April 1, 2025: Volume XCII, No. 7

FEATURING 350 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children’s, and YA Books

Our editors select 500 outstanding works, for adults and young readers, published in the past 25 years

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

REMEMBRANCE OF BOOKS PAST

HOW DO YOU recapture the past? You could flip through the pages of a photo album or old diary, or listen to an old playlist that evokes a particular time in your life. If you’re a hardcore reader, as I am, you might well scan your bookshelves and recall when and where you read certain titles.

I see my copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell , for example, and remember speed-reading it over a few days in the summer of 2004—mostly on a blanket in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park—to prepare for an interview with debut author Susanna Clarke. Ordinarily, I’d have been stressed out by a long book (800 pages!) and a tight deadline, but I soon lost myself in Clarke’s absorbing

work of historical fantasy, set in an early-19th-century England where the practice of magic is resurgent. It’s one of my favorite reading experiences ever.

On another shelf, I spy Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad , which I read in long, blissfully uninterrupted sprints as I commuted daily by train out to Long Island in 2010, the scenery—and the pages— rushing by. It was thrilling to see what a contemporary novel could become in the hands of a gifted practitioner—there’s a chapter in the form of a PowerPoint presentation!—without sacrificing the old-fashioned investment we feel in Egan’s all-too-human characters. It’s certainly a top contender, in my opinion, for the best novel of the past 25 years.

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Numerous other candidates appear—along with short fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and young adult literature—in this special issue dedicated to the best books of the 21st century (so far). The staff of the magazine has been hard at work on the issue for months now, revisiting old favorites, unearthing neglected gems, and arguing the merits of this or that title. We’ve chosen 100 books in each category, all published in the U.S. between 2000 and 2024; also scattered throughout these pages are spotlight features with details about the creation, reception, and long-term impact of select titles. What a pleasure to reflect on a quartercentury of great reads! (And what agony to whittle the list down to 500.)

Among the other books that set off Proustian reveries for me personally were Alison Bechdel’s funny and moving graphic memoir, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2008),

Isabel Wilkerson’s magisterial yet intimate history, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (2010), Viet Thanh Nguyen’s sly post-Vietnam spy novel, The Sympathizer (2015), and Jennifer Homans’ vivid biography of a ballet genius, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022). They’re such stellar books that I wish I could read them all again for the first time.

Fortunately, such an array of riches means that every reader will find something unfamiliar among our lists, along with beloved old favorites. If you discover a new favorite here, I hope you’ll let us know. And if you want to argue for a title that didn’t make the cut, please let us know that, too. What fun is a booklist without some debate? As always, my email is tbeer@kirkus.com.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

TOM BEER

The Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far)

Co-Chairman

HERBERT SIMON

Publisher & CEO

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Fiction Editor

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Young Readers’ Editor

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Mysteries Editor

THOMAS LEITCH

Contributing Writers

GREGORY MCNAMEE

MICHAEL SCHAUB

Contributors

Alana Abbott, Reina Luz Alegre, Jeffrey Alford, Autumn Allen, Paul Allen, Stephanie Anderson, Kent Armstrong, Mark Athitakis, Nada Bakri, Colette Bancroft, Audrey Barbakoff, Robert Beauregard, Nell Beram, Kazia Berkley-Cramer, Ty Billman, Elizabeth Bird, Ariel Birdoff, Christopher A. Biss-Brown, Elissa Bongiorno, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Nastassian Brandon, Jessica Hoptay Brown, Cliff Burke, Ana Cackley, Kevin Canfield, Hailey Carrell, Tobias Carroll, Charles Cassady, Sandie Angulo Chen, Ann Childs, Amanda Chuong, Tamar Cimenian, Carin Clevidence, Anastasia M. Collins, Jeannie Coutant, Maya Davis, Michael Deagler, Cathy DeCampli, Kathleen Deedy, Elise DeGuiseppi, Suji DeHart, Amanda Diehl, Steve Donoghue, Melanie Dragger, Anna Drake, Jacob Edwards, Lisa Elliott, Lily Emerick, Chelsea Ennen, Joshua Farrington, Brooke Faulkner, Eiyana Favers, Margherita Ferrante, Katie Flanagan, Amy Seto Forrester, Renee Fountain, Cynthia Fox, Sasha Fox-Carney, Mia Franz, Harvey Freedenberg, Jenna Friebel, Elaina Friedman, Laurel Gardner, Jean Gazis, Sydney Geyer, Fiona Giles, Chloé Harper Gold, Carol Goldman, Amy Goldschlager, Michael Griffith, Sean Hammer, Silvia Lin Hanick, Alec Harvey, Peter Heck, Lynne Heffley, Ralph Heibutzki, Loren Hinton, Zoe Holland, Julie Hubble, Ariana Hussain, Kathleen T. Isaacs, Kristen Jacobson, Jessica Jernigan, Danielle Jones, Lavanya Karthik, Ivan Kenneally, Colleen King, Katherine King, Stephanie Klose, Lyneea Kmail, Maggie Knapp, Andrea Kreidler, Susan Kusel, Megan Dowd Lambert, Christopher Lassen, Tom Lavoie, Judith Leitch, Maya Lekach, Seth Lerer, Maureen Liebenson, Elsbeth Lindner, Coeur de Lion, Sarah Lohmann, Barbara London, Patricia Lothrop, Mikaela W. Luke, Wendy Lukehart, Kyle Lukoff, Isabella Luongo, Michael Magras, Joan Malewitz, Thomas Maluck, Michelle H Martin, J. Alejandro Mazariegos, Kirby McCurtis, Jeanne McDermott, Don McLeese, Kathie Meizner, J. Elizabeth Mills, Tara Mokhtari, Clayton Moore, Rebecca Moore, Andrea Moran, Rhett Morgan, Molly Muldoon, Jennifer Nabers, Christopher Navratil, Liza Nelson, Mike Newirth, Therese Purcell Nielsen, Tori Ann Ogawa, Connie Ogle, Hannah Onstad, Mike Oppenheim, Emilia Packard, Derek Parker, Hal Patnott, Deb Paulson, John Edward Peters, Jim Piechota, Christofer Pierson, Shira Pilarski, Steve Potter, Margaret Quamme, Carolyn Quimby, Kristy Raffensberger, Kristen Bonardi Rapp, Kristen Rasmussen, Darryn Reams, Caroline Reed, Stephanie Reents, Sarah Rettger, Amy B. Reyes, Erica Rivera, Kelly Roberts, Amy Robinson, Lloyd Sachs, Hadeal Salamah, Bob Sanchez, Julia Sangha, Caitlin Savage, Will Schube, Sadaf Siddique, Linda Simon, Wendy Smith, Ari Snyder, Leena Soman, Margot E. Spangenberg, Allie Stevens, Mathangi Subramanian, Jennifer Sweeney, Deborah Taylor, Desiree Thomas, Lenora Todaro, Bijal Vachharajani, Katie Vermilyea, Francesca Vultaggio, Barbara Ward, Katie Weeks, Kerry Winfrey, Marion Winik, Livia Wood, Bean Yogi, Natalie Zutter

THE BEST

Fiction Books

OF THE CENTURY (so far)

When the century began, few people were using e-readers or listening to audiobooks, and now both are booming; the literary universe has changed in ways that reflect the world at large, and fiction writers have been there to reveal and interpret those changes. Our list includes everything from historical fiction to SF and fantasy, romance and thrillers, experimental novels and decade-spanning story collections. It’s exciting to look back at the careers that have blossomed over the past 25 years, to honor those that have ended, and to wonder how today’s literary landscape will appear to readers in 2050 or even 2100.

Alissandra Seelaus

The Last Samurai

DeWitt, Helen | Hyperion (544 pp.)

$24.95 | 2000 | 0786866683

Unabashedly over the top at times but, still, a saga that gives rise to as much amusement as it does sober reflection.

Bel Canto

Patchett, Ann | HarperCollins (304 pp.)

$25.00 | 2001 | 0060188731

Brilliant.

Austerlitz

Sebald, W.G. | Trans. by Anthea Bell Random House (320 pp.)

$25.95 | 2001 | 0375504834

Superbly translated, hypnotically written, a volume that requires and rewards slow, careful reading.

Atonement

McEwan, Ian | Nan A. Talese (448 pp.)

$26.00 | 2002 | 0385503954

With a bow to Virginia Woolf, McEwan combines insight, historical understanding, and sure-handed storytelling. Masterful.

Oryx and Crake

Atwood, Margaret | Nan A. Talese (400 pp.) | $26.00 | 2003 | 0385503857

A landmark work of speculative fiction. Atwood has surpassed herself.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Chabon, Michael | Random House (736 pp.) | $26.95 | 2000 | 0679450041

A tale of two magnificently imagined characters, and a plaintive love song to the fractious ethnic energy of New York City a half century ago.

The Corrections

Franzen, Jonathan | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (576 pp.) | $25.00 | 2001 | 0374129983

A wide-angled view of contemporary America and its discontents that deserves comparison with Dos Passos, if not Tolstoy.

Fingersmith

Waters, Sarah | Riverhead (493 pp.)

$24.95 | 2002 | 1573222038

Nobody surpasses Waters’ virtuosic handling of narrative complexity and thickly textured period detail. A marvelous novel.

Middlesex

Eugenides, Jeffrey | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (544 pp.) | $26.00 | 2002 | 0374199698

A virtuosic combination of elegy, sociohistorical study, and picaresque adventure: altogether irresistible.

The Known World

Jones, Edward P. | Amistad/ HarperCollins (400 pp.) | $24.95 2003 | 0060557540

This will mean a great deal to a great many people. It should be a major prize contender, and it won’t be forgotten.

The Great Fire

Hazzard, Shirley | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) | $24.00 | 2003

0374166447

One of the finest novels ever written about war and its aftermath, and well worth the 23-year wait.

Cloud Atlas

Mitchell, David | Random House (496 pp.)

$14.95 paper | 2004 | 0375507256

Sheer storytelling brilliance. Mitchell really is his generation’s Pynchon.

The Plot Against America

Roth, Philip | Houghton Mifflin (400 pp.)

$26.00 | 2004 | 0618509283

An almost unbelievably rich book, and another likely major prizewinner.

Small Island

Levy, Andrea | Picador (448 pp.) | $14.00 paper | 2005 | 0312424671

An enthralling tour de force that animates a chapter in the history of empire.

On Beauty

Smith, Zadie | Penguin Press (320 pp.)

$25.95 | 2005 | 1594200637

In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty’s only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone.

Love

Morrison, Toni | Knopf (208 pp.)

$23.95 | 2003 | 0375409440

One of Morrison’s finest, and a heartening return to Nobel-worthy form.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Clarke, Susanna | Bloomsbury (800 pp.)

$27.95 | 2004 | 1582344167

An instant classic, one of the finest fantasies ever written.

Gilead

Robinson, Marilynne | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.)

$23.00 | 2004 | 0374153892

A novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering.

Never Let Me Go

Ishiguro, Kazuo | Knopf (304 pp.)

$25.00 | 2005 | 1400043395

A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.

Arthur and George

Barnes, Julian | Knopf (400 pp.)

$24.95 | 2006 | 9780224077033

A triumph.

The Emperor’s Children

Messud, Claire | Knopf (448 pp.)

$25.00 | 2006 | 030726419X

Intelligent, evocative, and unsparing.

Lisey’s Story

King, Stephen | Scribner (528 pp.)

$28.00 | 2006 | 0743289412

One of King’s finest works.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Díaz, Junot | Riverhead (288 pp.)

$24.95 | 2007 | 9781594489587

A compelling, sex-fueled, 21st-century tragicomedy with a magical twist.

2666

Bolaño, Roberto | Trans. by Natasha Wimmer

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (912 pp.)

$30.00 | 2008 | 978034400148

Unquestionably the finest novel of the present century—and we may be saying the same thing 92 years from now.

Wolf Hall

Mantel, Hilary | Henry Holt (560 pp.)

$27.00 | 2009 | 9780805080681

Masterfully written.

The Road

McCarthy, Cormac | Knopf (288 pp.)

$24.00 | 2006 | 0307265439

A novel of horrific beauty, where death is the only truth.

Sacred Games

Chandra, Vikram | HarperCollins (912 pp.)

$29.95 | 2007 | 0061130354

Chandra’s writing is so elegant and so irresistible, it elevates the classic cops-and-robbers story to new heights.

Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories

Strout, Elizabeth | Random House (288 pp.)

$24.95 | 2008 | 9781400062089

A perfectly balanced portrait of the human condition.

Brooklyn

Tóibín, Colm | Scribner (256 pp.)

$25.00 | 2009 | 9781439138311

A fine and touching novel, persuasive proof of Tóibín’s ever-increasing skills and range.

A Visit From the Goon Squad

Egan, Jennifer | Knopf (288 pp.) | $24.95 2010 | 9780307592835

The talented and visionary Egan reinvents the novel for the 21st century while affirming its historic values.

Room

Donoghue, Emma | Little, Brown (336 pp.)

$24.99 | 2010 | 9780316098335

Wrenching, as befits the grim subject matter, but also tender, touching, and at times unexpectedly funny.

We the Animals

Torres, Justin | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | (144 pp.) | $21.00 2011 | 9780547576725

Upon finishing, readers might be tempted to start again, not wanting to let it go.

1Q84

Murakami, Haruki | Trans. by Jay Rubin & Philip Gabriel | Knopf (928 pp.)

$30.50 | 2011 | 9780307593313

Orwellian dystopia, SF, the modern world—all blend in this dreamlike, strange, and wholly unforgettable epic.

Gone Girl

Flynn, Gillian | Crown (432 pp.) | $25.00 2012 | 9780307588364

One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it.

Tenth of December

Saunders, George | Random House (272 pp.)

$26.00 | 2013 | 9780812993806

Nobody writes quite like Saunders.

Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories

Pearlman, Edith | Lookout Books (375 pp.)

$18.95 paper | 2011 | 9780982338292

Lovely and lyrical—a celebration of language and another virtuoso performance from a writer who deserves to be better known.

The Stranger’s Child

Hollinghurst, Alan | Knopf (464 pp.)

$27.95 | 2011 | 9780307272768

A carefully written, philosophically charged novel that invites us to consider how we can know the truth about anyone’s life.

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Fountain, Ben | Ecco/HarperCollins (320 pp.) | $25.99 | 2012 | 9780060885595

War is hell in this novel of inspired absurdity.

Beautiful Ruins

Walter, Jess | Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) | $25.99 | 2012 | 9780061928123

A superb romp.

Life After Life

Atkinson, Kate | Reagan Arthur/ Little, Brown (544 pp.) | $27.99 2013 | 9780316176484

Provocative, entertaining, and beautifully written.

Americanah

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi | Knopf (496 pp.)

$26.95 | 2013 | 9780307271082

A sensitive portrayal of distant love, broken affinities, and culture clash.

The Goldfinch

Tartt, Donna | Little, Brown (784 pp.)

$30.00 | 2013 | 9780316055437

A standout—and well worth the wait.

My Struggle: Book Three

Knausgaard, Karl Ove | Trans. by Don Bartlett Archipelago (427 pp.) | $27.00 | 2014 9781935744863

Halfway through, this series is starting to look like an early-21stcentury masterpiece.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Ferrante, Elena | Trans. by Ann Goldstein Europa Editions (416 pp.) | $18.00 paper 2014 | 9781609452339

Illustrates that the personal is political and that novels of ideas can compel as much as their lighter-weight counterparts.

Station Eleven

Mandel, Emily St. John | Knopf (320 pp.)

$24.95 | 2014 | 9780385353304

Mandel’s solid writing and magnetic narrative make for a strong combination in what should be a breakout novel.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Fowler, Karen Joy | Marian Wood/ Putnam (320 pp.) | $26.95 2013 | 9780399162091

A fantastic novel: technically and intellectually complex, while emotionally gripping.

All Our Names

Mengestu, Dinaw | Knopf (255 pp.)

$25.95 | 2014 | 9780385349987

Weighted with sorrow and gravitas, another superb story by Mengestu, who is among the best novelists now at work in America.

Euphoria

King, Lily | Atlantic Monthly (272 pp.)

$25.00 | 2014 | 9780802122551

A small gem, disturbing and haunting.

The Secret Place

French, Tana | Viking (464 pp.)

$27.95 | 2014 | 9780670026326

French has few peers in her combination of literary stylishness and intricate, clockwork plotting

The Three-Body Problem

Liu, Cixin | Trans. by Ken Liu | Tor (400 pp.)

$25.99 | 2014 | 9780765377067

Remarkable, revelatory, and not to be missed.

The Sellout

Beatty, Paul | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.)

$26.00 | 2015 | 9780374260507

Another daring, razor-sharp novel from a writer with talent to burn.

The Sympathizer

Nguyen, Viet Thanh | Grove (384 pp.)

$26.00 | 2015 | 9780802123459

Both chilling and funny, and a worthy addition to the library of first-rate novels about the Vietnam War.

The Fifth Season

Jemisin, N.K. | Orbit/Little, Brown (512 pp.)

$15.99 paper | 2015 | 9780316229296

With every new work, Jemisin’s ability to build worlds and break hearts only grows.

Fates and Furies

Groff, Lauren | Riverhead (368 pp.)

$27.95 | 2015 | 9781594634475

A n intricate plot, perfect title, and a harrowing look at the tie that binds.

The Vegetarian

Han Kang | Trans. by Deborah Smith Hogarth (192 pp.) | $21.00| 2016 | 9780553448184

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

A Little Life

Yanagihara, Hanya | Doubleday (720 pp.)

$30.00 | 2015 | 9780385539258

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

In the Country

Alvar, Mia | Knopf (368 pp.) | $25.95 2015 | 9780385352819

A triumphant, singular collection deserving of every accolade it will likely receive.

A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

Berlin, Lucia | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (432 pp.) | $26.00 | 2015 | 9780374202392

A testament to a writer whose explorations of society’s rougher corners deserve wider attention.

The Story of My Teeth

Luiselli, Valeria | Trans. by Christina MacSweeney | Coffee House (184 pp.)

$16.95 paper | 2015 | 9781566894098

A clever philosophical novel that, as the author puts it, has “less to do with lying than surpassing the truth.”

LaRose

Erdrich, Louise | Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) | $27.99 | 2016 | 9780062277022

Electric, nimble, and perceptive.

Marrying Winterborne

Kleypas, Lisa | Avon/HarperCollins (384 pp.) | $7.99 paper | 2016 | 9780062371850

Kleypas is a masterful writer, and her latest offering will be welcomed by fans old and new.

The Underground Railroad

Whitehead, Colson | Doubleday (320 pp.)

$26.95 | 2016 | 9780385537032

Whitehead continues his inquiry into race mythology and history with rousing audacity and razor-sharp ingenuity.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book One

Ferris, Emil | Fantagraphics Books (416 pp.)

$29.12 paper | 2017 | 9781606999592

A striking love letter to art and family—both blood and chosen.

Magpie Murders

Horowitz, Anthony | Harper/ HarperCollins (464 pp.) | $27.99 2017 | 9780062645227

This wildly inventive homage to Agatha Christie is the most fiendishly clever puzzle—make that two puzzles—of the year.

The Ninth Hour

McDermott, Alice | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) | $26.00 | 2017 | 9780374280147

Everything that readers and prize judges love about McDermott’s stories of Irish American life is back in her eighth novel.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Towles, Amor | Viking (480 pp.)

$27.00 | 2016 | 9780670026197

A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history.

Pachinko

Lee, Min Jin | Grand Central Publishing (496 pp.) | $27.00 | 2017 | 9781455563937

An old-fashioned epic whose simple, captivating storytelling delivers both wisdom and truth.

Exit West

Hamid, Mohsin | Riverhead (240 pp.)

$26.00 | 2017 | 9780735212176

One of the most bittersweet love stories in modern memory and a book to savor even while despairing of its truths.

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Ward, Jesmyn | Scribner (304 pp.)

$26.00 | 2017 | 9781501126062

As with the best American fiction these days, old truths are recast here in new realities rife with both peril and promise.

Her Body and Other Parties

Machado, Carmen Maria | Graywolf (264 pp.)

$16.00 paper | 2017 | 9781555977887

An exceptional and pungently inventive first book.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

Lawlor, Andrea | Rescue Press (388 pp.)

$18.00 paper | 2017 | 9780986086991

This is groundbreaking work from a daring writer; a fresh novel that elevates questions of sexual identity and intimacy.

The Great Believers

Makkai, Rebecca | Viking (432 pp.)

$27.00 | 2018 | 9780735223523

As compulsively readable as it is thoughtful and moving: an unbeatable fictional combination.

Milkman

Burns, Anna | Graywolf (360 pp.)

$16.00 paper | 2018 | 9781644450000

A deeply stirring, unforgettable novel that feels like a once-in-ageneration event.

Red, White & Royal Blue

McQuiston, Casey | St. Martin’s Griffin (432 pp.) | $16.99 paper | 2019 9781250316776

A clever, romantic, sexy love story.

Everything Inside

Danticat, Edwidge | Knopf (240 pp.)

$25.95 | 2019 | 9780525521273

An extraordinary career milestone: spare, evocative, and moving.

The Friend

Nunez, Sigrid | Riverhead (224 pp.)

$25.00 | 2018 | 9780735219441

Breathtaking both in pain and in beauty; a singular book.

Severance

Ma, Ling | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.)

$26.00 | 2018 | 9780374261597

Smart, funny, humane, and superbly well written.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

James, Marlon | Riverhead (640 pp.)

$30.00 | 2019 | 9780735220171

Could become one of the most talked-about and influential adventure epics since George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Vuong, Ocean | Penguin Press (256 pp.)

$26.00 | 2019 | 9780525562023

A raw and incandescently written foray into fiction by one of our most gifted poets.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown

Hibbert, Talia | Avon/HarperCollins (384 pp.)

$14.99 paper | 2019 | 9780062941206

A revelation. Hilarious, heartfelt, and hot. Hibbert is a major talent.

A Heart of Blood and Ashes

Vane, Milla | Berkley (560 pp.)

$7.99 paper | 2020 | 9780425255070

A showstopper.

Collected Stories

Moore, Lorrie | Everyman’s Library (776 pp.)

$27.00 | 2020 | 9780375712388

This expansive, exquisite collection cements Moore’s standing as one of the greatest short story writers of our time.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Philyaw, Deesha | West Virginia Univ. Press (192 pp.) | $18.99 paper 2020 | 9781949199734

Tender, fierce, proudly Black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root.

Detransition, Baby

Peters, Torrey | One World/ Random House (352 pp.) | $27.00 2021 | 9780593133378

Smart, funny, and bighearted.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

Jeffers, Honorée Fanonne | Harper/ HarperCollins (816 pp.) | $28.99 2021 | 9780062942937

If this isn’t the Great American Novel, it’s a mighty attempt at achieving one.

Shuggie Bain

Stuart, Douglas | Grove (416 pp.)

$26.00 | 2020 | 9780802148049

You will never forget Shuggie Bain. Scene by scene, this book is a masterpiece.

Daring and the Duke

MacLean, Sarah | Avon/Harper Collins (384 pp.) | $7.99 paper 2020 | 9780062692085

Dark, daring, delicious, and absolutely delightful.

Memorial

Washington, Bryan | Riverhead (320 pp.)

$27.00 | 2020 | 9780593087275

A subtle and moving exploration of love, family, race, and the long, frustrating search for home.

The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

Cohen, Joshua | New York Review Books (240 pp.) | $16.95 paper | 2021 9781681376073

A truly brilliant book and a remarkable achievement.

Palmares

Jones, Gayl | Beacon Press (504 pp.)

$27.95 | 2021 | 9780807033494

It is marvelous, in every sense, to have a new Gayl Jones novel to talk about.

The Books of Jacob

Tokarczuk, Olga | Trans. by Jennifer Croft

Riverhead (992 pp.) | $35.00 2022 | 9780593087480

A massive achievement that will intrigue and baffle readers for years to come.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Zevin, Gabrielle | Knopf (416 pp.)

$28.00 | 2022 | 9780593321201

Sure to enchant even those who have never played a video game in their lives, with instant cult status for those who have.

An Island Princess Starts a Scandal

Herrera, Adriana | Canary Street Press (368 pp.) | $30.00 | 2023 | 9781335006349

Empowering and exhilarating.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

McBride, James | Riverhead (400 pp.)

$28.00 | 2023 | 9780593422946

If it’s possible for America to have a poet laureate, why can’t James McBride be its storyteller-in-chief?

Monica

Clowes, Daniel | Fantagraphics Books (106 pp.) | $27.00 | 2023 | 9781683968825

A timeless nugget of polished pulp.

Trust

Diaz, Hernan | Riverhead (416 pp.)

$28.00 | 2022 | 9780593420317

A clever and affecting high-concept novel of high finance.

Demon Copperhead

Kingsolver, Barbara | Harper/ HarperCollins (560 pp.) | $24.99 2022 | 9780063251922

An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.

Witness

Brinkley, Jamel | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (240 pp.) | $26.00 | 2023 | 9780374607036

After just two collections, Brinkley may already be a grand master of the short story.

The Bee Sting

Murray, Paul | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (656 pp.) | $30.00 | 2023 | 9780374600303

A grim and demanding and irresistible anatomy of misfortune.

James

Everett, Percival | Doubleday (320 pp.)

$28.00 | 2024 | 9780385550369

One of the noblest characters in American literature gets a novel worthy of him.

Future Classics

By Laila Lalami

Kaveh Akbar

Xochitl Gonzalez

NOTES ON A QUARTER-CENTURY OF BOOKS

THE 21ST CENTURY started with a bang, fiction-wise, with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and  Clay (2000), a historical novel about two comic-book artists in which Michael Chabon explores so many 20th-century themes— from the immigrant experience to the growth of pop culture—that it serves as the perfect bridge to more recent hits like Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022). Chabon kicked off 25 years of authors breaking rules and busting genres, broadening the canon to include visions and perspectives that had long been excluded.

There are books on our list that have become instant classics; it’s already hard to remember a time when some of them weren’t part of the canon: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001), Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009), The Sympathizer by Viet Than Nguyen (2015), The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016), Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017), and many others. But there are also quirky books that we just love and want readers to rediscover. I was

thrilled to find that Kirkus’ verdict on Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George (2006)—a novel about Arthur Conan Doyle’s real-life investigation into a Victorian miscarriage of justice—was just two words: “A triumph.” And Kirkus agreed with my view of Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013), the story of a young woman grieving the loss of her adoptive “sister,” a chimpanzee: “A fantastic novel: technically and intellectually complex, while emotionally gripping.”

Our list includes writers near the ends of their brilliant careers—Shirley Hazzard is here with her last novel, The Great Fire (2003), and so is Philip Roth with his final full-length work, The Plot Against America (2004), which feels more timely than ever. Toni Morrison’s Love (2003) is “one of [her] finest,” according to our review. There are auspicious debuts, including The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (2000), We the Animals by Justin Torres (2011), The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw (2020), and Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (2021). There are thrillers here, including

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012), which revolutionized the genre, and romances like Sarah MacLean’s Daring and the Duke (2020), which took the historical romance out of the ballroom and into the dark corners of London’s Covent Garden. Cixin Liu’s SF novel The ThreeBody Problem (trans. by Ken Liu; 2014) is “remarkable, revelatory, and not to be missed,” according to our review.

Part of the fun of creating the list was finding reviews that turned out to be prescient: “This will mean a great deal to a great many people” was our verdict on Edward P. Jones’ The Known World (2003), while Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Bloomsbury, 2004) is called “an instant classic, one of the finest fantasies ever written.” Our review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (Knopf, 2005) concluded: “Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.” Twelve years later, Ishiguro was, in fact, awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. You can’t beat that.

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

LAURIE MUCHNICK

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

A collection of stories that artfully reframe issues including parenting, aging, illness, and life during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“He hypnotized me, and I loved him”: That’s the beginning of “The Hypnotist,” a story about the narrator’s lifelong connection with her father. “The hypnosis depended on a sort of innocence, a bargain between parent and child.” As if turning a shirt insideout and finding a beautiful new pattern, Bender—a National Book Award finalist for her story collection Refund (2015)—does a brilliant job of discovering novel metaphors and creating futuristic plots to re-examine some of life’s most taken-forgranted relationships and situations. In “The Listener,”

one of the collection’s standouts, a therapist named Saul suffers from a mysterious illness (perhaps chronic fatigue syndrome) that saps all his energy. Bender finds the perfect way to show how Saul’s invisible illness feels by having him kidnapped at gunpoint by a man pretending to be a new patient. At the bank, where his captor has taken him to withdraw money, now posing as his son, no one can see what’s happening: “What did it take for someone to see another?” he wonders, a question that cuts right to the heart of how well anyone can truly know other people. Other stories are incisive allegories for our age. In “The Shame Exchange,” which won a Pushcart Prize, elected officials who have no shame

take on the shame of ordinary people selected by a lottery, with the idea that they might begin to “govern with sensitivity and in a kindly way,” while in “The Court of the Invisible,” people begin disappearing because of the cruelty of everyday life. Not a lot happens in many of these stories; sometimes that feels

like the point, as in “Data” and “Arlene Is Dead,” two tales that capture the disorienting claustrophobia of the pandemic, though other pieces might have been trimmed without losing anything. Highly original stories that speak to the challenges of being human in the 21st century.

Kirkus Star

Plum

Anderegg, Andy | Hub City Press (232 pp.)

$26.00 | April 8, 2025 | 9798885740463

A girl outlasts a harrowing childhood and, though falteringly, enjoys control over her life.

This debut novel is told entirely in the second person, a bold move that injects the story with a special sort of hypersensitivity. As the reader grows still and silent—listening for a car in the driveway, clattering in the kitchen, any sign of parents (and thus, trouble)— alongside the narrator, known only as J, Anderegg places them into the role of a child in an abusive, neglectful home, constantly self-policing, seeking meager moments of peace, and hoping to eventually have the chance to shape their own lives. She lays out J’s good and bad days at home with her angry alcoholic father, her exhausted, spiteful mother, and her introverted older brother—her only ally and the recipient of all of their father’s beatings—in the same unflinching prose. Amid the chaos, J generally chooses numbness and painstakingly calculated obedience, even if she does not understand why she must behave a given way. “What is a rule?,” she asks, and how does she know whether it’s just? Initially, it doesn’t really matter to J. If she’s not being yelled at, she’s left alone to dream and plan for her far-off, glimmering future. She copies friends at school and people on TV; she gets a car, a credit card, a college degree. “You do not know this yet,” her wiser, future self narrates, “but you are raising you.” Tired of letting life happen to her, she molds herself into a woman through sheer will. Anderegg delicately considers the strange hollowness of having succeeded in getting out—of having the freedom and tools to find happiness, but nursing a shot nervous system and a crooked view of relationships. Yet, the book insists that nurture (or lack thereof) is not all there is. “This is your nature,” Anderegg writes. “This is

who you are and who cannot be destroyed or told to shut up.” It is enlivening to witness J’s steely resolve and to follow her relationship with her brother, which offers a glance into the shocking strength of a shared childhood. Anderegg’s novel outlives its pages.

The Gatsby Gambit

Anderson-Wheeler, Claire | Viking (368 pp.)

$30.00 | April 1, 2025 | 9780593831632

The Gatsby legacy is explored again. AndersonWheeler’s fiction debut revisits Jay Gatsby’s legendary West Egg estate but, this time, the emphasis is on a previously unheardof member of the Gatsby family: Greta. Known as Gigi to her older brother, Greta has just returned to Jay’s sprawling Long Island property after completing her education, which was designed to allow her to rise from the ranks of the nouveau riche and exist comfortably among the “Mayflower types” who look down on Jay’s background. Many personalities from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s cast of characters appear: Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jordan Baker, and Nick Carraway assume their previous roles and appear to be enjoying Jay’s hospitality—until a dead body is discovered on Jay’s docked sailboat. Unsettled by the unclear circumstances of that death, Greta is also troubled by other events at the estate, most notably the unexplained departure of Flora, a maid with whom she had formed a bond. With her bobbed hair and a “bohemian” wardrobe that includes a daring set of trousers, Greta endeavors to figure out what is going on at West Egg. Confronted by the realities of class privilege, wealth, and race-based disparities, Greta becomes more aware that her life and education have not prepared her for the tumultuous social changes happening before her eyes. Anderson-Wheeler delivers an account of the changing role of women in the early 20th century under the guise of a mystery by examining the lives and motivations of Greta, Daisy, Jordan, and the female staff

members at West Egg. Featuring much of the glamour and sparkle of Fitzgerald’s original, this reprise of Gatsby’s cautionary tale also revisits the distressing realities behind the glitz.

A mystery with a message (and some great jewelry).

Kirkus Star

Strangers in Time

Baldacci, David | Grand Central Publishing (448 pp.) | $30.00 April 15, 2025 | 9781538742051

Three strangers become friends amid the Nazi bombing of London. In 1944, fierce aerial fighting rages over London as the bombs and rockets continue killing and maiming English civilians. A 13-year-old “East End bloke” navigates the rubble and looks for things to steal. He always wishes for inclement weather so the Jerries won’t bomb them. In the few pieces of clothing he owns, his gran has sewn a label: “The Honorable Charles Elias Matters,” with his address. His parents and grandfather have been killed, and Gran thinks Charlie is going to school every day. Instead, he’s decided to get his education on the street. The well-to-do 15-year-old Molly Wakefield returns from the safety of the countryside to her parents’ London house, but the parents are nowhere to be found, and she meets Charlie as he hides in her yard. Ignatius Oliver runs The Book Keep in Covent Garden, a shop started by his late wife, Imogen. Charlie sneaks in and nicks some money and a book filled with blank pages, imagining he can sell it for the paper, but when he realizes that Ignatius knows where he lives, he tries to return everything. Ignatius catches him, but lets him keep the book, which plays a fateful role when it changes hands again. Before long the three become friends, all sharing common bonds of danger, humanity, and heartbreaking loss. All have their complex stories: Despite her youth, Molly wants to

treat the wounded, and she’s good at it; Ignatius is a part-time air warden who’s burdened by a dark secret about himself; and Charlie is party to a foot chase in which one of his mates and a police officer are accidentally killed. Charlie frets that he might hang. Meanwhile, the buzz of the V-1 rocket gives way to the silence of the V-2, and life or death are the devil’s toss of a coin. Baldacci weaves the trio’s lives together seamlessly, even though each comes from a different stratum of society. Hope, excitement, and tragedy will keep rapt readers reaching for their tissues.

Overheard

Barta, Dominik | Trans. by Gary Schmidt Univ. of Wisconsin (166 pp.) | $17.95 paper | April 1, 2025 | 9780299351540

A young man reckons with the lives of his friends and neighbors.

Kurt Endlicher is a young Viennese adult-education teacher living on his own for the first time. As the book begins, he has just moved into his aunt’s old apartment, where he initially clashes with one of his neighbors, Paul. “I had ended up living next to the most vulgar person in the world,” Kurt observes—but soon, the tension that exists between Kurt and his neighbor gives way to an often moving friendship. Kurt’s connection to his oldest friend, Frederik, and Frederik’s girlfriend, Yasmina, supply much of the book’s tension. Both Frederik and Yasmina work in medicine, leading to some wry observations: “We never interact with reasonable people whose butts are covered,” Yasmina says. Eventually, the couple separates after Frederik tells her, “You’re not an Arab Rosa Luxemburg but just a pretentious snob from the Eighteenth District.” In the aftermath of that quarrel, Frederik moves in with Kurt. Frederik then asks Kurt to keep tabs on Yasmina; Kurt in turn enlists the help of one of his students, Ferhat, to whom he is attracted. This novel has the components of a

Bartz takes her novel to places beyond where other authors stop short.

THE LAST SESSION

comedy of manners, but there are more serious concerns taking place in the background as well—including the 2014 fall of Mosul and broader questions of immigration, assimilation, and isolationism. Schmidt’s translation keeps things moving at a brisk pace and conveys the big ideas, subtle comedy, and moments of sadness that punctuate this book. And Kurt’s own idiosyncrasies—including hypochondria and depression—make him a memorable narrator.

A compelling chronicle of 21st-century Viennese life.

The Last Session

Bartz, Julia | Emily Bestler/Atria (240 pp.) $27.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781982199494

A social worker with a traumatic past goes undercover to save a patient to whom she bears a strange resemblance. By day, Thea offers art therapy to patients in a New York psychiatric ward; by night, she drinks too much and obsesses about how she was groomed by her pastor as a teenager, and the impact his abuse continues to have on her life. When a catatonic patient is admitted to the ward, Thea is shocked and excited to discover that it’s Catherine O’Brien, star of Stargirl, a movie that sparked a lot of her teenage fantasies, and who could almost be her twin. When Catherine is signed out from the ward by two people pretending to be her parents, Thea decides to follow a few breadcrumbs the former actor seems to have left her— most notably, a podcast recorded by people named Moon and Sol, who run

something called the Center for Relational Healing in the New Mexico desert. Thea signs up for retreat at the CRH, and when she arrives, she’s shocked to see Jonah, a guy with whom she’d nearly had a one-night stand back in New York. He says he’s actually a private investigator hired by Catherine’s family to find her. Aligned in their goal, Thea and Jonah sneak around trying to dig into Moon and Sol’s secrets, while still attending the sessions meant to break open their relationship blockages and help them connect to past lives. Clearly, there’s something sinister going on, and when they do find Catherine, their fears are amplified rather than assuaged. Bartz takes her novel, and its characters, to places beyond where other authors stop short; this is a harrowing story that tackles human vulnerability head-on. She shows us how evil actors can take full advantage of people in pain for their own material and psychic gain and how emotionally susceptible people can make tragic decisions. Melodrama of the first order, but frightening all the same.

Kirkus Star

The Fate of Others

Bausch, Richard | Knopf (352 pp.)

$29.00 | May 20, 2025 | 9780593801451

A strong collection by a veteran master of the short story. Though Bausch has become a prolific novelist, his story collections are more than publishing stopgaps between longer works. Particularly this one, filled with

fiction that is richly imagined, deeply felt, and filled with the sort of context that distinguishes it from minimalism. The “fate” of the title seems to be the one that awaits us all, as death—or the risk or fear of it—permeates these stories. So does literature, and there are many writers featured here—including Ernest Hemingway, in the opening “In That Time”— along with lovers of fiction and creative artists in other fields. Yet art doesn’t really help Bausch’s characters come to terms with the inevitable, or with the unexpected, the sort of out-of-the-blue crises around which so many of these stories pivot. Covid-19, politics, and religion serve to complicate some of the plots, but mainly the tales seem to focus on “How did we get here?” and “Where do we go from here?” In “Isolation,” a woman is quarantined with the husband she still loves, separated from the lover with whom she’d never intended to become involved. In “Forensics,” a “murder scene involving hoarders in a decaying old house” shows a detective the depths of depression into which he’s sunk. In the novella-length “Broken House” that closes the volume, another house in disrepair presents a lasting memory and metaphor for the narrator, a retired history professor who once contemplated becoming a priest but has since found his faith shaken. “A Memory, and Sorrow (An Interval)” reads like a rare foray into autofiction, but every one of these stories serves to render lives fully experienced.

Classic craftsmanship meets contemporary shell-shock.

These Days

Caldwell, Lucy | SJP Lit/Zando (288 pp.)

$28.00 | April 8, 2025 | 9781638931836

One Belfast family’s experience of the intense bombing raids of World War II becomes a lens through which to witness the whole city’s trauma and grief.

Philip Bell, a doctor, and his wife, Florence, live a comfortable middle-class

When a New York socialite is murdered, a witness manipulates the case.

existence in the Northern Ireland capital with their two adult daughters, Emma and Audrey, and younger son, Paul. But in the spring of 1941, they, like so many, endured the Belfast Blitz, a sequence of intensely destructive German bombing attacks that included, on one single night, the dropping of 100,000 incendiary devices. Caldwell uses the Bells’ joint and individual perspectives to depict many facets of these events. Audrey, newly engaged to Richard Graham, helps a 6-year-old child reunite with her family. Emma, a First Aid volunteer, survives a close impact but also suffers a terrible loss. Philip is fundamentally shaken by what he witnesses at the hospital. And later, among scenes of tremendous destruction, with uncounted numbers missing and presumed dead, Florence realizes Paul must be evacuated out of the city for his own safety. Around them, Caldwell introduces a lesser population of associated characters, widening the story’s scope to include black market smugglers, children, co-workers, and more. There’s a documentary quality to this broad, fact-driven panorama which lends detail and texture, although it also slows the storytelling. Emma (“kind, stubborn, awkward”), Audrey (“flighty, impulsive, earnest”), and Florence— haunted by a long-lost love—emerge most strongly, their differing perspectives lending emotional depth. The figures around them often seem less fully imagined. Similarly, Caldwell creates some moments of piercing self-knowledge or realization for her characters in contrast with other, more predictable scenes. But overall, her efforts to capture the literally earth-shaking experience of such a violent and terrifying overthrow of normality are effective, affecting, and achieved with sincerity. A hardworking elegy for a city’s devastation.

Witness 8

Cavanagh, Steve | Atria (416 pp.)

$29.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781668049372

When a New York socialite is murdered, a clever witness manipulates the case. Ruby Johnson has spent her whole life on the same posh block of West 74th Street on New York’s Upper West Side. In her childhood, her well-off family lived there, but when she was a teen, her father left Ruby and her mother, and they lost their home. Since then, she’s held jobs with various families on the block as a maid and nanny to support herself and her mother, who has medical issues. Late one night, as a party goes on a few doors away, Ruby leaves work and witnesses a murder. She knows the victim—Margaret “Maggs” Blakemore, notorious for her many affairs—and she knows who the killer is, too. (Although the reader doesn’t.) But then things get strange: Ruby frames an apparently innocent man, a saintly pediatric surgeon who is one of her employers. The mystery of this novel is less about identifying the killer and more about figuring out why Ruby does what she does. Guiding the reader through it is Eddie Flynn, a wisecracking con man–turned–defense attorney, who has a rather shocking number of people trying to kill him for various reasons. He’s also got multiple sidekicks—a wise older adviser, a brilliant female law associate, a fearless detective who doubles as a bodyguard, a former FBI agent with a shady past. It’s a promising setup, but the plot bogs down in stereotypical characters (mob guys, corrupt cops, eccentric hit men—yes, plural), repetitive

descriptions, excessive exposition, several narrators, and multiple subplots that take us away from the main story for such long stretches that it loses all momentum. Somewhere beneath a clutter of extraneous details lurks an interesting premise trying to get out.

Flashlight

Choi, Susan | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) $30.00 | June 3, 2025 | 9780374616373

A troubled American family suffers an insuperable loss during a year abroad. While Choi’s latest—a domestic drama with deep roots in 75 years of geopolitics—has little in common with her previous novel, the National Book Award–winning coming-of-age story Trust Exercise (2019), it does share one characteristic with that book: Only so much can be said about its explosively twisty plot without spoilers. What’s sort of amazing is that a novel with such a locomotive of a plot—and give it a chance, because it doesn’t rev up right away—could just as reasonably be described as character-driven, devoted to unfurling the personalities and destinies of its three point-of-view characters, Serk, Anne, and Louisa Kang. Serk is an ethnic Korean born in Japan; his family was among those thrust into chaos by the regime changes of the 1940s and he ends up moving on his own to the United States to purse an academic career. There he meets Anne, a white Midwesterner whose teenage fling with a married man resulted in the birth of a son she barely saw before he was taken away; 10 years later, her marriage to Serk produces a daughter, Louisa, who’s at the center of the storm that is this novel. Though she is never a happy or easy child, her life will go from merely bad to unbearable in the middle of fourth grade, when she’s forced to go to Japan for her

father’s visiting professorship. While Serk and Louisa are walking by the sea one night, something happens. The girl is found half-dead on the beach with few clear memories, and her father has disappeared; it is concluded that he has drowned. Louisa and Anne have many more challenges over the decades ahead, including serious chronic illness for Anne and a nearly disastrous college trip to Europe for Louisa, but one thing they will never have is a real connection. This is not an easy novel, but it has important things to say, and Choi is a writer you can trust to make the journey worthwhile.

Never sentimental, never predictable, this aptly titled novel illuminates dark passages both fictional and real.

Bad Nature

Courage, Ariel | Henry Holt (304 pp.) $28.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781250360885

This tightly wound novel follows a terminally ill woman on a quest to take vengeance against her long-absent father.

Hester, a corporate attorney in Manhattan, prides herself on her lack of emotional needs and connections, although she does like sex with strangers if they’re creepy enough. On the verge of turning 40, she discovers she has aggressive breast cancer and will die in six months unless she gets treatment. Instead, she quits her job and begins a cross-country drive to the California home of her father, an artist whom she last saw when she was 18, shortly after her mother’s death. Cancer aside, Hester is an emotionally damaged character, almost cringeworthy in her alienation from normal human feelings. Drawn with knife-sharp prose, she is a woman choosing to close herself off. Her travel plan is simple: “Drive west, find Dad, kill Dad, then self.” She claims that she’s wanted to kill her father since her parents’

divorce when she was 13. There’s a history of violence involved that Hester never allows to come fully into focus. Of course, her plans go awry in small and large ways. When her car is stolen, she can afford a rental; when visiting people from her past proves unnerving, she can escape. But what ultimately succeeds in throwing Hester’s equilibrium off balance is the bond she forms with a hitchhiker. John is an activist whose cause is “the dying world,” and Hester begins taking detours so he can photograph Superfund sites while fending off brushes with the law. Still in his early 20s, John is an idealistic extremist but also a character of profound integrity who cares deeply about both issues and people. Without being sexual, Hester and John’s relationship changes Hester—and the novel—for the better, weakening her self-protective solipsism while broadening her outlook to consider the world beyond her problems. What starts as a bitter internal dialogue becomes a rich overlap of the personal and the political.

The Paris Express

Donoghue, Emma | Summit/ Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) | $23.99 March 18, 2025 | 9781668082799

A real-life train crash propels Donoghue’s latest work of historical fiction. It begins on the Normandy coast on Oct. 22, 1895, as Mado Pelletier boards the eponymous train after buying some unspecified “supplies.” Donoghue displays her usual flair for in-depth research with the next scene, when 7-1/2-year-old Maurice Marland is confused by the 5-minute discrepancy between the times on the clocks over the station entrance and on the platform. The station clock is set ahead to prod tardy passengers, the train guard explains. Similar nuggets of train lore throughout—most notably detailed

descriptions of the driver’s and stoker’s perfectly synchronized teamwork—add to rather than detract from the Hitchcockian suspense as readers wait for the crash. (It’s a nice touch that, reminiscent of Donoghue’s contemporary novels, the aforesaid driver and stoker, both men, are unspokenly in love.) The author assembles a large cast, many of whom are real-life figures, though some were not actually on the train. Readers won’t care as Donoghue imagines compelling inner lives for her factual and fictional characters. They include ammunitions manufacturer Jules-Félix Gévelot, who has secret proclivities; African American artist Henry Tanner, who finds a kindred spirit in Cuban-descended medical student Marcelle de Heredia, also the subject of prejudice; and Alice Guy, secretary to the head of Gaumont and Co., who battles sexism to convince her clueless boss there’s a future in moving pictures. About a third of the way through the trip, we learn that Mado, an anarchist, carries a bomb to blow up the train; her principal targets are deputies on their way to the National Assembly session, but she knows many innocent people will also die, and her private struggle with this knowledge joins other expertly juggled plot lines to render each character a sharply delineated individual. Donoghue doesn’t aspire here to the thematic depth that distinguishes such earlier historical novels as Life Mask (2004); this one’s just for fun.

Smart, skillful entertainment.

A Line You Have Traced

Dunnett, Roisin | Feminist Press (320 pp.) | $17.95 paper April 15, 2025 | 9781558613874

Dunnett’s speculative novel traces three Londoners through a slow apocalypse. In London’s post–WWI Jewish East End, shopkeeper’s wife Bea minds her business. While her best

friend, CeeCee, is organizing rent strikes and demonstrating against fascists, she’s more concerned with the unwanted advances of her husband’s pompous friend, Haich, and with the angel who appears to her periodically, bringing with it “a feeling of vague irritation, and a strong flavor of peace.” She records these otherworldly incursions in a thin red notebook, picked up three generations later by her great-granddaughter Kay, a temp worker who stumbles, perpetually hungover, through present-day London’s queer nightlife with her friends El and Cue. Kay sleeps in Cue’s bed and attends El’s experimental drag shows, but she doesn’t tell her compatriots about the time travelers she has imagined visiting her since childhood or her fixation on her great-grandmother’s diary. In a future London laid bare by mass poverty and climate collapse, Ess lives on the “unloved outskirts of the city,” gardening for a newly established branch of the Network, a left-aligned collective that her mother calls a cult. In accordance with the beliefs of the “Basin” that the world is in its “Last Human Chapter,” Ess has been voluntarily sterilized. While organizing the papers of her mother’s friend Mr. J, she comes across Bea’s notebook, passed down from Mr. J’s own great-grandparents and now faded to pink. She receives an invitation from another branch of the Network, who believe that through Ess’ circuitous connection to Kay’s London, they can—and are, in fact, morally obliged to—help her travel backward in time. Dunnett’s languorous prose evokes the beauty and unease of a slow-dying world. Kay sprints to the supermarket under a “blue, hard dusk”; Ess pulls up an unremarkable stone with “a tart, metallic look to it that made her think of the inside of a very rare steak.” These passages often overpower the diaphanous narrators that deliver them. Bea, Ess, and Kay are oddly dissociated from their interpersonal relationships, and as ambassadors of their time periods, they read as all but interchangeable. The meditations that move through them—on reproduction, queer kinship, climate grief, and the permeability of time—are nevertheless profound. A digressive, lyrical climate novel.

Birthday

Egle, Jana | Trans. by Uldis Balodis Open Letter (140 pp.) | $15.95 paper

March 18, 2025 | 9781960385154

In this story collection—her first book to be translated into English—Latvian writer Egle delves into the feelings and experiences of women at different ages.

A mischievous young girl longs for a beautiful doll, unaware of what the adults around her are getting up to. A wife suffers a tragic loss. An office worker dates a man who turns into a stalker. A librarian gives in to a secret desire. A sister is haunted by the memory of a younger brother who disappeared. Animals feature in several stories: a pet cat, a fox in the snow. A heart transplant recipient tells his wife that the surgeon cooked his original heart, then fed it to his dachshund. The focus throughout this collection is on women: their inner lives, their desires, their complex thoughts and often contradictory feelings. There are men here as well, but they’re ancillary, never the main characters. A woman repulsed by her alcoholic stepfather tries to understand how her mother ended up with him: “What about him did she come to like, why did she want to marry this man, have children, live together with him day to day, year to year, eat at the same table, sleep in the same bed?” With a perceptive eye and a nuanced understanding, Egle shows the complicated bonds that connect families, friends, and romantic partners, their dependencies, frustrations, tenderness, and incongruities. Her characters contend with heartbreak, loss, and cognitive decline. “It’s a woman’s fate to love and suffer,” a woman thinks on a three-day hiking trip with an old flame who wants to marry her, but “she has strongly resolved to cheat fate.” The prose is unhurried, the language at times refreshingly earthy, and in any situation there’s more than first meets the eye. Of a field of beautiful flowers, the same woman observes, “In the sweltering heat

they exude the aroma of a piss-filled jar of honey.”

Vivid, thoughtful, emotionally layered fiction.

The Deserters

Énard, Mathias | Trans. by Charlotte Mandell New Directions (192 pp.) | $16.95 paper May 6, 2025 | 9780811239011

Prix Goncourt–winning French author Énard’s short novel maps the stark geometry between the Holocaust and 9/11, ideology and fate, truth and memory.

In 1995, noted East German mathematician Paul Heudeber, a Buchenwald survivor, drowned, an apparent suicide. A quarter-century later, his daughter, Irina, muses on his time in the concentration camp, his unshakable devotion to mathematics (“the other name for hope”), and his exploits as an outspoken antifascist and Communist sympathizer. She also flashes back to Sept. 11, 2001, when she and her aged mother, a politically active “orphan of the Revolution,” attended a celebration of her father’s work at a floating conference on a boat outside Berlin. Following the terrorist attacks in America, “the night kept falling,” recalls Irina, “our faith in a kind of peace…crumbling away.” While Irina’s recollections have the immediacy and directness of a diary, the novel’s alternating narrative is told in a kind of purgatorial stream-of-consciousness poetry, voiced by a barely conscious male deserter fleeing an unnamed contemporary war and a rightfully fearful young woman he encounters in the mountains. (She’s accompanied by an injured donkey, the book’s hero.) Énard, whose 500-page novel Zone (2010) consisted of a single-sentence monologue, draws eerie meaning from the odd particularities of the natural world: “a luminous puddle stretches out over the rocks, the pebbles, so many reefs on a dazzled sea, strewn with green inlets, something trembles…” Ultimately, the book is haunted by the

endless cycle of war and cruelty. “You don’t want the vexations of the past to suffocate you,” says the deserter. How can we avoid that? For Heudeber, it’s all in the numbers.

A powerfully elusive meditation by one of Europe’s most challenging authors.

The Snares

Grewal-Kök, Rav | Random House (320 pp.)

$29.00 | April 1, 2025 | 9780593446034

The recently appointed deputy director of a new U.S. intelligence agency finds himself swept into the dark corners of anti-terrorism policy—with dire personal and professional consequences.

A deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, Neel Chima is living the good life when he gets a phone call from a mysterious CIA official offering him the job. Neel has a loving wife, two adorable kids, and a house paid for by his rich father-in-law. But the lure of an important post at the Freedom Center, which runs parallel to the CIA in targeting suspected terrorists, is too much to resist. A Punjabi American who has never recovered from being called a dothead by the “fresh-faced white dudes” he served with in the Navy, he is eager to prove himself “as goddamned American” as anyone. After innocents in a Pakistani tribal region are mistakenly killed in a drone attack based on his cold analysis, his superiors convince him it’s all part of the job—that “the beauty of war by data is that it takes the moral question out of the discourse.” But following an FBI investigation into his drunken mishandling of top security papers during a trip

to Thailand, he’s secretly pressured into targeting an outspoken young Muslim in Brooklyn and his life begins to implode. Was this all part of a plan? Was he set up as a patsy from the start? The tension never lets up in Grewal-Kök’s gripping first novel, which exposes a system that will always compromise its moral code. Neel, who has lived his life coping with his feelings of “otherness” by diminishing his commitment to family and friends, discovers his own moral code too late. A terrific debut that finds new dimensions in the intelligence thriller.

Rabbit Moon

Haigh, Jennifer | Little, Brown (288 pp.)

$29.00 | April 1, 2025 | 9780316577137

Haigh’s latest novel begins with a hit-and-run in Shanghai and ends with a Christmas wedding in Boston, and in between those events, a family is rattled, upended, and—maybe?—healed.

The accident victim is 22-year-old Lindsey Litvak, who left college to travel to China with her boyfriend, their plan to teach English and immerse themselves in the culture. The boyfriend returned home, but Lindsey remained. When her divorced parents, Claire and Aaron, get the call that their daughter has been seriously injured, they fly to Shanghai to try to piece together what happened and will her back to health. Meanwhile, Lindsey’s 11-year-old sister, Grace— adopted by Claire and Aaron as an infant from China—weathers the storm at her summer camp, wondering why Lindsey hasn’t responded to her texts, unaware of her parents’ anguish. As Claire and Aaron battle hospital

A terrific debut that finds new dimensions in the thriller.

THE SNARES

bureaucracy, a language barrier, and their own guilt and fear, Haigh revisits the events that put Lindsey on that dark, late-night street and reveals the rift between parents and daughter that kept Lindsey on the other side of the world. Haigh draws a strong character sketch of Grace, who slowly awakens to the ramifications of her Chinese background. Lindsey feels less fully formed, her actions contradictory. What happens to her in Shanghai is predictable, and yet her youthful naïveté about matters of the heart and the darker side of human nature seem at odds with the ease with which she embraces her new life. Haigh’s message here, beyond highlighting the pain of family estrangement, is perplexing. “We live at the intersection of causality and chance,” an older Grace muses at the novel’s end, a conclusion too superficial to leave much of an impression.

A novel about family estrangement that relies too often on the obvious.

Kirkus Star

Big Chief

Hickey, Jon | Simon & Schuster (320 pp.)

$28.99 | April 8, 2025 | 9781668046463

A fixer for a Native American tribal leader is caught in the drama of a tense election season.

Mitch Caddo, the narrator of Hickey’s assured debut, is 30 years old and introduces himself as “the youngest ever tribal operations director for the Passage Rouge Nation of Lake Superior Anishinaabe,” a Wisconsin tribe with 5,000 enrolled members. It’s a step up from his previous work as a tribal attorney working family-court cases. But as the election for tribal president approaches, he’s torn: He knows that his old friend Mack Beck, the current president, who’s taken up residence in a suite at the local casino hotel, is an incompetent boor, and that Mack’s main political strategy—banishing and

disenrolling those who fall into legal trouble and effectively paying off the tribe via annual checks from the general fund—at once weakens and alienates the community. As Mitch does disreputable things on Mack’s behalf, such as creating burner Facebook accounts smearing his opponent, Mitch is prompted to reconsider his past. Joe Beck, who’s the tribal counsel, Mack’s adoptive father, and a mentor to Mitch after his mother’s death, is disappointed in the mudslinging. Mack’s sister, Layla, with whom Mitch had a brief fling, is even more resentful. Keeping the timeframe tight—the story runs from Thanksgiving to the election the following Tuesday— escalates the intensity of a story that includes a plane crash, a community riot, hovering FBI agents, and a police department that’s much too comfortable using military surplus equipment. But most of the tension resides within Mitch, who enters the story with plenty of swagger—”I execute the decisions of a multi-million-dollar corporation that also happens to be a sovereign nation”—while slowly recognizing the perils of his braggadocio. It’s not hard to see the events in this small community as an allegory for larger themes of corruption in the Trump era, but Hickey avoids big symphonic flourishes and instead emphasizes the cost to individuals. A big-minded book about small-town politics.

Kirkus Star

Tyrant

Iggulden, Conn | Pegasus (416 pp.)

$27.95 | May 6, 2025 | 9781639368891

The middle entry in a trilogy— following Nero (2024)— about Roman Emperor Nero’s turbulent life. In the year 50, the 30-something Agrippina marries the 60-something Emperor Claudius, who adopts her son, Lucius, and renames him Nero Claudius Caesar

Augustus Germanicus. The young lad is a handful, having managed with his friends to kill their tutor with a sack full of wasps. Luckily, he’s a minor and has his mother’s fierce protection. Quite the beauty, Agrippina “strangles poor Claudius in her skirts” and is rightly called “a destroyer.” Enemies seek to disgrace her and expose her to Claudius as a “faithless whore.” She kills him with foxglove powder supplied by her auspex, Locusta, opening the door for Nero to become emperor at age 16. But wait, what about Britannicus, the emperor’s biological son? Claudius said he’s next in line to be emperor, but the boy is an obstacle in the way of Agrippina’s ambition. Younger than Nero, Britannicus is but a pesky detail. Earlier, Nero tried to get him killed in a chariot race and nearly succeeded. Iggulden weaves a complex yarn based on events reported 50 years after the fact by writers such as Tacitus, so readers may wonder if the real Nero was as nasty as he appears to be. The best answer is to call it fiction and enjoy. Many details are marvelous, like the mock naval battles held in arenas that Roman engineers flood with sea water. It’s about the depravity of a mother and son seeking raw power and about the clash of wills that proves her undoing. Great characters, superb storytelling.

Zeal

Jerkins, Morgan | Harper/ HarperCollins (416 pp.) | $28.99 April 22, 2025 | 9780063234086

New fiction from the bestselling author of Caul Baby (2021). In 2019, Ardelia Gibbs and Oliver Benjamin are celebrating their engagement on the roof of a restaurant in midtown Manhattan. White linen tablecloths. Floral arches. Sliders and macarons. Nineties soul on the sound system. As the celebration is winding down, Oliver taps his glass to get everyone’s attention. He has a gift for his

bride-to-be: a letter that has been passed down from generation to generation in his family, a letter written by a woman named Tirzah to a man named Harrison in 1865. After this prologue, the narrative moves back in time to Mississippi in the aftermath of the Civil War, back to the time in which Tirzah sent a letter to her beloved Harrison with no guarantee that he would ever receive it. The couple had been separated and, while the Freedmen’s Bureau gave them a way to find each other again, there was little chance of them reconnecting. In the mythic version of the American story, emancipation is a single glorious moment when enslaved people become free. Jerkins makes it very clear that the truth is not nearly so simple as she explores a growing family tree and more than 100 years of history. The journey Jerkins’ characters take is similar to the story she shares about her own ancestors in her memoir, Wandering in Strange Lands (2020). In this work of fiction, as in her nonfiction, the author underscores the fact that establishing freedom and protecting freedom is very different from being granted freedom. And by beginning her narrative at a contemporary engagement party, Jerkins foregrounds the unifying power of family and community in creating a Black culture that doesn’t just survive, but thrives.

A multigenerational exploration of slavery’s legacy and the power of Black joy and Black love.

I Would Die for You

Jones, Sandie | Minotaur (320 pp.)

$29.00 | March 25, 2025 | 9781250910035

A young woman falls in love with a British pop star only to become entangled in an explosive situation involving deceit, drugs, murder, and the tragic delusions of her younger sister.

Londoner Nicole Forbes loves the quiet life she and her Navy SEAL

husband built in the sunny seaside town of Coronado, California. But when her daughter, Hannah, gets taken out of school one day by a mysterious woman she tells her parents is her “auntie,” Nicole fears that the past she tried to outrun more than two decades earlier has returned for a reckoning. In weaving Nicole’s first-person, present-tense perspective with one that is third person and past tense, Jones creates a fabulously addictive story about betrayal and retribution. In the 1980s, Nicole and her 16-year-old sister, Cassie, develop independent relationships with Ben Edwards, the lead singer of a hugely popular band named Secret Oktober. While Cassie is a groupie who fights for flirtatious backstage encounters with Ben, Nicole meets him at a bar, where he compliments her for a song she wrote and sang. Unknown to the starstruck Cassie, Nicole and Ben become musical collaborators and then lovers. When salacious news articles about drug parties and women come to light about Ben and his band, Nicole is heartbroken, unaware that Cassie was arrested for participating in one such party. The situation unravels quickly after that when the mysterious drug-related death of a Secret Oktober bandmate forces Ben, Nicole, and Cassie into painful realizations about themselves and each other. Well paced, intelligent, and tightly plotted, this novel will appeal not only to lovers of suspense but anyone with a penchant for stories that explore the fraught relationship between obsessive love and fame.

A riveting thriller about people caught up in—and destroyed by—the glitter of fandom.

Kirkus Star

Autocorrect

Keret, Etgar | Trans. by Jessica Cohen & Sondra Silverston | Riverhead (208 pp.) $28.00 | May 27, 2025 | 9780593717233

A bemusing clutch of comic vignettes alert to contemporary anxieties. For veteran Israeli writer Keret, technology doesn’t simplify our lives so much as amplify our foibles. In “Point of No Return,” efforts to find a programmable romantic partner go sideways. So, too, does a system that can allegedly cure loneliness in “Soulo.” In “The Future Is Not What It Used To Be,” the invention of a time machine doesn’t impress the populace until it’s rebranded as a way to drop those extra pounds. The Borgesian “Director’s Cut” imagines a film about a person’s life that’s exactly as long as his life itself. Such concepts seem possible in Keret’s hands, even likely, and the two translators from the Hebrew emphasize a clear, deadpan delivery, describing calamity with a disarming cool: “The aliens’ spaceship arrived every Thursday”; “People, by the way, became extinct a short time later”; “The world is about to end and I’m eating olives.” Not all of the 33 stories land: In “A Hypothetical Question,” a couple bickers over whether eating the other’s corpse would be an act of devotion, and in “Squirrels,” a dead partner may or may not be reincarnated as a rodent. But Keret still has an impressive success rate, finding places where the out-there premises sharpen our fears of loss and loneliness. “A World Without Selfie Sticks” supposes what might happen if our universe

A bemusing clutch of comic vignettes alert to contemporary anxieties.

>>>

THE KIRKUS Q&A: KATIE KITAMURA

The acclaimed novelist invites readers to take a leap with her in Audition

BY KAREN R. LONG

KATIE KITAMURA WILL take her new novel, Audition, on the road this spring, traveling down the East Coast, from Boston to Miami, then on to Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, before swinging back to Toronto and eventually stopping in Bath, England, and Paris. Her itinerary signals keen anticipation for Audition, the chilly, psychological story of a Manhattan stage actor and her pas de deux with a young man, Xavier, who claims that he may be her son.

The book tour is a contrast to Kitamura’s pandemicconfined Zooms to promote her previous novel, Intimacies, a New York Times Top 10 book of 2021. Few writers wield a sharp contrast with more acuity than Kitamura, 46, who grew up in a bilingual California household and has, for a decade, taught creative writing at New York University. She is married to British novelist Hari Kunzru. They share a son, 12, and a daughter, 8. In a wide-ranging interview with Kirkus—alas, on Zoom—Kitamura says their home is awash with the manuscripts of student writers.

Audition comes eight years after her fiction breakout, A Separation , which unspooled in the mind of a nameless young woman whose estranged husband is missing. The narrator of Intimacies, also unnamed, is a translator who recently arrived at the Hague to staff a war crimes trial. Kitamura marinates all three slim novels in dread, fed by the unknowability of others, especially those with whom the narrators are intimate.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You divide Audition into two parts; the second is a radical reset of the first. How did you decide that was a necessity?

I have a strong sense that general readers are very, very smart. Readers often understand things I’m trying to do and often

book, this sense that writing and reading are collaborative acts, that the novel takes shape in the space between the writer and the reader. I ask the reader to take a risk, take a leap, and if you’re going to do that, you also have to take a leap as a writer.

perceive things that I hadn’t understood I was trying to do. I felt that particularly with Intimacies . If a book is going to work, a lot of it has to do with the attention and care of the reader. And that’s something I wanted to push further with this

Can you give an example of something a reader of Intimacies gave you that you hadn’t perceived yourself? There are so many. A reader had asked me if there was a lesson to the novel, and I said I didn’t think so. She said she thought the big lesson of the novel is that everybody gets away with it. [Chuckles.] It’s completely true. It’s part of the bleakness of the ethical landscape the narrator is trying to navigate. And as I was finishing the novel, the central war crimes case on which it is based was dismissed.

There’s a line that I really loved in the novel The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier. The central character is a midcareer writer, and he says—I’m paraphrasing badly, apologies to Le Tellier—that if he could write one sentence that was more intelligent than he was, that would make him a writer. That may be the hope of all writers: that there be some alchemical event.

Talk about your approach to Audition. I like to stage the surface and then kind of crack it. The aesthetic lodestar for this novel is really David Lynch. There are those wonderful moments at the beginning of Blue Velvet when you think you are seeing this beautiful lawn, and when you look closer,

Clayton Cubitt

it’s teeming with undergrowth and darkness and disgust and fascination. That seems like one of the most interesting things in writing about American life: There is this very brittle narrative, and it doesn’t take a great deal to fracture that and see what’s underneath.

Why nameless narrators?

I’m thinking of your aesthetics alongside what Percival Everett does in James where the book’s last word, the culminating word, is “James.” I’m a huge admirer of Everett. He is a writer so acutely aware of how power functions, its force on individuals. There’s a lot of power in names—a lot of power to be gained and a

lot of power to be lost. There is so much information in names. And once you are named you are placed inside a system. Historically, naming has served as a form of power enforcement: women taking names, and children being named. I wanted to write characters who are not neatly slotted into a social position. They’re adrift in some way. In A Separation, the narrator is both married and not married to the central male character. In Intimacies , everything about the narrator is provisional. The moment they’re named, they would fit into a rubric. [Pause.] I think it’s now done—in the book I’m writing now, the character is named. [Laughs.]

At times, I wondered if the narrator of Audition is unhinged. Highly strung, I would say. But I’m really interested in widening the gaps between my intention and what the meaning of the book might be. My sense is that we all live with these narratives and these versions of ourselves that are in some way unstable and incommensurable. The two halves of the novel to me aren’t there to be reconciled—in the same way that within us there are different pieces of our lives that can’t really be reconciled. Sometimes that’s easiest to see in temporal terms—you might look back at a younger version of yourself and not be able to see it as continuous with who you are now. For many of us, it is simultane-

The aesthetic lodestar for this novel is really David Lynch.

ous—you are a different person with different people. I wanted to take that feeling and take it up to a 10.

Still, the quotidian and the mundane grounds Audition nicely. Tell us about the scarf.

One of the things that was fun to play with was to have objects whose meaning changes across the two halves of the book. The scarf appears in the first half and in the second as a sign of attachment, but also of entrapment and a desire to keep somebody close who will not be kept close. So the person who is preoccupied with the scarf shifts from the first half to the second. In this novel, even the intimacy between the narrator and Xavier is incredibly freighted, beautiful, and in some fundamental way unreliable. I was interested in turning the apartment into a pressure cooker over the course of the novel. They are primarily in the apartment for much of the action in the second half. In this novel, it’s also intimacy as a form of performance and display, almost a form of aggression. Intimacy is a provocation in this novel, it is very much weaponized.

Audition

Kitamura, Katie

Riverhead | 208 pp. | $28.00 April 8, 2025 | 9780593852323

Is your fiction anti-self-help? [Laughs.] Darian Leader, the English writer and psychoanalyst, told me he was asked, “What’s the use of psychoanalysis if it doesn’t make you better?” And he said, “It’s not there to make you better, it’s there to help you see reality.” Fiction is the same.

Karen R. Long is the manager emerita of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.

BEST OF THE CENTURY

The Corrections

By Jonathan Franzen (2001)

When Jonathan Franzen published The Corrections, it was something of a departure for the author. His previous novels, The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion, were decidedly postmodernist. The Corrections, about a dysfunctional family that can’t help but make extremely unfortunate decisions, left behind the narrative trickery and complex plots in favor of a more straight-ahead family saga.

The Corrections arrived at a complicated time in American history, less than eight months after the inauguration of President George W. Bush and 10 days before the Sept. 11 attacks. Franzen could not have predicted 9/11, of course, but he did predict the unease that marked the country both

before and after that watershed event.

The novel resonated with talk show host Oprah Winfrey, who selected it for her popular book club. Franzen expressed ambivalence about being chosen, calling some of Winfrey’s previous selections “schmaltzy,” which caused Winfrey to rescind her invitation for Franzen to appear on her show. (The two would later reconcile after Winfrey picked Franzen’s Freedom for her club in 2010.)

The book, which a Kirkus critic praised as “one of the most impressive American novels of recent years,” went on to win the National Book Award and is widely recognized as one of the best books of the 21st century.

Viewers will get to revisit the novel when a planned series adaptation, starring Meryl Streep, hits the small screen. The timing is good: While the future is unpredictable, unease, it seems, is here to stay. —MICHAEL SCHAUB

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

Gone Girl

By Gillian Flynn (2012)

It’s hard to overstate what a pheno menon Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was upon its release. An instant bestseller, the novel received rave reviews from critics despite being hard to summarize: The story of Nick, a man suspected of killing his missing wife, Amy, is notoriously twisty, surprising readers who managed to dodge spoilers . At the heart of its success, perhaps, was Amy, an antihero who both enchanted and repelled readers. For too long, women had been consigned to roles as victims in thrillers— but not Amy. Flynn later told the Hollywood Reporter that conventional wisdom at the time was that readers didn’t want books with unlikeable women characters. Her book, she said, “abso lutely blew the doors off that old-fashioned, completely antiquated theory.”

Gone Girl inspired writers who’d been itching to write about flawed women. It also struck a nerve with readers who identified

BEST OF THE CENTURY

with Amy’s “Cool Girl” monologue: “How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: ‘I like strong women.’ If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because ‘I like strong women’ is code for ‘I hate strong women.’”

David Fincher’s film adaptation with Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck wowed moviegoers in 2014, but by then the novel had already earned an enduring place in American literature. Some novels change literary culture; some change the culture at large. Gone Girl did both. —M.S.

For a review

of the book, visit Kirkus online.

Gillian Flynn

lacked one small but essential thing (no, not selfie sticks); “Polar Bear” imagines an AI tool to replace our partners, but which comes undone with one potent question. In its strongest moments, what resonates most aren’t Keret’s high-concept predicaments, but the determination of characters to preserve their humanity despite them. Wry, affectionate, tart storytelling with Keret’s trademark comic kick.

The Best We Could Hope For

Kraus, Nicola | Little A (284 pp.)

$28.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781662522642

Two generations of a dysfunctional family struggle to find breathing room in this dark solo debut by the co-author of The Nanny Diaries (2002).

In 1957, Jayne Linden is relieved to escape her life in suburban Maryland to study at Radcliffe, where she meets and soon marries aspiring journalist Rodger Donaghue. Left behind in Maryland with their chilly mother and abusive father is Jayne’s younger sister, Bunny, who soon runs away to travel around the world, in the process producing three children. When she realizes she can’t raise them on her own, she drops them off with Jayne, who later has two children herself. Jayne goes on to divorce Rodger, who is now “the toast of New York’s intelligentsia,” setting off an acrimonious custody battle. One of Jayne’s children, Linden, is at the center of that battle, and her struggles over the next several decades become the focus of the second half of the novel, as Linden, an artist who makes spooky dioramas, attempts to uncover the secrets at the heart of her family. Fans of The Nanny Diaries

and Kraus’ other novels written with Emma McLaughlin may be surprised at the story’s unremittingly bleak tone. Though Kraus spends some time dissecting the mores of upper-class New Yorkers and distinguishing between the behavior of those on the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, her main concern is the way abuse echoes down through the generations, bewildering those caught in its wake. Kraus juggles the stories of a dozen characters deftly without losing her focus on Jayne and Linden, as she touches down on key scenes through several decades. As her haunted souls muddle through their lives, the reader senses patterns the characters will never fully realize.

An anguished investigation of the way memories can warp lives.

Kirkus Star

Awake in the Floating City

Kwan, Susanna | Pantheon (320 pp.)

$28.00 | May 13, 2025 | 9780593701409

In the last days of an American metropolis, a grieving artist finds purpose in preserving an elderly neighbor’s legacy. In her marvelously graceful debut, artist and writer Kwan looks to the future with an arc of emotions ranging from existential panic to quiet moments of hope. While this gem sits firmly between the mushrooming genre of climate fiction and the more subdued melancholia of Station Eleven or The Dog Stars, it’s very much its own creature, meditating with fresh eyes on the resilience of memory and the inevitability of time. It’s become an all-too-familiar scenario in novels like The

Short stories examine the Vietnamese

refugee experience.

STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE SEA

Mars House and New York 2140: Here San Francisco is the drowned world where life, against all odds, goes on for now.

“Everyone wanted Bo to believe that there were better places out there, places that weren’t under relentless threat,” Kwan explains. “They called this city a death trap. But she knew the truth: it was terrible, sometimes, everywhere.” Why Bo hasn’t left, long after her mother disappeared and her remaining family fled to Vancouver, she keeps mostly to herself. “If I leave,” she asks, “how can I be found?”

Just as she’s been convinced to finally abandon her home, she gets a note under her door from Mia, one of the holdout supercentenarians in her building, who needs home care. Even as Mia’s health deteriorates, connecting with her brings Bo back to the world in the wake of her grief. With the help of Antonia, a resilient and determined librarian, and Eddie, a conservation biologist, Bo sets about composing a work of art that will layer her story on top of the places and history that made the city live and breathe. What might seem at first like sacrifice is really more like endurance—holding on tight because letting everything go means losing who we are.

What it means to see things through at the end of everything.

Stories From the Edge of the Sea

Lam, Andrew | Red Hen Press (206 pp.) | $17.95 paper | March 25, 2025 | 9781636282428

Short stories examine lives shaped by the Vietnamese refugee experience. Lam and his family fled Vietnam in April, 1975, when he was just 11 years old. While the stories in this rich, complex collection cover a wide swath of subjects, this autobiography informs his characters’ feelings, their relationships to family, friends, employers, and homelands past and present. In “This Isle Is Full of Noises,” Lam begins by describing an island in the Gulf of Thailand that features makeshift

tombstones and a grief-stricken woman. Nearby, two boys obliviously look to the clouds and see “catfish in mango sauce” and “roast chicken in lemongrass and chili pepper.” Death is everywhere, but hunger is more persistent. This land is a stopover for refugees of the Vietnam War. Once in America, one of these boys, given the American name of Koala (he was born Cao Le Y-Bang), tells an overly interested professor about the death of his younger brother on their journey West. The professor is, above all, entertained. Lam’s stories are filled with moments in which characters living in the U.S. are forced to reckon with history often too painful to recall, occasionally slipping into a past they never realized they were running away from. Lam’s inventive narrative styles add to the distance his characters feel from the world around them. “October Laments” is told through social media comments, videos, and flashbacks. “Love in the Time of the Beer Bug” features a son narrating the divorce of his parents as if it’s a boxing match. The book’s final—and most emotionally impactful—story, “The Tree of Life,” uses a funeral eulogy to tell the story of a remarkable mother, wife, and humanitarian. The unnamed narrator, the deceased’s child, describes how she lived and the good that was in her heart, saying “she was always an active agent in the face of calamity”—which, Lam suggests, is levied upon all who escape home in search of a better life.

Wide-ranging tales united by narrators with shared histories and questions of belonging.

Aftertaste

Lavelle, Daria | Simon & Schuster (400 pp.)

$26.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9781668061596

A chef who can cook food that reunites diners with their deceased loved ones finds out that’s not such a great idea.

A year after his father’s unexpected death, 11-year-old Konstantin “Kostya” Duhovny mysteriously gets

the taste of his father’s favorite food, pechonka, in his mouth. As an adult, wracked with guilt because he and his father quarreled at their last meeting, tortured by memories of being a social outcast in school and of a mother who simply stopped coping after losing her husband, Kostya gets by with menial jobs and binge-eating, baffled by the mysterious ability whose purpose he doesn’t know. Until one night, mistaken for the bartender in a speakeasy where he washes dishes, he gets the taste of a drink in his mouth—the favorite drink of a drunken customer’s dead wife. He mixes it, and the wife’s ghost appears. Both spirit and widower seem to get closure from this final meeting, although Maura Struk, the psychic Kostya consults about his gift, warns him, “Don’t ever make their food again…you’re no match for the Afterlife.” Kostya ignores her advice when sinister Russian businessman (read: gangster) Viktor Musizchka offers him the chance to become a very special kind of restaurateur, making dishes to summon their ghosts for grieving survivors—for a hefty price. Even Maura, who re-enters the novel to become the love of his life, encourages him, and Kostya seems bound for success. Of course, things are not so simple, and debut novelist Lavelle spins a twisty plot filled with mouthwatering descriptions of food and some very hungry ghosts. Both Maura and Viktor have dark hidden motives, and the hilarious running narration between chapters of “The Konstantin Duhovny Culinary Experience” by his best friend, Frankie (the novel’s most vivid character), in time reveals itself as another menacing element. The catastrophic opening night of Kostya’s restaurant provides a bravura climax, followed by a poignant final twist. A tasty variation on the supernatural thriller.

Dangerous Latitudes

London, Jack Woodville | Stoney Creek Publishing (326 pp.) | $22.95 paper March 2, 2025 | 9798990128965

A young man sets out on a perilous expedition for the Republic of Texas. In 1841

For more debut fiction, visit Kirkus online.

Louisiana, surveyor Alexandre LaBranche errantly draws a boundary line that puts many of his father’s slaves on his neighbor’s plantation. Oops! His fed-up father tells him he’s worthless and disowns him. Alexandre leaves home and is introduced to Texian president Mirabeau Lamar. (They weren’t called Texans until statehood.) Having confirmed that the youth can determine latitude and longitude, Lamar offers him $10,000 to map the Texas border up to the source of the Rio Grande, also secretly hoping he’ll find the 300 lost soldiers Lamar had sent to Santa Fe. Off the lad goes in a wagon, but soon two thieves rob him and toss him into a bramble-filled ditch. A free Black woman named Noeme eventually rescues him. She works for Sam Houston, who later succeeds Lamar as president. Various characters disparage Alexandre’s surveying skills and consider him a “plantation dandy” who can measure the Earth by looking at the sun and stars but can’t use a compass. He is a terrific mapmaker, though. His maps show every last building, Mexican soldier, and tortilla press along the Rio Grande in lifelike detail and perspective. The contrast between Alexandre’s professional skills and shortcomings strain believability: “You learned geography…but you didn’t learn which way the wind blows,” Houston tells him. Houston falsely accuses Alexandre of a murder and gives him the choice of either hanging in a gallows or spying on Mexico. The desire to prove himself, make money, and avoid execution all give plenty of motivation to forge ahead. The underlying events in this engaging novel are true. Before statehood, Texas was “the most ill-defended and beleaguered republic in North America” with undefined borders and constant attacks on Anglo settlements

like San Antonio. There was indeed a massacre at Hacienda Salado where the 17 prisoners who drew black beans from a jar were executed by a firing squad. There are nice twists, enjoyable main characters, and rich local color. But will Alexandre achieve his goals?

Fans of historical fiction will love this one.

Storybook Ending

Macdonald, Moira | Dutton (320 pp.)

$29.00 | May 27, 2025 | 9780593851296

An anonymous note left in a used book creates a surprising love triangle in Seattle. April knows she’s become a bit too isolated while working remotely for an online real estate company. Her only social interactions come from awkward blind dates and apologetic texts from busy friends who have left her behind. Perhaps it’s this loneliness that causes her to take drastic, romantic action. She leaves an anonymous note in a book she sells to local bookstore Read the Room—it’s meant for the eyes of the cute flannel-wearing man who works at the used-book counter. But that cute employee, Westley, doesn’t see the note before putting the book—Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz—on the shelf. Instead, it’s found by widowed mother Laura, who thinks it’s Westley’s way of covertly communicating with her, and she responds by leaving a note in a copy of The Hunger Games, as April instructed in her original letter. Westley, meanwhile, has no idea why women are staring at him from the young adult section—he’s focused on a movie that’s filming at Read the Room. As April and Laura unwittingly leave each other letters, the many characters in the bookstore’s orbit get to know each other and unlikely connections form. In her debut novel, Seattle Times arts critic Macdonald writes her own love letter to bookstores, and the community and comfort they can provide. The writing has the feel of a British rom-com, despite the Seattle setting, which gives the story a cozy

air. Although there are romances brewing, the story is ultimately about the courage it takes to go after the life you want. A perfectly charming read for devotees of the written word and anyone who’s ever hoped to find love in a bookstore.

Sympathy for Wild Girls

McGhee, Demree | Feminist Press (150 pp.) $17.95 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781558613386

Queer Black women strike out into the world on their own terms. While their histories and points of view differ, McGhee’s women are linked by how uncomfortable they feel in their bodies, how uncomfortably they move in the space in which they’re expected to exist. One woman must load her pockets with rocks to keep from floating away after a traumatic life event, while another works to shed the weight she’s gained since her days as a student athlete. The protagonists struggle with intimate connections, grief, self-acceptance, hope, faith, restlessness, transformation, and desire. A school nurse develops an inappropriate relationship with a student—no, not like that. The “how” is as alarming as it is profound. Other stories feature prophets and petty thieves. Some are tethered to our modern world of big-box stores and social media influencers, while others feel out of time, fablelike. Most take place in California. Readers looking for traditional short stories might find themselves vexed. The pieces aren’t incomplete, but rather fragmented. Sure, a vase can be beautiful, but the broken shards of glass that remain intact after it falls from a table or is hurled against a wall can be even more enticing to look at and touch. There is ample craft here, cunning description as well as an urgent, evocative voice that demands attention. McGhee harnesses the magic of language and narrative and character into a new kind of vessel to hold what it feels like to be young and Black and queer. Not every story succeeds, but each one takes

unexpected risks. McGhee has a unique vision with the chops to bring it to life. Every woman she’s created here is in danger and dangerously powerful in her own way, if she can figure out how. A daring debut collection of enigmatic short stories.

The Red House

Morris, Mary | Doubleday (304 pp.)

$28.00 | May 13, 2025 | 9780385544986

Why did Laura Smith’s mother, Viola Umberto Wilkins, vanish from her 12-yearold daughter’s life? Thirty years later, in search of an explanation, Laura begins to uncover Viola’s complicated, tragic past. It’s more about the journey than the arrival in Morris’ latest, a somber account of three generations of women, with a focus on abandonment. Laura has spent decades wondering about various explanations for her mother’s disappearance and dealing with the associated pain of unknowing. Now, at 42—the same age Viola was when she left—and for vague reasons, she sets about tracing her mother’s history, traveling to Brindisi, Italy, where the family lived till Laura was 6, when they moved to New Jersey. The Italian Viola had met Laura’s father, a U.S. serviceman, near Naples during World War II, and Laura believed that was where Viola’s roots were. But in Italy, she is able to locate a building called the Red House, the repeated subject of Viola’s paintings, and this discovery, plus conversations with an old man, Tommaso Bassano, reveal startling facts. Viola was Jewish—not Catholic, as Laura thought—and she, her parents, and brother Rudy were displaced from Turin and imprisoned with other Jews at the Red House in 1942, swept up in the violent antisemitic segregation of the era. Now the narrative switches—sometimes confusingly—between Viola’s and Laura’s perspectives. Viola catches the eye of young Italian soldier Tommaso, who loves her and tries to help the starving Jews. As the novel’s historical dimension

intensifies, embracing Viola’s parents’ stories, too, its mood darkens and it becomes an ever-harsher consideration of survival. Laura’s pilgrimage to Italy helps her heal and understand her mother better, but other facets of the story remain unresolved. It’s a melancholy spiral of a narrative, at times slack and repetitive and with loose ends, but the unusual historical aspect lends gravitas.

A solemn, sometimes-sketchy family excavation.

The Darling of Blackrock Desert: Three Novellas Set in the West

Newman, Laura | Delphinium (258 pp.)

$28.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9781953002532

Across three novellas and more than 40 years, families come together and fall apart. In the title novella, set in 1964 Nevada, Julia—a young Black woman—stops for a hitchhiker and her life is irreversibly changed. The hitchhiker’s name is Howi, and he’s a Native American man who works at a gypsum mine. They become lovers, although Julia doesn’t envision a life with him until she gets pregnant and has to give up her big-city dreams. Their lives are further complicated when their baby, Nia, is born with a disability after Julia is given thalidomide during her pregnancy. Nia’s complicated existence brings her family and friends together, but they suffer, too—when Nia dies in an accident, her parents can’t bear the pain. In “City of Angels,” Lenny Henri, a lonely Vietnam veteran suffering from PTSD with “skin something less than American Standard,” befriends Simone Bouchard, a budding artist with “skin the color of bone.” The two meet at the Los Angeles Central Library, and their friendship is primarily tethered to the shared space; when the library burns down, they both fear they won’t meet again. In “The Saints of Death Valley,” hazel-eyed Sister Francine leaves her Carmelite convent in order to adopt a

red-haired baby left on the doorstep. She raises the baby, named Grace, but cannot protect her from the pressures and cruelties of real life—sex, drugs, pregnancy, abortion. Lost and seeking her path, Grace stumbles upon a bohemian family in Death Valley who takes her in, though the family struggles to maintain its center. Newman’s prose is witty, at times lyrical and haunting, although it can border on the overly precious. The plots of her novellas are quite gripping, though it’s easy to predict the downfalls, and ultimate triumphs, of their characters. Newman attempts to cover too much ground in too little space—each piece could well be its own novel—giving some of her less central characters half-lives.

An ambitious although not fully realized collection.

The Colony

Norlin, Annika | Trans. by Alice E. Olsson Europa Editions (464 pp.) | $19.00 paper March 25, 2025 | 9798889660828

An outsider’s view of a remote forest colony changes everyone’s lives in this debut novel from Swedish author Norlin.

Emelie is burned out from her life as a journalist in the city. Unable to leave the house for a time, she eventually drives to the country and begins camping, nature soothing her fractured state. Out in the woods, she notices an odd group of people who seem to live there. After she has a run-in with Låke, a teenager who’s the youngest in the group, they begin an odd sort of friendship, and she finds herself being drawn into the fold. Each of the seven colony members is escaping from something in the outside world and each has a story that drives them, from Sara, the queen bee, to Aagny, who has trouble rejoining society after a stint in prison, and Sagne, Låke’s mother, whose lack of interest in humanity only increases after she’s assaulted. But with a new person

joining them for the first time in years, the cracks begin to show; Emelie’s questions and observations poke at insecurities that have been slowly forming in the fabric of their society since it was created. Norlin has a real sense for both character and worldbuilding, each member of the colony incredibly distinct and fleshed out, their reasons for escaping from the world intriguing and clear. The novel jumps among time periods and points of view, with each member’s voice becoming familiar, their personality more developed. The parts told from the perspective of Låke, who’s been raised in the colony without ever going to school, are especially evocative. Norlin’s writing (as translated by Olsson) is clever and incisive, poking fun at modern society and the woodland community in equal measure. The colony’s strengths are great but so are its weaknesses. Ultimately, this is a treatise on humanity, on the things people need and the power and frailty of human connection. This is a novel that will stick with you.

A smart and moving look at society, nature, and community.

Kirkus Star

The Reluctant Sheriff

Offutt, Chris | Grove (288 pp.) | $27.00 March 25, 2025 | 9780802164032

T he fourth in Offutt’s Mick Hardin series is another quick-paced, quick-witted, twisty winner. The draftee lawman is of course former Army investigator Mick Hardin, his hopes for rural Kentucky retirement thwarted again: He’s pressed into service while his sister, the sheriff, recovers from a gunshot wound. His first call (gloriously) is a domestic incident that takes him to a backyard yurt where he tries a tarotreader’s kombucha and dispenses justice with a side of horse sense. Then a bar owner whose tavern sits astride the boundary between the town of Rocksalt

Kirkus Star

and county jurisdiction is murdered, shot three times. It seems that Mick has dodged this one: The corpse sprawls in the parking lot, which lies inside the town line, and he works for the county. But he’s drawn in when his ex-wife, irresistible still despite everything, asks him to intervene; the accused, who argued with the bar owner hours earlier, is the man she left Mick for—and now father to her two kids. Alongside the quickly proliferating complications of that case and a second double killing that seems related, Offutt intersperses chapters catching up with ex-deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver, whom Mick has sent into secret exile on Corsica to recover from the trauma that ended the previous book, Code of the Hills (2023). With aid from a mysterious and dangerous ally of Mick’s, the unworldly Kentucky-boy expat adjusts to life in foreign climes—and finds that Corsica and the Appalachian hills have more in common than he’d have guessed. The book’s final quarter has too much violent, standard mayhem, but for the most part this novel is another propulsive delight, with indelible characters, crisp dialogue, and Offutt’s usual masterful command of his setting and of the folkways and thinking of the people who live there. More delightful, sun-dappled Kentucky noir.

Kirkus Star

Tilt: A Novel

Pattee, Emma | Marysue Rucci Books (240 pp.) $27.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9781668055472

On the cusp of motherhood, a woman faces peril. Annie is 37 weeks pregnant, shopping for a crib at IKEA, when suddenly she feels a terrible jolt, “a wave underneath me,” she thinks, “lifting me up.” An earthquake has hit Portland. In her assured debut novel, Pattee follows Annie through a horrific day: With wreckage all around her, she is intent on making her way to find her husband. She has miles to walk, it’s hot, she’s hungry and

thirsty and afraid. She’s alone, and yet not alone, because she’s carrying a child, her precious Bean. “How did we get here, Bean?,” she asks. “You and me, IKEA, Monday morning, AISLE 8, BIN 31, hand on metal rack, eyes wide in fear, body tensed like a firecracker about to explode?” As she trudges across devastating landscapes—collapsed houses, bridges, and schools; supermarkets and convenience stores overrun by looters; bodies of the wounded and dead—Annie answers that question by beginning 17 years earlier, when she fell in love with Bean’s father, Dom, and they set out together to fulfill their dreams of becoming stars: she, a playwright; he, an actor. But Annie gave up writing, and Dom, while tirelessly auditioning, works at a cafe. Annie worries, as she walks, about their lack of money “to have a baby, much less feed a baby, much less house a baby, much less pay somebody to watch said baby.” She worries that they’ll never be able to afford a home of their own, with real estate prices ballooning. She worries about her ability for mothering, for being a “lifelong cheerleader” for her husband, and about realizing their dashed dreams. Recounting Annie’s precarious journey across the city and into her past, Pattee reveals that the quake has upended more than the earth.

A captivating novel.

Fifteen Wild Decembers

Powell, Karen | Europa Editions (288 pp.)

$18.00 paper | April 1, 2025 | 9798889661092

A fictional dive into the tragic yet productive lives of the three Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell. The title comes from a line in one of Emily’s poems, and British author Powell attempts throughout to capture Emily’s gothic lyricism along with her viewpoint of the Brontës’ relationships with each other and the Victorian world they inhabited. Emily begins her narration in 1842 when she arrives to join her older sisters—Maria, 10; Elizabeth, 9; Charlotte; 8—at Cowan Bridge, the

model for the dismal boarding school where Jane Eyre spends her early years. Before long, Maria and Elizabeth have died from contagions they catch at the school. Death dominates this book. No one lives long, and the deaths are frequently gruesome. The surviving sisters come home to their father’s parsonage among the Yorkshire moors. There, they share with Branwell and youngest sister Anne a childhood strictly religious yet rich in ways to grow their imagination. Sibling rivalry works in tandem with sibling devotion from childhood through adulthood. Anne is the quiet, steady observer whose chance for a normal bourgeois life ends with the early death of her conventional suitor. Always-hungry Charlotte is aggressive and ambitious but somewhat sociable. Her authorial success is touted here mainly for its financial, not literary, value. Introvert Emily, who rarely talks outside the family circle, is the family’s creative genius and iconoclastic thinker, and Branwell’s early promise of brilliance is derailed by his emotional imbalance. Powell’s Emily bases the character of Heathcliff not on Branwell, but on a darkly handsome, crudely masculine farmer she first encounters as a boy on the moor, then as a man in increasingly suggestive scenes in which they never directly interact. To Emily, happiness is an elusive, even impossible option. Even her imaginative play offers more solace than joy.

Even fans of the Brontës’ wonderful novels won’t find much to cheer for in Powell’s depressing account.

The Other Lata

Ramisetti, Kirthana | Grand Central Publishing (272 pp.) | $18.99 paper April 1, 2025 | 9781538770993

When a wannabe socialite experiences a case of mistaken identity, she’s thrust into a world of glamour, riches, and lies.

Lata Murthy of New Canaan, Connecticut, wouldn’t describe her life as glamorous.

It’s 2013, and at 33, Lata is thousands of dollars in credit card debt, living paycheck to paycheck, and barely scraping by with a gig as a “content specialist” for a trivia company. Lately, her only source of entertainment comes from her email address (latamurthy@ gmail.com), where she’s been accidentally receiving messages meant for “thelatamurthy@gmail.com.” The Other Lata Murthy is a Mumbai-born heiress who’s constantly peppered with invites to the latest art exhibitions, galas, and fundraisers. Not only is the Other Lata fabulously popular, she’s downright mysterious—there isn’t a single photo of her online. And if no one knows what her doppelgänger looks like, how bad would it be if Lata attended one of these events? Technically, the invitations are in her name! But after one outing impersonating the Other Lata—and realizing how easy it is to perpetuate the lie—Lata can’t help but test the boundaries of her alter ego. Before long, Lata has dubbed herself “Downtown Lata” and befriended enough models and sexy fashion designers that she starts to earn her own invitations and street cred. Sure, she has to shoplift here and there to keep up her ruse, but after a few months of living as Downtown Lata, she starts to believe she’ll never be discovered. Then, when the Other Lata returns to claim what’s rightfully hers, the persona Lata has carefully crafted threatens to come crumbling down. Ramisetti’s novel is part fairytale, part horror story, deftly weaving a tale of two Latas and their desperation for relevancy. Lata is a flawed yet determined heroine, reminiscent of Sophie Kinsella’s Rebecca Bloomwood or Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek, and readers will be eager to unravel the mystery of the Other Lata and discover the underbelly of her socialite circles.

A fun high-society thriller.

Terrestrial History

Reed, Joe Mungo | Norton (272 pp.) $29.99 | April 8, 2025 | 9781324079378

Four generations of Scots labor— on Earth and Mars—to save humanity from the climate crisis. It’s 2025, and Hannah, a frustrated young fusion scientist vacationing in Scotland’s Western Isles, is visited by a disfigured young man who was born in a colony on Mars and has come back from the future to help her perfect fusion technology in time to save Earth from runaway climate change and civilizational collapse. Now it’s the 2070s and Hannah’s son, Andrew, has become one of Scotland’s leading political figures by fighting against billionaire futurists and arguing that society has “the means to save ourselves… if we work together.” Yet his daughter, Kenzie, is building on her dead grandmother’s unfinished research to construct a fusion reactor for the Tevat Corporation, which has given up on the planet and intends to evacuate its Shareholders (wealthy investors, corrupt politicians, and useful scientists like Kenzie) to Mars. Now it’s 2103 and Kenzie’s son, Roban, who lives with the painful physical disabilities experienced by the first generation of humans born in the Corporation’s frighteningly totalitarian Colony, is learning to function with the assistance of a mechanical exoskeleton—and to gradually distrust the Corporation’s vision for a better future. Can Kenzie build the reactor her grandmother first theorized? Can Andrew convince his daughter to labor toward a better future on Earth rather than off it? Can Andrew’s political career survive Kenzie’s plans to abandon Earth and its people? Can Roban find a way to communicate his mother’s fusion discoveries to his long-dead grandmother before it’s too late? Is “the alteration of the past by the future” even possible? Dancing between decades, characters, and planets, Reed’s latest may lack some of the lyrical beauty that marked his previous two books, but it succeeds in

brilliantly dramatizing some of the great questions of our time. Can we technologize our way out of the climate crisis or should we instead focus our energies on collaboratively solving the problem with the tools we have? Is Earth our only viable planetary home or can we adequately replicate its richness elsewhere? If the latter, who will get to go? And what fate awaits those left behind? And is the future worth living for those who manage to leave?

A bleak, timely, and painstakingly imagined exploration of a future that none of us want.

Kirkus Star

Endling

Reva, Maria | Doubleday (352 pp.) $28.00 | June 3, 2025 | 9780385545310

What begins as a wacky picaresque involving snail conservation, a missing mother, and an RV full of kidnapped Western bachelors shatters into a metafictional reckoning with the war in Ukraine. An endling is the last known member of a species before it becomes extinct, and Reva’s debut novel is both about one such creature—a charming left-coiling snail named Lefty—and meant to embody the term itself, as a glimpse of a lost world. Or, as the author’s agent asks her at one of the first autofictional asides in the narrative, “Wasn’t your novel originally going to be about a marriage agency in Ukraine?”

Well, it probably was. And it was also going to be about snails. The three central characters are 18-year-old Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, who work for a Ukrainian “romance tour” outfit, and Yeva, a scientist dedicated to saving and preserving snail species in her mobile lab (a beat-up RV), though she also moonlights at the bridal agency when she needs cash. The three come together when the sisters devise a plot they hope will result in the return of their missing mother, a famous activist who plotted stunts meant to derail the agency

For more by Joe Mungo Reed, visit Kirkus online.

and its industry. The plot involves kidnapping a dozen men from the latest group of wife-seekers and holding them in Yeva’s RV. This plan, and the novel containing it, are themselves derailed by the Russian invasion of 2022. This results in a hasty wrap-up of the narrative early in its second hundred pages, followed by back matter and what turns out to be a rather premature acknowledgments section. After a few blank pages, the novel resumes and continues on both fictional and metafictional trajectories, including grant applications in which Reva seeks support for continuing her work and a resumption of the main storyline in the midst of war. Her success at keeping that storyline alive, full of suspense and humor, while never letting go of what is really happening in the lives of Ukrainian people at home and abroad, is what earns this book comparisons to Percival Everett and George Saunders, though it is also entirely unique. A noteworthy literary achievement and also a good story, sure to be widely discussed and enjoyed.

Kirkus Star

The Missing Kidney: And Other Stories

Rosaler, Maxine | Delphinium | $27.00 May 13, 2025 | 9781953002556

Fourteen stories about the things we do for love, set in New York of the 1970s and ’80s. Though her debut novel-instories, Queen for a Day (2018), was well reviewed, Rosaler’s work will probably be new to most readers. Yet fans of Lorrie Moore, Lucia Berlin, Marian Thurm, and Grace Paley will quickly notice that those authors have a sister in this whimsical and wise chronicle of relationships between the sexes. In “Hospitality,” a young woman who is about to become entangled with a much older and somewhat tedious man explains her situation: “My life, like a bagel, had no center.” Another character, in “Happiness,” is a dancer in the East

Village, “whose face often wore a faraway smile that seemed to say she was sharing a private joke with God.” In the title story, our hapless heroine can’t seem to nail her job search: “Once, I was so flustered, I forgot to put paper in the typewriter, and I typed my thirty-five words a minute onto a bewildered, endlessly revolving black cylinder.” The typewriter, the pink pad hanging next to the fridge for messages, and the lack of cellphones mark these stories with period ambience, but the situations they illuminate are timeless. In a favorite, “Wheatberries,” the narrator comes home to find her husband has broken and thrown away a storage jar. “Reaching into the garbage, I retrieved the remnants of the jar and dumped what was left of the wheatberries onto the table, prepared to get to work salvaging as many pieces of grain as possible, because, in my own little way, I have always been a defender of the defenseless, a champion of lost causes, determined to set every wrong right.” When the husband comes in and tells her she’s insane, she says, “Sometimes I think you don’t love me anymore.” Oh no, he counters, “I love you. I love you. Just because I hate you doesn’t mean I don’t love you. Let’s just forget it.” That’s marriage for you, right? Chef’s kiss, as they say nowadays.

The best short story writer you’ve never heard of.

Kirkus Star

All the Mothers

Ruta, Domenica | Random House (304 pp.)

$30.00 | May 6, 2025 | 9780593734056

A single mother finds community in the most unexpected places. Ruta’s new novel follows Sandy Walsh, a New York City 30-something fresh out of a painful relationship and grieving her mother’s death, as she meets Justin Murray, a musician, whom she likes but fears she may never love. Despite encouragement from her friends, she’s

unsure if she should stay with him— and then she becomes pregnant. Once she decides to keep the baby, she notices that her friends—many of whom are married and had been trying to get pregnant for years—are not only unsupportive, but downright cruel. Ruta writes beautifully about Sandy’s decision to have her daughter, Rosie, which was made with equal parts grief and love: “the love of two invisible people, someone who wasn’t there anymore, and someone who wasn’t there yet.” Between Justin’s oscillating support and her own father’s lack of interest in her daughter, Sandy struggles to adjust not only to motherhood, but to a type of motherhood she never imagined. After a slip from Tara, Justin’s standoffish mother, Sandy—a masterful social media sleuth—discovers that Justin has another child, 8-year-old Ashley. Justin’s ex Stephanie, who had Ash when she was 18, lives with her parents on Staten Island while she gets her Ph.D. in psychology. Despite what Justin and Tara say about Stephanie—she’s “a nightmare. A witch. She’d make our lives hell if we let her”—Sandy reaches out to her, and the two mothers decide to meet so their children can get to know each other, discovering they have far more in common with each other than with Justin. Eventually, they move in together with their children, and begin to create a relationship, family, and life that defies categorization. Though the novel is densely plotted, the real marvel is the beautifully drawn characters, who are realized with tremendous depth. Ruta skillfully sketches the complexities and struggles of single motherhood, especially as it relates to financial precarity and the importance of cultivating joy and community. A perfectly charming and complex ode to mothers and found families.

For more by Domenica Ruta, visit Kirkus online.

This Is a Love Story

Soffer, Jessica | Dutton (304 pp.) | $29.00 February 4, 2025 | 9780593851265

Central Park is a touchstone for the four New Yorkers whose perspectives shape this novel.

Jane is a wildly successful visual artist; her husband, Abe, is an equally successful poet and fiction writer. They have raised a son, Max, in a Manhattan brownstone. As the novel opens, Jane is undergoing chemotherapy, and readers will come to learn that she was undone by postpartum depression; that the adult Max isn’t at all like his parents; and that during a bad patch, Abe took a risk that could have capsized his marriage. The book’s roving point of view finds Abe, Jane, Max, and a fourth key character revisiting pivotal moments in their lives, during which Central Park featured prominently; in one of Abe’s chapters, which are addressed to Jane, he prompts, “You remember we were walking by the Ladies Pavilion in the Park when you said that you could not be with someone who would not put their art first.” Scattered throughout the novel are omnisciently narrated chapters that pay homage to the park—”a beating heart, an adagio, a dreamy parenthesis”—and its denizens, many lovestruck or lovelorn. The book is beautifully if unremittingly observed, which at times gives it the feel of an extended prose poem, and Abe’s narrative strands in particular can read like freely associated, strung-together vignettes. Ultimately, Soffer’s unimpeachable sentences aren’t enough to carry an unremarkable story with familiar plot points. (And surely at least one of the novel’s two artists would have suffered a professional disappointment over the years?) Romantics and poetry lovers may find their bliss here, but readers looking for a novel with a compelling storyline may emerge dissatisfied. The title is half right: There’s lots of love here, but there’s not much story.

Passing Through a Prairie Country

Staples, Dennis E. | Counterpoint (272 pp.)

$27.00 | March 18, 2025 | 9781640096875

From Ojibwe writer Staples, a hybrid of Native American mysticism and gothic paranormal horror. Since it was built decades ago on the Languille Lake reservation, the Hidden Atlantis Lake Resort has been haunted by a malevolent entity locals know, whisperingly, as the sandman, and by the ghosts, living and dead, whom he’s sapped of their energies and robbed of their lives. These displaced souls shuffle about in the clock-free, no-cameras-allowed limbo of the casino and its surroundings, unable to move on. Enter Marion Lafournier, a young Ojibwe from the Bullhead clan who, fleeing a romantic disappointment, stops in for a bit of pain-numbing gambling. The susceptible Marion escapes only because his cousin Alana Bullhead, an employee who has the “sevenfire sight” and is thus attuned to the sandman and his predations, intervenes at the last second. Afterward Alana urges Marion, who’s shown incipient signs of being able to navigate the spirit world of their ancestors, to help her battle this false spirit. Meanwhile, Glenn Nielan, an aspiring documentary filmmaker, arrives at the resort to record this beautiful place’s essence, and also to do a bit of low-stakes gambling and relish the freedom that comes from being newly out of the closet—only to yield quickly to the state of lotus-eating uncaring that the sandman uses to entrap his victims. The sandman proves a much more formidable and resourceful adversary than Alana and Marion suspected and, ultimately, unable to trust what they see and hear, they have to take desperate, self-imperiling measures. The result is a shape-shifting, time-shifting, metaphor-shifting fever dream of a conclusion.

Often chaotic and murky, but the suspense builds to a satisfying end.

Kirkus Star

So Far Gone

Walter, Jess | Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.)

$30.00 | June 10, 2025 | 9780062868145

A hermit comes out of the woods to save his family—and see if life in the world is worth living again. The wild energy of Walter’s latest book is encapsulated in an exchange between former journalist Rhys Kinnick and a manic ex-cop name Chuck he’s connected with when his grandchildren are kidnapped out of his care: “Dude! Let’s do this!” Young Leah and Asher were delivered to Rhys’ ramshackle pile in the woods north of Spokane by a neighbor per the instructions of their mother, who needed a little break from her life. The thing is, Rhys hasn’t seen the kids in so long he doesn’t recognize them at first. He’s been living off the grid and out of touch ever since he punched his son-in-law in the face at Thanksgiving dinner in 2016. When the kids are almost immediately nabbed by goons connected with said son-in-law, Rhys gets help from a variety of partners: Lucy, an old flame from the newspaper; Chuck, who’s her old flame; and a Native American friend named Brian. Two out of three of these are packing heat, and several showdowns ensue, plus a high-spirited visit to a drug-positive electronica festival in the Canadian woods. The characters are created with loving care, the plot with reckless glee; Walter seems as fed up with various aspects of modern life as the smartphone-hating Rhys, and gives his version of the modern Northwest a distinctly Old West vibrational overlay. Things get really serious toward the end in a way we might not be totally prepared for, and doesn’t feel absolutely necessary, but perhaps it’s Walters’ way of saying the danger is real.

Walter is a beacon of wit, decency, and style.

BEST OF THE CENTURY

A Little Life

By Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

While a number of books could plausibly compete for the title of Saddest American Novel Ever Written, it’s unlikely that any of them could top Hanya Yanagihara’s

A Little Life, which is still making readers weep a decade later. The novel follows three decades in the life of a group of college friends in New York, centered around Jude, a disabled man who has endured unimaginable trauma in his past. To call it emotionally wrenching would be a severe understatement.

Critics (mostly) fell hard for the novel, including one from Kirkus, who wrote in a starred review, “The phrase ‘tour de force’ could have been invented for this

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

audacious novel.” The book won the second Kirkus Prize for fiction and made shortlists for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award.

A Little Life is a gay-themed novel that, as Garth Greenwell wrote in the Atlantic, “[avoids] the conventions of the coming-out narrative or the AIDS novel.” It also dove headlong into the theme of trauma with an intensity uncommon in other bestsellers of the time. Not everyone applauded the paces Yanagihara put her characters through, with some accusing her of writing “trauma porn.”

The novel’s most lasting legacy might be its unflinching look at suffering: It gave readers and authors permission to examine intense pain in their own lives, with an emotional honesty and rawness that still resonates. It endures because it examines the ways we endure— until we don’t. —M.S.

Hanya Yanagihara

The Underground Railroad

By Colson Whitehead (2016)

By the time Colson Whitehead published the novel that made him a literary superstar in 2016, he already had a reputation for being both brilliant and unpredictable. His three previous books were Sag Harbor, a coming-of-age tale; Zone One, a zombie novel; and The Noble Hustle, a nonfiction book about poker. All those books, and the three novels that preceded them, garnered critical acclaim. But nothing could prepare the literary world for The Underground Railroad, which follows an enslaved young woman in 19th-century Georgia as she makes her escape via the titular railroad—here an actual railroad, not a metaphorical one.

Oprah Winfrey selected the novel for her book club, saying it “helped [her] to better understand the past, as well as where we are as a people today.” The reviews were ecstatic,

For a review of the book, visit

and the novel would go on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

The Underground Railroad upped the ante for imaginative literary fiction that crosses genres, leading publishers to take chances on other novels that refused to play by the rules. And it made Whitehead, already considered one of America’s best Generation X authors, one of the leading U.S. writers of any age. Three years later, when he published the Kirkus Prize–winning The Nickel Boys, he would become one of the rare authors featured on the cover of Time magazine, with the headline “America’s Storyteller.”

But by that time, Whitehead had already changed American literature, proving that when it comes to the nation’s history, it was still possible to say something new—and that our past is, sadly, never really over.—M.S.

Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Kirkus online.

Colson Whitehead

A pregnant restaurateur wrangles hungry patrons—and dead bodies.

SCONE COLD DEAD

Shot Clock

Bourelle, Andrew | Severn House (304 pp.)

$29.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781448315307

A former basketball player is yanked back into the game in an unexpected and remarkably suspenseful way. Caitlin Glass never made it from Arizona State to the pros, but her first love, Garrett Streeter, did, joining Elijah Carter as one of the stars of the Cincinnati Sabertooths. That’s exactly why he needs help from Caitlin, who’s now a deputy in nearby Hill Haven, Ohio. Garrett’s kid brother, Jake, has been kidnapped by unidentified gamblers who threaten to kill him unless Garrett manages to fix the Sabertooths’ playoff games against the Las Vegas Lightning—by making sure that they win, or lose, or beat or don’t beat the point spread, depending on which game it is. Can his old flame find and rescue Jake without tipping off the police? No, she says, thinking of her husband and son and Garrett’s supermodel girlfriend, but of course you know she’ll change her mind. Crosscutting relentlessly between the games Garrett is supposed to fix and Caitlin’s one-step-forward investigations, which quickly narrow her suspect list to brothel owner Silas Bennett and Russian gangster Alexei Maxim, Bourelle keeps the action popping on and off the court. As Caitlin muses that “life was mostly looking at the clock and knowing you were running out of time,” Garrett races through the first six games of the playoffs, each of them spiked with

different surprises. But the biggest surprises will have to wait for (spoiler alert) that seventh game.

A ruthlessly stripped-down novel bound to lure in both basketball fans and those who’d never watch a game.

A Fashionably French Murder

Cambridge, Colleen | Kensington (272 pp.) $27.00 | April 29, 2025 | 9781496751195

In her third American in Paris adventure, set in 1950, Julia Child’s friend Tabitha Knight finds her sixth and seventh bodies. As soon as Tabitha realizes she’s left one of her gloves behind in Maison Lannet, the lower-budget fashion studio Christian Dior’s protégé RoseMarie Lannet has established, seasoned fans will know what to expect when she and Julia return: the corpse of Madame Lannet, strangled with a piece of designer lace. When the sûreté inspector in charge of the investigation is called home by a family emergency and replaced by the familiar Inspecteur Étienne Merveille, everything seems as comfy as can be, at least until Tabitha stumbles on the body of Gabrielle Pineau, Madame Lannet’s vendeuse and amoreuse, stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. In the meantime, Tabitha lands the first case she’s actually asked to take on: There’s been a burglary at the shoe boutique Godot & Block, whose owner suspects his employee Mathilde Pillon’s boyfriend, and Mathilde’s sister begs Tabitha to clear his name. Once a very cursory investigation reveals a much more likely suspect, rival

shoemaker Philippe Wathelet, the only mysteries that remain are whether and how Cambridge intends to tie the two cases together, what connection they can possibly have to the collaborationists who fed the occupying Nazis information during the war, and what Tabitha will do about the sudden romantic attraction she feels toward Inspecteur Merveille. Forget the forgettable plot and savor the loving descriptions of French cuisine and couture.

Scone Cold Dead

Day, Maddie | Kensington (320 pp.) | $8.99 paper | April 1, 2025 | 9781496742285

A pregnant restaurateur wrangles hungry patrons, staffing shortages, family secrets, and dead bodies. Robbie Jordan is on the cusp of motherhood, and she and her husband, Abe O’Neill, couldn’t be happier. Business is buzzing at Pans ’N Pancakes, Robbie’s diner. But as she and her staff of two, Danna Beedle and Turner Rao, work hard to furnish the citizens of South Lick, Indiana, with a steady stream of delicious daily specials, Robbie can’t help noticing that she isn’t able to focus on business the way she used to. Maybe it’s “pregnancy brain” that allows her to leave a stiff-moving customer to his own devices, even when he introduces himself to her as Ivan Sheluk and asks whether she’s related to Adele Jordan before ordering a grilled cheese and chocolate milk. Robbie’s supplier of baked goods, Hope Morris, seems to know Ivan. So does South Lick Mayor Corrine Beedle, Danna’s mother. But by the time Robbie gets to talk to her Aunt Adele about it, Ivan’s been found dead in Adele’s sheep field. Adele turns out to have enough history with the man to make her a likely suspect, but Robbie is too absorbed by her impending delivery, as well as Danna and Turner’s intermittent unavailability for

work, to put much energy into helping her aunt. Braxton-Hicks contractions and a never-ending search for waitstaff compete with sleuthing for room in Robbie’s head. In the end, finding a new cook seems just as important as finding out how Ivan died. Lots of down-home drama but no real mystery.

A Fatal Necessity

Eccles, Marjorie | Severn House (288 pp.)

$29.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781448316007

As whispers of war fill the air in 1935 England, certain members of the upper class remain smitten with the Nazi regime. Judge Eliot Waring drops a bombshell on his daughter Sophy: Her stepmother, Emilie, has left him for the architect planning their new home. Sophy spills the beans to her sister, Gizi, who’s her complete opposite: Sophy is practical, while Gizi is chasing aristocratic men alongside her friend Dee Malpas. Dee’s dad might be in trade and Jewish, but he’s also wealthy, and that money has gained her a new fiancé. Sophy’s older brother, Sam, who lives in Berlin, and their cousin, Alexei, a clever teen who lives with them, still need to be told about Emilie’s desertion. But the day after Dee’s engagement party at Falquonroy, her family’s home, it becomes clear that Emilie isn’t going anywhere, since her dog has found her dead body on the spot where the Warings’ new house was supposed to be built. DCI Herbert Reardon’s team includes London-based DS Tom Jago, who’s in the area quietly investigating Oswald Mosley’s fascist followers. The architect denies any plans to run off with Emilie, and though the judge might have enemies from his years on the bench, why would someone kill his departing wife? Reardon and Jago hope that a packet of photos found in Emilie’s handbag—which had gone missing but then turned up at

Falquonroy—will help illuminate her mysterious past. When Sam arrives home, having quit his job in Germany over the Nazi threat, he recognizes Jago as a friend from university days. Sophy and Jago, who start to develop more than just a working relationship, recognize that it may take all their combined knowledge to find a killer. The ambience of a Golden Age detective story with a thrilling twist of espionage.

A Spirited Blend

Elliott, Lauren | Kensington (288 pp.) $27.00 | March 25, 2025 | 9781496735225

A California shopkeeper faces challenges practical, mystical, and criminal. Shayleigh Myers’ world hasn’t changed much over the past year. She still works hard to make Crystals & CuriosiTEAS the premier destination for herbal remedies in Bray Harbor despite stiff competition from Madam Malvina, the owner of Celestial Treasures and Teas. She still pines for raffish Liam Madigan, who rewards her affection by asking her advice about his amorous inclinations toward every other young woman in town. She still has daily conversations with her late mother, Irish clairvoyant Bridget Early. She still gets warnings from the blue amulet Bridget gave her, which she wears hidden under her shirt. And she still can’t help getting tangled up in every suspicious death that comes by. The latest victim is Cora Sutton, the wife of Bray Harbor’s mayor. Shay feels some responsibility for Cora’s fate because shortly before her death, Cora asked for a tea-leaf reading. Shay whitewashed some of the cards’ more dire predictions. Then, shortly after the reading ended, Shay had a vision of Cora lying in the middle of a fairy ring—which is exactly where her corpse would be found. Shay looks to her friends and neighbors and into the

world beyond in search of clues that might lead to Cora’s killer, but she finds little help until a chance remark points her in the right direction. The supernatural spin distinguishes this series from other shopkeeper cozies, and it’s otherwise a faithful prototype of the genre. Readers’ fondness for this series will depend almost entirely on their affinity for the otherworldly.

Death by Chocolate Pumpkin Muffin

Graves, Sarah | Kensington (320 pp.)

$27.00 | April 29, 2025 | 9781496744142

A Maine baker feels the heat when she investigates the murder of a celebrity. It’s not as if Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree—now Jake Sorenson, thanks to her recent marriage—doesn’t have a full plate already, with her adult children and their rowdy brood living in her home and her father and beloved stepmother stashed in the adjacent annex. There’s also the Chocolate Moose, the bakery she runs with her best friend, Ellie White, which needs constant infusions of cash to keep up with unexpected expenses. But Jake’s also got a nose for murder, and the latest one’s a doozy. At first, it looks as if Hank Rafferty, star of a home-repair reality show, may be the answer to Jake and Ellie’s prayers. Hank’s just moved into Stone House, a crumbling mansion he hopes to restore to its former glory, and he orders a ton of baked goods to feed his Hollywood friends. But the duo’s first foray into Stone House reveals an unidentified corpse in a nearby shed, and their second lands them smack in the middle of Hank’s murder. The police investigation focuses on members of their circle of friends: first Arlene Cunningham, a schoolmate of Ellie’s teenage daughter, Lee, and later on Dylan Hudson, a former state cop who’s been dating Eastport police Chief Lizzie Snow since forever. Graves offers a complex puzzle that devolves into an overlong

denouement, with plenty of peril and old-dark-house action to go along. For cozy fans who like a little spice in their muffins.

A Proposal To Die For

Harper, Molly | Berkley (352 pp.) | $19.00 paper | April 8, 2025 | 9780593817322

A spa sojourn fraught with danger brings unique opportunities to a proposal planner. Jessamine Bricker has a history of succeeding even in the worst of circumstances. When her teen mother opted out of raising her, Jess’ Nana Blanche “clipped coupons like a fiend” to pay her tuition at Wren Hill Day School for Young Ladies, where blue-collar Jess rubbed elbows with Nashville’s oldmoney princesses. Jess went on to nurture her upper-class connections at tony Harrow University, parlaying them into a three-year stint working for one of the city’s “most feared wedding planners.” Realizing that spoiled young women with more money than sense might crave more than a single day of indulgence, she opens Bricker Consultants, helping wealthy young men create over-the-top proposals to delight their prospective brides. Working with grooms-to-be when the real clients are, of course, the brides is a tricky business that Jess handles with exceptional finesse. Still, Trenton Tillard IV provides a special challenge. Trenton’s already proposed to Diana Helston, but without the spectacle the social media influencer feels her Helston LuxeGram brand deserves. So Diana calls in Jess to guide Trenton into a more appropriate “Will you…?” Diana spirits Jess away to Golden Ash spa for a week of yoga, facials, and proposal planning. Unfortunately, the getaway also includes weird lights in the woods, corpses, and a police investigation. The silver lining is Golden Ash chef Dean Osbourne and his wonderfully quirky family, who offer Jess a tantalizing

glimpse of life outside the perils of princess-pleasing.

Harper’s sharp ear for dialogue and ability to limn the most absurd situations rock her mystery debut.

Kirkus Star

Vice and Virtue

Klein, Libby | Kensington (320 pp.)

$27.00 | April 29, 2025 | 9781496748553

Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and murder in Northern Virginia. Layla Virtue’s life is a mess. She quit the police force after her whole team was killed when she arrived for an operation a little late and a little tipsy. Though she doesn’t remember getting drunk, she blames herself as much as her police friends blamed her. Now she’s living in a trailer park filled with eccentrics and ekes out a living singing and playing the guitar at parties. As she’s making out in an alley with her new neighbor, Nick Hayes—a hottie she just met while playing an anniversary-party gig—she hears a police radio, which sends her running. Then Nick’s black Lab shows up at her door. The childhood friends who betrayed Layla in order to cash in on the fame of her father, rock superstar Don Virtue, taught her not to trust anyone. So when she goes to AA meetings, she usually avoids other members. This time, though, in a life-altering decision, she accepts friendly overtures from three women. Arriving home from the meeting, she’s greeted by the Lab and her dad. Don, who seems spacier than ever, has a classic Aston Martin DB5 delivered to the trailer, gets Layla’s TV service and Wi-Fi turned on, and takes her on an epic food shopping trip, but she refuses his help in jumpstarting her career. Instead, she reluctantly agrees to play at a kids’ party whose other entertainer, sleazy clown Chuckles McCracken, ends up dead. Building on her

relationships with Nick and her new friends, Layla accepts help in investigating the clown’s death while desperately trying to keep her dad incognito. This perfect combination of mystery, humor, and romance explores serious social problems.

The Stolen Heart

Kurkov, Andrey | Trans. by Boris Dralyuk HarperVia (336 pp.) | $28.99

May 13, 2025 | 9780063352339

A novice investigator faces more crimes to solve in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution. This second novel in a series returns to Kyiv in 1919. Less dramatic and violent than its predecessor, The Silver Bone (2024), it portrays a still uncertain but maturing Samson Kolechko in the early days of his career as an improbable police investigator. This time, alongside defrocked priest Sergius Kholodny, he’s pursuing participants in the illegal trade of meat, a precious commodity in a city plagued by material deprivation, whose inhabitants subsist, at best, on pork fat and pies filled with animal intestines. Under constant pressure from his commander, Nayden, and shadowed by Abyazov, an emissary from the Cheka, the dreaded secret police, Samson pursues his investigation fitfully, guided mainly by information he receives from Moses Briskin, the suspected meat dealer who’s hauled from detention for periodic interrogations. A series of thefts from police offices also divert the investigators for a time. Samson finds himself in a deepening relationship with Nadezhda, employed by the Provincial Bureau of Statistics, who’s imperiled by her involvement in a census of railway workers. They seamlessly, and appealingly, make the transition from roommates to awkward romantic partners. Samson remains haunted by the memory of the Cossack attack that took his father’s life and cost him his right ear, retaining the severed body part in a tin of

A fledgling travel writer makes a splash in his first out-of-town assignment.

HOW

TO HAVE A KILLER TIME IN D.C.

sweets in his flat. For all the bleakness of its characters’ lives, the novel has some lighter moments, like the training session that instructs Samson and Kholodny on the proper technique for blowing cigarette smoke into the faces of interrogation subjects. Though the stakes here are not as high as in its predecessor, Samson is a companionable protagonist who manages to seem both part of the nascent political system and at a slight remove from it, and this story’s conclusion lays the groundwork for future adventures in his grim, but intriguing, world.

A welcome return to post-revolutionary Kyiv for another police procedural featuring fledgling investigator Samson Kolechko.

How To Have a Killer Time in D.C.

Lumley, Sam | Kensington (288 pp.)

$27.00 | April 29, 2025 | 9781496753557

A fledgling travel writer makes a splash in his first out-of-town assignment. Oliver Popp, a 24-year-old gay man with autism, has done so well writing short front-of-book pieces for the San Francisco–based Offbeat Traveler that his managing editor, Drea Hollingsworth, sends him to the nation’s capital to do a piece on the city’s attempts to revive its flagging tourist industry. After just under a year on the job, he worries whether he’s ready for such a big assignment. When he arrives in D.C., still reeling with anxiety over being away from his mother’s cozy home in Oakland, he’s further discombobulated

by meeting his photographer, Ricky Warner, a sexy guy who seems to have slept with half the men in D.C. Ricky urges Ollie to go further out of his comfort zone by ditching his itinerary. Instead of taking the Metro to a carefully curated list of tourist destinations, they go roaring around town in Ricky’s Corvair, inevitably getting into trouble. At a reception sponsored by Moonshot Motors, the pair take a spin in a self-driving car that hits and kills Elise Perkins, a software engineer Ollie happened to know from high school. Ricky convinces Ollie that, as journalists, they have a duty to investigate Elise’s death, and pretty soon, they’re breaking into hotel rooms in search of clues. That search vies touchingly with Ollie’s inner search into his complicated feelings toward Ricky in Lumley’s series debut.

The biggest mystery is why Ricky, who’s attractive enough to get the attention of pretty much any guy he wants, should pursue shy, awkward Ollie.

The heart wants what it wants. Let’s hope Lumley offers a follow-up once his heroes’ hearts decide.

No One Was Supposed To Die at This Wedding

Mack, Catherine | Minotaur (352 pp.)

$28.00 | May 13, 2025 | 9781250326133

A threatening note sends a mystery writer into investigative mode to protect those closest to her from danger. Clever thinking and a knack for storytelling make author Eleanor Dash the perfect fit for her job. Well, that and her ability to

write from her own life experience, which is quite a robust source of information. Sometimes too robust, as she finds while on the set of the movie adaptation of her novel When in Rome Eleanor is thrilled that her longtime best friend, Emma Wood, will be playing the film’s lead opposite big-time movie star Fred Winter. The Catalina Island setting is remote and romantic, the perfect place for Emma and Fred to fall in love for real. In the wake of a preproduction fling turned serious, the two are surprising their colleagues and friends with a post-wrap wedding. The filming of Eleanor’s first novel awakens all sorts of personal memories of roguish playboy Connor Smith, the simultaneous hero and villain of her Vacation Mysteries series and her real life. Though her boyfriend, Oliver Forrest, is otherwise secure, seeing Connor show up in the flesh as the filming ends is a bit of a trigger. A bigger trigger is a vague anonymous note announcing that “someone is going to die at the wedding.” Eleanor switches into problem-solving mode, but she can’t do much to prevent the murders from piling up. Can she find the killer, or will her nearest and dearest be at risk?

Sometimes smart writing can be too clever to be something more.

The Antique Hunter’s Death on the Red Sea

Miller, C.L. | Atria (304 pp.) | $27.99 February 18, 2025 | 9781668032039

An English antiques dealer and her aunt hunt for a stolen painting aboard a cruise to the Middle East. Fresh from their triumph solving the murder of antiques thief Giles Metcalf at Copthorn Manor, Freya Lockwood and her Aunt Carole are content to sit back, relax, and manage Crockleford Antiques, the establishment left to them by Arthur Crockleford, Carole’s friend and Freya’s mentor. But a call from

Betty Peters, a volunteer at the Lowestoft Maritime Museum, galvanizes the pair into action once more in response to the theft of a painting of a burning ship and the discovery of a well-dressed corpse behind the trash bins. The late Arthur’s journals lead Freya to believe that the painting may be hung on an antiques-themed cruise run by MVGoldstar traveling from Greece to Jordan. Freya was supposed to be one of the experts lecturing aboard the ship until she received an email saying she was no longer needed. She and Carole reach out to MVGoldstar to see if there’s any way they can get on the ship, only to find out that the company hadn’t canceled Freya’s gig—they had received a letter telling them Freya was no longer available. Now, Freya and Carole rush to Cyprus, catching the ship as it prepares to cross the Suez Canal. Onboard, they meet a cast of colorful characters—fellow lecturers Chris Prince and Mark Rushwell, special events manager Laura Scott, veteran traveler Patricia Henderson, curator Luke, beautiful art thief Bella, and handsome FBI agent Phil—each of them hiding a major secret. The cascade of reveals creates a hectic pace some may find thrilling and others exhausting. Too many climaxes don’t always lead to satisfaction.

Murder in the Grotto

Myers, Amy | Severn House (224 pp.)

$29.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781448309993

Two members of the Tanton Ghost and Phantom Society have met their end. One has been murdered. How about the other, long thought to have died a natural death?

Cara Shelley runs the Happy Huffkin cafe on the grounds of Tanton Towers. It’s a popular spot for people who’ve come to see the British stately home and grounds. Tanton owners Max Farren Pryde and his wife, Alison, invite Cara to the Towers to discuss a celebration

planned by Max’s Aunt Izzy, the Dowager Lady Lendale. The event will include a dinner in the gardens followed by an overnight stay for society members in the haunted grotto. What could possibly go wrong? The current leader of the society is Berowne Dyer, but 10 years ago, the leader was Izzy’s husband’s nephew, Thomas Chalcott, who supposedly died of a heart attack after a ghost hunt in the grotto. Although Cara’s told that everyone loves Berowne, she soon discovers that’s not entirely true. There’s a lot of jealousy among the club members over his leadership and ideas, and there are also some romantic entanglements. The dinner and overnight stay go pretty well, but in the morning, Berowne is found stabbed to death. That brings out DCI Andrew Mitchem, Cara’s sometime swain. He’s been away on police business in Europe, so they haven’t seen each other in a while. Meanwhile, Aunt Izzy, convinced that Thomas was murdered too, asks Cara to help her investigate. Mitchem’s tight-lipped about the case but happy to receive Cara’s information while keeping an eye on her safety as she gets closer to the truth. Quirky characters and a small but lively group of suspects make for an entertaining mystery.

Death on Wolf Fell

Oldham, Nick | Severn House (240 pp.) $29.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781448314423

The release of a very reluctant inmate from Preston Prison triggers a series of felonies stretching from Lancashire lowlifes to the British royal family. Even though Lance Drake—who fingered a member of Ribble Valley drug czar Maggie Horsefield’s organization—is desperate to remain in custody, he’s bailed out by none other than Maggie herself, who’s eager to watch him squirm even as she presses him to help in the latest round of criminal plots she’s hatched with her married lover, crime boss Tommy Moss. One of these includes upping the

campaign against Sgt. Jessica Raker, who relocated from London after she killed Terry Moss, whose brother, Tommy, put out a contract on her. Another is an initiative against Wolf Fell Hall, the stately home of Carolynne, Duchess of Dunsop and Newton, and her sons Edward and Bruce Armstrong-Bentley, distant relatives of King Charles who are technically in the long line to succeed him. Jess, already called to Wolf Fell Hall by a summons from the duchess over a violent quarrel between her sons, is under strict orders from Inspector Brian Price, who’s always looking for an excuse to discipline her, not to return there. So most of her contact with Maggie is through their respective daughters, a pair of schoolgirls who’ve improbably become best friends. Oldham keeps the complications coming, stirring the pot without ever quite bringing it to a boil, till a final round of revelations shows that the line between lowlifes and royals isn’t so clear after all.

A not entirely successful attempt to balance the demands of a selfenclosed novel and the police heroine’s longer arc.

The Maid’s Secret

Prose, Nita | Ballantine (336 pp.)

$30.00 | April 8, 2025 | 9780593875414

It’s dust rags to riches for Molly in this series’ latest installment.

Narrator Molly Gray may now be head of special events at the five-star Regency Grand Hotel, but she and her fiancé, Juan Manuel, the pastry chef, are as cash-strapped as ever; the wedding they are planning is to be a budget affair. Meanwhile, the Regency Grand (its geographical location remains unspecified) is hosting an event with the Antiques Roadshow –like reality TV series Hidden Treasures, of which Molly and Juan are loyal viewers. After the hotel manager invites the Regency Grand staff to present any collectibles they may have to the show’s hosts before the shoot,

A second case for the Irish sheep that already solved their shepherd’s murder.

BIG BAD WOOL

Molly learns that what she thought was a valueless ornamental egg is a Fabergé prototype worth a bundle. But just as Molly’s egg has been auctioned off at the hotel for $10 million, it vanishes from its display case. The novel’s present-day chapters alternate with diary entries addressed to Molly by her now-dead grandmother, who gradually tells the story of the egg’s provenance. To arrive at the truth, readers have to wade through an awful lot of Gran’s personal history, not all of it interesting or surprising and much of which would be more at home in a romance novel than a crime caper. Prose is hoping that fans of the series will inhale Molly’s family history even if it means being served a less fully fleshed present-day mystery, and that gamble may well pay off, as the book has the series’ customary charms: a stouthearted protagonist who has trouble reading social cues and an elegant, anachronistically wholesome setting in which platitudes are considered worthy of not snark but serious reflection.

A family history–heavy installment best suited to series diehards.

Big Bad Wool

Swann, Leonie | Trans. by Amy Bojang

Soho Crime (384 pp.) | $28.95

May 6, 2025 | 9781641296625

A second case for the Irish sheep that solved their shepherd’s murder back in Three Bags Full (2007). Something is very wrong in the herd’s winter quarters near a French château. Several sheep from an earlier flock have gone missing;

someone destroys every article of red clothing owned by shepherdess Rebecca Flock; two deer are found dead, and then a human being and, more affectingly, a sheepdog follows. Clever Miss Maple and Mopple the Whale, along with Lane, Heathcliff, and the rest of the flock, think the most likely culprit is the Garou, a wolf-turned-human (or a humanturned-wolf). Except for Rebecca, however, all the people in the area behave strangely just because they’re people who do weird things like drive and buy groceries. What secrets is Pascal, the Jackdaw who’s master of the château, hiding? Is Rebecca’s friend Zach really a secret agent? Is silent goatherder Paul a werewolf or a werewolf hunter? The only characters the sheep can trust are the veterinarian, who can always be counted on to cause them discomfort and pain, and the goats who feed in an adjoining pasture. But even though communication is good between the two flocks, their relations are complicated by the goats who act like sheep and the sheep who wonder if they’re really goats. At length the sheep hatch a plot to catch the Garou that depends on “Lane, Heathcliff, a boob trap, limping, running, climbing—and a goat. At least one.” You can imagine how that goes.

Not by any means for everyone, but likely to warm the hearts and expand the horizons of readers who opt in.

Closer Than You Know

Webb, Debra | Thomas & Mercer (317 pp.) $16.99 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781662516191

The second case for Tennessee freelance investigator Vera Mae Boyett is both more and less than a sequel. A series of bizarre kidnappings introduces the Time Thief, who’s drugged and abducted three victims, held each of them for 48 hours, and then released them unharmed in remote locations. The disappearance of Nolan Baker, a local reporter who’s been following the case hoping to strike it big, moves Vera’s first love, Lincoln County Sheriff Gray Benton, to pass along an urgent message from Nolan’s mother. Elizabeth Bogus Baker has overcome her disdain for Vera—who, along with her sister, Eve, has long harbored unsavory family secrets—long enough to plead with her to find Nolan and bring him home. Hardly has the search begun when Vera begins to get messages eerily reminiscent of taunting notes she received from the Messenger, a serial killer she brought to book 13 years ago after he captured her and her then–Memphis PD colleague Lt. Eric Jones. Dr. Palmer Solomon, the psychiatrist who confessed to being the Messenger, has been aging in prison ever since and is now dying of cancer. But the spate of new messages, along with other details of Nolan Baker’s kidnapping, so completely echoes his earlier M.O. that Vera must face the unnerving question of whether the recent crimes are the work of a copycat or an accomplice of the Messenger. Webb, who’s much more interested in multiplying than resolving complications, unmasks a minor-league perp and then quickly moves on to supply more details about the Boyetts’ family history, plunge Vera and Eve into mortal danger, and reveal the identity of the killer, who despite the title, is not someone closer than you think. Generic thrills for fans who don’t want to look too closely.

For more by Leonie Swann, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

The River Has Roots

El-Mohtar, Amal | Tordotcom (144 pp.)

$23.24 | March 4, 2025 | 9781250341082

Two sisters fight their way back to each other across death and Faerie through riddle songs and murder ballads. After co-writing the epistolary enemies-to-lovers

SF novel This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019) with Max Gladstone, El-Mohtar makes a solo debut featuring another haunting harmony. The town of Thistleford is known for the grammar, or transformative magic, that flows from the Faerie land of Arcadia to be conjugated in the River Liss and translated through the Professors, the pair of willow trees rooted into its banks. The Hawthorn family is known for its willow-wood business as well as the stirring duets of sisters Esther and Ysabel: respectively, the gregarious elder daughter cheekily composing riddle songs for her immortal lover and the shy younger beauty who can belt a murder ballad but secretly wishes to be the adored subject of a beloved’s poem. When a greedy mortal suitor forcibly separates the sisters on opposite sides of Arcadia’s border, they must bridge an impossible distance measured only by how far the voice can reach. True to the title, darkness lurks just beneath the surface of this story, in which death is cruel yet not without its lingual loopholes. El-Mohtar’s blend of prose and poetry will catch readers in its fast-moving flow, even if the magic system requires multiple rereads. The core tale will be relatable regardless of a reader’s genre affinity: an ode to sisters’

secret languages, a paean to petty adolescent envy reshaped into the foundation for growing together into adulthood, an anthem for bloody retribution. The only slightly bitter note is the rather neat resolution, but the poetic justice nonetheless adds up to a satisfying performance. A book you’ll want to revisit like a favorite song, especially once you know the words to sing along.

Kirkus Star

When We Were Real

Gregory, Daryl | Saga/Simon & Schuster (464 pp.) | $29.99

April 1, 2025 | 9781668060049

An unlikely group of travelers take a tour of glitches in the simulation that is the world. JP Laurent has seen better days. The retired engineer is reeling from the death of his wife and a battle with brain cancer that caused him to take early retirement. His longtime best friend, Dulin Marks, a comic-book writer, has decided to sign himself and JP up for a tour to see the “Impossibles”: a series of “glitches, anomalies, Areas of Scientific What-the-Fuckery” that popped up seven years ago following the discovery that the world was actually a simulation, an announcement that caused the planet to descend into chaos. JP and Dulin are joined on the tour by a Canterbury Tales –esque group of pilgrims, including a rabbi, two nuns, a pregnant teenage influencer, and the conspiracy-minded host of a podcast with the motto “Speaking Truth to Morons.” There’s also a late addition to

the tour: Gillian, a professor on the run from a murderous group of “incels in long leather coats and hair gel, who believed they were among the 1 percent of people who were actually conscious.” JP and Dulin help Gillian dodge her would-be killers, even as the influencer, who takes a near-instant dislike to the professor, tries to dox her. Gregory’s novel is far from an SF retread of The Bucket List ; while the friendship between JP and Dulin is depicted sweetly (and with abundant humor), this book is something much greater: an epic adventure and an examination of how humans (or their simulacra) interact when everybody is at their worst. It’s a testament to Gregory’s skill at character development that the people in this novel, and not the bizarre phenomena they’re observing, are the most fascinating part. This is a marvel. Big-hearted, generous, and beautifully written.

Kirkus Star

Grave Empire

Swan, Richard | Orbit (464 pp.) 19.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9780316577007

A looming invasion by extradimensional creatures demonstrates just how dangerous it is to forget the lessons of the past. At the end of The Trials of Empire (2024), Lord Regent Konrad Vonvalt strongly encouraged the Empire of Sova to become a republic, stop fighting wars of conquest, and reject the study of most kinds of magick, especially that which involved contact with other planes of existence. Set 200 years later, this opener of a sequel series to the Empire of the Wolf books argues that getting one out of three is very, very bad. The Republic is an Empire again, a religious schism has led to a fierce war between Sova and the Principality of Casimir in their colonial territories, and worst of all,

successfully adhering to the third stricture has left the Sovans without the magickal resources they will soon desperately need. Two monks of a heretical sect report that communication with the afterlife has ceased, portending an ominous event known as the Great Silence. To gain more information about this phenomenon, an ambassadorial mission sets out to negotiate with the mer-men, who still retain their magickal knowledge. At roughly the same time, a nobly born lieutenant with a purchased commission but no real stomach for battle is posted to the frontier, where he must contend with constant screaming from no visible source, bloody hallucinations, and gruesome murders with no obvious perpetrator. And a viciously classist nobleman with an enthusiasm for forbidden magicks investigates a mysterious plague that robs people of their minds, plotting to turn the calamity to his own selfish purposes. Naturally, these plotlines eventually converge. Authors who write followups to trilogies that climax with an apocalypse-averting epic battle generally have difficulty in raising or resetting the stakes convincingly in those new installments. Swan actually succeeds in making his continuation seem organic, as the bittersweet ending to the first trilogy, added to his obvious acknowledgment both of real-life history’s cyclical nature and humanity’s collective tendency to forget the useful lessons of the past, make this reset seem plausible and not a mere retread of what came before. Plus, the eldritch abominations he conjures are genuinely frightening. Tense and spooky, with vivid characters that inspire strong feeling; a good new start built on a well-established foundation.

Murder by Memory

Waite, Olivia | Tordotcom (112 pp.)

$21.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781250342249

The detective on an interstellar passenger ship becomes embroiled in a murder involving indefinitely preserved minds and switched bodies.

Narrator

Dorothy Gentleman never expected to suddenly wake up in another woman’s body. But when a magnetic storm threatens to damage the glass library book containing all of Dorothy’s memories, the ship’s computer does an emergency download of the detective’s mind into the body of a young woman named Gloria Vowell and tells her that another body is lying dead elsewhere on the ship. As Dorothy proceeds with her investigation, she makes another shocking discovery: Gloria and the deceased are connected. In this tightly plotted novella, Waite follows Dorothy as she uncovers the truth behind why the victim, Janet Dodds, had drowned in a bathtub full of “memory liqueur,” a substance that recalled the loveliest parts of Earth, the planet from which the ship departed 300 years before. Her twisting path leads to encounters with delightfully quirky characters, like her brilliant but irresponsible nephew, Rutherford, and Violet, a yarn-store proprietor who once dated Gloria and toward whom the narrator is instantly attracted. Her investigations lead to the discovery that Janet’s memory book—which sat near the one containing her own memories— was deliberately sabotaged rather than storm-damaged, and that Gloria is now irrecoverably dead. Horrified that a killer may be roaming the ship and that the woman she has fallen for may be involved, Dorothy realizes that she must quickly bring the first real murderer of her interstellar investigative career to justice or risk the quasi-immortality she and her shipmates have taken for granted. Intelligent and always surprising, Waite’s book artfully weaves a queer love story into a unique mystery/science

fiction hybrid form that is pure entertainment from start to finish. An engaging novella that combines cozy-mystery charm with the edginess of high-tech SF.

Onyx Storm

Yarros, Rebecca | Entangled: Red Tower Books (544 pp.) | $20.98 | Jan. 21, 2025 9781649377159

Violet Sorrengail and friends go on a quest to find allies in the war against the terrifying magic of the evil, soulless venin.

After the events of Iron Flame (2023), Violet’s lover, the brooding but romantic Xaden Riorson, is in danger. By channeling magic from the earth, Xaden has possibly compromised his very soul, but Violet refuses to give up on finding a cure and preventing Xaden from becoming a full venin. Meanwhile, Violet has another mystery to contend with: Andarna, her second bonded dragon, appears to be part of a lost dragon species. As the nobles of various nations negotiate the terms of an alliance to fight against the venin threat, Violet and her friends journey to the various island nations off the coast of their continent, hoping to enlist more allies in the war, locate Andarna’s long-lost dragon family, and find a solution to Xaden’s compromised soul. Somehow, Violet is kind of, sort of still a student at Basgiath War College. If that seems like a lot going on, even for the third book in a series, know that many plot points don’t serve much narrative purpose so much as provide opportunities for Violet and Xaden to romantically comfort each other, or for various interchangeable side-characters to exchange less-thansnappy dialogue. Given the hefty page count, it’s hard to understand why there wasn’t room for genuine character development or more than a gesture toward worldbuilding.

The Empyrean juggernaut rolls on.

Original Sinner

Ballenger, Kait | Montlake Romance (352 pp.) | $16.99 paper | March 25, 2025 9781662528873

A young woman on the run from an abusive family falls in love with Lucifer. The Originals are seven fallen angels, each representing one of the Seven Deadly Sins, who were cast out of heaven. Now Lucifer and his six siblings run New York, and Lucifer—pride—is the most elusive, despite being the CEO of Apollyon, a multinational conglomerate. Charlotte Bellefleur has recently escaped her fundamentalist Christian family in Topeka, Kansas, and fled to New York, landing an internship in the public relations department of Apollyon. When a body is found murdered in a club owned by one of the Originals, gossip and speculation targets Lucifer as the murderer. Apollyon’s PR wing has just begun to quell the rumors when someone breaks into Charlotte’s office and sends a private document she wrote about the situation to the press. Lucifer forces Charlotte into a fake engagement to distract the press and the two engage in a torrid affair. Meanwhile, Charlotte is receiving threatening text messages that she fears are coming from the family she left behind in Kansas. The start of a new series, Ballenger’s novel is a mishmash of tired romance tropes and archetypes. Lucifer reads as an immortal Christian Grey, a bland bad boy complete with a sex-dungeon playroom. He finds the prim, mousy Charlotte fascinating because she’s one of the few people who will stand up to him, and even though he can read the dark thoughts in most human minds, Charlotte’s is mysteriously closed to him. The ostentatious lifestyles of the Originals are valorized as more honest than the evil excesses of the fundamentalist church led by Charlotte’s father, while Lucifer is just a sad guy with a daddy complex looking for love. Too shallow to be shocking.

Along Came Amor

Daria, Alexis | Avon/HarperCollins (512 pp.) | $18.99 paper May 27, 2025 | 9780062960009

A one-night stand leads to a long-term relationship for a schoolteacher and a hotel owner. When middle school English teacher Ava Rodriguez finds out that her divorce has been finalized, she’s at a Jersey Shore hotel for an educational conference. Determined to leave her old self behind and embrace “new Ava,” she goes to the bar for a drink and meets the hotel’s handsome owner, Roman Vázquez. Roman’s memories of growing up poor are what propel him to strive for more: In addition to expanding his hotel chain, he owns a rum distillery and is writing a memoir. Flirtatious banter between Ava and Roman leads to a sexy, passionate night together. Ava is determined to keep the interlude just that, but the next time she faces an emotional setback, she contacts Roman and they embark on a discrete, no-strings affair. Since her family was judgmental rather than supportive during her divorce, she’s determined to keep her love life private—even from Jasmine Lin Rodriguez and Michelle Amato, her cousins and closest friends. Then, to her horror, she discovers that Roman is going to be the best man at Jasmine’s upcoming wedding—where she’s going to be the maid of honor. Roman is thrilled to learn about their connection and is determined to take advantage of it, even volunteering to travel to Puerto Rico with Ava to do advance work at the wedding venue. Despite the glamorous settings, the novel is driven by internal turmoil. Ava is wounded not just from the divorce but from some traumatic experiences that have made her feel that she’s never good enough for her family. Roman learns that the quick thinking and problem-solving that make him a successful CEO make Ava feel undermined and overwhelmed. The reveal of their secret relationship is juicy and dramatic, but readers might

find it difficult to believe that Ava’s family can heal decades-old hurts so easily. Strong internal conflict makes for an angsty, emotional romance.

Hardly a Gentleman

James, Eloisa | Avon/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $9.99 paper | April 29, 2025 | 9780063347465

A Scottish laird and an English lady defy convention together. Up in the Highlands, lairds do as they please, and for the brawny Caelan MacCrae, Laird of CaerLaven, that means fishing naked in the loch, even in chilly April weather. Widowed two years ago and uninterested in the finer things, he’s happiest when he can catch his own trout, cook it over a fire, and then be left alone in his rapidly crumbling estate. And mostly, no one bothers him—until the Honorable Miss Clara Vetry arrives during a bout of unclothed fishing. Though she claims to be Mrs. Potts, a woman ordered from London to be his housekeeper, she’s actually a bookish noblewoman in her fourth season, fleeing London in disrepute after striking the Prince Regent in response to his groping her bosom. Banished by her mother, she jumps at the chance to start a new life, and even though everyone she meets can tell she’s not actually a housekeeper, she settles in and starts setting Castle CaerLaven to rights. Despite himself, Caelan is immediately attracted to Clara’s raucous hair and straightforward nature, and is intrigued to hear that all she wants in life is a “castle filled with books”; he has one to offer, and before long, he does. Clara is taken by Caelan’s tree-trunk thighs and kind nature. But even after they kiss and start falling for each other, Clara feels certain he won’t ever love her as he did his first wife and Caelan isn’t sure how many times he can keep proposing to Clara and being rejected. James has long been one of the masters of zany, witty Regencies, and for much of the story she’s in top form. The second novel

Friends get married

for the insurance benefits, but things get complicated.

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

in her Accidental Brides series starts strong, with a setting that fans of Scottish romances will fall for almost as quickly as Caelan falls for Clara. Unfortunately, the momentum gets bogged down due to a misunderstanding that lingers far longer than it should, leading to a conclusion that leaves several plot points dangling. However, the strong character development and very spicy intimate scenes more than make up for the story’s weaknesses, and James’ many fans will be happy to add this laird to their shelves.

An uneven but charming Highlands romance.

Friends With Benefits

Kanter, Marisa | Celadon Books (384 pp.) $18.99 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781250358899

Best friends decide to get married for the insurance benefits, but find that things get complicated. Evie Bloom and Theo Cohen have been best friends since they were children. As former dance partners, they’re used to being in close physical contact—and, sure, they may have kissed once or twice, but it didn’t mean anything. When Evie, an aspiring Foley artist, is up for a big full-time fellowship (without benefits) that could change her career trajectory, she knows she’ll never be able to go for it because she needs the insurance that comes along with her stable job. She lives with Crohn’s disease, a chronic illness, and could never pay for her treatments without insurance. Theo, a fourth grade

teacher, finds out that his roommates are moving out just as Evie learns that her grandparents are selling the home she’s been crashing in. Neither of them can afford a place on their own—but a married couple could get around the steep income requirements on Theo’s place. What’s more, marriage would entitle Evie to Theo’s insurance, meaning she’d be able to quit her job and take the fellowship. So, they quickly get married, vowing that it won’t change anything about their friendship—but, given that both of them have been nursing complicated feelings, their marriage starts to feel a lot more real, and a lot scarier, than they expected. There are many fake-dating and marriage-of-convenience romances out there, but Kanter’s stands out by presenting an entirely realistic reason for two best friends to get married. Evie’s struggles with her illness and the American healthcare industry are believable and surely relatable for many readers. Theo and Evie have sizzling chemistry, and their relationship is a satisfyingly slow burn. A romance that balances fun tropes with the frustrating realities of America’s healthcare system.

Set Piece

Schwartz, Lana | 831 Stories (224 pp.) $14.99 paper | April 8, 2025 | 9781797187334

When a night out with friends is ruined by passionate fans, his rescue comes in the form of a quick-thinking bartender. A couple of drinks in a closed bar lead to a memorable night for the two of them. A lot has changed for Cara “CJ” Ericson in the five years since her tryst with Jack: She’s a single mother and, no longer a bartender, she’s working in production design. Things have changed for Jack, too: His celebrity status has been cemented and he’s been tapped to star in a highly anticipated adaptation of The Great Gatsby —where CJ is the production designer. When they meet on set, Jack immediately recognizes CJ, much to her surprise. She’s worried that their history will create problems for her on the set of her first big project, and she’s combative toward Jack. Over six months of filming, though, the two of them begin to feel the familiar attraction they once shared, and they both imagine what might have been beyond a fantastic night in Jack’s hotel room. Covering such a long time span in such a short novel is a tall order, and the pacing occasionally feels off-kilter. Falling in love comes rather easily for CJ and Jack, as they observe each other in their elements in front of and behind the camera. Whatever obstacles stand in the way of their romance are quickly dealt with or handwaved. Now in their mid-30s, they both know who they are and what fulfills them professionally and personally, and it is exciting to see two characters who are secure in their adulthood, but the brevity of the novel doesn’t provide enough space to dig into CJ and Jack’s backstories and character quirks.

A Hollywood heartthrob reunites with the bartender he shared a one-night stand with five years earlier.

Jack Felgate is an actor whose career is on a meteoric trajectory.

A snappy appetizer of a romance that’s fun, but fleeting.

THE BEST

Nonfiction Books

OF THE CENTURY (so far)

Fast Food Nation. Alexander Hamilton. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Just Kids. Just Mercy. These are some of the prominent books published over the past quarter-century that have helped shape our culture—and touch our hearts. They’re just a handful of the titles on Kirkus’ list of the best 100 nonfiction books of the century. You’ll find biographies, memoirs, histories, and essay collections on the list, from a range of writers. We believe the books are as vibrant as when they were written—timeless titles that will long speak to us. As the English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote, “There is no past, so long as books shall live.”

Alissandra Seelaus

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex

Philbrick, Nathaniel | Viking (320 pp.)

$24.95 | 2000 | 9780141001821

A gripping chronicle of an epic voyage of hardship and survival that deserves to be as well known now as it once was.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Schlosser, Eric | Houghton Mifflin (350 pp.) | $25.00 | 2001 | 9780547750330

An exemplary blend of polemic and journalism, guaranteed to put you off your lunch.

John Adams

McCullough, David | Simon & Schuster (736 pp.) | $35.00 | 2001 | 9780743223133

Despite the whopping length, there’s not a wasted word in this superb, swiftly moving narrative.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America

Menand, Louis | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (518 pp.) | $27 | 2001 | 9780374528492

A singular achievement of intellectual history as well as a weighty entertainment.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

Larson, Erik | Crown (416 pp.)

$25.95 | 2003 | 9780375725609

Gripping drama, captured with a reporter’s nose for a good story and a novelist’s flair for telling it.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Sedaris, David | Little, Brown (288 pp.)

$22.95 | 2000 | 9780316777728

Naughty good fun from an impossibly sardonic rogue, quickly rising to Twainian stature.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Hillenbrand, Laura | Random House (336 pp.) | $24.95 | 2001 | 9780375502910

A great ride.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Ehrenreich, Barbara | Henry Holt (320 pp.) | $23.00 | 2001 | 9781250808318

Ehrenreich speaks eloquently for workers who are often too tired and too manipulated to speak for themselves.

Brown: The Last Discovery of America

Rodriguez, Richard | Viking (256 pp.)

$24.95 | 2002 | 9780142000793

Elegant, controversial, and altogether memorable.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Roach, Mary | Norton (224 pp.)

$23.95 | 2003 | 9780393881721

Informative, yes; entertaining, absolutely.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Nafisi, Azar | Random House (288 pp.)

$23.95 | 2003 | 9780812979305

A spirited tribute both to the classics of world literature and to resistance against oppression.

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Lewis, Michael | Norton (288 pp.)

$23.95 | 2003 | 9780393324815

The intriguing tale of baseball’s oddfellows—the low-budget but winning Oakland Athletics.

Alexander Hamilton

Chernow, Ron | Penguin Press (802 pp.)

$35.00 | 2004 | 9780143034759

By far the best of the many lives of Hamilton now in print, and a model of the biographer’s art.

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Bird, Kai & Martin J. Sherwin | Knopf (752 pp.) | $35.00 | 2005 | 9780375726262

One of the best scientific biographies to appear in recent years.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Bechdel, Alison | Houghton Mifflin (240 pp.) | $19.95 | 2006 | 9780618871711

Shares much in spirit with the work of Mary Karr, Tobias Wolff, and other memoirists of considerable literary accomplishment.

Gulag: A History

Applebaum, Anne | Doubleday (736 pp.)

$35.00 | 2003 | 9781400034093

Extraordinary in its range and lucidity: a most welcome companion to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story

Urrea, Luis Alberto | Little, Brown (256 pp.) | $24.95 | 2004 | 9780316049283

A horrendous story told with bitter skill, highlighting the whole sordid, greedy mess that attends illegal border crossings.

The

Glass Castle:

A Memoir

Walls, Jeannette | Scribner (288 pp.)

$24.00 | 2005 | 9781439156964

A pull-yourself-up-by-thebootstraps, thoroughly American story.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Pollan, Michael | Penguin Press (434 pp.) | $26.95 | 2006 | 9780143038580

Revelations about how the way we eat affects the world we live in, presented with wit and elegance.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Wright, Lawrence | Knopf (464 pp.)

$27.95 | 2006 | 9781400030842

Essential for an understanding of that dreadful day.

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million

Mendelsohn, Daniel | HarperCollins (528 pp.) | $27.95 | 2006 | 9780063251328

A forceful meditation touching on loss, memory, Jewishness, and the vagaries of chance in human life.

Brother, I’m Dying

Danticat, Edwidge | Knopf (288 pp.)

$23.95 | 2007 | 9781400041152

Deeply felt memoir rife with historical drama and familial tragedy.

Lit: A Memoir

Karr, Mary | Harper/HarperCollins | (352 pp.)

$25.99 | 2009 | 9780060596989

An absolute gem that secures Karr’s place as one of the best memoirists of her generation.

Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Demick, Barbara | Spiegel & Grau (320 pp.)

$26.00 | 2010 | 9780385523905

Meticulous reporting reveals life in a country that tries hard to keep its citizens walled in and the rest of the world out.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Skloot, Rebecca | Crown (320 pp.)

$26.00 | 2010 | 9781400052172

Skloot’s riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture, and Petri dish politics.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Weiner, Tim | Doubleday (752 pp.)

$27.95 | 2007 | 9780385514453

Absorbing, appalling history.

The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own.

Carr, David | Simon & Schuster (336 pp.)

$26.00 | 2008 | 9781416541523

A brilliantly written, brutally honest memoir.

Open: An Autobiography

Agassi, Andre | Knopf (416 pp.)

$27.95 | 2009 | 9780307268198

An ace of a tale about how one man found his game.

Just Kids

Smith, Patti | Ecco/HarperCollins (304 pp.)

$27.00 | 2010 | 9780066211312

Riveting and exquisitely crafted.

The

Warmth of Other

Suns:

The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

Wilkerson, Isabel | Random House (768 pp.)

$30.00 | 2010 | 9780679444329

An impressive take on the Great Migration, and a truly auspicious debut.

Cleopatra: A Life

Schiff, Stacy | Little, Brown (384 pp.)

$29.99 | 2010 | 9780316001922

Schiff finds a complex woman— brutal and loving, dependent and independent, immensely strong but finally vulnerable.

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Marable, Manning | Viking (594 pp.)

$30.00 | 2011 | 9780670022205

A bold, sure-footed, significant biography of enormous depth and feeling.

Blue Nights

Didion, Joan | Knopf (208 pp.)

$25.00 | 2011 | 9780307267672

A slim, somber classic.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Strayed, Cheryl | Knopf (336 pp.)

$25.95 | 2012 | 9780307592736

A candid narrative of a brutal journey through a wilderness of despair to a renewed sense of self.

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity

Solomon, Andrew | Scribner (906 pp.)

$35.00 | 2012 | 9780743236713

A moving book that raises profound issues about the nature of love, the value of human life, and the future of humanity.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Mukherjee, Siddhartha | Scribner (592 pp.) | $30.00 | 2010 | 9781439107959

An inspiring account of a very personal battle against “the plague of our generation.”

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

Greenblatt, Stephen | Norton (320 pp.)

$26.95 | 2011 | 9780393064476

More wonderfully illuminating Renaissance history from a master scholar and historian.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Boo, Katherine | Random House | (288 pp.)

$28.00 | 2012 | 9781400067558

The best book yet written on India in the throes of a brutal transition.

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson

Caro, Robert A. | Knopf (704 pp.)

$35.00 | 2012 | 9780679405078

The Johnson project deserves as much praise as Moses’ The Power Broker, considered a watershed in contemporary biography.

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Wright, Lawrence | Knopf (432 pp.)

$28.95 | 2013 | 9780307700667

A patient, wholly compelling investigation into a paranoid “religion” and the faithful held in its sweaty grip.

Wave

Deraniyagala, Sonali | Knopf (240 pp.)

$24.00 | 2013 | 9780307962690

Excellent. Reading her account proves almost as cathartic as writing it must have been.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

Fink, Sheri | Crown (448 pp.)

$26.00 | 2013 | 9780307718969

With apparent effortlessness, Fink tells the Memorial story with cogency and atmosphere.

White Girls

Als, Hilton | McSweeney’s (300 pp.)

$24.00 | 2013 | 9781936365814

Als’ work is so much more than simply writing about being black or gay or smart. It’s about being human.

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir

Chast, Roz | Bloomsbury (240 pp.)

$28.00 | 2014 | 9781608198061

A top-notch graphic memoir that adds a whole new dimension to readers’ appreciation of Chast and her work.

On Immunity: An Inoculation

Biss, Eula | Graywolf (192 pp.)

$24.00 | 2014 | 9781555976897

Brightly informative, a sturdy platform for readers to conduct their own research and take personal responsibility.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

Packer, George | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) | $27.00 2013 | 9780374102418

Exemplary journalism that defines a sobering, even depressing matter.

The Most of Nora Ephron

Ephron, Nora | Knopf (576 pp.)

$35.00 | 2013 | 9780385350839

A delightful collection from a unique, significant American writer.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Kolbert, Elizabeth | Henry Holt (336 pp.)

$28.00 | 2014 | 9780805092998

A highly significant eye-opener rich in facts and enjoyment.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

Hobbs, Jeff | Scribner (416 pp.)

$27.00 | 2014 | 9781476731902

An urgent report on the state of American aspirations and a haunting dispatch from forsaken streets.

Citizen: An American Lyric

Rankine, Claudia | Graywolf (160 pp.)

$20.00 | 2014 | 9781555976903

Frequently powerful, occasionally opaque.

Just Mercy

Stevenson, Bryan | Spiegel & Grau (336 pp.)

$28.00 | 2014 | 9780812994520

Emotionally profound, necessary reading.

H Is for Hawk

Macdonald, Helen | Grove (288 pp.)

$25.00 | 2015 | 9780802123411

Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful, and moving— and likely to become a classic.

Between the World and Me: Notes on the First 150 Years in America

Coates, Ta-Nehisi | Spiegel & Grau (176 pp.)

$24.00 | 2015 | 9780812993547

This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Desmond, Matthew | Crown (432 pp.)

$28.00 | 2016 | 9780553447439

This stunning, remarkable book—a scholar’s 21st-century How the Other Half Lives—demands a wide audience.

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Kendi, Ibram X. | Nation Books (592 pp.)

$32.99 | 2016 | 9781568584638

In this ambitious book, Kendi reveals just how deep racism cuts and why it endures.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Harari, Yuval Noah | Harper/ HarperCollins (464 pp.) | $29.99 2015 | 9780062316097

The great debates of history aired out with satisfying vigor.

The Argonauts

Nelson, Maggie | Graywolf (160 pp.)

$23.00 | 2015 | 9781555977078

A book that will challenge readers as much as the author has challenged herself.

When Breath Becomes Air

Kalanithi, Paul | Random House (248 pp.)

$25.00 | 2016 | 9780812988406

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

Lab Girl

Jahren, Hope | Knopf (336 pp.) | $26.95 2016 | 9781101874936

Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

Alexievich, Svetlana | Trans. by Bela Shayevich | Random House (496 pp.)

$30.00 | 2016 | 9780399588808

Profoundly significant literature as history.

The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between

Matar, Hisham | Random House (256 pp.)

$26.00 | 2016 | 9780812994827

A beautifully written, harrowing story of a son’s search for his father.

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea

Davis, Jack E. | Liveright/Norton (528 pp.)

$28.95 | 2017 | 9780871408662

An elegant narrative braced by a fierce, sobering environmental conviction.

Priestdaddy: A Memoir

Lockwood, Patricia | Riverhead (352 pp.)

$27.00 | 2017 | 9781594633737

A linguistically dexterous, eloquently satisfying narrative debut.

Educated: A Memoir

Westover, Tara | Random House (352 pp.)

$28.00 | 2018 | 9780399590504

An astonishing account of deprivation, confusion, survival, and success.

How To Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

Pollan, Michael | Penguin Press (480 pp.)

$28.00 | 2018 | 9781594204227

A trip well worth taking, eye-opening and even mind-blowing.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

Franklin, Ruth | Liveright/Norton (624 pp.)

$35.00 | 2016 | 9780871403131

A consistently interesting biography that deftly captures the many selves and multiple struggles of a true American original.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Grann, David | Doubleday (352 pp.)

$29.95 | 2017 | 9780385534246

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.

The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Gessen, Masha | Riverhead (528 pp.) | $28.00

$17.00 paper | 2017 | 9781594634536

A superb, alarming portrait of a government that exercises outsize influence in the modern world, at great human cost.

How To Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays

Chee, Alexander | Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (288 pp.) | $15.99 paper | 2018 | 9781328764522

Deserving of a place among other modern classic writers’ memoirs.

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America

Macy, Beth | Little, Brown (384 pp.)

$28.00 | 2018 | 9780316551243

An urgent, eye-opening look at a problem that promises to grow much worse in the face of inaction and indifference.

Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)

Solnit, Rebecca | Haymarket Books (166 pp.)

$15.95 paper | 2018 | 9781608469468

Solnit is careful with her words but never so much that she mutes the infuriated spirit that drives these essays.

A Dream Called Home: A Memoir

Grande, Reyna | Atria (336 pp.)

$26.00 | 2018 | 9781501171420

A heartfelt, inspiring, and relevant memoir.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America

From 1890 to the Present

Treuer, David | Riverhead (528 pp.)

$28.00 | 2019 | 9781594633157

A welcome modern rejoinder to classics such as God Is Red and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Underland: A Deep Time Journey

Macfarlane, Robert | Norton (496 pp.)

$27.95 | 2019 | 9780393242140

A treasure all its own. Anyone who cares to ponder the world beneath our feet will find this to be an essential text.

How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir

Jones, Saeed | Simon & Schuster (208 pp.)

$26.00 | 2019 | 9781501132735

A memoir of coming to terms that’s written with masterful control of both style and material.

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

Blight, David W. | Simon & Schuster (896 pp.)

$40.00 | 2018 | 9781416590316

A masterful, comprehensive biography.

Heavy: An American Memoir

Laymon, Kiese | Scribner (256 pp.)

$26.00 | 2018 | 9781501125652

A dynamic memoir that is unsettling in all the best ways.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Keefe, Patrick Radden | Doubleday (496 pp.)

$28.95 | 2019 | 9780385521314

A harrowing story of politically motivated crime that could not have been better told.

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Tolentino, Jia | Random House (304 pp.)

$27.00 | 2019 | 9780525510543

Exhilarating, groundbreaking essays that should establish Tolentino as a key voice of her generation.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Kolker, Robert | Doubleday (416 pp.)

$29.95 | 2020 | 9780385543767

A family portrait of astounding depth and empathy.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

Clark, Heather | Knopf (1152 pp.)

$40.00 | 2020 | 9780307961167

A major biography that redeems Plath from the condescension of easy interpretation.

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

Schulman, Sarah | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (736 pp.) | $40.00 | 2021 | 9780374185138

Vital, democratic truth telling.

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness

Radtke, Kristen | Pantheon (352 pp.)

$30.00 | 2021 | 9781524748067

Superb. A rigorous, vulnerable book on a subject that is too often neglected.

South to America: A Journey Below the MasonDixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation

Perry, Imani | Ecco/HarperCollins (416 pp.)

$28.99 | 2022 | 9780062977403

A graceful, finely crafted examination of America’s racial, cultural, and political identity. Perry always delivers.

Solito: A Memoir

Zamora, Javier | Hogarth (400 pp.)

$28.00 | 2022 | 9780593498064

Beautifully wrought work that renders the migrant experience into a vivid, immediately accessible portrayal.

A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

Abdurraqib, Hanif | Random House (320 pp.) | $27.00 | 2021 | 9781984801197

Another winner from Abdurraqib, a writer always worth paying attention to.

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America

Smith III, Clint | Little, Brown (336 pp.)

$29.00 | 2021 | 9780316492935

A brilliant, vital work about “a crime that is still unfolding.”

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Hannah-Jones, Nikole & the New York Times Magazine | One World/ Random House (400 pp.)

$35.00 | 2021 | 9780593230572

A much-needed book that stakes a solid place in a battlefield of ideas over America’s past and present.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

Yong, Ed | Random House (464 pp.)

$30.00 | 2022 | 9780593133231

One of the year’s best popular natural histories.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Beaton, Kate | Drawn & Quarterly (448 pp.)

$39.95 | 2022 | 9781770462892

A fascinating, harrowing, unforgettable book about a place few outsiders can comprehend.

Stay True: A Memoir

Hsu, Hua | Doubleday (208 pp.)

$26.00 | 2022 | 9780385547772

A stunning, intricate memoir about friendship, grief, and memory.

Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century

Homans, Jennifer | Random House (784 pp.)

$35.00 | 2022 | 9780812994308

The definitive account of a remarkable and flawed artist.

We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

Asgarian, Roxanna | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) | $28.00 | 2023 | 9780374602291

A sobering call to action demanding reform of the child-protective and foster-care regimes.

King: A Life

Eig, Jonathan | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (688 pp.) | $35.00 | 2023 | 9780374279295

An extraordinary achievement and an essential life of the iconic warrior for social justice.

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space

Higginbotham, Adam | Avid Reader Press (560 pp.) | $32.50 | 2024 | 9781982176617

A deeply researched, fluently written study in miscommunication, hubris, and technological overreach.

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz To Warn the World

Freedland, Jonathan | Harper/ HarperCollins (400 pp.) | $28.99 2022 | 9780063112339

A powerful story of a true hero who deserves more recognition.

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom

Woo, Ilyon | Simon & Schuster (416 pp.)

$29.99 | 2023 | 9781501191053

A captivating tale that ably captures the determination and courage of a remarkable couple.

Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino”

Tobar, Héctor | MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) | $27.00 | 2023 | 9780374609900

A powerful look at what it means to be a member of a community that, though large, remains marginalized.

How To Say Babylon: A Memoir

Sinclair, Safiya | Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) | $28.99 | 2023 | 9781982132347

More than catharsis, this is memoir as liberation.

The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise

Laing, Olivia | Norton (336 pp.)

$27.99 | 2024 | 9781324110385

An intellectually verdant and emotionally rich narrative journey.

Close Looks at Creatures

The Book of Flaco By David

Gessner

A well-told story of the bird that captured the imagination of New York and much of the world.

Anderson

Mornings Without Mii

Raising Hare By Chloe Dalton

A soulful and gracefully written book about an animal’s power to rekindle curiosity.

Tamed By Alice Roberts

A lively exploration of how human culture depends on partnerships with the plants and animals we have domesticated.

David Mech,

H. Dean Cluff

By Mayumi Inaba; translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Nonfiction

JOHN McMURTRIE

CHRONICLING OUR CENTURY

THE 21ST CENTURY began innocently enough, with fears of a global Y2K scare that quickly fizzled out. In little time, the new millennium, starting with the shock of the 9/11 attacks, grew ominously dark. More devastation and horrors followed: the United States’ costly, deadly, and deceitful invasion of Iraq; America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and a conflict that is still being waged over the Gaza Strip, now lying largely in ruins.

Closer to home, countless tragedies and crises have marked the quartercentury, from mass shootings to the Great Recession of 2008. History was also made: The U.S. elected its first Black president and twice chose as its leader a real estate developer and former reality TV host who’d never before held elected office.

Chronicling these momentous events were numerous books that give us a better understanding of our times. Several are on Kirkus’ list of the best 100 nonfiction books of the century. Among them

is Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, published in 2006. The book is a commanding overview of the terrorist attacks that set off epochal changes felt around the world.

Some authors soberly documented what they see as a decline of America over the past several decades. They include George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013), and Rebecca Solnit, winner of the Kirkus Prize for Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) (2018). Several books on the list skillfully and compassionately address specific problems plaguing the country, such as increasing poverty and corporate greed, as in Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), and Beth Macy’s Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America (2018). The ongoing effects of

systemic racism are powerfully detailed in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014), and Clint Smith’s How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (2021).

Immigration, a focus of political platforms across the country, is taken up in a host of books that personalize the ordeals of people trying to make it in this country. A few notable titles are Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway: A True Story (2004), Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home: A Memoir (2018), and Javier Zamora’s Solito: A Memoir (2022).

Not all is grim. We’re grateful, too, for all the books that have been a joy to read. Some of our favorites are David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), Andre Agassi’s Open: An Autobiography (2009), Patti Smith’s Just Kid s (2010), Nora Ephron’s The Most of Nora Ephron (2013), Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? A Memoir (2014), and Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (2022). Here’s to many more such works over the next 25 years.

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

Affecting portraits of Ukrainians caught up in a war whose origins trace back centuries.

A historian who grew up partly in Ukraine, Leavitt writes of the country’s lifeways: “the smart and dark sense of humor, minor-key folk songs, old women selling lingerie in underground walkways, how people regard long walks as a primary form of entertainment.” But, she notes, most people outside the country recognize only one Ukrainian by sight or name, Volodymyr Zelensky. Aiming to correct this, Leavitt focuses on ordinary Ukrainians across the country and their experiences in war. One, Vitaly, owns a struggling coffee shop near Kyiv, making most of his living recycling; another, Tania, lives on a

pig farm in a Russian-occupied part of southern Ukraine and has taken to calling the invaders orcs, “invoking the grotesque, nonhuman characters from Lord of the Rings ,” or “rashist,” “a mix of the words ‘Russian’ and ‘fascist’”; yet another, Maria, is caught in the hellish bombardment of the eastern city of Mariupol until being evacuated to a far-western town where few speak her native Russian, a language “still perceived as an outsider tongue.” Apart from offering memorable portraits of her dramatis personae, each of whom copes in one way or another with all the hardships of war and occupation, Leavitt serves up fascinating observations befitting a top-tier ethnography. One track she follows, thanks to

By the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine

Leavitt, Danielle | Farrar, Straus and Giroux

320 pp. | $30.00 | May 20, 2025 | 9780374614331

Vitaly the recycler and a publisher named Volodymyr, are the changing reading tastes of the Ukrainian public: “In the 1990s, everyone was throwing away Soviet books, manuals, pamphlets, propaganda….In the fall of 2022…Vitaly hauled away vans full of books by anyone who was Russian or represented

Russia, even if they had never said anything about Ukraine.” Elsewhere she offers helpful explanations of why, despite Russia’s imperial ambitions, Ukraine truly is a separate nation—and why it behooves the West to defend it.

A vividly written, memorable series of profiles in courage and fierce resistance.

Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance

Abbott, Henry | Norton (320 pp.)

$31.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781324050131

Exploring a new way of keeping fit.

Founded by Marcus Elliott, the Peak Performance Project (known as P3) has a clientele that includes an impressive array of big-name athletes. In this enthusiast’s account, journalist Abbott spends much of the book detailing how players have used the athletic training facilities to recover from—or train themselves to prevent—injuries. The book chronicles the development of P3’s methods as Elliott realized that many athletic injuries are the result of something happening elsewhere in the body—a weakness in an ankle or hip muscle causing a knee injury. So rehabbing the injury doesn’t prevent reinjury—a lesson the trainers and coaches of professional teams were reluctant to hear. But the use of force plates to measure the intensity of an athlete’s landing from a jump, or motion-detection cameras to analyze body movement in fine detail, gave P3 a level of data that allowed Elliott and his staff to often predict an athlete’s susceptibility to injuries that could end a career—and train them to stay healthy. This meant that, despite the resistance from the athletic establishment, many top stars in sports ranging from beach volleyball to ice hockey have made P3—based in Santa Barbara, California—an integral part of their off-season preparation. Basketball players in particular, whose game involves frequent jumps and sudden changes of direction, regularly use P3. Elliott advocates challenging the body to move, a belief he puts into practice in adventures that put the system to extreme tests, from body surfing in the Pacific to jumping from high rocks into pools below waterfalls. The book includes a number of exercises drawn from P3’s repertoire,

which some readers may be inclined to try for themselves.

This will particularly appeal to fans of basketball and fitness enthusiasts; others may find it on the adulatory side.

The Mother Code: My Story of Love, Loss, and the Myths That Shape Us

Ackerman, Ruthie | Random House (336 pp.)

$30.00 | May 6, 2025 | 9780593730119

A journalist chronicles how cultural ideas about genetics and inheritance affected her path to motherhood. Ackerman writes that she “hesitated extra-long before choosing motherhood because, let’s be real, I was told that a mother’s life happens in a distant galaxy from a life without kids—one where I would be overwhelmed, exhausted, depressed, and likely resentful of my partner if I was lucky enough to find one.” After years of caring for her half-brother, Adam—“born with a triple whammy of rare disorders”—and her mother, who was eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, she initially felt too burnt out to consider motherhood. She also worried that her grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s decisions to abandon their children might actually be what she calls “a glitch in my genetic code.” After several rounds of failed IVF with her partner, Rob, she trepidatiously consented to having a baby using a donor egg, all the while worrying whether her lack of genetic connection to her future child would compromise their resemblance to each other and, by extension, their bond. Ackerman is frank and vulnerable, voicing taboo truths that many parents experience but few are courageous enough to admit. At times, the book can lack cohesion, especially in its final chapters. Overall, though, it eloquently captures the author’s journey into motherhood’s great unknown.

A vivid memoir of one woman’s complex path to nontraditional motherhood.

The Golf 100: A Spirited Ranking of the Greatest Players of All Time

Arkush, Michael | Doubleday (384 pp.)

$30.00 | April 1, 2025 | 9780385549691

One man’s crazy attempt to judge golfing greatness. Prolific sportswriter Arkush admits early on that ranking the 100 best male and female golfers was an “impossible task” but does it anyway. He first sets up some basic criteria. Those winning majors get 2,000 points and additional points for finishing second to fifth and points for British or American Amateur wins. Winners of each tour’s regular competitions get 300 points. There are bonus points for players who quit early like Byron Nelson (No. 9) or Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa (No. 85). He picks 15 women, with Mickey Wright at an impressive No. 6. Arkush provides colorful, entertaining profiles of each player in numerical order. The little-known golf phenom John McDermott, youngest to win the U.S. Open, is No. 100, followed by Argentina’s Roberto De Vicenzo, with 231 wins. Bernhard Langer (No. 94) was “as tough mentally as any golfer…not named Jack or Tiger.” South Korean Se Ri Pak, at No. 90, “transformed golf globally.” Jim Ferrier (No. 83) was the first Australian to win a major. Popular Nancy Lopez (No. 65) was the “Arnold Palmer of the LPGA tour.” But “no one was more competitive than Hale Irwin,” at No. 54. Two players who sulked to the LIV tour, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka—“He looks like he wants to punch you in the mouth,” said Steve Stricker— are at No. 44 and No. 43. Annika Sorenstam (No. 26) was the “top female golfer of the last half century.” Young Tom Morris (No. 21) was the “Tiger Woods of his time.” Billy Casper (No. 16) was “buried in his green

An actor who pivoted “from warmth to menace, from folksiness to danger, on a dime.”

GANDOLFINI

jacket”—the family got special permission. Phil Mickelson (No. 13) was a “trapeze artist. Without a net.” The final five are Arnie, Ben, Bobby, Tiger, and Jack—the “greatest golfer ever.”

A fine primer for all those upcoming arguments about who was better than who.

Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told

Atherton Lin, Jeremy | Little, Brown (320 pp.)

$29.00 | June 3, 2025 | 9780316545792

Portrait of a gay marriage. In his awardwinning previous book, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (2021), the American-born author reflected on the watering holes where he and his English partner found sex and community (and sometimes banality) in the days before hookup apps like Grindr. His new book, a similar blend of memoir and sociopolitical history, widens the lens to examine how political debates over same-sex marriage affected the tenuous fate of this transnational couple, who ultimately tied the knot when it became legal to do so in the U.K. The author recounts their meeting in a London nightclub in 1996; that same week, he notes, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. “It wasn’t against the law for us to fall in love,” he writes. “But if we were to forge a commitment, there didn’t seem to be any place to take it.” For the next decade, the couple existed in limbo, first apart on different continents, then

together in San Francisco. The author’s partner would eventually overstay his visa, ushering in another form of legal insecurity. “Our relationship, built on apartness—longing—had entered its phase of subterfuge—pretending,” Lin writes. As their personal story unfolds in a series of rented Bay Area apartments, the author serves up a potted history of the gay marriage debate in the ’90s and early 2000s alongside passages on matelotage, a contractual arrangement between two pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries; Clive Michael Boutilier, the gay Canadian deemed a “psychopathic personality” and denied U.S. citizenship in 1965; and the ill-starred relationship of artist Felix Gonzales-Torres and his Canadian lover, Ross Laycock, in the ’80s and ’90s. Lin’s prose is as striking as ever—the lyric descriptions of gay sex recall Edmund White at his randiest— but the accounts of D.C. politics and Supreme Court cases feel dutiful rather than illuminating.

A rangy and readable book, both personal and political, that doesn’t quite coalesce.

Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend

Bailey, Jason | Abrams (352 pp.)

$30.00 | April 29, 2025 | 9781419767692

A hardworking character actor and surprising star whose untimely death left a hole in the heart of filmdom. Before his portrayal of Tony Soprano on HBO’s The Sopranos made him a household name in the late 1990s, James Gandolfini had been well

respected by peers like Denzel Washington and Patricia Arquette, directors like Sidney Lumet, and critics who noticed his performances no matter how small his roles on stage and screen. The son of working-class Italians from suburban Westwood, New Jersey—his father was a bricklayer and janitor, and his mother a school cafeteria manager—Gandolfini caught the acting bug in high school but didn’t pursue it until moving to New York City after college. Gandolfini (Jamie, Jim, or Bucky, depending on how one knew him) soon became a workhorse, steadily drawing attention. His breakout role was as the brutal psychopath Virgil in Tony Scott’s 1993 film True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino. Tiring (and feeling a little ashamed) of being typecast as Italian hoods, Gandolfini abruptly walked out on the 1996 HBO production of Gotti, in which he was cast as Sammy Gravano; he was told he’d never work for HBO again. Bailey, a film critic and biographer, displays a respect for Gandolfini’s craft and a sympathy for his sweet and salty nature off-screen. Of the actor’s best roles, the author writes, “He was such a combustible combination of ill-fitting, incompatible elements. He could pivot, seemingly effortlessly, from warmth to menace, from folksiness to danger, on a dime.” A fast-moving, entertaining bio of a Hollywood mensch.

The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder and Obsession

Bilston, Sarah | Harvard Univ. (400 pp.)

$29.95 | May 6, 2025 | 9780674272606

A tale of botany and greed. Novelist and literary scholar Bilston investigates the complexities of the international orchid trade, which became so frenzied in the 19th century that it was

Kirkus Star

Its appearance evoked

“women, sexuality, desire”; its rarity made it especially coveted.

THE LOST ORCHID

known as orchidomania and even orchidelirium. Although many types of orchids were prized, Bilston focuses on one particular variety, brought from Brazil by a naturalist in 1818, later dubbed Cattleya labiata for its purple markings and “pronounced crimson lip.” Its appearance evoked “women, sexuality, desire”; its rarity made it especially coveted, central to a quest that involved explorers, naturalists, businessmen, speculators, reporters, and illustrators; ships and railways; laboratories, herbaria, and auction houses. The orchid business was not only about horticulture, although the desire for orchids spurred innovations in hybridization, “a controversial practice,” Bilston notes, “with grave implications. It seemed, to many, to lead humans dangerously into the realm of the divine.” Hybrids, although making orchids available to the masses, did not evoke the romance of C. labiata. Imported orchids, wrested from their native habitat by intrepid plant hunters, were better able “to satisfy human fancies, urges, and needs—to signal wealth and power, or connoisseurship, or modernity, or attachment to the past, or scientific acumen.” Bilston depicts the many obstacles facing these plant hunters, including treacherous terrain, devastating environmental damage, and political unrest. Wealthy Victorians were not the only ones coveting orchids: Darwin was fascinated by their structure, evolution, and especially their intricate process of fertilization. “I am convinced,” he remarked, “that orchids have a wicked power of witchcraft.” Besides Darwin, among the many naturalists who appear in Bilston’s well-populated history are Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker. Drawing on abundant archival sources in the Royal Botanical Gardens, Bilston

conveys in colorful detail the “chaotic urgency” of the feverish pursuit of a remarkable epiphyte. A vibrant natural history.

Dragon on Centre Street: New York vs. Donald J. Trump

Bromwich, Jonah | Authors Equity (304 pp.)

$30.00 | May 27, 2025 | 9798893310382

A president stands accused.

Bromwich’s account of the trial that ended with the Republican presidential candidate convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records is solid, if light on scoops. Considering that it revisits an exhaustively covered 2024 court case—which itself has since been overshadowed by numerous controversies involving the book’s central figure—Trump fatigue may limit its appeal. Bromwich starts slow, awkwardly explaining that the title alludes to a person uninvolved in the trial: Kanye West, who in 2018 said he and Trump “are both dragon energy.” The book proper then begins with a dozen uneventful pages about “indictment watch,” the “endless March days” in 2023 when he and other New York Times reporters hung out at a Manhattan courthouse, waiting for word that District Attorney Alvin Bragg would be charging Trump for hiding hush money payments to an adult-film actress. Bromwich finds his footing in time, providing a brisk blow by blow from inside the courtroom and pulling back for informative recaps of, for instance, Bragg’s ascension at a moment when

many prosecutors were rethinking tough sentences for nonviolent crimes. The testimonies of ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, porn star Stormy Daniels, and former tabloid publisher David Pecker are revisited at length and enlivened with helpful context about the mores of their respective professions. This is diligent work, a necessary part of this kind of book. Yet even Bromwich acknowledges that not everyone clamors for Trump trial intel. When he delivered online video reports from outside the courthouse, Bromwich got kudos for his clothes, but the videos didn’t “prompt within my friend group a greater interest in the trial, or questions about the case.” Following Trump’s conviction, as his opponents celebrated his status as a “felon,” his presidential campaign quickly raised $100 million.

A detailed look at a landmark court case.

Kirkus Star

Scorched Earth: A Global History of World War II

Chamberlin, Paul Thomas

Basic Books (656 pp.) | $35.00 May 6, 2025 | 9781541619265

A view of World War II as the child of colonialism and the father of superpower neo-imperialism.

“The last time that a world leader launched a war to dominate Eastern Europe and a rising Asian power sought to challenge American power in the Pacific, it led to the bloodiest war in human history.” So, with an eye on the present, ventures Columbia University historian Chamberlin in closing his sweeping survey of World War II. Fittingly, that narrative begins with World War I and its antecedent conflicts in Africa, where the European colonial powers and the U.S. tested techniques and strategies that would come to full fruition a generation or two later: concentration camps, poisonous gas, aerial bombardment of civilian

populations. In this regard, Chamberlin dismantles the “good war” narrative so cherished by celebrants of the “greatest generation”: World War II had “overarching moral clarity,” but it had plenty of ignoble aspects. One, Chamberlin notes at the outset, was contingency planning on the part of the U.S. and Britain to immediately rearm German soldiers and go to war with the Soviet Union; another was the prewar expansion of American power deep into the Pacific, the result of a racist view that assumed that it was the white man’s role to lead the world (Japan, an allied power, was explicitly denied racial equality in the Treaty of Versailles). In the end, Chamberlin argues, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the European fight, losing millions of soldiers, while the U.S. bore the brunt of the Pacific War but relied on technological superiority to bomb Japan into submission. The outcome: a postwar world order dominated by those militarized superpowers and their satellites, “forced to prepare for perpetual warfare and the prospect of nuclear annihilation.”

A fresh, closely argued interpretation of a global conflict that continues to reverberate.

A Crumpled Swan: Fifty Essays About Abigail Parry’s “In the dream of the cold restaurant”

Collard, David | Sagging Meniscus Press (284 pp.) | $23.99 paper June 3, 2025 | 9781963846157

A journey into a dream.

In 50 brief, illuminating essays melding memoir, close reading, literary analysis, and cultural criticism, critic and essayist Collard takes Abigail Parry’s poem “In the dream of the cold restaurant,” from her collection I Think We’re Alone Now, as inspiration for reflecting on poetry as genre and on this singular, enigmatic poem in particular. “I want to be able [to] bring

to a poem the same knowledge and attention that an art historian brings to a painting,” Collard writes. The poem relates a scene involving a man who fashions a napkin into origami shapes; a surly 17-year-old waitress with a mysterious scar from, perhaps, a burn; and another diner, seated on a mezzanine, reading: All are depicted with both the “glib economy” and “gaunt extravagance of dreams.” Collard reads and rereads the poem, each time “impressed and astonished” by its “subtly-managed uncertainty and instability.” He investigates its language, rhythm, and allusions to Greek mythology. He brings to bear a range of contemporary critics. Not alone among poems he admires and discusses in these essays, this one obsesses him: “I carry the poem with me, and am in turn carried by it, or carried away.” Having grown up among Jehovah’s Witnesses, Collard, as a teenager, escaped a cult that severely circumscribed his world. “My behaviour from the age of eight, when my parents were evangelised, was constantly policed,” he writes; “everything I did and everything I said was either approved without warmth or criticised and corrected.” He saw literature as an antidote, “a way of engaging directly with other thinkers, other perspectives.” In Parry’s poetry, he feels “in direct contact with an intelligence I find sympathetic.” Collard’s insightful essays reveal him, as well, as a sympathetic presence, sensitive and wise.

Fresh, perceptive literary essays.

Modern Floral: Timeless Interiors Inspired by Nature

Coote, Charlotte | Thames & Hudson (224 pp.)

$45.00 | May 6, 2025 | 9781760764791

Bringing the outdoors inside. Australian interior designer Coote offers a lushly illustrated volume depicting ways to incorporate natural themes, objects, and materials into home settings. Like the

homes featured in publications such as Architectural Digest and Dwell , the rooms Coote shows reflect not only taste, but substantial financial means. We see, for example, Vogue editor Diana Vreeland’s red floral sitting room, created by famous American designer Billy Baldwin, and the White House guest bedroom designed by Jacqueline Kennedy with the help of Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon. Some of these rooms are enhanced by handcrafted pieces, such as an attractive butcher’s block in a kitchen and floor tiles handmade in Mexico. Coote, who advocates reusing beautiful items, gives advice for sourcing antique textiles, which some designers find on their global travels. She provides tips for homeowners on a budget (cover a pillow, rather than a sofa, with an expensive antique fabric), and she points out the relative inexpensiveness of some natural fibers, such as sisal, wicker, and grass cloth. Chintz, imported from India, became a popular fabric for bespoke curtains and upholstery in the 1600s; by the 1800s, Western consumers were in thrall to the botanically inspired cotton. Favored by many designers, its popularity got a boost from Princess Diana’s English-style chintz dresses. While many botanical fabrics and wallpapers feature large, deeply colored designs, Coote suggests ways to incorporate them so that they are not overpowering. Living on an expansive country property, she finds in the changing seasons ever-new ideas for incorporating the natural environment into her home; she devotes separate chapters to the colors that surround her in nature: blues, greens, pinks and reds, and neutral shades of browns. Featuring 308 color illustrations, this book may be inspirational for some readers, aspirational for others. Alluring ideas for decor.

The River’s Daughter

Crocker, Bridget | Spiegel & Grau (304 pp.)

$29.00 | June 3, 2025 | 9781954118546

A trailblazing rafting guide retraces the events that led her to whitewater.

Crocker grew up alongside Wyoming’s Snake River, but her ascendance to rafting renown was not straightforward. The author’s pensive, potent full-length debut is a twisting journey from her childhood in a trailer park, through an adolescence pockmarked with divorce, abuse, drugs, parental neglect, and sexual assault, to the banks of the Zambezi River in the nascent days of East Africa rafting tours and the rampage of the HIV epidemic on the continent in the 1990s. While the constant in Crocker’s life is the magnificence of the rivers she travels and her reverential relationship with water, her story is more than a cataloging of exciting conquests, defining romances, and fearless adventures. With the distance of decades and the intervening years honing her literary skills, she turns a reprising eye to the people and forces that made her and advances keen observations on the tensions between adventure-based service industries, their patrons, and their geographies. Her efforts to explain and understand her parents is heartrending in its maturity and quest for empathy: Appreciating their work in “breaking the chain” welded by their own histories of trauma does not release them from their responsibility for harm she experienced as a child. As she makes her way back to the American West and into adulthood, she hints at the entirety of the emotional impact of her past and foreshadows the complicated work of confronting it, but the details of that work lie largely beyond the text. Instead, this is the story of how Crocker found the strength, not only to make inroads into a male-dominated, thrill-oriented career, proving herself to the gatekeepers of her industry, but also to provide her own protection.

A brave, sincere story of the shattering and saving powers of adrenaline and humility.

The Catastrophe Hour: Selected Essays

Daum, Meghan | Notting Hill Editions (200 pp.)

$18.95 paper | April 15, 2025 | 9781912559688

Growing older, growing up.

Essayist, novelist, and memoirist

Daum, host of the Unspeakable podcast, gathers 14 acerbic, intimate essays written between 2016 and 2024 on a variety of themes, including marriage and divorce, childlessness and motherhood, friendship and music. Several essays focus on her abiding obsession with real estate; others on aging, dating, and death (her father’s, a beloved pet’s, and, someday, her own).

The essays, she writes, “were inspired not by news headlines or social media dustups but by the free-floating anxiety that underscores and perpetuates all of that.” Now in her mid-50s, Daum feels cut off from the concerns of younger people: “For at least the last decade,” she writes, “I haven’t known what anyone is talking about and for the last several years I haven’t really cared.” What she does care about is defending her overwhelming unsuitability for marriage (“I went into marriage hoping I could be a certain kind of person and came out of it accepting that I was never going to be anyone other than what I was”) and her decision not to have children, which she elaborates on throughout and which inspired her edited collection Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed. Her struggle to reconcile her

childlessness, she admits, was so painful that it led “to a life of obsessive confirmation bias.” Gen X readers (Daum was born in 1970) will likely empathize with an author who claims, “Life to me these days often feels like I’m backing up slowly from a tense and increasingly untenable situation,” and looks back at family, grief, and loss to acknowledge, “Cope is everywhere. The more years you’re alive, the greater percentage of your day is taken up by cope.”

Sharp, deft commentary.

Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins

Demick, Barbara | Random House (352 pp.)

$32.00 | May 20, 2025 | 9780593132746

A reporter aids in the quest to reunite longseparated twins in their native China.

As Demick’s account opens, she has received an unexpected email in which the stepbrother of an adopted Chinese girl tells her that “it appears like she has a twin sister still in China.”

Having spent years reporting there for the Los Angeles Times, Demick (author of Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea) delivers a narrative that will trouble many readers, one that begins with the one-child policy initiated by the government in 1979. That policy was deeply unpopular for many reasons, not least that China lacks a social welfare network to support the elderly, leaving it to

The U.S. State Department reckons that 20,000 children are stolen each year in China.

DAUGHTERS OF THE BAMBOO GROVE

children to take care of their parents. Popular or no, the law, Demick writes, “was enforced by an agency euphemistically known as the jisheng ban, literally ‘planned birth’ or ‘family planning agency.’” She adds, ominously, “It didn’t actually plan or advise so much as punish,” noting that the agency grew to employ 83 million Chinese and even more informers. In the case of Demick’s chief subjects, a couple in rural Hunan Province, a daughter—their third, and the older of twins by a few minutes— was kidnapped at 22 months and put up for adoption, which brought her to rural Texas. That pattern of kidnapping and child trafficking is endemic: The U.S. State Department reckons that 20,000 children are stolen each year for proceeds that help support an orphanage system whose “funding from national and local government was minimal.” Demick’s account of the twins’ eventual reunion is affecting, as well as a revealing study in cultural differences. And while the one-child system has changed, Demick concludes by noting that there are still up to 120,000 Chinese adoptees “tethered by blood to another family and country they struggle to comprehend.”

Solid reportage and a deep knowledge of China inform this welcome study of a state-imposed social experiment gone awry.

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color

De Robertis, Caro | Algonquin (320 pp.) $32.00 | May 13, 2025 | 9781643756875

A chorus of queer voices elaborate on the “gender revolution” that changed their lives, past and present.

Novelist De Robertis assembles insightful and educative life experiences from

interviews in 2022-23 with 20 multicultural transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, genderfluid, butch, TwoSpirit, transfeminine, and transmasculine people. Each personal history is notable in its own scope and perspective, but collectively these voices representing elder queer generations of color become extraordinary. Generous anecdotes about what coming out queer or questioning gender was like three, four, or five decades ago form the crux of several stories. Trailblazing activists Adela Vázquez recalls being a “fat, loud, queeny little kid” who identified as a girl, and Brooklyn-born transmasculine punk musician KB Boyce relates seeing himself as a little boy and “didn’t feel gender, I just felt like I was me.” Elsewhere, participants share coming-of-adolescence stories and unflinching anecdotes touching on familial transphobia, “chosen family,” identity, and survival; they oscillate between bittersweet pain and defiant audacity, as in Black trans woman Ms Billie Cooper’s U.S. Navy enlistment, where astounded fellow servicemen “could see that I came from a different realm.” Iconic San Francisco drag artists Landa Lakes and septuagenarian Donna Personna share vivid anecdotes from childhoods revealing misunderstanding from family and peers and memorializing the resilience that made them whole. Each story—from trailblazing trans activists and advocates to pioneering community leaders to a trans Latine immigrant business owner to cultivators of queer culture—reflects on how the joys and pains of living authentic queer lives formed the people they have become. The lasting impressions each of them has made on society beautifully amplify the heartbeat of queer trans life. A colorful tapestry of potent, radiant, and relevant testimonials from queer people of color.

The True Happiness Company: A Memoir

Dinavahi, Veena | Random House (320 pp.) $29.00 | May 20, 2025 | 9780593447659

Breaking away. When Dinavahi was an overachieving sophomore in high school, a friend in her math class took her own life. The tragedy was the latest in a series of incidents at Severna Park High, a Blue Ribbon school in Maryland with a suicide epidemic so severe that when Dinavahi was admitted to a psychological ward after her own suicide attempt, she ran into a classmate she presumes was there for the same reason. Dinavahi continued attempting to take her own life throughout her teens. Desperate to keep her daughter alive, Dinavahi’s mother took her to see a man named Bob Lyon, who ran the True Happiness Company (the names are pseudonyms). Although he was a former ophthalmologist with no background in psychology, Lyon diagnosed Dinavahi with borderline personality disorder and said that the only way for her to stop her self-destructive behavior was to speak to him daily. Over the course of the next decade, Lyon insidiously took over Dinavahi’s life, manipulating her into dropping out of college, getting married, and joining the Mormon church. It was not until Lyon molested Dinavahi that she found the courage to leave. “Sometimes conformity can be a protective mechanism,” she writes. “If everyone is heading in the same direction, you figure someone must know what they’re doing. They can’t all be wrong. But this overwhelming psychological pressure to conform kept me in True Happiness for so long, doubting my own instincts.” Dinavahi is a talented writer with a dark sense of humor. Her intensely vulnerable storytelling vividly illustrates the ways in which society preys on the insecurity of neurodiverse women and, in particular, neurodiverse women of color. A brilliant, personal take on the pernicious power of cults.

Kirkus Star

For more by Caro De Robertis, visit Kirkus online.

The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement

Dolan, Eamon | Putnam (304 pp.)

$30.00 | April 1, 2025 | 9780593714126

A white male survivor of childhood abuse provides an alternative look at estrangement. When Dolan was a child, his mother regularly physically abused him and his siblings with a wooden spoon. She also “had other weapons in her arsenal, like berating us in public or dialing the water heater down to its lowest setting” or serving them barely edible food. The author uses his experience as an example of how the current emphasis of approaching estrangement through the lens of future forgiveness marginalizes and harms survivors, whose experience of childhood abuse Dolan compares to the suffering of “enslaved people, concentration camp survivors, and others who have endured the worst harm their fellow humans could inflict.” In addition to summarizing the lifelong mental consequences of surviving childhood psychological abuse, he offers a system for deciding whether to consider estrangement as a viable option for parting with abusers, explores the “spectrum” of approaches to estrangement, and describes ways to leave the door open for abusers willing to undergo significant personal healing and change. He also explores the nonexistence of rituals for processing estrangement-related grief, calling this lack of options “another instance of the de facto conspiracy our culture has constructed to ignore and compound survivors’ pain,” and encourages survivors to make use of treatments like inner-child work and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, even if they sound “nutty.” This much-needed addition to the literature around estrangement is well researched, tightly structured, and eminently practical. At times, Dolan’s zealousness and

insistence on his own marginalization undermine his message and break the journalistic tone. Overall, though, this is a valuable tool for adult survivors. A practical approach to healthy estrangement.

Kirkus Star

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

Fraser, Caroline | Penguin Press (480 pp.)

$32.00 | June 10, 2025 | 9780593657225

A provocative, eerily lyrical study of the heyday of American serial killers. From the 1940s through the 1980s, the number of serial killers in the U.S. rose precipitously, and the Pacific Northwest was, disproportionately, home for them; Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway (aka the Green River Killer), Jack Spillman (aka the Werewolf Butcher), and more hailed from the region. Observers attributed this to mere coincidence, or perhaps a side effect of the gloomy climate. Fraser (Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, etc.), a Pulitzer Prize winner and Northwest native, suggests a more direct culprit: the region’s high concentration of smelters, which released derangingly high levels of arsenic and lead into the atmosphere. (Notable serial killers elsewhere in the country had similar backgrounds; Dennis Rader, aka BTK, grew up near a smelter in Kansas’ “lead belt.”) Fraser’s book layers the evidence for this argument (known as the lead-crime hypothesis) precisely but with

a novelistic structure, braiding together biographies of the killers (Bundy most prominently and prolifically), the growth of firms like mining and smelting companies ASARCO (controlled by the Guggenheim family), tragic incidents on a precarious floating bridge connecting Seattle and Mercer Island, and Fraser’s own recollections of growing up in a time and place when young women were inordinately targeted and killed. She depicts a lot of death; Fraser is determined to make the reader see the worst of the killers’ actions, in vivid but unsensationalistic detail, to underscore the ever-escalating crises that mining and smelting businesses tried to underplay, pay off, or ignore. By the ’90s, as bans on leaded gasoline took effect, smelters closed, and the EPA set stricter pollution standards, the number of serial killers dissipated. Fraser’s book is an engrossing and disturbing portrait of decades of carnage that required decades to confront. A true-crime story written with compassion, fury, and scientific sense.

Chai Noon: Jews and the Cinematic Wild West

Friedmann, Jonathan L.

Univ. of Wisconsin (264 pp.)

$42.95 | June 3, 2025 | 9780299352103

Shalom, partner. Westerns are a staple of the Hollywood tradition. They represent ideals of American individuality, communal governance, and a reverence for the land. They also raise questions about the treatment of

Did the Northwest’s smelters contribute to a high number of serial killers?

MURDERLAND

Native Americans, the inherent racism and inequality of American institutions, and the pervasive violence that governs our relationships. Jewish men and women were, from the outset, at the heart of Hollywood. Jewish producers, writers, and actors shaped our sense of heritage and landscape. This imaginative and often witty book illustrates the centrality of Jews and Jewish themes in the Western. Friedmann, the director of the Jewish Museum of the American West, explores a range of “recurring Jewish tropes and motifs” in film and television Westerns: masculine identity, personality types, occupational niches, survival strategies, intermarriage, racism, and marginalization. His book presents a series of close readings of the Western canon— Cimmaron , Shane, The Searchers, High Noon , Deadwood to see how Jewish figures (explicit and implicit) serve as foils for American male identity. Best is the treatment of the Jewish merchant, from Levy in Cimmaron to Sol Star in Deadwood Most provocative is its celebration of Mel Brooks as the anarchic critic of American ideals in Blazing Saddles. The book also examines how Jewish émigré composers created the Hollywood film sound and how the arching, aching strains of Max Steiner, Aaron Copland, and Dimitri Tiomkin gave voice to a longing to fit in. For Steven Spielberg, the Western shaped the heroic and artistic ambitions of the outsider, as in the animated adventure An American Tail (with its mouse, Fievel Mousekewitz). In the end, the Western offers tales of “personal tragedies papered over by the American dream mythology”—a statement that says much about the lives of all of us, regardless of religion or descent.

A well-researched, engagingly written history of American popular culture, told from an unexpectedly revealing angle.

Tequila Wars: José Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico

Genoways, Ted | Norton (352 pp.) $31.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9780393292596

The little-known man behind the famous drink.

This rich, edifying book remedies a striking gap in the historical record. José Cuervo’s namesake tequila is one of his nation’s iconic exports, a liquor made from local agaves that became a billion-dollar industry (and begot a commensurate number of hangovers). But until now, Genoways writes, there’s never been a book about him: “Even in Mexico, there is only one brief academic study that examines Cuervo’s rise.” His low profile in death has much to do with the way he lived. As many of those near him met violent ends, he maintained a “calm, reserved exterior” and stayed “strategically invisible,” a finishing-school product who parlayed a dodgy pedigree—his uncles were land thieves—into commercial immortality. Beset by drought, crop disease, bandits, and the outbreaks of violence and political chaos that accompanied the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s, Cuervo developed various tactics to stay afloat. He won public favor with civic-minded donations, showcased his product at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, paid bribes, lobbied reporters, built political alliances, and helped bring electricity and rail lines to his region. He lived amid ambient menace and unthinkable violence, fleeing his home on horseback in the cinematic scene that opens the book and, in a subsequent chapter, spotting the hanged corpses of at least 50 revolutionary soldiers. Genoways makes frequent and effective use of diaries kept by Cuervo’s niece, a strong writer whose words help us see and hear the action. The frenetic rate of change in Mexico in this era—leadership of one state government changed five times in about a year—occasionally

makes it challenging to track the narrative threads and players. But smart pacing and memorable detail are this book’s primary features. The comprehensive story of a liquor empire built during a pivotal period in Mexican history.

Rare Tongues: The Secret Stories of Hidden Languages

Gibb, Lorna | Princeton Univ. (352 pp.)

$29.95 | April 22, 2025 | 9780691274171

Speaking up for vanishing languages. Once a language is lost, important knowledge disappears with it. “Every language is unique and has something important to tell us about the world we live in,” writes Scottish linguist Lorna Gibb. Gibb’s love of her subject has led her on “a linguistic odyssey” to discover what vanishing languages can reveal about their speakers and the land in which they’re spoken. The book provides a whirlwind tour, starting with the outsized influence of Latin, a language of empire, to those of Australia, India, Finland, and Namibia, as well as other parts of the world where languages are extinct, endangered, or in decline. Gibb sheds light on the singular attributes of many of these rare languages, from the Native American sign language that enabled diverse tribes to trade and communicate, to Khoikhoi and N|uu, two of South Africa’s first languages, nearly erased by colonizers. She also focuses on ecologically significant languages such as Ainu, which, unlike Japanese, includes many original place names and words for parts of plants that are useful or medicinal. In doing so, Gibb highlights each language’s valuable properties and perspectives. Linguistic homogeneity has long been a goal of authoritarian regimes that seek control, resulting in trauma for people who were punished for speaking, or were forced to abandon, their mother tongues. The book underscores the connection

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between “language, identity, and cultural survival.” Crucially, Gibb highlights success stories, such as Hawaiian and British Columbia’s Nuxálk; a resurgence of interest has meant a revival of these once-endangered languages.

A thought-provoking tour of the diversity within the world’s languages—and a strong case for their preservation.

Kirkus Star

Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange

Goh, Katie | Tin House | $27.95 | May 6, 2025 | 9781963108231

Goh uncovers the history of empires inside a ubiquitous fruit.

“I follow the orange because it offers a model for a hybrid existence and I, too, seek my own meaning in the world,” writes Goh in her multifaceted narration of citrus. She follows the history of the orange in research that spans continents, centuries, and legends. We learn of the orange’s mythic origins in China, the many Silk Roads that brought citrus to Europe, and the shorelines that European colonizers planted with the scurvy-defying fruits. Goh demonstrates how the history of the orange is a history of colonialism, a history of exoticism, and one of convenience. We learn of the bubonic plague, when orange peels were dried and used to mask the smell of sickness. In the 2020 pandemic, the author bought bags of oranges with gloved hands and a masked visage, the fruit distant from its origins, made clinical under fluorescent lights. Artfully interwoven in the narrative is Goh’s own

history and that of her family. In rural China, the author meets her relatives, though they speak a dialect unknown to her. In Malaysia, she visits her aging grandmother and discovers pomelo orchards in the wake of tin extraction. And she writes of Ireland, the place of her upbringing and her mother’s family, where oranges are shipped across land and water to meet the desires of citrus-hungry consumers. “Per person, oranges are the most consumed fruit in the world,” she writes, and in these pages the fruit is seen across many essential parts of human history. Oranges expand into metaphors—the way we discuss family trees, hybridity, and naturalization are deconstructed, and their citrine trail reckoned with. Goh’s quest for self-knowledge mirrors the journey of citrus itself. In smart, engrossing prose, Goh teaches us as much about the fruits as about ourselves.

A brilliant history of the orange that, like citrus, defies classification.

Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai‘i

Goo, Sara Kehaulani | Flatiron Books (368 pp.) $29.99 | June 10, 2025 | 9781250333445

A quest for justice in a changing Hawai‘i. It may well surprise readers to learn, as journalist Goo did, that “there are now more people of Native Hawaiian descent—53 percent of the 680,000— living outside of Hawai‘i than in Hawai‘i.” The reason, Goo writes, is simple: Most native Hawaiians don’t earn enough money to live in a place where the average home price is more

The history of the orange is a history of colonialism.

FOREIGN FRUIT

than $1 million ($1.3 million on Maui). Money propels Goo’s narrative, which begins when her alarmed father announces that the state is drastically raising taxes on land held in the family trust after having been granted to an ancestor by the last king of Hawai‘i. Arriving at an equitable solution to this bureaucratic problem is just one thread of Goo’s narrative, whose larger story is really one of homecoming: Born and raised in California, an East Coast resident for decades, Goo must learn or relearn key points of the people’s traditional lifeways. The title of the book speaks to one such point, one’s obligation to both place and culture, less a burden, she explains, than a privilege: “For example, certain people had kuleana for growing taro or crops in a certain part of the island, or for taking care of a fishpond or teaching hula.” She explores many other concepts as she travels in the company of relatives, who take her, in one instance, to a heiau, or temple, whose purpose is lost to time; says her uncle, “Some people say dey did these tings there like human sacrifice and dat stuff, but we don’t know.” What is clear is that humans are sacrificed, at least metaphorically, for profit in a Hawai‘i made for wealthy outsiders; as Goo laments in closing, “Our culture won’t remain unless each generation— grandparent to parent to child to grandchild—keeps it burning.”

A well-crafted work combining memoir, ethnography, history, and sharp-edged journalism.

The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America

Graham, David A. | Random House (160 pp.) $16.00 paper | April 22, 2025 | 9798217153725

A close look at the ultra-rightist Project 2025, now playing in a capital near you. Atlantic staffer Graham dubs the authors of the Heritage Foundation–funded Project 2025 “contrarians,” but they’re

more than that: They believe “that the only way to deliver the Christian, right-wing nation they desired was a carefully organized assault on the U.S. government as it existed.” That radical assault has four chief aims: to restore the man-headed family, dismantle the “administrative state,” close the border and defend the nation’s sovereignty, and “secure our God-given individual rights to live freely.” Trump claimed not to have heard of Project 2025 and its playbook, but as Russell Vought, an author of the platform who’s now the head of the Office of Management and Budget, proudly acknowledged, he and his Heritage cohort were busily writing executive orders long ago, a stack of them awaiting Trump in his first minutes in the Oval Office. Vought also proudly owns up to being a Christian nationalist: “We are people who believe that we have a Christian nation.” Project 2025 is to be carried out, as has been plain, by seizing control of agencies and placing them under the rule of loyalists who will put Trump’s policies into action, with the understanding that “although the president’s choices for high-profile positions might not be the most qualified picks, the ranks below them would be stocked with well-prepared and committed deputies.” With broad planks restoring discriminatory measures against minorities, nonbinary citizens, and the like and slashing social services, Project 2025 also aims to replace the progressive income tax with a regressive consumption tax that would fall heavily on the poor. In fact, as Graham makes clear in his close reading of the text, the intended beneficiaries are wealthy white fellow travelers, and no others need apply.

Essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of the Trumpian maelstrom.

Karen: A Brother Remembers

Grammer, Kelsey | Harper Select/ HarperCollins (384 pp.) | $31.99

May 6, 2025 | 9781400252817

An actor pays tribute to his murdered sister. Fifty years ago, Grammer’s 18-year-old sister, Karen, was kidnapped from the Red Lobster where she worked. She was then raped, tortured, and stabbed to death by killers on a rampage through Colorado Springs. A spirit medium named Esther channeled the voice of Karen from beyond the grave, instructing the actor to write a book about her. The result is a repetitive stream-ofconsciousness account marked by metanarrative digressions that try the reader’s patience. A letter to the reader on page 84 suggests one put the book down if Grammer’s “no affectation or filter” approach doesn’t suit. The lack of filter generates jarring moments with regard to women’s bodies, World War II war crimes, and current ideas about privilege and race, as well as passages like this: “Dear God, I miss her. I miss my sister. She was so full of joy. She was such a wonderful girl. I loved her so much. That face shining and alive, so innocent and so fun. That was irreplaceable. Thanks for being my si ster, Karen.” And this: “She led me to this tale and leads me in it. I try to hear her. I try to honor her, climbing to where I see her high above me. Where Karen is today is a lofty place. And I am listening as I climb. She is Legend. Maybe the whole Valhalla thing is true. Maybe our Viking blood carries it.” It might have made more sense to present this material in a diary format to more naturally mingle past and present, story and process. But even then, it would have required a firm editorial hand and a sharp pair of pruning shears.

A disorganized book about a horrible crime.

Everyday Intuition: What Psychology, Science, and Psychics Can Teach Us About Finding and Trusting Our Inner Voice

Greenwood, Elizabeth | Harper/ HarperCollins (256 pp.) | $32.00 | May 6, 2025 | 9780063375697

Human intuition is a complex, unexplored phenomenon. Most people have felt the twinge of intuition at some point. The whisper in your head, the pang in the pit of your stomach, the inexplicable sense that a certain path should be avoided. Greenwood, the author of Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud , is interested in how intuition can be defined, the roots of it, and its development for positive ends. She describes herself as an intuitive rather than strictly rational person but notes that intuition is often derided in the modern world, especially because it is usually seen as a female trait. She believes that men can be equally intuitive, although they will often speak of a “gut feeling.” Greenwood details her own experiences and conducts a wide range of interviews in her examination. Some neuroscientists see intuition as a form of speeded-up logic, and there are those psychologists who view it as connected to buried issues and observations. It is not always clear where Greenwood is going with her discussion, and the chapters on using psychedelic drugs to enhance intuition and on how psychics can teach intuitive skills don’t quite fit with the book’s investigative tone. Nevertheless, she makes some useful points about the value of intuition. Intuitive feelings should not be automatically dismissed because they do not meet the social paradigm of rationality, Greenwood says. “Stepping into intuition means giving up the illusion of

For more books about Donald Trump, visit Kirkus online.

IN 2019, JOURNALIST Vauhini Vara stumbled upon a rich personal archive she didn’t know she was curating.

“I realized that Google was tracking all of my search results from the beginning of time—or at least the beginning of when it was able to do this,” Vara says in a video call from her Colorado home. “I became curious about what Google knew about me.”

Vara’s search history, which included queries ranging from “what is the top of a blueberry called” to “how to soften dried krazy glue” and “what should a person be,” inspired the title essay of her new Kirkus-starred collection, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age. Although she published this list of queries in the opinion section of the New York Times in 2019—and saw that readers had an appetite for inventive pieces about technology—it wasn’t until she published the essay “Ghosts” in Believer magazine that she realized she might have a collection on her hands.

“I started wondering if there might be something to write made up entirely of these experimental tech-related essays,” Vara says. “I started writing

THE KIRKUS PROFILE: VAUHINI VARA

A journalist and fiction writer wrestles with the complexities of living with technology.

BY MATHANGI SUBRAMANIAN

them one by one as they came to me, out of personal curiosity and interest.”

In “Ghosts,” Vara recounts how she provided an artificial intelligence model with a series of memories about her older sister’s untimely death, hoping the program would help her articulate her unresolved feelings about the decades-old family tragedy. Vara says that she didn’t set out to write the piece; its formation took her by surprise.

“I don’t know that I would have been able to write that essay if I’d said to myself, And now I shall write an essay that I’ll publish in a periodical ,” Vara says.

The author of the novel The Immortal King Rao and of the Kirkus-starred story collection This Is Salvaged , Vara began her career as a business journalist for outlets such as the Wall Street Journal , the New Yorker, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Wired . She began writing “Ghosts” after profiling Sam Altman in 2017, just before he became the CEO of OpenAI. The reporting process inspired Vara to ask for access to an AI model that would go on to power ChatGPT. Although Vara only

intended to use the model for experimentation—at one point, she repeatedly fed it the first line of Moby-Dick “just to see what happened”— eventually she found herself asking the program about her sister’s passing.

“It came out of a desire for help expressing something I didn’t know how to express,” Vara says. “Ultimately—at least in my experience; other people might read the essay differently—it turns out this technology is not able to provide what I was looking for, because no technology is able to speak from my perspective.”

This epiphany aligns with others in Searches, which Vara says she wrote as an investigation of “how big technology companies both fulfill and exploit our human desires and needs.” A chapter entitled “Resurrections” challenges visual AI to create a record of undocumented moments in Vara’s personal and family history. The essay “A Great Deal” is a collection of Vara’s Amazon reviews of personal purchases ranging from fig bars to chewable lactase to crew socks. The piece “Elon Musk, Empire” is a catalog of the

Andrew Altschul

author’s interests generated by the social media platform X based on her posts and interactions—among them Beyoncé, Russian political figures, horror books, and agriculture. Each chapter employs innovative structures that Vara’s editor appreciated but initially found incomplete.

“My editor said, ‘I know that you understand what you’re doing here. But a reader might need more background,’” Vara explains. “She suggested writing an introduction and conclusion, but I got it into my head to revamp the whole book. That’s why I added the chapters that are memoiristic and journalistic.”

In these additional essays, the author examines her history as the daughter of Indian immigrants and as the mother of a young boy. Vara says the inclusion of stories about parenting flowed naturally from the book’s themes.

“Having a child makes my thinking about the world 10, 20, or 50 years from now so much more concrete. Because there’s this individual human who I care so much about who’s going to be in that world. That’s part of it, certainly,” Vara says. “Also, being a parent is just so bound up in human desire, as well as the human need for connection, to care and to be cared for, which intersects with what tech companies are doing in interesting ways.”

Vara’s editor had another, less traditional suggestion: plugging excerpts of the work in progress into ChatGPT to see how it responded.

“My initial reaction was, ‘That’s a horrible idea!’” Vara says, laughing. Eventually, though, the author’s curiosity won out, and she decided to try it. The result is a series of conversations between the author and an AI program, which she interweaves throughout the book.

Vara’s openness to experimenting with AI contrasts with the creative writing community’s widespread avoidance of large language models as well as the anxiety many artists feel about this new technology. The 2023 Hollywood writers’ strike, for instance, began partly as a result of

studios threatening to replace screenwriters with AI. The Author’s Guild recently developed a policy platform stating that “it is inherently unfair to use and incorporate books, articles, and other copyrighted works in the fabric of AI technologies without the author’s consent, compensation, or credit.” Publications like I Am Code, an AI-generated book of poems credited to code-davinci-002, further fuel fears that creative writers will soon find themselves obsolete.

Vara believes that readers, rather than writers, will determine the publishing industry’s future relationship with AI.

“It’s an open question whether or not people are interested in reading something that doesn’t originate from a human consciousness,” she says. “Readers are the customers, and if customers don’t want this product that’s being sold, then the product isn’t going to be successful.”

Vara continues, “It’s easy for us to think about big tech’s role in our life in a binary way. Oftentimes we say, ‘These companies are exploiting us.’ Then the

companies say—I think fairly reasonably—‘You’re making a choice to use our products. You could decide not to use them.’ During the writing process, I discovered that this tension is what Searches is about: If we’re going to talk about the ways in which these companies exploit us, we need to also contend with the more difficult part of the equation, which is that we are using these products of our own volition.”

Moreover, Vara points out that all technology—including AI—is, inherently, a site of possibility.

“Humans are endlessly creative, and we can find creative uses of anything,” she says. “I would argue that Google search results are a potential source of creativity, or Amazon reviews, the same way the trash one finds on the sidewalk could become found art, or a government document could become an erasure poem. Literally anything can spark creativity.”

Mathangi Subramanian is a novelist, an essayist, and the founder of Moon Rabbit Writing Studio.

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age

Vara, Vauhini

Pantheon | 320 pp. | $30.00 April 8, 2025 | 9780593701522

Having a child makes my thinking about the world 10, 20, or 50 years from now so much more concrete.

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

B y Azar Nafisi (2003)

Reading Lolita in Tehran drew admirers around the world when it came out in 2003. A rousing account of young women secretly

gathering to read Western classics—against the dictates of a repressive regime in Iran—the book was appealing to anyone who believed in the power of literature and the fundamental principle that anyone should have the right to access it. As Azar Nafisi writes, Vladimir Nabokov’s titular novel was “not a critique of the Islamic Republic, but it went against the grain of all totalitarian perspectives.”

In 2008 Nafisi became a citizen of the United States, a country she had come to know and love through its books. Last year, Reading Lolita in Tehran was adapted into a film. Its making embodied a spirit of

cross-border cooperation—it stars Iranian actresses, and the director, Eran Riklis, is Israeli. The film screened at the Rome Film Festival, where it won the audience award. A day earlier, on Oct. 26, Israel had launched strikes against Iran (and Iraq and Syria). Nafisi was in Rome for the event. “This is what I wanted to bring to Reading Lolita,” she said in comments reported by Variety. “I wanted the West to know that the Israeli govern-

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

ment and the Iranian government are creating wars not just in their own land, but in the region.… And we the people should do as these girls did in the book and in the film. We should send this message that hate will not work.”

—JOHN McMURTRIE

Azar Nafisi

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Alexander Hamilton

B y Ron Chernow (2004)

Ron Chernow, who grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Queens, bought a place last year in the Dakota, the storied Manhattan apartment building whose residents

have included Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, and John Lennon. It’s safe to say that most people who live at the exclusive address have made their fortunes in fields more lucrative than historical authorship. But few historians are like Chernow.

A respected author who has drawn acclaim for biographies of, among others, John D.

Rockefeller, Chernow published Alexander Hamilton in 2004, the 200th anniversary of the duel that took the life of the Founding Father. The 800-page doorstopper was an instant hit, staying on the New York Times bestseller list for three months. And then someone named Lin-Manuel Miranda read it on a beach in Mexico and decided to make a musical of it. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Something by the name of Hamilton?

This year marks the 10th anniversary of that revolutionary work’s off-Broadway premiere. During that decade, the multiethnic show and its

hip-hop soundtrack (and merchandise) have hauled in more than $1 billion. Chernow’s book has also benefited, with more than 1 million copies sold—many no doubt purchased with $10 bills, a denomination that the Treasury Department says will continue to retain Hamilton’s likeness, thanks in no small part to the extraordinary popularity of the works that bear his name.—J.M.

Ron Chernow

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

certainty and confronting what is right now, or the immediate next,” she concludes.

Those interested in alternative ways of seeing the world will find an engaging read.

Kirkus Star

The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race To Invent the Future

Hagey, Keach | Norton (368 pp.)

$31.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781324075967

Searching portrait of Silicon Valley tech tycoon Sam Altman, “the global prophet of an unimaginably prosperous future.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Hagey has been tracking Sam Altman for years, charting the rise of various strains of AI that have risen at his behest and that of his competitors. Altman, Hagey notes, isn’t a coder, though he’s indisputably brilliant and charismatic: One colleague notes that if you dropped him on an island of cannibals and came back later, he’d be king, while tech funder Peter Thiel told her, “We should treat him as more of a messiah figure.” Instead, Hagey writes, he’s a promoter, an evangelist, the optimist of the title, although he has allowed that the algorithms he’s created through OpenAI—an oddly structured company that’s both for-profit and nonprofit— may indeed one day yield computers that are smarter than us, bringing on “the singularity,” that tipping point after which humans may not be needed. Indeed, in a book full of telling anecdotes, one of the most profound comes from Altman’s now nemesis, Elon Musk. One of Altman’s predecessors told Musk that he was working on superintelligent AI, “the most important thing in the world,” to which Musk responded that his project to bring humans to Mars was more important still. His interlocutor said fine, as long as a rogue AI didn’t

Tracking the “global prophet” of artificial intelligence.

THE OPTIMIST

follow humans to Mars and put an end to them there. “Musk got very quiet. He had never thought about that.” By Hagey’s vivid account, Altman has thought about that and most things, layering one venture atop another, with one comprising “an impressive synthesis of Altman’s many pet projects and obsessions—AI, UBI [universal basic income], affordable housing, technoutopianism—that cohered into a worldview.” Altman’s life isn’t uncheckered, but he emerges from these pages as someone far worthier than most tech giants of close attention.

An exemplary blend of biography, financial technology reportage, and futurology.

I’ll Have What She’s Having

Handler, Chelsea | Dial Press (320 pp.)

$32.00 | February 25, 2025 | 9780593596579

The comic and television personality turns serious— semiserious,  anyway—in a combination memoir and self-help book. Handler opens these generally short essays with a memory of childhood that closes with the exhortation to keep the child within us alive into adulthood: “Hold on to that child tightly, as if she were your own, because she is.” The memory soon veers into the comically absurd, with an account of a cocaine-fueled crosscountry trip with a random companion who looked like another TV personality: “I don’t know if Dog the Bounty Hunter does copious amounts of cocaine, but he sure looks like he does.” Drugs and juice are seldom far from the proceedings, but therapy is close by, too, and clearly the

latter has been of tremendous use, if “exhausting in the sense that every new development or idea led to a period of intense self-awareness followed by waves of acute self-consciousness coupled with endless self-recrimination.” As the anecdotes progress, that intense self-awareness becomes less fraught. Some of her life lessons are drawn from her experiences wrestling with the yips and setbacks of performing before audiences; some turn into knowing one-liners (“I knew if three men in a row told me not to do something, it was imperative that I do the opposite”). Most, even if tongue-in-cheek or rueful, are delivered with a disarming friendliness laced with her trademark archness: Her account of a dinner opposite Woody Allen and daughter/wife Soon-Yi is worth the price of admission alone. In the main, Handler is a cheerleader for everyone worthy of cheers, and especially women. As she writes, encouragingly, “You have misbehaved, and then corrected, and then misbehaved again, and then corrected some more”—and have grown and flourished. A pleasingly unformulaic book of hard-won advice that never rings false.

Hollywood High: A Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies

Handy, Bruce | Avid Reader Press (384 pp.) $30.00 | June 10, 2025 | 9781501181177

A cultural history of teen movies— and, by extension, the American teenager. Early in his second adult nonfiction book, Handy (Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an

Adult, 2017) notes that “teenager” is a largely social construction. It was only in the 1930s that the demographic became more than just young Americans unprotected by labor laws and instead a cohort with spending money, ambition, and an ability to shape the zeitgeist. Early entries in the teen-film field were tame and shaped by moral uprightness, particularly Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy films, where a first kiss was a gee-willikers event. Handy has good fun exploring how Rooney’s off-screen antics countered his chaste screen persona.) But on-screen transgression soon became the order of the day, be it through James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, no-adults-allowed beach-party flicks, Sean Penn’s stoner antihero in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, John Hughes’ defiant middle-class teens, up through Katniss Everdeen’s defiant postapocalyptic herodom in the Hunger Games films. Handy smartly balances scratching the target reader’s nostalgic itch for details on the making of films like The Breakfast Club while also exploring how each iteration of the genre reflects a generation’s concerns. American Graffiti sublimated ’70s post-Watergate stress; Mean Girls underscored early-oughts status anxiety; Twilight was canny counterprogramming for a generation overwhelmed by sex and drugs. Inevitably, given the genre’s range, Handy misses a lot: Classics like West Side Story and Heathers are mentioned only glancingly, horror is skipped, and indie gems like Pump Up the Volume are absent. One ungainly chapter crams together ’90s films Boyz n the Hood , Clueless, and Kids. Yet the book is a well-informed conversation starter that takes an often-maligned genre seriously. Good, smart, occasionally naughty adolescent fun.

Take to the Trees: A Story of Hope, Science, and Self-Discovery in America’s Imperiled Forests

Holloway, Marguerite | Norton (272 pp.) $28.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9781324036449

Learning from giants.

In Holloway’s journey to self-discovery, the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism professor shares

her experiences after enrolling in the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop as a novice climber with a fear of heights. As the author recounts, she witnessed the transformation of women from various walks of life who similarly sought to improve their skills, challenge themselves, and overcome their fears. Additionally, she encountered women from the arboriculture and forestry industry who shared their experiences working in a male-dominated industry. Throughout, Holloway also discusses details she learned about the impact that climate change is having on trees. As she notes, the book began to take form during interviews with climate change experts when reporting for the New York Times. From drought to an upsurge in wildfires across the country, from beetle infestations to the blurring of New England’s once sharply defined seasons, Holloway writes, “a great dying is underway in forests the world over.” Further, she asserts, “climate change is like a trauma that keeps gathering power and force because we won’t look directly at it.” Holloway also shares the impact of familial losses that she has witnessed in recent years and the resulting personal promise that she tried to keep. With this additional narrative, the book at times feels as if the author is attempting to accomplish too much. Nevertheless, it remains inspiring. Thanks to her journey, she writes, she feels “both more rooted and more free.”

A hopeful yet cautionary commentary about the power and fragility of trees.

Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power

Isenstadt, Alex | Grand Central Publishing (304 pp.) | $30.00 March 18, 2025 | 9781538765517

Axios reporter Isenstadt charts the dark paths that led to 45’s becoming 47.

Donald Trump’s election in 2024, writes Isenstadt, marks “the most remarkable political comeback in American history.” Trump left the White House in shame, failed coup attempt and all, with an administration shattered by resignations and assorted scandals. Brooding in his Mar-a-Lago exile, though, he continued the big lie that he’d won the election to keep his base engaged and his name in the news. With able lieutenants, he also focused on gaining total control of the Republican Party, which he “wanted to run…like a big-city political machine.” That project involved taking down his Republican opposition piece by piece, especially Ron DeSantis, who “was Trump but with all the stuff Republicans liked and without all the stuff many of them did not.” Trump was successful, just as he was in reducing former allies who in his mind had become his enemies, such as Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, who, after DeSantis crashed and burned, “had become the favorite of Republican establishment donors who were determined to stop Trump.” It’s worth noting that none of those enemies plays a role in the MAGA administration. Isenstadt delivers news, such as Trump’s having seriously considered Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo for his vice president before selecting JD Vance, who had been critical of Trump in the past. No problem, writes Isenstadt: “Trump was always amenable to former detractors who wanted to kiss the ring.” Trump was enraged when Kamala Harris took Joe Biden’s place in the race against him,

disparaging her in racist and sexist terms, but then again, in Isenstadt’s telling, Trump is always enraged about one thing or another, which was manifest from day 1 of his second term, when “his quest for revenge appeared underway.”

A sturdy account of how we got where we are, vindictive chaos leading the way.

Beastly Britain: An Animal History

Jones, Karen R. | Yale Univ. (320 pp.) $35.00 | May 20, 2025 | 9780300264470

A compendium of creatures. Jones, a professor of environmental and cultural history, brings expertise and a lively curiosity to her close look at a select bestiary of 10 animals—eight real and two vividly imagined—from four habitats: woodland, farm, underground, and sea. Each animal’s special relationship to humans emerges as Jones investigates its habits and habitat, morphology, evolutionary history, mating and breeding, and literary appearances. The hedgehog, for one, long chosen by Britons as their favorite animal, is a fitting choice for Jones’ first chapter. “Industrious and friendly,” it has the cute behavior of curling into a ball to defend itself. Hedgehogs have made their way into literature (notably, children’s books), as well as into the pharmacopeia, where its left eye, fried in oil, was once thought to have medicinal qualities. The “mysterious and enigmatic” fox is beloved by Britons for “intellect and hunting acumen combining in devastating and innovative ways.” Sheep, one of the first animals to be domesticated as livestock, are found in many idioms (such as black sheep and a wolf in sheep’s clothing), as are pigeons, which happen to be living dinosaurs. Stag beetles inspired Victorian beetle-mania, appearing, sometimes alive, in women’s jewelry, dress, and hats. A

All creatures great and small—including a supersize flea that feasted on dinosaur blood.

BEASTLY BRITAIN

flea, while not among Britons’ favorites, is surely among the most ancient: a supersize flea, Jones reports, feasted on the blood of dinosaurs. Dogs have been humans’ friends since prehistoric times, as archeological evidence attests; ghostly dogs howled in tales of the supernatural, which proliferated as spiritualism gained popularity in the 19th century. The Loch Ness monster, Jones finds, is not the only underwater plesiosaur believed to inhabit the British Isles, connecting humans to “deep time” and, like all animals, to untamed spirit.

A generously illustrated, entertaining celebration of wildlife.

Class Matters: The Fight To Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges

Kahlenberg, Richard D. | PublicAffairs (384 pp.) $32.00 | March 25, 2025 | 9781541704237

Journalist/ attorney Kahlenberg calls for college admissions policies based on economic class rather than race.

Kahlenberg is well known—and a source of controversy—for having aligned, though a liberal, with conservative thinkers in arguing against the affirmative action of old. The goals of racially based affirmative action are, he writes, “valid”: “It is crucial that in a multicultural democracy, students learn to appreciate and value individuals of all backgrounds.” Yet, as constructed until

recently, race-based affirmative action standards at state as well as private schools favored moneyed applicants, as well as legacy admissions. This may yield diversity of a kind, but it deprecates the efforts of economically disadvantaged students of whatever race. With a Duke economist, Kahlenberg gamed the results of class-based admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (where, perhaps surprisingly, there are 16 times more students from wealthy than from poor backgrounds), and the two discovered that the outcomes would be more equitable than race-based admissions: “We found that universities could produce both racial and economic diversity and maintain high academic standards if they invested in this new approach.” The keyword there is “invested,” because with likely fewer legacy and donor funds, it would cost schools more to offer financial aid to the economically disadvantaged than to do things as usual. However, things as usual are changing, anyway: The Supreme Court has ruled against race-based admissions, which, Kahlenberg cogently argues, may usher in a “fairer form of affirmative action.” He adds that this may also benefit progressives, who have been losing ground steadily among the electorate precisely because most Americans simply dislike race-based regulation. He also notes, in passing, that the “academic achievement gap,” measured among other things by SAT scores, is twice as large when gauged by class as by race.

A solid case for building diverse student bodies with closer attention to financial need than to ethnic background.

The Wisdom of the Romantics

Kellogg, Michael K. | Prometheus Books (376 pp.) | $32.95 May 6, 2025 | 9781493087112

Ten representative lives trace the amorphous outlines of the European Romantic movement.

As Kellogg acknowledges in his introduction, “Romanticism was a much messier business” than the more easily defined Enlightenment and Renaissance, subjects of the two previous books in his “Wisdom of” series. Nonetheless, a few unifying threads can be discerned in his brisk overviews of the lives and work of artists (and one philosopher), from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Honoré de Balzac. All emphasized the importance of lived experience, whether relished with rapture in the poetry of William Wordsworth or examined with irony in the novels of Jane Austen. Even the lone philosopher, Hegel (explicated here with about as much lucidity as his knotty tomes can allow), grounded his search for Absolute Truth in empirical reality as well as abstract reasoning. The inclusion of Stendhal and Balzac, commonly viewed as realistic portraitists of young men on the make in a corrupt society, may surprise some readers, but Kellogg argues persuasively that both writers, like their antiheroes, are Romantics as much as realists. Goethe may have disowned the solipsism of his quintessentially Romantic novel

The Sorrows of Young Werther in favor of a more classical style in Faust, but Kellogg demonstrates that the soul-selling doctor still has a characteristically Romantic goal: “to learn firsthand all that life has to offer.” The world-capturing aims of Alessandro Manzoni and Alexander Pushkin contrast with the intensely individual vision expressed in John Keats’ great odes, but all three relish words with a passion that is decidedly Romantic. Indeed, Kellogg reminds us, Manzoni and Pushkin basically invented their national languages in I promessi sposi and

Eugene Onegin. Those who have read the books examined here may find Kellogg’s detailed exegeses rather basic, but readers unfamiliar with these seminal works of world literature will get a good sense of their significance.

An accessible introduction to a key period in Western civilization.

Kirkus Star

Going Around: Selected Journalism

Kempton, Murray | Seven Stories (480 pp.) $29.95 paper | April 8, 2025 | 9781644214510

Writings by a great New York City journalist. Throughout his career, the Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist and reporter Kempton (1917-1997) stood out among journalists. His approach was critical, and he was, writes editor Holter, “for the downtrodden, instinctively.” Of the guerrillas in 1980s El Salvador, Kempton wrote, “There aren’t all that many human creatures more attractive than some revolutionaries can be, at least until they win.” As regards police violence against civil rights activists: “It is, of course, law and order when everyone who hits anyone else is wearing a uniform.” What mattered to him lay deeper. The Civil Rights March on Washington represented “an acceptance of the revolutionaries into the American establishment” that embodied the white hope “that the Negro revolt will stop where it is.” Holter, an independent historical researcher, has gathered nearly 90 articles and editorials “from every period in Kempton’s career.” Many are outstanding. The first is Kempton’s 1936 defense of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the last outlines his instructions for his funeral. Kempton’s subjects range from labor unions and his FBI file to notables such as A. Philip Randolph, Dwight Eisenhower, and J. Robert Oppenheimer; cultural figures such as the blues singer Bessie Smith; and the less famous

such as Odell Waller, a 1940s Black sharecropper who shot his white landlord during a dispute. A voice for the times, he wrote with a grace seldom encountered today. Of the conservative William F. Buckley, he said: “I did not want him to fail, except in the superficial sense of dying an old man without ever seeing the kind of America he thinks he wants.” Describing the future president, in 1989, he concluded: “We are assured that God does not make trash, which thought disposes of the impression that Donald Trump is not altogether a self-made man.” Reading Kempton reminds us that, no matter the chaos, justice and human dignity are within our reach.

The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy

Kim, Eunji | Princeton Univ. (224 pp.) $27.95 | May 6, 2025 | 9780691267197

Bridging the gap between American Idol and the American dream. How can the American dream remain a strong undercurrent of the national mythology despite evident structural wealth polarization? Kim, a Columbia University political scientist, writes that the belief that our political and economic system can support rags-to-riches stories might be stronger now than ever. Even while economic mobility lags, these views are propped up as a result of a growing number of reality TV shows. America’s Got Talent, American Idol, and Shark Tank, among others, exist in a world where anyone off the couch could win a cash prize or become a star. With Americans increasingly indulging in these narratives, Kim urges the political science community to invest more seriously in the role of these narratives to shape political views. “It’s a dance as old as time: each generation wrestling with the media that defines it, asking where and how the line between ‘politics’ and

‘clutter’ is drawn.” With Americans spurning more sober political analysis and news journalism, the author argues, analysts will need to look more broadly in search for insights into political discourse. Americans love entertainment, and Kim convincingly assures us that “within this universal passion lies an uncharted realm of persuasion—or, at the very least, the cipher to the many lingering puzzles of American public opinion that an exclusive focus on news media or elite-driven political communication cannot unravel.”

An insightful inquiry into America’s enmeshed political and entertainment landscapes.

The Last Days of Budapest: The Destruction of Europe’s Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II

LeBor, Adam | PublicAffairs (512 pp.)

$35.00 | April 22, 2025 | 9781541700581

The fall of a “seductive city.”

Journalist and novelist LeBor, author of Hitler’s Secret Bankers: The Myth of Swiss Neutrality During the Holocaust, writes that losing World War I was no less disastrous for Hungary than for Germany. Formerly a full partner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it emerged missing 70% of its former territory. LeBor describes Budapest as almost Parisian in its love of art, food, pleasure, and politics with an enormous cast of characters. He emphasizes that the Hungarian government’s obsession between the wars was to regain lost territories. Since that was also Hitler’s obsession, Nazism exerted a growing and malign influence. The nation remained neutral when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, but, under increasing pressure, joined Germany’s June 1941 invasion of Russia. During this period, the government remained in place. Unlike in Poland, there was no military occupation with the

accompanying massive atrocities but plenty of scattered atrocities and antisemitic laws. Barely keeping Germany at arm’s length, Hungary maintained a fairly free press, political parties, trade unions, and cultural life until March 1944 when, with the Red Army drawing near, Germany took control and almost immediately began rounding up Jews. Following Hungary’s clumsy effort to switch sides in October, Germany gave power to its right-wing pro-Nazi party, which quickly began a reign of terror. One historian writes, “Nowhere else in Nazi-occupied Europe were Jews killed in public in such large numbers over such a long period of time.” With access to new documents and diaries, LeBor vividly recounts details of gruesome atrocities. He describes heroic figures who saved thousands of Jews but failed to save hundreds of thousands. Uncovering grim but important history in Hungary’s capital.

We All Got Something

Lindell, Lawrence | Drawn & Quarterly (168 pp.) $21.95 paper | April 29, 2025 | 9781770467736

Art comes to the rescue.

Lindell’s life as a nomad musician/ artist who moved from California to Canada and Europe and back again was anything but glamorous. In this graphic memoir, he chronicles how he stopped running from the personal history that fueled his restlessness. The narrative begins with the author, back from a stay in London, at his mother’s house in California. Broke, isolated, and depressed, he accepted an elementary school aide job that his aunt helped him find. Through conversations Lindell has with fellow school aides, his story emerges in edgy, black-and-white comic book–style drawings. Once, he had pursued his dreams of becoming an animator through an internship and later a never-submitted application to

graduate school. His failure to act haunted him, as did a near-fatal shooting/car crash that involved both him and his girlfriend. Realizing that there “was a lot of shit [he] needed to resolve,” Lindell made peace with his girlfriend, then began working his way back to art by attending a San Francisco zine fest. A chance encounter with a female illustrator offered the chance of a new relationship. His revelation that he suffered from both bipolar disorder and PTSD—which she accepted without judgment—offers further insight into Lindell’s struggles while revealing the depth of his personal transformation. As it explores loss, vulnerability, and the power of art to heal, this brief but moving book celebrates the enduring resilience of the human spirit.

A candid, heartfelt story of one man’s triumph over his own demons through creative self-expression.

Kirkus Star

Intraterrestrials: Discovering the Strangest Life on Earth

Lloyd, Karen G. | Princeton Univ. (232 pp.) $27.95 | May 13, 2025 | 9780691236117

Confronting the “shocking enormity” of all we don’t know. In recent years we have discovered that most earthly life-forms do not derive their energy from the sun (photosynthesis). Most earthly life-forms are single-celled creatures dwelling below ground, where they derive chemical energy from inorganic compounds found there (chemosynthesis). Lloyd, a microbial biogeochemist, joyously notes that these preternatural subsurface critters, which seem barely alive but can live for eons, are giving us hints as to how life first developed, leading us to change basic assumptions about life’s rules. The most hardy intraterrestrials, which dwell in extreme places like arctic ice or volcanoes, are upending our

The odds are depressingly good that someone, sometime, somewhere will deploy a nuclear weapon.

SIX MINUTES TO WINTER

understanding of what life is—here and, perhaps, on other planets. Furthermore, intraterrestrials may even help us clean up our planet, given that one of the inorganic compounds that they can generate energy from is carbon, the main driver of climate change. Lloyd is one of those rare gifted writers who can be as broadly profound as she is precise, able to make science both come raucously alive and resonate with meaning. She does this via perfect metaphors, an effortless wit, and a massively infectious enthusiasm for the outsize significance of her very small subjects. This science book is, furthermore, part adventure story, as she travels to the ends of the earth to pursue her small subjects, and generally bears witness to “the shocking enormity of what we have been missing about life on Earth.”

A glorious gallop through one of the last, and possibly most important, frontiers of science.

Life Must Go On: The Remarkable Story of Sol Lurie, the Kovno Ghetto, and the Tragic Fate of Lithuania’s Jews

Lurie, Bea & Steven Leonard Jacobs

Pegasus (304 pp.) | $29.95

June 3, 2025 | 9781639369294

Survival and storytelling. As the last survivors of the Holocaust depart, their children continue to tell their stories. In this account of one survivor’s life in the vanished world of Lithuanian Jewry, Sol

Lurie’s daughter and her collaborator tell of a young boy stripped of his childhood. Lurie is far from the most famous of survivors. Yet his personal tale gives hope to modern readers faced with political struggle and an increasing social intolerance. The heart of this book is a history of the Jews in Lithuania: how 19th- and early-20th-century cities such as Vilna and Kaunas became centers of religious learning. The schools and rabbis of those cities shaped modern Judaism— how the Torah and the Talmud are taught, how rabbinic authority gains its voice, and how men and women could live devotional lives in the modern world. The book presents a readable, capsule history of Jewish life in northern Europe, largely for the purpose of restoring Lithuanian traditions to a history long seen as moving largely between German-speaking urban secularism and Slavic shtetl devotion. The real impact of the work may not be its recap of history or its personal tale, but rather the way that it encourages everyone to tell a unique story of survival. At stake is less the detail of life in the camps (a story told and retold powerfully over the past several decades) than the afterlife of those who made it through. If the injunction “never forget” remains, remembering will always be about the story, whether it is mundane or magical. A moving tale of personal resilience, told through a history of Lithuanian Jewry.

Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How To Avoid It

Lynas, Mark | Bloomsbury Sigma (304 pp.) $28.00 | May 6, 2025 | 9781399410519

Nobody ever said a nuclear holocaust would be nice. Here’s a book to prove it. The odds are depressingly good that someone, sometime, somewhere will deploy a nuclear weapon. British environmental journalist Lynas reckons it at a probability of about 63% within a century; given that it’s been 80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that gives us until 2045 to test the prediction. And given wars in Ukraine, Syria, Palestine, and other sundry odd places, the odds may be poorer still, which, by Lynas’ account, ought to put us to worrying about nuclear war more than we do. There’s plenty to worry about, as Lynas counts off the sequelae in grim detail: There’s nuclear winter, for instance, which means that much of the Northern Hemisphere will undergo a new ice age (which is at least a break from global warming). With that ice will come starvation, since crops won’t grow, which raises another unwholesome prospect: Once the canned foods are gone, “the absolute last resort is the consumption of human corpses.” A person might want to go vegan, since those corpses will be irradiated and probably highly carcinogenic. And so on. Lynas takes a too-long side tour into the asteroid-induced nuclear winter that did in the dinosaurs and sent up a tsunami that crested as high as Mont Blanc, but the point is well taken; nukes

A personal tale of survival that gives hope to modern readers faced with political struggle. LIFE MUST

will do the same trick, and, as the kids say, FAFO. Much of this isn’t new; Jonathan Schell was making many of the same points in his 1982 book, The Fate of the Earth. However, Lynas does a good job of sounding alarms anew and calling for meaningful action: “We cannot be another movement of hippies, eating vegan food in protest camps with smelly compost toilets, and obsessing over women-only spaces,” he writes; instead, we need to bring science and realpolitik to bear if we’re to survive. A rightfully urgent call to ban the Bomb—and stat.

Kirkus Star

Is a River Alive?

Macfarlane, Robert | Norton (384 pp.) $31.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9780393242133

The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world. In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds,

some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better. Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.

On Character: Choices That Define a Life

McChrystal, Stanley | Portfolio (304 pp.) $30.00 | May 13, 2025 | 9780593852958

The former general offers nostrums for how to be a better human in a worsening world. Character, McChrystal writes, is “the appropriate destination of our life’s journey,” something that’s learned along the way and that results from the confluence of one’s convictions and the discipline needed to live up to them. Discipline means, at one level, that you decide to undertake a challenge, you undertake it, you do it again, and pretty soon it’s ingrained. “The most effective people I know can’t help themselves— disciplined pursuit of their goals is an unshakable habit,” he writes to underscore the point. It’s altogether too easy to shirk, to pass the buck, to fail—and then to leave the field to someone else. Most of his lessons have a martial bent, and there McChrystal often draws from the same

well as he has in other books. He clearly hasn’t recovered from the psychic blow of being relieved of his military command for incautious comments made around a scoop-hunting reporter, for one thing.

But there’s a new, subtle critique at play here, too: One doesn’t have to read too deeply between the lines to know who he’s talking about when he writes, “When the best, most qualified people are silent, the field is left to the less principled and less qualified—often the demagogues.”

Even less subtle is his passing remark on the events of Jan. 6, 2021: “Rhetoric, in person and online, trumpeted the need to stop ‘them’ from stealing an election.”

Like a good soldier, McChrystal blames the foot soldiers less than “those who stayed on the sidelines.” Suffice it to say that although he doesn’t profess to be woke, he urges that the opposite of wokeness not become the norm again and that the military remain above the daily fray, since “a politicized military is a dangerous institution in any nation.”

It’s not Marcus Aurelius, but there’s plenty of thoughtful, soldierly advice to chew on in McChrystal’s pages.

Robert Shaw: An Actor’s Life on the Set of Jaws and Beyond

Myers, Christopher Shaw | Citadel (320 pp.) $29.00 | May 27, 2025 | 9780806544328

Up close and personal with the acclaimed actor and his family.

Myers is Shaw’s nephew, and his access to a wealth of primary source materials intimately informs this sprightly, episodic biography. Shaw (1927-1978) and his three English siblings grew up on the Orkney Islands, where his father practiced medicine. His father’s alcoholism forced his mother to flee with the children to a family farm in Cornwall. The author spends quite a bit of time discussing Shaw’s sister Joanna, too; in some respects, it’s something of a dual biography. After the war, a gifted young Shaw moved to London, joining

the Royal Shakespeare company. The occasionally off-putting Shaw got a break when Alec Guinness cast him in a production of Hamlet. Next came The Lavender Hill Mob, a 1951 comedy. Shaw wrote novels, acted on Broadway, and had three girls. His first original play, The Man in the Glass Booth, directed by Harold Pinter, was nominated for a Tony. Shaw wrote award-winning fiction and acted in the Bond film From Russia With Love (1963) and the highly successful The Sting (1973). Then, in 1974, Shaw got his first big role with a major studio: Jaws. Young Steven Spielberg’s costly film—and mechanical shark—floundered while Shaw struggled with his drinking and Captain Quint’s crucial, emotional monologue about World War II sailors on the torpedoed USS Indianapolis being eaten by sharks in the Pacific. Thanks to his friend Thornton Wilder, Shaw had been rewriting it. Spielberg loved it—“I believe we have our picture.” While Shaw’s professional life was flourishing, his wife, Mary Ure—suffering from alcoholism—died at age 42. Shaw’s own alcoholism took its toll, killing him at 51. Despite its awkward organization, this fulsome, heartfelt biography will delight fans.

The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp Olson, Lynne | Random House (384 pp.) $35.00 | June 3, 2025 | 9780593732304

A gents of the French Resistance find life-lasting, soul-saving, history-changing friendships in an all-female concentration camp.

Germaine Tillion, Anise Girard, Geneviève de Gaulle, Jacqueline d’Alincourt, and scores of their friends and collaborators were arrested and imprisoned in the early 1940s for

participating in underground resistance efforts following the Vichy government’s surrender to Nazi Germany. Rounding out a trilogy of sorts (including the bestseller Madame Fourcade’s Secret War) about oft-overlooked French heroines of World War II, Olson follows each of her four primary subjects from backgrounds etched with both privilege and patriarchy into resistance operations and then to the dehumanizing barracks of Ravensbrück. Olson chronicles their months clinging precariously to life in wretched conditions with graphic, sometimes sickening, detail, with intensifying stories of day-to-day horrors and descriptions of particular acts of brutality perpetrated by guards and medical staff. But beyond documenting such cruelty, Olson offers a deeper, even uplifting, story about the power of the female prisoners’ bond, not just to abet their survival but to preserve a nd strengthen their commitment to justice. As the war drew to a close and SS administrators became more desperate, the tightknit group of defiant and determined women resisted work, led “audacious” operations to protect the most vulnerable among them, recorded the atrocities they witnessed, and even created art. These activities laid the groundwork for the efforts they spearheaded upon their liberation and repatriation. Despite the lack of a hero’s welcome, the former prisoners sought justice for their captors and medical care and compensation for themselves and their fellow inmates. The author’s portrayal of the women’s postwar work, relationships, and notoriety inspires even greater awe at their widespread, ongoing positive impact. Both devastating and galvanizing, an account of how the best of humanity can rise to oppose the very worst.

Black Power Scorecard: Measuring the Racial Gap and What We Can Do To Close It

Perry, Andre M. | Metropolitan/ Henry Holt (256 pp.) | $27.99

April 15, 2025 | 9781250869715

Harnessing true power.

“We are living in the time of a new renaissance—what we are calling the Black Renaissance,” wrote the historian Ibram X. Kendi. Perry, however, argues that the cultural, social, and economic strides made by African Americans tell only part of the Black power story in the United States. Fortunes amassed by successful Black artists/entrepreneurs like Jay-Z, for example, ignore “the exploitation that is often required to make large sums of wealth,” thereby making financial status a false indicator of Black empowerment. A Brookings Institution senior fellow, Perry instead envisions a framework that roots that power in forms of Black resistance to both capitalism and the white supremacist culture it supports. For Perry, true Black power—which includes expectations of a long, healthy life— comes from collectives built on strong families, good schools, and social networks that exist in spaces that are safe and sustainable. It also derives from the more equitable distribution of income-generating assets such as commercial real estate. To help Black communities generate more wealth (as through collective ownership opportunities), Perry suggests that more equity-driven forms of capital, both private and governmental, be made

A deep, even uplifting, story about the power of female prisoners’ wartime bond.

THE SISTERHOOD OF RAVENSBRÜCK

available. Activists must also compel institutions and companies to acknowledge “liability for past harms” and, in this way, deliver much-needed restorative justice—in the form of long-overdue reparations—to all African Americans. Readable and timely, this Black power analysis-cum-manifesto will appeal to both a general audience as well as to those with an interest in racial and social justice issues.

Necessary reading that offers clear and actionable ways to close the racial gap.

Wild Thing:

A Life of Paul Gauguin

Prideaux, Sue | Norton (416 pp.)

$39.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9781324020424

Seeing a pioneering artist in a new light. In an 1895 interview in L’Écho de Paris, Paul Gauguin is described as “the wildest of all the innovators, and of all the ‘misunderstood’ artists the one least inclined to compromise.” Prideaux (Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, Strindberg: A Life, and I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche) revisits Gaugin’s legacy, which has been marred by controversy; his time in Tahiti, where he sought to escape European civilization, was complicated by accusations of appropriation and problematic relationships with young Tahitian girls. Prideaux bases this work on an unpublished manuscript, Avant et après, which Gauguin wrote during the last two years of his life and sheds new light on his more progressive thinking about women, morality, and the Catholic Church. Long admired for his innovative and bold use of color, his rejection of Western artistic conventions, and his lasting impact on modern art, Gauguin’s reputation, however, had been long tainted by colonialism. Gauguin may have idealized the noble savage, but here Prideaux attempts to romanticize him

as the savage. She reminds us that Gauguin thought of himself this way; as an outsider in France, he’d shout: “I am a savage from Peru!” The notion was corroborated by his friends: Edgar Degas described him as “a hungry wolf without a collar,” and playwright August Strindberg, inspired by Gauguin, claimed, “For I, too, begin to feel a great need to turn savage and to make a new world.” What others see as appropriation Prideaux rebrands as forward thinking: About works such as Ia orana Maria (Hail Mary), she writes, “Gaugin had taken the foundational legend of Christianity and synthesized it through a multi-racial lens.”

Newly definitive, impeccably researched, and lavishly illustrated.

Wildfire Days: A Woman, a Hotshot Crew, and the Burning American West

Ramsey, Kelly | Scribner (352 pp.)

$29.99 | June 17, 2025 | 9781668031476

A hotshot firefighter recounts seasons in the burning wilderness. In 2018, having ended a relationship and looking for a new life, Ramsey wound up in a Northern California hamlet called Happy Camp (“Yes, that’s a place”). There, in the formidable tangle of rivers, canyons, and mountains along the Klamath, she found the town in a “biblical crisis” of wildfire, and she volunteered to fight it. Not long after, she was offered a paying position with the U.S. Forest Service, training as a wildland firefighter after passing some tough tests; as her fellow firefighters, all men, learned, she was not just a woman but also much older than they—old enough, she reckons, that if she were an athlete she would have aged out. “Just me and nineteen men who were probably faster, stronger, and more knowledgeable than I was,” she writes. “No big deal.” Undaunted, she met the challenges of firefighting, which

include having to pack heavy equipment into remote places, many reachable only on foot, to say nothing of working under cruel conditions: “There was no hiding from the sun, a punishing tyrant that baked our skin….The rocks were secondary suns radiating heat upward, so we were seared evenly, top and bottom, unhappy steaks.” Ramsey is as agile a writer as she was a firefighter, with a welcome sense of humor, as when she writes of a beetle species that can sense wildfires from 100 miles away and swarm there to deposit their eggs in the smoldering wood, safe from predators: “How metal is that?” Eventually, during the Covid-19 pandemic and a year of “millions of acres of the planet I love burning before my eyes,” Ramsey realized that her body was beginning to falter under the strains of the work and, with regret, retired from a job she had come to love.

A welcome addition to the burgeoning literature of fire.

Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America

Read, Bridget | Crown (368 pp.)

$30.00 | May 6, 2025 | 9780593443927

A durable, controversial business model pays off for just a few. There are about 700 multilevel marketing companies in the U.S., among them biggies like Amway, Herbalife, and Mary Kay, Read writes in this impressive investigative work. MLMs claim billions in annual sales, yet independent analyses show that most people who try to make a buck in the industry earn almost nothing. That’s because “participants are not employees” but so-called distributors or partners, contractors who must first buy the cosmetics, weight-loss plans, or vitamins they hope to sell. Read’s book spans nine decades, from MLM pioneer Carl F. Rehnborg, a vitamin salesman

who falsely professed to be a doctor, to the industry’s current status as a political force. Amway’s co-founder and his wife gave $1 billion to Republican causes, and, inevitably, Donald Trump became an industry player. The New York magazine writer’s narrative is bolstered by revealing interviews with people burned by MLMs—one spent $75,000 on cosmetics, earning back a fraction on sales—and a touch of the madcap; she sneaks into a Mary Kay convention, where awards are given to “consultants” who bought $10,000 worth of products to sell. While paying close attention to the court cases and media exposés that attempted, often in vain, to distinguish between “predatory” but legal multilevel businesses and fraudulent pyramid schemes, Read notes that recent developments in the nation’s capital have signaled to some insiders that MLMs were working in “a postregulatory world.” Today, the battle to define what’s ethical has moved online, where “anti-MLMers” call for reform and proponents recruit on social media. In her thoroughly reported book, Read includes some levity, noting that in the 1970s, reps for Amway, founded by conservative Christians, circulated a rumor that a competitor “was run by Satanists.”

Scrutinizing an industry whose self-generated hype belies the experiences of many.

The Place of Tides

Rebanks, James | Mariner Books (304 pp.)

$28.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9780063434172

Journey to a new way of being.

Searching for relief from depression and his “manic, rushing-around life,” British writer and sheep farmer Rebanks spent four months on an island in Norway’s Vega Archipelago, a remote area he once had visited briefly. Shortly after that first trip, his father died, and so did others in his community whose counsel he often sought. Intensifying his sense of loss, his work as an environmental researcher

took him to places where “the world was breaking.” “I began to feel unmoored,” he writes, “like a piece of timber drifting on the current….I was a poor husband, father, brother, and son. I began to lose faith in the certainties that had sustained me. I was growing less sure, and more confused.” In this serene, reflective memoir, Rebanks chronicles his stay on the archipelago, where he lived with Anna Masoy, an aging woman who made her living by collecting eiderdown, the fragile feathers that remain after ducks leave their nests. Sixty nests, he learned, could yield enough feathers to form one duvet. Rebanks worked with Anna and her friend to clear out around 300 old seaweed nests, air nest boxes, build new ones, and collect—and painstakingly clean—feathers. They lived in a house with no running water, an outdoor compost toilet, and a generator that Anna used only for bread baking. Much of the memoir recounts Anna’s stories about her family, the islands’ history, and her determination to forge an “extraordinary form of independence from other people, their values, and their noise.” At the edge of the coastal shelf, on an island 900 miles from Iceland, in a place dictated “by the coming and going of the tides,” Rebanks learned, above all, a new rhythm for the rest of his life.

A quiet memoir of profound change.

The Color of North: The Molecular Language of Proteins and the Future of Life

Rizk, Shahir S. & Maggie M. Fink

Belknap/Harvard Univ. (288 pp.)

$27.95 | May 13, 2025 | 9780674292581

Tiny machines performing big miracles. Proteins are “the tiny machines that facilitate nearly all biological functions in every organism that has ever lived. They power our very existence.” From this mouthful

of an opening, this vivid book moves on to celebrate proteins and the ways we both harness them and improve on them to target everything from disease to environmental decay. The scientist-authors successfully make the case that nature has them beat; nature is the greatest scientist of all, given the billions of years it has had to perfect, via evolution, the magnificent biochemical processes of proteins. Nature’s proteins help bacteria to survive in nuclear reactors and microorganisms to survive in deep-sea vents. Proteins keep birds “in sync with the magnetic field of the Earth” and give fireflies “their ghostly glow.” Trees “quietly use proteins to capture carbon dioxide, turning this harmful greenhouse gas into a sweet nectar of maple syrup.” And yeast enzymes “perform a kind of miracle, turning grapes into wine.” As a result, scientists globally examine “antifreeze proteins” in hibernating animals to make organs for transplant last longer outside the body. They study carbon-capture proteins to determine how to break down and transform pollutants. Already, scientists have harnessed proteins to save/extend lives with targeted proteins called antibodies: Herceptin and Avastin have cured countless cancers this way, and Humira so successfully mitigates arthritis that it is the most popular antibody-drug of the 120 approved by the FDA. Even the paradigm-shifting gene-editing tool CRISPR took its cue from proteins. Every day these “tiny machines…perform big miracles,” the authors conclude. “Whatever our future holds, proteins are positioned to lead the way.”

An accessible look at some of the fascinating ways nature informs, and endlessly inspires, scientists.

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Just Kids

B y Patti Smith (2010)

The most indelible image of 1970s New York City punk rock cool remains Patti Smith staring down the camera from the cover of her seminal 1975 album, Horses. Defiantly androgynous and radiating subterranean charisma, she instantly redefined the notion of a rock star for generations of smart, artsy outsiders to follow.

The iconic portrait—a starkly beautiful provocation in high-contrast black-and-white—was the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, an artist who visually established the gritty Gotham demimonde in the public imagination as definitively as Smith did through her music and poetry.

Amazingly, Smith and Mapplethorpe were more than one-time collaborators

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

who happened to capture lightning in a bottle. They were also best friends who had supported and inspired each other while struggling in total obscurity and abject poverty at the storied Hotel Chelsea before emerging as leading lights of bleeding-edge 20th-century cool.

In Just Kids, Smith told their story in her characteristically ecstatic, lyrical prose, evoking an era of rebellion, decadence, and discovery from the perspective of an integral participant who survived to tell the tale. It’s a touching tribute to Mapplethorpe the man and artist (Smith notes, “Our relationship was such that I knew what he would want and the quality of what he deserved”) and an elegy for a cultural moment that has inspired boundary-breaking artists ever since.

Just Kids earned rave reviews (it was praised by Kirkus as “riveting and exquisitely crafted”) and won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2010, kicking off a wave of high-profile, literate rock memoirs from the likes of Keith Richards, Bruce Springsteen, and Questlove.—ARTHUR SMITH

Patti Smith

When Breath Becomes Air

B y Paul Kalanithi (2016)

Paul Kalanithi never got to witness the impact that his first, and only, book had on the literary world. When Breath Becomes Air was published by Random House in 2016, 10 months after Kalanithi died at the age of 37. (His widow, Lucy Kalanithi, completed the book and guided it to publication.)

The memoir is an account of Kalanithi’s battle with stage 4 lung cancer, a fight that would last less than two years. As a neurosurgical resident at Stanford University, Kalanithi had experience with helping patients confront their own mortalities. When he received the diagnosis that would shatter his life, he had to confront his own.

The book was met with rave reviews, including a starred one from Kirkus, in which a critic called the book “a moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.”

It didn’t take long for the memoir to find an

BEST OF THE CENTURY

audience—it spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list and won praise from Bill Gates, who called it “the best nonfiction story I’ve read in a long time.”

The book’s success led publishers to put out others by writers confronting their own imminent deaths, including Julie YipWilliams, whose The Unwinding of the Miracle was also published posthumously. When Breath Becomes Air has also endured with health care professionals, who regularly push copies into the hands of medical students. It remains a popular, if heart-wrenching, book among readers touched by Kalanithi’s inspirational candor. As he writes, “Even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.”—M.S.

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

Paul Kalanithi

A historian’s masterful overview of Britain and the world after Napoleon’s fall.

THE PRICE OF VICTORY

Kirkus Star

The Price of Victory:

A Naval History of Britain: 1815-1945

Rodger, N.A.M. | Norton (976 pp.)

$49.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9780393292220

The author of the two earlier doorstops in this trilogy delivers a finale that will not disappoint. Illness and surgery delayed Rodger, professor of naval history at the University of Exeter, after volume 2 in 2004, but after this tome’s first chapter, a masterful overview of Britain and the world after Napoleon’s fall, readers may regret that only 600 pages remain. Like every great power, including the U.S. today, patriotic Britons had no doubt that they were the master race and deserved the world’s respect. In fact, Britain enjoyed an impressive run. Rodger has no quarrel with the historical cliché that the Royal Navy ruled the seas in the century after 1815, enforcing peace while protecting a burgeoning trade and frantically adapting to technological advances (steam, breech-loading canons, screw propellers, ironclads, oil, submarines), social changes (peacetime flogging wasn’t stopped until 1879), and leadership; Rodger delivers vivid, often revisionist opinions of significant figures that do not exclude immortals from Wellington to Gladstone to Churchill. Readers may especially perk up at the book’s halfway point during the run-up to World War II, when American naval power arrived permanently on the scene. Rodger’s gripping account of World War II from the British point of view reveals

that America’s takeover of world leadership was not entirely magnanimous. Some American leaders had long disliked Britain; many American policies empowered America at Britain’s expense, and some led to the U.K.’s postwar financial crisis. The book is dense with technical details, naval tactics, accounts of sailors and leading figures, weapons development, and often cutthroat political and strategic infighting. Despite this, navy buffs will have to share their pleasure with a general readership because Rodger regularly steps back to recount two centuries of world history, emphasizing the strategy, technology, and actions of rival powers. Probably the definitive British naval history, exhaustive but with a wide appeal.

Phantom Fleet: The Hunt

for Nazi Submarine U-505 and World War II’s Most Daring Heist

Rose, Alexander | Little, Brown (352 pp.)

$30.00 | May 20, 2025 | 9780316564472

On June 4, 1944, American sailors captured Nazi submarine U-505 and its invaluable Enigma coding machine and code books.

Successful smallunit World War II operations were much less common than portrayed by Hollywood, but this was one, writes journalist and bestselling historian Rose, author of Empires of the Sky: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel To Rule the World. Taking advantage of massive archives and memoirs and with an admirable absence

of purple prose, he tells a gripping story. Saving the fireworks for the final 60 pages, Rose delivers an expert account of the U.S. Navy’s anti-submarine campaign. During the months after Pearl Harbor, U-boats sank hundreds of ships off the U.S. coast until the Navy got its act together to organize convoys and protection. Rose builds his story around three men, Commander Kenneth Knowles, the brilliant head of the intelligence division of the Tenth Fleet, which possessed no ships. Formed in May 1943, its function was to locate U-boats and pass the information to anti-submarine forces. Mentored by his equally brilliant British counterpart, Rodger Winn, he analyzed data pouring in from a high-tech intelligence-gathering operation that included the famous Enigma code breakers. Leading the attack was Capt. Daniel Gallery, the commander of the escorts who had long yearned to capture a submarine and had trained his men on how to do it. Leading up to that day, the author mines his sources to deliver detailed biographies of his main characters and the painfully bumpy three-year campaign to track down U-505 and its crew. Its capture was a major, if not world-shaking, achievement. British seamen had seized Enigmas from U-boats in 1941 and 1942, when it really mattered. By 1944 the U-boat threat was minimal, but access to the latest secrets made allied code-breakers’ job easier.

World War II submarine derring-do, a well-worn subject but worth a reader’s time.

Life and Art: Essays

Russo, Richard | Knopf (208 pp.)

$28.00 | May 13, 2025 | 9780593802168

Musings on the author’s past, his life as a writer, and recent cultural topics. Russo has done outstanding and widely acclaimed work in fiction ( Empire Falls , Straight Man , the North Bath

Trilogy) and has also written a strong memoir ( Elsewhere), so a collection of personal essays written over the past several years sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea. But it would take a slightly different set of essays and more scrupulous pruning to produce the version of that book a devoted admirer might imagine. Not much of interest is left to say about the Covid-19 pandemic, and Russo says some of it more than once. “There was simply no definition of essential worker broad enough to include a seventy-one-year-old novelist,” he posits early on, noting in a later essay that “it’s hard to argue that writers are essential workers.” The notion that “writers use people,” far from fresh and seemingly owned by Joan Didion, comes up in “Triage” and in later essays is deemed “probably worth saying again,” twice. Is it really the right time for an essay framed around “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” Which of Russo’s parents was right about America? This is one of the themes of a long essay, “Marriage Story,” that contains memoir material familiar to the author’s many fans, and much of it is reprised in a thematically adjacent essay titled “Ghosts.” On the other hand, those same readers are likely to enjoy Russo’s observations about the genesis of his story “The Whore’s Child” in “The Lives of Others,” his take on the fraught question of whether we must only write what we know. As he explains, he felt closer to, and prouder of, his octogenarian nun character than to his seemingly more autobiographical middle-aged writer—and breaks down exactly why and how.

Russo is quite a bit better than this collection would suggest, but completists will forgive him.

Kirkus Star

Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church

Sack, Kevin | Crown (480 pp.) | $35.00 June 3, 2025 | 9781524761301

Searching history of the Charleston church brought into the headlines by mass murder. In 2015, 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof took advantage of

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church’s open-door policy—“meant to affirm the place of the church as a refuge…not just from the universal stresses of life but from the particular ones born of four hundred years of enslavement, repression, and state-sanctioned discrimination”—and shot down nine parishioners and clergy. Former New York Times reporter Sack uses that horrific event as an entry point into the larger history of the Black church in America, from that open-door policy to involvement in the Civil Rights Movement over many decades and in local and national politics. In the last regard, one founding member of Emanuel, the oldest AME congregation in the South, “helped organize the 1865 statewide convention of Black South Carolinians that was called to set a postwar political agenda,” an agenda thwarted by the failure of Reconstruction and the imposition of Jim Crow. Indeed, by Sack’s illuminating account, politics defined much of the Black church in relation to white society, though it was not always progressive; as he notes, the AME church in particular, though boasting a membership of 1 million in 1950, “rarely seemed in the vanguard, its voice often fainter than it might have been for a body its size and potential strength.” In South Carolina, an epicenter of white supremacy, Emanuel tended toward gradualism in the interest of survival—as Sack notes, Emanuel has always struggled financially, with a declining membership and

diminished post-pandemic attendance. Roof was not the only or final challenge or threat: Many other supremacists, Sack writes, are on the horizon, so Emanuel now has a squad of congregants who carry concealed weapons—and, tellingly, “the doors of the church are no longer always open.”

A sobering, expertly told history of the struggle for equality as waged from pulpit and pew.

Antisemitism in America: A Warning

Schumer, Chuck with Josh Molofsky Grand Central Publishing (224 pp.)

$14.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781538771648

A prominent lawmaker stands athwart rising bigotry. The Senate minority leader recalls a not-sodistant time— 1980, the year he was elected to Congress—when prejudice against Jews was clearly waning in America. Today, however, amid a spike in documented antisemitic incidents, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history is more worried “than ever before” about this virulent form of intolerance. This is a sober—yet vivid and wry—book, grounded in the rich particulars of Schumer’s Brooklyn youth. Like a character in a Philip Roth novel, he grew up among fellow Jews who loved baseball, grieved John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and “were extremely proud to be Americans.” He recounts his family’s Jewish holiday celebrations and even shares benign jokes that make light of Jewish stereotypes. He traces antisemitism deep into the past, piggybacking on the work of scholars who’ve argued that bigotry against Jews stems from the relative age of the world’s major religions. Judaism came first, which means that Christianity and Islam “had to explain why the old religion was no

longer good enough.” If this part of the book is competent but unoriginal, Schumer is stronger on the 21st century, demonstrating how antisemitism became scalable online, spreading after the 9/11 attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. But “the biggest turning point” was Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which was followed by a documented jump in antisemitic incidents and divisive campus demonstrations. The far right has long been “a natural home” for antisemitism, Schumer writes, but offensive bias is present in some far-left claims and protest chants about Israel. Throughout, Schumer’s arguments and anecdotes support his belief that antisemitic tropes lose their power when we “understand the truth about the people who are hated, and how wrong the prejudices are.” An urgent warning about resurgent prejudice against Jewish people.

Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk

Siddiqui, Faiz | St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $30.00 | May 6, 2025 | 9781250327178

A timely look at the mercurial billionaire now as well known in politics as in business. A leitmotif in Washington Post reporter Siddiqui’s portrait of Musk is a suit brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud, the alleged violation having been to announce that a funding deal had been secured when it had not, artificially increasing the value of his stock. Another lawsuit enters into the picture, this one filed by a shareholder over Musk’s pay, estimated to be “250 times larger than the contemporaneous median peer compensation package.” By Siddiqui’s account, such things seem to be minor irritations; Musk is “a man with little regard for the consequences of his actions, for the

minor aftereffects one might describe as fallout .” There’s fallout aplenty in this account, much connected to the technology involved in getting his Tesla vehicles to be autonomous, a project that had collateral damage in the deaths of drivers and a pedestrian after the autopilot failed to detect obstacles in the way and that occasioned a shift in rhetoric: “The cars… required ‘active, constant, and attentive driver supervision,’” making them “self-driving, but not autonomous.” Musk’s apparent conviction that he’s saving the world with the Tesla and saving the human species with his SpaceX rockets (“We need to be a multiplanetary species, so mankind survives a big meteorite hitting the Earth”) makes him something of a character out of Ayn Rand, Siddiqui observes. Musk’s solipsistic approach to the world also resulted in one noteworthy turnaround: Formerly a Democrat, he has become an implacable foe of regulation—especially of his own businesses—who of course now has the ear of Donald Trump. It’s in this regard that Siddiqui’s study makes a useful adjunct to Walter Isaacson’s 2023 biography, which is overall the better book.

A revealing portrait of a man whom, though chaotic in the extreme, the author considers to be “inevitable.”

Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age

Sottile, Leah | Grand Central Publishing (304 pp.) | $30.00 March 25, 2025 | 9781538742600

does that sound?” So says, mockingly, the abandoned son of Amy Carlson, who called herself Mother God and surrounded herself with followers in a group called Love Has Won. Not only was she God—and Jesus, and Marilyn Monroe, and Cleopatra—but she also had, in a previous incarnation, ruled the lost continent of Lemuria, the invention of a 19th-century quack that just won’t go away. Given that, as journalist Sottile documents, about half of Americans believe in ghosts and the onetime existence of Atlantis, to say nothing of space aliens, Carlson found easy pickings among lost souls. The New Age, as Sottile writes, stretches back into olden times (one landmark, by her lights, being Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking ), and charlatans have been around forever. But Carlson tapped into something different: Apart from swilling down vast quantities of colloidal silver, supposedly a miracle cure, while chugging tequila, she linked her oddball metaphysics to other cultural threads, including QAnon. (Not for nothing did the “Q Shaman” of Jan. 6, 2021, fame declare that the riot altered “the quantum realm.”) So it was that she traded in tropes such as anti-vaxxing and 9/11-as-inside-job and performed psychic “surgeries” for a bargain-basement price of $77.77, declaring that she was guided by Robin Williams, the late comedian, an ascended master in the spirit world. (She also advised looking directly at the sun, “one of Our most powerful healing tools.”) Things ended badly for Carlson: Her diet killed her, and by the time authorities found her she was starting to mummify. Her followers are still out there, though, plying their eldritch trade.

A disorienting journey to the outré fringes of the New Age.

“The aliens are coming. The Earth is ending. The aliens will take us to a new planet, and we can build a new society. How awesome

A fascinating look into the fun-house mirror of cults and the occult.

For more about QAnon, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood

Specktor, Matthew | Ecco/ HarperCollins (416 pp.) | $32.00 April 22, 2025 | 9780063008335

A tale of growing up in Hollywood not just in a golden hour, but at the end of a golden age.

As a youngster, writes Specktor, actors and filmmakers were a common happy-hour sight around his home, thanks to a father who worked as an agent for “an insurgent company called Creative Arts Agency.” One memorable visitor was David Lynch, then at the beginning of his career, who sized young Specktor up and pronounced him an artist. Specktor may not have made his mark in the art world, but he certainly can write: This memoir is a sterling account of how Hollywood, the company town, works and of the strange people who inhabit a world very different from ordinary reality. It’s a place of glittering wealth and beautiful people, but also a place where beastly behavior is the norm and the ideal. “What is it about the culture that creates such furious and pointlessly cruel people? Is it…the fact that trafficking in illusion makes you begin to expect the impossible even in real life?” Good questions. In the case of Specktor senior, celebrated at the time of this book’s appearance as the oldest agent still working in the business, the education was at the hands of the irascible, deeply nasty Lew Wasserman, brilliant at structuring business-enriching deals and “not just the star but the stage itself, invisible to the inattentive eye”— and a terrifying boss. Jack Warner was just as scary, but his old-fashioned empire was toppled by

A sterling account of how Hollywood works and of the strange people who inhabit it.

THE GOLDEN HOUR

younger upstarts like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty—to say nothing of aggressive new-school agents like Michael Ovitz, who himself would be toppled by “a businessman even colder and more ruthless than he is, Michael Eisner.” Literate and liberal with huge scoops of dish, Specktor’s memoir is a sometimes shocking pleasure from start to finish.

A memoir that joins Peter Biskind, Joan Didion, William Goldman, and other top-shelf chroniclers of the L.A. film scene.

Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat

Steyerl, Hito | Verso (192 pp.) | $24.95 May 20, 2025 | 9781804298022

A techno-environmentalist warning shot for the digital landscape’s impending doom. In 11 searing essays, filmmaker and new media scholar Steyerl (Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary Civil War, 2017, etc.) discusses cutting-edge advancements in AI and art and outlines the ripple of damage caused by competing tech companies. “The more one tries to preempt the future,” she writes, “the more the present gets out of hand.” Many generative AI programs use images scrubbed from the internet, regardless of copyright protections.

A 2023 Hollywood strike protested against the use of AI likenesses in film. “The recent history of these apps,” Steyerl explains, “can be

written succinctly through the different protests against them.” She positions seemingly harmless image-generation programs on the same spectrum as “warfare, marketing and surveillance” by detailing the harmful impact this boom has on marginalized communities around the world. One essay discusses how compromised immigrant populations are exploited as “a new, invisible global underclass of data proletariats.” In Kosovo, the region’s electricity is sapped by the crypto mining frenzy. In Kenya and Sudan, the cryptocurrency Worldcoin collects biometric data from underinformed volunteers via retinal scans. These unnerving texts are steeped in technical jargon that will challenge many readers but reward those who endure by offering a blistering new perspective. Steyerl uses thermodynamic terminology to explain image generation: “a detailed, intelligible image is seen as being ‘cool’, then is diffused into ‘hotter’, less organized articulations, and ultimately into random noise. Image generation proceeds by reversing this process of entropy and recovering, or ‘restoring’, an image from noise.” Later, this lingo leads to another dark observation: “workers in digital industries take on the role of noise particles, being burnt out, dispersed and moving about randomly, making them vulnerable to exploitation.” By highlighting a system of global damage incurred at the expense of new technology, Steyerl paints a rotten digital landscape on the brink of something terrible.

A startling vision of the present rendered from the chaotic noise of recent technological advancements.

Super Visible: The Story of the Women of Marvel

Stohl, Margaret with Jeanine Schaefer & Judith Stephens | Gallery 13/ Simon & Schuster (400 pp.) | $29.99 June 24, 2025 | 9781982134617

An homage to pathbreaking women.

Stohl, along with Stephens, producer and co-creator of the Women of Marvel podcast, and editor Schaefer have mined 800 pages of transcripts, 300 hours of interviews, and over 130 conversations to create a lively history of female artists, writers, editors, proofreaders, and colorists who forged their careers at Marvel. Bursting with anecdotes and illustrations—photos, drawings, comic book pages—the book traces the advent of women into what was then a domain of straight white men who assumed that females didn’t read comics, sci-fi, or fantasy. The women’s pluck, talent, and mutual mentorship , though, led to their rise from entry-level jobs to leadership positions. Although voices from a cast of 127 characters and contributors sometimes result in cacophony, more than a few emerge as major forces in the industry: Louise “Weezie” Simonson, for example, joined the Marvel editorial staff in 1980 and helped build the X-Men universe. She recruited new female talent—not because they were women, she said, but because they were “people who were good at what they did.” Kelly Sue DeConnick pitched the idea of a female Captain America: Captain Marvel. Recalling controversy about her concept of the superheroine’s costume, she had asked herself, “Is this a hill I’m going to die on, or am I just going to make progress?” She made progress, to be sure. The first issue of Captain Marvel sold out in 24 hours. Many women attest to being the only woman in the room; others, to being the only minority or woman of color. All, the authors found, “have made a habit of throwing open every door they can find, and, when they run out of

doors, stocking up on dynamite to bring the walls down.”

Vivid testimony of resilience and grit.

After Hours: Scorsese, Grief and the Grammar of Cinema

Tanzer, Ben | Ig Publishing (200 pp.)

$16.95 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781632461711

An author turns to a cherished movie to help him deal with sorrow. All cinephiles can identify movies that had an enduring influence on their lives. For Tanzer, one of them is After Hours, Martin Scorsese’s 1985 film about an “office drone” who goes to Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood one evening to escape his humdrum life but, through a series of mishaps and tragedies, can’t find his way home. The film, Tanzer writes, is “about grief—how it never goes away, and how we adapt to loss by simultaneously embracing it and pushing through it.” Tanzer derives added resonance from After Hours, not just because he has spent much of his life working 9 to 5—happily, in his case—but also because he remains plagued by grief over his father, who died more than 20 years ago at age 59. In this heartfelt reminiscence, Tanzer writes about the passion for movies he shared with his cinephile parents, who took him to After Hours and other art-house fare when he was young, and the ways in which that film has helped him grapple with loss. He cites many other influences, including Scorsese’s own career struggles in the early 1980s; memoirs such as Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries; and films with father-son themes, such as Running on Empty, in which a father and son barely speak one evening, yet “love suffuses the scene, and that was my father and I during high school.” Frequent digressions weaken the book: the films he and wife Debbie watched during their two years in New York City in the 1990s, complaints about not always finding time to write. But readers who are

artistic types will relate to Tanzer’s statement about the motivation artists face: “The struggle to believe in ourselves. To find one’s voice. To create the work of one’s entire life,” a struggle that plagues someone like Scorsese as much as anyone else driven to create. A heartfelt if overstuffed tribute to the author’s father and the ameliorative power of art.

Kirkus Star

Evergreen Review: Dispatches From the Literary Underground: Covers & Essays 1957-1973

Thomas, Pat | Fantagraphics Books (320 pp.) $34.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9798875000676

A lively anthology of an archly contrarian, occasionally semi-pornographic, and highly influential magazine over its three decades.

Editor Thomas, a learned student of all things ’60s, makes a strong case for Barney Rosset and his Evergreen Review as key agents of the era’s evolving culture, politics, media, and entertainment: “Barney has not been properly acknowledged for morphing the sociopolitical terrain of the 1960s and early 70s. Along with the folks like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, Barney Rosset created the 1960s.”

The 1957 debut issue was suggestive of that era-shaping mission: It contained an excerpt from Ginsberg’s new poem Howl, a piece by Ralph Gleason on San Francisco jazz, a prose piece by the pre– On the Road Jack Kerouac, and works by many other Beat luminaries. Suggestive, too, was the fact that Cuban nationalists, put out by the review’s glorification of Fidel and Che, fired an RPG into Rosset’s Grove Press office, an act that “eloquently testified to Rosset’s capacity to provoke American sensibilities.” Thomas’ anthology hits on many high points, including an essay by Brion Gysin explaining his cut-up method of

composition; Norman Mailer’s testimony at the Boston obscenity trial of William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch; and even the American debut of the French cartoon Barbarella, soon to be a major motion picture. It was in Rosset’s pages that Ezra Pound lamented to Ginsberg his “stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism,” that Dennis Hopper detailed how the iconic film Easy Rider came to be, and that Twiggy revealed…well, more than readers had seen before, anyway. Jorge Luis Borges, Kay Boyle, Eldridge Cleaver, Bernadette Devlin: Every issue (and Thomas reproduces the covers of all of them) was a trove for readers, political activists, and fans of popular culture then and now.

An enjoyable and illuminating stroll down a countercultural memory lane.

On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters

Tsui, Bonnie | Algonquin (256 pp.)

$29.00 | April 22, 2025 | 9781643753089

A celebration of musculature in varying degrees and aspects. Tsui recalls growing up in the shadow of an “impressively fit father” who lived and breathed exercise, was a tae kwon do and karate brown and black belt, and insisted the author and her brother train with him in a makeshift home gym in the garage. As a result, she grew into adulthood with the same preoccupation with “outrunning death” as her father did. These vivid memories fuel a multifaceted book exploring how the

human musculoskeletal system is composed, how it functions, the ways to keep it optimally functioning as we age, and why it’s so critically important to daily life. To elaborate on themes of muscular strength and resilience in relation to the female species, Tsui profiles Jan Todd, the first female weightlifter to lift the Scottish Dinnie Stones in 1979, and Jan Suffolk, who, after embarking on a training regimen, would go on to become one of the world’s strongest women. Sections involving the author’s discussions on anatomical dissection are thought provoking and serve as apt reminders of the voluntary and involuntary muscle control we take for granted in everyday life, such as shoulder movement, heartbeats, posture, jumping, and even smiling and arching one’s eyebrows. The author of Why We Swim , Tsui discusses paralytic diseases and traumatic accidents that profoundly affect quality of life and what neuroscientists have discovered about the benefits of twitchy muscle movements during sleep to update and improve the brain-body connection. Undeniably fascinating is Tsui’s assessment of the biggest human muscle (the butt) and the smallest (the ear’s stapedius or the little muscle “goosebump” fibers). She also elaborates on the endurance of marathon runners and the mind-body connection where the brain interacts with the body to move its complex framework and network of bones, tissue, nerves, and senses. Grafting physical science with smooth, amiable storytelling, Tsui’s study creates a fun and factfilled physiology lesson for readers of any knowledge level.

An easily digestible, reliably entertaining appreciation of muscle, “the vivid engine of our lives.”

A fun and fact-filled physiology lesson, grafting physical science with amiable storytelling.

Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us

Tubbs, Anna Malaika | Flatiron Books (384 pp.) $29.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9781250876690

A scholar posits that patriarchy is the organizing concept behind the multiple oppressions built into the fabric of the United States. Tubbs decided to pursue a doctorate in sociology because she believes that patriarchy is the controlling force behind many American systems of oppression. She writes, “Despite the debated origins of patriarchy it was clear to me that it dictated our society, our behavior, and social relationships in the United States and that, vice versa, these things then continued to reinforce patriarchy.” In her book, she expounds on this theory, using historical and modern examples of how “putting white men at the top of the hierarchy and keeping power out of the hands of everyone else unless it serves the dominant group to include them” reverberates through all aspects of our lives. The author traces how the intersections of gender and race permeate the way girls and women in particular experience the world. She cites Mary Todd Lincoln’s refusal to bow to gendered expectations of her role as first lady, white male gynecologists’ usurpation of reproductive medicine from BIPOC midwives, and social media’s erosion of the mental health of girls and women. Throughout, Tubbs includes glimpses into her personal history, including a description of her white mother’s upbringing and her own experience of giving birth with the help of a doula to emphasize the personal effects of patriarchy’s iron grip. The book is a deeply researched, analytical, and convincing condemnation of white male patriarchy. The author’s conversational tone renders complex concepts a pleasure to read. Although the book’s scope is impressive, it covers so much ground that it can often feel disjointed, particularly when the author strays from personal experiences that ground her ideas.

A trenchant treatise on the damaging reach of American patriarchy.

Kirkus Star

The

Next One Is for You:

A True Story of Guns, Country, and the IRA’s Secret American Army

Watkins, Ali | Little, Brown (336 pp.)

$30.00 | March 11, 2025 | 9780316538275

Robust, ominous epic of blue-collar Americans running guns to the Irish Republican Army.

New York Times journalist Watkins writes with exactitude and compassion, digging deeply in archives to capture a high-stakes tale that played out internationally during the early 1970s, when the Northern Irish sectarian war against British domination (the Troubles) was at its brutal extreme. While the Provisional IRA received a new generation of recruits due to outrage following Unionist excesses like the “Bloody Sunday” massacre, weapons were in short supply. With a sprawling cast, Watkins focuses on the “Philadelphia Five,” a group of ordinaryseeming blue-collar Irish Americans with covert ties to the Republican cause, eventually “charged with trafficking hundreds of rifles to the IRA.” But for years, their complicated multistate network maintained “plausible deniability” via involvement with NORAID, a charity outwardly devoted to aiding beleaguered Catholic communities: “It was a fragile arrangement, having a public-facing organization as the front for a decidedly illegal transcontinental gun-smuggling operation.” Watkins ably captures the quirky personalities and gritty working-class backdrop of the American side, but she alternates it with the chilling narrative of how one smuggled rifle armed a young woman in Belfast in 1973, on an IRA mission ending with her own shooting and imprisonment. As Watkins notes, while

the Troubles would endure for another 25 years, the brazen actions of the Philadelphia Five predictably provoked an unwelcome diplomatic firestorm: “Officials in Belfast and London had been making the case, nearly since the Troubles had started, that the majority of the IRA’s arsenal came from American hands.” And despite their cocky Irish patriotism, “As the boys in Belfast were fighting the British Army, the boys in NORAID were barreling toward their own confrontation, with the US Department of Justice.” Engrossing, original fusion of true crime and geopolitics.

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting To Find Us a Future

Weisman, Alan | Dutton (512 pp.) $31.00 | April 22, 2025 | 9781524746698

A wide-ranging look at visionaries who are working on ways to lessen the worst effects of climate change. Having explored what the world would look like without humans, Weisman pays homage to the scientists, engineers, activists, and others who through efforts local and global are trying to undo harms our species has wrought. Weisman opens with an Iraqi engineer who, convinced that “ impossible often masks a lack of imagination,” has helped rebuild the critically important marshes at the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates river system, possibly the biblical Garden of Eden. That vision of paradise may seem odd in a place now among the hottest on earth, owing to a warming regional climate, but the engineer broke through an embankment built under Saddam Hussein and did the job on his own hook. Soon, Weisman writes, “the rehydrated marshes were bright green,” alive with long-absent birds. It’s just one of many success stories chronicled in

this impeccably written and thoroughly inspiring narrative. Oddly, some of those stories have hidden traps: The development of chemical fertilizers and of the Green Revolution kept billions of people from starving but added billions more to the planet, leading Weisman to note, “Too much of a good thing is simply that: too much.” Some forces for good are perhaps unexpected—the U.S. Department of Defense, for one, which, as one researcher notes, is “willing to invest in very strange new ideas.” One strange idea: “growing food from thin air and microbes.” Another: tackling rising sea levels by enlisting cartoonists to simplify scenarios for policymakers. Yet another: drilling deep beneath the earth with a laserlike tool to tap into geothermal energy. It’s mad-science stuff on its face but, Weisman assures, it all offers hope, and “hope is a prerequisite for…courage.”

Lively portraits of champions staving off the end of the world—or so we hope.

Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly

Weiss, Jeff | MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (400 pp.) | $19.00 paper June 10, 2025 | 9780374606138

A gimlet-eyed excavation of Britney Spears’ ascent to pop stardom and the insatiable celebrity machine that consumed her. In this fizzy romp through Spears’ meteoric rise and painfully public downfall, music writer and cultural critic Weiss unveils the toxic celebrity ecosystem that both created and consumed pop’s most compelling millennial icon. Through a narrative style reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Gonzo” journalism, Weiss launches his story at the production of Spears’ career-defining “…Baby One More Time” video, in which he served as an extra. “Every celebrity crush became irrelevant,” Weiss writes. “Britney was

Kirkus Star

the opposite of everything I’d known. A sequined mirage and airbrushed myth. It felt like I’d just watched a comet be born.” When Weiss lands a job at a Los Angeles–based celebrity tabloid in the early 2000s, he spends years tracking Spears’ every move and spiraling breakdown, not just capturing the nation’s (and his own) obsession with Spears but crafting an incisive portrait of the music industry’s seedy underworld. Through his colorful lens as a reporter, we experience trendy clubs, wild parties, and frantic car chases through L.A. The tabloids themselves emerge as characters in this unfolding drama of American celebrity worship and exploitation. As Weiss observes of the “ravenous desire for celebrity gossip”: “If the tabloids were once on the fringes of pop culture, they’re now international big business. The lines between news, sports, and entertainment have been erased.” While often mesmerizing and brutally honest in its depiction of fame’s dark side, Spears’ crash-and-burn story, stretched across 400 pages, occasionally feels excessive and repetitive. Yet Weiss proves himself a formidable talent with a keen eye for capturing the pulse of the moment, a writer whose future work will be well worth anticipating.

A bold, inventive foray into the dark netherworld of pop star fame.

Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How To Win Them Back

Williams, Joan C. | St. Martin’s (368 pp.) $30.00 | May 20, 2025 | 9781250368966

A meticulous review of the political and culture beliefs that fuel the class divide in the United States. If you yearn to immerse yourself in the intricacies of polling data, you will love this book. The author of White Working Class and a self-proclaimed “data devotee,” Williams believes that if the educated elites of the left better understood the

material bases of the values of the right-leaning lower-middle class and used that understanding to form multiracial coalitions of respect and mutual benefit, the current divisiveness roiling America would be muted. As she optimistically writes: “People who, in good faith, have a plurality of values and work together…can live peacefully together.” She accuses the left of harboring a class blindness that denigrates conservative beliefs and treats conservatives as either duped or deplorable. Yet, conservative values are embedded in the same factors that contribute to the inequality and racism that the left condemns. Here lies common ground for solidarity in the face of corporate and financial greed. In making her case, Williams covers a wide range of issues from marriage and masculinity to religion and climate change. Relentless attention to statistical data and to the many slight variations within and across political groupings overwhelms her reasoning, making the book work better as a source of information than as a coherent political argument. Moreover, she barely addresses the subtitle’s promise to craft a way to “win back” the working class, with “win back” implying that the educated left occupies the moral high ground and that working-class conservatives need to be the ones to compromise. Williams deftly debunks liberal myths and, with generosity, finds moral value in conservative politics.

All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America

Wolff, Michael | Crown (400 pp.) | $32.00 Feb. 25, 2025 | 9780593735381

unkillable, only strengthened by his assorted legal problems. “If you refuse to accept your disgrace, it becomes righteousness,” Wolff writes. Indeed, Trump’s “delusion” that the 2020 election was rigged impels him onward—and upward. His campaign effectively starts in August 2022, when FBI agents seize classified documents from Trump’s Florida club, inspiring loyalists to donate $22 million.

Subsequently indicted in four criminal cases, he’s soon up by 50 points in the GOP’s nomination contest. Remarkably, he succeeds “by making all prosecutors and judges his enemy,” Wolff writes. Wolff’s political analysis is fitfully insightful, but he’s mainly here for the gossip. Trump, he reports, suggested Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo for vice president; likened himself to Nelson Mandela; spread scurrilous rumors about Chuck Schumer and Michelle Obama; and wanted to sue Democrats to recover money he spent competing against a candidate—Joe Biden—who quit. Wolff’s anecdotes tend to rely on anonymous sources, so it’s impossible to judge their worth. Why did Trump win? In part because he has “bad lawyers.” They clog the courts with outrageous motions “that would embarrass respectable lawyers.”

But Wolff’s most sardonic jab hits Trump’s opponent. After Biden’s confused debate performance, Wolff deadpans, Jill Biden arrives “to take her husband to hospice.” Improbably, a youngish Trump aide develops a “lovestruck adulation” for her boss, emerging as a major figure in the book. Wolff quotes at length from her cringey letters to Trump and mocks her in his strange closing sentence. Given Trump’s many powerful enablers, Wolff might’ve found a more worthy target.

Back for more.

Bad news is the best kind in the “inverted reality” of a Trump presidential campaign. In Wolff’s fourth book about Trump, his subject is mentally “scattered” but politically

A mordant, murkily sourced account of the 2024 election.

Picture Books THE BEST

OF THE CENTURY (so far)

Inspired concept books, riveting read-alouds, wordless wonders, transcendent poetry, meticulously researched biographies, and gorgeously retold folktales—every title on our list of the century’s best picture books is nothing short of a masterpiece. Exemplifying the beauty and creativity of the format, these stories broke boundaries, transforming the kid lit landscape and lingering in the minds of all who read them; these are tales to spark the imagination, balms to soothe youngsters through troubled times, and, above all, friends to travel with children well into adulthood.

Alissandra Seelaus

Peek-a-Who?

Laden, Nina | Chronicle Books (24 pp.) | $6.95 | 2000 | 0811826023

A book little ones will reach for again and again.

Olivia

Falconer, Ian | Atheneum (40 pp.)

$16.00 | 2000 | 9780689829536

Flawless decisions in composition and page design and exaggerated perspectives add to the book’s distinction.

The Three Pigs

Wiesner, David | Clarion Books (32 pp.)

$16.00 | 2001 | 9780618007011

Proof that once we have ventured out into the wider world, our stories never stay the same.

Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People

Christensen, Bonnie | Knopf (32 pp.)

$16.95 | 2001 | 0375811133

A powerful, lyrical tribute to the musician whose music is so much a part of our lives.

See Pip Point

Milgrim, David | Atheneum (32 pp.)

$14.95 | 2003 | 0689851162

Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words.

I Will Never, Not Ever, Eat a Tomato

Child, Lauren | Candlewick (32 pp.)

$15.99 | 2000 | 0763611883

Funny bits of design will provoke a giggle.

The Stray Dog

Simont, Marc | HarperCollins (32 pp.)

$15.95 | 2001 | 0060289333

Really splendid artwork sets this book skipping like a stone on water.

Bridget and the Gray Wolves

Lindenbaum, Pija | Trans. by Kjersti Board R&S/Farrar, Straus & Giroux (24 pp.)

$14.00 | 2001 | 9129653959

Offers another rarity: droll and ironic humor for children.

Scranimals

Prelutsky, Jack | Illus. by Peter Sís Greenwillow Books (48 pp.)

$16.99 | 2002 | 0688178197

Poet and illustrator have never done better work than this hilarious, inventive cousin to Edward Lear’s nonsense.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

Willems, Mo | Hyperion (40 pp.)

$12.99 | 2003 | 9780786819881

Listeners will be begging, pleading, lying, and bribing to hear it again and again.

The Shape Game

Browne, Anthony | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) | $16.00 | 2003

0374367647

Readers will come away armed with engaging ways to enliven their approach to art.

The Snail and the Whale

Donaldson, Julia | Illus. by Axel Scheffler | Dial Books (32 pp.)

$16.99 | 2004 | 0803729227

Young readers will clamor to ride along.

The People Could Fly: The Picture Book

Hamilton, Virginia | Illus. by Leo Dillon & Diane Dillon | Knopf (32 pp.)

$16.95 | 2004 | 0375824057

A dreamy, powerful picture-book tribute to both Hamilton and the generations-old story.

Martha

Spirin, Gennady | Philomel (32 pp.)

$14.99 | 2005 | 0399239804

A little slice of life—about life.

Tadpole’s Promise

Willis, Jeanne | Illus. by Tony Ross Atheneum (32 pp.) | $15.95 2005 | 0689865244

A promising addition to the “share if you dare” list.

Ellington Was Not a Street

Shange, Ntozake | Illus. by Kadir Nelson

Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $15.95 2004 | 0689828845

Exquisite.

Actual Size

Jenkins, Steve | Houghton Mifflin (32 pp.)

$16.00 | 2004 | 0618375945

A new exploration of the biological world, from one of the current masters of collage.

Michael Rosen’s Sad Book

Rosen, Michael | Illus. by Quentin Blake | Candlewick (32 pp.)

$16.99 | 2005 | 0763625973

Readers burdened by similar loss will be touched by the honesty and perception here.

And Tango Makes Three

Richardson, Justin & Peter Parnell | Illus. by Henry Cole | Simon & Schuster (32 pp.)

$14.95 | 2005 | 0689878451

A tale of acceptance delivered in a matter-of-fact, non-preachy way.

The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon

Grey, Mini | Knopf (32 pp.)

$16.95 | 2006 | 0375836918

Hey-diddle-delightful.

The Three Witches

Hurston, Zora Neale | Adapt. by Joyce Carol Thomas | Illus. by Faith Ringgold HarperCollins (32 pp.) | $15.99 2006 | 0060006498

This tale’s rich oral language begs to be read aloud.

Orange Pear Apple Bear

Gravett, Emily | Simon & Schuster (32 pp.)

$12.99 | 2007 | 9781416939993

A striking example of how less is definitely more.

The House in the Night

Swanson, Susan Marie | Illus. by Beth Krommes | Houghton Mifflin (40 pp.)

$16.00 | 2008 | 9780618-862443

Breathtaking illustrations embody the message that light and dark, like comfort and mystery, are integral parts of each other.

How To Heal a Broken Wing

Graham, Bob | Candlewick (40 pp.)

$16.99 | 2008 | 9780763639037

Celebrates the spirit of compassion in a small child.

The Lion & the Mouse

Pinkney, Jerry | Little, Brown (40 pp.)

$16.99 | 2009 | 9780316013567

Unimpeachable.

Not a Box

Portis, Antoinette | HarperCollins (32 pp.) | $12.99 | 2006 | 0061123226

A playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity.

The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain

Sís, Peter | Frances Foster/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux (56 pp.)

$18.00 | 2007 | 9780374347017

A masterpiece for readers young and old.

The Black Book of Colors

Cottin, Menena | Illus. by Rosana Faría | Trans. by Elisa Amado Groundwood (24 pp.) | $17.95 2008 | 9780888998736

Fascinating, challenging, and lovely.

Bubble Trouble

Mahy, Margaret | Illus. by Polly Dunbar Clarion Books (40 pp.) | $16.00 2009 | 9780547074214

A frothy, effervescent gift.

Big Red Lollipop

Khan, Rukhsana | Illus. by Sophie Blackall | Viking (40 pp.) | $16.99 2010 | 9780670062874

Charming and spirited.

A Sick Day for Amos Mcgee

Stead, Philip C. | Illus. by Erin E. Stead

Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (32 pp.)

$16.99 | 2010 | 9781596434028

This gentle, warm story acknowledges the care and reciprocity behind all good friendships.

A Ball for Daisy

Raschka, Chris | Schwartz & Wade/Random (34 pp.) | $16.99 | 2011 | 9780375858611

Rarely, perhaps never, has so steep an emotional arc been drawn with such utter, winning simplicity.

Green

Seeger, Laura Vaccaro | Neal Porter/ Roaring Brook (40 pp.) | $16.99 2012 | 9781596433977

In all, lovely, inventive, engrossing, and interactive.

The Day the Crayons Quit

Daywalt, Drew | Illus. by Oliver Jeffers | Philomel (40 pp.) | $17.99 2013 | 9780399255373

A comical, fresh look at crayons and color.

Pom and Pim

Landström, Lena | Illus. by Olof Landström Trans. by Julia Marshall | Gecko Press (36 pp.)

$34.99 | $19.99 paper | 2014 | 9781877579660 9781877579882 paper

A perfect primer for the existential philosophy required for a small one to make it through the day.

Interrupting Chicken

Stein, David Ezra | Candlewick (40 pp.)

$16.99 | 2010 | 9780763641689

This tender iteration of a familiar nighttime ritual will be equally welcomed by fond parents and active, engaged youngsters.

I Want My Hat Back

Klassen, Jon | Candlewick (40 pp.)

$15.99 | 2011 | 9780763655983

Indubitably hip, this will find plenty of admirers.

Creepy Carrots!

Reynolds, Aaron | Illus. by Peter Brown Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $16.99 2012 | 9781442402973

Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.

Sophie’s Squash

Zietlow Miller, Pat | Illus. by Anne Wilsdorf Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.)

$16.99 | 2013 | 9780307978967

This season-spanning turn with high-spirited Sophie offers endearing lessons about nurture and regeneration.

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend

Santat, Dan | Little, Brown (40 pp.)

$17.00 | 2014 | 9780316199988

Welcome, Beekle. It’s nice to know you.

A Boy and a Jaguar

Rabinowitz, Alan | Illus. by Cátia Chien

HMH Books (32 pp.) | $16.99 2014 | 9780547875071

Moving and sweetly resonant.

Little Melba and

Her Big Trombone

Russell-Brown, Katheryn | Illus. by Frank Morrison | Lee & Low Books (40 pp.)

$18.95 | 2014 | 9781600608988

Readers will agree that “Melba Doretta Liston was something special.”

The Flat Rabbit

Oskarsson, Bárður | Trans. by Marita Thomsen | Owlkids Books (40 pp.)

$17.95 | 2014 | 9781771470599

Perfectly, honestly childlike in its approach, this title should provoke both thought and discussion.

Neighborhood Sharks: Hunting with the Great Whites of California’s Farallon Islands

Roy, Katherine | David Macaulay Studio/ Roaring Brook (48 pp.) | $17.99 | 2014 9781596438743

Full of the eww factor, up-to-date facts, and kid appeal, this splendid, gory introduction is not for the faint of heart!

Last Stop on Market Street

de la Peña, Matt | Illus. by Christian Robinson | Putnam (32 pp.) | $16.99 2015 | 9780399257742

This celebration of cross-generational bonding is a textual and artistic tour de force.

Separate

Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation

Tonatiuh, Duncan | Abrams (40 pp.) $18.95 | 2014 | 9781419710544

A compelling story told with impeccable care.

You Are (Not) Small

Kang, Anna | Illus. by Christopher Weyant Two Lions (32 pp.) | $16.99 | 2014 9781477847725

Charming characters, a clever plot, and a quiet message tucked inside a humorous tale.

The

Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus

Bryant, Jen | Illus. by Melissa Sweet | Eerdmans (42 pp.) | $17.50 2014 | 9780802853851

In a word: marvelous!

Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold

Sidman, Joyce | Illus. by Rick Allen HMH Books (32 pp.) | $17.99 2014 | 9780547906508

A work to be savored by young artists and scientists.

Sidewalk Flowers

Lawson, JonArno | Illus. by Sydney Smith | Groundwood (32 pp.) | $16.95 2015 | 9781554984312

Bracketed by beautiful endpapers, this ode to everyday beauty sings sweetly.

Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music

Engle, Margarita | Illus. by Rafael López | HMH Books (48 pp.) | $16.99 2015 | 9780544102293

A beautiful account of a girl’s bravery and her contribution toward gender equality in the creative arts.

The World in a Second

Minhós Martins, Isabel | Illus. by Bernardo P. Carvalho | Trans. by Lyn Miller-Lachmann Enchanted Lion Books (56 pp.)

$18.95 | 2015 | 9781592701575

The book’s extra-large trim is the perfect format for this mesmerizing vision of a thrillingly expansive world.

Sonya’s Chickens

Wahl, Phoebe | Tundra Books (32 pp.)

$17.99 | 2015 | 9781770497894

A reassuring story about death in the natural world, thoughtfully designed and illustrated.

The Only Child

Guojing | Schwartz & Wade/Random (112 pp.) | $19.99 | 2015 | 9780553497045

Rare is the book containing great emotional depth that truly resonates across a span of ages: This is one such.

School’s First Day of School

Rex, Adam | Illus. by Christian Robinson Neal Porter/Roaring Brook (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2016 | 9781596439641

A unique point of view makes this school book stand out.

Trombone Shorty

Andrews, Troy | Illus. by Bryan Collier | Abrams (40 pp.) | $17.95 | 2015 | 9781419714658

This well-told and exquisitely illustrated story will inspire young readers to pursue their passions.

Float

Miyares, Daniel | Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $17.99 | 2015 | 9781481415248

Lovely and life-affirming.

Waiting

Henkes, Kevin | Greenwillow Books (32 pp.) | $17.99 | 2015 | 9780062368430

Waiting as a joyful activity in itself is almost never celebrated; this Zen-like meditation might win some converts.

The Night Gardener

Fan, Terry & Eric Fan | Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) | $17.99 | 2016 | 9781481439787

Visual pleasure abounds.

They All Saw a Cat

Wenzel, Brendan | Chronicle Books (44 pp.) | $16.99 | 2016 | 9781452150130

A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.

Chirri & Chirra

Doi, Kaya | Trans. by Yuki Kaneko

Enchanted Lion Books (40 pp.)

$15.95 | 2016 | 9781592701995

A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel.

Du Iz Tak?

Ellis, Carson | Candlewick (48 pp.)

$16.99 | 2016 | 9780763665302

Following the minute changes is to watch growth, transformation, death, and rebirth presented as enthralling spectacle.

Wolf in the Snow

Cordell, Matthew | Feiwel & Friends (48 pp.)

$17.99 | 2017 | 9781250076366

Deeply satisfying.

Look Up!

Jung, Jin-Ho | Trans. by Mi Hyun Kim Holiday House (32 pp.) | $16.95 2016 | 9780823436521

Conceptually sophisticated; especially inviting for young artists ready to explore new visual angles.

Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat

Steptoe, Javaka | Little, Brown (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2016 | 9780316213882

Stellar bookmaking—a riveting portrait of a young artist.

The Way Home in the Night

Miyakoshi, Akiko | Kids Can (40 pp.)

$16.95 | 2017 | 9781771386630

Originally published in Japan, this reflective, dreamy tale with its timeless art is a must for the bedtime shelf.

Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix

Martin, Jacqueline Briggs & June Jo Lee

Illus. by Man One | Readers to Eaters (32 pp.) | $18.95 | 2017 | 9780983661597

A vibrant, life-affirming tribute to a chef and his city.

Over and Under the Pond

Messner, Kate | Illus. by Christopher Silas Neal | Chronicle Books (48 pp.) | $16.99 paper | 2017 | 9781452145426

A magical artistic and informational world that readers will delight in visiting again and again.

Hey, Boy

Strouse, Benjamin | Illus. by Jennifer Phelan | McElderry (48 pp.) | $15.99 2017 | 9781481471015

Luminous.

A Different Pond

Phi, Bao | Illus. by Thi Bui Capstone Young Readers (32 pp.)

$15.95 | 2017 | 978162370-8030

Spare and simple, a must-read for our times.

When a Wolf Is Hungry

Naumann-Villemin, Christine | Illus. by Kris Di Giacomo | Eerdmans (34 pp.)

$16.00 | 2017 | 9780802854827

As funny and as exquisitely put together as Edmond Bigsnout himself.

Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut

Barnes, Derrick | Illus. by Gordon C. James | Bolden/Agate (32 pp.)

$17.95 | 2017 | 9781572842243

One of the best reads for young Black boys in years, it should be in every library, media center, and, yes, barbershop.

Wallpaper

Lam, Thao | Owlkids Books (32 pp.)

$16.95 | 2018 | 9781771472838

A unique and visually stunning approach to the classic dilemma of making new friends.

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga

Sorell, Traci | Illus. by Frané Lessac Charlesbridge (32 pp.) | $17.99 2018 | 9781580897723

A gracious, warm, and loving celebration of community and gratitude.

The Undefeated

Alexander, Kwame | Illus. by Kadir Nelson | Versify/HMH (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2019 | 9781328780966

An incredible text for young readers eager to graduate to weighty conversations about our yesterday, our now, and our tomorrow.

Still Stuck

Yoshitake, Shinsuke | Abrams (32 pp.)

$12.95 | 2017 | 9781419726996

This hilarious, inspirational, and infinitely familiar story will make adults and children alike giggle.

Hello Lighthouse

Blackall, Sophie | Little, Brown (48 pp.)

$18.99 | 2018 | 9780316362382

A fascinating, splendidly executed peek into both the mundane and the dramatic aspects of lighthouse life.

A Big Mooncake for Little Star

Lin, Grace | Little, Brown (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2018 | 9780316404488

A warm and glowing modern myth.

Dreamers

Morales, Yuyi | Neal Porter/ Holiday House (40 pp.) | $18.99 2018 | 9780823440559

A resplendent masterpiece.

When Aidan Became a Brother

Lukoff, Kyle | Illus. by Kaylani Juanita Lee & Low Books (32 pp.) | $18.95 2019 | 9781620148372

Joyful and affirming, Aidan’s story is the first of its kind among books for welcoming a new baby.

My Papi Has a Motorcycle

Quintero, Isabel | Illus. by Zeke Peña | Kokila (40 pp.) | $17.99 2019 | 9780525553410

Every girl should be so lucky as to have such a papi.

Birdsong

Flett, Julie | Greystone Kids (48 pp.)

$17.95 | 2019 | 9781771644730

Emotionally stunning.

Saturday

Mora, Oge | Little, Brown (40 pp.)

$18.99 | 2019 | 9780316431279

Special and splendid.

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story

Maillard, Kevin Noble | Illus. by Juana Martinez-Neal | Roaring Brook Press (48 pp.) | $18.99 | 2019 | 9781626727465

Fry bread is much more than food, as this book amply demonstrates.

We Are Water Protectors

Lindstrom, Carole | Illus. by Michaela Goade | Roaring Brook Press (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2020 | 9781250203557

An inspiring call to action for all who care about our interconnected planet.

Lift

Lê, Minh | Illus. by Dan Santat | Little, Brown (56 pp.) | $17.99 | 2020 | 9781368036924

Fueled by emotions that come alive with magnetic illustrations.

Ten Little Dumplings

Fan, Larissa | Illus. by Cindy Wume | Tundra Books (48 pp.) | $17.99 | 2021 | 9780735266193

Stepping out of the shadows: a gentle, persuasive #ownvoices take on a hitherto-untold perspective.

Watercress

Wang, Andrea | Illus. by Jason Chin Neal Porter/Holiday House (32 pp.)

$18.99 | 2021 | 9780823446247

Understated, deep, and heart-rending—bring tissues.

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre

Weatherford, Carole Boston | Illus. by Floyd Cooper | Carolrhoda (32 pp.)

$17.99 | 2021 | 9781541581203

A somber, well-executed addition to the history as the incident approaches its 100th anniversary.

Moon Pops

Baek, Heena | Trans. by Jieun Kiaer Owlkids Books (36 pp.) | $18.95 2021 | 9781771474290

A sweet, icy treat that will warm your heart.

The Longest Letsgoboy

Wilder, Derick | Illus. by Cátia Chien Chronicle Books (48 pp.) | $16.99

2021 | 9781452177168

Stunning, tender, and brilliant. Readers will laugh and cry—but most of all love.

Coffee, Rabbit, Snowdrop, Lost

Birkjær, Betina | Illus. by Anna Margrethe Kjærgaard | Trans. by Sinéad Quirke Køngerskov | Enchanted Lion Books (44 pp.)

$17.95 | 2021 | 9781592703739

Child-centered, accurate, and engagingly told.

Everything in Its Place: A Story of Books and Belonging

David-Sax, Pauline | Illus. by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow | Doubleday (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2022 | 9780593378823

For all those who are never found without a book at recess.

João by a Thread

Mello, Roger | Trans. by Daniel Hahn

Elsewhere Editions (37 pp.)

$18.95 | 2022 | 9781953861344

A moody, ingenious masterstroke.

A Shell Is Cozy

Aston, Dianna Hutts | Illus. by Sylvia Long | Chronicle Books (40 pp.)

$18.99 | 2023 | 9781797212470

Just as sparkling as its many predecessors.

The Big Bath House

Maclear, Kyo | Illus. by Gracey Zhang

Random House Studio (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2021 | 9780593181959

A must-have celebration of cultural understanding and community— and the joy of family.

Kapaemahu

Wong-Kalu, Hinaleimoana, Dean Hamer & Joe Wilson | Illus. by Daniel Sousa | Kokila (40 pp.)

$17.99 | 2022 | 9780593530061

A poignant monument to the power of hidden Indigenous histories.

Choosing Brave: How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement

Joy, Angela | Illus. by Janelle Washington Roaring Brook Press (64 pp.) | $19.99 2022 | 9781250220950

A devastating, uniquely told story that will resonate.

Big

Harrison, Vashti | Little, Brown (60 pp.)

$19.99 | 2023 | 9780316353229

A healing balm with the power to make the world a bit kinder.

Afterward, Everything Was Different: A Tale From the Pleistocene

Buitrago, Jairo | Illus. by Rafael Yockteng Trans. by Elisa Amado | Greystone Kids (64 pp.) | $19.95 | 2023 | 9781778400605

A stirring and thought-provoking reflection on the essential part stories play in making us human.

Middle-Grade Books THE BEST

OF THE CENTURY (so far)

Middle grade: Is there a more broad-ranging group of readers? It encompasses the youngest independent consumers novels—kids excited to be losing their baby teeth—up to ninth graders weathering the emotional extremes of adolescence. The top middle-grade books of the century (so far!) reflect these dramatically different developmental stages through a rich variety of genres and formats, all combining excellent execution with genuine kid appeal.

Alissandra

Because of Winn-Dixie

DiCamillo, Kate | Candlewick (182 pp.)

$15.99 | 2000 | 0763607762

A real gem.

Esperanza Rising

Ryan, Pam Muñoz | Scholastic (272 pp.)

$15.95 | 2000 | 0439120411

It bears telling to a wider audience.

Artemis Fowl

Colfer, Eoin | Hyperion (288 pp.)

$16.95 | 2001 | 0786808012

Savagely funny.

The Thief Lord

Funke, Cornelia | Trans. by Oliver Latsch

Chicken House/Scholastic (352 pp.)

$16.95 | 2002 | 0439404371

Although the core of this tale is heartwarming, the merry-go-round hints at darkness, leaving readers changed forever.

The Amulet of Samarkand

Stroud, Jonathan | Hyperion (544 pp.)

$17.95 | 2003 | 078681859X

A thrilling adventure.

A Year Down Yonder

Peck, Richard | Dial Books (144 pp.)

$16.99 | 2000 | 9780803725188

Year-round fun.

Everything on a Waffle

Horvath, Polly | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (160 pp.) | $16.00 | 2001 | 0374322368

Life dishes up the sweet with the sour in this perceptive, barbed tale.

Love That Dog

Creech, Sharon | HarperCollins (112 pp.) | $14.95 | 2001 | 0060292873

This really special triumph is bound to be widely discussed.

Pictures of Hollis Woods

Giff, Patricia Reilly | Wendy Lamb/Random (160 pp.) | $15.95 | 2002 | 0385326556

This touching story will leave readers pleasantly drained, satisfied with the happy ending, and eager for more.

Chasing Vermeer

Balliett, Blue | Illus. by Brett Helquist Scholastic (272 pp.) | $16.95 | 2004 0439372941

Fans of E.L. Konigsburg will find equal pleasure in this debut by a talented writer.

Millions

Cottrell Boyce, Frank | HarperCollins (272 pp.) | $15.99 | 2004 | 0060733306

The gentle British humor lies under the surface here, making the story a joy for readers of all ages.

Permanent Rose

McKay, Hilary | McElderry (240 pp.)

$15.95 | 2005 | 1416903720

This fine, funny sequel, with its wonderful dialogue and effortlessseeming weave of plots and characters, stands on its own.

The Lightning Thief

Riordan, Rick | Hyperion (384 pp.)

$17.95 | 2005 | 0786856297

The sardonic tone lends a refreshing air of realism to this riotously paced tale of heroism.

Ivy and Bean

Barrows, Annie | Illus. by Sophie Blackall Chronicle Books (116 pp.) | $14.95 | 2006 0811849031

Readers are bound to embrace this spunky twosome and eagerly anticipate their continuing tales of mischief and mayhem.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Selznick, Brian | Scholastic (544 pp.)

$22.99 | 2007 | 0439813786

Fade to black and cue the applause!

Each Little Bird That Sings

Wiles, Deborah | Gulliver/Harcourt (264 pp.) | $16.00 | 2005 | 0152051139

A memorable tribute to the joys of living.

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

Birdsall, Jeanne | Knopf (192 pp.)

$15.95 | 2005 | 0375831436

Satisfying and not too sweet.

Babymouse: Queen of the World!

Holm, Jennifer L. | Illus. by Matthew Holm | Random House (96 pp.)

$5.95 paper | 2005 | 0375832297

Readers will happily follow Babymouse through ordinary pratfalls and extraordinary flights of fancy.

Larklight: A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space

Reeve, Philip | Illus. by David Wyatt Bloomsbury (384 pp.)

$16.95 | 2006 | 1599900203

Jolly good fun, all around.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons

Kinney, Jeff | Amulet/Abrams (224 pp.)

$14.95 | 2007 | 0810993139

Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy

The Wednesday Wars

Schmidt, Gary D. | Clarion Books (272 pp.) | $16.00 | 2007 | 9780618724833

Another virtuoso turn.

Ain’t Nothing but a Man: My Quest To Find the Real John Henry

Nelson, Scott Reynolds with Marc Aronson | National Geographic (64 pp.)

$18.95 | 2007 | 9781426300004

An eye-opening case study in how history and folklore can intertwine.

Savvy

Law, Ingrid | Dial/Walden Media (352 pp.)

$16.99 | 2008 | 9780803733060

Sending her young cast on a zigzag odyssey, Law displays both a fertile imagination and a dab hand for likable, colorful characters.

When You Reach Me

Stead, Rebecca | Wendy Lamb/Random (208 pp.) | $15.99 | 2009 | 9780385737425

Mind-blowing.

One Crazy Summer

Williams-Garcia, Rita | Amistad/ HarperCollins (224 pp.)

$15.99 | 2010 | 9780060760885

Writing that snaps off the page.

Elijah of Buxton

Curtis, Christopher Paul | Scholastic (352 pp.) | $16.99 | 2007 | 9780439023443

This is Curtis’ best novel yet, and no doubt readers will finish and say, “This is one of the best books I have ever read.”

The Stonekeeper: Amulet, Book One

Kibuishi, Kazu | Graphix/Scholastic (208 pp.) | $21.99 | $9.99 paper | 2008 9780439846806| 9780439846813 paper

Fans of Jeff Smith’s Bone will happily fret with the good guys and hiss at the baddies.

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11

Floca, Brian | Richard Jackson/Atheneum (48 pp.) | $17.99 | 2009 | 9781416950462

Breathtaking, thrilling, and perfect.

Smile

Telgemeier, Raina | Graphix/Scholastic (224 pp.) | $21.99 | 2010 | 9780545132053

Irresistible, funny, and touching.

How Mirka Got Her Sword

Deutsch, Barry | Amulet/Abrams (144 pp.) | $15.95 | 2010 | 9780810984226

Undoubtedly one of the cleverest graphic novels of the year.

Dead End in Norvelt

Gantos, Jack | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (352 pp.) | $15.99 | 2011

9780374379933

Characteristically provocative gothic comedy, with sublime undertones.

The One and Only Ivan

Applegate, Katherine | Illus. by Patricia Castelao | Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.)

$16.99 | 2012 | 9780061992254

Utterly believable, this bittersweet story will inspire a new generation of advocates.

Splendors and Glooms

Schlitz, Laura Amy | Candlewick (400 pp.)

$17.99 | 2012 | 9780763653804

Schlitz’s prose is perfect in every stitch, and readers will savor each word.

Doll Bones

Black, Holly | McElderry (256 pp.)

$16.99 | 2013 | 9781416963981

Spooky, melancholy, elegiac, and ultimately hopeful; a small gem.

The Crossover

Alexander, Kwame | HMH Books (240 pp.)

$16.99 | 2014 | 9780544107717

Poet Alexander deftly reveals the power of the format to pack an emotional punch.

The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Tale

Deedy, Carmen Agra & Randall Wright Illus. by Barry Moser | Peachtree (256 pp.)

$16.95 | 2011 | 9781561455959

Readers with great expectations will find them fully satisfied by this tongue-in-cheek romp.

A Greyhound of a Girl

Doyle, Roddy | Amulet/Abrams (208 pp.)

$16.95 | 2012 | 9781419701689

A warm, witty, exquisitely nuanced multigenerational story.

Bomb: The Race To Build— and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon

Sheinkin, Steve | Roaring Brook Press (272 pp.) | $19.99 | 2012 | 9781596434875

A superb tale of an era and an effort that forever changed our world.

I Lived on Butterfly Hill

Agosín, Marjorie | Illus. by Lee White Trans. by E.M. O’Connor | Atheneum (464 pp.) | $16.99 | 2014 | 9781416953449

Award-winning Chilean author Agosín’s debut for young people is a lyrically ambitious tale of exile and reunification.

West of the Moon

Preus, Margi | Amulet/Abrams (224 pp.)

$16.95 | 2014 | 9781419708961

Norwegian history, fiction, and folklore intertwine seamlessly in this lively, fantastical adventure.

The Night Gardener

Auxier, Jonathan | Illus. by Patrick Arrasmith | Amulet/Abrams (384 pp.)

$16.95 | 2014 | 9781419711442

Memorable characters and touches of humor amid the horror make this cautionary tale one readers will not soon forget.

El Deafo

Bell, Cece | Amulet/Abrams (248 pp.)

$21.95 | $10.95 paper | 2014 9781419710209 | 9781429712173 paper

Worthy of a superhero.

Echo

Ryan, Pam Muñoz | Illus. by Dinara Mirtalipova | Scholastic (592 pp.)

$19.99 | 2015 | 9780439874021

A grand narrative that examines the power of music to inspire beauty in a world overrun with fear and intolerance.

Melissa

Gino, Alex | Scholastic (240 pp.)

$16.99 | 2015 | 9780545812542

Warm, funny, and inspiring.

The Nest

Oppel, Kenneth | Illus. by Jon Klassen Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) | $16.99 2015 | 9781481432320

Compelling and accessible.

Brown Girl Dreaming

Woodson, Jacqueline | Nancy Paulsen Books (336 pp.) | $16.99 2014 | 9780399252518

For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share.

The War That Saved My Life

Bradley, Kimberly Brubaker | Dial Books (320 pp.) | $16.99 | 2015 | 9780803740815

Set against a backdrop of war and sacrifice, Ada’s fight for freedom and ultimate triumph are cause for celebration.

The First Case

Nilsson, Ulf | Illus. by Gitte Spee Trans. by Julia Marshall | Gecko Press (96 pp.) | $16.99 | 2015 | 9781927271490

The only sadness is that Volume 2 isn’t immediately available.

The Thing About Jellyfish

Benjamin, Ali | Little, Brown (352 pp.)

$17.00 | 2015 | 9780316380867

A painful story smartly told, Benjamin’s first solo novel has appeal well beyond a middle school audience.

Pax

Pennypacker, Sara | Illus. by Jon Klassen Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (304 pp.)

$16.99 | 2016 | 9780062377012

Moving and poetic.

The Wild Robot

Brown, Peter | Little, Brown (288 pp.)

$16.99 | 2016 | 9780316381994

Thought-provoking and charming.

It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel

Dumas, Firoozeh | Clarion Books (384 pp.)

$16.99 | 2016 | 9780544612310

Authentic, funny, and moving from beginning to end.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Barnhill, Kelly | Algonquin (400 pp.)

$16.95 | 2016 | 9781616205676

Guaranteed to enchant, enthrall, and enmagick.

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan

Bryan, Ashley | Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum (42 pp.) | $17.99 | 2016 | 9781481456906

Every child would benefit from experiencing this historically grounded web of narratives.

Hello, Universe

Kelly, Erin Entrada | Greenwillow Books (320 pp.) | $16.99 | 2017 | 9780062414151

An original and resonant exploration of interconnectedness and friendship.

Wolf Hollow

Wolk, Lauren | Dutton (304 pp.)

$16.99 | 2016 | 9781101994825

Trusting its readers implicitly with its moral complexity, Wolk’s novel stuns.

As Brave as You

Reynolds, Jason | Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum (432 pp.) | $16.99 | 2016 | 9781481415903

This pitch-perfect contemporary novel gently explores the past’s repercussions on the present.

Dog Man

Pilkey, Dav | Graphix/Scholastic (240 pp.) | $9.99 paper | 2016 9780545581608

What a wag.

The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

Gidwitz, Adam | Illus. by Hatem Aly | Dutton (384 pp.) | $17.99 | 2016 | 9780525426165

A masterpiece of storytelling that is addictive and engrossing.

Bronze and Sunflower

Cao Wenxuan | Illus. by Meilo So Trans. by Helen Wang | Candlewick (400 pp.) | $16.99 | 2017 | 9780763688165

Readers of all ages should be prepared to laugh, cry, and sigh with satisfaction.

Lucky Broken Girl

Behar, Ruth | Nancy Paulsen Books (256 pp.)

$16.99 | 2017 | 9780399546440

A poignant and relevant retelling of a child immigrant’s struggle to recover from an accident and feel at home in America.

The Stars Beneath Our Feet

Moore, David Barclay | Knopf (304 pp.)

$16.99 | 2017 | 9781524701246

A debut that serves as a powerful instructive for writing from and reading the intersections.

The Night Diary

Hiranandani, Veera | Kokila (272 pp.)

$16.99 | 2018 | 9780735228511

A gripping, nuanced story of the human cost of conflict appropriate for both children and adults.

Finding Langston

Cline-Ransome, Lesa | Holiday House (112 pp.)

$16.99 | 2018 | 9780823439607

A fascinating work of historical fiction that showcases a well-developed protagonist and presents Cline-Ransome at her best.

Sal & Gabi Break the Universe

Hernandez, Carlos | Rick Riordan Presents/ Disney (400 pp.) | $16.99 | 2019 | 9781368022828

This book, drenched in Cuban Spanish and personality, is a breath of fresh air.

Thornhill

Smy, Pam | Roaring Brook Press (544 pp.) | $19.99 | 2017 | 9781626726543

Beautiful, moody, sad, and spooky—all at once.

Where’s Halmoni?

Kim, Julie | Sasquatch (96 pp.)

$19.99 | 2017 | 9781632170774

An exceptionally charming and well-executed romp that brings to life loving family relationships and an enticing fairy-tale world.

Front Desk

Yang, Kelly | Levine/Scholastic (304 pp.)

$16.99 | 2018 | 9781338157796

Many readers will recognize themselves or their neighbors in these pages.

New Kid

Craft, Jerry | Colors by Jim Callahan

Harper/HarperCollins (256 pp.) | $21.99

$12.99 paper | 2019 | 9780062691200 9780062691194 paper

An engrossing, humorous, and vitally important graphic novel that should be required reading.

Other Words for Home

Warga, Jasmine | Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (352 pp.) | $16.99 | 2019 | 9780062747808

Poetic, immersive, hopeful.

Scary Stories for Young Foxes

Heidicker, Christian McKay

Illus. by Junyi Wu | Henry Holt (320 pp.)

$16.99 | 2019 | 9781250181428

Dark and skillfully distressing, this is a story for the bold.

The Best at It

Pancholy, Maulik | Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (336 pp.)

$16.99 | 2019 | 9780062866417

This coming-of-age story about diverse characters coming to grips with their layered identities rings true.

Prairie Lotus

Park, Linda Sue | Clarion Books (272 pp.)

$16.99 | 2020 | 9781328781505

Remarkable.

The Girl and the Ghost

Hanna Alkaf | Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.)

$16.99 | 2020 | 9780062940957

A fascinating, page-turning tale.

The Barren Grounds

Robertson, David A. | Puffin/Penguin

Random House Canada (256 pp.)

$17.99 | 2020 | 9780735266100

This middle-grade fantasy deftly and compellingly centers Indigenous culture.

More to the Story

Khan, Hena | Salaam Reads/ Simon & Schuster (272 pp.)

$17.99 | 2019 | 9781481492096

A delightful concept well executed, this volume is sure to find many fans.

When You Trap a Tiger

Keller, Tae | Random House (304 pp.)

$16.99 | 2020 | 9781524715700

Longing—for connection, for family, for a voice—roars to life with just a touch of magic.

Show Me a Sign

LeZotte, Ann Clare | Scholastic (288 pp.)

$18.99 | 2020 | 9781338255812

A vivid depiction of Deaf community along with an exciting plot and beautiful prose make this a must-read.

Everything Sad Is Untrue: (A True Story)

Nayeri, Daniel | Levine Querido (368 pp.)

$17.99 | 2020 | 9781646140008

A modern epic.

Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems

Nye, Naomi Shihab | Illus. by Rafael López | Greenwillow Books (256 pp.)

$17.99 | 2020 | 9780063013452

Striking use of everyday images and timely themes makes this free verse collection meaningful, memorable, and accessible.

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys’ Soccer Team

Soontornvat, Christina | Candlewick (288 pp.)

$24.99 | 2020 | 9781536209457

Thoughtfully researched, expertly crafted.

Soul Lanterns

Kuzki, Shaw | Trans. by Emily Balistrieri | Delacorte (176 pp.)

$16.99 | 2021 | 9780593174340

An evocative story that will move your soul.

Temple Alley Summer

Kashiwaba, Sachiko | Illus. by Miho Satake Trans. by Avery Fischer Udagawa | Yonder (240 pp.) | $18.00 | 2021 | 9781632063038

An instant classic filled with supernatural intrigue and real-world friendship.

Barb the Last Berzerker

Abdo, Dan & Jason Patterson | Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) | $13.99 | 2021 | 9781534485716

Nothing will stop readers from devouring this book.

The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy

Ursu, Anne | Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins (432 pp.) | $17.99 | 2021 | 9780062275127

A wonderful and inspiring feminist fantasy.

Can You Whistle, Johanna?

Stark, Ulf | Illus. by Anna Höglund Trans. by Julia Marshall | Gecko Press (80 pp.) | $18.99 | 2021 | 9781776573257

A sweet, tender, never maudlin evocation of an intergenerational friendship.

Niños: Poems for the Lost Children of Chile

Ferrada, María José | Illus. by María Elena Valdez Trans. by Lawrence Schimel | Eerdmans (76 pp.) | $18.99 | 2021 | 9780802855671

A book to be read and remembered: a tribute to children whose lives were lost to forces not of their own creation.

Born Behind Bars

Venkatraman, Padma | Nancy Paulsen Books (272 pp.) | $17.99 | 2021 | 9780593112472

A gritty story filled with hope and idealism.

The Last Cuentista

Higuera, Donna Barba | Levine Querido (336 pp.) | $17.99 | 2021 | 9781646140893

An exquisite tonic for storytellers far and wide, young and old.

¡¡Manu!!

Fernández, Kelly | Graphix/Scholastic (192 pp.) | $24.99 | 2021 | 9781338264197

Fun, refreshing, antics-filled magical adventures.

Candidly Cline

Ormsbee, Kathryn | Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) | $16.99 | 2021 | 9780063059993

Destined for the spotlight.

Storm

Skinner, Nicola | Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.) | $16.99 | 2022 | 9780063071681

A hauntingly memorable mixture of humor and honest emotion.

Book of Questions: Selections

Neruda, Pablo | Illus. by Paloma Valdivia Trans. by Sara Lissa Paulson | Enchanted Lion Books (80 pp.) | $18.95 | 2022 | 9781592703227

A gorgeous work that stretches the imagination and delights the senses.

The Lost Year

Marsh, Katherine | Roaring Brook Press (368 pp.) | $16.99 | 2023 | 9781250313607

A moving presentation of a long-suppressed piece of history.

Next Stop

Fong, Debbie | Random House Graphic (272 pp.) | $21.99 | $13.99 paper | 2024 9780593425206 | 9780593425183 paper

A poignant story that delicately balances youthful delight and naïveté with profound mourning.

Isla to Island

Castellanos, Alexis | Atheneum (192 pp.) $12.99 paper | 2022 | 9781534469235

An important and authentic look at the Cuban refugee experience.

Our Own Little Paradise

Kaurin, Marianne | Trans. by Olivia Lasky Arctis Books (300 pp.) | $15.00 2022 | 9781646900183

Absorbing relationship drama with a convincing protagonist.

Seen and Unseen

Partridge, Elizabeth | Illus. by Lauren Tamaki | Chronicle Books (132 pp.)

$21.99 | 2022 | 9781452165103

A bold combination of art, media, and records create a compelling read.

Julia and the Shark

Hargrave, Kiran Millwood | Illus. by Tom de Freston | Union Square Kids (224 pp.)

$18.99 | 2023 | 9781454948681

Outstanding.

On a Wing and a Tear

Smith, Cynthia Leitich | Heartdrum (240 pp.) | $18.99 | 2024 | 9780062870001

A unique and noteworthy tale that weaves together past and present with humor through stellar, multilayered writing.

Children's

25 YEARS OF LITERARY TREASURES

A BOX OF rebellious crayons goes on strike. A robot raises a young goose. A little girl befriends a squash. A quick look at our Best Picture Books and Middle Grade of the 21st Century (So Far) proves that there’s no end to the creativity of children’s book authors. As I revisit these titles, I’m also struck by how much the publishing landscape has transformed over the last 25 years. Though there’s still work to be done, kid lit is far more inclusive than it once was. Bao Phi and Thi Bui’s A Different Pond (2017) and Yuyi Morales’ Dreamers (2018) are immigrant stories threaded with all-too-necessary messages of belonging; Alex Gino’s Melissa (2015) and Kyle Lukoff and Kaylani Juanita’s When Aidan Became a Brother (2019) offer lovingly matter-of-fact depictions of trans kids thriving. Graphic novels for young readers have truly come into their own. Back in the ’90s, my elementary school library’s comics collection—if you could call it that—was limited to a few Bone or Tintin stories. Today, children have a wealth of choices:

Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm’s Babymouse: Queen of the World! (2005) will keep them giggling, Raina Telgemeier’s angsty graphic memoir Smile (2010) will have them groaning in sympathy, and Jerry Craft’s New Kid (2019), with its forthright exploration of microaggressions and systemic racism, will make them better human beings.

While I remember the nonfiction books of my youth being dry, fact-filled affairs, today’s informational texts are mesmerizing. Brian Floca’s Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (2009), Troy Andrews and Bryan Collier’s Trombone Shorty (2015), and Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki’s Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration (2022) are superb marriages of words and visuals; Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race To Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon (2012) is as heart-pounding as any suspense novel.

Some things haven’t changed, however. We still love a drama queen (or king).

Growing up, I couldn’t get enough of Kay Thompson’s Eloise (starring the Plaza Hotel’s sassiest resident), while today’s kids have Ian Falconer’s Olivia (2000)— featuring his popular porcine diva—and Mo Willems’ uproarious Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! (2003) to keep them entertained. And young readers will always adore a protagonist willing to tell it like it is. Just as I still constantly reread Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, 21st-century kids devour Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons (2007). Both star snarky youngsters who fill

notebooks with hilariously barbed comments about friends and family—if you can’t say anything nice, come sit by Harriet M. Welsch and Greg Heffley. The other constant? Reading shapes minds and makes us who we are. The young people who grow up with these books will emerge thoughtful, empathetic adults with a healthy sense of humor, a bit of a mischievous streak, and, perhaps, the confidence to create their own stories. What more could we ask for?

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

EDITOR’S PICK

Wynter and Pumphrey tell the story of Juneteenth. What would you wear, how would you eat, how would you sing, dance, and celebrate, after so many years of being forced to wear rags, to eat scraps, and to hide your messages in song? Directly addressing audiences, Wynter’s spare yet powerfully immersive words invite readers to imagine both the horrors of enslavement and the joy of emancipation, while the backmatter lays out the facts about the holiday commemorating June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the

end of slavery. Pumphrey’s acrylic illustrations weave back and forth in time, juxtaposing stark images of silhouetted people in chains and picking cotton with uplifting scenes of the newly liberated dancing and even taking flight, along with depictions of modern-day Juneteenth parades and concerts. Author and illustrator walk a fine line, acknowledging the harsh realities of slavery while never overwhelming readers with gruesome details. Pumphrey nimbly incorporates lyrics from spirituals into his artwork. Beginning and ending on notes of hope—with scenes

So Many Years: A Juneteenth Story

Wynter, Anne | Illus. by Jerome Pumphrey

Clarion/HarperCollins | 32 pp.

May 6, 2025 | $19.99 | 9780063081147

of a formerly enslaved family enjoying their freedom at sunrise and sunset—his visuals pulse with energy and life. Children will be filled with wonder; adults will be impressed by the sheer talent

on display. All will come away enlightened and moved by this loving tribute. A deeply felt celebration of the resilience of the human spirit. (lyrics to “Lift Every Voice and Sing”) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Mama Wears a Hijab

Abu, Fifi | Paw Prints Publishing/ Baker & Taylor (24 pp.) | $18.99 March 19, 2025 | 9781223186627

Muslim children from all over the world pay homage to their hijabi mothers.

Hijabs are as different as the women who wear them, and the young people in this story praise their mothers for what makes them remarkable. As one mama prepares a nourishing meal, her child notes that her headscarf is a symbol of her devotion and care for her family. Another mother’s hijab represents her deep faith in Islam. The women differ in skin tone, cultural setting, and clothing style and wear various types of hijab: a turban that fits closely like a cap, a niqab that reveals only the eyes, a loosely wrapped shayla, and a full-body burqa. The story features figurative language and rhymes that generally flow well. While some metaphors are more literal and easy to follow (“a sleek and glassy onyx, / a gorgeous gleaming gem” to describe an all-black hijab look), others are more abstract and difficult to connect to the Muslim women being celebrated (“a juicy tasty mango, / growing ripe and plump” appears to be an awkward nod to a mother’s pregnancy). Abu’s simple illustrations feature bold colors and striking patterns in the background. A downloadable educator’s guide is available to support young learners. Celebratory, though somewhat inconsistent. (Picture book. 4-7)

Little Troublemaker Defends Her Name

Ajayi Jones, Luvvie | Illus. by Joey Spiotto

Philomel (32 pp.) | $18.99 | May 6, 2025 9780593694251 | Series: Little Troublemaker

This latest from speaker, podcaster, and Professional Troublemaker (2021) author Ajayi Jones sees young Luvvie getting

Muslim children pay homage to their hijabi mothers.

MAMA WEARS A HIJAB

into even more trouble on her first day at a new school.

After Luvvie introduces herself to her classmates, Tommy taunts her: “Is your name LAVA?” “Is your name DUMMY?” Luvvie shoots back. Their teacher, Miss Millward, asks Luvvie to apologize but fails to ask Luvvie for her side of the story. Luvvie writes a note to express her feelings (“My teacher’s mean”), but when Miss Millward sees it, she asks Luvvie to speak with her after lunch. Ouch! Luvvie’s found trouble twice in one day. Luvvie’s bottled-up anger and hurt spill over when Mom arrives with the lunch that Luvvie forgot, and the two talk to Miss Millward, who apologizes for not having listened. Though the narrative is on the wordy side, it offers young people a road map for navigating similar situations. The grown-ups in the story display excellent listening skills, while Tommy models kindness and accountability. Bright, cartoonish illustrations alternate between full spreads and close-ups, focusing on the characters’ expressive faces. Luvvie is Black; the previous book in the series established that she’s of Nigerian descent. Tommy presents white, while Miss Millward has light brown skin. Keenly aware that youngsters with uncommon names often face cruel comments, Ajayi Jones ends with some reassuring words (“Sometimes you’re so unique that you don’t see your name on a key chain at a store”) and instructions for a craft project.

Thoughtful guidance for youngsters processing big emotions. (suggestions for dealing with hurt feelings) (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Star

Hide & Seek With Clyde & Monique: Clyde in Plain Sight

Annable, Graham | HarperAlley (32 pp.)

$5.99 paper | June 24, 2025 | 9780063414143

Series: I Can Read! Comics

A busy day of exploration for two friends— and readers. After arriving at Clyde’s aunt’s house, Monique wonders where Clyde is. He pops out and suggests that they play hide-and-seek in his aunt’s vast backyard. Monique volunteers to seek, while Clyde is confident in his hiding abilities. The outdoor pastime is a festively furtive affair, with Monique reacting to every investigated corner: The child sneezes at the flowers, exclaims over the warmth of the greenhouse, and recoils in disgust at the basement cobwebs. The yard is filled with vocal animals, too, from a mewing cat to clucking chickens and quacking ducks. Annable slyly plays with perspective, from an overhead shot of Monique gazing into the chicken coop to lovely, panoramic views of the garden. He employs soft, fuzzy linework in keeping with the upbeat tone. The mischievous masterstroke, however, is how Clyde is hidden on nearly every page during the game. Looking for him is truly a lesson in observation and will get readers in the habit of paying close attention to the artwork in graphic novels; this is a tale to build visual literacy and set readers on the path to becoming longtime comics fans. Both kiddos are good sports about how the game concludes, and it all wraps up with a

For more by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, visit Kirkus online.

snack and a rematch. Monique is light-skinned; Clyde is tan-skinned. An irresistible playdate.

(Graphic fiction. 4-8)

Do You See the Tiger?

Ardagh, Philip | Illus. by David Melling Candlewick (40 pp.) | $18.99 May 20, 2025 | 9781536242904

A subway ride turns into a memorable adventure when a girl encounters a tiger.

Penny and her father leave the rainy London streets to board an underground train. Her brown hair is pulled into a bun, and she sports a yellow-and-black-striped backpack, hinting at the events to come. Penny notices that one of the riders has orange and black fur under his fedora and trench coat—a tiger?! Her father gently dismisses her (“That’s not a tiger, little love. That’s just a person’s stripy glove!”), but a brown-skinned toddler clutching a stuffed blue bunny is also staring at the beast. As the toddler and his parent exit the train, the bunny falls to the floor. In an extended pas de deux, Penny and the tiger (now sans outerwear) rescue Bun-Bun, propelling it through the doors into the grateful child’s hands. Rhyming text (which includes a nod to William Blake’s “Tyger, Tyger”) drives the plot forward and adds to the read-aloud pleasure: “At last, with leaping grace and flair, / he sent Bun-Bun spinning through the air.” Melling has created a slow-motion effect for his warm, mixed-media images by using the train windows as sequential panels through which to view the ballet. Those who observe the oblivious adults and waving, re-clothed tiger among the departing passengers will delight in

having been in on the secret. Penny and her father have light brown skin; the human passengers are diverse. Sure to have youngsters going wild imagining similar escapades. (Picture book. 3-6)

Frida Kahlo’s Flower Crown

Armendia-Sánchez, Nydia | Illus. by Loris Lora | Abrams (32 pp.) | $19.99 April 1, 2025 | 9781949480351

Flowery language traces the broad roots of Frida Kahlo’s life.

The renowned Mexican artist’s life is retold from nascent bud to full bloom, with particular attention to her self-mythologized harmonious bond with nature and struggles against lifelong illnesses. Vibrant imagery marks her beginning: “Like a seed, / Frida sprouted / and burst through the earth / where / the coyotl once foraged.” Kahlo’s beatific childhood and her young adulthood in Coyoacán together shape the bulk of this biographic narrative, which briefly touches on her bout with polio. A burgeoning interest in flowers and plants blossoms as she visits a nearby park, as does Kahlo’s eventual devotion to painting as she remains in bed recovering from a near-fatal streetcar accident. “Frida flourished / through painting and reconnecting / with nature, / with her ancestral soil.”

Referencing a litany of flora, ArmendiaSánchez moves on to the painter’s garden, a site of inspiration and communion. At times, the emphasis on the featured plants and flowers threatens to overwhelm the otherwise delicate, opulent text. Still, Kahlo’s remarkable artistic and personal triumphs keep it all intact. Lora’s

An irresistible playdate

gouache artwork, a kaleidoscopic series of vignettes, emerges as an inspired highlight from page to page, bookended by fun, illustrated guides to all the flowers and plants included. A rosy view of an iconic artist. (author’s note, instructions for making a flower crown, sources) (Picture-book biography. 4-8)

Orpheline: A Mermaid Lost and Found Story

Aronson, Katelyn | Illus. by Dow Phumiruk | Candlewick (40 pp.)

$18.99 | June 10, 2025 | 9781536226515

While beachcombing, young Cora encounters a merchild stranded on the shore after a storm. In time, the foundling’s name is revealed as Orpheline, a cognate of orphan , just as Cora echoes coral . The artfulness of these name choices is matched by Phumiruk’s care in illustrating the characters in a realistic style that lends credulity to the blurring of lines between fantasy and reality. Though startled when Cora brings the merbaby home, Mama allows the child to look after Orpheline in cozy domestic scenes of bathtime, play, and bedtime. The story unfolds like Marjorie Newman and Patrick Benson’s Mole and the Baby Bird (2002), evoking the adage “If you love someone, set them free.” Cora does love Orpheline, and though Orpheline comes to love Cora, she longs for her underwater home, with a magical shell around her neck connecting her to her mermaid mother’s voice. Encouraged by Mama, Cora returns Orpheline to the beach after another storm, where a mermother-and-child reunion ensues. The touching conclusion affirms Cora and Orpheline’s lasting connection, their bond represented and enabled by a magical seashell necklace of Cora’s own. Orpheline has peachy skin, light brown hair, and a green fishtail; Cora is pale-skinned with dark hair. A tale to get lost in. (Picture book. 4-8)

100 Goats and Granny!

Atinuke | Illus. by Lauren Hinds

Candlewick (40 pp.) | $18.99

May 20, 2025 | 9781536238761

Counting goats can sure be nifty, but when there’s 100 of them, it can also be a challenge. Atinuke taps into the rhythms of Mother Goose for this romp, while Hinds fills her folk art–esque paintings with cheery caprine chaos. “Granny’s got a goat! / Granny’s got a goat!” Granny sits on a crate with pastel-colored laundry drying on the line behind her; she’s looking down at a smiling white goat. But with the turn of the page, readers see “Not 1, not 2, / not 3, not 4, / but more and more / and more and more!” There are eight, in fact, beginning to engage in goatly shenanigans with the laundry. In a magnificent double-page spread, the count goes up by 10s: “20, 30, 40, 50… / Counting goats is getting nifty!” Ninety-nine goats cavort on the grass and trip-trap across the brightly colored tin-roofed homes in the background, chewing laundry, eating homework, and pooping with abandon. When Granny’s 100th goat goes missing, the quest to retrieve it takes readers, Granny’s many grandchildren, and the dignified Granny herself into a town that’s clearly ready to say goodbye to the naughty goat. Atinuke’s text rollicks while Hinds’ illustrations urge readers to slow down to take in every delicious detail. Granny, kids, and community members are all Black, sporting clothes in bright Caribbean colors.

Great goatish fun. (Picture book. 4-8)

Forever Friends Farm: Forever Kind

Auerbach, Annie | Illus. by Luke Flowers

Paw Prints Publishing/Baker & Taylor (32 pp.)

$17.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781223188591

Series: Forever Friends Farm, 1

The animals at Forever Friends Farm welcome Jasper the cat into the fold, but he has some things to learn about being a good pal.

P.J. the goose is having a party to celebrate that he read a book by himself. He invites Jasper to join in the fun, but Jasper isn’t a natural fit. He doesn’t help with party prep, gobbles up all the cookies before anyone else can have one, and then accidentally smashes the party cake. The animals aren’t deterred; they forgive Jasper and reassure him that he’s still welcome at the celebration. Their supportive attitudes are sweet, if unrealistically rosy, but they never discuss how they feel about his thoughtless actions, nor does Jasper explain why he behaved the way he did. Instead, he switches gears quite effortlessly, slicing apples for the group and joining in with some party games. Bright, cartoony illustrations feature pops of action that will appeal to kids. The book offers some nods to inclusivity (P.J. uses an inhaler, Jasper has a leg brace, and Lola the cow uses some Spanish words), all of which is laudable but feels a bit forced. The final page features the lyrics to a song called “We Are Glad You’re Here!” (sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”) with a QR code to listen in. Gentle though unconvincing lessons on friendship and belonging. (Picture book. 4-7)

Two besties navigate their changing friendship as they solve another crime.

THEIR JUST DESSERTS

Their Just Desserts

Badua, Tracy & Alechia Dow | Quill Tree

Books/HarperCollins (352 pp.) | $18.99

May 13, 2025 | 9780063254633

Two “baking and busting” besties navigate their changing friendship as they attempt to solve another crime in this follow-up to 2024’s The Cookie Crumbles. Laila Thomas, who’s cued Black, is a 13-year-old budding chef. She’s looking forward to a slower pace after recently participating in a baking competition and solving a mystery with her best friend, Lucy Flores, who reads Filipino. But life feels frenzied as she’s featured in magazines, works on her cooking vlog, and starts the Bakers Gotta Bake club at school. Meanwhile, Lucy is now co-editor of the school newspaper and interning with Ariella Winborn, her investigative journalist hero. Laila loathes Ariella—even more so because Lucy’s time is consumed by the internship, leaving Laila missing her. And Lucy is disappointed that Ariella just seems to want her to fetch coffee and keep track of her phone. When Cal Parker, one of the fathers of their friend Jaden, is accused of stealing diamonds from the mansion where he’s filming a kids’ holiday baking show, Jaden asks the girls for help. They go undercover to solve the crime: Lucy fills in for a contestant who’s dropped out, and Laila joins Jaden as co-host. The nuances of friendship dynamics are realistically portrayed, and the inclusion of confessionals in the narrative adds to the well-portrayed reality TV vibe. Readers will easily make themselves at home within Laila and Lucy’s relatable narrative arc.

A lovely cozy mystery. (Mystery. 10-14)

For a review of the first book in the series, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

The Secret Life of a Sea Turtle

$19.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9781250901675

A sea turtle survives a perilous journey. Born on a nature reserve in Mexico, the turtle faces a series of challenges: climbing out of her nest, making it across the beach to the ocean while avoiding raccoons and other hungry creatures, searching for food, defying even more predators such as gulls and sharks, and getting entangled in a fishing net— which necessitates a rescue by humans. The turtle makes it to age 30. Now it’s time to mate, return to her birthplace, “like a sailor equipped with an internal magnetic compass,” and complete the delicate dance of finding the perfect spot for her nest. Employing language both precise and imaginative, marine biologist and conservationist Bearzi expertly describes the mechanics of sea turtles’ movements and morphology. Boersma’s stunning, intimate illustrations seamlessly complement the text, from a cutaway view of the nest to a gorgeous bird’s-eye view of unsuspecting baby turtles making sand trails in the shadow cast by the wing of an avian hunter. She captures her subjects’ every emotion: determination on the faces of hatchlings propelling themselves from the nest, fear in the eyes of an unlucky youngster grabbed by a crab. Sweeping undersea scenes, including maps of ocean currents on the sea turtle’s journey, vividly illustrate the life of this wondrous creature. It’s all capped by in-depth backmatter, including information on how readers can protect sea turtles and a look at several specific species. Mesmerizing and insightful. (author’s note, guidance for those interested in studying sea turtles, information on how temperature and artificial lights affect sea turtles, bibliography)

(Informational picture book. 4-8)

Montgomery Bonbon: Mystery at the Manor

Beckett-King, Alasdair | Illus. by Claire Powell | Candlewick (288 pp.)

$18.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781536241686

Series: Montgomery Bonbon, 3

A 10-year-old who’s “mainly interested in murders. Solving murders, that is” finally gets a crack at a mystery that unfolds in a classic country house setting.

In this third series entry, Bonnie Montgomery arrives at Adderstone Manor disguised as pint-size detective Montgomery Bonbon, complete with a “wobbly” foreign accent. She’s accompanied by Grampa Banks and her friend Dana Hornville. Infamous criminal Fergus Croke, who owns the manor, invited Monsieur Bonbon to referee a game—the prize is a diamond and the chance to be named Fergus’ heir. His apprentices, notable for their dubious talents, will participate in the scavenger hunt: pickpocket Daniel Devant, picklock Frankie Novak, and bank robber Naomi Igarashi. When Fergus is found murdered in the monkey house, the housekeeper calls the police, but Bonnie is sure they’ll botch the investigation. There’s monkey business afoot, but the exotic pets loved Fergus and shouldn’t take the fall for the murder, no matter what Bonnie’s rival, Inspector Prashanti Sands, believes. Meanwhile, the apprentices want that diamond! Powell’s lively illustrations capture key moments in the story, and humor, misdirection, and explosions add color. The girls’ friendship endures a blowup, too, when Bonnie feels threatened by Dana’s intellect. The answer? Working together. Between Grampa’s crime-scene photos, Dana’s undercover work, and Bonnie’s deductions, the murderer— and the diamond—are soon in hand. Bonnie and Grampa present white,

and the supporting cast contains racial diversity.

Vraiment, another standout. (map, cast of characters, author’s note) (Mystery. 8-12)

Creaky Acres

Brill, Calista | Illus. by Nilah Magruder Colors by Ellis P. | Kokila (272 pp.)

$24.99 | $14.99 paper | May 6, 2025 9780735230613 | 9780735230620 paper

A 10-year-old Black girl faces a lot of difficult changes when she moves to a rural town. When her mom gets a new job, Nora Wright leaves behind her three best friends, Ava, Anna, and Emma (drawn as nearly identical slender blond white girls) and the posh stable where she boards her horse, Hay Fever, to move to Creaky Acres. Although her current trainer recommends the place, Nora instantly despises it, calling it “a dump.” Horses are well cared for at Creaky Acres, but so are possums and a goat—and the white kids riding there are scruffy and don’t go to horse shows. Nora’s rude to them. She endures frequent racial microaggressions from kids and adults alike at her new school, where she’s the only Black student. She’s struggling with her riding, too. Nora is appealing and sympathetic, and the overall message that friendship and a love of horses transcend race and class divisions is a good one, but it’s undermined by the depiction of the rich riders as thin and neat and the poorer ones as plump and untidy, images that perpetuate stereotypes about body size and socioeconomic class. Confusingly, “eventing,” which is a specific sort of competition, is used repeatedly as a synonym for “horse show,” and some elements of the story strain credulity. The cartoonlike artwork is expressive and highlights the characters’ feelings. An unevenly executed story with a strong message about personal growth. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Bearzi, Maddalena | Illus. by Alex Boersma | Roaring Brook Press (48 pp.)

Hidden Treasure

Burton, Jessie | Bloomsbury (320 pp.)

$17.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9781547614714

In 1918, a 12-year-old girl finds a jewel in the mud of the River Thames that changes her life.

Bo Delafort is a mudlark—she sifts through the mud on the banks of the Thames for odds and ends that she can sell. One day, hearing the river speak to her—“Now!…Put your hands in now! ”—she finds a round silver object studded with rubies and pearls and engraved with illegible writing. When she holds the precious item, it shows her a perplexing vision. Then Bo meets a mysterious boy named Billy, who’s her age, on the riverbanks; later she discovers that the Thames has spoken to him also. The two learn that there’s another jewel—the Brightest Sun, which is a mate to Bo’s Eclipsing Moon—and also that another person is seeking them. As the friends unearth the story of the jewels’ history, they learn the part they each play in their own destinies. While the plot is inventive and intriguing, the presentation is uneven. Some aspects of the characterization skim the surface, although the in-depth detailing of grief (Bo’s older brother has just gone off to war) and some moral ambiguities surrounding the behavior of Bo’s teacher, Miss Cressant, strike a too-adult note for the intended readership. The result is an uneasy mixture: a story that is thin in places yet feels too complex in others. Characters present white. An intriguing concept with an unclear audience. (Historical fantasy. 8-12)

When You Go to Dragon School

Campbell, Chelsea M. | Illus. by Charlene Chua | Feiwel & Friends (32 pp.)

$18.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781250293015

Attending a new school can be daunting, especially when you’re a human among dragons.

When a group of kids arrive at school, they find it’s bursting at the seams, with no room for new students anywhere! Luckily, the local dragon school has openings. There, they’ll perfect their fire-breathing skills, learn the meaning of various wing gestures, and nap on shining piles of gold. Understandably, these human kids are nervous. After all, they won’t be able to take to the skies alongside their scaly classmates. Will they find a way to fit in? It turns out that dragons have plenty they can learn from humans— like how to make s’mores and how to fashion a huge pillow fort out of all that gold. Bright and humorous, this quick read-aloud will make for a fun discussion starter for little ones enrolling at new schools of their own. The conversational narrative creates a welcoming tone matched by warm and whimsical jewel-toned illustrations filled with round shapes and lines. While the dragons breathe fire, they’re all a bit goofy and cuddly, not at all scary. The characters, dragon and human alike, are diverse in appearance and ability. Fluffy fun for youngsters fretting about starting school. (Picture book. 4-7)

A 13-year-old embarks on a road trip with his famous grandfather.

The Secret of the Mansion: Trixie Belden

Campbell, Julie | Illus. by Mary Stevens Random House (272 pp.) | $8.99 paper June 3, 2025 | 9780593904596

Series: Trixie Belden, Girl Detective, 1

In this revised reissue of a 1948 title, two friends meet a runaway boy who could be the heir to a fortune that’s hidden in a dilapidated mansion.

Thirteen-year-old Trixie Belden is thrilled when a new family moves into her neighborhood. Trixie lives on Crabapple Farm in quiet Sleepyside in New York’s Hudson River Valley. She eagerly heads over to nearby Manor House, where she meets Honey Wheeler. The new friends decide to peek at Mr. Frayne’s run-down mansion—the “strange old” man is in the hospital. They’re surprised to find Jim Frayne, his great-nephew, hiding out there. Jim has left home and his abusive, greedy stepfather in hopes of finding his great-uncle’s will and the treasure that’s rumored to be somewhere in the house. The hunt is on. The threesome spend their days riding horses, searching the estate, and trying (and failing) to keep out of trouble, all of which is enjoyable. Unfortunately, the text, while fast paced, is largely expository and dialogue-heavy, which leads to a lack of nuance. The nostalgic black-and-white illustrations sprinkled throughout add little to the text, which feels quaint at times. (“‘I haven’t any dungarees,’ she said slowly. ‘I always wear a habit and boots when I ride.’”) The cast members present white; one character shares misinformation about “Indians.” Some fun hijinks in an otherwise ho-hum story. (Mystery. 9-12)

For more middlegrade mysteries, visit Kirkus online.

Fluffy fun for youngsters fretting about starting school.

WHEN YOU GO TO DRAGON SCHOOL

My Teacher Is a Dinosaur!

Canterbury, Bill | Illus. by Jeff Harter

Doubleday (24 pp.) | $12.99 | June 3, 2025

9780593807934 | Series: My Life Is Weird

It’s a truth universally acknowledged: Teachers are bizarre.

“They put sticky notes everywhere. And sometimes they dress strange.” In the accompanying images, a scattered-looking educator is surrounded by a flurry of Post-it notes while another proudly shows off a tie made from paper clips. But all pale in comparison with the teacher at the center of this story: a T. rex. The jokes fly as four students, who collectively narrate, describe their teacher’s antics. When the heater breaks, she chuckles (“You should have seen the Ice Age!”), her motivational posters are off-putting (“Chase your dreams and your dinner!”), and every day is an opportunity to roar (“Two plus two equals FOURRRRRRRRRRRRR!”). A field trip to the museum is enlightening (who better to offer a tour of the dino exhibit?), but it ends with the authorities—who assume the teacher is a model that’s come to life—chasing her and her students off the premises. The book wraps up with the kids drawing their favorite dinosaur (their teacher, of course); readers may be spurred to create their own stories. Canterbury’s goofy text pairs well with Harter’s cartoonish illustrations; though this sharp-toothed teacher is a true carnivore, her jolly expressions make her more comical than scary.

Roaring good comedic inspiration. (Picture book. 4-8)

A Hero’s Guide to Summer Vacation

Cartaya, Pablo | Kokila (288 pp.)

$18.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9780451479754

A 13-year-old embarks on a cross-country road trip with his famous grandfather. Grief-stricken middle schooler Gonzalo Alberto Sánchez García’s summer is off to a rocky start. He feels like he’s in a fog, he can’t stop drawing monsters against photos of landscapes on his iPad, and he’s stuck visiting his cranky, standoffish abuelo in Mendocino, California. Gonzalo’s Cuban grandfather is the renowned but reclusive fantasy author behind a “billion-dollar book-andmovie franchise” run by Gonzalo’s mother. Though generally reluctant to promote his work, Abuelo agrees to a tour for the release of the last book in the bestselling series. But he turns the tour into a journey to visit old friends and share his own wounds with Gonzalo in an attempt to help them both heal from the traumas they’ve suffered. Indeed, Abuelo’s plan proves poignantly effective as both he and Gonzalo slowly open up to each other and to all the joy still to be found in the world around them. Cartaya peppers Gonzalo’s first-person narrative with chapters voiced by an omniscient first-person narrator who breaks the fourth wall, directly addressing readers with plot recaps and commentary. While the narrator’s interruptions risk jarring readers out of the story’s flow, the shifts in perspective are charmingly and humorously executed, may support reading comprehension, and further the overarching bookish themes, since the story both revolves around a fictional book series and follows main character

Gonzalo’s transformation into the hero of his own story.

Cleverly structured and sweetly engaging. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-12)

This Book Is Dangerous!

Clanton, Ben | Tundra Books (44 pp.)

$19.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781774886564

Series: A Narwhal and Jelly Picture Book

Jelly dips tentacles into interactive, metafictive waters in a series of encounters with things thorny, toothy, and, well, dangerous.

This picture-book spinoff from the immensely popular graphic novels about a goofy narwhal and an anxious jellyfish sees Jelly flying solo. Alarmed by the title and declaring, “I don’t do dangerous,” Jelly looks for a way out. An amusing batch of signs (“Stop,” “Beware,” “Nope”) in bright colors against the sea-blue background point in multiple directions, offering no help. Jelly admonishes readers to be quiet (“not a squeak or a peep”) so as not to wake a trio of sea serpents sleeping nearby (they wake up, grinning menacingly) and then cautions readers not to touch the sunken cannon hidden in the seaweed (cue the explosion). As Jelly flies through the air, nearby objects offer only prickly surfaces for landing. “I don’t know which is more dangerous, you or this book !” says Jelly, red-faced and scowling. Jelly eludes a pirate—a large red crab sporting a comical pencil mustache and a tiny pirate hat—only to swim into the jaws of a shark. Fortunately, a bottle with the frightening label “Dangerously Hot Hot Sauce” provides a solution. This exhilarating adventure comes to a satisfactory conclusion as Jelly finds a safe harbor with friend Narwhal, who offers waffles and a big smile. Clanton’s now-familiar boisterously cartoonish illustrations are appealing; youngsters will enjoy feeling both a little bit dangerous and in charge of their reading experience.

Funny, energetic, and empowering. (Picture book. 4-8)

The Deadly Fates

Clayton, Dhonielle | Illus. by Khadijah

Khatib

Henry Holt (416 pp.) | $17.99

March 4, 2025 | 9781250874825

Series: The Conjureverse Series, 3

In this third series entry, Ella Durand and her friends embark on a journey that uncovers startling truths. Starting her third year at the Arcanum Training Institute for Marvelous and Uncanny Endeavors, Ella, a 13-year-old Black girl whose great-grandfather, Jean-Michel Durand, created the institute, has a lot on her plate. Along with keeping up with her magic lessons, Ella’s determined to uncover more of the secrets and lies surrounding the world of Conjurors and Marvellers—and her school in particular. This pursuit leads her to explore mysteries surrounding New Orleans’ Underworld and the history of the creation of the Cards of Deadly Fate, a conjure deck used to imprison people. She still has the help of best friends Jason and Brigit, and this time even more classmates join them. But will their search for answers be worth it, or will their efforts unravel the fabric of their magical society in possibly irreparable ways? Clayton continues to expand on the complex and fascinating magical world she’s populated with dynamic and appealing primary and supporting characters. This sequel delves even deeper into the culturally diverse world Ella and her friends inhabit, taking readers on an emotional ride. This work will best be appreciated by those who are familiar with the earlier books in the series. Another gripping entry in an engaging series that’s sure to keep readers hooked. (Paragons guide, Arcanum Training Institute information) (Fantasy. 8-12)

A ghostly mystery steeped in birdsong and fairy-tale magic.

THE MYSTERY OF THE HAUNTED DANCE HALL

Marianne the Maker

Corrigan, Kelly & Claire Corrigan Lichty

Illus. by George Sweetland

Flamingo Books (32 pp.) | $18.99

June 3, 2025 | 9780593206096

In this collaboration from mother/ daughter duo Corrigan and Corrigan Lichty, a youngster longs to quit the soccer team so she can continue dreaming up more inventions.

Marianne, a snazzily dressed young maker with tan skin, polka-dot glasses, and reddish-brown hair in two buns, feels out of place on the pitch. Her soccer-loving dad signed her up for the team, but she’d much rather be home tinkering and creating. One day she feigns illness to get out of practice (relying on a trick she learned from the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ) and uses her newfound time to create a flying machine made from bath towels, umbrellas, cans, and more. Eventually, her dad catches wind of her deception, and she tells him she prefers inventing to playing soccer. Immediately supportive, he plops a pot on his head and becomes Marianne’s tinkering apprentice. Told in lilting rhymes, the story resolves its conflicts rather speedily (Marianne confesses to hating soccer in one swift line). Though the text is wordy at times, it’s quite jaunty, and adults (and retro-loving kids) will chuckle at the ’80s references, from the Ferris Bueller and Dirty Dancing movie posters in Marianne’s room to the name of her dog, Patrick Swayze. True to Marianne’s creative nature, Sweetland surrounds her with lots of clutter and scraps, as well as plenty of bits and bobs. One never knows where inspiration will strike next. A thoughtful role model for aspiring inventors. (Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall

Cotter, Charis | Tundra Books (392 pp.)

$17.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9781774885550

An enchanting meld of ghostly magic, inspiration from a beloved fairy tale, the otherworldly rituals of summer camp, and the thrills of an adolescent summer spent in nature. When anxious, claustrophobic, 12-year-old Bee is forced to go to a bird-watching summer camp, she doesn’t expect to love it. Born with supersensitive hearing, Bee is prepared to spend the summer of 1960 as an outsider at Camp Blue Heron—and sure enough, some mean girls steal her flashlight and leave her terrified and stranded in the dark, half a mile from her tent. Fortunately, she meets Zippy, a spitfire with asthma who has incredible night vision and a mystery to solve. Each night the Hawks, the camp’s second-oldest group of girls, have fresh batteries for their flashlights, but come morning, the batteries are inexplicably dead. By all appearances, the Hawks appear to be asleep where they belong, leaving the staff flummoxed. Zippy and Bee decide to investigate. Together, they uncover a twisty mystery that’s stranger than anyone could have imagined. In the manner of writers like Anne Ursu and Lauren Wolk, Cotter trusts readers with deep descriptions and a languid buildup to the action. Her writing is ethereal and evocative, evoking the dangers and glittering possibilities of summer nights away from home. Bee

For more in the Conjureverse series, visit Kirkus online.

and most other characters present white, and Zippy is Jewish. A ghostly mystery steeped in birdsong and fairy-tale magic. (“The Twelve Dancing Princesses”) (Ghost story. 10-13)

Future Me Saves the World (and Ruins My Life)

Cypess, Leah | Illus. by Wes Molebash Aladdin (192 pp.) | $18.99

June 3, 2025 | 9781665964395

An excitable fourth grader might just hold the fate of the world in his hands.

Ten-year-old Ethan wakes up to a 39-year-old version of himself warning him that the world will be in peril if he doesn’t get up, go to school, and make sure that his substitute teacher doesn’t quit her job despite the pranks his classmates plan to play on her. If she leaves teaching behind, she will, following a suspiciously hazy chain of events, become an evil dictator who starts a war. Future Ethan wears funky fashions, talks up a storm of complicated time-travel logistics, and actually seems to like Ethan’s obnoxious sister. But Ethan listens to what his future self has to say. Under Future Ethan’s guidance, our young hero attempts to encourage his teacher to stick with the profession while also navigating a classroom spitball fight, a school-wide ziti-induced barfing incident, and a side quest that involves convincing his awkward classmate, Tamara, to take accelerated math so that she can invent time travel, which strains his relationship with his best friend. Infused with plenty of humor, Ethan’s first-person narration is chaotic, at once selfcentered and thoughtful, affectionately capturing the interior life of a highly imaginative elementary schooler. In Molebash’s simple cartoon art, characters have skin the white of the page. An energetic and hilarious mix of light sci-fi and the daily dramas of kids’ lives. (Science fiction. 8-12)

Go, Baby, Go!

Dairman, Tara | Illus. by Olivia Amoah

Peachtree (40 pp.) | $17.99

July 22, 2025 | 9781682631935

A mother dressed in jogging togs sets off on her usual run with her baby safely secured in a stroller. They run up and down hills, greet friends, and even jog in tandem with another parent and child, breezing merrily along. But when raindrops fall and dark clouds loom, they’re in a race against the storm. The pleasant outing becomes more of a runaway roller-coaster ride, with a slog through the mud. Nothing can stop this dynamic duo, however, and with plenty of effort and sure-footed determination, they manage to beat the worst of the storm home. But both need a long rest after all that exertion. Spare but enthusiastic prose (“Go, baby, go!”) laden with onomatopoeia (“Splitter, splatter,” “PLOP! PLOP! PLOP!”) effectively immerses youngsters in the outdoor setting while also making this tale a great read-aloud. The digital artwork is clean, crisp, and filled with motion; readers will feel as though they, too, are struggling up and down those hills, pushing a stroller with a mind of its own. The final page, with Mama and baby snuggled together on the bed, is warm and reassuring. The mother is light-skinned; her child is brown-skinned. The baby is delighted throughout the ride, never doubting that they’ll make it home safely. Will make readers want to go, go, go! (Picture book. 3-7)

The Day the Crayons Made Friends

Daywalt, Drew | Illus. by Oliver Jeffers

Philomel (40 pp.) | $19.99

June 3, 2025 | 9780593622360

Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-andwhite chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings— will enjoy checking in on their pals. Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)

I’ll Carry You

Docherty, Helen | Illus. by Brizida Magro

Henry Holt (32 pp.) | $14.99

May 6, 2025 | 9781250399243

After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.

A story of the things—tangible and intangible— that we carry. In gently rhyming text, Docherty lists the things that children can hold: a pebble from the beach, a beloved teddy bear, a watering can filled to the brim. But each item is so much more than the sum of its parts. The pebble is full of memories “of sea and sand,” the bear offers an

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THE KIRKUS Q&A: REBEKAH TAUSSIG

The bestselling memoirist offers an inspiring, inclusive message about disability in a new picture book.

BY MATHANGI SUBRAMANIAN

IN HER KIRKUS-STARRED memoir, Sitting Pretty, scholar Rebekah Taussig used her personal experience with disability as a lens to imagine a more accessible world. Now she’s brought that same depth to her Kirkus-starred picture book, We Are the Scrappy Ones , which provides children and the adults who care for them with a lyrical introduction to disability culture. Illustrated by artist Kirbi Fagan, Taussig’s new book invites disabled children and their families to simultaneously recognize the challenges created by an ableist world and to celebrate the creativity and resilience that have instigated social change. On a recent video call, I spoke with Taussig about community, collaborative picture-book writing, poetic devices, and activism. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In your author’s note, you explain that this book began as a poem you wrote after visiting a day camp for disabled teens. Can you tell us more about this origin story?

I was visiting the camp as a writer, and I hadn’t been in a room with a bunch of disabled teenagers—maybe ever? When I was a disabled teenager, I didn’t have that experience.

During that visit, I noticed how much of the experience of disability was described through a medical lens. It was eye-opening for me, because that was exactly the way I described my

own disability when I was a teenager.

What was it like exploring complex ideas, like the medical model of disability, in a book for children? I studied creative nonfiction and personal writing in school, so writing for children is just so new. It was almost like an experiment. We did, like, 90 drafts of this tiny poem because every word carried so much weight. How do we pick the right seven words to convey the 200 pages’ worth of content we’re trying to express?

Also, I tend to think very abstractly. My editor was

always guiding me back, saying things like, “Think about this metaphor for a younger kid,” and I’d be like, “Oh yeah. Let’s bring it back to Earth.”

One pivotal shift from the initial poem was that originally I was pointing out and naming ableism. Then, because I was writing to readers who are so new to the world, I wanted to be careful about how I presented that. I didn’t want to ignore what that world is, but I also wanted to focus on who they are— who we are—in a vibrant space of belonging. That is the tension that I am working through: I want us to be aware of what this place is and, also, how it could be different.

This reminds me of the section of your author’s note where you explain the book’s title. You mention

that you love being scrappy but also resent it. The title was originally the first line of the poem I wrote after visiting the day camp: “We are the scrappy ones.” When I started that poem, I wanted to instill a sense of belonging, but what is the thing that we belong to? Is there anything that all disabled people share under this giant umbrella? It’s a lot of responsibility representing the whole group and choosing one word for all of us.

The disability category exists because there’s some friction or tension or a mismatch between a disabled body and an environment or a community in the built world. That’s what I feel in my body in the world: This place was not made for me. The world wasn’t made for us, and that’s not

right, and we want it to be right. It’s a complicated kind of belonging.

The sheer fact that we are still here is because of a certain scrappiness. A certain way of figuring out how to survive, and the creativity that comes with that. And yes, I wish we didn’t have to be scrappy. And also, I treasure that scrappiness in us.

You observe that the disability community is incredibly diverse. Kirbi Fagan’s illustrations go a long way to reflecting that diversity. Did you weigh in on them?

I had a chance to give her feedback on sketches, but we also had a team of disabled readers that looked at the text and the pictures. They gave us input like, “What about a motorized chair?” Or, “We have someone who’s blind, who’s using a white cane, but what about a dog also?” We wanted to make sure that there was not only a range of disabilities, but also that we showed differences in specific disabilities. Blindness can look like a lot of things, and people have different ways they navigate being hard of hearing or deaf. We wanted that representation to embody the real human range that we have out in the world.

You write about disability culture in your author’s note. What is it?

Because the experience of disability is so sprawling, it’s a fiction to say that there’s one definitive disability community or culture. When I imagine disability community and culture, I think about experiences I’ve had

where it feels like there’s a group of people that understand something that most of the people around me don’t. I experienced it first online when I started to form friendships with people who understood things that I felt very, very lonely in.

Something you start to recognize in a culture is shared language. You start hearing about things like spoons or crip time —con-

cepts that are shorthand for things people inside that community understand. And there are [works by] certain writers and creators in that community that a lot of us consider shared texts, like Alice Wong’s books. Also, there’s a newer piece [of disability culture]: people learning that they’re a part of a history. Seeing yourself as a part of that story is a part of that culture.

The world wasn’t made for us, and that’s not right, and we want it to be right.

We

Are the Scrappy Ones

Taussig, Rebekah; illus. by Kirbi Fagan

Carolrhoda | 32 pp. | $19.99 April 1, 2025 | 9781728487700

Speaking of history, several pages in the book mention disability heroes. How did you pick them?

I wanted, like, 45 people on that page! I wanted all the people from the Section 504 Sit-in, [a protest that led to the enforcement of section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act] . We had to narrow it down, so we brought in different people from different time periods and different cultures and priorities, which I ended up liking.

Some of the heroes were Kirbi’s choices. Kirbi has Crohn’s disease, and Ally Bain [the activist who authored the Restroom Access Act] is really important in Kirbi’s world. I liked that we were able to bring in an illustrator who understood the experience of disability, and that some of those people were Kirbi’s priorities, and some of them were mine.

I hope that parents who read this book to their kids will be interested in learning more about who these disability activists are, if they don’t already know.

What excites you about the future of disability literature?

Authentic disability stories are such an untapped source of storytelling in mainstream culture. I’m writing a piece right now asking, How do you live in the world that we have and also imagine the world you hope to exist ? How do you believe that world is possible? As a writer, I’m always thinking about how disability disrupts traditional arcs in interesting ways.

opportunity to care for a beloved friend, and the watering can gives youngsters the chance to nourish thirsty plants. And we can’t touch some of the things we carry—hope, a memory, worry. “We can carry each other through difficult days,” continues the unseen narrator, who appears to be an adult soothing a child. “So when you are feeling a little bit blue, you know it’s okay…because I’ll carry YOU.” With its comforting message, the text feels like a tender lullaby. Complementing the story, the bright, scribbly illustrations feature children and adults who vary in skin tone and hair color and style. Magro finds creative ways to convey abstract concepts, using a knotted tangle of black lines to represent worry and soaring birds to symbolize hope. In a world that can feel harsh and overwhelming, this is a soft landing place to buoy young readers through tough times. Deeply meaningful and uplifting. (Picture book. 2-5)

This Cookie Will Change Your Life

Ellis, Ann Dee | Peachtree (352 pp.)

$17.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9781682636893

Misfits adrift during the summer between elementary and middle school intersect in a story of loneliness, hope, and cookies. It’s the summer after sixth grade, and five lonely young people struggle with the challenges of their home lives. Tilly Fox, Mateo Ruiz, Eloise Zussman, Jada Rocaberte, and Herschel Edwards each face serious problems, including domestic violence,

poverty, deceased or absent parents, and depression. One day, Tilly and Mateo cross paths at the public library with Jada and Eloise, and they all get swept up in Eloise’s plan to start a business selling her homemade cookies. Herschel, Eloise’s former best friend, is drawn into the project later in the story. As their plans take shape, the assumptions they’ve made about each other start to fall away. The kids’ experience with a traumatic incident forces them out of their self-protective isolation, and they learn to support each other and share the reality of their lives. The changes in perspective as the thirdperson chapters rotate among the ensemble cast initially adversely affect the story’s flow, but the faster pace in the second half helps compensate for this issue. Ellis realistically explores tween anxieties, and readers will yearn to find a community of support and true friendship like these young people have created. Names offer clues to some of the characters’ ethnic identities. The warm positives of friendship and mutual support shine through despite a bumpy storytelling style. (Fiction. 9-13)

Good Luck, Ice Cream Truck!

Fairbank, Sorche | Illus. by Terry Runyan Greenwillow Books (32 pp.) | $19.99 April 29, 2025 | 9780062842114

A cast of critters as impatient as they are colorful yearn for frozen treats. In a neighborhood occupied by sweet-toothed beasties, the ice cream truck reigns supreme, but a lengthy roster of vehicles must first pass

Wombats transform a community with their sophisticated vocabulary.

through this animal kingdom—a dump truck, mail truck, and fire truck, to name just a few. Trucks putter through town to onlookers’ delight and disappointment, and spectators bid each one farewell and wish it good luck—all the while dreaming of the delectable goodies to come. Eagle-eyed readers will know when to expect the ice cream truck’s advent, cleverly foreshadowed in the book’s opening spread. While Runyan’s work is pleasing in its simplicity, with characters rendered in bright watercolors and their homes and greenery depicted in appealing collages, Fairbank’s story drags on a shade too long. Though transportation-loving tots will eagerly exclaim over the various vehicles, others will grow frustrated waiting for the titular truck to arrive. Those seeking to incorporate the book into a storytime may want to practice reading this one aloud first, as some of the verses feel a bit clunky. May try the patience of antsy little ones, though vehicle fans will be delighted. (Picture book. 3-5)

Zarina Divided

Faruqi, Reem | Harper/HarperCollins (336 pp.) | $18.99 | May 20, 2025 9780063284999

During the Partition of 1947, a family uproots their lives in India and moves to the newly created Pakistan.

Zarina’s world revolved around swinging in the backyard with friends, roughhousing with her brothers, and feasting on her mother’s coconut toffee—until Abajan, her father, announces they’re moving to predominantly Muslim Pakistan. When, amid the growing violence, a bloodthirsty mob comes to their door, Abajan decides they must leave that night. During their perilous journey from Poona by train and ship to Karachi, they encounter unrelenting violence and crushing crowds of people fleeing in both directions. In Karachi,

they slowly rebuild their lives. But following an accident, a guilt-ridden Zarina is convinced she should leave home. Despite her mother’s reservations, Zarina joins her brothers, who are leaving for boarding school. At St. Denys’, a girls’ school with British teachers in mountainous Murree, she navigates old resentments and makes new friends. Zarina’s perspective as an 11-year-old who’s trying to make sense of overnight changes, religion-based divisions, and the horrors she witnesses are compelling. Unfortunately, the weak pacing and flat portrayals of other characters undermine the dramatic tension. Readers familiar with the setting may notice details that feel jarring. The second half of the book, which recounts the family’s refugee experiences and offers a quaint look at boarding school life, is stronger. An ambitious attempt to render sweeping changes in the birth of a nation that doesn’t coalesce. (map, author’s note, glossary, recipe, photo gallery, resources) (Verse historical fiction. 8-12)

The Wombats Go Wild for Words

Ferry, Beth | Illus. by Lori Nichols

Random House Studio (40 pp.)

$18.99 | June 17, 2025 | 9780593711057

A passel of wombats transform a community with their sophisticated vocabulary.

Evergreen Forest is “very nice and very ordinary”; some residents, like the little duckling draped glumly over a log on the opening page, might say it’s “rather dull.” The duckling perks up when a trio of wombats “with words on their minds” come tripping along the path. Describing themselves as “word-loving,” the wombats tell the duckling that “words are…‘ESSENTIAL!’ ‘MAGNIFICENT!’ ‘TRANSFORMATIVE!’” The duckling watches and learns as the wombats help animals who use regular

words such as thirsty and tired spice up their vocabularies with alternatives: parched and exhausted. The duckling is therefore well equipped to lead her own family from hungry and super hungry to peckish and ravenous, earning herself the title of “honorary word wombat” by book’s end. Nichols contributes friendly cartoon personae for Ferry’s characters, placing them against a woodsy backdrop. The compositions are minimally detailed, with a small blue slug accompanying the duckling and offering little ones a seek-and-find game on most pages. The wombats’ “wonderful words” are set in attention-getting display type; they literally fill the air as the denizens of Evergreen Forest join the word celebration in a conga line. As plots go, it’s pretty thin, but young listeners may well come away ready to seek out some new words to love and, inspired by the closing “duck-tionary,” to fill their own lexicons.

A merry outing for young wordsmiths. (Picture book. 4-8)

Squeak Chatter Bark: An Eco-Mystery

Fitzgerald, Ali | Fantagraphics Books (248 pp.) $24.99 paper | April 1, 2025 | 9798875000584

A girl goes on a quest to rescue her parents and animal friends from an evil plot. Hiding out in the near-future “Perfect. Animal. Worlds.” (or PAW) Biosphere, 11-year-old Hazel McCrimlisk hopes that learning to speak with the animals will help her locate her scientist parents, who were mysteriously abducted by a monster just over a year ago. Traveling between the different ecosystem-based biodomes created by Dr. Henry Nimick, Hazel becomes adept at speaking with different species. She’s assisted by Nina, a genetically modified miniature elephant, and her friend Alex Silva, whose gender isn’t specified. On the fateful day when they stumble upon Dr. Nimick, who’s presenting his genetically modified beasts to biosphere

visitors, they’re propelled into a whirlwind adventure filled with giant carnivorous flowers, an old woman who morphs into a jaguar, a helpful goat, and more. When the trio, along with a courageous team of creatures, discover Laboratory 2044, located in a secret biosphere, they’re thrust into a showdown with the terrible perpetrators of Hazel’s parents’ kidnapping. The black line art alternates between shading in purple for the main storyline and green for flashbacks. The somewhat stiff imagery moves the storyline along satisfactorily, giving the quirky and occasionally humorous animals their time in the spotlight and supporting the sometimes wooden dialogue. Hazel and Alex are racially ambiguous, and Dr. Nimick presents white.

A solid eco-mystery that will please lovers of nature and science fiction alike. (map) (Graphic mystery. 8-12)

My Friend May

Flett, Julie | Greystone Kids (40 pp.)

$19.95 | June 3, 2025 | 9781778401718

A cat goes missing. A young Indigenous child named Margaux and her kitty, May, have been best friends since Margaux was 6 years old. May generally stays close to home, and if she does wander off, she always returns at dinnertime. When May fails to show up one evening, Margaux and her family search everywhere—under the porch, behind the fence, on the roof—without any luck. May’s sudden absence coincides with another upheaval: Margaux’s Nitôsis (Auntie) is moving to the city. Back in the countryside, Margaux worries about May and misses her aunt; meanwhile, Nitôsis unpacks boxes in her new urban home. From down the hall, a tiny meow echoes from a box in the bathroom—the mystery of May’s disappearance is finally solved. Though Margaux’s concern for May is evident, this gentle narrative is low on drama but filled with real emotion. Flett’s

(Cree-Métis) signature minimalist illustrations, which make use of rich colors and vivid textures, are a highlight, as is the thorough backmatter, which includes an author’s note, a Plains Cree glossary, and an explanation of the intricate system of family in Cree culture. Cat lovers—especially anyone who’s had a pet disappear, only to turn up in a most unexpected spot—and those interested in Cree language will particularly enjoy this sweet tale. A quiet yet affectionate tribute to familial relationships of all stripes. (Picture book. 4-7)

Cows and Sheep and Chicks That Cheep: Farm Poems

Florian, Douglas | Beach Lane/ Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) | $19.99 May 6, 2025 | 9781665937740

Painter and poet Florian delivers the latest in a long line of humorously themed collections. A brownskinned child wearing overalls and pink sneakers narrates 23 poems that highlight the animals, crops, and routines of the family farm. Florian’s signature wordplay appears in poems such as “Cows”: “Udderly calm, / and udderly still. / Cows are udderly, udderly chill.” With his visual jesting, the author often upends expectations by placing animals in humanlike settings. The cow reclines, sipping a cool drink, while elsewhere, a rabbit poses for a selfie. “The Barn” extols the importance of such buildings: “A place that’s safe and free from harm, / the barn’s the center of the farm.” The poet doesn’t shirk from the ongoing toil that comprises daily farm life. “Rise at dawn. / Mow the lawn. / Milk the cows. / Feed the sows. / Pull up weeds. / Plant some seeds.” “Corn” riffs on that plant’s long lineage in Mexico. Corn “grows / in rows / a-maize -ing,” while the facing page shows an image of a half-shucked ear spelling out the word maize in darker kernels. The mix of fact and fancy

This concept book turned topsy-turvy is packed with appeal from Z to A.

ZEBRA AND YAK

continues throughout. “Collie” sings the praises of an expert shepherd depicted in boxing gloves, holding predatory wolves at bay. “Llamas” portrays a woolly creature (whose “llovely hair makes fleece for yarn”) knitting placidly. Florian’s mixedmedia pictures and punny verse charm once again.

A fresh look at the family farm. (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)

The

Grim Adventure

Forgettable, Fern with Piper CJ Random House (288 pp.) | $14.99 May 6, 2025 | 9780593810507

Series: Fern’s School for Wayward Fae, 2

The magically gifted students at Fern’s School for Wayward Fae attempt to head off destruction of their realm. This second series installment picks up right where the first left off: with Rosemary Thorpe alone and in danger in the Seelie court. She escapes via the Grim Reaper’s home after “borrowing” a hoodie that renders her invisible, then returns to Fern’s School a few hours later—only to learn that she’s been gone for a month, and everyone’s been worrying about her. Rosemary’s gift for foreseeing people’s deaths has made her aware that something terrible is coming to the school, and her teacher Dante’s prophetic abilities have pinpointed her upcoming 13th birthday as the pivotal date. Rosemary and her roommate, Trym, are convinced the Seelie Keeper is behind everything, but the adults—other than Dante—laugh at and dismiss their concerns, leaving

the students to investigate on their own and putting them in terrible danger. Fast-paced action sequences will keep readers on the edges of their seats. Those familiar with the events of the first book will experience the most enjoyment while following human-raised Rosemary as she continues to adapt to the magical world in which she finds herself and learns more about her own family. Rosemary and Trym read white. An action-packed sequel that’s sure to please series fans. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Zebra and Yak: The Backwards Alphabet Book

Friedrich, Paul | Putnam (48 pp.)

$19.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9798217002108

Series: Zebra and Yak

When Apple goes missing, an alphabet book must start at the end—much to Zebra’s chagrin. “This is ridiculous!” Zebra huffs. “We need to find Apple.” Working from the end of the alphabet, Zebra recruits Yak to help find the absent Apple. Letter avatars such as Turtle, Queen, and Ladder assist in their search. Others are less helpful, like Snake, who tries to eat Zebra and Yak. (Quick: “R is for Running!”) The pair engage in antics aplenty along the way: mistaking both Pumpkin and Orange for Apple, playing with Hula Hoops, and wondering about the difference between Violin and Fiddle. A recurring gag about Booger will elicit plenty of chuckles, as will frustrated Zebra’s interactions with the unseen narrator. At last, the duo find Apple, who thought the book was scheduled for

next week. Angry at missing the big moment, Apple throws a multi-page temper tantrum. Suddenly, Alligator snaps Apple up, becoming the new face of the letter A. The cartoon illustrations will appeal to fans of Mo Willems and Ben Clanton, with characters drawn in simple lines and set against bright monochrome backgrounds. The clever meta humor, quick pacing, and snappy dialogue will entice a range of readers, including kids slightly older than the average ABC book audience.

This classic concept book turned topsy-turvy is packed with appeal from Z to A. (Picture book. 3-7)

Yours, Mine, Ours: A Celebration of Service and Community

Gandhi, Arun & Bethany Hegedus | Illus. by Andrés Landazábal | Candlewick (32 pp.)

$18.99 | June 17, 2025 | 9781536233445

The late grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, co-author Hegedus, and illustrator Landazábal team up again following You, Me, We (2023). Drawing inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s commitment to both community and service and educator Maria Montessori’s teachings, this picture book follows a diverse group of children who come together to clean up and beautify a public park and help some of the people who frequent it. Each page unpacks a different idea with probing questions: “What does it mean to serve? Is it holding the door open? Letting someone else take your turn?” “Is serving an action? Or is it an emotion?” “And what do you call it when you give and receive at the same time?” Landazábal’s cheery watercolor pencil and gouache images extend the text with concrete examples: A youngster applies a bandage to a friend’s injured finger, several children bring supplies to an unhoused person, and as a group, the kids plant a tree. It’s a fairly simple treatment of the topic but appropriate for the target audience,

with prompts that would be ideal for the classroom, where teachers can help lead discussions on ways to give back within a community at both the personal and collective level. In an author’s note, Hegedus discusses her collaboration with co-author Gandhi, who died during the book’s production. A strong starting place for youngsters eager to make a difference. (Picture book. 5-8)

The Gingerbread Monster

July 8, 2025 | 9781250892256

A ferocious craving for a tasty treat leads to unlikely friendship. Young scientist Frank N. Stine longs for something sweet, but his favorite gingerbread mix is almost out. Being the ultimate innovator, Frank concocts a new mix in his laboratory, but in his haste, he accidentally knocks the contents of a nearby test tube into his batter. The result is a gingerbread man who smells delicious but looks terrifying. Frank runs from the hideous creation, who’s struggling to speak to him (“Frrr Frrr Frrruh”). Villagers and paranormal creatures alike join the chase, wanting a bite of the scrumptious beast. Frank finally understands the monster’s word in the nick of time, depriving the village of a feast but gaining the gift of friendship. This spooky, humorous story is told in snappy rhyme, accompanied by chaotic, Tim Burton–esque illustrations that set an eerie tone while portraying endearing characters who will charm rather than scare readers. Though the adventures of this monstrous cookie will elicit giggles, it will also open up conversations about acceptance and looking beyond first impressions. An appended gingerbread recipe, complete with “ideas to monsterfy

the cookie,” is the cherry on top of an already captivating picture book. Frank is light-skinned; other human characters vary in skin tone. This spookily delicious read with a sweetly satisfying twist is sure to delight. (Picture book. 4-7)

If You Find a Fawn: A WhatTo-Do for Wild Wanderers: A Disney Planet Possible Book

Gillis, Kellie DuBay | Illus. by Wazza Pink Disney-Hyperion (40 pp.) | $18.99 Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781368107075

What to do if you find a baby animal in the wild?

A pigtailed, tan-skinned, rosy-cheeked youngster exploring the natural world learns to give young wildlife some space. After all, the animal’s parents may be nearby and may have hidden their baby on purpose. Environmental scientist Gillis’ sound advice is set on Pink’s digital paintings, showing the child’s discoveries over the course of a day: a fawn, a bird, bunnies, recently hatched turtles, skunks, and raccoons. The repetitive text describes what to do: “Take a slow step back.”

“Leave them be.” “Stay calm and quiet.” “Wait and watch.” When the animal leaves, “whisper goodbye / and go on your way, / wild wanderer.” The pattern changes slightly when the youngster finds a tan-skinned human toddler, presumably a sibling. Readers and listeners are encouraged to help the little one walk and to entertain the tot “while parents do what parents do.” Later the child will be old enough to explore the natural world, too. The rhythm and alliteration make for a read-aloud that’s both educational and soothing. Illustrations suffused in verdant greens, the gentle pinks of sunset, and the blues of nighttime illuminate the wonders of the natural world. Gills concludes with suggestions of ways readers can help the environment. Thoughtful guidance for burgeoning naturalists. (books, websites) (Informational picture book. 3-8)

Gemeinhart, Dan | Illus. by Hugo L. Cuellar | Henry Holt (40 pp.) | $18.99

Angel Draws a Dinosaur

Giron, Pavonis | Henry Holt (40 pp.)

$18.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9781250874375

Oh, how Angel loves dinosaurs!

Inspired by a trip to the museum, the young aspiring artist knows exactly what he wants to draw. He gathers his supplies, consults his toy dinos, and starts drawing. But what Angel puts down on paper looks nothing like the dinosaurs in his head—a lament that will be familiar to artists the world over. And the more he tries, the more disappointed he gets. “Trying to fix the mistakes makes them worse!” he sighs, and he becomes reluctant to draw anything. But both his mothers are immensely supportive. Mama cuddles him and tells him art isn’t about being perfect, while Mom suggests that, like a paleontologist, he should consider his discarded pictures and look for some “good finds.” Eventually, Angel does just that, combining different elements from the various drawings—an interesting scale pattern, an eye-catching claw—into a single work of art. While Angel acknowledges that his creation isn’t perfect, he’s content with it and proud of his hard work. Skillfully acknowledging that frustration and perceived failures are part of the artistic process, Giron showcases an ever-increasing pile of drawings, deemed imperfect until Angel sees the beauty in them. Angel’s own images are rendered in a childlike hand, while the rest of the illustrations are more stylized and richly hued. Angel and his parents are brown-skinned. Empathetic reassurance for both young perfectionists and budding artists. (Picture book. 5-7)

Octavio and His Glasses

González Rossell, Marc | Trans. by Susan Ouriou | Kids Can (40 pp.) | $21.99 May 6, 2025 | 9781525313783

In this Spanish import, a boy’s new spectacles help him see the world anew.

After an eye exam, Octavio chooses a pair of round-framed glasses. Now, “he sees everything differently.” He can see so far that aliens come into view and so close that he can communicate with an ant. Most surprising to Octavio (judging from his eyes—wideeyed fear mixed with curiosity), he now glimpses “things in the dark that he couldn’t before.” González Rossell’s bold, grainy black-and-white sketches, set against an ominous mustard yellow background, depict Octavio descending into a world of monsters, cheaters, and liars, good guys and bad. These intimidating images turn out to be stories in the books he’s now able to read at night with his new glasses on—tales that launch his imagination when his glasses come off. González Rossell’s vintage-style illustrations convey the bulk of emotion in Octavio’s eyes—apt for a tale about getting glasses. Readers will see frustration in his squint, a wary perplexity in his encounter with a monster, a hangdog look when he’s among the liars, and the alert thrill of reading in bed. It’s an appealingly immersive tale that will have youngsters lingering over the artwork. Characters have skin the color of the page.

A feast for the eyes. (Picture book. 3-7)

Over in the Mangroves

Gopal, Jyoti Rajan | Illus. by Dikshaa Pawaskar | Orchard/Scholastic (40 pp.)

$19.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781546103332

tiger and her little tiger one.” Losing none of the North American original’s sprightly rhythms and upbeat tone, this version shifts settings to the Sundarbans mangrove forest of India and Bangladesh. Ten animal species are introduced, among them pitta birds, crocodiles, and mud lobsters; they all then huddle beneath the overarching mangroves while a storm passes. Though most of the parental caregivers are moms, both the curlew and the seahorse are dads (“Cling, said the papa. / We cling said the nine”); it’s a nicely inclusive touch and is also, as Gopal explains in her closing notes, scientifically accurate. Pawaskar gives the animals, even the honeybees and water snakes, engagingly wide googly eyes but otherwise depicts them with reasonable fidelity. In a final wordless spread, all bed down together in their swampy setting, “peaceable kingdom” style. Along with personal notes from the author and illustrator, the backmatter includes more information on each of the animals mentioned and explores the role the mangrove forest plays as both habitat and “climate helper.”

Sweetly informative.

(Informational picture book. 5-7)

Kirkus Star

Bright Lights and Summer Nights

Grant, Shauntay | Illus. by Zach Manbeck | Tundra Books (40 pp.)

$18.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9781774883662

A fun spin on the popular counting rhyme “Over in the Meadow.”

“Over in the mangroves by the river in the sun, / slinks a fierce mama

A snoozy tot embarks on a soothing journey to dreamland. As bedtime arrives, a celestial fairy godmother—apparently created from stardust and boasting enviable fashion—ferries a child into dream-filled sleep. As the pajama-clad protagonist descends deeper into slumber, the country fairs and carousels that the little one conjures give way to more fantastical environs. The child is joined by a merry band of dreamers; together, they ride giant fireflies and rest atop gargantuan lily pads. The text—more poem than

For more inspiration for budding artists, visit Kirkus online.

A surreal undersea adventure that zigs and zags to a satisfying close.

DEEPLY DAVE

plot—offers a rhyming, rhythmic lullaby, spare enough to encourage rumination on the delights it describes. Stunning mixed-media illustrations invoke occasionally familiar imagery; young art lovers may recognize homages to Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night and Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. Lush with verdant greens and bright with lemony yellows, the palette subverts the spate of blues and silvers traditionally associated with nighttime-themed fare, and both dreamer and setting emanate a warm glow from within. This effect proves more ethereal than eerie, evoking a serene nostalgia that complements the text’s tone. The voyage wends from pleasantly pedestrian to fantastical and transcendent; this is the kind of restorative dream one hopes to have. Both dreamer and fairy godmother present Black, while supporting characters vary in skin tone. Few reads offer a more enchanting bedtime experience. (Picture book. 2-5)

Deeply Dave

Grover, Michael | Henry Holt (240 pp.)

$14.99 | June 10, 2025 | 9781250331038

When his astronaut mom crashes into the ocean, a boy bravely dons a diving suit and descends to the rescue. In this work, originally published as a webcomic, the undersea expedition plays out episodically over several chapters interspersed with prompts (“Turn the page to jump into the hole”) to draw readers into the action, with sudden

twists abounding. Frequently wordless and simply drawn cartoon panels colored primarily in blues against a solid black background depict Dave descending at the end of a very long air hose, eventually finding the spacecraft guarded by an apparent sea monster. The fishy local residents dub the creature the “Big Doom.” Dave switches bodies with a red octopus and experiences hallucinatory visions, only to discover that his errant parent has brought a problematic guest back from her space travels. Led by Amos, a friendly “scavenger and entre-pruner” with a shrimplike head and a distinctly canine shark sidekick, the anthropomorphic (if ambiguous of species) supporting cast provides help and comic relief along the way. While the plot sometimes turns out to be a bit hard to follow, Grover does eventually contrive a reasonably tidy resolution. Dave and his loving mom have paper-white skin and black hair.

A surreal undersea adventure that zigs and zags to a satisfying close. (Graphic science fiction. 8-11)

Hard

Hat Hank and the Sky-High Solution: A Disney Planet Possible Book

Gunnufson, Charlotte | Illus. by Brian Biggs | Disney-Hyperion (40 pp.)

$18.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 | 9781368108294

digger,” but Hank scans the blueprints, as well as surveying, measuring, hammering, doing engine repairs, and teaching the others a welding technique. The team members are raising the one-piece roof when they see a nest: Two birds that have been observing the work (flip back to spot them!) have built themselves a home. Hank wants to banish the birds to a distant tree, but surprisingly the crew spontaneously improvises a workerscarecrow to protect the nest, giving Hank time to notice the eggs inside. Hank rethinks, replans, and graciously thanks the team as the birds enjoy their new green roof (which is made of materials that allow plants to flourish, per the backmatter). Well-chosen rhymes flow naturally and will help beginning readers with tricky words (stuff /rough). In the lively cartoon illustrations, the dogs wear work gloves, work boots, goggles, and hard hats. Orange, red, and yellow complement gray-blue washes. Scale is happily sacrificed to clarity, and the crew’s lunch atop a dangling I-beam cleverly references the famous 1932 Rockefeller Center steelworkers photo. Backmatter instructions for making a planter will require adult guidance. Construction fans and environmentalists alike will be hankering for Hank!

Readers will eagerly follow along as this kindly, adroit, and eco-friendly builder leads the way. (Picture book. 3-6)

The Aliens Do NOT Want To Go Home

Gustavson, Adam | Charlesbridge (40 pp.)

$17.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781623544942

Engineering alone can’t solve this unusual construction problem.

Hank the canine, looming over his three-dog crew, “always knows what to do.” The others drive “the dozer, the dump truck, the

Nothing’s more fun than a playdate— and nothing’s more frustrating than being told it’s time to go home.

Creatures from far-off planets have convened for an excursion in a small farming town on Earth. The good times must come to an end now, but the young participants make excuses to prolong the amusement. They have to

put their shoes on—which could take a while, given how many feet some of them have. Besides, it isn’t even dark yet, and they’re in the midst of a complicated game; the accompanying image depicts the youngsters inadvertently creating crop circles as they romp through a cornfield. As the extraterrestrials ask to watch a film, the illustrations portray them donning 3-D glasses at a drive-in movie. Could this playdate turn into a sleepover? Pretty please? The narrative consists of the simplest of prose—the young aliens’ pleas to stay just a little bit longer—while the highly detailed, painterly artwork does the heavy lifting, imbuing the story with action, humor, and a bit of mystery. From a hairy creature who looks like a mashup of the Addams Family ’s Cousin Itt and Star Wars ’ Chewbacca to a purple spotted fellow with a single eye, each alien is strange but thoroughly delightful; luckily, humans aren’t around to witness the havoc they inadvertently wreak. At last, searchlights from an array of spaceships beam up the miscreants, who just might have carried some surprising Earth treasures with them. Goofy, highly imaginative, and immense fun. (Picture book. 4-8)

Tidemagic: Ista Flit and the Impossible Key

Harlow, Clare | Illus. by Kristina Kister Knopf (336 pp.) | $17.99 | May 13, 2025 9780593806784 | Series: Tidemagic, 2

In this second series entry, Ista Flit enlists a chancy ally to help her wrest her enchanted dad from the clutches of the evil Marsh Queen. In order to crash the deadly queen’s birthday party and free her father, the redoubtable young shape-shifter needs to pass through multiple magic portals with trusted friends Nat Shah and Ruby Mallard in tow. She must also find someone familiar

with the ways of marsh-spinners—elusive insectlike beings given to enthralling unwary mortals with irresistible music and tricksy bargains. The question is: How far can she trust the troubled young musician Tamlin, who knows much but is plainly hiding something? Picking up the action right where she left off in the opening book (but recapping enough to let new readers find their feet), Harlow propels her racially diverse rescuers into a suspenseful climactic face-off that, due to the queen’s fondness for rigged games and challenges, requires as much cleverness as it does courage. Adding further zest, it turns out there’s another person in need of rescue as well as a wish on offer—but only one chance to get it right. Equally beguiling is how Nat holds his own and is treated with equal respect despite being a rare nonmagical human. The author ends on a seemingly conclusive note before hinting of further adventures to come. Kister has added small portraits in the cast list and a running chapter head decoration.

An engagingly twisty sequel. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)

The Witching Hour

Harris, Jennifer | Illus. by Adelina Lirius Tundra Books (32 pp.) | $18.99 June 24, 2025 | 9781774884409

“Anything can happen in the witching hour,” as one family learns while soothing their disgruntled baby. This cozy picture book opens with a lush woodland spread depicting a home carved into a large tree. Inside, two parents (both longhaired, clad in skirts, and wearing acorns or flower petals as hats) and their little ones sit at a table. When the sun sets, it’s time for the witching hour. The world goes “topsy-turvy,” and anything is possible. After the baby spills a bottle on the table and cries with increasing volume, the family tries different ways of consoling the youngster, from

swaying on a levitating broomstick to creating a magical parade of floating toys. Adults and older siblings will delight in the familiar, non-magical soothing tactics the characters try as well, such as bathing the child and offering snacks and favorite stuffed animals. Though a woodpecker’s “knock at the door” starts the baby crying again, and the parents’ faces begin looking more and more tired, sleep finally arrives. “The witching hour is over.” Each scene looks awash with magic, with detailed strokes created on vibrant backgrounds. Together, the art and the delightfully alliterative text result in a tale that’s both mystical and intimate. One parent is brown-skinned, while the other is light-skinned; the children are tan-skinned.

A bewitching bedtime story sure to charm the whole family. (Picture book. 3-5)

MousterWorks

Hawkins, Angela C. | Gnome Road Publishing (32 pp.) | $18.99 May 21, 2025 | 9781957655420

Through a mouse hole lies a gallery filled with teeny-tiny takeoffs on artistic masterpieces. Two big-eared rodents—Pépin, who wears a blue bow tie, and Cosette, who sports a pink flower—accompany Grand-mère to the museum, where they gaze at Hawkins’ cartoonish interpretations (or MousterWorks) of well-known paintings by Edward Bannister, Johannes Vermeer, Claude Monet, and others. The enthralled Cosette eagerly engages with the art, imagining the scents and sounds the subjects might be experiencing, while Pépin’s more concerned with tracking down cheese. While readers will enjoy picking out the adorable rodents interspersed throughout the MousterWorks—a mouse is tucked into bed alongside the youngster in Rosa Bonheur’s Child and Cat, for instance— they won’t get that much out of the paintings themselves. The brief, plotless

text provides no historical context or discussion of the pieces; readers curious about the performance depicted in Miyagawa Choshun’s Ryukyuan Dancers and Musicians, for instance, will need to go elsewhere to learn more. And though the MousterWorks are cute enough, alterations in composition, facial expressions, and color scheme mean that readers won’t get the full emotional effect. An author’s note includes a link to a website comparing the MousterWorks to the originals, while endpapers list the names and birth and death dates of the artists.

Endearing attempts at art appreciation, though likely to leave readers with more questions than answers. (Picture book. 6-8)

The Lucky Day

Heuer, Lourdes | Illus. by Lynnor Bontigao Amulet/Abrams (80 pp.) | $14.99 | June 24, 2025 9781419767524 | Series: Seashell Key, 3

It’s both the first day of spring and the last day before spring break, and the students of the beachside town of Seashell Key are having trouble focusing.

The first of this chapter book’s four “acts” finds Mateo interrupting math class to ask how to make a leprechaun trap. Mr. Leo guides the students through an arts and crafts project; after all, “making a leprechaun trap is a kind of math problem with shapes.” After recess, the kids return to the classroom to find that the trap has caught something unexpected. Act II moves to the classroom next door, where science-minded Sasha suggests

that they all work on the school garden. While the class gardens, Sasha’s more free-wheeling sister, Sophia, unzips her backpack to reveal a delightful surprise. The third act opens on yet another classroom, where Elana finds a map of the school; with help from their teacher, the students follow it to the library. The fourth story ties everything together as the students spend art class making hats that reference their favorite moments from the earlier tales. Throughout the book, kindly teachers willing to go with the flow nurture the curiosity of their bright, engaged students. In both style and length, the writing is consistently child-friendly, with key narrative details conveyed in the energetic artwork. Mateo is darkskinned, Sasha and Sophia present Black, Elana appears white, and the supporting cast is diverse. Sure to have young readers smiling. (Chapter book. 7-10)

Bruce Saves the Planet: A Disney Planet Possible Book Higgins, Ryan T. | Disney-Hyperion (48 pp.) | $19.99 | Feb. 4, 2025 9781368090209 | Series: Mother Bruce

A misanthropic bear inadvertently becomes a conservationist.

Grumpy Bruce prefers solitude— though that’s hard to find as a devoted parent to a passel of geese and mice. In search of some “me” time, he decides to go fishing but encounters a crowd of environmentalists protesting the building of a factory. Bruce rejects their pleas to join them. At the stream, he’s dismayed when his bait leaps into

Applauds even the smallest attempts to fight for a worthy cause.

The Boy Who Became a Parrot:

A Foolish Biography of Edward Lear, Who Invented Nonsense

Hill, Wolverton | Illus. by Laura Carlin Enchanted Lion Books (84 pp.) $22.99 | April 8, 2025 | 9781592704132

A fitting portrait of the creator of nonsensical foolishness. After his parents fall “on hard times,” young Edward Lear (1812-1888), the 20th child in a big family, is sent to live with his older siblings. Amid this nurturing environment, he explores his creativity while dealing with his “Demon”—chronic epilepsy. By

>>> the stream with his lunch. On his way home, Bruce passes the demonstrators, who have been joined by his own offspring. They’re delighted he’s returned “to save the forest,” and soon the unwilling Bruce is shepherded to the town hall, where his unenthusiastic comments are hilariously misinterpreted: “I don’t even want to be here.” “Bruce is right! None of us wants to be here. But we MUST!” As it turns out, Bruce’s lunchbox holds the key to a miraculous victory: Nestled inside are two extremely rare beetles from the stream that, by law, must be protected. Therefore, no factory! Following a long nap, Bruce rehomes the beetles and finds a new fishing spot, and the forest becomes a “protected wildland,” named in Bruce’s honor. The contrast between the standoffish Bruce and his earnest children and peers makes for a funny yet sweet tale that celebrates environmental preservation efforts and applauds even the smallest attempts to fight for a worthy cause. Higgins’ expressive, crisp, and clean illustrations will keep youngsters chuckling. A satisfying story with an important message. (tips for preserving the environment and animal habitats, websites, further reading) (Picture book. 4-7)

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

B y Mo Willems (2003)

Bossy and volatile but undeniably charismatic and side-splittingly funny, Mo Willems’ Pigeon was born to be a star. Since the publication of Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!,

the irascible bird has appeared in numerous sequels, inspired a musical and an opera, and headlined a traveling art exhibit. Most importantly, he’s proven irresistible to the preschool set; youngsters clamor for rereads and flock to author signings with the ardor of rock ’n’ roll groupies.

This literary debut hinged on a simple premise: After a bus driver leaves readers in charge of his vehicle, the Pigeon attempts to beg, bargain, and charm his way into taking over the bus; when that doesn’t work, tantrums ensue. Willems, an Emmy-winning writer for

Sesame Street, well understood what made kids tick.

“There is no such thing as a good childhood,” he told the Washington Post in 2012.

“There is no other time in one’s life, after all, when one must ask permission to use the bathroom and when that permission can be denied.”

Willems’ Pigeon taps into youngsters’ desires to have their own way—and gives them the thrilling power of saying no to someone else.

Although Willems endured two years of rejection before the Pigeon found a publisher, stories starring snarky, fourth-wall-breaking protagonists are now a genre unto

themselves. And if the Pigeon hasn’t exactly mellowed with age, he’s confronting new challenges with aplomb; his recent outings include Will the Pigeon Graduate? and Be the Bus: The Lost & Profound Wisdom of the Pigeon. The many fans who have grown up with him will be delighted.

—MAHNAZ DAR

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

Illustrations © by Dena Seiferling 9780823456758

Katherine Frey/The Washington Post

Getty Images

Mo Willems

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons

B y Jeff Kinney (2007)

In the early 2000s, kid lit was awash with overachievers, from Harry Potter to Percy Jackson. And then there was Greg Heffley. The socially inept protagonist of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Novel in Cartoons torments a group of kindergarteners, lets hapless BFF Rowley take the fall for his own misdeeds, and endures a string of humiliations at the hands of bullies—all to the delight of young readers. Wimpy Kid has spawned a bestselling series, a spinoff series for Rowley, a musical, and no less than seven films.

Wimpy Kid relies on a winning blend of prose and cartoons that look as though they were ripped straight from the sketchbook of an actual middle schooler—a format that’s proven especially popular with reluctant readers. Kinney has referred to his long-suffering leading man as

a sort of Larry David for tweens; Greg has a knack for saying the wrong thing, as well as a gift for chronicling his misadventures with a mix of self-deprecating humor and utter disdain for his peers.

While adults have pointed out that Greg’s no role model—sociopath is one label that’s been tossed at him online in recent years—it’s his foibles that have endeared him to millions of readers. As a young fan told the New York Times, “Everything in it is completely

a

true—the way the parents reacted to things, the dumb things we do, all the annoying things you have to do with younger brothers.”

Grown-ups might wish for a less naughty hero, but for kids, Greg Heffley still reigns supreme.—M.D.

Jeff Kinney

For

review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

SECOND LOOK

This review originally ran online on Jan. 6, 2025.

Rislov’s fact-based, illustrated children’s book celebrates a spirited, history-making horse. This well-told, absorbing tale for young children and intermediate readers is based (as the author explains at the end of the book) on the real Steamboat, the horse whose bucking bronco silhouette has been on Wyoming license plates since 1936. Told with engaging immediacy and at times near-poetic resonance, Steamboat’s saga is here conveyed by a grandfather entertaining his young granddaughter Lena while the pair do chores around his ranch. Before Grandpa met the famous horse, he tells Lena, Steamboat

was a rambunctious foal that “pranced and bucked from the day he was born,” running free on a ranch “in the endless sage-colored fields and under the big, blue sky.” Sadly, when Steamboat was 3 years old, “his golden mornings, rich wildflower scents, and the sound of coyote baying at the moon came to an end.” Sold to a cattle ranch where he is corralled and mistreated, the young horse gets his name due to his angry snort when he’d buck off the mean ranch hands who tried to break him. (Grandpa says that he attended a rodeo where every would-be rider hit the ground as

“Steamboat’s eyes would flash, his mane would rise like a wind gust, and his legs would disappear in a cloud of dust.”) Clearly, Steamboat loved to buck, but Grandpa saw a free spirit in danger of being crushed by the unfeeling ranch hands; he bought the horse, took him home, and gave him the nurturing he needed to become “the bronc he was born to be,” famous as “the horse that couldn’t be rode.” This colorful tale is an inspired collaboration between prolific children’s author Rislov and noted illustrator Pullen, who

A Home for Steamboat

Casey Rislov; illus. by Zachary Pullen Mountain Stars Press | 48 pp. | $24.95 April 15, 2025 | 9798218398620

teamed up previously on Rislov’s Western-themed books Rowdy Randy (2019) and The Rowdy Randy Wild West Show (2022). Pullen’s full-page, painted illustrations are both strikingly realistic (in the anatomy of horses and cattle, the beautiful big-sky landscapes, and meticulously rendered folds in clothing) and fanciful; the human characters have oversized heads and exaggerated facial features. A well-crafted, heartfelt narrative with lush and quirky visuals and a message of perseverance.

Laugh-Out-Loud Tales for April Fools’ Day

age 20, he’s in high demand throughout England as a talented natural history artist, but he feels like an outsider due to his humble origins and his Demon. His work documenting the Earl of Derby’s private collection of animals and his interactions with the earl’s young visitors inspire some of his most famous written works for children. After traveling the world, yearning for companionship, he settles down with his beloved feline; both would die months apart, embodied in a stunning spread with Lear slowly transforming into the titular bird from “The Owl and the Pussycat” as he flies to his grave. Though playful, Hill’s lengthy text may find a more receptive audience among adults interested in the history of children’s literature. While young readers will find Lear a sympathetic figure, they may not entirely understand his frustration with marriage and relationships (“Such odd couplings could only happen in the world of nonsense”) or his feelings of alienation in restrictive Victorian society. Still, Hill’s writing complements Carlin’s ethereal illustrations, creating a fanciful world full of wonder and nonsensical imagery. A lovingly unique tribute to a master of whimsicality. (author’s and illustrator’s notes, reproductions of Lear’s work, timeline, copy of “The Owl and the Pussycat”) (Picture-book biography 7-10)

Lu and Ren’s Guide to Geozoology

Hsieh, Angela | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (256 pp.) | $15.99 paper May 27, 2025 | 9780063207905

Two friends follow an old journal to find one girl’s missing grandmother. Lu loves hearing her geozoologist grandmother Ah-ma’s stories about her adventures and work with creatures like the mossbear and stonefowl. Lu wants to accompany her on her next expedition, but Ah-ma says

she’s too young. As time passes and Ah-ma’s letters stop coming, Lu becomes determined to find her. She’s sure she can discover clues to Ah-ma’s whereabouts in her old travel journal. But the journal is written in Cylian, and Lu can’t read the characters fluently. One day, her childhood friend Ren appears in the neighborhood, and the two decide to travel together to find Ah-ma. Along the way, they meet some of Ah-ma’s friends and encounter the wonders Ah-ma taught Lu about. But trouble looms as Ren keeps big secrets, and Lu struggles with revelations about her grandmother’s past. This full-color graphic novel is a beautiful story of family and friendship set in a fantasy world that cleverly combines geology and zoology. The two girls grapple with familial issues connected to expectations, language barriers, and loss. Lu, Ren, and their families speak Lirrish and Cylian, corollaries of English and Mandarin Chinese, respectively; differently colored fonts indicate which language they’re using. Lu has dark brown skin and black hair, and Ren has lighter brown skin and black hair.

A charming story of relationships and fantastical discoveries. (map, language note, The Traveler’s Guide to Geozoology, making of the graphic novel) (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

Wish in a Tree

Hunt, Lynda Mullaly | Illus. by Nancy Carpenter | Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $18.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9781524739683

Oliver, a neurodivergent child introduced in Hunt’s novel Fish in a Tree (2015), makes his picturebook debut.

Oliver feels like “a dragon in a paper house.” While his classmates work quietly, he fidgets and involuntarily makes noises. His brain “blazes.” He imagines his pencil as a rocket, and his mind fills with questions: Could a pencil rocket reach Saturn’s rings? Shay, the class bully, calls him “weird” and “lazy,”

unlike “the rest of us”—but the things Oliver says to himself hurt even more. At recess, Oliver makes a wish: “Please… please make me more like the rest of them.” Fortunately, not everyone is like Shay. Jada’s impressed by Oliver’s knowledge of ants, and Albert reminds him that famous inventors, scientists, and artists persisted despite being mocked: “Just imagine the things we wouldn’t have without all of your astonishing brains!” Cheered, Oliver dubs Jada and Albert his “colony”: “In an ant colony, everyone matters.” Now he’s proud to be a dragon in a paper house: “Isn’t it good to have a little fire inside?” Though the dialogue is somewhat heavy-handed, readers, especially those with learning differences, will appreciate the message that, like a tree with colorful autumn leaves, the world is “most beautiful” when people are all different. Energetic cartoon illustrations cleverly convey Oliver’s vivid imagination as well as his emotions. Most characters, including Oliver, have light skin; Jada is brown-skinned.

Affirming and uplifting. (Picture book. 6-8)

Going Overboard

Huntoon, Caroline | Feiwel & Friends (208 pp.) $17.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9781250347251

Sixth grader Piper reluctantly teams up with classmate Colton to break up their moms. Nonbinary budding fashion designer Piper, who uses the pronouns ze/zir/zem, was raised by an awesome and supportive single mom, Noura. Noura’s had girlfriends in the past, but nothing serious—at least not until Gwinny. Piper starts to realize this relationship is different when ze is invited to join one of their dates and meet Gwinny’s son, who turns out to be someone who once mocked Piper at a school dance. Piper has no desire to share zir mom and merge families, so when they all decide to go on a Caribbean cruise

together, Piper plans Project Breakup. Piper will need help to pull it off, however, so ze brings Colton into the fold, only to discover that Colton’s a lot more fun than ze thought. Just as Piper’s plan begins to fall into place, ze starts to question if maybe Project Breakup was a mistake. Told through Piper’s first-person narration, the story balances the antics of the breakup scheme with Piper’s internal growth as ze finds self-expression and confidence through fashion and realizes that change can be a good thing. Some serious topics and moments are gently threaded throughout, but overall the tale maintains a light tone and focuses on acts of love and support. Piper and Colton are cued white.

Entertaining and thoughtful. (Fiction. 8-12)

The Bi Book

May 20, 2025 | 9780593571828

On a day at the beach, two children discover words that start with the prefix bi “Many words that start with ‘bi’ mean two,” Irving informs readers. The kids in Alonso’s illustrations watch a biennial plant grow, then ride bicycles with their grown-ups to the seaside. Legs outstretched, the youngsters proudly proclaim themselves to be bipeds, watch a whale through a pair of binoculars, and explore bivalve sea creatures and the concept of bilateral symmetry in butterflies. Other families at the beach introduce the terms bilingual and biracial. Irving closes with a bi word that “can mean ‘more than

two’”: bisexuality, since “bi hearts love in a rainbow of ways.” Some of the concepts will be a bit abstract for young readers. A much-needed glossary goes into further detail and may allay some confusion; children and their adults will need to put in some work to understand these terms, but those interested in finding connections between words and concepts will be intrigued. The book’s soft, powdery illustrations rely heavily on the iconic pink, purple, and blue of the bi flag, particularly in the final spread, which shows silhouetted figures on the beach as the sun sets, with the phrase “Bi is beautiful” written in the sky. One of the children has dirty blond hair and pale skin, while the other has curly pigtails and light brown skin. Potentially perplexing, though rewarding for the right reader—and empowering for all. (Picture book. 4-8)

A Summer Without Anna

Jenks Landry, Kate | Illus. by Risa Hugo Kids Can (32 pp.) | $21.99

June 3, 2025 | 9781525310256

A child spends a long summer with grandparents. Junie’s sister Anna is ill; her condition is severe enough that Junie must stay with Nan and Pop while Mum and Dad care for Anna. They leave Junie with the promise that they’ll return “the minute Anna’s well enough.” The children have a positive relationship, and Anna even gives Junie her camera, though she writes in a letter that it’s just a loan and Junie “better not break it.” This slow-moving depiction of sadness mostly focuses on what Junie eats, sees, and photographs; a brief

A realistically somber snapshot of a summer marked by sadness and uneasiness. A SUMMER WITHOUT ANNA

mention of “Edmund” in the beginning turns out to refer to an ancient turtle living in a nearby lake. The story captures the kind of homesickness and anxiety that come from long-distance worrying about a loved one—it’s long and meandering, with a few bright spots against an otherwise dreary background. Not much happens, and since Junie stoically endures this difficult situation but doesn’t take much action, the happy ending is a relief but somehow doesn’t feel satisfying. Blocky illustrations in colored pencil and pastel mostly reflect the text directly, adding a layer of stillness and calm to the overall subdued tale. All characters are light-skinned.

A realistically somber—if less than compelling—snapshot of a summer marked by sadness and uneasiness. (Picture book. 4-7)

Everything’s Wrong!: A Bear, a Hare, and Trouble Everywhere

John, Jory | Illus. by Erin Kraan Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) | $18.99 May 20, 2025 | 9780374392147

Series: A Bear and Hare Book

In this companion to Something’s Wrong! (2021) and Nothing’s Wrong! (2023), two pals contend with a very bad day.

Jeff (a large brown bear wearing undies festooned with red hearts) and Anders (a fastidious green hare) each greet the morning cheerfully from their respective dwellings. But when the lights go out in both their houses, they find themselves prone, breakfast dripping from their fur. After they each step outside, their doors lock behind them, and they race toward each other’s homes—colliding on the path. What follows is a series of indignities involving bees, sap, dust, a skunk, pollen, and hail; it’s so preposterous that they can’t help but laugh. The text is full of alliteration and playful language. Anders thinks it’s going to be a “calm, cool, and collected type of day.”

Irving, A.J. | Illus. by Cynthia Alonso Knopf | (32 pp.) | $18.99

Jeff later wonders, “What are all these sticker-y, sticky, needle-y, poke-y, ouch-y, hurt-y thingies?” (Burrs.) Kraan’s mix of woodcut, colored pencil, and linocut artwork shows warm woodland and cozy domestic scenes full of pleasing textures and patterns. When the duo escape to the lake, they find friends—and Jeff’s grandma—all of whom had weird days of their own. They now float contentedly, munching sandwiches. As the pair join the fun, they conclude that pleasure is possible, even on bad days. Jeff muses, “All you can control are your actions and reactions to stuff.”

Important life lessons, served with a heap of comedy. (Picture book. 4-7)

Keepers of the Marsh

Jortner, Maura | Holiday House (208 pp.) $17.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9780823457915

Twelve-year-old

Lana Parker has been warned away from the marsh bordering her neighborhood in Galveston, Texas, but an intriguing discovery leads her there anyway.

Lana has little in common with her fraternal twin, Gracie, and younger sister, Duck. Since their dad died of a virus two years ago, her family members have retreated: Mom into listening to audiobooks and writing poetry, Gracie into K-pop music, and Duck into video games. With her best friends gone for the summer and her grandmother in a nursing home following a recent stroke, Lana is bored. She escapes to Nana’s nearly empty house, where she discovers a mysterious golden key and a letter addressed to her father, admonishing him to “do your duty. The Alligator Witch is always there.” Most people regard the witch as a legend, but Dad believed in her, so Lana decides to see the instructions through. But when she enters the marsh seeking the witch, her mother and sisters face unintended magical consequences. Lana’s sincere first-person narrative is interspersed with sections following early-20th-century

New York City teen spiritualist Zofia Kowalczyk and another pair of fraternal twins who lived in Galveston during the devastating Big Storm of 1900. This low fantasy blends historical and contemporary elements with magic in a storyline that offers a healthy exploration of dealing with grief. The storytelling in this compact tale will sustain readers’ interest before wrapping up with a satisfying resolution. Main characters read white. A heartfelt story that’s filled with adventure. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Bashir Boutros and the Jewel of the Nile

Jreije, George | Harper/HarperCollins (288 pp.) | $19.99 | May 27, 2025

9780063382244 | Series: Bashir Boutros and the Jewel of the Nile, 1

In this duology opener, an 11-year-old Lebanese American boy must travel to other realms and fight monsters and demons as he tries to save his parents—and possibly the world.

Seventh grader Bashir Boutros and his best friend, Farrah, love spending summers in Lebanon with their families, just as they have every year since they were babies. On the day before his return home to Boston, Bashir’s cousin accidentally pushes him into the Mediterranean Sea. He finds a golden ring in the seabed, which awakens a jinn named Yani. On the flight home, Bashir encounters a witch, just one of many monsters who want the ring. Panicked, he discovers that he’s unable to remove the ring; he and Yani are bonded. When Ali Adin, or Aladdin, one of the four Demon Lords, kidnaps Bashir’s parents and demands the ring in return, Bashir joins forces with 12-year-old Alina and high schooler Ziad, members of the Magi, who protect the human realm. They travel through a portal to recruit Farrah’s help. If he’s to rescue his parents, he must learn to harness the power of his

aura—but can shy Bashir accomplish his goal while remaining true to his pacifist principles? His action-packed journey contains both a surprise plot twist and real character growth as Bashir’s self-esteem, confidence, kindness, and care for his family, friends, and all living creatures grow stronger.

An effective blend of excitement and strong characterization, with a message of remaining true to one’s values. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals: The Story of the Bill of Rights

Kanefield, Teri | Illus. by Kelly Malka Abrams (224 pp.) | $19.99

May 20, 2025 | 9781419768262

A compelling exploration of the Bill of Rights that weaves together landmark cases, historical narratives, and reflections on the paradoxes of liberty.

Kanefield argues that since its inception as a compromise between Federalists and anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights has served as a battleground for competing interpretations of rights, freedoms, and equality. She proceeds to bring each amendment to life through real-world examples, such as Tinker v. Des Moines, in which a public school’s disciplining of students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War led to a ruling that emphasized the lasting importance of the First Amendment. References to well-known figures, like Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone in the chapter about the Second Amendment, add relatable historical context. Kanefield doesn’t shy away from highlighting paradoxes, pointing out that while the Bill of Rights offers “a soaring and far-reaching vision of fundamental” human rights, it was written by men who enslaved others, and its protections were only expanded through the struggles of marginalized people. At times the legal explanations can lean heavily on technicalities that

may challenge some readers, but the skillful inclusion of anecdotes enhances the book’s accessibility. The clear prose guides readers through complex constitutional principles, making this work a useful educational resource. Text boxes offer definitions of key terms. Malka’s somewhat stiff illustrations add little to the work.

Final verdict: insightful, thoughtprovoking, and timely. (author’s note, endnotes, bibliography, illustration credits, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Star

Pickle on Wheels

Kantorovitz, Sylvie | Holiday House (40 pp.)

$14.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9780823460304

Series: I Like To Read Comics

Pickle the pooch perseveres with pals. Pickle’s a huge fan of the TV show Superdog, and after watching the latest episode, in which the superheroic protagonist roller-skates to the rescue of a falling child, Pickle becomes a skating fanatic. Grandma sends Pickle a present: skates and a helmet! “I can be like Superdog now!” Pickle says. But after taking a few tumbles, Pickle’s ready to put away the skates. Coco, a spotted rabbit, appears on skates and offers to help Pickle practice; the two take things slow, skating while holding hands. Another spill tears a hole in Pickle’s pants, but Coco offers some reassuring words and a bandage, and they keep at it. Later, Pickle assumes the role of teacher and

rallies a similarly discouraged roller skater, Felix the bird. Felix compares Pickle to Superdog, making it clear that kind gestures and encouragement are the hallmarks of a true hero. By the end of the story, Pickle, Coco, and Felix are all skating together, three links in a chain of friendship. The repeated emphasis on process over results conveys a lovely lesson that never becomes preachy. Kantorovitz’s spare, muted artwork is enchanting in its simplicity, depicting the pains of failing at a new hobby and the joys of finally triumphing; she also displays a keen eye for precious details such as Pickle’s handwritten thank-you letter to Grandma and knee patches on the protagonist’s now-mended trousers.

A positively super lesson in persistence. (Graphic early reader. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

Dream for the Land

Kemp, Laekan Zea | Illus. by Leo Espinosa Anne Schwartz/Random (40 pp.)

$18.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9780593710302

During an unassailable drought, a young girl wishes for rain. The child and her father survey their farm amid the hush of dawn. Spotting hungry critters among the rows of squash, tomatoes, and poblanos, the girl rushes ahead to shoo them away, Pá at her heels. When Pá notices a horned toad, he scoops it up and kisses its wee head. “Eww!” the child replies. “Then you make a wish,” says Pá, “and let them go.” Má laughs, and the three farmers toil through the morning, caring for crops

Unpacks the hard-earned minutiae of a farming family’s everyday lives.

that have withered under the oppressive might of a long drought. The land was once “as green as jewels,” back when Great-Grandpa tilled it; it was nourished “by a cobalt river” that’s since vanished. As Má hopes for rain clouds, Pá hangs his head. The girl, however, moves forward, searching for a horned toad’s much-needed magic. She returns to her parents with a wish for an earth that could exist free from those who seek to exploit it. Kemp’s pensive, elegiac tale unpacks the hard-earned minutiae of a farming family’s everyday lives, as well as the encroaching consequences of human-fueled climate change, told from a young girl’s compelling, vivid perspective. Each line mounts to a gradual call to action by the closing spread. Espinosa’s striking pencil-etched artwork portrays arid earth, parched skies, and resilient brown-skinned people. The farming family is cued Latine.

Tender, expressive, and important. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

Turtles Heading Home!

Ketchum, Liza, Phyllis Root & Jacqueline Briggs Martin | Charlesbridge (48 pp.) $18.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781623545864

A step-by-step account of concerted efforts underway to rescue the hundreds of rare sea turtles washed ashore around Cape Cod every winter. Successfully reviving plate-size “Kemp’s ridley sea turtles” that have been stunned by unseasonably chill waters turns out to be a fussy, complicated process. The authors explain things in careful detail as they give readers a chance to meet many of the workers who search beaches, carefully transport stranded turtles to a wildlife rehabilitation lab for treatment, and then return the survivors to the shore. How rare is the Kemp’s ridley? Astonishingly, until recently there was but one nesting site in the world, and in 1985, fewer than 250 females laid eggs there. Thanks to efforts like the one documented here, that population has

been steadily growing since then. The authors also include information on the animal’s life cycle; after finishing this work—and poring over the many bright color photos—concerned young eco-activists will come away agreeing with the wildlife biologist who dubs these turtles “charismatic.” Those eager to help will appreciate the backmatter, which offers guidance on combating climate change and helping sea turtles. An inspiring success story for animal-rescue advocates. (photo credits) (Nonfiction. 7-9)

Bonnie Bailey and the Faire of Worlds

Kirk, Ellie | WorthyKids/Ideals (288 pp.)

$17.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781546007944

Some adventures know no bounds.

Thirteen-yearold Bonnie Bailey has problems. The award-winning Beeline Apiary, which women in her family have run for generations, isn’t profitable enough, and her single mother announces that, after getting into debt and being hounded by developers, she’s selling their land. Bonnie, who’s fuming over this news, is approached by Abeo, the mysterious manager of the Faire of Worlds, a magical camp of entertainment and wonders. Bonnie initially refuses Abeo’s offer of a role as assistant bee charmer, which would mean leaving home without telling her mother to travel with the Faire. But earning enough money to save the apiary persuades her to join them until the end-of-season election to choose Abeo’s replacement. The contenders include Alpha, a gruff, authoritarian bee charmer from “home world” #2,501, who plans to fleece unsuspecting victims if he’s elected. Bonnie also experiences a few pangs of romance, thanks to Jack, a cowboylike rustler, who’s also from another world. This light, fast-paced story is amusing, although readers seeking more depth might be frustrated by the quick

A middle schooler discovers haunting secrets in her grandmother’s house.

THE GIRL IN THE WALLS

resolutions. Like cotton candy at a fair, the story provides thrills and a little dazzle, lightening the themes of financial insecurity and threats to bees. The cast of characters largely presents white. Action-packed fun. (map) (Fantasy. 9-12)

Someone’s Gonna End Up Crying

Knowles, Jo | Illus. by Glynnis Fawkes

Candlewick (304 pp.) | $19.99 May 27, 2025 | 9781536231274

A girl navigates her family’s shifting dynamics through cartooning. It’s nearly the end of the school year, and 10-yearold Maple has a lot to be anxious about. She’s one of only two fifth graders who has yet to ace the weekly timed math quiz—and her teacher’s promised an ice cream party once everyone’s done so. Maple and her two best friends are making summer plans, and she hopes this will be the summer when her dad fulfills his promise of helping her build a tree fort. But her mercurial dad often forgets his promises and disappears for hours, saying he needs space. Maple finds solace and relief from her parents’ arguments by sitting under her namesake backyard maple tree and drawing in her private sketchbook, where she creates comics that help her process the changes around her. This characterdriven narrative is a slow-paced read that idly circles the central narrative conflict. Maple and her older brother and sister robustly demonstrate the complexity of flip-flopping emotions in response to their parents’ marital strife, including a

healthy amount of sibling conflict. The supporting characters subtly demonstrate coping methods for difficult emotions. Maple’s peers’ varying maturity levels, combined with a focus on friendship and Maple’s indifference toward potential crushes, make this work well suited for younger middle-grade readers. Fawkes’ winsome illustrations provide humor and add depth; they also cue some racial diversity surrounding the white-presenting lead.

A portrait of a family unit in flux for patient, thoughtful readers. (Fiction. 9-12)

The Girl in the Walls

Kuyatt, Meg Eden | Scholastic (288 pp.)

$18.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9781546110538

A middle schooler discovers haunting secrets in her grandmother’s house. Valeria isn’t looking forward to spending the summer at Grandma Jojo’s house, where “nothing can be not fine”—including V herself. Jojo dismisses V’s autism and forbids her from seeing her college art major cousin Cat, whom Jojo raised and who displays erratic behavior. As if Jojo’s criticism and Cat’s cryptic remark about their family’s history of “kicking out people / who are different” weren’t troubling enough, V begins hearing whispers in the walls that echo the self-doubts planted by her best friend’s rejection and her art teacher’s belittling of her style. The voice, V discovers, belongs to the mischievous ghost of a girl. At first, joining the girl’s pranks on Jojo is great fun—and the girl suggests that if V pulls off something

“extreme,” Jojo will be mad enough to send her home. But the more V investigates the secrets she finds behind hidden doors—paintings, a photo labeled Our Broken Doll, a journal—the less friendly the ghost becomes. Is V in danger from her? Through V’s reflective, perceptive free-verse narration and the well-drawn secondary characters, Kuyatt skillfully and compassionately explores complex topics, including self-expression, generational trauma, the dangers of suppressing emotions, and the power of words to shape self-esteem. The emotional toll of masking—endeavoring to appear neurotypical—is especially vividly conveyed. Most characters read white. An insightful, tense tale of family and (self) acceptance. (author’s note) (Verse paranormal. 8-12)

Kirkus Star

The Garden Just Beyond

Leavitt, Lindsey | Godwin Books (320 pp.) $17.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9781250858528

A family begins a new chapter in the story of their mysterious garden.

Fourteen-yearold Magnolia “Maggie” Gartner lives on the farm that’s been in her family for generations, ever since her tenth-greatgrandfather, a Hessian soldier fighting for the British, settled in the New Jersey forests in 1776. He and his wife planted a linden tree that formed the heart of a magical garden. Pragmatic Maggie has meticulously chronicled her family’s recipes, anticipating her turn to cook her first dinner. The extraordinary harvests each cook finds in the garden create unique emotional responses among guests. Once shared with friends and townsfolk, the dinners have become a family business, with tickets sold to the wealthy. But when the garden is finally revealed to her, Maggie is devastated to find decay and rot. After all, the garden “showed you what you needed to see. And who you needed to become,” so what

does this mean for her? Especially since her new friend, Graham Flores, finds the key to the garden gate and discovers the abundance Maggie hoped for. Their destinies are intertwined, it seems. In this page-turning story, Leavitt adroitly balances comedic and poignant elements, classical allusions, and contemporary diversions (like the local cryptid, the Jersey Devil). Convincing journal entries add historical context and character development as German American Maggie and those around her confront the challenges converging on the farm and neighboring town.

Richly detailed and imagined; will invite repeat visits to harvest all the delights. (map, family tree) (Fiction. 10-14)

Have a Good Trip, Mousse!

Lebourg, Claire | Trans. by Sophie Lewis Transit Children’s Editions (64 pp.) $18.95 | June 10, 2025 | 9798893380057 Series: Mousse

T he mostly solitary protagonist of A Day With Mousse (2024) leaves home for his first vacation.

Mousse, a long-snouted, skinny-legged, green-and-whitestriped creature, wakes up to a rainy day. He’s accustomed to damp surroundings; each morning, the sea washes into his house, and he gathers and sells the shells that come with it. But “everything that usually makes him happy is getting him down today.” When startlingly few treasures wash up inside Mousse’s home, he’s confused: Where has everyone gone? A neighboring limpet tells him that most of the sea creatures have headed south for their summer holiday. So Mousse boards a train and finds himself at a crowded seaside resort. He invites his walrus friend Barnacle to join him, and they revel in spa activities. Mousse’s jealousy is aroused when Barnacle befriends Felix, a toothy, red-and-white-striped creature, but despite their rocky beginnings, the duo swiftly become a happy trio. Once again,

sophisticated but accessible prose translated from French combines with airy, gently humorous artwork that depicts a world populated by sweetly strange denizens. Though the earlier book had more laugh-out-loud moments— largely due to sight gags that contradicted the text—this one is just as delightful. Lebourg once more speaks lovingly to the simple joys of quotidian life. A charming outing.

(Picture book/early reader. 5-8)

The Last Rhee Witch and the Nine-Tailed Fox

Lee-Yun, Jenna | Disney-Hyperion (272 pp.)

$17.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781368100984

Series: The Last Rhee Witch, 2

In this sequel to 2024’s The Last Rhee Witch, Ronnie returns to Camp Foster for witch training and winter fun with friends— only to encounter another dangerous supernatural creature.

Korean American Ronnie arrives at camp eager to learn some new spells. She’s dismayed to discover that last summer’s friends have kept in touch with each other through social media, which her father has forbidden her to use until she’s older, leaving her feeling like an outsider. She’s also shocked to learn that the camp (which is run by her late mom’s coven sisters, Ms. Hana, Ms. Akemi, Ms. Pavani, and Ms. Lia) is being visited by a gumiho—a shapeshifting, trickster fox spirit from Korean folklore. The gumiho beguilingly promises to fulfill people’s deepest desires in exchange for measures of their gi, or life force, which it desperately needs. Along with absorbingly ratcheting up the lively narrative’s tension on the way to an eerily lit climax beneath a lunar eclipse, Lee-Yun offers a genuine path to resolving conflicts equitably through Ronnie’s recognition that some give-and-take must happen on both sides. This insight serves her well: By the end, not only has the gumiho become a

sympathetic (even cutely appealing) character, but Ronnie and her friends are tighter than ever. Names and other contextual clues point to a racially and culturally diverse supporting cast. A pleasing, strongly paced tale with a folkloric twist and solid socialemotional underpinnings. (Fantasy. 8-12)

The Friendship Train: A True Story of Helping and Healing After World War II

Levy, Debbie | Illus. by Boris Kulikov Bloomsbury (48 pp.) | $19.99 June 3, 2025 | 9781547608027

Le vy invites readers to climb aboard the Friendship Train, a humanitarian project that collected food for hungry people in Europe in the wake of World War II. Spurred on by newspaper articles by journalist Drew Pearson, children across the United States contributed to the effort to help starving families overseas. To gather food and raise funds, they knocked on doors, did odd jobs, and donated their own savings. Starting from California, the titular train was packed with crops and canned goods; it made numerous stops across the country on its way to New York. Four ships were needed to transport everything to Europe. Impressed by the generosity of the Friendship Train, the people of France reciprocated with the Merci Train, filled with toys, statues, and other gifts. Although Levy makes clear in the detailed backmatter that Pearson’s motives weren’t entirely altruistic (he was also interested in promoting democracy and capitalism to counter the Soviet Union’s pro-communist messaging), the book brims with optimism about how even seemingly small contributions can make a difference. Her compelling prose shines, and her careful research is evident from her backmatter. Kulikov’s evocative, earth-toned, tea-stained illustrations portray crowds of diverse people lending a hand. In his maps of Europe and the United States, he fills the borders of the countries with, by turns, images of

A rousing appeal for those concerned about the state of the world.

CLIMATE IS JUST THE START

drooping children amid destroyed buildings, pictures of newspapers, and, later, waving people—a clever choice that makes these historical events feel immediate.

An inspiring and insightful testament to the power of cooperation. (author’s note, sources, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 4-8)

Climate Is Just the Start: How We Can Stop the Climate Crisis and Start Building a Better World for Everyone

Loach, Mikaela | Illus. by Lauri Johnston Bright Matter Books (208 pp.) | $17.99 March 18, 2025 | 9780593897324

A climate activist calls for action.

Loach, author of the adult bestseller It’s Not That Radical (2023), restates her argument in this title for younger readers. Acknowledging that many kids and teens are rightfully disturbed by global warming and other injustices, she uses understandable metaphors, a conversational tone, and relatable stories to encourage them to listen to their feelings, imagine a better world, and work to make a difference. A Jamaican immigrant who now lives in England, Loach discusses how her own identity as a Black woman informs her work and beliefs; notably, she teases out systems of oppression such as white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism as she stresses that the impacts of climate change disproportionately affect those living in the Global South. As bleak as things may seem, her passion is evident as

she urges readers to “fight against fossil fuels, against exploitation, against capitalism, and for a world where we all live in dignity.” She decries consumerism, explores how the burning of fossil fuels has resulted in disappearing beaches, and pushes readers to organize for change. Her vision may seem radical to some, but, as she points out, “Lots of things that most people now would find ridiculous used to be accepted.” Infographics break up the text, and the book concludes with an appendix of resources and glossary (unseen). Final art not seen.

A rousing appeal for those concerned about the state of the world. (Nonfiction. 10-14)

The League of Littles

Lyall, Casey | Illus. by Sara Faber Greenwillow Books (128 pp.)

$24.99 | $15.99 paper | June 17, 2025 9780063285262 | 9780063285255 paper

A group of youngest siblings are challenged by a hamster on the run. The League of Littles was founded to help protect kids from the “bullying, arrogance, and tyranny of elder siblings,” and when it quickly becomes clear that there’s also a Band of Bigs as well as a Middles and Onlys Guild, one might expect a dramatic confrontation among these birth order–based squads. But in this book at least, the crews generally keep to their own corners. Tasked by more senior Littles with locating a missing hamster (lest the little sister who lost it incur the wrath of

its owner, her big sibling), trainees Lexi, Mo, and Eli find themselves chasing the rodent high and low through the school. When it’s revealed that the hamster belongs to one of the birth-order groups, the intrigue deepens. Set up to pave the way for future capers, this graphic novel feels somewhat tentatively invested in its characters’ motivations, and the sibling rivalries take a back seat to the pursuit of the lost pet, perhaps leaving room for future, larger conflicts. Nonetheless, the book has several funny moments; the narrative gag of the Middles lounging in their lair watching the school-wide search in bemusement is truly hilarious. Faber’s lovely illustrations use a soft palette and smoothed lines while gleefully capturing the Littles’ mission with dramatic perspectives. Lexi is Black, Eli is tan-skinned and dark-haired, and Mo presents white.

A brief, amusing romp with potential for future fun. (Graphic fiction. 7-10)

Erin and Yrso: Book 1

Lylian | Illus. by Paul Drouin | Graphic Universe (56 pp.) | $11.99 paper | May 6, 2025 9798765647004 | Series: The Giants

A young girl must work with a strange creature to save the world. Erin recently lost her parents to a car crash, and now that she’s about to move from their home in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, to live with extended family, she feels as though she’s saying goodbye to them all over again. Plants have always been her passion (“It feels like we understand each other”), and gardening offers a refuge—as does a new friend, a towering, plantlike creature who calls himself Yrso. Yrso is one of several colossi, giants with the power to protect the planet—with help from a select group of children. Meanwhile, in icy Qaanaaq, Greenland, the mysterious Mr. Crossland is working to unearth another colossus, Alyphar, who represents a threat to the

entire world. Though this graphic novel moves quickly, readers will find themselves slowing down to admire the gorgeous, lush visuals marked by verdant forest scenes. Erin is a warm, spirited protagonist, as willing to offer gardening pointers to her younger cousin as she is to knee a bully in the groin. Yrso’s arrival brings larger stakes that include other colossi to be found by children around the world. This wide-ranging narrative requires art that balances poignant emotions with sweeping action, and Drouin is up to the task. A tender tale of grief propelled into a fantastical, globe-trotting adventure. (Graphic fantasy. 9-13)

One Day a Mayfly

Marr, Shirley | Illus. by Michael Speechley | Candlewick (40 pp.)

$18.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9781536243611

Mayfly’s life shows that it’s not the days in one’s life that matter, but the life in one’s days. While Marr’s main text focuses on the titular creature’s brief, single-day existence, Speechley’s accompanying illustrations depict a brown-skinned youngster who sees the insect while walking through a city with a pair of elders (presumably grandparents). As the mayfly zips about, the child follows, with text on buildings and signs offering layers of meaning. Though cartoonish, the sepia-toned illustrations are meticulously detailed, integrating seamlessly with the spare text. The child observes the mayfly’s brief life cycle as words and pictures combine to show how the youngster symbolically moves through the stages of life, too. “Life is a map with no set destination,” an unseen narrator tells us as the child follows the mayfly past a day care, a primary school, a high school, and a university. Later spreads similarly highlight career options, the joy of travel and the arts,

A tale to have readers seizing the day. (Picture book. 4-7)

The Gods’ Revenge

Marsh, Katherine | Storytide/ HarperCollins (256 pp.) | $18.99

April 22, 2025 | 9780063303799

Series: The Myth of Monsters, 2

Ava and her friends return for another year at their magical school. After narrowly avoiding expulsion during her first year and discovering her link to the goddess Medusa, eighth grader Ava Baldwin returns to Accademia del Forte, a boarding school in Venice for kids who are descended from mythological monsters. Though she’s eager to reunite with her friends, Ava is committed to her new mission: challenging the lies that the Olympian gods have told to keep themselves in power and conceal their misdeeds. Instead, however, Ava finds herself consumed with jealousy over her friend Layla’s newfound beauty, popularity, and boyfriend. Her efforts are further interrupted by bullies like Cyclops descendant Zale, as well as the new headmaster, demigod Perseus, who infuses the school with toxic hero worship. Disaster strikes when Layla, like many girls and women before her, is punished by the gods for her beauty and confidence. Committed vegan Layla is transformed into a bloodthirsty Empusa and must choose between compromising her

>>> and representations of birth (a hospital maternity ward) and death (a funeral procession outside a church). Endpapers designed as calendar pages provide further context for the child’s story, as do framing scenes with a frog who first attempts to discourage the mayfly (“The world out there will eat you up…Not that it matters. You’ll only live for one day anyway”) and then is surprised at her triumphant return after “a perfect day.”

BEST OF THE CENTURY

B y Jacqueline Woodson (2014)

In 2014, author Walter Dean Myers wrote a New York Times piece

lamenting the dearth of books about children of color—and calling upon

publishers to do better. Several months later, as it happened, the world was graced with Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming—precisely the kind of book Myers had longed to see as a child.

Woodson’s searing memoir in verse traces the trajectories that made her who she is: her ancestors’ path from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement, her journey from her 1963 birth in Ohio to the segregated South to Brooklyn, and her transformation from struggling reader to gifted storyteller and writer.

Her work sent a powerful message: Stories about Black and brown children are for all

readers. The book won multiple awards, including a National Book Award.

The message was one Woodson had been preaching for years; her groundbreaking 1998 essay for the Horn Book pushed the kid lit community to consider questions of authenticity and voice: “We want the chance to tell our own stories, to tell them honestly and openly.…My belief is that there is room in the world for all stories, and that everyone has one.”

Her memoir remains a potent window and mirror for

young people and adults alike. Last year, to mark the book’s 10th anniversary, author Roxane Gay, actor/ screenwriter Lena Waithe, activist Marley Dias, and others gathered at New York City’s Symphony Space for an emotional night of celebration. The book still exhorts readers to keep dreaming—and reminds us that all children deserve to see their stories told.—M.D.

Robin Marchant/Getty

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

Jacqueline Woodson

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Watercress

B y Andrea Wang Illus. by Jason Chin (2021)

In Watercress, after a Chinese American family spot the titular greens growing by the side of the road, they pull their car over to pick some. The moment awakens feelings of joy in the parents— immigrants

nursing fraught memories of their homeland—and resentment in their daughter, who wonders what passersby will think. Watercress is a source of shame for a child weary of “hand-me-down clothes / and roadside trash-heap furniture and / now, / dinner from a ditch.” But when Mom opens up about the hardships of life in China, the young protagonist sees her parents with newfound empathy.

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

Although author Andrea Wang drew from childhood experiences for this deeply personal tale, she didn’t learn about the poverty and famine her mother had endured until she was older—something she regrets. “I think it’s really important for families to share what they can,” she told NPR, so “kids [will] know that history and can feel a sense of pride in their culture.”

In his acceptance speech for the Caldecott Medal, illustrator Jason Chin noted that grateful readers had told him and Wang how much the book had resonat-

ed with them. “Stories give young readers the context and language with which to understand their own lives,” he said. More than that, Watercress allows older and younger generations to understand one another a little better— and to truly see each other.—M.D.

Jason Chin, left, and Andrea Wang

morals or starving to death; can Ava and her friends save her before it’s too late? As in the series opener, this second installment skillfully weaves familiar mythology with coming-ofage concerns, all filtered through a feminist lens. Full of humor, adventure, and heart, this story, with its diverse cast of international characters, will delight readers. This successful sequel offers relatable heroes for a new generation. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)

Not a Dog

Martínez, Claudia Guadalupe | Illus. by Laura González | Charlesbridge (32 pp.) $17.99 | June 17, 2025 | 9781623543044

Although it barks, a Mexican prairie dog is not a canine. While the “perrito llanero” once dug underground colonies in grasslands from Mexico to Canada, their population declined as farmers took over their lands and culled many of the animals. Interspersed with Spanish words, this clever tribute to an endangered rodent is woven with introductions to shapes. At birth, the prairie dog is a “tiny, hairless thing, nuzzling its mamá with the triángulo of its nose.” As it grows and joins other pups, they eat “grass and plants with their sharp rectángulos for teeth.” Though these animals face perils from humans, they also have allies. A diverse group of schoolchildren on a field trip learn about the prairie dogs and are spurred to help protect them, getting out their “papel cuadrado” (paper in the shape of a square) and writing letters. Their efforts pay off, and a “No farming” sign soon goes up. Now, “as far as those óvalo-shaped eyes can see, there are prairie dogs and prairie dogs and prairie dogs.” Like the creators’ previous titles—Not a Bean (2019) and Not a Monster (2023)—this is a playful look at a potentially misunderstood creature. González’s earth-toned illustrations are both “aw”-inspiring and meticulously

detailed, especially the cutaway images of the underground homes. A celebration of environmental action, a look at a most fascinating rodent, and an exploration of Spanish shape words—this one succeeds on all fronts.

A worthy continuation of a stellar series. (Spanish-English glossary, author’s note) (Informational picture book. 4-9)

Kirkus Star

Every Peach Is a Story

Masumoto, David Mas & Nikiko Masumoto Illus. by Lauren Tamaki | Abrams (40 pp.)

$18.99 | March 11, 2025 | 9781949480290

“A peach, like a story, needs time to grow.”

Midori, a young Japanese American girl, strides into her family’s orchard, followed by her Jiichan (Grandfather), to find ripe peaches. She takes a bite of one but…“crunch!” It’s still too hard. Jiichan urges Midori to be patient: “You’ll know it’s ready when it tastes like a story.”

Jiichan likens green peaches to the family’s ancestors when they first set foot in the United States: “Things weren’t ready. They felt like strangers.” Time goes by, and Midori picks up a yellow peach; it’s firm but has a soft spot. Midori’s father compares it to the family farm: “We [began] by planting roots in America in one spot.” More time passes, and when Jiichan hands Midori another peach, she takes a juicy bite and detects the seeds of her family’s efforts embodied in the sweet fruit. The seasons pass, and Jiichan dies. In his absence, Midori returns to the orchard, drawing on his guidance as she employs her senses and

picks a peach that truly tastes like a story. Narrated in a mix of free verse and prose, the Masumotos’ spare, haikulike text is simple yet laden with lush imagery. Using loose inky-black lines awash with vivid splashes of green, yellow, orange, and blue, Tamaki’s gorgeous illustrations propel this quiet tale forward, evoking Midori’s energy and curiosity. A mouthwatering gem to share with young gardeners everywhere. (authors’ note) (Picture book. 4-7)

Girls to the Front:

40 Asian American Women Who Blazed a Trail

Mata, Niña | Harper/HarperCollins (96 pp.)

$19.99 | Jan. 28, 2025 | 9780063216280

Profiles in greatness. In her foreword, Mata describes how alienating it felt to learn a monolithic version of history: “What if I had opened a book and it told me an extraordinary story about a girl who looked like me?” Here she writes the work her younger self longed for—a celebration of 40 Asian American women who “pushed their way to the front.” She covers both well-known subjects (author Amy Tan, fashion designer Vera Wang, vice president Kamala Harris) and those potentially less familiar (Mary Tape, a 19thcentury Chinese American immigrant who fought for her children’s right to an education; Gyo Fujikawa, a Japanese American children’s book illustrator). Each entry is accompanied by an engaging portrait, surrounded by colorful doodles that playfully hint at their contributions. And though the

A mouthwatering gem to share with young gardeners everywhere.

Kirkus Star

profiles aren’t in any chronological order, readers will get a taste of the historical events that shaped the lives of these women: An entry on actor Anna May Wong addresses the racism she confronted, as well as the practice of “yellow face”; a profile on historian Erika Lee touches on the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the California Gold Rush on her own family. Young readers and their caregivers will find this an accessible entry point for learning about these compelling women. A glossary is included, and quotes are interspersed throughout the book, though they aren’t cited.

Shines a much-needed spotlight on Asian American trailblazers. (list of other notable women, glossary) (Collective biography. 8-12)

Elsewhere

Matheson, Shelby | Wombat Books (400 pp.) | $16.99 | May 13, 2025 9781761112140 | Series: Elsewhere, 1

At boarding school in Wales in 1914, 11-yearold Elsie discovers how extraordinary she is. When the invitation to enroll in Miss Coleridge’s Academy for Gifted Youths arrives for Elsie Clarke, a London resident who’s originally from Australia, she’s puzzled—no one in her family has heard of the school. But with war looming, her ostensibly neglectful parents—a plot point that isn’t believably developed—decide to send her there. After she arrives, Elsie is surprised to discover that she, along with eight others, are Gifted: Unlike their merely academically talented classmates, they each have a special ability—invisibility, acute hearing, super strength, and so on—which they must keep secret even as they’re covertly mentored. Elsie, who’s cued white, discovers that she’s a Guardian, someone with the Gift of being able to open Gateways to Elsewhere. As the war breaks out, Elsie and the other Gifted are

A nostalgic story that will appeal to lovers of old-fashioned tales.

EVIE AND RHINO

disturbed by the headmistress’ plan to turn the school into a military academy, and they band together to try to get rid of her. The heavy reliance on telling rather than showing deadens the interesting premise, and the overt themes of respecting differences and not becoming intolerant like grown-ups are delivered with unleavened earnestness. In monologues, Elsie spouts insights far beyond her age and life experience that don’t feel authentic to her characterization and mostly come across as preachy and sanctimonious.

An imaginative plot undermined by weak delivery. (Historical fantasy. 9-13)

I Am NOT a Vampire

McKenna, Miles | Illus. by Riley Samels Little Bee Books (32 pp.) | $18.99 May 6, 2025 | 9781499816235

In this picture book from actor and LGBTQ+ advocate McKenna, a young monster goes down a path of self-exploration. Arlo is a vampire. Well, sort of. Everyone else in the family is a vampire. Arlo’s parents and 12 younger brothers have wan complexions, dark silky hair, sharp fangs, and pointy batlike ears. Even the baby, swaddled in a black bat suit, shows off his fangs as he giggles. Arlo, with shaggy brown hair, rounded ears, peachy-pink skin, and no fangs, sticks out. And while the others “can fly around in the dark and not hit a thing,” Arlo is “always knocking into things.” Arlo’s parents, who resemble Morticia and Gomez Addams, urge their eldest to be patient. But Arlo is skeptical. The Harvest Moon Festival offers Arlo an

opportunity for self-discovery; according to legend, the harvest moon gives all who attend the power to embrace their true selves. Arlo soon has an epiphany: “I’m a werewolf!” Published in partnership with GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), this effective allegory for the queer experience captures a child’s yearning to fit in while feeling acutely different from siblings and peers. It’s wonderful to see Arlo’s journey occurring within the embrace of a loving family; this is both a thought-provoking delight and a balm. Samels’ cute, clever illustrations complete the package; the vampire family’s elegant uniformity, their gently gothic home, and the Halloweeny atmosphere of their little town set a distinct scene without overwhelming the narrative. A sweet celebration of identity. (Picture book. 3-6)

Evie and Rhino

McMullin, Neridah | Illus. by Astred Hicks | Walker Books Australia (272 pp.) $18.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781761600302

In 1891 Australia, a girl grieving the loss of her parents bonds with a shipwrecked rhinoceros. Evie, 10, hasn’t spoken since her parents died at sea two years ago. She lives with her ornithologist grandfather in “crumbling” Lunar House in a remote corner of the state of Victoria, where they are tended by Cook (their housekeeper) and Mr. Duffer (their farmhand). Evie has a preternatural affinity for animals, so

when she comes across Rhino stranded on the beach, she’s unafraid and leads him home to the stables. Rhino’s an astonishingly agreeable fellow and quickly endears himself to the household, even going so far as to help Cook with the laundry. Nevertheless, Grandpa telegraphs the authorities and learns Rhino had been bound for the Royal Melbourne Zoo, which dispatches a representative to retrieve him. Evie frets over the prospect of losing Rhino, and Grandpa frets over the effect his loss will have on Evie. Basing her tale on a real incident, the shipwreck of the SS Bancoora, McMullin’s cozy adventure of interspecies love and healing has the sentimental feel of children’s literature of yore. Rhino’s cloying adoration of “the golden-haired human child” is only slightly tempered by his appealing earthiness. The human characters read white, and, underscoring the social class differences, the servants’ speech is rendered phonetically (“Yer drenched. Come on, let’s git yer changed”). Hicks’ grayscale drawings punctuate the text. A nostalgic story that will appeal to lovers of old-fashioned tales. (author’s note, recipe) (Historical fiction. 8-11)

Grandmas Are Magic

Méndez, Yamile Saied | Illus. by Minji Kim | Disney Press (40 pp.) | $17.99 March 25, 2025 | 9781368077033

T he grandmas of Disney are here— and they’ve got wisdom to impart.

Gramma Tala (from Moana) pushes her titular granddaughter to “listen to the powerful voice inside her.” Grandma Paguro, from Luca —a sea monster, like her grandson—urges Luca to take risks and to find friends who will love and accept him. Grandma Fa (from Mulan) makes her granddaughter laugh when times are tough. Méndez also compares these elders to readers’ own grandmothers; like Abuela Alma from Encanto, for instance, “your grandma will learn what makes you special.” While Disney

fans will get the most out of the book, the examples are general enough to make sense even to those unfamiliar with the films—though one section may confuse readers who haven’t seen Coco. Kim’s soft-hued, sunny illustrations refer to scenes from the movies, and although her artwork retains the style of the original animation, overall, it has a visual cohesiveness. Will some grown-ups find it all a tad cheesy? Yes, but little readers will enjoy seeing beloved characters on the page and will warm to the messages of grandmotherly magic. The book features mostly characters of color. A sweet tale to listen to while curled up in a grandma’s lap—preferably after the screening of a favorite Disney flick. (Picture book. 4-7)

Ready, Set, Roll!

Montagnana, Alessandro | Trans. by Emily Clement | Orchard/Scholastic (48 pp.) $14.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781546152422

A mislaid roll of toilet paper brings great joy to a group of forest animals. The title page sees a paleskinned youngster holding the hand of an adult (whose face is never seen) and leaving a roll of toilet paper on a stump, presumably after using it on a camping adventure. The animals have never seen such a sight before. What could this strange item be? A rotund, dumpy bear fashions a necktie out of a few sheets. “Don’t I look ELEGANT?” A moose agrees and quickly wraps some paper around its antlers. What fun! The animals take great pleasure in wrapping, fluttering, tearing, and tossing. The possibilities seem endless.

But of course, the more the roll is used, the smaller it becomes; then comes the biggest foe of all: rain. Everyone scurries to shelter while the toilet paper dissolves. To complete the full-circle narrative, the youngster returns with the adult, who’s in desperate need of some toilet paper. Luckily, there just may be a few squares left. While this quirky Italian import meanders a bit and requires close inspection of the illustrations to gain a fuller, more cohesive story, the wide-eyed woodland cast is an adorable delight. The potty humor will have little ones giggling—and seeing everyday items in a fresh light. Encourages readers to look at ordinary objects in new, unexpected ways. (Picture book. 3-6)

I Am Rebel

Montgomery, Ross | Candlewick (240 pp.) $18.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9781536246797

Devotion permeates this tale of a small dog who’s swept up in a peasants’ revolt against a greedy king. Inflamed with righteousness in the wake of yet another tax hike, 12-year-old Tom has defied his parents to slip away and join the revolutionary Reds. Stoutly declaring that he’s a good dog, 5-year-old Rebel chases after him to bring his beloved boy back—and discovers a wide new world beyond the farm, fraught with dangers but also rich in animal friends offering help and advice. Just as beguiling as the furry narrator’s dog’s-eye view of events are

The grandmas of Disney are here—and they’ve got wisdom to impart.

ARE MAGIC

his ongoing arguments with Jaxon, a gruff feral hound he meets along the way, who urges him to find his wild inner True Dog. Jaxon’s refusal to be bound by emotional attachments ultimately clashes with Rebel’s big, uncomplicated heart. Following a brush with death, Rebel encounters a mystical Companion, who offers him glimpses of dog heaven; when the climactic battle arrives, Rebel declares, “I get to decide what I do with my one and only life. And if I use it for anything, I’m going to use it for love.” The author brings the odyssey to a satisfactory conclusion with one last, pure affirmation of love. In this story set in an alternate Britain reminiscent of its 17th-century Civil War, Rebel distinguishes humans in the cast by their voices, smell, and dress. Heartwarming fare for young pet owners who feel the love and loyalty going both ways. (Fiction. 9-12)

Confessions of a Junior Spy

Munda, Rosaria | Feiwel & Friends (224 pp.)

$19.99 | $8.99 paper | June 10, 2025 9781250363800 | 9781250363794 paper Series: Confessions of a Junior Spy, 1

A top spy’s daughter gets involved in a mission against her mother’s wishes in order to save her friend.

Beatrice Bates has never set foot outside the Pangean Hotel. It’s part of an international network of sanctuaries for the Pangean League, a secret organization working toward world peace. Bea’s mom, one of the world’s best spies, is rarely home. Even though she ends up stitching up her mom’s wounds, Bea longs to follow in her footsteps and use the skills she’s learned at the Pangean— like self-defense, languages, and wiretapping—to help people. But Bea’s mom wants her to live like a “Normal” person and plans to send her off to boarding school. Bea makes a new friend, Chantal, whose family are

Normal guests who are hiding at the Pangean as they try to escape from a threat. Bea wants to help Chantal, but living out her spy dreams could mean disappointing her mother. This adventurous series opener has a clear, quick plot that fluidly drives the story forward within its well-drawn world. The Slavic-coded Arctic League, which has “a totally different definition of world peace,” is on a ruthless quest for “world domination.” Bea’s mom, Anya Batrova, who’s a rare “ex-Arctic assassin,” now only works for “good countries,” but the narrative doesn’t explicitly differentiate between oppressive governments and their people. Bea presents white, and Chantal reads Black.

A fast-paced romp that leans into ethnic stereotypes. (hotel rules, map, guide to hotel services) (Adventure. 8-12)

Gamers: Attempting Connection

Myers, E.C. | Pixel+Ink (272 pp.) $17.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781645952688 Series: Gamers, 1

A beloved video game leads to new friends for a girl who’s just switched schools.

When Chell (with “a hard sound, as in ‘chair,’” thank you very much) Park gets called to Principal Gupta’s office, she can’t help but take the opportunity to play a round of Soapbox Derby while she waits. Three nearby kids take an interest in what she’s doing: injured athlete Mario Delgado, who’s cued Latine, Josh Bard, a “vampire pale” boy with hearing aids, and Alyx Achebe, whose Black-presenting family founded a successful baked-goods franchise. The four connect online and decide to start their school’s first esports team. Chell forges ahead, though she knows her mom would never agree; she was named after a character from her unemployed father’s favorite video game, and his gaming (which got him fired and which he often prioritizes over his daughter) is a

source of conflict between her separated parents. Chell’s deception is bound to catch up to her, but the four seventh graders secure a faculty sponsor and try out for an exciting tournament, all the while growing closer and opening up to one another. Exciting gaming scenes accompany gentle, emotional explorations of telling the truth even in the face of undesirable consequences. Chell is implied biracial, with a Korean American dad and a mom who reads white. A refreshingly original high-interest, low-grit video game story. (Fiction. 8-12)

Soni and the Life Drinkers

Nguru, Shiko | Illus. by Melissa McIndoe Lantana (200 pp.) | $18.99 | May 6, 2025 9781836290018 | Series: Intasimi Warriors, 3

A magically gifted Kenyan girl and her three friends band together to fight evil and save their beloved mentor. Twelve-year-old Soni has her eyes on the prize: winning first place at Vunja Mifupa, an annual middle school dance contest. Running through the choreography with her teammates at Savanna Academy keeps her mind off her mentor Mr. Lemayian’s rapidly declining health. He helped Soni and the other Intasimi Warriors—Mwikali, Odwar, and Xirsi—come into their powers and defeat evil. But Soni’s plans for dance domination are interrupted by the sudden arrival of Thandiwe, a shiqq-human hybrid claiming to be her cousin. Thandiwe says she can help them find the Life Drinker, the malevolent monster draining Mr. Lemayian of his life force. Can Soni trust her? The Intasimi Warriors have been betrayed before. But with Mr. Lemayian growing weaker by the day, they can’t afford to refuse help. As they work together to find the Life Drinker, a bigger plot is revealed, and the balance of the world falls into their hands. In this third series

installment, Nguru expands the boundaries of the world, adding new creatures and showing the diversity of Nairobi’s neighborhoods. Soni’s headstrong spirit and fierce dedication serve her well, but she learns to temper her impulsive nature when working with others. The ending is satisfying while leaving readers hungry for the next book. Bristling with action from cover to cover. (Fantasy. 9-13)

Counting on Dad

Odd Dot | Illus. by Valentina Jaskina

Odd Dot (32 pp.) | $18.99 | $8.99 paper May 13, 2025 | 9781250345431 9781250345448 paper | Series: Counting On

Count from 1 to 10 with these fathers and their young. From under the sea to the high treetops, readers bounce through various habitats as dads interact with their offspring. A tentacled octopus reaches for his babies (“1 dad stretching”). In a meadow of purple flowers, cats tussle with their kittens (“9 dads cuddling”). Otters snuggle with their pups while floating down the river (“5 dads relaxing”). On each spread, a bold numeral in a pillowy font takes center stage, surrounded by full spreads of countable fathers and their young (only the dads match their equivalent numbers; many more babies are often present). The bright, utterly cute artwork depicts the pairs gazing adoringly at each other, except when they’re snoozing with arms wrapped tightly around each other. The fathers often help pass down life skills—six bears teach their cubs how to hunt salmon, while eight birds demonstrate how to whistle a song. The culminating spread (“So many amazing dads! / Count all the dads around you”) brings more pops into the fold, combining some animals seen on previous pages but also adding new friends.

A sweet ode to fatherhood that takes a walk on the wild side. (Picture book. 2-5)

This is one treat kids will be eagerly reaching for come October.

IT’S ALMOST TIME FOR…HALLOWEEN!

It’s Almost Time for…Halloween!

Oso, Maisha | Illus. by Tom Knight | McElderry (32 pp.) | $10.99 | July 15, 2025 | 9781665980128

Series: It’s Almost Time For…

Get ready, everyone! It’s nearly time for a very important holiday.

“When leaves turn brown, then tumble down,” announces a brown-skinned child, “beware! / A spooky day is on its way.” The young narrator goes on to offer gleeful guidance—and some clear hints—about the upcoming special event and all the enjoyable activities involved in getting ready for it, including putting up decorations (“Whatever makes you scream”), picking out a pumpkin (who’s that older, pink-cheeked, white-bearded, red-suited gent the youngster spots at the pumpkin farm?), carving a jack-o’-lantern, whipping up delicious pumpkin-flavored goodies, deciding on a costume, listening to scary stories, marching in a parade, and trick-or-treating. All this comes just in time for…Christmas? Boo! Of course not! The colorful, fun-filled—but not the least bit frightening—holiday in question is, of course, HALLOWEEN! Even the youngest readers and listeners will easily catch on. Bouncy verse that scans well is paired with cheery, bright illustrations filled with familiar Halloween symbols and accoutrements—the visuals are high-spirited in every sense of the word. Background characters are racially diverse; one child uses a wheelchair. This is one treat kids will be eagerly reaching for come October. (Picture book. 4-7)

Sweet Valley Twins: The New Girl

Pascal, Francine | Adapt. by Nicole Andelfinger Illus. by Knack Whittle | Colors by Lyle Lynde & Remus Jackson | Random House Graphic (224 pp.) | $21.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9780593807255

Series: Sweet Valley Twins, 6

In this latest series entry, the new student at Sweet Valley Middle School makes a bad first impression. Twins Jessica and Elizabeth create their own new girl, fictional triplet sister Jennifer, after Brooke, their unpleasant new neighbor from Los Angeles, holds them in contempt. Brooke, with her chic, excessively formal clothes, gives off a snooty vibe, turning up her nose at anything local, disparaging Jessica and calling her Unicorns club “Uni-duds,” and insulting the school paper Liz is proud to work on. When Brooke accidently spills paint on Jessica’s book fair poster, classmates attribute the mishap to malice, and her fate as a pariah is sealed. The sisters take turns posing as Jennifer, whose friendly overtures soften Brooke up. She even confides in Jennifer that she’s hurt by her workaholic father’s neglect and her mother’s abandonment. Jessica plots to give Brooke a public comeuppance, while Liz, as usual, shows more sensitivity, integrity, and compassion than her twin, but loyalty leads her to participate in the scheme, performing the role of Jennifer. Disaster, remorse, and the requisite apologies from the blue-eyed, strawberry blond twins follow—and there’s even a promise of brighter days ahead for Brooke at

home. The lively artwork, which uses bright pastels for most of the story, switches to darker jewel tones during scenes of emotional distress. Brooke has light brown skin and dark brown hair, and a Black-presenting supporting character is nonbinary. The friendship dynamics are easy to follow; fans will be pleased. (cast of characters) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

The Beautiful Layers of Me

Payne, Sophia | Illus. by Ruchi Mhasane Candlewick (40 pp.) | $18.99

June 24, 2025 | 9781536242898

A young girl receives her first salwar kameez. It’s Ameena’s auntie’s nikah (a Muslim wedding ceremony), and Ameena feels like a princess as she dons the tunic, pants, and dupatta that Babu (Dad) hands her. But when she heads outside, her neighbor mistakes the outfit for a pair of pajamas. The innocent comment fills Ameena with doubt. She attempts to confide in her mother, but Amma’s busy preparing for the wedding. While fidgeting, Ameena accidentally rips her tunic, forcing her to change into a Westernstyle dress. She’s filled with relief until a younger cousin asks Ameena why she’s not wearing a salwar kameez, too. Luckily, Ameena’s regret is short-lived; thanks to Babu’s quick handiwork, she ends up wearing the newly mended salwar kameez with confidence and joy. Ameena’s emotional twists and turns feel authentic and relatable, and her eventual pride in her outfit—and, by extension, her identity—will resonate with young people. In Mhasane’s tidily composed illustrations, the brown-skinned family’s bright ensembles pop against the relatively subdued backgrounds. Babu’s words—“These clothes are a part of our heritage”—hearten Ameena and will do the same for readers, though some youngsters may be curious

about her background, which isn’t discussed in depth (the brief glossary refers to the Guyanese term “gyal” and defines “salwar kameez” as a “South Asian garment”). An affirming story about accepting and loving ourselves and our cultural traditions. (Picture book. 4-8)

Creatively Human: Why We Imagine, Make and Innovate

Peterson, Lois | Illus. by

Madeline Yee

Orca (96 pp.) | $26.95 | March 11, 2025 9781459837775 | Series: Orca Think, 18

An earnest pep talk for beginning or tentative inventors, artists, upcyclers, and would-be innovators. Defining creativity broadly enough to include deciding what to wear in the morning, Peterson offers readers plenty of encouragement. Though her grasp on historical background is sometimes weak (evidence of bead making goes back much further than 2,000 years, and Marco Polo did not bring piñatas to Mexico), her tally of potential ways and means of expression displays a free-ranging imagination. Accompanied by a running list of alphabetically arranged creative activities from acting to Zackenstil painting, she jumbles together quick references to everything from scientific inventions to tattoos and hand-painted “kindness rocks,” introductions to working innovators in different countries, a list of traditional media, a catalog of advances in adaptive and assistive technology, and affirmations that arts and crafts are helpful, whether for therapy or raising environmental awareness. “Art, music, dance, theater, architecture and design all have the potential to change the world we live in,” she writes. Her credo can be taken as “Everyone is creative!” In the color photos and graphic images

scattered throughout, the figures engaged in everything from dancing to making sand castles are as diverse in age as they are in race, physical ability, and cultural cues. Wide-ranging and rousing in tone. (glossary, resources, index) (Nonfiction. 11-13)

Thelma Bee and the Darkwood Queen

Petti, Erin | Illus. by Yevheniia Lytvynovych & Suchat Longthara | Snowy Wings Publishing (236 pp.) | $24.99 | May 6, 2025 9781958051955

In this trilogy closer, a terrifying darkness threatens the town of Riverfish and is intent on consuming Thelma Bee. When the Haunted Dungeon, a local Halloween attraction located in an abandoned military fort, starts to live up to its moniker, Thelma Bee and her pals from the Riverfish Valley Paranormal Society are on the case. They meet with Willy (the older man who runs the attraction) and his teenage helpers and explore the tunnels. There Thelma has a brush with a power unlike anything she’s experienced since learning she’s part of the ancient Disiri sisterhood. Could the Darkwood Queen be more than just a local urban legend? Following the encounter, Thelma notices alarming changes in her own personality: She’s quick to anger and even shouts at her best friend, Alexander. Thelma and the RVPS must exorcise the town of evil in time to attend their middle school dance on Halloween. This action-packed page-turner is highly entertaining, and it’s a story about self-discovery and friendship as much as it is about a haunting. Thelma and her pals face plenty of scary situations, and they must use their reasoning skills and their emotional insights to find their way through. Readers will want to read the previous

two series entries to fully appreciate this one. Most characters present white, and two siblings in the friend group are Korean American. A delightfully spooky story with a heart—and hearty laughs to boot! (Ghost story. 8-12)

The Doughnut Club

Rahim, Kristina | Nosy Crow (256 pp.) $17.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9798887771533

Quinn’s summer is transformed when she learns surprising news from her moms. En route to their annual seaside holiday, 12-year-old Quinn’s mothers drop some big news: They’ve learned, from a website that connects families formed through donor conception, of the existence of 16 kids born to parents who used the same donor that Quinn and her 10-year-old brother share (Mom, who’s white, is the biological mother of pale, red-haired, green-eyed Quinn, while brownskinned Mama is Olly’s biological mother). Quinn secretly logs into the website and, posing as Mom, initiates contact with a nearby family. She’s also secretly pleased to have broken her wrist—now she’s exempt from the frenzy of physical activities the rest of her “action-obsessed family” enjoys. Instead, she can draw and take walks; she even makes a new friend in an elderly man named Fred. Unfortunately, 13-year-old bully Monika Webber, whose family also summers at the same hotel, is hanging around. Quinn, who feels out of place in her family, hopes that one of her donor siblings will be more like her, so she’s appalled to find clues that make her suspect Monika may actually be her half sister. Things come to a head when Olly goes missing, and Quinn is pushed to new limits as she wrestles with concepts of family. Despite some two-dimensional characterization and a conclusion that ties things up too

Supremely sophisticated bedtime fare that revels in its own peculiar humor.

LAMBERTO, LAMBERTO, LAMBERTO

neatly, this novel fills an important space in queer middle-grade fiction. A relatable dive into the world of donor conception. (Fiction. 9-12)

Randy Rainbow and the Marvelously Magical Pink Glasses

Rainbow, Randy | Illus. by Jaimie MacGibbon | Feiwel & Friends (40 pp.) $18.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9781250900777

C omedian, singer, and YouTube star Rainbow urges readers not to let others dim their light.

Young Randy Rainbow lives life out loud. While his classmates wear “dull blue jeans and drab T-shirts,” he sports “brightly colored three-piece suits and sparkly bow ties,” paints his nails, and listens to Broadway albums. After being called a “weirdo” at school, he tries to tamp down his sparkly side. While helping his grandmother sort through some of her old belongings, he stumbles across a pair of magical cat-eye glasses that, according to Nanny, allow whoever puts them on to “be anything and anywhere [they] want.” After rocking the glasses at school and a number of other locations, Randy becomes popular and confident, but when he breaks them on the way to a birthday party, he’s despondent. Nanny reveals that the glasses never had any powers; the magic was in Randy all along. While the message about being true to oneself is an important one, the unevenly paced, wordy text often tells more than it shows. At times it feels

as though the author’s trying to pad out a somewhat thin story; multiple examples of Randy sporting his new specs in a variety of scenarios drag quite a bit. Swirls of pink feature prominently in MacGibbon’s cartoon illustrations. Randy and Nanny are pale-skinned; hints in the text suggest that they may be Jewish. Long-winded but uplifting nonetheless. (Picture book. 5-8)

Shoes Off, Please

Rhee, Helena Ku | Illus. by Myo Yim Random House Studio (40 pp.) $18.99 | June 17, 2025 | 9780593649626

A child finds a way to make her friends understand the importance of a family rule. While Mina’s pals enjoy coming over to her apartment for snacks, they don’t love her family’s shoes-off rule. Mina decides to avoid confrontation and opts to say nothing when everyone wears their shoes inside. Later, as Mina and her seamstress mother clean the shoe prints off the floor, she asks, “Mama, can we just wear shoes inside? None of my friends have a shoes-off rule at home.” Her mother responds with empathy but urges Mina to think about the practice as a way of expressing respect for their ancestors, their home, and each other. After some reflection and a little collaboration, Mina comes up with a creative way to help her friends follow the rule while also learning about their customs. With sweetness, this story conveys how difficult it can be to maintain cultural traditions,

especially when the pressure to assimilate comes from well-meaning friends. Still, these customs connect us to our past, and, as Mina finds, they can also be a way to honor those we love. Yim’s pastel and pencil artwork captures Mina’s compact apartment and vibrant community with coziness and warmth. Mina and her mother have tan skin and black hair; other characters are diverse. A gentle exploration of cultural traditions. (Picture book. 4-8)

Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto

Rodari, Gianni | Illus. by Roman Muradov

Trans. by Antony Shugaar | Enchanted Lion Books (168 pp.) | $29.95 Jan. 28, 2025 | 9781592704156

In this Italian import, first published in 1978, an elderly nobleman discovers the secret to youth…and endures the troubles that follow. On a private island, 93-yearold Baron Lamberto abides with 24 maladies and his manservant, Anselmo. Together, the two invite six people to repeat the name “Lamberto” without cease. They are well paid and well fed but baffled by the assignment. They wouldn’t be if they could see how their efforts cause the aged baron to grow younger and younger. His greedy nephew Ottavio catches wind of the operation and schemes to get his inheritance sooner, but his nefarious plans are upended by the arrival of 24 bandits who promptly ransom Lamberto for their own purposes. While the storytelling traipses dangerously close to being more amusing to adults than children, its illogical logic more often than not transcends age. Translator Shugaar perfectly taps into the fiasco’s flavor, deftly displaying Rodari’s propensity for silliness, though his introduction makes it clear that there are political messages

embedded throughout, which young readers likely won’t pick up on. Muradov’s illustrations pay homage to Bruno Munari’s abstract artwork, featured in the book’s 1980 edition, while giving the tale a gentle tone entirely of its own. Some parents or caregivers may be a bit perturbed by the images of oversize guns. Characters have skin the white of the page. Supremely sophisticated bedtime fare, Rodari’s mildly muddled hoot revels in its own peculiar humor. (Fiction. 8-12)

On the Move: Things in Motion on Earth and Beyond

Romanyshyn, Romana & Andriy Lesiv Trans. by Oksana Luschevska Enchanted Lion Books (64 pp.)

$19.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9781592704149

In this Ukrainian import, husbandand-wife team Romanyshyn and Lesiv use bright, retro infographics to examine the concept of movement.

“Every journey begins with a single step,” the authors write, introducing the first set of numerous facts to come: “People started wearing protective coverings on their feet as early as 40,000 years ago.” A wide range of information follows, encompassing the invention of the wheel 6,000 years ago, ancient paths traveled for trade and pilgrimages, forms of exploration (space and seafaring), a consideration of time travel, and muchneeded advice to “rest and reflect” by writing in one’s travelogue. One lively spread includes a familiar “you are there” marker to set readers amid the “Wonders of the World,” in this case the Pyramids of Giza and Chichén Itzá, complete with a friendly-looking information booth. Four spreads are devoted to animal migrations, like those made by monarch butterflies and whales, and another spread wistfully describes “how freely wind and water travel,

knowing no boundary or limit.”

Vocabulary definitions abound: nomad , brachiation , immigrant , and refugee. The action-packed graphics themselves nearly spill off the page, and the italicized text seems to be in perpetual motion. The generally faceless humans vary in skin tone (some are more fancifully hued); one figure recurs—a pale-faced character with a single curly hair, reminiscent of the Belgian cartoon character Tintin.

Sophisticated graphics, laden with information. (Informational picture book. 7-10)

The Dreams I’ll Dream Tonight

Ruhl, Sarah | Illus. by Sally Deng Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $19.99 July 22, 2025 | 9781534453296

Two-time Pulitzer finalist Ruhl offers youngsters a playbook for a good night’s sleep. In text addressed to a parent, a child offers ideas for warding off unpleasant dreams and enjoying good ones. The youngster proposes that the parent “read just one more book to me the way you always do. Then I won’t dream of dragons. Instead, I’ll dream of you.” Smart kid. In fact, this child already seems to know how to conjure up agreeable nighttime images: “Tonight I won’t have nightmares. No bad dreams for me. Instead, I’m going to dream about a hippo sipping tea.” Throughout this soothing narrative, the protagonist delivers reassuring ideas, expressed via bouncy, rhythmic verses that evoke genial, sometimes comical reveries. Importantly, the child demonstrates an ability to conquer images that might otherwise prove fearsome: “And I won’t dream of monsters hiding by that chair. That monster was a kitten—his tail was in the air!” At one point, the child decides to “choose to dream

about…a dream inside a dream”—an empowering statement indeed. As morning peeps through the window, the young narrator slips off to sleep, saying, “I’m going to dream about…” This sweet book will help embolden dreamers to overcome nighttime apprehensions; kids will welcome repeat readings. Employing crayonlike textures and eye-catching imagery, the soft, muted illustrations match the text perfectly. Parent and child are pale-skinned. A very welcome addition to the bedtime-story canon. (page for readers to write their own dreams) (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Star

Amina Banana and the Formula for Friendship

Safadi, Shifa Saltagi | Illus. by Aaliya Jaleel Putnam (128 pp.) | $16.99 | May 20, 2025 9780593699225 | Series: Amina Banana, 1

Amina has crafted the perfect formula for fitting in. Having recently settled in Indianapolis with her Syrian refugee family, Amina is starting third grade late in the term. She plans to “speak English perfectly, wear a perfect outfit, be a good student, [and] eat American food.” But everything unravels when she mispronounces words and struggles to be understood—to the scorn of some of her classmates. When the students are told they must each give a presentation on a dish they’ve prepared, Amina is disheartened—how can she deliver a whole speech in English? But after talking with Egyptian American classmate Fatima, Amina finds a recipe for friendship and belonging. Safadi and Jaleel seamlessly weave Amina’s Syrian and Muslim identities into both art and text. Safadi pinpoints experiences that many English language learners

Immensely rewarding, with teachable moments for readers young and old.

AMINA BANANA AND THE FORMULA FOR FRIENDSHIP

will recognize: the oddity of idioms, the often-frustrating gap between Amina’s rich inner monologue and her less-than-fluent spoken dialogue, the loneliness that results from not being able to fully communicate, and the joys of forging connections as Amina becomes part of a warm, diverse group of friends. Her journey is realistically rocky but immensely rewarding, with teachable moments for readers young and old—for instance, a classmate correcting a teacher who mispronounces Amina’s name. Children will be heartened by Amina’s small triumphs, like when a new friend lovingly graces her with the nickname “Amina Banana.”

A winning series starter with layers of depth. (scientific method steps, science experiment, recipe for ful mdamas [fava beans], author’s note about the Syrian refugee crisis) (Chapter book. 7-10)

Bob the Boo-Boo

Schoenborn, Mélina | Illus. by Sandra Dumais | Kids Can (24 pp.) | $16.99 June 3, 2025 | 9781525313837

“An adorable little boo-boo” seeks the right spot of skin for a temporary home in this tale originally published in Quebec and translated from French. Yes, Bob is cute; he’s a wide-eyed, smiling red dot with skinny arms and legs. And on this windy, chilly day, he sets off, bindle over his shoulder, in search of a “warm and cozy place to settle down.” The tongue-in-cheek text will evoke readers’ empathy as Bob gets excited about a

brown-skinned young skateboarder’s “accident waiting to happen!” Giggles will ensue as two bigger, toughlooking boo-boos sneer at Bob, dissuading him from landing on the girl’s knee when she crashes. After facing more rejections, Bob has the good fortune to meet a boy who’s just fallen from his bike. The lightskinned, brown-haired boy welcomes Bob onto his knee, and the new friends head for the boy’s home. After proper introductions, the boy’s brown-skinned mother gently cleanses Bob and lets the boy choose a bandage. With each passing day, boy and boo-boo bond, even as new bandages reveal that Bob is shrinking. Minimalist, digitally rendered art that makes effective use of white space perfectly complements the quirky text, which will entertain older readers while helping little ones conquer fears of cuts and scratches— and even offers first-aid advice. Weirdly wonderful wound lore. (Picture book. 4-8)

Big Boy Joy

Schofield-Morrison, Connie | Illus. by Shamar Knight-Justice | Bloomsbury (32 pp.)

$18.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781547611515

An active child spends a busy day at a city playground. Narrating in first person, the youngster—a self-proclaimed “big boy”—lists his many abilities: He can run fast, walk slow, climb high, and “GO! GO! GO!” He can “SLIDE, SLIP, and CRASH!” Oops. A run-in with another child

leads to tears, but after the narrator apologizes, the two of them play with their toy dinosaurs, share a snack, and pretend to soar through outer space. Though a few adults appear, they’re largely relegated to the sidelines, keeping a watchful eye but allowing the youngsters to do what kids do best—have fun. Indeed, Schofield-Morrison depicts a refreshingly child-centric world, where little ones have the freedom to try new things, make mistakes, and solve their own problems. Minimal words (with plenty of onomatopoeia exuberantly presented in vibrant colors) and bold, simple images tell a story perfectly paced for toddlers and preschoolers. Knight-Justice zeroes in on details sure to please young audiences: a close-up of the protagonist intently turning the wheel on a toy vehicle, the drops of water sprayed by a sprinkler. Though tall buildings loom in the background, their appealing green space is filled with trees, plants, and bushes. Lettering on the protagonist’s sneakers, the slide, and the fence encircling the playground will encourage kids to identify letters they know. Both youngsters are Black.

Empowering and fun, like all the best outings. (Picture book. 2-5)

Willow and the Wildflowers

Schufman, Matthew | Random House Studio (40 pp.) | $18.99 June 24, 2025 | 9780593648308

Don’t let fears ruin your enjoyment of the world. Willow, a bear with an oblong head and tiny ears, typically stays at home. Though she’s often invited to events, she’s scared of so many things (water, the dark, and heights, to name a few) that she declines them all—until her love of flowers pushes her to say yes to a viewing of wildflowers at the seaside

fields. To get there, Willow must travel by raft, which gets stuck on some rocks. A frog tells Willow to jump into the water to help him push the raft. With his encouragement, the wary Willow eventually wades in, the raft is freed, and the frog joins the trip. As night falls, Willow shivers with fright, but a nearby raccoon hops on the raft and points out constellations and other phenomena in the sky. Then seagulls carry the new friends away from a treacherous waterfall, and Willow sees a beautiful view from high in the sky. The trip complete, Willow considers what it means to be brave. Though a bit purposeful, the narrative gently encourages readers to venture outside their comfort zones, especially when doing so yields great rewards and new experiences. Richly illustrated landscapes in marvelous speckled color shine on the page, while characters have an appealingly childlike cuteness to them, with big eyes and rounded heads. A worthwhile journey that may convince young worriers to overcome their own fears. (Picture book. 3-7)

Horse Camp

Seim, Carrie | Illus. by Steph Waldo Penguin Workshop (256 pp.) | $17.99 May 13, 2025 | 9780593754009 Series: Horse Girl, 2

W hen the beloved horse belonging to a “former frenemy” disappears, can first-time camper Willa solve the mystery? Having moved frequently for her mother’s military career, 14-year-old

aspiring #HorseGirl Willa only started taking riding lessons a year ago. When she gets a scholarship to the Colorado English-riding horse camp all her stable besties attend, it’s an “OMGEEEEE” and “!!!!!!!! ” moment. She’s surprised, though, that wealthy Amara gets to break camp rules and bring her own horse. Apparently, Amara’s parents’ donation has bought her that privilege—and Amara taunts Willa with the revelation that they’ve even funded Willa’s attendance, which Willa thought was awarded for merit. When Amara’s horse goes missing, Willa, feeling guilty for possibly leaving a gate open, determines to find Silver Streak herself. But even after she figures out it was a horsenapping, Willa keeps investigating. She’ll prove she belongs at Juniper Ranch! Enthusiastic, dramatic, and awkward, Willa peppers her narrative with exuberant punctuation, hilarious parenthetical asides, handwritten notes, and more. Horse lovers will appreciate the equine activities and details (including plentiful informative footnotes), mystery fans will enjoy the solid plot and fast pace, and those who like realistic fiction will love the friend drama and Willa’s crush on fellow camper Pasquale. Though the main characters have some depth, white-presenting Willa reads younger than 14, and the secondary characters are thinly sketched. The happy ending is more aspirational than realistic but still satisfying.

A fun, breezy, and enthusiastically punctuated camp mystery for readers who devour horse stories. (Mystery. 9-13)

A fun, breezy camp mystery for readers who devour horse stories.

HORSE CAMP

Bear

Shaloshvili, Natalia | Frances Lincoln (32 pp.)

$18.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781836002611

Holding in your feelings can have unintended consequences. Bear chills alone on a bench surrounded by beloved possessions including a cookie, a book, and a balloon. Fox comes over and asks, “Can I sit here?” Bear internally recoils; our protagonist’s inexpressive gaze says it all, but aloud, Bear replies, “Oh, sure.” Bear’s reluctance is suggested by the use of a larger, exaggeratedly shaky, handdrawn font, but Fox is unaware. Soon afterward, a menagerie arrives, asking for a bite of Bear’s cookie, to look at Bear’s book, and to hold Bear’s balloon. Each time, Bear responds yes through gritted teeth. As the bench becomes too crowded and Bear’s favorite activity—“sitting on my bench, all by myself”—becomes irritatingly untenable, Bear lets out a huge “AAAAARRRGH!,” and everyone scatters. Along the way, Bear’s annoyance is humorously captured in a series of increasingly tense and crowded spreads. Young readers (and many adults) will relate to the frustration of keeping one’s emotions in check and agreeing to things that they don’t want to do in the name of social politeness. Author/ illustrator Shaloshvili’s deadpan conversational text and her acrylic and watercolor crayon illustrations, with their moody gray palette against a stark white background, set the right tone. Fans of Jon Klassen’s inscrutable Hat books will find much to love here.

A humorous look at having the confidence to say what you want to say in the moment. (Picture book. 3-7)

The Best Worst Summer of Esme Sun

Shang, Wendy Wan-Long | Scholastic (224 pp.) | $19.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781546115380

With three high achievers for sisters, Chinese American sixth grader Esme Sun is sure she’ll never meet her mother’s expectations. Esme is looking forward to spending summer vacation at the local pool with her swim team. But this year, her plans for a carefree summer run into problems—her teammate Tegan (who presents white) seems more interested in boys and fashion than swimming, and she chides Esme for being “too intense.” A misunderstanding leads to a prickly relationship between Esme and new girl Kaya, who’s Black, and the swim meets lead to unpleasant encounters with more competitive swimmers. Esme finds herself torn between trying to stay close to Tegan, despite her mean jabs, and making new friends at the pool. As she begins to excel at the meets and finally wins her mother’s approval, Esme also has to decide if it’s better to put herself first and focus on winning—as her mom advises—or uphold the true sporting spirit and teamwork that the swim meets represent. Told from Esme’s first-person perspective, this well-crafted tale deftly examines the pressures of success and the courage necessary to find one’s own path. The characters are well etched and relatable, and the story

A glowing window into grieving that makes room for sorrow and joy to coexist.

gracefully underscores the importance of talking through problems with empathy and tolerance. Shang also addresses racism and colorism; Esme’s stand and her decisions in the face of her longed-for approval from her mother will resonate with readers.

A heartwarming coming-of-age tale about swimming, sisterhood, and principles. (Fiction. 8-12)

Threat of the Spider

Spradlin, Michael P. | McElderry (176 pp.)

$17.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9781665947237

Series: The Web of the Spider, 2

Inspired by his favorite fictional detective, 12-year-old Ansel investigates when his journalist father disappears just before a scheduled visit from Nazi kingpin Heinrich Himmler. People commonly believe that “it can’t happen here,” Spradlin writes meaningfully, as he did in his series opener (which centered on Ansel’s friend Rolf). “It can.” As the novel opens, a rock painted with the word “Judenliebhaber” (“Jew lover”) is thrown through Ansel’s window—just a hint of what’s to come. Ansel’s Bavarian town is gripped by rising tides of fear and excitement as the coming of Hitler’s lieutenant brings a flood of Nazi recruits and propaganda about lying journalists. When his defiantly anti-Nazi father drops out of sight, the bookish lad takes cues from the exploits of teen detective Dirk Goodly to seek out his whereabouts. Has he been kidnapped? Or worse? With help from Rolf and other allies, Ansel fearlessly antagonizes creepy, spiderlike Hans, too, even though the Hitler Youth leader has paramilitary brownshirt thugs at his back now and is certain to retaliate. Things seem hopeless, though along with perceptive efforts to explain how ordinary citizens could come to condone monsters, the author does try to lighten the load with banter and Ansel’s frequent

“Unassailable Facts of Life,” such as “#33: When the wise man flees, he leaves his pants behind.” Still, readers conscious of current events will have no trouble catching the episode’s ominous topicality.

Grim and plausible. (timeline, glossary) (Historical fiction. 11-13)

A Field Guide to Broken Promises

Stecher, Leah | Bloomsbury (308 pp.)

$17.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781547613069

Twelve-year-old Rivka “Evie” Steinberg is determined to be the perfect daughter and big sister. Thanks to countless moves following her mom’s TV news career, Evie’s only close friend is Dara Freedman. The girls share laughter and confidences at Camp Shir Shalom every summer. Previously her dad’s partner in his cryptozoology research, Evie blames herself for an accident that ruined a once-in-a-lifetime photo, and things haven’t been the same since. Now they’re moving to Southern California, maybe for good, and Evie is thrilled about putting down roots. But on her very first day of seventh grade at her new school, everything starts to unravel. She’s surprised to find Dara in her class—but Dara denies their friendship and tells everyone that Evie’s weird and a liar. Bullied and taunted, Evie can’t function at school. Jewish Evie forms an outsiders’ friendship with Charlie, who’s white, and Hannah, who’s Black. Evie shares her wild idea that this Dara is a golem, and the real Dara must be restored— but it all unravels, with disastrous results. Evie, who’s often mired in loneliness, depression, and self-loathing, narrates her story. Her dad is wrapping things up back in Idaho; Evie tries to meet her parents’ high expectations that she support her stressed-out mom during the move,

although doing so involves hiding her own struggles. The premise is original, and readers will sympathize with Evie, but the twisty, excessively repetitious tale is often hard to follow. An unfocused story exploring family drama, mistakes, and hope. (Fiction. 9-13)

If You Were Here

Stinson, Kathy | Illus. by Maya McKibbin Greystone Kids (40 pp.) | $18.95

May 13, 2025 | 9781771649926

A child mourns while taking in the marvels of the forest and ocean.

“I wish you were here,” begins this tender story. “Together we’d smell the damp mushrooms and moss deep inside these woods.” Narrated by a child with light brown skin and chestnut hair, the tale winds through a shining meadow, a temperate rainforest, and a pebbly shoreline. Stinson focuses on the young protagonist’s sensory experiences of the land and water all around, encouraging mindfulness and connection to the present moment: tasting “the ocean salt in the breeze,” seeing “the light poking through the clouds,” hearing “pebbles saying clickety-clack,” and feeling “the tickle of the sea-foam swish up between our toes.” Teeming with the flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest, where illustrator McKibbin (Ojibwe) lives, the vivid, full-bleed digital images bring life to a text filled with heartache and reverence for nature. Stinson’s narrator doesn’t go into detail about the missing loved one, allowing readers to see their own experiences reflected in the story; this could be a tale about someone who’s moved away, died, or is otherwise no longer a part of everyday life. Radiant images and a spacious narrative provide adults with an uplifting space to discuss heavy emotions with young ones.

A glowing window into grieving that makes room for sorrow and joy to coexist. (Picture book. 4-8)

Astronautical!

Stormie, Brooklin | Annick Press (248 pp.)

$16.99 paper | May 27, 2025 | 9781773219424

Two brothers cross the stars to save their father. One hundred years ago, the planet Zephyr in the Zephyr Galaxy shattered into countless neighboring chunks. Brothers Max and Lari watch their adoptive father get captured by the forces of Cynosure the planet breaker. A pair of twin stars agree to taxi them across the cosmos to get him back. Lari is immature the way a little sibling can be, goofing off and making himself the center of attention. Max, who’s proudly “almost thirteen,” is a little too eager to play the role of heroic captain. Together they meet anthropomorphic animals, a protostar in the form of a 1,000,006-year-old child, and sky-whales. There’s more to most characters than meets the eye, from the way Lari glows when he’s upset to Cynosure’s role in the breakup of Zephyr and the kidnapping of the boys’ dad. The combination of a space setting with fantasy logic makes for chaotic fun along the journey to the boys’ eventual maturation. The imaginative, jewel-toned illustrations contain visual clues that will engage readers, including the unnervingly large, black eyes of a mysterious old woman, and a map of the galaxy that changes to add new details at the beginning of each chapter. Most human characters have light skin; Max is pale with green hair, and Lari has tan skin and yellow hair. This debut adventure across the galaxy is a pleasure to navigate, both cosmically and emotionally. (science notes) (Graphic adventure. 8-12)

For more compelling graphic novels, visit Kirkus online.

Turns out, a short, furry knight in shining armor is the hero we all deserve.

MURRAY THE KNIGHT

Murray the Knight

Stower, Adam | Random House (192 pp.)

$16.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9798217031016

Series: Murray and Bun!, 1

An adventureadverse feline and his fearless sidekick are transported to the days of knights and chivalry. It’s not easy being a wizard’s cat. Murray the kitty would be perfectly content sleeping and eating his days away, but unfortunately he belongs to the “rubbish” wizard Fumblethumb, who has accidentally cast a spell on Murray’s cat flap. After Fumblethumb mistakenly turns a delicious frosted bun into a perky bunny (named Bun, appropriately), Bun and Murray make their way through the flap and find themselves transported from their ordinary suburban town to a medieval castle. There, they learn that Princess Rubytoes has fallen for the local gardener, Muddy Mick. Alas, their love is threatened by the devious Sir Nasty, who’s determined to marry Rubytoes and, assuming Murray’s here to court the princess, promptly challenges the cat to a joust. Will Murray, with Bun in tow, defeat the villain and aid the princess? This early chapter book has a distinctly British sensibility that charms with ease. Murray is 100% cat from tip to toe (his preferences run to “snoozing, napping, and sleeping”), yet he’s more than willing to help those in need. Bun’s the perfect foil for Murray, literally bouncing off walls in his eagerness to assist. Delightful

line art highlights the jokes and oozes utter cuteness. All human characters are light-skinned. Turns out, a short, furry knight in shining armor is the hero we all deserve. (Chapter book. 6-9)

Murray the Viking

Stower, Adam | Random House (192 pp.) $16.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9798217030989

Series: Murray and Bun!, 2

Herring, longboats, and inordinately pointy hats greet our hero in his latest outing.

“Adventuring always seems to be about DOING things rather than napping after eight herring sandwiches.” Alas for poor Murray the cat. Once again he’s called upon to be bold and intrepid. Ever since his useless owner, the wizard Fumblethumb, cast a spell on Murray’s cat flap, Murray’s found himself unwillingly going on adventures with his valiant (and adorable) rabbit sidekick, Bun. This time the duo are transported to the Viking era. Eggrik the Viking has disappeared, presumably taken by trolls, and according to Eggrik’s friends, it’s up to Murray to find and save him (assuming he hasn’t been eaten first). After Murray and Bun encounter the trolls in question, they realize that they’re likable creatures, more prone to sticking carrots up their noses than gobbling people. So where is Eggrik? The answer surprises everyone. Murray’s reluctance to embrace his role as hero only adds to the book’s entertainment

as he attempts to resist the call…and then saves the day anyway. Brief asides and subtle details in the delightful art combine for a tale that’s both memorable and funny. Human characters are light-skinned. Heroes aren’t born, they’re made…by slipping through enchanted cat flaps. A marvelous entry in a charming series. (Chapter book. 6-9)

The Salt Princess

Syed, Anoosha | Trans. by Humera Syed Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.)

$19.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9780063324718

Series: Everlasting Tales

In this retelling of a Pakistani folktale, a spirited princess teaches her father a lesson about love. In the Kingdom of Zammarud, four princesses live with their father, the king, beneath “a sky studded with diamonds.” While the elder three are graceful models of conventional femininity, the fourth, Princess Amal, is mischievous, clumsy, and quick with a witty retort. One day, the king asks his daughters to describe their love for him. While the eldest princesses compare their affection for their father to sugar, honey, and sherbet, Amal says that her love is “as plain and simple as the salt on this table.” Humiliated that his daughter would so publicly compare him to “something as common as salt,” the king banishes Amal. After fleeing to the forest, Amal befriends a prince with “kind, worried eyes.” After the two fall in love and contemplate marriage, Amal decides to play a prank on her estranged father—one that might repair their relationship. In an author’s note, Syed explains that “The Salt Princess” has been retold by cultures all around the world; with her version, she wanted to grapple with the king’s desire for social approval—something common in many South Asian communities.

Amal’s playfulness, wittiness, and independence come through clearly in Syed’s elegant prose, while her jewel-toned illustrations, surrounded by intricate borders or set against vivid backdrops, are a visual delight. Breathes radiant new life into a classic story. (Urdu and Roman Urdu versions of the story, translated by Humera Syed) (Picture book. 4-8)

The King and Nothing

Tallec, Olivier | Milky Way Picture Books (40 pp.)

$21.99 | March 18, 2025 | 9781990252389

A monarch contemplates the sole thing lacking from his life. Having collected all things conceivable, and more than a few things that don’t exist, the king finds himself literally wanting for nothing. In order to finally possess the one thing he doesn’t have, he sets out to explore the concept of nothing. Looking for something smaller than the tiniest animal, the king still finds microbes. “Or maybe,” he thinks, “when there is less and less of something, that leaves you with Nothing?” Cleaning up after his shedding dog, he still finds a minuscule piece of fur. Even the supposedly empty desert and night sky yield, respectively, rocks and stars. Eventually, the king opts to get rid of all his worldly goods; when the book wraps up, our protagonist, now nude, concludes that there’s “really, truly room for nothing.” The large-nosed, light-skinned king cuts a rather childlike figure in Tallec’s spare

illustrations. Depictions of the king’s many possessions—“caterpillars on bicycles, bicycles with caterpillar wheels, elephants without trunks”— hint at whimsy, but the book’s rather existential meditations drag on and may perplex readers. The punchline will leave some bemused, although in the hands of an adult willing to unpack heavy themes, the story might well spur discussions about greed and nothingness. Heady stuff, but potentially thought-provoking fare for budding existentialists. (Picture book. 6-9)

We’re All Gonna Die-nosaur!

Tan, Kon | Disney-Hyperion (160 pp.) $17.99 | April 1, 2025 | 9781368101912

Leather-winged Pterry (“the P is silent”) Dactylman may dream of becoming extinct, but our hero has more immediate worries after

being left to babysit unhatched little brother Ptodd.

As if waking up in the morning terrified by vivid visions of being a skeleton hanging in some future museum isn’t bad enough, Pterry, who can’t yet fly, is hard pressed to keep up with Ptodd. Despite being only an egg with legs, Ptodd shows an absolute genius for falling from high places, running out into traffic, and generally creating chaos wherever he goes. In big graphic panels designed for younger fans of the format, the popeyed, panicked-looking pterosaur pursues the errant Ptodd through New Rock City, from

Heady but potentially thought-provoking fare for budding existentialists.

skyscrapers to subways. A scene in which Pterry’s mom, just like a modern bird, horks up her halfdigested breakfast directly into her little one’s mouth may leave even readers who like their humor on the gross side a bit queasy. Still, Pterry’s multiple anxieties play well with all the physical comedy in this speedy series opener, and if Pterry’s trajectory from worrywart to fearless flyer comes a bit swiftly, it’s entertaining all the same.

Frenetic fun. (Graphic fantasy. 7-10)

This Is How a Ball Rolls: The Science of Wobbling, Bouncing, Spinning Balls

Tekavec, Heather | Illus. by Suharu Ogawa Kids Can (32 pp.) | $19.99 | June 3, 2025 9781525309687

It’s “Game on!” thanks to balls, from glass marbles to the “human hamster balls” called zorbs. Saluting a dozen types of round balls in roughly ascending order of size, Tekavec generates enough enthusiasm to put plenty of zip into her rolling, bouncing narrative. Most of the balls she describes are made to bounce, with marbles, bowling balls, soft juggler’s balls (made of “leather and beans”), and, arguably, baseballs being the exceptions. On each page, the author pairs upbeat verse with further facts in prose: “Basketballs need to be grippy, not slippy”; fuzz on a tennis ball slows it down so that players won’t break their rackets while swinging at it. Depicting a racially and culturally diverse cast, Ogawa cranks up the energy even further with scenes of excited young people (including some in hijabs, some in wheelchairs, and some in both) playing in or spectating both organized games and general rumpuses. Along with having a chance to learn a little more about different balls,

including some less familiar ones like yoga balls and the Kin-Ball (the “biggest sports ball in the world”), readers will come away with light doses of scientific background on relevant topics from elasticity to trajectories and aerodynamics. The author and illustrator have a ball with their subject, and so will readers. (Informational picture book. 7-10)

A Scrub in the Tub

Thomas, Jan | Beach Lane/ Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) | $17.99 June 3, 2025 | 9781665972963

Pig puts off bath time as long as possible. “Pee-ew! Someone needs a scrub in the tub!” says Rabbit. “Absolutely!” agrees Weasel. “Who needs a scrub in the tub?” asks the cheerfully oblivious Pig, surrounded by a greenish-yellow cloud of stench. “You, Pig!” says Rabbit. But Pig won’t listen. The two friends move behind a sweetsmelling bush as they attempt to persuade Pig to bathe. Pig tries a few other options: a quick splash of water, a mud bath, and even “a scrub with the shrub.” Finally, Pig gives in to their entreaties. The bubbles, the warm water, and the scrubbing brush are so pleasant that Pig wants to share the experience. The newly pink and clean Pig invites Rabbit and Weasel into the tub; it’s so much fun that they may never leave again! Speech balloons filled with accessible, cheerfully rhyming text and repeated refrains are chortleinducing— particularly Weasel’s

constant echo of “Absolutely!” The snappy, high-energy dialogue is matched by Thomas’ trademark cartoons, which feature boldly colored backdrops and simply drawn but hyperexpressive characters. Perfect for rereads, this tale also gently acknowledges that friendship sometimes means having hard conversations.

Peer pressure pays off in this punchy tale of a pungent pig. (Picture book. 4-7)

Crocodiles Need Friends, Too!

Toro, Tom | Little, Brown (40 pp.)

$18.99 | May 20, 2025 | 9780316471879

A creative, friendly crocodile just wants a chance to show the world who she is deep down. Croc’s life underwater is rich with hobbies and interests: dancing ballet, playing the guitar, and knitting. But when she tries to befriend the other animals, they flee in terror; all they see is an ominous pair of eyes peeking above the water. That is, until a fire forces them to the water’s edge. The crocodile knits them a bridge to safety and, along the way, shows off her hidden talents and finds friends at last. Toro’s cartoon illustrations pair beautifully with his text. Unlike the frightened giraffes, antelopes, and monkeys, readers see what’s happening both above and below the surface—an inspired choice that will help them empathize with both the sweetly oblivious crocodile and the animals giving her a wide berth. The entire setting is well realized, with

A tribute as bright, luxuriant, and giving as Marsha herself.

fantastic details such as Croc’s mother sporting a pink tank top while exercising with other reptilians and Croc’s father reading a newspaper (the Savanna Sentinel ) while soaking in a mud bath. At the heart of this clever tale is a vital message: Don’t be so quick to judge, and take a cue from Croc’s friends, who learn a great deal when they look beneath the surface.

Meaningful storytelling through a deft marriage of text and illustration.

(Picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Star

One Day in June

Tourmaline | Illus. by Charlot Kristensen Putnam (40 pp.) | $18.99 | May 27, 2025 9780593525371

On a day in June 2020, people across New York City gather in defense of Black trans lives—and to honor queer activist and icon Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992).

“You see…the way we are exactly ourselves, no more, no less? That’s because of Marsha.” Addressing both a young child and readers, a Black caregiver offers glimpses of Marsha’s life: her style, her attitude, her struggles, but most especially her seemingly simple but radical acts of kindness and acceptance. Connecting these past moments to the present, Tourmaline’s text is wonderfully light on its feet, dancing through rather than around the threats faced by Marsha and by Black trans people today while also showing that the sunshine of connection and joy is more than a match for the shadow of all-too-real struggle. A distinctly intergenerational pulse thrums under every word, emphasizing the storytelling and living knowledge at the heart of queer, trans, and Black community resilience and resistance.

Kristensen’s illustrations bring Marsha’s full glory to bear as she sweeps not only skirts too fabulous for words, but also a larger-than-life light across the cityscape of her home and her people. Most impressively, Tourmaline brings Marsha the icon into the more intimate space of Marsha the person as she finds joy in accepting herself and others, knowing “that’s how we change the world”—something the youngest of readers will understand they can do.

A tribute as bright, luxuriant, and giving as Marsha herself. (author’s note, additional resources) (Informational picture book. 3-8)

Devourer’s Attack

Tsang, Katie & Kevin Tsang | Simon & Schuster (320 pp.) | $18.99 | June 10, 2025 9781665962544 | Series: Dragon Force, 2

With the rest of Dragon Force held captive, four young riders and their dragons must mount a rescue before the arrival of the Devourer, a destroyer of worlds from another galaxy, in this sequel to Infinity’s Secret (2025).

Distinctly gamelike in plot and language, this second series entry plunges riders and rides into a series of set piece challenges and quests— such as being swallowed by a giant shark-dragon. These challenges allow each of them to show off their “signature move” while learning to control their fears in order to fend off the Petrifiers, who wield terror as a weapon and have frozen some members of Dragon Force. Inspired by the celestial Starlight Dragon’s encouragement (“Do not fear your destiny. Embrace it”), 12-year-old Lance Lo and his 10-year-old sister, Zoe, who have a white British mother and a Chinese British father, lead the multinational human and

A campfire conversation turns into a whimsical adventure of discovery.

dragon cast into a climactic confrontation that diverts the transgalactic gourmand…though only at the cost of a heartrending sacrifice. Typecast as the incidents and characters may be, they do represent appealing versions of their kind, and by way of development, the remaining humans do come away with cool new powers thanks to advanced, personalized super-suits.

Chock-full of awesome RPG-style action. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)

You Make the World

Văn, M ượ n Th ị | Illus. by Phùng Nguyên Quang & Huynh Kim Liên | Orchard/ Scholastic (32 pp.) | $18.99 May 6, 2025 | 9781338822045

A campfire conversation between an adult and a child turns into a whimsical adventure of discovery.

The caregiver notes that nature is a crucial part of the world around them—and so is the youngster. Each statement takes the pair on a fantastical journey through nature. As the adult describes how the child “make[s] the world grow” by seeing “others for who they are, / who they were, / and who they might become,” the accompanying image portrays the two of them riding on birds, soaring over a lush, endless green landscape. Later, they kayak in turbulent waters with hippos; the child throws a tantrum, and the adult responds, “When you let out what is inside out, / you make the world raw.” As they calmly swim

with giant whales and hundreds of colorful fish, the adult says that by forgiving and trying hard, the child makes the world kind and brave. This story emphasizes that humans are inextricably linked to the larger universe; it’s also a joyful ode to the parent-child bond. Văn’s lyrical verse will gently but powerfully uplift young readers. Quang’s and Liên’s illustrations are full of energy and movement but also exude the gentleness and warmth of Văn’s messages. As the book draws to a close, the pair are depicted amid several animals on earth and as figures in the starry night sky. Affirming and full of love. (Picture book. 4-8)

Trusty Bus

Verdick, Elizabeth Weiss | Illus. by Jeff Harter Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (40 pp.) $19.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9781665948494

A chipper brown bear named Dee and her yellow school bus—the aptly named Trusty—take their jobs seriously.

After all, the lives of many little ones rest in their steady hands, er, wheels. After a safety check, Trusty moves slowly through the streets, making multiple stops to pick up a pigtailed frog, an overall-clad pig, and other anthropomorphic young animals. Bighearted Trusty couldn’t be more patient; he cheerfully waits for passengers who are running a bit late or who need one more hug from a caregiver. Trusty also halts so a family of ducks can cross the street safely,

but everyone still makes it to school on time. All that work’s gotten Trusty a bit dusty, so Dee gives him a wash, fills him with gas, and adds air to his tires. Trusty’s dependability and kindness don’t go unnoticed; the passengers have a surprise for him when he arrives to take them home. The exuberant, onomatopoeia-laden text makes for a satisfying read-aloud, although there are a few clunky rhyming lines. Alternating between full-page illustrations and spot artwork for variety, the digital artwork brings Trusty to life, carefully portraying his expressive, watchful black eyes and handsome yellow body and making evident his concern for his passengers—this is one bus readers can count on.

A simple story to allay children’s fears about riding the school bus. (Picture book. 4-7)

The Bug Bandits

Walsh, Jenni L. | Zonderkidz (224 pp.)

$18.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9780310167921

Kids join forces to protect the denizens of Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Insectarium from thieves and financial ruin. Liberty Jacobs loves insects, though her fascination with them has earned her the nickname “Bug Girl” at school. Libs knows her entomologist father is seeking investors to help sustain the museum, situated in a rambling mansion, with a gift shop, coffee bar, workshare stations, and Libs and Dad’s apartment on the top floor. An odd overheard conversation between two men leaving the museum makes Libs believe they’re after the insectarium’s expensive specimens, including pink katydids and an endangered scorpion. But when police stakeouts fail to nab any criminals, Lib works with best friend

Emmy Perez (who offers help via the phone from Florida) and popular, sporty, artistic (and surprisingly nice) classmate Cam Jones to foil the anticipated “buglary.” The trio draws inspiration from Home Alone , and the story offers plenty of suspects to consider. First-person narrator Libs, who’s cued white, inserts interesting factoids about the museum’s resident insects, tarantula, and even Kermit the iguana. She, Emmy, and Cam also navigate friendship and family expectations before the story wraps up with a neat conclusion. The cover art portrays Cam with dark skin; he’s thinly characterized as “good at everything. Great, actually,” and largely reads like a prop to support Libs’ development. Stock images showing butterflies, bees, beetles, ants, and other creatures are scattered throughout. The young crime stoppers’ escapades will hold readers’ interest. (insectarium guide, author’s note) (Adventure. 8-12)

Double Dutch Queen

Wiley, DeAnn | Henry Holt (40 pp.)

$18.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9781250876386

Will Shay ever master the art of jumping rope? Despite big sister Genevieve’s coaching and reassurance, Shay’s afraid to take a turn at double Dutch. Plagued by doubts, she remains on the sidelines, admiring the others and sticking to hobbies she’s better at, like roller skating. Still, she can’t help but notice how much fun everyone else is having. When Shay’s Aunt Maci kicks off her

sandals and jumps in, the crowd roars with excitement. Later, as Shay quietly reflects on her anxieties, perceptive Aunt Maci tells her to focus on trying hard rather than being the best. With the encouragement of Genevieve, younger sister Kelly, and Aunt Maci, Shay works up the courage to set her own rhythm and jump in. In words and images, Wiley offers a loving portrait of a close-knit, supportive Black family. Shay’s a lively, thoughtful protagonist, surrounded by loved ones who believe in her even when she doesn’t. Wiley’s collagelike digital artwork is filled with geometric shapes, vivid textures, and a full spectrum of vibrant hues, while her text alternates empowering exclamations from Shay’s family members (“You can do it!”) with the girl’s contemplative inner monologue, which sees her go from uncertain wallflower to confident “double Dutch queen.” An uplifting story brimming with warmth and the strength of familial love. (Picture book. 4-8)

Where There Be Monsters

Williams, Alby C. | Illus. by Bex Glendining Roaring Brook Press (352 pp.) | $17.99

May 6, 2025 | 9781250866332

Series: The Outersphere Series, 1

A preteen travels across worlds to help a lost boy and finds herself at the center of a nefarious conspiracy. Eleven-year-old Glory Brown lives in the magical Light Inn in the Seam, a world that exists

An uplifting story brimming with warmth and the strength of familial love.

DOUBLE DUTCH QUEEN

in perennial dusklight. Full of Moxie (a monster-repelling magic powered by curiosity), Glory dreams of exploring the Outersphere by joining the Parliamentarium of Junior Spherinauts, just like her mom. Sadly, between the worst monster surge in years and her mazyheadedness, her parents don’t think she’s ready. When the inn rescues a boy named Marcus Williams—a lost Parliament on a secret mission—Glory sees an opportunity to prove Mama and Daddy wrong. Helping Marcus get home, she sneaks off, but they quickly find themselves at the center of a magical political controversy that threatens the future of the Parliamentarium and the Outersphere itself. Overwhelmed by the adventure and secrets she uncovers about her mother’s past, Glory must dig deep to find the courage and knowledge she needs to save what she loves. The richly imagined setting combines fantasy and science in fun, creative ways. The story weaves together many plot threads but doesn’t balance their development well, however, throwing off the pacing and flattening characters into pawns of the plot. Unfortunately, an unfocused racial allegory further complicates this issue. Readers will enjoy the whimsy but may find certain elements confusing. Main characters are Black, and Glory reads as neurodivergent.

An enchanting story that’s overrun by its plot. (Fantasy. 9-13)

Soft and Sticky

Willis, Jeanne | Illus. by Claire Powell Penguin Workshop (32 pp.) | $18.99 July 8, 2025 | 9780593754597

True friends know how to stick together. Best pals Mr. Stick and Mr. Soft live together in a loft. Slender blue Mr. Stick is composed of “sticky stuff,” while Mr.

A sweetly offbeat tale of the trials and tribulations of friendship.

SOFT AND STICKY

Soft, made up of “tickly fluff,” resembles an orange pompom. These besties always stick together— literally; thus, their living arrangement, not to mention their friendship, is quite challenging. Sticky complains that Softy’s fluff gets up his nose, and Softy’s had it up to here with Sticky’s “ickiness.” Each blames the other for the impasse: “If only you would shave your fur!” Sticky complains. “It’s YOU who needs to have a wash!” Softy claps back. After sulking, each accepts the other’s suggestion, which grants them unaccustomed freedom. At first, the pair rejoice in being apart. But then reality sets in—and it bites. They can’t share good times anymore. Friends, they wistfully realize, must stay together, literally and metaphorically. This cute U.K. import, expressed in breezy verse that reads well, treads familiar ground, but it’s comforting nevertheless and makes its point effectively: True friends are willing to compromise and overlook each other’s flaws. With their noodlelike limbs and solid bodies, the expressive protagonists are an appealingly strange-looking duo who inhabit a cluttered but cozy setting.

A sweetly offbeat tale of the trials and tribulations of friendship. (Picture book. 4-7)

Today at School: With Yesterday and Tomorrow

Young, Jessica | Illus. by Renée Kurilla Knopf (40 pp.) | $18.99

June 10, 2025 | 9780593812754

The first day of school brings with it a variety of emotions. Tomorrow and her sister, Yesterday—a blue bird and a brown bear, respectively— are preparing for the first day of school. Tomorrow is eager for the start of the new year, anticipating the fun they’ll have, while Yesterday tries to slow down and remember what was. As the day progresses, the siblings get into an argument (“You might need to slow down. You’re always rushing.” “If you’d hurry up, I wouldn’t have to”) that’s quickly resolved with the introduction of Yesterday’s new friend, an orange fox named Today. During recess, Today takes them to the top of a hill overlooking the town and shows them the beauty of living in the moment. Spotlighting common classroom experiences such as circle time, art class, and show and tell, Young and Kurilla offer a relatable look at the varied feelings associated with back-toschool days. While adults may find the book a bit didactic, many little ones will see themselves in both nostalgic Yesterday and eager Tomorrow. Kurilla’s enthusiastic, digitally rendered art is colorful and child-friendly, if a bit busy at times; the all-animal cast are all round shapes and soft lines, and the illustrator uses color-coded speech bubbles to make clear who’s speaking. A sweetly purposeful back-to-school tale threaded with a message of mindfulness. (Picture book. 3-6)

For more by Jeanne Willis, visit Kirkus online.

THE BEST

Young Adult Books

OF THE CENTURY (so far)

Despite being a relative newcomer to the world of young people’s literature, the young adult category has flourished, extending beyond its original audience of teens to win legions of dedicated adult fans. The reasons for its popularity are clear: Regardless of genre or format, its hallmark is an irresistible combination of raw emotional honesty and compelling storytelling. Our choices offer something to tempt every teen, showing the 21st century to be a golden age for YA.

Alissandra Seelaus

Kit’s Wilderness

Almond, David | Delacorte (228 pp.)

$15.95 | 2000 | 0385326653

A whirl of ghosts and dreams, stories-within-stories, joy, heartache, and redemption.

The Amber Spyglass

Pullman, Philip | Knopf (544 pp.)

$19.95 | 2000 | 9780679879268

Readers will be chastened―and warmed―and sorry to see the last page.

The Letters

Yumoto, Kazumi | Trans. by Cathy Hirano Farrar, Straus and Giroux (176 pp.)

$16.00 | 2002 | 0374343837

For readers who appreciate evocative writing that explores psychological questions, this novel will be satisfying indeed.

The Wee Free Men

Pratchett, Terry | HarperCollins (272 pp.) | $16.99 | 2003 | 0060012366

The Carnegie Medal winner’s fans will not be disappointed.

Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem

Nelson, Marilyn | Front Street/Boyds Mills (32 pp.) | $16.95 | 2004 | 1932425128

A glorious reclamation of a man whose identity had been assailed from the moment of his birth to beyond his death.

Fever 1793

Anderson, Laurie Halse | Simon & Schuster (256 pp.) | $16.00 | 2000 | 0689838581

A gripping picture of disease’s devastating effect on people, and on the social fabric itself.

Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr

Nix, Garth | HarperCollins (496 pp.)

$16.95 | 2001| 0060278234

Readers who like their fantasy magisterial in scope and apocalyptic in consequences will revel in every word.

Feed

Anderson, M.T. | Candlewick (288 pp.) | $16.99 | 2002 | 0763617261

The crystalline realization of this wildly dystopic future carries implications for today’s readers— satire at its finest.

The Race To Save the Lord God Bird

Hoose, Phillip | Melanie Kroupa/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux (208 pp.)

$20.00 | 2004 | 0374361738

Outstanding in every way.

Uglies

Westerfeld, Scott | Simon Pulse/ Simon & Schuster (448 pp.)

$6.99 paper | 2005 | 0689865384

The awesome ending thrills with potential.

The Book Thief

Zusak, Markus | Knopf (512 pp.)

$16.95 | 2006 | 0375831002

Beautiful and important.

The Arrival

Tan, Shaun | Levine/Scholastic (128 pp.)

$19.99 | 2007 | 9780439895293

It’s an unashamed paean to the immigrant’s spirit, tenacity and guts, perfectly crafted for maximum effect.

Graceling

Cashore, Kristin | Harcourt (480 pp.)

$17.00 | 2008 | 9780152063962

Grace-full, in every sense.

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

Heiligman, Deborah | Henry Holt (320 pp.)

$18.95 | 2009 | 9780805087215

Readers discover two brilliant thinkers whose marital dialectic will provide rich fodder for discussions of science and faith.

Akata Witch

Okorafor, Nnedi | Viking (352 pp.)

$16.99 | 2011 | 9780670011964

Ebulliently original.

Story of a Girl

Zarr, Sara | Little, Brown (208 pp.)

$16.99 | 2007 | 0316014532

This involving, touching first novel will resonate with those who have made mistakes and those who have not.

Jellicoe Road

Marchetta, Melina | HarperTeen (432 pp.) | $17.99 | 2008 | 9780061431838

A beautifully rendered mystery.

The Hunger Games

Collins, Suzanne | Scholastic (394 pp.)

$17.99 | 2008 | 9780439023481

Impressive worldbuilding, breathtaking action, and clear philosophical concerns.

Between Shades of Gray

Sepetys, Ruta | Philomel (352 pp.)

$17.99 | 2011 | 9780399254123

Sepetys’ flowing prose gently carries readers through the crushing tragedy of this tale that needs telling.

A Monster Calls

Ness, Patrick | Illus. by Jim Kay | Candlewick (224 pp.) | $16.99 | 2011 | 9780763655594

A poignant tribute to the life and talent of Siobhan Dowd and an astonishing exploration of fear.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Sáenz, Benjamin Alire | Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) | $16.99 | 2012 | 9781442408920

Meticulous pacing and finely nuanced characters underpin the affecting prose that illuminates struggles within relationships.

Every Day

Levithan, David | Knopf (304 pp.)

$16.99 | 2012 | 9780307931887

An awe-inspiring, thought-provoking reminder that love reaches beyond physical appearances or gender.

The Raven Boys

Stiefvater, Maggie | Scholastic (416 pp.)

$17.99 | 2012 | 9780545424929

The magic is entirely pragmatic; the impossible, extraordinarily true.

Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass

Medina, Meg | Candlewick (272 pp.)

$16.99 | 2013 | 9780763658595

Sheds light on a serious issue without ever losing sight of its craft.

Boxers & Saints

Yang, Gene Luen | First Second (512 pp.)

$34.99 paper | 2013 | 9781596439245

This tour de force fearlessly asks big questions about culture, faith, and identity and refuses to offer simple answers.

Code Name Verity

Wein, Elizabeth | Hyperion (352 pp.)

$16.99 | 2012 | 9781423152194

A carefully researched, precisely written tour de force; unforgettable and wrenching.

The Diviners

Bray, Libba | Little, Brown (608 pp.)

$19.99 | 2012 | 9780316126113

The intricate plot and magnificently imagined details of character, dialogue, and setting take hold and don’t let go.

Ask the Passengers

King, A.S. | Little, Brown (304 pp.)

$17.99 | 2012 | 9780316194686

Quite possibly the best teen novel featuring a girl questioning her sexuality written in years.

March: Book One

Lewis, John & Andrew Aydin | Illus. by Nate Powell | Top Shelf Productions (128 pp.)

$14.95 paper | 2013 | 9781603093002

A powerful tale of courage and principle igniting sweeping social change, told by a uniquely qualified eyewitness.

This One Summer

Tamaki, Mariko & Jillian Tamaki

Photos by Jillian Tamaki | First Second (320 pp.) | $17.99 | 2014 | 9781596437746

Keenly observed and gorgeously illustrated—a triumph.

We Were Liars

Lockhart, E. | Delacorte (240 pp.)

$17.99 | 2014 | 9780385741262

Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.

Bone Gap

Ruby, Laura | Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (368 pp.) | $17.99 | 2015 | 9780062317605

Cleverly conceived and lusciously written.

Nimona

Stevenson, ND | HarperTeen (272 pp.)

$17.99 | 2015 | 9780062278234

If you’re going to read one graphic novel this year, make it this one.

The Serpent King

Zentner, Jeff | Crown (384 pp.)

$17.99 | 2016 | 9780553524024

Zentner writes with understanding and grace—a new voice to savor.

When the Moon Was Ours

McLemore, Anna-Marie | Dunne/St. Martin’s (288 pp.) | $18.99 | 2016 | 9781250058669

Readers will be ensnared in this ethereal narrative long before they even realize the net has been cast.

The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

Fleming, Candace | Schwartz & Wade/Random (304 pp.)

$18.99 | 2014 | 9780375867828

A remarkable human story, told with clarity and confidence.

Challenger Deep

Shusterman, Neal | Illus. by Brendan Shusterman | HarperTeen (320 pp.)

$17.99 | 2015 | 9780061134111

A chillingly real adventure in perspective as well as plot.

Shadowshaper

Older, Daniel José | Levine/Scholastic (304 pp.) | $17.99 | 2015 | 9780545591614

Warm, strong, vernacular, dynamic—a must.

The Lie Tree

Hardinge, Frances | Amulet/Abrams (400 pp.) | $17.95 | 2016 | 9781419718953

Thematically rich, stylistically impressive, absolutely unforgettable.

The Sun Is Also a Star

Yoon, Nicola | Delacorte (384 pp.)

$18.99 | 2016 | 9780553496680

This profound exploration of life and love tempers harsh realities with the beauty of hope.

Allegedly

Jackson, Tiffany D. | Katherine Tegen/ HarperCollins (400 pp.) | $17.99 | 2017

9780062422644

Searing and true.

Piecing Me Together

Watson, Renée | Bloomsbury (272 pp.)

$17.99 | 2017 | 9781681191058

A timely, nuanced, and unforgettable story about the power of art, community, and friendship.

The Hate U Give

Thomas, Angie | Balzer + Bray/ HarperCollins (464 pp.) | $17.99 2017 | 9780062498533

This story is necessary. This story is important.

One of Us Is Lying

McManus, Karen M. | Delacorte (368 pp.) | $17.99 | 2017 | 9781524714680

Will leave readers racing to the finish as they try to unravel the mystery on their own.

The Road to Winter

Smith, Mark | Text (241 pp.)

$11.95 paper | 2017 | 9781925355123

A breakout new series full of romance, danger, and a surprisingly engaging world.

We Are Okay

LaCour, Nina | Dutton (240 pp.)

$17.99 | 2017 | 9780525425892

An elegantly crafted paean to the cleansing power of truth.

American Street

Zoboi, Ibi | Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (336 pp.) | $17.99 | 2017 | 9780062473042

This book will take root in readers’ hearts.

Wonderful Feels Like This

Lövestam, Sara | Trans. by Laura A. Wideburg | Flatiron Books (320 pp.)

$17.99 | 2017 | 9781250095237

Sensitive and deeply moving: outstanding.

Saints and Misfits

Ali, S.K. | Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) | $18.99 | 2017 | 9781481499248

A touching exposition of a girl’s evolution.

The Marrow Thieves

Dimaline, Cherie | DCB (180 pp.)

$14.95 paper | 2017 | 9781770864863

A dystopian world that is all too real and that has much to say about our own.

They Both Die at the End

Silvera, Adam | HarperTeen (384 pp.)

$17.99 | 2017 | 9780062457790

Engrossing, contemplative, and as heart-wrenching as the title promises.

The 57 Bus

Slater, Dashka | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) | $17.99 | 2017 | 9780374303235

An outstanding book that links the impact of impulsive actions to themes of tolerance and forgiveness.

The Poet X

Acevedo, Elizabeth | HarperTeen (368 pp.)

$17.99 | 2018 | 9780062662804

Poignant and real, beautiful and intense.

Blood Water Paint

McCullough, Joy | Dutton (304 pp.)

$17.99 | 2018-03-06 | 9780735232112

An incandescent retelling both timeless and, alas, all too timely.

Out of the Blue

Cameron, Sophie | Roaring Brook Press (272 pp.) | $17.99 | 2018 | 9781250149916

A strong infusion of magic and wonder distinguish this debut novel.

Long Way Down

Reynolds, Jason | Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum (320 pp.) | $17.99 | 2017 | 9781481438254

This astonishing book will generate much-needed discussion.

Truly Devious

Johnson, Maureen | Katherine Tegen/ HarperCollins (432 pp.) | $17.99 | 2018 9780062338051

A classic mystery that would make Dame Agatha proud.

Children of Blood and Bone

Adeyemi, Tomi | Henry Holt (544 pp.) $18.99 | 2018 | 9781250170972

Powerful, captivating, and raw—Adeyemi is a talent to watch. Exceptional.

Picture Us in the Light

Gilbert, Kelly Loy | Disney-Hyperion (368 pp.) | $17.99 | 2018 | 9781484726020

Exquisite, heartbreaking, unforgettable—and, ultimately, uplifting.

Hey, Kiddo

Krosoczka, Jarrett J. | Graphix/Scholastic (320 pp.) | $24.99 | 2018 | 9780545902472

Honest, important, and timely.

The Beast Player

Uehashi, Nahoko | Trans. by Cathy Hirano | Henry Holt (352 pp.) | $19.99 2019 | 9781250307460

A richly detailed coming-of-age fantasy epic that rewards the patient and contemplative reader.

When the Ground Is Hard

Nunn, Malla | Putnam (272 pp.)

$17.99 | 2019 | 9780525515579

An engrossing narrative that gently but directly explores complex relationships.

They Called Us Enemy

Takei, George, Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott | Illus. by Harmony Becker

Top Shelf Books (208 pp.) | $19.99 paper 2019 | 9781603094504

A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely today.

Where the World Ends

McCaughrean, Geraldine | Flatiron Books (336 pp.) | $18.99 | 2019 | 9781250225498

A masterpiece.

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-Winning Stamped From the Beginning

Reynolds, Jason & Ibram X. Kendi | Little, Brown (304 pp.) | $18.99 | 2020 | 9780316453691

Impressive and much needed.

The Things She’s Seen

Kwaymullina, Ambelin & Ezekiel

Kwaymullina | Knopf (208 pp.)

$17.99 | 2019 | 9781984848789

An #ownvoices story that empowers its heroines, giving them pride in their lineage and power in remembering.

Patron Saints of Nothing

Ribay, Randy | Kokila (352 pp.)

$17.99 | 2019 | 9780525554912

This powerful story offers readers a refreshingly emotional depiction of a young man with an earnest desire for the truth.

Pet

Emezi, Akwaeke | Make Me a World (208 pp.)

$17.99 | 2019 | 9780525647072

This soaring novel shoots for the stars and explodes the sky with its bold brilliance.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Jackson, Holly | Delacorte (400 pp.)

$17.99 | 2020 | 9781984896360

A treat for mystery readers who enjoy being kept in suspense

Heartstopper: Volume 1

Oseman, Alice | Graphix/Scholastic (288 pp.) | $24.99 | 2020 | 9781338617443

An adorable diary of love’s gut punches.

Camp

Rosen, L.C. | Little, Brown (384 pp.)

$17.99 | 2020 | 9780316537759

A drag act that plays with compassion and camp.

Elatsoe

Little Badger, Darcie | Illus. by Rovina Cai

Levine Querido (368 pp.) | $18.99 2020 | 9781646140053

Educates about settler colonialism while also entertaining with paranormal twists.

Bearmouth

Hyder, Liz | Norton Young Readers (256 pp.)

$18.95 | 2020 | 9781324015864

This grim and immersive thriller delivers suspense in the dark.

Home Is Not a Country

Elhillo, Safia | Make Me a World (224 pp.)

$17.99 | 2021 | 9780593177051

Movingly unravels themes of belonging, Islamophobia, and the interlocking oppressions thrust upon immigrant women.

From

a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial That Galvanized the Asian American Movement

Yoo, Paula | Norton Young Readers (384 pp.) | $19.95 | 2021 | 9781324002871

Accessible and compelling.

Today Tonight Tomorrow

Solomon, Rachel Lynn | Simon Pulse/ Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) | $18.99 2020 | 9781534440241

A dizzying, intimate romance.

Flamer

Curato, Mike | Henry Holt (368 pp.)

$25.99 | 2020 | 9781627796415

Buy it. Read it. Share it.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Lo, Malinda | Dutton (416 pp.)

$17.99 | 2021 | 9780525555254

Beautifully written historical fiction about giddy, queer first love.

Firekeeper’s Daughter

Boulley, Angeline | Henry Holt (496 pp.)

$18.99 | 2021 | 9781250766564

A suspenseful tale filled with Ojibwe knowledge, hockey, and the politics of status.

One Great Lie

Caletti, Deb | Atheneum (384 pp.)

$19.99 | 2021 | 9781534463172

A potent story of how one young woman finds the power to write her own story.

Beyond the Blue Border

Linke, Dorit | Trans. by Elisabeth Lauffer

Charlesbridge Teen (336 pp.) | $18.99 2021 | 9781623541774

A compelling look at Germany’s recent past.

Himawari House

Becker, Harmony | First Second (384 pp.)

$24.99 | 2021 | 9781250235565

An unforgettable story of personal growth in an exquisitely rendered setting.

Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People

Magoon, Kekla | Candlewick (400 pp.)

$24.99 | 2021 | 9781536214185

The highly readable and not-to-bemissed story of America’s history and current reality.

Echoes of Grace

McCall, Guadalupe García | Tu Books (400 pp.)

$21.95 | 2022 | 9781643794259

A nouveau gothic tale with roots as deep as mesquite and a heart as wide as the Texas sky.

The Getaway

Giles, Lamar | Scholastic (400 pp.)

$18.99 | 2022 | 9781338752014

Hold tight: You’ll want to stay on this nightmarish roller coaster till the end.

Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921

Tulsa Race Massacre

Colbert, Brandy | Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (224 pp.) | $19.99 | 2021 | 9780063056664

A compelling recounting that encourages readers to grapple with difficult history.

Huda F Are You?

Fahmy, Huda | Dial Books (192 pp.)

$22.99 | 2021 | 9780593324301

Hilarious, charming, and much needed.

All My Rage

Tahir, Sabaa | Razorbill/Penguin (384 pp.)

$19.99 | 2022 | 9780593202340

Takes readers on an unforgettable emotional journey.

I’m the Girl

Summers, Courtney | Wednesday Books (352 pp.) | $18.99 | 2022 | 9781250808363

A bold, unflinching, and utterly enthralling novel.

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults

Kimmerer, Robin Wall | Illus. by Nicole Neidhardt | Adapt. by Monique Gray Smith Zest Books (304 pp.) | 2022 | 9781728458984

Both an urgent, essential call to action and an uplifting love letter.

All That It Ever Meant

Musariri, Blessing | Norton Young Readers (192 pp.) | $18.95 | 2023 | 9781324030959

An inventive, exquisitely written story of family, love, and loss.

Iron Wolf

Pettersen, Siri | Trans. by Tara Chace Arctis Books (400 pp.) | $20.00 | 2023 9781646900152

An immersive, darkly exhilarating read.

The Eternal Return of Clara Hart

Finch, Louise | Little Island (288 pp.) $11.99 paper | 2023 | 9781915071026

A devastating, essential journey.

The Blood Years

Arnold, Elana K. | Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (400 pp.) | $19.99 | 2023 | 9780062990853

A moving glimpse into a past that is an all-too-possible vision of our future.

The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption

Gibney, Shannon | Dutton (256 pp.) $18.99 | 2023 | 9780593111994

An innovative and captivating reflection on identity and self.

America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History

Aberg-Riger, Ariel | Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $24.99 | 2023 | 9780063057531

Beautifully illustrated, riveting, enraging, and empowering: a must-read.

Gather

Cadow, Kenneth M. | Candlewick (336 pp.) | $17.99 | 2023 | 9781536231113

A heartfelt novel about the challenges of youth and the value of community.

The Book of Denial

Chávez Castañeda, Ricardo | Illus. by Alejandro Magallanes | Trans. by Lawrence Schimel Unruly (148 pp.) | $24.95 | 2024 | 9781592703623

Unforgettable.

Kindling

Chee, Traci | Harper/HarperCollins (432 pp.) | $19.99 | 2024 | 9780063269354

Both a mesmerizing fantasy adventure and a haunting meditation on shared trauma.

49 Days

Lee, Agnes | Levine Querido (352 pp.) $18.99 paper | 2024 | 9781646143757

A moving portrayal of mortality and its aftermath, shown from both sides.

Exploring Teen Friendship

By Leyla Brittan

Hannah Jayne

By Julie Thompson

Nathanael Lessore

By Magdalene Visaggio; illus. by Paulina Ganucheau; colors by Avery Bacon

Blame My Virgo Moon

By Freja Nicole Woolf Über-groovy!

Young Adult

LAURA SIMEON

SIX HIDDEN GEMS

NAMING JUST 100 titles as the best YA books of the century is daunting. How to weigh literary execution, cultural impact, authorial significance, and other factors? Lists such as these—like library collections— are meant for readers other than those who compile them; they can’t be simply a self-indulgent gathering of personal favorites. But there’s value in applying individual expertise to guide readers beyond the (many fabulous) bestsellers, celebrity book club picks, and award winners they already know. In that spirit, here is a spotlight on six surprisingly original, beautifully written, emotionally devastating books that appear on the list and deserve to be much better known.

Written before the Covid-19 pandemic, both of the following titles feel eerily prescient as they show the differing ways people react to extreme events.

The Road to Winter by Mark Smith (2017): Combining riveting, page-turning action with deep humanity and insight, Smith presents a lawless, chaotic Australia in the aftermath of a deadly pandemic. What becomes of the most vulnerable? How do we hold on to hope and the

best of what makes us human?

Out of the Blue by Sophie Cameron (2018): In this magical, awe-filled Scottish novel, a girl feels responsible for her mother’s death. As angels inexplicably crash to Earth and die, fueling conspiracy theories and cults, her father becomes obsessed with capturing one alive. When she finds and rescues an angel herself, she faces tough decisions.

If we hope to do better, we must look squarely at the uncomfortable parts of history; these books highlight the impact of inhumanity and inequality.

Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem by Marilyn Nelson (2004): This unflinching, deeply affecting work honors

Fortune, a Black man who died in Connecticut in 1798; his white enslaver hung his skeleton in his house, where Fortune’s widow cleaned. The author proclaims, “You are not your bones. / What’s essential about you / is what can’t be owned.”

Beyond the Blue Border by Dorit Linke, translated by Elisabeth Lauffer (2021): Linke, who grew up in East Germany, plunges readers into an unforgettable nail-biter as teen refugees try to swim through the freezing Baltic Sea to the West. Vivid flashbacks show the traumas of life in a corrupt, stratified country that spur them to risk all.

Who we are within our families—and who we become as we grow to understand them differently—shapes us profoundly, as these titles show.

The Letters by Kazumi Yumoto, trans. by Cathy

Hirano (2002): This contemplative, bittersweet novel from Japan will linger in readers’ minds. Chiaki reflects on her childhood, especially her hardworking single mother and the gruff landlady who told young Chiaki that she could deliver letters to the dead, offering catharsis and helping her navigate a disorienting loss.

All That It Ever Meant by Blessing Musariri (2023): This exquisite jewel from Zimbabwe has a gut punch of a surprise ending that maintains its power even with multiple rereads. The humor and lightly fantastical elements balance the exploration of stories and perceptions as grieving family members reconnect and heal during a road trip.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.

EDITOR’S PICK

A biography of the Fox sisters, mysterious 19th-century mediums whose spirit circles led to the foundation of a new, highly influential religion. Kate was 14 and Maggie was only 11 when the Fox family heard mysterious rapping sounds in the cottage they’d just moved into in rural New York state in 1847. A neighbor believed the sounds were emanating from an “injured spirit.” Maggie and Kate, along with Leah, their much older, married sister, became known as the Rochester rappers, mediums who could speak to the dead by asking questions and translating their raps for clients. The sisters made an independent

income by holding séances, creating the foundation for Modern Spiritualism. Against a backdrop of social upheaval—Christian revivals, cholera, abolitionism, the Civil War, and Reconstruction—the Fox sisters practiced their trade despite facing religious and personal criticism, skepticism from those who exposed frauds, financial crises, and alcoholism. The work highlights several famous believers, including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary Todd Lincoln. In this meticulously researched work, Rosenstock effectively and objectively presents historical facts alongside primary sources—journal entries, letters, newspaper

American Spirits: The Famous Fox Sisters and the Mysterious Fad That Haunted a Nation

Rosenstock, Barb | Calkins Creek/ Astra Books for Young Readers | 304 pp.

$24.99 | April 15, 2025 | 9781635928051

clippings, photos—as she explores whether the Foxes truly experienced supernatural phenomena or whether it was a hoax all along. She also excels at integrating the larger social and historical context in which Spiritualism rose to prominence, drawing clear

connections between the facts presented.

A suspenseful, well-researched read filled with fascinating and evocative visuals. (medium’s statement, author’s note, source notes, bibliography, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 14-18)

Come As You Are

Adler, Dahlia | Wednesday Books (320 pp.)

$20.00 | May 27, 2025 | 9781250871695

A teenage girl navigates the complexities of boarding school life and first love after unexpectedly finding herself living in a boys’ dormitory.

Everett “Evie” Riley is hoping for a fresh start when she transfers to boarding school to escape her cheating ex-boyfriend and her wild-child sister, with whom he hooked up. But when she arrives at Camden and is assigned to a boys’ dormitory by mistake, the beginning of her school year seems anything but auspicious. When she meets Salem Grayson, her dorm mate and a fellow transfer student who’s burdened by his reputation as a slacker, things start to look up after all. They forge a pact: Evie will help Salem shed his bad-boy persona if he teaches her how to let loose and embrace spontaneity. As the two navigate a semester filled with new friendships, family drama, challenging classes, and the ups and downs of dorm life, they must grapple with not only their own identities but also the changing nature of their relationship. Whip-smart dialogue and fluid pacing make this an engaging read that culminates in a wholly satisfying ending. Evie’s and Salem’s development from adversaries to friends to more is well fleshed out, authentically portraying teenage relationships. Readers will especially appreciate the nuanced characterizations of the leads, who present white; Salem is Jewish. A beautiful tale of love, friendship, forgiveness, and self-acceptance. (Romance. 13-18)

Touches

in gentle ways on significant themes, including consent and therapy.

I

CAN’T EVEN THINK STRAIGHT

I Can’t Even Think Straight

Atta, Dean | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $19.99 May 6, 2025 | 9780063158030

Malachi “Kai” Michaelides wants to come out as gay at school, but his closeted best friend, Matt, fears the consequences of the attention it would draw to them both.

Matt’s religious parents are homophobic, so he doesn’t plan to come out until after he’s left for university. British Kai’s Greek Cypriot single mum works two jobs while pursuing her master’s degree, so while she’s supportive of Kai’s queerness, she relies heavily on the metaphorical village to care for him: Kai’s Jamaican paternal granny, his yiayia and bapou, and chosen family Theía Estélla and her nonbinary child, Vass, Kai’s other best friend. Kai dreams of being a writer, and Atta’s verse lends a memoirist’s tone to the story. Supporting characters float in and out, including the kids at Kai and Matt’s bouldering youth squad, teachers at their London school who are realistically flawed, and a group of Black schoolmates called The Boys who take Kai and Matt under their wing. The resolution of the book’s romance plotline feels a bit rushed, but Atta touches in gentle, sensitive ways on many significant themes, including consent, sexual assault, forced outing, racial profiling, anger management and therapy, and the unique experiences Kai has as a biracial teen with a multicultural

heritage. Some untranslated Greek dialogue is easily understood in context. An emotional novel in verse that reads like an actual teen’s diary. (Verse fiction. 14-18)

Kill the Lax Bro

Balogh, Charlotte Lillie | Delacorte (384 pp.) $19.99 | June 24, 2025 | 9780593899274

A group of unlikely friends exacts their revenge on an entitled lacrosse bro. Troy Richards is a jerk. A senior on Hancock High’s lacrosse team, he seems untouchable: He’s handsome, manages to evade accountability for his numerous wrongdoings, and has been admitted to Harvard. But Troy isn’t universally loved by his classmates. Troy’s ex-best-friend and former lacrosse bro Andrew Garcia, ambitious perfectionist Sassi DeLuca, bad girl with a heart of gold Tatum Stein, and quiet freshman Naomi King all have reasons to resent him. The teens devise a series of vengeful pranks on Troy, but when he ends up dead at a senior night lock-in, any one of them may be the culprit. Balogh’s debut, set in the late 1990s, has an alluring plot with a quasi-locked-room concept but leans heavily on nostalgia and eventually collapses under its overly ambitious bloat. The narration rotates among the perspectives of Troy, Jennifer, Andrew, Sassi, Tatum, and Naomi, whose voices are difficult to distinguish. These shifting points of view are set

For another boarding school romance, visit Kirkus online.

against a jumpy timeline, further adding to the confusion, and a scattering of red herrings frustratingly leaves readers with more questions than answers. The examination of toxic masculinity and accountability is intriguing, but the characterization leans heavily on stereotypes and harmful tropes and the story reaches a disappointing conclusion. Andrew is cued Latine and white, Naomi reads Black, and other main characters present white. Messy and unsatisfying. (glossary) (Mystery. 12-18)

Shoot the Moon

Beam, Matt | Orca (128 pp.) | $10.95 paper April 15, 2025 | 9781459839632

Series: Orca Soundings

A teenager struggling to care for her dad, who has bipolar disorder, has hard choices to make when he disappears. In this accessibly written story that centers on the emotional costs of trying to take on too much responsibility, Charlie Abbott is thrown into a panic when her father vanishes—and she realizes he’s stopped taking his medications. Following his trail leads Charlie from Toronto to a campsite deep in the woods while at the same time plunging her into a perfect storm of conflicting feelings. She’s reluctantly forced to call on both Lachlan Tomic, her crush from school, and her mom, who’d given up on and left Charlie’s dad, for help. She also discovers that both of her divorced parents have been keeping shocking secrets from her. Charlie’s frantic search for clues to where Dad might have gone culminates in a canoe trip that’s marked by mishaps and that parallels an inner journey that leaves her ready, by the time the neat resolution arrives, to make changes in her life that turn out to leave her, her mother, and even her father happier. Beam leaves readers with food for thought about the roles they should—and perhaps should

not—be expected to take within their families. He concludes with teen helplines in the U.S. and Canada. Main characters are cued white.

An absorbing, intensely felt, occasionally scary novel that will hook reluctant readers. (Fiction. 12-18)

Vesuvius

Biehn, Cass | Peachtree Teen (416 pp.)

$19.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781682637326

In Biehn’s debut, set against the looming threat of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, two young men race to prevent disaster in Pompeii. Loren, an attendant at the Temple of Isis, aspires to join the council and help implement reforms that will help the city’s residents, but something hidden in his past complicates his ambitions. Felix, a wandering thief, steals the helmet of Mercury— an artifact said to burn anyone who touches it, although it doesn’t harm him—and is threatened by someone who’s seeking the powerful relic. Felix flees, seeking sanctuary in the Temple of Isis, where olive-skinned Loren recognizes him as the “copper-haired ghost” from his prophetic visions warning of Pompeii’s doom. Determined to uncover the connection between his visions and Felix’s immunity to the helmet’s powers, Loren joins Felix on a journey that takes them through a brothel, bars, and patrician homes. Initially adversarial, the boys’ relationship deepens into something more (Felix is bisexual, and Loren is gay). The narrative alternates between the teens’ perspectives; Felix is a troubled youth haunted by fragmented memories, and Loren is an idealist who’s yearning for recognition. Their bond feels authentic, adding emotional weight to the story. The richly described Pompeii setting immerses readers in its vibrant yet tense atmosphere as tremors foreshadow the eruption, although the

climactic event itself feels underwhelming compared to the buildup. A heartfelt and absorbing historical adventure with light fantasy elements. (Historical fiction. 14-18)

Out of Step, Into You

Burch, Ciera | Farrar, Straus and Giroux (304 pp.) | $19.99 May 20, 2025 | 9780374389154

In middle school, Mari and Taylor had a plan: The best friends were going to be on the cross-country team at Jefferson High together. But a lot has changed since then: Mari’s family moved to a different school district, Taylor covered up her dad’s kidney disease, driving a wedge between them—and the two girls started freshman year estranged and on competing teams. Three years later, when Mari’s single mother is forced to move the family, the two girls finally become teammates. Unfortunately, their complicated history means Mari and Taylor, who are both Black, are anything but friends again. Following an embarrassing public fight, their coach orders them to volunteer at a local animal rescue. While spending their Sundays together walking dogs, the girls finally begin communicating honestly with one another. By being vulnerable about their challenges—Mari’s mother leans on her to help with her younger siblings, Taylor feels pressure to live up to her star athlete father’s reputation, and his illness has taken a toll—they rediscover their friendship and build self-confidence. Told in the girls’ alternating voices, this heartfelt friends-to-rivals-to-lovers romance is a quick, entertaining read. It chronicles the girls’ intricate relationship while also addressing important familial and social themes. While at times Taylor’s and Mari’s voices are difficult to distinguish, and the subplot exploring socioeconomic differences doesn’t get

as much development as it deserves, the complexities of the overall story more than carry the narrative. A queer romance that really goes the distance. (Romance. 13-18)

Growing Into You!: An Inclusive, Shame-Busting, Get-Real Guide to Your Changing Body and Mind

Carnagey, Melissa Pintor | Illus. by Brianna Gilmartin | Quirk Books (176 pp.) | $17.99 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781683694311

An LGBTQ+friendly guide to all things related to puberty. Written by a nonbinary sexual health educator and social worker, this book is divided into four parts, covering an introduction to puberty, changes to your body, self-care tips, and how to connect with yourself and others. Within each section, readers find activities to further their learning and interaction with the content, including writing and discussion prompts and suggested activities. Carnagey intentionally presents the information using gender-inclusive language, for example speaking of “people who were assigned female at birth or who have ovaries.” The book covers topics such as gender, sex assigned at birth, being intersex, going through puberty as a nonbinary individual, period care for trans and nonbinary people, and sexual orientation. The care with which these topics are handled creates a safe space for tweens to explore their identities. Other sensitive topics discussed are period poverty, masturbation, and the importance of consent and boundaries. The backmatter includes suggestions for further reading, websites and organizations, and resources for adults. Although the work specifically addresses a young adolescent audience, many adults will find value in it. The author presents the information clearly, concisely, and nonjudgmentally and reminds readers

that there’s no room for shame in discussing these topics. Gilmartin’s bright illustrations show people of varied abilities, skin tones, and sizes and include clear anatomical drawings. An inclusive look at puberty for tweens and young teens of all gender identities. (glossary, references, index) (Nonfiction. 12-14)

Girls With Goals:

How Women’s Soccer Took Over the World

Castro-Malaspina, Clelia | Illus. by Michelle Brackenborough | Holler/Quarto (176 pp.) $19.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781836001898

An account of the long road to attaining equality for women’s soccer and the pitfalls met along the way, including the sport’s hardscrabble origins and its prominence as the most popular women’s sport in the world.

The author, a soccer fan and former player, opens by describing her deep love for “the world’s beautiful game.” Although she focuses on English and American teams, textboxes labeled “Global Game” spotlight women’s soccer worldwide, and significant events from other countries are woven into the general history. The text introduces readers to notable players and figures in the history of women’s soccer, emphasizing the sport’s broad geographic reach and including women who represent a range of ethnicities, nationalities, and sexualities. Each chapter relates a particular hurdle along the path to seeing women players’ efforts and

achievements recognized and legitimized. Unabashedly feminist in tone, the book is well-researched, and Castro-Malaspina relates her findings with enthusiasm. Readers will be drawn into the energy of the struggle: The broad-strokes history is combined with a vivid narrative that evokes what it might have been like to be present at pivotal moments. Following those generations of women as they lose and gain ground in the fight to play feels almost like watching an actual match, ending on a sweet note of victory. Ample photos and spot art enhance the text. A spirited, well-told success story, all the better for being true. (references, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Fitting Indian

Chand, Jyoti | Illus. by Tara Anand HarperAlley (288 pp.) | $18.99 paper May 13, 2025 | 9780063237537

Sixteen-year-old Nitasha’s gnawing feeling that she doesn’t fit in keeps growing. At home, she feels burdened by her traditional Indian parents’ expectations that she excel academically and pursue medicine. Fraught family dynamics and maternal nagging to master domestic chores for her future husband further suffocate Nitasha and narrow her options. Growing apart from her best friend and her crush, who both present white, translates into heightened insecurity about her looks. Nitasha copes by using alcohol and self-harming (her cutting is explicitly shown). At a high school party, her drinking gets out

Drake deftly introduces a multitude of beautifully nuanced characters.

LOVESICK FALLS

of hand, and a slut-shaming video of her spreads on social media. Nitasha’s delicate mental health shatters, and she attempts suicide (contrary to widely recommended practices, her method is detailed in the illustrations). When her family and broader support network rally around her, Nitasha feels supported and initiates a mental health support group within her religious community. This keenly observed graphic novel touches on rarely discussed themes of alcoholism, mental health, self-harm, and emotional avoidance in South Asian communities. Though some plot points lean into melodrama, the portrayal of overbearing immigrant parents and the pressures of high school feel true to life. The illustrations make interesting use of color, with sepia-tinted panels for scenes from the past and pinks, blues, and purples enhancing more dramatic situations. A candid if potentially triggering exploration of mental health challenges in South Asian families. (content note, resources) (Graphic fiction. 16-18)

Now She’s Dead

Clarke, Roselyn | Sourcebooks Fire (400 pp.) | $12.99 paper June 3, 2025 | 9781464223488

A young woman returns to the lake resort where her family vacations annually—and where her best friend was killed the year before.

The summer after Sara died in the woods after a night of drinking and setting off fireworks, 18-year-old Mandy has agreed to the trip to the insular, mostly white Highmark Inn & Resort with her family. She’s hoping to convince her parents that she’s functioning well enough to continue going to college away from home. In reality, however, Mandy is racked with guilt about her role in Sara’s death and is horrified to discover that her younger sister, Kelsey, has brought along Natalie, a friend who produces a

true-crime podcast and is interested in uncovering the real story behind Sara’s death. Employing a dual timeline that moves between the previous summer and the current one, Clarke effectively creates a grim, tension-filled atmosphere. Mandy’s internal monologues show how her anxiety ramps up in the present-day storyline, threatening to overwhelm her, and many members of the large cast of characters appear to be hiding things. There’s a great deal more to Sara’s death than the police uncovered, and the author teases readers about exactly how much Mandy knows—and how culpable she actually is—right up to the end. Mandy is a well-drawn unreliable narrator. Major characters are cued white.

A dark and engrossing debut that will keep readers guessing. (content warnings) (Thriller. 14-18)

Sanskari Sweetheart

Devarajan, Ananya | Harper/ HarperCollins (304 pp.) | $19.99 May 20, 2025 | 9781335009944

A time-loop story centering on Bollywood dance, emotional growth, and finding true love.

In this standalone companion to 2023’s Kismat Connection, Raina Iyer faces the most important weekend of her senior year of high school. She’s not just competing for the last time in nationals of a Bollywood dance competition and trying to secure her third championship title, she’s also determined to win the event scholarship and prove to her mother that she can successfully pursue a career in dance. But things go haywire from the beginning, tanking Raina’s performance: Aditya Kumar, her boyfriend of four years and dance team co-captain, unexpectedly breaks up with her, and later she sustains a head injury mid-dance. All seems lost, but when she wakes up the next morning, Raina discovers she’s got another chance at living through the

same day. Devarajan’s sophomore novel is a delightful romp through the competitive dance world, replete with nerves, sabotage, and oodles of romance. Raina and Aditya’s interactions crackle with chemistry, as Indian American Raina tries and tries again to save their relationship—all while facing the scrutiny and commentary of various aunties. Romantic tension and a range of emotions are on display as the duo work through their issues with heartfelt conversations—and lots of kissing. Raina’s journey to self-realization is enjoyable, and readers will feel invested in her.

A charming and illuminating romance filled with swoony, timeline-altering chemistry. (Romance. 13-18)

Kirkus Star

Lovesick Falls

Drake, Julia | Little, Brown (336 pp.) $19.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9780759557826

A plan for three friends to spend the summer together goes awry when love triangles cause tension. Celia Gilbert has carefully planned the trip to Lovesick Falls, a tiny town in a redwood forest whose spring water allegedly causes people to fall out of love. Celia envisions spending the summer before their senior year living in a cabin with her two best friends, Ros Brinkman and Andrew Touchstone, working at local theater festival Arden & Company and watching Power Jam, their favorite campy British TV show. If this plan also happens to lead to Ros’ finally falling for Celia, who’s been secretly in love with them for the last year, so much the better. But chaos erupts almost immediately: Ros meets Jess Orlando, a tiny blond boxer, and falls head over heels for her, which makes Celia both angry and jealous. And then there’s Oliver Teller, the incredibly hot star of Power Jam, who has coincidentally arrived at the

festival to act in a play and, despite an awkward first encounter, has really taken to Celia (for whom Touchstone has unrequited feelings). In this story based on Shakespeare’s As You Like It, a play famous for its complex and comic overlapping love triangles, Drake deftly introduces a multitude of beautifully nuanced characters, weaving their stories into a queer ode to friendship, theater, and the complexities of love. Central characters largely present white; Oliver has “deep olive” skin. An exceptional retelling of a classic Shakespearean comedy. (Fiction. 13-18)

All Paths Lead to Paris

Fedel, Sabrina | Delacorte Romance (336 pp.) | $12.99 paper

June 17, 2025 | 9780593900277

A teen influencer in Paris finds herself caught in a web of fake dating under paparazzi scrutiny.

Seventeen-yearold Aurélie McGinley, who has an American dad and French mom, has achieved success as a fashion influencer. In hopes of boosting their fame, her manager, Lille, orchestrates a fake-dating scheme between Aurie and another one of her clients, the French musician Remy St. Julien, who’s also 17 and Aurie’s best friend. When Aurie slips away during Paris Fashion Week in a desperate search for tampons, she’s followed by paparazzi and photographed with the pharmacist’s son, Kylian, whom she’s just met. To deflect the subsequent rumors, Lille hires Kylian as a math tutor for Aurie, who has dyscalculia, so she can pass her high school graduation exam. Aurie and Remy also engage in a public kiss—but it sparks real feelings in Remy. Hoping to avoid damaging their friendship, Aurie announces to her inner circle that she’s dating Kylian, who goes along with the ruse. The uneven character development makes some characters’

This slow-burn horror novel has death and destruction embedded throughout.

WHEN DEVILS SING

motivations and behaviors feel more realistic than others. Unfortunately, Aurie’s dyscalculia largely feels like a device to keep Kylian around, and despite the potential it offers as an intriguing backdrop for the story, the world of social media influencing isn’t fully fleshed out. Major characters present white.

A fake-dating love triangle that skims the surface . (Romance. 12-17)

Kirkus Star

The Big Ask

Green, Simon James | Union Square & Co. (120 pp.) | $9.99 paper

April 1, 2025 | 9781454960317

Series: Everyone Can Be a Reader

A lfie Parker is totally gay and totally fine going to prom by himself. His best friend, Jasminder Cheema, who has her life together, is going with Joe Chan, one of the hottest boys in school—because of course she is. But when Jas surprises Alfie one morning with the news that their school’s golden couple, Harvey Ledger and Summer Gray, have broken up, everything changes. Harvey and Summer have been inseparable for years, and now they’ve split up just four days before prom. Despite Harvey’s presenting as straight, Alfie has had a quiet crush on him for years. So when Jas encourages Alfie to ask Harvey to be his date for prom, he does the most un-Alfie thing he can think of: He gets up the courage to invite Harvey to join him. To his immense surprise and pleasure,

Harvey accepts. In short chapters that advance the plot at a swift pace, this work for reluctant readers that uses a dyslexia-friendly font explores relatable themes of popularity, sexuality, friendship, and identity. This sweet and accessible novel about potential romance and being true to yourself is a strong narrative that’s sure to engage readers and leave them wanting more. Alfie and Harvey are cued as white.

A delightfully authentic story about friendship, love, and taking chances. (Romance. 13-18)

The Art of Drag

Hall, Jake | Illus. by Various | Flying Eye Books (136 pp.) | $21.99 paper May 6, 2025 | 9781838749767

A colorful compendium of queer history. From ancient times to the modern day, human beings have bent and broken rules about gender through clothing, makeup, and performance. Tracing this history through to the possible future, Hall attempts to synthesize larger theories of drag and queer liberation while also providing thumbnail sketches of individuals, communities, and timeframes. They use a cheery tone to introduce readers to Kabuki theater in Japan, the Peking opera, British pantomime, the Pansy Craze of early-20th-century New York City, the Harlem ballroom scene that came to prominence in the 1980s, and other subjects. The book also introduces famous drag queens like House Mother Crystal LaBeija, RuPaul, Divine, and

masc-presenting performers and drag kings like Gladys Alberta Bentley and Stormé DeLarverie (though William Dorsey Swann, a formerly enslaved Black pioneer of American drag, is noticeably missing). Through mostly serviceable prose, occasionally given to run-on sentences or vague platitudes, the book addresses the impact that drag has within queer communities and references the social change created by drag, though readers seeking concrete information about the material impact that drag has had on policy and legislation will be disappointed. The illustrations by a variety of artists offer stylized, full-color renderings of the people mentioned.

Useful and optimistic. (bibliography, index, contributor bios) (Nonfiction. 16-adult)

Kirkus Star

Heir of Storms

Hamilton Murray, Lauryn | Roaring Brook Press (416 pp.) | $20.99 | June 3, 2025 9781250348159 | Series: Storm Weaver, 1

A notorious young woman must learn to fully accept her powers. Blaze, the last surviving Rain Singer, has spent 17 years locked away. Her birth brought on a devastating storm, and she’s been known ever since as the Storm Weaver. Her twin brother, Flint, is expected to win the throne of Ignitia in the dangerous Choosing Rite. The twins, who have olive skin and curly dark hair, differ in one significant way: Flint’s Flameborn power is strong, while Blaze’s own abilities seem to be gone. So it’s shocking when Blaze’s gifts make a resurgence at her Name Day ball. Chosen by the Gods as an Heir, Blaze must strengthen her gifts by finally letting herself feel her emotions—all while competing in the Choosing Rite for the Aquatori throne. This trilogy opener brings to life a gorgeous world

with thoughtfully designed customs and laws. Hamilton Murray demonstrates her narrative prowess through her intentional use of foreshadowing and complex characterization. Fox, the golden-skinned Terrathian Heir known as the Earth Cleaver, is the perfect contrast to Blaze, who’s embarking on a journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance. Together, they prove that labels only have power if you let them, and that self-perception matters more than how others see you. The narrative balances lyricism and drama as the Heirs work through the trials to assume their rightful places.

An impressive debut that highlights the importance of fully embracing one’s true self. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)

Voice of the Ocean

Impicciche, Kelsey | Blackstone (432 pp.)

$19.99 | April 22, 2025 | 9798212980906

In this debut by YouTuber Impicciche, a young siren princess is faced with a mission she cannot refuse. Celeste’s mother, Queen Halia, has always considered her to be too emotional—like the irrational humans. In order to prove herself, Celeste has spent several cycles, the sirens’ unit of time, training to become a member of the Chorus, a militarized unit that patrols the seas. Before her final test, Celeste comes across an attractive human prince, Raiden, whose father is King Leonidas—her mother’s sworn enemy. She ends up saving Raiden’s life, but when her mother learns of her transgression, she offers Celeste the chance to go on a mission that requires her to become human and avoid being executed for treason. The narrative, which initially is strongly reminiscent of “The Little Mermaid,” has some slower moments and repetitive elements that are offset by witty commentary that helps engage readers. The opening drags, but the pace picks up as the story unfolds. Impicciche does a good job of

creating a detailed world of siren customs and traditions. Her characters exhibit emotional depth, conveying what it feels like to be lost and betrayed. Sirens have skin of varying colors, including blue, purple, and green; Celeste’s skin is “soft peach.” Raiden presents white, and there’s racial diversity among other humans. After a slow start, an action-packed adventure about embracing vulnerability and trusting yourself. (map) (Fantasy. 14-18)

When Devils Sing

Kaur, Xan | Henry Holt (400 pp.)

$21.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781250357175

Four teens attempt to outsmart both the devil and his human servants in this sinister Southern gothic horror novel by debut author Kaur. In the small town of Carrion, Georgia, when the cicadas emerge every 13 years, people vanish—townsfolk and tourists alike. Rumors say that the town’s founder made a deal with the devil to ensure prosperity, but the devil demanded a sacrifice in return. Now the wealthy enjoy the spoils of life in the gated community of Lake Clearwater, while most inhabitants of Carrion struggle. This year Dawson Sumter, a local boy from the wrong side of the tracks, has gone missing, leaving behind only a mess of blood and a key ring. Drawn together by a confluence of circumstances, musician and motel worker Neera Singh, Harvard-bound podcaster Isaiah Johnson, long-suffering yet devoted eldest daughter Sam Calhoun, and descendant of Carrion’s founder Reid Langley team up to investigate Dawson’s disappearance. What they find is an ominous decadesold secret, exposing the town’s systemic inequalities and throwing all of them in harm’s way. Atmospheric and tense, this detail-rich slow-burn horror novel has death and destruction embedded throughout. The humid Georgia

summer setting provides an intense backdrop, acting as a character in and of itself. The four protagonists are well-developed, seriously flawed yet utterly understandable. Most characters are coded white. Neera’s Punjabi family is from the U.K., and Isaiah is Black. A harrowing tale of desire, despair, and the devil. (author’s note) (Horror. 14-18)

Fight To Win!: Heroes of American Labor: The Young Readers Edition of Fight Like Hell

Kelly, Kim | Simon & Schuster (240 pp.)

$17.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9781665937290

Rousing tales of courageous workers who dared to fight for better, safer jobs. In this young readers’ version of Fight Like Hell (2022), Kelly leaves out the chapter on activist sex workers and recasts the rest into individual profiles of 22 organizers and advocates. Giants in the great struggle, like Frances Perkins, Mother Jones, Eugene V. Debs (who ran for president from prison in 1920), and Judy Heumann have entries, and she also includes more recent, lesser-known heroes. The subjects are diverse, including people of color, immigrants, and other people from marginalized groups. Kelly chronicles their triumphs and tragedies and their relentless battles with largely faceless, uniformly hostile bosses. Her rhetoric often takes a fiery turn: “I could feel the heat roll off her words,” she writes about an interview with Jennifer Bates, one of the leaders in a bitter, ongoing struggle against “Jeff Bezos’s goons” to unionize the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Still, she reminds readers that her most iconic subjects were complex, fallible humans, acknowledging Bayard Rustin’s support for the war in Vietnam, for example, or how César Chávez and Dolores Huerta froze their longtime co-worker Maria Moreno out

of the United Farm Workers. A passionate read that would pair well with J. Albert Mann’s Shift Happens (2024), Kelly’s central message shines through. “Collective working-class power is behind every step forward this country has made.”

Fiercely partisan, rich in role models. (source notes) (Nonfiction. 12-16)

The Complex Art of Being Maisie Clark

Kleckner, Sabrina | Flux (288 pp.) | $14.99 paper | June 10, 2025 | 9781631639203

Maisie Clark is entering her first year at London College of Art with a plan: step out of her comfort zone and discover her artistic voice—or quit art altogether. Back home in upstate New York, Maisie painted portraits at her parents’ shop, and she’s become so good at seamlessly imitating her father’s style that their work can be indistinguishable. Determined to break free and express herself, she decides to experiment with new media, make friends, and reinvent her look in London. But Maisie’s plans quickly hit some snags—she hates her classes and struggles to connect with people. Things take an introspective turn when she partners with photography classmate Eli on a project that challenges her perspectives on herself and her family. When her parents’ portrait shop is vandalized, Maisie must confront a painful chapter in her family’s past and in her relationship with her older brother. Her slow-burn romantic relationship with Eli unfolds with authentic highs and lows. Both teens are white, and Eli is trans; this aspect of his identity is subtly woven into his characterization, offering insight into how his past has shaped his present. Maisie is funny, awkward, and occasionally overbearing. Her inner voice captures the confused, unfiltered thoughts of a teenager—full of self-doubt, sarcasm, and bursts of

confidence—in this thoughtful, character-driven story of growth. A well-realized coming-of-age story that celebrates art and the journey to accepting yourself. (Fiction. 14-18)

Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe

Lee, C.B. | Feiwel & Friends (400 pp.) $19.99 | June 10, 2025 | 9781250778024

The lives of two Los Angeles girls inhabiting different universes intersect, proving that love knows no bounds. Brenda Nguyen has a 19-step plan to save the world. Kat Woo is haunted by her legacy as the chosen one, a role she has no interest in. Brenda, working on an environmental science college scholarship application, stumbles into Sammy’s Coffee and Pick-Me-Ups, which Kat’s family owns. As the girls get to know each other, Brenda at last finds someone who’ll listen to her detailed plans, while Kat discovers she has something to look forward to. The girls, who alternate narrating the story, must defy the odds as their worlds begin to collide. As well as being a love story, this is an exploration of familial expectations: Kat is trying to outrun them, while Brenda is driven to fulfill hers. The girls, who are of Chinese and Vietnamese descent, respectively, complement each other: Brenda learns to live in the present, and Kat begins to look to the future. While there are pixie swarms and mana surges, the action takes a back seat to characterization. Lee’s fully developed parallel worlds are alike in many ways, although in Kat’s, you can buy teleportation spells at Target. The cast is rounded out by solid portrayals of the girls’ friends and family, who are important to the plot.

A charming cozy fantasy about defying expectations and finding love. (author’s note, recommended reading) (Fantasy romance. 14-18)

Chronicles triumphs and tragedies and relentless battles.

Nav’s Foolproof Guide to Falling In Love

Lewis, Jessica | Harper/HarperCollins (384 pp.)

$19.99 | April 29, 2025 | 9781335012388

A lesbian who doesn’t believe in love plays dating coach. Naveah has never had “an official girlfriend”—she’s against dating on principle; relationships are too “messy.” Instead, Nav keeps things casual and fun, unlike her bisexual best friend, Hallie (both girls are Black). Hallie is constantly getting her heart broken. After Hallie’s latest boyfriend turns out to be a cheater, Nav is determined to fix things for her. The problem is that Hallie is headed to an academic summer camp Nav didn’t get into. Then Italian and Mexican American new girl Gia, who has social anxiety and whose mom is a sponsor for Hallie’s camp, asks Nav for help getting Hallie’s attention. Nav agrees to teach Gia how to win over Hallie in exchange for the spot at camp that Gia’s planning to give up. Since Nav is good at flirting, this should be simple—but after Gia’s anxiety ruins her first date with Hallie, Nav has to go back to basics with her romance lessons. When Nav starts to have feelings for Gia, she panics. Nav hates change—and now she has to decide whether her perfect summer plan is more important than taking a chance on love. The highly relatable characters make cringeworthy mistakes while also showing their vulnerability. This book is about more than just romantic love: Lewis balances family trauma and complicated relationships with depictions of strong support systems. Funny, serious, and adorably awkward in all the best ways. (Romance. 12-18)

Good Luck and Other Lies

McKeown, Catriona | Rhiza Edge (296 pp.) $16.99 paper | June 10, 2025 | 9781761111969

When six teens team up to try and win the lottery, their lives unexpectedly become more complicated than they imagined. Sixteen-year-old Cassie Carsten’s life on Australia’s Sunshine Coast is quickly unraveling. She’s overshadowed by her five younger half siblings, and now, because of housing issues, her father plans to send her to live in Sydney with the mum she barely knows. Desperate to find a solution that will allow her to stay, Cassie is excited to overhear some classmates—Kye Takeo, Luke Conrad, Meg Narcisse, Alex Jakov, and Harriet Kurt—plotting a way to win the lottery. She joins them, they win $50,000,000— and their lives are turned upside down. After tragedy strikes one of the team members, and their relationships grow strained, Cassie starts to wonder whether winning the lottery was truly a stroke of luck. The moralizing feels heavy-handed throughout, and readers may be surprised and left dissatisfied and wanting more complexity when everything is neatly wrapped up at the end of the story. The fast-moving plot also covers a lot of ground without delving deeper into the topics it raises, including money troubles, artificial intelligence, sextortion, parentification, child abandonment, and toxic teen relationships. Fortunately, the characters come across as realistic and relatable, as do most of their problems. Most characters are cued white, Luke has brown skin, and Kye is originally from Japan.

An accessible read that disappointingly lacks depth. (Fiction. 12-18)

Hick: The Trailblazing Journalist Who Captured Eleanor Roosevelt’s Heart

Miller, Sarah | Random House Studio (384 pp.)

$20.99 | May 27, 2025 | 9780593649091

A thorough account of the life of Lorena “Hick” Hickok, an intrepid journalist best known today for her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt. Hickok was born in 1893. Her childhood was marked by loss—her mother died suddenly when she was 13, and a year later her abusive father announced his engagement to the housekeeper; he split the siblings up, leaving Lorena to fend for herself. She studied journalism, difficult for women at the time, and then worked for newspapers, often as the only woman reporter. Her compelling journalistic voice and dogged persistence were the keys to her success. Hickok rose to prominence at the Associated Press and covered Eleanor Roosevelt’s public appearances during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign. Eleanor and Hick’s romantic relationship grew from friendship; by 1933, their correspondence was affectionate, and Hick had given Eleanor a ring that she wore on her pinky, a “secret code” among committed Sapphic couples at the time. Hick, realizing her conflict of interest was unsustainable, left reporting for other pursuits, and the two remained romantically involved until Eleanor’s death in 1962. Afflicted with diabetes- and smoking-related health complications, Hickok died at the age of 75 in 1968. Miller’s prose is clear, thoroughly researched, and highly detailed. She’s careful to note when she has made an informed inference in the absence of primary sources.

A substantial biography of a noteworthy figure. (note on language, author’s note, sources, endnotes) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

THE KIRKUS Q&A: REX OGLE

Writing—and therapy—helped the author process his childhood trauma. Young readers can relate.

BY CHRISTOPHER A. BISS-BROWN

REX OGLE HAS LIVED many lives: editor, author, abused child, homeless teen. The last two identities are explored in many of his books, including Free Lunch, his award-winning debut; Punching Bag ; and Road Home. But his long bibliography runs the gamut in both format and subject matter, including graphic novels such as Four Eyes, illustrated by Dave Valeza. With the release of his Kirkus-starred novel in verse, When We Ride —a story of best friends and the life choices that strain their bond—we spoke with Ogle by Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m impressed with the diversity of your work. How do you decide what format a book will take?

I’ve heard colleagues say, “I write prose, so—prose,” or “I write comics, so—a comic.” I ask, What’s the best format for this story ? I grew up obsessed with poetry and reading prose and comic books, so all three genres were very intimate to me. Is it a highly visual story? Then it has to be a graphic novel. If the visuals are harder to include, the story could be verse or prose. I let the story tell me what it wants to be.

Has that approach to writing a book ever failed?

Being an editor for 15 years taught me about the craft of storytelling. In 2012, my agent

sent [my debut], Free Lunch, out to every major publisher—and it was rejected by all except two. One of them asked me to set it in high school. I said no, because then it wouldn’t be a memoir. The other wanted me to turn it into a graphic novel. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. An artist can’t capture the nuance and the pain that only come through in prose.

I initially assumed Four Eyes was a graphic novel version of Free Lunch. It’s definitely not, but it examines the same time period and people, albeit for a younger audience. Free Lunch was about poverty, domestic violence, and home instability, so the story had to be about those

things. I wanted to go there with Four Eyes, but that’s not the premise of the story. Four Eyes is about getting glasses, not fitting in, and finding new ways to look at yourself. Not only was it important for it to be a graphic novel, I don’t think it would have worked as anything else.

Your books range from unflinching depictions of abuse to light-hearted humor. That tonal shift seems emotionally complicated.

When I was younger, my mom would drive me to school, and we sang along to Madonna. Then the next thing I know, she’d pull the car over and start punching me in the face. She’d kick me out saying, “You’re walking to school.” I’d walk the last mile and a half with a bloody nose and black eye. At school I’d wash my face and pretend everything was OK. I’d smile

and hang out with my friends. “What happened?” “I ran into my locker.”

It was an education in taking the heavy stuff and saying, You can process this now, or you can process it later, but right now you have to get an education. If you want out, you’re going to need the grades to go to college; you’re going to have to work to get away from your situation. I’ve always been good at putting stuff in a mental drawer, which is not healthy. I’d put stuff in a drawer, close it, lock it, and not deal with it.

Is it cathartic to unpack those drawers through writing? How do you prepare for that?

Therapy. For 20 years I processed my trauma while trying to become a famous writer. During that time, I wrote 18 novels: fantasy, sci-fi, horror. All escapism,

For 20 years I processed my trauma while trying to become a famous writer.

and all rejected. I asked an editor, “What am I doing wrong?” He said, “There’s none of you in these stories. You’re not being honest.” I wrote Free Lunch as an exercise over about a year—a year of panic attacks, depression, anxiety, and so many tears. It was awful, but five years later, it was published—then Abuela, Don’t Forget Me, then Punching Bag. Later, I realized that I’d taken all my pain and trapped it in three books. It was out. I’ve been happier in the last year than I’ve been in my entire life.

Tell us about some of the readers’ responses. People will tell me that they were also on the free lunch program; that’s the number one thing that I hear. But people also talk about being abused as a kid or being homeless. I felt utterly alone growing up. I didn’t know that

When We Ride

Ogle, Rex

Norton Young Readers | 336 pp. $18.99 | March 25, 2025 | 9781324052821

millions of people were also living in poverty, living with domestic violence, living with home instability. I thought I was the only one.

And now there are political attacks on free lunch programs.

Lunch is just another school supply. It’s vital to supporting education. You can’t learn without a textbook, and you can’t learn without lunch. If you haven’t eaten all day, you can’t focus on the chalkboard or on a test. All you think about is that hunger in your stomach. Nothing else.

Can we assume When We Ride is a fictionalized version of your teen years?

The ending is not what happened in real life, but I was best friends with the drug dealer in high school, and I drove him around to deal. I’d stay in the car doing homework. I didn’t want to

drive, but I felt I had to because he needed money to buy food. I’m never going to stop someone from working, even if I disagree with it. And I disagreed with it often.

With your memoirs and memoir-adjacent works like When We Ride, has anyone said, “This isn’t what I remember?”

I don’t have a photographic memory, but I have a very good one. With Free Lunch and Four Eyes, I reached out to my abuela, my aunt, and my brother and asked countless questions. I sent manuscripts to friends and family to check if I was remembering things correctly. The story shocked people that didn’t know. Friends told me, “We thought you were a clumsy idiot clown because you always had bruises,” or “We thought you were super emotional.’”

As for the reception, my brother is super supportive. My abuela was also. My parents are probably not thrilled with the books being out there in the world. And by “probably,” I mean they definitely aren’t, but I wrote them letters and sent early copies of the book. I said, “I’m not trying to demonize you. I don’t hate you. I’m not angry. I let that stuff go decades ago. I love you, I hope you’re well, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been an orphan my whole life. I wrote the story that I lived—if you want to talk about it, I’m always here to have a conversation. But this is out in the world, so before you tell your friends that your son wrote a book, you might want to read it.”

Christopher A. Biss-Brown is the curator of the Children’s Literature Research Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

BEST OF THE CENTURY

The Hunger Games

B y Suzanne Collins  (2008)

Successful children’s television writer Suzanne Collins had already penned a bestselling series of books for young readers before creating The Hunger Games. But who could have anticipated that the new novel would launch one of the most successful series of all time—rivaling the likes of Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Baby-Sitters Club?

Publisher Scholastic swiftly increased an initial print run of 50,000 to 200,000 after demand for the gritty dystopian adventure story exploded in October 2008. Inspired by Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Greek mythology, and just war theory, The Hunger Games is the story of Katniss Everdeen,

For a review of the book, visit Kirkus online.

a brave 16-year-old from an impoverished district of prosperous postapocalyptic North American nation Panem, who takes her sister’s place in a televised gladiatorial battle. Each year, two randomly selected warriors from each of 12 districts must fight to the death for the entertainment and favor of the ruling class.

The themes of love, survival, oppression, violence, and rebellion resonated with readers: The Hunger Games spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and was followed there by sequels Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010) and prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020). The books launched five wildly successful feature films with all-star casts led by Jennifer Lawrence.

Today, there are more than 100 million copies of the books in print and digital formats worldwide, with foreign publishing rights sold in 54 languages—an undeniable tribute to their abiding appeal.

—MEGAN LABRISE

Suzanne Collins

The Hate U Give

B y Angie Thomas (2017)

Angie Thomas’ first novel, The Hate U Give, has left an indelible mark on both the literary world and the entire nation. Centering on Starr Carter, a Black 16-year-old whose friend is killed by a white police officer, the book debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, garnered numerous awards, and spawned a 2018 film starring Amandla Stenberg. The novel arrived on the scene as America was in the midst of a racial reckoning, just four years after George Zimmerman’s acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin sparked the Black Lives Matter movement. Starr’s relatable trajectory from uncertain teen to determined activist gave young people a way to process code-switching, the injustices of the justice system, and microaggressions— weighty topics that

For a review of the book, visit

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Americans still confront today. “I’ve always seen writing as a form of activism,” Thomas told Publishers Weekly. “I wanted to make something that is so political seem personal.” The novel has another distinction—it frequently tops banned book lists. The Hate U Give may be under attack, but Thomas’ devoted readers have taken her messages to heart—and are speaking truth to power. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, young demonstrators in Jackson, Mississippi, showed up with protest signs modeled after the cover of the book. Not only has Thomas written a book beloved by countless teens, she’s inspiring the next generation of activists.

—M.D.

Angie Thomas

Kirkus online.

Of Earthly Delights

Moldavsky, Goldy | Henry Holt (336 pp.)

$19.99 | May 13, 2025 | 9781250863324

What would you sacrifice for true love—and can you force others to make that sacrifice for you?

When rising senior Rose Pauly is forced to move from New York City to small-town Connecticut following her parents’ divorce, she feels out of place. But a chance meeting on her first night in town leads her to “her first love, her biggest enemy, and her best friend.” When Rose meets Hart Hargrove, it’s love, or at least lust, at first sight and their romance is a whirlwind. Heather, Hart’s sister, is less enthusiastic about the match and tries to warn Rose away. Though the pair, who present white, are head over heels, Hart harbors secrets about himself and his family’s seemingly magical garden, one that can make all your wishes come true—but at a price. The main action is interrupted periodically for vignettes. Are these glimpses of the future? Daydreams? Flashbacks? Clues hint at a darker timeline, but the truth, which astute readers may begin to harbor inklings of, isn’t fully revealed until the climax. Hart’s possessiveness of Rose demands that readers grapple with whether he truly loves her or she’s merely the object of his obsession, and if her affection for him is even her choice. The story ends on a satisfactory cliffhanger, leaving the lingering question of what price one should pay for love.

Young love’s twisted roots will leave readers in suspense. (Horror. 14-18)

Kirkus Star

Solo

O’Brien, Gráinne | Little Island (280 pp.)

$12.99 paper | May 27, 2025 | 9781915071798

A small-town Irish teen grapples with a breakup and a family health scare, both of which affect her passion for music. The book opens during a hot August on Daisy’s 18th birthday, although she feels too miserable to enjoy the celebration. David is her second love after the recorder, but now he’s broken up with her. When school begins, Daisy meets new classmate Flora, who’s from Dublin and has her own passion for music as an alto in the choir. Their personalities are complementary, and they form a special, fateful relationship that grows to become fierce and protective, leaving them both deeply changed. Flora helps Daisy find her way back to the recorder; she became overly absorbed with David (“Lost in his dreams / Neglecting my own”) and stopped practicing. Depressed about her father’s cancer diagnosis and guilty about letting down her supportive parents by abandoning the recorder, Daisy struggles to return to music. Daisy is a believable, complex narrator, sitting at that tentative place between growing and being grown up. She’s realistically both acutely self-aware and obliviously immature. The verse’s musicality is natural and a well-executed pairing with Daisy’s talent. Each poem has a brilliantly aligned (and briefly defined) musical term as its title, and many of the poems play meaningfully with shape and form. O’Brien accurately captures a time in a person’s

Captures a time in a person’s life that is fragile and overwhelming. SOLO

life that is so fragile and overwhelming that it’s nearly impossible to get just right. A tightly written, incredibly well-characterized work: bravo. (Verse fiction. 14-18)

Best of All Worlds

Oppel, Kenneth | Scholastic (256 pp.) $19.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781546158202

The discovery that he’s been cut off from the world beneath an invisible, impenetrable dome leads a Canadian teen into daunting challenges. When a planned weekend turns to years of isolation at their country cottage for white-presenting Xavier Oak, his dad, and his stepmom Nia, who’s Haitian Canadian, the family must shift its efforts from futile bids for escape to simple survival. Receiving miraculous help with the difficult birth of Xavier’s half brother seems to prove that they were abducted by aliens. Three years on, they suddenly acquire new neighbors: the Jacksons from Tennessee, who are implied white. Husband Riley is a full-bore conspiracy theorist, who rants about “reptilian bloodlines” and a covert plot that’s reminiscent of the great replacement theory. He’s hellbent on escaping, sure that the government is secretly behind their predicament. Xavier, now 16, is half convinced that Riley is right, though his own judgment may be impaired by the blinding tides of adolescent hormones that rise when he meets Riley’s dazzling teenage daughter, Mackenzie. Oppel eventually hints at the truth, but until then he leaves readers to sift the evidence through their own social and political convictions. The plot heats up when the mysterious overseers are revealed along with a terrifying secret, and cultural frictions mount between the two families. Although Riley’s portrayal feels somewhat lacking in nuance, the choice Xavier ultimately must make is understandably agonizing—and, in the end, justified.

An idyllic scenario that turns increasingly creepy in this slightly message- heavy story. (Thriller. 13-18)

Stuck Up and Stupid

Rice, Angourie & Kate Rice

Candlewick (384 pp.) | $18.99

May 6, 2025 | 9781536239034

Pride and Prejudice meets celebrity romance in this contemporary work set in rural Australia and Hollywood. This modern take on Austen’s classic centers on Lily, a recent high school graduate living with her younger sister, Rosie, and single mother, Lydia, in the tiny, idyllic community of Pippi Beach, which is tucked away and hidden from Sydney by bushland. The family resides year-round in the expansive beach house of Lily’s wealthy aunt Jane. When Casey Brandon, a charming young American actor, and his entourage—his influencer sister, Cecilia, her friend Yumi, and his aloof best friend, Dorian Khan, an even bigger movie star—rent Pippi Beach’s most luxurious property, Lily and Juliet, her lovely, shy cousin from the city, encounter the VIP visitors at a local party. Despite overbearing Lydia’s meddling, Casey and Juliet quickly become genuinely smitten, while Dorian remains wary of the small resort town’s insular, aspirational inhabitants. Lily’s gap-year trip to Los Angeles further amplifies the celebrity angle, while the book stays remarkably faithful to Austen’s plot beats. The Australian mother-daughter authors cleverly reimagine Mr. Collins as an obsequious production assistant and Lady Catherine de Bourgh as his ruthless producer boss. Lydia and her sisters are based on the Bennet siblings, adding another layer of homage to Austen, although the focus remains squarely on Lily and Juliet’s generation. Lily and her family present white, and names cue diversity in the supporting cast. A frothy and fun retelling. (Romance. 13-18)

Future Millionaire: A Young Person’s Stepby-Step Guide to Making WEALTH Inevitable

Rodgers, Rachel | Blink (208 pp.)

$22.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9780310158202

For young self-starters eager to become well-off, a successful Black entrepreneur and financial podcaster offers a pep talk and a program.

In this conversational, approachable guide, Rodgers presents a mix of practical guidelines and attitude adjustment techniques that, she claims, will make that Million Dollar Dream a reality in about 12 years, which is the average for entrepreneurs. Her advice about the nuts and bolts of budgeting, saving, mutual fund investing, and the like is solid, if standard issue. The secret sauce, she insists, is learning how to change negative Zero Dollar thinking, expectations, and decision-making. Her approach blends easily absorbed slogans (“You’re not broke, you’re pre-rich”) and valuable insights (“the riches are in the niches”) with the broader principle that having money “is not about the money,” but about using it to make one’s own and others’ lives better, helping to “create the world you actually want to live in.” Much of the content may seem wildly optimistic, but the author doesn’t downplay the amount of labor that will be required—and she stands as proof that her approach works. Crucially, Rodgers also doesn’t shy away from acknowledging that “studies show that banking policies are sexist and racist” and that queer, disabled, and other marginalized people face real barriers, lending her advice, as someone who succeeded despite these odds, more credibility. Each chapter closes with a summary of major points, and the book’s website contains supplementary worksheets.

Upbeat and persuasive. (100 ways to make money, resources, endnotes) (Nonfiction. 14-18)

All’s Fair in Love and Field Hockey

Rosewater, Kit | Delacorte Romance (320 pp.)

$12.99 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9780593898451

Two rival hockey players in Pennsylvania learn from each other—on and off the field.

Evelyn Feltzer, a white-presenting 17-year-old field hockey captain and goalie at Heathclef Prep, has a plan: Get a sports scholarship to attend Duke University (where she’d be a legacy student) and then go on to play professionally, fulfilling a promise she made to her late mother. There’s one thing standing in the way, though—her academic record isn’t stellar; but she’s eligible for a scholarship if her team wins the high school nationals. The situation intensifies when Heathclef’s rival, the Van Darian girls’ boarding school, brings in a new forward, a professional recruit from New Mexico named Rosa Alvarez. Beautiful, agile Rosa, who’s Chicana, distracts Evelyn so completely that Van Darian wins the homecoming game, putting Heathclef’s position in peril and devastating Evelyn. After Van Darian fans trash Heathclef’s playing field, Evelyn confronts Rosa—but the girls end up practicing together, forming a friendship that leads to romance. Evelyn begins to question whether fulfilling the promise to her mother is her only path forward. The story’s exploration of identity throughout is refreshing and realistic. The girls delve into their budding relationship, helping each other distinguish their true selves from the expectations they face. As Rosa observes, “You don’t have to be anything…Just follow your heart and be open to whatever.”

A sweet romance of introspection and renewal. (Romance. 14-18)

Tyger

Said, SF | Illus. by Dave McKean Penguin Workshop (304 pp.)

$18.99 | $9.99 paper | June 10, 2025 9780593887240 | 9780593887240 paper

In a 21st century in which slavery was never abolished and the British Empire still rules the world, a London boy gets caught up in a fantastical fight for the survival of all living things.

Adam Alhambra is a courier. His Middle Eastern Muslim immigrant parents have a Soho alterations shop, and Adam makes deliveries to the white patrons who live on the other side of the checkpoints that separate the Ghetto from wealthier parts of the city. While fleeing from a robber, Adam escapes through a hidden doorway and meets the immortal Tyger, one of many creatures who are extinct in his world. Adam agrees to help Tyger by finding the Guardians who can reopen the gateways between worlds and stop the hatred and oppression stoked by a maleficent immortal named Urizen. He’s assisted by new friend Scheherazade “Zadie” True, a Black Muslim girl whose parents came from Timbuktu. The fast-paced story, populated by a diverse cast and underpinned by a creative premise, will sustain the interest of fans of plot-driven narratives even as it delves into moral and philosophical questions of belonging, inequality, and unity in the face of efforts at divisive manipulation. The alternate-history worldbuilding, featuring lore that’s indebted to William Blake, is dramatically evoked

by McKean’s monochrome art. The strength of this novel, which garnered multiple honors in the U.K., lies in its demonstration of the power of art and language as tools of resistance. A vividly novelized parable that explores all-too-timely social themes. (Fantasy. 12-14)

Under the Light of Fireflies

Sanders, Lee | Flare Books/ Catalyst Press (396 pp.) | $19.95 paper January 21, 2025 | 9781963511017

The summer before seventh grade holds major challenges for an East Texan boy in 1981—from having to choose between his accustomed posse and a chancier but more exciting one to recovering his memory after being mauled by a tiger. In this debut, Noah Ellis, exposed to sudden notoriety as the amnesiac victim of an escaped zoo tiger, turns from his safe, old friends toward a set of popular boys a grade older who have reputations as bullies. A quaint sense of period pervades this tale—not simply because the girls and women are confined to limited, highly gendered roles but also because the boys and men are too. Between games of pinball and minigolf, the toughs hang out in a clubhouse built in a tree and subject Noah to an elaborate initiation ritual after he tries to impress them the traditional way by stealing an adult magazine. When he sees how some casual vandalism that spirals out of control makes all their swagger and tough talk about loyalty evaporate in panicked flight, Noah

A science-fiction romance grounded by human emotion and personal triumph.

reconsiders their ethos and makes a difficult decision about where true friendship lies. Readers may be inspired by his story to examine their own associations—and even if not, they’ll be riveted by the grisly, graphic events that Noah at last recalls from that traumatic night. Central characters present white. Strongly boy-centric, with sharp moral divides and some gruesome bits. (Historical fiction. 12-14)

You and Me on Repeat

Shyne, Mary | Henry Holt (224 pp.) $25.99 | $17.99 paper | May 13, 2025 9781250851857 | 9781250851840 paper

Two former friends in River Meadows, Illinois, find themselves trapped in a graduation day time loop. Chris O’Brien is stuck: He’s forced to relive his high school graduation day over and over again. The varsity swimmer, who reads white, believes that if he can orchestrate the perfect first kiss with the girl he likes, Miranda “Andy” Feldman, then he’ll rejoin the normal timeline. The only person who can help him escape the loop is childhood friend Alicia Ochoa, yearbook editor and valedictorian of River West’s class of 2025—but Chris hurt her feelings when he ditched her in favor of a new friend group in middle school. Mexican American Alicia has been repeating graduation day for almost a year, creating viral videos, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and caring for her four younger siblings. The teens must face what the future holds for them, along with new feelings that emerge as they navigate life on repeat together. Jane Ido-Cantor, Chris’ teacher and swim coach, died in a car accident before graduation day, a tragedy that brings an element of solemnity to the story, balancing the humorous and lighthearted moments. The expressive illustrations use monochromatic color schemes; blue denotes flashbacks, while the time-loop

scenes rotate through the colors of the rainbow. Thoughtful character development and the exploration of larger questions of grief and identity take center stage over the technical details of the timeline’s mechanics.

A science-fiction romance grounded by human emotion and personal triumph. (Graphic science fiction. 13-18)

Warsafe

Smyth, Lauren | Enclave Escape (368 pp.)

$24.99 | May 6, 2025 | 9798886051988

A dystopian world intertwined with contemporary gaming references offers a framework for exploring ethical questions. For 13 years, Halley has been a non-player character in a video game, serving lemonade in a village that serves the Mercenaries, or Mercs. Every day the Mercs kill guards and find ways to move up through the different floors of a house. A concurrent storyline unfolding outside of the world of the game follows Roscoe, a graphic designer who’s currently working as a beta tester for Warsafe, a major video game studio in Seattle. She joins forces with Andy, a 23-year-old radio astronomer, after learning a shocking secret. The relationships that develop among the characters take center stage in this suspenseful, well-paced narrative. Action-packed chapters fulfill readers’ expectations of a gaming-based novel with an interesting premise that requires some suspension of disbelief. The chapters rotate among several characters’ points of view, delving into their distaste for the utilitarian ethics that permeate their worlds. Through one character’s arc, Smyth introduces a moral framework that examines religious faith, which the narrative addresses in implicit and explicit ways. Amid the corporate espionage and manipulation, the book critiques violent video games, realworld conflicts, experimentation

without fully informed consent, and human rights violations. The characters largely present white, although some are inspired by Japanese gaming culture and aesthetics.

A balanced, suspenseful novel for passionate gamers that offers a critique of human violence.

(Science fiction. 14-18)

Fallen Academy: Year One

Stone, Leia | Bloom Books (352 pp.)

$12.99 paper | March 18, 2025

9781464218927 | Series: Fallen Academy, 1

Thirteen years after the battle between Heaven and Hell, an 18-year-old girl accepts her unique powers and begins navigating her way between angels and demons.

When the war between Heaven and Hell spilled out onto Earth, powers were unleashed that “mutated humanity,” but until their Awakening ceremony, most people don’t know which side they’re affiliated with. But Brielle Atwater knows she’s demon-bound, having been sold into demon slavery years ago in a bargain to save her terminally ill father’s life. His untimely accidental death didn’t erase her contract, and at her Awakening, she expected her “slave mark.” But when her powers emerge, they reveal something far more extraordinary: She’s a celestial, gifted by the archangels themselves—a rare and powerful being. As her new life unfolds, Brielle is assigned to be trained by fellow Celestial Lincoln, who’s harsh and judgmental toward her. Strong-willed, impulsive Brielle is unwilling to back down—and when demons threaten to drag her into eternal darkness, it’s Lincoln who steps up, fighting for her freedom. In this series opener, sparks fly between the white-presenting leads, mixing heat, tension, and petty grievances with high stakes that propel the plot. The juxtaposition of the real-world and magical elements of the story at times feels jarring, and the

characters spend little time on introspection, but readers seeking light escapism will be pleased.

An action-packed story with slow-burn romantic tension. (Fantasy. 14-18)

Rainbow! Volume 2

Sunny | Illus. by Gloomy | Graphix/Scholastic (320 pp.) | $16.99 paper | May 6, 2025 9781546110163 | Series: Rainbow!, 2

Picking up where the series opener left off, this graphic novel sequel finds Boo Meadows still dealing with her absent mother, who struggles with addiction, and her lack of a caring home environment. Although her issues continue unabated, caring people in Boo’s life, including her boss, Clarice, her co-worker Milo, and her love interest, Mimi, are beginning to be aware of her dire straits. Bolstered by their support, Boo is finally able to chart a course that leads her away from her desperate situation and into a world that matches the optimism of her imagination, an aspect of her character that’s made plainly visible in the illustrations. When things reach a breaking point at home, Boo turns to Clarice, who takes on a motherly role in her life. In contrast to the almost unbearably terrible realities of Boo’s life, the happy ending may strike some readers as almost too perfect. Fans of the first book may enjoy this work, which covers issues including addiction, parental neglect and abuse, and queer-bashing. It’s a quick, easy-to-devour read, but it unfortunately lacks emotional depth and forward momentum. The appealing, uncluttered artwork is executed mostly in shades of pink, mint green, and purple. Boo is shown in a body-positive way as a fat girl with stretch marks. She and Clarice present white, Mimi is cued Latine, and brown-skinned Milo is trans. Largely unmemorable, offering an onslaught of trauma with light at the end of the tunnel. (Graphic fiction. 12-18)

It’s You Every Time

Thomas, Charlene | Scholastic (320 pp.)

$12.99 paper | May 6, 2025 | 9781546111788

A cosmic mixed-up breakfast order pushes two Black teens into a merged time loop.

It’s September 24, and Sydney is running late for school, where she’ll have to take a dreaded precalc test. She stops at Dunkin’ for a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant—without the sausage and egg—and bumps into a boy named Marcus. Strangely, they have the same order number and similar tastes, only he’s ordered a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant with no cheese. Marcus invites Sydney to join him for breakfast at a nearby park, and she agrees, figuring that she can make up the test tomorrow. They spend the day together, but as their date winds down and they lean in for a kiss, they hear screeching tires, feel intense pain, and see a blinding light. Sydney wakes up to find it’s September 24 again, but she remembers her day with Marcus. They reconnect at Dunkin’ and begin reliving the same day, including always being painfully ripped apart at 10:15 p.m. Over time, the teens open up to each other about painful losses that still affect them. Readers witness the well-developed evolution of their relationship and their different responses: Sydney wants them to break free from the cycle, while Marcus sees getting stuck with Sydney as a welcome reprieve from grief. Thomas excels at blending meet-cute elements with more serious themes. A swoonworthy romance blending strong character development with realistic portrayal of the grieving process. (content note, playlist) (Romance. 13-18)

This coming-of-age sports narrative is honest, gentle, and hopeful.

ONE OF THE BOYS

Birch and Jay

Thompson, Allister | Latitude 46 (230 pp.)

$21.95 paper | May 24, 2025 | 9781988989921

Series: The Knowledge Seekers, 1

Curious Jay and spirited Birch, young people in what was once Ontario, were eager to explore the ruined world they’d only heard about.

Fifty years ago, in 2123, humanity was nearly extinct; only pockets of civilization remained. Twenty-year-old Jay, a member of the guild of the Knowledge Seekers, was about to begin his first journey into the wider world. In this believable dystopian world, Knowledge Seekers were tasked with collecting and preserving knowledge from the Old World. They sought to learn from their ancestors’ mistakes and ensure humanity’s peaceful future. However, Jay’s first mission was derailed by a chance encounter with rebellious Elder Elm. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Birch, seeking her own adventure, left her fathers behind to set out after Jay, to whom she is “promised.” Although extreme weather and wild animals plagued their journeys, they each soon learned that humans were a far more dangerous threat. The Six, leaders of an “old-fashioned city-state,” wanted to use environmentally destructive technology that could return Earth to the brink of collapse. The easy-to-follow narrative switches between Birch’s and Jay’s perspectives in the year 2173 with their storylines half a century earlier. The engaging premise is full of poignant reminders that the greatest challenge humanity faces is itself; the climate

change warnings are unsubtle but don’t detract from the steady pacing. Race in this world is an “antiquated” concept; Birch is racially ambiguous, and Jay has Nordic and Asian Indian ancestry. An exciting adventure with important messages about caring for our world. (Dystopian. 16-adult)

Devils Like Us

Thompson, L.T. | Bloomsbury (400 pp.)

$19.99 | June 3, 2025 | 9781547615193

Three young adults in Massachusetts discover there’s more to their world— and themselves— than they could have dreamed. Despite feeling dissatisfied, Cas Sterling tries to exist within the roles her mother and society have set out for her, behaving like a proper lady who doesn’t expect to marry for love. She’s also plagued by frequent prophetic visions of people’s deaths. When she was 10, she foresaw the gruesome death of her best friend Remy DeWindt’s dad. But people’s reactions have taught Cas to keep the visions private; a disbelieving Remy cut off their friendship after Cas revealed what she’d witnessed. Remy’s father has disappeared, however, and she has been trying to learn more about the Order of Lazarus, the mysterious society he’d been researching. She’s assisted by her Irish immigrant friend, Fionnuala Robinson, who has a secret crush on her. But when Cas has a terrifying vision of Finn’s death, the three are propelled on a journey of supernatural discovery. Thompson’s narrative is

another time-loop romance, visit Kirkus online.

well-paced: The unfolding plot meshes immaculately with the three main characters’ growing awareness of self. The 19th-century historical setting adds a romantic air, highlighting the restrictive social status quo that contrasts nicely with the freer atmosphere on the ship on which the white leads travel to Maine; its crew includes people of diverse ethnicities, gender identities, and sexualities. Cas’ experience with gender expression is his trans coming-out story, while Remy questions her sexuality. Well-written and exciting. (Historical fantasy. 14-18)

Generation Queer: Stories of Youth Organizers, Artists, and Educators

Topping, Kimm | Illus. by Anshika Khullar | Tu Books (240 pp.) | $22.95 May 27, 2025 | 9781643795201

A collection of illustrated profiles of a diverse range of young queer activists, grouped into three categories: organizers, artists, and educators.

Topping, the founder of Lavender Education and a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, offers brief biographies based on interviews with youth leaders along with suggestions for aspiring activists. Each profile opens with a portrait of the subject captioned with an insightful quote from them, followed by two to three pages describing their work and achievements as well as fun, humanizing details about their hobbies and interests. The organizers section explains what community organizing is, how it’s been utilized in the past, and how it has roots in intersectional and Black civil rights movements. The artists section focuses on young creatives and emphasizes the importance of representation. The educators section highlights activists whose social justice work is related to schools and teaching. The final chapters are a call to action, outlining different

forms of protest and addressing both young activists and adult educators. The author includes many helpful resources and suggestions for further learning throughout the book. Readers are likely to see their own identities reflected in these pages, which highlight the voices of people from many different gender, sexual, racial, and cultural identities. Final art not seen.

Joyful and inspiring. (sources) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

In Case You Read This

Underhill, Edward | Quill Tree Books/ HarperCollins (368 pp.) | $19.99 May 20, 2025 | 9780063373778

Two trans teens find, then lose, then find each other. Arden doesn’t want to leave Los Angeles for his mom’s tiny hometown of Winifred, Michigan, but after his mom loses her movie industry job, he has no choice. Meanwhile, Gabe is excited to leave Shelby, Illinois, for the sunnier pastures of Pasadena, but he worries about making new friends. Both the white 17-year-olds are out as trans to their supportive families and some friends, and each boy worries about how he’ll fare with his identity in his new locale. A chance meeting at a Motel 6 in Nebraska allows them to bond over their favorite queer band, Damaged Pixie Dream Boi (which has broken up but still has “a niche but very dedicated fan base”). Their meeting also gives them each something to search for once they reach their respective destinations. Arden is grumpy and jaded, Gabe is shy and insecure, but they both slowly find their people, who help them reconnect after each one drops breadcrumbs through different corners of the DPDB internet fandom. Although the story somehow feels incomplete, driven more by each character’s sense of dissatisfaction and disruption than

anything else, it’s nevertheless a sweet, idealistic romance with a refreshing lack of transphobia that will serve as a pleasantly escapist read.

A satisfying balance of angst and heart. (Fiction. 14-18)

One of the Boys

Zeller, Victoria | Levine Querido (344 pp.) $18.58 | May 13, 2025 | 9781646145027

A former football star, who never thought she’d play again after she came out as transgender, steps back onto the field for one last season to help her team win state. Grace Woodhouse used to know where she belonged. She had Division I schools lined up to recruit her, but that was before what happened during playoffs last year, before she came out as trans, and before she quit the team. Although her single father and new friend group support her, Grace feels lost as her senior year begins. When one of her old teammates asks her to help him with his technique, she quickly realizes that he and the other captains are hoping for more than her expertise from the sidelines—they want her to rejoin the team. Grace can’t resist the opportunity to play again, but her return draws unwanted national attention that makes her question her future and who she wants to be. Flashback chapters written in the second-person present tense bring Grace’s past to life, which helps maintain momentum and makes her emotional journey feel more immersive. A heartfelt, goofy, and diverse cast of secondary characters surround Grace, who’s white, as she navigates self-doubt, friendship, complicated feelings for her ex-girlfriend, and what she wants to do after graduation. Overall, this coming-of-age sports narrative is honest, gentle, and hopeful. A winning game of feelingsball. (Fiction. 14-18)

BEST OF THE CENTURY

The Poet X

By Elizabeth Acevedo (2018)

In 2018, the world learned that Elizabeth Acevedo has the X factor.

The Dominican American National Poetry Slam champion was teaching eighth grade English in Prince George’s County, Maryland, when

she began writing a novel in verse for young adults. Featuring an Afro-Latina teen protagonist, it was, in part, a loving response to her students’ requests for more books featuring characters that looked and sounded like them.

The Poet X stars 15-yearold high school sophomore Xiomara Batista, who has a way with words. She joins her school’s slam poetry club hoping to use her words to make sense of her world: what it means to be a first-generation American; what it means to grow up in a strict Catholic family; what it means to be in her body, to experience first

love, and to come into her power. Along the way, she realizes her potential is immense.

Readers’ and critics’ appreciation of The Poet X proved similarly limitless: It won the National Book Award and the Michael L. Printz Award and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. In the U.K., it took home the Carnegie Medal, making Acevedo the first winner of color in the award’s 83-year history. Hundreds of thousands of copies are in print; it has been translated into multiple languages.

Acevedo has since published two widely acclaimed young adult

novels, With the Fire on High and Clap When You Land, and made her adult fiction debut with Family Lore. In 2022, the Poetry Foundation named her the Young People’s Poet Laureate.—M.L.

For a review

Elizabeth Acevedo

of the book, visit Kirkus online.

Heartstopper: Volume 1

B y Alice Oseman (2020)

Alice Oseman was already something of a phenom by the time she launched her webcomic Heartstopper in 2016. The author had published her first book, the YA novel Solitaire, two years earlier, at age 19, and two novellas in 2015.

BEST OF THE CENTURY

Among the characters in Solitaire were Nick Nelson and Charlie Spring, two queer teenage boys who then anchored Oseman’s 2015 e-novellas, Nick and Charlie and This Winter. But the author and illustrator wasn’t done with them. The two became the focus of Heartstopper, a popular webcomic that explored the relationship between them.

Heartstopper: Volume 1 was published in the U.K. in 2019 and in the U.S. in 2020 to positive reviews from critics, including one from Kirkus praising it as “an adorable diary of love’s gut punches.” Four more volumes followed, as did

a Netflix series adaptation starring Kit Connor and Joe Locke that premiered in 2022.

The first Heartstopper volume was initially published in a limited-edition crowdsourced run, highlighting the changing face of publishing and helping to cement the webcomic as an important genre in its own right.

But more importantly, the success of the Heartstopper books proved that young audiences were hungry for realistic LGBTQ+ love stories that focused not just on the

For a review of the book , visit Kirkus online.

trials of being queer in a homophobic world but also on the joy of finding love. The novels and series inspired readers and viewers to come out of the closet and to celebrate their own triumphs—a powerful legacy for an author who only recently turned 30.—M.S.

Alice Oseman

Indie

THE BEST OF THE BEST (SO FAR)

THE FIRST QUARTER of the 21st century has seen an explosion of self-published books, including some that went on to become bestsellers. E.L. James’ erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey (2011), for instance, was a notable smash, and the SF thriller The Martian (2014), which first appeared on author Andy Weir’s website, went on to be adapted as an Oscar-nominated 2015 film. Kirkus Indie has been reviewing self-published, small-press, and some large-press books since 2011, when it was first known as Kirkus Discoveries. Here are four books that our editors consider to be among the very best to grace our pages since then: President of Kirkus Indie Chaya Schechner heartily recommends the Themis Files SF trilogy by Sylvain Neuvel; its first installment, Sleeping Giants (2016), received a starred review. It begins with a girl, Rose Franklin, discovering a giant metal hand buried in the Black Hills of South Dakota; as it turns out, similar giant body parts exist in other parts of the world, and they all appear to be parts of an alien relic. As

an adult, Rose becomes a physicist and secretly attempts to put all the pieces back together—but when word gets out, it leads to global chaos. Our reviewer said that the book “masterfully blends together elements of sci-fi, political thriller and apocalyptic fiction.” A film adaptation is currently in development.

Indie editor Arthur Smith sings the praises of All Tomorrow’s Parties: The Velvet Underground Story, a graphic biography by author/illustrator Koren Shadmi that was named one of Kirkus’ Best Indie Books of 2023. It tells the true story of this deeply influential rock band of the late 1960s and early ’70s and details the lives of its members, including the volatile singer-songwriterguitarist Lou Reed and multi-instrumentalist John Cale. Our critic, in a starred

review, called the “stylish, poignant, and intriguing” work “an immersive and enlightening experience, one that fans will appreciate for its scope and honesty, and one that non-fans are also sure to enjoy.”

Former Indie editor Myra Forsberg names Einstein’s Beach House, a set of short stories by Jacob M. Appel, as a favorite; many of its tales involve themes of deception, such as the title story, in which the owner of a beach house runs a scam on tourists until an unexpected visitor show up. Appel, an attorney, bioethicist, and psychiatrist, is a prolific writer whose books have been published by a range of large and small presses; several have received Kirkus stars, including this one, which our reviewer called “sharp, observant, darkly funny and deeply humane.”

I’ve long been a booster of Christy J. Leppanen’s offbeat and creepy SF/ horror collection, Bulletin of ZOMBIE Research: Volume 1, named one of the Best Indie Books of 2014. It’s a fictitious scholarly journal documenting studies of people infected with “Zooanthroponotic Occult MetaBiomimetic Infectious Encephalitis” (which, not for nothing, spells the word “ZOMBIE”). The stark coldness of the prose—peppered with hyper-realistic graphs, charts, and occasional upsetting photos— effectively shows how the experimentation that self-publishing allows can yield some startlingly creative works. Kirkus Indie will continue to highlight the best and brightest as the century goes on.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

DAVID RAPP

EDITOR’S PICK

Author/illustrator and conservationist McMullan, with collaborators Derek Sallmann and Ryan Sallmann, offers a wide-ranging illustrated overview of birds in 49 U.S. states and Canada. The book covers more than 1,000 avian varieties on the North American continent, including all of the United States except Hawaii. Birds are arranged by order and family, but readers may easily search for their common English-language names in an index. The authors describe each bird’s habitat range in detail and accompany it with a map inset, color-coded to show where the bird can be found at which time of year. The text descriptions of species are precise, thorough, and often unexpectedly expressive: a graylag goose, for instance,

is said to have the “familiar cackling brays of the farmyard goose” while cedar waxwings are described as “the most bacchanalian of birds,” due to their penchant for getting intoxicated by eating fermented fruit. In a guide such as this, readers should expect detailed graphics of various species, and this book delivers full-color illustrations comparing adult and juvenile plumage, as well as male and female variations. When birds closely resemble other varieties, the authors helpfully show the creatures side-by-side and highlight their distinctness under a “What’s the Difference?” heading. For example, the Savannah sparrow may be identified by a dark eyestripe and buff lines, while a Baird’s sparrow has white lines

Field Guide to the Birds of North America

McMullan, Miles, Derek Sallmann & Ryan

Sallmann | Illus. by Miles McMullan

Pelagic Publishing | 376 pp. | $29.99 paper

Jan. 23, 2025 | 9781784275426

and no eyestripe. In addition, the book features a glossary of terms, useful maps, and a diagram of the different parts of a bird. At a time when many birders rely on identification apps—some of which can pinpoint an avian species in seconds—a guide like this may seem obsolete. For many enthusiasts, though, it will surely evoke the ineffable pleasure, often established in

childhood, of opening an artfully executed reference book and losing oneself in its knowledge. In the preface, the authors express their belief that “birding is an activity that can make people happier”; a guide like this is sure to bring readers hours of delight, whether they’re outside with a pair of binoculars or simply sitting at home. A superb and concise bird compendium.

By Miles McMullan, Derek Sallmann & Ryan Sallmann; illus. by Miles McMullan

The Regolith Temple

Arama, Roxana | Dhawosia Publishing (367 pp.)

$34.99 | March 7, 2025 | 9798989873173

An android battles a dictatorial religious leader in Arama’s SF thriller.

The story begins in the year 1831 of the Lucretian Era, a very early indication that this novel involves multiple layers of complex worldbuilding. Yamir Varro, the chief neuroscientist at Connectome Labs, has uploaded a copy of his brain into the android Y1, who narrates approximately a third of the novel in journallike “Logfiles.” Initially, Y1 longs for the company of Yamir’s wife, who refuses to interact with an android, and he regrets how he treated his college-age son: “I missed so many of his milestones—losing his first baby tooth, playing his first game of stickball, shaving for the first time— because I was always at work.” Yamir is a pioneer, and his lab is on the verge of a major breakthrough, but the world’s largest organized religion, the Temple, does not endorse his work. Olma, the Temple’s science and technology supervisor, is tasked with monitoring all emerging research that falls outside the faith’s strictures, and the novel closely follows her progress in its early stages. The tension soon ratchets up as Yamir’s lab is sold by Grady Leos, its owner, to the Temple and the androids are tasked with forced labor on a Martian settlement, as the Temple believes their leader, El, wants humans to eventually populate the red planet. What follows is a power struggle that pits the desires of Y1, Yamir and his family, and Olma against one another in an often thrilling narrative. The thoughtful, depressed android is an intriguing central character throughout. However, his logfiles are often overly and off-puttingly technical—“The repairs to the ASV3 aren’t going well. Zaltana replaced the leg destroyed by the explosion with one taken from the ASV2, but not every input aligns”—as well as occasionally repetitive. The close third-person narration following Yamir

and Olma also relies on frequent scene-setting to remind readers of the stakes involved, which can, at times, become tiresome. Still, the central story and frequent twists will keep engaged readers hooked to the end.

An uneven but often thoughtprovoking narrative about a clash between science and religion.

Foundra

Arriaga, Emmanuel M. | EA Starchilde (548 pp.) | $29.99 | Feb. 20, 2024 9798218324964

In the far future, a rookie recruit to the armed forces of an intergalactic empire tastes his first military action (and maybe his last) during the rampage of an ancient, hostile entity.

The story opens generations after war has shaken the “Twin Galaxies” and spawned the benevolent Huzien Empire. The humanlike Huzien are magnanimous to vanquished opponents (including Earth), absorbing them as allies and even intermarrying with the conquered populace. Lucky individuals in the highest echelons have attained literal immortality (though, with effort, they can be killed), and leaders such as Lanrete must bear the pain of watching loved ones age and perish over centuries of maintaining order. Behind the immortality is the concept of the “Enesmic,” powerful energy existing on another plane. (“You can think of it as a new elemental force, similar to gravity, which holds our galaxy together.”) The most skilled “Cihphist,” or master manipulator of the Enesmic, is, surprisingly, a human, Lord Soahc. Lanrete brings a fresh recruit into the Huzien military’s “Founders’ Elites,” a young technology prodigy named Neven. Neven learns quickly just how much danger is involved in this peacekeeping fellowship after a mining crew disturbs a tomb-prison from eons ago, releasing Sagren, an 8-foot-tall “Eshgren,” one of a secretive race from the Enesmic realm.

Sagren summons Enesmic energy to create ghoulish creatures and assemble alien cronies and thought-controlled warships to attack the Huzien. The material is action-rich and fortunately not as comic-book chaotic as it sounds. Not all is gloom; Huzien females are super-sexy, and steamy encounters abound. When the real battles begin, though, recreational mating recedes to make way for an impressively epic pageant of devastation, horror, loss and outsized heroics. Glossaries, printed maps, diagrams, and character portraits (resembling Japanese anime characters) appear throughout. The SF combat jargon also deploys amply: “Quickly holstering her WMAs—Wopan master arms—Phoenix pulls out Unquenchable, the Nenifin blade’s power core emitting a soft hum at her expert touch.”

Epic action, tragedy, and romance amidst superhero-types fighting cosmic evil.

Kirkus Star

Gus: A Bird’s Life, in His Own Words

Bellows, David & Barbara Held | Maine Authors Publishing (162 pp.) | $13.95 paper Oct. 24, 2024 | 9781633814240

T he story of a parakeet and his remarkable interactions with humans. In their nonfiction debut, Bellows and Held relate the story of a tiny (1.4 ounce) parakeet named Gus who still fills their memories despite having been dead for two decades. “We still talk about him,” they write, “his assertiveness, his empathy, his intelligence.” With 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist, Bellows writes he was amazed at the health effects Gus bestowed through his affectionate and very interactive nature. Sensing whenever Bellows or Held was upset about something, Gus would fly over to them and inquire as to why they were (in his presumed conception) “scared”—and

A captivating discussion of psychological discontents.

THE MUSIC OF EMOTION

Bellows was always impressed. “As a psychotherapist,” he writes, “I can say with complete confidence that Gus was an excellent therapist [in such moments]; ‘empathetic listening’ is a core feature of good therapy.” In the stories related here, Gus shows not only an increasing verbal ability but a steadily deepening understanding of the words he was saying. Held is always skeptical in the narrative, but even she was sometimes deeply affected when Gus’ speech seemed to go far beyond mere mimicry. The authors have a good sense of pacing, which shows itself most strongly in the handful of funny scenes in which Gus’ sometimesfrank and off-color language raised eyebrows at veterinary offices. But while the book’s humor is uniformly winning, its most memorable element is the underlying pathos of genuine interspecies communication; long before the halfway point, Gus no longer seems like any kind of pet but rather a smart, mischievous person in the mix. When Bellows declares, “I was fascinated by what was in his little birdy mind and wanted to learn more–much more,” there’s hardly a reader who won’t agree. A touching and fascinating memoir of a little bird with a big personality.

The Music of Emotion

Biela, Ron | Self (330 pp.) | $12.99 paper Jan. 31, 2023 | 9781732546318

Thinking of emotions as a flowing, changeable music will foster a more mature, wellintegrated mind, according to this searching psychological meditation. Biela, a Denver psychotherapist and life coach, critiques mechanistic systems like

cognitive behavioral therapy for treating emotions as discreet states—happy, sad, depressed, anxious—determined by neurochemicals. Instead, he argues, we should view emotions as ever-modulating responses to experience, shaped by past traumas, relationships, cultural values, and “Personal Myths” about our ideal life roles. If we find [ourselves] lapsing into “the ‘I’m not good enough’ song,” for example, we can “play notes of caring… accepting [ourselves] completely.” This shaping of “emotional music” helps to develop the “Primitive Mind” of instinctual fears, drives, and egotism into an “Adult Mind” with an ethical awareness of self and others. Biela doesn’t say much about how the musical paradigm works in therapy; he suggests that counselors have clients hum music that expresses their moods and offers a sketchy case study of a quarreling couple who “f[ound] a wider range of music to play together, allowing for harmony and dissonance.” Music is more of a metaphor than a praxis: The author writes of “concertos of fear and courage” played by the amygdala, a brain region that controls the fight-or-flight response; “the blues of loneliness”; “dirges of grief”; and the “vulgar music of narcissism” on Donald Trump’s emotional playlist. Biela also engages in wide-ranging, philosophical discussions of everything from Jungian psychology to the Buddhist concept of nothingness and the brutality of MMA fighting. His treatise is an exuberant brief for humanistic psychology, skeptical of narrowly “evidence-based” and drug-centered practices. The author is adamant that aesthetics, morality, and social meaning are fundamental to a healthy psyche, and he conveys all of this in rich, sonorous prose. The book is a bit of a ramble, but it will reward readers with a wealth of intriguing insights.

A captivating discussion of psychological discontents analyzed through the lenses of art and spirituality.

Kirkus Star

Before and After Baby

Blackwell, Maegan | Illus. by Joanne Wong Rosebank Books (44 pp.) | $15.00 paper Nov. 3, 2024 | 9798991380904

A child copes with her mother’s postpartum depression in Blackwell’s debut picture book. Before Andy’s new baby brother arrives, everything in her family seems happy, and her parents are quick to assure her that accidents and mistakes are normal and easily forgivable after a bicycle kerfuffle. Together, the family of three sings, enjoys bath time, reads stories, and snuggles before bed. “But After Baby, nothing feels the same,” Andy explains. Mommy sinks into postpartum depression, which adult readers may recognize immediately, but for Andy and young readers it feels like an inexplicable and frightening change. After Andy helps comfort the baby, she talks to her parents about her mother’s condition. Mommy compares her emotions to Andy’s frightening bicycle ride: Everything feels chaotic and out of control, but none of that is Andy or the baby’s fault. Although Mommy’s struggle may be scary for children to read about, Blackwell depicts all the family members with sympathy, using Andy’s voice to keep the words simple even though the emotions are complex. Wong’s ink and watercolor illustrations move the story forward, sharply contrasting “before” Mommy’s coloration with a gray-hued Mommy as depression sets in. Colors for the whole family are muted after baby’s arrival until a final image shows possibilities for them moving forward as they are all patient and Mommy works to get better.

A valuable book that makes PPD easier to discuss, showing children they’re not alone.

An Unlikely Prospect: A World War II Novel

Blanton-Stroud, Shelley | She Writes Press (256 pp.) | $17.99 paper | Aug. 19, 2025 9781647429461

A young widow fights her late husband’s family and social convention to retain control of his struggling San Francisco newspaper in Blanton-Stroud’s historical novel.

When Edward Zimmer died suddenly of a heart attack, he left his 29-year-old wife Sandy his 35% share of the San Francisco Prospect, as well as his position as the twice-daily newspaper’s publisher. But in the three years since, it is her father-in-law Wyatt Zimmer and the board of directors who have assumed the roles of decision-makers. Now, Wyatt wants to sell the paper, a business venture he had always opposed. However, today, VJ day, is a time to celebrate: The Second World War has finally ended with the unconditional surrender of Japan. The streets of San Francisco are filled with revelry, but the abundance of alcohol is resulting in dangerously drunken crowds that are causing mayhem. When Wyatt denigrates her ability to run the paper in front of the board, she decides to investigate for herself what is happening on the streets. Sandy observes that the police are outnumbered and the hospitals are overrun—the city’s powers-that-be have been caught flatfooted. At least six rape victims are treated at the hospital, and there are 13 deaths. What she experiences and learns during this night of violence transforms her. Blanton-Stroud’s engaging narrative is a follow-up to her earlier Jane Benjamin novels about a hard-nosed, intrepid reporter at the Prospect, and Jane returns here to play a pivotal role in Sandy’s development from an insecure people-pleaser into a dynamic force in the male-dominated publishing industry. Determined to get justice for the rape victims and accountability from government officials (“all of them

should face consequences for their actions or inactions”), Sandy compellingly finds her voice and her backbone as she battles Wyatt and the board for control of the paper. Inspired by oft-ignored historical details from the 1945 riots, Blanton-Stroud has composed a well-paced, edgy tale that is a salute to solid, honest journalism. Strong female characters and engaging historical nuggets result in a satisfying read.

Gildenhammer: The Beating of Her Heart

Chan, W. James | Self (488 pp.) | $17.65 paper | Aug. 12, 2024 | 9780994285232

An intriguing character narrates her side of a complex story in Chan’s fantasy sequel. Readers familiar with the fantastical world of Kaef’re (which resembles ancient China), first introduced in the author’s previous novel Blackcloak: A Man of His Sword (2015), will find the onslaught of confusion and excitement familiar as this installment starts out with the fractured identities of the protagonist fighting each other. (“I, we. We…I’ve just learned to share with myself,” says the narrator as he violently grapples with the aftermath of the first book’s story.) This time around, the focus is on Charan’s sister Sariana Jaydemyr, who is ready to recount the details of her life and the long voyages through different realities, memories, and battles that brought her to Charan. Told from her perspective, Sariana’s tale begins in a village where she was known

as Sarah-Jade Falkenstrom, the daughter of a self-centered and abusive lounge singer named Chantal. After being abandoned by Chantal’s husband, the mother and daughter move to Teristra, where the outbreak of war leads Sarah-Jade to hide in an Abbey. There, the same Dreamsong magic that fractured Charan’s identity in the first book also leaves Sarah-Jade—now called Sariana—with multiple memories and identities. (“Who am I supposed to be, and what will happen if I reveal the truth?”) Sariana hides behind multiple false identities within the Abbey, training as a Sister of the Liquid Night before emerging into the world armed with a vision of the apocalypse and a signature weapon called the Gildenhammer. Sariana ventures from there to the city of Kaifeng, where her brother is only beginning to understand their shared history—and where the same political intrigue and fighting of the first novel await them both. As Sariana’s twisted story starts to catch up with the present day, both siblings also move closer to new, shocking revelations.

Compared to the first outing in Chan’s fantastical world, this entry gives readers a bit more to hold onto as Sariana’s first-person narration anchors all of the magical interventions with a single point of view. “I grew up in the memory of a shadow of a fantasy, unable to live up to any of it,” Sariana explains to her brother (and to readers) while showcasing the poetic turns of phrase that made Chan’s first book distinctive. However, there is still a mountain of dense mythology and worldbuilding to climb. Readers can easily get lost in the vast lists of characters and competing factions—those feeling completely overwhelmed may do well to start at the end of the book, where the author has

Strong female characters and engaging historical nuggets result in a satisfying read. AN UNLIKELY PROSPECT

wisely provided a detailed chronological timeline mapping the major events of both novels. (Spoilers abound here, of course, but for many they may be worth the relative clarity.) Chan’s powerful prose still pierces through the fog of his unwieldy mythology—the horrific abuse Sariana/Sarah-Jade suffers while also struggling to understand her egotistical mother is chilling. Readers willing to put in the work to understand what’s going on will be rewarded with Chan’s big ideas and even sharper writing than in the original. With a more coherent perspective, this sequel offers a smoother entry into a bewitching but difficult story.

Percy the Rockhopper Penguin and Friends

Cherkas, Walter Michael | Illus. by Joseph Mead | Palmetto Publishing (64 pp.)

$26.70 | $19.99 paper | Feb. 1, 2025 9798822937451 | 9798822937468 paper

Cherkas presents an illustrated children’s chapter book with lessons about emotions and friendship. The story opens in Glacier Cove, where a rockhopping penguin, Percy, notices that Bella the Blue Whale seems upset. She tells Percy she misses her family, and he reassures her that friends can be family, too. In another chapter, Percy is afraid of sliding down a massive ice mountain, but with the encouragement of a friend, he eventually overcomes his fear. When Max the Elephant Seal finds a friend’s lost necklace and wants to keep it, Percy teaches Max about honesty. After telling the truth, Max feels “a warmth inside him that was far better than the joy of having the necklace.” At the Great Glacier Cove Meet, Edgar the Polar Bear takes issue with Sam the Skua (a predatory sea bird) being allowed to play in the games. Percy takes the opportunity to praise diversity and invites Sam to teach everyone a new game; Edgar realizes that “Our differences should be celebrated, not

criticized.” Melting ice forces the animal friends to relocate the next Great Glacier Cove Meet, and in the process, they learn that change is challenging but can also lead to great new experiences. Percy also shares a golden seashell he found with a friend after learning that sharing “doesn’t mean losing something. It means multiplying the happiness it brings.” Throughout, Cherkas explains emotions in ways that youngsters will often find easy to understand. For example, Oliver the Snowy Owl compares sadness to an iceberg, stating, “There’s a whole lot more hidden beneath the surface.” He also incorporates humor, as when a penguin asks a puffin, “Why the long beak?” However, a few lessons may be a bit too abstract for children, such as “He realized that self-esteem and confidence came from believing in oneself.” Mead’s illustrations are boldly colored and balance chilly Arctic ambiance with the friends’ affectionate warmth in lively scenes. An often engaging introduction to managing feelings for young readers.

Under the Charcoal Sky

Cunningham, John H. | Greene Street (260 pp.) | $15.95 paper | Dec. 16, 2024 9798986920054

Cunningham’s 12th adventureseries installment delves into the complexities of Buck Reilly’s life, from his treasure-hunting exploits to personal upheavals that redefine his identity.

The story opens with a startling revelation: Buck’s biological connection to billionaire Sir Harry Greenbaum, which, in turn, unexpectedly ties Buck to an aristocratic Scottish clan. Soon after this revelation, an assassin tries to kill Buck; he’s unsuccessful, but Buck learns that a shadowy group wants revenge for the death of his biological mother, Catherine, who died giving birth to Buck. They’re also targeting Harry, and

are on the hunt for a missing item that they believe he stole. It turns out to be a canister containing some important papers, which becomes a new treasure for Buck and his team to hunt down—and a new mystery to solve. The narrative unfurls through a journey across Scotland, where ancient secrets, modern dangers, and personal reckonings collide. The novel’s pacing is dynamic, transitioning seamlessly from reflective moments to heart-pounding excitement, as during pivotal scenes such as Buck’s discovery at Dunfermline Abbey, the burial place of Robert the Bruce. Although the dialogue occasionally leans on exposition, the chemistry among characters—particularly between Buck and his ex-wife, Heather—provides humor and emotional depth. Heather emerges as a standout, with her strength and intellect offering a compelling foil to Buck’s more impulsive nature. Secondary characters, such as Buck’s pal Lenny Jackson, an irreverent pastor, add a layer of levity that contrasts effectively with the story’s darker aspects. Cunningham’s exploration of such themes as heritage, loyalty, and the burden of the past resonates, although the narrative occasionally risks becoming overly intricate at times. Still, the propulsive nature of Buck’s quest and the palpable tension of his interactions with figures from his personal and professional lives propel the story along. Fans of fast-paced adventure novels with a touch of mystery will find plenty to enjoy in this richly textured series entry.

Savage

Edward, David | Self (306 pp.) | $14.99 paper July 27, 2024 | 9798334323599

A novel focuses on covert military operations in the harsh terrain of the Darién Gap. When readers first encounter Dirk Lasher, he’s in a bad way. Running a dive bar in Florida, the former operative is reeling from the recent death of his beloved wife. As if

A pulpy true-crime account.

MEET THE KELLYS

fated, a young soldier, Capt. Benjamin Blake, shows up at the bar, telling Lasher and his compatriot Jack Williams that they’re needed for a mission that has gone belly up in the brutal jungles between Panama and Colombia. Though reluctant, both men are soon roped into the action, with Williams a week ahead as Lasher grieves stateside. Once Lasher acquaints himself with the personalities of the new special ops unit he’s joining, they’re loaded onto a plane bound for the jungle. Before they can land, they’re attacked by the rogue unit they’ve come to root out, and their plane crashes, wiping out everyone on board except for Lasher and a radio specialist, a young woman called Bonsai. As Bonsai and Lasher flee the scene of the crash, they’re rescued by—who else?—Williams and Blake. Chaos quickly erupts: The group is attacked again; Blake is killed; and it’s only Lasher’s quick thinking and deadly work with a hunting knife that prevent the rest of them from being gunned down. As the three survivors attempt to navigate the terrain and unravel the mystery of the rogue unit, Bonsai begins to fall for the enigmatic Lasher. While certain genre conventions do abound in Edward’s military thriller, such as the way female characters are often described in broad, physical strokes (“Bonsai was a fit twenty-six-year-old. She was tall for a female, about average height for a male, still the shortest of the four. Her face was narrow and her chin came almost to a point”), there is more than enough action and suspense here to keep readers flipping pages. In addition, the author offers an intriguing knife-wielding hero who just wants to complete his mission so he can go home and grieve. In this gripping, fast-paced series opener, some of the violence— much of which comes at the business end of a hunting knife—is brutal to get through, but is never gratuitous. A high-octane military thriller sure to

pound the pulses of even seasoned adventure seekers.

Meet the Kellys: The True Story of Machine Gun Kelly and His Moll

Kathryn Thorne

Enss, Chris | Citadel (272 pp.) | $29.00 May 27, 2025 | 9780806543055

Enss presents the true history of one of America’s great criminal romances in this nonfiction work. There are few couples in the annals of American crime to rival George “Machine Gun” Kelly and his wife Kathryn Thorne. Their kidnapping of oil tycoon Charles Urschel not only made headlines in 1933, but also led to the creation of the Federal Kidnapping Act, as well as the first filmed trial in American history. It also proved a watershed moment for J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, which—after a series of embarrassments surrounding the Lindbergh kidnapping, John Dillinger, and Al Capone—reformed their reputation in the pursuit of the Kellys, deploying new crime-fighting and media-courting strategies, earning their immortal nickname, “G-Men,” in the process. With this book, Enss offers a history of the infamous couple, their crimes, their capture, and their trial. Readers meet George, the charming and fastidious scion of an upper-middle-class Memphis family who began selling whiskey to his neighbors as a teenager; Kathryn, the twice-divorced woman and bootlegger who may have murdered her last husband and whose ability to spin a media narrative rivaled that of Hoover; and Geralene Arnold, the 12-year-old girl

who traveled with the fugitive Kellys as part of their cover story and was instrumental in their eventual capture. There’s also Ora Shannon, Kathryn’s mother, an experienced criminal herself who would end up sharing her daughter’s fate. The author draws heavily from court transcripts and newspaper accounts, offering what feels like a minute-byminute report of events. “Glasses of whiskey and gin eased their anxiety,” writes Enss of how the couple spent their third anniversary—on the run. “Neither slept well. Kathryn continued to worry about her family, Kelly worried about the authorities discovering their location, and both fretted over the ransom money.” This propulsive and thoroughly researched true-crime account will especially please fans of Depression-era gangster stories as it helps to elevate George and Kathryn to the same iconic strata as Bonnie and Clyde. A pulpy true-crime account of one of America’s most infamous kidnappings.

No Sticks or Stones No Broken Bones: Healing cPTSD When the Trauma Wasn’t Physical

Fleming, Ricia | ThriveAlive International (407 pp.) | $21.44 paper

July 3, 2022 | 9780578290263

A therapist reveals seldom-recognized signs of childhood trauma and offers methods of treatment.

Author Fleming writes that she saw clients with symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder almost every day in her therapy practice. Many of them had survived physical abuse or prolonged neglect in their childhoods, but others reported to her that they’d had happy early years and were raised by capable, loving parents. Patients in the latter group had sometimes struggled with parental disapproval and inattention, but they felt too ashamed to acknowledge that such “lesser” intangible

traumas might have had lasting impacts on their mental health. To describe this phenomenon, Fleming coined the term “non-physically-assaultive, attachment-based Chronic Covert Trauma.” In her first book on the topic, Fleming illustrates the lasting effects of such quieter traumas in a series of fictional case studies of several patients. The book is geared toward people who identify with symptoms of naCCT, as spelled out in these pages, but who haven’t fully come to terms with its effects on their adult lives. Its focus effectively steers it away from questions of blame; instead, it encourages readers to turn their focus inward. Accounts of Fleming’s own patients’ journeys— coming to terms with their trauma, identifying triggers, and working to mitigate cPTSD flares—are helpfully supplemented by journaling prompts, fill-in-the-blank exercises, and visualizations that readers can complete to investigate the roots of their own symptoms and soothe their effects. Fleming encourages a holistic approach throughout, but she prioritizes evidence-based methods. Some suggestions become repetitive over the course of the book, but the work as a whole nonetheless serves as an excellent resource.

Practical advice for addressing a common but underrecognized disorder.

Star Summit

Givler, Andrew | Sad Seagull Publishing (426 pp.) | $25.40 | $18.99 paper Nov. 15, 2023 | 9781958204092 9781958204085 paper

The third installment of Givler’s urban fantasy saga continues the story of a mortal entangled in a supernatural power struggle that threatens to spill over onto an unsuspecting SoCal populace.

To say that Matthew Carver’s life is complicated would be a vast

understatement. His soul was stolen; his betrothed, Ash, is a Faerie princess in exile who is also the Devil’s daughter; and his position as a squire of the Hunt training with the legendary Orion is in jeopardy after a contingent of dragons (the Dragon Dons) filed a grievance with Polaris, aka the North Star, to disband the Hunt. Polaris has called for a Constellation Congregation (the first such gathering in almost 250 years) to resolve the issue, and all of the powerful Constellations have been invited. In a brilliant twist by the author, this convocation is to be held in Los Angeles, disguised as a regular popculture fantasy/SF convention (“Will there be any Star Trek people there?”); attendees won’t blink twice when supernatural entities with magical weapons or dragonlike humanoids stroll past. With so many enemies harboring long-standing grudges gathered in one spot, chaos quickly ensues. Although the main characters’ various backstories can get a bit convoluted, there is a lot to love here. Givler’s unique take on constellation-inspired mythology is reason enough to read the series, but the ensemble cast of deeply developed characters also gives the narrative a strong emotional impact. It’s the pacing that makes the novel so compulsively readable—the final 100-plus pages are essentially one extended epic fight scene that is so well choreographed that readers will have trouble putting the book down before its conclusion. The descriptions are undeniably immersive: “The asphalt of the road had turned to putty and was sticky underfoot. Steam sizzled off everything as the rain fell on the superheated street. The whole block was burned and blackened, like it had been in a toaster oven for too long.” Excellent and innovative worldbuilding, memorable characters, and nonstop action—highly recommended.

The Current Fantasy

Haas, Charlie | Beck & Branch

Publishers (368 pp.) | $13.94 paper Oct. 3, 2024 | 9798988550549

In Haas’ historical novel, a German family moves to California in search of peace and freedom as the First World War approaches.

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In 1914, Anna Lanz, a violin player, lives in Berlin with her husband Gerhard—he builds telephone switchboards—and two not-quite-teenage children, Benji and Lilli. War is brewing across Europe, and she lives in a state of emergency, waiting for the world to explode. Gerhard is hopelessly impractical and waits idealistically for communism to deliver them salvation. Anna hears about Sunland, a bohemian community that has retreated into the mountainous countryside of Langenhain, where clothing is optional and electricity is frowned upon. Surprisingly, Gerhard agrees to visit for a couple of days with the family, and they become intoxicated with the simplicity and solace of this place that seems free from global tumult and the crassness of modern life. As Richard Weiss, more or less the leader of Sunland puts it: “Do you know what you do? You have people living in a state of obscene decency. Instead of manufacturing you have singing. Instead of money you have good looks. In place of the army you have conversation under the trees.” In this moving and startlingly fresh novel, the Sunland members—with the Lanz family in tow—decide to decamp for San Bernardino County in California, a land where arable farmland is abundant with the reputation of being the “world capital of being left alone.” However, there is no complete escape from the war—the Sunlanders wrestle with the prejudice and suspicion reserved for enemy aliens, which intensifies as the war begins. Moreover, the sexual libertinism of Sunland is not always emancipating, and threatens the marital bond between Anna and Gerhard.

Haas’ writing style is supple and bitingly ironic—there is not a hint of preachy didacticism here, and he vividly captures the wages of world war and the sometimes-quixotic responses to it. This is a mesmerizing novel, delightfully funny and unpretentiously wise. A sparklingly eccentric novel, historically intelligent and wryly amusing.

Guardian of the Ages

Hoffman, Henry | Self (172 pp.) | $16.99 Dec. 27, 2024 | 9798300092986

In Hoffman’s mystery, an aspiring detective takes a job as a library security guard, and his work becomes anything but by the book with a serial killer on the loose. It’s 1970, and Sean Doyle has always dreamed of being a PI, but when his life is upended by sudden illness brought on by a temporary heart condition and a bad breakup, he puts his dreams on hold until he’s healthy again. He starts a new job working security at the local public library, where he meets quick-witted Head of Public Services Alicia Barnes; the pair hit it off immediately, bonding over their shared experiences as children of military men; his father died while deployed in Vietnam. When a serial killer stalks the town, Sean begins to think the case has something to do with the library, due to the fact that the killer appears to employ the Dewey Decimal System in his written taunts to law enforcement. As Alicia and Sean get closer to each other, so does the killer to them, and Sean will have to put his life on the line to protect the people and ideals that he holds dear. Hoffman’s novel is an enjoyable mystery with an offbeat setting, and it effectively explores how different people stay connected to the past as time marches on. Sean’s mother’s “memorial library” to her husband, the old-school diner that the characters frequent throughout the novel, and Sean’s letter to his deceased father all highlight how characters work to create continuity between the past and

present; as such, the novel intriguingly explores how people protect, cherish, and safeguard their history—often quite literally. The novel does suffer from some clunky exposition at times, a predictable romance, and a slightly anticlimactic ending. Overall, though, Hoffman’s novel is a pleasing read that vividly portrays the simultaneously peaceful and chaotic world of the public library. This atmospheric mystery will surely incite nostalgia in readers familiar with its historical setting, card catalogs and all, and spark a newfound interest in the era for others.

A charming and enjoyable read for armchair-detective bibliophiles.

Brooklyn Motto

Johnson, Alex R. | Hfi (272 pp.) | $16.99 paper | March 11, 2025 | 9798218524012

In Johnson’s crime novel set in the late 1990s, an inexperienced private eye in New York City unexpectedly gets mixed up in multiple murders. It’s 1998, and 20-something Nico Kelly is a licensed PI who does mundane work for a lawyer named Finch, shadowing city employees suspected of committing insurance fraud. Specifically, he surveils supposedly injured workers, trying to catch them performing suspiciously vigorous activities. Nico’s personal life is also dismal. His father, once an “open-mic popular” musician, died of an overdose a few years ago, and he’s lost contact with his Ecuadorian mother, although he still sees his aunt, Cookie. Everything changes when Nico, on a routine job, gets videotaped footage of a cop’s murder by two fellow officers. Finch suggests giving the VHS tape to a former member of a police-corruption committee. After another murder, the officer assigned to the case, Detective Hong, looks at them as suicides, but Nico isn’t convinced— especially after his video camera is stolen from his apartment. Next, someone close to Cookie dies under strange

circumstances, and she begs Nico to find out what happened. Now he’s doing “real PI shit,” including breaking into buildings and creating a fake identity, but his investigation may not yield the answers he wants. Johnson ably gives his story a vivid sense of atmosphere. Nico’s world is gritty but cool, populated with establishments like the Doray, a tavern with a black interior and exterior; the 24-hour record shop Accidental Records; and “self-aware” bar Max Fish, all sharing space with ever-present rats, cockroaches, and garbage; characters eat New York staples such as pizza and bialys. Johnson skillfully imbues it all with a clear sense of the time, when Rudy Guiliani was New York’s mayor; one character is convinced a Y2K computer meltdown is imminent, and Nico uses old tech like pagers and pay phones. Although the story centers on a navigation of societal corruption, the witty dialogue throughout and underachiever Nico’s wry narration (“I sort of got shot”) counteract the darkness, ultimately giving readers a cautious sense of hope. An often humorous mystery that winningly portrays a very particular time and place.

Banners

Kasten, Kate | Islet Press (172 pp.) | $12.95 paper | May 19, 2024 | 9798989532100

Four women square off over the issue of book banning in Kasten’s political satire. Barb Barbarien (pronounced Barbar-EE-en) is the wife of a Republican U.S. senator from Kansas, and she’s on a mission to eradicate an onslaught of so-called “wokeness” caused by particular books she dislikes. Armed with Christian fundamentalist theology and her trusty “go-fer/chauffeur,” Teri Todie, Barb begins building a coalition of mothers and daughters to fight against “questionable”books such as Charlotte’s Web and Winnie-the-Pooh. On the

opposing side are Camille Hubbard and Frances Reid, two retired Kansas City librarians who are moved to defend every child’s right to read. As Barb’s star rises on conservative media, so does Camile and Frances’ fame in a series of viral protests in collaboration with a growing group of teen activists. When Barb joins forces with right-wing extremist groups who begin targeting the “Contrarian Librarians” with accusations of pedophilia and death threats, Camille and Frances only ramp up their efforts. Soon, Barb begins to unexpectedly see elements and characters from the targeted books in her daily life—including apparent spiders and spiderwebs. Kasten’s political perspectives are clear, although they’re sometimes heavy-handedly expressed. However, the struggle between the religious right and a pair of tenacious, retired librarians is conveyed beautifully, and the story has an abundance of empathy throughout. Many revelations, such as that Barb and her compatriots have never actually read the books they want to ban, are apt and amusing, and moments of magical realism are utterly delightful. Peripheral stories about Teri and Barb’s progressive daughter, Mart, can be distracting, but ultimately add to the multifaceted narrative. A beguiling work of political satire whose wit rivals a late-night sketch show.

Runaway At Sea

Maitland, Margreit | Self (322 pp.)

$12.06 paper | Nov. 24, 2024 | 9798987701645

A young boy finds adventure and danger after stowing away on a navy sailing ship in Maitland’s YA novel. Set in the mid19th century, this narrative is based on a journal by the author’s ancestor about his youthful adventures at sea and on land, from England to the Americas. Alive with vivid imagery, the saga begins as Robert, age 12, along with his 14-year-old friend Michael, runs away from his difficult life in an English

A lively and richly detailed story of Washington, D.C.’s artistic history.

CAPITAL ACTS

coastal village by stowing away on one of the queen’s Royal Navy vessels. Discovered when the ship sets sail to patrol “the world’s oceans to keep the peace,” the unwelcome pair are pressed into service. They learn what it takes to maintain the ship’s equipment, defend it against storms and foes, and repair damage, working to exhaustion doing jobs given to the lowliest members of the crew. Above all, they must adhere to a strict code of naval discipline—infractions earn bloody lashes and desertion carries a death sentence. (While not excessive, the violence and other rougher plot elements are not sugarcoated or sanitized.) Maitland’s meticulous observation of the ships of that time (down to how ropes were coiled depending on their placement and function) could have overwhelmed the plot; instead, the informed details deepen the storytelling as Robert struggles with hard labor, suffers painful clashes with the ship’s bully, and experiences the terror of ship-tossing storms (“black clouds spreading like ink spilled on parchment”). Just as resonant is Robert’s wide-eyed wonder over first seeing whales, his pride in his hardearned callouses and growing strength, and his hidden burden of shame over leaving home for fear of his older brother’s savage beatings. In a dramatic, fraught shift, the boys mistakenly jump ship in South America after hearing drunken sailors talk about easy gold pickings in “America.” Their struggles to survive while avoiding discovery and deserter’s deaths will lead readers to a welcome sequel, Adventurer at Sea: On the Edge of Freedom (2024). The novel ends with a comprehensive glossary of period-specific words and phrases. Engrossing “you are there” storytelling centered around a relatable young protagonist—a page-turner.

Capital Acts: Washington DC Performing Arts

Moore, Stephen, Johnny Holliday, Stephen Lorenz & Charles David Young Booklocker.com (540 pp.) | $25.99 paper Dec. 5, 2024 | 9781958892060

A history of some of the great and lesser-known arts and artists of Washington, D.C. For most casual readers, the one example of the long artistic history of the nation’s capital that comes to mind is probably the fact that President Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre while taking in a play. In these pages, Moore (and co-authors Holliday, Lorenz, and Young) aim to fill out that picture considerably, giving readers a panoramic look at the wide variety of arts that have either premiered or flourished in D.C. Moore covers both the broader history of the region and his own personal story, sometimes combining them, as when he reflects on growing up in the bedroom community of Anacostia and becoming aware of the Indigenous American heritage of the area: “I would later learn of the forced displacement and total loss of the Nacotchtank’s ancestral territory through a combination of treaties, coercion, and military actions that prefaced the establishment of our Capital.” Dozens of acts are lovingly described; readers learn of the staggering number of stage shows, for instance, that debuted for audiences at the National Theatre before they moved on to Broadway, including Hello, Dolly!; Annie; Rent; and Avenue Q, among many others. Musical acts are likewise profiled, many of them coming

through the legendary Georgetown venue called the Cellar Door (there’s a terrific story about the origins of John Denver’s hit “Country Roads,” for example, which was born out of happenstance when Denver was involved in a D.C. car accident). Lavishing his narrative with illustrations (playbills, photos, album art), Moore writes with warmth and irresistible energy throughout, regularly picking the perfect anecdotes and vignettes to bring D.C.’s artistic history to life. Fans of the scene shouldn’t miss this book, and its sheer energy will make it of interest far beyond the Beltway.

A lively and richly detailed story of Washington, D.C.’s artistic history.

Caravaggio: A Light Before the Darkness

Mora, Ken | Markosia Enterprises (182 pp.)

$20.72 paper | June 15, 2020 | 9781913359560

Mora’s graphic novel highlights the illicit romances and dramatic adventures of celebrated Baroque painter Michelangelo Caravaggio. In Milan, 1591, Michelangelo Caravaggio has made a name for himself as both a skilled painter and a dangerous troublemaker. After seeing a dear friend burned at the stake for sodomy by the Inquisition, Caravaggio and his male lover Mario are desperate to flee the city (“Perhaps this is fate, telling me to leave Milan”). Impetuous and angry, Caravaggio begins slicing his way through the town to collect debts, making a dangerous enemy in Cavaliere Fabrizio along the way. After relocating to Rome, Caravaggio creates bewitching art that challenges perceptions of the church, but he also continues to find conflict in the streets. As Caravaggio’s temper draws more and more dangerous enemies, he and Mario must once again flee. They soon find themselves welcomed in Malta by a certain Fabrizio and his patron, Cavaliere di Giustizia. They pretend to

love his art, but they are in fact the same men who tried to kill him in Milan years earlier, and they plan to use Caravaggio for their own political gain. With their take on Caravaggio, Mora and illustrator Mescaria subvert fusty ideas about classical painters, creating a queer, swashbuckling adventurer. Images of Caravaggio’s lithe, muscled figure against shadowy, gothic backdrops call to mind a fantasy hero more than a historical figure, while the story and exquisite artwork deliver one action-packed scene after another. The impact of Caravaggio’s art is addressed, especially in the Rome section, which works in some fascinating context about changing styles, but Mora is primarily focused on the doomed lovers and their cat-and-mouse game with various authorities. Some of the political intrigue and shifting motivations are a bit hard to follow, but those concerns are quickly swept aside as this unique and exciting version of Caravaggio repeatedly—and sometimes foolishly— charges into battle for the one he loves. A clever take on history turns a famed artist into a flawed and fascinating hero fighting for acceptance.

Chemistories

Mourshed, Maya | Society of Young Inklings (132 pp.) | $16.99 paper | Nov. 6, 2024 9781956380460

Mourshed presents a collection of whimsical, colorful tales about the elements of the periodic table. The young author presents a new way of memorizing the periodic table’s various features by presenting the elements as characters in a handful of lighthearted works. The book includes various chemistry-centered poems, as well as technical drawings, such as one of the makeup of an atom; photos, including images of an electron microscope and such famous figures as Marie Curie; and

random facts, including the process by which new elements are named. Mourshed’s colorful illustrations appear throughout. The bulk of the book, though, consists of short stories, beginning with a tale of a scientist named R.T. Fishul, who longs to discover a new element in her makeshift basement lab. She doesn’t realize that the elements had long ago agreed to pretend they weren’t alive in order to escape human suspicion—and just as R.T. is about to combine Krypton Kate and Bismuth Beth in her cyclotron machine, they clue her in. The elements and the scientist come to an arrangement, and R.T. is able to create Ununennium (the real-life temporary name for a yet-to-bediscovered element). Another story follows the adventures of Helium, who struggles to make friends (that is, bond with other elements) until he discovers his ability to fly and glow. The last story features 9-year-old Maysa, who gets transported into Chemistry Land and helps elements stop the evil Fluorine from taking over by creating “an extra-positive force” to “knock all of the electrons loose from Fluorine’s outer shells.” The book concludes with general chemistry information, including a short bio of Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, the Russian chemist who created the first periodic table. With an unmistakable sense of playfulness, the book blends facts and fantasy in a way that may appeal to even the most reluctant of science students, largely thanks to Mourshed’s vivid and adorable images in which marker and color strokes are clearly visible, lending them a rustic, hand-drawn feel. Although Mourshed helpfully points out when certain aspects of her stories are fictional (“My imagination. Totally Not Real”), readers encountering the periodic table for the first time may still encounter some confusion at times. Still, the stories themselves are informative, and undeniably funny in places. When Helium begins floating in the air in front of the whole school, for example, he sees his teacher, Ms.

Rubidium, “running away to hide in the kitchen. Helium didn’t take this personally because rubidium is a highly reactive element that panics quickly.” Readers will feel as if they’re stepping into the mind of a child during the Chemistry Land scenes, which makes sense, considering that the author is only in seventh grade; landmarks such as the Electron Eatery, where atoms can enjoy “molecular meatballs, atomic avocado toast, or chemical cannolis” showcase the youthful sense of fun. Mourshed has compiled an inspiring assortment of stories, poems, and art that manages to help explain a small part of the world around us in a way that will appeal to kids and adults alike. A unique and engaging set of science tales with a distinct sense of fun.

Gatchaman: Galactor

Orlando, Steve | Illus. by Kath Lobo & Pasquale Qualano | Mad Cave Studios (104 pp.) | $17.99 paper | Feb. 25, 2025 9781545815892

This comic-book expansion of the Gatchaman universe centers on archvillain Berg Katse. Japanese animated series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman —or simply Gatchaman —aired in the late 1970s and early ’80s. It may be better known to Americans by the title of its dubbed and re-edited version, Battle of the Planets, but this latest comic iteration, from an American publisher, returns the characters and organizations to their Japanese names.

This volume collects four comic-book issues, written by Orlando and illustrated by Lobo and Qualano. Berg Katse (called Zoltar in Battle of the Planets) is the commander of Galactor, an evil group whose mission claims to be in Earth’s best interest: By seizing all the planet’s resources, they assert, humanity can be saved from itself. But when a poisoned meal nearly kills Katse, he must uncover who’s infiltrated his organization. It doesn’t take long for him to track down his would-be assassins: the last members of an organized crime family he thought he eradicated years earlier, shortly before founding Galactor. The gang’s plan has been years in the making—and they have a secret weapon: a mutant family member strong enough to take on Katse. This comic is created by a different team than the one collected in the recent Gatchaman Vol. 1, and it avoids most of that series’ problems. At one point, Katse goes undercover to infiltrate Galactor’s ranks and, in a few panels, it becomes hard to discern which character is Katse. Aside from this, however, the panels have room to breathe, and strike an ideal balance between dialogue and action. The color palette is cohesive, leaning heavily on the reds and purples of Katse’s outfit. Notably, the Science Ninja Team is absent from this comic, other than a brief glimpse at the start (in which someone in a fleeing crowd says, “I’ve seen all their vids—got all the bootleg DVDs,” in a knowing wink to longtime fans), but it never feels that anything is lacking. Instead, this work effectively fleshes out an established character with an absorbing, artfully executed backstory. A thoroughly enjoyable side-story in a popular action-adventure franchise.

A thorough and practical career guide for design project and program managers.

DESIGN CONDUCTORS

The Design Conductors: Your Essential Guide to Design Operations

Posman, Rachel & John Calhoun

Rosenfeld Media (344 pp.) | $54.99 paper Oct. 22, 2024 | 9781959029236

Posman and Calhoun offer a clear and comprehensive review of best practices in the design operations profession. According to the authors, this is the first book specifically focused on design operations, or “DesignOps.” Posman and Calhoun both hold senior DesignOps roles at Salesforce and are experienced leaders in the field. Here, they set out to create “an essential field guide” for project and program managers in design and design-related areas, defining DesignOps as the work of “designing the design team’s experience” in order to “create the conditions that make great design possible.” As the title suggests, the book’s structure is musically themed—clever chapter titles include “Learning the Score,” “Composing Your Career,” and “Maintaining Your Rhythm.” The first three acts (sections) cover the fundamentals of DesignOps practices, practitioners, and organizations; Act 4 covers establishing and growing a practice, and Act 5 provides strategies to improve impact. Fittingly for the subject, the text is well thought-out and attractively presented in its breakdowns of methods to combine design thinking with business savvy, building relationships, managing programs, leading change, and communicating effectively. Colored boxes highlight real-world tips and insights from the authors and many senior DesignOps practitioners from well-known companies such as Adobe, IBM, and Google. More than 80 tables, charts, and graphics illustrate key concepts. The book also includes an “Encore” section with 15 adaptable templates, a 10-page index, and a link to a companion website that contains a

blog and additional content. It’s clear that Posman and Calhoun are speaking for and to a very specific audience of design-related professionals in web-centric or technology companies. They provide a wealth of useful information, including suggested interview questions and answers and guidance on preparing a portfolio. (Those outside the field will not find this riveting reading material, though they may pick up some good advice on management.) The prose mixes clear definitions and practical recommendations (“don’t start with the solution in mind—start with the customer’s need”), but it’s also filled with specialized terms (affinity-mapping, Scrum) and standard corporate jargon such as ideate, deliverables, onboarding, and “cross-disciplinary synchronicity” that mark this work as a text for specialists.

A thorough and practical career guide for design project and program managers.

To Avenge a Fallen Star

Quinn, Qilanna | Self (398 pp.) | $19.99 paper

March 25, 2025 | 9780999030271

Series: United Planetary Systems, 1

While on a mission to avenge her sister’s murder and spark a political revolution, a young woman learns that she might be a pawn in someone else’s game in Quinn’s SF series starter. Living conditions in the underground city of Perileos on the planet Reva are squalid, but there’s a way out: securing a position on the Oranos Space Station by succeeding in a grueling competition known as the Trials. Now

that Gemma Proctor is 20, the medic-turned-miner is eligible to take part, but getting out of Perileos isn’t her top priority—revenge is. Three years earlier, her older sister, Nadine, was murdered after the Trials by Rami Vidar, the game master and director of Zion, the tower fortress where the Trials take place. Gemma’s been preparing for the Trials, trained by Reymond, the leader of rebel group The Dissent. Before she embarks on the Trials’ first challenge—a midnight hike from Perileos to Zion—Reymond gives her a potent poison, hidden in a ring, to kill Rami, whose murder is meant to serve as a catalyst for an uprising against the oppressive United Planetary Systems’ government. All Gemma needs to do is pass the Trials and get close enough to Rami to drop the substance in his drink. Gemma is determined to fulfill her mission with her teammates— Imara, Hawk, Colton, and Christian (with whom she becomes romantically involved)—but later, her world is turned upside down when she learns some unexpected truths. Over the course of Quinn’s novel, Gemma’s justice-driven arc is compelling and sympathetic. The supporting characters are engaging and diverse, although readers may find occasional passages problematic, such as repeated descriptions of Imara, who has Indian heritage, as having “russet brown” skin. The novel’s most notable aspect is Quinn’s well-developed worldbuilding, showcased through richly detailed descriptions of buildings, wildlife, interplanetary politics, and technology, such as a communications device: “A tiny, flexible piece of electroglass sat directly upon her cornea, through which any visual messages appeared. Any auditory messages spoke directly through the biochip behind her ear.” An often bold SF novel about radicalization, resilience, and friendship.

Fine, I’m a Terrible Person

Rosenberg, Lisa F. | Sibylline Press (274 pp.) | $18.00 paper Jan. 9, 2025 | 9781960573674

Shared cultural and familial trauma—and lousy men— loom large in this wry motherdaughter novel by Rosenberg. San Franciscan Leyla Rothstein and her mother, Aurora Feldenburg, couldn’t be less alike. Leyla has a seemingly insatiable desire for efficiency, order, and perfection in her appearance, her family, and her marriage, and her perpetually cash-strapped mother is content to live amid the clutter of the past, gliding through the world clad in rhinestone-adorned velour sweatsuits and sparkly sneakers. Their interactions are often strained, as they often involve money—namely, the funds that Leyla sends her mom every month to bolster her meager Social Security checks. Leyla’s conversations with her mother are frequently laced with proverbs in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language of the family’s Rhodian roots. Two things bring the semi-estranged mother and daughter to Los Angeles: Leyla’s suspicions that her husband is cheating on her during a cannabis industry conference (his alleged mistress owns a company that makes THC-infused toothpaste for dogs), and Aurora’s desire to see if her late father’s recently deceased wife put her in her will. Predictably, the weekend dredges up long-suppressed family issues. Rosenberg’s novel has an effortless, dry sense of humor and quippy tone that lend themselves well to its chaotic storylines; along the way, it offers thoughtful details about Rhodian culture, language, and mysticism. The characters, as outlandish as they are, feel believably real, from their speech patterns to their idiosyncratic habits; Aurora, for example, delights in the “burnt smell of the English muffin in her old GE toaster oven,” while Leyla privately frets over which waste bin she should use to

dispose of a biodegradable wine glass. Such detail extends beyond the interior lives of the characters, making for a breezy, funny, and propulsive read. A redemptive and briskly plot-driven family story.

Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World

Schaefer, Mark | Schaefer Marketing Solutions (290 pp.) | $34.99 Feb. 1, 2025 | 9798987245774

Consultant

Schaefer delivers a bold manifesto on why human audacity has the ultimate advantage over AI. In an era in which people and companies are using artificial intelligence to flood the digital landscape with automated content, Schaefer argues that the true competitive advantage lies not in outsmarting AI, but in “out-humaning it.” His latest work is a rallying cry for marketers, entrepreneurs, and brand experts to embrace “audacity” as their greatest asset in an oversaturated market. Schaefer begins by asking “What does it take for your product to be discovered today? ” His answer unfolds through an exploration of brands, agencies, and individuals who’ve defied convention and, according to the author, have turned marketing into an art form. The book features case studies from innovative advertising companies and brands such as Giant Spoon, the Taboo Group, e.l.f. Beauty and HBO, among others, and it showcases how fearless creativity—not algorithms—captures attention and builds lasting loyalty. Through a mix of case studies and strategic insights, the author explores how what he calls “audacious” marketing can capture consumer interest and keep it. The book notes three critical pillars of brand storytelling: the narrative, the platform, and the storyteller. Using real-world examples, Schaefer illustrates how to “disrupt stories” and “[twist] them into new spaces,” rather than relying on

predictable, “safe” marketing. One of the book’s key concepts is “everyday awe,” which involves creating small but profound moments of wonder that can potentially turn passive customers into brand advocates. To that end, Schafer uses an intriguing strategy that effectively follows his book’s own advice: He includes QR codes that lead readers to videos and additional case studies, among other things, which turn reading the book into a more interactive journey. By the same token, the text also includes 19 bolded words that form a “magical phrase,” rewarding readers who engage with the game. In these ways, this playful guide delivers dozens of tips for eager market executives in offbeat ways. An interactive marketing manual that effectively encourages new methods while demonstrating them.

The Call

Schieffelin, Cathy | Atmosphere Press (276 pp.) $24.99 | Dec. 10, 2024 | 9798891325302

A reporter and a scientist come up against a strange virus in this international medical thriller. Nate Fisher is a journalist investigating a suspected terrorist cell. Juliette Fernandez is a virologist researching a mysterious virus and running from something in her past. They and their respective worlds meet in the Comoros Islands in this often gripping debut novel by Schieffelin. Nate is anticipating a routine research trip and mission, but he is instead thrust into a nightmarish ordeal when he awakens to find his colleagues dead—at least, he thinks they’re dead. They soon wake up, though, and Nate encounters Juliette and French scientist Darrien Gauche, who are tracking a mysterious virus that induces a state resembling death, blurring the boundary between existence and oblivion. Juliette is also dealing with her past (which includes an abusive relationship) and the fear of long-buried secrets being exposed

(“Goran’s eyes on me usually spelled trouble”). As Nate and Juliette’s professional and personal bonds deepen, Juliette is forced to confront her history—particularly the violent chapter that led her into hiding. When government agents close in, she must choose between continuing to flee or standing her ground. Meanwhile, Nate, untangling more than he bargained for, is unsure of whom to trust. It all amounts to a high-stakes medical mystery riddled with global conspiracies and deceptions. A blend of romance, thriller, and medical suspense, this novel explores themes of survival, redemption, and the fragile divide between life and death. Schieffelin has created two flawed but captivating characters in Nate and Juliette, and their relationship provides the beating heart of her narrative. The story jumps back and forth from Nate’s point of view to Juliette’s; this structure largely works, even if it does get a bit convoluted at times. Another strength of Schieffelin’s yarn is its international scope, bolstered by some regional recipes and an international music playlist at the back of the book. All in all, this is a promising effort from a first-time novelist who takes her readers on a gripping and romantic adventure. Solid characters and an intriguing story make for a satisfying read.

Presilience: How to Navigate Risk, Embrace Opportunity, and Build Resilience

Schneider, Gavriel | Amplify Publishing (304 pp.) | $24.00 paper | April 1, 2025 9798891382428

Schneider presents a patented new approach to proactive risk management in this step-bystep guide. The author, an experienced leader in risk management, here shares his method for turning professional setbacks into opportunities by focusing on six

distinct areas, using a system he calls Presilience®. First, readers learn how psychology can be used to understand people’s thoughts and actions in certain situations. Next, Schneider draws from neuroscience to explicate people’s responses to various situations: “In decision-making, the neural seesaw illustrates why we sometimes struggle to blend logical analysis with empathetic understanding. For effective decision-making, especially in leadership or complex scenarios, we need to harness both aspects.” The author then discusses the importance of physical health, using his martial arts and bodyguard experiences as examples, before discussing how interactions with others need to include trust (both in others and oneself) and a strong sense of ethics. He presents specific suggestions (like using a color-coded system for “different risk levels or scenarios” in the workplace) and explains the importance of looking to the past for information about the future. The final section includes a step-by-step guide to making one’s own “personal Presilience plan.” Schneider takes pains to break down potentially complicated ideas (the psychological concepts of “priming” vs. “framing,” for example) into bite-sized informative chunks that never feel overwhelming—even for risk-management novices. There are parts of the text that do become a bit repetitive, though, such as the section discussing the “tribal leadership model” in which the same information is relayed twice using slightly different verbiage. But such moments prove to be the exception—the author largely keeps the book moving in a logical forward trajectory. The prose itself is personable but never emotional, and it avoids the dryness that sometimes plagues business books of this size. There are also plenty of examples, anecdotes, and visuals to break things up. Schneider has created an accessible handbook full of concrete advice for anyone looking to adapt to the ever-changing business landscape. An articulate and well rounded look at success strategies that apply to professionals at every level.

Olive Branch

Schulze, David | Self (380 pp.)

$21.99 | $15.99 paper | Nov. 26, 2024 9781737037897 | 9781737037880 paper

In Schulze’s historical thriller, a soldier-turnedNazi-hunter fights for his life in occupied France.

The fog of war often yields no-win situations. However, the dangers facing William Gunnison seem more daunting than a battle-scarred soldier like himself might ordinarily expect. Stranded in German-occupied Paris, Gunnison is less intent on escaping with his life than he is on assassinating Adalwolf Bütz, a Nazi commandant whose bloodlust knows no bounds. However, the mission goes horribly wrong when Gunnison accidentally shoots and wounds Corey Baxter, an elderly American expatriate from a wealthy family, in the back. Gunnison’s unintended victim insists on being taken home to his abode in the French capital, and after he succumbs to his wounds, Jacques, Baxter’s faithful butler, reveals his employer’s dying wish—to inform his brother in New York City of his fate, and to get his servant to safety, away from the Nazis. Gunnison must contact Baxter’s mistrustful sibling using a coded prompt, “Olive branch,” whose origins prove troubling. As it turns out, Gunnison has secrets that have stark consequences for his fellow Resistance fighters, such as Nadine Sauvageot, whose identity is compromised due to her unlikely connection to him. Over the course of this novel, Schulze forces readers to confront the characters’ moral dilemmas: “He made mistakes….He was human.” It’s a brisk read, in addition to an exploration of its characters’ complex backstories. Overall, as World War II novels go, this one packs a roundhouse kick that present-day readers will feel sharply, as when Nadine tries to make her own way to New York, and a grim realization hits her: “We’re the unluckiest generation in the history of the world. We’re the ones born in Hell.” Secrets catch up to Resistance heroes with startling effects in this fastpaced WWII mystery.

Charlotte’s Ghosts: The Mystery of the Vanishing Boy

Simone, L.P. | Dragon Song Publishing (182 pp.) | $8.06 paper | May 15, 2023 9798987869918

In Simone’s novel for middle-grade readers, a grieving girl in the present day makes a connection with a Civil War–era spirit. Seventh grader Charlotte Cross, who’s grieving the sudden loss of her father, recently moved with her mother from Arizona to Manassas, Virginia. She feels emotionally distanced from her mom but hopes to join the cross-country track team at her new school, where she’s navigating new friendships and an embarrassing crush. Then, one day, while running in a former Civil War battlefield near her house, Charlotte meets a 14-year-old boy in old-fashioned clothes— who strangely keeps vanishing and reappearing. She feels a connection to Jeremy, who may very well be a ghost; she becomes determined to help him in some way. Jeremy lived in Virginia in 1861 with his farming family when news broke that Virginia had seceded from the Union. He believed that he was old enough to fight on the Union side, but his parents were against it. His father planned to join the Union army and needed Jeremy to take care of the farm. Ma, a Quaker pacifist, was entirely against Jeremy signing up; he struggled to manage the farm through a long, difficult war. Jeremy was desperate to become a soldier, which he saw as a way to prove his manhood, and he chafed against the bonds that tied him to home—until an incident forced his hand. Simone’s well-paced middle-grade novel tackles serious topics with care and consideration. The story cleverly balances the past with the present, the supernatural with realism, and action with interiority. Themes of grief, connection, and belonging underpin the narrative, as well. Charlotte’s story is narrated in the first-person present tense, while Jeremy’s is told in third-person past tense—a stylistic choice that effectively

highlights the time separating the main characters, as well as their very different experiences of adolescence. Simone’s emotional prose and vivid descriptions (“The pale morning light washed the spring’s colors into gray shadows. Even the sun seemed hesitant to rise that morning”) bring the narrative to life, right up until the affecting conclusion.

A middle-grade cross-genre standout.

Soul Taker

Sniegoski, Thomas E. & Jeannine Acheson Illus. by Valeria Burzo, Emilio Lecce & Michael Sta. Maria | Mad Cave Studios (162 pp.)

$17.99 paper | March 11, 2025 | 9781545816134

A woman who has lived for millennia feeding on lifeenergy battles an enemy she believed was long dead in Sniegoski and Acheson’s graphic novel.

Amara Delacourt lives a quiet life in a Miami retirement community. Though she looks to be about 70, Amara has actually been around for thousands of years. She’s the last of the Nehmer, a race of immortal beings whose sustenance is human life force. Although they’ve lived and fed among humans inconspicuously and peacefully, a relentless religious order called the Venatori has hunted them to near-extinction. After this “fanatical offshoot of the Catholic Church hellbent on wiping out all those they perceive as unholy” exterminated Amara’s kind, Amara retaliated by killing all of the Venatori—or so she thought. Two chemically enhanced henchmen arrive in Miami on a mission to take out the final Nehmer. But someone else is after Amara, too—Magnes Pharmaceuticals wants to procure the secret of her longevity. As she dodges the company’s attempts to grab her, she must also face off against a bloodthirsty Venatori soldier and a lab-created human Bloodhound engineered to track the Nehmer. Sniegoski and Acheson’s supernaturally powerful hero is not the usual comic-book fare: When she feeds, she resembles a fanged, long-fingernailed vampire, but she typically looks like a

grandma and easily consumes life energy without killing or even hurting people. Engaging backstories spotlight Amara and the Venatori throughout the last millennium and in various countries, from France and Italy to the Old West. There’s a notable progression across this volume’s six collected issues; foes inch closer to Amara, who gradually realizes who’s targeting her and putting someone she’s grown close to in potential danger. Welcome narrative touches include an ultrachic cyber-cat and the unorthodox way another character has lived a shockingly long time. The story ends with not one but two unforgettable cliffhangers. Burzo and Lecce’s impressive artwork combines beautifully muted colors and heavy shadows with brutal violence and ferocious expressions. The collection also showcases illustrator Sta. Maria’s six vibrant covers for the individual issues. Radiant characters electrify this sublime horror outing.

Foster’s Leash

Sommer, Sarah | Illus. by BulankinaKa Mascot Kids (38 pp.) | $19.95 April 1, 2025 | 9798891381728

A young girl fosters a dog for the first time in Sommer’s picture book. An unnamed bespectacled girl with long auburn hair and peachy skin tells her story of bonding with her first foster dog, Pepper, an exuberant midsize mutt. While walking Pepper in the park one day, the girl meets a woman who notices Pepper’s unique red leash with the words “ADOPT ME” in bold yellow letters. The girl explains she’s fostering Pepper until the dog finds a permanent home. The woman responds: “She’s adorable!…It must be hard for you spending all this time bonding and then having to say goodbye.” A week later, a rescue volunteer calls to say they have a potential adopter for Pepper, and the girl is delighted for Pepper but sad and anxious to see her go. The adopter is the kind woman from the park. A few weeks later, while walking her new foster dog, the girl hears a familiar bark: Pepper is with her new person, but hasn’t forgotten the girl who

cared for her until she found her forever home. BulankinaKa’s cartoon illustrations, while somewhat flat, capture the warmth of the tale. The prose is clear and unfussy (“It wasn’t easy saying goodbye last time. But I chose to be strong. Helping animals was important to me”), and Sommer gives good insight into the highs and lows of fostering. A how-to is included. Engaging and sensitive, a roadmap to rescuing animals.

Two-Comma Wealth

Stefanou, George | Streamline Books (218 pp.) | April 15, 2025 | 9798891651777 9798891651760 paper

A financial planner offers advice for managing a lifetime of wealth. In this debut book, Stefanou draws on his work advising clients and his personal experience of helping his immigrant father to manage his finances in his later years. It offers readers a roadmap to investing responsibly, managing tax obligations, and using accumulated wealth for charitable or legacy purposes. The book’s title refers to the wealth of its target audience—people who have accumulated more than $1 million in investable assets, often concentrated in retirement accounts. The book guides readers on how to invest that wealth to preserve and maximize its value, as well as how to spend it responsibly and enjoyably, and pass it down to one’s heirs. Stefanou covers some familiar topics, such as how to balance growth and risk over the lifetime of a portfolio, minimize tax liability through legal means, and manage spending during retirement. The book also dedicates a chapter to the needs of business owners, arguing that they should diversify their investments beyond their own enterprises and recommending exit planning well in advance of retirement for a smooth sale or transition. Other chapters address less concrete aspects of financial planning, such as assessing personal and ethical values, deciding how to get the most enjoyment out of spending one’s

A fearless and laser-focused novel of the future.

QUEEN BESS

available money, and anticipating and mitigating conflicts among heirs. Stefanou also advises readers on how to avoid financial scams and find a capable financial adviser. Each chapter concludes with “SWIM [Stefanou Wealth and Investment Management] Lessons,” combinations of summary and workbook exercises that guide readers through taking action on the topics covered.

The book provides a solid base of information, and it’s enhanced by the many anonymized stories that Stefanou shares from his clients’ adventures in saving, investing, and bequeathing inheritances. For instance, he explains the steps that he took to help a young man with a low salary minimize his income tax exposure. However, what makes the book unique is Stefanou’s inclusion of stories about his father, a Greek immigrant who lived frugally while working low-wage jobs and acquired enough capital to buy a rental property; he ended up with a portfolio worth more than $1 million, while continuing to work long hours into his later years. The author explains that the penny-pinching habits his dad practiced out of necessity were hard to shake when his financial situation was less precarious, and he takes readers through instances when he coached his father into occasionally spending some of his money. For instance, Stefanou encouraged his father to hire a builder to replace his porch, instead of doing it himself. “It was a fear of embracing and utilizing wealth because he felt like he needed permission to spend or else he was squandering money,” the author explains, and it took the combined effort of himself and his sister to help their father to overcome it. Such insights set this book apart from others in the genre. Throughout, Stefanou writes with empathy for his readers while offering advice that will guide them to responsible financial behavior. A useful financial-planning book that’s enhanced by the author’s personal experience.

The Body Trade

Thompson, Zac | Illus. by Jok | Mad Cave Studios (128 pp.) | $17.99 paper April 22, 2025 | 9781545816325

A father with a troubled past searches for answers about his deceased child in writer Thompson and illustrator Jok’s gritty graphic novel. In the not-sodistant future of 2031, amid a “cost-of-living crisis” that amplifies class divides in Florida, an ex-convict named Kim Krilic grapples with the loss of his 5-year-old son, Charlie, who died in a mysterious disaster that Kim seems to have played an accidental role in. The story opens at Charlie’s funeral, where Kim is clearly unwanted. Already struggling to contain his rage over the tragedy, he reaches a breaking point when he sees that his son’s body is missing. In its place is an empty “burial pod” from a company called Bio-Mem, which, unbeknownst to Kim, offered to cover Charlie’s medical and funeral bills in exchange for his corpse. Thus begins Kim’s action-packed mission to find his son’s remains—even if it means that he’ll end up spending the rest of his life behind bars. Meanwhile, a romance brews between him and Reed Fisher, an agent at the company’s retail outpost who, plagued by a guilty conscience, tries to help Kim in his mission. From panel to panel, Jok’s full-color images evoke a hypermasculine, post-apocalyptic, lawless atmosphere marked by wreckage and decay—the highways stretch over what look like rivers of toxic waste, and skulls and machine guns appear in high contrast alongside cheeky hearts, flowers, and splashes of 1990s-esque blues and pinks. Despite the unique particulars of the plot, readers will find familiar elements of the

post-apocalyptic genre lurking on every page, mostly in the form of archetypal characters; Kim, for one, is a classic antihero whom readers will root for from the start, despite his mysterious past and possible involvement in his son’s demise, and Bio-Mem’s Lead Broker, Ms. Wolfe, has a cool demeanor that masks a sociopathic thirst for money and power. Despite the familiarity, one will feel compelled to read on, eager to learn more about the grieving protagonist’s past. A tale of vigilante justice with a satisfying blend of genre-specific predictability and intrigue.

Queen Bess: A Tudor Comes to Save America

Vetrano, Maria | Regalo Press (336 pp.) $18.79 paper | Oct. 15, 2024 | 9798888456897

In Vetrano’s debut SF novel, a legendary Tudor queen is transported to 21st-century America to save the country—and the world—from certain ruin. It’s 2027, and with a presidential election looming, Dakota Wynfred, the billionaire CEO of a cutting-edge cybersecurity company, feels compelled do something radical to save America’s crumbling democracy. With the incumbent President Vlakas in the White House—whom Wynfred, the child of committed social activists, describes as “a xenophobic misogynist racist anti-science whackadoodle”—it seems possible that the country won’t survive another four years of chaos. Partnering with some of the most brilliant minds in the world, Wynfred discovers a way to travel back and forth in time. The group’s plan is as ambitious as it is unlikely: to go back to Tudor England with a small team of scholars and period experts and persuade Queen Elizabeth I, who ruled England, Ireland, and Wales from 1558 to her death in 1603, to run for president of the United States in 2028. Although the premise is wildly audacious, Vetrano handles all the details with intelligence and insight, from fixing the queen’s blackened teeth to educating her

on 21st-century politics and culture. Straight, white Wynfred’s diverse circle of friends—which includes a gay man and a Black woman—offers up additional learning opportunities for the queen. Humorous moments abound as the monarch, in 21st-century Massachusetts, discovers toasters, Nike running shoes, weekly microdermabrasion treatments, and The Bachelorette. However, the book’s obvious thematic power comes from its portrayal of a looming dystopia in which the landscape of America is radically changed by policy-backed bigotry, a lack of environmental protections, book banning, and other actions engineered by the Vlakas administration. Although this story’s conclusion could have had much more impact, the author’s decision to end the story where she does will leave readers deeply contemplative.

A fearless and laser-focused novel of the future that will entertain and trouble readers, by turns.

Mai Tai Malice

Westlake, Tanya | Impractical Press (403 pp.)

$14.99 paper | July 3, 2024 | 9798985642582

A Florida waitress tries to find the killer of a woman who had recently implicated her in a murder.

In Westlake’s third installment of a mystery series, Tampa resident Kalliope “Kallie” Brooks and her best friend, Tess Russo, are enjoying the parade at Gasparilla, the city’s annual pirate festival. Suddenly, a woman crashes into Kallie, and hands her a bloody knife. It’s the knife that was just used to kill an NFL player with a troubled past. Although Kallie spends a brief time in jail, she is released when security footage taken at the festival shows a woman handing off the knife. After Kallie’s release, she learns of another murder at the parade, and later is shocked to find the victim is Kelsey Majors, the woman who gave her the bloody knife. When not communing with her sweet dog, Sherman, or hanging out with Tess, Kallie is a waitress at the Lazy

Gecko, which features a cheerful beach vibe (“The unusual drinks were her favorites—the cool, retro Harvey Wallbangers and Blue Hawaiis and Old Fashioneds, delicately layered shots that relied on specific gravities—the ones that made Kallie feel like a mad scientist”). But serving up killers has become the amateur sleuth’s second career. She, Tess, and their hired bargain-rate private investigator, Reggie Cornwallis, look into Kelsey’s past, including her boyfriend, Dakota Abernathy, a filthy rich and supposedly reformed bad boy, and her controlling boss, Esmerelda Collins. Police Det. Morrison keeps an eye on Kallie along the way, and his interest in her may be personal as well as professional. Although this engaging novel can be read as a standalone, perusing the series in order provides helpful background information. This is not Kallie’s first rodeo, er, murder. But solving gory crimes does not dampen her spirits or lessen her good humor. The book is often quite funny, as when Tess gives Kallie a makeover, and the evocative descriptions of Gasparilla and the Tampa area add color. But old-timey terms stand out; Kallie drives a “jalopy,” and characters “scowl” and “grin.” Still, there are intriguing plot twists, and Kallie gets into some dangerous scrapes. Cheers to this delightful cocktail of sweetness, humor, and murder.

No Home Between Heaven and Earth

Wetjen, Philip D. | Self (233 pp.) | $14.99 paper Nov. 20, 2024 | 9798340339119

In Wetjen’s novel, a young traveler makes new friends and new plans on an eastbound train. Daniel, a man who’s running low on resources, finds himself sneaking aboard a train in Oregon with almost no possessions and no destination in mind. However, after a mysterious young woman named Sora brings him to a community of kind laborers, this life shifts in a way he couldn’t have predicted. However, he

quickly becomes aware that there’s a lot he still doesn’t know about his new circumstances, or about the unwritten rules among his new acquaintances. On their second journey together, they stay with a church group at the local Salvation Army in Pasco, Washington, which Daniel’s compatriots call “The Sally.” During their time there, they find work doing seasonal and short-term construction projects, but soon enough, they take their leave to the next destination—up north; Daniel follows the others up toward Minneapolis and then south again, toward Texas. Wetjen has their friendships unfold sweetly and organically, telling a tale of how people can support each other in conventional and unconventional ways. Wetjen’s prose is often vivid, giving readers a clear sense of place throughout: “The river seemed to unwind just for him. The mountains along the river were now more in the scale of hills, and they were gold in the sunshine. The river and brown hills and blue sky made for a beautiful day—no need for a book.” However, the sentences’ rhythms tend to lack variety, and some readers’ attentions may falter. Still, the novel’s themes of connection, personal growth, and perseverance shine through clearly, and it’s a wonderful option for readers looking for a brief but earnest tale. A complex and emotional story of friendships blooming in difficult situations.

Black Social Television: How Black Twitter Changed Television

Williams, Sherri Marie | Lexington Books (196 pp.) | $105.00 | Dec. 15, 2024 9781793616289

A media studies professor explores the intersection of television and social media in this debut nonfiction work. Watching television “is always better when it’s done together,” writes Williams, noting that Black Americans in particular have historically consumed television as a

collective experience, from communal viewings of Roots during the 1970s to mass engagement with major news stories like Magic Johnson’s AIDS announcement. In this well-researched, convincing study, the author argues that the nature of Black viewership underwent a monumental change in the 2010s that both challenged and fundamentally transformed the television industry. Calling this phenomenon “Black social TV,” Williams argues that “social media engagement by mostly Black audiences about scripted and unscripted shows with Black people” both connected Black viewers across the country and amplified their collective impressions on television media. Indeed, per the author, part of the success of some of the decade’s most popular shows—from gripping dramatic sagas like Empire and Scandal to reality TV programs such as The Real Housewives of Atlanta—was due to the social media engagement of Black Americans. The book’s early chapters provide historical context on Black viewership, media theory, and the representation of Black people (particularly women) in traditionally white-dominated media; the book’s second half explores case studies of specific TV programs. The final chapters look at how Covid-19-era quarantines further solidified Black social media engagement and address Elon Musk’s role in pushing Black media commentators out of their traditional home on Twitter to other social media platforms. Williams also discusses the continued exploitation of Black voices, particularly as the work of Black social media influencers remains largely uncredited and unpaid. An Assistant Professor of Journalism at American University, the author previously worked as a journalist in Mississippi and Ohio. Her text reflects both professional backgrounds—it’s impressively researched and offers readers an accessibly written and engaging narrative.

A well-argued case for the power of Black Twitter.

Forever We Dream

Workman, Mark | Birdeto Books (260 pp.) | $17.99 paper

March 19, 2025 | 9798989806720

In Workman’s YA debut, three identical conjoined sisters overcome bullying to compete in a televised talent competition. In 1978, 16-year-olds Elliana (Ellie), Bellamona (Mona) and Gabriella (Gabby) Banfear are the world’s only documented conjoined triplets. Their mother abandoned them as babies, so they live with their father Benson—a polyglot who works long hours as a translator—and their Great Pyrenees dog BeeGee. The triplets are talented seamstresses, singers, and instrumentalists, and achieve top grades at Hollywood High. They are relentlessly bullied, however, by classmate Twyla-Violet Higgins, who achieved brief fame as an 8-year-old actor and now fronts a band called Empress that has made it to the finals of the teen edition of the TV talent show Your Shooting Star. While Benson often addresses his daughters by the collective hypocorism “Papilio” (Latin for butterfly), TwylaViolet has popularized the pejorative “Caterpillar,” inspired by the shuffling movement the sisters make to pass through doorways. Her enmity appears relentless…and only goes up a notch when one of Empress’ rivals, the Bee Gees tribute band Boogie Children, has to replace its lead singer and invites Papilio to join them for the finals. The Banfear triplets are huge Bee Gees fans, and they are thrilled to make friends with 15-year-old lead guitarist Michael Thompson and his younger brothers Robbie, Jason, and Brian. They also see appearing on Your Shooting Star as a

Enough surprises to keep YA readers on their toes.

chance to track down their absent mother, either through a direct appeal on national television or, if by some miracle they win the contest, by using their share of the prize money to hire a private investigator. Only three things stand in their way: their own self-doubt, Twyla-Violet (backed by her overbearing father/manager Edward), and the fact that Benson won’t let them perform on the show. Ellie forges Benson’s signature; Gabby impersonates him on the phone; and the sisters even stand up to Twyla-Violet. But will their deceptions come back to haunt them?

Workman writes in the third person, narrating mostly from Papilio’s perspective with straightforward, effective prose. The writing’s only real flaw is a weakness for stilted expository monologues: “I’m struggling to meet this tough deadline, but I’m enjoying translating this Spanish novel into English. It’s an exciting spy story set during the Spanish-American War but a very long book that also needs editing. It’s a tough dual job.” Off-key verbalizations aside, the triplets emerge as an inspiring collective protagonist, distinct in their individual personalities but united in shared virtues such as positivity, thoughtfulness, determination, compassion, and willingness to forgive. To the author’s credit, the sisters also exhibit less salubrious tendencies (mendacity, rash imprudence) and are called out for these, such as when Michael berates Mona for Papilio involving Twyla-Violet’s mother and little sister in their retaliation scheme. The result is a nuance of characterization that extends to Benson, whose love for his children has led him to lie to them and act most reprehensibly. The realistic balancing of character traits elevates the triplets’ tale from a simple feel-good triumph to something more long-lasting and affecting. While Twyla-Violet’s bullying has the potential to be triggering, the plot is more than just a repudiation. The story is well paced and, though it follows a predictable line, unfolds with enough surprises to keep YA readers on their toes and rooting for a favorable outcome. An emotionally charged exploration of family and identity.