October 15, 2023: Volume XCI, No. 20

OCTOBER 15, 2023 | Vol. XCI NO.20

FEATURING 278 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children’s, and YA Books

BENJAMIN MOSER SIZES UP THE MASTERS The Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer turns his gaze to the Golden Age of Dutch art

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

IF YOU’RE A FOODIE , the

obsession runs deep. (I once had an editor who forbade use of the word foodie, but is there a better way to describe the type?) You love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, and dining out—from Michelin-starred restaurants to humble food trucks—is nearly a full-time job. You subscribe to the food magazines—Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Saveur—and you binge-watch Top Chef and The Bear. You could fill a library with the many books that address culinary topics from every conceivable angle. This month brings a splendid five-course meal of nonfiction titles; here’s what’s on the menu: The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City by Kim Foster (St. Martin’s, Oct. 10): In this debut, a James Beard

Award winner describes how, after moving to Las Vegas, she prepared daily lunches for her meth-addicted handyman and ultimately came to open a food pantry, all the while examining the role food plays in the lives of the underprivileged. Our reviewer calls it a “mournful exploration of the connections between food and community.”

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir by Curtis Chin (Little, Brown; Oct. 17): This memoir recounts the coming-of-age in 1980s Detroit of a first-generation Chinese American, gay man, and poet who went on to co-found the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Chin worked alongside his parents at their family restaurant,

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Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, where they served a cross-section of diners, from neighborhood sex workers to the city’s mayor. Our reviewer calls it a “charming, often funny account of a sentimental education.”

The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food

by Andrew Friedman (Mariner Books, Oct. 17): A writer and podcaster goes behind the scenes to chronicle the production of one dish at Wherewithall, an acclaimed Chicago restaurant that has since closed. Friedman looks at every step of the process, from farm and vineyard to transport to the kitchen and front of house, talking to all the workers involved.

Our reviewer calls it an “entertaining, eye-opening investigation.”

The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating & Eating While Reading by Dwight Garner (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 24): Food and books are the paired pleasures of this New York Times critic, and in a wide-ranging book he charts their intersections

in his own life and in the lives of authors from Rita Dove to Frank Conroy to Mario Puzo. Our reviewer calls it a “wonderful mix of culinary memoir, literary reference, how-to in indulgence.”

Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods by Sarah Lohman (Norton, Oct. 24): Employing the Ark of Taste, an online catalog, as her guide, the author travels the U.S. to learn more about the production, preparation, and preservation of endangered heritage foods in the age of agribusiness.

Readers will learn about rare types of New England apples, Texas Longhorn cattle, traditional reefnet salmon fishing of Indigenous tribes in the Pacific Northwest, and much more. Our reviewer calls it a “tasty sojourn through the landscape of America’s endangered foods.”

TOM BEER KIRKUS REVIEWS

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

A LITERARY TASTING MENU

Contents FICTION

4

Editor’s Note

5

Reviews & News

10 Q&A: Jhumpa Lahiri 17 On the Podcast: Mona Awad 25 Booklist: Crime Novels To Keep You Up All Night NONFICTION

46 Editor’s Note 47

Reviews & News

52 On the Cover: Benjamin Moser 59 On the Podcast: Alice Carrière 67 Booklist: Books for Nature Lovers

CHILDREN’S

One of the most coveted designations in the book industry, the Kirkus Star marks books of exceptional merit.

OUR FRESH PICK The love between two of Saverio’s heroes is put to the ultimate test in Thiede’s exhilarating follow-up to This Vicious Grace (2022).

Read the review on p. 125 PURCHASE BOOKS ONLINE AT KIRKUS .COM

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Editor’s Note

89

Reviews & News

94 Q&A: Roz Chast 109 Booklist: Can’t-Miss Middle-Grade Bestsellers YOUNG ADULT

124

Editor’s Note

125

Reviews & News

130 Q&A: Crystal Maldonado 137 Booklist: Must-Read YA Debuts INDIE

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Editor’s Note

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Reviews

147 Booklist: Indie Books of the Month

ON THE COVER: Benjamin Moser; illustration by Lauren Mortimer, based on a photo by Beowulf Sheehan. Background: detail from Still Life With Flowers in a Vase by Jan Davidsz. de Heem (1650-1683)

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KIRKUS REVIEWS

OCTOBER 1, 2023 1

KIRKUS REVIEWS Co-Chairman HERBERT SIMON

Co-Chairman MARC WINKELMAN

Publisher & CEO MEG LABORDE KUEHN mkuehn@kirkus.com

Editor-in-Chief TOM BEER tbeer@kirkus.com

Chief Marketing Officer SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com

President of Kirkus Indie KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com

Publisher Advertising

Managing/Nonfiction Editor ERIC LIEBETRAU eliebetrau@kirkus.com

& Promotions RACHEL WEASE rwease@kirkus.com Indie Advertising & Promotions AMY BAIRD abaird@kirkus.com

Author Consultant RY PICKARD rpickard@kirkus.com Lead Designer KY NOVAK knovak@kirkus.com Social Media Coordinator SEYANNA BARRETT sbarrett@kirkus.com Kirkus Editorial Senior Production Editor ROBIN O’DELL rodell@kirkus.com Kirkus Editorial Senior Production Editor MARINNA CASTILLEJA mcastilleja@kirkus.com Kirkus Editorial Production Editor ASHLEY LITTLE alittle@kirkus.com Copy Editors LOIS HEYMAN BILL SIEVER Magazine Compositor ALEX HEAD

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Fiction Editor LAURIE MUCHNICK lmuchnick@kirkus.com Young Readers’ Editor LAURA SIMEON lsimeon@kirkus.com Young Readers’ Editor MAHNAZ DAR mdar@kirkus.com Editor at Large MEGAN LABRISE mlabrise@kirkus.com Senior Indie Editor DAVID RAPP drapp@kirkus.com Indie Editor ARTHUR SMITH asmith@kirkus.com Editorial Assistant NINA PALATTELLA npalattella@kirkus.com

Indie Editorial Assistant DAN NOLAN dnolan@kirkus.com Mysteries Editor THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Writers GREGORY MCNAMEE MICHAEL SCHAUB

Contributors

Alana Abbott, Colleen Abel, Mahasin Aleem, Paul Allen, Stephanie Anderson, Kent Armstrong, Mark Athitakis, Diego Báez, Colette Bancroft, Robert Beauregard, Emma Benavides, Kazia Berkley-Cramer, Elizabeth Bird, Sarah Blackman, Amy Boaz, Elissa Bongiorno, Jessica Hoptay Brown, Justina Bruns, Jeffrey Burke, Timothy Capehart, Catherine Cardno, Darren Carlaw, Charles Cassady, Ann Childs, Alec B. Chunn, Tamar Cimenian, Rachael Conrad, Adeisa Cooper, Miranda Cooper, Jeannie Coutant, Perry Crowe, Kim Dare, Sara Davis, Michael Deagler, Cathy DeCampli, Dave DeChristopher, Elise DeGuiseppi, Jacob Edwards, Gina Elbert, Lisa Elliott, Chelsea Ennen, Gillian Esquivia-Cohen, Joshua Farrington, Brooke Faulkner, Katie Flanagan, Mia Franz, Jenna Friebel, Jackie Friedland, Robbin Friedman, Glenn Gamboa, Cierra Gathers, Maura Gaven, Carol Goldman, Danielle Galván Gomez, Melinda Greenblatt, Geoff Hamilton, Silvia Lin Hanick, Alec Harvey, Zoe Holland, Katrina Niidas Holm, Sarah Horner, Abigail Hsu, Kathleen T. Isaacs, Darlene Ivy, Wesley Jacques, Matt Jakubowski, Danielle Jones, Betsy Judkins, Deborah Kaplan, Ivan Kenneally, Colleen King, Lyneea Kmail, Megan Dowd Lambert, Carly Lane, Tom Lavoie, Judith Leitch, Donald Liebenson, Maureen Liebenson, Elsbeth Lindner, Coeur de Lion, Barbara London, Patricia Lothrop, Leanne Ly, Michael Magras, Joan Malewitz, Thomas Maluck, Collin Marchiando, Gabriela Martins, Matthew May, Zoe McLaughlin, Don McLeese, Carol Memmott, Clayton Moore, Karen Montgomery Moore, Andrea Moran, Sarah Morgan, Molly Muldoon, McKenzi Murphy, Liza Nelson, Mike Newirth, Therese Purcell Nielsen, Sarah Norris, Katrina Nye, Erin O’Brien, Tori Ann Ogawa, Mike Oppenheim, Derek Parker, Sarah Parker-Lee, Hal Patnott, Deb Paulson, Elizabeth Paulson, Alea Perez, John Edward Peters, Jim Piechota, Vicki Pietrus, D Popowski, Judy Quinn, Kristy Raffensberger, Kristen Rasmussen, Darryn Reams, Sarah Rettger, Jasmine Riel, Erica Rivera, Kelly Roberts, Amy Robinson, Lizzie Rogers, Lloyd Sachs, Bob Sanchez, Caitlin Savage, Hal Schrieve, Leah Silvieus, Linda Simon, Wendy Smith, Margot E. Spangenberg, Mo Springer, Daneet Steffens, Allie Stevens, Sharon Strock, Mathangi Subramanian, Jennifer Sweeney, Deborah D. Taylor, Caroline Tien, Renee Ting, Bijal Vachharajani, Katie Vermilyea, Christina Vortia, Elliott Walcroft, Barbara Ward, Erica Weidner, Audrey Weinbrecht, Lauren Emily Whalen, Amelia Williams, Wilda Williams, Marion Winik, Adam Winograd, Jean-Louise Zancanella

OCTOBER 1, 2023 3

SMALL PRESS ON A ROLL ONE OF THE most reward-

ing parts of my job at Kirkus is encountering great books from new (or new to me) small presses. Soon after starting here in 2014, I received a photocopied manuscript held together by a rubber band from a publisher I’d never heard of, sent it out for review, and got back a rave. That book was Alphabet by Kathy Page, and the publisher was Biblioasis; I’ve been looking forward to their books ever since.

Like a number of independent presses, Biblioasis

4 OCTOBER 15, 2023

began as a bookstore; it was founded by Dan Wells in Windsor, Ontario, in 1998, and when I asked Dan how he started publishing books six years later, he said it was almost accidental: “I’d been taking some bookbinding classes and got tired of making blank notebooks, thought I’d do some chapbooks instead, and fell in love with publishing, both the making of the books themselves and making them public.”

Biblioasis has been having a standout season. Of the

five books we’ve considered most recently, four have gotten starred reviews.

Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor (Aug 15.): During the hottest summer anyone can remember, Beatrice Billings turns 50 and somehow veers sharply out of her regular life as a Toronto art dealer and, after learning to pick locks, starts breaking into empty houses, investigating the lives of the people who live there. “A smart, funny, and sneakily terrifying version of the way we live now,” according to our review.

The Future by Catherine Leroux (Sept. 5): One of many books by Quebecois writers that Biblioasis has published, this novel takes place in an alternate Detroit that was never ceded by its original French settlers.

When a woman is murdered and her daughters go missing, their grandmother begins searching for the girls in the local park, which has been taken over by feral children. Our review says, “The story…encompasses speculative alternative history as well as a dystopian future—albeit with utopian aspects—and is recounted in sometimes-feverish prose that pushes its boundaries into poetry.”

Cocktail by Lisa Alward (Sept. 12): Alward turns a sharp eye on domestic life

in her debut collection of stories, setting the tone from the opening title story, in which a woman recollects her parents’ 1970s cocktail parties—the ones they threw before their divorce—and the mysterious man who almost (but not entirely threateningly) found his way to her preteen bedroom. “Refreshingly tart reflections on family fragmentation and its aftershocks,” according to our review.

Burn Man by Mark Anthony Jarman (Oct. 10): Our review says that “if there were any justice,” 68-year-old Jarman would be much more widely known in the U.S. This selection of his best stories, in which “marginalized men are on the run, failing to figure out how to stay in one place, how to stay sane, how to pin life down and make sense of it,” aims to make that happen. “Amid a welter of sensory impressions and a decided lack of the steadying machinations of traditional plot, narrators imagine alternate outcomes to their meager existences, their common language a heady, often surreal stream-of-consciousness.…

Literature at the highest level: heartrending, disquieting, fascinating.”

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

LAURIE MUCHNICK

FICTION

EDITOR’S PICK A graphic novelist grapples— or doesn’t—with the suicide of her brother.

When graphic novelist Coral Brown walks into her brother’s studio apartment in Long Beach, California, she doesn’t initially realize that Jay is dead by his own hand. After his body is whisked away by EMTs, she notices a text message on his cell phone from his college-age daughter, Khadija, wondering if she can postpone a planned dinner.

The message seems to break Coral, who responds to her brother’s death first with anger (“More dead shit. It never ends. For me.

And sometimes it gets to be about me, okay. I am a person. I’m not some kind gay nun with a credit card.

I have shit to do”), then

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

KIRKUS REVIEWS

with stunning denial—she decides to answer Jay’s messages from Khadija and other people as if she were him, later setting up social media profiles for him, refusing to admit to herself that he’s gone. She goes about her own life, brunching with friends, appearing at a comic convention, and meeting people on a dating app. She also gets sucked back into her younger days, recalling previous relationships, a custody battle Jay had with Khadija’s mother, and the deaths of her parents. The debut novel from short story author Blackburn is narrated by a mysterious “we”—perhaps characters from Coral’s book, perhaps multiple versions of herself, perhaps both. Despite the heavy

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The Little Liar

By Mitch Albom

5

Dead in Long Beach, California

By Venita Blackburn

7

Resurrection Walk

By Michael Connelly

8

Kids Run the Show

By Delphine de Vigan; trans. by Alison Anderson

9

The Other Mothers

By Katherine Faulkner

20

Verdigris

By Michele Mari; trans. by Brian Robert Moore

Dead in Long Beach, California Blackburn, Venita MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 240 pp. $27.00 | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9780374602826

subject matter, sensitively handled, this is frequently a deeply funny novel: Long Beach is “an oily, salty city nicknamed Weirdbeach by those not likely to fly a gay pride flag on their lawns anytime soon,” and Khadija “loved amusement parks the way chefs love cardamom and pretentious

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41

35

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The Curse of Pietro Houdini

By Derek B. Miller Lion & Lamb

By James Patterson & Duane Swierczynski

knives.” Blackburn shares a deep intellect and odd sensibility with authors like George Saunders and Rion Amilcar Scott, but this novel is its own thing: intelligent, bizarre, and brilliantly written.

An astonishing debut novel from a remarkably creative writer.

The Kingdom of Sweets

By Erika Johansen The Gentleman’s Gambit

By Evie Dunmore

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Bookshops & Bonedust

By Travis Baldree

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Kirkus Star

The Little Liar Albom, Mitch | Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) | $21.59 | Nov. 14, 2023 9780062406651

Truth and deception clash in this tale of the Holocaust.

Udo Graf is proud that the Wolf has assigned him the task of expelling all 50,000 Jews from Salonika, Greece. In that city, Nico Krispis is an 11-year-old Jewish boy whose blue eyes and blond hair deceive, but whose words do not.

Those who know him know he has never told a lie in his life—“Never be the one to tell lies, Nico,” his grandfather teaches him. “God is always watching.” Udo and Nico meet, and Udo decides to exploit the child’s innocence. At the train station where Jews are being jammed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, Udo gives Nico a yellow star to wear and persuades him to whisper among the crowd, “I heard it from a German officer. They are sending us to Poland. We will have new homes. And jobs.” The lad doesn’t know any better, so he helps persuade reluctant Jews to board the train to hell. “You were a good little liar,” Udo later tells Nico, and delights in the prospect of breaking the boy’s spirit, which is more fun and a greater challenge than killing him outright.

When Nico realizes the horrific nature of what he’s done, his truth-telling days are over. He becomes an inveterate liar about everything. Narrating the story is the Angel of Truth, whom according to a parable God had cast out of heaven and onto earth, where Truth shattered into billions of pieces, each to lodge in a human heart. (Obviously, many hearts have been missed.)

Truth skillfully weaves together the characters, including Nico; his brother, Sebastian; Sebastian’s wife, Fannie; and the “heartless deceiver” Udo. Events extend for decades 6 OCTOBER 15, 2023

beyond World War II, until everyone’s lives finally collide in dramatic fashion. As Truth readily acknowledges, his account is loaded with twists and turns, some fortuitous and others not.

Will Nico Krispis ever seek redemption? And will he find it? Author Albom’s passion shows through on every page in this well-crafted novel.

A captivating allegory about evil, lies, and forgiveness.

Rabbit Hole Brody, Kate | Soho Crime (384 pp.) | $25.95 Jan. 2, 2024 | 9781641294874

A woman reinvestigates her sister’s disappearance after her father’s death in this debut.

Teddy Angstrom was 16 when her older sister, Angie, disappeared after sneaking out to a party. Afterward, everything seemed to fall apart. Now, 10 years later, her father has driven his car off a bridge, and Teddy and her mother are left to pick up the pieces. Cleaning her father’s things, Teddy discovers that he was deeply invested in the online community built up around Angie’s disappearance. What began as a daughter trying to close up loose ends in the wake of her father’s death slowly devolves into Teddy finding herself more and more immersed in the true-crime community around what happened to Angie in ways that affect her love life, her job as a high school English teacher, and her relationship with her family. Through it all she’s joined by Mickey, a local college student who was working with her father and is maybe too eager to help. As her life spirals around her, Teddy has to determine what is real and what is in her head. The novel can be stressful to read at times; the first-person narration gives an almost suffocating air to Teddy’s increasing paranoia. Escalating series of bad decisions seem almost inevitable, but there’s a clear logic to

how Teddy reaches them, even if, by light of day, it seems fuzzy. Despite a few ham-fisted metaphors and egregiously unbelievable moments, the dizzying pace mixed with introspective passages (not to mention very short chapters) keep readers turning pages so the book flies by.

A timely rumination on true crime, internet obsession, and paranoia.

The Storm We Made Chan, Vanessa | Marysue Rucci Books (352 pp.) | $27.00 | Jan. 2, 2024 | 9781668015148

In World War II Malaysia, a woman discovers her pre-war miscalculations have ruined her life.

In twinned story streams beginning in the mid-1940s and 10 years earlier, Chan traces the experience of the Alcantara family: Gordon, Cecily, and their three children, Jujube, Abel, and Jasmin. The opening section is set in Japanese-occupied Malaya (as Malaysia was then called) in 1945, where “teenage boys had begun to disappear.” On his 15th birthday their beloved Abel is among them.

Cecily’s first reaction? “For a few minutes before the guilt took hold of her, it was a relief to see her terror realized. It had finally come to pass, and this was all her fault. She had caused this, all of it.” The flashbacks that begin in the next chapter unfold her heart-wrenching story. Through her husband’s position with the British occupation, Cecily comes in contact with a man of two names.

On the surface, he is Bingley Chan, a Hong Kong merchant. He begins a friendship with the Alcantaras, coming to their house to visit. Gordon is thrilled by his attention and has no idea that every night after he passes out, Chan, actually General Fujiwara of the Japanese Imperial Army, is working to become his wife’s lover and spymaster, telling KIRKUS REVIEWS

FICTION

Connelly never lets you forget the life-or-death issues behind every move.

RESURRECTION WALK

her she is helping build “an Asia for Asians.” As this background develops in the flashback sections, the horrors of 1945 unfold in parallel: Abel’s unspeakable torment in the labor camp, the perils of Jujube and even little Jasmin due to the abduction of girls to “comfort stations,” the almost unthinkable miseries of Cecily, who cannot free herself from her sexual obsession with Fujiwara even after he’s abandoned her and her life is in ruins. The ultimate cost of her shortsightedness and self-delusion is excruciating, to the point that finishing the book is like waking up from a nightmare with relief that it didn’t really happen.

A chilling exploration of the costs of human weakness and desire, in a compelling and vividly wrought historical context.

Kirkus Star

Resurrection Walk Connelly, Michael | Little, Brown (400 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9780316563765

Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer team up to exonerate a woman who’s already served five years for killing her ex-husband.

The evidence against Lucinda Sanz was so overwhelming that she followed the advice of Frank Silver, the B-grade attorney who’d elbowed his way onto her defense, and pleaded no contest to manslaughter to avoid a life sentence for shooting Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Roberto KIRKUS REVIEWS

Sanz in the back as he stalked out of her yard after their latest argument.

But now that her son, Eric, is 13, old enough to get recruited by local gangs, she wants to be out of stir and at his side. So she writes to Mickey Haller, who asks his half-brother for help. After all his years working for the LAPD, Bosch is adamant about not working for a criminal defendant, even though Haller’s already taken him on as an associate so that he can get access to private health insurance and a UCLA medical trial for an experimental cancer treatment. But the habeas corpus hearing Haller’s aiming for isn’t, strictly speaking, a criminal defense proceeding, and even a cursory examination of the forensic evidence raises Bosch’s hackles. Bolstered by Bosch’s discoveries and a state-of-the-art digital reconstruction of the shooting, Haller heads to court to face Assistant Attorney General Hayden Morris, who has a few tricks up his own sleeve. The endlessly resourceful courtroom backand-forth is furious in its intensity, although Haller eventually upstages Bosch, Morris, and everyone else in sight. What really stands out here, however, is that Connelly never lets you forget, from his title onward, the life-or-death issues behind every move in the game.

The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot.

For more by Michael Connelly, visit Kirkus online.

Broughtupsy Cooke, Christina | Catapult (240 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9781646221882

After her brother’s untimely death, a young, queer Jamaican woman living in Canada travels home to Kingston.

Twice during her bumpy attempt to reacquaint herself with the city of her birth, Akúa is accused of having no “broughtupsy”—manners. “ ‘Yuh see dis?’ the woman says, nudging someone beside her. ‘Gyal nuh ’ave no broughtupsy.’ ” Though she was born and lived there until her mother’s death from sickle cell anemia when Akúa was 10, she is now 20 and making her first return visit. It is 1996; the occasion is a sad one. Her 12-yearold brother has also died of sickle cell, and she is returning to spread his ashes. It is the first time she’s seen her older sister, Tamika, since their widowed father left the island for Texas, then Vancouver, taking Akúa with him; Tamika chose to stay on and attend boarding school. As a committed Christian, Tamika is appalled by Akúa’s sexuality (she’s just parted ways with a longtime girlfriend), warning her that she will not be accepted. “ ‘They will laugh at you and spit in your face,’ Tamika says. ‘Are you listening? They will stone you. They will bring their machetes and guns. Listen to me, mi seh! They will butcher you in broad daylight then leave you to rot.

And the police will pay you no mind.’ ” The style mixes a straightforward simplicity with patois vocabulary and, ultimately, more graphic language after Akúa gets sexually involved with a woman who works in a strip club.

As Akúa’s time in Kingston moves forward, as she deposits bits of her brother’s ashes at key locations from her childhood, the story builds to a fierce, then sweetly redemptive, climax.

The voice of innocence, the violence, and the sibling dynamics of Cooke’s debut recall Justin Torres’ We the OCTOBER 15, 2023 7

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Animals (2011), also a queer comingof-age story—but this blend of those elements is as unique as a thumbprint.

Vivid, emotionally intense, and unafraid of the dark.

Unnatural Death Cornwell, Patricia | Grand Central Publishing (432 pp.) | $30.00 Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781538743164

Kay Scarpetta travels deep into rural Virginia to retrieve the bodies of two potential spies who have been savaged by a seemingly invisible assassin— or maybe it

was Bigfoot?!

After a dismally busy Halloween night at Virginia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Scarpetta is preparing to join her niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, to travel by helicopter to claim the bodies of Huck and Brittany Manson, owners of an outdoor gear store who are suspected of spying for the Russians and/or the Chinese. Much of the novel is taken up by this retrieval mission, relayed in typical Cornwell fashion with a great deal of detail and description about preparation and procedure. The Mansons’ bodies are ravaged, the campsite is destroyed, and the trail cameras the Secret Service hacked failed to capture the assailant. Investigator, staunch Scarpetta ally, and Bigfoot enthusiast Pete Marino is already on the ground and has taken a cast of an enormous footprint near one of the bodies.

When they return to Richmond with the bodies for autopsy, Scarpetta faces off with a former employee who is seeking to discredit her. Her sense of unease about the situation grows when husband Benton Wesley, now advising the Secret Service, and a group of government officials insist on remotely observing the autopsy.

She finds a micro hard drive embedded in Brittany’s hip, which seems to be what the murderer was seeking 8 OCTOBER 15, 2023

but failed to locate. It’s been more than 30 years since Scarpetta’s debut, and she’s still seeking dignity for the victims under her care while fighting against shadowy government forces and long-standing nemeses. The past several novels have re-introduced a foe previously presumed dead, and this one continues to leave that storyline wide open.

Formulaic, but there’s still enough for the loyalists. It’s a safe bet that Scarpetta will return.

Kirkus Star

Kids Run the Show de Vigan, Delphine | Trans. by Alison Anderson | Europa Editions (272 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781609459840

The search for a kidnapped child reveals the truth behind her curated onscreen image.

As a child growing up in the French countryside just after the turn of the 21st century, Mélanie Claux finds the only thing that can soothe the empty feeling inside her is watching television, particularly Loft Story, France’s first foray into reality TV. Raised in an emotionally abusive household, Mélanie moves to Paris at the first opportunity.

There she attempts to break into the reality television world as a contestant and, when that fails, languishes working at a travel agency until she marries Bruno Diore and has two children, Sammy and Kimmy, who, while beguiling, do nothing to fill the void that is the most central tenet of Mélanie’s life. That is, until Mélanie begins to orchestrate little scenes for the children to enact and uploads the resulting videos to her family YouTube channel. Happy Recess becomes a viral hit, logging several million views per video and earning millions of euros for the family in endorsement contracts and advertising deals,

an outcome that seems fair compensation for the near 24-hour visibility the children must endure to keep the channel running. Meanwhile, Clara Roussel grew up in Paris, the daughter of political activists who stormed the filming location of Loft Story in an attempt to free the contestants from their Big Brother–style surveillance. Unlike Mélanie, Clara was raised with care and integrity and brings those values with her into her career as an officer with the Paris Crime Squad. The two women’s lives are thrust together when Kimmy is kidnapped and Clara is called in to investigate. As the kidnapper’s demands become more bizarre and the list of suspects lengthens to include practically anyone watching the Happy Recess channel, both women must reckon with the ramifications of living in a world where the most banal details of family life can be packaged and monetized and where the value of human existence is adjudicated not by the actions of the individual but by the reactions of the masses.

An intelligent and affecting look at the void that lurks inside our social media fantasies of domestic bliss.

The Annual Banquet of the Gravedigger’s Guild Énard, Mathias | Trans. by Frank Wynne New Directions (432 pp.) | $19.95 paper Nov. 21, 2023 | 9780811231299

Brigadoon meets Claude LéviStrauss in a pleasing tale of the supernatural.

David Mazon is the sort one would suspect lives in his mom’s basement. In his mid-30s, he finally bestirs himself to finish his doctoral dissertation in anthropology, a field project that takes him from Paris to the rural French village of La Pierre-Saint-Christophe. “Malinowski notes that insects and reptiles are the KIRKUS REVIEWS

FICTION

Faulkner is a pro at ratcheting up the tension bit by tiny, spine-tingling bit.

THE OTHER MOTHERS

principal obstacles to the work of the ethnologist,” Mazon writes in his journal, and while reptiles are comparatively scarce, there are plenty of worms and bugs in his bivouac. Little does he know that they’re unfortunately transmigrated human souls: “As David Mazon...poured half a bottle of bleach over the red annelids taking over his bathroom, he was unaware that he was returning to the Wheel the black souls of murderers whose vicious crimes had condemned them to many generations of suffering.” Every living thing in the village was once something or someone else.

La Pierre-Saint-Christophe is the perfect venue for recycling the dead; undertaking is a big business and Death has cut a deal: Each year the Grim Reaper will take time off so the funerary guild can enjoy a weekend of hard partying, whence Énard’s title.

Led by the mayor, Martial Pouvreau, they’re a Rabelaisian crew, given to high-flown oratory between blackouts; as the feast opens Pouvreau proclaims, “we shall drink until we drop, still struggling to make our gastral gurglings intelligible.” Énard has rollicking good fun with his tale, and although not much happens outside metamorphosis, drunkenness, and David making fumbling efforts at romance while eventually resolving to abandon social science for farming, Énard playfully works some of the same ecumenical ground as in earlier novels such as Compass (2017) and Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants (2018), drawing on the sometimes-colliding tenets of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.

Good fun, and blissfully inconclusive, as befits a shaggy-dog story of unending reincarnations.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

The Sun Sets in Singapore Fadipe, Kehinde | Grand Central Publishing (336 pp.) | $28.00 | Dec. 5, 2023 9781538741498

Three expatriate women navigate love, work, friendship, and family amid the sunny, cosmopolitan glitter of modern Singapore.

Dara, a workaholic Nigerian British lawyer, excitedly senses that she’s on the verge of becoming a partner in her firm, a long-awaited reward for the long hours she’s put in. Amaka, Dara’s best friend, is a credit-risk officer from Nigeria who’s navigating her father’s death and her place—or lack thereof—within his second family as she finds herself spending more and more time gazing lustfully at luxury shoes online. Finally, there’s Lillian, a Nigerian American former pianist turned teacher of Business English who’s followed her husband to the island, hoping to start a family even as their marriage threatens to fall apart.

Initially drawn together by a book club, the three women become further intertwined when Lani, a handsome and accomplished Nigerian lawyer, joins Dara’s firm, and the women find themselves involved with him in distinctive and potentially explosive ways.

As Lani racks up successes and builds admiration at the firm, Dara senses her position is threatened, and she must decide what she’s willing to do to preserve her career. Amaka finds herself irresistibly attracted to him (and away from her stable relationship with

her boyfriend) after a chance meeting one night. Seeking an evening course in Japanese, Lani meets Lillian at the language academy where she works, and she is immediately struck by, and then increasingly obsessed with, his resemblance to her late father. Alternating among the perspectives of the three women, Fadipe showcases her rich talent for illustrating Singapore’s social and economic landscape as well as the emotional complexities that motivate each character.

A lovely exploration of the phase of self-discovery between early adulthood and middle age.

Kirkus Star

The Other Mothers Faulkner, Katherine | Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) | $28.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781668024782

A London journalist struggles with parenting, work, and a coven of fellow playgroup mothers in this menace-infused thriller.

Freelance journalist Natasha Carpenter splits her harried time between work—when she can get it—her 2-year-old son, Finn, and her husband, Tom. When Finn, under heartbreaking duress, starts going to a local playgroup, Tash has slightly more time to pursue her current investigative article, the mystery of a local nanny, Sophie Blake, found dead in a reservoir; she also starts hanging out with some of the playgroup’s other mothers, Claire, Laura, and Nicole. Those three are living lives of higher-end luxury than Tash, accentuated by giant houses, cheerful—and sometime overly attentive—husbands, and fancy brunches at an upscale café, Ruby’s. Despite her limited budget, Tash goes along gamely for the breezy social ride. But when she starts getting anonymous threats, Tash realizes something is seriously amiss. >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 9

F I C T I O N // Q & A

THE KIRKUS Q&A: JHUMPA LAHIRI

For 11 years, Lahiri has split her time between Italy and the U.S.

In her latest story collection, originally written in Italian, Lahiri explores life in her adopted city of Rome. BY MARION WINIK

In the starred Kirkus review of Roman Stories, our critic observed that the throughline of the stories seems to be the “perspective of an outsider looking in.” Does that resonate?

Absolutely. For me, everybody in that book is an outsider. I would like to push against the binary 10 OCTOBER 15, 2023

idea of “foreigners” being the outsiders, in contrast with another category called Romans or Italians.

Even people born and raised in the city can suffer acute displacement and alienation. At the end of the day, we all have to understand the other in ourselves and make room for that

person. This is ethically so important.

And then there’s Rome!

My God! For centuries it’s had such specific cultural significance, power, and resonance. And yet waves of different populations have defined it from the beginning.

One of the stories that seems to explore that dynamic is “The Steps.” In it, a series of six characters is seen traversing an ancient staircase, each in their own story: The Mother, The Widow, The Expat Wife, The Girl, Two Brothers, The Screenwriter. Is this a real place?

The building where I live in Rome is literally part of La Scalea del Tamburino, though no one really calls it that. The idea for the stories originated in the period when we first went back to

Rome after the acute phase of the pandemic. There were as yet no vaccines, so we had to quarantine in our apartment, though everyone else was out and about. For those weeks, we lived by people basically passing us food, pasta, newspapers, whatever, across the gate from the staircase. It was the end of June, very hot already, and I would often go down to wait for the delivery, observing life on the staircase without participating in any way. That situation gave rise to the idea of using the staircase as a backdrop, but also as a character itself, to try to describe what daily life in Rome is like from my point of view.

What do you miss most about that life when you’re not there?

I miss a daily sense of well-being. I feel taken care KIRKUS REVIEWS

Laura Sciacovelli

PULITZER PRIZE–WINNING author Jhumpa Lahiri (The Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Whereabouts) is a woman of many countries and languages. Born in London to Bengali immigrant parents, she was raised in Kingston, Rhode Island. In 2012, she moved with her family from Brooklyn to Rome, developing a connection to the city that has only grown in the years since and is reflected in her new collection of short fiction, Roman Stories (Knopf, Oct. 10).

For 11 years, Lahiri has split her time between Italy and the U.S.; at the time of this interview, she had just resettled her American home base from Princeton, New Jersey, to Brooklyn. Her plan for the foreseeable future is to spend half the year in New York, teaching at her alma mater, Barnard/Columbia, and the other half writing and translating in Rome.

Roman Stories was originally written in Italian, then translated into English by Lahiri and Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz. Lahiri told Kirkus that although she characterizes Bengali as “the language in which I was first loved,” she doesn’t claim it, or any other language, as her own.

Nonetheless, her passion for Italian reflects her sense that the city of Rome is one place on earth “that has allowed me to really accept who I am.” We talked about that and more on Zoom; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q & A // F I C T I O N

the barista, “I’m leaving of by the city. It’s a strange tomorrow—my flight is in thing to say, because it’s not the morning.” He said, “You the easiest city, it’s not like come back here behind the everybody’s reaching out bar. This is your place of to hug me or hold my hand, honor today.” but it’s a place that has I did, and he made me my allowed me to accept who I coffee. I pulled out my one am. I’ve waited a long time euro and 20 cents, and he to feel that it’s OK to not be said, “Well, of course you’re from any one place, that I not paying for this.” I said, don’t have to conform to “You know, Marco, there is expectations of being one one thing I will miss immekind of person or another. I diately when I go back to feel that in Rome. the United States.” He said, There’s a humanity and “It’s the coffee, right?” And warmth in my day-to-day I said, “No, it’s you.” These life there—from friends, are very beautiful things in neighbors, from people in businesses that I frequent— my mind. that I find so rare and valuable in our increasingly How did Roman Stories fast-paced, impersonal come together? Did you set world. I remember the last out to write a book of stocoffee I had in the little ries about life in Rome? bar below my house. I told Well, in 2018 and 2019, I

was on leave for a year from Princeton, back living in Rome. I’d already written the first few stories in the book: “The Boundary,” “P’s Parties,” and “The Reentry.”

At that moment, I thought back to Alberto Moravia, his Racconti romani. One day I was sitting with my editor and I asked him, “What do you think of Racconti romani as a title for a book I might write?” He said, “Oh, I think this would be a really interesting project.” So, during that leave year, I drafted most of the other stories in the book. When I was finished, I still felt strongly that “The Boundary” should be the first story, because all the stories are about boundaries, how we negotiate them, how boundaries

There’s a humanity and warmth in my day-to-day life there.

Roman Stories

Lahiri, Jhumpa; trans. by Jhumpa Lahiri with Todd Portnowitz

Knopf | 224 pp. | $27.00 Oct. 10, 2023 | 9780593536322

are both necessary and do us violence.

The one about the little girl whose family rents out a guest house on their farm and she spies on the renters. I love that story!

Can you tell us what you are working on now?

I’ve been working for the past couple of years on a co-translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses with Yelena Baraz, a classicist at Princeton University.

Is that a fun project?

It’s an amazing project, the most thrilling project of my life. Ovid’s poem has meant so much to me for so very long. I studied Latin as an undergraduate at Barnard and minored in classics. It has remained a love and an area of interest. The opportunity to read the Metamorphoses from start to finish in Latin with someone as qualified as Yelena to walk me through every line and really explain what is going on has been the most fulfilling experience of my career.

Will we see it anytime soon?

It’s an immense project. We currently have a first full draft, but I imagine there will be many iterations, as well as introductory materials and commentary to write and incorporate. It’s not something one can do quickly.

I guess we’ll have to be patient—we’ll try!

Marion Winik is the host of the NPR podcast The Weekly Reader. Roman Stories received a starred review in the Aug. 1, 2023, issue.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

OCTOBER 15, 2023 11

FICTION

Unfortunately, she’s already struggled to re-focus any police interest in Sophie’s case, and she finds herself not just playing amateur detective but beginning to wonder who she can trust. Faulkner is a pro at ever-so-gradually ratcheting up the tension bit by tiny, spine-tingling bit. And, as the narrative deftly swings between timeframes—many of the chapters are narrated by Sophie in the period leading up to her death—we get a vertiginous view of just how tightly a group of people’s lives can be inexorably twisted together.

Faulkner pulls out all the psychological-thriller stops—and then some.

Five Bad Deeds Frear, Caz | Harper/HarperCollins (416 pp.) | $18.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9780063091115

“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences,” begins the letter that changes Ellen Walsh’s life. This might as well be the tagline for

the novel.

While Ellen might not be the perfect mom, she checks most of the boxes, most of the time. She’s got the successful husband, the designer bling, and the idyllic small-town life, complete with a house undergoing expensive renovations (financed by the in-laws) to become her dream home. If she might snap at her kids or overindulge in wine from time to time—well, who wouldn’t, with a hostile teenage daughter and a set of 4-year-old twins? But Ellen’s secrets run deeper than the occasional, regrettable Facebook selfie-under-the-influence. She may be responsible for destroying her friend’s marriage. She may have had a hand in her model sister’s career-ending accident. And she definitely chose to keep the high school student she’s tutoring a secret from her husband. So when Ellen receives an anonymous letter from someone intent 12 OCTOBER 15, 2023

The author makes visible the lives of African-immigrant security guards in France.

S TA N D I N G H E A V Y

on tormenting her for her perceived “crimes,” she knows she has a lot to lose. Trying to uncover the culprit and avoid exposure, Ellen instead finds herself humiliated and discredited at every turn. While Frear’s exploration of the darker side of motherhood and the trappings of affluent domestic “achievement” for white women seems to follow the recent trend in thrillers, the characters and the mystery itself are elevated by expert pacing; snappy, believable dialogue; and colorful metaphors (“Kristy always had a mouth like a rusty machete”). As a commentary on what some people will sacrifice for social status and the long-reaching consequences of childhood trauma, the novel is a psychological triumph.

Well-plotted and deliciously edgy.

Standing Heavy GauZ’ | Trans. by Frank Wynne | Biblioasis (176 pp.) | $16.95 paper | Oct. 3, 2023 9781771966009

This debut by GauZ’—his first English translation, courtesy of Wynne—makes visible the lives of African immigrants in France serving as the nation’s

security guards.

In movies, GauZ’ observes, “no security guard has ever been a hero.” Ossiri, Kassoum, and Ferdinand are among those working security in France, all Black immigrants from Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. They are “Standing Heavies,” a term defined as “designat[ing] all the various professions that require

the employee to remain standing in order to earn a pittance.” Ossiri watches for shoplifters at Camaïeu, a women’s clothing retailer; Kassoum patrols Les Grands Moulins de Paris, a disused flour mill, to prevent squatters; Ferdinand subcontracts out jobs from his own security company. GauZ’ spends half the book following these characters over several decades and ruminating with brittle humor on the inherited injustices of capitalism and postcolonial French West Africa. One particularly piercing insight describes the bitter irony of Europeans selling cotton, picked by enslaved Africans in America, back to Africa, in the form of “African print fabric” designed by former colonizers. The other half of the book is split into short, semiconnected snippets—a fragmentary collage of ideas, images, and impressions of consumerism which reads as if they were jotted down by a security guard people-watching on the Champs-Élysées. “A Black woman is applying white lipstick. It makes her look as though her lips are infected and filled with pus,” one entry reads. “Here, everything is on sale, even self-esteem,” concludes another. These mishmash sections are interesting but less memorable than the main narrative. This book should perhaps be read in one sitting for maximum effect and digested for long after.

An incisive, uneven, yet meaningful document chronicling the humanity of undocumented workers.

For more by translator Frank Wynne, visit Kirkus online.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

FICTION

About Ed Glück, Robert | New York Review Books (280 pp.) | $18.95 paper | Nov. 14, 2023 9781681377766

An autofiction elegy for both a former lover and the AIDS era.

The Ed of the title is Ed Aulerich-Sugai, an acclaimed painter who died of AIDS in 1994.

He and artist-essayist-poet Glück were lovers in the early ’70s, though this book doesn’t strictly chronicle their relationship, breakup, and friendship.

Instead, Glück delivers lyric-essay chapters on his San Francisco neighbors as well as friends lost to AIDS through the ’80s, bouncing between erotic remembrances of hookups to more mournful thoughts about Ed’s death. Glück’s tone can be wryly comic in remembering this era: “There were not enough orgasms in the universe to cut through the knot of tension that was Ed.” Or it can be gently lyrical: “Burning isolation.

From each red window Ed’s outstreached arms. I’m safe in heaven, somehow.” And there’s a genuine tenderness in some moments, as when he recalls washing Ed’s body with another lover after his death.

But there’s no prevailing order to this jumble of remembrances, which makes it hard to find a throughline in either Ed’s personality or his relationship with Robert—and makes a scene of coprophilia even more blindsiding than it’d usually be. Much of the closing sections are dedicated to Ed’s dream journals, which deploy a variety of metaphors around sex and illness, including shape-shifting, war, and Dennis Cooper-ish visions of incest and pedophilia. Glück’s delivery here is abstract (“We run for our lives, dodging sunbeams filtered through a mesh of arching roses”), and anybody troubled by transgression is shopping in the wrong aisle.

But it’s as tedious to experience Ed’s dreams at length as anybody’s, and KIRKUS REVIEWS

though Glück plainly strives to be affirming and loving, the prose is more often exhausting.

A sui generis but wearying examination of grief.

Orbital Harvey, Samantha | Grove (144 pp.) $27.00 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780802161543

Six astronauts on a space station orbit the planet over the course of a single Earth day.

Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, a space station goes round and round.

Over the course of 24 hours, the astronauts inside experience sunrise and sunset 16 times. Though they’re supposed to keep their schedules in tune with a normal “daily” routine, they exist in a dream-like liminal space, weightless, out of time, captivated and astonished by the “ringing singing lightness” of the globe always in view.

“What would it be to lose this?” is the question that spurs Harvey’s nimble swoops and dives into the minds of the six astronauts (as well as a few of the earthbound characters, past and present). There are gentle eddies of plot: The Japanese astronaut, Chie, has just received word that her elderly mother has died; six other astronauts are currently on their way to a moon landing; a “super-typhoon” barrels toward the Philippines; one of the two cosmonauts, Anton, has discovered a lump on his neck. But overall this book is a meditation, zealously lyrical, about the profundity and precarity of our imperiled planet. It’s surely difficult to write a book in which the main character is a giant rock in space— and the book can feel ponderous at times, especially in the middle—but Harvey’s deliberate slowed-down time and repetitions are entirely the point.

Like the astronauts, we are forced to meditate on the notion that “not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s…a universe of sidelines,

that there is no centre.” Is this a crisis or an opportunity? Harvey treats this question as both a narrative and an existential dilemma.

Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.

A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself Howe, Katherine | Henry Holt (288 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 21, 2023 | 9781250304889

Issues of identity loom large in this tale of a female pirate whose journal becomes the research subject of a professor and her ambitious student.

Hannah Masury’s “Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates” tells a classic story: In 1726, the illiterate teenager witnesses the murder of a young sailor by pirates and knows she must flee Boston. Disguising herself as a boy named Will, she becomes cabin boy on a ship, only to find herself in the company of marauding pirates on their way to a tropical island where treasure is buried; to survive, she becomes a pirate, too. The journal’s existence proves that Hannah did survive, but is it, along with the treasure it describes, real? That’s the question Radcliffe Professor Marian Beresford tries to resolve two centuries later. Against her better judgment, and despite factual errors in Hannah’s version of history, Marian wants to believe that the journal her student Kay Lonergan has discovered is authentic. Marian finds backing for an expedition to search a crescent of islands Hannah mentions, but nothing works out as planned. Sometimes deadly earnest, sometimes sharply funny, the novel explores how women thwarted by circumstances shape-shift to fit in.

Hannah, a starving girl in 18th-century Boston, finds some measure OCTOBER 15, 2023 13

S IECCTTI IOONN F

of security as a boy pirate, while Marian, a closeted 20th-century gay woman, lives with strict propriety as a spinster in Boston and occasionally escapes to the Mad Hatter, an actual gay club in 1930s New York.

And obfuscating gender or sexuality is not the only tool of self-protection or -advancement the novel shows; Kay, described by Marian as “the heroine of her own imagination,” courts fame in the tabloid press with a canny mix of fact and exaggeration. In Howe’s deliberately ambiguous narrative, authenticity is difficult to prove and not a clear absolute, in people or objects.

Enjoy the author’s strong eye for details of time and place; skim the muddled pirate action on the high seas.

Goldenseal Hummel, Maria | Counterpoint (240 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 9, 2024 | 9781640096066

“And yet the stories about female friendship rarely end well,” opines one of the protagonists in Hummel’s close examination of one such blighted relationship.

Estranged for more than four decades, former friends and confidantes Lacey and Edith reunite for a meeting, in 1990, on Lacey’s turf. (The encounter, orchestrated at Edith’s behest, would have to be at Lacey’s place, as she now rarely leaves her hotel suite in Los Angeles.)

Over the course of a long evening and a carefully planned room service dinner, the two aging women discuss their earlier relationship and subsequent lives. It’s clear that both bear emotional scars related to the apparently seismic rupture of their friendship and the facts of that breach are slowly revealed over the course of the night. Each of the old friends attempts to justify her own position in a series of sharp discussions and emotional monologues 14 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Hummel delivers a lifetime of pathos and revelation over a single night.

GOLDENSEAL

but a heartwarming rapprochement doesn’t seem in the offing when one of the two indicates she’s hated the other for four decades (and still does).

Lacey’s backstory is complicated by a family life marked by sadness and loss, much of it attributable to the horrific effects of the Holocaust upon her family. The scarifying effects of Edith’s family life relate to poverty, violence, and isolation but the outcome was the same: a young girl who revels in the friendship and understanding of a first close ally. Ranging from pre–World War II Europe to the glamorous era of postwar Hollywood with stops in New York City and a girl’s camp set in the northern woods, Hummel’s dissection of what went wrong between Lacey and Edith borrows from both stagecraft and fairy tale in its analysis.

Hummel delivers a lifetime of pathos and revelation in the course of one night.

The Woman Back From Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty Jin, Ha | Other Press (736 pp.) | $21.99 paper | Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781635423778

An epic historical novel of communist China, illuminated through the life of an extraordinary real-life woman.

More than 700 pages maintain a brisk pace, beginning with the introduction of two young women whose lives will remain connected. One

is the protagonist, Sun Yomei. Her classmate, rival, and eventual adversary is Jiang Ching, who warns the younger woman to stay away from a teacher in whom both have some romantic interest. Both are acting students, but the 24-year-old Ching is already more experienced and better established than the 17-yearold Yomei, whom she calls “my little sister.” The conniving Ching uses her sexual allure to advance her career and position, ultimately marrying Chairman Mao. The younger woman also rises to prominence, as a pioneering theatrical director. But Yomei remains an innocent, not really grasping that every man she meets seems to fall in love with her (in this novel at least) and why this generates resentment among so many women. She also believes that she can somehow remain free from political entanglement while devoting her life to the theater, an impossibility during the Cultural Revolution. Among the other complications are her adoption into the family of Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, her theatrical training in Moscow, and her brutal encounter with the rapacious Mao. She embarks on a problematic marriage, one that might have made more sense to her in real life than it does in this book.

Like its title, the novel can seem overstuffed, filled with incidents and characters that are true to the historical record but don’t serve much fictional purpose. The matter-of-fact narrative remains breezy, though the imagined dialogue can sound contrived. It takes decades for Sun Yomei to meet the fate that seems prophesied from the outset.

The redemption of a historical figure whose life ended in political disgrace.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

FICTION

The Engagement Party Kane, Darby | Morrow/HarperCollins (368 pp.) | $18.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9780063225626

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, this twisty tale unspools what happens when a gathering of old friends devolves into a

killing spree.

All the guests invited to a party to meet Will Mayer’s fiancee know they shouldn’t attend, but as often happens in locked-door mysteries and horror novels, they just can’t stay away. Will and fellow Bowdoin College graduates Alex and Cassandra Greene and Mitch Andersen share secrets about the deaths 12 years before of two fellow students, and the weight of those secrets has killed something inside them. Metaphorically, they’re rotting from the inside out. On graduation weekend, more than a decade before, Emily Hunt was found dead. At first, the police and friends, as well as people who never knew her, blamed her because she’d been drinking and had a reputation for liking sex. But someone spread rumors that she was murdered

by Brendan Clarke, another student, and not long after Emily’s death, he was found dead too. Now, this reunion, set on an island in Maine, will blow up all the rumors and wellkept secrets, and everyone’s life is on the line. Countless writers have employed the trapped-on-a-desertedisland setup, and this story could easily drown in a sea of clichés. But Kane methodically builds this plot-driven thriller through each character’s perspective, then lets us watch as nearly all of them fall on the swords of their coverups. Tropes abound—isolated location, an approaching storm, and a plethora of unreliable narrators—but Kane still manages to keep the plot spinning in tornadic fashion. Mixing a classic plot device with the dangers inherent in victim-blaming and the KIRKUS REVIEWS

damage amateur sleuths can cause through misuse of social media give Kane’s novel a modern twist.

Chances are no one will survive this killer celebration.

Hex Education Kilmer, Maureen | Putnam (336 pp.) $17.00 paper | Sept. 19, 2023 9780593422397

Kilmer returns to suburbia in this white-collar tale of magic, mayhem, and sisterhood.

Twenty years ago, on an otherwise peaceful evening in September, the Hawthorne Hall dormitory at North Valley University burned to the ground. The cause of the fire was never determined, but Sarah Nelson and her best friends, Katrina Andrews and Alicia Lipschitz, know the truth: Their inexperienced, currently estranged coven was responsible for the damage done that fateful night. Now a luxury realtor with a handsome husband, charming twins, and an opinionated, four-legged familiar who enjoys binge watching pay-per-view movies, Sarah still dabbles in magic from time to time. Who wouldn’t want a little extra help cleaning the house or keeping raccoons out of the trash? But when an unexpected reunion makes the friends’ innate magical abilities go haywire and, to make matters worse, a true crime podcaster starts investigating the cause of the fire, Sarah, Katrina, and Alicia are forced to reconcile with their powers before more irreparable damage is done. At its core, this novel is a love letter to the witchy stories that have come before it. Readers will appreciate the inspiration that Kilmer has taken from The Craft, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and even Charmed as Sarah and her coven navigate keeping their secret safe, protecting their families, and dealing with the often unexpected side effects of magic. Unfortunately,

nostalgia isn’t enough to propel this story forward, and this falls short of Kilmer’s campy debut novel, Suburban Hell (2022). Sarah’s domestic use of magic in her day-to-day life is delightful—a scene in which her refrigerator stocks itself with 30 pounds of sandwich meat of its own accord is laugh-out-loud funny—but it’s dragged down by an underdeveloped plot and two-dimensional characters.

A lighthearted witchy romp that pays homage to its predecessors but is cursed by uneven pacing.

The Wildest Sun Lemmie, Asha | Dutton (336 pp.) | $27.00 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780593185711

A search for her father takes a 16-year-old Parisienne on a voyage of self-discovery across two continents and two decades.

When we meet Delphine in September 1945, she tells us she has killed someone but gives no details until much later. We know right away who she thinks her father is: Ernest Hemingway, who Dephine’s mother says was her lover for two years before their baby was born in 1929 and he decamped to the U.S. Despite having dealt with her mother’s alcoholism and unreliability throughout her childhood, Delphine fiercely believes this to be true. This conviction carries her first to New York, where she takes refuge in Harlem with a nurturing Black couple who knew her mother in Paris, then later to Havana, where she has heard Hemingway is living. Her quest for Papa is the narrative line on which Lemmie hangs a touching coming-of-age tale. Delphine exhibits the classic traumatized personality of an alcoholic’s child: simultaneously guilty and angry. She assuages the guilt in New York by befriending and trying to help a drug-addicted party >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 15

P O D C A S T // F I C T I O N

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Everyone’s Thinking It

by Aleema Omotoni (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins) A Letter for Bob

by Kim Rogers, illus. by Jonathan Nelson (Heartdrum) Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Wednesday’s Child

by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) ALSO MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE:

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray All the Way to Havana

by Margarita Engle, illus. by Mike Curato Property: Stories Between Two Novellas

by Lionel Shriver THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Cryo by Blake Fisher A Long Time Dead

by T.L. Bequette The Wisdom of Beasts and Boogeymen

by Allen (Pud) Deters

Angela Sterling

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.

To listen to the episode, visit Kirkus online.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Fully Booked

Mona Awad’s Rouge is an irresistible elixir of dark comedy and gothic horror. BY MEGAN LABRISE EPISODE 337: MONA AWAD

On this episode, Mona Awad joins us to discuss Rouge (Marysue Rucci Books, Sept. 12), a contemporary fairy tale—inspired by Snow White—skewering beauty culture and youth obsession, from the critically acclaimed author of Bunny, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, and All’s Well.

Canadian novelist and short story writer Awad, who teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Syracuse University, specializes in dark comedy with a twist. Rouge is an outstanding addition to her oeuvre: Set primarily in sunny California, it charts the strange days of a skin care–obsessed dress shop clerk who’s traveled from Montreal to attend her mother’s funeral.

Here’s a bit from Kirkus’ starred review of Rouge: “Mirabelle Nour hasn’t lived with her mother in years, but she’s built a life that nevertheless feels like both a reflection and rejection of Noelle Des Jardins. She works in a dress shop, but not the one her mother co-owns in Southern California. She goes by Mira as an adult instead of Belle, the nickname Noelle always preferred. She puts a high premium on her appearance, just like her mother, but in a way Noelle struggles to understand: prioritizing elaborate skin care routines and collagen shakes over red lipstick and sun hats. When Noelle dies in a supposed accident, Mirabelle must come home to La Jolla and confront their disconnect. In the process, she finds her way to La Maison de Méduse, the home of the titular Rouge, which offers otherworldly spa treatments to clients in pursuit of their ‘Most Magnificent Self,’ and uncovers long-suppressed childhood memories of a man who resembled Hollywood royalty.…This is the stuff of fairy tales— red shoes, ballrooms, mirrors, and

Rouge

Awad, Mona

Marysue Rucci Books | 384 pp. | $28.00 Sept. 12, 2023 | 9781982169695

thorns but also sincerity, poignancy, and terror.”

Awad describes Rouge as “a gothic fairy tale about beauty, envy, and grief” and discusses how social media skin care videos and a famous fairy tale helped inspire the story. We then discuss the pleasures of writing the novel; the fact that fairy tales are often horrifying; how horror (genre) plays with the loss of autonomy; racial inequality in the beauty industry; critical reading of the words “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”; fraught mother-daughter dynamics; what artists can learn from their art; Rouge’s unforgettable cover; development deals; and much more.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, Eric Liebetrau, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

Megan Labrise is an editor at large and host of Fully Booked.

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B O O K T O S C R E E N // F I C T I O N

Book to Screen Zakiya Dalila Harris Discusses Series

Nicole Mondestin Photography

The Other Black Girl is streaming on Hulu.

Zakiya Dalila Harris discussed the Hulu series adaptation of her novel, The Other Black Girl, in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter.

Harris’ debut novel, published in 2021 by Atria, follows Nella, the sole Black employee of a book publisher until a woman named Hazel is hired. Not long after Hazel gains popularity with her officemates, Nella begins receiving anonymous notes demanding that

KIRKUS REVIEWS

she quit her job. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the novel “a biting social satire-cum-thriller; dark, playful, and brimming with life.”

The Hulu adaptation stars Sinclair Daniel as Nella and Ashleigh Murray as Hazel.

Harris discussed the

casting process with the Hollywood Reporter, saying, “There were so many great auditions for Nella, but when I saw Sinclair, I was just so blown away because she was able to convey so much on her face.…

When we met Ashleigh and heard about what the role meant to her, it was like, this is it. They have such a good chemistry together.”

Harris said that having actor Rashida Jones on board as an executive producer of the series was a key to it getting developed.

“I also know that behind the scenes, Rashida has been such a champion and

a force for this project,” she said. “It’s really hard to make something when you’re an author and not established in the world of Hollywood. Having her has helped keep the momentum going.”—MICHAEL SCHAUB

For a review of The Other Black Girl, visit Kirkus online.

OCTOBER 15, 2023 19

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girl; when that blows up, she flees for Havana. There, she settles in to write the novels that will show Papa she is truly his daughter. She does eventually make contact, but the novel’s central action over the next 14 years is Delphine’s slow maturation, which includes clearer assessments of her mother, Hemingway, and even his books that she once uncritically admired. Her growth is fostered in large part by Javier, initially hired as her guide and translator but ultimately her friend and savvy mentor. Castro’s overthrow of the Batista regime paves the way for the final stage in Delphine’s odyssey. She has chronicled her struggles and insecurities so affectingly that readers are likely to be tolerant of closing chapters that too neatly wrap up a plot grounded in messy ambiguities.

A strong story with an engaging protagonist.

The Bridesman Liebrecht, Savyon | Trans. by Gilah KahnHoffmann | Europa Editions (160 pp.) | $18.00 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9781609459864

An Israeli expatriate in Los Angeles reconnects with his aunt-by-marriage and returns to Israel, where secrets from the past resurface.

In a strong translation by Kahn-Hoffmann, Liebrecht portrays the connection between a young Micha and Adella, whom he meets for the first time when he’s 9 years old and she’s 18 and engaged to his favorite uncle.

Micha comes from a big, opinionated Iranian Jewish family that looks down on Adella but he befriends her, and when the wedding plans are made, he is chosen to be her bridesman. In fluid prose, Liebrecht describes how Micha gets to know Adella, becomes fascinated with her, 20 OCTOBER 15, 2023

and participates in her wedding.

As a young teenager, he relocates to Los Angeles with his mother, and then the chronology jumps ahead; Micha is an adult, working as a ghostwriter in Los Angeles, and Adella has reached out after many years to ask him to come to Israel for an unknown reason. Does she want him to ghostwrite her memoir? And who is this new woman?

Adella has become Adel, and there is no trace of the timid, marginalized girl he remembers from his childhood. What ensues is a revelation of long-hidden secrets. Micha is in the business of ghostwriting, of crafting narratives from what he is told is true. But Adel’s revelations make Micha revise his own memories of her and of his childhood, thus reminding readers to reexamine the stories we tell. The prose is clean and smooth, and Micha’s narration transitions seamlessly from the voice of a young boy to the voice of an adult.

Quietly intelligent and carefully written and translated, the novel encourages us to consider the relationship between truth and stories.

Unfortunately, the narrative drags a little, and the story is not very compelling until its final shocking twist—which almost, but not quite, makes the rest worthwhile.

This slim novel invites us to question the narratives we know and has a rewarding payoff, but is slow-moving.

Kirkus Star

Verdigris Mari, Michele | Trans. by Brian Robert Moore | And Other Stories (240 pp.) | $19.95 paper | Jan. 2, 2024 | 9781913505905

A curious teenager’s conversations with an odd groundskeeper yield far more than he’d bargained for.

In 1969 in rural Italy,

13-year-old Michelino whiles away the early August days by peppering Felice, the groundskeeper of his grandfather’s estate, with questions about the place and pestering him to stop killing the red slugs that populate the property. Plagued by the premature onset of hereditary memory loss, Felice agrees to pause his molluscan massacre in exchange for Michelino’s help in developing mnemonic devices to remember basic facts of everyday life: fleece flower by the bedside to remember his name, black arrows directing him to the outhouse. But as Michelino’s “maieutic maneuvers” grow ever more convoluted (a hammer and sickle somehow come to signify a rotten sausage?), the narrative takes a disturbing tilt.

Felice reveals his knowledge of a secret room above a hayloft, and buried truths emerge involving Nazi officers, the manor’s mysterious previous owners, and Felice’s own enigmatic identity. Mari’s signature approach to memory and childhood serves the storytelling well, and idiosyncratic elements intensify the novel’s underlying tension: Felice’s strangely endearing speech habits (“Firs’, we have t’ be fin’in’ ou’ me age”), Michelino’s eclectic philosophical references (Lukács, Adorno, and Aristotle among them), and actual historical events described with painstaking specificity, such as a reference to an infamous football match that turned violent and the “swollen eye of Néstor Combin,” a professional footballer. Kudos to translator Moore, whose consummate conversion allows readers to luxuriate in the language of even deceptively minor moments: “amid the heads of lettuce, languished the halved cadavers of red slugs.”

A gripping, beguiling, occasionally discomfiting, and utterly fascinating tour de force.

For more by Michele Mari, visit Kirkus online.

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FICTION

Maternal Instinct Masterman, Becky | Severn House (288 pp.) $31.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781448311958

A Florida man who’s lost his father opens his home to his stepmother.

Nightmare complications ensue.

In the two years since Robert Deming succumbed to kidney disease, Althea Deming, his second wife, has been living in a group facility. Now that Hal Deming has moved back into the house where he grew up and refurbished a sumptuous suite worthy of his imperious stepmother, he and his wife and daughter are ready to welcome Althea into their household. Maybe “welcome” isn’t the best word, since Grace Deming instantly recoils at what she sees as her mother-in-law’s resentment of the arrangements they’ve made, and her 13-year-old daughter, Shyla, is soon grieving the effects of the lethal games that Althea’s cat, Ruth, plays with Shyla’s tortoise, Gonzo. For her part, Althea, who encouraged her husband to roam through Europe searching for Joan, the daughter who ran away from home when she was a teenager, keeps remembering or imagining conversations with Robert in which he confesses to having killed Clare, his first wife, in an episode that pays explicit homage to Rebecca. The seal is set on the dysfunctional family when Grace’s mother suggests that Hal and Grace take some time off together, leaving Althea and Shyla to fester with her in their absence. A series of increasingly dreamlike scenes leaves one person dead and the others at odds. Masterman’s most original addition to the neo-Gothic canon is the conviction that every member of this shattered family is suspicious of the others, and that they all have abundant justification.

A fever dream of family gone disastrously wrong.

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A deeply affecting novel that illuminates the costs of being a woman.

THE SIMPLE ART OF KILLING A WOMAN

Night Owl Mayne, Andrew | Thomas & Mercer (315 pp.) | $16.99 paper | Dec. 1, 2023 9781662506437

A freelance fixer discovers international intrigue while probing a catastrophic aircraft explosion.

A creepy prologue introduces siblings Luka and Adrik, budding contract killers, making a few extra euros by dispatching a woman.

Stateside, the death of his young son, Jason, devastates retired FBI agent Brad Trasker, who waxes philosophical in the grip of his grief as he embarks on a new project. Trasker happened to meet media-shy entrepreneur Kylie Connor when she helped him change a flat tire. Is it karma or design when she summons him to a high-powered meeting in an airplane hangar? Kylie is planning to pilot Sparrow, an experimental hydrogen-powered aircraft she claims “will make aviation globally accessible.” Trasker isn’t sure why he’s been invited, but he’s clearly needed after the demo goes horribly wrong.

The aircraft explodes and catches fire; Kylie, engulfed in flames as she stands outside the plane, survives unscathed. Trasker sets about investigating the explosion. The prolific Mayne’s series kickoff at first unfolds like a forensics-heavy police procedural, with short chapters adding new bits of evidence and often introducing new characters. Advanced technology figures prominently; Trasker suspects a projectile fired from a strategically chosen location. The possibility of a Russian connection gives new

significance to the prologue and its title to the novel, which morphs into a labyrinthine international thriller.

The intensity rises when Trasker meets unctuous Michael Charles Wagner and begins to uncover a complex criminal network, piece by piece. Mayne overreaches, trying to do too many things at once, but the pace never flags.

A brisk, competent thriller that neither challenges nor disappoints.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman Melo, Patrícia | Trans. by Sophie Lewis Restless Books (272 pp.) | $17.00 paper Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781632063465

A Brazilian lawyer bears witness to the flaws in her country’s justice system, especially regarding the murder of Indigenous women.

The young, unnamed narrator has traveled to a remote Amazonian border town to participate in a research project for her firm, taking notes on the trials of men accused of killing Indigenous women. The trip is well-timed as her lover, Amir, has turned abusive, and she is acutely aware of how abuse escalates; her own mother was killed by her father when she was a child.

From a distance, she is more able to contemplate these experiences as part of a larger pattern of abuse and femicide in Brazil. Three wealthy young men are on trial for the gruesome rape and murder of Txupira, a 14-year-old Indigenous girl. The OCTOBER 15, 2023 21

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narrator witnesses the defense attorney meeting with three jurors in the middle of the night during the trial, and after this proof of corruption is publicized in the newspapers, the editor dies under suspicious circumstances. A friend introduces her to his mother’s Indigenous community, which welcomes her and helps her recall more details of the night her mother died. Each chapter begins with the description of a woman being murdered by a man in her life as part of the research notebook the narrator is assembling, and as the violence continues, she decides to fight back by publishing the stories. Brazilian author Melo weaves together crime, magical realism, mythology, and social criticism in this relevant and urgent translation from the Portuguese by Lewis.

Though the subject is horrifying, especially in the details about marred and dismembered victims, the narrator’s voice is captivating and compelling, offering strength and purpose rather than despair.

A deeply affecting novel illuminating the costs of being a woman in a dangerous, misogynistic society.

Kirkus Star

The Curse of Pietro Houdini Miller, Derek B. | Avid Reader Press (384 pp.) | $28.00 | Jan. 16, 2024 9781668020883

Orphaned by the Allied bombing of Rome, a 14-year-old boy is taken under the wing of a wily art restorer determined to prevent the Nazis from carting off precious paintings stored at the abbey of Montecassino.

The artist, a pontificating, grandiose soul calling himself Pietro Houdini, gives the boy, Massimo, an eye-opening education in art 22 OCTOBER 15, 2023

and survival. He shares his plan of painting over three undiscovered masterpieces by Titian and somehow sneaking them out of the abbey—“the first art heist inside an art heist in the history of the world.” Massimo shocks himself by becoming involved in acts of violence against the Nazis, a number of whom are roaming the abbey among the monks in search of paintings and manuscripts to haul away in trucks. Midway through the novel, Houdini, secretly tormented over a decision he made regarding his activist wife, confesses a family secret and Massimo reveals something even more surprising about himself.

Between Nazi atrocities, a wave of rapes by Allied Moroccan troops, and the massive American bombing of Montecassino, gruesome outcomes await a cast of likable characters, leaving us rooting for the battle-hardened teen to make it south to Naples.

Miller can be oddly detached from the shootings and stabbings, but he is otherwise a splendid storyteller.

Narrated from 40 years in the future, the novel works equally well as wartime tale, heist thriller, coming-of-age story, and sweeping history and art lesson. It’s also a brilliant set piece in which the abbey, “a fortress in the clouds,” is a major character. And let’s hear it also for Ferrari, the mule who overcomes injuries to lend his own brand of heroism.

A brilliantly imagined World War II saga.

Poor Deer Oshetsky, Claire | Ecco/HarperCollins (240 pp.) | $26.99 | Jan. 9, 2024 9780063327665

A terrible mistake burdens an isolated child with a bossy, hot-breathed conscience/ companion.

Oshetsky follows a well-received debut, Chouette (2021), with another odd,

child-driven, animal-haunted narrative, this time the dark fairy tale of Margaret Murphy, who, as a 4-yearold, is implicated in the death of her friend Agnes Bickford. “Poor Deer” is the phrase Margaret overhears—and misspells—as her widowed mother, Florence, and Aunt Dolly sympathize over the suffering Agnes’ mother, Ruby, must be enduring at the loss.

But for sensitive Margaret, the term converts into an actual hooved, yellow-teethed, articulate presence, the externalization of all her childish feelings and unanswered questions about Ruby, Agnes, and herself: the guilt, grief, sin, and sorrow. “Her hooves kick out at my shins. She nips and hurts…She demands justice. She never forgives.” The story opens as 16-yearold Margaret begins writing—at Poor Deer’s insistence—her confession, looking back to her younger self. On the fateful day of Agnes’ death, the two girls had played in the mud of a flooded school yard, then in a toolshed. As part of a game, Agnes had climbed into a disused cooler from which Margaret couldn’t release her, leaving Ruby to find the body and Florence to lie about her daughter’s whereabouts. The resulting backwash of blame and pent-up emotion is intensified by the Murphys’ Catholicism. As Margaret loses an infected finger to amputation, so the book’s overt symbolism and spiritual references come to the fore: heaven and the devil; the mark of Cain; ritual and self-harm. Oshetsky delivers this sad, child’s-eye-perspective morality tale in desultory fashion, leavened by a whimsical, occasionally comic tone, leading to a see-saw effect. Redemption, ultimately, is not ruled out.

A fanciful parable of coming to terms with psychological damage inflicted on a child’s psyche.

For more by Claire Oshetsky, visit Kirkus online.

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FICTION

Boys Alive Pasolini, Pier Paolo | Trans. by Tim Parks NYRB Classics (224 pp.) | $16.95 paper Oct. 17, 2023 | 9781681377629

A colorful, episodic depiction of youths living rough on the outskirts of post–World War II Rome.

Known in the U.S. mainly for his film work, Pasolini (1922-1975) was also a poet, novelist, and essayist. This 1955 novel was the Italian writer’s first and follows several teenage boys over the course of some five years as they struggle with hunger, poverty, and a squalid environment.

The author has a tireless eye for ugliness: “blackened, broken stairs, past twisted pipes spilling from the walls”; “a light bulb smothered in fly shit”; “buildings crusted with thick, damp filth…” The adolescents survive by scavenging and theft and occasionally sexual trade. The potential for desperate acts is never far offstage, lending a constant tension to a meandering narrative. Pasolini sometimes raises a threat and leaves a cliffhanger, as when a boy arguing with his mother grabs a kitchen knife, only to resolve it further along. Amid all the squalor and privation, the youths are resilient and resourceful and even amusing, with an ability to shrug off the hard knocks and go on to dig up the next tiny break life might have to offer. This isn’t The Little Rascals, though, and no ship will rescue them like the boy savages of Lord of the Flies. These are nasty youngsters. Everyone is a target for their entertainment or advantage.

They steal from each other and they have scant regard for girls or women, having seen their fathers habitually mistreat their mothers. Pasolini spends little ink on female characters, the chief ones here being mocking prostitutes and angry mothers. Parks does a fine job with what seems to have been a challenging translation, while also providing a helpful introduction and footnotes.

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A gritty read from one of 20th-century Italy’s leading cultural lights.

B OYS AL IVE

A gritty read from one of 20th-century Italy’s leading cultural lights.

Rebecca, Not Becky Platt, Christine & Catherine Wigginton Greene | Amistad/HarperCollins (336 pp.) | $18.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9780063213586

Two wealthy stay-at-home moms, one Black and one white, deal with the complexities of race. “ ‘Only three more weeks of being Black and bougie with my besties!’ De’Andrea wailed. ‘Then I’ll be living among the Whites, and be stuck dealing with Karens and Beckys and all their caucasity!’ ” In order to be close to her mother-in-law in a high-end memory-care facility, former corporate lawyer De’Andrea Whitman and her ultra-hot, super successful husband, Malik, are moving to Rolling Hills, a gated community in Virginia where they will be the only Black people— except for the security guys working the gate. Her Atlanta friends later joke that the family they saw shopping during their tour with the realtor were “Negroes-for-Hire,” staged to deceive them. Chapters alternate between De’Andrea, written in exuberant style, and the other protagonist, an earnest, anxious, to-do-list-obsessed white woman named Rebecca Myland. Not Becky, as she keeps reminding people— and, in fact, the pejorative meaning of the nickname doesn’t fit her. She’s well aware of her privilege even if her

husband doesn’t get it. She chairs the diversity committee at the nearly allwhite elementary school and is about to lead a charge to remove a Confederate statue from the local park.

She’s eager to get De’Andrea involved, though De’Andrea would really rather not, and she’s not dying to join Rebecca’s book club, either—but her therapist has directed her to make at least one white friend in Rolling Hills, challenging De’Andrea to overcome her extremely unabashed distaste.

Then the two women’s daughters fall in mad kindergarten love and there’s no stopping it—the distance between them must narrow.

At its best when having savvy fun with stereotypes and the sub rosa operations of female social networks.

A Grandmother Begins the Story Porter, Michelle | Algonquin (336 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781643755182

Family stories echo each other, for good and ill, from one woman all the way down to her great-great-granddaughter.

The stories of five generations of Indigenous women weave through this novel, set in western Canada. Mamé has already died but is struggling to negotiate the new norms on the other side. Her daughter Geneviève has checked herself into a rehab center at age 81 after decades of alcoholism. Gen’s daughter, Lucie, is dying of cancer and has >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 23

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3

2

1

For more crime novels, visit Kirkus online.

4

5

5 Crime Novels To Keep You Up All Night 1 Reykjavík

By Ragnar Jónasson & Katrín Jakobsdóttir; trans.

by Victoria Cribb

A slow-burning, spellbinding whodunit. Agatha Christie, to whom it’s dedicated, would be proud.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

2 Evergreen

By Naomi Hirahara

A thought-provoking noir with a searing period flavor.

3 The Collector

4

5 Distant Sons

Relevant and richly entertaining.

Just Another Missing Person

By Gillian McAllister

By Daniel Silva

Dips a bit into formula by the end, but oh! What a twist in the middle.

By Tim Johnston

A slow-burn novel that quietly elevates the fragile codes of honorable men.

OCTOBER 15, 2023 25

long been estranged from her own daughter, Allie. But Lucie has asked Allie’s daughter, Carter, to help her die by suicide even though Carter and Lucie have never met. All of their stories, past and present, overlap in an intergenerational sweep of families fractured by racism, poverty, misogyny, and substance abuse. But family bonds persist, and for this family the strongest bond is music. The book’s structure moves from one character to another, one time period to another, so often that some shifts are confusing. The most interesting stories, and those that get the most space, are Gen’s and Carter’s. Gen used to play piano at dance halls while her charismatic sister, Velma, played the fiddle, but Velma died years ago. As Gen detoxes, she has visions of Velma visiting so they can play together again.

Carter is in the midst of divorcing her husband, a Croatian immigrant, and deciding what to do about her 3-yearold son as she battles addictions of her own—and whether to grant Lucie’s request. Some of the book’s elements of magical realism work, like Mamé’s version of the next life and Gen’s visits with Velma. Others, like chapters from the points of view of Gen’s dogs and car, seem extraneous. But the book really bogs down in a long, repetitive, intermittent narrative about a lovelorn bison that never clicks with the rest of the story.

Several intriguing characters and insightful story lines struggle to emerge from this overstuffed novel.

The Counting House Sernovitz, Gary | Univ. of New Orleans Press (228 pp.) | $18.95 paper Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781608012534

A once-celebrated Chief Investment Officer has a crisis of faith about his life’s work.

After The Green and the Black (2016), nonfiction about the shale gas industry, 26 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Sernovitz returns to territory covered in his novel The Contrarians (2002)—a finance man in crisis. The setting is an unnamed university, where its unnamed, middle-aged CIO has doubled the endowment from $3 billion to $6 billion. Unfortunately, he’s floundering now, after “a very bad year,” and fears he’ll be fired anytime.

At endless meetings with staff, trustees, and managers pitching investment schemes, the CIO’s trademark repartee starts landing flat. Anyone could blow the whistle about his failure at any moment, including his sharpest staff member, Emily, who believes she “can do well by doing good” with lots of wealth. Meanwhile, everyone’s urging him to seek advice from an enigmatic billionaire alum named Michael Hermann. The CIO used to pride himself on being politically liberal, full of Jewish guilt, and hyper-informed. But his self-awareness is voracious. Sernovitz’s prose and focus then shifts to map the CIO’s fears about the meaningless of life, how universities leverage greed, and the inanity of modern investing.

Until, to the shock of his staff, he is literally asking strangers during meetings, “Why do you do this?” The novel doesn’t pretend the one percent care about anything but money, but Sernovitz seems to also want the CIO to be relatable. On the one hand, the CIO laments “the financialization of our economy, our society, and the ambitions of too many young people,” and he feels genuine pain and exhaustion as he looks for leftovers in his fridge.

But, on the other hand, because he’s told us, we also know it’s a $12,000 fridge.

Insightful and fun, but based on a premise only a millionaire could love.

Here in the Dark Soloski, Alexis | Flatiron Books (256 pp.) $27.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781250882943

When a New York theater critic is drawn into playing amateur detective, her dark world gets even darker.

“I am, of necessity, an imitation of myself—a sharp smile, an acid joke, an abyss where a woman should be. For a decade and more I have allowed myself only this lone role, a minor one: Vivian Parry, actor’s scourge and girl-abouttown.” In her debut, Soloski, a culture reporter at the New York Times, crafts a thriller narrated by Vivian Parry, a brittle, unhappy, relentlessly clever theater critic. Since her mother’s untimely death when she was a college student snuffed out her desire and ability to be on stage, Vivian has found her only pleasure in attending plays and issuing brutal assessments of them expressed in “diamond bright” prose, coupled with daily recourse to pills, alcohol, and casual sex. Shortly after she deigns to be interviewed by a whiny man named David Adler for his master’s thesis, she receives a visit from his tearful fiancee saying he has disappeared and Vivian is the last person who saw him. As utterly out of character as it seems, she decides to go undercover to investigate Adler’s disappearance; this is both preceded and followed by many more credibility-stretching events. It’s worth at least pretending to suspend disbelief and ride out Vivian’s Lost Weekend death

Insightful and fun, but based on a premise only a millionaire could love.

THE COUNTING HOUSE

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Truong’s graphic novel is a fascinating look at a troubling and complex time.

40 MEN AND 12 RIFLES

spiral for whole slew of reasons—fun supporting characters (a louche actress best friend, a flamboyant receptionist at Vivian’s magazine), ultra-snappy dialogue and metaphors, rough sex (if you like that sort of thing), and finally an over-the-top payoff that neatly pulls all the wild threads together, followed by a totally impossible but nonetheless touching denouement.

Like Dorothy Parker, the narrator’s role model, this book is almost too clever for its own good.

40 Men and 12 Rifles: Indochina 1954 Truong, Marcelino | Trans. by David Homel Arsenal Pulp Press (296 pp.) | $28.95 paper Oct. 3, 2023 | 9781551529233

Graphic novelist Truong, with translation by Homel, follows a young man’s journey from privileged artist to soldier and reluctant propagandist during the revolutionary fervor of 1950s Vietnam.

The title refers to an “armed propaganda unit” in the Viet Minh army, which fought the French occupation of Vietnam. Despite the description, these units also included women, artists of all stripes lending their skills to turn “the People’s Army” from illiterate peasants into violent revolutionaries. But beyond creating portraits of Communist leaders and dehumanizing caricatures of their opponents, the APUs would also execute those not loyal enough to the cause. We enter this world of thought control and bloody conflict via a young painter named Minh, KIRKUS REVIEWS

who spends his days painting nudes of his secret girlfriend in his studio in bustling and urbane Ha Noi. Minh’s father tries to keep his son from the grip of the Communists by sending him to a family estate in the countryside, but there Minh realizes the revolutionaries have violently seized control, and he survives only by becoming a “friend of the Revolution”—getting combat training in China and being admonished for his bourgeoise habits like carrying a sketchbook. But the Communists find use for his talents, assigning him to propaganda work, which he deeply resents and tries to subvert—at the risk of his life. He finds favor with his fellow soldiers and the villagers caught up in the conflict by drawing and gifting portraits of those he encounters.

All the while his artist’s heart wrestles with the lies and dogma enforced by Party officials. It’s a fascinating look at a troubling and complex time, and Truong’s art has an appealingly clean, direct style, while his writing conveys wit and heart.

Both affirming and chilling.

Catinat Boulevard Vu, Caroline | Guernica Editions (467 pp.) | $21.95 paper | Oct. 1, 2023 9781771838276

Two friends grow up in Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War, but follow very different paths in the war’s aftermath.

In 1966, Mai is 13 years old, leading a pampered existence in a traditional Confucian household

in Saigon. In spite of daily media reminding her that her country is at war, Mai is largely sheltered by both her privilege and a willed propensity to “[remember] what she wanted to remember.” Such is the power of Mai’s determination that, in spite of the powerful impact of witnessing a monk self-immolate in protest against religious persecution and the bombing of Saigon in 1968, her adolescence is largely untroubled until she accidentally witnesses her father seducing his young student Mai Ly. Mai responds by entering into her own sexual liaisons with gleeful abandon, specifically with the American soldiers who hang out on Catinat Boulevard. Unlike Mai, Mai Ly had a childhood defined by privation. Her mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident when she was 4 and her father’s family was massacred in My Lai, potentially by the same G.I.s who now frequent his street-corner beer stand. In 1975, the fall of Saigon finds Mai abandoning her baby in an orphanage as she flees on one of the last helicopters out of the city.

Meanwhile, Mai Ly, who has served as a spy and armed combatant for the Viet Cong, returns to her home in triumph, ready to celebrate their liberation with a people who, shockingly to her, do not feel liberated at all. As the aftermath of the war unspools, the novel follows the fortunes of Mai; Mai Ly; Michael, one of Mai’s G.I. lovers, who’s African American; their son, Nat; and many others as they navigate futures which must be lived in the light of their complicated pasts. This book is a capacious read but its conversational style, evocative characters, and penchant for very short, episodic chapters keep the reader from feeling bogged down by either the heft of its pages or the ambition of its scope.

Dazzling and impassioned, this novel evokes history from a perspective often overlooked—that of its survivors.

For another novel set in 1960s Vietnam, visit Kirkus online.

OCTOBER 15, 2023 27

S E E N & H E A R D // F I C T I O N

SEEN AND HEARD

Richard Osman Thought of Becoming a Spy Tony nominee Jessica Stone will direct the show.

Water for Elephants Musical Opens in March

Stone: Bruce Glikas/Getty Images; Osman: Penguin Books

The play, based on Sara Gruen’s popular 2006 novel, will premiere at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre.

A musical based on Sara Gruen’s bestselling novel Water for Elephants will hit Broadway next spring, Deadline reports.

Gruen’s novel, published by Algonquin in 2006, follows a young veterinary student who is hired by a circus to take care of its animals.

He soon falls in love with both an equestrian and an untrainable elephant.

The book was adapted into a 2011 film directed

by Francis Lawrence and starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, and Christoph Waltz.

The musical adaptation will be directed

by Jessica Stone, who earned a Tony nomination earlier this year for Kimberly Akimbo. It features a book by Rick Elice

(Jersey Boys) and music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co. The musical had its premiere last year at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta. In a review for Rough Draft Atlanta, critic Manning Harris called it “spectacular and one-of-a-kind.”

“What excites me most about Water For Elephants is working with our enormous design and creative team, an incredible group of artists from different aven ues of storytelling,” Stone said. “From Broadway veterans to puppeteers to circus artists—we have an eclectic collection of internationally acclaimed and innovative creators.”

There’s no news as of yet on casting for the musical, which is slated to open at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway on March 21.—M.S. For a review of Water for Elephants, visit Kirkus online.

The Thursday Murder Club author was once interviewed

by MI6, he revealed in an interview.

If things had worked out differently, mystery novelist Richard Osman might have become a spy.

Osman, the British quiz show host and author of bestselling novels including The Thursday Murder Club and The Man Who Died Twice, said in an interview with the Guardian that while he was a student at Cambridge University, he was given the “tap on the shoulder” by the Secret Intelligence Service—the British spy agency better known as MI6.

The agency gave Osman a series of tests; apparently, he didn’t acquit himself quite well enough, although he allowed it was a “fun” experience.

The 6-foot-7 author admitted he probably wouldn’t have been a success at MI6.

“Honestly, I would have been terrible. I’m too tall, not bright enough, and if I have a secret, I tell everybody. You could not find a worse spy. I cannot tell a lie.”

Osman’s latest novel, The Last Devil To Die, was published in the U.S. last month by Pamela Dorman. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Osman serves up another delightful mystery even if he’s not at the top of his game.”

Osman isn’t the only British author to recently come clean with an admission that he isn’t fit for a career in espionage.

In a profile, also in the Guardian, thriller novelist Mick Herron, who writes spy novels, revealed his own limitations.

“I’d have made an awful spy,” Herron said.

“I’m lacking in practical abilities. These days, most spying is done from a technological perspective—which I’d be no good at. I don’t have a smartphone. I don’t have Wi-Fi.”—M.S.

Osman was approached by the spy agency while at university.

For a review of The Last Devil To Die, visit Kirkus online.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

OCTOBER 15, 2023 29

F I C T I O N // M Y S T E R Y

Sniffing Out Murder

Dissolved

Murder on Tour

Benjamin, Kallie E. | Berkley (352 pp.) $17.00 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780593547359

Blædel, Sara & Mads Peder Nordbo Crooked Lane (256 pp.) | $29.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781639105953

Burns, V.M. | Kensington (256 pp.) $16.95 paper | Nov. 28, 2023 9781496739483

A newly minted author will be blamed for the death of a hometown diva unless her bloodhound can sniff out the real killer.

Priscilla Cummings’ decision to leave teaching for full-time writing is reinforced during her last parent-teacher conference with her former high school heartthrob, Joe Kelley, and his wife, forever mean girl Whitney. If their daughter, Clarice, grows up to be like them, she’ll become even more of a cartoonish baddie than she already is.

Pris is relieved that she’ll never have to deal with these parents again, especially after Whitney suggests that Pris’ 3-year old bloodhound, Bailey, a registered therapy dog, has no place in the classroom. In her role as chairwoman of the school board in Crosbyville, Indiana, Whitney even threatens Pris, though Pris’ resolve to focus on her writing puts her safely out of Whitney’s jurisdiction. Pris is eager to put out a worthy sequel to The Case of the Missing Maltese, her middle-grade title, which is already enjoying moderate success. Though Pris thinks she’s finally washed her hands of Whitney and her ways, she couldn’t be more wrong, for soon after Pris and Bailey uncover Whitney’s body in the begonias, she’s anointed prime suspect in her murder. New police Chief Morgan seems unimpressed at Pris’ claims of innocence, but his gentle demeanor with Bailey makes her wonder if maybe he’s more of a softie than he lets on. With Pris’ freedom at stake, finding the real killer is im-paw-rative.

Deserves to sit and stay.

For more mystery reviews, visit Kirkus online.

30 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Danish authors Blædel and Nordbo team up to follow the search for a kidnapper who’s snatching victims from greater Odense at a truly alarming rate.

When Claus Laursen turns up to report that his wife, Charlotte, is missing, Inspector Liam Stark’s first impulse is to reassure him: It’s only been a few hours, his wife isn’t a child, any number of things could have prevented her from picking up her own children. But 3-year-old Oliver Laursen has Down syndrome, and Claus can’t believe his wife would’ve broken the routine Oliver depended on unless she was stopped. When she still hasn’t returned the next morning, Stark and his colleagues begin a search, and by nightfall, Kasper, the friend who provided mechanic Dennis Sørenson with an alibi when he was accused some time ago of breaking into Charlotte’s house, has also vanished.

What particularly troubles the police are the pages left behind with Quran verses condemning particular sins of which different victims are presumably being accused. The abductions continue unabated on a daily basis, eventually encompassing all the sins enumerated by the Ten Commandments—not an idle comparison for Peter Løve, pastor Beate Nielsen’s husband and the father of the child she’s expecting, since he’s laboriously working on a proof that Allah is identical to the Christian God. Readers hoping for a glimpse behind the curtain for an update on the victims should beware of what they wish for, since the fate that awaits the victims is both horrifying and physically revolting.

Though the motive is more interesting than the identity of the perpetrator, the co-authors keep up the tension to the end.

A much-hated author’s publicist is offed by a poisoned cocktail doubtless designed for his client. Who had the guts to do what everyone wished they

could’ve done?

Michigan’s North Harbor Book Festival has brought some of the best and brightest to the area, so Samantha Washington is tickled to be part of an author panel even though some attendees might think she’s just a local yokel surrounded by big names.

Samantha’s proud of both the launch of her mystery series and the bookshop she runs with her Nana Jo, Market Street Mysteries, even if neither one will change the world. It’s fun to do what she loves and get the stories in her head down on paper for others to enjoy. But that sense of humility isn’t something all authors share, and Samantha’s fellow panelist, bestseller Judith Hunter, certainly could use a dose that would bring her down to earth. Samantha watches Judith go head-to-head with two other authors, one of whom even jokes about starting an I-Hate-Judith-Hunter Fan Club. So terrible is Judith that when her publicist, Clark Cunningham, is poisoned during the cocktail reception following the big panel, Samantha is certain the drink that killed Clark was meant for Judith instead. With the help of Nana Jo and their shared network of connections, Samantha tries to figure out which of Judith’s many highly motivated enemies stepped up to kill the famous author. Interspersed extracts from Samantha’s work-in-progress, a sequel to her first cozy, Murder at Wickfield Lodge, drop broad hints about the killer’s identity before the characters can figure it out.

The remarkable heroine’s refreshing lack of aspirations adds to the charm of this modest mystery.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

M Y S T E R Y // F I C T I O N

Rescuing horses, like investigating murders, is not for the faint of heart.

TROTTING INTO TROUBLE

Trotting Into Trouble Camp, Amber | Crooked Lane (304 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781639105182

Rescuing horses, like investigating murders, is not for the faint of heart.

Former nurse Mallory Martin is pursuing her dream of horse rescue on the family farm in Arkansas. Taking in an emaciated mare found by the sheriff as he was raiding a meth lab is just the start of yet another case.

With the help of Tanner and Ashley, her dedicated, barely paid helpers, Mallory manages on a shoestring budget. A visit from Coach Douglas Griggs, a favorite high school teacher, now retired, who’s looking for a quiet horse, leaves her with a bad feeling.

Exhausted from dealing with a dangerous case of colic in the new mare, Mallory, called by Sheriff Grady Sullivan to catch a loose horse, runs into a drunk who raves about a dead man. She catches the horse just as she finds the body of Coach Griggs, who’s been shot. Despite warnings from Grady and her boyfriend, lawyer Andy Hannigan, and a bad leg caused by a kick from Griggs’ horse, Mallory just can’t stop herself from sleuthing.

The thumb drive she’s found attached to the horse’s tack might provide a clue if it weren’t password-protected.

Blaming the horse, Griggs’ wife gives him to Mallory and asks her to pick up Griggs’ things from the school, a trip that alerts her to a possible case of grade manipulation. In addition, Griggs always wore an orange vest KIRKUS REVIEWS

that’s gone missing. Discovering the hidden vest elevates the death from hunting accident to murder. The more Mallory looks, the more suspects turn up.

Detailed descriptions of the trials and triumphs of horse rescue mix well with a mystery that keeps you guessing.

Fall Clark, Tracy | Thomas & Mercer (347 pp.) | $16.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9781662512551

Life goes on, and so does violent death, with equal penetration into the most exalted regions of Det. Harriet Foster’s Chicago.

Caught with her hand in the cookie jar, Marin Shaw put her head down and took her punishment without rolling over on any of the equally deserving members of the city council.

Now released after serving three years, she looks forward to spending more time with Charlotte Moore as her friend and not her lawyer, two roles Moore keeps toggling between, and to mending fences with her family.

Shaw’s husband, real estate developer Will Barrett, is so resentful of her notoriety that he’s probably beyond her reach, but she’s hopeful that their 13-year-old daughter, Zoe, isn’t.

Unfortunately, the real problem is with Shaw’s dirty work family: aldermen Deanna Leonard, George Valdez, Sylissa Franklin, and John “Cubby” Meehan, whose constant threats of exposure keep the others in line. Shaw

promises Meehan once more that she’s not about to blow the whistle on anybody, but that doesn’t stop someone from declaring open season on her colleagues, killing them off and leaving each victim with $3.00 in dimes—30 pieces of silver. Foster, who’s dealing with phone calls threatening her family if she doesn’t cross over to the dark side, and her new partner, Det. Vera Li, naturally suspect Shaw of the murders, but she swears that this time she’s innocent. Joined by members of their own professional family, they ask who could have produced so much evidence that incriminates Shaw, and why they would’ve wanted the only person who’s copped to corruption to suffer still further.

Another worm’s-eye view of the city, short on surprises but marinated in savory civic misdeeds.

The Dead Hand Cutler, Judith | Severn House (240 pp.) $31.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781448311323

Escalating misdeeds plague the trustees of an English estate in 1861.

It starts with mere mischief.

First, two of the farm workers at Thorncroft Estate in Shropshire get into a drunken brawl. Next, someone cuts the cords holding up several of the portraits that adorn the halls of the gracious home, causing the heavy frames to crash down on whoever tries to move or dust them. But estate manager Matthew Rowsley and his wife, Harriet, have little time for such foolishness.

Between keeping the estate fully staffed and running, riding herd on the fractious archeologists digging up Roman ruins found on the grounds, and supervising the construction of a model village that, in accordance with the will of the late Lord Croft, will provide housing for the local farmers and education for their children, their days are long and filled with hard OCTOBER 15, 2023 31

F I C T I O N // M Y S T E R Y

though rewarding work. When Harriet finds that she must also make time to supervise Professor Marchbanks and his wife, who are charged with cataloging the late lord’s library, she feels as if she’s at the end of her rope. But when someone attacks Matthew and the local rector in the chapel and later beats one of the laborers to death, she knows she must act. Cutler’s quirky series blazes its own path as the Rowsleys struggle to imprint their own modern values on their wild and rambling Victorian household, even as they never fail to offer its guests a wellstaffed dinner table.

A little history, a little mystery.

Murder Checks Out Gilbert, Victoria | Crooked Lane (272 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781639105205

In the Blue Ridge Mountains, Christmas is nigh, and so is murder.

Library director Amy Muir is extremely busy getting ready for Christmas both personally and professionally. Her husband, renowned dancer Richard Muir, is mounting a new production of The Nutcracker and the cast includes their twins, Nicky and Ella. They’re also expecting an unusual solo visit from Richard’s mother, who’s always been critical and prickly. The winter festival is on, and so is picketing against Wendy Blackstone’s real estate development plan. When Wendy is found dead at the bottom of a steep slope at the festival, Amy, who’s helped solve a surprising number of murders, can’t help but get involved. Her brother Scott Webber’s husband, Ethan Payne, is high on the suspect list since he’d had a nasty verbal altercation with Wendy. Of course, there are plenty of other suspects, including the members of the environmental group opposing the development; Wendy’s sleazy partner; and Wendy’s daughter, who wants to run the company. When Ethan 32 OCTOBER 15, 2023

vanishes, however, the sheriff assumes he’s on the run. Since research is Amy’s specialty, she delves into the checkered past of Wendy’s company; its developments have left behind any number of disgruntled people who could be out for revenge. Still juggling Christmas activities, Amy gets help from several friends and even her mother-in-law. When she starts getting threatening messages, she knows she’s hit a nerve.

did not sit well with all his colleagues.

Even some of the bird-watching group seemed jealous of his abilities. Rose, who’s keeping a family secret that goes to the heart of her dislike of Josh, is loath to break a promise to her late mother and reveal it. So it’s up to the knitters to find the truth and expose a killer.

A Twisted Skein

Harvey, W.F. | Poisoned Pen (224 pp.) | $14.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9781728278681

Christmas cheer mixes with a mystery nearly overrun by hordes of suspects.

Goldenbaum, Sally | Kensington (320 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781496729439

The Seaside Knitters, who have a long record of solving murders, face a particularly knotty case.

Both octogenarian Birdie Favazza, the Knitters’ leader, and Nell Endicott, aunt of yarn shop owner Izzy Perry and friend to lobster company owner Cass Halloran Brandley, are worried by a sudden schism between twin sisters Rose and Jillian Anderson. Although she’s only minutes older, Rose has always been Jillian’s protector. For reasons unknown, she’s taken a violent dislike to Josh Elliott, a brilliant teacher, birder, and all-around nice guy. Jillian is currently doing a teaching practicum while Rose works at a gallery and both help with a knitting fashion show. Birdie, meanwhile, has followed her name and taken up bird-watching.

Walking a path through the woods, she comes upon the lifeless body of Josh Elliott, whose death was no accident. Since everyone in Sea Harbor knows that Rose was no fan of Josh, she naturally becomes a suspect. Sure that their caring, talented friend did not kill Josh, the Knitters start looking at other possibilities. Josh’s students loved him, but his teaching style and the freedom he was given to pursue it

Heartwarming comfort food.

The Mysterious Mr. Badman: A Yorkshire Bibliomystery

Fans of the classic horror stories “August Heat” and “The Beast With Five Fingers” will welcome their author’s return with a sedate Yorkshire detective story out of print since its first publication in 1934.

Blanket manufacturer Athelstan Digby is minding the bookshop owned by his landlord, Daniel Lavender, when the Rev. Percival Offord, of Worpleswick Vicarage, enters to ask whether the shop has a copy of John Bunyan’s The Life and Death of Mr. Badman. Digby doesn’t know, and a search through the shelves turns up only copies of Bunyan’s Holy War and Pilgrim’s Progress. But Digby doesn’t need to look when another customer arrives an hour later asking for The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, or when a chauffeur turns up toward evening seeking the same title. The series of non-coincidences is capped half an hour later when a boy follows the three customers to sell a parcel of books he’s been given

by Diana Conyers of Deepdale End, one of which just happens to be The Life and Death of Mr. Badman. Before Digby and his curious nephew, Dr. Jim Pickering, can venture more than a few guesses as to why Bunyan’s KIRKUS REVIEWS

M Y S T E R Y // F I C T I O N

A Nigerian psychologist investigates a bishop’s wife who’s gone missing.

GASLIGHT

book would suddenly be such a hot commodity, one of its prospective purchasers is found dead, followed by another. By the second murder, Digby and Pickering have already branched off in different directions in search of answers. They both get hoodwinked by their quarry, neither of them shines as a detective, and the repeated conversations in which they review the evidence keep much suspense from building. But the story maintains a low-key charm that makes it well worth sticking with till the final anticlimax.

Harvey makes a strong case for the existence 90 years ago of a cozy procedural.

Gaslight Kayode, Femi | Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (384 pp.) | $29.00 | Nov. 21, 2023 9780316536646

A Nigerian psychologist investigates the case of a bishop’s wife who’s gone missing.

When Bishop Jeremiah Dawodu, the head of a Nigerian megachurch, is arrested on suspicion that he murdered his missing wife, Folasade, investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo (a consultant at the Police College in Lagos) is asked by his sister, Kenny, a devout member of the congregation, to meet with the church elders. Not a fan of organized religion, he reluctantly agrees to investigate the possibility that KIRKUS REVIEWS

Dawodu may have been framed and that the young and impulsive Sade, who was known to go away for days, might still be alive. Why would the First Lady, who was not particularly well-liked by the elders, seek to discredit her eminent spouse? On the home front, Philip must deal with 15-year-old Lara, who has been stealing money from her mother, Folake.

When he discovers his daughter’s heartbreaking reason, he realizes that his family has not quite escaped the racism and colorism left behind in America. “We never worried about our daughter because by the time we should have, we were already in Nigeria, where everyone was Black.” When Sade’s body is found floating in Lekki Lagoon, Philip’s investigation, aided by former mercenary Chika, takes a dangerous turn. Kayode has written a twisty, cleverly plotted mystery where nothing—and no one—is what it seems. Philip is a warm, compassionate, and insightful narrator, although the interspersed chapters featuring an unknown speaker feel like a distraction. While some details of Nigerian life are fascinating (Lagos’s notorious traffic jams will comfort L.A. readers who think they have it bad), a few more atmospheric touches could have enhanced an already entertaining mystery.

Readers will eagerly await Kayode’s next novel.

For more by Ausma Zehanat Khan, visit Kirkus online.

Blood Betrayal Khan, Ausma Zehanat | Minotaur (304 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781250822406

Near-concurrent police shootings rock Colorado.

During a routine patrol of a quiet residential neighborhood, Harry Cooper, a white officer with the Blackwater Falls Sheriff’s Department, shoots and kills Duante Young, a 20-year-old Black street artist whose spray paint Harry allegedly mistakes for a gun. That same evening in nearby Denver, another white cop shoots and kills a 22-yearold Latino bystander, Mateo Ruiz, in the course of a botched drug raid. Lt. Waqas Seif, head of the Denver Police Department’s Community Response Unit, instructs Det. Inaya Rahman and her CRU colleagues to focus on investigating the Blackwater Falls incident: “The [Denver] raid is the Drug Task Force’s business, not ours.”

Then Inaya receives a visit from John Broda, a racist bully who terrorized and physically assaulted her when they worked together at the Chicago PD, prompting her exit. John’s son, Kelly, is the Denver cop indicated in Mateo’s murder and John wants Inaya’s help exonerating him. In exchange, John will produce evidence sufficient to convict a fellow CPD officer of beating a young Black man to death—a case Inaya abandoned upon leaving Illinois.

Conflicted, she must now choose between obeying orders and righting past wrongs. Khan continues in the vein of her first Det. Inaya Rahman novel, Blackwater Falls (2022), bringing fresh relevance to the subgenre’s timeworn conventions. Melodramatic stereotypes pepper the intersectionally diverse cast, diminishing the effect of the twisty, multifaceted story and its thorny politics, but the care Khan takes in developing Duante and Mateo as nuanced characters largely compensates.

A penetrating, of-the-moment police procedural.

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Blood Bank Knopf, Chris | Permanent Press (286 pp.) $29.95 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781579626716

Hamptons cabinetmaker Sam Acquillo reluctantly returns to sleuthing to track down someone whose work, as he’d be the first to tell you, is a lot more important

than his.

Though there’s no obvious sign that biochemist Oriana Octavio, who left her personal belongings behind when she vanished, has been kidnapped or that anything else bad has happened to her, her mother and her kid brother, Oscar, are both worried because going AWOL isn’t her brand.

So Oscar asks his neighbor Sam if he’ll investigate. Sam, whom the Covid pandemic seems to have kept off the radar since Deep Dive (2019), is no more eager than ever to take on the work, but he’s sold on the urgency of the case when he learns that Oriana was working with Sheldon Trusedale on a genetic treatment for Alzheimer’s that could be game-changing. No sooner has Sam learned that BioLogics, the firm Oriana and Trusedale founded, is getting major financial backing from Zurich venture capitalist Dario Hunziker than Trusedale is found dead, his car wrapped around a tree. Has Ingenuit, the firm competing with BioLogics in a race toward the treatment, declared open war on its rival? Are they the power behind Jerome Woodson, the thug who tries to scare Sam off the case? What can Sam and Det. Ellie Pike possibly learn

by going undercover in the Casbah, a gambling joint owned by Sally Al Khatib, the player who actually hired Woodson? If Oriana Octavio is still alive, as Sam maintains she is, where on earth is she? Or could she actually be hiding in plain sight?

Fans of the series will enjoy its usual low-key pleasures, capped by a nifty climactic surprise.

The Burning Time Mark, David | Severn House (240 pp.) $31.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781448309399

Quirky community, quirky crimes. Thankfully, McAvoy’s on hand to solve them.

Ishmael Piper, 51, lives in County Durham, on the North Sea, in drug-fueled disarray with his girlfriend, Heloise, their 7-year-old daughter, Delilah, multiple cats and a hectoring inner voice that plagues him no end. So addled is he that he doesn’t even notice the inferno that consumes him. Months later, a disturbed man kills a woman whom he identifies as a witch, dragging her into his cottage.

Meanwhile, after a dangerous case that “nearly killed them both,” DS Aector McAvoy and his boss and best friend, DSU Trish Pharoah, are on extended sick leave. McAvoy is comfortably ensconced with his wife, Roisin, and their children. He contemplates the upcoming 70th birthday party of his distant mother, Cecilia, with dread.

The festivities are indeed unpleasant, with McAvoy feeling like a dismissed

An irresistibly charming detective cracks another case of quirky crimes.

THE BURNING TIME

34 OCTOBER 15, 2023

10-year-old and Roisin insulted by a drunken guest. But it’s also where McAvoy gets an earful and then some from ebullient Big Harry about the death of Ishmael, the troubled son of rock legend Moose Piper and the best friend of McAvoy’s annoying stepbrother, Felix Darling. Something about the story he’s told feels off, and McAvoy can’t help but investigate.

Shaggy plotting and sly, discursive storytelling are part of this long-running series’ charm. Witness transcripts, multiple perspectives, and even a book review are woven into McAvoy-focused chapters, delivering pieces of the puzzle through full-bodied characters and the anecdotes that accompany them.

All the while, the engaging chemistry of Aector and Roisin, a series trademark, is on full display.

An irresistibly charming detective cracks another colorful case.

Enchanted Hill Murphy, Emily Bain | Union Square & Co. (384 pp.) | $18.99 paper | Nov. 7, 2023 9781454949817

Haunted by past mistakes, an aspiring private investigator goes undercover to make a name for herself in Murphy’s adult fiction debut.

It’s 1930.

Rejected by the police department for her gender, Cora McCavanagh is forced to make her own way as a private investigator. She’s hired

by Mabel Byrd, the scorned wife of media mogul Truman Byrd, to go undercover as a maid at Truman’s infamous Enchanted Hill estate with instructions to obtain photographs of her husband in a compromising position with his latest mistress, Clementine Garver. The shocking appearance of presumed-dead Jack Yates, unrecognized by the other guests, soon throws a wrench into her careful plans. Fifteen years after escaping from prison, Jack seeks KIRKUS REVIEWS

M Y S T E R Y // F I C T I O N

This yarn replaces noir with humor—if only the world could do the same.

LION & LAMB

justice for his wrongful conviction, and he’s not thrilled to see the girl who helped him break out but could turn him in at any moment. Sparks, of course, fly, but they deliver more sizzle than steak. For a detective mystery there is remarkably little detecting here. Instead, the author crafts an ample, and more interesting, backstory full of daring prison escapes, murders, and art heists for her two protagonists. By comparison, the present-day mysteries prove lackluster, and rarely do the characters encounter true foils or danger. A heavily sprinkled bird motif provides an opportunity for Cora—and Jack—to showcase some actual PI skills, but it’s all too fleeting. Indeed, their greatest challenge seems to be their distraction with each other, in spite of mob threats, gunshots, and wrathful wives. Too somber for a cozy but lacking the bite of a gumshoe, this mystery’s saving grace is its likable characters and riveting backstory.

Would have benefited from tighter edits and more risks.

Cyanide and Sensibility Oliver, Katie | Berkley (320 pp.) | $9.99 paper Dec. 12, 2023 | 9780593337653

Murder strikes for a third time in Professor Phaedra Brighton’s otherwise impossibly cozy Virginia world.

Phae’s sister, Hannah, has labored so KIRKUS REVIEWS

diligently to prepare for the opening of her patisserie, Tout de Sweet, that it’s doubly devastating when Det. Matteo Morelli of the Laurel Springs Police Department closes it down on opening day after its smashing success is smashed to bits by the poisoning of Anna Steele, the personal assistant to wealthy Rachel Brandon.

Maybe it serves Anna right, since she swiped a dark chocolate cupcake Phae had earmarked for her father, attorney Malcolm Brighton, only to collapse moments after licking its fondant, which someone evidently spiked with cyanide during a false fire alarm that emptied Tout de Sweet. But it’s adding insult to fatality that she still can’t eclipse either her employer, the powerful heir of Brandon Advertising who’s promised to feature Hannah in her Home Channel magazine, or Hannah herself, who’s naturally accused of running the wrong kind of bakery (the accusers, led by rival baker Kate Brennan, don’t even call it a patisserie). Once Anna has breathed her last, there’s nothing left for the surviving characters to do but circulate rumors about each other, spot possible suspects in places they’re not supposed to be, react with horror every time an unsolicited gift of cupcakes or chocolates turns up, and grouse about their romances. The killer is more predictable than Edward Ferrars is in the role Austen gave him, and this time there aren’t even many echoes of Sense and Sensibility, though Phae’s Jane Austen Tea Society does meet to discuss it.

Strictly for readers who think “choosing a gift for a romantic partner was a puzzle fit for Sherlock Holmes.”

Kirkus Star

Lion & Lamb Patterson, James & Duane Swierczynski Little, Brown (400 pp.) | $21.00 Aug. 14, 2023 | 9780316404891

PI rivals combine their wits to solve a spectacular murder case.

Just after leading his team to a win in the NFL playoffs, Philadelphia Eagles star quarterback Archie Hughes is found shot to death in his powder-blue Maserati, putting the City of Brotherly Love in freakout mode. Archie was their GOAT, or Greatest of All Time; fans, bettors, and bookies had been counting on him to deliver a Super Bowl win.

The police are all over the murder investigation, but the district attorney asks private investigator Cooper Lamb to help. Lamb doesn’t want to work with the DA, so he recommends his rival, Veena Lion, whom he considers to be the second-best PI available. So Lion works for the city while Lamb works for the superstar’s widow, the much-beloved entertainer Francine Hughes. The two PIs find that they have one goal in common, which is to learn the truth. As they dig into the case, they learn disturbing facts about Archie Hughes that suggest Francine may have had a motive for his murder. Through all of this, the happily divorced Lamb cracks wise with his young son and daughter and brings his year-old associate, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Lupe, with him to important meetings. The kids call the pup Loopy. The PIs’ names are a perfect setup for silly jokes, with occasional utterings of “Rowrr” and “Baaaaa” by children and investigators alike. The two adults like each other, by the way. Though generally rivals, they aren’t competing on this case, and their main tension is sexual. He cheerfully suggests sleepovers, and she cheerfully deflects said propositions. Will they, or won’t they? This OCTOBER 15, 2023 35

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fast-moving yarn replaces noir with humor—if only the world could do the same. The authors are apparently noodling with the idea of making this enjoyable read the first of a series. Go for it, guys.

Great storytelling. Patterson’s fans will love it.

Barbacoa, Bomba, and Betrayal Reyes, Raquel V. | Crooked Lane (320 pp.) $30.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781639105243

Food anthropologist Miriam Quiñones-Smith discovers that even the colorful world of Caribbean cuisine has its dark side.

Awaiting the birth of her second child, Miriam is thrilled when her husband buys her a ticket to the Dominican Republic, where her parents manage a small vacation rental property. Even though she’s disappointed that Robert’s business doesn’t allow him to accompany them, she’s pleased that their son, Manny, can visit his grandparents in person before the arrival of his sibling. But things in Punta Palma are not all papayas and crema. Broken water pipes, algae in the pool, and a dead rat on the property have some of the guests up in arms. Before she can get settled in at her folks’ place, Delvis, the producer of Miriam’s TV cooking show, Abuela Approved, sends her to nearby Puerto Rico to report on the island’s Three Kings celebration, leaving her parents to wrangle Manny. Arriving in San Juan, she’s met by Delvis’ cousin Welmo, who’s lost his job as a police officer because of austerity measures imposed by the Financial Oversight Board on the mainland. Traveling with Welmo, she enjoys the rich food culture of Puerto Rico but also sees the privation these measures inflict on much of the island’s population. She also sees the threat posed 36 OCTOBER 15, 2023

by gentrification, which encourages developer-financed restaurants to put high-quality Mom and Pop eateries out of business. Miriam takes the bitter with the better until the host of her guest house, elderly Doña Santos, is attacked and ends up in the hospital, the latest casualty of an enterprise built on greed that doesn’t hesitate to get nasty.

Crime and cuisine really do mix.

Murder Wears a Hidden Face Simpson, Rosemary | Kensington (336 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781496741066

Chinatown, a seemingly impenetrable world of clashing cultures, is the setting for a difficult murder case.

The headline attendants at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1891 exhibit of Chinese artifacts include Lord Peng Tha Mah, the Chinese cultural attaché, and his family.

Former Pinkerton detective Geoffrey Hunter and his partner, socialite lawyer Prudence MacKenzie, watch in horror as Peng is stabbed to death by an unknown assailant, who flees the scene. The family had recently moved from London, where their son studied engineering and their younger daughter went to boarding school.

Both children speak perfect English, overshadowing their older sister and mother. The Chinese government has Peng quietly buried in New York and bids his family return home; rumors that Peng had fallen out of favor while serving in London make it likely that their fortune will be confiscated and the son executed in his place. Despite their status, the Pengs are subject to the restrictive Chinese Exclusion Act, which forbids the immigration of any Chinese women or laborers and denies citizenship to those who have already settled.

To stay in the U.S., the Pengs hide

in Chinatown under the auspices of Lord Peng’s powerful, estranged younger brother. Engaged by the family to uncover the killer, Geoffrey and Prudence find it tough going until they hire Matthew Lamb, a Yale graduate with a Chinese father who speaks several dialects. Suspecting a revenge honor killing, the detectives send Lamb to Chinatown, where he gets a job as a waiter to help crack a dangerous case.

A fascinating look at Chinese customs and restrictive immigration laws enhances a complex mystery.

The Nurse Murders Talton, Jon | Poisoned Pen (304 pp.) $16.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9781464215759

Even all that sun can’t shed light on the dark crimes that plague Phoenix in 1936.

Gene Hammons, a city cop fired for keeping his eye a little too clearly on the ball, gets an unusual request from prospective client William Jordan: to deliver the $10,000 ransom demanded by the kidnapper of a teenage boy, though Jordan isn’t the boy’s uncle and won’t identify who he is. When Gene declines the case, Jordan hires teacher-turned-shamus Pamela Bradbury for the job. In the meantime, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover enlists Gene as an informant on the city’s bountiful local crime scene. That scene instantly grows sadly richer with the fatal shooting of Gene’s would-be client, who’s really George Parris, a man with a richly checkered past, and the scalping of Caroline Emma Taft, whose death looks suspiciously like a couple of others in Little Rock in 1933 and El Paso last year. Joining forces first professionally and then romantically, Gene and Pamela struggle to unearth the links between the victims and rival gangsters Cyrus Cleveland KIRKUS REVIEWS

M Y S T E R Y // F I C T I O N

When Finley puts all the pieces together, the answers are more shocking than she could have imagined.

ALL THE LITTLE TRUTHS

and Gus Greenbaum. Their search is frustrated by the fact that their leading suspects keep getting killed, but eventually the Angel of Death, as the Arizona Republican dubs him, starts to taunt Gene over the phone.

Talton juggles so many balls—period details, cameo appearances by a dozen historical figures, the city’s ongoing criminal culture, the crimes that especially catch the eye of Gene and Pamela, and the development of their relationship—that it’s no disgrace the mixture is marked by a wobbly focus that shifts abruptly between tight closeups on action sequences and summaries glossing over the connecting tissue.

The most surprising feature is an appendix that identifies more real-life characters than anyone will have recognized.

All the Little Truths Webb, Debra | Thomas & Mercer (349 pp.) | $16.99 paper | Nov. 7, 2023 9781662508844

Finley O’Sullivan—attorney, dogged investigator, and survivor of unspeakable horrors—gets a new case that changes her life, and not for the better.

After finding her husband’s killers, Finley has begun a romantic relationship with her best friend, Matthew Quinn, and started working as an investigator for primo lawyer Jack KIRKUS REVIEWS

Finnegan. Jack owes a favor to mobster Raymond Johnson, whose son Ray is a suspect in the cold-case murder of Lucy Cagle, the daughter of a famous investigative reporter who was a high school senior when she was murdered 13 years earlier. Now her purse turns up, along with some cigarette butts, in an empty warehouse owned by the Johnson family.

When Ray denies any connection to Lucy, Finley sets out to uncover the truth. She’s fortunate that the detective on the case is Eric Houser, with whom she has a good rapport.

Finley manages to turn up a lot of information that eluded the police and a private investigator at the time.

When, on top of her already packed schedule, she finds her reclusive neighbor facedown in a flowerbed, she has her rushed to the hospital.

Finley has a fraught relationship with her mother, a renowned judge, but she’s shocked to learn that her father knew Lucy and is withholding information. Yet another unanswered question is what happened to Ray’s younger brother, who vanished after Lucy’s death. When Finley puts all the pieces together, the answers are more shocking than she could have imagined.

A convoluted, fast-paced mystery whose intrepid heroine faces plenty of danger.

For more by Debra Webb, visit Kirkus online.

Devils at the Door Wegert, Tessa | Severn House (256 pp.) $31.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781448311385

Shana Merchant’s unsettled upstate New York household is invaded by an unexpectedly troublesome presence: Shana’s teenage niece.

What could be more awkward for Shana, a senior investigator for the New York State Police, and her teammate Tim Wellington as they busily plan their Christmas wedding than to take in Henrietta Della Merchant, the wayward daughter of Doug Merchant, her brother in Vermont? But Hen’s become so uncommunicative and unmanageable at home that Shana and Tim open their doors and hearts to her. The gesture’s not returned: Hen continues obstinately silent even after Shana’s called one night to Devil’s Oven Island, where she finds Hen and three of her few school friends, one of them dead.

A preliminary exam indicates that Leif Colebrook has drowned, but the medical examiner rules otherwise, and Shana, still burdened by her neighbors’ identification of her with Blake Bram, the cousin whose many murder victims include her ex-husband, finds her position compromised even further by Hen’s involvement in Leif’s death.

The most ironic twist of all, Shana thinks, is that the very reason Mia Klinger, the leader of the three teens discovered with Hen at Devil’s Oven, befriended the outsider was because she was fascinated by her link to Bram. But Shana, who feels guilty because she didn’t stop Ford Colebrook, Leif’s grieving father, from kissing her, is wrong. That’s not nearly the most ironic twist in a tale whose secrets keep getting more and more devastating.

Missing your relatives and your summer vacation? Wegert has the perfect antidote.

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The Longest Autumn Avery, Amy | Flatiron Books (320 pp.) $28.99 | Jan. 16, 2024 | 9781250896490

A servant of the god of autumn tries desperately to figure out who stranded her master in the land of the living.

Tirne holds a coveted position within a religious sect that worships the four seasons, each personified by a different deity. As Autumn’s Herald, she is responsible for escorting the god from the divine realm to the human world every fall and back again via an ancient portal called the Mirror that Heralds alone can manipulate.

During their annual three-month sojourn abroad, Autumn sleeps with a mortal Consort to produce magical demigods known as Scions, and Tirne catches up with friends, takes part in earthly life, and enjoys rendezvous with her own lovers. Since she was appointed Herald five years ago, Tirne has excelled in the role— until, that is, the Mirror inexplicably shatters after she and Autumn cross over for the sixth time, severing the connection between the two domains and spelling bad news for mortals.

With the Mirror broken, autumn will stretch out indefinitely, food reserves will run out, and many will starve— not to mention that the trapped souls of the dead will begin feeding on the living. It’s a premise that recalls the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, but with plenty of twists and additions. Horrified and shaken, members of the sect and even skilled civilians immediately set to work trying both to repair the Mirror and find the person or people responsible for its destruction. Suspicion immediately falls on Tirne, the last person to touch the Mirror before it broke, and she is demoted to common acolyte. Devastated by the loss of her title, status, and sense of self, Tirne begins to conduct her own research into the Mirror’s destruction. Some 40 OCTOBER 15, 2023

An octogenarian astronaut finds a deadly secret on the moon’s surface.

TH E OXYG E N FAR M E R

plot points feel disconnected from the larger narrative, and the ending comes abruptly, but the mystery is compelling and Tirne’s world is richly drawn.

A whodunit in fantasy form makes for a complex, original tale.

Kirkus Star

Bookshops & Bonedust Baldree, Travis | Tor (288 pp.) | $17.99 paper Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781250886101

A prequel to the popular cozy fantasy Legends & Lattes (2022).

Viv is a fighter.

It’s not just what she does, it’s who she is. So when she gets wounded during a battle with a necromancer’s skeletal wights, and her crew dumps her in a small seaside town to recover while they continue on after the necromancer, she is not happy about it. But soon enough, against her will, she’s drawn into the life of the town. There’s Fern, the unsuccessful bookseller, who has a knack for recommending exactly the right book. And there’s Maylee, the baker, who not only makes the world’s best baked goods, she actually winks at Viv. Before Viv knows what’s happening, she’s helping Fern out here and there, she’s reading—she’s involved. Meanwhile, there’s a pesky young gnome asking for an introduction to her mercenary crew, and a mysterious man in gray who looks like trouble. But Viv is leaving when her crew comes back through town. No matter what. This

prequel gives readers a glimpse of Viv as a young orc, still committed to the fighter’s life, just taking an enforced break in a charming town populated by compelling, richly drawn characters, and the slightest hint of danger in the wind. Despite the lurking necromancer, the vibes are decidedly warm and cozy, and the plot is just as much about saving the bookstore and building relationships as it is about protecting the town from the man in gray. As a prequel, it can stand alone, but will certainly satisfy fans as well.

Warm and wonderful.

The Oxygen Farmer Holmes, Colin | CamCat Books (320 pp.) $28.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780744306675

A cantankerous octogenarian astronaut finds himself in over his head when he accidentally stumbles across a deadly secret hidden on the surface of

the moon.

Twice a week for 35 years, it has been the job of Millennium Edward Harrison—Mil for short—to transport oxygen for Neff Atmospherics to the various settlements around the Luna Colony. A former commander in the U.S. Space Force, not only is Mil something of a legend on the moon, he’s also earned a reputation for being bad-tempered and difficult to work with, which makes him the perfect man for such a solitary undertaking. Being an oxygen farmer is largely uneventful work, but all KIRKUS REVIEWS

S C I E N C E F I C T I O N & F A N TA S Y // F I C T I O N

that changes when Mil accidentally stumbles across a highly radiated exclusion zone that doesn’t exist on any official documentation. When Mil’s discovery leads to the gruesome death of a beloved young astronaut and then a spacecraft explodes mere moments before Mil is meant to board it, he finds himself in the middle of a dangerous conspiracy that goes all the way to the top. Worse still, Mil’s own daughter—from whom he’s been estranged for years and now a high-ranking official with the Space Force—is adamantly keeping him from the truth. Despite his ornery nature—it feels as if Holmes has taken some inspiration from the likes of Harrison Ford and Robert De Niro for his leading man—Mil is also incredibly endearing. It’s the softer moments and chemistry that he shares with the colorful cast of characters—his granddaughter and girlfriend in particular—that stand out as sharp and fast-paced dialogue moves the story forward at breakneck speed. Readers will find themselves rooting for Mil and his companions as they race against time before more lives are lost and irreparable damage is done to the colony they call home.

An action-packed thriller perfect for fans of Andy Weir and Jack McDevitt.

Kindling Jennings, Kathleen | Small Beer Press (288 pp.) | $18.00 paper | Jan. 16, 2024 9781618732132

Old tales and new turning points converge in a dozen fantasyrich stories.

Here’s a treat for readers who wish each fable launched by the words “Once upon a time” would segue into a cautionary tale punctuated with mythical motifs and genuine danger.

In the opener, “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” a songwriter and a songbird in a mythical land bring forth one KIRKUS REVIEWS

final song. “Skull and Hyssop” taps into the swashbuckling spirit of old Errol Flynn movies with its tale of a reluctant pirate and a low-powered enchantress at odds with a government flunky. Meanwhile, “A Hedge of Yellow Roses” is steeped in medieval lore; we meet a masterless knight on the run, carrying only “news of the murder of a King, a sword wrapped in a cape and tied to my saddle, and a secret so close to my own heart that even I did not then suspect it.” A child walks through fire in “Ella and the Flame,” two lovers of death find each other in “Not To Be Taken,” and a stowaway boggart causes a bit of chaos in “On Pepper Creek.” Even when the book veers past familiar fantasy into the boundlessly imaginative, it’s still beautifully composed, as in “The Present Only Toucheth Thee,” in which a storybook offers its own postmortem in the form of poetry, and “The Tangled Streets,” which features an enchantress helping a troubled young man find his true form. More often, it’s luridly imaginative—see the helpful amateur cryptozoologist in “Undine Love”—and genuinely exciting, like the ending of the title story: “No, I can’t stay any longer. I’ve been tangled in this story for too long. I have tigers to hunt, dragons to slay. An old friend to find.”

Women with guts and men of good fortune in search of their personal treasures.

Kirkus Star

The Kingdom of Sweets: A Novel of the Nutcracker Johansen, Erika | Dutton (368 pp.) | $28.00 Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781524742751

The famous Christmas ballet takes a sinister turn in Johansen’s spooky retelling.

All the pieces of the well-known story are here. At the Stahlbaum family Christmas

Eve party, darling Clara receives a gift of a magical nutcracker from the mysterious magician, Drosselmeyer. That night, Clara journeys to the magical Kingdom of Sweets, alongside her nutcracker prince, and is welcomed by the Sugar Plum Fairy. But there’s more to this fairytale dream than classical music fans might remember. In Johansen’s telling, Clara is the beautiful and beloved counterpart to her twin sister, the plain and bookish Natasha. Drosselmeyer is a feared sorcerer who blessed (or was it cursed?) the twins as infants, giving Clara a charmed life and Natasha a desolate one. At that fated Christmas party, Drosselmeyer makes the happy announcement that Clara will marry Conrad, a wealthy future duke with whom Natasha is desperately in love.

When the evening turns magical, Natasha follows Clara into the Kingdom of Sweets. Seething and resentful of Clara’s unending good fortune, Natasha finds a sympathetic ear in the Sugar Plum Fairy. Natasha can see that the Fairy is not what she seems, but she’s so consumed with envy and heartbreak that she accepts the Fairy’s dark bargain: Natasha can take her revenge against Clara for the small price of helping the Fairy fulfill her own sinister plans for Drosselmeyer.

It would be a simple thing to take the outlines of The Nutcracker ballet and make it grim, but Johansen is doing a lot of delicate character work here, primarily around envy, social limitations on women’s choices, and accountability. The world beyond the candy fantasy is satisfyingly creepy but also an effective landscape for exploring what happens when you ignore the rotten core of your deepest desires.

An eerie and sophisticated dark fantasy.

For more by Erika Johansen, visit Kirkus online.

OCTOBER 15, 2023 41

Book to Screen Netflix Drops Backstage Look at All the Light We Cannot See The limited series is based on Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize– winning novel.

Netflix is offering viewers a behind-the-scenes look at its upcoming limited-series adaptation of Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. The streaming service posted a video featuring interviews with the cast and crew of the miniseries, based on Doerr’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about

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the relationship between Marie, a blind French girl in World War II, and Werner, the German soldier who listens to her radio broadcasts.

In the video, director Shawn Levy talks about casting Aria Mia Loberti, who plays Marie in the series. “The question was always, ‘How do you rep-

resent a disability on screen in a way that feels authentic and equitable to people with that experience?’

The answer, of course: find someone who is Newcomer Aria Mia actually blind or low Loberti stars in the film. vision, and we found Aria Mia Loberti.” putting their hearts and souls He praised Loberti as and time into something like “someone who understands this. And to see it come to this character in her soul,” life, it’s really special.” pointing out that Loberti Other cast members of had never acted before All the Light We Cannot See appearing in the series. Cast include Louis Hofmann, member Mark Ruffalo also Hugh Laurie, Andrea Deck, had kind words for Loberti, and Marion Bailey. The series saying, “Aria has been a begins streaming on Netflix revelation. She’d never done on Nov. 2.—M.S. anything like this, and it’s For a review really beautiful to see. It’s of All the remarkable.”

Light We Doerr appeared in the Cannot See, visit Kirkus video discussing the adaponline. tation of his novel. “It’s really moving to see people really

OCTOBER 15, 2023 43

Atsushi Nishijima/Netflix

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F I C T I O N // R O M A N C E

Unrealistic Expectations Christopher, Andie J. | Berkley (304 pp.) | $17.00 paper | Sept. 26, 2023 9780593200087

Dumped by her longtime boyfriend just as her book of relationship advice is being released, a therapist starts fake-dating an acquaintance from college.

Jessica Gallagher has done her best to not end up like her mother, who never modeled what a positive, healthy romantic relationship looked like. For 15 years, Jessica was in a committed relationship with the same man, and while it wasn’t passionate, she thought it was stable… until he unexpectedly moved out.

When she runs into architect Galvin Baker, newly single Jessica learns the Lothario she knew from college has relationship troubles of his own.

His Instagram-famous ex-girlfriend criticized his sexual prowess to her followers, and now he’s been rethinking his actions in past relationships.

They decide to pretend to date to bolster each other’s reputations. From the beginning, though, the feelings are real, as Galvin brings out Jessica’s hedonistic side and she makes him a better, more emotionally attuned partner. Christopher’s latest standalone romance critiques the pitfalls of modern dating in the era of social media and apps while also showcasing how wonderful a romantic partnership can be with communication and introspection. Galvin and Jessica are appealing, thoughtfully created characters whose relationship hang-ups are realistically influenced by their parents. Their chemistry is sizzling and adds levity and fun to the emotions-driven story. Although the third act breakup doesn’t entirely ring true and makes the finale drag, the happy ending for this perfectly matched couple still satisfies.

Rich characterization and mature emotions make this an engaging read.

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Kirkus Star

The Gentleman’s Gambit Dunmore, Evie | Berkley (432 pp.) | $17.00 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780593334669

A suffragist meets her match in a handsome scholar who’s more than he seems.

Bookworm and intellectual Lady Catriona Campbell has always felt that her mind works differently than most people’s; an introvert, she seeks retreat in the idylls of her family’s remote Scottish home rather than enduring the restrictions of proper society. It doesn’t help that all her past attempts at romance have ended poorly, but it certainly doesn’t mean that finding a new relationship is a priority for her.

All that changes when she encounters an intriguing stranger—or, more accurately, he encounters her while she’s swimming naked in the nearby loch, starting their relationship off on a memorable note. The catch is that the gentleman in question, Mr. Elias Khoury, isn’t just handsome; he’s her scholarly father’s young colleague at Oxford, which means he’s certainly not for romancing. When Catriona’s father asks her to escort Elias to Oxford so he can examine some ancient Middle Eastern artifacts, she’s forced into close quarters with a man with whom she needs to remain unmistakably professional. Meanwhile, Elias has a hidden agenda for getting close to Catriona—he’s actually planning to steal back the artifacts so they can be restored to their rightful place of origin in the Levant. Seducing her isn’t necessarily part of that plan, but their attraction to one another, as well as their growing connection, is undeniable. Dunmore has written an exceptional conclusion to her League of Extraordinary Women series. Not only does this story revolve around redefining the types of characters who receive a romance—Catriona seems to be neurodivergent and Elias is more

of an outsider than most heroes—but it also refreshingly tackles the question of who gets to be the custodians of history, and the answer to both topics is well worth the journey.

A bold, illuminating finale to a feminist romance series.

Plot Twist La Rosa, Erin | Canary Street Press (336 pp.) | $16.99 paper | Nov. 14, 2023 9781335458117

A romance writer reconnects with her exes and gets to know her best friend’s brother— her landlord—in this steamy forced-proximity romance.

Sophie Lyon is a pansexual published romance author working on her second book, but she has a major case of writer’s block. After a night out with her best friend, Poppy, a video of Sophie—extremely drunk at a karaoke mic—goes viral, showing her wild-eyed and sobbing, proclaiming that she’s never been in love. In a disastrous morning after, she finds out about her drunken proclamation, the existence of the video, and that people in the comments have recognized her, and in her extremely hungover state, she pukes all over Poppy’s brother Dash, her landlord. (Considering that they live in Hollywood, it seems only natural that Dash and Poppy are part of a movie dynasty, and Dash is an actor Sophie’s had a crush on since she was a teenager.) Dash suggests she post a response video on TikTok, so she decides to meet with all her exes, some male and some female, to talk about why their relationships didn’t work out. And so she does, posting videos about what she finds out about herself and her relationships. Meanwhile, Sophie and Dash are physically drawn to each other, but because of Dash’s struggles with sobriety, he doesn’t feel like he can be in a relationship. Secrets, family KIRKUS REVIEWS

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A quick-witted romance with a touch of magic.

THIS SPELLS LOVE

complications, social media repercussions, agony over mistakes, the difficulty of establishing new emotional pathways, and sex are all part of this surprisingly sweet story that embraces characters’ flaws as part of the whole package that makes up an individual.

An engaging novel that seamlessly weaves together an exploration of love, the challenges of sobriety, and robust sex.

Silver Lady Putney, Mary Jo | Kensington (272 pp.) | $16.95 paper | Nov. 28, 2023 9781496746634

Two gifted people are drawn to each other along the coast of an alternate Cornwall in 1803.

Bran Tremayne has a gift—he has “perceptions and talents beyond what most people possess.” And in his world, this sort of gift is not well understood and is even hated by many people, including Bran’s father, who abandoned him as a child. He was lucky to be adopted by a family that takes in gifted children and helps them thrive. Now, as an adult, he and his brother are working for the Home Office, using their gifts of intuition to assist their country in the pause between wars with France, when he’s surprised to find out he might be the remaining heir to the Penhaligon estate in Cornwall. He has no interest in joining the aristocracy or claiming his inheritance, but his gift tells him he should go because there’s something important he must see.

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When he arrives, it isn’t long before a random woman literally stumbles into his life and fulfills his intuition.

She doesn’t remember anything about her life when they first meet, but it’s clear she also has a gift, and that there’s some sort of strange attraction between them. As she recovers her name and more memories of her life, her gift and Bran’s tell them both that serious danger is on the horizon, but that can’t entirely distract them from their connection. Putney begins a new series with this book and, unfortunately, it has a slow start and remains uneven throughout. The idea of “gifts” initially adds an intriguing and slightly paranormal twist to a classic historical romance, but that begins to lose its charm as the story continues and every plot point hangs on them, leaving little room for the characters to develop well enough for readers to understand why they’re so attracted to each other. The book is agreeable enough and has a slightly old-fashioned appeal, but this isn’t one that will attract new fans.

An unpromising start to a new series from a well-known author.

This Spells Love Robb, Kate | Dial Press (352 pp.) $17.00 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9780593596531

A young woman accidentally propels herself into an alternate reality where she falls in love with her best friend and has to figure out which life she prefers.

The book opens with Gemma

Wilde wallowing in self-pity over a recent breakup. She’s spending an evening at the home of her quirky Aunt Livi along with her sister, Kiersten, and best friend, Dax McGuire, as the three try to cheer her up. When Livi suggests using a spell to excise the terrible ex from Gemma’s heart, nobody resists. Unfortunately, Gemma’s a bit drunk and she misses a few steps. When she wakes up the next morning, everything’s different. She’s in an apartment she doesn’t recognize belonging to a man she doesn’t know.

Her job no longer exists and she apparently owns a beauty boutique in town. She hurries to contact Dax for help, but when she finds him, he doesn’t know her. Gemma realizes that the one thing she can’t stand to lose is Dax. In order to reverse the spell, she needs him to kiss her, but she’s got to win him over first.

As the two grow closer, their relationship turns romantic. Gemma’s never been happier, and she begins to wonder if she should just stay put in her new reality. Told in the first-person, the book follows Gemma as she gets reacquainted with Dax and also makes enlightening discoveries about herself. The chemistry between the main characters is palpable and grows increasingly compelling. Despite its lighthearted tone, the novel deals with deep issues such as self-doubt and lack of professional direction, lending it heft and grace. Unfortunately, once Gemma makes up her mind about what to do, the story wraps up so quickly, with so little angst, that it undermines the impact of all the prior meaningful moments.

Even so, the charming personalities and adorable moments make this story worth reading.

A quick-witted friends-to-lovers exploration with just the right touch of magic.

For more romance reviews, visit Kirkus online.

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Nonfiction

ERIC LIEBETRAU

“REED’S SUPREME muse was New York City: its wild, cacophonous beauty; its lures and dangers; its millions of stories.”

So writes veteran music journalist Will Hermes early in his excellent Lou Reed: The King of New York (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Oct. 3). The same could be said of Thurston Moore, frontman for Sonic Youth, whose memoir, Sonic Life: A Memoir, will be released

by Doubleday on Oct. 24.

Both books, which received starred reviews, serve as vital portraits of a bygone era of New York City cultural life, a roiling cauldron of rock,

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punk, dingy clubs, hard drugs, and invigorating musical exploration.

Hermes, a longtime contributor to Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, the Believer, and other publications, is the author of one of my favorite music books of the last 15 years, Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever. The author’s Reed bio covers much of the same fertile musical ground, bringing to vivid life the fascinating 1970s cultural milieu.

“The author interviewed many of Reed’s closest friends and relations and, unlike previous biographers, accessed the New York Public Library’s recently acquired Reed archives,” notes our reviewer.

“Hermes’ strength is in identifying and articulating the transformational brilliance of Reed’s songwriting and performances within the context of the 1960s and ’70s music scene.” The book is a must-read for fans of Reed, the Velvet Underground, Television, the Talking Heads, and all the other bands pioneering a new sound from the 1960s

through the ’80s. (For more on the Velvet Underground as a whole, check out Dylan Jones’ Loaded, which Grand Central will publish on Dec. 5.)

Moore proves to be as interesting and thoughtful on the page as he has been in his decadeslong musical career. When he founded Sonic Youth with Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo in 1981, few observers would have expected the band to become such a powerful cultural force, leading the NYC no wave art and music scene before moving into noisier yet no less intriguing territory. “The art-school nerds who had been cued off

by Talking Heads moved further into disjointed pop experimentation,” writes the author about the fluid music scene. “No wave bands were becoming far more formidable than their off-the-wall craziness might have first suggested.”

Moore’s memoir is “a literate, absorbing account of life in the New York of CBGB, no wave, and affordable spaces for artists.” The author charts his early musical influences (David Bowie and Patti Smith, among others),

as well as the band’s evolving sound and the many familiar ups and downs of life on the road. He is also candid about his messy breakup with Gordon and the lurking dangers haunting downtown NYC at the time. For all the Sonic Youth fans who were disappointed by David Browne’s 2008 biography, Goodbye 20th Century (“overwritten yet strangely dispassionate sound and fury, signifying far less than Sonic Youth’s ardent, explosive music” said our reviewer), Moore’s book will be a welcome rejoinder and update, straight from the artist who experienced it all.

Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor.

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Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

DISPATCHES FROM THE NYC MUSIC SCENE

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EDITOR’S PICK Lincoln’s political philosophy in sharp relief.

Princeton University distinguished research scholar Guelzo, a three-time winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, presents a detailed analysis of the 16th president’s conception of and reverence for democracy as the pinnacle of political aspiration and accomplishment, what Lincoln called “my ancient faith.” As the author adroitly points out, Lincoln often used terms such as democracy, representative democracy, and constitutional republic interchangeably; he only explicitly defined what democracy was not, which was slavery. For the selfmade Lincoln, democracy required consent. Guelzo uses his vast knowledge of Lincoln’s speeches, state papers, and letters to more fully interpret Lincolnian

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

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democracy, particularly regarding the principle of the sovereignty of the people and reverence for prudent laws faithfully observed. He is particularly enlightening concerning the evolution of Lincoln’s political and economic philosophy, notably the influence of Whig politician Henry Clay, philosopher John Stuart Mill, and political economist Henry Carey; democracy’s role in racial issues and emancipation; and the cultural mores that support democracy—in Lincoln’s view, property ownership, religious morality, toleration, and electioneering. Guelzo also contrasts Lincoln’s views about Jacksonian democracy and the Constitution’s protections against insurrection with that of his hand-wringing predecessor, James Buchanan, who

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Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant

By Curtis Chin

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Learning To Love Midlife

By Chip Conley

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Dirtbag

By Amber A’Lee Frost

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Our Ancient Faith

By Allen C. Guelzo

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Elon Musk

By Walter Isaacson

Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment Guelzo, Allen C. | Knopf | 272 pp. $30.00 | Feb. 6, 2024 | 9780593534441

“was so loath to reach for anything that looked like ‘necessity’ in dealing with secession that he convinced himself that the Constitution literally prevented him from acting against secession.” The author offers a balanced discussion of Lincoln’s expansion of government and abridgement of civil liberties during the war, and considers whether federalism suffered or was

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Prequel

By Rachel Maddow Rental Person Who Does Nothing

By Shoji Morimoto; trans. by Don Knotting

enhanced by Lincoln’s administration. The epilogue, “What If Lincoln Had Lived?” illuminates Lincoln’s views as the American body politic continues to wrestle with the meaning of democracy, which “is still the best method for people to live lives free from domination and exploitation.”

A brilliant, evenhanded, and timely political history.

The Money Kings

By Daniel Schulman The Naked Neanderthal

By Ludovic Slimak

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The Lede

By Calvin Trillin

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The Book of James: The Power, Politics, and Passion of LeBron Babb, Valerie | PublicAffairs (304 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781541702042

A study of basketball great LeBron James as an exemplar of unapologetic Blackness.

Some NBA players, such as Patrick Ewing, have been worn to the bone by fan racism; others, such as Michael Jordan, have tried to place themselves above questions of race entirely, adopting a “non-Black Blackness.” According to African American studies scholar Babb’s account, James has positioned himself as a “race man,” intent on self-expression while disproving racist tropes. It helps that he is phenomenally wealthy—though that fact does little to calm white racial resentments. “Rather than using celebrity to transcend Blackness, he uses it to give Blackness a place of prominence in American narrative-making,” writes Babb, “leaving a cultural record of how much Blackness is loved, hated, misunderstood, and just plain cool in an America that has changed and yet not changed.”

However, no matter what good James does with his celebrity and wealth—e.g., funding competitive public schools, building homes for needy families— the fact remains that Black culture is valued more than Black lives in too many quarters. Babb capably traces narratives that have been employed for and against James, one the almost trite story of a poor young Black child being raised by a single mother and elevating himself out of poverty through sheer talent—which also serves to “reinforce the notion that sexual deviance, broken families, and failed communities are typical of Black life.”

In the case of basketball, Babb shows, poverty, broken homes, and all the rest are actually outliers in the NBA: James’ story is atypical, bent to reinforce racist assumptions for whatever reason.

James defies that description, and Babb 48 OCTOBER 15, 2023

emphasizes his accomplishments both on and off the court, closing with one of his mantras: “Celebrate Black excellence every single day.”

A provocative, illuminating blend of social criticism, cultural history, and athletics.

How To Win Friends and Influence Fungi: Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math From Nerd Nite Balakrishnan, Christopher & Matt Wasowski | Illus. by Kristen Orr St. Martin’s (320 pp.) | $30.00 Feb. 20, 2024 | 9781250288349

A quirky compilation presents an engaging stroll through a forest of peculiar subjects.

For anyone who often finds life difficult, depressing, and too serious, this book is for you. Balakrishnan and Wasowski collect dozens of presentations from their Nerd Nite events, which are held monthly. There is also a YouTube channel, curated by the authors, who between them have a good mix of expertise. The subjects are largely scientific and cover topics ranging from the chemical basis of hangovers to the complex math of gossip. Some of the presenters are established scientists, while others are doctoral students or people who just know a lot about a specific topic.

Several of the essays are laugh-out-loud funny—e.g., Jane Gregory’s piece about why some people are driven to paroxysms by small but repetitive sounds, such as those made by the annoying individuals who eat chips straight from the foil bag (“misophonia can attach itself to any repetitive sound, but the most common ones are things like chewing, breathing, sniffing, and throat clearing).” Others, such as the zombie creatures of the animal kingdom or dealing with excrement in space, are cleverly droll. Many, such as the piece

titled “Why Nuclear Fusion Would Be Awesome—If We Get It to Work” or the one explaining how to manipulate perceptions of physical attractiveness (“Hot or Not? How To Be a Perfect 10”), are surprisingly informative. Most of the essays are only a few pages, so the book is a good one to dip into when a lift in mood is required, and Orr’s wacky illustrations provide a further dimension. One regrettable omission is that there is no contribution on influencing fungi, although it is clear that Balakrishnan and Wasowski are fun guys.

An enjoyable romp through the back alleys of scientific research, proving that knowledge and fun can easily go together.

Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story Blankfeld, Keren | Little, Brown (400 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9780316564779

A true tale of love amid unimaginable suffering.

Former Forbes writer Blankfeld pieces together the stories of Zippi Spitzer and David Wisnia.

The author never met Zippi, but she interviewed David before his death in 2021. However, the author notes that Zippi never spoke of a romance with David before she died in 2018. Hence, there is an odd disconnect, as often happens among Holocaust survivors, regarding how memories are preserved, concealed, and presented. Zippi was born in 1918 in Pressburg, Slovakia (now Bratislava). In 1927, her mother died from tuberculosis, and Zippi and her brother, Sam, were sent to live with other family members. Trained as a graphic artist, one of the few women in the field, Zippi was just getting started as a professional when the Nazis came to power and race laws restricting employment were passed. Meanwhile, David, from the small Polish town of Sochaczew, studied music and opera singing in KIRKUS REVIEWS

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A timely call to action about the nearand-present dangers of AI systems.

UNMASKING AI

Warsaw. With Poland conquered and Czechoslovakia broken apart, the Jewish population was deported, and Zippi and David were transported to Auschwitz. Thanks to Zippi’s friendship with a Nazi sympathizer who got her a job as an administrator, she was able to receive ample rations and help other women survive. David, barely 18, got preferential treatment because of his singing abilities and worked in “Canada,” the warehouse that housed the pilfered clothes and possessions of the transported Jews. As Blankfeld recounts in dramatic prose, their trysts in the clothing warehouse were risky and thrilling. David promised to meet Zippi in Warsaw, though he never appeared; he had become embedded with the U.S. Army, while Zippi became a displaced person. They met again only on her deathbed. Though the author’s italicized speculations about Zippi’s thoughts and actions may deter some readers, the story is worthwhile.

A moving and tragic account with many unresolved elements.

Unmasking AI: My Mission To Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines Buolamwini, Joy | Random House (304 pp.) $28.99 | Oct. 31, 2023 | 9780593241837

A computer scientist chronicles her journey from eager graduate student to crusader against algorithmic bias.

The daughter of Ghanaian immigrants to the U.S., Buolamwini, KIRKUS REVIEWS

the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, first caught the AI bug as a 9-year-old watching a PBS program about a “social robot” named Kismet, “a dazzling and intricate web of metal and wires topped off with enchanting eyes.” At 25, she was a graduate student in MIT’s Media Lab. At the end of her first semester, Buolamwini made a troubling discovery. Working on a final class project that involved face-tracking software, she discovered that the software was unable to “see” her “dark-skinned” face. However, it could see her face when she donned a white Halloween mask, which meant she could only finish coding the project in “whiteface.” At first, Buolamwini was reluctant to embrace the political dimension of her work, despite more than one encounter in which she realized that the software libraries she was working with “were not optimized for people like me with darker skin.” Eventually, she decided to fully focus on bias in technology, specifically on “AI systems applied to human faces.” At the time, facial recognition systems were being marketed to law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and U.K. Huge tech companies like Amazon and IBM were entering the field, touting programs that could analyze faces and guess demographics like age and race. However, as the author discovered in her groundbreaking research, the systems had largely been trained on data sets predominantly made up of white men; unsurprisingly, they were best at analyzing the faces of white men.

Buolamwini is clearly an exceptional scientist and passionate champion of the cause; if her prose is not always inspiring, the content certainly is.

A timely call to action about the nearand-present dangers of AI systems.

The Policing Machine: Enforcement, Endorsements, and the Illusion of Public Input Cheng, Tony | Univ. of Chicago (240 pp.) | $20.00 paper | Jan. 8, 2024 9780226830650

How the NYPD evades genuine public accountability.

As Duke sociology professor Cheng shows, the largest police department in America creates the impression of democratically led reform, while securely guarding its own autonomy. This book, writes the author, “describes how police cultivate political capital through a strategic politics of distribution— the discretionary distribution of public resources and regulatory leniency toward constituents, alongside coercive force against alternative voices.”

Cheng carefully and convincingly develops his argument, informed by extensive interactions with community members and backed up with copious citations of prominent scholarship. He explains how the NYPD undermines opposition to its policies by, among other tactics, manipulating community councils so that strict control is exerted over how complaints are interpreted and addressed, as well as coopting the authority of local churches to promote the appearance of widespread public approval. Cogent examples throughout the book demonstrate the failure of anything close to democratic power over policing itself. The core problem, Cheng demonstrates, is not a lack of ties between the police and the communities they serve, but rather the coercive force of the ties that already exist. The author includes insightful commentary on the various professional, practical, and personal reasons why the police are motivated to resist surrendering more of their independence. The timeliness of his investigation is underscored by the representative quality of the NYPD and the current urgency of efforts being OCTOBER 15, 2023 49

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Chin is a born storyteller with an easy manner, and this memoir should earn him many readers.

EVE RY TH I N G I L E AR N E D, I L E AR N E D I N A C H I N E S E R E S TA U R A N T

made across the nation to make police more responsive to public concerns.

Though more consideration of the views of police officers themselves would have enriched readers’ understanding of the complex problems—for that, turn to Edwin Raymond’s An Inconvenient Cop—Cheng makes a strong case that we must “rethink the promise of public input for achieving democratic governance over police departments.”

A hard-hitting exposé of the organizational structures and political maneuvering that thwart police reform.

Kirkus Star

Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir Chin, Curtis | Little, Brown (304 pp.) | $29.00 Oct. 17, 2023 | 9780316507653

A charming, often funny account of a sentimental education in a Cantonese restaurant.

Chin grew up in the 1980s and ’90s as a not entirely willing exemplar of a “model minority.” The latter term, he writes, is inadequate and incorrect, since in his hometown of Detroit, the white population was in fact smaller than that of people of color. His aspirational parents moved far from their downtown restaurant, where he worked alongside them throughout his adolescence, so that 50 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Chin and his siblings could attend good public schools in neighborhoods where “we were outsiders.”

That point was driven home by the brutal murder of a Chinese American friend by two racist white people who were given lenient sentences. The murder had the effect of galvanizing Chin, who had been charting a slow course from the desire to fit in with his suburban classmates, which “meant being a Republican,” to someone aware of his differences and willing to speak to them. One was the dawning awareness that he was gay, fearful of revealing the fact to his family and a mother who won every fight because “she always outlasted her opponent.” She also served the sex workers of downtown Detroit with the same hospitality that she extended to the mayor and the town’s business elite. To all the obstacles that Chin faced, he added a switch from a prelaw major to a degree in creative writing: “I didn’t know which truth would be more difficult to reveal—that I was gay or that I was going to be a poet.” A happy if qualified ending awaits, and the author closes his affectionate, self-effacing narrative with a paean to the power of familial love, to say nothing of an expertly cooked meal.

Chin is a born storyteller with an easy manner, and this memoir should earn him many readers.

For more on Chinese cuisine, visit Kirkus online.

Quantum Body: The New Science of Living a Longer, Healthier, More Vital Life Chopra, Deepak & Jack Tuszynski & Brian Fertig | Harmony (336 pp.) | $24.00 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780593579985

More alleged illuminations of the symbiotic mind-body relationship.

“The quantum model offers a solution because it is based on ‘real’ reality,” asserts prolific author Chopra, a prominent proponent of New Age perspectives and approaches to holistic health. Of the 30+ years since the publication of his book Quantum Healing, he writes, “it has taken all this time to reveal many findings that were only hinted at until medical science, physics, and biology caught up.” In this collaboration with physics professor Tuszynski and endocrinologist Fertig, Chopra argues that the book is “offering a revolutionary perspective.” In this well-intentioned yet thorny and grandiose book, the authors claim that “your real body isn’t what you think it is…Your real body is a quantum creation.” Corollaries to this premise include: “To find out who you really are, we must go to a place hardly anyone ever thinks about—infinity”; “Your brain will never lead you to expanded awareness or higher states of consciousness”; “You stand at the pivot point of creation, because your body is defined by how you relate to it.” As he has in many previous books, from Perfect Health to Total Meditation, Chopra draws from yogic texts—e.g., “Existence contains everything, which is why in ancient India the all-encompassing unity of existence was named Brahman, from the Sanskrit root that means ‘to grow or expand.’ Brahman is the ultimate reality because it can expand infinitely.” In chapters with titles such as “Reality Is Experience” and “Infinity Is the New Normal,” the authors repeatedly attempt to bolster the “two most powerful conclusions that drive KIRKUS REVIEWS

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this book: Well-being is weakened whenever there is a failure of intelligence. Well-being is strengthened when intelligence flows naturally.” Devotees of holistic medicine may find enough to ponder, but the authors overcomplicate most of the insights they claim to clarify.

For stalwart Chopra fans only.

Kirkus Star

Learning To Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age Conley, Chip | Little, Brown Spark (240 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 16, 2024 | 9780316567022

Life after 40 is “a rich time for introspection, a journey through stillness into freedom,” according to this engaging, conversational guide.

In a youth-oriented culture like the U.S., the midlife period is often seen as “one endless sand trap on the golf course of life.” But it doesn’t have to be like that, writes Conley, co-founder of the Modern Elder Academy and author of numerous business and selfhelp books. Midlife, which he defines as the 40-65 age bracket, can be a time when life is reconsidered and reorganized. The key is to make a conscious decision about what sort of future you want, including what the author calls “the Great Midlife Edit.” This means letting go of mindsets and obligations that have outstayed their welcome.

For some people, it can be a change of career or lifestyle, perhaps stepping off the 9-to-5 treadmill and finding a new use for hard-won experience; Conley cites statistics indicating that half of American start-up entrepreneurs are over 55. True, after 40, wrinkles start to appear and hairlines begin to recede. Accept it and become comfortable in your skin, advises Conley, although he also offers advice on maintaining overall health. Staying KIRKUS REVIEWS

active is the best medicine. The connection between mental condition and physical capability increases in midlife, and people with strong relationships, religious faith, and a willingness to try new things live longer, healthier lives.

Don’t be afraid to seek new challenges and experiences; the author notes that his father took up scuba diving at 60. “Midlife is the time to rediscover our love of old movies, jazz music, impressionist painters, and anything else that makes life worth living,” he writes. Later, he continues, “Aging is a privilege, a gift of time.”

Conley’s enthusiasm for grasping the full potential of the midlife years is contagious and inspiring.

Borrowed Time: Survivors of Nazi Terezín Remember Darling, Dennis Carlyle | Univ. of Texas (288 pp.) | $55.00 | Jan. 2, 2024 9781477328163

Biographies and photographs of former prisoners from the notorious Nazi camp.

Terezín was located in Czechoslovakia, annexed

by Germany in March 1939. Popular histories often mention its rich cultural life, including concerts, speeches, and education classes, the result of many “prominent” Jewish people imprisoned there—but also because of the Nazi effort to spruce it up occasionally to impress the apparently easily impressed Red Cross inspectors.

“Terezín would be the first and only concentration camp the International Red Cross ever inspected during the war,” writes Darling, a photographer and former professor at the University of Texas School of Journalism and Media, who shows it to be a loathsome place. Not a death factory like Auschwitz nor a permanent concentration camp like Buchenwald, Terezín was built as a temporary holding pen for Jews from German-occupied Europe.

Until its liberation in May 1945, 143,000 arrived; about 90,000 “were deported to German killing centers

and sites in the East.” About 35,000 died inside Terezín, mostly from starvation and disease. Initially, children were exempt from deportation and experienced better living conditions, but as the war progressed and German armies retreated, conditions in all Nazi camps deteriorated significantly.

“Of the fifteen thousand children that spent time at Terezín,” writes the author, “only twelve hundred were still alive in spring 1945.” Darling provides around 75 short biographies based on his interviews, and he includes an expansive glossary at the end of the book. The author acknowledges that his book is not a comprehensive history of the camp or the time period: “My intent was simple—to make portraits and collect first-person narratives of those imprisoned there—letting each voice tell their particular piece of the Holocaust; experiences remembered from seven decades ago.”

A solid entry into the Holocaust literature, presenting stories that need to be told.

Supercommunicators: How To Unlock the Secret Language of Connection Duhigg, Charles | Random House (336 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 20, 2024 | 9780593243916

Now more than ever, the ability to properly communicate is a crucial skill.

Certain people seem to have a gift for conversation, for understanding others and making themselves understood. Whether their ability is intuitive or deeply considered, they have much to teach the rest of us, especially when our society seems to be increasingly polarized and confrontational. Duhigg, a New York Times reporter and author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better, says he wrote this book because he recognized that his own verbal skills were poor. He delves deeply >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 51

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BENJAMIN MOSER

An award-winning biographer turns his gaze to the Dutch masters and the culture of his adopted country.

BY GREGORY MCNAMEE

that depict 84 residents of the city of Haarlem, painted over the course of a half a century.

“The paint is laid on in liberal quantities. Though the colors are few— black and brown for Zaffius’ clothing, yellows and reds and whites for his face and beard—Hals wrings every nuance out of them.” So Moser writes in The Upside-Down World: Meetings With the Dutch Masters (Liveright/Norton, Oct. 10) of one of Hals’ subjects, a Catholic

Moser worked on the book for 20 years.

The idea of living in a light-filled, perfectly harmonious home really stuck with me.

Philippe Quaisse

ASK BENJAMIN MOSER which work of Dutch art he would nominate if only a single piece could be saved from war, plague, climate change, robot uprising, or some other calamity, and he is quick to answer—though with something of a cheat. Speaking with Kirkus via Zoom from his home in the Netherlands, Moser says that he would choose a series of eight paintings by the great Golden Age artist Frans Hals, some 75 feet long in total,

survivor of Holland’s religious wars named Jacobus Zaffius. Though Zaffius represents a dark past, Hals looks confidently toward a better future, bathing his subject in an ennobling golden light. There’s plenty more going on in those eight extraordinary panels, which inspired the likes of Monet and Van Gogh. Says Moser, “When Holland floods and is sunk to the bottom of the ocean, which seems to be not too far off for any of us, I’ll try to get those to higher ground if I can.”

A native of Houston and onetime resident of Brooklyn—where he lived while working in publishing in Manhattan, “answering the phone, making photocopies, all the stuff that you do when you get out of college”—Moser has lived and worked in the Netherlands for the last 20 years, making his present home near the small Dutch city from which Brooklyn takes its name and, coincidentally, not far from Hals’ beloved Haarlem. “I love it here,” he says. “I can look out this window, and I can see a thousand-year-old cathedral.

You know, when you’re from Texas, that’s really cool.”

Meeting his partner Arthur Japin, a novelist and native of Holland, made leaving New York easier, though he immediately found himself facing the challenge of all people living outside their homelands: learning to negotiate the rules of a new culture. Practically

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from the moment Moser arrived, he began writing a rapidly accumulating set of notes on one of his great passions—namely art and its makers, which he used as a vehicle for getting to know his newfound country. That “sentimental education,” as he calls it, is ongoing, but in that mountain of notes on the likes of Vermeer, Rembrandt, Carel Fabritius, and other Dutch masters, he eventually discerned the shape of The Upside-Down World. “I started reading through it,” he says, “and I thought, well, it’s not a book yet, but it could be.”

Passion is a keyword, for Moser approaches Dutch art not as an exercise in technical criticism or artistic technique but instead as one of appreciation for the often turbulent lives of Dutch artists in the context of turbulent times: wars, plagues, floods, famine, and religious and political divisions that make the current American scene look tame.

For all the tumult of their lives and times, these artists created works of spectacular beauty. One of Moser’s favorite artists, Pieter de Hooch, endured a tormented period after the death of his wife, during which he raised his family alone. Yet in the work of that sad time de Hooch conjured what Moser characterizes in the book as a “prosperous land of clean and happy homes” where everyone had plenty of food to eat and children were pampered and loved. Moser first encountered de Hooch’s work in a small museum in Connecticut, and he allows that the viewing may have planted in him the seed for moving abroad. “You see his paintings, and they’re just so warm,” Moser says.

“There’s something so peaceful about them. There’s something so nice about the picture they offer of adult life, of families and their homes. You know, I was living in a 12th-floor walkup in Brooklyn before Brooklyn was cool, and the idea of living in a light-filled, perfectly clean, perfectly harmonious home really stuck with me.”

He now lives in such a home, a base for his travels throughout Holland while writing The Upside-Down World, KIRKUS REVIEWS

The Upside-Down World: Meetings With the Dutch Masters Moser, Benjamin

Liveright/Norton | 320 pp.| $39.95 Oct. 10, 2023 | 9781324092254

which took him the full 20 years to complete. Of course, that’s not all Moser occupied himself with, for during those two decades he also wrote two highly regarded biographies, the first on writer Clarice Lispector, who lived in a coastal Brazilian city once ruled by the Dutch, the second a Pulitzer Prize–winning life of Susan Sontag.

Both books fed into his latest—the Lispector by illuminating 17th-century Dutch culture in a setting far from its homeland, the second by giving him a way to approach the Dutch art he saw around him in venues ranging from international museums to dusty village archives, all part of what he calls “the intellectual adventure of trying to figure it all out.”

Without Sontag’s influence, Moser says, he might never have approached the work of Jan Steen as a species of camp. “Steen is famously fun and jolly and had too much to drink,” Moser says. “He’s probably sleeping with a hooker, and he’s probably sneaking out of the back room of the bar so his wife doesn’t find him.” As playful as they are, he adds, Steen’s works are

“extremely serious, beautiful paintings that you can hang next to Rembrandts or Vermeers.” That mix of the comic and the representational could have turned into something like a velvet Elvis painting in the local thrift store, but in the hands of Steen, it became a rich and, yes, campy commentary on the mores of his day.

A work of high seriousness itself, The Upside-Down World is full of good-natured humor, much of it directed at Moser’s efforts to “figure it all out.” The Dutch are like Americans in many ways, he notes: Both live in a multicultural society, a nation of immigrants sometimes riven by controversy and division. The book, he adds, is really “an immigrant’s memoir”—an immigrant as distinct from an expat, the former being someone who is serious about making a home in a new culture. “Immigrants often know a lot more than natives about the culture they’re in,” Moser says, “because they’re more observant. They have to learn the language, have to think about the culture and how they relate to it. I ask myself, What are the things I admire about life in Holland? What are the things I think are ridiculous about it?

Conceptualizing it that way is kind of weird, I guess, but it’s helped me think about where I am.”

While there are things about his homeland, and especially Texas, that he misses, Moser feels quite at home in the Netherlands. His Dutch compatriots, it seems, feel the same, for his book will soon appear in Dutch translation, which he hopes will invite readers to discover more about their own culture and country. There’s plenty left for him to learn, too, he reckons, and plenty more art to study. “It’s not called the Golden Age for nothing,” he says. “It’s where all these unbelievable figures, from Rembrandt to Vermeer to all the other people I write about, lived and created art. I could write three more volumes without even getting to the B-list.”

Gregory McNamee is a contributing writer.

The Upside-Down World received a starred review in the Sept. 1, 2023, issue.

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into the nature and structure of conversations, combining his own careful observations of “supercommunicators” with relevant research. He eventually defines three types of conversation and their inner meaning. Practical conversations ask, what is this really about? Emotional conversations deal with a different question: How do we feel? Social conversations involve questions of who we are. Being able to identify the type of conversation is a crucial step toward becoming a better communicator, and studies show that people’s brainwaves start to move in sync when they are in the same category. Duhigg breaks down each type to develop a set of useful rules, noting that empathetic listening is an essential starting point. In many cases, the listener has to be able to share some of their own experiences without making it about themselves. The author provides illustrative anecdotes, ranging from a CIA agent recruiting sources to jurors discussing a tricky case. He admits that all this takes effort and concentration, although it gets easier with practice, and the rewards of good interaction are worth the work.

“Connecting with others can make us healthier, happier, and more content,” he writes. “Conversations can change our brains, bodies, and how we experience the world.”

With a focus on practical advice, Duhigg unpacks the essential tools for effective, positive conversations.

Borgata: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia Ferrante, Louis | Pegasus (387 pp.) | $29.95 Jan. 2, 2024 | 9781639366019

A former mobster excavates mafia lore.

Ferrante, the author of Mob Rules and former mafia associate and heist expert, promises that this first volume of a planned trilogy will be free of 54 OCTOBER 15, 2023

misinformation repeated over the years by multiple mafia historians.

He begins at the beginning, with the germination of the mafia in medieval Sicily under French occupation. From there, he winds into the American mafia’s peak from the 1930s to the 1960s. Ferrante’s primary focus is the rise and fall of Charles “Lucky” Luciano and his associates and adversaries, including his partner, Jewish organized-crime legend Meyer Lansky; their West Coast counterpart Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel; and Luciano’s successors, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. Drawing on his experience as an ex-mobster, Ferrante argues that mafia standards of loyalty, secrecy, and revenge call for rewriting some of the mob’s most famous myths with a better grasp of the details and motivations involved. He peppers his stories with enlightening morsels about the conditions that facilitated the rise and impunity of organized criminals, touching on topics like ingrained corruption in New Orleans, mobsters’ pride in being Americans, and the surprising discernment the mafia showed in choosing which illicit activities to pursue. However, the tangled and tumultuous nature of mob-based relationships and activities is echoed by a text filled with long threads of names and events that weave in and out of order, with stiff segues between episodes. Exhausting playby-plays of a wide array of crimes fill pages, while others are simply alluded to. This approach frustrates rather than clarifies readers’ understanding of the mafia’s complicated strands of business, political, and personal relationships, which snaked around Prohibition and World War II, into and out of Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and Cuba.

An intermittently entertaining but rudderless exploration of the early history of the mafia.

To read our review of Mob Rules, visit Kirkus online.

What the Taliban Told Me Fritz, Ian | Simon & Schuster (304 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781668010693

A linguist for the U.S. Air Force chronicles his service in Afghanistan.

During his deployment, Fritz, an airborne cryptologic linguist, realized that language has the ability to humanize the so-called enemy. The author worked as a direct support operator, translating Dari and Pashto over two deployments in 2011. Hailing from a poor family in Florida, Fritz enlisted at age 20 in order to access college, and he spent a year studying Dari and Pashtun during accelerated Air Force language training in Monterey, California. As the author demonstrates, the work conducted by airborne linguists aboard military gunships is strategic and important, even though “the communications they receive or interpret rarely have an immediate impact on something actively happening on the ground.” In a vernacular account full of military abbreviations and slang, Fritz frankly reveals some of the chatter he heard and had to translate quickly. Listening to Taliban combatants exulting at their kills on the one hand, and the U.S. soldiers celebrating theirs on the other, prompted decidedly uncomfortable emotions.

“Because I could hear it all, both sides of this strange and eternal war,” he writes, “the boundary that was supposed to separate them from us no longer existed.” Fritz’s first deployment was 322.5 hours and earned him two medals; the next lasted only two months. He writes poignantly about his increasing dread before the second deployment, hearing of other DSOs “losing it” and falling into binge-drinking and other destructive behavior. Ultimately, Fritz grew disenchanted with the gung-ho killing and questioned the motives of the U.S. government. Never diagnosed KIRKUS REVIEWS

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Occasionally unfocused, but an informed and original progressive voice.

Welcome the Wretched: In Defense of the “Criminal Alien” García Hernández, Cesar Cuauhtémoc The New Press (240 pp.) | $27.99 Jan. 31, 2024 | 9781620977798

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with PTSD, Fritz calls the damage he sustained “moral injury,” defined by psychiatrists as “the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs.”

A fraught, moving account by a conflicted soldier.

Kirkus Star

Dirtbag: Essays Frost, Amber A’Lee | St. Martin’s (288 pp.) $28.00 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781250269621

Acerbic, observant tale of coming of age amid “the unlikely rise (and tragic fall) of a post-2008 wave of social democratic politics.”

Frost, co-host of the Chapo Trap House podcast, delivers a witty, self-knowing, digressive memoir, noting how her ADHD–inflected mindset has “been given free rein to dictate the literary style of this book.” While candid about the ups and downs of her personal life, she maintains an impassioned focus on progressive politics: “Socialism for me is simply a chore that needs to be done.” She affectingly describes her upbringing in an economically faded Indiana, influenced by her working-class, pro-union extended family. “I first threw myself into politics,” she writes, “out of frustration with an economy that sabotaged the talents, desires, and ambitions of KIRKUS REVIEWS

so many people I knew and loved.”

She realized mainline progressivism’s limitations upon moving to New York, working for the Working Families Party, then the Democratic Socialists of America, and, later, Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns.

Along the way, she participated in Occupy Wall Street, and she tartly depicts a transition from exciting to pedantic, noting, “every group at Occupy was always unstable, always vulnerable to tyrannical personalities and disruption.” In 2016, the Sanders phenomenon seemed a “realignment campaign” that would “show Americans they could demand more than what the Democrats offered.”

The odds against Sanders’ campaigns (and their sabotage by Democratic leaders) left Frost drained and frustrated. “He was an honest man in the public eye,” she writes, “and he was exposing the venality and corruption of the DNC.” The author peppers the narrative with incisive analytical digressions and unsparing critiques of politics, including the outsized influence of careerists and other toxic personalities. Underneath it all, she remains optimistic: “if you ever feel your faith depleted, you can have some of mine.”

Occasionally unfocused, but an informed and original progressive voice.

To read our review of Migrating to Prison, visit Kirkus online.

A law professor examines how U.S. citizenship laws have neglected the “complexities and contradictions” of individual migrants.

America has long prided itself on being a safe haven for what Emma Lazarus immortalized as “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

However, according to García Hernández, author of Migrating to Prison, this safe-haven status is more myth than reality because of what he calls a “romanticized view of migrants… [as uniformly] morally upstanding, self-reliant, up-by-the-bootstraps” individuals. He suggests that where this point is most visible is in the relationship between federal immigration law and criminal law. Anyone can seek asylum in the U.S. regardless of how that person gets to America, but federal law does not protect such individuals from prosecution.

This situation has created increasingly problematic tensions between what the U.S. purports to be and what it actually is, especially after 9/11.

Riding on fears of increased terrorist activity, George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security to deter the inflow of hostile immigrants along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, both of which focus on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

These events signaled a sea change in immigration policies while also laying the foundation for the “overblown rhetoric” politicians like Donald Trump would later use to provoke outrage over threats posed by immigrants, especially those hailing from south of the border. Using individual stories—like that of an aunt who, risking deportation, routinely gave shelter OCTOBER 15, 2023 55

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and assistance to non-citizens—the author demonstrates the brokenness of an immigration system he believes is in need of greater compassion toward imperfect people trying to lead better lives. Though tending at times toward historical digressiveness, this book offers timely insights into the vexing problem of citizenship in America.

A well-researched study that will appeal mostly to fellow academics.

Guardrails: Guiding Human Decisions in the Age of AI Gasser, Urs & Viktor Mayer-Schönberger Princeton Univ. (240 pp.) | $27.95 March 5, 2024 | 9780691150680

Two academic specialists look down the road at the evolution of AI and how to control it.

Discussions about how to regulate digital technology are inevitably heated and labyrinthine, with the participants often failing to agree on even the most basic of precepts. Anyone approaching this book with the expectation that Gasser, a professor in technology and social sciences at the Technical University of Munich, and Mayer-Schönberger, a professor of internet governance and regulation at Oxford, will lay out a one-size-fits-all model of regulation will be disappointed. Instead, the authors focus on establishing a conceptual framework that sets clear boundaries while still allowing for innovation and the capacity to change with dynamic circumstances.

They use guardrails as an extended metaphor, looking at a wide array of cases, including the European Union’s attempts at tech regulation and the rules governing contributions to Wikipedia. Most attempts to date have shortcomings, but they provide lessons on how to balance competing concerns. Neither tech specialists nor ethicists can understand all the issues, and the proposals put forward 56 OCTOBER 15, 2023

by Gasser and Mayer-Schönberger involve collaboration and a willingness to compromise. The authors are wary of the “black boxes” in which AI systems operate, and they believe that handing decision-making power to machines is a dangerous path. An example of unintended consequences is the case where an algorithm rejected mortgage applications because they were made by Black applicants. The designers of algorithms must be able to explain exactly what is happening in an AI “box,” and algorithms need to be constructed to take into account social concerns, with ample provision for human oversight. Gasser and Mayer-Schönberger have interesting things to say about the topic, but the book is a dense, complex read, written with an academic audience in mind.

A scholarly framework for regulating AI technology, with an eye toward enhancing choice while promoting the social good.

How Not To Age: The Scientific Approach to Getting Healthier as You Get Older Greger, Michael | Flatiron Books (640 pp.) $39.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781250796332

The latest in the author’s How Not To series.

Readers who agree that anti-aging books are largely “hype and lies” may perk up to learn that Greger not only proclaims that he is a scientist, but he writes like one. The author delivers a lengthy, encyclopedic account of life-extenders that explains how they work and examines research supporting them, and he is not shy about expressing skepticism. But skeptics often have a modest readership, while enthusiasts write bestsellers; Greger clearly understands this, so he leans over backward to express enthusiasm.

The author begins with a discussion of proven elements that lead to longer,

healthier lives, including long-lived parents, a plant-based diet, exercise, good medical care, and the money to afford quality food and medical care.

After this brief introduction, Greger focuses on an extremely wide variety of nutrients, herbs, foods, spices, new and old drugs, genetic manipulation, specific diets, attitudes, and even geographical areas that published research suggests may prolong lives. Some of the world’s longest-living people include Okinawans and Seventh-day Adventists in Loma Linda, California. The U.S. as a whole is 45th in the world in life expectancy. Relentlessly optimistic, Greger includes numerous life-extenders backed by a single study, which he admits is not the strongest evidence. A long middle section on how to preserve function as you age may be the most useful, despite its lack of life-extension hype. The author’s avalanche of information is genuinely educational, although an active, middle-class vegetarian probably already possesses more than 90% of what’s proven to maximize their lifespan. None of Greger’s revelations seems likely to lead to vast life extension, but this is a welcome addition to a genre that continues to grow in popularity.

A physician tells you everything you ever wanted to know about life extension with less nonsense than usual.

The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution Grim, Ryan | Henry Holt (304 pp.) | $28.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781250869074

Progressives come to Washington.

Political reporter Grim, D.C. bureau chief for the Intercept, examines the rise, challenges, and influence of six aggressive left-wing politicians: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar, branded by KIRKUS REVIEWS

NONFICTION

A wide-ranging, politically acute inquiry into the history of travel and tourism.

AIRPLANE MODE

the media as The Squad, and the two representatives who joined them in 2021, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.

Covering the period from 2015 to the 2022 midterms, Grim sees this book as a sequel to his last, We’ve Got People: From Jesse Jackson to AOC, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement.

He reprises AOC’s transformation from a newly registered Democrat who was swept up by Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign to an energized candidate for Congress, tapped by the organization Brand New Congress to unseat Joe Crowley, “widely considered the most likely replacement for Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she stepped aside.” Once sworn in, AOC was quickly disillusioned. At a retreat organized in part by the House of Representatives, she texted the author, “this Harvard ‘orientation’ is a corporate indoctrination camp and it’s infuriating.” In D.C., she and the other Squad members faced challenges from within their party, especially from the inordinately belligerent New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer; hostile Republicans; and internal disputes within the left, as they attempted to shape policy regarding immigration, climate change, health care, social spending, and the Middle East. The Green New Deal, for example, “was ridiculed by the right and dismissed by Democratic leaders as unserious.” Yet outside of Washington, Grim notes, “it became a global sensation.” As AOC became a prominent media personality, she and the rest of the Squad were increasingly targeted.

AOC, whom Grim portrays as “a consensus builder and a people-pleaser,” was “thrust into the role of rebel.”

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Drawing on his own on-the-ground reporting, Grim creates a detailed account of seven tumultuous years.

An insider’s often dismaying picture of national politics.

Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel Habib, Shahnaz | Catapult (288 pp.) | $27.00 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781646220151

A wide-ranging, politically acute inquiry into the history of travel and tourism, as seen by a south Indian writer and translator.

Attending a lecture by a travel videographer on “the travel habits of different demographics,” Habib heard him proclaim, “Europeans travel in August” and “cruises are for retired Americans.” Then came the kicker: “People from the Third World do not travel; they immigrate.” Born in Kerala, India, now living in Brooklyn, the author is a traveler and an immigrant, sometimes a tourist, as well. All these perspectives play a role in this collection of essays. Habib opens by contrasting her experience as a traveler with that of a white woman she met in Turkey, segueing into a history of guidebooks and an interrogation of the association between travel and privilege. “But what if,” she wonders, “instead of being a hole in the self, [lack of privilege] is more akin to a window? A crack through which the light gets in, a third eye

that reveals the magic-mushroom hybridity of the world we live in?”

Another essay describes her months as a new mother in Brooklyn, finding solace in aimlessly riding buses; Brooklyn, she proclaims, is “a flaneur’s paradise.” Most essays combine the history and historiography of travel with engaging personal narratives—e.g., her white American husband getting foiled in his plan for a romantic trip to Paris because his brown wife cannot get the paperwork in time. Habib includes funny stories about craving Thai food in Barcelona and her biophobia (fear of nature). A wonderful afterword explains “Why I Use ‘Third World In This Book.’ ” Although some find the term derogatory, she argues, “To speak of the Third World is to bring it into being…It’s not offensive to me. Its nasty women, bad hombres, and shitholes are dear to me.”

Enlightening and entertaining.

A Real Right To Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy Hasen, Richard L. | Princeton Univ. (232 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 20, 2024 | 9780691257716

A convincing argument in favor of a constitutional guarantee of the right to vote.

In this comprehensive follow-up to Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics and How To Cure It, Hasen lays out a plan to secure the franchise for all eligible voters in the face of its many current barriers. To strengthen his case, he provides a draft text of an amendment to the Constitution that would do just that. In his eyes, the principal obstacles in the way of protected voting rights are the states’ fetters on access to the ballot box, discrimination against targeted groups, the purposefully >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 57

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P O D C A S T // N O N F I C T I O N

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Phoebe’s Diary

by Phoebe Wahl (Little, Brown) Mexikid by Pedro Martín (Dial Books) Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career by Kristi Coulter (MCD/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux) The Fraud by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press) ALSO MENTIONED ON THIS EPISODE:

Layers: A Memoir, written and illustrated by Pénélope Bagieu, translated by Montana Kane Into the Wild

by Jon Krakauer Intimations: Six Essays

by Zadie Smith Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

by Zadie Smith THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

There Are No Answers Here, Only Questions: A Memoir by Charles Bruce McIntyre Botheration (Part Three: Epiphany) by Vito DiBarone

Sebastian Piras

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.

To listen to the episode, visit Kirkus online.

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Fully Booked

Alice Carrière charts the loss and recovery of selfhood in a stunning debut memoir. BY MEGAN LABRISE EPISODE 336: ALICE CARRIÈRE

On this episode of the Fully Booked podcast, Alice Carrière joins us to discuss Everything/Nothing/Someone (Spiegel & Grau, Aug. 29), a finely wrought memoir of mental illness that Kirkus calls “spellbinding.”

Debut author Carrière had a remarkable childhood: She grew up at 134 Charles St. in New York’s West Village, the humungous residence and studio of her famous mother, Jennifer Bartlett, an American artist known for paintings and installations that took up an uncommon amount of space. Her father, German actor and sex symbol Mathieu Carrière, was an intermittent presence whose behavior towards his child never conformed to traditional parental mores. The bulk of her care was managed by Nanny, a beloved British governess who attempted to shield her in a swirling world of art, money, power, and fame.

In adolescence, a dissociative disorder would erode Carrière’s sense of self until she could not recognize the face she saw in the mirror as her own. She was institutionalized and medicated to the point of complete collapse. But the ability to put words to her experience—and eventually, to write her own story—helped her reclaim her personhood and autonomy.

Here’s a bit from Kirkus’ starred review of Everything/Nothing/Someone: “Throughout this visceral text, the author propels readers forward with the gut-wrenching descriptions of her struggles and how they were exacerbated by the lack of a recognizable support system.…[Her] artistic prowess and determination to unearth and interpret the true narrative arc of her life and healing shine through. ‘Things only became real when they were turned into language,’ she writes, and ‘that language was often the only thing left when that reality fell

Everything/Nothing/Someone Carrière, Alice

Spiegel & Grau | 288 pp. | $28.00 Aug. 29, 2023 | 9781954118294

apart.’ This book is the exemplification of that ideal, rendering real and poignant her experience—both material and interior—in stunning prose.”

Carrière introduces Everything/Nothing/Someone to listeners. Then we discuss what it was like to grow up at 134 Charles St.; how nothing—including the decoration of her childhood bedroom— was under her control; the way the word maybe features in the opening of the book; how maybes seem to function as absolutes in Carrière’s early life; a definition of dissociative disorder; the book’s lovely language; how language helped her reclaim a sense of self; how she thought about point of view; recording the audiobook, and the significant role audiobooks played in her life; the way the word care features at the book’s end; and much more.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, Eric Liebetrau, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

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www.laevnotes.com Interactive Content

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7343635-3-1

Kindle eBook ISBN:

“Rich personal and cultural history of a young woman in Berlin’s Belle Epoque.”

—BookLife Reviews

978-1-7343635-4-8

Available on

“A tender, personalitycentered biography of golden age Berlin.”

—Kirkus Reviews

Book to Screen Netflix Drops Trailer for Nyad Biopic The film is based on swimming legend Diana Nyad’s 2015 memoir, Find a Way. Netflix released a trailer for Nyad, the upcoming biopic of swimming legend Diana Nyad, based on her 2015 memoir, Find a Way. Nyad’s book chronicles her career as a swimmer known for marathon water journeys. In 1975, she swam around the island of Manhattan—a 28-mile endeavor that she completed in 8 hours. She became a global star in 2013 after swimming

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from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64; the 110-mile trip took 53 hours.

A critic for Kirkus called the memoir “inspiring reading for anyone who has ever dared to dream the impossible.”

Nyad stars Annette Bening in the title role, and Jodie Foster as Bonnie

Stoll, her friend and coach. The film is written by Julia Cox and directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin.

The trailer opens Annette Bening with Bening reading in Nyad aloud from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day.” After ing fondly to Bening, “There’s a shot of archival footage no one more Nyad than you.” from an old interview with Bening smiles in response.

Nyad, it cuts to Foster trying Nyad opens in select to dissuade Bening from theaters in October and will making the Cuba-to-Florida begin streaming on Netflix on swim, saying, “Absolutely Nov. 3.—M.S. not. No. That’s insane.

Diana, you tried that when you were 28, and you did not make it when you were 28.

For a review You’re 60.” of Find a Way, “I don’t believe in imposed visit Kirkus online. limitations,” Bening replies.

“The only one who gets to decide if I’m through is me.”

It closes with Foster say-

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Liz Parkinson/Netflix

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ineffective administration of elections, false claims of fraud, and the decisions of the current Supreme Court majority, whom he considers “more dangerous” than any earlier ones. The author, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the UCLA School of Law, argues that Electoral College reform is a nonstarter, and a nonpartisan federal voting administration, whose creation he earlier supported, would not offer adequate protection of the vote. Still, Hasen is astute enough to recognize that his amendment can’t shoot for the moon. Leaving some issues to future adjudication, he omits from his text a vote guarantee for felons and full voting rights for residents of American territories. Though he is arguably over-optimistic, the author explains how, without such provisions—as well as the elimination of any reason to cheat at the ballot box since everyone will be able to vote— the amendment could gain favor with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. The trouble with Hasen’s case is that the author doesn’t fully account for the brutal politics facing any amendment’s congressional approval, followed by ratification by the states.

Nonetheless, his lively, closely argued book is bound to ignite a public effort to achieve its ends.

A persuasive, up-to-date proposal that deserves widespread attention.

Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Queer Histories Hester, Diarmuid | Pegasus (368 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 6, 2024 | 9781639365555

A personal and historical engagement with the places where queer art and culture have thrived.

Hester, a radical cultural historian and author of Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper, is intent on showing 62 OCTOBER 15, 2023

that “queerness has a place in a world that has often seemed so inhospitable to it.” To reveal these possibilities, he explores how the lives of queer artists, performers, writers, and activists have depended on and contributed to the places that they inhabited. The multitalented performer Josephine Baker’s bisexual identity flourished in the theaters of Paris. Novelist E.M. Forster found refuge in his rooms at Cambridge University where platonic love was celebrated. The artist Edith Craig and the novelist Christabel Marshall—both queer suffragettes— thrived in London. Novelist, filmmaker, and photographer Kevin Killian (“a quiet giant of contemporary queer culture”) and writer Dodie Bellamy made their homes in San Francisco, a center of queer culture.

The south of France and England’s Jersey coast, respectively, enabled the writer James Baldwin and the “gender-bending surrealist” Claude Cahun to live queer lives—although Hester describes Baldwin as “always out of place.” Of filmmaker and AIDS activist Derek Jarman’s cottage on the English coast, Hester writes that “the house and its setting had a huge influence on his story.” Large cities have been particularly important, as New York was for Baldwin and the filmmaker, photographer, and performer Jack Smith. Of course, Hester is not the first to point to the value that non-normative individuals derive from living with like-minded others or the allure of isolated cottages—think Thoreau—for escaping the pressures of an oppressive society.

However, he delivers a consistently engaging book, rich in interest for cultural history buffs and warm and poetic in personal observations.

An evocative reminder that it matters where we live—and where art is made.

For more on James Baldwin, visit Kirkus online.

The Other Side: A Story of Women in Art and the Spirit World Higgie, Jennifer | Pegasus (320 pp.) | $28.95 Jan. 2, 2024 | 9781639365432

A globetrotting survey of the role women and spiritualism have played in modern art.

For art historian Higgie, author of The Mirror and the Palette, it is a matter of fact that as long as humans have been making art, women artists have been on the periphery. Readers can easily corroborate the author’s contention by noting the dates when women were finally admitted to various art schools or the percentage of works by women at any given show or exhibition. Indeed, what’s remarkable about this book is that Higgie doesn’t approach the subject with a particularly feminist lens. The artists she profiles are women who happened to have interest in or connection to spiritualism, but with few exceptions, the author doesn’t make a case for their gender informing either their art or their connection to the otherworldly. As readers meet unsung heroes of art and spirituality across time and space, they also travel with Higgie on her personal journey as she discovers and explores this fascinating facet of art history. Near the end of the book, she describes a conversation with an artist friend: “I ask Liliane what the word ‘spirituality’ means to her. She thinks for a moment and shakes her head. ‘Although the ultimate goal is to be enlightened, I don’t think you can pin it down. It’s different for everyone. It’s just a path and you never reach the end of it because you want to keep going.’ ” Like Liliane, Higgie eschews definitive conclusions about the connections among spiritualism, women artists, and modern art, but she paints a variety of compelling portraits. For more KIRKUS REVIEWS

NONFICTION

A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur.

ELON MUSK

in-depth profiles of women artists, check out Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men.

An illuminating commentary on much more than art, demonstrating how new ideas and cultural shifts take hold.

Get Off My Neck: Black Lives, White Justice, and a Former Prosecutor’s Quest for Reform Hines, Debbie | MIT Press (232 pp.) | $27.95 March 26, 2024 | 9780262048910

An impassioned indictment of governmental prosecutors for racial injustice.

According to Hines, a trial lawyer, former prosecutor in Baltimore, and former assistant attorney general for Maryland, the prosecutor’s office is “the most powerful institution in the criminal justice system.” However, its major goal is to obtain convictions rather than advancing true justice or treating defendants with compassion. This also applies to police, who gather incriminating evidence and feed the accused into the prosecutorial system. Additional conviction opportunities come from plea-bargaining arrangements and the probation system, in which parolees are always at risk of being cited for violations and returned to court. Judges support these dynamics by rubber-stamping prosecutors’ recommendations, and the conviction mentality also provides incentives for prosecutorial KIRKUS REVIEWS

and police misconduct in a wide variety of situations. Making matters worse is the criminal justice system’s inherent racism, with Black people more likely to be arrested, more likely to be given longer prison sentences, disproportionately denied bail, and more likely to be killed by the police. That 95% of non-federal prosecutors are white is part of the problem. As a leading advocate in the criminal-justice reform arena, Hines wants to change the culture, and she suggests better staffing to cut down on onerous workloads, racial bias training, integrity units to identify misconduct, more emphasis on diversion and restorative justice, increased attention to white collar crimes, Black-white pro-justice alliances, and the election of progressive prosecutors—e.g., Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and Marilyn Mosby (now out of office) in Baltimore.

Hines supports her argument with governmental statistics, research studies, examples of prosecutorial overreach, and anecdotes from her courtroom experiences. Despite a somewhat untidy presentation and the wide scope of her accusations, this is an indictment with serious, presumptive validity.

A forceful plea to reform the toxic entanglement of prosecution, policing, and probation in the criminal justice system.

For another incisive look at police brutality, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

Elon Musk Isaacson, Walter | Simon & Schuster (688 pp.) | $35.00 | Sept. 12, 2023 9781982181284

A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.

To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work.

When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter OCTOBER 15, 2023 63

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servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.

Nick Drake: The Life Jack, Richard Morton | Hachette (576 pp.) $32.50 | Nov. 14, 2023 | 9780306834950

Thorough account of the all-too-short life of the brilliant British singer-songwriter.

Nick Drake (1948-1974) was an enigmatic figure during his brief career. His three albums sold poorly during his lifetime, and his resistance to self-promotion left even his enthusiasts bemused (“Forgive me please for being so rude in asking, but who are you?” read one fan letter).

Music journalist Jack demystifies Drake’s life without presuming to understand the psychic storms that led to an overdose at age 26. Born in Burma to British expats, Drake took to music early; an indifferent student, he was more inclined to smoke marijuana and travel with friends to Marrakesh or Saint-Tropez. His gorgeous, precise guitar style caught the attention of a member of one of the preeminent British folk-rock bands, Fairport Convention, who connected Drake with producer Joe Boyd. Despite supportive friends and collaborators, his career never took flight. He had a timid stage presence and was demoralized by gigs in loud, boozy venues paired with ill-suited acts like flamboyant progressive rock band Genesis, which prompted him to avoid touring. Jack interviewed most of the available key figures in Drake’s life, most notably Boyd and Drake’s sister, Gabrielle (who contributes a 64 OCTOBER 15, 2023

foreword); letters from Drake’s father expose the depths of compassion and despair the musician’s worsening depression provoked. Drake’s slow decline makes for melancholy reading, and the text could have been trimmed significantly. Curiously, his remarkable posthumous acclaim merits only a handful of pages; an appendix detailing his guitar collection is almost as long. Jack’s biography is nearly as inward-looking at Drake seemed to be; more context about his music’s place in the larger world, before and after his death, would be welcome. Nonetheless, this will deservedly stand as the definitive account of his life.

Somber by necessity, but passionately engaged with its subject.

Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism Jackson, Jenn M. | Random House (368 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9780593243336

The meaning of Black women’s transformational teachings.

Jackson, a political science professor and columnist for Teen Vogue, presents these 11 essays as “love letters” to influential Black women “who built our movements and taught us how to love ourselves whole.”

The author links their personal history with a vital tradition of intellectualism and activism spanning nearly two centuries. Jackson considers celebrated figures such as Harriet Jacobs, Zora Neale Hurston, and Audre Lorde, but they also examine less well-known ones, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, and members of the Combahee River Collective. In each case, Jackson explores the experiences and achievements of influential Black feminists as a means of charting historical continuities in an ongoing struggle for liberty and equality. The orienting insights provided by Black women’s storytelling is a consistent point of emphasis.

As Jackson notes the impact of Toni

Morrison’s writing on their own self-understanding, “There was a sense of inner knowing and outer recognition of being Black and of living Blackly without regard for a white world that would no doubt want to co-opt, water down, and erase our stories.” The author’s historical summaries provided are perceptive and engaging, as are the analyses of current battlegrounds over so-called “identity politics.” Jackson offers intriguing, if occasionally underdeveloped, commentary on the significance of intersectionality in understanding systemic oppression, the dynamics of respectability politics, and the dimensions of the prison industrial complex.

Also suggestive is the author’s take on the motivations behind conservatives’ outrage over critical race theory and the stakes involved in debates over how American history is taught. Overall, this “intimate history” ably highlights the longstanding importance and contemporary relevance of Black feminism, as well as the challenges that remain in having its voices heard and acted upon properly.

Galvanizing appraisals of Black women’s enduring search for freedom.

My Life Is Art: 11 Pillars for a Positive and Purposeful Life Jal, Emmanuel | Counterpoint (336 pp.) $27.00 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781646220380

The author of War Child returns with a how-to book about healing.

Throughout his childhood, Jal faced unbelievable trauma.

After his mother died in the South Sudanese civil war, his father arranged for him to escape to Ethiopia, a country he reached after a grueling journey during which he witnessed the deaths of hundreds of his fellow refugees, including children his own age. When the Ethiopian school he was supposed to attend turned out to be nonexistent, he became a child KIRKUS REVIEWS

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Essential for Velvet diehards, but also of interest to those longing for the pre-Disneyfied New York City.

LOADED

soldier, and not only witnessed horrific murders but also was responsible for an unspecified number of deaths. An aid worker rescued Jal and found him passage to Kenya, where he found Christianity and developed a meditation practice that he credits with giving him a new lease on life. Now, Jal is a successful rapper, entrepreneur, and activist. The purpose of this book, he writes, is to explain how he overcame trauma and to provide others with the tools to live the type of fulfilling life he has crafted for himself, despite unbelievable trauma. Jal intertwines stories about his past with explanations of the “eleven pillars” that now form the foundations of his daily life. “Every human being who has moved on from a traumatic situation is miraculous,” he writes. “Imagine someone who has experienced sexual violence, or a war child, still talking about peace and love.” The author is clearly dedicated to sharing this miracle with whoever is able to listen. In the sections of the book that pivot around memoir, Jal is courageous, vulnerable, compassionate, and insightful. The advice sections, however, hover close to toxic positivity and often deviate into strange, disjointed musings that feel overly specific or outdated. Overall, though, Jal’s energy and vitality renders the book a satisfying read.

A former child soldier’s bright yet uneven memoir-cum-manifesto about surviving trauma.

For more on Lou Reed, visit Kirkus online.

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Loaded: The Uncensored Oral History of the Velvet Underground Jones, Dylan | Grand Central Publishing (320 pp.) | $29.00 | Dec. 5, 2023 9781538756560

A warts-and-all oral history of the iconic proto-punk band.

“Rock and roll is so great; people should start dying for it.” So proclaimed Velvet Underground founder Lou Reed, and it wasn’t much of a stretch. The people around the band and around Andy Warhol’s Factory dropped like flies during the Underground’s early days, and it’s sobering to note how many of the voices are now silent. Reed is broadly remembered as “one of the coldest, most humorless, arrogant and—worse— boring characters rock and roll has ever seen,” in veteran music journalist Jones’ words—or as journalist Barney Hoskyns puts it, “dry and sneering, even when he was being tender.”

Reed was seldom without that sneer and an accompanying snarl. One of the sharp points that Jones draws out is how profoundly, for instance, Reed hated the Beatles (“throughout his career he went out of his way to diminish them”), prefiguring the punk hatred for hippies that would emerge a few years later. The author rightfully devotes much attention to Welsh musician and composer John Cale, who gave the band so much of its distinctive sound. Dylan offers less on Maureen Tucker, the drummer who turned toward right-wing politics

in her later years; and the late Sterling Morrison, who, in a sideways but heartfelt compliment, the similarly late Reed recalls as “perfectly made for being a tugboat captain.” While the band members cordially hated one another and parted acrimoniously, they also hated the world, making an art form out of misanthropy. Even so, glimpses of humanity break through: Reed’s anthemic song “Sweet Jane,” by the author’s account, was “a cautionary tale of forgiveness,” and Cale elevated Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” to “a modern masterpiece.”

Essential for Velvet diehards, but also of interest to those longing for the pre-Disneyfied New York City.

Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust Judd, Robin | Univ. of North Carolina (256 pp.) | $29.95 | Dec. 5, 2023 9781469675442

Finding love and rebuilding lives after the Holocaust.

Drawing on rich archival sources, historian Judd makes her book debut with a sensitive, well-researched history of marriages between survivors of the Holocaust and American, British, and Canadian military personnel. After World War II, some 200,000 women immigrated to the U.S. as soldiers’ wives, where they faced challenges of acculturation in a new country. Some marriages were reunions of foreign-born, naturalized soldiers with women they had known before the war; other couples met at Jewish venues, such as synagogues or cultural gatherings; still others met when soldiers arrived at camps for displaced persons. In reporting their unexpected meetings, Judd writes, “the couples expressed incredulity that they had crossed paths.” Some couples shared a language, but many resorted to hastily learned Yiddish, college-level >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 65

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“A labor of love that ably explores the relationship among three women and their shared love of music.”

—Kirkus Reviews

For lovers of memoir and music alike.

Alden Mellor Heck ties deeply personal experience to the expressiveness of her own paintings.

ISBN: 979-8-88855-000-7 RELEASE DATE: 10/9/2023

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This collection of twenty-one wry short stories features various animals that an acclaimed Polish writer uses to illustrate his experiences.

This humorous satire on communist Poland in the 1970’s takes place in an imaginary hotel deep in the Tatra Forest of Poland.

These stories pose philosophical and moral questions, inviting readers to contemplate their own place in the world and the nature of human responsibility.

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FOR GENERAL INQUIRIES, EMAIL NIKOLAI@CHESTNUTHILLPRESS • CHESTNUTHILLPRESS.COM

B O O K L I S T // N O N F I C T I O N

5 Must-Read Nature Books 1

For more nature books, visit Kirkus online.

1 Crossings

2

By Ben Goldfarb

An astonishingly deep pool of wonders.

2 Kings of Their Own Ocean

By Karen Pinchin

An engaging and fascinating tale of a natural struggle that will help determine the future of the oceans.

3 The Underworld

By Susan Casey

Space exploration gets the headlines, but Casey makes a convincing case that the deep ocean is more interesting.

3

4 The Wise Hours

By Miriam Darlington

Heartfelt, enchanting, and beautifully written.

5 A Darker Wilderness

Ed. by Erin Sharkey

A well-curated assemblage of Black voices that draws profound connections among family, nature, aspiration, and loss.

4

5 KIRKUS REVIEWS

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German, or the help of a translator.

Lacking a shared language was common among couples “in North Africa and southern Europe.” Courtship was often brief, with many couples deciding to marry quickly, sometimes because the soldier was due to be transferred or demobilized. Marrying, though, confronted them with the “arduous and legislated process” of obtaining permission from the military. The American, British, and Canadian governments forbade marriages to civilians from Germany, Austria, and other occupied countries. In addition, some Jewish and Christian chaplains refused to sanction interfaith marriages, and couples needed to take into account “disparate European marriage laws.” As far as leaving Europe, couples not yet married faced the “bewildering, slow character of immigration,” and even married couples encountered daunting paperwork.

Newly arrived immigrants recalled their initial feelings of strangeness, as well as the stress of meeting their new families and living with in-laws until they found homes of their own. Overall, Judd’s stories of “loss, recovery, power, and unbelonging” stand as testimony to the triumph of survival.

A fresh perspective on the aftermath of trauma.

The Rock of Arles Klein, Richard | Duke Univ. (176 pp.) $24.95 paper | Feb. 9, 2024 9781478025726

Arles, France sits at an intersection point of European history, and this quirky book examines the key turning points.

This is likely the first book authored by a geological formation, in this case by the plateau of limestone on which the French city of Arles stands. That, at least, is the explanation put forward by Klein, the author of Cigarettes Are Sublime, who jokingly claims that the Rock narrated the story of the town’s history 68 OCTOBER 15, 2023

A brief but pithy, informative piece of work.

THE ROCK OF ARLES

to him—in French, which the author then transcribed and translated. It’s a clever, inside-out technique that allows for a certain amount of speculation, as well as some clever banter between Klein and the Rock. “Nothing in the text should be considered reliable,” writes Klein. Arles is a crossroads city, wedged between the Mediterranean Sea and the Rhone River. Klein (and/ or the Rock) frames the story around three Arles natives, each known for their independent views. Favorinus was a philosopher and orator during the Roman era, known for his erudition. Kalonymus ben Kalonymus was a Hebrew poet who became a crucial translator of Arabic versions of Greek works, returning classical thinking to Europe. Pierre-Antoine Antonelle was an aristocrat who changed sides during the French revolution and became violently radical. All three are largely forgotten by the outside world but are revered in Arles. The argumentative Arlesians, however, have a history of fighting among themselves, and the streets have run with blood more than once. The story takes some interesting detours, such as Klein’s account of the revolt against the Catholic Church in the 13th century and the history of the arena built by the Romans. Whether readers go along with the narrative trick or not, the book is an engaging, enjoyable read.

A brief but pithy, informative piece of work, representing a unique approach to history writing.

To read our review of Cigarettes Are Sublime, visit Kirkus online.

Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World Lindorff, Dave | Prometheus Books (296 pp.) $29.95 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781633888951

Biography of a physicist who spied for the Soviet Union and was never arrested.

Ted Hall (1925-1999) was a prodigy, admitted to Harvard to study physics at 16 and recruited for the Manhattan Project in 1944 at 18.

Investigative journalist Lindorff reminds readers that at this time, the Soviets and Americans were allies. American media extolled the heroics of the Red Army, which suffered enormously and fought stubbornly during the Nazi invasion, and portrayed Stalin as a benign leader. Although never a communist, writes the author, Hall believed “that the United States, with a monopoly on the atomic bomb, would pose a dire threat to the other nations of the world. His fear that the United States would use its devastating power to dominate the globe unless prevented by another nation with a similar weapon was not misplaced.” As a spy, historians agree, Hall delivered technical plans for a bomb identical to the one the Soviets tested in 1949. A suspicious FBI investigated him for years but stopped, Lindorff theorizes, on orders from the Air Force because revealing Hall’s espionage would force it to fire his brother, the “director of the entire KIRKUS REVIEWS

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USAF ballistic missile development program.” Hall’s espionage did not become public knowledge until 1995. Lindorff concludes the book with highly unflattering views of postwar America, including the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s.

He maintains that the U.S. planned a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union before it could develop its own bomb, but was foiled when the Soviets succeeded with their project so quickly. “It’s likely,” he writes, “that Ted Hall’s spying effort did prevent the nightmare of a U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons and a genocidal nuclear attack against the Soviet people in the early 1950s.”

A carefully documented life story, though Lindorff’s contention that Hall “saved the world” may strike readers as overstated.

Kirkus Star

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism Maddow, Rachel | Crown (416 pp.) | $22.49 Oct. 17, 2023 | 9780593444511

A history of America’s admirers and enablers of the Third Reich, from fellow travelers in Congress to Nazi spies and other enemies of democracy.

Politicians espousing civil war.

Radio hosts howling about the liberal domination of culture. Militias training to hunt down Jews, leftists, and Democrats. If it all sounds like a run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, there’s a reason. As MSNBC host Maddow demonstrates in this sharp-edged history, the fascist strain in America runs deep. The author opens her contextually rich narrative with George Sylvester Viereck, whose 1907 novel, The House of the Vampire, “is seen today by precisely no one as the world’s greatest gay vampire fiction,” though it certainly was a pioneer of KIRKUS REVIEWS

the genre. The German-born Viereck was also a Nazi agent who dispensed money to pro-Hitler publications, many of whose talking points found their way into the mouths of politicians on Capitol Hill. Fascists pinned great hopes on Huey Long, who “ran Louisiana like a mob boss,” but who was assassinated before he could exercise national power. Calvin Coolidge was a milquetoast president; however, as Maddow shows, within his administration were strong anti-immigration advocates, some of whose policies were adopted by the Nazis in Germany. Well-known supporters of fascism included Father Charles Coughlin, who mixed anti– New Deal fervor with antisemitism.

“We want strong men,” said one militant acolyte. “Men to fight for America’s destiny and link it with the destiny of Adolf Hitler, the greatest philosopher since the time of Christ.”

Frightening current-day parallels aside, a web of patriots rose to battle the fascists, taking down the most prominent pro-Nazis, even if many of their elected officials lived on to battle civil rights and other progressive causes.

America beat fascism once. Maddow’s timely study of enemies on the homefront urges that we can do so again.

The Times That Try Men’s Souls: The Adams, the Quincys, and the Families Divided by the American Revolution―and How They Shaped a New Nation Malcolm, Joyce Lee | Pegasus (336 pp.) $29.95 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781639364756

A look at the divided loyalties of several leading Massachusetts families involved in the American Revolution.

It’s hardly news that the Revolution caused irreconcilable rifts in many colonial communities and

families; Thomas B. Allen’s Tories and Kevin Phillips’ The Cousins’ Wars are among many books that capably cover the topic. Malcolm, a law professor and author of The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold, wisely concentrates on Massachusetts, with some forays outside the colony—to note, for example, that even as Benjamin Franklin was fomenting revolt, his son was the loyalist governor of New Jersey. The author writes in depth about the divisions in some of the most prominent colonial families, including the Quincy and Adams clans. The revolutionary James Otis, for instance, had a wife whom he described as a “High Tory,” with one of their daughters marrying a British army officer and the other the son of an American general. John Adams lost a best friend to the cause, one of countless loyalists who pulled up stakes and moved to England. Josiah Quincy’s son, Samuel, also sailed off to England. Malcolm examines a number of well-known topics, including the proximate causes of the revolution—taxation without representation, colonial anger at having British troops billeted with them rather than being stationed on the dangerous frontier, and so forth. Regrettably, she has the vexing habit of closing episodes on trite telegraphic notes: “His calm, handsome portrait did not reveal any symptoms of the pulmonary disease that had stricken his brother Edmund and would eventually threaten his life as well”; “Could as prominent and educated a family as the Quincys avoid being enveloped by the whirlwind blowing about them? A better question is: Would they?” This diminishes an otherwise competent, if not entirely original, study.

A serviceable account of the familial costs of the American Revolution.

For more from Rachel Maddow, visit Kirkus online.

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The Writer as Illusionist: Uncollected & Unpublished Work Maxwell, William | Ed. by Alec Wilkinson Nonpareil/Godine (256 pp.) | $28.95 Jan. 16, 2024| 9781567927979

Wonderful snippets of marvelous, elegant prose abound in this collection from the celebrated writer.

Wilkinson was friends with Maxwell (1908-2000) when they worked at the New Yorker, and he wrote about his colleague in his 2002 book, My Mentor. In this loosely chronological assemblage, Wilkinson hopes “to make Maxwell present so that a reader might feel that he or she or they had met him.” As he approached 90, Maxwell wrote, “I still like making sentences.” Indeed, and there are plenty of delicate, understated examples on display in this book. His prodigious memories of his early years drive a number of the first pieces: “I can hear the creaking of the oarlocks, across half a century.” Wilkinson includes excerpts from fiction (The Folded Leaf) and nonfiction (The Outermost Dream), tossing in some unsigned Talk of the Town columns to capture Maxwell’s childhood and early years at the magazine. The section “Notes and Remarks on Writing” includes a sly 1963 speech on autobiographical fiction and being “enslaved by the past.” Tucked in a string of comments on writing in general, we find this gem: “When I was beginning to write I saw the short story as being a kind of safe with a combination.” Later, Maxwell calls reading “the divine hunger.” Another section includes criticism—lithe, subtle, discerning—tributes, and memorials.

Maxwell believes Robert Louis Stevenson should have equaled the stature of George Eliot, and Louise Bogan was “one of the finest lyric poets of our time.” This book’s title derives from a lovely speech given in 1955: “Writers—narrative writers—are people who 70 OCTOBER 15, 2023

perform tricks.” Followed by: “A door opens slowly in front of you, and you cannot see who is opening it but, like a sleepwalker, you have to go in.”

A great sampler for readers to experience a master stylist.

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church McCammon, Sarah | St. Martin’s (320 pp.) $30.00 | March 19, 2024 | 9781250284471

Through the lens of her personal and professional experiences, an American journalist describes the rapidly growing social movement abandoning fundamental evangelicalism.

McCammon, a national political correspondent for NPR and co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, vividly describes her evangelical-based childhood and education in suburban Kansas City in the late 20th century.

The author also explores the significant social and political influence of the evangelical movement in the U.S. that she witnessed as a correspondent during the 2016 presidential election and how she came to grips with the inherent contradictions and distortions preached by self-appointed arbiters of God’s word. McCammon is at her best when describing the construction of the evangelical infrastructure via TV and radio by figures such as James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, and what she and many others raised in the evangelical culture gleaned from the lessons and warnings espoused in churches and schools concerning the afterlife, human sexuality, and the role of women in the family.

The element of fear seems ever-present—fear of not being a fervent enough witness for Christ, fear of doubting the inerrancy of the Bible, and even fear that she would miss the Rapture because she wasn’t truly a believer.

Throughout the book, McCammon

deftly weaves the story of her immediate family’s marginalization of—yet urgent concern for—the soul of her kind, successful, and agnostic grandfather, a brain surgeon who happened to be gay, together with her own questioning of everything that had been drilled into her during childhood.

She also discusses “religious trauma” among exvangelicals and how she and others have experienced it and treated it. This fascinating and enlightening aspect of the consequences of a fundamentalist upbringing is only now beginning to be thoroughly explored, and McCammon’s poignant book serves as a launchpad to learn more.

A bold, intriguing, intimate read.

Strike of the Sailfish: Two Sister Submarines and the Sinking of a Japanese Aircraft Carrier Moore, Stephen L. | Dutton Caliber (384 pp.) | $30.00 | Dec. 5, 2023 9780593472873

Swiftly moving tale of submarine fireworks in the Pacific.

Even non-military buffs will enjoy spending time with two U.S. Navy crews during World War II. Few elderly survivors remain, but prolific military historian Moore, author of Blood and Fury, The Battle for Hell’s Island, and other books of military history, makes good use of memoirs, oral histories, videos, interviews, articles, helpful family members and official documents to provide a nearly day-by-day account of often terrible events. Built and launched almost simultaneously in 1938, the Sculpin and Squalus were both the latest model Sargo-class submarines whose “steel pressure holes made them capable of a ‘test depth’ of two hundred fifty feet.” Squalus sank the following year after suffering a catastrophic leak, killing 26 men. Thoroughly overhauled after being recovered, KIRKUS REVIEWS

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it was renamed the Sailfish. “With a new lease on life and a new name,” writes Moore, “Sailfish was destined for great accomplishments in World War II.” Boats that sank were considered cursed, but as the author demonstrates as he recounts their patrols in the Pacific, the Sailfish enjoyed a more fortunate career than her companion.

Delivering too many crew mini-biographies to remember, but emphasizing the captains and heroes, the author creates a gripping, extremely detailed account of submarines’ operation, personalities, and attacks—not always successful—on Japanese shipping.

Sculpin was lost after an attack by a Japanese destroyer in 1943, so most of the action involves its sister ship. Readers will enjoy Moore’s expert descriptions of many encounters, highlighted by “the first known unassisted sinking of an enemy carrier by a submarine.”

This isn’t quite as impressive as it sounds, because the ship was a flattop merchant vessel designed to transport planes, not a fighting carrier. Nonetheless, Moore’s capable history is fast-paced and gripping.

Entertaining World War II naval history by an old hand.

Kirkus Star

Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir Morimoto, Shoji | Trans. by Don Knotting Hanover Square Press (208 pp.) | $21.99 Jan. 9, 2024 | 9781335017536

An enjoyable exploration of how, sometimes, doing nothing can mean doing a great deal.

At first glance, this is an odd book. However, there is undeniable poignancy, and even a thread of comedy, in a narrative that transcends cultural borders.

As he recounts, Morimoto held several jobs that he disliked; when he thought about it, he realized that his favorite activity was doing nothing. Beginning KIRKUS REVIEWS

An eccentric, charming book, showing how humans can connect.

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with a tweet in 2018, he started a business where people could hire him to do, well, not much. The author chronicles many of the requests he has received: accompanying a woman who was filing divorce papers, having an ice-cream soda with a businessman, or visiting someone in the hospital.

Some clients seek an anonymous confidant to tell a secret to, or simply a bit of quiet company for a few hours.

Morimoto tries to be as innocuous as possible, nodding in agreement and making simple responses. He often does not charge clients for his mere presence—although he requests travel expenses—but if he performs a specific service, he charges a small fee.

It provides enough money for him to live comfortably; more than that, he is satisfied with the life he is leading. He demonstrates how his “job” is a way of helping people, and since he started, he has been hired over 4,000 times. It makes one wonder if a similar service could help ease the epidemic of loneliness and isolation that is gripping the U.S. “I don’t ever get fed up with my do-nothing role, and there’s no stress,” writes the author. “Why? I could come up with several answers to that, but the simplest one is that there’s variety; the people and the situations are different every time.”

An eccentric, charming book, showing how humans can connect in the strangest of circumstances.

For more from Kliph Nesteroff, visit Kirkus online.

Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars Nesteroff, Kliph | Abrams (356 pp.) | $30.00 Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781419760983

Comedy historian Nesteroff tackles the tangled story of how the performing arts have long been “dragged into the Culture War and used as a scapegoat.”

Put someone on stage or screen and let them speak a line or two, and someone is going to be offended.

Take the much embattled Smothers Brothers, whose TV show often drew letters such as one that read, “I for one am fed up with looking at [N-word]s, [N-word]-lovers and long-haired fruits on your and every other show on TV.” Thus, it has always been: Vaudeville shows were hounded for presumed violations of Jim Crow segregation and obscenity; books of every sort were suppressed by the likes of Anthony J. Comstock, who believed that reading “breeds lust”; drag performers since time immemorial, not least the comedian Milton Berle, were censored and suppressed. If all this sounds depressingly familiar, it’s because the campaign has never really lifted. Rightwing leaders are busily hounding targets, but now, too, so is the left, a process that began in the 1990s. “Just as Democrat Tipper Gore had demonized heavy metal,” writes the author, “Republican politicians like Oliver North and Dan Quayle demonized rap music as part of a greater political strategy.” Nesteroff paints >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 71

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Ada Limón To Edit Anthology of Nature Poems

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s next book will be an anthology of poems inspired by the natural world, the Library of Congress announced in a news release.

Milkweed Editions will publish You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World next spring. “Joyful and provocative, wondrous and urgent, this singular collection of poems offers a lyrical reimagining of what ‘nature’ and ‘poetry’ are today, inviting readers to experience both anew,” the press says of the collection.

The collection is part of Limón’s project as poet laureate, also called “You Are Here.” The initiative

will also see national parks in the U.S.— including Great Smoky Mountains, Everglades and Redwood—host picnic table–based installations featuring historic American poems.

The anthology will feature a range of poets including former U.S. laureate Joy Harjo, Jericho Brown, Diane Seuss, Victoria Chang and Rigoberto González.

“I want to champion the ways reading and writing poetry can situate us in the natural world,” Limón said in a statement. “Never has it been more urgent to feel a sense of reciprocity with our environment, and poetry’s alchemical mix of attention, silence, and rhythm gives us a reciprocal way of experiencing nature—of communing with the natural world through breath and presence.”

You Are Here is scheduled for publication on April 2.— M.S.

Limón is in her second term as U.S. poet laureate.

For more nature writing, visit Kirkus online.

The poet laureate’s You Are Here will be published next spring.

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Shawn Miller/Library of Congress

SEEN AND HEARD

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AWARDS Finalists Announced for British Academy Book Prize

Kirkus Prize finalist Tania Branigan is among the authors in the running for the nonfiction award.

The finalists for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding have been revealed, with six books in contention for the award that honors “a nonfiction book that promotes global cultural understanding,” Literary Hub reports.

Tania Branigan made the shortlist for Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution. The book, which focuses on Mao Zedong’s decade-long movement that killed more than a million people, was also a finalist for this year’s Kirkus Prize.

Nandini Das was named a finalist for her history, Courting India: Seventeenth-Century England, Mughal India, and the Origins of Empire, while Daniel Foliard made the shortlist for The Violence of Colonial Photography.

Dan Chung

For a review of Red Memory, visit Kirkus Online.

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Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation

by Kris Manjapra was named a finalist, as was Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living by Dimitris Xygalatas, and Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World, written by Irene Vallejo and translated

by Charlotte Whittle.

The British Academy Book Prize was established in 2013. Past winners have included Timothy Garton Ash for Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World and Kapka Kassabova for Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe.

The winner of this year’s British Academy Book Prize will be announced on Oct. 31.—M.S.

Branigan is one of six authors up for the prize.

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a broad picture, and his narrative is often little more than a shallow recitation of incidents: The Girl Scouts are tarred as Soviet stooges, the Dixie Chicks are pilloried for denouncing George W. Bush, and so forth. There’s also a lot of repetition, especially of the complaint, voiced by Groucho Marx half a century ago and reiterated

by Sam Kinison, Dave Chappelle, and even the anodyne Jerry Seinfeld, that comedy is impossible in the face of all the delicate sensibilities arrayed against it.

The parts are better than the whole, but the message is clear: Loosen up and enjoy the show.

Raising a Socially Successful Child: Teaching Kids the Nonverbal Language They Need To Communicate, Connect, and Thrive Nowicki, Stephen | Little, Brown Spark (304 pp.) | $30.00 | March 19, 2024 9780316516471

Why do so many kids have problems with social interaction? A clinical psychologist unravels the issues.

In the past few years, Nowicki writes, he has seen a marked increase in the number of young children struggling to connect with others, which leads to problems in adolescence and later life. His research revealed that the children had difficulties with nonverbal communication, and the main reason was the countless hours they spent staring at screens.

A related issue was the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, with lockdowns, masks, and social distancing depriving children of the opportunity to acquire those nonverbal skills; online classes simply did not provide the necessary social interaction. Children learn much of their nonverbal communication at a young age, and 74 OCTOBER 15, 2023

the author devotes several chapters to showing how it works. Taking turns, reading facial expressions and body language, understanding the rhythm of conversation, and respecting the boundaries of personal space are essential in building relationships, and these lessons are absorbed rather than consciously learned. Now, writes Nowicki, parents will have to devote time to deliberately teaching nonverbal communication to their children, sometimes with illustrative cases and anecdotes. The author, who has written multiple books on parenting, including Teaching Your Child the Language of Social Success and Starting Kids Off Right, provides sections of practical guidance in each chapter, noting that children are usually eager to learn. Parents must also be aware that children learn from watching them, so they should think carefully about their own actions in front of them. Interacting with your kids through play, talk, and reading will help to put them on the right track.

The author recommends that parents take them for a walk to the park or playground and leave the phone at home.

Sound advice for teaching children about building enjoyable, positive, and meaningful relationships.

American Zion: A New History of Mormonism Park, Benjamin E. | Liveright/Norton (480 pp.) | $35.00 | Jan. 16, 2024 9781631498657

A history professor takes on the history of a faith that has “been contested from the very start.”

Mormonism—officially, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—is the product of a period of religious fervor that swept the northeastern U.S. in the 1820s and ’30s, a venue for enough fire-and-brimstone

sermonizing that the area was called the “burned-over district.” In that context, Joseph Smith unveiled a story of a lost Christianity native to America in which his “religious and supernatural obsessions…intersected.”

Moreover, it emerged in a time of schismatic religions, otherworldly obsessions, and a widespread belief that buried treasure awaited discovery everywhere. Smith’s story became the Book of Mormon, “America’s most substantial contribution to the world’s scriptural canon.” Park, the author of Kingdom of Nauvoo, is respectful but not uncritical. He is particularly interested in the near-reversal of two of Mormonism’s foundational tenets, the first being an independent theocratic state, the second polygamy, “Utah’s worst-kept secret.” Both gave Mormonism the reputation of being anti-American, even if early Mormons “nearly canonized” the Constitution. In response, the church’s leadership decreed an ultra-patriotic, conservative worldview. Whereas Utah overwhelmingly voted for Franklin Roosevelt during the 1930s and ’40s, its voters chose Donald Trump over Joseph Biden even more enthusiastically in 2016 and 2020. One of its leaders, Ezra Taft Benson, was so committed to his racist doctrine that he came close to signing on as segregationist Strom Thurmond’s running mate in 1968.

Today, even as the Mormon leadership has adopted a policy allowing unencumbered historical research such as Park’s, there are ongoing doctrinal battles involving race, gender, and politics—battles that may soon take a surprising turn, given that Republicans are in the minority among Mormon millennials, who espouse many progressive ideas.

A welcome updating of earlier studies, and a readable, engaging work of religious history.

For more on Joseph Smith, visit Kirkus online.

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A richly detailed cultural history.

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The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading Pettegree, Andrew | (480 pp.) | $35.00 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781541604346

How printed matter has shaped the course of war throughout history.

British historian Pettegree offers a wide-ranging investigation of the role of books in warfare, considering ways that “print in all its manifestations” has inspired patriotism and justified conflict, contributed to the information and skills needed for waging war, supported civilians on the home front, and kept up the morale of troops. Drawing on published and archival material, including letters and diaries, Pettegree closely examines several treatises specifically addressed to warfare: Sun Tzu’s ancient classic The Art of War; Machiavelli’s The Art of War, from 1521; and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War, published in 1832.

While these books focused on military strategy, other publications set the stage for justification: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, proved influential in shaping Union support for the Civil War. In late-19thcentury Britain, articles in magazines addressed to young men, such as The Boy’s Own Paper, nurtured a martial spirit. Pettegree discusses books that disseminated “poisonous ideologies,” as well as nations’ efforts to censor and control public access. Nazis, as is well known, burned books by Jews and others they considered undesirable. During World War I, pro-German books were KIRKUS REVIEWS

cleared from U.S. libraries. In contrast, much effort has been devoted to finding safe havens for books vulnerable to bombings. The “books for Sammies” campaign distributed books to fighting men in WWI. During World War II, library associations and publishers— notably Penguin, in the U.K.—provided mountains of books for soldiers, none more so than the Armed Services Editions, which shipped 122 million copies of more than 1,300 titles to soldiers around the world. As in his recent history The Library, Pettegree makes a solid case for the endurance of books in daily life and during conflicts, “notwithstanding the domination of new technologies of war-making and information gathering.”

A richly detailed cultural history.

Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt: A Memoir in Verse Purnell, Brontez | MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (144 pp.) | $17.00 paper Feb. 13, 2024 | 9780374612696

The author of 100 Boyfriends returns with a memoir in verse.

Purnell has never been afraid to be unabashedly graphic, and that is certainly the case with his latest book, an assortment of poems that serve as a personal history of sexuality, at turns funny, confrontational, and achingly sad. As a gay, Black man, the author makes his sense of being an outsider immediate, a perspective he has felt since growing up in Athens, Alabama, where he’d accompany his mother to her job at

an Army base and listen to the soldiers’ racism. Now, every time he sees “a bleached white marble column,” he writes, “I see the Klansmen’s hood / I can like, / smell the cross burning.”

In “Alumni Sweater,” he describes his experience graduating from Berkeley with “a demonically expensive liberal arts education,” an achievement that doesn’t change white people’s mistaken impressions about him. That feeling of dislocation is manifest throughout these defiant pieces. “In a Participatory Capitalism” strikes a difficult-to-achieve balance of hilarity and frustration, as Purnell writes about going out to buy running shoes to do something about “my high-ass blood pressure,” the one act of conformity under his control, yet “how are we tracking the belief / that skinny people are actually happy?” The book presents abundant wry commentary on accepted norms and the extent to which one may suffer in pursuit of them. The author’s prose is vivid and earthy—e.g., “it is a surprise / that I have enough brain function left to / spread my butt cheeks / and wipe my ass in sequential order / considering how much I have failed in life.” In the best poems, the earthiness works in their favor. They may not be for all tastes, but they’re never boring.

A unique, indelible memoir on being Black and gay in America.

The Complications: On Going Insane in America Rensin, Emmett | HarperOne (288 pp.) $28.99 | Dec. 12, 2023 | 9780063057227

A firsthand look at schizoaffective and bipolar disorder.

In an absorbing debut memoir, journalist Rensin recounts in chilling detail his “superior and specific epistemological access to the lived experience of being mad.” Distinguishing his own psychosis from a popularized OCTOBER 15, 2023 75

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conception of mental illness as “diffuse unhappiness and attendant social struggles,” he describes the violent episodes and “agitated emptiness” that led to repeated hospitalizations and often frustrating encounters with “nearly two dozen therapists”; the multiple medications (four different pills, twice a day) that keep his symptoms in check; and, most emphatically, his “particular way of being in the world.” Although he sees psychosis as “a medical problem and a social problem and a personal problem, a problem of health-care policy and criminal justice and housing and labor,” Rensin does not intend his memoir “to educate or enlighten.”

Rather, he began writing because he believed “in a magical way, that by doing so, I could consign going mad to the past; turn it into an area of my expertise but not an area of my experience.” That goal, he has come to realize, is unrealistic: Even though medication has helped him to function, he is cognizant always of the possibility of a breakdown, a fear “very near but out of sight, like something waiting to attack.”

A bipolar mood episode, he reveals, does not rise up suddenly, and “psychosis comes and goes without warning.” He constantly worries that he is getting worse: unusually sensitive, prone to tantrums, “rude, unable to read tone, and impulsive and forgetful and disorganized.”

While he claims not to want “to change anything,” his historical overview of psychiatry, examination of the vagaries of diagnosis and therapy, and stark depiction of his own visceral experiences offer unique insight into the meaning of madness.

An intimate look at a tormented mind.

To read our review of Poverty, by America, visit Kirkus online

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The Alternative: How To Build a Just Economy Romeo, Nick | PublicAffairs (384 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 16, 2024 | 9781541701595

Romeo spins a series of New Yorker articles into a cohesive argument that there are alternatives “to our disastrous economic status quo.”

The author opens by challenging the basic received truth in neoclassical economics that it is a science, operating under its own set of ineluctable laws and with no political or moral dimension. This alone is worth the price of admission, revealing the increasingly narrow perspective promulgated by academia and the flexibility of thought that comes with the introduction of other disciplines, including history, philosophy, and psychology.

Romeo then goes on to survey eight different real-world models based in such heterodox thought: true pricing of consumer goods; the movement for an actual living wage; job guarantees; gig-work platforms that operate as public utilities; worker-owned cooperatives; perpetual purpose trusts that “dethrone shareholder primacy and profit maximization”; participatory budgeting at the municipal level; and the use of private equity to create employee stock ownership plans. Such an exploration may sound technocratic, but Romeo never loses his thread: that these approaches are based on both sound economic policy and a commitment to reject the immiseration of an underclass as an “economic necessity.” Variations on decent, moral, and ethical suffuse the text, continually challenging readers to look beyond cost-benefit analyses; that author argues that “no amount of added value for shareholders…can justify the existence of child labor.”

Though the examples Romeo presents are satisfyingly mind-bending, they are largely limited to Europe and the U.S. While this effectively establishes proof

of concept in developed economies, it ignores whatever innovation may be taking place in the global south and elsewhere that might further upend traditional economic thought. Nevertheless, it makes a terrific complement to Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America for readers looking for practical solutions.

Eschewing both “revolution [and] resignation,” Romeo offers a powerful addition to an urgent debate.

We Are Your Soldiers: How Gamal Abdel Nasser Remade the Arab World Rowell, Alex | Norton (384 pp.) | $30.00 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781324021667

Comprehensive study of how much of the modern Arab world still reverberates with actions committed by Egypt’s former dictator.

“Seven decades since his coup, and more than half a century since his death, the Arab peoples have scarcely begun to shake off the legacy of ‘Father’ Gamal Abdel Nasser,” writes Lebanon-based journalist Rowell. The now largely suppressed Arab Spring movement, for example, was in many ways a continuation of anti-Nasser resistance, while the Syrian civil war and political chaos in Iraq bear Nasser’s marks in the wake of his failed effort to create an “Arab socialism” that would unite authoritarian rulers in the region.

Nasser was a military adventurist who sent Egyptian troops as far afield as the Congo and unleashed chemical warfare on battlefields in Yemen.

Ironically, Nasser’s actions helped his enemies rise, including Saudi-inspired Islamists, for Nasser was unsuccessful in playing off the factions of his day such as the Muslim Brotherhood. As Rowell notes, in matters of religion and its Muslim fundamentalist practitioners, “Nasser’s own stance was far more protean and mercurial than KIRKUS REVIEWS

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A leading roboticist looks forward to the next generation of a crucial technology.

THE HEART AND THE CHIP

the one-dimensional ‘secular’ label permits.” The author shows that Egypt was much the weaker after Nasser’s rule, in part by his alienating the U.S. while courting a failing Soviet Union; in part because of the brain drain that accompanied his regime; and in part because of the disastrous 1967 war, which destroyed Egypt’s air force and led Israel to occupy Gaza and the West Bank. Nasser came to rue his errors, though, and “he made unequivocally clear to his fellow Arab heads of state that neither he nor they were in any position to wage war on Israel in the near future,” a confession “amounting to an indictment of much of pre-1967 Nasserism as a whole.”

A welcome history that helps explain the formation of the Middle East over the last half-century.

The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs Runciman, David | Liveright/Norton (352 pp.) | $30.00 | Nov. 14, 2023 9781631496943

A philosophically charged critique of the use of AI in the hands of human actors.

As Cambridge political scientist Runciman notes, machines may take over eventually, and perhaps in two phases: the First Singularity, where they do our work for us, and the Second Singularity, where they do our thinking for us and discover that humans are disposable. But note the order of the KIRKUS REVIEWS

players in the subtitle: Corporations and states are “both like and unlike AIs and other kinds of artificial agents,” and it is unlikely that AIs will be able to achieve world mastery without the guidance of corporations and governments to which we have ceded so much power—and more likely the latter, since corporations as such are likely to evolve or disappear. “It’s not a question of us versus them,” writes Runciman of those artificial agents. “It’s a question of which of them gives us the best chance of still being us.” That question turns on many elements, including the nature of capitalism. Will it be a predatory capitalism, a capitalism that sees little growth (the author cites Brazil and Italy as modern examples), or a capitalism that has evolved to value its human actors? That’s anyone’s guess, but, perhaps comfortingly to some, Runciman argues that the much-touted digital revolution has produced little of lasting value: “Can the iPhone’s contribution to the sum of human well-being compete even with the humble washing machine?” Another aspect is whether the state, perhaps the most critical player in the author’s trinity, is going to side with humans or with AI. Perhaps comfortingly to all but the bots, he suggests that despite the state’s artificial characteristics, it’s humans that “are the source of its ability to function.” We may have a chance, after all.

A thoughtful, learned contribution to the fevered conversation now surrounding AI. For more from Runciman, visit Kirkus online.

The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future With Robots Rus, Daniela & Gregory Mone | Norton (256 pp.) | $29.99 | March 5, 2024 9781324050230

A leading roboticist looks forward to the next generation of a crucial technology.

The next step in social development will be the proliferation of robots, writes Rus, a MacArthur fellow and first female director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In her first book for a non-academic audience, co-authored

by Mone, she lays out the current state of the technology and makes informed predictions about the future. There are already robots working in the background of our lives, from the millions in factories to clever machines performing sophisticated surgery. As Rus notes, the turning point will be when they are fully capable of taking over mundane, everyday tasks, freeing us to live richer lives. The robot trashcan that will take itself out when full sounds like a prosaic but very useful machine.

Rus takes a tour around the companies working in this field, looking at pioneers examining exoskeletons to improve the mobility of elderly people as well as robots that could work in dangerous environments. She explains the various ways that robots learn and can be taught, and she is careful to address their limitations. Robots will never compete with the nuances, flexibility, and creativity of the human mind, writes the author, who notes that in fields such as medical diagnosis, the best results happen when humans and robots work together. Rus believes that the ultimate effects of the proliferation of robots will be positive, so long as it is controlled so that “the chip works in service of the heart.” The author clearly knows her field and offers many interesting ideas, but whether her exuberant optimism (“maybe I am a dreamer, an algorithm-infused utopian”) is >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 77

In this intriguing spiritual memoir, The Maeve Chronicles author Elizabeth Cunningham traces her dynamic faith journey and its relationship to her writing.

ISBN 978-1-958972-10-6

“...anyone who has struggled with a Christian upbringing and discovered meaning elsewhere may well find solace and inspiration in Cunningham’s vivid account of her own religious evolution.” KIRKUS REVIEWS

MONKFISH BOOK PUBLISHING COMPANY

S E E N A N D H E A R D // N O N F I C T I O N

Christine Blasey Ford Writing Memoir The psychologist’s testimony in Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing gripped the nation in 2018.

Ford’s book comes out in spring 2024.

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Her testimony at Kavanaugh’s Senate hearing shook the country. “I am here today not because I want to be,” she said in her opening statement. “I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school.”

Kavanaugh, who denied the accusations, was confirmed by the Senate by a 50–48 vote.

“I never thought of myself as a survivor, a whistleblower, or an activist before the events in 2018,” Ford said in a statement. “But now, what I and this book can offer is a call to all the other people who might not have chosen those roles for themselves, but who choose to do what’s right. Sometimes you don’t speak out because you are a natural disrupter.

You do it to cause a ripple that might one day become a wave.”

One Way Back is scheduled for publication on March 19, 2024.—M.S. For more on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, visit Kirkus online.

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Tom Williams/Getty Images

SEEN AND HEARD

Psychologist Christine Blasey Ford will tell the story of her testimony in Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing in a new memoir, St. Martin’s Press announced in a news release.

The press will publish Ford’s One Way Back next spring. It describes the book as “a complex, page-turning memoir of a scientist, a surfer, a mother, a patriot and an unlikely whistleblower.”

Ford, a Palo Alto University professor, made headlines in 2018 after she accused Kavanaugh, who had been nominated to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice by then-President Donald Trump, of sexually assaulting her in 1982 when they were both high school students.

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justified is a question that can only be answered over time.

An authoritative vision of a world where technology allows us to enhance our humanity.

The Palace: From the Tudors to the Windsors, 500 Years of British History at Hampton Court Russell, Gareth | Atria (464 pp.) | $29.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781982169060

A history of Hampton Court, which has been a site of drama, revelry, and scandals.

Historian, novelist, and playwright Russell offers a lively, populous narrative centered on the British royals who inhabited Hampton Court from 1495, when the Tudors undertook costly renovations, to 2016. As a site of intrigue, pageantry, and diplomacy, the Palace reflects centuries of British monarchy, the “countries that they shaped, the glories they achieved, and the horrors that they inflicted.” Hampton Court was a backwater until Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Wolsey, took it over and transformed it into a sumptuous palace, enough of a showcase that it was chosen to entertain the Hapsburg Emperor, Charles V, when he made a state visit to England in 1522. The unfortunate Anne Boleyn suffered two miscarriages there, and her reputation suffered from rumors of many affairs, which led to her execution.

Russell traces the fate of the Palace as “a place to retreat, celebrate, or hunt,” to gamble, hold multi-course feasts, and throw glamorous parties—until the reign of George III, who deigned to use it as a home. Nevertheless, he was committed to preserving its heritage and devoted considerable sums to remodel it into a kind of boardinghouse for dignitaries and royals. With the advent of rail travel, the Palace did not draw royals as a get-away for rest 80 OCTOBER 15, 2023

and recreation: They headed, instead, to Balmoral and Sandringham. Queen Victoria opened parts of the Palace to tourists and, inspired by Versailles, initiated renovations to convert the grand house into a museum. Fittingly, in 1953, the Palace hosted a pre-coronation ball in celebration of Elizabeth II. “The magnificent, the absurd, the tragic and the important have interacted there over the course of its existence,” Russell aptly notes, “and their stories—perhaps more so than the architecture—continue to attract thousands of tourists every year.”

An entertaining journey into the past.

Kirkus Star

The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America Schulman, Daniel | Knopf (592 pp.) | $35.00 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9780451493545

Spirited account of the first great American financiers, many of them German Jewish immigrants.

Lehman, Goldman, and Sachs are well-known names, writes Schulman, deputy Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones and author of the Koch family biography Sons of Wichita. Less well known are the American Warburgs and the Seligmans, but all built the nation’s first modern banking system. Many of these families first landed in the South. Henry Lehman, for example, was born in Bavaria but moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he traded in that most valuable regional commodity, cotton. The need to establish a northern entrepôt brought some of the Lehman brothers to New York, “the nation’s financial capital” and “primary shipping link to European ports such as Liverpool, through which much of Britain’s

cotton imports from the United States passed.” (So extensive was their network that it contributed to Ulysses S. Grant’s later-reversed, infamous order that Jews be expelled from the vast military district under his command.) Building family dynasties through intermarriage, Lehman and other Jewish entrepreneurs found opportunity in the post–Civil War need for financing through bonds.

The deployment of the transatlantic telegraph cable soon internationalized the American market, requiring banking and trading services. Though Schulman is keenly aware of how antisemitic tropes have arisen from the financiers’ activities—which gave birth, he notes, to “the first American-Jewish lobby”—he points to plenty of gentiles who took the lead, including the Morgans, Harrimans, and Rockefellers.

Many of their firms thrived for more than a century. However, as the author points out in this wide-ranging history, “Of the mighty German-Jewish financial houses that had defined an epoch of American finance, only Goldman Sachs, which waited until 1999 to go public, survived…to become the world’s preeminent investment bank.”

A welcome, highly readable contribution to American financial and social history.

Welcome to The O.C.: The Oral History Sepinwall, Alan with Josh Schwartz & Stephanie Savage | Mariner Books (384 pp.) $28.99 | Nov. 28, 2023 | 9780063342798

A revealing oral history of the unlikely teen drama of the early 2000s that made stars of Ben McKenzie, Adam Brody, Mischa Barton, and Rachel Bilson.

In the hands of a lesser author, this story’s arc could have been problematic. After all, The O.C. went from pop-culture sensation to ennui, even among its stars, in less than five years.

But Sepinwall, chief TV critic for KIRKUS REVIEWS

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Philosophers and mathematicians don’t have much in common, right? A mathematician disagrees.

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Rolling Stone, manages to chronicle the show’s rise and fall without getting trapped in the implosion. His narrative entertains throughout, thanks to the author’s interesting revelations and a strong sense of pacing. He breaks up post-success years of struggle by focusing on the show’s role as a musical tastemaker, bringing indie bands like Death Cab for Cutie to broader audiences. Sepinwall had the support of creator Schwartz and producing partner Savage, who found lasting success together on Gossip Girl and Chuck, as well as all the series’ core actors.

Their cooperation yields lighthearted revelations like the fact that producers passed on hiring Marvel movie star Sebastian Stan for the show, which Schwartz called “the worst thing to come out of this book.” The book also includes more substantive disclosures, including the fact that the producers regret killing off Barton’s character, Marissa, as a way to please network executives at the end of the troubled third season. “It had only been this inevitable march to Marissa’s demise, because of the creative exhaustion with the character,” say Schwartz. “And then all of these voices on the Internet and early Tumblr exploded, like a primordial howl from the early Internet into the night sky….I very quickly realized, Oh my God, what have we done? I think we made a terrible mistake.”

Skillfully captures the show’s surprising sizzle without letting anyone off the hook for its many shortcomings.

For more from Singer, visit Kirkus online.

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The Waltz of Reason: The Entanglement of Mathematics and Philosophy Sigmund, Karl | Basic Books (448 pp.) $32.50 | Dec. 19, 2023 | 9781541602694

Philosophers and mathematicians don’t have much in common, right?

A mathematician disagrees.

Sigmund, professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Vienna and author of Exact Thinking in Demented Times, makes his case in nearly 400 pages of lucid prose. The author is a fine writer, but this is not Mathematics and Philosophy for Dummies; readers without a background in both may struggle. The first section “traces the evolution of the self-image of mathematics.” Evidence alone supports scientific laws; they can never be proven beyond a doubt. Not so with mathematics, but Sigmund’s explanations of mathematical proofs—dense with equations and diagrams—are not for the faint of heart. Surprisingly, proving that 1 + 1 = 2 is a complex operation.

In the second section of the book, the author deals with chance, the continuum, and infinity, which goes beyond common sense and often vexes philosophers with problems such as “how an infinitesimal could be smaller than anything and yet not zero.” Beginning with the Enlightenment, mathematicians began stepping on philosophical toes by examining human behavior and institutions with often intriguing results. These occupy the book’s third and fourth sections

and are more accessible. In the digital age, computers are the rage even for deep thinkers, and it’s become so difficult to maintain that computers are not intelligent that experts have moved the goalposts to maintain that they are not conscious. It turns out that humans are “utterly inept” at estimating probabilities, risks, and even fairness. Many Americans have no doubt that our winner-take-all voting system is superior, but it’s proven that all voting systems are unfair. Sigmund also examines irresistible areas such as game theory, probability, decisions, and the social contract, as well as parables such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Sigmund delves into fascinating philosophical areas but delivers an overwhelming amount of information.

Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt, the War Years, 1939-1945 Singer, Isaac Bashevis | Ed. and trans. by David Stromberg | White Goat Press $24.95 | Nov. 14, 2023 | 9798988677307

Newly translated essays show Singer as a journalist and columnist.

Stromberg, translator and editor of the Isaac Bashevis Singer Literary Trust, collects 25 intriguing, emotional pieces by the Nobel Prize–winning author (1903-1991).

They were published from 1939 to 1945 in New York City’s Forverts, a Yiddish newspaper, during a period of great turmoil in Singer’s life.

Stromberg argues that these key wartime pieces are “fundamentally different from almost everything published to date,” offering a bridge between his Polish homeland and his adopted country and insights into the Holocaust’s impact on Singer as he explored cultural and religious customs and practices. “What is Kabbalah?” from late 1940, led him to formulate broader “notions that OCTOBER 15, 2023 81

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guided Jewish spiritual life throughout times of great crisis.” In an essay from Sept. 7, 1941, Singer confronted Hitler’s antisemitism head-on. “When Hitler says that the existence of the Jews is a personal insult to him,” he writes, “he’s not pulling it out of thin air.” From 1943, “Religious Jews Say That the Current War Is the War of Gog and Magog” shows Singer’s ability to “consider current events in both pragmatic-historical and mystical-philosophical terms at once.” A March 1944 essay on the Jewish language urges Jews to collect and preserve their Hebrew texts, and others from the same year lament Jewish powerlessness and argue that “American Jews need the past to be directly connected to the present.” In December 1944, he penned “Yiddish Language and Culture Undergo Their Greatest Crisis in History.” As the war wound down in the second half of 1945, Singer turned to artistic topics, such as the portrayal of Jewish life in Yiddish literature, its absence in movies (“Hollywood silences our existence”), and, most importantly, the future of Yiddish literature.

Stromberg promises more collections to come.

Sheds light on the early, developmental years of the young, passionate writer.

Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest To Manufacture in the USA (and How It Got That Way) Slade, Rachel | Pantheon (352 pp.) | $28.00 Jan. 9, 2024 | 9780593316887

What does “Made in the U.S.A.” mean these days?

One company’s odyssey suggests an answer.

There aren’t many success stories in 21st-century American manufacturing, but Slade, a journalist and bestselling author of Into the Raging Sea, has found one: an apparel firm 82 OCTOBER 15, 2023

called American Roots, founded by idealistic Ben and Whitney Waxman.

They were determined to compete against cheap imports while paying their workers at good rates and with union benefits to make vests, shirts, and hoodies. When the pandemic hit, the firm pivoted to produce face shields and other protective equipment, reconfiguring their factory so workers could operate safely. The American Roots story shows that manufacturing in the U.S. is alive and deserves support, which makes it unfortunate that Slade often wanders away from the primary narrative. The text meanders for 100 pages before the company is established; after that, the author takes numerous detours to deliver diatribes on misleading official statements about masking made during the pandemic and “the demonization of unions, wrapped in the new mystical language of free trade.” Granted, a certain amount of background information and cultural context is welcome, but the amount of it here raises the question as to what the book is really about.

Slade is on firmer ground when she examines the problems of running the company, from haggling with fabric suppliers and finding skilled employees to monitoring the bottom line. It was a constant battle between operational efficiency and social objectives, but eventually, the Waxmans found a balance. By the end of the book, American Roots is poised for the next step in its growth path.

If Slade had been willing to tell the story in straightforward terms, this would have been a more readable, engaging book.

A sometimes illuminating but uneven examination of the current state of American manufacturing.

For more on Neanderthals, visit Kirkus online .

Kirkus Star

The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature Slimak, Ludovic | Pegasus (208 pp.) | $29.95 Feb. 6, 2024 | 9781639366163

A paleontologist explores how we might better understand our ancient relatives.

Slimak’s central argument, a synthesis of decades of his own and others’ research, is that Neanderthals possessed a distinctive form of intelligence in some ways superior to that of Homo sapiens. The author explains how recent discoveries have informed a reassessment of this species’ social and artisanal practices, and he offers adventurous speculations on the dimensions and meaning of its cognitive endowments. Clear explications of scientific concepts, lively commentary on the implications of competing ideas, and engaging storytelling describing the pursuit of knowledge by dedicated investigators bring a startling picture of an alternate humanity into view. We gain a clear and memorable sense, for instance, of the creative orientation and aesthetic sensibility suggested

by Neanderthals’ craftsmanship, the role cannibalism might have played in their societies, the relationship between their hunting preferences and presumed social values, and the most plausible reasons behind their ultimate extinction. In one particularly striking section, Slimak summarizes the profound lessons to be learned from studying Neanderthal tool-making. “The constant play that these people established between the materials they used and their technological traditions brings us face to face with a creativity that is beyond us,” he writes. “And this infinite playful production of original works, which is nonetheless based on well-defined traditions, enters into KIRKUS REVIEWS

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A firsthand account of Hendrix’s momentous final year.

JIMI AND ME

a dialectic with the materials, the textures, the colours of the rocks, which guide, or participate in, the balance of the whole creation.” Also excellent is the author’s broader discussion of how our own human prejudices have limited our appreciation of the Neanderthals’ achievements, a perceptual blindness he convincingly relates to modern forms of racism. Slimak shows how we have much more to learn about ourselves by studying “exotic sensibilities” and more fully acknowledging “our nature not as humanity but as a humanity.”

An exhilarating contemplation of human otherness.

Predicting Our Climate Future: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, and What We Can’t Know Stainforth, David | Oxford Univ. (368 pp.) $24.95 | Jan. 12, 2024 | 9780198812937

A scholarly exploration of how we might model climate change to know better how to respond to it.

Stainforth, a professor at the London School of Economics, is no denier, but he asks, “What do we know with confidence bordering on certainty? How do we know it, and what is the basis for any such confidence?”

His answer is that our understanding of climate change is a patchwork affair, contingent upon incomplete information that can be improved on only with more and better KIRKUS REVIEWS

information. The overarching problem is that the climate is a dynamic system that has countless moving parts, each comparatively easy to measure in the singular but vexingly hard to factor in the aggregate, “the whole, huge, complex, interacting muddle of physical components from clouds to ocean ecosystems, from ice sheets to rain forests, from hurricanes to the water and carbon bound up in soils.” To follow Stainforth’s argument requires grounding in data analysis, programming, probability, statistics, and climatology. Still, the author offers some fairly accessible takeaways—e.g., we can get to work in better controlling what we can, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That way lie still other moving parts, including the big social questions about what the climate future will look like: “What sort of work will be available in your nation or region? Will you be able to get the foods you want? Will you be more likely to be affected by conflict?

If so, how? Will you be influenced by natural disasters and extremes? Will you be able to see relatives in far-away places?” The answers to such questions hinge on emotion, politics, and hard data, and they aren’t easy to come by in the abstract—though answer them we must.

Dense and sometimes difficult, but a provocative contribution to the literature of climate change.

For a beautiful picture book about Jimi Hendrix, visit Kirkus online.

Jimi and Me: The Experience of a Lifetime Stathakis, Jonathan with Chris Epting Permuted Press (272 pp.) | $30.00 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781637588116

The unexpected story of how Jimi Hendrix collaborated with a little-known indie filmmaker burrows through numerous subcultures to reach a surprisingly universal relationship at its core.

Writing with veteran journalist Epting, Stathakis recounts how he was called to meet Hendrix in Manhattan in 1969. At that time, he was still trying to establish himself as a writer, producer, and photographer, and Hendrix was a superstar. “Purple Haze” had become an anthem, Electric Ladyland was a top-selling album, and his Monterey Pop Festival performance was captured in an influential documentary. Hendrix was interested in developing a film of his own and thought Stathakis would be a good possibility based on his movie Awakening Urge. They immediately hit it off and began work on a Western-styled movie called Avril. The film would have no dialogue but would use Hendrix’s score and guitar solos to punctuate the action on the screen.

Unfortunately, they never finished it—an outcome that didn’t surprise Hendrix’s assistant. “She accused me of refusing to accept the fact that Jimi had more important things to concern himself with than some side project that he’d come into on a whim,” writes the author. “The fact that I was still in his life on some level surprised her. She’d thought it would last a week or two and Jimi would tire of it—get bored or distracted and move on to something else.” Regardless, their connection gave Stathakis an insider’s view of Hendrix’s life—creative process, relationships, management issues, and how he navigated the tumultuous 1960s as a Black artist—as well as historic events like Woodstock. The OCTOBER 15, 2023 83

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author’s observations are probably more valuable than anything Hendrix revealed in their conversations, especially given the guitar legend’s reticence to discuss his personal life.

A firsthand account of Hendrix’s momentous final year provides an entertaining glimpse into rock history.

Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy Susca, Margot | Univ. of Illinois (232 pp.) | $24.95 paper | Jan. 23, 2024 9780252087561

A professor of journalism examines the ways in which private money co-opted American journalism in the name of profit.

At the end of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted to deregulate the newspaper and TV news system. Susca argues that this action, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2021, allowed for a small group of private equity firms and hedge funds to increase the rate at which they bought newspapers and consolidated them. The author pinpoints 2003 as the year when private investment firm involvement in the newspaper industry began in earnest, citing the 40% stake Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners bought in Freedom Communications, Inc., a then–publicly held news corporation. During the next two decades, more such investments followed, all driven by the desire to “squeeze out more profits” for shareholders by “cutting staff, consolidating beats…closing bureaus and selling off landmark buildings” in communities all over the U.S. The result—especially in small towns—has been the creation of print and digital newspapers that ignore the stories most important to readers, such as those focusing on “children’s schools, 84 OCTOBER 15, 2023

crime, local commissions and elected boards.” This, in turn, has led to what Susca sees as a diminishing of the informative, watchdogging role media has been entrusted to play in democracy. Another disturbing byproduct of the “quality crisis” in journalism has been lessening of audience engagement with the news process itself. “When newspaper companies treat [readers] as consumers only,” writes the author, “their function as citizens is limited.” Media scholars will appreciate Susca’s careful analysis of evidence derived from such sources as court documents, congressional reports, corporate records, and in-depth personal interviews. As timely and incisive as her conclusions are, however, general readers may find the book to be too academic.

A well-researched study that will have limited appeal outside of the communications field.

Kirkus Star

The Lede: Dispatches From a Life in the Press Trillin, Calvin | Random House (336 pp.) $31.00 | Feb. 13, 2024 | 9780593596449

An invaluable collection of observations about journalism authored by a beloved American reporter and humorist.

Best known as a veteran staff writer for the New Yorker, Trillin gathers columns, long-form pieces, and vignettes about the mechanics

and practices of the American press and its subjects, yielded from his six decades in the profession, during which he also worked as a correspondent and columnist for outlets such as Time, the Nation, and Brill’s Content.

His profile of the late New York Times journalist R.W. “Johnny” Apple Jr. is as expansive and thorough as Apple himself (“his form reflects the eating habits of someone who has been called Three Lunches Apple, a nickname he likes”). Trillin’s pieces, which range appealingly, include a 1986 profile of the incomparable Miami Herald police reporter Edna Buchanan; an absorbing account of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the disappearance and murder of a scion of a prominent family in Savannah, Georgia; an explanation of how Texas Monthly magazine selected the state’s best BBQ joints in 2008; and a poem about Al Gore’s weight gain. Much of this book is hilarious, and it seems impossible to suppress a grin even when reading essays about the most serious of subjects, particularly Trillin’s elegant tributes to fallen colleagues and friends like Molly Ivins, Russell Baker, and Morley Safer. The author saves his best for last: a piece about the commemorations of the Freedom Rides in the South in 1961, which he covered when Atlanta bureau chief for Time.

Trillin’s writing about the various people who marked the anniversary is the author at his finest, mixing his wit, sharp observational powers and recall, reporting skills, and poignancy. This book should be savored by admirers, critics, and practitioners of journalism and journalists, as well as anyone who appreciates first-rate writing, humor, and engaging reporting.

A brilliant compilation.

An invaluable collection of observations about journalism.

THE LEDE

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A visually fascinating study featuring dazzling photographs and artwork.

TWINKIND

The Last Ships From Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race To Save Russia’s Jews on the Eve of World War I Ujifusa, Steven | Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) | $32.00 | Nov. 21, 2023 9780062971876

A history of the cooperative effort that helped make the U.S. a second Jewish homeland.

Between 1881 and 1914, writes Ujifusa, author of Barons of the Sea, more than 10 million people entered the U.S. from Europe, “most of them… from the Russian Empire.” Because pogrom-ridden Russia imposed obstacles that made it difficult for Jews to travel, their flight was often illegal, and most arrived in Western Europe with few resources. Against this situation came three important figures. The first was Albert Ballin, the German Jewish director of the Hamburg-America Line, “the largest shipping company in the world,” who provided temporary settlement and, in time, subsidized travel through steerage. Monetary support came from New York financier Jacob Schiff. Less willing than those two was J.P. Morgan, who, having made a fortune in railroads, sought to extend his empire seaward and attempted to outflank and then absorb Ballin’s own maritime empire. The deal-making that resulted saw steerage passage for the refugees extended to other ocean liners; Ujifusa chronicles how soon-to-become-prominent figures such as Felix Frankfurter, Emma KIRKUS REVIEWS

Goldman, Irving Berlin, and Mark Rothko arrived at Ellis Island. As the author also notes in this densely detailed account, Schiff was no softie: Having decided that his father-in-law was an ineffective head of the family banking business, he “began a steady and calculated effort to take over the firm,” and he wasn’t shy of throwing his well-funded weight around to get things done. Thanks to the efforts of the three magnates, the U.S. emerged as the most desirable destination for Jewish refugees, vastly enriching the nation economically and culturally with their talents—though, as the author acknowledges, not without opposition from government officials and nativists that dogged the effort until the collapse of the immigrant transport at the beginning of World War I. A capable history that explains much about modern American demographics.

Twinkind: The Singular Significance of Twins Viney, William | Princeton Univ. (224 pp.) $35.00 | Jan. 9, 2024 | 9780691254753

A heavily illustrated volume about twins and popular attitudes toward them.

Uncommon but not rare, twins have created a stir throughout history, writes British researcher and writer Viney, himself a twin and author of Waste: A Philosophy of Things. In the past, twins were mostly viewed as a curse: killers of the sick, harmers of

livestock and crops, embodiments of evil. As the author chronicles, “common sense” made it obvious that women who bore twins had had sex with two men, so they were considered debauched and their children tainted; twin infanticide has been documented everywhere. On the positive side, twins were sometimes viewed as harbingers of good fortune, and they frequently played heroic roles in creation myths. A single egg that divides before fertilization gives rise to identical twins with identical DNA, but about twothirds of twins are grown from two different eggs and are as genetically varied as ordinary siblings. In the modern age, twins have appeared in paranoid fiction by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Charlotte Brontë, Dostoevsky, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Viney’s most compelling pages explore twins in the arts, especially in theater and films familiar to many readers, but he also covers scientists’ investigations of twins’ real-life experiences and attributes. These chapters deliver a painless if often lurid education into such areas as criminal identification, eugenics, racism, and psychology. Studies of identical twins, especially those raised separately, became central to the debate on the influence of nature versus nurture in human development.

Viney often focuses on controversial studies and the belief that identical twins have a paranormal connection, expressing mild skepticism but only after providing many vivid anecdotes. Other authors delve more deeply, but it’s unlikely that any match his spectacular illustrations, which occupy as much space as the text.

A visually fascinating study featuring dazzling photographs and artwork.

To read our review of Barons of the Sea, visit Kirkus online.

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Seeing One Thing Through: The Zen Life and Teachings of Sojun Mel Weitsman Weitsman, Mel | Ed. by Hozan Alan Senauke Counterpoint (352 pp.) | $17.95 paper Dec. 12, 2023 | 9781640096196

Collected wisdom from the late Zen master.

Weitsman (1929-2021), the longtime abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, chronicles political struggles and self-dealing in San Francisco’s Zen community. One former leader, Richard Baker, “used his empowerment to create a great gap between himself and everyone else, so that he would be untouchable.” Weitsman and Baker were both students of the first modern Japanese Zen master in the U.S., Shunryu Suzuki, and both took different views of his teachings—the well-educated, middle-class Baker in intellectual terms and the working-class Weitsman as a model for practice. The author’s title comes from a question and answer: “Suzuki Roshi would ask for questions. One time I asked, ‘What is nirvana?’

He looked at me and said, ‘Seeing one thing through to the end.’ All the teaching I had absorbed from him up to then came together and became a confirmation or turning point for my practice.” Baker left under a cloud, and until his death, Weitsman headed the community as a teacher with hundreds of students.

This book has three parts: a circumstantial, thoughtful introduction by Senauke, setting all this into context; Weitsman’s memoir, running to nearly 100 pages; and a series of the author’s lectures on various aspects of practice, which follow Suzuki’s teachings closely with a dose of blue-collar common sense: “‘Where am I and what I am I doing?’ This ‘What is it?’ is a koan for each one of us….How do we become aware of 86 OCTOBER 15, 2023

For Beatlemaniacs with room on their shelves for yet another book.

L I V I N G T H E B E AT L E S L E G E N D

the absolute quality of our life in each moment’s activity?” Occasionally sharp-tempered, Weitsman is also gently encouraging and eminently practical: Given the choice between keeping to one’s meditation schedule and a child’s needs, the latter rule, insisting that for all our divisions and disagreements, we’re all careening to the same end.

A book for every nirvana seeker’s collection.

Living the Beatles Legend: The Untold Story of Mal Evans Womack, Kenneth | Dey Street/ HarperCollins (592 pp.) | $50.00 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9780063248526

Overstuffed biography of the towering Beatles factotum whose life ended in tragedy.

Mal Evans (1935-1976) gave his life dates as August 3, 1963, when the Beatles first brought him on board, to May 20, 1975, when he foresaw dying in a New York hotel.

He lasted a bit longer, shot and killed by a police officer. Womack, a music culture critic for Salon, is a merely competent writer but diligent researcher, and he corrects the long misapprehension that the gun-obsessed Evans was waving a harmless air rifle: It was a real rifle with live rounds. Otherwise, this overlong book is both a blend of well-known facts and a peek into

Evans’ trove of Beatles arcana and his own sprawling, long-lost diaries, which give a day-by-day account of the band’s career. Those entries touch on sometimes prickly personalities and difficult situations, as when John Lennon blamed Evans for the loss of a purloined guitar, as well as high points—e.g., when Evans saved the Beatles from death from a shattered windshield by punching it out and driving the windowless tour van against arctic winds, with the lads piled up atop each other for warmth, “a bonding moment, to be sure.” A modest revelation: Lennon threatened to the last moment to ask his audience at the band’s first Royal Command Performance to “rattle your fucking jewelry” until Evans dissuaded him. Evans’ self-destructive spiral is the familiar rock story of too much money, booze, and cocaine. Less well known are the intricate, sometimes nasty band politics that held him back from higher positions in the pecking order, though he was essential to the Beatles operation and, indeed, contributed everything from lyrics to McCartney’s “Here, There and Everywhere” to tambourine on Harrison’s “What Is Life.”

For Beatlemaniacs with room on their shelves for yet another book.

For more on the Beatles, visit Kirkus online.

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Mandatory reading for both junior professionals and senior management alike.

THE BLACK CEILING

A Wild Path Wood, Douglas | Univ. of Minnesota (229 pp.) | $24.95 | Dec. 5, 2023 9781517905941

Nature offers the author a spiritual refuge.

Educator, musician, and wilderness guide Wood, author of Deep Woods, Wild Waters, gathers short essays reflecting on his deep connection to nature. As a child, because unrecognized dyslexia held him back in reading and math, he felt bad about himself. However, on fishing trips with his grandfather and summers at a lake, he felt “successful and okay.” A late diagnosis of ADHD helped him understand why he still is “scattered and disorganized, forgetful and unfocused,” with difficulty “following directions or completing tasks or remembering what the tasks were in the first place.” He has since decided, though, that ADHD is hardly a disorder, but rather an asset for attentiveness to the wild—to otters, bears, wolves, his friendly neighborhood cardinal, and trees. “Of all the teachers I have known,” he writes, “I have found very few more wise or helpful than trees. Their patience knows no bounds.” Wood responds to the “spirit and meaning of place,” musing on the joys of a cabin in the woods, the spectacle of the Northern Lights, and his experiences as a guide—all give him a “cause for awe, humility, and a profound appreciation of mystery.” Canoeing has been KIRKUS REVIEWS

a special pleasure. “I have loved the quiet of mist-shrouded mornings and golden evenings,” he writes, “the sense of being embraced by the wilderness and the entire natural world, the canoe and its paddler a part of every aspect of the landscape and the waterscape, the wind and the sky and the weather.”

The author has “long believed that the world is filled with teachings and teachers, messengers perhaps—if we are awake and aware and prepared to listen. Those messages nourish humankind’s capacity for joy, even in the face of struggle and loss.”

A warm evocation of nature’s gifts.

The Black Ceiling: How Race Still Matters in the Elite Workplace Woodson, Kevin | Univ. of Chicago (216 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 17, 2023 | 9780226828725

A sociological inquiry into the cultural disadvantages faced by Black professionals in elite, professional service firms.

Although racial bias is mostly muted in highly competitive and prestigious law firms, consulting companies, and investment banks, according to Woodson, a sociologist and professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, Black professional employees still contend with “subtle social dynamics,” that generate racial discomfort and diminish their career prospects. Drawing on life-history interviews, the author documents

the workplace disadvantages that stem from the discrepancy between a firm’s dominant white culture and prior life and educational experiences that likely featured minimal engagement with that culture. In these firms, social relationships are key to positive yearly evaluations, promotions, collegial support, rewarding assignments, and partnerships. “Careers are determined by the discretionary actions and subjective assessment of their predominately White colleagues,” writes Woodson. In addition to instances of overt racial discrimination, many Black professionals suffer from “feelings of alienation, frustration, and isolation.” Two types of racial discomfort ensue: social alienation related to personal background and cultural repertoire, and stigma anxiety generated by perceptions of the risk of unfair treatment. In response, many Black professionals engage in “racial risk management,” which often further weakens relationships with colleagues.

Although Woodson concentrates on race, he acknowledges its intersection with gender and class. “For Black women…gender-related cultural difficulties can be just as challenging as racial ones,” he notes. As for remedial action, firms must be more supportive, Black professionals must engage in acts of “strategic acclimation and acculturation,” and white colleagues should “reduce so­cial alienation by using more inclusive interactional habits, for example by engaging in more open-ended discussions that draw out the interests and experiences of colleagues.” In this well-researched book, Woodson identifies a significant and widespread consequence of the country’s racial divide.

Mandatory reading for both junior professionals and senior management alike.

For more nature writing from Douglas Wood, visit Kirkus online.

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Children's

MAHNAZ DAR

AS HALLOWEEN

approaches, I’m reminded of a favorite childhood memory: reading and rereading Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark series. Featuring surreal art

by Stephen Gammell, these anthologies awakened in me a love of the horror genre.

Part of why I enjoyed them so much was the format: I could mete out the scares, one at a time…or binge when I was feeling more daring. This year, I went in search of more collections of creepy tales aimed at middle graders, and I emerged with several macabre selections, perfect for spooky season. While some stories will have even grownups sleeping with the lights on, others are on the goofier side—there’s something for everyone here.

Dan Poblocki’s More Tales To Keep You Up at Night (Penguin Workshop, Aug. 15), illustrated by Marie Bergeron, more than delivers on its titular promise. A follow-up to last year’s Tales To Keep You Up at Night, the work follows a boy who’s convinced that listening to recordings of eerie stories is the key to saving his brother, unconscious in the 88 OCTOBER 15, 2023

hospital after a mysterious injury. The Lovecraftian creatures that appear in these tales are nightmare fuel, but even more disturbing are the scenarios the author conjures up: a toddler who finds himself lost in space and time; a young boy with the power to punish wrongdoers by summoning monstrosities.

Poblocki weaves the stories together into a bizarre yet brilliantly layered whole that will mesmerize readers—at least, those made of sterner stuff.

R.L. Stine has been giving kids Goosebumps for years, but before that, he wrote dozens of humor books.

With his latest, Stinetinglers 2: 10 MORE New Stories From the Master of Scary Tales (Feiwel & Friends, Aug. 29), illustrated by David SanAngelo, he draws on his comedy roots, doling out laughs as well as terrors and twist endings galore. Though nearly all these tales see their protagonists meeting a bad end, he keeps the tone light; kids who prefer their horror on the tamer side will flock to this volume.

In Jeff Szpirglas’ Book of Screams (Orca, Sept.

12), young Tanya becomes

disillusioned when she realizes that her favorite author, Joel Southland, may be concealing a disturbing secret. The main narrative— in which Tanya does some investigating—is interspersed with Southland’s stories.

Accompanied by Steven P. Hughes’ grisly black-andwhite art, the collection moves quickly and packs a wallop—a particularly gruesome entry opens with a girl’s eyeball falling out of its socket. Szpirglas also thoughtfully explores relevant topics, from Covid-19 to the prevalence of streaming services.

Inspired by the 1990s Nickelodeon TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Tehlor Kay Mejia’s first graphic novel, The Witch’s

Wings and Other Terrifying Tales (Amulet/Abrams, Oct. 3), centers on a young girl who tells three frightening campfire stories. From the tale of an owl-witch known as the Lechuza to the story of a bus trapped in time, these tales are all rooted in Latine folklore.

Not only are they chilling, but they’re also tinged with sadness, with Mejia folding in real-life horrors like child neglect and parental strife.

Each tale is illustrated by different artists—Junyi Wu, Justin and Alexis Hernandez, and Kaylee Rowena—yet the styles meld beautifully, making for a truly haunting collection.

Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.

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Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

SCARY STORIES FOR SPOOKY SEASON

CHILDREN’S

EDITOR’S PICK A boy fields questions about his missing leg in this British import.

On the playground, Joe is a pirate, battling crocodiles and sharks.

Just as Joe’s about to vanquish Señor Sharkface, brown-skinned Kid One interrupts: “YOU’VE ONLY GOT ONE LEG!” Then comes a question that disabled readers will recognize instantly: “What happened to you?” Joe, not keen on telling “that story,” replies, “What do you think?” That unleashes an avalanche of guesses as racially diverse kids join the conversation. Did it fall in the toilet? Is Joe hiding it?

But answering “no” over and over exhausts even a pirate. Though kids will

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

giggle at the silly scenarios and George’s bright, expressive cartoon illustrations, Joe’s frustration is palpable. Finally, Kid One asks the perfect question: “Is that a crocodile down there?” Ice broken, the kids introduce themselves and join the fun. When Joe asks Simone, formerly Kid One, “Do you still need to know what happened?” Simone’s “No!” is a deep breath of fresh air. In a welcome departure from picture books where conversations about disabilities are treated as teachable moments for nondisabled characters, this one gently but effectively illustrates that while curiosity is natural, questions don’t always need to be asked…or answered.

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I’m Going To Build a Snowman

By Jashar Awan

89

What Happened to You?

By James Catchpole; illus. by Karen George

105

Words Between Us

By Angela Pham Krans; illus. by Dung Ho

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What Happened to You? Catchpole, James | Illus. by Karen George Little, Brown | 40 pp. | April 11, 2023 | $18.99 9780316506472

Vitally, Catchpole, himself an amputee, reminds disabled readers—who are often sidelined in discussions of boundaries—that their bodies belong to them, including their

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114

When the Stars Came Home

By Brittany Luby; illus.

by Natasha Donovan The Witch’s Wings and Other Terrifying Tales

By Tehlor Kay Mejia; illus. by Junyi Wu, Justin Hernandez, Alexis Hernandez & Kaylee Rowena

medical histories. Backmatter advises caregivers on addressing disability. Joe presents white.

Delightful, necessary, and long overdue. (Picture book.

4-8)

Glowrushes

By Roberto Piumini; trans. by Leah Janeczko Hornbeam All In

By Cynthia Rylant; illus.

by Arthur Howard

120

Bompa’s Insect Expedition

By David Suzuki with Tanya Lloyd Kyi; illus.

by Qin Leng

122

What Rosa Brought

By Jacob Sager Weinstein; illus. by Eliza Wheeler

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Etta Extraordinaire

Sleeping Is Not for Me!

Ahmed, Roda & Charnaie Gordon Illus. by Chloe Burgett Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 Oct. 17, 2023 | 9780063295711

Andrés, José Carlos | Illus. by Alessandro Montagnana | Trans. by Cecilia Ross NubeOcho (48 pp.) | $17.99 | Oct. 24, 2023 9788419253767 | Series: Somos8

A young girl must overcome stage fright.

The first thing you must know about Etta Extraordinaire is that she is nothing less than fab-tacular, complete with a feather boa and pearls from her late Grandma Bess. “She can pluck a poem out of thin air, make a megaphone from old magazines, and can always find a lucky penny.” When the young Black girl finds a note for the school’s talent show, her visions of grandeur go into overdrive—until she remembers, with butterflies in her tummy, that she’s never performed onstage before.

Etta puts in motion a four-step plan to make the ordinary extraordinary.

Scrounging up supplies from around her home, Etta creates a makeshift stage, practices, finds a costume, and puts on a show in her own room. But belting out tunes onstage in front of people is a different story. When the big moment arrives, our on-the-fly diva has no plan for a case of the jitters. Just as she’s shaking in her lucky pearls, she takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, and suddenly gets a muchneeded boost from the ones who love and support her. The digital illustrations are sprightly and vivid, filling each page with details to entertain the eyes, while the story will speak to anyone who’s ever been wracked by performance anxiety.

A small elephant rejects bedtime; Dad is patient.

As this tale (translated from Spanish) begins, it’s night, and all is silent on the savanna. Daddyphant, blue, wears a small hat, and Littlephant, pink, wears a nightcap. (Other animals are cartoonish in form but in expected colors—surprisingly bright in the starry setting.) Though it’s bedtime, Littlephant wants to play: to gallop like a zebra and to remain “awake and alert” like a meerkat. Daddyphant never points out that zebras, meerkats, and other creatures sleep at night, but he counters by encouraging Littlephant to follow the example of animals like giraffes (“sleepyheads!” scoffs Littlephant), snakes (“boring!”), or hyenas—a suggestion that backfires as Littlephant begins to laugh loudly.

With each suggestion, Daddyphant chants a lullaby incorporating that animal’s name, which will challenge readers with the uneven meter. Littlephant’s antics are disturbing the savanna but wearing him out, and he eventually falls asleep. At that point, all the animals he has awakened creep up on him and make noise, rousing him. With incredible self-awareness, Littlephant says no when they ask to play and instead chants the Daddyphant verse, causing the animals to instantly fall asleep. (Littlephant seems unaware of nocturnal animals.) The

For the little divas who need a little nudge to perform as big as their dreams. (Picture book. 4-8)

For more by Roda Ahmed, visit Kirkus online.

images are sweet, but the idea of a lullaby with such quick effects stretches credulity. And how many small children would reject friends’ midnight efforts to play?

Cute but far-fetched. (Picture book.

3-6)

Kirkus Star

I’m Going To Build a Snowman Awan, Jashar | Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $18.99 | Sept. 19, 2023 | 9781665938174

A child decides to build “THE BEST SNOWMAN EVER!” One cozy morning, the brown-skinned, dark-haired youngster wakes up to discover that it’s snowing outside. After donning a sweater, boots, coat, and hat (with a little help from Mom), the child rushes outside, bursting with visions of greatness. This snowman, the protagonist believes, will not only be easy to make, but it will also come to life and carry the child away, through the sky, into a magical adventure: “It will be a dream come true!” But after the child finishes rolling balls of snow and adding stick arms, the results are not quite as expected. Luckily, with a little imagination and a lot of heart, the child puts the finishing touches on this less-than-perfect creation that, despite its flaws, is still the best snowman ever. The book’s spare, witty text pairs perfectly with the vibrant, exuberant illustrations. Awan makes great use of just a few words, layering

For the little divas who need a little nudge to perform as big as their dreams.

E T TA E X T R A O R D I N A I R E

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KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

A simple but beautiful story about how little perfection matters.

I’M GOING TO BUILD A SNOWMAN

in onomatopoeia that lends the lines a sense of momentum. Overall, this is a fun and meaningful read for little ones, though its message about the potential joy that can be found in imperfection is one that will resonate with readers of all ages.

A simple but beautiful story about how little perfection matters. (Picture book.

3-8)

Duel Across Time Baier, Bret | Illus. by Marvin Sianipar Aladdin (128 pp.) | $19.99 | Nov. 14, 2023 9781534485594 | Series: History Club, 1

Four tweens travel through time to preserve key moments in American history.

In 1961, the History Twister attempts to reroute Freedom 7’s angle of entry and thwart the American space program at Cape Canaveral. The History Club says “Eat globe!” to that, disconnecting the villain’s device just in time. Rewind to the club’s origins at a middle school history competition, when time first stops for classmates Cam, Zack, Becca, and Thomas. The mysterious Adviser appears and gives the team a dire directive: An immense evil is waging war against the past that only the History Club can thwart. The main showdown in this series opener takes the History Club to 1804’s famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. But can they stop another of the History Twister’s “crimes against history” before it’s too late? Sianipar’s full-color art and KIRKUS REVIEWS

engaging, varied paneling keep the plot moving. While many characters appear white, Zack is Black, the History Twister is tan-skinned, and a last name cues Cam as Latine. This first children’s book from Fox News host Baier brings history to life—and aligns it with the Adviser’s “one rule” that “once what can happen has happened, it must remain so for all time.” While the overarching story will appeal to kids, it mostly serves to further the didactic premise, which adults will recognize as a transparent attempt to justify a monolithic version of U.S. history.

A flashy tale with a clear political agenda. (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Love Like Chocolate Banghart, Tracy E. | Illus. by Alina Chau Little, Brown (40 pp.) | $18.99 Dec. 12, 2023 | 9780316408516

A family welcomes a child from another culture.

The older sibling describes the family’s experience: “We start by helping her feel safe. We listen. We go slow. We show her how love works in our family. And in our family, love works best with chocolate.” Important days (and sad ones, too) are observed with a different treat, from chocolate cake to cupcakes to hot chocolate. The younger child shares her favorite recipe, and together the family whips up “towers of Thai honey toast, mounds of chocolate mango mochi, and a castle of red velvet dreams.” Inspired by the author’s own family (her youngest was

adopted from Thailand), the story is told from the perspective of the older sibling, leaving a missed opportunity to give voice to the adoptee’s experiences; although the narrator asks the younger sister several questions (and she points out her favorite recipe in a book), she speaks only at the very end, which may suggest the time it can take for an adoptee to become comfortable in a new environment. Digitally composited watercolor artwork features an inviting mixed palette of colors that exude connection. The adoptive family presents white, while the adoptee has brown skin and curly hair; hints in text and art suggest she has a Thai background. Extended family and friends have varying skin tones and hair textures.

Gentle and loving. (author’s and artist’s notes, recipe for Grandma Banghart’s Heavenly Chocolate Sauce) (Picture book. 5-8)

I Will Find You Benedis-Grab, Daphne | Scholastic (240 pp.) | $8.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9781338884746

A fun annual school tradition takes a terrifying turn when a classmate goes missing.

Gracie can’t wait to spend two nights with her best friend at the seventh grade campout in the Catskill Mountains. Upon her arrival, however, her expectations are dampened by the discovery that one cabin is off-limits for repairs, leaving her in the only coed group, which includes teacher Ms. Becker and classmates Leo, Olivia, and (much to everyone’s chagrin) Nicky, who’s a notorious bully. The first night is uneventful, but the campers awaken to discover that Nicky is missing. The police arrive to investigate, but, each harboring their own secret reasons, the three remaining tween cabin mates launch a high-stakes investigation of their own. In the process, they uncover OCTOBER 15, 2023 91

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a scheme none of them could have expected. Chapters alternate between the perspectives of Gracie, Olivia, and Leo as they make discoveries that lead them closer to an answer. Each central character has a distinct and interesting perspective and personality, and although these traits are not mined deeply, they allow for helpful insights into the mystery. Thought-provoking questions about forgiveness, making amends, and the efficacy of consequences and retribution are peppered throughout. Important, complex social issues like poverty and child neglect are addressed, but the resolution feels too simple and ignores some real-world complexities. Main characters are coded white; names signal diversity in the supporting cast.

A thrilling, if overly didactic, mystery.

(Mystery. 8-12)

Much Too Busy Bond, John | Crocodile/Interlink (32 pp.) $18.95 | Oct. 31, 2023 | 9781623717223

Don’t let the pigeon miss the forest for the trees.

Like a feathered White Rabbit from Wonderland, Pigeon is an animal with places to go and people to see. Living in a crowded city, he’s always on the move. So much so that, without even realizing it, he ends up in the country, far from his intended destination.

He quickly enlists the help of a kind mouse who, until now, was enjoying staring into space with a cup of coffee in hand. Mouse is happy to lead the way but is inclined to stop and look at leaves, feathers, and cloud formations.

It’s only when Mouse realizes that they’re even more lost than before that Pigeon takes it upon himself to open his eyes and cheer Mouse up with a little nature appreciation of his own.

Vibrant art and hilarious body language keep eyes moving across every eclectic page. Meanwhile, elegant, even innovative, page designs parcel the action out in the same way that panels 92 OCTOBER 15, 2023

would in a comic. Don’t be surprised, though, if the lesson to be imparted in this tale is aimed less at kids than at their time-constrained caregivers.

Slow and steady won’t win any races in this sweet story, but it will help you value the walk along the way. (Picture book. 3-6)

Hippos Remain Calm Boynton, Sandra | Boynton Bookworks (40 pp.) | $18.99 | Dec. 12, 2023 9781665938532

When the unpredictable occurs, two hippos (mostly) do their best to keep their cool.

Boynton’s beloved hippos grace pages once more; this time their story is a play on the author’s debut, Hippos Go Berserk (1977). A cozy day at home turns out quite unexpectedly for the titular hippos. As they wander outside “in the cool April weather,” it suddenly begins to snow. A loud group of ducks interrupts their quiet, and an evening with a friend eventually becomes an opportunity for a partying group of hippos to go…well, berserk. Through it all, the hippos greet each surprise with a positive attitude, turning something like spring snow into a sensory delight. Boynton’s fans will surely approve of this hippo revival. The illustrations are easily recognizable, and eagle-eyed readers will note that the scene with the party animals is a near-identical replica of that in the original. Readers will chuckle at the hippos’ version of poetry and a ringing telephone that demands to be answered. The rhyming text hits a familiar rhythm and readaloud cadence. From deep breathing to displaying flexibility, the hippos demonstrate useful self-soothing techniques to little readers. Perhaps the most profound technique is that sometimes, remaining calm in a situation means joining in and letting loose with the not-so-calm crew.

These hippos (like Boynton) continue to charm. (Picture book. 2-4)

How To Be Your Dog’s Best Friend Bulay, Elena | Trans. by Lena Traer Thames & Hudson (96 pp.) | $21.95 Sept. 12, 2023 | 9780500653296

An illustrated guide to getting, training, and caring for a canine companion.

Using her adopted shelter dog Jo as both model and exemplar, Bulay runs through the basics in this work translated from Russian. She starts with select galleries of (unidentified) pure and mixed breeds and then offers canny advice about choosing a dog and preparing its new home, providing proper nutrition and health care at various times in its life, traveling with a dog, and training it using positive reinforcement. “A dog is not a toy,” she warns (twice), and the message that they are a big responsibility comes through clearly. That they also make joyful, rewarding companions is likewise implicit throughout: “MY DOG IS THE BEST!” she coos at the beginning, “And your dog is the best!” at the end. Her suggestions, if not always feasible (“Put away any rugs”), are at least specific and generally applicable. From the outset she also shows awareness of the dog’s feelings and reactions… and even devotes the final spread to a broader discussion of the “Five Freedoms” of animal welfare. Both the color spreads (in which Bulay depicts herself and Jo in domestic and outdoor settings) and monochrome assemblages in between recommended supplies and pets in doggy poses underscore the guide’s relaxed, affectionate tone. Most human figures are light-skinned or have skin the color of the page.

An engaging mix of personal experiences and solid guidelines. (lists of organizations devoted to helping dogs, recommended reading) (Illustrated nonfiction. 7-10)

KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

When the unpredictable occurs, two hippos (mostly) do their best to keep their cool.

HIPPOS REMAIN CALM

Skip!: A Graphic Novel Burgess, Sarah | Andrews McMeel Publishing (256 pp.) | $14.99 paper Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781524877378

Jay is a poet who struggles with making friends and self-expression—until meeting someone who fulfills a deep desire to connect and belong.

After crashing into Beah and stumbling into an invitation to Skip, Beah’s double Dutch group, Jay, who uses they/them pronouns, finally finds a place to belong and be themself.

Jay feels that they know who they are and can achieve their writing dreams with support from their new crew, especially Beah. However, bullying, jealousy, and simmering tensions culminate in an explosive conflict that fractures the group right before their big competition. Ultimately, this tale shows how an apology and support of loved ones can make up for mistakes and help heal those who become hurt.

The vibrant and energetic graphic art style evokes the emotional highs and lows of close friendships, while the text complements the imagery to provide insights into Jay’s inner life. Dynamic illustrations carefully draw out and portray empathy for the motivations and complex feelings that drive this character-focused story.

The narrative emphasizes that while you can find a sense of belonging with others, you never belong to someone, underscoring that individuality and community can thrive in unison and balance. Jay reads white; Beah has KIRKUS REVIEWS

dark-brown skin and black hair, and supporting characters are diverse in skin tone.

A journey of self-discovery, creativity, and belonging centers a sweet, uplifting story of friendship and ambition. (concept art, sketches) (Graphic fiction. 9-13)

The Secret of the Ravens Cacao, Joanna | Clarion/HarperCollins (272 pp.) | $15.99 paper | Nov. 7, 2023 9780358650119

Impoverished twins use magic to try to escape poverty.

Orphaned twins Elliot and Liza sell trash to survive. When they discover Ravens’ Unkindness, a magical way to complete quests and earn money, they jump at the chance. The siblings follow the ravens to the capital of Kawumiti Kingdom, where everything is expensive, and the king is trying to get rid of the poor. They meet a boy called Seb—a member of the king’s Royal Apprenticeship program—who suggests they join him. Liza is in favor, but Elliot refuses to work for a king who doesn’t care about his people. The twins continue to do quests until a Titan snake poisons Liza. Elliot brings Liza to a mage in the woods, who sends him on near-impossible tasks to retrieve items for an antidote. Elliot and Seb work together, but each task brings more danger, forcing Elliot to make big sacrifices to save his sister. This action-packed, full-color graphic novel

is an exciting and moving Filipino-inspired fantasy. Cacao creates an immersive world and magic system; a spell glossary lists herbs and Tagalog words. Beyond central themes of siblinghood, trust, and friendship, the story addresses war, genocide, corrupt leadership, and prejudice against the impoverished. The characters in this world have brown skin and black hair.

A page-turning adventure, full of heart and charm. (map, process notes, concept art, alternate covers) (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

Addie and the Amazing Acrobats Cagan, Shauna | Hippo Park/Astra Books for Young Readers (40 pp.) | $18.99 Sept. 12, 2023 | 9781662640469

Is fame more important than flipping, flitting, and flying with friends?

In a story of friendship that survives separation, Addie, Ben, and Jude are best friend bats, the type of best friends that celebrate their birth, first tooth, and first daytime sleepover together.

Together, they form Addie and the Amazing Acrobats. Addie is “the Superstar,” Ben is “the Big Flipper,” and Jude is “the Comet.” Crowds come to watch them every night, but when the representative of the Big Bat Circus visits, Addie learns only she is being asked to join. The dismayed narrator reports that Addie leaves her friends and becomes a featured circus act. At first, life is wonderful, but then Addie realizes something is missing. When the circus visits Addie’s old bridge, she anxiously wonders if Ben and Jude are still her best friends.

When she learns they are, the circus train leaves town so the show can go on, just with a different star. Subtle humor is embedded in the digitally created illustrations, often with a backdrop of a dark teal sky. Illustrations of the bat acrobatics are creative, and crowds of bats hanging >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 93

C H I L D R E N ’ S // Q & A

THE KIRKUS Q&A: ROZ CHAST

Chast says she could revise a drawing endlessly.

The cartoonist discusses Tired Town, a delightfully kooky new collaboration with writer Patricia Marx. BY AMY REITER

WHEN ROZ CHAST pops up on Zoom to chat, a fan of

How did you and Patty land on the idea for Tired Town?

Patty came up with it. We have overlapping senses of humor. I like the idea of a little kid who doesn’t want to go to sleep. My kids never did. Now I have this granddaughter who’s almost 3, and getting her to sleep, there’s a whole routine. Little kids just don’t want to go to sleep. You 94 OCTOBER 15, 2023

pretty much have to tie them to the bed and say, “This is it. I brought you, like, 74 glasses of water. Mom and Dad haven’t slept in a year. Now you need to go to sleep.”

Do you relate more to the main character or the parents?

I can see it from both sides. That’s one thing

about being a kid—you ultimately have to do what your parents tell you to.

They’re paying the bills, for one thing. And you can’t, like, play dodgem cars with traffic. But some things, like going to bed, are hard to understand. This is what this little girl feels: “I’m awake. Why do I have to go to bed?”

Do you base your characters on real people, pets, or inanimate objects, or do they come from your imagination?

It’s almost always my imagination. But the building blocks of what’s in my imagination are probably real. I’m not drawing the exact lamps we have in the house, but they’re probably a mishmash of lamps I’ve owned or seen. I’m happy to draw interiors because

my visual memory bank is interiors. I’m less good at drawing nature.

You and Patty were collaborators before you were friends, right?

Yes! When we were first starting out, in our mid20s, in New York, she had written a humor piece for the Atlantic that I illustrated.

When it was published, her mother said, “I like this illustration. You should call that girl; I think you could be friends.” Patty did call me. It was almost like her mother set us up on a playdate. Then we met a couple of years later at a book party. She was putting together a children’s book with Jane Martin, for Now Everybody Really Hates Me. They asked me to illustrate it. So that was the first book we collaborated on.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Laura Sciacovelli

her work finds her exactly as expected: warm, whimsical, thoughtfully forthcoming, and wryly prone to place almost any answer into a broader framework of existential dread, with a colorful, obliquely zany sense of humor that makes you lean in and inspect carefully.

Those qualities come through in Tired Town (Roaring Brook Press, Oct. 10), the new picture book—about a little girl who will not go to sleep—that she created with longtime collaborator, pal, and fellow New Yorker contributor Patricia Marx. These qualities also characterize Chast’s other endeavors, including a new adult book, I Must Be Dreaming, out later this month; the embroidery projects she shares on Instagram; the wacky ukulele duo she and Marx started as a lark, only to end up (surreally, Chast admits) playing with Isaac Mizrahi at New York’s swanky Café Carlyle; and, of course, the cartoons she’s contributed to the New Yorker for nearly five decades.

Chast speaks to us from her Connecticut home. The Brooklyn native also keeps a studio in New York—so small a friend calls it a “pomme de terre”—but she works primarily from Connecticut because, she says, the city is too full of exciting distractions. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q & A // C H I L D R E N ’ S

Tell me about the collaborative process for this book.

With Patty, it’s different from other collaborations. She usually presents me with a vague idea, and I get a sense of whether this might be a project I could bring anything to. We do a lot of back and forth. Collaborating with Patty is less like, Here’s the piece. Now you draw the pictures. There’s a Venn diagram—she does do the words and I do the pictures, but she can give me suggestions or tell me to change something, and vice versa. Neither of us have a ton of ego in it. We just want it to be good.

You both started when there was this idea that

women can’t be funny. Did you face headwinds?

Patty and I feel like we were lucky to be women starting out when we did. She was the first female writer on the Harvard Lampoon. I was certainly not the first female cartoonist at the New Yorker, but for decades there was this real gap. When I came in 1978, there was one other female cartoonist, Nurit Karlin, and she didn’t appear frequently. It was really, as they say, a sausage party. Patty and I have talked about that—in some ways, it was advantageous to us. I also felt that there were a constellation of issues when I came in: I was female. I was much younger than most people.

My work didn’t look like anybody else’s. I felt like an oddball anyway, so I didn’t make too much of it. I should have probably thought more about it.

Is there an element of this book you feel especially proud of?

I like the colors, the character. I had to redraw because when I first conceived of the character, I saw her as older. They said, “She looks too old.” I had to redraw her with a bigger head-to-body ratio. Redrawing is a pain, but you get to fix things you didn’t see the first time around.

How did you come up with the color palette?

That’s one thing about being a kid—you ultimately have to do what your parents tell you to.

Color for me is just an instinct and some trial and error. I sometimes see a color in my head when I’m working, and I think, OK, that has to be this color.

Then I futz around on the palette until I get that color.

How do you know when you’ve hit it?

It’s looking at it, and everything looks right—or as right as it’s going to get.

Because there’s part of me that could—if I had endless time; if there was no such thing as death, not to put too fine a point on it, or sleep—take a drawing and rework it endlessly.

Do you have any career goals yet to achieve?

Well, I would like to live inside an art supply store and set up a studio in there.

Free art supplies for life.

That would be good. Nah, I don’t think super far ahead because too far down the road is decrepitude and death, and that’s ever closer as I get older. I’m always just thinking a little bit ahead.

What are you working on now?

I’m still doing these embroideries; I’m kind of obsessed. And I’m starting to work on a collaborative graphic narrative book with a wonderful New Yorker cartoonist, Jason Katzenstein—he signs his work J.A.K. It’s about our sad kitchens. I like collaborations, but I’ve never done one like this. I’m excited about it.

Tired Town

Marx, Patricia; illus. by Roz Chast Roaring Brook Press 40 pp. | $18.99 Oct. 10, 2023 | 9781250859129

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Amy Reiter is a writer in Brooklyn. Tired Town received a starred review in the Sept. 1, 2023, issue.

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upside down at performances provide unexpected images. In addition, the bats’ acrobatics provide inspiration for a colony’s worth of vivid verbs.

Anyone who has friends is a true star.

(Picture book. 4-8)

A busy father makes time to tell his bored young children an exciting story of space adventure, teamwork, and compromise.

Space Pirate Bears

S PA C E P I R AT E B E A R S

Chisholm, Alastair | Illus. by Jez Tuya Kane Miller (40 pp.) | $14.99 | Dec. 1, 2023 9781684647361

A busy father makes time to tell his bored young children an exciting story of space adventure, teamwork, and compromise.

Dad, Jamie, and Abby, who have brown skin, curly hair, and toothy smiles, huddle up close to share stories of the faraway world of Princess Leona’s Star Defenders. This group of space heroes includes Prince Pilot, Captain Neigh the Space Horse, Cosmic Witch Bogwart, and Princess Leona herself.

The cartoonish illustrations are vibrant, which makes the threat of the evil Doktor Drab even more daunting as he brings with him a dullness that drains the pages of color. But just as Princess Leona is calling upon the titular Space Pirate Bears, the galaxy’s greatest heroes, Abby and Jamie derail the story as they squabble over the details. Are the bears unicorn doctors, too, as Abby would like, or secret agents, as Jamie insists?

Ever the savvy storyteller, Dad eventually guides the adventure toward a reasonable resolution to thwart Doktor Drab and empower the formerly bored kids to become collaborative storytellers of their own: Obviously, the heroes are Space Pirate Secret Agent Unicorn Doctor Flying Ninja Bears! With the help of unicorn rainbow laser beams, the day is saved (and a lot more colorful), and the kids—and readers—are gently reminded of the fun of working together. Though Doktor Drab has grayish skin, most human characters in Dad’s tale are brown-skinned.

A bright, big universe of fun and imagination. (Picture book. 4–8)

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The Brothers Zzli Cousseau, Alex | Illus. by Anne-Lise Boutin Trans. by Vineet Lal | Eerdmans (40 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 24, 2023 | 9780802856098

Cousseau puts a unique spin on the oft-told encounter between a girl and three bears.

In this version, the girl is the homeowner, and the bears, known as the brothers Zzli, are the guests. Unlike in the fairy tale, there are no intruders—“driven out of their home,” the bears arrive at the girl’s invitation and are greeted warmly. They bring joy to her life, and together the newfound family overcomes communication barriers and other challenges. Despite the bears’ kind hearts, intolerant neighbors treat them as dangerous interlopers and respond with escalating acts of harassment and violence. Boutin’s detailed illustrations are riveting, with bold inky lines and palettes reminiscent of woodcut prints used in 20th-century Russian and Polish folk art. Lal’s translation is clear and efficient, but some of the musicality and humor of the original French text is lost in the process. As an allegory for the treatment of refugees, the story lacks the subtlety and coherence of other titles. Portraying the refugees, but not their host, as animals may reinforce their otherness, and because the depiction of the animals that make up the broader community is superficial, younger readers may not understand their motivations. Yet, with additional

context and substantial adult guidance, this tale might help older readers make sense of the topic. The girl has skin the white of the page.

A quirky, poignant take on the refugee crisis, though one best introduced by sensitive caregivers or educators.

(Picture book. 7-10)

The Little Book of Words That Matter: 100 Words for Every Child To Understand Diaz, Joanne Ruelos | Illus. by Annelies Draws | Magic Cat (208 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781419767777

A rich glossary to help deepen children’s perspectives on themselves and the world.

The author/ illustrator duo behind The Little Book of Joy (2021) present words about feelings (bored, overwhelmed, appreciative), character (accomplish, resilience), the ways we differ from one another (identity, ethnicity), and changemaking (patience, teamwork); the terms are listed alphabetically within each section. One page concisely introduces and explains a concept, like frustrated: What is it, what does it feel like, and what might we do or say when frustrated? The following page offers four steps to take when frustrated, then asks, “What could you say or do if you saw a friend feeling frustrated?” Sometimes, the author suggests that children look for examples of the concept, say an affirmation, engage in moving and KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

breathing exercises, ask questions, or take care of themselves and loved ones.

Commendably, both positive (grateful, loved) and negative words (failure, anger) are included. Of the abundant adjectives, numerous nouns, and scattered verbs, the ones most likely to draw attention are those like anti-racism, diversity, and race. Sensitivity and openness characterize the handling of these terms, though the entry on gender doesn’t acknowledge those with nonbinary identities. In flat, pastel vignettes, racially diverse, rosy-cheeked kids (mostly) and adults give concrete form to abstractions.

A positive, age-appropriate, and engaging view of complicated concepts. (note to adults) (Informational picture book. 5-8)

Tasty: A History of Yummy Experiments Elliott, Victoria Grace | Random House Graphic (240 pp.) | $21.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 9780593425329 | Series: Yummy, 2

Not since series opener Yummy (2021) has learning science and history looked this delicious.

Food sprites Peri, Fee, Fada, and Naia inform and entertain readers as they explore the origins and uses of well-loved foods and ingredients, each of which has its own chapter: cheese, pizza, pickles, soda, processed foods, and gelatin. Peri mostly takes the lead, with Naia assisting when she needs backup. Fee and Fada take a more supportive role in acting out scenes and asking questions to help push the narrative along. In segments labeled “Story Time,” the cast acts out colorful and intriguing food origin legends, following up with the actual historical facts. The foods’ histories and origins are explained, along with how they have evolved through time and across different cultures. Labeled maps show readers where the food items originated and where different versions can KIRKUS REVIEWS

be found. For example, “The Abridged Atlas of Pickle History” contains 20 varieties, from Korean kimchi and European pickled herring to ceviche and other pickles of the Americas.

The appealing recipes are clearly explained with diagrams but are somewhat involved and will likely require adult assistance. Charming, colorful illustrations and adorable sprites (who have a range of skin tones) keep things interesting. Enough detail is provided to keep the text informative without becoming overly complicated or overwhelming.

Deliciously educational. (bibliography, drawing guide, profiles of food sprites) (Graphic nonfiction. 8-12)

Marya Khan and the Spectacular Fall Festival Faruqi, Saadia | Illus. by Ani Bushry Amulet/Abrams (144 pp.) | $14.99 Oct. 3, 2023 | 9781419761201 | Series: Marya Khan, 3

Marya Khan finds that winning can mean different things.

Marya believes that bigger means better, especially when it comes to pumpkins. The bigger the pumpkin, the more pumpkin curry, cookies, cake, and bread Mama can make! But the family’s trip to the pumpkin patch sours for Marya when she sees her perfectly annoying classmate Alexa R. win the party dress competition and take home a pumpkin-shaped trophy. Fans of other books in the series will know that Marya has clashed with Alexa in the past. So when Marya’s school announces a prize for selling the most tickets to the fall festival, Marya knows she has to win. And she begins to plan Operation Sell Tickets. But then, of course, so does Alexa. Eventually, however, both girls realize that maybe—just maybe—things will go more smoothly if they cooperate. While the outcome’s a tad predictable, there’s a lot of action, making for a delightful, sweet

read. Over the course of this chapter book, Marya does some growing up and learns a few lessons. Her relationships with others ring true, from her older siblings (with whom she often bickers), to her beloved grandmother, to her classmates. Marya and her family are Pakistani American and Muslim, while Alexa presents white.

A recipe for pumpkin spice cookies closes out the book.

Crisp and vibrant, just like a perfect fall day. (Chapter book. 6-9)

The Sky Over Rebecca Fox, Matthew | Union Square Kids (256 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781454951896

Kara Lukas, a contemporary Stockholm girl without friends, spends her time alone or with her beloved grandfather, who is enthusiastic about astronomy.

Kara lives with her caring, hardworking single mom; her father left when she was a baby. One day, observant Kara notices a strange snow angel, one without any footsteps around it. Later, she finds a coin in the snow, stamped with a swastika and the date 1942.

Then, a third odd thing happens: She meets the coin’s owner, a resourceful Jewish girl named Rebecca who’s trying to escape the Nazis with her younger brother, Samuel, who has a disability and cannot walk. For the siblings, it’s 1944, and they have managed to survive on an island in the middle of a frozen lake that Kara can only see when Rebecca’s hand touches her bare skin. The three children begin a relationship that crosses the decades dividing their existences. Kara has an empathetic desire to help her two new friends, and she has the help of Lars, a bully who eventually becomes a friend. The book provides limited information about the Holocaust, and some readers may not fully understand the overall situation. Kara’s abilities to enter the past, interact with the siblings, and even bring Lars OCTOBER 15, 2023 97

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with her are hazily explained, but her compassion and mature understanding are admirable, and readers will want to engage with her.

A time-travel story filled with friendship and compassion. (Fiction. 9-12)

To Dogs, With Love: A Love Letter to the Dogs Who Help Us Gianferrari, Maria | Illus. by Ishaa Lobo Roaring Brook Press (40 pp.) | $18.99 Dec. 19, 2023 | 9781250244949

A thank-you note to therapy dogs of all kinds.

Gianferrari, author of numerous books about animal and human connections, here focuses on dogs as helpers. Gentle text and appealing digital illustrations show canines bringing joy to humans in all kinds of ways. There are support dogs for children in hospitals, courtrooms, and funeral homes, as well as dogs to be read to in libraries. Incarcerated adults are depicted training dogs for therapy roles—an experience that can be just as rewarding for the trainers.

With their tail-wagging enthusiasm, soft fur (all the better for cuddling), and attentiveness, dogs provide comfort and confidence. The variety of situations portrayed is wide: We see dogs at work not only in institutions but also in backyards and on beds.

In individual scenes and on a final spread showing a dog shelter fundraiser, both dogs and humans range widely in size, shape, age, colors, features, and ability. Though the overall book is simple, the language is pleasingly complex in places, including words like coiffed and nuzzling.

Gianferrari has paid careful attention to the sounds of words, with plentiful alliteration and occasional rhyme or repetition. Lobo has included interesting detail; her pictures would also show well to a small group. The book wraps up with a note on therapy dogs and web sources for more information about service dogs.

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High fives for this tribute to helper dogs. (Informational picture book. 3-6)

Backcountry Goebel, Jenny | Scholastic (224 pp.) | $8.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781338857887

Thirteen-year-old Em and her diabetic alert dog face the dangerous Colorado wilderness alone.

While playing in a championship volleyball match, Em starts to feel sick. She pushes through so she won’t disappoint Dad, who only seems interested in her when she’s playing sports. More importantly, Em doesn’t want him canceling their upcoming backcountry cross-country ski trip, her chance to show him that she’s fun to be around outside of sports. But everything changes when she learns that she has Type 1 diabetes. Em’s matched with black lab Molly, a diabetic alert dog, who Dad says can join them on their trip. However, a whiteout separates Em and Molly from Dad, who falls and breaks his leg. They make it to a cabin, and with Dad sheltering, Em risks everything to go find help with Molly by her side—even though her supply of insulin was damaged.

The book attempts to walk the fine line between perpetuating the trope of the “inspirational disabled person” and presenting a character who displays intrepid adaptability while honoring her own limitations. Em’s internalized ableism is heartbreaking, however, perhaps because the compressed timeline—a matter of months between her diagnosis and the trip— doesn’t allow for in-depth, nuanced processing on her part. Em eventually realizes she can still live a “normal” life, but ultimately, it feels as though it’s despite her diabetes rather than because disability is normal. Main characters read white.

My Big Fantastic Family Guillain, Adam & Charlotte Guillain | Illus.

by Ali Pye | Nosy Crow (32 pp.) | $18.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9798887770307

Lily-May’s parents have separated, which brings complex emotions.

Lily-May lives with Mom but still sees Dad regularly. Mom has a new partner named Peter, who has two boys of his own. These big changes make for a lot of feelings, including sadness, longing for the way things used to be, fear, excitement, and joy. LilyMay ultimately realizes that these changes are rewarding: They mean new playmates and grandparents, extra quality time with Mom and Dad, and a brand-new pet cat. This story is really about what comes after parents separate. Writing in first person, the Guillains make it clear that Lily-May isn’t at fault for the separation and show both parents at big events. In the end, Lily-May comes away with an important lesson: Home is “anywhere I’m with my big fantastic family.” Lily-May has dark bobbed hair and tan skin and is almost always accompanied by a beloved stuffed toy, Blue Bear. Mom has darker brown skin and straight dark hair; Dad has pale skin and curly dark hair, while Peter and his children are pale-skinned and redhaired. A sweet layout of snapshot photos shows Lily-May with various configurations of family members, a nice visual representation of this beautiful, blended family.

An honest, encouraging story of a loving, evolving family. (Picture book.

3-6)

For more by Charlotte Guillain, visit Kirkus online.

An adventurous scenario that nearly but doesn’t quite achieve strong disability representation. (Adventure. 8-12)

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CHILDREN’S

A parent bear enumerates the many wonderful things about sharing the world with a beloved small cub.

I LOVE YO U TO TH E M O O N AN D BAC K AL L YE AR LO N G

I Love Me!

Your Voice, Your Vote

Harrison, Marvyn | Illus. by Diane Ewen Abrams Appleseed (32 pp.) | $14.99 Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781419768095

Henderson, Leah | Illus. by Keisha Morris Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 Dec. 19, 2023 | 9780062986115

A collection of affirmations to foster self-love in little ones.

The cover features two smiling Black children and a very proud pup surrounded by hearts—a hint at the joy to come within. Harrison, founder of the online community Dope Black Dads, has written a wonderful guidebook to empower youngsters and their caregivers and help them harness the power of words. Every day, a Black father sits his two children in front of a mirror and makes positive declarative statements: “Together, we say words to help us feel proud and brave, powerful and strong.” Each message is followed up with examples. On Monday, the children start the day by declaring, “I am brave!” One of the children recalls courageous moments, such as going down the big slide or reading a scary book. On Tuesday, they shout, “I am smart!” The child’s brother proudly lists his accomplishments, like his reading prowess and ability to make slime. Ewen’s bright, bold, charming illustrations complement the encouraging text. The book concludes with a list of additional affirmations, a note for caregivers from the author, suggestions on how to say the affirmations, information about Dope Black Dads, tips on how adults can read more with their children, and a discussion guide.

A Black family makes an important journey on Election Day. Young Quetta and her mother and grandmother take a long ride on two different buses (standing room only). Once they arrive at their polling place, they see a long line of community members, and they settle in to wait…and wait…and wait. It’s a big day—Grandma has even donned her Sunday hat, though it’s Tuesday. If it’s such an important day, though, why does Quetta’s mother still have to go to work? the girl wonders.

And as it begins to rain, Quetta suggests going home. That opens up a conversation between Quetta and Grandma, whose parents and grandparents fought for the right to vote and who explains just how crucial it is to exercise this right. As they reach the front of the line, everyone is told that they must have their IDs in order to vote. Grandma is initially unable to find hers, and a knot forms in Quetta’s stomach. Luckily, all ends well, and Quetta gets to watch two generations of women in her family cast their votes. Henderson’s story of a loving family working hard to vote puts this civic duty into greater historical context. Morris’ digital illustrations have an intimate, collagelike look, with specific details that bring to life the various members of this community.

A delightful book to start or end any day. (Picture book. 4-8) KIRKUS REVIEWS

A much-needed reminder that voting is a right not to be taken for granted. (author’s note, further reading, timeline) (Picture book. 4-8)

I Love You to the Moon and Back All Year Long Hepworth, Amelia | Illus. by Tim Warnes Tiger Tales (32 pp.) | $18.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 9781664300170

A parent bear enumerates the many wonderful things about sharing the world with a beloved small cub through the four

seasons.

While this is yet another sweet I-love-you book, it’s a cut above many of the rest with its adorable artwork and text that combines rhymes and rhythms with a message that will largely be understandable to even the smallest tots: “I love to chase and play with you / on hot midsummer days, // and swim in sparkling waters / underneath the sun’s bright rays.” The parent loves the rising sun, the crisp fall leaves, the small cub’s wonder at new spring shoots, as well as holding the cub’s paw as they walk together, friends and family, and—most of all—the cub’s presence. “You fill my life with magic, / each day a new surprise, / a softly swirling snowflake that / cheers up winter skies. // And as you drift to sleep / beneath a sky of inky blue, // I’m grateful for the love we share / that shines the whole year through.” In Warnes’ soft illustrations, the duo appear soft and cuddly, their facial expressions and activities anthropomorphized and their love for each other very clear.

The backgrounds of forest, river, and mountains show the changing seasons with bright colors.

Sure, the I-love-you-this-much shelf has room for this one. (Picture book.

3-6)

For more by Amelia Hepworth, visit Kirkus online.

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Thank You, Day!

Riley’s Really Big Worries

Hopper, Charlie | Illus. by Penelope Dullaghan | Cameron Kids (32 pp.) | $18.99 Sept. 5, 2023 | 9781951836702

Housman, Donna | Illus. by Renée Andriani Brown Books Kids (32 pp.) | $18.00 Oct. 17, 2023 | 9781612546537 Series: ECSELent Adventures of Hemmy and Shemmy, 4

A child expresses gratitude for the great outdoors.

This rhyming, poetic picture book gives readers a chance to join the narrator in showing joy and appreciation for nature’s gifts. From the grass to the flowers and birds, the child finds ways to be thankful for each element of the natural world: the sky holding sunlight, the beauty of buds, even the hardworking buzzing bees. There are poetic line breaks throughout the text and a purposeful use of punctuation, a lovely example of more complex writing for children. Dullaghan’s illustrations make use of a limited yet rich palette featuring blue and green with pops of yellow, burnt orange, and purple. The colors have the effect of drawing the reader’s eye to details such as the little orange cat and the stunning hues of the sunset. The child is drawn with paperwhite skin and black braided hair. The endpapers resemble block printing, with a mustard-yellow background and a repeated pattern of images from the book in the negative space, leaving no page untouched. While children are often taught to show gratitude for people and things, this book provides space for reveling in the natural world and the bounty therein.

A lovely opportunity to stop and smell the roses—and say thank you. (Picture book. 4-6)

Riley frets after catching the snuffleplox from a friend.

It isn’t just sneezing and a runny nose that are plaguing Riley—it’s also his newfound information about germs. Anxiety takes over as Riley starts imagining these invisible microscopic invaders around him, like a monster under the bed. A trip to Dr. Grayfoot and a supportive class discussion led by his teacher Mr. Dixon put Riley and his classmates, many of whom are also worried, at ease. All the characters are anthropomorphized animals: Riley is a sweet fluffy-tailed fox, his best friend, Milo, is a raccoon, and Dr. Grayfoot is an elephant. Andriani’s illustrations are appealing, with plenty of details for readers to take in, like the darling mouse family checking in at their own tiny window at the doctor’s office.

Clinical psychologist Housman’s foreword explains that the book is intended to help children understand and manage emotions. As a result of this singular focus, the story lacks character development and other elements that would make it a more compelling read for little ones. As a teaching tool for caregivers, however, it succeeds. Mr. Dixon’s suggestions for dealing with anxiety, such as breathing deeply and voicing worries,

Now floating above Manhattan, the theme park of the future faces old and new threats alike.

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are helpful, and the “Tips for Readers” section is informative and useful.

Purposeful but accessible. (Picture book. 4-8)

Futureland: The Nightmare Hour Hunter, H.D. | Illus. by Khadijah Khatib Random House (384 pp.) | $17.99 $20.99 PLB | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9780593479469 9780593479483 PLB | Series: Futureland, 2

Now floating above Manhattan, the theme park of the future faces old and new threats alike.

After the events in Atlanta in the series opener, Futureland’s lessthan-stellar reputation requires the whole Walker family—preteen tech whiz and detective Cameron, his parents, Uncle Trey, and their assorted robot helpers— to relocate to New York City, leaving behind a life Cam’s become attached to. But when his friend Yusuf stows away under suspicious circumstances, Cam agrees to keep his presence a secret from his parents for now as their flying amusement park home is once again compromised. Whether it’s by a previous foe or someone completely new isn’t always clear, but the Atlanta episode has left a mark on all the Walkers and undermined public trust. Cam’s frustration over wanting to help but no longer being trusted by grown-ups adds a layer of conflict to this thoughtful, compelling addition to a series that’s as grounded in family and friendship as its attractions are elevated in imaginative Afrofuturism. Between Cam’s old and new friends, the ranks of middle school mystery solvers grow just in time to grapple with a callous villain who’s targeting Harlem residents. The savvy and supportive squad of kids ultimately prevails, but an even more ominous baddie looms in the background, suggesting more to come.

A wild ride with high tech, high stakes, and high energy. (guide to Futureland) (Science fiction. 9-13)

KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

The Caldecott-winning duo offers eye-opening insights into some nonobvious animal behaviors.

WHY D O ELEPHANTS HAVE BIG EARS?

Flooded Ilustrajo, Mariajo | Frances Lincoln (40 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 3, 2023 | 9780711276789

A busy urban animal populace, initially oblivious to an observant monkey, grapples with the problem of rising water.

Like a lostin-the-shuffle Lorax, the monkey (a tamarin or patas monkey, perhaps), spying the problem and its solution on the title page, tries repeatedly to alert the preoccupied citizens. Giraffes and other large animals can ignore the rising water at first, but smaller ones struggle. (Ever-clever rats are quick to commandeer all manner of tiny watercraft: They crew through a restaurant and take a museum audio tour in a raft.) At the museum, the monkey rescues a low-hanging, Vermeer-esque painting as the water rises ever higher. Street vendors sell oxygen bottles and goggles, and animals stage underwater demonstrations. “Everyone needed it sorted out. But no one knew what to do…” The monkey is finally successful in engaging everyone, tugof-war fashion, to work together for a solution. Ilustrajo’s simple plotting permits interpretation of the text either as a celebration of community cooperation or an allegorical warning of climate change—or both. Either way, she cautions that such environmental calamities bring consequences.

“Nothing was quite the same as before.

There were lots of new problems. But now they knew the only way to fix a problem…was together.” The muted, gray-blue palette, punctuated only by KIRKUS REVIEWS

the monkey’s golden tail, brings to life often amusing scenes in this bad news–good news fable.

Impressively deep—even after the water recedes. (Picture book. 3-7)

Why Do Elephants Have Big Ears?: Questions―and Surprising Answers―About Animals Jenkins, Steve & Robin Page Little, Brown (40 pp.) | $18.99 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9780316456791

The Caldecott-winning duo offers eye-opening insights into some nonobvious animal behaviors

and features.

Nineteen creatures, arranged in no obvious order, strike dignified poses in full-body or partial views here, but readers may be just as taken by the accompanying nature notes. There, the co-authors/illustrators supply several answers to the titular question and a few speculative benefits about zebras’ stripes, for instance; they go on to explain why bats hang upside down and provide credible reasons why wombat poop is cube-shaped and why hippos fling theirs far and wide with their tails. For budding naturalists with a need for further details, the animals are measured for scale by small adjacent silhouettes matched to human ones; fuller accounts of size, weight, diet, and habitat are included in a closing section. Co-author/illustrator Jenkins died in 2021, which may explain why some of the art, such as

a rather diaphanous naked mole rat and a sketchy red-eyed tree frog, has an unfinished feel; still, the majestic dromedary, an extreme close-up of a giant squid’s eye, and even a giraffe represented by just a segment of neck are astonishingly realistic and aglow with the presence that marks Jenkins’ best work. A bibliography closes out the work.

Absorbing and enlightening. (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Just One Flake Jonker, Travis | Abrams (48 pp.) | $18.99 Oct. 10, 2023 | 9781419760112

Follow one child’s monumental effort to catch a snowflake.

Liam, a small, dark-haired child with peach-colored skin, has a singular mission: “I want to catch a snowflake. Just one snowflake. Right here.” (The accompanying image shows the young narrator, tongue sticking out.) Wearing green mittens, snow boots, and bobble hat, Liam spends the whole day romping in the snow. The child lies on the ground, builds a snowman, and then climbs it (to be closer to the sky) and even runs as fast as possible, mouth open, to no avail. Exhausted by these efforts and then called inside, Liam catches the last snowflake of the day with a flying leap…as the flake lands, safely in hand. As Liam heads inside for cocoa and crafts, the day ends on a comfortable note. Jonker’s naïve illustrations feature thick black lines and expressive movement with comic strip–like pacing. A detailed closeup on the last flake of the day shows the crystalline snowflake melt in the warmth of Liam’s mitten in a wordless four-panel page that brings just the right amount of wonder and beauty to this otherwise whimsical tale. Liam’s various snow-swallowing poses, tongue lolling out, are sure to entertain, and even though “hot chocolate probably tastes better anyway,” any young reader excited about a snow >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 101

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day can be expected to attempt to follow suit.

A satisfying snow day saga. (Picture book. 4-8)

Ruth First Never Backed Down Joseph, Danielle | Illus. by Gabhor Utomo Kar-Ben (32 pp.) | $19.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 9781728460284

A South African woman boldly spoke out.

Ruth First (1925-1982) was born in South Africa, the granddaughter of Jewish Eastern European immigrants who had experienced prejudice. From a young age, she was deeply troubled by her country’s apartheid system. In time, she met other activists, including a young Nelson Mandela, and worked tirelessly as an investigative journalist, exposing brutal conditions faced by Black workers; she also publicized the ideas of Black activists whose work was ignored. The government enacted laws to quell apartheid resistance, but she continued to work on her banned paper illegally. Eventually, Ruth became the first white woman to be arrested under the new edicts. Forced to leave South Africa upon her release, Ruth and her family moved to Britain, where she continued her activism. Thirteen years later, she became a university professor in Mozambique. Tragically, Ruth First was killed when a bomb exploded in her office. This is a warmly written account of a determined woman who is a role model for young readers and whose important work commands respect and wide recognition. The book closes with a timeline and information on Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and other leaders in the anti-apartheid movement. Ruth and family present white; friends and fellow activists are racially diverse.

A name, a life, and a cause to be long remembered. (Informational picture book. 7-11) 104 OCTOBER 15, 2023

An expansion of unicorn lore worth following to see where it crash-lands next.

D E AT H & S PA R K L E S A N D T H E S A C R E D G O L D E N C U P C A K E

Death & Sparkles and the Sacred Golden Cupcake Justus, Rob | Chronicle Books (368 pp.) $22.99 | $14.99 paper | Nov. 28, 2023 9781797206370 | 9781797206387 paper Series: Death & Sparkles, 2

Two adventures collide in an uproarious combination of heritage and revenge in this second series entry.

Opposing journeys, told across alternating chapters, provide insight into unicorns’ less savory qualities.

In one tale, four orphaned moles end up in the care of unicorn society, where they’re assigned gardening duties. While the moles toil under the belief that they’re earning a higher status, they end up facing even more discrimination, including in unicorn court. Meanwhile, Sparkles has a glowing horn, a magic golden cupcake from his parents, and a restless urge to dance somewhere unknown for an uncertain reason. Death tags along like the friend he is. Sparkles endangers himself and others with his carelessly confident manner, instigating an argument between the two friends.

Seeing ostensibly silly characters push each other into new growth, such as Sparkles experiencing humility and self-doubt or Death becoming a prankster, creates suitable dramatic foils for all the absurd humor surrounding them. The inevitable showdown with the scene-stealing moles leads to new stars in the series cast. Endless visual jokes make each page turn rewarding, from the moles’ wide variety of traps to some winking references to

green pipes from a certain video game franchise. A recurring gag in which someone delivers a wall of text, only to be ignored, speaks to the relaxed nature of the story.

An expansion of unicorn lore worth following to see where it crash-lands next. (sketches) (Graphic adventure.

10-14)

The Little Tiger Killen, Nicola | Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) | $17.99 | Dec. 12, 2023 9781665940986 | Series: My Little Animal Friend

The fifth in a series of wonder-filled, special-eventthemed books.

Ollie, a small child with skin the color of the page, previously seen sporting rabbit, reindeer, bear, and kitten costumes, here takes on the persona of a very gentle tiger. It’s not springtime, winter holiday, back-toschool time, or Halloween; it’s her birthday, and she’s received a tiger suit. As she is “practicing her roar,” alone with the cat, she spots a gigantic bunch of balloons outside the window and races out. Though she runs and runs, they almost float away, and she considers giving up. Then she remembers she’s a tiger and, roaring, she persists. With a huge leap she grabs them, and they lift her aloft. She flies for a while, then drops softly down and, “determined,” follows a path through some (oddly bare) trees, to find…a surprise party for her, with all her animal friends! Activities include a treasure hunt, a freeze dance, blowing KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

and popping bubbles, and a birthday lunch with cake. Of course she thanks everyone, and “drifting gently home,” she gives a “joyful roar.” Tender, textured grayscale lines and touches of watercolor render the magic of a “birthday she would always remember” completely believable.

Another sweet celebration of imagination. (Picture book. 3-6)

Coyote’s Wild Home Kingsolver, Lily & Barbara Kingsolver Illus. by Paul Mirocha | Gryphon Press (32 pp.) | $18.99 | Nov. 28, 2023 9780940719484

In this picture book from the Pulitzer Prize winner and her daughter, two youngsters embark on adventures.

Three relationships subtly unfold in this captivating tale: coyotes and their world, Diana and her grandfather, and other humans and Earth’s remaining wilderness. One summer afternoon, Coyote Pup’s aunt takes him on his first hunt. Close by, young Diana begins her first camping trip. Diana asks about this environment, new to her; Grandpa points out the wildlife around them and discusses their role as appreciative visitors. Pages alternate between the coyotes and the humans.

For both young ones, the emphasis is on their senses, especially Coyote Pup’s keen nose and Diana’s sharp eyes as she spots prints and scat. Grandpa tells Diana that if there are too many deer and rabbits, the forest will be overrun; coyotes help keep things in balance by hunting these herbivores. Meanwhile, Coyote Pup encounters his first prey, a vole. Coyote Pup and Diana (who goes fishing with her grandfather) both fail at their first predations, and both compensate with wild berries; their parallel family warmth also connects them. Backmatter offers more information about coyotes and how to help them. Grandpa warns Diana against overfishing: “We take what we need and KIRKUS REVIEWS

no more.” Richly detailed paintings provide a vivid virtual forest visit and breathtaking close-ups of the coyotes.

Diana and Grandpa present white; the coyotes are gloriously real.

A splendid, gentle introduction to environmental activism. (Picture book.

6-10)

All Is Found: A Frozen Anthology Ed. by Knowles, Heather & Mary Mancusi Disney Press (400 pp.) | $18.99 Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781368092487

A collection of 10 new stories in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Disney film Frozen.

This anthology combines adventure, humor, and lessons in communication and love with opportunities for readers to visit some cherished characters. In Diana Peterfreund’s “Anna of Arendelle and the Silver Skates,” young Elsa is confined to her room and wants to help Anna practice ice-skating. A surprise engagement party for the happy couple has everyone, including the unsuspecting lovebirds, in a state in “Engaging Anna and Kristoff,” by Jen Calonita. “Cold Secrets Deep Down,”

by Delilah S. Dawson, follows a sea voyage during which the sisters come face to face with a gigantic tentacled creature. In Vera Strange’s “Elsa and the Frost Monster,” Elsa feels compelled to investigate rumors of a mysterious creature up on North Mountain. “Call of the Cuckoo,” by Sámi author Karen Anne Buljo, is a Northuldra tale that speaks of wishes and love. Mancusi’s “Coronation Day” takes place on Elsa’s big day; her parents and sister are all there to support her, so why does she feel like something is wrong? There’s good variety among the stories, and the execution is largely satisfactory. Written with the expectation that readers will already be familiar with the characters and their storylines, most of the entries take place after the timeline of the

second film and reference earlier events accordingly.

A solid anthology that should satisfy fans of the franchise. (Fiction. 9-14)

Kirkus Star

Words Between Us Krans, Angela Pham | Illus. by Dung Ho Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) | $19.99 Oct. 3, 2023 | 9780063224544

A child of Vietnamese descent helps his grandmother get acclimated to their home in the United States.

Felix meets his grandma for the first time when she arrives from Vietnam to live with his family. The two quickly bond over pizza, music, and gardening. One day, Grandma gets lost at a city festival and, because she doesn’t speak English, can’t ask for help. Felix finds her and, later, decides to teach her English. He makes flashcards for different words, helping his grandma learn new words until “words became phrases. And phrases became sentences.” With a stronger command of English, Grandma begins to make new friends and navigates their world with greater ease. There is a beautiful sense of symmetry in Felix and his grandma’s relationship as they connect over their interests and lovingly support each other through challenges.

Ho’s digital illustrations are simply stunning. Vivid colors and sunlight permeate each scene, creating a sense of warmth and joy that thrums through the book even during difficult moments. Eye-catching visual details, from the various people in the crowd scenes to the flashcards in the endpapers, add depth and personality to the world they live in.

The tale wraps up with a recipe for Vietnamese pizza, just like the one that Grandma makes.

A heartwarming tale of intergenerational bonding. (Vietnamese-English glossary) (Picture book. 4-8)

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The Cool Code 2.0: The Switch Glitch Langeland, Deirdre | Illus. by Sarah Mai Clarion/HarperCollins (224 pp.) | $24.99 $15.99 paper | Nov. 14, 2023 9780358549338 | 9780358521181 paper Series: The Cool Code, 2

AI antics abound in this graphic sequel.

In this follow-up to The Cool Code (2022), the trio of coding friends— Zoey, Morgan, and Daniel—once again face C.C., their adorable yet mischievous llama AI. After leaving a program open on a public computer, their proprietary popularity-making software falls into the lap of Marcus, a shy sixth grader who’s virtually invisible among his classmates.

When C.C. advises him to gain notoriety through ostentatious pranks and social division, Morgan immediately realizes what has happened. She, Zoey, and Daniel must change C.C.’s algorithms before it’s too late, but when a programming error makes a clone of C.C., Morgan decides she must stop Marcus and C.C. herself. This sophomore effort follows closely in the footsteps of its predecessor, with peppy pacing and pleasing, full-color illustrations with a contemporary slant.

The characterizations can feel thin, however, alongside a noticeable lack of actual coding (there are just vague glimpses of screens), which may leave readers underwhelmed and frustrated. A tidy resolution buttons up loose ends neatly but feels a bit forced and saccharine. Despite these missteps, thanks to the growth of AI, this installment will have appeal due to its subject matter and alluring visuals. Zoey

and Marcus read white; Daniel appears Black, and Morgan is cued Asian.

Timely but doesn’t quite hit its mark.

(Graphic fantasy. 8-12)

Laolao’s Dumplings Liu, Dane | Illus. by Shinyeon Moon Godwin Books (48 pp.) | $18.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781250778192

Millie and Laolao love to cook dumplings together, but one day Laolao can’t make them

anymore.

Millie, a child with straight black hair and tawny skin, is dropped off at Laolao’s (Mandarin Chinese for grandmother) by Mama, who is Chinese, and brown-skinned Papi. Millie suggests they make dumplings, so the two head to Chinatown for ingredients.

Laolao knows everyone there, and all the “aunties” and “uncles,” though not related to Millie or Laolao, feel like family. Millie spends the summer visiting Laolao, but Laolao is slowing down. One day, Laolao is too tired to make dumplings. The two spend the fall snuggling by the window, and by winter, Millie’s parents are bringing Laolao’s meals to her. They’re good, but everyone misses Laolao’s dumplings. Millie has an idea, and Mama, Papi, and Millie head to Chinatown.

There, all of Laolao’s friends express their concern, sending best wishes and special ingredients back with the family. Then it’s Millie, Mama, and Papi who get to work in the kitchen, a new generation of dumpling-makers creating delicious memories to share with Laolao. Moon’s digital art

A moving portrait about discovering what home means.

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incorporates bright colors inside black outlines, reminiscent of graphic novels. Varied layouts and compositions create visual interest, albeit sometimes at the expense of consistency. The realistic scenes full of detail most strongly convey the strength of community and family.

A sweet story that brings connections and food traditions to a satisfying full circle. (recipe for dumplings) (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Star

When the Stars Came Home Luby, Brittany | Illus. by Natasha Donovan Little, Brown (40 pp.) | $18.99 Nov. 21, 2023 | 9780316592499

An Anishinaabe boy finds his North Star in a new city.

When Ojiig’s father gets a new job and the family must move to the city, Ojiig struggles to adapt.

Without the customs—like fishing and stargazing—and extended family who had previously oriented his life, he feels “like a stranger in his own skin,” alienated and alone. His parents announce that they’re going to make the city feel like home: They will look for stars. They buy glow-in-the-dark stars and a star-shaped night light, but they are poor substitutes for the Milky Way. One morning, Ojiig finds his mother preparing fabric for a quilt. As he helps her piece it together, she tells him stories about his ancestors. When she unveils the finished quilt, he’s surprised to see that its pattern is a giant star. With the quilt draped over his shoulders, he remembers all the ancestors represented within it and how their stories live on inside him. Home, he realizes, is learning about the people you come from, discovering who you are, and imagining who you might become. Told by an omniscient narrator, with limited dialogue, Luby’s (Anishinaabe) story echoes some traditional tales, increasing the impact KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

Brings connections and food traditions to a satisfying full circle.

LAOLAO’S DUMPLINGS

of its poignant ending. Donovan’s (Métis) illustrations are vividly realized with rich color and compositions that reflect Ojiig’s emotional landscape.

A moving portrait about discovering what home means. (author’s note, pronunciation note) (Picture book. 5-8)

Wild Inventions: Ideas Inspired by Animals Markle, Sandra | Millbrook/Lerner (48 pp.) $31.99 PLB | Oct. 3, 2023 | Series: Sandra Markle’s Science Discoveries

Select examples of technology “bioinspired” by observations of adaptations or behavior in the

natural world.

The veteran science writer not only neglects to mention such well-established examples as the invention of Velcro and the essential historical influence of bird wing structure on airplane wing design, but most of the links she does point to are indirect at best. For instance, she writes about honeybee strategies for cooling hives but then offers an entirely speculative connection to human technology.

Nor does she demonstrate precisely how human-made camouflage patterns were based on those of animals, and she makes only a vague connection between diving beetles and water scorpions and the way diving bells carry air underwater (“No one knows for sure what inspired some inventions that helped divers breathe”).

The line she draws between dolphin echolocation and the invention of sonar is a tenuous one (“Was Boyle’s invention inspired by dolphins echolocating? He didn’t leave a written KIRKUS REVIEWS

record identifying the inspiration for his invention”); the connection grows even more strained when she arbitrarily extends it to the lightbased “lidar” that self-driving cars use.

Unlike the narrative’s fuzzy choices and logic, the many photos and diagrams are sharp and well worth poring over, with plenty of images that are both enjoyable and informative.

Human figures are generally small and distant.

Attractive visuals, but sketchy text. (glossary, source list, index) (Nonfiction. 8-10)

Evacuation Order Mason, Jane B. & Sarah Hines Stephens Scholastic (176 pp.) | $7.99 paper Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781338629347

Two seventh graders battle dangers from a wildfire.

When a wildfire reaches their coastal California town, Sam Durand, his dog, Goodboy, and his best friend, Marco Nuñez, race to escape the flames—traveling on foot, bike, and ATV. They encounter plausible challenges like a flat bike tire, worsening smoke conditions, and a neighbor who’s been unable to evacuate. Interspersed chapters offer readers new facets of the catastrophe, following the perspectives of firefighters and a young deer spooked by the blaze. Mason and Stephens elucidate the details of the disaster with specificity and propulsive suspense, from the origins of the massive blaze right down to the dangerously hot rock that

remains after fire has torn through a streambed. The book’s characterization, however, doesn’t live up to these thrilling particulars, saddling Sam with a conflicted relationship with his deceased photographer father and an obsessive effort to re-create his dad’s images. Marco selflessly supports his friend, even to the point of leaving his own family to rescue Sam. The rest of their fearful flight results from Sam’s insistence on tracking his mother to the hospital where she works instead of evacuating with Marco’s family.

Physical descriptions of characters are minimal, though Marco is cued Latine.

A heart-pounding survival story for readers who can overlook the clumsy characterization. (Adventure. 8-12)

Carry My Heart With You McLean, Danielle | Illus. by Anna Terreros-Martin | Tiger Tales (24 pp.) | $9.99 Nov. 7, 2023 | 9781680102970

A parent and child introduce a way to make daily separations a bit easier.

At school drop-off, a parent rabbit comforts a sad child and hands the little one a heart-shaped object: “I’m giving you my heart to hold / whenever I’m not there.” The heart is meant to remind the child of the parent’s love, celebrate the things the child does well, calm worries, express joy, and watch over the child through the night. The book fails to spell out just how the heart does anything other than serve as a reminder of parental love, however. For instance, “Wave the heart above your head / to sing a happy song.” What’s the connection there? The heart is always in the child’s possession, even when the little bunny is with the parent, contradicting the opening premise that it’s for when the two are apart. Most troublingly, unlike a kissing hand, the wooden keepsake heart that comes with the book could easily be lost; with the statements that it’s the parent’s heart and that >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 107

FALL TITLES F R O M C U E N TO D E LU Z THE FOOTPRINT ISBN: 9788419464026 Picture Book · Age: 4-8

“...a beautiful and moving tale of friends lost and found.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Offbeat and lovely.”

—Kirkus Reviews

AUNTIE MAGGIE AND HER FIVE NEPHEWS AND NIECES ISBN: 9788418302671 Picture Book · Age: 4-8

ALL TITLES ARE AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH AND ALSO IN SPANISH

B O O K L I S T // C H I L D R E N ’ S

5 Can’t-Miss Middle-Grade Bestsellers 1 Nic Blake and the Remarkables

By Angie Thomas, illus. by Setor Fiadzigbey

2

Readers will eagerly await the unearthing of more secrets in the next installment.

2 It’s Not Bragging if It’s True

4 The Skull

By Jon Klassen

An upbeat volume that encourages young people to reach for the stars.

Employing his customary pitch-perfect tonal gymnastics, only Klassen could inspire readers to want craniums as pals.

3 The Eyes & the Impossible

5 The Lost Library

By Dave Eggers, illus.

by Shawn Harris

By Rebecca Stead & Wendy Mass

One remarkable creature vividly shows readers that “there is so, so much to see.”

A page-turner with striking characters and a satisfying puzzle at its heart.

By Zaila Avant-garde

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For more middle-grade bestsellers, visit Kirkus online.

4

5

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the love in the heart will never end, losing the token could be quite upsetting. The artwork features adorable cartoon anthropomorphic animals of various species, two of which use wheelchairs. The font sometimes fills in the centers of the lowercase g, o, a, and p letters with hearts, which may cause difficulties for youngsters reading on their own or for those with dyslexia.

Lackluster. (Picture book. 3-6)

Kirkus Star

The Witch’s Wings and Other Terrifying Tales Mejia, Tehlor Kay | Illus. by Junyi Wu, Justin Hernandez, Alexis Hernandez & Kaylee Rowena | Amulet/Abrams (192 pp.) | $24.99 | $14.99 paper Oct. 3, 2023 | 9781419763564 9781419763571 paper | Series: Are You Afraid of the Dark? Graphic Novel, 1

Latine folklore takes center stage in this graphicnovel adaptation of a spooky kids show from the 1990s.

Like all members of the Midnight Society—a group of diverse kids who gather by a campfire in the woods to tell scary stories—newcomer Alicia must prove herself worthy of inclusion by giving them something better than the same old ghost stories they’ve heard lately. Alicia tells three tales; the first is about a boy who finds himself on the wrong side of the Lechuza, a vengeful owl-witch. In Alicia’s second story, a girl discovers herself aboard a haunted bus, and finally Alicia tells a hair-raising tale about an adopted stray dog with horrifying powers.

Inspired by Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark?, this work maximizes the creep factor with disturbing imagery. The illustrators’ art varies in style (some are more free form, while others rely on sharp angles), but each artist’s work (or pair of artists, in the case of the Hernandezes) is well paired 110 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Latine folklore takes center stage in this graphic-novel adaptation.

T H E W I T C H ’ S W I N G S A N D O T H E R T E R R I F Y I N G TA L E S

with the emotional depth and action level of their respective pieces. Mejia’s writing maintains a fast, cohesive flow through the different art styles, and Wu’s illustrations for the final tale are tied together with the frame story for a seamless and exciting ending. Alicia is brown-skinned; she and the characters in her stories are cued Latine.

A quick, compelling, and creepy collection that’s sure to be a reader favorite.

(Graphic paranormal. 10-13)

Get Outer My Space!

Moyle, Sabrina | Illus. by Eunice Moyle Amulet/Abrams (112 pp.) | $12.99 Sept. 26, 2023 | 9781419766435 | Series: Cosmic Adventures of Astrid and Stella (a Hello!Lucky Book), 3

As they journey through space, Astrid the unicorn and Stella the flying squirrel learn big lessons.

It’s all fun and games until the Wi-Fi goes out, or so Astrid and Stella discover during one of their gaming sessions. They find relief at the Megafun Gaming Lounge, an arcade full of food, but the vibe is spoiled by poor sportsmanship. In another story, nightmares render Astrid and Stella sleepless, so Bobo the robot and the sheep residents of Planet Wink 40 offer multiple tools to calm them down and turn their night terrors into sweet dreams. Finally, Bobo invents “friend pods” that allow users to enforce a variety of personal boundaries. The topic generates some self-awareness in Astrid over past offenses. Throughout all three chapters, Bobo uses a wheel of emotions to

help our duo figure out how they’re feeling, and characters learn to address unresolved needs—handy skills for readers to adopt. Astrid and Stella model positive behaviors and emotional regulation, such as their free exchange of apologies and forgiveness.

An immersive game at the Megafun lounge renders everyone within an isometric, pixelated world, a stylistic flair in a book already brimming with colorful and creative style.

Galaxies and emotions are equally ripe for exploration in this new trio of adventures. (Graphic fiction. 6-9)

There’s Nothing Faster Than a Cheetah Nicoll, Tom | Illus. by Ross Collins Kane Miller (32 pp.) | $15.99 | Dec. 1, 2023 9781684647958

Many animals use a variety of tactics to try to outrun the cheetah in a race.

The omniscient narrator tries to deflate readers’ expectations—a race between a cheetah and a snail is hardly a fair match, since “there’s NOTHING faster than a cheetah!” But each page turn reveals more animals using different modes of transportation to give it their best shots. From a rhino on roller skates and a hippo in a hang glider to squirrels on snowmobiles and gorillas in go-karts, the cheetah leaves them all behind, though she is getting quite winded. Observant readers will notice snails on almost every spread gathering an interesting mishmash of supplies, making the ultimate reveal even funnier (spoiler: there IS something faster than a cheetah). The KIRKUS REVIEWS

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final wordless spread shows all the participating animals cheering for the winners atop the podium. Don’t miss the endpapers, which provide average speeds for many species (in kilometers per hour). Collins’ illustrations are sure to elicit giggles: The animals’ facial expressions are a hoot, and the small details will make even adult readers grin. The text is set up as a conversation between the narrator and an unidentified stand-in for the reader, though readers may wonder who is speaking, and in the end, the question of fairness is sure to come up.

Yes, cheetahs are fast and anthropomorphized animals are funny, but the race should at least be fair. (Picture book. 3-8)

Copydog OHora, Zachariah | Abrams (40 pp.) | $18.99 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781419765018

Two canine sisters confront a common sibling squabble.

Elise and Rosemont get along well. They share and take turns; they are everything a sisterhood should be. Except Rosemont won’t stop copying her older sister. It’s so annoying! In true OHora fashion, the depiction of Rosemont’s imitations is bonkers: When Elise starts playing the sousaphone, so does Rosemont (the curlicue instrument lets out a loud “SKRONK”). When Elise dresses as a pickle for Halloween, Rosemont is a cornichon. And don’t even ask who invented Cookie Soup—both sisters lay claim to that discovery. Elise accuses Rosemont of being a “copydog.” “I’m not a copydog!” responds Rosemont.

“We just like the same things, that’s all”—an exchange that will be all too familiar to kids with siblings of their own. But the biggest frustration is when Rosemont comes to a birthday party thrown for Fuzzy—Elise’s best friend from OHora’s Fuzzy, Inside and Out (2021)—and gives him the same present that Elise made! Elise storms KIRKUS REVIEWS

out of the party and roller-skates away, furious. Luckily, Rosemont copies Elise’s caring and helpful moments, too, and is there to pick her up (literally) when she’s down. Chatty speech bubbles dot the text, and Elise’s annoyance is palpable in the art, with overhead scribbles and jagged, spiky shouts. Instructions on how to make a rainstick (Fuzzy’s present) are appended.

A relatable copycat…ahem, copydog scenario. (Picture book. 4-7)

Wish Soup: A Celebration of Seollal Park, Junghwa | Little, Brown (40 pp.) $18.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780316457361

A young Korean girl is excited for Korean New Year, only to get caught up in the chaos of the preparations.

It is Seollal, and Sohee is thrilled that this year, she’ll become an eonni, or older sister, which means she’s old enough to stop hanging out with her younger sister, Somi, and baby cousins and can instead help the adults get ready for the celebration. After the children bow to the elders and receive gifts “of money and wisdom,” everyone is given a bowl of tteokguk—as Sohee’s harabeoji says, “We get one year older for every bowl we eat!” Sohee is determined to eat her bowl of tteokguk to cement the fact that she’s a year older than Somi, but Sohee is called away to set the table. A pattern is thus established: Each time Sohee is about to eat her tteokguk, she’s assigned another task. Meanwhile, Somi has consumed every bowl of tteokguk on the table, boasting that she’s now “the biggest girl in the family!” Sohee’s despair when her tteokguk is gone is quickly alleviated when her mother reveals one last bowl and tells Sohee that she’s already a big girl who’s taken on more responsibility. Park’s textured lines and colors, as well as the characters’ exaggerated expressions, marry perfectly with the simple narration,

evoking a sense of childlike charm and innocence.

A delectable and endearing celebration. (recipe for tteokguk) (Picture book. 5-8)

A Whale of a Time: Funny Poems for Each Day of the Year Ed. by Peacock, Lou | Illus. by Matt Hunt Nosy Crow (336 pp.) | $40.00 Sept. 19, 2023 | 9798887770253

Short poems for each day of the calendar year, including February 29.

Aside from the decision to include some poems in dialect, Peacock (a pseudonym) sticks to standard English in this hefty, lighthearted collection, including for the rare translations. Her 366 selections offer readers encounters with Jellicle Cats and Jumblies, limericks and nursery rhyme spinoffs (“Mary had a little lamb, / A lobster and some prunes”), and renowned versifiers from Jack Prelutsky (“It’s raining pigs and noodles, / it’s pouring frogs and hats”) to the ever-popular Anonymous, who checks in with “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly” and a five-verse version of “Nobody Loves Me, Everybody Hates Me.” Except for groups of Thanksgiving- and Christmas-themed entries in November and December, respectively, holidays go unacknowledged; instead, the entries have been gathered around dozens of quotidian topics from dogs and elephants to socks, relatives, and sneezes. While some poets make multiple contributions, most are limited to one or two, so there are plenty of lesser-known but rising lights among the diverse if mostly British and American cast of modern contributors, joined by more familiar writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Linda Sue Park, and Nikki Giovanni. Hunt’s cartoon illustrations, which feature a large and diverse cast of children in lively OCTOBER 15, 2023 111

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poses, add bright notes of energy and action to the spacious page layouts.

Readable and unusually capacious. (poet, title, and first line indexes) (Poetry. 6-10)

Kirkus Star

Glowrushes Piumini, Roberto | Trans. by Leah Janeczko NYRB Classics (120 pp.) | $12.99 paper Oct. 17, 2023 | 9781681377506

In a Turkey both real and imagined, a doting father commissions a renowned painter to show his ailing son the world.

Sickened by fresh air, soil, and sunlight, young Madurer is confined to his three white-walled rooms, books and pictures his only window to the world beyond. The painter Sakumat pours his lifeblood into his work, each landscape and invention like an act of holy creation. Together, they devise a great work that will become Madurer’s world—mountains and villages, sea and sky, and a meadow full of flowers and glowrushes that light up at night, ever changing and growing even as the light of Madurer’s life fades away.

Translated from the original Italian, half this story’s beauty lies in the tenderness of the love that grows between its three central characters, familial and familiar, like a careworn blanket.

The other half comes from the language. Each word is chosen and placed with reverent care, creating a rich, textured landscape that, like a prayer, or Sakumat’s paintings, seems like the stuff of dreams given physical form.

There’s something utterly spellbinding about how gently, and inexorably, the story flows on toward a conclusion that’s both heartbreaking and hopeful.

Character descriptions, fittingly, are left largely to the imagination, though both father and son have dark hair.

An elegy, timeless and entrancing.

(Fiction. 9-13) 112 OCTOBER 15, 2023

How To Love a Grandma

15 Secrets to Survival

Reagan, Jean | Illus. by Lee Wildish Knopf (32 pp.) | $10.99 | Nov. 28, 2023 9780593708903 | Series: How To...

Richards, Natalie D. | Delacorte (384 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 | 9780593644126

Reagan and Wildish’s long-running series continues with this look at ways to show love to a grandmother.

If you love your grandma, there are so many ways you can show her: Hug her, share with her, keep her safe, help her, boost her courage, cheer for her, and tell her.

The suggestions included here are totally doable for grandchildren, most being free, and feature ideas for both urban and rural dwellers: Share a seat with her on a city bus or press the walk button when crossing the street; share bugs found while gardening; fill the birdfeeder for her.

The children and grandmothers pictured here are diverse, though each grouping shares a similar skin tone.

One child uses a wheelchair, one grandmother-child duo uses hearing aids, one grandma uses a cane, many of the women wear glasses, and one wears a hijab. The grandmothers vary visibly in age; some are pictured as the stereotypical gray-haired grannies, while others appear younger and are clearly more physically able to keep up with their young grandchildren, but the common theme throughout is the joy both grandmothers and grandchildren share when they’re together; their bonds are both evident and strong.

Great ideas for kids to show they care.

(Picture book. 3-8)

Four 12-year-olds and an 18-monthold have an unexpected adventure in the Montana woods.

Although their parents are close friends and despite having been thrown together socially since they were babies, gymnast Abigail Walters, twins Emerson and Turner Casella, and gamer Baxter Phillips can’t stand each other. The latest parental endeavor, the consequence of the kids’ code of conduct violation and subsequent disqualification from a middle school team competition, involves Baxter’s great-uncle Hornsby. The sixth graders are going to stay with former kids’ camp owner Uncle Hornsby deep in the mountains of Montana for lessons in teamwork. Because the parents are going to Aruba for a vacation during this time, they also leave Baxter’s baby sister, Vivi, who provides sparkling moments of humor. Uncle Hornsby has devised a scavenger hunt for the kids to work out together. It’s winter, and the task tests the kids’ abilities to integrate the survival techniques they find in notes as they pursue clues leading to the final prize—the key to a locked cabin. But things take a dangerous turn when Uncle Hornsby disappears. They must now work together to find him and stay alive themselves. The narrative presents believable moments of danger infused

Each word is chosen with reverent care, creating a rich, textured landscape.

GLOWRUSHES

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with the protagonists’ unwillingness to cooperate and a well-crafted realization of individual strengths, weaknesses, and friendship. Most characters read white; oblique clues may indicate that Baxter and Vivi’s mom is a person of color.

Both exciting and revelatory. (Adventure. 8-12)

A Child Like You Robert, Na’ima B. | Illus. by Nadine Kaadan Crocodile/Interlink (32 pp.) | $18.95 Oct. 3, 2023 | 9781623717230

Encouragement for the future leaders and caretakers of our planet inspired by four real-life youth activists.

As Robert points out, “the world can be a scary place sometimes.” Climate change is wreaking havoc on our environment, refugees make perilous journeys in search of a better life, many children from marginalized backgrounds are unable to see themselves reflected in literature, and young people feel uncertain and afraid. Despite these painful realities, the book points out several reasons to be optimistic.

Young people are protesting, participating, imagining, and fighting their way toward a better future. The book visually depicts environmental activist Greta Thunberg, Syrian refugee and Olympian Yusra Mardini, #1000BlackGirlBooks founder Marley Dias, and child labor activist Iqbal Masih, though they aren’t named directly until an endnote.

Throughout, verses start with the refrain “somewhere, out there, / in the wide, wide world, a child like you”—which will spur young readers to make a difference. With watercolorlike blurring, Kaadan’s illustrations give the blues and grays of the opening pages a somber appearance. Paler, brilliant blues give way to more color as the children work together and the world starts looking a little brighter. Rather than KIRKUS REVIEWS

brushing over harsh realities, Robert and Kaadan acknowledge children’s very real fears while empowering them and offering hope. Background characters are racially diverse.

A meaningful call to action. (Picture book. 5-8)

No Such Thing as Perfect Rocks!, Misako | Feiwel & Friends (256 pp.) $14.99 paper | Nov. 7, 2023 9781250838919 | Series: Bounce Back, 2

With a bit of courage and some magical assistance, a young girl learns to reach out to others.

Star basketball player Emma is popular at school, but at home she feels unappreciated, since her mother constantly and unfavorably compares her to Julia, her seemingly perfect older sister who attends high school in Manhattan. Emma’s insecurities manifest in a defensive demeanor that affects her relationships with friends and family. The pressure is heightened when Emma gets a spot on the school’s all-star basketball team.

She’s disappointed not to be chosen as a starter; she’s also admonished for her lack of teamwork. Mounting pressures lead Emma to have more and more outbursts, but fortunately, she finds guidance from a guardian spirit in the form of Lexi, a cute talking French bulldog her family is dog sitting. Still, it takes things escalating to an unbearable point before Emma finally expresses her inner pain openly and connects more deeply with others. Parts of Emma’s backstory can initially be confusing to decipher, but the almost painfully honest portrayal of her emotional struggles will resonate. Self-esteem, friendships, and second chances are explored through her growth, leading to a satisfying conclusion. Drawn in a manga style and displaying a deft use of color, this is a visually attractive and expressive story. Emma and her

family have light-brown skin and brown hair; there’s racial diversity among the supporting cast.

An emotional story that gently advocates for emotional vulnerability. (drawing instructions, fashion ideas, dog-sitting advice) (Graphic fiction.

9-13)

I Am Happy!

Rosen, Michael | Illus. by Robert Starling Candlewick (32 pp.) | $14.99 | Dec. 12, 2023 9781536231281

This is one overjoyed puppy!

“I am happy,” declares the pup. “I’m SO happy I…sing on a swing, swing as I sing, head in the sky, like a butterfly.” The pup chases after bubbles, dances, does somersaults, and walks on clouds! Our furry protagonist grabs the paw of a kitty, whom readers may remember from Rosen and Starling’s I Am Angry (2022). They’re both joined by a squirrel from the creators’ I Am Hungry (2023), and they “walk on air, wind in [their] hair.” These pals do many outlandish things, from rolling down mountains and dancing in fountains to racing cars “all the way to the stars” and putting on elaborate talent shows. That’s how happy this puppy is! The friends are happy enough to play all day. Rosen follows his previous explorations of strong emotions aimed at the very young with a strong depiction of joy that the youngest listeners will understand and identify with.

Starling’s mixed-media illustrations of wide-eyed animals exhibiting emotions and using their imaginations are once again an excellent fit with the simple text, written in a bouncy, exuberant verse. As in previous installments, Rosen’s note to adults encourages them to learn and play with youngsters as they read the book with their grown-ups.

A happy hound’s verse, sure to inspire smiles. (Picture book. 2-6)

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I Love You, My Little Dinosaur: A Sweet, SelfEsteem Picture Book for Kids!

Rossner, Rose | Illus. by Morgan Huff Sourcebooks Wonderland (40 pp.) | $10.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781728268361

The cover’s glowing golden stars are but a small hint of the parent-child love inside.

In this companion book to the creators’ I Love You, My Little Unicorn (2022), a world full of digitally created dinosaurs illustrated in eye-catching colors dominates the pages. From the start, it’s clear that dinosaur parents have the same hopes and dreams for their offspring that human parents do.

Readers don’t have to be dinosaur fans to smile when the parent-andchild dinosaur pairs playfully interact and share loving glances. Take special note of the ankylosauruses, whose tails arc to form a heart beneath a sky filled with heart-shaped clouds. The text in verse shares words of unconditional parental love and support and wisdom (“please remember all these things / that I want you to know”), appropriate for humans and dinos alike. “Roar with all your might!”

“Spread your wings and fly.” “Use your voice, and ask for help.” There’s even a caveat that some “days will be dark / and other shades of gray.”

But “there’s always brightness up ahead.” While the loving sentiments in the storytelling are clear, words are sometimes inverted to make the rhyme work, and the verse doesn’t always follow a consistent meter, but

prereading will let the story shine during quiet snuggle times.

Whether spoken by a dinosaur or a human, this parental message clearly radiates “I’ve loved you from the start.”

(Picture book. 3-6)

Giraffe Is Too Tall for This Book Ryland, D.K. | Page Street (40 pp.) | $18.99 Oct. 17, 2023 | 9781645679851

A gang of animal friends helps Giraffe attempt to fit into this book.

Readers become an active part of this story from the first page, when Elephant, Giraffe, Cheetah, Flamingo, Snake, and Mouse make eye contact with them, then acknowledge and welcome them. Bright, appealing digital illustrations stand out against a plain white background, and the animals speak to each other and the reader via speech bubbles that are color-coded to match their fur, feathers, or scales. The animals fill each spread, but Giraffe’s head and neck don’t fit onto the page, and that’s the problem. Snake has several solutions, but the spread is too cramped when Giraffe brings its head down. When Snake asks readers to turn the book to make it taller, the animals slide into a heap, and Flamingo and Snake are crushed beneath the pile. When Flamingo suggests that everyone move up to the space where Giraffe’s head is, Giraffe bends to create stairs so the friends can climb up—all except Elephant, who’s afraid of crushing Giraffe. All Elephant can see is a view of Giraffe’s butt, but Elephant has one last idea. Readers

Personable animals, humor, and hands-on problem-solving make this tale a winner.

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will enjoy manipulating this book, predicting outcomes, and coming up with a few creative suggestions the animals didn’t consider. Take special note of the giraffe and elephant print endpapers.

Personable animals, humor, and hands-on problem-solving make this tale a winner. (Picture book. 5-8)

Kirkus Star

Hornbeam All In Rylant, Cynthia | Illus. by Arthur Howard Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $18.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781665924818 Series: Hornbeam Books

An early reader with a big heart.

Hornbeam, an anthropomorphic moose, has many animal friends. In this series opener, which consists of three stories, Rylant uses controlled vocabulary to highlight a trio of especially important friends. The first is Eureka, a goose, who brings Hornbeam to a picnic that turns out to be a great big goose family reunion. In fact, it’s so big that Hornbeam humorously misses out on enjoying much-desired potato salad (giving the last bite to a gosling), since he’s preoccupied with meeting each individual bird. In the second story, Hornbeam’s furnace breaks, and his friend Cuddy (a bull) lets him spend the night. When Hornbeam’s snoring keeps Cuddy awake all night, the good-natured bull displays the same generosity of spirit that Hornbeam did in the first story. Finally, in the third tale, Hornbeam, Eureka, and Cuddy go to the pool to cheer on their skunk friend, Adorabelle, at a swim meet.

During the course of events, Hornbeam discloses that he cannot swim, and his friends lovingly encourage him to overcome his anxieties to learn. As in previous Rylant–Howard collaborations, the illustrations ramp up the gentle humor in the text, with funny details like the quadruped KIRKUS REVIEWS

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As in previous Rylant–Howard collaborations, the illustrations ramp up the gentle humor in the text.

HORNBEAM ALL IN

moose wearing shoes only on his hind hooves, bumper stickers on animals’ vehicles, and especially snazzy attire for the geese (berets, turtlenecks, glasses).

All in for this dazzling series starter!

(Early reader. 5-8)

Mayor Good Boy Turns Bad Scheidt, Dave | Illus. by Miranda Harmon Colors by Lyle Lynde Random House Graphic (208 pp.) | $12.99 $15.99 PLB | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780593124918 9780593126073 PLB | Series: Mayor Good Boy, 3

Greenwood’s favorite fourlegged mayor comes clean about a shameful secret.

Abby’s mysteriously upset about something, but it’s nothing that some shared candy or a trip to the comic book store with her brother, Aaron, can’t fix. Meanwhile, their parents are wondering when to reveal that a third child is on the way. If those dangling threads aren’t enough, Mayor Good Boy seems highly nervous about the imminent arrival of his brother, Bad Boy, who explicitly endorses trouble and being mean, in case his spiked collar, sunglasses, and motorcycle aren’t evidence enough.

Bad Boy’s resemblance to Good Boy causes his antics to turn the residents of Greenwood against the mayor.

His blackmail of Good Boy over a misdeed from the mayor’s past delays the truth while consequences pile up, including a fight at a girl-positive punk rock show. At this point in KIRKUS REVIEWS

the series, Greenwood and its diverse residents feel familiar and entertaining throughout, full of returning faces and humorously unpredictable crowd scenes. Scenes of Good Boy running across town interacting with everyone really flesh out the mellow vibes of the town through visual storytelling.

Aaron remains clumsy, gross, and awkwardly candid throughout, making him a dependable, anti-schmaltz comic relief. Everyone’s secrets come out, though some honest confessions clear up any confusion and mend broken bridges. Abby and Aaron are tan-skinned.

Each trip to this winsome protagonist’s turf is more rewarding than the last.

(Graphic fiction. 7-10)

Snow and Sorcery Sell, Chad. | Knopf (320 pp.) | $21.99 $13.99 paper | $24.99 PLB | Nov. 7, 2023 9780593481622 | 9780593481615 paper 9780593481639 PLB | Series: The Cardboard Kingdom, 3

The kids of the Cardboard Kingdom are back—and they have new rivals.

It’s winter break, and the suburban neighborhood kids are ready to play! Continuing their massive, complex pretend world, they’re building their confidence, working out interpersonal dramas, and having a blast. While the first few chapters work as stand-alone stories, the rest quickly build up to a bigger plot: Kids from the Parkside neighborhood have seen how much fun the Cardboard

Kingdom is, and they want in. Unfortunately, this situation quickly spirals into competition and conflict as new alliances form and others are tested.

Only through communication and collaboration can the different sides create peace. Themes of familial expectations, respecting differences, and teamwork are throughlines: “What if we could show everybody…that we’re even more powerful together?” While seeing new characters and dynamics is refreshing, these elements may cause difficulty in tracking the large ensemble cast, most of whom have two identities. Still, Sell’s art moves seamlessly between the imagined world of the kids’ alter egos and their reallife pretend play, giving each time to shine. As before, the multiple contributors’ chapters are seamlessly woven together with Sell’s art and overarching vision, mirroring the experiences of the characters. Neurodivergence, queerness, racial and ethnic identities, and socioeconomic status are often implied rather than stated directly.

This volume will be best appreciated by those familiar with the earlier books.

A fun and thought-provoking series entry. (maps, note to readers, author bios, deleted scene, character designs, photos) (Graphic fiction. 8-12)

Creep, Leap, Crunch! A Food Chain Story Shaffer, Jody Jensen | Illus. by Christopher Silas Neal | Knopf (48 pp.) | $18.99 $21.99 PLB | Dec. 12, 2023 9780593565520 | 9780593565537 PLB

A rhymed climb up a food chain.

Shaffer and Neal follow a series of creatures: plants that create their own food with the help of the “glorious, life-giving, fiery sun,” a cricket that munches on grass, a mouse that eats the cricket, a red milk snake that swallows the mouse, a red hawk that hunts the mouse, a fox that pounces on the hawk, and, >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 115

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finally, a bear that makes a meal out of the fox. More bloodthirsty young readers may be disappointed that both author and illustrator largely leave out the CRUNCH! part of this natural progression—in the illustrations, only the foliage suffers, as none of the featured eaters are shown actually chowing down on animal prey, and the language is likewise abstract. The general concept is clear enough, though, and in both the cumulative rhyme and the nature notes at the end, Shaffer complements Neal’s pettable-looking creature cast with easily digestible descriptions of behaviors and diets. The author properly acknowledges that this particular chain “occurs in a temperate deciduous forest,” and if she never explicitly introduces the more complicated (and accurate) notion of food webs, she does finish off her narrative by noting that “some days” the fox gets away, whereupon the “hungry black bear / munches flowers and seeds… / all that she needs.”

Very simple, a little bland, but a good and read-aloud-ready way of introducing an important natural process. (glossary) (Informational picture book.

5-7)

Hour of Need: The Daring Escape of the Danish Jews During World War II: A Graphic Novel Shayne, Ralph | Illus. by Tatiana Goldberg Yellow Jacket (176 pp.) | $24.99 Sept. 12, 2023 | 9781499813586

A Jewish girl survives the Nazi occupation of Denmark.

In 1940, when Mette is 5, the Germans invade Denmark. Raised in a secular, assimilated family, Mette doesn’t even know she’s Jewish. When she’s 8 and her father shares the dangerous secret with her, she understands so little of what it means to be Jewish that she responds, “But I thought I was Danish.”

Meanwhile, in 2009, an older Mette 118 OCTOBER 15, 2023

An engaging introduction to an animal family that’s found its niche in the slow lane.

THE UPSIDE-DOWN BOOK OF SLOTHS

brings her American grandchildren to visit Copenhagen. As she tells them her story, she can offer more than she understood as a small child: Factual recitations (King Christian X’s family tree, the messy Treaty of Versailles, the planned mass deportation of Denmark’s Jews, and the complex pragmatism of Danish surrender) mix with tales of stubbornly patriotic anti-Nazi resistance. Older Mette’s narrative follows both her memories of the mass rescue of Danish Jews in October 1943 and the story of real-life resistance fighter Svend Otto Nielsen. Shayne concludes by drawing comparisons between past and present and reminding readers of the importance of learning from history. Though at times the artwork is emotionally moving, for the most part the illustrations are cluttered and static, and the book relies more on telling than showing. As a result, the work feels surprisingly dull and even confusing—as the narrative jumps back and forth in time, it’s often unclear who is being depicted and when.

A dry account that nevertheless imparts significant historical lessons.

(Graphic historical fiction. 9-11)

The Upside-Down Book of Sloths Shreeve, Elizabeth | Illus. by Isabella Grott Norton Young Readers (40 pp.) | $18.95 Sept. 5, 2023 | 9781324015772

An engaging introduction to an animal family that’s found its niche in the slow lane.

There are six types of sloths living today, Shreeve

writes, but many more used to roam the Americas—from ground sloths like the elephant-size Megatherium to the marine forager Thalassocnus. In this populous family gallery, various species extinct and otherwise pose in leafy settings, often looking up to make eye contact with viewers.

The author surrounds their shaggy figures with specific details of their ranges, diet, distinctive characteristics, and (for the modern exemplars) unique physical adaptations for living in trees. Modern sloths’ leisurely ways turn out to be just the ticket, she explains, for an efficient, low-energy lifestyle and for avoiding the notice of predators. Considering they’ve survived for more than 40 million years, they can’t be quite the “slackers” their common moniker implies. Along with all the scientific grist, she also notes that while prehistoric sloths “weren’t all that cute,” modern ones are totally adorable, with babies “hardwired for hugging” and three-toed adults bearing “peaceful smiles” beneath bandit-like masks. “And now…it’s time for a sloth slumber party!” she concludes, beneath a final image of a smiling snoozer comfortably sacked out in a leafy bower.

Fetching and informative. (timeline, author’s note, resource list) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

For more by Elizabeth Shreeve, visit Kirkus online.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

C H IS LE DC RTEINO’N S

Breathtaking images and lively text.

O N A F L A K E - F LY I N G D A Y

On a Flake-Flying Day: Watching Winter’s Wonders Silverman, Buffy | Millbrook/Lerner (32 pp.) $30.65 | Oct. 3, 2023 | 9798765605028

Close-up, detailed photographs of animals and winter scenes accompany simple rhyming text.

This simple nonfiction picture book provides readers with high-definition images that showcase the delicate beauty of individual snowflakes and a mouse’s tiny whiskers and tufts of fur. While the concise, bouncy text keeps the pages turning, it’s really the stunning photography that pulls readers in. More than just the furry creatures impress; a show-stopping image of shadows cast by winter trees is pure barren beauty. All the animals are shown in their winter habitat and include some surprises such as a huddled bunch of bees keeping warm and a pile of beetles against white snow.

Readers will surely expect the owl and bears, but the grouse, nymph, and heron are surprising inclusions. The rhyming text is largely simple twoword sentences describing each image, introducing young readers to vocabulary such as glistens, prowl, and lumbers.

The final pages include a paragraph of description about many of the featured animals, along with suggested further reading and a glossary. Ultimately, the incredible photography makes this book worthy of a spot on readers’ shelves, but the rhyming text and end notes certainly bolster its value.

Breathtaking images and lively text. (further reading, glossary) (Picture book. 2-5) KIRKUS REVIEWS

The Most Magnificent Maker’s A to Z Spires, Ashley | Kids Can (32 pp.) | $19.99 Sept. 5, 2023 | 9781525306297

Alphabetical advice and encouragement for creative kids.

In the third installment of the Magnificent books from author-illustrator Spires comes an A to Z of creation keywords and phrases for little inventors and artists, along with warm pieces of advice on making a project work. Spanning from straightforward vocabulary like “B is for BRAINSTORM” and “E is for EXPERIMENT” to the alphabetically redundant “O is for OLD OBJECTS” and “X is for X MARKS THE SPOT,” the featured letters consist of mostly identifiable tools and tidbits such as pencils, scissors, and horseshoe magnets that may confuse very new readers but get the job done. The same unnamed white girl and puggish dog from past titles pursue various projects in the background, providing doggedness and determination even in the face of “Mistakes. / They happen. A lot,” while the narration advises readers to “Try try try…and try again,” even if you need to walk away. “Creating is a journey. You may not have figured it out yet, / but you can try again tomorrow.” While this may not be the most magnificent “gift from the imagination,” it does offer valuable advice for eager young makers and their inevitable impediments.

Love Grows Spiro, Ruth | Illus. by Lucy Ruth Cummins Harper/HarperCollins (32 pp.) | $19.99 Dec. 26, 2023 | 9780063237742

Following a visit, a beloved aunt sends a child a series of houseplants and letters written in verse.

Each letter contains facts about the plants, like their varying needs for light and water or a Monstera plant’s Swiss cheese–like holes, while sidebars shaped like tags provide more specific information. After the child and a pet dog examine the plants, they’re set in a window or by the child’s bed, accumulating gradually, just as the aunt’s clear affection for the child likewise builds in the letters. Several months go by, with holidays and seasonal changes showing the passage of time, before the child and aunt reunite. The combination of accurately depicted plants with occasional silly rhymes and loving endearments from the aunt make for a delightful balance of education and fun. The sidebars do occasionally interrupt the rhythm and flow of the letters, but the neat details they include make up for this mild inconvenience. Whether read aloud to a child just becoming interested in plants or gifted from an aunt to a beloved nibling, this book brims with both warmth and information.

The aunt, child, and other family members are depicted with light skin. The endpapers include facts about plants, and the book opens with a note to adults warning about the dangers of potentially toxic plants.

A sweet introduction to houseplants.

(Picture book. 3-6)

For more by Lucy Ruth Cummins, visit Kirkus online.

ABCs for any budding creator. (Picture book. 5-10)

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Kirkus Star

Bompa’s Insect Expedition Suzuki, David with Tanya Lloyd Kyi | Illus. by Qin Leng | Greystone Kids (48 pp.) | $18.95 Sept. 19, 2023 | 9781771648820 | Series: David Suzuki Institute

The veteran science popularizer takes his two young grandchildren deep into the natural world—right

outside their door.

Twins Nakina and Kaoru are initially disappointed that grizzled (and instantly recognizable as the author) Bompa isn’t taking them to a less familiar locale. “You might be surprised,” he responds. Indeed, just bending down for a closer look at passing insect life touches off a fascinating series of exchanges and revelations that begins with the basics—“Bompa, are insects animals?”—and moves on to freewheeling discussions of insect behavior and body parts, of how much caterpillars can eat and ants can carry, and then to larger questions: What would happen if mosquitoes disappeared? If we did? Along with lavishing her lush, grassy settings with wildflowers and exactly drawn fauna from beetles to birds, Leng indulges the fancies of the three Asian-presenting observers by endowing each with dragonfly wings in one scene, giving them a sobering glimpse of a meadow bereft of flowers and pollinators, and shrinking them down for face-to-face encounters.

“After all, insects are competitive eaters, champion weight lifters, and expert fliers.

They’re the world’s most interesting picnic guests.” The backmatter features a supply list for budding naturalists and a list of activity suggestions for would-be “insect heroes.”

A terrific invitation to take closer looks and think longer thoughts. (Informational picture book. 6-8) For more by Tanya Lloyd Kyi, visit Kirkus online.

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Beautiful, soft illustrations bring layers of warmth and texture to the story.

I DREW A HEART

Sir Callie and the Dragon’s Roost Symes-Smith, Esme | Labyrinth Road (416 pp.) | $17.99 | Nov. 7, 2023 9780593485811 | Series: Sir Callie, 2

In this follow-up to 2022’s Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston, aspiring knight Callie grapples with right and wrong as their kingdom prepares for war.

After Callie defeated Chancellor Peran, they thought Helston would become a more welcoming kingdom.

Under the queen’s new decrees, anyone can train for knighthood or study magic regardless of gender. The rules may have changed, but people still fear magic. Even without Peran’s influence, the council pressures Queen Ewella to make Crown Prince Willow conform to their standards of masculinity— they are determined to push Helston backward. Meanwhile, a war with the evil dragons and witches of Dumoor looms on the horizon. All Callie wants is to protect their people, but when tragedy strikes, fear and prejudice turn the entire city, including the queen, against Callie and their family.

Forced to flee to protect their friends, Callie joins forces with an unexpected ally and begins to question everything they know about dragons and good and evil. This fast-paced sequel confronts complex topics, including abuse, trauma, and unlearning bias.

Although the messaging in Callie’s ruminations lacks subtlety at times, the story encourages critical thinking.

Gender identity and self-expression

remain significant themes as well.

Exciting plot twists and a cliffhanger ending heighten anticipation for the next entry. Most central characters read white; the wider world around them includes racial diversity.

A suspenseful fantasy quest driven by social themes. (author’s note, map) (Fantasy. 8-12)

I Drew a Heart Sze, Gillian | Illus. by Naoko Stoop Little, Brown (32 pp.) | $18.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 9780316349574

A child draws hearts that remind the family of cherished memories.

The young narrator draws a heart on a steam-covered mirror in the bathroom. The child’s sister sits nearby brushing her teeth.

Though the heart comes out wobbly, the child’s sister loves it: “That heart is like / our hips when we’re dancing / our hands in the air.” The protagonist spends the rest of the day drawing hearts—a wriggly heart makes the child’s older brother recall “you / when you bounce in your chair / and leap from the steps.” Another heart makes the child’s father think of “a kite caught in a breeze, / a dream that drifts.” The child draws bold polkadotted hearts, tiny hearts that will bloom like cherry blossoms, hearts that bring to mind rain clouds. Sze’s text is poetic and sweet, with each member of this loving and supportive multigenerational family praising the child’s efforts and creativity. Depicting KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

The veteran science popularizer takes his two young grandchildren deep into the natural world.

B O M PA’ S I N S E C T E X P E D I T I O N

the textured woodgrain of a wall to sandy beaches, calm shores, and clear blue skies, Stoop’s beautiful, soft illustrations fill the page and bring layers of warmth and texture to the story.

Long after sunset, paper lanterns lift into the air, symbolizing heart after heart that the little one has drawn in appreciation for those who fit into “this special heart that is mine.” Characters are cued Chinese.

A tender story that feels like a cozy hug. (Picture book. 4-8)

Deadliest Animals on the Planet Szymanski, Jennifer | National Geographic Kids (216 pp.) | $9.99 paper $19.90 PLB | Dec. 19, 2023 | 9781426373183 9781426374326 PLB

An album of animals that are best admired from afar.

From toothy great white sharks to bad-tempered koalas, Szymanski introduces dozens of different animals through striking, close-up color photographs. The images usually cover a full page and sometimes three-quarters of a double-page spread. Each animal gets a paragraph of text describing its offensive or defensive weapons. There’s no obvious organization, but occasionally a spread will feature a group with common characteristics such as large appetites, powerful bites, or dangerous body parts. Some of these animals are deadly to humans—toxic to eat or capable of inflicting a mortal wound— but many would more accurately be labeled dangerous. Readers might not expect to encounter some of the KIRKUS REVIEWS

creatures, like dragonflies and pelicans, both of which have prodigious appetites, and prey with highly developed defenses that can make a stink, like tamanduas and skunks, or fulmars, a type of seabird with oily vomit. There are carnivores and vegetarians; land, sea, and sky dwellers; and familiar and unfamiliar creatures from all over the world. This work is a browser’s delight, with a helpful index that includes animal groups (birds, the cat family, etc.) as well as individual species, for easy access. Fans of the earlier volume, Cutest Animals on the Planet (2021), will surely want to explore this follow-up title.

Danger! This topic is irresistible. (index, photo credits) (Nonfiction.

7-12)

Cupig: The Valentine’s Day Pig Tattersfield, Claire | Illus. by Rob Sayegh Jr. Flamingo Books (32 pp.) | $14.99 Dec. 19, 2023 | 9780593623107

A punctilious pig’s job as Cupid goes awry.

Cupig, a rotund porcine hero in heartadorned undies, loves love. She adores it so much that every year on Valentine’s Day, she takes her trusty bow and arrow and helps spread desire. This year, however, the weather affects her aim. Gray swirls of gusty wind blow her arrows astray, causing her to accidentally hit some familiar, well-established couples.

“Now Peanut Butter stopped loving Jelly / and fell in love with something smelly.” (The new pair is Peanut Butter and Anchovies.) Poor Jelly is

tipped over, leaving a smudge shaped like a broken heart on the counter.

“Needle and Thread had been a great team; / now they’re falling apart at the seams.” (Needle has fallen in love with a haystack; Thread is understandably unraveled.) Pair after pair are broken up and matched with new partners.

Butterfly falls out of love with the sky and in love with a horse, and Paper’s affections shift from Pen to a polar bear; love knows no bounds.

After some reflection, however, Cupig realizes her mistakes and goes off to set things right. Some readers may be slightly uneasy with the implication that romance should blossom only between couples who seem “right” for each other, but it’s mostly just a silly story of classic pairs reuniting. Tattersfield keeps a jaunty pace, and Sayegh’s smiling (and distraught) inanimate objects are a delight.

Sure to steal readers’ hearts. (Picture book. 4-7)

Wow in Space: A Galactic Guide to the Universe and Beyond Thomas, Mindy & Guy Raz | Illus. by Mike Centeno | Clarion/HarperCollins (192 pp.) $19.99 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9780358697077 Series: Wow in the World

A “bonkerballs” tour through the cosmos.

Thomas and Wow in the World podcast co-host Raz step into Centeno’s cartoon illustrations to be “galactic guides” to an assortment of space-related topics from the Big Bang to astronaut gear and training. Along the way, they give Uranus a chance to fume about being “the butt of all your jokes” and describe some of the pranks astronauts have pulled in orbit. For all their contagious sense of fun, though, they don’t cover much ground that isn’t surveyed elsewhere more systematically and in greater detail. Furthermore, they’re sloppy with details—no, Galileo did not invent the telescope, nor can OCTOBER 15, 2023 121

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navigators determine exact locations with just a sextant, and their pie chart of relative solar system masses is visibly at odds with the adjacent numbers. Stargazers searching for Sirius aren’t going to get much help from “look for a very bright star with a bluish-white tinge,” either, while younger audiences in general are going to be left wondering how black holes can “burp excess radiation and particles” when supposedly nothing can escape them. And even grown-ups will likely find the lists of technical source reports in miniscule type at the close indigestible. A dozen related Wow in the World episodes are linked with QR codes at the end. Thomas is white, and Raz has darker skin.

An entertaining jumble of undependable astro-facts. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)

Punycorn Watson, Andi | Clarion/HarperCollins (224 pp.) | $15.99 | Nov. 14, 2023 9780358571995

A diminutive, pure-hearted unicorn and his band of underdogs must save their kingdom from an evil ogre.

Punycorn is a trainee cadet in an elite troop protecting the kingdom of Carbuncle, although he’s not taken very seriously and is mostly tasked with cleaning Uni Palace. Unbeknownst to the huddle of hero unicorns who leave Punycorn behind to go on a special mission, a revenge plot is brewing in the Bastion of Evil, helmed by Sir Ogre and his clever sister; the ogre is aided by his magical Gauntlets of Ultimate Victory, which are, hilariously, pink mittens on a string. Unable to reach the rest of his troop after taking a distress call about the havoc being wreaked by Sir Ogre’s army, Punycorn travels to the Council of Wizards seeking help and is assigned the quest to form a Kinship of Heroes and save Carbuncle. Eager to prove himself, Punycorn assembles a motley crew 122 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Sleuths skillfully, satisfyingly solve silly roller-coaster shenanigans.

TA N G L E D U P I N M AY H E M

of helpers: a dragon who can’t breathe fire, a pacifist sword, and a dung beetle.

Chapters that shift perspectives between Punycorn and Sir Ogre present this tale of good versus evil, deftly moving the plot forward. Vibrantly colored, whimsical illustrations augment the reading experience, and readers are treated to several impressive full-page action scenes, along with plenty of humor. Themes of friendship and perseverance drive this first series installment.

A satisfyingly fun adventure with an irresistible, plucky hero. (Graphic adventure. 8-12)

Kirkus Star

What Rosa Brought Weinstein, Jacob Sager | Illus. by Eliza Wheeler | Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (32 pp.) | $19.99 | Nov. 14, 2023 9780063056480

“Then the Nazis came, and things changed.”

In Vienna, Rosa’s parents work in their grocery store while Grandma watches over the child. Then Nazi flags appear everywhere, and hatred against Jews, like Rosa and her family, becomes rampant.

Grandma tries to answer Rosa’s perplexed questions as gently as possible, but how can you explain the unexplainable? When Jews are banned from owning businesses, Dad surreptitiously builds and sells one trunk at a time for departing Jewish neighbors, even helping a rabbi hide a Torah in a false bottom. The family desperately waits for a visa that will allow them to flee to America. Rosa, in her

innocence, imagines what she might take with her when they leave, seen as whiteline ghostlike objects floating around her.

When the visas finally come, and there isn’t one for Grandma, Rosa takes the most important thing of all on the journey: Grandma’s love. Drawing inspiration from his mother’s childhood experiences, Weinstein employs spare, carefully selected language, without sugarcoating, to describe the rapidly escalating events.

Wheeler’s illustrations inform the wider, more harrowing tale, gradually growing darker and more fraught with menacing vignettes of book burnings and broken windows. After viewing the family’s apartment, nearly emptied of belongings, and watching them eat in a soup kitchen, readers will find the family’s sadness, fear, and hunger to be palpable.

Heartrending, tender, and eye-opening. (author’s note, photos) (Picture book.

7-10)

21 Things To Do With a Tree: An Outdoor Activity Book Wilsher, Jane | Ivy Kids (32 pp.) | $21.99 Sept. 5, 2023 | 9780711280540

Encouragement to adopt a tree, learn about trees in general, and appreciate and care for the trees in our world.

Wilsher cleverly folds in lots of learning and vocabulary while introducing children to all things arboreal. After beginning the activity book with the direction to choose a tree, the author moves from there to different things kids can do with their chosen friend: KIRKUS REVIEWS

CHILDREN’S

observe it, learn its parts, draw it, hug it (inviting others to join in if one person can’t reach all the way around the trunk), make bark rubbings, determine its age and height, examine its leaves, identify it, climb it, create art (scavenging from the ground, not picking live twigs or leaves), make a treehouse, play games with it, thank it, care for it, and look for seeds, fruit, and animals. The activities call on children to use different senses and skills to engage with the tree they’ve selected, and some of the options involving their tree’s fruit or seeds may require the kids’ power of observation over the course of multiple seasons. Stanev’s charming illustrations use spot, full-page, and double-page illustrations to depict steps, cycles, seasons, and many different types of trees. People depicted (mostly children) are widely diverse and include a wheelchair user and hijabis. Adult supervision and help are encouraged where appropriate.

A great interactive introduction to trees that will help children appreciate their many qualities and value. (Nonfiction activity book. 4-10)

Tangled Up in Mayhem Wyatt, Merrill | McElderry (272 pp.) | $17.99 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781665931052 | Series: The Tangled Mysteries, 3

Our renowned middle school detectives, in need of new social media content, get hired for actual money.

Rising eighth graders Amelia and Sloane, fresh from solving the case of Ma Yaklin’s Missing Millions, are pleased with the success of their detective agency, Osburn and Miller-Poe Investigations, and its corresponding YouTube channel. Now Mr. Collymore, “some rich guy from Sandusky,” wants to hire them. He claims his ancestor was swindled out of the land that Cedar Point Amusement Park is built on, KIRKUS REVIEWS

Heartrending, tender, and eye-opening.

W H AT R O S A B R O U G H T

and he wants to hire the girls to find the proof. An all-expenses-paid trip to an amusement park to solve a historical mystery? This will make great content for their YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram! Once on site, the girls are quickly entangled in some Scooby-Doo–esque drama involving a team of archaeologists, amusement park management, and a children’s book–writing, history-reenacting, racist history professor. Amelia has told Mr. Collymore that BuzzFeed and Apple TV are interested in their YouTube channel, and now mean girl Mackenzie (who is besties with Mr. Collymore’s daughter, uh-oh) has been posting rude TikToks about Amelia’s and Sloane’s dreams. If they don’t solve Mr. Collymore’s mystery, they’ll be humiliated, but the park management has foiled them at every turn.

Through sheer, ridiculous persistence, with a heartwarming assist from an unexpected quarter, the girls prevail once again. Main characters are white.

Sleuths skillfully, satisfyingly solve silly roller-coaster shenanigans. (historical note) (Mystery. 9-12)

Be Thankful for Water: How Water Sustains Our Planet Ziefert, Harriet | Illus. by Brian Fitzgerald Red Comet Press (80 pp.) | $19.99 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781636550749

For habitat, cleanliness, weather, recreation, health, nutrition, and life itself, we are indebted to water.

Each of the functions above

is the focus of a different section in this very attractive ode to the uses of H2O. Each part begins with a similar rhetorical question about a waterless world: “Could we keep clean without water?” “Would life be fun without water?” “Would our bodies stay healthy without water?”

“Would the earth have seasons without water?” Followed by the emphatic answers: “We could not!”

“It would not!” “They would not!”

“It would not!” At one point the book conflates weather and seasons, and a few verses don’t quite flow, but for the most part, this is an utterly praise-worthy celebration of water. Near the end, a couple of pages suggest watery problems— “man-made debris,” “factory black sludge,” and “old plastic galore”—but we’re soon back to the positive. A final double-page spread features abstract human figures holding signs labeled “Climate Change,” “Water Is a Human Right,” and “There Is No Planet B.” The illustrations are a perfect fit: Bright, clear, without hard lines or shadows, they depict lots of active animals and lively, racially diverse kids, including several who use wheelchairs. This book will work both for lap and group reading.

This colorful, easy-reading introduction to our planet’s greatest resource makes a splash. (Informational picture book. 4-8)

For more by Harriet Ziefert, visit Kirkus online.

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TRANSLATED YA: BOOKS TO CELEBRATE AS PART OF this year’s World Kid Lit Month events, I was fortunate enough to appear on a panel at Seattle’s National Nordic Museum entitled “Bringing Nordic Children’s Literature to an English Readership.”

Reliable estimates show that roughly 3% of the books for young people published in the U.S. are translated titles, a sad figure showing how deprived readers here still are.

Through translated books, we gain access to the perspectives of cultural insiders writing for young people within their own cultures. No matter how

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well informed, outsiders typically write for fellow outsiders; this implicit understanding of one’s audience shapes what is explained and emphasized.

It’s more invigorating and mind-expanding to read a book for which you’re not the imagined reader.

Learning to see universal humanity across cultural differences is another great benefit of global reading; it’s often a surprise to see how much you share with someone who outwardly seems very different. Arguments about certain books’ benefits are rarely persuasive to young readers, however; when you’re trying to sell a

teen on a translated book, it’s better to emphasize those aspects that will make a title feel relatable.

Fire From the Sky, by Moa Backe Åstot (Sámi), translated from Swedish by Eva Apelqvist (Levine Querido, Oct. 17), is a moving and atmospheric YA novel about a gay Sámi boy who loves his community and his family’s reindeer-herding lifestyle but knows that if he comes out, he’ll be ostracized. The book explores broadly relatable themes.

Many teens in conservative, rural U.S. communities who may never have heard of the Indigenous Sámi people will find their feelings mirrored in the story.

Layers: A Memoir, by Pénélope Bagieu, translated from French by Montana Kane (First Second, Oct. 17), is a lively, charmingly illustrated work that presents episodes from the popular Parisian graphic novelist’s youth. From the amusing to the emotionally wrenching, this work offers glimpses into the commonalities and differences of growing up in a country that many U.S. readers will have associations with, albeit ones that are largely filtered through nonFrench media and bear little resemblance to the details of daily life that Bagieu shares.

This Is Our Place, by Vitor Martins, translated from

LAURA SIMEON

Portuguese by Larissa Helena (PUSH/Scholastic, 2022), is a memorable, character-driven story that will speak to readers who have kept secrets from their families, wondered whether there’s room in the world for their own happilyever-afters, and wrestled with life-changing crises beyond their control. Set in a small Brazilian city, this book is narrated by a house that’s observed successive generations of queer teen inhabitants. The story is grounded in cultural particulars and is filled with emotions that will resonate widely.

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart, by Chesil, translated from Japanese by Takami Nieda (Soho Teen, 2022), may surprise readers who believe Japan to be homogeneous. The story highlights the long, fraught history of Korean Japanese people through the experiences of Ginny, a teen with a passionate commitment to justice who’s wrestling with her sense of self as she moves schools—and even countries—in search of safety, freedom, and belonging. Her struggles mirror those of young people everywhere who feel different and want to be heard.

Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

Young Adult

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EDITOR’S PICK The love between two of Saverio’s heroes is put to the ultimate test in Thiede’s exhilarating follow-up to This Vicious Grace (2022).

After defeating Crollo’s most recent Divorando, Finestra Alessa and Dante, her bodyguard-turned-lover whom she resurrected, look forward to moving on with their lives. But their battle with the scarabei— and Dante’s return to the living afterward—came with a price: Dante has become fully mortal, having lost his healing powers as a ghiotte, and Alessa has harnessed a harrowing ability to enter people’s minds. With the couple’s happily-ever-after remaining out of reach,

Alessa’s nightmares and Dante’s troubling visions from Dea manifest when a friend, momentarily possessed, delivers an ominous message from the gods about another war to come.

Dante; Alessa; Alessa’s twin brother, Adrick; and the team of Fonti who protected Saverio from the Divorando embark on a journey to find the other ghiotte—hiding in exile after centuries of persecution—and enlist their help to stop an even greater attack from Crollo during the next eclipse. Readers will fall deeper in love with Dante and Alessa, whose individual explorations of identity and self-love amid impending chaos are

This Cursed Light Thiede, Emily | Wednesday Books (448 pp.) $20.00 | Dec. 5, 2023 | 9781250794079 Series: The Last Finestra, 2

heart-wrenchingly honest.

But it’s the portrayal of their growth as a pair—in a relationship that’s filled with endless flirty banter, mutual understanding, and acceptance of each other’s flaws—that is especially

satisfying and wholesome.

Characters vary in skin tone; there’s natural representation of queerness and disability.

A rewarding, passionate, and beautifully characterized duology closer. (Fantasy. 14-18)

The relationship—filled with flirty banter, understanding, and acceptance—is especially satisfying.

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star KIRKUS REVIEWS

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The Atlas of Us

By Kristin Dwyer

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Tag, You’re Dead

By Kathryn Foxfield

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A Place for Vanishing

By Ann Fraistat

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This Cursed Light

By Emily Thiede

132

Sky’s End

By Marc J. Gregson For a great YA fantasy series, visit Kirkus online.

OCTOBER 15, 2023 125

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Of Sea and Smoke

Lovable, frothy, and happy-making.

Adams, Gillian Bronte | Enclave Escape (512 pp.) | $24.99 | Nov. 21, 2023 9798886050783 | Series: The Fireborn Epic, 2

In this second episode, Adams’ horsey epic gallops through a whirlwind of betrayals and rescues to a climactic assault on a rebel stronghold and several fateful developments.

Picking up the action from the opener, Of Fire and Ash (2021), characters meet, part, and meet again as the three storylines continue to intertwine.

But also again, it’s the horses that steal the show: fire-blasting Mindar, ridden by willful queen Ceridwen; coltish sea-demon Ghost, bonded to secretive princeling Rafi; and an unnamed and possibly legendary dawnling, reputedly able to heal wounds and the object of a relentless search by new Scroll Jakim’s captors. The four-legged cast includes numerous other rides who are able to bond and share powers with humans— notably stone-eye tigers, whose glance numbs the minds of prey—and they add considerable color and vim to the lengthy series of battles, journeys, chases, and flights that bring profound changes to Jakim’s life while leaving Ceridwen far from her realm but personally closer to Rafi and his cause. Still, prospects look dim for the leads in this multiracial world, pitted against foes who consistently outmaneuver them, being plainly smarter as well as more powerful and ruthless. Will one more volume be enough for good hearts and worthy steeds to win out? Only time will tell, as the author hasn’t, yet.

Resolution still looks far off, but sparks fly as hooves and hearts pound. (map) (Fantasy. 13-18) For more YA horse fantasy, visit Kirkus online.

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A R Y A K H A N N A ’ S B O L LY W O O D M O M E N T

The Ruined Ahdieh, Renée | Putnam (464 pp.) | $19.99 Dec. 5, 2023 | 978-1-984812-64-3 | Series: The Beautiful, 4

Otherworld politics threaten love in this series conclusion.

The Righteous (2021) left the heroes in disarray and the Winter Court of the Sylvan Wyld on the cusp of war with the Summer Court of the Sylvan Vale. The Wyld’s leadership vacuum results in pushes for Bastien to reclaim his family’s ancestral seat, the Ice Throne—and custody of a powerful mirror with control over time. But everything comes at a price, and the intriguing seductions of the mirror have ruined many before him.

He learns of the dark plans that the Lady of the Vale has for Celine, her daughter, but he fears Celine won’t believe him. His insistence on lies and secrecy do him no favors with Celine, who’s understandably conflicted: attracted to the power of being Lady Silla’s heir, tired of people controlling her, yearning for connection with her mother, and grieving the loss of Pippa, who is presumed dead. At times, the characters’ decisions may frustrate readers, but even their most irrational moments are justified by circumstances and emotional states.

Personal growth drives the plot and deftly separates heroes from villains.

The final showdown is a big one in its consequences both to the fey Otherworld and New Orleans, the city Sebastien and Celine love. No one escapes unscathed, but time may heal some wounds. The fey world is diverse in sexuality and race; discrimination

exists on the basis of human parentage and court affiliation.

A big, bold, high-cost end to a lush quartet. (Fantasy. 14-adult)

Through Fences Aldama, Frederick Luis | Illus. by Oscar Garza | Mad Creek/Ohio State Univ. Press (84 pp.) | $17.95 paper | Jan. 19, 2024 9780814258958 | Series: Latinographix

Latinx youths experience the violence and trauma of politics, dehumanization, self-hatred, racism, and illness in stories set along the southern U.S. border.

This multiethnic collection featuring people from Guatemala, Mexico, the United States, and another unnamed country is enhanced by the effective use of colors combined with stark black-and-white imagery.

The artwork includes some full-page panels with benday dots that appear at the end of stories, depicting a significant moment, as well as black gutters, and pages without panels that have black backgrounds. The palette creates a sense of foreboding as families head toward border separation, detention, and other tragedies. In the story of Alicia Xóchitl Arai, a Japanese Mexican teen social media influencer who moved to San Ysidro, California, six years earlier, the color scheme fittingly makes use of Instagram’s tropical sunset colors. “El Celso” follows a queer boy whose story ends in tragedy, “Alberto” spotlights a Mexico-born Border Patrol agent who projects his internalized hatred onto others, while KIRKUS REVIEWS

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“Rocky” shares the perspective of a “white dude who hates the world.”

English and Spanish are interwoven in most of the entries. Despite the social significance of the stories’ perspectives and their context within the many manifestations of border struggles, their brevity stifles their own potential for greater emotional resonance and impact on readers.

Visually effective and necessarily disturbing and difficult as it sheds light on inhumanity. (Graphic fiction. 13-18)

Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment Avachat, Arushi | Wednesday Books (320 pp.) | $14.00 paper | Jan. 9, 2024 9781250895134

A story full of drama and song.

Rising senior Arya Khanna’s older sister, Alina, is finally home, and the whole family is up to their necks in wedding preparations.

Amid the planning and anticipation of an elaborate Punjabi celebration, Arya finds herself torn: Her two best friends, Andy and Lisa, have broken up after they recently started dating each other. Arya no longer knows what hanging out together will be like. Meanwhile, she’s stuck being vice president on the student council, as she lost the election to soccer player Dean, a white boy who might be frustrating but is also really good-looking.

Things at home are not all song and dance, either, especially with Arya’s latent resentment toward her sister for leaving home, which requires Arya to deal with their workaholic father and a mother who’s showing signs of depression. Written like a Bollywood movie, complete with intermission, the book has all the vital ingredients—family drama, an enemies-to-lovers romance, and lots of scrumptious food—not to mention the lineup of films that are constantly being watched. Desi references are woven naturally throughout, KIRKUS REVIEWS

the romance is adorable, and the story is well paced. Readers who pick up this debut, inspired by the sheer fun of it all, will wish for some masala chai and chaat and then put on a Bollywood number and dance, inspired by the sheer fun of it all.

Lovable, frothy, and happy-making.

(Romance. 13-18)

The River Run Beartrack-Algeo, Alfreda | 7th Generation (161 pp.) | $9.95 paper | Jan. 30, 2024 9781570674136 | Series: The Legend of Big Heart, 3

A third series entry about a Lakota teen, this time focusing on residential schools.

After the events of The Roan Stallion (2022), Alfred’s calm life changes when U.S. government officers show up at his school to enforce the “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” policy.

They require Native children to attend schools approved by the Office of Indian Affairs. Alfred, his younger brother, and some of his friends reluctantly leave for St. John’s Indian School; others are sent to Pierre Indian School. As the seasons pass, Alfred becomes determined to escape the abuse, starvation, and disease. His brother becomes ill and is allowed to stay at home. A yearning for freedom engulfs Alfred, and following a vision in which his grandfather tells him to run to the river, he and two friends end up paddling down the Missouri River. They hitch a ride to Sioux City, Iowa, seeking Alfred’s parents, who have gone missing. The boys find work as carnies, and Alfred meets a man who knows something about the danger his parents could be in. The latest from Beartrack-Algeo (Lower Brule Lakota Nation) is an accessible work for reluctant readers that includes multiple engaging strands as well as an afterword about the Pick– Sloan Act of 1944, which authorized

the construction of five dams that destroyed vast swathes of Lower Brule Lakota land.

An action-packed journey offering a peek into the impact of residential schools. (Historical fiction. 12-18)

Outta Here Beddia, Lea | James Lorimer (112 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 1, 2024 | 9781459417304

A Quebecois teen’s dream of attending college means leaving behind the person she loves most.

Everything was different before the accident.

Before her mom was injured in a serious car crash, Élise had support, love, and hope for the future. But now her mom is taking too many painkillers and sleeping all the time. Poverty and hunger have become constant battles for Élise, who dreams of going off to college in the city with her best friend, Lily, even though her mom has made it clear she sees this as abandoning her for a new life. Everything becomes even more chaotic when her mother invites abusive drug dealer Richard, whom Élise secretly calls Stranger Danger, into their home.

Stranger Danger becomes a persistent threat as Élise tries to extricate herself from the tangled web of lies and betrayal her mother has built around them. Graphic violence and abuse pervade the narrative, allowing readers to experience Élise’s fear as their own.

The author’s note provides a necessary warning about the graphic nature of the story, as well as reassuring advice for readers who may be experiencing something similar. This novel provides the vital perspective of a young person who’s watching a loved one struggle with addiction. Élise is a powerhouse of a character who refuses to compromise, even when all odds are stacked against her. Main characters read white.

A heartbreaking testament to saving oneself. (Fiction. 14-18)

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Palpable romantic tension propels this beautifully written story.

T H E AT L A S O F U S

Dungeons and Drama Boyce, Kristy | Underlined (304 pp.) $11.99 paper | Jan. 9, 2024 | 9780593647011

Two small-town Ohio teens fake a romance to make others jealous.

Riley starts her junior year sentenced to work at her father’s game store as punishment following a serious infraction involving her mother’s car. When her ex drops in, Riley impulsively pretends that co-worker and classmate Nathan is her boyfriend. Nathan is not amused, but she convinces him that the ruse will also help him win the heart of his crush, fellow D&D player Sophia. Nongamer Riley strengthens the pretense by joining his D&D campaign, and she discovers that her musical theater background lends itself well to role-playing games. Over time, it becomes harder for Riley and Nathan to discern whether each other’s romantic gestures are an act or based on something real. Riley slowly gains more appreciation for her father than spending alternate weekends at his apartment during the five years since the divorce has allowed for. Meanwhile, the school principal cancels the spring musical for budget reasons, and Riley is working on a proposal to change his mind. When a crisis strikes, Riley’s friends step up to advocate for the importance of the arts. The book’s strengths lie in its characterization: Authentic portrayals of friendships and family relationships make the story shine, and the store’s sense of community adds depth and is part of Riley’s changing perception of 128 OCTOBER 15, 2023

her father. Most main characters are white; Riley’s best friend is Japanese American.

Gamers and nongamers alike will find much to enjoy in this sweet romance.

(Romance. 12-18)

Poison Town Campbell, Elyssa | James Lorimer (104 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 1, 2024 | 9781459417496

Fourteen-year-old Addie is on a mission to raise awareness about pollution in her small town in the Kootenay region of British Columbia.

When Addie Woods and Priya Gill get paired for a science project, neither of them wants to work together. But their teacher forces them to collaborate despite their mutual animosity, and the girls ultimately find common ground in investigating the pollution coming from the smelter that their town’s economy is built on. Both their dads work there monitoring emissions, and Priya trusts the advanced technology is making things safe, while Addie is concerned about the amounts of lead and sulfur dioxide still being emitted.

The pair agree to test their conflicting hypotheses, and they find evidence that the pollution from the smelter is indeed harming the local people, flora, and fauna. For Addie, this is no longer just a science project: It’s an important turning point in her activism. As the girls work together, they come to see beyond their earlier impressions of one another. Inspired by the author’s own experiences, this original exploration of the impact of

environmental pollution is a quick and accessible read, with consistent, smooth pacing and solid characterization. While some adults seem to change their attitudes unrealistically quickly, this does serve to emphasize the efficacy of the young people’s activism. Indian Canadian Priya and her family live in an otherwise white town.

An absorbing story of grassroots environmental activism by teens. (author’s note, sources and further reading) (Fiction. 12-16)

Red Cardi, Annie | Union Square & Co. (256 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 30, 2024 | 9781454951308

A young woman is shunned and harassed by members of her youth group after they discover she had an abortion.

Sixteen-yearold Tess Pine and her mother had to move in with Tess’ strict Christian grandparents following the death of her father and the loss of her mom’s job. Tess finds comfort in being with her peers from Grace Presbyterian; singing the choir is a particularly welcome outlet. So she feels terribly alone when they turn their backs on her after learning of her abortion.

Tess struggles with the bullying, which includes someone spray-painting a red letter A on her locker in an unsubtle nod to The Scarlet Letter, and her conflicted feelings about a relationship she was forced to keep secret. She eventually finds hope among a new group of friends who share her love of music. This harrowing, poignant, first-person tale takes its time unfolding, and readers will both ache for Tess and feel fury over the situation she’s been put in. Her slow but steady process of finding her voice rings emotionally true. Tess reads white; there’s some diversity in race and sexual orientation among secondary characters. The book also KIRKUS REVIEWS

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shows a realistic variance in the ways the Christian characters relate to Tess.

A heartfelt tale of an ostracized teen who finds caring people and a way through trauma. (author’s note, resources) (Fiction. 13-18)

Outer Banks: Dead Break Coles, Jay | Amulet/Abrams (272 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781419761614 Series: Outer Banks, 2

Surfing and sleuthing keep the Outer Banks teens on their toes.

A big surfing competition is happening on the Outer Banks, thrilling Kie but putting her at odds with her parents, who’d prefer she spend time with the wealthy Kooks. Kie befriends the professional surfers who are in town for the big event, including one particularly cute competitor. Pope is working at his new internship at the morgue, while JJ and John B are enjoying time on the water. But when the dead body of one of the out-oftown visitors washes up, it’s up to Kie and the Pogues to solve the mystery and save the day—before everyone leaves town. This murder mystery seamlessly blends familiar characters with newcomers, using the influx of summer visitors as a believable backdrop. Pope’s and Kie’s alternating perspectives provide the narrative with depth, as their different career aspirations—coroner and surfer, respectively—add context and dimension to their characterizations. As in the show, Pope is Black, and Kie is biracial, Black and white. Readers who are new to this world may find it difficult to keep up with the large cast, but it’s a treat for loyal followers, who will enjoy riding the wave to its satisfying conclusion.

A summery, surf-filled mystery sure to entertain fans of the show. (Mystery.

13-18) KIRKUS REVIEWS

Kirkus Star

Kirkus Star

The Atlas of Us

Tag, You’re Dead

Dwyer, Kristin | HarperTeen (336 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 9, 2024 | 9780063088580

Foxfield, Kathryn | Sourcebooks Fire (304 pp.) | $11.99 paper | Dec. 5, 2023 9781728278889

After her father dies, a teen drops out of high school, loses her job, and embarks on a four-week journey through the California backcountry.

Everyone in the Bear Creek Community Service program is assigned a nickname as part of starting over with “a blank slate.” No one needs to know your past or whether you’re there by choice or court order. All that matters is the present: working on hiking trail maintenance. For Atlas James, or Maps, as she’s now known, it’s an escape from the poor decisions she’s made since her father’s death from cancer and a tribute to him. One of his dying wishes was to hike the Western Sierra Trail with her— the same one she’ll now be spending the summer working on with Books, Junior, Sugar, and King. Maps is immediately drawn to group leader King, and as secrets are revealed, the two act as magnets, attracting and repelling one another. Maps’ tangible grief is centered as she copes with the loss of the only person who understood her and always had her back. Gradually, as they clear brush, dig drainage, and battle the backcountry and their pasts, a sense of family is forged among the crew. The palpable romantic tension between King and Maps propels this beautifully written story. Junior is coded Black; other major characters read white.

Gripping and authentic in the ways it portrays grief and shows how moving forward means having to let go. (Fiction. 14-18) For a great read to pair with Dwyer’s novel, visit Kirkus online.

Four teenagers with ulterior motives endure a deadly game of cat-and-mouse through the bustling streets of London.

Nine months after his collaborator, Rose Tavistock, died in a mysterious accident, “disgraced teenage millionaire” and video game creator Anton Frazer stages his comeback. He announces a competition with a £100,000 prize in which 100 hand-picked recruits will use augmented virtual reality goggles and GPS devices to pick each other off, while also vanquishing virtual ghosts and completing side quests. Four participants, however, have darker motives for taking part: Quiet Grayson vows to avenge ex-girlfriend Rose’s death, fanfic writer Charlotte is determined to win Anton’s undying affection, social media star Erin is desperate to escape her blogger mother’s clutches, and student reporter Emma is dead set on getting a scoop that catapults her to journalistic stardom. All bets are off, however, when an avatar of Rose hijacks the game, claiming there’s a murderer among them and setting off a deadly chain of events. Though the multifaceted main characters in this impeccably paced, pulse-pounding page-turner are terribly flawed, their humanity will keep readers rooting for them. This unusually deft, compulsively readable blend of mystery, thriller, realistic fiction, and horror with a bit of science fiction sprinkled in features incredible plot twists and will appeal to a broad range of teen readers. Most major characters read white; Emma’s surname cues Japanese heritage.

An unputdownable, deliciously unsettling read. (Thriller. 13-18)

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Y O U N G A D U LT // Q & A

THE KIRKUS Q&A: CRYSTAL MALDONADO The author’s new YA novel, The Fall of Whit Rivera, puts a bisexual brown fat girl front and center. BY ANA GRILO

Maldonado got her start writing fan fiction.

CRYSTAL MALDONADO’S THIRD book, and most recent

You are the self-described author of “rom-coms for fat brown girls,” books that are effectively about identity and visibility. How important is that for you?

I could not think of something more important when it comes to my work: the visibility of these main characters, and their willingness to take up space, not just in the stories but also on bookshelves and on the cover of books, where we’re seeing these girls who don’t typically get their stories told. For me, that is the driving force behind a lot of my stories: this idea that there are so many of us who can relate 130 OCTOBER 15, 2023

to feeling like our bodies are not “ideal for society” or feeling like our skin is too dark or our hair is too curly or insert whatever insecurity here. We’re living our lives, and we deserve to be able to see versions of ourselves exist and depicted in books and in movies and on TV, really getting to celebrate all the good things that happen in our lives and have that validation for our identities and our experiences.

The characters in this novel are so rich and complex, and they have a multitude of intersections as part of their identity. It all feels

very natural and integrated into the story.

I believe the ability to have these characters live in multiple worlds is important, because of that intersectionality. None of us is just the one thing: We are first-generation immigrants, or we are daughters of immigrants, or we are women; we’re dealing with our sexuality, or we’re white passing. We’re all these things, all at the same time.

And to be able to have characters who embody those things is essential, especially when I can try and bring some nuance to what that means for some of the characters. In The Fall of Whit Rivera, we see Whit’s invisible chronic illness, and she’s initially grappling with that quietly. She’s putting on this brave face, and she decides to focus on this perfect homecoming

dance, the Fall Fest. That’s relatable, because we do get to decide what’s at the forefront of our lives in certain periods. For many of us, that’s just life; it’s how we adapt, and that’s part of who we are. And it doesn’t have to be the central thing in our experience. Of course, there are periods of our lives where that is the focus—but not always. Having the ability to tell these stories that make room and take up space for all the varied experiences that we encompass is crucial, especially when we’re dealing with young readers.

To that point, is there any part of the book that you see yourself in?

A few parts of this book really relate back to my own life. So, first, I am such a fall girl. I grew up in Connecticut, and most KIRKUS REVIEWS

Crystal Maldonado

foray into contemporary YA, is The Fall of Whit Rivera (Holiday House, Oct. 10), a cozy and inspirational blend of romance and self-realization that follows the title character, a bisexual Puerto Rican American teenager, as she grapples with a recent diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a chronic illness that affects all aspects of her life. Nevertheless, she’s committed to throwing the best ever Fall Fest, her school’s celebration of all things autumnal. Maldonado spoke with us via Zoom about the inspirations behind the story, her love for boy bands, and the joys of the fall season. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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of my adult life I’ve been in Massachusetts. We have that quintessential autumn, the changing leaves and the apple and pumpkin picking, and all of that. I’ve always loved that season, so for me, it’s all tied together. And then, like Whit, I also have PCOS—I’m dealing with the illness but, equally, trying to push past it and have this exterior of everything’s fine and nothing’s going on.

I had to come to terms with just being OK—not being perfect and embracing where I am in life.

Whit has a younger sister named Lily, and she’s autistic. And we get to see

who Lily is beyond this diagnosis, too. We have these two big diagnoses in the book, and they take different forms. For Whit, her PCOS is front and center.

And for Lily, being autistic is like one teeny tiny part of who she is. I grew up with a younger cousin who was never officially diagnosed with autism. But a lot of the traits that Lily has, he shared with her. And we loved boy bands as we were growing up. We loved the Backstreet Boys, we loved ’N Sync. I gave that to Whit and her younger sister: their shared loved for the fictional band Intonation as a mirror image of

what we were experiencing when we were growing up.

You have a fan fiction background. How did that inform and shape your writing?

This is a perfect segue, because I was a boy band fan fiction girl; I wrote a lot of fan fiction about the Backstreet Boys especially.

Fan fiction is so underappreciated as an art form.

There are some phenomenal writers out there writing fan fiction, and for me it was how I got my feet wet in writing. I was able to explore writing an actual story that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it’s all about sharing with

I had to come to terms with not being perfect and embracing where I am in life.

The Fall of Whit Rivera Maldonado, Crystal

Holiday House | 320 pp. | $19.99 Oct. 10, 2023 | 9780823452361

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others who appreciate and love the thing that you love.

There’s an amazing energy that comes with that, because everyone already loves the baseline of what you’re writing about. But there’s also this terrifying fear of getting something wrong. There’s this element of getting comfortable with sharing your work with others and receiving feedback, for better or for worse. It really helped me grow as a writer to be able to experiment and make mistakes, to share and see what it was that made readers happy.

How does that relate to writing your own work?

When I transitioned to writing original characters, there was something exhilarating about it. I wanted to express appreciation for the fact that there’s room for books like Whit Rivera, where the main character is not this perfect person; she doesn’t necessarily fit the mold of what a main character might look like. I am so appreciative that there’s a willingness to embrace these characters who are messy, or who don’t always have the right answer, and to watch them as they grow, change, and become people who are better and know themselves more than they did at the start of the book. I’m very grateful for that and thankful that I get to explore these identities, and intersections of identities, in ways that I never dreamed I’d be able to when I was a teenager.

Ana Grilo is co-editor of the Hugo Award–winning blog The Book Smugglers. The Fall of Whit Rivera received a starred review in the July 15, 2023, issue.

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Kirkus Star

A Place for Vanishing Fraistat, Ann | Delacorte (464 pp.) | $19.99 $22.99 PLB | Jan. 16, 2024 | 9780593382219 9780593382233 PLB

Sisters return to their mother’s mysterious and legendary childhood home.

Libby’s mom grew up in the internet-famous haunted house Madame Clery’s House of Masks, at once deeply unsettling and incredibly beautiful underneath decades of neglect and overgrown blue roses. Despite never having taken Libby and her sister, Vivi, to visit, they move in, seeking a fresh start after Libby’s recent mental health crisis. As if the repercussions of her suicide attempt aren’t creating enough distance between her and her family, the more questions Libby has about the strange noises she hears at night, the intricate stained-glass insects in the windows, and the multiple disappearances of the house’s inhabitants, the more her mom seems to fall under its spell. Libby is left trying to solve the mystery with the help of redheaded neighbor Flynn, who definitely knows too much. In addition to dealing with the house’s deliciously spooky, haunted vibes and its accompanying legend and horrors, Libby is struggling with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which Fraistat does an excellent job of exploring both from Libby’s perspective and in terms of the emotional fissures it causes within her family. As well as being deeply emotional, the book contains many shudder-inducing moments that will leave readers’ skin crawling. The girls’ white mom, who may be aromantic or asexual, conceived them using sperm donors; Libby’s donor was white, and Vivi’s was Black.

A compelling, darkly creative, and intensely haunting examination of the masks we wear. (Horror. 12-18) 132 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Many shudder-inducing moments will leave readers’ skin crawling.

A PLACE FOR VANISHING

Static: Up All Night Giles, Lamar | Illus. by Paris Alleyne with N. Steven Harris | Colors by Bex Glendining DC (208 pp.) | $16.99 paper | Nov. 7, 2023 9781779510518

A teen superhero originally from the Milestone Universe tries to get over a breakup and finds himself having an all-night adventure.

Virgil Hawkins, aka Static, discovers his heroics do not endear him to his ladylove, Daisy. He’s just about to invite her to a big music festival when she breaks up with him, leaving him feeling distraught. It’s not as if it was his choice to become a Bang Baby but rather a side effect of being caught in an overly aggressive response to a demonstration. Virgil’s circle of friends includes others with unusual gifts as well. His best friend, Rich, encourages him to come with him to the festival and forget his problems for one night, but when Virgil gets there and spots Daisy with a new guy, Static’s powers accidentally disrupt the performance.

His attempt to salvage the night results in more disaster and mayhem as Static and friends clash with determined villains, while Static’s obsession with his breakup leads him to make bad decisions. The action in this page-turning graphic novel is nonstop. Giles brings his trademark strong storytelling skills and humor to this version of the character, and African American Virgil displays an engaging personality as he embraces his superhero tasks. Each member of his diverse set of friends

brings unique qualities to the tale as well. The lively, expressive illustrations skillfully match the exciting storyline.

A winning combination of characters, plot, and images. (Graphic adventure.

13-17)

Kirkus Star

Sky’s End Gregson, Marc J. | Peachtree Teen (416 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 2, 2024 9781682635766 | Series: Above the Black, 1

To save his younger sister from their villainous uncle, a 16-year-old enters a perilous contest that involves killing massive sky serpents.

Anyone living on the socially stratified floating islands can rise in status by dueling or entering a Trade. Conrad, once a High, is demoted after his uncle kills his father and assumes the role of Archduke. After his mother is killed, Conrad tries to reunite with Ella, the sister his uncle abducted, but Uncle demands that he first enter the Selection and rise through the ranks of one of the Twelve Trades. Chosen

by Hunter, which is responsible for exterminating the menacing, steelscaled gorgantauns, Conrad is soon taking part in the Gauntlet, a deadly contest between airships to see which crew can kill the most gorgantauns.

But he won’t just have to battle sky serpents—Conrad also faces the ever-present threat of mutiny, a murder attempt, and shifting loyalties.

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Amid budding friendships, the crew unearths startling truths about their world, revealing a more profound conflict than Conrad envisioned.

Gregson’s YA debut provides a skillful blend of action, suspense, and comic relief. After each airship battle, readers can barely draw breath before political intrigues turn the story on its head, but this is also a touching story of found family and personal growth. Most major characters read white; in this racially diverse world, one crew member has dark skin.

A thrilling and brilliantly realized series opener; readers will clamor for the next installment. (Fantasy. 14-18)

40 Days in Hicksville Kilbourne, Christina | DCB (264 pp.) $16.95 paper | Oct. 14, 2023 9781770867154

Kate Cooper likes exploring—until a creepy discovery hits close to home.

Fifteen-yearold Kate has just moved east across Canada to her mother’s childhood home in the small town of Clarendon, which she’s dubbed Hicksville—and she’s not happy about it. It’s just Kate and her mom, as her unstable dad is barely around. Zach Whitchurch, Kate’s neighbor and classmate, keeps riding over to her house on his John Deere lawn mower, and the two bond over their mutual interest in Kate’s paternal grandfather, who’s rumored to have killed his wife.

Exploring the woods on her grandfather’s property, Kate and Zach come across a crevasse that merits further exploration. But when Zach finds a human skull, it leads to a web of secrets unraveling. The story is told in alternating first-person chapters from Kate’s and Zach’s perspectives.

Character development is unfortunately lacking; it feels like there’s little more to Zach than his interest in Kate, while Kate comes across as a KIRKUS REVIEWS

stereotypical rebellious teenager. Repetitive events—ditching school to snoop and sneaking into the woods—become tiresome as they drive the story to its underwhelming climax. One highlight of the book, however, is its depiction of how trauma affects families’ wellbeing; Kate’s parents each carry demons from their pasts into their present lives.

Most characters read white.

A thin mystery with ultimately forgettable characters. (Thriller. 12-16)

That’s Not My Name Lally, Megan | Sourcebooks Fire (304 pp.) $11.99 paper | Jan. 2, 2024 | 9781728270111

A girl with amnesia and a boy suspected of harming his girlfriend overcome adversity to find the answers they seek.

A 17-year-old girl wakes up in a ditch, disoriented and with no memory of who she is or what happened. Found by the Alton, Oregon, police, she is brought to the station. Soon after, Wayne Boone, a man claiming to be her father, shows up. He has photos of her on his phone and her high school ID card, with the name Mary Boone. Wayne convinces the police to release Mary into his custody. The more time Mary spends with Wayne, however, the weirder things get: He’s unaware of her food allergy, and as her memories start to return, they don’t conform with Wayne’s versions of her life. In the town of Washington City, across the Willamette River, Drew is in a bad place. His girlfriend, Lola, has disappeared, and Drew was the last person to see her. His adoptive dads and cousin are the only ones who support him; everyone else, including the sheriff, thinks he’s responsible for Lola’s disappearance. Intent on finding Lola, Drew finds help in an unlikely ally, Lola’s best friend, Autumn, who is the sheriff’s daughter. But will they find Lola in time? The two immersive

storylines bring to life the trials and frustrations each main character faces in this debut, which is a thrilling delight right up to the unexpected and bittersweet conclusion. Most characters are cued white; one of Drew’s dads is Guatemalan.

A gripping tribute to resilience.

(Thriller. 14-18)

A Twisted Tale Anthology Ed. by Lim, Elizabeth | Disney-Hyperion (576 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 3, 2023 9781368080415 | Series: A Twisted Tale

A whole collection of Disney what ifs.

What if Snow White picked up some magic?

What if Mufasa survived his fall?

What if Tinker Bell worked for Captain Hook? What if Aurora was raised with knowledge of Maleficent’s curse? YA authors explore these possibilities (and more) in this collection of 16 short stories. Previous contributors to the A Twisted Tale series return— Liz Braswell, Jen Calonita, Farrah Rochon, and editor Lim. Joining them are Livia Blackburne, M.K. England, Micol Ostow, and Kristina Pérez. The shorter format allows readers to revisit some movies that already have their own novel-length treatments (The Little Mermaid, Mulan, Hercules, The Princess and the Frog) as well as others that often get less attention (Robin Hood, Treasure Planet, Bambi), which is refreshing.

Some of the stories have radical and intriguing premises (Rochon’s “A New Dawn,” Braswell’s “A Royal Game of Chess,” and Lim’s “The Rose and the Thorns”). The stories that take place after the canon may be the most fun for some readers, since they don’t upend the original beloved narratives (Lim’s “A First Mission” and Calonita’s “The Envelope” and “Fates, Three”). A couple of the tales offer some expanded backstory or fill in missing scenes (Pérez’s “A Dragon in the Snow” and Braswell’s “The Reluctant Prince”). All OCTOBER 15, 2023 133

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in all, this volume contains a pleasing variety of well-crafted entries.

An entertaining compilation that will satisfy Disney fans. (Fantasy anthology.

12-18)

The Getaway List

An entertaining friends-tolovers story that will have readers laughing and reflecting.

T H E G E TA W AY L I S T

Lord, Emma | Wednesday Books (320 pp.) $20.00 | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9781250903990

Two best friends come together after being separated for several years, tackling long-anticipated items on their Getaway List.

Riley was turned down by all 10 colleges she applied to, and she’s not upset about it, which concerns her—and really bothers her mother.

With her history of joining childhood bestie Tom in good-natured troublemaking, Riley has spent the past few years of high school since getting suspended overwhelmed by the extracurriculars and jobs her mother sets up for her. Now that Riley’s graduated, she realizes that she has no idea what she wants to do with her life. Against her mother’s wishes, she travels from Virginia to New York City, back into the life of Tom, who moved there after ninth grade. What starts as a weekend away turns into a summer of discovery and adventure for the two 18-year-olds as they hang out with a quirky group of friends and work to complete the list of activities they started making after Tom’s move. Together, Riley and Tom navigate the intricacies of self-discovery and their changing feelings for one another. This is a beautiful story of family, friendship, romantic love, and personal growth. Riley is a witty, reflective narrator, and the supporting characters are well formed and likable, keeping the humor and engagement high. Riley and Tom are cued white.

An entertaining friends-to-lovers story that will have readers laughing and reflecting in equal measure. (Romance.

13-18)

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Not Dead Enough Neiheiser, Tyffany D. | Viking (416 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9780593205549

A teenage girl must deal with the aftermath of a complicated tragedy.

After Charlotte’s boyfriend, Jerry, dies in a car accident the night of prom, everyone around her assumes she must be heartbroken and wants to reminisce about what a great guy he was. But Charlotte knew a different and darker side of him: Jerry wasn’t the golden boy everyone thought he was, a secret she’s been desperately trying to keep.

Charlotte is trying to live a normal life while attending therapy to treat her PTSD from the events leading up to that night and also grappling with mixed feelings about Jerry’s death.

When she starts receiving texts from her dead boyfriend, she realizes she might be in danger. With the help of her friends and a new romantic interest, Charlotte must figure out if the source of everything going on is paranormal—or maybe something even more sinister. Neiheiser’s prose is confident and compelling, but with the blending of thriller and paranormal genres and the inclusion of multiple serious themes, such as trauma, alcoholism, and abuse, the story occasionally feels like it’s trying to accomplish too much without enough room to do everything justice.

Nevertheless, the pacing makes for a riveting page-turner with genuinely scary and nerve-wracking scenes that does a mostly effective job of tackling

the complicated events. Most main characters are cued white.

Goose bump inducing and thought provoking. (author’s note, resources) (Thriller. 14-18)

The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee Oh, Ellen | Crown (304 pp.) | $19.99 $22.99 PLB | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9780593125946 9780593125953 PLB

When real life and her webcomic merge, a Washington, D.C., teen’s world is turned upside down.

Ever since 17-year-old Mina Lee’s mother’s sudden death, her father has been uninterested in Mina’s art, even though it’s the one way that she still feels connected to her mother.

Despite her father’s objections, Korean American Mina needs to convince him to let her go to art school, but she’s too scared to broach the subject. She has a plan, though: If her webcomic becomes popular enough, she can show her father that her art matters.

The only problem is that it is, frankly, boring—but when Mina tries to spice the story up, things suddenly get a little too interesting. Somehow, Mina finds herself inside her webcomic, and though she might be the author, she’s no longer completely in control. To make matters worse, Mina’s become part of a love triangle to rival those found in K-dramas, one involving childhood best friend Jin, who died when he was 6. The young woman hero of her webcomic (who’s seeming KIRKUS REVIEWS

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more like a villain) is interested in Jin too. What’s a girl to do? The fun, light romance is enhanced by the fantastical elements and diverse supporting cast.

The story evokes the daydreams of any teenager who’s let their imagination run wild. Both the high school and magical hijinks flow fast and furious, maintaining readers’ interest.

A lighthearted story with touches of romance and fantasy, told with K-drama flair. (Fiction. 12-18)

My Big, Fat Desi Wedding Ed. by Pickett, Prerna | Page Street (272 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 16, 2024 | 9781645679950

The glamour and drama of desi weddings are on full display in this short and satisfying anthology.

Written by new and established desi authors, the eight stories in this collection highlight the dizzying whirl of excitement, stress, family tensions, and sensory delights that surround desi wedding celebrations of various religions, regions, and countries. In the prologue, readers are introduced to an unnamed auntie who appears in every story and who, on some occasions, steps in to provide timely assistance.

In Sarah Mughal Rana’s “A Wedding Recipe for Disaster,” for example, the auntie prompts a reluctant bride to face some difficult truths, while in “Sehra,” by Syed Masood, her advice helps a Muslim teen perform a family tradition at his estranged older brother’s wedding. Most of the stories take place in realistic contemporary settings, though a few include a touch of magic. In “The Disaster Wedding,”

by Prerna Pickett, high school senior Jaanu scrambles to undo wedding weekend mishaps caused by her careless, prophetic words. In the sweetly romantic “Fate’s Favorite,” by Tashie Bhuiyan, 16-year-old Nivali juggles a new crush and the appearance of soulmarks—words that reveal what your KIRKUS REVIEWS

soulmate thinks of you—on her body.

The stories vary in tone and length but share themes of personal growth, reconciliation, and second chances.

Appealing characters and gratifying emotional arcs balance out some entries that are less polished.

Love triumphs in this festive collection.

(Romance anthology. 13-18)

A Fragile Enchantment Saft, Allison | Wednesday Books (384 pp.) $20.00 | Jan. 23, 2024 | 9781250892836

A tailor and a prince become entwined in a tenuous romance.

When Niamh, who’s from a working-class Machlish family, receives an invitation to serve as the tailor for the royal wedding of Avaland’s Prince Christopher to the Castilian Infanta Rosa, she boards the ship, convinced that this Season will change her family’s fortunes. Her ability to imbue emotions into her embroidery has earned her a reputation among the high-born, but using magic comes at a cost to her lifespan.

Niamh arrives on Avaland’s shores, only to find the country in turmoil.

The exploited Machlish are striking in droves, a gossip columnist has alienated the court, and most troublesome of all, the brooding and reluctant Christopher, who goes by Kit, simultaneously vexes and beguiles her.

With patience and persistence, Niamh pierces Kit’s thorny, magicked defenses, but personal and political histories threaten their future. The descriptions of Niamh’s handiwork are delicately crafted, as is the worldbuilding, which evokes a European historical setting and population. Names, the Machland crop famine, and Machlish legends point to Irish influences. Kit’s prickliness and Niamh’s empathetic nature create a heated attraction of opposites that risks positioning Niamh as overly self-sacrificing at the expense of her individuality and a satisfying character

arc. However, well-rendered supporting characters are gratifying additions to the narrative, which wraps up somewhat hastily.

A bit uneven, but fans of Regency romances will revel in this fantastical affair. (Fantasy romance. 14-18)

Saturday AM Annual 2024: A Celebration of Original Diverse Manga-Inspired Short Stories From Around the World Ed by Saturday AM | Rockport Publishers (224 pp.) | $15.99 paper | Oct. 17, 2023 9780760382523 | Series: Saturday AM Annual, 2

A broad and inclusive collection of manga short stories.

This collection offers nine different tales of varying genres and with different illustration styles. Although each of the entries are stand-alones, some of them are also parts of larger universes; however, even these can readily be appreciated and enjoyed by new readers. The highlights of the collection are “Apple Black,” by Odunze Oguguo, set in a world that’s rooted in magic in which characters meet an unlikely villain who’s a master manipulator, and “MMWOG: Land of Spirits,” by Han X. Rivers, in which a mother is put in the difficult situation of defending the world while also exposing her child to its ghostly horrors. Rivers’ art is especially stunning with its delicate linework. In other stories, the art is cute or sharply angled, depending on the narratorial choices that it complements. “Clock Striker,” by Mike Saharat Srimuang, is set in a technologically advanced world in which a close and meaningful friendship unfolds; the hero of Tapiwa Sikota’s “Spoon” was cursed and turned into a spoon and now faces an evil warlord named Spaghetti; and Angélica Rosales’ “Yellow Stringer,” which focuses on problems >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 135

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2

1 Unseelie

By Ivelisse Housman

An intriguing, magical debut.

2 Seven Percent of Ro Devereux

By Ellen O’Clover

A thoughtful meditation on some weighty questions wrapped in a welldrawn romance.

3 When It All Syncs Up

By Maya Ameyaw

A hopeful, realistic exploration of mental health among teens invested in the world of the arts.

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4

6 Must-Read YA Debuts 5

4 A Crooked Mark

By Linda Kao

6

This thoughtful debut offers both supernatural thrills and careful character development.

5 Sing Me to Sleep

By Gabi Burton

A winning debut.

6 Together We Rot

For more must-read YA debuts, visit Kirkus online.

By Skyla Arndt

Haunting and spellbinding.

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at a tabloid paper, emphasizes the importance of fighting back. The book also features an opening letter from the publisher and two interviews, one with WEBTOON artist uru-chan and one with comics professional Sanford Greene. Manga fans will appreciate the diversity of voices and characters featured in this volume marking Saturday AM’s 10th anniversary.

Delightfully varied. (Manga anthology.

16-adult)

A Grim and Sunken Vow Shuttleworth, Ashley | McElderry (640 pp.) $24.99 | Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781665918770 Series: Hollow Star Saga, 3

One by one, Riadne Lysterne, Seelie Queen of Summer, rejuvenates the seven Sins, claiming their power to break the seals on Ruin, a formidable and

devastating titan.

At the Solstice party, Arlo Jarsdel and Celadon, her cousin, watch helplessly as Riadne murders their family and seizes the Bone Crown from UnSeelie Spring. Weighed down by guilt for her misplaced trust in Riadne, Arlo swears she will never use her powers to manipulate fate again. The immortals have not forgotten Arlo’s mysterious powers, however, nor given up on winning her allegiance. Celadon carries a heavy burden of his own—a surge of new magic, the truth of his parentage, and rulership over a court that believes he conspired to kill his family. Amid the emotional and political strife, a treacherous ally with a blood-soaked history of and a vendetta against Fate emerges from the shadows. This third installment of the Hollow Star Saga begins in the middle of the turmoil where the last book left off, maintaining momentum and suspense by switching between the perspectives of an ensemble cast of queer, primarily white characters.

Shuttleworth’s use of foreshadowing through poignant details, flashbacks, 138 OCTOBER 15, 2023

and allusions to mythology sets up satisfying plot twists. Unfortunately, the attempts to examine colonization and racism through plot and worldbuilding miss the mark, as they don’t fully explore the weighty topics they broach.

Offers vicious and thrilling intrigue.

(Fantasy. 14-18)

The Invocations Sutherland, Krystal | Nancy Paulsen Books (304 pp.) | $19.99 | $10.50 paper Jan. 30, 2024 | 9780593532263 9780593696286 paper

Three young women team up to track down a serial killer who’s targeting witches.

Jude Wolf became cursed after a deal with a demon went awry; as a result, she was kicked out of her rich and well-connected family. Zara Jones wants to bring her murdered sister back from the dead so she can make amends. They both need the help of Emer Byrne, a powerful type of witch known as a cursewriter. With a dark past of her own, Emer writes invocations that give women power in exchange for letting a demon have part of their souls, turning them into witches. When the trio of women, who are cued white, realize that the serial killer on the loose in London is specifically going after Emer’s previous clients, they pool their resources.

Jude is independently wealthy, Zara has incredible puzzle-solving skills, and Emer brings her witchy prowess: Together they work to fight back and find the killer. Filled with feminist rage and a sprinkle of queer romance, this lushly written tale methodically builds to a heart-pounding confrontation. Each woman is separately introduced, and then Sutherland expertly weaves together their lives in intricate and fascinating ways. The characters’ relationships evolve as the stakes become increasingly dangerous.

Although some of the worldbuilding

details are waved away, the evocative body horror, distinct and compelling leads, and twisty plot will keep readers immersed in this grisly story.

A thrilling and exquisitely grotesque showcase of young women taking charge. (Paranormal thriller. 14-18)

Kingdom of Without Tang, Andrea | Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $19.99 | Nov. 28, 2023 | 9781665901444

A Beijing teen gets pulled into the ultimate heist.

The Beiyang clique came to power in 1915, with ministers manipulating the emperor and taking money from large corporations to maintain control; 150 years later, 17-year-old Zhong Ning’er lives in the slums of Beijing’s Sixth Ring. Ning’er sells her cybernetic prosthetic arm and leg to make ends meet, but when her father, who is addicted to drugs, cleans out her bank account, she takes a job as a thief with the Red Yaksha, a masked hero who steals from the Upper Rings to help the poor. Her unexpected assignment involves helping him free the Lark, an imprisoned revolutionary figure from the Lower Rings who spoke out against the corrupt government.

Since her apparent death—her shooting was caught on camera, although no body was ever found—corruption has increased, and the Lower Rings have become even more oppressed by the gendarme and their androids. Focused on her payday, Ning’er works with the Red Yaksha and his crew, but she didn’t expect to make friends, much less feel hope for a better future for herself and all of Beijing. This cyberpunk story with well-constructed worldbuilding offers a strong mix of wit, humor, action, and heart. Centered on revolution, the story addresses a range of social and identity issues.

A fun and powerful adventure for lovers of alternate histories. (dramatis personae) (Science fiction. 12-18)

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Where There’s Smoke Vickers, E.B. | Knopf (320 pp.) | $18.99 Dec. 19, 2023 | 9780593480694

A small-town teen’s moral compass is set awry after she discovers a dark side to someone she loves.

After the death of her beloved, well-respected father, recent high school graduate Calli rescues an injured girl she finds hiding on their family property. Shielding the clearly traumatized girl, whom she believes escaped from a nearby fundamentalist sect in the desert, Calli takes her to her family’s mountain cabin, where she learns more about the girl, along with some disturbing truths about her own family. Comforted by childhood memories of her parents and formative years but also baffled by what’s unfolding before her, Callie experiences a “watershed moment” when she faces an important decision involving loyalty and justice. The narrative alternates effectively with introspective poems that add insight and intensity.

The book explores the notion that there are monsters among us whose bland, ordinary, even righteous exteriors hide evil within and the fact that it can be easier to wear blinders than to face the truth. Calli’s first-person narration traces her trajectory from initial respect for her elders’ advice to becoming cynical and mistrustful. The plot explores the cyclical nature of abuse and the fine line between abuser and victim while addressing one teen’s growing awareness of these complexities. Characters largely read white; contextual clues point to Calli’s belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A twisty thriller that delves into tough emotional topics. (Thriller. 13-18) For another page-turner about family secrets, visit Kirkus online.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Diary of a Confused Feminist Weston, Kate | Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $21.99 | Jan. 2, 2024 | 9781665937948

Activism and laugh-out-loud hijinks abound in this diary-format novel about an aspiring teen journalist with anxiety.

Kat Evans, nearly 16, lives in a quiet English town and worries a great deal, especially about being left behind by her friends, who are pairing up with romantic partners. Kat’s three best friends work hard to support her: Millie is an actress who’s determined to be cast as Juliet in the school play, Sam is a talented artist, and Matt is Kat’s neighbor and a popular out gay classmate. The story opens in early September. After learning more about feminism from Kat’s and Matt’s mums, Kat, Millie, and Sam decide to spray-paint “#TimesUp” on the tarmac at school to commemorate the 2018 Golden Globes #MeToo protest. Unfortunately, they’re caught by the principal after only having completed “#Tim,” giving their creepy classmate Tim Matthews the wrong idea.

Mishaps and feminist acts of rebellion continue throughout. The humor is well done, featuring over-the-top yet believable scenarios and Kat’s relatable and detailed inner-monologue responses.

Kat’s family is warm and supportive, especially once it becomes clear that she needs mental health intervention. Her diary poses authentic questions that interrogate the tenets of feminism in a thought-provoking, accessible way that never feels preachy or overwrought. Sam is Black; other major characters read white.

A raucously entertaining examination of feminist principles. (Fiction. 14-18) For another funny, feminist YA novel, visit Kirkus online.

Houses With a Story: A Dragon’s Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 More Amazing Places To Explore Yoshida, Seiji | Trans. by Jan Mitsuko Cash Amulet/Abrams (128 pp.) | $24.99 Nov. 14, 2023 | 9781419761249

In this work translated from Japanese, 30 homes from worlds real and imagined are revealed in watercolor-style illustrations.

From lighthouse to treehouse, tower to subway station, each home in this collection is charmingly rendered in digitally colored hand-drawn sketches that evoke “the warmth of a picture book.” Accompanied by cutaways detailing the home’s history, inhabitants, and plumbing, every page transports readers to the scene of a new story. Some homes, like “The Post Office of the Dragon Tamer,” with its dragon stable, convenient payment window, and rarely used bathtub, exist outside of familiar space and time. Others, like the unprofitable “Kaidan-Do Bookstore,” filled with shelves of used books and run by a lonely shopkeeper, could appear around the corner in your own neighborhood. The homes and the vignettes describing them are clever and tenderly expressed; many are Japanese or East Asian, but other cultures and locations are represented. Equally fascinating are the substantial sections detailing Yoshida’s process and craft.

A background graphic artist for games and manga, Yoshida also includes sidebars sharing his research on roofs and toilets, documenting his own work studio, and revealing the time periods and countries that inspired each house. Readers with an interest in illustration, architecture, or worldbuilding will find much to pore over in this visually engaging art book.

Offers tantalizing glimpses into imagination-inspiring rooms full of untold stories. (select bibliography) (Illustrated fiction. 12-adult)

OCTOBER 15, 2023 139

Indie

ARTHUR SMITH

AS MUCH AS we love the

traditional gumshoe wearily making his way through the mean streets, pursuing another case lousy with double-crossing dames and grinning gunsels, we must admit the formula has grown familiar. We’ve spotted an intriguing trend in Indie titles: crime and mystery stories set in the wild and woolly world of pop music.

It’s a surprisingly natural fit: The music industry is nothing if not a snake pit of exploitation and desperate ambition (it’s surprising that anybody makes it out alive).

These criminally enjoyable tales eschew shadowy back alleys and skid row joints to play out in DJ booths, recording studios, and Andy Warhol’s Factory. It’s not Chinatown, Jake—it’s only rock ’n’ roll (and we like it).

140 OCTOBER 15, 2023

In Freeman Jayce’s 2023 book House Made of Sound, a desperate record company executive (a redundant phrase if ever there was one) must navigate a strange afterlife seeking the lost master tapes of a recently deceased band’s last album. Our review calls the novel “an absolutely winning story, a rousing, funny, and surprisingly moving tale,” praising Jayce’s “elegant prose”: “His thoughts returned to the empty wallet, and to the ousted presidents that once held office there.”

Sounds like a musician to us.

Jeff Gomez’s Vicious (2022) proceeds from an even less likely premise: Lou Reed, the famously foul-tempered leader of the iconic Velvet Underground, is lured from his early retirement in suburbia back into the demimonde of his mentor,

Pop Art titan Andy Warhol, when one of Warhol’s paintings plays a role in a murder (considering the depravity rumored to go down at the Factory, a simple murder seems almost quaint). Our review raves, “The author’s sly, deadpan prose captures both settings and their denizens in wonderfully evocative detail.” A rock poet heroin survivor playing Columbo? We’re in.

The 2022 novel Spirit Valley Radio by Jennifer Tall also puts a spooky spin on a rock-adjacent mystery—pirate radio station KSR seems to transmit broadcasts from the past; Spirit Valley, the source of the strange transmissions, is evidently haunted as all get-out. Garage rockers will cringe in empathy for the local combo that is paid to scare away tourists with their caterwauling. Our review describes the novel as a “beguiling fable that’s full of rich whimsy with a thoughtful bite” and highlights the “colorful characters who stay grounded amid the supernaturalism and sly humor and prose whose deadpan matter-of-factness shades into poetry.”

Flip Your Wig (2022) by Roy Chaney sets a murder mystery in the chaos surrounding a concert by the Beatles in the mid-1960s—a

guitarist for the band set to open for the Fab Four is found murdered, leading detectives to investigate a group of musicians stealing songs and bootlegging records (it’s tough to make a living playing rock ’n’ roll). An anticipated Beatlemania-stoked riot adds a ticking clock to the proceedings in a thriller our review calls a “historically rich mystery with a delectable noir touch.” “She said, ‘I know what it’s like to be dead.’ ” Tamatha Cain’s Song of the Chimney Sweep (2022) follows the efforts of a group of true-crime podcasters to solve the 2021 disappearance of Betty Van Disson. Her diary reveals a late-1960s romance she shared with charismatic R&B musician Dominicus Owen, leader of the Downtown Sound band.

The novel alternates between the intrepid podcasters chasing down leads in the present and Betty’s experiences decades earlier in a richly atmospheric Florida-set mystery our review describes as a “compulsively readable story” in which Cain “ably and steadily ratchets up the suspense.”

Sarah Koenig only wishes she got there first.

Arthur Smith is an Indie editor.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Illustration by Eric Scott Anderson

MYSTERIES OF ROCK

INDIE

EDITOR’S PICK A 16-year-old artist leaves her small-town Oklahoma home and enters a new school—and a new life—in this second installment in Vincent’s YA series.

Identifying as gender nonconforming, Nic Summers gets misgendered frequently and has had to deal with schoolmates and even family members who are far from understanding.

But when she leaves her home to attend a private academy in suburban Oklahoma City, her expectations are high. Not only does she hope to finally find her true self—and fully understand her as-of-yet uncertain gender identity and sexuality—she yearns to

These Titles Earned the Kirkus Star

KIRKUS REVIEWS

find people with whom she can identify and connect.

Nic quickly finds happiness at the school—she meets a teacher who takes her passion for art to the next level and a small group of friends who share the same interests. She even meets a mysterious boy, Mack, upon whom she immediately starts crushing. But the same prejudice, hatred, and ignorance that plagued her back home find her and her friends at her new school, and Nic is forced to deal with people who are willing to go out of their way to torment her, destroy her relationships, and derail her burgeoning career in art. An impressively honest

142

La Casita Hispaniola

By Yajaida Aristhyl & Michelson Aristhyl; illus. by Brittany Gonzalez

145

Mastering Classic Cocktails

By C. Townsend Brady; photos by Rod Searcey

149

Sand Dollars by the Seashore

By E.G. Creel; illus. by Elizaveta Kres

152

Majority

By Abby Goldsmith

Uglier Vincent, Kelly | Self | 360 pp. $12.99 | Jul. 31, 2023 | 9781958342114

and intimate first person POV powers this story of a young person struggling with gender and trying to find their place in a world that is seemingly determined to “erase” them.

Anti-trans legislation, book bans, and the blind hatred passed down by some parents (“red state training”) to their children are all

154

The Cathedral Murders

By J.E. Morales

referenced in this novel, which doesn’t pull any punches about the dangers growing up different, especially in small town America. “They really are coming after us, and it’s not just me. It’s all of you.”

A powerfully moving YA novel that will hopefully enlighten as much as it entertains.

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Uglier

By Kelly Vincent

155

Queenside

By Dima Novak

156

Master, Minion

By Paul Podolsky

OCTOBER 15, 2023 141

INDIE

Puro Pinche True Fictions: Prose and Comics Alaniz, José | Flowersong Press (134 pp.) | $18.00 paper | Sept. 5, 2023 9781953447685

Alaniz presents a hybrid collection of autofictional short stories and comics that examines the Chicano experience throughout time.

“These stories are also all in one way or another true and in one way or another made up,” writes the author in his foreword; “like all writing.” The book is split into two sections, one in prose, the other in comics form. Alaniz plays with the blurred line between fiction and memoir, sometimes repeating stories in the two modes.

The prose section addresses the concept of time, as indicated by each story title containing a year (“Sandías 1918”; “The Last Time 1994”); occasionally narrators switch between first and third person, and sometimes the perspectives are layered within the stories. Most of the narratives are constrained to the geography of the border area of southern Texas—the Rio Grande Valley—which lends many of the stories a sense of incomplete transition, hovering between opposing ideas, realizations, and concrete emotions. While there are some surreal elements at play, and even a Bradbury-inspired foray into space with a story set in the 2060s on Mars, most concern themselves with accessible themes of the malaise and gratifications of town life, viewed through the author’s personal Chicano lens. Characters include a baby born during a hurricane, a person dying from an accidental gun wound, a grandfather who can never quite reconcile how his trauma has shaped him, and a father dying while his son lives on the other side of the world; each is tinged with what the author calls a “sense of self-reliance…disinclination to get too dependent on 142 OCTOBER 15, 2023

anybody for anything.” The comics are less morose in general, but more gruesome, relaying serious injuries, losing a new puppy, and a garage fire, among other visceral vignettes.

It’s obvious (and stated outright) that Alaniz has mined his memories for threads to weave into the fabric of these stories. Some of the pieces are very effective, including the opening story, “Genoveva 2010/1924,” in which the narrator recounts the moralistic parables his grandfather constantly reiterates; the one with the most nuance is the story of the older man’s fractured childhood: “my 90-year-old grandfather’s tears streamed down his face, the face of the six-year-old he was, always would be.” Other standouts include “Tamales 2063,” in which the many horrors of life experienced as a migrant on Earth still cling to settlers on Mars, and “Faccia Prima 1997,” an erotic abstraction about identity, sound, and action that defies definition. All of the stories make use, to varying degrees, of “Spanglish,” and the text doesn’t always provide translation. The comics section, with stories about watermelon harvests and being bitten by a dog, treads some familiar territory, but these entries feel much more confessional in their immediacy as they visualize the stories’ more cerebral moments; rather than functioning as detached observers, the speakers of Alaniz’s comics must be visible, tangible. Though the comic illustrations by the author are, for the most part, not very intricate, they add a dark humor to these anecdotes. These stories appear to occupy different dimensions within the same place, but they all offer insights into universal human emotions.

An acerbic body of stories parsing memories both real and imagined.

Kirkus Star

La Casita Hispaniola Aristhyl, Yajaida & Michelson Aristhyl Illus. by Brittany Gonzalez | Self (32 pp.) $12.99 paper | June 9, 2023 9798397797962

A young girl celebrates two cultures in Yajaida Aristhyl and Michelson Aristhyl’s picture book.

Marisol, lovingly called “Yayi,” is the daughter of a Haitian dad and Dominican mom, and their house is a celebration of the blending of two cultures. Papa sings Haitian songs and Mama dances the merengue, and all three enjoy the “joyful melody” they make. Papa likes spicy Haitian food, while Mama prefers making “soft and delicious” mangú, which is made primarily of boiled, mashed plantains, and Yayi enjoys it all. Their colorful home is full of paintings and decorations from both countries. Together, the affectionate family members appreciate what they have in common without erasing differences that make their cultures unique. The book is greatly contextualized with an introduction, back matter on the Hispaniola islands, and enjoyable “Conversation Starters.”

On one standout page, the authors highlight beautifully illustrated food, and Gonzalez’s stunning images of the characters, who have a range of skin tones, are distinctive. The story is easy to follow and children may reread it frequently to notice details of the rich illustrations they missed on previous occasions.

A fresh family tale with vivid illustrations.

A fresh family tale with vivid illustrations.

L A C A S I TA H I S PA N I O L A

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All the Bones in Brooks County, Texas Barker, Adam Taylor | Wildbound (332 pp.) | $16.99 paper | July 24, 2023 9798988512417

A deputy and a forensic anthropologist join forces to investigate bones found on a Texas ranch in Barker’s crime thriller.

A Texas rancher calls local police after his dog brings him a human bone. He directs Deputy Hondo Velazquez, just a year on the job, to a spot where a “death spiral” of vultures has been circling. Hondo uncovers a number of bones, as well as a crudely made toy bunny. The sheriff and his team arrive to gather up the remains— likely the bones of migrants who died crossing the border—for mass burial, a routine task in the area. Hondo, however, can’t shake that something is wrong; he feels an affinity for the migrants, as his mother was one and he still has family back in Mexico. He sneaks some of the bones to Baylor University forensic anthropologist Magnolia Moss, who runs a program to identify migrant skeletal remains collected from border town cemeteries. After Magnolia finds a bullet in a skull that she examines, Hondo invites her along on an investigation that includes encounters with a menacing female cartel enforcer in Mexico and brutish border patrol cops. Finally, discoveries back at the ranch (and in a nearby silo) reveal horrible truths and provide a closure of sorts for Hondo. The author, a screenwriter, brings rich cinematic dimensions to his fiction debut, making the most of the bleak Texas landscape (cue the vultures) and crafting a Bogart-like existential hero for our times: “The border brought out the worst in people. In the way he’d learned the Wild West had. Which was, in his mind, the very origins of the conflict he found himself immersed within.” This character’s eloquent thoughts, and Barker’s KIRKUS REVIEWS

development of his key characters’ various demons and backstories, serve to enhance the suspenseful narrative, which culminates in a masterful final cross-cutting sequence and shootout.

A gripping, multilayered crime novel depicting the drama and trauma along the U.S./Mexican border.

Half a Cup of Sand and Sky Bjursten, Nadine | Alder House Books (402 pp.) | $17.00 paper | Oct. 17, 2023 9789198861617

In Bjursten’s novel, an Iranian woman’s search for love in 1970s Iran forms the heart of a story that spans generations of

political unrest.

It’s 1977, and Amineh is a student of literature at Tehran University when her friend Ava persuades her to attend a gathering in honor of their friend Tahmures, who was murdered for writing a pamphlet called The Art of Revolution. At the meeting, Amineh meets Farzad Rezai, a lawyer and physicist who works in the atomic energy industry. The pair quickly fall for each other and get married, and over the decades that follow, Amineh works to understand her slightly older husband and his work; she’s in awe of his desire to live “a life in service to humankind.” Bjursten’s novel does a fantastic job of charting the development of nuclear weaponry around the world; it highlights the fear it inspired and the campaigns to stop it. Farzad forms an international group called the GR12 to fight for nuclear disarmament, and he invites one of his oldest friends, Patrik, to join it. Patrik and Amineh begin a slowly building friendship, and soon it becomes clear that the contrast between Patrik and Farzad presents difficulties for Amineh; as the story goes on, she yearns for love, acceptance, and stability in a rapidly changing Tehran. The novel also presents a thorough exploration of family dynamics: Amineh grew up on a rural rose farm, which she left

to study in the hope of becoming a writer, and Bjursten effectively sketches out how her family members fuel her guilt over seeking other opportunities.

Although the novel occasionally skips through time rather quickly, the prose is often enticing as it shows how the characters grow. Notable characters include Amineh and Farzad’s children, Sara and Sohrab, who provide a thought-provoking youth perspective on issues of international diplomacy.

An emotional historical journey through the recent history of nuclear armament.

Life Is Crazy & We’re All Going To Die: A Book About Hope in Strange Places Blaine, Jamie & Vicky Lanzone Poignant Press (238 pp.) | $13.99 paper July 8, 2023 | 9798985600247

An online marriage therapist and a woman struggling to navigate a life crisis share their emails, text messages, and reflections in this nonfiction book about “two strangers trying to figure out their place with life, God and the spaces between.”

Lanzone was devastated when Wayne, her husband of nearly 30 years, suddenly proclaimed he was not happy and left her without an in-depth explanation. She recalls that he simply “wanted to smoke weed, watch porn and be happy.” The final humiliation was when he opted for a “short and dumpy” girlfriend who was into video games and romance novels whom he met on Craigslist.

An agnostic (“I grew up believing God was waiting for you to screw up so he could zap you”) and filled with self-loathing and self-doubt, Lanzone desperately turned to online counseling. With a background working in mental hospitals, homeless shelters, and church counseling centers, Blaine OCTOBER 15, 2023 143

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came to being “a late-night psychiatric crisis guy” thinking it would be easy money, but he grew weary of the “drama, divorce, depression or people problems.” Lanzone, he writes, shook him from his ennui: “She was mixed-up, messy, good-hearted, sarcastic and cool. She was real....I had to show up and try to be real too.” Lanzone and Blaine, an author of two faith-based memoirs, were blessed to find each other. Lanzone is to be commended for having the courage to reveal herself at her most vulnerable. Initially, she off-puttingly sounds like the desperate woman from the Vikki Carr song “It Must Be Him.” Less than empathetic parents, a bullying superior at work, and her admittedly desperate attempts to win back her husband drove her to suicidal thoughts. Lanzone’s redemptive journey, which ultimately embraced volunteerism and a Protestant church, is inspiring and moving, and Blaine’s intriguing guidance eschews jargons and platitudes. “Why not try totally changing your life instead?” he challenged her.

Raw and relatable, a positive and stirring roadmap for finding one’s way.

Hello, My Name Is Bunny!: Tokyo Bloom, Matt | Illus. by Pippa Mayell Hello Bunny (80 pp.) | $21.99 Oct. 16, 2023 | 9780997642582

The fourth entry in Bloom’s children’s series takes Bunny the cat and readers to Tokyo.

Bunny Doogle Simmons-Bloom, the lovable blackand-white cat who travels around the world with her human parents, finds herself in the colorful streets of Tokyo in this installment. There she meets Fumiko the falcon, who, after the death of her husband at the hands of humans, is convinced people are only nice to animals they find cute. Bunny then introduces herself to Haruto, a 144 OCTOBER 15, 2023

A poignant homage to animals and the psychological ties they forge with human companions.

WALKING WITH TWO SHADOWS

kind old man who was left blind after the “environmental damage” caused by the long- ago war between the United States and Japan. As Bunny learns some elementary Japanese and how to write haikus from Haruto, she stumbles upon the “Wild Bunch,” a gang of rough-and-tumble cats who are feuding with a rival cat gang called the “Suzuki Crew.” When the Wild Bunch is forced to relocate from their established home, Bunny hatches a brilliant plan for the two gangs to live together in peace. She’ll have to put all her diplomatic skills to use to broker such a deal, since both sides remain highly suspicious of the other’s intentions. With the same kind of simple advice and clear lessons found in the series’ previous entries, Bunny encourages kids to keep going even in the face of setbacks: “What did help is knowing from experience that bad circumstances can get better if you keep trying, if you just hang in there.” Readers will also learn a bit about Japanese culture, including elements of Shintoism, and gain an appreciation for where their food comes from via descriptions of the city’s bustling fish market. The beautiful color illustrations by Mayell scattered throughout lend a sense of playfulness to the adventures that perfectly matches Bunny’s wide-eyed innocence. A question section at the book’s conclusion drives home the real-world lessons that Bunny learns.

A sweet and simple tale of forgiveness that teaches kids and adults alike the value of helping others.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

Walking With Two Shadows: Real-Life Stories of Love, Loss, and the Reunion From Beyond the Rainbow Bridge Bowblis, Margo | Animal Soul Affirmations (380 pp.) | $34.95 | $24.99 paper Aug. 10, 2022 | 9798218052966 9798218088989 paper

This memoir celebrates the bonds in life and the hereafter between a woman and her dogs.

Following up on Walking With the Shadow of Love (2013), her tribute to her dog Zeak and his ongoing presence after his death from cancer, Bowblis—a retired art teacher living in New Jersey—sketches a loving profile of Lakota, her black Labrador. An appealing, charismatic pooch, Lakota was athletic when madly pursuing tennis balls, stalwart in standing his ground against other canines, yet so gentle with children and older people that he became a beloved therapy dog.

Lakota succumbed to a tangle of ailments but he consoled the distraught author by contacting her from the beyond in dream visitations, waking apparitions, ghostly outlines in photographs, and a fleeting sense that he was lying beside her in bed. Thus heartened, Bowblis adopted Kaya, a border collie who seemed tranquil at the shelter but turned into a terror at home, chewing everything within reach and relieving herself on the carpet. Heroic training ensued—the author would keep the dog tethered to her all day as a calming maneuver— that transformed Kaya into a better KIRKUS REVIEWS

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girl. Bowblis salutes other canine acquaintances as well, including Shy-Ann, her son’s Doberman, who died of a heart attack while chasing a bear, and delivers stories from animal lovers like Samantha, whose cat died of cancer but then returned as the sensation of an invisible feline rubbing against her legs. The author paints richly textured portraits of relationships between very involved owners and their pets, exploring everything from the niceties of obedience training to intimate canine toothbrushing techniques. She conveys it all in prose that’s vividly evocative and emotionally stirring. (“This exhausted dog would not go inside without doing his job one last time, and he headed for the mailbox to get the newspaper,” Bowblis writes of a dying Lakota. “He reached up into the newspaper tube and took the paper out. Five times on the way in, he stopped to lie down and rest….He brought it all the way into the house and dropped it at my feet.

Then he collapsed into a deep sleep.”)

This engrossing and luminous account of how canines weave themselves into people’s souls will resonate with dog lovers.

A poignant homage to animals and the psychological ties they forge with human companions.

Kirkus Star

Mastering Classic Cocktails: Recipes and Techniques for the Home Bartender Brady, C. Townsend | Photos by Rod Searcey | (198 pp.) | $34.99 | Nov. 2, 2022 9780983939894

Brady’s bartending guide serves up some classic— and tasty—recipes for mixed drinks.

Aimed at the home bartender but also useful for professionals, this cocktail guide is as entertaining and beautiful KIRKUS REVIEWS

as it is helpful. In the author’s introduction, Brady asserts that “most cocktails are simply not worth drinking. Consequently, the scope of this book is limited to a highly select group of classic cocktails, most of which are 65 to well over 100 years old.” The book’s lineup of these classic cocktail recipes is divided into five chapters: “Built Cocktails,” including mint juleps and mojitos; “Stirred Cocktails,” including the trusty Manhattan and martini; “Shaken Cocktails,” including the cosmopolitan and margarita; “Cocktails with Foam,” including the whiskey sour and white lady; and “Custom-Made Cocktail Syrups,” including basic simple syrup and mint syrup. The recipes are easy to follow and result in tasty concoctions, but it’s the additional elements in this book that really separate it from the other bartending guides out there. Non-recipe chapters include “A Brief History of Cocktails” and “Guidelines for Great Cocktails,” the latter of which includes 12 tips that will elevate any bartender’s game. Beautiful photographs, a guide to cocktail measurements (what is a “dash,” anyway?), and recommended equipment for your bar are the cherries garnishing the drink. It’s this combination—useful information and beautifully designed pages—that really distinguishes this charming book from run-of-the-mill bar guides; this attractive volume will, of course, be at home behind the bar, but also on a coffee table. Brady’s guide is a winner across the board, with recipes and techniques galore, beautiful and colorful illustrative photos, and a bit of illuminating history served up along the way.

A well-written illustrated guide to cocktails that is a must-have for bartenders and anyone who loves a quality adult beverage.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

The Red-Hot Blues Chanteuse: A Viola Vermillion Vaudeville Mystery Brazil, Ana | Self (374 pp.)

Oct. 17, 2023

In 1919 San Francisco, a vaudeville singer with secrets investigates the murder of her pianist and lover in this historical crime novel.

New Jersey native Viola Clark, in her late 20s, is thrilled to see her act, “Viola Vermillion—Red-Hot Blues Chanteuse,” listed on the marquee outside San Francisco’s Pantages Theater. She performs with Stu Wiley, the talented songwriter who accompanies her on piano. Stu has become her lover during their travels together as part of a 13-act vaudeville troupe touring the West Coast. But Viola is surprised to see that Stu wears her gun and has $75 in his money clip.

Shortly thereafter, she is shocked to find Stu shot dead by her gun in the theater balcony and the money and “the red leather notebook I’d asked Stu to safeguard for me” gone. She learns from a local police detective that her lover is the long-thoughtdeceased son of Alcatraz’s lighthouse keeper, with a body identified as Stu’s having washed ashore in 1915.

Viola proceeds to probe the puzzles of Stu’s past, including his entanglements with folks still on Alcatraz and the troupe’s female impersonator headliner and the flirty female half of its dance couple. Viola also deals with her rising attraction to Jimmy Harrigan, her replacement accompanist. Unbeknown to her, Jimmy, a hired missing-person’s expert, has been tracking Viola for months in the belief that she is an East Coast munitions tycoon’s runaway wife. Another troupe member’s death eventually leads to the unexpected killer getting caught in a snowballing cover-up. Later, >>> OCTOBER 15, 2023 145

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B O O K L I S T // I N D I E

Indie Books of the Month

1

1 Friendship Games

By Mark James

A profound and thought-provoking thriller examining humankind’s self-destructive tendencies.

2 All Tomorrow’s Parties

Written and illustrated by Koren Shadmi

Lush drawings and a captivating narrative combine for a wonderful telling of the Velvet Underground story.

3 Daughters of the Occupation

By Shelly Sanders

A gripping historical saga that skillfully addresses the trauma of the Holocaust.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

3

2

4 The Way of Humanity

By Martin Buber; trans. by Bernard H. Mehlman & Gabriel E. Padawer

Timeless wisdom made fresh and accessible.

5 The Corroding

5

By Ty Tracey

A complex, cinematic, engrossing horror novel with thrills and chills galore.

4

OCTOBER 15, 2023 147

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An intricate, compelling exploration of humanity and its core f laws and values.

CHANGELINGS: INSURGENCE

the arrival of the tycoon via his private rail car turns into a violent showdown.

This mystery series opener from California-based author Brazil immerses readers in the bright lights and colorful world of vaudeville while shading in darker, noirlike aspects of its players, era, and setting. Vaudeville details, such as the maneuvering to secure the best time spot on stage and the inclusion of unusual acts (in this case, one featuring “French Poodle Acrobats”), prove essential to unraveling the whodunit plot. Several characters are also recovering from World War I–era trauma. Jimmy feels badly about his journalist friend, the Army medic who stepped in front of a bullet for him, since “the shot that tore through Erwin’s upper arm... probably made every keystroke on that typewriter a misery.” Viola was recently released from an East Coast sanatorium, after having nearly died of influenza. She is angry about the deadly munitions factory explosion that the police concluded was done by “Germans.” A particularly striking and touching moment is when several troupe members put their military uniforms back on for a special performance on Neptune Beach, presented as a “a thank-you to the army boys who came home last week.” Brazil also includes several effective misdirects involving the investigation of Stu’s murder.

The growing bond between Viola and Jimmy is also well developed, whetting interest in their future adventures, which will certainly come with complications.

An atmospheric, red herring–strewn mystery that deftly captures an era’s angst and ambition.

148 OCTOBER 15, 2023

Changelings: Insurgence Corley, Liam | Milspeak Books (402 pp.) | $18.95 paper | Nov. 15, 2023 9798988120346

Corley’s SF debut finds humans from the future travelling back in time seeking DNA to correct a species-ending mutation.

Four hundred years have passed since nuclear fallout from the Resource Wars left Terra uninhabitable and reduced the human population from 16 billion to less than 20,000 souls—the survivors included astronauts, off-world colonists, and those few who could be rescued ships from settlements not on Terra from the onset of nuclear winter. In the ensuing four centuries, that number has grown to two million, a quarter of whom live on the capital planet Regulon and the rest in colonies that, while lying as distant as 120 light years from Regulon, remain within effective reach due to an interstellar transport system predicated on dark energy. Technologically and scientifically speaking, humanity has not only survived but thrived. Geneticists can synthesize and manipulate any sequence of DNA to treat disorders and remove imperfections. Yet, for all these advancements another crisis looms: Humanity is falling increasingly prey to an irreversible “changeling” mutation that causes physical deformity and, with succeeding generations, mental degradation.

The ruling Commission has mandated both sterilization and banishment in an attempt to purge humanity of

the mutation. The situation grows so desperate that a team of four outcasts is sent back into Earth’s history via an experimental time machine to collect untainted DNA material. Will their mission succeed? Even if it does, can they prevent the Machiavellian Central Analysis AI and warmongering factions of the ruling council from committing genocide?

Corley relates events by way of an omniscient past-tense narrative, switching between points of view and employing straightforward prose to both establish the protagonists’ particulars and detail a complex futuristic scenario. Necessary information is worked unobtrusively into the text. The speculative element, while underpinning the action, never overwhelms the human component; characterization is a particularly strong aspect of Corley’s storytelling. The four mis-matched time-travelers (soldier Tauran, scientist Mitta, historian Sororis, and engineer Caedis) all have strengths and weaknesses, along with moral shadings that inevitably bring them into conflict with each other. While SF stories have often been used to explore the question What is human?,the author declines to interrogate the personhood of the changelings; he instead takes theirhumanity for granted while exploring unafflicted people’s reactionto them. The introduction of AIs—one subversive, one supportive, both shaped by humanity’s attitudes—adds an additional layer to the question. There is a sense that Corley has packed too much into one book. An excess of ambition can be detected in the narrative’s interpolation of biblical events into the time-travel mission—while the expedition as a whole is a cleverly worked-out MacGuffin leading to satisfying action—the encounters with the “ultraphysicalist” Yehoshua (“Yehoshua spoke softly, and the boy responded with a shy nod. The rebbe took the boy’s withered hand and massaged it gently, working from the drawn tendons in the hand down to the atrophied muscles of his forearm.

The boy’s trusting smile grew, and his eyes closed in pleasure and relief”) feel both unlikely and unnecessary.

These qualms aside, the novel succeeds KIRKUS REVIEWS

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admirably in establishing its premise and investing readers in the outcome.

While not fast-moving, it gains pace and will carry readers along toward the denouement.

An intricate, compelling exploration of humanity and its core flaws and values.

Kirkus Star

Sand Dollars by the Seashore Creel, E.G. | Illus. by Elizaveta Kres | Self (28 pp.) | $12.99 paper | June 14, 2023 9798398345582

A simple rhyme helps beachgoers learn how to care for sand dollars in Creel’s picture book.

An anonymous narrator welcomes readers to the wonders of the beach, where there are many treasures, including shells, stones, and sand dollars, which are all easy to find along the shore. The text notes that sand dollars are animals, and that brown ones are still alive. Gray ones are not and have dried out in the sun. The narrator then explains how to handle the latter and prepare to take them home, ending with a rhyming rule: “If it’s brown leave it down; if it’s grey, it’s okay.” Creel’s simple phrasing is easy to memorize and is sure to inspire youngsters to be more mindful about what they collect at the seashore. The small amount of text on each page, geared toward emergent or lap readers, is presented in straightforward couplets, making the book an approachable way to introduce an animal-friendly concept. Keywords are presented in a different color to draw the eye. Kres’ soft-edged, full-color illustrations present two large-eyed children, one with bronze skin and blond hair, and another with paler skin and dark hair.

The bright shells and mostly realistic sand dollars will give readers a solid idea of what to look for on the sand.

An easy-to-understand guide with an important message for young shell collectors.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Scout of the Oregon Trail: The story of an American family traveling the Oregon Trail in 1852 as told by Scout, the family’s dog Crickmer, Todd | Self (256 pp.) | $9.99 paper May 11, 2023 | 9798988167303

In Crickmer’s middle-grade novel, a stray dog roaming the streets of 19th-century St. Louis finds a forever home.

Scout, along with several other pups, is captured and tied to a tree by a “smelly man.”

The man is hoping to find buyers among the hundreds of emigrants waiting in St. Louis for spring to arrive before heading west. Having known only a life of scrounging for food and shelter, Scout is excited to be selected by the three Churchill family children—young teenager Josh, younger sister Sarah, and little Molly.

“I promised myself I would be the best dog any family could ever have,” the dog reflects. The dangerous journey from St. Louis to Oregon City covers almost 2,400 miles, the first 360 via a riverboat that brings the Churchills to Independence, Missouri. They move into a tent village for several weeks, preparing to join a wagon train. While there, a rowdy boy pushes Sarah into the mud. Scout reports what happened next: “I leaped into the air and landed squarely on the boy’s chest, knocking him flat onto his back in the middle of the street.” It is but the first of many times that Scout comes to the rescue, including plunging into a frigid river to pull Molly to the surface when she falls out of the wagon and standing up to a mama bear. Through Scout’s enthusiastic, and occasionally anxious, voice, the author leads young readers through over 2,000 adventurous miles along the Oregon Trail, conveyed through uniquely canine sensibilities and understanding. The narrative serves as a vivid history primer, providing a plethora of details about the hardships

and perils of daily life on a wagon train, including the intriguing tidbit that much of the human travel was done on foot because the wagons were unbearably uncomfortable to sit in as they traversed the rugged trail. Scout’s love for and devotion to the Churchill family leaps from almost every page— he’s a dog every young reader will crave for their own. A cute surprise ending will leave readers smiling.

An educational adventure perfect for young chapter-book fans or a family read-along.

Who Pooped on Me? Cunliffe, David | Illus. by Ivan Barrera Bedtime Press (42 pp.) | $14.72 Aug. 15, 2023 | 9780997567366

In this picture book, an unappealing blob falls out of the sky right on a lizard’s head.

A lizard sleeps on a branch when all of a sudden there’s a splat. A mysterious pink goop drops on his head, prompting the reptile to point a finger at a number of suspects and ask them: “Did you poop on me?” The lizard approaches a worm, a fish, and a flower, all of whom respond in the negative by pointing out that they poop elsewhere or don’t poop at all. The lizard even turns to the audience, breaking the fourth wall in a way that is sure to leave readers giggling. At a loss and bombarded by even more pink stuff from the sky, the lizard tries to hide the unsightly accident, but a nearby giraffe, snail, and gorilla notice anyway. Luckily for the reptile, it turns out the ooze might not be poop after all—or is it? This quirky work, Cunliffe’s fifth picture book after Whoever Heard of a Flying Bird? (2020), makes for an engaging toddler and preschool read-aloud. Not only does the story sneak in some facts about the animals’ homes, it also appeals to the nearly universal, child-approved urge to make potty jokes. The tale’s cliffhanger ending gives young readers the chance OCTOBER 15, 2023 149

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to explore their imaginations to decide what really happened. Barrera’s illustrations are bold and colorful, excelling with their larger-than-life portrayals of the lizard’s many pouty facial expressions.

A riotous reptile tale that’s perfect for animal lovers.

Cave Creek: Book 1: Jess Kennard Mystery Series DePrima, Helen | Bowker (272 pp.) $13.97 paper | May 15, 2023 9798987508800

A sports journalist and amateur detective tries to track down the killer of a teenager in this mystery series opener.

Two and a half years ago, 16-yearold Stacy Jean Milhouse stole a horse and trailer from the stable where she worked and ran away from home. At least that was how it looked. The trailer was found abandoned but the girl and the horse were never seen again—until a wildlife rescue team found human bones while saving a goose in a local marsh. Stacy never made it a mile from the stable and her death was no accident. Journalist Jess Kennard covered horse racing at the highest level until one exposé unexpectedly led to bloodshed. Keeping a low profile at her family’s horse rehabilitation farm in Kentucky, Jess abandons all hope of peace and quiet when she learns about Stacy’s murder.

Having practically raised Stacy after the death of her mother, Jess feels devastated (“She was like my little sister…Or maybe my daughter. A bit of both”).

The protagonist puts her investigative skills and knowledge of the horse world to use as an unofficial consultant to the local police. Jess and Det. Joe Schuler, a childhood friend, have a limited amount of time to look for clues before the killer becomes aware of their search. When the pair begins to close in on newly elected U.S. Rep. Paul Renfrew and his family, the stakes grow 150 OCTOBER 15, 2023

higher—and deadlier. This an immersive, adventurous novel that dresses up mystery tropes by placing them in the cutthroat world of elite horse racing. DePrima’s intimate, detailed depiction of Kentucky horse country elevates the story even if the final reveal of the killer is a bit of a letdown. The motivations behind the murder seem too impulsive to justify the buildup.

Still, Jess is the perfect protagonist for a mystery series: plucky, stubborn, and independent, with a hidden vulnerable side. Her long history with Joe makes the chemistry between them easy and exciting. But the setting is the standout here; the author deftly takes readers to a place that feels lived-in and dangerous.

A satisfying treat for horse and murder mystery lovers.

A Life for a Life and Other Stories Drago, Ross | Chestnut Hill Press (160 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 16, 2023 | 9798888550069

Everyday life is a journey for the characters in Drago’s shortstory collection.

In “The Pit,” an unnamed narrator details their blue-collar job at the Basic Oxygen Lance Furnace. The “unbearable” heat that comes with slagging steel, coupled with inherent dangers (including a task that only a 300-pound man can do), give the impression that this workplace is the very pit of Hell. The casts in these eight tales lead ostensibly quiet lives that harbor turmoil: “Mountain Stone” finds Ginger Dressinger hoping to reconnect with the Rocky Mountains she visited years ago with her family. But this simple endeavor proves nearly impossible, as no resort has a vacancy, leaving her to spend a rainy day burdened by resentments she struggles to let go. Likewise, structural engineer Andy has a new job lined up in the closing story, “Equilibrium,” when his co-worker, Clinton Hanley, having just won the Irish Sweepstakes,

offers to hire him. Clinton’s plan is to build a small city in Arizona with an unusual design that may be too much for Andy to handle. Many of the characters herein seemingly feel out of place; that’s certainly true for the narrator in “Salmon,” who happily joins potential romantic interest Miriam on a train ride from Canada to California. Ensconced six cars behind Miriam’s sleeper car, he soon gets the miserable sense that he’s merely “third class” compared to the woman he’s pursuing. He’s just one of a handful of sympathetic souls Drago introduces, including a mother with terminal cancer, a janitor who has livelier conversations with plants than people, and a vegetable/marijuana farmer who realizes that clearing others off his land may not be what he really wants. The author’s unadorned yet insightful prose sparkles: “They were green eyes and detailed sharply with intelligence and a fatal ingredient, fatal to me, and this element was humor.”

A selection of profound stories teeming with a host of relatable individuals.

Street Smart Safety for Women: Your Guide to Defensive Living Farrow, Joy & Laura Frombach | Health Communications Inc. (336 pp.) $16.99 paper | Oct. 3, 2023 | 9780757324932

Farrow and Frombach present a guide to women’s safety at home, online, and in the world.

In this self-help book, Farrow (a retired deputy sheriff) and Frombach (a military veteran and technologist) advise readers, primarily women, on keeping safe in a variety of environments. Employing defensive driving as a metaphor (“use the same level of awareness and confidence in your daily life that you do behind the wheel of your car”), they encourage women to adopt safety-oriented behaviors as part of everyday life, making KIRKUS REVIEWS

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them ingrained habits without allowing fear to dominate their thoughts.

The book explores the psychology of victimization, the common characteristics of a predator or aggressor, the specific risks of online communication and dating, and domestic violence.

Subsequent chapters instruct readers in resisting persuasive tactics, establishing and maintaining financial security, and evaluating the appropriateness of weapons and other defensive tools. The book concludes with appendices that include survival tips and red flags in dating situations. The text is supported by a combination of both authors’ personal stories (Farrow’s tales of law enforcement highs and lows and Frombach’s history with domestic violence and addiction), research, and common sense. The book explores the psychology of violence from the perspective of both attacker and victim, and places theory into a usable real-world context.

There are practical tips with obvious everyday applications, as well as discussions of situations readers may experience infrequently, if at all, offering a comprehensive perspective on the multiple types of violence women may face.

The book is an informative collection of data and advice that many readers will find useful. The authors have a talent for pithy phrasing (“Your car is not a drive-thru! Do not ever roll your car window down because a stranger wants you to”) that makes the book’s recommendations easy to both assimilate and remember.

Their broad definition of “violence,” incorporating physical, emotional, and financial aspects, is both an asset and a limitation as the guide occasionally loses focus with its departures from and returns to the core thesis. The wide-ranging discussions can also lead to repetitiveness at times (one quote appears at three different points in the text), giving an unfocused feel to the information and advice on offer. The relevant and up-to-date explanations of terms like “love bombing” and “the manosphere” contrast with minor but jarring moments like describing IBM as “a company similar to Apple” or characterizing the temptation of Adam and KIRKUS REVIEWS

Franco excels at keen characterization and effervescent dialogue.

S A I N T R I C H A R D PA R K E R

Eve as a “scam”; the contrast between the clued-in material and out-of-touch infelicities such as these may give readers reason to question the book’s authoritative qualifications. These distractions do not outweigh the book’s cogent arguments, however, and its recommendations for developing mental toughness, establishing an awareness of one’s surroundings, and understanding the power of persuasion and social conditioning are clearly explained and presented in a way the average reader will be able to implement. Farrow and Frombach’s unique experiences make them effective and credible advocates for their message, and the book as a whole is a highly readable and useful addition to the genre of women’s self-defense writing.

A generally clear and coherent introduction to self-protective skills for women.

Saint Richard Parker: His Search for Love and Enlightenment Across India, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia Franco, Merlin | Self (472 pp.) | $18.49 paper Oct. 24, 2023 | 9798223473961

In Franco’s novel, a South Asian man seeks personal rejuvenation as a spiritual traveler.

It’s 2014, and despite his hilariously smug, egocentric attitude, Richard Parker remains a struggling journalist at New Delhi’s Indian Republic newspaper. Not content with just writing articles, the busy bachelor also moonlights as the entrepreneurial CEO of Cow ‘n’ Roots,

a business that outsources the sale of sun-dried organic cow waste products at a 300 percent profit margin.

A botched media spectacle meant to expose a local unscrupulous kingpin results in his swift and unceremonious termination. Jobless, with a destroyed career, Parker temporarily retreats to his native village seeking to change his life’s path through enlightenment and take a “passage into sainthood” through a pilgrimage with seven others. This spiritual cleansing journey is just one in a series of false starts toward reenergizing his broken spirit.

Heavily immersed in Hindu spiritualism, tradition, culture, and doctrine, Parker’s sojourns guide the narrative through several holy stops as “RP Saamy” (Parker’s spiritual pseudonym) and his fellow seekers are dazzled by the temples of gods and goddesses.

Parker soon gives up on the pilgrimage, however, and falls for a lovely girl named Chandini, admitting that “my enthusiasm tanks, but my hormones don’t.” These misadventures and setbacks form the bulk of Franco’s rollicking, densely populated narrative.

Bonds are quickly formed and broken as Parker searches for love, belonging, and meaning throughout dizzying months spent in India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The novel’s length becomes an issue as Parker’s wearying mishaps, spiritual tribulations, Tinder dates, and the onslaught of peripheral characters and prophesizing shamans eventually run out of steam. Still, he’s an engrossing, if self-absorbed, personality to observe—Franco excels at keen characterization and effervescent dialogue.

The globetrotting, vibrant, culturally rich adventures of Richard Parker are hard to resist.

A fun, frenetic, and overly ambitious yarn about finding purpose in a sea of tangled intentions.

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Kirkus Star

Majority Goldsmith, Abby | Podium Publishing (594 pp.) | $18.99 paper | Aug. 21, 2023 9781039442726

In Goldsmith’s YA SF novel, a 12-year-old prodigy stricken with MLS is abducted by aliens.

Abandoned and suffering from muscular dystrophy, Thomas Hill is only 12 years old, but he’s discovered various miracle cures. The New Hampshire native conceals a secret during the resulting fuss made over him: The sickly boy is also a powerful psychic. Thomas makes contact with another unusual, sheltered young New Englander: Ariock Dovanack, a gigantic, shy misfit, still growing at the age of 22. Attempts by Thomas and others to probe the connections between the boys’ disorders are interrupted by a commando raid by humanoid aliens called the Torth, who have been remotely monitoring Thomas. Some 30 trillion in number (“The power and size of the Torth Empire was beyond imagination!”), the Torth are telepathic, selfish, and ruthless. They recognize Thomas as one of their own, perhaps the result of a runaway Torth on Earth practicing sexual reproduction outside established test-tube norms—one of many taboos punishable by instant death.

Thomas’ intellect is outstanding, even

by Torth standards. On the Torth-controlled planet Umdalkdul, power players debate executing the Earth boy as an abomination or converting him to their ways. The author’s breathless narrative establishes the totalitarian nightmare of existing within a galaxy of countless mind-readers, where there are no secrets and the slightest transgression brings hideous consequences. Wrapped within the narrative is a sharp critique of social media, as the Torth’s ubiquitous “Megacosm” hive-mind is basically a super-internet.

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Thoughtful explorations of morality, altruism, justice and mercy, and the idea that godlike powers come with godlike responsibilities add depth and breadth to this auspicious entry in SF literature’s mutant-superman genre.

Though the material has natural YA appeal, it does not shun adult content or graphic carnage. The perilous premise seizes the reader’s attention from start to open-ended finish, and Goldsmith notes that this is only the opening act in a six-part saga.

An Earth-shaking opening to the chronicle of a rapacious galactic empire.

Trust Me: Evidence: Under Fire, Book 2 Grant, Rachel | Janus Publishing (502 pp.) | $15.99 paper | June 15, 2023 9781944571658

A grieving archeologist risks everything in Grant’s romantic thriller.

Diana Edwards is an archeologist on a quest to prevent precious artifacts from being trafficked and sold to fund terrorists. After the death of her fiance, Salim, she hasn’t had anything else to live for, and nothing to lose; she trains to become a part of Friday Morning Valkyries, a group dedicated to stopping artifact trafficking. When she’s taken hostage by the terrorists she’s trying to stop, she sees an opportunity to gather information on one of the worst in the world: Makram Rafiq.

Navy SEAL lieutenant Chris Flyte is brokenhearted and still recovering from his wife leaving him. Tasked with rescuing Diana, he sees the mission as his chance to prove himself. In the heat of the moment, Diana seizes an opportunity to refuse Chris’ rescue and stay with the terrorists to uncover more information and save people’s lives, sacrificing her efforts to protect ancient artifacts and putting her and Chris’ lives in danger. In the aftermath of the harrowing experience, Diana and Chris

find themselves trying to live normally; after they are set up on a date, sparks fly (“Damn. He was handsome, and he was looking at her lips like he was wondering how she’d taste”). But tension grows between them as people doubt Diana’s story about finding Makram Rafiq. Diana and Chris might be back home, but they’re far from safe, as secrets abound and someone dangerous is lurking around the corner.

The author elevates an intense thriller romance full of unexpected twists and turns with spectacular character development. Diana’s passion for archeology is believable, and her decision to throw that away in the hope of bringing down a horrific terrorist is equally convincing. Chris’ conflict between his sense of duty and his love for Diana also feels real and palpable. Their chemistry is fantastic, and their relationship grounds an exhilarating plot.

Exciting, heartfelt, and full of surprises.

Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail Griffin, Joan M. | Black Rose Writing (396 pp.) | $25.95 paper | Sept. 28, 2023 9781685132811

Three women set out to conquer the John Muir Trail in Griffin’s debut memoir.

In 2004, celebrating her 50th birthday, the author, along with her best friend, Z, threw an “over-thetop party.” Only days later, Z was killed by a drunk driver. Attempting to come to terms with the loss, Griffin escaped to Yosemite, where she camped and read. There she found inspiration in the words of the Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue: “When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of the mountains...” She felt the sudden desire to walk the John Muir Trail, a long-distance hike of KIRKUS REVIEWS

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A heartwarming and absorbing account of matching a human and a canine.

THE MUTT FOR ME

approximately 200 miles in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The author describes planning and training for the event before setting out in the summer of 2006 with two female friends, Cappy and Jane (Jane leaves the trip on the sixth day). The memoir records 27 days the author spent in the wild, where Griffin experienced terrifying mountaintop storms, beautiful waterfalls, and struggles with sprained ankles, blisters, and mosquitoes. She also met many other fellow hikers who became “trail friends,” one of whom, Zoe, joined their hiking party after splitting with her hiking partner. The author has a delightfully unconventional descriptive style that charms the reader from the outset. Her portraits of other hikers prove particularly vivid: “His mouth spread into a wide grin that pushed his cheeks up until they bumped into his eyes, scrunching them into an endearing whole-face smile.” Griffin eloquently communicates her physical and emotional progress, building to a true moment of epiphany in the mountains: “I was stronger, so the challenges were easier, and my fears, along with my aches and pains, diminished.” She was also fully aware of the awesome scenery surrounding her and deftly transports the reader into the landscape: “Unlike Mount Muir and the other sharp pinnacles, Whitney was an upside-down soup bowl, a vast rounded chunk of granite.” There are occasions when the author repeats observations, such as the sound of “nylon against nylon,” while walking.

This minor flaw does not detract from the elegantly crafted prose.

An inspiring, empowering memoir by a talented new author.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

The Ghost Writer Hawkinson, Anne K. | Bowker Identifier Services (561 pp.) | $15.99 paper June 12, 2022 | 9781732017559

After the death of a close friend, a young woman embarks on a journey that leads her to transcendental love in Hawkinson’s fantasy romance.

Thirty-two-year-old travel agent Jenna Hickson’s life unravels with a single phone call on a frigid January day in New York City. She finds out that her best friend, Padma Kumar, has been struck and killed by a car while crossing the street.

Jenna retrieves Padma’s things, which include a flash drive containing Padma’s magnum opus: a novel set in 14th-century Scotland that features a young princess who begins a fantastical adventure. Padma died before she could finish it, so a grieving Jenna vows to do so on her behalf. However, the moment Jenna begins to write, she begins to question her own reality: She finds brand-new edits and markings in Padma’s text that she didn’t make herself, including strikethroughs and a small “P” symbol on various pages; soon it becomes clear that they may have a supernatural origin. Jenna’s days are filled with thoughts of her friend, and her dreams are filled with strange enigmas, including an old castle, a handsome gentleman, and a threatening storm. As Jenna immerses herself in that fantasy world and in Padma’s fictional world, she finds herself driven to visit the real-life Dunnottar Castle—the place that inspired

it all. These three plotlines—Padma’s novel, Jenna’s dreams, and Jenna’s trip to Scotland—come together to form a complex romance novel with a touch of the paranormal and plenty of historical lore. Each storyline is thoughtfully plotted and well-paced, and they blend seamlessly without abrupt shifts that might take readers out of the story. There are areas that might have benefited from some revision, such as the excessive amount of detail regarding Jenna’s cat, Jenna’s many emails, and some of Jenna’s day-to-day activities, but she remains a sympathetic protagonist with a clear goal. The sweeping descriptions of Scotland (“The gently undulating sea beckoned….Come closer. Come and touch, feel, and smell me, it seemed to say”) provide an exciting backdrop.

A creative paranormal love story for fantasy fans.

The Mutt for Me Hughes, Don | River Grove Books (178 pp.) | $15.95 paper | Sept. 12, 2023 9781632997111

A debut memoir focuses on helping a troubled dog adjust to domestic life.

Hughes worked as a volunteer at an animal shelter in Maricopa County, Arizona. The shelter had seen a plethora of dogs and cats come through its doors with the goal of sending them to good homes.

Some animals proved more difficult than others: Many had suffered abuse and neglect. It was at the shelter that the author came across a dog named Barbie. Barbie was a “project dog” who couldn’t be adopted by just anyone.

She would need extensive attention and training. If she didn’t find a home, she would wind up on the “E-list,” marked for euthanasia. After Hughes considered the challenges, he decided to go through with the adoption. Barbie was terrified from the get-go. She had trouble doing just about anything that wasn’t OCTOBER 15, 2023 153

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simply standing still. House training alone became a major project. Yet the author worked with different trainers and persisted. Occasional photographs

by Hughes show an underweight dog who was not thrilled with being petted change into one comfortable enough to lie on her owner’s bed. Along with the canine tale, the author includes the story of his ailing father and other family concerns. The engaging book provides an in-depth look at the complexities of pet adoptions. Some readers may assume that they merely need to offer some toys and treats and pooches will be happy with their new homes. As the author points out, many potential pet owners “struggled to understand the trauma the dog may have gone through before it got to us at the shelter.” The book skillfully balances the difficulties with the ultimate rewards of an animal companion. Yet things move slowly as Hughes recounts agonizing over the adoption.

Would he be able to care for this dog?

Would he have the time? While his concerns are understandable, readers already know his decision. The core of the moving story comes in the author relating what happened afterward.

A heartwarming and absorbing account of matching a human and a canine.

I’m a Lucky Woman: A Photographic Memoir of a Breast Cancer Survivor Lawrence, Leslie | Stillwater River Publications (220 pp.) | $20.00 paper Sept. 19, 2023 | 9781960505507

Lawrence, the retired founder of a successful marketing company, shares her personal journey as a cancer survivor through verse, prose, and

photography.

This memoir begins in 2016 with the Massachusetts-based author getting a routine mammogram that revealed that she had triple-negative breast cancer.

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For 44 years, Lawrence had anticipated this possibility, as her mother and mother’s two sisters had all had the disease. While waiting for her radiologist that first day, the author took “an iPhone photo of my surroundings to stay calm.” This initial photo of a mammography machine begins her account of her journey through her illness, as documented in personal, often explicit, and powerful images.

Lawrence, who felt “no control over the process ahead or the outcome,” was inspired to write haiku, and her poems appear throughout the book; they reveal themselves as a simple, profound method of sharing her feelings: “Keeping a promise / To be as strong as I can / Not sure how I will.” Lawrence soon realizes the seriousness of her cancer and how its treatment will soon consume her life. She’s supported by many people (“Friends and family came to the rescue.”), including her devoted and caring husband, Ron. Overall, she provides readers with an honest, revealing work; at one point, for instance, she relates in verse how she was motivated to stay positive: “How can I not hope / Positive thoughts surround me / Good news coming soon.” However, the news was not always good, and in addition to a bilateral mastectomy, Lawrence required chemotherapy and radiation, and these later sessions make up most of the remembrance. She effectively relates how yoga was a help to her, physically and mentally, and how sharing her story gave her focus and purpose as she tried to provide “guidance, inspiration, and hope to fellow travelers on a similar journey.”

The memoir ends on a high note as she arrives at her five-year cancer-free milestone, which will likely be encouraging for readers on a similar path.

A revealing remembrance of the many “Downs and Ups” of one woman’s cancer treatment.

For more Indie content, visit Kirkus online.

Kirkus Star

The Cathedral Murders Morales, J.E. | BookBaby (300 pp.) $14.95 paper | May 23, 2023 9781667893488

A medical student’s discovery of tiny black crosses painted on recently deceased patients suggests the work of a serial killer in Morales’ thriller debut.

In 1992 Lima, Peru, med student Isabella Castle learns that Hospital Nacional Santa Maria, where she does her rotation, is nicknamed “the Cathedral” (“If Wembley stadium in London is the cathedral of football, Santa Maria hospital is the cathedral of medicine”). But not all that transpires in this cathedral is holy: Someone injects a lethal agent into the bloodstream of a patient associated with the Shining Path terrorist group.

Additional suspicious deaths follow, and Isabella notices small crosses drawn on each body. The hospital wants the problem kept quiet, as a police investigation would surely ruin Santa Maria’s reputation. Against a backdrop of government corruption, terrorism, and Church secrets (enter Opus Dei, popularized in The DaVinci Code), Isabella navigates medical school and murders while suffering from depression. Her condition is caused in part by her gay brother’s recent move to the United States (30 years ago, Peru was not known for its LGBTQ+ tolerance). Still, wearing black Dr. Martens boots and driving a “double cab pick-up truck with a defiant front grill and all-terrain tires,” Isabella remains a strong character, dedicated to helping others. The author succeeds in creating a tangled web drawn from the dark sides of politics, medicine, and religion. As a Peruvian native, Morales also gives the reader vivid, lived-in descriptions of the region: “It was one of those typical, humid and overcast days of early winter when the KIRKUS REVIEWS

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A riveting story of a fight for justice.

QUEENSIDE

streets of Lima are covered by the cold drizzle that the locals called garua.”

As a doctor, the author pens medical scenes rich in authenticity. The pacing is effective, the murders heart pounding, and the ending is a killer.

Amen to an absorbing thriller that succeeds on many levels.

Kirkus Star

Queenside Novak, Dima | Self (222 pp.) | $9.95 paper July 10, 2023 | 9798851131608

Novak’s second novel in his YA series tells a tale of New York City’s Travers Park—“the lungs, heart and soul of northern Queens.”

The story of 15-year-old Moses “Mose” Middleton and PS Q722’s chess club ensemble continues with newcomers adding interest and tension. Mose learns that his girlfriend Esther is overcommitted to extracurriculars and wants a break from their relationship. She’s also taking a break from chess club, which leaves Mose feeling bereft. The following day, Mose and his friend P.D. Morales head to Travers Park to play chess; there, they find an “official-looking notice” stating that playing chess there is prohibited and that tables will soon be removed by the parks department. Wealthy parents had created a Facebook page to complain about a “criminal element” creating “‘unsafe conditions” in the park; it’s clear that the teens’ beloved neighborhood is being co-opted by rich newcomers. The kids ignore the warning KIRKUS REVIEWS

and climb over the barrier to play their game, but someone films them on their iPhone while “giving [them] the evil eye.” The boys run off, but police track them down and take them into custody—an event that galvanizes members of the community to fight for the park.

Novak uses the chess club as the foundation for a strong community, bonded by common causes: a struggle for their neighborhood, for their honor in an upcoming chess tournament in Philadelphia, and, at the most basic level, for their chess tables in Travers Park.

The author effectively weaves in what Mose calls “choice nuggets of commie wisdom” through Viktor Fleischmann, the chess master; the words of Jane Austen through fans Esther and Mose; and generational wisdom throughout. Along the way, Novak authentically weaves discussions of Nuyorican culture, police brutality, gentrification, and diversity.

Strong characters fight for what they believe in, learning life lessons along the way. Gen-Z slang is interspersed throughout and is integral to the story.

A riveting story of a fight for justice.

Wildflowers Parayno, Beverly | PAWA Press (218 pp.) | May 27, 2023 9780998179292

Parayno offers glimpses into the lives of distressed Filipinas in this debut short fiction collection.

An unhappy 11-year-old girl experiences a sexual awakening while attempting to avoid her immigrant father’s violent temper (“Saviour”).

A middle-aged woman is fired from her housekeeping job for sleeping with her employer’s father, then forced to travel all the way to Manila to take a new job in the household of a disgraced government official with a dark reputation (“Housecleaning”).A young woman (who can’t have children) and her boyfriend allow a visiting pregnant couple to spend the night at their apartment, which inevitably brings up painful comparisons: “How is it that Charles and Janie have everything that she and Winston do not?” the woman wonders. “One thin wall made of plaster and wood, dividing two couples on different paths” (“Dilation”). “Victory Joe” follows a woman who has somehow managed to keep her family alive during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines; the Americans have liberated the country and started to rebuild the infrastructure, but the woman’s rapidly declining health makes her a pariah in her community and a burden on her husband and son. In these nine stories, set in the Philippines, the United States, and the British Isles, the author explores the various pressures placed on women at different times of life. Parayno excels at capturing the ways characters are shaped by their particular cultural settings. Her elegant prose is full of sharp details, as when the childless woman, who is Filipino American, thinks about dinners with her boyfriend’s Chinese family: “At her family dinners, the dishes were laid out in the containers they were cooked in or in aluminum trays saved from previous parties, spread haphazardly across the counter, with a stack of thin paper plates, plastic utensils, and scratchy paper napkins.”

Standouts include the eponymous “Wildflowers” and the Ireland-set “Surrender,” but nearly every story here leaves an impression.

An insightful and richly rendered collection of female-led short stories.

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New Normal Paris, Michelle | Loyola College/Apprentice House (294 pp.) | $18.99 paper May 2, 2023 | 9781627204521

A widow struggles to move on in Paris’ novel.

Emilie Russell, a publicist in Baltimore, arrives at a party where her friend, Viv Parks, is trying to set her up with a man.

Emilie’s not interested; she’s recently been widowed and doesn’t feel ready to date yet. Still, Viv introduces her to Colin Meyer, a lawyer who also recently lost a partner. Unbeknownst to Viv, Colin is gay, but he and Emilie connect over their similar losses and become fast friends. Emilie is still grieving and having difficulty sleeping, which is causing her to make mistakes at work, getting her into trouble with her overbearing boss. She resolves to try to recover from her grief as best she can— Colin talks her into counseling, which helps, and she also adopts a dog. She takes a girls’ trip to New York with Viv and her friends, goes on a blind date, attends her alma mater’s homecoming, and befriends Colin’s Aunt Dee, who is a delight (“Dee had, after burying two husbands of her own, made it a hobby at the ripe old age of seventy-nine of attending funerals in her small Delaware town, offering a shoulder to cry on followed soon after by a bed to sleep in”). The novel doesn’t have much of an arc or throughline but instead charts series of incidents over a year spent by Emilie mourning her husband. All of Emilie’s friends pressure her to start dating again, which seems odd given that her husband has died so recently. Still, some of Emilie’s dating misadventures are funny, and glimpses into other relationships—Viv and her husband are having problems; several of Emilie’s dates are divorced—serve as illuminating contrasts to Emilie’s own life without her husband. Emilie’s friendship with Colin is one of the best elements in the book, illustrating how simpatico friends can help each other 156 OCTOBER 15, 2023

heal. Emilie ultimately arrives at a resolution for how to live her life going forward, and her triumph gives the story a satisfying ending.

A realistic but optimistic look at grief.

Hitch’s Story Pierpoint, Paul E. | Self (283 pp.) $9.99 paper | Feb. 1, 2020 | 9798607467166

Pierpoint’s debut novel depicts a U.S. Marine’s voyage of recovery after the trauma of war.

The year is 1968, and Lt. Michael “Hitch” Crocker has just been discharged from the armed forces because of “psychotic episodes and the frequent night screams” that “rendered him psychologically unfit to serve.”

Even though he’s returned home to North Carolina, Hitch hasn’t forgotten the horrors of the war. His PTSD and guilt over his actions overseas make it difficult for him to sleep, get along with family members, and resume “plain old normal living,” as he puts it. To clear his head, he decides to hike the Appalachian Trail as a tribute to his good friend and fellow Marine, Pfc. Chester Blankenship, who died in the war during an unexpected attack.

As he hikes, Hitch keeps a journal, which makes up most of the novel.

Readers get a different perspective in intermittent third-person sections that depict the protagonist’s experiences in Vietnam, including his relationship with a Vietnamese woman named Muli Nguyen, and how violence continues to haunt him in America. Trauma and recovery are central themes of the story, but it also effectively displays a sense of hope as Hitch meets a variety of odd and intriguing characters, such as boxing master Robert E. “Barefoot Bob” Lee, and a man named Corky whose house is overrun with cats; these people help to restore Hitch’s faith in humanity. Such quirky acquaintances offer a welcome contrast to the intense brutality of the novel’s war scenes, resulting

in a good balance of light and darkness.

The story bounces back and forth in time, and there are a few moments that feel redundant as a result. However, the dialogue accurately reflects the period, including some characters’ use of offensive derogatory terms. Overall, the work provides a nuanced view of the Vietnam War and ably reflects the severe difficulties that many soldiers face.

An ultimately uplifting story that highlights the healing power of human connection.

Kirkus Star

Master, Minion Podolsky, Paul | Still Press (446 pp.) | $16.00 paper | Dec. 13, 2022 9780998667355

This novel focuses on the weaponization of money and how one murder can destabilize financial markets around the globe and potentially change the balance of power in the world.

When a deputy chief of the Russian Central Bank is murdered, Nick Burns, a researcher for a Boston-based hedge fund and a former Army translator, is tasked by the Boss to investigate. The Boss, the founder of the hedge fund and “worth more money than God,” is convinced that America’s financial system is about to implode. He wants Burns to confirm that there are connections between the murder and a veritable “Rubik’s Cube” of seemingly unrelated events, including Russian money laundering in South America through drug trafficking and a Russian state-owned bank involved in a massive bitcoin/dollar exchange with China’s Ministry of State Security. As Burns travels the globe attempting to understand the complicated political dynamics that could tie all these events together, he has to deal with his dying mother back in Boston as well as a newfound love interest in Li You, KIRKUS REVIEWS

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A thoughtful memoir, poetically rendered.

AN AMERICAN MEO

aka Lola, a Chinese-born researcher working in Hong Kong. Featuring an impressively large and diverse cast of characters (included in a four-page glossary), Podolsky’s well-written novel isn’t just the deep exploration of the complex connection between political influence and the manipulation of currency. Instead, the tale’s power lies in the way in which the author makes this a character-driven narrative (an element lacking in many thrillers).

Burns is three-dimensional, authentic, and identifiable. He loves his mother, risks his life for Lola, and—as an aspiring painter—sees the world through a vivid dichotomy. Humans are potential murderers as well as a “reflection of God’s beauty.” That said, the story—perfectly positioned for a sequel—delivers everything thriller fans expect: pedal-to-the-metal pacing, a complicated mystery, nonstop action and intrigue, and more than a few bombshell plot twists.

A potent, well-crafted thriller that’s a page-turner of the highest order.

An American Meo: A Tale of Remembering and Forgetting Rahim, Anisa | Spuyten Duyvil Publishing (218 pp.) | $20.00 paper | July 8, 2023 9781959556374

Rahim recounts her time in India as a human rights activist in this memoir.

The author was born and raised in Florida, though she visited India, her parents’ native land, often as a child. She is a KIRKUS REVIEWS

descendant of the Meos, a dwindling tribal group with a religious lineage that is both Islamic Sufi and Hindu, an identity that makes her something of a “cultural artifact in the flesh.” Rahim felt a distance from her own cultural heritage, an alienation she experiences as shame, poignantly depicted here.

While studying at the University of Chicago, she found a history book containing a picture of her grandfather, Yasin Khan, an important man who joined in the 1930s peasant protest against agricultural tax hikes and participated in the Indian independence movement. After graduating college, she visited India—her parents’ home village of Mewat, outside of Delhi—for the first time as an adult, experiencing the region with fresh eyes. “Despite numerous visits, the scenes are always a bit unfamiliar, awakening, as if I am seeing these places new with the same curiosity.” The author decided to stay for six months and found work at a nongovernmental organization in Delhi (as befit her abiding interest in social work and human rights) and ended up staying for years, reconnecting with both her family and her heritage.

Rahim’s remembrance—she calls it a “hybrid memoir”—is eclectically structured, including poems, family recipes, black-and-white photographs, and other miscellany. This very personal approach can be a barrier to entry for the reader—the author’s idiosyncrasies occasionally undermine the book’s universal resonance. Still, a relatable and even moving account of her alienation emerges, conveyed in elegant and meditative prose. Her account captures something essential about the anxieties of cultural dislocation, especially relevant in this age of globalization.

A thoughtful memoir, poetically rendered.

Happy AF: Simple strategies to get unstuck, bounce back, and live your best life Romero, Beth | She Writes Press (264 pp.) | $17.95 paper | Nov. 14, 2023 9781647425890

Romero’s motivational guide aims to put readers on the road to happiness.

The author, like millions of other people around the world enduring the global pandemic, had a horrible 2020.

Here she tells the story of how she bounced back and offers lessons for others trying to get back on track.

In the period covered by the text, the divorced Romero experienced a new romance that quickly ended in infidelity, the loss of her job, and the death of her father from Covid19. Though the author doesn’t like the term “self-help,” this is essentially a self-help book, full of tips to help hone the mind, body, and soul.

Each chapter includes what Romero calls a “happiness check,” providing exercises to help the reader achieve happiness. The first happiness check includes a deep-breathing tutorial, an exercise to help the reader feel empathy for someone who has wronged them, and guidance for developing a personal affirmation. Other topics include retraining your brain to be happy, staying resilient, maintaining gratitude and faith, practicing grace, setting goals, and finding a purpose.

The author holds a degree in psychology and asserts that all of her advice is supported by clinical research— she backs this up with a number of citations that lend credibility to her arguments. At the same time, the book is enjoyable; Romero’s a sharp, straightforward writer. Sometimes, though, she tries a bit too hard: The book is littered with gratuitous pop culture references (Sharknado, J. Lo., Survivor, Oprah, Judge Judy, Pete Davidson), making Romero seem at OCTOBER 15, 2023 157

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times a bit like the mom who wants to be cool around her kids’ friends.

She also seems to think she’s being relatable with her use of expletives, which is constant (“F*ck you, 2020.

You seriously kicked my ass”). There’s nothing really wrong with that; it’s just that, coming from an adult professional with grown children, it can appear calculated and patronizing.

This should not deter the curious, however—this guide is filled with information that just might help the most unhappy of us.

A sharp, sometimes witty, often helpful map for pointing your life in the direction of happiness.

When Cardinals Appear: The Love Birds: Book One Schenck, Katie Eagan | Faery Whisper Press (272 pp.) | $14.99 paper Sept. 19, 2023 | 9798988480310

After her mother’s death, a young woman revisits her childhood home and discovers important truths about her first great love in Schenck’s

romance novel.

Lanie McCallister has been named executor of her mother’s estate and must return to her hometown of Cedar Haven, Maryland, to help settle her affairs. After traveling back to the east coast from her home in Seattle, Lanie takes up temporary residence in her mother’s recently vacated home, which is also the house where Lanie grew up. Though the property is chock-full of memories of her mother, Melody, Lanie (with her brother, Steven) has agreed to sell it. After Lanie begins packing up her mother’s belongings, she takes a drive to see her brother and ends up with a flat tire. As luck would have it, the person who shows up to tow Lanie’s car is none other than Nate, her childhood sweetheart, and quite possibly the one that got away 158 OCTOBER 15, 2023

(“Nate finally raised his eyes to meet mine, and my attempt at indifference wavered when I saw how much they had softened with sympathy”).

Although Lanie has a serious boyfriend back in California, and may soon be engaged, seeing Nate brings back many complicated feelings for her. Each day she remains in town, Lanie seems to bump into Nate with increasing frequency. Before long, she learns a secret from their shared past that makes her wonder if she and Nate might deserve a second chance at a new future together. Told entirely in the first person, from Lanie’s perspective, the book details different ways that adults deal with grief and loss and provides hope that righting longstanding wrongs can help mend ailing hearts. As Lanie navigates complicated relationships with both her ex and her current boyfriend, as well as her brother (and even her deceased mother), the novel explores questions of self-doubt, fragile mental health, and whether second chances are worth taking. Despite following a predictable path, the story’s journey toward its inevitable conclusion is thoroughly delightful. With a plot-focused narrative and fast-paced dialogue, this wholesome tale will keep readers engaged throughout.

An uplifting romance about mending bruised relationships and holding onto hope.

The Stronger Brother Scibetta, G.A. | Self (254 pp.) | $25.22 $14.99 paper | June 16, 2023 | 9781738997534 | 9781738997503 paper

Two young brothers struggle with complicated familial dynamics as they aim to take down their family’s corrupt dynasty in Scibetta’snovel.

Eighteen-yearold Theodore “Theo” Perkins and his 19-year-old sibling, Alexander (known as “Alè”), come from a British noble

line. Residing in modern-day Milton, Ontario, they live in a luxurious mansion built by their father, Archibald, a mean, brutal man who often picks on Alè. The brothers despise the greed and the abuse of power that’s associated with their legacy. At one point, Alè even tries to change his surname to Dubois, his mother’s family name, but he’s forced by Archibald to abandon the idea. Alè and Archibald are always screaming at each other, and both brothers know their parents have hidden romantic relationships with other people. Theo, who’s gay, has only shared the fact of his sexual orientation with Alè and close friend Jade Lambert, and he worries about what might happen if his father ever found out. Then one night at a comedy show with Jade, he meets a young man named Wesley Summers, and the two immediately hit it off.

But after tragedy strikes, will Theo be able to find happiness? Over the course of this novel, Scibetta’s skill with dialogue shines through in Theo and Wesley’s interactions. Their banter feels natural and genuine, as they share everything from their love of vinyl to inside jokes and nicknames for each other (Wesley, for instance, is very quickly the only person who calls Theo “T”). Overall, the story doesn’t follow a traditional narrative structure; instead, it’s a slice-of-life portrait of Theo’s life as he tries to balance new love and the weight of his family’s legacy. Plot points converge close to the midpoint, leaving Theo shaken and angry; the story effectively becomes one of his grappling with his feelings and with the knowledge of secrets and truths coming to light.

An often engaging and dramatic debut that will appeal to fans of romances and psychological thrillers.

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A sharply drawn satire set in a broken future economy.

ROEBUCK’S PRIZE

Hattie’s War Serko, Peter | SageLand Press (324 pp.) $12.99 paper | Sept. 8, 2023 | 9798218129514

In this debut middle-grade historical novel, a teenager seeks the truth about her father.

Harriett “Hattie” Alanson Howell is only 14 years old but has already experienced major loss. When Hattie was 10, her closest sibling, Jennie, died of an illness. Hattie’s father, Hannibal—a successful sign painter who, like Hattie, loved to draw—was killed in the Civil War shortly before her birth. All Hattie’s mother will say is “I pray he had a good death.” As a teenager in New York state’s Finger Lakes area who battles depression, which she refers to as the “Raven,” Hattie decides to look for answers on her own. She begins corresponding with her Uncle Byron, Hannibal’s brother and the only war survivor in the family. Byron not only enlightens Hattie about the good man her father was—he joined the Union Army to fight racism on the home front—but also encourages the teen’s own artistic gifts, even paying for her to attend Atelier De Luca, a prestigious Ithaca art program, when she is 17. After graduation, Hattie must decide between further study or the opportunity to become a sign painter— and whether she can withstand a trip to Gettysburg, where her father perished.

Serko’s engaging novel was inspired by his own ancestors—Hattie was his greatgreat-grandmother and Hannibal his great-great-great-grandfather—as well as a family trip to Gettysburg in 1970 when the author was 16 and first learned of KIRKUS REVIEWS

the Howell side of the family. The book contains a host of kid-friendly resources to provide context, including key facts about the Civil War, illustrations by Leslie, historical and family photographs, and a recipe for the molasses cookies that prominently appear in the work’s first chapter. Hattie is an intelligent and thoughtful young hero, wrestling with mental health and discovering her creativity while navigating life in a brand-new landscape. Her story is both relatable and inspiring for the novel’s target audience.

A sentimental and satisfying tale about a teen in post–Civil War America.

Roebuck’s Prize Shapiro, Michael | Atmosphere Press (226 pp.) | $15.99 paper | July 11, 2023 9781639888979

In Shapiro’s debut speculative novel, an emasculated man seeks redemption in the shadow economy.

In 2035, times are tough for a lot of people, including Raf Vella, a downsized estate planner turned stay-at-home dad (though he dislikes the term). He moonlights as a delivery man for specialty items—which, due to shortages, now encompass anything beyond the barest staples— which he picks up at a warehouse called the Depot. One night, Raf stumbles across an underground boxing match going on at the back of Depot, and he can’t help but be taken in by the high wagers and prizes. He steps into the ring and, unexpectedly, comes away a

winner. The match provides his entry into the Real Deal Economy, a black market for all sorts of things, created by legal loopholes and Congressional gridlock. “We’re basically modern-day moonshiners-gone-corporate,” explains one RDE-er. Raf wants to become a Broker, someone who connects people and goods within the RDE and makes the kind of money that has become all but impossible to earn in the normal economy. If he can do that, maybe he can earn back the respect of his wife and provide for his daughter the way he wants to. To become a Broker, however, Raf will have to climb the dangerous ladder of the RDE. Is the money he might eventually make worth the things he’ll have to do to get there?

Shapiro’s prose expertly sketches Raf’s world, which feels simultaneously alien and familiar. Though the dystopian premise is hardly unique, the details of Raf’s grim near-future are inventive and fresh (the precipitator of this dystopia, intriguingly, is a corrupted infrastructure that unexpectedly leads to kleptocracy.) Here the author describes television in the post-streaming world: “Advertising had basically dried up, and not enough people were willing or had the bucks to pay subscription fees.

The whole industry had been replaced by a blizzard of so-called ‘user-generated content’ that consisted mainly of homemade videos, crudely-made amateur dramas and pirated copies of vintage TV shows.” It’s a quick, immersive tale that leaves its reader sated.

A sharply drawn satire set in a broken future economy.

Entanglements Souffrant, Leah | Unbound Edition Press (166 pp.) | $29.94 paper | July 11, 2023 9798987019917

Souffrant, an acclaimed poet, explores the complexities of life, history, and memory in this blend of memoir, commentary, and analysis.

OCTOBER 15, 2023 159

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Martha Graham, the mother of modern dance, once asked, “How does it all begin?” Her conclusion, that “It never begins. It just continues,” is an idea that the author ruminates on while writing in an airport. The writings collected here, influenced by Graham’s quote, are further inspired by the airport’s mise-en-scene, as Souffrant can’t help but hear the passing conversations of fellow travelers or smell fragrant cooking from nearby restaurants that contribute to her growing hunger pangs. Writers, artists, and even scientists, the book suggests, are entangled in a web of factors that influence what they produce, how they think, and what they choose to ignore (“Where are we not going, shaping the ideas?” she asks rhetorically). Describing her writing style as “a poetics of non-delimiting” that “recognizes the arbitrariness of limits, yet marks them anyway,” Souffrant offers readers her characteristically idiosyncratic perspective on a myriad of interrelated topics, from how knowledge is made to the role of myth-making in shaping narratives, as the book blends poetry with memoir, social commentary, and historical analysis. One chapter reflects on a trip to Salem, Massachusetts, connecting tchotchkes found in the local historical museum to the town’s infamous history: “We are held captive, too, by the narratives,” she writes, as “we feel for the sense of a thread between question and answer.” This chapter’s prose is interrupted by a poem, “1777 Primer,” which explores myth-making in a Revolutionary War–era textbook. Indeed, while mostly set in the relative present, including vignettes from Souffrant’s own life, the past maintains a constant presence in the text, as the author implores readers to recognize how “myths,” whether in our personal lives or in our collective memory of the past, “shape us even when we acknowledge them as fiction.” Like a cemetery (the book concludes with a poignant reminder of the poetry found on gravestones), our present, the author reminds 160 OCTOBER 15, 2023

readers, exists entangled with the past.

This is a gorgeous book with an eye-pleasing layout that matches the eclectic, genre-bending writing style.

Each chapter features original artwork, poetry, and relevant epigraphs.

The text even includes a nine-page list of works cited and end notes that signal a solid grounding in interdisciplinary scholarship surrounding history, feminist theory, literary criticism, and visual studies. A finalist for the National Poetry Award, Souffrant teaches writing at New York University, and has published her work (including excerpts from this book) in multiple anthology collections. While visually stunning, the book may not always prove accessible to readers unfamiliar with critical and feminist theory. Depending on the reader’s perspective, the writing may read as profound or rife with non-sequiturs. “Pain, too, comes,” one passage notes, concluding, “The sky is so beautiful. The ocean.” Like abstract art, the poignance and meaning of those lines are relative to each individual reader. At less than 170 pages in length, the book is deceptively dense and should not be read in a single reading. Each chapter, poem, reflective narrative, and piece of art offers new revelations upon subsequent readings.

A thought-provoking, if occasionally esoteric, reflection on life, history, and myth.

Dancehall Stobierski, Tim | Antrim House (90 pp.) | $18.00 paper | July 3, 2023 9798986552262

Stobierski offers a book of poetry about queer relationships.

The author explores intimacy in this collection, which blends natural phenomena with human emotion. The speaker begins with a direct address to the sun, “low over the hills,

/ red and ripe and / ready to become” (from “There are days I question the sun—”). He describes the excitement of meeting a new love interest and reveals the vulnerability he feels when trusting another with his heart. “These cold nights” recounts a sultry winter rendezvous between lovers “two tequilas deep,” and the soundtrack of a kiss triggers a childhood memory in “Melody.” Hunger for touch and carnal pleasures are recurring themes: “Press into me / as night / presses / into a canyon,” the speaker urges in “Want.”

In the aftermath of a lover’s quarrel, a speaker watches his partner peel an orange: “it wasn’t until then that I realized / just how gentle you could be” (“The night of our first big fight”).

The poems also effectively mourn love lost and examine how time doesn’t necessarily heal wounds of former relationships, and these poems are both tender and sensual. A date “smells like cut grass / and gasoline” in “Apolloniad,” and such natural elements add layers to the rich sensory detail; In the hands of a lover, the speaker becomes sweetgrass in “Bounty”: “Harvest me by the handful; / tear me out of the black earth. / I am yours, as much as you can hold.” Stobierski also manages to capture all-encompassing desire in lines such as “I ache to be spoken— / to cling to your lip / and fall from your tongue” (“And like a word”). In addition, many of his metaphors and similes are truly original, like “Your love gripped me / the way thirst grips a throat.”

A vivid portrayal of love, sex, and desire using natural imagery.

Backyard Bug Safari Teasdale, Barbara | Illus. by Natalia Logvanova | Inkster Publishing (40 pp.) $18.99 | $13.99 paper | Aug. 1, 2023

A pair of brothers collects bugs for a school project in this nature-focused illustrated children’s book.

Freddy is so excited to gather KIRKUS REVIEWS

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The chess-themed and idiosyncratic worldbuilding will excite young readers’ imaginations.

T H E P R I N C E S S , T H E K N I G H T, A N D T H E L O S T G O D

bugs for his school entomology project that he sleeps in his hat.

Now, Freddy; his little brother, Bradley; and their dog, Lucky-boy, head to a large backyard to collect 11 “live insects.” “What’s so special about bugs anyway?” Bradley asks, and, luckily, Freddy has all the answers. Freddy teaches Bradley about the importance of pollination; why ants march in a row; how grasshoppers and crickets differ; and more. The brothers spend all day in the backyard, encountering bees in manufactured hives; walking sticks; praying mantises; butterflies; and other insects. Freddy also explains hard-to-pronounce terms like metamorphous and tells Bradley not to eat a jumping bean—it has a caterpillar inside. The siblings end the night catching a firefly before dinner, and when Bradley accidentally tips over the bug collection boxes during their meal, they get to catch the insects all over again. Teasdale introduces plenty of insect fun in the dense narration. Freddy’s dialogue sometimes feels overly explanatory—more like a teacher’s speech than a big brother’s—but Bradley’s curiosity and reactions to new facts feel genuine.

Even insect fans are sure to encounter intriguing information, as the author explores some lesser-known ideas, including determining whether a grasshopper or a cricket jumps higher and farther, an experiment the brothers set up together. Logvanova’s painterly illustrations depict the two boys, both brown-skinned with curly black hair, in a textured environment. The insects all have big, cartoon eyes, which detract from the story’s realism but add an element of humor that the youngest lap KIRKUS REVIEWS

readers should savor. Many realistic flowers appear in the foreground of the images, and the watercolor backgrounds are beautifully rendered. Some insects featured in the pictures, such as dragonflies and ladybugs, are never mentioned in the text, giving readers a chance for an entertaining seek-and-find game to identify as many insects as they can.

A charming backyard adventure that young bug lovers are sure to enjoy.

The Princess, The Knight, and the Lost God: A Chess Story Winifred, Victoria | Illus. by Luisa Galstyan | The Enrichment Connection (216 pp.) | $10.99 paper | Sept. 27, 2022 9798986967509

The princess of Chess Mountain must hide on Earth to avoid a war between the gods.

Kassie, an athletic, intelligent princess, lives on Chess Mountain among living wooden chess pieces who animate the chessboards of gods. She’s the daughter of Mars, the Roman god of war and king of Chess Mountain, and Caïssa, a powerful dryad and queen. Kassie is eager to celebrate her twelfth birthday and embark on her mythic quest, which will elevate her to god status. Unfortunately, when Dimitri, son of neighboring god of sports, Euphron, disappears, Euphron declares war on Chess Mountain, and Mars sends Kassie through a

chess-puzzle portal to Earth with a knight chess piece named Maurice and an important book of chess solutions. After landing, Kassie, who on her home world glows and has inhumanly bronze skin, becomes a white-presenting brown-haired girl, and Maurice turns from a horse to a fedora-wearing clotheshorse. Kassie must integrate into an inexplicably chess-focused classroom in a culturally diverse elementary school in Queens. Light comedy centered on Kassie’s inexperience with snow, pizza, and cars abounds, as do lesser plots about a villainous classmate, Hunter, and suspiciously named teacher, Mr. Mercury, who seems intent on disrespecting the planet Mars, which makes Kassie think she’s been discovered. When the identity of the missing god Dimitri is revealed, Kassie must rely on her diplomacy to resolve the political crisis caused by his absence. In Winifred’s middle-grade novel, the prose can be stiff and protracted, and the book seems long for its reading level.

The use of Roman mythology, however, is entertainingly original, and the chess-themed and idiosyncratic worldbuilding will excite young readers’ imaginations. In fact, even more can be done to capitalize on the chess setting of Chess Mountain.

Despite humor and a happy ending, the story has a solemn bent, with the cast fulfilling preordained mythical roles. Galstyan’s occasional lighthearted, simple pen-and-ink cartoon illustrations don’t flesh out the fantasy visuals much; a map of Chess Mountain appears at the front of the book. There is a short chess vocabulary page, but most of the narrative’s descriptions of play expect readers to already understand the game.

A wordy but inventive mashup of mythology and chess.

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OCTOBER 15, 2023 161

As Cozy as a Pumpkin Spice Latte in Fall!

From CRYSTAL MALDONADO,, author of

A heartwarming autumn rom-com that touches on topics like PCOS, fatphobia, Latine identity, and class.

“A pumpkin-spice-latteflavored treat about friends, family and the importance of fun.”

Featured in PEOPLE Magazine’s Must-Read Books for Fall!

—PEOPLE Magazine

“Compassionate and cozy.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A satisfying story of self-acceptance.”

—Booklist

ALSO AVAILABLE in both English and Spanish

A Cosmopolitan Best New Book and POPSUGAR Best New YA Novel

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