February 1, 2022: Volume XC, No. 3

Featuring 310 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children's and YA books

KIRKUS VOL. XC, NO.

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REVIEWS Ruta Sepetys The bestselling YA novelist makes history thrilling in I Must Betray You

Also in the issue: Weike Wang, Kelly Weill, Ruth Behar, and Ulysses at 100

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK | Tom Beer

recognizing black women trailblazers John Paraskevas

As we often point out at Kirkus, Black history is a subject to be read and studied year-round—not just during the month of February, when it is officially recognized. Nevertheless, many publishers do take this occasion to release a host of important books about African American history and life, and that’s certainly cause for celebration. Among the most inspiring are those that bring to light forgotten or overlooked figures who deserve more attention and study. Here are three books about Black women trailblazers—one for adults, one for teens, and one for children—that Kirkus has recently reviewed.

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality by Tomiko Brown-Nagin (Pantheon, Jan. 25): Constance Baker Motley is not a household name, but her life story reveals a woman who had a powerful impact in law and politics—arguing 10 cases before the Supreme Court (and winning nine) as well as being elected a New York state senator and Manhattan borough president before being appointed to the federal judiciary—the first Black woman in each case. In a starred review, Kirkus calls Civil Rights Queen a “stirring life of a civil rights crusader” and an “excellent exploration of the life of an admirable pioneer who deserves to be far better known.”

Augusta Savage: The Shape of a Sculptor’s Life by Marilyn Nelson (Christy Ottaviano Books, Jan. 25): This YA biography elevates a Black visual artist who deserves to be better known.

Working during the 1920s and ’30s, the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance, Savage depicted significant figures and motifs in Black life. She was commissioned to create a sculpture for the 1939 World’s Fair—the only Black artist to be exhibited and one of only four women. (Sadly, her plaster sculpture, The Harp, was destroyed after the fair; Savage could not afford to cast it in bronze.) Nelson tells Savage’s life story through verse, and an afterword by the curator of New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture provides essential historical context. Our starred review calls it a “lyrical biography from a master of the craft.”

Call Me Miss Hamilton: One Woman’s Case for Equality and Respect by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Jeffery Boston Weatherford (Millbrook Press, Feb. 1): Like Constance Baker Motley, Mary Hamilton is a civil rights activist largely unknown today. Her life story is told in this middlegrade book written by the author of last year’s acclaimed picture book Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre. (The illustrations here are by Weatherford’s son, accompanied by archival photographs.) A Freedom Rider and the first woman head of the Congress of Racial Equality’s Southern region, Hamilton was frequently arrested. This book’s title comes from her reproach of a White Alabama prosecutor who insisted on addressing her by her first name rather than employing the honorific, as he did with others in the courtroom. Charged with contempt of court, Hamilton took her case all the way to the Supreme Court. Our review calls the book “essential reading for teaching children about the importance of demanding equality and respect.”

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Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N # Chief Executive Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N mkuehn@kirkus.com Editor-in-Chief TOM BEER tbeer@kirkus.com Vice President of Marketing SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com Vice President of Kirkus Indie KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com Fiction Editor L AU R I E M U C H N I C K lmuchnick@kirkus.com Young Readers’ Editor L AU R A S I M E O N lsimeon@kirkus.com Young Readers’ Editor S U M M E R E DWA R D sedward@kirkus.com Editor at Large MEGA N LABRISE mlabrise@kirkus.com Senior Indie Editor D AV I D R A P P drapp@kirkus.com Indie Editor M Y R A F O R S B E RG mforsberg@kirkus.com Editorial Assistant of Indie AMELIA WILLIAMS awilliams@kirkus.com Editorial Assistant N I N A P A L AT T E L L A npalattella@kirkus.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Editor G R E G O RY M c N A M E E Copy Editor BETSY JUDKINS Designer ALEX HEAD Kirkus Editorial Senior Production Editor ROBI N O ’ DE L L rodell@kirkus.com Kirkus Editorial Senior Production Editor M A R I N N A C A S TA L L E J A mcastalleja@kirkus.com Website and Software Developer P E RC Y P E R E Z pperez@kirkus.com Advertising Sales Manager TAT I A N A A R N O L D tarnold@kirkus.com Advertising Associate AMY BAIRD abaird@kirkus.com Graphic Designer K Y L A N O VA K knovak@kirkus.com

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contents fiction

The Kirkus Star is awarded to books of remarkable merit, as determined by the impartial editors of Kirkus.

INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS............................................................ 4 REVIEWS................................................................................................ 4 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................... 6

INTERVIEW: WEIKE WANG............................................................... 14 MYSTERY.............................................................................................. 36 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY.......................................................... 41 ROMANCE............................................................................................ 41

nonfiction INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.......................................................... 43 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 43 EDITOR’S NOTE...................................................................................44 INTERVIEW: KELLY WEILL.................................................................50

children’s INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.......................................................... 90 REVIEWS.............................................................................................. 90 EDITOR’S NOTE: PICTURE BOOKS . ................................................ 92 EDITOR’S NOTE: MIDDLE GRADE ................................................... 96 INTERVIEW: RUTH BEHAR............................................................... 98

young adult INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS........................................................ 120 REVIEWS............................................................................................ 120

Emily St. John Mandel returns with a novel ranging from Vancouver in 1912 to a moon colony in the 25th century; it’s even more boldly imagined than Station Eleven.

Read the review on p. 25.

ON THE COVER: RUTA SEPETYS.....................................................128

indie INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.........................................................139 REVIEWS.............................................................................................139 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................. 140

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FULLY BOOKED.................................................................................. 158 APPRECIATIONS: JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES AT 100................... 159 |

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COUNTRY OF ORIGIN

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Azim, Dalia A Strange Object (320 pp.) $16.95 paper | March 15, 2022 978-1-64-605152-6

ATOMIC ANNA by Rachel Barenbaum.................................................7 HEARTBROKE by Chelsea Bieker......................................................... 9 THE FAMILY CHAO by Lan Samantha Chang....................................10

An upper-class Egyptian teenager pursues romance and personal freedom following the 1952 uprising.

Halah Ibrahim is 14 when Cairo goes up in flames. She watches it burn from the relative safety of her family’s lavish home, guarded by the privilege of her father’s military connections. As the family cook says, “The rich are always protected.” Halah’s schooling ends with the revolution and her parents’ attempt to arrange her marriage to a much older man. Halah rebels, sneaking off in the night to marry Khalil, one of her father’s military acquaintances, whom she barely knows. They travel to New York, where he’ll attend medical school. “I had been so blasé about money my whole life,” Halah says, not realizing the gravity of what she’s done or the harshness of the existence that awaits her until she and Khalil try to forge a life together in Queens. They have a daughter, Amena, and Halah falls into patterns of negative, obsessive thought.

Early descriptions of Halah’s behavior seem like wild teenage defiance, but this is reframed after Halah goes missing in 1967 and other characters—Khalil, college-age Amena, and Khalil’s imprisoned brother, Hassan—begin to tell their sides of her story from various points in the future. Halah “hadn’t been in her right mind before she vanished,” and as the other characters try to piece together what happened, her earlier obsessions and actions seem less like immaturity. As they reckon with Halah’s disappearance, the other three characters’ stories reach out into diverse futures where they each come to terms with Halah’s influence and their connections to their Egyptian past.

Interesting for what it says about youth and romance entangling with mental illness.

PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN LADY by María Gainza; trans. by Thomas Bunstead...................................................................16 LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus................................... 17 THE WIND WHISTLING IN THE CRANES by Lídia Jorge; trans. by Margaret Jull Costa...............................................................22 THE IMPOSSIBLE US by Sarah Lotz.................................................. 24 SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Emily St. John Mandel............................25 VERY COLD PEOPLE by Sarah Manguso........................................... 26 NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE by Leigh Newman.................................27 VAGABONDS! by Eloghosa Osunde.................................................... 28 HAMMER by Joe Mungo Reed............................................................. 28 NEW AND SELECTED STORIES by Cristina Rivera Garza; trans. by Sarah Booker, Francisca González Arias, Lisa Dillman, Cristina Rivera Garza & Alex Ross................................................... 29 THE GREAT PASSION by James Runcie..............................................30 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BENNETTS by Lisa Scottoline.............. 31 SECRET IDENTITY by Alex Segura......................................................32 THE PARADOX HOTEL by Rob Hart..................................................41 FOOL ME ONCE by Ashley Winstead................................................. 42 THE FAMILY CHAO

Chang, Lan Samantha Norton (320 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-0-393-86807-4

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WHEN WE WERE BIRDS

in the city, but the only job he can get is hard labor in a giant cemetery. He’s not afraid of the work, but such a job requires him to abandon his Rastafarian upbringing and its edict about staying away from the dead—and it means betraying his devout mother.

Meanwhile, Yejide has always existed close to death, growing up in time to its rhythms and rules. One woman in each generation of her family is called to escort souls to the afterlife, but now that her dying mother is passing on this legacy to her, its traditions and responsibilities weigh heavily. As Darwin begins to suspect that his co-workers at the cemetery are involved in heinous crimes and Yejide senses the dead are uneasy instead of at rest, their paths collide during a raging storm. Their attraction is immediate and undeniable, but can two such disparate destinies be entwined? Banwo makes you care deeply about the outcome and deftly weaves the realistic and the fantastic into a strange and compelling tapestry. With skill and heart, she has created a world readers will happily return to, even if they don’t usually gravitate toward fantasy.

A remarkable story that blends urban reality and Caribbean-infused magical realism.

Banwo, Ayanna Lloyd Doubleday (304 pp.) $27.00 | March 1, 2022 978-0-385-54726-0

A gravedigger and a mysterious, powerful young woman are drawn together when the worlds of the dead and the living collide in Trinidad.

This wonderfully original debut novel unspools at the stormy crossroads that separates the living and the dead. Blending sobering urban realities with a Caribbean-infused magical realism, Banwo has created a unique world expansive enough to contain a ghost story, a love story, a mysterious mythology, and a thoughtful examination of how family bonds keep us firmly rooted to our pasts. Set in Trinidad, the novel follows the fortunes of Darwin and Yejide, both of whom are struggling through great emotional upheavals. Darwin has left his country home to find work

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FICTION | Laurie Muchnick

adding romance to the canon The Folio Society is known for lush, beautifully illustrated editions of classic books—you can buy the complete Jane Austen from them, or T.S. Eliot or Thomas Hardy or any of the Brontës. They also publish more recent fiction, like The Color Purple, and plenty of mysteries, thrillers, and SF/Fantasy. They have a partnership with Marvel, producing fan favorites like Spider Man and Captain America, and they’re working on a gorgeous set of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice novels. But despite the success of their genre titles, they hadn’t published any romance until recently, when they ventured into the territory with Georgette Heyer’s Venetia, originally published in 1958.

Though romance novels sell like hotcakes, the genre has had a problem gaining respect. I’m thrilled that the Folio Society is adding romance to the canon, but I wish they hadn’t felt the need to signal that the genre should be taken seriously by having a man—Stephen Fry—write the introduction and that Fry hadn’t started off like this: “From the absolutely appalling cover art that has defaced her books since she was first published, you would think Georgette Heyer the most gooey, ghastly, cutesy, sentimental and trashy author who ever put pen to paper.” But never fear, dear reader! Fry goes on to say that “her stories satisfy all the requirements of romantic fiction, but the language she uses, the dialogue, the ironic awareness, the satire and insight—these rise far above the genre.” Ah, the old “transcends the genre” trope, which is just as much a cliché as any cliché the writer is looking down his nose at.

But it’s February, and perhaps you’re ready for a dose of pre–Valentine’s Day reading pleasure, whatever Stephen Fry might think. Maybe you’d get a kick out of a book cover featuring a smoldering woman in a fur-trimmed gown, and Julie Anne Long’s Palace of Rogues series would be a great place to start. The first volume, Lady Derring Takes a Lover (Avon, 2019), introduces Delilah Swanpole, Countess of Derring, whose husband leaves her penniless at his death—except for a mysterious abandoned building by the London docks. Delilah sells her jewelry to raise money and, for reasons that make perfect sense 6

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in context, teams up with Angelique Breedlove, her late husband’s mistress, to renovate the building into a boardinghouse they call The Grand Palace on the Thames. And then, of course, Delilah finds love, as does Angelique in the next book, Angel in a Devil’s Arms (Avon, 2019). The third and fourth books, I’m Only Wicked With You (Avon, 2021) and After Dark With the Duke (Avon, 2021), follow the Grand Palace’s guests as they pair up, first an impetuous young aristocratic woman with a self-made American man and then a scandalous opera singer with a rigid military hero who also happens to be (surprise!) a duke.

If you’re looking for a contemporary romance try Seressia Glass’ The Love Con (Berkley, Dec. 14), about an aspiring costumer who ropes her best friend into posing as her boyfriend during a cosplay competition. Our starred review says, “Kenya is a heroine who staunchly refuses to exist on the sidelines, fighting to prove that she deserves every aspiration she dreams of reaching.” Or Anita Kelly’s Love & Other Disasters (Forever, Jan. 18), which takes place on the set of a TV cooking competition and which our starred review calls “a delectable queer romance.”

In Sara Desai’s The Singles Table (Berkley, Nov. 16), “a funloving lawyer promises to play matchmaker for a surly (but smoking-hot) businessman,” according to our starred review, which calls it “a beautifully told rom-com that’s full of laughs, heart, and scorching sexual tension.” Just the thing to heat up another pandemic winter.

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

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ATOMIC ANNA

Barenbaum, Rachel Grand Central Publishing (448 pp.) $28.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-5387-3486-5

KIRKUS REVIEWS

BEST INDIE BOOK OF 2021

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A Soviet scientist responsible for the Chernobyl disaster invents a time machine so she can change not only that fatal accident, but also her own destiny.

Anna Berkova grew up applying her brilliant scientific and mathematical brain to questions of nuclear power. A star of the Soviet Union, she designed the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, taking care to work through numerous safety protocols. Of course, it’s not enough, and when the reactor melts down on April 26, 1986, her life is only saved by an accidental jump through time. She finds herself in 1992, on top of a mountain, holding a bleeding woman who claims to be the daughter she gave away as an infant and who tells Anna she must use her time-traveling power both to stop Chernobyl and save her own granddaughter. From this striking, emotional beginning—which gives rise to a thousand questions—the novel follows three generations of Anna’s family, itself jumping around in time to explore the lives of Anna, her daughter, Molly, and her granddaughter, Raisa. All three struggle to find their places in the world as talented, strong, independent women, and all three will play a pivotal role in Anna’s quest to change the future—or is it the past?—not only to protect those who perish in the nuclear disaster, but to empower, and ultimately save the lives of, her family. In Barenbaum’s skillful hands, a complex concept and structure work beautifully, as the novel is slowly constructed one painstakingly detailed chapter at a time.

The book is an incredible achievement with a heartfelt human theme: It’s never too late to let go of psychological baggage and heal past wounds.

As ambitious as a Greek tragedy and just as lyrical and unflinching.

LUCKY BREAKS

JOSHUA SENTER’S

Criticall y Acclaimed NOVE L

Belorusets, Yevgenia Trans. by Eugene Ostashevsky New Directions (160 pp.) $14.95 paper | March 1, 2022 978-0-8112-2984-5

STILL THE NIGHT CALL

A debut collection depicting women who live on the margins of Ukrainian society.

“I’ve never felt a sense of security in Ukraine,” explains the narrator of one story. “It wasn’t safe for a girl or woman there.” Indeed, a sense of unease pervades every corner of this book, which spotlights women affected directly and indirectly by the violence in Eastern Ukraine. (The contours of the conflict are anything but straightforward: “Russia is waging war against Ukraine;

ISBN:

#978-1-7375856-0-2

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Ukraine is waging war against an internal enemy…people say that Europe is also waging some kind of war here.”) In a series of narrative portraits, readers are introduced to a witch who delivers a town’s babies using an enormous mitt, years later wordlessly compelling them to do her bidding (“The Woman Who Caught Babies Into a Mitt”); to a woman who lives in a damp room, “bursting with health, so much so that she no longer felt human,” and prays desperately for illness (“The Woman Who Fell Sick”); and, in the acerbically ironic “The Woman Who Could Not Walk,” to a protagonist whose “perfidious feet” betray her and stop moving amid a crowded street on International Women’s Day. Some stories adopt an overtly symbolic register, like the darkly humorous “The Stars,” in which a weekly horoscope informs townspeople when it’s safe to venture outside and when they should “seek seclusion and privacy” from the shellings above. Some are masterfully imbued with a sense of loss—such as “The Florist,” in which a woman as beautiful as her flowers disappears without explanation, presumably “into the fields and joined the partisans.”

Though the stories’ brevity occasionally dissatisfies, it also

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renders each one precious—like a gut punch, full of simple observations that quickly become devastating. Belorusets, who came to fiction from photojournalism (her own images appear in the book), excels at building stories that serve as striking snapshots of lives—strange, beautiful, and absent the interpretative context that might render them neater and less unsettling. As it is, this singular collection brings Ukraine, “the land of residual phenomena,” entirely to life.

Striking and original.

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“Larger than life and darker than hell.” heartbroke

HEARTBROKE

a long-missing girl named Susan has been found in Bornholm, where children from Louise’s hometown of Osted travel yearly on school trips. In 1995, one of those children—Susan—never returned. As the body count piles up and more women go missing, Louise can’t help but wonder if it has something to do with Trine’s disappearance, as she was one of the girls to last see Susan alive in Bornholm. Straight on the heels of a breakup and feeling a bit lost and lethargic, Louise breaks out of her sleeping pill–induced stupor to help lead an unofficial investigation into finding her sister-in-law and figuring out what exactly happened on Trine’s fateful school trip back in 1995. It’s a fast, compelling book, but the ending feels a bit far-fetched, and one can’t help wondering what’s in the water in Denmark considering that every character’s life seems to be in total chaos at the same time.

Suicide attempts, teenage pregnancies, and breakups abound during the short time it takes to discover who’s at fault for both current and past disappearances.

You may have to take it with a grain of salt, but it’s still a fun journey.

Bieker, Chelsea Catapult (288 pp.) $26.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-64622-127-1

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The down-at-the-heels and lovelorn of the American West battle addictions, exploitation, and abandonment.

If Bieker’s debut novel, Godshot (2020), were an acclaimed television series, Heartbroke would be its spinoff.

These 11 stories feature Bieker’s characteristic protagonists: naïve, mainly female, flattened by poverty, and desperate to cling to whatever helps make sense of the world or, rather, the corner of it Bieker retraces: namely, central California, where the bulk of these stories are set. (And in true spinoff fashion, characters from Godshot even pop up occasionally here.) Bieker hasn’t let up on the drama any in these narratives, either; there is a Coen brothers–esque dark zaniness to their plots, which are full of hapless criminals and bumbling lovers, all filtered through lovely prose. (“I had me a cowboy once on a hot steam Friday night, on a hot go all the way time, just us together in his truck” reads the beginning of the heist tale “Cowboys and Angels.”) In the opening story, “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Miners,” a college-age barmaid takes up with an abusive miner called Spider Dick and tries to figure out what her dead mother would have wanted her to do with her life. In the affecting “Lyra,” a brothel madam hosts a young academic writing a dissertation about sex work and a long-ago crime that the madam knows far more about than she’s saying. In nearly all the stories, the mother-child relationship is the beating heart, a heart that is shot through with the poison of poverty, substance abuse, and disenfranchisement. But that Bieker finds such humor and poetry in that heart is a testament to both her skill and her tender affection for her wayward characters.

Larger than life and darker than hell.

A HARMLESS LIE

Blaedel, Sara Trans. by Mark Kline Dutton (304 pp.) $17.00 paper | March 22, 2022 978-0-593-33094-4 Off-duty detective Louise Rick investigates a missing person case with a personal connection.

Louise is in Thailand, on leave from her job as a detective in Copenhagen’s Missing Persons department, when her father calls to inform her that her brother, Mikkel, has attempted suicide. Mikkel’s wife, Trine, disappeared for the second time a few days earlier, and Mikkel has hit rock bottom. Louise is on the next plane back to Denmark, where she quickly discovers that there’s more going on than a woman leaving her husband. The body of |

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“A nation of animals is stirred to revolt in the face of decadeslong dictatorial rule.” glory

GLORY

right-wing, egotistical leaders. (The unnamed U.S. president is a “Tweeting Baboon.”) Of course, the new horse is the same as the old horse: Tuvius, aka Tuvy, arrives with plenty of rhetoric about a “New Dispensation,” but he quickly proves himself greedy, egotistical, and belligerent toward all who cross him.

A counterweight comes in the form of Destiny, a goat and writer raised on memories of the old regime’s violence. Bulawayo’s use of animals gives the story a bit of quirkiness, and she writes sinuous prose rich with repetition and intensifiers that conjure a mood of an epic folktale. But the characters are so fundamentally human in behavior and action—tweeting, jet-setting, slaughtering—that the setup scarcely qualifies as an allegory. And for a novel of such breadth, its arc is straightforward; Tuvy is so cartoonishly dim, Destiny so straightforwardly heroic, and Jidadans’ rhetoric so well-worn (“What do we have to do in order for our bodies, our lives, our dreams, our futures, to finally matter?”) that the conclusions feel overly familiar despite its offbeat conceit.

A lyrical if rote tale of dominance and resistance.

Bulawayo, NoViolet Viking (416 pp.) $27.00 | March 8, 2022 978-0-52-556113-2 A nation of animals is stirred to revolt in the face of decadeslong dictatorial rule.

Bulawayo’s second novel—following We Need New Names (2013)—opens with the decline of Old Horse, the longtime authoritarian leader of the African nation of Jidada who is, literally, an old horse. His regime is out of touch when it isn’t actively corrupt—a (pig) crony priest emptily sings his praises, his (canine) generals support his hard-line attitude, and his (donkey) wife turns a deaf ear to protesters. When Old Horse dies, the menagerie of citizens is cautiously hopeful for reform—cats, pigs, and other disgruntled creatures tweet out their fury, echoing contemporary themes of frustration with

THE FAMILY CHAO

Chang, Lan Samantha Norton (320 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-0-393-86807-4

A Chinese American family reckons with its patriarch’s murder in this modern-day reboot of The Brothers Karamazov.

When James, the youngest of the three Chao brothers, returns home to Wisconsin from college for Christmas, he’s braced for drama. His imperious, abrasive father, Leo, has driven his mother to a Buddhist sanctuary. The middle brother, Ming, made his fortune in New York to escape the family’s orbit and is only grudgingly visiting. And the eldest brother, Dagou, has labored at the family restaurant for years in hopes of a stake in the business only to be publicly rebuffed by Leo. Leo is murderously frustrating, so it’s not exactly surprising when he’s found dead, trapped in the restaurant’s freezer room, its escape key suspiciously absent. Chang’s well-turned third novel neatly balances two substantial themes. One is the blast radius of family dysfunction; the novel is largely told from James’ (more innocent) perspective, but Chang deftly shows how each of the brothers, and the partners, exes, and onlookers around them, struggles to make sense of Leo and his death. (Handily, the plural of Chao is chaos.) The second is the way anti-immigrant attitudes warp the truth and place additional pressure on an overstressed family: When one of the brothers faces trial for Leo’s death, news reports and local gossip are full of crude stereotypes about the “Brothers Karamahjong” and rumors of the restaurant serving dog meat. As with Dostoevsky’s original, the story culminates in a trial that becomes a stage for broader debates over obligation, morality, and family. But Chang is excellent at exploring this at a more intimate level as well. A later plot twist deepens the tension and concludes a story that 10

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CURFEW

smartly offers only gray areas in response to society’s demands for simplicity and assurance.

A disruptive, sardonic take on the assimilation story.

Cowie, Jayne Berkley (320 pp.) $17.00 paper | March 22, 2022 978-0-593-33678-6

THE GREAT MRS. ELIAS

In a near-future United Kingdom, a dysfunctional family is further fractured by “Curfew Laws” that require men to remain off the streets from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Sarah Wallace is employed as a “tagger” at a center that locks trackable ankle monitors on all men over the age of 10. Sarah’s ex-husband, Greg Johnson, is soon to be released from prison, where he was sent for a Curfew violation, triggered by an offense committed against Sarah herself. The couple’s daughter, Cass Johnson, is a resentful, bitter teenager who’s furious at her mother, idealizes her father, and has a possessive, hormone-fueled crush on Bertie, a barista. As the book opens, a murdered woman’s body is discovered half buried in the bushes in a park; this

Chase-Riboud, Barbara Amistad/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $22.99 | Feb. 8, 2022 978-0-06-301990-4

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The story of a Black woman who became a millionaire a century ago.

This completes the author’s quintet of historical novels about what she calls “invisible” women of color whose significant stories have been erased. Hannah Elias certainly has a significant story. She was born Bessie Davis in 1865 to a struggling family in Philadelphia. In this fictional version of her life she was raped as a child, unjustly imprisoned for theft as a teen, and cast out by her family. She became a sex worker to survive and soon moved up to running bordellos.

Moving to New York City, she cultivated upper-class admirers, a goal made easier by her ability to easily pass as White, and parlayed her success into a real estate empire. By the time she was in her 30s she was one of the richest Black people in the country but little known—she was careful to avoid scandal. That all blew up, however, when Cornelius Williams, who had been a tenant in one of her boardinghouses and suffered the delusion that they were lovers, shot and wounded Hannah at her mansion on Central Park West and shot to death city planner Andrew Green, known as the “Father of Greater New York” for his role in founding Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other landmarks. His death was an error: Williams mistook him for one of Hannah’s longtime millionaire lovers John Platt. But the murder, which opens the book, exposed the relationship between Hannah and Platt as well as Hannah’s wealth, leading to tabloid headlines and blackmail accusations that shook New York City’s upper crust.

It’s a compelling story, based on what Chase-Riboud says in the acknowledgements is a long-lost trove of documents about Elias. But the novel, especially in its first half, slows the story down with prose that is often clunky and overladen with details, dialogue that sounds more like lecture than conversation, and much repetition. The last part of the book does build momentum, if the reader gets there.

A novel about a real-life madam-turned–real estate magnate stumbles on style.

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THE TROUBLE WITH HAPPINESS And Other Stories

discovery will reveal fault lines in the politically controversial tag system. The book then backs up four weeks before returning to the day the body was found: Sarah tases Paul Townsend, a man who complains about his tag. Cass steals a key from her mother’s office and unlocks her school friend Billy’s tag. Cass’ teacher Helen Taylor stops taking birth-control pills without telling her Cohab partner, Tom Roberts. Three female police investigators quarrel over whether a man could have violated the Curfew Laws to commit the murder and how much of the uncomfortable truth about the tag system should be revealed to a social media–obsessed public. An intriguing murder investigation, credible worldbuilding, clever gender-role dynamics, and a fast-paced narrative are paired with morally compromised characters, a predictable plot, and a didactic and sometimes heavyhanded message about male violence.

A conflict-rich story that demands a safer world for women.

Ditlevsen, Tove Trans. by Michael Favala Goldman Farrar, Straus and Giroux (224 pp.) $26.00 | April 19, 2022 978-0-3746-0560-5

A brooding collection of stories by the iconic Danish writer.

Ditlevsen, who died in 1976, was no stranger to misery: Addicted to drugs and alcohol, she was committed to psychiatric care several times. Many of the characters she depicts in this slender volume of stories could use professional care themselves. In the opening story, a young woman who “had never demonstrated a special talent of any kind” longs for just two things in life: a man and an umbrella. She attains the first, but the second is slower to arrive. “Sometimes she would lie awake next to Egon, or in her bed in the maid’s room in the house where she worked, nursing her peculiar dream of owning an umbrella,” writes Ditlevsen, and when the woman finally does pull the money together to buy an inexpensive bumbershoot, her enraged husband breaks it over his knee. There the story ends, and one can imagine the couple living miserably ever after. In another story, an aging woman despises any reminder that she will one day die yet introduces a prospective daughter-in-law to everyone in her family, the dead by way of photographs, knowing that one day she’ll be reduced to a few memories and a photo on her sewing table. A botched abortion here, an affair there, a child who, though only 7, “already possessed a great deal of formless anxiety,” a father considered nice only because he does not beat his children—these are the people and events that populate Ditlevsen’s unhappy world.

About the only promise of redemption comes in the title story, in which a young woman who inhabits a dank corner of a tiny apartment with her parents, her father “completely superfluous in my mother’s world,” works herself through sheer will into a career as a writer. If this small, gloomy piece is a roman à clef, then Ditlevsen deserves every bit of the reader’s sympathy.

Neurasthenic and melancholic but a central work of modern Danish literature.

DON’T SAY WE DIDN’T WARN YOU

Dixon, Ariel Delgado Random House (320 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 15, 2022 978-0-593-24350-3

An obfuscating narrator reflects on her life through a series of traumatic memories.

When we first meet Fawn, the sister of our unnamed narrator, she is wondering how long people have to pretend to be sad following a death: “She 12

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“A quirky novel that deals with weighty topics and emotions without taking itself too seriously.” lost and found in paris

couldn’t understand why everyone went on and on after someone died. She was staring out the window, holding her thumb up to the moon. Didn’t they get tired of acting like they were sad? When were you allowed to forget?” This sets the tone for Dixon’s novel: a discomforting look at compounding tragedies through an almost unfeeling lens. The sisters discover (and are responsible for?) dismembered body parts, decapitated animals, arson, and death, all the while constantly, but stealthily, battling against each other. As the narrator cycles between childhood memories of her mother and sister, her time at a residential school for troubled teens, time spent with her estranged father, and her young adult life, we learn more about her but never quite enough to get a firm read. And while Fawn is largely absent from many of the narrator’s recollections, everything always seems to circle back to her. Dixon packs a lot into this novel, and although the reflections on the narrator’s adult life don’t get the care and attention that her childhood and adolescence do, the novel’s weighty center—the relationship between the two sisters—is consistently and devastatingly intriguing.

A coming-of-age rife with destruction.

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LOST AND FOUND IN PARIS

Dolan, Lian Morrow/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $27.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-06-290902-2

A 31-year-old Los Angeles–area woman finds herself caught up in intrigue when the artworks she’s delivering to Paris are stolen.

Joan Blakely might be the daughter of an internationally famous artist tragically killed on 9/11 and a supermodel, but she’s nothing like either of her parents, while being exactly like both. Hardworking, focused, beautiful, working at an art museum, and almost 10 years into what she thought was a happy marriage to a photographer, Joan is pretty OK with how her life has turned out. But then her husband drops a bombshell as he’s heading out of town: Not only did he have an affair, he has 5-year-old twin sons who are starting kindergarten and live not five miles away. Joan can either join the big blended family he envisions with his former assistant–cum–baby mama, children, and her, or the marriage is over. Joan doesn’t have to think twice, and the locks to their—really her and her mother’s— house are changed and divorce proceedings started while he’s out of town. The story follows Joan’s efforts to reclaim her life, trying to rediscover the self she lost 10 years previously when her father was killed aboard American Airlines Flight 11 when it hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She agrees to personally courier a set of Joan of Arc–related sketches from the museum where she works to Paris so that an interested buyer can take a look at them.

One thing leads to another, and the sketches are stolen. An inexplicably lighthearted lark of a treasure hunt develops as Joan follows clues that lead her to various locations of personal importance to her, her father, and her mother as she tries to find the sketches.

A quirky novel that deals with weighty topics and emotions without taking itself too seriously. |

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13

WORDS WITH…

Weike Wang The author of Joan Is Okay did not set out to write a pandemic novel

BY HANNAH BAE Amanda Peterson

Connecticut, where her mother is visiting from China, Joan finally has time to ponder what drives her so relentlessly in her career and to confront the realities of her fractured family, now living too close for comfort, just before the Covid-19 pandemic hits.

Joan Is Okay is not being sold as a “pandemic novel”— Covid-19 features nowhere in the jacket copy—but the global health crisis truly turns the screws on Joan, a refreshingly “idiosyncratic character” whom Wang brings to life in a style “so wry and piercing,” our review notes.

Kirkus spoke to Wang via Zoom from her home in New York City. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your starting point for this novel?

After Chemistry, where I wrote about a protagonist who is having a hard time with her grad school science program, I was interested in writing a doctor protagonist who is an Asian female. I know so many people like this, and I wanted to create a character who is working in STEM and investigate the model minority stereotype through her. I wanted to have a little fun with that stereotype, not ignoring what someone like her would become through this indoctrination and deindividualization, which is so much of medical training. It has nothing to do with this person being Asian, it’s just that all doctors are trained to become a tool [within a larger system].

There’s a brilliant alchemy that bubbles beneath the surface of Weike Wang’s novels about the sciences. Her 2018 debut, Chemistry, came infused with a mordant wit that made her tale of a Ph.D. student’s breakdown and recovery “at once moving and amusing, never predictable,” according to our review. The novel went on to rack up acclaim, winning the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Whiting Award.

Now, Wang applies those properties to Joan Is Okay (Random House, Jan. 18), turning her gaze to a Manhattan hospital’s intensive care unit. Joan, her Chinese American protagonist, is an outstanding doctor whose workaholic tendencies draw praise from her boss as well as concern from her hospital’s HR department, which forces her to take a break. Feeling banished at her brother’s home in 14

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Was the pandemic always going to be part of the story?

No. I had finished the draft and turned it in in February 2020 and thought, I’m done. Covid wasn’t in the book at all. I had known about the pandemic since December 2019 because I have family in China, but it just didn’t cross my mind to include it in the book. Then, as my editor was reading the book in March, as things were starting to get bad here, we realized we had to redo the second part of the novel. The more we thought about it, it didn’t make sense for an ICU doctor to not have any awareness of [the Co|

It’s so common in immigrant narratives to express this idea that being in America automatically leads to a better life. Instead, you have Joan’s parents move back to China after she and her brother are grown.

That’s where they can have a better life in retirement. It seems true to what I’m seeing among my friends and their families.

I was trying to challenge this American narrative that life is terrible, but as long as we have each other, it’s going to be OK. I don’t know if that narrative holds water. Sometimes being apart can help the general stability of a family.

vid-19 crisis]. Otherwise, I would be writing in a vacuum and pretending that this didn’t exist. I knew I had to weave it in. I was reading so much about ICUs in March anyway, so naturally, in the revision process, I incorporated that. I was resistant at first, but I’m really happy I did it.

How did that affect the pacing? Right around the halfway point of the book, it becomes dreadfully clear to the reader that 2020 is coming.

I didn’t want the pandemic to be the story. Joan is working, working, working. I wouldn’t say she’s necessarily scared of the pandemic, because she’s trained for it very well. She starts realizing it’s getting bad [in China], and the headlines progressively get scarier and scarier. It’s occurring to her that a huge wave is coming, and I wanted it to parallel her expulsion from the city because of her hospital’s rules to prevent her overworking. This is the first book that I tried to plot extensively, thinking about outlines. Chemis­ try is much more internal, and it happens in this nebulous, one-year period in a person’s life. I wrote out an outline mostly of dates because I needed to know the timeline [of the pandemic] really well. In class, I tell my students that a good writer usually has a good control of time. They know when things are going to happen. So I said to myself, in November, in January, what’s going to happen here? The other trick was just trial and error. This story went through so many drafts that I stopped saving them.

So much of what lifts Joan’s voice is her deadpan humor. How did you hone your comedic sense?

Humor is a coping mechanism. Humor keeps the door open for readers to come in. I was in science for most of my 20s, and the stereotype of people like us was that we are robotic or we have no feelings, which is wholly not true.

I thought, what if I took that idea and made something a little bit comic to point at the absurdity of that idea? Of course, Joan has feelings. She is not this machine that just goes to work.

There’s just a funny way that she thinks about the world.

She’s endearing. She has an emotional landscape. But to her co-workers, she’s a complete mystery who does everything right. I wanted to play with that a little bit. She’s so laser-focused in her work, she’s oblivious to what’s around her. In that flatness [of how outsiders perceive Joan], I’m inhabiting this character and giving her roundedness in considering what kind of forces would have made her think, act, and talk like this. Because the book deals with identity and prejudice, which are important to Joan as she moves through the novel, it made sense to have the humor and the absurdity of the plot just hammer home the idea of how model minority can she get?

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Why was it important to show Joan questioning where she belongs?

Joan is a small person. She’s short in stature—“just under five feet tall.” She’s not very vocal. As a doctor, she’s always listening to others in order to assess a situation thoroughly.

When other people encroach on her, like her overzealous neighbor trying to welcome himself into her life, she’s so taken aback. When Joan is called back to work [from her brother’s home in Connecticut], the pandemic comes for her. She gets sick, and she has to totally quarantine, and she’s thrilled about it. This is her domain—her apartment, her ICU, which expands to take over the entire hospital [because of Covid-19]. Joan is able to rise to the challenge, and her idea of “home” is expanded. Joan’s story is about reclaiming her space.

Hannah Bae is a Korean American writer, journalist, and illustrator and winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.

Joan Is Okay was reviewed in the Dec. 15, 2021, issue.

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PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN LADY

paintings to publicizing the pieces to Buenos Aires galleries—and they all split the resulting profits, but they need somebody on the inside to provide the final touch: a certificate of authenticity from the art valuations department of the Ciudad Bank. This is managed by Enriqueta, Renée’s friend and fellow student at Argentinean Fine Arts Academy, who uses her position to pass along Renée’s forgeries for years until Renée, always a mercurial figure, drops out of the art scene and then out of sight entirely. Or at least this is what Enriqueta tells her new assistant, our narrator, who opens the novel many years later holed up in the Hotel Étoile, where she has retreated to write the story of the indomitable Enriqueta, known at the end of her long career at the bank simply as “Herself”; the fabled Renée, whose life the narrator pieces together through the contradictory accounts of her now-octogenarian cohort; and Mariette Lydis, whose actual story rivals anything that could be invented for her. Gainza’s expertise in the world of art criticism, with its cultivated language and capricious moods, and her loving eye for the history, architecture, and people of Buenos Aires are on display in this book, as they were in her debut, Optic Nerve (2019).

As fine as that novel was, however, the nuance in the way this story develops, wending its way through its layers of plot, history, and biography even as it spotlights the unflinching women who stalk through them all, is the work of an author in full command of her talents. The result is an exploration of identity and authenticity that asks what it means to be “real,” as the term is applied either to a work of art or to a life.

Subtle, incandescent, and luminous—a true master’s work.

Gainza, María Trans. by Thomas Bunstead Catapult (192 pp.) $24.00 | March 22, 2022 978-1-64622-032-8 An art critic chases the identity of a legendary forger through the testimonies of the aging counterculture denizens who knew her.

In 1960s Buenos Aires, a group of “tatty bohemians” take up residence in a decaying mansion they’ve dubbed the Hotel Melancholical. Among the poets, painters, photographers, translators, and philosophers that make up the heady menagerie is a hypnotically charismatic, flinty-eyed woman named Renée who is an accomplished art forger, specializing in the works of (real-life) Austrian Argentine portraitist Mariette Lydis. The hotel’s residents all have a role in the scheme—from forging the labels on the backs of

SCHOOL DAYS

Galassi, Jonathan Other Press (224 pp.) $25.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-63542-189-7 Boarding school life and loves in the 1960s.

Sam Brandt, the protagonist of wellknown editor and poet Galassi’s second novel, is an alumnus of Leverett, a Connecticut boarding school that had “always exuded an aura of meritocratic rather than purely pecuniary elitism.” Some 20 years after graduation he returns to the school to teach English. When the Head of School receives a claim of longago sexual abuse from one of Sam’s classmates, he asks Sam to investigate the accusation against former faculty member Theo Gibson, “the most inventive, demanding, popular teacher in the school” and someone who served as Sam’s “sounding board and source of wisdom.” The novel shifts into a lengthy flashback from Sam’s perspective, describing the complicated choreography of sexual desire at the school in its final years as a male-only institution, and specifically how students like him were forced by the mores of the time to suppress any overt expression of their desire, as “love among the boys was tacitly acknowledged and rigorously guarded against.” In Sam’s case, that included an intense, but utterly chaste, relationship with Eddie Braddock, a “dazzling, combustible kid” in Sam’s eyes. He was “desperate for 16

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“Two chemists with major chemistry and a dog with a big vocabulary are among the elements of this unusual compound.” lessons in chemistry

LIKE A SISTER

Eddie’s touch, yet he was determined, too, that the nobility of their bond not be tainted by neurosis.” When the story returns to its contemporary setting, capped off by a brief coda at the class of 1967’s 50th reunion, Galassi reveals how this sexual repression has damaged the lives of Sam and his friends—in Sam’s case, a marriage that produced a child has ended when it could no longer endure the truth of his sexual orientation—but at least hints at the possibility of recovery in late middle age. While the novel could have benefited from the elimination of some peripheral characters, Galassi’s understated style and economical prose are well suited to this elegiac story.

A thoughtful exploration of the lingering effects of repressed sexual identity.

Garrett, Kellye Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (336 pp.) $28.00 | March 8, 2022 978-0-316-25670-4 When her estranged ex–reality-star younger sister turns up shoeless and dead of an overdose on a Bronx playground, Lena Scott has to prove to herself—and everyone else—that it was not an accident.

Lena may be just 28, but she’s as hard-boiled as a millennial gets. A loner, she hasn’t had a relationship with her hip-hop– mogul father since she was 4; her mother and grandmother both died five years ago; and she hasn’t seen her best friend, who’s burying herself in a master’s program in nonprofit management at Columbia, in a year. A fan of friends with benefits, she’s “never been big on relationships.” She doesn’t even do

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY

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Garmus, Bonnie Doubleday (400 pp.) $28.95 | April 5, 2022 978-0-385-54734-5 Two chemists with major chemistry, a dog with a big vocabulary, and a popular cooking show are among the elements of this unusual compound.

At the dawn of the 1960s, Elizabeth Zott finds herself in an unexpected position. She’s the star of a television program called Supper at Six that has taken American housewives by storm, but it’s certainly not what the crass station head envisions: “ ‘Meaningful?’ Phil snapped. ‘What are you? Amish? As for nutritious: no. You’re killing the show before it even gets started. Look, Walter, it’s easy. Tight dresses, suggestive movements...then there’s the cocktail she mixes at the end of every show.’ ” Elizabeth is a chemist, recently forced to leave the lab where she was doing important research due to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Now she’s reduced to explaining things like when to put the steak in the pan. “Be sure and wait until the butter foams. Foam indicates that the butter’s water content has boiled away. This is critical. Because now the steak can cook in lipids rather than absorb H2O.” If ever a woman was capable of running her own life, it’s Elizabeth. But because it’s the 1950s, then the ’60s, men have their sweaty paws all over both her successes and failures. On the plus side, there’s Calvin Evans, world-famous chemist, love of her life, and father of her child; also Walter Pine, her friend who works in television; and a journalist who at least tries to do the right thing. At the other pole is a writhing pile of sexists, liars, rapists, dopes, and arrogant assholes.

This is the kind of book that has a long-buried secret at a corrupt orphanage with a mysterious benefactor as well as an extremely intelligent dog named Six-Thirty, recently retired from the military. (“Not only could he never seem to sniff out the bomb in time, but he also had to endure the praise heaped upon the smug German shepherds who always did.”) Garmus’ energetic debut also features an invigorating subplot about rowing.

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SISTER STARDUST

social media except to keep tabs on her sister, Desiree, another exile from her life after Desiree’s DUI two years ago. Since the police have zero interest in pursuing what Lena knows are suspicious circumstances around Desiree’s demise, she hits the streets, uptown and down, by foot and bike, mass transit, and Uber, tracking down leads with baby sister’s friends, flings, and— uncomfortably for her—family. If the first 60 pages have a few too many implausibilities (ubiquitous dashing reporters) and bad similes (“her eyes were as dry as my sex life”) and the last 60 devolve into eye-glazing digital forensics (“I was about to close Safari when I noticed the GoFundMe site”) and a rushed, toopat end, everything in between crackles. The writing is sharp, the commentary wry, and Lena is irresistible: “I’d never wanted to see a cop more in my twenty-eight years of being Black.”

Come for the not-so-bad whodunit, stay for the whipsmart, heart-hurt, very entertaining heroine.

Green, Jane Hanover Square Press (304 pp.) $26.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-335-42578-2 A small-town British girl relocates to London, where she gets involved with a fast crowd that introduces her to psychedelic drugs, free love, and complicated questions.

In 1960s England, Claire Collins has long yearned to leave rural Dorset and build a bigger life full of glamour. When her widowed father remarries, her desire to hit the road only intensifies. After a particularly nasty fight with her stepmother, Claire boards the first train to London with little more than pocket money and determination. After a dicey beginning, she finds lodging in a hostel and a job working as a shopgirl. Then she meets John McKenna, a young man with connections to the burgeoning British music scene. Before long, John is introducing Claire to one celebrity after another, well-known musicians and famous groupies. On a whim, Claire’s new famous friends bring her to Morocco, where she meets Talitha Getty, the wife of enormously wealthy Paul Getty. As Claire falls under the dizzying spell of riches and nonstop parties, she tries everything her new friends offer her, from LSD to opium and orgies. The more deeply entrenched she becomes, the more she begins to wonder whether the new life she’s created for herself contains more pitfalls than prizes. Chock-full of vibrant historical details about London and Morocco in the 1960s, Green’s first foray into historical fiction does not disappoint. The novel shines brightest when Claire, who narrates, first arrives in London and again when she forms her initial impressions of Morocco. Green portrays the scenery and atmosphere so vividly that readers will be instantly transported. The descriptions of Marrakech, with its bright colors and beautiful architecture, present an especial sensory delight. While Claire seems to believe the story she tells is about Talitha, the narrative is really about an average girl’s brief brush with fame during an unprecedented time, tackling difficult questions of self-doubt, fulfillment, and individual purpose—complete with cameo appearances by Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and a host of others.

A provocative story about youth culture during the 1960s, overflowing with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

TELL ME AN ENDING

Harkin, Jo Scribner (448 pp.) $27.00 | March 1, 2022 978-1-982164-32-4

Five people are impacted by their connections to a memory-removal clinic in this debut novel.

In an alternate near present, a tech company called Nepenthe offers a memory erasure procedure straight out 18

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of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Nepenthe patients can elect whether to remain aware they had a memory erased or to forget it ever happened. When new research suggests memories might not be permanently erasable—that they may naturally regenerate—the phenomenon of memory “traces” rollicks Nepenthe with controversy, prompting the company to offer memory restorations. Noor, a doctor at the flagship Nepenthe clinic outside London, begins to mistrust her supervisor, Louise, after observing some shady behavior regarding restorations.

The narrative follows four additional characters, each from a close third-person perspective: Mei, a young woman in Kuala Lumpur who believes she is experiencing traces; Finn, an architect in Arizona who suspects his wife erased the memory of an extramarital affair; Oscar, a man in Marrakech who barely has any memory of who he is; and William, an ex-cop in West Sussex who wants to remove a memory that is causing him PTSD. The premise is intriguing and becomes more compelling as it progresses (particularly pertaining to Louise’s psychology), but the story takes a while to pick up steam. The present-tense narration drifts around in time, heavy on abstract questions and

light on descriptive scenes, making it tough to stay grounded in the action. Harkin frequently describes each characters’ confusion—“Louise, what have you done? / Why did you do it? / What’s next?” asks Noor, on three separate lines—but struggles to differentiate their voices in other meaningful ways. References to philosophers like Sartre, Hume, and Locke aim for cleverness and depth, hitting the mark as often as not.

Interconnected storylines all arrive at the same conclusion: Messing with memory is messy business.

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“Like the lamb shank at the cafeteria: tender, salty, and worthy of note.” search

THE GOLDEN COUPLE

is on the rocks. Can Avery salvage the relationship in her trademark 10 sessions and done? She cases the gym in question, the Bishops’ opulent residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and looks into Marissa’s boutique and her slightly unhinged shop assistant, Polly. There’s more to Marissa’s story than meets the eye, Avery thinks, somewhat superfluously. The truth could explode any chance of reconciliation. At times, Avery’s tactics seem unusually cruel, even sexist: She busts up one marriage where the wife is unduly controlling but appears to ignore her own initial suspicion that Matthew might be that way, too.

Avery’s intrusiveness has made enemies, among them drug company Acelia, which she’s reported to the FDA on behalf of one of her clients who hesitated to be a whistleblower. The Acelia subplot feels superfluous, but it must be pivotal, because it takes up so much space while telling elements of backstory are withheld. There are some sharply observed class dynamics, and the final reversal is unexpected—but only because it is not foreshadowed. There’s a thin line between gaslighting characters and gaslighting readers, and this novel crosses it.

Replete with “huh?” moments.

Hendricks, Greer & Sarah Pekkanen St. Martin’s Press (336 pp.) $20.49 | March 8, 2022 978-1-2502-7320-8 This Washington thriller achieves suspense mostly through misdirection.

At one point, a character wonders what another is really up to, but most of the characters here actually have hidden agendas. Case in point: Avery Chambers.

As a therapist, she’s gone rogue, having lost her license thanks to unorthodox methods that include a combination of detective work, with all the data-mining and surveillance that entails, and prescriptive advice. She tells clients what to do—and sometimes does it for them. Matthew Bishop, a high-powered Washington lawyer, and Marissa, his wife, come to Avery for help. At the first session, Marissa confesses to infidelity with, she lies, a guy from her gym. Suddenly, this “curated Instagram” marriage

SEARCH

Huneven, Michelle Penguin Press (400 pp.) $26.00 | April 26, 2022 978-0-593-30005-3 What goes on behind the scenes of the search for a Unitarian minister becomes book fodder for a Southern California writer.

Huneven shows her range with a folksy, funny fifth novel on the unlikely subject of how bad decisions happen to good committees. Food writer, memoirist, and donkey owner Dana Potowski is casting about for an idea for her next book when she’s beset by “search committee ideation”—the urge to join the select group of her fellow congregants that will spend one year choosing the next minister of the Arroyo Unitarian Universalist Community Church. What’s more, she’ll write a book about it! After all, there are books about “a year of having sex every day; a year of not generating any trash, of not buying anything”—why not this? Readers with no a priori interest in church politics may have their doubts, but Huneven makes this deep dive into the workings of the modern committee process and the politics of Unitarianism engaging and thought-provoking. The voting, the vetting, the drama, the discord, the anti-oppression training— it’s all here. Her large cast—eight search committee members, a great number of prospective ministers, and several pewsful of others—is carefully constituted to embrace every age group and type, from the tattooed to the senescent, people of color, polyamorists, addicts, and a few members of the good old White heteropatriarchy. A James Beard–awarded food writer herself, Huneven gives her characters wonderful meals at home and in restaurants and includes a selection of complicated but delicious-sounding recipes at the end. A few caveats: The 20

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presentation of the novel as a surreptitiously created memoir doesn’t add much; plotlines about a past friendship and a possible romance are weak.

Like the lamb shank at the cafeteria: tender, salty, and worthy of note.

she was sent to Boston to live with her self-obsessed cousins.

Yearning for a place to belong, Willa splits her time among her menial cafe job, the pseudo-anarchist Freegans, and Harvard sociologist Sylvia Gill, the mysterious woman who becomes her companion, then lover. After a nasty fight about how Sylvia isn’t as committed to progressive causes as she claims to be, Willa locks herself in Sylvia’s office and finds a copy of Living the Solution, a guidebook describing a place called Camp Hope, “humanity’s best shot for changing course” from its current track of climatological and general doom. Sparked with new purpose, Willa travels to the Bahamian island of Eleutheria, where Camp Hope is located. She discovers that everyone there can also disappoint her, from the icy crew members to mythlike leader Roy Adams, but she tries to remain committed to the cause. Will they achieve their ambitious goal of launching Camp Hope and saving the dying planet, or is it truly too late? The nonlinear narrative wends its way from the events of Willa’s past to her time at Camp Hope and after; sporadic flashbacks to Eleutheria’s founding bog things down further. The buildup of Sylvia and Willa’s complex relationship is well written, sure to please

ELEUTHERIA

Hyde, Allegra Vintage (336 pp.) $17.00 paper | March 8, 2022 978-0-593-31524-8 A young woman journeys to a remote island camp hailed as the solution for climate disaster.

In addition to the global environmental problem, 22-year-old Willa Marks has many problems of her own: Her paranoid parents died by joint suicide when she was 17, after which

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WITH LOVE FROM LONDON

readers who love a good queer May-December romance, but the novel is too long on detail in many places and frustratingly short in others; the fraught relationship between the locals on Eleutheria and the crew members is hinted at but never fully fleshed out. Much of the novel’s momentum stalls in Willa’s long-winded, retrospective narration.

A sprawling debut with an urgent message about the danger of climate change that unfortunately gets lost in the clutter.

Jio, Sarah Ballantine (400 pp.) $17.00 paper | Feb. 8, 2022 978-1-101-88508-6

A 35-year-old Seattle woman whose British mother took off for London when she was a child learns that her mother has died and left everything to her.

A few minutes after she finds out that her husband, Nick, a lawyer, is leaving her—to be with a 23-year-old paralegal at his firm—Valentina Baker discovers that her mother, Eloise, has died. Unsure of how to move forward, Valentina puts one foot in front of the other and simply…does.

She moves to London and finds out that her mother adored books as much as she does and that—after a happy career as a librarian and book Instagrammer—she is now the owner of a beloved neighborhood bookstore in Primrose Hill. This is a charming tale: Valentina discovers who her mother was—and rediscovers herself after the end of her marriage—as she works to raise enough money to pay the inheritance taxes on the bookstore. Author Jio has taken a well-worn trope—American woman inherits property and a life in London—and made it her own, full of warmth, love, happiness, and books. Two storylines unwind as readers follow Valentina’s efforts to save the bookstore and explore dating and Eloise’s life as a young woman who falls in love, becomes a mother, returns to London despite her unwavering love for her daughter, and opens the bookstore she’s been dreaming of her entire life.

A cozy bit of escapism that will leave many readers dreaming of true love and the bookstores they might one day open.

THE WIND WHISTLING IN THE CRANES

Jorge, Lídia Trans. by Margaret Jull Costa & Annie McDermott Liveright/Norton (528 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 8, 2022 978-1-63149-759-9

The fates and fortunes of two Portuguese families become entwined during the later years of the 20th century.

The lonely death of Dona Regina, the matriarch of the influential Leandro family, prompts her granddaughter Milene to investigate its circumstances so she can explain them to the rest of her extended family, all of whom are out of reach on vacation at the time. Milene, an opaque and guileless sort, revisits the site of her grandmother’s demise, the family’s former cannery on the Portuguese coast. Her futile investigative efforts bring her into the orbit of the Mata family, the current tenants of the cannery, who have turned it into their family compound.

The welcome extended to her by the Matas, working-class 22

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“For the right Anglophile reader, a pleasing curiosity.” troy chimneys

TROY CHIMNEYS

immigrants from Cape Verde, contrasts (in almost every measurable way) with the hand-wringing, anger, and annoyance Milene’s presence provokes within her own family. Jorge manages to recapitulate many of the issues present in post-colonial Portugal—racism, workers’ rights, sexism, economic disparities, overdevelopment—within the context of Milene’s developing romance with one of the Matas, but she never lets the didactic get in the way of the romantic. An anonymous and enigmatic narrator propels much of the narrative while essential aspects of Milene’s sometimes-puzzling character are slowly revealed.

Present in both families are key actors and bit players living a thoroughly 20th-century life in Portugal: the White cannery scions are succeeded on their landholdings by the Black Matas, who have produced a pop star (tuna replaced by tunes?). As translated from the Portuguese by the team of Jull Costa and McDermott, who provide an extensive introduction to the work, Jorge’s narrative ranges from the lyrical to the mundane but conveys the universality of a specific, familial place.

Jorge delivers a dose of near-contemporary history tempered by a page-turning family saga and romance.

Kennedy, Margaret McNally Editions (288 pp.) $18.00 | March 8, 2022 978-1-946022-30-1 A sophisticated historical novel set in Regency England explores the moral dilemmas and internal conflicts of politician Miles Lufton, an unsettled figure.

Best known for her novel The Constant Nymph, Kennedy, author of many works of fiction, died in 1967. This book, first published in 1953 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, offers an unusual character portrait revealed through complex layers of narration (diaries, letters) bound together with a nonlinear timeline. Lufton, son of a clergyman and one of seven children, is a clever and ambitious boy who will grow up ever conscious of disparities of class, connection, and property: “I was nobody, because I was heir to nothing.” He enjoys

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“Two lovers struggle with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle—they’re living in parallel universes.” the impossible us

THE IMPOSSIBLE US

the pleasures of wealth but is uncertain of direction—should he become a clergyman, too, or study law? Eventually he finds a role as a Member of Parliament, but even that leaves him dissatisfied. And then there’s the question of identity. Miles sees himself as two people, his thoughtful self outshone by the “universal geniality” of his more ebullient side. There are two women in his life, the first a survivor of the French Revolution who marries a cousin instead and, later, Caroline Audley, who discerns the same split in his makeup: “The private Mr. Lufton likes solitude and hates the world. The political Mr. Lufton never forgets his duty, and will pay compliments before breakfast.” Caught between these two personae, the dissatisfactions of his career, and other complicated involvements with friends both rich and poor, Lufton’s path is at times a melancholy one which Kennedy interrupts to offer disquisitions on belief, suffering, happiness, and self-knowledge. The historic tone is captured with erudition and wit, while the dilemmas of the novel’s flawed hero have a distinctly contemporary edge.

For the right Anglophile reader, a pleasing curiosity.

Lotz, Sarah Ace/Berkley (496 pp.) $17.00 paper | March 22, 2022 978-0-593-43677-6 Two lovers struggle with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle—they’re living in parallel universes.

When Nick, a down-on-his-luck ghostwriter, sends out a profanity-laced email to a client who hasn’t paid him, he doesn’t expect to end up connecting with his dream girl. But that’s exactly what happens when he sends his email to the wrong person and Bee, who runs a business repurposing wedding dresses, ends up the recipient of his angry missive. In what seems like the start of a conventional romantic comedy, the two of them keep their conversation going and discover that they actually have quite a lot in common. But when they decide to meet in person, it becomes clear that theirs is no simple love affair. Even while standing at the same train station, they can’t see each other. They soon find out the reason: they’re living in different universes.

In Bee’s world, Brexit happened, Donald Trump was president, and climate change is a massive threat. In Nick’s world, Al Gore was president for two terms, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 never occurred, and the government has enforced widespread environmental rules, like completely banning plastic, that curbed climate change to a manageable level. Unable to communicate in any way but email, Bee and Nick decide to find each other in their own universes—but when Bee meets her timeline’s Nick and Nick locates his timeline’s Bee, things get complicated. Lotz takes what could be a confusing concept and makes it fun, heartbreaking, and eminently readable all at once. Bee and Nick’s emails are witty and romantic, while their supporting characters are entertaining in both worlds. Lotz manages to combine romance and science fiction into a book that will produce laughter and tears.

Readers will find themselves wondering how, or if, Bee and Nick will end up together until the very last pages.

A thought-provoking and clever genre-bending blend of romance and science fiction.

ANIMAL PERSON

MacLeod, Alexander Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) $27.00 | April 5, 2022 978-0-3746-0222-2 Meticulous prose and unpredictable characters collide in these short stories.

When telling tales that abound with changing fortunes, personal dynamics, and unspoken mysteries, it helps to know how to set things in motion. MacLeod’s collection features eight stories total, nearly all of which feature a compelling opening sentence. It’s hard to resist a beginning like “I am not like other people. And, most probably, I am not at all like you,” 24

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SEA OF TRANQUILITY

or “This is about me and my sister. Or is it my sister and I, or my sister and me?” MacLeod’s stories abound with characters dealing with delicate situations, from the narrator of “Lagomorph,” who’s contending with an elderly rabbit, to the characters struggling to play a familiar piece of music in “The Entertainer.” These are stories where precision and specificity are both crucial. “The Closing Date” recounts a murder from a vantage point some years later, and its narrator—whose family was staying in a motel room next door to the killer—moves back and forth in time, chronicling the events leading up to the crime as well as the effects it had on him and his wife.

It’s the precision found in that story, and the way it moves between past and future, that best shows what this collection can do. The peculiar narration of “What Exactly Do You Think You’re Looking At?”—whose protagonist observes that “the things that attract other people do not attract me”—also offers a memorably askew perspective on the world, as does the phantasmagorical ending to the otherwise realistic “The Ninth Concession.” The payoffs don’t always click, but when they do, the precision is a thing to behold.

MacLeod’s second collection abounds with crystallized moments in time.

Mandel, Emily St. John Knopf (272 pp.) $21.60 | April 19, 2022 978-0-593-32144-7

Characters living centuries apart all have the same brief, puzzling experience—what does this mean about the nature of time?

In 1912, at an estate in the British countryside, 18-year-old Edwin St. Andrew makes a rude comment at dinner and is sent in disgrace to live in Canada. In 1994, a young girl makes a video in the woods near her home; in 2020, after her death, her composer brother screens it during a concert. (These last two are Vincent and Paul Smith, characters from Mandel’s last book, The Glass Hotel.) In 2203, author Olive Llewellyn has left her husband and daughter at home on the moon’s Colony Two to travel to Earth for a book tour to promote her pandemic novel, Marienbad

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(reminiscent of Mandel’s own bestselling Station Eleven). “ ‘I was so confused by your book,’ a woman in Dallas said. ‘There were all these strands, narratively speaking, all these characters, and I felt like I was waiting for them to connect, but they didn’t, ultimately. The book just ended. I was like...“Huh? Is the book missing pages?” It just ended.’ ” This and other annoyances from Olive’s book tour seem to humorously reflect Mandel’s own experience, but no one will be making a similar complaint about her latest—a complicated and mysterious puzzle concerning the nature of reality solved perfectly, all loose ends connected.

To find out why these various people have all experienced the same weird few seconds of sound and sensation, we must go all the way to the 2400s, when there are three colonies on the moon designed to relieve overcrowding on Earth, and where we meet a character named after someone in Olive’s novel—yet he is already strangely familiar. Some of the scenes involving life in 25th-century pandemic quarantine are quite recognizable; this novel is futuristic without being all that dystopian. Perhaps our expectations have changed.

Even more boldly imagined than Station Eleven. Exciting to read, relevant, and satisfying.

doesn’t diminish the emotional impact of her story and the journey of becoming mature enough to understand transgression, be horrified by it, and search for a means to escape it.

A taut, blisteringly smart novel, both measured and rageful.

A DREAM LIFE

Messud, Claire Tablo Tales (136 pp.) $19.95 | Jan. 15, 2022 978-1-64969-729-5 Alice Armstrong, an American wife and mother transplanted to Australia in 1971, is unnerved by the responsibilities of running her grand new home.

Her husband, Teddy, pleased by the promotion he gets with his bank’s overseas posting, jokingly dubs the mansion they’ve rented in Sydney “Chateau Deeds,” name-checking the pretentious nouveau-riche Australians who built it. Her daughters, 4 and 6, run shrieking gleefully through the vast rooms.

But Alice feels she’s living in “a dream life, where nothing could matter and nothing would last, a hiatus from reality.” Reality intrudes when she realizes she can’t do all the household work on her own. A comedy of employment errors ensues, limned with Messud’s characteristic tart, cogently detailed realism. It begins with an unwed mother who brings her infant, cleans haphazardly for half a day, and never comes back. Other maladroit hires include a bossy Russian caterer for the couple’s numerous parties; a salty live-in housekeeper who turns out to be wanted for credit card fraud and passing bad checks; and the driver of the children’s school carpool, whose inappropriate attentions to the girls stop barely short of molestation. Alice also has a hard time with the opinionated gardener left behind by the owners; like all the Australian help, he barely conceals his opinion that his putative boss is hopelessly clueless. Teddy, rarely home, can’t understand why she can’t manage better, and Alice can’t understand what she’s doing in this strange place: “It was as if she had awakened after a drugged sleep to unfamiliar surroundings, as if some irretrievable portion of her life had been stolen from her.” This might be sad if readers were encouraged to feel any empathy for Alice, but Messud takes a cool, detached tone, emphasizing the humor of her dilemmas. The ending suggests that Alice is finally taking some control of her life, reinforcing the overall impression that the stakes aren’t very high here.

Messud’s eye for class distinctions and gender expectation is as sharp as ever in this enjoyable minor effort.

VERY COLD PEOPLE

Manguso, Sarah Hogarth (208 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 8, 2022 978-0-593-24122-6

A woman recalls her girlhood and adolescence through the lenses of family dysfunction and sexual assault.

The first novel by acclaimed poet and critic Manguso is a bracing coming-ofage story and master class in controlled style. The narrator, Ruthie, recalls growing up in Massachusetts on poverty’s edge. Her father is snappish and distant; her mother’s quick to judge and deeply narcissistic. (“The doctor said, Oh, she’s beautiful, when he pulled me out, and my mother had thought he was talking about her.”) As the story moves into Ruthie’s teen years, the damage to her self-esteem begins to show: She’s anxious around anybody she sees as her betters (which is almost everyone) and sees bullying and ostracism as her due. The plainspokenness of her voice—recalling early Ann Beattie and the dirty realists—at once underplays the tension and suggests just how tightly coiled she is. By the time she enters high school, she’s exposed to a new ecosystem of sexualized mistreatment, from inappropriate touches to rape. Police officers, gym teachers, and family members all seem to be wired for exploitation. So her self-harm intensifies (she pulls out her eyelashes) alongside her awareness not just of sexual abuse, but of how common it is among those around her, which leads to the novel’s powerful conclusive revelations. Manguso is a lovely writer about unlovely things—her previous books were built around lyric essays on suicide and autoimmune disease, and here she depicts her protagonist’s quiet agony with a poet’s eye. (“My shame fell from the ceiling like snow.”) But the elegance 26

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“Bighearted stories of domestic discord by a writer with a cleareyed view of Alaska’s romance and hardscrabble realism.” nobody gets out alive

NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE

both their dads fail them in emotional and material ways.

The 73-page “Alcan, an Oral History” follows a single mother and her two children and two women, friends and recent college grads, both groups headed overland to Alaska, and how their lives are forever altered when their paths converge. The fabled frontier is often depicted as a redemptive space, but Newman’s characters can’t outrun their problems. In “Slide and Glide,” a standout, a father takes his family on an epic ski trip to a cabin in the middle of nowhere, hoping to rekindle his marriage only to realize how powerless he is. That’s also true for Genevieve, a rebellious heiress who discovers that early-20th-century Alaska is every bit as socially restrictive as Milwaukee. These stories are rich with wit and wisdom, showing us that love, marriage, and family are always bigger and more perilous adventures than backcountry trips. “Was this marriage,” a newlywed wonders after witnessing his wife lusting after another man, “how well the worst in you worked with the worst in the other person?”

Bighearted stories of domestic discord by a writer with a cleareyed view of Alaska’s romance and hardscrabble realism.

Newman, Leigh Scribner (288 pp.) $26.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-982180-30-0 Eight gritty, harrowing stories of bravery and bluster set in the wilds of Alaska.

The women in this absorbing debut collection are larger than life, perhaps because this is what the harsh Alaska landscape demands.

Dutch, the narrator of “Howl Palace” (selected for The Best American Short Stories), is selling her house after a string of unsuccessful marriages. Plucky and tough, she installs herself in the mysterious “wolf room” during the open house, and the devastating reasons for her resourcefulness come into sharper focus. In “High Jinks,” Jamie and Katrina, just tweens, have to fend for themselves on a father-daughter float trip after

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VAGABONDS!

Spanish is “limited.” What follows is the meticulously researched depiction Picoult readers have come to expect, of the flora and fauna of this island and both its paradisiacal and dangerous aspects.

Beautiful lagoons hide riptides, spectacular volcanic vistas conceal deep pits—and penguins bite! A hotel employee known only as Abuela gives Diana shelter at her home. Luckily, Abuela’s grandson Gabriel, a former tour guide, speaks flawless English, as does his troubled daughter, Beatriz, 14, who was attending school off-island when the pandemic forced her back home. Beatriz and Diana bond over their distant and withholding mothers: Diana’s is a world-famous photographer now consigned to a memory care facility with early-onset Alzheimer’s, while Beatriz’s ran off with a somewhat less famous photographer. Despite patchy cellphone signals and Wi-Fi, emails from Finn break through, describing, also in Picoult’s spare-no-detail starkness, the horrors of his long shifts as the virus wreaks its variegated havoc and the cases and death toll mount. Diana is venturing into romantically and literally treacherous waters when Picoult yanks this novel off life-support by resorting to a flagrantly hackneyed plot device.

Somehow, though, it works, thanks again to that penchant for grounding every fictional scenario in thoroughly documented fact. Throughout, we are treated to pithy if rather self-evident thematic underscoring, e.g. “You can’t plan your life….Because then you have a plan. Not a life.”

Warning: Between lurid scenes of plague and paradise, whiplash may ensue.

Osunde, Eloghosa Riverhead (320 pp.) $28.00 | March 15, 2022 978-0-593-33002-9 A powerful debut novel about the power of love and stories to save people shunned by society for being themselves.

The tale is told in interconnected short stories held together by a chorus of “monitoring spirits” who gather the stories of the people of Lagos and deliver them to the “cityspirit,” Èkó. In Osunde’s book, the people of Nigeria know for a fact that spirits at a night market might take them to another space, that a group of women can summon a force to take them away from the violence in their lives, that the powerful can kill as they please, and that anyone can be arrested or killed for being themselves. The vagabonds of Lagos might be gay or lesbian, transgender, unwilling to conform to gender norms, or generally out of step with the dominant society. In “Johnny Just Come,” Aniekan changes his name to Johnny and moves from a small town to Lagos to drive for a trafficker in human organs. Johnny’s job is to drive and be silent, and he does both so well he loses his voice, his conscience, and his mind just as he discovers his love for a man named Livinus. “After God, Fear Women” shows how domestic violence becomes normalized for men and offers a kind of hope in the form of a power that carries women up into the sky. All of the stories are set in a Nigeria where magic and violence are as common as air and sunlight and outsiders can see the world more clearly than anyone else. “You can see a lot of things better from the outside, you know? For example, I can see now that, together, vagabonds are the city’s power. We’re its charge and circuit. It cannot exist without us. It stands on us….

It’s why I’m telling you this story.” This clarity of vision often leads to violence and even death, but Osunde handles both with a compassionate and ultimately inspiring touch.

Osunde revels in the joy of storytelling to render a city and its outsiders in all their flaws and glory.

HAMMER

Reed, Joe Mungo Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $27.00 | March 22, 2022 978-1-982121-62-4 An art auctioneer gets entangled with a Russian oligarch.

It’s 2013, and Martin, a junior specialist at a posh London auction house, spends his days wheeling and dealing with artcollecting elites and his evenings drinking beer in a grubby basement apartment with his depressed musician roommate. Then one evening Oleg Gorelov—a Russian oligarch with a checkered past and a peerless art collection—comes into the house and casually buys a Basquiat for 10 million pounds.

Oleg’s far younger wife, Marina, is Martin’s old college friend, and in the wake of the sale, she and Martin resume their acquaintance.

This gives Martin access to Oleg, who eventually shows Martin a work by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich that art historians believed lost. If Martin can acquire that painting for sale by the house, it will drastically boost his career. But Martin’s growing proximity to the Gorelovs soon gets complicated: First, his friendship with Marina evolves into something they have to hide; then Oleg decides he’s going to remake himself (and the country he helped plunder) by challenging Putin’s reign and running for president on a reformist platform. Reed’s riveting second novel is at once a romance, a geopolitical thriller, a meditation on art, and an investigation of the moral compromises that everyone makes

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Picoult, Jodi Ballantine (336 pp.) $18.39 | Nov. 30, 2021 978-1-984818-41-6

A young woman finds herself at a Covid-induced crossroads in Picoult’s latest ultratopical novel.

Sotheby’s associate Diana O’Toole, age 29, and her surgical resident boyfriend, Finn, are planning a trip to the Galapagos in March 2020. But as New York City shuts down, Finn is called to do battle against Covid-19 in his hospital’s ICU and ER, while Diana, at his urging, travels to the archipelago alone. She arrives on Isabela Island just as quarantine descends and elects to stay, though her luggage was lost, her hotel is shuttered, and her 28

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“A fine collection, chilling and frequently bizarre in all the best ways.” new and selected stories

NEW AND SELECTED STORIES

in the gravitational presence of wealth. Reed does a masterful job of complicating his characters’ motivations. Does Marina feel something special for Martin, or is she just dissatisfied with Oleg?

Can Martin’s interests in Marina be uncoupled from his interest in Oleg’s art collection? To what extent is Martin’s love of painters like Malevich influenced by his knowledge of the insane value that the art market places on Malevich’s work? Are Oleg’s reformist ambitions motivated by a sincere regret about the nation-ruining side effects of his ruthless accumulation of wealth, or is he just nostalgic for the “wild years” when he could profit from his visions unencumbered by weak constraints like guilt?

Richly textured, compulsively readable, and brilliant throughout.

Rivera Garza, Cristina Trans. by Sarah Booker, Francisca González Arias, Lisa Dillman, Cristina Rivera Garza & Alex Ross Dorothy (280 pp.) $16.00 paper | April 1, 2022 978-1-948980-09-8 Tales from the most surreal of shadowlands.

In novels like The Iliac Crest (2017) and The Taiga Syndrome (2018), Mexican author Rivera Garza has displayed an affinity for the mysterious: randomly encountered shadowy strangers and odd settings simultaneously out of place and out of time.

This new collection of short fiction, which contains stories dating back to the 1980s along with some new ones, thankfully finds the author on familiar ground; it proves that nobody does quiet menace quite like her. In “City of Men,” a reporter finds herself in the titular metropolis, having been assigned by her editor to

ONCE A THIEF

Reich, Christopher Mullholland Books (352 pp.) $28.00 | April 5, 2022 978-0-316-45609-8 Simon Riske drives again but not as fast.

Plying his ostensible trade as a restorer of sexy European sports cars, freelance spy Riske is in California shepherding a classic Ferrari through an auction. The car sells for $102 million, a record, and everyone is happy. Well, not everyone. The restoration did not include a critical piece of original equipment, for the very good reason that the piece was lost. But suddenly the buyer, Sylvie Bettencourt, receives news that the piece does exist, and she demands Riske find it and complete the restoration. Of course it’s not that easy.

Riske and his team had already scoured the mechanical world for the piece, and though they resume the search, there are no new leads. As a sidebar to the search for the gearbox, Riske researched Bettencourt and learned she was a major player in the process of laundering the fortunes of Russian oligarchs. Then Bettencourt blackmails Riske into helping her steal back some money she claims her superior has taken, and Riske becomes a mole spying on Bettencourt. In a further plot development, Carl Bildt, a Danish banker who managed the accounts Bettencourt services, is murdered, and his daughter Anna undertakes to find the killers. With Riske unraveling the oligarchical knot from the Bettencourt end and Anna pursuing her father’s killers, the extent of the laundering scheme is revealed. But these are Russian fortunes, and there is the obligatory presence of hulking violent enforcers, callous ultrarich misogynists, and even a teasing pirouette by Novichok, a nerve agent. Riske is a raffish rogue, ready to ride or preferably drive a Ferrari in whatever quixotic enterprise presents itself, but in this adventure he is somewhat subdued—still irresistible, still a seasoned street fighter, but somehow less visceral. Intricately plotted, the novel reaches a climax that is somewhat surprising yet disappointing, as if the magician had pulled a mouse from his hat.

Riske is still Riske, and the automotive world is still the better for it. |

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write a story about the city from a woman’s perspective—it’s “a place she had never wanted to go,” and as the story progresses, the reader finds out why. It’s a creepy tale that’s filled with a growing unease, and Rivera Garza handles its slow-burn narrative beautifully. A similar chilling surrealism pervades “The Date,” about an investigator on the trail of…well, something; it’s not quite clear. But it doesn’t need to be: Rivera Garza packs an impressive amount of atmospheric unease into its four pages, and the vagueness of the subject makes it even scarier. More conventional, but just as excellent, is “The Day Juan Rulfo Died,” which tells the story of a cafe meeting between two ex-partners who have “started to see each other just to criticize our current lovers.” The narrator, the reader comes to realize, isn’t as fine with their breakup as he initially lets on, admitting, “I wanted to own the world, the whole world, just to have the opportunity to wrap it up in wrapping paper and place it in her lap.” The story ends with a stunning final sentence that perfectly captures the post-romantic hopelessness and heartbreak that sometimes feel like they will never go away. The stories in this collection are as varied as Rivera Garza’s remarkable career, and this book is an excellent introduction to a unique writer who deserves to be recognized not just in Mexico, but all over the world.

A fine collection, chilling and frequently bizarre in all the best ways.

Boothe Luce’s classic play The Women hurtling toward a conclusion whose only clearly preordained feature is that one of them will end up killing one of the others, suspense focuses mainly on why only one of these eminently deserving ladies ends up dead.

Sublimely bitchy. What else is there to know?

THE GREAT PASSION

Runcie, James Bloomsbury (272 pp.) $28.00 | March 15, 2022 978-1-63557-067-0

A young boy sings for Johann Sebastian Bach in this richly textured tale of music and life.

After Bach’s death in 1750, organmaker Stefan Silbermann recalls a part of his boyhood in 1723, when his widowed father sends him to Leipzig to try out for a boys’ choir under Bach, then a church cantor. Bach’s goal is to set to music passages from the Bible, specifically the Passion according to Saint Matthew, for Good Friday. He accepts the carrot-haired Stefan, who has a beautiful voice that causes jealousy and prompts bullying from the other boys. Early on, Stefan learns that the boys must do their homework or their teacher (not Bach) will “smite” them with a cane. He runs away but returns and spends time in the school’s prison for another’s offense. Then Bach invites him to live for a while with his family in a home filled with musical instruments and people, “a place without privacy and a world without secrets.” Meanwhile, Stefan finds favor with Anna Magdalena, Bach’s second wife, and Catharina, his oldest child.

Anna Magdalena has a wonderful singing voice and blue eyes that remind him of flowers. As a woman, she is not permitted to sing in church. Stefan and Catharina have a sweet friendship as they chase butterflies together and he begins to love her, but she only likes him back. Though demanding, Bach is a kind and deeply religious man. “Without charity we are nothing,” he tells Stefan, “no more than a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal....We are all orphans before the Lord.” Yet the great man has a sense of humor. “You know that Luther wrote ‘Ein fest Burg’ when he was sitting on the privy?” “No.” “A musical prayer written midcrap. You can’t be proud when imagination strikes.” The story is rich in its descriptions of music, devotion to God, and the daily hardships of 18th-century life. And finally, this is perhaps the author’s best description: A man’s face “had a tinge of waxen yellow to it, as if an embalmer had started work but left off for his lunch.”

A delightful novel filled with warmth, music, and an obvious love of Bach.

ONE OF US IS DEAD

Rose, Jeneva Blackstone Publishing (272 pp.) $28.99 | April 26, 2022 979-8-20070-684-6 A salon owner who serves the uppercrust women of Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood recalls the events that led up to the death of one of them.

Once Congressman Bryce Madison has divorced Shannon Madison, who still insists on using his last name, and marries trophy wife Crystal, the first order of business for Olivia Petrov, the monstrous vice chairwoman of the Buckhead Women’s Foundation, is to get Shannon voted out as the organization’s chairwoman—a decision she announces to Shannon in the middle of a gala Shannon organized. Olivia’s second order of business is to get Shannon nixed as a client by Jenny at the Glow Beauty Bar and unfriended by upscale realtor Karen Richardson, whose husband, plastic surgeon Mark Richardson, Olivia has called on repeatedly for services both professional and unprofessional. But Shannon’s not about to go gently into that good night; Karen is busy falling for Keisha, Jenny’s friend and employee; and Crystal, who’s hiding secrets of her own, may not be the ideal new member of the frenemies group Olivia has gathered around her. As she’s questioned by Detective Frank Sanford, Jenny is joined by four other narrators—Olivia, Karen, Shannon, and Crystal—who take turns dishing on each other and heartlessly detailing all the offensive and defensive moves each of them made. As Rose sends her juiced-up take on Clare 30

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“A high-octane thriller whose hero is tossed into one impossible situation after another.” what happened to the bennetts

QUANTUM GIRL THEORY

A pair of FBI agents knocks on the Bennetts’ door at 3 a.m. to tell them that John Milo, the escaped carjacker, has framed Jason for the murder of his accomplice, George Veria Jr., in order to save himself from the wrath of Junior’s father, the kingpin of the George Veria Organization. Time is of the essence, the agents assure Jason and Lucinda: They have to leave their house and their old lives behind right now and go into the witness protection program. Sure enough, minutes after the three shellshocked Bennetts allow themselves to be driven off, a representative of the GVO sets fire to their house and follows up the next day with similar fires at Jason’s and Lucinda’s offices.

Warned off social media, the Bennetts can only watch helplessly as their friends and neighbors issue pleas for them to get in touch and self-styled “citizen detective” Bryan Krieger decides to launch his own freelance investigation, fueled by slanderous innuendo. Every time Jason thinks he’s finally got the situation figured out, Scottoline tosses in explosive new complications in the most relentless of all her mysteries.

A high-octane thriller whose hero is tossed into one impossible situation after another. Best started early in the morning.

Ryan, Erin Kate Random House (272 pp.) $28.00 | March 8, 2022 978-0-593-13343-9

y o u n g a d u lt

A clairvoyant with a secret past visits a town to assist a missing person investigation and finds herself navigating even more mysteries than she bargained for.

“Every space was haunted by something,” muses Mary, the protagonist of Ryan’s inventive debut. It is Bladen County, North Carolina, in 1961, and Mary, a White New Englander, has arrived clutching a MISSING poster of Polly Starking, a local White girl who has disappeared. Mary is there to work: She has “the Sight,” and her particular psychic ability manifests in visions of missing girls. But her desire to help is only partly based on altruism. Alone, unmarried, and running from her former life, she desperately needs the reward money from cases like Polly’s. The townspeople blow hot and cold about Mary’s presence: They desire her help at the same time they deeply mistrust her. As the sheriff attempts to get Mary to leave, Mary encounters Martha, a Black motel maid who is willing to help Mary navigate her day-to-day needs for food and shelter (as well as the nuances of the Jim Crow South) if Mary will use her abilities to find two other missing girls the town isn’t talking about—two Black girls, Evie and Jack, who are in a romantic relationship. Based on the real-life disappearance of Bennington student Paula Jean Welden in 1946, Ryan’s novel takes up what true-crime aficionados would call the “less dead”: victims of violence or missing people from marginalized communities who fail to garner the same attention as idealized victims—namely, straight young White women. Ryan takes a meta approach here; the novel is as much about the way we mythologize this type of missing and murdered victim as it is a twisty mystery about Mary’s hunt for Polly, Evie, and Jack.

A puzzler that is both brainy and full of satisfying narrative brawn.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BENNETTS

Scottoline, Lisa Putnam (400 pp.) $28.00 | March 29, 2022 978-0-525-53967-4

A hypernormal suburban family’s trip home from their daughter’s soccer game leads them down a rabbit hole of criminal complications.

For some reason—maybe just because it’s a Mercedes—a pair of gunslingers pick court reporter Jason Bennett’s ride to carjack as he drives along a quiet road with his wife, photographer Lucinda, and their teenagers, Allison and Ethan. In the scuffle that follows, one of the carjackers is shot along with Allison, who dies in the hospital. Wait, it gets worse. |

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“A secretary at a comic book company tries to track down a co-worker’s killer.” secret identity

SECRET IDENTITY

just work at a publishing house, but she is willing to settle for work as a word processor operator. When even this modest goal proves unattainable, San starts working in a flower shop.

She meets a woman named Su-ae—who is as bold and impetuous as San is cautious and reserved—and falls for an unnamed photographer. Shin is known for revealing the ways in which her culture oppresses and isolates people—especially women.

With San, she has created a protagonist who is professionally thwarted and incapable of forming attachments. San accepts Su-ae’s friendship, but she also pushes the other woman away.

San becomes obsessed with a man she barely knows because he offers her a couple of compliments. At the same time, her desire for him is tangled up with the still-raw feelings she has from being rejected by her only childhood friend after a brief intimate moment. Throughout these travails, though, San remains something of a cypher—inaccessible not just to the people around her, but also to the reader. The violent phantasmagoria of the story’s climax reinforces the sense that San is more a symbol of modern alienation than a fully developed character.

Overly reliant on sentimentality and shock.

Segura, Alex Flatiron Books (368 pp.) $27.99 | March 15, 2022 978-1-250-80174-6 A secretary at a comic book company tries to track down a co-worker’s killer in this taut thriller.

For nearly as long as she can remember, Carmen Valdez has loved comic books. The superhero stories sustained her during her rough childhood in Miami—they were “an intangible thing that got her through her own day-to-day.” When she moves to New York in 1975 and finds a job at Triumph Comics, she sees a chance to get her big break in the industry, but it doesn’t turn out well—her co-workers turn out to be “a squad of over-the-hill assholes,” and her boss has no interest in letting her try her hand at a writing gig. When a writer named Harvey Stern approaches her to collaborate with him on a project, unbeknownst to their boss, she warily accepts; they come up with an idea they think will surely be a hit. And it is, but Harvey is murdered, and Carmen finds out that he failed to credit her for her work before his bloody demise. So she sets out to track down his killer, all the while trying to figure out how to be recognized for her work by her oblivious, sexist boss. Meanwhile, she’s forced to deal with the sudden reappearance of her ex-lover, who’s shown up in New York under mysterious circumstances. Segura’s book works on so many levels, it’s almost hard to keep track—as a love letter to comic books, it’s as powerful as anything since Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000). And as a thriller, it’s smart, perfectly paced, and wonderfully atmospheric—Segura captures the intense, grimy milieu of 1970s New York with aplomb. You don’t have to be a comics fan to love this novel; it’s a masterful book filled with real heart and soul.

A triumph.

MY VOLCANO

Stintzi, John Elizabeth Two Dollar Radio (330 pp.) $17.99 paper | March 22, 2022 978-1-953387-16-5 A genre-bending novel that circles a volcano mysteriously rising from the Central Park Reservoir.

On June 2, 2016, a jogger observes a geological protrusion slowly emerging in Central Park. Three weeks later, the formation, now determined to be a volcano, has grown to 2 1/2 miles tall and is upending life in New York City. Around the story of the volcano’s appearance Stintzi weaves the lives of the novel’s diverse characters, including a folklore professor, a Mongolian shepherd, a White trans science-fiction writer, a manager at the “emotionmanaging service” startup Easy-Rupt, and an 8-year-old Mexican boy who is thrust back in time to Tenochtitlan in 1516. As the characters’ lives intersect, run parallel, and mirror each other, they experience an array of transformations: One slowly becomes a green network that incorporates all life in its path, while another discovers that she is turning to stone. In the background lurk the Otherwise, otherworldly beings capable of numerous rebirths.

Among the narrative sections, Stintzi intersperses the dates and victims of real-world violence in 2016, including the Pulse nightclub shooting and the shooting of Alton Sterling by police officers in Baton Rouge. At times, this ambitious novel can feel unwieldy, with its weighty subject matter and complex, formal innovation.

However, Stintzi has a gift for meticulously crafted worldbuilding and captures the tender drama of human (and, in this novel, extrahuman) relationships. Patient readers will be rewarded by their arrival at the book’s dazzling conclusion.

A vibrant ecosystem of a novel that deals honestly with the beauty and horror of human and ecological connectedness.

VIOLETS

Shin, Kyung-sook Trans. by Anton Hur Feminist Press (218 pp.) $15.95 paper | April 12, 2022 978-1-558612-90-7 The English translation of an early work by the author of The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (2015) and Please Look After Mom (2011).

One of South Korea’s most celebrated writers, Shin captured the attention of Anglophone readers when she won the Man Asian Literary Prize. This slender novel begins in the early 1970s with the birth of a baby girl— unwanted because of her sex—in a small village. Oh San’s family has little social status, and she and her mother move deeper into the margins after San’s father disappears. As a young woman, San moves to Seoul. Her real dream is to become a writer or 32

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FINDING GRACE

to the disappearance, which is investigated, along with Mariam’s behavior, by an aging cop with a checkered past. Back in 2003, Liv, who was abused by her older brother when they were kids (she was then known as Sara—not her last name change), finds solace—and sexual gratification—in the scaly company of her demanding python, Nero, who must be fed with ever larger living things. Her human friend Anita, a new mother beaten by her husband, turns to Liv for help. Mariam later becomes part of this vicious cycle when she is raped, resulting in the birth of her daughter. Ulstein’s provocative treatment of brutal male behavior, including an approving reference to female spiders devouring their male partners, can be powerful. But populated by many unpleasant characters doing unpleasant things, the novel loses focus at critical times. It’s not enough that the increasingly large and hungry Nero commits an unmentionable nasty incident that upstages everything. Ulstein also feels compelled to include periodic first-person commentary from the python, who ironically but not inaccurately calls Liz “the cold woman.”

An original but flawed thriller that never rises to the level of chilly.

Thomas, Janis Blackstone Publishing (320 pp.) $28.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-79992-141-7 Thomas follows All That’s Left of Me (2018) with another thriller that mixes hints of the paranormal with definite indications of imminent danger.

Twelve-year-old Melanie isn’t crazy about her current foster parents, Ray and Delilah James, but although they have their quirks—Delilah, for instance, repeatedly bakes pans of brownies she throws into the trash—she wouldn’t want to do anything to undermine her life with them. That’s why she’s never told them about Penny, the girl who lives in her hand and writes her messages like “Somebody’s coming for you.” Someone is indeed coming for Melanie: Grace Daniels, a nonpracticing nurse who’s been languishing in Bellevue Hospital, and Louise, the adult daughter who’s so daunted by the mental illness of her mother, who’s heard voices for many years, that she put her own out-of-wedlock daughter up for adoption shortly after birth to protect baby Edie from Grace’s influence and to protect Louise herself from the possibility of having to deal with two disturbed relatives at once. Learning that Grace wants to see her, Louise steels herself to visit her mother and finds herself signing the discharge papers that will make her responsible for Grace on their long trip to find Edie. All the while, Melanie is repeatedly promised acceptance by her schoolmates and foster parents, but every promise is thwarted or, worse, traumatically misconstrued. As Louise learns against the odds to trust the mother she’s spent half her lifetime denying, Penny keeps warning Melanie about impending doom. Even though most readers will figure out the relations among the characters long before Thomas reveals them, few will predict either the perpetrator or the victim of the climactic act of violence that brings them all together.

An authentically creepy tale for anyone who cares to look beyond, or into, those voices.

THE MATCHMAKER

Vidich, Paul Pegasus Crime (352 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-1-64313-865-7

A woman’s life takes a stunning turn and a wall comes tumbling down in this tense Cold War spy drama.

In Berlin in 1989, the wall is about to crumble, and Anne Simpson’s husband, Stefan Koehler, goes missing. She is a translator working with refugees from the communist bloc, and he is a piano tuner who travels around Europe with orchestras.

Or so he claims. German intelligence service the BND and America’s CIA bring her in for questioning, wrongly thinking she’s protecting him. Soon she begins to learn more about Stefan, whom she had met in the Netherlands a few years ago. She realizes he’s a “gregarious musician with easy charm who collected friends like a beachcomber collects shells, keeping a few, discarding most.” Police find his wallet in a canal and his prized zither in nearby bushes but not his body. Has he been murdered?

What’s going on? And why does the BND care? If Stefan is alive, he’s in deep trouble, because he’s believed to be working for the Stasi. She’s told “the dead have a way of showing up. It is only the living who hide.” And she’s quite believable when she wonders, “Can you grieve for someone who betrayed you?” Smart and observant, she notes that the reaction by one of her interrogators is “as false as his toupee. Obvious, uncalled for, and easily put on.” Lurking behind the scenes is the Matchmaker, who specializes in finding women—“American. Divorced. Unhappy,” and possibly having access to Western secrets—who will fall for one of his Romeos. Anne is the perfect fit. “The matchmaker turned love into tradecraft,” a CIA agent tells her. But espionage is an amoral business where duty trumps decency, and

REPTILE MEMOIRS

Ulstein, Silje Trans. by Alison McCullough Grove (400 pp.) $26.00 | March 15, 2022 978-0-8021-5886-4 In this debut novel from Norway, an 11-year-old girl goes missing more than a decade after connected events involving a troubled young woman who sleeps with her pet python.

The little girl, Iben, disappears from a supermarket in 2017 after her mother, Mariam, refuses to buy her a zombie comic book. Mariam, who is married to a politician, responds strangely |

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“A delightful metafictional novel that examines conventions of marriage and love.” a previous life

BEAT THE DEVILS

“deploring the morality of spies is like deploring violence in boxers.” It’s a sentiment John le Carré would have endorsed, but Anne may have the final word.

Intrigue, murder, and vengeance make for a darkly enjoyable read.

Weiss, Josh Grand Central Publishing (368 pp.) $28.00 | March 22, 2022 978-1-5387-1944-2 In the alternative late-1950s America of Weiss’ first novel, Commie-hater Joseph McCarthy is president, undesirables are being rounded up and deported, and it’s open warfare on “individual[s] of Judaic Origins”—including LA police detective Morris Baker.

A Holocaust survivor of Czech origins, Baker is hooked on peach schnapps, has dingy sex with an aspiring actress, and suffers from recurring concentration camp nightmares. His life perks up when he’s assigned to the celebrity double murder of rising TV journalist Walter Cronkite and forcibly retired film director John Huston. The investigation leads him to partner up with sexy Soviet spy Sophia Vikhrov, with whom he cutely uncovers a bomb plot involving imported German scientists, including Werner von Braun. For his troubles, Baker gets his front teeth knocked out by thugs from the House Un-American Activities Committee and, in a subsequent torture scene, has more teeth pulled (no subsequent signs of dental distress are evident). Edward R. Murrow makes a surprise appearance, Humphrey Bogart a decidedly un-Bogielike one, reduced to propagandist in films like It Came From Planet Communist! Fidel Castro and Che Guevera have been publicly executed. All the pieces for an edgy piece of speculative fiction are in place.

But Weiss, no Philip Roth, falls into the trap of using collective trauma as a cheap backdrop for Baker’s shenanigans, and there’s something creepy about his treatment of Cronkite and Huston (whose film Beat the Devil inspired the book’s title). In his acknowledgments, Weiss writes, “The story is, first and foremost, about Baker and his journey of adopting a new worldview.”

Second and secondmost would have worked a lot better.

A reimagined America that is short on fresh ideas and long on misplaced humor.

SOMETHING TO DO WITH PAYING ATTENTION

Wallace, David Foster McNally Editions (136 pp.) $18.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-946022-27-1

The final finished work by the late, widely influential novelist and essayist.

The present novel, which clocks in at 136 pages, was first published as part of Wallace’s unfinished book, The Pale King.

Unlike much of the larger work, it is a finished whole, an onrushing confessional set in an IRS processing center in Peoria, Illinois. The narrator, named Chris Fogle in The Pale King but unnamed here, begins his saga as an aimless young adult who lives at home in Libertyville, a North Side suburb of Chicago. His frustrated father tells his mother that their son “couldn’t find [his] ass with both hands,” and though dad has a point, Chris waxes analytical in classic Wallace form: “From what I understand of basic psychology, this is a fairly typical dynamic—son is feckless and lacks direction, mother is sympathetic and believes in son’s potential and sticks up for him, father is peeved and endlessly criticizes and squeezes son’s shoes but still, when push comes to shove, always ponies up the check for the next college.” Chris eventually comes around and signs up to join “the Service,” the IRS become a quasi-religious institution, driven to do so in part out of remorse for a grisly accident that kills his father. Wallace, as Chris’ interviewer, is really a stenographer, recording his subject’s every offhand remembrance of his early years in the 1970s: “Acapulco Gold versus Colombia Gold,” disco, the bankruptcy of New York, the “Uncola,” and other cultural touchstones of an unsettled time. Much can be read as roman à clef, with mental illness, drugs, and misdirection at the heart of the book, brimming over with irony and obsessive attention to the tiniest detail (“the Advanced Tax students had multiple pencils lined up on their desks, all of which were extremely sharp”). Not much happens outside Chris’ head, but what’s going on there is darkly fascinating.

A valediction for Wallace’s fans. Accountants will enjoy it, too.

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A PREVIOUS LIFE

White, Edmund Bloomsbury (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 25, 2022 978-1-63557-727-3

A septuagenarian musician and his 30-year-old wife break their silence about the past and share a series of episodic confessions.

White’s latest begins in the year 2050, when Sicilian musician Ruggero Castelnuovo and his American wife, Constance, decide to break a vow they had made to keep their pasts in the dark. Ruggero has already had a slew of marriages and love affairs with men and women alike, while Constance has had two brief marriages. |

When the couple determines that silence is no longer serving them, they begin to write a series of “confessions” in the form of episodic memoirs, which they take turns reading aloud. Ruggero shares memories of his aristocratic upbringing, his early sexual experiences, and the beginnings of his music career. Along with these reminiscences spill Ruggero’s anxieties about his reputation, which has been compromised by a dramatic and wellpublicized affair with the writer Edmund White. Constance, on the other hand, details her parents’ tragic deaths and her subsequent upbringing by her nanny’s family. When she is continuously molested by an uncle figure, she becomes determined to pursue an education at an elite university and never return. For Ruggero, this foundational trauma explains her attraction to significantly older men, including one who robbed her of everything she had and another who humiliated her deeply. Traveling to various locations in Europe and the United States, the couple make life-altering decisions about their relationship as their memoirs address large questions about aging, death, and desire.

In crisp but erotically charged prose, White provides a compelling character study that presses on the boundaries of sexuality and romance, polyamory and marriage. The memoirs give the book a unique and immersive structure as the secrets Ruggero and Constance reveal cast light on enigmatic parts of their internal lives and as they negotiate the terms of their marriage.

A delightful metafictional novel that examines conventions of marriage and love.

the lottery, a secret he’s been determined to keep, WE WHO WATCH make it clear that they’re interested in Marlowe’s money, that they’re not going away, and that the violence they threaten won’t end with him. The big reveal, which goes on forever, strains credulity, but there’s no denying Wilson’s power to weave a dark web and keep making it darker and darker.

Stuck at home because of the pandemic? This is cheaper than moving, and it’ll make you feel better about staying put.

THE DARKEST WEB

Wright, Kristin Thomas & Mercer (319 pp.) $15.95 paper | April 12, 2022 978-1-5420-2635-2

THE NEW NEIGHBOR

Wilson, Carter Poisoned Pen (400 pp.) $14.49 paper | April 12, 2022 978-1-72824-752-6 Wilson returns to Bury, New Hampshire, where a painfully widowed millionaire takes up residence in a house even more troubled than he is.

In the middle of his wife Holly’s memorial service after she’s died of an aneurysm at 34, Baltimore bartender Aidan Marlowe learns that the numbers he’s been playing twice a week for many years have hit a $29.8 million Powerball jackpot. Marlowe, a dissociative type who can sense energies most people can’t, though he often fades out of the picture for hours on end, decides to move to upscale Bury and buy a house that was owned by investment banker Logan Yates before he vanished along with several members of his family. He soon begins to get insinuatingly creepy letters welcoming him to Bury and signed “WE WHO WATCH.” His questions to Abril, the longtime Yates housekeeper, net just enough information to make him feel that he and his 7-year-old twins, Maggie and Bo, need more protection, but his visit to Police Chief Walter Sike produces nothing but bland assurances, and he’s unwilling to provide Sike’s friend and security consultant Owen Brace with the personal information required to take the wholesale measures Brace urges. Soon after a housewarming party flushes out the news that Marlowe’s won |

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A civil attorney fearful of standing trial for killing her detestable boss sees her only hope in hiring a defense lawyer whose life is nearly as chaotic as her own.

Once the funeral is over, no one in the Charlottesville office of Blackwood, Payne & Vivant, the “unmarked Honda Accord of law firms,” has a nice word to spare for Raymond V. Corrigan Jr., who was shot to death in his office sometime after midnight. When impossibly beautiful Jane Knudsen, a Blackwood associate hungry for a partnership, finds Ray’s body upon her customary pre-dawn arrival, her first reaction is relief at not having to deal with him anymore. That’s swiftly followed by certainty that the police will consider her a prime suspect whether or not she notifies them of her discovery, since everyone at the firm, from managing partner Greg Dombrowski to fellow associates Josh Gardner and Amir Burhan to longtime administrator Irene Robinson, will know better if Jane says she wasn’t there at 6 a.m. Helpless to avoid the glare of suspicion, Jane asks her old UVA law school roommate Allison Barton, who made quite a splash in The Darkest Flower (2021), to defend her. The two were never friends, and their salt-and-pepper relationship is the main attraction in Allie’s second case. But Wright, presenting her story again in alternating chapters, narrated by Allison and her client, also piles on complications, from a poisonous widow to importunate and unwelcome romantic pursuits of both Allison and Jane, from sexual harassment to domestic abuse, from a hidden past to child pornography, until even the most hardbitten readers will beg, like Jane, for release.

Overplotted and overwrought but as immersive as a serious addiction.

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THIS MIGHT HURT

Wrobel, Stephanie Berkley (336 pp.) $9.99 paper | Feb. 22, 2022 978-0-593-10011-0

PAY DIRT ROAD

Allen, Samantha Jayne Minotaur (304 pp.) $27.99 | April 19, 2022 978-1-2508-0427-3

With her second novel, the author of Darling Rose Gold (2020) brings more multi-point-of-view fun to thriller fans.

When a mysterious emailer threatens to reveal her darkest secret, Natalie Collins journeys from Boston to an isolated island off the Maine coast to confess the truth to her flighty younger sister, Kit. Kit has spent the last six months at Wisewood, a self-improvement retreat that requires attendees to give up all connections, including contact with friends and family and all forms of physical affection. When Nat shows up, the other residents of Wisewood refuse to give Nat any information about Kit, citing rules which prevent friends or family members from attending together. While her sister turns out to be an elusive presence on the island, Nat can’t shake the feeling that someone is tailing her. With a blizzard coming in to prevent all travel back to the mainland and Wisewood staff growing increasingly hostile toward her, Nat’s racing against a ticking clock to accomplish her mission and get back to her normal life. Although the genresavvy will see the twists coming from miles away, Wrobel manages to keep the lines of her narrative pulled taut here.

The narrator’s torch passes among Natalie, Kit, and a third woman who goes unidentified until the novel’s midpoint.

Through flashbacks to a childhood and adolescence spent trapped in her abusive father’s unhinged training regimen— one designed to purge fear and self-doubt from the girl and her sister—this third narrator’s story quickly proves to be the novel’s most captivating thread. Unfortunately, because neither Nat nor Kit shares her story with the same immediacy or intimacy as this counterpart, readers will inevitably feel a deeper connection to the long-unnamed woman. Once her identity is revealed, however, they’ll be left to wonder if that wasn’t the point all along.

A taut thriller that examines the twin legacies of trauma and grief.

A gritty, down-home exploration of murder and dysfunction in a Texas town.

Upon her college graduation, Annie McIntyre returns home to Garnett, Texas, thinking about law school but with no clear path in sight. She’s living with her cousin Nikki and waitressing at a diner, where she meets young mother Victoria Merritt. Attending Justin Schneider’s bonfire party takes Annie right back to high school, as beer flows and a volatile combination of jocks, mean girls, and outof-town roughnecks mix. Victoria turns up apparently bombed out of her mind; it’s the last time Annie sees her alive. When Victoria’s disappearance and a fatal hit-and-run roil the town, Annie, whose dysfunctional family has a long history in law enforcement, feels pulled to investigate. Mary-Pat, who runs a private investigation firm with Annie’s grandfather Leroy, hires her to do office work that may lead to an internship. Annie and Nikki’s many visits to bars in search of Victoria end when her body is discovered in a shallow grave on Annie’s family land.

The experience brings on a bout of PTSD from a traumatic experience Annie had at a fraternity party during her senior year in high school. When Fernando, a high school friend who works at the diner, is arrested, Annie gets Leroy and Mary-Pat to investigate for his lawyer. A gas company that sought to lease Victoria’s land gives her husband a financial motive for her murder; the environmental problems the company is hiding give it a powerful motive as well.

A dark picture of hardscrabble Texas juiced by the heroine’s angst makes for a great debut. Here’s hoping for a follow-up.

THE KING ARTHUR CASE

Bannalec, Jean-Luc Minotaur (384 pp.) $27.99 | April 26, 2022 978-1-2507-5308-3

An office retreat goes horribly wrong.

It’s been two years since the team at the Commissariat de Police Concarneau has gone on an outing together. So when Nolwenn, Commissaire Georges Dupin’s redoubtable assistant, bids to turn an unavoidable trip to the Forêt de Brocéliande into a group venture, even the taciturn Inspector Kadeg seems pleased. Riwal, Dupin’s other inspector, is downright jubilant. Brocéliande is famous throughout Europe as the seat of Celtic-Breton folklore, 36

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“A much-anticipated wedding is threatened by weather and murder.” bitter roots

BITTER ROOTS

including the tales of King Arthur and his Round Table, and he relishes the chance to introduce Paris-born Dupin to the Church of the Holy Grail, Merlin’s Steps, and Lake Lancelot.

And Dupin’s far more eager to explore Brocéliande than to carry out the errand pressed on him by his old Paris comrade Jean Odinot. After all, wasn’t it the Paris police who supported his expulsion to Brittany, as far from Paris as he could be sent, after he publicly insulted the mayor? But when Dupin arrives at the Parc de l’Imagination Illimitée, run by Odinot’s friend Dr. Fabien Cadiou, and finds the academic lying dead on the floor, what was supposed to be a pleasure trip turns into one of the most vexing cases of the Commissaire’s career. Cadiou is just the first of a band of quarrelsome King Arthur academics to breathe his last, and as the body count rises, Dupin has reason to fear that it may come to include even members of his team.

Another tense puzzle from Bannalec, with the Breton landscape once more the star of the show.

Crosby, Ellen Severn House (240 pp.) $28.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-7278-9102-0 A much-anticipated wedding is threatened by weather and murder.

The marriage of Lucie Montgomery, owner of the Montgomery Estate vineyard in Virginia, to winemaker Quinn Santori has been planned to the last detail

by Francesca Merchant, who runs the retail side of the business.

Their attention is diverted from the nuptials by a plot of Cabernet Franc grapes that are dying of unknown causes. Lucie and several other vineyard owners are furious with Jackson Landau, Eve Kerr, and Dr. Richard Brightman, who developed, heavily promoted, and sold the failing vines but deny any responsibility.

Lucie calls in her own expert, Josie Wilde, who’s sure the vines are suffering from black goo. Only a few very wealthy owners, like Lucie’s new neighbor, former NBA star Sloane Everett, can shrug off the threat of bankruptcy. The beautiful Eve tries to charm the distraught owners, but Landau digs in, blaming the problem on climate change. Seeking peace, Quinn tries to meet with Eve, a fellow Californian, arousing Lucie’s suspicions and launching him onto the suspect list when Lucie and her bestie, Kit, find Eve dead in a creek. The list, which includes plenty of people who were angry with Eve, is extended even further by the news of her pregnancy. Meanwhile, a vicious storm hits the area, ruining the wedding and leaving the place with no power.

But the ill wind does blow some good, uncovering a crucial clue.

Crosby’s reliable character-driven series once more offers a good mystery and relevant social commentary.

WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION

Copperman, E.J. Severn House (240 pp.) $28.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-7278-5076-8

Solving a murder is the ultimate distraction for a Jersey girl gone West.

Prosecutor Sandy Moss hardly expected to start a career as a defense attorney when she crossed the country to join a Los Angeles–based firm specializing in family law. But as her boss, Holly Wentworth, reminds her, Seaton, Taylor created a criminal division just for her after she successfully defended two murder trials.

So when film director Robert Reeves is accused of sabotaging the equipment that sent stuntman Jim Drake to his death, his demand to have Sandy defend him seems almost reasonable.

What makes Sandy most inclined to take on the uncooperative Reeves, however, is that her first client, actor Patrick McNabb, now her boyfriend, has just made an offer she’d prefer to refuse.

Her charming but impulsive beau wants her to move into his magnificent home. Sandy’s seen all too often that once Patrick wins the object of his pursuit, he tends to lose interest. So preparing a defense for the stubborn Reeves, who won’t come clean about any of the facts of the case, within the nine-week timeline Judge Franklin has allowed provides Sandy with the excuse she needs to put off a decision about McNabb’s proposal. As the evidence against Reeves mounts, Sandy draws on all her Garden State grit to clear a defendant who practically defies her best attempts to defend him while putting on pause the man who wants to woo her.

Crafty and zany, with a well-clued solution.

KILL HER TWICE

Fredrickson, Jack Severn House (224 pp.) $28.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-7278-5063-8 A Chicago shamus probes a high-profile murder for a sketchy client.

A distraught Martin Tripp calls police in the middle of the night from suburban Weston to report that an intruder has attacked his live-in girlfriend, Sara Jansen. She lies brutally stabbed to death, near a hidden cache of jewelry. Veteran police detective Harry Slage quickly concludes that Martin is lying, and guilty. When savvy defense attorney Reginald “Apples” Aplon argues that his client’s not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, a hung jury sets him free. The distraught Tripp, a ruined man, appeals to private eye Vlodek “Dek” Elstrom, who unloads on him before reluctantly agreeing to look into Sara’s murder. Like most of the city, Dek thinks Tripp is a coldblooded killer and takes the case more to nail than to exonerate him. But he finds several unsavory details of |

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WHEN BLOOD LIES

bank teller Sara’s past and, more significantly, corroboration for several of Tripp’s claims. Neighbors, co-workers, and colorful Aplon are among the first people Dek questions. Secretive neighbor Julianna Wynton, who took a powder shortly after the murder, seems key to unraveling the tangled truth. Fredrickson’s Chicago is reminiscent of Chandler’s Los Angeles, and the dearth of modern detail suggests an appealing timelessness; it could as easily be 1930 as 2020. Hard-boiled Dek’s eighth case is long on crackling dialogue and atmosphere, with another suspicious character seemingly lurking around every corner.

A sleek Windy City noir with a distinctly retro feel.

Harris, C.S. Berkley (368 pp.) $26.00 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-10269-5

A son searches for his mother’s killer on the cusp of Napoleon’s triumphant return to Paris.

March 1815 finds Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, in Paris with his wife, Hero, searching for the mother he’d long thought dead. Sebastian was born to Sophia, Countess of Hendon, and is the heir of the Fifth Earl of Hendon, but he’s not the earl’s natural son. For years he thought his mother was lost at sea only to learn she’d actually left his father and her children behind. His search for her has been made more difficult by the war raging across Europe, but with Napoleon in exile, he’s finally learned that she’s returned from Vienna to Paris using the alias Sophia Cappello. He’s crushed to find her bloody body near the home he’s renting, stabbed and thrown off the Pont Neuf. She dies before they can speak, and he vows to find the killer. Sophia has lately been mistress to Alexandre McClellan, formerly one of Napoleon’s marshals. The Bourbons are back in power, and France is restless under their rule, which is returning to the fanaticism of the monarchy before the revolution. The authorities seem determined to call Sophia’s death an accident, but Sebastian suspects politics are involved when he learns that Sophia had visited Elba before returning to Paris. A painting of McClellan inside her house, which he’s inherited, makes Sebastian wonder if the subject is his real father. The discovery of his mother’s reticule and then a jeweled leather bag sets him on a tortuous and dangerous search for the truth played out against the turmoil of Napoleon’s attempt to regain control of France.

The detailed historical narrative blends seamlessly with a complex, fast-paced mystery.

THE WILD LIFE

Gordon, David Mysterious Press (332 pp.) $25.95 | April 26, 2022 978-1-61316-277-4 When a professional thief falls for an FBI agent, what could go wrong?

Joe Brody is exploring his options.

Childhood friend Gio Caprisi’s network of illegal gambling dens provides a steady income not only for him, but for his shrewd grandma Gladys, who’s employed to spot cheaters.

And occasional side jobs, like the heist at Club Rendezvous, have enabled him to put aside a nice nest egg for the future. But the shootout that ended the heist reminds him of the risks his employment holds of his ending up dead. Plus, the raid that led to the shootout introduced him to Special Agent Donna Zamora, whose life is dedicated to stopping careers like Gio’s.

He’s intrigued by Donna’s dedication, but it’s her sexy smile that hooks him in the end. And Donna knows that her relationship with Joe is a potential career killer, which is why he’s never entered her apartment through the front door. While Joe ponders a career change, Gio has an ask that would put him on the same side as his secret lover. Gio’s pals have noticed that some of their working girls have disappeared without a trace.

Although their main concern is more loss of revenue than loss of life, Joe sees the chance to do the right thing, so he agrees to investigate on behalf of the mob. Meanwhile, Donna is tasked with busting up the human trafficking ring that’s taking a toll on New York’s sex workers. Watching Donna and Joe compete, unwittingly, to solve the same case brings a novel and zany twist to the old game of cops and robbers.

One wild ride.

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CLEOPATRA’S DAGGER

Lawrence, Carole Thomas & Mercer (364 pp.) $15.95 paper | April 1, 2022 978-1-5420-1430-4

Lawrence introduces a new character-based series set in 1880s New York City.

Elizabeth van den Broek may come from an old Dutch family, but she’s a rebel. Her father is a judge; her beautiful mother is a talented pianist and a bit of a snob; and her beloved sister resides in a psych ward in Bellevue Hospital. At the New York Herald, where her father’s influence got her a job, Elizabeth is fed up with writing society puff pieces. On her way to work on the L, she spots a dangerous opportunity for a story: a woman being choked in a third-floor apartment over a butcher shop. She tells her editor, who annoyingly sends her |

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’TIL DEATH

off to cover Mrs. Astor’s garden party instead. Returning to the apartment, she learns from an old woman that the girl who lived there has vanished. Back home in the Stuyvesant, Elizabeth makes the acquaintance of Carlotta Ackerman, an artist who rents a studio in the building. They agree to meet at the Metropolitan Museum early the next day to walk Carlotta’s dog, Toby, in the park and introduce her to bagels. Toby’s discovery of a body dressed as a mummy in the hole dug for the obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle catapults Elizabeth into opportunity and danger. After her editor reluctantly agrees to let her cover the story, more murders follow, and Elizabeth discovers a pattern linked to Egyptian gods. Along the way, she suffers prejudice and physical attacks in a world not meant for ambitious women. Since the corrupt police actively hinder her work, she’s on her own.

The complex, intrepid feminist heroine bodes well for future installments.

Perry, Carol J. Kensington (384 pp.) $8.99 paper | April 26, 2022 978-1-4967-3143-2

A program director for a TV station just can’t leave her days as an investigative journalist behind.

Lee Barrett likes being on the production end of things at WICH-TV in Salem, Massachusetts. It gives her access to a wide variety of program material, from Ranger Rob’s Rodeo to Tarot Time With River North to Cooking With Wanda the Weather Girl. It gives her an in with local celebrities like Fabulous Fabio, an aspiring magician whose day job involves baking the tastiest cakes in town. It allows her to score one of Fabio’s fabulous creations for her upcoming wedding to police detective Pete Mondello in return for giving Fabio a chance to showcase his sleight of hand on Ranger Rob’s. And it gives her time to order flowers, have her dress altered, pick out invitations, and buy a new home, tasks her old schedule as a reporter would never have allowed.

Lee’s ready to leave the home she’s shared with her Aunt Isobel since her parents’ tragic deaths in a plane crash on Pirate’s Island when she was almost 5. Unfortunately, the tenant first in line to take her place in Aunt Ibby’s newly renovated bedand-breakfast is Fenton Bishop, a mystery writer who learned his craft in the slammer after pleading guilty to the murder of his wife. With Pete’s help, Lee looks into Bishop’s past. At the same time, station manager Bruce Doan wants her to do a piece on Pirate’s Island while she and Pete are stopping there during their honeymoon to visit her aunt and uncle. Perry teases readers long and hard with the mystery of which puzzle Lee will try to unravel before she lets her heroine get down to the actual unraveling.

Just what all proper brides should have: something old and something new.

THE FOOL DIES LAST

Miller, Carol Severn House (224 pp.) $28.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-7278-2303-8

Miller debuts a series about things that go bump in the day.

Hope Bailey and her sister, Summer, own Bailey’s Boutique, an Asheville store specializing in things paranormal. Hope lives with their Gram in a haunted brownstone; Summer’s married to Gary Fletcher, who’s been absent a lot lately, allegedly working overtime. Hope’s in the middle of a palm reading when a handsome stranger enters the shop and accuses the sisters of trying to kill a woman. He’s interrupted in turn by Gram calling for help from the community center, where she’s lunching with her boyfriend, Dr. Morris Henshaw.

Roberta King, one of her friends, has died in agony with a tarot card near her body. The handsome stranger from the shop turns out to be Dr. Dylan Henshaw, Morris’ son, and he also turns up at the community center, telling Detective Phillips the cause of Roberta’s death seems to be anaphylaxis and accusing the sisters of giving Roberta an herbal concoction that killed her.

Meanwhile, the sisters’ friend Megan, who works in a hotel, tells Hope that Gary’s checked in with someone named Misty Monique. Then the same tarot card is discovered with another woman found dead at the hotel spa, tamping down Hope and Dylan’s obvious attraction for each other because of his suspicions and the sisters’ needs to cover up the ghosts in their attics.

Though Hope hasn’t done tarot readings since the accidental death of her fiance, she’s still an expert on the subject. So when Gram admits to being in a tontine with the dead women, Hope braves the ghosts to find the mysterious killer.

Pleasing characters spark the first entry in an often amusing mystery/romance series.

KNIT OR DYE TRYING

Pleiter, Allie Berkley (304 pp.) $7.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-20180-0

Maryland’s See More Than Sea Food Festival is marred by murder.

Mayor Gavin Maddock’s clever plan to increase tourism to Collinstown depends on many different moving pieces, including Libby Beckett’s promotion at her knitting shop, Y.A.R.N. Since returning to her hometown after a divorce, Libby has renewed old acquaintances, including Gavin Maddock, her high school love, and made new ones. Although she knows that Julie Wilson, whom she’s invited to give a workshop, is an advocate for plant-based fibers for yarn, she’s shocked when local sheep farmers stage a protest |

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THE BURNING PAGES

by driving flocks of sheep down the main street, accusing Julie of trying to ruin their livelihood. Knowing of the amazing colors Julie has achieved in her yarns, Libby’s rented a space in a warehouse for her fiber-dyeing workshop. Also in town for the festival is Chef Monica Wilson, Julie’s sister, and the two fight like cats and dogs. After trading insults with Monica at the festival’s opening reception, Julie goes off to start dyeing fibers in preparation for the workshop. At the same time, a fire in the kitchen where Monica is cooking looks like arson. When the police try to question Julie, they find the warehouse locked and the exhaust fans not running. Inside, Julie is dead from the fumes, the door and fans blocked with shepherd’s crooks.

Of course the local shepherds are suspects, but since Julie had plenty of other enemies, Libby must work with the sheriff and her friends to uncover a killer.

Keeps the small-town charm of the series debut while adding more mystery.

Shelton, Paige Minotaur (304 pp.) $26.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-2507-8948-8

An American expatriate learns to love Robert Burns.

Delaney Nichols took a job organizing a warehouse full of treasures for the owner of the Cracked Spine bookstore in Edinburgh, Scotland, married a Scot, and became involved in solving a series of crimes. But none has cut closer to home than the mystery associated with a birth certificate she’s found. The certificate might be that of her friend and fellow worker Hamlet, who was found wandering the streets as a young child and, years later, unofficially adopted by her boss, Edwin, and bookstore doyenne Rosie. When Delaney’s invited to a special Burns dinner, she asks Hamlet to join her, knowing he’s a passionate fan, though Edwin warns her there may be an ulterior motive to the invitation. Partway through the traditional dinner, after attorney Clarinda Creston has introduced Delaney and Hamlet to Charles Lexon, Malcolm Campbell, and Neil Watterton, Edwin is mentioned as the group’s founder, and Malcolm calls him a scoundrel. Telling the others that she and Hamlet work for Edwin, Delaney asks why she was invited and then leaves. Later that night, the club building burns to the ground, and Watterton’s body is found in the rubble. Delaney’s old friend Inspector Winters questions Hamlet, who was seen that night in the company of Watterton. When Hamlet vanishes, she resolves to explore his antecedents and his possible connections to the club members in order to clear his name.

Historical Burns references add spice to a complex series of intertwined mysteries.

THE DARKEST GAME

Schneider, Joseph Poisoned Pen (336 pp.) $16.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-72824-504-1 A cunning killer cuts a murderous swath through the LA art world.

A brief, brooding prologue, in which the narrator describes a murky murder and muses over the savagery of a Hollywood night, ignites a simmering undercurrent for LAPD Detective Tully Jarsdel’s third noir appearance as it rolls slowly into the centerpiece crime. The learned Tully, dubbed the “professor detective” by the LA Times, and Morales, his rough, righteous partner, commiserate over the unjustly light sentence for the killing of a young child before leaving the courtroom to return to Hollywood Station, where they’re soon sent back out to the scene of a brutal murder. Dean Burken, a curator at the Huntington Library and Museum, has been shot several times and, in a telling display of overkill, brutally beaten. The leisurely plot unfolds along traditional lines, with methodical interviews of the handful of “persons of interest” broken up by elaborate banter between the two detectives. The rogues’ gallery of suspects is as quirky and colorful as anything in Hammett or Chandler, and Schneider’s plot, while linear, is full of surprises. Tully’s poignant backstory follows his efforts as caretaker to Baba, his brilliant but declining old father.

The murder of a prime suspect at first seems to complicate the case until a witness steps forward to name the killer, only to meet the same fate. Throughout, Morales’ brusque, slangy dialogue plays nicely against Tully’s stylish, erudite speech. Schneider’s choice of backdrop gives him carte blanche to pepper his tale with historic and artistic tidbits about both the collection and the institution itself.

Juicy prose redolent of classic noir, with contemporary twists.

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WHEN THE CROW’S AWAY

Wallace, Auralee Berkley (304 pp.) $8.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-33585-7

The good witches of Connecticut get another chance to use their distinctive individual talents.

Evenfall has long been the home of the Warren family, which currently includes young widow Brynn, her aunts Izzy and Nora, and her uncle Gideon, who together run the Ivywood Hollow Bed and Breakfast. Izzy is a gourmet cook whose recipes contain a little extra something in the way of spells. Imperious Nora has a talent for growing all types of plants. Gideon keeps to himself in the attic, and Brynn can see ghosts. When Mortimer Sweete, from the Sweetes’ Shoppe, appears to her, claiming to have been murdered, she’s forced to get involved since he’s heard the witchy rumors and knows that she’s solved a murder. Unfortunately, the little he |

“Funny, thrilling, poignant, and profound.” the paradox hotel

remembers about his end isn’t enough to challenge the police assumption that he had a heart attack brought on by eating a box of candy in the town gazebo and triggering his diabetes.

Although Brynn tries to get Mort to go with her and give a message to his wife, Angie, he refuses. A vision in the family cauldron gives her a clue but not the answer to Mort’s death. As she investigates, she feels uneasy. Cookie, the wife of Mort’s partner, is all too eager to sell the shop, and Angie’s handsome neighbor Elias Blumenthal seems overly solicitous. Could the answer lie in his poison garden?

A lighthearted tale of good witches, romance, and hope.

cast is so large as to occasionally confuse, but on balance, Hart delivers a riveting read likely to win him scores of new fans.

Funny, thrilling, poignant, and profound.

r om a n c e TO MARRY AND TO MEDDLE

Waters, Martha Atria (336 pp.) $16.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-9821-9048-4

science fiction and fantasy

The latest installment of Waters’ Regency Vows series visits well-behaved Emily and rakish Julian as they navigate a marriage of convenience.

At 26, Lord Julian Belfry is perfectly content as “the black sheep of an aristocratic family” and owner of the rowdy Belfry theater…but his father isn’t happy about it. The Belfry is no stranger to promiscuity, and as “little more than a brothel,” it is hardly the place any reputable people would spend a night out. His father gives Julian an ultimatum: Sell the Belfry and restore his disgraced public image, or never set foot in his family’s home again. Four years later, the once undeterred Julian believes it’s time to rekindle his relationship with his father and upgrade the Belfry into an honorable establishment worthy of the ton’s approval. Luckily, he’s just asked the scandal-proof, golden-haired Emily Turner for her hand in marriage. Despite her own family’s blackened reputation, Emily’s respectability remains unscathed, which could elevate Julian’s status and free Emily from spending three more seasons on the arm of the detestable Mr. Cartham, her only suitor. Also, the past couple of months have helped Julian and Emily strike “an odd sort of friendship,” and he hopes their marriage can serve as a sort of symbiotic business transaction.

She says yes, but in time the two come to realize that maybe this relationship is less about convenience and more about actual love…if only they each knew whether or not their feelings were returned. Waters’ latest is awash with light, witty banter, unadulterated confessions of love, and plenty of steamy, corsetunraveling sex scenes. Emily’s happy ending mercifully involves a lot less plotting than those of Waters’ previous heroines, and all the feline hijinks brought about by Cecil Lucifer Beelzebub Turner-Belfry adds to the sweet, cozy feelings you can’t help but revel in while reading this book.

A charming London romp perfect for theater nerds, cat lovers, and hopeless romantics.

THE PARADOX HOTEL

Hart, Rob Ballantine (336 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-1-9848-2064-8

Timey-wimey mysteries vex a singular hotel’s damaged in-house detective.

In 2072, those with hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare can use the federally owned Einstein Intercentury Timeport to see Shakespeare stage Ham­ let, watch the Battle of Gettysburg, or witness countless other bygone events. A tram ride away from Einstein is the Paradox Hotel, where guests can obtain costuming, earpiece translators, and era-specific vaccines. Individual “flights” are relatively safe, but frequent travel can be risky; just ask former time cop January Cole, who spent her early career riding the timestream to prevent tourists from altering history and is now Unstuck, a condition that causes her perception to—temporarily and without warning—jump into her past or future. January left the field years ago to police the Paradox, but though the move has done little to slow her ailment’s progression, she refuses to retire, as her slips often provide glimpses of her late girlfriend, Mena, who used to work on-site. The U.S. government is hemorrhaging money, so a senator and four trillionaires are holding a summit at the Paradox to discuss Einstein’s privatization. The security logistics alone are a nightmare, but factor in strange time fluctuations and a phantom corpse in Room 526 and you have the recipe for a disaster only January can thwart—provided her mind stays put. Inventive action, breakneck pacing, and a delightfully acerbic yet achingly vulnerable first-person-present narration distinguish this speculative noir stunner, which meditates on grief while exploring issues of inequity and determinism. The worldbuilding can feel hand-wavy, and the supporting |

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FOOL ME ONCE

Winstead, Ashley Graydon House (384 pp.) $16.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-525-89974-4 Two exes must suddenly work together to get a green energy bill passed in Texas in this romantic comedy.

Lee “Stoner” Stone is a success: She’s Director of Communications for Lise Motors, a women-run electric car company, and the brains behind the Green Machine, a bill to replace all Texas state vehicles with electric cars. She’s also a bit of a mess, prepared to drink anyone under the table, up for anything, and queen of the walk of shame. After her “Four Major Heartbreaks,” she’s decided that love is a lie and is here for the good times only. When news comes that the governor has finally hired a policy director, she’s ready to turn on the charm only to discover that it’s Ben Laderman, her grad school boyfriend and fourth Major Heartbreak. When both bosses decide Stoner and Ben should team up to convince the Senate’s last three holdouts to vote “yes,” all the time she and Ben spend together might force Stoner to reevaluate her position on love and relationships. Early in the novel, Stoner wonders where the rom-coms about women “with actual character flaws” are, and this is what Winstead has delivered—a love story for every truly hot mess.

Stoner’s tendency to meet stress and problems with alcohol, drugs, and no-strings-attached sex set her apart from the typical romance heroine but make her ultimate happy ending that much stronger. The characters surrounding her, from a close group of girlfriends to a concerned family and the family-esque mentors at work, are all wonderful friends and foils. Along the way, Ben and Stoner each make real, legitimate mistakes, which makes their eventually coming together feel incredibly earned.

The politicking is also almost painfully real.

A romance with bite, wit, and heart.

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nonfiction ILLOGICAL Saying Yes to a Life Without Limits

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

HEALING by Theresa Brown.............................................................. 49

Acho, Emmanuel An Oprah Book/Flatiron Books (256 pp.) $27.99 | March 22, 2022 978-1-250-83644-1

THE VORTEX by Scott Carney & Jason Miklian................................52 DILLA TIME by Dan Charnas.............................................................. 53 DIFFERENT by Frans de Waal..............................................................56 WOMAN by Lillian Faderman.............................................................58 THE LONELY STORIES by Natalie Eve Garrett.................................62 THE SEARCH FOR THE GENUINE by Jim Harrison........................ 68 SHELTER by Lawrence Jackson........................................................... 69 WE ARE THE MIDDLE OF FOREVER ed. by Dahr Jamail & Stan Rushworth....................................................................................70 RIPE by Negesti Kaudo......................................................................... 71 THE AGE OF ASTONISHMENT by Bill Morris..................................78 LEARNING AMERICA by Luma Mufleh.............................................79 THIN PLACES by Kerri ní Dochartaigh............................................. 80 JOURNEY OF THE MIND by Ogi Ogas & Sai Gaddam.....................81 BLOOD AND RUINS by Richard Overy............................................ 82 IN WHOSE RUINS by Alicia Puglionesi............................................. 84 THE LIFE OF MARK TWAIN by Gary Scharnhorst........................... 86 DIFFERENT Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

de Waal, Frans Norton (408 pp.) $30.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-324-00710-4

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PATHOLOGICAL by Sarah Fay........................................................... 60

An accomplished athlete becomes a cheerleader.

In 2015, Nigerian American linebacker Acho suffered an injury that caused him to be dropped by the Philadelphia Eagles. The footballer, who had been cut five times by the age of 25 and traded after his rookie season, faced a real dilemma: the need to reinvent himself as something other than a football player.

Acho draws on that experience, biblical stories (David and Goliath, Noah), and the successes of people like Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and his own immigrant father to offer upbeat encouragement to anyone mired at a crossroads in life. Now an Emmy Award–winning sports analyst for Fox Sports and host of the podcast—and author of the book—Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho urges readers to follow their dreams, take risks, and refuse to let other people tell you that what you want is not logical. “Take the chance,” he advises. “Life is short and tomorrow is not promised. Do not live a half-filled life leaving yourself to wonder, ‘What if ?’ Just go do it.” He cautions against letting other people determine your value or success and even advises against aiming toward one particular goal: “If you open up your peripheral vision to different paths your impact is so much greater than crossing one finish line.” Children, he reminds readers, “just believe, they don’t overcomplicate things” by weighing the pros and cons of whatever they want to do. “My coach always used the phrase, ‘Paralysis by analysis,’ ” Acho writes. “Don’t overthink, just believe, and thus achieve.”

The author urges readers to find their natural gift—something they’re inherently good at or thoroughly enjoy—and develop it through perseverance and hard work. Never let other people’s doubt stop you, he insists: “The moment you think to yourself, ‘I might be crazy,’ is the first checkpoint on your path to accomplishing greatness.”

A heartfelt guide to personal success.

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NONFICTION | Eric Liebetrau

are the arts essential?

Leah Overstreet

For most readers of Kirkus—and for any literature and humanities geek—the answer to the above question is obvious: absolutely. However, it seems that our leaders at all levels, from federal to local, don’t necessarily agree, as arts funding is often the first thing to go during budget cuts, especially during the pandemic.

This month, New York University Press is publishing a book to bolster arguments on the necessity of arts and arts education: Are the Arts Essential? (Feb. 22), edited by Alberta Arthurs, a senior fellow at the John Brademas Center at NYU, and Michael DiNiscia, a deputy director for Research and Strategic Initiatives at the Center. In a starred review, our critic called the book “a vigorous, timely, necessary defense of creativity” in which “the editors gather a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse group of more than two dozen eminent scholars, artists, professionals working in the field of arts and culture, and funders who support the arts.”

Like many similar defenses of literature, visual art, music, dance, and theater, the contributors to Are the Arts Essential? all “argue forcefully for the importance of the arts in strengthening social ties, benefiting individuals, fostering community, engaging with the sciences, and recording and sharing human experiences.” What makes this one stand out is the contributor list, which features scholars and artists who will be unfamiliar to many general readers. Other than K. Anthony Appiah, Edward Hirsch, and Deborah Willis, there are few boldface names.

Of course, those scholars offer trenchant analyses, but we also get a refreshing dose of persuasive, convincing discourse from numerous esteemed but not widely known professors as well as DarFred Hersch ren Walker, presiGiorgio Perottino/Getty Images for OGR

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dent of the Ford Foundation; Elizabeth Streb, a choreographer and dance instructor who often performs “feats of extreme action”; Jesse Rosen, the former president of the League of American Orchestras; Jeffrey Brown, senior arts correspondent for PBS NewsHour; psychologist Ellen Winner; and Fred Hersch, an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer who has served as leader or co-leader on more than 50 albums and has received 15 Grammy nominations.

Clearly, the editors challenged themselves to construct as inclusive a portrait as possible, all in the service of getting artists of every stripe to be present at what editor Arthurs describes as “all the places where our values and our ways of life are being examined, where communal decisions are being made, where issues and ideas and laws are being mapped and moved forward.” In the foreword, Lynne P. Brown, the executive director of the Brademas Center, echoes that sentiment, noting how the contributors, “although singing in different keys and octaves, depending on their unique perspectives…constitute a chorus of conviction.”

At times, the book may be overly academic for those not dedicated to the advancement of the arts—chapter titles include “City as Living Laboratory: Creating a New Narrative for Climate Change and the Public Realm”; “Leading Institutional Change: New Thinking About Mission, Values, and Purpose”; “Art in Theory: An Insight from Marcel Duchamp”—but it’s timely and relevant nonetheless. As Hersch notes, “I don’t consider a concert or a composition a success unless I feel like I’ve moved someone. Maybe it’s just one person in an audience. Not that it should be all overwrought, emotional, or manipulative.…You want to have some moments that are fun, some things that are challenging, some things that are more intense, maybe even romantic.…Ultimately, I don’t want to go to a music performance and walk away being impressed. I want to be stimulated, and I want to be moved.” Don’t we all?

Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction editor.

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“More hilarity and heart courtesy of a distinguished collection of seasoned performers.” sicker in the head

SICKER IN THE HEAD More Conversations About Life and Comedy

THE TEEN INTERPRETER A Guide to the Challenges and Joys of Raising Adolescents

Apatow, Judd Random House (496 pp.) $28.00 | March 29, 2022 978-0-525-50941-7

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A refreshing and practical guide to raising teens.

In her latest parenting book, psychologist Apter challenges society’s negative view of teenagers by using brain science to offer clear, empathetic explanations of maddening adolescent behaviors ranging from “rudeness” to “rebellion.” Many books define teens solely through negative behavior and emphasize parenting strategies related to “boundaries and control,” offering “analysis that reduces teens to hormonally driven neurotics.” This perspective erases the delight families can take in this time of intense intellectual growth.

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Apatow continues his long-running media project with more interviews with comedy’s brightest talents past to present.

In this follow-up to Sick in the Head, the humorist presents interviews with another wide-ranging set of performers who have made laughter their life’s work. Initially, Apatow took a leisurely approach to these new interviews, but once the pandemic hit, he found his subjects easier to access since “it’s hard to say no to an interview when it is clear you are available.” Apatow admits that because of the vulnerable, raw space the pandemic created, the conversations became more personal and honest. This impression conveys across a variety of interviews in which the humor is plentiful and supplemented with intimate anecdotes that provide rare glimpses into the comedians’ lives and work. Readers will learn countless intriguing details about each individual, including Bowen Yang, who reflects on his experience as an openly gay Chinese American comic writing and performing on Saturday Night Live; and David Letterman and Gary Gulman, who chat about their depression and how discussing the condition became natural for comedians. Among the many hilarious career reflections are entertaining stories from Kevin Hart, Margaret Cho, Sacha Baron Cohen, Will Ferrell, and Whoopi Goldberg. Posthumous nods can be found in a conversation with John Candy, recorded in 1984, in which he applauds the coveted “killer instinct” of stand-up comics. As in his first volume, Apatow interviews a variety of stars—not just on the comedy circuit, but in other areas of the arts and media. For example, TV personality Gayle King, while not particularly known for her sense of humor, contributes keen insight on her life and the world today. Most of the pieces are enlivened by Apatow’s solidarity with his subjects. Other interviewees include John Cleese, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mindy Kaling, Samantha Bee, and Tig Notaro.

More hilarity and heart courtesy of a distinguished collection of seasoned performers.

Apter, Terri Norton (256 pp.) $27.95 | March 29, 2022 978-1-324-00651-0

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“Adolescents’ forthright observations, their exquisite sensibilities, their joys and terrors in self-discovery are belittled, marginalized, ignored,” writes Apter. While conventional wisdom blames teens’ impulsive behavior on hormones, in reality, these changes are largely attributable to a burst in brain development comparable to that of early childhood. The author’s advice is based on the fact that, like small children, teens are undergoing such intense development that they need supportive adults in their life more than ever before. Apter celebrates the caregiverchild relationship, encouraging active listening and showing teens how to identify complex emotions. The author argues that we must also rethink our conception of how long children need parenting; new research suggests that behaviors usually associated with teens actually last until the age of 24. Even at 18, she writes, “the neural networks for impulse and emotion control are not yet at full adult strength.” Therefore, the author believes we should extend parenting well into the 20s. Apter’s approach is original, thoroughly researched, and eminently constructive. Her strategies for using empathy and active listening to manage teen behavior are compassionate, clear, and

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proactive. The book’s main limitation is the lack of intersectional analysis. While the author does mention nonbinary and transitioning individuals, there is not enough concrete consideration of alternative gender identities or race.

A wonderfully atypical teen parenting book that leans into joy.

THE IMPOSTER’S WAR The Press, Propaganda and the Newsman Who Battled for the Minds of America

Arsenault, Mark Pegasus (336 pp.) $27.95 | April 5, 2022 978-1-64313-936-4

World War I German skulduggery combined with the biography of a flamboyant newspaper editor who trumpeted it.

Although many of the familiar events of the war appear throughout the book, Arsenault, an investigative reporter for the Boston Globe, focuses on John Rathom (1868-1923), editor of the Providence Journal, a largely unknown publication until it began printing violently anti-German stories, reports that were too juicy for other papers to ignore. Although much of the information was false, British undercover sources began feeding him tidbits, so he broke some spectacular stories. He became famous, but Arsenault’s research reveals Rathom as a fraud. “The imposter was undeniably brilliant. He was also a grifter, a con man, and an extortionist,” writes the author. “He was one of the most gifted liars of his era and immune to shame.

Under ordinary circumstances, someone of his dark talents would have been best suited for a career fleecing marks at a crooked carnival.” Rathom invented a fictional past as a hypereducated, adventurous journalist who traveled the world and covered many wars, where he was often injured and befriended famous generals. An aggressive reporter, he jumped from job to job before going to work for the Journal in 1906. Once America entered the war, his persistent claim that America was awash in German spies offended the Department of Justice. Officials confronted him with his errors, threatened frightening legal action, and forced him to sign a confession of their falsity, which they kept secret—for a while. This suppressed him until 1919, when he accused—perhaps correctly—Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt of overseeing an operation that recruited sailors to covertly gather evidence against gay shipmates by engaging in actual sexual acts. Roosevelt fought back, publicizing Rathom’s confession and suing for libel, but he lost interest when he began his battle with polio.

Rathom was quickly forgotten, but Arsenault does readers a favor by reviving his memory.

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SERENADE A Balanchine Story Bentley, Toni Pantheon (320 pp.) $28.00 | April 12, 2022 978-0-593-31639-9

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A former dancer describes her relationship with George Balanchine and one of his most famous ballets.

Reading a book about ballet is like listening to ice skating on the radio: One can imagine the scene, but the strengths of one medium don’t fully translate the beauty of the other. Bentley gamely tries to translate the majesty of one ballet in her latest book, and with more success than one might expect. The ballet is Balanchine’s groundbreaking Serenade, which premiered in 1934, a piece she danced 50 times for New York City Ballet in the late 1970s, starting when she was 16. The author admits that she sees the choreographer only through “clarifying tears,” writing that her book is “the story of Balanchine, his masterpiece, and my own experience in the vicinity of both.” Bentley describes the ballet’s three movements and the steps that constitute the piece: every arabesque and tendu and turnout. Wisely, she expands her focus to include a brief history of ballet, including France’s King Louis XIV, “a very good dancer of professional quality,” and his establishment of the Académie Royale de Danse, “the first academic national ballet school in the world”; Balanchine’s early years in Russia, where he was born in St. Petersburg in 1904, an upbringing that swung from riches to destitution and back; and brief biographies of Tchaikovsky, “the undisputed musical father of classical ballet,” and Marius Ivanovich Petipa, the pioneering 19th-century choreographer whose life included duels and a scandalous elopement. Bentley’s tone is uneven: effervescent when she describes Balanchine’s ballet—“Serenade is a slant shadow on my heart. She bifurcates my being, my life”—but more restrained in historical passages. Yet the book endearingly captures her passion for ballet and the genius of a man who could incorporate a ballerina’s fall during rehearsal into a permanent part of his dance.

A heartfelt tribute to an influential choreographer and one of his crowning achievements.

investigation of the plight of coral reefs, threatened by warming waters, overfishing, and pollution. “The fairyland” of coral reefs, she writes, “was the accumulated work over the eons of hundreds of thousands of tiny animals—most no bigger than the tip of a pencil—and the symbiotic algae that lived tattooed in their tissue.” Now coral reefs struggle to survive, a challenge the author observed firsthand in her research with scientists in Florida, Sulawesi, Bali, and the Dominican Republic; visits to a coral genetics laboratory at the University of Texas; attendance at meetings, such as the 2018 Reef Futures conference; and discussions with aquarists, climate scientists, geneticists, biologists, and environmentalists, among many others focused on promoting the health of an estimated 2,400 coral species.

While she clearly explains the causes of the coral reefs’ vulnerability, she also finds evidence of hope. By the process of reticulated evolution, for example, coral species can interbreed, producing hybrids able to survive in warmer waters. Public and private efforts are ongoing. For example, by 2021, a huge restoration project in Sulawesi, funded by the Mars corporation (manufacturer of candy bars, among other products), had

LIFE ON THE ROCKS Building a Future for Coral Reefs

Berwald, Juli Riverhead (352 pp.) $28.00 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-08730-5

A study of coral reefs and the environmental changes they face.

Science journalist Berwald, the author of a book about jellyfish, Spineless, brings a doctorate in ocean science and keen curiosity to an energetic |

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planted over 280,000 corals in nearly 10 acres, “making it one of the largest restoration projects in the world, if not the largest.” The Coral Restoration Foundation, founded in 2007, promotes growing coral in labs and returning them to reefs. Besides presenting ecological concerns, Berwald underscores the devastating impact of coral demise on communities of color that depend on the health of the oceans for their economic survival.

Along with sharply drawn profiles and lucid renderings of ocean life, the author interweaves her narrative with a memoir of family trauma: her teenage daughter’s overwhelming anxiety and OCD, whose causes seem as complex as the forces that assault coral reefs.

An animated narrative that conveys a timely message.

WHY WE FIGHT The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace

Blattman, Christopher Viking (400 pp.) $32.00 | April 19, 2022 978-1-984881-57-1

A bracing look at the many reasons nations go to war.

“There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefitted.” So wrote Sun Tzu, whose The Art of War is a classic text.

Blattman, a professor of global conflict studies at the University of Chicago, concurs—but he also notes that while there are countless reasons for individuals to fight individuals and countries to fight countries, war is rarer than it might be. The reason, as he brightly puts it, is simple: “Even the bitterest enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace.” Of course, war has always occurred, and Blattman identifies five principal reasons. One is “unchecked interests,” meaning that the goals of the ruling class are out of alignment: They gain power and wealth while ordinary people lose their property and lives.

The author argues persuasively that these unchecked interests account for much of the world’s organized violence, but another is just as opportunistic: the “commitment problem.”

If a rival nation seems to be growing in power, then why not crush it now, before it gets too strong to defeat with any certainty? (Think Vietnam.) Blattman attributes much warfare to what might be considered venal causes rather than the usual explanations of conflict as emanating from the quest for resources or ethnic divisions, though they certainly figure.

More to the point, as he writes, “there is seldom one reason for a war.” Against modern theories of intervention, the author observes that aims such as regime change are often unrealized, but there are useful nonmilitary weapons that can be deployed in place of actual arms—targeted sanctions, for instance, and decentralizing authority, the latter of which is difficult for bureaucratized world police officers such as the U.S. government and the United Nations.

Valuable for readers interested in understanding matters of war and peace.

FLIPPED How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power

Bluestein, Greg Viking (352 pp.) $29.00 | March 22, 2022 978-0-593-48915-4

A political reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution follows the hardfought Georgia Senate campaigns that broke the Republican stranglehold on a bright-red state.

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“An essential read for all members of the medical community.” healing

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In his first book, Bluestein shows how grassroots efforts

by Stacey Abrams and others helped lead to runoff elections that sent two Democratic trailblazers to the U.S. Senate: Jon Ossoff, who “entered the race to muted fanfare as an unknown, ‘make Trump furious’ candidate”; and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the first Black senator from Georgia. In 2020—buoyed by 1.5 million new voters and Abrams’ narrow loss in her 2018 race for governor—Democrats mostly stopped trying to regain power by posing as “Republican-lite” candidates. “Instead,” the author writes, “leaders energized the party’s core constituencies—including many who rarely cast ballots—with policies that just years prior would have seemed unthinkable: Gun control. Decriminalization of marijuana. An end to crackdowns on illegal immigrants. Progressive social and economic initiatives.

An expansion of abortion rights.” Against the backdrop of the pandemic and the racially motivated murder of Ahmaud Arbery, Bluestein gives a closely observed and well-reported account of how the Democratic winners mobilized new voters—Ossoff ’s aides courted Gen Z by playing into viral memes on TikTok— and survived the November election. Then both faced runoffs complicated by Trump’s bitter and unrelenting efforts to invalidate the presidential vote in Georgia. It’s a brisk and colorful story, full of twists: Ossoff ’s opponent, former Dollar General CEO David Perdue, had to self-quarantine after exposure to Covid-19; Warnock faced WNBA franchise co-owner Kelly Loeffler, who boasted of being “more conservative than Attila the Hun”; and “proud Trekker” Abrams enlivened an online forum called “Star Trek: The Next Election.” Bluestein’s portrayal of Warnock is thin and largely unilluminating—events such as his contentious divorce get skimpy notice—but an otherwise rich cast keeps the book engaging even if it reveals less about him than about some of its minor figures.

A savvy account of two of the most consequential U.S. Senate elections in recent history.

HEALING When a Nurse Becomes a Patient

Brown, Theresa Algonquin (272 pp.) $27.95 | April 12, 2022 978-1-64375-069-9

A former oncology and hospice nurse is forced to navigate the medical system as a patient.

In this revealing and heart-wrenching memoir, Brown takes readers on her journey from nurse to patient following a concerning mammogram. Reflecting on the day of her diagnosis of breast cancer, she describes the type of patient she knew she must be: “passive, undemanding, easy to manage.” As an experienced nurse, she knew easy patients receive better care.

What she hadn’t fully expected as a patient was how noncompassionate the medical community could be. Brown candidly shares her experiences with what she calls “DIY cancer care,” including the need to find her own surgeon, wait weeks for potentially |

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BEHIND THE BOOK

Off The Edge Why do people fall for conspiracy theories? In Off the Edge, journalist Kelly Weill explores

BY GREGORY MCNAMEE Scott Heins

Space lasers starting forest fires. A pizza parlor serving as the front for a pedophiliac cabal. Chinese bamboopaper ballots taking the place of the real thing. The world is full of strange ideas, and it seems they get stranger by the day.

Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill has been tracking the wacky world of conspiracy theories and what she calls “fringe cultures” for years. “I got interested in niche ideas when I was in high school,” she told Kirkus in a recent phone interview, “and I never got away from them.”

That fascination has yielded the absorbing—and often disturbing—debut book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Con­ spiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything (Algonquin, Feb. 22). As its subtitle suggests, the book looks not just at the present culture’s willingness to swallow poppycock, but also at the flimflammery of bad ideas that swept the world nearly 200 years ago, rejecting Enlightenment science for superstition and anti-intellectualism.

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Weill’s primary case study is the notion, disproven since the days of the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes, that the Earth is flat. There are wrinkles in that theory: Some adherents today say that the world is ringed in ice, others that the plane on which humankind dwells is infinite and just needs willing explorers to go have a look and bring back the good news.

Samuel Birley Rowbotham, the Englishman who concocted the flat Earth theory in 1838 at the young age of 22, would probably be content with either interpretation, so long as adherents contributed to his upkeep. He was a haphazardly educated idealist who, Weill writes, “liked to get high and litigate obscure political arguments.” He was also a small-scale con man who once “made steady money as a phosphorus grifter,” holding soda water to be a panacea for whatever ailed a person, before he hit on an even better idea: claiming that the Earth was flat. He turned that claim, preposterous on its face, into something approaching a religion.

It worked, and Rowbotham found intellectual—well, pseudo-intellectual—heirs who shared several attributes with him: They liked to argue, they imagined that they knew more than scientific experts (think Marjorie Taylor Greene versus Anthony Fauci), and they were often to be found on the fringes of academia or at the gates of colleges flogging their contrarian, frequently dyspeptic treatises.

Rowbotham’s heirs are still at work today, as Weill shows. One of her cases in point, figuring on Page 1 of her book, is an “offbeat guy, but a good one,” whom she met at a Flat Earth Society conference. Mike Hughes was convinced that the world was flat, of course. He was also a pretty good tinker and mechanic who spent much of his time drumming up support for a rocket by which he would launch himself into space and get a look at the pancake of a planet for himself. It would spoil the story to say what hap-

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“the ultimate incarnation of conspiratorial thinking,” rejecting science and authority in favor of what Kellyanne Conway was fond of calling “alternate facts,” but there are degrees of conspiratorial thinking that go far beyond geographical ignorance and descend into truly dark realms.

“It’s all very challenging,” Weill says. “It’s hard to deal with people who have ideas that are racist and antisemitic at the core, whose valorization is close to sociopathy.”

Still, Weill takes pains to remind her readers that conspiracy theories at their most basic level are a means by which people try to explain the inexplicable, at least to themselves: “They let us shape our fears into something we understand.” Given how many things there are to be afraid of out there, it’s small wonder that conspiracy theories and believers in them have grown logarithmically.

If isolation is the trigger by which fear becomes conspiratorial thinking, then, Weill urges, it’s important to remain open to those whose ideas have not yet metastasized into evil. “One of the best ways to help people out of a conspiratorial mindset is probably the most frustrating of all to those who have to do it,” she says, “and that’s maintaining a human connection with them.…The flat-earthers I’ve spoken to who have left the movement tell me that what helped them was to have the truth explained to them in a nonconfrontational, noncondescending way—not in the format of a debate, but with someone they know saying, ‘Let’s talk this through.’ People who love them can bring them back, and we have to make space for them to return.”

That may seem a big job with no end in sight, but it’s a necessary one. Off the Edge makes a powerful argument for why that’s so, and it’s an intriguing tour of the fun-house world that exists alongside our own.

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pened except to note, as Weill details, that things didn’t work out well for him.

At such conferences, Weill tells Kirkus, she observed that attendees were of all social classes, distributed broadly across age cohorts, variously educated, not outwardly unbalanced. But, she adds, they were almost all White, almost all Protestant, almost all conservative—and they tended to be an older demographic. (“Those are the people who can afford to travel to conferences,” she hazards.) And most, “despite decades of mockery,” are reasonably good-natured about the people they call “Globe Earthers” and consider to be simply misled by scientists who have their own nefarious reasons for thinking that the planet is round.

That mockery is an important element, says Weill, in the making of a flat-earther, or indeed anyone intractably wedded to just about any conspiracy theory. Mockery for their beliefs pushes people away from others who are not like-minded, and, Weill observes, “loneliness and isolation are really powerful vectors into conspiracy thinking.” Take the case of the writer Eve Babitz, who died last December at the age of 78. A one-time counterculture icon who was everywhere on the scene, she became a recluse after suffering extensive burns in a terrible accident—and, in her loneliness, found that right-wing radio was just about her only friend, a font of oddly comforting fear and anger.

“There’s more than just radio,” Weill says. “Social media is much more powerful as a hook.” Indeed, her book takes a hard view of the algorithmic manipulation by which tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter privilege bad ideas over good ones, as long as they lure eyeballs and advertising dollars. And that’s to say nothing of Alex Jones and his legion of imitators.

Therein lies one of the most disturbing aspects of Off the Edge. Flat-earthers don’t just believe in a flat Earth.

There’s a Venn diagram of outlandish thinking to chart what Weill calls “a whole package of beliefs” conveniently assembled for easy wholesale adoption. While not every flat-earther is a right-winger, she notes, most are. Most accept the premise that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump. Many buy the view that storming the Capitol wasn’t such a bad thing. Many are doomsday preppers, convinced that some sort of apocalypse is fast upon us and the unready will be obliterated.

Most are opposed to vaccinating against Covid. Most are sympathetic to, if not believers in, the cluster of improbabilities that constitutes QAnon.

On the further end of the spectrum are the Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis. Flat Earth may be, as Weill writes,

Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor. Off the Edge was reviewed in the Dec. 1, 2021, issue.

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life-changing results, and hassle people to get important information. She was also flippantly (and mistakenly) told she wasn’t on the list on the day of her scheduled surgery. “All I wanted after my diagnosis,” writes Brown “was for someone involved in treating my cancer to sit down with me, look me in the eye, and explain my diagnosis, discuss what my prognosis looked like, and clarify my likely course of treatment.” But that never happened.

Her experiences as a patient also forced her to reflect on how she treated her own patients. Alternating the narrative between her time as a nurse and as a patient, she passionately shares the range of emotions she felt and offers advice for both patients and nurses who are facing breast cancer. Brown also contends that in the U.S., patients, especially those seeking cancer treatment, are frequently treated differently based on where they live or their ethnicity. The author urges breast cancer specialists to “work to ensure that all women diagnosed with breast cancer receive humane care.” By sharing her story, Brown delivers much-needed advocacy for those who are often ignored or misunderstood.

An essential read for all members of the medical community.

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THE VORTEX A True Story of History’s Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation Carney, Scott & Jason Miklian Ecco/HarperCollins (528 pp.) $29.99 | March 29, 2022 978-0-06-298541-5

How unscrupulous politicians exploited the effects of a catastrophic cyclone to commit genocide and nearly trigger a nuclear war.

Carney is an investigative journalist and anthropologist who spent six years reporting from South Asia for Wired, Mother Jones, and other publications, and Miklian is a senior researcher at the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Oslo.

The authors begin by documenting the 1970 Bhola cyclone, a staggeringly destructive storm that killed roughly 500,000 people in the densely populated coastal area of East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). Then the authors turn to the complex aftermath, anatomizing the ruthless opportunism of West Pakistani politicians who sought to consolidate their power by exterminating ethnic rivals; the self-serving machinations of American and Soviet leaders whose interventions culminated in a nuclear standoff; the desperate efforts of Bengali resistance fighters to secure independence in the face of brutal oppression; and the often heroic attempts of aid workers to mitigate the catastrophic human toll. The authors effectively translate their exhaustive research into a compelling narrative, cleverly alternating chapters among the perspectives of a diverse range of protagonists, from Mohammed Hai, a humble young man who became a revolutionary, to international power brokers such as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. This is a riveting, page-turning story of human devastation, political corruption, and individual bravery as well as a cautionary tale with universal relevance. “This book is about climate change,” they argue convincingly, showing how rising global temperatures will continue to boost both the frequency and intensity of cyclones in many coastal areas, prompting extreme political volatility and large-scale human suffering. To those who may feel complacent about what happened a half-century ago in a relatively obscure part of the world, Carney and Miklian deliver a stark warning: “Our global climate future means not just flooded beach houses in twenty years and more expensive groceries next decade but an increasing likelihood of selective genocide and even global international war.”

A powerful, timely exploration of an environmental and political tragedy.

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“A wide-ranging biography that fully captures the subject’s ingenuity, originality, and musical genius.” dilla time

DILLA TIME The Life and Afterlife of the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

IS SCIENCE ENOUGH? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice Chomsky, Aviva Beacon Press (240 pp.) $16.00 paper | April 5, 2022 978-0-8070-1576-6

Charnas, Dan MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (480 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-0-374-13994-0

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An ambitious, dynamic biography of J Dilla, who may be the most influential hip-hop artist known by the least number of people.

A professor at NYU/Tisch’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music best known for his chronicle of the business of hip-hop, The Big Payback, Charnas uses myriad storytelling techniques to make his case for the importance of James Dewitt Yancey (1974-2006), aka J Dilla. To explain Dilla’s groundbreaking approach to rhythm, the author uses graphics to approximate conventional rhythms and contrasts them with the hip-hop producer’s method of slowing some elements while accelerating others. He also offers playlists so readers can hear how Dilla transformed songs and how, eventually, his approach took over hip-hop in the late 1990s. To the author’s credit, he also explains why technological advances allowed other producers and DJs to mimic the sonic style Dilla pioneered—often with broader success, as producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis did on Janet Jackson’s chart-topping smash “Got Til It’s Gone.” Of course, Dilla generated his own hits, with important remixes like the Brand New Heavies’ “Sometimes” and, most notably, his production of Common’s “The Light.” His 2006 album, Donuts, is considered a classic of instrumental hip-hop. As definitively as Charnas chronicles Dilla’s rise through the ranks of Detroit hip-hop and his partnership with Q-Tip, Questlove, D’Angelo, and other significant figures, his reporting on how success didn’t solve all of Dilla’s personal problems or protect him from illness sets this tale apart. The author’s discussion of Dilla’s decline and death from a rare blood disease and lupus is particularly heartwrenching, especially against the backdrop of his blooming career. Also memorable is Charnas’ chronicle of the family infighting that followed his death, which even spilled over into lawsuits against fan-created fundraisers at a time when Dilla’s work was finally being celebrated around the world.

A wide-ranging biography that fully captures the subject’s ingenuity, originality, and musical genius.

A hard-nosed evaluation of the myriad problems we face regarding climate change.

Chomsky emphasizes that greenhouse gas emissions represent a fraction of the problem, which includes ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, nitrogen release by agriculture and industry, deforestation, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution. Her solutions take a dim view of current strategy, beginning with technology. Most private- and public-sector leaders strongly believe that high-tech advances will allow us to extract more and emit less, but this approach relies on the exploitation of the many

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in the interests of the few. Throughout, Chomsky makes a convincing case that capitalism bears a heavy responsibility for the current situation, and she offers a superb education on efforts to reduce emissions. Readers will learn about international conferences (Kyoto, Paris), their compromises, and, absent the political will to ban or heavily regulate fossil fuels, the plethora of largely toothless efforts to reduce emissions through financial incentives. The author delivers lucid explanations of carbon taxes, the cap-and-trade system, carbon capture and storage, and carbon offsets while pointing out that most nations subsidize the fossil fuel industry. Consequently, emissions continue to rise. In the section on individual action, Chomsky shows little enthusiasm for recycling and attempts at energy efficiency. “Personal purification is not in and of itself a very effective form of political activism,” she writes, noting that genuine change involves avoiding consumption: going car-free, avoiding plane flights, eliminating meat, etc.

Mass movements often work, but collective action is hard to come by, and the author admits that results so far have been spotty. She argues that social justice is at the heart of the

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climate crisis: 45% of emissions come from 10% of the population, “the high-consuming global elite.” Marginalized communities emit less but suffer most of the consequences. Chomsky concludes with questions that the debate evades: Can there be economic growth without environmental destruction? Is capitalism dependent on economic growth? Are we making progress?

An outstanding primer on climate change but not for the faint of heart.

THE DÉJÀ VU black dreams & black time

Civil, Gabrielle Coffee House (320 pp.) $16.95 paper | Feb. 22, 2022 978-1-56689-622-1

An exuberant collection of texts and artifacts by a Black feminist performance artist.

In a disarmingly candid postscript, Civil, who teaches creative writing at CalArts, discusses her decision not to use a capital B for the word black when referring to race. Though she understands the impetus and values the gesture, “the déjà vu is my book…an attempt to reflect my voice, my inner life, and something about my time….I reserve the right to make different choices myself (even within the span of this text). I’m down for lowercase blackness, capital Blackness, all caps BLACKNESS, wild-style bLaCkNeSs, nourbeSe-N b l a c k N e s s, and other combinations.” An unwavering commitment to upholding a unique personal aesthetic while exploring black dreams is the driving force behind this unusual book, a kind of archive or scrapbook of performance pieces, scripts, poems, conversations, collaborations, lectures, and essays. As in the postscript, the narrative touches at many points on the tensions created by recent changes in the way we use and interpret language. One standout piece, “Blue Flag,” is a palindrome essay that unpacks the convoluted story of Civil’s being asked to write an introduction to a reissue of Wanda Coleman’s 1977 chapbook, Art in the Court of the Blue Fag. Throughout the book, Civil also provides inspiring instructions and DIY rituals for readers. For example, she shares the advice of a friend who was trying to help her cut through indecision about taking an academic position. He told her to repeat to herself, “I’m Gabrielle Civil. Now start acting like it.” To readers, the author suggests, “Switch out my name for yours, then repeat it. I’m ____________. Now start acting like it. See what happens.

A speech act and a spell.”

To be read, as the author suggests, like a dream: Garner what you can, and hopefully something new will unfurl in your mind.

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MAKING HISTORY The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past Cohen, Richard Simon & Schuster (736 pp.) $40.00 | March 8, 2022 978-1-982195-78-6

Former book publisher Cohen surveys the state of history writing over the past two millennia.

This wide-ranging account hits most of the predictable points in a traditional, occasionally entertaining introductory-level course on the writers of history in Western civilization. Cohen, the author of How To Write Like Tolstoy: A Journey Into the Minds of Our Greatest Writers and other books, begins with a chapter on Herodotus and Thucydides and then moves steadily forward, with chapters on Latin historians, medieval European historians, Civil War historians, “The Red Historians: From Karl Marx

to Eric Hobsbawm,” and so forth. The work of Herodotus, he writes, “brought into play…a special kind of inquiry—one that encompasses geography, ethnography, philology, genealogy, sociology, biography, anthropology, psychology, and imaginative re-creation (as in the arts).” Cohen seldom considers history as written by scholars other than those in Europe and, later, North America, and he recapitulates the biography of each of the historians he considers, which leads to an uneven text. For example, he spends more time on Voltaire’s many mistresses than on his thoughts and writings. This makes for smooth but rarely thought-provoking reading. While the book is useful as a broad overview for neophytes, readers looking for fresh insights into history and history writing should look elsewhere. As the narrative progresses, Cohen tends increasingly to group historians together not so much by historical period or approach to the subject matter as by less relevant standards. A chapter titled “Herstory” lumps together women scholars from the past 2,000 years, from Chinese historian and philosopher Ban Zhao to notable 20th-century historians Barbara Tuchman and Doris Kearns Goodwin, and

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“Engaging, enlightening, and deeply informative.” different

the chapter on Black historians could have been more well considered. (Overall, the book is notable more for its length than depth.) Cohen branches out to consider, though seldom favorably, novelists, journalists, TV producers, and photographers as historians. The book is amply illustrated with photographs, maps, and cartoons.

Lively but long-winded and largely superficial biographies of historians through the ages.

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DIFFERENT Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

de Waal, Frans Norton (408 pp.) $30.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-324-00710-4

What humans can learn from anthropoid apes.

World-renowned primatologist de Waal draws on a long career of investigating chimpanzees and bonobos—both equally close to humans genetically—to argue with wit and clarity against assumptions about sex and gender that generate inequality. With anthropoid apes his main focus, the author also looks to many other species (mice, tortoises, marmosets, and whales, among them) for evidence in responding to salient questions: Does the behavior of men and women differ naturally, or is it culturally determined?

Are there only two genders? Does gender account for differences in intelligence, aggression, leadership, cooperation, and competition? Are females naturally more empathetic than males? The author demonstrates how chimpanzees and bonobos are studies in contrast. Chimpanzee society “is aggressive, territorial, and run by males. Bonobos are peaceful, sex-loving, and female dominated.” Yet de Waal highlights similarities between the sexes in both societies—in intelligence, cooperation, and competition, for example, and even in leadership. Although males are generally larger and the “overwhelming source” of physical violence, still, “violence is not their default condition,” nor is it the only way an ape can exert power. Debunking theorists who insist that all behavior is dictated by genetic inheritance, de Waal underscores the “dynamic interplay between genes and the environment.” As for sexual behavior and identity, the author asserts that being transgender “is intrinsic and constitutional”— i.e., “the opposite of socially constructed.” Same-sex behavior is found among penguins as well as 450 other species, including humans’ close relatives anthropoid apes, and de Waal notes the prevalence of “female sexual adventurism,” which contradicts the idea that males are sexually insatiable. “It’s time to abandon the myth that men have a stronger sex drive and are more promiscuous than women,” he writes. The author enlivens his pages with attentive, sometimes moving portraits of animals he has encountered as well as anecdotes about his own experiences as one of six brothers.

Engaging, enlightening, and deeply informative.

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THE REPUBLIC OF VIOLENCE The Tormented Rise of Abolition in Andrew Jackson’s America Dickey, J.D. Pegasus (408 pp.) $29.95 | March 1, 2022 978-1-64313-928-9

A new history of the 1830s anti-slavery movement and the unprecedented violence with which it was met.

Dickey focuses on several key abolitionist leaders, notably William Lloyd Garrison, easily the best-known figure of the movement’s early years. But as the author shows, Garrison was hardly alone. While he was a pioneering voice, he had a number of supporters and rivals for the leading role in the movement. Among them, silk merchants Lewis and Arthur Tappan “generously funded the movement as part of their social gospel of evangelical Christianity.” The brothers,

write the author, “would go down in history as the money men behind the movement, but their role was much more pivotal.” James Forten, a Philadelphia sailmaker, and his daughters were among the most prominent Black abolitionists of the era. As Dickey’s title suggests, the movement had more than its share of opponents—not only Southerners who wanted to maintain the status quo, but also Northern business interests that had considerable stakes in their interactions with slaveholders as well as low-wage White workers who viewed African Americans as threats. Another major faction were colonizers, who supported returning exslaves to Africa, a program firmly opposed by Garrison and his allies. Dickey offers a well-documented history of how the abolition movement grew and changed over the years and of the race riots that swept Northern cities, including Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The author also examines a recurring issue for the abolitionists: whether or not to defend themselves against the violence of their opponents.

Garrison remained firmly committed to nonviolence despite a “near-lynching” in Boston in 1835. Interestingly, while many

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of the abolitionists based their beliefs on Christian doctrine, Garrison eventually came to distrust religion as an unreliable ally. Others, worn out by the epic struggle, retired in favor of younger abolition fighters such as Frederick Douglass.

A fascinating look at a slice of history that may be unfamiliar to many general readers.

PURSUING JOHN BROWN On the Trail of a Radical Abolitionist Dyer, Joyce Univ. of Akron (515 pp.) $40.00 paper | May 1, 2022 978-1-629221-36-6

A wide-ranging travelogue in the service of American history.

For some, John Brown (1800-1859), the armed and incendiary abolitionist,

was a hero. For others, he was a murderer, certainly an insurrectionary. Dyer was fascinated when she learned that he once lived in her small Ohio town—and possibly spent time in her own house—and she borrows biographer Richard Holmes’ “footsteps principle” to follow her subject of inquiry from place to place. “Returning to the physical places a person once occupied always seems such a private and mysterious act,” she writes, “a way of finding something out that reading alone can’t supply.” Though her reading of Brown’s history is extensive, the book benefits from the author’s hands-on approach to the principal places of his life and death, including apex moments such as Brown’s massacre of pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and his capture (by a rising young officer named Robert E. Lee) at the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, from which he intended to spark an uprising of enslaved Black people. Along the way, Dyer explodes a few myths and realigns others: For one thing, the Underground Railroad seldom involved the cellars and tunnels of legend, and its stations were inhabited more by freed Black people than by well-meaning Whites. On that score, the author takes a hard look at her hometown to find that only about a third of its pre–Civil War inhabitants were ardent abolitionists, about as many as those who believed the South should remain a slave-based economy. These two observations coincide: “Compared with the number of abolitionists who lived in Hudson,” she writes, “there really were few residents known to have engaged in Railroad activity.” Even the remembrance of Brown, largely forgotten in textbooks, was largely the project of Black people decades after his hanging. Dyer ranks alongside the late Tony Horwitz in her explorations of the past.

A thoughtful, elegantly written contribution to American studies.

WOMAN The American History of an Idea

Faderman, Lillian Yale Univ. (576 pp.) $32.50 | March 15, 2022 978-0-300-24990-3

The distinguished feminist historian analyzes how the concept of woman has evolved over almost 500 years of American history.

Woman, Faderman argues, is a patriarchal concept with roots that run deep. Even the most liberal views of (White) womanh­ ood, such as those of 17th-century Puritan minister Roger Williams, centered around woman as the “weaker Vessel…more fitted to keep and order the House and Children.” Wealthy women, especially widows, had slightly more agency, but a woman’s place, then and in the centuries that followed, was in the home. As the states expanded into Native American land, that idea was forced on Native women throughout the territories. At the same time, enslaved women suffered both race and gender marginalization that, as Angela Davis noted, “annulled” their womanhood. By the 19th century, women transformed the chains that bound them 58

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to woman into what Faderman calls the “visas” that took them out of the home and allowed them to “claim a voice in the public square.” Yet even as females—largely middle-class and White— gained greater access to public life in the 20th century, patriarchy, in the guise of medical science, denounced independent-minded women for violating gender norms. By the 1980s, Faderman engagingly demonstrates, thinkers like the radical lesbian feminist Monique Wittig called woman a dangerous patriarchal “myth” and helped liberate the concept of gender—and genderprescribed behaviors—from sexuality. Faderman ably brings the discussion into the 21st century and the present day, when nonbinary conceptions of gender are gaining further acceptance in the mainstream even as the resolutely patriarchal system—perfectly embodied by Donald Trump and his cohorts—continues to fight against anything other than a strictly binary gender structure.

This highly readable, inclusive, and deeply researched book will appeal to scholars of women and gender studies as well as anyone seeking to understand the historical patterns that misogyny has etched across every era of American culture.

An intelligently provocative, vital reading experience.

DEAR DAMAGE Essays

Farmer, Ashley Marie Sarabande (200 pp.) $16.95 paper | March 15, 2022 978-1-946448-90-3 A writer reckons with her grandmother’s “mercy killing” in this set of loosely connected essays.

In 2014, Farmer’s family became a national news story. Her grandmother, a quadriplegic in severe pain after a fall, was shot and killed by her husband in a Carson City, Nevada, hospital to end her suffering. (He intended to kill himself as well, but the gun “broke apart in his hands.”) In her debut nonfiction book, Farmer discusses some of the public responses to the incident and ensuing debates over assisted suicide. An appendix reproduces a formal letter she wrote in support of her grandfather and the state’s motion to dismiss charges against him. But most of the book

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“A provocative and original examination of the flaws in mental health treatment.” pathological

represents the author’s interior effort to assess her grandparents’ relationship (she reproduces snippets of interviews with them), the manifestations of grief that followed the incident, and the author’s own struggles to write about it. She’s attuned to how much America is steeped in gun idioms: “It’s strange how guns suddenly appear in ordinary phrases: Under fire. Stick to your guns. Oh, shoot.” Yet her sympathy for her grandfather isn’t absolute. “Regardless of my grandfather’s intention, she writes, “I consider the hearts stopped at the sound of the single shot, the psyches jarred, the people who thought, if even for a second, that they should run or take cover, who thought, This is it.” Farmer weaves these considerations, somewhat awkwardly, into essays exploring her own feelings about family: a failed first marriage, a second marriage so defined by hand-to-mouth living (to make ends meet, she stitched together multiple adjunct teaching gigs) that children seem unlikely. In that regard, Farmer’s book feels like two solid but incomplete essay collections.

However, at her best, the author exposes how trauma and family shape our lives no matter how we try to resist.

A slim and uneven but striking book, sensitive to grief and tested relationships.

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PATHOLOGICAL The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses Fay, Sarah HarperOne (320 pp.) $27.99 | March 15, 2022 978-0-06-306868-1

Fay’s incisive, wide-ranging debut explores her decadeslong immersion in the mental health system.

Beginning when she was a teenager, Fay was diagnosed with six different mental illnesses, sometimes one by one, sometimes in combination, and often based on the skimpiest of evidence. Therapists and physicians concluded that she was suffering from anorexia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, ADHD, OCD, and bipolar disorder.

They prescribed medications accordingly, and Fay dutifully swallowed both the diagnoses and the pills—and then found it nearly impossible to extricate herself from either. The narrative, justifiably soaked with anger but also darkly funny at points, does not follow the course of the usual mental health memoir, in which the subject finally receives and responds to the “correct” analysis of her problems and lives happily-ever-after.

Instead, Fay, still troubled, still medicated, stepped out of the loop of therapy and began to refute its basic tenets. The author boldly combines three strands: an account of her trip down the rabbit hole of the mental health system, where she tried valiantly to persuade herself to accept diagnoses that didn’t seem to correspond to her actual life; a dynamic critique of the various incarnations of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men­ tal Disorders, which serves as a guidebook for many clinicians; and, unexpectedly but beguilingly, analyses of the ways punctuation can reveal and structure thought. While criticism of the DSM is not new, Fay’s position as an insider suffering from the results of its application as a method of analysis gives her a unique perspective. Sharply personal and impeccably detailed, the book is bound to raise questions in the minds of readers diagnosed with any number of disorders about the validity of trying to cram individual experience into what Fay contends are essentially imaginary categories.

A provocative and original examination of the flaws in mental health treatment.

THE EMERGENCY A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER

“Exceptionally brazen, epiphanic queer writing ... much akin to Jack Kerouac”

Fisher, Thomas One World/Random House (272 pp.) $27.00 | March 22, 2022 978-0-593-23067-1

Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter

A memoir from an emergency department doctor on Chicago’s South Side.

Fisher, who graduated from medical school in 2001, started working as an

TM

Contact the publisher regarding rights through unboundedition.com.

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The essays between these chapters of reportage chronicle the author’s life and his frequent frustration with a medical system that cares more about making money than caring for patients, especially those on Medicare. His indictments of the system are consistently convincing, but framing them as letters to patients is an awkward literary device, making the narrative disjointed.

Nonetheless, the text is well written and compassionate and exposes countless problems within the American medical machine. Ta-Nehisi Coates provides the foreword.

A persuasive, sympathetic, scattered insider’s report on a broken system.

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attending physician in the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2006. Beginning his first book with a dramatic account of how the emergency room faced its first Covid-19 cases in February 2020, he moves back and forth through time, alternating between tightly focused sections on the cases he sees on a given day and letters ostensibly directed toward some of those patients and others. The author’s discussions of the initial impact of Covid-19, which “smashed through the South Side’s multi-generational homes” and where standing near unmasked patients left him feeling “like being in the same room with someone holding a gun,” are the most compelling. But the book, clearly started before the pandemic, is not so much about the effects of the pandemic—when the emergency department was less busy than usual (due to “social distancing orders and fear” of the virus), populated mainly by the victims of gun violence or drug overdoses—but rather the inadequacies of health care for Black citizens in the South Side and other urban areas.

In the chapters about particular days in the emergency room, Fisher delivers sharp portraits of individual patients. However, like the doctor who treated them, typically only for a few minutes, we have no idea what happens to them following the visit.

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“Big ideas worth attention.” the journey of humanity

WHAT MY BONES KNOW A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma Foo, Stephanie Ballantine (352 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-0-593-23810-3

A radio journalist and former This American Life producer recounts how she healed from complex PTSD. In her early 20s, Foo began seeing a therapist to discuss her boyfriend and other problems. But it was only after she left California and turned 30 that the therapist diagnosed her with complex PTSD, explaining that “sufferers of complex PTSD have undergone continual abuse—trauma that has occurred over a long period of time, over the course of years.” Using her investigative journalism skills, Foo began probing her troubled past. She remembered her unhappy mother’s violence and how she later became her father’s adolescent “caretaker” after her mother left. By high school, family dysfunction had transformed her into “a tiny, foul-mouthed pirate” who could not keep friends. Foo’s research into trauma and the brain later led to the conclusion that she had become “trapped within [a destructive] loop of stimulus, response.” She quit her stressful job at This American Life to interview neuroscientists and psychologists, practice yin yoga, join a childhood trauma support group, try experimental therapies, and care for the endometriosis she realized may have been a bodily reaction to years of living with C-PTSD. Foo then returned to her childhood home in San Jose to “fact-check my abuse.” In the course of interviewing old acquaintances, she realized how trauma had turned her otherwise beautiful hometown into a place she could only remember as “a place of hurt.” Ultimately, it was a stable, supportive connection to her new boyfriend and his loving parents that led her to final acceptance of how abuse and self-hatred had warped her mind, heart, and body. As Foo sheds necessary light on the little-discussed topic of C-PTSD, she holds out the hope that while “healing is never final…along with the losses are the triumphs” that can positively transform a traumatized life.

A sharp, insightful, and stirring memoir.

THE JOURNEY OF HUMANITY The Origins of Wealth and Inequality Galor, Oded Dutton (416 pp.) $28.00 | March 22, 2022 978-0-593-18599-5

Insights into two important questions: Why has the world suddenly become so wealthy, and why is there vast inequality between nations?

In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote that when societies produced a food surplus, the rise in living standards was always 62

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temporary because the population also rose and consumed it, so living conditions reverted to the subsistence level. However, soon after his death, living standards rose steadily. Since then, life expectancy more than doubled, birth rates plummeted, and per capita income skyrocketed with no end in sight. Traditional scholarship gives the Industrial Revolution credit, but Brown University professor Galor argues persuasively that the move away from Malthusian theory had less to do with the steam engine than “human capital.” During most of history, laborers put their children to work and earned extra income, which encouraged them to have more children. Consequently, populations rose. By the 19th century, jobs often required workers who could read and calculate. Since so many people were uneducated (“literacy rates over most of human existence were insignificant”), some businesses joined the growing movement for free, compulsory, universal education.

Children became human capital that increased in value as they became skilled at higher-paying jobs. With so much invested in each schoolchild, who brought in no income, parents had fewer children. When school attendance rises, fertility drops, and this is happening around the world, even in developing nations. Poverty is declining, and prosperity is increasing to the point where environmental degradation is a persistent problem. Regarding his second theme, Galor explores inequality without delivering a firm explanation of why some societies prosper. That the quarrelsome, fragmented nations of Europe led the way, while other empires stagnated, has produced a sizable amount of scholarship, to which Galor makes a modest contribution. Diversity has long been praised as a promoter of growth, profit, and creativity. The author astutely examines how it can also lead to political instability and social conflict, showing how multicultural societies that don’t work diligently to promote coexistence suffer for it.

Big ideas worth attention.

THE LONELY STORIES 22 Celebrated Writers on the Joys & Struggles of Being Alone

Ed. by Garrett, Natalie Eve Catapult (272 pp.) $16.95 paper | April 19, 2022 978-1-948226-60-8

Writers reflect on their experiences of loneliness and solitude.

In this above-average collection of personal essays, a richly diverse set of writers recall how periods of solitude have impacted their lives. Depending on their past or present circumstances, they evoke sensations of dread or despair, joy and enlightened freedom, often working through their darkest emotions to discover a renewed sense of well-being. “I was drawn to essays about the quiet delights of solitude and the shocks of isolation, as well as reflections on the gentler waves of loneli­ness that come and go throughout our lives,” writes Garrett. “I longed to create a harbor for |

our most vulnerable stories, told with urgency and sometimes with levity—affirming stories that might reas­sure and reconnect us. Most of all, I hoped to shine light on a universal emotion and experience that is often pushed down into the dark.”

Each essay, most of which are memorable, offers a meaningful glimpse into the varying depths of loneliness. “Javelinas” is Claire Dederer’s account of her six-week writer’s residency in Marfa, Texas, where she confronted her all-consuming issues with alcoholism. In “Exodus 2020,” Emily Raboteau hauntingly recounts a sorrowful sense of impending loss and doom caused by the mass departure of a New York City apartment building’s tenants during the pandemic. Lena Dunham examines her evolving feelings of aloneness during the breakup of a long-term relationship. Yiyun Li’s “To Speak Is To Blunder but I Venture” and Jean Kwok’s “The Perpetual Foreigner” movingly reflect on their personal journeys and struggles as Chinese immigrants; the loneliness of forfeiting one’s native language; and the sense of freedom in allowing one’s ambition to flower. It’s been well noted that writing can be a lonely endeavor, but this book demonstrates that great illumination

can be found in the process. Other contributors include Maggie Shipstead, Lev Grossman, Anthony Doerr, Peter Ho Davies, Jesmyn Ward, and Melissa Febos.

An absorbing, moving, cathartic collection.

AGEISM UNMASKED Exploring Age Bias and How To End It Gendron, Tracey Steerforth (192 pp.) $19.95 | March 1, 2022 978-1-58642-322-3

A study highlighting the enduring issue of age bias and discrimination in society.

Gendron, the chair of the gerontology department at Virginia Commonwealth University, has spent her career advocating for older adults. Combining her vast experience with relevant research,

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“A cogent, erudite historical analysis.” the rise and fall of the neoliberal order

the author first exposes the roots of ageism and how modern culture, in its vapid quest for eternal youthfulness, frames the process of aging in condescending stereotypes. Gendron shows how preconceived notions about elderly populations as irrelevant, out of touch with modern society, and predominantly frail have persevered since ancient Greece, where “old age was conceptualized as a sad, downward slope of decrepitude.”

While clinical and technological advancements have improved these situations, general attitudes, social determinants, and a systemic devaluing of older people remain unchanged. The author delves into discriminatory treatment and forced retirement situations in corporate environments as well as the more current conundrum of “COVID ageism,” and she shares stories about her own parents’ retirement “life stage” scenarios. Her examples illuminate a problem endemic in cultures across the globe, and the need for change is crucial. She points out some methods to create incremental change (some readers may wish for more proactive tips), including fighting the personal stigma of internalized oppression about growing old or being called old by others. While her prose is crisp, declarative, and scholarly, it is also accessible and accented with personality and wit; the inclusion of her own personal reflections about aging add a great amount of relatability and narrative connection. Readers concerned with aging will find Gendron’s discussion on the expectations of getting older, as well as the challenges many face with aging, refreshingly helpful. Also crucial is the author’s optimistic perspective about appreciating and embracing the aging process, which can promote better mental health, opportunities for productivity, personal development, and overall happiness.

A vital, applicable examination of how to fight inaccurate or unfair assumptions about growing old.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEOLIBERAL ORDER America and the World in the Free Market Era Gerstle, Gary Oxford Univ. (408 pp.) $27.95 | April 5, 2022 978-0-19-751964-6

A survey of the profound political changes that have marked the last 50 years.

Historian Gerstle connects the current state of American politics—characterized by a rise of enthnonationalism and populism, distrust of open borders and free trade, and disillusion with democracy itself—with the fall of neoliberalism, which had prevailed from the 1970s through the 1990s. He traces the germs of neoliberalism to the 18th century, when classical liberalism promised “new forms of government, new ways of organizing the economy, and new possibilities for cultivating the self.” In the 1920s and ’30s, liberalism, often conflated with progressivism, shaped Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, whose “broad commitment to the public good” included government 64

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oversight of capitalism to control the dangerous market forces that led to the Great Depression. In the 1950s, however, what appeared to be an “organized and bureaucratized society” was assailed as “suffocating the human spirit,” a feeling that became exacerbated in the next decade. The oil crisis and recession of the 1970s opened the door to Ronald Reagan, the “ideological architect” of neoliberalism. Reagan melded a policy of deregulation, open borders, and globalization with a revival of neo-Victorian values of order, discipline, strong families, and self-reliance. “Many of the principals in the story of neoliberalism’s rise,” Gerstle notes, came to identify themselves as conservatives. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a push to foster the “capitalist penetration” of new markets in parts of the world that emerged from communist rule further fueled the tenets of neoliberalism—and positioned Bill Clinton as its “key facilitator.” Gerstle sees failing economic and political policies under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as the recession of 2008, as giving rise to the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter: protests from left and right that laid the groundwork for Donald Trump. Acknowledging that neoliberalism is broken, Gerstle sees the nation’s prevailing disorder and dysfunction auguring both “great possibility” and “great peril.”

A cogent, erudite historical analysis.

THE FLAG AND THE CROSS White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy

Gorski, Philip S. & Samuel L. Perry Oxford Univ. (192 pp.) $21.95 | April 1, 2022 978-0-19-761868-4

Two sociologists examine polling data and American history to chart the dangerous rise of White Christian nationalism.

The so-called Christian right isn’t strictly Christian, write Gorski and Perry. They point to one survey in which one-fifth of those who identified as “Christian” also said they were secular or belonged to some other religion, meaning that “religious terms like ‘Christian’ and ‘evangelical’ are becoming markers of social identity rather than just religious conviction.” Many Christian nationalists are aggrieved Whites who believe that liberals are bent on “replacing” them with immigrants and minorities. By the logic of those adherents, events such as the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol are not insurrectionary but instead acts of self-defense, a violence that Christ’s purported followers endorse with full throats. Interestingly, according to Gorski and Perry, this Christian right, at whose heart lies “anti-Black animus” that dates back hundreds of years (whence the furor over the corrective 1619 Project), does not consider Muslims or even atheists to be existentially threatening. The real, dreaded enemies are “socialists,” and even if many Christian right-wingers probably couldn’t define what a socialist is, the thinking is that everything from taxes to the pandemic lockdowns are socialist ploys to take away rights that White Christian nationalists |

believe should be reserved unto Whites. Unfortunately, given the trajectory of American history, the authors write, there is no reason to think that this movement will fade away anytime soon. If decentralized power means that the worst of nationalist authoritarianism would be localized if Trump or some acolyte came to power, the authors suggest that it would be disastrous all the same: “Ironically, a serious attempt to ‘make America great again’ would probably end up making it chaotic and poor.”

A jarring analysis of a powerful and determined political minority bent on power.

REBELS AGAINST THE RAJ Western Fighters for India’s Freedom

Guha, Ramachandra Knopf (496 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-1-101-87483-7

Compelling minibiographies of a group of fighters for Indian independence who were born outside India but were fiercely devoted to the cause.

Guha, a Bangalore-based author of multiple books about Gandhi, among other works, compares these seven exemplary individuals to the International Brigade who fought against the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War as well as the “white South Africans who took a stand against apartheid” and fought for “a multiracial democracy.” In India, these figures “decisively changed sides, identifying completely with India, meeting Indians on absolutely equal terms as friends and lovers, and as

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The Classroom of Life.

A book of tools to help overcome the obstacles and adversity of life.

by Dr. Anthony Cedolini

A fifty-year dream to help identify and understand the challenges and vagaries faced on life’s journey. Everyone will experience pain, stress, and worry. Every mile will require strategies in dealing with difficult people, failed relationships, addictions, love, death, and the value of mentors—the very essence of survival, leading to personal happiness.

This book is the classroom covering all these life experiences.

“A sweeping, insightful set of life lessons drawn from vast experience.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Available at

ISBN: 978-1-64184-647-9 (hardback) ISBN: 978-1-64184-648-6 (paperback) Learn more about Dr. Anthony Cedolini at drtonycedolini.com

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comrades on the street and in prison.” Guha weaves into the story of independence the public and private battles of Englishwoman Annie Besant (1847-1943), who embraced theosophy and Indian home rule and, in 1917, was elected president of the Indian National Congress; and Gandhi colleague and journalist Samuel Stokes, a lapsed American missionary who wrote in 1919, “Christianity and Hinduism need each other. The best in each is incomplete without the other.” Mira Behn, “Gandhi’s adopted daughter,” learned traditional weaving and spinning at Gandhi’s side and advocated for the educational connection between that work and political freedom. B.G. Horniman, a Britishborn journalist who became a fearlessly outspoken editor at the Bombay Chronicle, was exiled from India for seven years before returning. In 1946, Sarala Devi (formerly Catherine Mary Heilemann) established a social service–oriented ashram for girls within an extremely conservative society. Dick Keithahn was a displaced American Christian who continued the practices of Gandhi after his death by helping establish a center for rural renewal through education, health care, and agricultural practices. Martin Luther King Jr. visited in 1959 and declared the fight for social justice in India “of inestimable value.” As Guha demonstrates, all of these individuals dedicated their lives to the causes for which Gandhi was so passionate.

An inspiring education tool for those researching India and nonviolent independence movements.

UNLOCKING THE KETO CODE The Revolutionary New Science of Keto That Offers More Benefits Without Deprivation Gundry, Steven R. Harper Wave (272 pp.) $28.99 | March 8, 2022 978-0-06-311838-6

The bestselling author and doctor assesses the keto nutritional program.

In his latest book, Gundry examines the nuances of the ketogenic diet and energy-producing mitochondria, the diversity of its touted health benefits, and how he believes keto has been applied in the wrong ways. While the author admits that he has recommended ketogenic diets to his patients for decades, recent research had led to alternatives to the plan that avoid the difficult-to-maintain dietary restrictions. Gundry cites two case studies in which keto failed two “metabolically inflexible” patients, and he highlights issues concerning weight stability once patients have achieved success as well as the ineffectiveness of the diet in terms of adherence to fat intake requirements. The author presents a new understanding of ketones and the revolutionary science supporting polyphenols and the anti-aging benefits of “mitochondrial uncoupling” and how people can ignite this process through easy dietary modifications. Gundry’s extensive list of versatile food sources associated with this new trend is exhaustive yet informative, with pages of recipes serving as a guidepost for serious dieters. The author promotes the consumption of 66

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whole foods and advises against processed sugar and “Frankenfoods loaded with Frankenfats.” While Gundry firmly believes in the power of the ketogenic diet, he cautions that it doesn’t work for everyone, with drawbacks ranging from “carb confusion” to meal monotony. His new approach, which involves mitochondrial-stimulating foods that are more “permissive, enjoyable, and sustainable than traditional keto diets,” will offer a fresh perspective for dieters eager for a change. One drawback is that Gundry’s expertise as a veteran restorative medicine authority leads to chapters laden with lingo and jargon that will confuse readers new to the process. Still, those dedicated to radical approaches to weight loss and healthfulness will welcome the author’s presentation of the latest research.

An encouraging “tune-up” diet guide featuring a host of weight-loss alternatives.

OTHERLANDS A Journey Through Earth’s Extinct Worlds Halliday, Thomas Random House (416 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-0-593-13288-3

A tour of the past worlds that the geological history of Earth reveals.

British paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Halliday roams the globe to examine the geological maxim that Earth’s past is its present and future—that the processes that once placed the continents into a single supermass will do so again. He begins along the banks of the Thames, which “now enters the sea more than 100 miles south of where it used to flow” thanks to changing sea levels in times of glaciation and glacial melt: Britain was once a tropical swamp. The author recognizes that geologic time is mind-boggling given a record of life that stretches back 4 billion years and a planet another half-billion years older than that.

He takes pains, therefore, to write with clarity about what is “directly observable from the fossil record,” allowing for a few alternate theories and surprises. One of the latter is his observation that grasses are only 70 million years old, meaning that grassland animals are younger than that. He chronicles his travels to oddball geological places such as Italy’s Gargano Peninsula, which really belongs out in the middle of the ocean and which was populated “over the water, with ancestrally small animals—mice and dormice, for example, blown across on bits of floating plant, and birds flying over.” The monkeys that made their ways from Africa to South America had a tougher journey, crossing more than 1,000 miles of sea long after the continents broke apart 140 million years ago. Halliday brings good news: After periods of mass extinction come mass flourishing: “A new age begins, with new gods, and new worlds. After death, life; after extinction, speciation.” The bad news: Humans are likely toast all the same.

A bracing pleasure for Earth-science buffs and readers interested in diving into deep history. |

QUEEN OF OUR TIMES The Life of Queen Elizabeth II Hardman, Robert Pegasus (688 pp.) $35.00 | April 6, 2022 978-1-64313-909-8

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A celebration of the queen.

For his latest book on the monarchy, Daily Mail journalist Hardman has drawn on interviews, confidential conversations, official and unofficial biographies, declassified Cabinet papers, and unpublished diaries, all of which give his account authority and heft. Elizabeth, who will celebrate her Platinum Jubilee on Feb. 6, 2022, has faced daunting political, economic, and family crises during her seven decades in power, including her sister’s romance with a married man; the assassination of Prince Philip’s uncle Lord Mountbatten; the Suez Canal conflict; disagreements with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; her children’s divorces; the deaths of Diana and Prince Philip; unrest in some parts of the realm; cultural upheaval in response to British

colonialism; anti-monarchists; and, most recently, the decision of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to withdraw from their royal obligations. No monarch, Hardman writes, “has weathered more change, both within and without the institution, than Elizabeth II. She has done so by avoiding grand, overarching masterplans and targets, by sticking to her strategy of ‘small steps.’ ” With unwavering admiration, the author portrays Elizabeth as a head of state who exemplifies “the prudent application of soft power” and who “genuinely likes being Queen.” He praises her restraint, which he believes comes from innate modesty and which often masks deep feelings. Even as a teenager in war-torn Britain, “Elizabeth was dutiful, reserved, reluctant to be the centre of attention, reticent with emotions and opinions.” In 1966, when she was criticized for not rushing to the scene of a devastating colliery accident in Wales, Hardman explains that she was afraid of publicly displaying overwhelming sorrow. More than his previous books, this one is structured as a detailed chronology, following Elizabeth on diplomatic voyages throughout the world and dutifully reporting on interactions domestic and foreign. He debunks critics and especially delights in exposing fictions perpetrated by The Crown.

A boon for royal-watchers.

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“Readers who don’t object to pages full of trout, elk, and day drinking will find the essays endlessly charming.” the search for the genuine

TIGER & PHIL Golf’s Most Fascinating Rivalry

Harig, Bob St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $29.99 | April 26, 2022 978-1-250-27446-5

Recounting a 25-year duel on the links.

“While there was respect, at times there was also pettiness and standoffishness,” writes ESPN.com senior golf writer Harig, describing the rivalry between these two great golfers in this insightful tale of the tape. He sets the stage with the 2004 Ryder Cup, when Hal Sutton, U.S. captain, surprisingly paired Woods and Mickelson together in two matches. They had never played together before. Their uneasy relationship was being put to the test, and they failed miserably, losing both. Harig chronicles in detail each player’s early rise to stardom. He notes that they were both brash and good at golf ever since they were young, with Mickelson, five years older, having an edge over Woods in terms of experience.

The author reveals them as two very different kinds of players.

Woods was a taciturn, tactical technician, Mickelson the imaginative, gambling prankster. Woods always took his game superseriously, Mickelson less so. Both accomplished impressive feats early in their careers, but Woods won his first appearance at the Masters as Mickelson missed the cut. “By that weekend in 1997, Phil knew what he was up against,” writes Harig. “As great as he was, Tiger was proving to be every bit the star and more.” In golf, head-to-head matchups are infrequent, so the author mostly covers this rivalry from afar. There was the much-hyped, made-forTV “The Match” in 2018, which Mickelson won. Harig admits there was friction in their rivalry, but it has been “a glorious ride through more than two decades of highs and lows.” In the end, despite Mickelson’s outstanding career, the author declares Woods the winner of this rivalry, an opinion that will surprise few observers of the game. Though a touch overlong and sometimes dry, the narrative is enlivened with interesting quotes from players and caddies, much golf lore, and up-close descriptions of tournaments and the players’ games in action.

Insider portraits tailor-made for golf enthusiasts.

THE SEARCH FOR THE GENUINE Nonfiction, 1970-2015

Harrison, Jim Grove (330 pp.) $28.00 | May 10, 2022 978-0-8021-5721-8

The boozy gourmand and superb writer recounts a long life of misbehavior, fishing, books, and wandering.

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cooking,” writes Harrison (1937-2016) in this collection of magazine pieces and other oddments. All of those things are true, but the author also confesses to early troubles in childhood— e.g., when he left a hard-earned fishing rod in the driveway, where his father ran over it. Quoth Dad, “Get your head out of your ass, Jimmy,” to which, decades later, Harrison appends the rueful, “They’re still saying that.” The author had numerous specific loves, most of which he puts on show here: sturdy hunting dogs, fine shotguns, good company out on the chase, and, of course, the finer things of life, especially expensive wines and whiskeys. These coincide in several pieces, as when he recounts getting lost in the company of Philip Caputo and spending a dangerously cold night in the New Mexico mountains with grizzly bear whisperer Doug Peacock, misadventures made more palatable by an unending quaff of Bordeaux.

Indeed, Harrison loves laughing at himself in episodes marked by pointed apothegms: “Of course, drugs and fishing don’t mix”; “I could live here,” he writes about walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, “though for reasons of claustrophobia it would have to be in a one-room cabin in the middle of the bridge.” Challenged at a book festival for his love of hunting, he delivered a stock response: “Perhaps I’m less evolved than you are.” Readers who don’t object to pages full of trout, elk, and day drinking will find the essays endlessly charming, and the more adventurous of them will want to retrace Harrison’s travels in places like the northerly canyons of the Yellowstone River and the Sandhills of Nebraska.

An essential installment in the Harrison canon.

THE MOST HUMAN RIGHT Why Free Speech Is Everything

Heinze, Eric MIT Press (208 pp.) $27.95 | April 12, 2022 978-0-262-04645-9

A legal scholar argues that without the right to free speech, there is no such thing as human rights.

Using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a touchstone, Heinze approaches his argument methodically, considering historical systems of justice, offering a focused history of Western philosophy, and looking at how human rights are conceptualized on an international level before arriving at his thesis. It’s a dense, often plodding exploration, a quality acknowledged in the introduction when the author explains trying to “strike balances between different types of readers”; among his audience he includes those “unfamiliar with human rights.” In sketching out his theory so the latter sort of readers will be able to make sense of his thesis when he finally gets to it, the author deploys technical vocabulary couched in ordinary language. Heinze makes a distinction, for instance, between human goods—effectively, benefits that any government may decide to provide to its people, “such as fair trials or equal protection under the law”—and human rights. |

Similarly, he pairs the duty principle (making the provision of such goods obligatory under law renders them rights) to his discursive principle (individual citizens’ ability to discuss those duties is what makes the goods they provide rights). These definitions and distinctions are necessary for his argument, but they become tendentious with repetition. For all the careful lead-up to his discussion of free speech, he punts some of the most urgent questions of the day, seemingly throwing up his hands when touching on speech in the online arena, to which he devotes four paragraphs. Readers hoping for a consideration in the same lively and provocative vein as P.E. Moskowitz’s The Case Against Free Speech should look elsewhere. Still, portions of Heinze’s argument—such as the politicization of international rights monitoring agencies’ findings, and in particular the final chapter, when he looks at recent rights cases in the real world— offer some food for thought.

A topic that deserves a more captivating treatment.

Jackson, Lawrence Graywolf (344 pp.) $17.00 paper | April 19, 2022 978-1-64445-083-3

The misunderstood city of Baltimore receives a probing portrait by a returning native son.

In 2016, Jackson, a noted historian and biographer, returned from a professorship in Atlanta to his hometown of Baltimore, where he had been offered a joint appointment in history and English by Johns Hopkins, and he now directs the Billie Holiday Project for Liberation Arts. It was a year after the police killing of Freddie Gray set the city aflame, and Jackson’s purchase of a home in a historically White neighborhood is the point of departure for a series of essays that seamlessly blend history, journalism, and memoir. The author’s command of factual detail is matched by the laser clarity of his childhood memories, whether offering a taxonomy of his elementary school teachers or recollecting the loan of a landscaping tool by a neighbor. Jackson clarifies issues like whether Johns Hopkins should have a private police force with a full complement of reporting, analysis, introspection, and lament. One of myriad evocative sentences: “When ‘Prince of Peace’ rang out over the congregation in 1989 at St. James, I could claim to have experienced a shared spiritual presence, a palpable thickening of emotional connection with people who were not materially engaged. This is my main experience of transcendence outside of a nightclub dancing to deep house music, and only then on those rare occasions when I had sweated through my pants.”

Writing about bus drivers, the author showcases the brilliant embodiment of geography that will make this book come alive for non-Baltimoreans: “They displayed inimitable sangfroid as they plowed the twenty-ton behemoths into the rapid flow of traffic on Druid Hill Avenue before making the daring left turn |

DEMOCRACY UNDER FIRE Donald Trump and the Breaking of American History

Jacobs, Lawrence R. Oxford Univ. (256 pp.) $27.95 | March 1, 2022 978-0-19-087724-8

A political scientist scrutinizes the underappreciated role of America’s primary-election system in the nation’s ideological polarization and the rise of Donald Trump.

Jacobs, the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, argues that primary elections undermine democracy, offering a timely but pedantic blend of a scholarly history of primaries and a critique of their enduring harms. Fearing rule by “the mob” instead of the gentry, James Madison and other framers made no mention of primaries in the Constitution, and as late as 1968, party bosses still controlled the selection of most delegates. That began to change with the election reforms of the 1970s, following Richard Nixon’s defeat of Hubert Humphrey, who ran in no primaries. The reforms weakened the influence of the old-school bosses and strengthened “a new network of party activists, organized groups, and donors.” These groups demand loyalty to their favored policies rather than to a party and, like Trump supporters, tend to be more ideologically extreme than voters in general. The author’s tightly structured arguments often read like expanded PowerPoint presentations without bullet points, as he covers the “two profound shifts in the party system in the past 50 years; the “three features” of strong democracy in the 1780s; the “four critical junctures” for election rules; “the five extraordinary consequences” of the rise of presidential primaries; and other enumerations. Jacobs also describes the “three sturdy barriers” to reforms he supports, such as having more unpledged “superdelegates” to nominating conventions, and he recalls historical injustices in the Jim Crow South, where Black voters were barred from casting ballots. All of this material will have high appeal for primary-election wonks, but it gives the sense that its natural readership consists of people who will be tested on the material at the end of the semester.

An informative but starchy history of primaries and how they have hurt democracy and enabled Trumpism.

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SHELTER A Black Tale of Homeland, Baltimore

at Cloverdale basketball court, all the while we passengers were showcased rarities, like the rotating carousel of pork loins in the window of Leon’s Pig Pen.” Those are only two of countless passages of sparkling prose.

An extraordinary dual portrait of the author and his hometown—angry, tender, incisive, and bracingly eloquent.

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WE ARE THE MIDDLE OF FOREVER Indigenous Voices From Turtle Island on the Changing Earth Ed. by Jamail, Dahr & Stan Rushworth The New Press (368 pp.) $28.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-62097-719-4

A welcome compilation of interviews with Indigenous Americans about

climate change.

Jamail is a Martha Gellhorn Award–winning journalist, and Rushworth is a California-based teacher of Native American literature. As the editors demonstrate, all of the contributors to this dynamic collection are rooted in ancient cultural philosophies that radically challenge non-Native ideas about climate change. “For the Indigenous people of the world,” writes Rushworth in the preface, “radical alteration of the planet, and of life itself, is a story many generations long.” Jamail goes on to point out that Native Americans have already witnessed massive destruction in the past few centuries, ranging from the annihilation of the buffalo from the Great Plains to the decimation of Native populations “as a result of sanctioned settler mayhem.” Consequently, Indigenous Americans are uniquely equipped to philosophically and practically tackle climate change. At the heart of these interviews is a rejection of current practices. Before colonization, Native peoples like the Hopi spent centuries perfecting systems that successfully cared for the Earth. This balance was disturbed by European colonizers who created what Ilarion, a Yupik elder, describes as a “reverse society” or “inside out society.” Ilarion argues that the only way to cope with climate change is to reject Eurocentric notions of “normal” and to adopt Indigenous ways of thinking and being.

Interviewees suggest a variety of abstract and concrete avenues for doing so—e.g., Potawatomi scholar Kyle Powys Whyte’s recommendation to alter our relationship with clock time or Quinault President Fawn Sharp’s idea to use Native knowledge to preemptively shift her constituents’ homes to flood-safe areas. Throughout, contributors remind us that the Earth has survived for billions of years and will survive for billions more; humans, however, may not. Readers will be impressed by both the depth and breadth of the interviews as well as the contributors’ evocative, vivid storytelling and palpable emotion.

A refreshingly unique and incredibly informative collection of vital Indigenous wisdom.

START WITHOUT ME (I’ll Be There in a Minute)

Janetti, Gary Henry Holt (208 pp.) $27.99 | April 26, 2022 978-1-250-22585-6

A maestro of the mundane strains to lend substance to his humor.

In his second book, Janetti, a TV writer, producer, and actor, delivers a narrative full of stratospherically overthe-top pronouncements and lurid asides—and that’s just about his childhood in Queens. In his account of growing up gay, the author visits many familiar touchstones, occasionally uncorking a tart observation, though few are terribly original. Janetti holds forth on his distaste for the outdoors, tribulations in high school gym class, the fallacy of college preparing one for life, musical theater, and his tendency toward misanthropy: “I’m constantly maneuvering myself through life to be the farthest away as possible from people,” he writes, not quite tongue-in-cheek. “If I can hear your voice you’re too close.” It may be shtick, but the author can also be venomous at times, and his wit seems labored.

“Maybe I met enough people over the years to realize that they just start repeating themselves after a while,” he writes. “So you’re never really meeting someone new. Just another version of someone else you know. ‘I already have one of you,’ I often find myself thinking while talking to a person I’ve just met.” The pieces in this collection allow the author to ramble on incessantly, usually about trivial matters. While it’s true that great comedy often springs from such preoccupations, the majority of Janetti’s jokes fall flat. His self-deprecating recollections cannot hide the fact that much of his comedy is dismissive or whiny. While there is solid advice for 20-somethings entering the world of independence—and a few touching moments—sarcasm is the principal arrow in his quiver, and it gets tiresome. Being judgmental can be wickedly amusing in a Woody Allen–on-a-park-bench-pilloryingpeople sort of way. But it’s a double-edged sword. Janetti’s “vulnerability,” when revealed, is simultaneously so snarky that it’s hard to empathize with him.

Superficial and arch to a fault.

NATIONAL PARKS FOREVER Fifty Years of Fighting and a Case for Independence

Jarvis, Jonathan B. & T. Destry Jarvis Univ. of Chicago (240 pp.) $25.00 paper | April 5, 2022 978-0-226-81908-2

An earnest plea to move the National Park Service out of the highly politicized Department of the Interior and make it an independent agency.

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RIPE Essays

Kaudo, Negesti Mad Creek/Ohio State Univ. Press (224 pp.) $19.95 paper | March 2, 2022 978-0-8142-5818-7 A young Black woman bares all in this candid collection of personal essays on self-discovery, injustice, and more.

One of the privileges of Whiteness, Kaudo observes, is “emotional range without consequence.”

Black women who express their anger can face dire consequences, but the author doesn’t hold back here. She articulates her rage, which is rooted in pain and frustration. She recounts the process of putting that rage in check the way many Black people have learned to do as a matter of self-preservation. She mines her memories, detailing how she’s navigated the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype and the treacherous waters between “invisibility” and “hypervisibility” over a lifetime of being the only Black person (or one of few Black people) in all-White spaces. Ultimately, Kaudo writes, “we are digging to the roots of |

a silenced history: a womanist and activist culture—a promise to reclaim the dignity of our mothers.” These essays, many of them experimental, explore an eclectic range of topics, including the author’s generation’s anxieties about adulthood, the sanctity of natural hair care, grief, cultural appropriation, and whether God is a Black woman. With unflinching honesty and vulnerability, Kaudo documents her journey to becoming her bolder self, to fight “the active erasure happening to blackness and black people” and the racist double standards and brutality of this nation. The author, a dark-skinned woman, reveals, “I’ve never found myself beautiful…no one’s ever called me beautiful.”

Some of the most powerful and breathtaking essays in the collection (“Me, My Fat, and I,” “Thunder Thighs,” “Messy: Brief Notes on Body Positivity,” and “For Your Pleasure”) focus on beauty standards, sex, self-love, and body image issues. Kaudo is a highly self-aware work in progress who doesn’t have all the answers, but she has chosen the most interesting questions to grapple with. The result is a deeply intimate meditation on millennial Black womanhood and a righteous indictment of how this country treats Black girls and women.

Timely, unapologetic, and intense, in all the best ways.

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Committee for the International Council on Monuments and Sites, tell a story that begins well but seems headed for an unhappy ending. Americans love their national park system and consistently rank it as one of the most popular federal organizations. For more than 50 years after its founding in 1916, this love was universal. Professionals managed the system and lobbied Congress for additions. The period from 1964 to 1970 marks the last golden years when many parks were established and the agency recommended sites for future local, state, and federal parks. Today, “the NPS is now only allowed to study new parks when specifically authorized by Congress.” The authors blame the system’s deterioration on political polarization, especially the conservative shift with the election of Ronald Reagan. The NPS is a federal program, and conservatives believe that, like most federal programs, the NPS is bloated, inefficient, and discouraging to private enterprise. Since the election of Reagan and the Bushes and, worst of all, Trump, the Secretary of the Interior and his or her powerful assistants have mostly been political appointees with little interest in conservation and intense hostility to the NPS. They propose no new parks and support efforts at “development,” meaning logging and oil drilling. While their ongoing efforts to set up a “park closing commission” to remove those that do not receive high visitation have so far failed, they have successfully shrunk the budget and downsized the department by forcing out skilled employees. The authors have facts on their side, but their text—almost entirely devoted to legislation, White House politics, efforts of national conservation organizations, and their job experience—will persuade readers without inspiring them to take to the streets.

A knowledgeable account of the trials of the National Park Service that would work better as a polemic.

THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS Learning To Live in an Age of Disasters

Kayyem, Juliette PublicAffairs (240 pp.) $29.00 | March 29, 2022 978-1-5417-0009-3

An eye-opening look at the disasters that have troubled humans throughout history—and why they seem to be increasing in frequency.

Think the news about tornadoes in December, rising sea levels, raging fires, and massive blizzards comes at us fast and furious today? Give it another few years, writes disaster-management expert Kayyem, faculty director of the Homeland Security Project and the Security and Global Health Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and our time will seem like a golden age. The devil of her title is always working mischief in some place or another. We tend to respond poorly because, Kayyem suggests, we may be preparing ourselves for the wrong disaster. On that score, the author examines the tragic fate of the California town of Paradise, which was consumed by a fire that burned an area the size of Chicago. Kayyem notes that houses were built right up against unmanaged forests that were full of flammable debris, while the town’s developers, seeking a kind of gated community without the gates, put in only one narrow road that was subject to being walled off by flames. The good news, writes the author, is that the town is now being rebuilt with lessons learned in mind. This speaks to another of Kayyem’s points: Humans sometimes don’t learn from earlier mistakes. She cites an old stone tablet near Fukushima, Japan, that bears the warning, “Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build homes below this point” lest kirkus.com

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they be destroyed by a tsunami, which is exactly what happened in 2011. Kayyem explodes many myths, noting, for example, that there was a point to the worry about Y2K, the disastrous effects of which did not materialize precisely because people prepared for it. “The only response to the preparedness paradox,” she concludes, “is a commitment to sustained preparedness; being ready will seem not that outside the norm.”

An urgent, useful survival manual for our time.

TO THE UTTERMOST ENDS OF THE EARTH The Epic Hunt for the South’s Most Feared Ship―and the Greatest Sea Battle of the Civil War Keith, Phil with Tom Clavin Hanover Square Press (352 pp.) $29.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-335-47141-3

Sturdy account of the Civil War’s most significant naval battle.

Keith and Clavin, co-authors of All Blood Runs Red, once again join forces in this naval history that emphasizes commerce raiding and the lives of the captains of the vessels involved. Commissioned a midshipman for the Confederate Navy at age 16, Raphael Semmes eventually became commander of the fearsome raider CSS Alabama. At the time, British law forbade supplying warships to “belligerents,” but officials paid little attention as Southern agents found a shipbuilder willing to construct a vessel purportedly for private use.

The ship sailed to the Azores, where another ship loaded with military supplies completed its conversion; on Aug. 24, 1862, it officially became the Alabama. Over the following two years, it captured perhaps 65 Union merchantmen. This barely touched the massive Union economy, but by 1863, pressure from infuriated ship owners persuaded the government to take action.

The authors follow with a biography of John Winslow, captain of the Alabama’s nemesis, the USS Kearsarge. Both Semmes and Winslow had largely undistinguished prewar careers, but Winslow, a North Carolinian, stuck with the Union and received orders to track down the Alabama. Unfortunately for him, “when Alabama was in the Atlantic the chances of her heaving into view of the Ke­arsarge were infinitesimally small.” After more than a year, Winslow decided to pay special attention to ports along the English Channel, which Semmes seemed to prefer for resupply. Sure enough, in June 1864, the Alabama docked at Cherbourg, and Winslow and crew got to work. Although they produce a gripping read, Keith and Clavin do not overdramatize the battle. After years at sea with no major overhaul, the Alabama was no match for the well-prepared Kearsarge, whose modern guns pummeled it mercilessly, sinking it. Winslow was a hero, and in the South, so was Semmes. Both lived modest but prosperous lives into the following decade.

Despite the breathless title, this is an accomplished history of an iconic battle.

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TRUE The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson Kennedy, Kostya St. Martin’s (288 pp.) $29.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-250-27404-5

An appreciative biography of Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) and his role in the integration of Major League Baseball.

When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1962, notes Kennedy, editorial director at Meredith and a former Sports Illustrated senior writer, Robinson “asked that his plaque make no mention of his role in integrating baseball.” The diffidence is curious, since Robinson famously faced court-martial while serving in the Army for refusing to vacate a bus seat reserved for Whites—10 years before Rosa Parks— and had been an active supporter of and fundraiser for the civil rights movement. Indeed, as the author shows, Robinson was a first in many ways—especially as the first Black player to work in MLB in the 20th century, by the design of executive Branch Rickey, who believed that the time had come for the sport to show the rest of American society the way to treat all citizens equally. Regrettably, as Kennedy writes, the lessons were hardwon. Robinson may have been an equal on the field, but when the Brooklyn Dodgers traveled, Robinson often dined alone in his hotel room, discouraged or forbidden from entering Whites-only dining areas. Even in the supposed racial haven of Canada, where Robinson played while being groomed in the minor leagues, he encountered the “clear marginalization of Black Montrealers, the small-in-numbers populace who lived for the most part in particular areas of town, who stayed only in particular hotels or rooming houses, who found jobs in labor and service.” Robinson didn’t go out of his way to make waves, nor did his friend and fellow Black player Roy Campanella, who insisted, “I’m no crusader.” Yet, in his quiet determination, Robinson opened numerous doors. There’s not much new in Kennedy’s life of Robinson, but it’s always good to be reminded of his greatness and significance in any big-picture view of modern America.

A sturdy combination of sportswriting and social history.

THE WHITE HOUSE PLUMBERS The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon’s Presidency Krogh, Egil & Matthew Krogh St. Martin’s Griffin (208 pp.) $17.99 paper | April 26, 2022 978-1-250-85162-8

A slender but thoughtful memoir by one of the foot soldiers of Watergate.

Coming on the heels of Dwight Chapin’s The President’s Man, one-time White House staffer Egil |

“Devastating revelations that humanize statistics while calling for reform.” entry lessons

ENTRY LESSONS The Stories of Women Fighting for Their Place, Their Children, and Their Futures After Incarceration Leap, Jorja Beacon Press (216 pp.) $24.95 | April 26, 2022 978-0-8070-2287-0

Women caught up in California’s criminal justice system share their har-

rowing stories.

Over the last decade, Leap, executive director of the Social Justice Research Partnership at UCLA, interviewed 80 formerly incarcerated Californian women about their experiences. “I didn’t need reentry services,” one woman noted, “I need entry services—like how do you enter into a normal life?”

Much of what the women recount is excruciating. Rosa, for instance, was not only molested as a child, but sex-trafficked by her own mother, who kept her prisoner. At 13, after giving birth to her first child, a gang helped her escape and took her in.

“She became deeply involved in…criminal activity in exchange for her freedom.” When discharged from a juvenile detention center, a judge released her to her mother’s custody; this served |

as Rosa’s final breaking point, sparking years of cycling in and out of jail. In chapters such as “I Thought He Would Take Care of Me” and “Halfway Is Just That,” Leap highlights commonalities of incarcerated women, including childhood violence and crushing entanglements with the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, the latter of which Leap describes as more focused on punishment than rehabilitation. Substance abuse, she writes, was “always about medicating the trauma,” and the reason for relapses is often the fact that “their underlying trauma had never been addressed and treated.” Citing poverty as the primary factor of recidivism, Leap expertly demonstrates why having financial and emotional security is key to sustaining change. “Out of the more than twenty thousand individuals L.A. locks up on any given day, a little over two thousand are women,” and nearly half of the women “are in jail simply because they can’t afford to post bail.” The author closes with a strong case to end indiscriminate use of money bail, and she offers specific suggestions for funding and the extension of relevant programs, which includes community-based alternatives to incarceration.

Devastating revelations that humanize statistics while calling for reform.

y o u n g a d u lt

Krogh delivers a more rueful remembrance assisted by his son.

Krogh, who served a short prison term for his role in Watergate, spent years afterward wrestling with the bad choices he made in committing crimes that sent him to jail and drove Nixon from the White House. The usual ingredients were there: youth, ambition, and a desire to serve a president and country in “an emergency context”—namely, the release of the Pentagon Papers, which Nixon insiders considered threat enough to national security to burglarize Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. Not long after, having assembled a crew including G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt (who brought in a merry band of Cuban “plumbers” from the Bay of Pigs days), Krogh oversaw the burglary of the psychiatrist’s office. Though the unit operated under the grand rubric the Special Investigations Unit, it was oddly amateurish. There are a couple of ironies involved, too, one a ploy to get the FBI to approve lie-detector tests on suspected leakers, a petition denied by FBI executive Mark Felt, later revealed as “Deep Throat.” The author allows that his “absolute loyalty to President Nixon, both personally and to his view of the national security threat, had skewed my perspective.” Refreshingly, however, he doesn’t try to explain himself away (as does Chapin) but instead writes that it was his term in federal prison that afforded him the opportunity to reflect on “why we so often choose courses of action that inflict harm on those we would help.” It’s good that he does so, since, as he notes, Nixon never accepted guilt for Watergate and the cover-up that ended his presidency. The author’s story is in development for a miniseries on HBO. A reflective, long-overdue apologia for misguided service to a corrupt leader.

THE PERFECT OTHER A Memoir of My Sister Leddy, Kyleigh Mariner Books (304 pp.) $27.00 | March 15, 2022 978-0-358-46934-6

In her first book, Leddy reflects on how she came to terms with her schizophrenic sister’s death.

The author grew up in awe of her older sister, Kait. Yet however much Kait loved her, Kyleigh knew that “I was born a shadow of my sister— paler, blonder, wispier, and more hesitant.” Smart, mischievous, and charming, Kait sometimes demonstrated erratic behaviors that emerged as suddenly as they disappeared. But no one thought anything of her antics until she reached adolescence.

After the family moved from the small coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, to Philadelphia, Kait’s volatility led to expulsion from her Quaker school. In high school, she quickly earned notoriety for her escapades, one of which involved suffering a head injury when she tried to sneak out of a window at her house. She turned violent not long afterward, forcing her parents to send her to a psychiatric hospital, which released her “undiagnosed.” Leddy watched in horror as the sister she idolized slipped away from her over the next few years while her parents stood by, feeling helpless. “You think you can get ahead of it, fix it,” writes the author. “She’s a little girl walking ahead of you, spilling paint from a bucket. You crawl behind her, trying to mop up every spot before it soaks into the fibers of the carpet.”

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FIRE AND FLOOD The True History of Our Epic Failure To Confront the Climate Crisis—and Our Narrow Path From Here

her broken family realize she had become suicidal. Threading commentary on traumatic brain injury and its relationship to psychiatric disorders throughout, Leddy seeks courageously to “break the stigma” and silence that still surround schizophrenia and similar disorders while paying tribute to the woman whose life so profoundly transformed her own.

A moving and deeply felt memoir about family and mental illness.

WHAT’S GOOD Notes on Rap and Language

Levin Becker, Daniel City Lights (312 pp.) $22.95 paper | Feb. 1, 2022 978-0-87286-876-2

An intellectual examination of hiphop lyrics.

Though the genre is more easily experienced than explained, Levin Becker, a lifelong fan and contributing editor at the Believer and senior editor at McSweeney’s Publishing, seems up for the challenge. His celebration of rappers’ wordplay and creativity shows the links between Cardi B and Ernest Hemingway, and he also compares the influence of Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back” to a Shakespeare play. Levin Becker delivers stunningly deep readings of 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” and takes odd swipes at Jay-Z’s occasional nods to rhymes from other rappers, and he discusses the use of the N-word and hip-hop’s preoccupation with drug dealing as a metaphor or plot point. Whether or not you agree with the author’s feelings on those issues, or even the success of the book itself, will likely depend on your point of view and interest in the minutiae of lyrics and song construction—not to mention asides on nearly every page. Levin Becker is candid about how his life differs from those of many rappers: “I’m white, middleclass, educated, risk-averse, law-abiding with the usual exceptions that are fine for middle-class white people. I’m the son of a doctor and a composer and the youngest of five brothers and sisters, all brilliant and accomplished in their respective whitecollar fields.” That description explains a lot about his choices as well as his decision to overstuff his chapters with examples to back his points. He often offers five when one will do, slowing down the narrative and cluttering the argument. For example, here’s how the author explains the evolution of rapper personas: “Before the gangster, though, rap’s primary agent of flux and mutability was the clown. The slobbering caperer, the winking joke-butt, the wild card.” Simply citing Flavor Flav would’ve worked, too. Levin Becker’s knowledge and passion are unquestionable, but he tries too hard to argue why hip-hop should be taken seriously when it can easily speak for itself.

Unnecessarily dense analysis whose appeal will be limited to die-hard hip-hop fans.

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Linden, Eugene Penguin Press (336 pp.) $28.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-984882-24-0

Less a polemic than a history of carbon emissions emphasizing the major discussions and missed opportunities since climate change became a mainstream issue.

Linden, author of The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations and other books, proceeds chronologically. He reports that while the 1980s saw tremendous progress in scientific understanding, there was still little public interest in climate change. Dedicated environmentalists focused on smog, poisoned rivers, whaling, and endangered species, largely neglecting the more pressing problem of global warming, and the ignorance continued into the 1990s. “The Kyoto Protocol, a limp attempt to reduce fossil fuel emissions, was enacted in 1997 but did not enter into force until 2005,” writes the author. “Despite the promises following 1988, nothing happened in the 1990s to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.” The first decade of the millennium was the warmest yet recorded, but the public ignored numerous warnings, and the business community continued its successful campaign to downplay the gravity of the situation, with climate change denial flourishing. Few elected officials make climate change an issue because it doesn’t help their election chances, and collective action is severely lacking. The issue has become especially partisan in the U.S., with Republicans solidly in the denial column and Democrats among the believers—at least rhetorically.

By 2010, writes Linden, “the message from nature was loud and clear: climate change was already here and promised to get more dangerous and expensive.” Leaders vowed to lower carbon emissions, but they continue to rise. As in many similar books, Linden attempts to end on a positive note; his concluding chapter, “A Narrow Path to a Livable Future,” is modestly successful.

Experts predict trillions of dollars in investments in renewables and a host of new jobs over the next 30 years. Restoring wetlands, reducing farm emissions, and halting deforestation will make a difference. Linden reports many commercial efforts to suck carbon from the air, but none have proven effective.

A fine history of the battle against climate change that does not strain to predict victory.

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“An accessible exploration of how war enabled the federal government to acquire real financial power.” ways and means

WAYS AND MEANS Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War

Lowenstein, Roger Penguin Press (448 pp.) $30.00 | March 8, 2022 978-0-7352-2355-4

How Lincoln’s administration effected a significant expansion of the federal government to pay for the Civil War. Lowenstein is not a Lincoln scholar, but no matter. His experience writing about financial matters, on display in such books as America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle To Create the Federal Reserve and The End of Wall Street, informs this fresh look at the president’s essential Republican roots as a self-made man, rather than slaveholder, and belief that anyone could be successful in America. Even before the war, just as Lincoln was assuming office, a recession loomed, and he tapped one of his rivals, Salmon P. Chase, to lead the Treasury. (For more on Chase, turn to Walter Stahr’s recent bio.) The economic differences between the North and South were vast, with the South essentially a monoculture of cotton exports, dependent on the North’s manufacturing base. This led to widespread inequality and inefficiency, hampering the South’s ability to wage war.

Lowenstein ably chronicles the myriad economic problems facing each side. For example, in the South, Jefferson Davis fervently believed that the war was less about slavery than objection to “the Hamiltonian ideal of centralism. Federal involvement in the economy was off limits.” The North, on the other hand, guided by Lincoln, believed the government should work for the betterment of the people. Lincoln’s Congress, writes Lowenstein, “enacted a protective tariff worthy of Henry Clay and enabl[ed] legislation for a transcontinental railroad. It involved the federal government in agriculture, education, and land policy. It legislated an income and refocused the war’s purposes to include a frontal attack on slavery.

It could almost be said that it created the government itself.”

Eventually, Chase came around to implementing a legal tender, the greenback, to stabilize and regulate the economy and create national banking, a system that exists to this day.

An accessible exploration of how war enabled the federal government to acquire real financial power.

IT WAS VULGAR & IT WAS BEAUTIFUL How AIDS Activists Used Art To Fight a Pandemic

A group of artists and graphic designers who came together within the New York City chapter of ACT UP, Gran Fury used sophisticated marketing techniques and state-of-the-art software to design posters, T-shirts, and other visuals for use during protests. Lowery interviewed 9 out of the 10 Gran Fury members still alive, and he supplements their informative testimonies with eyewitness accounts from the ACT UP Oral History Project, chronicling the creation and use of the collective’s greatest hits. These include posters reading “Read My Lips,” with a photo of kissing sailors; “He Kills Me,” describing the criminal neglect of President Ronald Reagan; and “All People With AIDS Are Innocent.” Art against AIDS went “on the road” when “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” appeared on ads on the sides of buses in San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Eventually dependent on the financial support of arts institutions, Gran Fury was invited to show in the 1990 Venice Biennale, where controversy ensued. Today, the group’s work is “held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and the Whitney and has been shown in most major museums in America.” Lowery puts his subject in context, describing similar AIDS pieces by the artists David Wojnarowicz and General Idea, but the true value of Gran Fury’s public works came from how they were successfully deployed in political actions. While the narrative is highly readable and educative, the author’s “Notes on Sources” are not quite up to scholarly standards. “In lieu of a traditional bibliography or list of references,” he writes, “I’ve detailed how each chapter came to be, whom I talked to and the sources I consulted and relied upon. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list.” As such, a dubious assertion such as, “America’s most widely read gay newspaper, the New York Native,” cannot be sourced or challenged. This is an undeniable weakness in an otherwise strong social history.

A lively depiction of how graphic art can bring political activism to life.

RECESSIONAL The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch Mamet, David Broadside Books/HarperCollins (256 pp.) $28.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-06-315899-3

A playwright once known for brilliant observation delivers an irate diatribe against anyone who doesn’t like

Lowery, Jack Bold Type Books (432 pp.) $35.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-64503-658-6

The story of an art collective’s relentless fight against the AIDS epidemic. |

Donald Trump.

Mamet’s punching bag is the “Left,” his base audience, “law-abiding Americans, anguished at the wreck the Left has made of this country, are wondering at the stroke of what midnight the Left will completely unmask and how little their visage then will differ from their current costume.” The dreaded socialists on the left side of the aisle—Pelosi, Sanders, et al.— bring all kinds of bad things to bear on conservatives, droning kirkus.com

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on about climate change, imposing mask mandates, and kneeling in protest against police brutality and racism. In one of his heavy-handed, disjointed essays, Mamet asks, “What was the ‘insurrection’? There was vandalism in the halls of Congress, a Capitol police officer was killed, and some poor woman died.” No big deal, right? If there’s something to whine about, Mamet finds it. He argues that Trump “was at a disadvantage because he did not lie,” which presumably allows enough wiggle room to encompass the thousands of “alternative facts.”

The author decries assimilationist Jews who vote for liberals instead of “the only president who treated them as human beings.” (You know who.) He wonders why he shouldn’t be able to use the N-word freely, and he dismisses “cancel culture” as a leftist tool of thought control—never mind that it seems most widely deployed as a rightist tool to ban books in public schools, institutions that Mamet despises, too. The author also likens climate change scientists to “Stalin’s science adviser, Trofim Lysenko.” It’s a bitter, boring litany with one or two accidentally calm observations on the role of playwrights in guiding audiences on how to think about characters, leavening vituperation and right-wing agitprop with oddly juxtaposed nostalgia.

A depressing performance best skipped by anyone outside of Trump world.

CONVERSATIONS WITH PEOPLE WHO HATE ME 12 Things I Learned From Talking to Internet Strangers

Marron, Dylan Atria (272 pp.) $27.00 | March 29, 2022 978-1-982129-27-9

A podcaster reveals behind-the-scenes details of his work and what he has learned from interacting with his guests.

After producing dozens of snarky videos for Seriously.TV, a digital TV network, and creating the web series Sitting in Bathrooms With Trans People, first-time author Marron began to receive numerous hateful comments, “all written by other internet strangers who seem to hate me.” He saved them, and by 2017, he was ready to take the next step. He reached out to 20 people who had sent him digital hate mail—weeding out those who seemed overtly dangerous or unhinged—and asked if they would consider engaging in a dialogue on a podcast.

Eleven of them agreed, forming the foundation for the titular podcast, which would go on to include episodes in which Marron connected other people who violently disagreed with each other. The book introduces some fascinating characters and smoothly details the author’s learning curve. We follow Marron as he taps into his “more earnest, sincere self,” learns how to encourage conversation rather than debate, and recovers from missteps along the way. The text is structured into chapters reflecting the lessons that he learned and that he hopes to communicate to readers, including “Empathy Is 76

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Not Endorsement,” “Conversation Is a Dance,” and “Debate Is a Sport.” Marron persuasively argues that the internet is a major source of polarization and that talking personally, and listening fully—without trying to score points or to convince someone to change their mind—goes a long way toward breaking down barriers. While the narrative runs out of steam as it progresses, especially in a section about Marron’s difficulty in achieving the 80,000 words he promised his publisher, his enthusiasm for forging temporary relationships with the most unlikely of strangers is palpable. The book will delight his fans and draw new listeners to the podcast.

A likable if not groundbreaking reminder of the joys of a good chat.

BECOMING ELIJAH Prophet of Transformation

Matt, Daniel C. Yale Univ. (248 pp.) $26.00 | March 8, 2022 978-0-300-24270-6

The many faces of the biblical hero.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s estimable Jewish Lives series, scholar Matt, whose nine-volume The Zohar: Pritzker Edition won the National Jewish Book Award, delves into the undying appeal and unending presence of the prophet Elijah. Whereas many reference works concentrate on Elijah’s appearance in the Hebrew Scriptures exclusively, Matt uses those Scriptures as a springboard to investigate the Elijah of legend and tradition in the many centuries since he was taken into heaven on a chariot of fire. Naturally, the author begins with the scriptural account of Elijah as found in I and II Kings, and he emphasizes Elijah’s zealous nature: “Of all the divine qualities,” writes Matt, “Elijah emulates one in particular…‘zeal’ blended with ‘jealousy.’ ” Outside of the biblical accounts, Elijah takes on a new role and mission, not as the defender of God’s honor but as the agent of God’s love and care for all people. In later Talmudic writings, Jewish sages described the prophet as coming to the aid of the helpless, marked no longer by zeal but rather compassion. Elijah has always been a bedrock figure in Jewish mysticism, and eventually, he became the most important character from the Hebrew Scriptures to appear in the Gospel stories of Jesus, in which John the Baptist is said to be Elijah trumpeting the coming Messiah. He also appears throughout Islamic traditions as “the Green One, or the Verdant One” and throughout the centuries of post-Temple Jewish practice as an expected guest at Passover seders and protector of the young at circumcisions. Matt intriguingly concludes that the later Elijah must have learned from his famed encounter with God that “to succeed in transforming others, fierce power is often less effective than patient gentleness.”

A lucidly written religious biography/history that will appeal to readers of all faith traditions.

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SATISFACTION GUARANTEED How Zingerman’s Built a Corner Deli Into a Global Food Community

IMAGINABLE How To See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

Maynard, Micheline Scribner (256 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-1-982164-61-4

A journalist examines the business philosophy and history of a legendary Midwestern delicatessen.

Maynard is the former Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times and author of other business-focused books such as The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market. She began writing about Zingerman’s to understand how a delicatessen located in a small Michigan town could command a global following and emerge more prosperous than ever in a food-service industry ravaged by the pandemic.

Research into the 40-year-old company and interviews with its founders, Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig, revealed that part of its success involved a philosophy that focused on three bottom lines: “great food, great service, and great finances.” Their famously pricey products, such as the signature “overstuffed” sandwiches and artisanal pastas, all speak to the “authenticity” that made customers look beyond price tags and embrace the “Zingerman’s experience.” Commitment to brand integrity emerged after early commercial success in the 1980s led investors to call for expansion outside Ann Arbor. Instead, Saginaw and Weinzweig opted to focus on socially conscious growth that hinged on doing good for employees and the local community.

Both engaged in what they called “visioning”—determining an inspiring, strategically sound plan that could be communicated to others—and stressed the importance of service on every level, starting at the top. The deli quickly grew to include a plethora of other ventures, including a food rescue program for the needy, mail-order services, a bakery, and a diner. Ultimately, though, it was the company’s ability to remain agile and innovative and move swiftly into online retail that allowed it to not only overcome the lockdowns and employee layoffs caused by the pandemic, but to thrive. Maynard’s book will certainly appeal to Zingerman’s aficionados, but it will also interest those seeking to succeed in the challenging, ever changing world of gourmet fare.

Thoughtful reading for foodies and entrepreneurs.

McGonigal, Jane Spiegel & Grau (432 pp.) $30.00 | March 22, 2022 978-1-954118-09-6

A fascinating book about how the future does not have to be an undiscov-

ered country.

McGonigal, a future forecaster, game designer, and bestselling author of Reality Is Broken and Superbetter, firmly believes that it is possible to consider the possibilities of the future in a systematic, disciplined way, and her narrative draws on a large body of personal experience, research studies, and knowledge gleaned from her work as a game designer. A good place to start is to imagine the world at a specific future date; McGonigal suggests that 10 years from now is often appropriate. Some things might be the same, and others might be different; the issue is how the pieces will fit together. There are several levels to think about, ranging from the impact on one’s life to the broader social picture. This process can be the basis for more serious modeling to determine the challenges and opportunities of the imagined future and what might happen on the way there. Some changes can begin small and grow into revolutions: Think about how the internet started, for example, and then how it grew to dominate our lives. McGonigal sets out a number of ways to detect emerging trends and then extrapolate them.

Her case study on the impact of facial recognition software is particularly interesting—and a little scary. But she emphasizes that you should allow yourself, when constructing an imagined future, to be a bit ridiculous. In fact, the more detail you add, the less crazy the scenarios will seem. Some of the games she describes are for individuals, and some are for groups; the latter can be useful for team bonding, generating ideas, and, of course, having fun. The author includes a number of scenarios as the basis of gaming and discussion, but many readers will find that making up their own is more enjoyable and productive.

A wealth of interesting ideas combined with practical guidance for new thinking.

JUMP My Secret Journey From the Streets to the Boardroom Miller, Larry with Laila Lacy Morrow/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 18, 2022 978-0-06-299981-8

A searching memoir of business, professional sports, and murder.

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“An entertaining combination of domestic and world history.” the age of astonishment

haunted him for nearly 60 years: As a teenage gang member on the west side of Philadelphia, he killed a member of a rival gang in an act of retaliation. That he does not name his victim has provoked controversy, and readers may wonder, if this book is an act of contrition at least in part, why he didn’t do so. However, the author writes that his book has a different purpose. “The only reason for me to narrate my life is that hopefully my story can inspire…young people who are in a rough environment and all they can see is what’s going on around them.” There’s inspiration aplenty, and if Miller made numerous missteps as a youth, which earned him prison time not just for the killing, but also for drug dealing and other crimes, he also took opportunity and ran with it. As he writes, he had the opportunity behind bars to earn college credit, and since he was good with numbers, he turned to accounting. Exuding confidence without swagger, he confessed his crimes to an early interviewer, who revoked the firm’s offer letter, saying, “I can’t take a chance on one of our clients coming back to me with this if something were to happen down the line.” Resolved to keep his past secret thereafter, Miller rose from accountant at a Campbell Soup factory to president of the Jordan Brand, with time out to head the Portland Trail Blazers—known then as the “Jail Blazers” since many of its players had also done time. Perhaps the greatest motivational moment in the book is when Miller, jailed yet again as a youth, resolves, “I am gonna learn my way out,” which he’s since paid forward through educational philanthropy.

A newsmaking book that deserves a hearing, though Miller could have done more to make amends.

THE AGE OF ASTONISHMENT John Morris in the Extraordinary Century― From the Civil War to the Cold War Morris, Bill Pegasus (304 pp.) $27.95 | April 5, 2022 978-1-64313-704-9

The history of a century through the eyes of an ordinary man who lived through it.

Journalist Morris holds a low opinion of recent decades.

“The difference between a buggy and a jet,” he writes, “is far greater than the difference between the rotary phones I grew up using and the smart phone I use today.” He maintains that the true miracle century was 1870-1970, and he makes a convincing case through the biography of his grandfather John Morris (1863-1955). His imaginative “mongrel” approach— “a mix of…biography, history, reportage, memoir, autobiography, and, when the record runs thin, speculation that flirts with fiction”—is successful. John was born into a slave-owning Virginia family. The end of the Civil War led to the departure of most of the plantation workers, so his father took a job as professor of English at the University of Georgia. Son John entered college in 1879 and proved an avid scholar while Thomas Edison 78

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and others were launching “the golden age of the independent American inventor.” John, an obsessive newspaper reader, undoubtedly soaked up these developments. After graduation, he drifted before deciding to attend the University of Berlin, where he discovered his life’s work: philology. His career as a professor writing scholarly articles for obscure journals does not seem like material for a page-turner, but his modest life, in contrast with the turbulent outside world, makes for an engaging read. Throughout his life, the South was afflicted with virulent racism, lynchings, and the KKK. Though John supported Black rights, he wondered if a “White man in the South [could]…help Blacks rise?” The author cuts away regularly to recount other historical elements that were prominent in his grandfather’s life: electric light, flush toilets, the creation of modern medicine, radio, movies, TV, automobiles, two world wars, and the atomic bomb. Though the author offers few novel insights, he does a superb job of recounting a life amid a series of significant decades.

An entertaining combination of domestic and world history.

TASHA A Son’s Memoir

Morton, Brian Avid Reader Press (224 pp.) $27.00 | April 12, 2022 978-1-982178-93-2 A son’s search for his mother.

In 1991, award-winning novelist Morton fictionalized his mother in his first novel, The Dylanist. “Her eccentricities, he admits, “made it hard for me to resist a comic portrayal”—a portrayal that wounded her. Now, after her death, Morton tries to understand how she became the stubborn, overbearing woman who blighted his emotional life. When she was younger, he knew, she had been defiant and determined; at 16, she left home and changed her name from Esther to Tasha, “partly because she liked the sound and partly because it wasn’t the name of anyone she knew.” Tasha became the first copy girl at the Daily Worker, and she also worked for the United Office and Professional Workers of America, where she met the man she would marry. When he dallied in proposing, she took off to a kibbutz for six months. Married at last and with two young children, she returned to school to earn a graduate degree in education, going on to become an innovative teacher and active school board member. Yet after her husband died suddenly in 1984, she started hoarding—filling her house with the “detritus of her despair”—and sank into depression, the depths of which she confessed to her diary. She felt, Morton realized, “as if she loved us more than any of us loved her.” After a stroke and increasing dementia made it impossible for her to care for herself at home, Morton and his sister tried to find support for her only to discover the dearth of resources for the elderly and their vulnerability to abuse. The author’s revised portrayal of Tasha is both comic and tender. He recounts frustrating, absurd |

THE REVENGE OF POWER How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century

conversations and discovers, as well, “a life that was devoted to making a contribution. What I see is the life of a woman who gave of herself as fully as she could.” His affecting memoir reveals a desperate woman railing against indignities and loneliness and a son powerless to assuage her pain.

Melancholy and familial devotion imbue a nuanced, poignant portrait.

LEARNING AMERICA One Woman’s Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children

Mufleh, Luma Mariner Books (256 pp.) $27.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-358-56972-5

A moving portrayal of the continuing plight of refugees.

Founding director of the nonprofit Fugees Family, an organization devoted to educational justice for refugee and immigrant children, Mufleh makes her book debut with an absorbing account of her journey from a Jordanian immigrant to an influential educational leader and activist. The author grew up in Amman, where, at the age of 17, “I was held at gunpoint and terrorized by a police officer who had found me kissing a woman in the park.” Although she describes herself as “a gay Muslim Arab American and refugee” as well as a middle-class, college-educated English speaker, her circumstances as an immigrant were far different from those of the ragtag group of boys that she encountered one day playing soccer in a parking lot in Atlanta. Impulsively joining them, she soon became coach of “the Fugees,” and in a few years, she had three teams and about 60 boys. As Mufleh became involved in the boys’ lives, she was stunned at the lack of support available to refugee families. They struggled economically and socially, and their children went to overcrowded, underfunded schools where their needs were not addressed. Besides offering vivid portraits of refugee families, the author engenders empathy in readers by asking them to imagine themselves in a frightening scenario: caught in violent conflict, fleeing with children, wrenched from home and community, and interred in a refugee camp, facing an inhumane immigration system “that assumes victims of war and atrocities are liars.” The rare few granted asylum would soon find that Blacks, the poor, and gay people “were othered and ostracized” and refugee kids left to languish. Seeing a dire need for remedial education for those kids, Mufleh started Fugees Academy in Atlanta, garnering nonprofit status from the IRS. Its success led to several more schools in other cities and well-earned acclaim for Mufleh. Nevertheless, she sees the schools as “the anomaly” in a system that needs profound change.

An impassioned, penetrating critique and inspiring model for progress.

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Naím, Moisés St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $29.99 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-1-250-27920-0

A distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sounds an alarm about the worldwide rise of authoritarian leaders.

After arguing in The End of Power that global institutions are finding it harder to win respect, Naím, the former editorin-chief of Foreign Policy, makes a good case that leaders who gain power increasingly use autocratic strategies he calls the 3Ps: “populism, polarization, and post-truth.” His thesis isn’t new, but what sets his work apart from books like Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny and Michiko Kakutani’s The Death of Truth is its unusually comprehensive armada of facts about the international drift over the past two decades toward authoritarian leaders, whether old-style dictators like Kim Jong Un or nominally elected presidents like Vladimir Putin. The pandemic has posed unprecedented openings for power grabs: Xi Jinping cracked down on ethnic Uyghurs in China, Viktor Orbán shut down Parliament in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte was granted near-unlimited emergency powers in the Philippines, and other countries have seen similarly repressive moves. In one of many startling but well-documented examples, Naím notes that a European Union report found that Russia used social media bots “to try to worsen the crisis the pandemic would generate for its adversaries in Europe,” typically by undermining confidence in democracies’ emergency response. Other tactics used for years by Russia—along with North Korea, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia— include the creation of GONGOs, government-operated fake NGOs, to thwart the work of democracies. Naím’s solutions to the new authoritarianism tend toward blue-sky visions, and his repeated use of the term “3P autocrats” is perhaps too clever for his urgent message (as in the Disney-fied chapter title “The 3P Autocrats Go Global”). But his book offers a chilling confirmation of a trend many readers will have sensed instinctively: A growing number of countries have achieved or are moving toward “outright kakistocracy: rule by the very worst a society has to offer.”

An authoritative and intelligent portrait of the global spread of authoritarianism and its dangers.

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“A beautifully written tribute to the healing power of nature.” thin places

THIN PLACES A Natural History of Healing and Home ní Dochartaigh, Kerri Milkweed (240 pp.) $24.00 | April 12, 2022 978-1-57131-195-5

A luminous memoir about growing up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Born in 1983 (the “exact midway point” of the Troubles) in the border town of Derry, ní Dochartaigh was raised by a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. However, she writes, her family was “neither Protestant nor Catholic, and our parents had stayed together in a mixed marriage long enough to ensure that none of the essential parts of either of these camps could ever be instilled in us. At least not to the extent that we could claim either heritage.” Throughout, the author recounts memories of a childhood consumed by loss and violence. With raw emotion, she describes many of the harrowing experiences, including being driven out of their home when a bomb was thrown through the window, moving frequently to avoid threats, and the murder of a dear friend. The author also explores the unsettling feeling of limbo that the Brexit vote has caused to resurface. In her attempt to come to terms with the effects of her tumultuous childhood, ní Dochartaigh writes poetically about her search for “thin places…places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds, beyond experience.” Having left Ireland many years ago in an attempt to escape the pain, she describes the feeling of being called to return. “A call back to the land that made me, that wounded and broke me, the land that turned out to be the only place that held the power for me to heal,” she writes. “A call back to places that I know my grandfather sought out, and maybe his grandfather before him, too.” For the author, who has suffered from alcoholism, depression, and suicidal ideation, the wild places surrounding her hometown help release her anxieties and bring her unparalleled peace. They have become her thin places.

A beautifully written tribute to the healing power of nature.

HOW TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain North, Ryan Illus. by Carly Monardo Riverhead (416 pp.) $28.00 | March 15, 2022 978-0-593-19201-6

A fun book about “the edges of science, the limits of what’s currently possible thanks to the technology that humans have already invented or are currently inventing.”

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North, an Eisner Award–winning writer for Marvel Comics, offers an entertaining manual illustrated with suitably farcical drawings by comics artist Monardo, imparting detailed advice for becoming a supervillain with the intention of tyrannizing everything and everyone in the universe. With a career spent designing “increasingly credible world-domination schemes,” North has confidence that they could work, even though in the world of comics those schemes are always foiled by superheroes.

Nevertheless, prospective supervillains would do well to find a secret base for subversive activities, establish a separate country, and unleash aggressive animals, such as dinosaurs, revived through cloning. In addition, supervillains will want to control the weather, manage the power of the internet, and achieve enduring fame, if not physical immortality. Though North’s proposals are outlandish, he grounds them in physics, biology, history, geology, zoology, computer science, genetics, paleontology, and cryogenics, not to mention politics and international law. He suggests, for example, three ways to take land away from someone else to start your own country (through stealth, force, or persuasion), and he enumerates the pros and cons of taking over Antarctica. At each step, he offers a timeline and cost analysis. As for dealing with climate change, “an obvious solution presents itself to even the neophyte supervillain: take over the world and use your iron fist to crush anyone who even thinks about emitting carbon.” Supervillains and heroes alike often face obstinate foes, requiring them to wield political influence. “The way you force people in power to do what you want,” North writes, “is by ensuring that they fear you.” The author’s spoof contains a serious subtext: The world has lots of problems—climate change, war, inequality, computer hackers, disease, and rampant greed, among others—that can be addressed through understanding, focus, and determination. Knowledge, he proposes, is the greatest superpower of all.

An exuberant handbook for making the world better.

LIFE OF CHE An Impressionistic Biography Oesterheld, Héctor Germán Illus. by Alberto Breccia & Enrique Breccia Trans. by Erica Mena Fantagraphics Books (88 pp.) $19.99 | March 15, 2022 978-1-68396-522-0

A graphic biography of the famed revolutionary originally published in 1969 but unavailable in English until now.

Written by Argentine comics maestro Oesterheld and illustrated by frequent collaborator Alberto Breccia and his son, Enrique, this slim, experimental bio explores and challenges the comics form. Oesterheld’s lyrical text barrels through Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s life (1928-1967) like a prose poem, often drifting midthought from historical facts to Guevara’s internal monologue. Recounting skirmishes with Batista in Cuba, one frame reads: “Eighty-two splashing ashore, half-blind. But Fidel is shouting ‘To the mountain! We’re already in Cuba and we will be |

victorious!’ What are you going to win, dreamer. Nothing to eat and Batista’s 30,000 soldiers and the Yankees giving him everything, but here we are, staying still is worse, let’s go.” Intentionally disorienting, the biography alternates between two threads, exclusively drawn by one Breccia. One follows Guevara’s life from his student years to the Bay of Pigs and beyond, while the second recounts his final weeks in the jungles of Bolivia. Alberto’s art is mischievous. Using collage, splattery ink, and even finger-painting, he creates rapturous scenes that brim with kinetic energy and impressive technical prowess. His son draws like he’s composing woodcuts, offering chiaroscuro scenes laden with heavy shadow. If occasionally muddled, the narrative is still inspired, accentuated by essays that contextualize the history. After publication in 1969, the book was met with intense government opposition. In 1973, the publisher’s office was ransacked and materials were destroyed, including the comic’s original artwork, which made reprinting impossible. A Spanish edition emerged in 1987, which restored the book from a surviving copy of the Argentine edition, and this is the first English version. This lore transforms the book from a mere comic to something that feels like a World War II–era samizdat, a legendary underground manuscript that we’re lucky to have available.

A mesmerizing historical comic with a storied past.

JOURNEY OF THE MIND How Thinking Emerged From Chaos Ogas, Ogi & Sai Gaddam Norton (448 pp.) $30.00 | March 8, 2022 978-1-324-00657-2

Two computational neuroscientists make a fascinating argument for a “hidden connectedness of all minds,” from primitive bacteria to AI–enhanced human

intelligence.

What is “the mind,” and how does it enable consciousness, language, and self-awareness? In carefully constructed chapters that build toward a unified theory of mind—a concept that scientists only recently developed the mathematical tools to explore—Ogas and Gaddam introduce 17 increasingly intelligent entities to demonstrate the incremental and awe-inspiring emergence of awareness and consciousness. For each of these “minds,” the authors devise mental challenges and explain how the mind overcame them, a clever setup that draws readers into the surprisingly relatable drama of each scenario and enhances the authors’ conversational (and equation-free) writing style.

Their descriptive language is sharp and engaging, and the easyto-understand illustrations demonstrate the concepts underpinning evolving conscious experience, such as a bacteria’s interaction with the environment, the amoeba mind becoming aware of itself, and birdsong demonstrating culture. “Birdsong can…fuse the dynamics of two minds,” write the authors, “empowering a couple to focus on joint purposes and enabling them to share similar perceptions of important situations.” In |

later chapters, the authors explore “superminds,” which gave rise to language, civilization, and the concept of the “self,” and which continue to evolve as technology increases in sophistication and scope. Each of these examples bolsters their argument that “consciousness is a specific mental innovation that arose to solve specific mental challenges.” Though the authors don’t skimp on their analysis, that demystification may leave some readers wanting. Nonetheless, Ogas and Gaddam imbue every detail with awe and enthusiasm, a reminder to readers that the very science underpinning their theories is only possible because of the wondrous machinations of the human mind itself, a mind that likely has not reached its apotheosis.

Packed with insight and astonishing in scope, this book offers an original perspective on thinking and consciousness.

THE SHAME MACHINE Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation

O’Neil, Cathy Crown (272 pp.) $27.00 | March 22, 2022 978-1-984825-45-2

A flinty look at a culture and economy based on the premise that there are points to be scored and dollars to be made by shaming people.

“Shame is a policing tool,” writes data scientist and mathematician O’Neil, “and it has been one since the first clans of humans roamed the savannas of Africa.” As a means of reinforcing taboos and social norms, shame has its uses. Yet, as O’Neil gamely writes, there’s a “shamescape” at work, “always brimming with opportunity.” If there’s a diet on the market, there’s a huckster out there to flog it, always playing on the shame of a person who believes they are heavier than what cultural and social norms consider acceptable. In one of O’Neil’s most unpleasantly pointed examples, she examines the whisper-of-shame subeconomy surrounding female genitalia and the horror that an odor might be detected. Lysol, she notes, was originally marketed in a campaign that “shamed half of humanity for the by-products of a functioning reproductive system” and was laced with chemicals that caused burns and even death. Our sexual organs, she writes, “generate profound fears and insecurities within us. Even in these more sexually liberated times we tend to envelop them in secrecy.” O’Neil takes a philosophical turn in her discussion of the acceptability of shaming, arriving at a standard whereby those who can do nothing about a condition should be shielded whereas those who might be able to adjust—incels, for one, who “are not hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world”—might understandably weather a few shame-based nudges to grow up. Whether it’s smoking in public, masking against Covid-19, or promulgating political lies, O’Neil allows room for shame while also urging readers always to “punch up” at the social and economic machine and its masters rather than down at the vulnerable.

A thoughtful blend of social and biological science, history, economics, and sometimes contrarian politics. kirkus.com

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“More than 1,000 pages on World War II might seem overkill, but not for one of the world’s leading military historians.” blood and ruins

BLOOD AND RUINS The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945

THAT LONELY SPELL Stories of Family, Friends & Love

Overy, Richard Viking (1,152 pp.) $35.00 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-48943-7

More than 1,000 pages on World War II might seem overkill, but not for one of the world’s leading military historians.

Overy disagrees with “the conventional view of the war,” which portrays “Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese military as causes of crisis rather than its effects, which is what they were.” He emphasizes that historians describe World War I as the outcome of a 19th-century global imperial order dominated by the British and French and opposed by Germany, which considered itself a “have-not” nation whose survival depended on “conquering additional imperial zones of its own.” Few readers will quarrel with that assessment, but they may be surprised with the author’s startling yet persuasive argument that the same description applies to WWII. The 1920s featured three unhappy nations—Germany, Japan, and Italy—who felt that their national identities were in danger unless they could expand their influences. First off the mark was Japan, which invaded China in 1931. Meanwhile, viewing the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa as steppingstones to a new Roman Empire, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia. Overy emphasizes that Hitler had no intention of conquering the world. His view was that Germany, “as a vigorous, progressive and cultured people, lacked sufficient territory to…nourish a growing population.” Annexing Austria, the Sudetenland, and Czechoslovakia were acts of an energetic imperial nation, and it was no secret that Poland was next. Still, Hitler expressed surprise when Britain and France declared war. A master of technical detail, Overy summarizes the campaigns but concentrates on the backgrounds and decisions of the leaders who, despite rhetoric about freedom, found themselves in a high-tech imperialistic war. Victory occurs halfway through, and the author devotes the remaining chapters to other relevant imperial issues: Britain’s, France’s, and Holland’s violent efforts to preserve their empires did not peter out until the 1960s; China suffered civil war; and Stalin brutally took control of Eastern Europe.

A brilliant, mildly controversial interpretation of the history, conduct, and aftermath of WWII.

Park, Frances Heliotrope Books (228 pp.) $17.50 paper | March 1, 2022 978-1-942762-84-3 A fresh take on the Korean American memoir by a writer from a generation whose voice has seldom been heard.

Unlike most Korean Americans, who emigrated after the late 1960s, Park’s father was part of a small wave of Korean scholars who left shortly after the Korean War ended. In this memoir in essays, a collection of previously published pieces, the author describes the eagerness with which her cosmopolitan father—a Harvard-educated economist who worked for the World Bank—embraced the “American way of life” for his family. Park adeptly captures little details of a bygone era: her father’s love for Reader’s Digest, references to Camel cigarettes or Saturday night barbecues, and “the sweet stuff of life: Juicy Fruit gum, butterscotch candies, 7-Ups.” Although her sketches of ordinary life are engaging, the narrative is less a memoir of the times, or cultural identity, than a story of loss.

At its heart, this is an elegy to Park’s father, who died when the author was in her early 20s. These essays, she notes, are “love letters to my dad and his life, both glorious and cheated.” Though Park writes about other loved ones—her mother, a childhood friend, an old sweetheart, her ex-husband—all ultimately echo her defining loss, the beloved patriarch taken too young. Recalling the death of a beloved dog, the author writes, “You know Jefferson, I never got to say good-bye to my dad; he was here then gone forever. So, despite the tragic hour, I’m grateful I could say good-bye to you.” She revisits her last moments with her father repeatedly. Had she known he was near death, “I would have… grabbed my father so hard he could’ve never left this earth, not even if God, the angels, and fate willed it.” Yet despite the deep dive into grief, Park’s tender, self-aware voice is never maudlin, and her journey is relatable.

Heart and humanity shine through in essays that speak to a fierce love of family and longing for home.

BOMB SHELTER Love, Time, and Other Explosives

Philpott, Mary Laura Atria (288 pp.) $27.00 | April 12, 2022 978-1-982160-78-4

Essays on the challenges of midlife parenting and other terrors of human existence.

“Every joy, every loved one, every little thing I got attached to, every purpose I held dear—each one was another stick of dynamite, strapped to the rest. The longer I 82

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lived, the more I loved, the larger this combustible bundle grew,” writes Philpott in her second collection. “I walked around constantly in awe of my good fortune and also aware that it could all blow up in an instant, flipping me head over heels into the air, vaporizing everything.” In this follow-up to I Miss You When I Blink, the author returns with her trademark blend of crippling anxiety and determined optimism. Early on, Philpott recounts her terror when her teenage son had a grand mal seizure. Concerns about his health create energy and suspense at first, then dissipate, overwhelmed by all the many other things she is worried about. Foremost among them is anxiety about her future empty nest. “Sometimes when I thought about the children leaving,” she writes, “I had a primal urge to swallow them whole, just absorb them back into my body and keep them with me forever.” Philpott is clearly aware that she gets carried away sometimes—“I had it undeservedly and nonsensically good as a parent. What gave me the right to existential fear when so little actually threatened my existence or the existence of my loved ones?”—but she is unable to stop herself. In some essays, the author takes a break from her anxiety to joke about her difficulties with cooking, shopping, the NextDoor app, etc., but worry is never far away, because every moment of happiness and satisfaction comes with the specter of its opposite. “I am obsessed with death because I am in love with life….I’m sad because I’m so happy,” writes the author at the end.

First-world problems are still problems. Philpott offers camaraderie for those who face them.

ON THE LINE A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight To Build a Union

Pitkin, Daisy Algonquin (288 pp.) $27.95 | March 29, 2022 978-1-64375-071-2

The memoir of a labor organizer’s fight to unionize commercial laundry facilities in Arizona.

In her intimate and touching debut, Pitkin shares the story of her role in bringing a voice to workers who were “tired of being treated like a machine, tired of working in such dangerous conditions, and doing it for a company that didn’t care if you get sick or hurt.” Focusing on her efforts related to the campaign at Sodexho, the author describes the friendship that emerged with Alma, an immigrant worker at the factory who became a fellow organizer. At Sodexho, which services the linens for many hospitals, the workers’ primary concerns were health and safety. Pitkin vividly describes the “gruesome” working conditions, including encountering bodily fluids, IV bags, and needles left in sheets and gowns; being forced to reuse too-thin gloves that were susceptible to puncture; lack of shoe protection; and missing safety guards on machines. Narrating as if speaking to Alma, Pitkin recounts the time they spent together during the campaign, including the fear and uncertainty they faced during |

their groundwork, work stoppage, and beyond. She alternates her primary narrative with a discussion of the history of labor unions in the U.S. During this arduous process, she and Alma began referring to themselves as “Las Polillas,” the moths, a takeoff on “Las Mariposas,” who “worked clandestinely to oppose the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic and were nicknamed The Butterflies.” Pitkin also interjects details about her personal life, including her recurring dreams about moths and the metamorphosis that this journey brought her as well as her view on the true meaning of solidarity. Declaring “a new wave of worker momentum,” the author rightly contends that “labor law in this country is broken, and just as in the early 1900s, a strike is a worker’s only recourse, the only way to force a company to the bargaining table.”

A much-needed spotlight on the daily struggles of a vulnerable population.

THE GREAT NOWITZKI Basketball and the Meaning of Life

Pletzinger, Thomas Trans. by Shane Anderson Norton (448 pp.) $30.00 | March 15, 2022 978-1-324-00305-2

How a skinny German kid became one of the best basketball players of all time.

In a book translated and “edited with an American readership in mind,” journalist and novelist Pletzinger explores the improbable emergence of Dirk Nowitzki (b. 1979) as an NBA superstar. The author follows Nowitzki’s early development in the town of Würzburg, his experiences in international basketball as an adolescent and young man, and his 21 seasons as a member of the Dallas Mavericks (he retired in 2019). The author had extraordinary access to Nowitzki during the last few years of his career, and he presents much of the material as a firsthand observer who often traveled with the Mavericks and was as much a fan as a journalist. This vantage makes possible some intriguing behind-the-scenes commentary, as in the extensive discussions of Nowitzki’s intense and sometime unorthodox training methods or his unguarded reactions to assorted highs and lows during his final years as a player. Pletzinger also draws on a host of insider contacts, including other NBA stars such as Steve Nash and Peja Stojaković, to fill out his descriptions of his subject’s impact on the game as one of the first 7-footers who could move with agility and shoot extremely well. However, the author’s enthusiasm for every detail of his subject’s professional life occasionally feels maudlin and tedious, and the narrative meanders inexplicably in the last 100 pages or so. Though the eccentric philosophizing of Nowitzki’s longtime coach and mentor, Holger Geschwindner, is summarized at some length, credible insights into “the meaning of life,” as promised in the book’s subtitle, remain elusive. Still, Pletzinger makes a strong case for Nowitzki’s status as a kirkus.com

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“First-rate work of historical research and storytelling.” in whose ruins

BODIES ON THE LINE At the Front Lines of the Fight To Protect Abortion in America

transformative player. Nowitzski, he writes, “revolutionized his position….He shot the ball better than anyone else his size.

He changed his sport—basketball after Dirk Nowitzki is a different game than it was before him—more variable, smarter and more creative.”

A meticulously observed, impassioned assessment of Nowitzki’s significance as a basketball player.

IN WHOSE RUINS Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire Puglionesi, Alicia Scribner (384 pp.) $28.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-982116-75-0

A novel reading of American history as an endless chain of ideologically sanctioned extractions from the land.

The original inhabitants of America were presented a moral dilemma by the newcomers who wanted their land: They were both impediment and reproach, objects of admiration and enemies. One of Puglionesi’s players in this vigorous, constantly revealing study is Henry Schoolcraft (1793-1864), who coined the name of the lake in Minnesota where the Mississippi River originates, Itasca, “splicing the Latin words veritas and caput to mean true source.” But Latin wouldn’t do, and so Schoolcraft invented a putatively Ojibwe myth about a “chaste Indian maiden” of that name, a yarn that sometimes turns up in books today. Other stories abounded, all of which the author recounts engagingly. In what is now West Virginia, the owners of property containing ancient Indigenous mounds argued that they couldn’t possibly have been built by the ancestors of the people whose lands they conquered and therefore had to be Celtic or Roman—and therefore rightfully belonging to Europeans. Such mounds were looted for the treasures they supposedly contained, and while the diggers came away disappointed, the excavations gave Joseph Smith an idea for a story about buried tablets, “the spiritual treasure of the book of Mormon.” From the moment Americans landed in the West, they began collecting Native arts even as they ravaged the lands in the quest for minerals—a process that only accelerated in the nuclear age, with its need for uranium. All the while, Puglionesi writes, spiritualists were cooking up tales about Indigenous ghosts, borrowed by speculators and prospectors who claimed that those ghosts were guiding them to the oil fields of Pennsylvania and New York; one claimed that he had “Indian spirits working ‘mechanically’ on his body while white ‘wisdom spirits’ enlightened his soul.” Page after page, Puglionesi finds some strange twist on history used to justify theft and genocide, and it makes for a fascinating tale.

A first-rate work of historical research and storytelling.

Rankin, Lauren Counterpoint (304 pp.) $26.00 | April 5, 2022 978-1-64009-474-1

A history of the abortion-rights movement told through the lens of abortion clinic escorts.

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, women’s reproductive rights have been under attack. Much of the battle has occurred legislatively, particularly through bans at the local level. But as Rankin shows, another danger is the contingent of protestors who attempt to halt abortion by physically blocking access to services and whose ultimate goal is to shut down clinics. “If you live in one of the 10 percent of U.S. counties that still has an abortion clinic,” writes the author, who served as an abortion escort for six years in New Jersey, “there is probably a group of picketers outside of it right now.” As early as 1988, when a group called Operation Rescue “conducted 182 blockades” of clinics, a group of abortion-rights activists began to create the first “clinic defense networks,” which ensured that patients could access important health services. This proved to be the vital beginning of the abortion escort movement. In the years that followed, escorts organized against everything from blockades and clinic closures to the murder of providers. When their local clinics were shut, escorts found new, behind-the-scenes ways to support patients needing abortions, including amassing funding for those who couldn’t afford the procedure. Although the introduction of right-wing judges during the Trump administration has rendered abortion’s legality more tenuous than ever, escorts remain active and ready to fight. Rankin’s passion for women’s health blazes on the page, and she is adept at connecting disparate events to create a cohesive historical narrative. At times, the plethora of profiles makes it difficult to keep track of the principals, but this is an important book nonetheless.

A stunning, compassionate history of an overlooked element within the abortion-rights movement in the U.S.

THE AVOIDABLE WAR The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the U.S. and Xi Jinping’s China Rudd, Kevin PublicAffairs (432 pp.) $32.00 | March 22, 2022 978-1-5417-0129-8

tional relationships.

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An exploration of one of the world’s most significant and fraught interna-

Rudd, CEO of Asia Society and the former prime minister of Australia, employs his considerable diplomatic experience to analyze Xi Jinping’s aggressive approach toward the world stage.

The author sets out a readable cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of mutual distrust between China and the U.S. as well as the follies of the “Thucydides Trap,” described by historian Graham Allison as “the natural, inevitable discombobulation that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power.” As Rudd amply demonstrates, Xi, as a kind of neo-Mao, is actively stoking the “depressingly familiar, ancient alchemies of xenophobia, nationalism, and political opportunism.” The author calls for new “rules of the road” for the two powers to navigate, and he shows the roots of the conflict in China’s suspicion of foreigners, regarded as culturally inferior and irrelevant, and the stance of the American government, which, despite its avowed anti-colonialism, has often disregarded China as an equal trading partner and pursued aggressive, patronizing policies toward China. After World War I, for example, “America’s status, in the eyes of China’s emerging political class, collapsed overnight from national savior to spineless hypocrite.” Rudd surmises that Beijing sees the relationship as a transactional one while the U.S. has viewed it as “transformational, carrying with it the deeper objective of changing the fundamental nature of Communist China itself.” This has not happened, of course, and the author walks us through Xi’s “ten concentric circles of interest,” which include the widespread consolidation of power, national unity, unfettered economic growth, “securing China’s maritime periphery in East Asia and the west Pacific,” and even “rewriting the global rules-based order.” Where Xi is perhaps most vulnerable is in environmental policy or a situation in which cracks develop in the seemingly endless economic expansion plan.

An accessible primer on the evolving China–U.S. rivalry.

THE LAST BARON The Paris Kidnapping That Brought Down an Empire Sancton, Tom Dutton (368 pp.) $28.00 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-18380-9

Fast-paced account of a late-1970s abduction in Paris that exposed rivalries, anger, and secrets.

Former Time Paris bureau chief Sancton was living in France in 1978 when he followed newspaper reports of the brash kidnapping of industrialist Baron ÉdouardJean Empain, whose huge empire comprised 174 companies in fields that included mining, banking, shipbuilding, armaments, and nuclear energy. Sancton’s brisk recounting of the abduction and its aftermath draws on Empain’s memoirs as well as those of Alain Caillol, convicted of masterminding the crime, who not only talked with Sancton, but eagerly gave him documents and clippings. These sources, along with trial testimony, reports, and additional interviews, enabled the author to create |

a palpable sense of the carrying out of the crime and Empain’s ordeal, which included the amputation of a fingertip, sent to his family. Empain’s conglomerate had been established by his grandfather, a titan of the belle epoque who managed vast holding companies and multinational investments and whose achievements included building the Paris Métro. By the end of the 19th century, Sancton writes, “the Empain group was a major player in the fields of transport, energy, finance, and civil engineering.”

Born into luxury, Empain reveled in fast cars, glamorous women, and high-stakes gambling, habitually losing huge sums at his twice-weekly poker games and, in 1977, some 11 million francs at a casino in Cannes. However, the men who took part in the kidnapping, though “left-leaning and anti-capitalist,” were not aiming to make a political statement; they wanted a ransom of 80 million francs. As days turned into months, the kidnappers realized they would not achieve their goal. Sancton vividly chronicles the invasive publicity that cost Empain his marriage, the police investigators’ frustration and strategies, the machinations of rivalrous business associates who welcomed Empain’s disappearance, and the disclosures about his philandering and gambling that tainted Empain and his family.

An entertaining, well-researched tale of a late-20th-century scandal.

THE DYLAN TAPES Friends, Players, & Lovers Talkin’ Early Bob Dylan Scaduto, Anthony Ed. by Stephanie Trudeau Univ. of Minnesota (400 pp.) $29.95 | April 5, 2022 978-1-5179-0815-7

An extended, illuminating footnote to the author’s classic 1971 biography.

Scaduto’s Bob Dylan is considered one of the best biographies of the iconic singer/songwriter. Thanks to Trudeau, Scaduto’s wife, 24 interviews the author conducted with key people in Dylan’s life have been literally resurrected from a basement. Collectively, they provide a road map to the birth and development of Dylan’s quixotic career—and Scaduto’s book. Echo Helstrom, a high school girlfriend who believes she was the inspiration for “Girl From the North Country,” provides an early picture of Dylan singing and playing guitar on a street corner in the fall and reading John Steinbeck. Gretel Hoffman, a friend from the Minneapolis days, recalls watching Bob “build the myth, the legend of himself…very consciously, very deliberately.” Thanks to David Whitaker, who lived down the street, Dylan got hooked on Woody Guthrie, and Mike Porco talks about him singing Guthrie songs and “Blowin’ in the Wind” in his New York City club. Musician Dave Van Ronk tells Scaduto that Dylan wanted to be a superstar—until he didn’t. The author also interviewed the Clancy Brothers; Phil Ochs, to whom Dylan tried out a “new” song, “Mr. Tambourine Man”; and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who didn’t share Dylan’s affinity for Hank Williams. It’s not all sweetness and light. Some people are cranky and critical, kirkus.com

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“Generous but never apologetic, Scharnhorst ably reveals a complex man: irascible, vain, and hungry for adulation.” the life of mark twain

including Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend who appeared on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The esteemed record producer John Hammond Sr. fesses up—“he didn’t play the greatest guitar, but so what?” The Joan Baez interview from 1970 is a veritable gold mine of Dylan lore. Finally, Scaduto struck pay dirt when Dylan agreed to a wide-ranging, amiable interview. He read the manuscript and told him, “I like the book. That’s the weird thing about it.” These insightful interviews are like pieces to a puzzle that the author ably wove together.

For Dylan fans, it’s like revisiting an old friend.

THE LIFE OF MARK TWAIN The Final Years, 1891-1910

Scharnhorst, Gary Univ. of Missouri (710 pp.) $44.95 | March 11, 2022 978-0-8262-2241-1

Meticulous research informs the third volume of a scholarly biography.

Scharnhorst completes his commodious life of Twain with a densely detailed chronology of personal trauma and professional triumph, including the publication of The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Following the Equator, and chapters of his rambling autobiography. Always needing money, Sam, as Scharnhorst calls him, worked tirelessly—writing, lecturing, performing—to compensate for bad business dealings and several economic depressions. In 1891, he carted his wife, daughters, and maid to Europe, hoping they could live more cheaply than at home. Besides financial pressures, he faced family stresses. In 1896, his beloved daughter Susy died of spinal meningitis, for which he blamed himself. If he had not been “forced by financial exigency to lecture around the world to pay his debts,” he could have kept the family in America; instead, Susy died “a pauper & an exile.” Jean, another daughter, had epilepsy, a condition that deteriorated into violent outbursts, especially against her father; she died in 1909. Clara, pursuing a singing career, was rebellious and, because Sam supported her, expensive. His wife, Livy, suffered from a heart condition for which she futilely sought a cure; she died in 1904. Scharnhorst recounts all of Sam’s writing output and its critical reception; the events in his packed social calendar; his many public appearances before crowds that numbered in the thousands; and his evolution from social satirist and man of letters to “cultural critic, public intellectual, and political sage.”

Among the issues against which he railed were racism; antisemitism; Christian Science and Christian missionaries; imperialism; and “the rapacity and materialism of twentieth-century America, which he blamed on such post–Civil War fat cats as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Jay Gould.” Generous but never apologetic, Scharnhorst ably reveals a complex man: irascible, vain, and hungry for adulation.

An authoritative portrait of the iconic and iconoclastic author.

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HOLDING TOGETHER The Hijacking of Rights in America and How To Reclaim Them for Everyone Shattuck, John & Sushma Raman & Mathias Risse The New Press (464 pp.) $29.99 | April 26, 2022 978-1-62097-724-8

A spirited defense of the political and civil rights that Americans enjoy— and that are constantly being chipped away.

In the middle of the pandemic in July 2020, a nationwide poll showed that 71% of Americans believed that “Americans have more in common than many people think.” By May 2021, that figure was 88%, a stunning supermajority. What holds these Americans together, maintain the authors, faculty members at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, is our portfolio of rights, constitutional and agreed-upon and even some that we haven’t figured out yet. On the last point, the authors reveal that most Americans hold generous—liberal, even—views on the rights of immigrants, to say nothing of police reform, equal rights for minorities, and the like. The fundamental right is the right to vote, and that is precisely the one that the authors hold is most endangered by the rise of neo-authoritarian attempts to disenfranchise voters, “a direct assault on the voting rights of the electoral majority that had defeated [Trump].” Though the authors try not to evoke the former president too often, they lay many assaults on rights at the door of the previous administration, including the unstated right to have a civil conversation about politics without incorporating that administration’s “vast official landscape of disinformation and misinformation.”

Though the authors add that “ideological tension is a foundation of a healthy democracy,” so, too, is a shared standard of objective truth. But the authors show how few institutions are invested in teaching people how to distinguish fact from lie.

On that note, they conclude, perhaps controversially, that federal legislation should be enacted to regulate social media and “require algorithms to be used safely and responsibly to promote freedom of speech and protect against racial, gender, religious, disability, or LGBTQ discrimination.”

A provocative and well-considered argument stressing the necessity of maintaining the sanctity of hard-won liberties.

FOREVER BOY A Mother’s Memoir of Autism and Finding Joy Swenson, Kate Park Row Books (320 pp.) $27.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-7783-1199-7

An advocate for autistic children reflects on life with her son, Cooper, who was born with severe autism. |

When a premarital counselor asked Swenson and her boyfriend at the time, Jamie, how they would cope with the challenges of caring for a child on the autism spectrum, they balked.

“What a silly question,” she writes. “That would not happen to us.

He went on to briefly talk about the stress of hav­ing children, and how a child with special needs intensifies it. I remember not being jarred by the question, not in the slightest. I mean, we were healthy and invincible.” After suffering a miscarriage, the couple’s second pregnancy resulted in Cooper, who could not be comforted by touch. Cooper mystified the author and made her an outsider to the “exclusive club” of mothers with so-called “normal” children. As she struggled to make sense of her situation and the attendant personal and financial challenges, Jamie distanced himself. Though they divorced, they became more committed to giving their children—especially Cooper, who had been diagnosed with severe, language-impeding autism—“their best life.” Finally able to work as a team, she and Jamie fought doctors and schools to give Cooper what he needed, and they remarried each other. Despite their loving care, Cooper was subject to fits of rage so violent that they feared for the safety of their other children. The author, creator of the blog Finding Cooper’s Voice, finally decided to medicate Cooper to ameliorate the anxiety that stalked him, despite her fear that drugs would turn him into a “zombie.” The result was miraculous. Much calmer in general, Cooper began to build a small vocabulary that helped him emerge from the lonely world in which he had been trapped. This wise, inspiring book will appeal to not only parents of children with autism, but anyone interested in stories about the selflessness and endurance of maternal love.

A candid and hopeful addition to the personal literature on pediatric autism.

MY MOTHER’S WAR The Incredible True Story of How a Resistance Fighter Survived Three Concentration Camps Taylor, Eva Hanover Square Press (224 pp.) $16.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-0-369-72043-6

A daughter unearths her mother’s remarkable Holocaust story.

As a young woman, Taylor’s mother, Sabine Zuur, was a charming Dutch socialite who was madly in love with a pilot in the Royal Army. After her fiance left for a war from which he would never return, Sabine became involved in the Dutch resistance, helping to hide fellow resistance members in the Hague, where she lived at the time. “Sabine had an extensive and closeknit circle of friends, most of whom seemed determined to become involved with the Resistance, as was Sabine herself,” writes the author. “Like many others, she was strongly opposed to the ideals of the German Reich, and when an opportunity presented itself…to join the Resistance herself, she took it with |

both hands.” In 1943, Sabine was arrested and jailed in prisons in Amsterdam and Utrecht before being transferred to three different concentration camps: Amersfoort, Ravensbrück, and Mauthausen. During her time in the camps, Sabine both witnessed and endured unspeakable atrocities. She survived the final camp only because she caught the eye of a German prisoner whose chilling obsession with Sabine led him to care for her and several of her friends, including the doctor who would go on to deliver her two children when she was safely back at home in Holland. This riveting story is thoroughly researched and unsparingly frank about the cost of war. However, other than the letters she penned to her mother from two Dutch prisons, Sabine’s words are largely absent from the narrative, and the prose often lacks polish. Furthermore, Taylor defines Sabine primarly by her victimhood, providing readers with only hints of her life before the war, thereby creating a character that can feel both elusive and two-dimensional.

A heartfelt biography of a Dutch concentration camp survivor that doesn’t fully live up to its extraordinary subject.

SISTERS OF MOKAMA The Pioneering Women Who Brought Hope and Healing to India

Thottam, Jyoti Viking (384 pp.) $28.00 | April 12, 2022 978-0-525-52235-5

The story of six Kentucky nuns who forged a new life in India.

In her debut book, New York Times Opinion editor Thottam draws on detailed archival sources and more than 60 interviews to create a vivid history of a hospital and nursing school established in the small Indian town of Mokama in 1947 by six members of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, whose “ambition and longing, passion and hunger” fueled their desire for bold, new challenges. Ranging in age from their early 20s to 50, buoyed with hope and excitement, they set out for India knowing no Hindi and without a clue about conditions in a nation that had just emerged from British rule and the trauma of Partition. After an arduous journey by sea and rail, they faced a stunning reality. Mokama, riddled by violence, was populated by the war-ravaged and destitute who had fled brutality and the loss of their homes. The physical conditions were daunting: The Jesuits who had invited them provided a large, unheated structure with no electricity or running water; no hospital beds; no medicines; and no doctors, nurses, or other staff. Weeks after their arrival, supplies finally came, and Nazareth Hospital, as they named it, began seeing patients. A young doctor arrived in 1948, and by 1949, the nuns, working tirelessly, offered basic primary care, a village health center, and a school to train nurses—aspiring young women like Thottam’s mother— who came from all over India. In 1952, they established a leprosy clinic. Nearly eight decades later, the hospital still exists, serving “the poor and the extremely ill, for whom Nazareth is still kirkus.com

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THE HIDDEN ORDER OF INTIMACY Reflections on the Book of Leviticus

the only option.” The author offers candid, sympathetic portraits of the doctors and nurses who arrived through the years to staff the hospital and especially of the six original founders.

“They are women,” she writes, “who took hold of uncertainty, saw a void, and would not let go until they had shaped it into something closer to the life they desired.”

An inspiring story of faith and dedication.

PRIVATE NOTEBOOKS 1914-1916

Wittgenstein, Ludwig Ed. and Trans. by Marjorie Perloff Liveright/Norton (240 pp.) $24.95 | April 5, 2022 978-1-324-09080-9 Wittgenstein’s private notebooks provide welcome context to his first masterpiece.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), the only book Wittgenstein published during his lifetime, is among the most influential philosophical works of the 20th century.

Famously, he wrote much of the book while fighting as a volunteer for the Austro-Hungarian Army against Russia in World War I. Throughout this period of his life, he kept a series of notebooks that contained a draft of the Tractatus on the recto pages and a private journal, written in code, on the verso pages.

Incredibly, until now, the verso pages have never been published in English. Poetry scholar and critic Perloff noticed this oversight early in the pandemic when, turning to Wittgenstein for comfort, she reread his journals in German. In bringing this text to the English-reading world, Perloff has done a great service to scholars and students of philosophy. Wittgenstein’s philosophical writings give the impression of being unattached to their author. Consequently, to read him in an autobiographical mode—whether longing for his friends, complaining about his comrades, documenting his frequency of masturbation, or praying—as he is composing the Tractatus is to have that work humanized. More than anything, the notebooks describe his frustrations with the amount and quality of his work. Again and again, the crystalline insights he seeks remain on “the tip of my tongue.” In the last of three notebooks (the others are lost), Wittgenstein is moved to the front lines of the war. “Perhaps,” he writes, “the proximity to death will bring me the light of life!”

Over the course of the narrative, his attitude toward life shifts from mystical indifference to the realization, achieved only after being fired at, that “I now have such a strong wish to live!”

At the same time, his work broadens, “from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world.”

An invaluable contribution to the scholarship of Wittgenstein.

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Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb Schocken (304 pp.) $32.50 | March 29, 2022 978-0-8052-4357-4

A broad review of the biblical book of Leviticus.

Noted Torah scholar Zornberg, who won the National Jewish Book Award for The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, takes readers on a densely detailed, challenging tour of the traditional and mystical readings of Leviticus, drawing especially from the Midrash and other Jewish writings and interpretations through history. This is not a linear review of Leviticus nor a text-based commentary. Instead, the author “reads Leviticus through the prism of midrashic narratives that connect the surface with the depths of this text.” This approach allows readers to interface with Leviticus through the thoughtful and timeless opinions of rabbis and Torah scholars of the distant past. Simultaneously, Zornberg brings in more modern and secular voices as well, including Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Freud, Foucault, George Eliot, Keats, Franz Rosenzweig, Kafka, Borges, and Louise Glück. Assuming that her readers are familiar with the scriptural background, Zornberg spends very little time on reviewing the text itself. In lieu of a line-by-line analysis, she uses specific liturgical readings from Leviticus as springboards for exploring later commentary. One of the common themes the author identifies is the continued guilt caused by the Golden Calf rebellion. As she ably conveys, most of Leviticus stems from this unatonable moment of idolatry. “The national experience of shame is related to the memory of the Golden Calf,” which “haunts the people, in the way that something neither dead nor alive haunts the present moment.” The trauma of rebellion leads to a communal commitment to holiness, marked by such characteristics as an abhorrence of blasphemy, an emphasis on caring for the poor, and an obsession with cleanliness of the body and home. Though this book is an impressive scholarly reference, it will be confusingly inaccessible to readers without a prior working knowledge of midrashic scholarship and Hebrew.

A work of depth and cultural value that will have limited appeal beyond religious scholars.

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“Those who worry about clear and present dangers to democracy will find much grist in this astute biography.” the man who understood democracy

THE MAN WHO UNDERSTOOD DEMOCRACY The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville Zunz, Olivier Princeton Univ. (456 pp.) $35.00 | May 3, 2022 978-0-691-17397-9

A wide-ranging study of the life and thought of the French aristocrat who, looking in from the outside, taught Americans about the political system that guided them.

When he was just 25, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled across the Atlantic to see the American experiment for himself. He landed in 1831, a time of turmoil, and made some compelling observations from the start—e.g., Americans were fractious, worshipped flags, exalted themselves as exceptional.

As he traveled across the country, his observations deepened, and he formulated a maxim that he would later apply to France in a time of turmoil: “One must first belong to one’s country before one belongs to a party.” He determined that a durable democracy must involve every citizen, but he found troubling signs on every front. In Cincinnati, for instance, he observed the segregation of Blacks and the fact that the city’s “whiteness was by design,” while in the South, he noticed that there were few White people who did not carry a concealed weapon, adding an interlocutor’s note that “in the North you have religion; here you have fanaticism.” As Zunz, who has written extensively on his subject, shows throughout, Tocqueville recorded plenty of signs of disunion and fragmentation in a country divided by the institution of slavery; nor was he blind to the mistreatment of Native Americans. When Tocqueville returned to France, Zunz notes, he wrote with particular appreciation of the fact that seemingly irreconcilable systems of government—federal, state, and local—somehow managed to work and that the branches of the federal government were restrained from tyranny by the deliberate insertion of checks and balances. Even so, at the end of his life, having written extensively in the same British library room where Karl Marx (whom he never met) was working, Tocqueville was pessimistic, fearing that “the democratic experiment might be failing.”

Those who worry about clear and present dangers to democracy will find much grist in this astute biography.

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I AM MOZART, TOO The Lost Genius of Maria Anna Mozart

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

LIFELING by Kirsty Applebaum..........................................................91

Ades, Audrey Illus. by Adelina Lirius Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-0-374-31476-7

UNFADEABLE by Maurice Broaddus..................................................93 THE PEAR AFFAIR by Judith Eagle; illus. by Jo Rioux..................... 99 THE WOMAN WHO SPLIT THE ATOM by Marissa Moss................110 THE RAINBOW PARADE by Emily Neilson.....................................110 THE LAST MAPMAKER by Christina Soontornvat..........................116 HUNTERS OF THE LOST CITY by Kali Wallace............................... 118

Discover the lost genius of Maria Anna Mozart.

Ades and Lirius’ picture-book biography tells the story of the older sister of great classical music composer and pianist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Maria, nicknamed Nannerl, narrates the story, recounting how her musical family life inspired her early longing to make music. During her childhood, her father taught her to play the harpsichord. She explains that “Wolfgang always wanted to do everything I did, so Papa taught him, too.” Both children showed prodigious aptitude and spent years performing across Europe. However, the custom of the time precluded women from public performance, never mind musical composition, so as Nannerl grew older, her father arranged for her to marry, bringing her short-lived music career to an end. Nevertheless, Nannerl’s passion for music never died. The book spends little time developing the relationships between its central characters, especially the complex one between Nannerl and her father, in reality not half so tyrannical a figure as the story makes him out to be. The narrative is rather limited in scope, omitting certain key aspects of Nannerl’s biography. The prose is lyrical in its simplicity but otherwise unremarkable; the gouache and digital illustrations, however, are sublime, painted in delicate shades with whimsical touches and flowing floral scroll motifs. The backmatter explains that some liberties were taken in creating this work of “creative nonfiction” and provides biographical and reference information, including a timeline and glossary. All characters are White. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Interesting enough but not particularly impactful. (Pic­ ture-book biography. 4-8)

THE LAST MAPMAKER

Soontornvat, Christina Candlewick (368 pp.) $17.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-5362-0495-7

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“Gripping drama full of intense emotion.” lifeling

LIFELING

Applebaum, Kirsty Henry Holt (272 pp.) $16.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-250-31735-3

SCOUT IS NOT A BAND KID

Armstrong, Jade Random House Graphic (272 pp.) $20.99 | $12.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-17623-8 978-0-593-17622-1 paper Eighth grader Scout is desperate to meet her favorite author, who will be appearing at a festival in another town.

The only way she can think of to get there is to join the school band, which will be performing at the festival. Trouble is, Scout doesn’t play an instrument. So she lies and says she plays the trombone. The other trombone player, Merrin, a serious music student who has a lot at stake from the band’s success, is excited to welcome her, but when she discovers that Scout can’t play, she is actually upset. Thinking Scout is just rusty, their teacher assigns Merrin to tutor Scout, telling the girls they will both be kicked out if they don’t get along better. Scout, meanwhile, shows little inclination to practice. Eventually, the two find common ground—a |

JOHN’S TURN

Barnett, Mac Illus. by Kate Berube Candlewick (32 pp.) $17.99 | March 1, 2022 978-1-5362-0395-0

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What if you had the power to stop someone from dying? What if it cost you your own life?

Twelve-year-old Lonny Quicke is a lifeling—someone with the power to heal creatures near death. Applebaum flies out of the gate, introducing readers to Lonny at the moment he decides to save a dying rabbit. Lonny makes a conscious decision to rescue the creature despite knowing that his own life will be shortened as a result. From there, Lonny and his younger brother, Midge, continue to make life-altering decisions, leaving the protective woods where their widowed father keeps them safe and journeying to the large town of Farstoke in hopes of earning some much-needed money. Farstoke, which evokes a foreboding, folktalelike feeling, holds an annual festival celebrating the supposedly mythical lifelings. Will Lonny be forced to expose his closely guarded gift? The first-person narrative dynamically reveals the action as the novel unfolds, creating gripping drama full of intense emotion. The use of onomatopoeia clearly signals the pull of the lifesaving magic when death is near. This light fantasy, set in a recognizable contemporary world with splashes of magic, will spark many philosophical discussions about values and priorities; love for friends, family, and self; and the weight of possessing power. Readers will feel the release of emotion after the satisfying ending. Characters read as White.

A thought-provoking premise musing on life, love, and sacrifices made for others. (Fantasy. 8-12)

not unexpected development, but the twists and turns of the plot while getting there contain many lively and amusing moments. As a character, Scout is so flawed it’s intriguing: Her self-centered behavior and lack of conscience about lying and using band participation to get what she wants are presented not as a growth opportunity but simply not a big deal, which makes her eventual success feel unearned, creating a less-thanimpactful ending. Scout and Merrin present as White, and the book refreshingly portrays a school inhabited by kids and teachers diverse in ethnicity and gender identity and expression who accept one another.

A perky and mostly fun story. (character sketches, author’s note) (Graphic fiction. 10-14)

A young White boy shares his secret talent with his classmates for the first

time.

An unnamed, unidentified narrator, clearly one of the titular protagonist’s schoolmates, explains that every week at Friday Assembly, one student gets to perform for the whole school, an activity called “Sharing Gifts.” Once, Tina played her tuba; another time, Jessie did some magic; Carol delivered a stand-up routine. Now it’s John’s turn, and boy does he look nervous. In short, declarative sentences the text describes John’s preparations for his act. Once on stage, he hesitates as some kids laugh at the musical track accompanying his performance—“strings, violins and things, and then maybe flutes”—then it’s showtime.

A succession of wordless, double-page spreads uses continuous narration to showcase the various poses and steps of John’s glorious ballet recital. His facial expression and body language morph as fear gives way to a joyful sense of accomplishment.

Young readers will love John’s classmates’ reactions at the ending. Berube’s simple ink-and-paint illustrations have minimal background details, allowing readers to focus squarely on John and his emotions. It is truly wonderful to see a boy character in a children’s book so enthusiastic about, and accomplished at, ballet. Any child, though, who has a talent to share or struggles with performance anxiety will find a role model in John. The children are nicely diverse racially. Their teachers present White. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A lovely, empowering book about having the courage to express one’s individuality. (Picture book. 4-7)

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PICTURE BOOKS | Summer Edward

normalizing african aesthetics in children’s book art Color proofing is a familiar concept in publishing. It’s the process of producing a test print of an illustrated book to preview the colors before the final printing. I will reappropriate this term—color proofing—to discuss a common misunderstanding of how human diversity can be achieved in children’s book art.

Sustained observation of children’s book art (Western children’s book art, in particular) reveals that many creators are relying solely or heavily on the specter of brown and black skin as visual proof of the Black human presence in storybook worlds. While continuing to use aesthetic principles and artistic traditions developed over the course of centuries within societies, art institutions, and aesthetic cultures where Black people have traditionally been excluded or are simply not present, children’s books are increasingly adding more melanin. bomberclaad on iStock

What this means is that Black people are often being represented in children’s book art using formal artistic properties, judgements of taste, and architectures of expression emanating from outside of Black environments, communities, history, and culture. In large part, the illustration, design, and aesthetic packaging of children’s books continue to reflect the field’s foundation of hegemonic Eurocentric ideologies and epistemological systems that claim universal validity and unquestioned acceptance.

The truth is, we cannot “color proof ” children’s book art against centuries of Eurocentric dominance. Art that stands on the fragile bedrock of skin color has never—and will never—captured the Black human presence faithfully, unreservedly, and inspiritingly. The bedrock has to be much stronger. French artist Henri Guérin has noted that “color 92

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is art’s charm and its seduction—a siren of whom the prudent person should beware.” Indeed, there is a dangerous allure to the idea that diversifying children’s book art is as simple as darkening the complexions of human characters.

Honestly rendering and honoring the Black human presence in children’s book illustration requires that illustrators embrace a lifelong education in the rich, long, ever expanding lineages of art created by African/African-descended peoples. Additionally, the children’s book industry must be prepared to enter into open-hearted, committed, respectful conversation with Black people’s cosmology, which Matthew Karangi defines as “the way Africans perceive, conceive, and contemplate their universe; the lens through which they see reality, which affects their value systems and attitudinal orientations.”

Of course, Black people’s experiences vary widely across the globe, yet our ancestral roots inform how we inhabit the world. Science has proven that memories pass down generations, and, as Glenn Chambers, former Director of the African American and African Studies Program at Michigan State University, notes, “it is impossible to elude the numerous similarities in art, cuisines, religion, community organization, speech patterns, and world view that pay homage to the legacy of the African experience” across the Black diaspora.

Susan M. Vogel, former executive director of the Center for African Art, has identified key characteristics of African aesthetics. A growing body of research is exploring the highly developed, culturally idiosyncratic aesthetic frameworks that African and African-descended artists have developed throughout countless generations. African aesthetics communicate subjective, metaphysical, existential truths about Black experience in the world that art rooted in other cultural and stylistic positions does not and cannot.

Moreover, African aesthetic frameworks are intertwined with the lived histories of African peoples in the world; without these frameworks, children’s book art implicitly reinforces harmful narratives of Black people as ahistorical.

Illustrated children’s books are representational constructions, pictographic edifices, and their aesthetic frameworks must provide the foundation, support, and structure that will allow Black cultures to stand strong in their own identities. It is beyond time for children’s book aesthetics to widely reflect and articulate the cultural, conceptual, and perceptual specificities of African heritage, knowledge, values, beliefs, identity, and imperatives. This, after all, is the very definition of art.

Summer Edward is a young readers’ editor. |

“Will inspire realistic change.” unfadeable

SPEAK UP, SPEAK OUT! The Extraordinary Life of “Fighting Shirley Chisholm” Bolden, Tonya National Geographic Kids (144 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 4, 2022 978-1-4263-7236-0

UNFADEABLE

Broaddus, Maurice Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $16.99 | April 19, 2022 978-0-06-279634-9 A 13-year-old girl faces unethical decision-makers to save her beloved Indianapolis neighborhood.

Isabella Fades, known for her graffiti tag, Unfadeable, makes sure to keep to herself so no one finds out her secret—that she doesn’t have caregivers or a home of her own. Over summer break, Bella attends a community meeting. She suggests an art project— her mother was an art teacher—but runs up against Mattea Larrimore, newfound nemesis and chair of the neighborhood association. Lost in the overwhelming world of politics and money, Bella must balance her immediate need for survival as an unhoused teen against her desire to enrich her community.

With powerful observation skills but few resources, she goes |

RENA GLICKMAN, QUEEN OF JUDO

Catarevas, Eve Nadel Illus. by Martina Peluso Kar-Ben (32 pp.) $17.99 | May 1, 2022 978-1-7284-2430-9

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A comprehensive biography of Shirley Chisholm’s political career.

Born in the U.S. to Bajan immigrants in 1924, “Fighting Shirley Chisholm” was raised and educated in both Barbados and the United States. As a teacher and administrator, she labored to improve the welfare of children in New York and championed legislation that supported low-income families and disadvantaged groups all over the country. Dedicated and unrelenting in her passion to serve “the workaday folk who make up most of the nation,” Chisholm worked her way up to becoming a congresswoman. The book describes how she was forced to battle racism and sexism en route to becoming the first Black person to seek a major party’s nomination for president of the United States. Readers will learn how Chisholm navigated an educational and political system bent on keeping women like her disempowered. The strength of Bolden’s skill as a researcher is evident; chapter by chapter, she provides succinct but critical context around the motivations and movements of Chisholm’s political career. A foreword by Stacey Abrams helps establish that Chisholm’s legacy is one of political innovation as someone who forged a path for others to follow. This informative book has an engaging narrative structure. The use of repetition and inclusion of memorable pearls of wisdom attributed to Chisholm add a poetic tone.

An insightful and focused profile of a political trailblazer. (maps, author’s note, bibliography, photos) (Biography. 12-14)

against her better judgment in whom to trust, but as she finds her voice and the courage to make herself known, Bella realizes that taking risks and forming connections isn’t such a bad thing.

The author introduces a compelling, honest protagonist readers will immediately root for throughout this well-paced story that addresses the impact of gentrification and the power of young voices. The clear narration sends readers a strong message about civic responsibility and how they’re never too young to get involved in decision-making that affects their communities. Bella’s mom is Black, and her father is White; the remaining cast is majority Black.

An engrossing story with a captivating protagonist that will inspire realistic change. (author’s note) (Fiction. 8-13)

Judo was considered strictly a man’s domain until a young Jewish woman

fought for inclusion.

As a girl, Brooklyn-born Rena Glickman—nicknamed Rusty for her red hair—did pushups and lifted weights with her older brother, becoming physically strong and mentally tough.

Introduced to judo by a friend, she insinuated herself into an all-male judo class at the local YMCA, practiced endlessly, and developed her talent. She continuously faced discrimination and was never allowed to participate in competitions, but her relentless drive took her to Japan, where she was the first woman accepted at The Kodokan Judo Institute. After completing her training and marrying her judo partner, she returned to New York, where she opened a coed judo school and funded women’s judo competitions. Glickman lobbied tirelessly and successfully for women’s judo to become an Olympic event and served as the American Olympic team’s first coach. Catarevas presents the tale in clear, concise prose, with careful attention to the facts, and, with a sense of admiration, emphasizes Rusty’s determination and strength. Peluso’s mostly earth-toned illustrations are well matched to time periods, locations, and events, with stylized characters that display their personalities, reactions, and emotions via spot-on facial expressions and body language. There are some subtle skin-tone differences among judo participants and onlookers, but all characters present White except for Rusty’s Japanese husband and one Black member of the Olympic team. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A worthy homage to a fascinating woman who was a force for change in a man’s world. (author’s note, photos) (Picturebook biography. 7-10)

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“Brimming with a fruitful sense of whimsy.” mapmakers and the lost magic

KARTHIK DELIVERS

Chari, Sheela Amulet/Abrams (272 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-4197-5522-4

It’s the summer before high school starts, and Karthik is miserable.

Forced to deliver orders for his parents’ struggling grocery store, pining after Juhi Shah, and harassed by neighborhood bullies, Karthik Raghavan can’t think of a worse way to spend his vacation. But Shanthi, a Boston University graduate student and aspiring playwright with a weakness for the Raghavan family store’s spicy chips, asks him to play the lead role in her play about the early life of Leonard Bernstein. Karthik starts to imagine himself as more than just a rising ninth grader: The more he learns about acting, the more he likes it, and it doesn’t hurt that his stunning memory helps him quickly master his lines. Karthik isn’t sure if he wants to grow up to be an actor, but he is sure that he wants to explore the possibility of doing so, a wish he’s positive his parents won’t support. The more he rehearses, and the faster the summer rolls on, though, the more the people in Karthik’s life surprise him— and the more motivated he feels to find himself. The book’s narratorial voice deftly shifts between sarcasm and pathos, creating a three-dimensional protagonist who values his Indian American family’s identity without being wholly defined by it.

The author successfully avoids tired tropes about unsupportive immigrant parents by telling a multigenerational story that, most notably, examines how Karthik’s parents grapple with their own dreaming.

A refreshingly nuanced novel about what it means to chase your dreams. (Fiction. 10-14)

MAPMAKERS AND THE LOST MAGIC

Chittock, Cameron Illus. by Amanda Castillo Random House Graphic (256 pp.) $20.99 | $12.99 paper | $23.99 PLB April 26, 2022 978-0-593-17287-2 978-0-593-17286-5 paper 978-0-593-17288-9 PLB Series: Mapmakers As the oppressive might of the Night Coats befalls the town of Alden, young Alidade must uncover her inner mapmaker to liberate her home and herself.

Trouble comes easily to Alidade, a brown-skinned, blackhaired girl who routinely flouts the Night Coats’ rules forbidding anyone from traveling beyond Alden’s boundaries. During one of her prohibited excursions, she spots a tree with a doorknob. Sneaking through the door in the tree’s trunk, Alidade enters the mysterious Mapmakers’ Lodge, where she finds 94

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a degraded magical map of the whole Valley as well as Blue, a haughty, birdlike creature, or Memri, who is loyal to the mapmakers’ peace-seeking cause. With help from her best friend, Lewis, who has brown skin and sandy hair, and guided by Blue’s tutelage, Alidade acquires knowledge once celebrated by the now-gone mapmakers, working to restore the map and fight back against the Night Coats. In their debut, Chittock and Castillo weave a quaint tale of courage and friendship brimming with a fruitful sense of whimsy. The artwork—inked in a lovely ramshackle style—boasts a rich and earthy palette, scaled to match the journey that Alidade undertakes as she crosses the magical barrier. Alidade’s arc from eager troublemaker to determined mapmaker chugs along at a nice pace, dependent on a couple of wordless time lapses that prove crucial. Above all, it’s Alidade’s sweetly sketched friendship with Lewis that pulls the most weight in this trilogy starter.

Intriguingly good. (sketches, recipe, drawing lesson) (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

THE MAGIC SHELL

Christmas, Jillian Illus. by Diana G.A. Mungaray Flamingo Rampant (28 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jan. 25, 2022 978-1-9991562-4-4 A magic shell helps a Black Caribbean immigrant child connect with her ancestors.

Pigeon Pea, a young girl with medium-brown skin and an Afro, watches her parents and aunts (cued as a lesbian couple) preparing roti and callaloo (Caribbean culinary staples) and asks big questions: Who were their ancestors, and what would they say if they were still with them? Aunty bestows her with a magical cowrie shell that “carries the story of our people across sea and distant lands.” The shell’s magic transports Pigeon Pea through time and space, first to Tobago, where she meets her African foremothers and Kalinago forebears and participates in their community rituals, and then to West Africa, where she learns the songs and dances of her ancestral kinfolk, meets the “spirit guides” of her family, and is counseled by Yemoja, the mother of all Orishas, who assures her that “we are always rooting for you! We are with you wherever you are.” Pigeon Pea returns from her journey eager to tell her contemporary family about her enlightening adventure. The final illustration is a perfect ending: Pigeon Pea’s happy family enjoys a meal surrounded by the smiling spirits of their ancestors. Familial love and the joy of self-discovery are affirmed in Christmas’ uplifting narrative. The questionable choice of rhyming text and a lack of perspective in Mungaray’s colorful animation-esque art don’t spoil this special and important story. All characters are Black or Indigenous. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A beautiful and long-overdue picture-book homage to the importance of ancestors in Afro-Caribbean cultures. (glossary) (Picture book. 5-8)

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ON THE LINE

Coccia, Paul & Eric Walters Orca (312 pp.) $12.95 paper | March 15, 2022 978-1-4598-2713-4

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A middle school basketball player enters a season of strife off the court.

Star power forward Jordan Ryker feels more at home on the basketball court than anywhere else. His parents fight constantly about everything, but especially money with the imminent shutdown of the local automotive plant where his dad works. After every argument, his mom vents her feelings to him, while his ever calm father drives off in his rebuilt ’69 Camaro. At least Jordan can count on Junior, his best friend. When Jordan’s parents announce their separation, even basketball season can’t distract him from his overwhelming home life. Complicating his feelings further, he learns his dad is gay and dating a man. Through Jordan’s firstperson point of view, the women and girls in the story are portrayed one dimensionally as highly emotional, an outspoken feminist who doesn’t fit in with other girls, and an attentionseeking flirt. Aspects of Junior’s identity only reveal themselves to serve as sources of conflict. Basketball action plays second string to interpersonal drama, most of which comes as a consequence of Jordan’s father’s coming out. Although Jordan does experience character growth, it happens all at once in a sudden transformation before the resolution. The book follows a White default; Junior is described as half Filipino (the rest of his parentage is not specified).

A relationship-driven story let down by limited characterization. (Fiction. 10-14)

THE TARNISHED GARDEN

Colman, Alyssa Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $16.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-374-31395-1 Long-separated orphan sisters bond as tensions rise over mysterious attacks on magic in early-20th-century Manhattan.

Following up on The Gilded Girl (2021), a riff on A Little Princess, Colman crafts a companion tale. Referencing Frances Hodgson Burnett’s titular secret garden, this entry is set in 1907 and centers on 11-year-old Maeve O’Donnell, younger sister of Izzy and struggling student at a new, controversial magic school that is—thanks to her sister’s heroic actions in the previous book—open to children of all social classes. Along with further developing the theme of class struggles (one of the school’s rabid opponents is tellingly named Mrs. Nimby), the author stirs in disturbing reports of magic being somehow burned up in certain buildings as well as a rash of disappearing house dragons (think talking magic cats) and a walled garden in |

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MIDDLE GRADE | Laura Simeon

family stories for black history month Each February sees a flood of interest in books to honor African American history, a subject inseparable from U.S. history as a whole and worthy of year-round attention. However, tales of enduring and overcoming adversity—while they provide critical awareness—should be balanced by the sorts of everyday stories that have long been a staple of literature about White kids. Too many adults assume that diverse books “don’t count” if they are not about suffering—or that they are unrealistic and merit criticism if they don’t center bias. Black kids, like all kids, deserve books in which simply being who they are is normal and positive, not exclusively or primarily a source of pain. For readers who are not Black, it can be difficult to imagine what you don’t see and therefore easy to assign Black peers’ lives to the narrative margins. These recent and upcoming middle-grade releases celebrate Black families and help round out the stories we share with young people.

Operation Sisterhood by Olugbemisola RhudayPerkovich (Crown, Jan. 4): Bo is content with things just the way they are. The 11-yearold and her mom are a tightknit pair, happy in their cozy Bronx apartment. Discovering that she will become part of an exuberant blended family when her mother marries boyfriend Bill is news that takes some adjusting to: Bill comes with a Harlem brownstone, a variety of pets, a daughter, and a chosen family that includes two more little girls. Fans of classic ensemble casts, as in Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family, will warm to this cheerful book with its strong sense of place.

Pizza My Heart by Rhiannon Richardson (Scholastic, Jan. 4): In a story that will resonate with many tweens, seventh grader Maya must adjust to some big changes. On the bright side, Soul Slice, her parents’ Brooklyn pizza parlor, is so successful that they are expanding. On the downside, this means a move—to suburban Pennsylvania. Establishing a new restaurant is hard 96

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work, and Maya is roped into doing bicycle pizza deliveries, which clashes with her desire to pursue her passion through an after-school art club. With the help of a cute (if annoying) boy, she comes up with a scheme that is sure to succeed, right?

Just Right Jillian by Nicole D. Collier (Versify/HarperCollins, Feb. 1): The loss of her beloved grandmother is difficult for 10-year-old Jillian, who struggles with social anxiety.

Mama runs workshops on women’s leadership, and Daddy is a high-flying tech professional, but Jillian’s self-consciousness holds her back.

To deflect attention, she bows to peer pressure in her clothes and hairstyles and struggles to speak up in class. But warm memories of Grammy’s quiet, unswerving encouragement help her find the inner strength to rise to new challenges— like entering her school’s annual academic competition.

This reassuring, thoughtful story is a loving testament to family ties.

Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence by Sonja Thomas (Aladdin, March 22): This touching novel for fans of relationship-driven stories introduces science geek Mira Williams. Since her best friend moved away, it’s felt like they are drifting apart. Meanwhile, irritating Tamika, who has beaten her in the school science fair four years running, has moved into the neighborhood. Dad lost his job, Mom is working extra hours, and now Sir Fig Newton, her loyal cat companion, has diabetes. They can’t afford the vet bills and will have to find him a new home unless Mira can use her creativity and flexibility to raise the money they need.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.

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“A subtly allegorical story about the universal search for home.” a good place

the Tarnish tenements where three rare and superlatively cute dragon kittens are hiding. It’s in that garden (once she discovers it) that Maeve gets over not only her fear of her own uncontrolled magic by helping new friend Avi Sigal conquer his anxieties, but her conviction that her loving sister’s affections are being stolen by the previous episode’s co-protagonist, Emma Harris. Ultimately the mysteries all twist up into a tight, tidy climax that leaves the villain exposed and other storylines happily resolved. Most of the cast reads as White.

A sweet tale spun around friendship, sisterly love, and dragon kittens, with a nod to another Edwardian classic.

(Fantasy. 8-13)

THE BEST BED FOR ME

Cornwall, Gaia Candlewick (32 pp.) $17.99 | May 17, 2022 978-1-5362-0715-6

A GOOD PLACE

Cousins, Lucy Candlewick (40 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-5362-2425-2 Four insects set out on a mission to find the perfect home.

Bee thinks some flowers would do the trick, so the foursome install themselves in a cluster of yellow daisies growing out of a sidewalk; but human foot traffic |

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A young child’s imagination runs wild before bedtime.

It’s lights out, but energetic Sweet Pea, depicted with lightbrown skin and straight hair, isn’t quite ready to go to sleep yet.

Mama, a stout White woman, repeatedly tries to tuck them in, but they obstruct her attempts by chattering on about all the various ways they could sleep. Climbing up a bedpost, they declare that they want to sleep like koalas do, high up in trees.

Hiding under their pillow, they pretend that they are dozing like a puffin in its burrow. Standing on their bed, they wonder if they can sleep upright like emperor penguins snoozing on rocks.

After making their way through several more animals and their sleeping habits, Sweet Pea’s stalling ends as they conclude that their bed is “the best bed for me.” Cornwall’s art, rendered in pencil and watercolor with a digital finish, uses a restrained palette of minimal, muted colors that adds a soporific feel to the narrative. The text is dialogue-heavy but flows easily and combines the humor of Sweet Pea’s bedtime antics with the tenderness of their relationship with their patient caregivers. The illustrations show that Sweet Pea has two moms, one of whom shares their skin color and hair color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet, playful bedtime story with animal appeal. (Picture book. 5-9)

poses danger, so they conclude that “this is not a good place.”

Dragonfly suggests that they try living in a pond, but the one they find turns out to be a puddle in the middle of an unsuitably busy street. Beetle’s and Ladybug’s ideas also come to naught.

“Hungry and sick and tired,” the little swarm succumb to despair.

Luckily, they meet a sympathetic butterfly who knows “a good place to live.” The four friends follow Butterfly over a brick wall, where a better home than anything they could have ever imagined awaits. The simple text will draw young children in with its repetition and strong opportunities for making inferences. Instead of quotation marks, typographical shifts are used to distinguish narration from dialogue. Caregivers and teachers can use the book as a springboard to discuss insect habitats with youngsters. Cousins sticks to her trademark style of bold, simple, uncluttered gouache pictures against solid backgrounds.

No human characters are shown, but Butterfly notes that a boy is responsible for creating the “good place” the insects ultimately embrace as their abode. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A subtly allegorical story about the universal search for home. (Picture book. 3-7)

GLASS SLIPPERS

Cypess, Leah Delacorte (272 pp.) $16.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-17887-4 Series: Sisters Ever After, 2 Cinderella’s hitherto unknown youngest stepsister becomes the protagonist of this psychologically astute fairy-tale adaptation.

Queen Ella has now been married and ruling her country for six years. Beloved by her subjects, she dons her special glass footwear annually for the grand ball. Her wicked stepmother is dead, and the two cruel, older stepsisters have been exiled to a remote peninsula. But their younger sister, just a little girl at the time of the legendary events, lives with the royal family in the castle. Still, 11-year-old Tirza is always unsure of her status; the young princes love her, but she’s hidden away and not treated as an equal within the family. She also feels guilty about not being able to help her sisters in exile. Tirza’s only friend is Aden, the stable boy who also sells cupcakes in the castle. However, Dame Yaffa, the cupcake baker, turns out to have ulterior motives and nefarious goals, and when the slippers go missing, Tirza is accused of stealing them. The mystery of the thief ’s identity becomes a focus of the book, but questions of women’s clout, family loyalty, and sisterly relationships play equally important roles. All characters are presumed White in this engrossing novel that injects originality into a familiar medieval European setting as it explores sibling rivalries of different stripes.

Begins with a familiar tale but creatively travels down a different path. (Fantasy. 9-12)

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WORDS WITH…

Ruth Behar The author’s new picture book is a wistful ode to new beginnings and a lens on the Jewish Cuban community

BY ILANA BENSUSSEN EPSTEIN Gabriel Frye-Behar

we or our families are from and doing research there. And then, when we go back to where we actually live, which in my case is Michigan—which, well, is not exactly Cuba [laughs]— I’m homesick when I’m here, and when I’m in Cuba, I realize there’s a strong part of myself that’s American and that can’t be Cuban anymore. Anthropology gave me a framework and a philosophy to think about that. In this part of my life, this parallel career where I’m writing the things I’ve always loved—poetry and fiction for young people—I have a new way of talking about ideas I’ve spent so long untangling for myself.

What were the things you were focused on, telling a story for young readers?

Ruth Behar has called herself “an anthropologist who specializes in homesickness,” and her books, both fiction and nonfiction, bear this out. In her middle-grade novel Letters From Cuba, a young Jewish girl living in Cuba writes to a sister left behind in Poland. In the adult memoir Traveling Heavy, Behar— who was born in Cuba to a Jewish family and later immigrated to the United States—explores her own changing relationship to cultural identity over the course of her travels and education as an anthropologist. Her newest work, Tía Fortuna’s New Home: A Jewish Cuban Journey (Knopf, Jan. 25), places the theme front and center in a picture book, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth, that our review calls a “nostalgic glimpse at a little-known but rich culture within the broader Jewish American community.”

It tells the story of a young girl who helps her aunt, an elderly Jewish Cuban woman who’s long settled at the beautiful Seaway condominium in Miami, move on once again. With an eye to the past and hope for the future, aunt and niece work together to accept a new chapter. We spoke to Behar by Zoom to learn more. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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In a lot of ways, I found it much harder to write a picture book than a middle-grade novel! I had to be so much more precise.

More like writing poetry?

Yes, much more like writing poetry—like a long prose poem. I loved that aspect of it, but if I was writing a novel, I would have been wondering, Well, who was Tía Fortuna? And there was all this context that I would have filled in with a novel or ethnography.

There are so many themes that come up in this story—loss; diaspora; the acceptance of loss, of aging, of mortality.

How did your background as an anthropologist inform this book?

It was about passing culture onto another generation but doing so with joy, because you don’t want to be saddling a child with all the melancholy of the Sephardic story. How do you relay that beauty and resilience in a children’s story? I focused on symbols—foods like the bourekas and the ojitos, the evil eyes.

All of these traditions mean a lot to me. And the place itself, the Seaway, which is a real place and which was actually facing demolition. I remember visiting these beautiful casitas that were right on the beach, and I thought about what saying goodbye to that place would mean for Fortuna as a diasporic woman.

I think about anthropology as a discipline that’s about the search for home. There’s a lot of people, like myself, who I call diasporic anthropologists. We’re going back to the place where

I loved the way she said goodbye to her surroundings, like old friends.

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I saw moving on and accepting new places as part of her heritage. She’s from Cuba, but her parents are from Turkey and, before that, from Spain. Her goodbyes to the space were her heritage speaking, but there’s also an element of magic in how she says goodbye. I wanted everything to be a little alive for Tía Fortuna. And I loved the idea of the magic of trees, which stay put so long.

TURN THE TIDE

What was the process of collaborating with your illustrator, Devon Holzwarth?

I sent her a lot of pictures! Pillows—because I felt certain Tía Fortuna would have a lot of embroidered pillows—and evil eye bracelets and hamsas. Devon did such a wonderful job adding the interior details of the home. Since it’s a story about Fortuna losing a home, the interior details really mattered to me.

You have a Spanish edition coming out at the same time as the English version—did you consider translating the text yourself?

What are you working on now?

My next novel is a middle-grade novel, and it’s like nothing I’ve worked on before. It follows four characters from different time periods. All four are Sephardic, and they’re all young women struggling with different facets of identity and religion. They all have very revolution-centered stories.

Can middle schoolers save the environment and the world?

When 12-year-old Mimi Laskaris moves to a small island in Florida with her family, she is immediately taken with the beach and shells. But she quickly notices problems: plastic bags caught in trees and litter washed up on the beach. After learning about Melati and Isabel Wijsen, sisters who started a movement to ban single-use plastic bags in their home of Bali, Mimi decides to try to do the same in her new community.

She becomes absorbed in organizing and gathering signatures for a petition, though she also worries about what her classmates might think. As Mimi’s continued activism causes strain in her new friendships and affects her grades, her parents notice that her piano practice has been neglected. Mimi does want to focus on school and piano, but how can she when she can’t get enough signatures for her petition? This novel in verse explores environmental concerns many young people today have and shows how change can be made close to home. Mimi is Greek American, and other students from her new and old schools are cued as ethnically diverse. Dimopoulos gives some examples of the international nature of the youth climate justice movement in the text and supplementary notes; a foreword by Melati Wijsen adds a special touch.

A heartfelt story highlighting activism and showing how change does not come easily. (author’s note, timeline, activist profiles, resources, scientist interview, bibliography) (Verse novel. 8-12)

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I was self-conscious about translating. I speak Spanish all the time, but I was concerned about choosing the right words and grammar. I did insist on reviewing the translation, but in the end I made very few edits. Yitzia Yani is Sephardic and Cuban as well, and she did an incredible job. I’m absolutely thrilled that the two editions are coming out contemporaneously. I wanted to come out with a Ladino edition at the same time, but we’re going to see how the Spanish version does first.

Dimopoulos, Elaine Clarion/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $16.99 | March 8, 2022 978-0-358-53815-8

THE PEAR AFFAIR

Ilana Bensussen Epstein is a writer and filmmaker in Boston. Tía Fortuna’s New Home received a starred review in the Dec. 15, 2021, issue.

Eagle, Judith Illus. by Jo Rioux Walker US/Candlewick (288 pp.) $17.99 | April 26, 2022 978-1-5362-1703-2 In the summer of 1969, 12-year-old Nell confronts confounding, confusing mysteries that intertwine in unexpected ways.

She accompanies her abusive parents on a business trip from their home in Kent to Paris, determined to find her former nanny, Pear, a loving, kind, young Frenchwoman.

Pear was abruptly dismissed before Nell was sent to boarding school. They corresponded regularly for five years, but Pear’s letters from Paris stopped six months ago, and Nell’s went unanswered. Nell sets out on her quest, navigating the underground tunnels of Paris with the help of new friend Xavier and other children for whom they are playground, sanctuary, and even home. But strange events are affecting the city: Boulangeries are closing at an alarming rate due to contamination of baked goods by the Thing,

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“An unusual, moving war story.” when the sky falls

while locations of the new Pain-tastique chain are opening. The two are connected and involve high-level greed, corruption, secret codes, and formulas. Self-doubting Nell is prone to paralyzing fears, but she is braver than she knows as she overcomes setbacks and real dangers. Eagle masterfully maintains suspense, dispensing new clues as the events escalate, with twists and turns galore and a cast of charming, loyal friends, all set against the special atmosphere of Paris. Soft, full-page, pencil-and-ink illustrations highlight key events. A satisfying conclusion finds the villains punished, bakeries restored, and a whole new life for Nell. Most characters present White; there is a Tunisian family in the supporting cast.

A tour de force. (Mystery. 10-14)

Imaginative Stella, a young Black girl with Afro puffs, misses her friend Kamrynn, a light-skinned, straight-haired girl who has moved to “the other side of the world.” Luckily, Stella still has her best pal Roger, a blue hippo stuffie. Neither Stella nor Roger like sleeping: “Why do we have to miss all the fun and go to bed just because it gets dark?” Deciding that “if it never gets dark, then we can stay awake forever,” the duo work tirelessly to “keep the sun awake.” They play loud music, shine flashlights at the sun, and even make various attempts to launch a cup of coffee up to the celestial orb in hopes that caffeine will keep it alert. Eventually, the pair quit when they realize that if the sun never sets for them, morning can never come for Kamrynn, who wakes up when they go to bed. Despite the book’s sweet touches, the narrative is weakened by some meandering irrelevancies that make the plot feel disconnected. Also, at the beginning of the story, Stella seems enamored of the moon— she wishes she could jump high enough to kiss it—yet she and Roger spend the bulk of the book trying to prevent nightfall; this discrepancy may give some readers pause. The digital, cartoonlike illustrations are bright, colorful, and cheerful but don’t make up for the shaky plotting. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An interesting premise but the execution is underwhelming. (Picture book. 4-6)

WHEN THE SKY FALLS

Earle, Phil Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $16.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-5476-0930-7

The bond between an angry 12-yearold boy and a zoo’s silverback gorilla provides an unusual perspective on the Blitz.

Joseph Palmer leaves Yorkshire to stay with Mrs. F in London after his father heads to war and his grandmother can no longer care for him. Joseph is angry and explosive, challenged at school by bullies and his misunderstood dyslexia. Mrs. F devotedly tends to the closed-down zoo she runs—many animals are euthanized out of necessity or sent to the country. There, Joseph encounters Adonis, a silverback gorilla who is equally irate and volatile. An unlikely relationship and trust build between the two hurting souls, helping Joseph heal and unfold. Earle conveys the stress and tension of the ever present war so that readers also feel that fear. There is a dark cloud of sadness over the decaying zoo, conveying the almost unspeakable things Mrs. F experienced and had to carry out and the life-altering losses that touched everyone. Earle has readers rooting for stubborn Joseph, charmed by his new friend, Syd, and touched by Adonis’ impressive strength and depth of feeling. At times, the book feels overwhelmed by hopelessness, as violence and death come at nearly every turn, but when the proverbial dust settles, there is resilience and peace. All characters are presumed White.

An unusual, moving war story with excellent writing and compelling characters. (afterword) (Historical fiction. 9-12)

STELLA KEEPS THE SUN UP

Ewing, Clothilde Illus. by Lynn Gaines Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | March 8, 2022 978-1-5344-8785-7

sun from setting.

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WILD FOR WINNIE

Fitzgerald, Laura Marx Illus. by Jenny Løvlie Dial Books (32 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-11181-9

A new student’s unusual behavior bewilders her classmates.

Winnie, a White redheaded girl, is “no ordinary kid,” opines the narrator, an unnamed and unidentified child in Winnie’s class. She howls “like a hyena” at circle time, kicks “like a kangaroo” at storytime, and chomps “like a piranha” on another student’s arm at lunch. Undaunted, her Black-presenting teacher suggests that “maybe Winnie sees and hears and feels the world differently than most of us” and proposes that everyone give Winnie’s “world” a whirl. In Løvlie’s cheery, colorful, pastel-hued double-page spreads, racially, physically, and ability diverse classmates joyfully join Winnie in activities that regulate her animal-themed antics. If she’s “monkeying around” on the furniture, everyone joins her on the jungle gym at recess; when she’s acting “pretty squirrelly,” the other students go “nuts” with her on an indoor toy obstacle course; and so on. Unfortunately, more complex idioms such as “bull in a china shop” may fly over young readers’ heads without further explanation.

Gradually, the narrator realizes that Winnie is ordinary after all: “Sometimes we all feel the world differently.” Fitzgerald’s message is well intentioned, but in this plotless story, Winnie feels more like an object lesson than a person, which may alienate readers who experience the world in similar ways. Although Winnie’s behavior is left unexplained, a closing author’s note to caregivers alludes to sensory processing disorder and presents

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additional activities targeting balance, body awareness, and more.(This book was reviewed digitally.)

Caregivers of “antsy” kids will glean some helpful tips, but young readers won’t go wild for this one. (Picture book. 4-8)

UNCLE JOHN’S CITY GARDEN

Ford, Bernette G. Illus. by Frank Morrison Holiday House (32 pp.) $18.99 | May 3, 2022 978-0-8234-4786-2

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In this swan song from one of children’s publishing’s pioneers, a young girl nicknamed Li’l Sissy and her siblings are recruited by their uncle to grow a garden in an inner-city housing project.

Narrating in the first person, the girl shares that when they first arrived at Uncle John’s Garden “there were no plants yet—just dirt.” Readers see a barren plot of land surrounded by monotonous chains of tall brick buildings. Uncle John, a physical giant of a man, tills the land and labels the garden rows with plant markers, then the children dig holes, plants seeds, and water the plantings. In the following weeks, they visit the garden almost daily—there are weeds to pull and bugs to chase away—and revel in the wonder of sprouting shoots and budding flowers. When a huge storm arrives, there is high tension as the children wonder if their garden will be destroyed in the raging weather. Thankfully, all is well, and a fine harvest ensues throughout the summer. Young readers will feel the siblings’ sense of accomplishment as they share the garden’s produce at a big family barbecue. Ford’s lovingly remembered autobiographical tale highlights the power of urban gardening to foster community, revive decaying property, create food resiliency, and even promote STEM learning. The figures in Morrison’s oiland–spray-paint paintings emote pride and quiet joy, challenging the negative association between African American people and farming. All characters are Black. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A simple, lovely story about the power of blooming where you are planted. (Picture book. 5-9)

WAIT—AND SEE

Frost, Helen Illus. by Rick Lieder Candlewick (32 pp.) $17.99 | May 10, 2022 978-1-5362-1631-8

An invitation to embody the attributes of a praying mantis: stillness, awareness, patience, calm, and focus.

Frost and Lieder continue their collaboration with a paean to the fascinating creature that is the Chinese praying mantis.

The book invites readers to sharpen their observation skills in |

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order to appreciate the marvels of the elusive little creature.

Noting that praying mantises can be brown or green, the text urges children to emulate the insect’s composure and patience: “It can wait a long time, / staring straight / at you. / Can you wait a long / time too?” Budding entomologists must “be still and quiet” and “keep watching” if they want to witness a praying mantis hunting, eating, and even being born. Frost’s rhyming text scans fairly well and draws readers into the experience of standing in the presence of this awe-inspiring arthropod. Lieder uses macro photography techniques to capture detailed, closeup, stunning views of the insect as it perches on various flowers, snatches prey with its sharp spines, and hangs upside down on a leaf. Children will undoubtedly feel compelled to make up fun stories for these personality-filled creepy-crawlies. Of particular note is a crystal-clear photo of praying mantis nymphs emerging from their cocoon. A closing author’s note describes the life cycle of praying mantises. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A reminder of the wonders we can see in nature if we slow down and pay attention. (Informational picture book. 3-7)

AND J.J. SLEPT

Garbutt, Loretta Illus. by Erika Rodriguez Medina Kids Can (32 pp.) $18.99 | May 3, 2022 978-1-5253-0419-4 A fun and lighthearted story about adoption.

J.J., a newborn baby with ruddy skin, is adopted into a rambunctious family. Each of his four siblings, who are loud and energetic, clamor around, attempting to touch him, although he is fast asleep. The dog barks, the washing machine beeps, and the siblings thunder through the house, playing and making music, but J.J. sleeps through the din. When all of the siblings leave the house for a weekend to participate in various extracurricular activities, J.J. cannot sleep—it is too quiet! For the first time, he wails inconsolably and grows cranky.

It is only when his boisterous siblings return—giggling, chasing each other, and loudly regaling their parents with stories—that J.J. finally dozes off. Adoptive parents in children’s books are usually White, but Garbutt’s story refreshingly features both adoptive parents and an adoption agent who present as people of color; J.J.’s siblings are also racially diverse. This offering further sets itself apart from other children’s books about adoption by telling a story about an adopted child that does not focus explicitly on the experience of adoption. However, like so many picture books portraying adopted children, Garbutt’s narrative presents a simplistic, one-sided view that focuses solely on a happy homecoming and fails to mention anything about J.J.’s birthparents, perpetuating the stereotype that the true life of adoptees begins at adoption. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet story about what makes a house a home and a portrayal of adoption that has its merits and shortcomings.

(Picture book. 4-6)

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BEING A DOG A Tail of Mindfulness Gianferrari, Maria Illus. by Pete Oswald HarperCollins (40 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-06-306791-2

An affable dog and its human model mindfulness.

The brown, short-legged mutt with expressive eyes and a wagging tail is definitely the star of the book. Its companion, an androgynous child with straight black hair and rose beige skin, doesn’t show up until the sixth spread. The slight story follows the pair through a series of ordinary days as the seasons change.

The dog and child are often together as they eat, play, swim, socialize, and sleep. The text is filled with frequent mindfulness reminders like “feel the emotion, then let it go and BE,” and “notice the night. Feel the fatigue.” Young readers are encouraged to imitate typical doggy behaviors that will help them maintain a moment-to-moment awareness of their thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and surroundings: “Like a dog, feel what you’re feeling: Bark if you’re worried. Yowl if you’re sad. Growl if you’re angry.” The winsome digital illustrations, created using cut paper and scanned watercolors, are convincingly textured and multidimensional. Two diagrammatic closing double-page spreads present instructions for taking a mindful nature walk with a friend and include suggestions of what you might notice when you see, hear, sniff, taste, or feel “like a dog” in the spring, summer, fall, or winter. The final page outlines a mindful breathing exercise and shows a picture of child and dog sitting with eyes closed on a blue rug. One spread shows a group of children at a playground, all of whom present White except for two boys with light-brown skin. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A cute mindfulness primer that will especially appeal to dog lovers. (Picture book. 3-7)

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LITTLE BLUE BUNNY

Guendelsberger, Erin Illus. by Stila Lim Sourcebooks Wonderland (40 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-1-72825-448-7 A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.

The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny’s goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, |

and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny’s epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy’s company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922).

The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE EINSTEINS OF VISTA POINT

Guterson, Ben Illus. by Pétur Antonsson Christy Ottaviano Books (272 pp.) $16.99 | April 12, 2022 978-0-316-31743-6 What secrets will Zack and his siblings discover in and around the cryptic Tower?

When 11-year-old Zack Einstein and his family move to Vista Point, Zack still blames himself for the accidental death of his younger sister the previous year. He’s paralyzed by grief until he follows a mysterious girl into the abandoned nine-sided Tower. What he discovers sets Zack off on a summer filled with secret messages, a hidden cave, and a touch of the supernatural, But can Zack put the pieces of the mystery together before his family’s dream of opening a bedand-breakfast is dashed by a cantankerous old man? The fascinating cipher that ties it all together is the highlight of this wholesome, gentle story set in 2002. There’s little doubt this novel was inspired by classic sibling adventure stories. Indeed, Zack’s favorite series, the fictional Falcons and Bandits, reads like an homage to Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.

Zack’s emotional journey is compelling, yet his siblings’ onedimensionality keeps this work from ascending to the heights of more character-driven titles. The happy ending is sweet—some may find it cloyingly so—offering closure for Zack, his family, and even the story’s villain-turned-friend. The Einsteins are Jewish and White; other major characters are assumed White.

Occasional spot illustrations add visual interest.

An inspirational throwback for families seeking tales with a classic feel. (Fiction. 8-12)

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THE SISTERS OF LUNA ISLAND

Hackney, Stacy Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $17.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-5344-8869-4

Afraid to use her magic, Marigold must learn to accept her gifts to break a 200-year-old curse.

Seventh grader Marigold Lafleur lives on North Carolina’s Luna Island, a place with a history of magic. Hers is the last known family to possess aromagic, or the ability to make charms out of scents. Unfortunately, aromagic comes with consequences since its use means that someone’s fate is altered.

When Marigold uses a charm to try to stop her dad from leaving the family, it causes an earthquake, hurting him and damaging the town. She and her sisters swear off magic, but even so, everyone believes she’s a witch, and her family members become outcasts. Even worse, her parents still separate, her dad leaves the island for Asheville, where he can receive physical therapy, and her mother immerses herself in magic. When a rotten smell appears in town and strange accidents start happening to her sisters, Marigold investigates and discovers a curse that could destroy her family. Marigold must believe in her own abilities and control her magic in order to save her sisters. This is a captivating fantasy with a touch of mystery centered around family.

Readers will connect with Marigold’s thoughts and emotions as she deals with her parents’ separation, sibling conflicts, and middle school drama. Marigold and her family read as White; other characters have a variety of skin tones.

A charming story of magic and sisterhood. (Fantasy. 8-12)

NELLIE VS. ELIZABETH Two Daredevil Journalists’ Breakneck Race Around the World Hannigan, Kate Illus. by Rebecca Gibbon Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers (40 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 15, 2022 978-1-68437-377-2

The real-life story of two intrepid female journalists and their competition to circumnavigate the globe.

In 1889, daredevil American newswoman Nellie Bly was keen to improve on the journey described in Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). Though skeptical at first—“women are too delicate for adventures”—her editors eventually gave her the go-ahead. Little did she know that rival reporter Elizabeth Bisland was attempting the same record-breaking trip from the opposite coast of the USA. Hannigan recounts the hair-raising, breakneck race, including the challenges each woman faced— seasickness, late ships, surly sailors, and more. Direct quotes attributed to Bly, Bisland, and various newspapers that covered |

“Simple but impressively evocative.” in the blue

the escapade pepper the text, some raising more questions than they answer. Did Elizabeth really receive false information that her ship had refused to wait for her? On this point the book is mum. Although the narrative attempts to laud both women equally, the description of Bly as a “stunt journalist” who was “willing to go to outrageous extremes to catch a reader’s attention” minimizes her important work. The acrylic ink and colored pencil illustrations are colorful with fine details, if flat; they sometimes strain the reader’s credulity, as in a spread showing the two women joining hands and celebrating their wins together. Backmatter includes a marvelous “Timeline of Women Investigative Journalists” that is worthy of an entire book in and of itself. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

This mutual homage mutes the thrill of competition, yet there’s much to love in this historic tale of female derring-do. (author’s note, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 4-7)

IN THE BLUE

A family comes to terms with depression.

A dad teaches his daughter how to surf in the ocean. He is “as tall as the sky,” and she is “his teeny-tiny sunspot.” He usually sings to her in the morning and tucks her in at night. “But right now, things for my dad aren’t bright and yellow. They are a deep, dark blue,” the girl reveals.

Shrouded in cobalt shadow on the verso, the father hangs his head while the girl and (presumably) her mother look on worriedly from the sunny recto. Readers learn that when the father is “in the blue,” his “kisses don’t reach as far at night, and the morning is quiet and dim.” The girl tries in vain to cheer him up. All her family can do is “wait together in the blue” until he is ready to get help. They all see a Black therapist—“someone who knows all the colors, from sunny to midnight”—and Dad is shown buying medicine from a White pharmacist. After some time, Dad grows “bright and yellow again,” and the fatherdaughter surfing adventures resume. The power of Hourigan’s metaphorical yet crystal-clear portrayal of depression lies in its simple but impressively evocative use of color symbolism. The acrylic gouache and color pencil illustrations are suffused with primary colors that convey misery, joy, and anger and that sometimes blend, creating secondary colors that signify the many moods, faces, and grades of depression. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Sensitive, honest, and expertly done. (author’s note, resources) (Picture book. 4-8)

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A child loses their beloved blanket... but there is a silver lining.

Blanket and Bailey first “found each other” when the red “soft, cozy cover” kept Bailey warm as a newborn. As Bailey grows into a young child, Blanket becomes an attachment/comfort object that the youngster carries everywhere and uses for every imaginable purpose—as a pretend parachute, a hammock, “a magical tent” to play tea party in, and more. One day, while Bailey, Mom, and Dad are using Blanket as a picnic accessory at a lake, disaster strikes—a dog snatches Blanket and rips it to pieces. That night, Bailey falls asleep “crying, lonely, and sad.” Determined to make the best of a bad situation, Dad uses the scraps of torn cloth to make “a special surprise” that will ensure Bailey and Blanket have “more happy adventures together.” Readers will want to read to the end to find out what Dad creates. Although this sweet story addresses a common childhood experience that many kids will find relatable, the rhyming text feels forced, to the point of distracting from the plot. House’s digital illustrations use muted colors and create interest through the use of spot art, continuous narration, and the many visual cameos of the family’s cat. No gender pronouns are used in the text or on the book jacket. Mom is Black, Dad is White, and Bailey shares Mom’s brown skin and Afro-textured hair. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet story that proves love is the best security blanket.

(Picture book. 3-7)

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Hourigan, Erin Little, Brown (40 pp.) $18.99 | May 3, 2022 978-0-316-49762-6

BAILEY AND BLANKET

House, Emily Blue Dot Kids Press (32 pp.) $17.95 | April 26, 2022 978-1-73760-322-1

THIS BOOK WILL GET YOU TO SLEEP!

John, Jory Illus. by Olivier Tallec Farrar, Straus and Giroux (32 pp.) $18.99 | March 15, 2022 978-0-374-31130-8

This is not your average bedtime story.

“ATTENTION, READER!!! / This book will get you to SLEEP./ It’s TRUE.” An excessively eager kangaroo, with a blue megaphone and snazzy blue boots, is up for the challenge of sending youngsters off to slumberland. Want to fall asleep?

Pshaw, that’s easy. All you need are some monster trucks to roar by, “RUMBLING and BUMBLING and CRASHING.” Or maybe a menagerie of animals to lull you to sleep with screeching electric guitars: “RAOO RAOOO RAOOOOOOO!!!

YOU ASLEEP YET?” Surely counting sheep will do the trick… except they’re running too fast for you to count them because they’re being chased by dragons! Tallec’s free-wheeling style shines as distraction upon distraction pile up on the book’s high-energy double-page spreads. John’s chatty narration and signature dry humor (“Hmm? / You’re wide-a—what? / You’re wide-AWAKE?”) propel the story with frenetic fun. Young kirkus.com

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“Will elicit giggles.” kitty

audiences won’t hesitate to join in as the overzealous marsupial leads a stadium full of critters in a boisterous chant (“FALL ASLEEP! FALL ASLEEP! FALL ASLEEP!”), and the amusing sound effects are perfect for read-alouds. Alas, this book just may have the opposite effect of the titular vow; thankfully, a disclaimer is included on the cover. All characters are anthropomorphic animals. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A picture book that takes bedtime drama to a whole new level. (Picture book. 3-6)

KITTY

Jordan-Glum, Rebecca Roaring Brook Press (40 pp.) $18.99 | March 15, 2022 978-1-250-76804-9 Catsitting should be no problem for Granny, right?

When a White-presenting family leaves for a one-night camping trip, Granny assures them she won’t have any trouble watching Satsuki the cat. After all, there is an instruction sheet for caring for little Satsuki taped to the refrigerator: “Very sweet! Loves to be brushed. Picky eater. Please don’t let the cat out.” When the cat spies a raccoon through the window, it jumps off of the refrigerator in fright, knocking Granny’s glasses off of her face and under the fridge. Bereft of her spectacles, Granny can barely see a thing and mistakes the raccoon for an escaped Satsuki.

Granny coaxes “Kitty” inside with some cat food; meanwhile, the real Satsuki slips outside. Kitty loves the bowl of kibble Granny offers as well as the cupcakes she makes but not so much the bath that follows. Granny tires herself out keeping Kitty under control, and when she goes to bed, the raccoon goes wild, wreaking havoc throughout the house. In the morning, glassesless Granny can’t see the mess, and when the family returns, she rushes off before they can apprehend the disaster, relieved to get away from the exhausting “cat.” Jordan-Glum’s tale of mistaken pet identity will elicit giggles. The text is spare, narrated using crisp sentences, while the acrylic, watercolor, and pencil spot art and full-bleed illustrations do the heavy lifting and inspire all the laughs. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Irresistible fun with one rowdy raccoon. (Picture book. 2-7)

SHINJI TAKAHASHI AND THE MARK OF THE COATL

Kagawa, Julie Disney-Hyperion (320 pp.) $16.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-368-06819-2 Series: Society of Explorers and Adventurers, 1 An old curse and untapped magic lead a boy on a worldwide quest to save his aunt.

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Ever since 13-year-old Shinji Takahashi’s parents died, he and his Aunt Yui have lived a life that includes months of travels, hunting for unique items for her shop in Miami. While floating down the Zambezi River, Shinji comes upon a mysterious shop with a small figurine of a Coatl, or mythical feathered serpent, that seems to be calling to him. But after he buys it, Shinji is kidnapped and held captive by the Hightower Corporation in New York City.

Aunt Yui is nowhere to be seen—and the Coatl figurine has transformed itself into a tattoo on Shinji’s arm. A Hightower villain informs him that it brings with it a deadly curse. Meanwhile, young prodigy Lucy, who has been working for the corporation, appears in Shinji’s room in the middle of the night: After overhearing Hightower’s evil plans for him, she decides to help him break out. Lucy suggests reaching out to the Society of Explorers and Adventurers, Hightower’s archrivals, for help returning the Coatl to its original temple and finding Shinji’s aunt. This intriguing venture builds to a compelling climax. One question that remains unanswered is why Japanese American Shinji, who has no Mesoamerican heritage, is chosen by the Coatl to be its rescuer; perhaps this will be resolved in the next entry in this new series.

An action-packed fantasy containing a surprising twist.

(Fantasy. 9-12)

OUR OWN LITTLE PARADISE

Kaurin, Marianne Trans. by Olivia Lasky Arctis Books (300 pp.) $15.00 | April 12, 2022 978-1-64690-018-3

Nora’s summer vacation turns out to be the best—and also the worst—ever.

Narrator Nora’s sixth grade year—her first in a new school—ends with the disclosure that her classmates from the middleclass neighborhood of Solvang Heights have summer plans for travel with their families. Put on the spot, an ashamed Nora lies and says she’s going to the tropics. Only Nora and Wilmer, the boy who dropped by on the last day of school to meet the class he’ll join in the fall, live in Chaplin Court, a low-income apartment block dubbed Craplin Court. Nora’s reluctance to befriend Wilmer—he’s not cool or handsome in the way that her crush, Marcus, is—gradually eases as she struggles with the long stretch of summer, lack of friends, and an unemployed mother who seems to sleep all the time. Wilmer shares with Nora his discovery of the long-unoccupied former apartment complex caretaker’s flat, and the two resourcefully create a summer getaway they do their best to turn into a tropical escape. Evidence of the caretaker’s long-ago romance and heartbreak captures Nora’s and Wilmer’s imaginations. The transformation of the flat and the innocent playing house seem magical until the class mean girls find a way to bully Nora’s happiness out of her. Hints of the Norwegian setting come through in this translation that sheds light on socio-economic disparities. The resolution is satisfyingly happy.

Absorbing relationship drama with a convincing protagonist. (Fiction. 9-12) |

ONE SUN AND COUNTLESS STARS A Muslim Book of Numbers Khan, Hena Illus. by Mehrdokht Amini Chronicle Books (32 pp.) $17.99 | March 1, 2022 978-1-4521-8272-8 Series: Muslim Book of Concepts

JORDIE AND JOEY FELL FROM THE SKY Lauren, Judi Jolly Fish Press (240 pp.) $11.99 paper | April 19, 2022 978-1-63163-581-6

Twelve-year-old twin foundlings slip away from their 19th foster home to investigate their mysterious origins.

Jordie, slightly younger than his brother chronologically but reading as significantly more so developmentally, is sure that they are aliens since they were found as infants in a crop circle, bear odd scars down their backs, and he, at least, has no memories before age 7. Also, they never seem to fit in anywhere…though at least they’ve always had each other. A terrifying hint that they may have to be separated in order to find permanent foster |

BEDTIME FOR MAZIKS

Levy, Yael Illus. by Nabila Adani Kar-Ben (24 pp.) $17.99 | April 1, 2022 978-1-72842-427-9

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A counting book takes readers on a tour of the Islamic faith.

“One is the morning sun” as a multigenerational Muslim family awakes to the first adhaan (call for prayer). “Two are hands for making dua” as they utter morning invocations. In this fashion, the book moves through the numbers one to 10 as the family members, including two children, carry out various religious practices and traditions. As Khan explains in a closing author’s note, the book steers clear of abstract concepts (like five for the five pillars of Islam) and instead presents “concrete and illustratable terms” to help children “focus on things we can count in the world around us.” Thus, readers see five cups of tea being served at a halaqa (religious study group) with family friends, 10 pairs of shoes that the characters have removed from their feet before salah (formal worship), and three bags of donations being prepared for sadaqa (almsgiving). Exquisite, colorful mixed-media illustrations depict a setting that could be Iran (Amini’s ancestral homeland) and showcase the aesthetics of Islamic art, from textile patterns to architectural ornamentation. This concept book complements the creators’ Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns (2012) and Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets (2018), about colors and shapes, respectively.

Some readers may disagree with certain spelling choices, such as salah instead of sala or salat. A helpful glossary explains key terms and could be critical for non-Muslim readers. Muslims are portrayed diversely in terms of dress, physical appearance, and race. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A creative, fun introduction to Islam. (Picture book. 3-7)

homes drives Jordie to drag his reluctant but fiercely protective brother, Joey, into a search for the truth about their parentage. First stop: Roswell, New Mexico, to interview UFO experts and abductees. Expediting her perceptive articulation of the twins’ complex webs of trust and doubt, dependency and independence, Lauren adds Nadia, an observant classmate who tags along on what becomes a series of mishaps and revelations over the course of long, exhausting walks and bus rides. As a tease, the author also lets readers wonder whether this is science fiction or not right up to the climax—which begins with an attempt to sneak into Area 51—and goes on, after a wrenching reveal, to end with a promise of hope. The main cast seems to be White. Joey is attracted to boys, something Jordie implicitly accepts, although Joey’s openness about his sexuality is evolving.

Twin protagonists make a winning double bill in a story about alienation and aliens. (Fiction. 9-13)

A celebration of the sometimes-exasperating, but always entertaining, shenanigans of irrepressibly energetic young children.

As Levy explains in a brief introduction, mazik “is a Yiddish word for a devilish imp or a rambunctious mischief-maker.”

The story follows the daily antics of two sibling maziks—cued as female and male—with White human parents. At breakfast time, the maziks—portrayed as happy little monsters with small fangs and pink and green skin—make a huge mess; ditto during crafts time in the living room. On some days, they attend school, where they hide under or jump on the furniture. On other days, they enjoy a rowdy, splashy romp at the pool or have a wild frolic with a multiracial group of neighborhood human kids. At dinnertime, they spill their juice and slip the cat challah bread before having a bedtime pillow fight. The rhyming text is filled with rhetorical questions (“Do they rumble? / Do they fight? / Do they snarl with all their might?” etc.) as the narrator repeatedly wonders, “What do maziks do each day?” The colorful, busy artwork subtly indicates that this Jewish family observes Shabbat and ends each day with a Sh’ma prayer and that the maziks attend a Judaic school. Non-Jewish readers may miss these details, but the book’s depiction of the hectic, demanding life of an active young family will be familiar to all little hellions and their exhausted parents. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

The mayhem of young family life seen through a positive, whimsical lens. (Picture book. 3-5)

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A IS FOR AXOLOTL An Unusual Animal ABC Macorol, Catherine Henry Holt (32 pp.) $18.99 | March 29, 2022 978-1-250-10810-4

A zoological introduction to the letters of the English alphabet.

Rhyming text, interesting animal facts, and lesser-known global wildlife come together in this letter recognition primer.

Using the traditional, familiar “A is for…, B is for…” pattern, the text introduces readers to the axolotl, binturong, colugo, dumbo octopus, and more, ending with “Z is for the Zebra Duiker.” Each entry includes two short, intriguing tidbits about the animal’s behavior, physical characteristics, or country of origin.

Readers will learn that the fossa lives in Madagascar, the gerenuk eats standing up, and the pangolin is covered in keratin scales.

To provide children with reference points, Macorol mentions some of the animals’ better-known relatives—the okapi is kin to the giraffe, the hyrax is “cousin to elephants and manatees,” etc. The creatures are shown in their various natural habitats, and a map of the world at the beginning of the book reveals the continent on which each critter is found. Large, thick, uppercase alphabet letters in different colors allow for tracing and easy visual processing of letter shapes. Much of the vocabulary will be unfamiliar to children; coupled with challenging words like monotreme and retractable this makes the book best suited for independent readers looking to stretch their skills.

Although the rhymes sometime struggle for scansion, Macorol’s roundup of unusual fauna is engaging. The bold, multitextured digital illustrations often depict the animals gazing quietly at the reader, inviting us into their fascinating worlds. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An informative abecedarian tour of the animal world but not one well suited for early emergent readers. (Informational picture book. 6-9)

YOU ARE HERE

Manbeck, Zach Chronicle Books (36 pp.) $17.99 | May 10, 2022 978-1-79721-010-0

Manbeck offers direction for life’s journeys in his children’s book debut.

Using just one or two pithy sentences per page, the text encourages readers to bravely forge their own paths in the world. Whatever one hopes to accomplish or whatever one’s destination in life, the starting point is “here,” a point of view that suggests that there is power and wisdom in embracing the present moment. Manbeck assures readers that “you can go anywhere!” and includes all-caps imperatives on almost every double-page spread: “Begin”; “Take your time”; “Keep going”; “Be patient”; etc. A major thrust of the narrative is the futility of comparing oneself to others since every person is unique 108

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and there is no one-size-fits-all formula for how life should unfold. The whimsical illustrations, rendered in gouache and mixed media with digital editing, show sprightly children and their childlike anthropomorphic animal companions romping on giant fantastical play structures that recall Rube Goldberg machines. Some spreads feature a montage of the characters adventurously exploring a range of fun activities: butterfly watching, rollerblading, riding a penny-farthing, etc. Flowers and butterflies—with their associated meanings of transformation, hope, courage, success, and new beginnings—are used liberally as motifs throughout the colorful artwork. The characters have various skin tones, and one of them uses a wheelchair.

Many wear party hats, conveying a mood of celebration; indeed, this book would make a good baby-shower or graduation gift.

(This book was reviewed digitally.)

An uplifting ode to the power of taking small steps to make big changes. (Gift book. 0-5, adult)

THE SILK ROAD

Marion, Kirsten Common Deer Press (220 pp.) $13.95 | April 1, 2022 978-1-988761-66-4 Series: Lucy and Dee, 1 Unexpectedly trapped in a fantasy kingdom, best friends Lucy and Dee embark on a quest.

Adventurous Lucy dreams of being a world traveler, while cautious Dee wants to be a scientist. Since the disappearance of his archaeologist parents, Dee conducts alchemical experiments, hoping to produce gold to fund a search. Lured by a flaming red bird into a tunnel with a road of silk, the default White duo encounter a stone man who pronounces them “the children we have been waiting for.”

He bargains with them to go on a mission to befriend the kingdom of Sericea’s young emperor, a lonely boy facing danger and in need of companions his age. In return, the stone man promises information that could help Dee locate his parents. Traveling on fantastical horselike creatures to the Celestial City, Lucy and Dee meet 13-year-old Emperor Yidi, a petulant, self-absorbed boy controlled by Xixi, his sorceress stepmother. Blond Xixi is a foreigner in this fantasy land that evokes China, and she is intent on retaining her power by eliminating Yidi. Fearing for their lives, the young people flee with Xixi’s forces in pursuit. The trio, including a reformed Yidi who grows in compassion and understands that he is the one who must save Sericea, emerge as credible young heroes making difficult moral choices as they seek a safe place to hide out and regroup. The story ultimately leaves readers in suspense about what happens next.

An enthralling, fast-paced adventure, hinting of more to come. (Fantasy. 9-12)

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“While there is no shortage of picture books about Pride, this one may be the most inclusive and expansive yet.” ’twas the night before pride

’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE PRIDE McClintick, Joanna Illus. by Juana Medina Candlewick (32 pp.) $17.99 | May 10, 2022 978-1-5362-1343-0

THE WOMAN IN THE WOODS And Other North American Stories

Ed. by McDonald, Kel, Kate Ashwin & Alina Pete Iron Circus Comics (120 pp.) $15.00 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-945820-97-7 Series: Cautionary Fables & Fairytales

Native American and First Nations writers and artists introduce a comics anthology of diverse Indigenous lore passed down through generations.

Representing eight tribes, each offering is this collection is a reimagining of a traditional Indigenous tale. Readers are led on a wild journey through various mythologies, including the Métis narrative of a young boy trapped in the body of a rougarou |

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A small family gets ready for the next day’s Pride march.

On “the night before Pride,” drag queens brush their wigs “with great care,” while bikers check the air pressure in their motorcycle tires. Across the city, marchers-to-be plan their outfits or polish musical instruments. Inside a family’s home, a brown-skinned mom encourages everyone to “go to bed early,” while the other mom, a White woman, packs snacks. At the older, wavy-haired, light-brown-skinned child’s behest, the family tells light-brown-skinned, curly-haired baby Sammy “the whole story” about “Prides past.” Harking back to 1969—“a less fair time”— the family’s account abridges some of the many injustices that led to the famous Stonewall riot that sparked “a march that spread worldwide.” Going beyond “tutus and rainbow suspenders,” the family tells Sammy about “rights for queers and all our beautiful genders.” As they settle into bed, the older child notes what Pride means to them: being yourself! Debut author McClintick, a social worker, joins forces with award-winning illustrator Medina to present a child’s-eye view of Pride that borrows its cadence and rhyming scheme from Clement Clarke Moore’s classic Christmas poem. Rainbows abound in Medina’s full-color digital illustrations, which incorporate historical references and depict a wonderfully diverse cast, including background characters with disabilities. While there is no shortage of picture books about Pride, this one may be the most inclusive and expansive yet.

Endpapers depict over 80 important historical LGBTQ+ figures, including some prominent children’s book authors and illustrators. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An affirming and kid-friendly history lesson. (author’s note, illustrator’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

(werewolf); a Chickasaw pourquoi story featuring an anthropomorphic rabbit trickster; the legend of the Octopus Woman from the S’Kallam tribe; and an Ojibwe story about a girl who encounters a half-lynx, half-dragon underwater being called Mishipeshu while searching for clean water for her people. Some stories are humorous, such as the Navajo-sourced “Into the Darkness,” while others dip into the mystery genre, like “The Woman in the Woods” from the Taino oral tradition. Because of the digestible graphic format, this would be a good introductory text for readers unfamiliar with Native American folklore and culture; meanwhile, Indigenous readers may find the stories from tribes other than their own pleasingly familiar. The black-and-white artwork by multiple artists is enhanced by panels of varying shapes and layouts. The stories are set in both contemporary and historical periods, and some feature two-spirit characters. After reading these diverse stories, young readers might be inspired to create a folklore retelling of their own. Characters are diverse in race, skin tone, age, and gender. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Enjoyable for reading aloud or sharing around a campfire.

(Graphic fiction. 8-13)

CARRIMEBAC, THE TOWN THAT WALKED

Moore, David Barclay Illus. by John Holyfield Candlewick (40 pp.) $18.99 | March 8, 2022 978-1-5362-1369-0

A town of prospering Black folks magically uproots itself.

When Rootilla Redgums, who claims to be nearly 100 years old, moves to Walkerton, Georgia, with her 9-year-old, old soul of a grandson, Julius Jefferson, her wizened appearance and powerful aura cause a stir among the townspeople. They aren’t quite sure what to make of the odd pair, but Rootilla soon wins them over.

She teaches them to make homemade goods that draw White buyers from the surrounding towns, and Walkerton, once full of misery, begins to thrive. Rootilla’s handiworks possess unique powers—they are carpets that never wear down, jugs that never empty, and walking sticks “that somehow never got you lost in the woods.”

Convinced that Walkerton’s Black residents are practicing witchcraft, a mob of White people attack but are no match for Rootilla’s magic. At her behest, the town—which Julius renames Carrimebac—is literally carried away, leaving only a lake to mark where Walkerton once stood. Each page turn brings fresh delights via the engaging acrylic paintings that create drama through the use of various perspectives. On some spreads, characters look directly at the viewer, as if inviting interaction. While the premise is compelling, the narrative is not cohesive; some character connections are confusing, and the use of the euphemism “Fearful Folks” to refer to white-hooded, torch-bearing figures emphasizes their unfounded fears of Black folks instead of the terror they inflict because of their hate. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A tall tale that doesn’t quite measure up. (Picture book/folktale.

6-9)

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“Well stocked with dramatic moments and discoveries.” the woman who split the atom

THE WOMAN WHO SPLIT THE ATOM The Life of Lise Meitner

Moss, Marissa Abrams (264 pp.) $19.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-4197-5853-9

A scorching profile of a brilliant physicist whose proper recognition was long delayed thanks to sexism, antisemitism, and personal betrayal.

In a career much like her older contemporary Marie Curie’s, Meitner was a relentless researcher subjected to rabid prejudice against women in the sciences. Nevertheless, she was rewarded some grudging, minimal support through her world-changing discoveries. She had the further obstacles of being Jewish in Hitler’s Germany—and of working closely and fruitfully for decades with Otto Hahn, who, as Moss carefully documents, then pressured her to quit the Berlin institute he headed rather than shield her from the Nazis, neglected to mention in his lecture after being awarded a Nobel Prize that she had provided the essential insights about nuclear fission that explained his experimental results, and repeatedly dismissed her as bitter. Despite being a Nobel also-ran no fewer than 48 times, Meitner made multiple attempts to mend fences with Hahn, even while taking him to task for joining the postwar German apologists. Meanwhile, she twice narrowly escaped capture on her flight from the Third Reich, worked with Allied intelligence during the war, and went on to become a pacifist who, like Einstein, was horrified at the way nuclear energy was weaponized. She cuts a small, neat, shy figure in the scene-setting graphic panels that open each chapter, but her intellect and determination shine on every page.

A bright tale of a life dedicated to science, well stocked with dramatic moments and discoveries. (author’s note, timeline, glossary, biographical profiles, notes, bibliography, image credits, index) (Biography. 11-14)

TODAY IS DIFFERENT

Moua, Doua Illus. by Kim Holt Carolrhoda (32 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-72843-029-4

When a Black man is “hurt” by police and Black Lives Matter protests are staged in her community, 7-year-old Hmong protagonist Mai knows that “today is different.”

Then Mai’s Black best friend, Kiara, misses school; the two girls usually do everything together…“but not today.” Seeking to understand more about race, Mai questions her teenage brother, Tou, and learns that “in the Hmong culture, there are Black Hmong, White Hmong, Green Hmong, Striped Hmong, and many more.”Although their parents want to shield them from the unfolding events—“It doesn’t have anything to do with you”—the siblings make a protest sign, and Mai uses colored pencils as an 110

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object lesson to show her parents that “if we all stand together, we will be unbreakable.” She and Tou run away to a Black Lives Matter rally to march in solidarity with Kiara’s family and are pleasantly surprised when Mom and Dad join them. The book focuses on racism against Black Americans, but Dad and Tou board up their house’s windows, a potentially confusing detail that the story glosses over. Though risking oversimplifying how children process racial trauma, Moua positively portrays a cross-cultural friendship and explores how racial violence impacts children.

The backmatter explains the historical discrimination against Hmong people in many countries and emphasizes the importance of African American and Hmong communities uniting to fight injustice. Colorful but mediocre digital paint illustrations add little to the telling but realistically portray urban diversity.

(This book was reviewed digitally.)

An important story about how marginalized groups can work together for social justice, but some elements feel illconceived. (author’s note, pronunciation guide, glossary) (Picture book. 4-7)

THE RAINBOW PARADE

Neilson, Emily Dial Books (32 pp.) $17.99 | May 31, 2022 978-0-593-32658-9

Inspired by the author’s childhood memories of attending San Francisco Pride, this picture book offers a delightfully dynamic child’s-eye view of the festivities.

Emily, a young White girl, and her two White moms take the train to join their “family of friends” alongside the parade route.

Emily narrates the story in the first person, relaying her observations. She admires the bikers and the loud, proud, colorful marchers and performers, who vary in size, skin color, physical ability, and age and who wear “whatever makes them feel most like themselves.” But when Mommy spots a group of LGBTQ+ families (“just like us!”) marching and suggests they join them, Emily worries she’s “not loud or proud enough to be in the parade.”

Her moms’ poignant, encouraging responses are just what she (and likely, many readers) needs to hear. Neilson employs simple, accessible language to deliver a buoyant tale that fleshes out the notion of Pride—an integral cultural concept within the LGBTQ+ community—by showing rather than telling. The stylized digital illustrations include true-to-life details that affectionately reflect the array of outfits, identities, and signage one might encounter at a Pride celebration. Meanwhile, the pitch-perfect visual pacing (the artwork shifts effortlessly between immersive, full-bleed pages and spot illustrations) captures the movement, scope, and many moods of the parade. Readers familiar with San Francisco may recognize the BART train, which helps establish the setting.

(This book was reviewed digitally.)

An exploration of community and belonging that’s highly recommended for all families and all bookshelves. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)

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ALL FROM A WALNUT

Paquette, Ammi-Joan Illus. by Felicita Sala Abrams (40 pp.) $18.99 | March 22, 2022 978-1-4197-5002-1

A DARKENING OF DRAGONS

Patrick, S.A. Peachtree (400 pp.) $17.99 | April 1, 2022 978-1-68263-376-2 Series: Songs of Magic, 1

This story begins where the legend of the Pied Piper left off.

The Hamelyn Piper, as he is known in this story, is languishing in a dungeon after luring hundreds of human and dragon children away from their homes and families, never to be seen again. Thirteen-yearold Patch Brightwater is a Piper determined to use his Piping for good, until one ill-advised outburst sends him on the run. Illegally playing his Pipe for food and lodging, he lands in a rat-infested village and puts his skills to the test. When his Piping goes awry, he ends up in prison with the Hamelyn Piper in the cell next to him.

An attack on the Hamelyn Piper by a darkness of dragons—so called because they darken the sky—leads Patch on a quest to break a curse, find the missing human and dragon children, and keep obsidiac, a dangerously powerful magical substance, from falling into the wrong hands. He is joined in his adventures by |

SOMETIMES, ALL I NEED IS ME

Perdomo, Juliana Candlewick (32 pp.) $17.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-5362-1804-6

A young girl finds courage, comfort, and peace within.

An unnamed young girl with lightbrown skin, cued as Latinx, tells readers about the various people in her life and the activities she enjoys doing with them. Sometimes she spends cozy hours at home with her single mom and their dog, Rumba; goes on camping trips with other kids; and splashes around in rain puddles with her White-presenting friend, Mateo. When she needs help, there are neighbors she can count on, and if she feels sad, “a hug from Grandma makes everything better.” But sometimes, when she’s away from home or there is no one around, she has to rely on herself: “I become my own home, where I feel calm.” “I can be my own company and make my own magic,” the girl shares, and “I can love myself and become whatever I need.” Children will learn that they can give themselves a hug if no one is available to do so and create their own light, if need be. Perdomo’s simple but powerful narrative explores the balance between self-reliance and dependency and conveys the equal importance of self-care and allowing others to care for us. The colorful digital illustrations, endearingly rendered in a naïve art style, show the girl spending her alone time contentedly doing the things she loves, like dancing to samba music and putting on a magic show for her toys. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A heartfelt, reassuring picture book that will help children develop inner resources and psychological strength. (Picture book. 2-5)

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A young girl cultivates a tree and an understanding of her family history.

When Emilia wakes up one morning to find a gift—a single walnut—from Grandpa on her bedside table, her mom smiles knowingly: “It must be walnut season.”

What follows is the story of Grandpa’s nut. Long ago, a young Grandpa plucked a lone walnut from a tree outside his home near Lake Como in Italy and carried the steadily growing sprout across “a great wide ocean” to “a new country on a new continent.” As he grew into an adult, the sapling grew into the tree that still stands outside the house Grandpa shares with Emilia and her mom. With newfound appreciation, Emilia beholds the lofty walnut tree in her backyard that grows alongside a smaller, younger one: “This is my tree,” Grandpa tells Emilia. “And that one is your mother’s.” Together, they plant a third walnut tree, for Emilia, and care for it as it slowly grows. The warmhearted watercolor, gouache, and colored-pencil illustrations are the true highlight of the book, offering lovingly rendered images of Sala’s native Italy and a poignant view of Grandpa’s aging and eventual passing. A gentle tale about maintaining a sense of continuity and rootedness in the face of life’s upheavals, this book is a worthy addition to any personal or library collection. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A glowingly illustrated exploration of immigration, family bonds, and human resilience. (Picture book. 5-10)

Wren Cobble, a girl turned into a rat by an angry sorcerer, and dracogriff Barver Knopferkerkle, who is part dragon and part griffin. Filled with adventure, magic, and humor, this multilayered story makes for a rich read. The promise of a sequel will satisfy those who are left wanting more by the sudden ending. All of the human characters are presumed White.

Fans of epic, worldbuilding fantasy will find this lengthy narrative worth the trip. (Fantasy. 9-13)

PEACOCK AND SKETCH

Peterkin, Allan Illus. by Sandhya Prabhat Magination/American Psychological Association (32 pp.) $14.99 | Jan. 11, 2022 978-1-4338-3279-6 A fame-obsessed peacock gains much-needed perspective.

A purple peacock at the zoo loves having his photo taken by visitors and showing off his beautiful plumage. A young girl named Sketch with unnaturally pink skin is the only one kirkus.com

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uninterested in taking his photo; instead, she regularly visits Peacock to draw pictures of him in her notebook and tell him stories. Hungry for even more fame, Peacock escapes the zoo.

He parades down the street on the roof of a school bus, strutting, posing, and garnering more and more attention. He wanders into a library, where everyone except the stereotypically stern librarian marvels at him. But being famous, it turns out, is exhausting; luckily, worn-out Peacock runs into Sketch, who begs him to “go back home.” Back at the zoo, Peacock loses his fan base when his feathers start to molt, but loyal Sketch is there to comfort him as the seasons change. Peterkin’s straightforward yet moving cautionary tale is capped off by backmatter urging caregivers to use the “3 C’s” of social media—content, contact, and conduct—as a framework for discussing “the benefits and risks of social media” with children. Prabhat’s cartoonstyle digital illustrations depict animal and human figures alike with oversized, round eyes and vibrant colors and use close-ups to capture key emotional moments. Background characters have a range of skin tones from deep brown to tan. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A helpful title for kids growing up in the social media age.

(Picture book. 4-7)

BALLOON GIRLS

Pitt, Darrell Text (240 pp.) $8.95 paper | April 12, 2022 978-1-92233-056-7 What’s a cool enough science project to win a tween in Australia a trip all the way to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.?

Ally is bound and determined to win a national contest for year seven kids to show they understand the scientific method. First prize is a visit to the United States to visit museums she’s always wanted to see. With the help of her best friends, Harmony and Ping, Ally comes up with the coolest idea: prove the Earth is spherical.

After all, as her dad tells her, “it’s easy to laugh at conspiracy theorists. The important thing is to prove it to yourself.” It’s trickier than the three girls expect to do their experiment. They have to deal with racist and fatphobic bullying, a devastating fire, and even just the science-confounding effects of weather and water. But each setback is a learning experience, and the girls improve their experimental design with each iteration.

The bullies are over-the-top comically dunderheaded rather than frightening (going along with the misinformation-debunking theme, their science project is a lazy attempt to prove one of the most ridiculous real-world conspiracies). Educational content is mixed with light humor and a random-but-entertaining mystery. Except for Ping and science teacher Miss Kapoor, all characters appear to be White.

A little bit mystery and suspense, a little bit fun sciencefair nerdery. (Fiction. 9-12)

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A SEED GROWS

Portis, Antoinette Neal Porter/Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | June 7, 2022 978-0-8234-4892-0 A piecemeal overview of the life cycle of a plant.

Using her signature minimalist prose and stripped-down art, Portis follows the journey of a sunflower seed from the moment it “settles into the soil” to its emergence as a blossom that eventually parents new sunflower plants. The entire text consists of one long sentence, broken up into fragments across the book’s spreads. Except for a few well-chosen double-page illustrations, the full-color artwork appears on the recto pages while the text appears on the verso pages. Readers watch as sunshine and rain help the seed grow into a bud and then a tall flower whose grandeur and height are accentuated by a switch from a horizontal page layout to a vertical one. The flower produces seeds, which are dispersed by birds after they feed, beginning the process of new plant growth all over again. The book offers a close-up look at plant reproduction using simple, accessible language that preschoolers can understand. Youngsters will feel a sense of awe as they witness the magic of a seed’s first tender shoot and the symbiosis of nature. The backmatter uses spot art to highlight the parts of a sunflower seed and plant and four things that “the seed needs to sprout”; it also includes a diagram of the sunflower’s life cycle. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An understated, useful primer on one of nature’s miraculous cycles. (Informational picture book. 3-6)

PERFECTLY IMPERFECT MIRA

Pray, Faith Little, Brown (40 pp.) $17.99 | April 12, 2022 978-0-316-54116-9

A young girl stifled by her perfectionist tendencies learns to find joy in simply

doing her best.

Whatever new activity Mira starts she soon quits because of her fear of failure. While other kids forge ahead enthusiastically learning new skills, she makes herself small, until she is “just a shadow.” She regards her peers with wistful envy, thinking how much better they are than her at gymnastics, painting, dancing, and more. Mira is convinced that they succeed because they are naturals. Mired in self-doubt, Mira spends some alone time at the beach, contemplating her situation. Longing to let down her hair, she decides to try some tumbling moves on a piece of driftwood. She wobbles, her long, black braid caught on the wind, and flops. But Mira realizes it feels good to try! She smiles and goes again, stumbling and spinning and bouncing; her fixed mindset melts away as she finds the fun in learning and growing.

As Mira blossoms, the red and blue palette of the colored-pencil illustrations, symbolizing her fears, transforms to one of warm, cheerful yellows and oranges. Pray’s rounded forms give both |

“Explores the oppressive interconnectedness of White supremacy and racism in slow and methodical detail.” me and white supremacy

weight and softness to Mira, who appears Asian. The multiracial cast of children is full of energy and their physically expressive activities are captivating. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet celebration of the growth mindset. (Picture book. 3-8)

IT’S A SIGN!

Pumphrey, Jarrett & Jerome Pumphrey with Mo Willems Hyperion (64 pp.) $10.99 | May 10, 2022 978-1-368-07584-8 Series: Elephant & Piggie Like Reading!

THE EVERYBODY GETS ANXIOUS ACTIVITY BOOK

Reid, Jordan & Erin Williams Illus. by Erin Williams Rodale Kids (112 pp.) $9.99 paper | March 1, 2022 978-0-593-43380-5

We all experience anxiety at some point or another; this book offers tools to help.

This interactive workbook, geared toward creative kids who are nervous or overwhelmed, encourages readers to learn new strategies for self-soothing and build self-awareness through drawing and writing. Reid and Williams |

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A squad of foxlike characters named One, Two, Kat, and Four start a club.

None of them really has a firm idea of what the club should be called; still, their enthusiasm and wideranging talents are evident as they brainstorm. One cannot write but makes paper hats for everyone. Two, who knows every letter but can only write short words, creates a sign with the word a on it. Kat, who is able to write longer words as long as they rhyme with their own name, creates a sign with the word hat on it.

Meanwhile, Four knows how to write “the perfect word for a club sign”: club. Though the ideal club name should be obvious to the animals based on what they have written, they ultimately land upon a comically long-winded one. The story’s final punchline may go over some younger readers’ heads, but the silly dialogue in this playful tale makes for an engaging read. The minimalist illustrations, created with hand-cut foam shapes and colored digitally, do the easy-reader format justice. Observant readers will notice that the color of each animal’s speech bubbles corresponds with the color of their fur, making their conversation easier to follow, and that One’s, Two’s, Kat’s, and Four’s tails each display one, two, three, and four white speckles, respectively. This winsome addition to the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series is bookended with commentary by co-author Willems’ beloved Elephant, Piggie, and Pigeon characters.

If you find yourself giggling at this goofy story, join the club. (Early reader. 4-8)

begin with an introduction that explains, in kid-friendly terms, what anxiety is; they compare anxiety to a smoke alarm—helpful when there’s real danger but disruptive when it goes off constantly.

A two-page spread of comics-style illustrations provides an evolutionary perspective on anxiety and its physical symptoms. The book often uses humor to spur serious reflection. For example, one double-page spread of spot art showing amusing “things that are seriously unlikely to happen” poses the question “What else is literally never going to happen, but sometimes worries you anyway?”

Readers can work their way through art prompts—like drawing the design on a cape to wear while defeating a “worry dragon”—in addition to quizzes, gratitude exercises, and other engaging activities as they learn mindfulness and other coping techniques. Sections like “The Anxiety Toolbox” and “How To: Calm Down When You’re Freaking Out” offer tangible suggestions and simple practices to try. Digital doodlelike illustrations enliven the browsable presentation. Human characters are depicted with a variety of skin tones ranging from light peach to dark brown.

An engaging resource that will help kids navigate anxiety with imagination. (Self-help. 8-12)

ME AND WHITE SUPREMACY Young Readers’ Edition Saad, Layla F. Sourcebooks eXplore (304 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-1-72825-908-6

Adapted from the 2020 adult edition specifically for young future changemakers, key terms and critical concepts related to White supremacy are thoroughly explained and a course of antiracist action is outlined.

With a clear sense of her audience, Saad explores the oppressive interconnectedness of White supremacy and racism in slow and methodical detail. Chapters include clear considerations of essential vocabulary with historical and contemporary definitions as well as reflection questions and activities to support readers’ continued work and thinking about the subject at hand.

Overall, the consistent organization––by regularly recapping, reflecting, and providing a framework for responding to these issues of inequity––provides an accessible space for individual and group reading. Still, while presenting thoughtful definitions and personal reflection on White privilege, White fragility, tone policing, and allyship, to name just a few of the pieces of the high-stakes puzzle Saad puts together, the book works best as a distinct voice and resource added to a larger collection of anti-racist tools and conversations. As “an East African, Middle Eastern, Black, British, Muslim woman who lives in Qatar,” the author proposes not just rhetoric to resolve racial tensions or avoid hurt feelings, but specific practices for young people to commit to a lifetime of anti-racist values and commitments, optimistically affirming readers each step of the way.

A valuable workbook in the truest sense. (glossary, reading list) (Nonfiction. 10-14) kirkus.com

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“An engaging biography whose dramatic oil compositions and engrossing narrative will pull in other equine aficionados.” a storm of horses

WITH LOTS OF LOVE

Sanchez, Jenny Torres Illus. by André Ceolin Viking (32 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 8, 2022 978-0-593-20500-6

A young girl living in the United States misses her old life in Mexico, particularly her beloved grandmother.

Rocio misses visits to Abuela’s grocery store, with its enticing smells and the soft, rustling sounds of handmade piñatas hanging from the ceiling. She misses Abuela’s buñuelos (fried dough fritters), special coffee, and tortillas, and she fondly recalls how she and her grandmother used to gaze at the night sky at bedtime. On the morning of Rocio’s birthday, she is excited and moved to discover that Abuela has sent her a package containing “a dazzling star made of bright ruffled paper”; a stack of tortillas wrapped in a cloth with Rocio’s name stitched on it; and a picture of Abuela and other relatives holding a happy-birthday banner. “Con mucho amor. / With lots of love,” the writing on the package reads. That night, Rocio blows a kiss through her window that travels far across the night sky to eventually land on Abuela’s cheek “with lots of love.” The striking digital artwork incorporates dynamic patterns reminiscent of those found on Indigenous Mexican textiles and flowing lines that add liveliness, balancing the rather bland, albeit sweet, text.

All characters have straight black hair and terra-cotta–colored skin except for Rocio’s light-skinned mother. Visual cues suggest that Rocio lives in a suburban neighborhood. Some Spanish terms, like pan dulce and Las Mañanitas, are sprinkled throughout the story. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A celebration of the grandparent-grandchild bond and an immigration tale that any child missing home will relate to.

(Picture book. 4-8)

A STORM OF HORSES The Story of Artist Rosa Bonheur Sanderson, Ruth Crocodile/Interlink (32 pp.) $19.95 | Feb. 14, 2022 978-1-62371-848-0

A profile of groundbreaking 19thcentury French animalier Rosa Bonheur.

Sanderson, herself a realistic painter whose initial artistic inspiration was horses, crafts an engaging biography whose dramatic oil compositions and engrossing narrative will pull in other equine aficionados. Peppering the text with horse imagery (Rosa “galloped into the world” and was sent “trotting back home” for being naughty at boarding school), Sanderson describes how Bonheur (1822-1899) was introduced to art as a child by her artist father who took her under his tutelage. At school, she “covered her papers with animal sketches,” and as a teenager, she trained at the Louvre; Bonheur went on to study 114

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horse anatomy at a medical school and horse musculature at a slaughterhouse. Sanderson explains the period’s limitations on women’s ambitions and its expectations regarding marriage— something headstrong Bonheur had “no interest in.” Thus, it is impressive that her paintings were shown at the Paris Salon annual exhibition, where she won a gold medal. It was her masterpiece, The Horse Fair, however—at 8 feet tall by 16 ½ feet wide—that garnered international attention and the most critical praise. Sanderson details the various steps in executing a work of this scale; the illustrations depict the painting studies, red ochre outlines and layering, and Bonheur on a ladder adding personality to each horse. Sanderson states that Bonheur was aided by her “companion” Nathalie. The extensive backmatter includes information about Bonheur’s lesbian identity. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An inspiring glimpse into the talent and drive of a woman who marched to the beat of a different drummer. (author’s note, bibliography, resources, sources, image credits) (Picturebook biography. 6-9)

THE EDGE OF IN BETWEEN

Savaryn, Lorelei Viking (304 pp.) $16.99 | April 19, 2022 978-0-593-20209-8

An enchanted garden offers an orphan and her cousin a chance to heal their broken hearts.

In this lightly gothic fantasy retelling of The Secret Garden, artistic Lottie uses her special magic to imbue her paintings with a vitality that makes them feel alive. Her talent, like all such gifts in the Land of the Living, is innate. However, not everyone holds onto their magic. Magic and color usually fade as one ages, and people join the Living Gray, unable to use magic or see color and becoming devoid of any pigmentation. Sudden shocks can also drain a person’s magic instantly; after the accidental deaths of her parents, Lottie becomes a Living Gray. She is sent to live with her estranged uncle, who endlessly roams the In Between seeking the ghost of his wife. Lottie and her cousin, Clement, another Living Gray, discover a hidden garden that gives them hope of reclaiming the magic and future they once believed lost. As with the original classic, this story highlights themes of redemption and companionship. The blossoming garden and Lottie’s friendship with Clement help her understand the interconnectedness of emotions and the empowerment that comes with having hope. While the novel is highly imaginative, certain plot and worldbuilding elements feel complex to the point of confusion, disrupting the reading experience. Lottie is cued as White, and Clement has brown skin.

An inventive but overcomplicated twist on a classic.

(Fantasy. 9-13)

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FIRSTS & LASTS The Changing Seasons Schubert, Leda Illus. by Clover Robin Candlewick (48 pp.) $18.99 | March 1, 2022 978-1-5362-1102-3

ANANSI AND THE GOLDEN POT

Selasi, Taiye Illus. by Tinuke Fagborun DK Publishing (32 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 15, 2022 978-0-7440-4990-9

Kweku, nicknamed Anansi by his father, meets the famous trickster spider he’s named for.

Anansi, a young city-dwelling boy, flies overseas to Ghana with his parents and siblings to visit his grandmother. In Nana’s seaside community, Anansi climbs coconut trees, helps fishermen pull in their nets, and enjoys red-red (Ghanaian bean stew), his favorite food. One day, at the beach, Anansi meets the real Anansi the Spider, whom he’s heard so much about. The spider reveals to Anansi a golden pot that will magically fill itself with whatever the boy most desires if he utters a charm. When Anansi gives it a try, the pot immediately fills with red-red. The spider warns Anansi that “you must share what you love with those you love the most,” but the boy hides the pot and secretly binges on red-red for several days before learning a lesson about the importance of generosity. Selasi creatively reimagines the |

WHO ARE YOUR PEOPLE?

Sellers, Bakari Illus. by Reggie Brown Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins (32 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 11, 2022 978-0-06-308285-4

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A celebration of the harbingers and vestiges of seasonal change.

Beginning with spring, each of the four temperate seasons is introduced by a double-page montage of seasonally specific images to prompt discussion and sharpen predictive skills. For example, “spring is…” tulips and daffodils, birds’ nests, planting seeds, rainbows after a rain shower, etc. The main thrust of the text, however, is its description of activities associated with the transitions between seasons. Summer’s arrival, for instance, marks “the last time we wear flannel pajamas, // the last time we sleep with the windows closed,” and so on. A plethora of sensory details highlights the joys of a simple, but rich, childhood—splashing in mud puddles, learning to ride a bicycle without training wheels, the sound of June bugs hitting window screens, being “too hot to move,” enjoying the last ice cream cone from a seasonal stand, and the “silence of snow.” Activities like bird-watching, gardening, biking, and insect investigation model active living. Robin’s cut-paper collages are charmingly old-fashioned yet still feel relevant and fun, and they use color palettes that shift with the seasons. The story is set in a small rural town, and all characters appear White. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Seasonal rituals come alive in this by turns bittersweet and joyful ode to beginnings and endings. (Picture book. 3-8)

classic West African folktale of “Anansi and the Pot of Beans,” distinguishing this retelling from previous adaptations by putting a contemporary child at the center of the story. The characters have Ghanaian names, and both the text and illustrations include interesting cultural details—like the kaftans Nana wears and the Adinkra symbols scattered throughout the illustrations (the backmatter includes a symbol key)—making this a good experiential introduction to Ghanaian culture. Complementing the folklore-inspired text well is Fagborun’s brightly colored artwork that lends a folk-art sensibility. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A great choice to introduce young readers to West Africa’s wonderful Anansesem storytelling tradition. (author’s note, Ghanaian dishes) (Picture book/folktale. 4-7)

A Black man teaches two Black children about their roots.

“Who are your people?” and “Where are you from?” These questions open the book as a man leads an unnamed boy and girl, presumably his children, into “Remembrance Park,” where they gaze up at Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, Stacey Abrams, and Martin Luther King Jr., who appear as cloudy apparitions in the sky. This imagery gives the misleading impression that Abrams, very much alive, is in heaven with the other figures, who are all deceased. Later on in the story, another potentially delusive illustration shows the main characters visiting a Mount Rushmore–like monument showcasing Kamala Harris alongside departed Black icons. After highlighting inspirational individuals who are not descended from people enslaved in the United States, the illustrations paradoxically depict enslaved Black Americans working in cotton fields. The portrayal of slavery is benevolent, and the images of civil rights marches and sit-ins likewise lack the necessary emotional depth. The text’s statement that “you are from the country where time moves with ease and where kindness is cherished” erases centuries of African American struggle in the face of racist violence and systemic exclusion. The book tries to instill pride in African Americans, who continue to struggle with a lack of shared identity or common experience; ultimately, it stumbles in its messaging and attempts to turn an extremely complicated, sometimes controversial topic into a warm and fuzzy picture book.

All characters are Black. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A simplistic take on the complex issue of Black identity in America. (Picture book. 5-9)

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BLAST OFF! How Mary Sherman Morgan Fueled America Into Space

Slade, Suzanne Illus. by Sally Wern Comport Calkins Creek/Astra Books for Young Readers (48 pp.) $18.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-68437-241-6

Prolific STEM writer Slade spotlights Mary Sherman Morgan (1921-2004) and her role in the launch of the United States’ first successful satellite.

As a young girl, Mary’s parents delayed her education and filled her days with grueling chores on their North Dakota farm. Despite starting school at age 8, she excelled academically and bucked her family by putting herself through two years of college, where she majored in chemistry. She accepted lab jobs in Ohio and California during the war years and diligently researched fuel-oxidizer combinations to determine how they affected flight, becoming an expert in her male-dominated field. In 1953, Sherman Morgan was appointed leader of a “top secret project” to create the fuel for a rocket called Juno I that would carry America’s first satellite, Explorer I, into space. Slade ably details Sherman Morgan’s quest to determine which combination of fuels would provide the stability and energy to propel the rocket into space. With little help from her two inexperienced assistants, Morgan ultimately invented a fuel concoction known as hydyne that, after two years of field testing, was successfully used to power Juno I. Comport’s lively illustrations—rendered using color pencil, traditional collage, digital collage, and digital paint—combine dramatic perspectives, facsimiles of space-race ephemera, and collaged STEM equations, enhancing Slade’s spry narrative. Excellent backmatter includes an author’s note in which Slade acknowledges her creative use of “known facts” to plug research gaps. All characters present White.

(This book was reviewed digitally.)

A respectful, important tribute to an instrumental rocket scientist. (chronology, further facts, selected bibliography, photos) (Picture-book biography. 8-12)

MY MUST-HAVE MOM

Smith, Maudie Illus. by Jen Khatun Lantana (32 pp.) $17.99 | March 1, 2022 978-1-913747-71-8

A young boy fears he’ll be his mom’s next fix-it-up project.

“There’s Nothing my mom can’t do Something with,” protagonist Jake shares. From “tires and teapots” to “traffic cones and soup cans,” his mother sees treasure in trash, scouts dumpsters for hidden gems, and piles her wheelchair with odds and ends that they “simply must have.” (In a delightfully silly scene, she even tows home an abandoned trawler hitched to her wheelchair; it is refreshing to see a disabled character enacting 116

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slapstick humor.) In their cozily cluttered apartment, Mom “tinkers and tailors,” transforming her eclectic finds into new creations. A rusty truck becomes a flourishing daisy garden; a “damp bedraggled rat” is transformed into “quite a decent dog” in a humorously absurd montage. But when their curmudgeonly neighbor Mr. Price grumbles that Jake’s “must-have mom” “won’t be satisfied until she’s changed every last thing in the world,” Jake worries: Does she want to change him, too? In a poignant speech, Mom assures him that she wouldn’t change a thing about him—he’s her “one and only must-have son!”— and even Mr. Price can’t suppress a smile. Khatun’s scratchy, expressive cartoon-style illustrations energetically and colorfully complement Smith’s rhythmic, upbeat text. Mom’s enthusiasm is infectious, and the tender bond between mother and son radiates from their faces, accentuated by warm family portraits gracing the walls of their home. Jake and his mom have medium-brown skin and straight black hair; Mr. Price presents White. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A sweet, environmentally-conscious tale of unconditional love. (Picture book. 4-8)

THE LAST MAPMAKER

Soontornvat, Christina Candlewick (368 pp.) $17.99 | April 12, 2022 978-1-5362-0495-7

Sodsai Mudawan has worked her way onto a ship sailing toward the unknown— as long as no one discovers the truth about her past.

Twelve-year-old Sai is from the marshy Fens, an area whose residents are looked down upon. But with the right clothing and some quick thinking, she’s earned an Assistantship with Paiyoon, the Mangkon Royal Navy’s Master Mapmaker, at least until her 13th birthday, at which point, when she does not receive a lineal, or golden bracelet whose links represent the recipient’s noble ancestors, her lowly status will be clear to everyone, including Paiyoon.

Luckily for Sai, before her birthday Paiyoon secures a spot on a royal ship bound for the south—the direction of a mysterious, shadowy continent and rumored dragons—that is tasked with claiming treasure for the kingdom. Paiyoon takes Sai with him on a voyage that could finally allow her to move beyond the Fens, but as she sails farther from home, she will have to decide whom to trust and what sacrifices she is willing to make for her future. Mangkon is inspired by Thailand, and most characters are implied to be Asian. One supporting character has a parent from a foreign land that is allied with Mangkon, allowing room to address questions of exploration and colonization. Exploits on the high seas and complex characters combine in a tale full of both excitement and heart.

An engrossing adventure with the feeling of a whole world to be explored. (map) (Fantasy. 9-13)

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“A poetic, gently humorous introduction to the world of neutrino physics.” i’m a neutrino

LISTEN How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion

Stocker, Shannon Illus. by Devon Holzwarth Dial Books (40 pp.) $17.99 | April 12, 2022 978-0-593-10969-4

SATURDAY SANCOCHO

Torres, Leyla Square Fish (32 pp.) $8.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-250-82555-1

Maria Lili gets a lesson in resourcefulness from her grandmother Mama Ana. Every Saturday at her grandparents’ home, Maria Lili, a young girl living in Colombia, looks forward to eating a traditional stew known as sancocho. One Saturday, Papa Angelino announces that there is no money to purchase the ingredients needed for the sancocho; all they have is a dozen eggs. Undaunted, Mama Ana packs the eggs into a basket, and off she goes to the market with Maria Lili in tow. Young readers |

I’M A NEUTRINO Tiny Particles in a Big Universe

Vavagiakis, Eve M. Illus. by Ilze Lemesis MIT Kids Press/Candlewick (40 pp.) $18.99 | March 8, 2022 978-1-5362-2207-4

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Stocker and Holzwarth tell the story of Evelyn Glennie, a profoundly Deaf world-renowned solo percussionist.

The story opens with Glennie’s musical childhood in the Scottish countryside. She was well on her way to becoming a skilled pianist and clarinetist when she started losing her hearing around the age of 10. Despite her doctor’s gloomy prognostication—“she’s never going to be able to play music”—young Evelyn refused to give up her dream. Drawn to her high school orchestra’s percussion section, she solicited the help of music teacher Ron Forbes, who taught her how to use her body to sense the vibrations of percussion instruments. Despite challenges, including the discrimination she faced as a Deaf person, Glennie persevered and was eventually accepted into the Royal Academy of Music in London. The story closes with a précis of her groundbreaking career achievements. Holzwarth’s illustrations—rendered in watercolor, gouache, and color pencil with digital touches—are charming and effectively portray the dynamics of sound visually. Some kids may be turned off by the wordy text and small font size. The implicit narrative framing of a disabled person as “inspirational” and having “overcome” their disability is problematic. This and the tired juxtaposition of Deaf school with failure and mainstream school with success are unfortunate blemishes in an otherwise sweet and educational book. Like too many children’s books featuring deafness, this story would appeal to hearing or oral Deaf children but might not be an appropriate choice for signing Deaf children.

(This book was reviewed digitally.)

An intriguing, loving biography that’s unfortunately marred by some disparaging clichés. (author’s note, references) (Picture-book biography. 6-9)

will be awed by Mama Ana’s bargaining, bartering, and haggling skills as she gathers all the essentials: plantain, cassava, carrots, corn, tomatoes, onion, garlic, cumin, cilantro, and chicken.

Maria Lili even gets a spinning top to round off the acquisitions.

Back at home, the family prepares the dish together and savors the meal before taking their siesta. Sunny, warm watercolor illustrations enhance the engaging text, beautifully capturing what could be any small Andean town in Colombia. Young readers will want to keep track of Maria Lili’s white dog, who is never mentioned but always visible. At the end of the book, the author has included her own family recipe for sancocho. All characters present White. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Family ties, cultural traditions, and a can-do spirit cooked into one sweet story. (Picture book. 5-8)

The mysteries of a neutrino unfold!

This rhyming tale with minimal text offers a whimsical initiation into the wonders and features of a neutrino particle.

Young readers will learn about the traits of neutrinos—charge, mass, weight, flavors, movements, and origins—and their significance. Ethereal digital illustrations with comical touches portray neutrinos from micro and macro perspectives and conjure up awe-inspiring images of outer space. Children and scientists of various races and genders are shown studying neutrinos; one double-page spread depicts the interior of a neutrino detector. Although the rhymes are sometimes wobbly and skew young, the text provides a solid foundation from which to launch deeper explorations of the subject matter. Not all youngsters will be developmentally ready to digest and comprehend the ideas presented, but precocious young scientists will doubtlessly benefit. The information and concepts are rather abstract, and not much explanation or detail is provided in the main text (“I am a fermion that can hardly be traced. I come in flavors but not ones you can taste”), but the backmatter provides more specifics and expounds upon unfamiliar terminology. Overall, this book would be a helpful addition to any science collection, though it’s best suited for more mature young readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A poetic, gently humorous introduction to the world of neutrino physics. (further reading) (Informational picture book.

5-8)

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“This quiet fantasy gem renews and refreshes an old chestnut of a premise.” hunters of the lost city

HUNTERS OF THE LOST CITY

Wallace, Kali Quirk Books (304 pp.) $17.99 | April 26, 2022 978-1-68369-289-8

A girl takes on the power structures of her world after discovering what’s been hidden.

Twelve-year-old Octavia, who is coded as White, lives in Vittoria, the sole town to survive a magical war that decimated the rest of the world 50 years ago. Vittoria is bustling and happy, with bakeries and markets, even if nothing has come from outside their borders since the war. Surrounded by forests filled with magical creatures that are designed to kill, Vittoria has strict rules for its residents: No one stays out past nightfall, and if they do, the gates will not be opened until the next morning. Octavia longs to be a Hunter like her late, beloved sister, and she sneaks out to practice—but when she is caught out after the gates close, she discovers brown-skinned Sima, a strange girl her own age, and learns that the world is more complicated—and less empty— than she thought. What follows is a journey of world- and selfdiscovery. Reminiscent in feel to Kelly Barnhill’s The Girl Who Drank the Moon, this lovely fantasy introduces a complicated, brave, and believable heroine navigating grief, friendship, and the possible first stirrings of a (same-sex) crush while asking hard questions about power and community. This quiet fantasy gem renews and refreshes an old chestnut of a premise.

An absolute delight. (map) (Fantasy. 10-14)

CALL ME MISS HAMILTON One Woman’s Case for Equality and Respect

Weatherford, Carole Boston Illus. by Jeffery Boston Weatherford Millbrook/Lerner (40 pp.) $19.99 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-1-5415-6040-6

Young readers are introduced to the inspiring life of lesser-known civil rights leader Mary Hamilton.

Weatherford recounts that as a child, Mary had a “fighting spirit” and proudly embraced her African American identity despite the fact that her “skin was so light, she could have been mistaken for white.” She grew up to attend a genteel allgirls college where she learned that addressing people by their proper titles was “a sign of COURTESY AND RESPECT,” and she pursued a teaching career. Hamilton became the first woman head of the Congress of Racial Equality’s Southern region and was frequently arrested while participating in civil rights protests. When a White prosecutor referred to her as “Mary,” she insisted on being addressed by the honorific “Miss.”

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entitled to the same respectful forms of address, regardless of race. Weatherford’s text is straightforward, unfolding the story in pithy, reportorial prose. Bold fonts and all-caps typography help emphasize the fierce moral urgency of the civil rights movement. With a combination of black-and-white photos (including a montage of portraits of Hamilton’s relatives) and scratchboard art, the book presents iconic, unvarnished images of the civil rights era and captures Hamilton’s bold determination. Fans of Weatherford’s Voices of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer (2015) will enjoy this visually interesting picture book. Backmatter includes a timeline of the civil rights movement. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Essential reading for teaching children about the importance of demanding equality and respect. (author’s note, further reading) (Picture-book biography. 7-11)

MAP OF YOU The Journey of Self-Discovery Starts Here!

Williams, Sophie Cicada Books (72 pp.) $12.99 paper | May 3, 2022 978-1-80066-015-1

An interactive guide to the “magical landscape of YOU!” Young people are invited to explore their “mountains of strength,” “wetlands of weakness,” and “forest of fears” in this fill-in-the-blank imaginative journal. The journey begins with an invitation to draw self-portraits and outline the parameters of “your world,” including its name, laws, and motto. On a double-page spread featuring a picture of a large green knapsack, it is suggested that readers pack an “emotional survival kit” for difficult times by writing down and drawing their supplies.

Quizzes, creative prompts, flowcharts, and inspirational quotes encourage journalers to reflect on their hopes and fears, goals and experiences, mental health, and interpersonal relationships.

Earnest nature-based metaphors are woven throughout the text, with all-caps subheadings such as “Lake of Likes,” “Kindness Cove,” and “Memory Marsh.” Most of the suggestions succeed in their intention of sparking creative reflection about one’s social-emotional well-being, although they range in practicality from exposure therapy tips to a prompt to “draw yourself as a shining star in the night sky.” Unfortunately, a section titled “Spirit Animals” perpetuates the widespread appropriation of an important facet of some Indigenous cultures; this misstep is made even more egregious by the inclusion of a “certificate of adoption” for readers to fill out in order to make their spirit animal choice “official!” The cheerful, doodlelike illustrations— some in full color, others selectively colored, and many of them busy—are filled with nature imagery and complement the text well.

A potentially fun vehicle for self-awareness and wellness but one with a glaring flaw. (Novelty. 8-adult)

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MRS. NOAH’S DOVES

Yolen, Jane Illus. by Alida Massari Kar-Ben (32 pp.) $17.99 | May 1, 2022 978-1-72842-426-2

EMILE AND THE FIELD

Young, Kevin Illus. by Chioma Ebinama Make Me a World (32 pp.) $17.99 | March 15, 2022 978-1-984850-42-3

The story of a young Black boy who “fell in love with a field.”

The book opens with a peaceful scene of Emile sitting in a field overrun with wildflowers of various colors. This is his favorite haunt, where he and his little black dog spend countless hours undisturbed, daydreaming and communing with blossoms and insects. Emile—who often whispers lovingly to the field and regards it as a sentient companion—reflects on all the things the field will never get to experience. Although the field knows the four seasons and “how many stars / there were / and just how far,” it will never get to see the sea and skyscrapers. When winter comes and snow covers the field, Emile worries, wondering |

BE THANKFUL FOR TREES A Tribute to the Many & Surprising Ways Trees Relate to Our Lives Ziefert, Harriet Illus. by Brian Fitzgerald Red Comet Press (80 pp.) $19.99 | March 29, 2022 978-1-63655-020-6

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Yolen puts Noah’s wife center stage in this reimagining of the biblical flood narrative.

Kindly, gentle Mrs. Noah, her long white hair in a half-up bun, nurses injured birds of all kinds back to health. Doves, which remind her of her grandmother (presumably deceased) “at night, bending over to pray in her soft, gray clothing,” are her favorite. When it begins to rain interminably, Mrs. Noah struggles to keep her bird cages above the rising floodwaters.

“Do not worry,” Mr. Noah reassures her, “God has told me what to do.” With his sons and daughters, he builds a “huge boat” (the sudden absence of rain in the illustration showing the boat’s construction may confuse some readers) that spares his family and a male and female of each animal species from the worldengulfing flood. When the rain stops, Mrs. Noah sends out her birds to find evidence of dry land. The eagles, ravens, terns, and gulls all fail to return, but her doves come back bearing bits of vegetation in their beaks, heralding the deluge’s end. Lyrical imagery suffuses the lexically stimulating text: Raindrops are “small drips as perfect as pearls,” and rain showers are “cloudbursts and gully washers.” Massari’s trademark style incorporates various textures and elaborate patterns recalling the ornamentations of sacral architecture. The animals’ droll facial expressions (Noah’s too, at times) sometimes give them a bored look. The characters’ light-brown skin and clothing cue them as Middle Eastern. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A lovely backstory for an obscure biblical personality. (Reli­ gious picture book. 3-8)

where the field goes when it disappears. And when some noisy children invade the field to sled and build snowpals, Emile hates that he has to share his beloved sanctuary, until his dad teaches him that love is not about possession but appreciation.

Although some readers may pause at the unconventional punctuation, Young’s gentle, sparely worded narrative endearingly captures the animistic, magical thinking of children and the joy of tranquil childhood hours spent in nature. The impressionistic, atmospheric artwork—rendered in watercolor and ink— underscores the dreamy, spontaneous nature of Emile’s outdoor adventures and features open compositions that create a sense of expansiveness. All characters present Black expect for one White background character. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A charming exploration of children’s special relationship with nature. (Picture book. 5-8)

What’s so great about trees?

Everything, according to this picture-book tribute to our green companions. Using just a few words on each double-page spread, Ziefert enumerates the many environmental, social, culinary, and aesthetic contributions that trees make to the world. Firstly, trees nourish humans and animals with food; several pages of artwork show people picking pecans and tapping syrup and animals nibbling on leaves, nuts, and berries.

Trees also provide comfort; readers are given a tour of the many wooden objects found in our homes, such as “a floor for your feet,” comfy chairs, a baby’s cradle, and more. In this fashion, the book moves through items made from trees that are used in the spheres of music, art, and recreation before ending with a look at the ways trees provide homes for animals and a clarion call for protecting trees as air purifiers and vital sustainers of human life. Narrated in rhyming couplets that scan well, this book manages to pack a lot of thought-provoking concepts into a short format in a cohesive, engaging way. Fitzgerald’s colorful, stylized digital illustrations brim with outdoorsy charm and highlight the many beautiful textures and grain patterns of tree barks and cut wood. The ensemble cast is diverse in race, skin tone, hair color, hair texture, and age. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Arboreal adoration that will indeed leave readers feeling thankful for our wooded world. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

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THE COMPLETE COOKBOOK FOR TEEN CHEFS 70+ Teen-Tested and TeenApproved Recipes To Cook, Eat, and Share

These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE COMPLETE COOKBOOK FOR TEEN CHEFS

by America’s Test Kitchen Kids...........................................................120 SCOUT’S HONOR by Lily Anderson.................................................. 121

America’s Test Kitchen Kids America’s Test Kitchen (208 pp.) $21.99 | March 1, 2022 978-1-948703-95-6

HOW TO BE A DIFFICULT BITCH by Halley Bondy, et. al; illus. by T.L. Luke................................................................................ 121 ALL THATS LEFT IN THE WORLD by Erik J. Brown......................122 SOME MISTAKES WERE MADE by Kristin Dwyer.........................124 VERY BAD PEOPLE by Kit Frick.......................................................126 HIGH SPIRITS by Camille Gomera-Tavarez.................................... 127 ALONE OUT HERE by Riley Redgate................................................ 135 HOTEL MAGNIFIQUE by Emily J. Taylor......................................... 136 THE MOST DAZZLING GIRL IN BERLIN by Kip Wilson................. 137 NOTHING BURNS AS BRIGHT AS YOU by Ashley Woodfolk......... 137 THE MOST DAZZLING GIRL IN BERLIN

Wilson, Kip Versify/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $18.99 | March 29, 2022 978-0-358-44890-7

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A comprehensive cookbook designed for and tested by teen cooks.

According to the introduction, not only did thousands of teens test these recipes in their own home kitchens, but each recipe was only included in the book if at least 80% of the testers considered it a keeper. The appeal of breakfast sandwiches, pizza pockets, and cheeseburger sliders may be obvious, but the book, divided into chapters titled “Breakfast,” “Snacks,” “Lunch,” “Dinner,” “Sides,” and “Sweets,” branches out into acai smoothie bowls and blistered shishito peppers and includes food from a wide variety of culinary cultures: Onigiri, shakshuka, congee, arepas, and chana makhani are only some examples. The layout is crisp and clear, starting with ingredients and their prep, with required equipment highlighted for easy visibility. Special techniques, such as how to stem kale, are given in boxed sidebars, sometimes with photographs, and possible ingredient substitutions are both recommended and (where necessary) warned against. The front of the book offers tips on how to get started, covers elements of kitchen safety, and illustrates common techniques and equipment. The recipes themselves are tagged beginner, intermediate, advanced, and vegetarian (but not vegan). Each dish starts from basic, whole ingredients—no canned soup here—and the text often gives suggestions for how cooks can personalize or expand on it. Bright photographs show racially diverse young people and showcase the mouthwatering array of dishes.

Top-notch recipes for junior top chefs. (photo credits, conversions and equivalents, nutritional information, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

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SCOUT’S HONOR

Anderson, Lily Henry Holt (416 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-250-24673-8

A HISTORY OF RACISM IN AMERICA

Blohm, Craig E. ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.) $31.95 | March 1, 2022 978-1-67820-168-5

An extremely brief survey of racism in the U.S. from founding to the present day.

From the very beginnings of European colonialism in what would become the United States, there’s been both racism and people fighting it. Blohm is ambitious, beginning with a concise definition of race as a social construct and attempting to trace major developments in American racism beginning with the arrival of enslaved people from Africa in 1619. Because this work is so short, the end result is a speed run through the next 500 years.

Luckily there are extensive source notes, because there’s not much room here for detail, as the author attempts to cover slavery, forced religious conversion of Indigenous people, Indian boarding schools, Japanese American internment, the Chinese |

HOW TO BE A DIFFICULT BITCH Claim Your Power, Ditch the Haters, and Feel Good Doing It

Bondy, Halley, et. al Illus. by T.L. Luke Zest Books (152 pp.) $14.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-5415-8675-8

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Typical Ladybird Scout activities: knitting, baking, white-gloved tea parties—and slaying invisible monsters.

Anderson pits a squad of preteen Northern California trainees and their 16-year-old instructor, Prudence, against mulligrubs—gross, sometimes-dangerous creatures only Ladybirds or, sometimes, their descendants can see that are drawn to this dimension to intensify and feed on anger, sadness, fear, and other feelings. Pru, who has PTSD and quit the Scouts three years ago after her closest circle mate was eaten, has been railroaded by her Ladybird Dame mom into filling in the latest batch of bright-eyed recruits on the basics of martial arts and proper deportment. As she leads them through projects ranging from rooting a toxic Nock Jaw out of a working fun house to setting up a free car wash, she reluctantly finds herself bonding with them. A climactic nighttime graveyard battle with a huge mulligrub eager to feast on her terror and anxieties brings her to the cusp of a decision. The metaphorical level is there for readers inclined to dig for it, but they, particularly the Buffy fans among them, will be better off reveling in the whirl of teen angst and ichor-spattered fun. Led by Pru, who is White and Puerto Rican, and her BFF Sasha “the Beast” Nezhad, cued as Persian, the cast displays an effervescent mix of racial and ethnic identities and character types from meek to (truly) mean girl.

Anyone with a yen for community service, particularly the martial sort, will be hot to sign up. (Fantasy. 13-17)

Exclusion Act, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Ku Klux Klan. From the Freedom Summer it leaps to the present day, with Stop AAPI Hate, Black Lives Matter, attacks on critical race theory, and the killings of Philando Castile and George Floyd. The recent rise in hate movements is also covered, with the assertion that we must maintain momentum in the fight against racism. The limited page count means an enormous amount is left out or touched on only briefly (redlining is entirely absent, for example). The layout and graphic design occasionally interfere with ready comprehension, but the accessibly written text will serve as a good general overview, particularly for reluctant readers.

Accurate, important, and blunt but much too brief; an introduction only. (picture credits, source notes, websites, bibliography, index, timeline) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

An illustrated self-empowerment manual for teens.

A bitch, according to Bondy’s introduction, is a powerhouse, an agent of change who threatens the status quo in service of their personal well-being and for the greater good.

The Difficult Bitch commandments read, in part, that Difficult Bitches shall “break boundaries for a better world,” “stand up for themselves,” and “own up,” and shall not “worry about haters,” “back down,” or “be petty.” Bondy and her co-authors are thorough and intentional about addressing the particular experiences and concerns of people of color and people with disabilities. They write that “people of any gender identity can be a Difficult Bitch and take the advice in this book.” And what great, comprehensive advice it is. This slim volume packs a lot of wisdom, with chapters on body image; school; stress; internet safety; pursuing extracurricular passions; and more. The chapter on activism is a standout, as is the one covering money, employment, entrepreneurship, and personal finance. Every topic is presented with sections labeled “hypothetical,” realworld scenarios followed by guidance that reflects the nuance and complexity of situations teens may find themselves in.

The authors explore these critical topics in frank, compelling, and humorous ways. They address issues that matter to teen girls with deep empathy and age-appropriate language and without being condescending or preachy.

A thoughtful, engaging, bad-ass crash course in moxie, self-confidence, and self-love. (further reading, index) (Nonfic­ tion. 12-18)

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ALL THAT’S LEFT IN THE WORLD

Brown, Erik J. Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $17.99 | March 8, 2022 978-0-06-305497-4 What do you do after the world has ended?

After an influenza strain with a mortality rate of 99.9% sweeps across the world, two survivors, White teens Jamie and Andrew, are brought together by happenstance after Andrew’s leg is caught in an abandoned bear trap and Jamie takes pity, welcoming him into his cabin. A promise of potential help from overseas sets the new pair off on a trek from Pennsylvania to Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., and beyond. Along the way, their encounters with different survivors test and strengthen their resolve and their bonds. The narrative, alternating between Andrew’s and Jamie’s first-person perspectives, is successful at relaying both teens’ reasons for making the journey; the story develops organically. Hints to big reveals are subtly scattered throughout, which should successfully hold curious readers’ attention: Many will be white knuckled as the twists and turns slowly unfold along with the boys’ romance. Those looking to escape the gloom and doom of Covid-19 news may shy away from the topic of a pandemic-driven apocalypse, but that would be a shame because this story delivers. Book clubs and discussion groups will have a lot to dig into, especially as the backstory of Andrew and a mysterious family, the Fosters, slowly unfolds. A haunting story that’s sure to delight (and terrify).

Readers will find this infectious; highly recommended.

(Post-apocalyptic adventure. 12-18)

CHASING AFTER KNIGHT

Buchta, Heather Penguin Workshop (336 pp.) $17.99 | April 26, 2022 978-0-593-38496-1

High school senior Alexa wonders if love is a force of nature.

This novel follows Alexa Brooks as she rediscovers her lost love, Carson Knight.

During their time at summer camp in junior high, before he was hot Hollywood actor Cayden McKnight, she fell in love with him. Alexa is haunted by the past and wants to make amends for embarrassing him years ago. Is she willing to leave a pretty nearly perfect life in which she envisions herself as a future valedictorian, cross country running star, and Boston College early decision admit to chase after Carson? She did everything possible to distance herself from the fun, spontaneous girl she once was, but now her inauthentic, predictable life appears to be crumbling. Love-struck Alexa does not think about the consequences of her actions and how they could negatively affect those around her. Her attempted indifference 122

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toward Carson’s career fails dismally when she needs to watch one of his movies for class, causing her to fall down the rabbit hole of his celebrity life and its attendant gossip. Alexa is determined to fix Carson’s bad-boy reputation with a few good deeds of her own, but her behavior skirts uncomfortably close to stalking and harassment. This predictable, paint-by-numbers novel unfortunately fails to generate tension. Alexa’s father’s repeated use of a homophobic slur is shrugged off. Characters are coded as White.

A lightweight romance with a Hollywood ending. (Romance.

12-18)

THE KEY TO FURY

Cast, Kristin Blackstone (320 pp.) $20.99 | April 26, 2022 978-1-982548-04-9 Series: Key, 2

A return to the dystopian world in which the evil Key Corporation keeps the world safe from a deadly virus—and its citizens under heavy control.

After momentous events that led Aiden and Elodie to discover the truth behind the Key Corporation and unveil the leader of the Eos resistance movement, they are on the run and in search of New Dawn, an idyllic stronghold where a bright, hopeful future awaits. But before they can reach their destination, Aiden and Elodie get caught in a new web of lies and deception. Meanwhile, Blair, Aiden’s ambitious sister who is now MediCenter’s new director, sees her own once-bright future become uncertain when she too starts to reevaluate her life just as the corporation’s leaders work on a new plan to further exert their authority.

This second entry in Cast’s The Key series sees the focus move away from shaky, credulity-stretching dystopian worldbuilding to mostly concentrate on Blair’s, Aiden’s, and Elodie’s growth as people, touching on agency, identity, and grief. The trio share the narrative with Council Leader Preston Darby, a psychopath obsessed with Blair and a clichéd embodiment of the wickedness of the authoritarian government. The book’s second half changes gear, moving toward a rushed and unearned climax and bringing the central storylines to a fizzled close. Main characters are brown skinned; Preston reads as White.

Strictly for those who enjoyed the first book in the series.

(Dystopian. 14-18)

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“Enigmatic and powerful.” the color of the sky is the shape of the heart

THE COLOR OF THE SKY IS THE SHAPE OF THE HEART

Chesil Trans. by Takami Nieda Soho Teen (168 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-64129-229-0

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A young woman caught in between worlds reconciles with her history.

“The sky is about to fall. Where do you go?” It’s 2003, and first-person narrator Pak “Ginny” Jinhee considers high school—along with the world at large—“a cruel place.” Descriptions of a sensitive “invisible boy in class” and her sole friend, Maggie, who is deaf, along with Ginny’s poignant observations of people’s shoes (her own “the most worthless”) echo her earlier life and experiences. As a marginalized, mistreated Zainichi Korean from Tokyo, she “bounced around” between schools, moving from Japan to Hawaii before landing with an American host mother in Oregon. Ginny’s existential troubles stem from her visceral intolerance of injustice and self-proclaimed revolutionary tactics. Compact chapters set a brisk pace, punctuated by family letters from North Korea and a scene in the format of a play that flesh out a collective history and entrenched prejudice against Koreans in Japan. The narrative pivots between Ginny’s fragments of memory and her current dilemma in the U.S.: whether to exert academic effort or embrace expulsion. Flashbacks to junior high Korean school where she discovered “an unshakable freedom,” despite not entirely fitting in or knowing much Korean, detail events compelling Ginny to leave and show how “an invisible thirty-eighth parallel line was drawn in Japan too.” This complex, layered story, originally published in Japanese, reaches a cathartic conclusion once Ginny resolves to catch the proverbial sky as it falls, thereby forgiving herself and claiming her agency.

Enigmatic and powerful. (translator’s note) (Fiction. 13-adult)

MY DEAREST DARKEST

Cottingham, Kayla Sourcebooks Fire (368 pp.) $10.99 paper | March 29, 2022 978-1-72823-641-4 A group of teens faces supernatural evil at an elite boarding school.

This debut novel introduces readers to the isolated town of Rainwater and its main attraction—Ulalume Academy, a prestigious prep school with an arts focus that pianist Finch Chamberlin wants to attend more than anything. But on the way back from her final audition, Finch gets into a car crash that kills her parents and leaves her with an array of medical conditions. Three months later, she’s a Ulalume student but still suffers serious aftereffects from the accident. She’s in the same year as Selena St. Clair, the leader of an exclusive clique on campus and a girl who is already out |

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“A powerful tale of found family and first love.” some mistakes were made

to get Finch after an earlier misunderstanding. However, when Finch and Selena are paired for a crucial performance project, they must come to terms with the burgeoning feelings that arise between them. When Finch, Selena, and the popular girls stumble upon a mysterious and alluring power in the tunnels beneath Ulalume, they discover a source of supernatural favors that may not be what it at first seems. Cottingham’s debut opens with a gut-wrenching first chapter and doesn’t let up, juxtaposing vivid and unsettling horror with Sapphic teenage angst. Finch and Selena are White; side characters possess an array of diverse ethnic identities.

Blood, gore, and drama make for a spooky success. (Horror.

14-18)

GENDER INEQUALITY IN SPORTS From Title IX to World Titles

Cronn-Mills, Kirstin Twenty-First Century/Lerner (120 pp.) $37.32 PLB | April 5, 2022 978-1-72841-947-3 A provocative analysis of the changes wrought on U.S. sports at every level by Title IX and the complex issues that the legislation has, over the years, been used

to address.

Cronn-Mills trots out flurries of heartening statistics to show how much American women’s participation in education and organized sports has increased since the 37-word rule (which she quotes in full) was added to a federal bill in 1972. But along with cogently arguing that equality is not the same as true equity (and that both remain elusive anyway), she expands the ongoing controversy’s scope by discussing at some length the conflicts and nuances that issues of racism and transphobia have added to the evolving notion of gender—and stoutly countering claims that trans competitors have unfair physical advantages. The stock photos are sparse and, at times, look more like filler, but racial representation in them is diverse and inclusive, as are the frequent shoutouts to significant voices for change, from Billie Jean King and Simone Biles to nonbinary Olympic skateboarder Alana Smith. Her conclusion that the battle for equal opportunity is still being fought because sexism is endemic in our society is persuasive, as is her argument that a profound shift in culture that demands change is the only way toward real resolution.

Necessary reading, particularly for those who think the battle is won and done. (glossary, source notes, selected bibliography, further information, index, photo credits) (Nonfiction.

12-18)

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DOES MY BODY OFFEND YOU?

Cuevas, Mayra & Marie Marquardt Knopf (432 pp.) $18.99 | $21.99 PLB | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-42585-5 978-0-593-42586-2 PLB

Two girls launch a movement to protest their Florida high school’s dress code.

When 15-year-old Malena shows up at school without a bra, she’s not trying to look sexy or attract attention. On the contrary, Malena just has a painful sunburn and is quietly trying to get by after moving from Puerto Rico, which was recently devastated

by Hurricane María. Yet, to Malena’s utter humiliation, an assistant principal scrutinizes her chest, then orders her to cover her nipples by putting panty liners beneath her shirt. While she’s in the bathroom, senior Ruby overhears Malena crying while attaching the panty liners and, after peeking into the stall without permission (behavior that crosses boundaries and is not clearly called out), convinces her not to do it. After noncompliance lands Malena in detention, she’s initially upset that Ruby encouraged her to defy directions. Despite her good intentions, Ruby is later rightfully called out for overstepping in other ways, such as acting like a White savior and needing to be a better listener. Told through Ruby’s and Malena’s alternating first-person viewpoints, the plot unfolds thoughtfully after Ruby and Malena team up to challenge the dress code. The book includes important discussions about how race and body type impact the way clothes are perceived as well as about sexual assault and the wrongful shaming of victims.

An ultimately heartwarming story about activism and allyship, learning when to speak up and when to listen. (Fiction.

14-18)

SOME MISTAKES WERE MADE

Dwyer, Kristin HarperTeen (384 pp.) $17.99 | April 26, 2022 978-0-06-308853-5 After a year away, Ellis returns home to confront her past.

Graduating from high school far from everything familiar was not part of Ellis Truman’s original plans, but she nevertheless ended up spending her senior year with her aunt in California. In Indiana, Ellis practically grew up with the Albrey family and their three tightknit sons, Dixon, Tucker, and Easton. Now, Tucker wants her to return home for matriarch Sandry Albrey’s 50th birthday celebration on the Fourth of July—but Ellis is dreading seeing Easton, as they haven’t talked since she left. Chapters alternate between past and present, and much of the story unravels slowly: How did she come to live with the Albreys? What caused Ellis to then end up in San Diego? What happened in her relationship with

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Easton? Patient readers will find the heartfelt tension pays off.

With her father in and out of jail and an absent mother, socioeconomic differences separating Ellis from the middle-class Albreys don’t go unnoticed, and Ellis’ down-to-earth journey shows how she unpacks her feelings about her relationship with her parents. The slow-build romance is swoonworthy, and young adult fans of Colleen Hoover seeking emotional devastation and unforgettable characters will find much to enjoy here. Characters read as White.

A powerful tale of found family and first love. (Fiction. 14-18)

High school senior Hallie plans to attend college by winning a prestigious local scholarship, but unforeseen circumstances jeopardize her dreams.

Hallie thought she knew all the rules governing the Verhaag Scholarship, which is awarded to the Santa Barbara High School student who writes the best research paper about famed poet Robert W. Service, rumored to have been intimately connected with family matriarch Augusta Verhaag. But it turns out she didn’t. Some fine print—and the award committee’s reputation for nepotism—mean that to have a fighting chance she must encourage another classmate to apply while hustling to find an extracurricular activity to round out her college applications. Hallie also continues working many hours at her father’s pest control company to earn money. While detailed information

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PEST

Foscue, Elizabeth Keylight Books (224 pp.) $15.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-68442-812-0

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about rodents and insects is made genuinely interesting, the rest of the novel is a plod through three slow-moving subplots: machinations to win the scholarship; a romance with Spencer, the boy next door; and a search for last year’s yearbook supplements that were supposedly stolen by a boy who refuses to let her join the yearbook staff. Hallie’s voice has an authentic, often snarky, ring and her pluck is admirable. However, supporting characters are thinly drawn, and the novel is unevenly paced, gets bogged down in irrelevant details, and ends abruptly. All major characters are presumed White; Spencer is cued as Latinx.

An interesting premise and engaging protagonist let down by overall execution. (Fiction. 13-18)

VERY BAD PEOPLE

Frick, Kit McElderry (416 pp.) $19.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-5344-4973-2

A chance encounter prompts a high school junior to wonder whether her mother’s death six years before wasn’t all that accidental.

Hardly has Calliope Bolan arrived as a transfer student to Tipton, the exclusive boarding school in Alyson-on-Hudson that her mom and aunt attended, than a passing glimpse of a stranger who is somehow familiar sets her on a course toward a tangle of shocking family revelations—few if any of which even attentive readers will see coming. Never one to skimp on rising suspense and extreme plot twists, though, Frick also casts her teenage protagonist into a heady series of exploits as a new member of the Haunt and Rail Society, a decades-old secret group on campus that undertakes everything from wonderfully clever “larks” designed to raise awareness of inequities like underpaid kitchen staff to a campaign to expose a popular teacher as a sexual predator that escalates in a frighteningly proactive way.

Ultimately Calliope comes to realize that nearly everything she thought she had understood about her classmates, her parents, and even her own motives has been wrong, and that saddles her with some hard choices to make…including one life-changing final twist. Aside from her bisexual aunt’s wife, who is Black and Filipina, Calliope and her family are White; names and other cues identify her fellow students as diverse in race, ethnicity, and nationality.

A doozy of a ride, with thrills and chills aplenty. (campus map) (Thriller. 13-18)

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DEAR FRIENDS POPS the Club Anthology

Ed. by Friedman, Amy & Dennis Danziger Out of the Woods Press (232 pp.) $17.95 paper | April 12, 2022 978-1-952197-12-3 Authentic voices of a generation navigating young adulthood, existing through the Covid-19 pandemic while experiencing the loss of a loved one to the carceral state.

This rich tapestry of student creativity—poems, letters, photographs, and paintings stitched together and informed by colorful and diverse emotions—comprises the latest anthology from POPS the Club, a national nonprofit working with young people who have an incarcerated loved one. While the works included were created by students who share a common bond, the collection readily connects them with readers who have not lived through the same experiences. Divided into thematic sections united by a collective sense of community—“Our Hoods,” “Our Humility,” “Our Homies,” “Our Homes,” “Our Honesty,” and so on—the anthology presents experiences and emotions that bind people together, reflecting our universality rather than our differences. Some pieces, such as the poems “Atrapasuenos Entrelazados Dalias y Amapolas de California” by Donaji Garcia and “Pain(t)” by Nick Griffin and the six-word memoir “I grieve, I celebrate each year” by Lucy Rodriguez, shine with glimpses of literary greatness through the use of metaphor, adianoeta, and sensory language. The collection marches steadily toward hope, ending in a photograph of a purple petunia by Kennedy King, leaving readers inspired.

Resonantly reflects the necessities of community and friendship in a time of social distance and division. (Anthology.

12-17)

THE WOLVES ARE WAITING

Friend, Natasha Little, Brown (304 pp.) $17.99 | March 22, 2022 978-0-316-04531-5

Fifteen-year-old Nora Melchionda remembers sipping root beer at a fraternity fundraiser, then nothing more until Camille Dodd woke her on the Faber College golf course.

Adam Xu interrupted a sexual assault on Nora, chased the three assailants away, and texted Cam, Nora’s best friend, for help. In the aftermath, Nora wonders if it’s her fault: She’d worn a miniskirt, earning her conservative mom’s disapproval, and her older brother, Asher, had already warned her about how some boys interpret girls’ short, tight clothes. Cam feels guilty because she’d been at a different party kissing Asher at the time. So when Nora refuses to report the matter to the police, well-intentioned Cam forges

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“Displays a focused emotional intelligence.” high spirits

ahead, persuading Adam (who has long nursed a crush on Nora) to help her investigate, although his parents work at the college and he fears repercussions for their employment if he gets publicly involved. Meanwhile, Nora makes painful discoveries of her own that have a devastating impact on her relationships. This small New York town is proud of the college’s sports prowess, its privileged male athletes nurtured by an entrenched Greek system and overseen by Nora’s beloved college athletic director dad. The fast-paced plot and well-developed characters bring a crime with broad, deep roots nourished by local tradition into compelling focus. Like most of the town, Nora’s family is White. Biracial Cam is Haitian and implied White; Adam is Chinese American.

Gripping and resonant; a good pick for intergenerational book clubs. (Fiction. 14-adult)

HIGH SPIRITS

Harts, Minda Dial Books (288 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-32661-9

A book championing the beauty, vulnerability, and resilience of Black and brown girls.

Harts, who includes her lived experiences as a Black girl and woman, delivers a handbook for girls of color growing up in a world that is often prejudiced against them. Harts acknowledges the very real and significant hurdles and obstacles that are faced by Black and brown girls in particular. Questions throughout prompt further introspection and help them tackle situations that influence identity formation.

The importance of friendships—forming, maintaining, and maybe even ending them—and finding one’s voice and using it

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Gomera-Tavarez, Camille Levine Querido (224 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-64614-129-6

YOU ARE MORE THAN MAGIC The Black and Brown Girls’ Guide to Finding Your Voice

Interrelated stories about the extended Belén family sprout from the Dominican Republic and branch out into the diaspora.

In 11 short stories, Afro-Dominican debut author Gomera-Tavarez offers slice-of-life peeks into the Beléns of Hidalpa, Dominican Republic. While these stories are fictional, the author brings Hidalpa vividly to life, with a focus on the intergenerational experiences of a single family member in each story. Whether focusing on 10-year-old Cristabel, teenage Josélito, adult Gabriel, or any one of the many other family members, each displays a focused emotional intelligence. These eye-opening diasporic stories cross borders, taking place in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, New Jersey, and New York. The setting of each is strong: Unfolding in locations including Abuelo’s colmado or general store, the barber shop, beach, and a Paterson, New Jersey, high school during a lockdown drill, the everyday lives of the Belén family past and present read as authentic and immersive. Themes of belonging, social class, patriarchy, and language thread evenly throughout, with Dominican Spanish as well as African American Vernacular English infused with ease.

The simple touch of a handwritten family tree at the beginning of the book conveys a diarylike quality to this collection; the inclusion of a faded picture of the author’s grandparents adds further intimacy.

A labor of love imbued with dedication to family. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14-adult)

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ON THE COVER

Ruta Sepetys The author’s new novel pulls teen readers into the terror of life in Romania on the eve of revolution

BY LAURA SIMEON Rachel Kinney Studios

ish situations like his. Sepetys spoke with us over Zoom from her home in Nashville; the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you come to write about this point in Romanian history?

It’s no surprise that international bestselling author Ruta Sepetys has won awards for riveting, emotionally arresting historical fiction that spotlights moments in history that most young readers know little about. In her fifth novel, I Must Betray You (Philomel, Feb. 1), she focuses on Cristian Florescu, a teenage Romanian boy living during the final days of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s brutal communist dictatorship in the late 1980s.

Threatened with charges of treason and promised medication to help his beloved, ailing grandfather, Cristian agrees to betray friends and family and become an informer for the Securitate, Romania’s secret police. This page-turning thriller is made all the more poignant and tragic through the knowledge that millions of ordinary Romanians lived through nightmar-

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My father was a victim of communism: He fled Lithuania and spent nine years in refugee camps before making it to the United States. Because of my family’s experience, I felt that I had a general understanding of postwar communist systems.

[But] when I was on tour for my first novel, Between Shades of Gray, I was in Bucharest, sitting outside with my publisher, my interpreter, and a few other people. A woman reached for the ashtray on the table, lifted it up, and looked beneath it. I don’t know what I thought—she was checking the brand or something? She said, “Oh, I’m sorry, habit. They were listening, you know. They were always listening.” Can you imagine?

They had invited me to speak about victims of communism from another country; they were so compassionate. I started pressing: Tell me more. I became breathless and chilled. The stories that kept coming were about the young people: The bravery, the courage, it was unparalleled. These kids—just with hearts defiant—attacked tanks with their bare hands.

And I thought, OK, this is what I’m going to write about.

How do you balance details necessary for worldbuilding with avoiding infodumps?

I am a geek for historical detail—I want more and more.

However, the last thing I want to be doing is pushing a moral; young readers are so savvy. So I constantly remind myself: First and foremost, make it human. Something that made a huge impression on me was the impact of Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. If I have a piece of research that I think is important, before I describe it, I create a scene around it. In this case, I’m going to bring the reader into that tiny kitchen

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where the entire family is crowded around a radio with an illegal antenna. They know that there’s probably a surveillance device in their apartment. Through that radio comes the voice of freedom, a crackly broadcast that makes them feel less lonely. When we care for a character, our hearts opens, and that is a moment of potential progress. A statistic can become a human being if I create an experience that’s immersive to bring [readers] on that journey so they want to know more.

Writing about these traumatic events must take an emotional toll on you.

There can be pushback against books for young people about troubling subjects.

We cannot underestimate the hearts of young readers. If we don’t allow them access to these stories, could we be denying them the use of the greatest gifts that they have as humans— of caring, compassion, empathy, human understanding?

Studying the past gives context to the present, and if studying the past helps them create hope for a more just future, I can’t think of a better reason. Teachers and librarians [are] hidden heroes: Although a young reader might run into a library asking for whatever the hottest new contemporary fiction is, I doubt a reader comes in saying, “I want to know about the Securitate and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.”

Teachers and librarians deeply understand the power of the young reader. If kids are sensitive to injustice and [have] the energy to become crusaders against it, why would we deny not only them, but our future world?

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I hope readers will ask themselves how they would respond if their entire life were an existence of enforced obedience—being listened to, being tracked. If there were microphones in their light fixtures, their bathrooms. If they were recruited to be informers against those they love the most. Would they?

We think we know how we would react, but I would say, read the book and ask yourself. I would say to readers, never underestimate the power of telling someone that you hear them. When I interviewed Romanians, they said that one of the most powerful moments over the radio was the address [from then–President Ronald Reagan for Captive Nations Week] in July 1985.

I interviewed some 75 to 100 people, and so many targeted the exact same moment: When they heard that broadcast saying, you may feel alone but you’re not alone, it gave [them] the courage to go on. That’s the power that we have. Read the book, tell someone, did you know what happened in Romania?

Sharing that maybe helps restore a bit of human dignity. I believe so deeply in this power of historical fiction.

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I don’t question the emotional toll because I’m writing about something I didn’t experience. What right do we have to history other than our own? It’s a big question that I wrestle with.

So if I’m going to do this, I have to give 500% to the people who are allowing me to share their story. What would it be like to live in a culture of fear to the point where, many years later, they’re still looking over their shoulders? What was it like to be [in the] Romanian secret police? I don’t want to just condemn you. I have to remain objective, but I can’t remain emotionally distant, because if I do, it’s not being reverent to the people who are so generous [as] to reopen those wounds and share them with me. It does take a toll, but if I can experience those emotions, the work will be more emotionally resonant.

paper archives. My next step is to travel and speak to the human beings who experienced [these events], and I need to have a strong grasp of what was going on so they don’t have to give me a history lesson. That would be disrespectful. History provides my outline and my scaffolding. Once I start doing interviews with witnesses, that’s when the characters start to emerge. For each novel, I work with experts—historians, interpreters, a team of people. Ionel Boyeru, who executed Ceaușescu—I met with him in person—he [said], “The world has to know this story.”

I Must Betray You received a starred review in the Dec. 1, 2021, issue.

Do you start with setting or characters first?

My starting point is the history—dissertations and scholarly publications. Then I move on to poetry, memoir, art, music, even cookbooks, photography archives, radio archives, news|

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“Inventive magical elements and splendidly atmospheric illustrations make this a standout.” the lost daughter

to advocate for oneself and others are among the valuable topics covered. Using an empathetic, compassionate, and uplifting tone, Harts helps readers love the skin they’re in, despite those who may discourage them from doing so, and find and follow their dreams. She steers readers toward answers to challenging questions and complex situations. Ideal for Black and brown girls in need of counsel and support and those who care for them, this book is also beneficial for those outside the target demographic, as it contains advice that serves to make for a better and more inclusive society. Backmatter addresses both adults teaching and caring for girls of color as well as White adults and also includes prompts and discussion questions.

A love letter to Black and brown girls and an acknowledgement of the real work it takes to make magic. (Nonfiction. 12-18)

LOVE FROM SCRATCH

Hill, Kaitlyn Delacorte (368 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-37916-5

Rivals turn to lovers while baking and soapboxing.

Southern belle Reese Camden is spending the summer in Seattle as a marketing intern for Friends of Flavor, a popular online foodie channel. Reese aims for a job with the company once the internship is over, and her main competition is charming and handsome Benny Beneventi, the culinary (and only other) intern. Circumstances throw Reese and Benny into starring roles on Piece of Cake: Amateur Hour, an episode of the popular baking show that quickly goes viral based on the crackerjack chemistry the young couple have on screen. Strangers begin shipping the teens, and the company wants more videos. A smitten Benny wants a bit more from Reese as well, but Reese has a crummy relationship history that keeps her from fully embracing Benny’s swole bod. The push and pull of the rivals’ will-they, won’t-they tension is paired with Reese’s feminist commentary, which readers will likely pump their fists in support of at first—but the pumping will get a little lower as this bell gets rung over and over. The contradiction between Reese’s empowered speeches and her wallflower demeanor never quite adds up to consistent characterization; those around her never get fully fleshed out either. The result is a pleasant, admirable, well-intentioned rom-com that aims high but misses. Reese and Benny are White; there is some ethnic diversity in the supporting cast.

An unevenly rendered romance that struggles to meet its own aims. (Romance. 12-18)

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THE LOST DAUGHTER

Hörnig, Haiko Trans. by Haiko Hörnig Illus. by Marius Pawlitza Graphic Universe (136 pp.) $11.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-72844-865-7 Series: A House Divided, 4

As danger approaches, orphan Henrietta Achilles must protect the inherited castle she now calls home in this graphic fantasy translated from the German.

The formerly friendly stone guardians led by the mysterious Firstborn are attacking the village and trying to breach the entrance to the castle. Henrietta has grown into her own, capably harnessing the magic powers of the house keys to protect the townspeople sheltered inside. A turncoat within the castle causes chaos, setting loose more corrupted stone guardians— but the real mastermind of the invasion is someone unexpected.

An emotional backstory reveals what happened to Henrietta’s parents, and, finally, the contents of the wizard Ornun Zol’s secret vault are unveiled. With never a dull moment, this entertaining fourth and final series entry that follows 2021’s The Winter of Walking Stone easily shifts between perfectly timed humor, poignant dialogue, and action-packed battles. The inventive magical elements and splendidly atmospheric illustrations continue to delight and make this series a standout. The myriad bandits, townspeople, friendly creatures, and menacing army of enemies may be overwhelming to keep track of at times, but readers will be pleased at the return of memorable characters from previous installments. The cast is predominantly male and light-skinned.

A satisfying finale to an inventive and absorbing series. (pierogi recipe, character sketches) (Graphic fantasy. 12-18)

THE LOST DREAMER

Huerta, Lizz Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $18.99 | March 1, 2022 978-1-250-75485-1 The Songs of Indir and Saya are intimately linked, but how and why remain a mystery through much of this opening salvo from Huerta in which a world of Dreams, Songs, prophecy, and chaos are introduced.

Worship through the ancient traditions of Song and especially Dreaming forms the rituals of daily life in the Temple of Night and is all Indir has ever known. A world away, young, isolated Saya also knows the world of the Dream despite being separate from the rituals and traditions of the Dreamers in the city of Alcanzeh. This story with Mesoamerican influences unwinds in chapters of alternating first-person perspectives from Indir and Saya as they grapple with their identities as Dreamers,

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struggle in their relationships with the women who raised them, and discover their roles in the larger story as chaos threatens to destroy both the Dream and the Waking World. Huerta conjures a deep, sensual world in which many cultures share fragments of a larger tradition based on the myths of the Dream and told through Song and story. It is evident through their shared ties to the Dream that Indir and Saya are linked, but the revelation of their true relationship provides the climax, leaving readers hanging on what the symbols and prophecies discovered on their journeys mean for the Waking World. Those who crave intentional worldbuilding and deep knowledge of characters will find that this slow and intimate build leaves them longing for more.

Sensual fantasy with a feminine gaze and intimate worldbuilding. (Fantasy. 14-18)

DEAD GIRLS CAN’T TELL SECRETS

Savannah’s sister, Piper, is comatose after falling off a cliff, but was it really an accident?

Piper seems perfect: smart, popular, and successful at everything she tries.

Savannah is the soccer star of Grayling High, but she feels invisible, stuck in her younger sister’s shadow at home as well as at school. When Piper is found unconscious beneath a scenic lookout called Vanderwild Point, some of her classmates suspect she attempted suicide—but Savannah wants to figure out what really happened and whether it was her fault. She discovers a note in Piper’s locker asking her to come to a Survival Club meeting at the Point on the day she fell, but why was the club holding a session on a Wednesday when they only meet on Mondays? For that matter, why did Piper even join the Survival Club when she hates the outdoors? Savannah uncovers more strange clues. Who is the mysterious Alex who called Piper’s cell three times the day of the incident? Savannah is determined to uncover evidence of wrongdoing before going to the police. This fast-moving mystery focuses on Savannah and her feelings in the aftermath of her sister’s accident. The realistically imperfect characters make mistakes and have human flaws.

Readers will enjoy the twists and turns as facts that exonerate one person throw suspicion onto others. Main characters read as White.

A well-paced page-turner about uncovering the truth at any cost. (Mystery. 14-18)

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Adventures continue in this followup to Star Wars: Queen’s Peril (2020).

With the tumultuous tides of war sweeping the galaxy, Senator Amidala and her former look-alike handmaidens grapple with their changing relationships as they embark on their own missions of politics, espionage, and self-discovery. After the Battle of Geonosis, Padmé Amidala returns to Naboo for healing and for her wedding. She has dedicated her life to serving others, but now she wants something entirely for herself—as well, of course, as Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker, the man she loves. However, the secret of their relationship weighs on her heart, and she struggles with how much to share with the handmaidens who once knew every facet of her life. Meanwhile, duty returns Sabé to being Padmé’s double, though she discovers the role may not fit her anymore. Back in the Chommell sector, Saché adjusts to the responsibilities of her own political career. Johnston delicately twists together multiple, disparate perspectives and drama with strong social and political themes, like colonization and community-led justice initiatives. The wider cast reflects a diverse galaxy, including one transgender and one nonbinary/genderfluid character (although their identities are explored through the gaze of cisgender characters, which detracts from the otherwise casual nature of their inclusion). This sequel builds on relationships established in the earlier books and demands familiarity with the events of Star Wars: Episodes I and II. A satisfying resolution models healthy boundary setting in loving relationships.

Cohesive and engaging. (Science fiction. 12-18)

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Ichaso, Chelsea Sourcebooks Fire (336 pp.) $10.99 paper | April 5, 2022 978-1-72825-597-2

STAR WARS: QUEEN’S HOPE

Johnston, E.K. Disney Lucasfilm (352 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-368-07593-0

ALL THE BEST LIARS

Kahaney, Amelia Flatiron Books (336 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-250-31270-9

In this thriller, two best friends find their relationship pushed to the breaking point.

After Brianna’s father became wealthy, Rain and Sydney felt abandoned by her as she warmed to her newfound acceptance by their more popular peers. Later, Rain also experiences a dramatic change in social class when her mother wins the lottery.

This dark drama opens with a chapter from the perspective of Syd, whose sense of decency seems reliable even if her recollection of events, clouded by drug and alcohol use at a party the night before, does not. Alternating between Syd’s, Rain’s, and Brie’s points of view, and moving back and forth in time between the present and the periods before and after the house fire that

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claimed the life of one of the girls, the narrative structure sets the stage for a psychological mystery that explores loyalty and jealousy. There is a fair amount of coincidence packed into this story, but the intense emotions and yearnings each of the young women feel to be accepted and worthy ground this ever shifting novel in very real ways. Some readers will spot twists before they are revealed, but there is enough left up in the air until the very end to keep them hooked. The three main characters read as White; names signal some diversity in secondary characters.

A dynamic, suspenseful tale of friendship and betrayal.

(Thriller. 14-18)

TEEN GUIDE TO SIDE GIGS Working in the New Economy

Kallen, Stuart A. ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.) $31.95 | March 1, 2022 978-1-67820-242-2

The best freelance opportunities for Generation Z. The pandemic spurred older generations to explore profitable side hustles, often via the web, and create new income streams. Why shouldn’t today’s teens, arguably even more internet savvy, get in on the action? Kallen divides these gig options into seven categories explored in separate chapters: “Little Experience Required,” like dog walking and product delivery; “Focus on Food,” including making specialty items for sale or working as a personal chef; “Art and Design,” from jewelry to other unique creations; “Writing and Translating,” from listicles to email blasts to instruction manuals; “Music and Video,” describing success on Spotify, Twitch, and other online outlets; “Making Instructional Videos,” for YouTube and other streaming platforms; and “Technology and Programming,” which includes designing websites as well as offering technical support. In all these areas, online expertise is presented as key for marketing, networking, billing, and bookkeeping. Kallen’s treatment is perfunctory but reader friendly, with full-color stock photos, large type, and chapters divided into subheaded chunks. He stresses the importance of persistence and of embracing the learning curve, encouraging teens to dive in and absorb lessons of success and failure as they hone their skills. Much more helpful is the backmatter, which lists 24 other possible jobs and includes online sources for further information and an index.

A solid, accessible resource for industrious teens. (source notes, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

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GIRLS WHO GREEN THE WORLD Thirty-Four Rebel Women Out To Save Our Planet

Kapp, Diana Illus. by Ana Jarén Delacorte (336 pp.) $19.99 | $22.99 PLB | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-42805-4 978-0-593-48434-0 PLB

A celebration of women who are devoted to reducing the impact of climate change in a variety of creative ways.

From the author of Girls Who Run the World (2019) comes a collection of brief profiles of women working tirelessly to reduce humanity’s impact on our planet. Introductory chapters and wide-reaching infographics provide background information on the science behind the climate crisis and the urgent need for action. Readers are encouraged to find hope by starting small and thinking big. There is a clear focus on creating change through entrepreneurship; many of the women are or have been CEOs. Prefaced by fill-in-the-blank answers to personal questions asked of the subjects, the biographical sketches are organized into thematic sections based on their areas of focus, such as reducing plastic waste, government and politics, fossil fuels, and food. The biographical information is augmented with facts about related environmental issues, data from reputable sources, and quotes from the author’s personal interviews with subjects. Jarén’s colorful, bold illustrations highlight the racially and culturally diverse women; in many cases their identities fuel their passion. There are also women whose affluence and privilege allowed them to take more risks. Unfortunately, given the focus on urgency and innovation, the content is sure to become dated quite quickly. The final chapter encourages young readers to find a way to contribute to environmental change in a way that is personally resonant.

A gift book for budding entrepreneurs. (sources) (Nonfiction.

12-16)

HEARTBREAK SYMPHONY

Kemp, Laekan Zea Little, Brown (368 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-316-46038-5

A story of surviving grief with the help of community.

Full of music from the start, this novel follows two Chicane teens in San Antonio, Texas, who are navigating loss and self-doubt. Aarón’s mother died eight months ago and now he has an imaginary robot following him around. Not just any imaginary robot, though, but one that represents La Maquina, the public persona of Xavier López, a musician Aarón is strongly attached to—and someone missing for nearly a year who he can’t accept is possibly dead. Mia has

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“Challenging and rewarding.” this rebel heart

grown up with domestic violence at the center of her world. She and her brothers create family bonds through invented rituals so they won’t focus on the parents who are gone: first, their mother who abandoned them, and soon after, their father, who was consumed by alcoholism until he passed away. Aarón and Mia come together with a pact to not give up on auditioning for scholarships to a prestigious music school, but their community may need their alliance for more. As the book threads together commentary on race, mental health, and undocumented immigration, the two main characters join protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on their neighborhood. The text is vibrant, with Spanish words and poetry effortlessly woven throughout; unfortunately, the chemistry between Aarón and Mia does not fully satisfy, affecting readers’ connection to them and the story.

A bold premise written in beautiful prose but faltering in characterization. (Fiction. 14-18)

SHE GETS THE GIRL

Many begin college with hopes of personal reinvention, and Alex Blackwood and Molly Parker are no exception.

Apparently opposite in every way, both girls nevertheless arrive for their freshman year at the University of Pittsburgh with the same goal in mind: to fundamentally change the way others perceive them and get their dream girls. Easypeasy. Molly, whose mom is a transracial adoptee from Korea and whose father is assumed White, was socially anxious in high school. She worries that her close friendship with her mother holds her back. Willowy, blond Alex, who is implied White, has never once found herself at a loss in a social situation, and yet her fairy-tale story of adolescent beauty and wit is tempered by having a single mom whose struggles with alcohol abuse meant shouldering responsibilities far beyond her years. Utilizing tried and true tropes, married couple Lippincott and Derrick cut right to the heart of the matter when it comes to the mysteries of romance. Queerness itself is never the motivator of the drama, and gratifyingly, both girls find in one another the means to explore and unpack complexities of life unrelated to their sexualities. Nothing is made simplistic—not Alex’s relationship to self-expression and conventional beauty standards, nor Molly’s experiences of culture and community in a world that has expectations of her based on her racial identity.

Sweet, honest, and filled with personality. (Romance. 14-18)

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Locke, Katherine Knopf (448 pp.) $18.99 | $21.99 PLB | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-38124-3 978-0-593-38125-0 PLB A Jewish girl finds her power in an occupied city.

Csilla Tisza lives with her aunt Ilona in 1956 Hungary. Eleven years after the war, they’re all they have left; Csilla survived the Holocaust, unlike most of her Jewish family, but her parents were later executed for false charges under a brutal communist regime. When Csilla is followed by an agent of the Hungarian secret police, she’s certain she’s about to be arrested, but a strange young man who doesn’t seem quite normal intercepts and helps her. From here on, Csilla learns more about her family and her country as she becomes involved in the revolutionary struggle to free Hungary from the post-Stalin Soviet Union. History and magic intertwine in a beautifully rendered Budapest that is literally drained of color, where the Danube River becomes a supernatural protector and your childhood friend might be an angel of death. Through prose at times elegant and evocative and at other times mechanical and jarring, readers follow Csilla as she uses both practical and supernatural tactics to organize her comrades and fight for her country’s future. Some readers may need more background on European history to fully understand what is happening, and occasionally the political explanations become jumbled, but overall this is an engaging story, melding characters and themes that feel familiar against a backdrop that is underutilized in young adult literature.

Challenging and rewarding. (Historical fantasy. 13-18)

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Lippincott, Rachael & Alyson Derrick Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-5344-9379-7

THIS REBEL HEART

UNRAVEL

Loken, Amelia Sword and Silk Books (366 pp.) $14.99 | Feb. 15, 2022 978-1-7364300-8-8 A deaf princess must use her magical gift to save her kingdom.

Princess Marguerite is gifted in Skeincraft—literally embroidering magic into fabric and thread. Unfortunately, her uncle leads a crusade against witchcraft, imprisoning and burning the accused. While saving a child from the witch hunt, she meets Tys, a handsome young man who also has a magical gift. Loken’s fantasy world feels European, including the religion, which borrows several ancient Greek deities and puts them into a Roman Catholic–inspired framework. Major characters are presumed White; Marguerite’s parentage on her father’s side is default White, and on her mother’s, Mirvray—an ethnic group that reads like a fantasy corollary of Roma people, including the prejudice they experience. Marguerite was born

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“Accessibly offers the firsthand perspective of a person living with psychosis.” survive and keep surviving

deaf and given magical hearing aids in the form of silver hair combs that do not work well. She uses speech, listening, and lip reading, but when she is introduced to Mirvray culture, in which deafness is more common, she discovers a signed language that was kept from her. Marguerite’s deafness is naturally woven into her characterization and realistically shown to have an impact on her life. Overall, this is a smooth, enjoyable read with a heroine who is both feminine and strong. The satisfying ending leaves just a few loose threads that will make readers hope for more.

A lovely tale for readers in search of magic, adventure, and romance. (Fantasy. 14-18)

SURVIVE AND KEEP SURVIVING

Mallory, Mel West 44 Books (200 pp.) $19.95 | April 19, 2022 978-1-9785-9593-4 Series: West 44 YA Verse

In ninth grade, Mara experienced a very public psychotic break after being raped at a party the summer before school started.

Never having disclosed what happened to authorities or her parents, she suffered paranoia and delusional thoughts. Mara’s initial ER treatment was harsh and followed by a hospital stay.

Her parents, especially her dad, were clueless but did find her a therapist, Dr. Lewis, who continues to treat her. Now a senior, Mara takes medication and has learned techniques for getting through daily life. Ellie is the one person who has remained her friend—other students are downright mean. Top student Kendall is unbelievably cruel, using a public speaking class to openly bully Mara, with other students joining in while their teacher fails to deal adequately with the situation. Mara, now strong enough thanks to Dr. Lewis’ help, weathers this storm and ultimately stands up for herself. This brief, realistic novel is accessibly written in free verse by Mallory, who offers the firsthand perspective of a person living with psychosis. It focuses on Mara’s recovery, achieved through hard work with Dr. Lewis, who helps shore up her independence and self-confidence and wisely tells her that “Recovery is always a process.” Characters are cued as White.

A novel for reluctant readers that explores a young woman’s courage in finding her voice. (Verse novel. 14-18)

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UFOS AND ALIEN ENCOUNTERS Are They Real?

Marcovitz, Hal ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.) $31.95 | March 1, 2022 978-1-67820-176-0

Spoiler alert: In response to the question posed in the subtitle, the author says, definitely possible!

The introduction presents a provocative case for the existence of UFOs, with Navy pilots officially reporting sightings as recently as 2014, news eventually carried by major outlets.

With recent advances in audio and video recording, many argue that credible evidence supports the existence of visitors from outer space. After providing a historical context (a Greek general named Timoleon spotted a hovering light in 343 B.C.E.), Marcovitz describes the work of modern UFO hunters like M.J. Banias, who works as an investigator for the Mutual UFO Network, and Chuck Zukowski, a sheriff in Colorado who examined mysteriously mutilated cattle carcasses. Popular culture has done much to bring speculation about alien visitors into the mainstream, from H.G. Wells to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and celebrities like Miley Cyrus sharing their experiences.

Marcovitz presents many anecdotes, told with effective local color and convincing detail, like that of the discovery of a skeleton with a strangely elongated skull in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile or of an unusual rock in Antarctica, judged to be from Mars and containing evidence of fossils of living organisms. The author reports that although the scientific community is divided on this subject, enough people are convinced to ensure further research. Color illustrations and pithy sidebars enhance readability.

A lively, entertaining overview of the case for the existence of alien life. (picture credits, source notes, further reading, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

THE SILENT UNSEEN

McCrina, Amanda Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-374-31355-5 As World War II winds to a close, Soviets, Poles, and Ukrainians struggle for the upper hand.

Sixteen-year-old Maria, recently escaped from a German slave labor camp, and 17-year-old Kostya, a reluctant member of the UPA (Ukrainian nationalist partisans), are separately trying to return to their mutual hometown of Bród in Poland as the Red Army takes over from the German occupiers in August 1944. They’re on opposite sides: The UPA and the Polish resistance have been working against each other throughout the German occupation. When Maria stumbles

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upon members of the Soviet secret police about to kill an injured Kostya, she shoots them and saves Kostya’s life before learning of his background. Then, while trying to find him medical care, she encounters a group of Polish resistance fighters led by her brother, Tomek, whom she’d thought dead. After that, the plot gets a little confusing. This novel, like McCrina’s previous book, Traitor (2020), explores an interesting and relatively unexplored side of history, and the sentence-level writing is compelling.

However, the author sacrifices clarity in her effort to produce excitement: She doesn’t provide enough background or write in a way that readers can easily keep track of what’s going on—and without fully understanding the action, it’s difficult to care very much about the characters.

Could have been excellent but misses the mark. (historical note, map, list of military and paramilitary forces, list of characters, author’s note) (Historical fiction. 12-18)

UNBETROTHED

Everyone in Giddel is bestowed a magical gift by the age of 5—but not Princess Beatriz.

When the whyzer tells Beatriz on her seventh birthday that she must one day enter the Valle de los Fantasmas to receive her gifting, she is pitied and regarded as useless. Now 17, her duty is to marry someone who will help protect her kingdom from their enemies, the Himzo. Desperate to receive her gift and marry whom she wants, she makes an oath with the Ancient One to enter the valley. Beatriz runs away with the help of her maid, Laude, and some other servants. But things don’t go according to plan, and she and Laude are left alone in the wilderness before being rescued by handsome Himzo merchant Zichri and his men. Overcoming her mistrust, Beatriz accepts Zichri’s offer of protection, and they journey to the valley together. But Beatriz and her new suitor hold secrets that threaten everyone’s happiness and safety. Although the beginning is slow, the pace of this story, set in a detailed, Latin-inflected world, picks up in the second half. It is overall a fun read for readers who like their fantasy mixed with a bit of romance. Beatriz’s character develops throughout, and she outgrows her initial pompous haughtiness; secondary characters are fleshed out. Beatriz and Zichri have dark hair and brown skin; other characters are diverse in appearance.

An enjoyable read. (map) (Fantasy. 12-18)

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Price, Tirzah HarperTeen (416 pp.) $17.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-06-288983-6 Series: Jane Austen Murder Mysteries, 2 This follow-up to Pride and Premedita­ tion (2021) reimagines the intrepid Dashwood sisters tracking down leads about the murder of their father, who ran a

detective firm.

After sensible Elinor, a budding chemist, discovers her father slumped over his desk, she, her mother, and her sisters, Marianne and Margaret, grieve his loss to an apparent heart attack. It is only later that they begin to suspect that his death might not have been natural, as they struggle with being forced from their home by their half brother, John, and his conniving wife, Fanny, to whom their father’s estate was left due to his failure to update his will. Maintaining the original’s setting, time period, and characters (both in regard to name and personality), this whodunit embellishes the storyline with a subplot involving the burgeoning use of opium both in medicine and recreationally. The plotting takes its time, wending its way around twists and turns that will be more obvious to readers who know Sense and Sensibility, but the sympathetic nature of both the elder Dashwood sisters should keep both existing fans and newcomers sufficiently in their corner. Likewise, the neat resolution of this tale will satisfy those with a taste for happy endings and the comfort of the familiar, even if it’s not particularly memorable. All characters are White.

A light, mostly engaging mystery that will find a ready audience among Jane Austen fans. (author’s note) (Mystery. 12-18)

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Pedraza Yamnitz, Candice IlluminateYA Fiction (296 pp.) $16.99 paper | Feb. 8, 2022 978-1-64526-342-5

SENSE AND SECOND-DEGREE MURDER

ALONE OUT HERE

Redgate, Riley Disney-Hyperion (400 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-368-06472-9 It’s 2072, and a group of teens has one chance at surviving the end of the world: a prototype spaceship.

Eighteen-year-old Leigh Chen, daughter of the president of the United States, knows a volcano will soon erupt, leading to the destruction of Earth’s atmosphere. She also knows the Global Fleet Planning Commission has a plan: to rebuild on a new planet, 5.4 light-years away. While Leigh and other children of GFPC members are touring a launch site in California, the eruption unexpectedly begins. Approximately 50 teenagers from around the world find themselves on a journey that will last many lifetimes, relying on an unfinished ship and a minimal supply of food. On their side is Eli, White American daughter of the spaceship’s intended pilot. Eli forms a small leadership

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council to run the ship that includes Chinese American Leigh along with members from Kenya, Russia, Bolivia, and Egypt. As fault lines in the group quickly become apparent, Leigh busies herself with smoothing over conflicts among the survivors.

But as they begin to repeat the mistakes of their parents, she must confront a question from her almost-friend, Anis Ibrahim: What does she really stand for? Part survival story and part exploration of the tenuous ties of cooperation, this memorable page-turner is a successful foray into science fiction for Redgate.

A gripping post-apocalyptic survival story featuring a multinational cast and just the right amount of introspection. (Science fiction. 14-18)

THE FAKE NEWS CRISIS How Misinformation Harms Society

Sheen, Barbara ReferencePoint Press (64 pp.) $31.95 | March 1, 2022 978-1-67820-240-8

Explains what fake news really is and why it matters.

Opening with descriptions of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol invasion and misinformation about the outcome of the 2020 election that has continued to fuel distrust in the election process, Sheen explains that these are part of a wider problem of proliferation of fake news that affects us all. She devotes her first chapter to defining fake news, touches on its long history and the ways it is spread, and explores the reasons some people believe it. A second chapter focuses on science denial, with special emphasis on responses to Covid-19. A third section looks at political and social movements, including responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, Russian influence in the 2016 election and beyond, domestic extremists, and unethical political leaders. Although most of the politicians called out are Republicans, particularly former President Donald Trump, the author offers examples of Democrats as well. A final chapter describes efforts to combat fake news, including action by social media platforms and media literacy education. Sheen provides pros and cons for governmental oversight. The backmatter includes a handy list of ways to spot fake news and another of useful organizations and websites. Some topics are given special boxed treatment, quotes are pulled out for emphasis, and there are photographs throughout to break up the text. The author’s concern is evident, and she includes ample documentation as well as explanation.

Strong stuff clearly expressed. (picture credits, source notes, further research, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

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COLD

Tamaki, Mariko Roaring Brook Press (240 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 8, 2022 978-1-62672-273-6 A teen’s death sparks an investigation.

When the body of Todd Mayer, a local teen, is discovered buried in the snow in a park, the police investigate his old life—his family, classmates, teachers, and lack of friends (he was a target of vicious homophobia). Todd, the ghost of the dead teen, follows the investigation as he tries to recall how he died, catching glimpses of his past. Meanwhile, Georgia is feeling lost; she is also fed up with being seen as Molly, the friendless little girl from her author mother’s children’s books who is a thinly veiled version of Georgia herself. Georgia juggles her changing relationship with her brother, Mark; her crush on her new friend, rich, popular Carrie; and time spent digging into Todd’s murder.

When Georgia discovers something surprising about Mark, who attended the same private school as the victim, hidden information about Todd also comes to light. The alternating narration that switches between Todd’s and Georgia’s perspectives includes humor that balances discussions of bullying, mortality, secrets, and selfhood. The mystery elements are intriguing, but the characters and their relationships with friends and family would have benefited from more depth and exploration before the too-tidy ending. Georgia is biracial (she’s described as “half Asian”); Todd and Carrie are White.

A fast-moving story with a rushed ending. (Mystery. 12-18)

HOTEL MAGNIFIQUE

Taylor, Emily J. Razorbill/Penguin (400 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-593-40451-5 Every decade or so, Hotel Magnifique appears in the port city of Durc, and a few lucky people get tickets to enter; the rest must find other ways inside.

Seventeen-year-old Jani, olive-skinned with brown hair like others in the south of Verdanniere, dreams of a better life for herself and her sister, Zosa. A magnificent newspaper ad printed in bright purple ink announces that Hotel Magnifique—which transports itself to Elsewhere each midnight—is hiring. Zosa’s singing voice is sure to get them in the door—why not apply? Upon entering, the sisters quickly realize that the hotel, its owner, and the mysterious doorman, Bel, handsome with his copper skin and brown eyes, have many secrets—and not all of them are good. This is a story brimming with magic, from the suminaires, with their unique magical gifts and infinite lives, to the themed guest rooms that can grow entire forests and orange juice that has you experience your favorite meal

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“A beautiful, emotionally charged novel.” nothing burns as bright as you

all over again. Taylor eloquently builds an immersive, believable world of magic, heavily influenced by French culture and brimming with interesting characters readers will grow to love and care about as they solve the mysteries of the hotel and free themselves from their gilded cage. The complex characters who evolve throughout the story are diverse in skin color, body type, sexual orientation, and financial means. Even those well read in the genre will enjoy some genuine surprises.

A wondrous read for anyone searching for a bit of magic.

(Fantasy. 12-18)

WITH AND WITHOUT YOU

Wibberley, Emily & Austin Siegemund-Broka Viking (384 pp.) $18.99 | April 19, 2022 978-0-593-32687-9

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Wilson, Kip Versify/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $18.99 | March 29, 2022 978-0-358-44890-7 “I shiver. / How much has changed / in a week.” And we all shivered with her.

Recounting the months before Hitler’s rise to power in 1932, Catholic orphan Hilde, an 18-year-old resident of Berlin, documents her life in a series of free-verse poems. Her story begins as she leaves the orphanage and follows her through a brief period of homelessness and unemployment before she finds the Café Lila, a queer nightclub that ultimately provides employment, security, and a sense of community previously missing from Hilde’s life. It also brings her in contact with gorgeous Rosa, a Jewish performer and waitress with a vivacious attitude who quickly captures Hilde’s heart. Astute readers will understand what horrible fates await many of the characters but will be captivated by the events that Hilde observes, many of which still echo today. Book clubs will find a lot to discuss in Hilde’s story, and educators won’t need to work hard to generate conversations about equality, authoritarianism, and the role of minorities in democracy. The free-form verse is inviting and masterfully captures the mood and times in sparse poetry, making this work equally appealing for pleasure reading. Educators and history buffs will appreciate the thorough and informative backmatter, which includes selected sources in both English and German, a glossary of terms, and an author’s note that provides valuable context and recommends more information about the time period.

Wunderbar! (Verse historical fiction. 12-adult)

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Siena and Patrick have been together so long their friends regard them as a single unit.

As they head toward senior year, Siena feels trapped and decides to break up with Patrick during their weekly coffee date. But Patrick has his own shocking development to reveal: His family is moving from Phoenix to Austin. Thrown off guard, Siena takes Patrick up on his offer to try the long-distance thing, presuming the relationship will fizzle out and she won’t have to be the heartbreaker after all. As the school year unfolds, the two exchange texts, schedule holiday visits, and create new social circles. The relationship Siena once saw as stale expands as well, giving her a lot to ponder as college looms. Told from Siena’s point of view, the novel takes a while to really start humming. Siena’s complaints about the perfectly decent Patrick grow tiresome; readers may check out before the worm turns and the authors start flipping new cards. Once things get going, the novel becomes a reasonably well-sketched rendering of young love evolving, but there’s a lot of padding to get through first. The pacing and character shading are the novel’s weakest points: Patrick never really pops as a real person, and Siena, desperate to figure out her new identity, comes off as whiny. She ultimately settles on a new pursuit that feels like it comes out of the blue rather than organically emerging from her personality. Siena and Patrick are presumed White.

A well-intentioned misfire. (Romance. 14-18)

THE MOST DAZZLING GIRL IN BERLIN

NOTHING BURNS AS BRIGHT AS YOU

Woodfolk, Ashley Versify/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $18.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-358-65535-0 Friendship evolves into a fiery, complex first love for two teen girls.

This nonlinear novel in verse begins at the end, as a queer Black couple stand on opposite sides of a bridge, their relationship crumbling. The first and last poems—both titled “After the Fire”—are the only times the story is told from the point of view of the partner, a girl only ever referred to as “you.” The unnamed narrator begins by alternating between the history of their tumultuous relationship and the day things begin to unravel, when the pair set fire to a dumpster in their high school’s parking lot. In addition to exploring queerness—the narrator is attracted to other girls, her partner is bisexual—Woodfolk also writes about how girls, especially Black girls, learn that what

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“Zucker’s real-world experience is reflected in her ability to engage with readers.” a perfectionist ’s guide to not being perfect

other people think about how they look can put them in danger.

The two met at a coffee shop and soon became friends, partners in trouble, and each other’s everything. Through the economical and expressive poems, readers are pulled into the narrator’s deep, shifting emotions as her feelings for her friend change.

The rich language describing the way the two love each other is magnificent: “we added up to a little too much. // You loved me more than I knew. / I loved you more than you could take.” Fire is a symbol throughout, and the final flames aptly represent the passion and volatility of this relationship.

A beautiful, emotionally charged novel. (Verse novel. 14-18)

CRIMSON REIGN

Zhao, Amélie Wen Delacorte (496 pp.) $18.99 | March 1, 2022 978-0-525-70787-5 Series: Blood Heir, 3 Allies and enemies fight for country and love.

In this follow-up to Red Tigress (2021), Ana and company have gone on separate quests. As Ana makes her way to Cyrilia to confront her aunt, the Empress Morganya, Linn is off to the Kemeiran Empire to recruit forces for their cause. Ramson remains in Bregon to discover what he can about regaining the Affinite powers stolen by the siphons. While the villain comes off as somewhat two-dimensional—in it for the power and little else—the evil aunt makes some interesting comments about leadership and winning wars. The ultimate goal is to rid the world of the current corrupt monarchy, and the questions Ana and the others must ask themselves are: What will take its place? What will be best for the people? And who will be the one to lead them? It is the journey to answer these questions rather than the frequent bloody battles that is compelling.

Though Ana is the main heroine, the storytelling finds its stride in delving into the ensemble cast, exploring their motivations and watching them come to their personal and sometimes painful resolutions. Cultural and physical markers code the Kemeirans as an East Asian fantasy equivalent, while the Northern Cyrilians read as Russian inspired, and Southern Cyrilians have light-brown skin.

Awash in bloodshed, this trilogy closer is most interesting for the questions it poses. (map, glossary) (Fantasy. 14-18)

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A PERFECTIONIST’S GUIDE TO NOT BEING PERFECT

Zucker, Bonnie Magination/American Psychological Association (256 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-1-4338-3703-6

A therapist describes the symptoms and effects of perfectionism and offers a self-help guide to a more balanced approach to life.

Practicing psychologist Zucker, who specializes in anxiety, OCD, and similar concerns, reaches out to perfectionists with helpful information and step-by-step ways to change behavior as a way to change thoughts. Her conversational text conveys sympathy as she explains what perfectionism is, how to recognize it, and why it gets in the way of success. Then she introduces cognitive behavioral therapy and explains how it can be used to challenge perfectionist thinking and behavior. She offers practical examples of ways to step out of one’s comfort zone and practice flexibility. She encourages her readers to make mistakes, pointing out that failures can offer life lessons. Finally she describes techniques for stress management and relaxing the body and mind. Throughout, her examples reflect teen lives today. She reminds her readers that social media images are constructed. She talks about stressors in schoolwork, in sports, and in social life; the problems of hesitation to take chances and overpreparation. From time to time she offers a list of questions or written exercises to help readers evaluate themselves. Each chapter ends with a summary of the major points. Zucker’s realworld experience treating people who struggle with these issues is reflected in her ability to engage with her readers.

Solid advice for teens in need. (resources, references, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

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THE AUTUMN QUEEN PROTOCOL

These titles earned the Kirkus Star:

Ashe, Patrick Self (231 pp.) $12.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Oct. 26, 2021 978-1-73484-774-1

RUNNING OUT OF WORDS FOR AFTERWARDS

by David Hargreaves........................................................................ 144 PERMISSION by Marc Kristal......................................................... 146 FACE THE NIGHT by Alan Lastufka.................................................147 DEAR WILLIAM by David Magee.....................................................148

BUNSO MEETS A MUMU by Rev Valdez.......................................... 155 FINDING FRANCES by Kelly Vincent............................................... 155 SAINTED IN ERROR by Glenda Winders.......................................... 157

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BAKING UP A STORM by Jessica Parham; illus. by Srimalie Bassani....................................................................150

Ashe’s bifurcated novel imagines a Covid-19–flavored zombie outbreak.

The novel opens with a rundown of Mike Ballard’s life in quarantine: virtual check-ins, masked visits, introspection, and his father’s death. Shortly after a return to normalcy, chaos really erupts, but not because of a new contagious variant. Now there’s a devastating viral outbreak that turns humans into bloodthirsty zombies, or, as they are ubiquitously called, “the infected.” The book comprises two interrelated parts, each including a prologue/summary and hero: Mike Ballard in one and Cassandra Riven in the other. Ashe uses these two halves to contrast vastly different experiences of the outbreak. Mike is an epidemiologist who becomes a hermit with his cat, Chloe.

Cassandra is a lethal and highly skilled sergeant, deployed on a top-secret mission to uncover a possible cure for the zombie outbreak. In the first section, the zombie horrors impact the civilians trying to stay alive; in the other, these same zombies become the subject of confidential government and military operations that seem like warped fun-house­–mirror versions of contemporary conspiracies about the coronavirus pandemic.

The characters, too, offer totally different perspectives on not just the outbreak, but society writ large. Cassandra and Mike seem totally unalike at the outset; Mike’s a middle-aged milquetoast, and Cassandra’s an adept but young, transgender soldier (previously discharged after Trump’s anti-trans military ban). Eventually, however, their paths intersect. Through these two leads, the novel successfully examines a familiar story in a new light, with some interesting and shocking twists along the way, and it cogently considers the role of governmental authority, the importance of science, and what happens when a large number of people would rather not accept lifesaving medical care (spoiler: It’s not pretty).

A timely allegory with interesting interlocking points of view and biting social critique.

BAKING UP A STORM

Parham, Jessica Illus. by Srimalie Bassani Mascot Books (38 pp.) $16.95 | Jan. 4, 2022 978-1-63755-013-7 |

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INDIE | Myra Forsberg

potent profiles FARM GIRL A Memoir

The biography genre offers a dizzying array of subjects, from Malcolm X (Les Payne and Tamara Payne’s The Dead Are Arising) to Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna (Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker). The most stimulating and astute biographies gracefully immerse readers in the intricate stories and turbulent eras of bold figures. Kirkus Indie recently reviewed books that examine a NASA astronaut, a Los Angeles detective, and a Watergate hero.

In Wonders All Around, Bruce McCandless III paints a complex portrait of his father, a daring astronaut. Bruce McCandless II made the first untethered spacewalk—documented in a striking photograph—while on a shuttle mission.

The author observes that the photo’s “contrast of a solitary man emerging from the immensity of the universe” suggests a triumph against what is “essentially incomprehensible.” Our reviewer calls the work “a fine evocation of the NASA experience—in the sky and on Earth.”

The Long Winding Road of Harry Ray­ mond by Patrick Jenning examines an LA police detective who served on the department’s “goon squad” in the early 20th century. During his career, Raymond investigated gangsters, politicians, and corrupt cops. Called “the most feared copper in California,” he caused the exodus of numerous LA criminals to Las Vegas. “An exciting addition to the true-crime history of Depression-era LA,” our critic writes.

Adam Henig focuses on Black security guard Frank Wills in Watergate’s Forgotten Hero. Wills uncovered evidence of a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in 1972. While he briefly became famous for his role in the scandal, he spent many years in poverty. In Bob Woodward’s view, Wills was “the only one in Watergate who did his job perfectly.” According to our reviewer, this book is “a remarkably wellresearched and definitive account of an unheralded American hero.”

Baxter, Megan Green Writers Press (264 pp.) $19.95 paper | July 1, 2021 978-1-9505845-4-3

A tender memoir of a tumultuous life that also celebrates agricultural cultivation.

Baxter begins her remembrance (in which some names have been changed) in a cabin in the Catskills, where she and Jayden, her poet fiance—both in their 20s—went to try and rekindle their love after a summer apart; it’s their “last chance,” as she puts it. Jayden spent the previous summer in Paris, seeking inspiration, and Baxter went to Cedar Circle Farm in New England to work because she needed money—something that Jayden “struggled to understand.” At the cabin, she discovered a condom in Jayden’s pocket, which was apparently evidence of an affair, as she’d been taking birth control pills for years. The couple fought at the cabin and again at an airport a few days later. Consequently, Jayden returned to their apartment in Portland, Oregon, ahead of Baxter and moved into a separate room, where he stayed following her return. As the memoir continues, it becomes increasingly clear that Baxter and Jayden were in very different places, with very different ideas of what will make them happy. Baxter weaves accounts of her summers as a farm worker with recollections of Jayden’s alcohol abuse and his trips to hospitals for new painkiller prescriptions. The author is shown to believe that staying with Jayden would keep him alive, even as the status quo remained unchanged. The collapse of this relationship and its emotional toll on Baxter are effectively emphasized with ruminations on the careful tending of crops, such as corn stalks and fresh strawberry plants, through the seasons, with such symbolic observations as “If I am rough with the spinach it will turn soft and break as it warms.” There’s some intensity in the accounts of Jayden’s pain-fueled pursuit of drugs, but overall, the memoir is more serene than it is dramatic. Overall, the author focuses her attention, at last, on where she’s most herself; it’s not so much a love story as it is a rumination on one’s proper place in the world.

An often moving ode to nature—human and otherwise.

THE TIMEMATICIAN

Bereznai, Steven Jambor Publishing (192 pp.) $11.95 paper | $6.95 e-book | Aug. 2, 2022 978-1-989055-06-9 978-1-989055-03-8 e-book In this SF sequel, a supervillain perfects his scheme to destroy the world— but meets surprising opposition.

As described in Generation Manifes­ tation (2021), a future society consists of worker-bee DNA regulars and Supergenics. Regular teens who successfully face Testing for superpower potential are called

Myra Forsberg is an Indie editor.

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Generation Manifestation, or Gen M. One such teen was the socially awkward misfit narrator, now a resentful adult calling himself Doctor BetterThan. He’s amassed a huge collection of sophisticated weaponry in his elaborate ocean lair. His first goal is to display his utter supremacy (“Forget Gen M. I’m Gen Me”) and his second is to destroy all life on Earth. Thanks to his ability to rewind and restart time, he’s now able to annihilate a phalanx of superheroes, finally deploying his death ray. “I’m the only living being on the planet. I win,” he crows. At first, postapocalyptic life is everything he’d hoped for: eating unlimited Twinkies and writing his memoir. But a spoiler arrives in the formidable form of Mairī Lin Monroe, a pink, breathy-voiced robot who, with a cybernetic army, vies for planetary domination. Though an enemy, she’s intriguing, and while the Doctor could just rewind time again—what would he lose by winning again? In his second Gen M novel, Bereznai makes every story element an over-the-top, operatic, and highly detailed extravaganza, from superhero-movie action scenes to a sequence that shows the Doctor gloating over his control board: “A dizzying array of toggles, switches, and dials that tease me with silent siren calls, begging me to flick and press them.” The author makes the most of the Doctor’s insufferable enjoyment of winning before complications rightfully ensue. The story also provides intriguing psychological reflections (why does the Doctor’s helper robot so resemble his overbearing mother?) and unexpected romance.

Wildly entertaining, with a thoughtful layer under all the villainous boasting and ka-pow action.

including Adam’s hated foe, Dwayne Mayhew, and vampirista fashion designer/mob boss daughter Marie Elaina Marcone.

Some of the players star in subplots that the author deftly ties to the main plot—either Mercy’s legend or Adam’s relevant family history. Leah is, without question, intelligent, savvy, and resilient. As such, the narrative’s incessant reminders of her Ph.D. are superfluous. But on occasion, she comes across as condescending, as when she repeatedly calls Adam “Big Man on the Island.” This somewhat dampens the two’s developing romance, as it pales against the subtler pairing of Marie and young patrolman Seth Whitelaw. Still, Burrows pits the story’s “nerdette” hero against several dangers while immersing readers in the island’s spooky ambiance. The 19th-century mystery slowly unravels, resulting in a satisfying conclusion.

A razor-sharp protagonist headlines this gripping tale of mythical vampires and scarier humans.

EARTH 101 Time To Run

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Church, Emae Korudaz Ink (412 pp.) $20.99 | $12.37 paper | $2.99 e-book July 20, 2021 978-1-916300-37-8 978-1-916300-30-9 paper In Church’s debut YA SF novel, a teenage girl’s new romance spins off into deep-space adventure and a chance to

VAMPIRE ISLAND, RHODE ISLAND

save her home planet.

Somewhere on Earth, in what seems to be England, in the small town of Dereton, 17-year-old Jayne is something of a loner.

It’s partly because her best friend, Chloe, has vanished, though oddly, none of the townsfolk seem to recall the missing girl; only Jayne seems to have any memory of her. When the very same thing happens to a bully named Laura at her school, Jayne becomes obsessed with proving both missing girls’ existences.

On the brighter side, the attractive new guy at school, Aithen, has his eye on Jayne, and the admiration is mutual. However, that doesn’t stop Jayne from noticing Aithen’s odd quirks, as when he seemingly foretells a catastrophic accident. It turns out that he’s from planet Korudaz, and he may have answers regarding the mysteriously “deleted” girls in her past. Jayne gets the opportunity to visit her boyfriend’s Neptune-sized, twosunned home world, but his people, the Koyorads, aren’t fond of her—or of humanity in general. The aliens’ advanced tech tells them that Earth will meet its doom in a frighteningly short time, so Jayne fights to prevent the human race’s obliteration.

The first third of Church’s novel combines an engrossing teen romance with a dark, unfolding mystery. Jayne is likable, both as a protagonist and as a narrator, and the enigmatic Aithen proves a worthy love interest. Once the SF elements take over, however, the story teems with genre conventions—spaceships, time travel, wormholes, and more—as well as thriller subplots as someone attempts to off Jayne. There’s copious dialogue explaining Koyorad technology and customs along with plenty

Burrows, Geraldine Glenarvon Press (338 pp.) $4.99 e-book | Oct. 28, 2021

In this thriller, a folklorist who arrives on an island to debunk a vampire legend meets resistance from the locals— some of whom prove menacing.

Purgatory Island in New England is known for its vampires. According to legend, Mercy Randall unleashed a vampire plague on the island 200 years ago. But Dr. Leah Gerard aims to clear Mercy’s name—with a scientific explanation for those 19th-century deaths associated with vampires. She quickly sways Randall descendant Adam, a local single dad who suffers visitors nosing around for details about the legend. His sizable Victorian home has a wealth of “never-before-seen data” that Leah can dive into.

But other islanders thrive on Purgatory’s lore, from the owner of the neon-gaudy Vampire Vixen Lounge to the secret society of “Rens,” who preserve and spread a belief in vampirism.

Leah shrugs off people’s vague threats—until they turn physical.

Meanwhile, her research dredges up Randall family skeletons, a few that even Adam doesn’t know about. It all culminates in a shocking murder that Leah investigates to clear someone’s name. In this taut tale, Burrows assembles a memorable cast, |

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HUNTER’S HOPE Vampire Motorcycle Club: Book Two

of obstacles, which characters seem to discuss more often than they face. Nevertheless, the final act not only clears up some lingering questions, but also kicks the action into gear. The novel ends on a superb cliffhanger with plenty of unresolved elements for a potential sequel.

A sometimes-dense but often absorbing introduction to a tale of interplanetary turmoil.

Day, Alyssa Entangled: Amara (368 pp.) $8.99 paper | $5.99 e-book Nov. 30, 2021 978-1-64937-091-4

THE LAST VOYAGE Earth Ascending

A newly turned vampire finds romance, family, and danger in this fantasy sequel.

In Savannah, Georgia, firefighter Hunter Evans died saving a child’s life. Bane, leader of the Vampire Motorcycle Club, then bit his friend, inviting him to the land of the undead. Three weeks later, Hunter struggles against drinking blood from a living victim rather than a blood bag. After fellow vamp Luke Calhoun helps him curb his thirst, Hunter bumps into the enchanting Alice Darlington, who runs the Little Darlings Rescue shelter. Though her specialty is animals, Alice can also sense and communicate with the dead. She assumes Hunter is a ghost and offers him an appointment. Later, at Bane’s mansion, Hunter waxes poetic about Alice to his supernatural family, including the wealthy Meara Delacourt. To encourage his pursuit, she donates $100,000 to Alice’s shelter.

Meara delivers Alice the check, then accompanies Hunter and his potential love to a restaurant to get to know her better. Alice still isn’t fully convinced her new friends are vampires until a ghost appears. The spectral flapper tells Alice: “They want you to die.” A deeper entanglement soon reaches out from her past.

Dr. Hanford Kurchausen, head of an institute for “mentally disturbed individuals” where Alice spent eight years, wants her powers to serve him again. In her sequel, Day sips long on the warmth and camaraderie found in seminal genre series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight. For the first third of the novel, the adventure focuses on Hunter and Alice as they find their places among the growing supernatural cast, which includes dragon-in-disguise Charlie, posing as a golden retriever. Hunter and Alice are well matched, he being the classic “nice guy” and she recovering from an old trauma. Yet his vampire lust runs hot in lines like “Every inch of his new body wanted to jump on her and take and take and take. Her mouth, her body, her blood.”

Behind Kurchausen is the broader villainy of Lord Alastair Neville, ruler of the warlocks of the Chamber, to be addressed in the next installment.

Larger plots percolate while new characters shine in this fantasy series entry.

Clare, Dawn Self (326 pp.) $14.95 paper | $5.99 e-book | July 12, 2021 979-8-74726-648-3 Advanced descendants of lost Atlantis return to modern Earth to enlighten and advance the planet, but alien hostiles threaten all.

In the latest by fantasy author Clare, whose last book was Journey Into the Past (2004), Atlians, the elite of lost Atlantis, are smart enough (or, in another interpretation, selfish enough) to have fled Earth before their high-tech civilization destroyed itself. Now, supported by an interplanetary Alliance of Galaxies, Atlian “Voyager” Jareth Dagda’s mission? Return to 21st-century Earth and boost humanity into a more harmonious evolutionary state before climate change and war trigger another Atlantis-type debacle. But fallout from a U.S.–Russian missile duel in space unintentionally shakes the dimensional grid of distant planet Reged. Its water-dwelling inhabitants (inspiration for yarns of mermaids and merrows) retaliate with a strike on Earth’s electromagnetic grid, spawning massive earthquakes and volcanoes.

Moreover, Tirich, another Atlian, secretly compromised by the Regedians and infatuated with Jareth’s lover, Charmaine, uses the opportunity to sabotage a mystic teleportation node to dispose of the heroic Voyager and have sylphlike Charmaine all to himself. The ensemble is thrown to a chaotic Earth, and, as the author weaves in multiple New Age tropes, the otherworldly heroes and their paranormal pals do not respond as readers might expect. The stranded Atlians continue their good deeds at ground level, sequestered among fellow survivors on richly described coasts of northern Scotland and Ireland; others are left to their various fates. Exhortations of better, enlightened living and shoutouts to SF heroes, like Masaru Emoto, alternate with a fair quantity of occult action and intrigue set against succinct strokes of geopolitics practiced on a wounded globe.

Readers in a prepper frame of mind get a persuasive look at a potential WWIII scenario/outcome (albeit with nasty alien merfolk). Though follow-ups are promised, this can be read as a stand-alone.

An entertaining mix of New Age quasi-magic and postapocalyptic SF.

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“A primer on the strength of family and the frailty of memory.” last stop on the 6

THE VIRTUAL EVENTS PLAYBOOK How to Successfully Train, Facilitate, Lead, and Present Using the Latest Collaboration Technology

Deaner, Lee, Nick Zerby & Stanley Saint-Louis Amplify Publishing (136 pp.) $24.95 | $9.99 e-book | Aug. 24, 2021 978-1-64543-689-8 A guide to navigating pandemic-inspired virtual training for companies.

As a direct result of Covid-19’s impact, “Virtual events will never again be considered optional luxuries,” write authors Deaner, Zerby, and Saint-Louis. Training veterans from the pharmaceutical industry, these three professionals were using virtual training well before Covid-19 changed the way many of us work. The authors make a compelling case for the cost and time benefits of virtual events and meetings, especially when it comes to instruction. They correctly note, however, that good content and planning are the keys to effectiveness, whether the event is virtual or live. They start with the basics, outlining the “two types of engagement” (community and individual) and the responsibilities of individuals involved in executing events. A subsequent chapter provides valuable techniques and tips for using platform tools, presenting graphics, incorporating recorded video, and handling technical glitches. The authors distinguish between and offer information for hosting interactive meetings and one-way webinars. Deaner, Zerby, and Saint-Louis offer an excellent how-to for virtual training sessions, including the use of breakout sessions and “presenting back to the group.” The information here is specific, technical, and augmented by helpful, pertinent examples. Later chapters, like “Delivering Results,” provide guidelines for both hosts and participants and give worthwhile guidance for developing an event master plan. The last is perhaps the most intriguing chapter; it serves as a “guide to using virtual events during the next crisis.” Sidebars supplement the primary content, and at the end of each chapter, the authors have appended a QR code and URL leading to additional free “active content.” This playbook should prove valuable to every corporate user of virtual events.

An authoritative, timely resource in the age of endless Zoom meetings.

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to Los Angeles, consumed with guilt over a fateful night of teenage carelessness that left her brother Jimmy paralyzed.

Ten years later, when her mother mails her a one-way ticket home for Jimmy’s last-minute wedding, Angela knows something else is up. Her fears are confirmed when she returns to the Bronx to find Jimmy missing—the first in a string of difficulties that brings Angela in contact with various elements from days gone by: her childhood friend Billy, an artist and recovering addict working for Angela’s family’s exterminating business; her alcoholic father, who’s preoccupied with Jimmy’s childhood acting career; a closetful of plastic saints; and an unsavory man called “Fat Freddy” and his thuggish cronies.

As seen through Angela’s eyes, the novel paints a portrait of a Bronx where a progressive anti-war activist still needs a “red slut dress” to do a business transaction with neighborhood muscle. Angela soon reveals herself to be an unreliable narrator, however, whose “bulldozing” manner seems to run in the family: Her mother is the queen in a hive of overbearing personalities, fuzzed by clichés but nevertheless complex in their motivations. The characters’ constant bickering, which sometimes feels more scripted than reflective of real life, brings the novel to a head at Billy’s art show, where “creepy-crawlies” take center stage in more ways than one. Set against the backdrop of America’s 1991 involvement in Kuwait and addressing addictions of all kinds, the novel dabbles in moralism but refuses to sacrifice its fast pace to pause for deep reflection.

Ultimately, Dunn’s novel is a primer on the strength of family and the frailty of memory and a reminder that the only way we can truly understand those we love is to stop and listen; after all, Dunn reminds us, “forgiveness can’t happen in silence.”

A novel that brings the Bronx to teeming life with a wry marriage of drama and humor.

THE MISSING STRAD The Story of the World’s Greatest Violin Forgery

Gaul, Gerald FriesenPress (336 pp.) $34.99 | $24.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Oct. 20, 2021 978-1-03-910820-2 978-1-03-910819-6 paper

A rollicking historical study that tackles the murky careers of antique violins and the raucous culture of 19th-century virtuosos.

Gaul, a violinist and trustee of the National Music Museum in South Dakota, explores the provenance of two 18th-century Cremonese instruments: the “Messiah” Stradivarius, owned

by Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum; and a violin made by luthier Giuseppi Guarneri, now displayed in Genoa’s town hall. The latter was once owned by legendary virtuoso Niccoló Paganini, who dubbed it Il Cannone for its powerful sound. Both violins are of questionable authenticity because of their passage through the workshop of Parisian luthier and violin dealer JeanBaptiste Vuillaume, who was known for making near-perfect

LAST STOP ON THE 6

Dunn, Patricia Bordighera Press (286 pp.) $20.00 paper | $9.99 e-book | Nov. 9, 2021 978-1-59954-173-0 A woman returns home to New York City and confronts her past in Dunn’s novel.

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copies of Cremonese originals. Vuillaume did repairs on Il Cannone for Paganini in 1833, bought the Messiah himself in 1855, and copied both. Gaul investigates the possibility that a copy was passed off as the original and even exceeded it in quality.

The author also dives deeply into old-school violin-making details, from the design of bows to specific techniques to make brand-new violins look very old. Along the way, he steeps readers in the antics of superstar romantic violinists, especially the larger-than-life Paganini; he spotlights the maestro’s astonishing performances, his tempestuous love affairs, his disturbing syphilis symptoms, and his devilish reputation. The book is a meandering jaunt, full of far-flung digressions on such topics as Napoleon Bonaparte’s mistress and the era’s anxiety that female piano players attracted immoral men; these sometimes lose the thread of the overarching mystery but are wonderfully intriguing in their own rights. Gaul relates all of this in elegant, evocative prose: “When it is ill—when it is being pried open with a knife—it makes sickening cracking sounds as its bones are separated,” he writes of Vuillaume’s disassembly of Il Cannone. “Paganini was exquisitely sensitive to sound, and it was a torment to hear his own violin put under the knife.” Lovers of classical music and forensic detective stories will eat it up.

An entertaining ramble through a golden age of violinplaying and violin-faking.

alternates between Rashida’s and Elliott’s perspectives with ease, giving readers insights into their family histories—the good and the bad—and their reasons for engaging in this conflict as well as with each other. The couple’s chemistry is off the charts from their first meeting on, but their problems are also very real and can’t be resolved with a single conversation or a simple kiss. The author’s obvious familiarity with and love for Atlanta, an ever changing yet deeply historical city, adds a unique and engaging flavor.

Equal parts adorable and sexy, with a strong social message and two appealing lovers.

JAKE AND THE PURPLE UNICORN Jake’s Dreamland

Hardy, Chris Illus. by Wally_LL (Osipova V.) Jake’s World (40 pp.) $9.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Dec. 15, 2021 978-1-7363235-4-0

A puppy dreams about wild escapades in this second installment of a picture-book series.

In Hardy’s appealing sequel, a shaggy, white puppy named Jake, a relatable child substitute, falls asleep in his cozy bed and is off to dreamland, looking for adventure. Jake finds it, meeting up with his pal Tedd the toad and driving the amphibian’s car to a forest where the canine makes a new friend, Gwen the Unicorn. Gwen invites Jake to jump on her back and hold on as she soars up into the sky and then straight down to the ocean floor, where diversions await.

Among the numerous undersea sights that the author’s rhyming text describes to tickle funny bones are “Wizards and lizards / and goats on floats / They saw sharks named Mark / and seals with wheels.” LL’s colorful, digital art enhances the overall gentle silliness with a wealth of visual whimsy: A seal wears blue roller skates; a goat lounges on a pizza float; whales knit sweaters; and starfish play basketball. (Readers will have fun, too, going through the pages to spot Jake’s squirrel friend in each image.) After Jake wakes up and a certain discovery makes him wonder if he is “really awake, or am I still dreaming?”

Hardy invites reader involvement: “He had no clue what was really true / so tell me, dear friend / do you??”

Children will relate to the endearing canine at the center of this zany adventure.

THE HOOKUP DILEMMA

Gillam, Constance Entangled: Amara (400 pp.) $15.99 paper | $7.99 e-book | Nov. 16, 2021 978-1-68281-572-4 A sexy one-night stand goes awry in this enemies-to-lovers romance.

Rashida Howard hadn’t planned on hooking up. The Atlanta afternoon is sweltering; her feet hurt in her high heels; and she has just been stood up for an important, possibly life-changing meeting. But Elliott is irresistible, and not just because he shares his table in a crowded bar with Rashida. He’s extremely attractive; he loves food as much as she does (and she writes about it for a living); and when they take their flirtatious conversation to a hotel suite, Rashida knows she’s in for an unforgettable night with someone she can easily leave behind. Or so she thinks—Elliott is the son of Marcus Quinn, head of the architectural firm intent on erecting new and expensive facilities in Atlanta’s Millhouse neighborhood, where Rashida spent a good chunk of her childhood and where her beloved and spirited grandmother Eula Mae Robinson still resides. Rashida knows the gentrification that will soon follow such a move and thinks she can persuade the Quinn firm to forge alternative plans—so what if Elliott is now in charge while his father recovers from a heart attack? So what if Elliott knows the firm desperately needs this success to survive?

And so what if Elliott continues to be incredibly sexy? As Elliott and Rashida navigate legal mediation, community protests, and unexpected soul food dinners, both wonder if this is a one-night stand that can survive a battle between old and new. Gillam 144

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RUNNING OUT OF WORDS FOR AFTERWARDS Poems

Hargreaves, David Broadstone Books (96 pp.) $21.95 paper | Oct. 1, 2021 978-1-937968-93-9 Poems of creation and destruction located in the earthly and spiritual worlds feature in this collection. |

In his debut book of poems, including many previously published in literary magazines, Hargreaves draws, in part, on his translation of contemporary Nepalese poet Durga Lal Shrestha’s works in The Blossoms of Sixty-Four Sunsets (2014). His own “Sense and Reference,” set in Patan, Nepal, pairs two columns of stanzas; at left, the poet recounts a conversation with a Nepalese friend working out the meanings of mākhu, a word for many disparate flavors, such as those of bananas, rice flakes, and avocados. He doesn’t get it, concluding that “Clearly, I have no taste / and no clue.” On the right-hand side, a column in italics describes birds and animals above and around a temple carved with erotic images, said to protect the temple from “the prudish / virgin goddess of lightning.” Like many other poems in the book, this one contrasts the mundane—a tea stall, a snack—with the numinous while also drawing connections between them. The mystery of taste, the birds and monkeys living their animal lives, the sculptured tantric couplings, the casual conversation effectively intertwine like the words of a poem itself. The poet explores other seeming dualities in other works, including birth and death, fate and chance, and the natural and human-made worlds; there is a clear sense of longing for connection as well as images of thirst, hunger, and desire. Although one poem (“News at Eleven”) employs the hendecasyllable meter of classical poetry, most are written in free verse that’s lushly allusive yet chiseled to essentials. The prosody is marked by pleasing alliteration and assonance, as in “Now & Then,” in which the K and T sounds in “O’ Kālī, O’ Time” ripple through the poem (“taught us / to tally”; “chit / for each goat”; “match goat to chit”).

Remarkably well-crafted verses that feel alive to the fullness of experience.

disguised / as hunger for the tender / tongue of touch” or when adults yearn to remain in “a place where the taste of salt might linger / on remembered skin.” Personal experiences intertwine with vivid imagery in Hines’ poems, offering a tactile description of living that’s often baffling but always meaningful; it’s a world where “Sometimes grownups kiss. Sometimes they cut. / It’s hard to explain but some like to draw blood.” The voices within this collection savor each moment of play, each sensation, and each moment before the sun descends.

A dynamic and colorful set of poems inspired by water and ocean imagery.

REQUITAL A Dr. Sean Nolan Mystery

Johnson, E.W. Self (302 pp.) $9.99 paper | $2.99 e-book | Oct. 29, 2021 979-8-49402-878-5

WINTER AT A SUMMER HOUSE Poems

Hines, Mary Beth Kelsay Books (102 pp.) $19.00 paper | Nov. 4, 2021 978-1-63980-045-2

A poet’s debut collection swims through the cycles of life.

Hines grew up in Massachusetts, adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, and the poems in this debut collection are filled with richly detailed imagery evoking the sea—of characters swimming, bathing, diving, as if time were an unpredictable element and living, a process of navigating unexpected currents. Each of the volume’s six sections is associated with a different phase of life; one poem features an infant taking a bath (“As water rushes from the tap, rainbow bubbles / build then snap. Waves ripple her legs and chest”), while a later work features a more independent and stronger protagonist, going to the water to “dive / the way he taught me, / beeline into surf swell, / under mayhem, into sparkle.”

The richness of Hines’ poetic structure is powerfully auditory, often reminiscent of the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The sounds and syncopated rhythms of her language are just as vital as the subjects she describes, as when “the baby cried / his distress |

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This fifth installment in Johnson’s ongoing thriller series takes physician Sean Nolan to the U.S.–Mexico border to bust a drug cartel and save a family.

Fresh from the Sudan after investigating deaths caused by a designer drug in Imbalance (2021), Nolan is approached by his lawyer girlfriend, Elena Cantrell, with a tantalizing proposition. A drug-mule client offers to help bring down a powerful cartel in exchange for Nolan’s freeing his captive family members and smuggling them out of Mexico. The adventurous doctor decides to take the assignment, although it’s surely beyond any skill he learned in medical school. However, with his growing reputation as an international operative, he rounds up a support team of ex-military mercs and picks up a few other teammates along the way, including Jonathan Coleville, a pharmaceutical genius and “wealthy man-child, trying to save the world,” whom Nolan had met in the Sudan.

There’s not a lot of nuanced character development in these pages, but there’s plenty of humor, and Johnson, a physician himself, clearly has fun giving the young soldiers any reason to crack a joke. This serves as an effective tension reliever in this action-driven narrative. Indeed, their lighthearted camaraderie belies the seriousness of their undertaking, making them appear more suited to beer pong than armed conflict—but this impression is quickly dispelled once the shooting starts. Nolan and Elena have an appealingly passionate and flirty relationship; his frequently deadpan delivery gives him such a cool, calm, and collected air that the rare times he breaks character are welcome.

Later, when the team’s cover is blown, the cartel retaliates, but Nolan adapts, and the fight ends up at cartel headquarters in Mexico and threatens to cause an international incident. Still, Nolan and his men manage to make it all look easy.

An engaging thriller that offers a fine mix of action and humor.

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“The dissection of a disintegrating marriage in these pages is unsettlingly vivid.” permission

SAM THE CHOSEN

PERMISSION

Jones, Wally Koehler Books (284 pp.) $29.95 | $19.95 paper | $7.49 e-book Nov. 16, 2021 978-1-64663-456-9

Kristal, Marc Atmosphere Press (370 pp.) $18.99 paper | $7.99 e-book | Nov. 16, 2021 978-1-63988-111-6 A burned-out writer hits rock bottom and eventually reinvents his life in this novel.

The narrator of Kristal’s tale leaves the slough of Los Angeles at the outset of the book in hopes of striking it big in the heyday of Ronald Reagan–era New York City. There, he lives the life of a high-profile freelance writer rubbing elbows with a seedy but glamorous set. “My friends were seldom writers or artists,” he reflects, “but rather a phylum of those I worked for: commodities traders, junk bond dealers, all of them arrogant, brainless, materialistic.” He also has a series of lovers, “high-strung girls, ferocious drinkers, all with hard, tiring jobs that owned a weird insubstantiality: focus group leaders, time buyers, food stylists.” Only belatedly do readers learn that the narrator has had a wife this whole time in New York, a woman who inherited a “blue-chip portfolio that paid enough in dividends to float a vie de la boheme; and the lack of a need to work had leached into the groundwater of her emotional conflict.”

Despite her initial resistance (“I’m not leaving” becomes something of a refrain throughout the story), she and the narrator ultimately move back to LA, where the “consuming reality” is that everything had to sell, “and if people weren’t buying your thing, you bloody well fixed it until they did.” The narrator is nakedly ambitious. “God knows I wanted to make it,” he confesses. “I was dying to see a hideous flash picture of myself, snapped at an opening, on the back page of Variety.”

The return to LA precipitates many descents for the narrator and a key change in his wife’s life. She starts going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. But the narrator’s efforts in the script-doctoring business feel uninspired (“The work might lack originality,” he allows, “but one sustained a career and, no less valuably, a reputation”). And as his marriage dramatically tumbles into savage antagonism, the narrator falls into a $5,000-a-month addiction to sex workers and cocaine. Kristal writes this dramatic and seedy deterioration with incredible vibrancy and linguistic virtuosity (“Think of a December night,” goes one passage in which the narrator fondly remembers his initial experiences with cocaine, “when the crisp, clear air rings each streetlight with an aureole, the vodka pours thick and frigid and arrives in a crystal glass, when a woman’s smile is bright, her laugh musical, and every scrape and snap has a satisfying bite: cocaine at its best is all that”). The book’s protracted anatomy of drug- and alcohol-fueled deconstruction is immensely insightful and powerful. When the narrator complacently observes that “one cannot build a useful fiction on top of a destructive lie,” readers will genuinely wince at the self-delusion. And when he leaves his wife and meets a supportive woman named Jessica, those same readers will cheer.

The dissection of a disintegrating marriage in these pages is unsettlingly vivid, as is the portrait of degradation brought on

A woman begins a strange new life after a personal tragedy in Jones’ debut paranormal thriller.

Samantha is a second grade teacher living in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, Charlie, and two teenage children, Lexi and Kevin, during a dangerous time. People from every walk of life, but especially nuclear families, are being attacked on a global scale, and no one knows who—or what—is doing it: “Not a single eyewitness was ever found. Not one security camera caught video of an attack.” Curfews, empty supermarkets, and military patrols are commonplace. When the three-week siege abruptly ends, 6 million people are dead. Later, Sam’s family decides to go camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where they have a deadly encounter with a bear protecting her cub. Afterward, Sam awakens in a cave, tended by stern men and wolflike canines. A man named Grondi says that Charlie and Lexi died but that Kevin’s recuperating in another cave. Sam has devastating spinal injuries, but her hosts insist she’ll soon heal. The secretive group, called the Chosen, has elected to adopt Sam and Kevin during their Time of Prophecy, in which an “unseen storm” will wreak havoc on humanity’s “unstable biome.” But will Sam be able to stomach the Chosen’s plans? Jones’ novel uniquely blends discussion of the natural world with werewolf fantasy, as when Grondi urges Sam to reevaluate blaming the bears for her family members’ deaths: “Both you and the mother bear did what you felt was right.” Sam’s dreams of hunting prey effectively foreshadow her own physical transformation; however, she learns that the familiar humanoid werewolf form is “outlawed” by the Chosen because it “blends the worst traits from both species.” Grondi also sharply critiques Sam’s former society, saying, “Only humans could create a contrivance where the few must be supported by the many.” However, Sam gets a chance to renew her happiness with Nechek, a male Chosen, and by teaching again. A grand, dark secret lies at the center of the Chosen’s existence, providing fertile ground for a sequel.

An entertaining, well-crafted debut that challenges humankind’s stewardship of the planet.

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by addiction. The fact that the narrator somehow remains likable throughout is as remarkable as it is unexpected.

A searingly moving picture of a personal, professional, and marital crackup.

masterfully, using them to fully immerse readers in the eerie atmospherics: “She listened. The water lapped gently at the shore, hundreds of branches creaked under the weight of the breeze, nearby frogs croaked at the moon, and there was a faint chiming. Adriana didn’t expect to find anything pleasant in this nightmare world, but the distant bell chimed continuously, monotone and somewhat soothing.” But, above all, it’s the surprisingly intricate plotline that powers this narrative.

The wide-ranging characters—from Adriana’s neighbor’s deaf teen daughter to the courageous wife of the candidate running against Bradley—are like puzzle pieces, and with each new revelation, the grisly picture becomes clearer.

An impressive, complex horror tale—two (rotting) thumbs up.

FACE THE NIGHT

Lastufka, Alan Shortwave Media (344 pp.) $22.99 | $16.99 paper | $5.99 e-book March 8, 2022 978-1-73369-192-5 978-1-73369-193-2 paper In this debut novel that fuses horror and supernatural mystery, a woman struggles to understand a recurring nightmare that has haunted her since childhood.

Set in the fictional town of Cellar, Ohio, in 1987, the story begins as Adriana Krause—an unemployed, single mother trying to make ends meet—is embroiled in a custody battle over her 3-year-old son, Dylan, with her estranged father, Bradley Krause.

Bradley is the longtime mayor of the town. After a court judge decides that in order for Adriana to keep custody of her son, she needs to secure gainful employment in the next 30 days, her life goes from bad to worse. Dylan’s biological father, Eric—a drug addict who has had nothing to do with Adriana and her son for years—overdoses and dies on her couch while babysitting the boy as she attempts to get hired as a sketch artist for the local police department. Because of her uncanny ability to bring subjects to life on the sketch pad, she gets the job—barely—and befriends a rookie cop named Matthew Hinkley. The two are both outsiders of sorts and find common ground questioning the strange and seemingly unethical decisions coming from the mayor and the police chief. As Adriana fights to keep custody of her son, she becomes increasingly beleaguered with a dream that has haunted her for years. In the dream, she is underwater at the bottom of a lake when a rotting arm explodes from the sediment, grabs her, and begins pulling her down. When she sees the corpse’s face, it’s trying to tell her something. As her father becomes embroiled in a contentious mayoral race, Adriana and Matthew begin to piece together the clues that they’ve uncovered—some from his work with cold-case files and others from her evolving nightmare—and the conclusion they both come to is as shocking as it is gruesome.

This outstanding novel is reminiscent of early works by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Lastufka brilliantly uses subtle imagery and symbolism throughout to create a decidedly dark undertone that is simultaneously creepy and nostalgic. In the very first sequence, for example, Adriana tattoos a laughing, rotting skull onto the arm of her former boyfriend as ’80s tunes blare from the radio. The utilization of music from the era adds another layer to the narrative and creates a memorable soundtrack to Adriana’s story that includes Depeche Mode’s “Strangelove,” Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” and Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” And, like the aforementioned horror luminaries, the author employs sensory descriptions

THE CAPITALIST AND THE ACTIVIST Corporate Social Activism and the New Business of Change

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Lin, Tom C.W. Berrett-Koehler Publishers (240 pp.) $29.95 | $29.95 e-book | Jan. 11, 2022 978-1-52-309199-7 A legal scholar examines the growing phenomenon of corporate activism.

In this debut book, Lin—a law professor at Temple University and Academic Fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Law, Economics & Finance—suggests that “too often the stories of activists and capitalists are told as disparate, unrelated stories of distinct tribes.” With an expert’s grasp on current trends in corporate America, the author instead sees the “new reality of corporate social activism” and the “interplay between capitalists and activists” as an important 21st-century development. Nearly every major corporation, for instance, has formal “social responsibility programs,” and Fortune 500 companies have pumped billions of dollars into these campaigns since 2020 alone. The intertwining of grassroots and corporate activism can be seen in the wake of the tragic school shooting in Parkland, Florida. At the same time, gun control activists, many of them students who survived the shooting, organized the “March for Our Lives” protest in Washington, D.C., and America’s largest banks cut their financial ties to gun manufacturers who made bump stocks and high-capacity magazines. Corporate influence on social issues comes as no surprise to Lin, who describes in an accessible and rigorous narrative how government policies in the 1970s and ’80s and Supreme Court cases like Citizens United have transformed companies into “private empires.” And though there is a “danger of corporate whitewashing” by using social justice campaigns to divert attention from “problematic business practices,” the author by and large sees the intersection of social consciousness and capitalism as a positive development that leads to “Better Activism” and “Better Business.” Thus, while recognizing corporate bad actors like former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, the engrossing book often gives entrepreneurs the benefit of the |

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“Magee’s prose is crisp and precise, showcasing an effortless descriptive style.” dear william

CINDER THE FIREPLACE BOY And Other Gayly Grimm Tales

doubt. Many moderates and neoliberals will share the eloquent volume’s optimistic sentiments as well as embrace its support of both free market capitalism and social justice reforms. But those outside the ideological mainstream may find this work a frustrating read—from those on the right like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who rail against “corporate communism” to those on the left whose plans for systemic reform include dismantling corporations.

A well-researched, absorbing, and balanced case for corporate-activist partnerships.

Mardoll, Ana Illus. by Alex Dingley Acacia Moon Publishing (232 pp.) $15.99 paper | $4.99 e-book | Nov. 21, 2021 979-8-985-04241-2 LGBTQ+ characters take center stage in Mardoll’s reimagining of classic fairy tales.

Mardoll’s fairy tales might sound familiar, but if readers pay close attention, they’ll notice he’s made a few changes from the classic Brothers Grimm versions.

In one, a prince who makes a reluctant deal with a frog discovers the amphibian is a beautiful young man in disguise. In another, a princess falls in love with a woman trapped high in a tower, accessible only by climbing the woman’s long golden hair.

In the wonderfully titled “Sometimes Hansel and Othertimes Gretel,” a woodcutter’s child identifies as a boy on some days and a girl on others. The kind woodcutter accepts the child’s fluidity, while the child’s mother is annoyed by it. As Mardoll explains in the book’s introduction, he has always loved the Grimms’ fairy tales—and has frequently given volumes of them as gifts—but found them lacking in one area specifically. “I was proud to share my love for these tales, even if sometimes I felt a gnawing hunger when I remembered how heteronormative the stories were; how much sooner would I have found my queer self if those old tales had contained queer representation?”

In these 31 versions of the classic tales, Mardoll has removed instances of racism, antisemitism, and Christian moralizing while introducing queer and disabled characters. Women fall in love with women; husbands give birth to babies; and beautiful maidens use wheelchairs to get around. The tales are preceded by content notes warning of potential triggers, from the classic (“Cannibalism, Murder, Dismemberment, Execution”) to the contemporary (“Accidental Misgendering”). Mardoll also starts each story by identifying the pronouns of the characters who will appear in it.

Mardoll’s prose mimics the fabulist style of the original tales. The language is precise without delving too deeply into the specifics of character: “Once upon a time there lived a child who liked to be idle and daydream, as children often do. Their mother was very vexed by this and accused the child of being lazy, insisting that a young person on the cusp of adulthood as they were should learn a useful trade such as spinning yarn.”

Gorgeous color illustrations by Dingley, which manage to feel medieval and modern at the same time, accompany the text.

Some of the tales are essentially the originals with a few pronouns swapped: The Frog Prince seduces a man, and Rapunzel is wooed by a woman. The more interesting ones are those in which the characters’ queerness contributes to the plot, as in the fairly ingenious title story, which is perhaps the best in the book. The protagonist is a boy who everyone thinks is a girl. His cruel stepmother and stepsisters misgender him and call him Cinderella, and it’s only the power of a magic bird that allows him to present his true self to the handsome prince. While the

DEAR WILLIAM A Father’s Memoir of Addiction, Recovery, Love, and Loss

Magee, David Matt Holt (256 pp.) $28.99 | $12.99 e-book | Nov. 2, 2021 978-1-953295-68-2 A writer and former newspaper editor reflects on his family’s addiction issues following his son’s fatal drug over-

dose in this memoir.

The memoir opens in 2013, with author Magee witnessing his son William lying dead on his couch with a rolled up $20 bill still in his hand. William, who’d spent time in drug rehab, was eager to go to law school but unable to shake his addiction.

During their final meeting before his death, William encouraged his father to write a book about their family’s struggles to help other families. Magee writes of being raised in a family that had its share of secrets: His parents covered up his adoption with a fake birth certificate, and his adoptive father was a closeted gay man. Magee also describes his own problems with substance abuse that began in his teens. As a father, he identified similar patterns of addiction in his offspring; his other son, Hudson, got into a life-threatening accident prompted by substance abuse. The memoir closes with the author working on building the William Magee Institute for Student Wellbeing at the University of Mississippi for students with alcohol and drug problems. Magee’s prose is crisp and precise, showcasing an effortless descriptive style: “The first day of February, I peek through the blinds. It’s sunny out, and flakes swirl in the air, although the sky is all blue. Everything else is white, alien, sparkling.” Despite journalistic leanings toward brevity, his writing is never sterile; this passage, describing his bond with his son, is subtly laced with evocative imagery and complex emotion: “He wanted to look out for me. Because I’m fragile. His boy-man face grows wavery as I blink back tears.” The text can be brutal at times, but overall, this is a carefully nuanced work that explores the dark realties of substance abuse. Indeed, despite his tragic loss, Magee’s tone is frequently positive: “Our children’s struggles have changed us. We’re more aware of the suffering of others and more motivated to help them.”

Essential, poignant, and insightful reading for anyone aiming to understand familial patterns of addiction.

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OUR HOME IN MYANMAR Four Years in Yangon

reader may sometimes wish Mardoll had allowed the characters’ new traits to propel the stories in new and surprising directions, the author has succeeded in his task of creating more inclusive versions of the stories that the Grimms’ fans know and love.

A welcome, clever update of fairy tales that work best when they reinvent the originals.

Mudditt, Jessica Thorpe-Bowker (316 pp.) $17.33 paper | $7.99 e-book | March 5, 2021 978-0-648-91422-8

Martin, Heather FriesenPress (180 pp.) $19.49 | $15.49 paper | $7.99 e-book Oct. 13, 2021 978-1-03-911752-5 A debut guide offers a multipronged plan for improving health and well-being.

The wheel at the heart of Martin’s slim book has “community” at its hub.

Twenty years of wide-ranging reading and experiences have left the author with the strong conviction that community— friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors—is the crucial center of gravity for a healthy, well-grounded life. “Human beings are social animals,” she writes. “Community is where it starts and where it ends.” The rest of the wheel—the different parts of the hub circling that center—is made up of the six ingredients that “add up to optimum emotional, physical, and spiritual wellness.”

Those items are “Purpose,” “Mindset,” “Sleep,” “Constitution,” “Lifestyle,” and “Food.” Over the course of the manual, Martin elaborates on each of these components, first giving her readers several tips on how to build the kind of community that sustains those elements. After that, each ingredient is discussed at length—and in surprising detail for so short a book. She takes readers through the basis of a sound diet, the outlines of a “sleep survival tool kit” (citing, for instance, the current figures of chronic sleep deprivation in the United States and the deleterious health effects associated with that), and alternate methods of understanding health paradigms, such as India’s Ayurvedic lifestyle. She delivers all of this advice with a breezy, optimistic tone that’s immediately inviting to readers, especially those who may be feeling guilty or touchy about neglecting such basics as “seek out activities you enjoy,” “get out in nature,” and “walk, walk, walk.” Some of this advice is too simplistic—“You are what you think,” and “Do what makes you happy.” But most of the counsel achieves a very pleasing mix of practical and aspirational. In addition, the guide is well designed: The visuals very much help to break down the main points.

An energetic, optimistic, and worthwhile blueprint for adding mindfulness to daily life.

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This memoir details a journalistic coming-of-age in Myanmar.

The premise of Mudditt’s debut is simple, but its content proves highly complex as it details the author’s time living in Myanmar for four years from 2012 to 2016. The Melbourne native moved to the city of Yangon with her Bangladeshi husband, translator Sherpa Hussainy, to build a life and career, and she meticulously documents her experience as a journalist in one of the world’s most repressive military regimes, home to a stunning diversity of ethnic and religious groups, a sublime natural landscape, and a complex pre- and post-colonial history.

The first part of the book deals with practical difficulties as well as the struggles she faced in understanding the country’s sociopolitical and journalistic landscape. A late chapter that gives the book its title marks a turning point as she experiences a budding hope regarding the country’s nascent democratic processes. The book’s last third highlights the 2015 election, which took place amid a rise in xenophobia and religious fundamentalism. Black-and-white photos shot by Mudditt enhance it throughout, and a detailed epilogue connects her narrative to the present-day human rights and political situation in the country. Thematically and stylistically, Mudditt employs a careful journalistic voice as she exposes the privileges and pitfalls of her Western European viewpoint, and her tone balances genuine emotional reactions with journalistic observations; the result is a balanced but passionate report. She excels at bringing in diverse local perspectives to constantly challenge her own, and the reader’s, expectations of Myanmar. This is particularly visible in Mudditt’s exploration of the politics of renaming the country, which was formerly known as Burma, and the citizenry’s treatment of gender. Her observation of employees in the state-controlled publication The New Light is nuanced and crucially combats more reductive depictions of people working in regimes with limited press freedom. The book’s epilogue is almost poignant in its matter-of-fact manner, as the book leaves the reader the same way Mudditt left Myanmar—on a sad note of incompletion yet enriched in knowledge and spirit.

An honest, detailed, and well-structured account of the personal and political.

THE WHEEL OF WELLNESS Seven Habits of Healthy, Happy People

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“The narrator offers an almost Jack Prelutsky–ian tale of kitchen chaos.” baking up a storm

EVEN A PANDEMIC CAN’T STOP LOVE AND MURDER

see was a mess; trash and oil stains were the main inhabitants.”

While this book offers a solid wrap-up, the author has two more installments in the works.

A rousing crime tale with an indelible cast and a sharp, edgy environment.

O’Neill, A.E.S. AESON Publications (342 pp.) $9.99 paper | $3.99 e-book | Oct. 14, 2021 979-8-985-12240-4

BAKING UP A STORM

In this debut thriller set during a pandemic, a New Jersey contractor finds romance while dodging a lethal mobster henchman.

For his contract work at a bank, Aloysius “Alby” O’Brien anticipates payment under the table. That’s perfectly fine, but since he’d rather not do asbestos removal, he farms the work out to three strangers. One of those hires does something with unexpected consequences—he swipes a signed cashier’s check that a dim bank executive left in the open. The theft itself isn’t surprising; what’s shocking is that the bank’s owners are mobsters. They want this mess cleared up in a week and send meticulous problem-solver Jagger, who’s armed with a fake FBI badge and homicidal intentions. Alby hunts for the thief, too, as the mob’s involvement has already complicated the quiet life he struggles to maintain. Years ago, while working in Baghdad, he was unwittingly entangled in an Islamic State group attack. United States government types spun the story so that Alby was the hero who thwarted the assault. This unquestionably put him on the terrorists’ hit list, forcing him to retreat to America and keep as low a profile as possible. But his present situation isn’t all bad, with charming diner waitress/Zumba instructor Ginger occupying his mind. While she shares with Alby a love of classic Hollywood musicals, Jagger tracks down the contract employees, leaving lingering threats and the occasional body in his wake. It’s not long before he’s eyeing Alby, an intriguing man with an oddly murky history. But now that Alby is dating Ginger, he’s not the only one in potential danger.

O’Neill infuses his series opener with a perpetual sense of unease. Jagger, for example, is a constant menacing presence, and readers know his ferocious search puts him closer and closer to Alby. In the same vein, the mobsters’ deadline ignites the story’s momentum, as each new chapter designates the day and time like a countdown. Even romantic interludes with Alby and Ginger hardly slow the narrative down. Their dialogue scenes pop, and their dates include such winsome bits as Alby’s mostly futile attempts at dancing. The titular pandemic enhances this story— it creates a brooding atmosphere rather than serving as the plot’s driving force. In this case, the near-future world endures Covid22. Alby protects himself with the most elaborate mask available, while Jagger, who’s getting his hands dirty for the mob, makes sure to sanitize when mingling with the unvaccinated. Despite the romantic couple’s appeal, Jagger is the standout; it’s not his violent acts that prove the most terrifying but rather his painstaking dedication to his grim assignment. His actions often showcase O’Neill’s stark, concise prose: “He saw an empty garage with weeds starting to poke through the black parking lot tar; an abandoned business, two large bay doors with narrow glass windows near the top. Jagger got out and peered through the windows. The place was half-lit from the parking lot, so all he could 150

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Parham, Jessica Illus. by Srimalie Bassani Mascot Books (38 pp.) $16.95 | Jan. 4, 2022 978-1-63755-013-7

A child and mother follow a grandmother’s famous cupcake recipe, unleashing a magical storm of ingredients in this cleverly inclusive rhyming picture book.

A pale, sports-loving child with orange hair, red pants, and a striped blue-and-white shirt plans for an average day baking when something magical happens. “Our ingredients were out, all placed in a row, / but then somehow, it started to snow!” the child recounts. It’s not snow pouring from the ceiling but flour, and as soon as the narrator scoops some into the bowl, the flour storm stops. Next, milk pours from the faucet, sugar floods under the doors, eggs drop from the ceiling, and butter flows across the floor. As each ingredient is added, the last storm stops, until salt, vanilla, and baking powder are all added to the mix. After a dash of sprinkles, the cupcakes go in the oven, and the result is delicious. The narrator offers an almost Jack Prelutsky–ian tale of kitchen chaos, never mentioning in the text the limb difference shown in Bassani’s fantastical cartoon illustrations. The child’s shorter arm doesn’t ever hinder adding each ingredient and stirring it into the mixing bowl; instead, this story is about magic, chaos, and baking a family recipe, and it features a hero with a limb difference. Parham’s scansion sometimes adds or drops a beat, but the rhymes are solid, with fun-to-say words (goop, bonkers) sprinkled throughout.

A tale of kitchen whimsy starring an underrepresented hero.

FUNERAL FOR FLACA Essays

Prado, Emilly Future Tense Books (186 pp.) $14.00 paper | July 1, 2021 978-1-892061-87-4 A collection of essays that walks readers through different phases of one woman’s life.

This compilation ranges from Prado’s earliest memory of her father’s absence from a kindergarten show and tell to her present struggles with bipolar disorder and PTSD and with offering forgiveness.

Her carefully crafted essays are all intensely felt. She starts off strongly by detailing her experiences as a brown kid in Belmont, |

California, who spoke Spanish at home; she points out how she struggled with her identity at a primarily White school. Prado guides readers through the trying events of her childhood, as when her dad left the family and she almost failed out of middle school. She hastily moves on to her emotional breakdown right before her college graduation and then recounts serious romantic relationships and how they fell apart as well as experiences of sexual assault. In the midst of her storytelling, Prado challenges readers to reconsider their definition of storytelling, as she says that she can’t always trust her own memories. However, the way that she mixes in contemporary letters and diary entries makes her experiences feel tangible and gives them additional credibility. She also incorporates family and school photographs as well as her heartfelt sentiments in a eulogy for her aunt Concha. Prado’s intentional ordering of her essays effectively brings “quiero bailar” together with the essays that surround it. At first glance, it would appear to be disconnected, as it’s about gentrification in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant and feels less personal and more critical; however, it makes sense when one considers the essays before and after—in which Prado discovers that she’s 60% European and considers letting go of her family nickname—as they share the concept of needing to “exist loudly” in order to “never be forgotten.”

A difficult but heartwarming set of essays that relate a story of healing.

effectively inform the most urgent events of the present and enrich the cast of characters as well. In Part 2, what feels at first like a digression turns into its own rich story with additional intrigue, although it’s not quite as exciting or dramatic as Part 1.

A tense third act successfully ties it all together with a satisfying resolution to each thread. Along the way, Roach finds moments to illustrate nature, as when “bugs dance in the beams” of car headlights. These reflections on the Australian setting are a consistent treat even as tension builds at every turn.

A slow, complicated mystery that pays off in the end.

THE WITCHES OF VEGAS

Rosendorf, Mark The Wild Rose Press (272 pp.) $15.99 paper | $4.99 e-book | Aug. 5, 2020 978-1-5092-3211-6

A MATCHBOX FULL OF PEARLS

Roach, Kamille Independently Published (323 pp.) $14.62 | $5.72 e-book | Nov. 4, 2021 979-8-541-06464-3

Past and present collide as an Australian woman confronts a series of mysteries in Roach’s dramatic debut novel.

In 2006, Lola Harris must return to her small Australian hometown of York for a funeral and to receive her inheritance following the death of her foster mom, Blossom—one of “two tidy deaths” revealed in the novel’s opening line. On the plane, she looks over an article about an exotic dancer and convicted murderer named Lovely Lorrelai, which Blossom sent her before she died, and she hears from a fellow passenger that a serial rapist has apparently returned to the town after an eight-year absence. Back in York, she bumps into familiar figures from her childhood: Perry, a pest; Ben “Walshy” Walsh, whom she still considers the love of her life; Shelley Turner, a friend with dark secrets; and Mary, Lola’s old boss at the local bar, who gives Lola a key that Blossom left her. Each person will play a role in solving the mystery that Lola uncovers, which involves a book of sketches of Lorrelai. In the book’s second part, Lorrelai speaks for herself as the story makes a startling shift to the past—one that will excite and infuriate readers (in the best way) and leads to a cliffhanger in the present day. In general, the novel switches between Lola’s childhood and adulthood quite seamlessly; her memories, interspersed throughout, |

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Las Vegas witches face off against a diabolical and powerful being in this YA paranormal novel.

Isis Rivera is only 9 years old when she discovers incredible abilities like telekinesis. These powers so terrify her foster parents that they try exorcising her. But she’s also tapping into a “universal energy” that leads Sebastian Santell right to her. He’s a sympathetic witch who takes her to his coven, though he describes it as a family. By 15, Isis belongs to “The Witches of Vegas” along with Sebastian, two sister witches, and a 500-year-old vampire. They use supernatural skills to pull off seemingly impossible feats (disguised as illusions), making them the hottest act on the strip. They’ve practically wiped out the competition save for “The Amazing Herb Galloway Show.” Yet adept teen magician Zack Galloway and his Uncle Herb barely scrape by. So when a brash reporter named Victoria Hunter comes to them with her plan to expose The Witches of Vegas, the boy and his uncle reluctantly agree.

She has a crazy notion that the performers are bona fide witches and a vampire, something young Isis might admit if Zack warms up to her. Once he gets close to selfless, softhearted Isis, Zack has second thoughts about the scheme. Unfortunately, it may be too late, as someone kidnaps Isis. Zack turns to Sebastian and his coven for help, but their new enemy—the mysterious and vengeance-minded Valeria—wields more power than they can imagine. To stand a chance of defeating her, they’ll need strength, determination, and even a few tricks up Zack’s sleeve.

In this kinetic series opener, Rosendorf offers solid character development. Isis, for example, struggles to master her abilities and, as readers learn, may be capable of much more.

But she’s also a girl who begins the novel without a family—an absence Sebastian’s coven fills. Sebastian adopts the role of her dad, and vampire Luther acts as Isis’ perpetually cranky, centuries-old grandfather. While the narrative runs full tilt, glimpses into characters’ pasts enrich the present-day setting. Most notably, Valeria’s history with a coven member, during which she suffered a particularly horrid experience, fuels her revenge. Her battles with Sebastian, Zack, and the others spark entertaining 151

“An inspiring, positive tale that exemplifies staying true to yourself.” the extraordinarily ordinary life of prince

THE EXTRAORDINARILY ORDINARY LIFE OF PRINCE Everybody’s Good at Something

action scenes: “A chair rose out from the row and flew at Valeria.

With a flick of her hand, she changed the chair’s trajectory so it slammed against the wall. She did the same with the second chair that hurdled her way. The third, she sent back at Sebastian, who dove to the floor, barely escaping its attack.” Notwithstanding all the extraordinary abilities on display, the story showcases players who display nonsupernatural talents as well. Vegas witch Selena Quinn, for example, has enough medical know-how to tend to someone’s broken arm. Zack is especially impressive, cleverly turning his brand of magic against Valeria and dropping the occasional one-liner in the face of danger. Sadly, not everyone makes it to the end, but with such an appealing cast, readers will surely follow the characters to the sequel.

A fast-paced, engaging, and unexpectedly heartfelt supernatural tale.

Sanders, Prince A Illus. by Ikhsan Ditya Dorrance Publishing (58 pp.) $25.00 | $23.00 paper | Aug. 23, 2021 978-1-63661-428-1 978-1-63661-400-7 paper A boy pursues his love for dance despite bullies in Sanders’ picture book.

Prince, a 7-year-old boy, struggles to find his passion, particularly when compared to his popular and athletic brother, Andrew. Despite Andrew’s encouragement, Prince, who is Black, feels disheartened that “his body didn’t want to cooperate and do the things Andrew instructed.” When Mom takes the family to see the ballet at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, Prince is captivated and soon enrolls in a ballet class. The only boy there, he adores class and excels at the steps. The teacher, Miss Adriana, says, “He is destined to be a dancer!” The boy’s talent shines, and he becomes familiar with the “French words and the beautiful movements.” However, school bullies ridicule him for being a dancer. Prince’s mom says, “Trust in yourself, and never let what anyone says stop you from doing the things that you love.”

She also suggests that Prince practice standing up for himself by talking to his pet hamster, Popcorn. When Prince nervously notices school staff and students in the audience at a performance at the mall, he reminds himself of his mom’s words and pushes on. Prince is shocked when his gym teacher, Coach L., praises his dancing and asks him to demonstrate moves in class.

His diverse schoolmates, including Black and White students, cheer Prince and enjoy listening to his stories about “his adventures in dance.” Prince realizes he “didn’t need to play football or baseball to be a hero at school. He just had to find what he was good at.” Prince is a likable, relatable protagonist whose authenticity and determination are admirable. His dedication to ballet may inspire readers to discover their own passions and persevere through their own challenges. Ditya’s colorful digital illustrations offer fun, animated scenes of Prince’s journey, like “wearing his grown-up clothes” to the ballet and performing on stage. Readers will particularly enjoy Popcorn’s appearance, as when Prince imagines the critter wearing a tutu.

An inspiring, positive tale that exemplifies staying true to yourself.

VINNY AND CHIP

Saga, Tomi Illus. by Mackenzie Ott Tomi Elsagga (34 pp.) $24.00 | July 30, 2021 978-1-73755-480-6

A cat teaches a mouse to defend himself in this picture book.

When a striped, gray feline called Vinny heads to the river for a drink, he rescues a drowning field mouse named Chip. The cat “bravely hunched his back, hissed loudly, and showed his sharp teeth,” which thwarts an approaching alligator. Chip appreciates Vinny’s help and tells members of his family how the feline frightened the predator. The mouse explains that if they are “faced with danger from a big animal, all they have to do is hunch their backs, show their teeth, and hiss loudly.” The mice even evade a snake when they mimic Vinny’s moves. One day, Chip and his family spot Vinny high up in a tree, hiding from a fox “that’s trying to eat me.” The critters “stacked themselves onto each other’s shoulders until they made a pyramid shape.” When they wave their arms and tails and show their teeth, the confused fox scurries away. Vinny is thankful for their brave actions. Chip says, “That’s what friends do. We learned it from you!” The positive display of an unlikely friendship in this enjoyable tale will appeal to young readers interested in animal stories. Saga deftly emphasizes that there is always something to learn from new friends. Ott’s delightful, realistic, hand-painted illustrations feature lovely details in outdoor settings, including blue waters, lush greenery, and up-close, textured animals, including a scaly snake and furry mice.

A sweet, thoughtful animal tale that highlights teamwork, courage, and friendship.

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GROUNDED EAGLES Three Tales of the RAF in WWII

THE 31 NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES OF JENNY BLACK

Schrader, Helena P. Cross Seas Press (356 pp.) $19.95 paper | $4.99 e-book | Nov. 1, 2021 978-0-9891597-9-1

Shearer, F.E. Pumpjack Press (340 pp.) $16.95 paper | $7.99 e-book | Jan. 25, 2022 978-1-73451-974-7

A woman attempts to cure her friend of frequent trips to the other side in Shearer’s debut novel.

Loretta Sparkman is going through a midlife crisis—or, as she prefers to describe it, turning into a zombie—due in part, perhaps, to her husband Matthias’ ongoing struggle with cancer. She’s also just reunited with her best friend, Jenny Black, who has come to stay with the Sparkmans after five years of absence from their lives. The first thing Jenny wants to talk about is near-death experiences. “Not having a bad scare or thinking you might die,” Jenny clarifies. “The other thing. When you go through a tunnel, float above your body, see dead relatives, your life flashes before you.” Loretta has never had one. Jenny has had 22. In the past year. They come to her out of the blue, whisking Jenny to a netherworld where she can communicate with the spirits of people who have already died. Why are they happening? What does it mean? Jenny wants Loretta, who works as a spokesperson for a university, to ask around the faculty and see if anyone might know something about NDEs. Loretta will do what she can, though a university scandal involving race and artificial insemination is taking up most of her time.

Can the two old friends figure out just what these NDEs mean before Jenny gets trapped on the wrong side of death for good?

Shearer’s prose has a lively precision, toggling between humor and urgency as needed. Here, one of Jenny’s episodes occurs in a lab: “Jenny nods, her body begins to go limp. Loretta rushes forward, grabs her beneath her arms and half-drags, half-pulls her to the machine. ‘It’s happening, now, it’s happening!’ she yells.

The director is shouting, ‘Roll tape, run sound, places everyone, the event is coming, now! Go!’ ” The novel is as interested in the meaning of near-death experiences as the characters are, and the book as a whole serves as a rumination on the nature of life, birth, and death. While the plot sometimes dawdles, it’s an engaging, enjoyable story of attempting to find the right balance—at least while on this side of the grave.

An immersive novel of friendship and transcendent phenomena.

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In Schrader’s collection of novellas, men of the Royal Air Force try to make it through World War II without losing their sense of self.

In these three novellas, British airmen struggle with the complex roles that they must fill during and after their time at war. The first, A Stranger in the Mirror, tells the story of David “Banks” Goldman, a fighter pilot who’s lucky to have survived the destruction of his Hurricane. He didn’t make it out unscathed, however: His hands and his face have been burned beyond recognition. Reconstructive surgery can give him a new face, although it will take a lot of time and cause him a great deal of pain, and the chances of him flying again are slim. He wonders if a Banks who can’t fly and who wears a different visage is truly the same person. In A Rose in November, Rhys Jenkins, a widower and father of two, is perhaps too old to fight when the war begins—he had his share of that in the previous one—but he’s just received his dream posting as the “chiefy,” or ground chief, of a Spitfire squadron. When he meets Hattie Fitzsimmons, an officer in the Salvation Army who’s in a different social class, he’s forced to choose between his heart and his duty. The final novel, Lack of Moral Fibre, is a tale of objection. Kit Moran has flown 36 operations, and he refuses to fly a 37th. He is declared “LMF”—“lacking moral fiber”—and sent to a mental health facility for evaluation. If his psychiatrist, Ralph Grace, can find a medical reason for his refusal, he’ll receive treatment.

If not, he’ll be punished for cowardice. Kit’s reasons for objecting turn out to be more complex than he can understand.

Over the course of this collection, Schrader’s prose is understated but often arresting, as when Banks works up the courage to look at his own burned face: “An image took shape in the glass.

A mummy with glistening, shifting eyes. There was something inherently terrifying about a moving mummy because it suggested the return of the dead.” The stories here offer the reader compelling psychological explorations of men grappling with the traumas of war and attempting to find places for themselves in civilian society. In this way, the narratives have a timeless feel, but part of the joy of Schrader’s work is the way in which she brings the reader into highly specific, less-illuminated corners of British WWII history. A Stranger in the Mirror, with its exploration of traumatic injury, is perhaps the strongest of the pieces, but each of the others immerses the reader in a world of its own, with its own rules, shames, and dangers. Together, the novellas paint a grimly vivid portrait of what the average RAF serviceman might have experienced while also limning the contradictory ideals that they attempted—and often failed—to live up to during wartime.

An impressive and memorable trio of works about the many costs of war.

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BACON GRIEF

surprised by the news. But Tim is more furtive, having already been forced into therapy for his inclinations by his parents, and freaks out when Charlie holds his hand in drama club. It seems as if the only thing holding their relationship together is a small voice they hear in their hearts telling them that God accepts them. Shoemaker makes his characters’ religiosity and gay sexuality equally central—and harmonious—parts of their personalities, treating them seriously but in a usually lighthearted tone.

He crafts complex, convincing characters and fleshes them out in supple prose and spot-on dialogue that’s split between awkward adolescent self-consciousness—“Okay, so I want to say something dumb but, it’s just that, I kind of almost maybe more than like you,” says Tim—and more knowing, adult reflections. (“Mother will love it and she will cry,” Charlie muses about his bit part in a school play, “and she will bring me flowers and she will cry, and she will hug me afterwards like seventeen relatives suddenly died and she is so pleased that I was not among them and she will cry.”) Readers will root for Charlie and Tim to find their way through the thicket of anxieties and droll snark to happiness.

A wry, beguiling romance that’s passionate about faith and love.

Shoemaker, Joel Self (153 pp.) $16.99 | $11.99 paper | $7.99 e-book Dec. 4, 2021 979-8-490-55725-8 Two devoutly religious teenage boys fall in love and struggle to find acceptance in this YA coming-out novel.

Charlie is a 16-year-old kid in a small Illinois town who loves theater and is gravitating from Roman Catholicism to a Baptist youth group.

Tim is the son of the new pastor at Calvary Baptist Church and a student at Charlie’s high school; the two meet online and bond despite having opposing opinions on ice cream sprinkles and cargo shorts. Tim invites Charlie to church, where they weather a nosy parishioner. Charlie invites Tim to drama club; the two get in a car crash on their way to a bowling alley (with no injuries); and it seems as if they have a sunny future being “in love with Jesus and in love with each other.” Unfortunately, they are inhibited by the difficulties of making their relationship public. Charlie has an easier time of it: He comes out to a friend and his sympathetic drama teacher, neither of whom seems

WW II POWS IN AMERICA AND ABROAD Astounding Facts About the Imprisonment of Military and Civilians During the War

This Issue’s Contributors # ADULT Colleen Abel • Jeffrey Alford • Mark Athitakis • Colette Bancroft • Sarah Blackman • Amy Boaz Catherine Cardno • Tobias Carroll • K.W. Colyard • Emma Corngold • Coeur de Lion • Dave DeChristopher • Kathleen Devereaux • Melanie Dragger • Lisa Elliott • Mia Franz • Harvey Freedenberg • Jackie Friedland • Roberto Friedman • Glenn Gamboa • Marcie Geffner • Christine Gross-Loh • Miriam Grossman • Geoff Hamilton • Janice Harayda • Peter Heck • Katrina Niidas Holm • Jessica Jernigan • Tom Lavoie • Angela Leroux-Lindsey • Elsbeth Lindner • Michael Magras Gregory McNamee • Molly Muldoon • Christopher Navratil • Therese Purcell Nielsen • Sarah Norris Connie Ogle • Mike Oppenheim • Nina Palattella • Derek Parker • Scott Parker • Heather Partington • Deesha Philyaw • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Steve Potter • Katherine Pushkar Margaret Quamme • Stephanie Reents • Roberto Rodriguez • Lloyd Sachs • Bob Sanchez • Richard Santos Michael Schaub • Leah Silvieus • Linda Simon • Zhanna Slor • Wendy Smith • Margot E. Spangenberg • Mathangi Subramanian • Bill Thompson • Francesca Vultaggio • George Weaver Kerry Winfrey Marion Winik • Adam Winograd

Slaughter, Gary Fletcher House (256 pp.) $20.00 paper | $9.99 e-book | Oct. 4, 2021 978-1-73380-213-0

A scholarly examination of a neglected aspect of World War II: prisoner-of-war camps in the United States.

In 1943, American forces were fighting with the British against German and Italian soldiers in North Africa, and they confronted a logistical problem—there was no means of securely imprisoning captured enemy combatants locally. The United States took charge of 50,000 of them and shipped them stateside—the first of 435,000 German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war who would be interned on American soil. Eventually, nearly 1,000 permanent camps were established across the country, and an elaborate system of incarceration was constructed in accordance with Geneva Convention protocols.

Many German soldiers reacted to this in a way that may surprise readers: “They were extremely relieved to be in America even under these conditions rather than the unpleasant alternatives, including dreadful conditions their counterparts were experiencing fighting the Soviets.” Former U.S. Navy officer Gary Slaughter’s meticulous study, edited by Joanne Fletcher Slaughter, examines the various education programs that were available to U.S.–based POWs as well as attempts to “reprogram” ideologically committed Nazis. He also documents the internment camps that falsely imprisoned Japanese Americans as well

CHILDREN’S & TEEN Lucia Acosta • Maya Alkateb-Chami • Kazia Berkley-Cramer • Elizabeth Bird • Kimberly Brubaker Bradley • Nastassian Brandon • Christopher A. Brown • Jessica Brown • Timothy Capehart Patty Carleton • Alec B. Chunn • Tamar Cimenian • Miah Daughtery • Julie Danielson • Dave DeChristopher • Erin Deedy • Elise DeGuiseppi • Summer Edward • Ilana Epstein • Brooke Faulkner Eiyana Favers • Amy Seto Forrester • Ayn Reyes Frazee • Nivair H. Gabriel • Reina Luz Alegre Judith Gire • Melinda Greenblatt • Ana Grilo • Tobi Haberstroh • Julie Hubble • Kathleen T. Isaacs Darlene Sigda Ivy • Wesley Jacques • Elizabeth Leanne Johnson • Betsy Judkins • Deborah Kaplan Sophie Kenney • Megan Dowd Lambert • Lori Low • Wendy Lukehart • Kyle Lukoff • Kaia MacLeod Joan Malewitz • Michelle H Martin • Gabriela Martins • J. Alejandro Mazariegos • Kirby McCurtis Breanna McDaniel • Sierra McKenzie • Zoe McLaughlin • Kathie Meizner • Susan Messina • Cristina Mitra • Sabrina Montenigro • Lisa Moore • Mya Nunnally • Katrina Nye • Tori Ann Ogawa • Hal Patnott • Deb Paulson • Danni Perreault • John Edward Peters • Deesha Philyaw • Susan Pine • Kristy Raffensberger • Amy B. Reyes • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Amy Robinson • Stephanie Seales • John W. Shannon • Karyn N. Silverman • Rita Soltan • Mathangi Subramanian • Wendy Thomas • Jenna Varden • Christina Vortia • Yung Hsin • Leslie Stall Widener • Dorcas Wong • Bean Yogi INDIE Alana Abbott • Paul Allen • Kent Armstrong • Jillian Bietz • Darren Carlaw • Charles Cassady Anthony Cooke • Michael Deagler • Stephanie Dobler Cerra • Steve Donoghue • Joshua Farrington Lynne Heffley • Justin Hickey • Ivan Kenneally • Samantha Kirby • Barbara London • Brendan McCall Steven Nester • Diya Radhakrishna • Sara Schulke • Barry Silverstein • Yesenia Trujillo • Lauren Emily Whalen • Sam Wilcox

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BUNSO MEETS A MUMU

as ethnic Germans and Italians, and for the sake of comparison, he explores the experiences of Americans incarcerated in camps in Germany, Japan, and Italy. Overall, this is a remarkably detailed exposition; one even learns exactly what an average prisoner in the United States ate for breakfast each morning.

Moreover, the author provides a cleareyed discussion of the ensuing national debate regarding the excellent treatment that American forces gave to enemy POWs and how it stood in stark contrast to deplorable conditions that U.S. soldiers endured abroad. Gary Slaughter’s prose is unerringly clear but also quite plain, even featureless, making the book feel more like an encyclopedia than a broader historical narrative at times. Nonetheless, it’s a well-researched introduction to an element of the war that hasn’t received sufficient scrutiny.

A thorough and exacting historical analysis of wartime incarceration.

Valdez, Rev Jesse B. Creative (48 pp.) $18.00 | Oct. 5, 2021 978-0-9997050-4-9

DIAL M FOR...MUTANTS!

Thorne, Mat Terlion Books (236 pp.) $14.00 paper | $3.99 e-book Feb. 22, 2021 978-1-73-616820-2

A dissolute tabloid reporter partners with a photographer to prove the existence of a homicidal monster in this SF novel.

Thorne’s tale revels in its pop-culture inspirations, including the tropes of film noir. This is evident in the opening chapter, as Buck Vincent, a jaded scribe for TheMidnight Extra tabloid who writes most of his articles “at the bar,” comes under fire from his publisher, Janet Lane. In a clever reversal of the classic entrance of the femme fatale to the grizzled private eye’s office, Thorne has his washed-up antihero shamble into his boss’s office, where she gives him one final chance to redeem himself—by partnering with photographer Betty Roy to produce “quality” tabloid material. Buck and Betty visit Mrs. Vivet, who claims she saw a hellhound; the pair are skeptical because the woman also offers them a tray full of pictures of cookies that “took ages” to bake. Later, as Buck and Betty watch Mrs. Vivet’s corpse being taken from her home— ramping up a mystery—a fellow Midnight Extra reporter dressed as Elvis entertains some of the policemen. Overall, Thorne does an admirable job combining elements of multiple genres, and as the previous summary indicates, the novel also offers an abundance of humor. Like characters in a buddy-cop film, Buck and Betty engage in sharp-witted banter almost immediately after meeting. Before they get a lead on an alleged sighting of the aforementioned hellhound, for instance, they walk past framed covers of old editions of the paper; Betty notes, “I don’t see you on any recent ones.” Buck replies, “It’s been a rough year.”

Betty: “The last one was from like a decade ago.” Buck: “Well then it’s been a rough decade.”

A genre-blending novel of absurdist comedy.

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A child encounters a creature from Filipino folklore and makes a surprising new discovery in author/illustrator Valdez’s picture-book debut.

Bunso (whose name is a Tagalog word for a family’s youngest sibling) is scared of the stories that his sister, or Ate, tells him about a creature called the Mumu, who “likes to punish kids who misbehave by sucking the fun outta everything!” Mom, Dad, and Bunso’s Kuya (brother) scold him for drawing on the walls, not eating dinner, and playing Kuya’s video games without permission; all say that the Mumu will get him. Bunso decides to try to defeat the Mumu; he does research and prepares equipment to confront it. But when Bunso traps the Mumu, it turns out to be an adorable ghost who wants a friend and another shot at enjoying life. Valdez draws on Filipino folklore he learned from his own family to create a fun, mischievous tale for young readers. He works Tagalog terms into the text seamlessly, and Bunso’s narration reads in an authentically childlike voice. Valdez’s comic-style drawings are reminiscent of Cartoon Network programs but also have the sensibility of Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes,” particularly in their depiction of the instant friendship between Bunso and misunderstood Mumu. Children struggling with fears of monsters under the bed may be comforted by Mumu’s adorableness.

A fantastic entry into the kid-and-monster–friendship subgenre.

FINDING FRANCES

Vincent, Kelly The Wild Rose Press (324 pp.) $17.99 paper | $4.99 e-book | Feb. 3, 2020 978-1-5092-2903-1 In author Vincent’s debut, a Midwestern teenager learns that everything she’s been told about her childhood is a lie.

Bright, outgoing, and athletic Loretta “Retta” Brooks, a 15-year-old girl in small-town Buckley, Iowa, has been home-schooled her whole life and has spent a lot of time alone. Her mother has long told her that they were the sole survivors of a van accident that killed Retta’s father and all four of her grandparents. Now, as the teen enters public high school, she still feels the effects of her mom’s constant hovering, as the latter works in the school lunchroom. Her mother explains that she’s preoccupied with Retta’s safety and security because of the long-ago accident. But when Retta later tries to secure a copy of her birth certificate from their native Nebraska, only to come up empty-handed, she starts to doubt the murky car-crash account. She soon realizes that |

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“Wang’s reflection on the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution in China is well considered and searching.” from tea to coffee

her mother has been feeding her a false narrative. A shocking criminal act makes Retta call a phone number that her mother made her memorize for emergencies, which sends her into a Midwest underground of protective strangers and safe houses.

There are certainly elements of this story that call to mind the psychological thrillers of Mary Higgins Clark, but Vincent intriguingly chooses to focus on the young protagonist’s feelings of anger, grief, rebellion, and helpless bewilderment when she finds out that nothing she thought she knew is true— including her own name. (Readers may also recall Robert Cormier’s 1977 YA mainstay I Am the Cheese.) The story occasionally pairs Retta with Jack, a potential boyfriend from a Punjabi immigrant household whose members deal with their own issues of control and conservatism; this adds an intriguing multicultural note to the story and deepens its exploration of themes of identity. The author also appends an essay to her gripping story, addressing domestic violence and the personal and social pathologies it breeds.

A page-turning coming-of-age tale that offers an offbeat spin on the YA suspense genre.

The author’s family suffered under the tyranny of Red Guard harassment, especially Wang’s mother, who was labeled an enemy of the state as a result of her privileged family background. Nonetheless, the author was an eager devotee of Mao’s philosophy and “ready to assume my role in emancipating humankind.” In 1975, as a teenager, he was sent to TianXi (the name means “heavenly happiness”), a peasant village in Inner Mongolia, for radical reeducation, an experience designed to destroy any allegiance to authority, including his family’s, that competed with Mao’s. However, his encounter with this “naturally harsh landscape and difficult lifestyle” was never fully realized; the revolution died with Mao less than a year later, and China’s new leader, Deng Xiaoping, ushered in a new regimen of reforms aimed at modernization. Wang was brainwashed by this “gigantic vortex” of political ideology, a predicament lucidly depicted by the author: “My inner voice served to suppress any encroaching doubts even before they could surface. I, like millions of others all over China, honestly believed in this course, the one that would lead to a better world for humankind.” The author would have to reinvent his own sense of purpose as well as his understanding of the character of his homeland, an especially difficult undertaking since he moved to the United States to pursue his studies—a “culture-crossing expedition”—and settled with a wife and child in North Carolina.

Wang’s remembrance is a deeply thoughtful one, communicated in prose full of studious concentration and careful precision. His reflection on the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution in China is well considered and searching, and he exposes the nuanced, myriad ways it left an indelible impact on the tenor of Chinese daily life. “In the post-Mao era, this social rift has grown into a subtler, but more profound phenomenon: aloofness between people. It is present between almost any two people. For instance, when you go to a restaurant in China and the waitress comes to you with a stern face, do not take it personally. Emotional distancing was—and still is—a norm within the country.” His life is both inspiring—he eventually finds success in American corporate life—and cinematically eventful. Swallowed by the forces of history and then unceremoniously spit out, he finds his own destiny. The best of Wang’s memoir is his consideration of the abrupt shift from one newly adopted cultural identity to another and the subsequent feelings of dislocation and distrust. The author avoids any political proselytizing.

In fact, he expresses a respect for the intentions of Mao, however disastrously executed. This is not principally a political tract but rather a personal one, though it deftly raises questions of a grand cultural and historical nature.

A captivating account of a complex chapter in Chinese history.

FROM TEA TO COFFEE The Journey of an “Educated Youth”

Wang, Cheng Open Books (205 pp.) $17.95 paper | $9.99 e-book | Aug. 19, 2021 978-1-948598-51-4

In this debut memoir, Wang recounts life in northeast China during the turbulent years of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution and his attempts to find purpose in the wake of its disintegration.

K I R K US M E DI A L L C # Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Executive Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N # Copyright 2022 by Kirkus Media LLC. KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 1948- 7428) is published semimonthly by Kirkus Media LLC, 2600Via Fortuna, Suite 130, Austin, TX 78746.

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SAINTED IN ERROR

THE ENSIGN LOCKER

Winders, Glenda Subplot (305 pp.) $16.95 paper | Feb. 1, 2022 978-1-64543-910-3

Zerr, J.J. Primix Publishing (446 pp.) $23.99 | $23.95 paper | $3.99 e-book Aug. 12, 2021 978-1-955177-40-5 978-1-450243-84-1 paper A Vietnam War novel focuses on a United States Navy destroyer stationed off the Gulf of Tonkin.

It is January 1966, and Navy Ensign Jon Zachery has spent his first month aboard the USS Manfred in San Diego, California, the vessel’s home port. He is the newbie in the “Ensign Locker,” the tiny quarters that house five shipmates. It has been rough going for the insecure enlistee, whom readers meet as he is waiting for his wife, Teresa, to give birth to their first child. Soon enough, the chaos and fear Jon feels during Teresa’s emergency C-section are replaced by the stress and excitement of his experiences at sea. After months of offshore training, the Manfred deploys to the South Pacific. The bulk of the narrative takes place over the next six months, during which Jon copes with the overwhelming assortment of Navy regulations and procedures, deals with his angst over being apart from Teresa, gets into trouble, and finally develops into a respected leader. His slow transformation begins in the Philippines, where he scores in a chiefs-versus-officers softball game—a small victory for the ensign whose propensity for seasickness has earned him the nickname Two Buckets. Arriving in Vietnam, the Manfred takes up a position north of the DMZ, providing support for the U.S. Marines fighting the Viet Cong in the jungle. It is here that the story picks up steam with vividly described action scenes, both in the water and on land. Zerr is a Vietnam veteran with a long naval career. A minimal internet perusal of the author will confirm what readers may quickly suspect—that the novel is semiautobiographical.

The first clues are the accidental, sporadic slip-ups in which the third-person narrator uses a first-person pronoun (“ ‘Aa yes hole,’ Cowboy said as he followed us out the door”). In addition, there is Zerr’s encyclopedic knowledge of the minuscule details of life aboard a military vessel. Although moment-by-moment reporting of every turn of the screw, replete with naval terminology and acronyms, becomes occasionally mind-numbing, the author’s engrossing, atmospheric portrait of the period and place brings readers directly into the Vietnam conflict.

An engaging, evocative, and informative war tale that will especially appeal to Navy enthusiasts.

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In this novel, a woman’s longtime friend suffers an undiagnosed mental disorder for years, culminating in violence and murder.

Maggie Patterson first meets Cynthia Morgan in 1973 when they become college roommates. The UCLA freshmen are polar opposites— Cynthia is a wealthy conservative; Maggie is a liberal Vietnam War protester. Despite their differences, they grow close in a relationship lasting beyond the university. But Maggie can’t help but notice Cynthia’s sharp changes in mood, oscillating between aloofness and acts of kindness. As adults, Maggie envies both her pal’s marriage to a doctor named Richard and her new role as a mother, while Cynthia’s jealousy of her friend’s budding journalism career borders on resentment. This spurs hateful comments, an early sign of their deteriorating relationship. Both Maggie and Richard suspect Cynthia is mentally ill, as her mother had been bipolar. But Cynthia refuses psychological treatment and only gets worse, accusing Richard of infidelity and threatening to kill him. She even has a gun stashed somewhere, which her loved ones desperately search for. Maggie can’t decide if she should help her close friend or steer clear of her. Unfortunately, it’s just a matter of time before Cynthia erupts. Winders opens with narrator Maggie preparing to testify at Cynthia’s murder trial (“What do you wear when you testify against your best friend as she goes on trial for murder? It’s ridiculous that I’m so anxious over such a minuscule and trivial part of this whole nightmare”).

Readers do not know the victim’s identity, which imbues the story with ample suspense as the narrative builds to the fateful day. This reinforces an already riveting tale of a woman’s mental collapse. Cynthia’s story is sad and unnerving; she tragically lost her mother at a young age, but this sympathetic woman turns outright malicious and frightening as the years pass. The author masterfully propels readers through several decades in a grim, well-crafted drama that occasionally teases things to come, like Maggie’s own marriage and someone’s betrayal. Notwithstanding the novel’s persistently somber tone, Maggie’s tireless optimism provides a glimmer of hope—for herself as well as readers.

A gripping, indelible tale of the unrelenting anguish that psychological afflictions cause.

Fu l ly B o o k e d recent highlights from the author interviews on kirkus’ weekly books podcast

BY MEGAN LABRISE

Her argument in her book (The End of the Novel of Love) was that love novels don’t really work for us as a culture anymore. Because we know—in quotation marks ‘know’—that romance is not going to be the thing that saves us at the end of the day. That falling in love is not what saves us. And I thought, this woman is smart, but I don’t know if I believe her. I’m not sure if she’s right, you know? So I thought, I’m going to write a book to see if I can tease out this statement—to see if I agree with her, or to challenge her.…Her whole book was actually a launching pad for Monster in the Middle. In a way, I’m testing out her theory.

Kay Hinton

Episode 238: Tiphanie Yanique, author of Monster in the Middle (Riverhead), on the Vivian Gornick epigraph she chose for the book (“Put romantic love at the center of a novel today, and who could be persuaded that in its pursuit the characters are going to get to something large?”):

Tiphanie Yanique

Nikki Autin-Garlington

Episode 240: Rax King, author of Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have To Offer (Vintage), on the distinction between tacky and trashy: To me, something tacky is maybe closest to campy or kitschy. It’s fun in a way that makes you feel bad for enjoying it. What I hope to do is to eliminate that guilt and leave people with the sense that these are things that are OK to enjoy.

Whereas something trashy is disreputable for a reason. It’s not just kitschy and campy and Technicolor and too cutesy and goofy to like. It’s something that has a bad reputation that it sort of deserves. It doesn’t make people feel good, really, to engage with something that’s trashy the way that it makes you feel good, in that guilty way, to engage with something that’s tacky.

Rax King

Blayke Images

Episode 242: Chibundu Onuzo, author of Sankofa (Counterpoint), on how she conceived of the fictional country of Bamana: I did a lot of research. I didn’t want to just create stuff. I feel sometimes people do that with Africa…like it’s a blank space. They just project things onto it. So, I didn’t want to call my fictional country ‘Manga Bungo’ and pick some random phrases that don’t mean anything because Africa is this blank space for you to project whatever you want onto it.… ‘Bamana’ is a real ancient West African kingdom. Things like that I tried to ground in reality, so it felt real.

Editor at large Megan Labrise is the host of the Fully Booked podcast. Find new episodes every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or at kirkusreviews.com/podcast.

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APPRECIATIONS

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Gregory McNamee

James Joyce’s Ulysses at 100 Culture Club/Getty Images

Twenty-seven or so centuries ago, a poem known to us as The Odyssey began to materialize. Set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, fought four or five centuries earlier, it recounts the roundabout, eventful return home of a minor Greek king called Odysseus. Though the distance between Troy and his island realm of Ithaca is only 565 nautical miles, the trip takes him 10 years. The struggle is worthwhile, though, for awaiting Odysseus is his faithful, resourceful wife, Penelope, besieged by suitors who try to convince her that he is dead.

Fast-forward to 1914 and the ancient city of Dublin. James Joyce, enthralled as a child by Charles Lamb’s prose version of The Odyssey, is hard at work recounting a voyage around the city, one that will last JamesJoyce not 10 years but a single day. Playing the part of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, is a malcontented part-time teacher and would-be artist called Stephen Dedalus, whose name evokes another ancient Greek story. And Odysseus is not a king of many wiles and much wealth but instead an impoverished Jewish immigrant named Leopold Bloom.

Bloom’s wife is no Penelope, and when, at the end of the book, asleep, she moans “yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes,” it’s not with Bloom in mind. Bloom, whom we meet in the fourth book, sets out on his voyage precisely to avoid being at home when Molly’s lover comes calling, in fact. In episode after episode, each echoing The Odyssey, Bloom stops in at the post office, attends a funeral, inadvertently gives a tip on a racehorse, and weathers an ugly barroom encounter with an antisemitic nationalist who threatens, “By Jesus…I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will.” Finally, Bloom encounters Stephen, leading to an inebriated visit to a brothel before the two stumble to Bloom’s home and the undisguised evidence of Molly’s tryst.

Ulysses, published in Paris by the English bookseller Sylvia Beach in 1922, was quite audacious for its time, with adultery, masturbation, and other not-forpolite-company topics at the fore. But Joyce had a bigger ambition: With his account of the events of June 16, 1904, now celebrated as Bloomsday, he meant to create a Homeric catalog of things and places so comprehensive that, he said, if Dublin were to be demolished as Troy was, archaeologists would be able to reconstruct it by following his book. We don’t know to a T what Odysseus’ palace looked like, but we know every stick of furniture, every pillow, every picture in Bloom’s home; every detail of Dublin’s streets, the city’s pubs, the places where people lived and labored.

Joyce worked on Ulysses for eight years, wryly commenting that he expected readers to take as long to read it. Published on his 40th birthday, Feb. 2, 1922, it took 11 years before the book circulated freely, widely banned on the grounds of obscenity. But it took almost no time for it to be hailed as a classic—and so, 100 years after its birth, Ulysses remains.

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