Featuring 310 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children's and YA books
KIRKUS VOL. LXXXVII, NO.
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REVIEWS
from the editor’s desk:
Books That Deserved More Buzz B Y T O M
Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N
B EER
# Chief Executive Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N mkuehn@kirkus.com
John Paraskevas
Tom Beer
This issue, we continue our Best of 2019 coverage with our picks for the Best Nonfiction (100 titles) and Best Young Adult (75 titles) books of the year. While many of them have been widely praised, nominated for literary awards, and are likely to show up on Best of 2019 lists elsewhere, we’re especially proud when we can shine a spotlight on a hidden gem that not everyone has discovered. As I look back on my own reading in 2019, there are a few titles that absolutely wowed me but didn’t get all the attention they deserved. Here are a few books that warranted more fanfare this year; any of them would be a great way to cap off your 2019 reading.
Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg (Scribner): Goldberg is still best known for Bee Season, her 2000 novel about a young girl competing in a national spelling bee. (Indie rock fans also know her as the subject of The Decemberists’ “Song for Myla Goldberg.”) Subsequent novels were not quite as thrilling, but this year Goldberg absolutely dazzled me with this rich and imaginative novel about art, censorship and motherhood—presented as the catalog and notes for an exhibition by a fictional female photographer who courts controversy by taking intimate portraits of her young daughter. Our reviewer called it “a riveting portrait of an artist who happens to be a woman.”
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from the editor’s desk
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Fiction Editor L AU R I E M U C H N I C K lmuchnick@kirkus.com Children’s Editor VICKY SMITH vsmith@kirkus.com Young Adult Editor L AU R A S I M E O N lsimeon@kirkus.com
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Managing/Nonfiction Editor E R I C L I E B E T R AU eliebetrau@kirkus.com
Vice President of Kirkus Indie KAREN SCHECHNER kschechner@kirkus.com
The Other Side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border by Juan Pablo Villalobos, translated by Rosalind Harvey (FSG): OK—a book that was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Young Readers’ Literature wasn’t exactly unsung. But I maintain that The Other Side should have been reviewed and talked about by young people and adults everywhere. Mexican-born novelist Villalobos (I’ll Sell You a Dog, etc.) interviewed real Central American teens about their experiences crossing the border and used the techniques of fiction to make these monologues dramatic and deeply moving. Kirkus’ reviewer called it an “essential volume...deserving of more than one read.”
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Vice President of Marketing SARAH KALINA skalina@kirkus.com
Editor at Large MEGAN LABRISE mlabrise@kirkus.com
Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl: A Memoir by Jeannie Vanasco (Tin House): It was a year of important, much-discussed #MeToo books—from She Said by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, to Know My Name by Chanel Miller. In this memoir, Vanasco recounts how she was raped as a teen by a boy who had been a friend; confused by what had happened, she maintained the friendship. In writing about her experience, 14 years after the incident, she contacts the rapist and conducts a series of interviews with him; she feels ambivalent about giving him a voice but also feels the need to understand how he could betray her as he had. The Kirkus reviewer called it “an extraordinarily brave work of self- and cultural reflection.”
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Editor -in- Chief TOM BEER tbeer@kirkus.com
Cover design by Liana Walker
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contents special issue: best books of 2019
1 december 2019 issue
best nonfiction books of 2019
fiction
REVIEWS.............................................................................................4
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS...................................................... 82 REVIEWS........................................................................................... 82
EDITOR’S NOTE.................................................................................. 6
MYSTERY........................................................................................ 108 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY.....................................................121
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: STEPHANIE LAND.................................... 10
ROMANCE.......................................................................................123
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: CHERRÍE MORAGA.................................. 14
nonfiction
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: GEORGE PACKER..................................... 18
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.....................................................125 REVIEWS..........................................................................................125
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: ISHA SESAY............................................... 22
best young adult books of 2019
children’s INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.................................................... 156
REVIEWS............................................................................................51
REVIEWS......................................................................................... 156 BLACK HISTORY MONTH PICTURE BOOKS............................... 188
EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................ 54
young adult
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: JULIE BERRY.............................................60
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.................................................... 196
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT:
REVIEWS......................................................................................... 196
AMBELIN & EZEKIEL KWAYMULLINA..........................................64
indie
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: AKWAEKE EMEZI.....................................68
INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS.................................................... 210 REVIEWS......................................................................................... 210
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: DAVID YOON............................................. 72
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nonfiction GO AHEAD IN THE RAIN Notes to A Tribe Called Quest
THE NARROW CORRIDOR States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty
Abdurraqib, Hanif Univ. of Texas (216 pp.) $16.95 paper | Feb. 1, 2019 978-1-4773-1648-1
Memoir meets cultural criticism in this bittersweet appreciation of hip-hop visionaries A Tribe Called Quest. Poet and essayist Abdurraqib (They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, 2017, etc.) avoids the temptation to oversell his subject while maintaining a tricky structural balance. He somehow does full justice to the musical achievements of Q-Tip and his crew, to the influence of the musical world on this singular group, and to how deeply the experience permeated the young fan who might not have become a writer—and certainly not this writer—without their inspiration. In recent years, the author found himself with students as young as he once was who, as contemporary hip-hop fans, “had never heard of A Tribe Called Quest, and then, later, only knew them as a phoenix, risen from the ashes.” There was a 17-year interval between albums, and by the time what appears to be the last one was released in 2016, friendships had frayed and a crucial collaborator had died. This is a history of how two boyhood friends, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, teamed up (though the former overshadowed the latter), how they differed from each other, and how they needed each other. Some of the book takes the form of letters from Abdurraqib to each of them and to others. Elsewhere, the author chronicles the progression of rap and how the way that Dr. Dre challenged Q-Tip was similar to the way that the Beatles pushed Brian Wilson, as well as how the East-West synergy later turned vicious and dangerous. “It is much easier to determine when rap music became political and significantly more difficult to pinpoint when it became dangerous,” writes Abdurraqib toward the beginning of the book, a somewhat inexplicable pronouncement that he proceeds to explicate and elucidate over the rest. Even those who know little about the music will learn much of significance here, perhaps learning how to love it in the process.
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Acemoglu, Daron & Robinson, James A. Penguin Press (576 pp.) $32.00 | Sep. 24, 2019 978-0-7352-2438-4 A wide-ranging survey of the conditions of liberty required to steer the world away from the Hobbesian war of
each against all. Why do nations fail? So Acemoglu and Robinson, economists at MIT and the University of Chicago respectively, asked in their 2012 collaboration, Why Nations Fail. Their answer is complex, but it falls largely on the absence or failure of democratic institutions. In this continuation of their previous book, they examine how liberty works: It is not “natural,” not widespread, “is rare in history and is rare today,” and is a fairly recent phenomenon that balances the competing demands of state and society while being reinforced by that balance. For instance, the Athenian constitutional reforms of Cleisthenes “were helpful for strengthening the political power of Athenian citizens while also battling the cage of norms”—that cage of norms being the informal body of customs supplanted by state institutions. Those norms in turn “constrained what the state could do and how far state building could go,” providing their own set of checks. Though somewhat fluid in its definition, liberty, as Acemoglu and Robinson show, is expressed differently under various “leviathans,” to extend the Hobbesian critique. The American Leviathan, for example, does not contend properly with inequality and racial oppression, two enemies of liberty, while the “Paper Leviathan” is a bureaucratic machine favoring the privileged class, serving as both a political and economic brake on development and yielding “fear, violence, and dominance for most of its citizens.” So it is with China, a “Despotic Leviathan” that commands the economy and coerces political conformity. The authors trace a link between democratic states and what they call “Shackled Leviathans,” the beast in restraints being the best of all possible scenarios. Though the argument is a little jargon-y, it is, as with the authors’ previous books, provocative and intuitively correct. An endlessly rewarding book full of takeaways, including the thought that the best societies protect everyone’s rights.
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A stirring, inventive masterpiece of heartbreak. when death takes something from you give it back
Aidt, Naja Marie Trans. by Newman, Denise Coffee House (152 pp.) $22.95 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-56689-560-6
THE BRITISH ARE COMING The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777
Atkinson, Rick Henry Holt (800 pp.) $40.00 | May 14, 2019 978-1-62779-043-7
The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian shifts his focus from modern battlefields to the conflict that founded the United States. |
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A memoir of the author’s struggle to find the words to mourn her son’s death. On March 16, 2015, Aidt’s son, Carl, died after throwing himself out of a fifth-floor window; he had suffered a psychotic break after consuming psilocybin mushrooms. It takes a long time—nearly halfway through this slim, devastating book—for Danish poet and fiction writer Aidt (Rock, Paper, Scissors, 2015, etc.) to state those facts so plainly. But her sense of grief is present from the first page, and she deploys multiple rhetorical elements—poetry, literary criticism, journals, all-caps, exclamatory text—to reckon with her loss. She returns over and over to her memory of the phone call delivering the news, adding new details each time, as if bracing herself to express the fullness of the event. Between those moments, Aidt bemoans the impossibility of putting her feelings into words through run-on anger (“I hate writing don’t want to write anymore I’m writing burning hate my anger is useless a howling cry”), unusually structured poetic passages (“Panic like a geyser inside the body / shoots its poison-water / up / from underground / to / the reptilian brain”), and sober contemplation of other grief-struck books such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, and Anne Carson’s Nox. The difficulty of articulating grief is itself a cliché of the grief memoir, but Aidt’s shattering of genre forms both underscores the feeling of speechlessness and gives it a palpable shape. (The book’s orthography bolsters that sense, playing with font sizes, line breaks, and italicization; translator Newman handles these rhetorical shifts with grace and clarity.) Carl’s death thrusted Aidt into a world where “nothing resonates or can be established, where nothing in the entire world is recognizable.” Yet this book is an alchemical feat, giving shape to the most profound sense of absence. A stirring, inventive masterpiece of heartbreak.
Atkinson (The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, 2013, etc.) is a longtime master of the set piece: Soldiers move into place, usually not quite understanding why, and are put into motion against each other to bloody result. He doesn’t disappoint here, in the first of a promised trilogy on the Revolutionary War. As he writes of the Battle of Bunker Hill, for instance, “Charlestown burned and burned, painting the low clouds bright orange in what one diarist called ‘a sublime scene of military magnificence and ruin,’ ” even as snipers fired away and soldiers lay moaning in heaps on the ground. At Lexington, British officers were spun in circles by well-landed shots while American prisoners such as Ethan Allen languished in British camps and spies for both sides moved uneasily from line to line. There’s plenty of motion and carnage to keep the reader’s attention. Yet Atkinson also has a good command of the big-picture issues that sparked the revolt and fed its fire, from King George’s disdain of disorder to the hated effects of the Coercive Acts. As he writes, the Stamp Act was, among other things, an attempt to get American colonists to pay their fair share for the costs of their imperial defense (“a typical American…paid no more than sixpence a year in Crown taxes, compared to the average Englishman’s twenty-five shillings”). Despite a succession of early disasters and defeats, Atkinson clearly demonstrates, through revealing portraits of the commanders on both sides, how the colonials “outgeneraled” the British, whose army was generally understaffed and plagued by illness, desertion, and disaffection, even if “the American army had not been proficient in any general sense.” A bonus: Readers learn what it was that Paul Revere really hollered on his famed ride. A sturdy, swift-moving contribution to the popular literature of the American Revolution. (two 4-color 16-page inserts; 25 maps)
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WHEN DEATH TAKES SOMETHING FROM YOU GIVE IT BACK Carl’s Book
CHARGED The New Movement To Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration Bazelon, Emily Random House (448 pp.) $28.00 | Apr. 9, 2019 978-0-399-59001-6
A lawyer and journalist exposes flaws in the criminal justice system, with an emphasis on the untrammeled power of local prosecutors. Because the United States contains several thousand prosecutor jurisdictions (mostly at the county level), identifying misconduct is often difficult. In this potent book, New York Times Magazine writer Bazelon (Yale Law School; Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Char acter and Empathy, 2013) emphasizes prosecutors who care more about winning convictions rather than upholding their sworn duty of seeking justice. The author makes a convincing argument that if there were a larger number of justice-seeking prosecutors, we could reduce incarceration by a substantial percentage in a kirkus.com
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nonfiction: the best of 2019 Leah Overstreet
In this issue, you will find our reviews of the 100 best nonfiction books of the year. That may sound like a lot of books, but consider that we reviewed more than 1,500 nonfiction books this year. Granted, given our reputation for tough, honest reviews, many of those books didn’t fare so well, but we did award stars to more than 300 books—and designated nearly 300 more as “recommended.” But this issue is about the best of the best, and just as in previous years, I have worked with my reviewers to curate a list of the most outstanding books of the year that also reflects diversity across author, subject, and publisher. In that vein, I’d like to offer my personal favorites in a selection of subjects/genres, in no particular order or rank. Memoir: How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones (Simon & Schuster, Oct. 8). The winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize was the standout memoir of the year. As our reviewer notes about the acclaimed poet, Jones “tends less toward flights of poetic fancy and more toward understated, matter-of-fact prose, all the more powerful because the style never distracts from the weight of the story: the sexual awakening and struggle for identity of a young black man raised in Texas by a single mother, a Buddhist, who herself was the daughter of an evangelical Christian….A memoir of coming to terms that’s written with masterful control of both style and material.” Music Criticism: Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib (Univ. of Texas, Feb. 1). A finalist for the Kirkus Prize, the poet and critic’s latest is an incisive examination of the music— and attendant cultural elements—of A Tribe Called Quest. Our reviewer writes, “even those who know little about the music will learn much of significance here, perhaps learning how to love it in the process.” Historical Remembrance/Reportage: The Only Plane in the Sky by Garret M. Graff (Avid Reader Press, Sept. 10) and Fall and Rise by Mitchell Zuckoff (Harper, April 30). For anyone seeking a well-rounded, comprehensive, and moving portrait of 9/11, these two books are essential—and unlikely to be surpassed. While Zuckoff ’s book is a “meticulously delineated, detailed, graphic history of the 6
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events of 9/11 in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania,” Graff presents an exemplary oral history packed with “wrenching, highly personal accounts of 9/11 and its aftermath.” Essay Collection: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (Random House, April 6). The highly promising debut from the 30-year-old New Yorker staff writer is, as our reviewer writes, a series of “exhilarating, groundbreaking essays that should establish Tolentino as a key voice of her generation.” In consistently engaging pieces that cover the internet, social media, and many other elements of popular culture, the author “brings fresh perspective to current movements in a manner similar to that of Joan Didion in the 1960s and ’70s.” Nature/Adventure Writing: Underland by David Macfarlane (Norton, June 4). Few chroniclers of the natural world write with the grace and poetry of Macfarlane. “Wherever he travels,” writes our reviewer, “he enhances our sense of wonder‚ which, after all, is the whole point of storytelling.” After the excellent Landmarks, he follows with this “exploration of the little-visited realms of the Earth, from deep caves to bunkers, trenches to Bronze Age burial chambers, courtesy of an accomplished Virgil.” Criminal Justice: Charged by Emily Bazelon (Random House, April 9). The United States criminal justice system is seriously flawed, and New York Times Magazine writer Bazelon, who teaches at Yale Law School, vividly portrays the country’s major incarceration problem in this “vitally important new entry in the continued heated debates about criminal justice.” It’s a meticulously well-documented indictment of the system that doesn’t just point out problems, but also offers solutions. In fact, Bazelon closes with a highly useful appendix, “TwentyOne Principles for Twenty-First-Century Prosecutors.” —E.L. Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and man aging editor. |
A rare book of healing on multiple levels. black is the body
Bernard, Emily Knopf (240 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 1, 2019 978-0-451-49302-6
A memoir in essays about race that is as lucid as the issue is complicated. Though Bernard (English and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies/Univ. of Vermont; Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White, 2012, etc.) is a scholar, her latest book is almost devoid of jargon. Instead, the writing is deeply felt, unflinchingly honest, and openly questioning. The author makes no claims to have all the answers about what it means to be a black woman from the South who has long lived and worked in the very white state of Vermont, where she might be the first black person that some of her students have encountered. From the evidence on display here, Bernard is a top-notch teacher who explores territory that many of her students might prefer to leave unexplored. She is married to a white professor of African American Studies, and she ponders how his relationship with the students might be different than hers, how he is comfortable letting them call him by his first name while she ponders whether to adopt a more formal address. The couple also adopted twin daughters from Ethiopia, which gives all of them different perspectives on the African American hyphenate. But it also illuminates a |
WHAT I STAND ON The Collected Essays of Wendell Berry 1969-2017 Berry, Wendell Ed. by Jack Shoemaker Library of America (1,650 pp.) $75.00 | May 21, 2019 978-1-59853-610-2
A splendid gathering of 50 years’ worth of essays “cultural and agricultural” by the eminent Kentucky farmer, poet, novelist, and social critic. In 1969, Berry (b. 1934), who had previously written a couple of novels that received little attention, published The Long-Legged House, his first book of nonfiction. The timing for the book of essays on the Ohio River backcountry was just right, anticipating the wave of interest in things ecological and place-oriented, and Berry’s neo-transcendentalism (“it is another world, which means that one’s senses and reflexes must begin to live another kind of life”) found an audience that would grow significantly in the coming years. This comprehensive anthology, whose first volume reproduces his entire 1977 manifesto, The Unsettling of America, is made up of selections made by Berry and his longtime editor, Shoemaker, who, for nearly 40 years, has made it an unceasing project to continue to expand Berry’s audience and influence. The Gift of Good Land (1981), an early collaboration between writer and editor, gives attention to such country comforts as horse-drawn farming as contrasted to industrial agriculture, which “considers only the machine.” The second volume of this sweeping collection, comprising 1,650 pages altogether, offers further arguments in favor of an agriculture and rural culture that are anything but simple—and, according to the author, in constant need of defense against those who would attack them “morally as well as economically.” Conservative in the deepest sense, and often resembling T.S. Eliot as much as Edward Abbey, Berry goes on to insist that “the distinction between the physical and the spiritual is, I believe, false,” urging instead that the truly relevant contrast is “between the organic and the mechanical.” Over a consistently developed line of argument through the decades, it’s abundantly clear what side Berry falls on and what he stands for—which is, as he has long said, what he stands on. Essential for environmentalists, back-to-the-landers, and students and practitioners of the essay form. kirkus.com
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BLACK IS THE BODY Stories From My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine
legacy of storytelling, from her mother and the Nashville where the author was raised and her grandparents’ Mississippi. “I could not leave the South behind. I still can’t,” she writes, and then elaborates on the relationship between blacks and whites there: “We were ensnared in the same historical drama. I was forged—mind and body—in the unending conversation between southern blacks and whites. I don’t hate the South. To despise it would be to despise myself.” The book’s genesis and opening is her life-threatening stabbing by a deranged white stranger, a seemingly random crime. Toward the end of the book, she realizes that “in every scar there is a story. The salve is the telling itself.” A rare book of healing on multiple levels.
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nation overwhelmed by prison costs. In addition, individual lives would no longer be derailed by criminal charges that are unnecessarily severe or even downright false. Bazelon aims her book at nonlawyer voters as well as defense attorneys, judges, police officers, social workers, prison wardens, and others in the criminal justice system. A clear message that resonates throughout the book: Never confuse the law with common sense. The author narrates her impressively researched book primarily through two defendants. One is Noura Jackson, a Memphis resident who was 18 when she was charged with the murder of her mother. Despite no physical evidence of guilt or eyewitness testimony, Jackson went to prison. Believing in Jackson’s innocence, Bazelon wrote about the case in August 2017. Based on the extensive evidence she gathered, the author rightly demonizes the Memphis district attorney, the trial judge, and other law enforcement personnel in the Jackson prosecution. The author also explores the plight of Kevin (a pseudonym), a teenager arrested on a gun charge in Brooklyn. As Bazelon makes abundantly clear through her cogent, credible arguments, a sensible, compassionate system never would have arrested or prosecuted Kevin. Throughout the two narratives, the author demonstrates occasional optimism due to the election of reform-minded prosecutors in a few cities. The appendix, “Twenty-One Principles for Twenty-First-Century Prosecutors,” is also helpful. A vitally important new entry in the continued heated debates about criminal justice.
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ALL THE POWERS OF EARTH The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. III, 1856-1863
THE UNDYING Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care
Blumenthal, Sidney Simon & Schuster (784 pp.) $35.00 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-4767-7728-3
The third of a projected five-volume political biography, this one dealing robustly with Lincoln’s political ascent, ending with his election to the presidency in 1860. Blumenthal—who has served as a senior adviser to both Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Washington editor for the New Yorker—has published two earlier volumes in his series (Wrestling With His Angel, 2017, etc.). Here, the author continues to establish himself as the definitive chronicler of Lincoln’s political career. The years 1856-1860 were tumultuous ones in American history, and Blumenthal astutely examines many seminal events: slavery’s fracture of the country, the 1856 assault on Sen. Charles Sumner, the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown’s deadly attacks at Pottawatomie Creek, 1856, and Harpers Ferry, 1859, Lincoln’s transformative Cooper Union speech in 1860. Some crucial characters appear throughout, including Frederick Douglass, Emerson and Thoreau, Dred Scott, and John Wilkes Booth, who was present at Brown’s hanging and at some of Stephen A. Douglas’ presidential campaign appearances. Some facts will surprise readers with only a modest knowledge of Lincoln. For example, he didn’t like to be called “Abe” (he preferred “Lincoln”); listeners were sometimes put off by his voice, which could be high and squeaky; and he was masterful behind the scenes of his campaigns—he was, Blumenthal reminds us continually, a politician. Some will probably be surprised to learn that he did not leave his home in Springfield during the entire campaign and that he received less than 40% of the popular vote. The Democratic Party had split—North and South—thus assuring Lincoln’s victory. Blumenthal’s explorations of all of these elements are stunningly thorough, both wide-angled and microscopic. He quotes from newspapers, books, speeches, congressional transcripts, and numerous other sources. At the beginning, he includes a timeline of major events and cast of major characters. As essential as any political biography is likely to be.
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Boyer, Anne Farrar, Straus and Giroux (320 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-0-374-27934-9
A passionate and eloquent memoir about one woman’s battle with breast cancer. Award-winning poet and essayist Boyer (Creative Writing/ Kansas City Art Institute; A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, 2018, etc.), a single mother living on a tight budget, was diagnosed with highly aggressive breast cancer when she was 41. Her doctor (who she later replaced) said her tumor was “necrotic, which meant that it was growing so quickly it failed to build infrastructure for itself.” He recommended chemotherapy right away. Her treatment with Neulasta cost $7,000 per shot. As the author writes, “someone once said that choosing chemotherapy is like choosing to jump off a building when someone is holding a gun to your head.” Boyer looked for guidance and inspiration from other women artists who suffered from the disease, including Susan Sontag, Alice James, Rachel Carson, Audre Lorde, Fanny Burney, Kathy Acker, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Boyer kept a journal, a “minor form of reparative magic,” which she abandoned hundreds of times. John Donne’s “sickbed masterpiece,” Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, written when he thought he was dying, casts an influential shadow over her book. Both have complex structures and are highly meditative, but Boyer’s “exercise in lamentation” is secular where Donne’s was religious. She takes us on a deeply personal journey into “my body in pain,” “eviscerating sadness,” and profound loss—eyelashes, eyebrows, toenails, nerves, brain cells, her hair. “I like wigs,” she writes. “I wear wigs. People I like wear wigs. Dolly Parton wears wigs….Medusa wore a wig made of snakes.” Eventually, Boyer had a double mastectomy. “In the capitalist medical universe in which all bodies must orbit around profit at all times,” she writes, “even a double mastectomy is considered an outpatient procedure.” She learned that everyone lies, from pharmaceutical companies to doctors and researchers and the internet. “Now that I am undying,” she writes, “the world is full of possibility.” Told with brutal clarity, this is a haunting testimony about death that is filled with life.
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A thorough, exciting, and altogether excellent choice for World War II—and especially D-Day—aficionados. sand & steel
SAND & STEEL The D-Day Invasions and the Liberation of France
Bricker, Darrell & Ibbitson, John Crown (288 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-1-984823-21-2 A lively exploration of how “we do not face the challenge of a population bomb but of a population bust—a relentless, generation-after-generation culling
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Caddick-Adams, Peter Oxford Univ. (928 pp.) $34.95 | May 6, 2019 978-0-19-060189-8
This massive nuts-and-bolts account corrects many of the inaccuracies surrounding the vaunted Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. British historian Caddick-Adams (Military History/ Defence Academy of the U.K.; Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45, 2014, etc.), a major in the British Territorial Army, offers an impressive summary of the sheer materiel and human effort required in securing the Normandy beachhead, from years of preparation to excruciating execution. Examining Gen. Erwin Rommel’s reinforcement of the so-called Atlantikwall, which was supposedly impenetrable, the author underscores some faulty suppositions—e.g., that German soldiers were “supermen” when in fact they were aged, exhausted, and relying heavily on horses for mobility. The American presence in Britain dazzled the local population, while the black American troops were treated with markedly more respect and warmth by the British locals than they were used to back home, prompting one veteran to recall, “our biggest enemy was our own troops.” Caddick-Adams, an expert in this terrain, devotes considerable space to the months of training that the invasion required and the many lives that were lost in run-up accidents; the prickly personalities of the various leading generals; the reliance on the sketchy weather reports; the nerve-wracking decision to delay the invasion 24 hours due to unpromising sea conditions; and how the Germans, who of course knew an invasion was coming at some point, had essentially “applied different criteria for a successful invasion” than the Allies. Following the armada toward Normandy, the author explains the roles of airpower, minesweepers, and assault flotillas and chronicles how, beach by beach, the Allies made their valiant, perilous forward thrust. In an intriguing postscript, he examines the crucial role of the spy network in “inducing Hitler to order a series of mistaken moves based on false intelligence.” There is also a glossary, rank table, and a list of the orders of battles. A thorough, exciting, and altogether excellent choice for World War II—and especially D-Day—aficionados.
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of the human herd.” Warnings of catastrophic world overpopulation have filled the media since the 1960s, so this expert, well-researched explanation that it’s not happening will surprise many readers. Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, and Globe and Mail writer at large Ibbitson (co-authors: The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture, and What It Means for Our Future, 2013) point out that a dozen nations are already shrinking. “By 2050,” they write, “the number will have climbed to three dozen. Some of the richest places on earth are shedding people every year: Japan, Korea, Spain, Italy, much of eastern Europe.” The authors explain that throughout history, birth and death rates were high, and population grew slowly. After 1800, increased food production and public health improvements lowered death rates, so populations boomed, but this didn’t last long. Also after 1800 came the Industrial Revolution and urbanization. Children are a big help on the farm but little use in a city. Perhaps most important, the authors emphasize, when women acquire education and status—something that happens in cities—they have fewer children. As a result, birth rates began dropping along with death rates, and most readers will be surprised to learn that the poor are not exempt. Brazil’s fertility is below its replacement rate, and Mexico’s is fast approaching. While it’s not unanimous, the authors are not alone in concluding that world population, now around 8 billion, will stabilize near 8.5 billion at midcentury and then decline. This is not necessarily good news. Nations losing population suffer labor shortages and an excess of elderly whose support requires taxes from a shrinking number of younger workers. The only effective solution to population decline is immigration, which, all researchers and the authors agree, always benefits their new nation. A delightfully stimulating and not terribly controversial overview of human demographics.
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EMPTY PLANET The Shock of Global Population Decline
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AUTHOR SP OTLIGHT
St e p h a n i e La n d
Nicol Biesek
Publishing is impoverished when it comes to firsthand accounts of the working poor, notes Stephanie Land, author of Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive (Hachette, Jan. 22). “There are no first-person narratives of people who are struggling,” says Land, a Barbara Ehrenreich mentee through the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and a Center for Community Change writing fellow, “and that’s exactly what we need.” The personal essay is “most vital right now,” she adds. “If you have distance in the writer [from the subject], there’s distance for the reader. The only way we’re going to build compassion for people under this huge umbrella of government assistance is by [listening] to their stories.” “An important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty,” according to Kirkus, Maid poignantly renders Land’s experience as a single mother living below the poverty line in Washington state. “We lived, we survived, in careful imbalance,” she writes of early life with daughter Mia. “This was my unwitnessed existence, as I polished another’s to make theirs appear perfect.” To make whole the insufficient funds provided by public assistance, Land took lowpaying, physically demanding jobs with various housecleaning services. Her wealthy cliStephanie Land ents never knew she repaired at night to a small studio apartment whose mold kept Mia constantly congested. Nor that one unforeseen expense could send mother and daughter tumbling. “[This book is about] breaking out of the caricature of poverty, breaking out of the stereotypes we’ve created for people in poverty,” Land says. “Even ‘poverty’ is a loaded word that comes with a lot of images in our heads, when in truth...this could happen to anybody. I hope that makes readers feel a little more vulnerable and possibly empathetic.” —M.L.
PARKLAND Birth of a Movement
Cullen, Dave Harper/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 12, 2019 978-0-06-288294-3 An incisive study of one of the past year’s most significant mass shootings, with publication tied to the one-year anniversary. Cullen spent 10 years researching and writing his book Columbine (2009), which meticulously documented the Colorado high school massacre, with an emphasis on the two students who planned it. This time, in the aftermath of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, committed by a former student on Feb. 14, 2018, the author has produced an impressively deep account in just 10 months. Never naming the murderer of 14 students and three staff members, the author focuses on surviving students who coalesced to promote gun control by spreading their message, encouraging voter registration, and seeking to influence legislatures at the local, state, and national levels. Starting with his initial coverage of the story for Vanity Fair just after the shooting, Cullen immersed himself with the students, many of whom left classes to tour the nation. Throughout the book, the author demonstrates his rapport with the students as well as Parkland parents, teachers, and community leaders. When he deems it appropriate and relevant, Cullen effectively compares and contrasts the Columbine and Parkland experiences. As he notes, his years of immersion in the Columbine tragedy left him with secondary PTSD, so diving in to the Parkland aftermath felt personally risky. However, he persisted, believing that the hopeful messages of the students would outweigh the darkness. Chronicling how the mostly middle- or upper-class Parkland students eventually expanded their crusade to address other issues related to guns, Cullen memorably captures many of the interests they share with often stereotyped inner-city teenagers from violent neighborhoods. In nearly 60 pages of detailed endnotes, the author expands on the revelations in the main narrative, discusses his information-gathering methods, and discloses potential conflicts of interests due to the close relationships he has formed with survivors. In both Columbine and this up-to-the minute portrait of the Parkland tragedy, Cullen has produced masterpieces that are simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful about a saner future.
Megan Labrise is Editor at Large and host of the Fully Booked podcast. 10
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A riveting chronicle from a courageous journalist who was there to witness and report the truth. assad, or we burn the country
Curran, Andrew S. Other Press (320 pp.) $28.95 | Jan. 15, 2019 978-1-59051-670-6
COVENTRY Essays
Cusk, Rachel Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) $27.00 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-0-374-12677-3 A striking collection of essays from the acclaimed British novelist. In three thematically organized sections, Cusk, a winner of the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards who is |
special issue: best books of 2019
A lively biography of Denis Diderot (1713-1784), provocateur, polymath, and central figure in the French Enlightenment. Ironically, the philosopher whose name is strongly associated with freethinking kept his freest thoughts under wraps: Thanks to an early lesson in the consequences of candor, he intentionally left mountains of unpublished writings to be discovered after his death. Early writings skewering organized religion and questioning God’s existence earned him public book-burnings and a three-month prison stint. In the ensuing years, he would save his most provocative thoughts about sex and politics for the drawer; his posthumous novel The Nun questioned the immorality of incest and adultery. But he put some of his most challenging ideas in plain sight, if subtly, through his life-consuming, multivolume Encyclopédie, which tweaked the sensibilities of religious leaders while also striving to “pull back the world’s curtain” through anatomical and mechanical illustrations that were rarely available to the public. Curran (Humanities/Wesleyan Univ.; The Anatomy of Blackness, 2011, etc.) gamely sifts through the mountain of Diderot’s output—he was a prolific art critic, lead writer of the Encyclopédie, and an inveterate correspondent—without for a moment making it feel burdensome. Rather, he ably balances the details of Diderot’s life with thoughtful considerations of the source and depth of his philosophical byways, taking his more peculiar ideas seriously but not literally. Curran’s mission is served by his subject’s wealth of experiences: In addition to his run-ins with state and religious leaders, he found a patron and intellectual sparring partner in Catherine the Great and corresponded with Benjamin Franklin before the American Revolution his writings helped inspire. As Curran writes, Diderot argued that kings and religious leaders “were complicit in running a massive illusion factory”; a more skeptical world may be Diderot’s greatest legacy. An intellectually dense and well-researched yet brisk journey into one of history’s most persuasive dissenters.
also renowned for her Outline trilogy (Kudos, 2018, etc.), brilliantly delves into expansive realms of personal memoir and social and literary criticism. In the titular essay, the author reflects on her odd, sometimes-tense relationship with her parents, who, for unaccountable reasons, will periodically stop speaking to her—a phenomenon that in England is referred to as “being sent to Coventry.” Cusk then expands her account of this experience to address further complex and sometimes strained aspects of her domestic life. Readers of the author’s first-person fiction will be pleased with the acutely observant narrative voice that characterizes these introspective meditations on family, motherhood, marriage, and community. “Part of the restlessness and anxiety I feel at home has, I realize, to do with time: I am forever waiting, as though home is a provisional situation that at some point will end,” she writes. “I am looking for that ending, that resolution, looking for it in domestic work as I look for the end of a novel by writing. At home I hardly ever sit down: the new sofa has nothing to fear from me.” In the section entitled “A Tragic Pastime,” Cusk deals with broader ideas of creative self-expression, gender politics, and the writing process. In the essay “Shakespeare’s Sisters,” the author sets Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own as alternating touchstones for considering the identity and concept of women’s writing within a male-dominated culture. In the final section, Cusk offers fresh perspectives on Edith Wharton and D.H. Lawrence and argues for the importance of Françoise Sagan, Olivia Manning, and Natalia Ginzburg. She also directs her discerning eye toward Kazuo Ishiguro and his novel Never Let Me Go and an even sharper edge to her withering assessment of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. An eloquent and engrossing selection of nonfiction writing that will enhance Cusk’s stature in contemporary literature.
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DIDEROT AND THE ART OF THINKING FREELY
ASSAD, OR WE BURN THE COUNTRY How One Family’s Lust for Power Destroyed Syria
Dagher, Sam Little, Brown (560 pp.) $29.00 | May 28, 2019 978-0-316-55672-9
A harrowing, deeply researched look inside a country riven by a brutal, longrunning dictatorship that would rather destroy the country and its people than relinquish power. To understand Bashar al-Assad’s use of lies and terror to subjugate his people, journalist Dagher, who spent more than 15 years covering the Middle East, including the Syrian civil war, for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (he was expelled from Syria in 2014), looks first at the regime of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who established the violent playbook. Hafez and his right-hand man, Mustafa Tlass, seized power in 1963 and created a dreaded secret police force, brutally eliminating all opponents and inklings of opposition. Assad’s second kirkus.com
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son, Bashar, who was enlisted as successor only when his “golden knight” older brother was killed in a car wreck, assumed power in 2000 upon his father’s death. He was packaged as a “reform” leader, and he was courted by world leaders especially after 9/11 as the lynchpin in fighting Islamic terrorism in the Middle East. Meticulously and systematically, Dagher shows how the glamorous front concealed the truth: Assad was behind the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005; he was enjoying the full support of Hezbollah and Iran; and, when the Arab Spring erupted in 2011, he employed the murderous tactics of his father across the country. His support by Iran and ultimately Russia allowed him to remain in power by presenting the Syrian civil war as necessary in defeating the Islamic State. Dagher scored a highly valuable source for this work, Manaf Tlass, son of Mustafa, who was, as the familial roles played out, Bashar’s own right arm in the early years of his rule (he defected to France in 2012). Besides insiders, the author interviewed numerous opposition leaders who endured terror and torture to challenge Assad’s dictatorship yet “must surrender to the fact that there’s nothing we can do if the entire world wants Bashar to stay.” A riveting chronicle from a courageous journalist who was there to witness and report the truth. A book that should deservedly garner significant award attention.
THE CLUB Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age
Damrosch, Leo Yale Univ. (488 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 26, 2019 978-0-300-21790-2
Memorable portraits of members of a London club who met weekly to discuss literature, politics, and life. From 1764 to 1784, a group of men met once a week in a private room at the Turk’s Head Tavern in London for conversation and, in varying degrees, camaraderie. They called themselves, simply, “The Club,” and they included some of the most prominent personalities of the time, including Edward Gibbon, Adam Smith, Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Sheridan, and, most significantly, Samuel Johnson and his acutely observant biographer James Boswell, who take center stage in this masterful collective biography. Like Jenny Uglow did in The Lunar Men (2002), Damrosch (English/Harvard Univ.; Eternity’s Sunrise: The Imaginative World of William Blake, 2015, etc.) offers incisive portraits of individual members, highlighting their relationships and interactions with one another to reveal “the teeming, noisy, contradictory, and often violent world” they inhabited. It was a world confronting upheaval: noisy agitation in Britain’s American Colonies, bloody rebellion in France, debate over slavery, and domestic economic stress. Between 1739 and 1783, Damrosch notes, Britain was at war for 24 years, at peace for 20. In 1776, Adam Smith’s The Wealth 12
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of Nations and Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire both spoke to national preoccupations: Smith, to inequality and the consequences of industrialization; Gibbon, to fears about maintaining the empire. Besides illuminating the salient issues of the day, Damrosch characterizes with sharp insight his many protagonists: abstemious Johnson, who likely would be diagnosed with depression and obsessivecompulsive disorder today; womanizing, hard-drinking Boswell, an unsuccessful lawyer with “unquenchable confidence,” intelligent, but “no intellectual,” whose mood swings indicate that he may have been bipolar. Although Damrosch emphasizes the men and their works, he does not neglect the women in their lives: memoirist Hester Thrale, for one, who offered Johnson “crucial emotional support” as his confidante and therapist and novelist and diarist Fanny Burney. Late-18th-century Britain comes brilliantly alive in a vibrant intellectual history.
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO FANNIE DAVIS My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers
Davis, Bridgett M. Little, Brown (304 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 29, 2019 978-0-316-55873-0
A remarkable story of a mother whose “ingenuity and talent and dogged pursuit of happiness made possible [her family’s] beautiful home, brimming refrigerator and quality education.” Fannie Davis was an amazing woman. Sharp and unwilling to be hemmed in by the dual restrictions of race and gender, she did what it took to raise a family and to uplift a community. In 1960s and ’70s Detroit, she ran the “Numbers,” an illegal lottery that was nonetheless central to many urban and especially African American communities, especially in the era before states realized that licit gambling could be a lucrative trade and even as they cracked down on the gambling they defined as illicit. Above all, Fannie Davis was a mother. In this admiring and highly compelling memoir, Bridgett Davis (Creative, Film and Narrative Writing/Baruch Coll.; Into the Go-Slow, 2014, etc.) tells the story of her beloved mother. The author knew that her mom’s role in the Numbers had to be kept secret, but she also knew that it was not shameful. Placing her subject in the larger historical contexts of the African American and urban experiences and the histories of Detroit and of underground entrepreneurship embodied in the Numbers, and framing it within numerous vital postwar trends, the author is especially insightful about how her mother embodied the emergence of a “blue collar, black-bourgeoisie.” Although there was considerable risk in running the Numbers, it also provided a path forward to a comfortable lifestyle otherwise nearly unimaginable. While critics liked to paint the game as a path toward dissolution, for the author—and many others—it was anything but. This is not |
De Waal turns his years of research into a delightful and illuminating read for nonscientists. mama’s last hug
THE LOST GUTENBERG The Astounding Story of One Book’s Five-HundredYear Odyssey Davis, Margaret Leslie TarcherPerigee (304 pp.) $27.00 | Mar. 19, 2019 978-1-59240-867-2
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de Waal, Frans Illus. by de the author Norton (336 pp.) $27.95 | Mar. 12, 2019 978-0-393-63506-5
Once again, the eminent primatologist takes readers deep into the world of animals to show us that we humans are not the unique creatures we like to think we are. In his latest highly illuminating exploration of the inner lives of animals, de Waal (Psychology/Emory Univ.), the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, provides a companion piece to his prizewinning Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016), which revealed the sophistication of animals’ brains. Here, it is their emotions that take center stage. One of our keenest observers of emotional expressions, body language, and social dynamics, the author demonstrates that pride, shame, guilt, revenge, gratefulness, forgiveness, hope, and disgust all exist in other animals, not just humans. A dying chimpanzee matriarch’s farewell to her longtime caretaker provides the title of the book, but this is just the first of many stories about the immense—and unique—emotional capacities of animals. “I don’t expect to ever again encounter an ape personality as expressive and inspiring as Mama’s,” he writes. De Waal is impatient with scholars who assert that language lies at the heart of emotions, that feelings cannot be expressed without language. Sometimes he names names; sometimes he simply dismisses their ideas as nonsense. Most of the author’s observations involve the spontaneous behavior of chimpanzees, bonobos, and other primates, but readers will also be rewarded with tales of birds, dogs, horses, elephants, and rats. As he has shown in nearly all of his books, de Waal is a skilled storyteller, and his love for animals always shines through. His examples of the actions of certain humans—e.g., Donald Trump, Sean Spicer— lend color to his argument, and the simple drawings that illustrate behaviors and facial expressions are exceptionally clear and effective. De Waal turns his years of research into a delightful and illuminating read for nonscientists, a book that will surely make readers want to grab someone’s arm and exclaim, “Listen to this!” (16 pages of b/w illustrations)
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The surprising journey of a special book. Davis (Mona Lisa in Camelot: How Jac queline Kennedy and Da Vinci’s Masterpiece Charmed and Captivated a Nation, 2008, etc.) follows the remarkable tale of “Number 45,” one of the finest copies of the Gutenberg Bible in existence. The author focuses the narrative on the life of book collector Estelle Doheny, whose oil-tycoon husband was at the center of the infamous Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s. In 1950, she purchased the Gutenberg as the crowning achievement of her life as a collector and as a devout Catholic. Doheny’s various attempts to purchase a Gutenberg, and the dealers, scholars, and members of her household who took part in the quest, make for engrossing reading. However, the story of Number 45 is far deeper and richer, beginning with the unsurpassed skill and ingenuity of Gutenberg himself. This particular copy went on to be owned by three intriguing modern owners before Doheny. Through the stories of these three wealthy men, the author explores the significance of rare book collecting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collectors themselves all have interesting backgrounds, as well—e.g., Charles William Dyson Perrins, heir to the Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce fortune as well as a once-famed porcelain dynasty. After Doheny’s death, Number 45 was used in scientific experiments to determine the components of Gutenberg’s inks. She had left the Bible—and the entirety of her rare-book and art collection—in the care of a Catholic seminary, but church authorities decided to sell everything in the late 1980s, and Number 45 changed hands yet again, landing at a Japanese firm for a record $5.4 million. Davis does a fine job telling a fascinating story that touches on the origin of books, the passion of collectors, the unseen world of rare-book dealers, and the lives of the super-rich, past and present. A great read for any book lover.
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MAMA’S LAST HUG Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves
a story about capitalizing on degeneracy. It is one of hope and hustling in a world where to have the former almost demanded the latter. This outstanding book is a tribute to one woman but will surely speak to the experiences of many.
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Author Spotlight
Cherríe Moraga
Daniella Rossell
On the surface, Cherríe Moraga’s newest memoir, Native Country of the Heart (FSG, April 2), explores her mother’s life and battle with Alzheimer’s disease. But to Moraga, the stakes are even higher. “The book also has to deal with a larger memory loss, a cultural loss. Not just culture leaving my family personally through my mother, but also leaving many of us as Mexican Americans,” Moraga says. For decades, Moraga has used personal stories to explore the fraught relationships that so many Latinx people have with place, history, and the dominant culture. “We have to learn intergenerationally,” Moraga says. “We have to be able to go home to walk through the world as we truly are.” Elvira Moraga’s life took her from the cotton fields of Southern California to work as a cigarette girl at a high-end casino in Tijuana in the 1930s to raising Cherríe and her siblings in San Gabriel, California. This memoir is Moraga’s attempt to come to terms with everything from her parents’ strict Catholicism—young Moraga was sure her mother would not accept her if she came out of the closet—to what it means to live as a Mexican American on land taken from Indigenous people. As Moraga writes, it was her “mother’s task to sow and hoe and grow us up with a Mexican heart in an Anglo America that had already occupied the village.” “I’ve always gone home since I was a young writer in my 20s,” she says. “We were trying to go home with This Bridge Called My Back,” the groundbreaking collection of feminist essays edited by Moraga and the trailblazing Gloria E. Anzaldúa. For Moraga, examining the past isn’t about moving backward, it’s about finding a new, Cherríe Morgara more hopeful path forward. Elvira Moraga fought to raise a family caught between multiple cultures, and then she fought to hold on to her dignity in the face of an unrelenting disease. Native Country of the Heart picks up that struggle, and readers who open their hearts and minds just might find their own way forward. —R.Z.S.
FLOATING COAST An Environmental History of the Bering Strait Demuth, Bathsheba Norton (416 pp.) $27.95 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-0-393-63516-4
A lyrical, deeply learned ecological history of the region where Asia and North America meet. The peoples of Beringia are many, writes Demuth (Environmental History/Brown Univ.), but ultimately, they divide into Natives—the Iñupiaq, Chukchi, Yupik, and so on—and foreigners, who number everyone else. Those foreigners—Russians, British explorers, and Yankee whalers—fundamentally altered the environment of the region in a fairly short time. If, as the author notes, Natives and foreigners alike went in search of whales as a source of sustenance, they did so with different ideas of what to do with their prize. Apparently influenced by students of Howard Odum, Demuth writes of energy flows across the region. “To be alive,” she writes, “is to take a place in a chain of conversions.” The seas surrounding the Bering Strait are among the most productive ecosystems on the planet, and “human life in Beringia was shaped, in part, by the ways energy moved over the land and through the sea.” Many of those ways were purely extractive, as energy sources, from ambergris to oil, were located and taken away, a process against which Native people and some foreigners militated. One of Demuth’s great contributions is her exploration of the radical history of labor in the remote regions, a history soon supplanted by corporate capitalism on one shore and the gulag on the other, even as new arrivals concentrated their efforts on “liberating energy.” Now, she writes, a new chapter in Beringian history is being composed with climate change, a transformation that led one elder to observe that “foreigners had brought the end of a world to his people a century ago.” The far north has inspired a remarkable body of literature, highlighted, in recent years, by Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams and Lawrence Millman’s At the End of the World. Demuth’s book, based on years of field research and comprehensive study, easily takes its place alongside them. A superb book, essential reading for students of the once-and-future Arctic. (maps)
DEAD BLONDES AND BAD MOTHERS Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power
Doyle, Sady Melville House (272 pp.) $16.99 paper | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-61219-792-0
A deep dive into misogyny in popular culture, from timeless myth to contemporary horror flicks.
Richard Z. Santos is a writer and teacher living in Austin. 14
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An urgent, alarming work of health reporting that will make you question every drug in your medicine cabinet. bottle of lies
Dutta, Sunil Anthony Bourdain/Ecco (256 pp.) $26.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-06-279585-4
The poignant memoir of two brothers raised under the dark shadow of Indian Partition who forged wildly dif-
ferent paths in life. Dutta (Bloodlines: The Imperial Roots of Terrorism in South Asia, 2015, etc.) and his older brother, Kaushal (“Raju”), were born in the late 1960s to poor Hindu refugees in Jaipur. Their Indian father, a government clerk, had arrived in 1959, forced by the violence after the Partition to flee his homeland. From enjoying the status of Brahmin to living in a near-destitute condition, the family spiraled over the decades into “bitter shame” and familial squabbles, a toxic atmosphere in which Dutta and Raju were raised. While Raju was by nature precocious, charming, and daring, the author, in contrast, grew inward, becoming idealistic and shy. In moving, honest prose, Dutta follows the disparate |
BOTTLE OF LIES The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom Eban, Katherine Ecco/HarperCollins (512 pp.) $28.99 | May 14, 2019 978-0-06-233878-5
An eye-opening exposé on generic drugs. Given the greed of pharmaceutical companies, writes investigative journalist Eban (Dangerous Doses: How Counterfeiters Are Contaminat ing America’s Drug Supply, 2005), cheap generics are essential to money-strapped consumers—and that just may be a death sentence. There are many players and levels in this excellent book, a solid mix of the history of generic drugs, whistleblower tale, and pharmaceutical detective story. The whistleblower in question is a young executive and systems engineer from India, lured home after being educated in the United States to work for a huge pharmacological concern that specializes in making generic drugs. There’s a fortune to be made there, Eban writes, especially for the first to market, who can enjoy a brief monopoly. The margins are further improved by eliminating key steps in the quality-control process—and then cooking the books when investigators from the Food and Drug Administration come to inspect. The executive in question sounded the alarm, his charge backed by on-the-ground evidence from an FDA investigator. However, he faced prosecution, not least on the part of the FDA and U.S. attorney Rod Rosenstein. “My reporting,” writes Eban early on, “led me into a web of global deception”—and, she makes clear throughout this long but tightly narrated book, that deception may well prove fatal to medical consumers. This is especially true in the developing world, she writes, for if substandard drugs are regularly shipped from plants in India, China, and elsewhere to the U.S. and Europe, the really ineffective, dangerous stuff is headed for markets in Africa, South America, and Asia: EpiPens, AIDS cocktails, kirkus.com
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STEALING GREEN MANGOES Two Brothers, Two Fates, One Indian Childhood
trajectories of their lives. Raju became entangled in a relationship with a rich, older gay man, which propelled him into posh jet-setting and eventually a criminal life abroad. Meanwhile, the author fell in love with an American woman and followed her to America in 1986. Dutta went to school, became a research biologist and then, in an odd but determined turn, a police officer in Los Angeles and a professor of homeland security and issuesinvolved terrorism. Meanwhile, Raju descended into the life of a con man and, later, terrorist. Both were cancer survivors. The memoir opens with a shattering call from France, where Raju had married and was living, to notify the author that his brother had been incarcerated for murder. Throughout, Dutta captures the enormous sense of humiliation wrought by this crisis; in Indian society, he writes, “the responsibility for a crime lies not with the perpetrator, but with the entire family.” A powerful memoir of deep loss driven by the author’s desire to get at harrowing answers to difficult questions.
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The second book by feminist commentator Doyle (Train wreck: The Women We Love To Hate, Mock, and Fear…and Why, 2016) is wide-ranging but operates from a simple premise: Western culture tends to perceive women as unruly monsters who can’t be trusted as girls, wives, or mothers. In exorcisms—and, by extension, the horror classic The Exorcist—Doyle observes a cultural urge to barricade girls from puberty and sexual independence. She draws a throughline from Celtic myth to Romantic poets to true-crime touchstones like the Laci Peterson case, showing how each represents a fear of women and urge to bring them to heel. In the case of serial killer Ed Gein (the inspiration for a host of horror tales, Psycho and The Silence of the Lambs most famously), Doyle notes how the blame for his actions often shifts to his mother, routinely portrayed as “fanatically religious, permanently enraged, a castrating, sexless, son-warping harpy.” The author sometimes approaches her source material, particularly movies, with wit and humor: She revels in rooting for the momma T. Rex in Jurassic Park and roasts Ben Kingsley’s turn in the terrible sci-fi film Species, as he “visibly chokes down every line of dialogue with a barely contained rage that says ‘I played Gandhi, damn it.’ ” But Doyle recognizes how much of our misogynistic, transphobic cultural id is revealed in our trashiest cultural products, and she never loses sight of how the social norms they promote have led to feelings of fear and entrapment at best and countless deaths at worst. The author’s accounting of the death of Anneliese Michel, the inspiration for The Exorcist, is especially chilling. A lengthy appendix serves as both a casebook of her sources and a recommendation list for further research both high (Julia Kristeva) and low (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Unflinching, hard-charging feminist criticism.
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A PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith
cures that may turn out to be poisons. For all the efforts of that FDA inspector, writes the author, the new anti-regulatory FDA now gives foreign companies advance warning of inspections, allowing the deception to grow and flourish as suspect drugs continue to roll in, “including a crucial chemotherapy drug for treating leukemia and breast and ovarian cancers.” An urgent, alarming work of health reporting that will make you question every drug in your medicine cabinet.
BIASED Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
Eberhardt, Jennifer L. Viking (352 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 26, 2019 978-0-7352-2493-3
An internationally renowned expert on implicit racial bias breaks down the science behind our prejudices and their influence in nearly all areas of society and culture. MacArthur Fellow Eberhardt (Psychology/Stanford Univ.; co-editor: Confronting Racism, 1998) challenges the idea that addressing bias is merely a personal choice. Rather, “it is a social agenda, a moral stance.” Relying on her neuroscientific research, consulting work, and personal anecdotes, the author astutely examines how stereotypes influence our perceptions, thoughts, and actions. Stereotypes, such as “the association of black people and crime,” are shaped by media, history, culture, and our families. A leader in the law enforcement training movement, Eberhardt recounts high-profile cases of police shooting unarmed black people, and she documents her own fears as a mother of three black sons. Though “more than 99 percent of police contacts happen with no police use of force at all,” black people are stopped by police disproportionately and are more likely to suffer physical violence. Only a tiny fraction of officers involved in questionable shootings are prosecuted, and convictions are rare. Through her work, the author teaches officers to understand how their biases inform their interactions with the communities they are charged with protecting and serving. She shares informative case studies from her work with Airbnb and Nextdoor, an online information-sharing platform for neighbors, when bias among the sites’ users led to racial profiling and discrimination. Eberhardt also looks at bias in the criminal justice system, education, housing and immigration, and the workplace. A chapter on her visit to the University of Virginia after the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville is, much like the book as a whole, simultaneously scholarly illuminating, and heartbreaking. Throughout, Eberhardt makes it clear that diversity is not enough. Only through the hard work of recognizing our biases and controlling them can we “free ourselves from the tight grip of history.” Compelling and provocative, this is a game-changing book about how unconscious racial bias impacts our society and what each of us can do about it. 16
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Egan, Timothy Viking (384 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-7352-2523-7
From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, a pilgrimage to find religion—or truth, or the way—that pleasingly blends memoir, travelogue, and history. The latest from Egan (The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revo lutionary Who Became an American Hero, 2016, etc.) will make readers want to make a journey of their own. In a fascinating page-turner, the author chronicles his travels, mostly via foot but also via car and train, along the Via Francigena, a 1,200-mile medieval route that runs from Canterbury to Rome, where he sought an audience with “a pope with one working lung who is struggling to hold together the world’s 1.3 billion Roman Catholics through the worst crisis in half a millennium.” Egan traversed this route in search of God or some type of significant spiritual experience. A skeptic by nature and Catholic by baptism, he realized that he needed to decide what he believes or admit what he does not. “I start [the journey] as a father, a husband, an American deeply troubled by the empty drift of our country,” he writes. “And for the next thousand miles or so, I will try to be a pilgrim.” Any pilgrimage is a rough test of faith and one of the most unpredictable and independent adventures on which to embark. Along for the ride on this quest are St. Augustine, St. Paul, Joan of Arc, St. Francis, and Oscar Wilde, among others. Egan’s Jesuit education inevitably crept into his mind during his stays at monasteries and visits to cathedrals to view their relics and learn about the events and myths that comprise their histories. Pope Francis, a man who embraces reason and promotes peer-reviewed science, brings the author a sense of hope after the church’s decades of inflexible leadership. Finding people and places warm and welcoming in each village and city, allowing himself to be amazed, lingering to rest blistered feet, and discovering soul-stirring spots—all this kept him pushing on, and readers will be thankful for his determination. A joy and a privilege to read. (maps)
CATCH AND KILL Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy To Protect Predators
Farrow, Ronan Little, Brown (464 pp.) $30.00 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-316-48663-7
The award-winning journalist sharply illuminates how he exposed Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual predator. |
A compelling mix of biography, cultural history, and political intrigue. the great successor
Fifield, Anna PublicAffairs (336 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-5417-4248-2
A journalist experienced in reporting from Asia penetrates the secrecy of North Korea about as well as humanly possible. Fifield, the current Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post and former Tokyo chief for that publication, focuses on Kim Jong Un, the third consecutive leader from the same family to subjugate the citizenry since the partition of Korea after World War II. The author has no direct access to Kim Jong Un (very few do), who was only 27 when he succeeded his father as supreme leader. Because of the outlandish and relentless North Korean government propaganda about the divine origins of the family’s three generations, treating the leaders seriously can |
THE EUROPEANS Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture
special issue: best books of 2019
THE GREAT SUCCESSOR The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un
seem like an exercise in dishonesty. In addition, the cartoonish physical appearance of Kim Jong Un often gives rise to cruel satire. Refreshingly, Fifield avoids the temptation to treat him less than seriously. Despite his presiding over a police state, the malnutrition of most North Koreans, the bluster, and the “decrepit kleptocracy that was his inheritance,” Fifield understands that the young despot has improved conditions for the citizenry. Partly due to the spotlight that President Donald Trump has shined on him, the North Korean dictator has received sustained attention on the global stage, a phenomenon that the author documents beyond the superficial daily headlines. Most of Fifield’s sources have justified reasons to despise the North Korean family dynasty, but her strong journalism skills allow her to separate the wheat from the chaff of biased sources. At times, she brings herself into the narrative, but she does so judiciously. There is some comic relief with the entrance of such odd characters as former professional basketball player Dennis Rodman, who “loved the adulation he received” when he visited North Korea. Fifield is also good at explaining the personal obsessions that define Kim Jong Un’s dual-level dictatorship, with the top level reserved for the North Korean supporters upon whom he has bestowed lavish wealth. A compelling mix of biography, cultural history, and political intrigue.
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Along the way, Farrow (War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence, 2018)—a New Yorker contributing writer who has won the Pulitzer Prize, National Magazine Award, and George Polk Award—offers a primer on investigative journalism, a profession that he is well on the way to mastering. For this book, he writes, he drew “on interviews with more than two hundred sources, as well as hundreds of pages of contracts, emails, and texts, and dozens of hours of audio.” As the son of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, the author has wrestled for years with allegations of sexual assault in his own family, leveled by his sister Dylan against their father. During his investigation of Weinstein—and, later, multiple highlevel sexual predators within NBC—Farrow had to fend off complaints that he was too close to the story. Along the investigative path, the author sought insight from his sister and relied on the steadfast support of his partner. Though Farrow and his producer believed their pursuit of Weinstein had the blessing of the top brass at NBC, they gradually learned that Weinstein was using his massive influence to sabotage the investigation. Consequently, the author took his work to the New Yorker, where editor David Remnick provided a venue for him to present his story. Ultimately, Weinstein was arrested. In addition to chronicling his work on the Weinstein project, Farrow also discusses the transgressions of Donald Trump and Matt Lauer. At times, the book is difficult to read, mainly because Weinstein, Trump, Lauer, and other powerful men victimized so many women while those who knew about the assaults stayed quiet. Nonetheless, this is an urgent, significant book that pairs well with She Said by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. Both books are top-notch accounts filled with timeless insights about investigative journalism, on a par with classics from Seymour Hersh and Bob Woodward. A meticulously documented, essential work.
Figes, Orlando Metropolitan/Henry Holt (688 pp.) $37.50 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-62779-214-1
A prodigiously researched account of the spread of culture throughout the mid and late 19th century using three specific biographies to personalize the voluminous historical data. Figes (History/Birkbeck Coll., Univ. of London; Revo lutionary Russia, 1891-1991, 2014, etc.) returns with another astonishing work displaying his vast knowledge of art, music, literature, culture, and history. Wisely, he uses three people to embody much of his discussion: Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, French singer Pauline Viardot, and her husband, Louis, a political activist and literary figure. The author follows these three over the decades—Turgenev and Pauline had an intimate relationship that Louis tolerated—and through their stories, we see specific instances of the cultural changes Figes illuminates throughout the book. The growth of railways, the advances in photography and publication, the explosion in literary translations, the vast increase in literacy—these and other factors increased the development of a kind of common European culture that only the growth of nationalism, and the consequent wars, could weaken. “The arts played a central role in this evolving concept of a European cultural identity,” writes Figes. “More than religion or political beliefs, they were seen kirkus.com
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AUTHOR SP OTLIGHT
G e o r g e Pa c k e r
Carol Loewen
Richard C. Holbrooke was a man of many parts, a literate and erudite man who, it seems, read everything and knew everyone. As a diplomat, he traveled the world, projecting American power, resolving international crises, soothing ruffled feathers, cajoling, wheedling, sometimes bullying. In Bosnia he brokered peace, forcing unwilling enemies to end a bitter ethnic war. He was also a pill—impatient, difficult to deal with, insecure, hurt when he was not elevated to the upper reaches of power. Small blows amounted to huge assaults on his ego. Larger slights, as when Hillary Clinton said that “it wasn’t at all certain he would be doing the talking” during peace negotiations in Afghanistan, shattered him. Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (Knopf, May 7) is the latest book by George Packer, a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (2013). Holbrooke called Packer one day and began to talk. “I was slightly acquainted with him,” Packer tells Kirkus. “I was one of the journalists he thought could be of use to him, and he was never shy about being in touch with people he wanted to talk to.” Holbrooke fell ill not long after his unhappy encounter with Clinton, dying in 2010. “Could Holbrooke have solved Afghanistan?” asks Packer in Our Man. “I don’t think so,” Packer says. “The best ideas are useless without the ability to bring them into the world.” Our Man is filled with smart insights into how government and diplomacy work as well as astute observations on the psychological costs of working in public service, a sometimes thankless, always stressful occupation at the higher levels of statecraft. “Holbrooke would be horrified at what’s going on now,” says Packer. “He was a liberal internationalist, the exact opposite of what we have now. He believed George Packer that we have a responsibility, with all our might and wealth, to be a global leader. Trump is the stake in the heart of that idea, and even though we can still be involved in the world in a positive way, this is something that I fear will be a permanent historical shift. My book is a history of something that’s over.” —G.M. Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor. 18
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as uniting people across the Continent.” This necessitated the “recognition that any national culture is a result of a constant dialogue across state boundaries and of the assimilation of separate artistic traditions into a larger European world.” Turgenev and the Viardots traveled continually: She was a popular singer, and, initially, it was her financial success that supported her family. Later, her voice gone, it was Turgenev’s writing and generosity. In many ways, the text is a who’s who of the time period. Liszt, Dickens, Balzac, Hugo, George Sand, Chopin, Tolstoy, Flaubert—these and countless other icons move smoothly through the narrative, a rich mélange of tasty ingredients. There are some mild surprises, too: Mary Shelley briefly wanders in (we read Victor Frankenstein’s description of the Rhine), and Henry James makes some cameos. A powerful and essential addition to our understanding of European history and culture.
WHY YOU LIKE IT The Science and Culture of Musical Taste Gasser, Nolan Flatiron Books (720 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-1-250-05719-8
A sprawling, packed-to-the-brim study of the art and science of music, as monumental and as busy as a Bach fugue. Why does one person like the Rolling Stones and another like Celine Dion? Why does anyone like the Eagles? Are there human universals at play in musical preferences? Gasser, the polymathic mind behind Pandora Radio’s Music Genome Project, probes the “sources, nature, and implications of our own, personal musical taste,” a taste that cannot always be easily reduced to buy- or listen-next algorithms. Music has features that are essentially invariant among human cultures: It is shaped by rhythm, “the overriding parameter wherein the listener gains an intuitive understanding of the music as a whole,” and it comprises melody, harmony, and other sonic elements. But more individually, our musical taste is shaped by all sorts of factors, socio-economic and psychological, that sometimes anticipate and sometimes follow “our membership in intracultures,” whether goth or mod or lite-classical. Gasser’s overarching aim is not just descriptive. In his forays into all imaginable corners of the musical world, he seeks to soften prejudices and broaden horizons, posing exercises and suggestions such as identifying syncopation in hip-hop tunes and appreciating the power of pre-Islamic chants sung by Saharan women “aimed at bringing the listener into a state of ecstasy.” The author’s body of examples—backed by a vast online site—is fittingly broad-ranging, featuring tunes from “Old MacDonald” to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and Leonard Bernstein’s Can dide overture, all of which have something to say about why we like what we like. And while there’s no disputing taste, as the old Latin tag has it, there is much to know about how our psyches play in our musicality, what recreational drugs can contribute to
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A provocative, lucid, and urgent contribution to the study of race in America. stony the road
STONY THE ROAD Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow Gates Jr., Henry Louis Penguin Press (320 pp.) $30.00 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-0-525-55953-5
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Gottlieb, Lori Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (464 pp.) $28.00 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-1-328-66205-7
A vivacious portrait of a therapist from both sides of the couch. With great empathy and compassion, psychotherapist and Atlantic columnist and contributing editor Gottlieb (Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, 2010, etc.) chronicles the many problems facing the “struggling humans” in her stable of therapy patients. The intimate connection between patient and therapist established through the experience of psychic suffering forms the core of the memoir, as the author plumbs the multifaceted themes of belonging, emotional pain, and healing. “Therapists…deal with the daily challenges of living just like everyone else….Our training has taught us theories and tools and techniques, but whirring beneath our hard-earned expertise is the fact that we know just how hard it is to be a person,” she writes. Through Gottlieb’s stories of her sessions with a wide array of clients, readers will identify with the author as both a mid-40s single mother and a perceptive, often humorous psychotherapist. In addition to its smooth, conversational tone and frank honesty, the book is also entertainingly voyeuristic, as readers get to eavesdrop on Gottlieb’s therapy sessions with intriguing patients in all states of distress. She also includes tales of her appointments with her own therapist, whom she turned to in her time of personal crisis. Success stories sit alongside poignant profiles of a newly married cancer patient’s desperation, a divorced woman with a stern ultimatum for her future, and women who seem stuck in a cycle of unchecked alcoholism or toxic relationships. These episodes afford Gottlieb time for insightful reflection and self-analysis, and she also imparts eyeopening insider details on how patients perceive their therapists and the many unscripted rules psychotherapists must live by, especially when spotted in public (“often when patients see our humanity, they leave us”). Throughout, the author puts a very human face on the delicate yet intensive process of psychotherapy while baring her own demons. Saturated with self-awareness and compassion, this is an irresistibly addictive tour of the human condition.
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The noted African American literary scholar and critic examines the tangled, troubled years between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. From the outset, writes Gates (African and African-American Research/Harvard Univ.; 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro, 2017, etc.), there was, among whites, a profound difference between being opposed to slavery and advocating equality for emancipated black people. Alexis de Tocqueville, he notes, warned of the latter that since “they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.” Meanwhile, countless enemies emerged among the white population, from unreconstructed Southerners to the architects of Jim Crow laws. Gates argues, with Frederick Douglass, that freedom without the vote is meaningless, and those laws did all that they could to suppress suffrage. Meanwhile, there was the hope that a “New Negro” would emerge to change affairs once and for all—a trope, Gates notes, that emerged anew with the election of Barack Obama, a metaphor “first coined as a complex defensive mechanism that black people employed to fight back against racial segregation.” Other mechanisms were born of necessity even as white culture found endless ways to appropriate from black culture while never accepting its authors. In a highly timely moment, Gates discusses the history of blackface, which was put to work in depictions of lascivious, predatory black men advancing the “thought that the ultimate fantasy of black males was to rape white women”—a thought that soon became an “obsession.” Reconstruction failed for many reasons, and the ethos that followed it was no improvement: The period under consideration, as the author recounts, marked the rise of “scientific” racism, of “Sambo” images that were “intended to naturalize the visual image of the black person as subhuman,” reinforcing the separate-and-unequal premises of Jim Crow itself. Gates suggests that it’s possible to consider the entire history of America after the Civil War as “a long Reconstruction locked in combat with an equally long Redemption,” one that’s playing out even today. A provocative, lucid, and urgent contribution to the study of race in America. (4-color images throughout)
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MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
the enjoyment of a Grateful Dead song, and the many ways in which music can make us better and happier people. Like Nathan Myhrvold’s like-minded explorations of cooking, Gasser’s enterprise has a pleasingly mad-scientist feel to it, one that will attract music theory geeks as much as neuroscientists, anthropologists, psychologists, and Skynyrd fans.
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THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY An Oral History of 9/11
Graff, Garrett M. Avid Reader Press (416 pp.) $30.00 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-5011-8220-4
Wrenching, highly personal accounts of 9/11 and its aftermath. Former POLITICO and Washingto nian editor Graff (Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan To Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die, 2017, etc.) returns with an impressive feat of organization, editing, and balance. He begins the story early in the morning of 9/11, proceeds through the entire day, and then follows up with comments from people about the ensuing weeks, months, and years. He spent three years collecting stories from a wide variety of people—survivors, responders, politicians, witnesses, family members—and then assembled the pieces into a coherent and powerful re-creation of the attacks on the twin towers, the Pentagon, and (perhaps) the Capitol, an attack that failed when the passengers aboard Flight 93 fought back, their plane crashing in a Pennsylvania field. Some of the storytellers’ names are well known—e.g., Katie Couric, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush—but most of them are not. Graff also does an admirable job of maintaining focus on the personal stories and does not drift off into political commentary—or engage in placing blame—or arrange the material so that some of his interviewees look good and some bad. Pretty much everyone emerges looking good, from President George W. Bush on down the political ladder—not to mention the stunning heroism of the fire and police departments and the unnumbered, and sometimes nameless, others who rushed to help. Graff excels at re-creating the anxiety and terror of that day: What is happening? What’s next? Who did this? Most affecting of all, of course, are the accounts of those who survived, the responders who struggled to help (and who lost so many of their colleagues), and the families who learned a loved one would never be coming home. Pair this with Mitchell Zuckoff ’s Fall and Rise for a full, well-rounded perspective on this monumental tragedy. Readers who emerge dry-eyed from the text should check their pulses: Something is wrong with their hearts.
TELL ME WHO YOU ARE Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture, & Identity Guo, Winona & Vulchi, Priya TarcherPerigee (400 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-525-54112-7
Two young women collect stories about race from a diversity of voices. 20
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Before they started college, Guo and Vulchi spent a gap year traveling across the country asking 150 people the same question: “How has race, culture, or intersectionality impacted your life?” “The responses,” they write in their startling, moving, and revealing debut book, “were astonishing,” giving eloquent voice to the meaning of intersectionality: the many “overlapping parts” of any individual’s identity, including race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ability, age, and physical appearance. Equally astonishing are the sophistication and insight that the authors bring to their collection. By the time they embarked on their research, they were already impressively knowledgeable about race; they had founded CHOOSE (princetonchoose.org) “as a platform for racial literacy,” on which they shared stories from interviewees in the Princeton area; they had spoken at schools; and they had given a TED talk. Their yearlong investigation deepened and widened their perspective. They listened to people who grew up in racist families, some whose parents threw them out for being gay or transgender. Many encountered virulent racism: Traveling with her predominantly black softball team to a city that was home to the Ku Klux Klan, one woman recalls her fear at spending the night in a hotel. The next morning, the team left without stopping for breakfast. A Creole woman in New Orleans discusses the lifetime of secrecy experienced by light-skinned blacks who decide to cross the color line and pass as white. A Japanese-American tells about her family’s internment for 4 years during World War II. “We accepted our way of life just because, culturally, we’re very obedient citizens,” she said, adding, “I still feel that America is the best country that we could be in.” Besides the revelatory stories, the authors provide informative introductions, annotations, and a rubric for talking about identities. Clearly, they hope this volume will lead to social change. As one young Asian woman remarks, “research papers and big words aside, what are you doing to shake things up?” A stirring, inspiring collection.
HYMNS OF THE REPUBLIC The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War Gwynne, S.C. Scribner (400 pp.) $32.00 | Oct. 29, 2019 978-1-5011-1622-3
An engrossing history of the final gasps of the Civil War, a year in which “Americans mourned their fathers and brothers and sons but also the way their lives used to be, the people they used to be, the innocence they had lost.” Journalist and historian Gwynne (The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football, 2016, etc.) begins in May 1864 with the Confederacy shrunken and impoverished but with no intention of surrendering. Aware that their armies were outmatched, Southern leaders kept their spirits up with a fantasy. If they could hold out until the November election, they believed, |
As good a state history as has ever been written and a must-read for Texas aficionados. big wonderful thing
Harrigan, Stephen Univ. of Texas (944 pp.) $35.00 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-292-75951-0
Austin-based novelist Harrigan (A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, 2016, etc.) serves up a lively history of the nation-sized Lone Star State. The title comes from the painter Georgia O’Keeffe, who marveled at Texas but wound up making her fortune in next-door New Mexico. Of course, Texas has many next-door neighbors, each influencing it and being influenced by it: the plains of Oklahoma, the bayous and deep forests of Louisiana, the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico itself, all where South and West and Midwest meet. Telling its story is a daunting task: If the project of the gigantic centennial Big Tex statue with which Harrigan opens his story was to “Texanize Texans,” it was one in which women, ethnic minorities, the poor, and many other sorts of people were forgotten in the face of stalwarts like Sam Houston, Judge Roy Bean, and Davy Crockett. Not here. The standbys figure, but in interesting lights: Houston was famous and even infamous in his day, but his successor, Mirabeau Lamar, mostly known only for the Austin avenue named for him, was just as much a man of parts, “a poet and classical scholar with a bucolic vision of the empire that his administration aimed to wrest |
MY PARENTS An Introduction / This Does Not Belong to You
Hemon, Aleksandar MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 11, 2019 978-0-374-21743-3
Two very different memoirs within the same cover address memory, identity, history, and mortality from different perspectives. Having established himself as a brilliant novelist (The Mak ing of Zombie Wars, 2015, etc.) and memoirist (The Book of My Lives, 2013), MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow Hemon offers a structural challenge in these back-to-back memoirs, where the end of the book finds a fresh beginning, with no direction as to in which order they should be read. In My Parents: An Introduc tion, the author takes a deep dive into the lives and marriage of his Ukrainian father and Bosnian mother and their lives before and after the devastating war that tore apart their Yugoslavian homeland and drove them to Canada. His father is a storytelling natural who rarely reads and disdains fiction: “I am not going to read made-up stuff only because it’s nicely written,” he insists. His mother reads voraciously. As chapters illuminate the cultural significance of food, music, literature, and so much else within their extended families, Hemon rebels against both parents, but what he resists most strongly is their aging and the inevitability of their dying. Ultimately, it is a memoir of mortality, of memory, of what endures. This Does Not Belong to You is more of a series of coming-of-age fragments, some rapturously poetic, covering much of the same ground of the family’s years before the war but with the focus on the author as a young boy and man rather than on his parents. He struggles to understand what he understands better now, and he feels a sense of loss now over what he experienced then. It provides the seeds for his sense of identity and for his germination as a writer. Eventually, he finds his narrative and shows that there could have been many others. An incisive combination of literature that addresses the function of literature and memories that explore the meaning of memory.
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BIG WONDERFUL THING A History of Texas
from the hands of its enemies.” Harrigan’s story of the Alamo is also nuanced: It is not true that there were no survivors, but the fact that the survivors were slaves has rendered them invisible—as is the fact that many Mexican officers who served under Santa Anna pleaded with him to show mercy to the rest. The Alamo has given a Texas flair to all sorts of things, including a recent golf tournament, highlighting Texans’ tendency toward “a blend of valor and swagger.” Just so, Harrigan, surveying thousands of years of history that lead to the banh mi restaurants of Houston and the juke joints of Austin, remembering the forgotten as well as the famous, delivers an exhilarating blend of the base and the ignoble, a very human story indeed. As good a state history as has ever been written and a must-read for Texas aficionados. (photos throughout)
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Lincoln would lose, and a Democratic administration would end the war, leaving the Confederacy intact. This was not entirely unreasonable. The July 1863 triumphs at Gettysburg and Vicksburg were ancient history. War weariness was common; Lincoln himself believed he would lose the election, and Northern media poured out invective. Everyone had high hopes when Ulysses Grant took command in March. Gwynne emphasizes that his strategy—unrelenting attacks on all fronts—was a war winner, but initial results were discouraging. Sherman stalled in front of Atlanta, and Grant couldn’t defeat Lee, although, unlike previous generals, he kept trying. As the author writes, by “the summer of 1864 the North was bitterly divided, heartily sick of the war, and headed into an election that would give full voice to all of that smoldering dissent.” Then, as fall approached, matters improved. Atlanta fell, Philip Sheridan eliminated the persistent threat to Washington in the Shenandoah Valley, rival candidates self-destructed, and Lincoln won reelection in a landslide. Five months of war remained, but the Union won all the battles. A consummate researcher, Gwynne has done his homework and is not shy with opinions. He especially admires Sherman, a mediocre general but an insightful thinker who taught that war had no positive value; it was misery pure and simple. He also punctures persistent myths, especially that of the great Appomattox reconciliation. Lee, Grant, and a few generals shook hands, but Union forces celebrated wildly, and Confederates fumed and stormed off. A riveting Civil War history giving politics and combat equal attention.
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AUTHOR SP OTLIGHT
Is h a Se s ay
Cathrine White
In 13 years of reporting world news for CNN Africa, no story impacted Isha Sesay like the abduction in Nigeria of the Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram. “When the news emerged in April 2014, I was moved by the ways the world galvanized,” says Sesay, a Peabody and Gracie award winner for her coverage of the kidnapping and its aftermath, including the global movement #BringBackOurGirls. “And I was moved in equal measure by [the fact that], in what seemed to be the blink of an eye, it was gone.” While the world averted its gaze, Sesay remained engaged, maintaining relationships with the families, community elders, activists, journalists, and officials lobbying for the girls’ release. In 2016, she raced to Nigeria to report that 21 had been freed. When those girls returned to Chibok for the first time, the following Christmas, she accompanied them on their journey. “I was once a little black African girl, and my life mattered,” says Sesay, who was born in London, raised in Sierra Leone, and now lives in Los Angeles. “My story mattered. And it pained me, the way a valuation was put on their lives as ‘not important’—and this is domestically and internationally. I wanted to right that wrong as best I could.” Expertly reported and boldly told, Beneath the Tama rind Tree: A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost School girls of Boko Haram (Dey Street, July 9) adds depth and breadth to a story worthy of our sustained attention. “I hope it inspires readers to see black and brown girls, girls of color, in a new way— to see them in their fullness,” Isha Sesay Sesay says. “I hope it inspires them to pay more attention to what happens beyond U.S. borders. And I hope that it inspires them to lending their voice to a call to the Nigerian government to do everything possible to account for the 112 who are still missing.” —M.L.
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THE BURIED An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution Hessler, Peter Penguin Press (448 pp.) $28.00 | May 7, 2019 978-0-525-55956-6
The New Yorker staff writer recounts five years of work as a correspondent in Egypt, where he witnessed the events of the so-called Cairo Spring. The great struggle of Egypt, suggests Hessler (Strange Stones: Dispatches From East and West, 2013, etc.) over the course of this long but economically written study, is both to forge a national identity and to enter history—the history that one can record accurately, that is. On the second matter, the author looks deeply into the Egyptian past and the pharaonic notion that the past is never even past but instead “exists forever in the present.” It would also seem to be open to interpretation; Hessler opened a textbook to find that, as if by miracle, Egypt won the October War of 1973, which “actually ended with the Egyptian Third Army surrounded by the Israelis.” So it is that Egyptian museums display but don’t really interpret the past, even as that textbook noted, in passing, “Whoever has no history has no present.” All of these ponderings have bearing on what Hessler witnesses on the streets of Cairo and surrounding small towns as Islamists battle modernist reformers and members of the old post-Nasserite regime, each with a different view of what it means to be an Egyptian—in some instances of which former “fellaheen,” or “peasants,” actually claim descent not from the pharaohs but instead from the Saudis across the Red Sea. Hessler’s interlocutors are a fascinating lot, including a garbage collector who ports away his own empty bottles of beer after visits, knowing he’s going to have to do so anyway, and an Arabic-language instructor with a subtle command of politics. In the chaos of the revolution, some of those interlocutors are forced to leave, finding exile in faraway lands. Nuanced and deeply intelligent—a view of Egyptian politics that sometimes seems to look at everything but and that opens onto an endlessly complex place and people.
MIDNIGHT IN CHERNOBYL The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster Higginbotham, Adam Simon & Schuster (544 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-1-5011-3461-6
The full story of the Chernobyl catastrophe. In April 1986, a massive accident destroyed a reactor at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station near the town of Pripyat, now a ghost-town tourist destination, in Ukraine. The disaster |
Hopper’s essays seem like love songs, as well: delicate, thoughtful elegies to friendship, compassion, and grace. hard to love
Hopper, Briallen Bloomsbury (336 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-1-63286-880-0
Love and yearning, independence and community recur as salient themes in this debut collection. In her first book, Hopper (English/ Yale Univ.), a contributor to New York magazine and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications, gathers essays notable for their intimacy and warmth. Raised in an evangelical family by “anxious, God-obsessed parents,” the author and her siblings were home-schooled, with little exposure to TV, movies, and radio. “We shared a unique set of cultural references,” she writes, “or perhaps a unique lack of them, which amounted to a secret language.” In high school, she began boning up on popular culture and, gradually, assembling a “found family”: people who “know you and love you for who you are—not for who you once were, or who you never were.” Many essays meditate on varieties of sentimental attachments—to |
AGENT JACK The True Story of MI5’s Secret Nazi Hunter Hutton, Robert St. Martin’s (336 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-1-250-22176-6
special issue: best books of 2019
HARD TO LOVE Essays and Confessions
friends, lovers, and, in “Hoarding,” to things. Hopper rejects the idea of a “hoarding disorder,” which “pathologizes an entire deeprooted orientation toward the material world, an orientation that constitutes my lifelong experiences of creativity, attachment, safety, and joy.” Both hoarding and writing, she suggests, depend on what is “serendipitously discovered and rediscovered and collected and stored.” In the lovely “Lean On,” Hopper regrets that dependence is “despised in our culture, from psychology to politics,” implying weakness and shame. Self-reliance, on the other hand, is extolled by Emerson, Joan Didion, Ayn Rand, noir novels, and most Westerns. Hopper begs to differ, celebrating the gifts of “shared daily life.” Praise for community underscores her admiration for the classic sitcom Cheers, whose theme song, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” seems to her “a kind of love song.” Whether she is writing about her fraught decision to become pregnant with donated sperm, a friend’s bout with cancer, baking (“a code for conveying care safely without the ambiguity of words”), the collective energy of the Women’s March, or a visit to the Foundling Museum, Hopper’s essays seem like love songs, as well: delicate, thoughtful elegies to friendship, compassion, and grace. A fresh, well-crafted collection.
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sent a radioactive cloud across the Soviet Union and Europe, triggered pandemonium and coverups, involved thousands of cleanup workers, and played out at a cost of $128 billion against the secrecy and paranoia of Soviet life at the time. In this vivid and exhaustive account, Higginbotham (A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite, 2014), a contributor to the New Yorker, Wired, GQ, and other publications, masterfully re-creates the emotions, intrigue, and denials and disbelief of Communist Party officials, workers, engineers, and others at every stage. He takes readers directly to the scene: the radioactive blaze, the delayed evacuation of residents from the apartment buildings in “workers’ paradise” Pripyat, the treatment of the injured, and the subsequent investigation and “show trial” of scapegoats in a tragedy caused by both reactor failings and operator errors. Drawing on interviews, reports, and once-classified archives, the author shows how the crash program of Soviet reactor building involved design defects, shoddy workmanship, and safety flaws—but made “sanctified icons” of arrogant nuclear scientists. Higginbotham offers incisive snapshots of those caught up in the nightmare, including politicians ignorant of nuclear physics, scientists “paralyzed by indecision,” doctors treating radiation sickness, and refugees shunned by countrymen. We experience the “bewildered stupor” of the self-assured power plant director, who asked repeatedly, “What happened? What happened?” and watch incredulously as uninformed citizens hold a parade under a radioactive cloud in Kiev. At every turn, Higginbotham unveils revealing aspects of Communist life, from the lack of proscribed photocopiers to make maps for responders to the threats (shooting, relief of Party card) for failure to obey orders. Written with authority, this superb book reads like a classic disaster story and reveals a Soviet empire on the brink.
Though British Nazi sympathizers never posed a major threat, MI5 took them seriously. This account of its energetic battle makes entertaining reading. Capably bringing to light a forgotten World War II story, British political correspondent Hutton (Would They Lie to You?: How To Spin Friends and Manipulate People, 2015) begins in the 1920s with his major character, Eric Roberts, a bored bank clerk who had joined a tiny fascist group (Mussolini had many admirers during his early years). While there, he was recruited as a spy by an oddball anti-Bolshevik organization run by a wealthy businessman. Roberts turned out to have a talent for undercover work, and MI5, Britain’s minuscule internal security agency, was happy for assistance from this private intelligence service. Roberts continued to clerk, devoting free time to unpaid spying, at first on communists but then against British Nazi sympathizers. In 1940, finally flush with money, MI5 hired him full-time. A different MI5 department handled German spies; Roberts’ superiors concentrated on their British supporters, which, to their surprise, were not scarce. Even during the war’s darkest days and with prewar fascists behind bars, a scattering of Britons hoped for a Nazi victory. Their efforts revealed a mostly comic-opera incompetence, but MI5 took no chances, setting up a fake fifth-column organization with Roberts (“Agent Jack”) posing as its Nazi agent/ leader. A trickle of volunteers signed up and recruited friends. kirkus.com
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Most varied from useless to wacky, but a number “were capable of inflicting serious harm on the British war effort. Had Roberts not posed as their Gestapo spymaster, they might have approached Germany directly themselves.” Few were arrested, because a trial would have blown Roberts’ cover. After an undistinguished postwar decade, Roberts retired into obscurity. Many MI5 records from WWII were destroyed, and others remain classified. While there are no firsthand participants alive to give evidence, Hutton has done an impressive job assembling transcripts, letters, interviews, and declassified documents into a delicious spy story. Even though there is little derring-do, this is a delightful account of World War II espionage. (31 b/w photos)
SURVIVAL MATH Notes on an All-American Family Jackson, Mitchell S. Scribner (336 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-1-5011-3170-7
A dynamic, impressive debut memoir from the Whiting Award–winning author of The Residue Years (2013). Following his award-winning debut novel, Jackson (Writing/New York Univ.) looks back on the specific chaos of historical, cultural, and familial forces that, despite the continued presence of open wounds, allowed them a chance at redemption in their home of Portland, Oregon. As he writes, “there’s the history that’s hit the books, what for all time should live in its ledgers, but…I must keep alive the record of where we lived and how we lived and what we lived and died for,” so it doesn’t slip “into the ether.” The author chronicles the complicated influences that have shaped his life, weaving through the Reaganomics era and its attendant uneven burden on black families, which led to expanding precariousness and subsequent street-scheming and entrenched pipe-dreaming. In his lyric memoir in essays, Jackson navigates family strife, crime, guns, toxic masculinity, substance abuse and addiction, and the meaning of “hustle,” among countless other timely topics. The author also makes it clear that there’s no room for pity, neither for his own choices nor those of his mother, who struggled with addiction, or the collection of black men he homages as the “composite Pops” who raised him. These are powerful stories of survival in the face of tremendous odds, rendered in a consistently intriguing hybrid of the street-cool hip-hop mathematics of Mos Def and the bluesy, ancestry-minded prison-cell work of Etheridge Knight (especially “The Idea of Ancestry”). The narrative hits its peak when Jackson motions beyond the tenuous spectacle of a moment to understand what came before it and to hope about what deliverance might come after it even while admitting, sometimes ashamedly so, that he is still wrestling with it all. A potent book that revels in the author’s truthful experiences while maintaining the jagged-grain, keeping-ita-100, natural storytelling that made The Residue Years a modern must-read. 24
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GOOD TALK A Memoir in Conversations
Jacob, Mira Illus. by the author One World/Random House (368 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 26, 2019 978-0-399-58904-1
A novelist explores the perils and joys of parenting, marriage, and love in this showstopping memoir about race in America. When her 6-year-old, half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Z, started asking complicated questions about Michael Jackson’s skin color, Jacob (The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, 2014) faced the challenge of being honest about racism in America without giving him answers that might be too much to handle at such a tender age. The result is this series of illustrated conversations between Z and the author, by turns funny, philosophical, cautious, and heartbreaking. “Every question Z asked,” writes Jacob, “made me realize the growing gap between the America I’d been raised to believe in and the one rising fast all around us.” These reflections compelled the author to excavate her formative years in New Mexico and, later, in New York as a young writer struggling through her 20s. Jacob grew up navigating a constant stream of expectations from her parents, who emigrated from India to the American Southwest in the middle of the civil rights movement. Particularly moving are the chapters in which Jacob explores how even those close to her retain closed-minded and culturally defined prejudices. With grace and honesty, the author chronicles how she navigated the racist assumptions of an employer and dealt with Indian relatives who viewed her as “a darkie” with no marriage prospects as well as the devastating decision of her Jewish in-laws to vote for Donald Trump. “I feel awful,” Jacob explained to her husband. “I feel like they’ve abandoned me.” The memoir works well visually, with striking pen-and-ink drawings of Jacob and her family that are collaged onto vibrant found photographs and illustrated backgrounds. Occasionally the author reuses a drawing to spectacular effect, as when the faces of a white boyfriend and colleague from her past show up in a collage about the responses of white Americans to Trump’s candidacy. Told with immense bravery and candor, this book will make readers hunger for more of Jacob’s wisdom and light. The visual echoes between past and present make this extraordinary memoir about difficult conversations all the more powerful.
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A memoir of coming to terms that’s written with masterful control of both style and material. how we fight for our lives
HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES A Memoir
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BECOMING DR. SEUSS Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination
Jones, Saeed Simon & Schuster (208 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-5011-3273-5
Jones, Brian Jay Dutton (496 pp.) $32.00 | May 7, 2019 978-1-5247-4278-2
A coming-of-age memoir marks the emergence of a major literary voice. A prizewinning poet, Jones (Prelude to Bruise, 2014) tends less toward flights of poetic fancy and more toward understated, matter-of-fact prose, all the more powerful because the style never distracts from the weight of the story: the sexual awakening and struggle for identity of a young black man raised in Texas by a single mother, a Buddhist, who herself was the daughter of an evangelical Christian. He and his mother were both damned to hell, according to his grandmother, who nonetheless loved both of them. There is a lot of subtlety in these familial relations: the son not willing to recognize the implications of his loving mother’s heart condition, the mother struggling with her son’s sexuality. The “fight” in the title is partly about the fight with society at large, but it is mainly about the fight within the author himself. “I made myself a promise,” he writes. “Even if it meant becoming a stranger to my loved ones, even if it meant keeping secrets, I would have a life of my own.” Jones documents the price he paid for those secrets, including the shame that accompanied his discoveries of self and sexuality. “Standing in front of the mirror,” he writes, “my reflection and I were like rival animals, just moments away from tearing each other limb from limb.” One of them was the loving son and accomplished student; the other, a young man drawn toward denigrating and debilitating sexual encounters, devoid of love, with white men who objectified him as black and even with straight men. One almost killed him and made him feel like this is what he deserved. “This is that I thought it meant to be a man fighting for his life,” writes Jones. “If America was going to hate me for being black and gay, then I might as well make a weapon out of myself.” A memoir of coming to terms that’s written with masterful control of both style and material.
special issue: best books of 2019
A rich, anecdotal biography of one of the bestselling authors in publishing history. Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), aka Dr. Seuss, created more than 60 books, classified mostly as readers for children. However, as Jones (George Lucas: A Life, 2016, etc.) points out in this engaging, page-turning work of Seuss scholarship, Geisel was writing and illustrating for children and adults simultaneously. Some of his books could be considered in the vanguard of activism about environmental degradation (The Lorax), nuclear war (The Butter Battle Book), and an increasingly geriatric society (You’re Only Old Once and Oh, the Places You’ll Go). During his Massachusetts childhood and education at Dartmouth and then Oxford, Geisel developed his talent for drawing comic figures; early in his career, he earned his livelihood as a creator of advertisements for commercial products, including an insecticide. The shift to writing books for children occurred gradually, surprising almost everybody, including Geisel himself, who never had children. Used to being perceived as a funny guy, Geisel evolved into a serious thinker about how to develop books that would encourage children to read while also enjoying the learning process. Jones is particularly masterful in this vein, showing how Geisel, his wife, publisher Bennett Cerf, and other key collaborators collectively revolutionized reading education, with Dr. Seuss always reserving the final say. “Nearly thirty years after his death,” writes the author, “books by Dr. Seuss still sell as well and as fast as ever, rivaled only by the Harry Potter books by the brilliant J.K. Rowling—Geisel’s natural heir, as she reignited the same love for books in today’s young readers that Dr. Seuss had first sparked…fifty years earlier.” Though the narrative is strictly chronological, it never bogs down because the character sketches and publishing anecdotes are so wellrendered, and Jones is especially skillful with foreshadowing. Although sometimes exasperating to work with because of his exacting standards, Geisel comes across as a mostly kind, wellintentioned person. Whether readers are familiar with Dr. Seuss books or not, they will find this biography absorbing and fascinating.
SHE SAID Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
Kantor, Jodi & Twohey, Megan Penguin Press (320 pp.) $28.00 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-0-525-56034-0
A behind-the-scenes look at the Harvey Weinstein case as told by the two New York Times journalists who broke the story. When Kantor (The Obamas, 2012) and Twohey published their 2017 article series implicating Weinstein in a 30-year-long |
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sexual misconduct scandal, it garnered worldwide attention, earned the news outlet the Pulitzer Prize, and briskly vaporized the Hollywood film producer’s career and reputation. In vivid, cinematic fashion, the authors describe the risky investigation from its first probing telephone calls and emails to the challenges of obtaining recorded interviews. Despite episodes of self-doubt, an avalanche of testimonials from victimized women started pouring in. Kantor and Twohey focus on the details of how they doggedly procured sources, chased leads, and obtained enough concrete evidence to blow the case open. As the attestations began to accumulate, so did the trouble, including calculated interference and intimidation from a supposed Weinstein-hired Israeli intelligence organization, which attempted to sabotage the entire endeavor. The authors also examine the nature of wealth and power and how the corruption of privilege infected Weinstein, Miramax, and his expansive web of malefactors, which included employees, publicists, and the corporate machines aligned alongside him who overlooked his reprehensive behavior and supervised his confidential settlements to the women he abused. The authors chronicle the early testimonies from Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd as well as an initially reluctant Rose McGowan, who accused Weinstein of raping her and labeled his notorious behavior “an open secret in Hollywood/Media.” The journalists’ work helped ignite the burgeoning #MeToo movement and inspired a massive cultural sea change, but they also acknowledge the grueling work ahead, as evidenced in the book’s concluding chapters featuring Christine Blasey Ford, who shares her personal insights on the steamrolled Supreme Court appointment of Brett Kavanaugh. Both admirable and suspenseful, the narrative is a fitting testament to the power of persistence and dedication in exposing critical crimes. Keenly executed, exemplary spadework dedicated to justice for all women caught in the crosshairs of privileged power.
SAY NOTHING A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland Keefe, Patrick Radden Doubleday (496 pp.) $28.95 | Feb. 26, 2019 978-0-385-52131-4
Half a century after the fact, a cold case in Northern Ireland provides a frame for a deeply observed history of
the Troubles. In 1972, though only 38, Jean McConville was the mother of 10, trying to raise them on a widow’s pension in a cloud of depression—a walking tale of bad luck turned all the worse when she comforted a wounded British soldier, bringing the dreaded graffito “Brit lover” to her door. Not long after, masked guerrillas took her from her home in the Catholic ghetto of Belfast; three decades later, bones found on a remote beach were 26
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identified as hers. These events are rooted in centuries of discord, but, as New Yorker staff writer Keefe (The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, 2009, etc.) recounts, the kidnapping and killing took place in the darkest days of the near civil war between Catholics and Protestants. Another Belfast graffito of the time read, “If you’re not confused you don’t know what’s going on,” and the author does an excellent job of keeping an exceedingly complicated storyline on track. At its heart is Gerry Adams, who eventually brokered the truce between warring factions while insisting that he was never a member of the IRA, whose fighters killed McConville. “Of course he was in the IRA,” said an erstwhile comrade. “The British know it. The people on the street know it. The dogs know it on the street.” Yet, as this unhappy story shows, one of the great sorrows of Northern Ireland is that naming murderers, even long after their crimes and even after their deaths, is sure to bring terrible things on a person even today. Keefe’s reconstruction of events and the players involved is careful and assured. Adams himself doubtless won’t be pleased with it, although his cause will probably prevail. As the author writes, “Adams will probably not live to see a united Ireland, but it seems that such a day will inevitably come”—perhaps as an indirect, ironic result of Brexit. A harrowing story of politically motivated crime that could not have been better told. (26 photos)
HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST
Kendi, Ibram X. One World/Random House (320 pp.) $27.00 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-0-525-50928-8 Title notwithstanding, this latest from the National Book Award–winning author is no guidebook to getting woke. In fact, the word “woke” appears nowhere within its pages. Rather, it is a combination memoir and extension of Atlantic columnist Kendi’s towering Stamped From the Beginning (2016) that leads readers through a taxonomy of racist thought to anti-racist action. Never wavering from the thesis introduced in his previous book, that “racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas,” the author posits a seemingly simple binary: “Antiracism is a powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity and are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” The author, founding director of American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, chronicles how he grew from a childhood steeped in black liberation Christianity to his doctoral studies, identifying and dispelling the layers of racist thought under which he had operated. “Internalized racism,” he writes, “is the real Black on Black Crime.” Kendi methodically examines racism through numerous lenses: power, biology, ethnicity, body, culture, and so forth, all the way to the intersectional constructs of gender racism and queer racism (the only section of the book that feels rushed). Each chapter
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An absolutely compelling war memoir marked by the author’s incredible strength of character and vulnerability. war flower
THIS LAND How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption Are Ruining the American West
Ketcham, Christopher Viking (432 pp.) $29.00 | Jul. 16, 2019 978-0-7352-2098-0
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WAR FLOWER My Life After Iraq
King, Brooke Potomac Books (280 pp.) $28.95 | Mar. 1, 2019 978-1-64012-118-8 A devastating memoir of a woman’s experiences in Iraq that ultimately reflects how “there is no real end to war, only the absence of it, a lull in the fighting, a time during which another generation is born for the kill.” At the age of 19, King (It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories From the American Revolution in Afghanistan, 2017, etc.) was deployed to Iraq as a “wheel-vehicle mechanic,” which required her to recover vehicles rendered inoperable due to mechanical issues often caused by enemy fire. However, sometimes she also had to salvage the body parts of fellow soldiers who had been killed in those vehicles. “We were told every soldier gets a black bag and every piece of flesh, bone, or body part not connected to a full body was to have its own separate bag,” she writes. As a sergeant explained, “there is no certainty that the leg lying near one body is actually that body’s leg. It’s not your job to figure that shit out. It’s your job to clean it up.” Throughout her deployment she saw soldiers inured to the violence and death, and she tried to be detached and courageous even when she was thrown for a loop by mortar fire that left a fragment of shrapnel in her shin. Impressively, King coolly relates the countless horrors she witnessed. Readers who don’t know certain elements of war jargon— Strykers, nametape defilade, BOHICA, etc.—should consult a dictionary or the internet; this immediate narrative has little room for such explanations. As if her nightmarish experiences in the war weren’t difficult enough, she relates the equally arduous challenge of returning home pregnant with twins and suffering from and denying PTSD. Throughout, King’s descriptions are graphic, clear, and frightening to read. An absolutely compelling war memoir marked by the author’s incredible strength of character and vulnerability.
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special issue: best books of 2019
How arrogance and greed are eviscerating public wilderness. Making an impressive book debut, journalist Ketcham, a contributor to Harper’s and National Geographic, among other publications, reports on his journeys throughout the West investigating the state of public lands: 450 million acres of land—of which national parks are only a minor portion—that are “managed in trust for the American people” by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Both agencies, argues the author persuasively, have shown inept oversight, caving to demands of oil, gas, mining, and lumber industries to “defund and defang” environmental laws, “leading always to the transfer of the commons into the hands of the few.” In Utah, “rabid Mormons” stridently insist that the “entire federally managed commons” are constitutionally illegal. Latter-day Saints, Ketcham asserts, are anti-science, deny climate change, and hold “naked contempt” for environmental regulation. But they are not alone: Enormously wealthy—and federally subsidized— cattle ranchers, who dominate millions of square miles of public land throughout the West, viciously attack lawmakers and activists who dare to stand up to them, refuse to acknowledge endangered species, and mount sadistic hunts for wolves and coyotes that, they claim erroneously, threaten their cows. Grassland has been degraded by overgrazing and watersheds contaminated by bacteria from cattle waste. Republican and Democratic administrations—including “self-proclaimed protectors” like Barack Obama—have repeatedly betrayed their mandate to protect the environment. Wildlife Services, a Congressional agency, “kills anything under the sun perceived as a threat to stockmen.” The Nature Conservancy, likewise, has bowed to corporate power, and federal funding has compromised the missions of
well-meaning nonprofits. “To save the public lands,” the author maintains, “we need to oppose the capitalist system.” Echoing writers such as Bernard DeVoto, Edward Abbey, and Aldo Leopold, Ketcham underscores the crucial importance of diverse, wild ecosystems and urges “a campaign for public lands that is vital, fierce, impassioned, occasionally dangerous, without hypocrisy, that stands against the tyranny of money.” Angry, eloquent, and urgent—required reading for anyone who cares about the Earth.
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examines one facet of racism, the authorial camera alternately zooming in on an episode from Kendi’s life that exemplifies it— e.g., as a teen, he wore light-colored contact lenses, wanting “to be Black but…not…to look Black”—and then panning to the history that informs it (the antebellum hierarchy that valued light skin over dark). The author then reframes those received ideas with inexorable logic: “Either racist policy or Black inferiority explains why White people are wealthier, healthier, and more powerful than Black people today.” If Kendi is justifiably hard on America, he’s just as hard on himself. When he began college, “anti-Black racist ideas covered my freshman eyes like my orange contacts.” This unsparing honesty helps readers, both white and people of color, navigate this difficult intellectual territory. Not an easy read but an essential one.
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GODS OF THE UPPER AIR How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
King, Charles Doubleday (448 pp.) $30.00 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-0-385-54219-7
The story of cultural anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) and “a small band of contrarian researchers” who shaped the open-minded way we think now. In this deeply engaging group biography, King (Government and International Affairs; Georgetown Univ.; Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul, 2014, etc.) recounts the lives and work of a handful of American scholars and intellectuals who studied other cultures in the 1920s and ’30s, fighting the “great moral evils: scientific racism, the subjugation of women, genocidal fascism, the treatment of gay people as willfully deranged.” Led by “Papa” Franz, who taught for four decades in Columbia University’s first anthropology department, the group of “misfits and dissenters” (as a university president called them) included Margaret Mead, whose expeditions to Polynesia produced Com ing of Age in Samoa (1928); Ruth Benedict, Boas’ assistant, Mead’s lover, and author of Patterns of Culture (1934); Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance writer whose ethnographic studies led to her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937); and Ella Cara Deloria, a Native American scholar and ethnographer. King offers captivating, exquisitely detailed portraits of these remarkable individuals—the first cultural relativists—who helped demonstrate that humanity is “one undivided thing,” that race is “a social reality, not a biological one,” and that things had to be “proven” before they could shape law, government, and public policy. “When there was no evidence for a theory,” Boas argued, “…you had to let it go—especially if that thing just happened to place people like you at the center of the universe.” King’s smoothly readable story of the stubborn, impatient Boas and his acolytes emphasizes how their pioneering exploration of disparate cultures contradicts the notion that “our ways are the only commonsensical, moral ones.” Rich in ideas, the book also abounds in absorbing accounts of friendships, animosities, and rivalries among these early anthropologists. This superb narrative of debunking scientists provides timely reading for our “great-again” era. (16 pages of photos)
AN AMERICAN SUMMER Love and Death in Chicago
Kotlowitz, Alex Talese/Doubleday (304 pp.) $27.95 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-0-385-53880-0 A chronicle of dreams and gun violence one summer in the city of Chicago. In 1991, Kotlowitz (Journalism/Northwestern Univ.; Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago, 2004, etc.) published the modern classic There Are No Children Here (1991), which told the story of brothers Lafeyette and Pharoah and their experiences in one of Chicago’s violent housing projects. Years later, the author received a call in the middle of the night and learned that Pharoah may have been involved in a murder. In his latest powerful sociological exploration, the author masterfully captures the summer of 2013 in neglected Chicago neighborhoods, rendering intimate profiles of residents and the “very public” violence they face every day. One example is Eddie Bocanegra, who killed a rival gang member as a teenager. “Eddie did the unimaginable,” writes Kotlowitz. “He took another human life. I suppose for some that might be all you need to know. For others, it may be all you want to know about him. And that’s what Eddie fears the most, that this moment is him. That there’s no other way to view him.” We also meet Anita Stewart, a dedicated social worker who watched one of her favorite students get murdered and another struggle with the aftermath. Heartbreakingly, the author writes early on, “I could tell story after story like this, of mothers who drift on a sea of heartache, without oars and without destination.” Throughout, Kotlowitz raises significant issues about the regions where violence has become far too routine. “After the massacre at Newtown and then at Parkland we asked all the right questions,” he writes. However, “in Chicago neighborhoods like Englewood or North Lawndale, where in one year they lose twice the number of people killed in Newtown, no one’s asking those questions.” Kotlowitz offers a narrative that is as messy and complicated and heart-wrenching as life itself: “This is a book, I suppose, about that silence—and the screams and howling and prayers and longing that it hides.” A fiercely uncompromising—and unforgettable—portrait.
MAID Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will To Survive Land, Stephanie Hachette (288 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 22, 2019 978-0-316-50511-6
First-time author Land chronicles her years among the working poor as a single mother with only a high school diploma trying to earn a living as a minimum-wage housecleaner. 28
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Leonard’s work is on par with Steve Coll’s Private Empire and even Ida Tarbell’s enduring classic The History of the Standard Oil Company. kochland
Leonard, Christopher Simon & Schuster (704 pp.) $35.00 | Aug. 13, 2019 978-1-4767-7538-8
A massively reported deep dive into the unparalleled corporate industrial giant Koch Industries. In 1967, Charles Koch inherited from his recently deceased father the leadership of a medium-sized, nearly invisible industrial conglomerate based in Wichita, Kansas. Charles would build the conglomerate into an entity so sprawling, profitable, and politically powerful that it seems to defy all reason. “Koch’s operations span the entire landscape of the American economy,” writes business reporter Leonard (The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America’s Food Business, 2014). “The company’s story is the story of America’s energy system, of its blue-collar factory workers, of millionaire derivatives traders, corporate lobbyists, and private equity deal makers.” Brother David shared ownership and participated in management of the company, which never sold stock to the public. Another brother challenged Charles |
OUR WILD CALLING How Connecting With Animals Can Transform Our Lives―and Save Theirs
special issue: best books of 2019
KOCHLAND The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America
by filing lawsuits but, over the decades, finally pulled back. The fourth brother never became involved in the operation of the business. As the author shows, the Koch brand does not appear on consumer products. Rather, the brothers became multibillionaires by controlling oil and gas production, paper products, derivatives trading in multiple commodities, engineering services, and much more. At first interested in influencing electoral politics to aid Koch Industries’ profitability, Charles eventually expanded the corporate presence inside state legislatures and the U.S. Congress partly for ideological reasons. Labeling Charles’ political philosophy is impossible, but there is definitely a kinship to libertarianism, with an emphasis on capitalist free markets untrammeled by government intervention. Charles opposed almost every policy of President Barack Obama and then battled various Donald Trump initiatives for entirely different reasons. Leonard is especially skilled at explicating the politics as well as at delineating how Koch Industries dominated industrial sectors, with natural gas extraction via fracking a timely recent example. This impressively researched and well-rendered book also serves as a biography of Charles Koch, with Leonard providing an evenhanded treatment of the tycoon. Leonard’s work is on par with Steve Coll’s Private Empire and even Ida Tarbell’s enduring classic The History of the Standard Oil Company. A landmark book.
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The author did not grow up in poverty, but her struggles slowly evolved after her parents divorced, remarried, and essentially abandoned her; after she gave birth to a daughter fathered by a man who never stopped being abusive; and after her employment prospects narrowed to dirty jobs with absurdly low hourly pay. The relentlessly depressing, quotidian narrative maintains its power due to Land’s insights into working as an invisible maid inside wealthy homes; her self-awareness as a loving but inadequate mother to her infant; and her struggles to survive domestic violence. For readers who believe individuals living below the poverty line are lazy and/or intellectually challenged, this memoir is a stark, necessary corrective. Purposefully or otherwise, the narrative also offers a powerful argument for increasing government benefits for the working poor during an era when most benefits are being slashed. Though the benefits received by Land and her daughter after mountains of paperwork never led to financial stability, they did ameliorate near starvation. The author is especially detailed and insightful on the matter of government-issued food stamps. Some of the most memorable scenes recount the shaming Land received when using the food stamps to purchase groceries. Throughout, Land has been sustained by her fierce love for her daughter and her dreams of becoming a professional writer and escaping northwest Washington state by settling in the seemingly desirable city of Missoula, Montana. She had never visited Missoula, but she imagined it as paradise. Near the end of the book, Land finally has enough money and time to visit Missoula, and soon after the visit, the depression lifts. An important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty.
Louv, Richard Algonquin (320 pp.) $27.95 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-616-20560-7
The renowned nature writer explores how we can find better ways to coexist with animals in the future. In his latest, Louv (Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a NatureRich Life, 2016, etc.) expands on key themes he has addressed in his previous books: specifically, how we must engage more directly and harmoniously with nature. He offers an impassioned and compelling case for establishing a sustainable bond with animals by proactively seeking to protect them. With extensive urbanization and the devastating effects of climate change driving more wild animals outside of their traditional habitats and into the cities, the urgency is greater than ever. “Wild animals, for their solitude or independence, stay a respectable distance from us,” writes Louv. “How do we do the same for them? How do we protect the spaces in which other animals live and still watch them, connect with them, be with them? The point is not just to fulfill our human need for connectedness but to mindfully replace our destructive interactions—as individuals, as a society.” Weaving his personal experiences into accounts of his interviews with wildlife experts, psychologists, teachers, and others, the author recounts spiritual and sometimes mindaltering or life-changing encounters with various types of wild kirkus.com
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animals. These range from dogs to cattle to birds to snakes to sea creatures (a particularly interesting section involves a diver’s enigmatic meeting with a giant octopus). Louv offers glimpses of how animals can effectively communicate with their own species and remarkable examples of cross-species interactions. He further considers how interactions with animals can be therapeutic, both physically and mentally, including our increasing dependency on support animals and evidence of how animalassisted therapy can benefit autistic children. By understanding how to effectively connect with the animal world, argues the author, we will not only reduce human and animal loneliness; ideally, we could find the key to our survival on this planet. A thoughtfully researched, poetically inspiring call to action that will resonate with a broad range of readers.
UNDERLAND A Deep Time Journey Macfarlane, Robert Norton (496 pp.) $27.95 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-393-24214-0
An exploration of the little-visited realms of the Earth, from deep caves to bunkers, trenches to Bronze Age burial chambers, courtesy of an accomplished Virgil. Macfarlane (The Lost Words, 2018, etc.), who has pretty well revived single-handedly the fine British tradition of literary natural history writing, can usually be found atop mountains. In his latest, he heads in the opposite direction, probing the depths of the Earth to find the places in which humans have invested considerable imaginative attention yet fear to tread. He opens with a cave network discovered in China’s Chongqing province only a few years ago that “was found to possess its own weather system,” with layers of dank cold mist that never see sunlight. From there, the author moves on to other places that require us to “go low,” into places that humans usually venture only to hide things—treasure, sacred texts, bodies. Now that many such places are making themselves known, exposed during construction excavations and unveiled by melting permafrost, “things that should have stayed buried are rising up unbidden”—treasure sometimes, more often just bodies. All of this is occasion for Macfarlane, a gifted storyteller and poetic writer, to ponder what historians have called “deep time,” the time that is measured in geological rather than human terms and against which the existence of our kind is but a blip. Even places well known or celebrated in antiquity—from the underworld of The Epic of Gilgamesh to the Iron Age mines of the Mendip Hills of southwestern England—are recent points on the map of that ancient landscape. As he moves from continent to continent, Macfarlane instructs us on how to see those places, laced with secrets and mysteries (“all taxonomies crumble, but fungi leave many of our fundamental categories in ruin”). Wherever he travels, he enhances our sense of wonder‚ which, after all, is the whole point of storytelling. 30
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A treasure all its own. Anyone who cares to ponder the world beneath our feet will find this to be an essential text. (24 illustrations)
IN THE DREAM HOUSE
Machado, Carmen Maria Graywolf (264 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-64445-003-1
In this daringly structured and ruthlessly inquisitive memoir, Machado (Her Body and Other Parties, 2017) examines an abusive relationship with an eye to both personal truth and cultural assumption. The author begins with a declaration. “I speak into the silence,” she says. “I toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice; measure the emptiness by its small sound.” She is writing to record her experience of queer sexuality and intimate psychological violence; by telling her story, she’s committing its existence to history. History has largely ignored the queer experience, particularly the existence of domestic abuse between queer women. As Machado points out, when you are invisible from the collective narrative, it is harder to imagine what your own feelings mean. The relationship at the heart of this memoir is resurrected with visceral potency. Instead of tracing her past with linear continuity, the author fractures it, diving into beautifully or painfully remembered moments with a harrowing emotional logic. As Machado recounts, she fell in love with a woman who seemed wonderful—they had sex, went on road trips, met parents—but who eventually became oppressively terrifying. In other sections, the author recounts an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and illuminates the imagery of abuse in two films by George Cukor. Machado uses slippery changes in point of view and a knack for translating emotion into concrete sensation to slide readers into her space, where they experience the fear and confusion of abuse from the inside. She applies the astonishing force of her imagination and narrative skill to her own life, framing chapters with storytelling motifs (unreliable narrator, star-crossed lovers, choose-yourown-adventure) and playful footnotes. Occasionally, the various parts muddle each other’s trajectories, but the heart of this history is clear, deeply felt, and powerful. A fiercely honest, imaginatively written, and necessary memoir from one of our great young writers.
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Expect a tweetstorm as Maddow’s indictment of a corrupt industry finds readers—and it deserves many. blowout
BLOWOUT Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
Mackintosh-Smith, Tim Yale Univ. (656 pp.) $35.00 | May 1, 2019 978-0-300-18028-2
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Maddow, Rachel Crown (432 pp.) $30.00 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-525-57547-4
Maddow (Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, 2012) examines the disconcertingly disproportionate influence of big oil on world affairs. The author may be a popular, progressive news-and-commentary anchor on MSNBC, but it’s not to be forgotten that she holds a doctorate in politics from Oxford and seems to devour whole libraries of data before breakfast each day. In her second book, she takes on the oil oligarchy, beginning with, fittingly, an opening: the first of a Russian-owned chain of gas stations in New York City in 2003, its celebrity highlight Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Sen. Chuck Schumer. Putin had not been in power long, though long enough that the U.S. ambassador to Russia “had already warned of the risk that [he] would evolve into an autocrat who monopolized control of government and the economy behind the window dressing of democratic institutions.” From there, Maddow goes on to develop a densely argued exercise in connecting dots: A corrupt Russia— one in which, for example, the builders of the Olympic Village in Sochi skimmed off upward of $30 billion—hitched its wagon to a moribund petro-economy, one that could not survive with the sanctions imposed on it by the Obama administration. This set in motion the whole chain of events now playing out, including Russian tampering in the 2016 election and the not-coincidental haste of the Trump administration to lift those sanctions the moment it entered power. There are many stops along the way. Maddow looks, for example, at the seismic effects of fracking in Oklahoma, a petroleum-extraction technology that, as one voter remarked, afforded “an issue that will turn a red state blue.” Updating Daniel Yergin’s The Prize with three decades’ worth of material, Maddow concludes that big oil can and will do nothing to regulate itself and argues that “containment is the small-c conservative answer” to the problem of “the industry’s reliance on corruption and capture.” Expect a tweetstorm as Maddow’s indictment of a corrupt industry finds readers—and it deserves many.
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An engaging history of the Arab world by a Yemen-based Westerner thoroughly versed in Arabic. One clarifying theme runs throughout this extensive, illuminating narrative of the Arab people from ancient to modern times: language. Long before the writing of the Quran, the language that “evolved on the tongues of tribal soothsayers and poets…has long, perhaps always, been the catalyst of a larger Arab identity.” Arabist and translator Mackintosh-Smith (Yemen: The Unknown Arabia, 2014, etc.), a senior fellow at the Library of Arabic Literature who has lived in the Arab world for 35 years, structures his study around “three waves of unity” in Arab history that originated from the “momentum of ‘arab biyyah, the high language par excellence.” These included the slow, ancient tribal agitation of self-awareness; the “tsunami” of conquest inspired by Muhammad’s Quranic recitations; and the 19th-century nationalism awakened by Napoleon’s conquest. “That last wave,” writes the author, “is still breaking now.” Throughout this impressive book, Mackintosh-Smith grapples with coexisting “rationalities” of Arab history: the “settled” society, or the civil polity where people lived together in a town; and the Bedouin or nomadic tradition. The rugged, dry terrain and lack of fresh water kept the people of the Arabian subcontinent in perpetual mobility (another theme) and imparted the masterful pairing of two beasts of burden—the camel and horse—that enabled the Arabs’ transformation from “plodding hauliers into dashing warriors.” The author demonstrates the power of rhetoric by the orator-leaders who “gathered the word”—of the people, recorded battles, etc.— even before Muhammad channeled that energy in disciplined Quranic teaching and embarked on his state-building years in Medina. Over the course of an extensive, consistently fascinating history, Mackintosh-Smith expertly picks and chooses his details and analyses, providing an admirably complete picture of a consistently misunderstood part of world history and culture. In addition to illustrations and maps, the author includes a useful chronology delineating both “events” and elements of “language, culture, society, identity.” A marvelous journey brimming with adventure and poetry and narrated by a keen, compassionate observer. (illustrations and maps)
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ARABS A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires
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ANTISOCIAL Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation
Marantz, Andrew Viking (400 pp.) $28.00 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-0-525-52226-3
A searching study of the right-wing gate-crashers who have overwhelmed social media in the Trump era. New Yorker staff writer Marantz is fond of Martin Luther King’s arc of history/arc of justice trope, though he allows that King himself wasn’t quite as optimistic as his famed aphorism might suggest: We bend the arc of history, he notes, and it’s pretty twisted at the moment. More to the point is political philosopher Richard Rorty’s 20-year-old warning that the decline of progressivism meant that the only political figures “channeling the mounting rage of the newly dispossessed” would be populists on the right. Bingo, and with them, Rorty added, would come the rollback of civil rights gains, to say nothing of heightened misogyny and socially acceptable sadism. Marantz’s travels into the camps of those right-wingers at the gates proves Rorty correct, and the author clearly documents their use of social media to advance right-wing causes, leveraging such vehicles as Facebook, whose owner, Mark Zuckerberg, pleaded innocence by insisting “that Facebook was a platform, not a publisher.” Some of the figures that Marantz covers are selfserving disrupters who threw verbal grenades into the crowd just to see what would happen. Others are true believers, notably the alt-right figure Richard Spencer, who turns up at odd moments. Some are even more or less reputable journalists who weren’t upset to see the “smug little cartel” of the establishment press taken down a few notches by the Trump administration. TV news, “dominated by horse-race politics and missing planes and viral outrage,” may be bad, writes Marantz, but what if what comes along next is worse? He makes his own case, wading into the throngs of rightist influencers with some trepidation but no effort to disguise his establishment credentials. It’s not a happy picture, but Marantz does offer some hope in the evident splintering of the right as the provocateurs discover that “all memes eventually outlast their utility.” Invaluable political reportage in a time of crisis—and with little comfort in sight.
MAMASKATCH A Cree Coming of Age McLeod, Darrel J. Milkweed (240 pp.) $16.00 paper | Jun. 11, 2019 978-1-57131-387-4
In his debut, the winner of the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction, McLeod recounts his childhood and coming-of-age in Treaty Eight Cree territory in Northern Alberta. Told predominantly in English, with a smattering of French and infused with important moments of untranslated Cree language, the fragmented and seemingly dissonant episodic chapters contain elements that are present in many Native/First Nations memoirs: alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, abuse, racism, religious intolerance, and poverty. However, these details don’t exist to pleasure the white gaze or to satisfy any savior complex. These aspects, delineated in the segmented narratives, reflect candid truths and the brokenness that occurs in a life surrounded by settler colonialism and fueled by historical trauma. They also serve as an acknowledgment, which is the first step to healing. Whether retelling his mother’s stories, such as her escape from residential school, or recounting the grooming and abuse he experienced from his brother-in-law, his search for intimacy, or his desire for reconnection to Cree tradition, the author ably conveys all of the devastating guilt, shame, remorse, and emptiness that he has experienced. Still, it’s clear that McLeod isn’t “looking for pity.” As the title of the opening chapter, “Spirals,” suggests—and just as his mother did in her own “magical way”—the author shares his stories in a spiral, revisiting “each theme several times over, providing a bit more information with each pass,” until it “wash[es] away the heaviness.” Readers able to “just sit back and listen without interrupting” (a lesson young Darrel learned from hearing his mother’s stories) will share in the secret knowledge that coming-of-age has little to do with losing one’s innocence and everything to do with maintaining one’s hope. Lyrically written and linked by family, compassion, forgiveness, and hope, Mamaskatch sings out as a modernday celebration of healing.
WHEN DEATH BECOMES LIFE Notes From a Transplant Surgeon
Mezrich, Joshua D. Harper/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 15, 2019 978-0-06-265620-9
An outstanding memoir by a transplant surgeon who combines an autobiography and operating room dramatics with an equally engrossing history of his profession. 32
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A powerful narrative that couldn’t be timelier and deserves the widest possible audience. know my name
Miller, Chanel Viking (368 pp.) $28.00 | Sep. 24, 2019 978-0-7352-2370-7
A victim of sexual assault speaks out in an eloquent memoir. Miller’s riveting book begins in January 2015, when she awoke in a hospital bed bruised, bloody, with pine needles in her hair. She was 22 and the night before had gone with her younger sister to a fraternity party at Stanford, where she drank enough to black out. Two Swedish graduate students saw her splayed on the ground, unconscious, beside a dumpster, a young man molesting her; he ran, and they chased him and pinned him down until the police arrived. Miller creates a brisk, vivid chronicle of three years, from the assault by 19-year-old Brock Turner, a Stanford student and swimming athlete, to its dramatic aftermath. Called Emily Doe to protect her identity, the author told only two people outside of her family during the first year after the assault and only a few more later. Victim |
THE HUMAN SWARM How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall Moffett, Mark W. Basic (480 pp.) $32.00 | Apr. 16, 2019 978-0-465-05568-5
special issue: best books of 2019
KNOW MY NAME A Memoir
Emily, she writes, “lived inside a tiny world, narrow and confined” to the courtroom and lawyer’s office as Miller—daughter, sister, girlfriend, comedy club performer, art student—struggled with anger, sorrow, depression, and often incredulity. “I didn’t know,” she writes, “that being a victim was synonymous with not being believed.” Victims, she learned, were held “to an impossible standard of purity.” Turner’s high-priced lawyer “littered my night with intentions and poor decisions.” Women claiming assault were always asked if they said no. Although a jury unanimously found Turner guilty of three charges, felonies that could have carried a 14-year prison sentence; although Emily Doe’s 12-page victim’s statement went viral and was read by 18 million readers (including Joe Biden, who sent a supportive message); the judge, noting Turner’s upstanding family and bright future, imposed a six-month sentence, of which he served three. That decision caused an uproar, resulting in an unprecedented vote for the judge’s recall. Despite that outcome, Miller had learned from the trial “whose voices were amplified inside the courtroom, whose were muted,” inspiring her “to expose the brutality of entitlement, gender violence, and class privilege.” A powerful narrative that couldn’t be timelier and deserves the widest possible audience.
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In his first book, Mezrich (Surgery/Univ. of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health) avoids standardissue jokes about motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets but reminds readers that, except for the occasional live donor, a tragedy usually precedes every transplant. “Someone who had just died had saved the life of someone he had never met,” he writes, “and we were the ones that made it happen.” The author touches all bases with a masterly hand. He trained as a surgery resident, undergoing the usual mixture of servitude and inspiration. He graduated to a fellowship, during which skill and satisfaction increased with no decrease in the workload. Readers will share the author’s exhilaration at the end of a procedure when, for example, the clamps are released, blood flow turns a new kidney pink, and urine flows out before his eyes. At intervals, the author digresses, offering a cogent history of transplants. These sections will enthrall most readers save animal rights proponents, who will recoil at the myriad of animals sacrificed along the way. However, plenty of human recipients also died miserably, except for the rare identical twin, in the decades before doctors realized that they required immunosuppression. About half died during the 1960s and ’70s, when surgeons used early versions of anti-rejection drugs. After the first effective immunosuppressant, cyclosporine, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1983, success rates exceeded 90%. As a result, transplanting many organs has become routine. Still, recent doctor-authors give equal time to failures, so Mezrich recounts plenty of painful experiences. Medical memoirs have become a significant genre over the past two decades, and this one ranks near the top, in a class that includes arguably the best, Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm (2015).
Scientists routinely explain that humans rule the planet because of our intelligence, tools, or language, but this eye-opening account will convince most readers that our biggest asset is our ability to be comfortable around strangers. A research associate at the Smithsonian and a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Moffett (Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari With a Cast of Trillions, 2010, etc.) points out that humans will walk into a cafe or stadium full of unfamiliar people without thinking twice. A chimpanzee, wolf, lion, or mouse encountering strangers could be attacked and perhaps killed. This ability—not IQ—has allowed humans to swarm over the world, argues the author. We belong to a society Moffett defines as “a discrete group of individuals amounting to more than a simple family… whose shared identity sets them apart from other such groups and is sustained continuously across the generations.” Most animal colonies, flocks, herds, schools, packs, swarms, or prides are simply creatures getting together informally, but a small minority qualify as societies because members recognize who belongs and who doesn’t. These provide access to resources and protection; however, despite the popular belief, cooperation is optional among higher animals. Lions do not necessarily hunt as a team, and a chimpanzee feels no obligation to share food. The kirkus.com
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author leaves no doubt that ants form the only society rivaling that of humans, featuring mutual cooperation, division of labor, and self-sacrifice. Much of the book is a fascinating exploration of how members of human societies identify who belongs and why most believe that their society is superior. Flags, food, hairstyle, dress, and heroic founding myths (their truth is irrelevant) all play significant roles, and infants absorb the prejudices of the adults around them as effortlessly as they do language. A delightfully accessible and ingenious series of lessons on humans and our societies.
NATIVE COUNTRY OF THE HEART A Memoir
Moraga, Cherríe Farrar, Straus and Giroux (256 pp.) $25.00 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-0-374-21966-6
A queer Latina feminist focuses on her ferocious, survivor mother from Tijuana. In her moving portrait, Moraga (English/Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; A Xicana Codex of Changing Consciousness: Writings, 2000-2010, 2011, etc.), the founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, examines her close but tortured relationship with her now-deceased mother. Elvira Isabel Moraga, who came of age in Tijuana’s golden era in the 1920s, “was not the stuff of literature.” The daughter of an “illusive trickster who shuttle[d] between worlds” and “rode the counterfeit borders of the Southwest with a vaquero flare of Mexican independence and macho bravado,” Elvira and her numerous siblings, born on the American side of the border, were hired out by their father for menial labor, essentially limiting her education (“her inability to read and write well remained an open wound”). As a teenager, Elvira secured work until the mid-1930s as a hat-check–and-cigarette girl at a high-stakes gambling room in Tijuana, eluding the advances of the casino’s predatory owner. Ultimately, she met and married a man named Joseph, a “functionary” who operated the South Pasadena Santa Fe Railroad station. Together, they and their children moved east of Los Angeles, embracing the suburban dream that characterized much of post–World War II America. Born in 1952, author Moraga offers mesmerizing details of growing up there and in San Gabriel, a mixed-race community, near her grandmother, who served as the locus of myriad visits by relatives. Coming to terms with her sexuality during a progressive social era almost derailed the author’s relationship with her strict, volatile mother, but in the end, her mother assured her, “how could you think that there is anything in this life you could do that you wouldn’t be my daughter?” The author’s determination to learn Spanish and visit Mexico helped the two bond in her mother’s later years, which were marked by Alzheimer’s. A sympathetic portrait of Mexican American feminism (both in mother and daughter) delivered in a poignant, beautifully written way. 34
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EDISON
Morris, Edmund Random House (800 pp.) $38.00 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-8129-9311-0 One of history’s most prolific inventors receives his due from one of the world’s greatest biographers. Pulitzer and National Book Award winner Morris (This Living Hand and Other Essays, 2012, etc.), who died this year, agrees that Thomas Edison (1847-1931) almost certainly said, “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” and few readers of this outstanding biography will doubt that he was the quintessential workaholic. Raised in a middle-class Michigan family, Edison displayed an obsessive entrepreneurial spirit from childhood. As an adolescent, he ran a thriving business selling food and newspapers on a local railroad. Learning Morse code, he spent the Civil War as a telegrapher, impressing colleagues with his speed and superiors with his ability to improve the equipment. In 1870, he opened his own shop to produce inventions to order. By 1876, he had money to build a large laboratory in New Jersey, possibly the world’s first industrial research facility. Never a loner, Edison hired talented people to assist him. The dazzling results included the first commercially successful light bulb for which, Morris reminds readers, he invented the entire system: dynamo, wires, transformers, connections, and switches. Critics proclaim that Edison’s innovations (motion pictures, fluoroscope, rechargeable batteries, mimeograph, etc.) were merely improvements on others’ work, but this is mostly a matter of sour grapes. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was a clunky, short-range device until it added Edison’s carbon microphone. And his phonograph flabbergasted everyone. Humans had been making images long before Daguerre, but no one had ever reproduced sound. Morris rivetingly describes the personalities, business details, and practical uses of Edison’s inventions as well as the massive technical details of years of research and trial and error for both his triumphs and his failures. For no obvious reason, the author writes in reverse chronological order, beginning in 1920, with each of the seven following chapters backtracking a decade. It may not satisfy all readers, but it works. Not only the definitive life, but a tour de force by a master.
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A unique, deeply thought-out refugee saga perfect for our moment. the ungrateful refugee
THE UNGRATEFUL REFUGEE What Immigrants Never Tell You
Morrison, Toni Knopf (384 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 13, 2019 978-0-525-52103-7
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Nayeri, Dina Catapult (336 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-948226-42-4
A novelist turns to nonfiction to illuminate the refugee experience, focusing mostly on her Iranian family but also reporting the sagas of many others fleeing poverty and violence. The word “ungrateful” in the title is intended sarcastically, even bitterly. For Nayeri (Refuge, 2017, etc.), winner of the UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, that word signifies the misguided mindset of privileged individuals in stable nations who treat desperate refugees with suspicion, condescension, or even outright cruelty. Those unkind hosts falsely believe that refugees expect something for nothing, that maybe those fleeing to save their lives will somehow displace welfare benefits and jobs in a new land. With inventive, powerful prose, Nayeri demonstrates what should be obvious: that refugees give up everything in their native lands only when absolutely necessary—if they remain, they may face poverty, physical torture, or even death. The author, who was born during the Iranian Revolution and came to the U.S. when she was 10, grew up with her brother in a household run by her physician mother and dentist father. However, their relative privilege could not keep them safe from Muslim extremists involved in the revolution. Nayeri’s father learned to compromise his principles to get along, but her mother rebelled openly, converting to Christianity. The extremists threatened to kill her and take her children, so her mother gathered her children and fled, leaving Iran secretly via a risky route. Nayeri’s father stayed behind, eventually remarrying and starting a new family. The refugees subsisted for 16 months in squalor, mostly in a compound in Italy. Nayeri’s mother, desperately working every angle, used her wits and solid education to gain entry to the U.S. The author uses some time-shifting to unfold the narrative, which she divides into five sections: escape (from Iran), refugee camp, asylum (in the U.S.), assimilation, and cultural repatriation. A unique, deeply thought-out refugee saga perfect for our moment.
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Brilliantly incisive essays, speeches, and meditations considering race, power, identity, and art. A prominent public intellectual even before being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, novelist Morrison (Emerita, Humanities/Princeton Univ.; The Origin of Others, 2017, etc.) has lectured and written about urgent social and cultural matters for more than four decades. Her latest collection gathers more than 40 pieces (including her Nobel lecture), revealing the passion, compassion, and profound humanity that distinguish her writing. Freedom, dignity, and responsibility recur as salient issues. Speaking to the Sarah Lawrence graduating class in 1988, Morrison urges her listeners to go beyond “an intelligent encounter with problem-solving” to engage in dreaming. “Not the activity of the sleeping brain, but rather the activity of a wakened, alert one” that can foster empathy—a sense of intimacy that “should precede our decision-making, our causemongering, our action.” To graduates of Barnard in 1979 she recasts the fairy tale of “Cinderella,” focusing on the women who exploit and oppress the heroine, to urge her audience to “pay as much attention to our nurturing sensibilities as to our ambition.” “In wielding the power that is deservedly yours,” she adds, “don’t permit it to enslave your stepsisters.” In an adroit—and chillingly prescient—political critique published in the Nation in 1995, she warns of the complicity between racism and fascism, perceiving a culture where fear, denial, and complacency prevail and where “our intelligence [is] sloganized, our strength downsized, our privacy auctioned.” “Fascism talks ideology,” she writes, “but it is really just marketing—marketing for power.” Speaking at Princeton in 1998, she considers the linguistic and moral challenges she faced in writing Paradise, one of many pieces offering insights into her fiction. Aiming to produce “race-specific race-free prose,” she confronted the problem of writing about personal identity “in a language in which the codes of racial hierarchy and disdain are deeply embedded”—as well as the problem of writing about the intellectually complex idea of paradise “in an age of theme parks.” Powerful, highly compelling pieces from one of our greatest writers.
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THE SOURCE OF SELF-REGARD Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
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I LIKE TO WATCH Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution
OUR MAN Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century
Nussbaum, Emily Random House (384 pp.) $28.00 | Jun. 25, 2019 978-0-525-50896-0
Packer, George Knopf (608 pp.) $30.00 | May 7, 2019 978-0-307-95802-0
In her book debut, Pulitzer Prize– winning New Yorker critic Nussbaum offers an expansive collection of writing that captures the artistically evolving spirit of current TV. The author’s profiles on TV giants such as Joan Rivers, Jenji Kohan, and Ryan Murphy provide penetrating glimpses into how their personal histories have helped to shape their careers. In one of the book’s longest—and best—pieces, “Confessions of the Human Shield,” Nussbaum wrestles with the work of renowned artistic talents recently caught up in the #MeToo movement, including Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Louis C.K, and Roman Polanski. “What should we do with the art of terrible men?” asks the author. The revelations about the widespread sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood, she writes, “made the job of criticizing art seem like an indulgence—the monocle-peering that intellectuals resort to when we should be talking about justice.” Nussbaum incisively discusses the difficulties in separating their creative output from their offensive actions. “When you look at [Polanski’s] Rosemary’s Baby sideways,” she writes, “it becomes a darkly funny cautionary tale that could have been written by Andrea Dworkin….The movie was a feminist masterpiece created by a sex criminal.” Assembled together, the author’s essays and reviews reveal her vast interests and unpretentious tastes as well as her keen insights into what’s phony. She seems equally appreciative of goldstandard dramatic series like The Sopranos and the pleasurable indulgences of “unscripted” reality shows such as Vanderpump Rules. We are currently living in what many consider the golden age of TV, with countless quality series from networks and streaming services introduced daily, and Nussbaum has proven to be a shrewd, highly reliable source for evaluating this rapidly progressing medium. “There was something alive about the medium to me, organic in a way that other art is not,” she writes, reflecting on her career. “You enter into it; you get changed with it; it changes with you….[TV] was where I wanted to live.” Sharp, insightful writing that firmly positions Nussbaum as one of the leading TV critics of our time.
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The riveting life of a deeply flawed diplomat whose chief shortcoming seems to have been the need to be more recog-
nized than he was. New Yorker staff writer Packer (The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, 2013, etc.), winner of the National Book Award, was a friend of the diplomat and foreign policy specialist Richard Holbrooke (1941-2010), one of whose signal accomplishments was navigating through the endless difficulties of Balkan ethnic politics to negotiate peace in the former Yugoslavia. When it came to national interest versus universal principles of human rights and the like, “Holbrooke favored the former while making gestures toward the latter.” Still, faced with the ugly realities of such things as the Cambodian genocide, which, as one of the “best and the brightest” of the American technocrats in Vietnam, he bore some responsibility for, he stretched to accommodate justice. Serving one administration after another, Holbrooke accumulated friends and favors; he also made powerful enemies, and it was not always easy to tell one from the other. As a sometime outsider—he was descended from a Jewish immigrant named Golbraich—he desperately longed for power, wanting especially to rule over Foggy Bottom as Secretary of State. Alas, he did not achieve his aim, though Packer supposes he was worthy enough. Instead, he served other leaders, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the latter of whom considered him disruptive. The author notes Holbrooke’s real accomplishments along the way, including founding an American cultural center in Germany and achieving delicate balancing acts in the intractable mess of Afghanistan. As Packer notes, he also had a “huge appetite for details [and] need to understand from the ground up,” attributes that not every American diplomat shares. In the end, though egotistical and quick to be insulted, Holbrooke was also, by Packer’s absorbing account, highly capable. Students of recent world history and of American power, hard and soft, will find this an endlessly fascinating study of character and events. (35 illustrations; 3 maps)
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A masterfully poetic and intimate work that anchors mothering within the long-standing tradition of black resistance and resourcefulness. breathe
BREATHE A Letter to My Sons
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ARCHAEOLOGY FROM SPACE How the Future Shapes Our Past
Perry, Imani Beacon (176 pp.) $18.00 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-0-8070-7655-2
Parcak, Sarah Henry Holt (288 pp.) $30.00 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-1-250-19828-0
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A renowned space archaeologist gives readers an insider’s look at her field, which is basically Indiana Jones meets cutting-edge satellite technology. It’s every bit as exciting as it sounds. Discovering ancient civilizations by digging them up has always had grand romantic appeal. Parcak (Anthropology/ Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham; Satellite Remote Sensing for Archaeology, 2009), the president and founder of GlobalXplorer and winner of the TED Prize, was among a generation of kids wooed by archaeology in movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark. But unlike most of us, she followed through on her passion, committing early to archaeology and pioneering the use of advanced technologies as a means to significantly improve the chances of the discovery of a lost site. Such excavations offer much more than just a cache of dusty loot; as she writes, “that dirt contains nothing less than the clues to who we are, how we got here, and how we might thrive in the future.” In this fascinating adventure memoir, the author describes how remote sensing technology powered by orbiting satellites has transformed archaeologists’ ability to locate and verify sites that might otherwise never have been discovered. As the lead in many big discoveries around the world, from Egypt to Newfoundland, Parcak has a lot of great stories to tell, and she tells them with clarity, enthusiasm, and humor. She also looks into the future, explaining that artificial intelligence and DNA analysis could further push the field into territory that only recently would have been considered sci-fi. And then there is crowdsourcing: The author is optimistic that regular people have the power to “find and protect the world’s hidden heritage” through the online mapping of millions of undiscovered sites. Us, space archaeologists? There is no doubt that she will have no shortage of volunteers. Exciting and futuristic, this book elicits that anythingis-possible feeling—a must-read. (8-page color insert; b/w photos throughout)
A distinguished scholar writes to her sons about the joy, possibility, and grace of black life amid ongoing American struggles with race, gender, and class. Carrying on an iconic legacy of public letters from black writers—think James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Kiese Laymon, among many others—Perry (African American Studies/Princeton Univ.; Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, 2018, etc.) reflects on her family history, tying it together with cultural allegories to impress upon her sons the precious inheritance found within black social life and the pursuit of a livelihood full of “passion, profound human intimacy and connection, beauty and excellence.” A multidisciplinary and acclaimed researcher, Perry uses references throughout the slim volume that range across centuries and the global black diaspora, across folklore, music, and visual arts as well as the influence of numerous faith traditions. “The people with whom you can share the interior illumination,” she writes, “that is the sacramental bond.” She breaks down the structures of violence and marginalization that black children face while uplifting the imaginative and improvisatory space for them to focus on their becoming, to not be trapped in misnarrated stories or “forced into two dimensions when you are in four.” Echoing Baldwin’s distinctive “Letter to My Nephew,” Perry emphasizes the critical life discipline of making choices— not in the shallow sense of choosing success or achievement but rather within the depths of the long, historic freedom struggle to answer important questions—e.g., “How will you treat your word? How will you hold your heart? How will you hold others?” Deeply intergenerational, the book blurs intended audiences to call all of us to face up to legacies of injustice while insisting on the grace and conviviality necessary to imagine just futures. A masterfully poetic and intimate work that anchors mothering within the long-standing tradition of black resistance and resourcefulness.
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AUDIENCE OF ONE Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America
FIGURING
Popova, Maria Pantheon (592 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-1-5247-4813-5
Poniewozik, James Liveright/Norton (304 pp.) $27.95 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-63149-442-0 The chief TV critic of the New York Times sums it up: “Without TV, there’s
no Trump.” In his stellar debut, Poniewozik demonstrates how Trump, over a period of four decades, “achieved symbiosis” with the TV medium: “Its impulses were his impulses; its appetites were his appetites; its mentality was his mentality.” As TV evolved from America’s homogenizer (the three major networks) to fragmenter (cable TV), Trump “used the dominant media of the day—tabloids, talk shows, reality TV, cable news, Twitter—to enlarge himself, to become a brand, a star, a demagogue, and a president.” Recounting how Trump, who was born in 1946, grew up with TV, the author details how he cultivated a famous image and leveraged celebrity, becoming a reality TV star in the 2000s and a politician in the 2010s. “Playing ‘Donald Trump’ became his full-time job.” His telling analyses of Trump’s appearances on The Apprentice, Fox & Friends, and The Howard Stern Show will come as revelations to readers unfamiliar with those programs, on which Trump emerged as an antihero, known for “being real” rather than honest, in the manner of the not “conventionally likeable” people on reality TV. As Poniewozik writes, he “spent a lifetime in symbiosis with television, adopting its metabolism, learning to feed its appetites.” For Trump, cable TV news, with its “constant fear and passion” and need to “agitate their viewers, not settle them,” was a perfect fit. His daily tweeting is based on careful study of his most popular tweets—those provoking “shock, insult, rage.” The author chronicles Trump’s actions against a deeply insightful history of vast changes in the media and popular culture during the period. TV, he writes, proved “the perfect medium for his sensibility, for picking fights, for whipping up people’s hatred and fear and resentment, for taking the express lane around logic.” This intelligent eye-opener belongs on the small shelf of valuable books that help explain how Trump created his base.
The polymathic Popova, presiding genius behind brainpickings.org, looks at some of the forgotten heroes of science, art, and culture. “There are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives,” writes the author at the outset. She closes with the realization that while we individuals may die, the beauty of our lives and work, if meaningful, will endure: “What will survive of us are shoreless seeds and stardust.” In between, she peppers thoughtful, lucid consideration of acts of the imagination with stories that, if ever aired before, are too little known. Who would have remembered that of all the details of the pioneering astronomer Johannes Kepler’s life, one was racing across Germany to come to the aid of his widowed mother, who had been charged with witchcraft? The incident ably frames Kepler’s breaking out of a world governed by superstition, “a world in which God is mightier than nature, the Devil realer and more omnipresent than gravity,” and into a radical, entirely different world governed by science. That world saw many revolutions and advances ahead of the general population, as when, in 1865, Vassar College appointed as its first professor of astronomy a woman, Maria Mitchell, who combined a brilliant command of science with a yearning for poetry. So it was with Rachel Carson, the great ecologist, whose love for a woman lasted across a life burdened with terrible illness, and Emily Dickinson, who might have been happier had her own love for a woman been realized. (As it was, Popova notes, the world was ready for Dickinson: A book of her poems published four years after her death sold 500 copies on the first day of publication.) Throughout her complex, consistently stimulating narrative, the author blends biography, cultural criticism, and journalism to forge elegant connections: Dickinson feeds in to Carson, who looks back to Mitchell, who looks forward to Popova herself, and with plenty of milestones along the way: Kepler, Goethe, Pauli, Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne…. A lyrical work of intellectual history, one that Popova’s many followers will await eagerly and that deserves to win her many more.
THE MASTERMIND Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.
Ratliff, Evan Random House (496 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-0-399-59041-2
A complex tale of true crime on a global scale. Wired contributor Ratliff (editor: Love and Ruin: Tales of Obsession, Danger, 38
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A captivating, psychedelically charged coming-of-age memoir. the light years
Richtel, Matt Morrow/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $28.99 | Mar. 12, 2019 978-0-06-269853-7
An expert examination of the immune system and recent impressive advances in treating immune diseases. Scientists describe the brain as the most complex organ, but novelist and Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist Richtel (A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention, 2014, etc.) maintains that our immune system gives it a run for its money. Around 3.5 billion years ago, the earliest cells developed means to identify alien threats and (usually) fight them off. As organisms evolved greater complexity, their immune systems kept pace with mammals, humans included, which possess a dazzling collection of organs, tissues, |
THE LIGHT YEARS A Memoir
Rush, Chris Farrar, Straus and Giroux (384 pp.) $27.00 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-0-374-29441-0
special issue: best books of 2019
AN ELEGANT DEFENSE The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives
wandering cells, DNA, messengers, and chemicals keeping watch on our “festival of life.” “The thymus makes T cells,” writes the author. “The bone marrow is the origin of B cells….The T cells, when alerted by dendritic cells, behave as soldiers, spitting out cytokines; the B cells use antibodies to connect to antigens as if they are keys in search of a lock. Macrophages, neutrophils, and natural killer cells roam the body, tasting, exploring, and killing.” In the first of many jolts, Richtel downplays the claims of enthusiasts who urge us to attain the strongest possible immune system. Immunity resembles less a comic-book superhero than a trigger-happy police force, equally capable of smiting villains and wreaking havoc on innocent bystanders. To illustrate, the author devotes equal space to its role in fending off threats (infections, cancer) and attacking healthy tissues during allergies and autoimmune diseases such as asthma, diabetes, colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus. Scientific breakthroughs in producing specific antibodies have led to spectacularly effective—if toxic and wildly expensive—treatments for many. A newsman’s truism insists that readers love articles that include real people, so the author introduces us to four. All illustrate the good and bad features of modern immunotherapy, but the courses of their diseases are too bizarre to be typical. Richtel illuminates a complex subject so well that even physicians will learn. (b/w photos throughout)
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and Heartbreak From the Atavist Magazine, 2016), the co-founder of Atavist Magazine, digs deep into a story that seems utterly appropriate to the computerized, globalized, transnational age. The protagonist is Paul Le Roux, a Zimbabwe-born computer programmer. Having moved from South Africa to Australia and later to the Philippines, he discovered early on that cyberspace was a frontier in which to grow rich serving humankind’s lesser instincts: pornography, trolling, gambling, addictions of various kinds. Eventually, as the author foreshadows in an opening salvo of incidents, he founded a crime network with many nodes across the world, one with hired killers, corrupt doctors, software specialists, and countless other players. One branch began by selling painkillers under the flimsiest of medical screenings: A customer would type in a complaint that she had back pain, a doctor would sign off, and drugs would arrive in great quantities, with one small-town Wisconsin pharmacist alone filling 700,000 illegal prescriptions and being paid millions in return from a Hong Kong bank account. Killings followed as Le Roux stretched his hand to North Korean methamphetamine manufacturers, international mercenaries, Colombian cartels, and black-ops hackers. Writes Ratliff, each of these pieces “seemed like a kind of message from an adjacent reality that few of us experience directly”—a reality that ended in a massive counteroperation on the part of the Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement agencies, bringing down long prison sentences and massive fines. “In 2013,” writes the author, “UPS paid $40 million to resolve federal accusations of knowingly shipping drugs for illegal online pharmacies.” Sifting through detail after nefarious detail, Ratliff serves up a taut narrative that limns a portrait of a sociopath whose powers were most definitely used to evil ends. A wholly engrossing story that joins the worlds of El Chapo and Edward Snowden; both disturbing and memorable.
A dazzling debut memoir from artist and designer Rush. Growing up in a strict Roman Catholic family in New Jersey, the author felt both trapped and adrift as a child, a feeling exacerbated by his neglectful mother and alcoholic father, who was “a dark planet, exerting only vague astrological influence on his offspring.” Introduced to drugs, especially LSD, early on by his loving hippie sister, Donna, Rush continued to chafe under his suburban adolescence before finally setting out on a remarkable journey into the counterculture and across America, from his hometown to the wilderness of the Southwest. By the age of 13, he writes, “I took LSD as often as possible. Taking acid was like entering a painting of a storybook—a glowing dream world, lush and lovely. I felt no conflict between the real and the unreal. It was so easy to slip in between.” In sparkling, lucid prose that perfectly captures the joy, depression, anger, and wonder that characterized his adventures, the author recounts the seemingly endless hills and valleys of his unique tale. Among others, these experiences included countless days getting stoned in his parents’ basement, avoiding his dysfunctional parents; a stint in boarding school, where he became the primary drug dealer on campus; time living with Donna and a group of her friends on a drug compound in rural Arizona; enduring a shocking act of violence; and some weeks living a feral life in caves kirkus.com
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THE SEINE The River That Made Paris
scattered around the deserts of the West. Along the way, while struggling with significant substance abuse (“sometimes I’d shoot up with…customers who craved a speechless high, who wanted to grow dim with me, become sputtering candles in the dark”) and grappling with his sexuality, Rush continued to draw, an artistic spark that took years to ignite into a career. He also suffered a near overdose. Though the narrative ends on a slight uptick, the author refreshingly avoids tying his story up with a pretty bow, and readers will wish for more from this talented writer. A captivating, psychedelically charged coming-of-age memoir.
THE EDGE OF EVERY DAY Sketches of Schizophrenia
Sardy, Marin Pantheon (304 pp.) $25.95 | May 21, 2019 978-1-5247-4693-3
A shape-shifting debut memoir about a family’s coming to terms with schizophrenia—or not. Essayist and critic Sardy delivers an extraordinarily ambitious and accomplished narrative about significant challenges. She chronicles the immense difficulties in trying to maintain a semblance of sanity while both her mother and brother suffer through schizophrenia that they refuse to acknowledge, with the rest of the family in various states of denial as well. The structure keeps readers off balance, as the author refuses to follow conventional notions of chronology or connection, illuminating mental illness from the inside out. “Mental illness is not contagious, but madness often is,” she writes, a crucial distinction in her exploration of how, “in my family, psychotic illness has threaded its way through four generations in a row” and how those not afflicted have suffered through the effects of coming to terms with the delusions of schizophrenia, which seem so real to the one suffering and so outlandish to anyone else. At the outset, the book seems to be a memoir about coming-of-age while the author’s mother was falling apart, refusing to acknowledge her condition, spending all of her sizable inheritance, and telling her daughter that now is a particularly good time to emigrate to Pluto. Meanwhile, her father, whom her mother refused to acknowledge as such, remained in a state of denial while trying to provide a safe harbor when he had the children. Yet much more of the narrative concerns her relationship through her 20s with her brother, who showed similar signs of disintegration from schizophrenia, resisted diagnosis and treatment, and suffered from increasingly harmful delusions, leaving him in jail or homeless—though rarely completely out of touch with his family. The author herself suffers from bouts of depression, which she acknowledges and probes in her unsettling narrative. Both powerful and disturbing, this impressive debut memoir suggests just how challenging it can be to regain some semblance of balance after that balance is lost. 40
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Sciolino, Elaine Norton (304 pp.) $26.95 | Nov. 1, 2019 978-0-393-60935-6 The veteran New York Times contributing writer and former Paris bureau chief shares her love affair with Paris and the Seine with enchanting anec-
dotes and insights. Sciolino (The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs, 2016, etc.), who has lived in Paris since 2002, presents more of a voyage than a history, from Burgundy to the sea, traveling the 483 miles on the river’s looping path from the Plateau de Langres to Honfleur and the English Channel. Along the way, the Seine is anchored by Paris and then Rouen, where it widens enough for oceangoing ships to reach the port of Le Havre. The source of the river is the underground springs where the Gauls worshiped the healing goddess Sequana, who, according to the author, is the true symbol of the river. Through the years, the river has been altered many times. Napoleon eliminated many of the islands to ease navigation, and he established the river as the center point for Paris’ street-numbering system. Baron Haussmann transformed the riverfront with bridges, locks, and dams as well as tree-shaded promenades. As we travel downriver with our genial guide, we note that the right side of the river symbolizes money, politics, scandal, and the power of the media while the left signifies freedom, liberty, free speech, and free sex. Throughout, Sciolino provides wonderful, detailed interviews of former barge people, houseboat dwellers, booksellers, and members of the River Brigade, which polices the river. The author also takes us into the world of the impressionists, and in Rouen, once the most important port, we find ancient windmills, Joan of Arc, and the place where Monet obsessed over the light on the cathedral. Then it’s on to Le Havre, the port created by François I in 1517, and finally, Honfleur, which “travel guides often refer to…as one of the prettiest towns in France.” Francophiles will adore this book, and others may become Francophiles as they read.
PICNIC COMMA LIGHTNING The Experience of Reality in the Twenty-First Century Scott, Laurence Norton (256 pp.) $25.95 | May 28, 2019 978-0-393-60997-4
Centrifugal excursions into the nature of reality, a sad and confusing place for most of us. |
Rich details and dedicated, courageous reporting create a powerful tale of faith, love, and loss. beneath the tamarind tree
Sered, Danielle The New Press (336 pp.) $28.99 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-1-62097-479-7
In her first book, the founder of Brooklyn-based Common Justice convincingly attacks the conventional wisdom about violent crimes, appropriate punishment, and how to repair the criminal (in)justice system. Sered’s organization brings together crime victims and perpetrators to experience a process known as restorative justice. Common Justice always begins with the crime victims, who are rarely heeded and often downright ignored by police, prosecutors, and judges. The author and her small staff listen carefully to victims of all kinds of violence. In most jurisdictions, a large percentage of perpetrators are never arrested. If an arrest occurs, well over 90% never reach the trial stage, and the vast majority of plea-bargained convictions terminate in private, with the victim nowhere near the negotiating venue. Even when conventional |
BENEATH THE TAMARIND TREE A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram
special issue: best books of 2019
UNTIL WE RECKON Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road To Repair
wisdom maintains that a prison sentence is a positive outcome for the victim, Sered has learned that rarely do victims heal quickly— if ever. The physical injuries and/or mental anguish do not disappear simply because a perpetrator is incarcerated. In addition to destroying myths about victimhood, the author attacks incarceration as a positive outcome for anybody, especially because prisons offer no accountability from the perpetrator that reaches the victim and no rehabilitation that benefits society eventually. Violence in every neighborhood must be attacked at its roots, Sered argues convincingly, and the evidence is overwhelming that mass incarceration never halts ongoing neighborhood violence. “If incarceration worked to secure safety,” she writes, “we would be the safest nation in all of human history….If incarceration worked to stop violence, we would have eradicated it by now— because no nation has used incarceration more.” The author provides clear, specific evidence for her contention that the new conventional wisdom must be survivor-centered, accountabilitybased, safety-driven, and racially equitable. The case studies of restorative justice that punctuate every chapter offer undeniable proof that Common Justice’s tactics are succeeding and should be more widely applied. A top-notch entry into the burgeoning incarceration debate.
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George Orwell once noted, presciently, that the lasting harm caused by totalitarian regimes lay not in the atrocities they committed but in their assaults on “the objective concept of truth.” Truth is reality, and, writes Scott (Writing/New York Univ. in London; The Four Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World, 2016), reality is being mediated away from us. “What does it feel like to be responsible for generating a sense of reality in a culture that accuses itself of being fictional?” he wonders. Then he looks at the many evasions our culture permits us, from the philosophical concept that reality is simply a shared set of hallucinations to the widely shared tenet that there is no such thing as objective truth to begin with, which allows politicians to lie savagely and then, when confronted with their lies, to cry that it’s fake news. Alternative facts, alternative realities, alternative truths; all add up to what Scott nimbly calls “tears in the fabric of normalcy, reason and accountability.” The author moves from one subject to another with sometimes-neck-snapping speed, populating his pages with names and events that in many instances will be ephemeral in a few years (Britney Spears, Cosmo Kramer) but with others that are eternal (W.H. Auden, Aeschylus, Doris Lessing). Scott ably deconstructs how shared realities are forged, all of which involve the skillful, meaningful storytelling of which he himself is an ascended master. As he moves from the nature of story, love, memory, and other such things that enfold us while embracing and being embraced by “the weird scale of the private life of the mind,” the author makes it clear that reality is not always a pleasant place to be, for framing this eminently literary story and running through it are memories of his mother as she dies, too young, of cancer. A lucid, if refractory and quite brilliant, critique of a fragmented culture in a peculiar time.
Sesay, Isha Dey Street/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $27.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-06-268667-1
A longtime CNN Africa reporter delivers a close-up report on the Chibok girls, attempting to bring their story “full circle” and “resurrect public interest in this mass abduction.” On April 14, 2014, the extremist group Boko Haram stormed into a predominately Christian school in Chibok, Nigeria, and kidnapped 276 schoolgirls. This event triggered worldwide press coverage, but as the months wore on and the girls didn’t return home, the world’s attention turned elsewhere. Fortunately, award-winning journalist Sesay—the former host of CNN News room Live From Los Angeles who spent more than a decade reporting on Africa for the network—didn’t forget this story, and she offers a compelling, empathetic tale that focuses on the lives of four of the Chibok girls and their immediate family members. The author, who grew up in Sierra Leone and Britain, intertwines her thoughts and feelings regarding the kidnapping with the history of the region, the political, social, and economic events that gave rise to Boko Haram, and the personal accounts of Priscilla, Dorcas, Mary, and Saa. Sesay’s attention to detail places readers with the girls under a giant tamarind tree, one of their many naturally made prisons deep in the Sambisa forest, where they scrounged for food and water and fought off the constant kirkus.com
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demands of their captors to convert to Islam. Although many of the girls did convert and have not been heard from since, a greater portion remained steadfast in their Christian beliefs. The author also explains what the Nigerian government has done to find the missing girls. She notes that, in the beginning, many Nigerians believed the abduction was “no more than an elaborate hoax with political objectives.” The joyous homecoming of 21 of the Chibok girls in 2016 prompted Sesay to compile her notes on this fascinating and emotionally charged telling of the girls’ story, which will hopefully put those still missing back into the limelight. Rich details and dedicated, courageous reporting create a powerful tale of faith, love, and loss.
INHERITANCE A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love Shapiro, Dani Knopf (272 pp.) $24.95 | Jan. 15, 2019 978-1-5247-3271-4
Before focusing on memoirs, Shapiro (Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage, 2017, etc.) drew from her family life in her fiction. In her latest, she delves into an origin story that puts everything she previously believed and wrote about herself in fresh perspective. The author’s relationship with her mother was difficult. “My single best defense had always been that I was my father’s daughter,” she writes. “I was more my father’s daughter. I had somehow convinced myself that I was only my father’s daughter.” Eventually, she learned that she wasn’t her father’s daughter at all, at least not in the way that she had initially understood. Through DNA testing to which she had only submitted because her husband had done so, Shapiro discovered that she shares none of hers with her father’s side of the family and that the sperm that impregnated her mother had come from someone else. But who? The first half of the book trudges through a bit too much day-by-day detail, as the author becomes convinced that there’s no way these results could have been mistaken. It is after she discovers who her real father is, or at least the sperm donor, that the narrative deepens and enriches our deeper understanding of paternity, genetics, and what were then called “test tube tots.” Sperm donors had been guaranteed anonymity, and the man she contacted was initially resistant to upset the balance of his family dynamic because of his participation in the procedure decades earlier. Equally upsetting Shapiro was the issue of what her parents had believed, separately or together, about her parentage. Had they spent their lives as a family deceiving her, or had they also been deceived? Then there was the doctor whom they had consulted when they were having fertility issues, “an outlaw” whose credentials were shaky but whose results were impressive. For all the trauma that the discovery put her through, Shapiro recognizes that what she had experienced was “a great story”—one that has inspired her best book. 42
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THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving Silverman, David J. Bloomsbury (528 pp.) $30.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-63286-924-1
An impassioned, deeply knowledgeable history of the “first contacts” between the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the English and Europeans, this time told from the Native side. A scholar of Native American, Colonial, and racial history in America, Silverman (History/George Washington Univ.; Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America, 2016, etc.) first orients readers toward what the landing Pilgrim scouts at Cape Cod in November 1620 would have actually seen in the environs: evidence of an undeniable Native civilization. As the author shows, the Wampanoag Indians had already adopted horticulture (maize, beans, squash); created a system of governance via individual sachems (chiefs), inherited through the male line; and established proprietorship of the land stretching back generations. Moreover, there had already been a history of violence between the Natives and the shipboard European explorers for at least 100 years, as the explorers often lured the Natives into unfair trade, which often led to violence, and spread fatal diseases that decimated their population. “The ease of some of the Wampanoags with the English,” writes the author, “suggests that there had been other more recent contacts than surviving documents report. At Martha’s Vineyard, thirteen armed men approached the Concord without any fear, as if they had experience with such situations.” Throughout this well-documented, unique history, Silverman offers a detailed look at the long, tortured relations between the two and captures the palpable sense of overall mourning after the aftermath of King Philip’s War and the attempt to annihilate (and assimilate) the Wampanoags—and their incredible ability to transcend the dehumanization and prevail. Ultimately, the author provides an important, heart-rending story of the treachery of alliances and the individuals caught in the crosshairs, a powerful history that clearly “exposes the Thanksgiving myth as a myth rather than history.” Silverman also includes a helpful “Glossary of Key Indian People and Places.” An eye-opening, vital reexamination of America’s founding myth.
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Bracing and gut-wrenching, with slivers of hope throughout, this is exemplary, moving reportage on an important subject that often remains in the dark due to shame and/or fear. no visible bruises
WOMEN’S WORK A Reckoning With Work and Home
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NO VISIBLE BRUISES What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us
Stack, Megan K. Doubleday (352 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-0-385-54209-8
Snyder, Rachel Louise Bloomsbury (320 pp.) $28.00 | May 7, 2019 978-1-63557-097-7
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A self-critical and heartfelt narrative of the author’s life in China and India and the impoverished women she employed as her nannies and servants. For the majority of the wealthy, white, privileged women who employ these women, “help is affordable, help is cheap,” and learning further personal details about their servants and nannies seems to be an unnecessary headache. However, former Los Angeles Times reporter Stack (Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War, 2010), a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, has sought to sincerely empathize with and find similarities in their lives and her own life through an investigation of what she terms “women’s work.” The author divides her eye-opening book into three parts. In the first part, she thoroughly engages readers with the story of the birth of her first child, in China. These chapters are beautifully written, informative, and sometimes harrowing as she recounts the joy, fear, and exhaustion of becoming a mother. Her chronicle of how she found her way out of depression offers wisdom that new mothers will find supportive and enlightening. Throughout the book, Stack writes compassionately about her encounters with her nannies, Xiao Li (China), Pooja, and Mary (both from India), as well as her struggle with a “postmodern feminist breakdown.” The author demonstrates how her concepts of gender equality and sisterly connections ran head-on into her need to run her home and control her time. In the second part of the narrative, she relates her time in India and her second pregnancy. By that time, she had found it easier to relegate some household authority to her husband. In the final section, Stack discusses her decision to write about the women who worked for her and provides moving details of her relationships with them. What women—and men—can learn from Stack’s story is that “women’s work,” in all of its complexity and construction, should not be only for women.
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A powerful exploration of the sinister, insidious nature of domestic violence in America. As an international reporter for more than two decades, Snyder (Literature/American Univ.; What We’ve Lost Is Nothing, 2014, etc.) encountered regular acts of violence against women adjacent to the issues she covered. The grim statistics about and the prevalence of unreported incidents both startled and motivated her to begin chronicling the universality of an issue that “is too often hidden.” Through a graphically portrayed series of in-depth profiles, the author discusses how domestic violence has reached epidemic levels while efforts to curb the trend have been historically underfunded and ineffective. She elucidates this point in stories spotlighting both victims and assailants alongside the investigators and family members who’ve become all-consumed with sleuthing the crimes that have torn their relationships apart. She also tackles the complex conundrum facing victims of familial violence who choose to remain in abusive households. Intriguingly, Snyder probes the chilling territory of the perpetrators, sketching them from the inside out. Especially memorable is the author’s incisive coverage of the communities responsible for creating change through victim advocacy, rehabilitative jail programs, batterer intervention groups, and transitional housing. In one scene, Snyder describes a state prison’s group therapy session in which former abusers discuss “their own incidents of violence, times they…denied any wrongdoing, moments they manipulated or verbally threatened partners [and] instances of trivializing their own violent events. They begin to see, some of them for the first time ever, the effect their violence may have had on their victims.” As these stories and perspectives evolve and deepen, the author contributes her own profound introspection on the nature of empathy and relatability, weaving in themes of enduring emotional trauma, the resilience of “deep stereotypes,” and the many manifestations of physical and emotional violence. Bracing and gut-wrenching, with slivers of hope throughout, this is exemplary, moving reportage on an important subject that often remains in the dark due to shame and/or fear.
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FAMILY PAPERS A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century
Stein, Sarah Abrevaya Farrar, Straus and Giroux (336 pp.) $28.00 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-374-18542-8
The experiences of a Sephardic family reveal tumultuous Jewish history. Drawing on rich archives that yielded thousands of letters, telegrams, photographs, and legal and medical documents, two-time National Jewish Book Award winner Stein (History and Jewish Studies/UCLA; Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Cen tury, 2016, etc.) offers a fascinating history of the Levy family, Sephardic Jews descended from Sa’adi Besalel Ashkenazi a-Levi, an influential publisher in 19th-century Salonica. The author’s incomparable sources, which include Sa’adi’s memoir (edited by Stein for publication in 2012), afforded her an intimate look at the challenges, quarrels, loves, and rivalries that beset Sa’adi and his wives, children, grandchildren, and their descendants as they experienced cataclysmic world events. Organized chronologically, each chapter focuses on a family member to explore their choices and opportunities in a changing world. Of Sa’adi’s 14 children, one daughter became a teacher; one son followed in his father’s footsteps as a newspaperman; another became a high-ranking official for the Jewish Community of Salonica. Yet another son, a gifted linguist and mathematician who rejected a teaching career in favor of law, rose to considerable stature as the Jewish Community’s “director of communal real estate,” a position that carried significant “legal, social, and economic authority.” Four emigrated to Sephardic communities abroad. Generations of the Levy family were caught in the maelstrom of wars. The First Balkan War, which obstructed daily life, led to the Ottomans’ loss of Salonica to Greece, an upheaval that the Levys saw as calamitous because it gave Greek Orthodox Christians preference to Jews. After World War I, a massive influx of Greeks reduced the once-prominent Jewish population to “a mere fifth” of the city’s residents. In 1943, Nazi persecution intensified in Salonica, and Stein uncovers harrowing evidence of one great-grandson of Sa’adi who became a Nazi henchman, for which he was executed. By the end of World War II, of 37 family members deported from France and Greece, only one survived. Still, the Levys endure, scattered throughout the world. A masterful multigenerational reconstruction of a family’s life. (59 b/w illustrations; map; family tree)
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IN THE COUNTRY OF WOMEN A Memoir Straight, Susan Catapult (384 pp.) $26.00 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-1-948226-22-6
A moving family saga celebrates generations of bold, brave, and determined women. Award-winning novelist Straight (Between Heaven and Here, 2012, etc.) makes her nonfiction debut with an eloquent, absorbing memoir. Addressed to her three adult daughters, the narrative weaves together stories that transcend time, place, race, and ethnicity to vibrantly portray her children’s rich ancestry. Straight is white: Her mother grew up in the Swiss Alps; her father, in Colorado. The couple settled in Riverside, California, a hardscrabble community of a wide variety of mixed ethnicities, all “dreamers of the golden dream.” When she was 14, she met Dwayne Sims, an African American high school classmate; years later, they married and eventually settled near their families. Straight taught English to refugees and at a city college; Dwayne worked at a juvenile correctional facility. Frugality was a way of life. When her youngest daughter was asked how the family fared, she replied, “Wait—what’s below humble?” They had been poor, Straight admits, finding furniture on the street and living without air conditioning in temperatures over 100 degrees, but “the safety and tether and history” of their families was ample compensation. “The women who came before you, my daughters, were legends,” writes the author, and their journeys—from Africa, Europe, and across the American continent—entailed convoluted “maps and threads” that culminated in her own girls, “the apex of the dream.” Her daughters inherited not only their ancestors’ “defined cheekbones and dimples and high-set hips,” but, more crucially, their beauty, intelligence, and defiant independence. Among those many women, Dwayne’s mother, Alberta, shines: “bemused and regal and slightly mischievous,” a warmhearted woman who unreservedly welcomed her white daughter-in-law. Listening to family stories and mining ancestry.com, Straight recounts the peril and hope, forced migration and fierce escapes, “thousands of miles of hardship,” that women endured. “All of American history,” she tells her daughters, “is in your bones.” A radiant memoir imbued with palpable love.
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Exhilarating, groundbreaking essays that should establish Tolentino as a key voice of her generation. trick mirror
THE ART OF LEAVING A Memoir
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TRICK MIRROR Reflections on Self-Delusion
Tsabari, Ayelet Random House (240 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 19, 2019 978-0-8129-8898-7
Tolentino, Jia Random House (304 pp.) $27.00 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-0-525-51054-3
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An Arab Jew searches for the meaning of home. From the time her father died when she was 10, Tsabari (The Best Place on Earth: Stories, 2016) felt out of place in Israel, where she and her family had long lived in a community of Yemeni Jews. “Grief shakes the foundations of your home,” she writes in her candid, affecting memoir, “unsettles and banishes you.” In addition to the loss of her father—whom the author evokes in loving detail—she felt excluded from Israeli culture, where Arab Jews were treated like second-class citizens, even those, like her and her parents, who were born in Israel. “In a country riddled with cultural prejudice,” she writes, “the stereotypes associated with Yemenis over the years have ranged from romanticizing to fetishizing to patronizing.” In 1935, when her grandparents arrived, Yemeni immigrants were considered “savage and primitive”; even today, “Yemenis are often the butt of racial jokes and the subject of mockery.” As in her impressive collection of short stories, which won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, Tsabari examines the cultural and personal forces that result in alienation and “self-inflicted exile.” For nearly a decade after completing mandatory service in the Israeli army, she traveled to Canada, New York, Mexico, India, and Thailand, with few possessions. “Home, essentially, was the act of leaving,” she writes, “not a physical place, but the pattern of walking away from it.” She married, briefly; had affairs; spent years drinking cheap whiskey and smoking dope; and periodically returned to her family home before leaving once more. “Leaving is the only thing I know how to do,” she reflects. “That seemed to be the one stable thing in my life, the ritual of picking up, throwing out or giving away the little I have, packing up and taking off.” It must be lonely, a friend remarks, “needing to be free all the time.” Now in her 40s, grounded by her husband and daughter, she redefines home: an emotional commitment to a place “where love resides.” Linked essays cohere into a tender, moving memoir.
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A popular young writer tackles a host of cultural movements in her debut collection of essays. In these nine stunning pieces, New Yorker staff writer Tolentino seamlessly melds together journalistic social criticism and revealing personal essays. To varying degrees of intimate context, she places herself within each narrative, reporting on broad social currents while revealing very specific encounters. Among the many topics the author explores: the expansive influence of the internet and social media; the increasing social pressure to optimize our interests and aspirations at all times (especially for women); the alarming proliferation and increased tolerance of scamming; societal, somewhat idealized traditions such as marriage and, more specifically, weddings. Tolentino recounts her experience with reality TV and reflects on her teenage identity when she appeared as a contestant in Girls v. Boys: Puerto Rico. “Reality TV had not yet created a whole new type of person,” she writes, “the camera-animated assemblage of silicone and pharmaceuticals; we hadn’t yet seen the way organic personalities could decay on unscripted television, their half-lives measured through sponsored laxative-tea Instagrams and paid appearances at third-tier regional clubs.” She also recalls favorite literary books from her past, assessing the heroines’ varying plights in guiding her current feminist leanings. While offering razor-sharp commentary on the underbelly of our culture, she can also appreciate its attraction. Furthermore, she acknowledges her particular conundrum, having established her niche as a writer by staying in tune with cultural trends: “I don’t know what to do with the fact…that my career is possible in large part because of the way the internet collapses identity, opinion, and action—and that I, as a writer whose work is mostly critical and often written in first person, have some inherent stake in justifying the dubious practice of spending all day trying to figure out what you think.” Tolentino offers a millennial perspective that is deeply grounded, intellectually transcending her relative youth. She brings fresh perspective to current movements in a manner similar to that of Joan Didion in the 1960s and ’70s. Exhilarating, groundbreaking essays that should establish Tolentino as a key voice of her generation.
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THE OUTLAW OCEAN Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier Urbina, Ian Knopf (560 pp.) $30.00 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-0-451-49294-4
Anarchy reigns on the high seas as a New York Times investigative reporter travels the world’s oceans. Early on, Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award winner Urbina (Life’s Little Annoyances: True Tales of People Who Just Can’t Take It Anymore, 2005) writes that the stories he turned up while roaming from port to port “felt less like journalism than an attention deficit disorder,” so bewildering and untidy did they seem, so without unalloyed heroes and villains. One figure in the narrative, for instance, is a law-trained, poetry-writing sailor whose job is to sneak into ports where ships have been impounded and, on behalf of their owners, steal those ships away; the work is dangerous and utterly demanding. “He struck me as an older Tintin,” writes the author. The good guys in the story are beleaguered, outnumbered, and often outmaneuvered. As Urbina writes of Palau’s efforts to halt maritime poaching, a former captain of an interdicted pirate ship arrested in 2016 was back as an ordinary deckhand six months later, making the effort “more myth of Sisyphus than David and Goliath.” If there are villains in the story, they are perhaps the unnamed owners of fishing fleets that put out to sea for long periods of time, for they are inspected and policed only in port. Urbina engagingly chronicles his travels from one trouble spot to another: oil rigs erected on continental shelves, just outside the territorial zones of neighboring nations and subject to little governance; pirate-rich Somalia, where he became a persona non grata; and Djibouti, one of the places where ship owners— in this case of a Thai fleet—“shop around for the most lax registries with the lowest prices and fewest regulations.” Urbina’s book ranks alongside those by Mark Bowden and Sebastian Junger, fraught with peril and laced with beer, the smell of sea air, and constant bouts of gaming an inept system. A swift-moving, often surprising account of the dangers that face sailors and nations alike on the lawless tide. (73 illustrations; 16 pages of full-color photos)
THINGS WE DIDN’T TALK ABOUT WHEN I WAS A GIRL A Memoir
Vanasco, Jeannie Tin House (360 pp.) $24.95 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-947793-45-3
After 14 years, a survivor of rape chronicles her interviews with the man who assaulted her, a former friend. 46
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Inside the swirling “zeitgeist” of the #MeToo movement, Vanasco (English/Towson Univ.; The Glass Eye, 2017) decided not only to write about the experience that still gives her nightmares, but also to include the perspective of the person who raped her. Over emails, phone calls, and in-person conversations, the author interviewed her former friend, Mark, and tried to make sense of his inexplicable betrayal as well as her own ambivalence toward him: “I doubt I’m the only woman sexually assaulted by a friend and confused about her feelings,” she writes. At every step of this harrowing process, from deciding how to approach Mark after years without contact to transcribing and interpreting their conversations, the author scrutinizes her own motivations, her compulsive caretaking of Mark’s discomfort during their discussions, and the lasting impact of the trauma that he caused her. Perspectives from Vanasco’s friends, her partner, and her therapist also figure heavily into the narrative, emphasizing how crucial it is for survivors to have wide networks of support. With deep self-consciousness, courage, and nuance, the author reveals the inner universe of her survivorship and interrogates the notion that rapists are two-dimensionally evil. A friend of Vanasco’s reflects, “how can someone who seems so harmless or acts so well or is so intelligent be capable of committing what is understandably kind of an evil act and how can it happen?” Though the author does not exactly answer these questions through her interviews with Mark, her engrossing, complex, incisive testament to the banality of violence is not a desolate narrative. Instead, Vanasco invites her readers to understand the complicated humanity involved in both causing and experiencing harm, leaving the limits and possibilities of accountability and healing as urgent, open questions. An extraordinarily brave work of self- and cultural reflection.
THEY WILL HAVE TO DIE NOW Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate
Verini, James Norton (304 pp.) $27.95 | Oct. 21, 2019 978-0-393-65247-5
Moving reportage by an American journalist who embedded with the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service and with Kurdish peshmerga forces fighting the Islamic State group. Coming from Brooklyn, George Polk Award–winning journalist Verini—a National Geographic contributing writer and frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine—was determined to serve a kind of “penance” when he arrived in Baghdad in the summer of 2016 for the first time; he was ashamed that he had been “too scared” to go to Afghanistan fresh out of college after 9/11. This time, he traveled in the wake of the Iraqi army as it moved on IS, which had captured Mosul two years before and declared a triumphant caliphate led by insurgent Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Throughout the taut |
If you weren’t alarmed already, Wallace-Wells sounds the tocsin of toxicity. An urgent, necessary book. the uninhabitable earth
THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH Life After Warming
Wallace-Wells, David Tim Duggan Books/Crown (320 pp.) $27.00 | Apr. 16, 2019 978-0-525-57670-9
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THE HISTORY OF ROCK & ROLL, VOLUME 2 1964-1977: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock
Ward, Ed Flatiron Books (336 pp.) $29.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-250-16519-0
A sprawling yet strangely compact history of the years of rock’s golden age. Austin-based music journalist Ward, co-host of the Let It Roll podcast, sets a daunting task: to say something new about the likes of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, each of which fills libraries of criticism and biography. He answers by going deep here and there while painting a big picture view of the effect those groups had on the world, especially the United States. The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. By 1965, writes the author, “guitar bands were erupting everywhere,” a pack headed by the Byrds but made up of groups as various as the Lovin’ Spoonful, the McCoys, the Bobby Fuller Four, and the bizarre Nightcrawlers, of “Little Black Egg” fame. The Brits captured the most attention during that time, but things were happening on plenty of peripheries: Memphis, for instance, where Otis Redding was working hard to develop an audience and write a hit, and American towns everywhere, where one-hit wonders were doing their thing. “Who were Pidgeon? Rhinoceros? Kak? The Serpent Power? The Wildflower? Zakary Thaks? The Harbinger Complex? Crow?” Ward asks, answering, no one and everyone, sometimes capable of producing songs and artists that would go on to make history, such as guitar wizard David Lindley and Captain Beefheart. Of course, the Stones and the Beatles figure prominently in the narrative, but so do whirlwinds of bands who sometimes turn up a dozen to the page in Ward’s overstuffed narrative. As for the age-old question, Beatles or Stones? Ward delivers a nicely oblique answer: It depends on whether you like live or studio music. By the end of the book, which is full of interesting surprises—e.g., it was Frank Sinatra’s label that took a chance on Jimi Hendrix— readers will have encountered scores of bands they’ve never heard of and plenty of grist for the playlist. Essential for deep-dyed rock fans, collectors, and fans of literate music writing.
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“The threat from climate change is more total than from the bomb. It is also more pervasive.” A closely argued look at what may be a turning point in human existence. As New York magazine deputy editor Wallace-Wells observes, almost every major moment of “evolutionary reset” in Earth’s history has been precipitated by climate change produced by an overproduction of greenhouse gases—and there is now more carbon in the air than at any point in the last 15 million years, leading him to open, grimly, with the warning, “It is worse, much worse, than you think.” So it is, and even if the author allows that we have the tools we need to stop transformative climate change, from carbon taxes to carbon capture and a conversion to renewable energy, we lack anything like the political or economic will to alter our course. The results will be catastrophic, from untold millions of environmental refugees to summers that, even in Scandinavia, will be accompanied by killer heat waves. Wallace-Wells rightly muses over the fact that, for all our devotion to end-of-the-world scenarios in science-fiction books and films, too many of us continue to believe that the scientists warning of these dire matters are “simply crying wolf.” Witness the sitting president, who considers himself too smart to believe that the climate is changing and that there’s still plenty of time to do something about it. There’s not, Wallace-Wells writes, leaving us with only a few alternatives, ranging from the hope that some technological miracle can be ginned up to the darker impulse to “normalize
climate suffering at the same pace we accelerate it…forgetting all that we had ever said about the absolute moral unacceptability of the conditions of the world we are passing through in the present tense, and blithely.” If you weren’t alarmed already, Wallace-Wells sounds the tocsin of toxicity. An urgent, necessary book.
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narrative, Verini brings us vivid and often heartbreaking stories of everyday Iraqis, occupied and humiliated for eons, enduring yet another war “that nevertheless would not be happening, at least not in this way, if not for the American war that preceded it.” The invasion of Mosul was conducted by the Counter-Terrorism Service, which “had put the first real puncture in the [IS] defenses” in 2016, as well as multiple divisions of the Iraqi army, the Iraqi federal police, and international forces. The official end of combat, in Mosul, occurred in July 2017. Verini’s account is startlingly candid and informed, and the author has clearly benefited from some years of distance. He manages to effectively convey the complicated mess on all sides: American, Iraqi, IS. After the months of fighting, Mosul “looked as though a vindictive god had wiped his hand across the city.” In the battle, writes the author, “twelve hundred Iraqi soldiers were killed,” and while “no one will ever know how many civilians died, it was certainly in the thousands.” A deeply thoughtful boots-on-the-ground work about a topic that many of us have stopped thinking about.
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THE WITCHES ARE COMING
FENTANYL, INC. How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
West, Lindy Hachette (272 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-316-44988-5
A cornucopia of shrewd cultural observations from New York Times columnist West (Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman, 2016). In 18 pointed essays, the author addresses a variety of topics, including frivolous internet sensation Grumpy Cat, South Park, Guy Fieri, and the global significance of abortion rights and gender equality. In West’s opening tirade, she denounces Donald Trump’s repetitive usage of the term “witch hunt” while scrutinizing his uncanny “ability to conjure reality out of hot air and spittle.” This essay serves as the launching pad for further pieces exposing the sorry state of contemporary American politics and popular culture. Tough, irritated, and eager to speak her truth, the author expounds on the unifying aspects of visibility and activism to cultivate change, especially when countering the denigration of women. Her sharp wit and no-nonsense sense of humor also shine through her dissection of the work of Adam Sandler, Gwyneth Paltrow’s diet plan (her avocado smoothie “could give diarrhea an existential crisis”), and how movies like Clue shaped her perspectives and appreciation for one-liners and physical comedy. West rarely minces words, especially regarding documentaries on the Ted Bundy murders and the Fyre Festival or when expressing her sheer appreciation for the legacy of Joan Rivers, and her writing is fluid and multifaceted. Though she often rages at social injustice, she also becomes solemnly poetic when discussing her fondness for the drizzly Pacific Northwest, where she was raised and still resides, a place where she can still feel her deceased father’s presence “in the ridges and grooves of my city—we are close, superimposed, separated only by time, and what’s that? This is the only religion I can relate to.” Only occasionally are the smoothly written essays hijacked by intrusive asides—e.g., her experience inside a proselytizing Uber driver’s car, a scene wedged into her reflections on climate change. Though uneven at times, the author drives home the critical issues of our time while taking time to tickle our funny bones. Satirical, raw, and unapologetically real, West delivers the bittersweet truths on contemporary living.
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Westhoff, Ben Atlantic Monthly (356 pp.) $27.00 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-0-8021-2743-3
How a lethal synthetic opioid and its manufacturer is creating a global drug
addiction crisis. In 2013, investigative journalist Westhoff (Original Gangstas: Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and the Birth of West Coast Rap, 2016) began researching potently addictive street drugs, and he learned about Fentanyl and other “novel psychoactive substances” while writing about “why so many people were dying at raves.” The author describes Fentanyl and synthetic drugs (including K2 and Spice) as formerly medically sound panaceas whose formulas were hijacked and re-created with unpredictable potencies and physical effects. The staggering statistics he presents tell a much darker tale, as he shows how Fentanyllaced cocaine and other new psychoactive substances are killing thousands of people. In order to uncover the origin of the epidemic and the epic race to develop effective deterrent systems, the author seamlessly blends past and present in his profiles of Belgian chemist Paul Janssen, who was responsible for Fentanyl’s initial development in 1959; police officers; politicians; LSD drug kingpins, and St. Louis street dealers. While promising, the harm-reduction initiatives remain diluted beneath the shifting weight and influence of political red tape, global capitalism, and the biological and psychological bondage of drug dependency. Perhaps most compelling is Westhoff ’s undercover infiltration of several rogue Chinese drug operations. Some operate covertly, while others are blatantly transparent since China offers subsidies to companies manufacturing and distributing Fentanyl components. Also fascinating is the author’s charting of Fentanyl’s circulation from darknet marketplaces to overseas postal stops to regional distribution. While international interceptive efforts like “Operation Denial” have helped in the apprehension of the upper echelon of major distributors, they have failed to collar Fentanyl trafficking network kingpin Jian Zhang, who is believed to be largely responsible for the steady flow of the drug into the global market. Drawing material from official reports, drug databases, scores of interviews, and years of personal research, Westhoff presents an unflinching, illuminating portrait of a festering crisis involving a drug industry that thrives as effectively as it kills. Highly sobering, exemplary reportage delivered through richly detailed scenarios and diversified perspectives.
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Shelve this one alongside Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Mitchell Jackson’s Survival Math, and Imani Perry’s Breathe. self - portrait in black and white
THIS VIEW OF LIFE Completing the Darwinian Revolution
Williams, Thomas Chatterton Norton (208 pp.) $25.95 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-0-393-60886-1
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SELF-PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE Unlearning Race
Wilson, David Sloan Pantheon (304 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 26, 2019 978-1-101-87020-4
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An excellent argument that evolution applies to culture as well as organisms. Most people, the uneducated included, have no objection to the concept of the Darwinian evolution of plants and animals. Evolution of humans won over scientists long ago. Applied to human behavior in the form of politics, economics, business, and war, evolutionary theories existed before Darwin but acquired a bad reputation by equating Darwinian “fitness” with wealth, social status, and belligerence. Evolutionary biologist Wilson (Biology and Anthropology/Binghamton Univ.; Does Altruism Exist?: Cul ture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others, 2015, etc.), the president of the Evolution Institute, points out that the 20th century was nearly over before scientists began to examine human institutions without the ideological distraction of social Darwinism. Ironically, this happened because of spectacular advances in biology, especially genetics: “Evolution…became associated with an incapacity for change (being stuck with our genes), with our capacity for change somehow residing outside the orbit of evolution. The term ‘Social Darwinism’ helps to buttress this bizarre configuration of ideas in ways that are almost childish, once they are seen clearly.” A masterful educator, Wilson begins with basics and then carefully amplifies them. To understand any product of evolution (a hand, cancer, aggression), one must address four areas: function, history, mechanism, and how it develops. A snowflake may be more complex than a hand, but it doesn’t qualify because it has no function. The problem of evil torments theologians but yields to evolutionary analysis. Thus, altruism seems a trait for wimps because selfish individuals prosper, but a group where everyone cooperates always outcompetes a group with selfish members. The author emphasizes that cultural evolution is a multilevel process. A learned behavior spreads by benefiting individuals compared to other individuals in the same group or the whole group compared to competing groups. One of the major advances in modern biology receives a splendid overview. (b/w illustrations)
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A standout memoir that digs into vital contemporary questions of race and self-image—among the most relevant, “What is proximity to the idea of whiteness worth and what does color cost? And the reverse?” Williams (Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture, 2010), a 2019 New America Fellow and contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, moves away from the “Black Man” label to offer a chronicle of why he is aiming to think of himself as “an ex–Black Man.” Raised in the 1980s in New Jersey by a “black” father and a “white” mother, the author grew up thinking of himself as black. The trigger for writing this lyrical, incisive memoir was the birth of his daughter in 2013, followed by a son. They are also mixedrace given the author’s marriage to Valentine, a Frenchwoman. (The family resides in Paris.) Though Williams is determined to move beyond categorizations of “black” and “white,” in order to communicate clearly in this memoir, he knows he must rely heavily “on our language’s descriptive conventions,” which he explains in the opening author’s note. We see the author’s psychological struggle as he thinks through the conundrums, including what the confusion might mean for his white-looking children. In the hands of a lesser writer, the back and forth of his pondering could have sunk the memoir. However, it succeeds spectacularly for three main reasons: the author’s relentlessly investigative thought process, consistent candor, and superb writing style. Almost every page contains at least one sentence so resonant that it bears rereading for its impact. The lengthy prologue is grounded heavily in discussions of race as a social construct. Part 1 takes readers through Williams’ adolescence, Part 2 through his marriage, and Part 3 through dealing with his family on both sides. In the epilogue, the author speculates on “the shape of things to come.” Shelve this one alongside Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Mitchell Jackson’s Survival Math, and Imani Perry’s Breathe. An insightful, indispensable memoir.
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THE ADVENTURES OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT
FALL AND RISE The Story of 9/11
Zuckoff, Mitchell Harper/HarperCollins (624 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 30, 2019 978-0-06-227564-6
Wulf, Andrea Illus. by Melcher, Lillian Pantheon (272 pp.) $29.95 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-1-5247-4737-4
A delightful recounting, in word and image, of the work of a pioneering scientist and world traveler. “Do you really remember all the plants you’ve ever seen?” “Of course!” So replied Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the famed explorer and naturalist, to a colleague’s query, adding, “I can remember even the smallest detail for years—from the shape of a leaf to the color of soil, the layering of a rock or a temperature reading. Why wouldn’t I?” Humboldt wasn’t bragging unnecessarily. Neither does his biographer, Wulf (The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, 2015, etc.), when she points out that he was the first naturalist to ask some of the critical questions that would later guide scientific investigations into plate tectonics, evolution, geomorphology, vulcanology, meteorology, and countless other fields—to say nothing of the fact that just about every continent bears names that honor his presence, intellectual or physical. In this “work of graphic nonfiction (for want of a better term),” Wulf teams with illustrator Melcher, whose work is whimsical, even a touch primitive—deliberately, one presumes, to fit the exploratory mood of the text. There are hidden depths in the artwork, however, for Melcher does wonders with collages and renderings that would do Joseph Cornell proud, making use of contemporary illustrations, modern photographs, and excerpts from Humboldt’s own handwritten manuscripts. (In one charming aside on a certain pelagic bird, Wulf notes, “I just wanted to note that Lillian Melcher didn’t draw the penguin…it looks very similar to her style, but I assure you that I sketched it in Callao.”) Readers new to Humboldt will surely find themselves fascinated by a man who went everywhere, saw everything, and spoke with the luminaries of his time, from Jefferson to Napoleon. And those who have already read and admired The Invention of Nature will enjoy this delightful graphic presentation. Alexander von Humboldt himself would doubtless have approved. A pleasure for students of science, art, and their intersections.
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A meticulously delineated, detailed, graphic history of the events of 9/11 in New York City, at the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Working at the Boston Globe as an investigative journalist, Zuckoff (Journalism/Boston Univ.; 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi, 2014, etc.) spent months after 9/11 publishing pieces on the tragedy’s victims and their families and friends. He decided to revisit the personal sagas so that future generations of readers will fully understand this watershed moment in American history. The author divides the book into three sections: what happened inside the cabins and cockpits of the four hijacked planes; what happened on the ground at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania countryside; and reports on what happened to some of the survivors after 9/11. Zuckoff mostly avoids references to the hijackers’ possible motivations as well as speculation on why the government failed to halt the sometimes-amateurish terrorist plot despite multiple warnings from alert sources. The author also eschews lengthy commentary on the massive reduction in civil liberties in the U.S. as governments at all levels implemented drastic policies to halt future terrorist attacks. In each of the three sections, Zuckoff offers a cross-section of widely representative individuals and then builds the relentlessly compelling narrative around those real-life protagonists. Despite the story’s sprawling cast, which could have sabotaged a book by a less-skilled author, Zuckoff ably handles all of the complexities. Even readers who might normally balk at reliving 9/11 and its aftermath are quite likely to find the accounts of gruesome deaths, seemingly miraculous survivals, and courageous first responders difficult to set aside for an emotional break. In two appendices, the author provides a “timeline of key events” and a list of “the nearly three thousand names as they appear inscribed in bronze on the 9/11 Memorial in New York.” Zuckoff did not set out to write a feel-good book, and the subject matter is unquestionably depressing at times. Nonetheless, as contemporary history, Fall and Rise is a clear and moving success.
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HIS HIDEOUS HEART Thirteen of Edgar Allan Poe’s Most Unsettling Tales Reimagined Ed. by Adler, Dahlia Flatiron Books (480 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-250-30277-9
INTERNMENT
Ahmed, Samira Little, Brown (304 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 19, 2019 978-0-316-52269-4 Layla was a regular American teenager until the new Islamophobic president enacted Exclusion Laws. Muslims are being rounded up, their books burned, and their bodies encoded |
with identification numbers. Neighbors are divided, and the government is going after resisters. Layla and her family are interned in the California desert along with thousands of other Muslim Americans, but she refuses to accept the circumstances of her detention, plotting to take down the system. She quickly learns that resistance is no joke: Two hijabi girls are beaten and dragged away screaming after standing up to the camp director. There are rumors of people being sent to black-op sites. Some guards seem sympathetic, but can they be trusted? Taking on Islamophobia and racism in a Trump-like America, Ahmed’s (Love, Hate & Other Filters, 2018) magnetic, gripping narrative, written in a deeply humane and authentic tone, is attentive to the richness and complexity of the social ills at the heart of the book. Layla grows in consciousness as she begins to understand her struggle not as an individual accident of fate, but as part of an experience of oppression she shares with millions. This work asks the question many are too afraid to confront: What will happen if xenophobia and racism are allowed to fester and grow unabated? A reminder that even in a world filled with divisions and right-wing ideology, young people will rise up and demand equality for all. (Realistic fiction. 13-18)
special issue: best books of 2019
A genre-bending collection of 13 twists on Edgar Allan Poe’s works. Editor Adler (contributor: It’s a Whole Spiel, 2019, etc.) does Poe proud with this creepy and atmospheric set of stories inspired by a handful of his most wellknown works. All are well worth reading, but there are quite a few standouts, including Rin Chupeco’s (contributor: Hungry Hearts, 2019, etc.) ebullient “The Murders in the Rue Apartelle, Boracay,” in which an effervescent Filipina trans woman joins up with her dashing new half-French, half-Filipino boyfriend to solve the baffling murders of two American tourists on the island of Boracay. Lamar Giles’ (The Last Last-Day-of-Summer, 2019, etc.) unsettling “The Oval Filter” features African American football star Tariq, whose dead girlfriend’s distorted images appear on his phone—and they seem to be trying to tell him something. “The Fall of the Bank of Usher” by Fran Wilde (The Fire Opal Mechanism, 2019, etc.) is an adrenaline rush of a tale about assumed white orphans Rik and Mad, brother and sister twins, who must hack their way out of an intimidating Scottish bank for a life-changing prize—a challenge many before them have failed. Strong feminist themes appear throughout, and genres run the gamut from futuristic to gothic and lots in between. Diversity in race, gender identity, and sexuality is well represented. As a bonus, all of the original stories and poems are included. Poe’s ghost happily haunts this fresh, delightfully dark collection. (author bios) (Anthology. 14-adult)
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LOVE FROM A TO Z
Ali, S.K. Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $18.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-5344-4272-6 Zayneb is an 18-year-old hijabi from Indiana—and she was just suspended for standing up to her Islamophobic teacher. Now she’s on her way to Doha to spend two weeks with her cool aunt Nandy and forget about her troubles at school. On the flight, Zayneb meets Adam, who converted to Islam at age 11 after his mom—Auntie Nandy’s best friend—died from multiple sclerosis. Enamored with each other, Adam and Zayneb begin to share their life stories: Adam is keeping a huge secret from his father and sister, Zayneb hasn’t shared with her aunt why she’s been suspended, and both are mourning loved ones. Slowly, they fall in love, but their different experiences of dealing with racism and pain threaten to drive them apart. The novel’s dual narrative structure uses raw, earnest journal entries to guide readers through the painful realities of the Islamophobia and racism that permeate all levels of society. Zayneb’s story shows how the smallest incidents have trickle-down effects that dehumanize
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The raw emotion splashed across the pages will resonate deeply. the weight of our sky
Muslims and devalue Muslim lives in some people’s eyes. This is a refreshing depiction of religiosity and spirituality coexisting with so-called “normal” young adult relationships and experiences: What makes Zayneb and Adam different is not their faith but their ability to learn from and love one another in a world hurling obstacles their way. Zayneb is half Pakistani and half West Indian; Adam is Canadian of Chinese and Finnish descent. Heartfelt and powerful. (Fiction. 13-18)
THE WEIGHT OF OUR SKY
Alkaf, Hanna Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster (288 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-1-5344-2608-5 A girl battling mental illness searches for her mother during the historic race riots of 1969 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Sixteen-year-old Melati Ahmad, a Malaysian of Malay descent, has obsessive-compulsive disorder. Mel believes a djinn has taken over her consciousness and if she doesn’t placate it by counting in threes—her compulsive behavior—all her loved ones will die, and it’ll all be her fault. On May 13, the first day of the riots, Mel is saved by Auntie Bee, a ChineseMalaysian stranger, and forced to leave her best friend, Saf, for dead. Wracked with guilt, Mel must battle her rising anxiety and the Djinn’s accusatory voice to find her missing mother. While the war between the Chinese and Malays rages on, Mel finds an ally in Auntie Bee’s son, Vince. Armed with a Red Cross curfew pass, Mel and Vince scour the city helping those in need. When faced with a life-or-death situation, Mel digs deep and finds the inner strength to confront the Djinn and stand up for what she believes in. This is a brutally honest, no-holds-barred reimagining of the time: The evocative voice transports readers to 1960s Malaysia, and the brisk pace is enthralling. Above all, the raw emotion splashed across the pages will resonate deeply, no matter one’s race or religion. Unabashedly rooted in the author’s homeland and confronting timely topics and challenging themes, this book has broad appeal for teen readers. (Historical fiction. 14-18)
JOE QUINN’S POLTERGEIST
Almond, David Illus. by McKean, Dave Candlewick (80 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-5362-0160-4 A newly illustrated edition of Almond’s psychologically acute tale of ghosts and grief in a small British town. Originally published in the autobiographical Half a Creature From the Sea (2015), the atmospheric narrative is placed within 52
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equally shadowed, evocative scenes, sepia sketches alternating with painterly, often nightmarishly jumbled portraits or visions. Wounded souls battling tides of anger and loss abound: from inwardly focused narrator Davie, still hurting in the wake of his baby sister’s death, to the people around him, notably Joe Quinn, a mercurial youth with a dad in jail, a giddy mum, and, he claims, a household poltergeist. In the end the author leaves it to readers to decide whether the “ghost” is real or just Joe, but after a vicious fight with Joe followed by a bit of shared moongazing, Davie’s initial skepticism is transformed to a deeper feeling that has something of empathy to it: “I know the poltergeist is all of us, raging and wanting to scream and to fight and to start flinging stuff; to smash and to break.” The art amplifies the characteristically dark, rich tones of Almond’s prose all the way to a final Dylan Thomas–style promise that “the world and all that’s in it will continue to…hold us in its darkness and its light.” The cast is a presumed white one. A keen collaboration moving seamlessly between worlds inner and outer, natural and supernatural. (Graphic novella. 12-16)
ONE PERSON, NO VOTE (YA EDITION) How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally
Anderson, Carol with Bolden, Tonya Bloomsbury (288 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-1-5476-0107-3 This YA adaptation of Anderson’s breakthrough 2018 book of the same name for adults demonstrates her scholarship on racial discrimination and voter disenfranchisement, presenting an urgent case for political intervention. “The millions of votes and voters that disappeared in 2016 were a long time in the making,” begins this deep historical investigation. The excitement of the Reconstruction era, when newly enfranchised black men were able to leverage such transformative policies as the shaping of the public school system, led to white people inventing de facto and de jure mechanisms to prevent black America from having any real political power. Civil rights struggles achieved the 1965 Voting Rights Act in a period of U.S. global ideological competition, but simmering anger and backlash from whites strove to undo voter protections for black citizens. Coverage of the controversial 2000 presidential election results shows how the GOP–led reinvention of voter disenfranchisement strategies undermined federal government–backed voter protections in order to focus on eliminating voter fraud. Persuasively emphasized throughout the book is the disproportionate impact of these policies on black citizens, as Anderson argues with clarity that predatory racial animus lies at the center of the American democratic project, culminating with the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Bolden’s (Inventing Victoria, 2019, etc.) adaptation will fire up a new generation of civic activists through its gripping presentation.
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SHOUT
Anderson, Laurie Halse Viking (304 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 12, 2019 978-0-670-01210-7
WE RULE THE NIGHT Bartlett, Claire Eliza Little, Brown (400 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-0-316-41727-3
Flight, friendship, and feminism collide in this fantasy that draws heavy inspiration from the Soviet female bomber pilots of World War II known as the Night Witches. In this USSR influenced world, war seems eternal. Every Union resource is dedicated to the war; women use their spark magic to power the technology that shapes living metal into war machines while men and boys die on the front. Linné, the daughter of a general who dressed as a boy to join the war, and Revna, the disabled daughter of a convicted traitor, are each angry at a world that doesn’t have a place they belong, which brings them both to an experimental |
women’s flight regiment. The richly textured world, painted in snow and fire, filled with disparate, diverse people who all want to win the war, is background to a powerful, slow burning story that develops Linné and Revna’s reluctant friendship, their growing understanding of the world, and their emerging identities as soldiers who may not entirely trust the country they are willing to die for. Undercurrents of religion, hypocrisy, betrayal, and honor roil beneath the alternating third-person perspectives; hints of possible romances and likely bigger battles to come seem to promise a sequel or two. Linné is bronze-skinned and Revna is pale; descriptions assume a white default. A fierce and compelling breakout debut that should not be missed. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 13-adult)
SERIOUS MOONLIGHT
Bennett, Jenn Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $18.99 | Apr. 16, 2019 978-1-5344-2514-9 Birdie Lindberg, a lover of detective novels, teams up with her one-time hookup Daniel Aoki to solve a mystery at the historic Seattle hotel where they work. After years of being home-schooled by her strict, recently deceased grandmother, orphaned 18-yearold Birdie’s circle of friends is limited to three adults: her widowed grandpa, Hugo (with whom she lives on Bainbridge Island); her free-spirited–artist honorary aunt, Mona Rivera; and Ms. Patty, co-owner of her favorite refuge in the city, the Moonlight Diner. So when Birdie, who’s white and has undiagnosed narcolepsy, starts a night shift at a historic hotel, she’s gobsmacked to bump into co-worker Daniel, a handsome half-Japanese/halfwhite boy with whom she shared a romantic-turned-awkward night before fleeing the scene. Remembering Birdie’s love of mysteries, Daniel—who’s 19 and a magic aficionado—suggests they investigate whether a regular guest is actually Raymond Darke, the pen name of a reclusive bestselling local mystery author. Bennett (Starry Eyes, 2018, etc.) excels at nuanced characterization, portraying deeply felt first love and offering readers well-researched diversity (Mona is Puerto Rican, Daniel’s deaf in one ear and has grandparents who survived the Japanese American internment). The mystery theme is compelling (each chapter opens with a quote from a famous sleuth), but it’s the way Birdie and Daniel navigate an emotional and physical relationship—despite their sensitively handled issues—that’s truly memorable. An atmospheric, multilayered, sex-positive romance from the talented Bennett. (Fiction. 14-18)
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“This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.” The award-winning author, who is also a rape survivor, opens up in this powerful free-verse memoir, holding nothing back. Part 1 begins with her father’s lifelong struggle as a World War II veteran, her childhood and rape at 13 by a boy she liked, the resulting downward spiral, her recovery during a year as an exchange student in Denmark, and the dream that gave her Melinda, Speak’s (1999) protagonist. Part 2 takes readers through her journey as a published author and National Book Award finalist. She recalls some of the many stories she’s heard during school visits from boys and girls who survived rape and sexual abuse and calls out censorship that has prevented some speaking engagements. In Part 3, she wraps up with poems about her family roots. The verse flows like powerful music, and Anderson’s narrative voice is steady and direct: “We should teach our girls / that snapping is OK, / instead of waiting / for someone else to break them.” The poems range in length from a pair of two-line stanzas to several pages. Readers new to Anderson will find this accessible. It’s a strong example of how lived experience shapes art and an important book for the #MeToo movement. Necessary for every home, school, and public library. (resources) (Verse memoir. 13-adult)
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A significant people’s history and call to action for youth. (discussion guide, resources, notes, photo credits, index) (Nonfiction. 13-18)
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the best ya books of 2019: crossing boundaries After many hours spent reading, sorting, and resorting, I came to some difficult decisions and settled on the 75 top YA titles of the year. It is in the nature of teens to question limits and to seek truth, and in a world where borders and barriers are becoming increasingly calcified, I noted with interest how many 2019 titles featured growth as a consequence of crossing boundaries both literal and figurative. Here are just four examples to pick up, each a superlative work of literature showing how being lifted completely out of one’s element is a catalyst for development. Someday We Will Fly by Rachel DeWoskin (Viking, Jan. 22) highlights the experiences of Jews who fled to Shanghai during World War II seeking to escape the Nazis. Focusing on one Polish family—Lillia, her baby sister, and their Papa—it explores many layers of displacement and dislocation, as European Jews settled in a Chinese city that was occupied by the Japanese. Lillia and her family are traumatized, fear that their high-spirited Mama has been lost to them forever, and are uncertain what the future may hold, but they must find the will to carry on and adapt to a new culture and language. Lillia’s crush on a Chinese boy and her intrepid interest in exploring her new city uplift this tale of survival and human connection in the most desperate of circumstances. In Forward Me Back to You by Mitali Perkins (FSG, April 2), two American teens travel to Kolkata to volunteer with survivors of trafficking. Bostonian Robin has wealthy white parents who adopted him from an orphanage in India. He feels adrift and uncertain as well as curious about his birth mother and the circumstances surrounding his early years. Jujitsu champion Katina comes from Oakland. Following a disciplinary incident at the private school she attends on scholarship that highlights entrenched inequities, she accompanies Robin’s church youth group on a summer mission trip. Both teens are very much outside their element, and the people they meet in India challenge their expectations and help them learn 54
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to truly listen to others rather than assuming they know what is best. Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay (Kokila, Jun. 18) follows Jay, a biracial (Filipino/white) Michigan senior who spends spring break visiting family in the Philippines and investigating the mysterious death of his cousin Jun, apparently killed as a result of Duterte’s harsh anti-drug policies. Jay wrestles with remorse and imposter syndrome. He stopped replying to Jun’s letters when he met a girl he liked, and while he chafes when white friends act like “not seeing race” is a compliment, he also realizes that he has much to learn about Filipino culture. Although brief, his time in the Philippines is revelatory both for him and his grieving, wounded relatives. Jay gains new perspectives on his identity, his beliefs about the Philippines and the U.S., and his options for the future. In Thanhhà Lai’s Butterfly Yellow (HarperCollins, Sept. 3) Hăng is a Vietnamese refugee newly arrived in Texas, seeking the younger brother she has been separated from for years following her misguided effort to get them both to safety; LeeRoy is the son of East Coast academics who dreams of becoming a rodeo cowboy. What happens after their paths cross ends up answering both their needs, although not in a way either of them could anticipate. Hăng’s disorientation is conveyed effectively, showing her to be a young woman of courage and purpose, a survivor of trauma who evokes sympathy but never pity. Motivated by love and guilt, a sense of urgency drives her forward. LeeRoy, meanwhile, is quite sure his parents’ goals aren’t right for him, and he’s reaching for a tantalizing fantasy world. Each of these books, and many others from this year’s list, offers a reminder that we have much to gain from deliberately putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations where we must reexamine everything we believe to be true and shake up comfortable mindsets. At a time when many fear or actively shun those who are different, works like these are of tremendous importance. —L.S. Laura Simeon is the young adult editor.
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A historical account that mirrors many of today’s headlines. accused!
Berry, Julie Viking (512 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-0-451-46993-9
MOMENTOUS EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF A CACTUS Bowling, Dusti Sterling (272 pp.) $16.95 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-1-4549-3329-8 Series: Life of a Cactus
In the sequel to Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus (2017), Aven Green confronts her biggest challenge yet: surviving high school without arms. Fourteen-year-old Aven has just settled into life at Stagecoach Pass with her adoptive parents when everything changes again. She’s entering high school, which means that 2,300 new kids will stare at her missing arms—and her feet, which do almost everything hands can (except, alas, air quotes). Aven resolves to be “blasé” and field her classmates’ pranks with aplomb, but a humiliating betrayal shakes her self-confidence. Even her friendships feel unsteady. Her friend Connor’s moved |
away and made a new friend who, like him, has Tourette’s syndrome: a girl. And is Lando, her friend Zion’s popular older brother, being sweet to Aven out of pity—or something more? Bowling keenly depicts the universal awkwardness of adolescence and the particular self-consciousness of navigating a disability. Aven’s “armless-girl problems” realistically grow thornier in this outing, touching on such tough topics as death and aging, but warm, quirky secondary characters lend support. A few preachy epiphanies notwithstanding, Aven’s honest, witty voice shines—whether out-of-reach vending-machine snacks are “taunting” her or she’s nursing heartaches. A subplot exploring Aven’s curiosity about her biological father resolves with a touching twist. Most characters, including Aven, appear white; Zion and Lando are black. Those preparing to “slay the sucktastic beast known as high school” will particularly appreciate this spirited read. (Fiction. 12-14)
ACCUSED! The Trials of the Scottsboro Boys: Lies, Prejudice, and the Fourteenth Amendment
Brimner, Larry Dane Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills (192 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-62979-775-5
special issue: best books of 2019
Love’s enduring power faces off against the horrors of war in this sumptuous Greek mythology–inspired romantic page-turner. In a Manhattan hotel on the eve of World War II, Hephaestus catches his wife, Aphrodite, in a compromising position with his brother Ares. To exonerate herself of the crime of adultery, she weaves an intricate tale of mortal love during wartime that demonstrates the endurance of the human spirit. Vacillating between the present and the past, the goddess’s narrative centers on Aubrey, an African American musician; Colette, a Belgian singer; Hazel, a wide-eyed British pianist; and her paramour, James, an aspiring architect (the latter three are white), who are all brought together by happenstance during the First World War. The resulting interweaving story is an epic of Shakespearean emotional depth and arresting visual imagery that nonetheless demonstrates the racism and sexism of the period. Scheherazade has nothing on Berry (The Emperor’s Ostrich, 2017, etc.), whose acute eye for detail renders the glittering lights of Paris as dreamlike in their beauty as the soul-sucking trenches on the French front are nightmarishly real. The mortal characters are all vibrant, original, and authentic, but none is more captivating than the goddess of love herself, who teaches her husband that love is an art form worthy of respect and admiration. An unforgettable romance so Olympian in scope, human at its core, and lyrical in its prose that it must be divinely inspired. (Fiction. 13-adult)
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LOVELY WAR
Brimner (Blacklisted!, 2018, etc.) revisits the history of injustice in America. Brimner has extensively researched the heartbreaking story of the suffering and stolen futures of nine African American teens falsely accused of the rape of two white women in Alabama in 1931, laying all the facts on the table in a concise, gripping volume. The engaging, easy-to-follow text will draw readers into a historical account that mirrors many of today’s headlines. Ultimately, it took over 80 years for justice to finally be served for these young men; they were not fully exonerated until 2013. In the meantime, they were nearly lynched, attacked and beaten by guards, and faced execution. Even after they were released from prison, their lives were ruined, and they were never able to fully recover. The text is enhanced with primary sources including photos, newspaper clippings, ephemera, and court documents that give readers a sense of immediacy. The author’s note provides context about the enduring impact of the trials. This volume stands as a reminder to readers that lies have consequences and that no matter how long it takes, “We need to right the wrongs that have been done in the past.” The parallels between the perils the Scottsboro Boys endured and current news stories show the continued relevance of this history, making this a must-have for both school and public libraries. Engaging and historically accurate; highly recommended. (author’s note, bibliography, source notes, index, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 13-adult)
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@RHCBEducators Visit RHTeachersLibrarians.com, your online destination for all the resources you need for your school or library!
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Deeply emotional and evocative. last bus to everland
LAST BUS TO EVERLAND
Cameron, Sophie Roaring Brook (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-250-14993-0 Bullied by two of his female classmates, Scottish teen Brody Fair is saved by a handsome Spanish boy wearing blue fairy wings. Nico Clark Calderón invites Brody— via an invitation written on an origami lily—to meet him on an Edinburgh hill on Thursday at 11:21 p.m. precisely. Charmed and eager to see Nico again, Brody sneaks out and enters Everland— a magical place where no one dies and the passage of time is ambiguous. At home, Brody, who is white, feels invisible to his overworked mother and agoraphobic father, caught between his gifted older brother and intense younger sister. In Everland, he is the drummer in a band and unafraid of being out as gay. He encounters a gang of misfits escaping their realities, including bisexual Argentinian Dani; Muslim Zahra, whose mother has multiple sclerosis; talented but stressed Japanese violinist Miyumi; and Polish Kasia, whose ex-girlfriend stopped coming to Everland. Challenges at home and changes in Everland eventually force Brody to make a difficult decision. Brody is a protagonist worth caring about; his insecurities and struggles are genuine and sympathetic, as is his temptation to run away and never look back. With empathy, Cameron (Out of the Blue, 2018) creates a cast in which every character is prone to being misjudged and has depth beyond their face value. She seamlessly weaves the two worlds together, creating a story that is deeply emotional and evocative. For the lost and misunderstood. (Magical realism. 13-18)
HUNGRY HEARTS 13 Tales of Food & Love
Ed. by Chapman, Elsie & Richmond, Caroline Tung Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $18.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-1-5344-2185-1 A collection of 13 #ownvoices stories that amplify the central role food plays in families and cultures. The web of stories in this anthology unfolds in Hungry Heart Row, a neighborhood where myriad cafes, bakeries, and restaurants abound, renowned for their great food, unsurpassed hospitality, and—in some cases—magical meals to cure every malady. In Sandhya Menon’s (There’s Some thing About Sweetie, 2019, etc.) “Grand Ishq Adventure,” Neha writes a blog and has no problem advising her readers what to do, but her own love life is going nowhere—until she takes some of her own advice. The heroine in “Panadería-Pastelería” by Anna-Marie McLemore (Blanca & Roja, 2018, etc.) expresses 58
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herself through the language of baking rather than words, showing her caring through carefully chosen, lovingly made baked goods. The cast of unconventional, diverse characters—who run into one another in different stories—includes a Muslim superhero, a teen of Native (nation unspecified) and white ancestry, and a Jewish girl struggling after trauma. The stories use food and restaurant settings to frame engaging narratives connecting to themes of first love, belonging and isolation, family conflict, and loyalty, spiced up with elements of the supernatural, fantasy, and magical realism. A brilliant multicultural collection that reminds readers that stories about food are rarely just about the food alone. (map, about the authors) (Anthology. 13-adult)
BECOMING BEATRIZ
Charles, Tami Charlesbridge Teen (272 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-1-58089-778-5 In a city where “cocaine is king,” can a teenage gang leader dare to dream of another life? Newark, New Jersey. 1984. Beatriz Mendez and her older brother, Junito, lead the powerful Latin Diablos gang. Everything changes on Beatriz’s 15th birthday when a Haitian gang leaves Junito for dead and Beatriz badly injured. A Like Vanessa (2018) spinoff, this page-turner opens dramatically with a visceral fight scene that introduces a fierce protagonist. Beatriz is a Spanglish-speaking Puerto Rican badass with “a blade tucked inside [her] cheek…to use on anybody who tries to step.” In the aftermath of Junito’s death, Beatriz struggles to maintain her standing as a Diabla, raise her grades (mostly D’s and F’s), and support her grief-stricken zombie of a mother. Though “dancing ain’t gonna pay the bills,” she allows her childhood dream of becoming a dancer to glimmer through her tough exterior each week when watching her favorite TV show, Fame. Told in the first person, this narrative is full of passion and humor, with flashbacks rooted in Beatriz’s beloved salsa music. Realistic newsprint clips effectively add context. A friendship/romance with a new boy contributes depth while avoiding predictability. As Beatriz transcends her trauma and self-doubt—“No such thing as a gangbanger turned famous dancer”—readers experience a necessary portrayal of a young Afro-Latina woman who makes her own path, one that isn’t straightforward, told in an extremely realistic voice. Inspiring and fresh. (historical notes) (Fiction. 12-18)
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Courtney, Nadine Jolie Farrar, Straus and Giroux (432 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 12, 2019 978-0-374-30952-7
THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS Davis, Charlotte Nicole Tor Teen (352 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-250-29970-3
In an alternate Wild West, five girls are on the run. On the night of her sister’s debut into the world of prostitution, Aster tells Clementine to think of a song to distract herself. They are Good Luck Girls, indentured sex workers from poor, sharecropping families of a social underclass known as dustbloods. There is no outward difference between a dustblood and a fairblood, but generations ago, dustbloods had their shadows torn away, and since then their children have been born without them. When Clementine accidentally murders her first “brag,” or customer, Aster knows they must run for it. In seeking help, she unwittingly recruits three other girls itching to escape, and the five head north, |
where fairblood Violet insists a woman named Lady Ghost can help by removing their favors, mystical tattoos applied to the throats of Good Luck Girls that cannot be disguised. And thus begins their adventure, which also involves robbing men who deserve it and having to avoid vicious ghosts called vengeants and soulless, evil club bouncers/bounty hunters called raveners. Inventive language and outlaw girls are nothing new in Westerns, but debut author Davis’ richly imagined setting goes deeper than that, questioning the difference between ethics and law, exploring the complexity of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, and exposing the lengths men will go to control and constrain women. Characters have varying shades of skin, from light to dark, and hair of different colors and textures. This one is a winner. (Speculative adventure. 14-adult)
SOMEDAY WE WILL FLY DeWoskin, Rachel Viking (368 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 22, 2019 978-0-670-01496-5
During World War II, Lillia and her Polish family struggle to make a new home in Shanghai. DeWoskin (Blind, 2014, etc.) explores a rarely depicted topic: the struggles of the Shanghai Jewish refugees. Lillia’s parents, Stanislav Circus acrobats, are performing their last show when the event is raided. Her mother is lost in the confusion, and Lillia, her father, and her developmentally disabled baby sister flee Warsaw, traveling by land and sea to China. Part of Lillia rejects what is going on around her, in innocent disbelief at what people are capable of doing to one another, while another part revels in small freedoms, wandering the streets of Shanghai unmonitored, amazed at discovering a Jewish community in this foreign land. There, in a place where she begins to hate the hope she harbors that her mother will find them, Lillia both discovers new strength and plunges into new depths of desperation, driven to do things that would surprise and appall her old self. Though the instances of Chinese romanized text are missing all tonal marks that denote pronunciation and meaning, English translations are given. The vivid characters are flawed and evolve, sometimes according to or despite their circumstances. Particularly fascinating is the juxtaposition of the plight of Jewish refugees with that of the Chinese living in a Japanese-occupied Shanghai. A beautifully nuanced exploration of culture and people. (author’s note, sources, map) (Historical fiction. 13-18)
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special issue: best books of 2019
Allie Abraham is tired of being a “receptacle for unguarded Just Between Us White People ignorance” and discomfort. Moving from place to place with her Circassian Jordanian professor father and white American psychologist mother, Allie has been a chameleon, blending in as the perfect all-American girl. Very few people know that Allie is actually Alia and that both her parents are Muslim. Her mother converted upon marrying her nolonger-practicing father, who encourages his daughter to take advantage of the pale skin and reddish-blonde hair that help her avoid being profiled. Allie yearns to connect to her religion and heritage—and to her Teta, the grandmother with whom she is only able to communicate in broken Arabic. Her new boyfriend, Wells Henderson, seems so genuine and likable, unlike his father, a conservative, xenophobic cable newscaster. As Allie embraces all the parts of who she is and confronts Islamophobia, she wonders if others can fully accept her growth. The book handles the complexity and intersectionality of being a Muslim American woman with finesse, addressing many aspects of identity and Islamic opinions. Allie, who has a highly diverse friend group, examines her white-passing privilege and race as well as multiple levels of discrimination, perceptions of conversion, feminism, sexual identity, and sexuality. While grounded in the American Muslim experience, the book has universal appeal thanks to its nuanced, well-developed teen characters whose struggles offer direct parallels to many other communities. Phenomenal. (Fiction. 13-18)
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AUTHOR SP OTLIGHT
Julie Berry
Travis Tanner
It took Julie Berry a few attempts at her latest YA novel, Lovely War (Viking, March 5), before her ideas got some traction. In reading about World War II, she was repeatedly struck by how often references were made to experiences in World War I, a conflict largely glossed over in the United States due to the brevity of this country’s involvement. “I wanted to show the scope of that war, how long it was, how big it was,” Berry explains, “but I struggled to figure out how to form a young adult novel about it.” After a number of attempts, inspiration struck—from the heavens. “There really was divine inspiration,” Berry says, referring to the pantheon of divine narrators she introduced into the narrative. “I realized I needed a nonhuman perspective.” In Lovely War, a jealous Hephaestus lays a trap for cheating wife Aphrodite and her lover—his brother, Aries—in a New York hotel room. The year is 1942, and against the backdrop of man-made devastation on a global scale, the God of Fire demands that Love and War stand trial for their crimes against him. In her defense, Aphrodite says she is incapable of true love herself and offers two tales of love as evidence: those of Hazel and James and Collette and Aubrey, two couples whose lives and relationships were defined by the Great War. The goddess turns over the authorial voice to other gods as they offer testimony about the parts of the story they influenced—Aries in war, Apollo in art, and Hades in death. As the trial drags on and the Julie Berry gods weave their tale, an overarching question hangs above them all like the sword of Damocles. “This really is a story about whether true love can overcome brokenness,” Berry says, “about whether love is still even viable in this modern, nuclearized world. Personally, I don’t think I could begin to answer that question in anything other than a 400page book.” —J.F. James Feder is a New York-born, Scottish-educated writer based in Tel Aviv. 60
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THE LAST TRUE POETS OF THE SEA Drake, Julia Disney-Hyperion (400 pp.) $17.99 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-1-368-04808-8
Sixteen-year-old Violet is shuffled off to stay with her uncle in coastal Maine after her brother, Sam, tries to kill himself. The near mythic family lore of Violet’s mother, whose great-great-great-grandparents founded the fictional town of Lyric, is the thread that weaves together a host of interesting characters in this witty, surprising novel as it explores grief, mental illness, and both family and romantic dynamics. After a wild year of drinking and impersonal sex that ultimately results in Violet’s suspension from school for smoking weed near campus, she arrives in Lyric with a freshly shaven head and a vow to keep to herself. Though she cares about her kind uncle, Toby, Violet’s avoidance of her painful and difficult emotions means that she holds him at arm’s length and speaks little to her parents back in New York City or her brother, who is at a treatment center in Vermont. Slowly, through the relationships she develops with her similarly musically talented coworker Orion and his tightknit, eccentric group, Liv, Mariah, and Felix, Violet begins to contend with her own anxiety and her near paralyzing fear about her brother’s illness. Most of the characters are white; Mariah is Indian American, and several are queer. A warm, wise, strange meditation on developing the strength to be vulnerable. (Fiction. 14-18)
AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne Beacon (264 pp.) $18.95 paper | Jul. 30, 2019 978-0-8070-4939-6 Series: Revisioning American History for Young Readers, 2 A young readers’ adaptation of the groundbreaking 2014 work, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, offering an important corrective to conventional narratives of our nation’s history. Questioning the ideologies behind the belief systems that gave birth to America’s dominant origin stories, this book not only challenges the standard tale of European explorers “discovering” America, it provides an Indigenous perspective on key events. The book urges students to think critically about private property and extractive industries, land conservation and environmental rights, social activism, the definition of what it means to be “civilized,” and the role of the media in shaping
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VOICES The Final Hours of Joan of Arc
A multivoiced verse retelling of the last day of Joan of Arc’s life. Interspersed with snippets from the transcripts of the Trial of Condemnation and Trial of Nullification are monologues in verse from the individuals surrounding Joan, in actuality or in memory, on the last day of her life. The expected characters are there—Charles VII, her mother, the saints who guided her—but also other, unexpected, choices—the fire, the arrowhead that pierced her shoulder, her hair, her virginity. The title cleverly alludes to both the voices that guided Joan and the cacophony of voices in the book, all of whom take various forms that heighten their individual personality. There is concrete poetry as well as poetic forms popular during and after Joan’s time: the villanelle, the sestina, the rondeau, and the ballade. Joan herself is ethereal, wondering, and poignant. The conceit works; the variety of voices and compelling verse bring the story to life and heighten the pathos of Joan’s death. Among her last words: “…the penetrating / pain will be my ecstasy in / knowing I was true; there is nothing / I have done that I would alter / or undo.” Compelling for pleasure reading, this will also be a valuable addition to language arts lessons. An innovative, entrancing account of a popular figure that will appeal to fans of verse, history, and biography. (preface, map, author’s note, list of poetic forms) (Historical verse novel. 13-adult)
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PET
Emezi, Akwaeke Make Me a World (208 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-0-525-64707-2 Teenager Jam unwittingly animates her mother’s painting, summoning a being through a cross-dimensional portal. When Pet, giant and grotesque, bursts into her life one night, Jam learns it has emerged to hunt and needs the help of a human who can go places it cannot. Through their telekinetic connection, Jam learns that though all the monsters were thought to have been purged by the angels, one still roams the house of her best friend, Redemption, and Jam must uncover it. There’s a curious vagueness as to the nature of the banished monsters’ crimes, and it takes a few chapters to settle into Emezi’s (Freshwater, 2018) YA debut, set in an unspecified American town where people are united under the creed: “We are each other’s harvest. We are each other’s business. We are each other’s magnitude and bond,” taken from Gwendolyn Brooks’ ode to Paul Robeson. However, their lush imagery and prose coupled with nuanced inclusion of African diasporic languages and peoples creates space for individuals to broadly love and live. Jam’s parents strongly affirm and celebrate her trans identity, and Redemption’s three parents are dedicated and caring, giving Jam a second, albeit more chaotic, home. Still, Emezi’s timely and critical point, “monsters don’t look like anything,” encourages our steady vigilance to recognize and identify them even in the most idyllic of settings. This soaring novel shoots for the stars and explodes the sky with its bold brilliance. (Fantasy. 14-18)
special issue: best books of 2019
Elliott, David HMH Books (208 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 26, 2019 978-1-328-98759-4
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perceptions. With an eye to the diversity and number of Indigenous nations in America, the volume untangles the many conquerors and victims of the early colonization era and beyond. From the arrival of the first Europeans through to the 21st century, the work tackles subjects as diverse as the Dakota 38, the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee, the American Indian Movement’s takeover of Alcatraz, and the Dakota Access Pipeline resistance. A deeply felt connection to the Earth’s health permeates the text, along with the strength and resiliency that have kept Indigenous cultures alive. Maps, photographs, informative sidebars, points for discussion, and a recommended book list round out this accessible, engaging, and necessary addition to school libraries and classrooms. An excellent read, dismantling American mythologies and fostering critical reasoning about history and current events. (further reading, recommended titles, notes, image credits, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)
HOW IT FEELS TO FLOAT
Fox, Helena Dial (384 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2019 978-0-525-55429-5 An Australian teenager struggles to cope with grief and mental illness in this captivating debut. Seventeen-year-old Biz constantly sees her father even though he died nearly 10 years ago. He pops up to remind her of events from her childhood, to speak with her when she’s spiraling, to puzzle out their shared history of mental illness. She doesn’t tell anyone else: not her single mother, not her best friend, Grace (with whom she shared a kiss), not the new boy, Jasper, who walks with a limp, or his grandmother, who has taken Biz under her wing. After an incident further triggers her undiagnosed (or, at least, unnamed) PTSD, Biz begins to unravel, dropping out of school before both literally and metaphorically journeying to better understand her father. Biz’s mental health crisis, which
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primarily takes the form of hallucinations, dissociation, and panic attacks, is portrayed with raw, vivid authenticity. Biz and the majority of the cast default to white (Grace is implied biracial Chinese/white), and while their sexual identities are questioned, they never become the central focus of the story. Characters sometimes feel flat or underdeveloped, but this is fitting for Biz’s first-person perspective, which is unreliable and frequently foggy. Fox’s prose is lyrical and profoundly affecting, providing a nuanced account of the hereditary effects of trauma. Haunting. (resources) (Fiction. 14-18)
I WAS THEIR AMERICAN DREAM A Graphic Memoir
Gharib, Malaka Illus. by the author Clarkson Potter (160 pp.) $16.99 paper | Apr. 30, 2019 978-0-525-57511-5 A graphic memoir about being half Filipino, half Egyptian—and 100 % American. After her parents’ divorce, debut author Gharib spent her school years with her Filipino relatives in Cerritos, California, and summers with her father and his new family in Egypt. She honestly recounts the challenges she faced as a biracial child trying to appease both sides of her family, providing detailed (and oftentimes humorous) insights into her parents’ cultural differences, both significant (her mother is Catholic while her father is Muslim) and nuanced (food, etiquette, expectations for her behavior). Gharib thoughtfully explores the gradations of diversity and what they meant to different people. In elementary school, Filipino classmates commented on her less-than-Filipino name and appearance. In high school, surrounded mostly by students of color but still feeling marginalized due to her bicultural, biracial heritage, she was criticized for her obsession with white culture. Readers also experience Gharib’s transition to college and her first job—far away from her family and requiring huge adjustments as she entered mostly white worlds. She eventually married Darren, a white man from Tennessee. Charmingly unsophisticated illustrations, predominantly—and appropriately—colored in red, white, and blue, and Gharib’s authentic voice make her story personable and accessible. Dispersed throughout are unique interactives, including a bingo chart of microaggressions, a mini zine tutorial, and Tagalog flashcards. A heartwarming tribute to immigrant families and their descendants trying to live the American dream. (Graphic memoir. 13-adult)
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SPIN
Giles, Lamar Scholastic (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 29, 2019 978-1-338-21921-0 Two African American teens who dislike each other find themselves working together to solve the murder of a mutual friend. Kya Caine and Fatima “Fuse” Fallon were both in the orbit of Paris Secord, aka DJ ParSec. Kya and Paris were friends from their neighborhood, while Fuse’s skill with social media made her the ideal person to promote this music among #ParSecNation fans. On the night Paris is murdered, both girls happen on the scene within minutes of each other; her death is a blow, and their shock and pain run deep. When they are briefly kidnapped by #DarkNation, a group of violent, extreme fans, they put their differences behind them to find the killer. The young women come from different worlds: Kya, the daughter of a hardworking single parent, resents upper-middle-class Fuse. But the drive to find answers before #DarkNation or the killer strike again propels them. They agree on the likely culprit and know their best chance of proving their guilt will occur during the high-energy commingling of everyone touched by the rising star and her music in an upcoming memorial concert. This is genre fiction at its best: a taut mystery with rich characterization and a strong sense of place. Social realities, such as class and family dynamics, add depth. The depiction of the grassroots music scene that feeds hip-hop and keeps it cutting edge is seamlessly woven into the narrative. Not to be missed. (Mystery. 12-18)
LET’S CALL IT A DOOMSDAY
Henry, Katie Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 6, 2019 978-0-06-269890-2 Ellis Kimball has faith in the imminent end of the world. She’s failed her driving test twice because fears of hitting elderly pedestrians prevent her from even starting the car. She stockpiles survival gear and spends lunch period in the school library, the perfect place for a mass shooter—or Ellis herself—to hide. She loves her family but neither understands nor is understood by them. In her therapist’s waiting room, she meets Hannah, a girl from her class who says she knows when and how the world is going to end: on Dec. 21, during a freak San Francisco snowstorm, while Hannah and Ellis are holding hands. While Ellis makes flyers to warn everyone, Hannah enlists her help to find a homeless psychic called Prophet Dan, who she is certain will be able to help them. Ellis is a Latter-day Saint; her faith is as important to her as her survival, and her belief in Hannah feels
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A testament to the unbreakable bonds of friendship and a love letter to hip-hop. let me hear a rhyme
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holy. But Hannah is neither a mystic nor a saint. Told from Ellis’ probing, intelligent point of view, the story reaches a lovely, surprising conclusion that offers respect and healing for all concerned. Henry (Heretics Anonymous, 2018) writes witty dialogue, creates complicated characters, and treats different religious beliefs with sincerity and respect. Ellis and Hannah are white, and Hannah is lesbian. Secondary characters are broadly diverse. Don’t be put off by the canned tomato cover: This one’s a gem. (Fiction. 12-18)
LET ME HEAR A RHYME
Jackson, Tiffany D. with Sharif, Malik “Malik-16” Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $17.99 | May 21, 2019 978-0-06-284032-5
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special issue: best books of 2019
After a Brooklyn teen is murdered, his sister and best friends set out to launch his rap career. Stephon “Steph” Davis could’ve been one of the hottest emcees to come out of Brooklyn, just like his inspiration and fellow Bed-Stuy rapper, the Notorious B.I.G. Unfortunately, like Biggie, Steph was murdered. His grieving best friends, Quadir and Jarrell, discover a treasure trove of tapes and CDs of Steph’s music in his bedroom. With the help of Jasmine, his socially conscious sister, Quadir and Jarrell hatch a plan to promote Steph’s music. With lyrical finesse (penned for the novel by Sharif) and beats that can rock a party, Steph is “killing them while he’s dead.” Soon, Steph’s demo catches the attention of a well-known rep for a major record label who wants to meet hip-hop’s newest rising star. The three teens must keep up the charade while also trying to uncover the truth about his murder. Exceptional storytelling, well-crafted, trueto-life dialogue, and the richly drawn Brooklyn landscape will draw readers into this fast-paced blend of mystery, budding romance, and social commentary. Quadir, Jarrell, and Jasmine are endearing, tenacious, and memorable. Hip-hop lovers of all ages will appreciate this homage to rap legends from a bygone— but not forgotten—era. Thoroughly engrossing and as infectious as Steph’s lyrics: a testament to the unbreakable bonds of friendship and a love letter to Brooklyn and hip-hop in the late ’90s. (Fiction. 13-18)
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AUTHOR SP OTLIGHT
Ambelin & Ezekiel Kw a y m u l l i n a
Viva Photography Fremantle
Sister and brother Ambelin and Ezekiel Kwaymullina—writers from the Aboriginal Palyku people of Western Australia—have always worked on projects together, primarily picture books. The Things She’s Seen (Knopf, May 14) is the duo’s first novel, and its United States release comes at a time of heightened awareness of some of the story’s core themes, especially about the place and treatment of women and Indigenous peoples. The death of biracial teenager Beth, who is Aboriginal (no nation is specified) and white, is still too recent for her police detective father, which is why she can’t fathom leaving him just yet. In her ghostly form, she accompanies him to a small Australian town where he’s been sent to investigate an arson in hopes that the case will help distract him from his grief. But the provincial mentality reminds him of where he grew up and faced his own father’s rejection after falling in love with an Aboriginal woman. “The persistent privileging of outsiders telling stories about us over our own voices has multiple adverse impacts on Indigenous writers,” Ambelin and Ezekiel jointly explain via email. “The Aboriginal peoples of Australia are many nations, and our cultures are founded in story,” the Kwaymullinas say. These stories Ezekiel & Ambelin Kwaymullina are passed down generation to generation. In the novel, Beth attends an interview with Isobel Catching, a young Aboriginal girl who witnessed a fire break out, and listens to her haunting story. Subjected to unspeakable violence, Isobel falls back on the strength of her foremothers who were forced to endure the barbarities of colonization. In The Things She’s Seen, realities blur together and time passes in a non-Western fashion, both hallmarks of Aboriginal storytelling. It’s a tender and harrowing tale, and one that will remain with the reader. And that’s intentional; these memories are supposed to linger. “Today we must contend with this dual inheritance of the stories that sustain us and the ones that seek to tear us down,” the Kwaymullinas say. “Aboriginal storytellers move through and between both sets of narratives, find our way to our own truths as we seek to heal the wounds of the past and look to the future.” —J.F. 64
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REBEL GIRLS
Keenan, Elizabeth Inkyard Press (384 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-335-18500-6 Word in Baton Rouge is that Athena Graves’ younger sister got an abortion over the summer. Named after powerful women in Greek mythology, the Graves sisters could not be more different. Athena is a gifted student with dyed red hair and a love for punk-rock music. Helen, a blonde beauty, loves fashion and Pearl Jam—a band Athena deems so mainstream. Helen’s anti-abortion stance makes her a better fit for their Catholic high school than aspiring riot grrrl Athena. But when a rumor spreads that Helen got an abortion after sleeping with a racist classmate, Athena, with the help of fellow abortion-rights advocate Melissa, works to save Helen from being expelled. Athena believes mean girl Leah started the rumor, but Leah’s football-star boyfriend, Sean, comes to her defense. And soon after Athena starts dating cute Kyle, Leah sets her sights on him too. Sympathetic Athena honestly struggles to get justice for her sister while upholding her core beliefs in the face of a strongly conservative community. Beyond the abortion debate, this provides a necessary focus on the importance of young women supporting one another across differences. Echoing the punk-rock feminist movement of the early ’90s, debut author Keenan creates a timely narrative that will challenge teens to reflect on their personal values and engage in respectful discourse. Main characters are white apart from Melissa, who is half Vietnamese and half Cajun, and Sean, who is black. A must-read. (Fiction. 12-18)
A CURSE SO DARK AND LONELY Kemmerer, Brigid Bloomsbury (496 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 29, 2019 978-1-68119-508-7 Series: Cursebreaker, 1
A cursed prince and a high school dropout become unlikely allies in this ambitious “Beauty and the Beast” adaptation. Harper’s life in Washington, D.C., hasn’t been easy: Her mother is dying of cancer, and her father’s only legacy is the loan sharks her brother Jake works for to pay off his debts. Harper, who has cerebral palsy, is standing lookout for Jake when she sees a man carrying an unconscious woman. Harper intervenes—and is magically transported to Emberfall, a kingdom abandoned by its rulers and beset by both a mysterious beast and attacks from a neighboring country. She meets blond Prince Rhen, who reveals that the beast killed his family. He believes falling in love is the only way to save his kingdom, and his guard commander travels to Harper’s universe to find
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CATFISHING ON CATNET
Kritzer, Naomi Tor Teen (304 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-1-250-16508-4
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THE THINGS SHE’S SEEN
Kwaymullina, Ambelin & Kwaymullina, Ezekiel Knopf (208 pp.) $17.99 | May 14, 2019 978-1-9848-4878-9 Beth Teller may be a ghost, but she is hoping to solve a mystery and heal her father’s broken heart. Beth is a biracial Aboriginal (no nation is specified) girl from Australia who remembers very little about the car accident that took her life. She can’t fathom why her spirit hasn’t moved on, but she suspects it might have something to do with her love for her grieving white father. He’s a detective who always did right by her mother and siblings after being rejected by his own parents when he fell in love with an Aboriginal woman. Dedicated to serving justice, her dad has fallen into a deep depression after Beth’s death. When he finally heads back to work, he must investigate a possible arson: the charred remains of a children’s home. What Beth and her father find are secrets far more complicated than the mere burning of a building. A legacy of violence sits at the heart of this important novel, yet artful language softens the blows of pain and fear. The only interviewee the two detectives can consult is a witness who speaks in riddles: Isobel Catching. Who is she, and what does she know? Crimes—common yet unspeakable—rise to the surface in this fast-paced thriller with a supernatural bent. An #ownvoices story that empowers its female heroines, giving them pride in their lineage and power in remembering. (Thriller. 13-18)
special issue: best books of 2019
Dual narrators—a cat picture–loving AI and a teen with a dangerous past— develop a friendship. Steph’s spent her whole life constantly on the move, never in one town or school long enough to make friends, as her mother keeps them carefully hidden from Steph’s abusive father. Her realest connections are her online friends from an internet community called CatNet. CatNet is secretly run by one of those friends— username CheshireCat—a powerful AI that uses the community for cat pictures and to counter loneliness. When Steph and her friends hack her new school’s sex ed–instructing robot (to give actual, correct answers to questions instead of “You’ll have to discuss that with your parents!”), the resulting hilarity and scandal attract unintended media attention, leading to worries that Steph’s father will be able to use the story to find them. Preemptive digging into her father reveals worrying inconsistencies in what Steph thinks she knows, kicking off a tense, fast-paced thriller storyline. The believably applied near-future technology grounds the wilder plot elements. The personhood elements of the AI narrator’s story complement identity themes among the cast at large—though the new town is nearly all white (with one biracial black/white character), the characters offer positive, realistic LGBTQIA+ representation—especially nonbinary identities and characters still exploring their identities. Refreshingly, the characters also feel like generally-woke-butstill-imperfect humans. Wickedly funny and thrilling in turns; perfect for readers coming-of-age online. (Thriller. 13-adult)
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matches for him. Harper doesn’t buy it. Rather than acquiesce to fate, she calls Rhen’s attention to more immediate, practical actions they can take to protect his kingdom. The book follows a white default for main characters, although Jake’s boyfriend is black and Harper’s best friend in Emberfall has brown skin. Refreshingly, Harper is the undisputed hero and also not the only significant character with a disability. Avoiding disability inspiration tropes, she is a fallible, well-rounded character who fights for the vulnerable and resists being labeled as such herself despite how others perceive her. A fast-paced, richly detailed feminist epic. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 12-18)
COURTING DARKNESS LaFevers, Robin HMH Books (512 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-0-544-99119-4 Series: Courting Darkness, 1
History, intrigue, and peril in 15thcentury Brittany and France. It’s 1489. Sybella, a trained assassin, escorts Brittany’s duchess to France to marry King Charles. The duchess promises, when queen, to protect Sybella’s young sisters from their brother’s house, where the men molested Sybella (Dark Tri umph, 2013). Having changed the nature of death (incomprehensibly) in Mortal Heart (2014), LaFevers ignores that and focuses on Sybella’s doubt about how to serve her father, Mortain— the god of Death—without the black marques that previously showed her whom to kill. Meanwhile, Genevieve, another assassin/daughter of Mortain, languishes in an undercover placement in France, instruction-less—so she builds herself a plan. Sybella and Genevieve have brilliant skills—killing, scheming, spying, protecting, and sometimes finding Mortain’s grace—but
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everyone who holds power abuses it terribly. Danger’s everywhere—rape, murder—and love is a risk. Will Sybella and Genevieve find each other, or even learn each other’s information, before things come crashing down? They alternate narrating in first-person present, with great immediacy. This rich tapestry of intrigue, betrayal, trauma, protection, old religion, and historically based politics resurrects the urgency and depth of the His Fair Assassin series—but must be read after the others (“new duology” label notwithstanding). Contrary to the reality of early modern Europe, all characters default to white. Sharp and breathless, full of anger and strength. May the sequel hurry. (character list, map, author’s note) (His torical thriller. 14-adult)
BUTTERFLY YELLOW
Lai, Thanhha Harper/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-0-06-222921-2 The day after Hăng arrives in Texas from a refugee camp, she heads toward Amarillo to find her little brother. On that same day in 1981, an 18-yearold aspiring cowboy named LeeRoy is traveling to Amarillo to pursue his rodeo dreams. After some helpful meddling from a couple at a rest stop, LeeRoy finds himself driving Hăng on her search instead. They make an odd pair, a white boy from Austin and a determined Vietnamese refugee on a mission. But their chemistry works: Hăng sees through LeeRoy’s cowboy airs, and LeeRoy understands Hăng’s clever English pronunciations, cobbled together from Vietnamese syllables. When they find Hăng’s brother and he remembers nothing about Vietnam, Hăng and LeeRoy settle in at the ranch next door. Hăng’s heartbreaking memories of the day her brother was mistakenly taken by Americans at the end of the war, her harrowing journey to America, and the family she left behind are all tempered by LeeRoy’s quiet patience and exasperated affection. It is their warm and comic love/hate relationship, developing over the course of the summer into something more, that is the soul of award-winning Lai’s (Listen, Slowly, 2015, etc.) first young adult novel. Every sentence is infused with warmth, and Lai shows readers that countless moments of grace exist even in the darkest times. Masterfully conjures grace, beauty, and humor out of the tragic wake of the Vietnam War. (author’s note) (Historical fiction. 13-18)
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YOU MUST NOT MISS Leno, Katrina Little, Brown (304 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 23, 2019 978-0-316-44977-9
A depressed New England teen writes her perfect world into reality and uses it to exact revenge. Sixteen-year-old Margaret “Magpie” Lewis’ father left soon after she caught him having sex with her mother’s sister. Since then, Magpie’s older sister, Eryn, a college senior, has stopped communicating with her, and her mother’s drinking has gotten much worse. In addition, her ex–best friend, Allison, has shunned her and branded her as a slut after a horrid encounter with Allison’s boyfriend, Brandon. School is an afterthought, but Magpie has made new friends: Clare, whose father committed suicide; bisexual Luke; Brianna, who suffered a humiliating incident; and Ben, who is trans. Magpie also copes by writing about a place called Near. After a portal to Near manifests in Magpie’s backyard shed, she spends days there with her Stepford-esque family—one untouched by tragedy—but as Magpie tests her new abilities, her numb, shattered heart tells her that revenge will be sweet, no matter the cost. Poor Magpie’s spiral is a heartbreaking example of how deep pain often masquerades as cruelty, and her actions are tragic. Leno (Summer of Salt, 2018, etc.), channeling early Stephen King at his best, offers no neat conclusions, and her frank examination of depression, grief, alcoholism, and the ruinous aftermath of sexual assault is grim yet effective. Characters are presumed white. Readers will ponder this exceedingly creepy gut punch of a tale long after turning the last page. (Thriller. 14-adult)
THE GRACE YEAR
Liggett, Kim Wednesday Books (416 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 8, 2019 978-1-250-14544-4 A rebellious 16-year-old is sent to an isolated island for her grace year, when she must release her seductive, poisonous magic into the wild before taking her proper place as a wife and child bearer. In gaslit Garner County, women and girls are said to harbor diabolical magic capable of manipulating men. Dreaming, among other things, is forbidden, and before girls embark on their grace year, they hope to receive a veil, which promises marriage. Otherwise, it’s life in a labor house— or worse. Strong, outdoorsy, skeptical Tierney James doesn’t want to be married, but a shocking twist leaves her with a veil— and a dangerous enemy in the vindictive Kiersten. Thirty-three girls with red ribbons symbolizing sin woven into their braids set out to survive the island, but it won’t be easy. Poachers, who trade in the body parts of grace-year girls, surround the camp,
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A stellar and important read. light it up
LIGHT IT UP
Magoon, Kekla Henry Holt (368 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-250-12889-8
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A HOUSE OF RAGE AND SORROW
Mandanna, Sangu Sky Pony Press (336 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-1-5107-3379-4 Series: Celestial Trilogy, 2 Princess Esmae started a war—but will she finish it? Esmae always dreamed of reuniting with the family who abandoned her when she was a child. She originally wanted to return her brothers to their homeland after they were usurped by their Uncle Elvar. But when her twin, Alexi, tries to kill her—and instead kills her best friend—her trust is shaken. Esmae reluctantly plots to maintain the status quo in hopes that Elvar will allow her to inherit the throne. But when she learns the truth about the duel that was meant to end her life, her sense of self is completely shattered. Driven by ambition, jealousy, and a lifetime of powerlessness, Esmae grows increasingly bloodthirsty and power hungry, abandoning her former quest for peace and her family’s love. The plot is fast-paced and full of surprises, its intricate world carefully rendered. Where it really shines, however, is in its characters, particularly Esmae, who, throughout the story, is forced to confront painful truths. Mandanna (A Spark of White Fire, 2018) is an astute observer of human nature and a master of suspense, deftly unraveling Esmae’s defenses until her complex feelings about her family turn her from peacenik to warmonger while simultaneously making her villain of a brother more sympathetic. After substantial intermarrying, race does not exist in this fantasy world. Extraordinarily drawn characters and plot twists will keep readers’ hearts racing. (Fantasy. 14-adult)
special issue: best books of 2019
The shooting of an unarmed African American teen by police serves as catalyst for racial tension in a community still recovering from a previous tragedy. This time, Shae Tatum, a 13-year-old girl, is shot by a white police officer. Two years have passed since the killing of Tariq Johnson, and the community organizations that arose in the aftermath are more active. Social media scrutiny has intensified, with the media and police focusing on public messaging. The officer’s family copes with being in the spotlight, and a minister who was in the limelight is now a senator. Tariq’s friend Tyrell is now focused on college and reluctant to dredge up bad memories, but his white roommate, Robb, is intrigued by the shooting and seems insensitive to Tyrell’s silence. The engagement of white supremacists and white women who protest in support of the police at Shae’s funeral add new wrinkles. As tensions escalate, divisions harden while the police and community await the decision of the grand jury. This follow-up to the author’s acclaimed How It Went Down (2014) uses multiple distinctive narrators, transcripts, and social media posts to convey the charged atmosphere as people must carry on with their lives while turmoil brews around them. The wide range of personalities, rich details, and nuanced connections make this a stellar and important read. This companion to a modern classic offers an even deeper, more layered depiction of the impact of a police shooting. (Fiction. 14-18)
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and paranoia, superstition, and mistrust rule. Not everyone will make it home alive. The bones of Liggett’s (The Unfortunates, 2018, etc.) tale of female repression are familiar ones, but her immersive storytelling effortlessly weaves horror elements with a harrowing and surprising survival story. Profound moments lie in small details, and readers’ hearts will race and break right along with the brave, capable Tierney’s. The biggest changes often begin with the smallest rebellions, and the emotional conclusion will resonate. All characters are assumed white. Chilling, poignant, haunting, and, unfortunately, all too timely. (Dystopian. 14-18)
ONCE & FUTURE
McCarthy, Cori & Capetta, Amy Rose Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown (368 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 26, 2019 978-0-316-44927-4 A girl with a sword and an impulse problem embarks on a perilous quest to save her family and free the galaxy from the clutches of a power-hungry corporation. When Ari, an on-the-run refugee from planet Ketch, pulls Excalibur from a tree on Old Earth, she sets a centuries-old cycle into motion. By claiming the sword, she unknowingly attracts the enchantress Morgana and awakens the backwardaging magician Merlin, both of whom are doomed to an eternity of reliving the same story of King Arthur’s rise and fall. Honest to the core and averse to pageantry, Ari rejects her destiny as “the one true king” until she discovers her connection to the Arthur cycle may help her raise a resistance against the Mercer
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AUTHOR SP OTLIGHT
A k wa e k e E m e z i
Beowulf Sheehan
Nigerian-born author Akwaeke Emezi moved to the United States for school at age 16 and now lives in Brooklyn; they straddle both worlds and know well the necessity of carving out a space of representation on the page. Emezi’s debut young adult novel, Pet (Make Me a World, Sept. 10), based in the fictional city of Lucille, where monsters supposedly have been eradicated, follows the journey of Jam, a young black trans girl, as she discovers that monsters are still very real and preying upon the children of the town. “It was important to me to make Jam a black trans girl,” says Emezi, “and I wanted her to be safe because that’s not what’s happening for a lot of trans teens. I wanted to create a world in which that safety is possible and also to show that the reason she was safe was because her parents kept her safe and cared for her.” As the first person who understands the monsters are real and present in Lucille, Jam is in a situation where she has to decide on her own what’s actually happening—and not listen to the falsehoods that the adults, her teachers, and the media are telling her. “It takes a special kind of bravery, I think, to make that kind of decision to choose to trust yourself rather than what you are told,” says Emezi. Like Emezi’s critically acclaimed 2018 adult debut novel, Freshwater, which is rooted in an Igbo mythos, Pet imagines a space that draws heavily Akwaeke Emezi from black cultures. In this case, Emezi’s inspiration draws from the diversity of both the African continent and the diaspora. Pet presents a community made up of black immigrants and black Americans, a reality in which a black trans girl is safe, cherished, and loved. “The first step to making a lived reality is to imagine it,” says Emezi, “and when you have stories like Pet you can start imagining it.” —H.W.
Company, who imprisoned her mothers and are threatening everyone Ari loves. In this intergalactic reimagining of Arthurian legend, a racially diverse queer and trans ensemble of characters leads the battle against the tyranny of capitalism. Capetta (The Brilliant Death, 2018, etc.) and McCarthy (Now a Major Motion Picture, 2018, etc.) develop complex conflicts on multiple fronts, including a passionate, whirlwind romance between Ari and her Gweneviere. The women in the story grow together through their challenges with one another and learn from their differences. All hail this worthier-than-ever, fresh, and affirming reincarnation of the legendary king and her round table of knights which dazzles with heroic flair, humor, and suspense. (Science Fiction/Fantasy. 14-adult)
WHERE THE WORLD ENDS
McCaughrean, Geraldine Flatiron Books (336 pp.) $18.99 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-1-250-22549-8 In this Carnegie-winning novel, McCaughrean (The Middle of Nowhere, 2013, etc.) turns a small piece of history into an epic, nearly mythic, tale. St. Kilda’s archipelago, far off the northwest corner of Scotland, is the most remote set of islands in Great Britain. In 1727, a boat set off from the sole occupied island, Hirta, dropping a small group of men and boys at Warrior Stac, a giant rock, for a fowling expedition. Told from the point of view of Quilliam, one of the older boys, (precise ages are never given; the boys seem to range in age from around 10 to about 16), the trip begins as a grand adventure: scaling cliffs via fingertip holds, making candles out of dead storm petrels, and cutting the stomachs out of gannets to use as bottles for oil. But then, inexplicably, the village boat does not return for them. As the weeks stretch to months and the birds begin to leave the rock, the party fears the end of the world. Cane, one of the men, sets himself up as a divine authority, praying for repentance, while Quill attempts to soothe the younger boys through story—and himself through memories of a young woman he loves. McCaughrean takes the bones of a real event, wraps it in immersive, imaginative detail and thoroughly real emotion, and creates an unforgettable tale of human survival. A masterpiece. (map, afterword, birds of St. Kilda, glossary) (Historical fiction. 12-18)
Hope Wabuke is a writer and assistant professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 68
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McGinnis, Mindy Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (432 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 12, 2019 978-0-06-284719-5
TWO CAN KEEP A SECRET McManus, Karen M. Delacorte (336 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 8, 2019 978-1-5247-1472-7
History threatens to repeat itself in a small town known for disappearing teen girls. When their mother is suddenly sent to rehab, twins Ellery and Ezra Corcoran are uprooted from California to live with their grandmother in Vermont. True-crime–obsessed Ellery knows the town is infamous for girls going missing. Her own aunt, her mother’s twin, disappeared 23 years ago, never to be found. Just five years ago, Lacey Kilduff was found murdered in nearby Murderland, a Halloween theme park. All eyes are on the twins as the new kids in town, and Ellery’s pulled between the popular girls and Malcolm Kelly, the younger brother of Declan, Lacey’s boyfriend |
and the person everyone suspects murdered her. Disturbing acts of vandalism pop up, threatening a sequel to events at Murderland. When Ellery’s nominated for homecoming queen, the threats begin to target her and the other princesses, and no matter what he does, Malcolm keeps ending up at the wrong place at the wrong time, making for an easy scapegoat. Alternating between Ellery’s and Malcolm’s perspectives, the mystery unfurls at a deliciously escalating pace, filled with believable red herrings and shocking twists. Readers will furiously turn pages until the satisfying end. Though the students are predominantly white, Ellery and Ezra are biracial (white and Latinx), and Ezra is gay. Malcolm is white, and his best friend is a bisexual Korean American girl. Masterfully paced with well-earned thrills and spooky atmosphere worth sinking into. (Thriller. 14-18)
WE SET THE DARK ON FIRE
Mejia, Tehlor Kay Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 26, 2019 978-0-06-269131-6
special issue: best books of 2019
A compassionate, compelling, and terrifying story about a high school softball player’s addiction to opioids. A promising life can be upended in a minute. One moment star catcher Mickey Catalan, who is assumed white, is living an ordinary life, talking about boys and anticipating a winning season with her best friend, pitcher Carolina Galarza. The next moment her car is upside down in a field, and their promising softball careers are in danger. Mickey’s divorced parents and Carolina’s tightknit Puerto Rican family are rooting for them to recover before the start of the season. After enduring surgeries, they are each given opioid painkillers, yet only Mickey spirals into addiction. From the novel’s opening line, the reader awaits the tragic outcome. What matters are the details—the lying, the stealing, the fear about college scholarships, the pain confronted in the weight room, and the desperate desire to win—because they force the reader to empathize with Mickey’s escalating need. Realistic depictions of heroin abuse abound, and the author includes a trigger warning. The writing is visceral, and following Mickey as she rationalizes about her addiction is educative and frightening. Even more frightening are the descriptive passages that reveal how pleasant the drugs make her feel. By the end, readers understand how heroin can infiltrate even the most promising lives. A cautionary tale that exposes the danger of prescription medications by humanizing one victim of America’s current epidemic. (author’s note, resources) (Fiction. 14-18)
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HEROINE
Power, truth, and lies intertwine dangerously in Mejia’s debut novel about oppression and resistance with a cunning Latinx teenage heroine. Medio, an island nation divided by a wall, is literally in between extremes: “On one side there was the might of a nation. On the other, desperation.” Clear parallels to Mexico in imagery and themes abound. Born on the wrong side of the wall without legal papers, 17-year-old brown-skinned Daniela “Dani” Vargas graduates after 5 years of diligent training at an elite finishing school to join the powerful Garcia family as their son’s Primera. In this well-constructed world, an ancient mythology forms the basis for a practice in which husbands have two wives each: Primeras are quick-witted and emotionally restrained while Segundas are brave and passionate. When Dani’s Primera training falters in the face of her ruthless, powerhungry husband, her past overwhelms her present, and she is recruited to spy for the resistance. Excerpts from the Medio School for Girls rulebook precede each chapter, a juxtaposition that effectively reveals Dani’s conflicted self-awakening. An action-packed third-person narrative, smart dialogue, and lush descriptions offer readers a fresh and steely heroine in a contemporary coming-of-age story. This well-crafted fantasy offers a mirror that reflects themes in our own difficult world, namely privilege, immigration, and individualism versus the common good. A queer subplot with sensual tenderness adds rich complexity to the story. Thrilling and timely. (Fantasy. 14-18)
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A deep sense of place and characters who are vivid and fallible add meaning to a heart-wrenching story. barely missing everything
BARELY MISSING EVERYTHING
Mendez, Matt Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum (320 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 5, 2019 978-1-5344-0445-8 Born on the poor side of El Paso, Juan and JD fight for their dreams, knowing the odds are stacked against them. Mendez (Twitching Heart, 2012) tells the touching story of two teenage buddies, their troubled families, and the injustices they endure as a result of being poor and brown. Juan wants to play college basketball. JD wants to be a filmmaker. But following a single bad decision at a party in a wealthy neighborhood, their dreams begin to fall like dominoes. In a setting of police profiling and violent streets, it becomes obvious that the pain in this community is intergenerational. The boys must cope with parental secrets—Juan’s mother never told him who his father is, and JD’s father makes him an accomplice in a dishonest affair. As they seek answers, readers see that the future is a tidal wave pushing them to the brink even as they act with courage and good intentions. Studying, working hard on the court, impressing coaches and teachers, the teens come to understand that the world has labeled them failures no matter how hard they try. In this novel with a deep sense of place and realistic dialogue, characters who are vivid and fallible add deep psychological meaning to a heart-wrenching story. At once accessible and artful, this is an important book about Mexican teens holding onto hope and friendship in the midst of alcoholism, poverty, prejudice, and despair. (Fiction. 14-18)
SKIP
Mendoza, Molly Illus. by the author Nobrow Ltd. (168 pp.) $22.95 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-1-910620-42-7 Forsaken and left to confront their doubts and dreads, a brave young child and a buoyant creature fall through vibrant, extraordinary new worlds in Mendoza’s (contributor: The Real Folk Blues, 2019, etc.) kaleidoscopic ode to metamorphosis. Bloom awakens from a deep sleep. It’s another day with Bee, checking on the potatoes, fishing on the lake, and pondering the city from a safe distance. The crackling radio disrupts their night by the fire. A plea fills the air, and before Bloom’s ready, Bee heads out to answer it. Left alone to “watch the lake,” Bloom fills the days with routines until Bee’s extended absence moves Bloom to leap into the lake. Transported in a swirl of colors, Bloom reemerges in another world and meets an exiled creature named Gloopy, whose half-hearted, distracted assistance 70
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during the Moon Harvest preparations results in catastrophe. Together, Bloom and Gloopy slip into a different place, kicking off a multiworld voyage back to their respective homes. From the first spread to the last image, Mendoza’s gorgeous, surrealist artwork presents imaginative depths both refreshing and disorienting. Poignant catharsis surfaces through tearful declarations and emotional strife as Bloom and Gloopy reflect on their strengths and weaknesses amid unusual environments (imagine playing games with a giant lizard or discussing creative ambition with a wistful AI–like being). Both Bloom and Bee are brown skinned, and the author uses “they/them” pronouns throughout. An exceptional road taken. (Graphic dystopia. 12-adult)
THE DOZIER SCHOOL FOR BOYS Forensics, Survivors, and a Painful Past
Murray, Elizabeth A. Twenty-First Century/Lerner (120 pp.) $37.32 PLB | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-5415-1978-7 The history of a reform school that abused and tortured the young people sent there. The Florida State Reform School, opened in 1900 and later named after former superintendent Arthur G. Dozier, was intended to be a place where youth could be educated and given the skills they’d need to become independent citizens. However, almost from the beginning the school was problematic for the boys: The work was dangerous, and strict discipline protocols involved severe beatings, deprivation, psychological torture, and, some claimed, outright murder. Until 1968 the facilities were racially segregated, with black youth receiving more hazardous work assignments. In the early 21st century, survivors began telling their stories, and a 2007 case of physical abuse was caught on surveillance cameras. State-led investigations into the school cemetery and the survivors’ stories drew attention from media and activists. The author, herself a forensic scientist, explores how the school operated without much oversight or reporting and the ways criminal science was used to piece together a picture of the horrors many endured. The testimonies of the survivors and the forensic research into those who died at Dozier are the most compelling aspects of the book. The many photographs and sidebars will make this accessible for young readers. A grim, harrowing, and important read with insights into the troubled juvenile justice system. (source notes, glossary, selected bibliography, further information, index) (Nonfiction. 13-18)
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Next Wave Muslim Initiative Writers Shout Mouse Press (192 pp.) $14.99 paper | May 22, 2019 978-1-945434-93-8
WHEN THE GROUND IS HARD Nunn, Malla Putnam (272 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-525-51557-9
A 16-year-old girl finds friendship and questions social hierarchies at her boarding school. After Adele Joubert is demoted from her favored place among the popular girls and sent to live in a room where a former student died, she begins to question the carefully structured hierarchy of her community. Within Keziah Christian Academy, a school for mixed-race students in 1965 Swaziland, a class system separates the rich from the poor, dictating who eats first at meals and who gets access to the best textbooks. Hair texturism, colorism, and the legitimacy of their parents’ relationships also create divisions that Adele, who is of black and white |
ancestry, challenges with her budding friendship with her new roommate, Lottie Diamond, a poor outcast of Jewish, Scottish, and Zulu heritage. When classmate Darnell Parns, who is coded as neurodivergent, goes missing, Adele pushes boundaries aside to search for him and, in the process, learns more about her own complicated origins in the sweeping hills where Keziah is situated. With a critical emphasis on power dynamics among the multiracial students, the story moves quickly, focusing on Adele’s interpersonal development. The gorgeous imagery sets the scene wonderfully, and there is mention of the religious and geographical colonization represented in the book, the hazy morals of the adults, and the relationships between black, white, and mixed-race citizens of Swaziland, but the narrative doesn’t dig too deeply into these subjects. An engrossing narrative that gently but directly explores complex relationships. (Historical fiction. 14-adult)
BLOOM
Panetta, Kevin Illus. by Ganucheau, Savanna First Second (368 pp.) $17.99 paper | Feb. 12, 2019 978-1-62672-641-3
special issue: best books of 2019
An anthology of short stories, poems, and collages by 10 American Muslim teens. A project of the nonprofit Next Wave Muslim Initiative, this collection presents the work of young people who reflect on their experiences as members of a marginalized and misunderstood faith coming-of-age in the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Iman Ilias’ “How To Be a 14-Year-Old Paki Muslim American Girl” and Leyla Rasheed’s “Moments I Remember I’m Muslim” unpack the social pressures on Muslim teens to simultaneously fit in and retain their sense of self. “Kabob Squad Takes Down Propaganda Man: (A Concept for the TV Show I Needed as a Kid),” by Samaa Eldadah and Fatima Rafie, and “Hyphen,” a poem by Noor Saleem, both address representation and identity. Other themes explored include relationships to prayer, perceptions of the hijab, and what it’s like to be an observant Muslim guitarist navigating the American teen party scene. Readers seeking a sociological account of the persecution of American Muslims will have to look elsewhere. This volume focuses instead on the creative minds of Muslim American youths themselves, opening a window into the complexity of their lived realities as teens in today’s America. The varied text layouts, font styles, and exceptional art enhance the reading experience. The book features a foreword by Pakistani American children’s author Hena Khan. The contributors are diverse in ethnicity, race, and sect. Captivating and uplifting. (Anthology. 12-adult)
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I AM THE NIGHT SKY ...& Other Reflections by Muslim American Youth
Summer love rises between two boys in a bakery. High school may have ended, but Ari is stuck with sourdough starter at his family’s bakery instead of summer gigs in the city with his band. As his family’s money grows tighter, Ari feels tethered in place. His friends start to drift toward their own futures. But the future of their band—and their friendship—drifts toward uncertainty. Under the guise of recruiting another baker to take his place, Ari hires Hector. A culinary student in Birmingham, Hector has temporarily returned home to find closure after his Nana’s passing. The two grow close in more than just the kitchen. Ari, who hates baking, even starts to enjoy himself. But will it all last? Panetta and Ganucheau’s graphic novel debut is as much a love story between people as it is with the act of baking. Ganucheau’s art, in black ink with varying shades of blue, mixes traditional paneling with beautiful double-page spreads of detailed baking scenes, where the panels sometimes take on the shape of braided loaves. The romance between Ari and Hector builds slowly, focusing on cute interactions long before progressing to anything physical. Ari and his family are Greek. Family recipes referenced in the text code Hector as Samoan. Delicious. A tender blend of sugary, buttery, and other complex flavors that’s baked with a tremendous dash of heart. (recipe, production art) (Graphic novel. 13-adult)
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AUTHOR SP OTLIGHT
D a v i d Yo o n
David Zaugh /Zaugh Photography
David Yoon was at jury duty during the heated 10-way auction for his debut YA novel, Frankly in Love (Putnam, Sept. 10), about a Korean American teen, Frank Li, who falls for a white girl and fake-dates a Korean American classmate to appease their respective strict parents. “My phone was blowing up, and I had to pretend to go to the bathroom,” he recalls. Asked about the origins of the novel, Yoon, who grew up in Orange County, California, shares that his Korean immigrant parents had strict rules about dating: “I had to hide my entire love life from my parents.” He was expected to bring home a Korean girl. Yoon did no such thing. In 1997, while pursuing an MFA at Emerson College, he met his wife, Nicola Yoon. Nicola, who is of Jamaican descent, would become the bestselling author of the YA novels The Sun Is Also a Star and Everything, Everything, for which David would do the illustrations. In a poignant scene in Frankly, Frank goes to a restaurant with his white girlfriend, Brit Means, and her parents. He’s suddenly foisted into the role of “Korean Food Tour Guide,” being asked to order for the table and explain each and every “foreign” dish that arrives. The scene captures the nuances of racial and cultural expectations as well as microaggressions from even those with the best intentions. “The core of being an immigrant kid, especially one who doesn’t present as white, is that you’re the one who’s always listening and adapting and paying careful attention to context and code-switchDavid Yoon ing when necessary.” That scene—indeed the entire book—will spark many conversations for readers. And perhaps viewers— Alloy Entertainment and Paramount Players, who acquired the film rights last fall, are developing Frankly in Love for a feature. “It’s so amazing….It was the right place, right time, right subject material.” —P.P. Patricia Park, author of the novel Re Jane, is a professor in the MFA Program at American University and writes for the New York Times, the Guardian, and others. 72
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WHO PUT THIS SONG ON?
Parker, Morgan Delacorte (336 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 24, 2019 978-0-525-70751-6 Seventeen-year-old Morgan is determined to live her truth as a quirky black girl in a predominantly white, small town in Southern California while struggling with depression and anxiety. Morgan has more than her fair share of teen angst. She’s regularly the only black person in the room, frequently told that she’s “not really black.” She takes medication for depression and anxiety. Her history teacher is clueless about black history and idolizes Ronald Reagan. For a Goodwill clothes–wearing “emo” girl in a sunny Southern California suburb, Christian school is “like going to high school inside a church inside a PacSun.” And Morgan is tired of having to act like she’s religious. She has doubts about faith and her ability to handle life, and if she were white, she’d be cool in a late-’90s teen film kind of way. But a black manic pixie dream girl is not something her peers embrace as cool. With music as a solace and constant companion, Morgan and her motley crew of friends navigate love, bullying, and an uncertain future. Poet Parker offers readers a heart-filled, laugh-out-loud hilarious YA fiction debut. Morgan’s pain and passion electrify every page. Her life feels like a mess, but faced with racism, rejection, and everyday growing pains, her hope and determination still shine through. A funny, clever, wild ride of a story about growing up and breaking free. (Fiction. 12-adult)
FORWARD ME BACK TO YOU Perkins, Mitali Farrar, Straus and Giroux (432 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-0-374-30492-8
A summer church trip to Kolkata allows two American teens to serve, grow, and heal their own suffering in unexpected ways. Katina King is a 16-year-old Brazilian jujitsu champion, a scholarship student at an elite Oakland school, and the brown-skinned, biracial daughter of a single white mother. After a male student assaults her, Kat’s anxiety, rage, and anguish disrupt her focus on winning matches and applying to college. Eighteen-year-old Robin Thornton was adopted as a toddler from an Indian orphanage by wealthy white Bostonians. He can’t seem to find true belonging or be more than a rudderless sidekick to his white jock friend. When Kat’s mother sends her to Boston for a break from Oakland, the teens meet, traveling to Kolkata with their pastor to work with survivors of child trafficking. Kat decides to teach the young women how to fight while Robin, now going by Ravi,
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THE STARS AND THE BLACKNESS BETWEEN THEM Petrus, Junauda Dutton (320 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 17, 2019 978-0-5255-5548-3
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THERE WILL COME A DARKNESS
Pool, Katy Rose Henry Holt (496 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-250-21175-0 Series: Age of Darkness, 1 us.”
“The Age of Darkness is almost upon
One hundred years ago the Seven Prophets disappeared from the world, leaving one last secret prophecy predicting an Age of Darkness, the end of the Graced, the destruction of all civilization, and a Last Prophet who will know how to prevent it all. The Order of the Last Light has been lying in wait ever since for the harbingers to appear: The rise of the Deceiver (the Hierophant, a man bent on destroying the Graced) and the murders committed by the Pale Hand signal that the time has finally come. And then the Last Prophet is found. Five young people who share the narrative—a prince, a murderer, a dying sister, a warrior, and a gambler—have roles to play as the Last Prophecy unfolds and the world starts to change. This epic fantasy novel revels in rich worldbuilding, deftly plays with genre expectations, and thoughtfully examines the power dynamics between those born with abilities and those without as well as the friction between free will and prophecy. A cast of fully developed, flawed, and endearing characters whose actions are genuinely unpredictable are present and accounted for in a world full of brown and queer people in this story that continually walks the fine line between darkness and hope. A well-crafted, surprising, and gripping start to a new trilogy. (Fantasy. 14-adult)
special issue: best books of 2019
In Petrus’ bewitching debut, Aquarius meets Scorpio and contemplates what comes next. Audre has found religion in the form of Neri, the pastor’s granddaughter, much to the chagrin of her religious mother. Sent from Trinidad to Minneapolis to live with her father, Audre is afraid of leaving her beloved grandmother, being cut off from her home culture, and starting over in a new country. Meanwhile, fascinated with Whitney Houston and the singer’s supposed romance with a female friend, Mabel is attempting to fit the pieces of her sexuality together. Although she’s been feeling sick, she agrees to entertain her father’s friend’s newly arrived daughter, and Audre and Mabel grow close over the summer. As the school year ramps up, Mabel can no longer ignore her chronic fatigue and pain and must grapple with life-altering news. She finds comfort in reading an old book of her parents’, learning about astrology, and seeking Audre’s healing presence. Audre’s voice is lyrical, and readers will practically hear her Trinidadian accent as she overcomes her fears and self-doubt. Through a nonlinear storyline and two secondary characters, Afua and Queenie, the author beautifully interjects elements of magical realism while delving into the complexities of spirituality. Readers seeking a deep, uplifting love story will not be disappointed as the novel covers both flourishing feelings and bigger questions around belief and what happens when we face our own mortality. Main characters are black. A cosmically compelling read. (Fiction. 14-adult)
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hopes to find his birth mother. But they learn the hard way that they must first earn the trust and respect of those they serve and that service may be very different from what they imagine. Perkins (You Bring the Distant Near, 2017, etc.) celebrates Christian faith, superheroes, and Kolkata life through the interleaved perspectives of sympathetic and earnest protagonists and in simple language that speaks straight to the heart. A hymn to faith, friendship, and social justice, sung by gentle men and strong women of many colors and ages. (Fiction. 14-adult)
WILDER GIRLS Power, Rory Delacorte (368 pp.) $18.99 | Jul. 9, 2019 978-0-525-64558-0
When the institutions you trust fail you, what will you do—and how will you handle the consequences? Two girls grapple with these questions in this gritty, lush debut chronicling psychological and environmental tipping points at a boarding school for girls on a remote island in the near future. Sixteen-year-old scholarship student Hetty was one of the first to show signs of the Tox. Over the last 18 months, she’s watched it ravage her classmates and teachers as they wait, quarantined within school grounds, for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop and deliver a cure. The Tox affects everyone differently: Hetty’s right eye sealed itself shut; her best friend, Byatt, grew a second, exterior spine; Reese has a sharp, silver-scaled left hand and glowing hair. Not everyone adapts to the Tox’s cyclical flare-ups—a girl brought to the
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infirmary rarely returns. The two remaining staff maintain tenuous order, but a flare-up that lands Byatt in the infirmary—with Hetty determined to protect her—quickly escalates into events that irrevocably shape the fates of everyone left on the island. Power deftly weaves a chilling narrative that disrupts readers’ expectations through an expertly crafted, slow-burn reveal of the deadly consequences of climate change. Most characters are assumed white; Julia is brown-skinned and Cat is cued as Chinese American. Several significant characters, including Hetty, are queer. Part survival thriller, part post-apocalyptic romance, and part ecocritical feminist manifesto, a staggering gut punch of a book. (Dystopian. 12-18)
PATRON SAINTS OF NOTHING Ribay, Randy Kokila (352 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 18, 2019 978-0-525-55491-2
Seventeen-year-old Jay Reguero searches for the truth about his cousin’s death amid President’s Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs while on an epic trip back to his native Philippines. Shocked out of his senioritis slumber when his beloved cousin Jun is killed by the police in the Philippines for presumably using drugs, Jay makes a radical move to spend his spring break in the Philippines to find out the whole story. Once pen pals, Jay hasn’t corresponded with Jun in years and is wracked by guilt at ghosting his cousin. A mixed heritage (his mother is white) Filipino immigrant who grew up in suburban Michigan, Jay’s connection to current-day Philippines has dulled from assimilation. His internal tensions around culture, identity, and languages—as “a spoiled American”—are realistic. Told through a mix of first-person narration, Jun’s letters to Jay, and believable dialogue among a strong, full cast of characters, the result is a deeply emotional story about family ties, addiction, and the complexity of truth. The tender relationship between Jay and Jun is especially notable—as is the underlying commentary about the challenges and nuances between young men and their uncles, fathers, male friends, and male cousins. Part coming-of-age story and part exposé of Duterte’s problematic policies, this powerful and courageous story offers readers a refreshingly emotional depiction of a young man of color with an earnest desire for the truth. (author’s note, recommended reading) (Fiction. 14-18)
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SORCERY OF THORNS Rogerson, Margaret McElderry (464 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-1-4814-9761-9
An apprentice librarian faces a magical threat against a Great Library. Orphaned Elisabeth Scrivener was raised in Summershall, a Great Library of the kingdom of Austermeer. She hopes to train as a warden—a battle-ready librarian, guarding against sorcery. The grimoires within Summershall are dangerous and imbued with life by the spells within them; if damaged, they become uncontrollable Maleficts. A chance encounter introduces Elisabeth to the infamous sorcerer Magister Nathaniel Thorn, who is charmingly roguish— but she doesn’t trust sorcerers. One night, Elisabeth awakens to find the library’s Director slain and a Malefict on the loose. Wielding the Director’s sword to destroy the monster, by morning she’s painted as a traitor and questioned by the Magisterium. Over time, Thorn and his demon companion, Silas, prove to be less evil than clever and confounding. As more attacks befall the Great Libraries, Elisabeth decides to seek the evil that threatens them, but it requires challenging everything she believes in a world of complicated magic where things are never as they seem. Elisabeth’s journey is fraught with hard-won self-discovery, and Thorn and his demon make for delightful counterparts. The world lives and breathes as enchantingly as the grimoires, and readers will flip pages feverishly, led by the tip of Elisabeth’s sword. All major characters are white; two minor characters are brown-skinned, and Nathaniel is bisexual. An enthralling adventure replete with spellbinding characters, a slow-burning love story, and a world worth staying lost in. (map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)
PUMPKINHEADS
Rowell, Rainbow Illus. by Hicks, Faith Erin & Stern, Sarah First Second (224 pp.) $17.99 paper | Aug. 27, 2019 978-1-62672-162-3 Autumn loving, they had a blast; autumn loving, it happened too fast. Having worked together in the Succotash Hut at the pumpkin patch for years, best friends and co-workers Deja and Josiah, who goes by Josie, ditch work and find love on their last night, heading out in search of Josie’s unrequited love, the girl who works in the Fudge Shoppe. Deja, a witty and outgoing girl who attracts— and is attracted to—boys and girls alike, is set on helping the shy, rule-following Josie move out of his comfort zone before they part ways for college. Deja encourages Josie to take a chance and talk to the girl of his dreams instead of pining for her from afar. Not to be dissuaded by his reticence, Deja leads
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Worth revisiting again and again. deposing nathan
96 WORDS FOR LOVE
Roy, Rachel & Dash, Ava Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 15, 2019 978-0-316-47778-9
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THE FOUNTAINS OF SILENCE
Sepetys, Ruta Philomel (512 pp.) $18.99 | Oct. 22, 2019 978-0-399-16031-8 The pitiless dictatorship of Francisco Franco examined through the voices of four teenagers: one American and three Spaniards. The Spanish Civil War lasted from 1936-1939, but Franco held Spain by its throat for 36 years. Sepetys (Salt to the Sea, 2016, etc.) begins her novel in 1957. Daniel is a white Texan who wants to be a photojournalist, not an oilman; Ana is trying to work her way to respectability as a hotel maid; her brother, Rafael, wants to erase memories of an oppressive boys’ home; and Puri is a loving caregiver for babies awaiting adoption—together they provide alternating thirdperson lenses for viewing Spain during one of its most brutally repressive periods. Their lives run parallel and intersect as each tries to answer questions about truth and the path ahead within a regime that crushes any opposition, murders dissidents, and punishes their families while stealing babies to sell to parents with accepted political views. This formidable story will haunt those who ask hard questions about the past as it reveals the hopes and dreams of individuals in a nation trying to lie its way to the future. Meticulous research is presented through believable, complex characters on the brink of adulthood who personalize the questions we all must answer about our place in the world. A stunning novel that exposes modern fascism and elevates human resilience. (author’s note, research and sources, glossary, photographs) (Historical fiction. 15-adult)
special issue: best books of 2019
When Raya Liston spends a month at an ashram in India, she doesn’t just find herself: She also finds true love. Seventeen-year-old Raya has a plan: major in English at UCLA and make her Indian mother and biracial (half black, other half unspecified) father proud. Spending the summer after high school at the Rishi Kanva ashram in the Himalayas with her cousin Anandi is definitely not the plan—until she receives a phone call from her dying grandmother, Daadee, saying she’s left something important for Raya and Anandi hidden on the ashram grounds. Against her better judgment, Raya leaves for the ashram, where she unexpectedly falls in love with Kiran, a budding filmmaker who breaks rules as passionately as Raya follows them. In the process of falling in love and uncovering the secrets Daadee left, Raya realizes that the real question is not what she wants to do but who she wants to be. An insightful, layered feminist retelling of the Hindu myth “Shaktunala,” the book features a diverse cast of characters who grapple with equally diverse issues in a richly drawn setting. Raya’s candor and self-reflection infuse the narration with the perfect balance of insight and momentum. Her relationship with her family is particularly refreshing: Unlike in most books about diaspora, Raya’s Indian relatives support her, guiding her through conflict rather than creating it. A beautifully crafted, truly feminist coming-of-age story featuring nuanced characters in a unique setting. (Romance. 14-18)
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Josie to multiple stops in the Patch in search of the almostimpossible-to-find Fudge Girl, with every stop taking them in a new direction and providing a new treat. As they journey through the Patch—chasing a snack-stealing rascal, dodging a runaway goat, and snacking their way through treats from fudge to Freeto pie—they explore the boundaries of their friendship. Visually bright and appealing in autumnal reds, oranges, and yellows, the art enhances this endearing picture of teenage love. Deja is a beautiful, plus-sized black girl, and Josie is a handsome, blond white boy. A heartwarming, funny story filled with richness and complexity. (Graphic fiction. 14-18)
DEPOSING NATHAN Smedley, Zack Page Street (400 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2019 978-1-62414-735-7
Two West Virginia teens become as close as two boys can get—until one stabs the other. During the course of a three-day deposition, Nate, the victim, gives the prosecutor a detailed account of how Cam stabbed him. Before it turns violent, the bromance begins when the two pair up in 11th grade biology class. Between formerly attending private Catholic schools and losing family members young, the two share an intimate connection. As that intimacy becomes physical, problems start to arise—for one, Nate has a girlfriend. Nate’s home, run by his straight-laced aunt, is also one of rules. The newest rule is that Nate can’t see Cam anymore. But Nate still wants to. Cam does, too. So, why the violence? The first-person present-tense narrative twists
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A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely. they called us enemy
between dialogue, letters, and descriptive sequences. Jolting moments of direct address heighten the drama. Though the adults read as extremes, debut author Smedley adds depth by including intimate backstories. Nate’s internalized homophobia and Catholic guilt mix, resulting in a layered, complex depiction of questioning (bi)sexuality. Meanwhile, ignostic Cam provides a more bi-positive foil. Smedley’s tight control of the structure, alternating between burgeoning romance and cringeworthy case details, skillfully results in cognitive dissonance. Most of the cast presents as white, but the prosecutor is black and uses a wheelchair. A heartbreaking case worth revisiting again and again. (Fiction. 13-18)
MY BODY MY CHOICE The Fight for Abortion Rights Stevenson, Robin Orca (176 pp.) $19.95 paper | May 7, 2019 978-1-4598-1712-8
A nonfiction book about reproductive justice focusing primarily on the U.S. and Canada. Stevenson’s (Pride, 2016, etc.) stated goal in writing this book was to spark conversation and destigmatize this common medical procedure. The introduction makes the work’s abortion-rights stance clear: Medical abortion is 10 times safer than childbirth, and without legal abortion, women die from unsafe ones. Chapter 1 provides historical context for the criminalization of abortion and contraception in the U.S., linking it directly to racism and white supremacy. This sets the stage for the fight for legal abortion in the U.S. and Canada, which is discussed at length in Chapter 2. Subsequent chapters focus on a range of topics related to attacks on abortion rights in the U.S. and Canada, challenges to abortion access globally, and key issues surrounding racial justice, trans inclusion, and concerns of the disability rights community. Each chapter includes information about activists, with young people featured in the last chapter. The book is visually appealing, with bold design that includes photos, cartoons, sidebar quotes, and maps in eye-popping full color. Minor quibble: Many photos are undated. Well-researched and visually appealing, this is a boon for those seeking clear, comprehensive information from the perspective of the reproductive rights movement. (author’s note, glossary, resources, references, index) (Non fiction. 12-18)
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THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT
Sugiura, Misa HarperTeen (400 pp.) $17.99 | Jun. 4, 2019 978-0-06-247344-8 Sugiura’s (It’s Not Like It’s a Secret, 2017, etc.) sophomore novel deftly questions accountability for past injustices. Seventeen-year-old Japanese American CJ Katsuyama lives with her single mother and free-spirited aunt in present-day Silicon Valley. Though pushed by her mother to aspire to greatness, CJ feels she only excels at arranging flowers at the family flower shop. CJ is intimately familiar with the history of the store, sold for a pittance to Robert McAllister, a white man, while her family was interned during World War II, purchased back at the market rate after 30 years, and now floundering while the McAllisters have prospered (CJ’s high school is even named after them). A discovery about the McAllister patriarch leads CJ and other student activists to embark on a campaign that creates tension within their community and further complicates CJ’s relationship with her mother, a partner at McAllister Venture Capital. Sugiura tackles an abundance of topics with finesse, including social and economic injustice, allyship, and feminism, simultaneously breaking down the Asian American immigration narrative and the myth of the model minority. CJ lacks confidence and is flawed but grows, along with other characters, into selfrealization in part through addressing prejudices. A majority of the cast members are people of color, and many characters are biracial; several are queer. Two nations who first lived in the area, the Miwok and Ohlone, are named in the text. Essential. (Fiction. 14-18)
THEY CALLED US ENEMY
Takei, George & Eisinger, Justin & Scott, Steven Illus. by Becker, Harmony Top Shelf Books (208 pp.) $19.99 paper | Jul. 16, 2019 978-1-60309-450-4 A beautifully heart-wrenching graphicnovel adaptation of actor and activist Takei’s (Lions and Tigers and Bears, 2013, etc.) childhood experience of incarceration in a World War II camp for Japanese Americans. Takei had not yet started school when he, his parents, and his younger siblings were forced to leave their home and report to the Santa Anita Racetrack for “processing and removal” due to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The creators smoothly and cleverly embed the historical context within which Takei’s family’s story takes place, allowing readers to simultaneously experience the daily humiliations that they
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LAURA DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME
A 17-year-old struggles to navigate friendship and finding herself while navigating a toxic relationship. Biracial (East Asian and white) high schooler Freddy is in love with white Laura Dean. She can’t help it—Laura oozes cool. But while Freddy’s friends are always supportive of her, they can’t understand why she stays with Laura. Laura cheats on Freddy, gaslights and emotionally manipulates her, and fetishizes her. After Laura breaks up with her for a third time, Freddy writes to an advice columnist and, at the recommendation of her best friend Doodle, (reluctantly) sees a psychic who advises her that in order to break out of the cycle of her “nonmonogamous swing-your-partner wormhole,” Freddy needs to do the breaking up herself. As she struggles to fall out of love and figure out how to “break up with someone who’s broken up with me,” Freddy slowly begins to be drawn back into Laura’s orbit, challenging her relationships with her friends as she searches for happiness. Tamaki (Supergirl, 2018, etc.) explores the nuances of both romantic and platonic relationships with raw tenderness and honesty. Valero-O’Connell’s (Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks, 2018, etc.) art is realistic and expressive, bringing the characters to life through dynamic grayscale illustrations featuring highlights of millennial pink. Freddy and her friends live in Berkeley, California, and have a diversity of body shapes, gender expressions, sexualities, and skin tones. A triumphant queer coming-of-age story that will make your heart ache and soar. (Graphic novel. 14-adult)
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CICADA
Tan, Shaun Illus. by the author Levine/Scholastic (40 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 29, 2019 978-1-338-29839-0 Tan’s narratives often critique traditional office culture; this one features the inhumane treatment of the protagonist, a cicada dressed in a four-armed gray suit, complete with tie and pocket square. Oriented vertically, the insect does not reach the top of his human co-workers’ desks, thus skewing the perspective so their heads are not visible. The green data entry clerk works in a gray maze of cubicles. Despite his exceptional performance and strong work ethic, he must walk blocks to a bathroom and is physically bullied. Readers will recognize forms of marginalization throughout, i.e., the elevator buttons are too high, poverty forces residency in the office wall. Cicada language is primitive and rhythmic: “Seventeen year. No promotion. / Human resources say cicada not human. / Need no resources. / Tok Tok Tok!” The last line is a refrain following each brief description, suggesting both the sound of a clock (time passing) and the notion of cicada “talk.” Upon retiring, he ascends the long stairway to the skyscraper’s ledge. The oil paintings of shadowy, cramped spaces transition to a brightened sky; a split in Cicada’s body reveals a molten glow. An orange-red winged nymph emerges and joins a sky full of friends flying to the forest, where they have the last laugh. No Kafkaesque conclusion here; metamorphosis brings liberation and joy. Simultaneously sobering and uplifting, it will lead thoughtful readers to contemplate othering in their own lives. (Picture book. 12-adult)
special issue: best books of 2019
Tamaki, Mariko Illus. by Valero-O’Connell, Rosemary First Second (304 pp.) $17.99 paper | May 7, 2019 978-1-62672-259-0
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suffered in the camps while providing readers with a broader understanding of the federal legislation, lawsuits, and actions which led to and maintained this injustice. The heroes who fought against this and provided support to and within the Japanese American community, such as Fred Korematsu, the 442nd Regiment, Herbert Nicholson, and the ACLU’s Wayne Collins, are also highlighted, but the focus always remains on the many sacrifices that Takei’s parents made to ensure the safety and survival of their family while shielding their children from knowing the depths of the hatred they faced and danger they were in. The creators also highlight the dangerous parallels between the hate speech, stereotyping, and legislation used against Japanese Americans and the trajectory of current events. Delicate grayscale illustrations effectively convey the intense emotions and the stark living conditions. A powerful reminder of a history that is all too timely today. (Graphic memoir. 14-adult)
HOPE IS OUR ONLY WING
Tavengerwei, Rutendo Soho Teen (216 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-64129-072-2 Following the tragic and mysterious death of her journalist father while on an investigative trip to the family’s homeland of Zimbabwe, 15-year-old Shamiso and her mother leave England. Returning to the country she left at age 5 is disorienting for Shamiso—she doesn’t even remember her paternal grandmother. She unsuccessfully tries to keep her grief and anger under wraps, bound up in resentment over being in this place that is now home. At her new boarding school, Shamiso initially seeks to keep to herself, but Tanyaradzwa, another student, who has her own reasons for deep sadness, extends an offer of friendship that Shamiso initially rebuffs, although later the girls become close companions. Inspired by actual events from
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2008 Zimbabwe, debut author Tavengerwei masterfully knits together a literary quilt with prose that evokes heartbreaking and hopeful truths. Mainly portraying events from a teenager’s perspective, readers also learn about the political and economic downfall of a once prosperous country. Filled with tales of struggle, sacrifice, corruption, and resilience, the novel showcases a cast of characters whose formidable spirits in the face of lifethreatening crises take readers on a roller-coaster ride of emotions via a gripping page-turner. A narrative of courage and optimism in the face of loss, this novel is brilliant storytelling. (glossary) (Fiction. 14-adult)
ON THE COME UP
Thomas, Angie Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 5, 2019 978-0-06-249856-4 This honest and unflinching story of toil, tears, and triumph is a musical love letter that proves literary lightning does indeed strike twice. Thomas’ (The Hate U Give, 2017) sophomore novel returns to Garden Heights, but while Brianna may live in Starr’s old neighborhood, their experiences couldn’t differ more. Raised by a widowed mother, a recovering drug addict, Bri attends an arts school while dreaming of becoming a famous rapper, as her father was before gang violence ended his life. Her struggles within the music industry and in school highlight the humiliations and injustices that remain an indelible part of the African American story while also showcasing rap’s undeniable lyrical power as a language through which to find strength. Bri’s journey is deeply personal: small in scope and edgy in tone. When Bri raps, the prose sings on the page as she uses it to voice her frustration at being stigmatized as “hood” at school, her humiliation at being unable to pay the bills, and her yearning to succeed in the music world on her own merit. Most importantly, the novel gives voice to teens whose lives diverge from middle-class Americana. Bri wrestles with parent relationships and boy drama—and a trip to the food bank so they don’t starve during Christmas. The rawness of Bri’s narrative demonstrates Thomas’ undeniable storytelling prowess as she tells truths that are neither pretty nor necessarily universally relatable. A joyous experience awaits. Read it. Learn it. Love it. (Fiction. 13-adult)
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THE SPACES BETWEEN US
Tolman, Stacia Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 23, 2019 978-1-250-17492-5 A brilliant, frustrated girl seeks connection and freedom beyond her claustrophobic hometown. Serena Velasco knows there’s something rotten in the state of Colchis, the abandoned factory town that her uncle describes as “the burned-over cinder of the American Dream.” She adopts her late father’s communist philosophies and Red Army cap as shields to keep herself loftily separate from a community that has never welcomed or understood her—and that she does not wish to welcome or understand either. Her only friend is talented dancer Melody Grimshaw, a fellow social pariah who comes from the poorest family in town. When Serena’s mother becomes the new principal, Serena and Melody think they can use that leverage to achieve the goals that will get them out of Colchis, but chasing their dreams proves more complicated, isolating, and dangerous than either girl predicted. As the scope of the narrative expands to old-money Maine, a California strip club, and a cross-country hitchhiking trip, the spaces between Serena and the people she loves threaten to grow irreparably wide. All major characters are white. Serena is a stunningly realistic and layered protagonist, brilliant but naïve and projecting a prickly disdain that covers deeper insecurities. Her story unfolds in remarkably sharp, vivid prose, and even the least sympathetic characters are rendered with thoughtful complexity. A girl-centered Catcher in the Rye for the 21st century. (Fic tion. 14-adult)
THE BEAST PLAYER Uehashi, Nahoko Trans. by Hirano, Cathy Henry Holt (352 pp.) $19.99 | Mar. 26, 2019 978-1-250-30746-0
Can humans bridge the gulf that separates them from beasts? Is it love that binds all sentient life—or fear? In this translation of the first entry in international-award–winning Japanese author Uehashi’s (Moribito, 2014, etc.) hit series, 10-year-old Elin idolizes her mother, a skilled beast doctor for Toda, fearsome battle serpents. When some Toda die mysteriously, Elin’s mother is sentenced to death. Elin escapes and finds a kind beekeeper in the mountains who raises her as his own. As she grows into adulthood, she discovers her love for all living creatures and a unique gift for communicating with the magical Royal Beasts. But the nation’s political structure is fragile. Soon Elin is thrust into deadly civil conflict and must decide whether to use
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This essential volume is deserving of more than one read. the other side
THE OTHER SIDE Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border Villalobos, Juan Pablo Trans. by Harvey, Rosalind Farrar, Straus and Giroux (160 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-0-374-30573-4
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THE WAKING FOREST Wees, Alyssa Delacorte (304 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 12, 2019 978-0-525-58116-1
An older teen’s uncanny dreams spill into reality—or perhaps it’s the other way around. Rhea Ravenna, eldest of four white sisters, has been having visions and the same dream full of winding stairs and forbidden doors since she was young. Now 18 and with a decade of therapy for anxiety under her belt, she finally opens the door in her dream to find a dark presence behind it—and he is still there when she wakes up. Elsewhere in a vast woods—the same woods that Rhea sees in waking visions—a witch contentedly grants wishes to dreaming children, until a young man disguised as a black fox enters her realm and begins to tell her an enigmatic story of magic and rebellion and torn-out hearts. As Rhea’s home begins to unravel and her family to disappear, her world and the witch’s realm violently collide, and neither can hold back their screams. Dreams and stories—their power to escape reality and to restore it—are in the bones of this masterfully woven fantasy debut. And at its heart? The power of revolution in the face of coldly violent injustice. Wees has borrowed everything and nothing at all from fairy tales, stitching the most timeless and archetypal elements of dream, darkness, the forest, corruption, and imperfect valor into an intricate pattern crafted to twist, invert, and fall apart with exquisite precision. Into the woods like never before. (Fantasy. 14-17)
special issue: best books of 2019
A critical compilation of stories from unaccompanied Central American teen refugees who make tremendous sacrifices to cross the U.S.– Mexico border. Told in short vignettes that offer dynamic perspectives, this harrowing book provides readers with snapshots of dire, foreboding situations faced by migrants. The first story, “Where Are Your Kids?” spotlights 16-year-old Kevin and his 10-year-old sister, Nicole, whose mother in the U.S. learns from an immigration officer that her kids are not in Guatemala on a school trip as she believed but rather detained at the San Ysidro border. In another account titled “I’d Rather Die Trying to Get Out,” the two siblings are moneyless and lost, resorting to asking a random truck driver for a lift. The author’s introductory note indicates that all these stories are true save for some changes to protect the 11 immigrant minors’ identities. Most narratives leave readers with (all the right) questions: How long were the teens detained? Are they OK? Why did they receive such horrible treatment in detention cells? What aren’t they telling readers? Villalobos (Breve historia del ya merito, 2018, etc.) records the chilling details of the refugees’ treks, framed against a background of politics and the reality of today’s migration crisis. At the center of every story lies credible fear; this essential volume is deserving of more than one read. (author’s note, about the refugees, glossary, further reading) (Nonfic tion. 12-18)
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her beloved animal friends as tools of war. The author creates complex societies and fantastical creatures with imaginative, immersive detail. In a refreshing change for Western readers, the central issue hinges on neither individual power nor romantic love but kindness balanced against responsibility, and the narrative jumps among the perspectives of numerous characters in a more digressive style than they may be accustomed to. It’s lovely to watch Elin blossom from a quiet, curious child into a compassionate, thoughtful young woman with a steadfast moral compass—even if that compass sometimes leads her astray. A richly detailed coming-of-age fantasy epic that rewards the patient and contemplative reader. (Fantasy. 13-adult)
A THOUSAND SISTERS The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II Wein, Elizabeth Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (384 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 22, 2019 978-0-06-245301-3
In her first work of nonfiction for teens, Wein (The Last Jedi, 2017, etc.) details the complex and inspiring story of the only women combat pilots of World
War II. The “Great Patriotic War” was already under way by the time Marina Raskova—a famous, record-breaking pilot—convinced the Soviet Union to create women’s air regiments. Using photographs and primary source quotations, Wein brings these regiments of young women to life, tracing their harrowing experiences before, during, and after the war. A detailed overview of the Russian political and social landscape in the first half of the 20th century is interwoven throughout the narrative, contextualizing the Soviet Union’s involvement in World War II. Wein thoughtfully addresses her readers’ contemporary understanding of identity politics, acknowledging the homogeneity
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An intense, bone-chilling reading experience. white rose
of her white (despite the ethnic diversity of the USSR), straight subjects and the ways that Soviet ideologies about gender align with or differ from the expectations of contemporary American readers. The Soviet women’s experiences are placed in context through comparisons with the roles of women pilots in the Royal Air Force and the United States military. Vivid descriptions of their personal sacrifices and the deep bonds they formed connect readers to the story. Careful footnotes provide information about unfamiliar vocabulary, and pagelong sidebars round out the history with tangential but fascinating facts. For readers invested in military and/or feminist history, this important book soars. (source notes, bibliography) (History. 14-18)
WHITE ROSE
Wilson, Kip Versify/HMH (368 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-1-328-59443-3 Sophie Scholl was a young German student who wanted to see the end of Hitler and the Nazi regime. She gave her life for that cause. As children, Sophie and her brother Hans were enthusiastic members of Hitler Youth organizations. But as the Nazis’ chokehold increased and the roundups and arrests of dissenters and Jews escalated, they became determined to resist. After conscription into the National Labor Service, Hans, Sophie, and trusted university friends formed the secret White Rose resistance group. Hans began to compose treasonable leaflets, promoting an uprising against Hitler. Sophie helped get the leaflets out to influential people as well as to other university students. Their work attracted the attention of Nazi sympathizers, who informed the Gestapo of suspicious activities—and they were ultimately caught by a university custodian. Intensive interrogation and imprisonment, followed by a sham trial led by a fanatical judge, led to the sentence of death by guillotine. Organized in repeated sections that move forward and backward in time, readers hear Sophie’s thoughts in brief, pointed, free-verse poems in direct, compelling language. Other poems give voice to individuals such as her boyfriend, Fritz, who served in the German army, and the Gestapo interrogator, adding to readers’ understanding of the inevitability of the outcome and the tragic futility of their sacrifice. Real events made deeply personal in an intense, bonechilling reading experience. (dramatis personae, glossary, author’s note, sources) (Verse historical fiction. 12-adult)
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FRANKLY IN LOVE Yoon, David Putnam (432 pp.) $18.99 | Sep. 10, 2019 978-1-984812-20-9
A senior contends with first love and heartache in this spectacular debut. Sensitive, smart Frank Li is under a lot of pressure. His Korean immigrant parents have toiled ceaselessly, running a convenience store in a mostly black and Latinx Southern California neighborhood, for their children’s futures. Frank’s older sister fulfilled their parents’ dreams—making it to Harvard— but when she married a black man, she was disowned. So when Frank falls in love with a white classmate, he concocts a scheme with Joy, the daughter of Korean American family friends, who is secretly seeing a Chinese American boy: Frank and Joy pretend to fall for each other while secretly sneaking around with their real dates. Through rich and complex characterization that rings completely true, the story highlights divisions within the Korean immigrant community and between communities of color in the U.S., cultural rifts separating immigrant parents and American-born teens, and the impact on high school peers of society’s entrenched biases. Yoon’s light hand with dialogue and deft use of illustrative anecdotes produce a story that illuminates weighty issues by putting a compassionate human face on struggles both universal and particular to certain identities. Frank’s best friend is black and his white girlfriend’s parents are vocal liberals; Yoon’s unpacking of the complexity of the racial dynamics at play is impressive—and notably, the novel succeeds equally well as pure romance. A deeply moving account of love in its many forms. (Fic tion. 14-adult)
AS MANY NOWS AS I CAN GET
Youngdahl, Shana Dial (432 pp.) $17.99 | Aug. 20, 2019 978-0-525-55385-4 Grief, addiction, first loves, and traveling an unplanned road are among the many themes explored in this debut novel. After growing up in an insular town in Colorado, graduating senior Scarlett has big ambitions. Though she dabbles with alcohol and drugs, her intelligence, drive, and propensity for physics pave her way into college after college. At the same time, her close relationships prove difficult for Scarlett to leave behind: her best friend, Hannah; ex-boyfriend, Cody; and lifelong friend, David, with whom a clandestine romance, replete with a sort of magnetic sexual draw, blooms. Moving between the present and two points in the recent past, her heartfelt yet often sardonic first-person narration fills in the
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details of this deeply authentic story, realistically portraying how paralyzing unexpected circumstances and tragedy can be. Scarlett herself is marvelously complex, sympathetic but difficult, grief-stricken and funny. Secondary characters are also well developed, imbued with interesting backstories that help frame this study both in how people can break one another and hold each other together. Scarlett and David are both white, Cody is Latinx, and there is some diversity in ethnicity, gender, and sexuality among the people Scarlett meets while at her fictional college in Maine. Lovely, evocative, unadorned writing shines in this smart, poignant story that serious teen readers shouldn’t miss. (Fiction. 14-18)
BLACK ENOUGH Stories of Being Young & Black in America
Ed. by Zoboi, Ibi Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 8, 2019 978-0-06-269872-8
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A diverse and compelling fiction anthology that taps 17 established, rising star, and new #ownvoices talents. Editor Zoboi (Pride, 2018, etc.) lays out the collection’s purpose: exploring black interconnectedness, traditions, and identity in terms of how they apply to black teens. Given that scope, that most stories are contemporary realistic fiction makes sense (Rita Williams-Garcia’s humorous “Whoa!” which dips into the waters of speculative fiction, is a notable exception). Conversely, the characters are incredibly varied, as are the narrative styles. Standouts include the elegant simplicity of Jason Reynolds’ “The Ingredients,” about a group of boys walking home from the swimming pool; Leah Henderson’s “Warning: Color May Fade,” about an artist afraid to express herself; the immediacy of Tracey Baptiste’s “Gravity,” about a #MeToo moment of self-actualization birthed from violation; Renée Watson’s reflection on family in “Half a Moon”; and the collection’s namesake, Varian Johnson’s “Black Enough,” which highlights the paradigm shift that is getting woke. In these stories, black kids are nerds and geeks, gay and lesbian, first gen and immigrants, outdoorsy and artists, conflicted and confused, grieving and succeeding, thriving and surviving—in short, they’re fully human. No collection could represent the entire spectrum of blackness, however, the presence of trans, Afro-Latinx, and physically disabled characters is missed: a clarion call for more authentic black-centric collections. A breath of fresh air and a sigh of long overdue relief. Nuanced and necessary. (contributor biographies) (Anthol ogy. 12-18)
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These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Aboulela, Leila Black Cat/Grove (304 pp.) $16.00 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-8021-4915-2
BLACK SUNDAY by Tola Rotimi Abraham.........................................83 AMNESTY by Aravind Adiga...............................................................83
Three members of a British Muslim women’s group travel north to the Scottish Highlands, where their individual preoccupations turn increasingly surreal, leading them to redefine their attitudes and their futures. Talking birds, phantom children, and physical metamorphoses are just a few of the surprises in this latest novel from an Egyptian-born writer who has previously used a more realistic style to explore the dilemmas of Muslim women often stranded between cultures. Aboulela (Elsewhere, Home, 2019, etc.) does begin her new work in recognizable territory, depicting a trio of friends who share a religion and immigrant background, but gradually proceedings shift into a more fantastical place. Salma, married to Muslim-convert David and mother to four British children, has enjoyed the most freedom, yet she fantasizes about the life she might have had in Egypt and is enjoying a risky phone dialogue with Amir, the man she didn’t marry. Moni is neglecting and endangering her marriage by devoting herself exclusively to the care of her son, Adam, who has cerebral palsy. Iman, youngest and prettiest of the three, yearns for a child but has just been rejected by her third husband and is now homeless. During a week together in a remote loch-side cottage, the women pursue private paths: Iman wears peculiar costumes and communes with a fable-sprouting Hoopoe, a sacred bird; Moni befriends a silent child who suddenly begins to grow alarmingly, like Alice in Wonderland; and Salma chases Amir through the woods. All three suffer painful physical alterations and journey through testing landscapes, but their friendship, previously fraying, helps sustain them until the Hoopoe leads them back. Aboulela’s exploration of the women’s problems of choice, faith, and commitment are as immersive as ever, but her dreamscapes, while imaginative and disconcerting, seem to sit oddly, at one didactic remove from the story. Split between two different narrative modes, Aboulela’s latest is both engaging and perplexing.
THE BOATMAN’S DAUGHTER by Andy Davidson............................87 MY PART OF HER by Javad Djavahery; trans. by Emma Ramadan................................................................... 88 THE AMERICAN FIANCÉE by Éric Dupont; trans. by Peter McCambridge.............................................................. 89 THE RESISTERS by Gish Jen.............................................................. 92 THE BURN by Kathleen Kent...............................................................93 I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM by Peter Kispert............................95 LOVE, UNSCRIPTED by Owen Nicholls............................................ 99 WEATHER by Jenny Offill................................................................... 99 APARTMENT by Teddy Wayne........................................................... 107 THE AOSAWA MURDERS by Riku Onda; trans. by Alison Watts.......................................................................... 117 THE RESISTERS
Jen, Gish Knopf (320 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-525-65721-7
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When things fall apart, four modern Nigerian siblings will need cunning to survive. In this piercing, supple debut, a Nigerian father is scammed into ruin, and his wife, wearing her “favorite perfume, Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door,” soon flees to New York. The couple had honeymooned in Spain and lived a comfortable life, but “my family unraveled rapidly,” says their daughter Ariyike, “in messy loose knots, hastening away from one another, shamefaced and lonesome, injured solitary animals in a happy world.” Ariyike sells water on the Lagos streets while her sister scrubs hospital toilets, their younger brothers both hungry and in need of school fees. All subsist with their complaining Yoruba grandmother. In a riveting sequence, Bibike helps her twin, Ariyike, transform into Keke to audition for an on-air radio job. A male acquaintance advises: “Dress sexy, be confident, smell nice, and if you are offered something to drink, ask for water first....If they insist, ask for something foreign and healthy, like green tea.” Keke isn’t chosen but leverages a position anyway by trading sex and plying her encyclopedic knowledge of Luke’s and Matthew’s Gospels. Thus begins her rise in Christian radio. Sex—often predatory—forms and deforms all four siblings; the novel features several rapes. Chapters alternate in each sibling’s voice over a stretch of 20 years. The brothers grow up and move to Chicago and out of the story. Abraham stuffs her novel past brimming, but its sophisticated structure and propulsive narration allow her to tuck in a biting critique of corrupt colonial religion and universally exploitative men. “It was fortunate to be beautiful and desired,” says Bibike, whose voice opens the story. “It made people smile at me. I was used to strangers wishing me well. But what is a girl’s beauty, but a man’s promise of reward?” Bibike eventually becomes a healer who cherishes their Yoruba grandmother while Keke, the wife of a powerful and monstrous pastor, tastes ashes—the source of the novel’s title. Twin sisters cut adrift in a perilous, duplicitous world learn that “only the wise survive.” A formidable debut.
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After surviving the war by working on a farm, Vera and Edith realize their hometown of Budapest holds little promise. Fortuitously, a kind American officer sends them to Naples with a letter recommending Vera to the embassy. Once there, Vera, who is fluent in five languages, readily secures a job as secretary to Capt. Anton Wight, an American officer at the embassy. She’s intent upon taking care of Edith, who’s looking for male attention, which she finds with Marcus, a photographer ready to sweep her away dancing and maybe into social ruin. But it’s Vera who falls in love first, with the dashing Capt. Wight, who treats her to dinner dates and gifts. Although Vera tells Anton about her experiences during the war, including her guilt over surviving while her family presumably perished in the gas chambers, her attraction to him quickly outweighs any lingering trauma. However, Anton’s struggles with his own past derail their romance, plunging Vera into more heartache as her path traverses the globe. The romance between Vera and Capt. Wight is, unfortunately, much too easy, beginning with its inevitable whirlwind courtship. Publishing for the first time under her birth name, Abriel (Christmas in Vermont, 2019, etc., written as Anita Hughes) was inspired by her mother’s life, and she deftly sketches the postwar world from Naples to Venezuela and Australia, with attention paid to the changed architectural and emotional landscapes. The rubble of bombed cities, the blank map of lost relatives, and the uncertainty of day-to-day survival outline the anguish of the lost generation. A predictable romance tempers the energy of this tale about the healing powers of love.
Abraham, Tola Rotimi Catapult (288 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-948226-56-1
AMNESTY
Adiga, Aravind Scribner (272 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-9821-2724-4 An undocumented immigrant from Sri Lanka tries to elude the forces, legal and otherwise, working to push him out of Australia. Dhananjaya Rajaratnam, the hero of this taut, thrillerlike novel by the Booker Prize-winning Adiga (Selection Day, 2017, etc.), has done everything he can to pass through Sydney unnoticed after his student visa expires. He goes by Danny, the better to assimilate, and works as a housecleaner so fastidious and efficient he’s nicknamed Legendary Cleaner. He lives cheaply and unobtrusively in a storeroom above a grocery store and buys expensive hair highlights to blend into an increasingly expensive city. But during the course of the day the novel covers, his unstable perch is getting wobblier. His phone is obsolete and he can’t afford to replace it, cutting off his lifeline, and he witnesses the aftermath of what he’s sure is a murder committed by Dr. Prakash, one of his clients. The plot of the novel mainly turns on Prakash’s attempts to bully Danny into silence, lest he be reported to Australian immigration authorities. (“Easiest thing in the world, becoming invisible to white people, who don’t see you anyway;
THE LIGHT AFTER THE WAR
Abriel, Anita Atria (320 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-9821-2297-3
Having escaped from a train headed to Auschwitz, Vera and Edith, two young Hungarian women, mourn their parents as well as Edith’s fiance, all likely lost to the Holocaust. Can they forge new lives in the postwar world? |
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A PERFECT EXPLANATION
but the hardest thing is becoming invisible to brown people, who will see you no matter what.”) But Adiga cannily balances his assured plotting with a style that evokes Danny’s justified paranoia. Amid the tick-tock of Danny’s reckoning with Prakash, Adiga chronicles his hero’s history as a migrant, which involves a demoralizing stint in a scammy university and an increasing realization that getting along means disclosing information others can use. “Each time a door opened or slammed… Danny’s heart contracted,” Adiga writes, and he expertly translates that anxiety to the reader. A well-crafted tale of entrapment, alert to the risk of exploitation that follows immigrants in a new country.
Anstruther, Eleanor Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (320 pp.) $24.00 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-358-12085-8 Enid Campbell never wanted to marry, but her aristocratic family needs an heir—and after her brother is killed in World War I, it falls to Enid to produce one. This pressure will lead to cascades of unhappiness down the generations. Poisoned, splintered relationships characterize this saga of upper-class life in 1920s Britain, radiating outward from the fallible Enid, whose discomfort as a daughter, sister, and mother dominates events. Favored by her father, who also died early, Enid makes a questionable marriage to Douglas, “a nobody, a nothing,” and then has a son, Fagus, who’s “born with something wrong with him” and becomes an invalid after falling down the stairs, turning the child into “the living breathing embodiment of everything she’d done wrong.” Loveless though her marriage is, Enid stays in it to provide a fully able heir, although she would rather be a nun or devote herself to her Christian Science beliefs. Two more children are born, but the pressure and postnatal depression are too much, and Enid flees, leaving her sister, Joan, and Joan’s “companion,” Pat, to step in. Anstruther’s debut, a fictionalized version of her own family’s history, is a dark story of close relationships gone awry. Enid’s stony, withering mother, Sybil, was always closer to Joan; Enid believes Joan hates her; Enid’s daughter, Finetta, believes her mother hates her and neglects her own daughter in turn while feeling crushing love for her son. For all the sophistication of tone and expression to be found in the book, the familial relationships emerge naked, brutal—and gender biased. Anstruther depicts a privileged world that offers little in the way of human warmth and a group of characters almost uniformly miserable despite their material comfort. It makes for a chilly read, its gloom only deepened by a running 1964 episode in which an elderly Enid is confronted by the measure of her failure. A stifling, dismaying tale of upper-class dysfunction elegantly told.
LITTLE CONSTRUCTIONS
Burns, Anna Graywolf (312 pp.) $16.00 paper | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-64445-013-0
A coruscating tale of family and trauma first published in Britain in 2007 by the National Book Critics Circle Award– and Booker Prize–winning author of Milkman. Burns’ Milkman was the surprise breakout literary novel of 2018: A story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate Northern Ireland’s Troubles, its style was challenging 84
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The doyenne of damsels in distress enters the brave new world of #MeToo. kiss the girls and make them cry
and at times maddeningly recursive but also showcased Burns’ knack for black comedy and skill at conjuring an atmosphere of paranoia. In retrospect, this novel reads like a rehearsal for that triumph; it’s a touch clunkier, at times more confusing than beguiling, but speaks to her ability to write about violence in powerful and unconventional ways. The story turns on the Doe family, whose gangster patriarch, John, is the sun around which various offspring, girlfriends, and hangers-on orbit. Most of them have names that start with “J”—Janet, Jetty, Jotty, Janine, Julie, Johnjoe, JerryJudges—which makes the relationships hard to parse. But the tactic is intentional; incest and other forms of sexual abuse are central (if slowly revealed) themes, underscoring how callously and interchangeably people (usually women) are treated. More directly, the story turns on Jetty, one of John’s girlfriends, going on a mad spree to acquire a gun to exact revenge after feeling betrayed by him. Her actions set in motion a series of revelations about family and small-town secrets. The puckish, unnamed narrator explores this milieu with dark irony (“he was now initiating his first beating of a proper adult woman”). But Burns has deep reserves of empathy too, writing about one
woman who stocks up on self-help books she’s too terrified to read and depicting a family so consumed by “Noises” (i.e., memories of abuse) that it feels helpless. “Violence—and by the bucketload—kept the Noises away.” Burns’ style can make for tough sledding, but the intensity of her material justifies the effort.
KISS THE GIRLS AND MAKE THEM CRY
Clark, Mary Higgins Simon & Schuster (400 pp.) $26.99 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-1-5011-7170-3
The doyenne of damsels in distress enters the brave new world of #MeToo. Returning from a trip to Hong Kong, investigative journalist Gina Kane is eager to see her boyfriend, banker Ted
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Wilson, and nearly as eager to hear from CRyan, the mysterious correspondent who’d emailed her about “a terrible experience with one of the higher-ups” at REL News. But Ted has just left on a business trip of his own, and despite Gina’s repeated attempts, CRyan doesn’t reply. By the time Gina has identified her as Catherine Ryan, she’s been killed in a jet ski accident in Aruba. Since Cathy was an old hand at jet skiing whose death seems suspiciously timed, Gina, with the blessing of Geoffrey Whitehurst, the incoming editor at Empire Review, takes off for Aruba, where she satisfies herself that this was no accident. A long flashback to two years earlier shows REL associate producer Lauren Pomerantz reporting to Michael Carter, a lawyer in the news organization’s HR department, that venerable anchor Brad Matthews has harassed her and that she’s gotten some convincing proof that will put paid to he-said, she-said. The next hundred pages mark a notable stretch for Clark (I’ve Got My Eyes on You, 2018, etc.), who clearly relishes the opportunity to show a bunch of high-priced lowlifes—Matthews, Carter, CEO Richard Sherman, and Frederick Carlyle Jr., son and heir apparent to REL’s founder—scrambling to cover up
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Matthews’ bad behavior without leaving any trace that they’re doing so. Back in the present, Gina leans on enough sources to link Cathy Ryan’s death to Matthews’ serial abuse, but at considerable cost. Her relationship with Ted, who’s helping handle REL’s move to turn itself into a public corporation, is seriously jeopardized by her sleuthing. She can barely spare the time it takes to fly to Buffalo to check out the bona fides of her recently widowed father’s much younger new girlfriend. And savvy readers will realize long before Gina does that one of the conspirators at REL whose wings she plans to clip has ideas about clipping hers first. Clark’s usual mixture now updated, with surprising and welcome assurance, for a new generation of imperiled women.
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A young girl comes of age in a house of horrors. real life
THE BOATMAN’S DAUGHTER
REAL LIFE
Dieudonné, Adeline Trans. by Glasser, Roland World Editions (240 pp.) $16.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-64286-047-4
Davidson, Andy MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (416 pp.) $16.00 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-374-53855-2
A young girl comes of age in a house of horrors. In the Demo, a nondescript prefab development, there is a house where a young girl and her dysfunctional family live. Belgian writer Dieudonné’s debut novel, which has already won multiple awards in France, follows an unnamed narrator who fears her father, an abusive big-game hunter; denigrates her mother, a battered wife; and adores Sam, her bright-eyed younger brother. After the two siblings witness a tragedy, their lives are forever changed. Sam retreats from the world and finds comfort in the carcass room where his father’s trophies are mounted. The narrator becomes convinced she’s living in an alternate reality that she can rewrite:
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The remote Arkansas bayou is a swirling kaleidoscope of murder, greed, and dark, ancient magic in Bram Stoker Award finalist Davidson’s second novel (In the Valley of the Sun, 2017). The rotting Holy Day Church and Sabbath House, where the preacher Billy Cotton held his congregants in his thrall, serves as a painful reminder to 21-year-old Miranda Crabtree of the night 10 years ago when she and her father, Hiram, the boatman, took the midwife (and witch) Iskra there to deliver Cotton’s son. As soon as Cotton laid eyes on the infant’s mottled, scaly skin and webbed hands, he called him an abomination and tried to kill him. Iskra had other ideas, and the baby, whom Miranda called Littlefish, survived. But Hiram disappeared that night, and she’s since dreamed of finding his body (because he’s surely dead) and laying him to rest. It’s Miranda’s love for the mute, goodhearted Littlefish that has kept her going, and with Iskra’s help, she’s spent years running her father’s general store and eventually running dope for Cotton and his cruel and corrupt deputy, Charlie Riddle, to make ends meet. Now, Billy Cotton’s kingdom has crumbled around him and his body is riddled with cancer. Before dying, he’s desperate to appease the angry ghost of his wife, who died in childbirth, but he’ll need a sacrifice. On Miranda’s last run for Riddle, she’s ordered to deliver a young girl to Cotton, which she’s not about to do even though she knows her refusal will start a war she might not survive. But she’s ready, and the time for a reckoning has come. Davidson’s captivating horror fable combines the visceral violence of Cormac McCarthy with his own wholly original craftsmanship, weaving rich, folkloric magic with the best elements of a gritty Southern thriller. The book’s lightning-fast pace doesn’t come at the expense of fully realized, flawed, and achingly human characters. Ample bloodshed is offset by beautiful prose, and the bad guys are really, really bad. Luckily, Miranda, a young woman forged in hardship and grief and buoyed by her love of a very special child, is a perfect foil for the evil she’ll have to face. A stunning supernatural Southern gothic.
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MY PART OF HER
“It made everything seem more bearable.” She spends the next few years trying to change the past to save her younger brother—who has stopped smiling, started hurting animals, and become their father’s shooting buddy. She studies quantum physics, feels stirrings of forbidden desire, and begins recognizing the dangers of her intelligence and budding body. After a tense moment with her father she has a moment of realization: “I understood that, from now on, just like my mother, I, too, had become a prey.” The novel portrays trauma and abuse with both seriousness and a touch of humor. When talking about the way her mother prepares meals, the narrator says, “She did like an amoeba might, with neither creativity nor taste, but lots of mayonnaise.” Dieudonné’s writing captures momentous and mundane moments with equal insight and beauty: “The houses of the Demo smelled of old damp swimming towels forgotten in a sports bag,” and “[the sounds] escaped from her like jets of steam from a pressure cooker.” Despite a slightly underwhelming ending, Dieudonné’s startling debut tackles dark themes with grace, wit, and sincerity. A deeply disturbing, furiously tender, and darkly comedic debut.
Djavahery, Javad Trans. by Ramadan, Emma Restless Books (256 pp.) $17.99 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-63206-243-7 Searing novel, by Iranian exile Djavahery, of love and betrayal in a time of revolution. “If we were to have a reunion one day, it would have to take place in a cemetery.” In his English-language debut, screenwriter/novelist Djavahery writes pensively of an unnamed young man, just 13 when we meet him, who is hopelessly smitten by his 16-year-old cousin, Niloufar, whose name means “water lily” in Farsi. She is beautiful, with long, black, curly hair and large eyes, and she swims like a dolphin in the cool waters of the Caspian Sea, carefree thanks to prosperous parents who are also members of the Communist Party: “Wealth, power, an elegant mother who looked like
A thriller
MIKE BROGAN “A frighteningly realistic, entertaining story. Well-developed characters in a convincing real-world menace!” – Kirkus Reviews “Compulsive new page-turner from a Writer’s Digest award-winner. Suspense from a master...” – Midwest Book Review “Tense and engaging journey through corporate espionage and revenge. A timely mystery thriller.” – Foreword Reviews “Buckle up for a wild ride!” – Loren D. Estleman, Four-time Shamus Award Winner
How to order: Ingram, Amazon, mikebroganbooks.com 88
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THE AMERICAN FIANCÉE
a Hollywood starlet…so different from the archetype of our mothers.” Like a figure out of Homer, Nilou also happens to have numerous suitors, two in the lead, one as beautiful as she, the other a klutz with the demeanor of a “beaten dog” whom our narrator lures into a compromising situation that will forever shame him. Not even the arrival of another cousin, half Iranian and half German, who sports “the tiniest bikini on the south coast of the Caspian” can dim the ardor of the local boys for Nilou. Come the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini a few years later, and all those golden youth face doom. Called into service in the war that soon erupts with Iraq, some are squandered in suicide attacks while Nilou disappears, joining a leftist revolutionary group in Kurdistan, or so the narrator believes. A comrade eventually betrays her, as will her cousin, who, having also joined a Communist cell, decides that he cannot face the torture that is visited on him when he’s captured. At times reminiscent of Giorgio Bassani’s Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Djavahery’s novel is an aching evocation of a paradise lost, one that is impossible to regain, even in our narrator’s searching dreams. Vivid, shattering, and utterly memorable.
Dupont, Éric Trans. by McCambridge, Peter HarperVia/HarperCollins (608 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-06-294745-1 French Canadian Dupont’s bruiser of a novel begins as a traditional family saga set in a small, early-20th-century Quebec village before swerving into new, less linear, and more psychologically demanding territory. Born in 1918 and almost immediately orphaned, larger-thanlife figure Louis Lamontagne grows up with his grandmother Madeleine, a powerhouse herself, in Rivière-du-Loup. The names Louis and Madeleine will recur among other characters, as will a birthmark shaped like a bass clef and blue eyes in a particular shade of teal. Louis’ nickname, “The Horse,” is his alone, however, derived from his mythic strength. Womanizing,
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storytelling Louis’ life is by turns rollicking and tragic. He evolves from a charismatic, beloved boy to a witness to World War II atrocities to an alcoholic funeral director after his youngest son dies in a tragic accident. His middle child, Madeleine, eventually takes center stage. As a pregnant, unmarried teenager, she moves to Quebec City in the 1960s and opens a diner that she expands into a hugely successful chain while raising twin sons, Michel and Gabe. This first half of the novel, chock full of digressive stories about seemingly minor characters, has a rambling, overstuffed, 19th-century feel. But then, more than 250 pages in, Dupont shifts gears; the novel narrows and becomes epistolary. In 1999, Gabe, on a hopeless romantic quest in Germany, and Michel, an opera singer making a controversial film version of Tosca in Rome, begin a correspondence expressing their ambivalence toward each other and their conflicting views of their mother. Meanwhile, Gabe meets an elderly German woman with a convoluted story she shares in notebooks that take Gabe and the reader in unexpected directions. Everyone’s version of events differs here; there’s no trusting who’s hero, victim, or villain—or what’s real; parallels accumulate;
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every casually mentioned detail becomes important as truths are revealed. While the intensity of Dupont’s prose can be maddening, the sweet, sour, and salty world he creates is thoroughly addictive.
ADEQUATE YEARLY PROGRESS
Elden, Roxanna Atria (400 pp.) $16.99 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-9821-3502-7
A veteran teacher–turned-novelist provides a satirical view of life and (not so fast) times at an underperforming high school in Texas. Elden populates the paradoxically named Brae Hill Valley High School (located neither on a brae or hill nor in a valley) with a variety
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A lyrical and evocative portrait of a Sri Lankan boyhood friendship and the life lessons that came with it. suncatcher
of stock characters, including the hapless principal, the idealistic teacher from “TeachCorps,” officious administrators, the hard-as-nails football coach, and a plethora of students ranging from the football-crazed to the routinely apathetic. When the mediocre equilibrium at Brae Hill Valley is upset by the appointment of a self-promoting, disruptive education guru as superintendent of schools, the new school year devolves into a farcical exercise in increasing test scores and chasing after “new” standards, including a “Believer Score.” With references to the educational acronyms and platitudes spouted by industry consultants, Elden draws a manic sketch of a school under attack by the forces summoned to save it. Elden’s limited development of several characters, particularly students, results in some stereotyping in lieu of nuanced portraits, and her long service as a classroom teacher is clear from the more flattering portraits of the teaching staff vis-à-vis the student body. Occasional episodes, including one touching on issues of race, hint at layers beneath the surface which might have been mined for a weightier, less-slapstick approach. It’s hard to know whom to root for in this sitcom but easy to see how the system is broken.
although a subplot involving a girl who comes between the two friends never quite comes into focus. A lyrical and evocative portrait of a Sri Lankan boyhood friendship and the life lessons that came with it.
THE SNOW COLLECTORS
Hall, Tina May Dzanc (224 pp.) $16.95 paper | Feb. 12, 2020 978-1-950539-04-8
A grieving woman researches a possible murder in this novel by Hall (The Physics of Imaginary Objects, 2010, etc.). One year and seven months after the loss of her parents and twin sister at sea, Henna, a freelance encyclopedia writer who specializes in entries having to do with water, moves to an unnamed village where her constant companions
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SUNCATCHER
Gunesekera, Romesh The New Press (288 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-1-62097-559-6 A young boy comes of age against a backdrop of class conflict and political unrest in 1960s Sri Lanka. Gunesekera (Noontide Toll, 2014, etc.) sets his latest in Sri Lanka in 1964—then known as Ceylon—as uncertainty looms for the fledgling democracy and ethnic Sinhalese nationalism is on the rise. In the novel’s opening pages, narrator Kairo meets Jay, two boys riding their bikes in a church parking lot in the capital city of Colombo. Charismatic Jay challenges Kairo to a race, and the dynamic of their brief boyhood friendship is established: “I needed a guide, a hero, illumination,” Kairo explains. “Jay, I now know, needed an acolyte.” The middleclass son of a disillusioned socialist father in the Labour Department and a mother who works at Radio Ceylon, Kairo drifts in a dream world of pulp Western comics until he is swept into Jay’s glamorous orbit (the Gatsby echo must be intentional). Jay’s family home is grand enough to have a name, Casa Lihiniya; his mother, Sonya, drifts about in a caftan like a film star, and his uncle Elvin maintains a fleet of cars and runs a coconut estate in the countryside. Jay himself collects fish in tanks and birds in a backyard aviary. A vivid set piece takes the boys to Elvin’s estate, where a game of Cowboys and Indians, played with the son of an estate laborer, turns ugly and Kairo has his first intimations of class privilege: “I could see how easily [Jay] could slip into his uncle’s place one day: inherit this estate and loom over the shorter lives of less favoured people.” The story winds its unhurried way to a dramatic conclusion, |
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It’s the not-too-distant future, and the United States has become AutoAmerica. the resisters
ROBERT LUDLUM’S THE TREADSTONE RESURRECTION
are the oppressive snow and her sister’s basset hound, Rembrandt. When Henna finds a woman’s dead body under a hawthorn bush at the edge of the woods, she resolves to find out the secret meaning of the woman’s death, who was responsible for it, and how it’s connected to Lady Jane Franklin’s search for her Arctic-explorer husband, who disappeared with his two ships in 1845. Suspects include the “rakishly handsome” police chief, Fletcher, his unusual mother, Eleanor, and their alarmingly attractive and intrusive housekeeper, Dita. Is Fletcher innocent of the woman’s death, or has Henna been “blinded by a spot of canoodling”? Birds, blood, the town library’s tower room, and Fletcher’s strange house combine with other elements to create a deliciously creepy atmosphere. The story is captivating and well paced apart from the heavy-handed reportage of Rembrandt’s activities and an unremarkable ending. An inventive premise, lush imagery, and a shameful historical secret nicely elevate an otherwise formulaic cabinin-the-woods story.
Hood, Joshua Putnam (384 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-0-525-54255-1
A disappointing testament to the power of branding. Since Ludlum’s death in 2001, his name has appeared possessively on a number of novels, his spirit presumably having inspired authors to work in his distinctive idiom. There’s nothing new in this—Robert Parker’s characters carry on, as do Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, and it can be gratifying to meet an old literary friend artfully reborn. This example of the Ludlum franchise introduces a new warrior, Adam Hayes, who is a graduate of a new source of agents, Treadstone, a secret CIA program that turns out agents with incredible capabilities and undetectable scruples. Hayes, whose post-traumatic behaviors have imperiled his family, has tried to quit Treadstone, but circumstances compel him to revert to full battle readiness to survive. A conspiracy of rogue CIA agents, corrupt Venezuelan military officials, and a U.S. senator has targeted Hayes because he has received evidence of their malfeasance, but Treadstone itself is in the process of being shut down, and Hayes has limited access to the material support it once provided. Success against the arrayed resources of the CIA seems unlikely, but Hayes is up to the challenge. As the plot moves from violent confrontation to violent confrontation through a catalog of modern weaponry, from conventional sidearms to a seriously presented Hellfire missile strike (on U.S. soil, against U.S. citizens!), the technical designations and capabilities of the weapons are precisely presented and sometimes seem more important than the characters wielding them. And in fact Hayes himself is a weapon: He sheds his humanity so readily that it is difficult to fully accept it. Ludlum was never so one-dimensional. Aggregated violence without much else.
THE RESISTERS
Jen, Gish Knopf (320 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-525-65721-7 Subtle dystopian fiction from the author of World and Town. It’s the not-too-distant future, and the United States has become AutoAmerica. The citizenry has been divided into the Netted and the Surplus. The job of the former is to rule, while the primary function of the latter is to consume. These are new social classes, but, as Grant, the narrator, notes, they look a lot like the old social classes. The Netted are “angelfair.” Grant is “coppertoned,” and his services as a professor are no longer needed. Eleanor, his “spy-eyed” wife, 92
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is still practicing law, though, mostly fighting on behalf of the oppressed; when the novel begins, she has just been released from prison. What’s most remarkable about the worldbuilding here is that the sense of horror that suffuses so much dystopian fiction is absent. Grant’s tone is wryly matter-of-fact—perhaps because, as a dark-skinned person, he never took the freedoms and opportunities he once had for granted. And, really, the totalitarian country he describes is entirely believable. It’s not the product of a single cataclysmic event. It is, instead, the result of a million seemingly inconsequential actions, the cumulative effect of citizens giving away little pieces of their agency every time they choose convenience over autonomy. But life changes for Grant’s family when the government decides to resurrect the sport of baseball, because it happens that his daughter, Gwen, is a pitching prodigy who has spent her childhood honing her skills in an underground league. Baseball offers a way out and up for Gwen, but she’s not sure that what she would gain is more valuable than what she would have to leave behind. The juxtaposition of America’s pastime and the AI–enabled surveillance state Jen presents here is brilliant. Sports are a classic national obsession as well as an avenue to fame and success for
the disenfranchised. In this sense, Gwen’s story feels familiar, and the ease with which the reader identifies with this narrative helps to make everything else about AutoAmerica seem eerily familiar, too. We recognize the world Jen creates because it is, finally, nearly identical to our own. Beautifully crafted and slyly unsettling.
THE BURN
Kent, Kathleen Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (352 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-316-45058-4
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Dallas detective Betty Rhyzyk is back in action and looking to take down a brutal cartel assassin responsible for several murders in Kent’s (The Dime, 2019, etc.) modern noir. Several months after she was rescued from torture and
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imprisonment at the hands of Evangeline Roy and her ring of meth dealers, Betty has begun healing, though her inability to run off stress because of an injured leg, coupled with her denial of her post-traumatic fears, is driving her girlfriend, Jackie, crazy. She returns to active duty as a narcotics detective, but following some bad decisions, she’s quickly relegated to a desk by her sergeant, Marshall Maclin. The narcotics division is busy tracking down a man known as El Cuchillo (The Knife), the leader of the Sinaloa cartel’s particularly brutal security force, but when local drug dealers begin turning up dead, Betty becomes concerned by rumors that the true killer might not be El Cuchillo but rather a cop with a score to settle. Though she doesn’t want to admit it, her secret suspicions fall on her partner, Seth, who has been keeping company with known dealers, stealing crime scene evidence, and exhibiting signs of addiction. With the help of some unorthodox investigators, including a homeless pregnant girl and Jackie’s Vietnam vet uncle, Betty sets out to track down a confidential informant who may be able to identify the cop involved—heading straight back into danger. In this second outing for Detective Rhyzyk, the action is all a little closer to
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home, and Kent continues to reinvent and subvert traditional noir expectations with the larger-than-life, damaged, courageous Betty. Like many a noir detective before her, she is constantly running into the wall of her own vulnerability, wounded just as much by her own stubborn code of loyalty as she is by those attacking her. Action-driven mystery anchored by dynamic, deep characters.
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The characters in Kispert’s debut collection grapple with chaotic lives, troubled memories, and shifting identities. i know you know who i am
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHO I AM
a small island off the coast of Maine, which Will has inherited. Unfortunately, Sadie, who used to practice emergency medicine, finds no satisfaction in her work at a local clinic; Otto is starting to show signs of the problems Sadie hoped he’d left behind; and though she understands that Imogen is devastated in the wake of her mother’s death, the girl is behaving in a downright alarming way, including gleefully showing Sadie a picture she took of her mother as she hung from the attic rafters. Sadie also thinks Will might be cheating on her. Again. The family tension stretches to a breaking point when a neighbor woman (whom Sadie thinks Will has been cozying up to) is stabbed to death. It’s not long before Sadie finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. Kubica ably molds Sadie into a (very) complicated woman with simmering secrets; as usual, she is a master of atmospherics who can turn almost any location into a swirling cesspool of creepy possibility. However, in a story told from multiple perspectives—first person and otherwise—a few are less compelling than others, such as that of over-the-top Camille, who claims to be having an affair with Will. And while Kubica sprinkles in a few clues
Kispert, Peter Penguin (240 pp.) $16.00 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-14-313428-2
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The characters in Kispert’s debut collection grapple with chaotic lives, troubled memories, and shifting identities. The narrator of the title story pays a man to act out the role of a fictional friend from the tales he’s told his boyfriend about his life before they met. This sets in motion a cascading series of events that prompts a meditation on the paradoxical nature of “true stories,” which in turn casts a long shadow over the rest of the book. The next story is “Puncture,” whose second sentence feels like a reaction to “I Know You Know”: “Clark is color blind, or so he’s telling me.” Kispert wrestles with grand themes, but he’s equally adept at memorable miniatures. In “Signs,” he makes effective use of brevity, creating power both in what’s told and what’s left out. The collection’s first section, called “I Know,” abounds with scenes of deception, so when the second section, “You Know,” opens with a story narrated by an actor, it seems like the logical next step. The final story, “Mooring,” plays out with echoes of the opener, not unlike a strange remix. It’s all in keeping with Kispert’s attention to the border between fiction and reality. While his depictions of contemporary life are wholly immersive, he also displays a talent for the speculative. Kyle, the protagonist of “How to Live Your Best Life,” inhabits a marginal existence with his partner, Jerry, and their daughter, Chloe. In between acts of petty theft, he ponders whether they should appear on a game show that’s a blend of The Newlywed Game and Family Feud, albeit with potentially lethal consequences. And in “Rorschach,” live crucifixions carried out on death-row inmates garbed as Jesus have become a hot ticket around the country. Kispert blends sharp characterization with intriguing premises throughout this memorable collection.
THE OTHER MRS.
Kubica, Mary Park Row Books (384 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-0-7783-6911-0 A fresh start for a doctor and her family becomes a living nightmare in Kubica’s (When the Lights Go Out, 2018, etc.) new psychological thriller. Human ecology professor Will Foust and his wife, Sadie, a doctor, have two boys, 14-year-old Otto and 7-year-old Tate. On the outside, they look like the perfect family. After Will’s sister, Alice, dies from an apparent suicide, Sadie hopes that she and Will can provide stability for Alice’s 16-year-old daughter, Imogen. They’ve also decided to leave Chicago and move into Alice’s home on |
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about the big twist, she still asks readers to suspend disbelief to the breaking point. A page-turner that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
questions: “How can we free ourselves from the past while honoring it?” “How does death define the experience of life?” “Can the living even have a narrative without the narratives of the dead?” The book begins with a woman’s search for public statues that went missing in the spring of 2010, in the wake of Iran’s political unrest. The pieces are numbered and described as though in a catalog: “Missing Statue (1): Mother and Child. Location: San’at Square.” Interspersed with the statues and the story of her search for them are pages of questions, word clouds, and quotations from academic works on the subjects of dreams and urban spaces, and the tone ranges everywhere from journalistic to magical realist. Another set of numbers begins, this one a catalog of corpses. “I make her keep looking for the bronze bodies while these bodies of flesh and blood begin to become their own statues in the landscape of my soul,” the narrator tells us. The dead described here are based on real cases, and what connects them is the violence of the state: assassinations, arrests by Cyber Police, attacks on university students, beatings in prison. In Persian, “both ‘testimony’, and ‘martyrdom’ are expressed with one word.” We learn the cause of each death, the date and place, and the attempts by those left behind to learn the truth, to seek justice, to mourn. “What is the use of the book when the dead are not coming back to life?” “What good is yet another remnant?” “Will the trauma ever stop being inherited? Will humans ever change?” An ambitious, important book, erudite and anguished, about the role of writer as witness.
TRANS(RE)LATING HOUSE ONE
Missaghi, Poupeh Coffee House (296 pp.) $17.95 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-56689-573-6 Iranian American writer and translator Missaghi’s debut novel, set in Tehran, aims to unknot the city’s tangled secrets— its art, its violent histories—and illuminate inhabitants living and dead. The narrative is fragmentary, deliberately disjointed, because, as the unnamed narrator explains, “the whole only becomes the whole in parts, in conversation with the parts, dispersed in time, in space.” It is a novel filled with unanswerable
OONA OUT OF ORDER
Montimore, Margarita Flatiron Books (352 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-250-23660-9
What would you say to your younger self if you could give her advice? “Wise beyond their years” is an expression we’ve all heard before. But for one Brooklyn teen, that saying becomes all too real when an unexplained event causes her to begin living her adult life in random order. On New Year’s Eve 1982, Oona Lockhart is about to turn 19. Change is on the horizon, as she must decide whether to leave school to tour with her band, Early Dawning, or quit the band to continue her studies in London. Does she follow her loving boyfriend and band mate, Dale, or does she make a stable, independent decision for herself? Almost as if standing on a precipice between past and future, Oona finds it important to tell herself: “Remember this party. Every second of it. Every person here.” When the clock strikes midnight, she opens her eyes to a reality far different from the one she’d been experiencing—and decades later. The abrupt shift sets the pace for the rest of the book—it turns out that even when you’re living life out of order, time passes just as quickly. Right as you settle in with one version of Oona, whether it be free-spirited, club-going Oona or middle-aged investor Oona, it’s almost New Year’s again. The 96
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Like the best sportswriting, this bighearted, finely observed novel is about far more than the game. the cactus league
THE CACTUS LEAGUE
effect is something like narrative jet lag, making it impossible to feel grounded in time. Which is, no doubt, the point. Montimore (Asleep From Day, 2018 ) is not afraid to wrench Oona from one season of life to another, satisfied with ending a year in a fashion as incomplete as this: “She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence.” These vignettes, removed from linear neatness, celebrate the unpredictability and imperfect nature of life. Even when Oona has the opportunity to leave notes for the next version of herself, it doesn’t always mean she’ll follow her advice. With each temporal shift, Oona is left longing for what came before, but supporting characters like Oona’s mom, Madeleine, and confidante, Kenzie, serve as talismans that guide her back to the present. In the end, we must give credit to Oona for finding joy and even humor in her situation and to Montimore for developing a complex narrative held together by simple truths. Read this to get a bit lost, to root for a character with a strong love for herself, and to connect on a deeply human level with the fear of leading an incomplete life. A heartfelt novel that celebrates its implausibility with a unique joie de vivre.
Nemens, Emily Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-374-11794-8
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A star left fielder for the Los Angeles Lions is in personal and professional free fall in this debut novel from the editor of the Paris Review. Jason Goodyear is a major league star: He’s got a Golden Glove, solid MVP votes, and a big deal with Nike. So why is he suffering through a divorce, damaging historical property, and losing prominent endorsements? That’s the question an unnamed sportswriter, the casualty of an agonizing round of newspaper layoffs, sets out to answer. Instead of going straight to the source, however, he tracks the movements of everyone adjacent to Goodyear during the 2011 spring training season in Scottsdale, Arizona. There’s Tamara Rowland, a down-on-her-luck divorcée who enjoys picking up ball players for a casual fling; Stephen Smith,
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a partial owner of the Lions and the only black man who has any power in the franchise; William Goslin, a rookie first baseman who is flattered into helping Goodyear get out of trouble; and even a chorus of “baseball wives” who know that spring training “is a party: luncheons and spa days, cocktails and color consultations, mornings at the furrier’s and afternoons with the jeweler.” What emerges, however, is less a picture of Goodyear during a moment of personal crisis than a portrait of Scottsdale and its residents as they recover from the 2008 recession. The sportswriter intersperses each chapter-length character study with his own digressive musings about everything from Goodyear’s motivations to belabored geological metaphors for the draft. Unfortunately, this frame narrative for Nemens’ ambitious, sprawling, and otherwise impeccably written debut is an often clunky and frustrating misdirection. Although the sportswriter insists readers can understand Goodyear’s inner workings by examining peers, colleagues, and characters on the periphery, he never bothers to tell us how these character studies shed light on the star player. As it turns out, Goodyear isn’t really at the heart of this book at all. He’s a premise rather than a
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true-blue character. It’s a strange choice on the part of Nemens, who created a narrator uniquely situated to deliver on his initial promises—or subvert them openly and purposefully. Nemens has instead written a novel about baseball and how it shapes the lives of athletes as much as the town that supports it—and a beautiful one at that. As our narrator would put it: “It’s more, He did this, he said that, and then the whole world unfurled.” It simply would have been nice to know that that was the only game we were playing. Like the best sportswriting, this bighearted, finely observed novel is about far more than the game.
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A delightfully sweet, funny, and heartbreaking ode to love stories, both onscreen and off-. love, unscripted
LOVE, UNSCRIPTED
history, Offill’s (Dept. of Speculation, 2014, etc.) third novel might be thought of as a more laconic cousin of Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport. Here, the mind we’re embedded in is that of a librarian named Lizzie—an entertaining vantage point despite her concerns big and small. There’s the lady with the bullhorn who won’t let her walk her sensitive young son into his school building. Her brother, who has finally gotten off drugs and has a new girlfriend but still requires her constant, almost hourly, support. Her mentor, Sylvia, a national expert on climate change, who is fed up with her fans and wants Lizzie to take over answering her mail. (“These people long for immortality, but can’t wait ten minutes for a cup of coffee,” says Sylvia.) “Malodorous,” “Defacing,” “Combative,” “Humming,” “Lonely”: These are just a few of the categories in a pamphlet called Dealing With Problem Patrons that Lizzie’s been given at work, Also, her knee hurts, and she’s spending a fortune on car service because she fears she’s Mr. Jimmy’s only customer. Then there are the complex mixed messages of a cable show she can’t stop watching: Extreme Shopper. Her husband, Ben, a video game designer and a very kind man, is getting a bit exasperated. As
Nicholls, Owen Ballantine (352 pp.) $17.00 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-9848-2687-9
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A movie-obsessed projectionist looks back at his relationship and wonders where it all went wrong in this debut from Nicholls. Nick and Ellie meet under auspicious circumstances: at an election-viewing party the night that Barack Obama is chosen as the next president of the United States. Nick, who loves nothing more than films and works as a projectionist at a theater, instantly falls for Ellie and sees the entire movie of their relationship play out in his mind. Now it’s four years later, Obama is about to be elected president once again, and Ellie’s moved out of their apartment. Forlorn and desperate to figure out where it all went wrong, Nick retraces their entire relationship as the plot jumps back and forth among the night they met, the present day, and the challenges the couple faced along the way. Meanwhile, Nick finds himself falling further and further into despair as he loses his apartment, his parents move away, and his theater switches from film to digital, rendering his job obsolete. With his entire life in shambles, Nick must finally look inward to figure out why things with Ellie really didn’t work out. Nick tends to think in movie references, many of which are very clever, particularly an oft-remembered argument with Ellie about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Unlike in many books and movies with similar plots, Nicholls doesn’t treat his female character like the bad guy for stomping on the male character’s heart and ego. Instead, he examines her point of view as she reminds Nick that life is more than just movies—or, at least, life doesn’t turn out like the movies sometimes, and Nick may have to make some big changes if he wants a Hollywood ending. Their relationship has cinematic highs and believable lows, with fully rounded characters and smart, snappy, romantic comedy–worthy dialogue. Nick’s and Ellie’s real lives aren’t a movie, but as Nicholls tells it, they might have a happily-ever-after anyway. A delightfully sweet, funny, and heartbreaking ode to love stories, both onscreen and off-.
WEATHER
Offill, Jenny Knopf (224 pp.) $23.95 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-385-35110-2 An ever growing list of worries, from a brother with drug problems to a climate change apocalypse, dances through the lively mind of a university librarian. In its clever and seductive replication of the inner monologue of a woman living in this particular moment in |
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DEAD TO HER
the new president is elected and the climate change questions pour in and the doomsday scenarios pile up, Lizzie tries to hold it together. The tension between mundane daily concerns and looming apocalypse, the “weather” of our days both real and metaphorical, is perfectly captured in Offill’s brief, elegant paragraphs, filled with insight and humor. Offill is good company for the end of the world.
Pinborough, Sarah Morrow/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-06-285682-1 Two trophy wives in Savannah, Georgia, learn that wealth and status can’t protect them when their secrets and lies catch up to them. Marcie thinks she has finally escaped her bleak past in Idaho. She broke up Jason Maddox’s first marriage and is now Mrs. Maddox, with all the trappings of mansions, country clubs, and the right social set. But when Jason’s 65-year-old boss, William Radford IV, a recent widower—having buried the saintly and never-forgotten Eleanor—returns from London with 22-year-old Keisha, a stunning bride, Marcie’s status as the alpha wife seems uncertain. And is Jason flirting with Keisha? As the novel unfolds, alternating between each woman’s perspective, we learn that the husbands may not be the prizes they seem, either. (Though did they ever seem like prizes?) And everyone in Savannah, it seems, has secrets, some more dangerous than others. The author’s ability to build suspense is hampered by overwriting (“Splinters of her heart broke off and she wanted to stab him with them”) and tedious passages; editing would have made the book tighter and moved the plot along better. It’s also a struggle to spend so much time with, or care much about, characters a police officer deems “such truly atrocious people.” If you do manage to stick with this crowd until the end, you may at least be surprised by a few late-breaking twists and turns.
THE FREEDOM ARTIST
Okri, Ben Akashic (336 pp.) $28.95 | $16.95 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-61775-791-4 978-1-61775-792-1 paper A dystopian allegory about how cultures can become cruelly prisonlike, from the Booker-winning author of The Famished Road (1992). Okri’s somber, fablelike novel is a call to rally against oppressive institutions and for broader social consciousness. In that regard, it’s an inheritor of The Hand maid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, and Things Fall Apart. Unlike those novels, though, the story is sparer, with only the barest scaffold of characterization and plot. In an unnamed city, a young man named Karnak had been neglecting peculiar graffiti springing up reading “Who is the prisoner?” until his lover, Amalantis, is hustled away by authorities. Elsewhere, Mirababa, a boy, is challenged by his grandfather to “find the elixir of freedom, and bring it back to the people.” As both go on their journeys, Okri describes a totalitarian state that whips up myth and propaganda to keep society in line, hunts down all critics of its authority, wipes reading from the culture, and renders its populace in a kind of agony, screaming at night while they sleep. The resistance’s graffiti changes (“upwake!”), and Okri cycles in more characters like Ruslana, whose father was “the last guardian of the tribe of writers.” Okri’s writing is sturdy and graceful, fully inhabiting the authoritative tone of mythmaking; the grotesque imagery of institutional savagery in its latter chapters is harrowing. Yet the structure of the book is so simple, and its twists so modest, that the story has trouble sustaining itself at novel length. Okri reiterates the same laments for lost wisdom, and the book’s climactic calls for education and self-awareness are so familiar, with bromides about how our social problems start with us, that the novel edges into hectoring, wake-up-sheeple territory. Okri’s fury is plainly visible under his deliberately plainspoken prose but in a story that’s more thin than universal.
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THE LOST FUTURE OF PEPPERHARROW
Pulley, Natasha Bloomsbury (512 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-63557-330-5
More steampunk adventures of a samurai prognosticator, his clockwork octopus, and his human lovers. Five years after her charming debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (2015), Pulley brings back the main characters for another scramble through the dangers and consequences of clairvoyance. Readers of the first book already know the big reveal: that Keita Mori—the eponymous London watchmaker—has an unusual memory that works both backward and forward. (Readers new to the series should put this book down and start with Watch maker.) This time Pulley sets the action principally in Japan, where Mori; Thaniel Steepleton, a British translator and diplomat; Grace Carrow Matsumoto, a physicist; and Takiko Pepperharrow, a Kabuki actress and baroness, are working together to foil a samurai’s power grab and turn away a Russian invasion. |
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At least, that’s what Mori’s doing; the others are rushing blindly down paths he’s laid out for them, which may or may not get them where he wants them to go. But if Mori knows what’s coming and what steps they can take to change the future, why doesn’t he just tell them what to do? The answer is half satisfying (because, as in any complicated relationship, communication isn’t always easy; because the characters have wills of their own and might not obey) and half irritating (because if he did, there wouldn’t be much of a story). Pulley’s witty writing and enthusiastically deployed steampunk motifs—clockwork, owls, a mechanical pet, Tesla-inspired electrical drama—enliven a plot that drags in the middle before rushing toward its explosive end. Perhaps more interesting than the plot are the relationships. The characters revolve through a complex pattern of marriages of passion and convenience, sometimes across and sometimes within genders and cultures, punctuated by jealousy and interesting questions about trust. Although this sequel doesn’t break new ground, it will appeal strongly to fans of the first book.
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Rader, Mark Unnamed Press (315 pp.) $18.00 paper | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-944700-99-7 Through the intertwined stories of a dying priest full of regrets, his caretaker sister still mourning her late husband, and her adult daughter torn between her family and a new man in her life, Rader’s poignant debut novel explores the emotional costs of seeking and sacrificing romantic love. “The official story of the life of Father Paul Novak was that he was a more or less happy man who’d lived an admirable life of service.” But diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, the 70-yearold cleric is deeply troubled by his “thwarted heart.” At the Sister Bay, Wisconsin, cottage he rents with his sister, Britta, Paul daydreams (with a little help from morphine) of “the men that could have been” if only he had mustered the courage to leave
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the priesthood and come out as he once tried to do in the summer of 1990. He grieves for his first and only love, Luca Aurecchio, a young Italian he met in 1970 while studying in Rome. Britta does her best to pull her brother out of his depression, but she has her own problems, missing her husband, Don, who died three years ago, and estranged from her daughter, Maura, who wants to leave her husband and two children, one of whom has special needs, for the possibility of true love. Traveling to Rome on a final pilgrimage, Paul gradually reveals to his sister his heartbreaking secret. These are the strongest and most moving sections of the novel as Paul struggles between getting the love he so desperately desires and remaining closeted in the church. Maura’s parallel story is not quite so engrossing. She comes across as shallow and self-absorbed (she fails to reach out to her dying uncle), and her affair with a sexy older artist is a clichéd trope. As Maura acknowledges, hers is the “unoriginal tale of a straight woman realizing…that she needed a certain kind of love to feel whole.” An insightful and compassionate family drama about desire, love, and the courage it takes to live a full life.
flowers indiscriminately; and he is incredulous when ordered to remove a swath of flowerbeds to accommodate guests’ cars: “Do you suppose a flowerbed in full bloom is like a chair,” he retorts, “and you can just move it around as you please?” But for the wealthy class, the garden is a mere prop: The owner of a neighboring villa, for example, hurries to plant some greenery as decor for a party. More than once, seeing his own flowerbeds ruined, the gardener is pained “to think about the gladiolus and the fate they had met.” But, he acknowledges with calm resignation, “those who have the money make the rules.” A captivating tale gently spun.
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GARDEN BY THE SEA
Rodoreda, Mercè Trans. by Relaño, Maruxa & Tennent, Martha Open Letter (206 pp.) $15.95 paper | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-948830-08-9 Amid a lush landscape, wealthy young Spaniards play at joy. In a novel notable for its graceful, restrained prose—sensitively rendered by translators Tennent and Relaño—Catalan fiction writer Rodoreda (1908-1983) (War, So Much War, 2015, etc.) creates a finely etched portrait of 1920s Spanish society, as seen through the eyes of a quietly attentive gardener. “I’ve always enjoyed knowing what happens to people,” the gardener remarks in the book’s opening line, recalling, from the vantage of old age, six summers when he worked for the newly married Senyoret Francesc and his wife at their seaside villa outside of Barcelona. Tending his plants, the gardener has ample opportunity to observe the “cheerfulness and ostentation” of his employers and their guests, whose superficial revelry is blighted by suffering, loss, and failed dreams. From Quima, the easily affronted cook, who gets details from the maids; Toni, a stable hand who self-importantly calls himself a riding instructor; the laconic local innkeeper; and even the postman, the gardener is privy to an endless stream of gossip about the “fools,” as Quima calls them, “who create a lot of work for the rest of us.” Designing the beds, growing seedlings, replanting, and weeding take mindful care and sometimes exhausting effort. The garden itself, described in sensuous detail, takes a prominent role, an expression of the gardener’s aesthetic sensibility and of the arrogance and self-absorption of its owners. Justifiably proud of his plants, the gardener becomes irritated when guests pick |
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complicated codependent triangle: Helen is certainly replaying a thwarted love affair from more than a century ago, but she did not love Luke then. It all begins in 1895, when Juliet LaCompte, a beautiful 16-year-old French farm girl, falls in love with her summer neighbor, Auguste Marchant. Marchant is a Parisian artist who adores painting Juliet, and as the summer progresses, their desires for each other grow. But Marchant is very much married with a heavily pregnant wife, and Juliet is betrothed to a boy whose farm abuts her father’s. Even worse, Juliet’s mother, a skilled herbalist and sometime witch, finds out about their affair. Enraged that Juliet has besmirched the family’s honor and terrified for reasons Juliet cannot understand, her mother casts a spell cursing Marchant. But the spell is sloppily made, and it not only catches Juliet in its web, but also saddles her with a demon administrator: Lucian Varnier (aka Luke), who begins to fall in love with her, too. Sayers builds tension between present-day Luke and Helen by plunging Helen into a dream world, where she relives her time as a 1930s Hollywood starlet and 1970s rock musician, and each incarnation of Juliet becomes more attached to Luke. Moreover, her own powers as a witch have grown, so perhaps this will be the lifetime in which she breaks the curse. But her own feelings for Luke may get in the way. A smart, engrossing debut from a writer to watch.
Sagasti, Luis Trans. by Petch, Fionn Charco Press (85 pp.) $13.95 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-9997227-4-6 A postmodern work of fiction made up of neatly assembled and interpreted facts, the first of Argentine writer Sagasti’s books to be translated into English. It makes good sense that by day, Sagasti works as a museum curator, for this is a diligently collected series of oddments that help make sense of how the world works—and, as Sagasti writes, that it works at all is a marvel, since “for the machine to keep running, it’s better not to mention certain things.” Those certain things might include matters of family dysfunction or historical inconveniences; whatever the case, Sagasti enjoys turning them up and looking them over, counseling that in a world full of people as cold as the distant heavens, “we should seek out only the fireflies,” never mind that they die just like everything else. Sagasti keeps the theme of his title alive and at work throughout this brief book, which turns into a lively meditation on how things connect and cohere of the sort that Guy Davenport would have approved. One firefly is the German artist Joseph Beuys, shot down as a Luftwaffe pilot over Russia and briefly held by a Tatar shaman who allays his fears by pointing to the flickering stars—and then, it seems, implants those stars in Beuys’ head, for “shamans travel into the skies in search of the sick person’s soul in order to return it to their body.” If shamans can do it, so can the time-traveling Billy Pilgrim, another prisoner of war, of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five; and the Tatars may have taken an idea or two from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, another flyer whose novel The Little Prince was translated into their language. In the manner of a well-functioning ecosystem, everything in Sagasti’s book connects to everything else, and it’s a subtle marvel—especially the surprise ending. A nimble writer who merits wider readership in English—and several more novels await translation.
THE ONLY CHILD
Seo, Mi-ae Trans. by Jung, Yewon Ecco/HarperCollins (304 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-06-290504-8 As a psychologist interviews a famous serial killer, her new stepdaughter exhibits disturbing behavior. In Seoul, Seonkyeong, an FBI–trained criminal-psychology teacher, is surprised when she’s granted an interview with the serial killer Yi Byeongdo, who has refused to speak to anyone else. Meanwhile, her workaholic husband, Jaeseong, has reluctantly taken custody of his daughter, who had been living with her maternal grandparents ever since his ex-wife’s death, when his in-laws die in a mysterious fire. Seonkyeong immediately welcomes the child as part of the family, but something about her is off. She’s cold to Seonkyeong one minute and throwing violent tantrums the next. But her behavior is hard to correct, as she transforms into a much more obedient child when her father is home. As Seonkyeong gets to know both the killer and the child, she sees disturbing similarities between the two. Yi Byeongdo is handsome but brutal. His violent tendencies began in childhood when his mother rejected him; he shares the details in intermittent chapters. Hayeong, though outwardly angelic, was often her mother’s pawn in a ruthless game to get back at Jaeseong for having left them. Between the two of them, Hayeong, is the creepiest. As she fights Seonkyeong for control of the house, she ticks off all the childhood characteristics of a future serial killer, notably her cruelty to animals. Even more disturbing is the way she gives her stepmother false hope
A WITCH IN TIME
Sayers, Constance Redhook/Orbit (448 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-316-49359-8 When Helen Lambert meets her blind date, Luke Varner, at a trendy D.C. bar, little does she know they’ve met before—over several lifetimes. In this, her debut novel, Sayers cleverly twists the loves-lost-through-time motif. Helen and Luke are not star-crossed, or rather cursecrossed, lovers from the 19th century, doomed to an eternity of thwarted passion. Instead, Sayers binds them together in a 104
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Time Tunnel:
The Twin Towers The Empire The Eclipse
timetunnel.one "Todd grippingly conjures a what-if time-travel scenario that’s unusually believable.” —Kirkus Reviews
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" Time Tunnel: The Empire was a crazy good adventure that I would have never expected from this sci-fi style book. It is a must-read that I could hardly put down.” —Manhattan Book Review "As the main characters carry out their exciting mission and remake history, readers will find it intensely satisfying, and the cliffhanger ending promises new thrills to come.” —Kirkus Reviews " Just like the first novel in the series The Twin Towers, The Empire is full of action, intrigue, and suspense. Richard Todd does a fantastic job of retelling historical events, which are brilliantly researched.” —Seattle Book Review " The integration of the time travel storyline with the real events that happened on that day are seamless. If I didn’t know better, I would think this could have really happened." —Manhattan Book Review " Relationships are tested in this story; the only way to know how you truly feel about someone is to throw them in a situation together for which they are totally unprepared. The reader is able to delve deeper into the feelings of the characters and grasp a better understanding for the motivation of their actions. As in Twin Towers, there is action galore, and The Empire includes another story from history that originally ended badly, but now occurs in a way we would have liked for it to have played out. The ending was a complete shock, with another phase in the Time Tunnel series coming at a later date.” —Tulsa Book Review The Towers will rise again Time Tunnel: The Twin Towers and Time Tunnel: The Empire by Richard Todd available on Amazon View book trailers at timetunnel.one For publication or film rights, contact laura.hinson@timetunnelmedia.com Time Tunnel Media
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that she, unlike Yi Byeongdo, is young enough to be saved. Both of Seonkyeong’s charges have affection for her, but it’s not to be mistaken for trust. With cold precision, Seo creates a chilling and engrossing profile of a next-generation serial killer.
famous quote from Muriel Rukeyser that made the social media rounds in the wake of the #MeToo movement: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open.” These are stories of that split-open world. In “Everyone’s a Winner in Meadow Park”—an uncharacteristically lengthy story for Sparks—a young girl living in a trailer park is haunted by the ghost of another young girl, who helps her navigate the turmoil of her hardscrabble environment. The daughter of an artist obsessed with making dioramas of female saints tells the story of her strange childhood and her stepfather’s murder at the hands of her mother (“The Eyes of Saint Lucy”). Many of Sparks’ pieces borrow from myths and fairy tales; in “A Place for Hiding Precious Things,” a young princess is transported by her fairy godmother to contemporary New York City to save her from a ghoulish fate. In “When the Husband Grew Wings,” a wife who adds a magic powder to her husband’s cereal that results in his growing wings is unhappy with the results. Although there is anger and rage in these stories, Sparks suffuses them with zingy humor at every opportunity. At their best, they balance heartbreak and wit. The pieces that don’t land are
AND I DO NOT FORGIVE YOU Stories and Other Revenges
Sparks, Amber Liveright/Norton (192 pp.) $23.95 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-63149-620-2
Bite-sized fiction about the lives of women, from the far past to the present and beyond, who have been wronged. The characters in this third collection of short fiction from Sparks (The Unfinished World and Other Stories, 2016, etc.) exemplify the
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It leaves one feeling vaguely ill, in the best way possible. apartment
APARTMENT
the ones where that wit grows cartoonish, such as the apocalyptic “We Destroy the Moon,” in which a cult leader’s wife persistently hashtags her own narration. A collection with a goth heart beating beneath a cheerleader’s peppy exterior.
Wayne, Teddy Bloomsbury (208 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-63557-400-5
Tuck, Lily Atlantic Monthly (224 pp.) $23.00 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-8021-4759-2
National Book Award winner Tuck (The Double Life of Liliane, 2015, etc.) turns her attention to Emily Brontë’s gothic, psychologically riveting Wuther ing Heights in Heathcliff Redux, the novella at the center of this collection. It’s 1963 in rural Virginia, and the unnamed narrator, who’s a mother and the wife of a cattle farmer, is rereading Wuthering Heights when she finds herself inexplicably drawn to a morally compromised man named Cliff. Although warned that Cliff is “too good-looking for his own good,” “reckless,” and untrustworthy, the narrator falls hard. The story of their affair unfolds as collage: Interspersed with passages from Wuthering Heights, snippets of Brontë’s biography, and critical commentary on the novel, the narrator reports in short dispassionate sections on the places she and Cliff make love, on Cliff ’s lies, and on her husband’s affair, among other things. Places or things that arise in scenes from Wuthering Heights or the narrator’s own story (Rehoboth Beach, cuckoos, Boeuf Bourguignon) are sometimes glossed on the next page, underscoring the extent to which facts are not necessarily truths. Though the narrator is looking back (much of the secondary material was published 30 years after the affair), hindsight doesn’t help her understand why she allowed Cliff to become the force of so much destruction. Instead, the human heart remains a mystery, which seems to be the point. This may disappoint readers who expect fiction to explore the reasons for characters’ actions or the novella to shed new light on Brontë’s novel (or vice versa). The final four stories are both stranger and more conventional. The characters do things surprising (like carrying a dead swan home) and shocking (murdering a teenage girl), and yet the past always catches up with the present, emphasizing the age-old belief—and plot of much fiction—that you can’t escape the consequences of your actions. Lean, intriguing, formally innovative prose that will satisfy some readers while leaving others hungry for meatier plots.
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Wayne’s latest foray into the dark minds of lonely young men follows the rise and fall of a friendship between two aspiring fiction writers on opposite sides of a vast cultural divide. In 1996, our unnamed protagonist is living a cushy New York City life: He’s a first-year student in Columbia’s MFA program in fiction (the exorbitant bill footed by his father) who’s illegally subletting his great-aunt’s rent-controlled East Village apartment (for which his father also foots the bill). And it is in this state—acutely aware of his unearned advantages, questioning his literary potential, and deeply alone—that he meets Billy. Billy is an anomaly in the program: a community college grad from small-town Illinois, staggeringly talented, and very broke. But shared unease is as strong a foundation for friendship as any, and soon, our protagonist invites Billy to take over his spare room, a mutually beneficial if precarious arrangement. They are the very clear products of two different Americas, one the paragon of working-class hardscrabble masculinity, the other an exemplar of the emasculating properties of parental wealth—mirror images, each in possession of what the other lacks. “He would always have to struggle to stay financially afloat,” our protagonist realizes, “and I would always be fine, all because my father was a professional and his was a layabout. I had an abundance of resources; here was a concrete means for me to share it.” And he means it, when he thinks it, and for a while, the affection between them is enough to (mostly) paper over the awkward imbalance of the setup. Wayne (Loner, 2016) captures the nuances of this dynamic—a musky cocktail of intimacy and rage and unspoken mutual resentment—with draftsmanlike precision, and when the breaking point comes, as, of course, it does, it leaves one feeling vaguely ill, in the best way possible. A near-anthropological study of male insecurity.
HEATHCLIFF REDUX And Other Stories
THE LOST BOOK OF ADANA MOREAU
Zapata, Michael Hanover Square Press (272 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-335-01012-4 Two strangers are unknowingly connected by a rare manuscript. Maxwell Moreau, born to a pirate father and a Dominican immigrant mother in New Orleans in 1920, has a childhood in which he is surrounded by his parents’ stories. His mother, Adana Moreau, learns to read in English with Maxwell at her side. She writes a well-received science fiction novel, |
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Lost City, but becomes gravely ill before finishing the sequel, A Model Earth; she and Maxwell burn the manuscript before she dies . The pirate travels north in search of work, and Maxwell is effectively an orphan when his father fails to meet him as planned in Chicago. Nearly 80 years later, a man named Saul is grieving the death of his grandfather, his only family after his parents were killed in a terrorist attack in Israel. Shortly before dying, his grandfather had asked Saul to mail a package for him to someone named Maxwell Moreau at a university in Chile. When the package is returned some time later, Saul takes on the task of finding Maxwell, now a well-known physicist who theorizes about parallel universes, to give him the papers inside— the same manuscript Adana Moreau had burned so many years earlier—and fulfill his grandfather’s last request. This search takes Saul and his friend Javier to New Orleans just after Hurricane Katrina, and the two reflect on their friendship and Saul’s grandfather’s work as a historian as Javier documents the extensive loss of life in an effort to bear witness. Zapata’s debut novel is a wonderful merging of adventure with thoughtful but urgent meditations on time, history, and surviving tragedy. The
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characters are richly drawn, and the prose is striking: “They drove east, back the way they had come, and the road seemed to take on an extra-temporal quality, like they were traveling backward in time. We’re already meeting ourselves coming the other way, he thought as the Cadillac sped on and on and on.” A luminous novel about the deep value of telling stories.
m ys t e r y IN COLD CHAMOMILE
Avon, Joy Crooked Lane (272 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-64385-288-1
A Valentine’s Day fundraiser is loaded with surprises, including murder. Callie Aspen gave up her job as a worldwide tour guide to help her great aunt Iphy run her tea shop in Heart’s Harbor, Maine. After several dangerous adventures revolving around Haywood Hall (Sweet Tea and Secrets, 2019, etc.), Callie and Iphy have been appointed to keep the stately home running as a venue for town activities. They’ve cooked up a fundraiser featuring a book swap and sale complete with an expert appraiser, an area to meet and greet shelter pets, and a concert. The arrival of Sean Strong from Vienna as a lastminute replacement for the baritone originally scheduled gives Iphy a shock she refuses to explain. And Callie’s careful plans are undermined when her friend Quinn upsets his girlfriend, Peggy, who drives off, leaving her kids behind. Then the assistant to librarian Mrs. Forrester tells Callie she’s found Mr. King, the book expert, dead. Callie calls her boyfriend, Deputy Ace Falk, to the scene. Ace, who already has his hands full with the sheriff out sick, is never happy when Callie meddles in murder. The evidence suggests that Mrs. Forrester may have stabbed King with a pair of scissors. Certainly the man was arrogant and rude, but was his behavior enough to drive a stranger to murder him? Ace is furious when he finds out that Quinn upset his sister Peggy, who really likes Quinn but can’t get over the death of her husband. Despite Ace’s disapproval of her activities, Callie can’t help sleuthing, especially when she finds out that King may have been cheating people in his appraisals. She also wants to get to the bottom of Iphy’s relationship with Strong, who soon becomes a murder suspect. Risking her relationship with Ace, Callie continues to search for clues and question anyone who might have answers in her hunt for the truth. Pleasing characters and romantic interludes brighten an otherwise mundane mystery.
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More of Bannalec’s winning formula: a healthy chunk of Brittany with a bracing dash of murder. the killing tide
THE KILLING TIDE
causes to the fish hall. Dupin, on the other hand, doesn’t mind rattling a few cages along the way to finding Céline’s murderer. He confronts Charles Morin, owner of a large fleet of deep-sea trawlers as well as some coastal boats, who’s rumored to take in more than the legal limit. He also chases down a local character known as Captain Vaillant, who’s reputed to be a pirate. But more murders lead Dupin and inspectors Riwal and Kadeg to wonder if the origin of the crime really is local, since the second victim, Laetitia Darot, was an outsider, a researcher who studied the dolphins in the Parc Iroise. As usual, Dupin’s drive to catch the killer quickly is balanced by his desire to enjoy the local cafes and the breathtaking Breton coast just a little bit longer. And as usual, justice triumphs. More of Bannalec’s winning formula: a healthy chunk of Brittany with a bracing dash of murder.
Bannalec, Jean-Luc Trans. by Millar, Peter Minotaur (368 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-250-17338-6
From the oyster farms of Port Belon, Commissaire Georges Dupin (The Miss ing Corpse, 2019, etc.) pushes north to probe the mysterious deaths of two women near the bay of Douarnenez. Douarnenez is a fishing town where small family-owned boats jockey with large trawlers, all competing to wrest a living from the unpredictable Atlantic. Céline Kerkrom was a line fisher, one of the few women to own her own boat. She lived alone and kept to herself. So why would someone slit her throat and dump her body in a container of fish guts in the harbor’s auction hall? Harbormistress Gaétane Gochat is appalled, not so much by the violence of the murder as by the disruption it
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their self-appointed betters. When Maggie, one of the younger housemaids, goes missing, the staff is worried, although most of them assume she’s gotten pregnant and run off. Maggie’s mother, who’s squeezed her large family into the gatehouse, disclaims any knowledge of her whereabouts, and since Lord Croft has left suddenly on an extended trip with friends and his mother is also away, Rowsley takes it upon himself to organize a search. As the hunt for the missing maid continues, Rowsley develops an especially close relationship with Mrs. Faulkner, who seems to have secrets of her own. He’s especially unhappy with Theophilus Pounceman, a sanctimonious minister who blames women for leading men into temptation. Rowsley’s prowess on the cricket pitch and his concern for the estate workers earn him some new friendships, and most of them, even the boyfriend Maggie deserted, work to find her. Soon after Rowsley finds a clue to Maggie’s whereabouts, Lord Croft’s new carriage is found smashed and the horses gone, along with Croft and his valet, bringing the police to the estate. Her ladyship, who’s returned home, claims to know nothing, leaving Rowsley and his friends two mysteries to solve. A promising series debut with engaging characters, social commentary, and a Victorian twist on the ever popular upstairs-downstairs storyline.
Bonner, Hilary Severn House (256 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8907-2
Is the hanging of a young mother suicide or murder? Late one night, Gerry and Anne Barham nearly run over their 6-year-old neighbor, Joanna Ferguson, as they pull into their driveway in the English seaside village of Instow. Anne takes the girl home to discover a horrific scene. The story flashes back almost three weeks to depict Jane Ferguson’s recent neurotic behavior, her apparent descent into mental illness, and Felix Ferguson’s distress. When Jane’s body is found hanged back in the present, DI David Vogel (Wheel of Fire, 2018, etc.) is roused from sleep to undertake the investigation. Felix is not at home. Gerry Barham reports that Felix, commodore of the local yacht club, has been drinking heavily lately. Vogel questions Jane’s mother-in-law, Amelia, who assumes it was suicide, as Jane was “never happy,” and freely admits that their relationship was not close. Felix appears in the middle of this interview, disheveled and drowsy after celebrating the anniversary of his position at the yacht club and intending to crash at his parents’ home. Felix tells Vogel about his wife’s struggles; Vogel in turn informs Felix that he’s a suspect. The arrival of Felix’s blunt father, Sam, who’s as disdainful of Jane as Amelia, completes one part of the picture. Medical examiner Karen Crow can’t determine whether Jane’s death was murder or suicide, and several bruises on her body arouse Vogel’s suspicions. When Vogel approaches Miriam Thorpe, Jane’s therapist, for insights, she confirms much of Felix’s account. But Vogel keeps coming back to those bruises. Will they lead him to a killer? A crisply written crime novel that methodically reveals the pieces of a complex puzzle, effectively challenging armchair sleuths.
DEATH IN THE GARDEN CITY
Dams, Jeanne M. Severn House (224 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8913-3
Combining travelogue with mystery, Dams (A Dagger Before Me, 2019, etc.) treats her England-based sleuths to a case in Canada. American expatriate Dorothy Martin and her husband, retired Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, enjoy traveling. So when their friend Judith Montcalm asks them to go to Victoria, British Columbia, all expenses paid, to help solve a perplexing case, they readily agree. Lady Montcalm’s uncle, John McKenzie, is a retired Mountie who’s concerned about a series of odd events and thinks an outsider’s view may help. After staying with John while they’re introduced to the area, they move to a condo normally occupied by the absent daughter of John’s fiancee, Amy Hartford. They visit the stunning Butchart Gardens, from which a number of poisonous plants have been stolen, and take a trip to meet Silas Varner, whose hawks are housed in high style while he lives in a hovel, brooding over the neighbors who think his raptors are killing chickens. After Dorothy is almost kidnapped in broad daylight, she and Alan wonder who could be targeting them. When the sleuths get threatening phone calls and an unknown woman is killed, ostensibly by Varner’s birds, the stakes are raised. An autopsy proves that the birds were framed; a knife was used to mimic the marks of talons. The murder was committed near a lovely tourist town that’s also home to surviving members of the Cowichan tribe, an Indigenous people
THE WAGES OF SIN
Cutler, Judith Severn House (240 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8938-6
Cutler (Guilty as Sin, 2015, etc.) presents two unlikely period sleuths with an unusually freighted missing person case. Matthew Rowsley is the new land agent for Lord Croft, whose youth and careless attitude do not bode well for his neglected estate. Rowsley’s feeling his way with the suspicious tenants and the upper house staff: Mr. Bowman, the butler; Mrs. Faulkner, the housekeeper; and Mrs. Arden, the cook. Victorian morality is priggish and censorious, and Rowsley, whose parents are an archdeacon and a relatively liberated woman for the times, is appalled at the way the lower classes are treated by 110
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DON’T LOOK DOWN
almost wiped out by Europeans and their diseases. A Cowichan woman tells Dorothy that the victim may be a tribe member who moved to Victoria for an IT job. All roads seem to lead to Paul Hartford, Amy’s wealthy ex, who owns the IT firm, a man widely known for charitable giving and less widely known for his inability ever to forgive a slight. Tension runs high until the surprise ending, the depravity tempered by lyrical descriptions of Victoria and environs.
Davidson, Hilary Thomas & Mercer (394 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-5420-9203-6 A blackmail plot produces complications upon complications in a story of sex trafficking, class wars, and stolen identities. Someone is blackmailing Jo Greaver with obscene photos of her previous life as a teenage sex trafficking victim. When she arranges to meet up with the man demanding payment, a gunfight breaks out, leaving Jo wounded and the blackmailer, Andray Baxter, apparently dead. When she returns home to pack a bag before taking it on the lam, Jo can’t bear to tell her boyfriend, Cal, what’s happened, especially since she’s never told Cal about her early life, when she was raised by her drug-addicted sister, Lori, on the mean streets of New York. The presence of Cal’s imposing,
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upper-crust mother, Priscilla McGarran, who just happens to be resting on their couch when Jo enters, doesn’t make it easy for Jo to escape, but she thinks she’s in the clear once she’s left Manhattan behind. Wrong: Her body gives out on her shortly thereafter. The NYPD’s Sheryn Sterling has already had a long day picking up her 14-year-old son following his own arrest for protesting deportations while black when she and her partner, Rafael Mendoza, are put on the case. At first it looks like Baxter’s murder is cut and dried. After all, he has a note in his pocket that essentially reads “Blackmail Jo Greaver.” But clues at the scene and Jo’s own behavior when she’s arrested make Sheryn suspect that there’s more to the story. Davidson incorporates details about Sheryn and Rafael that connect their experiences of being seen and judged by others as a black woman cop and a gay cop who walks with a cane with their willingness to look more closely at Jo and Andray. What they find is enough blackmail, impersonation, and class warfare to seriously complicate what seemed like a straightforward case. Readers won’t mind that Davidson keeps moving the goal posts during the finale because the buildup is such a satisfying page-turner.
another locked room murder. The traitor must be unmasked before all Margaret’s allies are killed and her dream of a throne for her son thwarted. An elegantly written, historically based account of evil machinations with a surprising denouement.
GHOSTS OF THE MISSING
Donohoe, Kathleen Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (320 pp.) $18.00 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-544-55717-8 A young woman reckons with the ghosts of her past, both literal and metaphorical, when she returns to the site of a childhood tragedy. Culleton, New York, has a history of unsettling mysteries and books inspired by the disquieting atmosphere. Adair has returned to her hometown after a health crisis to convalesce in her childhood home, a writers’ retreat overseen by her uncle and guardian. The return brings back memories of her childhood best friend and distant cousin, Rowan, who disappeared 15 years earlier when the girls were 12. When Rowan’s half brother turns up at the retreat, working on a book about missing persons and asking for Adair’s help in understanding the circumstances of his sister’s disappearance, Adair has to reckon again with her memories of the event as well as the rest of the misfortunes of her young life. The chapters alternate among the perspectives of Adair in the present (which is 2010), Adair in 1995, and various people who have lived in Culleton since the 1800s. Donohoe (Ashes of Fiery Weather, 2017) is skilled at cultivating the pervasively disconcerting and melancholy atmosphere that surrounds both Culleton and Adair. There is an impressive weaving of science and mysticism so that when the reader realizes the “fact” behind a family’s curse, it stays just as foreboding as it was when it was just fantastical. The novel is rooted in Irish lore, legends of upstate New York, and historical facts from the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ’90s. Despite centering the story of two people trying to discover what happened to a missing girl, this isn’t a thriller but more of a meditation on loss and the power of memory and tradition. A reflective tale of a town’s and a girl’s histories through the lens of rumor, storytelling, and ghosts.
DARK QUEEN WAITING
Doherty, Paul Severn House (224 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-78029-127-7
A pair of locked-room murders holds the key to a deadly stew of medieval plots. Now that the House of York has won the Wars of the Roses, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond (Dark Queen Rising, 2018, etc.), lives quietly in London. Supported by Reginald Bray, her steward, and Christopher Urswicke, her personal clerk, she plots to recall Henry Tudor, her son by her first husband, home from his exile in France and secure the throne for him. In an effort to win favor for his support of York, Christopher’s father, Sir Thomas Urswicke, Recorder of London and Great Lord of the Guildhall, is having Margaret’s loyal followers in the Red Dragon Battle Group murdered. Awaiting the arrival of agents from France, Christopher and Bray watch in horror when the agents are attacked on the shore by his father’s men, leaving two dead and two on the run. Back in London, another of Margaret’s followers who sought sanctuary in the church of St. Michael is found murdered inside the locked church. As she ponders her fate, Margaret plots with Christopher and Bray to protect her son and save her network of loyal helpers. A secret battle between York and Lancaster followers rages in the perilous, squalid streets of London, where men kill for a piece of bread. Margaret, who hopes to have her followers seek sanctuary, gets permission from King Edward and Sir Thomas to exile them to France. But Christopher doesn’t trust his father and knows that someone among their closest allies is a traitor feeding him information. As Margaret waits to travel with the exiled men to ensure their safety, there’s 112
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THE BLACK CAGE
from the Chicago Examiner to its suburban magazine, the Pink. So neither Rigg nor Glet is pleased when they run into each other at an unpleasantly similar crime scene at Devil’s Creek, where teenage sisters Beatrice and Priscilla Graves have been found naked and dead from unknown causes. Glet’s boss, Cook County Sheriff Joe Lehman, fastens on Richie Fernandez, a machine operator and dishwasher who knew the Graves girls, as his top suspect but insists that he hasn’t arrested Fernandez, who’s gone missing. At length Rigg digs up a pair of witnesses to the arrest, but shortly after the Pink runs the story, a search for the witnesses comes up empty, putting Rigg in hot water that feels awfully familiar. As he deals with his memories of his murdered wife, the avatars of the local law, and Luther Donovan, the wealthy developer intent on squeezing every dollar out of the Examiner before he tosses it away, Rigg finds only two possible sources of consolation: his unlikely liaison with Aria Gamble, the glamorous features reporter who’s been exiled to the Pink along with him, and the fact that so many suspects and antagonists are dying all around him. The mystery takes a back seat to the hero’s scorchedearth battles with authority figures more powerful than he is.
Fredrickson, Jack Severn House (224 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8916-4
Who could possibly be more compromised and more jaundiced than rarely employed Chicago shamus Dek Elstrom (Tagged for Murder, 2018, etc.)? Only Milo Rigg, the disgraced investigative reporter who anchors Fredrickson’s new series. Fifteen months ago, Rigg pushed a little too hard against Cook County Deputy Jerome Glet for moving the bodies at an earlier crime scene in order to arrange a better photo op for himself. That crime—the murders of young Bobby Stemec and John and Anthony Henderson—still hasn’t been solved, and the recently widowed Rigg’s attempts to console former exotic dancer Carlotta Henderson, mother of two of the victims, have been widely assumed to extend to an affair that got him banished
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THE OLD SUCCESS
times. His Most Private Investigators Ltd., uses the most upto-date surveillance equipment. Puri himself carries the latest model cellphone. But modern as he is, he is truly vexed by his wife Rumpi’s news that his youngest daughter, Radhika, wants to make a love match—and with a Bengali, no less! Why can’t Radhika act more like his client Ram Bhatt’s daughter, Tulsi, who married Vikas Gupta, the groom chosen by her father after a careful investigation conducted by Puri himself confirmed him to be an A-1, top-notch prospect? And if Tulsi’s been driven from her husband’s house by his truly thunderous snores, well, Puri still stands by his investigation, although he now must find out how he could have missed such an undesirable trait. Meantime, Puri’s beloved Mummy-ji has another urgent task for him. She wants her son to reexamine the case of Riya Kaur, a young wife whose husband, Mantosh Singh, left her to die in the antiSikh riots of 1984. Mummy-ji has stumbled across Saanvi, a young girl who claims to be the reincarnated presence of Riya, and she shares chilling memories of the Sikh woman’s last hours. Can Puri, who wants nothing more than some crispy pakora and a ride in his beloved Ambassador sedan, juggle three such diverse cases and still get home in time for tea? Hall deftly handles amusing characters and serious social issues.
Grimes, Martha Atlantic Monthly (256 pp.) $26.00 | Nov. 5, 2019 978-0-8021-4740-0 Superintendent Richard Jury’s 25th case is less a star turn than a team effort for a trio of detectives and their deep bench of helpers and hangers-on. A pair of young sisters out walking the beach of Bryher, the smallest inhabited Isle of Scilly off the Cornish coast, find the body of a woman who’s been shot to death. Since Bryher is accessible only by ferry, it stands to reason that whoever killed Manon Vinet is still on the island. That’s hard for the close-knit native community to accept. What makes the case even harder for Divisional Commander Brian Macalvie, called in from Exeter to head the investigation, is that the victim’s most prominent link to the outside world—the fact that she once nursed the late Gerald Summerston—links her to still more violence when Summerston’s niece, Flora Flood, is arrested for fatally shooting her estranged husband, Tony Servino. Flora denies the charges, but her account—Tony threatened her because he was enraged at being served with divorce papers after a two-year separation; she only shot at his feet; an intruder entering at just that moment fired the fatal bullet from a gun of the same caliber— seems calculated to inspire skepticism from even her next-door neighbor Jury’s old friend Melrose Plant. While Jury and Sir Thomas Brownell, a legendary detective retired from Scotland Yard, are still trying to figure out whether the two murders are connected, their attention is claimed by a third: the shooting of former Summerston maid Moira Quinn in Exeter Cathedral, right on Macalvie’s home turf. The ensuing rounds of inquiry and cross-checking would tax most novelists and their detectives to the limit, but Grimes (The Knowledge, 2018, etc.) keeps dropping unexpected complications, newly minted characters, and familiar faces into a mix that becomes so head-spinning that most readers are likely to greet the denouement with a combination of surprise and relief. Plotted and peopled with unstinting generosity, even if the regulars are never quite as amusing as the author thinks.
MUSKRAT HILL
Jackson, Easy Five Star/Gale Cengage (304 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 19, 2020 978-1-4328-6604-4 A mysterious woman’s request for an interview sends a country musician down a long road of reminiscences to the hometown nearly torn apart by a murderer during his boyhood. No one can identify the young woman whose corpse Kittrell Robertson and his best friend, Whitey Collins, find on a quiet riverbank. But everyone can see that she’s been killed with exceptional ferocity, her breast and ear slashed off after she was bashed to death. Half-Comanche Muskrat Hill marshal Asa Jenkins, feeling out past his depth, naturally turns to Kit’s father for help. Pope Robertson was a famous Texas Ranger before he retired and opened a grocery store, and Jenkins thinks that underneath all that white hair, Robertson’s still got the brains and the tenacity to find the murderer. Before that happens, though, there’ll be two major complications. One is the arrival of Clara Grace, an eccentric cousin of Kit’s mother, Dolly, whose other cousins, Willie Mae and Ralph, have shipped her to Muskrat Hill because they got tired of minding her themselves. Five minutes with Clara Grace, a staunch Catholic with a passion for spreading the word and a lack of social filters that allows her to speak her mind about Baptists, Methodists, and anyone else who looks at her sideways, will make readers deeply sympathetic toward Ralph and Willie Mae. While Dolly does her best to parade possible mates before the uninterested Clara Grace, the second complication unfolds:
THE CASE OF THE REINCARNATED CLIENT
Hall, Tarquin Severn House (240 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8878-5
India’s most private detective confronts the changing face of marriage in his native land. Vish Puri (The Delhi Detective’s Hand book, 2017, etc.) tries to keep up with the 114
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A retired MI5 officer risks everything to rescue an old friend. terminal black
NEAR PROSPECT PARK
The killer continues to strike. Inoffensive butcher Oscar Sorenson is gutted and hanged upside down; Miss Maydell, at 30 the town’s old maid, is strangled in an outhouse; and more victims will follow. Jackson (A Season in Hell, 2019, etc.) spends less time on Robertson’s hunt for likely suspects than on limning the town’s rhythms and rituals, goading Robertson’s exasperated outburst: “We have a vicious, crazed killer on the loose, and all I have is a houseful of people who couldn’t care less about it.” In the end, the surprisingly intricate murder plot feels grafted onto the heartfelt evocation of the Texas town.
Levy, Lawrence H. Ballantine (304 pp.) $17.00 paper | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-451-49846-5
NAIROBI NOIR
Ed. by Kimani, Peter Akashic (256 pp.) $15.95 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-61775-754-9 Fourteen new crime stories set in Kenya’s capital and largest city. The teeming diversity of Nairobi, a metropolis of more than 3 million people, is reflected in this anthology, illustrated by a map of the city that shows a different neighborhood location for each story, the neighborhood’s name mischievously overlaying the white silhouette of a corpse. The highlights are as diverse as the city itself. In Winfred Kiunga’s “She Dug Two Graves,” a young woman with a bright future sets out with a vengeance to solve the devastating murder of her brother. Faith Oneya’s “Say You Are Not My Son” traces the bizarre aftermath of the “sewer volcano” that erupts in a squalid neighborhood. Rasna Warah chronicles the psychiatric visits of a distressed United Nations worker in the twisty “Have Another Roti.” Music figures prominently in several of the stories: “The Hermit in the Helmet,” by Ngügï wa Thiong’o, features many hymns in its saga of an educated man driven to irrational extremes by the perceived power of the title headgear. J.E. Sibi-Okumu deconstructs the anatomy of a robbery in piercing detail in “Belonging.” The collection ends with the most traditionally noir story, Ngumi Kibera’s “The Night Beat,” a gritty procedural centering on military police. There are also stories by Kevin Mwachiro, Kinyanjui Kombani, Troy Onyango, Makena Onjerika, Peter Kimani, Wanjikü wa Ngügï, Caroline Mose, and Stanley Gazemba. The latest in Akashic’s long-running series runs the gamut in style, introducing a generous assortment of new writers.
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A shocking #MeToo story set in an era when women had no chance of being believed. Private detective Mary Handley (Last Stop in Brooklyn, 2018, etc.) has married reporter Harper Lloyd. Since their baby girl, Josephine George Handley, arrived in March 1896, Mary’s cut back on detecting. But she maintains in office in the bookstore of her friend Lazlo, and that’s where William Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, asks her to help him recover a stolen manuscript. Mary agrees to deliver the $4,000 the thieves have demanded to a meeting place in Prospect Park. The sellers never show, but someone accosts Mary as she leaves the park and tries to steal the money. Mary, who has a black belt in jujitsu, easily overpowers him, but she’s attacked from behind by someone else and awakens to find her husband—whom she’d left at home, writing and watching Josie—shot dead. Blaming herself, she’s devastated until her friend Patrick Campbell, a retired police chief, visits and encourages her to use her skills to find the men who killed her Harper. Meanwhile, Mary’s acquaintance with Theodore Roosevelt, who as president of the police commission is determined to root out corruption, entangles her in the case of Stanford White and James Breese, respected society figures accused of drugging and raping a 15-year-old. The police, who don’t believe the girl, have refused to investigate, though their society friends generally acknowledge that White and Breese are guilty. But few of them care about the fate of lower-class women above the age of consent, which is 10. Mary, who’s worked for many famous people, meets Diamond Jim Brady and Lillian Russell, who agree to help her with the manuscript thieves and the rape case. The failure of Mary’s daring plan leaves it to fate to exact revenge. Famous figures of the period spice up a fine mystery that takes on a problem still making headlines.
TERMINAL BLACK
Magson, Adrian Severn House (256 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8947-8
A retired MI5 officer risks everything to rescue an old friend. In central London, Irina, a no-nonsense Russian agent, is heading up a “stop and snatch” operation. At the last minute, she decides to kill the woman she was targeting, angering her colleagues. Irina uses the dead target’s laptop to send a message to the woman’s contact, former MI5 officer Rik Ferris. Meanwhile, |
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at the Minsk International Airport, MI5 agent Clare Jardine worries about the dicey situation of her Russian partner, Katya Balenkova, who’s embarked upon an unwise affair with Ferris, whom Clare fortuitously spots across the airport. Sir Iain Colmyer, the British government’s Chief Whip, is very concerned that a “low level mouse of an IT worker in MI5” (that would be Ferris) has looked at his file, and he announces he wants that mouse found. Enter former MI5 agent Harry Tate (Execution, 2013, etc.), enjoying a piece of chocolate cake when he’s buttonholed by “minder” Ben Cramer, who wants him to find Ferris, unaware that Ferris is being held prisoner by Irina and company. It’s strongly implied that Cramer has enough incriminating information on Harry to leverage him back into service. From this point on, the plot goes round and round from one front to the next. Clare, who has a sketchy history with Harry, also seeks Ferris while Colmyer monitors the situation from the Home Office and Harry reluctantly embarks on his mission. Harry’s progress is uncertain; his time away from the service makes him slow to appreciate how completely methodical technology has replaced gritty fieldwork. But soon enough he finds himself in the middle of the crossfire, not sure whom he can trust. Magson adroitly shuffles a double handful of desperate characters in his sixth Harry Tate thriller. Brisk and bracing.
found badly mutilated, Felicity resolves to learn as much as possible, even bribing the undertaker to let her examine the body. Felicity and Pike are undeniably attracted to each other, and although he still doesn’t like her sleuthing, he admits that she does turn up some helpful clues. Pike suspects two men who are blackmailing prostitutes and also suspects anyone, like the butcher, who’s handy with a knife. Felicity, certain that the culprit is someone with medical knowledge, suspects a local doctor. As more murders follow, a frustrated Felicity risks her own life to unmask a mad killer. This colorful, action-filled mystery presents a novel twist in the continuing search for the identity of England’s most notorious murderer.
TROUBLE IS WHAT I DO
Mosley, Walter Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (176 pp.) $24.00 | $26.00 lg. prt. | Feb. 25, 2020 978-0-316-49113-6 978-0-316-42642-8 lg. prt. If you’ve been wondering what Leonid McGill and his family private-eye business have been up to lately, how does trying to foil a billionaire’s murderous plot to conceal his black heritage sound to you? The seemingly unstoppable Mosley (John Woman, 2018, etc.) shifts his restless vision back to contemporary New York City and to McGill, the ex-boxer who’s as agile at navigating both sides of the law as he was in the ring. Here, Mosley delves into the murky waters of history and racial identity as Leonid’s agency is asked by one Philip “Catfish” Worry, a 94-year-old African American blues musician from Mississippi, to help him to deliver a letter to the daughter of a wealthy, ruthless, and incorrigibly racist white banker saying that he’s her greatgrandfather because of an illicit liaison he had with the banker’s white mother. Sounds simple enough, but the aptly named Mr. Worry warns McGill that the banker is desperate enough to do anything within his considerable and far-reaching power to stop that information from getting to his daughter. (“One thing a poor sharecropper understands is that messin’ with rich white people is like tipplin’ poison.”) When his client is wounded three hours after he takes the case, Leonid calls upon every resource available to carry out his assignment, including various characters scattered throughout Manhattan who are somehow beholden to him, whether it’s a physician recovering from opioid addiction or an ill-tempered NYPD captain who dispenses the kind of stern-but-friendly admonitions police detectives have given private eyes since the days of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Watching McGill coolly deploy the physical and intellectual skills he’d acquired in his previous life as an underworld “fixer” provides the principal pleasure of this installment, along with Mosley’s own way of making prose sound like a tender, funny blues ballad. (At one point he says a character is “as country as a bale of cotton on an unwilling child’s back.”) But there
FELICITY CARROL AND THE MURDEROUS MENACE
Marcantonio, Patricia Crooked Lane (336 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-64385-289-8
A bluestocking proves her worth as a detective in a hunt for Jack the Ripper. Felicity Carrol is a wealthy young woman with several degrees and a passion for crime solving. When she receives a letter from the mother of her friend Inspector Jackson Davies, asking her to come visit him as “a matter of life and death,” Felicity rushes to his side. Although he had initially ignored her when they met during her first case (Felicity Carrol and the Perilous Pursuit, 2019), Jackson soon came to rely on her scientific knowledge. Now Jackson is worn down with overwork and angst over the unsolved Whitechapel murders, and his health has worsened since he read an article about a seemingly identical murder in Placer, Montana. Determined to help him, Felicity sets off for Montana with her friend and servant Helen Wilkins to determine whether the Ripper has relocated to the United States. Money greases her way and allows her to buy a house in Placer as her base. Stepping off the stagecoach, she meets good-looking sheriff Tom Pike and informs him she’s there to investigate the murder of Lily Rawlins. When Pike reluctantly agrees to talk to her, she tells him she plans to write a book of detective fiction using the horrifying crime as the basis. He doubts her story but gives her information and an area tour. When another prostitute is 116
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A bizarre murder in 1970s Japan continues to reverberate through the decades. the aosawa murders
THE HEARTLESS
isn’t much more than that to this mystery, which is far less complex than its setup promises. Even at less-than-peak performance, Mosley delivers enough good stuff to let you know a master’s at work.
Putnam, David Oceanview (336 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-60809-378-6
THE AOSAWA MURDERS
Onda, Riku Trans. by Watts, Alison Bitter Lemon Press (346 pp.) $14.95 paper | Feb. 9, 2020 978-1-912242-24-5 A bizarre murder in 1970s Japan continues to reverberate through the decades. This book, originally published in 2005 under the title Eugenia, is the first by Onda to be translated into English. After opening with a short, unusually lyrical excerpt from the transcript of a police interview, the book unfolds through chapters told from strikingly different perspectives. The first narrator is Makiko Saiga, who wrote a book about the crime in question, the poisoning of 17 people at a birthday party at the Aosawa family estate. Looking back on the murders 30 years later, Saiga, who was a child at the time, remembers it was a humid summer in a beautiful setting by the sea. Then, several months after the crime, a man who didn’t seem to have any connection to the Aosawas wrote up a confession and then hanged himself. Though skeptical, the police took the opportunity to close the case. Saiga went on to research and publish The For gotten Festival, her only book, about the crime. As she winds up her story, she implies that Hisako, the blind young Aosawa heiress and the only survivor of the massacre, might have been the killer. “You see, it’s a very simple story. If there are ten people in a house and nine die, who is the culprit?” The next narrator is Saiga’s assistant, who’s highly suspicious of her boss’s motives. An excerpt from The Forgotten Festival follows, a thinly veiled dramatization in which Saiga places her younger self at the scene of the crime and implicates a man she sees as the messenger of death. Subsequent sections focus on the housekeeper’s daughter, the detective, Saiga’s older brother, and others on the way to the surprising conclusion. The domino effect of the murder on the community and the nation, as well as the swirl of uncertainty concerning the way its narratives are shaped, gives the book a striking resonance. This dark and dazzling novel defies easy categorization but consistently tantalizes and surprises.
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An ex-cop struggles to raise his rebellious teen daughter but knows no limits when it comes to protecting her. Former LA County deputy Bruno Johnson (The Reckless, 2019, etc.), now working as a bailiff, gets a distressed call from his 15-year-old daughter, Olivia, during the murder trial of psycho killer Louis Borkow. A frightened Olivia reports that she and her boyfriend, Derek Sams, are in a house with a bunch of armed people—she’s not sure exactly where—and they’re threatening to kill Derek. After Bruno rescues her, she reverts to rebelliousness and passionately defends Derek. Bruno’s girlfriend, deputy district attorney Nicky Rivers, tries to warn him against taking too harsh an approach with his daughter. Meanwhile, Borkow, bent on revenge against his own lawyer, Gloria Bleeker, engineers a daring prison escape, with henchwoman Lizzette adding muscle. Once Olivia’s safely home, Bruno tracks down Derek, grabs him and puts him on a bus home, hoping his father will drive some sense into the boy. Then Bruno’s called abruptly to the courthouse, where Judge Connors plays a tape in which Borkow agrees to kidnap Olivia in payment of a substantial debt to “dem boys on Pearl.” One of his flunkies comes to warn Borkow that unstoppable Bruno is after him, but the escaped con is unimpressed. Olivia, meanwhile, has taken refuge with Nicky, who manages to negotiate a temporary peace between the remorseful father and his daughter. Olivia tearfully adds that Derek is missing; can Bruno find him? The news of Gloria’s murder just adds one more item to Bruno’s to-do list. Blunt and compelling, Putnam’s seventh franchise installment makes up in pace and punch what it lacks in finesse.
A CRAFTER QUILTS A CRIME
Quinn, Holly Crooked Lane (320 pp.) $26.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-64385-290-4
Years after forming S.H.E., a detective club dating back to their high school days, two sisters and a cousin try to solve a very adult murder. Sammy Kane, her married sister, Ellie, and their beautiful cousin, Heidi, succeeded in solving an earlier murder (A Crafter Knits a Clue, 2018). When yoga instructor Wanda Wadsworth dies in the window of Sammy’s shop, Community Craft, they decide to revive S.H.E. over the strenuous objections of Heidi’s boyfriend, Tim, and Sammy’s love interest, Detective Liam Nash. Wanda was a contestant in Sammy’s live-mannequin contest when she died |
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while holding a lap quilt she’d made. The death looks suspicious to the coroner, and Wanda’s husband, Marty, has disappeared. Ellie’s husband, Randy, who’d co-listed Marty and Wanda’s house, now finds himself a suspect. During a visit to Wanda’s brother, Jackson, on the family farm, the sleuths notice that the quilt block painted on the barn has the same pattern as a quilt in a painting that had been hanging in Wanda’s house, which they’d seen in the real estate listing. The quilt blocks painted on many area barns, part of a quilt trail project aiming to attract tourists to the area, may hold further clues to the murder. After the police find Marty’s car near the farm, Jackson receives a note demanding $100,000 for his safe return. He begs club members not to inform the police and tells them that a large amount of cash may be hidden in a gun safe at Wanda’s house, which the police have sealed. So Sammy suggests that they use the key in the lockbox Randy’s left outside the house. They reluctantly go along with Sammy’s plan but are caught by Tim. He’s furious enough to put his relationship with Heidi on hold, and Liam loses all trust in Sammy. Even though the police now know about the kidnapping, Sammy can’t stop sleuthing and dragging her reluctant relatives along with her. More romance than mystery but the elusive means and motive do keep you guessing.
kid, it’s best if I don’t bother you anymore. Have a good life”— that so interests state trooper Graciano “Gonzo” Vasquez that it pretty much guarantees that “Rick Kisel was going to ruin their lives, all over again.” The ensuing developments send both heroines spinning down converging rabbit holes to their dimly remembered pasts until Alice concludes, “She was in Wonderland.” It’s not a pretty place. Another harrowing nightmare by a master of the sleepless night.
JOURNALED TO DEATH Redmond, Heather Severn House (224 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8950-8
Redmond forsakes Dickens’ London (Grave Expectations, 2019, etc.) to menace a very contemporary heroine with murder and its fallout. You’ve got to feel for Amanda Meadows. When she finds her cousin Ryan Meadows dead at the bottom of her basement stairs, she realizes that she’s lost both one of the few family members she can claim as her own since her recent divorce and a lodger who provided her with a small but steady income stream. With problem-drinking University of Seattle Hospital janitor Ryan gone, she can only count on her own job as a hospital barista, supplemented by her modest earnings from the lifestyle video blog she runs with Vellum Moffat, her 15-year-old daughter, to keep the ship afloat. And her woes deepen when Detective Justin Ahola informs her that Ryan was bludgeoned to death with Mandy’s own hammer, making her a prime suspect. Even if Ahola ever decides that Mandy is no longer a person of interest, as of course he does, how much of an improvement is that? After all, she tells Reese O’Leary-Sett, a hospital nurse and rival vlogger, “It’s not like a stranger killed him. It has to be someone I know.” All in all, she’d prefer that the killer be one of Ryan’s shady friends, Dylan Tran or Alexis Ivanova, or Crystal Roswell, her own next-door neighbor and Ryan’s hookup—if only that wouldn’t leave Crystal’s son, Aiden, free to ride his skateboard at will over Mandy’s lawn. It’s probably too much to hope for that the culprit could be Cory Moffat, Mandy’s well-heeled, good-for-nothing ex. But what if it’s Dr. O’Halloran, the surgeon Mandy and her co-worker Kit Savva call Dr. O’Hottie? A middling demicozy with hints of romance, hints of crime, and a seemly moderation of information about video journaling.
THE LUCKY ONE
Rader-Day, Lori Morrow/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $16.99 paper | Feb. 18, 2020 978-0-06-293807-7 An online project to trace the fates of missing persons and unidentified murder victims bears poisonous fruit for two women it brings together. Everyone involved in the Doe Pages has their reasons—civic-mindedness, moral outrage, obsessive curiosity—for the interest they share in gathering information about the anonymous parties whose photos they pore over. Alice Fine’s reason sets her apart. Taken from her home when she was only 3, she was lucky enough to be rescued by her father, a police officer in Victorville, Indiana, apparently before anything terrible happened. In the generation that’s passed since then, Harrison Fine has quit the force, moved to Chicago, been widowed, and become the can-do junior partner in the contracting firm of King and Fine, where Alice is working in a meaningless hanger-on position the day she’s scanning the contents of the Doe Pages and spots the photograph of the man she’s convinced was her kidnapper. By the time Alice catches up with Richard Miller, she and a pair of her online buddies have uncovered evidence that he lived many lives before the last one came to an end when he was stabbed 12 times. One of these lives, Rader-Day (Under a Dark Sky, 2018, etc.) begins hinting early on, involved Merrily Cruz, who knew Miller as Richard Kisel, the man so close to her mother for so long that he was practically her stepfather, the man who on her 30th birthday leaves her a text message—“Hey, 118
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LAST DAY
History seems to repeat itself across generations when a murder and the disappearance of a painting lead a Connecticut woman to investigate her sister’s private life. Marred by tragedy at an early age, sisters Kate Woodward and Beth Lathrop coped with their mother’s murder and their kidnapping during an art heist in the family gallery in two very different ways. Beth married Pete Lathrop, started a family, and continued the family tradition of mentoring starving artists as part of the now-named Lathrop Gallery in the town of Black Hall. Kate was unmoored by what happened, becoming a pilot traveling through life with no connection to anyone except for Beth and childhood friends Lulu and Scotty. When Beth is six months pregnant, she’s killed in her own home, and Moonlight, the Benjamin Morrison painting stolen in the first heist, once again goes missing. Detective Conor Reid couldn’t be more shocked by the turn of events. He’s kept an eye on Beth and Kate for years since being part of the team that investigated the first crime, oversight that Rice presents as sweet rather than stalkerish. Conor is certain that Pete killed Beth. After all, the marriage was on the rocks, and Pete already had a new child with Nicola, his paramour. But Conor’s theory of the crime is harder to prove than he anticipates. Kate’s just as desperate to learn the truth about Beth, and she finds that the more she investigates Beth’s last day, the more she wonders whether she ever knew her sister at all. A long buildup culminates in a climax that’s not as satisfying as the rest of the story.
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method is so offbeat and so precisely calibrated—the malefactor clearly targeted both victims when they were home alone and chose a chemical agent that would be sure to dispatch them without killing any innocent victims—that both crimes were obviously hatched by a single brain. And this time, the second murder, instead of muddling the mystery, clarifies it so dramatically that Eve, backed up by her usual legion of omnicompetent colleagues and a little help from Roarke, her dishy billionaire husband, quickly identifies the likely motive for both homicides and then zeroes in on her prime suspect when her tale is only halfway told. So there’s precious little mystery after the initial false leads. The rewards on tap instead are the familiar pleasures of watching Eve and Peabody and the New York Police painstakingly gather evidence, make their case, relentlessly question any number of variously complicit citizens who don’t happen to be the killer and walk away from their pushback, and then break the perp in a climactic interrogation that the mountain of physical evidence they’ve amassed makes as superfluous as it is satisfying. It’s great to think that the dawning surveillance state will help catch some actual criminals in the mid-21st-century.
Rice, Luanne Thomas & Mercer (412 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 1, 2020 978-1-5420-1820-3
MANY RIVERS TO CROSS
Robinson, Peter Hodder & Stoughton/Trafalgar (384 pp.) $27.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-06-284749-2 Many murders to solve, too, in this latest thicket of felonies for DCI Alan Banks and the staff of the Eastvale Police (Careless Love, 2019, etc.). Why would whoever stabbed Syrian immigrant Samir Boulad to death take the risk of dumping his body in Edith Grunwell’s trash bin, where the retired nurse found him when she took out her trash? Although Malden Terrace is no more immune from nativist racism than other neighborhoods, the traces of cocaine in the dead boy’s pocket hint at equally sinister connections—from lowend Howard Stokes, a diabetic heroin user found dead in his home, to high-end developer Connor Clive Blaydon, an associate of Albanian Mafia stalwart Leka Gashi who’s more recently partnered with equally dodgy Timmy and Tommy Kerrigan to build Elmet Centre, which, Blaydon piously assures Banks, will do the area no end of good. As Banks and his team make their inquiries, police consultant Nelia Melnic, who’d rather be called Zelda, has problems of her own. A superrecognizer rescued from sex slavery to become a valuable asset to the constabulary and a self-appointed seeker for Phil Keane, an associate of the brothers who first kidnapped Zelda 20 years ago and who almost killed Banks when he set his house on fire, she’s upset to learn that her boss, Trevor Hawkins, has died in an equally suspicious house fire and upset in a completely different way when she suddenly bumps into Goran Tadić, one of her kidnappers. There’ll be precious little downtime for Banks and company,
GOLDEN IN DEATH
Robb, J.D. St. Martin’s (400 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-250-20720-3
Lt. Eve Dallas celebrates her 50th futuristic procedural by taking down an unusually malevolent and resourceful poisoner. Who would have wanted to kill saintly physician Kent Abner, who donated his services to a pediatric clinic—except of course for all those abusive parents he reported to the authorities over the years? Eve and her partner, Detective Delia Peabody (Vendetta in Death, 2019, etc.), are still wending their way through the list of possibles when they learn that Elise Duran has been prevented from hosting the weekly meeting of her book club in exactly the same way Abner was killed: She breathed the toxic fumes released from a golden egg delivered to her door. The murder |
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ONE DAY YOU’LL BURN
as they’re forced to deal with more mystery, more murder, and some uncomfortable moral conundrums posed for both the characters and readers before Robinson pulls down the curtain, not with a bang but with a final piercing twist. Reliable procedural entertainment from a pro’s pro, with an ending that guarantees more drama ahead.
Schneider, Joseph Poisoned Pen (336 pp.) $15.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-4926-8444-2
Hollywood detectives catch the strange case of a brutally burned body. Detective Tully Jarsdel is a former academic, leading his partner, Morales, to call him Professor. When he fights his way through multiple news crews to reach a corpse one day, it’s unlike any he’s ever seen. The body is twisted, partially ravaged, and burned so badly it’s unrecognizable. Jarsdel and Morales intensely question Dustin Sparks, the horror-movie special-effects expert who found the body. He eventually admits that he saw the body being dumped from a van, but his addiction to OxyContin makes him a compromised witness. While waiting for DNA results, Jarsdel and Morales watch missing persons reports closely. An odd red disk glued to the victim’s palm turns out to be a 1996 quarter painted red: the case’s first clue, albeit a murky one. DNA connects the victim to grizzled convict Lawrence Wolin, who identifies the man as his brother. The pieces of Grant Wolin’s life come together via interviews prompted by a search of his dirty apartment. He sold jars of “genuine Hollywood dirt” on the street, smoked marijuana occasionally, and was apparently asexual. A dinner scene at the home of Jarsdel’s scholarly parents provides insight into his psyche and his sense of isolation. Though he fits in with neither the gritty world of police work nor the ivory tower of academia, he has a passion for justice. Schneider’s debut enlivens the police procedural with offbeat characters and an appealingly complex hero.
ALL THE BEST LIES
Schaffhausen, Joanna Minotaur (336 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-250-297389
Desperate to solve the years-old case of his slain mother, an FBI agent digs into Vegas dirt alongside a woman with whom he has a complex relationship. Mail-in DNA tests upend the world of Reed Markham, who’s spent his whole life thinking he was adopted only to learn that his adoptive father, Angus, is also his biological father. A lesser man would just sit with the news, but Reed’s an FBI agent with the will and the means to learn more, particularly about the murder of his birth mother, Camilla Flores. Cammie was a Puerto Rican immigrant working hard to make ends meet in 1970s Las Vegas when she was viciously attacked and stabbed to death as her 4-month-old baby slept in another room. Though her murder has never been solved, police wisdom seems to think that it was the work of a local drug dealer Cammie was prepared to testify against. But Reed’s investigative know-how tells him the crime was more personal, and now that he knows the truth about Angus, Reed needs to learn whether his father was involved in Cammie’s death. Ably assisting Reed is Ellery Hathaway, the one person (unlike his ex-wife, Sarit) who won’t judge his quest. Reed and Ellery’s complicated relationship began when she was a child and he was the agent who rescued her from the clutches of a serial killer. Now that she’s become a cop, Ellery’s shared with Reed trauma histories, investigative skills, and poor boundaries as they’ve solved several cases on and off the books, even as their relationship has veered toward romance—though their history makes this turn something Schaffhausen (No Mercy, 2019, etc.) can’t quite pull off. Now that he’s in Vegas to learn the truth about his mother, Reed also wants to figure out what he and Ellery have together. By-the-book plotting gives this novel less flair than earlier series entries, though a final twist wraps things up neatly.
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THE APOLLO DECEPTION
Silver, Mitch Severn House (224 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7278-8975-1
Everything you knew about the moon landing whose 50th anniversary we just celebrated is wrong. No, wait, there’s more. Yes, American technology in 1969 was indeed the envy of the world. But what it was used for, Silver (The Bookworm, 2018, etc.) cheekily reveals, was not to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon but to produce a video simulation of the landing nobody could tell from the real thing. Now the announcement that the Chinese are about to launch a manned lunar mission of their own has NASA panicking. When the Chinese astronauts land and find no American flag in the Sea of Tranquility, they’ll realize the whole mission was a fraud—and they’ll be free to tell the whole world and, incidentally, to claim the |
moon for their own country. Gary Stephens, a director of TV commercials whose father, Charlie, was recently murdered by members of a dark conspiracy, is alerted to his father’s participation in the “week-long reality TV show” that was Apollo 11 by NASA widow Chris Walsh, whose daughter, Robin, is one of the astronauts who’s been hand-picked for the Dark Side mission—a covert last-minute moonshot whose goal is to plant a suitably weathered American flag in the alleged landing spot before the Chinese can get there. Readers whose eyes haven’t glazed over at this outrageous premise, and even some whose eyes have, will be impressed by Silver’s finesse in juggling endless time frames and counterplots and rewarded with an elaborate set of assassinations and double-crosses by the Chinese, the Russians, the Americans, and some enterprising freelancers that threaten to compromise the top-secret mission and continue after liftoff and even once the intrepid crew lands on the lunar surface. This fast-moving pipe dream could be the perfect airplane read, because you just never know.
A DIVIDED LOYALTY
Todd, Charles Morrow/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-06-290553-6 Inspector Ian Rutledge’s 22nd case revolves around two young women found dead in utterly unexpected places. Scheduled to give evidence in an ongoing investigation, Rutledge can’t go to the village of Avebury—where a body has been found stabbed to death in the center of a circle of prehistoric stones—in the place of Chief Inspector Brian Leslie when Rutledge’s nemesis, Chief Superintendent Markham, sends Leslie there when he’d been looking forward to a couple of days off. Instead, Rutledge ends up going to the Shropshire village of Tern Bridge, where a woman eventually identified as Bath schoolmistress Serena Palmer has been stabbed and tossed into a grave dug the day before for someone else. After a witness’s unexpectedly keen eye and sharp memory puts Rutledge on a trail that leads with disconcerting suddenness to Serena Palmer’s killer, he’s sent to Avebury after all, since Leslie’s conscientiously thorough inquiries have identified neither the killer nor the victim. This mystery, Rutledge finds, is just as murky as the Shropshire murder was clear, and he despairs that he’ll ever have anything to add to Leslie’s report. Constantly threatened by Markham, who’s still holding the letter of resignation Rutledge submitted to him after his last case (The Black Ascot, 2019, etc.), and intermittently needled by the ghost of Cpl. Hamish McLeod, the corporal he executed in a trench in 1916 when he refused to lead troops into further fighting in the Somme, Rutledge struggles with a case whose every lead—a necklace of lapis lazuli beads, a trove of letters written to the victim—leads him not so much to enlightenment as to ever deepening sadness. The final twist may not |
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surprise eagle-eyed readers, but it will reveal why Todd’s generic-sounding title is painfully apt. If you’re in a receptive mood, nobody evokes long postwar shadows or overwhelming postwar grief better than Todd.
science fiction and fantasy AGENCY
Gibson, William Berkley (416 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-101-98693-6 A sequel to The Peripheral (2014), in which bored dilettantes from the future meddle virtually with potential pasts while more responsible people try to ameliorate the damage. The novel opens, as so many Gibson novels do, with an intelligent, creative young woman accepting a not terribly well-defined job from an enigmatic (possibly sinister) executive involving a piece of cutting-edge technology. In this case, that technology is an emerging AI with origins in top-secret military research who calls herself Eunice. The young woman, Verity Jane, spends only a couple of days with Eunice (via company-issued glasses, phone, and headset) before her new boss, Gavin, gets nervous about Eunice’s potential and starts attempting to monitor every move of the human– AI pair. What Verity does not know is that her present day of 2017, in which a decreased Russian influence on social media led to an unnamed woman who is clearly Hillary Clinton winning the presidency, the U.K. voting to remain in the E.U., and a volatile situation in Turkey threatening to turn nuclear, was deliberately manipulated by someone in 2136 who enjoys creating doomsday scenarios among possible past timelines. It’s up to future law enforcement (who can only contact the timeline via digital communication or virtually controlled mechanical peripherals) to get in touch with Verity and Eunice and recruit them to prevent looming global catastrophe. Given Gibson’s Twitter-stated unhappiness with the timeline in which he currently finds himself, it’s hard to know what he’s implying here: That outside intervention would have been required to achieve a Hillary Clinton presidency and defeat Brexit? Or that our own vigilance on social media could/should have brought those outcomes about? And why would these two potentially positive occurrences in that timeline instigate an even darker scenario than the one readers are currently experiencing—and also require that intervention to fix it? Have we reached the point
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A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children. the house in the cerulean sea
THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA
of no return in all potential 21st-century timelines, doomed, at least in part, regardless of what political and social choices we make now? (Nor is it ever really explained why Gavin turns so quickly on Verity and Eunice, unless it’s simply to inject the story with urgency and transform it into the author’s favorite plot device, the chase.) This is vintage, or possibly tired, Gibson, filling his usual quest-driven template with updated contemporary or just-past-contemporary politics, technology, and culture. Someone else might’ve made this fresh and clever, but from this source, it’s an often dull and pointless-seeming retread.
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Klune, TJ Tor (352 pp.) $26.99 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-1-250-21728-8
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children. Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When
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Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune (The Art of Breathing, 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up. A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
details that could be cut. Still, the final pages give satisfying closure to the trilogy. A worthwhile finale to a fun SF adventure series.
r om a n c e WHITEOUT
Anders, Adriana Sourcebooks Casablanca (448 pp.) $7.99 paper | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-4926-9870-8 Two survivors of an attack on an Antarctic research base have to withstand a perilous trek to safety while safeguarding the lethal virus that the attackers would do anything to find. When chef Angel Smith joins a research facility in Antarctica, she’s intrigued by enigmatic scientist Ford Cooper, who keeps to himself and rejects all her friendly overtures. In fact, Ford is uncomfortable with emotions, and Angel’s open, tactile nature scares him. Just before Angel and the summer staff are supposed to board the plane taking them home, Angel witnesses a murder in a supply warehouse and hides the ice samples the criminals killed for, switching them out for similar ones. The villains leave the station on a second plane with the wrong samples, and while Angel is looking for a way to escape the freezing tunnel she’s been locked in, Cooper comes back from a satellite base checkin to find the station abandoned, all the communications equipment destroyed, and Angel trying to chop down a door to get to safety. When she tells him what she’s seen, he realizes the men will hunt down the right samples and will kill any witnesses. Their best hope of survival is at the closest nearby station, but they’ll have to ski hundreds of miles to get there. Along the way, they’ll battle villains and the harsh landscape in myriad ways, but the attraction that grows between them becomes one of their greatest strengths, because they’re both determined to save each other. Anders launches a new series with a bang, maintaining a furious pace and setting up geographical, criminal, and emotional dangers that force the characters to find their deepest strengths to survive. Heart-pounding sexual, emotional, and physical tension keep the suspense high and the pages turning.
GRAVITY OF A DISTANT SUN
Stearns, R.E. Saga/Simon & Schuster (432 pp.) $16.99 paper | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-4814-7693-5
Adda and Iridian are back for the third installment in Stearns’ Shieldrunner Pirates trilogy (Mutiny at Vesta, 2018, etc.). Adda and Iridian just want to live together in peace, but it seems the entire galaxy is out to stop them. First it was the killer artificial intelligence on Barbary Station. Then, it was the noxious Oxia Corporation on Vesta. And now it’s those pesky awakened (meaning: sentient, self-aware, and therefore terrifying) AIs that have been trailing Adda and Iridian throughout their adventures. This third novel starts off with Iridian in prison and Adda trapped in a hospital, being treated for AI “influence,” a condition where an AI gains control over a human’s mind. When Adda has recovered enough to be put in a dormlike hospital room but not enough to be transferred to jail, she and Iridian manage to break themselves out and escape to a station far enough out in space that the authorities won’t follow them. Despite the great risk of being influenced again, Adda decides to find out what exactly the awakened AIs want from her. It turns out that the AIs and humans may share the same goals. If Adda agrees to help them, she and Iridian will finally be free to live their lives, but is it worth the risk? Much like the second book in the series, this final story feels episodic, which allows for lots of action and adventure even if it drifts a little. Stearns has clearly put a lot of work into fleshing out the world and the tech used here, sometimes including |
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HOW THE DUKES STOLE CHRISTMAS
FOREVER MY DUKE
Drake, Olivia St. Martin’s (384 pp.) $7.99 paper | Dec. 31, 2019 978-1-250-17439-0
Dare, Tessa & MacLean, Sarah & Jordan, Sophie & Shupe, Joanna Avon/HarperCollins (464 pp.) $7.99 paper | Sep. 24, 2019 978-0-06-296241-6
Second in a historical romance series featuring dukes who fall for governesses. Hadrian Ames, Duke of Clayton, is on his way to the village of Whitnash to court 18-year-old Lady Ellen Godwin when an ice storm forces him to take shelter at an inn. The prospective union has long had the blessing of both the Earl of Godwin, who fostered Hadrian as a child after his father died, and Hadrian’s late father himself. Hadrian thinks little of women in general—they pout, plead, scheme, and simper—but recognizes that at age 29, it is time for him to produce an heir. When a lovely American guardian chases her young charge, Leo, into his room at the inn, Hadrian’s outlook abruptly changes: “The world faded as he stared at the vision standing before him.” Natalie and Leo barely survived a vicious attack on their American frontier mission by renegade British soldiers. The massacre took the lives of Leo’s parents, one of whom was Lord Godwin’s eldest daughter, Audrey. Natalie promised a dying Audrey that she would return Leo to her family in England. Hadrian becomes Natalie’s reluctant defender when Lord Godwin and his second wife greet Leo and his American guardian with extreme skepticism. Natalie’s tall, willowy beauty, her forthrightness, and her rejection of hierarchy set her apart from other women, and soon Hadrian’s instant attraction becomes something more, although he allows her to believe he is still interested in Lady Ellen until nearly the end of the novel. In 2020, this “not like all the other girls” trope is more apt to generate reader antipathy toward the hero than admiration for the heroine. A gratuitous attempted rape of Natalie by a groom merely provides a pretext for the duke to seduce her rather than a means to address her post-traumatic condition. A fresh plot is undermined by stale romance elements best left in the genre’s past.
Four Christmas-themed novellas by leading historical romance writers that pay homage to beloved holiday films. In the opening novella, Meet Me in Mayfair by Dare (The Wallflower Wager, 2019, etc.), James, the new Duke of Thorndale, demands payment of Louisa Ward’s father’s debt, which will render the family homeless. Louisa attends a holiday ball hoping to entice a wealthy suitor but attracts the attention of the duke himself, who finds her indifference to him appealing. They have a series of wintry adventures all over London, in the course of which she teaches him the importance of home. An homage to Meet Me in St. Louis, Dare’s irreverent story brings all of the optimism, romance, and wit of that beloved film to a Regency setting. MacLean’s (Brazen and the Beast, 2019, etc.) The Duke of Christmas Present is a second-chance romance wrapped in a Scrooge story. Eben (get it?), Duke of Allryd, is all work and no play. On Christmas Eve, having sent the servants away, he engages in his ritual of getting drunk and trying to forget the night 12 years ago when the love of his life, Lady Jaqueline “Jack” Mosby, left him. Having inherited a nearly bankrupt ducal estate, Eben kept Jack waiting too long for marriage while he rebuilt the family’s wealth. When Jack returns from a decade of world traveling, their intense longing draws them together while past hurts linger. An angst-y winner. In Jordan’s (The Duke’s Stolen Bride, 2019, etc.) Heiress Alone, Annis Ballister is stranded in the Scottish Highlands when her big, boisterous family returns to London without her. The surly, hermitlike Duke of Calder shelters Annis in his castle against brigands during a snowstorm. Soon, the duke is reconsidering his confirmed bachelorhood while Annis’ ambition to become a nun melts in the heat of Calder’s rough embrace. Sexy, with a classic gruff Scottish hero who is a bit too pushy. Shupe’s (The Rogue of Fifth Avenue, 2019, etc.) Christmas in Central Park finds popular columnist Rose Walker in a bind when her newspaper’s owner, Duke Havermeyer III, asks her to prepare a holiday dinner for the board of directors. Although she poses in print as a Gilded Age Martha Stewart, Rose is single, of modest means, and domestically uninclined. The romance is rushed, but the story is amusing and sweet. The first two novellas, brimming with the magic of holiday romance, are worth the price of the book.
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nonfiction NOBODY DOES IT BETTER The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond
These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE LONGING FOR LESS by Kyle Chayka......................................126
Altman, Mark A. & Gross, Edward Forge (720 pp.) $29.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-250-30095-9
WOMEN’S WORK by Chris Crisman; photos by Chris Crisman..... 127 INTO THE ABYSS by Anthony David............................................... 127 AMERICAN QUEENMAKER by Julie Des Jardins............................129 BLACK WAVE by Kim Ghattas......................................................... 131 THE FALCON THIEF by Joshua Hammer.......................................... 132 ABANDONED by Anne Kim.............................................................. 138 THIS IS CHANCE! by Jon Mooallem.................................................143 OUR REVOLUTION by Honor Moore............................................... 144 THE MAKING OF POETRY by Adam Nicolson; illus. by Tom Hammick...................................................................... 144 THE HUNT FOR HISTORY by Nathan Raab.................................... 146 SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED by Neil Shubin................................ 149 RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE by Rebecca Solnit...... 151 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS ILLUSTRATED by Gertrude Stein; illus. by Maira Kalman....................................... 151 RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE A MEMOIR
Solnit, Rebecca Viking (256 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-593-08333-8
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THE BOMB by Fred Kaplan............................................................... 137
An oral history of six decades’ worth of entries in the James Bond film franchise. For some fans, James Bond is Sean Connery, who turns up here at the last moment to mutter, “Of course the films will go on, but who’ll play me, I just don’t know and can’t guess.” Others are perfectly happy with the work of Daniel Craig, who lacks Connery’s twinkle but has nicely captured the character’s essential amorality: He’s perfectly capable of mayhem and extreme violence without pausing for a breath (and doesn’t really need to, the Bond of today having lightened up on the cigarettes and booze of his 1960s iteration). Besides, he looks good in a tux. Altman, the co-author, with Gross, of like-minded oral histories of Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Battlestar Galactica, talks to figures before and behind the camera to chronicle the changing face of Bond and the Bond films—including the “Bond girls,” some lethal and some merely eye candy. The compilers don’t always hit the mark: It does little perceptible good to know that Robert Rodriguez was introduced to Bond through The Spy Who Loved Me or to repeat the well-worn truism that Ian Fleming named his spy after the author of a book about Caribbean birds. But there’s plenty of meat on the bones, too, such as the authors’ exploration of the pioneering work of Bond’s early producers in product placements, with Dr. No sporting more than 20 of them as “a result of James Bond and Sean Connery being fairly unknown entities” at the time. Pierce Brosnan, George Lazenby, and Timothy Dalton weren’t much better known. However, along with Roger Moore and Craig, all, note the authors in a rare criticism, have done their part to play Bond as Fleming wrote him, “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur who is always ready to do what’s right for England and the world.” Die-hard Bond fans will delight in this compendium.
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A superb outing from a gifted young critic that will spark joy for many readers. the longing for less
A SCHEME OF HEAVEN The History of Astrology and the Search for Our Destiny in Data Boxer, Alexander Norton (320 pp.) $28.95 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-393-63484-6
A data scientist takes a deep dive into astrology. Interest in astrology has been escalating in recent years, gaining wider cultural acceptance in relation to forecasting pursuits that range from politics to finance while continuing as an enduring preoccupation involving love and romance. Boxer argues that while it may still be frowned upon in most scientific circles, as a forecasting indicator, it’s perhaps no less reliable than more traditional mathematical formulas relating to fields such as economics. Throughout the book, the author brings an open-minded perspective, balancing his genuine interest and curiosity with rigorous analysis of historical and scientific data. “I want to give astrology a treatment that’s open and fair,” he writes. “Unlike many others who have a scientific background, I’ve never felt a particular animus toward astrology. On the contrary, its taboo status as the arch-pseudoscience makes it all the more delicious to think about.” Boxer investigates how astrology has evolved through the ages and focuses extensively on the algorithmic formulas intrinsic to numerical charts and diagrams from the ancient world. He reviews the work of scientific minds such as Ptolemy and Copernicus and considers how the subject has been applied to literary works by Dante, Shakespeare, and others. He also reviews key moments in history when astrological forecasting was useful, including the assassination of Julius Caesar and the Apollo 11 lunar landing. Ultimately, the author’s far-reaching exploration of the subject lands him at an enlightened conclusion. “It may not be ‘cosmic sympathy,’ but there is an undeniable power in astrology to reveal the surprising ways in which everything, and all of us, are connected to each other across time and space,” he writes. While Boxer’s diligent research may serve to advance the subject’s relevancy, his expansive data analysis makes for fairly arduous reading, and the data-averse will find it somewhat grueling. A solid book on the history and science of astrology that will appeal more to academics in the field than general readers.
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THE LONGING FOR LESS Living With Minimalism
Chayka, Kyle Bloomsbury (272 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-63557-210-0
From the delights of decluttering to the stillness of Kyoto’s rock gardens—an intriguing deep dive into the many manifestations of minimalism. In this lively debut, freelance writer Chayka (New York Times Magazine, n+1, Paris Review, etc.) explores the universal desire for a “different, simpler…more authentic world” as evinced in the austerity of minimalism. Feeling overwhelmed by materialism, many of us believe “less could be better than more—in possessions, in aesthetics, in sensory perception, and in the philosophy with which we approach our lives.” The author’s book draws on examples from throughout history, as seen through the lens of four common qualities: reduction (seeking simplicity through getting rid of things), emptiness (including the minimalism of architect Philip Johnson), silence (exemplified by composer John Cage’s 4’33”), and shadow (reflecting the ambiguity of Japanese Buddhism). In Chayka’s view, the trendy lifestyle minimalism made popular by Marie Kondo and celebrated on Soho storefronts (“Fewer, better”) is the least of it. Sorting through your house will not bring “happiness, satisfaction, and peace of mind.” The author’s main interest is in the deeper minimalism of visual art, music, and philosophy that works “against” strict rules, offering no advice or solutions but confronting “existential questions on how to live in the modern world.” The best of minimalism, argues Chayka, is found in “the fundamental miracle of our moment-to-moment encounter with reality” in the “quietly meditative” paintings of Agnes Martin, the metal boxes (“just there, without content”) of artist Donald Judd, and Japanese philosopher Shuzo Kuki’s (1888-1941) writing on “iki,” the acceptance of uncertainty. Chayka discusses the lives and works of these and other minimalists, and he chronicles his visits to museums, Zen gardens, art installations, and a sensory deprivation spa, where he discovered the pleasantness of nothingness. The book is so thoughtful and absorbing it is quibbling to wish there were more photos and some consideration of literary minimalism. A superb outing from a gifted young critic that will spark joy for many readers.
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ILLEGAL How America’s Lawless Immigration Regime Threatens Us All Cohen, Elizabeth F. Basic (272 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-5416-9984-7
WOMEN’S WORK Stories From Pioneering Women Shaping Our Workforce
Crisman, Chris Photos by the author Simon & Schuster (192 pp.) $35.00 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-98-211037-6
Vivid portrait photography and accompanying essays declare that all work is women’s work. Every picture tells a story, and these photos alone, many of them full page or two-page spreads, show women fighting fires, |
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A political scientist offers a concise but unflinching look at the barbaric state of immigration in America and a few ideas, possibly viable under the right conditions, to make things decent again. Most readers understand that the immigration system in the United States is deeply flawed, a state exemplified most vividly by news reports of children in cages at the southern border. Cohen (Political Science/Syracuse Univ.; The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice, 2018, etc.) takes a close look at the players: Customs and Border Patrol, the relatively new Department of Homeland Security, and, most importantly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was founded in 2003 and functions with near impunity when it comes to immigration issues. This is a nicely succinct portrait of one of the most pressing issues of the day, and Cohen is openly cautionary in her approach. “If ICE and CBP are allowed to continue on their current path,” she writes, “we are only a short leap to a time when any citizen could hear a knock on their door and encounter uniformed officers on the other side who are ready to take their property and possibly their family into the custody of the US government. Or perhaps the government will look the other way as a private militia group targets us.” The author is a sharp examiner of the relevant data and research, and she is shrewd enough not to drown in the political quicksand surrounding immigration. However, she doesn’t shy away from controversy, exploring the dangers of white nationalism and taking into account the pragmatic reasons to formulate a fair immigration policy that doesn’t prostrate itself before communal fear. Cohen never ignores the fact that cruelty is often the point of many of the country’s current immigration policies, and she shows how it’s an issue “that affects not just immigrants but anyone in this country.” An even-keeled examination.
dealing with prisoners, flying planes, taming horses, mining gold, farming oysters, writing, teaching, coaching basketball, and baking—among dozens of other professions. Take the two sisters responsible for Georgetown Cupcake in Washington, D.C., who “had dreamed about opening a bakery since we were young girls,” before getting sidetracked into “careers in fashion and venture capital.” And now? They “bake over twenty-five thousand cupcakes a day and have over three hundred employees across the country.” In addition to bakers, the book includes a butcher, a blacksmith, a firearms and archery instructor, a beekeeper and urban gardener, and a vice president of Google. Many of them are immigrants or minorities; some of them find themselves in fields where there is no family background or female mentorship. They have taken as many different career paths as there are careers, yet much of the advice they offer is straightforward and consistent: Do what you love. Be persistent. Don’t worry about what others think or say. The younger women often recognize that earlier generations of women had it tougher, and they are determined to level the playing field even more for generations to come. The personal testimonies are inspirational throughout, and the photos embody the same spirit. Some are stunning in their composition and color contrast, from the many that are shot in the natural world—the author/photographer biography notes that in addition to his prizewinning commercial work, he is “a photographer specializing in environmental portraiture”—to the ones at the slaughterhouse, the funeral home, and the prison. Says a prison guard, “I will always be an advocate for women pursuing any career interest they have. You’ve got to remember that there are others, somewhere, doing what you want to do.” A beautiful book that provides genuine encouragement and inspiration.
INTO THE ABYSS A Neuropsychiatrist’s Notes on Madness
David, Anthony Oneworld Publications (256 pp.) $24.95 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-1-78607-705-9 That psychiatric illness is at least partly brain disease still provokes skepticism in some circles, but these compelling case reports make a convincing
argument. In his first book, psychiatrist David (co-author: Lishman’s Organic Psychiatry, 2009), director of the University College London Institute of Mental Health, writes that journalistic accounts of mental health “either lament the overdiagnosis and the medicalization of life or blame it all on modern society. The real problem, they say, is social media, sexual abuse, drugs, poverty, wealth, patriarchy, feminism, religion, lack of religion…the list goes on.” After agreeing that social and personal stresses play a role—as they do in obesity, heart disease, allergies, and numerous other conditions— the author proceeds to discuss a dozen patients whose illnesses can only be explained by a combination of biology, psychology, and
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sociology: the “biopsychosocial model of mental disorder.” Among David’s case studies are a man who suffered a catastrophic accident that left him with severe brain damage, from which his body recovered but not his personality; two different patients who were completely paralyzed despite tests that showed their brains were awake and functioning; and a schizophrenic woman who developed Parkinson’s disease, which doesn’t make sense because Parkinson’s, a neurological disorder, results from a deficiency of dopamine, a chemical that transmits nerve signals in the brain; schizophrenia is thought to involve a dopamine excess. David comes across as a compassionate physician and talented writer who works hard to demonstrate the biopsychosocial model and usually succeeds. Americans will note that a major social source of treatment failure—inability to afford it—doesn’t apply in Britain’s National Health Service, and several of his long-term triumphs could not have been repeated in the U.S. The cases are complex and sometimes so bizarre that it’s often difficult to apply their lessons to familiar disorders, but readers will be captivated. Fascinating stories from the practice of a skilled neuropsychiatrist.
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ELENA FERRANTE’S KEY WORDS
de Rogatis, Tiziana Trans. by Schutt, Will Europa Editions (288 pp.) $18.00 paper | Dec. 3, 2019 978-1-60945-563-7 An Italian scholar tackles novelist Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet in terms of their “creative forms of [female] resistance.” Ferrante has managed to keep her true identity secret since she published her first novel in 1992; she has consistently refused to be defined by the patriarchy in Italy, “where male journalists, publishers, and professors consistently undermine women writers and their visibility.” De Rogatis (Comparative Literature/Univ. for Foreigners of Siena) offers a close reading of the themes, style, and language of the quartet of novels about the dovetailing lives of two girls coming-of-age in 1950s-through1970s Naples, Elena and Lila: My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015). De Rogatis meticulously explores the arc of the narrative as the two poor friends struggle to go to school despite the narrowed expectations of female lives at the time, and certainly within the neighborhood in Naples where they live, and both have to navigate overweening male relationships, marriage, children, and the struggle for self-emancipation. Ferrante, argues de Rogatis, writes with an eye to the “high and low,” with enough twists in plot and engaging characters to keep readers hooked, “drawing on subgenres, like thrillers, serial novels…even photo romances— that is to say, marginalized genres.” Among the “key words” de Rogatis explores are the complicated “friendship” between the girls, entailing both projection and envy; “smarginatura,” a term Ferrante uses to mean “spilling through the established boundaries of conventional reality”; and frantumaglia, a word Ferrante’s mother invented (according to de Rogatis) meaning “how she felt when she was racked by contradictory sensations.” Throughout, the author emphasizes the global relevance of Ferrante’s feminist work in light of #MeToo narratives of “erasure and survival.” A richly layered study that will appeal to the wellversed fan.
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The author opens our eyes to a woman who should be a household name. american queenmaker
AMERICAN QUEENMAKER How Missy Meloney Brought Women Into Politics
IN OUR PRIME How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead
Douglas, Susan J. Norton (320 pp.) $25.95 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-0-393-65255-0
Des Jardins, Julie Basic (384 pp.) $32.00 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-5416-4549-3
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A feminist scholar rallies the troops in the battle against injustices to older women. Douglas (Communication Studies/ Univ. of Michigan; Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done, 2010, etc.) melds history, advocacy, and media criticism as she calls for a counteroffensive against America’s “war on older women.” With alternately insightful and overfamiliar arguments, the author makes the case for a new wave of feminist activism to challenge the “gendered ageism” that sidelines women of her boomer cohort or implies that they’re all “supposed to go plant peonies and play peekaboo” with grandchildren. In the book’s best sections, Douglas smartly analyzes
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The first biography of Marie Mattingly Meloney (1878-1943), “a journalist, publicist, social reformer, mother, rainmaker, diplomat, political operative, and patron of women, the arts and sciences.” After her father’s death, Missy (as the author refers to her throughout) used her literary and social knowledge to introduce herself into Washington, D.C., society and the sophisticated world of statesmen and men of letters. She began a lifetime of making contacts and went on to have a “public impact [that] reverberated broadly,” writes former history professor Des Jardins (Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Era, 2015, etc.), a board member of the National Women’s History Project. A fall from a horse left Missy with a permanent limp, and her recurring battles with a tubercular lung could have condemned her to a restricted life. However, “she vowed never to be the unavailable convalescent her mother had been.” When the Washington Post published her letter promoting a church, a journalist was born. Not long after, she captured a scoop on Spanish-American War hero George Dewey. Missy delivered not only a story, but also photos and connections to famous neighbors, whom she knew personally. As Des Jardins clearly demonstrates, she never stopped looking beyond the story. In 1900, she went to Colorado to recuperate from a TB attack and returned home as the Denver Post’s Washington correspondent—at age 18. One of Missy’s strengths was her patience. Whether seeking a story, convincing someone to write for her national publication, This Week, or gaining access to the Senate press gallery, she waited, worked, and always succeeded. What she discovered along the way was the strength of women’s ability to accomplish things through contacts and friendships. Without the vote, titles, or positions, one could still master the art of influence. Missy’s network extended across Europe and America and the political and intellectual spectrums. Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Lou and Herbert Hoover are only some of the people whose lives she affected. Her accomplishments were vast, and Des Jardins capably brings them to light. The author opens our eyes to a woman who should be a household name.
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portrayals of older women in popular culture, including movies and TV shows like Book Club and The Golden Girls. While images have diversified, the media often depict older women only to exploit them as sales targets or foster what marketers call “aspirational aging.” Even AARP magazine has been “moving down the age chain” and once featured then-49-year-old Brad Pitt saying, “Personally, I like aging.” As the author notes, “come back to me in thirty years, buster. And as a woman, with no health insurance.” Douglas also lands well-placed jabs at “anti-aging” cosmetics and diseasemongering pharmaceutical ads built on the “infantilizing strategy of using cartoons.” Unfortunately, the author gives too little attention, too late in the book, to the issue that polls repeatedly have identified as the No. 1 concern of older women— health care—and claims as feminist issues some concerns that don’t affect women exclusively, such as Medicare. Elsewhere, she offers a to-do list with timeworn tasks such as forming discussion groups, “kind of an update on [1970s] consciousness-raising,” and holds up, as a model of engagement, the late Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn, who in her 70s successfully lobbied Congress against the mandatory retirement age of 65. Women of any age can learn from trailblazers like Kuhn, but those seeking a fresher and more urgent battle cry will find it in books like Jennifer Block’s recent Everything Below the Waist (2019). Your mother’s feminism, sent back to the front lines with refurbished weapons.
FIRST, CATCH Study of a Spring Meal
Eagle, Thom Grove (240 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-8021-4822-3
London-based chef Eagle, a contributor to various culinary journals, makes his book debut with a thoughtful meditation on the craft, chemistry, and cultural history of cooking and the “inexorable currents of history and economics” that influence taste. Winner of the Debut Food Book at the Fortnum & Mason’s Awards, the author’s unusual cooking manual lacks specific recipes, although he does devote several chapters to the process of making a rabbit stew. He dismisses the idea that recipes are “more-orless scientific sets of instructions,” seeing them “more like short stories—about history, about politics, and about love.” Instead of emulating other cookbooks by presenting an “inaccurate account of the various things that have been done before,” Eagle offers reflections on techniques—such as curing, boiling, pickling, slicing and dicing (including specific directions for onions)—that can be applied to a variety of cooking situations. “A recipe,” he maintains, “is a work in progress, one outcome of a long, silent conversation between cook and cooked, which started before anyone alive today thought to pick up a knife.” Once a cook knows how to make a stew, for example, complex recipes “from across the globe and the ages” are not necessary; instead, the cook would benefit more from “terse suggestions” that can be adapted to ingredients at hand. 130
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Eagle emphasizes the importance of salt, which should be added “sometimes with abandon, sometimes judiciously” at the beginning, middle, and end of cooking. Besides bringing out flavors, salt is integral to the movement of water. “The elemental act of cooking,” he writes, “is chiefly the act of moving water from one place to another.” In curing meat or fish, we draw water out; in boiling pasta, rice, polenta, gruel, or grain, we rehydrate. Although Eagle does not extol cooking as an art but rather a craft, he celebrates the ephemeral pleasure of eating, “where a forkful comes together with a sip and a word to produce something beautiful.” A graceful, enlightening contribution to food writing.
THE NATION CITY Why Mayors Are Now Running the World
Emanuel, Rahm Knopf (240 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-0-525-65638-8
The former two-term mayor of Chicago (2011-2019) and chief of staff for Barack Obama pens an eloquent tribute to the potential benefits of mayoral influence. Given his long history of public service, Emanuel (co-author: The Plan: Big Ideas for America, 2006), now a contributor to the Atlantic, could have penned a traditional memoir; instead, he focuses on duty and service rather than his own track record. The book is part memoir, part sociological study, and part road map to readers who may aspire to political office in the future. In these deeply partisan times characterized by widespread gridlock at the federal level, Emanuel argues that mayoral power, even if used via the “bully pulpit,” can be more effective than the federal institutions that have failed in even their most basic responsibilities to their constituents. Sure, the author takes a few swipes at Donald Trump, noting that he dislikes cities because they represent qualities that he lacks: “They are progressive, smart, dynamic, inclusive, climate-aware, healthy, innovative and diverse, among other things.” However, the narrative is far from a political screed and more of a manifesto about how communities can take care of themselves by concentrating efforts on the local level. After a brief history of mayoral influence in the United States, Emanuel offers microportraits of mayors who are changing their communities for the good worldwide, including Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Indiana), Mick Cornett (Oklahoma City), and Sadiq Khan (London), as well as leaders in New Orleans, Houston, and Milwaukee. These men and women continue to meet their challenges head-on and seek solutions through innovation, partnerships, and civic cooperation. While it’s true that most of the featured leaders are left-leaning progressives, the author also dedicates a chapter to fiscally and socially conservative mayors who are doing their jobs well. Emanuel has his detractors—who doesn’t?—but he shines a compelling spotlight on that most elusive of ideals: hope. (first printing of 75,000)
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The headlines from the Middle East make a little more sense through the lens Ghattas provides. Essential for all who follow world events. black wave
BLACK WAVE Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East
Ghattas, Kim Henry Holt (400 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-250-13120-1
Illuminating account of the origins of sectarian violence and the current political shape of the Muslim world. “What happened to us?” So runs a common refrain in households from Pakistan to Libya. Beirut-born journalist Ghattas (The Secretary: A Journey With Hillary Clinton From Beirut to the Heart of American Power, 2013), now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, locates an answer in three events of the same year, all tightly linked: the overthrow of the shah and the revolution
in Iran, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the attack on the Grand Mosque of Mecca by Saudi militants. “Nothing has changed the Arab and Muslim world as deeply and fundamentally as the events of 1979,” she writes. Her fluid, fast-moving narrative ably proves the thesis. The Iranian Revolution put into sharp relief the ancient division between Shia and Sunni Islam, an argument at once religious and political, with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors vying for power with an implacably opposed—though just as conservative—form of Islam. The struggle has played out in many times and places over centuries, but since 1979, it has taken a form more familiar to Westerners. While occasionally Shia and Sunni clerics allied to battle a common enemy, such as the secularist Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the two powers of Iran and Saudi Arabia have more often squared off through proxies in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and particularly Pakistan after the withdrawal of the Soviets from neighboring Afghanistan—a defeat paid for by Saudi money but whose aftermath was swayed by Iran. One constant in the narrative: Wherever Americans have been involved, the aftereffects have been worse, whether attacking Iraq in 1991 and 2003 or attempting to shift the balance of power in the Middle
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THE FATHER OF AMERICAN CONSERVATION George Bird Grinnell Adventurer, Activist, and Author
East, with the bumbling of the current administration enabling such things as the savage murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The headlines from the Middle East make a little more sense through the lens Ghattas provides. Essential for all who follow world events.
THE FALCON THIEF A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird Hammer, Joshua Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-5011-9188-6
The story of an unrepentant birds’egg thief who found a lucrative market for rare wild falcons on the Arabian Peninsula. In his latest page-turner, Hammer (The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race To Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts, 2016, etc.) explores two reckless and ultimately disastrous obsessions of people of a certain class and sense of entitlement: egg collecting, which gained currency during the Victorian era, and falconry, pushed to new competitive heights by Arabian princes. The author compellingly chronicles the exploits of Jeffrey Lendrum—who was arrested several times during the last two decades attempting to transport rare, endangered peregrine falcon eggs and others with intent to sell to rich Arabian clients—whom he portrays as a destructive combination of knowledgeable bird-watcher and destroyer of “the fragile, symbiotic relationship between man and the wild.” Early on during his youth in Rhodesia, Lendrum’s father passed along his passion of observing wildlife. As a young boy, he was enlisted to raid the nests of wild birds so that the eggshells, emptied of their yokes and dried, could be added to his father’s collection. Despite the risk and illegality of the enterprise, Lendrum learned to hike and scale great heights—in Wales, Canada, and even Patagonia—to attain peregrine eggs, which many members of the royalty in Dubai covet for their lucrative racing games. In this well-written, engaging detective story that underscores the continuing need for conservation of rare bird species, Hammer delineates the trials of Andy McWilliam, the retired policeman who grew admirably to serve in his capacity as officer for the National Wildlife Crime Unit, which helped prosecute Lendrum and others. Throughout, the author beautifully renders this tale “of human obsession and nature’s fragility, of man’s perpetual insistence on imposing his will upon the wildness of our world, and of the tiny handful of investigators, most unrecognized, working to safeguard the environment’s bounty and wonder.” A sleek, winning nonfiction thriller.
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Hatch, Thom Turner (400 pp.) $21.99 paper | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-68442-333-0
A celebration of a significant 19thcentury environmental activist. Hatch (The Last Days of George Armstrong Custer: The True Story of the Battle of Little Bighorn, 2015, etc.) offers a thorough, but undistinguished, biography of George Bird Grinnell (18491938), known by his contemporaries as “The Father of American Conservation.” The author asserts that Grinnell “has not enjoyed the acclaim of other early conservationists,” but he was the subject of a fine, recently published biography, John Taliaferro’s Grinnell: America’s Environmental Pioneer and His Drive To Save the West, (2019) which covers essentially the same ground as Hatch’s more concise book. Both authors chronicle Grinnell’s evolution from Wall Street financier to eminent naturalist, his advocacy for Native Americans, his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt and others concerned about the environment, his editorship of Field and Stream, his founding of the Audubon Society, his prolific publications, and his many expeditions into “the untamed wilderness.” Neither author is able to offer intimate details about Grinnell’s personal life: for example, his sudden decision, at the age of 53, to marry a “young Boston widow,” 24-year-old Elizabeth Curtis Williams. Hatch emphasizes Grinnell’s “continuing growth as an advocate” for Native Americans, whom he considered “downtrodden” victims of governmental fraud. In Grinnell, writes the author, Native Americans “encountered not merely a sympathetic ear but a man who truly desired to tell an accurate story and offer a vivid yet unembellished portrayal” of tribal culture. Hatch boasts that his biography is “not only timely but has a chance to make a substantial difference” by alerting readers that natural resources “are under siege.” In the final chapter, he exhorts readers to preserve Grinnell’s legacy, to trust in the “wonders of science to develop a solution to climate change,” and to ensure that “civilization, commercialization, and conservation” can flourish together. The concerned public may “have more influence than we may think,” Hatch writes, “but it must be used wisely and properly.” A middling biography that serves as a useful reminder of an exemplary champion for the Earth.
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An essential report on the state of the art of American letters. pushcart prize xliv
PUSHCART PRIZE XLIV Best of the Small Presses 2020 Edition
Ed. by Henderson, Bill Pushcart (600 pp.) $35.00 | Dec. 10, 2019 978-1-888889-95-6
The venerable literary anthology turns 44, celebrated with the trademark mix of top-shelf poetry, fiction, and essays. Not everyone who began the journey with Henderson in the mid-1970s is around today: The editor names Tony Hoagland, W.S. Merwin, and Mary Oliver among the recently fallen, and a poem by Tom Sleigh, among other commemorations, honors Denis Johnson, who died in 2017. The contribution by Hoagland, an essay called “The Cure for Racism Is Cancer,” explores the disease that felled him. “From this rocky promontory,” he writes, “you can contemplate the long history of your choices, your mistakes, your
good luck. You can think about race, too, because most of the people who care for you will be nonwhite, often from other countries….Your attention is made keen by need and by your intimate dependence upon these inexhaustibly kind strangers.” Hal Crowther contemplates another kind of death in his essay “Dante on Broadway,” in which he notes that the Florence of Dante’s time supported public schools with more than 10,000 students, whereas “seven centuries later in America, a republic with infinitely more wealth and a much higher technical rate of literacy, only the most stubborn optimist could overlook the intellectual stagnation and cultural dry rot that make another Dark Age seem possible, if not imminent.” The point is well taken. In a collection full of standouts and only the occasional clunker, there are many excellent contributions, including a poem by Juan Felipe Herrera remarking on the things border crossers leave behind in the desert, with “children still running with / torn faces all the way to Tucson”; a slightly sardonic story by the always readable Joy Williams; and an entertaining tale by Jason Brown that recounts the odd interaction of an unnamed writer with an eccentric couple: “The quality of Grandma’s crab
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cakes suffered after five hours of drinking, but semi-inebriation was the only state in which she would agree to feed people outside the family.” An essential report on the state of the art of American letters.
#METOO IN THE CORPORATE WORLD Power, Privilege, and the Path Forward
Hewlett, Sylvia Ann Harper Business (256 pp.) $29.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-0-06-289919-4
A veteran economist and corporate leader makes a significant contribution to the continuing shameful story of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Hewlett (The Sponsor Effect: How To Be a Better Leader by Investing in Others, 2019, etc.), CEO of an eponymous consulting firm, knows her subject well. In her early 20s, she was hounded out of a job with a “blue-chip” London consulting firm by a lascivious boss who had enormous power and would not take no for an answer. After discussing how the long-overdue pushback against sexual harassment gained steam with the revelations about Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and others—including Donald Trump, who assumed the presidency “even after the media had revealed a long-running pattern of sexual harassment, including a recording in which he boasted of groping unwilling women”—Hewlett delivers a powerful assessment of “what the numbers tell us.” The facts and numbers are staggering: More than one-third of women report having been harassed in the workplace at some point in their careers; Latina women and black women are the most frequently targeted groups; most predators are top-level executives; and the two industries in which harassment is most prevalent are media and technology. The author then takes on a relatively little discussed pool of data around the harassment of men, especially gay men, and executive women who have been guilty of sexual predation. Finally, Hewlett notes, the bonds of “stigma and silence” are being broken—e.g., in the military and on Wall Street. The author emphasizes that sexual harassment is all about power, and when it occurs at work, the entire workforce can suffer demoralization. Moreover, the legal expenses and enormous corporate settlements—for example, at Fox News, Google, and Goldman Sachs—along with the loss of key leaders and even bankruptcy are slamming the corporate world’s bottom line, forcing a change in culture. Hewlett is hard-hitting and concise, concluding with practical steps to shut down sexual misconduct in the workforce.
MINOR FEELINGS An Asian American Reckoning
Hong, Cathy Park One World/Random House (224 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-984820-36-5
The poetry editor of the New Repub lic discusses her experiences living and working in a culture hostile to expressions of Asian individuality and identity. In this memoir in essays, Hong (Engine Empire, 2012, etc.) offers a fierce and timely meditation on race and gender issues from her perspective as a Korean American woman. She begins by reflecting on her struggles with depression, which she traces to being forced into the role of model minority. Working harder than everyone else for recognition as an artist, she describes how she watched herself disappear into the “vague purgatorial” no-man’s land inhabited by other Asian Americans. The author details how her experiences developing bonds with other talented Asian American women in college taught her to take 134
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a Fire). The title aside, Jackson demonstrates a determination to be musically inclusive. “Fifteen of the year’s nineteen No. 1 albums were rock albums,” writes the author. “In 2018, only eight out of the forty-one No. 1 albums were rock.” Though Jackson dives deep into AOR radio, he makes it clear that 1973 was also about outlaws Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings upending the country music scene; superstars Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye revolutionizing the Motown sound; Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell defying genre norms; and much more. As the year turned over, the top song in the country was Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.” A month-by-month selected timeline helps readers situate the events discussed in the book. Consistently surprising and richly entertaining. (8-page b/w photo insert)
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herself seriously in a world that stereotyped Asians as “mathcrunching middle managers.” She began developing a greater sense of race consciousness when watching comedian Richard Pryor, which she explores in the essay “Stand Up.” His no-holdsbarred comedic monologues embodied racialized “negative [and] dysphoric” emotions with which she immediately identified. In turn, Hong attempted to access those “minor feelings” through her own brief foray into stand-up comedy. Like the experiments with language she discusses in “Bad English,” the author was seeking a way to speak honestly about her own experiences with racism in an effort to end “white innocence,” a concept she addresses sharply in a separate essay. As she sees it, the United States has achieved dominance through “the capitalist accumulation of white supremacy.” In “Portrait of an Artist,” Hong discusses Asian female invisibility by delving into the groundbreaking work of artist and novelist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Seeking to force confrontation with Cha’s largely undiscussed murder, Hong examines how Cha died while suggesting that Cha’s preoccupation with discursive erasure was a manifestation of revolutionary—rather than “feminine” self-silencing—impulses. Candid and unapologetically political, Hong’s text deftly explores the explosive emotions surrounding race in ways sure to impact the discourse surrounding Asian identity as well as race and belonging in America. A provocatively incisive debut nonfiction book.
1973 Rock at the Crossroads
Jackson, Andrew Grant Dunne/St. Martin’s (448 pp.) $29.99 | Dec. 3, 2019 978-1-250-29998-7
An astute observer of popular culture takes a granular look at 12 months of music that reflected “the aftermath” of the preceding cultural revolution. In a natural follow-up to 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music (2015), Los Angeles–based music writer Jackson examines another pivotal year in popular music, when radio programmers figured out how to commodify ‘album-oriented rock’…[which] soon segregated rock from other genres that once spurred its evolution.” There’s all sorts of intriguing cross-pollination going on in the author’s rollicking retrospective of 1973, a year that some may consider unexceptional. However, Jackson’s expansive exploration obliterates such notions. On one hand, 1973 was a remarkable year for celebrated acts to produce some of their most seminal works, including Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, The Who’s Quadrophenia, and Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies. On the other hand, 1973 was also an exceedingly fertile time for exciting new artists to burst on to the scene—Bruce Springsteen with Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.—and for others to break away from the confines of their home countries and garner a more global audience (Bob Marley’s Catch |
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An inspiring, captivating story of resilience. wine girl
WINE GIRL The Obstacles, Humiliations, and Triumphs of America’s Youngest Sommelier James, Victoria Ecco/HarperCollins (336 pp.) $26.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-0-06-296167-9
A memoir from the youngest certified sommelier in the male-dominated wine industry. After her passionate response to the final question of the competition, James (Drink Pink: A Celebration of Rosé, 2017) won the Sud de France Sommelier Challenge in 2013, becoming the first American female sommelier to take home the title. Soon after, at the age of 21, she became the youngest certified sommelier. Getting to that point was not an easy task. Along the way, she endured a tumultuous upbringing due to an absent mother and an alcoholic father as well as verbal and sexual abuse from
customers. Growing up, James felt “that one’s social class did not define one’s character” and had the notion that she could “bring people together through wine” as a sommelier. Becoming a certified sommelier should have been a life-changing event, but she soon discovered it was not. Despite her successes, she was continually belittled for her age and faced sexism and abuse of power from employers and clients. After years of humiliation in the high-end restaurant world, where men hold the majority of the power, James became disillusioned and escaped to the vineyards of France, seeking authenticity. There, she also discovered a true sense of purpose. On her return to the States, with the support of her family, she felt “empowered to make a change.” She established a zero-tolerance policy at the restaurant she now co-owns, and, with a vision for “diversifying the wine world,” she created Wine Empowered, a nonprofit organization that offers tuition-free education for minorities and women in the hospitality industry. She also finished her book, which shares this journey and dispels many of the myths associated with the wine industry. Many of the details James shares about her experiences are disturbing and graphic in nature; however, her story also exudes warmth as she breezily weaves in her knowledge and passion for wine and shares the generous love she has for her siblings, friends, and husband. An inspiring, captivating story of resilience.
RUST BELT FEMME
Jolie, Raechel Anne Belt Publishing (150 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-1-948742-63-4 A queer feminist activist celebrates her roots in what she proudly calls “white trash” culture. Though Jolie left behind her native Ohio in 2003 and went on to earn her doctorate and become “firmly queer,” she insists that “home home has always been Cleveland. Even when it hasn’t been.” The blue-collar neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city provide the setting for the author’s story, which begins with a harrowing account of her father’s accident: He was hit by a drunk driver, crippling him and leaving him brain damaged and often violently enraged at his fate. After a year at home, he returned to the care of his mother, who had strained relations with Jolie’s mother, who then raised her daughter on her own. “Being poor is written in my blood and my bones as much as it is sung from my tight skirts and cheap lipstick,” writes the author. “Being poor, really, became the building blocks of my gender; this embodied expression we in the queer community call femme. It’s a type of femininity that I have come to realize is inextricable from the shape of early poverty, the shades of the rural edges of Cleveland, and for me, the sound of punk.” Many of her rites-of-passage initiations into sexuality and punk culture, the two intertwined, were heterosexual, at least as recounted in these pages, but her embrace of “femme” and her cultural analysis are particularly illuminating. 136
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In her explanation, femme “was formed by the working poor, and it wasn’t for men. Rather than appeasing the male gaze, femmes got dressed for the pleasure of their butches and for the pleasure of their own damn reflection in the mirror. And it was, or became, a little exaggerated….A femme instinct to up the sex appeal to better spite the male gaze.” It seems that well before she came to terms with her sexual identity, she knew what she liked, and she communicates her feelings effectively to readers. A sharp coming-of-age portrait.
THE BOMB Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War
Kaplan, Fred Simon & Schuster (384 pp.) $30.00 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-9821-0729-1
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Kaplan, Janice Dutton (336 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-52-474421-2
The former editor-in-chief of Parade magazine pays tribute to women who have contributed indispensable work in a variety of fields. Near the beginning, Kaplan (The Gratitude Diaries: How a Year Looking on the Bright Side Can Transform Your Life, 2015, etc.) asks a pertinent question: “In our current era of assumedly aroused consciousness to gender issues, why do both men and women still assume that men’s contributions to society are the ones that really count?” The author does readers a service by spotlighting the achievements of many remarkable women. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn had sisters with equal or
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A comprehensive review of American nuclear policy from the Truman administration to the present. Slate national-security columnist Kaplan (Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, 2016, etc.) draws on original documents, many only recently declassified, to build a detailed, incisive picture of how U.S. presidents have thought about their most troubling responsibility: pushing “the button” that could end civilization. Equally important players are the top brass in the military who desire more and bigger bombs and the vehicles to deliver them. One theme becomes clear: For the most part, presidents are uncomfortable with nuclear warfare while the military is eager to amass the weapons. Regardless, as soon as a rival power has gained access to nuclear weapons, every administration has had to consider the circumstances under which they might need to be employed. For most of the early history of the bomb, the key strategic decisions were orchestrated by Air Force Gen. Curtis Lemay, whose Strategic Air Command controlled most of the bombers and missiles. But in almost every administration, there were those who dared to oppose him, usually by pointing to the Soviet arsenal and exaggerating the threat it posed. Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense under John F. Kennedy, brought in his “Whiz Kids,” who tried—with limited success—to rein in the Pentagon budget. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, tried to bluff the North Vietnamese into making concessions on the theory that if they thought he was crazy enough to use the weapons, they might back down. Jimmy Carter, firmly convinced of the immorality of nuclear war, also tried—with even less success. Surprisingly, it was Ronald Reagan who took advantage of the Soviet Union’s internal troubles to achieve the first big cut in nuclear weapons. Further gains were made by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, although the Pentagon and congressional hawks kept both from paring back the arsenal. In the last chapter, the Pulitzer-winning journalist covers Donald Trump’s posturing about the issue. A well-written, exhaustively researched history of American leaders’ efforts to manage their nuclear arsenal. (8 pages of color photos)
THE GENIUS OF WOMEN From Overlooked to Changing the World
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An outstanding book for policymakers and people who work with adrift young people. abandoned
better talent, but while Fanny Mendelssohn was able to publish her work, Maria Anna Mozart achieved little recognition. In the sciences, the sins are more egregious. Female lab assistants have often conducted breakthrough research only to earn prizes for their professors or to discover the basis of world-changing science that enables another prizewinner. As she searches for characteristics of genius, the author lists a number of requirements. The first is to have acknowledgment, support, and encouragement from a parent or mentor. Being naturally smart (whatever that means) isn’t at the top of the list; tenacity and determination come before innate intelligence. How many women are out there who never understood their full capabilities because no one ever mentioned it? From science, technology, and math to literature, art, and psychology, Kaplan presents a diverse cast, including those geniuses still at work—e.g., Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Donna Strickland, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in physics. Who is considered a genius depends on who sets the rules; throughout history, that has been men. Refreshingly, as the author points out, there are now countless groundbreaking women paving the way for future generations, who will see power differently and demand to be taken seriously. “Once we expect to see women’s genius on display,” she writes, “the lack of it seems wrong and inexplicable.” Kaplan’s coverage of this broad-reaching topic is as deep and diverse as women’s abilities.
DEATH IS BUT A DREAM Finding Hope and Meaning at Life’s End
Kerr, Christopher with Mardorossian, Carine Avery (256 pp.) $27.00 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-525-54284-1
A hospice doctor with an “aversion to the supernatural” examines the experiences of patients’ end-of-life dreams and visions and proposes that they have profound meaning and impact. Intrigued by his patients’ nearly ubiquitous reports of healing, restorative, and closure-providing visions in the days and hours before death, Kerr, the chief medical officer for the Center for Hospice & Palliative Care in Buffalo, embarked on a long-term study of these experiences, and he recounts many of them in this sympathetic and intriguing book. Readers looking for evidence of an afterlife, an eternal soul, or insight into what happens to us after death will not find it here. Instead, as the author takes pains to illustrate, it is what transpires just before death that proves to be profound and meaningful for patients and their loved ones. “These experiences simply give each patient what they need the most,” Kerr writes about the dreams that are more vivid and real than any that have come before and usually boil down to feelings of genuine love: the love of a deceased dog acting as a guide into death for a dying child; the sight of a mother’s arms reaching out from above an elderly woman’s bed; dreams that allow a widow to relive quiet, happy moments doing crosswords with her deceased spouse. Even distressing dreams serve to work out and heal old 138
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wounds and bring peace in the final hours. While Kerr’s exclusive focus on patients’ words and experiences—rather than those of caregivers or researchers with their occasionally detached perspectives and potential agendas—is admirable, the presentation of one case study after another, with each patient’s introduction, backstory, and experiences, becomes a little tedious, and some amount of contextualizing data or further description of research findings would have been welcome. (Readers can find some of this information in the author’s TEDx talk along with video footage of selected patients; watching makes a nice companion to the book.) An uplifting and reassuring work testifying to the deep restorative and spiritual—though not necessarily religious—nature of pre-death visions.
ABANDONED America’s Lost Youth and the Crisis of Disconnection Kim, Anne The New Press (208 pp.) $25.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-62097-500-8
An urgent portrait of a neglected group of at-risk young people. Americans under the age of 25 grab headlines when they launch flashy startups or become activists for social change. However, as Washi ngton Monthly contributing editor Kim argues in her quietly powerful nonfiction debut, the success of such leaders masks an alarming reality ill-served by current public policy: “In 2017, as many as 4.5 million young people” ages 16-24 were neither in school nor working. Social scientists call them “disconnected youth” (or, in Europe, NEETs, for “not in employment, education, or training”), and many of them have aged out of foster care or spent time in prison and lack the support of trusted adults. A vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, the author shows clearly how their plight tends to result from years of systemic failures. Some disconnected youth live in rural or urban “opportunity deserts,” which decay as good jobs vanish, or “higher education deserts,” which either have no postsecondary schools or none that teach relevant skills. Others have been unprepared for the transition to economic independence by schools, foster care, the criminal justice system, or government initiatives intended to help them. A striking example of a program falling short is the federal Job Corps, which gives 16-to24-year-olds room and board in a dormlike setting along with education and training. However, according to a 2018 report by the U.S. Department of Labor, the Corps “could not demonstrate the extent to which its training programs helped participants enter meaningful jobs appropriate to their training.” Among her many and varied examples of successful programs, Kim cites the Latin American Youth Center in Washington, D.C., a drop-in center where homeless young adults can find a safe place to stay during the day—and get food, take a shower, and talk to counselors. Although rich in statistics that support its positions, the
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narrative is never wonky, and the author enlivens the text with miniprofiles of beneficiaries of high-impact programs. An outstanding book for policymakers and people who work with adrift young people.
GO TO SLEEP (I MISS YOU) Cartoons From the Fog of New Parenthood
Knisley, Lucy Illus. by the author First Second (192 pp.) $14.99 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-250-21149-1
A celebration of new motherhood, for new mothers, by a graphic artist who was then a new mother. Knisley (Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos, 2019, etc.) admits that she “spent much of my pregnancy worried that having a baby would derail my work.” Instead, it gave her
work a new focus and fresh meaning as well as some occasional respite from the overwhelming duties of motherhood. The author calls her latest a “baby book” and a “sketchbook,” and it is very much a work accommodating the pace and demands of having a baby. The sketches have an on-the-fly immediacy, and there’s little attempt to sustain a narrative beyond a onepage panel. Who has the time? Or the concentration? Whether she’s “running on (baby) fumes” or admitting that “some days it feels like there’s nothing left,” Knisley captures the exhilaration and exhaustion that a newborn brings to a household and its established routines. She explores “Some Unexpected Aspects of Mommification”—“you cannot think about anything bad happening to a kid without getting messed up for days”—demonstrating how motherhood changed her perspective and behavior in ways she hadn’t anticipated even though she had likely given the upcoming changes plenty of thought. For example, “I expected breastfeeding to be hard, but I had NO IDEA.” Throughout, the drawings and text capture the frenzied pace, the love and humor, the experience of feeling depleted and having nothing more to give—but then having to give some more.
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An engaging, perceptive companion for all writers. every day i write the book
HOLD ON, BUT DON’T HOLD STILL Hope and Humor From My Seriously Flawed Life
For all of the immediacy of the sketches, there’s also a recognition of passing through stages and enjoying what you can while you can—because “Sleeplessness, Screaming & Teething Are Fleeting!” (drawn in a manner that could serve as a tattoo). A volume that will serve as a cherished keepsake for mother and son and will resonate strongly with other mothers.
EVERY DAY I WRITE THE BOOK Notes on Style
Kumar, Amitava Duke Univ. (264 pp.) $24.95 paper | Mar. 27, 2020 978-1-4780-0627-5
A guide for academic writers that is also relevant to anyone who cares about fine prose. Novelist, essayist, and literary scholar Kumar (English/Vassar Univ.; Immigrant, Montana, 2018, etc.) offers a handbook on style and form that is simultaneously elegant and practical. Admiring “fresh, provocative, unpredictable texts,” the author is dismayed by what Toni Morrison called “the proud but calcified language of the academy.” As fiction writer David Means observed, “so much academic writing seems sealed up and hermetic and uninspired, shorn away from a love of subject.” Academic writers, Kumar asserts, work in a “culture of oppression,” in which they strive to fit into “the existing codes”—scholarly jargon—of their field in order to publish the articles and books that will earn them tenure. As a graduate student, he admits that he, too, tried mightily to emulate his teachers “and wrote sentences whose texture was inevitably thicker than cement.” Dissatisfied with the quality of his work, he despaired of ever attracting readers: “Couldn’t our analyses become more exuberant, imaginative, and even playful?” Kumar agrees with other writing guides—Strunk and White’s for one—that advocate clarity and conciseness, but he knows that the admonition to “find your voice” can be confusing. “Perhaps specificity is what brings us closer to the idea of voice, which I think is another word for distinctiveness.” Voice, in any case, “depends on the question you are asking” and the “zones of experience” from which a writer is drawing. Kumar appends his slim manual with 10 habits he recommends to his students, including setting a daily goal of at least 150 words, turning off the internet, making sure to exercise, keeping a bookshelf of several volumes to turn to as guides in “the critical matter of method or style,” and finishing one project before taking up another. He shares advice about craft from many writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, all of whom strive to “bring delight.” In that aim, Kumar amply succeeds. An engaging, perceptive companion for all writers.
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Kuzmić, Kristina Viking Life (272 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-525-56184-2
An exhausted, stressed, loving mother shares her experiences. Making her book debut, vlogger Kuzmić, known by her viewers as “the mom who finds humor in every nook and cranny of motherhood while shoving brownies in her mouth and drinking coffee straight out of a coffeepot,” offers hope and support to parents like herself: “wounded by our failures, hobbled by our insecurities.” A decade ago, divorced with two young children, the author was struggling financially, working weekends as a waitress, when she decided to launch a cooking blog, Sticky Cook. Nine days after launch, she was invited to submit a video pitching her own TV show as part of a competition run by the Oprah Winfrey Network. To her amazement, she won, and although her show, The Ambush Cook, ran only one season, Oprah embraced her. “Once you’ve eaten hot dogs with Oprah,” writes the author, “you expect your life to be different.” Remarrying and having another child did make her life different: better in many ways and more complicated. But her TV experience inspired a new project: a parenting video that quickly went viral. Within days, it had over 1 million views. Besides writing about meeting her second husband, dealing respectfully with her ex, and raising children, Kuzmić recalls growing up in Croatia during the nation’s War of Independence in 1991, learning to cook beside her beloved grandmother, immigrating to the United States, and suffering sexual assaults as a 5-year-old and as an adult. Mostly, she writes about motherhood, which she describes as “the most heart-filling part of my life, and it is also at times the most heartbreaking.” A worrier who has struggled with depression and low self-esteem, Kuzmić tries to foster gratitude, self-confidence, and empathy in her children. With her self-absorbed teenage son, she embarked on a game: In two hours, they would complete three random acts of kindness. “The game,” she writes, “is now on regular rotation in our family’s activities” to remind them that each can make other people’s lives better. A generous guide through the bumpy terrain of parenting.
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BUILDING A LIFE WORTH LIVING A Memoir
Linehan, Marsha M. Random House (384 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-8129-9461-2
The psychologist who developed dialectical behavior therapy to treat suicidal individuals reflects on her own life in this gripping memoir. Linehan (DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, 2014, etc.) grew up in a “reasonably well-off ” family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1940s and ’50s. A “happy-go-lucky, confident high school girl,” though not a good fit for her more sedate family, she experienced a breakdown during her senior year of high school and was institutionalized for more than two years at the Institute for Living in Hartford, Connecticut. The psychoactive drugs and electroconvulsive therapy she was given,
in addition to long periods of solitary confinement, left her with few memories of her childhood and adolescence, which she reconstructs here with the help of others. Linehan went on to study psychology and, later, train as a Zen master and work as a research scientist at the University of Washington. These Western and Eastern strands combined to influence the therapeutic protocol she developed, which has been clinically proven to benefit those affected by borderline personality disorder and suicidal tendencies. DBT, one of the first psychological treatment plans to incorporate the teaching of mindfulness, combines a recognition and deep acceptance of what the patient is feeling with the implementation of a behavioral plan for change. While the technique may not strike readers as revolutionary as Linehan contends it is, the author obviously has deep empathy for those she treats and a willingness to try a range of techniques to help them. Although she has chosen not to write about any of her clients, for the sake of their privacy, her description of her own slow, uneven recovery from what she calls a version of hell is compelling, and it’s easy to see how it would translate to other individuals. While she
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doesn’t stress the point, it’s also clear that both the spiritual and practical approaches she takes would also benefit those with less extreme psychological challenges. An inspiring account of healing and helping.
DOROTHY DAY Dissenting Voice of the American Century
Loughery, John & Randolph, Blythe Simon & Schuster (448 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-982103-49-1
The tempestuous life of 20th-century America’s archprogressive, Dorothy Day (1897-1980). Loughery (Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America, 2018) and Randolph (Amelia Earhart, 1990, etc.) provide a serviceable and largely
balanced look at one of America’s most complex and socially influential figures. The authors begin with a protracted exploration of Day’s young adulthood, a period rife with cross-county moves, love affairs, and interactions with World War I–era radicals. Her development as a writer, thinker, and activist is intertwined with sometimes-salacious tales of her relationships with intelligent but immature men who too often caused her great pain. Eventually, Day’s plunge into Catholicism redirected her passions while confusing her friends and family. The authors move on to discuss Day’s encounter with mystic wanderer Peter Maurin and the ensuing creation of the Catholic Worker, at once a publication, a collection of communal homes, and a way of life. Moving through the militant 1930s and the desperate 1940s, the authors do a good job of locating Day’s life and work in the midst of a wide variety of colorful characters and contentious controversies. Day was a polarizing figure seemingly with everyone: the church, the government, and fellow activists alike. This reality did not abate as the century matured, though Day’s name moved on from being an FBI target to having nearcelebrity status. Though Loughery and Randolph’s work does not provide the personal depth of Kate Hennessy’s exceptional Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty (2017), they do provide an excellent record of Day’s involvement in the progressive circles of her time. The authors touch on countless personalities within Day’s sphere of influence and use her as a focal point in their exploration of issues ranging from homelessness to homosexuality and historical events ranging from Sacco and Vanzetti to the Spanish Civil War. An intriguing glance at a complex and countercultural personality. (24 pages of color photos)
A WOMAN LIKE HER The Story Behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star Maher, Sanam Melville House (336 pp.) $27.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-61219-840-8
An investigation of the “honor killing” of a young Pakistani social media star at the hands of her own family. In her first book, Maher (Al Jazeera, Buzzfeed, etc.) delves deeply into the brief life of Qandeel Baloch (1990-2016), discovering a desperate attempt to assert agency regarding her own fate in a society determined to silence her. Baloch, who was born Fouzia Azeem in the poor village of Shah Sadar Din, in southern Punjab, was strangled by her brother, Waseem, in her parents’ home. Baloch had been branded the Pakistani Kim Kardashian, and she had perfected a social media persona that gained her hundreds of thousands of followers. But along with the followers, there were also plenty of detractors who believed her too risqué and scandalous for the clannish society in which women had little chance of emancipation. After an early failed marriage, single motherhood, and significant social media success, Baloch, apparently, went too far, 142
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One finishes this book deeply impressed—with the people of Anchorage, with Genie Chance, and with the author. this is chance!
baiting the ruling Islamic clerics and moral arbiters and alarming her family—even though she paid her parents’ rent and periodically gave money to Waseem. Indeed, thanks to her stardom, Baloch became the family’s cash cow. In addition to Baloch’s story, Maher examines the parallel experiences of young Pakistani women cast adrift by family and severed marriages. Most of these women must try anything to make a living, including working in the modeling industry, where they are at the mercy of brutal handlers, brokers, and managers. “In the year before Qandeel was murdered,” writes the author, “933 women and men were killed for ‘honor’ in Pakistan”—and “those are only the number of cases that were reported by family and friends.” Maher also explores the role of the media in Baloch’s death, which provided both an insatiable audience and sanctimonious jury, and speculates on whether justice will ever be served. A compelling account of the tragic fate of a creative woman who might have excelled brilliantly in any other milieu.
at the community theater at the time), dividing the narrative into acts, bringing different characters onstage and then off? It isn’t until Mooallem introduces himself as a character and recounts the process of reporting that one fully appreciates the journalistic accomplishment, the implications of which extend from feminist activism to the field of “disaster studies.” Encouragingly, the major lesson is that “our goodness is ordinary.” One finishes this book deeply impressed—with the people of Anchorage, with Genie Chance, and with the author. (b/w photos)
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THIS IS CHANCE! The Shaking of an AllAmerican City, a Voice That Held It Together Mooallem, Jon Random House (336 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-0-525-50991-2
A natural catastrophe inspires ordinary people to extraordinary heroism. Like the aftershocks of the earthquake that rocked Anchorage in 1964, this immersion in a barely remembered disaster shows how thematic implications continue to reverberate. In this impressively rendered narrative, longtime New York Times Magazine writer-at-large Mooallem (Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America, 2013) seamlessly blends together a character study, an examination of the character of a community, a tick-tock chronicle of what happened, and an inquiry into the human soul. The title refers not only to life’s chanciness, but also to the protagonist, a part-time radio reporter named Genie Chance, who became the voice of calm reassurance to Anchorage and then earned fleeting fame as the voice of Alaska. The author ably describes the earthquake, the most powerful in North American history: “The earth yawned open and swallowed cars….The sounds of the earthquake were part of the dreamlike incoherence. Most people mistook the low growl of the churning earth for a nuclear bomb.” Mostly, however, he focuses on the people and the aftermath, specifically how the disaster brought out the best in people, who followed their best instincts when there was no clear line of authority and behaved with “a staggering amount of collaboration and compassion.” Initially, skeptical readers might question the account: How did an author born long after the incident learn so much that he is able to recount so precisely. Why does he frame the events in reference to Our Town (playing |
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OUR REVOLUTION A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury
THE MAKING OF POETRY Coleridge, the Wordsworths, and Their Year of Marvels
Moore, Honor Norton (464 pp.) $28.95 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-39-308005-6
A sharp portrait of two women who struggled to shape their lives as their world changed. Poet Moore (The Bishop’s Daughter, 2008, etc.), who has written perceptive, revelatory biographies of her father, Bishop Paul Moore, and maternal grandmother, painter Margarett Sargent, now focuses her attention on her mother, Jenny McKean (1923-1973). Based in part on an unfinished memoir that Jenny bequeathed to her, Moore also draws on letters, scrapbooks, and abundant interviews with family, Jenny’s many friends, and lovers to create a sensitive portrait of a complex, contradictory woman. Born into great wealth, Jenny greatly enjoyed the “dinners and dances” of her debutante year, at the same time feeling stimulated by what she was learning at Vassar: comparative anthropology, for example, where, for the first time, she studied race, “an issue that would gather force and meaning for her and inform her moral and political thinking for the rest of her life.” So did her marriage to Paul, also born into wealth, who had decided to become a priest. For both, the church offered a sense of meaning and mission. Jenny defied “the limitations of her role as a clergy wife,” becoming an active partner in the couple’s work in the slums of Jersey City, where they lived in near poverty and, influenced by the Christian radical Dorothy Day, threw themselves “into a life of service, away from the spiritual emptiness and lack of community in which they had grown up.” Honor, the oldest of their nine children, competed for her mother’s attention not only with her siblings, but also with her mother’s consuming social and political engagement; as she grew up, Jenny desired to extricate herself from her roles as wife and mother and forge a new identity. By 1970, with women’s liberation bursting into American culture, both the author and her mother “began to stumble toward new terms of engagement—as free women.” For each of them, the stumbling exposed emotional wounds, and for Moore, the discovery of her mother’s gift to her: “a kind of force within that never allows me to stay still.” A deeply insightful, empathetic family history. (9 illustrations)
Nicolson, Adam Illus. by Hammick, Tom Farrar, Straus and Giroux (448 pp.) $35.00 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-0-374-20021-3
A full-immersion exploration of two great poets at the end of the 18th century, a time that ended with the publication of their Lyrical Ballads. In his latest, Somerset Maugham Award winner Nicolson (The Seabird’s Cry: The Lives and Loves of the Planet’s Great Ocean Voyagers, 2018, etc.) provides an astonishingly rich re-creation of the months that the Wordsworths and Coleridges lived near each other in southwest England. The author tells us how they met, how they ended up living there, and how they spent their hours and days (lots of walking and talking) when both of them would write some of their most celebrated works—Coleridge: “Kubla Khan” and “Cristabel”; Wordsworth: “Tintern Abbey.” Nicolson also reminds us continually of the women in the writers’ lives: Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy, a crucial companion who suggested ideas; Coleridge’s wife, Sara, who wasn’t as much a part of the literary excitement. We also see the emerging—and then diverging—poetical attitudes of the two principals and their eventual separation. Nicolson, like Richard Holmes—to whom he pays tribute early in the volume—not only read the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge and conducted library research; he moved to the region and enjoyed the same nature walks, becoming extremely familiar with the woods and water. Periodically, he offers his own lyrical paragraphs about the terrain—about what it was like in 1797 and what it’s like now. This reflects the author’s deep commitment to the project and diligence in trying to truly understand these men and their writing. He also quotes and expatiates upon hundreds of lines of poetry, dives into their letters, and tells stories about some of their notable visitors (young William Hazlitt was smitten by Coleridge). Nicolson’s passion sometimes leads him to suggest that all of this has been consequential for how we think and imagine today. A stunning example of a happy marriage between fecund imagination and devoted scholarship. (41 full-color illustrations; 3 b/w illustrations)
THE DALAI LAMA An Extraordinary Life
Norman, Alexander Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (432 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-0-544-41658-1 A biography of the famed spiritual leader who has lived through complex and contentious times.
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British journalist Norman (Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama: The Untold Story of the Holy Men Who Shaped Tibet, From Pre-History to the Present Day, 2010, etc.), who has collaborated with the Dalai Lama on three books, including his autobiography, brings well-grounded authority to his portrayal of a figure revered throughout the world for his joyfulness, generosity, and compassion. Born in 1935, Tenzin Gyatso was identified as the 14th Dalai Lama when he was 2 years old, on the basis of several miraculous occurrences and the child’s demonstration of occult power. Although the author acknowledges that “the skeptical reader will doubtless see this whole account as a classic example of myth-making,” he underscores the Buddhist perspective that “the way things really are” does not depend on empirical verification. Norman vividly depicts the “enchanted” world from which the Dalai Lama emerged, where “every feature of the landscape and every creature dwelling within it falls under the aegis of some sprite or spirit or deity.” Rich in spirituality, Tibet nevertheless was a poor, isolated country. As the Dalai Lama grew up, though focused intensively on his spiritual education, he came to realize that social, political, and material reforms
were urgently needed. At 14, he met a foreigner for the first time: a 33-year-old Austrian mountaineer who became his informal tutor, responding to the “boundlessly curious” young man’s many questions about the Western world. Norman lucidly traces the Dalai Lama’s spiritual and academic education, his growing awareness of the internal and external political conflicts that threatened Tibet, and his reluctant decision to go into exile when China invaded the country. At 24, when he led 80,000 Buddhists into India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru found him “exasperatingly naïve.” The Precious Protector, as he was known, gradually evolved into an astute, occasionally controversial, leader, resolute in his harsh dealings with dissent among rival schools within the Buddhist tradition and eventually renouncing his efforts for Tibet’s independence. A sturdy, comprehensive look at the Dalai Lama and his tumultuous world. (8-page 4-color insert; map)
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Though the anecdotes are unconnected, they are unfailingly entertaining. the hunt for history
WE KEEP US SAFE Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities
THE HUNT FOR HISTORY On the Trail of the World’s Lost Treasures— From the Letters of Lincoln, Churchill, and Einstein to the Secret Recordings Onboard JFK’s Air Force One
Norris, Zach Beacon (208 pp.) $24.95 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-80-702970-1
An urgent call for safer, more inclusive communities for everyone. Currently in the United States, general anxiety, racism, classism, and economic insecurity are some of the factors contributing to an unhealthy society in which no one, regardless of race, religion, gender, or economic status, really feels safe. Norris, executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, provides readers with a comprehensive look at how American society has evolved into an “Us vs. Them” scenario. “This fear-based mode,” writes the author, “defines safety only in terms of being free from crime and criminals, which is limited and limiting….With or without literal incarceration, millions of people are cast as ‘others’ and ‘bad guys,’ including many children who have a hard time focusing in school [and] many people whose anxiety and depression pushes them to consider suicide.” After analyzing the myriad problems with this fear-based model, he gives an optimistic view of what could take its place: a care-based model that would “replace deprivation, suspicion, punishment and isolation with resources, relationships, accountability, and participation.” Throughout, the author uses sufficient data and personal stories gleaned from interviews to substantiate his claims that the current system is broken. He then provides solid evidence of alternative programs that have been successful, such as Families for Books Not Bars. In the third section of the book, Norris recounts individual stories that illustrate his points and gives lists of recommended actions, such as initiating a federal child benefit program, improving student-teacher ratios in schools, decriminalizing drug possession, and increasing the number of reentry programs for those released from incarceration. The author argues that Americans are at a crossroads, and we must abandon the path of fear, propagated by the current presidential administration, and switch to a more equitable model of real democracy. Highly illuminating account of the changes required to create a more democratic society for all.
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Raab, Nathan Scribner (288 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-1-5011-9890-8
A leading dealer in historical documents and artifacts delivers a delightful account of his business. Raab, who writes the “Historically Speaking” column for Forbes.com, begins with an account of his education under the guidance of a father whose fascination with antiquities persuaded him to give up a prosperous legal career. “I had found my way to the emotional yet intangible heart of this trade in history,” he writes. “I came to understand what binds people to the physical traces of our history and its great men and women, why these artifacts and pieces of paper have such power. This isn’t an easy lesson, and no one can teach it to you. You have to learn it yourself.” The author emphasizes that it’s not a career for the faint of heart, requiring a scholar’s knowledge of history, a keen nose for fakes (a thriving industry), genuine-but-notpriceless items (many famous people’s letters were signed and often written by a secretary), and a sense of what will sell to collectors. A Benjamin Franklin letter discussing the Constitution brings a king’s ransom; another apologizing for arriving late for a meeting would attract far less interest. As skilled in satisfying readers as clients, Raab knows how to tell a story, chronicling how descendants of great historical figures invite him to their homes and reveal treasures. A survey report signed by the young George Washington looked like a bonanza until Raab’s research turned up another, identical including the corrections—and then another. An undistinguished collection of John F. Kennedy memorabilia included a tape of lost recordings from the plane carrying Kennedy’s body to Washington, D.C., after his assassination. In that case, the author’s joy was cut short when a government lawyer called him to demand it. The book also contains plenty of sad tales about certain family heirlooms, preserved for generations, that turned out to be reproductions. Though the anecdotes are unconnected, they are unfailingly entertaining.
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WHEN MY TIME COMES Conversations About Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right To Determine When Life Should End
WAR FEVER Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War Roberts, Randy & Smith, Johnny Basic (368 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-1-5416-7266-6
Rehm, Diane Knopf (256 pp.) $25.95 | Feb. 5, 2020 978-0-525-65475-9
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In a companion to a TV documentary, the longtime NPR host and podcaster interviews terminally ill patients and others about end-of-life choices. One in five Americans lives in a jurisdiction that allows terminally ill adults to request “medical aid in dying,” the term many experts prefer to “assisted suicide.” Rehm (On My Own, 2016, etc.) became a champion of the swiftly growing right-todie movement after her first husband, ravaged by Parkinson’s disease, begged doctors in vain for help ending his life. In the gently probing interviews collected here, the author discusses the pros and cons with people who have seen the effects at close range: patients, relatives, physicians, clergy, hospice administrators, and others. An African Methodist Episcopal pastor explains why he opposed the death-with-dignity law in Washington, D.C., given its potential for use against blacks. Dan Diaz recalls the upheavals his wife, Brittany, faced when they moved to Oregon so she could end her life after a diagnosis of terminal cancer; amid the devastating news, she had to find a house to rent and get a new driver’s license and voter registration card to establish residency. Other interviews in the book, which features a foreword by John Grisham, focus on a variety of relevant questions: Who qualifies for medical aid in dying? What life-ending medicines do doctors prescribe? How long does it take to die after you ingest them? Several contributors give similar answers to the same question, which at times grows repetitious but suggests the variations around the country. For gravely ill patients, a vital point is that securing aid in dying involves paperwork, a waiting period, and finding two doctors willing to help. These safeguards can have heartbreaking results for anyone who puts off making a decision. The approval process takes an average of about one month, notes the president of the group Compassion & Choices, “and about half the people die before that.” Thoughtful conversations with friends and foes of the death-with-dignity movement.
A lively historical account of 1918 Boston, a city obsessed with baseball and defeating the Kaiser in Germany. Roberts (History/Purdue Univ.) and Smith (History/Georgia Tech Univ.), co-authors of Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Mohammad Ali and Malcolm X (2016), tell their story through the lives of two New Englanders—Charles Whittlesey, commander of the “lost battalion” in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive; and Karl Muck, the German conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra—and a Baltimore boy playing for the local team: George Herman “Babe” Ruth. As the authors write, the three “became, in 1918, the most famous war hero, war villain, and war athlete. Nearly everything they did was interpreted through the lens of the war.” Whittlesey, an idealistic lawyer, enlisted in 1917. In 1918 in France, his battalion was surrounded. For five days, without food or water and running out of ammunition, they resisted German attacks and a request to surrender until relief arrived. Oppressed by his avalanche of fame, which continued after the war with demands for speeches, parades, and favors, he vanished during a cruise in 1921, probably a suicide. The authors stress that today’s anti-Muslim prejudice pales in comparison to the nationwide anti-German hysteria that victimized the internationally acclaimed Muck. Although unashamedly German, he was no spy, terrorist, propagandist, or anti-American demagogue, accusations that poured from newspapers, women’s clubs, patriotic organizations, and elected officials. Arrested in March 1918, he was interned in a Georgia camp for 18 months and then deported. That year, Babe Ruth was pitching for the Red Sox but was already nationally famous because of his slugging. At the time, baseball was in crisis, with teams crippled by enlistments and conscription and plummeting attendance. Concealing fears of bankruptcy behind fervent patriotism, owners proclaimed that baseball provided moral uplift to war-weary Americans and salvaged a shortened season and World Series that Boston, led by Ruth, won. An entertaining reminder that American hero worship, media hype, and fierce nationalism haven’t changed much in a century.
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A succinct, passionate guide to fostering creativity. how to be an artist
THE PLEASURE GAP American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution Rowland, Katherine Seal Press (304 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-58005-836-0
An exploration of why women have less satisfaction with their sexual lives than men. Former Guernica publisher and executive director Rowland, who has contributed to Nature, Psychology Today, and other publications as a freelance writer and researcher, interviewed more than 100 women of all sexual orientations about how they experience feelings of arousal, pleasure, and desire as well as frustration and pain. Unfortunately, the comments she elicits are generally imprecise and uninformative. Besides these interviews with ordinary women, the author sought out and frequently cites the professional opinions of psychologists and sexologists and the practices of therapists and counselors. The sexual revolution, writes Rowland, has brought women improvements in some areas, such as education and health care, but not in sexual health. While the quantity may have increased, the quality has not improved. “For younger women, especially, the message these days is that you should want sex because sex is fun and physically exciting,” writes the author. “There is so much pressure to be nonchalant about it, to not appear needy or emotionally invested, and that leaves little room for considering why it is that we should want sex in the first place.” During the author’s quest for answers, she spent time observing the leader of a group therapy clinic teaching the art of mindfulness, proposed as one solution to sexual dissatisfaction, and she reports on the thriving sex coaching business and the efforts of the pharmaceutical industry to formulate a drug treatment for women diagnosed as having hypoactive sexual desire disorder. Such approaches have their limits, and Rowland points to cultural issues as one of the main driving forces of the so-called pleasure gap. Consequently, sociologists may find some useful information, but many of the author’s conclusions are too nebulous to benefit general readers. A candidate for the supplemental reading list in a women’s studies course.
HOW TO BE AN ARTIST
Saltz, Jerry Riverhead (144 pp.) $22.00 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-0-593-08646-9
A noted critic advises us to dance to the music of art. Senior art critic at New York Maga zine and winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, Saltz (Seeing Out Louder, 2009, etc.) became a writer only after a 148
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decadeslong battle with “demons who preached defeat.” Hoping to spare others the struggle that he experienced, he offers ebullient, practical, and wise counsel to those who wonder, “How can I be an artist?” and who “take that leap of faith to rise above the cacophony of external messages and internal fears.” In a slim volume profusely illustrated with works by a wide range of artists, Saltz encourages readers to think, work, and see like an artist. He urges would-be artists to hone their power of perception: “Looking hard isn’t just about looking long; it’s about allowing yourself to be rapt.” Looking hard yields rich sources of visual interest and also illuminates “the mysteries of your taste and eye.” The author urges artists to work consistently and early, “within the first two hours of the day,” before “the pesky demons of daily life” exert their negative influence. Thoughtful exercises underscore his assertions. To get readers thinking about genre and convention, for example, Saltz presents illustrations of nudes by artists including Goya, Matisse, Florine Stettheimer, and Manet. “Forget the subject matter,” he writes, “what is each of these paintings actually saying?” One exercise instructs readers to make a simple drawing and then remake it in an entirely different style: Egyptian, Chinese ink-drawing, cave painting, and the styles of other artists, like Keith Haring and Georgia O’Keeffe. Freely experiment with “different sizes, tools, materials, subjects, anything,” he writes. “Don’t resist something if you’re afraid it’s taking you far afield of your usual direction. That’s the wild animal in you, feeding.” Although much of his advice is pertinent to amateur artists, Saltz also rings in on how to navigate the art world, compose an artist’s statement, deal with rejection, find a community of artists, and beat back demons. Above all, he advises, “Work, Work, Work.” A succinct, passionate guide to fostering creativity. (printed in color throughout)
MY WILD GARDEN Notes From a Writer’s Eden
Shalev, Meir Illus. by Shir, Refaella Trans. by Chen, Joanna Schocken (304 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 31, 2020 978-0-8052-4351-2
An agreeable set of essays in which gardening teaches perspective and the
rewards of hard work. When Israeli novelist Shalev (Two She-Bears, 2016, etc.) first saw his home in the Jezreel Valley, its garden was dried up and derelict. Although his grandfather kept an orchard and his mother took pride in her Jerusalem garden, he had little personal experience with horticulture. In this pleasant “collection of impressions of a modest wild garden and the gardener who tends it,” he charts the development of a hobby that soon became his “new love.” With the help of an elderly village guru, he learned what to plant and what to cut down, creating such an idyll that a wedding party once mistook his garden for a countryside photo shoot location. The book rests on solid botanical knowledge but is never heavy-handed. Rather, Shalev
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sometimes indulges in whimsy, as when he asks his sea squill plants if they want to be sown together or separately. Though the author notes an overall decline in local wildlife, he still enjoys owl calls and nocturnal visits from fruit bats. In a standout chapter, Shalev good-naturedly chronicles a losing battle against mole rats. The author weaves in Jewish wisdom via stories of the Tree of Life and God’s providing water as well as King Solomon’s words in praise of ants. Shalev contends that keeping a garden helps with cultivating a proper sense of time—not just planning ahead with annuals, but also planting a tree that will remain hundreds of years after its planter is gone. “This patience is not something I brought to the garden,” he writes, “but rather something I received from it.” He persuasively likens gardening to writing in that both necessitate time, dedication, and back pain but ultimately produce beauty. At the end of the book, when he describes how he cut down his old, dying lemon tree to replace it with another, it reminds him of his mortality: “I, too, am a rather old lemon tree.” Charming musings on the “moments of bliss” found in the garden.
Shaw, Art with Wise, Robert L. Morrow/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $28.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-0-06-290744-8
A memoir of World War II’s last great battle by an officer who is now 99. Shaw was a field artillery unit commander already bloodied by the 1944 invasion of the Philippines when his unit landed on Okinawa on April 1, 1945. The immense invasion, the most expansive amphibious assault of the Pacific War (1,500 Allied ships and 1.5 million soldiers), came ashore meeting no resistance, which was the result of deceiving the Japanese, according to the author. In fact, the Japanese had given up defending beaches— as they had abandoned mass banzai charges—because it didn’t work. They had deeply fortified part of the island and prepared to fight to the death. Moving inland, the troops encountered resistance after a few days, and here the narrative records nearly three months of brutal combat that killed more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers, 10,000 Americans, and far more Okinawan civilians. Shaw often scouted ahead of his battery, observing frontline infantry in action. His purported duty was to direct artillery fire, but readers expecting to learn the experiences of a WWII forward observer will discover that this is mostly a literary device. In the text, co-written by Wise, Shaw is the omniscient observer describing the murderous battles of his division down to company and platoon level across the island. The author also offers his eyewitness account of the suicides of the defeated Japanese generals and descriptions of regular trips to the rear to record deliberations of the senior commanders |
SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, From Ancient Fossils to DNA
Shubin, Neil Pantheon (288 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-1-101-87133-1
A welcome new exploration of the evolution of human and animal life on
Earth. Shubin (Organismal Biology and Anatomy/Univ. of Chicago; The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body, 2013, etc.), provost of the Field Museum of Natural History, begins with a venerable anti-evolution argument. Evolution is supposed to occur when a new trait gives an organism an advantage. To live on land, an animal needs lungs, but lungs took time to evolve. What is the advantage of 1% of a lung….or 10%? Case closed? The author writes that “biological innovations never come about during the great transitions they are associated with. Feathers did not arise during the evolution of flight, nor did lungs and limbs come about during the transition to land….Massive change came about by repurposing ancient structures for new uses.” Many fulltime fish breathe air with rudimentary air-exchange organs. Most have air-filled sacs with other functions but lunglike possibilities. Case open, and Shubin explores it with his characteristic enthusiasm and clarity. Since well before Darwin, scientists traced life’s development through fossils, which produced material but no explanation. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species provided significant evidence for a mechanism: natural selection. This converted many—but not all—scientists, who still had no idea how it happened. Progress in genetics after 1900 led to tantalizing theories, but only during the past 50 years has DNA technology enabled scientists to understand and even tinker with evolution. Readers who assume that organisms change when their genes change are in for a jolt, as the author explains that a gene may simply multiply dozens or hundreds of times or jump wildly across the same genome. Since the beginning, viruses have broken into cells and joined cellular DNA, sometimes wreaking havoc but often remaining forever and doing good. Organisms themselves occasionally combine forces. Mitochondria inside every cell and the chlorophyll in plants were once free-living microbes that are still present in some DNA. A fascinating wild ride through the mechanics of evolution.
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82 DAYS ON OKINAWA One American’s Unforgettable Firsthand Account of the Pacific War’s Greatest Battle
and chat with his men. The result is a docudrama with invented dialogue and action that must be at least partly fictionalized because it’s unlikely Shaw could have witnessed so much, not to mention remember it. A vivid re-creation of a campaign so vicious that the soldiers involved rejoiced when they heard about Hiroshima. (maps)
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ALWAYS HOME A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories
PRETTY BITCHES On Being Called Crazy, Angry, Bossy, Frumpy, Feisty, and All the Other Words That Are Used To Undermine Women
Singer, Fanny Photos by Lacombe, Brigitte Knopf (336 pp.) $35.00 | Mar. 31, 2020 978-1-5247-3251-6
Alice Waters’ daughter recalls growing up with an abundance of food, beauty, and warmth. Swaddled in dish towels and set inside a huge salad bowl, newborn Singer (co-author, with Waters: My Pantry, 2015) was a regular visitor at Chez Panisse, her mother’s famed Berkeley restaurant, while Waters conferred with the manager or tasted dishes. “I don’t remember this, of course,” Singer writes, “but I feel like my disproportionate love of salad might have something to do with my early kitchen cribs.” Singer’s charming narrative, interwoven with Lacombe’s painterly black-and-white photographs, bursts with sensuous descriptions of tastes, fragrances, and textures as she recounts her “very rich and full and just a little bit unconventional” young life. Her remarkable school lunches featured greens with vinaigrette, kiwi in orange juice, and garlic toast that her classmates coveted. At home, even breakfast was transcendent: “a perfectly soft-boiled blue Araucana egg, with a marigold-hued liquid center into which I would delight in plunging buttered toast ‘soldiers.’ ” Instructions for making this dish, along with 59 other recipes—her mother’s garlicky noodle soup, her grandfather’s special pancakes, and, not surprisingly, several salads—add delectable details to the colorful narrative. Although sweet confections sometimes appeared for dessert—there are recipes for persimmon pudding and quince meringue ice cream—more likely the end of a meal was “the most perfect handful of raspberries” from their own garden or the sweetest fig. Only a perfectly ripe fruit met her mother’s exacting standards. Singer’s culinary adventures with her parents took her to the south of France as well as on a research trip of France’s great restaurants and wineries; her father, she adds, is “a committed oenophile and professional wine merchant.” Because neither parent spoke French, Singer, who went to a bilingual French school, served as official interpreter at age 9. Waters, who has been the subject of much media attention and multiple books, including her own memoir, Coming to My Senses (2017), is lovingly portrayed throughout Singer’s book. Her mother, writes the author, “is at once a kind of spiritual compass and a salve.” An intimate homage to an iconic restaurateur. (54 photos)
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Ed. by Skurnick, Lizzie Seal Press (320 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-58005-919-0
New York Times Magazine columnist Skurnick (That Should Be a Word, 2015, etc.) curates a feminist anthology that gathers essays on women’s disheartening and empowering experiences. Ambitious. Exotic. Intimidating. Aggressive. Aloof. These and other descriptors build a fraught lexicon in which barbs and compliments alike convey barely concealed, or even blatant, misogyny. With an introduction by Rebecca Traister that elucidates how certain expressions silence women, this literary collection features voices emphasizing the need to keep speaking up. Novelists, women in media, activists, and others each tackle one commonplace word through pointed memories and deft examinations of word origins, often braiding private experiences with larger events. Though certain themes recur— double standards in the workplace, physical appearance, and expectations about women’s behavior—the personal approach keeps the collection fresh and surprising. Stephanie Burt, for instance, weighs the implications of “pretty,” which can be seen as shorthand for not being beautiful enough. Through a rigorous exploration of a spa visit, Amy S. Choi bemoans the lie that beauty is “effortless,” while Dagmara Domińczyk’s take on “ugly” is a painful reminder of adolescence. In Monique Truong’s “Sweet,” she exposes the word that Christine Blasey Ford’s colleague used to describe her as the trivializing term it can be. Essays on achievement—and how often it is attributed to reasons other than women’s talent and effort—revisit frustrating ground, and essays on the compounding problems of being a minority woman underscore how little American culture has changed since the civil rights movement. Other salient passages depict how a single word can reverberate in a woman’s life for decades. There’s no easy solution for eradicating derogatory, deeply ingrained language—or reclaiming certain terms to be used positively—but this uplifting collection serves as a good first step toward highlighting what’s wrong with how women are talked about. Other contributors include Laura Lippman, Carina Chocano, Meg Wolitzer, and Katha Pollitt. A galvanizing, sharp compendium.
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A perceptive, radiant portrait of a writer of indelible consequence. recollections of my nonexistence
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY NONEXISTENCE A Memoir
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS ILLUSTRATED
Solnit, Rebecca Viking (256 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-593-08333-8
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Whimsical illustrations meet quirky prose in this tag-team reinvention of the iconic 1933 book. An award-winning New Yorker illustrator, designer, and author, Kalman (Swami on Rye: Max in India, 2018, etc.) takes on the challenge of illustrating Stein’s iconic “auto” biography of her longtime companion Toklas. Even though it’s not as ambitious as Zak Smith’s Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow (2006) or Matt Kish’s Moby-Dick in Pictures (2011), Kalman’s 70-plus color illustrations, rendered in her distinctive playful and Fauve-esque style, perfectly reflect the artistic and intellectual world of Paris in the 1920s and ’30s. In a short afterword, written in Kalman’s distinctive script, she describes the book as a “love story” about how “two people, joined together, become themselves. They cannot breathe right without each other.” An accompanying illustration shows them sitting together at a table, Stein reading a book (aloud?), Toklas looking on (listening?). On the final page of the book, Stein notes that Toklas probably will not write her autobiography, so “I am going to write it for you….And she did and this is it.” On first meeting Stein, Toklas said there are a “great many things to tell of what was happening then….I must describe what I saw when I came.” With the current volume, we see what Kalman saw. Here’s Stein sitting in a bright yellow chair at her popular Paris home at 27 rue de Fleurus, Picasso’s famous portrait of Stein on the wall behind her. Luminaries came and went, all beautifully captured with Kalman’s bright brush strokes: Toulouse-Lautrec; Seurat, who “caught his fatal cold”; the “extraordinarily brilliant” Guillaume Apollinaire; William James, Stein’s former teacher; Marcel Duchamp (“everybody loved him)”; Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky; James Joyce and Sylvia Beach; Hemingway; the “beautiful” Edith Sitwell; and of course, Toklas, wearing one of her hats with “lovely artificial flowers” on top. A sparkling, imaginative rendition of a literary classic.
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nonfiction
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1 december 2019
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A feminist, activist, and prolific writer recounts her emergence from solitude and vulnerability. “To have a voice,” writes Solnit (Whose Story Is This?: Old Conflicts, New Chapters, 2019, etc.) in her absorbing new memoir, “means not just the animal capacity to utter sounds but the ability to participate fully in the conversations that shape your society, your relations to others, and your own life.” As a young woman in San Francisco in the 1980s, Solnit lacked the “three key things that matter in having a voice: audibility, credibility, and consequence.” Instead, she felt silenced by a society that effaced women, circumscribed their freedom through harassment and violence, and insisted that they learn “deferential limits.” So she became expert “at the art of nonexistence, since existence was so perilous.” At 19, “young, ignorant, poor, and almost friendless,” Solnit was finishing her last semester at San Francisco State University, living in a dingy residential hotel, when she found an affordable, light-filled studio apartment. Furnished with pieces she found on the street or in thrift stores, the tiny apartment, where she lived for the next 25 years, became a refuge from a pervasive threat of violence. A joyous walker, she was often “followed and yelled at and mugged and grabbed.” In the news, movies, and TV, women were beaten, raped, and murdered by boyfriends, husbands, or serial killers: “Even if none of these terrible things happen to you,” writes the author, “the possibility they might and the constant reminders have an impact.” Books offered another kind of refuge where “I ceased to be myself, and this nonexistence I pursued and devoured like a drug.” Solnit traces her discovery of communities—artists, punk musicians, gay men and women—that sustained her and the people and places that inspired many of her books. Writing offered her a way of participating in the world, probing “what’s hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions,” illuminating forgotten people and places, and showing “how invisibility permits atrocity.” A perceptive, radiant portrait of a writer of indelible consequence.
Stein, Gertrude Illus. by Kalman, Maira Penguin Press (320 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-59420-460-9
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THE PRESIDENTIAL FRINGE Questing and Jesting for the Oval Office
THE POWER WORSHIPPERS Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
Stein, Mark Potomac Books (296 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 1, 2020 978-1-64012-032-7
Throughout much of our history, minor candidates have jumped into the lake of presidential politics, some mak-
ing a splash. In his latest, screenwriter, playwright, and author Stein (Vice Capades: Sex, Drugs, and Bowling From the Pilgrims to the Present, 2017, etc.), whose 2008 book How the States Got Their Shapes was adapted into a History Channel series, focuses on American politicians—well, sort-of politicians. Beginning in 1848, the author escorts us through the election cycles, pausing to focus on a particular fringe candidate, providing a bit of background on the candidate and speculating about what that person’s candidacy told us about ourselves—and what it could bode for the future. Some of the names will be familiar to most readers, including Joseph Smith, Victoria Woodhull, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Pat Paulsen, Eldridge Cleaver, Stephen Colbert, and Roseanne Barr. Yet other names—and nicknames—will doubtless be new to most: Leonard “Live Forever” Jones, who claimed to be immortal; Gabriel Green, who represented the Universal Flying Saucer Party; Pigasus, a domestic pig put forth by the Youth International Party in 1968; Vermin Supreme; and the Naked Cowboy. Stein treats each candidate with a rubber band of seriousness—for some, there are stretches—and quotes liberally from various sources, both print and online. The author also deals with a variety of “firsts”—the first woman, the first African American, the first “transhumanist,” and so on. He discusses how the internet and social media have propelled a number of folks into presidential prominence, including “Deez Nuts,” who turned out to be a teenager from Iowa. The author’s tone varies throughout, from amused to ironic to admonitory. Donald Trump lumbers in from time to time, but, as Stein notes, he is hardly the first to be called “the clown in the White House”: Lincoln, for one, preceded him. Informative and entertaining, forcing American readers to take some glances into what at times is an unflattering mirror.
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Stewart, Katherine Bloomsbury (352 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-63557-343-5
An exposé of the righteous hypocrisy driving Christian nationalism. In the late 1970s, a self-appointed group of radical right-wing Christians decided to take on an impossible-sounding task that would, in their view, restore America’s moral foundation. They would form a political organization with the goal of taking over every element of government in the U.S.—first Congress, followed by the presidency, the federal courts, state legislatures, and local governments—and imbue them with their religious ideas. However, according to Stewart (The Good News Club: The Chris tian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, 2012, etc.), the initial purpose of the Christian nationalists, as she calls them, had little to do with religion or morality. In the beginning, their efforts were focused on overcoming the Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University. To succeed, they knew they needed a hot-button issue they could ride to success; they settled on abortion even though Judaism teaches that life begins at birth, and Jesus never challenged that. Nevertheless, the plan worked so well that today, four decades later, Christian nationalism has become a frighteningly powerful voice in the Republican Party. It was instrumental in getting Donald Trump elected president, and now it has a committee that suggests candidates for the federal bench that Trump rubber-stamps and blindly sends out for confirmation. Currently, the Christian nationalists are moving rapidly in their plan to take over state legislatures, which they’re accomplishing through “Project Blitz.” Though its stated aim is to advance religious freedom, Stewart argues convincingly that the true goal is to inundate as many states as possible with so many right-wing bills that it will jam the state legislative processes. Many readers will consider the book advocacy journalism because the author didn’t seek out her targets’ comments, but the thoroughly researched facts as she lays them out are hard to argue with. A one-sided but undeniably powerful examination of the Christian right’s political motives.
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If you love Chinatown, then you’ll love The Big Goodbye— and it’s good reading for any American cinema buff. the big goodbye
THE BIG GOODBYE Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood
IBAUHAUS The iPhone as the Embodiment of Bauhaus Ideals and Design
Wasson, Sam Flatiron Books (416 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-250-30182-6
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Having devoted decades of his professional life to the Bauhaus school of art and design, the author celebrates the iPhone as the perfect realization of that movement’s sensibility. For Weber (The Bauhaus Group, 2009, etc.), Bauhaus is much more than a design collective that began a century ago in Germany, where “all in all, it would last only fourteen years.” It is more than the aesthetic principles that have been kept alive by adherents in the worlds of visual art and architecture. It is more, even, than a design for living, though it is very much that. It is a religion, a cosmology, a way of ordering and understanding the universe, a spirit that Weber traces from Plato—whose “best-known broad-sweeping profundity” was “the good is the beautiful”—through Steve Jobs, among the latest to apprehend that “design—capable of miracles, truthful and alluring—was the new religion.” Of course, this religion has a moral code: to serve the many rather than the elite with its simple beauty and to avoid any ostentatious filigree in its devotion to the streamlined essential. “In the 1970s, I devoured Bauhaus values at the source. I bridge the gap between two great epochs in the modernization of civilization,” writes the author, whose book bridges those eras as well. For more than four decades, Weber has served as executive director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, keepers of the Bauhaus flame, founded by the couple who “were like a two-person religious sect. The Bauhaus had been the place where they had met and started to practice their faith.” Flash-forward over the decades, and we see the emergence of Steve Jobs as a kind of second coming, with the iPhone serving as “the perfect Bauhaus design.” The narrative contains more Bauhaus elements than most iPhone devotees have ever paused to consider, but the author makes a strong case that a revolution in modernist design has found fulfillment in contemporary culture. An engaging and occasionally provocative analysis.
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nonfiction
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1 december 2019
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A biography of the making of China town, which scriptwriter Robert Towne called “a state of mind.” In his latest, Los Angeles–based film chronicler Wasson (Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Art, 2017, etc.), who has written about Bob Fosse, Audrey Hepburn, Blake Edwards, and Paul Mazursky, undertakes a multifaceted dissection of the infamous noir film starring Jack Nicholson. Produced by Robert Evans and written by Towne, Chinatown was directed by the “brilliant tyrant” Roman Polanski. Throughout the book, Wasson treats the film as a masterpiece, an arguable but reasonable assessment, and delineates his biographies of Nicholson, Evans, Towne, and Polanski in the context of the film specifically. The author adeptly illustrates how each man brought his own experience of contemporary Hollywood to the film though the story is arguably a more accurate depiction of 1930s Hollywood than any noir film recorded in that time period. Wasson portrays drugs and crime in a matter-of-fact manner befitting the movie itself, and he doesn’t minimize or romanticize any of the less-than-savory elements involving the principals of the narrative; this applies especially to Polanski. The author weaves into the text details about the Tate-LaBianca murders and their effects on not only Polanski, but the city as a whole. He shows how the phrase “That’s Chinatown” was not just a memorable motif in the movie, but also a reflection of the visceral emotions roiling LA at the time of the film’s release. “Since the murders,” writes the author, “the communal dream of social and political reformation that had illumed the sixties had blackened, almost on cue, at the decade’s turn.” As Towne said, “there are some crimes for which you get punished, and there are some crimes that our society isn’t equipped to punish, and so we reward the criminals.” Through Wasson’s thorough research, this book clearly illuminates that concept. If you love Chinatown, then you’ll love The Big Goodbye— and it’s good reading for any American cinema buff.
Weber, Nicholas Fox Knopf (272 pp.) $27.95 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-0-525-65728-6
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BROKEN FAITH Inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, One of America’s Most Dangerous Cults
THE REALITY GAME How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth
Weiss, Mitch & Mohr, Holbrook Hanover Square Press (352 pp.) $28.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-335-14523-9
A fly-on-the-wall account of a religious cult and its discontents. Headquartered in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, the Word of Faith Fellowship has a long pedigree—and has long attracted the interest of law enforcement, write Associated Press reporters Weiss (The Heart of Hell: The Untold Story of Courage and Sacrifice in the Shadow of Iwo Jima, 2016, etc.) and Mohr. The founder, Jane Whaley, is “a godlike figure who professe[s] to have all the answers,” a woman quick to disappear with the collection plate—and who, the authors charge, was instrumental in the disappearance of an emerald so rare that the Brazilian government has been trying to retrieve it, the consequence of the church’s expansion not just into that country but also in other entrepôts around the world. The authors open with the daring escape, literally, of a church member and his wife, two refugees among 100 or so who have fled from the church and whose testimony provides the basis for this book—in addition to several law enforcement reports. Interestingly and ominously, some of those reports were never filed, and some were never even written thanks to the intercession of officials sympathetic to or supported by the WFF. Whaley, a charismatic leader surrounded by vulnerable followers and strong-arm lieutenants, has since sheltered herself in several ways, including forging political ties to the Trump administration and the Republican hierarchy in North Carolina. Meanwhile, amid such cultlike activities as dictating whom church members are allowed to marry, preaching a doctrine in which “sex is evil and demonic” and only the missionary position is acceptable, administering beatings to suspected apostates, and so forth, Whaley “has amassed millions.” Ominously, the authors note at the end, one church higher-up has lately acquired a license to transport cyanide, the potential recipe for another Jonestown. A compelling examination of a Christianist cabal whose crimes are evident but whose power seems, for the moment, unbreakable.
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Woolley, Samuel PublicAffairs (272 pp.) $28.00 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-5417-6825-3
Propaganda, the “art” of manipulating how and what people think, is as old as communication. But as this eye-opening new book shows, it has reached a new level of refinement. Woolley (Journalism/Univ. of Texas; co-editor: Computational Propaganda: Political Parties, Politicians, and Political Manipulation on Social Media, 2018)—the founding director of the Digital Intelligence Lab at the Institute for the Future—employs the term “computational propaganda” to characterize the political exploitation of technologies that have their roots in the internet. As he argues, human-mimicking “bots,” “deepfake” videos, and other attempts to persuade and deceive herald a new era of technology that may further damage democratic values if they do not possess built-in safeguards against misuse. “The Web has become as much a tool to control people as a means to connect and empower them,” writes the author, who acknowledges that the problem of digital deception is complex and opaque, its scale daunting. Woolley focuses on pervasive social media that are highly vulnerable to being manipulated not only by politicians and governments, but by anyone mounting a disinformation campaign. He insists we must “bake” democratic values and human rights into our current and emerging technologies, the ones that bear so much promise—and so much potential for calculated misuse. Innovation without caution is not an advance. While applauding the positive potential of new developments, Woolley goes into exhaustive detail analyzing the capacity for manipulation harbored by artificial intelligence and anthropomorphic tools. Such a narrative can’t help but be immersed in a deep pool of techno-speak, but Woolley does yeoman’s work in making most of it understandable. The delivery, however, is sometimes dry, and the author has a tendency toward repetition. But given the importance of his arguments, readers should stick with it. A well-informed cautionary tale on alarming issues that show no signs of abating as disinformation continues to proliferate.
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A worthy addition to the literature of the gulag that also features intimate glimpses of the author of Doctor Zhivago. dressed for a dance in the snow
THE BOSTON MASSACRE A Family History
DRESSED FOR A DANCE IN THE SNOW Women’s Voices From the Gulag
Zabin, Serena Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (300 pp.) $30.00 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-0-544-91115-4
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Oral histories of women imprisoned by the Soviets in the gulag or elsewhere, often startling in their lack of self-pity. Far fewer women than men were sent to Stalin’s forced labor camps, and the imbalance has led to a corresponding gap in eyewitness accounts by female prisoners. Barcelona-based writer and translator Zgustova (The Silent Woman, 2014, etc.) offers partial redress in her oral histories of nine women, eight sent to the gulag and one to a horrific psychiatric prison. The best-known is Irina Emelyanova, exiled to Siberia with her mother, Olga Ivinskaya, who was the intimate companion of Boris Pasternak and inspired Lara in Doctor Zhivago. Her vivid account reveals less about the camps than about the novelist who rejected the Nobel Prize under pressure from the Soviets (he feared reprisals against her mother if he accepted). Actor Valentina Iyevleva is tragically representative of others: After her father was executed as an “enemy of the people,” she ended up in a Siberian camp where women, even if pregnant, worked as loggers in deep snow, “often up to our waists or higher,” in temperatures as low as 50 below zero, on starvation rations. Small acts of friendship or kindness could determine who survived the brutal conditions. Born in the gulag, Galya Safonova still has the books prisoners made for her from hand-sewn scraps, including a version of Little Red Riding Hood: “They are my greatest treasure.” The most startling accounts come from women who say matter-of-factly—with no apparent self-pity—that their suffering had benefits. “If I had to live my life over, I would not want to avoid that experience,” says Susanna Pechuro, who did more than five years’ time for anti-Stalinist activity. The bitter experience helped after her release: “A person can turn into a monster in the camps, but if you come out of a camp and you don’t become an ogre, you know that nothing in life can hurt you. You are armored.” This rare collection shows the terrible cost of that armor. A worthy addition to the literature of the gulag that also features intimate glimpses of the author of Doctor Zhivago.
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1 december 2019
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The British army was not just a man’s profession 250 years ago but instead “a social world of families, friends, and children.” A popular British song at the time of the Revolutionary War was called “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” As it turns out, writes Zabin (History and American Studies/Carleton Coll.; Dangerous Economies: Status and Com merce in Imperial New York, 2009, etc.), the British army was in the habit of bringing women along with it, or intermarrying with local populations, so that life in a bivouac was a family affair. For four years, writes the author, one unit lived in Boston “on a peninsula hardly bigger than a square mile.” Zabin observes that the old term “camp followers” denigrates the contributions of women to these units who contributed work that was useful and necessary. They were also prolific; as the author notes, “in the years 1768 to 1772, more than a hundred soldiers brought their babies into Boston’s churches to be baptized.” When the British unit quartered in Boston, late of campaigns in Portugal and elsewhere during the Seven Years’ War, was caught up in the chain of rebellious events that culminated in the Boston Massacre, a local defended the soldiers who were on trial for murder. That local was John Adams, who was, at the same time, involved in the first stirrings of the revolution. One witness, Zabin writes, was a Massachusetts woman who knew the soldiers well enough to know their first names—and, indeed, married a member of the regiment less than a month later. By that time, such marriages were no longer points of pride, though, and neither defense nor prosecution raised what might have been interpreted as witness bias because “to do so would have cracked open the pretense to which both sides had tacitly agreed: that an enormous gulf separated soldiers and civilians.” A well-written, thoroughly interesting addition to the social history of the American Colonies. (4-page color insert and b/w illustrations)
Zgustova, Monika Trans. by Jones, Julie Other Press (272 pp.) $25.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-59051-177-0
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children’s THINGS THAT GO AWAY
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Alemagna, Beatrice Illus. by the author Abrams (40 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-1-4197-4482-2
CONSENT (FOR KIDS!) by Rachel Brian.........................................158 EFRÉN DIVIDED by Ernesto Cisneros...............................................160 LEAVING LYMON by Lesa Cline-Ransome.......................................161 THE ONLY BLACK GIRLS IN TOWN by Brandy Colbert.................162 LITTLE LEGENDS by Vashti Harrison & Kwesi Johnson; illus. by Vashti Harrison.....................................................................167 THE GIRL WHO LOST HER SHADOW by Emily Ilett..................... 170 WHAT WILL THESE HANDS MAKE? by Nikki McClure................ 174 WHERE LILY ISN’T by Julie Paschkis; illus. by Margaret Chodos-Irvine....................................................... 177 THE PAPER KINGDOM by Helena Ku Rhee; illus. by Pascal Campion.....................................................................179 TWILIGHT HAUNTINGS by Angie Sage............................................182 THE NEST THAT WREN BUILT by Randi Sonenshine; illus. by Anne Hunter..........................................................................184 A WAY WITH WILD THINGS by Larissa Theule; illus. by Sara Palacios..........................................................................185 AT THE POND by Geraldo Valério..................................................... 187 LIZZIE DEMANDS A SEAT! by Beth Anderson; illus. by E.B. Lewis.............................................................................188 FREEDOM SOUP by Tami Charles; illus. by Jacqueline Alcántara.............................................................189 OVERGROUND RAILROAD by Lesa Cline-Ransome; illus. by James E. Ransome.................................................................190
An exploration of things that are temporary. “In life, / many things go away. / They transform, / they pass by.” Each double-page spread holds a special sheet, attached in the gutter, that’s halfway between transparent and translucent. This sheet overlays first the right-hand page, then the left; it features black markings (different on every spread) that shift meaning as it turns. In one fine example, to demonstrate that “sleep always departs,” heavily drawn, closed eyelids move from overlaying a child’s face to a stuffed animal’s. Unfortunately, many spreads are less successful. All the primary illustrations pale significantly when viewed through the middle sheet while the sheet’s black drawings are particularly bold; consequently, flipping the sheet leftward often fails to hide or repurpose the black marks. Musical notes seemingly meant to disappear into a plant (“Music flies away”) are so dark—and the underlying illustration so paled by the flip-over sheet—that the notes don’t visually integrate into the plant but hover nonsensically. Tears drop from a child’s eyes, but instead of blending into a cat’s fur when the sheet flips, they sit confusingly overlaid on the cat. The conceit’s weak implementation leaves little room for attention to Alemagna’s heavy oil paintings with faces styled like children’s art, nor to the otherwise lovely catalog of things that are (or can be) fleeting: injury, bubbles, bad moods, hair placement, steam from a teacup. A good idea philosophically and artistically—but tanked by weak execution. (Picture book. 4- 7)
THE OLDEST STUDENT by Rita Lorraine Hubbard; illus. by Oge Mora...............................................................................191
FLY BACK, AGNES
Atkinson, Elizabeth Carolrhoda (296 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-5415-7820-3
BLACK IS A RAINBOW COLOR by Angela Joy; illus. by Ekua Holmes..........................................................................192 A RIDE TO REMEMBER by Sharon Langley & Amy Nathan; illus. by Floyd Cooper..........................................................................192 FREEDOM BIRD by Jerdine Nolen; illus. by James E. Ransome.......193 A VOICE NAMED ARETHA by Katheryn Russell-Brown; illus. by Laura Freeman..................................................................... 194
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At odds with her changing self and family, one summer Agnes Moon pretends to be someone different—and meets others with secrets. Twelve-year-old Vermonter Agnes, who has her white mother’s red hair and freckles and her |
FIRE TRUCK VS. DRAGON
Barton, Chris Illus. by McCloskey, Shanda Little, Brown (40 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-316-52213-7
The ultimate showdown gets waylaid by an inconvenient friendship. What could be cooler than a fire truck going head-to-head with a dragon? From the title, fans of Barton’s Shark vs. Train (illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld, 2010) will be prepped for some major fire-and-water action. The three child protagonists certainly anticipate a humdinger of a battle, but unfortunately, antipathy is not on the menu. Turns out, Fire Truck and Dragon are the best of buds. Worse, they won’t even take advantage of their natural gifts. A campout sees them making shadow puppets with flashlights. A barbecue is just a chance for them to show off their “free-range potato salad” and “firehouse beans.” And don’t even bother inviting them to your birthday party, unless you just want them spinning you around before you try for the piñata. When at last the two do face off, what occurs? A staring contest. But readers shouldn’t give up hope. They haven’t seen how they say good night. Barton deftly upsets expectations, both for those familiar with his previous book and newcomers who know what “versus” means. Laughs come equally from the disappointed children in the book as well as readers’ thwarted guesses as to what is going to happen. And McCloskey’s daffy cartoons make a perfect complement to Barton’s high-wired hilarity. A friendship story for the young and vicious. (Picture book. 3-6)
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OH BROTHER
Bates, Sonya Spreen Orca (144 pp.) $12.99 paper | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-4598-2433-1 After enrolling in a new school, a girl keeps her physically disabled little brother a secret from a popular clique. When her family moves from Saskatchewan to Vancouver, British Columbia, to benefit her little brother, Will, 12-year-old Lauren is lonely—and overwhelmed. For the first time, she and Will—who uses a wheelchair and interacts via a communication board and short, spoken words—will be attending the same school. When Lauren meets Callie, a “tomboy” who dreams of playing football instead of conforming to her parents’ “girly girl” stereotypes, she’s thrilled to have a friend. But Callie hangs out with popular, snooty Treena and Maddy, who mock Will, calling him “spaz.” If Lauren reveals that Will is her brother, will she lose her friend? Though Bates sensitively acknowledges Lauren’s feelings of frustration and neglect, Lauren’s relationship with Will is generally affectionate; she plays with him, reassures him, and enjoys making him laugh. Will himself is never depicted as a burden, and his friend and classmate, Blake, happily includes him in activities such as soccer, which Will’s parents encourage. Unfortunately, the predictable ending abruptly reduces Will to a saccharine inspiration for another character’s epiphany, and one-dimensional secondary characters render the author’s exploration of peer pressure somewhat heavy-handed. Most characters, including Lauren and her family, appear white; Maddy is Asian Canadian. Patronizing disability tropes let down this well-intentioned tale of peer pressure and sibling bonds. (Fiction. 9-12)
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biracial (white/Korean) dad’s dark eyes and light-brown skin, really hates her new curves and the idea of “becoming a woman.” She also feels left out: Her divorced parents, her older sister, and her best friend all seem to have moved on to other relationships. A first small lie allows her to spend the summer with her father. But he’s busy; she has plenty of time to explore. The lies multiply as she introduces herself as Chloe from Kansas, first to Stella and her grandmother at the general store and then to Fin, the attractive boy visiting nearby Fly Back Farm, and Harriet Hooper, the farm’s owner. As they gradually reveal some of their secrets, Agnes becomes increasingly uncomfortable in her own deceit but holds out until she collapses spectacularly and publicly. Having been exposed to the decisions made by and for teen mothers and intersex babies, as well as to someone who has been seriously depressed, she’s more willing to face her own personal and family concerns. While there’s no doubt many readers will find Agnes’ discontent familiar, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that these secondary characters and their concerns exist primarily for Agnes’ enlightenment. Except for Agnes and her dad, characters seem to be default white. Important issues float through clouds of self-pity. (Fic tion. 9-13)
DINOSAURS CAN’T ROAR
Beason, Layla Illus. by Epelbaum, Mariano Sourcebooks Wonderland (40 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 1, 2020 978-1-4926-9365-9 Dino facts exposed—in rhyme! Beason and Epelbaum introduce readers to a black woman paleontologist and her friend Rex, a cartoon T. Rex, who work to dispel common and historical myths about dinosaurs. As the rhyming lecture unfolds, Rex—and, later, a small herd of dino friends—morphs to mirror the changes described, which reflect advances in scientific thought. Overall, Beason’s concept is amusing and her rhyming quartets (aabb) flow smoothly. She ends the story by letting readers know that our current theories about the thunder lizards are still evolving: “Roaring or not, let’s give dinos three cheers! / They ruled on this planet for millions of years. / We still love them all—Brontosaurus to Rex! / Who knows what we’ll learn about dinosaurs next?” The weak spot
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Brian skillfully balances kid-friendly scenarios with clear but gentle information about safety. consent (for kids!)
in the story may be the visual emendations seen in Rex and the other dinosaurs: As the characters are illustrated in a rounded, friendly, cartoon style, some of the changes (such as Rex’s posture or Triceratops’ crest) depicted are unsatisfyingly subtle. The backmatter, however, includes enough information to help caregivers explain the changes. This correction is somewhat undercut by anatomically inaccurate accompanying line drawings of Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus. Given the subject matter, the book may be a welcome snack at storytime, but it won’t be top of the food chain. Worthy of a growl but not a roar. (Informational picture book. 6-8)
A HIGH FIVE FOR GLENN BURKE
Bildner, Phil Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-0-374-31273-2 A gay black baseball player posthumously inspires a sixth grade white boy who is ready-ish to come out. Baseball enthusiast Silas Wade opens the book by giving a colorful class presentation about Glenn Burke. Burke was a once-well-known major league player who invented the high-five and eventually left the sport after enduring isolation and harassment for being gay. Silas leaves that last part out, but heralding his hero in front of a crowd is the silent start of his own coming out. Further testing the waters, he tells his best friend, Zoey (a champion robot builder), he’s gay and finds that there’s a bouncy kind of freedom that comes from saying who he really is. Inspirational YouTube videos encourage Silas to come out to Coach Webb, an adult who embodies the understanding, guidance, protection, and encouragement that all queer kids should have. But when Silas gets nervous about everything changing and wants to backpedal into the closet, circumstances put him at a crossroads: continue to lie for self-preservation or live out loud like Glenn Burke wasn’t able to. Silas is white, but Zoey has a Spanish surname, and his baseball teammates and one coach are black and brown. (One notable moment includes an explanation from the coaches about why monkey insults are racist.) As the narrative foundation is established, there are overt explanations of settings and characters that aren’t additive, but these superfluous tendencies dissolve about 50 pages in. Insights into Silas’ home life feel bittersweet and real with parents fumbling to do the best they can, but Silas’ struggle is the central story. Beleaguered tolerance strikes out; loud, proud love wins the game. (Fiction. 10-12)
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CHANGING THE EQUATION 50+ US Black Women in STEM
Bolden, Tonya Abrams (208 pp.) $19.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-4197-0734-6
African American women in the past and present have overcome racial and gender barriers to succeed in STEM fields. Bolden begins by providing background and context, explaining that traditionally STEM’s definition did not include medical fields. Bolden, however, does include women from those areas, including Dr. Rebecca Crumpler, who “earned her MD in 1864—four years before black people in America had citizenship.” Dr. Crumpler, like many discussed, combined her scientific knowledge with a commitment to serve the community. In the period after the Civil War that saw the establishment of black colleges, many of the subjects received degrees and taught in those schools. Following Plessy v. Ferguson, some worked in the institutions available to serve blacks. While there are obvious similarities in the stories presented, there were also some unique situations, such as Ida Gray Nelson Rollins’. The first black woman doctor of dental surgery, she came to the field after working for two white dentists who encouraged her. Many more were mentored by other African Americans who recognized their talents. Contemporary biographees include video game developers, computer scientists, and a founder of a nonprofit organization that encourages black girls to learn coding. Bolden’s lively text, accompanied by archival images, underscores the importance of sharing these stories to understand the long tradition of black women striving in these areas. A worthy addition to the effort to tell a more complete and compelling American history. (source notes, bibliography, index) (Nonfiction. 10-14)
CONSENT (FOR KIDS!) Boundaries, Respect, and Being in Charge of You
Brian, Rachel Illus. by the author Little, Brown (64 pp.) $15.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-316-45773-6
A comic-book handbook for young audiences about physical and emotional
boundaries. This small-but-mighty resource cleverly mimics popular early-reader series like Elephant & Piggie or Narwhal and Jelly, with heavy-duty binding and a jaunty cartoon feel. But instead of zany friendships, this text carefully takes children through consent, relationship dynamics, and what to do if you experience, cause, or witness harm. The unnamed characters are |
GLORIA’S BIG PROBLEM
Gloria’s capital-P Problem hounds her with worries and makes her feel small. Gloria Marvel loves to sing, and, in the privacy of her home, she’s expressive and exuberant. But her Problem’s bellow drowns her out if she tries to sing in public. Deas depicts Gloria’s ever present Problem as a large, hairy, green-striped, troll-like monster with polka-dot shorts. No one else can see Gloria’s Problem, and when she tries to talk about it, people either dismiss or ridicule her. She really wants to audition for a play at the community theater, but her Problem howls in her ear so she can’t think. It makes Gloria so mad that she finally yells at it to “STOP!” The Problem immediately shrinks, and, though it’s still present, she auditions with confidence. Brown-skinned Gloria goes to church and lives in a multiethnic neighborhood. Pages are text heavy, but the illustrations, in watercolor shades and heavy, inked lines, encapsulate the scene essentials. The book accurately depicts the way that anxiety often makes some outlandish what-ifs seem very probable and small things seem just as devastating. It also makes the case for Gloria’s family and friends to treat her needs seriously, and it emphasizes that although she sometimes feels “bonkers,” she definitely isn’t. In the collection of books that conceptualize mental conditions, this one respects the afflicted protagonist and politely insists that others should as well. Sensitive and emotionally realistic. (Picture book. 6-9)
A Midwestern farm girl deals with the upheaval of her mother’s death and her sister’s polio diagnosis. Prudence, called Pixie by her older sister, Charlotte, and her grandfather, can’t believe she has to start fifth grade with Miss Meany-Beany for a teacher and without her sister’s protection. Last winter, after Mama died, the girls and their father moved to their grandparents’ farm. Then, in late summer, Charlotte contracted polio, just like President Roosevelt. Charlotte stays nearly a year at a hospital in far-off Indianapolis while Pixie learns to get along without her sister, making friends with a boy whose older brother is fighting in the war, coming to appreciate Miss Beany, and raising an orphan lamb. Pixie is a
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Bright, Sarah Stiles Illus. by Deas, Mike Tilbury House (36 pp.) $17.95 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-88448-739-5
PIXIE PUSHES ON
Bundy, Tamara Nancy Paulsen Books (240 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-525-51516-6
CONGRATULATIONS !
9781624146916 • Ages 8+ • $18.99
clothed stick figures with a variety of hairstyles and skin tones of different shades of gray. Early chapters include “You Rule,” about individual boundaries, and “Giving & Getting Consent,” while later ones focus on community and helping others. Brian skillfully balances kid-friendly scenarios (tickling, the gift of an unsuitable pet) with clear but gentle information about safety: a phone with text messages reading “send pics” and “wanna meet?”; a firm note that if a “picture shows someone under 18 without clothes on, it’s a crime.” The text also acknowledges that not all kids have the power to stand up to the adults in their lives: “It’s great when your family supports your choices. But if they don’t, you have a few options,” such as “reach[ing] out to supportive friends” or “think[ing] about what you’ll do differently as an adult.” The twin emphases on clear and direct communication and that it’s OK to change your mind are important messages effectively delivered. A book to own and refer to, often. (Graphic nonfiction. 6-10)
A Boy, a Protest, and the Photograph that Changed Apartheid by Adrienne Wright
“A tragic but inspiring story about an event in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Nzima’s
powerful photograph—the one that caught the world’s attention—is distinct yet seamlessly integrated in this unique account.” —Booklist, starred review
CLASSROOM GUIDE AVAILABLE! Distributed by Macmillan PageStreetPublishing.com
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pleasant character, and her affection for her sister seems genuine, but the other emotional arcs in the story—Pixie’s blaming herself for her sister’s illness and most of Pixie’s interactions with her family and friends—feel somewhat forced and predictable. Keeping Charlotte offstage for nearly all the book makes her feel more like a plot device than a character—and why does Charlotte write letters to Pixie only when family members can hand-deliver them instead of putting them in the mail? Wartime details are sometimes missing or inaccurate. There’s no mention of gas rationing, for example, or how the war required farmers to grow more crops with fewer laborers and brought general prosperity to those who farmed. Sentimental, somewhat soggy, not very real. (Historical fiction. 8-12)
KING AND THE DRAGONFLIES
Callender, Kacen Scholastic (272 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-338-12933-5
In the wake of his brother’s death, a black boy struggles with grief and coming out. When Kingston’s white friend Sandy came out to him a few months ago, Kingston’s older brother, Khalid, told him to stay away from Sandy because King wouldn’t want people to think he was gay too. And then Khalid died. Their mom wants him to see someone, but King refuses because he knows he has nothing to say except that he is sad. Although his dad says boys don’t cry, King can’t stop the tears from coming every time he thinks of Khalid. But King knows that his brother is not really gone: Khalid “shed his skin like a snake” and is now a dragonfly. Complicating King’s grief over the sudden loss of his brother is the fear that Khalid would not still love him if he knew the truth—King is gay. Every day after school King walks to the bayou searching for Khalid, wondering if he can ever share who he is. When Sandy goes missing, King must come to terms with the true cost of shame. The tale is set in Louisiana, and Callender’s vivid descriptions of the rural area King calls home are magical; readers will feel the heat and the sweat, see the trees and the moss. This quiet novel movingly addresses toxic masculinity, homophobia in the black community—especially related to men—fear, and memory. Elegiac and hopeful. (Fiction. 8-12)
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GIRL MEETS CAT
Cazenove, Christophe & Richez, Hervé Illus. by Ramon, Yrgane Trans. by Johnson, Joe Papercutz (96 pp.) $14.99 | $9.99 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-5458-0427-8 978-1-5458-0428-5 paper Series: Cat & Cat, 1 Move over Garfield, there is a sassy new orange kitty in town. In this abundantly cute French import, Cat, a young girl with gravity-defying salmon-hued pigtails, lives with her single father and their mischievous, apricot-striped cat, Sushi. As seen in a series of rib-tickling, mostly one-page vignettes, Sushi engages in all the lovably predictable kitty behavior feline aficionados would expect: scratching up the walls and curtains and commandeering the best seat in the house. In one memorable episode, Cat tries unsuccessfully to keep Sushi from clawing the carpet and consequently angering her father, so she conspicuously rearranges the room to hide the offending spots, leaving the living room in comic disarray. Each graphic-format page is styled with small, mostly borderless bubblelike panels and relies on a barrage of episodic sight gags with a high-energy palette of sugary pinks, cheerful blues, and citrusy greens. Imagination runs unfettered, from both Cat’s and Sushi’s perspectives. Sushi is an indoor cat (with only the occasional jaunt through his cat door), so most of his adventures are rather insular and almost exclusively involve only Cat and her father, who are both white. The few additional humans depicted are mostly white and usually slender. Cat fans should find plenty to purr about. (Graphic fiction. 7-10)
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EFRÉN DIVIDED
Cisneros, Ernesto Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 31, 2020 978-0-06-288168-7 A young boy must become an adult overnight when his mother is deported. Twelve-year-old Efrén Nava’s world is turned upside down the day he comes back from school and his mother is nowhere to be found. His neighbor Doña Chana tells him that an ICE raid was conducted at the supermarket and that Amá was picked up and deported to Mexico. When his father takes on a second job to make ends meet, Efrén becomes the primary caregiver for Mía and Max, his younger twin siblings. Unsure of how much information about his mother’s fate to give them, Efrén tries his best to make Amá’s miracles his own as he struggles to keep his siblings safe, feed them, and take them to school while still dealing with his own schooling. Taking care of Max, whose oxygen supply was cut off during childbirth and has |
A captivating novel. leaving lymon
learning disabilities, and figuring out which friends and adults to trust with his secret add layers of responsibility Efrén feels unprepared to deal with. Debut author Cisneros paints a vivid and palpable #ownvoices picture of the lost childhoods as children and parents are separated due to immigration issues. But even as Efrén’s world seems to be crashing around him, Cisneros celebrates the kindness of the Mexican American community and its richness of food, culture, and resilient spirit. Honest and tender: a must-read. (Fiction. 8-13)
LEAP FROG
Clarke, Jane Illus. by Teckentrup, Britta Nosy Crow/Candlewick (24 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-1-5362-1205-1
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There are lots of noises and many other animals that make Felix the tree frog worry. Young readers could start to fear for his safety, but the book’s narrator constantly works to reassure and engage them. “Plip! Plop! Splash! What’s that noise? Felix looks worried, doesn’t he? Let’s turn the page and show him there’s nothing to be scared of.” It turns out that a “friendly turtle” has made the noise. Other animals, such as a “shiny beetle,” “playful monkeys,” and a “slithery snake,” cross the little frog’s path, and there are other actions for readers to take: “Clap your hands and shout, ‘Shoo, slithery snake’ ”; counting the branches of a tall tree (the book must be turned 90 degrees to view it) that Felix climbs to get away from a “busy woodpecker.” When something else comes up that tall tree, the narrator exhorts readers to say “Leap, frog!” But Felix is a little more aware of his own environment than readers are, and all’s well. The vibrant, full-bleed illustrations are reminiscent of Eric Carle’s collaged flora and fauna. While the text reads a little bumpily, it is engaging and the pictures should work well with a group. Some children may want to know if any of the other animals really could be harmful to the little tree frog. This book does not provide the answers. A cautionary tale on a minor note. (Picture book. 4-6)
Ma. Lymon’s flighty teen mother, Daisy, abandoned him long ago when she moved to Chicago and started another family; Grady, Lymon’s father, is incarcerated at Parchman Farm. Like Langston’s, Lymon’s distinctive rural Southern voice narrates both painful and poignant moments in a matter-of-fact way that leaves readers wondering how he can bear so much without breaking. Though likable and worthy of compassion, Lymon seems to attract negativity. When Grandpops dies and Ma sickens from diabetes, the relatives can no longer afford Lymon’s upkeep. They send him to Chicago to live with Daisy, her two sons, and her husband, Robert, who beats Lymon regularly. When Lymon steals money from Robert, the police send him to a boys’ home—where, finally, he’s allowed to come into his own. Cline-Ransome’s masterful storytelling will keep readers enthralled while teaching them about historical racial biases in the penal system, the plight of children during the Great Migration, the discrimination faced by Northern blacks, and more. A captivating novel about a boy whose story will leave readers wanting more. (Historical fiction. 8-12)
LEAVING LYMON
Cline-Ransome, Lesa Holiday House (208 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-8234-4442-7 Lymon, who has music in his bones, has too many strikes against him to make growing into young adulthood easy. Readers met Lymon as an angry bully in Cline-Ransome’s Finding Langston (2018). At the outset of this companion, the African American boy lives in 1940s Mississippi with his loving, guitar-playing grandpops and ever disgruntled grandmother, called |
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Colbert’s middle-grade debut deserves a standing ovation. the only black girls in town
ZATANNA AND THE HOUSE OF SECRETS
Cody, Matthew Illus. by Yoshitani, Yoshi DC (152 pp.) $9.99 paper | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-4012-9070-2
The magical DC hero makes her middle-grade graphic-novel debut. Zatanna and her magician father, a widower, live quiet lives. The white preteen balances friendships and homework like any other typical middle schooler while missing her departed mother. But one night Zatanna sneaks out to a dance and returns to find a pair of blue-skinned strangers standing in her own home, a home that has transformed into the House of Secrets. After one of the home invaders identifies herself as the Witch Queen and disappears with Zatanna’s father, Zatanna searches for him and discovers the true nature of her family’s past. Mystery and magic fill the graphic novel’s frames as Zatanna’s large, expressive eyes soak in the bizarre and fantastic flourishes. Readers with minimal knowledge of Zatanna’s role in DC Comics lore will have no trouble here: The story is easily appreciated by newbies and familiars alike. The bold, unoutlined artwork uses a purple, orange, and blue palette that helps the pictures stand apart from the four-color comic palette used by similar middle-grade DC Comics titles. The plot moves forward at an almost alarming speed, twisting and turning and enticing readers with a page-turning emotional mystery. A lively turn for a lesser-known comic-book hero. (Graphic fantasy. 9-12)
sometimes-painful dynamics of middle school friendships, bullies, and racism, their research into the journals that leads the girls to a discovery of family and racial dynamics transcends time. Colbert’s middle-grade debut, centering black girls who represent a range of experiences, deserves a standing ovation. Alberta’s narration is perceptive and accessible as she navigates race in America in the past and present. A heartfelt tale with classy, indelible characters. (Fiction. 10-12)
THE ONLY BLACK GIRLS IN TOWN
Colbert, Brandy Little, Brown (368 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-0-316-45638-8
A new neighbor brings change and mystery to rising seventh grader Alberta Freeman-Price. Despite the fact that Alberta and her dads are some of the small number of black people in Ewing Beach, California, Alberta leads a pretty chill life, surfing and eating ice cream with her best friend, Laramie. Then the bed-and-breakfast across the street is taken over by new neighbors from New York, a black single mom and her goth daughter, Edie. The fact that Edie is black fuses the bond between the two. When Edie discovers mysterious journals in the attic of the B&B, she shares them with Alberta. The author of the journals was Constance, a young woman who apparently worked as a nanny in the building during the 1950s. The girls’ obsession with the journals combines with their emerging friendship to cause Alberta to feel torn between Laramie, who is white, and Edie. While Alberta and Edie juggle the awkward, 162
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JELLY
Cotterill, Jo Little Bee (272 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-4998-1006-6
Eleven-year-old Angelica hides her embarrassment about her size until a caring adult encourages her to express her thoughts and emotions freely. Angelica, called Jelly, is the class clown. Known for doing impressions, she laughs off the occasional unkind remark from a classmate, then writes brief poems in her journal detailing the pain she feels. Although she talks about typical adolescent concerns with best friends Kayma and Sanvi, they, like her mother, are unaware of her inner turmoil. After a breakup with her current boyfriend, Jelly’s mom connects with Lennon, a guitar-playing songwriter. It’s Lennon who winds up being Jelly’s (somewhat unlikely) confidant and the one who gives her the confidence to share her innermost thoughts with family and friends. British author Cotterill packs a lot into this import. Jelly’s grandfather is a bully with old-fashioned (racist and misogynistic) values, and her aunt is coping with depression. Although it’s delicately handled, Jelly is well aware of her single mom’s sexual activity, a realistic touch that some may find disquieting. Jelly’s first-person narration is appropriately self-centered but also results in most characters appearing somewhat one-dimensional. Some Briticisms have been altered but others remain, creating a slightly off-kilter tone at times. Jelly, her family, and Lennon are white; Kayma and Sanvi are black and Indian, respectively; other racial and/or ethnic diversity is implied by some names but not explicitly acknowledged. A sympathetic portrayal of adolescent angst with a feelgood—if not entirely convincing—resolution. (Fiction. 10-13)
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LEGEND OF THE FIRE PRINCESS
D.G., Gigi Illus. by Ganucheau, Paulina with de la Cruz, Eva Scholastic (128 pp.) $24.99 | $12.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-338-62716-9 978-1-338-53895-3 paper Series: She-Ra, 1
FARAH ROCKS FIFTH GRADE
Darraj, Susan Muaddi Illus. by Mannaa, Ruaida Stone Arch Books (144 pp.) $15.95 | Jan. 1, 2020 978-1-4965-8339-0
Farah is trying to navigate fifth grade and protect and care for her kindergartner brother, all without worrying her parents. Farah lives in Harbortown with her parents and younger brother, Samir, who has special needs. Her friends call her Farah Rocks since her Arabic last name, Hajjar, means “rocks.” Farah and her best friend, Allie Liu, are excited to apply to the Magnet Academy for middle school. Farah must keep her grades up and write an essay for the application, but she has a lot on her mind. Compounding her general anxiety about leaving Samir if she gets into the new school is a bullying new white student, whose cruelty to her little brother doesn’t seem to bother Allie enough. |
EQUALITY’S CALL The Story of Voting Rights in America
Diesen, Deborah Illus. by Mora, Magdalena Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-5344-3958-0
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A graphic-novel incarnation of Netflix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power reboot. While the story assumes familiarity with the source material—it fits into the show’s timeline some unspecified time after the first season—dialogue aided by visual coding (color palettes and characters’ body language) allows total newcomers to quickly infer that Hordak’s bad guys are battling the heroic Rebellion for the fate of Etheria. Both groups are headed to the ruined and abandoned city of Candila in search of a magical runestone, the Spirit Ember. The heroes, rallied by enthusiastic Glimmer, hope that recovering it first will enable Adora to use She-Ra’s magic to heal the corrupted magic—and at the least, they must stop the Horde from gaining its power. The art style matches the show’s animation and displays the characters as diverse both racially and in terms of body shape. Additionally, the visuals are mapped out through the various beats of the lengthy action, emulating the pacing of a typical episode. While there is no overt romance, there’s plenty of subtext (especially in Scorpia’s desire to give Catra a pleasant picnic outing) for those who want it. What will really satisfy She-Ra fans is the space given to Adora and Catra’s emotional conflict and broken friendship. Captures all of the charms of the animated show. (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)
When she tries to tell the adults at school, no one takes her seriously. Readers will ache as, acting out of care and love, Farah takes a risk when she attempts to take on the bully without the help of her parents. Darraj writes a strong character who must take on a lot as a fifth grader. Intimate cultural details—Farah’s dad says “bancakes” because “in Arabic, the letters p and v don’t exist”; the family has the surname Hajjar due to their Jerusalem stonecutter origins—add to the authenticity of the portrayal of the family’s Palestinian ethnicity. Allie and her family are Chinese. A hummus recipe and glossaries of Arabic and select English words are included at the end. Readers will be eager for this empathetic protagonist’s next appearance. (Fiction. 8-12)
A poetic narrative charts the history of voting rights in the United States from the founders to the present, emphasizing that “A right isn’t right / Till it’s granted to all.” A black woman at a blackboard instructs a class (and readers) in an inclusive “we” as the voices of democracy swell to affirm the expansion of voting rights. Diesen (in a dramatic departure from her Pout-Pout Fish series) and Mora effectively employ the drama of the turning page as, on each spread when the refrain is resounded, the number of people marching grows from two black women and a black man to a host of the historically disenfranchised. The final refrain is a crescendo, complemented by a double-page spread depicting a crowded, diverse line of marchers. As they march from left to right into the page turn, readers are reminded that “The journey’s not over / The work hasn’t ended / Democracy’s dream / Must be constantly tended.” The pages act as a timeline, and several illustrations depict historical figures, including Sojourner Truth, Abraham Lincoln, and John Lewis. (A backmatter key helps identify the many activists represented.) As an introduction, the volume focuses on the progress and not the obstacles, but caregivers can supplement the history, using the extensive backmatter addressed to them: information on related constitutional amendments and relevant legislation and a two-page list of voting rights activists. A solid work of visual storytelling. (Informational picture book. 5-9)
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STELLA DÍAZ NEVER GIVES UP
Dominguez, Angela Illus. by the author Roaring Brook (208 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-250-22911-3 Series: Stella Díaz, 2
A family trip to Mexico inspires a girl to save the oceans. Stella is going to have a great summer. Her mother is taking her and her older brother to Mexico to visit family, and when they return to Chicago, she’ll be attending day camp at the Shedd Aquarium! But she soon finds out the ocean isn’t all fun and games. It’s filled with plastic and trash. With her friends from day camp, Stella starts a club and pledges to reduce her own impact on the ocean and to encourage others to do the same, passing along what she learns to readers as she goes. Stella’s narrative voice is earnest and authentic to her age; the text is not detailed enough to make for a good classroom complement to an environmental or marine unit or to satisfy avid ocean fans, but it may inspire readers to start to be interested in marine ecology and environmental activism. Dominguez explains her choice to italicize Spanish words in an author’s note as an aid for children unfamiliar with the language. Readers who are comfortable with Spanish already may feel that words seem sprinkled in just to teach vocabulary rather than being a true, natural use of Spanish for a heritage speaker of the language. This is Stella’s second outing, but readers don’t need familiarity with Stella Díaz Has Something To Say (2018) to fall in love with her. The protagonist will endear readers to her; she may also create some environmental converts. (Fiction. 6-10)
THAT’S LIFE!
Dyckman, Ame Illus. by Doerrfeld, Cori Little, Brown (40 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 31, 2020 978-0-316-48548-7 Life—personified as a wild, furry gray creature—brings many surprises in this picture book about loving your Life no matter what. A small, brown-skinned child sits at a table writing on a pad of paper when there is a knock at the door. Who could it be? “Oh, that’s Life! Life happens when you least expect it.” The child opens the crate, labeled LIFE, that sits on the doorstep. A furry gray creature jumps out, then drags the child on all sorts of adventures. Every conceivable saying about life is worked into the text (“Life’s a journey”; “Life is full of surprises”). Life changes form throughout, becoming a means of transportation (a boat, a camel, a hot air balloon), a suitcase, and a bull with pointy horns (“Life can be tough. And sometimes…Life hurts!”) Doerrfeld’s visual interpretations of Dyckman’s text are humorous, kid-friendly, and clever, featuring soft-lined vignettes of 164
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busy, active scenes on white space. The silly concreteness of the illustrations raises the intentionally cliché-packed text to a level of fun that will satisfy readers of all ages. Young readers will enjoy watching Life’s ups and downs, and they just might internalize a true lesson or two about their own lives. Both a lighthearted reflection and an entertaining read. (Picture book. 3-8)
TAYLOR BEFORE AND AFTER
Englund, Jennie Imprint (320 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-250-17187-0
A Hawaii teen charts life before and after the catastrophe that’s reshaped her world. Three years ago, Taylor’s family (presumed white) left Oregon for Oahu, where her mom’s clinical depression and the friction between her dad and brother, Eli, a high school senior, have worsened. Eli skips school to hang with his surfing brahs and girlfriend, Stacy, partying, drinking, and driving to the North Shore to surf. Eighth grader Taylor escapes into social networking, fantasizing about a career in fashion. Thrillingly befriended by wealthy, stylish Brielle, whose manipulative ways are patterned on reality TV, Taylor allows Brielle to coax her into abandoning one friend and betraying another. Taylor’s responses to classroom writing prompts—dating both before and after the catastrophe—comprise the text. Like Brielle, Taylor’s turned winner-take-all competition into her life template. Triumphant outcomes are transmitted and amplified through social media, but so are humiliation and tragedy. Publicly scrutinized by indifferent strangers, they prove deeply isolating. If the shape of the plot’s defining events at first seems withheld capriciously, the technique pays off in a powerful story charting the evolution of a life-shattering night and its aftermath. Oahu’s dizzying contradictions, from shabby to glorious, and cultural events such as Bon dances are carefully rendered and, like the Hawaiian orthography, largely accurate. Though character names and actions convey Hawaii’s uniquely mixed, multiethnic population, physical descriptions are disappointingly few. A resonant look at coming-of-age in a socially networked world. (Fiction. 11-15)
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Readers will be invested. we could be heroes
WE COULD BE HEROES
Finnegan, Margaret Atheneum (256 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-5344-4525-3
Two classmates set off to save the dog next door. Hank Hudson has his strategies for keeping the a’a at bay. A’a, a Hawaiian word he happened upon that describes a type of lava flow, perfectly captures the “worst feeling ever” and “the thing he didn’t like about having autism.” The giant Holocaust tome that his class is reading aloud is just so sad, so terribly sad, that it ignites in Hank the urge to take a bold action. The scheme (which involves literal ignition) doesn’t quite go as planned, but it does catch the attention of his classmate Maisie Huang. Maisie is adamant about freeing Booler, a pit bull with “a lolling, happy tongue,” from a life tethered to a tree. Hesitant but empathetic, Hank embarks
on a series of misfires and misadventures with Maisie to permanently untether Booler, including a made-up school project to get close to Frank Jorgensen, Booler’s human companion and Maisie’s elderly neighbor. With each attempt, the pair realizes not all is what it seems and matters are much more complicated than they thought. Debut author Finnegan explores the many facets of the characters’ situations and mindsets, including those of the secondary cast of older, mostly presumed white characters. In addition to Hank’s autism, Maisie, who is Asian, takes medicine for a condition disclosed later on in the book, and an aging body affects Frank. At times, the tension simmers, but readers will be invested in the resolution of the Booler story and the community’s human residents’ growing understanding of themselves and one another. A coming-of-age story of friendships young, old, and canine. (Fiction. 8-12)
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Espinosa fills the retro illustrations with funny details. no more naps!
HOW TO BE A PIRATE
markers suppresses a feeling of robust diversity. Character development is weak, so while readers will root for Aster to find Poppy, they won’t have a sense of who she really is. However, the depiction of her anxiety and panic attacks both feels authentic and is well written. While the twists are interesting, the information reveal is slow in coming, so they pack less punch than they might. An underwater adventure bogged down by uneven pacing. (Thriller. 10-13)
Fitzgerald, Isaac Illus. by Barrager, Brigette Bloomsbury (40 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-68119-778-4
Feminism for the piratically inclined. Fitzgerald and Barrager give the old chestnut of a girl who’s turned away from a boys’ fort due to her gender alone a piratical twist. After CeCe’s initial disappointment, she vows to get advice from the only true pirate she knows: her grandfather. Game to give his granddaughter a 101 in how to be the best possible scurvy dog, he uses each of his tattoos to extol a virtue such as bravery or speed. As in Alison McGhee and Eliza Wheeler’s Tell Me a Tattoo Story (2016), body art becomes the inspiration for any number of adventures and aphorisms, ending with the most important lesson: love. Readers may note that few of these flights of fancy have much to do with pirates specifically. Nevertheless, an emboldened CeCe returns to the boys and successfully owns her piratude. The ending is more than a bit optimistic, as CeCe gains admission simply by redeclaring intentions with a smidgen more chutzpah. Would that misogyny always rolled over so easily. Happily, Fitzgerald’s tale is accompanied by the rollicking vibrancy of Barrager’s art. Reality pales (literally) in the face of the imagination, with a clever tonal shift to a brighter, more saturated palette indicating CeCe’s determination. CeCe and Grandpa both present white; the boys who initially snub her display a range of skin colors and hair textures. While thar be precious little piracy visible in this, its feminist themes are strong. (Picture book. 3-6)
THE SECRET DEEP
Galvin, Lindsay Chicken House/Scholastic (352 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-338-56739-7 Aster wakes on a deserted beach, alone and confused, just days after she and her sister, Poppy, move to New Zealand to live with their mysterious aunt. Aster, 13, and Poppy, 11, are officially orphans. Their dad died in a car accident when Poppy was a baby, and their mom recently lost her battle with cancer. Having no other relatives, the girls travel to New Zealand to live with their aunt, Iona, whom they haven’t seen in years because she works all over the world as a hotshot research oncologist. Iona moves them to Wildhaven, a remote ecovillage where she is doing fieldwork. Wildhaven is a research site filled with international students, secrets, and doctors at odds with one another. Following a catastrophic boat trip, Aster wakes up alone on a beach, bewildered. She works to uncover the mysteries of Wildhaven and Aunt Iona and to find Poppy. The cast is a range of races and skin colors—including Aster and Poppy, who are white, Korean, and black—but an absence of cultural 166
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NO MORE NAPS! A Story for When You’re Wide-Awake and Definitely Not Tired Grabenstein, Chris Illus. by Espinosa, Leo Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-5247-7128-7 978-1-5247-7129-4 PLB
Can a book about napping be a lively story? Why, yes. Meet Annalise. Middle-grade novelist Grabenstein, perhaps best known for the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library series, turns to picture books in this story of a spunky toddler who prefers shrieking to napping. Her weary father pushes her through town in a stroller, hoping it will lull her to sleep. The two discover that the townspeople, one by one, are more than happy to “take” Annalise’s nap in her stead. Everyone stops in their tracks to get some shut-eye while Annalise is “the only one in the whole wide sleepy world who would not fall asleep.” When she’s finally ready to, she can’t; “all the naps had already been taken!” Cue more shouting: “I WANT TO TAKE A NAP!” Grabenstein writes chummily, often directly addressing readers (“Do you know anyone like that?”). The book’s display type plays with font size and color to accentuate Annalise’s wails, and Espinosa fills the retro illustrations, reminiscent of mid-20th-century classics, with funny details, including snoozing pigeons, fish, and ducks. Preschoolers will find the defiant protagonist’s protests a little bit thrilling and 100% funny. Delightfully, the front endpapers feature a large, red “WAAAAAH!”; the closing ones, a small, blue “Shhhh” after the girl has finally, mercifully closed her eyes. Annalise and her family have pale skin; Espinosa depicts a diverse group of townspeople who will gladly take her naps for her. Screamingly fun. (Picture book. 3-8)
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LILAH TOV GOOD NIGHT
Gundersheimer, Ben Illus. by Naggan, Noar Lee Nancy Paulsen Books (32 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-5247-4066-5
WINK
Harrell, Rob Illus. by the author Dial (300 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 31, 2020 978-1-9848-1514-9 A rare form of cancer takes its toll in this novel based on the author’s experience. Seventh grader Ross Maloy wants nothing more than to be an average middle schooler, hanging out with his best friends, Abby and Isaac, avoiding the school bully, and crushing on the popular girl. There’s just one thing keeping Ross from being completely ordinary: the rare form of eye cancer that’s reduced him to the kid with cancer at school. Ross’ eye is closed in a permanent wink, and he constantly wears a cowboy hat to protect his eyes. The doctors are hopeful that Ross will be cancer free after treatment, but his vision will be impaired, and the treatments cause him to lose his hair and require the application of a particularly goopy ointment. This isn’t a cancer book built upon a foundation of prayer, hope, and life lessons. The driving force here |
LITTLE LEGENDS Exceptional Men in Black History
Harrison, Vashti with Johnson, Kwesi Illus. by Harrison, Vashti Little, Brown (96 pp.) $17.99 | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-316-47514-3
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As the sun sets and the moon rises, an unnamed young child says good night to everything in the natural landscape. In the simple, brief, descriptive text the child calls out, “Lilah Tov,” to hens and roosters, bears and bats, beaches and waves, clouds and stars, fish and birds, mountains and streams. There is no other narrative, at least not in words. Naggan’s lush, detailed, soft-edged landscapes provide another, deeper, and more nuanced level to the proceedings. “Lilah tov” means “good night” in Hebrew, and there is a menorah on the windowsill, indicating that this family is Jewish. By dress and household appearance, they seem to be living in the late 19th or early 20th century. After a simple meal, they pack their belongings and leave their small rural home. The protagonist is saying good night to the creatures and places spotted on what readers will see as a lengthy journey. Beneath a full moon a man rows them across a body of water, and the journey continues on the other side. At the end of their travels there is a new home awaiting them. They travel quietly and surreptitiously, but there is no explanation within the text of where they are and why they leave. Are they refugees escaping something dreadful? Each young reader will interpret the work differently depending on individual understanding and knowledge of history, or perhaps with a wise adult to help. Haunting and beautiful. (Picture book. 6-10)
is Ross’ justifiable anger. Ross is angry at the anonymous kids making hurtful memes about him and at Isaac for abandoning him when he needs a friend most. Ross funnels his feelings into learning how to play guitar, hoping to make a splash at the school’s talent show. The author balances this anger element well against the typical middle-grade tropes. Misunderstood bully? Check. Well-meaning parents? Check. While some of these elements will feel familiar, the novel’s emotional climax remains effectively earned. Characters are paper-white in Harrell’s accompanying cartoons. Not your typical kid-with-cancer book. (Fiction. 9-12)
Harrison celebrated black women of note in Little Leaders (2017); here, with an assist from Johnson, she presents a companion volume of profiles from black history, this one focusing on black men. This is a book many have been waiting for, and it does not disappoint. The winning formula that endeared Little Leaders to readers is employed again here: One page of biographical text faces a full-page portrait of a young-looking figure with a serenely smiling brown face with closed eyes. The figure’s clothing and the background setting design represent his field of contribution. The text begins with each leader’s early life and is held together with a thread showing how the leader found an interest, learned and improved, worked hard, and made his work matter in the lives of others. Ordered chronologically, the names include well-known figures such as Frederick Douglass, Alvin Ailey, and Prince, but there are also many lesser-known names, such as historian Arturo Schomburg and astronaut Leland Melvin. Included also are international legends, such as Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène and British Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye. Whereas hairstyling details created an illusion of visual variation in Little Leaders, here the uniformity of the portraits’ faces is more pronounced—yet this allows readers to see that a black boy can play at and ultimately grow into any one of these roles. A “Draw Your Own Little Legend” spread at the end invites readers into Harrison’s creative process. Inspiring and healing as it educates, this volume belongs beside its companion on every bookshelf. (further bios, further reading, sources) (Collective biography. 7-12)
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EARTH HOUR A Lights-Out Event for Our Planet
the story, though, is not in its modest action but in Herrmann’s lovely lyrical language, which ambles along generously (this is not a concise narrative), and, most especially, in Wilkoń’s viscerally empathetic illustrations. His use of warm, rich colors and amorphous shapes brings a sense of life and atmosphere to the whole even as they evoke in the renderings of the cubs a childlike wonder and innocence. While the book’s design is uneventful—text on white paper on verso, full-page illustrations on recto—and the ending lacks pizazz, there is an overall endearingly soothing and comfortable quality to this tale. A quiet interlude of innocence. (Picture book. 3- 7)
Heffernan, Nanette Illus. by Luu, Bao Charlesbridge (32 pp.) $16.99 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-58089-942-0
Once a year, all over the world, people celebrate the electricity we use in our daily lives by turning off lights in homes, offices, and famous monuments for a single Earth Hour. In time for next spring’s Earth Hour, March 29, 2020, this admirable debut offers both the what and the why. Luu’s cheery illustrations emphasize the worldwide nature of this event. The book begins with vignettes: examples of electricity use, including cozy home scenes, city streets, and the lit-up Earth as seen from space. Next, full pages and double-page spreads show illuminated buildings, cities, and internationally recognizable monuments at night. The scenes then move to the interior: bathtime, family games, and lights out. The international scenes reappear, without artificial light. The next to the last spread shows a single sleeping child (echoing Clement Hurd’s “great, green room”); the final one shows people of many colors and ethnicities (one using a wheelchair) carrying candles and lanterns on a starlit night: “Alone we are one… // …but together we have power. / United, we are Earth Hour.” Heffernan’s simple narrative runs across the pages, tying the story together. Her author’s note recalls her surprise at seeing San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge go suddenly dark in honor of Earth Hour a few years ago, and a short final note connects energy use to global climate change. A timely invitation to participate in raising energy consciousness. (Picture book. 3- 7)
THE LITTLE WOLVES
Herrmann, Svenja Illus. by Wilkoń, Józef Trans. by Wilson, David Henry NorthSouth (40 pp.) $17.95 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-0-7358-4397-4 Little wolf cubs venture into the forest while their mother is away. First published in German in Switzerland and now translated into English, this innocent story follows the classic homeaway-home formula. Four small wolf cubs venture outside of their cave one night while their mother is away hunting. (This atypical family unit—wolf packs are usually father, mother, older siblings, and youngest littermates—is not explained.) The cubs are entranced by the forest smells and sounds and venture further, traveling throughout the following day and into the next night. Small activities occur: They see their reflections in a pond, startling them, hear an owl, which enchants them, and, in an odd segue, run away from a sleeping hunter. The magic of 168
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CLARA THE RHINO
Hirt, Katrin Illus. by Fuchs, Laura Trans. by Wilson, David Henry NorthSouth (48 pp.) $18.95 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-0-7358-4395-0 A historical picture book about a rhino who traveled the world in the 18th century. Hirt opens by telling readers that this baby rhino’s story begins around 300 years ago, when there were no planes or buses and most people journeyed only as far as their neighboring town. The baby rhino—later named Clara—lives with her mother in India. When hunters kill her mother (neither hunters nor act is depicted), they give the orphaned rhino to a white merchant and his family, who raise her as a pet until she gets too big for their house. The merchant then gives Clara away to Capt. Douwe van der Meer, a young white mariner, and he sails to Europe with the rhino, correctly predicting that she would be a sensation there. Fame follows Clara as she is exhibited to several people, including kings and queens across Europe. Based on historical accounts of a real rhino’s travels across the world, Hirt’s steady narrative and Fuchs’ bright and detailed illustrations make this tale a cheerful one; indeed, the book puts a downright positive spin on Clara’s tale, as she seems to be smiling during her travels, thus masking any trauma that might have been faced by the real rhino. Moreover, although the tale begins in India, almost all the depicted characters are European and white. An interesting-enough story, albeit from a very human, colonialist perspective. (Picture book. 4-8)
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A WHALE OF A MISTAKE
Hobai, Ioana Illus. by the author Page Street (32 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-1-62414-927-6
A small child wrestles with the mental aftermath of a mistake. The mistake (never depicted) starts off small, but it feeds on worry, and soon it has ballooned into a gigantic mistake in the |
Lovely illustrations conjure up a beautiful and accurate Arctic landscape. what’s that noise?
form of a blue whale. The mistake becomes a constant and persistent companion despite all efforts to escape it. The journey the mistake takes the child on is rough, but eventually a look up into the night sky reveals that even the stars aren’t perfect. Some are falling. Knowing the universe is full of mistakes provides perspective, allowing the child’s own mistake to shrink to a manageable size until it swims off with a wave of its tail. Through this metaphor, the text describes the internal distress experienced when looking back on a mistake. Both the narrator and the protagonist—neither named—seem to speak directly to readers, encouraging self-reflection. The absence of pronouns further allows readers to insert themselves into the shoes of the fuzzy-haired protagonist, who sports a simple blue tunic. Awash in sunset pink, blue, and purple, the watery illustrations highlight the movement of the world around protagonist and mistake. Occasionally, the painted colors are muddy and the compositions rather trite; however, the brevity of the text keeps the story moving forward. A simple story to open a discussion on how to learn from and process mistakes, be they minnow- or whalesized. (Picture book. 3- 7)
WHAT’S THAT NOISE?
Howarth, Naomi Illus. by the author Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-1-5362-1352-2
A rumbling noise puzzles animals living in the Arctic in this picture book. Magnus, a ringed seal, awakens from a “very deep sleep” to hear a “long, low rumbling sound.” After ruling out the wind, the sea, and an iceberg, he goes to find a friend with better ears to ask. Hare, with its long ears, doesn’t know either, so they ask Owl, and then Fox, Polar Bear, and Walrus. In this way, readers are introduced to some of the animals living in the Arctic. Author/illustrator Howarth’s narrative is lighthearted and mildly humorous, but it is also predictable and relies heavily on the rule of three, making it textually most suitable for readers on the younger end of the range. Lovely illustrations combine pastel colors and textured mottling with plenty of white space
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Characters both human and non- are real, multidimensional, and sympathetic. the girl who lost her shadow
to conjure up a beautiful and accurate Arctic landscape in all its pristine glory (with the exception of the puzzling inclusion of two small sea horses in the double-page illustration of the underwater Arctic ocean). The cover and one inside illustration, showing pinky-red shrimp dangling comically from the seal’s jaws, may also give pause to readers who don’t find eating meat particularly humorous. Backmatter relays more information about each animal, including a dim prognosis due to the melting ice of our changing climate. This late introduction of doom in a lightly humorous story comes without preparation and leaves a dampening feeling. This lighthearted tale features some less-than-wellintegrated elements. (Picture book. 4-8)
BRAVE. BLACK. FIRST. 50+ African American Women Who Changed the World
Hudson, Cheryl Willis Illus. by Robinson, Erin K. Crown (128 pp.) $18.99 | $21.99 PLB | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-525-64581-8 978-0-525-64582-5 PLB
Accompanied by Robinson’s brightly textured illustrations, Hudson’s text highlights trailblazing African American women from the 1700s until the present day. Including women from all industries and spheres of activity—theater to mathematics to tennis—everyone here has made her mark. The illustrations evoke a reverence for these women and capture iconic poses, such as Zora Neale Hurston in her fur-trimmed coat and feathered cap and Angela Davis with a raised fist. Each one-page biography includes a famous, inspiring quote from its subject as epigraph. “Women know how to get things done,” for instance, introduces civil rights activist Dorothy Irene Height. Alongside familiar figures are names likely new to many readers: sculptor Augusta Fells Savage, fashion designer Ann Lowe, and Union Army nurse Susie King Taylor, for instance. Although the book does include a few members of the lesbian, bisexual, and queer community, such as Sheryl Swoopes, there is an absence of transgender women, many of whom have achieved historic firsts in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is disappointing to see the omission of such pivotal figures, who have often stood side by side with cisgender black women to advance the rights and freedoms of African Americans. The backmatter provides additional facts about each woman along with information on artifacts at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and at the National Portrait Gallery. A beautifully illustrated testament to the continuing excellence and legacy of African American women. (Collec tive biography. 8-12)
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THE GIRL WHO LOST HER SHADOW
Ilett, Emily Kelpies (224 pp.) $9.95 paper | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-78250-607-2
A girl struggles to find her sister’s lost shadow, and her own, in this debut. On the morning of Gail’s 12th birthday, her shadow leaves her, rippling away outdoors. Gail isn’t particularly concerned—between her father’s leaving two months ago and her older sister’s subsequent depression, she has bigger things to worry about. But when Kay’s shadow disappears, too, Gail sets out in pursuit of it over the remote, forsaken end of the Scottish island where she lives. Gail’s afraid to swim without Kay— more than that, she can’t be herself with Kay. And Kay can’t be herself without her shadow. Following the shadow into a vast mazelike cave, she meets chatterbox Mhirran and menacing Francis, a pair of siblings also hunting shadows; a gang of mussel poachers; a wildcat and whales; and the living embodiments of storms. Fluent and sophisticated storytelling combines with precise sensory detail and a tangible sense of place; characters both human and non- are real, multidimensional, and sympathetic. Even the shadows of petrels and the rocks themselves come to life. Ilett blends magic and reality so deftly that one can be mistaken for the other; both have a sharp, briny tang of the sea. Gail’s ultimate triumph feels real and hard-earned. Gail, Kay, and their mum have brown skin; Gaelic-speaking Mhirran and Francis are pale. Fantastic in both senses of the word. (Fantasy. 8-14)
THE ELEPHANT’S UMBRELLA
Jaffari, Laleh Illus. by Khodai, Ali Trans. by Rassi, Azita Tiny Owl (24 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-910328-54-5
A quiet tale of selfishness and generosity. The plot begins simply: The wind carries off Elephant’s beloved umbrella and gives it to Leopard. Leopard tells the umbrella that he’ll take her hunting and “sit under you and eat [his prey].” Umbrella, revealed to be sentient, doesn’t like this proposition and asks the wind to take her somewhere else. When the wind takes Umbrella to Bear, he tells her that he’ll take all the honey from the bees and “sit under you and eat all the honey by myself.” “No, no,” Umbrella responds and begins to look everywhere for Elephant, who had used her to shield others—mice and rabbits—from the rain. The wind returns Umbrella to Elephant, and all is well. Khodai contributes striking, collage-effect illustrations that render the umbrella as a vivid fuchsia with yellow, green, and blue circles on it. The animals are simply formed and childlike, sporting smiles and expressively beady eyes. Some details |
may perplex readers. An intermittently appearing scribbly black mass may have readers struggling to decode its purpose. The text has little momentum, moreover, and the denouement comes far too quickly and without any real conflict beyond Umbrella’s distress at her potential uses. A clear moral caps an enigmatic and unsatisfying story. (Picture book. 3-6)
THE BODY UNDER THE PIANO
Jocelyn, Marthe Illus. by Follath, Isabelle Tundra (336 pp.) $15.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-73526-546-2 Series: Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen, 1
A GIRL LIKE ME
Johnson, Angela Illus. by Crews, Nina Millbrook/Lerner (32 pp.) $19.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-5415-5777-2 A book to inspire the next diverse generation of girls to keep working toward breaking glass ceilings no matter how often the world tells them, “A girl like you needs to stop.” |
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A fictional version of young Agatha Christie, a bloodthirsty writer, is in an excellent position to solve a gruesome mystery. It’s 1902, and 12-year-old Aggie is a strange child in her largely white, English hometown. She’s overwhelmingly shy yet gifted with a cutthroat imagination. Thanks to her “Morbid Preoccupation,” Aggie is nearly unfazed when she discovers a corpse at her dancing lesson. But when two of Aggie’s favorite people are suspected of the murder, she is determined to learn the truth. With the help of a Belgian refugee boy named Hector Perot, Agatha must find the real killer even if her mother, the constables, and an eager journalist all get in her way. A classic anonymous letter made of letters cut out of newspaper must be a key clue, surely. Fictionalizing both the author Agatha Christie and her famous creation as characters in the same mystery is an infelicitous choice at best. Within the world of the tale, Hector adds little; Aggie is the real detective of the pair. Nonetheless, myriad little touches keep this both exciting and enjoyable. Aggie’s grandmother is funny and quite saucy. The girl’s grief over her recently dead father manifests genuinely: as sudden flashes of grief, as irritation with his financial mismanagement, and as fond recollections of the delicious cake that had appeared in the wake of his death. The protagonist makes a remarkable, cool, and likable detective despite some literary dead weight. (author’s note, sources) (Historical mystery. 9-11)
Johnson and Crews are seasoned talents whose collaboration here shines. Johnson’s spare words of encouragement are in harmony with Crews’ large double-page spreads blending photos of black and brown girls into a collaged dreamworld. Each of three girls is a star in her own dream only to hear people shouting in the background that what she wants simply isn’t possible. The illustrations show the three meeting on an urban playground and then encouraging other neighborhood girls of many races to join them in standing up to the doubters. There is much that Johnson doesn’t say that Crews uses pictures to illustrate. Adult readers may need to help children understand what is taking place in the story, at the heart of which is the power of play. Each girl is seen using her imagination to make her reality “better than the dream.” Illustrating this, a dozen girls in ebullient dress-up pose on the beach, all unapologetically themselves. A final spread allows each depicted girl to tell readers a little bit about herself—a sweet touch that drives home this reminder that girls should be supported in exploring their limitless imaginations, regardless of the naysayers. A great way to spark real-world conversations with other girls “like me.” (Picture book. 4-8)
RAILWAY JACK The True Story of an Amazing Baboon Johnston, K.T. Illus. by Samaniego, César Capstone Editions (40 pp.) $18.95 | Feb. 1, 2020 978-1-68446-088-5
Johnston’s debut recounts the partnership of English-born railway signalman Jim Wide and his service baboon, Jack, in 1880s South Africa. After an accident necessitates the amputation of his legs, Jim can no longer inspect the trains at Uitenhage Station. Fortunately, his request for a new task is granted, and he becomes a signalman, switching trains onto different tracks by pulling levers. But getting around is difficult, even after Jim carves himself prostheses and builds a handcart. Jim finds a helping hand in Jack, a chacma baboon, training the animal to push the cart, operate switches, and more. Soon, the hardworking primate becomes not only Jim’s assistant, but his “best friend.” But when railway authorities discover a monkey at the switch, Jack must prove his reliability in order for Jim to keep his job. Jack’s antics are sometimes charmingly (and somewhat disorientingly) humanlike; affection radiates throughout the straightforward text and Samaniego’s close, expressive illustrations as the pair share an exuberant cart ride or Jack chatters at a smiling Jim, a hand on Jim’s shoulder. Against the eloquent illustrations, the occasional speech-balloon dialogue feels redundant. Most humans, including Jim, present white; South Africa’s troubled racial history goes unmentioned. An author’s note provides an epilogue, and thought-provoking discussion questions touch on animal rights. Backmatter
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includes archival photos, a glossary, internet resources, related reading, a brief history of service animals, and a bibliography. A warm, engaging tale of the bond between a resourceful man and his service animal. (Informational picture book. 8-12)
WOMEN WIN THE VOTE! 19 for the 19th Amendment
Kennedy, Nancy B. Illus. by Dockrill, Katy Norton Young Readers (160 pp.) $19.95 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-324-00414-1
A brief history highlighting 19 pioneering women who repeatedly overcame obstacles and persisted in leading the women’s suffragist movement, earning women the right to vote. Commemorating 100 years since women have had the right to vote, Kennedy selects founders, leaders, organizers, and advocates—many from different backgrounds, classes, and traditions—that were essential in fighting for gender equality. Lesser- and well-known names alike, such as Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and Adelina Otero-Warren, weave in and out of one another’s abbreviated stories. Despite its limited overview, readers still acquire glimpses of the setbacks and struggles they endured, ranging from public (physical or verbal) attacks to horrendous jail conditions. They also learn how, contradicting their revolutionary mission, white suffragists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard, and Alice Stokes Paul often fell into racial tensions with African Americans who were fighting for similar rights. Ida B. Wells joins Truth and Cary as the only women of color profiled (Otero-Warren was of European descent). Mustard, coral, and teal pages provide a backdrop for Dockrill’s mostly black-and-white sketches, and the minibiographies serve as succinct and interesting catalysts for readers to learn more about these and other women. The backmatter includes a handful of briefer bios of other important figures. This quick read will prepare readers nicely for longer, scholarly chronicles. (epilogue, timeline, archival photos, historical sites note, sources, index) (Nonfiction. 9-13)
SUNNY
Krampien, Celia Illus. by the author Roaring Brook (40 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-250-31660-8
positive outlook and soars with a sea gull. Soon, the wind takes her over the sea and drops her into a small boat on rolling waves. Optimistic Sunny thinks how glad she is to be boating, not swimming. Terrible situations keep being thrust at Sunny, but only when she finds herself alone in the middle of the sea does she cry. Following a “most people would say…but not Sunny” pattern, Krampien creates a story around one character’s ability to find the bright sides of bleak situations. She shows that it is OK to cry and that when things get too bad, others will help lift us when we are down. The illustrations are mainly rendered in shades of teal, with Sunny a bright spot with her yellow raincoat, boots, umbrella, and, later, her white-and-yellow boat. Sunny has black hair and light skin, and the other characters have diverse skin and hair colors. Sweet and bright, like the sun on a stormy day. (Picture book. 3- 7)
FLY HIGH, JOHN GLENN The Story of an American Hero Krull, Kathleen Illus. by Quarello, Maurizio A.C. Harper/HarperCollins (48 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-06-274714-3
What makes a hero? This lively and informative selection presents a thorough overview of Glenn’s life: his childhood; attempts to learn to fly; support from his wife, Annie, who herself dealt with stuttering and became a speech pathologist; the thousands of flying hours he clocked; military service during World War II; life as an astronaut; subsequent political career; and flight at age 77 as the oldest man to fly in space. With all this, Krull focuses on his accomplishments as an astronaut, in particular on his Project Mercury mission on the Friendship 7, when he became the first American to orbit the Earth during the United States’ space race with the former Soviet Union. The energetic text thoroughly describes Glenn’s experiences while flying while realistic, sweeping oils offer a sense of space and capture some of the bliss Glenn must have experienced. Tales of his less-than-successful endeavors (his failed presidential bid, for example) are not mentioned, which seems a lost opportunity to discuss how setbacks are an inevitable part of success. Regardless, this vivid portrayal is full of exhilaration and suspense and will doubtlessly create new fans and inspire or increase a love of space exploration. Captures the excitement of space travel while creating a warm portrait of an innovative explorer. (timeline, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Sunny finds silver linings in the darkest clouds. “Most people would say there is nothing good” about walking to school on a dreary, rainy morning, “but not Sunny.” She thinks it is the perfect day to use her big yellow umbrella. When a big gust carries her away, she continues to maintain her 172
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Earnest, entertaining, and original. worse than weird
WORSE THAN WEIRD
Little, Jody J. Harper/HarperCollins (272 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-06-285258-8
BREAKING THROUGH How Female Athletes Shattered Stereotypes in the Roaring Twenties
Macy, Sue National Geographic Kids (96 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-4263-3676-8
A feminist look at how events of the 1920s informed the role of female athletes through the next century of American sports. Art deco page designs, colorized archival photos, and reprinted news articles bring readers into the Roaring ’20s, illustrating a time of radical change in women’s liberation through the lens of sports. Chapters, broken down in two-year increments, focus on athletes and events that moved women forward in an arena dominated by men. Contextualized primary-source articles presented in sidebars help show how women challenged the era’s preoccupation with femininity, at odds with athleticism, though at times the main narrative repeats this information. Efforts are made to explore racial segregation in sports and to highlight the important roles played |
SAVING THE COUNTRYSIDE The Story of Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit Marshall, Linda Elovitz Illus. by Urbinati, Ilaria Little Bee (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-4998-0960-2
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A technology-loving 12-year-old girl is convinced that her hippie parents are the ultimate in embarrassing, but then she learns that her friends are struggling with far more challenging concerns. MacKenna “Mac” MacLeod’s unconventional parents host annual Earth festivals, enjoy goat yoga, and participate in the Portland, Oregon, Naked Bike Ride (albeit with private parts covered by flowers and dreadlocks). Meanwhile, Mac believes that computer coding is her superpower and wishes that her parents were more buttoned-down in their presentation. Driven by the need for funds to attend computer camp, Mac participates in a prize-focused treasure hunt involving Portland’s famed food carts and engages her friends to help. Mac soon learns that all of her treasure-hunt partners have parent-related troubles of their own: family separation, intense pressure to excel in competitive swimming, parental mental illness, and homelessness. All the while she adopts a coder’s mindset to solve problems: both big and small, inanimate and human. Readers will appreciate following the multiethnic food-focused treasure hunt, Mac’s zeal for coding, and her compassionate friends as well as her eventual transformation in thinking about the life of her family. Mac, her family, and her friends present white with the exception of one who appears to be of Vietnamese heritage. Earnest, entertaining, and original. (author’s note) (Fic tion. 8-12)
by athletes of color as well as how historically black colleges and universities were more forward-thinking in supporting women athletes than white institutions tended to be. The author’s note addresses the challenge of drawing a full picture due to lack of documentation of athletes of color. When discussing sports and athletes outside the U.S., the narrative is Eurocentric with the exception of a spotlight on Japanese athlete Kinue Hitomi. An epilogue ties events of the 1920s to pinnacle moments such as the passing of Title IX and the 2019 Women’s World Cup while discussing the disparities still prevalent in sports. A recommended introduction to an often overlooked aspect of feminist history. (table of contents, foreword, index, timelines, source notes, illustration credits, annotated resource list) (Nonfiction. 11-14)
The life of the British picture-book author and illustrator makes a serendipitous subject for an engaging and attractive picture book. Growing up in an upper-class family in Victorian London, Potter was an observant and talented artist from a young age. When on vacation in the English countryside, she reveled in the freedom to enjoy animals and nature. Urbinati’s able, Potter-inspired pen-and-watercolor spreads and vignettes show the development of the author’s work through landscapes and facsimile pages of her books. Marshall’s clear, engaging text relates how Potter was interested in mycology, but her ideas were rejected by the male scientific establishment, so she pursued book illustration. Initially finding no interest for her children’s book among publishers, she self-published The Tale of Peter Rabbit. When that sold, a publisher became interested, and she wrote and published all the small-format children’s books for which she is well known today. Potter took the precaution of copyrighting her character so that her creations would be protected. Realizing the countryside she loved was under threat from urbanization, she used her wealth to acquire several farms and saved much of the English Lake District through her land purchases, more than 4,000 acres of which she donated to the National Trust. A well-told tale that makes the life story of the renowned author accessible to children. (author’s note, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)
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The matte pigments glow on the taupe paper. what will these hands make?
IF WE WERE GIANTS
Matthews, Dave & Smith, Clete Barrett Illus. by Caparo, Antonio Javier Disney-Hyperion (304 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-4847-7871-5 Matthews, of the Dave Matthews Band, and co-author Smith offer a fantasy that explores the damage done by violence inflicted by one people against another. Ten-year-old Kirra lives in an idyllic community hidden for generations inside a dormant volcano. When she and her little brother make unwise choices that help bring the violent, spindly, gray-skinned Takers to her community—with devastating results—Kirra feels responsible and leaves the volcano. Four years later, Kirra’s been adopted into a family of Tree Folk that live in the forest canopy. Though there are many Tree Folk, individual families care for their own and are politely distant from others. Kirra, suffering from (unnamed) PTSD, evades her traumatic memories by avoiding what she calls “Memory Traps,” but when the Takers arrive in the forest, she must face her trauma and attempt to make a community of the Tree Folk if they’re to survive. Although Kirra’s struggles through trauma are presented with sympathy and realistically rendered, some characters’ choices are so patently foolish they baldly read like the plot devices they are. Additionally, much preparation goes into one line of defense while other obvious factors are completely ignored, further pushing the story’s credibility. Kirra is brown skinned, as is her first family; Tree Folk appear not to be racially homogenous; and the Takers are all gray skinned. Uneven pacing and clunky writing undermine this examination of trauma and PTSD. (Fantasy. 10-14)
leaves, and bugs while people (children and adults, a multiracial group) are crucial but secondary, sometimes visible only as feet. Watercolor illustrations with ink and charcoal highlights create a soft, warm, horticulturally damp environment. Scale and perspective are more stylized than literal. McCanna’s superb scansion never misses, incorporating lists of insects and plants (“Lacewings, gnats, / mosquitos, spiders, / dragonflies, and water striders / live among the cattail reeds, / lily pads, and waterweeds”) with description (“Sunlight warms the morning air. / Dewdrops shimmer / here and there”). Readers see more than gardeners do, such as rabbits stealing carrots and lettuce from garden boxes. Like its subject: full of bustling life yet peaceful. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)
IN A GARDEN
McCanna, Tim Illus. by Sicuro, Aimée Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-5344-1797-7 Life buzzes in a community garden. Surrounded by apartment buildings, this city garden gets plenty of human attention, but the book’s stars are the plants and insects. The opening spread shows a black child in a striped shirt sitting in a top-story window; the nearby trees and garden below reveal the beginnings of greenery that signal springtime. From that high-up view, the garden looks quiet—but it’s not. “Sleepy slugs / and garden snails / leave behind their silver trails. / Frantic teams of busy ants / scramble up the stems of plants”; and “In the earth / a single seed / sits beside a millipede. / Worms and termites / dig and toil / moving through the garden soil.” Sicuro zooms in too, showing a robin taller than a half-page; later, close-ups foreground flowers, 174
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WHAT WILL THESE HANDS MAKE?
McClure, Nikki Illus. by the author Abrams (40 pp.) $19.99 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-4197-2576-0
A grandmother holds a baby’s hand and wonders, “What will these hands make?” Myriad possibilities follow. What if those little hands made “a fiddle to play quick / a stack of wood for the night / a play to cheer / a lantern to guide the way back home?” Or how about “a bridge to cross a river / a boat to sail the sea / a house for swallows / a home for families?” These projects appear embedded within luxuriantly detailed scenes, made with McClure’s own steady hand and an X-Acto knife. Capitalized headers boldly ask “WILL THESE HANDS MAKE,” with possibilities unfurling in lyrical, lucid verse beneath. Awe-inspiring double-page spreads show a busy town from multiple, miraculous perspectives. Putty-colored paper serves as a soothing, neutral background for McClure’s inky-black illustrations, and it also allows all people to share the same skin tone. Selective pops of color (icy blue, buttercream yellow, brick red, cotton white) highlight fabric, flowers, cake, a mast. The matte pigments glow on the taupe paper, emphasizing just how good, hands-on work provides bright spots in communities. McClure encourages readers to trace their hands on two vacant ovals on the final pages, and it seems she’s asking also for a promise to do something with their own hands in the future. A conversational author’s note describes how she cuts paper to make artwork. Extraordinary artwork inspires young people to use their hearts and hands. (Picture book. 4-10)
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WHEN THE BABIES CAME TO STAY
McDonnell, Christine Illus. by Bradley, Jeanette Viking (36 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-1-9848-3545-1
VERA VANCE, COMICS STAR
Mills, Claudia Illus. by Zong, Grace Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House (144 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-0-8234-4094-8 Series: After-School Superstars, 2
Vera Vance attends comics-making camp and dreams of attending the final field trip in this installment of the AfterSchool Superstars series. Third-grader Vera Vance is totally into comics, so she is excited to attend an after-school camp devoted to making comics with her friend Nixie (of Nixie Ness, Cooking Star, 2019). Vera has a hard time sticking up for herself, so she suffers through experiences like making a final project with Nixie when she really wants to work on her own project. And when her mom, who values grades and piano but not comics, says no to the camp’s final field trip to a comic-con, Vera is crushed, seeing no way to change her mother’s mind. But at the last minute, all her camp lessons about the hero’s journey and the power of comics |
ONLY A TREE KNOWS HOW TO BE A TREE
Murphy, Mary Illus. by the author Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-1-5362-1470-3
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A fable of four babies and how they become dearly loved and a family is created. Four babies mysteriously arrive on an island: one in the mail, two on a ferry, one in a pile of fishing nets. No one knows where they have come from, who their families are, or what to do with them—but the librarian, a black woman, has a few ideas. Readers will be enthralled with this story as they learn who takes care of the babies, what the babies experience, and how the babies grow into children, loved and cared for by the whole community. Bradley’s enchanting illustrations depict a diverse cast, including people of color among the islanders, babies, and toys, and place it in a well-realized island setting. Details delight, from the lobster-trap cradles to the babies’ alphabetical names. Each baby has its own distinct personality, strengths, and experiences. As the babies grow into older children, they ask questions about where they came from and why they do not look like one another. These are relevant and accurate questions that can be used to open dialogues with child readers to introduce deeper and more serious conversations surrounding adoption. While the fantasy plotline of the babies’ arrivals is whimsical, the story is grounded in an emotional reality that will appeal to and delight children. Charming and lighthearted with broadly applicable messages of love and acceptance. (Picture book. 3-8)
come together with Vera’s talent to make a pretty brilliant bid for reaching her goal. Vera’s shyness will be appreciated and understood by many readers. Her character stays real throughout, and the lovely wrap-up shows how every personality type in any situation can find a way to use their strengths to reach their goals. Vera’s dad died years ago, a fact remarked on in brief but emotional musings. Full-page, black-and-white illustrations punctuate most chapters, depicting brown-skinned Vera with an afropuff and Nixie as white, while the small font pushes the boundary between chapter book and middle grade. Readers who stick around to see Vera become her own hero are in for a satisfying read. (Fiction. 6-9)
A celebration of the uniqueness of trees—and birds, dogs, fish, the planet Earth, the universe, and each human being. What makes this feel-good reflection on individuality stand out are the illustrations, childlike in their presentation but surprisingly detailed—especially the images of children of all colors, from peach and pink to tan and deep brown. Some are in ethnic dress, and some use wheelchairs or wear glasses. Picture readers can spend a lot of time looking at what they do: A child climbs a tree; another pretends to be a bird; children jump rope, blow bubbles, or simply talk with a friend; a child meditates; another carries an infant; and much, much more. Murphy begins by talking about things trees do: “turn sunshine into tree food,” change color, and shelter birds and animals. She goes on to birds, dogs, and fish, and then she widens her view to encompass the whole planet, “where we live,” and the entire universe before making her point: “Every comet, flower, cat, and beetle, every cloud, frog, stone, and duck, every mountain, river, and deer is different.” With the exception of the depiction of outer space, every spread includes at least one child. The simple text has been hand lettered, and the painterly illustrations include interesting dry textures. Even though many illustrations include tiny details, this will work well for groups as well as one-on-one. A simple message delivered effectively. (Picture book. 3- 7)
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FIVE FUZZY CHICKS
Murray, Diana Illus. by Hanson, Sydney Imprint (32 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-250-30122-2
These fluffy chicks are ready for action…or are they? The day is about done on this busy farm. The sun has nearly set, and everyone is tired from a good day’s work…except for five smiling, different-hued chicks who want to go for a run. “Five fuzzy chicks / run past the plow, / into the grass, / and under the cow. / The cow says, ‘Moo! Moo!’ / The chicks say, ‘Cheep! Cheep!’ / But the grass is so cozy… // one chick falls asleep.” Four chicks run on and meet the pigs. After a dance, three are ready to proceed…but one falls asleep on a mossy rock with the pigs. The three play with Rover, a smiling terrier…but one finds the pooch too cozy to leave, and a snuggle occurs. Another finds the horse’s hay too comfy to pass by, and the last falls asleep in the sheep’s fleece. A determined “Mama Hen hurries / to gather her troop. / She scoops them all up… / …and runs back to the coop.” And finally those five fuzzy chicks settle down in their cozy nest. Murray and Hanson have created what feels like an old classic that’s simultaneously fresh and sweet. The watercolor-and-pencil illustrations, all full-bleed, are soft and just realistic enough to ensure recognizability. These fuzzy-edged farm animals sport big eyes and anthropomorphic smiles; the farming family, seen in only one scene, is white. A bedtime countdown rhyme for every little farmer. (Picture book. 2-5)
A GUARD DOG NAMED HONEY
Orenstein, Denise Gosliner Scholastic (256 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-338-34846-0
Bean’s determined to raise the money to bail her beloved older brother, Willis, out of jail, but her schemes seem doomed to failure. On this island off the coast of Massachusetts, the opportunities to raise $1,000 in bail money are seriously limited. But plucky Bean is determined to find a way. It’s that mission that motivates her to befriend 9-year-old Phoebe. She’s been left by her wealthy but distant parents in the care of the unusual chef-turned-nanny Edwin and, more importantly, Honey, a huge young mastiff. Initially, Bean is skeptical of the whole crew, merely currying their favor in order to make money by—she hopes—painting their house. Unexpectedly, Phoebe and Honey take up the slack for the 11-year-old, who is bereft without Willis. Although Bean talks Phoebe into agreeing to sell Honey, she quickly has sobering second thoughts. After Bean realizes the prospective buyer is involved in the dogfighting world, the two girls, full of spunk 176
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but a little short of wisdom, resolve to bring the bad guy to justice. The apparently white characters are lovingly crafted and richly nuanced, although drooly, ever loyal Honey almost steals the show. Bean’s motivation is fully convincing, and her heartfelt but somewhat scatterbrained plans are age appropriate as she tries to fix too many hard issues with a believable lack of adult help. Richly engaging and evocative. (Fiction. 9-12)
I GO QUIET
Ouimet, David Illus. by the author Norton (48 pp.) $18.95 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-324-00443-1 A child is too intimidated to speak in a dark, forbidding environment. Appearing small and isolated among richly detailed, atmospheric, even frightening illustrations that present a bleak, dystopian, mechanistic world where grim uniformity is the norm, the school-age narrator describes feeling misunderstood and alone. Because the child is timid and small and different, the child chooses silence. The world surrounding the narrator is oppressively populated; it’s primarily awash in somber shades of browns, blues, and grays. Both the white-appearing narrator and diverse classmates resemble hollow-eyed, sorrowful automatons and occasionally wear mouse masks. Some students sport peculiar hairdos. It’s unclear if the sober society depicted is real or if the author/illustrator is suggesting that this world feels this strange to the introverted, shy, and quiet. Yet all isn’t hopeless in this disquieting story: Though the narrator seems troubled at being muted, the child possesses a lively imagination and recognizes how important silence is when reading, which is depicted as liberating. At the end, the protagonist is confident that this love of reading will someday enable a powerful voice that will finally be heard. Ouimet overplays his pessimistic hand, for, at this point in the narrative, his colors, oddly, don’t significantly brighten. This is off-putting and belies what seems to be meant as an uplifting, empowering message about books and communication. Not very child friendly, though it’s thought- and conversation-provoking for older readers willing to engage with picture books. (Picture book. 7-12)
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Restrained illustrations convey a subtle sense of emptiness and loss. where lily isn’t
GOODBYE WINTER, HELLO SPRING
unforgettable ending emphasizing that the dog will always be in the child’s heart. Restrained illustrations stand out with a large trim size and plenty of white space that conveys a subtle sense of emptiness and loss. Both narrator and mother present white; humans in the background include people of color. Touching and comforting. (Picture book. 3-8)
Pak, Kenard Illus. by the author Henry Holt (32 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-1-250-15172-8
WHERE LILY ISN’T
Paschkis, Julie Illus. by Chodos-Irvine, Margaret Godwin Books/Henry Holt (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-250-18425-2 A small child describes all the aspects of life that are now changed due to the loss of beloved dog Lily. The unnamed child narrates the story, beginning with a motion-filled spread detailing all the fun, active ways that the small, brown dog liked to play. The narrative shifts, and now Lily is gone, though readers don’t learn the details of Lily’s demise. The child continues the story with spare sentences describing Lily’s different actions, using the repeated structure of what Lily isn’t doing. Lily isn’t there on her braided rug or waiting for food to fall from the breakfast table or sitting by the door when the narrator returns from school. Every description of what Lily isn’t there to do communicates the child’s sadness and longing for Lily while also conveying a quiet acceptance and respect for memories of her pet. An understated but powerful conclusion shows the narrator drawing pictures of Lily, with a sweet, |
SNAIL FINDS A HOME
Peterson, Mary Illus. by the author Aladdin PIX (64 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-1-5344-3185-0
A snail searches for the perfect home—for both his heart and his stomach. Snail loves his “old rusty bucket full of sweet red strawberries.” Well, more the strawberries than the bucket—the strawberries are his breakfast, lunch, supper, and dessert. Snail loves strawberries so much he gets buried in them. His best friend, Ladybug, has to call out to him to make sure he’s still there. One day, Ladybug tries to convince Snail to go house hunting. She wants Snail to move closer to her (and away from the strawberries). Snail refuses until he nearly eats himself out of house and home, getting so sick that he throws up (readers will echo Ladybug’s revolted reaction). Together, Snail and Ladybug go on a grand, slightly dangerous adventure to find the house that’s just right. But can they make it past the hungry chicken? Snail’s second outing (Snail Has Lunch, 2016) is five short chapters of pure silliness. Peterson’s full-color cartoon illustrations—rendered without black outlines—adopt a bright, springtime feel. Spreads often combine descriptive text with dialogue in speech bubbles, with at most 12 sentences per page. Sentences vary in length and complexity, but pictorial cues, mostly white backgrounds, and deliberate text placement help keep the story accessible. However, some of the busier pages do look a bit cluttered without panels to guide readers. A nibble into chapter books for emerging readers. (Early reader. 6-9)
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A dialogic approach to the turn of the seasons. A young child, with beige skin and dark hair, and a white dog walk through the darkened, snowy countryside. They greet the snow and the winter night; a frozen pond and an empty nest; and even a glass house. Each in turn answers back, offering insight into their experience of the chilly atmosphere. Following a wordless spread that serves as a pictorial climax, the season shifts toward spring, with increased sunlight, warmth, melting snow, and the renewed presence of songbirds and flowers. The world has come to life again, and the child and dog run through green fields sparsely patched with retreating snow. The contrasting color palettes and geometric shapes in the accumulating spreads effectively evoke the stark darkness of winter and the bright warmth of spring. Ground-level and bird’s-eye perspectives of the rural setting and tiny details reward eagleeyed readers. The rapid change from nocturnal winter storm to bright, green spring day seems a bit contrived, underscoring the book’s premise of transition and metamorphosis. Moreover, the child’s conversation with the natural world at times leaves readers unclear of who is speaking, which may cause confusion during a read-aloud. This is the third book in Pak’s seasonal cycle. A slight addition to a seasonal collection redeemed by its striking illustrations. (Picture book. 4- 7)
THE BEAR MUST GO ON
Petty, Dev Illus. by Todd, Brandon Philomel (40 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-9848-3747-9
Four woodland animal friends put on a show. Rabbit, Squirrel, and aptly named Other Squirrel (who has slightly redder fur than Squirrel) are a flurry of activity. They are going to put on a show. “A BIG show.…The BEST show!” It will have hats (tall ones), tickets (shiny ones), and a curtain (red— no, green). There are many decisions to be made. Bear, however, does not want to be part of it. He is too shy. He would prefer to
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For a spy story, it’s surprisingly interior focused. city spies
be the note taker. Rabbit, Squirrel, and Other Squirrel fire off ideas, amending one another’s at furious speed, and Bear writes them all down. Scribbles appear in the white space surrounding the boulderlike ursine’s head. The ideas pile up; debut illustrator Todd deftly covers an entire page while Bear hunches in the middle, furiously writing. He hums a tune to keep himself calm. On the night of the performance, everything seems ready. Everything except…the show! They were so bogged down with the details, no one figured out what the show would be. The title gives away the ending from the very start, but Bear’s pluck is nevertheless laudable. Petty’s comedic quips are echoed in the frenzied art, with Bear looming large yet timid to ground it all. Limited, skilled use of panels helps to control the pacing. A snort-inducing lesson of both bravery and preparation. (Picture book. 4- 7)
CITY SPIES
Ponti, James Aladdin (384 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-1-5344-1491-4 This thriller reads like Miss Congeni ality meets Kingsman, starring Norwegian climate activist Greta Thunberg and Anishinaabe-kwe water protector Autumn Peltier…kind of. Puerto Rican–born, Brooklyn-raised Sara isn’t expecting much from her court-appointed lawyer— she has no reason to put faith in the system that put her in jail after she hacked into the city’s computers to expose her foster parents as abusive frauds. But with juvie her only other prospect, Sara takes a leap and agrees to a wild proposition: She’ll join Britain’s MI6 as a kid operative. When she arrives at the covert facility in Scotland, she meets the other kids the MI6 agent, a white Englishman affectionately called Mother, has taken in—all of them, like Sara, have highly developed skills in logic, puzzles, sneakiness, and other useful spy tactics. Mother has a mission for them; he’s taking them to Paris to a competition for youth environmental innovation, where their job is to perform just well enough to make it into the top 10 so they can protect the eccentric billionaire sponsor of the contest from an imminent threat. It’s a fun romp with timely but superficial things to say about environmental activism, though the recruitment process and messy organization stretches the imagination even with a hardy suspension of disbelief. For a spy story, it’s surprisingly interior focused rather than action packed. The cast is technically diverse in ethnic background, but this has next to no influence on the characters. It’s fine, but it doesn’t live up to its potential as a STEMplus-caper adventure. (Thriller. 8-12)
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WELCOME TO YOUR WORLD
Prasadam-Halls, Smriti Illus. by Kim, Jaime Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-1-5362-0622-7
Prasadam-Halls and Kim celebrate new life with a rose-colored perspective. The story opens with a double-page spread of a black-haired, brown-skinned mother cuddling a brown-skinned baby in a sunlit meadow replete with tree blossoms and flowers and rhyming text: “Welcome, little baby. / Welcome to your world.” The subsequent double-page spreads are done in the same lush style and show mama and baby animals with gentle smiles, cavorting in their golden-hued perfect habitats as the rhyming text (in second person, “Look up to the sky. Can you see the sun?”) extols the harmonious beauty of the world to readers. The narrative leans purple in its effusion, blithely ignoring strife, not to mention the food chain: “Listen to the creatures of the air and land and sea / living whole and happily, living wild and free.” The illustrations, while delightfully colorful, match, with their depiction of environmental perfection, the determinedly rosy tone of the text. It’s a nice concept, this welcoming new life to the world, but the whole story has an anthropocentric feel to it—beginning with the book’s title—as if this Disney-perfect natural world of harmony and health that “loves you through and through” is there only for the human child’s pleasure—an out-of-date idea, to say the least. In conclusion, the story asks readers, referring to “your world,” “will you love it too?” A vague nudge to stewardship? It’s unclear. Relentless. (Picture book. 2-5)
COURAGEOUS WORLD CHANGERS 50 True Stories of Daring Women of God
Redmond, Shirley Raye Illus. by Longhi, Katya Harvest House (112 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-7369-7734-0
Redmond introduces readers to Christian women from all over the world who made an impact on society. Well-known political activists, athletes, missionaries, and many more are included along with various other strong and brave women who are less known, such as Ni Kwei-Tseng Soong and Christine Caine. Each of these 50 women has a dedicated spread, with a full-page illustration on recto and text on verso that provides readers with a brief history of her childhood. With this background, readers can understand how each woman has come to be celebrated. In each minibiography, the subject is quoted testifying to God’s presence and influence in her life. While a book dedicated to empowered Christian women is enlightening to read, it portrays all of these women |
uncomplicatedly as heroes. The view of missionary work it presents is outdated and biased, betraying a fundamental lack of cultural respect and appreciation, a point inadvertently driven home in the profile of Narcissa Whitman, a white woman who, as she wrote, worked for the “salvation” of “benighted [American] Indians.” Probably unsurprisingly, the entry on Pocahontas (depicted in a skimpy buckskin dress) does not acknowledge the traditional Powhatan counternarrative that she was kidnapped and raped rather than voluntarily converting to Christianity. A well-intentioned book that does not successfully grapple with the complexity and challenge of its subject matter. (Collective biography. 7-10)
THE PAPER KINGDOM
Daniel accompanies his parents to their job late one night and discovers a magical kingdom. Daniel’s parents are night janitors and get ready for work just as Daniel gets ready for bed. Usually Auntie Clara babysits him, but one night when she cannot, Daniel must go with his parents to their job. Though the story takes place in the middle of the night, full-page illustrations brimming with color and depth bring the story to life. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is sleepy and on the verge of tears, but he must stay awake as his parents mop floors, vacuum, dust shelves, and clean the bathrooms. Despite his tiredness, Daniel can’t help but question why everything is a mess and why his parents must be the ones to clean up everything. It angers him to see his parents working so hard to clean up other people’s messes, but his parents reassure him with stories of the Paper Kingdom and well-meaning dragons. Lushly respectful illustrations perfectly complement this simple yet heartwarming story that highlights the struggles of working-class parents and the sacrifices they make for their families. Daniel’s parents sometimes appear multiple times on a spread, emphasizing their busyness. This diverse story features a family of color depicted with brown skin and black hair. A beautiful, must-read tribute to hardworking families and the magic they create. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)
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Every parent has been there. It’s spring vacation, the bunnysitter is sick, your partner has already left for work, but you still have to do your job and keep your little bunny safe. What is a mother to do? Little Bunny is beyond excited at the opportunity to go to work with Mama and see what she does all day. A quick hop onto the train into the city, a stroll to the office past some street artists, and in they go! However, inside is not particularly exciting. There is not a lot for a little bunny to do, and, even more important, there are no snacks! There are few things as creative as a bored bunny, so Bunny goes on the hunt for some snacks only to stumble upon that beautiful creature: the vending machine! Can Bunny figure out how to reach the buttons? Will Bunny be able to get money for snacks? Richmond’s illustrations are bright, with expressive faces on her characters (whose simple bodies look as though they’ve been drawn in one long, easy pen stroke) and fun details. A delightful montage shows Bunny making art, wearing paperclip chains, and sticking Post-its all over while the text exclaims, “So THIS is what Mama does at work all day!” It really captures the delight of a kid who gets to have a day off and see the work side of their parent’s life. Kids will get a good laugh and adults will all-too-easily relate. (Picture book. 4-6)
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Rhee, Helena Ku Illus. by Campion, Pascal Random House (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Feb. 18, 2020 978-0-525-64461-3 978-0-525-64462-0 PLB
BUNNY BUSINESS
Richmond, Lori Illus. by the author Scholastic (32 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-0-545-92590-7
SPARKY HELPS MARY MAKE FRIENDS
Rivadeneira, Caryn Illus. by Alpaugh, Priscilla Red Chair Press (72 pp.) $12.99 | $6.99 paper | Jan. 1, 2020 978-1-63440-774-8 978-1-63440-777-9 paper Series: Helper Hounds In this new series outing, energetic dog Sparkplug takes his helper mission seriously. Half border collie and half Bernese mountain dog, Sparky meets human Tasha after being surrendered to an animal shelter. She enrolls him in obedience classes, where Sparky proudly excels. His mission as a new, “world-famous, card-carrying Helper Hound” is to provide “love and encouragement” to people in need. His current assignment is Mary, who, after a recent family separation and move across the country, is nervous about attending a new school. Sparky models for Mary how to “settle” by performing his good behaviors and is determined to show Mary that making friends is possible, no matter what—even with her bristly cat! Sparky’s first-dog narration is exuberant, humbly confident, and playful, mirroring his personality. The text is interwoven with encouraging suggestions and dog facts,
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and the backmatter includes “Tried-and-True Tricks for Making Friends” (being a good listener, bonding over laughter, etc.) as well as some facts on Sparky’s heritage breeds. The text contains no references to race, but illustrations cast trainer Tasha with dark skin and Mary with light. Most of the text is Sparkycentric, which tends to overshadow Mary’s struggles; what should be a pivotal scene in which Mary meets her new classmates is short and accomplished with surprising ease. Regardless, the story, with an appropriate decoding level text for an early chapter book, should appeal to dog lovers and anyone who needs reassurances of their own. Companion title Penny Helps Portia Face Her Fears focuses on another Helper Hound, a pit bull who helps a white girl with Down syndrome overcome her fear of dogs. A doggone encouraging manual. (Fiction. 6-9) (Penny Helps Portia Face Her Fears: 978-1-63440-775-5, 978-1-63440-778-6 paper)
ON OUR NATURE WALK Our First Talk About Our Impact on the Environment
Roberts, Jillian Illus. by Heinrichs, Jane Orca (32 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-4598-2100-2 Series: World Around Us
This installment in the World Around Us series addresses how humans can affect the environment in good and bad ways. The most memorable part of this book is the foreword, which describes how the Earth is the only habitable planet we know of, setting the tone for why we humans must take care of it. The text then uses a Q-and-A format, with questions in large, colored display type on the verso and answers (about a half-page paragraph in large type) on the recto. A sidebar on the far right introduces more details about a topic on each spread (for example, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). Large photographs are set on a lightly patterned pastel background, with drawings of children in various poses filling space around the text and photographs. The text begins with a nature walk during which a child notices litter in the forest, progresses through questions about pollution and what people can do about it, and ends with an emphasis on the sort of innovation and problemsolving that will be needed to save our planet. Unfortunately, the straightforward text does not sustain the level of interest promised by the dramatic foreword; the Q-and-A format works to bring in different topics, but it leaves openings for readers’ minds to wander. While the photographs are well chosen and child-friendly, the drawings distract from rather than add to the presentation. Accessible and informative—but look elsewhere to get kids excited about the topic. (note, resources) (Informational picture book. 6-10)
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COOL CUTS
Roe, Mechal Renee Illus. by the author Doubleday (32 pp.) $16.99 | $19.99 PLB | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-9848-9557-8 978-1-9848-9558-5 PLB This companion to Happy Hair (2019) takes the same appreciation for the diversity of black self-expression from the beauty salon to the barbershop. Branching out from black girl hairstyles, Roe here extends the conversation to consider the multitude of hairstyles for black and brown boys even as readers can infer a wider representation of the gender spectrum, since many of the illustrations come without explicit gender assignments. There’s a legacy of black boys who have been targeted, punished, or criticized for their choice of self-expression, and this book is a needed corrective. Arriving after the much-heralded Crown (2017), this makes space to celebrate a wide range of styles, from cornrows and curls to fro-hawks and flat-tops. Each matte, posterlike portrait is rendered alongside a catchy, empowering quote: “When the stars shine, / the world is mine” highlights a high-top; “A happy boy, / full of joy!” celebrates a step-up. A (rather trite) refrain pulls them all together: “i am born to be AWESOME!” Roe is returning to the series after Superheroes Are Everywhere (2019), her recent bestselling collaboration with Sen. Kamala Harris, undoubtedly bringing a number of new fans with her. For a segment of U.S. readership that is starved for representation that appreciates the unique details and nuances of their style and identity, this steps in to lift up their presence in bright, lively portraiture. Lacking in originality yet ultimately a timely mirror for black boyhood and childhood. (Picture book. 3- 7)
THE BOX TURTLE
Roeder, Vanessa Illus. by the author Dial (40 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-73-523050-7
A young turtle’s experiences with bullying and friendship lead him on a journey of self-acceptance. When a pair of box-turtle parents discovers that their baby is born without a shell, they don’t miss a beat. The loving parents “[give] him a name and a shell, both of which fit just right”: Terrance, in a playful nod to his species, wears a cardboard box. Terrance is perfectly happy until a trio of bullies shame him for his unusual shell. Mortified, Terrance leaves the box behind to look for something beyond reproach. Hijinks ensue during Terrance’s search for a new shell, which features the disrobed reptile and his anthropomorphic buttocks on full display. At every step of the determined turtle’s quest, Terrance’s unnamed |
Zunon’s illustrations effectively show that familial love is not contingent upon material possessions. as big as the sky
hermit crab friend is there, supporting Terrance as he tries on box after box. After a roster of options (including a mailbox, a boombox, and a jack-in-the-box) are rejected for their slapstick effects, Terrance is downcast—until the hermit crab offers up their own tiny shell. This generous act of friendship inspires Terrance to return to his beloved cardboard box after all. Among a range of titles featuring a be-true-to-yourself message, this effort doesn’t quite stack up. Aside from its overworked story, the idea that Terrance “[is] so much more than just his shell” implies that he does have an unfortunate attribute. Such a concept does little to challenge the biases of Terrance’s bullies or the false notion that Terrance’s shell is “definitely weird.” Sadly, there’s not much to unpack in this box. (Picture book. 5-9)
AS BIG AS THE SKY
An homage to the resourcefulness of children, whose ingenuity is their wealth. Caleb and his younger sister, Prisca, are inseparable. When Caleb comes down with malaria, Prisca brings him tea and nsima, a Malawian cornmeal dish. When Prisca can’t carry the bucket on her head during chores, Caleb helps. So when Caleb leaves the village for school in Chimwe, Prisca misses him so much that she seeks help from the peddler Tewa Tewa. She makes painted rocks, paper-bead necklaces, and corn-husk dolls to earn travel money, but Tewa Tewa’s customers don’t buy them. Still, Prisca always welcomes the peddler warmly. When he visits with his newly repaired bike, he agrees to take Prisca and her mother to Chimwe. Based on a family Rose met on a medical mission, this quiet tale emphasizes the sacrifices families often make to educate their children. Zunon’s full-bleed illustrations are a bit stilted, but they give readers a sense of village life in Malawi and effectively show that familial love is not contingent upon material possessions. The book’s final image, of Caleb reading to Prisca, also highlights the gift older siblings give younger siblings when they share their love of literacy. An author’s note closes with URLs for organizations that fund girls’ education in developing countries. A worthwhile read. (maps, glossary) (Picture book. 5-8)
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Rosen, Michael J. Illus. by Tavares, Matt Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-1-5362-0121-5
While Josiah Franklin seeks the right trade for his son, young Benjamin follows other pursuits. Growing up in Colonial Boston, Benjamin loves reading and swimming. Eschewing his father’s candle making trade, Benjamin longs to be a sailor, but Josiah refuses. Worried his son’s becoming an “aimless woolgatherer,” Josiah unsuccessfully apprentices him to a joiner, a shoemaker, and a turner. Benjamin prefers swimming in Mill Pond, where he experiments with wooden paddles as flippers and a kite, using wind to pull himself through the water. Eventually, Josiah realizes Benjamin’s a boy of many trades and indentures him in a print shop, where he can “read and study and write” to his heart’s content. Expanding several incidents from Franklin’s Memoirs, this story reveals Franklin as a likable boy whose eclectic childhood interests led to his amazing life. Realistic, carefully executed watercolorand-pencil illustrations in browns, grays, blues, and yellows effectively use light and varied perspectives to add drama to this formative period in Franklin’s life. Scenes of Benjamin sampling tedious trades alternate with upbeat scenes of him swimming, playing to the story’s theme. Text panels from antique books surrounded by Colonial-era nautical maps reflect Franklin’s interest in books and the sea, reinforcing the authentic period setting. The focus is on Benjamin and his close circle, all white. An effectively presented and surprising slice of Benjamin Franklin’s childhood. (author’s note, illustrator’s note, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)
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Rose, Carolyn Illus. by Zunon, Elizabeth Sterling (40 pp.) $16.95 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-4549-2357-2
A BEN OF ALL TRADES The Most Inventive Boyhood of Benjamin Franklin
KENZIE KICKSTARTS A TEAM
Rosewater, Kit Illus. by Escabasse, Sophie Amulet/Abrams (160 pp.) $14.99 | Mar. 24, 2020 978-1-4197-4079-4 Series: The Derby Daredevils, 1
The first in an illustrated middlegrade series about growing up—and roller derby. Fifth graders and best friends Kenzie and Shelly have always done everything together. They also share the same dream: to be on the same roller derby team. It’s only 2,000 days until they turn 15 and can join the local “wreck” league. But when tryouts for a new junior league are announced, the girls no longer have to wait. The catch: if “Kenzilla” and “Bomb Shell” want to be on the same team, they need to try out as a team. The Dynamic Duo must find a way to expand to a fivesome, and introvert Kenzie will need to accept that she
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Sage offers intricate worldbuilding, richly evocative settings, nuanced characters, deftly woven plotting, and wry humor. twilight hauntings
must share outgoing Shelly with new people. The third-person limited narration sympathetically conveys Kenzie’s struggle. The derby scenes are fast-paced and fun to read, with clearly explained rules; readers who hope for the further support of a glossary will be disappointed, however. Expressive black-andwhite graphic novel–style illustrations show wide diversity among classmates and derby members. Kenzie and Shelly are white; new teammate and basketball player Tomoko is Asian and larger than the other girls; skateboarder and Kenzie’s crush, Bree, is black and wears her hair in locs; and a third, shy Camila, is implied Latinx. Kenzie’s dad is trans, a fact that is incidental to the story. A lighthearted celebration of life, friendship, and rolling with the punches. (Fiction. 8-12)
GIVE US THE VOTE! Over Two Hundred Years of Fighting for the Ballot
Rubin, Susan Goldman Holiday House (128 pp.) $19.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-8234-3957-7
Text and photographs document the ongoing struggle for voting rights in the United States, from the Constitution’s inception into early 2019. This slim volume has 19 chapters with intriguing titles, including “How To Steal an Election” and “Voting From the Grave.” The prologue includes an interview with Jamie Azure, chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, who explains how a 2018 North Dakota election law effectively denied suffrage to previously enrolled Native Americans. The next chapters move backward to civil rights in the 1960s and only then to the Founding Fathers—a clever way to ensnare young readers. Accessible, journalistic text covers a good deal of all-things-election, including the history of suffrage extended beyond white, male landowners—and many documented stories of fraud, violence, and corruption carried out by both major parties over the years. It gradually returns full circle to 2018, carefully balancing opinions from current Democrats and Republicans as it reports on the 2013 Supreme Court’s partial dismantling of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; 2016 election controversies; and youth activism vis-à-vis the environment, gun laws, and 16-year-old suffrage. In general, there is excellent coverage of past and recent protest movements relating directly or indirectly to voting; gerrymandering commands an entire chapter. However, current protesting against the Electoral College is the unspoken elephant—or donkey—in the room. This is especially disturbing after the text properly describes its insidious undermining of voter equality. Pithy and worthwhile. (timeline, relevant constitutional amendments, sources, index) (Nonfiction. 10-16)
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TWILIGHT HAUNTINGS
Sage, Angie Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (368 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 31, 2020 978-0-06-287514-3 Series: Enchanter’s Child, 1 In this series opener from Septimus Heap creator Sage, an oracle’s accidentally truthful prophecy feeds a monarch’s paranoia and prompts his magically enforced ban on Enchanters. Ten years ago, unable to escape themselves, Alex’s parents handed her to a woman with two daughters on the last train out of Rekadom. Now 11, Alex endures life as Mirram’s foster daughter and bullied household drudge. Secretly reading cards in the Luma marketplace yields her spending money—also danger; Sentinels are everywhere, enforcing the city’s ban on Enchanters and their magic. Alex fears she’s been seen reading for her last customer, Benn. Instead, Mirram’s youngest daughter Names not only Alex, but her own mother and little brother, Louie, to the Sentinels. Dire consequences ensue. Fleeing with Louie and the family’s pet pokkle, Alex is spotted by King Belamus’ magical enforcers: the enormous Hawke and its novice Flyer, who, fortunately, can’t bring himself to shoot them or his next Quarry, an old man in the forest. Once again, Sage offers intricate worldbuilding, richly evocative settings, nuanced characters (all have flaws and don’t always manifest their good intentions), deftly woven plotting, and wry humor. The downside to eating dried snake is revealed; the royal ex-Enchanter offers caustic comments on the king’s penchant for alliteration; and visitors making the arduous climb to question the Oracle are confronted with a “No Picnicking” sign. Characters are default white. An unmitigated delight. (Fantasy. 10-13)
CAN YOU SEE ME?
Scott, Libby & Westcott, Rebecca Scholastic (368 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-338-60891-5 A girl with autism confronts the terrors of sixth grade. Eleven-year-old Tally is fierce, brave, funny, and kind; but she also wants desperately to fit in, so she keeps her autism secret from her new classmates at Kingswood Academy. But the harder she tries to act “normal,” the more the bullies call her “weirdo” until even her friends start to pull away. Tally’s story—based on Scott (herself 11 and autistic) and co-written with the neurotypical Westcott—shines with authenticity. Even the lengthy “Autism Facts” in Tally’s interspersed diary entries avoid didacticism via their un-selfconscious honesty. The deceptively simple prose sticks tightly |
to Tally’s point of view, conveying her courage and quirky charm while rendering with painful acuity her struggles with anxiety and sensory overload. It also portrays compassionately the sometimes-stressful effects of her particular needs and oddseeming behaviors on her loving, supportive family. There are no villains here: Her teachers are (mostly) receptive and sympathetic, and even the bullies come off as more clueless than cruel. Nor is there any magic resolution: Tally’s situation may improve but only at the cost of her privacy; and her social relationships remain tentative. Instead, her triumph comes in her resolve to present as her own unique, different “normal.” Recommended for readers with autism who will feel genuinely seen and for those desiring to see others more clearly. (Fiction. 9-12)
THE BOY WHO GREW DRAGONS
Tomas discovers a strange cactus at the back of his grandad’s messy garden with the most amazing fruit: tiny dragons. When Grandad gets the urge to tidy up the weedy mess in his back garden, Tomas happily gives himself blisters helping out. He’s reluctant to chop down the fascinating cactus hidden behind the weeds, though. It “looks like a giant upturned mophead” and is covered with the strangest fruit, glowing and spiky. Tomas’ online searches tell him the strange fruit is pitaya, a dragon fruit—but unlike a real pitaya, Tomas’ explodes in the middle of the night, hatching into a tiny dragon. The dragon is lovely, a gorgeous, flying, magical creature. It is also, like many babies, a creature that mainly eats and poops. There’s flammable, exploding poo everywhere: in his dad’s porridge, on his mother’s best towel, and in Tomas’ gym bag—and even illustrated in smoldering glory. As Tomas seeks to keep his dragon hidden while seeking any others that might have hatched, the lively illustrations keep pace with the slapstick action. Blond, white Tomas and his lovely pet are not the stars of the irreverent pictures, though; that honor goes to the action: a terrifying leaping cat, a grumpy neighbor toppling into a wheelbarrow of flaming cabbages, and more. Never has so much toilet humor been so charming. (Fantasy. 8-11)
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Shulman, Mark Illus. by Bloch, Serge Neal Porter/Holiday House (40 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-0-8234-4561-5 The hows, whys, and wherefores of voting are presented in this picture book. Beginning with the concept of choice and using a vote for a class pet as the initial example, this story takes readers by their hands and leads them through the entire electoral process for something. In addition to presenting the actual activity of the vote, the story stresses the ramifications of voting (or not voting) as well as the idea of engaging others in discussion. Special emphasis is placed on the concept of acquiring knowledge in order to become an informed voter. While the target audience is too young to vote in town, state, or national legislative elections, the story hands young readers power by telling them they can make sure those who can vote, do. The meat-and-potatoes text is forthright and unadorned, and the illustrations rarely vary from their two-vignettes-per-page format. Nonetheless, by its very simplicity, the gravity of the message is underscored— voting equals choice; choice equals quality of life. Bloch’s illustrations, dominated by people delineated in sketchy black outlines filled with simple patterns or color shades, emphasize expressions rendered in a cartoon style, and this adds a needed bit of levity to it all. A range of skin shades from beige to brown is shown. Extensive backmatter includes a thorough section on “How Our Government Works” as well as steps to take to vote. Comprehensive and forthright. (backmatter, bibliography, online resources) (Picture book. 5-8)
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Shepherd, Andy Illus. by the author Little Bee (224 pp.) $13.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-4998-1011-0
I VOTED Making a Choice Makes a Difference
GLOOM TOWN
Smith, Ronald L. Clarion (288 pp.) $16.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-328-84161-2 Two friends team up to save their town from an ancient supernatural evil in this suspenseful middle-grade novel. In his latest work, Smith (The Owls Have Come To Take Us Away, 2019, etc.) weaves together an eerie adventure narrative as nail-biting and mysterious as Roald Dahl’s The Witches. Set in a downtrodden seaside town appropriately named Gloom, the tale follows a single mother and her son. Desperate to help in the endless struggle to make ends meet, Rory, a young darkskinned biracial boy who takes after his father instead of his white mother, regards a job notice advertising a valet position at the opulent Foxglove Manor as a godsend. He’s so eager he overlooks the townwide speculation that the manor contains some malevolent spirit. Before long, Rory can no longer ignore
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the sinister butler whose face looks inhuman, the mysterious dinner guests who aren’t served food yet leave behind a pile of bones with the marrow sucked out, and a human heart found buried in the back garden. When Lord Foxglove, his enigmatic employer, discovers Rory snooping, he is forced to flee for his life. Together with best friend Izzy, a white girl who lives next door, Rory sets out to unravel the mystery of the manor and save Gloom from whatever lurks inside. Anchoring this wellpaced story is a solid cast of characters whose central relationships feel authentic and grounded. A yarn as full of magic and intrigue as any fairy tale or pirate song. (Suspense. 10-12)
THE NEST THAT WREN BUILT
Sonenshine, Randi Illus. by Hunter, Anne Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-1-5362-0153-6 A familiar cumulative rhyme pattern here describes the activities of a pair of wrens from nest construction through incubation and hatching of eggs to the fledging of their offspring. Nesting birds are a popular picture-book subject, but this appreciative account stands out both for its descriptive language and its evocative illustrations. Those reading aloud will appreciate the regular rhythm, intriguing vocabulary, and deft turns of phrase. Not only does Sonenshine smoothly introduce specific words for the growing chicks (“hatchlings,” “nestlings,” “fledglings,” all clear in context and additionally defined in a glossary at the end), she also uses engaging adjectives: “reptilian charm,” “persnickety burr,” “mirthful song.” There is interesting and appropriate imagery as well: “twigs…cradle the nest,” which will be lined with “moss, softer than suede.” Hunter uses ink and colored pencils on various shades of colored paper to illustrate the process. From vignettes to double-page spreads, these scenes focus on the wrens but also include other animals for observant readers to find; a final spread shows a mouse climbing into the now-empty nest. Following the pattern of the nursery rhyme, the author uses Wren as a proper noun in the repeated phrase “the nest that Wren built,” but in a final page of appended facts she makes clear that both the male and the female are involved in the various steps of the nest-building process. All in all, a delightfully readable and informative wrendition. (Informational picture book. 4-8)
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THE BUG GIRL A True Story
Spencer, Sophia & McNamara, Margaret Illus. by Kerascoët Schwartz & Wade/Random (44 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-525-64593-1 978-0-525-64594-8 PLB
A fourth grade girl tells how her mother helped her change from being bullied to being celebrated—for her love of bugs. Sophia’s voice is conversational as she relates how she became entranced by butterflies in a butterfly conservatory at the age of 2½. She keeps the same tone throughout, whether she is mentioning that bugs are important to the world or that she had a thriving bug club until, in first grade, all the other children lost interest in bugs. Explaining that at first she doesn’t mind being ridiculed by classmates for her entomological enthusiasm, Sophia matter-of-factly delivers the chilling, gamechanging anecdote: She brought a grasshopper to school one day, and “they knocked that beautiful grasshopper off my shoulder and stomped on it till it was dead.” She went home and cried, and her single mother offered her comfort but apparently did not report the bullying to the school. Eventually, her mother does come up with a brilliant solution: she contacts entomologists for help. After emails and postcards pour in, Canadian media outlets pick up the story. Sophia modestly asserts her goal: “I wanted to get the word out that it’s okay to love bugs.” The excellent, loosely outlined watercolor illustrations depict Sophia and her mom as white with background racial diversity, and they complement the gentle textual humor. Final pages offer further, mostly accurate bug information. (Many would disagree that there are only “two major types of arthropods.”) Inspirational for young naturalists. (Picture book/memoir. 5-8)
THE WONDER OF WILDFLOWERS
Staniszewski, Anna Simon & Schuster (192 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 25, 2020 978-1-5344-4278-8 A young girl who wants nothing more than to fit in with her classmates learns to stand out instead. Włodzimira—Mira for short—is the “least-athletic girl” and shortest person in her fifth grade class. She’s also the only one who breaks a sweat when doing physical activity, and it’s because everyone else in her class takes Amber: a magical substance that essentially makes people stronger, healthier, and smarter. Only citizens of Amberland have access to Amber rations, and the government is strict regarding whom they let cross their borders. Just when narrator Mira and her family finally become citizens, news of
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Theule’s gentle storytelling reveals that what others may consider weaknesses may actually be our greatest strengths. a way with wild things
Amber’s dwindling supply weaves panic into the community, causing protests and hate crimes. Staniszewski writes a fluid first-person narrative, providing valuable insight on Mira’s thoughts and feelings regarding how she’s seen as an outsider by her classmates and hopes for a better life in Amberland. While the worldbuilding feels thin at times, the magical aspects of the story are well balanced with the realistic issues tackled such as bullying and immigration laws. Naming conventions cue ethnicity in this analog America, which seems to be as diverse as the real one; Mira and her family are presumed Polish. A light fantasy with a powerful message of hope. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 8-12)
THE DEADENING
A timid boy receives guidance from the ghost of his beloved pet. Derrick Hollis, a white, bespectacled seventh grader with long sandy hair, loves art and spending time with his gray dog, Max. An introvert, Derrick escapes problems at school and his implied alcoholic mother by losing himself in his drawings with Max by his side. When Max is hit by a car and dies, Derrick is understandably heartbroken. In a supernatural turn of events, Max’s spirit materializes at his side as a kind of ghostly Jiminy Cricket. Emboldened by Max’s sage, otherworldly advice, Derrick finds the courage to stand up against bullies, show his art, and ask his crush to the dance. At first glance, this seems to be in the vein of Goosebumps, but it actually lands closer to James Patterson’s I Funny series. Striving to hit a balance between gravitas and slapstick, Sullivan does not quite manage to pull off this feat, tipping more toward humor and skimming over the deeper subjects. This slim series opener is told in short, fastpaced chapters composed of very busy, full-color panels interspersed with Derrick’s own comics. Max and his best friend are white and his crush has light brown skin. Secondary and background characters encompass a more inclusive spectrum of skin tones. A bit uneven but a fun premise nonetheless. (Graphic fan tasy. 8-11)
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Theule, Larissa Illus. by Palacios, Sara Bloomsbury (32 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-68119-039-6 Theule and Palacios bring a seeming wallflower to the fore. Poppy Ann Fields likes bugs more than most other humans. With bugs, she can sit and quietly observe their amazing tiny worlds. At parties with people, Poppy prefers to blend in with her surroundings, hiding away and avoiding others and going about in her own pensive way—until a dragonfly alights on Grandma Phyllis’ 100th birthday cake. Poppy claps her hands in joy to see another arthropod friend, but her cheerful applause gets the attention of Uncle Dan, and soon the whole clan who have gathered to celebrate are looking at her. Poppy freezes but chooses to focus on the dragonfly, now sitting softly in her hand. In this moment Grandma Phyllis helps Poppy to see that she is no wallflower but instead truly a wildflower. Theule’s gentle storytelling reveals that what others may consider weaknesses, like Poppy’s quiet and keen observation, may actually be our greatest strengths. Palacios’ cheery illustrations are bright and playful but softly textured, a perfect match for our protagonist’s bright-eyed yet introverted curiosity. Poppy’s dark hair and medium-brown complexion make her ethnicity somewhat vague, and her extended family appears to be quite diverse. A quiet, contemplative story that reminds readers to pause and enjoy the view. (glossary) (Picture book. 4- 7)
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Sullivan, Dana Illus. by the author Red Chair Press (64 pp.) $18.99 | $8.99 paper | Jan. 1, 2020 978-1-63440-852-3 978-1-63440-853-0 paper Series: Dead Max Comix, 1
A WAY WITH WILD THINGS
THE MUSIC OF LIFE
Thomas, Louis Illus. by the author Farrar, Straus and Giroux (40 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 18, 2020 978-0-374-30315-0 A composer hits all the wrong notes until he hears music from unexpected sources. Lenny lives with his cat, Pipo, in Paris. Uninspired while trying to write a symphony, he stares dejectedly at his empty page when…Pipo laps at his water bowl and—why not?—Lenny writes these sounds down. A dripping faucet and tweeting birds supply additional “notes.” Then more present themselves: a bicycle bell, metal shutters against a shop’s door, a barking dog. Lenny acknowledges these certainly feel musical, so they belong in his composition, too. A buzzing bee convinces Lenny to venture into the park, and oh, what musical magic emerges from the multitude of sounds on offer: “The symphony of life!” Lenny happily returns home, his formerly blank page now “full of ideas.” His symphony is actually transcribed on a page of sheet music, and savvy readers who wish to do so may try playing it. The simple plot isn’t original, but it is lively and stimulating, inviting listeners to join in.
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The simplicity of the writing gives ample room for the artist’s deft employment of visual humor. ducks!
Youngsters will remain engaged and enjoy mimicking the onomatopoeic sounds for the assorted noisemakers throughout; these are rendered in italicized, larger type. The loose, cartoon illustrations are expressive and child appealing. Lenny is white; other characters are diverse. Music is all around. One need only listen. (Picture book. 3-6)
incorporated into the illustrations, so the pictures do the heavy narrative lifting as a young duckling follows a butterfly away from the pond where the other ducks swim. Determined to locate them after it realizes its mistake, the fowl is thwarted time and again. The sounds of “Squawk!” are made by a local brass band (all humans in this title present white). Webbed footprints are the work of a snorkler. Feathers? That’s a pillow fight. Only when the duck decides to get a little more proactive in its search does it discover that the other ducks have been hunting just as hard. The simplicity of the writing gives ample room for the artist’s deft employment of visual humor. At one moment the duck gives young readers a half-lidded look of pure skepticism that breaks down the fourth wall. Kids will no doubt get a kick out of seeing the duck’s expectations upset with increasing ludicrousness (a seeming duck egg that hatches a baby dinosaur climaxes the silliness). They’ll enjoy even more the happy ending waiting in the wings. Fine-feathered and funny frolics. (Picture book. 3-6)
LETTER TO PLUTO
Treleaven, Lou Illus. by the author Maverick Publishing (128 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-84886-470-2 Series: Penpals on Pluto, 1 A pair of grade school pen pals exchange a series of amusing letters between Earth and Pluto. Jon lives in England. His very creative teacher has assigned her students pen pals, with all of the letters to be written on paper, a novel concept in the 24th century. Straxi, his pen pal, is a human girl who lives with her family on odoriferous Pluto. She describes to Jon how the president of the planet has decided to destroy all the very stinky vomblefruit trees in an effort to improve Pluto and boost tourism. Before that can happen, she sends Jon a vomblefruit that his mother attempts to keep alive in her greenhouse. It’s only after all the trees are dead that people on Pluto discover that they were critical to the ecosystem; everything else begins to falter, too, making the planet almost uninhabitable. After Jon sends back the seed from his vomblefruit to begin to restore the lost trees, Pluto is saved and the two children become celebrities. Presented in large “handwritten” text on faux lined paper and accompanied by numerous amusing, small illustrations the protagonists have drawn on their letters, this quick read is both highly imaginative and entertaining, with a useful embedded environmental message. Although character development is minimal, it’s the novel ideas and inventive presentation that shine. Humans depicted present white. A fun and fanciful exploration of life in the future. (Sci ence fiction. 6-9)
DUCKS!
Underwood, Deborah Illus. by McBeth, T.L. Henry Holt (40 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-250-12709-9 The odd duck looks for the right ducks in all the wrong places. Working together once more after Ogilvy (2019), Underwood and McBeth trail a wayward duck on the search for its fellows. The text is limited to just four words, with a few others 186
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BAD BEST FRIEND
Vail, Rachel Viking (320 pp.) $16.99 paper | Mar. 24, 2020 978-0-451-47945-7 An eighth grader’s world is thrown into turmoil when her best friend publicly identifies another girl as such instead. Required to team up with a best friend in gym class, Niki’s mortified when Ava chooses Britney, leaving Niki by default with “wonky, nerdy, wholesome” Holly, her best friend in third grade (before Ava moved here to Snug Island, Maine). Bonding with Holly and her friends holds little appeal. Niki’s desperate to restore the status quo, but Ava won’t answer her texts and now hangs out with the superpopular Squad. Confronted, Ava defends her behavior by attacking Niki, who’s still mourning their lost friendship. Niki’s social anxiety echoes her mother’s. (She exhausts herself pretending that Niki’s little brother, Danny, is doing fine; later, testing places him on the autism spectrum.) Niki feels guilty for repeatedly blowing off Holly, who single-handedly saves Danny’s ninth birthday party. While Danny’s needs and crises increasingly demand parental attention, Niki herself becomes a person of interest to neighbor and classmate Milo. Occasionally, the plot spirals into melodrama; Holly’s mature intelligence and Ava’s manipulative selfishness can seem excessive next to the perfect-pitch presentation of other characters, Niki especially. Danny—high-functioning but self-absorbed, sweet but annoying, impervious yet vulnerable—is an appealing standout among fictional characters on the spectrum, a fully rounded individual. Niki and her family are white, as are most—but not all—of her classmates. Vail’s gift for channeling adolescent angst is the icing on this funny, moving tale. (Fiction. 10-14)
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AT THE POND
Valério, Geraldo Illus. by the author Groundwood (48 pp.) $19.95 | Mar. 3, 2020 978-1-77306-232-7
THE CANDY CAPER
Watson, Tom Illus. by Kissi, Marta Harper/HarperCollins (96 pp.) $15.99 | $5.99 paper | Mar. 3, 2020 978-0-06-295341-4 978-0-06-295340-7 paper Series: Trouble at Table 5, 1 Molly, a grade schooler with a few quirks, gets help from her two best friends in solving a problem that’s both-
ering her. Molly likes to count things, shuns food not of certain colors, and eats some other foods only in even numbers. Her parents are both aware of her extreme focus and completely accepting of it: “That’s just who you are,” they say. Molly’s best friends, one a perceptive black girl and the other a white boy with an expansive imagination—Molly is biracial, with a black mom and white dad—are just as understanding. When Molly becomes consumed with the need to count the number of Skittles in a big jar on their principal’s desk, the two naturally pitch in to help her find a way to get into a little trouble—just |
GREEN ON GREEN
White, Dianne Illus. by Sala, Felicita Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 17, 2020 978-1-4814-6278-5
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This wordless narrative examines the assumptions humans make regarding their relationship to animals. The story opens in a forest clearing: A dog is tied to a pole next to the only house there. It’s a gray world except for the yellow chain and collar. As the white owner and dog walk toward the pond, blue streaks bleed onto their heads and the treetops. A bevy of swans floats peacefully on the water, and one nuzzles the child’s hand. Child and dog climb aboard, delighting in the friendly animals that emerge along with a range of spring colors and flowers on the banks. Removing the collar, the protagonist releases the pet to play—then places the restrictive object around the swan’s neck. Immediately the color drains from the spread. In addition to skillfully advancing meaning and plot via his palette, Valério effectively employs the gutter to signal division and reunion. Simply drawn but expressive faces convey apology and forgiveness across the gulf as the chain is abandoned. Viewers will have much to ponder about the tension between love and control or freedom and belonging as lifeless, tangled trees contrast with sun-drenched, impressionistic compositions rendered in visible strokes of graphite and colored pencils, paint, and markers. A provocative drama inviting readers to question their own behaviors toward all of the creatures in their orbits. (Picture book. 3- 7)
enough to lead to an office visit—and then methods for both luring the principal away and giving Molly the opportunity to complete the count. Their clever problem-solving skills are as much on display as their empathy with Molly’s unique personality. Large-print chapters are brief and illustration-rich, and each concludes with a series of milestone boxes that show emergent readers how much of the book they’ve already gotten through. With likable characters, an amusing situation, and lots of reinforcement for readers, this effort is sure to be a hit. What underlies Molly’s quirks is never explored within the story, leaving her behavior open to interpretation. An empathetic introduction to a new series of early chapter books. (Fiction. 5- 7)
A celebration of colors through a full cycle of the seasons. This rhyming, lyrical story opens with a blue-eyed, dark-skinned mother and child enjoying the yellow flowers in a grassy green meadow with the father riding horseback nearby and a lighthouse on the coast in the background. The text accompanying each seasonal sequence includes a refrain that focuses on the colors: “yellow on green” for springtime. The rhythmic text practically sings of the shifting seasons, as spring turns to summer, summer to fall, and so on, while the matte illustrations reveal the child’s curiosity, the family’s bonds, and the mother’s growing roundness as they all prepare for the birth of a baby. A summer trip to the beach brings “turquoise, teal, and blue on green”; “toasty and warm” “cinnamon, almond, and brown on green” abound in fall; winter comes with “gray and taupe and white on green”; and spring sees the addition of a new family member. Since every season includes green, it remains a touchpoint and a refrain throughout. Insects and animals, including the family dog, show up on most pages, giving detail-oriented readers lots to explore. Sala’s intentional inclusion of diversity in this rural community, as folks gather for activities and events, offers mirrors for many kinds of readers and emphasizes the richness of cross-cultural sharing. A beautifully illustrated, peaceful song of family, community, and new birth. (Picture book. 3- 7)
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THE KINGDOM OF NOTHING
the moon, disappearing behind, then emerging from, the orb’s shadowed surface.) Through the moonless night, Emile repeats the bird’s words until he falls asleep, awakening to a “new smile” that waxes to fill the sky again. Talented illustrator Zosienka’s pictures, made with colored pencil and opaque paints, employ inky blue-blacks and warm whites to depict bear, moon, and the night sky. A charming addition to titles exploring the phenomenon of the moon’s phases. (Picture book. 4- 7)
Wohlman, Ronald Illus. by Hewitt, Dylan Frances Lincoln (48 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-7112-4526-6
Can nothing be everything? In the Kingdom of Nothing reside a Queen, a King, a Princess, and a Prince. The King gives his children “lots and lots of his time,” “very big hugs and kisses,” and “the funniest tickles.” To the kids, these “gifts” are “truly SOMETHING.” Some other “THINGS” everyone appreciates: sunsets setting the sky ablaze and moonrises and twinkling stars emblazoning the night. The children adore the stories they hear every bedtime, as “stories are definitely not NOTHING.” What’s the best nothing of all? The parents’ assurances that “we love you more than anyTHING in the world.” This gently, subtly told story reminds us of what we take for granted and to recognize that what we need is in front of us. We don’t require THINGS; we need only one another and to share time and affection. Ironically, the tale deemphasizes material things by emphasizing the word “thing” throughout: It’s capitalized both on its own and in compound words. These important messages could spark much thoughtful discussion, including why these folks lack food, homes, and books. The quirky illustrations present dark-orange characters posed mostly against turquoise and, occasionally, black backgrounds with simple details; features, hair, body parts, and clothing are rendered with quick black strokes. This will capture kids’ attention and empathy during readings—but its staying power is an open question. (Pic ture book. 3-6)
THE MOON KEEPER
Zosienka Illus. by the author Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-06-295952-2 Emile, a white bear, is chosen by the village’s “night creatures” as the new
moon keeper. He gathers potential tools for the job: a net, a feather duster, a jar of fireflies, and more. He climbs a 93-step ladder into a sycamore tree, introducing himself to the full, luminous moon. Emile performs simple duties, blowing away clouds and shooing fruit bats that fly too close. “There isn’t a lot to do, but Emile finds the moon nice to talk to in the stillness of the night.” Gradually, Emile notices that the moon’s getting smaller. Alarmed, he consults a neighbor and cousin, who confirm his impressions. What to do? He offers food, then releases fireflies to share a riddle. “Emile giggles at the joke and sees that the moon is smiling, too.” With the moon thread-thin, a big green bird appears, reassuring Emile: “Things come and go—you’ll see.” (Sharp kids might observe the bird flying a circuit round 188
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black history month picture books LIZZIE DEMANDS A SEAT! Elizabeth Jennings Fights for Streetcar Rights
Anderson, Beth Illus. by Lewis, E.B. Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-62979-939-1
Just over 100 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, Elizabeth Jennings refused to dismount from a New York City streetcar. In 1854, New York was a so-called free state, and Lizzie Jennings was a freeborn, well-to-do African American woman. Accustomed to being permitted in the better-appointed streetcars reserved for white passengers, Lizzie is first taken aback and then angered when the white conductor tells her she must wait for one emblazoned “Colored People Allowed in This Car.” Her refusal to leave leads to a contretemps with the law—and a white witness, whose expression of support bolsters her enough to file an eventual, successful, groundbreaking lawsuit. Anderson’s third-person text allows readers under Lizzie’s skin as her indignation at injustice mounts. Children will readily recognize both the conductor’s capricious cruelty and Lizzie’s anger that “being born a ‘free black’ in a ‘free state’ ” does not mean being “treated as equal.” Lewis’ dappled watercolors depict the action and extend it. A picture of an angry Lizzie thrown to the cobbles, bonnet askew, is shocking; another, of the faces of five white, male jurors floating forbiddingly against a vivid, darkblue background, underscores the injustice of the legal system. A two-page author’s note fleshes out the history, including mentions of Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks. Necessary. (bibliography, further reading) (Informa tional picture book. 5-8)
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This tale features characters for whom cooking is an elaborate dance as well as family bonding. freedom soup
THE SECRET GARDEN OF GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
Barretta, Gene Illus. by Morrison, Frank Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-06-243015-1
BIG PAPA AND THE TIME MACHINE
Bernstrom, Daniel Illus. by Evans, Shane W. Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-06-246331-9 An African American grandfather and grandson take a time-traveling journey through U.S. history in this mystical and heartwarming picture book. When his grandson announces that he does not want to go to school, Big Papa takes action. Sweeping him up in his time machine (which looks a lot like a 1950s-era automobile), the pair visit Little Rock and Chicago in the ’40s through the ’80s, the places where Big Papa grew to manhood. In recounting his |
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FREEDOM SOUP
Charles, Tami Illus. by Alcántara, Jacqueline Candlewick (32 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 10, 2019 978-0-7636-8977-3
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George Washington Carver tended a secret garden of flowers before becoming known for his skill in agriculture. The book opens in 1921 as Carver addresses the U.S. Congress, astounding them with dozens of uses for the peanut. The narration then takes readers back to Carver’s childhood to discover how he reached that career highlight. As a child, he loved flowers, but he was warned not to waste time on plants that couldn’t be eaten or sold, so he kept his colorful garden hidden in the woods. Shut out of schools because he was black, he studied nature independently and learned through experimentation. Eventually, he started caring for neighbors’ sick plants, becoming known as “the Plant Doctor.” At 12, he left the farm on which he was raised and attained a formal education, after which he taught students at the Tuskegee Institute and farmers with a mobile classroom mounted on a wagon. This journey through Carver’s childhood and accomplishments ends with Carver’s simple but memorable words, “Regard Nature. Revere Nature. Respect Nature.” The substantial text holds readers on each spread long enough to appreciate not only the subject matter of the painted illustrations, but Morrison’s artistic techniques—strong strokes and careful dots, artful combinations of textures and shapes—which create lush forest scenes and portraitlike human faces and forms. The childhood story feels more cohesive than the final pages, which list his adult accomplishments but lack the narrative thread. Memorable art earns this biography a respectable place on the shelf. (timeline, bibliography, further reading) (Pic ture book/biography. 4-9)
struggles with dangerous jobs and working conditions and his trepidation at marriage and impending fatherhood, Big Papa gives his grandson a lesson in developing bravery while also teaching him the importance of getting an education. Love and reverence for history and family radiate from Bernstorm’s words. Backmatter indicates that the story is inspired by the author’s family, and he couldn’t have penned a more moving testament to their dignity and endurance. Evans’ whimsical, sunnyhued illustrations have a dreamlike quality that nicely maintains balance between the fantasy of time travel and the heaviness of some of the subject matter. This is particularly evident in the vignette set in the Arkansas cotton fields, where a fellow African American tells Big Papa to give up school because “work, that’s all you ever gonna do.” This beautiful celebration of the importance of family will also spur young readers to reflect on history. (Picture book. 4-8)
A Haitian grandmother and granddaughter share a holiday, a family recipe, and a story of freedom. It’s New Year’s Day, and Belle and Ti Gran are sharing in the annual tradition of making Freedom Soup. Though Belle jokes that the dish is named because “It’s free,” Ti Gran informs her that it is anything but. What follows is a breathless recounting of family slave history before the Haitian rebellion, with Freedom Soup as the conduit between the historical past and present day. Charles’ prose and Alcántara’s illustrations work perfectly in tandem to re-create a Haiti that is heartbreakingly lush and tropical. The mellow brown of the main characters’ skin contrasts with the darkness of their slave ancestors’, and the vibrant blue waters and endless yellow sugarcane fields are both breathtaking and oppressive when viewed through this historical lens. One particularly affecting double-page spread uses the sweep of the fields to draw readers’ eyes up to the white slave-owning family, to whom the soup is served by a girl young enough to be Belle herself. This tale features characters for whom cooking is an elaborate dance as well as family bonding, and the soup looks so tempting readers will swear they smell it. A stunning and necessary historical picture book. (Pic ture book. 5-9)
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Ransome’s illustrations effectively capture the trepidation of a family who though not enslaved, nevertheless must escape as if they were. overground railroad
BEAUTIFUL SHADES OF BROWN The Art of Laura Wheeler Waring
cannot eat in the dining car and must sit in the colored section of the train. The conductor calls out the cities as they progress North. When the conductor removes the “whites only” sign near Baltimore, African Americans can sit wherever they want— though it takes some time before Ruth Ellen and her family find white riders who smile a welcome. Ruth Ellen reads Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass aloud to Mama on the train ride, a gift from her teacher that parallels her own family’s journey. Ransome’s watercolor-and-collage illustrations effectively capture both the historical setting and the trepidation of a family who though not enslaved, nevertheless must escape as if they were. Cotton bolls throughout the images accentuate cotton’s economic dominance in the sharecropping system. A beautiful portrayal of a historic and arduous family journey northward. (Picture book. 4-8)
Churnin, Nancy Illus. by Marshall, Felicia Creston (32 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-939547-65-1
Laura Wheeler Waring saw “brown [as] a rainbow” and painted it that way. Growing up in turn-of-the-20th-century Connecticut in a middle-class African American household, Laura works for “hours mixing and blending” paints in order to replicate the shades she sees in her family members. Determined to pursue a career in art, she studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and then in Paris, honing her craft. Attending a concert given by a young Marian Anderson, Laura vows to paint the singer someday. A 1944 commission for “portraits of important African Americans” finds her painting the likenesses of Alice Dunbar Nelson, James Weldon Johnson, W.E.B. Du Bois—and Marian Anderson. Churnin ably conjures the painter’s process, thrillingly describing Laura’s painstaking combination of shades to create just the right browns for each subject. She is less adept at helping readers understand the barriers Laura must have faced, saying only that “there weren’t portraits of African Americans in museums” during Laura’s childhood and that her art education was undertaken among mostly white peers; one sentence in her author’s note acknowledges the limited opportunities available to African Americans of Laura’s time. While the evocation of Laura’s joy in her art is admirable, skimming over the everyday injustices she must have faced paints only half her picture. Marshall’s illustrations are appropriately painterly, capturing the play of light on her characters’ brown faces. An important story only partially realized. (timeline, further reading) (Picture book/biography. 5-8)
OVERGROUND RAILROAD
Cline-Ransome, Lesa Illus. by Ransome, James E. Holiday House (48 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-8234-3873-0 One family’s experience of the Great Migration. Cline-Ransome and Ransome, a husband-and-wife authorand-illustrator team, have again collaborated on an important story from African American history. Narrator Ruth Ellen, Mama, and Daddy awaken early to travel to New York without the permission or knowledge of the landowner on whose land they sharecrop. (The author’s note mentions that landowners often used threats and violence to keep sharecroppers on the land and perpetually in debt.) The family boards the train with luggage, tickets, and food in a shoebox—since black folks 190
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THE POWER OF HER PEN The Story of Groundbreaking Journalist Ethel L. Payne Cline-Ransome, Lesa Illus. by Parra, John Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-48-146289-1
Cline-Ransome and Parra introduce journalist Ethel L. Payne, called “The First Lady of the Black Press,” to young readers. Born in 1911 to a Pullman porter and a Latin teacher, as a girl, Ethel loved the stories her elders told, reading at the library on weekends, and English class with a teacher who encouraged her writing. During World War II, she became a community organizer in her hometown of Chicago, then began writing letters to newspapers about national politics and black issues. She got a job in Japan after the war, where she learned from black American soldiers about discrimination in the military, and a friend had her diary entries from the trip published. One of her articles made headlines, and she began working at the Chicago Defender. The newspaper sent her to Washington, where she became one of only three black journalists with a White House press pass and covered six presidents, asking them tough questions about race. The lengthy text, a paragraph or two on most pages, gives a thorough treatment of Payne and her effects on national politics and culture. While the copious details are relevant, their telling feels somewhat tedious, as the various events lack a strong narrative thread to hold them together. Parra’s painted, folk-style illustrations use texture and a mix of earthy colors to create distinct scenes that are stronger individually than collectively. Patient children will see another way to make a difference. (author’s note, bibliography, credits, further reading) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)
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THE SLAVE WHO WENT TO CONGRESS
Gaillard, Frye & Rosner, Marti Illus. by Haggard, Jordana NewSouth (32 pp.) $18.95 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-58838-356-3
MAMIE ON THE MOUND A Woman in Baseball’s Negro Leagues Henderson, Leah Illus. by Doutsiopoulos, George Capstone Editions (32 pp.) $18.95 | Jan. 20, 2020 978-1-68446-023-6
Mamie “Peanut” Johnson broke gender barriers playing in the Negro League in the 1950s. Through informative prose and muscular illustrations, Mamie emerges as both small in stature and larger than life. Standing 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighing in at 120 pounds, Mamie was frequently underestimated due to her small size and gender but consistently proved skeptics wrong with her strong right arm. She even joined the all-white, all-boys Long Branch Police Athletic League in New Jersey while still a preteen, |
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THE OLDEST STUDENT How Mary Walker Learned To Read
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Benjamin Sterling Turner, the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress from the state of Alabama, is the subject of this picture-book biography. Rosner and Gaillard tell the story in Turner’s voice, opening with his enslavement and his “yearning for an education,” which “would come alive” during “the reading mornings” when he would sneak and listen to his owner, Mrs. Turner, read aloud to her children. Turner was a tenacious learner. Children who are familiar with stories about Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass will notice this parallel with his contemporaries. From this book, readers learn that Turner was an interesting man who amassed a fortune twice before his death, raised a son alone after his first wife was sold away, and was elected to Congress despite having been born enslaved. However, a problem that presents almost immediately is that this book is related in the first person and therefore reads as though it is an autobiography. The authors mention both this decision and their sources in an opening note, but their fairly unorthodox choice unacceptably blurs the line between the facts of Turner’s life and fictional embellishment. Drawing on secondary resources for detail and Turner’s few recorded writings for his style, the authors put words in his mouth; a representative example: “I cannot say [my owner] was altogether unkind.” With no specific citation for this or other assertions, it is impossible for readers to know whether this was authentically Turner’s feeling or authorial imposition. The story is an important one, but this vehicle can’t carry it. (Picture book/biography. 5-10)
overcoming her teammates’ snickers and helping them win two championships. She was unable to prove her worth for the AllAmerican Girls Professional Baseball League, which denied black women the opportunity to play. On the urging of a former Negro League player, Mamie won a spot on the Indianapolis Clowns at 19, eventually pitching her way to a 33-8 record in her three-season career. The artwork deftly works with the text to provide a memorable reading experience, Mamie’s enthusiasm and determination shining from every page. Images of Mamie facing down white and/or male hostility alternate with scenes of prowess and accomplishment. This compelling story of breaking barriers and perseverance is timely and essential; it will pair well with She Loved Baseball, by Audrey Vernick and illustrated by Don Tate (2010). An incredible tribute to an African American woman who dismantled racial and gender obstacles amid the civil rights movement. (afterword, notes, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
Hubbard, Rita Lorraine Illus. by Mora, Oge Schwartz & Wade/Random (40 pp.) $17.99 | $20.99 PLB | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-5247-6828-7 978-1-5247-6829-4 PLB Mary Walker, who learned to read at the age of 116, is introduced to young readers in this lovingly illustrated picture book. Born into slavery in Alabama, Mary Walker was not allowed to learn to read. When the Emancipation Proclamation outlawed slavery, she was 15. She was later gifted a Bible, which she couldn’t read, but she kept it and made marks in it when her children were born. She worked hard and took care of her family and kept postponing her goal of learning to read. But she outlived her family, including a son who died at the age of 94. In 1963, she enrolled in a literacy program. “Could someone her age learn to read? She didn’t know, but by God, she was going to try.” By 1969 she had learned to read, been certified the nation’s oldest student (twice), received the key to the city of Chattanooga, and had her birthday celebrated by the city to recognize her achievement. While the author’s note mentions that some of the details that round out the text are invented, the most amazing facts of this story are the ones that are documented. Mary Walker was a living connection to a history people wanted to forget, and her indomitable spirit comes across beautifully in this book. Caldecott honoree Mora’s (Thank You, Omu!, 2018) collages endear Walker to readers, each spread creating an intriguing scene of textures and layers. Enjoy this book with every child you know; let Mary Walker become a household name. (selected bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 5-9)
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BLACK IS A RAINBOW COLOR
Joy, Angela Illus. by Holmes, Ekua Roaring Brook (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-62672-631-4
A young black child ponders the colors in the rainbow and a crayon box and realizes that while black is not a color in the rainbow, black culture is a rainbow of its own. In bright paints and collage, Holmes shows the rainbow of black skin tones on each page while Joy’s text describes what “Black is” physically and culturally. It ranges from the concrete, such as “the braids in my best friend’s hair,” to the conceptual: “Black is soft-singing, ‘Hush now, don’t explain’ ”—a reference to the song “Don’t Explain” made popular by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, the former depicted in full song with her signature camellia and the latter at her piano. Joy alludes throughout the brief text to poetry, music, figures, and events in black history, and several pages of backmatter supply the necessary context for caregivers who need a little extra help explaining them to listeners. Additionally, there is a playlist of songs to accompany reading as well as three poems: “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes, and “We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy,” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The author also includes a historical timeline describing some of the names that have been used to describe and label black people in the United States since 1619. Both a beautiful celebration of black culture and an excellent first black history book for young children. (Pic ture book. 4-8)
A RIDE TO REMEMBER A Civil Rights Story
Langley, Sharon & Nathan, Amy Illus. by Cooper, Floyd Abrams (40 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-4197-3685-8
Sharon Langley became the first African American child to legally ride the carousel at Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore, Maryland, one month before her first birthday, in 1963. Her ride on the carousel followed a series of protests and the arrests of many, including children, who demanded the park integrate. The story is told through a conversational reminiscence between a school-age Sharon and her parents, interspersed with moments when Langley speaks to readers as an adult. The questions the little girl poses to her parents are those one would expect from a child grappling with injustice: “What about the Golden Rule? What about treating other people the way you want to be treated?” Her mother tenderly answers her innocent yet complicated questions with kindness and grace: “I guess some people forgot that the Golden Rule is supposed to include everyone.” Braided into the story are mentions of the 192
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other children who participated in the protests for the integration of the park. Backmatter includes photographs and a note from Langley, a timeline, and updates about the people mentioned in the story. Cooper’s grainy sepia and golden tones with bright bursts of color give the book a dreamy and nostalgic quality that fits well with the story. This book delivers a beautiful and tender message about equality from the very first page. (Picture book/memoir. 6-9)
PATRICIA’S VISION The Doctor Who Saved Sight
Lord, Michelle Illus. by Harris, Alleanna Sterling (48 pp.) $16.95 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-4549-3137-9 Series: People Who Shaped Our World
The inspiring story of Dr. Patricia Bath, an African American eye surgeon who made significant contributions in the field of ophthalmology. Growing up in the late 1940s in Harlem, young Patricia first became curious about sight and sightlessness when she noticed a beggar with cloudy eyes. While her friends played nurse, Patricia wanted to be a doctor, and her working-class parents encouraged her love of science. Patricia honed her eye-hand coordination skills by sewing up and mending her dolls, a skill that would come in handy in her career. As a young ophthalmologist, Dr. Bath began working in Harlem before moving across the country to the prestigious Jules Stein Eye Institute in California. The discriminatory treatment Dr. Bath received at her new workspace didn’t keep her from taking the high road and seeking justice and triumph. Where other doctors saw the impossible, Dr. Bath saw opportunities for miracles, going on to perform a series of groundbreaking surgeries that restored or improved sight for her patients and eventually pioneering the use of lasers in cataract surgery. The lively illustrations complement this motivational text with detail and emotion, from early depictions of Patricia practicing medicine on her toys to the granting of her first patent and her later humanitarian work in Tanzania. A great tribute to a beautiful life and an important spotlight on a little-known part of American medical history. (timeline, author’s note, biographical note, works cited, further reading) (Picture book/biography. 6-10)
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Nolen luxuriates in poetic and symbolic language in this satisfying story. freedom bird
READY TO FLY How Sylvia Townsend Became the Bookmobile Ballerina
Lyon, Lea & LaFaye, Alexandria Illus. by Gibson, Jessica Harper/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-0-06-288878-5
DREAM BUILDER The Story of Architect Philip Freelon Lyons, Kelly Starling Illus. by Freeman, Laura Lee & Low (40 pp.) $19.95 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-62014-955-3
Philip Freelon, the architect of record for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., began life as a little boy who had trouble reading. His grandfather was a Harlem Renaissance painter, his parents were educated professionals, and his older siblings were able students, but Phil struggled. Before long, however, he discovered his love for math, science, and art, and while it took him a little longer to begin reading well, he eventually learned the joy of words, too. Lyons follows Phil from those early years through |
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FREEDOM BIRD A Tale of Hope and Courage
Nolen, Jerdine Illus. by Ransome, James E. Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster (32 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-0-689-87167-2
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A young black girl overcomes prejudice and financial barriers to become a successful ballerina and teacher in this picture book based on a true story. Sylvia Townsend hears her parents’ music—jazz and symphonies—and she rises “to my toes, ready to fly.” She sees Swan Lake on television and decides she must learn ballet—but her supportive parents can’t pay for lessons. When a bookmobile comes to town, books about ballet become her teachers. She learns well, even teaching other girls in her neighborhood. When her fourth grade teacher sees the talented girl dance, she offers to pay for lessons, but three different schools turn Sylvia away. Only one “let[s] the real reason slip—ballet is for white girls.” Sylvia is disheartened—but her pupils still want lessons. At a school talent show, Sylvia’s skill leads to a connection to a Russian ballet teacher. After a successful audition, Sylvia earns a free place in her school. On the final spread, an adult Sylvia teaches a multiethnic room full of children at Sylvia’s School of Dance. Lyon and LaFaye have co-authored a standout text that centers action in this triumphant story. Gibson’s full-color illustrations use patterns, textures, and expressive facial features to show a loving family, a vibrant community, and a talented girl who becomes an accomplished woman. Townsend contributes a brief introduction, and backmatter elaborates on her life and on the history of the bookmobile. Engaging and inspiring, this brief introduction is also fun to read. (notes, references, further reading) (Picture book. 3-8)
high school, where he learned he wanted to be an architect, and college at Hampton University (a historically black institution), where he learned about other black architects, to 2008, when Phil met with two other architects as they planned to enter a competition to design and build the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Freeman’s illustrations have an appropriately clean-lined look that complements the theme; her pages are populated by faces from black history as well as those of Phil and his family. Closing with an afterword by Freelon himself, this book will inspire children who have trouble reading, like Phil, and those who aspire to have careers as artists and architects. Both an inspiration and an excellent companion for a trip to the museum its subject designed. (Picture book/biog raphy. 5-10)
Two enslaved children become a legend when they escape the inhumane plantation system. Siblings John and Millicent (whom some will remember as the mother of Thunder Rose, from the 2003 picture book of the same name, illustrated by Kadir Nelson) toil on Simon Plenty’s plantation as slaves. Their parents were sold away—“I don’t have to tell you the pain this could put on anyone, let alone a child”—but not before they “had sown the seeds of freedom in their children’s minds and hearts.” Samuel and Maggie had told their children that their people could fly and that such a time might come for them. One day, the overseer strikes an unusual, large bird out of the sky. John and Millicent rescue it under cover of night and nurse the creature back to health. Things get more difficult for John and Millicent, as first John is hired out for months at a time, and then it is rumored that he will be sold away. One night, when they are trying to free the bird, the overseer discovers them, and the two children run off, heading west after the bird. Nolen luxuriates in poetic and symbolic language in this satisfying story. The lengthy text, addressed directly to child listeners, frames the tale with historical, cultural, and mythical context that will leave some younger children wondering but nevertheless will hold them spellbound. Ransome’s paintings create memorable scenes that evoke the indomitable human spirit to which the book is a tribute. Powerful storytelling and immersive art. (author’s note, further reading) (Picture book. 6-10)
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Aretha is often dressed in gold to signify her queenly stature, and Freeman hides small crowns throughout the pages. a voice named aretha
I AM A PROMISE
tennis on top of maps or with the globe represents the reach of her influence across the U.S. and the world. Other double-page spreads emphasize the enormity of the difficulties, specifically racism, Gibson faced while pursuing her dreams. One levels a “WHITES ONLY” sign on one page ever so slightly below Gibson’s determined gaze on the other. An author’s note fills in more historical and personal context for Gibson’s early and later life, and a timeline of important dates with a short bibliography of recommended texts rounds out the exploration of Gibson’s remarkable rise to tennis stardom. A measured, well-researched winner. (Picture book/biog raphy. 6-12)
Pryce, Shelly Ann Fraser with Rousseau, Ashley Illus. by Moss, Rachel Black Sheep Press (24 pp.) $15.95 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-61775-764-8 This autobiographical picture book highlights the challenges and achievements of six-time Olympic medalist Pryce. Young Shelly Ann, she tells us, is both tiny and fast, with big dreams of winning great races. It is her grandmother who first introduces her to the idea that she is “a promise.” Puzzled by this but hearing it from others, she runs. Running “to be free,” running “without fear,” Shelly Ann outpaces every competitor in her school-age years. As Pryce’s mother struggles to provide for her family, people in her community continue to validate the promise invested in her by her grandmother. Representing her country, Jamaica, Pryce realizes the promise that so many have recognized in her. “I was a promise to my country and to all who have supported me. A promise to myself and to all those who have loved me.” Writing with Rousseau, Pryce offers a text that’s accessible to new readers, repetition both underscoring her tirelessness and supporting decoding. Firmly outlined in black and opaquely colored, Moss’ images complement this moving story while highlighting both Pryce’s determination and the spirit of Jamaica, especially the support of a loving community (all depicted as black, like Pryce). Backmatter includes further facts about Pryce (athletic achievements and other activities) and a short biography. A solid addition to the early biography shelf. (Picture book/biography. 5-8)
ALTHEA GIBSON The Story of Tennis’ Fleet-ofFoot Girl Reid, Megan Illus. by Freeman, Laura Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-0-06-285109-3
Reid and Freeman celebrate the life of tennis champion Althea Gibson. Debut author Reid takes readers from 1940s Harlem, where “fleet-of-foot” Althea Gibson is the “quickest, tallest and most fearless athlete,” all the way to 1957, when she becomes the first black player to win the championship at Wimbledon. Readers get to see Gibson’s development from a young athlete, cocksure, assertive, and focused only on winning, to a considerate sportswoman in a league of her own, paving the way for generations of young tennis players coming after her. Framing transitional moments in Gibson’s life in medallions, Freeman’s somewhat static illustrations encourage the narrative along, keeping pace with the text. The clever placement of Gibson’s form playing 194
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A VOICE NAMED ARETHA
Russell-Brown, Katheryn Illus. by Freeman, Laura Bloomsbury (40 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-68119-850-7 “Queen of Soul” Aretha Franklin was once a shy child afraid to sing in front of a large audience. However, she came to learn that through music, she could ease her own pain and help others. This thoughtfully illustrated biography of Aretha Franklin paints a clear picture of the artist from the time she was a child grappling with the loss of her mother in 1952 through refusing to sing before segregated audiences during the 1960s to winning multiple awards and honors. The narrative covers Aretha’s introduction to entertainers like Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald as well as to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—all were often visitors of her father, famed preacher C.L. Franklin, at their Detroit, Michigan, home. The book moves fluidly through one phase of Aretha’s life and career to the next. The illustrations are vivid, and those of Aretha singing are full of emotion. Aretha is often dressed in gold to signify her queenly stature, and Freeman hides small crowns throughout the pages, often on Aretha herself. The final spread, featuring four overlapping, sequential images of Aretha Franklin at different stages in her music career against a white background, is especially well done and even moving. The backmatter begins with a two-page spread of photographs and more information about Aretha’s life; it’s followed by a list of songs that younger listeners can look up and hear for themselves. An excellent introduction to an American icon. (Picture book/biography. 4-8)
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BY AND BY Charles Tindley, the Father of Gospel Music
Weatherford, Carole Boston Illus. by Collier, Bryan Atheneum (48 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-5344-2636-8
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A child born to one free and one enslaved parent grows up to make a difference in the spiritual and secular lives of his people. Charles Albert Tindley, born in antebellum Maryland, had a difficult childhood, losing his mother while very young and consigned to a life of harsh field work. There he heard the spirituals that the enslaved workers sang and longed to be able to read the Bible stories that inspired them. Once he learned and was able to read aloud in church, he was inspired to continue his search for more knowledge. In time, he married and moved to Philadelphia, eventually becoming pastor of the church whose floors he’d mopped while studying. As his congregation grew, he preached and sang, eventually writing a hymnal containing songs he had composed—songs that have become an important part of the rich musical tradition of the black church. (Lists of popular hymns and of songs quoted in the book appear in the backmatter.) Weatherford tells Tindley’s story in rhyming verse that captures his drive for spiritual growth, service, and musical expression. Collier’s strong, vivid watercolor-and-collage illustrations enhance the text and visually depict the various facets of Tindley’s life. His use of perspective often highlights the pastor’s efforts to connect with issues beyond those of the earthly realm. A lively salute to an important, influential life of music and service. (author’s note, illustrator’s note, bibliography, resources) (Picture book/biography. 4-8)
wish to draw them.) Her third application, based on the records of her children’s births, is approved. It’s an unusual plot for a picture book, but Wills pulls it off, emphasizing both Emma’s unrealized desire to read and write and the importance of literacy to the successful negotiation of power structures. Cornelison contributes soft-focus paintings that linger on Emma’s determined, soulful face. Her differentiation of other African American characters is weak; most are the same shade of brown and have similarly round faces and cheeks. Copious backmatter includes a note on primary sources, discussion questions and activities, and a two-page glossary. The message is clear and convincingly conveyed: Literacy is survival. (Picture book. 5-10)
EMMA
Wills, Cheryl Illus. by Cornelison, Sue Lightswitch Learning (40 pp.) $18.63 | Feb. 1, 2020 978-1-68265-642-6 Journalist Wills reaches back through her family tree for a story of freedom and self-determination. Little Emma is enslaved on the Moore plantation in Haywood County, Tennessee, in 1858. She works in the house, caring for and playing with the white master’s children—but not learning with them. More than anything, she wants what they have but she can’t: freedom and literacy. With the end of the Civil War, she gains one but not the other. Emma marries a former black Union soldier and has children, milestones recorded by others. When he dies, she applies for survivor’s benefits but is denied twice due to bureaucratic quibbles about her husband’s name. (The use of this same tool to deny voting rights today goes unmentioned, but the parallels are clear for adults who |
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young adult BLACK GIRL UNLIMITED The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard
These titles earned the Kirkus Star: THE SILVERED SERPENTS by Roshani Chokshi..............................197
Brown, Echo Henry Holt (304 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-250-30985-3
THE RISE AND FALL OF CHARLES LINDBERGH by Candace Fleming............................................................................198 ME & MR. CIGAR by Gibby Haynes................................................. 200 THE HAND ON THE WALL by Maureen Johnson.............................201 DARK AND DEEPEST RED by Anna-Marie McLemore................. 204 LUCKY CALLER by Emma Mills...................................................... 204 STAMPED by Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi............................. 206
STAMPED Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award– Winning Stamped From the Beginning
Reynolds, Jason & Kendi, Ibram X. Little, Brown (304 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-316-45369-1
A graphic look at the magical black girls who are often forgotten or fetishized. Echo is a dark-skinned black girl who learns very early that life is not fair and that she must dig deep within herself to rise above life’s worst circumstances. Echo is also a wizard, just like her mother, a crack addict who is often checked out of her children’s lives. Echo’s brothers stray to the streets while Echo navigates the hardships of the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio, while attending school on the privileged West Side. On her journey, beginning from the age of 6, Echo relays the lessons she learns while traveling between different human and magical worlds. With the help of other wizards, all of whom are women, she learns the importance of cultivating the darkness that surrounds her while holding on to the light within. Debut author Brown delves into heavy and uncomfortable topics including drug abuse, sexual violence, depression, poverty, intergenerational trauma, and the work required to end cycles that seem cell deep. The text transitions between different times in Echo’s life, but the prose is smooth, as each break seamlessly transports readers to the next moment as if it’s a continuation of the same thought. Through Echo’s lessons, readers learn what it’s like to persist despite hopelessness, survive in a world propelled by oppressive and exploitative systems, and cope with feelings of connection and disconnection. A much-needed story. Just brilliant. (Magical realism. 15-adult)
FOUL IS FAIR
Capin, Hannah Wednesday Books (336 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-250-23954-9 A teen and her best friends exact revenge on the prep school boys who raped her. Elle, Mads, Jenny, and Summer are wealthy Los Angeles teens who crash a prep school party on Elle’s 16th birthday. 196
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THE SILVERED SERPENTS
Chokshi, Roshani Wednesday Books (416 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-250-14457-7 Series: The Gilded Wolves, 2 Chokshi channels National Treasure vibes in her intriguing follow-up to The Gilded Wolves (2019). Haunted by the death of his brother, Séverin determinedly searches for the artifact he is certain will absolve him of both his sins and his humanity—The Divine Lyrics, a book which is rumored to contain the secret to rebuilding the Tower of Babel, thus promising godhood and erasing pain, suffering, and guilt. Séverin hardens his heart and conceals his true intentions, both to guard himself and to ensure he accomplishes his mission for the friends whom he longs to protect. Séverin’s cruel front most hurts Laila, his mistress-for-show, and she, in turn, hides her deepest secret from him. Séverin, Laila, and the rest of their team—Zofia, Enrique, and Hypnos, patriarch of House Nyx—travel to a wintry Russia, where they are later joined by some unexpected cohorts, to explore the Sleeping Palace for The Divine Lyrics. This is a more cohesive and well-executed fantastical endeavor than its predecessor, allowing complex characterization to flourish—although the art of Forging, except for Laila’s ability to read objects with her hands, still seems vague. Themes, including visibility, grief, and sacrifice, permeate the story, driving it to breathtaking highs and heartbreaking lows. As before, the characters are richly diverse in ethnicity and sexual orientation; Zofia exhibits signs of being on the autism spectrum. Lavish and thrilling—a reward for readers who have awaited its release. (Historical fantasy. 14-adult) |
OASIS
de Becerra, Katya Imprint (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-1-250-12426-5 Alif Scholl and five of her friends leave Melbourne for the deserts of Dubai, where her archaeologist dad is leading an excavation. Recent high school graduate Alif looks forward to getting closer to her crush, Tommy Ortiz, her dad’s research assistant. But things at the site seem to be off. A mysterious, sunburned Frenchman appears out of nowhere, mumbling about a powerful force from Mesopotamian folklore called Dup Shimati. Rumors of a fantastical desert world suddenly seem possible. Following a sandstorm, Alif is stranded with Tommy and her friends. They come upon a lush oasis teeming with fruit—pears, apples, and strawberries—that shouldn’t grow there. The famished, dehydrated group consumes the fruit and fresh spring water. That night, disturbing dreams haunt Alif, making her sleepwalk and attempt to poison her friends. The others begin acting strangely too. The line between dream and reality begins to blur, especially after they find a tablet with sinister powers. The book explores the very real tensions teenagers face in grappling with their desires and learning to understand the importance of trust. While the narrative is engaging overall, with a spirited and ethnically diverse cast (Alif has a Jordanian British mother and German American father), the characters feel underdeveloped and the attempt to play with multiple realities falls short, leaving readers confused by sweeping transitions and sudden, jarring events. Some descriptions border on Orientalism. Overly ambitious. (Science fiction. 12-18)
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After four boys spike Elle’s drink and rape her, the girls decide to kill them. Using her middle name, Jade, Elle enrolls in the boys’ private school and launches an elaborate scheme of manipulation and retaliation, choosing golden boy Mack, who is in their friend group, as her scapegoat for murder. But when Jade falls for Mack, her friends start to question her loyalties, and she must decide how far she’ll go. Rhythmic, propulsive prose drives this bloody retelling of Macbeth at a relentless pace all the way to its violent end. Readers will find little moral or emotional complexity in these pages and hardly any character development or examination of the self-destructive power of vengeance. What they will find, after they leave their disbelief at the door, is a steadfast sisterhood repaying heedless assault with red-hot rage; and perhaps, in the age of #MeToo, that is enough to begin with. Jade’s father is an Indian immigrant (her mother’s ethnicity is not mentioned), dark-skinned transgender Mads has a Latinx name, Jenny is implied Korean, and Summer is bisexual. Besides a backstory involving transphobic bullying, none of these identities go much beyond name and appearance. Other key characters are white. Intense, implausible, and impossible to put down. (Fic tion. 14-18)
THE QUEEN’S ASSASSIN
de la Cruz, Melissa Putnam (384 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-525-51591-3 Series: Queen’s Secret, 1
A young woman, raised in obscurity and trained in magic, rescues a handsome boy and sets off to save her kingdom in this duology opener. In a kingdom where the only magical knowledge to escape centuries of tyrannical rule belongs to women, Shadow wants to go on adventures. She’s connected to both the palace and the Guild, a group of mostly female magicwielding assassins and adventurers. Unfortunately, her mother has just recalled her to court, where she’ll be expected to wear fancy gowns and jewels and maybe be married off. Rebellious Shadow runs off to rescue Caledon Holt, the Queen’s Assassin, who is bound to the Queen until he finds the hidden magic
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scrolls. Chapters alternate between Cal’s and Shadow’s perspectives as the pair reluctantly partner up to infiltrate a neighboring kingdom and root out the conspiracy trying to destroy Renovia. From perpetual frustration to all-in love, this is more about the romance than the world, although the world—with strong women, marriage equality, and characters of varying skin tones—certainly has its strengths, lightly realized though it is. This is a classic plucky heroine fantasy in the vein of Tamora Pierce and Kristin Cashore, with some modern tweaks. Pleasantly formulaic light fantasy with an appealingly strong female lead. (Fantasy. 12-18)
THE STARS WE STEAL
Donne, Alexa HMH Books (400 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-328-94894-6
For the second time in her life, Leo must choose between her family and true love. Nineteen-year-old Princess Leonie Kolburg’s royal family is bankrupt. In order to salvage the fortune they accrued before humans fled the frozen Earth 170 years ago, Leonie’s father is forcing her to participate in the Valg Season, an elaborate set of matchmaking events held to facilitate the marriages of rich and royal teens. Leo grudgingly joins in even though she has other ideas: She’s invented a water filtration system that, if patented, could provide a steady income— that is if Leo’s calculating Aunt Freja, the Captain of the ship hosting the festivities, stops blocking her at every turn. Just as Leo is about to give up hope, her long-lost love, Elliot, suddenly appears onboard three years after Leo’s family forced her to break off their engagement. Donne (Brightly Burning, 2018) returns to space, this time examining the fascinatingly twisted world of the rich and famous. Leo and her peers are nuanced, deeply felt, and diverse in terms of sexuality but not race, which may be a function of the realities of wealth and power. The plot is fast paced although somewhat uneven: Most of the action resolves in the last quarter of the book, which makes the resolutions to drawn-out conflicts feel rushed. A thrilling romance that could use more even pacing. (Science fiction. 16-adult)
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A PERFECT BLANK
Duran, Rye West 44 Books (200 pp.) $12.90 paper | Feb. 1, 2020 978-1-5383-8285-1 What happens when designer babies don’t turn out the way their designers intended? In the very near future, humanity is suffering. “There wasn’t / enough food or medicine / to go around. We were made / to be the solution.” Trans teen Alex and their nine siblings were created to be saviors of the human race by Project Apogee. Each had their own special area of expertise, and all excelled at first; then Alex didn’t. When the 10 kids returned from their foster parents’ houses at age 7 for tests, Alex didn’t satisfy Dr. Pinker and was told they wouldn’t be let back in. Their sister Anto hints that part of the reason was that Alex was too girly. Alex is comfortable with their feminine side and with being free from the Project. They lose touch with the other nine, until at 15 they all return to Apogee for more testing and learn they have lost their abilities. Alex is invited back for further study, and they go in hopes of saving their siblings from Dr. Pinker. Debut trans novelist Duran has created a pageturning science fiction narrative in blank verse that simultaneously sensitively and realistically displays the feelings of a trans teen. Any outsider will identify with Alex’s feelings of otherness and failure and cheer when their otherness is the key to success. Aimed at reluctant readers, this will satisfy the voracious reader too. (Verse novel. 12-18)
THE RISE AND FALL OF CHARLES LINDBERGH
Fleming, Candace Schwartz & Wade/Random (384 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-525-64654-9 The story of a flawed, complicated man. The son of a distant Minnesota congressman and a demanding, well-educated mother, young Charles Lindbergh grew up shuttling among the family farm, his grandfather’s Detroit home, and Washington, D.C. Intelligent but uninterested in school, he began flying at age 19, getting involved in barnstorming and becoming an Air Service Reserve Corps officer. He used a combination of mechanical aptitude and moxie to successfully cross the Atlantic in a 1927 solo nonstop flight and was instantly propelled into worldwide celebrity. Success came at tremendous cost, however, when his infant son was kidnapped and murdered. Lindbergh was also his own enemy: His infatuation with eugenics led him into overt racism, open admiration for Hitler, and public denunciation of Jews. Fallen from grace, he nonetheless flew 50 clandestine combat missions in the South Pacific. He became an advocate for animal
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Begins with a forbidden romance but turns into so much more. together we caught fire
conservation but also had three secret families in addition to his acknowledged one. Fleming (Eleanor Roosevelt’s in My Garage!, 2018, etc.) expertly sources and clearly details a comprehensive picture of a well-known, controversial man. Her frequent use of diaries allows much of the story to come through in Charles’ and his wife Anne’s own words. The man who emerges is hateable, pitiable, and admirable all at the same time, and this volume measures up to the best Lindbergh biographies for any audience. A remarkable biography. (bibliography, source notes, picture credits, index) (Biography. 12-adult)
TOGETHER WE CAUGHT FIRE
Gibson, Eva V. Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-5344-5021-9
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Gier, Kerstin Trans. by Fursland, Romy Henry Holt (336 pp.) $19.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-250-30019-5
Winter has arrived at Castle in the Clouds, bringing with it a group of distinguished guests who have come to spend the winter holidays at the historic hotel located in the Swiss mountains. It’s all very exciting for 17-year-old Sophie Spark, who decided to spend the year as the hotel intern rather than repeating a year of school. Sophie’s festive mood is dampened, however, when she overhears the hotel owners discussing whether to sell the hotel to a wealthy businessman with plans to thoroughly modernize the property. Misfortune strikes soon after when a guest’s engagement ring goes missing. Gier’s (Just Dreaming, 2017, etc.) latest offering treads a familiar path and holds few surprises for veteran mystery fans. Lengthy exposition and the introduction of a large cast make for a slow start, but the pace eventually picks up, albeit unevenly. Sophie’s frank and witty narration provides a boost of entertainment, and her earnestness is compelling—perhaps more so than the plot. Between new friendships, a potential romance, and various hotel duties, it’s easy for Sophie (and readers) to forget about the hotel’s uncertain fate. Characters follow a white default; handsome British secondary character Tristan Brown is described as Asian. Like a white Christmas in the Alps—charming, atmospheric, and predictable. (Mystery. 12-16)
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Eighteen-year-old Lane Jamison’s enduring crush, Grey McIntyre, moves into her house and becomes her stepbrother. When she was 5, Lane’s mother died by suicide, leaving her motherless and traumatized. Inundated with relentless nightmares of that bloody and violent night, Lane prefers to keep people at arm’s length lest she begin to care about them. Her life is further complicated when her father remarries and the object of her desire since eighth grade moves in. Green-eyed, cinnamon-haired Grey is everything Lane wants but can’t have, not only because he’s now her stepbrother, but also because he’s in a relationship with Southern belle Sadie Hall. When Lane and Connor (Sadie’s older brother) start a flirtation that irritates Grey as much as it delights Sadie, both relationships and friendships are tested. Lane must decide how far she’s willing to go for her attraction to Grey and what Connor really means to her. Flawed and fully fleshed out, the characters attempt to navigate their lives as best they can with the baggage they each carry. While the plot meanders at times, this is a solid debut that realistically portrays teens and touches on issues like sex, drugs, trauma, and mental illness. The writing is captivating and fluid—easily switching from lyrical and dreamy to raw and violent. All characters are assumed white. An addictive page-turner that begins with a forbidden romance but turns into so much more. (Fiction. 14-adult)
A CASTLE IN THE CLOUDS
HOSTILE TERRITORY
Greci, Paul Imprint (352 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 28, 2020 978-1-250-18462-7
Four teens stranded in the Alaskan wilderness find themselves sabotaging a foreign occupation. Rising high school senior and crosscountry standout Josh is days away from leaving his mountainside leadership camp when an earthquake buries everything. Only Derrick, Brooke, and Shannon—who, like Josh, were away from the main camp—survive. When time passes and help doesn’t arrive, the Fairbanks quartet sets off toward a distant town, hoping for rescue along the way. Early on, the text offers what readers would expect from Greci (The Wild Lands, 2019, etc.). Much like the environment it describes, Josh’s play-by-play first-person narration is simultaneously stark and lush. The group learns to collaborate while staving off the threats of dehydration, starvation, animals, fire, injuries, and allergic reactions. Dialogue expands from curt to compelling, and characters balloon into distinct, believable personalities. Suddenly, about halfway through, the text takes a turn from
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Gloriously unhinged. me & mr. cigar
slow-burn survival to plodding geopolitical intrigue. After the earthquake, a Russian army somehow invaded Alaska, subdued its population, and gained control of its nuclear arsenal. Those missiles are now trained on the Lower 48 states, and the American government must either acquiesce to Russian demands or nuke its own people. Can Josh and company demolish a bridge to help save not only themselves, but the entire free world? Excepting Shannon, who is Athabascan, protagonists are white. The concerns of Native people are treated in an offhand manner. An odd but ambitious cross-genre thriller in search of an ideal crossover reader. (Adventure. 12-17.)
STORM FROM THE EAST
Hathaway, Joanna Tor Teen (496 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-0-7653-9644-0 Series: Glass Alliance, 2
It’s never good when the second volume doubles down on the issues of the first. Athan, son of a northern general, and Aurelia, a rebellious princess with ties to both the peaceful royal North and the tumultuous South, continue their ponderous journey through infatuation and war toward the showdown promised in the prologue of Dark of the West (2019). Although the war and political machinations have advanced, neither protagonist has changed much yet; 17-yearold Aurelia continues to believe that “blood” defines her and that she can find solutions, and Athan continues to decry the ambition and duplicitousness of his family and their war while also seeking their approval and rebelling only emotionally. Hathaway is interested in big ideas: the cost of war, the nature of loyalty, how to keep hope alive for a better future. Many of the complex (although not always clear) political machinations turn out to be motivated by individual revenge fantasies (everyone in power is a self-righteous hypocrite, and Athan and Aurelia aren’t much better), which makes sympathy hard to feel, and sometimes-overwrought prose (“Remains of Safire bombers still smoke, spread out like grotesque butter among the trees”) bogs down the story. Characters’ skin tones range from pale to brown. An intriguing payoff is coming but not soon enough. (map) (Military fantasy. 13-adult)
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ME & MR. CIGAR
Haynes, Gibby Illus. by the author Soho Teen (256 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-61695-812-1
With federal agents in hot pursuit, two Texas teens and a small dog with unusual abilities roar off to New York in a battered pickup. Haynes, lead singer of the Butthole Surfers, crafts a gloriously unhinged road trip from a host of promising elements. Five years after meeting Mr. Cigar—a loyal, frighteningly smart, and possibly immortal escapee (it turns out) from a secret government project—Oscar is living the dream, organizing local roadside raves. The idyll comes to an abrupt end, though, as a series of ominous encounters with corrupt cop Cletus Acox and scarred military man Colonel Sanders, coupled with a plea for cash from his desperate older sister, send Oscar, with his canine sidekick and his best buddy Lytle, haring off cross-country. Unfortunately, in the meantime Oscar has unwittingly quaffed a Red Bull doctored with both MDMA and LSD—which adds, to say the least, a hallucinatory quality to a narrative already propelled by staccato minichapters, profane banter, surreal events highlighted by a bank robbery in the buff, a climactic battle with goons both visible and otherwise, and more than one fatality that turns out to be only temporary. Oscar is wreathed by a colorful supporting cast led by a pooch who is generally the brightest and most dangerous character in the room. Lytle, who is black, is the only character who doesn’t present as white. As boy-and-his-dog tales go, a long, long way from Lassie. (Satiric fantasy. 14-adult)
A GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO MURDER
Jackson, Holly Delacorte (400 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-9848-9636-0
Everyone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago—except Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood; he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. For her senior capstone project, Pip researches the disappearance of former Fairview High student Andie, last seen on April 18, 2014, by her younger sister, Becca. The original investigation concluded with most of the evidence pointing to Sal, who was found dead in the woods, apparently by suicide. Andie’s body was never recovered, and Sal was assumed by most to be guilty of abduction and murder. Unable to ignore the gaps in the case, Pip sets out to prove Sal’s innocence, beginning with interviewing his younger brother,
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Ravi. With his help, Pip digs deeper, unveiling unsavory facts about Andie and the real reason Sal’s friends couldn’t provide him with an alibi. But someone is watching, and Pip may be in more danger than she realizes. Pip’s sleuthing is both impressive and accessible. Online articles about the case and interview transcripts are provided throughout, and Pip’s capstone logs offer insights into her thought processes as new evidence and suspects arise. Jackson’s debut is well-executed and surprises readers with a connective web of interesting characters and motives. Pip and Andie are white, and Sal is of Indian descent. A treat for mystery readers who enjoy being kept in suspense. (Mystery. 14-18)
THE HAND ON THE WALL
Johnson, Maureen Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-0-06-233811-2 Series: Truly Devious, 3 The final, riveting chapter of the Truly Devious murder series. The initial incident in the series involved the 1936 abduction of newspaper tycoon Albert Ellingham’s wife and daughter; the present volume probes several unsavory events that transpired afterward, including Ellingham’s own death in 1938, in a sailing accident on Lake Champlain, and the recent immolation of University of Vermont history professor and Ellingham mystery enthusiast Dr. Irene Fenton. Fenton was introduced to protagonist and contemporary “Ellingham Sherlock” Stevie Bell in The Vanishing Stair
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(2019). As Stevie gets closer to making good on her resolution to solve the Ellingham case’s past and present riddles, Johnson makes the most of the exclusive institution’s remote, wooded mountain locale, provocatively setting the climax of Stevie’s investigations during the throes of a cataclysmic blizzard. Stevie and her motley crew of misfit high school geniuses are stranded à la Agatha Christie with members of the Ellingham Academy administration, who may have a stake in the revelations of several secrets linking the Ellingham kidnappings with present-day murders. Throughout this intricately woven, fast-paced whodunit, Johnson demonstrates how proximity to wealth and power can mold and bend one’s behavior, whether with good or—here largely—devious intent. The brainy secondary characters’ quirky talents and interests complement Stevie’s sleuthing skills; while mostly white, they include diversity in socio-economic background, mental health challenges, physical disability, and sexual orientation. A richly satisfying, Poirot-like ending for Johnson’s inspired and inspiring teen sleuth. (Mystery. 14-18)
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DEVIL DARLING SPY
Killeen, Matt Viking (480 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 21, 2020 978-0-451-47925-9 Series: Orphan Monster Spy, 2 Evil wears many faces. In this fast-paced sequel to Orphan Monster Spy (2018), Killeen brings back Jewish German Sarah and the British Captain, spies who aim to keep biological warfare out of the hands of the Axis powers during World War II. In order to thwart a plan between Shirō Ishii, a Japanese army surgeon, and SS-Obersturmbannführer Kurt Hasse to wreak biological havoc across the globe, 16-year-old Sarah, the Captain, and Clementine, their new servant of French and Senegalese descent, travel to central Africa. Their goal is to locate the White Devil who is rumored to be spreading a highly contagious disease that causes relentless bleeding, ultimately
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A slow-burning thriller and a study on how a vulnerable girl is led to commit a crime. what i want you to see
resulting in death. Their travels take them deep into the Congo, where they pretend to be missionaries. While Sarah works with German missionaries who are already there to treat the plague, Clementine educates her on the complexities of evil. Sarah must determine what—or who—the actual threat to humanity is. As not all people are who they present themselves to be, Sarah uses her wits and spy training to protect the world from pestilence. Unfortunately, Clementine’s character is not well developed and her emotions are not nuanced; she comes across as embodying negative stereotypes of black women, appearing mean, hard, and, at times, cruel. A fast-paced thriller full of twists and surprises. (author’s note) (Historical thriller. 13-17)
SHADOW OF THE BATGIRL
The story behind Batgirl. Cassandra Cain is trained to kill. Raised by a criminal mastermind, she knows only how to fight and execute. One day she freezes in the face of one victim’s desperation for her to pass on a message to his daughter. Not wanting to return home, she is found on the streets by noodle shop owner Jackie Fujikawa Yoneyama, who gives her a free meal. Cassandra also finds solace in the Gotham Public Library, where, having been raised with little conversation, she learns to comprehend language by listening to librarian Barbara’s storytimes about Batgirl. Fascinated, Cassandra begins to understand her life before, with her villain of a father, and to envision the life she wants to lead in the future, as a hero. This is an excellent introduction to Cassandra’s backstory and her journey to becoming Batgirl. The detailed illustrations and meticulous coloring add emotion and effectively convey movement. Dark memories and moments are shrouded in blue and purple while Cassandra’s safe, comforting spells are brightened by shades of yellow and orange. Cassandra’s sweet, touching story includes themes of self-discovery, relationships, family, and personal choices, and there’s enough action to keep readers interested. The cast of characters is diverse in race and ability; Cassandra has mutism, she and Jackie are Asian, and red-haired Barbara uses a wheelchair. Without a shadow of a doubt, readers will enjoy this hero’s backstory. (Graphic novel. 12-17)
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A naïve art student gets entangled in a web of lies, forgery, and manipulation. Sabine Reyes is a talented new student at the California Institute for the Visual Arts whose isolation and homelessness after her mother’s recent death set her apart from other students. As the recipient of a prestigious merit-based scholarship, Sabine continually needs to prove her worth, especially to renowned faculty member Collin Krell, whose harsh critiques leave her angry and humiliated before her peers. If Sabine loses the scholarship, she stands to lose her place at the school, her room (she had been sleeping in her car), and her shot at becoming someone. When Adam, a grad student who seems to truly understand her, presents Sabine with a way of getting insight on Krell’s own art by secretly studying his work in progress, she takes the chance, not realizing the dangerous path she is about to embark on. Linka (A Girl Undone, 2015, etc.) expertly weaves a story that is both a slow-burning thriller about the world of art and a study on how a traumatized, vulnerable girl is led to commit a crime and make numerous mistakes. What it means to truly see is present as a recurring theme in terms of understanding not only art itself, but also self-expression and interaction with others and the world. Main characters are white; Sabine’s absent father is not described. An engrossing novel about art, self-expression, and making amends. (Thriller. 14-adult)
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Kuhn, Sarah Illus. by Goux, Nicole DC (208 pp.) $16.99 paper | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-4012-8978-2
WHAT I WANT YOU TO SEE
Linka, Catherine Freeform/Disney (384 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-368-02755-7
THE TRIGGER MECHANISM
McEwen, Scott & Williams, Hof St. Martin’s Griffin (384 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 11, 2020 978-1-250-08825-3 Series: Camp Valor, 2
With help from a reclusive billionaire, teen supersoldiers tackle a cyberterrorist in this sequel to Camp Valor (2018). The main suspense comes from wondering when the chases and firefights are finally going to start. Traumatized by the discovery that he’s been duped into mowing down a crowd of real pedestrians in what he thought was a virtual truck, online gamer Jalen Rose is recruited by Valorian agent and co-protagonist Wyatt to join him in an unauthorized mission to find the instigator, Encyte. There are suspects aplenty. Their patron, tech tycoon John Darsie, points them toward one possibility: his own employee Julie Chen, a brilliant (not to mention “tough and a little boyish, but cute”) 14-year-old gamer and software designer. Despite a series of cyber exploits, including a high-casualty riot fueled
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Will leave an indelible mark on readers’ hearts. dark and deepest red
by pheromones, there are so many distracting subplots—notably the hunt for a traitor from the first volume, the arrival of a government official who orders the camp shut down because she can’t see the value of a cadre of secretly trained child warriors (go figure), and a developing relationship between Jalen and Julie—that the pedal doesn’t really hit the metal until some time after the real villain makes a tardy first entrance. Jalen is African American and Wyatt is white. Slow off the mark and gratuitously violent but cooking with (nerve) gas by the end. (Paramilitary thriller. 12-16)
DARK AND DEEPEST RED
McLemore, Anna-Marie Feiwel & Friends (320 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-250-16274-8 McLemore (contributor: Color Out side the Lines, 2019, etc.) weaves another magic spell in this haunting retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Red Shoes.” In her most ambitious novel yet, she interconnects the present-day trials of Mexican American Rosella and Romani American Emil with those of Lavinia, a young Romani woman in 16th-century Strasbourg, who is revealed to be Emil’s ancestor. Emil and Rosella became friends as children when they realized their darker skin color and families’ religious practices set them apart from the rest of their friends. Now teens, the two are drawn to each other during their town’s “glimmer,” an annual weeklong occurrence in which magical things happen. This year, the red shoes created by Rosella’s family cause people to pursue their romantic passions. However, Rosella is cursed with uncontrollable dancing, very similar to the plague of dancing that swept through Strasbourg in 1518, when the townspeople blamed Lavinia and the white trans boy she loved for their affliction. McLemore’s lush sentence-level writing is masterly, painting vivid pictures of Lavinia’s world. The past timeline is especially compelling, and readers will eagerly return to it. The author spins a tale of first love, misfits forging their own places in the world, and the inherent prejudices of people who fear what they don’t understand. This novel will leave an indelible mark on readers’ hearts. (Magical realism. 14-adult)
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BELLE RÉVOLTE
Miller, Linsey Sourcebooks Fire (384 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 1, 2020 978-1-4926-7922-6 An aristocrat and a commoner swap places to realize their dreams. In this French-flavored fantasy, magic is classified as either the midnight arts (illusions, scrying, divining) or the noonday arts (physical magic oriented toward military uses and healing). As using magic takes a heavy toll on the practitioner’s body, nobles make use of talented commoners as hacks: The hacks channel the magic and take the brunt of the damage while the noble artist directs it. While being packed away to a finishing school where she’ll learn the midnight arts, noble Emilie happens upon Annette, a poor girl who looks like her. Seeing Annette’s interest in the midnight arts, Emilie proposes they switch places, enabling Annette to utilize the education and freeing Emilie to pose as a commoner in order to apply to the university as a physician’s hack (with the goal of breaking the gender barrier and becoming a physician herself). The protagonists keep in contact through letters and scrying, build new communities, and get an up-close look at their society’s ills—injustices targeted by revolutionary figurehead Laurel. As they fall into revolutionary orbits, the girls uncover dark secrets, devious politicking, and get a taste of war’s casualties. Various types of relationships and sexualities are given positive representation, including powerful platonic relationships, multiple lesbian romances, and characters who are trans, nonbinary, and asexual. The protagonists are white; there are several brownskinned secondary characters. A bursting-at-the-seams stand-alone empowerment story. (Fantasy. 12-adult)
LUCKY CALLER
Mills, Emma Henry Holt (336 pp.) $17.99 | Jan. 14, 2020 978-1-250-17965-4 A group project for a radio broadcasting class spirals out of control. In the last semester of senior year, Indiana teen Nina ends up working with classmates Jamie, Sasha, and Joydeep on a weekly radio show. After some initial mishaps, the group comes up with a plan to attract more listeners. Nina dislikes being in the shadow of her mostly absent father, a popular radio host who now lives in California, but suggests that they could interview him when he comes to visit in the spring. So the group drops teasers about an upcoming mystery guest—and of course nothing goes quite as planned: Somehow rumors spread that the member of a famous band will appear at the live recording. Complicating matters is Nina’s
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past with her former friend Jamie, who lives with his grandparents in her apartment building. Transcripts from Nina’s father’s radio show as well as various class recordings are interspersed throughout the narrative. The plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, and this lovely book brims with complicated family dynamics, unexpected friendships, and important lessons on learning from mistakes. Mills (Famous in a Small Town, 2019, etc.) truly excels at creating vivid characters that will tear at readers’ heartstrings. Most characters are assumed white; Joydeep was born in India, and Sasha has deep brown skin. A stunning read filled with wit and wisdom. (Fiction. 12-18)
SHADOWSHAPER LEGACY
Older, Daniel José Levine/Scholastic (432 pp.) $18.99 | Jan. 7, 2020 978-0-545-95300-9 Series: Shadowshaper Cypher, 3
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Older (The Book of Lost Saints, 2019, etc.) brings the Shadowshaper Cypher to a close. Sierra Santiago is Lucera, Mistress of Shadows and Head of the House of Shadow and Light, and she and the other shadowshapers have been fighting the forces arrayed against them. It’s been a month and a half since the events of Shadowhouse Fall (2017), when Sierra set up a rival magical house and stripped the head of her powers. In doing so she brought down an enemy...but by breaking a rule, she opened the door to other enemies. Separated into four parts, the book features folktale-esque interludes that chronicle the exploits of some of Sierra’s magical ancestors. Throughout, Sierra’s growth is obvious as she steps more fully into her leadership role as Lucera and grows to understand the complications of leadership. The narrative switches perspectives often, offering supporting characters, like Sierra’s brother Juan and friends Tee and Izzy, a chance to be further developed and thus become more interesting to readers. Readers will appreciate the deeper dive into the mythology of shadowshapers and the Deck of Worlds, and though they may miss Sierra and her family and friends, they should be satisfied with this series closer. Sierra is Afro-Boricua, as is her family, and most of the other shadowshapers are people of color. Tee and Izzy are queer, and one of Sierra’s ancestors was genderfluid. In a word: bueno. (map, Spread of Cards) (Fantasy. 14-adult)
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STAMPED Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award– Winning Stamped From the Beginning
Reynolds, Jason & Kendi, Ibram X. Little, Brown (304 pp.) $18.99 | Mar. 10, 2020 978-0-316-45369-1
Award-winning author Reynolds (Look Both Ways, 2019, etc.) presents a young readers’ version of American University professor Kendi’s (How To Be an Antiracist, 2019, etc.) Stamped From the Beginning (2016). This volume, which is “not a history book,” chronicles racist ideology, specifically anti-blackness in the U.S., from its genesis to its pernicious manifestations in the present day. In an open, conversational tone, Reynolds makes it clear that anti-black racist ideology in the U.S. has consistently relied on
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the erronious belief that African people (and black people in general) are “dumb” and “savage,” ideas perpetuated through the written word, other media, and pseudo-science. Using separationist, assimilationist, and anti-racist historical figures, a direct line is drawn throughout U.S history from chattel slavery through the Civil War, Jim Crow, the civil rights era, the war on drugs, and #BlackLivesMatter, with plenty of little-known, compelling, and disturbing details inserted. Readers who want to truly understand how deeply embedded racism is in the very fabric of the U.S., its history, and its systems will come away educated and enlightened. It’s a monumental feat to chronicle in so few pages the history of not only anti-black racism in the U.S., but also assimilationist and anti-racist thought as well. In the process it succeeds at connecting “history directly...to our lives as we live them right this minute.” Worthy of inclusion in every home and in curricula and libraries everywhere. Impressive and much needed. (Nonfiction. 12-adult)
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Readers will be richly rewarded by the depth of these characters. what kind of girl
ALICE BY HEART
Sater, Steven Razorbill/Penguin (240 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-451-47813-9
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A World War II–era girl escapes the harsh reality of the Blitzkrieg through stories from her childhood favorite, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As Alice Spencer hides out from bombings on a London Underground platform, crammed into a too-small and squalid space and cared for by nurses and doctors who seem impersonal to the point of cruelty, all she can think about is her friend Alfred, quarantined in another part of the platform. A domineering Red Cross nurse keeps them apart, but Alice finds respite in retelling the Wonderland stories to herself and remembering the bucolic days when she and Alfred would act out scenes together. Wonderland and war blur together until Alice must decide which world is truly worth living in. Playwright and lyricist Sater (A Purple Summer, 2012, etc.) thoughtfully explores the parallels between Lewis Carroll’s topsy-turvy universe and the surreality of life in wartime; the novel is an adaptation of his existing off-Broadway musical of the same name, and it is easy for readers to imagine a lush theatrical rendition of the visuals and themes at hand. However, the novel reads like a consolation prize for those unable to attend the real show; the prose is long-winded, complacent, and solipsistic, and the story progresses at a deathly slow pace. All major characters are white. Reads like a playbill; save your attention for the musical. (author’s note, musical credits, photo credits) (Fabulism. 14-18)
patient readers will be richly rewarded by both the depth of these characters and the compassionate portrayal of the issues they face—which also include bulimia and drug use—and by the way their stories are eventually woven together. Some details are chilling, as when Maya’s classmates suggest that they believe she was hit but think she may be confused about who did it. Realistic diversity is present—Mike and Maya are both white, and she is Jewish; Junie is Mexican American and Ashkenazi Jewish; Junie’s girlfriend, Tess, is black. A poignant, thought-provoking novel that will resonate deeply. (Fiction. 14-18)
WHAT KIND OF GIRL
Sheinmel, Alyssa Sourcebooks Fire (384 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 1, 2020 978-1-4926-6727-8
Two friends who’ve been growing apart are drawn back together when one of them comes forward to report that her boyfriend has been hurting her. In short sections, each divided into three parts, taking place over a timeline that spans just a week, a Northern California high school is rocked by the revelation that Mike, a well-respected, highachieving student, has given his girlfriend, Maya, a black eye. Extending naturally from this central plot is the nuanced and compelling struggle of Maya’s best friend, Junie, from whom she’s become distanced due to Mike’s isolating behavior. Junie is dealing with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder and copes by cutting. The narrative structure of this effective novel is a clever one, though some may feel that the number of threads that are spun out at the beginning are a bit unwieldy. However, |
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SCAMMED
YO U N G A D U LT
Simmons, Kristen Tor Teen (384 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-250-17583-0 Series: Vale Hall, 2
Brynn’s life as a young con intensifies in this Norse mythology–themed sequel to The Deceivers (2018). After successfully surviving her first big mission, senior Brynn Hilder begins to relax at secretive Vale Hall, giving in to her feelings for swoony classmate Caleb Matsuki and enjoying her new friendships with fellow trained con artists. When controlling school founder Dr. Odin announces that her former mark, the corrupt senator’s troubled son Grayson Sterling, is moving into Vale Hall and is again her primary assignment, Brynn’s short-lived sense of peace begins to crumble. Simmons keeps the pace taut and the romantic tension high, but readers may quibble at how often Brynn second-guesses what’s truth and
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what’s deception in every comment, gesture, or action—even a kiss. As her doubts mount, Brynn holds on to one constant: She cannot allow her single mother (or herself) to go back to a life of poverty (or, in her mom’s case, a controlling relationship). Despite posing more questions than it answers, this installment delves deeper into the compelling main characters and sets the stage for what’s likely to be a chaotic, life-or-death next volume. Most characters are white, but there’s scattered inclusion in the story: Brynn is Colombian and white American, Caleb is Japanese American, and there is some racial and sexual orientation diversity in minor characters. This twisty, fast-paced sequel will leave readers hungering for more. (Thriller. 13-18)
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A roller-coaster ride of romance and self-discovery. loveboat, taipei
THE GRAVITY OF US
Stamper, Phil Bloomsbury (352 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-1-5476-0014-4
OFF SCRIPT
Watson, Kate Flux (344 pp.) $14.99 paper | Jan. 21, 2020 978-1-63583-048-4 Series: Seeking Mansfield, 3 Emma Crawford has it all: fame, fortune, good looks, and charisma. Fortunately for those around her, she is just as generous as she is wealthy. After helping her friend Weston get his own talk show, Emma realizes she rather enjoys helping others and begins looking for someone new to bestow her guidance upon. Enter Winter White, stage name of Brittany Smith. The cousin of Weston’s makeup artist, she is doe-eyed and blinded by the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. It just so happens that Emma needs a new assistant, preferably one without ties in the industry who could sell her out. An unlikely friendship begins to grow between them, and Emma realizes that Brittany could have a much bigger career than the one she’s hoping for as St. Martin’s, Ohio’s resident meteorologist. However, Liam Price, a beautiful professional soccer player, introduces complications as he |
LOVEBOAT, TAIPEI
Wen, Abigail Hing HarperTeen (432 pp.) $18.99 | Feb. 4, 2020 978-0-06-295727-6
A sheltered teen with a passion for dance finds love, drama, and herself at a summer camp in Taiwan. Eighteen-year-old Everett “Ever” Wong braces herself for a summer of curfews and vocabulary lessons after her parents reveal that they signed her up for a Mandarin language and Chinese culture program. But upon arriving at Chien Tan, Ever quickly discovers how the program earned its nickname, Loveboat. As her new roommate, Sophie, says, “Ever, you are never going to meet this many eligible guys in one place.” Ever seizes this opportunity away from her strict parents to experience a slew of forbidden activities, from sneaking out at night with other campers for illicit clubbing to taking classes at a local ballet studio. Complications arise when she unintentionally stumbles into a love quadrangle involving bad boy Xavier, handsome prodigy Rick, and glamorous Sophie. The novel evokes the style of bingeworthy Taiwanese TV dramas, complete with dramatic plot developments and characterizations that occasionally toe the line between exaggeration and caricature. Between hookups, glamour photo shoots, and camp classes, Wen addresses a number of hot-button issues for many Asian Americans, the foremost being the struggle to reconcile immigrant parents’ expectations with personal aspirations. Characters are predominantly Chinese American; a secondary character is Indigenous Taiwanese. An entertaining and heartfelt debut that takes readers on a roller-coaster ride of romance and self-discovery. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14-18)
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Gay romance goes interstellar in this quirky coming-of-age tale. After extensive experience as a social media reporter, high school student Cal, an aspiring journalist, has his dream internship with Buzzfeed tantalizingly within reach. Meanwhile, his father, a commercial pilot, applied to become an astronaut for an upcoming NASA mission to Mars, but the chances of being chosen are one in a million...and then it happens. Suddenly, Cal’s life is turned upside down, and he finds himself ensconced in a Houston, Texas, suburb far away from his beloved Brooklyn neighborhood and best friend, Deb. Surrounded by picture-perfect NASA families, Cal worries that he and his parents are outclassed and out of their depth, especially since being part of a space-themed reality television show called Shooting Stars is part of the deal. When Cal meets Leon, a handsome brown-skinned gymnast and fellow astronaut’s son, he begins to hope that this unexpected journey might be a new beginning. In his debut novel, Stamper crafts a sweet fishout-of-water tale that also shrewdly explores the intersection between social class and modern media culture. Cal’s mother’s anxiety issues and the arguments over how much is too much to sacrifice for one man’s dream humanize the story and help demonstrate the sharp divide between the life shown on camera and the one lived offscreen. Cal and his family are white. A charming and satisfying first novel. (Romance. 13-18)
informs Emma that maybe what she thinks is best for Brittany isn’t actually what is best for her. Hollywood has its dark side, one that Emma has glimpsed but was luckily sheltered from by her domineering father. As time goes on, Emma starts to realize that she needs to find courage in herself. This dramatic coming-of-age story features solid writing, complex characters, and good pacing. Emma and Brittany are white; Liam is Brazilian and Jewish. A modern Hollywood do-gooder offers a fun spin on Austen’s classic. (Fiction. 14-18)
indie DESERT SANCTUARY A Detective Sanchez/Father Montero Mystery
These titles earned the Kirkus Star: OPEN MY EYES by T.E. Hahn.......................................................... 220
Baker, Fred G. Other Voices Press (286 pp.) $9.99 paper | $4.99 e-book May 17, 2019 978-1-949336-12-2
FRONTAL MATTER by Suzanne Samples..........................................227 FROM THE MIDWAY by Leaf Seligman........................................... 228 THE THEORETICS OF LOVE by Joe Taylor.......................................230
A shootout with gang members results in an unexpected outcome and a lot of trouble for a young Arizona detec-
tive in this sequel. Phoenix detective Lori Sanchez, “sweating like a porker in the heat of the evening,” doesn’t think there’s enough backup for the drug bust set up by Capt. Ronald Gurvy of the South Metro Gang Unit. Sanchez’s concerns increase when Roberto “Criatura” Gomez, the criminals’ “top guy,” shows up with a heavily armed posse for a minor drug deal. After all hellfire breaks lose, Gurvy chases Gomez into a junkyard. Sanchez, in delayed pursuit in the darkness, trips over a downed Gurvy. Both he and Gomez are dead. Ballistics reports show the bullets that killed each man match. “They were both shot by the same gun—the same shooter,” says Jeff Bordou, Sanchez’s partner. After the gunfight, Sanchez and Bordou can’t locate their snitch, Eduardo, for questioning, and her apartment is ransacked. The thieves stole not much of value, but they apparently hid something in her apartment—the gun that killed Gurvy and Gomez. When the cops find and ID the weapon, suspicion falls on Sanchez, who relies on her dear friend Father Guillermo Montero for comfort and counseling. He knows Father Juan “John” Ortega, a local priest whose church grounds offer asylum for two dozen refugees from El Salvador and one newcomer, a local man who says he needs protection but may have gangland ties. Baker’s (An Imperfect Crime, 2018, etc.) images are rich, as when he describes Arizona’s deserts, casinos, or even a precinct secretary’s desk—“one of those old steel ones in the shade of battleship gray. It, like Margaret, was formidable.” The book’s pacing is superb, starting out strong with the gunfight, retreating a bit, then bringing in more firepower. Timeliness of content stands out, as Father John offers a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, who are subjected to violence. The series gets bonus points for its ethnic lead characters: a strong female cop and a sympathetic priest who share “similar interests and a love for Mexican beers and good food.” A resonant, character-driven mystery that proves a worthy series entry; recommended.
OPEN MY EYES
Hahn, T.E. Running Wild Press (162 pp.) $21.99 paper | $9.99 e-book | Nov. 22, 2019 978-1-947041-28-8
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BIG CITY MAGIC Uncover the Secret of the Big Apple
THE 1% DIVORCE When Titans Clash
Bikel, Dror Sutton Hart Press (189 pp.)
Bender, Jeanne Illus. by Willows, Kate Pina Publishing (270 pp.) Oct. 15, 2019 978-1-943493-27-2 978-1-943493-26-5 paper
A puppy explores New York City, makes new friends, discovers a secret, and experiences a little magic in author Bender and illustrator Willows’ (Flying High, 2nd Ed., 2018, etc.) latest children’s book. Little Lindie Lou, a spirited brown pup with huge paws and floppy ears, has, in previous series installments, experienced early life in Missouri, found a new home in Seattle, and visited a farm in Iowa. As this lively, travel-themed chapter book series continues, Lindie Lou jets into New York with her loving owners, Kate and Bryan, to stay with their friends at a posh apartment house overlooking Central Park. Lindie Lou and the hosts’ puppy are allowed to explore the idealized city alone because they have tracking collars, and Bender infuses the plot with benign suspense as Lindie Lou searches for a legendary apple tree that, their host says, gave New York it nickname of “The Big Apple.” The pup’s ability to read comes in handy as she tracks down the tree; so does her surprise ability to speak with a mysterious woman (whose eyes, strangely, are the same bright green as Lindie’s) and an elderly man named Kris, who explains the legendary tree’s secret and makes a significant appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The sunny, characterbuilding revelation may disappoint children hoping for magic— and may strike adults as exceedingly aspirational—but Kris and the green-eyed woman retain an air of mystery. Bender’s text, in which occasional words are enlarged, colored, or reshaped for emphasis, will attract young eyes, and Willows again charms with watercolor-soft digital illustrations that combine realism and a cartoonish style. The humans are diverse; Bryan and Kate are white, their friends are people of color, and the few other human characters have varying skin tones. As in previous books, Bender describes various landmarks; here, they include One World Trade Center, the Oculus transportation hub, the Statue of Liberty, and others. Post-story features include a Lindie Lou– related song, New York City “Fun Facts,” a calendar of events, and a “Quick Quiz” for reading comprehension. A tale with an adorable, relatable central character, a hint of mystery, and a wholesome message.
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An experienced divorce attorney thoroughly explains the issues that arise when ultrawealthy marriages dissolve. Divorce is never an uncomplicated affair, but according to lawyer Bikel, it poses “unique challenges” for rich couples. Such parties may be acrimonious, and they must have all of their considerable assets valued and divided equitably—an astonishingly complicated process that can take years and, in itself, come at an extraordinary cost. The author, a veteran divorce attorney based in New York City, takes his readers on an expert tour of the myriad issues that can arise in such situations, including property division, conflict over the custody of children, the difficulty of maintaining privacy, and revelations of infidelity, among many others: “there are countless things that can go wrong with a highstakes divorce. Affluence can make life easy, but it can also make it infinitely complicated unless experienced counsel is at hand.” He illustrates the lessons of this instructional primer with a series of high-profile cases involving the marital woes of actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie; Donald Trump and both of his former wives; and Amazon.com founder, CEO, and president Jeff Bezos and his spouse, MacKenzie Tuttle, among others. The overarching lesson of Bikel’s lucid, comprehensive guidebook is that one should prepare for every eventuality and hire the finest legal and financial experts that one’s money can buy: “a legal team with a panel of expert forensic accountants, valuators, art appraisers, real estate appraisers, and other specialists who understand the appropriate appraisal methodologies to use for each specific asset type.” Although much of the author’s counsel in this book will be of practical interest to anyone who may be facing the end of a marriage, it does specifically focus on the wildly financially fortunate. As a result, many less-wealthy readers will find the text to be more entertaining than edifying. Relatively few people, for example, will be able to relate to such questions as “Did you use your income as a gallerist in Soho to improve your condo in Belize?” However, even for those readers who don’t have billions of dollars at stake, the book will offer a prudent cautionary tale about the costs of being unprepared for a marital catastrophe. In addition, the book looks at divorce not only as a division of wealth, but also as a bitter contest between relentlessly competitive Type A personalities. For the most part, Bikel largely sticks to his own areas of expertise—this is a legal guidebook, after all, and not a self-help manual—but he does offer a wellspring of prudent counsel on the equitable mediation of conflict. Along the way, he also discusses, at great length and with impressive authority, the messiness of child-custody negotiations. These sections will be of value to many readers, including those who are less well-heeled. Overall, this is an impressively comprehensive survey of its subject conveyed in flawlessly clear language. An intelligent handbook to divorce for the abundantly rich that also contains some useful information for the rest of us.
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THE MISADVENTURES OF RABBI KIBBITZ AND MRS. CHAIPUL
now about 400 million survivors make up the UEA, an upstart, North American cabal seeking to establish a one-world government. Pockets of violent resistance fighters materialize, but they’re not the only things newly appearing in the dark new world. Lingering spirits of the dead—known as the “unattached”—are restless and ubiquitous. The Great Catastrophe only seemed to spare people who could psychically detect the “anuniverse,” where the spirits dwell, so such hauntings are no small thing. By the 2090s, studying and fighting the unattached has become an obsession for Raile Alton, a UEA “anologist”— basically a ghostbuster—who lost the love of his life, Lily, among others, during a resistance attack. He grieves the fact that he hasn’t ever felt Lily’s phantom presence. Moreover, Raile has been hunting an unattached entity calling itself “Cavusa.” Most unattacheds are bewildered, slowly waning energy patterns, but Cavusa is sentient and homicidal. As Cavusa’s victims pile up and the resistance fighting escalates, the shadowy chiefs of the UEA near their goals, including a body-switching “transference” technique that allows one to live forever. SF fans may be reminded of English writers who blurred the boundaries of science fiction and the supernatural, such as Nigel Kneale and Colin Wilson. There’s a steep learning curve with this novel, though, even for genre followers, due to Bryan’s use of unfamiliar terms such as “physipethic” and “anmatter,” instead of, say, “telekinetic” and “ectoplasm.” There’s a narrative shoutout to H.P. Lovecraft’s work, but the bulk of the story deals with cloak-and-dagger insurgency and guerilla ops with a paranormal tinge. The reversals, surprises, and betrayals are numerous, and the book finishes without a concrete resolution. Invested readers, therefore, will hope for a continuation, even with a grave ambiance hanging over the story. A particularly dark science fantasy that’s gloomy even by dystopian fiction standards.
Binder, Mark Light Publications (122 pp.) $19.95 paper | $4.99 e-book Aug. 9, 2019 978-1-940060-29-3
A novel set in a small Jewish village chronicles an unlikely romance. This latest book from Binder (The Zombie Cat, 2017, etc.) continues his stories about the village of Chelm “on the edge of the Black Forest, in a part of the world that was sometimes Poland, sometimes Russia, briefly Austria, and maybe Germany.” The author has related the fictional goings-on in this little village in five works. This sixth installment centers on the wisest man in Chelm, Rabbi Kibbitz, and an unexpected late-in-life romance he enjoys. The book opens with a note of hyperbolic wry humor that skillfully captures the tone of the whole volume. The good rabbi is officiating at the wedding of a young couple who have succumbed to the temptation to write their own vows. As those vows drone on and on, various members of the congregation drift off to sleep. When the couple are finally done with their pledges and married, they’re frozen in place. “They both made so many vows to each other,” Rabbi Kibbitz explains, “that they can’t move for fear of breaking their promises.” One of the most surprising marriages in the village turns out to be the rabbi’s own. He weds Mrs. Chaipul, “owner and operator of Chelm’s sole kosher restaurant, the village’s chief caterer, and the best wedding planner” within four days’ ride. She insists on being called Mrs. Chaipul even after their marriage (her first husband’s last name was Klammerdinger, so she’s a bit skittish). Their union is a happy one, gently and wonderfully portrayed by Binder. The slim book’s descriptions of small-town Jewish life glow with affection, including Rabbi Kibbitz’s irritation concerning his obligation to eat his wife’s tough-as-nails matzah balls (“After five minutes your jaws began to ache, and the villagers started to wonder whether Mrs. Chaipul’s family had all died of starvation or lockjaw”). In all of these engaging tales, the jokes and human pathos are expertly balanced. Village stories that deftly lift a curtain on a world of friendly humor and touching details of Jewish life.
TOWARDS A NEW PIETY
Bussan, Paul PSB Publishing (60 pp.) $16.00 paper | $5.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2019 978-0-9726884-3-7 Bussan (This Is Me, Not Robert Creeley, Speaking, 2017, etc.) stakes out his vision of religiosity in a collection of short poems. Faith presses up against its limitations in Bussan’s poems, whose abbreviated lines and sudden line breaks seem to struggle against their own boundaries, as in the opening “Towards a New Piety, X,”: “The challen- / -ge of that t- / -wofisted pr- / -ayer, and b- / -arrel-chest- / -ed faith, th- / -e times are / calling for, I / am answe- / -ring.” These strained, stuttered lines illustrate the deliberation that’s required to speak even short statements simply. In other poems, in which words aren’t split, the syntax is still fractured and reordered, creating a puzzle to be reassembled: “As, / on water, / Jesus did, / one step / at a time, / desire paths, / on dry land / I’m making as / I go along.” The poet also develops a self-centered theology in which he reworks
FOURTH TRAIT
Bryan, Benjamin A. Amperception Books (377 pp.) $13.95 paper | $2.99 e-book 978-0-9973636-7-8 Decades after a mysterious cosmic event killed 95% of Earth’s people, the survivors fight battles while haunted by spirits of the dead in Bryan’s SF novel. In 2031, the Great Catastrophe, a mysterious cosmic event, occurred, and 212
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Bussler’s story offers an uncommon narrative of the Iraq War, and it’s a haunting one. no tougher duty, no greater honor
prayers and Scripture to place the speaker in the role of God or other religious figures: “The godman in me, / 3 times before the sun sets, / I will not deny,” reads the haiku “Daily Affirmation.” The speaker wryly sets terms for a deity in which he can believe in “Deal Breaker, IV”: “Any god who’s never / experienced betrayal, / is no friend of mine.” The overall result is an empowered, individual theology—one that’s often found in the modern world. Bussan’s poems are short—frequently fewer than 30 words in length and sometimes in the neighborhood of 10. Even in these Spartan spaces, he finds humor, as in “Alpha and Omega,” in which the speaker sees a bit of himself in Christ: “An ageless hipster, / Christ, the first, and last, hipster, / liberates in me.” The poet grapples with his influences as well as with deities; references to Robert Creeley, Charles Baudelaire, Søren Kierkegaard, Stephen Crane, and others dot the pages’ cemeterylike terrain. The vision that emerges is not a groping or questioning one, as one often finds in poetry that touches on God and religion, but rather confident and firm. Despite his rejection of so much orthodoxy, Bussan ends up positioning his speaker as a sort of holy man. Poems such as “Structural,” which is shaved into slender columns, offer the speaker as a stylite, rejecting the world from atop his pillar: “When I, / from my / faith, / the orna- / -ments, re- / -move, / I see how / it st- / -ands.” It’s a book that reads very quickly and yet invites rereading; one wishes to return to dismembered words, which take on greater importance the more that they appear. It can be difficult to come up with new poetic approaches, particularly when tackling religion, but Bussan’s fragmentary efforts—which feel simultaneously of the current moment, of 70 years ago, and of 2,000 years ago— stand out in a landscape of undercooked verse. A stark, striking collection of inward-looking theological poems.
take.” Bussler and his comrades would soon learn just what was being asked of them as they participated in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. With this book, the author describes his three tours there, during which he received physical battle scars and suffered the loss of comrades. The experience gave him a unique, intimate perspective on an aspect of the conflict that rarely made it into the news. Bussler is a capable battlefield reporter, revealing the remarkable psychology of “body baggers,” as his unit was darkly nicknamed. Here, he recounts the excitement his team felt when they recovered a dog tag from a burned corpse, which inspired high-fives among the troops: “It felt good to hold something in our hands that was tangible and as valuable as this, something that we could pass on down through the chain of custody that would eventually go to this fallen soldier’s loved ones.” He deftly balances the horrific with the quotidian, displaying a deep empathy for the dead while also exploring the continuing traumas of the living. By turns gruesome and introspective, though always deeply human, Bussler’s story offers an uncommon narrative of the Iraq War, and it’s a haunting one. A remarkable, sometimes-devastating war memoir.
y o u n g a d u lt
MOJO RISING The Saga of Trio de Dio
Curaçao, Lourdes, Edwards, Blake & Kalkwarf, Granville Bothsams Publishing (300 pp.) 978-1-5255-4540-5 978-1-5255-4541-2 paper
This horror novel sees a trio of friends embark on a road trip during a zombie apocalypse. In Tucson, Arizona, Desré Dupuy is an Air Force veteran in love with Blake Edwards, a musicology student. Blake’s best friend, Granville Preston Gordon, is a former Navy MP, and together they form the Trio de Dio. They share a weekly movie night featuring zombie flicks. Though Gran asserts that “all of life is in those movies,” Des is sick of the cheesy Hollywood productions. She convinces her friends to celebrate the birthday of Marie Laveaux, a 19th-century Condomblé priestess and Acadian heroine. They create an altar, burn their troubles (like Blake’s eviction notice) in an abalone shell, and dance to banda music. Despite being enlightened, Gran insists that a zombie apocalypse is near because he dreamed it—and his dreams always come true. The next morning, a horrible stench assaults the Trio. Outside the crummy apartment complex, the dead have indeed risen. So begins the Trio’s journey, taking them through Texas and Louisiana and toward Des’ relatives in South Carolina, who live on the “Fish-Camp” reservation. Along the way, natural disasters strike and new friends pop up. In this series opener, Curaçao (Walker, 2018), Edwards (Strange Diary Days, 2018), and debut author Kalkwarf enter the well-trod genre with narrative guns blazing. They give longtime fans exactly what they crave with descriptions like “part of her face was gone, blown away, from the looks of it,” and “all her internal organs were missing. It was just a body cavity…spine showing through.” The overall tone
NO TOUGHER DUTY, NO GREATER HONOR
Bussler, L. Christian CreateSpace (525 pp.) $21.99 paper | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 27, 2017 978-1-5466-0493-8 In this debut memoir, a postal worker and U.S. Marine reservist is tasked with recovering fallen soldiers from the battlefields of Iraq. In December 2002, mail carrier Bussler was leading an unremarkable life in Dayton, Ohio, working hard to make sure the people on his route got their Christmas letters each day before he went home to his wife and 2-year-old daughter. Then he heard from his supervisor that his reserve unit had been called up. The platoon was trained in mortuary affairs, which entailed recovering the remains of soldiers who’d died in the line of duty—a specialization that wasn’t needed in peacetime: “We were proud to be the only mortuary affairs (MA) platoon in the entire Marine Corps,” he recalls, “even though in reality we really didn’t know what that duty would demand of us, or what kind of toll it would |
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is light, sharpened with self-awareness, as in the line “A fire axe, just waiting there for me like it had been drawn in by some supernatural narrator.” Sometimes the tendency to tell rather than show infects the proceedings, as with a rant about Des’ awful neighbor, Dino. But the theme that family is important—and that all humans are related—is an excellent one. The notion that zombies represent a modern-day Ragnarok, humanity’s natural end, is as captivating as it is terrifying. Like many impressive zombie narratives, this tale wrestles with humans’ deeper connection to the undead.
Disney, Neda Tandem Books (249 pp.) $25.99 | $9.99 e-book | $17.46 audiobook Nov. 4, 2019 978-1-73335-242-0 An experimental debut novel in stories about artists wrestling with addiction and sexual frustration in Los Angeles. Each of this book’s six chapters is centered on a single character—respectively, “the writer,” Mrs. Randall, Rodney, “the sponsor,” “the sex addict,” and Nelly. While visiting New York City for a reading, the writer gets a drink at a bar, where he discovers that all his fellow patrons can read his mind. In the second chapter, the writer is left behind for a new character, Mrs. Randall, who finds a renewed passion for life when she volunteers at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California, while her soldier husband is deployed abroad. After enduring the loneliness of raising an infant alone and then experiencing a personal tragedy, Mrs. Randall begins to experience states of confusion associated with the onset of dementia; although she “didn’t suffer at the beginning phase of the disease…she was entertained almost all the time,” Disney writes. As readers proceed deeper into Mrs. Randall’s mind, they’ll find nothing that connects her with the writer, and nothing supernatural seems to be afoot. Only the characters’ similar geographical location provides a thin thread of connection; the writer is a recent Angeleno while Mrs. Randall lives in or near Glendale. The next chapter, however, focuses on a man named Rodney, whose father worked at the Alex Theatre; in this way, Disney emphasizes the connection between the characters—and the slightness of it. (Rodney goes on to unexpectedly develop stigmata.) As this collection of vignettes about isolation cycles in the remaining characters, it proves to be light on plot, as a rule. However, it sparkles intermittently with surprising kernels of humor: “It is not in the least bit difficult to hide one’s stigmata on the set of an episodic television show.” The wry observations of each new player manage to cut through their personal misery. As the characters strut and fret their hour on the stage, their stories unfold in a vacuum that each one seems unable to escape. A surreal and darkly funny set of tales of West Coast strangers.
WHEN A TOY DOG BECAME A WOLF AND THE MOON BROKE CURFEW…
de Vries, Hendrika She Writes Press (234 pp.) $16.95 paper | $8.99 e-book Aug. 27, 2019 978-1-63152-658-9
A writer brings her perspective as a therapist with a love of mythology to her debut memoir of growing up in Amsterdam during World War II. Before the Nazis arrived, de Vries and her parents lived a vibrant life with colorful neighbors in a charming city full of promise. That changed when the author witnessed a little girl in a crowd being taken away by Nazis. Soon after, her father was sent to a camp as a prisoner of war. De Vries was only able to offer her father her toy dog, which she secretly believed was a wolf, to protect him. For the following two years, the author and her mother survived as Amsterdam’s inhabitants starved or were shot in the street, witnessed neighbors betray neighbors, scavenged for food, and burned anything they could find to stay warm. Her mother stayed hopeful and joined the resistance, at one point hiding a young Jewish woman. In one of the book’s most harrowing scenes, de Vries watched as Dutch traitors dragged the woman out of hiding and held her mother at gunpoint. As a child who had been taught to love stories, the author tried to think of a happy ending even as she and her mother ate their meager rations and battled malnutrition. One of the more intriguing aspects of this engrossing account is what happened when the family was reunited after the conflict. De Vries clearly and empathetically portrays how a broken-down family and a devastated city attempted to rebuild after the trauma of war. There are many lovely moments and vivid, heart-rending details that bring the author’s narrative to life, including her stark description of the inexplicable coldness she felt toward her father when he first returned. “I had no feelings for this man hugging my mother,” she recounts. “He had no place in the story of my mother’s and my traumatized life.” A beautifully wrought wartime account; highly recommended for its portrait of the human side of a horrifying period of history.
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THE SECRET STRAND
Eklund, Nora CreateSpace (391 pp.) $28.00 paper | $3.99 e-book Oct. 5, 2019 978-1-983581-34-2 In Eklund’s debut novel, a middleaged cancer patient discovers a startling secret about her family while searching for information about her past. |
Fischer leads readers through the family’s day-to-day struggle in a voice that captures the innocence, vulnerability, and enthusiasm of a boy on the edge of leaving childhood. discovering america
After enduring an abusive childhood and, later, her own divorce, Jenna Waring pursued a successful career in social work; raised her son, Drew; and got happily married to her high school sweetheart. Now, as she approaches 50, her life is upended by a devastating diagnosis: stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As she begins the process of arranging treatment, telling the news to her family, and coming to terms with her condition, she’s buoyed by a new source of happiness—a previously unknown 3-year-old granddaughter named Violet. Jenna made the discovery through a DNA-sequencing service that listed them as close relatives. After corresponding with Violet’s mother, Maddy Kansel, Jenna learns that Violet was conceived using an anonymous sperm donor, who turns out to be Jenna’s son. Jenna has tremendous love for her son, but because of Drew’s reserved nature and difficulty expressing emotion, their relationship is somewhat delicate. Out of fear about Maddy’s motives, Drew forbids his mother from having any further contact with Violet. Jenna must now determine whether she can have a relationship with her granddaughter without driving her son away while knowing that her time left with her family is limited. Over the course of the novel, hints of magical realism, in the form of prophetic dreams, lend the story a mysterious quality and draw focus to considerations of the afterlife. Eklund’s treatment of the moral, social, and legal implications of DNA-sharing technology is also balanced and thought-provoking. Even more striking is the presentation of Jenna’s condition; her progression of emotions, from dismay to resolve and much in between, is relatable, and she retains an admirable humor and warmth of character throughout. The supporting cast, which includes Jenna’s husband, Sam; her best friend, Eric; and her beloved sister, Mary Grace, is fairly well conceived. However, the most stirring scenes are those between Jenna and Violet, as the elder woman rediscovers some of herself in her young granddaughter. A novel that carefully presents an unusual situation, offering plenty of poignant moments along the way.
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and is working on a farm in Austria. Nine-year-old Konrad and his mother make a dangerous escape. In 1948, the family is reunited in Austria at the Straubling refugee camp. The town is flooded with physically and emotionally wounded people from all over Eastern Europe; there are few jobs to be had, and food is scarce. However, the Kempers have a far-reaching goal: One day, they aim to make it to the United States. While their campmates move on to Canada, Australia, and South America, the Kemper family acquires a small shack, working and waiting for American authorities to accept their visa application. Fischer leads readers through the family’s day-to-day struggle in Straubling in a voice that captures the innocence, vulnerability, and enthusiasm of a boy on the edge of leaving childhood. The prose is detailed, conjuring a visceral portrait of the postwar wreckage—the grime and smells of the refugee barracks, the ever present hunger, and people’s hope for something better in the New World. For example, while climbing through the American Army’s garbage dump, Konrad finds treasures—pencils, a spoon, a Classics Illustrated comic book, a batch of unused American Christmas cards. Insatiably curious and observant, he gradually develops an image of a United States filled with wonder, from the extravagance of disposable paper tissues to the miracle of “radios that let you see.” A historically informative, gritty, and tender comingof-age immigration saga.
FUGITIVE PLANET
Greenburg, Shane Self (231 pp.) $9.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Aug. 20, 2019 978-1-09-508555-4 In Greenburg’s SF debut, Earth in 2030 may be in danger of colliding with a rogue planet moving through the solar system. A Hawaiian space observatory captures a possible asteroid that’s getting brighter. When it’s clear that it’s moving at an astonishing speed, astronomer Matt Olsen confers with colleagues in Texas. The object is not an asteroid but a rogue planet headed toward Earth. The planet may be slowing down, which also means an alien species may be “steering” it. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Planet Babek, thanks to their dying sun, have been living in caves for more than 2 millennia. They’re using thousands of thrusters to move to another solar system, and they’re fully aware of humans’ presence on the blue planet. But many on Babek, which hasn’t seen war in 50-plus generations, despise humanity’s propensity for violence. Some even suggest eliminating the humans. But while the inhabitants vote against such an act, someone on Babek sabotages a good number of thrusters. This will force the planet, in order to get into orbit, to redirect itself using Earth’s gravity, which will likely have catastrophic results on the humans’ world. Greenburg’s novel, which launches a prospective series, sets an impressive pace from the start. Along with the countdown to the potential collision, the suspense builds as Babek inhabitants race to reconnect thrusters and attempt to warn humans of the impact. The author retains simplicity with
DISCOVERING AMERICA
Fischer, Helmut AuthorHouse (190 pp.) $26.98 | $13.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Jul. 14, 2019 978-1-72831-684-0 978-1-72831-685-7 paper Debut novelist Fischer takes readers to post–World War II Europe, where a young boy and his parents dream of immigrating to America. Konrad Kemper, the engaging narrator of this tale, was born in Yugoslavia. During the Nazi occupation during the Second World War, Konrad’s father, Hans, was conscripted into the German army and wound up in an American prisoner-of-war camp. At war’s end, Konrad and his mother, Anni, were placed in one of Marshal Tito’s prison camps: “We…had lost our farm in Yugoslavia to Tito’s Communists. They equated German speakers with fascists although we had lived there for two centuries.” Now, Hans has been released |
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21 Great Indie B ooks Wo r t h D i s c o v e r i n g [Sponsored] ROUGH FLAVORS
IN THE SPACE BETWEEN MOMENTS
by Sylvia Hart Wright “A human rights activist recalls a richly textured life in this memoir.” A smart, straight-talking account by an author who courageously followed her beliefs.
by Pranay Sinha “A trainee doctor combats burnout with heartening stories of how medical professionals make a difference in patients’ lives.” Prescription: Read. Laugh. Cry. Repeat.
IN THOSE GLORY DAYS OF ELVIS
COMMUNIST DAZE
by Josephine Rascoe Keenan
“A physician recounts three years of service in a small Soviet village and the horrors of the communist medical system. ”
by Vladimir A. Tsesis
“The times, they are a changin’ in Arkansas in this third installment of a series.” A coming-of-age story that deftly demonstrates the potency of standing up for one’s beliefs.
A historically eye-opening memoir told with insight and wit.
KARMA’S ENVOY
THE SOULS OF THE LASH
by Kevan Houser “A millennial gets caught up in the ripples of time travel in Houser’s complex SF thriller.” A promising first novel featuring an unlikely hero.
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by Jennifer Reinfried “Otherworldly creatures terrorize the Wild West in this genrebending adventure.” A gripping SF Western that ends too soon.
THE MERMAID UPSTAIRS
SPLINTERED PADDLE
by Jami Lilo “This debut YA novel tells of a family coping with a mother’s firm belief that she’s a mermaid.” An exuberant fantasy that earnestly explores its teen protagonist’s problems.
by Bill Fernandez illus. by Judith Fernandez photos by Judith Fernandez “A historical novel set during the period of Kamehameha the Great’s battles to consolidate the Hawaiian Islands stars a fierce yet tenderhearted young warrior determined to bring security to his family.” An action-packed adventure, a wealth of historical and cultural minutiae, and an engaging protagonist.
THREAD RECOVERED
by D.R. Meckfessel
by D.R. Meckfessel
“In this debut SF novel, a world already facing nuclear devastation may be under threat from an unexplained space phenomenon.”
“Six people from the 21st century travel 152 years into the past in order to prevent nuclear destruction in Meckfessel’s (Thread Discarded, 2018) SF sequel.”
An assortment of intriguing characters and subplots neatly packed into a memorable cautionary tale.
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THREAD DISCARDED
An engaging second SF installment with remarkable details and characters.
FORRESTER BRANCH by Greg Corle “A landowner fights to protect his Colorado property from soulless commercial development. ” A philosophically simplistic but entertaining ecological drama.
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GHOST NEXT DOOR
JUDGING NOA
by Helen Currie Foster
by Michal Strutin
“A Texas lawyer becomes embroiled in a case of murder, arson, and deceit in this fifth installment of a thriller series.”
“Strutin’s (History Hikes of the Smokies, 2003, etc.) novel tells the story of a minor character from the biblical book of Exodus who fights for justice.”
A sufficient mystery elevated by a pragmatic and able heroine.
THE VAVASOUR MACBETH
CLIMBING THE HOLY MOUNTAIN OF RECOVERY
by Bart Casey “A historical novel re-creates life at the 16th-century court of Queen Elizabeth I via a 20th-century murder mystery involving a cache of valuable papers found in a tomb.” An engaging read with a plethora of captivating literary and historical details wrapped in a contemporary whodunit.
TEARS FROM IRON by Jonathan Oldenburg “In this fantasy debut, a warrior on a mission to infiltrate a band of rebels begins to empathize with his targets.” Laudable characters and striking exposition give this world a grand introduction.
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A good choice for readers who love historical tales of strongwilled women.
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by Adrian Auler “A former heroin addict’s story of hitting rock bottom and finding a way back by unconventional means.” A colorful, involving account of decades of drug addiction.
STANDING ABOVE A SIGH by Azadeh Azad “A collection of poetry that examines themes of exile, joy, loss, feminism, and political repression.” Searching poems that often make effective use of language, though some are overly polemical at times.
SCISSORMAN by Henry Chancellor “A high-profile treasure hunt monopolizes headlines as a serial killer roams the London streets in Chancellor’s (The Forgotten Echo, 2012, etc.) thriller.” A moody and absorbing detective story.
“McIlvain (Stein House, 2013, etc.) takes readers back to Texas at the end of Reconstruction in a novel about a man trying to come to terms with his biracial son’s radical decision and the return of a woman whom he’d thought he’d lost. ”
“A debut history book focuses on a New Jersey cemetery while exploring the whole spectrum of the black experience in the region.”
Readers will likely welcome a sequel to this well-wrought historical family saga.
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by Myra Hargrave McIlvain
IF THESE STONES COULD TALK
WATERS PLANTATION
by Elaine Buck & Beverly Mills
A stunningly thorough and poignant study of African Americans.
MAGIC MOON: A YOUNG BOY’S JOURNEY by Shirley Moulton illus. by Marilyn Whitchurch “A young boy climbs a mountain to the Magic Moon in this children’s picture book.” A message book with a bit of mystery.
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Hahn writes in a clipped, frenetic manner that effectively conveys his narrator’s mental state. open my eyes
CAFÉ FRENCH A Flâneur’s Guide to the Language, Lore & Food of the Paris Café
minimal characters (Earth is primarily represented by U.S. scientists) and concise descriptions. At the same time, the aliens’ complex manner of communication is “translated” into English. This fascinating species converses by flashing their colorful feathers, and though the winged beings are certainly birdlike, they sport six eyes. Delving into the aliens’ history offers surprising reveals, including how they’ve retained peace for so long and created their machines, which may prove deadly against humans. A cliffhanger ending leaves plenty of room for a sequel or two. An entertaining futuristic tale with a thoroughly established, cool alien species.
Harris, L. John Villa Books (195 pp.) $29.95 978-0-578-48537-9
A food writer delves into the myths and realities of the classic Parisian cafe. Harris (Foodoodles, 2010) first came to Paris to study abroad in 1963 and continued to visit, spending months at a time there between 2011 and 2015 while working for an online food journal. Like many writers and travelers throughout the 20th century, the author considers himself a Francophile and would-be expatriate. In his new book, he weaves together journal entries, restaurant critiques, and personal drawings that all center on Paris’ famous sidewalk cafes and his experiences of them. He begins with an in-depth look at flâneurs, those artsy and often well-dressed 19th-century figures who made strolling and people-watching into an institution, before sizing up the current conditions of the Parisian cafe, finding the classic institution under threat from cringeworthy croque monsieurs. As he compiles his cafe index, Harris muses on garçons (surly Paris waiters) and the oddities of the French language, illustrating the striking similarities between “foie” (liver) and “foi” (faith) with delightfully irreverent cartoons. Harris also spends considerable time reflecting on his home in Berkeley, California, and how the cafe’s allure has touched the world. Throughout the book, the author employs witty wordplay that is sure to delight his fellow Francophiles, throwing in n’est-ce pas and très for slightly pretentious but still charming comedic effect. His writing is strongest as a pure travelogue, diving into particular meals, like his 85 euro roast chicken at Chez l’Ami Louis. His forays into academic and historical analysis are somewhat less successful. The writers, ideas, and even the specific, hypercentral cafes that Harris concentrates on will already be well known to true lovers of la vie Parisienne. It is a shame readers do not get more of the author’s sharp perspective (and amusing artwork) focused on Paris’ less famous sidewalks, but readers less well versed in the city’s lore will start to see what all the fuss is about. A clever and entertaining introduction to Paris’ cafe culture.
OPEN MY EYES
Hahn, T.E. Running Wild Press (162 pp.) $21.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Nov. 22, 2019 978-1-947041-28-8 A young man struggles to articulate his chaotic but numbed feelings in this debut novel. Seventeen-year-old Eddie falls headlong for Elizabeth, a freshman who plays in the school band with him. As they begin dating and grow closer, he’s as awkward and self-conscious as he is earnest about his first relationship: “In the beginning was Elizabeth, and Elizabeth was in light, and Elizabeth was light.” However, it turns out that circumstances have effectively blurred the line between fantasy and reality for Eddie; his father died years ago, and to this day, the young man addresses his thoughts to the void where his dad should be. His mother responds to the loss by clinging to Eddie in ways that slowly become sinister. And since the fateful car accident, he’s been put on mind-altering medication for unspecified reasons, which causes him to lurch through life in a physical, mental, and emotional fog: He assumed the medication was punishment for his disobedience, he explains, “the longest punishment in childhood history.” However, Elizabeth cuts through his detachment, shining in his memories like a divine being. Yet the significance of her presence in his life raises the stakes of their relationship in untenable ways. Typical hurdles, such as uncomfortable meet-the-parents dinners, assume a mythical awfulness in Eddie’s fragmented neuroses and visions, and he can barely enjoy his newfound happiness under the looming fear that he’ll somehow taint or pollute it. Hahn writes in a clipped, frenetic manner that effectively conveys his narrator’s mental state. Recurring images of snow, fire, and blood give the book religious overtones that feel almost medieval despite Eddie’s refusal to attend church with his mother. Other symbols crowd the story but in a manner that rarely feels heavy-handed; in a particularly engaging scene, for example, Eddie and Elizabeth argue as they watch an inflatable fun house collapse on a group of screaming children. Collectively, the author’s choices create a satisfying sensory experience as the protagonist seeks a real and present version of himself. An engrossing, hallucinatory relationship story. 220
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GOOD FOOD GRATITUDE
Hawaii, Hollan Deeper Well Publishing (280 pp.) $34.95 | Oct. 1, 2019 978-0-9857152-7-4 Homestyle vegan recipes from a Hawaii-based chef. Hawaii is the former owner of Caffe Coco in Kauai, Hawaii, and in this debut book, she combines health-forward recipes with a family-friendly approach to cooking. A native of the |
San Francisco Bay Area, the author studied at Le Cordon Bleu and adopted a vegan diet after reading Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin’s book Skinny Bitch (2005). Like Barnouin, the author is a former model: “During my brief modeling career,” Hawaii writes, “I used food to keep my body at a certain weight (it was during the unhealthy waif craze), and my relationship with food became blurred.” This cookbook, she explains, “is a culmination of my journey toward healthfulness.” At the end of 2017, Hawaii sold her cafe so she “could complete this book, write more books, create videos, and teach what I have learned along the way.” The recipes here, featuring plenty of full-color images by multiple photographers, are simple and easy to follow, running the gamut from nut milks and fruit juices to dinner items and desserts. There’s plenty of emphasis on health-conscious vegan foods, including ginger shots, tofu scrambles, and smoothies. But Hawaii also includes a wide range of simple, homestyle dishes, such as sandwiches, soups, and dips. Other notable recipes include her “Coconut Mac Nut Tofu,” the signature dish at her cafe—“It is a great way to get your family to fall in love with tofu”—and a San Francisco avocado sub, inspired by her Bay Area upbringing. “I want my kids’ diet to seem normal, even though we eat vegan,” Hawaii writes, which means plenty of familiar breakfast and dinner foods, from waffles to quesadillas. Recipes also helpfully note whether they’re gluten-free, nut-free, or sugar-free. There’s a useful section on dressings—from Hawaiian Island to Cashew Caesar—and sauces, and Hawaii offers practical advice in the closing pages, which range from her preferences regarding organic brands to a list of her cooking appliances. Although this cookbook doesn’t break any new culinary ground, it’s easy to read and ideal for people who want to eat simply and healthily. A photo-filled cookbook that effectively combines vegan food with lifestyle tips.
and track down Neil; and Lauren, hiding in a forested world, stumbles on another danger. But Claire winds up in a giant library, where she encounters strange individuals with a unique ability to help her and her family—or severely compound their predicaments. Heetebrij’s diverting tale, most assuredly a series launch, boasts characters with distinctive personalities. Neil, for example, tries to convince himself he’s dreaming during the initial pirate abduction while Elyse, when scared, clings to the closest family member. And Cash turns out to be a scene-stealer; in an argument with Neil, the canine, who occasionally wears a spray collar, suggests: “How about a collar to shut you up?” Though the pirates supply much of the villainy, there are vivid characters throughout, from fairy trolls to a band of knights. Complementing the writing are the striking and animated images by debut illustrator Lareva. But the artwork’s most discernible quality is the color-defined worlds; the blue-gray library, the dark green forest, and the black tunnel with minimal light provide readers with effortless scene transitions as well as visual treats. A vibrant, entertaining, and memorable adventure with strong characters.
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RUNNING WILD NOVELLA ANTHOLOGY Volume 3, Book 2
Ed. by Kastner, Lisa Diane & Lockwood, Barbara Running Wild Press (318 pp.) $24.99 paper | $9.99 e-book Dec. 1, 2019 978-1-947041-40-0
This free-wheeling anthology offers a variety of characters, settings, and genres. At first glance, the novellas in Book 2 of this third installment of a series seem disparate enough to be deemed eclectic. The six range in length and tone. The collection—edited by Lockwood (Frontal Matter, 2019, etc.) and Kastner (Running Wild Novella Anthology: Volume 3, Book 1, 2019, etc.)—opens with Circuits End by Rasmenia Massoud. The story focuses on a tough-talking painter working a dead-end job at a Colorado circuit factory, trying to make her way in life after breaking up with her longtime boyfriend. Then, readers take a sharp turn into the fantastical with an eerie fairy tale called Doctor Porchiat’s Dream by Frankie Rollins that follows the adventures of a quirky physician in a superstitious town as he chases scientific proof of the soul. That spell is quickly broken by the cutting-edge modernity of Kastner’s Newly Minted Wings: Craig’s List Nikky, which follows a PR maven called Nicole (nicknamed Nikky) who resurrects the careers of desperate Craigslist posters with extravagant stunts. She must reassess her life once her wealthy parents cut her off and she gets the chance to work with one of her idols. Nicole’s privileged world is quickly replaced by the tender contemplation of Kenneth Holt’s The Cups That Hold, about the unlikely connection forged between a black groundskeeper and his white teenage charge during a summer job in 1977. After that, readers must contend with Patrick Breheny’s Like a Human, a futuristic
THE UNDERGROUNDS
Heetebrij, Geert Illus. by Lareva, Jonathan Manuscript 978-0-9903874-0-4
In this debut graphic novel, four siblings discover a passage to a number of worlds, precipitating grand escapades and a great deal of peril. Neil and Kristen Cooper are relocating their family to a new home, a fixer-upper in a seemingly vacant neighborhood. On moving day, young Rob finds a sizable hole in the backyard, which leads to a tunnel that he; his sisters, Lauren, Claire, and Elyse; and the family dog, Cash, enter. Underground, where surprisingly Cash can talk, are doors leading to various worlds. Over the next few days, the siblings explore a desert, a forest, and many other places and even take some items for Neil’s birthday. Unfortunately, pirates who had already claimed the pieces crawl up the backyard hole and kidnap the entire family. Though the Coopers eventually manage to escape, they are almost entirely separated. Kristen sprints through the tunnel with little Elyse in tow; ever loyal Cash helps Rob evade pirates |
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trip featuring a robot called Howie. He believes he can ingratiate himself with humans enough to enjoy a hedonistic lifestyle and one day conquer the world. The energetic collection closes with Ace Boggess’ Somewhat Misunderstood, a satirical, biting thought exercise that considers how readers would respond to the seeming reemergence of Jesus. Taken together, what connects these mostly engaging stories are a sympathy and humor for life’s outcasts—from a down-on-his-luck kid in the ’70s to an overly ambitious robot in the near future. While some of the tales, like Doctor Porchiat’s Dream, make full use of the novella form by deftly exploring the perspectives of various characters, others, such as Newly Minted Wings, feel half formed. Wings ends on a cliffhanger after six chapters of minor character development. Still, the anthology is always entertaining and lives up to its title. A collection that delivers a strange and ultimately satisfying ride.
some of the exercises—such as affirmations—have been done many times before. But women who are searching for a first step to change will find some solid ground under their feet here. An upbeat, if sometimes-familiar, manual for self-discovery.
TAYLENOR
Lutz, Anne Marie Hydra Publications (263 pp.) $14.99 paper | $3.99 e-book | Jul. 17, 2019 978-1-948374-17-0 A novel follows a priest of the goddess Imn-ashu as she fulfills her duty as a Seeker and wields her faith against demons descending on the world. Jaena travels the countryside searching for children who have inherited tay len, the ability to learn magic. The priest’s senses lead her to the village of Bless-us-goddess, where she quickly finds Wiel, a boy who she believes is a taylenor. Wiel’s parents object to Jaena’s taking him away, but when she tells the boy the truth about his condition, he agrees to accompany her to a hospital. Unfortunately, the gift of learning magic is bittersweet: It comes with a deadly illness that only a few—like Mage Herrein, who employs Jaena as a Seeker—have ever survived. Jaena hopes that with her help Wiel will live and become a Mage instead of wasting away like countless others. On their journey, Jaena catches sight of a hulking, wolflike animal among the trees, which reignites her fear that demons have returned to the countryside. In theory, Mage Herrein can defend the city of Uthen, but his strength against demons and the Eastern Mage has been untested for over a hundred years. With the help of her charming friend Metten and the nobleman Halpen, who has a vestigial trace of taylen, Jaena tries to turn the dark tide that threatens to overwhelm the city as she guides Wiel to what she thinks is a safe harbor. In a welcome change to the typical hero’s journey, Lutz’s (Sword of Jashan, 2019, etc.) epic fantasy deftly explores the perspective of a guardian and mentor rather than a talented young charge. Jaena’s palpable sense of duty toward Wiel is a much more intriguing story thread than the catastrophes that serve as a call to adventure in many fantasy novels. The author delivers strong worldbuilding and a fast-paced plot, which serve the book well even when it edges toward standard fantasy fare. In addition, examinations of the characters’ complex emotions add depth when some of the twists in the tale are not hard for readers to foresee. This well-crafted epic fantasy about a mentor’s travels veers off the path at just the right moments.
YOU ARE A HEROINE A Retelling of the Hero’s Journey
Liller, Susanna Emerald Lake Books (154 pp.) $14.99 paper | $7.99 e-book Oct. 9, 2018 978-1-945847-07-3
This inspirational self-help book for women offers a cheerful yellow brick road to a new life. In his famous 1949 book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell theorized that, in literature, all mythical heroes’ journeys have a similar structure. Organizational development consultant and executive coach Liller (Circle Power, 2010) details how women may start their own life-changing journeys in this accessible guide. Her inspiration for writing this book occurred while watching a speaker’s presentation that compared Campbell’s theory to Dorothy Gale’s journey in The Wizard of Oz. Liller sprinkles references to the wide-eyed girl from Kansas throughout the text as she urges readers to realize that, like Dorothy, they’ve been the heroines of their own stories all along. A heroine doesn’t have to leap over tall buildings in a single bound, writes Liller; instead, she can simply be a woman who dares to take risks and challenge herself even when it’s frightening to do so. This breezy manual begins by defining some terms; for instance, a person is in the “Belly of the Whale” when they find themselves in turmoil during a journey of self-discovery. As Liller urges women to begin their own quests, she provides basic rules of the road, such as “it’s OK not to know where you’re going next.” She also offers practical tools that are easy to use, such as a “Heroine’s Journey Map” for recording milestones. For readers who have no idea what they want to do in the future, there’s a hands-on exercise that involves free-writing ideas on sticky notes and grouping similar ideas together; the aim is to help women to see previously unknown patterns in their lives. Although the book is relatively short, Liller’s friendly voice is inviting, and her examples are often compelling. Comparing life to a journey is a cliché, and 222
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The author has found peace, but pain and a sense of great loss permeate these pages. homing
HOMING A Memoir
Lyons, Mark New Door Books (224 pp.) $18.95 paper | Nov. 19, 2019 978-0-9995501-5-1
In this debut memoir, a writer revisits his youth, traveling a difficult path to forgiveness for the damage suffered dealing with his mother’s mental illness. In the spring of 1957, Lyons was 14 years old. His life in Downey, California, just outside Los Angeles, was good. And then his world crashed. His mother, Phyllis, had her first mental breakdown. Until that point, he recalls Phyllis as being vivacious and popular, with a gift for the dramatic. She had a passion for literature, and she helped found the Downey Community Players. Their house had been frequently filled with an intellectual, artistic crowd. But Phyllis would spend the next 17 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals: “My mother disappeared down her own well. Many rescue attempts were made, as she was brought to the surface, then slipped back down into her private abyss. Every time she was pulled up, there seemed to be less of her.” Lyons describes his life at ages 14 and 15—which makes up the bulk of the retrospective—in vividly detailed, present-tense prose, bringing readers through the minutiae of a period filled with adolescent angst, sadness, fears for his future, and anger at his parents (his mother for disappearing and his father for catering to her relentless needs). Although he never specifies a diagnosis, her illness was manifested in deep depression and immobilizing fears. She also had a very disturbing sexual obsession with the author. In his complex memoir, some of the most poignant stories are about the homing pigeons he bred and trained for about four years. Jumping back and forth in time, Lyons connects his early adult difficulties in romantic relationships to the fear of abandonment developed during those crucial teenage years. Now in his 70s, a devoted husband and father, he writes: “I have learned to embrace my loneliness—or rather to embrace the boy who grew up lonely, the boy who in some ways I will always be.” The author has found peace, but pain and a sense of great loss permeate these pages. A thoughtful, moving account of watching a loved one gradually fade into a private world.
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Chief Armstrong heads Seattle BOP, which stands for “the Bureau of whatever P is required”—be it payment, payback, or pursuit. Gestalt Insurance enlists BOP to look into the suicide of Roger Hansen, a teacher at an ultraconservative institution called the Right School. He apparently killed himself shortly after Gestalt denied his medical claim, but the company suspects that something’s not right about the situation. Chief poses as a student, and, as part of his search for intel, he strives to become a star pupil, which entails copious physical combat in a style called “Right Fighting.” Other BOP members, meanwhile, including Chief ’s girlfriend, Ammy O’Malley, have no way to contact him, as he has no cellphone or internet access. Ammy and her colleagues, Duncan and Starr Jackson, go undercover, as well, in an attempt to deliver messages to Chief. As he begins to uncover nefarious goings-on at the school, Chief ’s predicament becomes increasingly dire. Meanwhile, the Right School’s Dean Ernst Tulley and his right-hand man, Stanton Crawford, are perpetually on guard. MacRath’s (The Big Bopper, 2018, etc.) sequel offers readers a breezy, often funny mystery. Political satire runs rampant throughout; for instance, The Right School’s rival is called the Woke School, whose students the Right calls “wrongos.” The author also loads his narrative with zany visuals (such as a Donald Trump–branded clock with an “orange glow”) and wordplay (“an ultra-barbelled blond dumbbell”). There’s suspense, as well, as Chief must be incessantly careful not to reveal anything about his true mission at the school. The investigation, however, often takes a back seat to the drollness. A lighthearted novel with consistent wit and wry humor.
A CONVENIENT FICTION
Matthews, Mimi Perfectly Proper Press (352 pp.) $16.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Oct. 22, 2019 978-1-73305-693-9
A gambler bets on love in Matthews’ (The Work of Art, 2019, etc.) latest period romance, set in 1860 England. Alex Archer never looks back, or so he claims. Decades ago, he fled the orphanage that was his childhood home and left his friends behind, piecing together a life for himself as a gambler. Now, his latest scheme is to leverage his winnings, wed a wealthy country socialite, and finally secure his own land. But his plans seem to go awry from the beginning when he stumbles across the beautiful, impoverished Laura Hayes. Her family has suffered financially since the death of her father, and Laura has been responsible for the well-beings of her brother, who’s in ill health, and her elderly aunt. Unfortunately, her family’s estate is controlled by a scheming lawyer, and their only hope is for Laura to marry before her upcoming 25th birthday to receive her inheritance. When Alex appears in her small town, Laura immediately sees him as a fortune hunter, intent on marrying her wealthy friend, Henrietta Talbot. But Alex’s plans are no match for the vagaries of true love. Despite his financial
THE BIG BOPPER RISES
MacRath, Reb Time Tunnel Media (261 pp.) $10.99 paper | $4.99 e-book Jun. 26, 2019 978-1-07-580432-8
Members of a special Seattle unit investigate a suspicious suicide involving an insurance company and an elite, rightwing school in this comedic mystery sequel. |
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interests and Laura’s determination to avoid him, their fate is sealed when Alex saves her life. But before they can pursue their relationship, Alex must reconcile with his past. Readers of Matthews’ previous works will be pleasantly satisfied when Alex crosses paths with memorable characters from prior installments of the Parish Orphans of Devon series. Matthews’ storytelling skills remain rock-solid, and she spins a lovely romantic tale here. Her characters are familiar types, and the plot follows a predictable path, but that doesn’t make the journey any less enjoyable. As always, the background historical details are impeccably researched; in particular, Laura’s trip to the seaside at Margate provides readers with a captivating glimpse into Victorian culture. The description of Victorian bathing machines is intriguing, as well, and Matthews builds excellent narrative tension as Laura’s independent attitude clashes with the era’s cultural expectations. A well-crafted historical romance built on a marriage of convenience.
get away with pluck and ingenuity for a time, finally gathering enough knowledge to put them in danger. When the three friends inevitably get in over their heads, they wisely seek help from the adults in their lives, especially Mildew. What results is a winning, lighthearted paranormal tale for all ages. This spunky heroine sees dead people, to readers’ delight.
A NEW SLANT ON ACTING
Mongiello, Charese iUniverse (158 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 2, 2019 978-1-5320-7089-1
An industry primer offers novice actors a guide to surviving their early careers in Hollywood. For new actors freshly arrived in Hollywood, getting to practice their craft on a real film set is probably the main thing on their minds. But successful actors know that there is a lot more expected of them on a movie set than mere acting. With this book, Mongiello (Start Your Own Screen-Printing Business, 2008) seeks to prepare actors for operating within the world of the film set so that they can give the finest performances and leave the best impressions. Some “actors will overwork themselves and their crews because they don’t know some basics that make for a much better movie,” writes the author in her foreword. “If you remember the suggestions in this book, then directors, producers, and crews will want to hire you over and over again.” Mongiello preaches the gospel of professionalism: showing up prepared, on time, and agreeable. She describes the processes of a set, from call sheets and one-liners to the various responsibilities of gaffers, grips, and script supervisors. She also goes into the etiquette of working with directors, hitting a mark, navigating hair and makeup, and practicing on-set ethics. In addition, the author delivers off-set advice regarding acting classes, coaches, and that trickiest of topics: money. Despite a few peculiarities (the volume is dedicated to “my dearest friend, L. Ron Hubbard”), Mongiello’s manual supplies advice that is generally practical and sound. Her prose is direct and easy to follow, as here when she provides a tip for preserving emotional continuity during scenes shot out of order: “A good way to keep track of all this is to get a hold of the continuity one-liners the script supervisor makes. These are like a table of contents for the movie. Underneath each one-liner write what the character is going through.” The work is a quick read without much filler. The author is a fellow thespian taking a newbie under her wing. Even if her counsel is sometimes clipped, it comes from lived experience and will save actors the pain of learning it for themselves. A slim but pragmatic and helpful manual for navigating a film set.
THE HAUNTING OF ELMWOOD MANOR
McCord, Pamela Acorn Publishing (214 pp.) $18.99 | $9.99 paper | $2.99 e-book Mar. 1, 2019 978-1-947392-46-5 978-1-947392-45-8 paper A debut YA novel features the message that ghosts have problems too. In this series opener, McCord introduces a feisty protagonist. Pekin Dewlap, 15, is starting her own ghost-hunting business and plans to draft her best friends, Amber and Scout, for this venture. She has chosen to clean up haunted houses because, up until middle school, she was able to communicate with spirits. As she explains to her mother, Melissa, who used to have that same ability, “I want to be special again.” Pekin already has a client, Elonia Collins, who says the property she inherited at 12 Elmwood is haunted. Elonia suspects the apparition is Miranda Talbert, who was 14 when she disappeared in the house in 1918. Pekin, accompanied by her two reluctant friends, encounters Miranda on her first visit to Elmwood Manor. After Miranda gets comfortable with the trio, she admits she was murdered. During the attack, Miranda bit off and swallowed one of the killer’s fingers, keeping him from crossing over when he died. Since then, the culprit, imprisoned at Elmwood Manor, has been tormenting Miranda. So the three friends, aided by local psychic Mildred “Mildew” Willingham, must determine how to banish the killer and help Miranda find peace. In this novel, McCord certainly knows how to reach her target audience. Pekin is dealing with emotional changes in her life, including a growing attraction to Scout. In her thoughts, Pekin debates whether he really likes her. Amber is even more boy crazy while Scout is sometimes a typical, monosyllabic male teen when expressing his feelings. But, while acknowledging the teens’ daily struggles, this volume is primarily about solving the mystery. Pekin and company 224
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An astute examination of the despair engendered by solitude. fishing for birds
SOCIAL SECURITY IN 30 MINUTES Volume 1: Retirement Benefits
FISHING FOR BIRDS
Quennec, Linda Inanna Publications (300 pp.) $22.59 paper | Jul. 7, 2019 978-1-77133-613-0
Pogue, Emily i30 Media Corporation (104 pp.) $19.99 | $12.99 paper | $7.99 e-book Sep. 17, 2019 978-1-64188-034-3 978-1-64188-032-9 paper A comprehensive, high-level guide to the fundamentals of Social Security benefits. In this debut personal finance book, Pogue covers a wide range of topics, from who’s eligible to collect Social Security benefits to what useful information can be found on the Social Security Administration’s website—all in fewer than 100 pages, including a glossary. The author walks readers through how Social Security benefits are calculated, the circumstances that can reduce them, and their long-term impact on total income. However, because many of these aspects are influenced by individual earnings and state regulations, the book offers explanations in general terms and encourages readers to consult experts regarding some of the more specific requirements. Although the book’s primary target audience is readers planning for retirement, Pogue also explains how spouses and dependents may also qualify for benefits. Charts and examples make it relatively easy to understand how, for instance, one’s outside earnings affect benefit levels and tax rates, and readers will be able to easily use the provided calculation formulas. The book also uses examples to encourage readers to make financially sound decisions, showing, for example, how collecting benefits as soon as one is eligible can substantially reduce one’s overall earnings. The book is informative and easy to understand, which is no small achievement given the many variables involved. There are several references to other books in the publisher’s series, such as the companion volume, which covers the disability portion of Social Security; there’s also an excerpt from a book by another author—Personal Finance for Beginners in 30 Minutes, Vol. 2. Despite these advertisements, however, the book is a solid account of how a complicated benefits system works, and it will be useful to readers looking for a concise introduction. A Social Security explainer that packs a lot of information into a brief text.
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In the wake of a tragedy, a Canadian woman leaves her job and home for the solace of a small island in Quennec’s debut novel. After her husband, Jeff, and both of his parents die in a car accident, Kate is left floating through life like an “apparition,” emotionally unmoored. She boldly decides to leave her job as a newspaper editor and her home in her native Vancouver Island, British Columbia, for nearby Britannia Island in the Salish Sea, in search of peace and some measure of rejuvenation. Once there, however, she’s forced to face the grim reality that her marriage was in trouble long before Jeff died and that he may have been unfaithful to her—and the darker truth that she may be culpable in his death. Kate feels encouraged in her soul-searching after she meets Ivy, a fascinating woman in her twilight years who’s “strong and vital in so many ways, yet stuck in a body that didn’t even work well enough to eat independently.” Ivy relates a past crisis of her own: In 1926, just before she attended college, she visited her German grandparents at Isla de Piños, a small Cuban island caught in the country’s struggle for independence from the United States. There, Ivy began a torrid affair with Emilio, a young Cuban, but her grandparents strongly disapproved, citing the unbridgeable cultural chasm that separated them. Quennec sensitively probes Kate’s and Ivy’s respective romantic crises, with the former seeming to seek a reprieve from life and the latter, a recommitment to it. The author conveys the story from three distinct perspectives: Kate’s, Ivy’s, and Kate’s mother Nora’s. Over the course of the novel, Quennec delicately exposes Kate’s deepest fear that, despite her lust for life, she is, in fact, unworthy of finding happiness in it. At a dinner party with other women, for instance, Kate thinks, “Soon enough they will see her for who she is, a frightened, unworldly child. She can almost predict the onset of their disappointment once she’s revealed enough of herself.” Quennec has a gimlet eye for this kind of unexpressed terror, which she ably portrays when Kate meets Luke, an earnest environmental consultant who takes a real interest in her. Ivy’s past is unraveled in a similarly poignant manner, as the young woman frets that she’s as narrowly provincial as her grandparents are—a theory that Emilio offers her, none too generously. Nora’s plight, however, is considerably less engrossing and certainly less dramatic than the others’, as her conventional married life is upended by the unprovoked attentions of a male admirer. In fact, her flat, formulaic narrative is so incongruent with the other two that it seems misplaced. Also, the author unfurls the plot at a pace so languorous that it may lose some readers’ attention at times. Overall, though, her novel offers an astute examination of the despair engendered by solitude and of the paradoxical consolations it delivers. A slow-paced but thoughtful tale that will reward patient readers. 225
NASU RABI (OLD BEAR)
tyrant-ruled Factions—seems grim for most. Air and water are unclean, most animals are extinct, food is scarce, and homelessness is rife. Seventeen-year-old Somerset Whitman is more fortunate than most; her family are clerics, and for generations they’ve lived in a huge “Tempedral,” where, Somerset says, “It’s our job to take care of the ornate building and brainwash seekers into requesting Reverie”—a event that no one returns from. Secretly, Somerset works with a resistance cell to sabotage the government, which is already on shaky ground due to low food supplies. She also has a new responsibility in taking care of Monica, an orphaned little girl, and has a burgeoning romantic interest in Jake, the piratical new cell leader. Amid growing unrest and crackdowns, Somerset and others must take refuge in a safe house: “I don’t know for sure what’s happening in the other Factions, but it’s end-of-days outside of here,” reports Jake. Just as things look bleakest, Somerset discovers the secret of what Reverie has become. Although Russell (Same As It Never Was, 2018, etc.) combines some familiar elements of YA dystopian and romance fiction, she does so with intelligence and energy. For example, it turns out that society’s collapse began after the destruction of disease-bearing mosquitoes—which had unintended consequences. Russell also creates a believably paranoid atmosphere and shows how propaganda and advertising contribute to propping up fascist governments. However, the book never feels didactic thanks to Somerset’s naturalistic narration and well-rounded characterization. For example, she’s very much a stereotypical teenage girl in how she avoids chores, but she’s also a brave fighter and protective toward Monica. The cliffhanger ending suggests that further installments are planned, which would be welcome. An intriguing and thoughtful adventure.
Roley, D.L. JDR Publishers (384 pp.) $14.95 paper | $2.99 e-book | Jul. 6, 2019 978-1-73395-250-7 A debut historical fantasy sees a peasant boy, orphaned by raiders, taken in and trained by a solitary old man whose very name is legend. Fourteen-year-old Darius lives in a small village on the outskirts of what used to be the Chungoku Empire, a vast realm resonant of dynastic China. It has been 30 years since the empire fell. Barons now rule the land; the people are happy. But then raiders come to Darius’ village. His brother is killed and his mother captured. Vowing to rescue his mother, Darius sets off in pursuit of the marauders. This hopeless undertaking seems certain to end badly, but Darius meets an old hunter—Arthengal—who offers to teach him swordsmanship and survival skills. Arthengal lives in a secluded valley. If Darius will join him there, Arthengal will prepare him for the quest that lies ahead. Though impatient, Darius agrees. Thus begins the student-teacher relationship that will change and define his life. Arthengal is also known as Nasu Rabi (which means “Old Bear in the old tongue”) and is a hero of the civil war. Under his instruction, and listening to his stories, Darius grows to become a man. But even after 30 years, is the war truly over? And what of the other bear in Darius’ life—the one he blinded in an eye with an arrow and that to this day follows him? Darius believes it is the embodiment of Antu, the sky god, sent to test him. When the day comes to resume the hunt for his mother, will Darius be ready? In this series opener, Roley has an easy writing style, narrating in the third person mostly from Darius’ point of view but occasionally from the perspectives of minor characters as well. The resulting storyline has epic scope yet an intimate feel, pulling readers along familiar paths but in a manner that doesn’t seem forced. The dialogue is a little stylized but mostly quite natural. Even though the tale in this first book is as much about Arthengal as Darius, fans of the genre will find a comfortable familiarity in this mentoring phase of the teen’s journey. This skillful story bodes well for future adventures. A conventional but well-rendered take on quest fantasy’s master-apprentice trope.
FRONTAL MATTER Glue Gone Wild
Samples, Suzanne Running Wild Press (262 pp.) $24.99 paper | $0.99 e-book Oct. 15, 2018 978-1-947041-24-0 A North Carolina woman reexamines her life after being diagnosed with a terminal illness in this memoir. “Everything was fine. And then everything went to shit within twenty minutes,” Samples (English/ Appalachian State Univ.; A Mad Girl’s Love Song, 2016, etc.) writes of a fateful leg seizure at the age of 36 that ended with her in the hospital, diagnosed with brain cancer. Before that, she was enjoying her life teaching and writing and being part of a roller derby team. Her medical dramas revolved around Type 1 diabetes and her love-hate relationship with her endocrinologist. But now everything changed; as she puts it, “Diabetes is a slow, drawn-out death; cancer is a quick blow.” She writes in percussive sentences that jump from her diagnosis and treatment to moments further in the past and other stray thoughts. She muses on the secret sex lives of her nurses and reevaluates relationships as a parade of friends, family, and exes come to visit her. She dwells most
REVERIE
Russell, Carolyn R. Vine Leaves Press (165 pp.) In this YA dystopian thriller, a teenage girl fighting against a fascist government learns an astonishing truth that changes everything. After environmental disaster and ensuing wars, the future in the United States—now just “States,” divided into 226
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The author describes waterways, and the boats that explore them, with an expertise born of experience. battles on lord’s creek
notably on Chole (pronounced “Cole”) the “narcissistic sociopath” with whom she had a tumultuous relationship. She tells of Uber drivers who offered to pray for her, her partying sister who sent her drunken texts about conspiracy theories, and how she spoke directly to her own brain tumor, asking for its opinion on the life that it might be cutting short. “This is not a Tuesday with Morrie,” she writes, speaking to the existential weight and poetic form of her writing. At times, Samples repeats simple sentence structures over and over, like a record that has broken, but she marries this with short, smoothly written vignettes that manage to be frightening, sad, and humorous all at once. At one point, for example, a nurse confuses her asymmetrical haircut for brain-surgery prep gone wrong. Samples also bravely commits to paper her darkest thoughts about dying and the most humiliating physical moments of her illness. Overall, her memoir perfectly reflects the chaos of her experience, but she guides readers through it by staying true to her belief that “honest writing is good writing.” A uniquely poetic memoir with dark humor and profound insights.
and outs of modern nursing care and medical bureaucracy. Linda fights to get clean and also attempts to get her son desperately needed mental health care so that he can heal from his wounds of war. Told in direct, no-nonsense prose, this novel is compassionate but blunt, much like Linda herself. A straightforward story of a troubled family that feels authentic.
TIME IN MY COFFEE
Sazevich, Igor Reyes Publishing (280 pp.) $35.00 paper | Nov. 6, 2018 978-1-73232-693-4
BATTLES ON LORD’S CREEK
Sausville, Shannon O’Barr Larkington Cove Books (267 pp.) $13.99 paper | $3.99 e-book Aug. 8, 2019 978-0-578-53284-4
Sausville (The Tides of Cecil Cove, 2018) offers a novel that reveals the difficult realities of living with opioid addiction and PTSD. Linda is a divorced nurse who lives and works on Maryland’s Western Shore. Her adult son served three tours as a skilled marksman in Iraq and Afghanistan before recently and unexpectedly returning home. He was once a happy, outdoorsy boy, but now he’s a hollow, shattered version of himself. Quickly, his life begins to spiral out of control; his girlfriend breaks up with him, and he can’t hold down a steady job. He eventually shows up on Linda’s doorstep, skittish and penniless. She later finds out that he suffered a concussion from an explosion, which caused him to start acting erratically. Indeed, he went AWOL shortly thereafter, which led to a discharge from the Army. He’s plagued by recurring nightmares and extreme anxiety in civilian life, but he’s denied Veterans Administration benefits and starts drinking heavily and disappearing for days at a time. Breaking up the emotionally weighty sections about trauma are descriptions of boat trips into the welcoming waters of the Chesapeake Bay. The author writes lovingly of the geography of the bay and describes waterways, and the boats that explore them, with an expertise born of experience. Linda lets Matt stay with her even though she has problems of her own, including imminent knee replacement surgery. Despite her own work experience in orthopedic rehabilitation centers, she struggles to cope with the pain of her surgery and begins abusing pain pills, as does Matt. Soon, the stakes of her addition reach a breaking point. As with her descriptions of the Chesapeake Bay, the author demonstrates a familiarity with the ins |
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An artist and architect looks back on his unconventional life. Born in San Francisco in 1929, Sazevich was the son of Russian émigrés and named after Alexander Borodin’s 1890 opera Prince Igor. After a brief, early stint in interwar Paris—where his father worked as a painter and his mother as a hat maker—Sazevich’s family returned to San Francisco in 1935. He’s lived there for much of his life, and he writes about the city in impressive detail in this debut memoir. Something of a loner in his youth, he attended classes at the local chapter of the communist newspaper People’s Daily World as a teenage writing student. Soon after, in an early display of literary ambition, he wrote a play in an attempt to “express to the world the plight of the downtrodden.” After briefly attending San Francisco City College, Sazevich transferred: “As soon as I walked onto the campus of UC Berkeley,” he recalls, “I knew that the years of being difficult and bored had come to an end.” In 1953, he was drafted into the Army, which postponed his architectural studies at Berkeley. Like much of his biography, Sazevich’s Army experiences proved unusual; somehow, he was promoted to be captain of the 37th Engineer Group tennis team and was sent to Frankfurt, Germany. After returning to California, he resumed his courtship with a woman named Natasha, whose aunt married a member of the Romanov family, whom he eventually married. Throughout this book, the author’s life is marked by readable, remarkable, and often humorous experiences. Sazevich has a brisk prose style that’s full of honesty and humor; often, the writing is action-driven, but he occasionally issues somber reflections, as when he recalls a road trip with his father during his own late teens: “Looking back now, I understand much of what bound us so closely: not just love but curiosity, strong survival instincts, and a wonder at being alive amid undiscovered beauty.” The eccentric personalities of his largerthan-life parents loom large in this remembrance, and Sazevich writes movingly about their lives as well as his own. A heartfelt and humorous memoir of a son of immigrants.
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FROM THE MIDWAY Unfolding Stories of Redemption and Belonging
Largest Woman,” who’s perpetually forced to remain heavy by the profit-hungry Beasleys, endures a barrage of mocking taunts by cherishing a private secret—her real name. Cheever, an African American roustabout, ran away from his difficult life as a sharecropper only to find that the carnival is just another type of bondage. Seligman’s (A Pocket Book of Prompts, 2015, etc.) episodic narrative hangs on themes of loneliness, suffering, and the ascendance of human kindness. Although the setting might give rise to fears of stereotyping or sensationalism, each character emerges as a complex person who’s part of an unconventional but still familiar community. Seligman’s prose is vivid and captivating, as when she describes Julian’s first encounter with Tiny: “her eyes darting every which way until they landed on him like great splats of rain.” Her portrayal of a society teetering between the past and the future is subtle, and although many of the characters’ stories are sad, there are recurring moments of gentleness. A riveting fictional meditation on the persistent drive to find acceptance and connection.
Seligman, Leaf Bauhan Publishing (224 pp.) $22.50 paper | Sep. 5, 2019 978-0-87233-296-6 A collection of linked short stories about a cut-rate carnival show traveling through the American South during the
early 20th century. In 1910, patent medicine salesman Earl Beasley launches a “Traveling Amusements” show, and his first “human attractions” are people whom he’d been unable to cure with his concoctions. Earl’s sons, Stan, Tom, and Earl Jr., take over in 1912, and they continue the family business with ruthless hucksterism, amassing a collection of people whom they market under such names as “Flipper Boy,” “Hammer Toe,” and “Lizard Man.” Each has a unique, poignant story, rooted in social segregation and a desire for autonomy and connection. Julian Henry, the aforementioned “Lizard” person, is embittered by both his father’s revulsion and his mother’s adulation. Tiny Laveaux, billed as the “World’s Smallest Woman,” escapes the tawdry reality of her daily exposure to the gawking public via transcendent sex with the armless “Hammer Toe.” Beulah Divine, the “World’s
JESSE’S GIRL
September, Tara Self (142 pp.) $8.99 paper | $2.99 e-book $13.08 audiobook Apr. 8, 2019 978-1-09-317613-1
Two old friends go from playing house to truly making a home together in this contemporary romance. One day, Gwen Gallo-Clark gets an unexpected knock at her door: It’s a swarm of reporters asking her about allegations against her Texas congressman husband, Jesse Clark. The rapid-fire questions about embezzlement and an affair with an intern deeply trouble her, although she manages to put on a brave face for the press. Shortly afterward, however, Gwen finds out that Jesse remortgaged their home and withdrew their savings before running off with his mistress, leaving almost nothing for her and their young daughter, Maddie. It’s only due to the kindness of Jesse’s longtime friend and attorney Reade Walker that Gwen and Maddie have a place to stay until the end of Maddie’s school year. While spending time with Reade, Gwen begins to remember just how much she enjoys his company—and how attractive he is. Reade, meanwhile, has loved Gwen almost since the first day they met, but he never acted on his feelings. Now that Jesse’s gone, he wants to be there for her. However, the road to happily-ever-after is paved with speed bumps—because Jesse isn’t done ruining Gwen’s life just yet. September (From Florida With Love, 2018) delivers a charming tale of two old friends finally getting their chance at happiness. It’s not the usual setup for a friends-to-lovers story, but fans of this age-old trope will surely enjoy Reade and Gwen’s history and chemistry. The book is on the short side, coming in at fewer than 150 pages, but there’s enough here to interest and amuse those who usually
This Issue’s Contributors # ADULT Colleen Abel • Maude Adjarian • Rebecca Leigh Anthony • Mark Athitakis • Joseph Barbato • Amy Boaz • Tobias Carroll • Lee E. Cart • Kristin Centorcelli • Carin Clevidence • Devon Crowe • Dave DeChristopher • Melanie Dragger • Bobbi Dumas • Daniel Dyer • Lisa Elliott • Chelsea Ennen Kristen Evans • Mia Franz • Marcie Geffner • Amy Goldschlager • Janice Harayda • Peter Heck Jessica Jernigan • Skip Johnson • Chelsea Langford • Tom Lavoie • Louise Leetch • Judith Leitch Elsbeth Lindner • Karen Long • Joe Maniscalco • Mary Kay McBrayer • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Clayton Moore • Karen Montgomery Moore • Molly Muldoon • Christopher Navratil Liza Nelson • Therese Purcell Nielsen • Mike Oppenheim • William E. Pike • Margaret Quamme Carolyn Quimby • Lisa Reardon • Stephanie Reents • Karen Rigby • Michele Ross • Gene Seymour Polly Shulman • Rosanne Simeone • Linda Simon • Margot E. Spangenberg • Rachel Sugar • Bill Thompson • Claire Trazenfeld • Jessica Miller • George Weaver • Wilda Williams • Kerry Winfrey Marion Winik CHILDREN’S & TEEN Autumn Allen • Alison Anholt-White • Elizabeth Bird • Marcie Bovetz • Kimberly Brubaker Bradley Jessica Anne Bratt • Christopher A. Brown • Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • Alec B. Chunn Amanda Chuong • Jeannie Coutant • Cherrylyn Cruzat • Julie Danielson • Maya Davis • Erin Deedy Elise DeGuiseppi • Lisa Dennis • Luisana Duarte Armendáriz • Eiyana Favers • Rodney M.D. Fierce Amy Seto Forrester • Laurel Gardner • Judith Gire • Carol Goldman • Hannah Gomez Melinda Greenblatt • Shelley Huntington • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Elizabeth Leanne Johnson • Danielle Jones Deborah Kaplan • K. Lesley Knieriem • Wendy Lukehart • Kyle Lukoff • Meredith Madyda Pooja Makhijani • Joan Malewitz • Michelle H. Martin PhD • Kirby McCurtis • Breanna McDaniel J. Elizabeth Mills • Lisa Moore • Tori Ann Ogawa • Sara Ortiz • Deb Paulson • Rebecca Rabinowitz Asata Radcliffe • Kristy Raffensberger • Amy B. Reyes • Nancy Thalia Reynolds • Amy Robinson Christopher R. Rogers • Ronnie Rom • Leslie L. Rounds • Hadeal Salamah • Dean Schneider Stephanie Seales • John W. Shannon • Jennifer Sweeney • Deborah D. Taylor • Tharini Viswanath Christina Vortia • Gordon West • Bean Yogi INDIE Kent Armstrong • Julie Buffaloe-Yoder • Charles Cassady • Michael Deagler • Sam DiBella • Stephanie Dobler Cerra • Steve Donoghue • Jacob Edwards • Tina Gianoulis • Lynne Heffley • Jennifer Helinek Justin Hickey • Ivan Kenneally • Lauren Kinney • Laura Leavitt • Maureen Liebenson • Barbara London • Dale McGarrigle • Alana Mohamed • Rhett Morgan • Jamison Pfeifer • Sarah Rettger Mary Slosson • Holly Storm • Emily Thompson • Amanda Toth • Nick A. Zaino
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DARLINGTON
prefer more fleshed-out narratives. A surprising twist at the end, and a bit of spicy political drama, will leave readers satisfied. A short but sweet tale about taking a shot at true love.
South, Tripsy Adagio Press (276 pp.) $21.95 | Nov. 1, 2019 978-1-944855-20-8
SOMEDAY THIS WILL FIT Linked Essays, Meditations & Other Midlife Follies
Silverman, Joan Bauhan Publishing (172 pp.) $19.95 paper | Sep. 23, 2019 978-0-87233-299-7
A debut collection offers columns and op-ed pieces written for periodicals around the country. Everyday pleasures, irritations, and quirks get center stage in Silverman’s essays. Whether she’s writing about the sublime joy of peanut butter, the inexplicable rudeness of neighbors who shovel their snow onto adjoining properties, the disappearance from the shelves of her favorite products, or the value of Post-it notes, her wry observations and musings ring with authenticity and familiarity. Not many people are so able to hold readers’ attention while discussing the perfection of yellow lined paper versus white. (Silverman does all her writing by hand.) Of the dreaded white pad, she declares: “It’s daunting, that blank surface, staring back at me. It is demanding and austere….‘Something you don’t like?’ it seems to suggest. ‘Well, learn to live with it.’ ” Then there’s her charming obsession with her old dictionary despite the unused new one sitting nearby: “Should I throw out the dictionary that I’ve used for twenty-five years, that has all but fallen apart? Or should I grant yet another stay of execution, and return it to its shelf?” In fact, a love of words, sentence structure, and books is evident throughout these carefully composed essays that maintain a comfortable, conversational tone. While most of her contemplations are light in nature, the conventional subjects—a shopping trip, the origin of a recipe, the tenacity of fallen leaves to return after they have been blown into a pile—are enhanced with humor and a delightful hint of snark. Still, the volume is best enjoyed in measured doses. Along the way, the author delivers some valuable words of wisdom. Especially tender are the sections that deal with the last few months of her mother’s life. Knowing she was dying, her mom wanted to visit her own mother’s grave. When she insisted on bending down to straighten the flowers they brought to lay at the gravesite, Silverman realized that this action was “the final gesture of a daughter saying goodbye to her mother.” Edgy, whimsical, and poignant essays about ordinary triumphs and travails.
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A hit man finds no easy career exit in this Florida thriller. Sunny Sarasota starkly contrasts with South’s (Suicide Tango, 2019, etc.) dark story, in which titular character Tommy Darlington works as a well-paid assassin hired by “unforgiving men with silent billions.” A former Army ranger and low-profile artist, Tommy initially has no problem with the deadly commissions he refers to as “taking out the trash.” His girlfriend, Rachel, a successful novelist, supports the couple, as publicly Tommy ekes out a living as a nighttime cabbie. Rachel knows nothing about her boyfriend’s deadly business or his ill-gotten gains that amount to millions, all of which he has hidden and earmarked to fund their retirement in Costa Rica. Witnessing a higher-up known as the Old Man feed Tommy’s bespoke-suited handler, Alfred, to a dozen alligators, the hit man has a change of heart about his line of work. The shift in his attitude is bad for business, and his employers take notice. Then Rachel disappears. Readers may feel an adrenalin rush as Tommy desperately tries to find her. There’s a disconnect between his incomprehension for his employers’ “casual disregard for human life” and his own sniper activities, although some kills bother him. Snuffing out an elegant older woman who heads a foundation that a dirty organization wants in its portfolio, Tommy cries along with the doomed victim. Fans of the award-winning television series Barry will find similarities between the show’s main character and Tommy, as both are damaged, military-trained hit men with a desire to change but seemingly no way to do so. Told primarily in the first person, the novel will elicit readers’ sympathies for Tommy’s impaired psyche as he works for men dealing in the “top three commodities in the world: firearms, drugs, and humans.” The author’s descriptions—be they sexy, humorous, or terrifying—are notable: for example, “she fragranced her way to the bedroom,” “his huge sausage fingers,” and “hollow eye sockets were illuminated by a deadlight that made me rocket-vomit and cough in rolling spasms.” A gripping crime tale that becomes as complicated as its main character.
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An entertainingly complicated, interwoven story that is, by turns, funny, horrifying, and tender. the theoretics of love
ELEMENT GIRLS The Lost Goddess
characters are, by contrast, quite complex; the unsure Tess and Amelia’s sorcerer father are each particularly well developed. Young fans of fantastical fiction will also enjoy this book’s magic system, which is inventive without being overly complicated. Imaginative and engaging magical fiction.
Spudich, Giulietta M. Handersen Publishing (366 pp.) $19.95 | $12.95 paper | $4.95 e-book May 27, 2019 978-1-947854-50-5 978-1-947854-49-9 paper
THE THEORETICS OF LOVE
A Hawaii-set, paranormal middlegrade series starter that tells a story about the power of friendship and sacrifice. Spudich (The Ice Giant, 2019, etc.) presents an exciting tale of a hidden world of sorcerers, goddesses, and people with elemental powers. Tess and her three friends, Amelia, Susie, and Elizabeth, have a bond that’s reflected in the necklaces they wear, highlighting the four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. However, as they get ready to start high school, Amelia’s closeness with her friend Tess, who suffers from a lack of confidence, seems to be fading. The other girls face their own challenges; for example, Elizabeth shows a lack of interest in exercise, and Susie is starting to show impulsive behavior. When Amelia’s sorcerer father, whom she’s never met, suddenly kidnaps her, she embarks on a surprising adventure involving the use of magic. Amelia eventually meets a surprising ally named Akoni; he helps her fight back against her father, who wants Amelia to join him in his dark magic endeavors. Through clever problem-solving and the use of a few magical items, the girls manage to locate Amelia, but their challenges aren’t over. Over the course of this book, Spudich maintains an atmosphere of peril that keeps the pace lively, but she never makes any scenes too scary for older elementary school–age readers to enjoy. The conclusion offers the touching lesson that people can change but still remain close friends. The prose style is simple and straightforward throughout, but the
Taylor, Joe NewSouth Books (376 pp.) $28.95 | $8.69 e-book | Sep. 3, 2019 978-1-58838-330-3 A forensic anthropologist encounters a series of complicated interconnections in this novel. Dr. Clarissa Circle, an English major– turned–forensic anthropologist, has a mantra: “No one ever touches anyone.” She insists on it as her guiding principle, but it’s often questioned by other characters and tested by events, which connect to one another in numerous ways. In 1999, at age 32, Clarissa begins her first postdoctoral job as a new professor at the University of Kentucky. When a “puzzling glut of ritual murders” occurs in the area, Clarissa becomes a consultant to the Lexington police. She and Sgt. Willy Cox begin a relationship that’s later rocked by mutual infidelities and jealousies. Clarissa analyzes skeletons found in a mass grave, which could relate to a rumored “blood cult” from the early 1970s. These rumors are confirmed by Methuselah, a former hippie who attended the university in that era. In a local forest shack, two dead bodies are discovered that have been there for a considerable length of time—an apparent double suicide. Meanwhile, a mentally ill man stalks a female student; another woman lives in his boardinghouse whom Clarissa dubs “Petite Artiste,” as she often stands outside and sketches Clarissa’s rented house—the same house where a woman whose body was found at the mass gravesite used to live. Another female boarder is romantically obsessed with the artist and secretly follows her. At the same time, three English students share a house—seemingly a separate story, yet their lives have points of connection with other characters, too. And an old man becomes a Lexington street-corner prophet, his stream of phrases taken as oracular by growing crowds. As these various mysteries and relationships unfold, are solved, remain obscure, or end in violence or romance, characters consider the nature of chance and patterns. Along the way, Taylor (Pineapple, 2017, etc.) tells an entertainingly complicated, interwoven story that is, by turns, funny, horrifying, and tender. Philosophy, physics, literature, and historical events, such as the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath, all play roles, making this a novel of ideas as well as a complex murder mystery. One of its chief ideas is the question of how much people actually contribute to pattern-making rather than simply perceiving it. At one point, for instance, Methuselah, in a spot that was once occupied by a Civil War monument, comments on the “fermenting connection among a renegade Confederate general, his stallion, a methhead, and a hoary-haired gent babbling unrelated babbles. Obviously,
K I R K US M E DI A L L C # Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N President & Publisher M A RC W I N K E L M A N Chief Executive Officer M E G L A B O R D E KU E H N # Copyright 2019 by Kirkus Media LLC. KIRKUS REVIEWS (ISSN 1948- 7428) is published semimonthly by Kirkus Media LLC, 2600Via Fortuna, Suite 130, Austin, TX 78746. Subscription prices are: Digital & Print Subscription (U.S.) - 12 Months ($199.00) Digital & Print Subscription (International) - 12 Months ($229.00) Digital Only Subscription - 12 Months ($169.00) Single copy: $25.00. All other rates on request. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Kirkus Reviews, PO Box 3601, Northbrook, IL 60065-3601. Periodicals Postage Paid at Austin, TX 78710 and at additional mailing offices.
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my friend Willy the dashing detective was getting to me with his Jungian synchronicities.” Different narrators, each with his or her own style, swap around storytelling duties, providing checks on different points of view as well as skillful revelations of character. It is somewhat disappointing when it’s revealed that a key to Clarissa’s character is repressed childhood trauma, which feels like an overused plot device. However, this is a relative quibble among so much inventive brio. An intelligent, deeply felt, quirky, and original novel that lives up to its ambitions.
HEART’S BLOOD
Von Kannon, Alice MCP Books (458 pp.)
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Von Kannon (co-author: Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies for Dummies, 2008, etc.) tells a tale of romance and intrigue in this historical novel set in 17th-century America. In 1803, the United States is still coming to terms with what it means to be independent from Britain. Salem, Massachusetts, is a mighty naval city whose docks bustle with commerce, and imports from all over the world fill warehouses that line the shore. Capt. Isaac McCallister is a successful businessman and seaman from one of Salem’s wealthiest families—or at least he was before he was captured by Barbary pirates and enslaved in Algeria for five years. Francois Déguerre, a loyal Frenchman who is his friend, ransomed him and set him free. After returning home to Salem, McCallister is bewitched by Eleanor Hampton, his late stepbrother’s daughter. She’s a headstrong, fiercely talented painter, and they quickly fall in love despite family drama that threatens to destroy their happiness. While grappling with the trauma from his time in Algiers, Isaac is accused of a grave crime and must fight to clear his name. Von Kannon appears to have modeled the relationship between Eleanor and her mother, Fanny, on the one between Mrs. Bennet and Elizabeth from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and as Austen did in that classic tale, the author provides a meddling cousin and snooty siblings to effectively add to the tense, exasperating family dynamics. The overall drama is propelled by strong dialogue and careful research that makes the historical fiction ring true. Despite its length, this novel is well paced and offers up some steamy romantic scenes that break up the drama into digestible sections. An engrossing tale of navigating new love and finding one’s way back home after a perilous journey.
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