is satisfying on every level, with marriage, morality and religion among the book’s many talking points.

Ailey Pearl Garfield, a young Black woman, delves into her disturbing family history in Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper Perennial, $20, 9780062942951). Brought up in a family of formidable women in Georgia, Ailey takes inspiration from the great activist W.E.B. Du Bois while wrestling with her heritage and selfhood.

As she learns the truth about her family tree and the impact of slavery on her forebears, Ailey draws closer to self-acceptance. Jeffers explores issues of race, history and female relationships through this luminous story of a woman coming into her own.

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

BOOK CLUB READ S SP RING F OR WINTER A MERRY LITTLE MEET CUTE

by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone “The holiday romcom of my dreams!

Sexy, progressive, hilarious, and full of good cheer. I know what I’m gifting to all my romance-loving friends this year.”

—HELEN HOANG New York Times bestselling author of The Kiss Quotient

MARMEE

by Sarah Miller A revealing retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved Little Women , from the perspective of Margaret “Marmee” March, about the larger real-world challenges behind the cozy domestic concerns cherished by generations of readers.

SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS

by Jenny Holiday An unforgettable romance about a confident American woman and the strait-laced royal advisor who falls hopelessly in love with her.

THE GIRLS IN NAVY BLUE

by Alix Rickloff “The unforgettable story of the very first women allowed to join the US Navy in WWI. The Girls in Navy Blue is an enthralling story about sisterhood, and the secrets we leave behind.”

—LECIA CORNWALL author of The Woman at the Front

t @Morrow_PB

t @bookclubgirl

f William Morrow I BookClubGirl

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whodunit

by bruce tierney The Double Agent

The problem with being a double agent is that if you put a foot wrong, there is always someone ready—even eager—to kill you. In the case of Alexsi Ivanovich Smirnoff, the situationally heroic hero of William Christie’s The Double Agent (Minotaur, $27.99, 9781250080820), there are not two but three agencies poised to be either his savior or his executioner, depending on their mood and the day of the week: the Brits, the Germans and the Russians. It’s 1943, and the slippery spy has been captured in Iran by the British, who promptly recruit him to infiltrate the German forces in Italy. His exploits amid the Vatican and members of the Italian aristocracy are particularly dicey and well rendered, and as Alexsi makes his way across the European theater of the war, he becomes entangled in and surreptitiously shapes real-life events, such as the assassination attempt on Winston Churchill. Alexsi is an engaging character despite being self-serving to the max; in his defense, if he weren’t so consistently out for number one, he would have been summarily executed ages ago. Although it is not strictly necessary to read Christie’s first novel starring Alexsi (2017’s A Single Spy), after reading The Double Agent, you will surely want to. I would suggest tackling them in chronological order for optimal reading enjoyment.

How to Survive Everything The first line of Ewan Morrison’s How to Survive Everything (Harper Perennial, $17, 9780063247321) grabs readers by the throat: “I’m still alive, and if you’re reading this then that means you’re still alive, too. That’s something.” The Scottish writer’s thriller is set in the not-too-distant future, where rumors abound of a new disease that far outstrips COVID-19. Narrator Haley Cooper Crowe is an outspoken and plucky 16-year-old girl. (“Hold on . . . If you’re reading this, it’s also possible I’m dead. . . . If you found me lying there dead, I hope I wasn’t too gross.”) Haley’s family is a microcosm of modern-day political discord vis-a-vis pandemics. Her father, Ed, is a survivalist, a gun-toting libertarian determined to protect his family; her mother is a pandemic denier who accuses Ed of being an alarmist who’s ready to jump on any bandwagon that promises impending apocalypse.

Long story short, Ed, convinced another pandemic is about to begin, kidnaps Haley and her younger brother, Ben—and then the troubles really begin. Morrison seamlessly channels the voice and attitude of a teenage girl: Haley is by turns insightful, hilarious, cynical and, like many teens, wise beyond the perceptions of those who surround her. How to Survive Everything is a spot-on fable for the pandemic era. Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to regard it as a textbook.

H A World of Curiosities Reviewing Louise Penny gets more difficult with each new installment of her Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries, because each of her books improves upon the body of work that precedes it. One can advance that opinion a limited number of ways before it becomes severely repetitive. Nonetheless, the latest case of Armand Gamache, A World of Curiosities (Minotaur, $29.99, 9781250145291), is another superb achievement. The title refers to “The Paston Treasure,” a real-life painting by an anonymous Flemish artist that shows off the eclectic collecting habits of the Paston family in 17th-century England. The painting is housed in Norfolk, England, so it is something of a surprise when a full-scale replica of it turns up in a walled-in room in Gamache’s quiet Three Pines village in Quebec. And it’s even more of a surprise when the replica appears slightly different from the original, featuring collectibles that had not even been conceived of at the time the artwork was created. And then the murders begin, with the key question being what connection they could possibly have to the recently discovered painting. The reappearance in town of a young man and woman whose mother was brutally murdered a decade before complicates matters further. Penny weaves together all these narratives—the series of modern-day killings, the decade-old bludgeoning murder and the haunting artwork that has remained shrouded in mystery across the centuries—with a master’s deft hand.

H Secrets Typed in Blood Some of the giddiest delights experienced by mid-20th-century suspense aficionados were summoned forth by author Rex Stout in his mysteries starring grumpy armchair detective Nero Wolfe and his smart-alecky assistant/biographer, Archie Goodwin.

Stout died in 1975, and with the exception of tributes in print and on screen, Wolfe and Goodwin passed away with their creator— until 2020, when Stephen Spotswood’s Fortune Favors the Dead introduced brilliant sleuth Lillian Pentecost and her stalwart assistant, Willowjean “Will” Parker. While not an intentional homage to the Nero Wolfe mysteries, the Pentecost & Parker series will thrill fans of Stout’s iconic characters. They share a 1940s New York City setting, and the dynamic between the central characters is very similar; the biggest change is simply that Spotswood’s duo is composed of two women, with one of them, Will, being gay.

In the latest installment, Secrets Typed in Blood (Doubleday, $27, 9780385549264), the canny pair takes the case of Holly Quick, a pulp magazine writer who thinks that someone is committing real-life murders that mimic her stories. The tension ratchets up when the latest killing mirrors a story that Holly has not even published yet, thus shrinking the suspect pool considerably.

I was a huge fan of the Nero Wolfe series and am on my way to becoming as big an admirer of the Pentecost & Parker mysteries.

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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feature | thrillers

Let the chase begin!

Banish the winter blahs with globe-trotting, page-turning thrillers.

In this trio of suspense novels, a seasoned spy, a clever reward-seeker and a thief extraordinaire take on complicated, dangerous assignments as they race against time and attempt to elude their equally determined enemies.

JUDAS 62 At just under 500 pages, Charles Cumming’s JUDAS 62 (Mysterious Press, $27.95, 9781613163399) is a commitment, but those who love immersive espionage thrillers will consider it time well spent.

Fans were first introduced to Lachlan Kite in the 2022 series-opener BOX 88, named for the spy agency to which Kite has been loyal since his college days. As the second book begins, Kite is chagrined to hear that former Russian general Saul Kaszeta, a BOX 88 resource for many years, has been killed at his home in Connecticut. To make matters worse, Kite learns of the existence of the JUDAS list, a log of Russia’s enemies who are targets for assassination. Kaszeta was on that list, and thanks to a mission he completed in 1993, so is Kite. Also on the chopping block? Yuri Aranov, the bioweapons scientist Kite exfiltrated all those years ago.

Emotionally vivid flashbacks to that mission offer insight into a pivotal time in Kite’s life, when he was transitioning from a newbie uncomfortable with lying to his friends into an accomplished, silver-tongued agent on the rise. It’s a treat to be in on Kite’s elaborate planning, social machinations and on-the-fly pivots as roadblocks literal and figurative pop up in his path, including a violent Russian intelligence agent named Mikhail Gromik.

In the present day, there’s plenty of nail-biting action, too: Kite’s got to keep himself and Aranov from being crossed off the JUDAS list and, to truly ensure their safety, take Gromik off the map. Kite and his team jet off to Dubai, “a playground for spying,” to bring those goals to fruition, and Cumming puts his characters in a variety of creatively precarious situations, layering in paranoia and suspense galore. He also underscores the inner conflict that bedevils his spies both novice and expert, what a young Kite called being “suspended between the two worlds in which he lived.” JUDAS 62 offers an engrossing, highly detailed excursion into spy life that crackles with tension, life-or-death problem-solving and plenty of international intrigue.

Hunting Time As his millions of fans know, Jeffery Deaver likes a twist, especially in his Colter Shaw series. The rugged reward-seeker (he finds people who have gone missing and collects the reward money) relies on two rules emphasized by his über-survivalist late father: “never be without a means of escape, and never be without access to a weapon.”

In his fourth adventure, Hunting Time (Putnam, $29, 9780593422083), Shaw puts those rules to the test on a new sort of project, foiling the theft of a nuclear device called the Pocket Sun. The client is Marty Harmon, the

founder of Midwestern startup Harmon Energy Products. Shaw likes the cut of Harmon’s jib, so he agrees when the CEO implores him to do yet another job just days later. The brilliant Allison Parker, Harmon’s best engineer and inventor of the Pocket Sun, and her teenage daughter, Hannah, have gone on the run because Allison’s abusive ex-husband, former police detective Jon Merritt, was released early from prison. Harmon wants Allison and Hannah found, protected and returned, but Allison refuses to resurface until Jon is back behind bars.

Deaver deftly alternates perspectives throughout Shaw’s suspenseful three-day chase over rough terrain, immersing the reader in Jon’s growing rage, Allison’s efforts to strategize an escape while keeping the argumentative Hannah calm, and the demented determination of two hit men who are, alas, also chasing Allison. As time ticks by and the various players converge, Deaver keeps the anxiety high with short chapters and multiple twists that cast the characters’ motivations in surprising new lights. The vagaries of city politics and complicated family dynamics add depth and context to this timely and tension-filled thriller.

Three-Edged Sword Incorrigible master thief Riley Wolfe is back for a third escapade in Three-Edged Sword (Dutton, $28, 9780593186220) by Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter series (and creator of the hit TV adaption).

The story picks up right after 2020’s Fool Me Twice, and Riley is doing the last thing readers would expect: sitting still. Or at least trying to, as he waits for Monique—master art forger, occasional heist partner, the woman for whom he has unresolved romantic feelings—to emerge from a coma. Riley’s mother has been in a coma for some time, and with the only two people he cares about ill and inaccessible, he’s suffering the kind of antsiness that makes him “really want to . . . light [his] hair on fire and run screaming into the night.”

He doesn’t do that, but he does take risks that land him in the clutches of Chase Prescott, a rogue CIA agent who decides to force Riley into doing a job for him. He’s to sneak onto a remote island in Lithuania owned by former Soviet intelligence agent Ivo Balodis, who lives in an underground bunker connected to a decommissioned missile silo. Once there, he must steal a flash drive from the (heavily guarded and booby-trapped) silo; as payment, he can swipe a rare Russian icon from Balodis’ prized collection.

Riley is infuriated to learn that Prescott has kidnapped his mother and Monique to ensure compliance. Can he rescue them from Prescott’s goons while coming up with a way to breach Balodis’ missile silo without coming to great harm, or even death? Readers will be transfixed by Riley’s every move as he engages in astonishing transformations and clever ruses in pursuit of his seemingly impossible goals in this audacious and action-packed thriller.

—Linda M. Castellitto

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lifestyles

by susannah felts

Hey, good lookin’ Kiss the cook—but maybe buy them a present too. These five gorgeous cookbooks will wow any culinary artist worth their salt.

H Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking An Italian-born friend, who is a very fine cook, once texted me a recipe for Bolognese sauce. The recipe, she explained, was by Marcella Hazan, and the meal we made from it was a gorgeous triumph.

You can find that recipe on page 210 of the new edition of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (Knopf, $40, 9780593534328), a classic tome now outfitted in cheerful bright yellow for its 30th anniversary. Hazan, who died in 2013, is often credited as the most significant teacher of northern Italian cooking in the United States, and her guidance on fresh pasta, sauces and vegetables is without match, her objective “not to astonish, but to reassure.” Hazan’s cooking is unfussy, powered by good, fresh ingredients (which she explains in loving detail) and firmly rooted in family memories.

A Dish for All Seasons A Dish for All Seasons: 125+ Recipe Variations for Delicious Meals All Year Round (Chronicle, $27.50, 9781797207711) is a collection of 26 recipe templates and suggestions for how to mix them up for each season—in other words, a brilliantly useful concept. For example, quesadillas: an easy weeknight favorite, but possibly a bit boring? Not so when stuffed with steamed root veggies in winter or grilled corn kernels in summer. Or consider pesto four ways, depending on what’s in season. Kathryn Pauline, a Saveur award-winning writer, provides a meal-making approach suitable for all levels of kitchen wizardry. Beginners can develop fluency through repeating familiar go-tos with simple twists, while those with kitchen skills will jump at the opportunity to improvise within constraints.

“Use what you’ve got” is advice that never grows old, and this book puts a clever, adaptable spin on it.

I Am From Here In Vishwesh Bhatt’s cooking, the flavors and foodways of Mississippi and India converge in dishes like okra chaat, saag-style collards and succotash with garam masala. Until now, one had to visit Snackbar in Oxford, Mississippi, where Bhatt is executive chef, to experience that fare. Now, I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes From a Southern Chef (Norton, $37.50, 9781324006060) showcases the inventive cuisine on which the James

Beard Award-winning chef has made his name. A dinner might include grown-up stir-fried rice (based on a snack from Bhatt’s childhood in Ahmedabad, India), collard-wrapped catfish and Mom’s rice pudding. Stories of Bhatt’s mother, who kindled his early interest in food, pepper these pages. The book beautifully represents an individual immigrant’s experience through food; at the same time, it is a welcome addition to the canon of elevated Southern cooking.

Chinese-ish Rosheen Kaul and Joanna Hu, the two young Asian Australians behind the delightful Chinese-ish: Home Cooking Not Quite Authentic, 100% Delicious (Interlink, $35, 9781623717995), encompass a wealth of identities and influences between them: Kashmiri, Singaporean, Filipino, Malaysian, Indonesian and, of course, Chinese.

Their collaboration, born during the COVID-19 pandemic, dances merrily through all of that territory with insouciant verve and a dash of humor. There are sections called “Chinese-ish snacks that feel kinda wrong” (including Beijing hot chicken and prawn toast) and “A few desserts we don’t hate” (such as mango pudding and pumpkin cakes).

Hu’s watercolor illustrations play so nicely with the vivid photography throughout, and the recipes are remarkably accessible. Get yourself a carbon steel wok (as my husband did recently; he’s loving it), hit up the supermarket’s international aisle or your local Asian market, and you’ll be dishing up variations on fried rice, Sichuan-style noodles and chiffon omelets in no time.

Bread Head “The bread I’m going to teach you to make is a little rough around the edges, a little louder than is polite, and stupid good.” That’s Greg Wade, head baker at Chicago’s Publican Quality Bread, in Bread Head: Baking for the Road Less Traveled (Norton, $45, 9780393866742). Wade’s bread is “an eff-you to the factory-­farmed, industrially made versions” ubiquitous in supermarkets, as he often forges standard wheat for organic heritage whole grains such as barley, buckwheat and millet. Or how about a sorghum and rosemary ciabatta, or a rye naan? Wade’s creations pull from around the globe; for example, there’s khachapuri, a fermented dough stuffed with cheese and eggs that sounds like the stuff of my wheatiest dreams.

Even if you burned out on sourdough during the pandemic, this book will make you want to try again.

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

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Illustrations from Chinese-ish © 2022 by Joanna Hu. Reproduced by permission of Interlink Publishing Group.

gifts | celebrity memoirs

From stage to page Six celebrity memoirs capture all the grisly details of glitz, glamour and fame.

Have I Told You This Already?

Playing Under the Piano

Lauren Graham is best known as the headstrong single mom in “Gilmore Girls,” but she’s also an accomplished author.

Her second book of personal essays, Have I Told You This Already? (Ballantine, $28, 9780593355428), is composed of 15 insightful pieces relaying impactful moments and life lessons.

Graham takes the reader on a behind-the-scenes tour of Hollywood, remaining candid about the demands of show business and the acrobatics that actors have to perform to fit into the Hollywood mold. In a chapter aptly named “Forever 32,” she reflects on aging, comparing her recollections of being a 20-something to when, at age 32, she realized “I had a sense of myself I’d never had before.”

Graham’s writing is fresh, sharp and very funny. Her voice invites the reader in, emanating a refreshing openness that will make them want to be her best friend.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

In Playing Under the Piano (Other Press, $28.99, 9781635423426), stage and screen actor Hugh Bonneville allows “Downton Abbey” fans to know him more truly. His account is intriguing, breezy and full of intellect and humor. It’s also a delicious stroll down a red carpet lined with big names.

The memoir is divided into sections discussing Bonneville’s childhood, theater years and film roles. There’s no mean-­ spirited gossip here, just plenty of humorous self-­deprecation and some laugh-out-loud anecdotes—like the time Judi Dench dropped a note that said “Fancy a shag?” in the lap of an audience member she thought was a friend. Turns out, the man was not her pal.

Playing Under the Piano is a must-read for Bonneville fans, as well as an excellent look at the ups and downs of being an actor. Now excuse me while I go watch Paddington again.

—Alice Cary

Waypoints

The Sporty One

Sam Heughan, known to fans as Jamie Fraser from “Outlander,” recently decided it was time to walk the rigorous West Highland Way, a 96-mile hiking trail that runs from north of Glasgow to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands.

Bracketing Heughan’s hike is an account of his visit to his dying father in British Columbia, Canada. The man was a stranger who abandoned his family long ago, but Heughan and his brother felt nonetheless compelled to offer a goodbye.

Once they arrived, Heughan was stunned to learn that his father had been following his acting career all along.

Throughout Waypoints (Voracious, $29, 9780316495530), Heughan has a clear, precise and entertaining style, and his encounters with roaming sheep and clusters of mushrooms are wonderfully comic. His reflection on his life and work, interspersed with the challenges and discoveries of the Way, lend this story heft and grit.

—Priscilla Kipp

Nothing could have prepared Melanie Jayne Chisholm—aka Sporty Spice—for the loneliness and isolation that accompanied fame. In The Sporty One (Grand Central, $29, 9781538740293), the singer unpacks her journey toward self-acceptance.

The Spice Girls were a pop culture supernova at the turn of the new millennium. This type of rise at a young age leaves a few scars, and Chisholm isn’t afraid to recount her personal battles. The pressures of being a ubiquitous pop star coupled with her innate perfectionism brought on depression and severe anxiety. And despite her public image of health and fitness, she was secretly contending with disordered eating.

Chisholm’s narrative voice is warm and funny as she examines the fickle nature of celebrity. The Sporty One is more than the memoir of a pop star; it’s an emotional revelation.

—Vanessa Willoughby

Beyond the Wand

Paul Newman’s memoir, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man (Knopf, $32, 9780593534502), composed posthumously from interviews he began conducting in 1986, is raw, honest and revealing. Through his own reminiscences and those of his contemporaries, the book provides a firsthand glimpse of Newman’s upbringing, military service, first marriage to Jackie Witt, second marriage to Joanne Woodward, six children and professional and personal endeavors.

Even after he became famous, Newman was often unsure of himself. The way he was treated by his parents, especially his mother, was detrimental. Newman’s memories of his father depict the man as an indifferent alcoholic. Unfortunately, this contributed to Newman’s own problems with alcoholism.

But Newman also had more positive traits, from charisma and humor to compassion and business savvy. The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man is a humble and candid look into the life of a celebrated but often misunderstood man.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

A few years after British actor Tom Felton hung up his Slytherin robes, he hit rock bottom. After spending nearly a decade as sneering, peroxide-blond Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Felton hoped to transition into a career brimming with star-studded blockbusters. Instead, his move to Los Angeles made him feel like a rudderless ship. In Beyond the Wand (Grand Central, $28, 9781538741368), Felton looks back to uncover the path forward as he candidly details the surreal experience of being part of a pop culture juggernaut.

Felton’s memoir isn’t a shameless tell-all or a cautionary tale about the ills of fame. He frequently expresses gratitude and praises the skills and professionalism of actors such as Jason Isaacs and Alan Rickman. Ultimately, Beyond the Wand is so much more than fan service. With introspection and charm, Felton’s narrative captures the growing pains of adolescence.

—Vanessa Willoughby

The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

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gifts | history

Giftable glimpses of history The armchair historian’s wish list isn’t a tough nut to crack!

Just give them a great book.

Documentary filmmaker and historian Ken Burns believes that photographs are portals “not just to a different time and space but also to dimensions and possibilities within.” Through photographs and illustrations, these books are guaranteed to transport you.

are inspiring and well-rounded, running the gamut from Frederick Douglass and James Baldwin to activist Alicia Garza and food journalist Toni Tipton-Martin.

H Apollo Remastered

Despite the mountains of books already written about the Kennedys, I couldn’t put down My Travels With Mrs. Kennedy (Gallery, $35, 9781982181116), a conversational memoir and very personal photo album by Clint Hill. A former Secret Service agent who served under five U.S. presidents, Hill was present during John F. Kennedy’s assassination and later assigned to the first lady and her children. He’s written other books about those experiences, including several with his wife and co-author, Lisa McCubbin Hill. Dialogue between the co-authors makes this book immensely readable as they discuss Hill’s memories. Numerous photos bring each scene to life, capturing intimate moments that reveal the first family’s personalities, especially that of Jackie. Of their relationship, Hill writes, “It wasn’t romantic. But it was beyond friendship. We could communicate with a look or a nod.”

Apollo Remastered (Black Dog & Leventhal, $75, 9780762480241) is a weighty coffee table book that beams readers right into its cosmic world. The original NASA film from the Apollo missions (which includes some 35,000 images) has been safely secured inside a frozen vault at the Johnson Space Center, but new technology has allowed digital restoration expert Andy Saunders to painstakingly remaster this treasure trove of photographs, many of which have never been published. The results are pure magic, full of clarity, sharpness and color that make readers feel like part of the team—a far cry from those grainy images that were broadcast on TV at the time. During their spaceflights, many astronauts were shocked by how moved they felt looking back at Earth, and readers will see why. Apollo 9’s Rusty Schweickart recommends reading this book at night, surrounded by darkness and silence, to allow the gleaming spacecraft and spacesuits to shimmer and shine.

H Our America In the tradition of Walker Evans’ groundbreaking 1938 book, American Photographs, Ken Burns has assembled a collection of his favorite images in Our America (Knopf, $75, 9780385353014). These black-and-white photographs are arranged chronologically from 1839 to 2019, with only one on each page for full visual impact. They’re labeled by date and place (at least one for each state), with fuller explanations at the back of the book, and they are mesmerizing, drawing on a multitude of personalities, emotions and events. The images depict the brutally scarred back of an enslaved man, decomposing bodies at Gettysburg, frozen Niagara Falls, a 1909 game of alley baseball in Boston, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Elvis onstage and, finally, a stunning portrait of Congressman John Lewis from 2019.

Illustrated Black History For Illustrated Black History (HarperOne, $40, 9780062913234), artist, designer and creative director George McCalman created 145 original portraits spotlighting Black pioneers in many fields, each accompanied by a short biographical essay. Moving alphabetically from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to cinematographer Bradford Young, McCalman uses a bold array of acrylics, watercolors, pen and ink and colored pencils to capture each personality in an individualized way. “I document body language, I document exuberance, I document pain,” he writes. “I draw like a reporter because I am a reporter.” His portraits

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My Travels With Mrs. Kennedy

The Only Woman The Only Woman (Phaidon, $29.95, 9781838664206) is a unique gallery of group portraits that contain a lone female figure surrounded by men. There’s Marie Curie, for instance, with her head in her hand, looking downright bored among a group of suited scientists at a 1911 conference in Belgium. There’s 9-year-old Ab Hoffman, who earned a spot on a Canadian hockey team for one season in 1956 because her coaches hadn’t noticed her gender. In a 1982 photo, a white male U.S. Army Diver candidate sneers at Andrea Motley Crabtree, a Black woman who made the training cut when he didn’t. Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Immy Humes provides concise commentary throughout her collection, which spans from 1862 to 2020.

She speaks to “the pleasure of spotting them, and then, most of all, the mystery of them: What was she doing there?”

Affinities In need of some creative downtime? Curl up with the hefty Affinities (Thames & Hudson, $60, 9780500025208) and lose yourself in a delightfully imaginative, visionary game. The book’s 350-plus pages contain a miscellany of images arranged to showcase unexpected similarities. With images old and new from around the world, all selected from the archive of the Public Domain Review, this is a book designed for random perusal. As explained in the introduction, the result is “a maze of rootlike cut-throughs that allow you to move through the book in different ways, to disrupt the sequence and carve through your own serpentine trajectory.”

—Alice Cary

gifts | literary

Beguilements for bibliophiles Make the holidays bright for the dedicated readers on your list.

If you’re shopping for someone who always has books on the brain, we’ve got your gift needs all wrapped up.

Great Short Books Anyone who’s eternally time-strapped will treasure Kenneth C. Davis’ Great Short Books (Scribner, $28, 9781982180034). This nifty volume highlights 58 works of fiction chosen by Davis for their size (small) and impact (enormous). Each brisk read weighs in at around 200 pages but has the oomph of an epic.

“Short novels,” Davis writes in the book’s introduction, “have been shortchanged. They occupy the place of the neglected middle child of the literary world.”

With its eclectic roster of authors (Sandra Cisneros, Stephen King, James Joyce, Nella Larsen—the list goes on), his volume challenges this perception.

Davis’ picks include something for every reader.

Classic selections such as James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway are spotlighted alongside contemporary offerings like Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation and Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn. The entry for each title consists of a plot summary, an author bio, suggestions on what to read next and—the perfect bait for hooking book lovers—the work’s first lines.

Davis delivers readerly insights and plenty of literary trivia in this handy guide. Outside of extra time, it’s the perfect gift for busy bibliophiles.

Reading the Stars Readers in need of a little inspiration should try tapping into the power of the zodiac. That’s the premise behind Reading the Stars (Abrams Image, $19.99, 9781419758874), the new release from the literary website Book Riot.

This quirky title encourages readers to connect with their astrological signs as a way to deepen and enrich their relationships with books. Astrology, according to Book Riot, can “give you some hints about what kind of books you like to read, what books can help you grow as a person, and how you engage with the reading world.”

The volume covers the basics of astrology and provides an intriguing profile of every sign in the chart, with details on the characteristics and reading styles of each. Aries readers, for instance, focus on meeting their reading goals, while Virgos read to destress and love getting lost in a good fantasy. Cancers savor extended story arcs and happily ever after endings.

Filled with atmospheric illustrations, Reading the Stars offers sign-specific reading recommendations and reveals which signs are compatible with one another—from a literary standpoint. Sure to pique the interest of bibliophiles, this delightful title will give them a whole new way to think about books.

Marple Here’s a merry surprise for mystery fans: Miss Jane Marple is back. Marple (William Morrow, $28.99, 9780063136052) is a collection of new stories featuring Agatha Christie’s iconic detective written by some of today’s top thriller writers. Ruth Ware, Lucy Foley, Dreda Say Mitchell and Alyssa Cole are among the dozen authors who salute the sleuth in this anthology.

Christie introduced Jane Marple in the 1927 story “The Tuesday Night Club.” An elderly spinster and first-rate cracker of crimes from the quiet village of St. Mary Mead, England, Miss Marple appeared in 12 Christie novels, becoming one of the most beloved figures in detective fiction.

In the new volume, fresh mysteries take Miss Marple to far-flung locales. A cruise ship headed for Hong Kong is the setting for Jean Kwok’s “The Jade Empress,” which finds Miss Marple investigating the death of a fellow passenger. In Alyssa Cole’s “Miss Marple Takes Manhattan,” sinister events plague a Broadway rehearsal, where the lady detective is providentially in attendance.

Miss Marple logs many a mile in these new adventures, and fans will be elated to find that she remains a redoubtable force when faced with a case. The new stories are suspenseful and—of course—deliciously cozy. What’s not to love about more Miss Marple?

H Revenge of the Librarians Bibliophiles will find a kindred spirit in cartoonist Tom Gauld, whose clever new collection, Revenge of the Librarians (Drawn & Quarterly, $24.95, 9781770466166), is all about books and the literary life.

The setting of the volume’s opening strip is a world taken over by librarians—a what-if tale of terrific proportions compactly recounted in five panels. “With superior organizational skills, they quickly seized power,” Gauld writes. “Opponents were mercilessly shushed. Every building was converted into a library.”

Arch humor abounds in Gauld’s perfectly pithy cartoons, which drop amusing author allusions, spoof the literary establishment and play with writer stereotypes. Ardent memoirist and precious poet, tormented novelist and cutthroat critic—none are exempt from his pen. Gauld also lampoons hallowed literary traditions. The titles in the cartoon “Summer Reading for Conspiracy Theorists” include Slaughterhouse 5G and The Old Man and the CIA. In “Waiting for Godot to Join the Zoom Meeting,” Vladimir and Estragon sit expectantly before their computers, but alas: “Nobody comes. Nobody goes.”

Gauld, whose work has appeared in The Believer and the New York Times, gets up to all manner of literary mischief in this quick-witted, must-have collection for book buffs.

—Julie Hale

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INTRODUCING OUR

OF 2022, ACROSS ALL GENRES AND CATEGORIES

TOP 10 Babel

An Immense World

The Rabbit Hutch

Set in an alternate Victorian Britain, R.F. Kuang’s standalone historical fantasy is an unforgiving examination of the cost of power.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ed Yong’s nonfiction study of animal senses is an immersive, page-turning reading experience.

Despite its doomed Midwestern setting, Tess Gunty’s debut novel makes storytelling seem like the most fun a person can have.

In Love by Amy Bloom

Trust

Amy Bloom is known for examining the dynamics of intimacy in her fiction, but she has never gotten closer to the flame than in this memoir of her husband’s early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Hernan Diaz’s second novel is a beautifully composed masterpiece that examines the insidious disparities between rich and poor, truth and fiction.

by R.F. Kuang

Everywhere With You

by Carlie Sorosiak, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth

Carlie Sorosiak and Devon Holzwarth’s flawless picture book rings with a tender truth: When you are with the ones you love, everywhere you go is home.

Honey and Spice

by Bolu Babalola

This enemies-­to-lovers romance set on a British university campus hums with Bolu Babalola’s energetic, intelligent voice.

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by Ed Yong

by Tess Gunty

by Hernan Diaz

Lolo’s Light

Winter Work

Liz Garton Scanlon’s compelling middle grade novel glows with empathy and understanding.

Dan Fesperman’s intense post-Cold War mystery savvily addresses both the personal and political pressures facing an East German spy.

by Liz Garton Scanlon

Man o’ War

by Cory McCarthy This YA novel’s exploration of queer identity ferociously resists the idea that coming out is a simple or straightforward process.

by Dan Fesperman

FICTION

NONFICTION Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah The engrossing 10th novel from Nobel laureate Gurnah is filled with compassion and historical insight.

All This Could Be Different

Lessons in Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

Garmus’ devastating and funny debut novel blows the lid off simplistic myths about the 1950s.

by Sarah Thankam Mathews

Natural History by Andrea Barrett

Bitingly funny and sweetly earnest, Mathews’ debut is one of those rare novels that feels just like life.

The stories in Barrett’s dazzling collection demonstrate that while history distills events, fiction can bring messy humanity to life.

The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li Li probes a magical yet destructive friendship between two girls with the deftness of Elena Ferrante.

Calling for a Blanket Dance

by Oscar Hokeah

Hokeah’s exceptional debut examines the many leaves of a Native American man’s family tree.

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan Egan’s vast empathy makes this companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad more than a literary experiment.

The Consequences

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng Ng is undoubtedly at the top of her game as she portrays an American society overcome by fear.

Either/Or by Elif Batuman Selin, the hero of Batuman’s The Idiot, returns with a voice that is more mature, reflective and droll.

The Furrows by Namwali Serpell Serpell’s purposely disconcerting follow-up to her genre-defying debut reinforces her keen talent.

How It Went by Wendell Berry Berry’s 13 stories create a tale that gently unwinds and doubles back on itself like a flowering vine.

If I Survive You

by Jonathan Escoffery Escoffery’s connected stories offer an imaginative, fresh take on being a man and nonwhite immigrant in America.

Lessons by Ian McEwan This scathing, unsettling novel posits that knaves and heroes come in all guises.

In the Shadow of the Mountain

The Song of the Cell

Unlike mountaineering memoirs that celebrate the individual, VasquezLavado’s is intimately collaborative.

This captivating book from Pulitzer Prize winner Mukherjee explores how cellular engineering can reshape medicine.

by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado

The Invisible Kingdom

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

by Meghan O’Rourke

South to America by Imani Perry

O’Rourke compassionately chronicles the rise of autoimmune disease alongside her own search for healing.

In a vibrant blend of travelogue, memoir and cultural history, Perry shows the South’s iniquity and beauty.

Last Call at the Hotel Imperial

Stay True by Hua Hsu

by Deborah Cohen

Historian Cohen brilliantly captures the complicated lives of America’s most influential interwar journalists.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Hsu’s remarkable memoir examines the reverberations of a friendship frozen in time by untimely death.

Strangers to Ourselves

by Rachel Aviv

This stunning book profiles people whose experiences of mental illness exceed the limits of Western psychiatry.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Rojas Contreras makes the history of Colombia immediate and personal.

Raising Lazarus by Beth Macy

Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse

It’s impossible to predict how, exactly, you’ll fall in love with this novel, but it’s an eventuality you can’t escape.

Macy’s follow-up to Dopesick ​​will radically change your opinions on the opioid crisis.

Krouse’s compelling, highly personal account of a landmark Title IX case reads like a detective novel.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

Red Paint by Sasha LaPointe

Stuart’s follow-up to Shuggie Bain is a marvelous feat of storytelling, a mix of tender emotion and grisly violence.

LaPointe offers a poetic narrative of trauma and healing through ancestral rites and punk rock.

This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch

by Manuel Muñoz

In this story collection, Muñoz forges a new Latinx narrative full of richness and complexity.

cover story | best books

Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun Calhoun’s biography of the poet Frank O’Hara unexpectedly transformed into an absorbing and insightful memoir about her father.

Free by Lea Ypi Political scholar Ypi’s poignant, funny memoir views Albania’s journey out of socialism through a child’s eyes.

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams by Stacy Schiff Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Schiff vividly renders an essential Founding Father: Samuel Adams.

River of the Gods

by Tabitha Carvan

Carvan makes an excellent case for embracing what you like and the delight it brings—no shame allowed.

Under the Skin by Linda Villarosa Villarosa’s wonderfully written book makes stunning points about the health risks of racism.

by Candice Millard

Virology by Joseph Osmundson

In this unforgettable history of the Nile, European explorers’ egos loom godlike, but East African guides save lives.

Sparkling prose, glittering insights and accessible writing make this one of the best science books of the year.

Half American

by Matthew F. Delmont Delmont provides a top-notch overview of the contributions of Black service members and civilians during WWII.

How to Read Now

by Elaine Castillo

Castillo brilliantly argues that being a good reader means learning how to interrogate the stories all around us.

Inciting Joy by Ross Gay Gay’s powerful and poetic sixth book asks: What incites joy? And more importantly, what does joy incite in us?

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cover story | best books Hook, Line, and Sinker

by Tessa Bailey

This fabulous friends-to-lovers rom-com feels authentic every step of the way.

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean Dean’s deliciously dark debut is a haunting story that’s part fairy tale and part nightmare.

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid

The king of the rom-com conquers the Regency with an angsty historical romance.

Inspired by Eastern European history and folklore, this fantasy novel is a tender love story as well as a chilling tale of escape from abuse.

Love & Other Disasters

Leech by Hiron Ennes

by Anita Kelly

The only bad thing about Kelly’s wonderful foodie romance is that after you’ve gulped it down, you’ll want more.

Dark and horrifying, Leech is perfect for readers who wish that Wuthering Heights had been more like Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation.

MYSTERY & SUSPENSE

ROMANCE

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY Blood Sugar by Sascha Rothchild

Sometimes People Die

Part of Your World

The Maker of Swans

Darkly hilarious, Sometimes People Die harks back to classic English satire—just with more murder.

Jimenez’s special blend of humor and angst is polished to perfection in the fairy tale-esque Part of Your World.

The Woman in the Library

by Sulari Gentill

The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes by Cat Sebastian

If you like beautiful things, read The Maker of Swans, an enthralling dance over the line between literary fiction and magical fantasy.

Gentill treats readers to an inventive and expertly crafted mystery that blurs genre lines.

Subversive yet satisfying, Sebastian’s latest breaks new ground for historical romance.

Geiger is a truly excellent first novel: deeply researched, painstakingly crafted and thrilling on every page.

You’re Invited

by Amanda Jayatissa

The Redemption of Philip Thane by Lisa Berne

The Half Life of Valery K

by Natasha Pulley

This thoroughly satisfying and beautifully plotted thriller deconstructs the trope of the crazy ex-girlfriend.

Berne’s Groundhog Day-inspired love story is a clever addition to the canon of “rake redemption” romances.

A paranoid atmosphere and a fascinating narrator contribute to a superb historical mystery.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

Promising Young Woman meets “Dexter” in this suspenseful and strangely empowering thriller.

The Cage by Bonnie Kistler Part locked-room mystery, part legal thriller, The Cage is tailor-made to be read in one breathless session.

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen This thoroughly entertaining noir examines midcentury LGBTQ+ life through a cast of dynamic characters.

Little Sister by Gytha Lodge A teen covered in blood interrupts a detective’s afternoon pint—and Lodge’s mystery only gets more unpredictable from there.

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by Simon Stephenson

by Abby Jimenez

The delightful Book Lovers both dismantles and celebrates the “career woman” archetype.

Emezi’s first romance novel is a hot and sultry exploration of love and grief.

A Curse of Queens

All the Seas of the World

In her fourth Kingmaker Chronicles book, Bouchet continues to strike a perfect balance between world building and romance.

Kay tells small stories of hope and resilience in an expansive fantasy world modeled on the Renaissance era.

by Amanda Bouchet

by Guy Gavriel Kay

by Paraic O’Donnell

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher This dark fantasy starring a possessed chicken and a feminist avenger represents the burgeoning “hopepunk” ethos at its finest.

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske Marske’s second historical fantasy is a stunning, sensual love story wrapped in an exciting murder mystery.

Sign Here by Claudia Lux Sign Here is both a hilarious reimagining of Hell as a corporate nightmare and a painfully realistic exploration of morality in the modern world.

Thistlefoot

by GennaRose Nethercott Inspired by traditional tales of Baba Yaga, Nethercott’s Thistlefoot is a weird and wonderful triumph.

YOUNG ADULT

cover story | best books

MIDDLE GRADE

PICTURE BOOKS

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

With this story of two teens desperate to leave their small town, Tahir proves she’s just as skilled at contemporary fiction as she is at epic fantasy.

A Year to the Day

by Robin Benway

A Year to the Day is simultaneously gut-wrenching and heartening, as grief and love so often are.

Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min This epic tale of queer validation is an essential read for anyone searching for a blueprint of their soul.

The Epic Story of Every Living Thing by Deb Caletti Introspective and profoundly engaged, Caletti’s new novel embraces imperfection and inspires empathy.

Hopepunk by Preston Norton Norton’s stellar novel might be the most punk rock book ever written about religion and forgiveness.

I Kissed Shara Wheeler

by Casey McQuiston

The most impressive accomplishment in McQuiston’s first YA book is complicated Shara Wheeler herself.

Nothing Burns as Bright as You

by Ashley Woodfolk

Woodfolk plumbs the depths of friendship and first love—and the grief that often comes with navigating both.

Queen of the Tiles

by Hanna Alkaf

Against the backdrop of a cutthroat Scrabble tournament, Alkaf explores loss, celebrates teen determination and sets up a nail-biting mystery.

Squire by Sara Alfageeh and

Nadia Shammas

This heart-pounding fantasy graphic novel is filled with silly banter and fast-paced battles.

We Deserve Monuments

by Jas Hammonds

Hammonds takes on two challenges—exploring the ugly legacy of racism and telling a moving love story—and succeeds at both.

A Comb of Wishes

by Lisa Stringfellow

In her beguiling debut, Stringfellow shows how fantasy tales can be more true than ordinary life.

Different Kinds of Fruit

by Kyle Lukoff

This remarkable novel will be as meaningful to today’s young people as Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret was for earlier generations.

A Duet for Home

by Karina Yan Glaser Never forgetting the complexities of her characters’ lives, Glaser infuses A Duet for Home with sweetness and optimism.

Golden Girl by Reem Faruqi

A Seed in the Sun by Aida Salazar

This historical novel in verse is a skillfully crafted look at the life of a child working in dangerous conditions.

Tumble by Celia C. Pérez Tumble movingly reminds readers that sometimes heroes (and villains) are not who they seem—both in life and in a wrestling ring.

Berry Song by Michaela Goade In her debut as an author, Caldecott Medalist Goade imbues nature with an enchanting, otherworldly beauty.

Emile and the Field by Kevin Young, illustrated by Chioma Ebinama This impressionistic story highlights the importance of having a place to relax, roam and be yourself.

Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall Two-time Caldecott Medalist Blackall offers a sophisticated, openhearted ode to what truly makes a house a home.

John’s Turn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Kate Berube This wise, warm picture book explores the abundant and everyday courage of children with a light touch.

Knight Owl

by Christopher Denise In this tale of dreams, dragons and determination, a tiny owl becomes an unexpected hero.

The Legend of Gravity

by Charly Palmer

This riveting rocket of a tall tale makes readers feel like they have courtside seats to an epic basketball game.

Love in the Library

by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, illustrated

by Yas Imamura Based on the life of the author’s grandparents, this exquisite piece of historical fiction is a love story for the ages.

Maya’s Song by Renée Watson, illustrated by Bryan Collier Through lyrical poems and lavish artwork, Maya’s Song creates a moving biography of Maya Angelou.

Monsters in the Fog

by Ali Bahrampour

Understated humor has never been so laugh-out-loud funny as in this perfectly paced, playful picture book.

In spare, carefully chosen words, Faruqi builds an absorbing drama that rings with authenticity and emotion.

Hummingbird by Natalie Lloyd With exceptional style and empathy, Hummingbird addresses weighty themes in a jubilant yet realistic way.

Invisible by Christina Diaz

Gonzalez, illustrated by Gabriela Epstein This cleverly conceived graphic novel celebrates both individuality and community while transcending language barriers.

The Last Mapmaker

by Christina Soontornvat The Last Mapmaker brims with adventure, surprises and action that moves faster than a ship under full sail.

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reviews | fiction

H We All Want Impossible Things

By Catherine Newman

Popular Fiction We All Want Impossible Things (Harper, $25.99, 9780063230897) is ostensibly a novel about death—but it pulses with life.

Ash is a food writer who is separated from her husband, Honey. Their relationship is basically over, but they’ve been too lazy and cheap to file for divorce. Even so, Honey often visits, offering food and emotional support in equal measure. Their eldest daughter is away at MIT and mostly communicates via emoji-laden text messages. Their younger daughter often skips school to watch HGTV and has, on more than one occasion, caught Ash in the midst of a romantic encounter.

Ash is surrounded by people; they wend their way through her world much like the cats that circle her feet. And Ash needs all of them,

The Key to My Heart

By Lia Louis

Contemporary Romance A sweet and touching story of friendship, heartbreak and healing, The Key to My Heart (Emily B e s t l e r, $17.99, 9781668001264) by Lia Louis is a poignant romance with astute observations about life after loss.

It’s been two years since her husband, Russ, died, and 32-year-old Natalie Fincher is still grieving. She’s lost her passion for her dreamy cottage, and she’s missed the chance to be part of the musical she wrote. She finds comfort in talking to her friend Shauna, a motherly figure who owns a coffee shop at London’s St. Pancras railway station, where Natalie has been playing the public piano.

Although she is not interested in dating, Natalie placates her best friends, who are desperate to reignite her love life, by approaching handsome, good-natured Tom during a night out and asking him to pretend they’re starting a fling. Tom quickly becomes a friend, and when someone starts leaving Natalie sheet music in the piano bench, he attempts to help her find her anonymous music angel.

With tender credibility, Louis (Eight Perfect

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because her best friend, Edi, is dying.

Edi and Ash have been in each other’s lives since nursery school.

They love each other well, quickly forgiving sanctimonious moments but just as easily calling each other on their bull.

For three years, Edi has had ovarian cancer, and now her doctors are predicting that she will die in a week or two.

Every hospice in New York City has a waitlist, so Ash recommends an option near her home in western Massachusetts, and Edi’s husband reluctantly agrees.

But death doesn’t come quickly. Instead, We All Want Impossible Things is full of moments both mundane and painful, hilarious and

heartbreaking, as Ash waits for life after Edi. The complications of love, parenting and saying goodbye all mingle together in rich detail as Ash, who is non­ religious, seeks some sort of divine kindness in the face of death.

Catherine Newman, who has previously authored two memoirs and several books for children, drew from her experience of caring for her dying best friend (which she wrote about in the essay “Mothering My Dying Friend,” published in the New York Times in 2015) to craft her first novel for adult readers, and she fills it with heart-rending, lovely moments.

—Carla Jean Whitley

Hours) immerses readers in Natalie’s past through well-placed, bittersweet memories of her life with Russ. Natalie is a likable protagonist, trying to balance her grief and self-doubt with the expectations of her friends and family.

Some of the repartee between Natalie and her friends, especially about her sex life, can feel overly sophomorish and superficial compared to the depth of her first-person narration. But it also highlights her friends’ uncertainty and discomfort with addressing Natalie’s loss—and their own eventual growth.

The Key to My Heart is an enticing and moving portrayal of the heart’s power to heal after the loss of a loved one.

—Maya Fleischmann

paying respect to the people who found their way through the destruction.

The novel centers on Cushla Lavery, a Catholic teacher living near Belfast who also works part time in her family’s pub. The sectarian violence between Republicans (largely Catholics) and loyalists (largely Protestants) has become overwhelmingly ingrained in society. The school’s headmaster even insists that Cushla’s 7- and 8-year-old students devote time each morning to reporting and commenting on the day’s most horrific news, from bombings to internments.

Quicker than she can make sense of, Cushla forms new relationships that drive her personal life into the public eye. There’s Michael Agnew, an older, married Protestant barrister with whom Cushla begins a surreptitious affair. There’s also Davy McGeown, a child in Cushla’s class whose father is brutally beaten.

Disaster soon becomes inevitable, but no matter how close Cushla’s life comes to collapse, Kennedy’s unyielding narrative voice exhibits heart-wrenching impassivity, forcing readers to grapple with their own prejudices and morals.

The novel’s brilliance lies in Kennedy’s commitment to nuance. Simple definitions of “right” and “wrong” are nonexistent in Cushla’s world, as Kennedy is more concerned with contextual authenticity: How do our choices affect our environments, and conversely, how do those environments shape the choices we make? Reading Trespasses is an exercise in trust, in letting oneself accept the transient failures of an individual while holding fast to their implicit humanity.

—Sydney Hankin

Trespasses

By Louise Kennedy

Historical Fiction Louise Kennedy, chef of nearly 30 years and author of the short story collection The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac, emerges with a debut novel that will fill every historical fiction fan with gratitude. Trespasses (Riverhead, $27, 9780593540893) exposes the crushing realities of Northern Ireland during the “troubles” while

reviews | nonfiction

H Butts

By Heather Radke

Social Science In her fascinating and frank debut, Butts: A Backstory (Avid Reader, $28.99, 9781982135485), journalist Heather Radke ponders why this body part is so polarizing, the collective cultural obsession so enduring.

As the author notes in her introduction, “Butts are a bellwether. The feelings we have about butts are almost always indicative of other feelings—feelings about race, gender, and sex.” Radke explores the societal forces that underlie such feelings as she guides readers on an impressively well-researched tour of butts throughout history, beginning with a functional analysis (hominids and horses take center stage) and ultimately alighting in the present (twerking, social media and celebrity butts).

In between, Radke considers the persistent, pernicious attitude toward women’s bodies as things to critique. She shares the story of Sarah

Portable Magic

By Emma Smith

History In Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers (Knopf, $28, 9781524749095), Oxford University Shakespeare studies professor Emma Smith offers a lively and engaging survey of the history of the book. It’s a “book about books, rather than words,” that describes with both insight and affection the enduring power of the book as a physical object.

Organized thematically, Portable Magic covers an impressive amount of ground with efficiency. The opening essay, on Gutenberg’s “invention” of movable type in the 15th century, sets the book’s often iconoclastic tone. Pointing out that this method was used in Asia almost a century before Gutenberg, Smith argues that the idea that print is a Western innovation is a myth, invoked primarily in the service of European colonization.

In subsequent chapters, Smith ranges widely across literary history. Some of the topics she takes on include the history of paperback books and the practices of giving books as gifts and book collecting. In the latter, she tells the story of Harry Elkins Widener, a well-known book

Baartman, a South African woman of the Khoe tribe who was effectively enslaved and exhibited in England and France in the early 1800s under the guise of scientific inquiry.

From there, Radke segues into eugenics and its emphasis on big butts as supposed markers of sexual deviance.

These so-called scientific endeavors have had a ripple effect, Radke explains, influencing media and pop culture, creeping into beauty standards and body image.

She offers examples of butt-obsessed media with positive posterior impacts, too; a deep dive into the 1992 hip-hop sensation “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-A-Lot is entertaining and edifying, and Beyoncé’s 2001 hit “Bootylicious” gets a shoutout as well.

Radke also touches on fitness sensations (“Buns of Steel”) and fashion trends (Victorian bustles), as well as her complicated feelings about her own “generous” butt.

While she, like so many others, has felt shame about her body shape, Radke also believes that “a close examination of the parts of ourselves that can feel unbearable . . . can be transformative.” Certainly, Butts can usher readers onto this more positive path, thanks to its topnotch reportage, assured and respectful voice and invitation to butt-centric contemplation.

—Linda M. Castellitto

collector from Philadelphia who sank to the bottom of the ocean with the Titanic, carrying a 1598 collection of Francis Bacon’s essays in his pocket. Other essays consider the depiction of books in works of art and the central role of religious scriptures, as well as oddities like books bound in human skin and the 17th-century Venetian book containing a small pistol that could be fired using its silk bookmark.

Though Portable Magic reflects the work of a careful scholar, it will delight the thoughtful general reader. Any bibliophile will come away from it with a renewed appreciation for books and the central role they still play in our lives.

—Harvey Freedenberg

and Destroyers of Modern Europe (Penguin Press, $30, 9781594203459). They range from the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to Helmut Kohl, chancellor of West Germany in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down.

War was the most important enabler of power in the 20th century. Without World War I, the chances of Lenin, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler becoming leaders would have been virtually zero. Without World War II, it is unlikely that Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle or Josip Broz Tito would have led their countries. Of the 12 figures Kershaw includes in Personality and Power, only Konrad Adenauer, Mikhail Gorbachev and Kohl were never war leaders.

Each leader profiled here had a strong sense of self, a relentless will to succeed and the ability to get complete loyalty from followers.

Some have dark legacies, such as Hitler with the Holocaust and Lenin with communism, that still endure. Other legacies are more mixed.

Between 1940 and 1945, probably no European democracy had a leader with more power than Winston Churchill. He was somewhat of a political failure before that, and his later return as prime minister from 1951 to 1955 was not a great success. But his example during the war continues to inspire people today.

These excellent in-depth profiles of major figures and their influence on millions of people help us better understand why the world is as it is today.

—Roger Bishop

Personality and Power

By Ian Kershaw

European History How important are individuals in the shaping of history?

Twentieth-century Europeans knew leaders whose decisions, good or ill, transformed their countries, the continent and, in some cases, the world. Ian Kershaw, one of our leading historians of the period, focuses on 12 of them in his enlightening and stimulating Personality and Power: Builders

Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Heather Radke.

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reviews | young adult

H We Deserve Monuments

By Jas Hammonds

Fiction “Get in. Get out, No drama. Focus forward.”

That’s the motto guiding Avery Anderson when she and her parents move from Washington, D.C., to Bardell, Georgia, in order to care for Avery’s estranged, dying grandmother. Yet Avery soon finds herself surrounded by drama in Jas Hammonds’ superb debut novel, We Deserve Monuments (Roaring Brook, $18.99, 9781250816559).

Avery’s life isn’t just in limbo from the move; she’s also fresh off a breakup with her girlfriend back home. Avery’s relationship with her grandmother, Mama Letty, isn’t all smooth sailing either. The first time they meet, Mama Letty tells Avery that her lip piercing makes her look “like a fish caught on a hook.” Avery’s mother, a renowned astrophysicist, grapples with her own

A Wilderness of Stars

By Shea Ernshaw

Science Fiction Vega has stars on her skin. Her mother created the tattoos knowing that one day Vega would become the last Astronomer.

Now Vega’s mother is dying from a sickness that has claimed much of the world’s population and twin stars have appeared in the sky, signifying that Vega must fulfill her duty: to find the Architect and go to the sea.

Vega is unprepared for the world outside the valley, where branded men called Theorists hunt her, believing she holds the key to a cure for the sickness. She is rescued by a girl named Cricket, who leads her to Noah, a secretive boy with green eyes. Together, they set off across the desert, but as the twin stars move along their orbital path, Vega knows that time is running low.

A Wilderness of Stars (Simon & Schuster, $19.99, 9781665900249) pulls from a constellation of genres as author Shea Ernshaw crafts a world that seems both familiar and alien. Full of ghost towns and outlaws, much of the setting feels straight out of a Western, but without the identifiable geography of the American West. Ernshaw employs a similar tactic with the

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relationship with Letty, who was often drunk and abusive during Zora’s childhood, while Avery and Letty eventually form a close bond.

Meanwhile, Avery gets to know the town of Bardell, where “every corner [holds] a story,” with the help of new friends: next-door neighbor Simone, who is Black, and Jade, whose wealthy white family lives on a former plantation and owns a posh hotel in town. Yet her new knowledge only inspires more questions for Avery, including what happened to her late grandfather, Ray, whom neither Zora nor Letty will discuss.

In We Deserve Monuments, Hammonds takes on two challenges—exploring the ugly legacy of racism in a small town and telling a moving love story—and succeeds at both.

The author blends these plot strands in a

wonderfully organic fashion, and their prose is surefooted every step of the way.

Avery is an engaging, appealing narrator whose story is occasionally supplemented by short chapters of omniscient narration that efficiently fill in gaps from the past. As Avery navigates a seemingly forbidden new romance and drifts from her intention of following in her mother’s professional footsteps, readers are rewarded with startling plot twists and a host of tender moments between Avery and her love interest. Just as rich are the characters in Avery’s family, especially the magnificently complex Letty.

Life, identity, love, death—it’s all here.

We Deserve Monuments marks a noteworthy debut from a writer paving her own literary future.

—Alice Cary

novel’s temporal scope, giving enough clues to place the story in a far-off future where our current technologies are considered ancient myths, but no real specifics about when the story takes place.

Ernshaw relies on intentional ambiguity and the slow unspooling of secrets, which is sometimes effective and other times frustrating.

Readers who appreciate a focus on romance will enjoy the time she spends lavishing Vega and Noah’s love story with florid prose.

A Wilderness of Stars will delight readers who love soft science fiction, measured reveals and romances that are written in the stars.

—Mariel Fechik

race against time in the delightful, suspenseful Whiteout (Quill Tree, $19.99, 9780063088146).

Can a couple reunite and reconcile before it’s too late?

Stevie and Sola’s middle school friendship transformed into high school love. Together, they’ve plotted out their future: Howard University, marriage, kids, in that order. But after a disastrous weekend, that future is in serious jeopardy and Sola has issued Stevie an ultimatum: Provide a satisfactory apology by midnight, or they’re over—for good. Heartsick Stevie leaps into action, asking several friends to join her elaborate plan to win back Sola.

When the blizzard arrives, she cancels those requests, but in an encouraging display of loyalty, the other teens pitch in nonetheless. It’s not easy; they get stuck in locations all around their snow-besieged city while also unraveling their own entanglements. As the clock ticks down to midnight, readers will root for multiple couples to take their own leaps of faith as they assist Stevie with hers.

This unabashedly romantic effort by six acclaimed and bestselling YA authors will captivate readers who adored the group’s first novel, 2021’s Blackout. While both books celebrate Black and queer love, the writers took a different approach for Whiteout, blending their contributions rather than crafting alternating chapters. The result is a charming and captivating second-chance romance that pays homage to friendship, honesty and the power of swoonworthy grand gestures.

—Linda M. Castellitto

Whiteout

By Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk and Nicola Yoon

Romance It’s four days before Christmas, and Atlanta is in the middle of an unprecedented blizzard.

Traffic has slowed to a halt; flights are grounded; malls are closing. The abundant chaos as a surprise snowstorm hits a wholly unprepared Southern city serves as the perfect setting for a

gifts | teens

Phenomenal power, itty bitty page count Teens will discover whole new worlds within these four anthologies.

Game On

Eternally Yours

Give this to a reader who has a competitive streak, whether it manifests on the field, in the classroom or at game night.

Give this to a reader who is smitten with all things magical, mysterious and macabre.

Editor Laura Silverman’s Game On: 15 Stories of Wins, Losses, and Everything in Between (Viking, $18.99, 9780593352786) highlights the importance of “playing the game” to find yourself. In each tale, characters interact with a game, from sports and video games to neighborhood pastimes and more. Many stories illustrate the thrill of competition, even as characters grapple with why rivalries and the act of winning mean so much to them. Nearly all the stories capture the central game’s emotional underpinnings, allowing characters to become closer to one another, find courage in other aspects of their lives or see something in a new light.

Standout story: Gloria Chao’s “Mystery Hunt” follows two college freshmen with a passion for language puzzles as they embark on their linguistics department’s annual scavenger hunt. As they race to piece clues together, Faye’s growing friendship with her cute classmate, Pierce, inspires her to form deeper connections with other people in her life. The puzzles are challenging, the emotional stakes are high, and by the end of the hunt, readers will be eager for more adventures with Faye and Pierce.

—Annie Metcalf

H Tasting Light Give this to a reader who yearns to expand the limits of what is possible.

Every story in A.R. Capetta and Wade Roush’s Tasting Light: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions (MITeen, $19.99, 9781536219388) demonstrates how powerful science fiction can be. Whether the teens in these futuristic tales are sipping coffee in a spinning city, exploring parallel universes or experiencing bold new technologies, they’re contemplating concepts like race, class, disability and gender as thoughtfully as teens today, while dreaming up inventive ways to improve themselves and their worlds. As one character muses, “You can be a teenager and make things happen.

They’re not mutually exclusive at all.”

Standout story: Junauda Petrus-Nasah’s “Melanitis” begins in the middle. What’s a FAN, and why is it a big deal that another one has been murdered by police? To give away more would spoil the experience: As narrator Amari processes the news, so do we. Petrus-Nasah takes a classic sci-fi theme—the perils of scientific overreach—and applies it to the disparity between joyous Black energy and the dangers of being Black in a white­dominated society. The result is daring and devastating.

—Jill Ratzan

In Eternally Yours (Viking, $19.99, 9780593206874), editor Patrice Caldwell collects 15 paranormal romance stories that feature supernatural suitors ranging from ancient immortals to undead high school students. Many of the tales have contemporary settings, their speculative elements intertwined with familiar teenage concerns like part-time jobs and parties. These realistic details—and the often relatable protagonists—give the collection a grounded core that allows readers to truly connect with larger-than-life dramas such as hunting vampires or making out with mermaids. This anthology will sweep romance-minded readers away into one otherworldly love story after another.

Standout story: Marie Rutkoski’s “Bride-Heart” follows a teenage waitress caught up in the ominous affections of a wealthy older man. As it becomes clear that there is far more to the rich stranger than anyone suspects, a test of agency, control and subtle magic unfolds.

Rutkoski crafts a dreamlike atmosphere of creeping dread as she upends many paranormal romance tropes.

Her tense, twisty tale will keep readers guessing all the way to the end.

—RJ Witherow

Generation Wonder Give this to a reader who knows exactly what they’d do if they woke up with superpowers.

The 13 tales in editor Barry Lyga’s Generation Wonder: The New Age of Heroes (Amulet, $18.99, 9781419754463) introduce brand-new, contemporary superheroes across a range of genres, from comical adventures to fast-paced thrillers. In a clever touch, each story opens with an illustration in the epic style of a comic book cover by artist Colleen Doran. Diverse, imaginative and entertaining, these stories prove that extraordinary heroes can truly come from the most ordinary circumstances.

Standout story: In Nulhegan Abenaki author Joseph Bruchac’s “Ordinary Kid,” Leonard is a Native American teen just trying to survive high school—and figure out how to use his newly acquired super­powers, of course.

He has recently become telekinetic and gained an “uncanny ability to sense when someone [is] picking on someone else.” He decides to use his powers to disrupt his town’s drug trade before turning his attention to an even more dangerous target. Leonard’s self-­ deprecating humor and hunger for justice call to mind such well-known superheroes as Captain America and Spiderman.

—Hannah Lamb

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feature | holiday picture books

Sparkling and festive tales As long winter nights set in, four books shed joyful light on seasonal celebrations.

The Christmas Book Flood Winter arrives in all its glory in The Christmas Book Flood (FSG, $18.99, 9780374388997). Dating back to World War II, Jólabókaflóð (which translates to “Yule book flood”) is the Icelandic tradition of giving books to loved ones on December 24.

Author Emily Kilgore’s prose is expressive and poetic. As the book opens, she describes how the “northern lights dance and curtsy across a cold, black sky.” Later, she captures the thrill of searching for the perfect book as “shoppers glide through the aisles of towering shelves.”

Though Kilgore’s text speaks in general terms, illustrator Kitty Moss’ artwork focuses on a wide-eyed child. She explores the nooks and crannies of a bustling bookstore, and her shopping expedition becomes an enchanted adventure. A book transforms into an owl that flies her to a fantastical world full of castles, hot air balloons and magical creatures.

Moss creates glowing scenes—a snow-covered village, a dreamy bookshop, families reading by the fire—set against nighttime backdrops. She incorporates paper and newsprint into her collage-style art, offering further reminders of the transportive power of reading.

Bibliophiles will revel in this stunning celebration of the written word. The Christmas Book Flood sparkles with bookish excitement on every page.

Twelve Dinging Doorbells A girl observes the growing number of visitors who gleefully fill her home as her family celebrates the holidays in Tameka Fryer Brown and Ebony Glenn’s Twelve Dinging Doorbells (Kokila, $17.99, 9781984815170), a delightfully raucous riff on “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

Things begin calmly as the first dinging doorbell reveals a grand­ motherly woman with “a sweet potato pie just for me.” Spread by spread, more friends and family arrive, and Fryer Brown’s clever variations on the cumulative rhyme will have readers chiming in: “At the fifth ringing doorbell this holiday I see: BAKED MACARONI AND CHEEEEEESE! Four pounds of chitlins, three posh sibs, two selfie queens and a sweet potato pie just for me.”

Glenn’s illustrations draw readers into the festivities by playing with perspectives. Many spreads depict rooms through a bird’s-eye view as the house bursts at the seams, while other scenes allow the reader to feel as though they’re seated at the long yellow table, surrounded by plates of food. There’s so much to discover in these images, and Glenn captures plenty of action and an amusing variety of facial expressions, from sheer joy to utter annoyance.

At the 11th doorbell ding, the narrator notices with dismay that only crumbs are left on the sweet potato pie plate. Thankfully, the baker comes to her rescue in a lovely final scene. Twelve Dinging Doorbells is a stellar ode to rollicking family gatherings at any time of the year.

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Through the North Pole Snow A white fox digging in a snowdrift falls through Santa’s roof in Through the North Pole Snow (Candlewick, $18.99, 9781536228526), a lovely tale whose mixed-media illustrations and quiet, wondrous tone bring to mind Eric Carle’s Dream Snow and Jan Brett’s holiday tales. Polly Faber’s text doesn’t name the white-bearded, red-sweatered man until the very end of the book, instead offering a garland of clues that start with the man’s first comment when he frees the fox from his living room ceiling: “Stuck?

Now that’s a problem I understand!”

Faber’s Santa lives a peaceful life alone in a cabin, free from all of the holiday hullabaloo. Fox watches him as the seasons change, slowly building up to Christmas Eve. The result provides children with an insider’s look at a year spent with Santa, from his post-Christmas nap, his months of careful toy making, the arrival of the reindeer and the loading of the sleigh.

Richard Jones’ exquisite illustrations underscore the subdued nature of this tale, with nary a “ho ho ho” to be heard and no elves in sight. Instead, this Santa is a solo, studious worker, surrounded by nature. And yet there’s plenty of magic in the making as his shelves fill up with handmade treasures and the reindeer are decked out in brightly colored harnesses.

Families feeling overwhelmed by seasonal excess will find Through the North Pole Snow a welcome respite.

Latkes and Applesauce “Long ago in a village far away,” the Menashe family is ready to celebrate Hanukkah, but their plans are foiled by a blizzard. Latkes and Applesauce: A Hanukkah Story (Charlesbridge, $17.99, 9781623541569) updates the text of a charming wintry tale originally published in 1989, replacing Robin Spowart’s illustrations with new artwork by Kris Easler.

Mama, Papa, Rebecca and Ezra usually dig up potatoes from their garden to make latkes and pick apples from their trees for applesauce. This year, Mama notes, “the blizzard has swallowed our feast.” As the days pass, the family’s food supply dwindles, yet they continue to celebrate as best they can.

Author Fran Manushkin heightens the tension yet keeps the mood upbeat and reassuring. Two unexpected visitors, a stray cat and dog, delight the children but also mean more mouths to feed. “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” Papa repeatedly reminds his family.

Easler’s illustrations lend a contemporary vibe to this “long ago” family.

Every spread is bathed in warmth, the glow emanating from the Menashes’ home contrasting with the deep blue of the falling snow. The kindness shown to the stray animals leads to a solution to the family’s dilemma that’s a bit predictable but still rewarding. Cheerful and cozy, this edition of Latkes and Applesauce has the makings of a new classic.

—Alice Cary

reviews | children’s

By Dianne White Illustrated by Felicita Sala

Picture Book As the sun sets and a full moon rises, three children venture outside, ostensibly to find their runaway dog but mostly to frolic in the nocturnal world beyond their gate. Author Dianne White and illustrator Felicita Sala’s Dark on Light (Beach Lane, $18.99, 9781534487895) is lyrical, charming and wonderful.

White’s text is more like a poem than a straightforward story. In lieu of lengthy descriptions, she creates a vivid world through concise statements that form rhymed couplets: “Silent the owl. Still the night. / Dark the meadow beneath its flight.” Once every four lines, the couplets resolve by using the book’s title as a refrain. This repetition, along with the text’s soothing, cohesive meter, lends Dark on White the mood of a calming lullaby. It calls to mind

the way we feel compelled to whisper among shadows, to hush our voices as we explore the realm of nighttime.

It’s magical and awe-­ inducing, but never eerie or foreboding.

Sala’s illustrations do much of the narrative work. We see the children run through flowery fields, traipse through a forest, turn cartwheels in the grass and eventually find their dog and make their way home to bed. Sala’s artwork has a classical look, with soft shapes and muted hues that are familiar, joyful and full of life. And while night is often a source of fear for children, Sala’s dark forest is

meet E.G. KELLER

beautiful and deep, populated with gentle, curious creatures, including a doe and her fawn, a fox and a squirrel nestled in the hollow of a tree.

Enchanting details— the Canis Major constellation highlighted in the starry sky, a teddy bear peeking out from under a bed—give readers a further sense of security. This is a safe book for imagination and dreams.

Everything about Dark on Light makes it perfect for cozy time or bedtime. Actually, everything about Dark on Light makes it just about perfect.

—Jill Lorenzini

© MARK STEVENS

Dark on Light

Murray takes his job as a guard dog very seriously, so he’s alarmed when his humans plant a tree in the living room and hang their laundry from the mantel—and then a strange man in a red coat appears in the middle of the night!

Author-illustrator E.G. Keller’s Murray Christmas (Abrams, $17.99, 9781419753923) offers a hilarious dog’s-eye view of the holiday season. Keller has also illustrated Jill Twiss’ bestselling A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, Gretchen Brandenburg McLellan’s When Your Daddy’s a Soldier and, as Gerald Kelley, Ken Burns’ Grover Cleveland, Again! He lives in Denver, Colorado.

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